The Case for Flagless Churches

Many attend church week after week and never pause to reflect on the presence of a flag in the sanctuary.  Or singing “America, the Beautiful” on the Sunday after Independence Day.  Or a bulletin insert decorated with the stars and stripes.  I know that I didn’t for years.  These things were just as normal as donuts and coffee after Sunday School.  And yet, pausing and reflecting is something we must do because what we do on Sunday mornings matters.  Everything we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste (don’t forget communion!) in worship communicates.  These things orient our lives to eternal truths.   And by placing a flag in the podium we are, aware of it or not, participating in what sociologists call “civil religion.”  It’s a term I didn’t learn until seminary, but once I learned it, I began to see it at every turn.

Rob Hewell, author of Worship Beyond Nationalism, describes “civil religion” in this way:  “Civil religion develops as a nation-state seeks validation from the church or prevailing religious order for its establishment, protection, sustenance and ambitions.  It propagates itself through a cross-pollination of the stories, symbols and celebrations of the church and nation-state.”  In short, it is mixing patriotism with worship.  And it is ubiquitous in American churches.

The American flag did not appear in churches until World War I.  Why?  The simple answer is that a wave of patriotism always sweeps through a nation during times of war.  The tremendous cost and horror of “The Great War” united Americans and motivated them to display the flag in church.  The church felt the need to validate the nation and its agenda.  This was a lamentable change and it needs to be reversed.

When I was an English teacher in China, I had the opportunity to attend the officially state-sanctioned “three-self” church.  It caught me off guard when I entered the sanctuary and saw, next to the cross, a large Chinese flag hanging from the wall.  The juxtaposition angered me:  One was the symbol of peace, forgiveness, and salvation; the other was a symbol of communist, one-party rule; forced abortions; millions starved under the Great Leap Forward; repressed speech and freedom during the Cultural Revolution; and ongoing threats against political dissidents.  Why would Chinese Christians consent to displaying such a symbol next to the cross of Christ? 

But not so fast.  We do it too. 

Now I’m not equating the American government with the Chinese government.  Just hear me out.  Think about what the American flag symbolizes to different people groups.  To Native Americans, it means exile, dispossession of land, blankets infected with smallpox, rape, murder, Wounded Knee, and the Trail of Tears.  To African Americans, it means a history of slavery, broken families, Jim Crow, and burning crosses.   To my Iraqi neighbors, it is a symbol of military might, war, and national upheaval.  To the Japanese, it is a reminder of two of the worst days in human history, when thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians were instantly incinerated.  To Latin Americans, it is the emblem of a nation that funded bloodthirsty regimes in the 1980s.  I could go on.

Of course America and its flag are not all bad.  Like all nations, America has her moments of greatness.  But we can all agree that, at best, it has a checkered past.  For those who have been served well by the present state of things, the American flag may represent many beautiful things – freedom, liberty, the American Dream.  But the church of Christ is built on a different foundation.  Whereas America – like all nation-states – is founded on military power, Jesus demonstrated self-sacrificial nonviolence.  Whereas America obsesses over security, Jesus taught us to seek first the kingdom and worry not.  Whereas Americans chase the allure of upward mobility, Jesus demonstrated a way of life where “the Son of Man has no place to rest his head.”

You see, when we mix patriotism with the Christian faith, we pervert the faith.  We turn the universal

message of Christ into something tribal.  We confuse the nonviolent ethic of Jesus with the unending power struggles of the powers and principalities.  We fall prey to the temptation that has plagued the church since 313 CE, when Constantine decided he’d been divinely chosen to establish a Christian Empire.  This unholy concoction of the original way of Jesus and the way of the world expresses itself through our worship when we sing national anthems in our services, display flags in our sanctuaries, and use salvific rhetoric in reference to our national troops rather than to God.  Civil religion takes many forms.

We who claim to ally with Christ are part of a new nation, a separate and holy people that are (or ought to be) marked by our refusal to bend the knee to the violent gods that seek to subvert our allegiance.  In this nation, our laws are different, our language is different, our narrative is different, our relationships are different, and our ruler is different.  As Christians, we pledge our allegiance to that kingdom, and that kingdom demands all.  There is no room for any other alliance that might ask us to deny our true citizenship.  In this sense, we who follow Christ are all aliens in this world.  We who set our face toward Jerusalem have no nation but God’s. 

I pledge allegiance to the Lamb of God who was slain.  The one who is worthy to open the scroll.  The one who chose to lay down his life rather than grab political power. His kingdom, unlike America or China or any other earthly nation, will never end.  His kingdom is universal.  So let’s rid ourselves of our symbols of tribalism.  There is no room for them in the unbounded nation of God.