A Prayer for Our Country by Peter Marshall (former Senate Chaplain)
God of our Ancestors, whose almighty hand has made and preserved our nation; grant that we may understand what it is we commemorate and celebrate [today]. May we remember how bitterly our freedom was won, the down-payment that was made for it, the installments that have been made since this Republic was born, and the price that must yet be paid for our liberty. May it ever be understood that our liberty is under God and can be found nowhere else. May our faith be something that is not merely stamped on our coins, but expressed in our lives. To the extent that America honors You, O God, bless America. Keep her as true as You have kept her free, and make her as good as You have made her rich. We pray in the name of Him whose service is perfect freedom, Jesus our Lord. Amen.
There was a time when the churches were transformational spiritual communities instead of legalistic religious collectives.
The worst thing that can happen to a transformational spiritual tradition is to become a civil religion.
The Trinitarian Mystery is Father, Son and Holy Spirit; not God, Church and Country. And the theological virtues are Faith, Hope and Love; not the civic virtues of the Protestant work ethic.
Many contemporary church-goers have more faith in the transformative power of Law/ideological polical policies than they do in the healing power of Grace/Divine Love.
Conservative/Traditional churches are Republican PACs with a 50′s political agenda and Liberal/Progressive churches are PACs with a 60′s political agenda. I have little hope of either meeting the challenges of the 21st century.
In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe , where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America where it became an enterprise.
–Richard Halverson, former chaplain of the United States Senate
In a rare interview in 1967 with Thomas McDonnell, [Thomas] Merton pronounced that the great crisis in the church is a crisis of authority precipitated because the church, as institution and organization, has overshadowed the reality of the church as a community of persons united in love and in Christ. He now charged that obedience and conformity with the impersonal corporation-church are a fact in the life of Christians. “The Church is preached as a communion, but is run in fact as a collectivity, and even as a totalitarian collectivity.
~ George Kilcourse, ACE OF FREEDOMS: Thomas Merton’s Christ, Notre Dame Press, 1993
“The appeal of which Jesus Christ in person is the living embodiment, the distinctively Christian reality, must be the criterion everywhere. Christians may never identify themselves totally with any party, institution, or even Church. Only totalitarian systems demand total identification. Christians may never join uncritically in every cry of the age. Only partial identification can be justified: insofar as this party, institution or Church corresponds to the Christian criterion or at least does not clearly contradict it.” Hans Kung, On Being a Christian, pg.569.