If “nationalism” amounts to the proposition that “it is good for people to belong to each other and pursue goods in common,” then I have no quarrel with nationalism. But it doesn’t mean that. If it did, there would be no reason to laud “America” as the nation which makes us nationalists; to boast of the tenuous, legal, and highly theoretical “belonging” that unites tech-designers in Seattle to unemployed steelworkers in Youngstown. Long before they pursue goods with their nation, people pursue, or refuse to pursue, goods with their families, friends, and the political communities in which they actually live and act -- their neighborhoods, towns, and cities. If nationalism simply refers to the good of belonging to one’s polis, then our localities would be the proper object of our nationalist fervor, long before our nation-state. Since no nationalist seems to think this, I presume this cannot be what is meant by “nationalism.”

Likewise, if the whole romance of national conservatism is the awakened awareness that we are all united by our common loves, then I have no truck with the movement. Americans are indeed united as a “people” by their common loves, and R. R. Reno is correct to cite Augustine in his recent defense of nationalism. But Augustine does not argue that our common loves make a mass of people into “America” as opposed to “France” -- as if different loves simply generate different iterations of these things called “nations.” History, geography, language, and law all interact alongside with a people’s love to produce a distinct “nation” -- and even then it is not clear which piece of data assures a citizen, beyond doubt, that he belongs. Rather, our loves are special because they are make us a good or an evil nation, ascending to Heaven or descending to Hell. In Augustine’s account, Rome is condemned for placing love of honor over the love of God. And while I understand why Dr. Reno argues that America’s love of self-governance and honor is “distinctive,” even a “good” love of honor and self-governance is disordered if it is not subordinate to the love of God, our Highest Good.

Besides this, honor and self-governance are not the primary loves of the American people. They are the primary loves of a mythical, self-description of what an American ought to be. One could undoubtedly wrassle up seven or eight nations that describe themselves as honorable and self-governing, but Augustine’s argument is not that a mass becomes a good or evil people by the loves they would pursue, but by the loves they actually pursue. In this regard, Americans are better described as a group of people who love material comfort, financial security, technological development, and passive entertainment than a group of people who love honor. If these loves make Americans into a people, they are a condemned people whose primary relation to the Christian is one of temptation and scandal.

Proponents of a Christian-nationalist syncretism seem to think that the mere appearance of the English word “nation” in our translations of the Holy Scriptures justifies our rally around the nation-state. Reno argues that “biblical universalism affirms nations” and that “the nation of Israel is the divine instrument of universalism.” But the fact that a “nation” is used as an instrument, or has people called from it, is not a sufficient proof that the nation is an unequivocal good, a natural form of polity, or a divinely ordained institution. God used animal sacrifice as a “divine instrument of universalism,” consenting by an unutterable humility to be worshipped and petitioned; to have his very forgiveness and mercy called down in and through a form that he eventually reveals as despicable: “If I were hungry I would not tell you; for the world and all that is in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?” (Psalm 50:12-13) By what confidence do we assume that the form of the nation is not akin to the form of animal sacrifice -- a man-made, social practice that God takes up to save us without thereby validating it as the form of common life that fulfils the political nature of his creature, man?

Jesus Christ does describe a social order which he calls a nation. In the Gospel of Luke, he says: “Do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be of anxious mind. For all the nations (ethnē) of the world seek these things...” (Luke 12:29-30) The nations of the world, in the words of Christ, are those social orders characterized by anxiety and ordered towards seeking out their own survival. Christ commands that his followers be unlike “all the nations,” reminding them that they need not worry about their survival, having a provident Father in heaven, and commanding them to “instead, seek his kingdom” wherein all the necessities of survival “shall be yours as well.” (12:31)

Again, Christ argues that “the kings of the Gentiles (ethnōn) exercise lordship over them; and those with authority over them are called benefactors (euergetai).” (22:24) The nations are described as those who accept an (apparently evil) kind of lordship over themselves in order that they might have “benefactors” -- those who bring them good gifts. Christ commands that his followers form an alternative social order: “But not so with you; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.” (22:26)

From this perspective, there are really only two kinds of social order. There is a social order that is founded on the basis of fear, that is, the perception of the universe as a place of scarcity of food, drink, clothing, and shelter, and the subsequent unification of men in order to obtain these goods. People who construct this kind of social order do so by accepting a king or a form of rule that provides these scarcities. This makes rule look like a beneficence while, in truth, it is an exercise of sovereign authority over the entire social order. To say that Jesus has, in two verses, anticipated the entire Hobbesian tradition of political philosophy would be trite. In truth, Hobbesian political philosophy -- where political order is established through fear, by the submission of all wills to the power of the sovereign -- describes a world which abandons the second kind of social order that Jesus describes, one which he usually calls a “kingdom.” This is not to say that this new social order may not be called a nation. St. Peter does: "[Y]ou are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people.” (1 Peter 2:9) But using this label does not negate the dichotomy that Christ establishes between this one, holy nation and all the other nations of the world.

The people of the social order proposed by Christ are characterized by their habitual presumption, not of scarcity, but of abundance. They have enough food, drink, clothing, and shelter, because God gives these things providentially -- “your Father knows that you need them.” (12:30) Men are unified, not in order to obtain scarce commodities, but for a purpose that exceeds the life of the body, “for life is more than food” (11:23). This purpose is supernatural -- communion with God and the establishment of his kingdom, that is, the perfect peace and order that all creatures enjoy when in harmony with his will.

The goods necessary for survival are not the goals of this social order. They are received as secondary results: “all these things shall be added unto you.” This is not achieved magically, or extrinsically, as if God, upon seeing men seeking his kingdom, decides to rain down food, clothing and shelter as a prize for good behavior. It is intrinsic to the habitual presumption of abundance, servant-rule, and the social pursuit of holiness that needs of a society are provided for.

For instance, it is an intrinsic consequence of the pursuit of spiritual merit that the poor will be fed. Jesus, using the same comparison between two social orders, says “when you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.” (Luke 14:12-14) By seeking spiritual blessing, rather than material goods, material needs are provided for as a consequence. In a society in which the poor were invited to the wealthy’s every feast there would be no hunger. By contrast, Jesus condemns the social order which seeks material goods rather than blessing -- using a feast as a transaction, and seeing excess as a means of further accrual against scarcity, rather than as a consumable belonging to the poor.

One gets a glimmer of this kind of social order in the feasts and customs of the Middle Ages, in which the obligation to pursue spiritual blessing and merit were taken seriously, and, as a consequence (rather than an anxiety-ridden goal) alms were given, and the poor could quite seriously claim the excess of the wealthy as their own.

Again: There are two social orders. One is anxious about tomorrow and so enters under the lordship of its rulers to protect them. Christ calls this order “all the nations of the world.” This social order has already been described and condemned in the Book of Samuel. The Israelites, anxious about the future of Israel, ask Samuel for a king “to govern us like all the nations.” (1 Samuel 8:5) God describes this as a rejection of the second social order in which his providence takes care of tomorrow: “they have rejected me from being king over them.” (1 Samuel 8:7) He has Samuel describe the way of “all the nations,” which are only able to soothe the anxiety of their members by culling property-ownership into the hands of their sovereign, who operates the resultant state as a mechanism moved by his authority: “He will take the best of your fields and vineyards...he will take the tenth of your grain...he will take your menservants and maidservants...and you shall be his slaves.” (1 Samuel 8:10-18) The people accept this as the kind of social order they would prefer, reiterating that “we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.” (1 Samuel 8:19-20)

The second social order is not anxious about tomorrow and so renders the basic securities provided by the “other nations” unnecessary. For instance, Jesus tells the would-be members of this second order not to rely on civil courts: “And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? As you go with your accuser before the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way, lest he drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer put you in prison.” (12:57-58) In Matthew, Jesus’ followers are ordered to “ make friends” with their accusers, and Paul makes the point poignant: “When one of you has a grievance against another does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?” (1 Corinthians 6:1)

A social order which achieves peace through a sovereign power needs civil courts to enact that power on a local level. A social order which presumes that peace is real and attainable between people, without reference to sovereignty, has no need of civil courts — any more than a family needs a civil court to preserve the peace of its members. If everyone made friends with their accusers; if everyone believed, with Paul, that “to have lawsuits at all with one another is a defeat,” preferring to “suffer wrong” and “be defrauded” then for a brother to go to law against brother — then the securities of the state would become unnecessary.

A society which seeks holiness produces a respite from violence as an auxiliary result of its primary search for God -- as a thing “added unto you.” By contrast, a society which anxiously pursues the prevention of violence as its goal and raison d’etre relies on the sovereign authority over them to achieve its goals; to attain by the power of some men over all what holiness would attain for men among themselves. By arguing for the fundamental necessity of the civil courts, this order presumes that violence is real and inescapable and that peace only a stalemate produced by the overweening power of a state.

Jesus is constantly speaking in this mode -- establishing a new kind of social order and distinguishing it from every other. When we consider whether a Christian can be a nationalist, it may be best to avoid the infinite task of figuring out what each and every nationalist means by “nation” and ask, quite simply: Is the United States of America like unto what Jesus refers to as “all the nations of the earth,” or is it like unto the new social order he calls the kingdom of Heaven?

Given the abject failure of the many arguments seeking to ground the unity of America in race, geography, culture, creed, love, history, or language, it seems obvious that the United States of America is best described as a legal entity, the unity of which is characterized by the fact that its members all exist under the same authority, an authority which Americans consent to, not for the pursuit of their Highest Good -- which is held in suspense -- but for the sake of material protection and the provision of material goods within a field of scarcity. If this is the case, then the Christian should be a part of an active struggle to be habitually and socially unlike the nation from which he comes -- to not worry about tomorrow, to cease amassing, to trust in the providence of God, to give away excess wealth, and to incarnate a social order in which rulers are as servants, civil courts are unnecessary, and so forth. The peace that the nation provides may be useful to the Christian while he seeks to substantiate the peace of Christ (Augustine says as much in his City of God) but it has no essential bearing on his existence as a political animal. If, once the kingdom of fear is banished, and the kingdom of Christ firmly established within the United States of America, we continue to call it a “nation,” raise its flag, and enjoy belonging to this group of people we call “Americans” — so be it. But a similarity of words should not confuse us. The nation will be radically transformed.