The Cross and the Flag

I love this country in which we are privileged to live.  I love its flag.  There has always been a special place inside of me for the red, white, and blue.  One of my earliest memories is living on Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.  I remember my father stopping the car, standing outside at attention, and saluting the distant flag as it was being lowered on the causeway.  A few years later I would see that same flag draped over his coffin.  I am unashamedly a patriot, a lover of America, and live with the greatest respect for our flag. 

 

Having said all of this, over the years I have come to hold the position that it has no place in our churches.  It speaks of a conflict of loyalty.  When we gather for worship, we gather before the cross of the crucified Christ.  Even as the Old Testament Hebrews were a people of two altars when they worshipped Yahweh and Baal, so can we become a people of conflicted loyalties as we gather in a place where cross and flag stand side by side vying for our attention. 

 

What tends to be most troubling is the way the gospel can become compromised into a message that Americanizes the message of Jesus.  We live in a day when political issues seem to pervade too many of the places where we live.   It is hard not to hear what is being propagated as news as mere political opinion.  It seems that the speaker's bias is more important than the facts of the news.  Bias has no place in the proclamation of the gospel.  It is neither liberal, nor conservative, but always revolutionary and radical.  When the flag waves too high in the life of the church, political positioning often takes the place of the radical message of Christ.