In this 4th of July special, Joe Heschmeyer tackles Christian questions about patriotism and how it relates to our life in Christ.
Transcription:
Joe:
Happy 4th of July to my fellow Americans, for those of you not from the United States. 4th of July is of course our independence Day, the day when we successfully declared independence from England, from Britain. Now these days there’s like 65 countries on earth that can say some form of that, but we did it first. And I’m not here to bash on England. In fact, one might say this is a good day for England as well. After all her American colonies grew up, left the house and went off and formed colonies of their own, it’s like becoming an imperial grandmother. In all seriousness though, 4th of July can raise some kind of funny questions as a Christian, because as Americans we tend to lean really heavily into the patriotism thing. For those of you who are wondering what I’m wearing, whether you’re listening or watching, I’m wearing a red, white and blue shirt.
But upon closer inspection, it’s got Benjamin Franklin, it’s got the Liberty Bell, it’s got the Bald Eagle, and I thought it was just like an American patriotic shirt. Only upon doing some research for this podcast do I realize it’s actually Philadelphia themed. So it also has a boxing glove for Rocky and it’s got a Philly cheese steak, nevertheless, feels extremely patriotic. But is that good or bad? Should we as Christians strive to be American patriots or patriots of whatever country you happen to be from? Or is that something to kind of rise above? Is patriotism a shortcoming or a virtue? Now, in the American context, this is more complicated because not only do you have the kind of national questions of rah rah, my country, but you also have internal domestic issues because within America there’s a fight over even the word patriot. And CNN pointed this out a few years back in an article called What exactly does it mean to be a Patriot?
Experts Say It’s not easy to define. And in that they rightly pointed out that patriot tends to have connotations of more like right wing these days. And the Oxford English dictionary even recognizes this. It added a new definition to the word patriot doesn’t replace the existing ones, but added to it where it now reads an opponent of presumed intervention by federal government and the affairs of individuals. I don’t know what it means by presumed there, but upon of intervention by the federal government and the affairs of individuals, especially with respect to gun and tax laws, frequently in the names of right wing, libertarian, political and militia groups. So if you say my fellow Patriots, that sounds to American ears that you’re saying I’m on the right side of the political aisle. So you’ve got that level of issues of just patriotism gets complicated. It feels like a very political statement, not just about national politics, but where you stand on things.
But then you also have things like flags in the back of church or in the front of church. Sometimes I don’t think I’m alone and sometimes be uneasy. What are we doing with an American flag next to the cross or sometimes an American flag and a Vatican flag since we’re Catholic? That can be kind of a disconcerting or at least makes you kind of wonder, is this the appropriate time and place for this? Yes, no, why? But I might even add one more thing because sometimes you’ll hear patriotic music in church, especially on 4th of July, but on other days as well. And there’s one song in particular that really rankles me and I wasn’t originally able to say why I’m going to share with you the lyrics and say like, okay, this made me a little uneasy, but I couldn’t put a finger on it. And I think after kind of exploring the theology of patriotism, I can more precisely say what annoys me about the song.
So the song is from an artist by the name of Lloyd Stone and it’s called This is my song as we’re going to hear. He does not originally come up with the tune for it. That’s going to matter in a little bit, but the lyrics say, this is my song of God, of all the nations, a song of peace for lands, APHA and mine. This is my home, the country where my heart is, here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine. But other hearts and other lands are beating with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine. And there was just something about that song where it’s like on the one hand, we now have the questionable like, okay, we’re doing patriotism during mass kind of thing, and then it’s like, but what even is this? It’s like, yeah, I’m patriotic, but everybody else is too and that’s also valid.
So it seems like the kind of thing where it’s like Go sports teams, but also the other team, you’re also very good and valid. I’m rooting for my team, but I also want you to root for your team and we’re all just here to have fun. The whole thing feels weird and I couldn’t exactly, again, put my finger on what it was that drove me nuts about the song and I think I can now, but let’s start with a theological objection here. St. Paul in Colossians three, verse 11 says here, there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian ian, slave free man, but Christ is all and in all. And so there’s a certain view that says patriotism really no longer has a place. All that matters is that you’re a Christian. And so all those old distinctions, male and female, slave and free Jew and Greek, none of that stuff matters Now because we’re all just Christians and verses like Colossians three can sound like that’s what they’re saying.
Now that is what they’re saying in one sense that the defining characteristic of your life should not be your race, your gender, your nationality, any of those things, but rather that you’re a son or daughter of God and in relationship to other sons and daughters of God. But Paul, as we’re going to see from other things he says, is not actually knocking patriotism and even nationalism as long as they’re properly understood. So what is the case for patriotic piety? Now you might say piety, that sounds almost blasphemous. Well just wait and hear it out. St. Thomas Aquinas and the Summa, the Summa Theolog, when he deals with the question of patriotism, he puts it under the realm of piety. Now, piety we usually talk about in regards to our relationship with God and Aquinas is going to argue, piety is a form of justice. Now, justice is giving someone what they’re owed and Aquinas is going to say piety.
Basically piety is the kind of justice you give when you actually can’t pay back the debt. If somebody borrows $20 from you and they pay it back, there it is, that’s justice. But if someone’s given you your life, what can you possibly do to repay that? It’s an un repayable sort of debt. And so we can see hopefully even from that description why that would apply to God, but think more broadly and say, okay, well if that’s true of God, who else might that be true of? And that’s exactly the question Thomas Aquinas wants to explore. And so he says, well, we become debtors to other men in various ways according to their various excellence and the various benefits received from them. We owe someone a debt of honor if they’re really honorable or we owe someone something if they’ve done something for us. Now in the first place, this is going to apply to God.
He is the most honorable and he’s done the most for us. But Aquinas says in the second place, the principles of our being and government are our parents and our country that have given us birth and nourishment. You wouldn’t be here today if not for your mom and dad and if not for the country in which you were born and raised and it took care of you that raised you up that really was a motherland or fatherland in a real sense of that term that had the kind of role that a parent has. Now, sometimes the American ear does not like that. You think about, oh, nanny state, whereas other countries tend to be much more comfortable in terms like Fatherland and motherland. But if you think about just what do I owe the country in which I was born, it really is a debt I’m not able to repay, and so Aquinas makes the point that therefore we have this relationship of piety.
Consequently, he says, man is a debtor chiefly to his parents and his country after God. Then he says something even more controversial, therefore just as it belongs to religion to give worship to God. Now, that’s a poor translation. The word worship there is cultus, which is like honor or service. So we want to give honor service to God in the case of God that literally is divine worship, but the word cultus doesn’t just mean worship. So therefore just as it belongs to religion to give honor service to God, so does it belong to piety in the second place? Do give honor and service to one’s parents and to one’s country?
Then he goes, we can go even that. So you’ve got this threefold. I have this debt of piety to God, my country, my parents that then can be extended because what we owe to our parents extends to all of our kin, all our kindred. You can’t love your parents and be totally cruel to your siblings, right? That’s incompatible. Likewise, this honor and service go to our country, extends to our fellow citizens and in fact to all friends of the country. So he says that’s what we mean when we talk about piety. Aquinas is not alone in this, by the way. He’s not just making this up in the 12th century or 13th century. St. Ambrose, the famous preacher of Milan who converted St. Augustine talks about this as well back in the three hundreds, but he has the order slightly different. This is the only major difference when you talk about the piety of justice.
He says it’s directed firstly towards God, secondly towards one country, next toward parents and then lastly towards everybody, and he views this as almost self-evident. So you have chiefly these three God country parents. Now, the difference between Ambrose and Thomas Aquinas is the order Aquinas is going to say God, parents country, for our purposes, it doesn’t really matter. The point is we have a relationship of piety between all three and thinking about it this way is actually super helpful. Now, you might be saying even this far, what are you talking about? How do we know we have this relationship of piety? Now, I’ve already given one answer to that that they’ve given you more than you can ever repay, but is this theologically sound? I think we can see several indications that it is. For instance, God speaks of himself as a father numerous times and expects you to understand the service you owe to him in light of the service you owe to your father.
For instance, in Malachi one verse six, this is one of the texts, St. Thomas Aquinas points to God says a son honors his father and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? Right? So if you want to understand how to honor God, look at how you honor your father. Now we’re going to get into a commandment in the 10 commandments that has very similar language about honoring your father, but notice that God views these as analogous. Now, obviously you owe God more than you owe your father, but if you want to make sense of your relationship to God makes sense of your relationship to your father. This becomes even clearer on the other passages like Ephesians chapter three, where St. Paul says, for this reason I bow my knees before the Father Potter from whom every family’s patria in heaven and on earth is named, but not only is family patria, patria is also the term given for one’s country.
In fact, our word patriot comes from this patriot, like literally children of one’s father and the father there is the fatherland. And so the idea of a fatherland is built in even to the word patriot. Now, the etymology dictionary where I pulled that from actually references Orienta fci, who is an Italian writer from the 20th century and early 21st century, who points out that as Americans and English speakers more broadly, we have this strange relationship where we don’t have the word patria. Instead, we have Fatherland motherland native land or my country, which are much clunkier, right? We don’t use those very often and they sound really strange and even stranger to say, my patria. Nevertheless, we have terms like patriotism and patriotic, and she says, apart from France, I cannot imagine another country more patriotic than America. And as an American I’m like, apart from France, excuse me, I think we can do better.
That’s the patriotism. The point there is that relationship to your heavenly Father, your biological father and the father land are all analogously related one to another, and they’re tied together by this theme of piety. So in light of that, can we say patriotism is biblical? I’m going to say in one sense, yes, but we need to understand it correctly. Now, the easy case is this. In one Timothy chapter two, St. Paul encourages us to pray for everybody, but he specifies for kings and all who are in high positions that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way. Now, that’s the low hanging fruit because that’s the easy kind of patriotism where you’re praying for even someone you may despise as a politician or a leader. And I’m reminded here actually of the prayer from Fiddler on the roof,
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Is there a proper blessing for the tzar, a blessing for the char? Of course, may God bless and keep the char far away from us,
Joe:
But the Christian vision of piety is actually richer and deeper than that. It’s not just praying for leaders that they’ll get right with God or praying for the leaders that they’ll turn their attention away from us so we can live quiet and peaceable lives. Those can be legitimate prayers. Don’t get me wrong, we owe something more. Romans 13, St. Paul talks about this directly. He says, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, and then he lays out a principle that we’re going to see is very important for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resist what God has appointed and those who resist will incur judgment. That is a shocking declaration of civic loyalty, especially when you think about the context that when Paul is writing this, he’s writing about the Roman Empire, which was fiercely anti-Christian, and then he says, rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad, would you have no fear of him who’s in authority?
Then do what is good and you’ll receive his approval. For he is God’s servant for your good, but if you do wrong, be afraid for he does not bear the sword in vain. He is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. Now again, Paul is subjected to an unjust capital punishment as are the other apostles, mostly as was Jesus. Paul is clearly aware that the civil authority can use its sword for evil. Nevertheless, he views the authority of the state as being God-given and suggests we need to be subject, we need to be deferential and honoring in response to that and honoring really is the right term for this because he goes on to say that we must be subject not only to avoid God’s wrath, but for the sake of conscience, for the same reason you also pay taxes for the authorities or ministers of God attending to this very thing.
And then listen to this language. He says, pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due revenue to whom revenue is due respect to whom respect is due honor to whom honor is due. Now, if this was April 15th, I’d be leaning more into the fact that as Christians, we need to take seriously the fact we have to pay taxes. We have to civilly participate in the ways open to us, and that includes the unpleasant ways like paying taxes. But honor seems to be more appropriate for the theme of patriotism, and Paul is not alone in saying that. St. Peter puts it really succinctly. He says, honor all men love the brotherhood. Fear God, honor the emperor. And that verse one Peter two, verse 17 is really punchy, especially when you consider that the emperor at the time is not King David. It’s not some pro-Israel pro Christian sort of world leader.
It’s the emperor Nero, a vicious tyrannical monster of a man and we’re told to honor him this same Nero mind you is going to kill St. Peter. He’s going to crucify him upside down. Now you could say, oh look, that was so naive of Peter. He didn’t know he should have dishonored the emperor because the emperor was actually a bad guy. No, absolutely not. St Peter knew the risks, but he knew the very real likelihood he was going to be executed. For a couple of reasons we can say this one, St. Peter describes himself at the time in this same letter as being in Babylon. Babylon is code, if you will, for the city of Rome and is comparing Rome with his oppression to the earlier Babylonian oppression of Israel. So he doesn’t have a rosy eyed image of Roman occupation of Israel or Roman suppression of the church.
He understands that we are in captivity, we are being oppressed by the new Babylonians, the Romans, and here he is in the heart of the empire, in the city of Rome itself, but it’s more than that. He also knew that he was going to be executed because Jesus told him that in John 21, Jesus told him that he was going to have a death that would glorify God by his martyrdom. And so Peter was under no illusions that he was going to somehow get out of this by making nice with the emperor. He knew the same emperor who was probably going to kill him and did indeed kill him. We still have to honor him. That is a rich, nuanced and challenging vision of patriotism. So how do we make sense of them? How can we fear God and honor the emperor after all? Aren’t there times where those two things seem to be intention with one another where what the emperor wants, the president wants what the state wants runs counter to what God wants, and Peter’s not oblivious to that possible tension either.
In fact, he speaks into that in the acts of the apostles when he says, we must obey God rather than men. So is there a way to unite these ideas that we have to honor the emperor, but sometimes we might have to disobey the emperor or might have to do things the emperor wouldn’t want us doing. Remember, at the same time Peter is saying honor the emperor. He’s operating discreetly in Rome because he knows if he’s caught, he’ll be put to death. Those two things are coexisting in his mind at the same time that he’s writing one Peter. So how do we make sense of this for a coherent vision of the duty of patriotism and its limitations? Again, I want us to remember the three dimensions of piety, our relationship to God, our relationship to our country and our relationship to our parents, and I want to actually turn towards how do we harmonize our relationship to our parents, the honor we owe them with the honor that we owe God because there’s a lot written on this in the Bible, both in the old and the New Testament, and it gives us kind of a framework to make sense of our relationship to our patria, to our homeland.
So what does the decalogue have to say about patriotism? Now, for those of you watching this, you might be wondering, why did you put decalogue instead of 10 commandments? And I’ll tell you, 10 commandments didn’t fit. It’s too many letters, but in the 10 commandments you have right after the commandments about honoring God. Now, there’s a difference in how Protestants and Catholics tend to number these, but you have the first commandments are to honor God by making no other God besides him by not building any graven images or idols by not taking his name in vain and by keeping the Sabbath holy. And then immediately after that, what’s the fifth commandment for Protestants and the fourth commandment for Catholics, because we put those first two together, we’re told Honor your father and your mother as the Lord your God commanded you. I want to unpack a few parts of this commandment, but this commandment, which we call the fourth commandment, is quite clear about this need to honor your father and mother, and the catechism of the Catholic church suggests that this, well, it’s addressed chiefly to our relationship to father and mother because it’s the most universal relationship.
Also gives us a principle that sort of extends outward just like St. Thomas Aquinas has said. So it likewise concerns the ties of kinship between members of the extended family. It requires honor, affection and gratitude toward elders and ancestors, and it even extends to the duties of pupils to teachers, employees, to employers subordinates, to leaders, citizens to their country, and to those who administer or govern it that a foundation of patriotism of our relationship to our country and our country’s leaders is actually found right here and honor your father and mother that if you get why the honoring of your father immediately then goes to honor your patria, honor your earthly father and mother, and before you even get to all the commitments about love of neighbor that come after that, the hinge one is this relationship to your parents, right? You’ve got love of God, you’ve got love of neighbor, and then the honor your father and mother sort of falls as a hinge between those two where one way of understanding what you owe to your father and mother is to think about what you owe to your neighbors.
One way of thinking about what you owe to your father and mother is to think about what you owe to God. I hope that makes sense. There’s a reason that this falls in the order that it does because it does really serve as a hinge between the two sort of sets of commandments. The catechism goes on to say that the fourth commandment illustrates our relationships in society and our brothers and sisters. We see the children of our parents and our cousins, the descendants of our ancestors and our fellow citizens, the citizens of our country in the baptized, the children of our mother, the church in every human person, a son or daughter of the one who wants to be called our father. So in other words, honor your father and mother is really an appeal to love in a relational sort of way. I hope this makes sense because this is a critical way of understanding both why this made it into the 10 commandments and why we understand it as being more broad than just literally honoring your biological mom and dad and boom, that’s it.
That if you get why you owe this moral duty, partly again injustice because they’ve given you more than you can repay, but partly also because it grounds this sort of relationality. So think about that back in the context of the commandment. Honor your father and your mother that there’s something very personal and relational about that, that these are not just honor but your mom and dad, and that’s the catechisms point, that this turns our love and our duty and our honor and our service and all of these things away from coming into amorphous grownups or adults or the elderly into something much more meaningful. And this gets into why I really disliked that hymn that I shared earlier. Think about it in the context of honoring your mom and dad. Now, I realize honoring your mother and father in the ancient world included things like taking care of them when they were old.
But think about it just in the most basic sense. You get a best dad ever mug for your dad for Father’s Day, and now imagine someone saying, oh, excuse me. Actually all parents really are owed respect, not just your dad. We should resp... Read more on Catholic.com