When we gather for public worship, we do so primarily as citizens of a universal body of believers, as citizens of the heavenly city, whose builder and maker is God (Heb 11:10). That is why in rightly ordered Reformed and Presbyterian churches one does not see national flags in the auditorium. Like Hoeksema and the Reformed before him, we pray for the magistrate, we thank God for the magistrate and for those who serve the community, nation, and state (and especially for those who place themselves in harm’s way in the military and in the police forces) but our principal allegiance is to the Kingdom of God, which, as our Lord Jesus said to Pilate, is “not of this world” (John 18:36). The visible, institutional church is an outpost of that heavenly kingdom. 

Mark Tooley, of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, weighs in on the June 25 patriotic worship service held by First Baptist Church in Dallas. First Baptist is the home of Robert Jeffress, whom you might know from his frequent appearances on Fox News as the putative Jerry Falwell of 2016. Tooley provides a helpful survey of some of the responses to the service and proceeds to respond by categorizing service, which one might describe as a stunt, as a question of preference or taste.

His essay is worth also reading because it illustrates the utility of the distinction between what Calvin called a “duplex regimen” (twofold government or twofold kingdom; see Institutes 3.14.15; 4.20.1). If we used that categorical distinction, rather than subjective category of preference, we find a way to affirm our citizenship in this world while simultaneously affirming our heavenly citizenship (Phil 3:20) without confusing the two. Since Christians have a dual citizenship and since the visible church is, as Herman Hoeksema argued in early 20th century, an expression of the heavenly kingdom, a worship service is no place for expressions of American, Canadian, Mexican, or Nigerian citizenship. As Calvin argued,

But whoever knows how to distinguish between body and soul, between this present fleeting life and that future eternal life, will without difficulty know that Christ’s spiritual Kingdom and the civil jurisdiction are things completely distinct. Since, then, it is a Jewish vanity to seek and enclose Christ’s Kingdom within the elements of this world, let us rather ponder that what Scripture clearly teaches is a spiritual fruit, which we gather from Christ’s grace; and let us remember to keep within its own limits all that freedom which is promised and offered to us in him.¹

We are always tempted to resolve the tension between the two spheres or the two governments (sacred and secular) in favor of the other. Calvin mentions what we might characterize as Jewish theocrats and Christians antinomians. There were Anabaptists who were seeking a theocracy, who anticipated a future, earthly golden age. There were other Anabaptists who wanted no part of civil life, who adopted a quasi-Gnostic view of the physical world. This approach has, since the 2nd century, led to two outcomes: licentiousness (antinomianism) and legalism or asceticism. We saw these two tendencies re-emerge through the Middle Ages in the radical dualistic Albigensian movement (and related groups, e.g., the Bogomils) and the monastic movements. We see the same sort of impulses in American fundamentalism and evangelicalism. If the physical world is not real or if it is inherently evil, then it must be suppressed or it may be indulged.

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