Patriotism

Renewed debates over history reveal the narratives that conservatives and progressives employ to justify or decry American history. One narrative insists on lionizing historical figures, the other on demonizing them—yet both distract from the ongoing pursuit of the American ideals of justice, liberty, and equality.

Delight in your family and community and boldly have a very happy Independence Day.

Of course America will survive the coronavirus. We’ve many times survived far worse.

Formal religious adherence is declining, but America’s longtime religious self-identity as a lodestar of democratic responsibility in the world continues unabashed.

Nationalists believe that humanity is divided into mutually distinct, internally coherent groups defined by shared traits like language, religion, or culture, and that these groups should each have their own governments. There is an alternative.

The current discussion of “nationalism” seems to be mostly a battle of words and caricatures that bears little on the actual reality or lives of regular people.

For Providence readers, there are three topics of particular interest from the Prodigal Prophet’s second half: justice, politics, and patriotism.

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.