A Christian nation? At 250, America is still fighting over what that means

When people ask Holly Hollman if America is a Christian nation, she has a simple response.

“What do you mean by that?”

The longtime general counsel of the Washington, D.C.-based Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, which promotes the separation of church and state, Hollman explains that if the question is whether most Americans are Christian, that’s yes. But if they’re asking whether Christians should have special legal privileges that others don’t have, she says her answer is a hard no.

Most historians and legal scholars agree that two things have always been true about the United States — it has no official religion, and Christianity has shaped its culture, laws and public life since before its founding. But what does it mean to be a nation of mostly Christians without a state religion? For most of the nation’s history, the country held that tension without resolving it.

The debate over that question has gained new intensity in the Trump era, especially as the country approaches its 250th anniversary. On Sunday (May 17), the Trump administration will host “Rededicate 250,” a daylong festival of prayer and thanksgiving on the National Mall. The idea, Trump said when he announced the event at the National Prayer Breakfast, is to “rededicate America as one nation under God.” Many of the speakers at the event — most of them Christian and evangelical — espouse the idea that America was and always has been a Christian nation.

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In Opinion

And finally, Spiritually burned out? Tish Harrison Warren and some ancient monks have some advice.

Tish Harrison Warren had everything going for her.

A job as a priest at a church she loved. A family she adored. Good friends. And a dream gig writing about faith for The New York Times. And yet, she, like millions of Americans, was exhausted.

And God had gone silent.

“I would sit to pray, but it felt as though the line had gone dead. I did not feel a sense of God’s nearness. I didn’t feel much of anything at all,” writes Warren in her new book, “What Grows in Weary Lands,” out Tuesday (May 12) from Penguin Random House.

“And I’d begin to think, is anyone there?”

Warren, who is ordained in the Anglican Church in North America, found a way forward with the help of some friends and advice from the desert fathers and mothers, a group of ancient spiritual guides who fled into the desert to find God more than 1,500 years ago. Their advice, Warren writes, helped her build a sturdier spirituality for taking on the modern world. Rather than spiritual hacks, they offered advice for long-term spiritual health.

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