Changing Thoughts on Patriotism and War

Today it is the Left, the Progressives who are best known for their opposition to War, their pacifism, and their questioning of patriotism's value? But has that always been the case?

Consider this:

To love a country simply because it is one's own country and to stand by it no matter of what injustice it is guilty towards other and weaker nations is radically and thoroughly unchristian. The sentiment, "My country, may she always be right, but my country whether right or wrong," has been quoted and requoted until some almost seem to think it a portion of the Word of God. It is a thoroughly vicious statement. It justifies the most unjustifiable wars and the most devilish conduct in war. We should love our country . . . but we should not love our country at the expense of other countries. We should not justify our country when she is wrong. We should not join hands with the multitude of our countrymen to do evil to other nations. We should seek peace and prosperity and welfare of other lands as well as our own. We should not seek to always put the best construction on our own acts and the worst construction on the acts of other nations. The law of love should be the law of nations as well as the law of the individual. The fair-sounding word "Patriotism" is often used as a cloak for the basest and meanest conduct. In Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, Barbarian, Scythian, German, Englishman, Russian, or American, we are all one in him (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11). [Reuben A. Torrey, King's Business, (December 1914); quoted in Timothy P. Weber, On the Road to Armageddon, Baker Books, 2004, pp. 84-85].


Reuben Torrey was a Dispensationalist, a lieutenant to Dwight Moody, and Founder of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Biola). While he was questioning the wisdom, spiritually, of nationalism, he and others like him were being denounced as unpatriotic by folk such as Shirley Jackson Case, Modernist theologian and Social Gospeler at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Now, as Timothy Weber points out, by 1918 even the Dispensationalists found it necessary to join in supporting the war effort, but at least early on the sentiment was such that most of us contemporary Progressives could say I agree. At the same time, those on the Religious Right who have sought to equate patriotism with faith, consider again your origins!!

Comments

Anonymous said…
I have said for years that pacifism and peacemaking are not "liberal" views. The problem is nationalism. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many Social Gospellers were nationalists (Rauschenbusch was an exception) and, thus, were crusaders in WWI. The experience of WWI changed many, however. Conservative and fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christians, perhaps because they were not as assimilated into the mainstream culture and were very missionary-minded, remembered that the Church was global and had loyalties which transcended that of the nation-state: Many were pacifists, even.

It was beginning in the 1950s that nationalism became intertwined with conservative Christianity. This grew during the Vietnam War and, again, with the rise of the Religious Right. As liberal/progressive Christians have become less "mainstream," many have rediscovered the peacemaking dimensions of the gospel-- but they are not inherently "liberal."

Secular conservatism also has elements that, in previous generations, have at least made conservatives less war happy than currently: a sense of the limits of military power, that major changes (including geopolitical ones) take time, etc. Remaking the world in our image is not a conservative view--not cauutious. Old style conservatism worked with a foreign policy rule of "first, do no harm." This made it slow to stop genocidal travesties (or develop nonmilitary alternative interventions), but it did make it less inclined to start wars of choice.

How times have changed.
John said…
As a political and religious Conservative, until recently, I always saw myself as a pragmatist - brutality must be met on its own terms or the aggressor, having no conscience, will merely exploit the nonviolent person or situation to the aggressor's advantage and the disadvantage of the nonviolent.

In recent years however, I have embraced a position of pacifism. Not without some ambivalence. I still believe the truth of the just cited pragmatic principle, and there is an undeniable satisfaction in witnessing retribution. But I have differentiated myself from among the affected parties and chosen my own role in the mayhem. As an elder in a Christian Church I am called to be a peacemaker and that has become my agenda. Acceptance of this role for me is made somewhat easier in that I am by nature non-violent. Mine is a voice in the wilderness, one voice among many others who are moved by different principles to accomplish other agendas. I truly believe that the call for peace and for peaceful responses should never be silenced, even if it only acts as a call to conscience among parties.

But this opens up a large area of discussion: Just as we will always have the poor so also will we have the violent and the aggressive. How do we respond with this reality as a society? How do we respond as individuals? As civic leaders, soldiers, police, citizens? Does being a Christian affect one's response? Must it?

John

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