Today is Independence Day. Mikey went to a parade where someone was carrying a cross with an American flag flying from it. Does that disturb you? Does the image above disturb you?

It should.

Look, there’s nothing wrong with patriotism and loving your country. I love the USA and I love living here. I love it so much that I have dedicated almost 16 years of my life to serving it in uniform.

There’s also nothing wrong with allowing your faith to inform your citizenship. I make decisions on who I vote for based on my faith. I make decisions on things I support based on my faith.

The problem comes when those two things get combined into Christian Nationalism. From the linked article, “Christian nationalism is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a “Christian nation”—not merely as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program for what America must continue to be in the future.”

There’s a lot of problems with that idea. First, there’s only one nation that is identified as “God’s chosen people”, Israel…but God only blessed them as long as they obeyed Him. America is not Israel, and the truth is that most of the people in our nation who call themselves “Christian” don’t even obey God. Why should God bless us?

Second, we were never a “Christian nation.” We might have been a nation of Christians at one point, but it was never the plan to only recognize Christianity. That’s the whole point of freedom of religion in the First Amendment. And let’s not forget that freedom of religion was not why we fought The War of Independence. There were certainly people in the early days of the colonies that came to flee religious persecution in England, but then they practiced religious persecution here (see Massachusetts). In fact, there were only two colonies that built religious freedom into their framework: Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. It was because of them that religious freedom was enshrined in the Constitution. No, the reason we fought a war was over money…taxes to be specific. Money is the real god of America.

Finally, Christian Nationalism is normally about what makes the person proclaiming it comfortable. I’ve never heard it expressed as a desire to see the nation follow Jesus. I’ve always seen it expressed as “I don’t like thing thing (fill in the blank), so we should force people into my view of Christianity.”

I asked at the beginning is the idea of flying a flag from a cross or the image at the beginning disturbs you. For many, it doesn’t. Would it disturb you if it was an image of Jesus, bleeding and dying on the cross, draped in an American flag? Doesn’t that strike you as somewhat heretical? Why is taking Jesus off the cross and putting a flag in His place any better?

But here’s my real point: If you’re going to proclaim that we are a Christian nation, or advocate for that, then you had better act like it. The thing is, that is probably a lot different than what most Christian Nationalists might think.

Jesus didn’t come to overthrow the Roman government. He came to die for them. He didn’t come to make Judea the preeminent nation in the world. He came to die for the world. He didn’t come to change the immoral practices of the Romans. He came to die for them.

The early church didn’t march for freedom. They died for those who persecuted them. They didn’t try to change laws. They provided for those who were being harmed by those laws (the poor, slaves, abandoned children). Interestingly, as they laid their lives on the line for others (physically and financially), it changed the hearts of everyone around them.

Are you willing to sacrifice for people who don’t agree with you politically?

Are you willing to sacrifice for people fleeing persecution in other countries?

Are you willing to sacrifice for others being mistreated?

Carrying a cross with a flag on it will change nothing. What will make America a Christian nation is when people outside the kingdom of God see us doing what God commanded…feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, and loving those that no one else will love. When our actions match our words, THEN things will change!