Faith As Allegiance
Some thoughts on pledging allegiance and Matthew Bates' latest book
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A few years ago, I stopped saying the Pledge of Allegiance. You may be thinking, “Me too…when I graduated high school.” And fair enough. I don’t really have a lot of moments where the Pledge of Allegiance is being said and I can refuse. In fact, I can count the number of times on one hand since 2015.
Chinese Nationals and the Third Reich
In 2015, I taught at The King’s Christian School (TKCS) in Cherry Hill. I taught 5 different Bible classes and 3 of them were completely made up of Chinese exchange students. For several of them it was their first experience in America and in a Christian setting. It was an interesting experience for both them and me. One of the interesting circumstances we found ourselves in happened the first day. My homeroom was the freshman Chinese students. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I believe I had about a dozen students and only 2-3 who had been to the school the previous year. After welcoming students to the classroom and a few awkward remarks, a voice came over the loud speaker instructing us all to stand for the pledge. Most of them felt awkward because they didn’t know what was happening; I felt awkward because I did know what was happening.
Later that day I printed out copies of the Pledge of Allegiance for all of my homeroom students. The next day I passed them out. I explained that I was well aware none of them were likely interested in pledging their allegiance to the United States of America or the Republic for which she stands. BUT this could be good English practice for them. We’ll return to the classroom, but first a trip to an alternate timeline…
If you haven’t already, go ahead and watch that clip from Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle1 based on Philip K. Dick’s novel of the same name. What emotions does it stir in you? I can’t be sure, but I wonder if my Chinese students felt the same way watching me as you did watching these students pledge their allegiance to the Nazi regime. I don’t remember exactly when I watched this season of High Castle, but in my imperfect memory it was at some point during my year at TKCS.
As I watched this scene, it definitely made me feel uneasy. It was clear that these fictitious students were being subjected to propaganda, whether they knew that or not. What’s different about our pledge? I agree with it? It’s my country? Hearing it through the ears of my Chinese national students and then watching fictitious children pledge their allegiance to the Nazi regime made me reconsider what it means to pledge my allegiance. So I stopped.
I like America. I’m glad I was born here. I’m glad I live here. There are plenty of things I wish were different, but that would be true in a lot of places. But my allegiance isn’t to America. My allegiance is to a different Kingdom that operates on a completely different set of principles. America was born of the myth redemptive violence, built on violence, and sustained through the threat of violence. This may seem a crass oversimplification and I get that. But I also think it’s true.
Gospel Allegiance
Enter Matthew Bates2. I first heard him on Preston Sprinkle’s podcast (linked below) and it grabbed my attention. Let’s do a quick little experiment. How would you define faith? Or more specifically, what does it mean to have faith in Jesus?
I may never know, but I’d imagine that your answer to that is something like “Believing that Jesus, the Son of God, died to forgive my sins and so I could spend eternity in Heaven with Him.” That’s a pretty standard idea of faith in the Gospel of Jesus.
In Gospel Allegiance, Bates isn’t necessarily rejecting that. But he’s making the case that the Greek word pístis would often be better translated allegiance instead of faith and justification (or our being forgiven of our sins) is not the Gospel but rather an outcome of the Gospel. Obviously, he goes into great depth on each of these points and I won’t do the whole book justice. But I’ll share a few thoughts on each of those two main points.
Faith as allegiance helps as both a corrective and a clarifier. When faith is simply belief it is fairly cheap. Many Christians realize it can’t just be belief because, as James says, “even the demons believe and tremble.” But it is difficult for many to name what faith really is, if not belief. Seeing faith as allegiance can help us think and speak more clearly about how we relate to Jesus. If, like me, you grew up in Christian environments you’ve likely heard and/or said something about “asking Jesus into your heart.” What does that mean? How does that work? It’s unnecessarily cryptic language about what we are seeking to do. To be a Christian is to pledge allegiance to Jesus. This connotes royal, political ideas as well. As illustrated above, we most commonly think of pledging allegiance in regards to our flag and the Republic for which is stands. Seeing faith as allegiance recognizes a key part of the gospel that we often make secondary, if we include at all, namely, that Jesus is King.
Bates suggests that the gospel must include and, in fact, should start with the fact that Jesus is King. The gospel remains cruciform, or cross-centered, because Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension were all integral to his enthronement. But that fact that Jesus sits enthroned as King is the gospel. In all, Bates highlights ten gospel events3:
“The gospel is that Jesus the king
preexisted as God the Son,
was sent by the Father,
took on human flesh in fulfillment of God’s promises to David,
died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
was buried,
was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
appeared to many witnesses
is enthroned at the right hand of God as the ruling Christ,
has sent the Holy Spirit to his people to effect his rule, and
will come again as final judge to rule.”
I’ve barely scratched the surface. But if any of this has piqued your interest or stirred up questions, go grab a copy of Gospel Allegiance! You can even do it for free through the Hoopla app and your local library.
The basic premise is that the Axis Powers won World War II. The eastern half of America is now run by the Third Reich and the western half by Japan.
This book, Gospel Allegiance, is available on hoopla which you can download on any smartphone and access with a local library card. Both ebook and audiobook are available. If you’re not ready to jump into the book, you can whet your appetite with an interview he did with Preston Sprinkle here:
While different emphases are placed on these ten events, Bates highlights that all ten can be affirmed by Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox believers and thus no one from one of these three camps should seek to exclude someone from the other two as “not Christian.”