Why Anglicans need to do patriotism
Augustine's exchange with Nectarius provides an insight into how love of country was regarded as praiseworthy by this great Doctor of the Church. What is more, Augustine emphasises that contrary to the critique of the Church articulated by pagan accounts of the virtue of love of patriam, it is Christians who are the authentic patriots:
Consider now whether you would prefer to see your country flourish by the piety of its inhabitants, or by their escaping the punishment of their crimes; by the correction of their manners, or by outrages to which impunity emboldens them. Compare these things, I say, and judge whether or not you love your country more than we do; whether its prosperity and honour are more truly and earnestly sought by you or by us.
What is more, the famous Cicero's vision of noble Roman citizenship is, Augustine declares, what is found in the Church's life, teaching, and witness:
Consider for a little those books, De Republica, from which you imbibed that sentiment of a most loyal citizen, that there is no limit either in measure or in time to the claims which their country has upon the care and service of right-hearted men. Consider them, I beseech you, and observe how great are the praises there bestowed upon frugality, self-control, conjugal fidelity, and those chaste, honourable, and upright manners, the prevalence of which in any city entitles it to be spoken of as flourishing. Now the Churches which are multiplying throughout the world are, as it were, sacred seminaries of public instruction, in which this sound morality is inculcated and learned.
In The City of God (XIX,17), Augustine would give further expression to the theological grounds for the virtue of love of country. He recognises the "diversities in the manners, laws, and institutions whereby earthly peace is secured and maintained" and states that while the Church gathers in peoples from all the nations, it "is so far from rescinding and abolishing these diversities, that it even preserves and adopts them, so long only as no hindrance to the worship of the one supreme and true God is thus introduced". The "manners, laws and institutions" of the patriam, in establishing "this earthly peace", reflect and order us towards "the peace of heaven".
Thomas Aquinas distils this Augustinian vision when he answers the suggestion that it is wrong to show piety towards parents or country:
I answer that, Man becomes a debtor to other men in various ways, according to their various excellence and the various benefits received from them. On both counts God holds first place, for He is supremely excellent, and is for us the first principle of being and government. On the second place, the principles of our being and government are our parents and our country, that have given us birth and nourishment. Consequently man is debtor chiefly to his parents and his country, after God. Wherefore just as it belongs to religion to give worship to God, so does it belong to piety, in the second place, to give worship to one's parents and one's country - ST II/II.101.1.
I have quoted from both Augustine and Thomas in order to demonstrate that Anglicanism's historic experience of sanctifying patriotism - love of country - should be no embarrassment to contemporary Anglicans. Rather, it is the outworking of a solidly Augustinian and Thomist understanding that a rightly ordered love of country should be a good in which the Church shapes and forms us, and that the Church thus contributes to how - in Augustine's words - "a commonwealth should flourish".
However, despite these solid Augustinian and Thomist foundations, the Anglican experience of sanctifying patriotism is often ignored because of embarrassment or rejected because of hostility on the part of many clergy, theologians, and opinion-formers within contemporary Anglicanism. As Philip North put it in a 2016 Church Times article:
All too often, middle-class clergy squirm nervously during Remembrance Sunday, and excise any hymns that hint of nationalism. But surely an Established Church has a part to play in finding a new and unifying national narrative that is patriotic, besides tolerant and inclusive.
Whether because of progressive social embarrassment or anti-Christendom theological animus, Anglican churches in North Atlantic societies have largely abandoned their historic vocation of sanctifying patriotism. This results in a two-fold failure of the Church's mission, as highlighted by an excellent Ed West UnHerd article. The first failure is seen in an unsanctified patriotism, a disordered love of country, afflicting the polity. As West states:
forms of patriotism have also appeared highly divisive, more akin to sectarianism than patriotism. It’s why I felt empty on “Brexit Day”; why would I cheer about something that many of my loved ones found devastating?
The second failure is that alongside an unsanctified patriotism, there also exists an equally unsanctified detachment from our neighbours in the polity:
a more global identity as part of the worldwide liberal ummah of the educated and tolerant.
Often characterised by a resentment of 'them' - the lower-class uneducated and intolerant - and comfortably conformed to the norms of global capitalism with its philosophical vision of the autonomous individual, this unsanctified detachment is also a disordering of our affections:
this denial of healthy group-feeling leaves something of a hole in some people’s lives, because we are not solitary animals and crave the oxytocin we get from belonging, a desire to be part of something bigger than us, something timeless.
The point of West's article, however, is to point to how contemporary Anglicanism can provide a sanctified patriotism, a rightly-ordered love of country in place of a both sectarianism and detachment. West saw this when he attended Evensong on Accession Day (6th February) in the parish of Saint Bartholomew the Great, London, with a sermon rejoicing in Her Majesty's reign, and the singing of I Vow to Thee My Country and the National Anthem.
It all left me with an emotion that I suddenly realised I hadn’t felt for some time: patriotism ... the Evensong service jolted me a bit by reminding me. I’m clearly not the only one - the service was packed.
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