Wired Word Lesson of the Week

The Wired Word

Topic for Sunday, July 12, 2026:

United States Turns 250 and Half of Churches Celebrate:  A recent survey revealed that 50% of Protestant pastors in the United States believe that their church should do something special to commemorate the country’s 250th birthday. As you reflect on the occasion, discuss your congregation's approach to celebrating the anniversary, our nation's greatness as well as its failures, and the proper balance of love of country and love of God.

In the News

Individuals are encouraged to read the news below related to this topic before the July 12th bible study to be prepared for an engaging conversation:

According to a Lifeway Research study, 50% of Protestant pastors in the United States believe that their church should do something special to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding. 47% of pastors disagree with this approach, and 3% are not sure.

Older pastors are more likely to see the importance of patriotic elements in the worship service than their younger colleagues, according to the study. Pastors in the South (51%) and West (50%) are more likely than those in the Midwest (39%) and Northeast (37%) to say that patriotic elements are important.

Celebrating America during worship is more likely in rural churches than in urban churches, and more likely in congregations led by evangelical pastors than in those led by mainline pastors. In terms of denominational affiliation, the churches more likely to include patriotic elements are Pentecostals (64%), Baptists (53%), Methodists (49%), and those at nondenominational congregations (47%). Less likely to include such aspects in the service are churches that are Lutheran (32%) or Presbyterian/Reformed (29%).

When specifically considering a special commemoration of the country's 250th birthday, Pentecostals (65%), Methodists (56%) and Baptists (55%) are more likely than Lutheran (39%) and Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (31%) to agree that such a celebration is important.

"For churches with something special for July Fourth during their worship service," said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research, "more focus is on people within the congregation who have helped our country rather than a focus on the country itself." Around three in five Protestant pastors say they recognize living veterans (62%) or those with family currently serving in the armed forces (59%). Most say they include special music honoring America (55%) or recognize families who have lost loved ones in service to our country (51%).

Congregations are challenged to figure out what, if anything, should be celebrated in worship on the 250th anniversary of independence. In previous celebrations, the Bible has been lifted up by national leaders as an "anchor of liberty" and a guide for life. The Center Square reports that on the 100th anniversary in 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant urged American youth to "hold fast to the Bible as the sheet-anchor of your liberties; write its precepts in your hearts and practice them in your lives." On the 200th anniversary in 1976, President Gerald Ford said that settlers brought "the Bible and Blackstone's Commentary across the Atlantic among their few cherished possessions and established their own governments on a strange and hostile coast."   

Both of these anniversaries occurred in contentious times, with the centennial coming soon after the Civil War and the bicentennial occurring on the heels of the Vietnam War and Watergate. National greatness "does not exist without a simultaneous reckoning with national failure," asserts The New Yorker. In the Declaration of Independence, "Jefferson's first draft contained a hundred-and-sixty-eight-word denunciation of the transatlantic slave trade, which was excised from the final text. A seed of conflict was sown in that moment."

This conflict led to the Civil War and then decades of struggle for civil rights. In the year 1900, two African American brothers, James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, wrote a song that has come to be known as the Black National Anthem. It captures both the glory and the struggle of Black life in America. Called "Lift Every Voice and Sing," it includes the lament, "We have come over a way that with tears has been watered / We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered." But then it ends with words directed to God, "Shadowed beneath Thy hand / May we forever stand / True to our God / True to our native land."

A new documentary called "God and America's 250th" reports on the history of church-state relations, including conflicts that have occurred. According to filmmaker Jack Thomas Smith, freedom of religion in America was not intended to push religion onto government but to prevent government from imposing itself on religion. "Those who want to bring down Christianity," he said to Newsmax, "need to remember that the abolitionist movement, child labor laws, the women's suffrage movement, and the civil rights movement all emerged from the church."

The Lifeway Research study revealed that 30% of pastors say that their congregation's love for America sometimes seems greater than their love for God. Pastors who are less likely to include patriotic elements in their services are often among those most likely to worry about the levels of national love among their congregants. Younger pastors are more likely than older pastors to say that their church's love for America sometimes seems to rival their love for God.

More on this story can be found at these links:

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