"I have a dream,” said Martin Luther King in his famous speech. America was planted in a dream; so was Canada. When our ancestors, came to Canada, they came because they dreamed of a better life. Many people were fleeing religious persecution. Canada, not unlike the U.S., represented their hope that they could build a new nation “under God” with Christian laws and government.

Canadians are basically peace-loving people. We value our patience and tolerance. We want to get along with others. Historically, we have been satisfied with our government representatives and felt their views of life more or less reflected our views.

But gradually, to keep the peace, Canadian Christians began to tolerate governments that started to pass laws we didn’t agree with—like conscription, freedom to have abortions and divorce on demand. And now, with the passage of same-sex marriage legislation, we realize like never before that the ground has shifted.

Our dream has died. The Canadian government no longer represents us. Really, it hasn’t for a long time. More and more, Christian views are ignored, ridiculed and even prosecuted in the courts as the government nonchalantly stands by.

But really, if the government is not Christian, why should we expect it to act Christianly? How much effort should we expend trying to make Canada a Christian nation?

Craig Carter, professor of theology at Tyndale University College, is in the process of writing a book, Rethinking Christ and Culture after Christendom. He argues that Christendom is an experiment that has utterly failed and that the Church needs to recognize that fact and move on.

Carter says, “Canada and continental Europe are obviously further down the post-Christendom road [than the U.S.], but keen cultural observers of the United States and the United Kingdom are aware of the thinness of the ‘Christian veneer’ and the considerable rot underneath it.

“The mission of the Church,” claims Carter, “is to witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ, which means that the transformation of the wider culture in which the Church lives will always be a secondary byproduct of the Church’s main mission rather than its primary goal in this age. We should be spending less time trying to convince the government or courts to follow our rules and spend more time teaching our children how to live and keep our faith as a minority.”

Carter maintains that we should study the example of the Jewish people as they sought God in exile. “One of the most ironic facts about the history of Christendom,” he says, “is that the majority of Jews rejected Jesus as Messiah and then went on to live a lifestyle that largely conformed to the one Jesus laid out for His followers in the Sermon on the Mount.

“Up until the 18th century, the Jews of Europe were resident aliens and pacifists. They lived in communities in which they cared for one another and took care of widows, orphans and the poor. They were persecuted by the world and hated because they remained faithful to God and the Torah.”

We can only truly be a witness to our culture if we are different than the culture. We need to get back to our roots—prayer, Bible study, Jesus’ teaching. The purpose of the Church is to exemplify Jesus’ teaching in its own community life.

“If God is real, if Jesus is God and if the Holy Spirit is the driving force behind the Church, we don’t need guns, laws and the favour of non-Christian rulers in order to succeed in our mission,” says Carter.

Our dream of a Christian nation may be lost, but God has a much better dream—people of God who truly follow Him without compromise, living a Sermon on the Mount lifestyle and a Church that is the public expression of Christianity.