This essay will describe how the tendency toward idolatry was inherent in the United States from the beginning, how it can be conquered through what St. John of the Cross calls "counsels," how the idolatry is promoted daily through images and slogans which reinforce, yet conceal, the idolatrous agenda, and how this contributed to the war in Iraq. I begin with a quotation from American historian Sidney Mead.

The primary religious concern in our nation must be to guard against national idolatry; against the state becoming God; against the state assuming a heteronomous stance vis-à-vis other nations. The founders sought to incarnate such a guard in the legal system of the new nation, the spiritual core of which is a theonomous cosmopolitanism.(1)

According to Mead, the medieval understanding of the one universal Christian church began to break down with the Reformation and the rise of nationalism in which each nation had their own national Christian church. America, however, did not adopt a national church, and this for a number of reasons. Given Europe's bloody religious wars and persecutions, the founders thought it best to allow freedom for each denomination by giving freedom to all.

Furthermore, a number of the founding fathers were enlightenment Deists. They believed in a single universal God who revealed certain truths in creation as known by reason. Foremost among them was that no one person was God or divinely ordained to rule another, that all were created equal, that political sovereignty resided in the people, that governments were instituted by agreement among citizens, and that certain rights were inalienable, such as the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." They also believed that the particular Christian denominations enshrined these beliefs as an inner core, but beyond that inner core, the denominations differed in their particular doctrines. As Deists, a number of the founding fathers did not accept the particular beliefs of the denominations, but they did affirm the inner core and believed it important for the life of the nation.

Benjamin Franklin was typical in this regard. He was raised a Presbyterian, but reached the conclusion that their specific doctrines, the eternal decrees of God, election, reprobation, and such were unintelligible. He gave up attending church but financially supported the various denominations since each accepted the crucial inner core. In Franklin's view, the particular doctrines "serv'd principally to divide us, and make us unfriendly to one another."(2)

Mead calls this inner core the Religion of the Republic. It was cosmopolitan in that it accepted religion in all its forms. It was theonomous in that it held that God's eternal laws, known by reason in nature, were the source of the universal principles upon which the nation was founded.

Under these conditions, no single denomination could claim ultimacy before the law. Or, to put it another way, in daily life, in public discourse, in actual practice, no particular church was deemed universal with the result that certain universal characteristics that once belonged to the medieval church were attached to the nation itself.

According to Mead, three characteristics were especially significant.

They are:

1. The nation became the primary agent of God's meaningful activity in history. 2. The nation became the primary society in terms of which individual Americans discovered personal and group identity. 3. The nation became the community of the righteous.(3) Once Americans felt this way about their nation, it became commonplace to believe that America, to quote Lincoln, was "the last best hope of earth."(4)

According to Scripture, Jesus Christ as known through the preaching of the gospel is "the primary agent of God's meaningful activity in history." The fundamental identity of Christians is as followers of Christ in the company of other believers, the church. Further, Christians believe no one is righteous, but by Christ's sacrifice on the cross God imputes righteousness to his people, and they learn to walk in it by holiness of life. When a people ascribe to a nation qualities that belong to Jesus Christ and his church, they are well on their way to idolatry.

Scripture shows that idolatry is more the norm for God's people than the exception. Americans, Christians and non-Christians alike, are typical in this regard. American idolatry is a daily, pervasive reality that affects everything from individual daily decisions to the highest levels of government. Let me describe how this idolatry works on an ongoing daily basis. First, however, I need to say a few words about St. John of the Cross in order to put the matter in a spiritual perspective.

St. John of the Cross describes two dark nights, the night of the sense and the night of the spirit.(5) In these dark nights God withdraws an awareness of his presence and works secretly in the soul to reveal its deep and hidden sins. Sins pertaining to the body, such things as sloth, lust, gluttony, or physical and emotional dependencies pertain to the night of the senses. Deeper sins, how we understand and love, pertain to the night of the spirit. This night deals with meaning, value, and status, such things as how one understands personal relationships or political events, or how one loves or hates, whether it be family members, various social classes, or one's country.(6)

One of the principal ways God enables the soul to enter the dark nights is through what John of the Cross calls the "counsels." These counsels are first and foremost the gospel narratives of Jesus. (7) As one enters into these accounts by the power of the Spirit, one enters the dark night because all of us are profoundly sinful as measured against the righteousness of Christ. As these sins become apparent, a person is invited to confess their sins, offering them to Christ on the cross, and in this process is cleansed and made new.

The first and most important result of the dark night is purity of heart, the gift of seeing and hearing God and seeing life in relation to God. This is a great blessing, glimpsed with joy as a prelude to seeing God face to face beyond death. In the words of John of the Cross, "And the memory, too, was changed into presentiments of eternal glory."(8)

Secondly, one has a deeper awareness of the idolatrous and subtle power of sin. Through the dark night, hidden sins become visible, and once visible, their powerful and secret nature becomes obvious. Once that occurs, it is not only apparent that the soul is organized to hide sins, but also, that society, culture, and the world, are organized in the same fashion. One way this occurs is through images and slogans that both conceal and strengthen the sin. These slogans and images are everywhere, saturating all of life. They create both life and death, idolatry or the worship of the one true God. Let me give an example.

On the wall where I get my hair cut are a number of posters depicting American life. One of them is a picture of an imposing aircraft carrier with the caption, "90,000 Tons of Diplomacy." What does this image convey? To begin with, the image of a massive aircraft carrier conveys awesome military power, the power to devastate any opposition. For most viewers, this fits in with prior perceptions that he or she belongs to a very powerful country, the United States of America. Secondly, this 90,000 ton killing machine is in the service of diplomacy. The term "diplomacy" communicates instantly that the United States is a country committed to diplomacy, that is, to solving conflicts through peaceful means. This is because, according to Mead's third point, America is the "community of the righteous." At the same time, however, the country recognizes that there are evil people and evil nations, and if crossed, the diplomacy will be backed up by 90,000 tons of force.

According to St. John of the Cross, few people ever pass through the dark nights. As a result they carry within them powerful unconfessed sins. Among them are the insecurity, anxiety, anger and aggression created by failing to trust the Father of Jesus Christ. The image of 90,000 tons of diplomacy resonates with these deep fears and aggressions. It strokes and pleases them. At the same time, however, the slogan justifies these aggressions by claiming that they are only exercised when diplomacy fails. In this way, the poster never allows the viewer to enter the dark night and repent of his or her sins.

For example, the poster does not ask the viewer to question whether or not America's military power has only been used when diplomacy fails, or whether it has been used instead of diplomacy. To resolve that issue, one would need to study the foreign policy of the United States over the last century or so. Virtually none of those who see the poster make such a study. Rather, they experience the poster as a fleeting moment in a more general impression that the United States is a just, powerful, and righteous country, giving them a feeling of pride and security. This impression reinforces an entire world of images and slogans continuously promoted by media, parents, friends, politicians, and so forth. In this world, real repentance is virtually impossible. Repentance is impossible because the poster, and the socially constructed world to which it belongs, is created through images and slogans that feed each person's sinful aggression while hiding its reality. The result of this socially constructed world is that each person will daily express the deep aggressions and fears that drive the human heart. Intense human suffering is the result.

Let me now contrast this poster with a gospel counsel, that of Good Friday. First of all, the biblical narrative of Good Friday shows how human sin, politics, greed, envy, and the manipulation of the crowd by their leaders, lead at once to the suffering of Christ on the cross. The narrative shows you Christ dying there. By contrast, the poster shows none of the mangled, bloody bodies produced by a 90,000 ton aircraft carrier in action. That reality is hidden, and since it is hidden, viewers are not confronted with its horror. Secondly, the biblical narrative depicts the whole of life, religious leaders, political leaders, the crowd, men, women, the followers of Jesus, individuals such as Judas and Peter, all involved in events that lead to Jesus' death. Whoever you are, you will find yourself in the Good Friday narrative, and you will see how you kill Christ.

By contrast, the poster shows no one killing anyone. The flight deck is empty except for an array of fighter planes. No one is there. All are innocent. Further, the biblical narrative portrays the death of Christ in a larger context, that is, Jesus as God's Son, so that his death is a sin against the living God. This enables sinners to repent of their sins, to receive forgiveness, and to enter into relationship with a transcendent, righteous God, who having loved his own, loves them to the end. Further, this encounter with the message of Good Friday elicits feelings of sorrow, contrition, repentance and thankfulness before the face of God. The poster refers the viewer to a larger context as well, the United States of American as a powerful, righteous country. It elicits the feeling that one belongs to a great country, a powerful country, a free country, a country that fights for democracy, for freedom, and for peace at home and abroad. It exalts the soul with a feeling of the nation's greatness, while the cross humbles the soul before a living God. The cross leads to worship of the one true God and to eternal life, the poster to making an idol of the nation before the face of a jealous God.

The poster is but one image in a vast, socially constructed world of images, messages, and media. Under normal conditions, this world of meaning is not monolithic. There are opposing ideologies and policies, each promoted by slogans and images, normally designated by the political right or left. The poster contributes to one side of this ongoing debate, namely, the conservative emphasis on a strong military.

In times of crisis, the poster and its ideology come to the fore. After 9/11, for example, the aggression that lay in everyone's heart was intensified beyond the boiling point. This aggression required an outlet. Someone had to pay for this crime and the threat had to be exterminated. Iraq was chosen to pay the price, even though Iraq had no real relation to al Qaeda nor to 9/11.

That choice was not accidental. It was the convergence of at least two major factors, the religious right and the neo-conservative agenda.(9) The religious right has adopted a heretical understanding of the Christian faith. Rather than the Kingdom of God, they proclaim the United States as the vehicle of God's redemption of the world. The neocons offered a secular version of the same vision. Both reflect the idolatry described by Mead.

How this idolatry manifested itself politically, and how it endangers both the nation and the church, will be the subject of my next essay. I will show how the present administration used deceptive rhetoric to connect an imperial foreign policy to a heretical version of the Christian faith. As a result, the name "Christian" was connected to a military campaign. There is a time and place for legitimate military defense, but not for profaning the Name of God. Using the religion of the Prince of Peace to support the "shock and awe"(10) of a brutal military crusade places us, as individuals and as a nation, in grave danger. There is a reason for this: "Do not be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatsoever you sow, that you shall reap." (Galatians 6:7)

Endnotes

1. Sidney Mead, The Nation with the Soul of a Church (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 76.
2. Mead, p. 22.
3. Mead, p. 73.
4. Lincoln's Annual Message to Congress Concluding Remarks, Washington, D.C., December 1, 1862
5. St. John of the Cross, Collected Works, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriquez (Washington D. D.: ICS Publications, 1979), pp. 73, 109. Biblically, the dark nights correspond to the forty years Israel wandered in the desert and to Jesus' forty days in the wilderness. It was, and is, a time of testing and temptation.
6. John of the Cross, p. 334-9.
7. John of the Cross, p. 102.
8. John of the Cross, p. 335. I have described how this looks, feels, and sounds in my novel Face to Face.
9. Let me recommend a very good book, America Alone, by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). These two authors possess the highest academic credentials and have distinguished careers in government and academia. They are conservative politically and both are admirers of Ronald Reagan. Halper, for example, was a White House and State Department official during the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations. They describe in documented detail how the neo-conservatives, supported by the religious right, took command of the Bush administration and utilized the fear generated by 9/11 to promote their agenda to remake the Middle East in America's image, starting with Iraq.
10. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld introduced the concept of "shock and awe" to President Bush. He liked the phrase. It was picked up and echoed by the press as the bombing campaign began. Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), p. 102.

---The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D. is VirtueOnline's resident cyber theologian. His website can be accessed at: www.rsanders.org