The educational goal of the American Christian church in a republic is to build the foundation of America’s christian conscience.
The Christian church has been one of the most potent factors in the construction of the American Republic and one of the greatest bulwarks of its magnificent principles and institutions. The Christian church should form the character of the nation, and breathe the soul of Christ into its society and incarnate God and conscience in its history and progress. That is the way it was in the beginning.
“So imbedded in the life of our early civic fathers was the Christian church that we cannot think of them apart from the Christian church. The church was the real mourning of the state with them. They saw to it that every settlement had its sanctuary, until ten thousand spires pointed upward to the capital source of their national prosperity. With them was the method of their political building: the people made the laws, and the churches made the people.”
(Teaching and Learning America’s Christian History: The Principle Approach p. 40)
The church in teaching American citizens:
- The first essential is to get in right relationship with God, to get His law written on his heart and incorporated in the life.
- Institutions must harmonize with His will, and so must rulers and so must voters.
- The church sets Jesus Christ before men as the pattern in which to follow-His views of man, man’s dignity, man’s rights, man’s needs, must be held.
- His principles and His views of doctrine concerning God must be adopted.
- The divine love which shines out of His cross must be allowed to dominate all the affairs of human life.
- His hopefulness must be granted an entrance into the souls of men.
- His manhood must be reproduced in our citizens, and the nation must wheel itself into line with the purposes of his coming kingdom of righteousness, peace and love.
“A nation is only and aggregation of individual men. Christ deals with nations. In His sight nations are moral personalities. They perform all the functions of a moral person, and He treats them according to their character. Divorce your nation from Christ you ring its death-knell; you link its fate to the fate of Judas… Tell me how the America Republic will treat Christ and I will tell you the future of the American Republic.”
(Teaching and Learning America’s Christian History: The Principle Approach pp. 42-43)
Resources:
- Bible and the Constitution
- An American Dictionary of the English Language
- Family and the Nation
- Christian History of the Constitution: Christian Self-Government
- Value of the Bible
- A Republic If You Can Keep It
- Keepers of Liberty
- Lesson in Liberty Lecture Series
The FACE ministry supports the three spheres of constitutional liberty: the Christian home, the Christian church, and the Christian school.