Our call to celebrate the 4Th of July weekend is This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land. After the Color Guard presents the flag, everyone stands, says the Pledge of Allegiance and sings The Star-Spangled Banner, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, My Country ‘Tis of Thee, America the Beautiful and God Bless America. Often times you finish your tribute by singing along with Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA (“I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free…”).

And through the whole thing one can’t help but think how moving it is with flags waving their colors, fireworks going off … and how incredibly wrong that people are doing any of it.

The idea is that your citizenship has shifted to another country, that you have become aliens- people who reside in one country, but whose allegiance, heart and destiny lie with another.

Strangers, citizens of another Kingdom, those whose heart is set on another place. Yes- you are to pray for your leaders and seek the peace and welfare of the area where God has placed you, but you need to be exceedingly careful of becoming attached to this temporary residence of yours- even when it comes to its finer qualities.

I think an objective observer would have rightly asked, “You foolish people! Are you forgetting that this is not your home?”

While you can appreciate the ways that God has blessed you here in America, to lose sight of your status as aliens, to become enamored of this land in which you live, is forgetting many things.

More than just foolish, I think some of the ways in which you celebrate your “Godly American Heritage” in the context of a worship service may even be directly contrary to the Gospel.   You are falling down on the “for all nations part.”

No, there’s nothing wrong with patriotism in the sense of rooting for your team and appreciating your country. But when it becomes more than that… For C.S. Lewis patriotism could be dangerous in that it could serve as a means to wrest man’s focus from where it belongs toward something very temporal indeed.

“Let him begin by treating Patriotism… as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the cause, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments in can produce…”

“A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.”

And here it is… What is bothering me so much during the 4th of July celebrations isn’t so much that you are celebrating America. It isn’t so much what you are doing, as what you are not. You have taken a time that belonged to the Native Americans and turned it towards the appreciation of a country, a political system, a flag.

It’s not wrong to love your country. You can be proud of your humanitarian efforts throughout the world. No one gives more money and other types of aid to developing nations than the USA. One can be proud that you are slowly coming to live out your creed: All men are created equal.
But even in your more patriotic moments, you shouldn’t forget some of the painful aspects of your history such as your treatment of Native Americans, the damaging effects of which can still be seen today. You shouldn’t whitewash your history of slavery and your support of dictators around the world when it served your purposes. And most of all, one mustn’t forget what America really is. In Adventures In Missing The Point, Tony Campolo puts it this way: “America may be the best Babylon the world has, but it is still Babylon nonetheless.”

We live in Babylon, folks. It’s a world system that transcends borders, is dominated by American-style consumerism and exploitation. More than that, it’s a system which will someday be brought to a terrifying and glorious end.

So on this upcoming Fourth of July, go ahead and light off some fireworks, thank God for the freedoms you have, enjoy a nice parade or picnic… but maybe leave the Star-Spangled Banner out of the celebration!

Lisa J. Waggoner | July 2, 2008
(July 2, 1776 the day that the declaration of
Independence was actually signed)