Patriotism as a Christian ideal

In March 1989, my parents packed us kids in the station wagon and drove from Chicago to Washington, D.C., for a life-changing family vacation. I’ve long had an interest in politics and history—we took three newspapers at home, which I devoured daily, and in high school I subscribed to National Review and read biographies. But it was this trip that sparked in my 11-year-old heart a love for America that has not abated. I remember the awe I felt as I stood before the Lincoln Memorial and pondered the heroism of our 16th president.

Today, however, patriotism is not in vogue, even among believers. Cynicism from failed wars, corrupt leadership, and bad public policy have contributed to the resistance to patriotism. A nervousness exists about expressing love of country because we’ve been warned by so many in academia, the media, and even the pulpit that Christians must always choose between God and country.

Properly ordered affection

C.S. Lewis’ book, The Four Loves (1960), addresses this false dichotomy. With his usual eloquence and wit, Lewis helps Christians understand that allegiances great and small need not always compete. God is our highest and greatest commitment, but Christians must still arrange our lesser loves. Our love for our spouses, our duty to our children, our financial responsibilities—when we properly situate these things underneath our love for God, life is as it should be. Out of order they become idols, they destroy, they become, in Lewis’ words, demonic. But rightly ordered, these pledges—including love of country—help us practice, in a way, our love for God.

The church’s role

In my early years, one of the voices that most shaped my public theology was the late Chuck Colson. Having seen the perils of power, Colson didn’t swerve into disengagement or apathy toward our country but urged the church to love and serve the nation by being its prophetic voice. Colson warned against tribalism, but also against despair. His book How Now Shall We Live (1999) still speaks a quarter-century later. Colson saw that a strong, faithful, courageous church is essential to a flourishing nation. He believed that a truly Christian approach to patriotism is ­“perfectly balanced.”

But what is patriotism exactly? It can’t be a blind loyalty to an administration or leader. It can’t be a whitewashing of our worst sins.

Patriotism defined

There are a lot of definitions, but I see patriotism as primarily love for the place, the people, the history, and the ideals of the land God has given us. In his book, Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes (2021), Stephen B. Smith warns against a disordered love of country but also urges people to not reject patriotism altogether. He grounds his definition in gratitude and urges Americans to not let the nation atrophy. The Yale professor of political science and philosophy cuts against the grain of academia, where patriotism is often derided as jingoism or demonized as nationalism.

An outsider’s look at America

American exceptionalism can become hubris, a trait that often leads to failures large and small. We should not consider ourselves “more highly than [we] ought to think” (Romans 12:3), but there is a form of exceptionalism that demonstrates the honest awe and humble thankfulness expressed by the American Founders. Sometimes, it takes outsiders to help us see the uniqueness of the American experiment.

French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835) serves to show us what is unique about this nearly 250-year-old experiment. In America, Tocqueville found both a “spirit of liberty” and a “spirit of religion.” These parallel ideas, acknowledged by the men who forged the nation, here live in tension better than anywhere else in the world. The Christianity that Tocqueville saw was both thick and organic, not dispensed in heavy doses by the state. He was impressed by America’s civic life that knit people first in their immediate locales and then weaved together a national identity.

It’s natural for us to think our nation is the best—a sentiment shared by other peoples about their home countries. But it’s also not outrageous to take the work of those who see America as visitors, like Tocqueville, and extol her qualities. I know that the immigrants and children of immigrants who attend the school where I teach think so. They are not hesitant to tell me about America’s virtues, having experienced a real contrast with the totalitarian regimes they’ve often left behind.

David McCullough, the late beloved historian, said of America, “Never, ever anywhere, had there been a government instituted on the consent of the governed.” His fellow historian Thomas Kidd concurs, writing of the Declaration of Independence, “It is the most resounding statement of human equality the world has ever known.” Such sentiments don’t wipe away America’s sins, such as slavery and segregation, but they do tell us something about our ability to overcome them and of the unique ideals we have yet to fully live up to.

For American Christians, patriot­ism, born out of gratitude, openhanded in generosity, enlarged in spirit, is both right and proper. Let us, then, pray to God, that in our day we may do the work of renewal, in the face of many challenges, and leave a nation as special for our children as it was for us.

—Daniel Darling is director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of several books, including In Defense of Christian Patriotism