Piety and Patriotism

This article originally appeared in the May-June 1973 issue of the Post American, the predecessor to Sojourners.

Discussions on the relationship between Christianity and politics often give rise to the idea that being a Christian is likely to make one a good citizen. This idea is based on tacit acceptance of the proposition that there is a close affinity between allegiance to Christ and loyalty to the state, particularly in a democracy.

During the period of debate in the United States Senate in 1970, when Senator McGovern of South Dakota and I offered an amendment to what was called the "Amendment to End the War," I received many letters of communication.

One of them said, "Why do you think you have the right to interfere with our president? Have you forgotten that God's way is to respect and honor those in authority? What higher power is there than President Nixon? God put him there. ‘Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment’ (Romans13:2)."

This is perhaps an extreme example, but there are many within the Christian community who conclude that faith in Christ means obedience and allegiance to those in political authority; beyond this, one need not involve his personal faith in politics.

The more I observe about contemporary America, the more I read about the history of the church, and the more I study the scriptures, the more I sense how dangerous it is to merge piety with patriotism. The Christian, like every citizen, cannot avoid political involvement, but his responsibility is to bring this realm of his life, like all others, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Our politics must never be ruled by thoughtless conformity to the culture, because it is clear that our culture is not Christian in the truest sense of the word. We do not, as a culture, accept the ultimate authority of Jesus Christ over all people, all nations, and all history. We do not, as a culture, believe that our ultimate allegiance and trust must be placed in God's work of redemption and salvation.

Yet, our culture is "religious." "In God We Trust" is stamped on our coins. Nearly every president of the United States has made a reference to God or divine providence (although none have ever referred to Jesus Christ) in his inaugural address. Most Americans, I believe, assume that religion in some way is essential to giving the nation strength and success. They have great faith in their civil religion, a religion that really is nothing more than Unitarianism. It includes the belief that God has blessed and chosen America as he did Israel, that Washington, like Moses, led a people out of bondage into a new land, and that the Constitution and Declaration of Independence (whose authors were mostly Deists!) were written after inspired prayer meetings.

There are certain kernels of truth in this "civil religion." It is true that many of the early settlers came to America with a deep sense of religious commitment, and a vision of a New Order to be established for the glory of God. Read the New England Federation Compact or the Mayflower Compact and other early documents, and you will find in our history an inspiring spiritual heritage. In fact Allen Evans has said that the history of America is the history of a spiritual movement.

But our civil religion distorts the relationship between the state and our faith. It tends to enshrine our law and order and national righteousness while failing to speak of repentance, salvation, and God's standard of justice. The Promised Land becomes the Perfect Land in civil religion. America's actions become spiritually ordained, and even in war, we are beyond reproach, fulfilling a divine destiny.

The God of our civil religion, however, is a small and very exclusive deity. He is a pawn rather than a king: a loyal spiritual adviser to American power and prestige, an exclusive defender of the American nation, and the object of a national folk religion devoid of moral content.

And until our faith is placed in the biblical God of justice and righteousness revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, we shall continue to use the trappings of religion to sanctify the status quo. This God demands that a relationship to him begins with repentance, that his will be discovered not through nationalistic, vain glory, but through acts of humble love, service, and justice. Isaiah stated it clearly when he said: "Is not this what I require of you... to loose the fetters of injustice... to snap every yoke and set free those who have been crushed? Is it not sharing your food with the hungry, taking the homeless poor into your house, clothing the naked when you meet them, and never evading a duty to your kinsfolk?" (Isaiah 58:6).

Much of the organized church today has allowed its thinking and values to be shaped by the world. It is, in many ways, the captive of our culture, and the religion of America is America.

If we are to liberate the church and ourselves from conformity to the world, then we must allow ourselves to hold the Word of God over the tumult of society. Exploiting or watering down religious faith to make it compatible with political ends is not a temptation unique to our country or to our period of history. Much of the church's history has been dominated by the political prostitution of its faith to serve the powers of emperors, kings, and governments.

You see this even in the establishment of the monarchy in the Old Testament, when the peoples of Israel wanted a king like all other nations. They wanted to follow the conventional wisdom of the age and trust in worldly programs to ensure their security. Samuel warned of the danger inherent in setting up such uncontrolled kingly powers when he responded to the people's request, and his prophetic warning has continuing relevance. There are oppressive dangers present whenever a nation meekly submits to rulers and gives them absolute power. Our trust is easily misplaced.

A good example of this is found in Christ's earthly ministry, when Roman soldiers enforced the political occupation of Israel. There was great resentment toward Rome, and sometimes the anger and bitterness of the Jews was channeled into direct resistance. Tax collectors were hated because they collected Rome's revenues. However, some of the elements of the Jewish political and religious establishment were willing to ally themselves with Rome. This was especially true with the Sadducees, the religious leaders who justified the political status quo. They saw politics in one sphere, totally divorced from their religion, which was in another. They were the political collaborationists of their day, because they approved of Roman occupation without reservation.

Christ was outspoken in his condemnation of this party and its political-religious establishment. In the light of the kingdom of God, and its demands, that order could not be accepted; it stood under judgment. And when he called the tax-gatherers to repentance, like Matthew, it meant that they renounced their former life of collaboration with Rome, and the injustice that it involved.

Another group called the Zealots were committed to the forceful overthrow of Roman power, through military effort. A subversive, guerrilla-war type of movement, the Zealots were opposed to taxes, social injustice, and those, like the Sadducees, who cooperated with Rome. They looked for a political Messiah who would lead their resistance and establish a new Israel, a Jewish theocracy.

Although Christ had at least one close follower with Zealot sympathies, he himself refused to embrace this movement of violent resistance, and even regarded it as a temptation of the Devil. In the Garden, when the authorities came to arrest him, and some disciples wanted to fight, Jesus said, "He who takes up the sword shall die by the sword." His words, "love your enemies," were directed even to those excluded by the Zealots.

Christ rejected both extremes as represented by the Zealots and Sadducees. He condemned the Sadducees who were blind to injustice, and he resisted the Zealots who believed that injustice had to be met with violence. He proclaimed instead the way of love. His life demonstrated that God's kingdom does not come through the world's political power, but through the power of love.

The epistles, as well as the gospels, describe the relationship between a man's faith and his responsibility to the state. Romans 13:1 ("Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.") is often cited by well-meaning Christians who insist that all authority is constituted by God, and must therefore be obeyed. But what about the authority of Great Britain in 1776? It was a constituted authority, yet we glorify the American Revolution. This instance, and others, where a rebellion against authority is "justified," forces us to reread Romans 13, reading this time not out of context, but considering the verses immediately before this chapter. Listen to these words:

Never pay back evil for evil... If possible, so far as it lies with you, live at peace with all men. My dear friends, do not seek revenge, but leave a place for divine retribution; for there is a text which reads, 'Justice is mine, says the Lord, I will repay.' But there is another text: 'If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink: by doing this you will heap live coals on his head.' Do not let evil conquer you, but use good to defeat evil. (Romans 12:17-21, NEB)

I like to cite Revelation 13 to correspond to Romans 13. It pictures the state that has been so glorified in the minds of many Christians in these words: "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a dwelling-place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, for every vile and loathsome bird, for the blood of the prophets and of God's people was found in her, the blood of all who had been done to death on earth." And this was the same Roman state!

The New Testament tells the Christian that he does owe the state respect because the state is ordained by God. But as Paul says, it is also accountable to God, and if it is evil, that is quite a different story. The Christian must regard the powers of the state, and their potential for good (and evil) even more seriously than the state itself does. And he owes obedience as long as this does not involve disobedience to God. But whenever the state and God come into direct conflict, the Christian has only one choice. Render to God, not to Caesar. And God and Caesar are not on a par.

The Christian should pray for the state regardless of how bad or good or just or unjust it is. He must witness to the state by his words and acts. He must demonstrate that Christ is sovereign over all and ultimately we are all bound to the law of love.

The Bible gives us no basis for uncritically accepting the state, or for rejecting it either. Rather, the Bible tells us that at times, Caesar and God may come into conflict. Of course, we know what our priority is.

The relationship of the Christian to the state has a very interesting history. The first Christians in the early church gave their primary allegiance to Christ and his kingdom, not to the Empire of Rome. Early Christians refused to give oaths of allegiance to the emperor and the empire. They did not join the Roman army, or participate in the Roman Court system, which they thought to be unjust.

And you know what happened to them. Maximilian, a young Christian in the third century, is one of several recorded in history. Maximilian appeared before an African proconsul named Dion for induction into the army. Refusing induction, he simply stated, "I cannot serve for I am a Christian." Dion replied, "Get into the service or it will cost you your life." Maximilian's last remark was, "I do this age no war-service, but I do war-service for my God." He was executed March 12, 295 C.E., and his father, also a Christian, returned home, deeply proud of his son's unbending loyalty to God. Historians report that there were many cases like this, which may have led to the massive persecution of Christians in 303 C.E.

Another Roman official, Celsus, was insistent that Christians fulfill their duty to the king. If everybody followed the ethic of non-resistance, he said, the Empire would be ruined. Origen, a learned father of the early church, rebutted the position of Celsus by pointing out that Christians "have come in accordance with the counsel of Jesus, to cut down our arrogant swords of argument into plowshares, and we convert into sickles the spears we formerly used in fighting. For we no longer take swords against a nation, nor do we learn any more to make war, having become sons of peace for the sake of Jesus, who is our Lord."

The conversion of the Emperor, Constantine, in the fourth century, is of course a watershed in church history. Historians have sometimes wondered whether this was genuine conversion or whether it was perhaps motivated by political expediency, but this is not the place for a debate of that kind. The important thing is that after Christianizing the Empire, Constantine offered the church a "deal" from which it has been suffering ever since. The clergy were to be exempt from taxes and any requirement to serve in the military. The church was allowed to set up a separate court system of its own. Church authorities were given the right to hold property.

From that time on, the church was used to support the Roman Empire and whole Roman legions were baptized en masse and sent into battles for the sake of the Empire. The state used the church to justify its own existence and power. That is the legacy of Constantine. In the 1,500 years of history since then, it has been difficult for the church to resist the temptation of baptizing the secular state.

Our witness is to the world. We must witness to the values of our culture. As the Phillips translation puts it: "Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves toward the goal of true maturity."

Today we must examine what it means not to be conformed to 20th century culture in America. A church that is the captive of the culture or a message that merely echoes the values of the society cannot be truly evangelistic, or truly biblical. We cannot be the salt of the earth under such circumstances. We cannot be the light of the world unless our ultimate obedience is to Jesus Christ, rather than to the values of the world or the state. Too often we have left these values go unquestioned. We hesitate to confront the problems of materialism, militarism, or racism and in this hesitation, we run the danger of equating the American way with the Christian way of life, flagrantly disobeying the command, "Be not conformed to this world."

Lastly, we must offer the world a vision of its future built upon God's promised kingdom. We must, however, also have the spiritual resources necessary to bring such a kingdom into being. We cannot give out more than what we possess.

Our strength comes through prayer. It comes through reading and studying the scripture. It comes through sharing our faith and love, and demonstrating our faith by works. The Lord said that the world would know that we were his disciples by our works. By the catechisms we recite, by the church we belong to? No. The world will know we are his disciples by the way we love one another. We have to have an inner vitality, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, to be able to love one another so that we can reach not only the needs of each other, but also the community and the world about us.

Today we need a "confessing church," a body of people who confess Jesus as Lord and are prepared to live by their confession. Lives lived under the Lordship of Jesus Christ at this point in our history may well be at odds with the values of society, the abuses of political power. We need those who try to honor the claims of their discipleship, who are continually being transformed by Jesus Christ. Let us be Christ's messengers of reconciliation and peace, giving our lives over to the power of his love. Only then can we soothe the wounds of war and renew the face of the earth and all mankind.