[I wrote this column at the request of our Zion’s Lutheran Church newsletter editor for inclusion in the July 2026 Zion’s Lutheran Church newsletter in Trinidad, Colorado]

When I was three my parents, older brother, and I walked to see the Fourth of July fireworks at Fontenelle Park. By the time the display reached its grand finale – “blowing up” the island in the middle of the park lagoon- lightning was adding to the aerial display. When we got home, Daddy opened the garage door, closed it again, and all four of us stripped down to our skivvies so we wouldn’t drip all over the floors on our way to dry towels, pjs, and ultimately, bed.

When I was six, Miss Anderson knew I was sick when I wasn’t the loudest first grader singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”

When I was thirteen, a whole group of us from our new neighborhood made the longer trek by foot (who wanted to get caught up in all that traffic?) to Fontenelle Park for the Fourth. I remember it because I tried to paint my blonde hair red, white, and blue with food coloring and my Maybelline eye shadow was done with the faintest possible hint of those patriotic colors. (Maybe a cute boy would notice how patriotic I was)!

When I was sixteen, our family accompanied Dad to his pediatric convention in Philadelphia during the Bicentennial celebration. I remember seeing the Liberty Bell and feeling proud of our nation.

Mine was a naïve patriotism. I was a good girl, a good Girl Scout, a good Christian, a good American. I pledged allegiance to the flag at school, at scouts, at Grandma’s Vacation Bible School.

Then came college, and a semester in Sweden, and travels through the Soviet Union and Europe, and courses on the Holocaust and in theology, and then Seminary, and then Language School in France with Christians from many countries together in a tiny village that saved the lives of thousands of Jews during the Nazi control over France, and then Zaire and time with Christians very different than I, and conversations about what it means to pledge one’s allegiance to a nation when one has already given one’s life to following Jesus. Somewhere along the line, I understood I cannot pledge allegiance to a nation when I’ve pledged allegiance to one who taught us that everyone, everywhere, throughout all time is our neighbor. Nations go to war with other nations. Nations seek their own good over that of their neighbors. Nations are wrong as often as they’re right. Our own nation included. Those who think ours is a Christian nation, and those who think it should be, haven’t read Jesus’ teachings very carefully.

I once read a quote from a leader in my Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) tradition who served a term in his state’s legislature. As I remember it, when he was asked to serve another term, he declined, saying in effect, “I have come to believe one can be a good Christian, and one can be a good statesman, but one cannot be both at the same time.”

Martin Luther, our ELCA forefather and namesake, wrote extensively about the separate realms of nation and of church nearly five hundred years ago. In rejection of the “Christian” nationalism of the Protestant churches in Nazi Germany seventy-five years ago, theologians and church leaders wrote the Barmen Declaration against it, reminding the church and Germany’s Christians that God’s gift of grace is for all people without preconditions and exclusions. “All people” means all people. Lutheran scholar, Michael T. Grozonka writing in the Journal of Lutheran Ethics says, “This truth exposes that fundamental flaw of “Christian nationalism” where it attaches Christianity to peoples of a particular nationality. But there are no national versions of Christian belief; there is single Christianity for all humankind.” (“Ninety years Barmen Declaration of Faith (1934)” June/July 2024: Responses to Christian Nationalism (Volume 24 Issue 3)).

I won’t be wearing red, white, and blue this year for our nation’s 250^th birthday. I’ll be wearing something black, just as I have for the past year because I am grieving the death of decency and democracy in our nation. Seeing news reports of people dancing with glee at the opening of “Alligator Alcatraz” broke my heart. It is blasphemy when politicians and church leaders climb into the same bed and create a department of war, separate families seeking safety, demote people of color, trans people, and women, kill peaceful protesters, assassinate boaters on open waters, strike school girls dead with drones, and stage cage fights on the White House lawn all while wearing crosses around their necks, or on their ties, or tattooed on their bodies.

We’ve fallen far from “liberty and justice for all,” and even further from “what you do to the least of these, you do unto me.”

Christian nationalism sings, “I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free” without the least thought for those who are not free. I’ll not be waving a flag, nor singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” Instead, this year, as in years past, I’ll be singing Lloyd Stone and Georgia Harkness’s glorious hymn, “This is my Song.” Maybe it’s your song, too.

This is my song, O God of all the nations, a song of peace for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is, here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;

But other hearts in other lands are beating with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean, and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;

But other lands have sunlight too, and clover, and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

O hear my song, thou God of all the nations, a song of peace for their land and for mine.

This is my prayer, O Ruler of all nations: let thy reign come; on earth thy will be done.

In peace may all earth’s people draw together, and hearts united learn to live as one.

O hear my prayer, thou God of all the nations; myself I give thee; let thy will be done.