When protesters took to the streets over Iran's disputed presidential election, that nation turned to its supreme leaders — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his 12-member Guardian Council, made up of clerics and experts in Islamic law — for a verdict on the election's outcome.
Iran's appeal to religious authorities for a binding decision on a national election struck me as odd. Or quaint. Or ominous.
As an American, I've never had to worry about a religious potentate or a group of ministers deciding for all of us who our next president would be.
Somehow, though, the developments in Iran made me think of my recent appearance on Jack Pattie's radio call-in program on WVLK-590 AM.
The question that morning was whether the United States is a "Christian nation." Quite a few callers had strong opinions, pro and con.
I find that whole issue thorny.
Iran, for instance, obviously is a Muslim nation; it's a theocracy.
But in what sense is America "Christian"? Here are a few thoughts:
The people who argue that America was founded as a Christian nation rarely define what they mean. They might be right; they might be wrong. It depends entirely on how you use the words "Christian nation."
It's true, for instance, that most of America's early Europe-born settlers would have claimed Christianity as their faith. On the other hand, it's a mistake to imagine those folks as a like-minded throng of Scripture-spouting pilgrims.
By 1776, a mere 17 percent of Americans belonged to churches, according to The Churching of America 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy by Roger Finke and Rodney Starke (Rutgers University Press, 1992). A comparative few early settlers came here to practice their religion; many more came to claim land, make money and, on occasion, escape criminal prosecution overseas.
It's true, too, that many of America's laws and guiding principles were based directly or indirectly on the Bible. But most of the Bible (the whole Old Testament) was first written by Jews for Jews, not by Christians for Christians. Also, much of the United States' founding ethos was based on the works of liberal political philosophers such as John Locke.
As for the guys who gave us the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, they ran the theological gamut, from Christians to deists to agnostics.
If you actually read the Constitution they wrote — plus any ream of other, related documents — it's clear the framers were distrustful of church hierarchies and hoped to limit their influence, while at the same time allowing all citizens religious freedom.
Is the United States today a Christian country? Again, it depends on how you define the term. Certainly, the majority of Americans classify themselves as Christians: 77 percent in a 2008 Gallup survey (down from 91 percent in 1948).
Yet, depending on whose study you believe, only 20 percent to 40 percent of Americans, a minority, actually attend services on any given Sunday.
Look at other indicators of how people's faith actually affects their lives, and the gap between our profession and our practices becomes glaring.
The Barna Group reported that in 2007, a mere 5 percent of all American adults gave a 10 percent tithe of their income to churches. A 2006 Barna study found that only 15 percent of those who regularly attended church rated their relationship with God as the most important thing in their life. And in another Barna poll, 75 percent of U.S. teenagers said they would engage in psychic or witchcraft activity.
None of this indicates a nation awash in Christian piety.
I don't hear many people calling for the United States to establish a theocracy governed by the Christian equivalent of an ayatollah. But I can't help wondering what such a development would look like.
Let's say our Christian ayatollah was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, President Barack Obama's controversial former minister, or liberal theologian John Shelby Spong. Evangelicals would rend their garments and declare civil war.
If evangelicals managed to install the Rev. Pat Robertson or conservative activist James Dobson, mainline Protestants would go berserk.
What if the Conference of Catholic Bishops declared one of its members our pre-eminent power, and the other bishops became his Guardian Council? Nearly everyone else — including millions of Catholics who disagree with the bishops on birth control, abortion, homosexuality or the death penalty — would simply lose their minds.
Various religious factions lobby to get like-minded individuals elected to Congress or appointed as federal judges, but I don't think we have to fret about the United States ever becoming a theocracy.
Whether or not this is, or ever was, a Christian country according to your personal definition, American Christians today are so fragmented they couldn't cooperate long enough to take over the government, much less administrate it.
Which maybe is what the founders were counting on.
Their vision has made this a terrific land in which to live. We can believe any reasonable or unreasonable thing we want to, or believe nothing. It's up to each of us, our conscience and our God. No dour-faced holy man can force even one of us to do anything.
I define that as true freedom.
