“The Problems and Possibilities of Patriotism”

July 4, 2010

Amos 9:5-8

Psalm 33

Romans 13:1-7

With fireworks in the offing later tonight, we take a break from the jazz music that has energized our neighborhood in recent days to worship God. I have to confess my uncertainty as to what a service of worship should be like when the Fourth of July falls on a Sunday. On the occasions when this has happened I have usually been on vacation.

And attending worship at other churches on the Fourth of July has not turned out well.

In fact, I walked out of two such services before they even began. Looking at the bulletin and listening to the prelude music, I quickly became aware that they were going to be too much of a “red, white, and blue” spectacular for my tastes, my theology, and my political inclinations. I was discrete in leaving. But I left.

If you’ve made it this far this morning, my guess is that, regardless of your own tastes, theology, or politics, you’re going to stay through the benediction. So for a few minutes, let me offer a few thought on what it might mean to be patriotic Americans and faithful Christians and how we might best celebrate this day.

We can start with the words of that great Congregationalist and Founding Father, John Adams, who wrote to his wife, Abigail, that this day “ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty.”[1] So, certainly, worship is appropriate when the Fourth of July falls on a Sunday or any other day.

Patriotism is the problem.

Part of the problem is the way in which so many people have conflated being a patriotic American with being a Christian. We bristle when we hear Jerry Falwell say: “We teach patriotism as being synonymous with Christianity.” When General William Boykin tells us: “America is a Christian nation,” we shudder as much as when we see the bumper sticker that declares: “God Bless America—and to Hell with Her Enemies.”[2]

Statements such as those make me just want to avoid churches on the Fourth of July.

Many find it easy to cry out with the Psalmist: “Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord!” They almost suggest that the ancient Hebrew poet was thinking about the United States of America when those words were written. And certainly this psalm has been used in a self-congratulatory manner, neglecting that it is God, not the nation, who does the choosing.

We forget that God alone is rules the world and we do not. If we listen closely to Psalm 33, we hear the Psalmist singing, not of national greatness, but of the forgiving grace of God. This grace is the “real power behind illusions of power.”[3]

In spite of the words of the Pledge of Allegiance, we are not a nation “under God,” and there has never been one—except to the extent that all nations are under the God who is Sovereign over all creation.

Yes, patriotism can be a great good. The love of country leads people to make great and valuable sacrifices as soldiers and as civilians. At the same time, in pointing out what he called the “paradox of patriotism,” Reinhold Niebuhr observed that patriotism transforms individual unselfishness into national selfishness. He warned that unqualified loyalty to the nation “is the very basis of the nation’s power and the freedom to use that power without moral restraint.”

We turn to scripture only to discover that we have entered some very dangerous territory.

In recent history Paul’s words to the Romans exhorting every person to be subject to the governing authorities was interpreted by some German Protestants as requiring allegiance to Hitler.

But if we listen closely, Paul’s call for obedience to governments also relativizes those governments. No government, no nation can claim for itself the devotion that “a creature can only give to its Creator.”[4] We make an idol of our nation if we claim that it is fulfilling some divine mandate or that it is beyond criticism.

This is a long-standing problem in our country. It’s been observed that even Alexis de Tocqueville back in the 1830’s complained that Americans stiffen at all foreign criticisms. He accused us of “irritable patriotism,” as though we were not secure enough in our new nationhood to admit that some features of our culture deserved criticism.[5]

There are many problems with patriotism

And yet, with its problems there is possibility in patriotism as well.

One of the first cartoons published in The New Yorker after 9/11 shows a liberal looking couple entertaining friends in their book-lined urban apartment. One of them admits to the group: “We’re still getting used to feeling patriotic.”

Maybe you recall that sense in those days. With the vulnerability and uncertainty that came from the attack, many discovered a heretofore unknown—or at least unrecognized—love of country welling up within them.

And for a lot of people, that was an unusual, slightly disturbing feeling. Those of us who are products of the Sixties could resonate with the plea of the second verse of “America the Beautiful:” “God mend thy every flaw.” We knew well the failures of our nation. Then suddenly, almost nine years ago now, feeling patriotic was something we had to get used to.

 But what is that feeling?

William Sloane Coffin said: “There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country, a reflection of God’s lover’s quarrel with all the world.”[6]

Loving critics recognize that the very efforts we have made to secure our nation’s future—drilling for oil, invading nations to fight terrorists, freeing the financial markets from regulation—have made us even more insecure and vulnerable.

Can we find a patriotism that will help us with the despair we feel as war in Afghanistan escalates, as we see only the limits of American ingenuity in the Gulf, as we discover that greed is not as good as we were led to believe?

Perhaps such despair is the beginning of hope.

We begin to see the possibility in patriotism when it is stripped of illusions. American exceptionalism must give way to a recognition that we are one in a world of nations, aware of the power that we hold and its potential for abuse as well as its many benefits.

God speaks to Israel through the prophet Amos, “Are not you Israelites like the Ethiopians to me?” Even God’s “chosen people” are not beyond the judgment of God. And the other nations are also under God’s care, the objects of God’s love and mercy that extends to all people.

The nation whose “God is the Lord” is also the nation that recognizes that a ruler is not saved by a great army; a warrior is not delivered by great strength; and that the war horse is a vain hope for victory. A critical patriotism will be based on love of country and not simply serve as a support system for its military ventures. Perhaps then we can see that Psalm 33 is a hymn of universalism that embraces all people and indeed all of creation.

This perspective is far removed from most “God and Country” talk. But lest we think that all of our sisters and brothers in the evangelical churches are still under the sway of Falwell and his ilk, we can take heart from the statement in the conservative magazine Christianity Today in 2005 that reminded readers about the difference between the Christian faith and an uncritical nationalism: “George W. Bush is not Lord. The Declaration of Independence is not an infallible guide to Christian faith and practice.... The American flag is not the Cross. The Pledge of Allegiance is not the Creed. ‘God Bless America’ is not the Doxology. Sometimes one needs to state the obvious” the editors concluded—“especially at times when it’s less and less obvious.”[7]

A critical patriotism still needs to state the obvious.

A critical patriotism celebrates the birth of our nation while remembering what has been called our “national birth defect”—the continuation of slavery even as our leaders were able to declare that “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with…liberty.” And we recall that the framers of the Declaration of Independence ignored Abigail Adams’ plea to John that they “remember the women.”

Nevertheless, we can celebrate the slow but certain spread of freedom in our nation and the people and the sacrifices that have made this possible. We celebrate the example of our own state that has a long history of supporting the basic rights of people, from outlawing slavery while we were still a territory back in 1839 and to last year’s Supreme Court decision that allows full marriage equality for all people. On this Independence Day we celebrate with the many members of our congregation who have claimed this freedom in the past year. The Iowa state motto gives us some guidance for how to observe this day: “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.”

John Adams thought that this day “ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shows, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”[8] He didn’t mention jazz on the Pentacrest, but that is good, too. Let us celebrate and give thanks for the toil and blood and treasure that allowed this nation to take our first steps to freedom, for the toil and blood and treasure that secured that freedom for all people, and for the toil and blood and treasure that continues to allow this imperfect nation with our flawed leaders and flawed citizens to move forward in freedom.

May God raise up within us and among us a new patriotism that sees and seeks this nation’s good.