Christians generally affirm God’s presence in the world. As Susan Stabile wrote a few days ago in a thoughtful Advent reflection, “There is an important implication of recognizing God’s indwelling that I also spoke about: if I recognize that God dwells in me, then I also must recognize that God dwells in you, in everyone. During the open question and answer/discussion period we had . . ., someone said that as she sat with that idea, it occurred to her to wonder: then God must also dwell in, e.g., a Hitler.
“As hard as it is for us to understand in human terms, yes, God dwells even in the worst of us, even in those of us whose lives don’t reflect that indwelling. Part of understanding God’s limitless, unconditional love is understanding that nothing we do – not even the worst we can do (and Hitler is often the example we use to represent the worst) – will make God withdraw from us.”
Typically, though it is only Christian conservatives who argue that God works in human history through nations and that the United States has a special positive role in the Divine plan. They typically do not discuss the role of France, England, and Indonesia, for example, in this plan though Israel figures in their account. From the perspective of many progressives, I suspect that the United States would be the modern Roman empire (albeit on the decline) and certainly would not count as an unmixed positive force. Others would have more humility about assessing the workings of God in history through nations. Mark Silk at Spiritual Politics focuses today on the biblical warrant for the belief that God takes sides and is working through the U.S. in a positive way. He suggests that President Obama recently signed on to a form of American exceptionalism (Obama noted that Britain and Greece had their own forms) and he wonders what the biblical warrant for such a belief might be. I would have thought he might have discussed the twisted readings of the Book of Revelation. But he goes elsewhere and tops it off with a wonderful closing line: “So far as I know, the only American religious tradition that has scriptural warrant for American Exceptionalism is the LDS Church, whose Book of Mormon describes a visit by Jesus to these shores and whose Doctrine and Covenants proclaims the Constitution to be divinely inspired. The closest the rest of us can come these days is the Gospel According to Sarah.”
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