It's In the Code Ep. 27: Stand for the Flag, Kneel for the Cross
Is the slogan, “stand for the flag, kneel for the cross” a harmless expression of the conviction that good Christians can also be good citizens? Or if we decode it, do we find that a meaning that’s much more pernicious than that? In this episode, Dan argues that this slogan is an expression of Christian nationalism, giving voice to anti-Black racism and licensing election denial and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
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Hello and welcome to the series It's in the Code, a part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Pleased as always to be with all of you.
As always, Straight White American Jesus is offered in partnership with the CAP Center, UCSB.
We thank them.
And as always, I thank all of you who listen to us, who suffer through the ads that help support us, who choose to be patrons and support us financially.
We cannot do it without you.
We thank you for that.
And for this series, I thank all of you who continue to email me at danielmillerswaj.com and help to give the ideas for this series.
As always, I want to pick up with a theme we have for today, and I am recording this on Election Day.
Midterm elections, at the time I'm recording this, or today, brings two things to mind.
One is today's topic, but before that, just a final reminder of our Denver event.
I guess not final, I guess I will post next week before the event, but it's coming right up, just under two weeks away, a week and a half.
Our live event in Denver, first ever live event.
You can be there in person.
We'd love to see you.
You can be there virtually.
We'd love to know that you're doing that as well.
You know the information about how to find it.
If you go to bradleyonishi.com slash nationalism, the information is there.
Great lineup.
We've been pushing it for a while.
You've probably heard about that.
If not, go online, check it out, and we'd love to have you there, whether in person or virtually.
And I know that after the events today, however they all play out, we'll have some great things to talk about with a really great slate of people.
Having said that, let's get into today's topic.
As I say, today is Election Day, and I know that many of you, by the time you hear this, it will be over and you will be looking to sort of figure out where things are.
And I want to have been kind of saving this.
I've gotten a lot of people that have contacted me about it.
I've been promising to do it, and I figured that this was a good time to do it.
A theme for today, a sort of slogan that has come in in the last just Few years articulated in this way, but I think it actually gives voice and expresses impulses that go much earlier than that.
And it is this.
You will see it on posters.
You will see it on bumper stickers.
You will see it on shirts.
You might see it on church signs.
And it is the slogan that says, stand for the flag, kneel for the cross, or bow to the cross, or something along those lines.
Stand for the flag, kneel for the cross.
And I want to look at this.
As I say, a lot of you have reached out.
It's familiar.
You see it all over.
Some have just wanted to comment on that.
Some have been a little confused about what that's supposed to mean.
It feels sort of discontinuous with what you've known to be the Christian tradition and things like that.
It is a phrase that you're going to show.
It's going to show up in Christian circles, obviously, with the focus on the cross.
Let's look at sort of where does this come from, and as always, what does it mean, both kind of the surface meaning or what the people who say it might say that it means, and what do we find if we decode it further, okay?
So the first thing to point out is, and I'm going to throw it out there at the start, this is a straightforward Christian nationalist slogan.
No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
I say that because the hypothetical Uncle Ron might show up in this t-shirt and say, no, it's not about Christian nationalism.
This is just about, you know, being a good citizen and showing that as a Christian, I can also be a good citizen or something like that.
Nonsense.
It's complete nonsense.
It is Christian Nationalist straight up, and it's just right there on the surface.
It lays out a Christian obligation of reverence to both God and nation.
I'm just going to point out that for some Christians, one might have thought that that would be idolatrous, the notion that we have a kind of dual obligation to God and nation.
It's Christian Nationalism straight up.
And in most of these formulations, it's worth noting that the reverence due to the state is actually listed first.
It first tells us what we do with the flag, then it tells us what we do with the cross.
And on its most basic reading, it gives voice to something that I think is taken for granted by millions of American Christians.
And that is that reverence to the church and reverence to the state are linked.
That the one requires the other.
That you can't be a good Christian without showing reverence to the state.
You cannot effectively bow to the cross or kneel at the cross if you are not standing for the flag.
And by implication, standing up for America.
But also the notion that you can't be a good citizen without reverence to God.
That standing for the flag or standing up for America is a kind of empty gesture if it isn't backed up by Bowing for the cross or kneeling at the cross.
This is a slogan that emerged within Christian nationalist circles.
It almost always signals a form of theologically and politically conservative white Protestantism.
We want to talk about the context where it is.
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