Christian U.S. New Dream of Evangelicals, Cleric Says

Turning the United States into a Christian nation is becoming more important to evangelical Christians than the second coming of Christ, the chaplain of the U.S. Senate has complained.

“The more I listen to evangelicals talk, the less I hear about the hope of Christ’s coming again and the more I hear about making this U.S. of A. a Christian nation, a prosperous nation,” the Rev. Richard Halverson said in a talk here. “Sometimes I think if Christ would come back, it would constitute a terrible interruption of their plans.”

Halverson, 72, a Presbyterian minister who characterizes himself as an evangelical, said he had no particular politically active evangelical organizations in mind. He emphasized that a Christian’s ultimate hope must reside in “the next world, not this world.”

Concerning one commonly identified evangelical political issue, a school prayer amendment to the Constitution, Halverson said he opposes it.

“Because this is a pluralistic society, it would be a Pandora’s box,” he said.

The Senate chaplain noted that “the third largest religious group in this country now is the Muslims, behind Catholics and Protestants. Buddhist temples are springing up everywhere. With such an amendment, there’d have to be a Christian prayer one day, a Muslim prayer another day, a Buddhist prayer another. It doesn’t make much sense.”

Halverson defended pluralism as a cultural condition “protected by biblical faith” because “God gives us freedom of choice.”

But he defended the practice of opening each session of Congress with a prayer, a task for which he is responsible.

“Whatever the framers of the Constitution meant by the First Amendment, they did not mean not having chaplains, because they had them,” said Halverson, who has been the Senate chaplain for eight years.

“From the first session in 1789, both the House of Representatives and the Senate had a chaplain who began each meeting with a prayer,” he said.

Halverson stressed that conservatives are not the only people who can claim to be good Christians.

“People don’t understand you can be liberal or moderate and profess Christ,” he said. “The problem is we don’t think any more. We’d rather use simple categories to define people.”