# The Wired Word — United States Turns 250 and Half of Churches Celebrate **Summary.** The Wired Word lesson for the week of July 5, 2026 uses a Lifeway Research survey — 50% of US Protestant pastors think their church should do something special for the nation's 250th birthday, 47% disagree, 3% unsure — as the entry point to a study on patriotism in worship, civil religion, and the balance between love of country and love of God. The lesson does not tell classes whether to celebrate; it equips them to hold gratitude for country and primary allegiance to God at once, and to tell the national story "warts and all." (Source: [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/The Wired Word for 07052026|The Wired Word for 07052026]]) --- ## Key Claims 1. **Pastors split almost evenly on marking the 250th, and the split is patterned.** 50% yes / 47% no / 3% unsure. Older pastors favor patriotic elements more than younger; South (51%) and West (50%) more than Midwest (39%) and Northeast (37%); rural more than urban; evangelical-led more than mainline-led. By denomination (patriotic elements generally): Pentecostal 64%, Baptist 53%, Methodist 49%, nondenominational 47%, Lutheran 32%, Presbyterian/Reformed 29%. (Source: [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/The Wired Word for 07052026|The Wired Word for 07052026]]) 2. **The lesson names the civil-religion risk in the data itself.** 30% of pastors say their congregation's love for America sometimes seems greater than their love for God — and the pastors most likely to worry about that are the ones least likely to include patriotic elements in worship. Celebrating the nation in worship can slide into treating the country, its founding, and its symbols as objects of quasi-religious devotion. (Source: [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/The Wired Word for 07052026|The Wired Word for 07052026]]) 3. **"Greatness alongside failure."** Citing *The New Yorker*, the lesson argues national greatness "does not exist without a simultaneous reckoning with national failure" — the 168-word denunciation of the transatlantic slave trade that Jefferson drafted and the Continental Congress cut, "a seed of conflict" leading to the Civil War and the civil-rights struggle. It lifts up the Johnson brothers' "Lift Every Voice and Sing" (1900) as a text holding both "the glory and the struggle of Black life in America." (Source: [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/The Wired Word for 07052026|The Wired Word for 07052026]]) 4. **The "Bible as anchor of liberty" frame, quoted and left contestable.** Presidents Grant (1876, "hold fast to the Bible as the sheet-anchor of your liberties") and Ford (1976, settlers who brought "the Bible and Blackstone's Commentary across the Atlantic") are cited. The lesson also cites documentary-maker Jack Thomas Smith (via Newsmax) arguing US religious freedom was meant "to prevent government from imposing itself on religion," not to push religion onto government, and crediting the church with the abolitionist, child-labor, suffrage, and civil-rights movements. The lesson flags these causal and "original intent" readings as interpretive and contestable. (Source: [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/The Wired Word for 07052026|The Wired Word for 07052026]]) 5. **A four-passage scripture spine on loyalty to God vs. nation.** Deuteronomy 6:5 (the Shema) read against the Puritan "Promised Land" framing and its 19th-century secularization into "Manifest Destiny"; Matthew 22:21 (Caesar / God) with loyalty to God on "a different and higher level"; John 18:36 ("My kingdom does not belong to this world") — a kingdom without soldiers; Romans 13:1 with the paired question of when disobedience to authority is warranted. (Source: [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/The Wired Word for 07052026|The Wired Word for 07052026]]) > [!quote] > "Shadowed beneath Thy hand / May we forever stand / True to our God / True to our native land." — "Lift Every Voice and Sing," James Weldon Johnson & J. Rosamond Johnson (1900) --- ## Analysis for this wiki A mainline adult-study curriculum treating the semiquincentennial as a live pastoral question rather than a settled one. Its usefulness here is as a *pro-social civil-religion* counter-specimen to the wiki's [[Christian Nationalism]] material: same subject (the nation inside worship), opposite handling. Where the Museum of the Bible marathon in [[2026-06-27-data-over-dogma-america-reads-the-bible|Data Over Dogma — America (Almost Never) Reads the Bible]] deploys Scripture as branded national theater, this lesson keeps God, not the nation, as the highest priority and insists on the "warts and all" story — the excised slavery clause, "Lift Every Voice and Sing." The denominational gradient in Claim 1 (Pentecostal/Baptist high, Presbyterian/Reformed/Lutheran low) is a clean data point for the civil-religion-by-tradition pattern. **St. John's UCC relevance.** As a mainline, likely Open and Affirming congregation, the 250th is exactly the "should patriotic elements be in worship?" decision this lesson frames. The 30% "love of country rivals love of God" figure and the four-passage spine are directly usable for a worship-team or study-group conversation. This is a *prep resource*, not a dated St. John's service — consistent with how the wiki files Wired Word issues (cf. [[2026-06-21-wired-word-men-losing-friends|Wired Word 06/21/2026 — Research Reveals That Men Are Losing Friends]], [[2026-04-23-wired-word-finishing-well-church-closures|Wired Word — Finishing Well in a Time of Church Closures]]). > [!note] Tradition / source-caution > The Wired Word is a mainline-oriented, current-events adult Bible study curriculum; it is deliberately even-handed and hands classes the questions rather than the answers. Cautions carried by its own sources: the Lifeway figures describe *only* US Protestant pastors (not Catholic, Orthodox, non-Christian, or lay attitudes), and stated pastoral intent is not congregational practice; Jack Thomas Smith's "the church produced the reform movements" and "original intent" claims are interpretive and would be contested by historians. The lesson's framing (love of country vs. love of God) presupposes the two can compete — a premise a class may want to examine rather than accept. > [!question] Concept-page candidate — "civil religion" > Between this lesson and the [[Christian Nationalism]] concept, the wiki now distinguishes two things worth separating: *Christian nationalism* (the state as a Christian project) and *civil religion* (quasi-religious devotion to the nation, its founding, and its symbols — which this lesson treats as a risk to name, not a program to advance). One more source that theorizes civil religion directly would justify a `concepts/civil-religion.md` node. Held below threshold; folded into [[Christian Nationalism]] for now.