We Are Not Christian Soldiers
It's time to stop using militaristic language to talk about politics and religion
I may never march in the infantry
Ride in the cavalry
Shoot the artillery
I may never fly o’er the enemy
But I’m in the Lord’s army! Yes Sir!
Is that song familiar to anyone else?
To be honest, when I don’t think about the lyrics I have fond memories of my teenage self singing this song with small children while leading Sunday School worship. It wasn’t just the lyrics. The extra body movement was fun for everyone. It was exciting to see happy kids singing and waving their arms around like they were airplanes flying over a field.
But as I spend middle age unpacking many of my 80s and 90s childhood and teenage church experiences, the implications of the lyrics make me feel at least a little sick.
“I’m in the Lord’s Army” was popularized by a children’s singing group in the 90s, but variations on the song throughout the 20th century make the original composition difficult to pin down. The song became popularized for a new generation in 1993 by Cedarmont Kids, but in my fuzzy memory, it feels like we were singing it well before I was performing the song as a teenager.
Regardless of when the song was written, by 1993, I was not unfamiliar with the concept of spiritual battle. The foundational hymn of the Lutheran church is Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress.” We sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” a couple of times a year, usually around patriotic holidays, proclaiming “Like a mighty army moves the church of God.” We sang “I Will Sing Unto the Lord,” echoing Miriam’s Exodus proclamation, “I will sing unto the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously, the horse and rider thrown into the sea.” We were encouraged to learn about the armor of God, learning how to prepare for spiritual battle against the unseen forces that would try to lead us away from God and His goodness.
To anyone raised outside of a similar ecosystem, I know that this will seem strange and cultlike, but when taken individually, it wasn’t. Nearly every culture believes in the forces of good and evil. The hero’s journey requires an individual to endure a series of tests that challenge the body, soul, and mind. And part of any kind of spiritual formation is the establishment of a moral compass that is supposed to guide decisions throughout our lives.
But when a church body stops being the voice of the oppressed and starts to become intertwined with the power structures of the state, the “mighty army” of “the church of God” takes on a complete different meaning.
When the apostle Paul encouraged the congregation at Ephesus to “Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace,” (Ephesians 6:14-15) he wasn’t encouraging them to prepare for battle against the Roman government. The ancient Christian church was a motley crew of women, slaves, outcasts, and people from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Their spiritual struggle wasn’t against people who wanted to do very real harm to their bodies. Their struggle was against spiritual forces that would lead them away from God and back to the often harmful practices of the Roman empire. They weren’t supposed to fight that battle by changing the political structures of their day; they were instructed to arm themselves with truth, righteousness, and peace, changing the culture with their words and deeds instead of taking arms against Caesar.
But growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, that countercultural message was somehow lost on us because our citizenship as Americans and Christians had become intertwined. We were told that morality mattered. We were told that we needed godly leaders. We were no longer being prepared to face invisible forces that wanted to destroy us. Those invisible forces had become personified in the American political landscape.
“Christian nationalism” is the political embodiment of that spiritual battle. A lot of people who are way smarter than me have written entire books on the subject. (Seriously, for more perspective from Christian academics about Christian Nationalism, look into
, , and .) But as I continue the process of disentangling my faith from my patriotism, looking back on these seemingly innocuous moments from my childhood takes on a different meaning.
Because the invisible forces of light and dark had become personified in the political landscape, we were also told that the battle to preserve our faith mattered. We were told that we would be persecuted for our faith and that we could lose our rights to worship as we pleased. We were told that we had to vote for the right people if we wanted to keep America a Christian nation. And we were told repeatedly that America was indeed a Christian nation and that it had been that way since her founding.1
I was in college during Bill Clinton’s impeachment. As a history and English major, my Christian professors had thoughts, but they expressed those thoughts by having us look at history and determine for ourselves what kind of precedent the impeachment would set for future generations.2 My friends and I agreed that it was wrong. While many of us would turn around and vote for Bush in 2000, most of us agreed that it was unwise to impeach a man for lying about an affair with an intern who was only a few years older than us. It took years before I made the connection that his daughter, who had to watch everything unfold from the sidelines, was also the same age as us. It took even longer for me to see just how horribly Monica Lewinsky was treated by all sides in the impeachment affair, realizing that she was only few years older than me, and probably no wiser when she took on an internship at the White House.
My mom didn’t agree. She couldn’t believe that I didn’t see the need for moral leaders. Bill Clinton had abused his office and acted in a way unbefitting the president of the United States. She said that we needed people of moral character filling the position of the leader of the free world. She was appalled that I didn’t see it the same way. Never mind that the many sexual affairs of our past presidents are not a modern secret.
This was the world from which I emerged into adulthood. Then 9/11 changed the landscape again. Eight years later I watched the moralistic handwringing from the sidelines as I broke with my upbringing and voted for our first Black president, committing then to always vote for who I believed was the best person for the job, regardless of political affiliation, belief system, or gender.
And then I watched as the moral façade that I had been told mattered more than anything else crumbled with the rise of Donald Trump.
I watched people who proclaimed Bill Clinton as unfit for office excitedly vote for a twice-divorced, thrice-married man who once graced the cover of Playboy magazine. People who I respected and admired participated in the accension of a man who defied everything I had ever been taught about what it meant to be a good and decent human being. Even worse, he defied everything I had been taught about what it meant to be a “good” Christian.
Why did they do it? Because he would fight for them. He would fight for Christian ideals. He would fight the culture wars for them and ensure that Christian morals and beliefs would win out over secularism. The American Christian church no longer had to worry about losing freedoms that had been promised in the United States Constitution. The American Christian church could continue in a position of privilege and power in American politics. The American Christian church could continue to fight against the powers that wanted to put God into a box and toss Him out to sea.
Except, Jesus was always perfectly clear that his Kingdom was not an earthly Kingdom. He repeatedly told his followers that he was not a political Messiah but a spiritual Messiah intent of saving humans from themselves. When Peter tried to defend him in the Garden of Gethsemane by pulling out a sword and going on the offensive, Jesus ordered him to put up the sword. Hours later he would tell Pontius Pilot, “ “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place” John 18:36 (NIV).
God sees humans, not countries. He sees His creation, not political factions divided by invisible borders. He is concerned with the flourishing of all people, not individual nations.
God isn’t concerned with earthly kingdoms and He doesn’t need to enlist warriors to defend his heavenly kingdom. If we believe that He is all powerful, then we also have to believe that He can handle that defense on His own.
In the 21st century, using militaristic language to refer to our faith or the role of the Church in the world, pits us against our neighbors. It prevents us from seeing others as human beings created in the image of God. It encourages us to prioritize political parties and ideologies over our fellow citizens. It selfishly focuses our goals on our own success instead of seeing ourselves as interconnected with our neighbors, our own flourishing dependent on the flourishing of others. It pits us against each other and further drives wedges between our fellow humans and God.
As
recently posted on Threads:In fighting the way the world fights, we become part of the destruction….By treating other people as enemies, by trying to claim victory at all cost, we become the destruction we were trying to prevent.
I’m tired of seeing my neighbors as an enemy, individuals determined to see my spiritual and physical destruction. And I only need to spend thirty minutes on Threads before I can see that this posture has done more harm than good to our Christian witness. I’m tired of culture wars that put my personal comfort with the life I’m living ahead of the needs of my neighbors. God didn’t enlist me to be a solder; He called me to be His child. He called me to make “disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). He called me to be His hands and feet, not His sword.
That doesn’t mean that we should be meek and mild and a doormat for those who want to do us harm. But maybe we should be opening our ears to listen to our neighbors and their fears and concerns while being more discerning about what is actually a threat to our hearts, minds, and bodies.
It’s one place where we can start healing our divides.
Support my writing
While most of my work here is free for all subscribers, it is still a labor of love that I fit into the few hours I have when I am not teaching or being an attentive wife and mom. If you would like to support my writing but you do not want to commit to being a paid subscriber, please consider one-time donation.
You can also support me by ordering my book or books from my favorite book lists at my Bookshop.org affiliate page.
If you want to be a regular supporter, you can upgrade your subscription from free to paid and get occasional content only for paid subscribers.
Yes, I know differently now. Please do not think that I still believe that America was founded as a Christian nation.
Those thoughts were overwhelmingly opposed to impeachment, they just couldn’t say so.
Just finished reading Jesus and John Wayne which did a good job of explaining exactly how this transformation happened over the last 50 years.
Well said.