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June 24, 2026

This edition is sponsored by Cru

Hello, fellow wayfarers … How churches ought to recognize the 250th Independence Day without making America an idol … Why TikTok and the World Cup gave me hope for the future this week … What our technological crisis can teach us about loneliness and how to fix it … A Hoosier Desert Island Playlist … This is this week’s Moore to the Point.

How to Have a "Patriotic" Worship Service Without Making America the Point

A few weeks ago, I wrote here that the 250th anniversary of the United States deserves a better gospel than the false one of Christian nationalism. A pastor wrote in to ask what his church should do on the Sunday before this important Independence Day. Here’s what I told him:

Dear pastor,

I have little worry about you leading your church toward nationalistic idolatry, either of the "hard" sort of cosplay theocracy that is marketable today or of the "soft" sort of God-and-country civil religion of the last generation. You rightly cringe at the bad exegesis of identifying covenantal Israel with the United States. You’d never replace John Newton’s "Amazing Grace" with Lee Greenwood’s "God Bless the U.S.A." What you might do, though, is act as though this Sunday were just another Sunday, as though it were before the fourth of September instead of the Fourth of July: singing what you would ordinarily sing, continuing with the next verse of the sermon series in Acts or whatever.

I can see why you might want to do that. You might assume this choice would recalibrate your people to see that Word and worship are above the temporal flux of nation-states, and therefore the preeminent mission of the church should not be disrupted even by the amount of time it takes to acknowledge that national moment. In this view, a regular Sunday would be its own protest against idolatry. I just don’t think it does that.

Imagine, with me, a woman I used to know who realized her mother had become an idol in her life. The woman realized she valued her mother’s approval so much that she had become incapable of making her own decisions. This mother had manipulated the biblical command to "honor your father and your mother" (Ex. 20:12, ESV throughout) as though it created a matriarchal dictatorship. The woman realized her mother was so central in her life that she believed every belittling thing her mother said about her, and she was constantly crushed that she could never please her mother. She realized this was unhealthy: Her obsession with her mother had become an idol that was choking her. It was exhausting.

This woman’s diagnosis was probably mostly right. But what she decided to do was to pretend her mother didn’t exist. She still went home for Thanksgiving, but she never looked in her mother’s direction. When her mother said something, she pretended she didn’t hear it. She thought about what she would ordinarily do or say just to please her mother, then did the opposite. She thought this would free her from how overly significant her mother had become to her life. But it did just the opposite. Her mother now had even more power over her. The energy she had spent catering to her mom was now devoted to the theater of pretending she wasn’t there. Instead of being governed by a tyrannical list of "What does Mom want?" she now had a just-as-tyrannical list of "What does Mom not want?"

Most of us don’t have that same idol, but we often do similar things. Whatever we’ve seen go wrong in the past we try to fix by doing the exact reverse. Sometimes that’s right, but rarely. If sin pulls us out of equilibrium—the right ordering of our loves—we often replace one idol with another. That doesn’t work, and it’s certainly not what’s called for here, at America’s 250th.

The problem is not that patriotism is wrong. Patriotism is a good and right attitude toward a country. The problem is confusing a nation with the kingdom of God, confusing love of country with love of God. If you grew up in a fertility cult, you might grow really uncomfortable when your new church reads Bible passages on marriage. But rejecting a fertility cult doesn’t mean rejecting fertility itself; the response to a sex cult isn’t the rejection of sex. Our response is a reordering of those things into right proportion in light of the "summing up" of all things in Christ (Eph. 1:10–11, NASB 1995).

Part of the way the church should shape us is by demonstration, not simply teaching. And in an era of idolatrous blood-and-soil nationalism all over the world, we need all the more a demonstration of the right kind of patriotism—the kind that loves the country but puts the kingdom first.

And we actually already know how to do this.

In his first letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul wrote, "First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way" (2:1–2). Remember, Paul wrote this letter in the context of imperial Rome, which was hostile to the way of Jesus and armed to the teeth against it. Yet as he did elsewhere, he wrote to give honor where it could be given, gratitude where it could be found.

Significantly, though, Paul addressed this thankfulness not to kings or political structures but to God. And then he made an even more important move: He defined the primary meaning of we. Paul was a Roman citizen, and he took this citizenship seriously. More than once he appealed to his Roman citizenship against those who violated his rights (Acts 16:37; 22:25–29). Even so, he told the church at Philippi, "Our citizenship is in heaven" (Phil. 3:20).

The very fact that temporal politics—or the identity that comes with it—is not the most important thing in our lives enables us to give thanks and honor. We seek peacefulness and quiet not for their own sake but for the sake of being who "we" are—those who come to God through the mediation of Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 2:5). Our national thanksgiving is a step toward something else—toward what it means to be part of the church, the communion of saints that joins heaven to earth. That’s why Paul wrote briefly about prayers and thanks for the nation before turning to what is more important—how Timothy’s hearers should relate to one another and to the outside world as the church.

Recognizing that we are in a context that gives us much to be grateful for is not idolatry. In fact, to refuse to recognize that would be a key aspect of idolatry, the refusal to give thanks (Rom. 1:21). Again, we already know how to recognize our context. If I’m in a church in California that thanks God for sparing the community from wildfires and prays for wisdom for firefighters and community leaders, my response would not be "But I live in Tennessee—and other Christians are in Tanzania and Tibet and Tbilisi. This church is identifying the body of Christ with California!" Of course not.

Recognize the 250th anniversary. Thank God for every blessing and gift that has come with America, without pretending our country is faultless. We seek to be "a more perfect union," our founders wrote, not a perfect one. When a loved one has a birthday, what do we do? Recite Uncle Ronnie’s past addiction to horse tranquilizers or the time his car was repossessed for nonpayment? No. We thank God for another year of Uncle Ronnie’s life and think about all the ways, through him, God has blessed and shaped us. That’s not idolatry; it’s just gratitude.

All sorts of things could confuse people in a time of this kind of civil religion: for example, songs that feel as though they are written in praise to the country. I wouldn’t recommend congregationally singing the national anthem, nor "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which uses biblical imagery but for the nation’s military might—though both are great songs that would be appropriate for the town’s fireworks display on the Fourth. But you can sing songs of thanksgiving to God, noting that part of what we are giving thanks for is this country and its freedoms.

Likewise, you can and should pray for America. Just notice whether what you are saying is actually addressed to God. If the prayer sounds like a political speech, you are talking to someone other than Jesus, who is not an American citizen and is perfectly happy that way.

Above all, make sure every moment in worship reminds your people of what’s true: They are joining an existing worship service in the heavenly places, surrounded by innumerable angels and the redeemed of all ages (Heb. 12:22–24). We are Americans, yes, but we are Americans on pilgrimage to Mount Zion, not to Mount Rushmore, and we are a tiny sliver of a kingdom that is not of this world.

In other words, don’t have a "patriotic worship service," and don’t have a "counterpatriotic worship service." Worship God through Christ Jesus. And as you do, teach people how to transfigure even their patriotism to seek first another kingdom and serve first another king.

How World Cup Visitors Shook Us Out of Cynicism

I’ve spent a lot of time decrying how social media platforms are fueling division and cruelty and envy and hate. Every once in a while, though, I see something that breaks through all the cynicism—even on a platform like TikTok. Last week I was in Scotland, and it seemed from my social media feed that all the Scots had gone the other way, to the United States. I watched as Scottish fans in Boston for the World Cup marched in kilts to Fenway Park, where they enlivened the entire stadium by singing Scottish songs and bringing their enthusiasm for baseball.

Many of us followed accounts of Europeans going around the country, reporting back on things such as free refills of chips at Mexican restaurants and (my favorite) tours of Buc-ee’s. What I loved about all this was the goodwill and sincerity.

Visitors to the US could have posted a sneering set of videos about how vulgar Americans are, with shots of Taco Bell servings as the reason for American obesity, or about how stupid the kitsch for sale in the gas stations is. And Americans could have posted videos deriding the World Cup ("That’s not football!") or resenting the Scots or Germans or Brazilians or Japanese for "bringing their songs into our baseball games" or whatever. But I found none of that.

What went viral were Americans loving the energy their visitors brought to their towns—and the visitors expressing gratitude for the warmth and hospitality with which Americans received them.

Both the Americans and the visitors displayed curiosity, wonder, and gratitude and showed how specificity can include rather than exclude. When the Scots sing Scottish songs at Fenway, they do not become less Scottish—or less welcome. When the Frenchman marvels at Beaver Nuggets, nobody thinks he wants the 8th arrondissement converted into Buc-ee’s. These people had confidence and pride in their home countries and traditions in a way that made them more able to enjoy and give and receive hospitality from everybody else.

I know it’s not much. It’s just TikTok and Instagram, and the World Cup doesn’t last forever. But it wasn’t nothing. It was the triumph of sincerity over cynicism and hate in this one little area. That’s a good start. Maybe the kids are going to be all right after all.

Andy Crouch on Why Technology Can’t Cure Loneliness

A few years ago, Andy Crouch told me a story I haven’t been able to forget. A woman he knew was working from home, eyes fixed on her laptop, when her small daughter walked over, pressed her own face directly between her mother’s face and the screen, and said with a kind of quiet desperation, "Mom, look at me."

I’m away with my family for a little while this summer, so we’re bringing back a conversation from 2022 that lands even harder now than it did then. Back then, Andy and I sat down to talk about his book The Life We’re Looking For—about smartphones and social media and the strange new world we’ve built around ourselves. But listening to it again, I realized we weren’t really talking about screens at all. We were talking about what it means to be known.

I had spent that same week teaching on Hagar—the enslaved castaway, alone in the desert, who became the first person in Scripture to give God a name: El Roi, the God who sees. That hunger to be seen is no modern glitch; it is the oldest ache we carry. And Andy thinks our screens have learned to mimic what we want without ever satisfying it.

Andy argues most of us have quietly accepted a trade none of us ever knowingly made: more convenience for less presence, more control for less connection, more power for less personhood. And the ones who tend to notice the cost first, it turns out, are our children—the ones standing in front of the glowing rectangle, asking to be seen.

We get into a lot in this episode: Why narcissism comes not from too much recognition but from a bottomless ache of never having been truly known. Why I couldn’t tell you the name of a single person who delivers packages to my door—and what that says about all of us. Why Jesus, of all people, never once used media to do his work. And why the cure for a lonely age might be something as small—and as terrifying—as opening the door of your life to one other person.

That’s the question Andy keeps asking, and it’s the one I want to leave with you: How many people have a key to your house?

You can listen to the whole thing here.