A Sense of Place?

R.R. Reno has an excellent essay over at First Things. It's one of those essays that reminds you that while an argument seems to be over and done, there are still some very smart people pulling you back to the table, presenting things in an old (but not stale) and penetrating way. The debate? Patriotism.

As Reno mentions, much more profoundly than I ever could, it's chic right now to criticize nationalism, especially American patriotism. I have made such critiques on this blog and in my sermons. But Reno reminds us--quite well--that there is something true and beautiful in every culture--which is why the kings of the earth bring their splendour into the New Jerusalem--and so there is something that is worth loving in every culture, as well. Because of this, there is something worth fighting for in every culture. I can agree with Reno up to this point.

However, the beginning of Reno's essay makes me uneasy and its conclusion confirms this uneasiness. Reno says that G.K. Chesterton was a sucker for "romantic" images, like soldiers with swords crossed and flags rippling in the wind. Indeed, who has seen battle scenes from Lord of the Rings and not been moved? But what Reno cites approvingly gives me chills, because the images he mentions are people against people, not Elves against Orcs. They are people against people, not good vs. evil. Tolkien's pictures can be moving, inspiring even, precisely because they are fantasy. When it becomes all too real it ceases being romantic and becomes something brutal, awful, and destructive--even if one believes, as I do, one can engage in war Christianly. If one can see this image as romantic, then one has been lured, I think, into seeing why war is so seductive.

My uneasiness as Reno concludes, "In genuine patriotism, we give ourselves away to our roots—not unequivocally, not uncritically, not without reserve, but really and without hedging our bets. All our flags are corrupted by sin, but when we salute them, we prepare the heart for a deeper, life-abandoning salute to the cross and abandonment to God." Once Reno has described abandonment to God as "deeper" than patriotism, he has put them in the same category, just a different levels. Abandonment to God is what allows me to re-categorize all other commitments. It is not devotion to country that prepares my devotion to God; it is my devotion to God that enables proper devotion to country. It is loving God *before* any and all else--country, family, self--that enables proper loving of self, family, country possible, even responsible. Loyalty to God makes any kind of loyalty to country Christian because it means that the one to whom my first allegiance is given constructs and enables any and all other expressions of loyalty.