Fourth of July celebrations in church seeking to tie being America too closely to being Christian might work against Jesus’ Great Commission and wrongly tell non-Christians they must become Americans, a Southern Baptist scholar has warned.
“I love patriotic music, fireworks on the National Mall, and the country they’re honoring. But I confess I’m not a fan of celebrating America inside Sunday’s sanctuary,” wrote last week author Jonathan Leeman, an elder at Cheverly Baptist Church in Washington D.C., who is also editorial director for Christian ministry 9Marks.
“It just might work against Jesus’s Great Commission,” Leeman wrote in The Gospel Coalition, ahead of Sunday service and of the 4th of July, Independence Day.
The author reflected on Christian gatherings around the world, and asked readers, “should churches divide between nations, or between those who identify with Christ and those who don’t?”
“Church gatherings represent nothing if not a celebration of our heavenly, not earthly,…
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