Christianity, American Nationalism, and DACA

I was originally going to write this post about the confusion of Christianity, patriotism, and American nationalism in the United States these days.  But President Trump has just decided to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that kept undocumented/illegal* immigrants who came to the US as children from being deported.  While many of these immigrants are now adults, they were brought here as children through no choice or fault of their own, and many don’t know any home but this country.  The US government is punishing children for the actions of their parents.

Aside from the justice or injustice of the American** immigration system, this whole thing should make those of who identify as Christians take a moment to think about our place in the world.

Here in America, Christianity and nationalism seem to go hand in hand for quite a lot of us – many Americans say that the United States is a “Christian nation” – a biblical “city on a hill” – and not so subtly imply that American patriotism is part of being a good Christian.  Of course, all of this presupposes that Christianity the a kind of thing that can have nations and national allegiances.  Regardless of the degree to which that is true or false, polities are a thing, and Christian people are a part of them.

In trying to understand nationalism, historian and political scientist Benedict Anderson writes about nations as what he refers to as “imagined communities”.*** These communities are “imagined”, not in the sense being fictional, but in the sense that their members do not interact face to face as in a family or small town.  While I might know and interact with a certain number of other Americans on a personal level, I have not and never will meet the vast majority of them.  The same can be said of every other American (unless you travel a lot and are really, really friendly), yet we have a sense that all of us are somehow the same kind of people: Americans.  Granted, there are always arguments about who’s really in and out of that or any other group, but the point is that we conceive of ourselves as common members of a meaningful community despite our lack of personal intimacy.  As such, these imagined communities are key to our sense of identity and the way we understand our place in the world, and they can motivate us to engage in a variety of actions and for reasons we might not otherwise.

Those of us who are American Christians need to think about three imagined or conceptual communities in particular right now:

1.  The Church broadly conceived; the great body of Christians throughout the world, whatever their theology, practice, or denomination; the Body of Christ****

2.  Humanity as a whole, and I mean everyone; the community of every single person on earth

3.  Our country: the United States of America

In what order do we rank the importance our membership in these imagined communities for ourselves?  The order above is my answer, but you have to answer for yourself.  But answer honestly, lip service does us no good.

We can be Americans and proud to be Americans, but we will always come to a point at which our faith demands that that identity take a back seat to our commitments to other communities. 

I find today’s slogan of “America First” to be fundamentally at odds with the Gospel of Christ, which calls us to emulate His sacrificial love.  What that might look like politically and internationally is complicated and without easy answers.

But when it comes to DACA, as well as how we view and act towards all manner of refugees from war, poverty, and violence, I can’t help but think of Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:31-46:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.  Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.  Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”  Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?  And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?  And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?” And the King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.”

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”  Then they also will answer, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?”  Then he will answer them, saying, “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”  And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

I’m not going to tell you what to do, but I hope I’ve given you something to think about.

* There’s lot of politics involved with how you refer to people who entered the country outside of legal immigration channels (which themselves have major problems that make them difficult to use), but I’m not sure the discussion makes a huge amount of difference in what I’m talking about here.

** “America” is obviously a problematic term here – North America, South America, Latin America, etc. – but I’m going to use it to mean the United States of America, as that’s where I and most of my readers live and how we refer to it.

*** Anderson, Benedict.  2006 [1983].  Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.  London: Verso.; I am in no way giving Anderson’s ideas the complex explanation they deserve, but such are the realities of blogging, I guess.

**** Like many other Christians, I believe that there is a very real spiritual dimension to this community that goes beyond the type of thing Anderson is talking about, but that’s beyond the scope of this type of analysis.