We are observing the 100th anniversary of the ending of World War I, a war that has been blamed to a large degree on the passions of nationalism. Today we see a debate over the virtues of nationalism vis-à-vis a growth in the importance of supranational institutions and more global governance that is strikingly similar in many ways to that which occurred in the aftermath of the war. The Brexit vote, the election of Donald Trump, and the surge of what has been referred to in a pejorative manner as “populist” and “nationalist” movements throughout the West are only the opening salvos of what I am convinced will be a mammoth struggle over ideas regarding national identity versus cosmopolitanism, more local national governments versus transnational governmental institutions, and so forth, and the impact that these ideas will have on the shape of the future international order.

Nationalistic tendencies are driving global politics wherever we look, from China attempting to regain its past glory and assuage its wounded pride to Russia, perennially paranoid and insular; to the large rising democracy of India; to other rising states with strong senses of national identity, including Brazil and Indonesia; to Europe (see Brexit, Scottish, and Catalonian drives for independence, and the rise of anti–European Union forces and political parties that are winning elections in places such as Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland); to the United States. It is important that we grasp the implications and find ways to address the phenomenon and to harness its positive traits while guarding against its more negative tendencies. To reflexively condemn all forms of nationalism as morally equivalent is not only to ignore the virtues of nationalism but also to ensure that the popular discontent we see and the gap between the perceptions on the part of many of our ruling elites and those of a large proportion of our citizenry continue to grow with negative implications for domestic political stability, for the West’s ability to meet the challenges that face it, and for the international order as a whole.

To help us get some perspective on what I believe will be one of the most important debates of the coming years, I should like to start with a favorite of mine, the poetry of Sir Walter Scott:

     Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
     Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
     From wandering on a foreign strand!1

The concept of “home” is one that usually fills each of us with warm feelings and a sense of belonging and rootedness—and it is entirely natural that it should do so, as Scott’s poem so poignantly expresses. Home is usually a place where we live out our loves and commitments, our loyalties and reciprocal obligations. It provides us with an anchor as well as a place where we learn to live for something larger than ourselves. It provides us with a sense of solidarity and shared sacrifice and purpose. This is true of the family, of the local communities where our lives are rooted, and of our nation, or “homeland.” National identity, as Roger Scruton has written, “is an outgrowth of the experience of a common home.”2

Scott’s poem articulates a view that has fallen out of fashion today—that the bonds that connect us to our homeland, our nation, are entirely natural and, as his words imply, healthy. There was a time, not that long ago, when this was understood and far more broadly accepted among the ruling class than it is today, and when the principle of national self-determination and a system of equal and independent nation-states were seen as moral goods. Arguing that love of one’s nation is a naturally occurring and even healthy phenomenon and that the nation-state may have a significant role to play in facilitating human flourishing and in building a just and stable international order, however, is not always a popular pastime these days, when the terms nationalism and populism are virtually always used as pejoratives and regularly paired with loaded words such as fear, jingoism, xenophobia, parochialism, and chauvinism.

And yet I am convinced that this dominant narrative is incorrect, that its view of nationalism is simplistic, and that an affirmation and cultivation of a healthy form of nationalism and of the importance of a sense of each nation’s unique identity is just as necessary today as it has ever been—perhaps even more so, given the centrifugal forces unleashed by globalization and the impact that those forces are having in human societies around the globe. The process of globalization, while having many positive aspects, nevertheless has had some significant negative repercussions as well—for example, the dissolution of many of the traditional bonds that have historically held peoples together has contributed to the atomization of societies. And it is atomized societies, as Rusty Reno has argued, “that are susceptible to demagogues—not societies that enjoy strong social bonds and organic communal solidarity.”3 I believe defining and cultivating a healthy form of nationalism to be necessary for the sake of our domestic political stability and unity in the West (as well as for the international order writ large), for its unique ability to create conditions necessary for the advancement of human flourishing, for its ability to safeguard and pass down to future generations the cultural distinctiveness of each nation that is unique, and for the contributions it can make to sustaining a just and stable international order.

Let’s take a minute before we really get started to briefly address the issue of definitions: the terms nation, nation-state, and nationalism are all closely interrelated, yet each is distinct from the other. One can be a nation, having a distinct language and culture and a considerable degree of autonomy, for example, without being a full-fledged nation-state, or an internationally recognized sovereign power. One example would be the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq. Because of the limitations of time and space, we cannot delve into discussions over the precise nature of such differences, but in what follows I will refer to nationalism as the public commitment to a nation-state that enjoys de jure independence, that exerts political control over a clearly defined and delimited territory, and that is recognized as sovereign over that territory and the population within that territory.

Much of the commentary on nationalism portrays it, almost reflexively, as a uniformly and self-evidently dark force, one that is implicitly assumed to be contrary to humanity’s inevitable march toward modernity, progress and peace, and cosmopolitanism. The legacy of World Wars I and II regarding how we view nationalism has been that the term has come to be synonymous with the darker angels of human nature that were held responsible for such carnage. Negative examples of a militant, jingoistic nationalism certainly exist, but it is important to recognize that the caricature and perversion of an ideal does not discredit that ideal. As classicist Bruce Thornton has written, “To blame nationalism for the horrors of fascism and Nazism is to blame a healthy cell for becoming cancerous.”4

Following the world wars, Europe, understandably horrified by the carnage, deemed a weakening of loyalties on the part of Europeans to their homelands to be necessary if peace, prosperity, and human rights protections were to prevail, lending the argument against nationalism. In addition to moral content, the issue was seen on the part of many in eschatological terms—it was a struggle related to the all too regularly referenced “arc of history” in which a vaguely defined “universal brotherhood of man,” which history was allegedly trending toward as a utopian endpoint, was advanced by the gradual diminution and ultimate destruction of old loyalties.

This postwar moral logic has been extended into the 21st century, and this process in which old loyalties become increasingly less important is believed by many to be more enlightened and morally superior than narrow-minded particularisms derived from a less enlightened past. The process of globalization has been viewed in a similar manner—as a positive lessening of particularist loyalties, which have come to be viewed as increasingly anachronistic in a world that appears much smaller and more tightly bound together due to modern communications technology, the nature of international trade flows, and increasingly intertwined economic and political relationships. And here I would say that Graham Fairclough’s discussion of the global communications network of World War I and the echoes of that in our world today helps to illustrate that what we think is new is not necessarily so new, a point that has relevance to the debate over nationalism versus cosmopolitanism.5

Many of the cultural elites in the West, found in the halls of academia, policymaking circles, and the upper reaches of our governments, long ago made the assumption that the international order would increasingly come to be characterized by transnational organizations and that national sovereignty and the importance of national identities and more local ties would gradually fade into history. As Gideon Rachman expressed it, “In a borderless world of bits and bytes the traditional concerns of nations—territory, identity, and sovereignty—looked as anachronistic as swords and shields.”6

In light of this passage about the modern world being so much more tightly woven together than at any point in history and the presumed implications of that fact for an emerging international brotherhood of man and the diminution of more particular kinds of identities and loyalties, it is interesting to note that similar predictions were made in the wake of World War I. In response, the British scholar G.K. Chesterton wrote:

What we call the modern world is more ancient than we thought; and its simplicities will survive its complexities. Men care more for the rag that is called a flag than for the rag that is called a newspaper. Men care more for Rome, Paris, Prague, [and] Warsaw than for the international railways connecting these towns. . . . Nobody has any such ecstatic regard for the mere relations of different peoples to each other, as one would gather from the rhetoric of idealistic internationalism. It is, indeed, desirable that . . . men should love each other; but always with the recognition of the identity of other peoples and other men.7

Chesterton illustrates a truth that a study of history bears out—that love of our family, tribe, and nation is a very human trait that has always existed and is not likely to disappear, no matter the degree to which it is castigated by a ruling elite. Ever quotable, one of Chesterton’s best retorts is to the cosmopolitan “who professes to love humanity [yet] hates local preference. . . . How can you love humanity and [yet] hate anything so human?”8

The attitudes on the part of our cultural elites in the West have been given expression in the form of active hostility toward anyone who still believes that issues of national identity and loyalty to king and country can be positive goods. In November 2017, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, quoting François Mitterrand’s well-known statement made in the midst of the conflict in the Balkans in 1995, “Le nationalisme, c’est la guerre,” added that this was still true and that therefore “we have to fight it.” He went on to assert that, far more than the threat from a revanchist Russia and China or the threat from the Islamic State and Islamic radicalism, the resurgence of nationalist sentiment within Europe “is the real war.”9 Juncker has also labeled nationalism “a poison.”10 Numerous European Union leaders have made similar statements.

These attitudes are shared by members of the “tribe” of self-described cosmopolitans (and they exhibit all of the attributes of a tribe, with all of the negative connotations, which I will address later) around the globe, including here in the United States. A 2016 article in Foreign Affairs co-authored by a former senior Clinton administration official foresaw a world in which nations become less significant, supranational institutions become “stronger and more independent,” and the various world civilizations “fuse” together. This will, according to the authors, inevitably lead to a world that is more peaceful and prosperous because, the article implies but does not explicitly state, the ultimate causes for human conflict will then have been removed. The article confidently ends by asserting that “the progressive direction of human history . . . is set to continue.”11 (This, of course, ignores what a Christian theological anthropology teaches us, that the ultimate cause of human conflict is to be found within the human heart and in the brokenness of the human condition.)

The resurgence in nationalist sentiment and reaffirmation of the importance of identity are calling into question this cosmopolitan vision of the future, however, and are highlighting a growing gap between the West’s ruling elites and vast swathes of its citizenry. And rhetoric such as that of Juncker and other high-profile Western leaders contributes to the sense of alienation on the part of Western citizenry, who believe that national identity and related loyalties are not inherently dark or sinister but rather contribute positively to their lives in substantive ways. The bonds of nationalism have exhibited a stubborn durability that has surprised many Western elites. The de-emphasis of the importance of national identity and associated loyalties as well as the attempted delegitimization, atomization, and secularization that have accompanied globalization is leaving people feeling unrooted, unmoored, and adrift, resulting in cultural anxieties that are both making themselves felt in Western politics and reshaping global affairs in tumultuous ways.

The more strenuously the voices affirming faith, family, tradition, and identity are condemned and the greater the amount of energy expended in marginalizing and/or silencing them, the stronger and more virulent will be the backlash, with a concomitant increase in more extreme voices throughout the West gaining a greater hearing than would otherwise have been the case. This carries grave implications for the future of the international order, particularly political order in the West. The more strongly our political and cultural elites dig in their heels, the more violent is likely to be the counter-reaction.

The resurgence of nationalism across the West (as well as globally), contrary to the hopes held in some quarters, is not a temporary phenomenon but rather the symptom of deeper cultural shifts that are occurring. The era that is gradually emerging from the prolonged fluctuations following the ending of the Cold War could be the dawning of the new age of the nation rather than a continued diminution of the importance of the nation-state.

In the debate between proponents of the nation-state and the self-described cosmopolitans, a cliché we regularly hear is, “I’m a citizen of the world,” a phrase attributed to the Greek thinker Diogenes, who first used the term cosmopolitan in relation to political identity more than three centuries before Christ. While I have lived several places around the world, am simultaneously an Anglophile and Francophile—at the cost of serious cognitive and cultural dissonance, I must say—have lived in China and am deeply attracted to Chinese history and culture, and am married to someone born and reared in Venezuela, I am, nevertheless, fundamentally American. Former British Prime Minister Theresa May has rightly stated, “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.” And she is correct; human beings, by our very nature, lead lives that are rooted in a particular time and place. In a similar vein, one author has noted that “‘the international community’ doesn’t give out citizenship, or even green cards.”12 And his point, while humorously made, makes a more serious one: the countries in which each of us reside and to which we owe our loyalties are the particular communities that give our lives meaning—the corollary of this is that without these countries and our loyalties and affections for them, our lives would be much the poorer.

To those who argue that the rise of nationalism is a dark appeal to “blood and soil,” French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut has responded that “it is inhuman to define man by blood and soil, but no less inhuman to leave him stumbling through life with the terrestrial foundations of his existence taken out from under him.”13 The backlash we are seeing throughout the West is precisely due to this sense of insecurity that comes from the feeling that “the terrestrial foundations” are being removed. Bruce Thornton explains this in more detail, writing that:

Cosmopolitanism is viable only for a tiny elite of businessmen, politicians, entertainers, academics and professional media. The vast majority of people live in local communities rooted in a specific landscape, language, beliefs, history, and customs, in a nation that needs secure borders and strict qualifications for citizenship in order to protect its identity and security. The nation, properly understood, makes its citizens who they are and gives their civil and political lives meaning.14

Increasingly, the United States and many of its Western allies are being led by those whom Samuel Huntington in his 2004 essay “Dead Souls” (a phrase borrowed from the Sir Walter Scott poem with which I began this article) referred to as a “denationalized elite,” who “have forgotten the mystic cords of memory [while] the American people have not.”15 The growing gap in perceptions between the ruling elites and a significant proportion of their citizenry is going to increase, with negative implications for our domestic political stability in the West and for the larger international order unless something is done to address the issue and our elites begin to express a greater level of appreciation and support for the roles that faith, family, tradition, and identity play in the lives of their citizens. The restoration of a sense of solidarity between our leaders and our citizenry is necessary to the future of liberal democracy. At this point, I am not optimistic that a reevaluation of attitudes on the part of our elites will take place, and I see trouble ahead.

Addressing this gap is also vital for geopolitical reasons. Vladimir Putin, to take an obvious example, has quite shrewdly played on the sense among large portions of the West that their leaders no longer share their appreciation of the importance of faith, family, and national identity. He has played on this theme in order to increase his soft power appeal throughout major segments of the West while at the same time creating a positive spin for a Russia whose reputation has taken a huge hit in the past few years and is in desperate need of rebranding. The Kremlin’s skillful propaganda in this regard, which has been interwoven with its propaganda regarding the West turning hostile to its Christian civilizational roots (the implication being that Russia remains traditional and Christian), has found broad resonance in Europe (and much of the rest of the world), despite the obvious fact that Putin is hardly a paragon of Christian virtue or an exemplar of ethical Christian leadership.

Theological-Ethical Perspectives

Looking at the phenomenon of affection and loyalty to nation from the perspective of Christian theological and ethical thought, does the Christian tradition contain tools that would help us determine whether there is any virtue in loyalty to one’s nation? Or is the morally superior position, as so many voices tell us these days, a negation of that loyalty and a substitution of that loyalty with one to universal humankind?

The Christian concept of agape tells us that God’s love is universal and that we are to be channels of that love. The parable of the Good Samaritan makes clear that those whom we should consider to be neighbors and the objects of our goodwill and love are not just those of our own tribe. This does not, however, address the issue of where and the manner in which particular loyalties and affections fit into that larger ethical framework. It also does not address our finite, limited attention, reach, and resources, and the manner in which they ought to be apportioned in keeping with both Christ’s call to love our neighbor and with the fact that God has placed each of us within particular communities and nations that also have a legitimate claim on those limited affections and resources.

Yet the Christian tradition does provide instructive approaches to how to think of our particular affections and loyalties in the context of living out God’s calling to be conduits of His love for the whole world. As one example, primary affection for and loyalty to one’s spouse and one’s family were not to end and become submerged in a larger loyalty to the whole of society. On the contrary, our primary commitments to marriage and family and, after that, to our community are seen as the means by which we contribute to and build a healthy larger society. These particular bonds have not been abolished by Christ’s call to a universal agape. Rather, contributing to and prioritizing bonds to family, community, and nation, which is a larger community that nevertheless has a shared sense of common identity, contribute to our own well-being while simultaneously contributing to that of other members of the nation. Particular loyalties to family, community, and nation teach us to live for something larger than ourselves, and so contribute to moral formation and maturity. As C.S. Lewis has written, “As the family offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this [love of country] offers us the first step beyond family selfishness.”16

There are numerous examples of particular affections and loyalties to people and nation, and distinct national identity, being affirmed in the Christian Scriptures, including the record of the Gospel that Christ himself, when questioned by the Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders of his day, affirmed the value of Gentiles, asserted that faith in God existed among the Gentiles and not just the Jews, and affirmed Jewish duty to the Roman emperor—yet maintained his uniquely Jewish identity and love of the Jewish people. Also relevant is that the Apostle Paul, even while spending most of his life preaching to the Gentiles, nevertheless wrote that he would sacrifice himself for his people, the Jews, and that on the day of Pentecost, members of each nation visiting Jerusalem heard the Gospel in their own tongues, affirming national differences.17

As finite creatures, it is also true that we are bound by our limitations in time and space. We therefore have limited ability to positively affect the whole of humanity, but must by necessity focus our efforts on those to whom we have access through the proximity of family, community, and nation. Augustine explained the need for concrete objects of our love when he wrote that “nothing can be loved unless it be known.”18 Expanding on this, Edmund Burke, in his critique of the French Revolution, wrote in the 1790s that “to be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.”19

Moving ahead about 120 years, G.K. Chesterton wrote during the early 20th century in defense of love of nation vis-à-vis a vaguely defined cosmopolitanism: “Patriotism begins the praise of the world at the nearest thing, instead of beginning it at the most distant.”20 And C.S. Lewis, writing a few decades after Chesterton, echoed this sentiment when he wrote that “those who do not love the fellow villagers and fellow-townsmen whom they have seen are not likely to have got very far towards loving ‘Man’ whom they have not.”21 Nigel Biggar, addressing the impact that our finiteness has on balancing the call to love all with potential obligations to those nearest us, writes:

We may be responsible [to all], but ours is a responsibility of creatures, not of gods; and our creaturely resources of energy, time and material goods are finite. Therefore, we are only able to benefit some, not all; and there might be some to whom we are more strongly obliged by ties of gratitude, or whom we are better placed to serve on account of shared language and culture or common citizenship. In short, notwithstanding the fact that all human beings are equal in certain basic respects, no matter what their native land, we might still be obliged—depending on the circumstances—to benefit near neighbors before or instead of distant ones.22

Gratitude for the patrimony bequeathed us by those social and political structures that provide the conditions within which we flourish might be one justification for our loyalty and affection being prioritized toward them. Along these lines, Pope John Paul II spoke repeatedly throughout his papacy about love of country and outlined a theology of the nation in a series of talks given at Castel Gandolfo. He first notes that “the family and the nation are both natural societies, not the product of mere convention. Therefore, in human history, they cannot be replaced by anything else.”23 He writes that this patrimony that we receive from our homeland is “the totality of goods bequeathed to us by our forefathers . . . [including] the values and the spiritual content that go to make up the culture of a given nation.” As part of his theological justification of the justness of primary loyalty to one’s homeland, he points to the Decalogue, specifically to the fourth commandment, to honor one’s father and mother, drawing a link between father and mother and fatherland or motherland, noting that the Latin pater and patria are related and arguing that the patrimony that our homeland provides us ought to be honored in a similar manner to the way in which we honor our parents.24 Relatedly, and providing some additional context for the Biblical injunction to love our neighbor, Biggar argues that “whether near or far, human neighbors are not the only proper objects of our respect and care. So are customs and institutions.”25

The concept of nation is addressed repeatedly in Hebrew and Christian scripture, with substantial support from the Judeo-Christian tradition existing for the idea of the nation having a role in the economy of God. Israeli scholar Yoram Hazony argues that the idea that international political order should be based on a system of independent nations was not new to the Treaty of Westphalia, contrary to popular perceptions. Rather, it can be traced to one of the earliest shapers of Western culture, the Hebrew scriptures. According to Hazony, the concept of a self-determining nation and a system of self-determining nations rather than a universal imperial system was a key distinguishing characteristic of ancient Israelite thought. Ancient Israel was surrounded by imperial powers—Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia—each of which sought to impose an imperial political order on the ancient world. As Hazony has argued, those empires did bring positive goods including wealth, stability, and peace within the empire, but Hebrew scripture nevertheless was the first to offer “a sustained presentation of a different possibility: a political order based on the independence of a nation living within limited borders alongside other independent nations.”26

Hebrew scriptures also portray nations as having providential purposes and portray God as ruling over the international political order. Psalm 22 perceives God as “ruler over the nations.” The prophet Daniel records that governments rise and fall according to God’s will (2:21–22 and 4:35), as does the book of Job: “He makes nations rise and then fall, builds up some and abandons others.” These passages emphasize both the temporal nature of nations and the fact that they are not the highest authority, key considerations that should shape and temper our love of nation. Relatedly, the Hebrew scriptures record that God holds nations accountable for virtue or lack thereof, with Proverbs 14:34 stating that “righteousness exalts a nation,” an assertion that would inform one’s willingness to criticize one’s nation when it is in the wrong.

The prophet Isaiah (19:25) records God as referring not just to Israel as “His people,” but others, as well: “Blessed is Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, my inheritance.” Furthermore, the nation as defined in the Hebrew scriptures was centered on common beliefs and culture, rather than on an ethnic purity. God tells the Israelites that others are welcomed in their national community as long as they accept Israel’s God and customs.

The earliest followers of Christ, who were Jews, inherited the Hebraic tradition and passed it into the Christian tradition, with the Apostle Paul affirming in Acts 17:26 that God has ordained nations to exist at particular points in history. Speaking in Athens, Paul states: “From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.” Christian thinkers who followed Paul wrote about the nature of the Christian’s relationship to his earthly home and provided Christians with strong arguments in favor of a dual citizenship that was equally rooted in transcendent authority and in the earthly polity, rooted in the particular time, place, and circumstance within which they found themselves. Such arguments supported the idea that Christian believers were simultaneously citizens of not only a heavenly kingdom but also their earthly kingdom and that they should seek its welfare.

The Protestant Reformation significantly altered how we think of international order and asserted the role of the modern nation-state vis-à-vis rule by a transnational authority. Protestantism has been credited with making possible the modern system of nation-states, but despite criticism that the Roman Catholic Church presided over a form of empire for hundreds of years, Roman Catholic thought also provides support for loyalty toward one’s nation. Pope Leo XIII appealed to natural law when he wrote in his 1890 encyclical Sapientiae Christianae that the “natural law enjoins us to love devotedly and to defend the country in which we were born, and in which we were brought up. . . . We are bound . . . to love dearly the country whence we have received the means of engagement this mortal life affords.”27

Closer to our own time, John Paul II wrote and spoke repeatedly on his theology of the nation, including in a letter to his homeland just after his accession to the papacy, when he wrote of the bonds that the love of country can create between disparate members of that nation as ennobling: “Love of our country unites us and must unite us above all the differences. It has nothing in common with a narrow . . . chauvinism, but springs from the law of the human heart. It is a measure of man’s nobility.”28

Nationalism’s Virtues: Countering the Dominant Narrative

A defense of the ideal of the nation-state is not a defense of the evils that certain types of nationalism have perpetrated. It is, rather, a recognition that the virtues present in nationalism have the capacity to contribute to human flourishing in unique ways. The phenomenon of nationalism itself is not inherently dark or anti-modern, despite the fact that nationalistic impulses can indeed be mobilized for jingoistic and aggressive purposes, just as any other human political and social organization can be used for good or ill. But just as nationalistic impulses can be the cause of great evil, so they can also be the source of great good.

What are some of the virtues that can be attributed to nationalism? One of the most fundamental is the role that citizenship in a nation-state plays in giving our lives meaning. Due to the fact that humans are rooted in a particular location and in a particular culture, “the nation . . . makes its citizens who they are and gives their civil and political lives meaning.”29 And, as Rusty Reno notes, “Human beings thrive best as members of a particular people and as proud recipients of a distinctive cultural inheritance.”30

There is something in human nature that seeks such localized, fundamental attachments, which are natural, healthy, and to be encouraged. To blithely state that we should all seek to be “citizens of the world” and, worse, to repudiate such attachments as somehow morally suspect, ignores a fundamental human reality that has positive moral content. In fact, the danger of the dissolution of such traditional, historical, and natural ties of community, ties meant to preserve and hand down the unique cultural inheritance of various peoples, is a far greater danger than the current resurgence of nationalist fervor. A commitment to a unique national identity and common values, which can be most surely protected by means of the institutions of a state supported by a strong civil society, is absolutely vital for the survival of any human society. Emphasizing this point, British historian Michael Burleigh asks the rhetorical question, “Can a society survive that is not the object of commitments to its core values or a focus for the fundamental identities of all its members?”31

Membership in a nation, where its citizens hold a common identity, are committed to common values, and have a shared sense of destiny, is also a spiritual good that meets some of humanity’s deepest spiritual needs for solidarity and fellowship. Genesis records God as stating that “it is not good for man to be alone,” hinting at the fact that we are created for fellowship with others. Rusty Reno also notes that the experience of being a citizen in a “polis,” a common political project in which all of our individual efforts contribute to something larger than ourselves, “provides us with an experience of solidarity in the service of a common good” and “anchors ordinary lives in something transcendent.”32

Pope John Paul II hinted at the useful role that national bonds can play as a source of unity and social cohesion in a letter to his homeland just after his accession to the papacy when he wrote, “Love of our country unites us and must unite us above all the differences.”33 The sense of having fraternal bonds of mutual obligation that comes from belonging to the same nation reminds us that the differences between us pale in comparison to the strength of that communal bond, and thus can be a source of social progress, providing for the building of ties between segments of society that would otherwise have little to do with one another.

The idea of citizenship in a common polity implies mutual responsibility to one’s fellow citizens, and numerous scholars have emphasized the role of nation-states as moral communities. David Miller, for example, argues that the phenomenon of nationalism creates an ethical incentive to care for one another due to the fact that we are all part of a collective political effort from which we all benefit. The bonds of mutual obligation created by common citizenship are the means by which personal interests and group interests overlap, as occurs when the sacrificial acts of a citizen sustain a set of relationships from which they themselves will benefit in some manner. Miller also argues that nation-states can combine aspects of both “ethical particularism,” in which we show love for those with whom we are in a particular relationship and whom we may (or may not in the case of the larger nation) know personally and to whom we have an easier time understanding our moral obligation due to proximity, on the one hand, and, on the other, “ethical universalism,” in which we recognize the principle that, despite the priority of our ethical obligation to our fellow citizens, we nevertheless still have universal obligations based upon the human dignity of all.34

Another important virtue generally ignored today is the fact that the nation-state has made modern, consensual government possible and is therefore necessary for political freedom. Liah Greenfield argues that without nationalism and the modern nation-state, democracy would not have been possible. In her 1992 work on nationalism she explains that:

The location of sovereignty within the people and the recognition of the fundamental equality among its various strata, which constitute the essence of the modern national idea, are at the same time the basic tenets of democracy. Democracy was born with the sense of nationality. The two are inherently linked, and neither can be fully understood apart from this connection. Nationalism was the form in which democracy appeared in the world.35

Echoing Greenfield, Bruce Thornton notes that the current dominant critique of nationalism:

ignores the critical role of the nation-state as the foundation of modern consensual government and political freedom. The nation-state allows large groups of people to create a solidarity that binds them together and gives them a common destiny. Without this shared identity and values, this affection for their own way of life and for those who share it with them, people are left rootless and fragmented into niche identities, connected now only by consumerism, popular culture, and sporting events. . . . No one will risk his life to die for the United Nations, the European Union, or the World Bank.36

Diplomatic historian Walter Russell Mead has made similar observations about nationalism in the American context, writing that “nationalism—the sense that Americans are bound together into a single people with a common destiny—is a noble and necessary force without which American democracy would fail.”37

The principles of national independence and self-determination have also been at the core of the Western conception of a just international order since the Westphalian system began. Contrary to the legitimacy of empire, which rests upon conquest and in which the only real commonality is the common ruler, the democratic nation-state’s validity rests on pillars of shared fraternal bonds and the principles of consent of the governed and self-determination—the right of the citizens to be the rulers of and to control the state, and for that state to have the right to determine its own course.

Another reason the nation-state system has historically been considered just is due to its fundamental egalitarianism, the principle of the equality of all states, regardless of disparities in size or wealth or other measures of national power. Our post–World War II international system, including the United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions, is constructed around an assumption of the equality of nation-states, and forcing such states into supranational governance structures and reducing their sovereignty does away with that real-world moral good of the current international system in pursuit of a misguided utopian dream of building international peace through reducing state sovereignty.

A reassertion of the centrality of the nation-state and a reaffirmation of the value of particular identities are also essential if true human difference and diversity are to flourish, particularly in the face of a simultaneously homogenizing, atomizing, and dehumanizing globalization. Each nation of the world represents a distinctive culture, and a major purpose of each nation-state is to cherish its unique culture, to prize its unique history and perspectives, and to pass that culture and self-understanding onto future generations. An appreciation for the uniqueness of each nation and for the genuine cultural diversity that is protected by a system of nation-states is thus an important reason to prize such a system. Imperial projects have seldom facilitated the celebration of true difference and diversity, and it is extremely unlikely that governance by supranational institutions and a cultural homogenization brought about by globalization and the attempt to minimize the importance of national identities and particularist ties will do so.

Looking back at the interwar years, it is interesting to note that the debate over nationalism versus cosmopolitanism was just as vigorous as it is today, and many of the arguments made in favor of the nation-state then are still just as relevant today. William Temple, for example, a socialist who served as Archbishop of Canterbury during World War II, wrote in 1928 as Bishop of Manchester defending the ethics of nationalism on the grounds of the good of the diversity of cultures in the world, and used that argument to justify a national right to self-defense. Temple argued that affection for and loyalty to a particular nation, even to the point of taking up arms and killing the members of another nation committing aggression against it, were defensible on the grounds that individual nations and the cultures represented by those nations make valuable contributions to the whole of the human experience. Temple understood having particular loyalties to a particular nation to be a form of agape. He wrote, “Not only is the State the trustee for the community, but each national community is a trustee for the world-wide community, to which it should bring treasures of its own; and to submit to political annihilation may be to defraud mankind of what it alone could have contributed to the general wealth of human experience.”38

Developing that theme further, and criticizing the arguments of the self-proclaimed cosmopolitans of his day who sought then as now to minimize and ultimately do away with national loyalties, Temple wrote, “The variety of nations is good. A non-national cosmopolitanism, which would depreciate national distinctions, would thereby also demolish many valuable elements of our experience. But we can learn to rejoice in each other’s peculiarities instead of detesting them.”39

Chesterton defended nationalism on similar grounds, likewise positing that the multiplicity of cultures and nations is to be appreciated for the variety it brings to our experience of the world: “The fundamental spiritual advantage of patriotism and such sentiments is this: that by means of it all things are loved adequately, because all things are loved individually. . . . Nationalism gives us a hundred countries, and every one of them is the best.”40

Another virtue of nationalism is the scale of the nation-state. Transnational or global institutions are too large and abstract to have a legitimate claim on our loyalties and do not provide a realistic environment within which human beings can live out their particular commitments. Due to the fact that the nation-state sits at the nexus of empire and universalist claims on the one hand, and more narrow, parochial interests on the other, it provides for a political entity of manageable size that binds people together in shared, fraternal loyalties, while also providing for the protection of rights and the passing down to the next generation of a unique cultural heritage. As Mark Tooley has written, “This sort of nationalism . . . fosters unity while protecting dissent and self-critique. Such nationalism is a noble alternative to parochialism and narrow self-interest, sustaining a wider community in which persons otherwise uninterested in mutual welfare find common purpose and fraternal bonds.”41

Elaborating on this and echoing the point that William Temple made some 90 years ago, Yoram Hazony has argued that the nation-state, due to its scale, provides for a “cast of mind” that “paves the way for certain positive traits of character that are more difficult, if not impossible, to attain” in an international order that is organized around any other principle. He explains that because the nation-state sits at the midway point between empire and narrow tribalism, the citizen of the nation-state “takes part in a political endeavor which is quite different both from the indefinite expansion of empire and from the petty warfare of anarchy [tribalism]. And this endeavor encourages in him a different cast of mind in two respects”—first, it encourages the citizen of the given nation to prize the “truth and beauty in his own national traditions and . . . his own loyalty to them,” while at the same time recognizing that “they are not the sum of human knowledge, for there is also truth and beauty to be found elsewhere, which his own nation does not possess.” Hazony continues, “This balance of factors permits a moderating skepticism with respect to one’s own national inheritance, which is recognized as a product of a particular history and circumstances. And it gives rise to a willingness to consider on an empirical basis, the advantages of the institutions and customs of other nations.”42

This point leads to a commonly expressed criticism of nationalism, that it is defined by hostility to “the other” and, therefore, that it is a primary cause of conflict in the world and is almost uniquely the channel for the darker impulses in human nature. This not only wrongly assumes that all forms of nationalism are equivalent but also ignores the fact that a perverted form of nationalism is not the only cause of human conflict (both history and an orthodox Christian theological anthropology teach us that conflict will always be with us, as its most fundamental causes are rooted in human nature). This claim is often made in relation to an assumption that particular loyalties are by nature characterized by fear of and hostility toward the other at least as much as it is by love of those with whom one shares a common familial bond.

An expression of a unique culture and the political and other bonds and institutions that preserve and hand down that culture and way of life to future generations is not necessarily defined by a “hostility” to those from a different culture and national community. Herbert Kelman, a Harvard-based pioneer in the social psychology of conflict analysis, recognizes that issues of identity can be a key part of any ongoing conflict between groups but has nevertheless argued throughout his career that maintenance of a cultural identity does not depend on or necessitate hostility toward that of others. Kelman has posited that a major goal of conflict analysis and resolution is to arrive at an understanding of the other group that affirms its identity without believing that identity to be a threat to one’s own.43

Hostility toward the other can indeed take place within the context of competing national loyalties, but it is just as likely to take place in any other human context given the universality of human failings and the brokenness of the human condition. The weaknesses of human nature are evident in any form of human political organization, and the giving of power to supranational governing institutions does not form any type of barrier to the exercise of those more negative tendencies found in human nature. In fact, the argument can be made that larger governments, with greater distance from the lives of those citizens over whom its regulations hold so much sway, such as supranational institutions, are far less likely to be held accountable for their actions and thus their more negative tendencies are less likely to be curbed and a gradual trend toward authoritarianism is more likely to result. Supranational, statist solutions to the potential problems of an unhealthy form of nationalism, or “nationalism gone wrong,” are not convincing.

It should be noted that tribalism, with which nationalism is regularly equated, is just as evident among those who proclaim their own enlightened cosmopolitanism. Even though they do not see themselves in this manner, no less than anyone else, those self-proclaimed “citizens of the world” tend to advocate on behalf of their tribe, and their hostility toward all others who do not share their perspectives is often every bit as intolerant and tribalist as the tendencies that they justifiably condemn in others. This elite tribalism has its own easily identifiable worldview, is uncomfortable with and rarely encounters genuine cultural difference, and is utterly unwilling to change its views after coming into close contact with anyone who sees things differently. In fact, the vehemence with which this tribe attacks those who do not belong to it, their pronounced sense of moral superiority, and their conviction that they alone are worthy of governing illustrate just how “uncosmopolitan” they truly are.44

Every society addresses issues that are at the core of defining a given nation’s brand of nationalism differently, and another weakness of typical arguments against nationalism is that, as hinted at earlier, they tend to view nationalism as a monolithic phenomenon and all nationalisms as being morally equivalent, ignoring the fact that different types of nationalism exist. Today, the authoritarian nationalisms of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan are fundamentally different in nature from the democratic nationalisms of countries such as Australia, Canada, France, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Is anyone threatened, for example, by Canadian nationalism, despite the fact that we know Canadians love their country fiercely? With the exception of those of us non-Canadians who have ever faced a Canadian hockey team on the ice, probably not.

Historically, a comparison of the very different types of nationalism represented by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Benito Mussolini, and Hideki Tojo, on the one hand, and George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela, on the other, also illustrates the point. In the case of the latter, it is clear that each was based on a belief in the equality and dignity of all human beings, in the rule of law, and in a clear-eyed ability to see his nation’s failings while continuing to believe in and work toward the achievement of that nation’s higher ideals. Most today do not think of the word nationalism when they think of the American Founding Fathers. But that they were by definition nationalists would appear obvious given the fact that they made enormous sacrifices in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds to birth a nation that was shaped by their deepest convictions about the nature of human freedom and dignity (and one that was informed by the conviction that human freedoms and rights are sourced in divine authority, not merely granted by government, thus limiting government’s authority in our lives and shaping their conception of the type of nation they were creating). Indeed, they would hardly have pledged to each other their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” had they not firmly believed in the national project to which they were giving birth and in the political, moral, and, indeed, spiritual principles upon which it was based.45

Examples of this type of high-minded, “constructive” nationalism should give us a goal to shoot for. Lincoln, another whose name is not typically paired with the descriptor of “nationalist,” was clearly also one by definition; he was willing to sacrifice much to save his nation as a political union yet was nevertheless painfully aware of the ways in which his own nation, much as he loved it, had fallen short in terms of national righteousness. As a Congressman in the 1840s, for example, Lincoln argued strongly against the Mexican-American War on moral grounds, decrying it as a sin against heaven itself. As President, he was humbled by the knowledge that the sin of slavery had brought the Civil War, which threatened the Nation’s continued existence. In his second inaugural address, he referenced what he understood as God’s providential decree that the bloodshed that took place during that war was a direct result of the “lash” of the slave owner and the spiritual need for recompense. His knowledge of that grave national sin, and our other moral failings, however, did not halt his belief in the American national project. Rather, he understood that human sinfulness meant that both individuals and nations will inevitably fall short of their ideals, and suffer God’s judgment for it, but that that does not mean the national project based on those ideals is not worth pursuing. Lincoln is an example of a leader who recognized that one should seek not only the material but also the moral and spiritual prosperity of one’s nation.

But if moral perfection is the standard for loyalty to our respective nations, rather than a humility and determination to strive toward greater realization of those ideals in both our domestic and international actions, no national polity (or any other type of polity) could exist that could ever command our loyalty, all polities being composed of imperfect men and women whose actions all too often reflect the broken condition of humanity. As Biggar has written, “The line between virtue and vice runs down the middle of each human community, as it runs through the heart of every individual.”46

At the same time, an awareness as Americans, Britons, Canadians, Frenchmen, and so forth of our nations’ past failures to live up to our lofty standards should not cripple our nations so that they no longer act on the global stage, but rather should motivate us to do better in the future and to strive to interact with the world in keeping with our self-proclaimed values. A self-loathing due to real and imagined past sins can cripple a nation’s ability to be an active force for good in the world. (Referencing, in relation to the United States, the need for a moral self-confidence to fuel the Nation’s ability to act for good on the world stage, one former British government official has written, “That’s right, U.S. nationalism exists—and thank heaven it does. America would be weaker without it and much less use to the rest of the world.”47) A healthy nationalism balances a humbling awareness of our failings as a nation, on the one hand, and on the other the moral self-confidence necessary to act in pursuit of the high ideals upon which we were founded. None of our nations has a monopoly on either sin or righteousness, and this fact should both imbue us with humility and give us the confidence to attempt to tackle the ills facing our own nations and the world.

Christian theology sees all political community as provisional—a “grace,” if you will—to pursue order, justice, and peace, and to attempt to maximize human freedom and flourishing on Earth to the extent possible within the limits of sin and humanity’s unhealthy propensities. For Christians, our loyalties to our nation are to be shaped both by the realization that our nations are not eternal but temporal, and by the realization that all nations, as all individuals, are deeply impacted negatively by the brokenness and imperfection of the human condition. These realizations emphasize the limits of the nations and inject needed humility into our attitudes toward our own nation and empathy for others. While it is important to remember that all nationalisms are not morally equivalent, it is also true that a deep sense of humility before God is a necessary ingredient to guard against an arrogant sense of one’s own superior virtue. Biggar articulates well the reasons we should have this sense of humility when he writes, “The Christian doctrine of the universal presence of sin means that we cannot fondly imagine that the line dividing virtue from vice runs with reassuring neatness between our people on the virtuous side and another people on the viscious [sic] side.”48

It is self-evident that we cannot achieve a perfectly peaceful and just world order given the reality of sin and human brokenness. Catholic writer George Weigel holds that the peaceful international order Christians should seek to cultivate:

coexists with broken hearts and wounded souls. It is built in a world in which swords have not been beaten into plowshares, but remain swords: sheathed, but ready to be unsheathed in the defense of innocents. Its advantage, as Augustine understood, is that it is the form of peace that can be built through the instruments of politics.49

A system of nation-states will not change human nature and turn us into angels, no more than evolving into an international system ruled by supranational and/or global institutions will do so. A system of nation-states is, rather, one designed to work within the reality of an imperfect humanity, prone to so many moral failings, to provide an environment within which stability, justice, and human liberty and flourishing can be achieved to the greatest extent possible in any human political system created and managed by flawed humans.

While the desire to love one’s nation is natural, like other desires and needs found in human beings, this one needs to be carefully cultivated and bounded to ensure that this natural need finds healthy expression. Nation-states, as long as they exist, will always be profoundly human—that is, they will always be characterized by the same flaws that mark all social and political endeavors. Yet at the end of the day, it is difficult to see how alternatives to the nation-state can conceivably provide similar social, cultural, political, and moral goods, and there appears to be nothing that is better positioned to set conditions that can enable human flourishing. Our respective nations, and the ideal of nation-states, can do much to contribute to a healthy world and deserve our considered support, not our blanket condemnation.