The Church of Jesus Christ blog has posted an engaging interview with Richard Hughes, author of the new book Christian America and the Kingdom of God.

Q: Professor, this book was published this year, and I assume finished late last year. If you could write an epilogue, what would you include?

A: An epilogue could well focus on the health care debate — an issue that clearly reveals how profoundly unchristian “Christian America” really is. The biblical vision of the kingdom of God calls on Christians to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, and to heal the suffering.  Remember Matthew 25 where those kinds of questions are really the only criteria for entering the kingdom of God, and the health care debate fits beautifully into the struggle between the sheep and the goats that we find depicted in Matthew 25.

I might also include the current flap in the state of Texas over the role Christianity should play in the history books adopted for the school children of that state. The Texas Board of Education has appointed six “experts” to offer advice on what should be included in those books and what should not.