During the “Celebrate Freedom” rally in the nation’s capital, a Southern Baptist choir sang a song based on Pres. Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”

The First Baptist Church of Dallas was a sponsor of the event. The megachurch’s pastor, Robert Jeffress, is an outspoken Trump supporter.  Gary Moore wrote the song. He used to serve as First Baptist’s music minister.

Jeffress took some flack for wrapping up Jesus in an American flag, but the pastor blew off criticism, calling detractors “evangelical gnats.”

“They are absolutely nothing but evangelical gnats who are looking for any excuse to nibble at the president. If you take these critics’ argument to their logical end, then Christians need to quit saying the Pledge of Allegiance.”

Jeffress got one thing right. Christians need to quit saying the Pledge of Allegiance. If you claim citizenship in the Kingdom of God, why would you pledge fidelity to an earthly kingdom?

We can’t serve two kingdoms.

This becomes especially significant considering the kingdoms of the world and their systems belong to Satan. I don’t want to pledge allegiance to him.

Writing for Patheos, John Aigner  perfectly described the problem with the Trumpesque hymn specifically, and more generally pledging allegiance to the American state.

“The problem is that it has been adopted by a significant portion of the evangelical church. It’s their mantra, their creed, and their prayer, and they shout it out with nationalistic fervor. Pledging allegiance to God and to America in the same breath, melding together the kingdom of God and self, they pray a blasphemous prayer to a red, white and blue Jesus … How tragically this prayer cancels out the prayer of Jesus himself. The political church prays, ‘Make America great again!’ Jesus prayed, ‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’”

Far too many American Christians conflate the United States with God’s kingdom Worse, some elevate the country above the Kingdom of God. America is not “the Christian nation.”

Kingdom considerations aside, even if you embrace such things as constitutions, and believe in America’s founding principles, you should reject the Pledge of Allegiance.  It completely bastardizes the constitutional system as originally conceived. The United States are neither “one nation,” nor are they indivisible.

So Jefferss is right. Follow the logic to its conclusion. Stop saying the Pledge of Allegiance.