July 4th: A dangerous day
for Christians

By The Rev. Chris Ayers

Special to The Observer

 

Pop! Bam! Kaboom!  The sound of firecrackers dances on our eardrums.  Fireworks shoot up into the night sky bursting into multiple configurations. Flags waving in the air.  The singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Lee Greenwood vocalizing about being proud to be an American.  It’s the Fourth of July, a day of patriotism and nationalism.  For Christians it is perhaps the most dangerous day of the year.

Why is the Fourth of July such a dangerous day for Christians?  One of the key tenets of Christian faith is that there is one and only one God.  Caught up in patriotism, Christians can make their nation a God.  Loyalty to nation and government leaders can replace or compete with loyalty to God.  Distinctions between being a Christian and being an American can be dissolved.  Christianity can be exchanged for civil religion.  The Bible can be wrapped in the American flag.

When God and nation get mixed, and unlimited blind loyalty is offered to the state by Christians, there are harmful consequences for the Church.  Rather than seeing all human beings as creations of God, Christians begin to put people into categories.  The Iraqi is not seen as a brother or sister but as an enemy.  Patriotism makes it easier to hate, to kill, and to fight “just wars.”  The end result is the devaluation of precious human life and the Church’s neglect of its peacemaking role.

 

Doing the Church’s work

A second destructive consequence of the invasion of patriotism into the Church is that Christians expect the government to do the work of the Church.  A prime example is Christians laboring “to get prayer back in the schools.”  It is not simply a matter of a Christian being allowed to practice his or her faith.  Prayer has never been taken out of the schools.  A student can pray a silent prayer any time he or she desires.  What has been taken out of public schools is coercive, proselytizing, state-mandated prayers.  Government, at least in this instance, is no longer willing to do the work of the Church to reach pagan children.

To be sure, there are examples in American history and in our society of government meddling in the work of the Church and using religion for its ends.  Prayers are offered in the Congress of the United States, “In God We Trust” is printed on American coins, and Bibles are used in the judicial process.  From the perspective of an American, such practices may be good justification for state mandated prayer in public school and other government intrusions into religion.  Christians, though, should realize that the spread of the gospel is the business of the Church, not the business of the government.  It is a lazy, unfaithful church which seeks another entity to do its work.

Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, professors at the Duke University divinity school, in their book “Resident Aliens” point out the hypocrisy of the Church “demanding the state to do what it cannot do even among its own members through persuasion and conversion alone.” 

When the Church starts being the Church, it will not be tempted to use the help of the government.  The government needs the Church but the Church does not need the government.  The government will propagate not the Christian gospel but civil religion.

 

‘Go to the desert’

That is why I believe it may be a good idea for Christians to “go to the desert” on the Fourth of July.  Let me explain.  Justo Gonzalez in his book “The Story of Christianity” notes that when Constantine became Roman emperor there were several important consequences for the Church.  One result was the development of an “official theology.”

“Many Christians sought to show that Constantine was chosen by God to bring the history of both church and empire to its culmination, where both would be joined . . . .  Others took the opposite tack.  For them, the fact that the emperors declared themselves Christians and that for this reason people were flocking to the church, was not a blessing, but rather a great apostasy.  Some who tended to look at matters under this light . . . withdrew to the desert . . . .  The fourth century witnessed a massive exodus of devoted Christians to the deserts of Egypt and Syria.

Chris Ayers is senior minister of Wedgewood Baptist Church in Charlotte.

 

 

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