This weekend, all across the country, hundreds of churches will adorn their santuaries with red, white, and blue apparrel and choirs will trade in All Creatures of my God and King and How Great Thou Art for My Country Tis of Thee and God Bless America. The problem with Christianity in America can be found, precisely, in these churches that choose to celebrate patriotism in their house of worship. When a church inserts patriotic medleys into their Sunday service of worship they begin to blur lines that ought not be blurred. Wittingly or unwittingly they attempt to make the God of Israel at home in America. The result is a domestication not only of the church but of the God we worship. Thus, the problem with American Christianity is just that…it has become American.

The problem, moreover, is that these churches assume a deep compatibility between Christianity and American democracy. For most members of these churches it is unthinkable that being a Christian might in any way render problematic their full participation in American life. Yet when played out, the presumption that there is no to little difference between the church and the principles of the American experiment leads to churches and Christians that have nothing distinctive to contribute to society since they believe that very society is underwritten by their faith in God.

Given the patriotic, Christian climate, the question that I believe must be asked is, “Faith in what god?” Because the god sung about in patriotic hyms such as God Bless America is not the God whose raised Israel out of Egypt and Jesus from the dead. (On that note, God Bless America is most often spouted not because God hasn’t but because we assume that its our due that God bless us). Yet the God of Christ is not the God of some generalized freedom qua freedom and defender of inalienable rights. Rather, the God of Christ offers freedom through and only through obedience to the cross. Thus, to the extent that we confuse these two gods we move in the direction of golden calf idolatry.

Still, we fail to recognize our own idolatry because as Stanley Hauerwas (Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University) puts it, “Americans do not believe in God. They believe in belief.” He continues…

That is why we have never been able to produce interesting atheists in the U.S. The god most Americans say they believe in is not interesting enough to deny because it is only the god that has given them a country that ensures they have the right to choose to believe in the god of their choosing. Accordingly, the only kind of atheism that counts in the U.S. is that which calls into question that proposition that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and happiness.

This is why President Obama had to leave his church when his pastor suggested that God might stand in judgment against America. But maybe Rev. Wright had a point. Maybe he was on to something. After all what he said was juvenile relative to the prophets of old. Those who assume that America deserves God’s blessing a) fail to recognize that God’s blessing incurs God’s judgment and b) must surely suffer from historical amnesia. When has American been a Christian nation? During slavery? During the murder of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians at the hands of our own nuclear terrorism? During the Cold War when we put ruthless tyrants such as Pinochet into office merely because they didn’t ascribe to communism?

When Christianity becomes American, it becomes Constantinian It becomes something other. It pursues something other than the cross.

One of history’s greatest lessons is that once the state embraces a religion, the nature of that religion changes radically. It loses its nonviolent component and becomes a force for war rather than peace. The state must make war, because without war it would have to drop its power politics and renege on its mission to seek advantage over other nations, enhancing itself at the expense of others. And so a religion that is in the service of a state is a religion that not only accepts war, but prays for victory. From Constantine to the Crusaders to the contemporary American Christian right, people who call themselves Christians have betrayed the teachings of Jesus while using his name in the pursuit of political power. (Mark Kurlansky)

It may be shocking to you that I have been accused of being insufficiently patriotic by quite a few Christians - but this rankles me because I actually consider myself on the high end of appreciation for history and tradition. However, for the last few years my mood has begun to sour around the 4th of July because with it comes the co-opting of Jesus onto America which often results in the worst kind of patriotism.

I wish instead that we, as Christians, would spend the holiday weekend in an understanding that we are Christian before we are American. Put differently, we as Christians are citizens of another kingdom and are thus called to live in America not as citizens but as resident aliens. I wish we’d spend the holiday putting thought to what that might actually look like. What might it look like to be disciples of a God whose mission on earth did not seem to be the spread of capitalism or the security of America or the heightening of a single country’s prestige but to lift up the downtrodden and to be a light to all nations.

Before we pridefully wave our American flags, let’s spend some time putting flesh to the idea that we follow Jesus - the one who lived in Palestine among the poorest of the poor, and suggested we love our enemies, and touch the untouchables and exhibit immense mercy. Before we support the powers that be let’s search for a contextual understanding of this Jesus, this God made flesh, that mortified the powers that were.