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 "There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism, Americanism is a matter of the spirit, and of the soul... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin… would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans... each preserving its separate nationality..." -
Theodore Roosevelt
INTRODUCTION
Between 1892 and 1924, 22 million immigrants poured into America from the 'old world' through Ellis Island and the Port of New York. Most quickly adopted the grass roots patriotism of their new country, assimilating its ways, learning the language, and becoming proudly 'American.' They sentimentally retained certain cultural icons but even threw them into the 'New World' mix. But President Roosevelt foresaw a dangerous day ahead when the 'hyphenated American' would move from the context of assimilation to multiculturalism; where immigrants would be allowed, in the name of 'tolerance,' to keep their own language and customs, being many separate cultures in one nation. Somewhere along the way we allowed political correctness to dilute 'One Nation Under God, ironically making us increasingly more secular and tolerant, so that now we cannot tolerate any views that challenge our tolerance.
A BIG GRAY MELTING POT
Australia, a land with a different perspective and priority on patriotism than America, readily adopted multiculturalism many years ago, but learned the hard way that it cannot necessarily produce a big gray melting pot of utopian racial harmony. Instead, it has resulted in racial ghettos with tension between them. In the natural, it will take four or five generations before there may be any harmony, and even then there are no guarantees. However, in stark contrast to the natural, our former church in Sydney was comprised of over 80 nationalities giving testimony that in Christ… "There [should be] neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28). Let me suggest that nowhere else on Earth is it possible to see such unity except in the Body of Christ, once we realize that the culture of heaven is greater than any earthly culture.
LAND OF PARADOXES!
America is a land of paradoxes! On one hand, its people ardently seek humanitarian fulfillment as this recent observation from Canadian television commentator, Gordon Sinclair, declares; "This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts… The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries…." On the other hand, America's dollar driven popular culture has to take a lot of responsibility for the downward slide of western morality. Tolerance has made homosexuality acceptable to many by calling it an 'alternative lifestyle' leaving the closet door wide open. When syndicated talk show host, Daniel Lapin, recently said; "…Christians are the only people in America who haven't come out of the closet…" he was being more profound than he could have imagined!
LIFESTYLE COMPARTMENTALIZATION
If Roosevelt had lived closer to our era, perhaps he would have amended his comments to note an even greater danger to America - the "Hyphenated Christian"! We have become experts at compartmentalizing our lives. Our family life is separate from our social life; our personal and business lives have nothing to do with our spiritual life! Many have become 'Sunday-Christians.' Church is something we do on Sunday, or as Bishop Roderick Caesar puts it; "Spiritual bulimics - "taking in the word on Sunday and then going home and regurgitating it, not acting on it, and going back next Sunday to get filled up again".
PART-TIME CHRISTIANS
Religion and morals are not necessarily the same thing. Many morally upright people have no religious faith whatever, and many religious people behave badly. Somehow the lines have gotten crossed! A national study by the Barna Research Group found; "We rarely find substantial differences when comparing the moral behavior of Christians and non-Christians in 70 categories."
The only 'Hyphenated Christians' that are not a danger to America are "FULL-TIME CHRISTIANS". They are those who put God first and who understand that He must fill every area of their lives otherwise He just becomes another option. The greatness of America is not in its fighting forces or in its economy, but in the goodness of its people. That goodness is anchored in the Church. America will stay great as long as the Church stays strong.
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