Patriots and Pilgrims
A Confessional Lutheran Reflection on America's 250th Anniversary
"For our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ."
Philippians 3:20
This Fourth of July marks a remarkable milestone. Americans celebrate 250 years since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Such anniversaries invite us to look backward with gratitude, inward with humility, and forward with hope. We remember those who sacrificed, celebrate the freedoms we enjoy, and give thanks for the countless ways God has blessed our nation.
As Christians, however, we celebrate differently than the world around us.
We celebrate neither with uncritical patriotism nor cynical disdain. We need not pretend our nation's history is spotless, nor should we deny the remarkable blessings God has bestowed through it. Rather, we celebrate as Christians who confess that every good gift comes from above (James 1:17), every earthly kingdom is temporary, and every nation, including our own, stands continually in need of God's mercy.
That is why the title Patriots and Pilgrims is so fitting.
For that is precisely what Christians are called to be.
We are patriots.
We love our country. We pray for our leaders. We honor those who serve. We seek justice, defend our neighbors, participate faithfully in civic life, and give thanks for the freedoms God has graciously provided.
But we are also pilgrims.
Like Abraham, we seek "the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God" (Hebrews 11:10). Like the exiles in Babylon, we seek the welfare of the place where God has planted us (Jeremiah 29:7), while remembering that this world is not our lasting home. And with St. Paul we confess, "Our citizenship is in heaven."
Holding those two truths together is one of many challenges facing Christians in our own day.
History offers us a helpful place to begin.
On July 3, 1775, a forty-three-year-old Virginia planter rode into Cambridge, Massachusetts, to assume command of what would become the Continental Army. George Washington inherited a force that was anything but united. The soldiers under his command came from different colonies, belonged to different churches, spoke with different accents, and often viewed one another with suspicion. Before he could hope to defeat the British Army, Washington first had to forge these separate colonies into one people with a common purpose.
His earliest General Orders called the troops to lay aside their colonial loyalties and unite in a single cause. They were no longer merely Virginians, New Yorkers, or Massachusetts men. They were to become one army.
Christians understand something about unity that no earthly nation can fully accomplish.
Our unity is not founded upon geography, politics, or even shared culture. It is founded upon Christ Himself. Around His Word and Sacraments, people of every nation, language, and background are gathered into one holy Christian and apostolic Church. Earthly unity may preserve a nation for a season. The unity Christ gives endures forever.
Another of Washington's earliest General Orders may surprise many of you. On July 9, 1775, he directed officers and soldiers to attend Divine Service whenever military circumstances permitted and urged commanding officers to lead by example.
Washington understood something our culture often forgets. Freedom requires more than constitutions. It requires virtue. Virtue requires moral formation. And moral formation cannot long survive if a people imagines it has no need of God.
Notice, however, what Washington was—and was not—doing.
He was not establishing a national church, nor suggesting that civil government should administer the means of grace. Rather, he recognized that religion and public virtue belonged together in the life of a free people.
That distinction should sound familiar to Lutherans.
Long before America existed, Scripture teaches us that God rules His world in two distinct yet harmonious ways. Through earthly government He preserves order, restrains evil, and promotes justice. Through His Church He forgives sins, creates faith, and grants eternal life through the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.
The State should not become the Church.
The Church should not become the State.
Yet both remain under God's providential care.
The Augsburg Confession beautifully summarizes this truth in Article XVI: "Lawful civil ordinances are good works of God."
Christians, therefore, need not apologize for loving their country. Nor need they confuse patriotism with the Christian faith. Because Christ has secured our heavenly citizenship, we are free to serve faithfully within our earthly one.
Our nation's history, however, also reminds us that God accomplishes His purposes through imperfect people.
Few names are more closely associated with America's founding than Thomas Jefferson. His pen gave us one of history's most memorable declarations: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Those words have inspired movements for liberty throughout the world.
Yet Jefferson's own life stood in painful contradiction to them.
He owned slaves throughout most of his life, benefiting from an institution that denied the very equality he proclaimed. Christians should neither minimize nor excuse that reality.
History, however, is often more complex than our modern conversations allow.
Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration contained a forceful condemnation of the transatlantic slave trade, accusing the British Crown of violating "the most sacred rights of life and liberty." Ironically, that accusation was directed toward King George III, who also served as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Congress ultimately removed the passage in order to preserve the fragile unity of the colonies.
None of this erases Jefferson's own failures.
Nor should it.
Yet neither should we imagine that God's providence depends upon morally perfect instruments.
Scripture certainly does not.
- Abraham lied.
- Jacob deceived.
- Moses murdered.
- David committed adultery and arranged a man's death.
- Peter denied his Lord.
- Paul persecuted the Church.
The Scriptures never hide the sins of those through whom God worked. Their stories remind us that salvation has always depended upon God's grace rather than human righteousness.
The same lesson applies to every nation.
America has acted courageously.
America has acted shamefully.
America has defended liberty.
America has tolerated injustice.
Neither statement cancels the other.
Patriotism does not require historical amnesia, and repentance does not require self-hatred. Christians are free to give thanks for God's blessings while honestly confessing both personal and national sins.
That raises another question Christians sometimes ask: Is America a Christian nation?
The answer depends entirely upon what "Christian" means.
America is not the New Israel. She is not God's covenant people in the biblical sense, nor is she a theocracy governed by the Church. The Church possesses no army, and the State administers no Sacraments.
Yet it is equally true that Christianity profoundly shaped our nation's moral imagination. For generations, the Scriptures informed public discourse, churches stood at the center of countless communities, and Christian convictions helped shape our laws, customs, and institutions.
Whether that remains true today is an open question.
But more than two centuries ago, John Adams observed that the Constitution was made "only for a moral and religious People." Whether one agrees entirely with Adams or not, his observation raises an important question: Can constitutional self-government flourish indefinitely if the moral foundations upon which it rests continue to erode?
That question is ultimately not political.
It is spiritual.
For the deeper question is not whether America remains Christian, but whether the Church remains faithful.
Every generation faces the temptation to allow politics to shape its theology rather than allowing God's Word to shape its politics. Whenever that happens, Christians lose sight of their true citizenship.
So, what does it mean to live as both patriots and pilgrims?
For most Christians, the answer is wonderfully ordinary.
- God calls husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church.
- He calls wives to receive and return that love with respect and faithfulness.
- He calls parents to teach their children to pray before they teach them to argue.
- He calls teachers to instruct with integrity, employers to lead justly, employees to labor honestly, neighbors to care for one another, citizens to vote thoughtfully, and Christians to gather faithfully around Word and Sacrament.
These ordinary vocations rarely make headlines.
Yet they are the very means through which God ordinarily preserves both His Church and society.
Luther once remarked that God milks the cows through the vocation of the milkmaid. In the same way, He governs the world through countless ordinary Christians quietly serving the people He has placed before them.
Such service may never appear in history books.
But it is no less holy.
As we celebrate our nation's 250th birthday, Christians have every reason to be grateful. Gratitude, however, must always be joined to humility.
History reminds us that every earthly nation eventually passes away. Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome all appeared permanent in their day. None were.
America is no exception.
- No constitution guarantees perpetual blessing.
- No military guarantees perpetual peace.
- No economy guarantees perpetual prosperity.
"Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain" (Psalm 127:1).
Humility does not diminish patriotism.
It purifies it.
It frees us to love our country honestly, appreciating genuine blessings without pretending perfection.
Perhaps Christians are uniquely equipped to love their country well because we need not love it desperately.
We are free to admire Washington's leadership while acknowledging his failures.
We are free to appreciate Jefferson's vision while lamenting his contradictions.
We are free to honor those who defended liberty while grieving the injustices that remained.
Such honesty is not weakness.
It is Christian maturity.
While the following illustration is an adiaphoron, left to wise discernment in the freedom of Christ, there is one image that beautifully captures this balance.
In many Lutheran sanctuaries, the American flag stands quietly to one side. Its presence reminds us to pray for our nation, honor those who have served, and give thanks for the blessings of civil peace.
But it is never placed at the center.
The cross is.
That arrangement teaches a profound truth.
The flag deserves honor.
The cross deserves worship.
The flag reminds us of the nation to which we owe civic duty.
The cross reminds us of the Savior to whom we owe everything.
When those two are kept in their proper place, Christians are free to love their country without making it an idol, and to confess Christ without neglecting their responsibilities as citizens.
Perhaps that is what it truly means to live as both patriots and pilgrims.
For our greatest hope has never rested in the strength of the American republic.
It rests in the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, whose Kingdom shall have no end.