Mike Johnson's Theology is Wrong

Mike Johnson on Morning Joe: "There's So Much Hypocrisy Here"  

As I look through my New Testament, a New Revised Standard Version translation, I find no place where God has made, or offered, a covenant relationship, during this new covenant with Jesus Christ, to any nation or country or specific ethnic or racial people group.  Johnson's use of the term "collective sin of America" is the biggest indication of his error.  Sin, in the Christian gospel, cannot be "collective."  

"For all have sinned," says the Apostle Paul, "and fall short of the glory of God."  And he goes on to point out where the accountability for that falls. 

"Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?  Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister?  For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.  For it is written, 'As I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.'  So then, each of us will be accountable to God."  Paul, the Apostle, to the Christians at Rome, 14:10-12, NRSV

The only covenant relationship, leading to the development of a theocratic monarchy, that God ever offered to any specific group was the one he offered to the children of Israel, the Abrahamic covenant of the Old Testament that designated the descendants of Abraham as God's chosen people.  He did that for the purpose of revealing himself, and for offering the same kind of redemption to the rest of the world.  In Christian theology, Jesus and the Christian gospel is the extension of that covenant, and it is based on individual conviction of sin, repentance and forgiveness, not the collective behavior of countries. 

God does not promise countries or nations that if a majority of their citizens practice Christianity, and if those Christians keep the whole country in line morally, he will find a way to bless them, blessing, in this particular context always meaning "financial prosperity."  The Old Testament does indeed teach this principle, applying it directly to the Abrahamic covenant, and there are multiple narratives about the nation of Israel, God's chosen people, the only nation with which this kind of theocratic covenant was ever made in the biblical narrative, experiencing peace and prosperity when their people were, collectively, believers in God, and experiencing judgment, at the hands of surrounding enemies, when their faithfulness waned. 

But Jesus made it clear that the new covenant, in his name, didn't work that way.  There's no place anywhere in the Bible that offers the kind of theocratic relationship that existed between the Jewish people and God to any other country, ethnicity, nationality, race, or citizens of a country.  And there is no biblical teaching that defines the term "Christian nation," or that even hints at some kind of blessing of God to be bestowed upon countries that have a high number of Christians among their population who are in charge of national morality.  

The Christian covenant is an individual one, based on individual conviction of sin, repentance and restoration, and has nothing to do with one's race, nationality or country of origin.  The church experimented with that through several centuries of state church history.  It didn't lead to conversion or conviction, only oppression and war.

Johnson's rhetoric is very common among Evangelicals who base their worldview on the assumption that the covenant relationship described in the Old Testament between God and Israel also applies to the United States.  It's also a way to indirectly blame their political opposition for the immorality and claim they're the ones dragging the country down, and to justify their desire to use the power of government to enforce a morality that they can't seem to maintain by depending on God's spiritual power alone.  

Supporting Donald Trump, even as a secular politician, would be a position that runs counter to everything Johnson is claiming.  He's lamenting the low moral state of America, and ignoring one of the causes of it.  It is completely inconsistent to claim that America is reaching new moral lows while ignoring one of its moral lows.  

If Speaker Johnson is looking for hypocrisy, he needs to face a mirror.