HANNAFORD: Faith, forgiveness, and a gentle warning to our American friends

One of the more unfortunate conflations made by traditional conservatives is that of God and country. They are not the same thing. Yet, Christian nations in the ascendant are often prone to think they are.This is the confession of one who once thought so. Raised in Great Britain during the 1950s when the British Empire still coloured much of the world map red, it was easy enough. The very coronation of the monarch was a religious event, conducted for more than 900 years in Westminster Abbey, to which successive kings and queens were escorted not by priestly processions, but by cavalry. In the rafters of Winchester Cathedral, where I went sometimes during my university days, were the crumbling colours of ancient regiments, recalling old gallantries. As this is a confession, I confess — my heart is still moved. Of those days I can only say, it was all around us. And it was comfortable.However, the hearts of many Americans are equally comfortable who today sing ‘God bless America!’ with every expectation that He will do so.And the sad truth is that while God seems to have been gracious to my old country in the past and even more so to America, the blessing is not to be taken for granted; above all, a nationalism that claims the protection of divine grace will not long survive if it does not produce the fruits of it..If Americans love God then, He may well protect their land as he has protected other nations in distress who called upon Him. (Here’s a case in point.) However, the opposite is also true; God is not a magic charm or a mercenary for hire. He requires the devotion of those who call upon His name.Sunday’s memorial service for Charlie Kirk should therefore be an occasion for thoughtful reflection, deeply inspiring though its sincerity certainly was.Kirk was rightly honoured as a martyr for his Christian message. However, he was also an extremely effective conservative Christian activist. And it worries some people that he was both, as though politics and faith shouldn’t mix..They, at least, worry for nothing. Faith ought to make a man think about his politics. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. put it, “Some people are so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good.”Well, that wasn’t Charlie Kirk. Because he believed certain things about Christ, he had to draw certain conclusions about people and politics. It was a neat fit, and on Sunday everybody except perhaps President Trump, who professed to hate his enemies, stayed on the message of forgiveness and not meeting hate with hate. Even the Jewish Stephen Miller didn’t break step in this overwhelmingly Christian witness.And with spectacular grace Erika Kirk in forgiving her husband’s killer, was true to the teaching of Christ who while being nailed to the cross, famously said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” She said, "My husband Charlie he wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life ... On the cross, our Saviour said, 'Father, forgive them, for they not know what they do.' That young man. I forgive him.".This is not to absolve the killer. He remains in the hands of the authorities. Mrs. Kirk however chose to accept that she had been forgiven for her offences against God, whatever they were … she could not withhold forgiveness from someone who had wounded her.It is a difficult teaching.Kirk’s memorial service therefore looked like an authentic tribute to him and the God he served, and I believe it was entirely sincere.But let’s hope the idea doesn’t spread that if you’re an American and want to serve your country, you’d better learn to speak Christianese. Because then you become no better than people who to get hired, pretend (for example) to think men can be women and women can be men, just by saying so. And the Bible provides no evidence that God would long bless such deceptions….There remains however the need for national humility. Worshipping God might, maybe, make a man a great American, but worshipping America definitely cannot make a man a good Christian.So because I deeply admire and respect the US, I commend to Americans what our great poet of empire, Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1897 for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Called ‘Recessional,’ it anticipated the moral decay and decline that within a generation overtook a country that at the time stood like a colossus over the world.It reads, in part, “If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,Such boastings as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds without the Law—Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget!Look at England now. They forgot.Americans, take note.Canada too, by the way, with a government relentlessly looking for ways to exclude God from our national life ... It will end badly.

HANNAFORD: Faith, forgiveness, and a gentle warning to our American friends

Related Stories