A nation in the Scriptures is defined by a people with a common language, a common border, a common religion, and a common ancestry.  When Paul says in Galatians 3:28 that there is no longer “Jew nor Greek, slave nor free man, male nor female,” he is not cancelling the identities of Jews and Greeks, no more than he is cancelling the identities of males and females. In Christ we are all one, but a Russian Orthodox Christian is still Russian, and a Japanese Christian is still Japanese.  Both Russians and Japanese as they today dwell within a common border still have their common language, their common ancestors, and in many ways a common god….

I am approaching my octogenarian years and my time on earth seems to go by very quickly.  I was born in the 1940s and have seen major changes in America.  I was raised in a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) American community in the coal fields of West Virginia. Those were the days when the public schools were the Protestant schools. Most everything was shut-down on Sunday.  There were no athletic events on the Lord’s Day.  Local businesses closed early on Wednesdays so Christians could attend Wednesday Night prayer meetings. Preachers received discounts at local clothing stores out of honor for their calling. Abortion was illegal, sodomy was a crime, and having a baby out of wedlock was a shame.  I don’t remember any couples in our neighborhood who were divorced.

My childhood community imaged the United States when the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788.  It reflected the sentiment of the Naturalization Act passed by Congress in 1790 which limited citizenship to “free white persons” of good character who had resided in the U.S. for at least two years.  My community was a vestige of the past.  I call it Heritage America. It was part of an America that lasted for nearly 150 years.

Today, in the modern evangelical and reformed church, my forefathers who settled in Virginia in the 1600s probably would be considered a sinful and racist people-group.   They were of a common race as were the citizens of the colony of Virginia (race is not a mere social construct).

Multiculturalism has become the holy grail of American politics and it is sadly supported by the modern Church. I am surprised that my brethren in the PCA have not condemned our founding fathers as ethnonationalists as they did Southerners for slavery.

My point is not that America should return to the ethnonationalism of the past. We should not because we cannot. However, my plea is that my brethren in the faith should at least be honest and recognize the truth that ethnonationalism was part of the fabric of early America. And it was not sinful.

Neither is it condemned in Scripture. The gospel in no way nullifies the biblical concept of a nation.  It only extends the gospel to all the nations.  A nation in the Scriptures is defined by a people with a common language, a common border, a common religion, and a common ancestry.  When Paul says in Galatians 3:28 that there is no longer “Jew nor Greek, slave nor free man, male nor female,” he is not cancelling the identities of Jews and Greeks, no more than he is cancelling the identities of males and females. In Christ we are all one, but a Russian Orthodox Christian is still Russian, and a Japanese Christian is still Japanese.  Both Russians and Japanese as they today dwell within a common border still have their common language, their common ancestors, and in many ways a common god (take your choice—Shintoism, Buddhism, Materialism, Russian Orthodoxy, or Communism).

Modern day America is no longer a nation. It is an empire.  It is an attempt to nullify the biblical concept of nation and build a new Tower of Babel.  It is an experiment to unite all nations, all religions, and all races under one flag in order to build a utopia apart from the God of the Bible under the pretext of Democracy. We have become a “propositional nation” without the identify markers of the Bible. We are a nation not defined by our past, our ancestors, or our customs and traditions, but a nation defined only by saying a few magic words before an immigration judge.

In the creation mandate God commanded that the descendants of Adam and Eve fill the whole earth and subdue it.  They rebelled against God and sought to build a tower unto heaven, with all of them living in one place on the earth (Genesis 11). The curse of language was for the purpose of driving them back to the original mandate of covering the whole earth and subduing it. Nations with a common ancestor already existed in Genesis chapter 10, but they all spoke the same language, and they had not covered the whole earth.  God added the identity marker of confusing languages to guarantee that they would obey his original command.

I once believed that Pentecost was a reversal of Babel.  Since that time, I have seen the error of my way.  Pentecost reasserted the creation mandate that a multitude of nations would cover the whole earth, each with a common language, with a common ancestry, with common borders, and now with a common faith among all the nations—that being the Christian Faith.

The resurrection of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was a guarantee that all the nations of the earth would be Christianized.  We are still waiting for that day.  A few elect ethnicities, gathered together in a local church on Sunday morning, is a far cry from God’s original intent.  At Pentecost the nations heard the gospel in their own language, but God did not recreate one universal language, nor did he tell them to stay in that one place.  Those from the various nations who each had a common language returned to their homeland with the gospel.  Pentecost was not the reversal of Babel, but the guarantee of the extension of the original creation mandate.

America is a hubris people seeking to build a second Tower of Babel. Heritage America is dead. Ethnonationalism is now considered sinful even though the Bible never condemns it.  We are a nation greatly divided on the tipping point of chaos.  A nation with many gods, with many races, with many languages, and a multitude of ancestors will not endure.  God will not tolerate it, no more than he did the Tower of Babel.

Larry E. Ball is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is now a CPA. He lives in Kingsport, Tenn.