It seems as if we are constantly hearing about so-called Christian nationalism, critiques from the ideologues of the Left and, strangely, proposed as a healthy alternative by a small cadre of non-mainstream academics on the Right. It is the arguments of this latter group that I will focus attention on, but first we must look at the history and meaning of the word “nationalism” and then the phony, anti-Christian pseudo-history being promulgated by the Left. This latter is the real threat as progressives brand American Bible-believing, theologically orthodox Christians as fascistic ‘Christian nationalists.’ Whether on the Right or the Left, the use of the term is bad terminology, bad history, and bad theology.1
This essay begins with four different ways of looking at nationalism: (1) the classic approach rooted in the disciplines of history and the social sciences; (2) the recent framing of a fascistic, Right-wing Christian nationalism; (3) the confused embrace of the term by some patriotic Christians in America; and, finally, (4) the academic Christian nationalism of a small group of theologically orthodox American scholars. Because any form of contemporary nationalism is typically statist, the critique and way forward of the final section focuses our attention on Christian Realism’s emphasis on human sin, institutional fallenness, and, therefore, the need for limits on state power. An alternative to any form of state-mandated religion is the robust religious freedom of America’s founding, and this is both a moral good in accord with human nature and a necessary check on state power.
Nations, Nationalism, and U.S. History
The term “nationalism” is largely alien to the American context. Nationalism is an idea coined in the 1800s to describe the movement by cultural-linguistic groups seeking political autonomy. Perhaps the best expression is Ernst Renan’s famous 1882 lecture, “What is a Nation?” The basic idea was that a religious-cultural-ethnic-linguistic group, a group of people with a shared history and culture, should have an independent polity. When Lord Byron died at the siege of Missolonghi, he was participating in the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire. The unification of dozens of smaller principalities into the modern German state (1871) and the unification of the Italian peninsula into modern Italy (1861) were examples of cultural and political – national – cohesion into a single polity. So too was Norway’s independence from Sweden in 1905. All of these national movements looked to geography and the mists of ancient history for symbols, often pagan in origin, to emphasize ethno-nationalist distinctiveness. Thus, arts and literature abounded with mystical and folk themes (Romanticism) tying blood and national consciousness to non-negotiable geographical sites, from the Teutonic (German) themes of Wagner to the most famous of them all, Biedrich Smetana’s symphonic poem, The Moldau, from his masterwork My Country (Má vlast), which he called, “musical pictures of Czech glories and defeats.”
World War I was the death-knell for Europe’s large, multi-ethnic empires: the sprawling Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires shattered, resulting in new or revitalized governments based primarily on ethnic identity, including independent nation-states for the Finns, Hungarians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Bulgars, Romanians, Serbs, and others.
The contemporary study of nationalism, with a focus on the break-up of some countries and ethno-nationalist and ethno-religious rivalries, took off after the fall of the Soviet Union, and especially, the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. In the 1990s there was a host of new work on localism, national religious revivalism, cultural nationalism, and even civilizational forms of shared identity. Wars in places such as Azerbaijan-Armenia, the successor states to Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and elsewhere suggested a new, virulent nationalism based on blood and soil.2
Does any of this sound like the United States of America? No. “Yankee Doodle went to town … and called it macaroni…” is just not in the same cultural universe as the nationalist anthems of Europe. For instance, the song most associated with the movement for Italian Independence, the “Royal March,” declares:
All of Italy puts her faith in you, believes in you,
glory of our race, sign of freedom,
of freedom, of freedom, of freedom.
When the enemy comes seeking
our flourishing fields
where heroes fought
in the bygone ages
as long as our fervent patriotic love lasts
as long as our civilization reigns
The American War for Independence resulted from the colonials defending their customs and rights “as Englishman,” not as something different. The American sensibility, as it deepened and expanded, was and is a nation of ideas, not of blood and myth. It has always been forward-looking, not resting its legitimacy on fables from pre-history. Those who share the ideas and values found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are eligible to voluntarily join the American nation, regardless of blood, language, or religion. As John Adams famously wrote, the war was not the American Revolution. Rather, the real revolution was a “revolution of the mind,” a centering on key ideals of freedom, ordered liberty, and equality.
Mainstream America, despite some radicals on the extremes, has not been chauvinistically hyper-nationalist. Indeed, if one looks at the statements of our great leaders, from Washington and Lincoln through Grant, Cleveland, Coolidge, FDR, Truman, Reagan, and Bush, one simply does not find the language of ‘nationalism’ because it is not part of our way of thinking about our national identity. The ideas of rightful patriotism, perhaps best described by C.S. Lewis in his The Four Loves, is a better way of thinking about American national identity and patriotism.
Progressives’ anti-American Re-Write of U.S. History: Chauvinistic Nationalism
Fast forward to 2006. As Mark David Hall has documented, in recent years, a group of progressive academics have willfully rewritten US history to say that American Bible-believing Christians have been a regressive, anti-equality, anti-freedom force, akin to fascists. I witnessed this first-hand at a scholarly conference in France, at which an academic got up and told a fabricated saga of American history that started with rabid slave owners and racists in the 1600s and led directly, from 1619 to the Civil War and segregation to Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. It was a masterful conspiracy theory akin to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion featuring white, male Christian dominance as a three century-long project of exclusion, patriarchy, militarism, and racial hierarchy. However, it was entirely without serious historical references and citations. This cottage industry of false history is represented by a plethora of pseudo-histories and conspiracy theories. One of the worst examples, criticized by renowned historians such as Allen C. Guelzo, is the widely discredited, yet still in print, 1619 Project, which is buttressed by pseudo-social science justifications found in “new theories,” including critical race theory, queer theory, and the like.
All such “critical theories” and alternative histories emphasize some form of Christians-as-the-boogeyman. According to writer Andrew Whitehead, Christian nationalism is an existential “threat to American democracy and the Christian church in the United States.” Andrew Seidel, vice president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, claims that it is an “existential threat” to this country. Amanda Tyler, president of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, contends that Christian nationalism is the “single biggest threat to America’s religious liberty.” Finally, and many additional examples could be given, Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry recently informed us that white Christian nationalism is a “threat to American democracy.”
Perhaps the most famous of these writings is Taking America Back for God by Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry. They define Christian nationalism as
An ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of American civic life with a particular type of Christian identity and culture [that] includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism.
Upon a closer look, this misuse of labels and data has a partisan character with strong anti-Christian overtones. For example, Whitehead and Perry’s research, based on flawed survey results, seems to suggest that if someone believes Biblical teaching to be true, then that person is a potentially violent Christian nationalist. Such a conclusion brands hundreds of millions of faithful Protestants and Catholics across the Western world as fascists.
Here is a recent example: the character assassination of Mike Johnson. In autumn 2023, Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana, an evangelical Christian who previously served as an attorney for the faith-based legal firm, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), became Speaker of the House of Representatives.
A Washington Post opinion headline said, “Mike Johnson is a pro-gun Christian nationalist. Yes, be afraid.” The author says Johnson’s “ideology” may encourage violence. A New York Times opinion piece calls the friendly, smiling Johnson “The Embodiment of Christian Nationalism in a Tailored Suit.” The bogeyman created by radical progressives is a blend of racism, militarism, and fascism. Thus, we should not be surprised to find Whitehead and Perry writing the following in TIME magazine: “When we say Speaker Johnson is a Christian nationalist, we mean he provides a near-perfect example for each element.”
As scholar Mark David Hall has written, although there is a small minority of Americans who do hold expansive views about the role of Christianity in American public life, very few are white supremacists or militarists. He reports on survey data from Pew, PPRI, and Brookings, none of which suggests a mass movement rooted in Christianity that is violent and fascistic. Indeed, such caricatures simply do not correspond to the generations of charity, compassion, and liberty movement initiatives that have Christian roots, from humanitarian groups such as the Salvation Army and World Vision to the abolition movement.
Christian Nationalism vs. the Patriotic Christian
Thus far we have seen two uses of the word “nationalism,” one from the academic social science and historical literature, and a second that is a recent polemical war against people of traditional Christian faith in America. Both are problematic in that the first is a powerful explanatory tool for understanding European and other histories, but its “blood and soil” approach is far from the American experience. The second is a caricature of the type of Christian people who have been part of mainstream American society since the seventeenth century, and thus, equally problematic.
With the attacks, since 2006, on American history and the role of Christian people and institutions in that history, a third problematic use of the term “Christian nationalism” has arisen. This is when patriotic Christians, who are genuinely worried about the direction of the country, own the label given to them by the progressive Left. In other words, as more than one friend has said to me, “I love this country. Isn’t ‘Christian nationalist’ just another label for ‘Christian patriot?’ Don’t they mean the same thing?”
There are three reasons that it would be better for Christians to avoid self-identifying as “Christian nationalists.” The first is a simple matter of semantics. The word “Christian” should always be used as a noun: it is a label of identity meaning “Christ follower” or “Christ’s disciple.” It is far weaker to use the word “Christian” as an adjective when we are thinking about identity. One is not a “patriot” or “nationalist” first, but a Christian first and foremost. Second, it is not useful to play into the hands of Christianity’s critics by trying to appropriate a label that they have turned into a brand of derision. Why play into their hands? I think that doing so is particularly confusing when one is trying to discuss patriotism and religious faith to students and young adults. It is a far harder battle to get down to serious business when there is all the clamor about “nationalism” in the press.
Third, it would be best to focus attention on the Christian and rightful patriotism, or one might call, for lack of a better term, being a “patriotic Christian.” As noted earlier, C.S. Lewis’ discussion of rightful patriotism in The Four Loves can help us.
As I have described in more detail elsewhere, Lewis describes several ways we can think about love of country.3 At the bedrock of this is love of home.4 Home means all that is familiar, from familiar faces to familiar places. Home is the sense that I am part of a community. I share life and experiences with my neighbors and kin. Such love of our immediate neighbor helps us recognize that our primary obligations are, first and foremost, to those closest to us. God put us in a specific time and place to reflect Him and serve others. We simply cannot exercise the same degree of neighbor-love to everyone, everywhere, all of the time. To do so would be to neglect those for whom we are responsible at home. At the same time, our love of the neighbors should, according to Lewis, elevate our view of our fellow man as bearing the image of God. It should help us lift our eyes away from narrow parochialism to lovingly see God’s design in all of humanity.
Lewis argues that we have expanding circles of what is shared, and part of this is our common national story.5 This is a building block of patriotism. That story helps us to understand where we came from and how we got here. It is a narrative that looks at our history with a sense of thanksgiving but also with an eye of critical discernment. We should be inspired by what is noble and special in our nation’s history and ideals while striving to overcome our nation’s shortcomings.
Love of home and love of country should not be culturally chauvinistic. C.S. Lewis says that we should recognize that just as it is right for me to love my home with its idiosyncrasies, so we should naturally expect a Frenchman to love and be proud of his home and the Japanese to love and be proud of their homeland.6 Rightful patriotism includes respect for difference.
Appropriate love of one’s homeland differentiates proper patriotism from inappropriate or even violent forms of nationalism. The term “nationalism” has become confused in recent years. It used to mean the simple idea that the cultural identity of a people was or should be tied to a specific geographical place, such as the Kurds in Kurdistan or Koreans in Korea. But when nationalism goes beyond that simple idea to embrace some form of chauvinistic ethnic or ideological political program, it is badly misdirected. These forms of love-my-clique are sinful because they categorize the ‘Other’ not simply as different, but of lesser moral value or worth. This is a gross violation of Christ’s command to love one’s neighbor.
We can see how the sin of hyper-nationalism is related to a form of political idolatry. Many extreme social and political “isms” such as Communism, Fascism, hyper-nationalism, or ethnocentrisms such as India’s violent Hindu nationalism are idolatrous in putting a government, ethno-religious identity, or ruling ideology at the center of meaning and existence. Making a political ideal the centerpiece of worldview is a theological move, one that displaces God and his transcendent moral order in favor of human power and will for a particular place and time. Hyper-nationalism whitewashes the sins in a nation’s past. This is collective self-adoration, whether expressed at Babel, or the hubris of Athens and Rome, or the idolatrous systems of the French and Russian Revolutions. These are wrong loves.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in places such as China, North Korea, and elsewhere today, Christians are seen as obstacles for their unwillingness to bow to the maximizing demands of the state. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego all faced this challenge of allegiances. Christians in Rome faced this when confronted with mandatory emperor worship. Today’s Christians in Communist countries face it when restricted from worshipping or when government policy mandates abortions. The Christian may love his community and love his country, but his or her highest allegiance is to something above the political party or the government. A Christian’s first allegiance, his or her first love, is devotion and obedience to Jesus Christ. Love of Christ, informed by the Holy Scripture and led by the Holy Spirit, must be the essential loyalty and animating motivation for the Christian.
It is not only right but also admirable to appropriately care for the good of the community and nation where God has placed us. Patriotism loves what is good in our own country and respects the patriotism of others. Our nation should never be set up as the ultimate center of truth and authority. That is reserved for God and his Word. The lyrics of “America” (“My Country ‘Tis of Thee”) express this affectionate balance well:
My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountainside let freedom ring!
My native country thee, land of the noble free, thy name I love.
I love thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture thrills like that above.
Our fathers’ God to Thee, Author of Liberty, to Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright, with freedom’s holy light,
Protect us by Thy might, Great God our King.
Christian Academics Espousing a Confessional State
Should we be worried that a chauvinistic, racist, anti-woman Christian nationalism is taking over our churches? The answer is “no.” Recent surveys, by those who are not necessarily friendly to orthodox Christians such as The Brookings Institute and PPRI, nonetheless demonstrate that only a small percentage of Christians in America embrace the term. In fact, most people who signal support for the term “Christian nationalism” are simply trying to argue that they are patriotic Christians who are deeply worried about the moral fabric of our country. Christian leaders and intellectuals have a responsibility to inform them of what it means to be a patriotic Christian while clarifying the problems with hyper-nationalistic rhetoric.
Nonetheless, there is a tiny group of academic Christian nationalists, many of which identify it as an intellectual project for moral renewal. Although there is a potentially wide spectrum here, from Catholic integralists to proponents of a fusion of Church and State (the historic Christendom model), those who are making the argument that is most likely to capture the evangelical imagination are those like Stephen Wolfe and his allies, who argue for a confessional state. Here is a brief overview of that argument.
This form of academic Christian nationalist, found in some seminaries and Christian college campuses or writing without peer-review in online magazines, typically make this form of argument. In sum, although the institutions of religion (the Church) and societal government (the State) are distinct institutions with their own spheres of influence, nevertheless both have overlapping roles in promoting law and morality in society. In contrast to those who say that the Church is responsible for the first table of the law (e.g. love God, refrain from idolatry and blasphemy) and the State is responsible for the inter-personal relationships of the second table of the law (do not steal, lie, or murder), these academic Christian nationalists argue that the government has a role to play in enforcing all of the Ten Commandments.
Let’s take a step back and think about some of the presuppositions here. Most Protestants and Catholics recognize that society has a number of natural institutions such as the family, the church, and government (see Romans 13). Due to human innovation responding to the cultural mandate to steward the earth, we have developed a number of other institutions and social sectors over time. Abraham Kuyper called these “spheres” and his model of “sphere sovereignty” remains a useful description for thinking about a healthy society, where different sectors (spheres) have their own models of governance and expertise, such as the agricultural sector, the economic sector, the education sector, the government sector, etc. The family and the religious sector are indispensable institutions for society. A society needs all of these sectors, working like the gears of a clock in cooperation but with some independence, to function well. Each of these institutions or sectors, and the people that make them up, are responsible to use their God-given talents and abilities, for the glory of God and for the betterment of mankind.
Moreover many Christians, particularly American Christians, also embrace some form notion of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity, an important term in Catholic social ethics, is the idea that the responsibility for handling problems should happen at the most local of levels, e.g. the family, the neighborhood, the local community, the nearby church. Larger issues that need more collective power, such as law enforcement and military defense, should happen at different levels of collective authority.
I mention sphere sovereignty and subsidiarity because we typically think quite differently today about Christian political ethics than Luther and Calvin did. In the early decades of the Reformation, those thinkers typically wrote about the jurisdiction of just two entities, the institutions of Church and State. This was largely a reflection of the key issue of their time, as the medieval consensus was breaking down and Christendom models of Church-State fusion were being challenged.
Today’s academic Christian nationalists draw their inspiration from those early decades of the Reformation, particularly places such as Calvin’s Geneva. Their view of societal renewal means a far greater integration of the institutions of Church and State.
The American model, developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is far different. It suggests that church and state, or to put it in more comprehensive and realistic terms for a large society like that in the U.S., the religious sector and that of [political] government, which has as its primary duty to protect and defend the citizenry, should be distinct spheres, even if they inform one another. America’s Founders understood, as George Washington wrote, that “religion and morality” are indispensable for society and the elements of Christian religion would inform our politics and laws but without the national establishment of an institutionalized church or by imposing a theological orthodoxy by force. John Adams concurred that a society of ordered liberty was rooted in religion and morality: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
To be fair, those academic Christian nationalism proponents such as Stephen Wolfe do not seem to be arguing that the Church should take over the State nor that the State should take over the Church (e.g. theocratic Iran), but that both spheres have a role to play in a mutual reinforcing way to propagate, defend, and even punish on behalf of both tables of the law. In other words, the government should punish wrongdoers when it comes to matters of faith and worship, such as in matters of apostasy or blasphemy. They envision a confessional state, one where there is a majority religion that has the power of the state to enforce religious worship and religious dictates. One could imagine a constitutional monarchy being laid out upon these lines, or, as many of the proponents argue, something resembling Calvin’s Geneva. Religious dissent, non-conformism, and agnosticism would all be criminalized.
These self-styled academic Christian nationalists are responding to a real problem. That problem is the decadence and the degradation of Western civilization. They, like Catholic Integralists, suggest that the emphasis of the American Founders on limited government and a reliance on the family and religious institutions to promulgate righteousness was misplaced. They argue that a more explicit state-sanctioned Christianity, with mechanisms for promoting and defending the faith, is necessary to overcome the immorality and social disintegration of our time.
Christian Realism Counters Christian Nationalism: Limited Government and Religious Freedom
This form of Christian nationalism-as-a-confessional state is deeply problematic and it is the anti-thesis of an approach called “Christian realism.” Christian nationalism is a utopian, idealistic vision. Like any utopian vision, it requires revolutionaries who are willing to “do whatever must be done,” such as burning down the old order and imposing a new one by force. To be clear: the only way to get to the Christian Nationalists’ view of a Christian society is to follow the advice of Vladimir Lenin. A small group acts as an “elite vanguard” to seize power and then use the police, the military and the courts to impose their views on society. Idealists must use coercion, exclusion, or exile to push out those who refuse to conform. They must purify society for the sake of the revolution.
What we have found throughout history is that the accumulation of power into the hands of a small elite never ends. Well. This is how the French, Russian, Chinese Communist, and other revolutions, led by a small elite zealously committed to their blueprint for the world, imposed it by force on their fellow citizens. This is not authentic Christianity.
There is a long tradition of anti-utopian Christian thinking, from the Bible through Augustine, Aquinas, and many other thinkers in our present day. We often call this way of thinking “Augustinian” or “Christian realism,” and many important thinkers have operated from this general approach over the past several decades when thinking about politics from a Christian worldview, including Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Ramsey, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Carl Henry, George Weigel, and many others. For specialists, I have laid out a longer explanation of Christian Realism here.
Christian realism is the antithesis to the Christian nationalist vision. Christian realism is authentically Christian and realistic in that it recognizes the sinfulness of humanity, both in terms of individuals and our institutions. We are sinners and we live in a fallen world. The solution is not to put more power into the hands of a small group of flawed people. Indeed, Christian realists recognize that what we must do is divide and separate power, creating balances of power through mechanisms that we in the United States call separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, elections, the distinction between government and the private sector, and the like.
Christian Realism counters Christian Nationalism, because Christian realism emphasizes a rightful patriotism that does not idolize the state, an ideology, a party, or a demagogue. Christian nationalists are prone to fall into all of these traps. Whether by anointing a secular prophet, such as a candidate or office holder, or a political party, or even an individual Christian mega-star as having all the answers for law, politics, and society, Christian nationalists run into the problem of putting tremendous power into the hands of sinful human beings. In contrast, Christian realism recognizes that there are a number of potential unintended consequences and unforeseen outcomes by the accretion of power, particularly when that power is justified by a revolutionary ideology, even one that is rooted in religious conviction.
In the American context, the principle of religious freedom has been championed by those who clearly operate from the perspective of Christian Realism. These are people, from many of the Founding Fathers to contemporary writes such as Jean Bethke Elshtain, George Weigel, Robert P. George, Marc LiVecche, J. Daryl Charles, and many others, who have articulated a patriotic Christianity bounded by a realistic approach to human fallenness and the need for limited government. Interestingly, in every case that makes them great champions of religious freedom as a social good and as a check on government power.
According to Thomas F. Farr, religious freedom “the right of all persons to believe, speak, and act – individually and in community with others, in private and in public – in accord with their understanding of ultimate truth.” Farr’s capacious view of religious freedom is particularly important as we think about its theological, philosophical, and prudential foundations. Note his four dimensions: individual, community (institutional), private, and public. Farr writes that religious freedom is an individual right “to believe, or not to believe, in religious truths without coercion. Those who do believe have the right to order their lives in accord with religious truths, without undue coercion from the government or any other human agent.” But, it is also an institutional right: “the of right religious communities to establish and gather in churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and other houses of worship without undue interference. It also entails the right of individuals and communities to found and run religious organizations such as schools, universities, homeless ministries, adoption and foster care agencies, hospitals, clinics, and more consistent with their faith tenets.” In practice, then, religious freedom is both a private and public right. Farr concludes, “Religious freedom encompasses the right of religious individuals, institutions, and communities to express religious truths in their private lives, and to bring those truths into political life through their respective claims about justice, peace, equality, and freedom on a basis equal to all others in society.”
To be clear, religious freedom in American history and culture is far different from academic Christian nationalism. It has been both a social good and a check on power. Religious freedom has allowed for a vast space for faith-based organizations and charities to serve the common good. At the same time, the fact that there is an authority and morality above and beyond the state is a limiting principle on government. Both have been important in U.S. history and culture.
In conclusion, we have looked at four different ways of thinking about the term “nationalism” in contemporary political discourse. Much more needs to be done in our churches, schools, and civil society to reconnect with how past generations defined love-of-country, rightful patriotism, just statecraft, ethical thinking on justice and public defense, how doctrines of human sin and human potential should affect our sense of public responsibility and much more. We also need faithful witnesses to how calls to impose Christian government always end up as anti-Christ tyranny. Just look at the example of the Spanish Inquisition. The good news is that only a tiny minority accept the idea of a powerful statist Christianity in our time. A better approach is a robust, hopeful, sober Christian realism, founded in the fundamentals of Christian doctrine, defending the value of the human person and calling for human responsibility, and attuned to the realities both spiritual and temporal, of the world in which we live.
- Earlier versions of this paper were presented to a meeting of the board of directors of the Institute for Religion and Democracy (April 2, 2024) and at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in San Diego, CA (November 21, 2024). The author gratefully acknowledges advice from Emilie Kao, Mark David Hall, and Jennifer Patterson and expresses gratitude to Regent University for travel support. ↩︎
- There are many books on this phenomenon, but here is a representative sampling. The author recommends beginning with Liah Greenfeld’s Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Harvard University Press, 1992); also see, Liah Greenfeld Mind, Modernity, Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience (Harvard University Press, 2013); Catherine Baker, The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2015); Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (New York: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1993); and, for an expression of a civilizational form of shared identity that is a macro-expression of shared civilizational culture leading to conflict, see Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996/2011). ↩︎
- See Eric Patterson, A Basic Guide to the Just War Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023), chap. 5. ↩︎
- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York, NY: HarperOne, reissued edition on February 14, 2017, originally published in 1960 by Harcourt Brace). ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎