To the Church of White Evangelicals in the United States of America: 

You have created a large network of worship and praise. But whom do you worship and whom do you praise? Over your pulpit, there is a large empty cross–a symbol of my resurrection. But yours is empty for another reason: You have taken me down from the cross and buried me in a shroud of two flags with different images but identical colors.  

“Remember then from what you have fallen; repent and do the work you did at first.”
Revelation 2:5 

It began innocently enough: a need to create a visual symbol of identity. Your faith had been both refugee and pilgrim, sojourner and soldier, martyr and conqueror. You rightly discovered that my gospel is a nomadic spirit that lives off a movable feast. Evangelizing by nature requires travel: how else were you supposed to share my good news into “all corners of the earth”? Travel by choice is one thing, but when the kingdom of men shifts divine loyalties, persecution requires a necessary relocation. Centuries of migration, by choice or by force, found you in an unfamiliar land that offered the possibility of what I had longed for you: true freedom from religion. But you chose freedom of religion, and so built a nation on the blood and bones of Imago Dei to practice your perversion of my true commission: To love the blood and bones of your neighbor. 

I will give them a white stone, and on the white stone will be written a new name
that no one knows except the one who receives it.”
Revelation 2:17 

The “new” land gave you a “new” identity and what better way to signal that than with a flag–nay, two flags. Twin halves of your divided devotion. And to prove your devotion, you placed them in the front of your stage, I mean sanctuary. Both of equal height, Christian to the left, American to the right. Each bearing red, white, and blue with overlapping meanings. Is red for blood or for courage? Is white for purity or peace? Is blue for faithfulness or justice? The duplicitous meanings and diluted symbols conflate loyalty to a sovereign nation and divine authority. 

Repent then. 

If not, I will come to you soon and make war against them
with the sword of my mouth.”
Revelation 2:16 

What began as symbols of reverential honor have become totems of clannish privilege.  You have traded the nomadic gospel for two stationary flags, both planted on the very ground you stole, subconscious retribution for fleeing your own persecutors throughout the ages. These flags demanded more than visual attention, they demanded contractual fealty, and so you devised an oath to each: pledges of allegiance to the symbols that flanked the empty forgotten cross. Pledges that appropriated words like “life” and “liberty” and “believe” and “justice” and, yes, even “God” and “Christian.” Pledges that were mandated in school and football games. Pledges that commanded a symbolic focus became an ideology of idolatry. 

“…you have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam,
who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the people….”
Revelation 2:14 

And what happens when the symbol becomes greater than its meaning? Is it any wonder these symbols of life and liberty and salvation are marched into war? And is it any wonder these symbols are waved and wielded at any perceived threat of conflict and imagined conquest? Even if it occurs at the very heart of the nation that was founded on freedom of religion? Even if it is on one cold day on January 6, 2021 when cloth of red, white, and blue becomes a collage of crosses, stars, and stripes on fields of blue with the name of a leather-fisted king of men over your craven pale image of me. Hands of prayer held guns, knees crouched not in humility but aggression, and chants of violent delusional supremacy rang out over the City of Man. 

“I know your works; you have a name of being alive,
but you are dead.”  Revelation 3:1b 

Your pulpit cross is not empty because you honor my resurrection, it is empty because you have buried me underneath your zeal for power. You have chosen loyalty over devotion, control over humility, self-righteousness over compassion. You have married your love of country to your love of church. Indeed, your patriotism is equally yoked with your religion and this union has gestated a fetus fatal to your faith. And the consummation of your conjugal symbols has birthed a stillborn bastard child: Christian nationalism. 

“Let anyone who has an ear hear what
the Spirit is saying to the churches.” Revelation 2:29 

It is late, but there is still daylight. You cannot carry my cross when your hands hold two poles. Lay down your flags. Pick up my cross. It is stronger than steel, lighter than cotton, and resistant to the winds of change. Its crossed wooden frame points ever forward toward Divine Love and away from earthly loyalties and will guide you through the approaching night.