A Reflection for this 250th Independence Day: Patriotism as a Providential Sacred Duty

“Which procession will we join? To which kingdom will we pledge our allegiance?”

I asked these two questions in a Palm Sunday reflection two years ago, drawing on John Dominic Crossan’s and Marcus Borg’s portrayal of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and his last week there. As we approach this Fourth of July and our country’s 250th birthday, I’ve found myself returning to these same questions again.

This question of properly directed allegiance has always confronted people of faith, both past and present. Jesus addressed it himself, answering a question about taxes: “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” The second-or-third century Epistle to Diognetus put it this way: “They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers.” Even into the 20th century, Billy Graham agreed: “The Bible says that as long as we are here on earth, we are strangers in a foreign land. … This world is not our home; our citizenship is in heaven.”

Our current era of ascendant Christian nationalism makes these questions of allegiance ever more important. Asking where our loyalty lies as Christians in the United States today is no small task. This question not only threatens to reveal our partisan political leanings, it also asks us to examine the very core of our identities. Are we people who first follow Christ and seek after his Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven? Or, are we people willing to allow all else, our faith included, to be made subservient to finite and fallen human leaders, causes, and institutions?

The Christian answer to this question must of course be that we find our foremost identity and allegiance in our one and only Lord Jesus Christ. Ancient Christians faced martyrdom for this allegiance in the time before Constantine. Waldensians were burned for it and the Anabaptists were drowned. And, in our founding era, the Baptist witness to this proposition of Christ’s sovereignty, prophethood, and priesthood served our people and our nation exceedingly well — establishing a nonsectarian government where citizens and residents are free to discern the dictates of their own conscience absent the coercion of the civil government or an established ecclesiastical authority. It is a proposition to which all Christians (and Baptists, especially, of the southern and fundamentalist kinds) must return. A truly free state depends on a free church and a truly free church depends on a free state. Every person must have the freedom of their own conscience — without question and without fail. Such a free people are the bedrock for building thriving societies that promote human flourishing.

Our primary allegiance to Christ, of course, does not absolve us of an obvious fact: We are people born into a world whose national borders were shaped long before we were born. Many of us are, through no choice of our own, citizens of the United States. This citizenship is not our primary citizenship nor do we owe to it an undying, uncritical devotion or blind, unquestioning patriotism. True citizenship in a country like ours requires a more honest, more humble patriotism that realigns our allegiances from the horizontal to the vertical and then back out again.

Blind patriotism demands allegiance to this horizontal, this earthly, plane and nothing more. It demands our trust and loyalty be placed in finite and imperfect leaders and institutions. It may tolerate some of our religion or morality and the questions it produces, but only so far as it does not threaten to completely overturn the status quo or dethrone those who maintain it.

Shifting the alignment of our allegiance vertically, however, allows us to make good on our regularly repeated prayers to do God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. With our eyes and allegiance turned toward God, this covenantal, higher-law patriotism recognizes first our allegiance to Christ as Lord. Our work on earth and in our country is thus guided not by blind allegiance to earthly power, but rather by Christ’s example of endless, self-sacrificing love. In this arrangement, our vertical allegiance produces a spirit of outward goodwill and patriotism becomes a sacred civic duty. We are freed to ask questions, challenge the status quo, and demand accountability when the powers that be disrupt or demean the God-breathed imago Dei in each and every person. We are freed to ask these questions without fear because we know that whatever the consequences the Author of All Life will bring mercy, justice, and healing in the end. We become able to fulfill not only our duties as Christians but also our duty as heirs to the as-yet-unrealized promise of America and of our Declaration of Independence. This providentially oriented civic duty renders unto Caesar what is Caesar’s — our taxes and a law-abiding life — while simultaneously giving to God what is God’s — our primary obligation to love God with our entire hearts, souls, and minds and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Christians committed to this historic and baptistic understanding of church and state find ourselves uniquely situated in this 250th year of American independence to reframe conversations with our friends and family. Small, private, and repeated conversations among our own circles can radiate outward, rippling through the civic discourse. No matter who we are, where we live, what kind of job we have or community groups we belong to, we each have a role to play in creating more healthy, more Christ-like communities where all people are respected.

There are certain powerful people in our country today who say your loyalty belongs only to a singular person or party. There are powerful movements that insist you bend the knee at some hardline purity or litmus test, attempting to clearly delineate camps of “us” versus “them.” Others demand your subservience to the economy — that what is good for the stock market is good for you and for all. Still others demand you shutter away your free-thinking mind and allow your conscience to be subsumed into a singular idea of what it means to be an American: muscular, mighty, and mean — a pagan Rome adorned in red, white, and blue, complete with modern gladiator games on the lawn of the White House.

The Christian Patriot dismisses all of these false idols, turning our allegiance instead back to where it rightly belongs… back to that parade of paupers led by a poor country preacher, the Living God himself, perched atop a donkey… as we ask not, “What is good for my party or my portfolio?”, but rather, “What is good for my neighbor?”

For 250 years, Americans have struggled to answer that question: “What is good for my neighbor?” We have struggled and moved closer toward making good on what Martin Luther King, Jr., described as the promissory note of our founding. I submit to you, my friends, family, and whoever might be reading, this simple answer: That if we abandon our blind patriotism, clearly repudiate Christian nationalism and white supremacy, and let go of our fears and let God guide our hearts, then and only then, will we begin to build a world where the image of God in all people is made clear and paramount in a country whose founding ideals, novel and breathtaking at the time of their first utterances, hold some of the greatest promises for human dignity and equality.

America is broken and remains broken. Like any individual human, the collective mistakes of the people who comprise America, past and present, cast a shadow over our nation. But, also like any individual human, we are not obligated to judge our country by the worst thing we have ever done — especially when there have been so many truly positive and beautiful achievements in our past and in our present. The Christian Patriot is mature enough to discern the difference: We can repent for our collective, national sins. We can celebrate and honor what is good. We can contribute with other people of goodwill — people of faith, other faiths, and no faith — toward ensuring that promises of our founding become more fully realized in time. Working together for what is good, right, and just, we fulfill our obligations as good citizens on earth and as good citizens in God’s beloved community.

A postscript:

I write all of this as a kind of personal salve and reflection… as I attempt to understand competing and seemingly contradictory parts of my self. Each of us, after all, is full of contradictions.

For as long as I can remember, the little Cub Scout and Boy Scout in me has been a perfect patriot. I’ve long heard old family stories and genealogies of those who came before me, including those who served in the American Revolution. At the young age of 40, in this semiquincentennial anniversary year, I made good on a long-hoped-for desire to join the Sons of the American Revolution; I’m looking forward to joining SAR’s in historic study and preservation efforts.

I am also a gay man who was rejected by my childhood church, grew up in an era where everything about LGBTQ life was illegal or taboo, and came into adulthood as all of those old crimes and taboos turned into constitutionally protected rights recognized by the Supreme Court, the Congress, and the President. I went from a poor gay kid kicked out of the Boy Scouts to a young adult editor of North Carolina’s LGBTQ newspaper invited to attend the President’s signing ceremony for the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal and a White House LGBTQ Pride Month Reception.

The pressures of my childhood and youth should have taught me I don’t belong — in this country or to God and God’s church. But, as I grew up and entered adulthood I never gave up on two promises: First, the promise handed down to me from the time of the apostles — the promise of my salvation in Christ, the only Son of God, whose Spirit guided me and guides me still. And, second, the promise of America and our Declaration, however imperfectly achieved, that all men, all people, are made equal, endowed by our Creator with the unalienable right of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

There is much in the American story to be corrected and accounted for. I believe we have the power to correct those mistakes. We also must choose to keep the promises which have come to us over time and the promises we will continue to make to each other. We must choose to ensure that every day becomes a brighter day. At the end of all time, God will gather together all of the people of every nation and reconcile all creation into God’s beloved community. Until then, we do what we can when we can to fulfill our responsibilities as Christians and as citizens of whatever earthly country we find ourselves in, following the instruction from Jeremiah: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”