America: A Christian Nation

The concept of America as a Christian Nation has been “so systematically blotted from the collective memory of this country,” said Dr. D. James Kennedy in this sermon preached in 1990, “as to sound to most people in America to be an alien philosophy—an intrusion of religion into the tranquility of a secular nation.”

The question before our nation today is not whether men are created equal; it is whether they are created at all; whether they are creatures made by God who have certain inalienable rights, or whether they are merely an accident of time and matter. Is this still “one nation under God?” Can it have a new birth of freedom?

“You and I were born in a Christian nation,” said Dr. Kennedy. “That may not be said for your children or grand- children, unless we who have received this marvelous patrimony do something other than let it sift through our fingers like sand….”

Taking as his text, Psalm 33:12, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance,” Dr. Kennedy presents evidence of America’s Christian origin. Then he challenges the viewer, in light of these foundations and the bedrock of Scripture, to be willing to sacrifice what is required to see that Christ’s kingdom is advanced among those who thumb their noses against God in this land, so that once again our nation might become a “city set upon a hill.”