patriotism

Theologian Richard Mouw calls for a God-chastened love of country. 

Constitutional patriotism, Steven Smith argues, is both ethical and necessary.

The conflation of Christianity and American patriotism has never done either one any favors.

The controversy over athletes kneeling during the national anthem reveals America's unholy trinity of patriotism, militarism, and sports.

More jobs would help, says J. D. Vance. So would a stronger work ethic.

Where independence and freedom were proclaimed, dependence on African slavery persisted. As Jesus was preached in this land, everything that Jesus taught against was practiced.

When asked about Pope Francis’s call to America for a welcoming immigration policy, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) perhaps unwittingly invoked a biblical trope used countless times in American Protestant churches. I call it the “American Nehemiad.” 

The book of Nehemiah is political. 

The Sportsman Channel touts its newest series, Amazing America with Sarah Palin, in a three-minute video making the rounds on social media. The video, a recording by “the most patriotic band in America,” Madison Rising, contains rousing lyrics, while a variety of activities flash by in rapid succession: men fighting fires, men shooting guns, women shooting guns, men running with bulls, men riding down zip lines, cars racing, and Sarah Palin on a dogsled pulled by pink-booted sled dogs.

We owe our homeland patriotism, but not just any kind of patriotism—because just as we don't choose our parents, neither do we choose our country of origin.

When war causes us to suppress our deepest religious and moral convictions, we cave in to a “higher religion” called war. Yes, there is beauty in patriotism, in its unselfishness and love of country. But this beauty makes for what Reinhold Niebuhr called the “ethical paradox in patriotism”—a tendency to transmute individual unselfishness into national egoism. When this happens, the critical attitude of the individual is squelched, permitting the nation to use “power without moral constraint.”