Category: Wilderness Wanderings

If Christians Listened to Punk, Would They Be Upset about Phil Robertson?

Published on by D. G. Hart80 Comments

The complaints about A&E mount:

I read that you are indefinitely suspending Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty after he quoted the Bible and said that the homosexual act is sinful. I get it, guys. I do. You punished the Christian guy for being a Christian because you got some angry emails from a bunch of whiny gay activists who lack the spine and maturity to deal with the fact that there are still people out there who have the guts to articulate opinions that they find disagreeable. In so doing, you’ve kowtowed to a pushy minority of vocal bullies who don’t even watch your channel, while alienating the fan base of the one show that keeps your entire network afloat.

___

Yesterday the hucksters we invite into our living rooms and onto our computer screens suspended Duck Dynasty’s patriarch, Phil Robertson, from his show.

Turns out it’s not Phil’s show or our show. It’s their show. The spawn of Woody Allen who run the Arts and Entertainment Network have given Phil the boot for the offense of quoting God right there in his own life. Speaking for God is a hate crime now, and that’s the real reality show.

Duck Dynasty provided the biggest national screen possible for gagging God. So now, every Christian in America has learned the lesson that, if you preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you’ll get what Phil Robertson got. So shut up, you fool. Zip it! Some things are best said in the privacy of your own home. Or prayer closet.

Unless, of course, you’re like Phil Robertson and you’ve invited Hollywood cameras into your home and prayer closet. Then, you’re outta luck ’cause you’re never alone.

___

Religious believers who think they can avoid the issue are deluding themselves. While we may not have a hit reality show that we can get fired from, we will be pressured in numerous ways to make it clear that we will not speak or act publicly in a way that supports the biblical view of homosexuality. The objective of the activists is to marginalize Christian views on sexual norms until they can be outlawed in the public square. Many Christians have already and will continue to gleefully work to ensure this becomes a reality. But for faithful Christians, allowing our biblical witness to be silenced is not an option. Like Phil Robertson we must all say, “My mission today is to go forth and tell people about why I follow Christ and also what the Bible teaches, and part of that teaching is that women and men are meant to be together.”

The solution is not 2k. It is Punk Rock:

Punk music has its feet firmly on earth and deals with the nitty gritty of a world in chaos, scrambling for some moment of sanity. Think of The Clash in their song “Straight to Hell.” This song addresses in rather painful fashion the mistreatment of immigrants, as well as the love children of American G.I.s who procreated with the unfortunate female population of Vietnam during the war. Gritty, painful, dirty. Punk lives in the here and now–the already, rather than the not yet. Or consider a song by The Dropkick Murphys called “The State of Massachusetts,” which faces head-on the effect that drug-abuse has on families.

Maybe if Christians were known less for their seeker-sensitive cultural preferences and more for living quiet and peaceful lives, Phil Robertson’s fate would not matter (except to him and his family).

Male Pattern Sensitivity

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

Who is more sensitive?

Bill Smith in response to Thabiti Anyabwile on crazy Confederate uncles?

I should not have to say these things, but I will, though I know some, perhaps including Brother Anyabwile, will take it as the equivalent of “I have black friends”: (1) I have no sympathy for the League of the South. I have never been to Monroe, Louisiana, or attended a Confederate Ball. While I am eligible for membership, I have not joined the Sons of the Confederacy because I do not want anything to do with the racism of some of its members. (2) In seminary in the early 1970s I spent two summers working as an assistant to a black Presbyterian pastor in Jackson, MS. (3) I was run off as a RUM campus minister, with a wife and five babies, in part because of my racial views and practice. Ours was the only integrated RUF in Mississippi, and we integrated the statewide conferences. I stood by an interracial dating couple which included my sitting in an office hearing one of them described as a “white N-word” by a person threatening my job. (4) I have a love-hate relationship with the South, and particularly with Mississippi. Mississippi is a place where place (both geography and status) and people (your family and social group) make a great deal of difference. I hate indirection and insincerity in relationships. But the South is like my family. I can point out theie faults, but if you go to talking bad about my people, I’ll bow my neck and clench my fists. (5) I read B.B. Warfield and listen to B.B. King.

But, nevertheless I am one of those crazy Confederates I suppose because I am (1) white (so far as I know, though there are questions) , (2) Reformed (in my case defined by the 39 Articles); (3) western (in civilization – the “dead white guys”); (4) Southern (by heritage and affection).

Like all paranoid schizophrenics, I feel I have been persecuted.

Or Jemar Tisby on Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson?

So, Blacks were happier during the Jim Crow era? Does he assume that all Blacks now are on welfare?

I’ve actually heard similar reasoning quite often. Usually these comments come from older Whites who grew up in the South and remember it fondly. I understand their point. They look back on their experience of a historical moment that was mostly positive, and they want to remember it that way. The problem in a segregated society, then and now, is that our perceptions tend only to reflect our particular realities. We have little exposure to the realities of others, including an awareness of their hardships.

What Phil Robertson and others get wrong is how they diagnose the state of race relations in America. They use external cues like the frequency of a smile, and their personal exposure to overt instances of racism to judge the climate of a culture. But what some people fail to understand is that there are unwritten rules of conduct when Blacks interact with Whites. . . .

It’s possible that Phil Robertson knew Blacks who were genuinely happy. It’s possible that in his community there truly were exceptionally positive relationships between Blacks and Whites. It’s possible, but not likely. What’s probably closer to reality is that he saw Black people who knew the rules. They knew what they could say and do around Whites who held the power. Even if those Whites were lower-income or “white trash” as Mr. Robertson describes it. There was still a cultural curtain separating the races.

I am merely asking, since it seems that everyone is sensitive and that everyone also expects others to moderate their sensitivity for the sake of getting along, though Joe Carter may differ.

I do believe that Tisby is correct to conclude that:

We all need to examine our tools of discernment. What are we using as evidence for a hypothesis about a people? Are we employing superficial and anecdotal proofs for our theories? Or are we engaging in meaningful dialogue with those who are different from us?

I am not sure that Anyabwile or Smith’s posts meet Tisby’s guidelines, nor do I think either man is without a point. The issue may be whether each man can acknowledge the other’s grievance, or whether one grievance trumps the other and lowers Tisby’s threshold for “meaningful dialogue.” That’s why Ross Douthat’s point (in the context of “12 Years A Slave”) is worth repeating:

A fruitful conversation about race in America, then, would require both sides to somehow pick a different starting point. To get a fair hearing from liberals — and, more importantly, from black Americans — the right would need to begin from a place of greater empathy for the black experience, and greater respect for the historical reasons that voter ID laws and Rush Limbaugh soliloquies can raise so many hackles. To get a fair hearing from conservatives, liberals would need to begin by imputing racism less frequently, attacking racially-entangled policies that aren’t remotely like Jim Crow on the merits rather than just calling them Jim Crow, Round Two, and recognizing that (as with Hitler analogies) the sooner you link your interlocutors to slaveowners, the faster they will tune you out.

Obama-era conservatism has often gone backward, not forward, where this potential conversation is concerned. But a liberalism that expects conservatives to see their present-day positions and rhetoric illuminated and condemned by a cinematic portrait of the evils of slavery in 1840s Louisiana — or that declares them unreachable when they don’t — is a liberalism that’s as unready for dialogue as any insensitive right-wing talk show host.

Less Is More

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

After finishing a class on Hollywood and the Civil War in which I watched for the first time Gone with the Wind — a movie that was much more agreeable despite its length than I would have expected — I am still of the conviction that a small movie has as much appeal as the Hollywood blockbuster. Frances Ha, which the Mrs. and I watched over the weekend, arguably has more charm on a much smaller scale than most of Hollywood’s major productions.

It is movie about a young woman who is struggling to find her way in New York City as a dancer without great talent or a level head. What keeps Frances going is a close friendship with another woman, Sophie, who has a decent job but is easily prone to poor decisions under the influence of romance. When Sophie, with whom Frances shares an apartment, falls for a man and moves in with him, their friendship hits the rocks and Frances needs to find a place to live in an expensive city with few prospects for making enough to pay the rent. She eventually loses her position as a minor player in a dance company, cannot afford to live in the city, and barely holds on to her dignity. To keep it she foolishly takes a weekend trip to Paris that she pays for with a credit card that some lender offers to sucker her into paying interest.

Rather than being a sad tale or a story of the triumph of the human spirit — Frances does eventually prevail in an ordinary way — Frances Ha is a simple narrative about young adults and what they go through before achieving a measure of maturity stability. It has the feel of a Whit Stillman movie, like Last Days of Disco. It also resembles the characters in Lena Dunham’s HBO series, Girls, except that Frances and Sophie are not nearly as sexually depraved or bored as Hannah and Marnie. The movie is shot in black and white, and several of the sequences resemble images from the heyday of French movies from the period of Francois Truffaut’s influence in which Frances skips or runs through the streets of New York, either in a state of glee (having recently received a rebate check from the IRS) or panic (needing to find an ATM to pay for a meal at a restaurant that does not take debit cards).

Again, it is a small film. But rather than highlighting the particular temptations that afflict young women either in the days of disco dance clubs or during the sexually charged ethos of the hookup culture, Francis Ha explores the age old theme of friends who see their relationship threatened by boyfriends or jobs. It feels as much like my own experience while living with a good friend who started to spend more time with a girlfriend than with me — can you believe it? — or my wife’s own disappointments as a twenty-something with a best friend/roommate who vacated the friendship and apartment for the charms of a man.

It is not brilliant. Nor is it profound. But in its own charming way, Frances Ha shows the joys and sorrows of life between the order provided by parents and college and the stability of an income and the ability to pay your way. If you do not care for chick flicks or movies low in special affects, Frances Ha will likely disappoint. But if ordinary life has enough affect for you, it is a movie well worth seeing (as is Noah Baumbach’s other films, The Squid and the Whale, and Greenberg).

The Wisdom of the World

Published on by D. G. Hart2 Comments

In light of the recent discussions of Christian rap and hip-hop and the racial attitudes that plague middle-aged white men who don’t either care for or listen to rap, Ross Douthat has advice for worldlings to which Christians could well take heed:

A fruitful conversation about race in America, then, would require both sides to somehow pick a different starting point. To get a fair hearing from liberals — and, more importantly, from black Americans — the right would need to begin from a place of greater empathy for the black experience, and greater respect for the historical reasons that voter ID laws and Rush Limbaugh soliloquies can raise so many hackles. To get a fair hearing from conservatives, liberals would need to begin by imputing racism less frequently, attacking racially-entangled policies that aren’t remotely like Jim Crow on the merits rather than just calling them Jim Crow, Round Two, and recognizing that (as with Hitler analogies) the sooner you link your interlocutors to slaveowners, the faster they will tune you out.

Who Will Review in that Great Day?

Published on by D. G. Hart26 Comments

Our Virtuous Commonwealth of Pennsylvania correspondent sends us news of a book, From Heaven He Came and Sought Her, on limited definite atonement. It features chapters by:

Raymond A. Blacketer, Henri A. G. Blocher, Amar Djaballah, Sinclair Ferguson, Lee Gatiss, David Gibson, Jonathan Gibson, Matthew S. Harmon, Michael A. G. Haykin, Paul Helm, David S. Hogg, Robert Letham, Donald Macleod, J. Alec Motyer, cJohn Piper, Thomas R. Schreiner, Daniel Strange, Carl R. Trueman, Stephen J. Wellum, Garry J. Williams, and Paul R. Williamson.

It comes with endorsements from:

J. I. Packer, D. A. Carson, Michael Horton, David Wells, John Frame, Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., Ligon Duncan, and Kelly M. Kapic.

So who is left who teaches theology or historical theology to review this book? And will those people feel all that kindly to a book whose editors overlooked them?

Sometimes publishers go overboard with endorsements and take out of circulation people who should be reviewing the book. Of course, endorsements may sell more books than reviews. But I doubt it.

More Winning?

Published on by D. G. Hart19 Comments

Regular readers should understand by now that 2k has less to do with politics than with the church and her ministry. On that anti-2kers and 2kers agree. But sometimes 2k does arise even among those who are engaged in the business of doing or theorizing about politics. On the political front, then, 2kers may be intrigued to know about a couple of recent items.

The first is the candidacy of Ben Sasse for the Republican Senate nomination in Nebraska. Those familiar with Ben from his associations with Modern Reformation may know of his Lutheran-turned-Reformed ecclesiastical background and I can personally vouch for his 2k outlook. Ben served in HHS for the George W. Bush administration and has spent a lot of time recently thinking about health care in the United States. Slate recently interviewed Sasse about the subject (and others). Surprise, no Lordship of Christ or Satanhood of Democrats came up in his answers:

Well, let’s go back. In Medicaid, there’s no demonstrable evidence right now that people with Medicaid have better health outcomes than people who have no insurance. So, just saying, “I empathize and I feel your pain and I want to therefore make the government solve all these problems,” we don’t have evidence that that actually works. So if you want to actually help people, what we need to do is create a society that has a lot more people who are healthfully and steadily and stability in a middle class and believe that there is a growth economy, and that there’s opportunities for their kids and grandkids that are as great as what our grandparents knew, when we felt like America was still on the upswing. America should still be on the upswing, but our optimism should be about the American people, and about the ability of communities and neighborhoods and schools and small businesses to solve these problems. Big government programs haven’t demonstrated that they actually ameliorate these problems that you’re talking about. I mean to you, point about Oregon or West Virginia, more Medicaid signups, you can put more names and more numbers on government programs, but it isn’t clear that that actually benefits them, so I think we need to go back to the drawing board.

I think most Americans believe in a basic social safety net. But if there are 3–5 million hard-to-insure people right now, why are we disrupting the 165 million persons in an employer-sponsored insurance market? As of now we don’t know how many enrollees there are in these programs, but we know that millions of people have been kicked off their plans already because of Obamacare. The president said if you want to keep your plan you can keep it. We know that’s not true and right now we don’t even know that the benefits, in scare quotes, of the new exchange programs are even going to add up to the amount of people that lost their individual market insurance in New Jersey and Florida and Nebraska. So I think that this is hugely disruptive, and trying to solve a problem it’s creating unintended consequences that are creating more problems than its even solving. And it’s at a price tag we can’t afford. There are better solutions.

The other item of note is the new book by Jeff Taylor, who teaches political science at the very Kuyperian Dort College. Here is an excerpt from a review of Politics on a Human Scale: The American Tradition of Decentralism:

Jeff Taylor, the chair of a political science department at a private college in northern Iowa, successfully shifts the focus on federalism from its institutional moorings to the way it was scuttled in the Twentieth Century by party politics gone astray. In this respect, the book is unique. What one learns by thinking about decentralization through the lens of political party evolution is that the rush for electoral advantage in building national coalitions came at the cost of sacrificing a good deal of liberty and sanity. Most critically, the hunger for power and national scale led to a forfeiture of politics on a human scale: the politics of decentralism.

Nowadays, we have 315 million Americans spread across 3.8 million square miles of American territory. Oddly, the higher the population and wider the range of policy preferences, the more intense the push becomes to settle on one brand of economic justice, one approach to health care, one ideological conception of best practices, and one oversized approach to national defense. Lost in this cacophony for centralization are the sober voices who remind that symbolic diversity in the face of considerable constraints upon community autonomy is a hollow pursuit.

If Jeff Taylor’s book was merely a retelling of the benefits of federalism, it would have less value. Political scientists like Thomas R. Dye have already made the case that federalism—rooted in multiple, independent governments with considerable responsibility for the welfare of people within their jurisdictions—protects important political values such as individual liberty, pluralism, party competition, political participation, and the management of conflict (American Federalism: Competition Among Governments, 1990, 175). While Taylor’s book addresses these considerations, it is much more focused on the idea that decentralization helps nourish attitudes, understandings and relationships that are central to real human flourishing.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not claiming that Taylor is 2k. But a word search at Amazon of the book indicates that the words “kingdom” and “Lordship” are absent, which is an indication — in addition to Taylor’s own blogging at Front Porch Republic — that despite his Kuyperian surroundings, he is not running his studies through a neo-Calvinist grid.

Profile and Prejudice

Published on by D. G. Hart50 Comments

A sojourn to the east coast by way of an internal-combustion-engine-empowered vehicle (aka car) reminded me of at least one acceptable prejudice that remains available to Americans — automobile profiling. I dare say, 80 percent of drivers in the U.S. size up other drivers on the basis of the car they drive. With a high end car, a BMW or a Lexus, we make assumptions at least about the socio-economic status and the driver’s willingness to drive fast. Add a vanity plate like VULGR1, and you can make even further assumptions about the driver’s character. (Truth in advertising, this driver has an OLD LIFE plate. Surprisingly, that combination of letters was still available in Michigan when we arrived.)

Another prejudice that most perceptive drivers have is one about those who sit behind the wheel of a mini-van. These are vehicles that may have lots of functionality, but have to be as dull in design and performance as The Brady Bunch. That means, if you are like me, you try to pass a mini-van driver as quickly as possible, even if it means racing ahead at a stop light or passing on the right. Is it fair to assume that all drivers of mini-vans (especially younger women) are slow drivers who will keep you from your appointed rounds? Maybe not. But almost no one wants to take the risk of finding out.

Of course, automobile profiling is not as loaded with social costs as racial or ethnic profiling. But acknowledging that we do make assumptions about people based on makes and models of cars does suggest that making judgments on the basis of appearance comes naturally to homo sapiens. I imagine that back in the day when all men wore suits, ties, and hats, and women wore dresses, gloves, and high heels, profiling people outside vehicles was much more difficult than it is today when clothes, hair cuts, tattoos, and studs are chosen to be a personal statement (like a vanity plate).

This seems like another version of the cultural inconsistency that attended the news that NSA was reading my email (as if it’s that juicy). Americans take umbrage at the thought that government officials are invading our privacy at the same time that we divulge intimate matters on widely accessible social media outlets. In the same way, Americans take great offense at the idea that others might judge us on the basis of our appearance even while we fashion a public image that invites others to draw a conclusion about our identity based on “style.”

Sanctification NCAA-Style

Published on by D. G. Hart64 Comments

The deity of American athletics, also known as the NCAA, has decided to lift some of the restrictions on Penn State football:

George Mitchell, the former U.S. senator who is now Penn State’s independent athletics integrity monitor (a position created after the scandal to improve campus sports culture), said that after his first annual review of Penn State’s progress he determined the NCAA should “recognize and reward” the administration’s “good-faith effort” to change.

At Mitchell’s suggestion, the NCAA Executive Committee and the Big Ten Conference agreed to restore the scholarships that were revoked in response to last year’s Freeh Report. The findings of former FBI director Louis J. Freeh detailed the cultural and administrative failings that helped enable Sandusky to use his status as a former coach to rape children for years, sometimes on university property.

Initially, the NCAA said Penn State could award just 65 total football scholarships per year through 2017-18, significantly fewer than the 85 that programs at its level are used to handing out. But now, Penn State will receive an additional five scholarships each year through 2016-17. So essentially, the NCAA returned 20 scholarships it had taken away.

“This action provides an opportunity to recognize Penn State’s significant momentum, while also providing additional opportunities for student-athletes,” said Nathan Hatch, chair of the Division I Board of Directors and president of Wake Forest University.

(Yes, that Nathan Hatch.)

This makes me wonder if that Penn State stays on the course of institutional sanctification, will the NCAA reward Coach Bill O’Brien with W’s from their treasury of victories? They have 111 at their disposal.

When Tatts Make Up for Sass

Published on by D. G. Hart58 Comments

Christian Piatt, father, son, and holy heretic has a list of the top 25 Christian blogs. I had never heard of Mr. Piatt until a couple of the historians I follow mentioned him.

I went to the list, mind you, not expecting to see Old Life since the skepticism and sarcasm here qualifies for the most part as sub-Christian. But I was curious to see what might qualify. This caught my eye (boy did it — see below) at number 13:

13) Sarcastic Lutheran: Nadia Bolz-Weber’s writing convicts me. And I doubt that she’s trying to do that. But that’s what happens. Her humility and love (and occasional sass) challenges my life and faith.

Now if you go to the link, you get here with a big page-not-found message. So I searched for Nadia Bolz-Weber, hoping to see some of that sass for which I so enjoy Lutherans. And what I found was eye-opening (image above).

Bolz-Weber’s home page is all about her, her tatts (apparently), and her next speaking appearances. But alas, no sass. I suspect the ELCA sucked it all out of her.

B-W’s home page does take you to her blog. Any sass there? How’s this?

Today we just got to hear that awesomely weird story of when Jesus casts a legion of demons out of a naked dude and into a herd of pigs – pigs who then throw themselves over a cliff and drown in a lake. It was this story that made my friend heather post the following question on my Facebook Page: “Dear Nadia. How can I get on board with Jesus when so much pork was wasted in the lake?”
– Signed, A bacon-loving Christian

Which I guess means that the demon possessed pigs diving off a cliff and drowning in a lake story is one that vegans and bacon lovers can unite around.

Perhaps. But she never resolves the question of bacon:

Bottom line: Who cares. I don’t think demons are something human reason can solve. Or that human faith can resolve.

I just know that demons, whether they be addictions or evil spirits, are not what Jesus wants for us. Since basically every time he encountered them he told them to piss off. And here’s the thing: the authority to do just this – the authority to face what tell us lies, to face what keeps us shackled, to face what keeps us out of control, alone and in pain and tell it in the name of Jesus to piss off is an authority that has been given to us all in baptism. Baptism is as radical as exorcism. So remember our reading from Galatians: For as many of you who were baptized in Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female (gay nor straight)

Which means, you dear people of God are clothed with the one whom demons fear. Claim it. And tell those demons to piss off. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Luther would not have avoided the earthiness of the original question (and he did not even wear tatts).

Love of Country

Published on by D. G. Hart63 Comments

I was glad to see Matt Holst challenge modestly Rick Phillips’ patriotic post about the need for Christians to love the United States. One of the best ways to register a 2k perspective is to ask whether Christianity has a special relationship with any particular nation, or whether Christians themselves have an obligation, no matter their citizenship, to the United States. Christians in the U.S. would not like instructions to love Mexico on the fifth day of May and would likely snicker at similar exhortations about a duty to love Canada on July 1. Why American Protestants don’t recognize the problem that Christian patriotism poses for Christians who are not citizens but reside LEGALLY in the U.S. is a riddle I am still trying to solve. But Charles Hodge’s argument in the context of the Civil War that the church supporting the Federal Government was akin to singing the Star Spangled Banner at the observance of the Lord’s Supper captures the 2k dynamic nicely. So does a Dutchman asking why a congregation has a U.S. flag at the front of its church.

Holst’s objection started with an acknowledgment that he is a “furr-ner,” an outsider:

It is always an interesting time of year for a foreigner to be in America. Every Fourth of July, I jest with our church members that the Sunday morning sermon closest to the Fourth will be on Romans 13 – submission to the civil magistrate. People laugh…usually. The obvious historical reasons aside, it is even more interesting for someone from Britain to be in the States on this date because Britain is a peculiarly unpatriotic place – nothing like America in that sense. I don’t recall ever seeing Union flags displayed on people’s houses, except in peculiar circumstances such as a royal birth or sporting achievement. The view of the armed forces in the UK has been nothing like that in America; it is much more low-key and much less admired, to be quite honest. To be clear, I am not saying that such is a good thing.

Moreover, Britain is itself a nation divided into four countries and four separate identities. When asked where I am from, my answer is Wales, not the UK. Speaking to most people over here, I inevitably have to explain where Wales is located. As an aside, I was once talking to a seminary student, who commented “You’re not from around here are you?”. I replied “No I’m from Wales”. To which he replied, in all seriousness, “Ah, a good Scotsman!” The conversation ended pretty quickly after that. My point is that the UK has multiple identities, with very few Welshmen being willing to accept the moniker “Scottish” and absolutely no Welshman willing to accept the label “English”. In spite of a rich and varied history, and maybe because of it, the UK does not have the same level or expressions of patriotism regularly evidenced on this side of the Atlantic.

In other words, Christianity transcends nations and so calling for Christian love of country only begins to make sense if you create space between country and faith, with patriotism being one form of affection, membership in the church another.

But Holst bring up some other matters that deserve comment, especially his contrast between the UK and the U.S. In fact, he touches on a subject that I am not sure Brits necessarily understand any better than Yanks, that is, the nature of British identity. Sports journalists needed to wrestle with this recently when Andrew Murray won at Wimbledon. Is Murray a Scot? A Brit? An Englishman? Some conjectured that whenever Murray lost he was a Scot, but when he won he was English. Indeed, among the three kingdoms that comprise the “United” Kingdom, national identity is anything but fixed, at least as J.C.D. Clark explains:

‘British” as a term in general usage has therefore had at least two senses. One was a spontaneous or encouraged Unionist identity allegedly felt equally by Scots, Irish, Welsh and English. This may indeed have been problematic. But another usage was more prevalent: as employed by the four groups, usually when abroad, ‘British’ was an official, political euphemism for one’s sectional identity, whether English, Welsh, Irish, or Scots: it was to a considerable degree synonymous with, and not a substitute for, sectional national identities. If so, it matters less that ‘British’ in the sense of the whig defenders of 1707 had shallow foundations: ‘Britishness’ in its prevalent sense rested in large part on the ancient and massive foundations of Englishness, and the equally ancient if differently formulated identities of England’s neighbours.

. . . . Britain was not invented; it developed. It was not devised by a small number of cultural entrepreneurs, acting like advertising executives to package and market a new product; it grew, the often unintended result of actions by men and women in many walks of life, often, too the result of conflicts and cross-purposes.

But contrary to Holst (and I am not criticizing as much as I am working out some of my own fascination with religious affiliations and national identities), a sense of Britishness did emerge, according to Clark, very much with the aid of Protestantism:

The ancient identity of the Ecclesia Anglicana meant that the Reformation did not at once create a unitary national identity. As a religious message of universal validity, Protestantism initially implied a reaction against the national subdivision of the universal church; only subsequently were some sections of ‘Protestantism’ identified with national churches and so with national identities. One strand of the Reformation stressed a pan-European solidarity between believers in the Reformed traditions, a shared sense of a supra-national destiny. Since the English had ‘a long-standing reputation for xenophobia’ even by 1500, it did not help that Protestant theology was originally associated with German reformers; not until the reign of Mary I (I553-8) were reformers ‘given the opportunity to sail for the first time under Protestant colours.’ Anti-popery, too, could be an international phenomenon, and not until Elizabeth’s reign did an assumption become prevalent that England had a special, or even the leading, role in that drama.125 The church in England only adopted the label ‘Protestant’ for itself in the first decade of the seventeenth century, and then in order to distinguish itself from both Rome and Geneva: Anglican Protestantism did not become pan-European. In Scotland and Northern Ireland the Reformation went much further: confessional differences have been basic to the emerging ‘three kingdoms’ explanation of the dynamics of state formation in the British Isles,” and when Wales acquired a distinct confessional identity from Protestant Dissent in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that principality took its place as a fourth component in the model.

So it is not the case that Americans are the exceptions who link their faith to their patriotism. They learned it from the Brits, or English, or Scots, or Welsh, or Irish. For a popular rendition of English conflation of faith and patriotism, see the third season of Downton Abbey where Lord Grantham cannot tolerate the idea that his granddaughter, who is the child of an Irish Roman Catholic — chauffeur no less, will be baptized a Roman Catholic. The English national identity was very much bound up with the Protestantism of the Church of England.

But if that little hiccup of British civil religion is so obvious to American viewers of Downton Abbey, why aren’t similar conflations of faith and nationalism obvious to Christians in the U.S.? One reason may be the very notion of love of country. Holst makes the useful point that such love is not commanded in Scripture:

. . . when I read that a Christian is to love his country, I’m left a little bit confused. What exactly am I to love? Presidents? Congressmen? Hills, valleys streams, lakes (I have no difficulty loving them)? The people? The armed forces? Government? I wonder if Rick’s advice, which I regularly find beneficial and prudent, has, on this matter, slipped into an amorphous Americanity – a more subtle form of “God and Country” which is so prevalent in certain areas of the church. Such is the kind of Christianity which has the American flag on one side of the pulpit and the Christian flag (wherever that came from?) on the other. America, like every other Western nation has had a remarkable yet chequered history – morally, economically and militarily. What are we to love, and what kind of love are we to show?

Holst may be confused because most modern citizens of nation-states are confused. A colleague tells me that the proper way to love the United States is to think of it as a people and a place. Loving the American people can be a challenge since it would mean having to love Alex Rodgriguez along with Phil Hendrie. But loving a place may be easier if we took a greater delight in the locales where we live. Certainly, though, if we identify the United States with its government (and a chief part of that government’s expenditure — the military and all those damned wars), we will have a different kind of love than the older variety of love of country.

I myself do not think it is wrong to love country as long as it is a love qualified by higher and holier affections (no, not those kind). I love my wife, for instance. The Bible tells me I have to. But I also love our surviving cat. The Bible doesn’t tell me to do that. Nor does it prohibit such love, which is one of those key points bound up with Christian liberty and two-kingdom theology. We are free to love a country (I think) and we are free not to love a country. We are not free to identify a country with the kingdom of Christ.