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| President Donald Trump speaks to the Faith & Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority Conference June 8, 2017 in Washington, DC. Photo by Alex Wong—Getty Images |
(Headline from Time Magazine)
Fault Lines
Some say it took about 400 years
For Rome to fall –
At least to fall all the way down.
If that is true,
People still saw it coming.
Barbarians fighting in the streets
Is no small harbinger, after all.
By the time it began to crumble
Rome had become identified
With faith and security.
Indeed, it was seen as
The full measure of Christendom.
The full measure of Christendom.
The well-heeled faithful
Saw despair in the fault lines.
To that despair
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, wrote
The City of
God.
In part, he sought to set forth
The ideal of that city
Not built by human hands
Which can guide our efforts
In living and organizing
Our public life.
The greater part
Was in the bishop’s assurance
That the end of Rome
Was not the death of faith.
Time has borne out his wisdom
And should have made it clear
That faith does not rest
Upon the foundations
Of the cities we build.
Nevertheless,
On our own shores
We set a shining city on a hill
Declaring a Christian nation.
We wed our faith
To our national pride,
Not allowing ourselves
To foresee the day
To foresee the day
When that city would fall.
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In another life, I was a Baptist seminarian. Southern Baptists in those days were all about separation of church and state. One of my colleagues said, "Yes, we should keep church and state separate, but don't separate God and country." I knew then that therein lay a greater problem.
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