Navigating the Political Rapids: Remaining Biblical in Modern America

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Dr. James Spencer

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 2/16/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to Stand In the Gap Today. And I trust that in the midst of the ongoing and increasing distraction and deception that swirls all about us, that if you are a genuine child of God definition, you’ve made your relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ alone. That definition, if you’ve done that, that you are not caught up in the distraction and the deception that the world and the world system throws at us. One of the most significant challenges facing American Christians today is how to interpret the events of the day and the news we hear, all of which is filtered through the world and the world system and intentionally, intentionally turned to some aspect of the political. Our mind goes to the political and those in political office says both cause and the cure. Every statement from government has become a political spin.

Every economic statistic or policy is politically shaped. Every congressional hearing, whether it’s about the very current Epstein file saga as an example, or every presidential tweet is political designed to divide, not to unify it’s us versus them to blame shift to avoid responsibility for what now is. And it should therefore be no surprise when no real change is seen regardless of the political party or the people in charge. Because without any fear of God or understanding of accountability toward God, there is a continual rejection of God’s plan for society and his divine pattern, which he has for each authority structure within society as called out throughout scripture. As a result, God’s pattern for personal and national blessing, which God says comes only from his hand and is contingent on two things fearing God. Number one, keeping God’s commandments. Number two, without that it becomes impossible.

It’s a fool’s errand for anyone to think otherwise. Yet we hear deceptive political promises of greatness and talk of a new golden day or some new world order that will occur if only a new party was in power, right? That’s what they say. And this bold promise is repeatedly proclaimed from election to election despite God’s clear words to the contrary. So how should a true Christian view life around us in this politically hijacked world system around us? How should we do that from a biblical perspective and respond accordingly? Well, the title I’ve chosen to frame today’s program is this, navigating the political rapids remaining biblical in modern America. And joining me to give some thought to this very real challenge to Dr. James Spencer, he’s been with me many times before. He’s the president of the Useful to God ministry, which has a website@usefultogod.com, and he is also the president of the DL Moody Center. And with that, Dr. James Spencer, welcome back to the program. It’s good to have you on quite a relevant topic here today.

James Spencer:

Yeah, it’s great to be back Sam. Thanks for having me,

Sam Rohrer:

James. In my introduction, I provided a short foundation for the challenge I believe that faces America today. We began as a nation of civil government, carefully built on articulated foundational principles of biblical principles. We know that, but we’ve rejected that history. We’ve replaced God with a man centered God and the political system filled with people who manifest no fear of God and adding further to that just to help get this foundation of the program going. We sit here today and this ladies and gentlemen, if you listen to the program ruin, you may have heard this before, but I cite it because it bears right now just over 70% of Americans self-identify as being Christian and one say, wow, that’s a great number. That is a pretty big number. But one third of them, about 30% self-identify as being born again or evangelical. But according to Dr. George Barna who did the research and we’ve talked about it on this program, when all things are considered only about 3% of Americans, even that self-identified group of born again or evangelical 3%, only 3% would qualify according to scriptural requirements as being truly redeemed and genuine disciples of Christ and sons and daughters of God.

Alright, now that’s a big deal. So James, in an article you wrote some months ago, you said this, when I began writing about the intersection of Christianity and politics in 2022, it wasn’t out of concern for the political situation in the United States. You went on to say, as I’ve noted elsewhere, politicians and political parties are not in the business of making disciples for Jesus Christ or glorifying God. They are focused on securing votes. That’s pretty straight up. And here’s my question. How would you describe the current health of true biblically driven Christianity in the midst of our modern politically focused America?

James Spencer:

Well, I mean you bring up the Barna research, which largely has to do with this sort of syncretistic worldview, the merger of Christianity with a number of different ideologies and perspectives that are in commensurate with it. And I think that really speaks to where we are politically right now. What we’re seeing in my mind is we are seeing Christians adapting to the political environment and trying to learn to play the political game in order to get us back to something that is just as fragile as where we are now. And so you talked a little bit about the founding of the nation and I think that people have in their minds that if we could just get back to that founding, if we could just get back to basing some things on biblical principles, all would be well. And what I would argue is that even if we go back to the Old Testament and we see God giving Moses the law and immediately we see the Israelites breaking that law, this is not a failure of the law, it’s a failure of the law to be able to deal with the human heart.

Any system we put together is going to be brittle. Any system that we put together is going to dishonor God because all of us have gone astray. We need something different in the world, not some different system. We need something different in the world and this is why God sent the Holy Spirit to live among us, to rejuvenate us, to redeem Christians so that we can show the world an alternative. And as we seek to move back into this political space and accommodate to the political logics of the day, I think we’re really missing an opportunity to show the world an alternative, the alternative that Jesus Christ can make in the lives of a people. And without that alternative, I think we’re just playing a political game that we will always lose even if we win. That’s part of the problem that we’re facing right now, Sam. We’re trying to learn to play a game that is unwinnable for us because it requires us to compromise who we are in Christ. It requires us to compromise our faith at a various number of terms. It requires us to support things that we really shouldn’t be supporting and it distracts us from simply proclaiming the truth of who God is and pointing to and glorifying the trying God.

Sam Rohrer:

And ladies and gentlemen, I hope that this introduction has your attention. Whether you’ve realized this challenge that exists or not, I think probably most of you listening do, but it’s a very real thing in our nation as Dr. James Spencer, my guest has just said, many think if we just go back and just automatically recreate what we were 200 years ago, things would be different. Well maybe that would be, but we can’t go back 200 years ago. So we have to say, what does scripture say? What does the Bible say should govern our thinking, our actions, our analysis in these days when we are right now, we’ll be back in just a moment if you’re just joining us, we’re beginning our second segment here today. Our theme is this, navigating the political rapids remaining biblical in modern America. My special guest is Dr. James Spencer. He is the president of the Useful to God Ministry.

They have a website@usefultogod.com and he’s also the president of the DL Moody Center and that website is moody center.org. But we’re tackling a topic here today that is very real. Anyone who is observing all that is going on and has any understanding of scripture at all feels it. We feel it. Some understand it a little bit better than others perhaps, but it’s there. And how do true biblical Christians operate in a system that is clearly thrown truth out the window and God is not in their minds, in their hearts, it’s clearly not. How do we navigate, how do we interpret that? Well, I thought of this one section, John chapter 17, let me just read this a little bit. Jesus is praying there to his father. He’s recognizing that he was soon going to return to heaven and he says no longer be a part of this world.

When he was here, he was a part of this world. He identified with us human flesh, but he knew he was not going to stay here. So he prays for true believers. If you read that chapter, it’s pretty interesting. So he prays for true believers us if we know him through faith, that though we are in this world, he recognizes that we are not part of it. See? And so should we. Jesus says in John chapter 17, 14 to 17, he says this, I have given them, he’s talking to his father. I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world. Just as I am not of the world. Jesus says to his Father, I do not ask that you take them us true believers that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one.

They are not of the world just as I am not of the world. And then these words, sanctify them, preserve them, keep them in the truth. Your word is truth. Alright, that’s the authority of scripture. That’s why we go there all the time. Now James, let’s just compare a contrast now to help our listeners gauge perhaps for themselves and others as to what is promoted by the political system and those in it versus what God says should be the Christian view. My goal today is not to focus on the current faces in political power faces and names come and go. It’s the man centered attitude that’s been driving our nation for a very long time. And so let’s speak to that. Let’s take the foundational aspect of a couple of these things. The first, this one here of the purpose. The purpose for government, meaning authority, government authority, the same word, the purpose for authority, the purpose for government, compare, contrast, the political view, how they view that versus the biblical view and provide if possible an example.

James Spencer:

Sure. I think that government is obviously when we look at government biblically, we see the government is under the authority of God. And so what we see as Christians when we see that is it’s under the authority of the triune God and all that that entails. I think when we adopt a political view, divorced from scripture or marginalizing scripture a bit, what we find is that politics really isn’t under anything. It is its own sovereign. And so while it may appeal to principles of morality or truth or goodness, what have you, and at certain times they may appeal to right principles of morality, truth, goodness, beauty. Ultimately the political view is that the politics run things, that the government is actually in charge, that it has a sovereignty in the United States. This takes on the people have the sovereignty, we are governing ourselves to some extent, but when we just take God out of it or we push God’s sufficient to the margins, that he’s not really all that important to it.

The political side of things really does start to gain its own authority, its own inertia, it claims its own authority and it starts to make its own decisions on its own terms as opposed to recognizing that God has put an order in place that it is to be governing toward. I think that as we shift over to the biblical view, that’s really what we see. If we just look at the great commission in Matthew 28, Jesus proclaims to his disciples that he’s been given all authority over heaven and on earth and thus we are to make disciples. Our job as the church is to draw people under the authority of Christ. And so that’s our basic function When we’re making disciples, we are drawing people under the authority of Christ. And I would say that we can extend that into our interactions with the government.

Part of what we’re supposed to do as members of a democracy is to say to our government, look, you’re still sitting under the authority of Christ. And so when we see the government moving in directions that it shouldn’t be moving, doing things that it shouldn’t be doing, whether that’s economic or oppressive or burying justice, whatever that happens to be, part of our role as church is to step back and say, you’re no longer living under the authority of Christ and you need to come back and recognize that this is unjust, that this is unfair and you need to change what you’re doing. That is just part of the church’s function. We’re constantly seeking to draw other people or other entities under the authority of Christ. Whereas the government in the political view, the strictly political view is really just trying to justify itself and live on its own terms.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, staying on this and we’re going to go to the goal. But when you go to somebody in office today or most people and say, what is the purpose of government? The purpose of government, I mean I know from being in office most they can’t tell you can’t what it is. But the word of God does tell us that it’s to enact justice to Romans 13. And Peter talks about to praise those who do well, to protect those who do well as defined by what the Bible defines it by, and to punish those, bring to justice those who break the law particularly as defined by God. So that’s where we get the idea of limited government because government’s not to tell us how to run our families. It’s not to tell us what to teach our children, all of that. That used to be some discussion now nobody really knows. So the political system today goes way beyond that, doesn’t it?

James Spencer:

It does. And I think you’re right. Governments are intended to restrain evil and promote good. That’s just sort of a simple, straightforward, basic definition of it. Restrain evil, promote good. And what we normally have when government is enacting policies, we have some mixture of that. We have the government being able to enact policies and procedures that either make the whole political community sicker or healthier on some level, but even as we talk about that, it’s like there are side effects from the medicine that they’re giving us and we’re ignoring a lot of those side effects. And so as Christians, we need to not get so caught up in the sort of micro progressions. The government doing what it does well is a good thing for us. Jeremiah 25 speaks to the Israelites who are in exile and says, you need to seek the welfare of the city in which I’m sending you because in the welfare of the city, so is your welfare.

It’s totally appropriate for Christians to want our government to function well. What I think is not appropriate for Christians is only to want our government to function for us, to make us comfortable, to make our lives convenient. What we are trying to do is we’re trying to order the government to the good. And ultimately I would argue what we’re trying to do is order the government to the good while we point the government toward the triune God. And so our role is always to be asking the government to recognize that it sits under the authority of Christ and to conform to that standard. We’re not trying to convert the government, we’re not trying to institute some sort of Christian nationalism. I don’t believe we’re doing that. Our proclamation though can’t lose Christ. It’s essential to who we are and what we do. Christ is constituted for the church. And so when we speak, we’re constantly speaking in line with what Christ wants us to do.

Sam Rohrer:

And in accordance with that, James as a citizen, to look at what is taking place. It requires a knowledge of scripture and what God says is what should be so that we either accept or reject what is being put toward us. And for the person who may be in office called and says that they fear God for them when they make their votes and they cast make their public decisions, that they do not compromise what scripture says in the hopes of maybe getting a chance down the road. So those who know the truth can’t back up from the truth, but we have to keep that filter in front of us always. Do we not?

James Spencer:

That’s right. And I think that the big sort of the thing that I would say is missing in this equation, I think there are Christians who stand up for what they believe in. I think there are Christians who are even in office who are standing up for good biblical truth and trying to push society toward sitting under the authority of Christ in appropriate ways. I think the problem is that we’re unwilling to lose. We serve a savior who was crucified and then was resurrected. We don’t like the crucifixion part so much. We just want to win. And I think if we get caught up in winning the political game, we’re going to lose our souls in the process. We’ve got to be willing to lose politically in order to stand firm on the gospel. I’m not saying that every time we stand firm on the gospel, we will lose. I’m saying we have to have that willingness because otherwise we’re going to compromise our faith.

Sam Rohrer:

That’s very good James. Ladies and gentlemen, we cannot compromise convictions and compromise truth. There may be a cost to disagreeing with the world. Absolutely there will be, but we must fear God more than man. That brings back into this entire discussion that we’re having. Stay with us. We’ll be back in just a moment. Well, the fact that there is a competing worldview, we’re shifting topics just a little bit. We looked at compare and contrast, the idea of purpose of government from what the Bible says, what the political system says, and really emphasizing the fact that we are in alight culture. We’re in a time where as a nation, I’m going to submit from my perspective, and I’ve been in office for a long time, but we’ve actually in reality moved from placing our utmost trust in the word of God and what God says, and even as people who say they fear God.

And we already identified at the beginning of the program that even though there’s 70% of Americans say they’re Christians, only about 3% according to George Barna research would indicate that they truly are. So we got a problem in that the vast majority of our nation, and even those who say they are Christian, do not think biblically like a Christian, nor do they act like a Christian, which means expectations are not on mark. The view of God’s not on mark. And as we said, as Christ recognized, we his followers, sons and daughters of God, we are in this world, but we’re not of this world. So how is it that we should then live? Well, that’s kind of what we’re talking about today because there are far too many who look to those in office or somebody in office as if they are God, because in reality, those who are in government without God fearing tend to believe that government is God and they are little gods.

Now, the fact is there’s a competing worldview, and we talk about that a lot on this program. It’s driven by the world, the world system, and the scripture says it’s currently run by Satan who is the God of this world. It’s what the Bible says. It’s taught all the way through scripture. The truth is that the very essence of us as true believers being in this world but not of the world, that it’s not possible on our own to be discerning and alert to the deception around us. Hence Apostle Paul, Romans 12, one to two, I’ll just read this. He says, I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice wholly acceptable to God, not to the world to God, which is your reasonable service. And then here’s the key. Be not conformed to this world in the world system the way it is, the way it thinks, the way it acts, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you might prove not just to yourself, but to those around you. What is acceptable and perfect will of God. Alright, now, James, while it may be obvious, it may not be though compare contrast, what you see is perhaps the most fundamental differences in worldview as it relates to interpreting what we see around us, what we’re talking about here today in regard to our political system versus what a shaped Christian view would say.

James Spencer:

Yeah, so I think I would frame this out in terms of four worldview questions. Number one, where do we come from? Number two, what went wrong? Number three, what is the solution? And then the number four, where is everything headed? And I think if we ask those questions through a US political framework, we’re going to give very different answers than what we get in a Christian framework. So where do we come from? We’re a nation formed by shared ideals, liberty, equality, democracy, rights, and our identity is really grounded in a constitutional order and a national story. Much of that story has borrowed from the stories of the Bible. So early on we saw that the United States was framed as a new Israel coming out of a new exodus with Great Britain as the tyrannical pharaohs who were holding back the American people. And that origin is in conflict with the Christian story where we know that we trace our origin all the way back to Adam and that we are best independence on God as opposed to independent from him.

And that when God’s people were brought out of the exodus in very early stage, they’re not brought out of Egypt so that they can live however they’d like or determine their own lifestyle. They’ve given the law, they’re to live on God’s terms. And so I think we have this fundamental origin story that’s a real problem. We are trying to live on our own terms claiming that God rescued us to do so. When we then funnel that down into what went wrong, what we see is that the core problem in the United States sort of worldview is that there’s this injustice in the systems. There’s bad policies, there’s corruption. There’s people who have come into America who didn’t share these values. We have immigration problems and they’re bringing in new worldviews and there are people with loose morals. And so it’s the liberals who are really the problem.

But in Christian perspective, we know that’s not true either because our fundamental problem is human sin. We all do this, we all depart from God’s order. And so we need something different as the solution. We can’t just lie back on government and say we need better laws, better leaders, institutional reform, civic engagement. We need to move out people who don’t believe as we do or get them assimilated into some sort of broad national narrative. And this is going to solve all the problems. It won’t. The ultimate solution is redemption through Jesus Christ. That’s the Christian worldview. And so we need new birth, we need to have transformed hearts. We need to have a restored relationship with God. Political action is a stopgap. It restrains evil and promotes good, but it’s not drawing people’s hearts. It’s not transforming people’s hearts so they can keep God’s law.

It’s just not doing that. And then where are we headed? I think it’s difficult to understand what the United States thinks it’s headed. There’s some sort of vague utopia that I think we’re trying to achieve here, but ultimately nations fail all of them, and we haven’t seen one yet that’s succeeded. And so we are going to fail as a nation. I think it’s just a question of when we aren’t shooting for a utopia here on earth that is built on the US constitution, US constitution’s great. It’s like I wouldn’t want to live in any other country, but at the end of the day as a Christian, what I’m shooting for is new creation where I’m standing in the presence of God. And so I think using those four worldview categories, it gives us a clear understanding of where is our hope? What mechanisms do we use to get there?

One way, the political way is to use our human capacities to move in the direction that we see fit. The other is to surrender ourselves over to God and allow him in his wisdom to guide our ways. And all our job is, is to not compromise our faith as we’re doing it. I think there’s ample reading. If we read through the letters to the seven churches in Revelation, we see this over and over and over again. God commends the churches, Philadelphia and Smyrna that are faithful to him that not compromising their faith, but the ones like Aleia that is compromising in order to be rich in this world in order to have some sort of influence in this world, he wants to spit out of his mouth. They’re unsatisfactory to him because they’re so compromised in their faith that they no longer truly represented. And so he calls ’em to repentance.

This isn’t a call to a city, it’s not a call to a government. It’s a call to a church. And so from a Christian worldview perspective, our job is to represent the faith without compromise. As we participate in government, that’s great. Government needs to restrain that evil government needs to promote that good. But the reality is that government is a stopgap measure. It’s intended to point to God’s order. And then we need to fill in those gaps of this isn’t just a vague order, this is the order that the triune God, the Father, son, and Holy Spirit have instituted for us. And it’s only in them that we’ll ever get to participate in the new creation.

Sam Rohrer:

You see, that takes us back again. What you’re describing, Dr. Spencer is understanding of what scripture says, and you took us back to Israel. God is the designer, he’s the creator. He has a plan that he’s laid out that incorporates nations and how he was going to work his plan of redemption through nations. And he gave Israel as a nation that he covenanted with, ordered them to be the light of the world, a light to the gentile nations. They didn’t do a good job of it, but he’d laid it out and he said that they feared him and they keep his commandments, that he would bring them blessing and there were attitudes and all that. He told those who would be in positions of power what they should do. Just briefly, we don’t have much time left, but as we’re speaking, obviously if anyone who’s in a position of authority has a level of authority that they’re going to have to answer to God for what they do when they’re in there and how they relate and how the decisions that they make. But as citizens, we have a responsibility as well. And one of those is that it’s very easy to condemn the ones we don’t like another party. But if somebody may be of our own party, for instance, we may cut them a break and say, oh, well that’s okay. In their heart, they’re right. How does a Christian citizen relate the way we respond to that which we see?

James Spencer:

Yeah, I think we have to keep our mind set on one key aspect. We are citizens of heaven. We’re primarily God’s children. And when God calls us to love him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, there’s no reserve there. It’s what we’re always doing. It’s not like we give God 99.9% and we can reserve this 0.1% for anything else we choose. It’s 100% of who we are that’s given over to God. And so the way that we relate to our own party, our own political leaders, the political leaders we vote for, has to be filtered through that allegiance to God. We’re not serving them by agreeing with them when we should and going along with him when we shouldn’t. We’re not serving them and we’re certainly not serving God. We are not loving our neighbor, our political neighbor, by allowing them to go off the rails and just saying, well, but they’re doing so many other good things, we should just let ’em go ahead and do this. We need to be speaking into their lives in the same way we would with anyone else and condemning bad behavior and calling them back to repentance and pointing them to Jesus Christ.

Sam Rohrer:

And ladies and gentlemen, that is the question even in our own minds, is God really God? Is scripture authoritative or is it only a recommendation that has great application? We come back, we’re going to compare contrast now, the process and the motivation. Well, as we head into our final segment now, my special guest, Dr. James Spencer, and again, he is the president of two different ministries, useful to God, ministry website, useful to god.com. The article that I referenced, I’m going to reference again here you can find on that site along with a host of other material, but he also is president of the DL Moody Center, which is in existence to help further the goals and the calling of DL Moody. So I won’t go any further on that, but I just want you to know that and the topic we’re talking about today, again, we’re not even getting close to exhausting because we could give a lot more actual examples from news and news headline as an example, but we’re saying more on the principle aspect of it.

And that is just really guidance for those who are true believers. Now, the majority of our country says they’re Christians, and we’ve been through that before. I’m not going to repeat all of it, but the vast majority are not. We’ve become a people who are a part of this new religion, of which 94% of America belongs. It’s synergism. We make up our own religion based upon how we feel. And it includes a little bit of Bible and includes a little bit of new age, and it includes a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And we’ve dealt with that in depth in other programs. Dr. George Barnett has been with us because it’s been a result of his research that has so effectively quantified all of that. But see, it makes a difference. It makes a difference when we have a nation by 97% who don’t really believe the Bible is the Bible, but has a little bit of Bible.

It’s almost enough to be dangerous. And I just put that out here because we know in days of deception when Jesus says, he’s saying to his people, for my namesake, he said, so these would be people who’d say they’re Christian. Don’t be deceived. The world is not deceived. The world is rejected God. And Jesus wasn’t talking to them in Matthew 24. He was talking to us who know him, don’t be deceived, which means the deception of the days in which we live are going to sound Christian. Maybe they may be people who stand up and quote a Bible verse. They may be a person who stands up and says, yeah, I go to prayer meetings. But they don’t tell you who they pray to or they don’t define who their God is. And when you hear them talk, they talk like they don’t know God because most cases they don’t and they don’t refer to scripture, and they have no reference to accountability.

They have no fear of God. We see that it’s those kinds of circumstances in which we must be careful not to be deceived by someone who stands up and may even use the word revival, but when in fact they’re defining that as societal transformation, right? So you get the idea. We have to be very aware. That’s what we’re dealing with. So James, as we conclude this now, we’ve touched on a number of things, but I want to revisit just one aspect that goes back to the article that you wrote that I first referenced at the beginning of this program, and it is this. Lemme decide it and then go on to it. You say this, politicians and political parties are not in the business of making disciples for Jesus Christ or glorifying God. And I’m going to put in there ladies and gentlemen, that ought to be obvious.

Let’s not think that some political party is going to glorify God. That’s not what it’s about. You want to say, James, they are focused on securing votes. You want to say to achieve this, politicians often co-opt Christian language using terms like Christian values, quoting Bible verses suggesting that America is uniquely God’s nation. Now, having been in office myself for 18 years and all that, I’ve run statewide twice. I can tell you that the political campaign experts of the day and for a long time have encouraged people not too consistently. If they say they’re Christian, they will tell you, I’ve had them tell me, oh, no, no, no, you can’t actually do what you say. But use words like prayer and God and the Bible. That’s all good depending on the crowd that you’re with. Alright, we get the idea. Would you expand upon the quote that I just read in that article and the real challenge that this climate presents, I’m going to say to the true biblically defined Christian, how should they think and respond biblically in a God rejecting political culture?

James Spencer:

Yeah. Let me just underscore what I’m sort of trying to get at with an analogy. One of my favorite bands growing up was Aerosmith. They sang a number of different, they’ve been around since the seventies. A lot of people know who they are. They’re a rock band, nowhere near Christian. We would probably never get the major. If you went to an Aerosmith concert and you said, okay, everyone in the crowd who’s Christian raise their hands, and let’s say we have 90% Christians in the crowd at an Aerosmith concert. It doesn’t matter how many Christians are in there. That is never going to be a Christian worship event. It’s just not. And so that’s part of what I think we’re dealing with here in the United States, right? We see our Christian founding, we see a few Bible verses thrown around. We hear people talk about being made in the image of God and the dignity that confers.

But the reality is that to be Christian is to sit under the authority of Christ. He’s essential to what it means to be Christian. And most of the time when we see these things done in the United States and in political discourse, I’ll say, Christ is ignored. There’s no exclusivity of Jesus. He is not the way, the truth and the life, the God language, the biblical verses, the theology that are put out there are used for political purposes to justify various political positions. So while I would not deny that the United States and the founders were inspired by the Bible, what I would say is that there’s a difference between being inspired by the Bible and recognizing the Bible as the inspired authoritative word of God. And I think that is the distinction that needs to be made between what Christians do and what the government often does.

I’ll underscore this problem that I see just by quoting a gentleman. His name’s Robert Bella. He’s a sociologist. He did a lot of work on American civil religion. And he says this, the American civil religion was never anti clerical or militantly secular. On the contrary, it borrowed selectively from the religious tradition in such a way that the average American saw no conflict between the two. He’s saying that in a positive light, I’m seeing it in a very negative light. This is the heart of syncretism. It’s, it’s the incorporation of Christian language into a system that is not truly Christian. And so this is what we’re dealing with, Sam. The real challenge here is to parse back out what it means to be the church in the world, not to be American Christians, not to have American faith, but to be Christians and to interact well with the government as Christians, to glorify God in the midst of a democratic republic where we are participating in our own governance. We need to be figuring out how is it that we as Christians do this without compromising our faith? Because at the end of the day, not compromising our faith is how we live under the authority of Christ.

Sam Rohrer:

Dr. James Spencer, you bring us right up to the end, ladies and gentlemen, it is, do we know the God of heaven through faith in Jesus Christ? We either do or we don’t. And then have we committed to obeying and executing his commands even in the difficult times? That may get us thrown into the fiery furnace or thrown into the lion’s den, but we fear God more than man? Or do we, in order to keep our seat at the table, become intoxicated with proximity to power and compromise God’s word in order to achieve something that we think is going to work out here? Alright, that’s the end. We’re at the end of the program. Thanks for being with us today. Useful to god.com as Dr. James Spencer’s website. Go there. And then this program, you can pick up again on our website or on our app at Stand in the Gap.