Frontier Citizenship

The apostle Paul pushes us to expand the borders of our spiritual frontier.

The frontier. It’s a place that calls to mind images of dusty, gun-toting adventurers riding off the map into the unknown, uncharted wilderness. Since the days of Lewis and Clark, Americans have been fascinated with the frontier and pushing out our boundaries. The past popularity of movie and television Westerns is just one indicator that we love a good adventure, and we’re always looking for a new frontier. (Walk into any nursing home in America during the afternoon, and you’ll see reruns of “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza” blaring away.)

In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner suggested that it was actually this frontier mindset that formed the unique vision of American democracy, with its emphasis on “coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and acquisitiveness; that practical inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things … that restless, nervous energy; that dominant...