{"id":1410,"date":"2009-01-12T17:13:14","date_gmt":"2009-01-13T01:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eaf.net\/mvp\/?p=1410"},"modified":"2009-01-12T17:18:18","modified_gmt":"2009-01-13T01:18:18","slug":"christians-without-borders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2009\/christians-without-borders\/","title":{"rendered":"Christians Without Borders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t usually read <i>Covenant News<\/i> but the above headline caught my attention. Here you have the opening and closing paragraphs, with my own title borrowed from the body:<\/p>\n<table width=75% align=center bgcolor=pink border=1 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=5>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"http:\/\/www.covenantnews.com\/daveblack090111.htm\">Our Banner, Our Emblem, Our Flag of Allegiance<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The relationship between church and state continues to be a subject of great interest and importance to me, particularly the dangers of statism and its inevitable by-product, nation-worship. For example, I think the flying of the American flag in our churches is a bad idea. In my opinion, it sends all the wrong messages. For one thing, it confuses the kingdom of God with the kingdom of man. We wonder, \u201cWhere does America stop and Christianity begin?\u201d For another thing, Jesus\u2019 kingdom is not of this world. It transcends tribe and nationality. And it is God\u2019s primary agent of activity in the world. Because of this, the nation-state is always seeking to usurp Christ\u2019s kingdom authority. Allegiance to the nation replaces (or at least actively competes with) allegiance to Christ.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>There is reason for thinking that if Christians could look, not at their own country, but at a man \u2013 the God-Man whose kingdom unites people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation \u2013 there would be no need for displays of national patriotism in their churches. By its very nature, the church is different from any other society on earth. And the cross, not the flag, is the point of intersection between the church and the world. The cross of Jesus Christ is the secret of being in the world without being of it. It is the source of freedom for us to be given to the world as broken bread and poured-out wine. It is our banner, our emblem, our flag of allegiance. Let us fly it high!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>Here is some further reading from one of my own sites:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.anabaptists.org\/writings\/politics.html\">Christian Citizenship<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.anabaptists.org\/ras\/31e30.html\">Separation of Church and State<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.anabaptists.org\/ras\/31e97.html\">The Christian&#8217;s Relation to the Nation<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.anabaptists.org\/ras\/21e74.html\">Nonresistance and Nonparticipation in Civil Government<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.anabaptists.org\/clp\/youth\/7-208.html\">Faith Worth Dying For<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t usually read Covenant News but the above headline caught my attention. Here you have the opening and closing paragraphs, with my own title borrowed from the body: Our Banner, Our Emblem, Our Flag of Allegiance The relationship between church and state continues to be a subject of great interest and importance to me, &#8230; <a title=\"Christians Without Borders\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2009\/christians-without-borders\/\" aria-label=\"More on Christians Without Borders\">Read more<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,8,10],"tags":[636,749],"class_list":["post-1410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity-101","category-politics","category-religion","tag-church-and-state","tag-patriotism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJUJ-mK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}