Ever since I wrote a paper and did a presentation on civil religion, I have found myself noticing the presence of it in churches time and time again. The most obvious sign of it is the American flag usually positioned near the front of the church. However, I have also noticed that almost every Sunday, churches pray for our troops, meaning our American troops. This is usually in conjunction with specific prayers for those who are from the church in the armed forces. This has always made me a bit uncomfortable because we often neglect to pray for those that we are fighting against. However, Michael Gorman recently posted on his blog a letter to the church in the U.S. in regards to praying for our troops. It is worth a read. Gorman is a professor and the dean of the Ecumenical Institute of Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, Maryland. I first heard him at a Pauline conference I attended (he is a NT scholar and his specialty is Paul). Anyways, I thought I would share his letter with you and introduce you to him.
The Vine and the Branches
With the celebration of Independence Day last weekend, I have been thinking about independence and freedom in light of the Christian story. Here in America at least, we uphold independence as a chief virtue, as we try to set up democracies in countries so that they may be independent and in order that people may have freedom and individual rights. These may be good things but I would like to suggest that independence may have been the starting point of the broken world we now inhabit. The act of Adam and Eve eating the fruit in the garden was an act of independence, one in which they chose their own freedom of choice over the commandment of God. You could say they acted independently of God. They chose their own way over the way of God. Independence is the reason we find ourselves immersed in sin.
In biology, specifically when talking about different environmental habitats such as marshland or forests, words such as codependence and coevolution are usually thrown into the discussion. Put very simply, this means that different organisms depend on other organisms for their very existence and their evolution to continue to survive in years to come. They are only able to survive as long as another is able to survive. Take the food chain for example. When a link of the chain becomes missing, the whole food chain is broken down and everything in that food chain is affected by it.
In the Bible, we hear Jesus say that he is the true vine and we are the branches and there is no life aside from the vine. We also see imagery of being grafted into the tree of life, God. We are dependent on God for our livelihood. We are dependent on the new life found in Him. Life is dependency on another. And independent life is one of separation from others, separation from God. We must learn to be dependent on God, on other humans, and on his creation. Because in reality we are. However, we often lose sight and convince ourselves that independence is the highest goal.
Independence Sunday
I hate going to church on the Sunday closest to Independence Day. Hate may be too harsh of a word. Maybe despise would be better. Sometimes I wonder what it is that we are truly celebrating on such a Sunday. To me, the independence and freedom we have as Americans is celebrated first and foremost and the freedom of Christ gets thrown in as an afterthought. The songs we sing help us recollect that we are God’s chosen people here in America, that we are the city upon a hill. We see the American flag on stage and sing songs displayed over the background of a waving American flag on the projector screen. Civil religion at its finest.
Michael Gorman wrote a really fine piece debunking the idea of Independence Sunday.
We must continually be reminded on holidays such as Independence Day that we are not Americans who happen to be Christians but rather Christians who happen to be Americans. We must not view Christianity in light of America but rather America in light of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
