Long before the term “Christian nationalism” came to describe the weird and idolatrous fusion of unbiblical, conservative Christianity and absolute American allegiance, many of us in the South saw this brand of religion up close and personal. You see, way before Colin Caepernick kneeled during the National Anthem, I would either excuse myself to another part of a sports stadium or simply sit quietly during the playing of the National Anthem at sporting events. I did that for years. Frankly, I have never really understood why we stand. My allegiance simply is not to one country. It is to one Kingdom. Besides, it is difficult for me to show respect for a country that spends billions on police and military to control poor, Black and Brown communities both inside and outside the country and then demonize those same Black and Brown communities when they show up on our doorstep seeking a fair shot at opportunity. I never made a big deal of not standing. I still don’t. But I have to be true to what I believe in so even when I do stand (and there are times I do), I say prayers of repentance for the harm that we cause. 

Now, I happened to share that I did not stand during the playing of the National Anthem with a long-time friend (well, they used to be a long-time friend), and they were so deeply offended (and that is partly why we are no longer friends) that our friendship never recovered. Seriously. I found that kind of odd so I doubled down and told my friend that Lee Greenwood’s song, “I’m Proud to be an American” makes my stomach turn. Oh boy, my friend’s head almost turned around like in the Exorcist. I am sure that is what they wanted to perform on me. Like all good Christian nationalists who see patriotism to the United States as necessary and sacred as prayer, my friend could not comprehend that I could be critical of the United States and maintain any level of fidelity to Jesus. Like I said, I found this odd as much as I did troubling. 

But after the terribly awkward conversation ended I got to thinking about their weird devotion to the United States. I began to wonder if they really are all that devoted? I mean, they like to claim they are and the rest of us just assume they are. But are they really? This is what I mean. They home-school their kids so they have little knowledge of and even less commitment to their local schools. Because their kids are home-schooled and only participate in Christian activities, they have zero knowledge of what families not entrenched in CHristian home-schooling do. They live secluded in an up-scale, suburban neighborhood which I am absolutely positive would never allow multi-family dwellings or affordable apartments for low-income people to live in. And they continually vote for and support tax cuts (along with massive increases to military and police budgets), which always results in fewer vital services for under-resourced communities. To top it all off, I constantly hear from these kinds of “patriotic” friends a deep distrust and derision of the government with an unearned yet absolute trust in the private sector. 

Why is this patriotic? 

I have found myself asking the question, what exactly are these kinds of patriotic Americans loyal to exactly? There seems to be little if any commitment to national institutions and definitely as little investment as possible. And their reasoning for wanting to invest as little as possible into the public coffers is because they believe that the government can do little right. But this seems to be a case of chicken and the egg – which comes first, government inefficiency or emptying the government cashbox while rewarding equally inefficient businesses through privatization thereby making the assumption of government inefficiency come true? You can’t strip the government of all funding and then ask why the government is unable to do the job they have been tasked. 

Matthew Desmond, in his excellent book, Poverty, by America, describes what happened in MIchigan when legislators “accommodated their affluent political base by refusing to raise taxes, the state balanced its books by canceling infrastructure upgrades and firing safety inspectors, factors that directly contributed to the Flint water safety crisis, which exposed upward of twelve thousand children – most of them poor and Black – to lead poisoning.” (p. 107) And where were all of the private businesses or the nonprofits funded by all of the tax dollars affluent Michiganders saved through their tax cuts to meet the needs of the poor residents of Flint? Nowhere to be found. Because money saved through lower taxes for rich individuals and rich businesses do not go into public spending or do-gooderism. And this is why cutting taxes is actually a betrayal of patriotism and commitment to country. 

Our tangible commitments to our neighbors to provide necessary services that benefit so many through taxation have been demonized with so little pushback and our communities have been made to suffer as a result. Again, Desmond describes this beautifully: 

As our incomes have grown, we’ve chosen to spend more on personal consumption and less on public works. Our vacations are more lavish, but schoolteachers must now buy their own school supplies. We put more money into savings to fuel intergenerational wealth creation but collectively spend less on expanding opportunity to all children. In 1955, government spending accounted for roughly 22% of the economy, and it stayed that way for years. But during the last quarter of the 20th Century public investments began to decline. By 2021, government spending on all public goods – including national defense, transportation, health expenditures, and programs to ease the pain of poverty – made up just 17.6% of GDP. Meanwhile, personal consumption grew from about 60% of GDP to 69% over that same period…in 2021 that amounted to more than $2 trillion. (p. 108)

Now imagine if that $2 trillion was being used to expand rather than contract vital social services? Imagine if the $2 trillion was used to create jobs, provide universal healthcare, lower the cost of housing for first time buyers, research cancer and other diseases, or provide housing alternatives for those experiencing homelessness? Heck, imagine if you took a little of that $2 trillion and built economies in countries whose economies have been devastated through US-led resource extraction so that fewer of their workers and farmers do not have to leave their families, countries, and cultures to travel to the United States to earn a living? Spending $2 trillion in such constructive and life-giving ways could make this a helluva country to live in. 

The truth is both parties constantly promise to cut taxes and so both share in the ludicrous notion that we can expect the government to provide excellent services (roads, schools, care for the poor, and obscene investments in police and military) while being starved of the funds to do so. Desmond rightly calls what we are experiencing right now, “private opulence and public squalor.” 

What if, instead of standing for the Anthem or getting teary at Greenwood’s song, paying your taxes was patriotic? Instead of hiring PR firms to make patriotic commercials about how proud of America they are, what if big companies quit hiring lobbying firms to rewrite the tax code to hide their massive profits in off-shore banks and made up corporations, and what if all of these corporations did the most patriotic thing of all: paid every last cent of their damn taxes and hired lobbyists to raise the the corporate income tax rate from the paltry 21% they pay now to a healthier and fairer 40%? 

We can all do this of course. If you really love this country then spare me the performative crap and call your Reps, Senators, and in DC, call your Mayor and Councilmembers and ask to pay more taxes. If we did this as a country I would not just stand for the Anthem, I would be belting out the lyrics. Let’s put our money where our priorities are. Otherwise, everyone’s patriotic songs are just noisy gongs and clanging cymbals.