Should Christians Be Patriotic?
Patriotism is in a bad way these days. On the left, it is suspect, too close to nationalism, too easily weaponized. On the right, it is increasingly absorbed into something harder-edged, less distinguishable from the tribal and the partisan. For many Christians, the question of what it means to love one’s country has become genuinely difficult to answer without sounding like you’re signing up for the culture war.
This is why I was glad to sit down with Daniel Darling on Acton Line to discuss his new book, In Defense of Christian Patriotism, published by Broadside Books. Darling is the director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a fellow at the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He has thought carefully about what faithful public engagement looks like, and this book is the fruit of that thinking.
Our conversation explored why patriotism needs defending in the first place. Not because love of country is self-evidently good, idolatries of the nation have done incalculable harm, but because the Christian tradition offers resources for a patriotism that is genuinely different from its counterfeits. A patriotism grounded not in blood and soil but in gratitude, responsibility, and a vision of the common good that transcends partisan allegiance.
What I found most compelling in our discussion was Darling’s argument that Christian patriotism, rightly understood, doesn’t threaten pluralistic America but can actually reinvigorate it. This is a crucial distinction. The question is not whether Christians should care about their country, of course they should, but how they should care, and toward what ends.
Lord Acton wrestled with these very questions in his 1862 essay “Nationality,” where he argued that the health of a state depends not on national homogeneity but on the coexistence of distinct communities under a shared commitment to liberty. Christianity, Acton believed, rejoices at the mixture of peoples precisely because its truths are universal. A Christian patriotism worthy of the name must reckon with that universality even as it affirms the particular loves and obligations that bind us to the places we call home.
Darling’s book is a welcome contribution to that reckoning.
Pick up In Defense of Christian Patriotism from Daniel Darling.
