“…One Nation, Under God…”?

 

It has long been my conviction the United States has replaced the Church as the primary sacred community, functioning not merely as a government but as a rival religion. Every time I am in a public space and am called on to recite for the Pledge of Allegiance, I am heavily conflicted for two reasons. First, it is in violation of Jesus’ command on giving oaths. Second, the phrase, “…one nation, under God…”, is blatantly not true. It seems I am not alone.

Scholars attempting to isolate what makes religion uniquely prone to violence — its absolutism, irrationality, and divisiveness — keep identifying those same qualities in secular ideologies like nationalism, capitalism, consumerism, Marxism, etc. When scholars adopt a functionalist definition of religion (anything that provides ultimate meaning, generates myths and rituals, and demands sacrifice), those same ideologies become religion by definition.

The nation has obviously absorbed roles once belonging to the Church; soteriological and liturgical functions expressed through myth (stories of the Founding Fathers, national heroes, etc), ceremonies, speeches, rallies, symbols (flags, war memorials, etc), and national holidays. These demand a loyalty functionally indistinguishable from religious devotion. Nationalism, in thus defined, is not a secular phenomenon but a theology, and the nation-state a rival religion.

The secular/religious divide is a theological and ideological arrangement that advantages the nation from the start. Within it, the nation occupies the universal, public, meaning-giving role, while the Church is relegated to the private sphere, one competing voice among many. When the Church does make claims on public life, it trespasses onto the state’s domain, because the state has seized that sacred ground and declared it sovereign.

The Church's marginalization by our nation is intentional and leads to the deepest contradiction: religion is treated as dangerous in public life precisely because it claims ultimate transcendence over the individual, yet fervent, lethal devotion of the individual to the nation is considered the highest civic virtue. In the end, only one sovereign is tolerated, and the Church is expected to step aside.

To whom should we owe our ultimate allegiance?