How I’m celebrating the 4th this year:
Heckling the neighbors down the street who have a far superior home fireworks game.
Grilling ribs.
Discovering a new species of Midwestern mayonaise salad.
Attending our small-town Iowa fireworks show.
Watching Top Gun.
Thinking about what it means to love my country.
Chances are, at least one or two things on your own list overlaps with mine. (If not, it’s not too late to try the salad. It’s called Frito corn salad and somehow, it works.)
And chances are, coming together to celebrate the 4th might feel a bit strained this year. For many of us, it is impossible to ignore the fact that there are fundamentally conflicting ideas of what our country is and ought to be, and what it means to love our country.
When an editor from the Washington Post’s Made by History column approached me recently to write an op-ed on Oliver North, I knew I couldn’t say no. He’d read Jesus and John Wayne, and like me, he kept coming back to the sections on Oliver North. While writing J&JW, I confess I developed a bit of an obsession with Ollie. Each time I received edits back on my manuscript, I’d look to see if my Ollie sections made it through unscathed. (I’d also scroll ahead to see if my editor was still letting me get away with “Holy Balls” as a chapter title, and I’d breathe a little sigh of relief each time on both counts. If I recall correctly, my editor did attempt to streamline my discussion just a bit, suggesting cutting the “shredded lettuce” description of the Ollie North sandwich at the Buffalo diner. I stood firm: “shredded lettuce,” get it? Cracked me up every time.)
I remember being fascinated with North back in the 1980s. I was only 12 at the time of the Iran-Contra hearings, and I was confused. On the one hand, I heard North celebrated as a true American patriot. On the other, I picked up Time and Newsweek and read that he was a traitor, a man who had betrayed his country. I couldn’t make sense of it at the time.
Three decades later, I returned to the story as a historian. As I delved into the history, my own confusion started to make sense. North did subvert the rule of law, but he was celebrated by many Americans for doing exactly that—especially by conservative Christians.
I hadn’t known of North’s conservative evangelical bona fides back in the 80s—that he had converted to evangelical Christianity in the 1970s, that he’d read James Dobson and worked with leaders in the Christian Right to drum up support for the Contras. I also didn’t know that, in the aftermath of the hearings, Rev. Jerry Falwell had become his champion, and that North had prefigured in so many ways the world we now inhabit:
As one of his friends explained, “To Ollie, religion, flag and family are all part of the same makeup.”
This profile was deeply appealing to evangelical leaders, who found North to be “a shining example of American righteousness.” For evangelicals steeped in Christian nationalism — the belief that America is God’s special nation and must be defended as such against enemies foreign and domestic — the perceived law of God took precedence over the rule of law.
Evangelicals themselves were clear about their love for North and the conflation of God-and-country faith he represented:
“There is a commitment to country and to God. I think Oliver North represents a commitment to God.” North became a frequent speaker at evangelical churches…Appealing to “anti-gun control, pro-life, school prayer, strong defense, anti-gay, and the like,” North tapped a populist vein in American politics. His strategist and pollster explained North’s appeal in the words of country singer Garth Brooks: He resonated with the “hard-hat, gun rack, achin’-back, over-taxed, flag-waving, fun-lovin’ crowd.”…
Critics warned of North’s authoritarian tendencies and of his disrespect for the truth, but for his supporters, there was “what’s right” and “what’s legal,” and the two were not always the same. Skirting the law was part of North’s appeal. When God is on your side, the ends justify the means.
Watching the January 6 hearings, I couldn’t help but think of Oliver North and his conservative Christian fans. But mostly, I couldn’t help but think of the words of Senator George Mitchell, a Democrat from Maine, who challenged North to his face on the last day of his testimony:
A devout Catholic with his own military pedigree, the soft-spoken senator informed North that the United States was a nation of many races, ethnicities and religions, and that what held the country together were the ideals of individual liberty and equal justice. Respectfully but firmly, Mitchell chided the zealous soldier, reminding him that it was possible for fellow Americans to disagree with him “and still love God and still love this country just as much as you do,” and that no matter how important or noble a cause, the rule of law must never be sacrificed. God, Mitchell added, “does not take sides in American politics,” despite being regularly asked to do so.
Mitchell gets at the crux of our crisis: What does it mean for us as Americans to love our country?
When I read debates over the 1619 Project and the 1776 Commission, I often encounter conservatives claiming that critical approaches to American history denigrate our country, whereas focusing on America’s heroic past—even if mythical—demonstrate true love for country. Yet when I read critiques of America’s past, I often encounter love—deep love for fellow Americans and for the ideals upon which the nation was founded, ideals that themselves fuel a critique of the nation’s past by illuminating the many ways that we’ve fallen short. The critique is not an end in itself, but a call to become wiser and more compassionate, to learn from our shortcomings and recommit to those ideals—to the pursuit of liberty and justice for all. A pursuit that will always be imperfect, but a pursuit always striving for a more perfect union.
And Mitchell gets to the crux for American Christians: What does it mean to love God and to love our country?
I often find myself going back to an older reflection on Christian America, a book published in 1983 by Christian historians Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and my former advisor George Marsden, The Search for Christian America. The authors argue that by promoting the myth of “Christian America,” American Christians in fact weaken their own public witness and paradoxically contribute to the secularization of American society: “Positive Christian action does not grow out of distortions or half-truths,” they contend. “Such errors lead rather to false militance, to unrealistic standards for American public life today, and to romanticized visions about the heights from which we have fallen.”
A few years back, I reflected on their project, on how a mythical view of “Christian America” discouraged “a biblical analysis of our position today.”
Here’s how they explained what was at stake: “If we accept traditional American attitudes toward public life as if these were Christian, when in fact they are not, we do the cause of Christ a disservice. Similarly, if we perpetuate the sinful behavior and the moral blind spots of our predecessors, even if these predecessors were Christians, it keeps us from understanding scriptural mandates for action today.”
But by conflating a certain understanding of American history with scriptural revelation, proponents of “Christian America” risk idolizing the nation and succumbing to an “irresistible temptation to national self-righteousness.” They also sacrifice any ability to offer a scriptural critique of the cultural values they themselves embrace.
Paradoxically, this ultimately leads to secularization—for “uncritically patriotic Christians” are no longer able to articulate a prophetic critique of their own culture, or of any religious impulse that “does not have its ultimate end in the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
A few days back I ended my Washington Post op-ed with the following words: “the fate of American democracy hinges on which vision of patriotism prevails.”
American Christians, in particular, play a pivotal role in determining which version prevails, and their choices will have enduring consequences for their own faith, and for their nation.
My dad spent a bit of time around Ollie. He worked at a local metal plant but went back and started a PhD in history at GW when the plant started layoffs, although he died of pulmonary fibrosis before he could finish. Some part of his grad work had him around North fairly regularly. He thought North and Falwell were complete morons. In my early ev years I had expressed some admiration for North’s being a hero and “doing the right thing” - and Dad would just shake his head. He would have liked J&JW.
"What does it mean to love God and to love our country?" That line, particularly the "our" took on new meaning for me last month when I became a US citizen. I don't regret getting citizenship, but the partisan polarization and Christian nationalism of the past months and years has left me wondering if making that commitment was the right thing to do. For all the tensions that it has caused, maintaining a conscious effort to separate church and state seems to be a better approach, this side of glory, than any overtly Christian nation that I have learned of through history. At the same time, I am thankful for the opportunities that being in the US has afforded me in my life, and I look forward to full participation in the life of the country going forward. (I already managed to vote in the primaries for the first time ever!) Admittedly, my first 4 of July as a citizen was pretty low key-I posted a flag photo as my FB image and we grilled burgers for dinner. I wanted to hang up our US flag outside today, but my family (all of whom are born citizens) talked me out of it! I guess my problem is that I love God, but am finding it hard to love my new country. At the same time, love for neighbor is grounded not in how good the other people are, but that they are all people and image bearers of God.