I intend to prevent this piece from becoming another tirade against the evils of the USA. There are already plenty of those in circulation, and they have their place; they give us needed perspective. But it isn’t my purpose to list our crimes or decry our bids for empire; instead, I want to try to develop some ideas about what it can mean for a Christian to be “patriotic,” no matter what nation she calls home.

In these times, a working definition of “patriotism” can’t avoid being informed by the general sentiments of collective outrage and national solidarity, by the intensified focus on “security” as the end-all, and by the development of a popular vocabulary that serves to morally justify that focus and make it nearly ubiquitous. We naturally want to call the common reactions to the September 11 tragedies “patriotic”, but I contend that if we let “patriotism” be exclusively so defined, without qualifying it, then we as Christians can have little to do with it.

So the questions are, What is patriotism? and, What place should it be given in a Christian life and worldview? The answer to the first question will in large part determine our answer to the second, for depending on what patriotism is—or more accurately what it can be—we must either exclude or embrace what it has to offer.

We tend to define patriotism as a love for one’s country, and this is generally correct. This love, though, is not confined to a sentimental feeling, since it has the power to incite people to great action, sometimes of the most radical kind. Patriotism seems to have supplied much of the motive power for some of the best and worst of history; in World War II, patriots were found both bombing London and liberating concentration camps. Patriotism drove both sides to memorable deeds, and yet we honor the Allied cause as (on the whole) noble and just, while we use “Hitler” as a synonym for “evil.” What made the difference?

Certainly based on this example we can say that patriotism will be good or bad depending on its object., depending on whether one’s country warrants patriotic support. Or, more precisely, depending on whether the policies of one’s country deserve support. If we are to determine this, we obviously need some higher standard to which we can appeal, a moral framework that is capable of relativizing our obligations to our “homeland” by means of an absolute to which we pledge our allegiance.

But this is precisely where our problems arise, and have arisen most dramatically in recent months. It seems very easy for the human heart to absolutize his nation, relativizing all other moral obligations for the sake of service to its cause and fidelity to one’s identity as its citizen. The nation itself becomes God, and every norm of justice and morality is emptied of its real content and refilled with whatever means are identified as necessary to the ends adopted by the nation itself. Horrible crimes are justified in this way, and sickening hypocrisy accompanies it on the part of those who say they serve God, and not Caesar. The accommodation of the Nazi regime by German Protestants is just one chilling example.

As Christians, the absolute to which we owe our fidelity is Christ. Our norms of justice are informed by Scripture, which demands that all other laws be subordinated to or verified by the one law of Love. The propriety and extent of other allegiances must be tested against our obligations to love our neighbors and our enemies as ourselves, to work for peace and justice, to plead for the widow and the orphan, to live and work as part of God’s creation being redeemed by the grace of Jesus Christ.

Every former loyalty is forgotten when we pledge our loyalty to Christ, who comprehends them in himself, looking to complete the good work he began in us until that day when the wealth of the nations will be brought into the New Jerusalem. We serve a God who expresses his jealousy by saying that unless we hate our father and mother - and our nation - we cannot follow after him.

Few Christians in the United States would admit to placing America above Christ, and I believe that few actually do, even unwittingly. Our problem is far more subtle. We don’t worship the U.S. instead of God—we just identify U.S. interests with God’s interests, which amounts to the same thing. To sustain that (mis)identification, Christians seem to have developed a set of myths that work to explain how “America” is a “Christian Nation” (which is highly dubious and deserves to be explored in another article). As a “Christian Nation,” we have a privileged status that sanctifies our foreign policy and dramatizes our domestic policy. “Christian Nation” is a statement about identity; we approach our debates about internal matters with concerns about the maintenance of that identity, and we approach our external affairs armed with confidence-building comparisons of ourselves to other nations, which are “far worse” than us.

I believe that it is with “identity” that the problem begins. It is pleasant for a Christian to be able to identify his nation as a “Christian” one. But though it may be possible to describe any nation as more or less “Christian”, it is antithetical to Christianity itself to try to substitute the identity we have in Christ with an identity we have in our country even if that country looks like a Christian one. When we so fuse our national identity with our fundamental identity as children of God and followers of Jesus, we have made a relative good an absolute one.

It becomes easy to continue this deception when the uncomfortable alternative is to dismantle the false identity we have come to cherish. And so we American Christians continue to deceive ourselves into thinking that it is alright to support or at least overlook foreign policies that fund brutal dictators (Sadaam Hussein) and ignore atrocities that could have been prevented (Rwanda), in the name of maintaining a favorable balance of power or encouraging profitable trade conditions—in the name of our “national interests.” We condition ourselves to react with suspicion to anyone who opposes a war with Iraq, because our identity demands our unquestioning loyalty—something that should be reserved only for this God who we have confined to particularistic appeals for validation. We have redefined justice until it means we can ignore the effects of our sanctions on Iraqi children, and unequivocally support a war that will cause even more harm than has already been done and likely do much less good, all for the sake of protecting our beloved—idolatrous—identity. We are no longer American Christians; we have instead become Christian Americans. And we no longer have the moral resources to condemn things that deserve condemnation.

But I began this essay by protesting that I didn’t intend to write a polemic against the U.S. I hope I succeeded in avoiding that kind of message, but there are some reasons why anyone writing as both an American and a Christian about patriotism might have trouble avoiding it.

Any citizen of any country is susceptible to the temptation to substitute nation for God. But Americans do not live in just any nation; they live in the world’s only superpower. With that kind of power comes a different kind of responsibility, and with that kind of responsibility comes increased opportunity to make a lot of mistakes. The U.S. appropriately attracts more criticism not because it is inherently worse than other nations, but simply because it does more. That might serve as an argument for cutting us some slack, but I think that for the Christian it’s better that it be an indication of the kin of moral vigilance and humility that are needed on our part. We should be at the forefront of efforts to use our power to accomplish justice and real peace, and to counter the tendencies toward imperialism, insensitivity, and abuse that inevitably accompany so much power.

That said, I must emphasize how much I do love my country, and how appropriate I think it is that we all maintain gratitude and even sentimental feelings for our “homeland.” I studied in the Middle East for four months, and I loved it there. But I remember the moment when I was flying home, low over rural Ohio, and I realized how much good and beauty and blessing are in the United States, and how happy I was to be back.

In fact, a proper love for our country, one that is rooted in our love for God and our worship of Him alone, will require of us the proper kind of patriotism. Christian patriotism will demand that we work to bring the power at the disposal of the United States in line with God’s purposes for this world by opposing unjust and selfish foreign policies, bringing to light the abuses that are perpetrated or allowed to persist for the sake of economic policy or the idol of “security’, and rejecting every opportunity we find to embrace the Godless comfort of an identity that is American but not Christian. Only if we are faithful to the call of Christ and the norms of Scripture in our relationship with our nation can we preserve and develop the good it contains.

At the present time, such faithfulness may call for taking some unpopular positions. Support for the “War on Terror” has become orthodoxy in many more conservative churches. Voices that question our policies are not welcome, to say the least. But if we choose to be faithful first to the Biblical call to do justice to all people, we must come to really understand that an American is no more or less worthy of life than an Iraqi, and this understanding should embolden us to think more carefully about the morality of war. We may in fact come to the conclusion that war is right, but that conclusion will be the result of honest, Christian reflection instead of knee-jerk reactionism. Obedience to the one law of love puts all other loyalties in perspective, and allows us to shed those identities that comfort us with feelings of familiar solidarity, and don our true identity in Christ and with all who should receive our unconditional love.

As a side note, I realize that some will argue for an absolute which renders even my “proper” patriotism untenable. They claim there is nothing in patriotism that can save it from charges of particularism, ethnocentrism, or a general failure to meet the demands of agape love. As evidence they point to the overwhelming number of cases in which patriotism has played a negative and very destructive role, compared to the very few times it has happened to do any moral good. I will leave that argument aside for the sake of a more focused discussion, although I welcome any critics who wish to approach the subject from this point.