{"id":23289,"date":"2012-07-12T09:30:50","date_gmt":"2012-07-12T14:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christandpopculture.com\/?p=23289"},"modified":"2012-07-12T09:30:50","modified_gmt":"2012-07-12T14:30:50","slug":"under-the-sun-patriotism-inside-the-american-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/2012\/07\/under-the-sun-patriotism-inside-the-american-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Under the Sun: Patriotism Inside the American Church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Each week in \u201cUnder the Sun,\u201d Jonathan Sircy examines the history of a cultural practice that\u2019s generating buzz at CaPC.<\/em><\/p>\n

In his recent feature \u201cThe Separation of Church and Patriotism,\u201d<\/a> Brad Williams writes that \u201cworship and patriotism don\u2019t mix.\u201d I was glad to see Brad explain the theological underpinnings for such a claim as I had been thinking through this same dilemma.<\/p>\n

On the Sunday morning preceding Brad\u2019s post, my wife and I sat through a church service that featured boy scouts parading the flag right before the congregation stood and pledged allegiance to it. I whispered \u201cand to the republic for which it stands,\u201d unsure exactly what was happening. My wife protested by remaining silent. Before the service was over, I\u2019d heard a re-arranged \u201cBattle Hymn of the Republic,\u201d sung \u201cAmerica the Beautiful,\u201d and stared intently at the bulletin\u2019s full-color picture of the Statue of Liberty while the pastor preached on the fate of the nation.<\/p>\n

The experience was new to me. I\u2019ve been a churchgoer all my life, and those churches have been theologically and politically conservative, a sign that the churches should have skewed patriotic. In his 2006 column on the topic<\/a>, David P. Gushee sums up the current divide between the Christian Right and Left this way:<\/p>\n

On the Christian Right are many of that dwindling number of Americans who are happy to proclaim their love for this country and to wave the flag proudly as a symbol of that love. Meanwhile, on the Christian Left there is an emphasis on the international loyalties of Christ\u2019s people\u2014and also some trenchant critiques of our nation\u2019s behavior.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(It\u2019s important that in his column, Brad appears to fall on both sides of Gushee\u2019s divide; Brad simultaneously declares an open love for his country while emphasizing the transnational makeup of the church.)<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019ve certainly sat through sermons about God both blessing and damning America. I\u2019ve had pastors ask that veterans stand and be recognized when Memorial Day rolls around. Such practices might not have passed Brad\u2019s muster, but they seemed par for the course to me, especially considering the political demographics of those churches. But I had never seen a flag ceremony, an unending queue of patriotic songs, or a church bulletin that seemed to shout in unison so unswervingly: \u201cWe love America!\u201d I mean, the liturgist opened the service by reading Emma Lazarus\u2019s \u201cThe New Colossus\u201d<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Is this seemingly inextricable connection between patriotism and worship something old or new? That is, was my church participating in a long-held tradition or responding to particular political circumstances? The answer, of course, is both.<\/p>\n

The ties between national pride and religious fervor run deep. Between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, preacher after preacher used Biblical narratives to describe America\u2019s special place in history. We can write off such scriptural deployments as distortions, but, as historian Mark Noll writes, \u201c[I]t is not so easy to regard the use of the Bible in the country\u2019s early history as simple ideological prostitution.\u201d The Bible, Noll contends, came \u201cto be read in terms dictated by the development of American nationalism.\u201d Noll supports his case with quotation after quotation from period sermons, showing that the connection between politics and theology was not something that stayed outside the doors of the church.<\/p>\n

Nineteenth-century hymnbooks also set aside special songs for \u201cNational Occasions.\u201d An 1878 Methodist Hymnbook<\/a>, for instance, includes a section dedicated to such occasions alongside songs about the seasons or marriage. The section begins with the tune to \u201cMy Country \u2018Tis of Thee.\u201d Intriguingly, the book contains two different sets of verses for the tune: the well-known address to the country itself (\u201cOf thee I sing\u2026!\u201d) \u00a0and an alternate set that prays to God for blessings (\u201cFor her our prayer shall rise\u201d). The collection never approaches jingoism, however. Other songs ask that God pardon the nation\u2019s sins and show mercy upon its inhabitants. In general, the songs resonate with Brad\u2019s theology while showing that such songs had a place in corporate worship.<\/p>\n

But there is something new about a 21st century church\u2019s patriotic display; for while America\u2019s churches have a longstanding connection to open displays of patriotism, the relationship between worship and patriotism has grown more fraught over the past decade. Peter C. Meilaender, Professor of Political Science at Houghton College, notes that \u201cfollowing the terrorist attacks of September 11, patriotism, for the first time in a long time, became fashionable in America.\u201d That unified love of country didn\u2019t last long, however. Splintered by G.W. Bush\u2019s controversial foreign policy, the public has seen patriotism used like an inverted form of another polemical buzzword: \u201cideology.\u201d You never wanted to admit you were under ideology\u2019s grip; it held your opponent. Patriotism, however, gets used in the exactly opposite way. It has been good policy during the past decade to portray yourself as a patriot while claiming that your opponent hates the country. National pride, in short, became yet another way of delineating \u201cus\u201d and \u201cthem.\u201d When combined with religious fundamentalism of America\u2019s attackers, we had a citizenship-confusion powder-keg on our hands.<\/p>\n

This patriotic tension played out against an increasingly hostile debate over the realms of church and state. Judges listened to cases on everything from the public display of the Ten Commandments to the inclusion of \u201cunder God\u201d in the pledge to the flag. The confluence of these two cultural trends\u2014the increasing importance of national pride and the Conservative Right\u2019s sense that their religious heritage was being slighted\u2014left the church as a secure place to combine an open love of country and Jesus. The church has provided a venue for the pomp and circumstance of religious patriotism that is no longer allowed in the public square.<\/p>\n

I want to stress that the theological position Brad stakes out in \u201cThe Separation of Church and Patriotism\u201d makes sense to me.<\/p>\n

However, the evangelical church is in a bind. On the one hand, the weight of national tradition, so frequently appealing to conservatives, places a burden on those who seek to follow Brad\u2019s advice. On the other, our current political climate has made the public performance of God-inflected patriotism more difficult.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s enough to make you cry out a line from one of the 1878 hymnal\u2019s songs for \u201cNational Occasions\u201d: \u201cGive to us peace in our time, O Lord!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is this seemingly inextricable connection between patriotism and worship something old or new?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1227,"featured_media":23296,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,15],"tags":[1401],"class_list":["post-23289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asides","category-general-culture","category-politics","tag-under-the-sun"],"yoast_head":"\nUnder the Sun: Patriotism Inside the American Church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Is this seemingly inextricable connection between patriotism and worship something old or new?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/2012\/07\/under-the-sun-patriotism-inside-the-american-church\/\" 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