When Idolaters Move In

What should Christians do if we discover there are idolaters living down the street?

Lots of tangles in the question. For better or worse, the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of religion.

We can debate whether or not the Framers intended the Constitution to protect Hindus and Muslims. In actual legal fact, it does.

I think the Framers fumbled this. A Christian state should explicitly acknowledge Christianity and privilege the church. When they failed to do this, the Framers sowed deep ambiguity in the American project.

As a political matter, I like Constantine’s solution. He played the long game. He shut down the most notorious pagan shrines, but generally left idolaters alone; they were Roman citizens and subjects, after all. But he gave massive support to the church, and paganism weakened over time.

Until we change the Constitution, or form a regime that ignores the First Amendment, American Christians will live side-by-side with worshipers of Allah and Krishna.

These days, the question about neighborhood idolaters gets bundled together with debates about immigration and ICE’s deportation program.

That’s not the essential frame for answering the question. Biblically, we need to ask a prior question, Where do idolaters come from?

We’ve got an entire book of the Bible about that – Judges, which tells us again and again, idolaters invaded and enslaved Israel because Israel had already turned to idols. Israel’s idols were magnets for idolaters.

Israel was rescued from idolaters when they cried out to Yahweh, who raised up a judge to deliver them.

America was and still is a predominantly Christian nation, but Christianity long ago ceased to define our polity and culture. If we want to purge idols from our country, the first (not the only) step is repentance. Start with yourself. Demolish your own idols.

At the end of the day, idolaters are here, whether we like it or not. They’re all around us – not just Hindus and Muslims, but native-born Americans who long ago prayed the prayer and got baptized, then promptly abandoned Jesus and His people.

The first Christian instinct must be to love them by calling all of them to abandon their idols and follow Jesus. Jesus did not say, “Love your neighbors, unless they’re idolaters.”

Don’t film them. Resist the temptation to grab seven seconds of social media fame. Walk up the street, introduce yourself, have them over for dinner, tell them about Jesus, invite them to church.