Patriot versus Nationalist
These days, our social context involves both patriotism and nationalism. The line between the two is both important and at times blurry. I consider patriotism to be healthy and nationalism to be unhealthy. Patriotism is usually defined as a love of one’s country or nation, while nationalism is defined as the view that one’s nation is superior to all others. When my family and I moved to the USA in 1996 we immediately noticed just how many American flags were flying on building, homes and front lawns. It was a surprising sight, quite different from European countries where patriotism is less overt but nonetheless present. Patriotism is a part of American life in powerful ways that is not so demonstrative in other nations. I am fine with that, unless it tips over into nationalism.
In 2010 I, along with my wife and adult children, became US citizens. It was a good day! I often say, humorously, that as a naturalized citizen, I a more patriotic than natural-born citizens because they are American simply by birth, but I chose America! I am patriotic about my adopted country, and I admire and feel proud of her best qualities, while at the same time, I frown with displeasure at her various shortcomings because I want America to be the best, finest, America that she can be. I am committed to working towards the ideals of freedom and flourishing for all Americans. At the same time, I understand that patriotism must include assessing where our American society is less than admirable and working to improve her. The ideals of the USA Founding Fathers as discussed in our founding documents certainly included many subtly different ideals of what our then-new nation should be, and debate about this was seen as a necessary civic duty.
In recent years we have all seen a rapid rise in nationalism, typically from the right wing of the political spectrum. Our current US President often speaks and posts on social media messages that show that he believes that not only is America good, but that it is the best nation on earth. He goes further by describing other nations in derogatory and deprecatory terms. He goes beyond patriotism into a Nationalism that sees America as superior to all other nations. In so doing he strays into regarding people from other countries as ‘worth less’ than Americans. Inevitably this has progressed into the frequent treatment of people from other countries as less than fully human. No matter what your political allegiance, I need hardly list examples of this, yet perhaps I must, to make my point. Nationalism has no problem separating parents from their children, permanently and without adequate records to ensure their reunion, as a part of our visa enforcement activity. Nationalism authorizes our military to blow up boats off the coast of Venezuela killing the citizens of another nation. But it has moved on from there to a yet more dangerous shift of using the mechanisms of our nation to threaten US citizens who disagree with our President’s actions. Our own military is deployed on US soil to ‘control’ US citizens as they engage in legal protest and exercise their first amendment rights. Nationalism is a dehumanizing impulse that starts by dehumanizing foreigners, and then so often progresses to seek to quash all dissenting voices to the agenda of those in power. In this way it is intrinsically undemocratic and in my view, un-American.
Christians’ First Allegiance is to God.
Christians may be patriots, but they must not be nationalists. The core principle here is that Christians are those who have pledged to follow God in Christ. Our first and full allegiance is to The Lord Jesus Christ, as the full revelation of the sacred Godhead, the three-in-One. Christ summarized the whole Old Testament (Hebrew) Law (Torah) as ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart soul and mind (see Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30, and Luke 10:27). The word ‘all’ is important here. Our devotion to God must be total. Jesus expounded this often in various other scriptures (see Luke 9:46 to 50 for example). Our primary and superior allegiance is to God and therefore to the values of God as taught by The Lord Jesus. Any allegiance to nation is not only very much secondary to our Christian allegiance, but we must vitally interpret our patriotism in the light of our primary and superior allegiance to the goodness, mercy, and holiness of God. The very way that Christians might be patriots must express the values of God. The errors of nationalism stand 180-degrees opposed to the values of God. If your don’t agree with me on this, just consider that many times that Jesus taught and exampled concerning the Samaritans – a people that Jewish nationalism of the time dehumanized.
Church for People of all Political Parties and No Party.
Church is the body of Christ, the congregation of those who have become Christians, and through baptism has vowed their allegiance to Christ and taken on such a shift in their identity, that as we grow in our Christian faith, we recognize that we have died to ourselves and now live anew as utterly renewed people, in Christ. Our congregations also warmly welcome those who are exploring the Christian faith. We offer hospitality to all people, even especially our enemies and those who oppose us, or even oppress us. Because of our primary and extensive allegiance to God in Christ, we work with intentionality and diligence against any secondary impulses that would cause division and argument in the people of Christ. The epistles of the New Testament teach this principle of unity in many places. Perhaps our Lord’s prayers for unity (not uniformity) in John 17 would be s passage to illustrate God’s wish for the church to be at peace together. American political party allegiances or preferences are so very far secondary to the primary allegiance to Christ, that we should never allow political difference to cause division in us. May God forbid that any Christian should leave our fellowship for reasons of political identification. Our church must be a church for all Americans of every political persuasion. Indeed, we must example to each other that the values of God must inform and direct our political decisions. All the while understanding that none of us, including your priests and bishop, have total understanding, so that we might come to different political conclusions, without any rift in our Christian unity.
Church for People of All Nationalities.
By extension, these thoughts also apply to people of various nationalities. While our local congregation is mostly American, we have members and frequent visitors who are citizens of the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Nicaragua, and those are just the ones that I am aware of. Some of these dear brethren have nationality in both America and a foreign country. Some were foreigners first and then naturalized as US citizen without losing their original foreign citizenship. Some are natural born Americans who have added a foreign citizenship. Others are foreign citizens who are living and worshipping in our congregation. Yet others have blood and heritage from the ‘first nations’ – Indigenous people who have had and continue to have a deeply troubled relationship with the USA. Again, we are united by something far greater that earthly citizenship or nationality – we are citizens of heaven – adopted children of the One True Living God. Our local parish congregation must be a place where all of us can experience the unifying people of God that is above all identifiers of nationality and earthly citizenship.
The Flag as symbol
The United States national flag – ‘Old Glory’ – the ‘Stars and Stripes’ is a beautiful symbol of America. (Notice that I use the word America as synonymous with the United States, while recognizing that our nation is only one of many American nations.) Most people who choose to fly the flag on their homes and businesses do so from a healthy patriotic motive. As I write, the village green in my town is festooned with US flags as we prepare to mark Veterans Day, as it is on Independence Day and Memorial Day. Yet always the flag has been used as a political symbol, claimed and used by both major US parties. In recent years the flag and strong patriotism have become a totem of the right wing, Republican party and most especially by the ‘far right’ in US politics. First the ‘tea party’ movement and then the ‘Make America Great Again’ or MAGA movement have embraced the US flag as a potent symbol that has gone beyond a healthy patriotism into a clear nationalism. This isn’t fair, right, or helpful to many who want to free our nation’s flag of these nationalistic overtones. Yet it is where we are as a society right now. Our flag has been weaponized by imbuing it with nationalistic connotations that are alienating many in our society and our congregation.
Consequently, I find it is now an unhelpful symbol of have in our house of worship. While I am happy to have the flag in our worship space on days of special significance to the majority of our congregation (e.g. Independence, Memorial and Veteran’s Days), I do not want it in our place of worship otherwise. This is certainly not any indication of disrespect to the flag or the ideals of the United States that most all of us hold dear. Of course not! Yet it is a deliberate decision to uphold our space as welcoming to all persons, with specific respect to the varied national and political secondary allegiances that we find in our diverse congregation.
Church as an Embassy of Heaven.
Now I wouldn’t want to push this next idea too far, but one way to thing about a Christian congregation is to see us as an embassy on earth of the Kingdom of Heaven, Ys, we know that all the earth belongs to God, indeed all the Cosmos, so yes, don’t take this point too far. Yet how wonderful is it that our church can example of all of our society, that it is possible to find unity in diversity, peace in national and political difference, because of the Lord who has made us all one?!
The US Flag Code requires that wherever the US flag is flown, all other flags must be positioned lower than it. In The Christian Church our highest allegiance is to God. Dos God have a flag? No. His supremacy is beyond all flags. The Lord Jesus Christ is described as King of kings and Lord of Lords, the Name above all names. May our community of Church live out our allegiance to God that needs no flags beyond the witness of our individual and collective lives that ‘fly the flag’ of God in the world that He is redeeming. Amen.