It's In the Code Ep. 27: Stand for the Flag, Kneel for the Cross
From the Archives: With Dan on vacation, we bring back a timely episode from 2022:
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, I've 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, rather, 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.
Are there other kinds of Christians who can say this?
Yes.
Are there other kind of Christians who can think this?
Yes.
Are there other people who might show up wearing the t-shirt or stick the bumper sticker on their car or whatever?
Yes, absolutely.
But I would put my money down that nine times out of ten, if you see that t-shirt, you see that bumper sticker, this is somebody who is a theologically and politically conservative white Protestant Christian, okay?
And for many Americans, for those Americans, the Americans who don that shirt or put it on their car, This is a seemingly obvious and maybe non-controversial statement.
You will encounter Christians or people in your life if you haven't, and I just keep thinking forward to the holidays here, coming up, Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's, when many of us will be thrown together with family members and friends who might be in these circles, and somebody shows up with this shirt, and you take offense to it or you pose questions about it or you ask why they're wearing it, they may look back at you with sincere shock.
Not understanding because for them it's just obvious and non-controversial that to be a good Christian means you should be patriotic, and that to be truly patriotic means you're a good Christian.
They will challenge the notion that it emerges from Christian nationalism.
If you say, that's a Christian nationalist shirt, or I've been listening to this podcast, and they argue that you're a Christian nationalist if you wear that, or whatever, They will try to tell you that it's not.
It's just a statement of patriotism.
It's just a basic statement of faith or whatever.
So why do I say that it has to do with Christian nationalism?
Why is it immediately obvious to me?
That's what this decoding is about, learning how to read the code.
As soon as you see that shirt or that bumper sticker, you hear that slogan, you hear a pastor say it from the pulpit, you are hearing, seeing, reading Christian nationalism.
Why do I say that?
I say that for three reasons.
The first is that this notion that if you're a good Christian you'll be quote-unquote patriotic, by which I mean you will support your country no matter what, that's not obvious at all.
It's not.
And it's not, despite what the people with that t-shirt or that bumper sticker will tell you, it's not the quote-unquote biblical position.
It only seems obvious to those who view America as a Christian nation, that is, to Christian nationalists.
The second reason is the anti-black sentiment of the slogan.
It only takes a little bit of decoding to get to this, and all we have to know is the history of where the slogan came from.
We'll get to that.
And then the third one, and this is the one that, you know, those of us who are sort of, you know, a little bit geeky or intellectual in nature, for whom logic and consistency and things like that matter a lot, this is the one that will drive us nuts, which is the completely selective application of this slogan.
That despite the fact that these people will say, to be a good Christian, you have to support your country, you have to support your elected leaders.
Yeah, it's going to turn out that's only true when the right leaders are elected.
So let's dive into all of this.
This first point that is not obvious at all, let's say that you're, let's say, I guess we're getting the time of year, maybe you're not at a cookout, let's say that you're at a Christmas party, a holiday party of some sort, and you're gathered around the eggnog bowl, and our fictional Uncle Ron walks up, and he's got his t-shirt on.
Stand for the flag, bow for the cross, or kneel for the cross, or maybe it's a pin on his Christmas sweater, whatever it is, you get the idea.
And you press on it and say, why do you say that, Uncle Ron?
Why that shirt?
Why that pin?
What's going on?
He says, well, it's just biblical.
Why would he say that?
He'd say that because most Christians who are going to affirm this slogan, who are going to toss it around or wear it on their car or their shirt or wherever, they are what we call Biblicist Christians.
And if you're curious what that means, go back, look at some of the other series where we've talked about the notions of being quote-unquote biblical and what that means, appeals to the Bible.
It's a kind of Christianity that will want to say that what it does, that everything it does, is it does because the Bible demands it, okay?
But here's the issue.
The Bible doesn't give us a single clear political theology.
And this is not a Bible study series.
I'm not here to preach.
I don't want to dive into this too far.
But if you were to say to your Uncle Ron, well, okay, what do you mean it's biblical?
Odds are, again I'd put money down on this, that if he's biblically literate at all, he will cite a passage like Romans 13 1-3.
13, 1-3.
He will say, as Romans 13 says, I'm quoting here, Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.
Therefore, whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.
The idea that all authority on earth, that earthly authorities have, comes from God, and so to rebel or stand up against those authorities is to rebel or stand up against God.
It's not the only passage in the Bible that says things like that, but that's sort of the passage you're really going to pick out.
You can pick out most of the Hebrew Bible where there's a vision of a theocratic society, right?
So if somebody wants to build that political theology, they can.
But here's the issue, right?
Paul, the same Paul who wrote the book of Romans, also says that what he calls the rulers of this age are, quote, doomed to perish.
And he discusses his willingness to suffer punishment at the hands of civil authorities.
It's the same New Testament that tells the story of Jesus, this Jewish reformer, who proclaims a message of nonviolence and ultimately is executed by the state authorities, by the Roman authorities of his time.
And it's worth noting that that same Paul, who says in Romans to submit to the authorities, the same state he also seems to affirm in that passage, also executed him.
The book of Revelation, the last book in the Christian New Testament, is all about the evils of a state that is envisioned as standing against God.
The apostles in the book of Acts say that Christians have to obey God rather than human authority, obviously setting up a juxtaposition between the two.
So, just because someone is trying to be biblical, there's no intrinsic reason to show reverence to the nation or to the state.
It simply doesn't stand up.
The Bible doesn't speak with one voice, and so Christians who want to appeal to the Bible will invariably privilege one set of passages over another, and that goes for your Uncle Ron or anybody else.
So when somebody says, well, that's just what the Bible says.
No, that's one thing that the Bible says in one place, and it says other things in other places.
You want to tell me that it's biblical?
You want to tell me that being a Christian means you have to do this?
You're going to have to work harder than that.
Citing a couple Bible verses isn't going to do it.
It is far from obvious, and Christians who are not Christian nationalists know this.
There have been other Christian traditions, as long as there has been Christianity, who have not held that to be Christian is to show a sort of unyielding reverence for the state.
So don't be fooled if Uncle Ron tells you, you know, comes at you with, well, yeah, but Romans 13 says, because you can say, well, yeah, but Jesus says, and Revelation says, and Paul also says, and on and on and on.
It's not at all obvious that that's what the Bible means.
There's nothing in the Bible that makes us.
Think that if we want to be biblical Christians, right?
That's not really something I'm that interested in, but I know that some are, right?
So that's the first reason I say that it's a Christian Nationalist slogan.
The second is the history of this particular slogan, this particular formulation, okay?
American Christian nationalism aligns with race.
We talk about that all the time on the podcast.
It is part of why the podcast is called Straight White American Jesus.
It's the notion that the Jesus that Christian nationalists say they worship is straight and white and American.
It's that simple.
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Hi, my name is Peter, and I'm a prophet in the new novel, American Prophet.
I was the one who dreamed about the natural disaster just before it happened over the Oh, and the pandemic.
And that crazy election.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not bragging.
It's not like I asked for the job.
Actually, no one would ask for this job.
At least half the people will hate whatever I say and almost everyone thinks I'm a little crazy.
Getting a date is next to impossible.
I've got a radio host who is making up conspiracies about me, a dude actually shooting at me, and an unhinged president threatening me.
But the job isn't all that bad.
I've gotten to see the country, and meet some really interesting people, and hopefully do some good along the way.
You can find my story on Amazon, Audible, or iTunes.
Just look for American Profit by Jeff Fulmer.
That's American Profit by Jeff Fulmer.
To affirm Christian identity within a Christian nationalist framework is also to affirm its proper white identity, or a society that is structured in such a way that white people hold the mechanisms of power.
It is a white supremacist Christian vision.
And this slogan came to the fore and was articulated and became widespread In precisely a context of anti-black sentiment on the part of white people, it came to the fore in the context of widespread protests against police brutality against black men.
This was particularly visible in sports venues and especially the NFL.
Most people will remember Colin Kaepernick kneeling or sitting on the bench during the National Anthem, and this sort of caught on and became a thing.
And other players did this, especially African-American players, players in some other sports did this.
You would have occasionally players who were not people of color who joined in this.
It was primarily a movement, though, of black players.
And it raised angry outbursts all over, especially the NFL versions of this.
And you had commentators and politicians and regular people and everybody else who said this was disrespectful, that it was horrendous, that it was awful, and so forth.
And it was in this context that the insistence that one stands at the flag arose.
It was aimed primarily at black men who protested by sitting or taking a knee with the presentation of the flag, despite the fact that they made clear that this was not intended as a slight to the nation, but as a call for it to be all that it could be, because it is also their flag and their nation.
But the demand to stand for the flag arose as an anti-black response to these protests, and it was tied in with Christianity.
To be a good Christian was also to support the nation unconditionally, which meant that to kneel for the flag was not only unpatriotic, it was unchristian.
So when we decode, stand for the flag, kneel for the cross, we find that not only is it a selective appeal to particular Bible texts, it's a potent expression of anti-black sentiment.
It is racist.
And that's why this slogan is virtually absent from majority black and social justice minded Christian communities, because they know this history.
They remember where the slogan came from.
The third reason.
Why, for me, this is clearly linked with Christian nationalism.
It's just the selective application, right?
It's that simple.
Christians who affirm that we, quote, stand for the flag and kneel for the cross, they don't actually say this all the time.
They don't actually think this is true all the time.
They didn't say it when Barack Obama was president.
They haven't said it as they have demonized Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden.
They haven't said it as they have demonized the so-called Jihad Squad, as they will refer to it, a group of minority women legislators.
When it's those leaders, no, no, we're not talking about that, that they clearly aren't appointed by God, They clearly don't demand our obedience no matter who we are.
No, no, no, no.
It's when Donald Trump was president that you had none other than, excuse me, None other than the Attorney General citing Romans 13 as an explicit appeal for why people shouldn't be protesting what the President was doing, right?
They only apply this political theology, in other words, when leaders who share their Christian nationalist sentiments are in office.
They're convinced that only their leaders can be divinely appointed.
Only their leaders really demand that we stand for them.
And they're so convinced of this that they will go to any lengths to oppose the others.
That's part of the rhetoric and the logic behind Appeals to the Big Lie about the election.
It's part of what was going on with J6, and we have talked in the podcast so much about the Christian nationalist dimension of the January 6 insurrection.
We see it with setting the stage for election denial here as we come into the midterms.
We see it all the time when it's our people who are elected.
Oh, yes, yes, yes, the Bible demands That we obey authorities.
It says that they're appointed by God, we have to obey them.
How dare you stand up against them?
How dare you pose questions?
How dare you protest?
But when we don't think it's true divinely appointed people who are elected, when somehow or another it's no longer true, That God chooses those leaders.
Well, of course, of course, we should remove them.
Right?
It's completely selective in how it's applied.
And this is not just me railing as some sort of professor or something.
I have lived with this my entire life.
I have never yet, ever, anywhere met a single conservative Christian that I've had conversations with who would acknowledge and say that if Bill Clinton was elected twice, It was because God wanted him to be elected, because God had appointed him as leader.
Not once ever have I met somebody who would acknowledge that.
I have never heard them acknowledge it about Barack Obama.
It is one of the most partisan pieces of theology that I have ever encountered in my life.
It is only when it is conservative Republicans who are elected that we are suddenly called upon as good Christians to support the state without question.
So when we decode it, this is what we get to.
We get to not just a notion that, well, you know, you can be a good Christian and be a citizen, or it's okay to be a Christian and worry about your country or care for your country or support your country.
No, it's more than that.
It is a claim that only a certain kind of leader can be appointed by God.
It is a claim that racism is okay.
It's an anti-black claim.
It is a claim against pluralism.
It is an anti-democratic claim.
It is the claim that only Christian nationalists are fit to rule and that once they do, we have to obey them and that their power should be maintained at all costs.
So those who insist that Christians, quote, stand for the flag and kneel for the cross, they're expressing a radical Christian nationalist view of the nation.
And if they don't see that, if there are people in your life who don't understand that, then that's on them.
Everything is there in the open.
It's only an affirmation that holds when the right kind of political leaders are in power, which means Christian nationalists, and when they aren't, all bets are off.
The fact that they aren't actually in power, it legitimizes anti-government activity.
If you say to them, well, you know, if God chooses the leaders and this person was elected, then that person must be the leader.
No, it's the logic of J6 and the Big Lie.
Well, then that means they couldn't have been elected.
It must have been rigged.
This is what this viewpoint licenses, which means, and sort of close with this, decode this.
If somebody's wearing that shirt, They have that bumper sticker.
They're saying that from the pulpit?
Then I probably know that they support the big lie.
I probably know that they look at something like J6 and they may make sounds about how bad it is and say that people got carried away and so forth, but they don't think it was an insurrection.
And they've got real doubts about the legitimacy of the election.
And there are people who are going to believe that the system is rigged against them, and it has to be set right, because if we talk about things like voter access and things like that, what we're really talking about is taking the nation away from Christian nationalists.
Need to wind this down.
I want to thank you all, as always, for listening.
Please keep the ideas coming.
I know that I'm forever and always behind on responding to the emails, but I thank you all for the feedback that you give, the comments that you give, the ideas that you give.
I get to them as I can.
I respond to as many emails as I can.
Please keep them coming.
Please know that I read them and that I appreciate them, even if I don't get to respond.
Keep the ideas coming.
Daniel Miller Swag, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
And as always, I wish you well.
I always say until we meet again in this space, I wish you well as we come through the midterms again.
By the time you hear this, we will see what kind of country we live in for the next two years and beyond.
I wish you all well, and I will talk to you again in this format soon.
