Tag: antifascist theology

What Critics Often Get Wrong About Christian Nationalism

Last month I enjoyed a fun Memorial Day parade in my hometown of Newburgh, NY. I expected the procession to include a lot of flags, police cars, marching bands, and fire engines—and it did. More surprising to me however, were the large number of Latino evangelicals present in the parade, and particularly the prominent blending of Christianity and American patriotism. There was a Spanish-speaking church with multiple parade floats, led by a trio of  Hispanic men blowing shofars, followed by an Israeli flag, the Christian flag, and dozens of American flags. As the lead pastor rode by, dressed in a suit and waving to the crowd, I could read “One Nation Under God” and “In God we trust” written across the side of his van, which was decked out with more American flags. Spanish worship music blared from the speakers.

Photo from Hudson Valley Press

Seeing this blend of Christianity and patriotism made me reflect on the nature of Christian nationalism. Political science theorist Paul Miller writes: “Christian nationalism is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way.” Christian nationalism has been in the news a lot recently, as it becomes increasingly apparent that many Trump supporters—particularly those who attempted the coup on January 6, 2021—are fervent believers in this ideology. While Christian nationalism has often seemed to the domain of white evangelicals, who form the bedrock of Trump’s support and supported him in record numbers in 2016 and 2020, there are a growing number of Christians of other ethnicities who have also embraced Christian nationalism, including Christians of Spanish descent. Political journalists have noted the massive swing towards Trump that occurred in these communities (especially in Texas and Florida) in the 2020 elections as compared to 2016. While I didn’t see any Trump signs at the Memorial Day parade, I would guess that many of these Latino evangelicals might also fit into that category.

And that brings me to the main point of my blog today. Watching the Memorial Day parade, while fun, brought up some uncomfortable reminders of Christian nationalism, and the dangers that can arise when Christians attempt to coerce others into our faith through political power. I could go on and on about the problems with nationalism generally, and have blogged about it in the past. However, most recent critiques of Christian nationalism in America that I have come across—particularly by those who aren’t Christian— typically focus on three problematic aspects: 1. its connections to white supremacy, 2. the focus on America First, and 3. a centering of Protestant Christianity. All of these critiques are of course valid to a certain extent in the United States, but I want to highlight what I saw in the Newburgh Memorial Day parade as a caution: if your main critique of Christian Nationalism is that it is too centered on whiteness, America, and/or Protestantism, then your critique simply will not apply to many versions of Christian nationalism in our world today. 

As the Latino parade marchers illustrate, more and more, Christian Nationalism is NOT a domain of European whiteness- nor even of America. One can look more broadly at the rise of Christian nationalism in Brazil, or African nations like Uganda. There are attempts by more and more non-white peoples around the world to inscribe Christian values into their countries’ laws through legislation and political power. And lest one think that Christian nationalism is a fundamentally evangelical or Protestant phenomenon, one only has to look at the twisted version of Russian Orthodoxy that Putin has mobilized and militarized alongside Russian Archbishop Kirill in order to justify his imperialistic endeavors. Even in America, more and more Catholics are building alliances with their former Protestant rivals in order to fight what they see as rising “wokeness.” Contrary to what one might have heard, Christian nationalism is not a solely white, American, or Protestant phenomenon. 

Moreover, these narrow secular critiques of Christian nationalism remind me of the argument that philosopher Susan Sontag had with the poet Adrienne Rich regarding the nature of German Nazis’ ideology. Adrienne Rich had argued that the best way to understand Nazism was solely through the lens of misogyny–she wrote that Nazism was “patriarchy at its purest, most elemental form.” Sontag rebutted that while misogyny was certainly present, to focus on patriarchy over and above other aspects of Nazism (such as racism, anti-Semitism, violence, capitalism, imperialism, etc) is to deny the complexity of the problem. Similarly, to simply denounce Christian Nationalism solely for being too white, or too American, is dangerously myopic, and leaves one open to counter-arguments like this: “Well, we can’t be Christian nationalists because we aren’t white and we aren’t American!” They fail to comprehend the real appeal of Christian nationalism, which is the same appeal it has held for millennia, ever since the Roman Emperor Constantine co-opted the faith in 313 CE and began using it to justify his rule and reign. Christian nationalism is appealing because it is a form of idolatry, of using the name of God to bless one’s empire and defeat one’s enemies (domestic or foreign).

If Christian nationalism is only really wrong because America does it, then your critique can’t go back further than 1776; if it’s only wrong because it’s too Protestant, it can’t go back further than 1517; if it’s only wrong because it’s too white, then you can’t go back further than the 1400s (when the concept of “whiteness” originated). We need to go back further than that.

Thus, to lay my cards not he table, I believe the fundamental weakness of critiquing Christian Nationalism for being too racist, too American, or too Protestant is that it simply does not go deep enough; it fails to address the root of the problem. (And to be clear, the problem is not that Christians are acting voting and acting according to their moral beliefs about what is right or wrong—because that is hopefully true for EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON.) The core problem at the heart of Christian nationalism is this–should Christians be attempting to establish Christianity as the pre-eminent religion? Should Christians ever use political power to coerce people to follow Jesus? 

Admittedly, some Christians, particularly those who have a dim view of free will, have no problem with this. They might argue that other religions—notably Islam—spread through the sword, and if governmental power helps people to make other wise decisions (like wearing a seatbelt), then why not use coercion to force people to become Christian? For me and other Anabaptists, however, it is clear from the New Testament that Jesus’ Kingdom is not of this world, and as such he forbids his followers from using the sword to advance their interests. The earliest Christians refused to fight in wars, and would not use force to make others believe. We Anabaptists do not even baptize infants, insisting that they be able to make a free choice to be baptized when they are mature enough to decide for themselves. Thus Anabaptists such as myself would argue that Christianity is always wrong when it uses violence to coerce others into following Jesus, and our critique can go back all the way to the “Christianization” of the Roman Empire in 313 CE, would apply all the way through the Crusades, Inquisition, and European conquests, and will keep on applying going forward regardless what form Christian nationalism takes next. 

For example, I think there is a chance, however small, that within the next century China will hit a tipping point where the number of Christians becomes too large for the government to keep repressing. Imagine then a Chinese version of Roman Emperor Constantine, who decides that it is easier to co-opt Christianity to serve his regime rather than to keep fighting it. Imagine that then we see a new version of Christian nationalism that uses the cross to justify Chinese persecution of the Muslim Uighurs, Chinese expansionism in Asia, and even a war against the increasingly non-Christian West. If your critique of Christian nationalism is that it is too white, or too centered on American Christianity or Protestantism, then you would have little to say against a uniquely Chinese Christian nationalism. (Or Brazilian Christian nationalism, or Ugandan Christian nationalism… etc). 

However, if instead you have been critiquing Christian nationalism all along because Jesus’ followers are called to never use violence against their opponents, then you actually have a worthwhile—and consistent!—counter-philosophy to offer. That is why I think it is so crucial in this time for Anabaptist Christians to offer up their theology of pacifism (and our connected critiques of Christian nationalism) and spread it far and wide. Lord knows that Western Christians need to understand that Christian nationalism is flawed; but the center of the Church is no longer in the West. Now is the time for Christians around the entire globe to learn from Western Christianity’s mistakes and to reject the temptation to pick up the sword. Otherwise, we will see the heartbreaking cycle of violence continue in a new generation, staining the name of Jesus once more as rising powers in the Global East and South flex their muscles and attempt to build their own Christian Empires. 

The sword is a lot easier to carry than the cross. Every generation since Peter sliced off the servants’ ear in the garden of Gethsemane will be tempted to establish God’s Kingdom through violence. But that’s not the way of Jesus. And Christians of every tribe, nation, and tongue need to be reminded of that. 

[For a book that does a great job of critiquing Christian nationalism both in principle and as it has been practiced in America, I recommend Paul Miller’s The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism. Paul Miller is himself a practicing Christian so this book is an insider’s view at the philosophical and theological issues with Christian nationalism.]

[For another book that is a bit shorter and less academic, but was written 18 years ago so it’s a bit out of date, I’d recommend Greg Boyd’s Myth of a Christian Nation. This book was one of the biggest influences on how I shifted in my political and religious views away from Christian nationalism and to my current views.]

A case study of a church doing the work of communal repentance

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of communal repentance, particularly as we work against idolatry, nationalism, and racism. Now, I want to give a concrete example of what a modern-day act of communal repentance might look like; not just a performative act but one that takes ownership of the past and seeks to make amends. In Plough (a quarterly magazine), Pastor Helmuth Eiwen wrote an article titled “The Sins of the Fathers,” sharing why and how he led his Austrian church to publicly repent of anti-Semitism past and present. (While I am unsure if Eiwen is specifically familiar with Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, his articles accurately reflects the same points that I shared in my blog post.) I encourage you to read his whole piece, but in the meantime I will quote a few parts: 

“Forgiveness of sins, in the sense of the cleansing and salvation of the sinner, is a personal experience between God and the penitent. No one can step in to be cleansed or forgiven in the sinner’s stead. Yet the Bible describes another important aspect of guilt: the reality that the so-called “sins of the fathers” may have lasting negative results. In other words, even if we do not bear the sins of our ancestors, we may not be able to escape the consequences of their actions….Such an inheritance may not be personal but collective; God’s history is marked not only by relationships and covenants with individuals but with whole groups – families, cities, tribes, and entire peoples or nations…

“The ongoing aftereffects of “sins of the fathers” may be temporal: political oppression or subjugation, or economic woe. They may manifest as wars, famines, and natural catastrophes, or as pandemics and plagues. Just as grave, if less visible, are the spiritual fruits of such sin – the blindness that can lead to unbiblical or faulty theologies being passed from one generation to the next; they may be wrongheaded (and even deadly) traditions, worldviews, and attitudes. Antisemitism is one such malign legacy; its insidious invincibility has poisoned countless souls and continues to do so. Ungodly decisions, stipulations, and legal decrees by government officials or clerical leaders preserve injustice.

“When a dark cloud hangs over a city, region, or a church, its origin does not matter: it will hinder the breaking through of the gospel. More often than not, it will show itself in splits and divisions within Christendom that can be traced back to instances of persecution, hatred, and ostracism.“

In the late 1990s Pastor Eiwen realized that the legacy of anti-Semitism had left a curse on his small Austrian town that had left it strangely resistant to receiving love and grace from God. Interestingly enough, the most recent Atlantic cover article makes a similar point, that centuries-old acts of evil can have tangible, measurable impacts in our modern world: “[William Bernstein says] You can actually predict anti-Semitism and voting for the Nazi Party by going back to the anti-Semitism across those same regions in the 14th century. You can trace it city to city.” Wow! I am reminded of the ways that you can still see the tangible effects of redlining, urban renewal, or other past racist policies in many American cities today.

As Pastor Eiwen and his church wrestled with the implications for their specific city in Austria, they realized: 

“We cannot repent on behalf of somebody else. But we can identify with them and ask God to lift the curse – the negative consequences – that we are suffering under; we can even be so bold as to pray that he turns it into a blessing.…Daniel does not pray [in Dan 9], “Lord, forgive our fathers, cleanse them of their guilt.” That is something they could only do themselves. When Daniel prays for forgiveness, he is asking God to lift today’s curse. And so we too pray for God to break today’s curse so that the chain of destructive consequences of “the sins of the fathers” might come to an end – and so that there will finally be real freedom, once and for all….Daniel was given a clear recognition regarding the sins of his ancestors. He did not seek to remove himself from them, sweep them under the rug, or say they were not his business. Rather, he clearly acknowledged and named sins, and confessed them “before God’s countenance.” He could do this because he knew he was a member of a people whose ancestors had sinned, and he himself was thus ready to bear the consequences of their sin in his exile – perhaps almost as a guarantor for them.“

Eiwen emphasizes that confession is just one part of communal repentance. 

“A confession of identification is a beginning, but to bear fruit, it must lead to concrete action on the part of individuals and the community at hand – to deeds that demonstrate the authenticity of the confession by bringing about real change. Examples might include the correction of false theologies; reconciliation, which encourages new behavior and new attitudes; compensation, which, to some degree, returns what has been stolen; and the solidification of new attitudes and paradigms by the passing of new insights to the next generation. For repentance by identification to be fruitful, it must include as many of the individuals and groups who represent the collective body in question as possible. Not only solitary men and women, but whole families, congregations, churches, neighborhoods, cities, and peoples, must be willing to identify with the guilt of their fathers and step into the fissure.“

For Eiwen’s church, they felt led to take a number of actions: 

  • Learned about the guilt of their city, particularly in mistreatment of Jews
  • Gathered church leaders for a prayer
  • Confessed ancestor’s guilt as their own, and asked God’s forgiveness
  • Implored God to turn his face to the city once again, and turn the curse into a blessing
  • Do a public act of external remorse, which involved seeking out Jews that had left Wiener Neustadt and seeking forgiveness and connection

Eiwen closes:  

“One remarkable fruit of this process of “repentance by identification” has been an increased openness to the gospel in Wiener Neustadt. As far as we have been able to observe, God has revitalized not only our congregation’s spiritual life but also that of other churches in the city. Many spiritual leaders and congregants gather regularly to pray for revival. I do not know what the future will bring, but I can say this: the spiritual atmosphere has changed, the cloud has lifted, and the skies above Weiner Neustadt are now open to God.“

I continue to be immensely inspired by Pastor Eiwen’s article and recommend you read it. But in the meantime, it leaves me with many questions:

  • What are the open wounds still open in America that must be repented of? Or let’s get more local — What about in Central Pennsylvania? What about here in Carlisle? And what would repentance look like? 
  • Of what communal sins should I and my family and church identify ourselves? Of what communal sins are we still guilty of? Are there ancestral or generational curses that we must become aware of in order to break cycles of brokenness? 
  • What if the revival that we Christians are seeking in America can only come through communal repentance? How does one even being to help American Christians see the truth about history when they are enthralled by semi-fascist narratives of a perfect nation under God that can do no wrong? 
  • Is communal repentance a “once-and-done” activity, or something that must be pursued for decades (or even longer)? How can you know when a communal crime has been sufficiently repented of? And how far back do we go; must modern-day Italians repent of the crimes of the Roman Empire?
  • How big a community is necessary to truly do communal repentance? Ideally the entire social group that is implicated in a crime would be willing to repent, but if that’s not the case, is it enough for just one church to do communal repentance? One family?

These are not easy questions. But they are important ones. I hope that you’ll join me in continuing to wrestle with them.

Bonhoeffer’s Antifascist Theology – Part IV. We Need Communal Repentance for Communal Injustices

[Read all posts about Antifascist Theology by clicking here.]

When telling the story of America, where do you begin? Did the story of America begin in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence’s statement that “all men are created equal”? Or did it begin in 1619, when the first enslaved Africans were brought to our shores, ushering in the start of a decidedly unequal society built on the backs of marginalized people groups? The answer to that question has been hotly debated in recent years, and I don’t plan to address it today, except to say that “it’s complicated.” However, it is crucial that we do think deeply and critically about the past — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Real history requires the study of nuance, of complicated people groups doing complicated actions for complicated reasons. 

In contrast, one of the hallmarks of fascism is an oversimplified, often mythologized celebration of a nation’s founding story, which may have little basis in fact. In the first century BCE, the Roman poet Virgil wrote The Aeneid , which linked the founding of Rome to the glorious heroes and demigods of the Trojan War stories. Virgil’s writings helped to prop up and justify the new order of the Pax Romana, the empire led by Caesar Augustus after the fall of the Roman Republic. All past evils and uncomfortable truths were washed away in the glow of the founding story. 

Fascists over the centuries have followed suit. Mussolini linked his vision of Italian fascism to the Roman Empire, nearly 1900 years prior, while Hitler’s Nazis concocted a pseudoscientific story about “Aryans” that linked to Norse and Germanic legends. For both Mussolini and Hitler, these stories required a timeless villain that they described as the globalist, unrooted, corrupt, disloyal Jew. We all know what horrors would soon be justified by these fables. 

Norse imagery used in Nazi propaganda : Source

Now, I don’t think there is anything automatically wrong with telling semi-mythical origin stories about one’s people group; humans have been doing it since the invention of language — see the Babylonian Enuma Elish, or the book of Genesis. To the extent that Americans are inspired by a fake story about George Washington chopping down a cherry tree tree, that is probably fine. However, it is bad when those stories are misused to justify evil, oppress marginalized groups, and/or to puff up a sense of false pride and supremacy. What’s even worse is when Christians, who ought to hold ourselves to a higher standard, refuse to acknowledge wrongs done and instead continue to justify sins and evil done in our nations. 

So what is the answer? How can we as Christians move forward to tell the truth about previous generations, repent and make amends as needed, and pursue justice in our own time? 

Bonhoeffer has much to say about this in his Ethics (pages 134-145), written in the 1940s under the specter of Nazi fascism. As I have written previously, while Bonhoeffer does not use this term, what he is essentially creating in Ethics is a work of antifascist theology. The tendrils of fascism have been creeping up in many places recently and we would be wise to heed Bonhoeffer’s warnings, lest we fall into similar errors. 

Bonhoeffer’s Theology of Communal Guilt

I have written before about the idea of communal guilt and communal repentance. It is a deeply biblical idea, but in the West it is often ignored because we are overly focused on individual culpability. In contrast, as Bonhoeffer writes in Ethics, “The church today is [supposed to be] the community of people who, grasped by the power of Christ’s grace, acknowledge, confess, and take upon themselves not only their personal sins, but also the Western world’s falling away from Jesus Christ.” Even if we ourselves do not think we have done wrong, or have done very little, we still must confess: “Even the most secret sin of the individual soils and destroys the body of Christ. Murder, envy, strife, war—all arise from the desire that lies within me (James 4:1). I cannot pacify myself by saying that my part in all this is slight and hardly noticeable…I am guilty of inordinate desire; I am guilty of cowardly silence when I should have spoken; I am guilty of untruthfulness and hypocrisy in the face of threatening violence; I am guilty of disowning without mercy the poorest of my neighbors….what does it concern me if others are also guilty? Every sin of another I can excuse; only my own sin, of which I remain guilty, I can never excuse.”

Bonhoeffer points out that this is not merely something to be confessed by individuals for themselves, but by Christians on behalf of the whole church. “The church was mute when it should have cried out…the church has looked on while injustice and violence have been done, under the cover of the name of Christ.”

Bonhoeffer shares a litany of sins of which the German church was guilty. How many of these are similarly true of the American church today?

  • Using the language of “resisting Bolshevism [communism]” to legitimize violence against leftists
  • Not resting on the Sabbath
  • Exploiting working people beyond the hours of the workweek
  • Disrespect towards elders
  • Not speaking out against the arbitrary use of brutal violence
  • Looking on silently while the poor are exploited, and the strong were enriched
  • Not condemning slanderers who tell lies about other people

Clearly, all of these sins have both individual and communal manifestations. In our day, one person’s private sinful inclination can quickly become very mainstream — witness the rise of slander as we share unfounded conspiracy theories and lies on social media — “Oh I’m just asking questions; it’s my freedom of speech.”  Or witness the coarse joking of Christians who eagerly express the not-so-hidden desire to kidnap, kill, or rape their political opponents (#FJB anyone?).

Of course in our day, like in Bonhoeffer’s, there are those who would argue that these sins are not so bad, or at least, not so bad as the sins of our opponents. Bonhoeffer responds to these people and writes sarcastically, “Is this going too far? Should a few super-righteous people rise at this point and try to prove that it’s not the church, but all the others are guilty?…to be called as judges of the world, proceed to weigh the mass of guilt here and there and distribute it accordingly?” To these people who engage in such Whataboutism, who argue that the Church’s confession of communal sin is unnecessary when the other side is also bad, Bonhoeffer thunders at them— “Free confession of guilt is not something that one can take or leave; it is the form of Jesus Christ breaking through in the church. Whoever stifles or spoils the church’s confession of guilt is hopelessly guilty before Christ.”

Wow! He is not holding back. For the church to be the church, it must be willing to confess the sins of its people, and its nation. Anyone who tries to oppose such communal confession is “hopelessly guilty!” I think of all the pundits and politicians who are so quick to deny that American Christians have ever done anything wrong, and say that we have nothing to apologize for. Bonhoeffer thinks such people are not only deluded, but practitioners of a false gospel. To deny the existence of any guilt is to deny any possibility of forgiveness, repentance, or redemption.

However, if we do choose the right path, progress is possible. Bonhoeffer writes: “The nations bear the heritage of their guilt. Yet by God’s gracious rule in history it can happen that what began as a curse can finally become a blessing on the nations…to be sure, the guilt is not justified, not removed, not forgiven. It remains, but the wound that is inflicted is scarred over. For the church and for individual believers there can be a full break with guilt and a new beginning through the gift of forgiveness of sin. But in the historical life of nations there can only be a slow process of healing…Continuity with past guilt, which in the life of the church and the believer is broken off by repentance and forgiveness, remains in the historical life of nations…

“What matters is only whether the past guilt is in fact scarred over. If so, then at this point, within the historical conflicts of nations both domestic and foreign, something like forgiveness takes place, though it is only a weak shadow of the forgiveness that Jesus Christ gives to believers. Here the claim to full atonement by the guilty for past injustice is renounced; here it is recognized that what is past can never be restored by human power, that the wheel of history can no longer be rolled back. Not all wounds that were made can be healed; but it is critical that no further wounds be made….Where this does not happen, where injustice rules unchecked and inflicts ever-new wounds, there can certainly be no talk about such forgiveness. Instead, our first concern must be to resist injustice and convict the guilty of their guilt.” 

Bonhoeffer clearly makes the distinction between wounds that have slowly been left behind by the passage of time, and wounds that continue to remain open and gaping. In both cases, however, there is the need be a need for Christians to seek forgiveness and healing, not to simply sweep the past under the rug.

Some Case Studies

The idea of communal guilt is a bit vague. What might this look like practically? Let’s take a few case examples. 

There are some sins of our own nation that have indeed “scarred over,” and are mostly in the past. For example, Anti-Catholic sentiment used to be one of the biggest forms of discrimination in the US, with legal, social, and ethnic prejudice embedded throughout the nation. Recall that it was a big deal that JFK was the first Catholic President. However, as writer and speaker Eboo Patel has pointed out, anti-Catholic sentiment is very rare nowadays, and systemic and social barriers to Catholics have virtually disappeared. This feels like a good example of Bonhoeffer’s “scarring over”— it doesn’t justify the sins of the past, and the pain may still be there in some ways, but for the most part it is in the past. There are no new wounds being made against Catholics except in the absolute rarest of occasions.

Anti-Catholic cartoon from 1913 depicting the church and the pope as a malevolent octopus (source)

Or take the response of Germany after the Holocaust. After being forced by the Allies to reckon with the evils perpetrated in their name, Germany has embarked in a multi-generational, long-term effort to make amends. Germany has sent reparations checks to individual victims of the Holocaust for decades, as well as billions of dollars of military funding to the Jewish nation of Israel. They have constructed memorials to the Holocaust in ways both big and small, both national and local. And in terms of foreign policy, Germany has accepted over one million refugees fleeing violence, and has been very hesitant to resort to armed violence (as seen in the recent hesitation to get involved in the war in Ukraine). The repentance after WWII in Germany has thoroughly remade both that nation and Europe as a whole-for the better! [In comparison with Germany, Russia never made a serious attempt to repent or make reparations after the collapse of the USSR, and instead allowed bitterness and jealousy to take root. The contrast between modern-day Germany and modern-day Russia is vast.]  

Or to look at a negative example, we can look at certain people groups in America and see that some harms never scarred over, or, even if it partially healed, the scar keeps getting picked at and infected. Witness the genocidal removal of Native Americans from their lands and continued overlooking of the problems they face now, particularly in Native reservations. Witness the longstanding mistreatment of African-Americans at all levels of society, from the lack of reparations and justice after slavery, to the continued under-investment in and over-harsh policing of their communities. Or witness the coddling of wealthy corporations while consistently overlooking small farmers and blue collar workers. None of these are new phenomena in America, but we have never truly seen the Church at large confess sins against these groups, nor has the nation sought long-term justice, healing, and progress in them. 

Now, it is tempting in some liberal circles at this point to blame “white supremacy” or “capitalism” for all systemic sins in America and in the entire world. However, a view that blames Western ideology for all problems in the entire world actually falls prey to the same Eurocentric mindset it is critiquing. It removes agency from non-Westerners to choose their own paths, and treats them like children whose every choice is ultimately based on the foundations laid by Westerners. Can we blame white supremacy and capitalism for the genocide of Uyghurs in far-west China by the Chinese Communist Party? Should we lay the blame for 1930s Japanese militarism and violence in Korea and China at the feet of Western Europeans, or is it instead appropriate for descendants of those victims to seek justice and apologies from modern-day Japan (as they actually are doing)? Or what about evils that happened around the world centuries ago, before European colonialism started, that still have a legacy today? At the final judgment of the world, the sins of Europeans are indeed vast. Western Christians must deal with them all as quickly and thoroughly as possible lest we ourselves receive judgment. But at best it overstates the case, and at worst engenders unneeded opposition, to lay all the sins of all history at the feet of modern-day Europeans and North Americans. Each community must take proper account of its own actions, right or wrong, justified or unjustified.

On a related note, Bonhoeffer himself is hesitant to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” by rushing straight from the evils of empire into a different mess. He writes, “By renouncing the crown or by surrendering what had been conquered, a ruler could cause even greater disorder and incur even more guilt.” In other words, we must be careful that the unjust systems we seek to tear down are not replaced by something even worse. The French Revolution started with lofty goals but ended with the guillotine and Napoleon. The 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2011 Arab Spring both sought the ends of evil dictatorships but both resulted in bloodshed and violence worse than before. We must not be slow or scared to act against social injustice, but we must be wise in how it gets corrected. 

Me at at an Arab Spring rally in Ramallah, Palestine, 2011.

Conclusion

There is a LOT to think about here. And I am still learning and having my theology shaped on the topic of communal repentance. But in the meantime, it leaves me with many questions. 

What are the open wounds still open in America and around the world that must be repented of? Or let’s get more local — What about in Central Pennsylvania? What about here in Carlisle? And what would repentance look like? 

Of what communal sins should me and my family and church identify ourselves? Of what communal sins are we still guilty of? Are there ancestral or generational curses that we must become aware of in order to break cycles of brokenness? 

What if the revival that we Christians are seeking in America can only come through communal repentance? How does one even being to help American Christians see the messy truths about our nation? 

Race, Patriotism, and the Nation State

[Originally published on my old blog on April 25, 2011, this essay was written partially in response to a class assignment. I have reposted it here without edits.]

Yesterday I was sitting in the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, Italy. It was a warm and lively evening, as hundreds of people milled about with their beer and gelatos. Meanwhile, the dominating white edifice of the Duomo Cathedral hung over everything, its stained glass windows lit from within. My attention was distracted from it, however, by the bright rocket/helicopter toys that street vendors would launch into the night sky to attract the lustful eyes of children. Over and over the toys flew through the air like shooting stars…(or like flares announcing the start of war? I can see the soldiers leaping from their trenches into the maw of the machine guns, their blood spilling upon the soil that is undistinguishable but for the fact that it is their soil, for their nation…).

Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of race and nationhood. The mythology of the Romantics and fascists alike is powerful: that people form discreet groups or ethnicities based upon a homeland (and therefore usually also a language, history, and set of stories). Germany for the Germans, France for the French, Italy for the Italians, Israel for the Jews… The implication of this is that these people groups each have an essential, eternal, almost spiritual identity, not an artificial one created through normal processes of history.

            This was very clear to me yesterday when I went to an art and history exhibit about Italy’s wars for independence (their 150th year as a nation is this year). While I couldn’t understand all of the Italian in the descriptions, what I gathered was quite patriotic. The Italians fought for their land against the French and Prussians, with a common ethnicity, language, music, and colors binding them together. By blood and force the new nation had been forged.

But after World War II, it seemed that the concept of the nation-state had been dealt a deathblow. The radical fascism of Italy and Germany had proved disastrous, so most of the world united around universal values instead of the nation-state. The Western bloc chose the values of political freedom and sought to promote those, the Eastern bloc chose economic freedom from the claws of capitalism.

But meanwhile, hidden beneath the tide of universal values that rose up in the post-war period, one anomaly entered the system. The nation of Israel was founded, a homeland for the Jews scattered around the world. Finally, after 2000 years, the Jews would no longer be a minority in other lands! The verse I’ve heard applied by Israel’s founders comes from 1 Samuel 8:5, where the Jews want to be “like all other nations” (The fact that this displeased God is ignored). However, established in its founding charter as a “Jewish, democratic state”, Israel has sacrificed some democratic values to preserve its Jewish character, for example by forbidding non-Jews from immigrating and by banning non-Jews from getting married. Thus I believe that while Israel is obviously quite democratic compared to its Arab neighbors, it is not an American-style democracy. It is a Jewish nation-state with many democratic tendencies.

This has many interesting implications besides the marriage and immigration limitations mentioned above. A one-state solution in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is no longer on the table because high Arab birthrates mean that there would be too many in the “Jewish” state. This also reveals itself in a well-documented bureaucratic effort to keep Palestinians from ‘taking over’ Jerusalem. Building permits for expansions of housing or schools are usually denied to Palestinians in East Jerusalem, while almost always approved for Jews. The result is over-crowding and poverty for these families in East Jerusalem, or else being forced into the even poorer cities Ramallah or Bethlehem.

 However, any Jew who questions any of Israel’s policies as unbefitting of a democratic state is labeled by many as a “self-hating Jew”. Why? Because by not supporting these policies of excluding non-Jews, they are undermining the concept of a solely Jewish state. Once that concept is gone, the theory goes, Jews will once again have nowhere to be safe and will inevitably face another Holocaust, one that will wipe them out for good. This is the basis I’ve heard over and over of all the fears of losing Israel’s solely Jewish character. So thus the ‘self-hating Jew’ is thought of in Zionist and neo-Zionist thought as an anti-Semite, therefore on the side of those who wish to complete Hitler’s Final Solution.

In fact, merely by writing this blog and other blogs that are mildly critical of one or two of Israel’s policies (such as the Security Barrier built on Palestinian land that economically crushes Palestinians), I have been personally called out for in essence being an anti-Zionist (AKA an anti-Semite). The fact that some people label would place me in the same camp as the Nazis is a bit scary and shows that no middle ground currently exists in the minds of modern-day Zionists. “Either you are with us or you are against us.” In their view, criticisms by leftist Jews or neutral people like me, intended to help Israel become an even better nation, must be completely silenced lest they serve as moral ammunition to the Hitlers who wait at the doorstep.

But perhaps, we see recently that Israel’s nationalist policies are not that deviant. Throughout the West there is now a trend towards preserving the “nation” from those “outsiders” who threaten it. In France and Germany, PMs Sarkozy and Merkel have each proclaimed that “multiculturalism has failed”. Throughout Europe, racism abounds against Muslim and African immigrants who threaten their singular national character. In France Muslim headscarves are banned, while racist parties gain power in Denmark and Switzerland. Goodbye freedom; hello nationalism.

To what extent is ultra-nationalism present in America? We see it in fears against Mexican immigrants and the need to preserve jobs for “true” Americans. That’s interesting because America is one of the few states in the world that was not founded on a singular nation of people. A mix of Europeans created a state built on the theory of freedom for all, regardless of race or religion. But perhaps America is in fact a nation like all other nations; the only difference being the rationale given for waging war. Instead of for a given “nation”, we wage war for “freedom”. Same violent results.

            Is there an answer? Must every group of humans necessarily become violently exclusionary to preserve it’s own identity? How does this apply to me as a Christian? If you’ve talked to me about these types of issues within the past year or so, I think you can guess what my solutions might entail. Hint: they do not involve a Church with political power. Instead, there must be a Church that is anti-political, on the side of the excluded, the lepers, the poor, the shunned. NOT to empower the outsiders politically, as that would ultimately lead to the same problem. But we are only called to love them, free them, and be among them.

(On a side note, I am frustrated by Christians who worry constantly about the direction America is heading politically. They’re afraid of the wrong things! The soul of a single person is infinitely more important than whether America continues to have Christian bling like Ten Commandment displays, “in God we trust” coins, or “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. I hate to say it, but America is not eternal. The soul of every single person is. So unless one thinks that angrily fighting gay marriage tooth and nail will somehow lead people to God, then one is fighting the wrong battles.)

Pardon me for the tangent. The conclusion to this long essay is that there is a way to avoid the temptations of nationalism. Nationalism is beautiful, and patriotism is surely a more beautiful idol to worship than drugs, alcohol, or sex. But for that reason it’s much more deadly. Thus we must renounce the nation state and choose to live in the world but not of it. To always challenge the systems of power that dominate and exclude. To unconditionally love the rejected.

I don’t believe in the myth of the Nation State anymore. And it saddens me to see that the Jews, God’s chosen people, have chosen to go the route of all other nations instead of deciding to be different, a light to the rest of the world. “It is not you they have rejected as their king, but me,” God says to Samuel (1 Sam. 8:7). The desire for a supposedly secure homeland trumps the desire to be uniquely God’s people, showing compassion to others.

May Christians not follow into the same error, and repent if they already have.