I wonder if anyone else wrestles with Independence Day as it relates to the church? In my past experience, I have seen churches do everything from a Sunday full of anthems and patriotism all the way down to just a mention of the holiday in prayers or announcements and every once in a while, there is no mention at all.
What I wrestle with is not the secular nature of what this holiday is or stands for, but rather how we as Christians can sometimes allow the patriotism of July 4th (and some other national holidays) to take over our faith and our worship services.
So here's the million dollar question...Should churches incorporate July 4th into this weekends' worship services and if so, to what extent?
Leave me a comment with what you think and I will share those with you, as well as some thoughts of my own, later in the week!
Blessings,
Russell
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9 comments:
We just had patriotic sunday....and I hated it :(
We said three pledges:
1) to the christian flag (I never knew we had a flag till I moved to the U.S.)
2) To the bible - the very book that says let your yes be yes and your no be no!!
3) To the American Flag, which of course was the only pledge the congregation said with any seriousness.
If a church wants to do a patriotic celebration I'm all for it. But please please don't do it in a Worship Service, have a picnic or a concert or something, but dont create synchretism by mixing patriotism with christianity.
Whatever happened to Paul's comment "In Christ their is neither Jew nor Greek..."
O.K. Rant over
We just had patriotic sunday....and I hated it :(
We said three pledges:
1) to the christian flag (I never knew we had a flag till I moved to the U.S.)
2) To the bible - the very book that says let your yes be yes and your no be no!!
3) To the American Flag, which of course was the only pledge the congregation said with any seriousness.
If a church wants to do a patriotic celebration I'm all for it. But please please don't do it in a Worship Service, have a picnic or a concert or something, but dont create synchretism by mixing patriotism with christianity.
Whatever happened to Paul's comment "In Christ their is neither Jew nor Greek..."
O.K. Rant over
I might comment on it, though always in the context of what it isn't: the source of our freedom as Christians--who do they think Christ was anyway? I won't have a big patriotic thing, no matter who is trying to make it happen. I will have a separate celebration, but I won't even call it a worship service (because the point of that kind of service is not to gather to honor God, but to gather to celebrate ourselves...which, come to think of it is the point of some other services I've been to that have purported to call themselves "worship").
In any case, I thought that what we did one year was a good bridge. My choir director got together with two other churches (small to medium choirs) and pulled out a series of 4 anthems, based on early American hymnody. Not patriotic songs, but HYMNODY that came out of the American folk tradition. The anthems were huge arrangements--8 parts in some places--and really beautiful and transcendent. We structured the worship service around those hymns, like a lessons and carols. Independence Day was never mentioned, nor was "freedom" a big theme. We had a worship service that was musically centered, yet talked about God and how we continue to follow God in and through Jesus Christ. But the congregation felt like we had tapped into something of the peculiarly USA-American contribution to the Christian faith. We went as far as to give some information about the origin of the hymnody in the worship notes in the bulletin, but otherwise, it was a well-done worship service that had a undercurrent.
In other words, we let the congregation celebrate God, using their own historical context instead of celebrating our own historical context using God as our excuse.
In my current church, we didn't do anything because the 4th is so far away from the Sunday and besides, our special presentation came from the VBS kids. :-)
Cynthia
Our patriotic Sunday is this coming Sunday, and its one of my least favorite of the year. The music is always big and bold. We don't serve Communion (gasp!) even though its the 1st Sunday... because the service would take too long. (not because I think we should be 1st Sunday Communioners... just because of the statement it makes.) Even though we would never say anything like it, I struggle with the inference that The Kingdom of God is somehow equated to the kingdom of the USA.
Render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. I see no problem with patriotic songs in the worship service on July 4th Sunday. My goodness, our country was founded on Christian principles, we print "In God We Trust" on our money and some courtrooms are still allowed to display Bibles and the 10 Commandments. Perhaps celebrating July 4th is a way of acknowledging to God our thankfulness for living in a country where we can practice our faith freely.
oh man, don't get me started... let's just say i do all i can to skip "patriotic sunday". it's not that i am not patriotic, but like peter and cynthia have already said, it just seems to NOT need to be the point of our worship...i just bristle at folks that seem to equate "american christian" with "so much better than everyone else"...and it sure seems to get that way on patriotic sunday...
My gut reaction is to get smug here, which usually means I'm too big for my own britches. So, call me on that if you will...
I attended a 4th of July Sunday at a mega non-denom several years ago. The sanctuary was a big room, probably 3,000 people. The pastor and his wife came in dressed in red white and blue, riding on white horses, each holding a huge American flag on a pole with a holder attached to the saddle. We praised America and ended the service with fireworks (yes, real fireworks indoors!)and I walked out of that place and went home to shower.
So as I approach this Sunday, I am aware of that extreme and I am also aware of those who will be sitting in the pews who either went through extreme trauma fighting for their country or who have sons and daughters in harm's way right now in the Middle East. I think it is appropriate to acknowledge that in prayer. I think it is appropriate to acknowledge those who are being negatively affected by our countries actions and it is appropriate to thank God for or blessings, which may or may not include living in a particular place.
I want to be smug about not riding a horse or setting off fireworks in the worship place, but I also want to temper my distaste for worshipping powers and principalities with the knowledge that to ignore the occasion, is to ignore what is real in the lives of those who are worshipping. This ministry thing is a messy thing, all of your comments are compelling...so we trudge on...
Thanks, Wade--
I think you're right that there are extremes on both sides. And I do believe that we can't ignore something that's really on people's hearts and minds because they'll spend more time wondering why we didn't say something about it. But I think that we can do that and acknowledge the "stuff" that we come with, whether it's racial reconciliation on MLK or Veteran's Day or Labor Day or the huge disaster that's happening (tsunami, Katrina, etc.), without letting that be the thing that guides the way we worship and what we worship.
To respond to Tammy--I think that being thankful to God is one thing, but only some of the patriotic songs are actually thankful to God. Most of them are thankful to ourselves. I really like using God of our Fathers (or in its newest incarnation, God of the Ages) or possibly America (My Country, Tis of Thee) because at the very least, the last verse addresses God--if you look you'll see the first verse says that we sing *about* our country...and the last verse puts all of the song in context saying we sing *about* our country *to* God. In contrast, America the Beautiful sings specifically to America, not to God. My question is always, "Do the hymns we sing make it possible for us to be in a deeper relationship with our Creator and Sovereign, our Savior and Lord before *any* other allegiances?" (and granted, a good deal of the time, God may not be asking us to be in conflict with our other allegiances, but sometimes God may call us to that and we've got to choose whom we will serve).
But again--the smugness can be overwhelming too. There is a pastoral responsibility that we have in worship to make sure that we're not so far apart from where our congregation is that they can't see what we're doing or where we're going. We can't expect to lead anyone in worship that way. So--I will always know why each song should or shouldn't be sung, why each prayer we pray is there and what I hope to lead the congregation through in terms of forming and shaping them for praise and discipleship.
Cynthia
I think if you are going to do a patriotic themed worship service for the 4th of July, you ought to go all out.
OT Reading from Joshua, violent Psalm about victory over our national enemies, etc. Then after you read about how much you celebrated bashing babies heads into the rocks, you can ask your military veterans to stand up for a round of applause.
I mean there is a strain of imperial king/nation loving in the bible. Its hard to get past. Why not camp it up and go all out?
I support doing large patriotic displays in churches because it makes explicit what is almost always implicit. That what happens in this building has more to do with being a civil religion of a destructive empire then anything to do with Jesus.
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