When I can, I prefer to begin the week by highlighting good news from recent days. So, we’ll start with such news from three unlikely sources:
- A spiritual revival is making headlines in Sweden, long considered one of the most secular nations on earth. Swedish youth even named Jesus “influencer of the year” for 2025.
- A three-fold surge in adult baptisms in France is sparking hope of revival in the highly secular country. Pope Leo discussed this phenomenon during his weekend visit to the country, where he received what the Wall Street Journal is calling a “rockstar welcome.”
- Philosophy students at Princeton made headlines by reasoning their way from atheism to Christian faith. We should be unsurprised: even AI agrees that Christianity is the most reasonable religion.
Any movement toward Christian faith is good news for any secular nation, including ours, for reasons that might surprise many of us.
“Out of many, one”?
Over the weekend, I read This Land is Your Land, a creative and engaging history of America by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Yale historian Beverly Gage. In it, she quotes Theodore Roosevelt’s admonition to “do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are,” a maxim that could be America’s definitional motto.
Concerning our nation’s founding creed, Dr. Gage writes, “the Declaration was not self-executing. It required generations of conflict to turn the tools and ideas it provided into new realities.” In fact, as she reports, not even half of the colonial residents actively supported the rebellion against England that birthed our nation. When George Washington took the oath of office as our first president, two states—Rhode Island and North Carolina—had not yet approved the Constitution that created his office.
From then until now, America has been on a quest to invent itself, to create one nation out of widely disparate peoples and cultures. E pluribus unum, it says on our money—“Out of many, one.”
But I’m not sure we agree with what our currency says. In truth, Americans are more “many” than we have ever been.
A melting pot, a salad bowl, or chocolate fondue?
Electoral maps we’ll see in the run-up to the midterm elections feature only two colors: red for Republicans and blue for Democrats. But these colors became identified with the two parties by the media for purely arbitrary reasons.
And they are largely a fiction: Americans are far more diverse politically than two colors can represent. As Dr. Ryan Denison reported in the Daily Article last Friday, three-fourths of Americans are neither conservative nor liberal but hold a wide variety of positions across the ideological spectrum.
Clearly, politics are not making one—or even two—out of many. Nor are languages: the Census Bureau reports that at least 350 languages are spoken in American homes, more than ever before. Nor are ethnicities: the Census Bureau estimates that there are nearly 1,500 different race and ethnicity groups in our nation, also more than ever before.
Some would say that America is or should be a “melting pot” in which our differences meld together to make a sum greater than its parts. Others believe us to be a “salad bowl” where we retain our individual differences but work together for the common good. Still others compare us to chocolate fondue, a culture in which we are individually strawberries, pineapple, and so on, all “coated” with the “chocolate” of our commonality as Americans.
I would suggest a fourth metaphor, one I believe to be critical to our cultural flourishing.
A fourth metaphor for our nation
From the beginning, the creation of our nation was not an end but a means. Thirteen very disparate colonies united to cast off the oppressive yoke of Britain, cooperating out of necessity more than out of design. As soon as independence was won, our pluribus became more important than our unum.
Voters elected leaders based on what those leaders could do for their supporters. Slave states sought to remain slave states; new states joined the nation less to benefit the nation than to benefit themselves. Even today, personal issues such as the cost of living, data centers, and gas prices are expected to dominate the midterm elections more than national or international concerns.
This is unsurprising: humans typically seek unity when we do as a means to personal ends. Here we find yet another reason the Christian worldview is so vital to our national future.
Rather than seeing America as a melting pot, a salad bowl, or chocolate fondue, I suggest a room with a throne in the middle. The closer we draw to the throne, the closer we draw to each other.
When the risen Lord Jesus is our personal King, his Spirit molds us into the character of Christ, manifesting a selfless commitment to God and neighbor that motivates true altruism and unconditional love. The closer we draw to his throne in worship and service, the closer we draw to our fellow worshipers and servants.
“From all tribes and peoples and languages”
In his vision of heaven, John saw “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9). Like them, when we center our lives on Jesus, what unites us becomes greater than what divides us. We function as a holistic “body” with Christ as our head (1 Corinthians 12:27; Colossians 1:18) and serve as the salt and light that transforms our broken culture into a family of faith (Matthew 5:13–16).
What is true of our nation is true of our souls as well. The more we center our lives on Jesus, the more holistic and unified our lives become. The more we are empowered by a single purpose that gives direction and significance to our days. And the more our culture will want the Christ they see in us.
Are you closer to Jesus’ throne today than you were yesterday?
If not, why not?
Quote for the day:
“The man who walks with God always gets to his destination.” —Henrietta Mears
Our latest website resources:
Denison Forum
