We expect people to have strong feelings for their country. This is pretty normal in a post-Babel world. History is replete with examples of people making virtual idols of tribe and nation and while I do not intend to revisit all the history at this moment, suffice it to say this impulse was strengthened in the 19th century with the rise of national identity and nationalism. It's so normative at this point that many would struggle to understand otherwise.
But with Christians it should be different. It's not a popular message but we have another allegiance - not a dual allegiance but another allegiance. The New Testament describes us as foreigners and pilgrims who are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. It's not a republic or a democracy. We have no rights. We are both slaves and sons at the same time - and we have a King. It is a Theocracy in the purest sense.
Many Christians pay lip service to this pilgrim-exile notion but it has no practical bearing on their lives and for many more the ideas of nation (and sometimes tribe) are intertwined with (and all but inseparable from) the Kingdom of Heaven - and sometimes the theocratic notion is included in the mix as well. In addition to being a divided allegiance (by definition) this is also a heresy but one that few dare to call out. In the American context it's not just pervasive, it's dominant.
And by heresy I don't mean that it's just an error - which it is. It's a heresy that if followed through will lead someone to fall from grace - a failure to persevere in the faith. It leads Christians to serve another kingdom and also turns the gospel on its head. The masking of this treason (for that's what it is) with a kind of sacralizing of the nation is little more than smoke and mirrors and self-deceit. The earthly nation always takes precedent under such syncretic paradigms for it is the one aspect that seems more immediate and certainly more pressing in terms of daily life - or at least for those who are not seeking the Kingdom and laying up their treasures in heaven will be bound to think.
They will be led astray and their faith will be choked by the riches and cares of the world - for temporal flourishing and nation-idolatry (or nationalism) go hand-in-hand. Supposing that gain is godliness, they fall prey to foolish lusts. Power and riches are not what Christians should aspire to - whether individually or in alliance with a tribe or nation. The heart of patriotism is pride and it is pride that produces ethical blindness. How often do Christian leaders like Albert Mohler echo the sentiments of the lost world in suggesting America is an 'exceptional' nation - in other words it cannot be judged by the same standard. For many Evangelicals, the United States is exceptional in the sense that it is chosen, elect, sanctified, and in some kind of covenant with God - though nothing in the New Testament can be appealed to in order to substantiate this notion. Should that not be the lens through which the history is judged?
This is idolatry and it leads to an evil ethic. To place America in a position of moral equivalence with other nations is odious to this paradigm. It would be just another nation subject to the same standards and judgments. The consequence is that behaviours that are sinful and atrocious when pursued by other nations are permissible for the United States. The same rules don't apply for this so-called Christian nation.
The only word for this kind of reasoning is satanic.
In this world we are called to bear witness – that means evangelism but also taking up the cross, being made fools for Christ's sake – testifying to His wisdom which the world derides as foolish. As such, the enemy has always worked within the church finding ways to compromise the message to get the Church to make peace with the world - to compromise and corrupt our witness. As a consequence the pulpits of Christendom are filled with false teachers who proffer this pseudo-gospel - they are lambs with horns that speak like a dragon.
In the wake of Constantine a new order emerged known as Christendom. For centuries Europe was ruled by the Throne and Altar paradigm with kings that ruled 'by the grace of God' - a pseudo-reality that was sanctioned by the Church which was fully integrated into the social, political, and economic order.
Beginning in in the 11th century, the Papacy began to assert its preeminence and centuries of tension, struggle, and often open conflict ensued. The Altar (as it were) also possessed a Throne and insisted its throne was superior and for a long time it indeed had the mastery. Many thrones were cast down and dynasties were defeated by the Popes of Rome. And yet many states resisted and due to a combination of factors - cosmopolitanism born of trade, new economics and new wealth, and various forms of dissidence, the Papacy struggled to retain its supremacy.
The Renaissance planted the seeds for a new era and a flourishing of culture and innovation. But it also resulted in great division and even a new rival Magisterial Protestant Christendom. Due to the many divisions over religion, economics, politics, and much else, Europe was engulfed in a terrible series of conflicts sometimes known as the Wars of Religion - an oversimplification to be sure. The real result was that Christendom itself received a mortal wound. People speak of its fall in our day but in reality its death blow or mortal wound came not in the 1960's but the 1600's.
A new ideological regime arose in the 1700's based on notions of individual rights, democracy, and an increasingly 'scientific' epistemology applied to all fields of thought - though it's clear enough that this has also failed and a great deal of the science and the assumptions behind it are in fact ideologically driven and therefore biased and thus bogus in its strictly empirical and objective claims. This is especially true when it comes to subjective fields such as economics and sociology. The new order represented an Enlightenment-based rejection of Christendom (and its authority bases) that had dominated for centuries. Needless to say this resulted in revolutions which took different paths depending on their context. The American Revolution celebrated on July 4th is part of this process and movement. It was able to avoid extremes because the king that it rebelled against was across the ocean and the state Church had never gained the ascendancy in the North American colonies. To achieve its goals it did not have to overthrow the totality of society.
If Christendom wasn't bad enough and unbiblical in its foundations, it's truly amazing to reflect on how this new liberal (and by most accounts anti-Christian) order was also 'Christianized' by its proponents. Over time, just as the feudal and monarchical systems were viewed as 'Christian' by earlier generations, the new Enlightenment order and value system was also syncretized and believed to be derived from Scripture. Both notions are of course, absurd.
It seems so ridiculous to most people now that Christians actually thought the Roman Empire could be considered a Christian polity, let alone what emerged in its aftermath. And yet no one considers that future generations might look back in wonder at the madness of Christians thinking that democracy or social contract were somehow compatible with Christian ethics or the fostering of some kind of Christian social order.
Like an elephant in the room, many are afraid to acknowledge that the present order, despite all its supposed glories is not working, as the Western experiment has not produced a new Christendom but in fact the new polity is being used to dismantle what was left of it, and to confound the already confused thinking of those who believe the Enlightenment order could be Christian.
As such, there's a scramble under way as people seek to re-orient their foundations in an attempt to find a solution. There isn't one and while some are attempting to revisit the Medieval Catholic order and find some way to paste it on to the now collapsing Enlightenment system - it doesn't work.
History reveals that when a conservative reaction takes place in a society and yet it's not able to reconstitute the old Throne and Altar system (in any substantive way), the answer is found in a strong-man, often associated with the military. He becomes the embodiment of the nation, the leader, the ethical compass - a kind of embodiment of reason as well as the Throne and Altar symbolism. The nation is put over all and the nation is embodied in the Throne/Altar/Nation leader.
The fact that Donald Trump has arisen in the context of the United States is the clear signal that the system has run its course. He may not be the last such leader and things may limp on a bit or move quickly. There are many factors involved in how this will all play out. But it's clear the nation and its politics will not go back.
The thing that is most striking to me as we near this holiday which celebrates disobedience to Scripture, rebellion, and the shedding of blood - all vigorously celebrated by American Christians, is that few seem to understand the social or ecclesiastical context for the events of 1776 or what they represented in terms of history. America was not the first Christian country as some think but in fact the first Western country since the time of the late Roman Empire to explicitly reject the Throne and Altar basis for authority - replacing it with Enlightenment reason, the regime of rights, and it justified its rebellion on this basis.
It's no wonder Rome (at the time) saw America and Americanism as the harbinger of doom. This was not a Protestant victory but the triumph of Secular Humanism. Not a few Protestants at the time were also concerned. Many American thinkers and historians have understood the deeper meaning of the American Revolution and its ideology and looking past all the fog and contradictions found in the American voices of the time and the romanticising of the history in subsequent generations, they have nevertheless understood that the modern society that we live in represents the full bloom or harvest of these ideas and ideologies. I think they're right but that doesn't make the contemporary American system or ideology right. Far from it. It just shows that it was always rotten to begin with and now the house is condemned and ready to be torn down.
Many Christians have rightly argued that the system itself is flawed as right and wrong cannot be decided on the basis of vote. Just because a majority votes for something doesn't make it right. That's not Christianity and many have confused the idea that I might be content to live among legally-protected blasphemers who let me alone as opposed to living under an authoritarian state that persecutes me with endorsement or approval. It may be true that I prefer to live under such a liberal system (as opposed to the alternative) but it doesn't mean it is moral or right. I don't accept the either-or false dilemmas that political creatures seem to relish.
These same Christians will often say that the system will work with a Christian social consensus - as long as the majority within society agrees on how to vote and what's right and wrong, then democracy will work. But that means it's not universal which is what the founding documents claim. That means democracy cannot work in non-Christian contexts and if society ceases to be Christian (however that is defined) then the system (it would follow) should be abandoned. The question then would not be democracy for all but how to assess a society to determine if democracy will work there. And clearly many within the Christian Right no longer believe in democracy and as such are turning to authoritarianism.
But that's not what the founders taught, so again I ask - why then are these people waving flags and celebrating the founders when they patently reject their ideas?
This is the absurdity, we have millions of people waving flags even while repudiating the ideological foundations of that flag. Millions more wave it without knowing why or even really thinking about it apart from some notion of libertarian freedom - which is not actually what the founders were advocating.
And further, there is no such thing as a Christian nation to begin with, so many of the arguments on that order are flawed at the premise. As stated, Christendom is itself a heretical notion that involves a complete redefinition of Christianity and the gospel.
So in the end, watching Evangelicals and other Christians celebrate and wave flags on 4 July is an episode in tragic comedy. And yet as the fundamentally and fatally flawed system collapses, it's turning into a horror - not only for the nation but for the Church.
The revolution was born in blood and its sin has gone to seed.
Have nothing to do with it.
Let the dead bury their dead. Let them celebrate their fantasy Babel - for no one is celebrating anything real anymore. Even the ideals of the nation's founding were fuzzy at best - hence the ambiguity, the need for a Bill of Rights, and the amendment process. The Originalist school of Constitutional theory is a fiction and self-defeating.