Queasy in Church Again: Fourth of July

You may remember this refrain from my previous national holiday post after Memorial Day. Well, I got that feeling in my stomach again this past July 6th, when my church had a medley of armed forces theme songs along with a display of armed forces flags, a pledge of allegiance to the US flag, and a offertory interlude of patriotic songs.

Here, unchanged from the 1925 Baptist Faith and Message in both 1963 and 2000, is Section 17:

“XVII. Religious Liberty

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and He has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are contrary to His Word or not contained in it. Church and state should be separate. The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends. In providing for such freedom no ecclesiastical group or denomination should be favored by the state more than others. Civil government being ordained of God, it is the duty of Christians to render loyal obedience thereto in all things not contrary to the revealed will of God. The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work. The gospel of Christ contemplates spiritual means alone for the pursuit of its ends. The state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind. The state has no right to impose taxes for the support of any form of religion. A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal, and this implies the right of free and unhindered access to God on the part of all men, and the right to form and propagate opinions in the sphere of religion without interference by the civil power.

Genesis 1:27; 2:7; Matthew 6:6-7, 24; 16:26; 22:21; John 8:36; Acts 4:19-20; Romans 6:1-2; 13:1-7; Galatians 5:1,13; Philippians 3:20; 1 Timothy 2:1-2; James 4:12; 1 Peter 2:12-17; 3:11-17; 4:12-19.”

There is a good argument to be made that religious freedom is one of the great Baptist contributions to the world. Bruce Prescott traces the long line in this refrain in an article entitled “Passing the Torch for Church-State Separation“.

My problem is not that Southern Baptists and Christians in general have mixed politics and religion too much, though clearly there’s recent arguments they have. My problem is what subtle or unsubtle message we send when our Sunday morning services spend a fair amount of time “waving the flag”. Shouldn’t the church be, as it were, an embassy of the country it truly represents, Heaven? Why then spend so much time on a foreign land, our earthly residences?

You may say, it is well and good to honor the veterans among us. I agree. I think a shorter, more to the point: “Stand up. Here they are. We salute you. Back to the business of Heaven” is more called for.

You may say, we should train our children to be good citizens. I say:

1. Raise them to become Christians, and the citizenship should follow.

2. Are then Christian parents such awful child-rearers as to require fellow Christians to take up their slack in parenting?

My ideal, and it was likely only an ideal, even when penned in ancient times, is the description of Christians found in the Apostolic Fathers, Epistle to Diognetus, aka Mathetes, Chapter Five: 

“For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They  have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh.  They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven.  They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life.  They are poor, yet make many rich;  they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonoured, and yet in their very dishonour are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless;  they are insulted, and repay the insult with honour; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.”