By Chris Satullo

I would like to live in a Christian nation. But not that kind.

Not a “Christian nation” as meant by the rhetoric of the Ralphs (Reed and Drollinger) and their fellow travelers.

Not an apocalyptic Gilead, as in the dark imaginings of Margaret Atwood.

No, simply one that, while heeding the wisdom of its First Amendment about the dangers of state religion, strives to emulate the clear, difficult moral wisdom of Jesus – a peaceable but brave and demanding radical – as conveyed in the Christian Gospels.

Christian in practice, in other words, but not by law or dominion.

Christian in the way that the wonderful Shane Claiborne, a Philadelphian who is one of the better angels of evangelicalism, means when he urges “red-letter Christianity.”

Claiborne counsels a moral practice of hewing to the authentic core of what that itinerant preacher in ancient Judea most likely said and taught. (Red letter, because that’s how some Bibles signify typographically the words of Jesus.)

Words such as :

“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:24

“Let him who among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her.” John 8:7

“How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?” Matthew 7:4

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” Matthew 5:8
“No one can serve two masters … You cannot serve God and Mammon [greed].” Matthew 7:24

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Luke 6:27

“Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, so you did it to me.” Matthew 25:40

(All wordings from the Revised Standard Version Bible.)

I so yearn to live in a nation that works to follow this true example of Jesus, as vividly portrayed in the Gospels.

He was indeed a radical who:

• Opened his arms to the outcast, the despised, the foreigner. (When you hear the story of the Good Samaritan, understand that the contemporary American equivalent of Samaritan would be Arab or Mexican.
• Preferred the company of the poor to the silken precincts of the rich.
• Had patience for all manner of sinner, except for the self-righteous hypocrite, whom he delighted in exposing, confounding, leaving aghast.
• Scandalized the conventional thinkers of his day by welcoming women into his teachings and his ministry (including the miracles).
• Taught that morality, justice and salvation flow not from a list of rules, but from a heart transformed by grace and love.

Having studied the Gospels for, lo, these 50 years, it is a continuing mystery to me that some of the Americans who most loudly trumpet their fidelity to the Bible so often indulge in personal practices and political activism that would have enraged the prophet whose ministry is detailed in the Gospels’ four books. These people are the modern-day “Pharisees.” (If this term is mysterious to you, please Google it, then check out Matthew 23.)

Savor, also, this irony: With the esteemed sage of social justice evangelicalism, Dr. Tony Campolo, Shane Claiborne wrote a book laying out their hope for a “Red-Letter Revolution.” Their book was then savaged by some right-wing pastors. Why? Because it exalted the authentic teachings of Jesus (whom these pastors say they regard as their Lord and Savior) over some harsh words that a desert people 3,000 years ago perhaps had to say about homosexuality.

Here’s something else that exasperates me: How so many Christians (Mainline Protestants, evangelicals, Catholics, Friends etc.) who sincerely try to live Jesus’ teachings then get left out of the frame when secular-minded citizens discuss (fret, decry) “Christian activism.”

This surely is the fault, at least in part, of a tribe to which I have long belonged: journalists.

As a Christian who worked in America’s newsrooms for four decades, I can tell you that many journalists are relentlessly and proudly secular. They know zippo, nada, bupkis about the type of Christian communities to which I’ve belonged for decades.

I have heard fine journalists utter sweeping generalizations about the ignorance, gullibility and hypocrisy of “Christians,” by which I suspect they meant the followers of people such as Jerry Falwell.

They seem oblivious that their stereotype excludes millions of Americans whose faith leads them regularly to contribute time, talent and treasure to works of social justice and democratic healing.

Secular liberals often excuse themselves from their usual standard of “tolerance of difference” when the difference in question involves faith in Jesus Christ. They confidently make statements about believers that betray the kind of breathtaking bias they would decry (properly) were it applied to immigrants, gays, African-Americans etc.

I also blame us (i.e. aspiring red-letter Christians) for how we get wiped from the picture.

Appalled by how some “Christian nation” polemicists of the right misconstrue the Gospels, the Constitution and American history, we tend to downplay the faith foundation of our views, so as not to alarm the secular or non-Christian citizens with whom we make political common cause.

We sit silently by as those liberals propound a deeply flawed interpretation of the First Amendment, which equates “separation of church and state” (a phrase, by the way, found nowhere in the Constitution) with a far more extreme “separation of faith and public life.”

Yes, we “hide our light under a bushel.” (Jesus said that one first, by the way.)

In insisting that religion is a private matter that has no place in the public square, these secularists ironically echo the privatism of many on the religious right.

There is a brand of Christianity which seems (to my unsympathetic eyes) all too happy to focus on stamping one’s own ticket to heaven by adhering to a strict personal sexual morality, while feeling free to pursue in the public realm a path of selfishness and disdain for the less fortunate.

This combination would appall the Jesus who, for me, jumps off the pages of the Gospels.

In America, every government budget – federal, state, county, municipal – is a moral document. It renders in numbers the values of those who approved it; it determines whether the efforts of that polity will bend towards justice and mercy, or selfishness and exclusion.

Every choice I make about whom to vote for, which tax increases to support, which policies to advocate, flows from who I am as a moral being, however flawed or selectively blind I might be.

I respect utterly the right of secularists, and people of other faiths, to decide their choices without any regard for the Christian faith that I consider binding upon me. But, fellow citizen, please don’t tell me I have no right to speak out loud the particular values that shape my views, simply because they derive from a faith that you disdain without really understanding it.

Besides, you might actually be delighted with how things might change across this land if aspiring red-letter Christians ever found their voice and learned how to drown out the distortions of the Ralphs of this world.

Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia.