A Brief Alphabet of Christianity and Politics (6)

 

Flag – if your place of worship has an American flag in it, it is likely your church does not understand the relation of church to nation and, hence, to its politics. A flag is a powerful symbol and shaper of identity and values. And it is a competitor not a complement to the Christian faith. Nearly a hundred years ago in an essay “Nationalism as a Religion” Carlton Hayes astutely made this point:

“But nowadays, and herein lies the fundamental difference between us and our ancient and mediaeval and early modern forebears, the individual is commonly disposed, in case of conflict, to sacrifice one loyalty after another, loyalty to persons, places and ideas, loyalty even to family, to the paramount call of nationality and the national state. This is nationalism, and surely it must have a richly emotional content to predominate over all other emotional loyalties of the present generation.” (https://www.panarchy.org/hayes/nationalism.html)

We cannot therefore be Christian Americans, only American Christians. That is, Christians who happen to live in America. The flag stands for the former, Christians who are defined by their American identity and values and interpret their Christian faith within is parameters. The Bible, the other major symbol in the sanctuary, stands for the latter, Christians who define their identity and values by the gospel and delimit their response and responsibility to their homeland in its light.

Just a few years after Hayes’ article, in August of 1933, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German pastor, theologian, and resister against the Nazis, wrote to his Grandmother: “The issue really is Germanism or Christianity.” He had seen German Christians place Nazi flags alongside the communion table and believe that God’s will worked through the National Socialist Party. For many of them, loyalty to the Arian race and the German nation (“blood and soil”) had usurped loyalty to God.

The American flag should not appear in a Christian worship space. Even if it was lowered beneath the Christian flag as it is in some places. The flag in any position in the sanctuary exercises its competitive power with the Christian symbols. The issue is, as it was for Bonhoeffer, Americanism or Christianity. Americans have tended, in effect, to lower the Christian flag before the American flag and play the role of chaplain or cheerleader on the Good Ship America, proclaiming God’s special relationship to and work through this nation. Here’s one description of the effects of such “chaplainship”:

“Seduced by wealth and power, the church willingly became the servant of the Roman empire. Where once its role was prophetic—calling the wealthy elite and ruling powers to create a just society—it now became a chaplain to the powerful, accommodating its values to the needs of politics and blessing the domination system that oppressed the poor. For the first time, Christians willingly went to war.” (https://followingjesus.org/hide-and-seek/)  

Without divesting our sanctuaries, and more importantly our hearts, minds, and habits of the Americanism that has desperately infected Christianity here, there remains as little hope that we can summon the strength to resist the resurgent nationalism that afflicts us these days. That surely must be at the top of the churches agenda!