The Flags We Fly

This morning, my 10-year-old son and I retrieved from a storage closet our American flag. Having been in storage for the winter, and with Memorial Day approaching and April showers behind us, it was time for Old Glory to fly again from the front of our home. There was little fanfare, but the tradition of flying the American flag on national holidays seems increasingly rare, so we try not to miss it.

America will always be a nation of many flags. In my office in Washington, D.C., I have a flag from my home state of Tennessee. The flag of the Commonwealth of Virginia, where I currently live, features the figure of virtue standing atop a defeated king with the words “sic semper tyrannis,” or “thus always to tyrants.” Allegiance goes to what the flag symbolizes. We do not, of course, pledge allegiance to a 2’x3’ piece of fabric. Ideally, a flag tells you something about the person flying it. Thus, those who died under the banner of the stars and stripes died for the men and women for whom they fought. And when we honor the flag on Memorial Day, we honor those who died under its banner.

The flags we fly broadcast our faithfulness and loyalty to something. And America’s many flags certainly have a pecking order. The U.S. Flag Code, a federal law that advises how the U.S. flag should be displayed, even includes provision for the positioning of the American flag:

“No other flag or pennant should be placed above or, if on the same level, to the right of the flag of the United States of America, except during church services conducted by naval chaplains at sea, when the church pennant may be flown above the flag during church services for the personnel of the Navy.” 

That means that in proper usage, even my beloved Tennessee Tri-Star flag defers to Old Glory. But the dominance of the American flag isn’t quite as solid as it once was.

Just last year, The New York Times proffered the notion that, “Today, flying the flag from the back of a pickup truck or over a lawn is increasingly seen as a clue, albeit an imperfect one, to a person’s political affiliation in a deeply divided nation.” In the past — in much of America — homes that didn’t display the American flag on Memorial Day or Independence Day would be in the rare category. Nowadays, the stars and stripes are but one of a cornucopia of banners raised to broadcast a favored cause.

We see and hear about these flags all the time. The removal of Confederate symbols from state flags has been staple of the news in past decades. And in a matter of days, the rainbow flag celebrating what once was known as a sin — pride — will be displayed everywhere by businesses and governments held in the sway of sexual activists. In fact, the display of the rainbow flag at American embassies across the globe by the Biden administration provoked Congress to include a provision in the 2024 omnibus bill that prohibits the flying of flags other than the U.S. flag at State Department facilities. And just weeks ago, pro-Hamas protestors at the University of North Carolina replaced an American flag with a Palestinian flag, only to have it swapped back by a group of heroic students.

Even more recently, The New York Times again highlighted what they deemed as flags of division. In the past week, a front-page story with the headline “Another Provocative Flag Was Flown at Another Alito Home” ran in the Times. The “provocative” flag was a replica of a revolutionary banner with a pine tree and the words “Appeal to Heaven.” Apparently, that was one appeal too many for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who had another property that displayed an upside-down American flag two years ago. This “news” has caused a rewriting of the Wikipedia page on the Appeal to Heaven flag, which is now apparently a “symbol of Christian nationalism.”

But Justice Alito may be on to something. Because when it comes to flags, Christians have one that supersedes them all. It’s not the Appeal to Heaven flag or even the Christian flag that is displayed by many churches. And it’s definitely not made of cloth. In Exodus 17:15, after the people of Israel defeated the Amalekites, we’re told that “…Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The LORD Is My Banner.” The Hebrew phrase Yahweh Nissi means that Moses considered Yahweh himself as his banner — the flag under which he fought. The victory would be known as the Lord’s more so than Moses’s.

We Americans fly many flags, and we will indeed be known by ones we let unfurl from our standards. As I let my 10-year-old place the flagpole into the bracket this morning, he and I paid homage to those who fell under those colors throughout America’s history. The flag on our house doesn’t make us Americans or even better Americans — how we live as Americans will see to that. Like Moses, we also need a higher standard under which we live and move and have our being. As we remember those who died this Memorial Day, we would do well to fly the flag of the one who overcame death, Jesus Christ. There is no higher banner.