What to a Mennonite is the 4th of July?

Some thoughts on Living in the USA at 250

by Stephen Kriss

Sometime in 6th grade, I started to question the words and ritual of the Pledge of Allegiance. My family had not yet begun attending a Mennonite church, which would eventually give more of a framework for my conscientiousness. But I began to wonder in the midst of the heaviness of the Cold War if I should offer my words every morning at West End Elementary School. By the end of the year, I stopped reciting it and moved my hands to my side rather than over my heart.

Following Jesus and becoming Mennonite gave words and a theological position that spoke to my conscience and questions. All of human life is sacred. Nations rise and fall. Those of us who follow Jesus must question our allegiances and our willingness to bear the sword, carry a gun, or fund a system that does violence on our behalf.

As I reflect on our country’s 250th anniversary, I carry the tensions that citizenship gives with both possibility and responsibility. Our country these days looks more like an empire. Fortunately, the Biblical texts give us some guidance on how to live within an empire and how to embody faithfulness. Biblical stories remind us that empires will resist our declaration that Jesus is Lord.

These tensions have long shaped the Anabaptist story in North America.

Long before the United States existed, Mennonites settled in what would become Pennsylvania, drawn by the possibility of practicing their faith in relative freedom. Communities like Germantown (now in Philadelphia) flourished through the craftsmanship and industry of Mennonite settlers and within William Penn’s vision of religious diversity.

Yet very early on, at Germantown, we recognized this freedom and flourishing were not afforded to all people. The Germantown Protest on slavery in 1688 became the first written protest by Euro-American Mennonites and Quakers, in a city where enslaved people were sold along the banks of the Delaware River—the same place Mennonite immigrants themselves likely first stepped ashore to find a new life living alongside the Lenape.

That witness still calls to us.

As Mennonites, we offer gratitude for the freedoms this land affords us to flourish and live according to our convictions. Yet the lines between serving Jesus and the Empire aren’t always clear. We make compromises. We can become more loyal to political movements than to Christ himself (see this article from Joel Horst Nafziger of the Mennonite Heritage Center [Harleysville, PA]). Christian nationalism, in its current forms, presents a particular danger to the church, even if it is not a defining characteristic of most Mosaic Mennonite communities.

Like the Apostle Paul, many of us possess privileges through our citizenship. We are called to use those privileges to extend the good news of Jesus and to advocate for those who are marginalized or mistreated. The early Mennonites of Germantown understood that faithfulness meant speaking and acting on behalf of those denied justice. We are called to do the same.

Not everyone experiences the U.S. American story in the same way. For many of us whose families have immigrated, the US experiment is one of finding opportunities. For those of us who are descendants of enslaved Africans and Indigenous peoples, that story includes displacement, violence, and loss. As people committed to the peaceable way of Jesus, we hold those tensions in community and with respect.

So, what is the 4th of July to us as Mennonites? Rather than praise, may it call us to prayer. May we humbly recognize the possibilities and opportunities and hold the pain and inadequacies. May we seek the peace and flourishing of the place God has sent us yet acknowledge that this country cannot receive our full loyalty. Our allegiance belongs to God alone and to the way of Jesus, bound to those who share our baptism regardless of their place of birth.

We are grateful for God’s provision. We embrace honest storytelling, confession, prayer, and discernment of what it means to those of us to live in the tension between God and country with the privilege and pain that we carry. We acknowledge that respect, not unswerving loyalty, is due to those who serve in places of authority.

This 4th of July, I’ll catch a glimpse of fireworks. I’ll also remember that our Anabaptist movement was here in this land before the country existed, and by God’s grace and mercy, we will remain (or we will move on, as we have before). We seek the shalom of the places where God has sent or planted us because our flourishing is intertwined.

We seek first the reign of God—the story of the Alpha and the Omega, from generation to generation. We offer our loyalties and allegiances to Jesus as Lord, the light of our world.