I love being British. I love our history, I love visiting National Trust properties, and I love a Sunday roast and a cream tea (cream first, not jam!). I cheer when Hugh Grant sticks it to the US President in ‘Love Actually’, and I devour all things Olympics or World Cup related. In short, I feel patriotic.
But patriotism has become contested in recent years, with focus on Britain’s problems, not its successes. What about colonialism? Isn’t Britain racist? Shouldn’t we be paying reparations?
Politicians in particular have seemed reticent to express a love of country. ‘Patriotism’ feels like a dirty word, particularly on the left, and when it is referenced, it sometimes feels performative.
Patriotism and nationalism are not the same thing. Whereas patriotism refers to pride and love of country, as one good among many, nationalism tends to elevate the state into the ultimate good. Patriotism recognises a nation’s place under God. Nationalism turns the nation into god, or conflates a particular political agenda with God’s will.
Patriotism unites rather than excludes
As Christians, we seek the good of the country where we are placed. This is not just a patriotic principle, it is a Biblical principle: even when Israel was carried into exile, to a land of foreign gods and hostile powers, God told them: “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7). There is nothing wrong with wanting the UK to prosper.
We want our government to do a good job: to promote good and restrain evil, and to help everyone to prosper. We believe in the common good, and that God’s wisdom is good news for everyone, whether it be around the economy, the environment, or education.
But seeking the good of the city cannot be abstracted from the good of the people. A nation is more than a plot of land (or a sceptred isle).
Patriotism ought to include, to provide people with a shared heritage, and to unite them around love of country. Nationalism tends to do the opposite: major figures sow division, people who are legally British are told they are ‘not really British’, and flags are paraded like war-banners rather than a sign of national pride.
But Christians are to “love our neighbour as ourselves”, regardless of creed or colour, as the Parable of the Good Samaritan demonstrates. Even in Old Testament Israel, ‘resident aliens’ (people who had permanently moved to Israel) had the same legal protections as Israelites. Seeking the good of the country means seeking the good of all British people, not making citizens feel alienated, lesser, or even afraid.
Patriotism involves pride, but doesn’t rewrite history
Mankind was tasked by God with “cultivating the world and subduing it” (Genesis 1:28), sometimes known as the Cultural Mandate. These verses provide the basis for Christian engagement in everything from the arts to the sciences.
Around 20 years ago, the historian Niall Ferguson wrote the book: “Empire: How Britain created the modern world”. Few countries have laid foundations for our world like the UK. James Watt and the steam engine; Michael Faraday and the electric generator; Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web. Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and JRR Tolkien; the Beatles, Queen and the Spice Girls; football, rugby and cricket. A 2015 article estimated that 40% of inventions in the previous 50 years came from the UK.
And at times, Britain has been a force for real good; from pioneering the abolition of slavery to facing the Nazis in the early 1940s.
But a healthy Christian view of a nation cannot rest in smug superiority, or brush over failures, as the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector warns. Each nation’s history comprises both good and evil, because its people are both made in the image of God and sinners who fall short of His glory.
Nation makes for a flawed idol, for in our island story there are moments of tragedy, just as there are moments of celebration. Concentration camps in the Boer War. The Amritsar Massacre. The treatment of the Mau Maus in Kenya. Within our own borders, 4.5 million children grow up in poverty. Inequality is so pronounced that 17% of British adults skip meals each month because of the cost of living. There are more than 200,000 abortions every year.
Patriotism cannot mean sweeping evil under the carpet. Countries are never just all good, or all bad: the truth is far more complex.
Patriotism recognises the nation but places it under God
Many things form our identity: our age, our sex, our relationships. Our nationality is also a part of who we are. As a Brit, I don’t mind queuing, I’m used to the rain, and I enjoy cricket and afternoon tea.
These things don’t stop being part of who we are when we become a Christian. When Paul said that “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male or female”, he did not mean these things cease to exist: he addresses men and women individually, and gives slaves advice on how to relate to masters.
But they are not the primary part of our identity. He lists a series of identity-markers in Philippians 3, including nation, tribe and religious practice, only to say: “whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.” Paul’s Israelite credentials had been impeccable: ‘a Hebrew of Hebrews’. But any earthly community we are part of is nothing compared to our primary identity: being in Christ.
At times, we will not feel at home in the world around us: Peter describes us as “foreigners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11). As resurrection-people, we are ourselves a glimpse of God’s new creation, stuck between this fallen world and the world to come. We may be citizens of the UK, but our deeper, truer citizenship is of the heavenly Kingdom (Philippians 3:20). That does not mean turning our back on this world: as heavenly citizens, we can bring a glimpse of heaven to earth.
Every year, on Remembrance Sunday, the hymn ‘I vow to thee my country’ is sung across the country, about love and duty to the nation. But its second verse speaks of “another country, I've heard of long ago…We may not count her armies, we may not see her King; Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering; And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase, And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.”
As Christians, we can be patriotic: we can love our nation, seek its best, and be proud of its successes and conscious of its faults. But let us not confuse it with our true home. For it is to another country - the heavenly city - that we owe our true allegiance; and to the King who we do not see now, but who, one day, we will see face to face.