God and Country?

There was a time when I believed that patriotism was entirely consistent with my profession of faith in Jesus Christ. For most of my life, I prayed, attended church, sang patriotic hymns in church, recited the pledge of allegiance to the U.S. flag, stood with my hand over my heart for the national anthem, voted, and even served honorably in the United States Army for a few years. I was a proud Christian, American, and Republican. Indeed, I was one of those people who thought that the rejection of patriotism by the Jehovah's Witnesses was absurd and very misguided.

However, when Barack Obama became President of the United States, I noticed a profound shift in the political attitudes of many of my brothers and sisters in Christ. Democrats weren't just wrong anymore - they were evil. In fact, many of my family and friends seemed to genuinely believe that liberals were deliberately trying to destroy this republic! And, while Americans had always believed that they were special - exceptional (a shining city on a hill), it seemed that that conviction was now firmly rooted in a phenomenon that was being characterized as Christian Nationalism.

In an article for Christianity Today titled What Is Christian Nationalism?, Paul Miller defined the phenomenon as "the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way." For these folks, America had been founded on Christian principles, those principles were being threatened in the present, and they must be defended and preserved for the future! In other words, this was an integral part of what it meant to be an American, and they saw threats to that lurking around every corner!

Then, suddenly, there was one Donald John Trump running to be President of the United States. And, in a very inarticulate way, he seemed to perfectly articulate the grievances of my brothers and sisters. Indeed, he promised to fight against the forces of evil and "make America great again." Moreover, my brothers and sisters seemed eager to buy what he was selling. In fact, many of them came to regard him as a kind of savior - a "King Josiah" that would lead God's people out of the unholy society/culture which the wicked socialists had been feverishly trying to construct over the last eight years! Trump promised to choose Supreme Court justices that would reverse Roe vs. Wade and put those nasty homosexuals back in their place!

Even so, while Trump was catching fire among my Christian brethren, my own disquiet and alarm steadily increased. I even tried to warn family and friends away from their infatuation with this man. "He is a corporate CEO," I reminded them. "He is used to giving orders and having them implemented without question, and that's NOT the way the presidency of this democratic republic works." Unfortunately, his authoritarian impulses only seemed to excite more support for the man. "He's a misogynistic, cruel, and ruthless bully," I pointed out to no avail. I went on to remind them that these were NOT the qualities of a Christian, and that his policy prescriptions were NOT consistent with traditional conservative politics. They didn't care! This guy was their man, and NOTHING or NOBODY was going to convince them that he wasn't!

A personality cult had developed around this crude and hateful man, and it propelled him straight into the Oval Office! I experienced a kind of "Deja vu" - I had witnessed this phenomenon before - in the religious realm - in the person of one Herbert W Armstrong. And, just as the realization dawned that I had been duped by Armstrong, I began to take another look at my own patriotic notions and compare them to my own training in history and religion.

I knew that there were some serious problems with Trump's narrative about America. I knew that there were some profound flaws in this Christian Nationalism that had become so popular in the last few years. Frankly, the United States had been founded on the principle that there should NOT be a state religion - that church and state should be separate! Indeed, while many of the Founding Fathers had been Christians, most of them were very far removed from the modern Fundamentalist/Evangelical/Literalist view of Christianity and the Bible. Moreover, the notion that the United States was ever a righteous or "Christian" nation was a myth. America had always been FULL of faults and sins. Our forefathers had murdered Native Americans and stolen their land and enslaved their African brethren. They had exploited, abused, and destroyed so many of our God-given natural resources. The people of the United States had abused and discriminated against women, foreigners, and children throughout much of their history as a people. Likewise, Americans had championed greed, divorce, and violence throughout most of their history. Hence, there had ALWAYS been a whole lot of sinning going on in the United States - It was certainly NOT a modern development!

Moreover, my religious disillusionment had also previously provoked an intensive reexamination of my spiritual beliefs. In the years since leaving Armstrongism, I was reminded that Christ had instructed his disciples to pray for God's Kingdom and for his will to be done on this earth in the same way that it was currently carried out in heaven! Likewise, after leaving Armstrongism, it had dawned on me that the entire model and foundation of their prophetic understanding was hopelessly flawed. In short, I realized that the people of the United States were NOT modern Israelites, and that all of those Old Testament prophecies did NOT apply to them! In similar fashion, I came to understand that ALL of the nations of this world were patterned after the Babylonian model and were part of the Beast discussed in the book of Revelation. In this same connection, it finally dawned on me that the "Mark of the Beast" was the anti-Shema (the Shema is a kind of declaration of God's supremacy and a Jewish pledge of allegiance to him). This, in turn, led me to understand that the civic religion which is such an integral part of patriotism is CONTRARY to the worship of the God who declares that he will not tolerate the worship of any other gods beside or in place of him!

The United States may be the best that this world has to offer, but the best isn't good enough! ALL of the human governments of this world will eventually be overthrown/supplanted by God's government (including the United States of America)! Scripture says that Christians are supposed to regard themselves as strangers and pilgrims on the earth. We are supposed to be looking for another country or city whose architect and builder is GOD, and ANYTHING which distracts us from reaching that goal is unworthy of our attention and devotion! In short, I am a citizen of God's Kingdom first and foremost, and that citizenship supersedes the claim that ANY nation on this earth has on my loyalty or affection. In the words of an old Elton John song: "I'm going back to the border where my affairs, my affairs ain't abused, I can't take any more bad water - been poisoned from my head down to my shoes Holy Moses, I have been deceived"