Mysticism creeping into the modern church gets a direct rebuke here, answered by recovering the church’s own prophetic mission: a call to repent rather than a call to feeling. John the Baptist, Christ, and Calvin are read together on what repentance actually means, resisting easy sentimentalized versions of the word. A separatist church, in this sense, is simply one still willing to say it.
America’s religious history sets the Pilgrim Separatists’ authentic religion in 1620 against the civil religion of the Revolutionary generation in 1776. Why God has blessed America is a real question, and it has no simple answer. The closing exhortations of Hebrews 13 give the standard for measuring both moments.