Is the USA a Christian Nation?

Nagasaki after Atom Bomb

In 1549, by the request of a fugitive Samurai warrior named Anjiro, Francis Xavier sailed to Japan to plant a church. He was very successful, and it was said of these converts that they were very zealous.

Interestingly, when Francis Xavier asked Anjiro if he thought Japan would receive Christianity, he replied, “They would not do so immediately, but would first ask you many questions and see what you knew. Above all, they would want to see whether your life corresponded with your teaching.”

Gary G. Kohls who wrote about this period tells us that Christianity took root there. But in the 1600s, it quickly became the target of brutal Japanese Imperial persecutions. Within 50 years after the planting of Xavier’s mission church, it was a capital crime to be a Christian in Japan. The Japanese Christians who refused to recant their beliefs suffered ostracism, torture, and even crucifixions similar to the Roman persecutions in the first three centuries of Christianity. After the reign of terror was over, it appeared to all observers that Christianity had been completely stamped out.

However, 250 years later, Japan was being opened up for trade purposes, and it was discovered that thousands of baptized Christians still existed in Nagasaki, Japan. It was now the 1850s, and these homes, were completely unknown to the government. When they were identified, the government started another series of persecutions. However, this time, because of international pressures, the persecutions were soon stopped, and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground.

In a relatively short time, by 1917, the Japanese Christians had organized and built a massive Cathedral, calling it St Mary’s. By the 1940s, thousands of people professed to be Christians in Japan. It appeared to most that Christianity was beginning to be practiced openly, without fear of hostility and persecution.

However, early in the morning of August 9, 1945, a few young American Christians from another part of the world, met with two chaplains— one Lutheran and the other Catholic— for a little prayer meeting before they started their day’s work. After the prayer, these two American Christians climbed into their B- 29 Super Fortress long- distance bomber and began heading for Nagasaki.

Tragically, history records that St. Mary’s Cathedral was one of the very landmarks these American Christians had been told to look for as they flew into the target zone. Shortly after the pilot identified the cathedral, he ordered the atom bomb to be dropped.

At 11:02 a.m., as told in Kohl’s words, “Nagasaki Christianity was boiled, evaporated, and carbonized in a scorching, radioactive fireball. The persecuted, vibrant, faithful, surviving center of Japanese Christianity had become ground zero. And what the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years of persecution, American Christians did in 9 seconds.” The Christians of Nagasaki were wiped out.

This was and is the product of the idea that the United States of America is a christian nation and that it is acceptable for Christians of one nation to kill fellow christian of another nation if that nation declares that their cause is the “just” one. Even though war may be evil, it is a necessary evil so that good may prevail.

Listen to what the bible says about Christians who follow this kind of reasoning.

Romans 3:8 (NIV)
[8] Why not say—as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is deserved.

Think of the Roman soldier that cut off Paul's head. What if he was a born again professing follower of Jesus Christ. An ambassador of Christ, as if God were making His appeal through him. He is being compel by love, as Jesus commanded us, to love the family of God, our neighbor and our enemies. Could he truly be justified in committing this act of beheading Paul, another follower of Jesus Christ, because he is a citizen of the Roman Empire and was ordered to carry out this mission by Nero? Just because they told him it was for a “just” cause. Is that what Jesus would want us to do? Is that what it means to love your enemy as Jesus commanded us to do? 

There are only two nations. The kingdoms of man and the kingdom of God. We cannot serve two master. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” John 14:15 (NIV)

John 15:10 (NIV)
[10] If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.

Do we just follow Jesus in theory when it’s uncomfortable and literally when it’s easy?