The Nation-State is not your Church

Influenced by Calvinism and Puritanism the Protestant religion is largely individualistic.   It is about “my personal relationship with my own ‘personal Jesus.’”  Identity too then is individual rather than corporate.  Identity is formed based on a relationship with Jesus alone, and not with his Body; in much of Protestant evangelicalism the church and the sacraments become secondary, and indeed often unnecessary, forms of unity.  This is in contrast to churches with a more focused (and some would argue well developed) ecclesiology (including the sacraments, especially baptism and Eucharist) such as Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Anglicanism.  One has to wonder if this individualistic focus of religion is one of the reasons many evangelicals are so enthralled by politics and political parties.  If religion is individualistic and does not provide a corporate structure in life another structuring mechanism must take its place, and for many this is politics, and especially political parties.  The result for many evangelicals is the nation-state becomes their church.   As Americans have come to give more loyalty, and place more faith in, to the nation-state they have begun to attribute theological principles to the American nation.  And have come to give less loyalty and place less faith in the Church.