Prime Minister Modi’s apparent disdain for human rights and religious freedom is casting dark and ominous shadows across India’s otherwise promising future.

Nationalism is on the rise worldwide with nationalist-oriented leaders taking the helm in some of the largest countries.  Some call them “authoritarians,” others “populists.” 

Is it morally legitimate or acceptable for a nation-state to deny membership in the group, meaning voting and other political rights, to outsiders? At the end of the day, the moral question of the legitimacy of nations is about the politics of immigration.

Is it possible for a Christian to love his or her country too much? Is America itself even deserving of a Christian’s loyalty? If Christians have anything to offer the civil kingdom, how should they go about it?

True patriotism is not about establishing the external borders of your love so much as the ordering of it. For the Christian, who has access to an unending source of love in God, no one ought to be excluded from this love—neither your neighbor, nor fellow countrymen, nor other peoples around the globe.

An incarnational nationhood deepens and overcomes the weaknesses of both the nation-as-idea and nation-as-ethnicity visions.

Tonight people will gather for Burns Night to remember one of Scotland’s national heroes. But should this man’s flaws cause us to rethink his place in national mythmaking and nationalism in general?

Should Christians promote nation-states in all places at all times? No.

There seems to be something of a movement to revive the “virtue of nationalism” today, both in America and—with Brexit the apparent battle flag—the rest of the world. This is a mistake.