The Gospel According To The Pentagon

A military cemetery with rows of white marble crosses. One cross in the foreground is draped with an American flag and a red clerical stole, symbolizing the merging of church and state. — Image created with DALL·E

America loves its myths. Apple pie. Bootstraps. A flag planted on the moon. But perhaps no myth is more enduring—or more damning—than the one that says we’re a Christian nation.

You’ve heard it before: “This country was founded on biblical values!” Which, I assume, means something like loving your neighbor, welcoming the stranger, turning the other cheek, and—oh right—relentlessly expanding your territory by any means necessary. Manifest Destiny with a side of John 3:16.

Enter Memorial Day. A national moment soaked in sentimentality and symbolism, where we pause—briefly—to remember those who died in America’s wars. Sounds noble. Sounds solemn. Sounds like a civic benediction. But let’s be honest: Memorial Day isn’t really about mourning the dead. It’s about baptizing our wars.

If we’re supposedly a Christian nation, Memorial Day should feel like Good Friday: quiet, somber, full of grief and repentance. But it doesn’t. It feels more like Easter Sunday got hijacked by Top Gun.

Red, White, and Blood

Let’s call it what it is: the real religion of America isn’t Christianity—it’s militarism. War is our sacrament. The flag is our holy relic. And soldiers, God bless them, are the saints we canonize—just don’t ask why they were sent to die.

In this liturgy, Jesus doesn’t fit. He’s the guy who told Peter to put away the sword. The one who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” not “Blessed are the shock-and-awe campaigns.” He wept over Jerusalem. We drop bombs on Baghdad.

But American Christianity can’t quit the war machine. It’s too convenient. Too profitable. Too culturally baked-in. So we rebrand Jesus. We make him muscular, armed, and American. The Prince of Peace gets drafted.

Flyovers for Christ?

Churches across the country will mark this Memorial Day with all the usual flair: patriotic hymns, flag processions, and sermons that blur the line between gospel and government propaganda. Jesus is no longer the Lamb of God; he’s an unpaid chaplain for the Department of Defense.

You’ll hear lines like “They died for your freedom,” which conveniently skips over which freedom, whose war, and whether freedom actually needs to be delivered via Hellfire missile. Don’t ask questions. It’s disrespectful. Just grill the burgers and wave the flag.

Meanwhile, the actual teachings of Jesus—enemy love, peacemaking, forgiveness—are treated like fringe ideas. Optional add-ons. Maybe they play in private devotionals, but don’t bring that weak sauce into a sermon on America’s greatness.

Selective Memory Day

Memorial Day asks us to remember. But we don’t remember. We sanitize. We whitewash. We glorify. We airbrush over the PTSD, the broken families, the limbs lost and the lies told. We remember only what reinforces the story we want to believe—that our wars are always just, our soldiers always heroes, and our cause always blessed.

We don’t remember the civilians caught in the crossfire. The veterans abandoned by the system. The war profiteers laughing all the way to the bank. We definitely don’t remember Jesus.

If We Were Honest

What would it look like to actually remember? To sit in lament? To ask if any of this—any of it—looks remotely like the Kingdom of God? A day of mourning should provoke us. Shake us. Force us to reckon with our addiction to violence, our baptized nationalism, our unholy fusion of cross and flag.

But that’s not what we want. We want comfort. We want a narrative that makes us feel good. We want Jesus to shut up and salute.