Approximately three out of four Americans identify as Christian (77% in 2001, according to a survey by the Barna Group). Phrases inscribed on the U.S. currency or recited in oaths in American classrooms and courtrooms have led some to claim that America is a Christian nation. Christian nationalists and revisionists are reinterpreting the original intent of America's founding documents, to illustrate that America’s wall of separation was built to protect churches from state intervention, and not the other way around. But my object here is not to engage the revisionists. This task has been accomplished admirably elsewhere.<1> My purpose is merely to outline discrepancies between an authoritarian ideology (commonly mis-identified by some of its advocates as a “Christian worldview”) and that of modern liberal democracies, such as America has traditionally been.
There is a growing chasm between the values of America’s founders and the values of the theocratic Christian right, who claim that their version of authoritarianism is a more authentic interpretation of American values than the Enlightenment values so cherished by our nation’s forebears. But their values are irreconcilable with those of America’s past. Hence they are not giving a more authentic interpretation of American values but replacing those values with an entirely different doctrine, while attempting to transfer the prestige of the label American to their own antithetical doctrines. This prestige is not theirs to own, however, as it comes from the very principles they reject. As with all of the debates they have undertaken to win their culture war the Christian right’s pundits control the cultural conversation by controlling the discourse -- shifting the meanings of words to reflect an agenda alien to the referents that once gave those words their meaning. The best way to stop this abuse of language is to refuse to accept their terms, and to demand that they define them before deploying them in new contexts with new referents.
Since one of the key words the authoritarian Christian nationalists have grossly distorted is “Christianity” itself, it will be necessary to clarify my own terms before I proceed with my critique of the so-called “Christian worldview.” It is rather misleading to refer to America’s politicized theocratic movement as Christian (their preferred term), because the word has so many different referents, many of which bear no resemblance to this movement. To allow this network of politically active social conservatives to monopolize the term Christian is grossly misleading. I prefer theocrats because it more accurately describes the values this movement represents. It seems the proper question is not whether it is ‘Christian’ to be homophobic, feminist, or “anti-contraception and anti-abortion”.<2> Rather, the question is whether the word ‘Christianity’ refers to any single thing. Mainline moderate Christians concede too much to their theocratic rivals by taking for granted the unity and coherence of the New Testament (i.e. the Christian Bible).
There has simply never been a coherent Christian moral philosophy capable of reconciling the inherent tension between the Synoptic Gospels and Paul’s letters. The latter are commentaries on the significance of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection for human salvation. Paul demonstrates astonishingly little knowledge of, or interest in, the traditions about Jesus. This, according to Dr. John Ziesler, is “one of the strangest and most puzzling areas of early Christianity.”<3> The West has no single, coherent basis for ‘Christian’ ethics because the New Testament contains two conflicting ethical systems. One can be traced to the traditions of the followers of the historical and fully human Jesus of Nazareth (i.e. the ‘Q’ source), and the other takes its authority from the salvation-by-atonement interpretation of Jesus’ death found in Paul’s epistles.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/Murray_WhenChristianityIsUnAmerican.html 
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