{"id":83807,"date":"2025-07-04T06:00:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T10:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=83807"},"modified":"2025-06-29T18:17:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T22:17:09","slug":"theses-on-love-of-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2025\/07\/theses-on-love-of-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Theses on Love of Country"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Happy Independence Day!\u00a0 This year we celebrate the 4th of July, our nation\u2019s 249th birthday, in a climate of controversy.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t just debates over the slogan \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d or the propriety of \u201cChristian Nationalism.\u201d\u00a0 The Left has long been demonizing America as a hotbed of capitalism, racism, colonialism, and their other sins.<\/p>\n

But now elements of the Right seem as if they too have turned anti-American.\u00a0 This country and our vaunted Constitution are products of the Enlightenment!\u00a0 That\u2019s why we have become so secularist!\u00a0 The American fixation on freedom has led to sexual license, the breakdown of the family, same-sex marriage, abortion, and transgenderism!\u00a0 Our radical individualism makes a true sense of community impossible!<\/p>\n

\n

Both Leftwingers and Rightwingers are saying that we are in a \u201cpost-liberal\u201d era, in which democracy, capitalism, and Constitutional rights just don\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

And goodness knows, we conservative Christian culture critics are always complaining about how things are in the United States.\u00a0 So are progressive secularist culture critics, though we complain about different things.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s think through what it means to love one\u2019s country.\u00a0 Let\u2019s avoid the loaded terms \u201cpatriotism\u201d and \u201cnationalism\u201d for now\u2013not that there is necessarily anything wrong with them\u2013but just to set aside all of the ideologies for a moment to zero in on what we should be feeling on this Independence Day and beyond.<\/p>\n

I would like to propose some theses on love of country.\u00a0 (I can\u2019t think of 95 of them, but if\u00a0 you can think of others, please add them in the comments.)<\/p>\n

Theses on Love of Country<\/h4>\n

(1) Love of country is a virtue.\u00a0 <\/strong>Just as we should love our family simply because it\u2019s our family, we should love our country simply because it\u2019s our country.<\/p>\n

(2)<\/strong> Love of country does not mean thinking it is without faults.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>We may have a family member who has gone off the rails in one way or another.\u00a0 We love them anyway.\u00a0 Same with our country.<\/p>\n

(3)\u00a0 Love of country means we want it to overcome its faults.\u00a0 <\/strong>We can criticize it while still loving it.\u00a0 In fact, our love for it motivates our concern. As G. K. Chesterton<\/a> has said,<\/p>\n

To one who loves his fatherland, for instance, our boasted indifference to the ethics of a national war is mere mysterious gibberism. It is like telling a man that a boy has committed murder, but that he need not mind because it is only his son. Here clearly the word \u2018love\u2019 is used unmeaningly. . . .\u2018My country, right or wrong,\u2019 is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, \u2018My mother, drunk or sober.\u2019 No doubt if a decent man\u2019s mother took to drink he would share her troubles to the last; but to talk as if he would be in a state of gay indifference as to whether his mother took to drink or not is certainly not the language of men who know the great mystery.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(4)\u00a0 Our country is not the same as our government.<\/strong>\u00a0 We can dislike our government without disliking our country.\u00a0 Our country has<\/em> a government, which changes periodically.<\/p>\n

(5)\u00a0 Our country consists of the land, its people, their history, and their civilization.\u00a0 <\/strong>This is not the same as \u201cculture,\u201d since every state and region has its own cultures and sub-cultures.\u00a0 \u201cCulture\u201d has to do with the organic customs and folkways of a people, but \u201cCivilization\u201d has to do with the people\u2019s accomplishments and contributions to the world.<\/p>\n

(6)\u00a0 Citizenship is a vocation; therefore, we should love and serve our country.\u00a0 <\/strong>Luther said that God has ordained three \u201cestates\u201d for human flourishing: the family, the church, and the state.\u00a0 God calls us to stations, duties, and responsibilities in each of the three.\u00a0 And the purpose of all of the vocations in all of the estates is the same:\u00a0 to love and serve our neighbors.\u00a0 The country in which we live consists of neighbors whom we are to love and serve.<\/p>\n

(7)\u00a0 People from every country should love their country.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Love of homeland is a universal virtue, so it applies to every nation.\u00a0 People from other countries love their countries too.<\/p>\n

(8)\u00a0 Love of country works against emigration, but it does not completely preclude it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Thesis #6 and thesis #7 would indicate that, in general, people should not leave their own countries to live in a different one. But the United States is a nation of immigrants, as are other countries, so that loving America recognizes that sometimes emigration is justified, because. . .<\/p>\n

(9)\u00a0 Love of country is not the highest good.\u00a0 <\/strong>Some things are more important than love of country, such as\u00a0 love of God and love of family.\u00a0 Some immigrants, including confessional Lutherans, came to America for religious reasons, out of their higher commitment to God.\u00a0 Some came for economic reasons to better the condition of their family.\u00a0 Some fled political oppression out of a craving for liberty.\u00a0 Some came out of necessity, because they were driven out of their homes (Russian Jews), stolen from their homes (African slaves) or to escape starvation (the Irish).\u00a0 \u00a0Immigrants often\u00a0 retain a love for their old homeland.\u00a0 But insofar as they assimilate to their new homeland, they come to love their new country.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Illustration:\u00a0 \u00a0Independence Day<\/a> by by\u00a0Arvin61r58<\/a>\u00a0via Openclipart, Public domain, CC0 1.0<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year we celebrate the 4th of July in a climate of controversy over patriotism. To help us think through what it means to love our country, I propose nine theses. . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":83813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12,15,16,19,20,21,48],"tags":[1071,1078,4704,1679,2321],"class_list":["post-83807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america","category-culture","category-ethics","category-family","category-government","category-history","category-holidays","category-vocation","tag-immigration","tag-independence-day","tag-love-of-country","tag-patriotism","tag-vocation-of-citizenship"],"yoast_head":"\nTheses on Love of Country<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This year we celebrate the 4th of July in a climate of controversy over patriotism. 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