Thoughts on 'Patriotism' and the Proper Subject of Allegiance

    Nationalism is not a Christian virtue. Americanism is heresy. Propaganda and white-washed history is false witness. And our government and national history, both in the past and in current days, is one of greed and violence. None of those are 'opinion' statements.

    How should we live, in Christ, as citizens of an earthly nation? Whatever value there is in patriotism is not found in lauding our imaginary past glory or clinging to an unrecognized ideal, but in steadfastly demanding and actively working toward a more equitable, livable future- if not for our whole country, for the fellow individuals that reside on its soil. As Christians, our duty is not first to America, but to furtherance of the Kingdom of God. Woe to each of us whenever and however we forget that truth. Few will believe in our holy and meek Servant King if those who claim to follow him do not emulate his care and concern for the bodies among which he walked, as precious homes in his image to the eternal souls for which he died.

    I am quite fully convinced, based on scripture, that were Jesus to arrive in 21st century America rather than 1st century Israel, and face American/Evangelical culture rather than Roman-ruled Judaism, he would react with much the same censure and grief to many of the same structural sins, and be met with much the same hatred and disdain from the established powers-that-be, as he did in his time on earth. He would walk among the outcast, the disenfranchised, those whom our legislature loves to despise. Then Democrats would wash their hands of him once his ministry no longer was convenient, the GOP would mock and murder him in the name of law and order and the American Way.. and many in who sit within the church would be cheering at his death on a Facebook livestream, with red caps atop their heads. My most desperate and sole hope is that, in that day as now, I would endeavor ever to follow him, even to the darkness of death before the dawn of redemption.

    So, until America fulfills her own claims of liberty and justice for all, on a day like today we are celebrating little but the hope of a future in which those claims are finally, actually, realized. A future for which many, both brave soldiers and innocent victims, have spilled blood. I guarantee no troop in has had a fleeting last thought of the Constitution or the stock market as a stray bullet snatched away his life in battle. I guarantee no Native American thought wistfully of the American ideal as an agent of its government cruelly slew them to seize their land. Nor did any African's heart leap in their chest to think, as they were being abducted by slavers, that their kidnapping from their home and their new life of abuse and exploitation was the means to creating a vast wealth for a few men in the distant future. So it is not in the upholding or extolling of such things, for which they were killed or degraded, that I find the channel to honor their priceless lives.

    The American Experiment may well be founded on the best idea in the world, as many claim. I don't think I would like to try, right now, to judge whether or not that is true. But America is certainly not that idea, yet. Perhaps one day it will be. Whether it is possible or not, we do have a duty as human citizens to attempt to bring something of it into being, for the good of us all. But if not, as I believe to an increasing degree as I grow older, there is a far better idea beyond the world that alone contains the power to work for such goodness here below. I, for one, will pledge my allegiance only to that, and let all else come from the message that Christ died to save sinners, of which I am chief.