In a late-December Breakpoint radio commentary, Chuck Colson said that recently he had started his prayer time “by concentrating on the Church.”¹

He continued, “We can’t pray for our nation to be revived, to be saved, to receive God’s mercy; we can’t pray for our leaders to make wise decisions unless we first pray for the Church.” This sentence caught me up a bit short. Does the church pray as a means to the end of reviving America? In what way is a “nation,” which is not God’s people in Christ, to be saved?

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Colson then moved to the economic crisis. “When it comes to the economy, our nation has dug a hole for itself… At a recent meeting with President-elect Obama, the nation’s governors had their hands out, asking for federal dollars. The President-elect was all too happy to oblige.” Colson’s disapproval was mitigated by the words of South Carolina’s governor, Mark Sanford. Colson appreciated Sanford’s comment, “We don’t believe economic problems that were in large measure created by too much debt will be solved by more debt.” What was Colson driving at?

He was going after Christians and other Americans for their “idolatry of consumerism.” “Our nation is in this crisis,” he said, “precisely because we’ve traded in a Christian worldview of work, thrift, savings, and prudence, and instead have embraced the false worldview of consumerism—of leisure, debt, and instant gratification.” Colson was emphatic: “Renewing the Church is the key to saving America.”

At this point, Colson’s confusion of America with the church began to trouble me. Was Colson implying that earlier in America the country as a whole operated with a Christian worldview, even though not all Americans were Christians? Or was Colson referring only to Christians who have abandoned their Christian heritage?

There are certainly biblical grounds for Christians to pray for the church and for those who hold governmental offices of authority. But we must stop to ask, “Who is the church?” Biblically speaking, the church is the people of God in Christ, spread throughout the world. Yet Colson’s message leaves me with the feeling that his attention is focused only on the American church.

In fact, the wider world doesn’t come into view until he starts talking about the good that America has done and should do for the world. He says, “I no longer know for sure that America has a special place in God’s sovereign plan for the world. I could argue that we have in the past. No other nation has played such a positive role. . .  But we will be unable to continue to be a force for good in the world if we are bankrupt.”

This is startling. Colson doesn’t refer to the church at all here. Rather, he talks about God’s specially blessed America and its global good deeds. The church Colson seems to have in mind is composed of those Americans whom he is calling to turn from their consumerism and reclaim the worldview of “work, thrift, savings, and prudence.”

Surely the Bible’s good news is not the same as a word from Benjamin Franklin about thrift. The Bible’s good news is that God calls people throughout the world to turn from sin—including idolatrous nationalism and idolatrous consumerism—toward a life of discipleship. This is not a mercy transmitted to the world through God’s thrifty, hard-working Americans.

Colson’s confusion of the worldwide church with America is deeply troubling, but he is not the first to make this mistake. This way of conceiving things dates back to America’s founding and continues to hold power over many evangelical believers.

In its earliest days as a republic, many Americans believed that the nation was God’s new Israel. This conviction had been transferred from the New England Puritans, who came up with the idea that their early “Christian” colony was a new Israel, a new covenant people. By 1776, America had laid claim to this identity as God’s specially chosen people, a city on a hill, called to be a light to the world and the vanguard of progress toward independence, republicanism, and prosperity.

Clearly, none of this has any biblical basis. Biblically speaking, there is only God’s originally chosen Israel through whom the Messiah comes. Then, through the Messiah, the wall between Jews and Gentiles is torn down so that Gentile believers can be grafted into the living Israel of God.

We can, on biblical grounds, call that newly broadened community of faith God’s new Israel, the community of those being gathered together into the kingdom of God. But under no circumstances may we identify America or any other nation with either ancient Israel or this new Israel in Christ. To do that is to radically misunderstand the Bible.

Colson seems to imagine that America has always been a force for good in the world before it started going too far into debt. Was slavery not a criminal theft and a piling up of debt to those whose labors we stole? Was it hearing that Obama and the governors were willing to go further into debt that really drove Colson to the discomfort that he expressed? Has he been agonizing about indebtedness for the last eight years as the national debt has doubled from what it was when President Bush entered office? I don’t know, but it troubles me that Colson was willing to lay this problem at the feet of the governors and President-elect Obama.

The church Colson has in mind serves as a means to the end of God’s special place for America being achieved. But shouldn’t the words of Isaiah ring in his (and our) ears at this point? Isaiah tells us that all nations are mere dust on God’s scales of justice and all of them fall under the same criteria of judgment (40:15; also see Paul in Acts 17:26-31). In praying for the church I wish Colson would think of it not as a means to America’s end but as God’s truly chosen people, scattered around the globe (Rom. 11:13-24).

My prayer is that Christians everywhere will have the worldwide church in mind when they pray that all of us will turn from our idols. If the church in Christ is our end in view, we will be able to pray for Christians in all nations to learn how to be better citizens. This will flow naturally from being faithful servants of Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords.

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¹The segment described here aired on December 30, 2008.

James W. Skillen is President of the Center for Public Justice in Annapolis, Maryland.