Churches and National Flags

On Memorial Day weekend this year, I attended a United Methodist church service, in a church sporting the American flag to the left (from the congregation’s perspective) of the altar, and just behind the pulpit. Although that was the norm where I grew up, I was startled to see the flag in that church. Imagine my surprise when the choir sang their anthem, “America, The Beautiful.” And what happened next? The offertory was – you guessed it – our National Anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.” Worshippers stood to sing, and to salute the flag.

Why was I offended by a practice that, as a child, I accepted without thinking? Perhaps I was made uncomfortable by the mixed message: Whom do you serve?

“The display of a national flag can be intended to convey [one of] several distinct messages:

1. The person flying this flag is acting under the authority of the sovereign the flag represents.

2. The place where this flag is flying is under the authority/sovereignty of X.

3. The person flying this flag owes allegiance or obedience to the sovereign the flag represents. Its display is an expression of loyalty or submission.

4. The person flying the flag wants to show respect, hospitality, genealogical connection, linguistic facility, etc., etc., having to do with the country the flag represents.“[1]

The interesting and important distinction here is: “under the authority” of a sovereign vs. “owes allegiance or obedience” to the sovereign, vs. “show respect” to the country.

“In the United States, people tend to gravitate to messages 3 and 4. In other words, an American Baptist congregation that puts the stars and stripes inside the church is not asserting the government's temporal power over the church but expressing the allegiance that the members of the church as U.S. citizens owe to the country.”[2]

Perhaps I am simply over-reacting to the presence of the American flag (or its image) seemingly everywhere I turn. It’s found in lapels, and on car bumpers and truck windows. Still, it feels to me the flag in that church says that church owes allegiance and obedience to the President. But Christians also claim to owe their allegiance first and foremost to God alone. We’re warned (Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13) against trying to serve two masters.

When Muslim leaders in Australia called for support to fly the Australian flag outside (not even inside) mosques in that country, as a symbol of loyalty and commitment to their nation, some Muslims labeled the idea as “politicizing a place of worship.”[3]

The Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Ill., took down its Israeli and U.S. flags about five years ago in response to a congregant’s petition to the synagogue board. “He said they were political symbols, and the sanctuary is sacred space,” Rabbi Brant Rosen recalls.[4]

I wonder. Would Jesus have stood and sung our National Anthem with us that Memorial Day morning? I think he was clear about which master he served, as were Moses and Mohammed.

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[1] See http://flagspot.net/flags/rel.html#sanct. Written by Joe McMillan. Retrieved 5 June 2008

[2] Ibid.

[3] http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21239882-601,00.html

[4] http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/32512/edition_id/604/format/html/displaystory.html