INDIANAPOLIS (RNS) While alumni from Shortridge High School stood and beamed, 60 singers attending a choir reunion closed our concert with “God Bless America.”

We weren’t using patriotism to make a point of supporting a war, or power to the right wing, or to make this a “Christian nation” or send all strangers home.

We were singing from that time before militarists hijacked patriotism to bolster American wars and to condemn anti-war protesters as anti-American. We sang from a time when patriotism belonged to everyone.

Back then, everyone sang patriotic songs in school, everyone said the Pledge of Allegiance. Jews and Christians stood side by side. While grown-ups struggled with racial integration, we just accepted whoever was present. We didn’t see wealth; we saw some trying and some not trying.

Our fathers had fought in World War II and in Korea, and we were proud of them. Our neighbors included refugees from European oppression and deprivation, and we were proud to welcome them to our, and their, “home sweet home.”

We loved our cities and towns, we loved our music and our cars — not because they made us a superpower and entitled us to police the world, but because they expressed freedom and the achievement that freedom makes possible.

The president of the United States was our president, not some rogue alien who needed to be undermined. When we pledged allegiance to the flag, we weren’t saluting a political party or an ideology. We were standing with friends and neighbors who went to school with us and were, therefore, part of us.

Yes, we were simple. Of course we were simple; we were children. We hadn’t yet learned to seize flags and use them as weapons. We weren’t craving power or wealth. We didn’t try to package “American values” to defend segregation or go after political enemies.

We just lived the values of freedom, tolerance, working hard, taking risks. We were excited about life — eager to learn, ready to fall in love, itching for car keys. America was where all that would happen. It could have been another country. But we were born here, and so we sang of “spacious skies” and this “sweet land of liberty.”

And that’s what we were singing about at our reunion concert: the simple gratitude of children who felt safe.

Eventually, we grew up, and we bear some responsibility for the distortion and perversion of patriotism that came later. We did our part in turning politics mean, stirring up religious extremism, shouting down opponents, demonizing the different. We joined a national collapse into selfishness and the politics of narcissism. We put right opinion above common humanity. We all have cause to be ashamed.

Grown-ups don’t always see reality. As Jesus said, God tends to reveal the important things to children because they can still see. As an adult, I know a lot about American history and politics. But as a child, I knew the simple joy of loving my country — not because it was better than any other nation, but because here I belonged.

I can’t speak for all the choristers who sang Irving Berlin’s love song to America, but I know that I was singing for a rekindling of gratitude and national pride in its best form. Not to be a child again, certainly not to buy into any ideology, but loving my homeland because it is my home.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter (at)tomehrich.)