Most Americans today consider the displaying of our flag to be an act of patriotism. But the embrace of a flag as a symbol for a nation, and for a certain set of values (although these values may vary wildly for different people), is relatively new in human history, going back only about 250 years, according to Michael Billig in his 1995 book, Banal Nationalism. The flag may have been emphasized as a national symbol in the newly-independent America of the late 1700’s and early 1800’s because we didn’t have a monarch or a royal family to rally around.
What is a flag, really? Some religious groups in America – the Amish, Mennonites, and Jehovah’s Witnesses (all of whom self-identify as Christians) – object both to saying the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag (or to any flag), and to standing for or singing the national anthem. According to the website mennoniteusa.org, Article 20 of the Mennonite faith stipulates:
Throughout history, human governments have asked citizens to swear oaths of allegiance. As Christians, our first allegiance is to God. In baptism we pledged our loyalty to Christ’s community, a commitment that takes precedence over obedience to any other social and political communities.
As a white girl growing up in Hampton, Virginia during the sixties, I had never even heard of Mennonites. But I could not help but see what was all around me: a culture in which African-Americans were treated as inferior to white people, and in which they were not granted the same rights or opportunities. I saw when I went with my grandparents (who were not Jewish, since I converted to Judaism as an adult) to the James River Country Club in Newport News: every single person who was enjoying the club as a patron or guest was white, while almost every person who waited on us in the club house, from the hat-checker to those who cleared our table at the end of a meal, was black. I noticed that there were no non-white members of the Hampton Yacht Club (my father was an avid sailor), although the yacht club was right across the creek from Hampton Institute (now Hampton University, one of our nation’s historic black colleges). There were no black congregants in attendance at the Episcopal church we belonged to; the only person of color to be found there was Moses, the church custodian. Born at the end of 1959, I can just dimly recall having seen city bus stop benches stenciled “white” and “colored.”
Beginning in fourth grade, I remember struggling within when made to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Why do we say that this is a nation “under God”? Are we saying that we are unique – that we are “under God,” but other nations aren’t? And if we are “under God,” then why are we such a cruel, unjust society? I could see with my own eyes that our nation did not live up to the Pledge’s claim “…with justice and liberty for all.”
Which should be a person’s higher allegiance – an allegiance to defending the worth, equality, and liberty of each person in one’s nation, or an allegiance to a flag? One might say that the importance of the flag is not the object itself, but the ideals it represents. But if the same people pledging allegiance to these ideals had no intention in actually living them out – then they were turning these stars and stripes into an idol, into something that stood instead for allegiance to a particular culture (white, Protestant, and, in my childhood, male-dominated).
But at least (I could say to myself) the flag represents an aspiration to higher ideals, just as the Declaration of Independence did, despite the fact that its author kept human beings in bondage. We were (and are) a nation that had set our sights high – and had sadly failed to live up to our ideals. But (I hoped) we were still trying.
Mississippi, 37 percent of its residents being African-American, can claim to be the “blackest” state in the nation – and yet it took their legislature until just this past week to vote to remove a blatant symbol of the Confederacy from their state flag. The flag’s defenders claimed it did not represent racism, but “Southern culture.” I am from the South; I know what that expression means. It means white Southern culture. And it has meant, for so many years, oppression of non-white people. But it seems, at long last, that “the times, they are a’changin.” Halleluyah for this change!
Although I still recoil from the kind of patriotism that “wraps itself in the flag” (rather than in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights), recent events have given me fresh hope for America. We are not perfect. We have not made real the ideals that our founders signed onto in 1776. But at all times in our nation’s 244 years there has always at least some portion of our population striving to make us a land with “liberty and justice for all.” Somewhere along the line I learned that the red stripes of our flag were meant to remind us of the blood that the valorous have spilled in this effort, with the white reminding us of bandages, and of those who care for our wounded. Indeed this struggle has never been easy, sometimes claiming our very lives. May God take notice of today’s social-justice warriors, and bless our valiant ones with courage and fortitude as we endeavor to reach for the “stars” – liberty, justice, and a commitment to truth – as we continue to grow as a nation.
Shoshana Brown serves as cantor and spiritual leader at Temple Beth El in Fall River.