I remember proudly marching down the center aisle of the sanctuary carrying the heavy Stars and Stripes toward the altar as the choir, decorated in their red, white and blue, sang the words to “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” It was the Sunday evening before the 4th of July, and I was the youth intern during my junior year of college. We had discussed all week at VBS God’s mission for us as Christians and celebrated the fact that we were Americans and God was invested in our work as a nation. This evening was the culmination of a week likely similar to that of many American churches as the summer calendar rushes toward that first week in July.
Over the next two weeks, churches from sea to shining sea will take time out of their worship gatherings – or perhaps, dedicate their entire worship – to celebrate our national freedom in commemoration of Independence Day. In appreciation for the freedom to gather for worship freely as Americans, we as Free and Faithful Baptists will celebrate our nation, its leaders, and its military by singing patriotic “hymns,” parading the flag, and sometimes even preaching on texts about God’s favor on His chosen nation. For most of us, this mixture of faith and nationalism seems quite natural – it is how we were raised and socially formed. We know that God shows favor on America and has a special purpose. We know American values are quite similar to our Christian values, and the more perceptive of us even see similar missional goals in the spread of Christian evangelism and American democracy overseas.
This is nothing new; this mixture of patriotism and religion is simply the context in which we live, work and worship. Scholars call it “civil religion” – a set of beliefs, symbols and rituals commemorating national prophets and martyrs, sacred events and sacred places, solemn rituals and symbols. From the words on our currency and proclaimed as our national motto, to the concluding petition that “God bless America” in the president’s speeches, to the veneration of important national heroes in “sacred” markers, it is wildly apparent that a different type of “religion” permeates all of public America. A recent Bible publication by a respected publisher even solidifies this civil theology in the “Word of God” – the American Patriot’s Bible. (Greg Boyd, among others, has blogged significantly about this project.) And for most of us, this religion neatly coincides with and complements our Christian faith.
While thus far many of you might be in agreement with me, condemning such heresies as a Patriot’s Bible and joining in on the always enjoyable deriding of overly-patriotic Religious Right-ers, we can no longer only accuse conservative Republicans of patriotic idolatry. Liberals and moderates are today just as likely to fall into the civil religion trap, and therefore cause just as much damage to the witness of the Church. For these liberals, faith does not lie in a transcendent God who watches over His chosen nation, but in a transcendent nation. One scholar explains this idea as “the nation which saw itself in the place where God had been” (Martin Marty). They place faith in our nation and its leaders to redeem us from our struggles and bring security and salvation to a world in need. In short, the state through policy, coersion, and violence offers an alternative salvation to that of the Church through Christ. Our current president’s speeches exemplify this liberal civil religion.
In the end, the level to which the Church ought to engage in national politics is a widely debated issue. While most Americans see themselves as dual citizens, religious and national, perhaps this entanglement of the Church in the political realm has damaged the witness and work of the Church in America. It places an alternative object at the proverbial altar – that is, a deep commitment to liberal democracy as manifest in the American Way. Theologians Hauerwas and Willimon offer a helpful critique of our current situation. Quoting Leslie Newbigin, they note: “The nation state has taken the place of God.” It is a fusion that in for conservatives and liberals alike, closely resembles idolatry. (Resident Aliens, 34).
The implications of accommodation and ecclesial danger I am suggesting are not a politically-oriented liberal insistence on the separation of church and state. Rather, I am reminded by each effort like the Patriot Bible, that as the Church we ought to work to construct new ways of imagining the relationship between the Church and national politics, a path forward out of the malignant nature of our current circumstances. I don’t suggest the Church be apolitical, rather that it live out its own politics. By this I mean we understand politics not in the narrow sense of nationalistic politics, but in the broader root sense of polis, of the way we structure our relationships, where politics means the organizing of a Body (of Christ) and we see the Church itself is a politic.
Conservatives and liberals alike, in their efforts toward freedom and individual rights, legitimize the American democratic system in a way that relieves the Church of a true prophetic and political role. Neither allow for the Church to exist as an alternative social community, living according to the ethic of Christ. In this sense, allegiance, and even support of another politic is idolatry – an alternative conception of salvation. If we begin to conceive of the Church as a “colony, an island of one culture in the middle of another,” operating in a different Kingdom, then we might begin to better understand the roles of citizenship in rival kingdoms and better understand what it means to be the Church in a world of violent and compromised politics.