The God Bless the USA Bible, Calmly Considered

Photo by Matt Reynolds

I told myself I wouldn’t write this piece. I said to myself, “Leave it alone, Watson. Just walk away.” After all, anything having to do with Christian nationalism, American exceptionalism, and most particularly a certain former president is radioactive in this bewildering cultural moment. I would prefer to remain radiation-free.

Unfortunately, I seem to be constitutionally (pun intended) incapable of not writing on this topic. Once again the Bible has been dragged onto the political battleground of an increasingly divided United States. It has become cannon fodder amid the culture wars. I don’t like that. The Bible is too important, too holy for such irreverence. 

So… there’s this thing called the God Bless the USA Bible. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It was, after all, endorsed and marketed by none other than one Donald John Trump. Social media subsequently went a bit… what’s the word?... oh yeah… completely bananas. It was like a gallery of exploding crania as I scrolled through Facebook. My first mistake, in retrospect, was scrolling through Facebook. I’m starting to think social media might not be entirely healthy. 

I don’t want to talk about Trump, though. Plenty of other people are doing that, no doubt with great passion and loquaciousness. Heck, just scroll through Faceb… no, wait… don’t do that. There are other issues besides Trump’s involvement in need of some critical evaluation, so let’s dive into those. 

What is the God Bless the USA Bible? Well, it’s a KJV Bible plus a few other items. I’ve heard pernicious rumors that this Bible is made in China, but Lee Greenwood’s own website reassures us in bold print that this Bible is made in the U.S. of A. Sorry, China. I guess you’re going to have to wait for Lee Greenwood to release “God Bless the PRC.” Maybe Xi Jinping will make a commercial for it.  

The God Bless the USA Bible includes a copy of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, and—here’s the really special part—a handwritten chorus of Lee Greenwood’s monster hit, “God Bless the USA” (hence the name of the Bible). It does seem to be a somewhat random collection. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights are all documents establishing the autonomy and governance of the United States. The Pledge of Allegiance is…well… a pledge of allegiance. “God Bless the USA” is a patriotic country-and-western song. What is the connecting thread? I suppose it’s that all of them would be appreciated by patriotic Americans, though one wonders why our national anthem got bumped for the chorus of “God Bless the USA.” 

This isn’t the first patriotic Bible we’ve seen. Take, for example, The NKJV American Patriot's Bible: The Word of God and the Shaping of America. According to the product description on Amazon, “This beautiful Bible spotlights the people and events that demonstrate the godly qualities that have made America great. The American Patriot's Bible connects three important elements: the teachings of the Bible, the history of the United States, and the connection it has to our lives today.” Wait a minute, though… the New King James Version? Who made this thing? Communists? 

Speaking of communists, I was recently identified as such in one of the several GMC Facebook groups. I assure you, however, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Communist Party. Heck, I love the Dallas Cowboys, rare steaks, and country music. I own a smoker and several trucker hats. More to the point, I’ve traveled the world enough to see that the USA is in many ways a remarkable country. We have our sins, past and present, some quite egregious. We need to be honest about these. We need to be equally honest about the extraordinary nature of the United States, its unprecedented, if imperfectly realized, elevation of the principles that all people are created equal and have been endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

Naturally, then, I think the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights are exceedingly important documents. The Pledge of Allegiance isn’t important in the same way, but it is a way of expressing our commitment to this extraordinary nation in which we live. As for the chorus to “God Bless the USA,” I don’t really have an opinion. And no, that doesn’t make me a communist, either. 

The Bible, however, is an entirely different kettle of fish than any of these. It’s a different kind of document altogether. I’ll mention three significant ways in which the Bible differs from the other documents in the God Bless the USA Bible. For Christians, the Bible is canonical, revelatory, and holy. These other documents are not. 

First, the Bible is canonical. The writings of Scripture were inspired by the Holy Spirit to serve as a canon—a rule or measuring rod—according to which we judge Christian faith and practice. As Protestants, we believe that the canon of Scripture is the norma normans non normata, a Latin phrase from the Reformation that basically means that Scripture is the “unnormed norm.” We do not judge Scripture. Rather, Scripture judges us. We interpret Scripture, and we draw upon the riches of our Christian tradition to help us to do so, but Scripture is primary. When most Protestants talk about sola Scriptura, this is basically what they mean: the primacy of Scripture as the norm of Christian faith and life. 

The Bible is also revelatory. Through Scripture, we encounter the revelation of God’s saving work in history. Scripture teaches us about our creation in the divine image; humankind’s fall from a state of grace; God’s work in and through Israel; the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and the fullness of God’s new creation that awaits us in the age to come. Apart from Scripture, we would never know that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16). We could never figure out on our own that Christ, having the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness (Phil 2:6-7). We only know these things because God has revealed them to us through these inspired texts. 

Finally, Scripture is holy. This means it is “set apart” for a sacred purpose. Its canonical and revelatory aspects mean it is sui generis—one of a kind. There is nothing else like it. Other books may be good. They may even be inspired, but they are not holy in the way that Scripture is. They are not set apart as a rule or measuring rod for Christian faith and practice. Scripture teaches us how to be saved. It tells us about the God who created us and the great lengths to which this God has gone to save us from self-destruction. Other books may teach these same things, but if they do, they derive these teachings from the Bible. The holiness of Scripture is its set-apartness for the purpose of leading sinful men and women into salvation. 

As great as the specifically American documents in the God Bless the USA Bible may be, they are neither canonical, revelatory, nor holy. They are the creations of human beings, some of whom were quite brilliant, but human nonetheless. They may be important, but they are not sacred Scripture. Thus, to place them in a collection with works that are canonical, revelatory, and holy represents a category mistake. It misrepresents what kinds of documents these American documents are and what their functions are. The purpose of the political documents is to establish and promote good governance. The purpose of Scripture is to lead us into salvation through uniquely authoritative teaching. If we put all of these disparate documents together, it would be easy for confusion to set in, for us to begin to believe that somehow the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights have the same kind of purpose and authority that the Bible does. In fact, including them in a collection called the God Bless the USA Bible seems to indicate that they are a part of the Bible, but they are not. 

The church decided long ago that some works should be grouped together as Scripture and some should not. In other words, the church established a canon, both a list and a rule. We have long known what that list is, and the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Pledge of Allegiance, and “God Bless the USA” are not Scripture. It is wrongheaded to place them alongside Scripture in a book that we are calling a “Bible.” We don’t get to add to or take away from the Bible based upon our preferences. 

When John Wesley referred to himself as a “man of one book,” he didn’t mean that he only read one book, or that other books weren’t important. He meant that one book towered over all others in importance, because only one book is inspired by the Holy Spirit to teach us how to be saved. In that sense, I’m a man of one book, too, and I hope you are a man or woman of one book. For Christians, among all the books ever written, the Bible is preeminently important. No other writing stands beside it. When we try to place other documents alongside it in importance, we end up both elevating those documents beyond their proper significance and diminishing the significance of Scripture. 

Is the God Bless the USA Bible the worst thing that’s ever happened? Of course not. It’s just misguided. I can imagine many people buying this collection with the best of intentions. But there are problems with it—significant problems that can lead to a misunderstanding of God’s will and guidance for our lives. So let’s let the Bible be the Bible. It stands alone as canonical, revelatory, and holy. 

And I promise, I’m not a communist.

David F. Watson is Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary, and is Lead Editor of Firebrand.