A Sermon at Emmaus Road Mennonite Fellowship – July 12, 2026
In his Fourth of July speech from behind his George Washington office desk, New York Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, shared that the strength of New York, the strength of America lies not with the powerful and privileged, but in the cultural, ethnic, and economic diversity of its citizens, so many of them immigrants, just like him. He added, “It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it. After all, who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free?”
The President of the United States, in his July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore, extolled an uber-American exceptionalism, scaremongering about the dangers of a communist invasion in our country: “You must love our country,” he said. “ There has never been anything like us anywhere on earth and we are not going to let anyone take that away.”
Three weeks ago, in her moving speech at the Dedication of Chicago’s Obama Presidential Center, a speech in turns poignant, funny, and deeply personal, Michelle Obama referred to her and her husband’s journey to that place as the triumph of hope. She closed with the words, “God bless you, and God bless this country we love.”
There’s our country’s unofficial anthem, “God bless America, land that I love … .” And there’s also the President’s favorite musician, Lee Greenwood, and his rousing refrain, “And there ain’t no doubt I love this land, God bless the USA.”
And what’s been called “the defining image of Trump’s America,” taken by Reuters photographer Cheney Orr, July 4, a Black woman sitting on a DC Metro train surrounded by masked members of the white nationalist Patriot Front. Just prior, their 400-member strong group marched throughout DC carrying Confederate flags, chanting, “Love America! Reclaim America!”
So I’ve been wondering the last couple of weeks, “What do people mean when they say they ‘love America’?” “What does it even to ‘love’ a country?” More personally, I’ve been asking myself, “Do I ‘love’ America?”
First, I’m not sure what people mean when they say “America.” Political scientist Benedict Anderson tells us that “nationalism,” “nation,” is a recent idea in human history. He calls nations “imagined communities.” (Churches are imagined communities, too, but that’s another sermon). Even though we’ll never know most of our fellow members, because we’ve been so deeply socialized, often unconsciously, by media, in religious organizations, in schools, with rituals, flags, anthems, more, we believe we share at least a baseline of interests, values, beliefs. It’s different, right, when we hear “United States” and when we hear “America.” It’s a construct. Think of the many ways “nationhood” is reinforced subtly, invisibly; for many, it becomes so strong, combined with exceptionalist blood and soil rhetoric, it rises to the level of religious worship, so people are willing to die for the nation, willing to kill for it. Different people, different images when you hear … “America”? An “imagined community.”
+ Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman interviewed Princeton Religious Studies Professor and MSNow’s Eddie Glaude Jr. about his new book, “America U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries,” how the US celebrated prior anniversaries, spinning a “storybook version of US history,” ignoring its racist past and slavery’s legacy “baked into the very foundation of the country.” We see it today in attempts to whitewash our history – textbooks, monuments, National Parks, and this past week, the President accusing the Smithsonian of being “woke.” Glaude’s book begins: “I do not love America, never have, especially now.” For many African-Americans and our country’s indigenous peoples, the Fourth of July is really the “Fourth of … You Lie.”
+ I also re-read James Baldwin’s February 18, 1965, debate speech with William F. Buckley at the Cambridge Union, widely considered one of the most historic discussions on race, for which Baldwin received a standing ovation. He made the point that your frame of reference makes all the difference, that a person’s privilege and hidden assumptions can blind them.
“It comes as a great shock around the age of five or six or seven,” he said, “to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to discover that Gary Cooper killing the Indians, when you were rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians were you. It comes as a great shock to discover that the country which is your birthplace and to which you owe your life and your identity, has not evolved any place for you.” But then he added, “I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
+ A month ago, the Republican House passed the President’s $4 trillion bill with defense spending boosts and increased ICE funding, while cutting a trillion dollars from Medicaid and other social safety-net programs. Before the vote, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson prayed for its passage. After it passed, US Senator and Baptist pastor, Raphael Warnock, was asked whether such a draconian bill reflected the teachings of Jesus. He went to Johnson’s office where they had a conversation about Matthew 25, today’s Gospel. Johnson argued Jesus meant it was an individual’s responsibility to care for the hungry, tend the sick, welcome the stranger. And Warnock replied, “Mr. Speaker, please read the text – ‘When the Son of man comes in his glory, and he sits on his throne, before him will be gathered all the nations – the nations! – and he’ll separate them, sheep from goats.’”
I’ll just add when Amos says he hates their festivals, songs, their offerings, when he says, “Let justice roll down like water, righteousness like a mighty stream,” he’s not addressing individuals but a people, “O house of Israel,” a nation that’s lost its way, whose beliefs and worship have been severed from seeking justice. It’s our duty, not only as citizens but especially as Jesus-people, to demand from politicians, to demand from government: “Are the hungry being fed, the homeless sheltered, the stranger welcomed, the sick cared for?” We’ve made the Kingdom of God a matter of personal piety that ignores the political and economic structures that make for human flourishing; we worry more about personal morality than the things that protect those most at risk.
Do I love America? I value the extraordinary freedoms I have here compared with some other countries, the sacrifices my ancestors made so I can live the life I live and that of my children and grandchildren. So I’d like to agree with James Baldwin, that he loves America so much he insists on the right to criticize her – most of my friends would agree with him. But I can’t. I agree with Eddie Glaude, I don’t love America, and haven’t … and especially today when both our political and religious leaders manipulate the structures of democracy to undermine democracy. You see, marginalized peoples, my students, and my children have taught me that my privilege has kept me from seeing, hearing, from valuing other oppressed, cancelled, made- invisible, even exterminated faces and voices, ones that have been and continue to be excluded from America’s dream. Excluded from the dream.
Even this, even this 250-year-old radical experiment in self-governance bought at such great price … a nation created by ethnically cleansing its native population with an economic system built on the back of slaves, all legitimated by white man’s religion, this fatal flaw built into America from its origins prohibits me from granting it my love no matter how just or moral a particular leader or party happens to be at any given moment, just tinkering at the edges. At the end of the day, I just don’t trust the thin line between patriotism and nationalism, and consequently, between nationalism and empire’s greed, that always wants more, that gobbles up the weakest at home, and with colonial forays abroad, funding ethnic cleansing and genocide, all to enrich the voracious appetite of the military-industrial corporate wealthy. I just don’t trust that we can distinguish between patriotism, nationalism, and empire, not in the realm of geopolitics and the global economy. I can’t love an idealized vision of a nation for what it says it is, no matter how noble, when it’s never been that and there’s no indication that it’s serious about wanting to be.
So, No, I don’t love America, I’m very clear about that. But that doesn’t mean I’m not committed – in fact, I’m more committed than ever – to the values of equality, diversity, multiculturalism, liberty, human freedom. So while I don’t love America, I’m working more diligently to open my heart to love the people of America, all the people of America, and even more, all people – black and yellow, red and white – that my faith calls us to serve, which means all people everywhere.
+ Finally, this past 4th of July evening, I re-read the final essay written by Congressman John Lewis, published posthumously, as was his wish, by the New York Times, July 30, 2020, the day of his funeral. I’ll close with some of what he wrote:
“Martin Luther King Jr. said we’re all complicit when we tolerate injustice. It’s not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up, to speak out. When you see something’s not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It’s an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what he called ‘the Beloved Community,’ a nation, a world society at peace with itself. Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in, what I call, good trouble, necessary trouble.
“In my life,” he continued, “I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it’s your turn to let freedom ring. Let historians look back and say it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war.
So, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”