to continue our way of life. I won’t say that it’s impossible to have a functional free-market system without a Judeo-Christian tradition (after all, all humans have been created in the image of God), but it is improbable for that stated reason. Proof to that effect can be seen in that most of the countries that have strong markets also have a strong history of non-state directed Christianity, or have been significantly influenced by said countries (Hong Kong and Singapore, for example).

While at first glance this thinking seems to honor the revelation uniquely afforded to the literal and spiritual children of Abraham, it errs significantly.

The statement “if you aren’t working from the Decalogue then I don’t see how a rational person can say X is wrong” implies “a person not working from the Decalogue is either not rational or cannot say X is wrong”.

Thus you have just made the majority of the world’s citizens either irrational or amoral agents or both. Wow! As we all know a Calvinistic gets enough flak for stating the inconvenient truth that all humanity is naturally ineligible for salvation; are you prepared to stand against the charge that you are making much of humanity naturally inhuman?

Natural Law details have been hammered out differently by Christians and non-Christians. But the post-Reformation Christian at least will tend to say that although all desire–hence ability–to love God was wilfully jettisoned in Genesis 3, with catastrophic consequences, yet the remnants of the knowledge of God’s law imprinted upon the heart, though weakened and variously perverted by sin, are still sufficiently legible to cause all humanity to know both the inescapable necessity of keeping that law and irremovable–apart from Grace–guilt for breaking that law, Romans chs. 1-3.

So those without knowledge of the Decalogue proper nevertheless have sufficient knowledge of the Author of the Decalogue and His ways to be accountable; and that knowledge is used by God to exercise His dominion over them, in large part by more-or-less stable cultures and governments.

Are there departures from this stabilizing influence? Of course.

Do they lack the further light shed on the Law by the Giver of that Law? Of course, and frequently in the last 1981±2 years wonderful advancements in culture have attended the advancement of that light.

But when Christianity is primarily marketed as a moral improvement message–and this has been the main American contribution for about 200 years–rather than a declaration of the Sovereign God’s saving activity solely in Jesus Christ, well somebody better be ready to answer the fastidious Muslim who wants to know why a predominantly Christian nation which kills 40 million of its children in a generation hasn’t been better at following the Decalogue.

You ask whether that without a “Judeo-Christian” foundation stealing is wrong. It was always my understanding of Libertarian belief, that the infringement of anyone else rights would be considered “wrong”, therefore stealing rightfully owned property from someone else is “wrong”, I honestly don’t care if one is Christian, Muslim, Satanist, or atheist. Under the belief system that I feel most Libertarians, at least I can speak for myself, your infringement on anyone else’s right is wrong.

The first question that I was asked when I was introduced to libertarianism, was, “Do I have a right to my body”. If I do have that right all other beliefs, extend from that.

Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and about 1/2 of the Founding Fathers weren’t American, then. If you compare the US to any of the European nations, we certainly had less stringent requirements of doctrine and religion, and looking at some examples of “Christian” nations enforcing their religious standards on the populace (Spain is always a good point of comparison), it would appear that our Founding Fathers were correct in not having a national religion. Certainly, our country would be very different without, say, Jewish immigration.

I’m a Christian, and I wish that the whole world was Christian, but there’s no point in making our country into something that it never was: namely, one more in a series of states that assert an arbitrary religious standard over the preferences of their collective citizenry’s personal preferences. Politically speaking, I’d rather have (non-crazy) libertarians voting in our elections than any of the progressive Christians who vote for government encroachment when given the choice.

How would this do as source material for your new Citizenship Test – 3 Versions ?

Just trying to help.

and that comes from someone who accepted Christ long ago. This is undoubtedly one of the most ridiculous comments I’ve seen posted here, and I’ve seen plenty of ‘em.

but this one takes the cake.

Since “American” is defined quite specifically in the Constitution and your definition isn’t either specifically included or implied, just where do you get your cite? And don’t say the Bible because I’ll simply request a cite relating specifically to “America” from there.

and I would need more source material at my fingertips, but the “majority Reformed” position has differed from that described by tenebrous above in this way, the so-called Two Kingdoms model:

1) God rules His people, the Church, through the means of Special Grace, which would be His Word and the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, empowered by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. That would include everything properly belonging to the ministry of the Church from evangelistic preaching through the sanctifying processes of discipline and encouragement of fellowship.

2) God rules the rest of the unbelieving world through the means of Common Grace, including all that Adam possessed which, though corrupted and depraved by his fall, nevertheless remains in mankind sufficiently to enable him to enculturate the world. These means would include reason, conscience, creativity, justice, governments and the like. While all of these due to the corruption of sin fall infinitely short of the requirements of the holiness of God, it has nevertheless pleased God that they remain, in varying degrees, in the world as unacknowledged gifts of God.

The challenge for the Christian is to see one’s dual calling to live in both kingdoms, not mixing or confusing the means proper to each.

Prior to the Reformation, a dominant Christian mistake of the preceding 1000 years had been the confusion of the 2 kingdoms with the Church attempting to exercise means proper only to Kingdom 2, only to find that it could not do so without increasingly abandoning the means proper only to Kingdom 1, that is, the proper preaching of the Gospel of Christ.

The more recent utopian-model governments have of course erred in the opposite direction by claiming the ability to establish heaven on earth using means masquerading as those proper to Kingdom 1.

The contemporary American evangelical, without a solid grounding in this model, can be seduced by both voices– and I believe we saw that last year in the primaries and election–either the conservative error that the kingdoms of this world should really only be run by real Christians, or the liberal error that all the good stuff Jesus talked about can really happen right here and now for everybody.