My friend Richard Mouw has a nice post up this week on faith and citizenship, just in time for the Independence Day celebrations. Some excerpts:
Strictly speaking, there is nothing wrong with having a national flag in a place of worship. As a reminder of our national “place” and as a stimulus to reflect seriously on what it means to be Christian citizens, a flag can be a rather innocent symbol.
But it is difficult to assess this issue properly without also reckoning with the constant danger of nationalistic pride. We are often asked to offer to our nations the kind of allegiance that we should direct only to God. A national flag seldom serves as a mere reminder of the fact that we are citizens of a specific nation. It is a powerful symbol—even a seductive one—that can evoke feelings of loyalty and pride that are not proper for Christians. And when a national flag stands alongside the so-called Christian flag, we can easily be led to think that God and Caesar have equal importance in our lives.
That makes good sense.
To be a “patriot” is to have affection for the “fatherland.” The explicit analogy to the parent-child relationship is a helpful one. It is a good and natural thing to love our parents. But our love has gotten out of bounds if we think our parents are literally the best parents in the whole world—so wonderful that everyone else also ought to value them as the world’s greatest parents.
That’s the kind of out-of-bounds thinking that takes hold when nationalistic feelings get to be excessive. People start to think that their country—which they quite naturally have very affirmative feelings toward—is the best country in the world.
Christians need to work hard at keeping patriotic feelings within proper bounds. There is nothing wrong with my loving my country simply because it my country—just as I love my parents simply because they are my parents. But this does not put my country beyond criticism.
Amen, amen, amen.
Though I no longer worship with the Anabaptists, I still don’t pledge allegiance to the flag. If I have to choose between my Christ-informed conscience and Caesar’s call, I’m rejecting Caesar. And Caesar is Caesar whether he seizes power with his legions or whether he is installed by the Supreme Court or whether he wins a popular landslide. The fact that a country is a democracy with stable institutions gives it no greater claim on my loyalties as a Christian than if it were a murderous dictatorship. Please understand, I’m delighted we do have these relatively solid and fair institutions in our country. But the relative goodness of the United States doesn’t mean it comes any closer to claiming my loyalties as a Christian than would, say, Zimbabwe or North Korea. Some Caesars are better than others, but they’re all still emperors of this world.
I’m proud to be an American the way I’m proud to be a Californian, the way I am proud to be the son of Hubert and Alison Schwyzer. But there’s a difference between my saying “America is my favorite country in which to dwell” and my saying “America is the best nation on earth.” I’d rather live in California than in, say, Scotland. (I know both very well.) But I’d rather live in Scotland than in Mississippi (and yes, I’ve been all over the Magnolia State). My loyalty is more to place than to anything else.
I’m not an entirely rootless cosmopolitan. I do feel more at home some places than others. I have two passports, and I’m fond of using them both (usually on the same trip, to the annoyance of the airlines and, once or twice, the befuddlement of Homeland Security.) But in the end, I’m only a loyal citizen of a Kingdom that is not quite yet. And while I will follow Caesar’s laws save where they call on me to do an injustice, and while I will pay taxes to support Caesar’s state, and while I will even pray for Caesar to have wisdom in all things, I will not pledge my allegiance to anything or anyone other than the ruler of that Kingdom.
This makes a great deal more sense than all the “God’s Country” Christian patriotism we see today, but…
The fact that a country is a democracy with stable institutions gives it no greater claim on my loyalties as a Christian than if it were a murderous dictatorship.
Something seems puzzling about this. Elsewhere, you seem to be claiming that you feel an obligation to obey the state when the act of obeying doesn’t entail an unjust act on your part. So, you pay your taxes but you don’t turn your immigrant neighbor or employee in to INS or what have you. But some coercive state actions are neither inherently just or unjust (for example, collecting taxes) and a great deal about what separates justice from injustice for those acts is the process by which the state policy was reached. Now, if you take democracy seriously as a good, I expect one of the reasons for that is that democracy is a fundamentally more just way of making decisions. If a democratic majority votes to tax itself for a new stadium for a sports team, that’s potentially legitimate, whereas authoritarian goons demanding that money to hand over to the NFL is not potentially legitimate, even if we thought it was good policy (which I don’t, but that’s neither here nor there).
This is getting complicated, let me break it down to premises:
1) As a Christian strives to obey the state whenever her conscience and her God allow her to, and
2) A functional democratic state renders a number of everyday acts of government potentially legitimate and not unjust in a way other forms of government simply cannot, therefore
3) A democratic state will make one’s everyday acts of obedience to the government more just than any other sort, and therefore
4) A Christian who cares about not being implicated in injustice should strongly prefer a democratic state to any other.
When the state compells you to do an injustice–to kill, to turn in your neighbor to the INS, to discriminate, whatever–it doesn’t matter whether it’s a democratic state or not. But when the state does ordinary but coercive state-like activities, it should matter.
There’s no question, DJW, that it’s easier to be a Christian in a democratic state. The more repressive the state, the more the Christian is obligated to be in open (or at least quiet) rebellion against it. On the other hand, the more democratic the state, the greater the temptation to confuse patriotism with authentic spiritual virtue.
A great reminder for this week. One of the reasons I love going to a church that follows the lectionary is that the civic holidays don’t turn into services that worship the American flag instead of Christ.
the greater the temptation to confuse patriotism with authentic spiritual virtue
That makes sense, in theory. (In practice I’m not sure you’d see a correlation there)
i’m glad you linked to this — and very glad that mouw addressed it. i wish more american christians would read this.
Great post. I have split allegiances, one to the country of my birth, one to the country I have now made my home and one to the country I de-facto work in (I work for a US multinational and most of my work-life is effectively American, albeit via various forms of telecommunication). All three countries are wonderful and flawed in equal measures and while I will always think of myself as being of the nationality of my birth country I do not believe that any of them are the ‘greatest’ in any sense.
Funny you should mention Scotland… I was there in May for my long-dreamed-of tenth anniversary trip, and when I looked up at Ben Nevis (well, the clouds around Ben Nevis) I thought of you and wondered if that would be your kind of hiking trip.
Carla, I’ve never hiked Ben Nevis, though I have tramped elsewhere in the Cairngorms. Just magnificent country.
Freedom =/= Democracy.
Tyrants have been elected all through history, with about an equal amount of benign despots who offered a great deal of freedoms to their subjects.
Gonzman, you should probably recount. Democracy doesn’t automatically equal more freedom, but it’s strongly correlated with it. This is a pretty robust and uncontroversial finding.