“You cannot FORCE someone to be a Christian. If you think you can force a nation to be a Christian Nation Then you are far more like Islam than Christianity.”
Mr. Blake Allen
X Post
I pause to deal with this because this kind of thing gets said repeatedly. Mr. Allen is just a mouthpiece here for an idea that is widely accepted.
However, I challenge the verity of this denial. I do think you can force a people/nation to be Christian. Of course it all depends on what one means by “be a Christian.” One certainly can force a people or nation to be Christian in the sense of forcing upon them Christian standards, law, and morals. Just as Communism was forced upon Europe in the 20th Century so Christianity could be forced upon people today. Another example is how Islam was forced on Christian peoples in the 8th century forward as it converted by the sword as it swept across formerly Christian lands. Eventually, most of those people as individuals gave up their Christianity in order to conform to the “Islam at the point of the sword” reality. Another example is how the Transcendentalist Yankees during the War of Northern Aggression forced their damnable religion on the South successfully during the era or Reconstruction and beyond. Examples abound of religion being successfully forced upon peoples.
Thus there is no reason to think that Christianity, in its objective sense, could not be forced on a people. Charlemagne accomplished this with pagan tribes in his time. Oliver Cromwell did it for a season in England.
Now, if one means by the above quote that one can’t force people into a living vital union with Christ… well, that is certainly true. However, it often is the case that the living vital union with Christ will follow a forced subjection of a people — even if that requires a couple generations. With the forced subjection to Christianity the ground is cleared of pagan religion resistance against Christianity being given a hearing by the former peoples, who, as a people, condemned Christ and Christianity.
So, it is true that one cannot force individuals to have vital and living union with Christ but it is decidedly not true that Christianity cannot be forced upon a people / nation by means of conquest.
