Wall Street Journal Op-Ed:  Christians Err if They Give Up on America, by D.G. Hart (Hillsdale College; Author, From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism (2011)): 

American Christians sometimes do unusual things in pursuit of patriotism. … In certain sectors of the Christian world, such patriotic excess is in marked decline. For several years a gifted set of Roman Catholic thinkers, sometimes known as integralists—Edmund Waldstein and Adrian Vermeule among them—have taken a dim view of the American founding and its subsequent political traditions. For them, the cultural pathologies deforming American life stem directly from the Lockean liberalism the Founders embraced when creating a new government.

On the Protestant side, self-described Christian nationalists such as Stephen Wolfe and Doug Wilson are also, by a similar logic, implicitly critical of July Fourth festivities.  …

For Christian critics of the American experiment, patriotism is misguided if not corrupt because the nation no longer honors God through its ceremonies and institutions. These critics also abhor the tendency to define the U.S., with all its might and wealth, as a redeemer nation. That kind of faith in America, in their view, ignores how far the nation has fallen from true religion.

The obvious challenge for Christian critics of secular America is to figure out where non-Christians—or the wrong kinds of Christians—fit in their preferred God-fearing state. That was the question the American Founders contemplated, and it’s worth contemplating the genius of their answer.

The settlement hammered out in the 1780s somehow made room for all religious groups—including, eventually, skeptics and atheists. The full measure of religious freedom took a while to include Catholics, Mormons and Jews. But in time religious disestablishment freed all religious groups from governmental restrictions. …

Christian believers have good reason to celebrate the Fourth—not because the country is carrying out a divine mission but rather because it makes room for people like them to practice their faith as they like. Instead of American “greatness” stemming from conformity to Christian norms, America is “great” because churches can thrive in it. American patriotism distinguishes the functions of government from the substance of faith, which is why it can unite believers of all kinds in celebrations of the founding.

[T]he desire to thank God for the U.S.A. by marching in a parade with the Boy Scouts or the Rotary Club is a noble one. Gratitude is a Christian virtue, and it’s entirely appropriate to express it in backyard barbecues and fireworks.

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