"Take America back where?" Laudable thoughts from Doug Wilson

This is just too good to merely mention on the "Shared" list in Google Reader. It's not very often that we get challenged with the orthodoxy of our most deeply held convictions by someone on our own team. When we do, we should rejoice - especially if the challenge is substantive, good work is being done... on us (John 16:8-14).

From Wilson's post at Blog and Mablog today:

A common rallying cry for conservative activists, including Christians, is that we need "to take America back." Okay, sign me up. Take America back where?

Generally the point is that we need to take America back from the liberals and progressives -- the secularists in the academy, the homosexuals in the streets, and the raunchy movie producers in our very own Netflix queue. Okay, sign me up again. Once we have taken America back from those guys, what do we do with it?

The assumption is that the underlying America is just fine the way it is unless some progressive has been messing with it. We need to "save America," the thinking goes, and so the language of salvation is used all the time. But in our heart of hearts, we are saving an innocent kidnapping victim, and not a skid row bum who became a drunk because of his own stupid choices.

In other words, once the progressives, that alien force, are taken out of the picture, America's native good sense will return, the nation will right itself, common sense will again prevail when it comes to the national budget, we will stop killing the unborn "because we are too good for that," and so on. In short, America gets to be saved without a savior. America gets to be saved without repentance. America gets to be saved without hearing and believing the gospel. In other words, if the terms of the Great Commission were a great tournament, America always gets a bye.

This is not just a trivial error; it is heresy. It is another gospel. It is false, damnable. Further, it is a basic reason why we have so little success in fighting the progressives, whose vision for society really is a lunatic vision. Traditional values can't fight sin, for the same reason that healthy tissue can't fight cancer -- but is rather the tissue that provides cancer with its scope and its future.

Read the rest here.


Additional Resources
The Church and Politics (a short video)