During the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, then-candidate Barack Obama found himself in the midst of a controversy over a sermon delivered by his Chicago pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Our country had failed her people, especially minorities, and we should not sing “God Bless America,” he thundered. “No, no, no, not God Bless America. God damn America—that’s in the Bible!” After the Wright sermon was unearthed and caused a media firestorm, Obama was forced to distance himself from the radical preacher and ultimately leave his church.
Distressingly, Wright’s religiously tinged anti-Americanism has only become more prevalent in contemporary politics—and not just on the Left. From theocratic Protestant nationalists to Roman Catholic integralists, increasing numbers of right-wing Christians are joining their progressive counterparts in denouncing this country and her political institutions. Revolution is in the atmosphere. At least on the extremes, it seems that Christians are experiencing a crisis of faith in America.
Daniel Darling’s latest book, In Defense of Christian Patriotism, is a serious tonic for this troubled discourse. He blends a Chestertonian sensibility with a Baptist preacher’s commonsense reading of Scripture to provide a thoroughly convincing case that believers are called to love their country. Taking his case a step further, he also provides compelling reasons why Christians should feel a special sense of loyalty for the American Republic. In our age of doubt and discontent, this bold vindication of conservative wisdom deserves acclaim.
To take one particular example, Darling’s treatment of the place of national flags in sanctuaries is representative of his general argument. Some Christians object to the presence of the star-spangled banner on the grounds that it is idolatrous to place it alongside the cross. But Darling argues this is misguided. “It’s true that Sunday mornings shouldn’t be a civic pep rallies for America,” he writes. “Still, a flag can serve as a reminder of the location in which God has called us to serve Him. Juxtaposed with a cross, it helps us put our love of God, love of our country, and love of our families into the proper order.” Darling does not mistake the nation—let alone the state—for the divine, but he does recognize its place in the contract of eternal society.
For the most part, Darling trains his fire on progressive evangelicals and far-left mainliners who contend that America was never great in the first place. “If some people,” he writes, “are tempted toward a disordered love of country, I sense that in this generation, it’s far more common to recoil at any sense of loyalty to America.” The shoddy arguments and flawed scholarship of Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Andrew Whitehead, and Samuel Perry (among others) have been ably deconstructed by others, but Darling does a fine job collating these critiques for readers who, by some blessed providence, have thus far avoided the toxic debate over “Christian nationalism.”
Perhaps more interesting, though, are the moments when Darling takes time to defend his vision of Christian patriotism against right-wing ideologues. While he certainly acknowledges Christianity deserves a prominent place in the American public square, he harbors none of the ideologues’ illusions about the efficacy of political power to instill virtue or, much less, faith. The state can and should act as a moral guardian, informed by natural law and even certain biblical truths. But centralization and terror will not revive Christianity or the good life. As Darling puts it with some humor, “A government that can barely manage a post office or healthcare website is not equipped to make decisions about right and wrong belief.”
In part, the reason Darling can be so clear-headed about the follies of this left- and right-wing Jacobinism is that he has a healthy skepticism about power without indulging in simple-minded libertarian clichés. “The American system hinges on the idea that the state tends to be a poor steward of individuals’ positive freedom and therefore it is wiser to diffuse power and disperse freedom widely among the citizenry,” he writes. At the same time, though, Darling urges Christians to remain engaged with politics. Indeed, he even asserts that Christian faith is an essential pillar of the political tradition of separated powers. Without the ballast of biblical wisdom, our constitutional arrangements are liable to drift away.
At the heart of all debates about patriotism—and other kinds of love—is a perennial question that has troubled Western thinkers since antiquity: How do we know if a thing is good? We might argue that a thing is good if it has endured over a long period of time; but this answer seems obviously flawed when we remember moral evils such as chattel slavery. Another possible argument is that we could know through divine revelation; the trouble, though, is that the Bible simply does not speak clearly to every single situation. We might turn to human reason for answers; but when we consider the distortions of ideology and sophistry, we remember that rationality is hardly the solid ground it might seem. If we cannot know if a thing is good, how could we know if it is lovable?
Early in the book, Darling provides a more sophisticated answer that informs his entire argument. “Things are not good merely because they are familiar,” he writes. “But if we can’t see the good in the familiar, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to perceive the good that’s far away. Instead, we’ll love an abstraction made in our own image.” Along with a great chain of Western thinkers, from Augustine and Anselm to GK Chesterton and CS Lewis, Darling clearly understands that the particular is a kind of ladder up to the universal. By loving the things nearest to us—family, friends, parish, place—and expressing our gratitude for them, we can slowly ascend to a more comprehensive love of the whole of creation. To borrow a phrase from another estimable theologian, “love alone is credible.”
To his great credit, Darling therefore spends the second half of the book discussing ways Christians can work to redeem the times and restore our country that go beyond politics. From recommitting to the local church to working for the renewal of schools and families, his program is not only sensible but an excellent reminder of the real substance of both American patriotism and Christian life.
Our job as individual Christians is not to defeat all evil and inaugurate God’s kingdom on earth—Christ already achieved our victory on the Cross. Similarly, the American Republic is not the entity that will bring salvation to all mankind. Our vocation, as both Christians and patriots, is far more manageable: we are called to love God and love our neighbors. As Russell Kirk put it in his short book The American Cause, “Love of the Republic shelters all our other loves. That love is worth some sacrifice.” Here in the United States, at least, we are fortunate to live in a regime that defends and even celebrates the love Christ commands. And for that reason alone, we should all be able to say, without reservation, “God bless America.”
