For an American church, the Fourth of July should be just another day

By David McElroy · July 2, 2011

I know this is hard for some people to believe, but Jesus isn’t an American. He doesn’t spout patriotic words, and He doesn’t pledge allegiance to any flag.

Sadly, many U.S. churches are confused about this issue. As a result, this Sunday will be another confusing day when many American church-goers will be hit with a message that is unbiblical in every way.

When I was growing up, I accepted this odd mixture of Christian religion and civic religion without paying much attention to it. I was a patriotic little kid, so I was happy to see various patriotic songs in the Baptist Hymnal on the backs of the pews where I sat every week. I was happy to see a U.S. flag on stage areas much of the time (sometimes flanked by the weird notion of a “Christian flag“).

As I’ve thought about the implications of this odd mixture of patriotism and Christianity, it makes me sick. The U.S. flag has no place as part of a church, just as the flags of various other civic nations have no place in churches, either. If you have loyalties to a government or a state of some kind, that’s your business, but it has no place being given a place of honor in God’s house.

The truth is that those of us who are Christians have brought too much of “the world” into the church. Glorifying and emulating the “American dream” isn’t a biblical thing. Patriotism isn’t appropriate for a church to promote. And American exceptionalism certainly isn’t.

It didn’t start to bother me too much until I was in my mid-20s and attended a large Baptist church here in Birmingham during a Fourth of July weekend. It was a bizarre spectacle. There were flags draped everywhere and there was a processional of people carrying U.S. flags down the aisles at one point. It felt far too much like a Nazi rally at Nuremberg for my taste — and it started me thinking a lot about why patriotism had ever been connected with Christianity.

Americans aren’t the first people to believe they are somehow special and that there is a bond between church and nation. Throughout history, governments have fostered this belief. The Holy Roman Empire is an obvious example, but the people of pretty much every country have believed that God (as they understood Him) was on their side.

Even the Nazis believed that God was on their side. If you look at pictures of German churches from the Nazi era, you’ll find many of them flying the Nazi flag, such as this one at a cathedral in Cologne in 1937. Although few would argue that the U.S. government is as evil as the Nazis were, it makes just as little sense for American Christians to glorify our civic religion as part of our Christianity as it did for German churches to glorify the then-current civic religion there.

Most conservative Christians remain steadfast in their desire to connect their church life with their civic religion, so I know this will anger some people, simply because it goes against things they’ve experienced all their lives and still hold dear. But more people are starting to realize that our allegiance to God has nothing to do with some people’s allegiance to a state.

God isn’t an American. He doesn’t love America anymore than He loves Balochistan or Nepal or Germany. He made and loves every single one of us. It’s offensive to Americanize Him or His loyalties.

Share on Social Networks

Lucy just made possible friends with two little girls, but the girls are more enthusiastic so far than she is. Joy, 5, and Hope, 6, just moved in with their grandmother on my street. I didn’t know this, but while Lucy and I were walking, I heard a tiny voice from the darkness cry out, “Hi, doggie!” It took me a minute to figure out where the voice was coming from, but once I did, their grandmother, Rose, came out onto the porch and gave the girls permission to pet Lucy, which delighted the girls. Joy said she wasn’t allowed off her porch since she had socks and no shoes. Lucy was shy, but allowed them to pet her a bit, while the girls marveled about how soft she is. I hope Lucy will let them be her friends. It’s a joy to see how far Lucy has come since she came to live with me. She’s nothing like the “special needs dog” who I was told would never get close to anybody.

I’ve never taken YouTube very seriously as a publishing platform — not enough to do anything more than post the occasional random video — but I’ve started laying a foundation for doing more with it in the future. I created and uploaded some simple branding to my longstanding YouTube channel this weekend and I’ll be doing more in the future. The channel has only about 300 subscribers, so if you feel so inclined, I would appreciate it if you’d subscribe. As with all things on social media, subscriber counts and views help me to get future content seen more easily by others. Click here to visit the channel.

Don‘t appeal to any piece of paper or any tradition as the source of your freedom. You don’t have “constitutional rights.” You have natural human rights. If you appeal to a document as the source of your rights, you are admitting that politicians can come along and amend your rights at any time. A right is yours because you are a human being, but it means nothing if you don’t have the means and the willingness to defend it. The sad truth today is that almost all of us are at the mercy of politicians who ignore our natural rights — and they get away with it only because they have educated our fellow humans to believe we have no legitimate choice other than obedience. Rebellion without the ability to win is insane — so don’t make this argument to police, politicians or judges — but it costs you nothing to come to a clear-eyed understanding today of what your rights really mean and where they come from.

Spring always reminds me how glorious blue skies and green leaves can be. When I was in the second grade, Mrs. Arnold chastised me for using those colors together. She said they didn’t match. Mrs. Arnold had very specific rules about which colors could be used together. We couldn’t deviate from her rules. When I used green and blue together in one of my class drawings, she forced me to do it over, since she said those colors shouldn’t be used together. I was a polite and obedient child, but I asked her why they didn’t match — since God used them together in nature. She was exasperated and told me to follow her rules. So when I see glorious beauty which mixes green and blue — such as this photo I took just outside my office Friday afternoon — it always reminds me of Mrs. Arnold. It reminds me that she was wrong. And it’s a good reminder for us all. There are established rules about a lot of things. Many of those are good rules. But if an expert tells you something and you know he’s wrong, you might need to take a chance. He might be just as mistaken as Mrs. Arnold was.

In the coming months and years, we’re going to need inventive and productive people pursuing things that matter. We’re going to need smart and self-directed men and women who will find ideas and create enterprises that will help bypass the political class and build a new and better society. But everything I see in media right now seems geared toward telling people how to entertain and amuse themselves. The stories are full of advice about what to binge on Netflix and what games you should be playing while you’re stuck at home. We desperately need to ignore this advice and be looking toward building new futures instead. Being passive consumers got us where we are today. It’s time that we reclaim our former role — the one that made this country wealthy — as productive and free people who build far more than we consume. This could be a great opportunity for those who will take it. Turn off Netflix. Put down the video game controller. We need new ideas, new achievements, new goals — not more coach potatoes. This is the time to be thinking and creating and planning for the future that you and I both want.

Related Posts