Brayton points out an astonishing case of religion being mixed in with an official government ceremony for no good reason and not even with much poetry to it: someone has come up with various “meanings” for the folds in the flag at military funerals. Now that the Air Force has changed it, no doubt, we will hear soon how the poor persecuted Christians just can't get respect in today’s secular progressive society. But the “ceremony” isn’t even “authentic”: it’s a recent engrafting of sanctimonious balderdash, just like the addition of In God We Trust to the currency. The “motto” was not on the currency in the days of the American founding and was not even added until the middle of the 19th century. Likewise “under God” which was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in the 1950s. Yet people act as though eliminating these phrases is somehow undoing some long-standing American tradition.
A commenter on Brayton’s site, a former military chaplain, puts it well:
never in my active duty career did I ever have any experience with or knowledge of this foolishness. This is the work of some sentimental misguided patriotism. It does not exist in any official liturgy or order of service regarding military funerals or memorial services. It certainly would never be a part of folding the flag at evening colors. In my opinion, it trivializes and cheapens the macrocosmic symbolism inherent in the flag as symbol. While I am a Christian and make no apology for being a Christian, I am ashamed of and embarrassed at what postures itself as Christianity in the public square today. The evangelical, fundamentalist brand of Christianity that has inserted itself into American politics is a metastasizing social cancer that seeks to erode the very foundation of American democracy.
This is how the “Christian nation” nonsense gets started: someone engrafts such references into a ceremony and nobody complains about it, and soon enough it’s an “old tradition” and eliminating it is “persecution.”
Update: Sure enough.
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