Christian Faith and the American Experience

Donald W. Shriver Jr.

Article Type: Article

Publication Date: 7/1/1981

Issue: Experience and Christian Faith (Vol. 1, No 3, Summer, 1981)

The essay below attempts to summarize, in this one authorís reading, what the signs of our times say to the likes of us Christian Americans. he pattern of our history is a crazy-quilt of non-meaning for some of our fellow citizens. Others read it as meaning what the Christian must perceive as idolatry, pride and pretension. But Christian Americans too are supposed to search for coherent positive readings of their national history. They are forbidden, by their faith, to believe that anything will separate that very history from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. What then might be the connections, the conjunctions of the divine and the human in the life of the United States of America? I grant to all readers their right to resist the hubris apparent in this question. But the courage to ask it may have more warrant in faith than the timidity that refuses to ask it.

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