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Properly understood, the Church functions as a community that:
- Embodies an alternative ethics of nonviolence and transformation, rather than violence and destruction. We overcome evil through good. (Matthew 5.38ff; Luke 6.27ff; Romans 12.14ff)
- Embodies an alternative identity and allegiance in a Kingdom that is not of this world but is present in it. We act as witness to and dissident from Empire and Nation-State. (John 18.36; Luke 17.20f)
- Embodies an alternative economics of generosity rather than greed, of Jubilee rather than exploitation. We give freely and forgive debts as ours have been forgiven. (Matthew 6.19; Luke 4.19; Acts 2.44ff)
Each of these aspects of the Kingdom of Heaven, to which the Church is witness, requires hard commitment and flies in the face of “conventional wisdom” and cultural norms (especially in America). Christianity in this form becomes, ironically, more difficult to live out in societies where Christian rhetoric and nominal institutional membership are normative — i.e., in large countries with a “Judeo-Christian Tradition” or societies where the majority of citizens attend church. This paradox arises because in these situations Christian religion is appropriated by the State, compromising its essential pacifism (and, in individualist-capitalist societies, often its economic/social aspects as well).
Thus for the Christian who aspires to restore the Church to a model like that advocated here, “separation of church and state” is central — not to protect government from undue religious influence, but to allow the Church to maintian its integrity as a witness to the dominant order.
I’m currently reading John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus, which is one of the modern classics of Christian pacifism and related theological movements. In his chapter on Romans 13, Yoder has a brilliant statement on the relavancy of the passage to issues of war. I reprint it here without further comment; it speaks for itself.
The function of bearing the sword to which Christians are called to be subject is the judicial police function; it does not refer to the death penalty or to war.
The sword (machaira) is the symbol of judicial authority. It was not the instrument of judicial punishment, since the Romans crucified their criminals. It was not the instrument of war since it was but a long dagger. Like the pistol warn by a traffic policeman or the dagger worn by a Swiss citizen-officer, it was more a symbol of authority than a weapon. This is not to say that the Roman government was mild or that this weapon was only symbolically present. But what it symbolizes is the way a given government exercises dominion over its subjects by appeal to violence, not the execution of capital offenders or the waging of hostilities against other nations. At this time Rome was not carrying on major military hostilities against other nations. There were in fact no neighbor “nations” with whom Rome could very meaningfully wage war. The brushfire hostilities along the frontiers were more like police action than like war.
The distinction made here between police and war is not simply a matter of the degree to which the appeal to force goes, the number of persons killed or killing. It is a structural and profound difference in the sociological meaning of the appeal to force. In the police function, the violence or the threat thereof is applied only the offending party. The use of violence by the agent of the police is subject to review by higher authorities. The police officer applies power within the limits of a state whose legislation even the criminal knows to be applicable to him. In any orderly police system there are serious safeguards to keep the violence of the police from being applied in any wholesale way against the innocent. The police power is generally great enough to overwhelm that of the individual offender so that any resistance on the offender’s part is pointless. In all of the respects, war is structurally different. The doctrine of the “just war” is an effort to extend into the realm of war the logic of the limited violence of police authority — but not a very successful one. There is some logic to the “just war” pattern of thought but very little realism. At the very most the only relevance of Romans 13 to war would be to a very precise operation carried on within the very clear limitations of all the classic criteria that define the “justifiable war.” The more we would attempt honestly to define and to respect such criteria, the more clearly we would see that as far as any real or conceivable war is concerned, in the name of any real or thinkable government, it is not honestly possible to include that function under the authorization given government by Romans 13.
American Nationalism is a religion. Consider:
1. Conventional religions have holy scriptures. Christianity has the Bible; Islam, the Qu’ran; Judaism, the Torah. American Nationalism has the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights — documents that every American is encouraged to read and own and understand, documents whose earliest copies are housed and glorified for public display. America also has sacred stories, of varying historicity: George Washington and the cherry tree, the heroic exploits of the Sons of Liberty, and more. These documents and tales are formative for Americans the way Scripture and religious narratives are formative for faith communities.
2. Religions have hymns and songs of worship. These span the full spectrum from the Psalms to the dizzying confusion of modern Christian “praise music”. Nationalism has its hymns as well: sacred songs like The Star-Spangled Banner and invocations of divine favor like God Bless America. These pieces of national music serve exactly the same role in American public discourse that hymns do in church services: they give us a giddy feeling in our hearts, affirm our allegiances, draw us together.
3. Many Christian traditions are historically creedal, using a standard statement of faith as a declaration of identity and belonging to community. In American Nationalism, the role of the creed is filled by the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge is a liturgical, corporate statements of identity, and goes at least as the far as the Creeds in terms of committing to a certain identity.
4. Religions have institutional forms, in addition to their cultural expression: the Roman Catholic Church, for example. Similar, nationalism has a institutionalized form: government. Just as the institutional Church hierarchy defines (or seeks to define) what is normative for a given faith, American (and other) systems of government enforce norms on the cultures they stand guard over.
5. Symbols is incredibly important to both conventional religions and nationalistic religion. Christianity has the cross; Islam has the crescent; nationalism has the flag. These symbols are often prominently displayed by adherents (at least by Christians and nationalists) — on car bumpers, on buildings, in advertisements.
6. Conventional religion uses places of worship: the church, the synagogue, the mosque. Though they are fewer in number, nationalism has its temples as well: the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and much more. These temples are often devoted to the memory of the nationalist’s analogue of a saint: a Founding Father, or a successful soldier, or a conquering explorer. Where Christianity has martyrs, nationalism has heroes.
(Maybe this will help people understand why I object to having flags in churches.)
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ADDENDUM: Long after writing this, I realized that Gregory Boyd had written up a similar comparison of nationalistic practices and religious ones, and that this comparison was quoted in part in Jesus for President (by Shain Claiborne and Chris Haw), which I have read. I fear that Boyd’s writing strongly influenced my own here.
I just came across these bumper stickers from Liberty Stickers. Despite the very-Caucasian Jesus, they go nicely with the thematic trends of my recent posts. (Incidentally, I have another post on the topic of nationalism and faith in the works; check back tomorrow or the day after. )
Too bad I don’t have my own car.
On March 5, three days ago, I wrote a post on why I don’t fit in at my SBC church.
On March 7, just yesterday, I wrote a post about the “Theology of Watchmen“, discussing the way it reflects the American religion of Christian Nationalism. In that post, I referenced “churches that obscure the cross with the flag”.
Today, these two subjects combined, as I realized yet again that my own Baptist megachurch is one of those institutions. In fact, my Sunday school classroom is adorned with three miniature American flags, and on the wall hangs a WWI Pearl Harbor calendar. The March image is a 1940′s poster depicting artillery gunners, with the caption “Your job is to keep ‘em shooting!”
Blessed are the peacemakers?
Don’t get me wrong. I do not take issue with people who fly the flag or are “patriotic”, and I myself am “patriotic” in a cultural (not nationalistic) sense. But the Church is not the place for flag-waving, and it is not the place for vintage military propaganda. I find it hard to imagine Jesus encouraging the early Christians to decorate their houses of worship with symbols of the Roman Empire. But today, that is exactly what many congregations, including my own, are doing.
