America: A Godly people or a Godless nation?

For the first forty-two years of my life, I believed the godly people version of the history of America. God called the Puritans, a Biblical people, to settle New England to begin a Christian nation - America.  I was taught this version of American history at Christian colleges.

On April 4th, 1968, I had a second conversion - the conversion to a spirituality that included biblical justice.  This second conversion included a keen awareness that America was fundamentally flawed with ethnocentrism/racism and economic oppression.  In other words, America was born Godless than godly.

Today I am aware of the fact that the Puritans also packed British ethnocentrism and oppression next to their Bibles.  Second and third generation Puritans often put greed, ethnocentrism and oppression ahead of the Biblical message.  Soon Puritans were even paying money for the scalps of Indians.

The Reverand Bill McGill may be right when he declares: "The Christian coalition should stop preaching the lie that this country was founded on Christian principles and teach their children that only a godless people would be responsible for Indian genocide and African enslavement."

If you are confused about American history, I completely understand.  On the one hand, we have the Washington Monument with its double message:  Celebrate our first president, our founding father, but the second message is George and Martha Washington owned around three hundred slaves: Thus they participated in a massive social evil.  Our founding fathers did not have the courage or wisdom to end slavery, so later these United States had to fight a Civil War at great human cost in order to eliminate slavery.

Then there is also the St. Louis Arch with its double message:  Westward expansion and Indian oppression.  St Louis was the base for expansion of western Christian civilization clear to the west coast.  It was also the base for the destruction of Indian peoples and cultures and the stealing of Indian land.

Are white evangelicals idolatrous?

In the April 2018 issue of Sojourners Magazine Kelly Brown Douglas wrote an article titled "How Evangelicals Became White".  In a one sentence summary of the article Douglas stated, "By linking Anglo-Saxonism with godliness, evangelical Christianity has become complacent in promoting a great America that is equated with white supremacy."

A term that was used by scholars in the mid-1900s needs to be revived: that term is "white Anglo-Saxon Protestant"  Today white evangelicals equate WASP as an Americanized Kingdom of God.  This turns white ethnocentrism into a type of idolatry.

Why is the evangelical social ethic so deeply flawed, so easily corrupted by the worst of Americanism?  Why has white evangelicalism degenerated into a spirituality without justice?  A couple of possible reasons:  There is no biblical theology of oppression in spite of the fact that there are 555 references to oppression in the Old Testament, and there is no New Testament theology of justice in spite of the fact that there are over 300 dik-stems in the New Testament.