A story.

Growing up in a Southern Baptist church, our youth group did something called “interpretive movements,” which were...not dancing and not sign language, but some sort of strange mix of both.

Anyway, one year we did one to a song called “I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb.”

Innocent enough, right? My current “anabaptish” can get behind that. But at the climax of the song in this little church, the baptism curtains were opened, unfurling an American flag.

We’d do this for years around the Fourth of July. And people would get emotional and stuff.

And listen, these were and are good people. *Hear me when I say that they were the reason I am a Christian.* Sacrificial, simple, faithful people.

At the time, there were a good number of WW II vets in the congregation. This is years before the nationalism we know today.

But for years these little expressions of what I now know to be civil religion were prominent. And I had no theological reference point for what - and why - this was heresy.

I think about those people when I hear what the Vice President said. I know what it is appealing to.

I guess what I’m saying is... I want to find a way to both confront the scourge of civil religion in the American church and meet some of these older saints where they are with compassion. I don’t know how. Their kids have left the faith or go to the megachurch down the street.