How Christian nationalism shows up in patriotic worship services

“What a Sunday!” Houston First Baptist Church’s social media team celebrates on Facebook. “From worship to fellowship, Pocket Constitutions to patriotic tunes, we’re grateful for a church family that gathers with thankful hearts and points people to Jesus. Happy birthday, America!”

That was a reference to the megachurch’s July 5 worship services where Senior Pastor Greg Matte wore an America 250 polo shirt and told the congregation, “We’ve got pocket Constitutions and Declaration of Independences that are out in the lobby and the fitness and recreation center.”

In the same way many churches offer literature about the church in public areas, First Baptist Houston handed out America’s founding documents.

Worshipers also were served red, white and blue popsicles on the church lawn. Images from the church’s social media team include congregants gathered around and laughing while eating their popsicles, meeting in an auditorium filled with patriotic banners and balloons, a photo booth for church members to get their photos taken surrounded by balloons underneath the America 250 logo, and people walking into worship while wearing American flag sunglasses, shirts and even one shirt featuring a cross wrapped up with an American flag over where Jesus’ body would have been.

Independence Day worship services

One of the ways Christian nationalism seeps into Sunday morning is through holiday-themed worship services. The independent Baptist churches I grew up in celebrated Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Independence Day with military-themed worship services similar to the service put on by Houston’s First Baptist Church on Sunday.

When I was a student at Northern Seminary, one of the other students said she was leading worship one Sunday when suddenly videos of U.S. fighter jets zooming through the sky began playing on the screens behind her. And many of us have seen the spectacle of First Baptist Dallas worship services featuring American flags, pyrotechnics and hymns about the United States, including an original hymn written by their church with the lyrics, “Step into the future, joining hand in hand. Make America Great Again!”

So it should come as no surprise that many churches across the nation chose to host these Christian nationalist worship services over Independence Day weekend.

One of the longest-running and most over the top is Carolina Celebration of Liberty at First Baptist Church of Columbia, S.C. This year’s ticketed event began with greetings from the U.S. military and from Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C. In his remarks on America history, Graham quipped, “Speaking of kings, President Trump said hello.” The comment drew rapturous applause and laughter.

The annual flag-waving musical extravaganza features the church’s sanctuary choir and orchestra, drawing massive crowds to honor veterans, active-duty military and Gold Star families. It is the longest-running patriotic event of its kind in South Carolina.

“Speaking of kings, President Trump said hello.”

The opening worship set

One of the themes I trace in Weapons of Worship is the fifth century formula lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi, meaning “As we worship, so we believe, and so we will live.” Here’s how that played out in Houston.

While the individual songs chosen for the Houston worship service may seem like typical white evangelical worship songs to many, they work together with the more explicit statements from the speakers to promote a theology and practice of power over neighbors rather than a loving presence with them.

Sunday’s opening song began with the line, “When all I see is a battle, you see the victory.” The chorus invoked images of fighting through worship, knowing the battle belongs to God. On the second verse, the congregation sang, “Who can be against me?” Then the bridge declared, “Nothing can stand against the power of our God,” who wins “every battle.”

How might these lyrics land on people who, the night before, heard President Donald Trump raging about their patriotic battle against the supposedly communist Democrats? How could these worshipers not be thinking about politics when they’re decked out in patriotic gear, holding pocket-size government documents, surrounded by balloons and America 250 logos, and eating patriotic popsicles?

The second song was the traditional hymn “How Great Thou Art.” This has become a favorite among Christian nationalists over the past year and a half. Trump supporters sang it at Trump’s victory party on Election Night. And it’s been the most-often-sung worship song at the Pentagon’s worship services.

“Thy power throughout the universe displayed,” they sing. To Trump’s worship army, it seems God’s power is displayed through their power.

The third song was “Holy Forever,” which has become a staple of Sean Feucht and Chris Tomlin’s Christian nationalist worship rallies. As Tomlin recalled singing it at Charlie Kirk’s funeral: “I’m thinking of all the powers and positions in that room and that are tuned in. And I’m thinking to point people to the name that is above every name. … What a privilege!”

It’s an easy power dynamic to miss because it sounds like humility for politicians to talk about recognizing God’s power and authority over them. But when it’s being sung by authoritarian Christians, they’re setting up a dynamic where U.S. politicians submitting to God means ruling over the nation according to white evangelical morality.

After singing “God Bless America,” the worship leader said, “As we turn our hearts to worship him, we remember the Scripture that says that a nation who prays and bends their knee before our God that he will bless and he will heal.”

Again, what does it mean for their non-Republican neighbors for the nation to bend its knee to the white evangelical God?

Apparently it means salvation can be thought of not merely as happening for individuals or the church, but for nations.

“God can save a nation,” the fourth song claims. Its chorus suggests the way this happens is for the people of the nation to sing, “Our God reigns. Forever your kingdom reigns.”

‘Biblical moments in American history’

The preacher for the morning was Robert Morgan, author of 100 Bible Verses That Made America.

“I feel like that everyone is trying to expunge the Judeo-Christian heritage from the national chronicles of our story and we need to get it back there,” Morgan lamented. “We need to know what our forefathers really did and the impact the Bible had over the decades and centuries that make up the American story.”

Morgan went on to do what conservative pseudo-historians like Eric Metaxas and the Bartons have been doing by casting the Founding Fathers as essentially a bunch of inerrantist evangelicals.

“Today, there is a lot of sin happening in America,” Morgan said. “And we need to heed the words of our forefathers and the words of our first president.”

Regarding George Washington, Morgan claimed public schools teach that he was a deist, when in reality “he was a committed Christian. He was an Anglican. He said the creeds. He was a very devout man.” According to Morgan, Washington spoke of “the divine author of our blessed religion.” He claimed Washington promoted the idea, “If we don’t follow Jesus Christ, we can never hope to be a happy nation.”

But as is typically the case with Christian nationalist myths, reality is more complicated than Morgan claims. I’ve interviewed Warren Throckmorton, author of The Christian Past That Wasn’t: Debunking the Christian Nationalist Myths That Hijack History for Episode 118 and Episode 140 of “Highest Power: Church + State” to debunk these myths as they spread in the news.

“Washington had no problem expressing his religion (which wasn’t orthodox Christianity) but he did not want any kind of coercion or favoritism in America,” Throckmorton said in an interview. “Everybody had a right to freedom of conscience.”

Throckmorton said despite attending an Anglican Church, “Washington didn’t take Communion and actively avoided it. Apparently it was somewhat more common then, but his wife took Communion all the time. They sent a carriage back to the church to fetch her. That’s how much he avoided it.”

In his book, Throckmorton tells how Washington “avoided saying or writing the name of Jesus Christ.” He asks, “Had Washington been an orthodox Christian, wouldn’t he have at least occasionally talked about or written about Jesus? The consensus among historians is that Washington referred to Jesus Christ only twice. … In the online library of the founder’s writings, there are over 30,000 documents written by Washington, including his correspondence and speeches, and the lack of reference to Christ is striking.”

Still, Morgan continued making such sweeping generalities as this: “If we remove the Bible as the foundation of our public morality, we cannot survive as a nation. And all our Founding Fathers felt that way.”

God’s providence over every step

In his sermon at Houston’s First Baptist Church, Morgan quoted Washington saying, “Every step by which we have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”

The words “seems to have been distinguished” and “some token” aren’t exactly statements of certainty. They suggest perhaps Washington speculated over the possibility that a providential agency might have played a role.

But Morgan characterized Washington’s speculative language by saying: “In other words, he is saying every step that has led us to this point, it has been guided by the hand of God.”

One of the more disturbing themes I found in writing Weapons of Worship is how military commanders during our genocide of Native Americans invoked the providence of God and the language of praise to justify their violence. In his published account, “A Brief History of the Pequot War,” Captain John Mason wrote, “And indeed such a Terror did the Almighty let fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished.”

According to Mason, the reason they had to commit genocide was so that “God may have his due praise.”

The next day, as Pequot bodies burned to ash, Mason wrote, “Thus did the LORD judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead bodies!” When Mason’s men made their way back to safety, they once again worshipped “with great triumph and rejoicing and praising God for his goodness to us.”

In Mason’s words, “Thus was God seen in the Mount, crushing his proud enemies and the enemies of his people, … burning them up in the fire of his wrath and dunging the ground with their flesh: It was the Lord’s doings, and it is marvelous in our eyes! It is he that hath made his work wonderful, and therefore ought to be remembered.”

Mason concluded his book by saying, “O let us meditate on the Great Works of GOD: Ascribing all Blessing and Praise to his Great Name, for all his Great Goodness and Salvation!”

But as congregations like Houston’s First Baptist Church met over the weekend for their Independence Day-themed worship services with pocket Constitutions and popsicles, they referenced our ancestors ascribing their steps to being guided by God without naming what those steps were. They conveniently left out the genocide.

“The Christian right today wants to create myths about our past while demonizing anyone who mentions the violence we inflicted on our neighbors.”

To the contrary, the Christian right today wants to create myths about our past while demonizing anyone who mentions the violence we inflicted on our neighbors.

“You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both,” President Donald Trump declared during his Independence Day address. “As for those who pedal Marxist lies about our heritage, tell our children that we live on stolen land, or that our heroes were oppressors, they’re doing something much worse than slandering our past. They are slandering and attacking our future.”

If pointing to the violence in our past is pointing to our future, and if Trump and his white evangelical fan club want us to return to the ways of our past, do they plan to fight those who stand in their way in the future as our supposedly heroic ancestors did to the Native Americans? Do they, like our ancestors, plan to dung the ground with the flesh of the heathen while praising God?

‘Fight against those who fight against me!’

Among the Bible verses Morgan told First Baptist Church were instrumental in our nation’s founding and what we should return to today was Psalm 35:1, which says, “Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me!”

The following two verses add, “Take up shield and armor; arise and come to my aid. Brandish spear and javelin against those who pursue me.”

To white evangelical Christian nationalists, any honest reflection on the harm we caused is an attack on white Christians. So just as with Captain Mason in his genocide of the Pequot tribe, worship becomes the fuel for fighting back.

As Morgan put it, worship was “like an infusion of courage” in which “their hearts melded together” in a “spiritual energy.”

In Houston, as the congregation looked on, dressed in their American flag-wrapped cross shirts and with the taste of popsicles on their tongues, Morgan referenced the “government of heaven” and proclaimed, “Like we sang a few minutes ago, our God reigns. And that was the spirit of the American Revolution.”

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and is the author of a forthcoming book, Weapons of Worship: How the Songs of Evangelicalism Form the Soundtrack of Extremism. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.

 

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