Why Does Understanding Nationalism Matter?
We defeat evil nationalisms by out-narrating them
The news bulletin was orange with big gold lettering. Memory is dim concerning the exact wording, but it etched two things in my mind. A date. April 4, 1968. And an event that I intuited was historic based on my parents’ reactions. Someone killed Martin Luther King, Jr (MLK).
I didn’t know who he was, but I knew we weren’t ever supposed to say his name in our house. I knew that because Keith said Mamma told Marie that. Marie didn’t say anything but just kept ironing and humming as though it was the most natural mandate in the world. Their relationship was complex.
Dad once explained that the man was a troublemaker, which he often called me. He didn’t like that I talked back, and I guessed that he thought the same of the dead man.
But he didn’t say that when that orange bulletin interrupted Daniel Boone.
Urgency. “Grace! You need to see this!” Mom was washing dishes while we men watched TV. When Chet Huntley came on and told the world what happened, they seemed stricken. It was as though they knew we lost something precious that night because we desperately needed the trouble that troublemaker caused.
I remembered MLK as I sat recently with several scholars and bishops discussing nationalism. Our task is to advise the Episcopal House of Bishops on how to respond to the reported rise in Christian nationalism. We unanimously see Christian nationalism as sinful.
However, several colleagues go further. They repeat a claim I read often on social media. They claim that all kinds of nationalism are intrinsically evil.
I don’t see it this way. In theology-speak, nationalism is a created good. It’s not God’s creation; it’s something humans create as we cooperate in sustaining everyday life. As with all things, we can use it for good or evil.
Recognizing this is important for two reasons:
We create nationalisms to resist tyranny.
Healthy nationalisms are the only way to cure unhealthy nationalisms.
I’ll explain these below, but first, it’s essential to recognize where my colleagues err. They presuppose that nationalism and, implicitly, its correlate, “nation,” are things with fixed realities behind the words that name them.
It’s the same mistake some make with Scripture: they assume reading Scripture consists of isolating the single meaning behind the text that is true for all times and all contexts, as though Scripture is a univocal, static thing rather than a Living Word that speaks to us in our moment.
Americans often use nation and State interchangeably, but they are distinct. The State is a government entity devoted to the service of, by, and for the people. In my usage, people and nation are interchangeable terms.
“Nation” and “nationalism” are not substances but practices. Once we get that, we get why suggesting either is inherently evil is wrong.
Nations are not “collectivities, entities, communities” but philosophical categories. To say a group is a nation is to make a political claim on people’s fidelity, identity, and cooperation to mobilize them to change their world. 1
As the current Gaza War reminds us, it’s also a claim that third parties must validate. They do that by observing the people’s behaviors.
Like a church, a nation is not something a people are but something they perform. Or at least imagine themselves performing. As James Baldwin noted, we Americans are still working “to achieve our country.” Just as “We will know they are Christians by their love,” we recognize nations by their shared commitment to mutual flourishing.
French scholar Ernest Renan, commenting on the loss of German-speaking Alsace-Lorraine to German after the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, defined "nation" as "an 'everyday plebiscite' (Renan, 1996,[1882]": 115). That captures well the always-in-the-present practice of political idioms by which humans dialectically imagine our peoplehood. Our public square is a marketplace of ideas where multiple nationalisms compete to name who we are becoming and how we will get there.
When we recognize nations are not entities but practices of large-scale mutual flourishing, it becomes clear that “nationalism” is not a substance, entity, or something we can name as essentially good or evil.2 On the contrary, nationalism is a peoplehood story, a symbolic discourse with which we speak about nations. It’s a time-bound narrative about nations, an imagining practice that belongs to the sphere of values.3
As political idioms, nationalisms are not intrinsically good or evil; we must inquire about peoplehood stories to assess whether they are narrative practices that we should support or revise or whether they are “at best an anachronistic, at worst a dangerous practice.”4
While we can use peoplehood narratives inclusively to foster reciprocal cooperation, mutual responsibility, and solidarity among a nation's citizens and residents, we can also use them exclusively. Too often, we do.
Peoplehood narratives can declare possession of political societies by groups who form only part of states. Often, such groups are shaped by distinct ethno-traditions that they claim should be protected by the State; they also claim the State should be of and for their people, excluding other ethnoreligious, ethnolinguistic, or ethnocultural groups from full ownership of the State.
Such is the case, for example, for White Supremacists in the United States and Hindu nationalists in India. Given that the United Nations charter affirms national identity as a fundamental human right, we rightly judge such exclusive political narratives as destructive.
Our nationalisms can be creative or destructive, stuck in the past, or propel us toward a fruitful future. They are the political languages with which we negotiate our national identity. It’s a category error to think we can banish them. In the encounter with an evil nationalism, our only way forward is to out-narrate it.5
Mom and Dad thought MLK was a troublemaker. But by their shock at his death, my 8-year-old brain discerned their sense of loss. He troubled their hearts with his non-stop talk of Beloved Community - a vision for a nation that cherished its near and distant neighbors. With that corrective to our peoplehood discourse, he invited Black Americans to resist tyranny. By retelling America’s story, he told a better story about how all Americans can practice the shared commitment to mutual flourishing we claim as the cause of our Constitution.