Contrast Society?
by Roy Howard
Soon Americans in the United States will engage in the annual celebration of the founding of the nation. There will be patriotic speeches, parades and flag waving along with family picnics. All of which presents an annual dilemma for Christians; or at least it could if we raised certain questions at our pot luck dinners and in our Fourth of July sermons. For instance, what is the relation of the Church to the State? If Christians are to give their sole allegiance to God, then what does it mean for them to pledge allegiance to the flag? If there are limits to my allegiance to the flag, and the republic for which it stands, then how can I offer an unqualified pledge? Are those Christians most truthful who refuse to pledge allegiance to the flag and if so, what does it mean to be truthful and patriotic? How can a Christian be patriotic and truthful?
What am I to make of the comment by one parishioner to his pastor, “if you take the flag out of the sanctuary, then I will be walking out with it.”? What does that mean? Is his allegiance more to his country than to the Church of Jesus Christ? Or, perhaps, like most American Christians living in the United States, he has never even considered the question of Christian discipleship and citizenship. On Sundays we pledge our allegiance to Jesus Christ but how does that allegiance inform our practice of responsible citizenship in a world of war, torture, genocide, predatory economics and more?
Christians living in the United States – or in any country, for that matter – are called to be a “contrast society”, displaying God’s purpose for the world. Yet, there is massive confusion about the role of the Church in society as evidenced by the simple practices of pledging allegiance to the flag and fighting over there presence in sanctuaries, as if questioning our allegiance to the flag were blasphemy. Isn’t this the way civil religion has blurred the church’s witness? An immigrant might reasonably ask, based upon the evidence, whether vast numbers of Christians in the United States love their country more than they God. If that is true, why is it so and what challenge does that present to pastors and congregational leaders?
I think it would valuable for congregations to have open and serious conversations about our calling to be a what Gerhard Lohfink calls, “a contrast society” for the sake of God’s transforming purpose in the world. If Christian congregations are identical with the society then how can we present any contrast? Or as Jesus said, “if salt has lost it savor than what good is it?”
I suggest we have some good conversation about what it actually means to give our sole allegiance to God on the one hand, while on the other pledging allegiance to the flag and the nation for which it stands. That is the tension in which we live. The clearer we are about our roles as citizens of the realm of God and citizens of the United States, the better off we will be and the clearer will be the witness of the Church in our time.
What do you think?