Flag Worship

Before I get started, I want to tell you that I love America. I love being an American. Despite all of it’s flaws--and they are many--it’s still, in my humble opinion, the best country on Earth. Also, you may have deduced from some of my previous rants that I’m a bleeding heart liberal. Not true. I admit that I’m more liberal than conservative, but politically I’d say I tend to be about 3 clicks left of center.

Having gotten that out of the way, what the hell is it with the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance? Yes, I know that the flag represents the United States, but let’s look at it another way—IT’S A PIECE OF CLOTH! It annoys the hell out of me when people are offended if you don’t say the pledge. You’d think that I was dropping my pants and urinating on it. I simply don’t believe in pledging an oath to a colorful piece of cloth. I would go so far as to say that the flag of the United States represents my right to NOT have to say the pledge.

I recall as a teen one Sunday we were in church—and I went to a nice, moderate Presbyterian church, not one of those over-the-top bible thumping churches—and we were singing hymns. Well, it was around Independence Day, and we were singing a lot of traditional patriotic songs. Anyway, at one point, I forget the song, but a bunch of people stood up spontaneously in this swell of fervor, placing their right hands over their hearts. I found the whole thing unsettling. Here we were in a so-called House of God, and these people show more reverence to a flag than they do to the Almighty. Let’s see: Piece of cloth…creator of the universe…hmm. The choice should be easy, particularly in a CHURCH!

And I’m blown away how conservative Christians, who worship Jesus Christ—THE PRINCE OF PEACE—are the most fervent supporters of war and patriotism. If they truly practiced what their founder taught, not a one of them should be supporting warfare (i.e. bloodshed, killing, etc). Don’t get me wrong. I believe there’s a time and a place for war. I think invading Iraq was a huge mistake motivated more by greed than by any need to protect us from terrorism, but I also think pacifism during WWII would have lead to you and I speaking German today and pledging to a flag with a swastika on it. It’s just I don’t see where traditional Christian beliefs can co-exist with a pro-war mentality. If you think the country needs to hunt down Osama Bin Laden, more power to you. –Just don’t go around claiming that Jesus would endorse this sort of thing.

The thing about the Pledge of Allegiance is not that I don’t take it seriously. It’s the opposite: I take the speaking of an oath seriously enough that I cannot swear to something I don’t believe. I mean, when I have to stand for it (There are times when it would be awkward not to), this is what I’m saying to myself:

(I’m not saying this part) to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God (do you know that the original pledge didn’t have the “under God” part? It was added during the Cold War to set us apart from those godless commies), indivisible (yeah, there’s no dividing us—look what happened when the South tried it back in 1861), with liberty and justice for white, upper class men and women, and others to a lesser extent…

For me to say the pledge and mean it, it’d have to go something like this:

I acknowledge my appreciation to the flag for the United States of America,
and to the highest ideals of the democratic republic on which it was founded,
one nation, not superior, but at it’s best a shining example of liberty and justice such as humankind has never known before.

As a petty pet peeve, at one of the schools that I work in the kids do the morning announcements. They of course start with the pledge. So many of them start by saying, “I pledge OF allegiance…” I hope we aren’t holding these kids to what they’re saying by rote.

In this post 911 climate where expressing thoughts like the ones above will get you branded as unpatriotic, I saw a bumper sticker that gave me hope the other day. Instead of the more common “God Bless America”, it read, “God Bless the Whole Wide World—No Exceptions.”

I’ll pledge to that.