The performance of the national anthem is not simply a patriotic ritual but one with religious import. The ritual is an aspect of a national faith that all American citizens are called upon to believe and participate in. We see this civic faith practiced when we stand to sing the National Anthem at sporting events, when schoolchildren recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and when politicians begin their speeches with appeals to the Declaration of Independence and conclude with the words “God Bless America.” Such patriotic rituals amount to what has been called a “civil religion,” to use the term made famous by the sociologist Robert N. Bellah. This civil religion serves to provide sacred legitimation for the American government and its institutions and shapes the performance of citizenship and patriotism. Although the American civil religion was forged within the context of the nation’s unofficial “Protestant establishment,” Americans practice this civil religion alongside their manifold faiths. In fact, the line between the two is often blurred.
Considered from this perspective, we can get a deeper understanding of what is at stake in the NFL players’ protest, and why it has sparked such outrage as well as commendation. The national anthem is not simply a song but a national hymn, and the American flag is not a mere piece of cloth but a sacred symbol representing the nation and its ideals. The singing of the anthem before the flag can thus be regarded as a religious ceremony during which citizens display their loyalty to the political order. It is, we might say, a priestly endorsement of the state. Opponents of the NFL protest are offended by what they regard as the players’ sacrilegious act, the desecration of a sacred symbol. This anger is compounded by the fact that the ceremony has come to represent support for the military and an acknowledgement of the sacrifices of those who have served in it. What fuels their anger is a religious ire, the hatred of those who dare profane a holy ritual.
From the point of view of the protesters, however, the gesture has a different intention and meaning. The protesters have not chosen to opt out of the ceremony (as religious groups such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses have requested to be to exempted from recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance in the nation’s public schools.) Rather than a sacrilege, the chosen gesture of protest ought to be seen as a new civic ritual that serves as a patriotic challenge to a nation that has failed to live up to its stated promises and ideals. In an op-ed in the New York Times last September, Kaepernick‘s teammate Eric Reid wrote that “[a]fter hours of careful consideration, and even a visit from Nate Boyer, a retired Green Beret and former N.F.L. player, we came to the conclusion that we should kneel, rather than sit, the next day during the anthem as a peaceful protest. We chose to kneel because it’s a respectful gesture. I remember thinking our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy.”
In short, the gesture of taking the knee was designed as different way of showing respect to the nation and its totem. Kneeling before the flag displays one’s recognition both of the importance of the object as a sacred symbol and also of the nation’s failure to live up to its founding promise; the act serves as a reminder that values of the nation have not yet been achieved, a call to hold the nation accountable to its ideals. It is an act well within America’s long tradition of prophetic challenges to the standing order, a tradition going as far back as Puritan New England and the American jeremiad.
What the controversy over the NFL national anthem protest reveals is a clash between priestly and prophetic expressions of the American civil religion. For the priests, the flag, national anthem, and nation they represent ought to venerated, and such veneration ought to take the official, one might say orthodox, form. (The United States Code describes the statutory conduct during the playing of the national anthem.)
The prophets, by contrast, hope that their counter ritual calls attention to the failings of the nation to guarantee and protect the rights of all its citizens. Its very purpose is to provoke dis-ease among spectators and to inspire positive social change. Further, understanding these rituals in religious terms allows us to think of them not only in terms of free speech but also in those of religious freedom.
This is not an issue that only concerns professional athletes. During the performance of the national anthem those in the stadium become participants as well as spectators. All in attendance have the choice on how to observe the ritual, whether to stand with our priests or kneel with our prophets, to question whether such ceremonies are even appropriate at sporting events (the revelation that the Department of Defense has spent millions of taxpayer dollars on advertising and marketing contracts with professional sports teams, including, but not limited to the NFL, for so-called “paid patriotism” initiatives ought to raise concerns), or to opt out of them completely and to express devotion to the nation and its military in their own ways.
