I was happy about this. I don't think either the American flag, the so-called Christian flag, or any other political symbol has any business being displayed in the sanctuary. I think it is a bit like if the early Christians would have displayed a Roman standard in their worship spaces to witness to everyone how much they loved Rome and the emperor, so they could avoid being fed to the lions. That's not the witness they gave.
We pray for our country and our leaders. Scripture tells us to do so. God commands us to obey those authorities which are over us because He has established them, unless they tell us to do something contrary to God's word. But, we are supposed to know that this world and its kingdoms are passing away. We are supposed to understand that here, in this fallen creation, we have no continuing city. We are pilgrims, looking forward to when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of Our LORD, and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.
Then the flags came back. Apparently, there was some outrage expressed. It was coming up on Veteran's Day, after all. This is not surprising.
Why is this issue a hill upon which so many people are willing to die? Why are people so adamantly in favor of having an American flag inside their church sanctuary?
This genuinely is confusing to me. Whenever I look forward toward the chancel, the American and Christian flags book-ending it seems to me awkward and out of place. Standing among the other artwork, architecture, and sacred furniture are these two oddities: a symbol of political power and authority, and a symbol of 19th Century American ecumenism of which the LCMS was not supportive.
There is no surer way to cause controversy in your LCMS congregation than to remove, or even suggest the removal of the flags from the sanctuary. A possible exception to this is perhaps the suggested removal of delinquent members from the church membership rolls. The difference, however, is that despite the grumbling of the odd distant relative, I have been a part of congregations that have successfully removed names from their rolls. I have never personally seen a congregation successfully remove an American flag from a sanctuary. I hear tell that such places exist, though.
The most common argument against removing the flags that I have encountered is that the flags are there to show our patriotism and love of country. They show that we want God to bless our country and its inhabitants. They express our belief in the idea of the Two Kingdoms: Just as God is at work governing the Church, He is also at work governing our nation, so it is appropriate to display the flag.
That last one's a stretch.
I suspect that the real reason has more to do with our genuine love and respect for our friends and neighbors who are veterans of the US armed forces, and the patriotism instilled in an older generation of Americans according to what I call the American Civil Religion (God and Country).
If you have the unmitigated gall to oppose the display of the American flag in church, however, people get angry. You are denying God's sovereignty. You are denying that America is a Christian nation (which I do, but that's a whole different story you can read here), and you are a filthy anti-American pinko-commie rat bastard.
But I'm not a commie rat bastard. I love the US Constitution, and the principles enshrined therein. The place for showing that love of country, however, isn't inside the sanctuary. It is at the ballot box. And those principles certainly aren't our ultimate hope for salvation. Jesus is.
The sanctuary is the place where we gather to hear God's word preached. It is where we receive God's gifts of forgiveness of sins and eternal life won for us by Jesus' death on the cross, particularly in the sacraments. It is our heavenly embassy. It should look, sound, smell, and feel different than the secular world. It should direct our focus to Christ and what He does for us. When we include secular politics in the sacred space, the best-case scenario is that we confuse and diminish this function of the sanctuary. The worst-case scenario is that we are actually setting up other objects of worship next to Jesus.
Saying this, however, apparently means that I do not love America.
How did the flag get in the sanctuary in the first place? The common myth is that the American flag came into the sanctuaries of LCMS churches during World War I. That's not entirely true. It was, rather, a process that happened over a long period of time stretching back to the 1890s.
In the 1890s the Grand Army of the Republic (the precursor to the modern American Legion) began promoting the patriotic display of the American Flag. The GAR, and other patriotic civic organizations, purchased and donated flags to private and public institutions alike, including public buildings, libraries, and even churches (immigrant and native congregations alike). By the time of the Great War, churches displaying the American flag - though not in their sanctuaries - was becoming a common practice. (Nickodemus, “The History of the American Flag in Missouri Synod Churches.”)
But the official story goes that, during the Great War, German-speaking Lutherans were suspected of not being loyal to America, but rather to their ancestral home. Being targeted for persecution, we filthy, backward, non-English-speaking immigrants nervously began displaying the flag to show that we were not subversive, and to better fit into American society and culture.
By the time we were getting ready to make the world safe for democracy by entering the Great War, churches displaying the American flag were becoming the norm. The magazine The Lutheran Witness documented the patriotism of German Lutherans in America during the war by showing how proudly they displayed their flags. But, it wasn't a reaction to wartime persecution as much as it was a positive response to community activism, and an effort to blend in. (Nickodemus, “The History of the American Flag in Missouri Synod Churches.”)
Most importantly, in the examples cited by The Lutheran Witness, the flags weren't inside the sanctuary. That didn't happen until after World War II.
When the LCMS was actually being persecuted during World War I because she was a German-speaking church, and her pastors preached in German, there was a huge fight over whether the Synod should abandon German for English. We seem to never have fought about the flags. (Nickodemus, “The History of the American Flag in Missouri Synod Churches.”)
In the end, demographics decided the language question in favor of English, but there doesn't seem to have been a similar debate over the flag. Everyone just seems to think displaying the flag was a good idea.
By the 1950s the LCMS was publishing guides to show congregations how to properly display the flag inside the sanctuary. To this day the Synod officially treats the issue of displaying the American flag in the sanctuary as an adiaphoron. (Nickodemus, “The History of the American Flag in Missouri Synod Churches.”)
To me, that is just a pious way to avoid making a decision that the important people know will upset the wrong group of laymen too much. The men in charge all know that the American flag, or any other political symbol, doesn't belong in the sanctuary. No one wants to bother with the argument.
Displaying the American flag in the sanctuary confuses our worship. It makes it look like we are worshiping the State. By the way many people react when one suggests moving the flags out of the sanctuary to a more suitable location, I'm beginning to think that maybe we do worship the State.
We did, after all, follow the edict of the governor (here in Illinois) and suspend worship at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, offering very little resistance. Between March 16 and May 31, I think we can be a little charitable. We were still trying to figure out just what we were dealing with; we didn't understand how deadly the virus was (or wasn't), or whom it affected the most; many of us (myself included) still believed that our government was acting in good faith during that time.
Then came the protests.
When politicians and news reporters began to encourage the “mostly peaceful protests” in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, their lie was exposed. They said people should protest because systemic racism was a bigger public health crisis than Covid-19, but they still worked to keep Christians from gathering together to worship. (Bernstein, “De Blasio: Black Lives Matter Protests Exempt from Large-Event Ban.”) Even after this blatant display of the government's agenda, many church members continued to shout “Romans 13! Romans 13!” and advocate for online worship. Many others were just too timid to say anything. (Klotz, “Civil Disobedience.”)
The point is this: most people were willing to trust the government when the government ordered us to wear masks, even after there was evidence that masks did little to stop infection. People were willing to trust the government when they forced us to stop going to church for our own safety but said it was safe to protest the police, or go to Walmart, Target, or other essential (read corporate) businesses.
Meanwhile, many of us Christians (myself included at the beginning) didn't trust Jesus enough to say that we must obey God rather than men and, willing to accept the temporal consequences, gather in spite of the government ban.
We didn't trust Jesus enough to obey Him, to gather around Word and Sacrament, and to eat His body and drink His blood as He told us to. We were afraid that Jesus would kill us, and we trusted the government to save us. It should be the other way around. In fact, we should trust Jesus so much that, even if He does kill us, we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.
Maybe it's more accurate to say that we were more afraid to disobey the Government than we were to disobey Jesus. If that's so, we would do well to remember what Jesus said about fear: Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
That's Jesus, God in human flesh, not J.B. Pritzker.
So, perhaps we do worship the government. Perhaps it would be more appropriate, and cause less of a furor to remove the crucifix from above the altar and keep the flags. We could maybe replace it with a picture of an American Bald Eagle. We could worship our idol by eating apple pie instead of the Lord's Supper; the Scriptures could be replaced by readings from the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers; preaching by telling people to be good citizens.
Our transformation into adherents of the American Civil Religion of generic “god” and Country would be complete.
Or, we could confess our sins, and God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. For the part I played in our unfaithfulness, I repent.
And then, maybe also at least move the flags to the fellowship hall. ###
Works Cited
Bernstein, Brittany. “De Blasio: Black Lives Matter Protests Exempt from Large-Event Ban.” De Blasio: Black Lives Matter Protests Exempt from Large-Event Ban. Accessed November 15, 2022. https://news.yahoo.com/blasio-black-lives-matter-protests-115502505.html.
Concordia Historical Institute. “US Flag in Missouri Synod Churches - Concordia Historical Institute.” Accessed November 13, 2022. https://concordiahistoricalinstitute.org/about-chi/chi-reference-and-research/frequently-asked-questions/us-flag-in-missouri-synod-churches/.
Klotz, Joseph. “Civil Disobedience.” The Hodgkins Lutheran: Civil Disobedience, November 26, 2021. http://hodgkinslutheran.blogspot.com/2021/11/civil-disobedience.html.
Nickodemus, Ben. “The History of the American Flag in Missouri Synod Churches.” Historical Footnotes, 2017. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://concordiahistoricalinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/HF62_2_American_Flag_LCMS_Churches.pdf.
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