Peace is Patriotic: Anabaptists and the National Anthem

Duane,

I haven't given this much thought yet. Thank you for leading the way on this issue.

I'm not sure why this is true: "If we as peacemakers are perceived by our neighbors as being unpatriotic and anti-American, there is an immediate barrier to discussing our belief in peacemaking."

The witness of the Mennonites has long been a rejection of any form of pride in or love for the nation/state. To capitulate on this point seems both unfaithful to the Mennonite tradition and to what I see as the way of Jesus.

Many wise words here, Duane. You've got me pondering my own mix of discomfort with and acceptance of national symbols. You don't pledge allegiance to the flag, something I've been doing all my life (usually with private reservations and self-talk explanations), while you are okay with joining fellow patriots in our "bombs bursting in air" anthem. I do it, too, but always with more reluctance than I feel when I stand with my neighbors at a city council meeting and join them hand-on-heart in reciting approval of "liberty and justice for all." Huh.

"Mennonites has long been a rejection of any form of pride in or love for the nation/state"

The Mennonites are very proud of this fact.

The Tea Party activist rally against the fiscal and social policies of the federal government all while waving flags. They consider themselves patriots. During the Bush years the Democrats often stated that protest is the highest form of patriotism.

I'm very uncomfortable with the hands on heart pledge. And with the flag in church. During Gulf War I a good lady, and she is/was, brought in a whole display of miniature flags and put them on a table at the rear of the sanctuary. I incurred her displeasure by removing them. (I was pastor). But I try to choose my battles. On the pledge I mumble, which some might see as cowardly. (Maybe I see it that way too.) This double citizenship thing can be tricky. But I try to remember where my primary citizenship and my allegiance are.

I met Goshen College President Jim Brenneman last summer when he gave a presentation on the Old Testament at the Albany Mennonite church.

I had a discussion with him and he'd promised to read something I'd written for his consideration on the "Myth of Christian Militarism" and then reply to me with his thoughts.

He never did. Given that implies he disagreed with the traditional Mennonite theology affirmed therein, why am I now not surprised that he's embraced the militaristic, patriotic tradition that's a direct affront to centuries of Anabaptist faith? That is a faithfulness that was pursued at great cost of persecution and which is the very reason for Mennonite emigration to North America - the refusal to do the same thing when forced to, by edict, by militaristic European empires.

Jim is practicing pre-emptive surrender. Yet it is, I surmise, just a reinforcement of the absorption and assimilation of the Mennonite Church into the general American civil religion that serves nationalism and empire and a society grown more self-indulgent that has occurred over the last decade. Whether in the accomodation to the vast expansion of nationalistic militarism or to "Pink Menno" homosexual lifestyle celebration, today's Mennonite Church is quickly forsaking the faith of the fathers for typical American consumerist self-indulgence and the war-making that has become increasingly necessary to try to sustain it.

When the Lutheran Church - which has a statement of faith that specifically upholds violence as an article of faith, since his version of "Reformation" was won by Luther appealing to the military rebellion of secular princes against Rome, which has given birth to the modern nation-state and its constant propensity for large-scale war-making - apologized to Anabaptists (Mennonite included) for their persecution by mass murder for being heretics - was the cost of this accommodation a softening of the Mennonite Church stance against warfare and abandonment of the Mennonites doctrine of the separation of church and state?

Ostensibly a leader, Jim Brenneman is just staying out ahead in the direction it is already falling. I can just imagine what John Howard Yoder - who, sadly Jim knew - would think of his betrayal of Mennonite principle, were he alive to see it.

The thing is, the accommodation is nothing new. Those immigrating descendants of Anabaptists may have persisted long in distinctive dress or polity, but they partook of the slavery economy and removal of natives from Day One. And they've been thanking God for a bounteous land of freedom and opportunity ever since. To their eternal credit, they often drew a line against going to war, but even that witness involved bargains that weren't pure Christian pacifism. Still and all, I'm proud it's my children's heritage.

No person is pure, but the enormous bulk of Mennonite, Brethren and Amish immigrants came after slavery had been abolished and was not in the South, but exclusively in non-slave states. Moreover, the shameful "liebensraum" expansion of the United States into Indian lands had long been completed by the time of their own 19th century late immigration. Moreover, Mennonites, Jehovah's Witnesses and others were sent to Fort Leavenworth Kansas during World War I, and there were those who were not only were tortured there and elsewhere, but killed as well. What sort of bargain could that have been? "Day One?" I think you confuse the peaceful Anabaptists with the cruel and vengeful Puritans and by an error of several centuries.

I'm curious... where in the Scriptures does it say we are "double citizens"? Or are we merely citizens of a different world? Just a thought... try Greg Boyd's "Myth of a Christian Nation." It's a great read.

We are likened to ambassadors

Duane Shank says "We can show that we are patriotic Americans" but it's never been clear to me why we should do this. I can't imagine Jesus being a "patriotic Roman." And if we SHOULD be a "patriotic American" then why is there no emphasis on being a patriotic Iowan, or a patriotic member of my local city, or county, or, for that matter, soil conservation district? The only answer that occurs to me is that being a "patriotic American" has religious connotations. We look to America for protection, security, and material prosperity - but isn't that supposed to describe our relationship to God? My conclusion is that being a "patriotic American" is in fact one form of idolatry, precisely parallel to the idolatry of the Old Testament.

Well Xfree, I don't feel I have to have chapter and verse for everything. Nowhere in the Bible does it say I should drive my pickup down to the church for Methodist men breakfast this morning. But I did. And feel no guilt for doing so. But I could come close to supplying chapter and verse for this if I wanted to take the time to get my concordance to do so. Somewhere, you look it up, Paul claimed Roman citizenship. And somewhere else this same Paul said, "Our citizenship is in heaven." Does this meet the test?

proud of not being proud. pretty funny!

Duane, the principles in your post are at least worthy of discussion, but you don't address the content and context of the U.S. national anthem. That's where it breaks down.

"we should reclaim the symbols in the name of a deeper patriotism." I really don't see how you can do that with the anthem written during a U.S. war of aggression (rightly stated as such in the Ft. McHenry film at the time I visited many years ago) celebrating "bombs bursting in air." "Reclaim" implies it once had a value we would regard as positive, but in this case it never did. It started out as a glorification of war and aggression, and I think that is just what it is.

I don't think you can get around the content by playing an instrumental version. Most of the audience will know the words, and will think of them when it is played. Playing it communicates the message, which is quite antithetical to Christian values, even when it is an instrumental version.

Duane, you may be able to "reclaim" your flag, but I can't see how you can reclaim that anthem. In the terms of your Dyson quote, use of the flag could be patriotic, but the anthem is essentially nationalistic.

Find yourselves a less exclusive anthem and your case would make some sense (though I still don't see what the connection is with an inter-college sporting event). You've already grabbed the tune to the British anthem for a national hymn, so why not grab both the tune and the words to the South African anthem (Nkosi Sikelele i Afrika) but just change "Afrika" to "Amerika".

(I write as a dual citizen of Canada and the UK, unable with integrity to sing either of my national anthems in their entirety, and increasingly worried by the wave of flagwaving hysteria which is sweeping Canada in the wake of the winter olympics and especially the hockey final)

I don't deny that mennonite witness has sometimes been at best ambiguous. But at least mennonites have never owned slaves, and the Germantown mennonites were involved in the first public opposition to slavery in the American colonies in 1688.

Don't you mean "Lebensraum"? I think a "Liebensraum" might be a tacky motel room rented for the afternoon...

...but we're also quite humble about it....

...maybe it shoulda been liebchensraum...

... but really, it was SUPPOSED to mean the forced removal or genocide of one group by another to make room for the group engaging in the genocide...

Blessed are the humble for they shall be proud of it.
I am grateful for your heritage. It sometimes takes a minority to stand out in a crowd.

Yes, to reply to your substantive point, NM, here in Saskatchewan the first mennonites arriving in the 1890s had no understanding of the history of the local Cree nation, of the treaties made between First Nations leaders and the British crown a couple of decades previously, or of the 1876 Indian Act which effectively took away most of the land rights established in those treaties. They naively thought they were coming to virgin land. I understand from friends in Indiana that their ancestors were under a similar misapprehension.

As someone who came to live out his faith with Mennonites (and other Anabaptists) after leaving the Reformed tradition, I've been quite disappointed at the Goshen College decision. I studied with John Howard Yoder and disagreed with the sticker on his old Rambler that said "Peace is Patriotic." There are things I appreciate about living in the USA, but I don't think the vast majority of US citizens would agree that "Peace is Patriotic" or we might not have been involved in so many wars. I rewrote the national anthem while a high school student during the early 1970's as a revised version expressing my view of living in the US empire created by violence and hailed in the Star Spangled Banner. I entitled it the "Blood Battered Banner" and sang the words during the time designated before sports events I attended. Later I decided to not sing or stand at all, in protest. I think Duane's example of MLK Jr. is irrelevant to me as a follower of Jesus. The good things, movements and legislation for justice, in the US are not completely unique to it's bounded territory. There are many other nations who have "Let freedom ring!" and "Let justice roll down!"

Reminds me of the time I was at an IMF/World Bank protest in D.C. in 2000 and one rally began with the playing of the national anthem. I stood up as did a few others, to jeers from some, but I chided those around me to stand by reminding them we had as much right to claim the national anthem and the flag as our as did those on the right. And so they stood too. I will never allow the war-mongering nationalist ever take the flag of our nation and our national anthem away from me, and will never accept their claims of nationalism as being patriotic.