My sweeping takeaway from The Democratization of American Christianity is this: ingrained in the very DNA of the American Protestant church is an aversion to authority. 250 years after gaining our independence from England, nothing has changed; we’re still fiercely independent, anti-authoritarian, and obsessed with freedom. No wonder we struggle with passages like Romans 13:1 (if we even read it in the first place):
Let every person be subject to governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
Even as I read it now, my heart bristles. My mind jumps quickly to all the exceptions, all the ways that I could possibly explain it away. “What about tyrannical governments? Does God establish those leaders too? What about Hitler?”
I don’t know all the answers. But I do find it interesting — and it helps to explain some of my experiences with Church culture — that our resistance to authority is nothing new. It’s woven into the very history of American Christianity.
Daily thoughts on The Democratization of American Christianity by Nathan O. Hatch.
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