From the Archives: "Identity Politics"
Each month, our blog features articles from the archives of Liturgy. Our goal is to share the wisdom from decades past so that we might celebrate the work and insights of these excellent ministers and scholars.
Debra Dean Murphy
In 2005, Litrurgy published an article by Debra Dean Murphy, entitled “Identity Politics: Christian Baptism and the Pledge of Allegiance.” In this summer of 2024, the United States is in the throes of a rise in Christian Nationalism: the conflation of Christian faith and the nation. This article from 2005 reminds us that the issues of our nation’s origins, identity, and focus are alive and contested. Debra Dean Murphy notes that one response to the enormous shock of September 11, 2001 was to nostalgically embrace the pledge of allegiance. The wounds of 9/11 encouraged some of us to assert that our nation s “exceptional” among all nations and to, therefore, call criticism betrayal rather than healthy self-examination.
Baptism is at odds with the god of nationalism. “Paul's vision of baptism as adoption into a new family and immersion into Christ's death (Rom. 6:4; 8:15—16) is severely diminished when the baptized are trained to believe that there is no real difference between being a good Christian and being a good American.”
Selected Quotes from
“Identity Politics”
“You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own forever.”
—The Book of Common Prayer
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands …”
—The Pledge of Allegiance
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“If one of the definitions of nationalism is that the nation-state affords one his or her primary sense of identity and belonging, and if Christians on the whole have articulated no real disagreement with such a view—indeed have been wholly complicit with such a view—then it is fair to say that the church has surrendered its central claim that Jesus is Lord to the nation's demand for an unquestioned allegiance to free market capitalism.”
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“When we enter into the worship of the triune God, we give witness to the truth that we are citizens of a commonwealth wider than that of the nation of our birth. We are, as members of the body of Christ across time and space, Christians without borders. We pledge allegiance not to any earthly power or principality but to the sovereign God of the universe—the God made known to us as a community of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
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“Through baptism our lives are united with [God] and are offered back to us as gifts that we might become conduits of the love, justice, and fellowship that is the Trinitarian life of God.”
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Debra Dean Murphy is associate professor of religion at West Virginia Wesleyan College. Her articles have appeared in Theology Today, Modern Theology, Scottish Journal of Theology, and Cross Currents; her most recent book is Happiness, Health, and Beauty: The Christian Life in Everyday Terms. This essay is taken from the author's Teaching That Transforms: Worship as the Heart of Christian Education (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004).
If you would like access to this article, please follow this link:
Debra Dean Murphy, “Identity Politics: Christian Baptism and the Pledge of Allegiance,” Liturgy 20, no. 1 (2005): 5–10, https://doi.org/10.1080/04580630590522821.