Divorcing God?

I had to smile at the two news magazines sitting on my kitchen table this morning. One was Christian (World ) and the other was secular (Newsweek), but for a minute you would have thought they were both out of the Bible belt.

It's not that Mike Huckabee's face fills the cover of Newsweek, or the words "Holy!" or "God" --- which, of course, are always used with sophisticated irony in this self-consciously post-religious world. But one can't help getting the feeling about America that "she protesteth overmuch" in her flamboyant divorce from God.

You will know what I mean if you have traveled in Europe --- where, by the way, they think we are all Christians here, the lot of us. The Europeans have by and large made a clean break from God. Nietzsche's "God is dead" rings true across that pond.

But America always seems to me like a kid who flamboyantly runs away from his Daddy, but can't stop talking about him. The feature article on Huckabee is a little too sympathetic; it belies a twinge of nostalgia for home. I am reminded of ancient Israel's similar episodic attempts to break free of the God who loves her and to curry favor with all the other kids on the Middle Eastern block:

"You say, 'We want to be like the nations, like the people of the world, who serve wood and stone. But what you have in mind will never happen." (Ezekiel 20:32).

America, have a tantrum and plug your ears and scream, "I can't hear you, God!" But you know it isn't so.