1/8. I am an Augustinian. So are both Luther & Calvin. So are the Westminster Sem. CA theologians. So we have an intra-family dispute.

The only pt. I criticized in Horton's art. was his statement that it is wrong to speak of a Xian America. We agree on many things, but not that

2/8. Daryl Hart has criticized Evangelical civil religion as originating in the 19th C & as having much in common with postmillennial social gospelism. I disagree. The idea of a Xian nation is much older. America is a late dev. of the British tradition that goes bk over 1000 yrs.

3/8. The British monarchs have ruled as Xian monarchs over a Xian nation for over a millennium. It was natural for America - even w/o a monarchy or a state ch - to see itself as Xian in a broad sense. Enlightenment Deism joined confessional Protestantism in recognizing God & law.

4/8. Later it would be natural for Jews to see their way clear to be full members of this sort of Xian America & so we often hear about the "Judeo-Xian worldview" as foundational. America is a new thing in hist. in that it is a non-sectarian, Jewish-Xian constitutional republic.

5/8. But its roots are very, very old. They go back to pre-conquest Britain & before that to the Christian Roman Empire of the 4th century. The idea of a "Xian nation" is heavily contested & has taken many forms. But to write it off completely is, to me, a counsel of despair.

6/8. My conviction is that every nation must have a rel. or it will die. Religions can be better or worse & Xianity is the best. But the further a rel departs from Xianity the worse it will be. No vacuum is possible; something demonic usually rushes in to fill a spiritual vacuum.

7/8. The decline of vital Xian faith in America is causing a spiritual vacuum which is being filled with evil ideologies, which will degrade & ultimately destroy American civ. Secularism is just a transitional phase to Neo-paganism.

8/8. We must be careful not to promote secularism b/c secularism will only lead to a Neo-pagan nation & we have seen in Nazi Germany the kind of destructive madness & horror that can characterize the Neo-Pagan rejection of Jewish & Xian revelation & law.