by Robert Hoyle
And the Lord said unto Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers, and unto thy kindred; and I will be with thee.
- Genesis 31:3
There was once a time when patriotism was taken for granted and being unpatriotic was akin to being a filthy communist. Good citizens were proud to salute the flag. Today the water is considerably muddier. There are some people who will happily stand by every act of our country and still sing along with the Lee Greenwood songs on the 4th of July, and then there are people who claim that patriotism is a form of idolatry and contrary to good Christianity. The purpose of this work is to showcase the attitude towards patriotism displayed by a significant 16th century Christian thinker, Heinrich Bullinger. Below is a lengthy quotation from a collection of sermons which Bullinger preached in Zurich entitled The Decades but first I would like to add some introductory thoughts.
By way of foreword, allow me to briefly introduce the person of Heinrich Bullinger. A leading light of the Protestant Reformation, Bullinger was, in his day and for a century thereafter, significantly more influential in his native land of Switzerland, as well as the English realm, than either John Calvin or Martin Luther. Following in the wake of the turbulent Ulrich Zwingli, Bullinger proved himself to be an irenic figure, resolving religious conflicts and restoring hot-headed disputants all across Europe. His mastery of Christian doctrine from a very young age (his father was a proto-Protestant minister who would join Bullinger in the work of reformation) saw many men who we today consider more famous or who were his elders seek his wisdom and teaching in matters of the faith. His Decades is a collection of fifty sermons delivered before his congregation in Zurich, Switzerland which cover the basics of Christian life and doctrine. The excerpt below is taken from his exposition of the fifth commandment (honor thy father and thy mother) which is the fifth sermon in the second “decade”—a collection of ten sermons.
To the loss of the Christian lay reader, Bullinger’s works have been largely unavailable and overlooked by many for centuries. It is my hope that in retrieving and drawing attention to his teachings on the subject of patriotism, the faith and resolve of Godly Christians will be strengthened. Certainly Bullinger’s teaching in what follows does not deviate from the standard or traditional teaching on the subject, but Bullinger proves his worth to the reader in both his clarity of thought and brevity of expression.
There is nearly half a millennia between Bullinger’s day and our own, but however much the circumstances of life may appear to change, mankind is still the same being he was then and the problems which confronted Bullinger bear many striking similarities to those of our own day. Men in any age carry in their breast an innate love of hearth and home, and from birth there flows a pride for the things of one’s own land and people which may only be removed with some effort. The problems which supposedly accompany patriotism today mostly stem from a lack of intellectual discipline in the realm of civics.
Poor thinking serves to compound a host of problems in our own day, with most men being incapable or unwilling to make distinctions or definitions in many disciplines. The inability to distinguish between the nation and the state introduces a great amount of confusion into the topic of national pride. In the correct usage of the language we receive from our parents, the term nation refers to a people and the state is the political apparatus of the people. When reference is made to the nation, then it is not the government but the actual people themselves who are in view considered separately from their political arrangement or organization.
The 19th century rise of the “nation-state” altered the historic relationship between nations and states. In Bullinger’s day there was only one Swiss nation (one people) but there were many Swiss states (not all Swiss people were combined into the same political apparatus). The same had traditionally been the case for the German, Spanish, and Italian peoples. The peoples thought of themselves as a racial or cultural group although divided up amongst a number of states. The great exceptions historically had been the French and the Swedes who for centuries roughly maintained a unified political administration over their unified peoples.
In the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars there was a push all across the Western world to consolidate every nation or people into a single state. Under these pressures many ancient institutions began to crumble and the great nation-states of Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, and the United States were born. This tendency towards political consolidation on the part of the nations of the West was largely necessitated by the changing circumstances wrought by rapid changes in industry, transportation, and modes of warfare. Whether good or ill the change undergone in the age between Napoleon and Woodrow Wilson has left us with a rather irritating inability to distinguish between a people and its government.
In Bullinger’s day it would have been impossible to speak of a “Swiss state” and it would have been unthinkable to conflate the Swiss nation with any of the various smaller states into which the Swiss people assorted themselves. Re-introducing such distinctions into our own thought and speech can prove edifying to our ability work through political matters. In the realm of national pride it allows us to draw a line between patriotism and statism. As Bullinger will point out, the root of the word patriotism is patri, the Latin word for “father.” A patriotic feeling is the connection which one knows towards his fatherland. To dislocate this loyalty from the people and the land of one’s fathers and attach it to the government is to make the subtle but very real move from patriotism to statism.
Speaking for myself, I feel a great deal of pride in the people and land of my nativity. Simultaneously I do not harbor the same warm fuzzies towards the political apparatus at work in that land. It could even be possible that, from a sense of patriotism, a man may challenge the form or direction of his civil government. The statist cannot make the distinctions afforded the patriot but is instead forced to approve of every act of his government.
Patriotism is a feeling which is natural to men. Bullinger challenges men who lack sufficient love for their homeland and native people as being effeminate and cowardly. Writing in a future day, Robert Dabney would refer to men who cast off their love of home and kin as “sickly.” We are certainly surrounded by a great number of sickly and effeminate men today. Ephemeral transients who bear no respect for the people or land which gave them life rarely win the respect of rooted men who value the commitments bequeathed them by birth. Mature men need to be able to walk that line between the effeminates who cast off love of fatherland on one side and the statists who baptize every act of a corrupt or tyrannical government on the other. To that end I believe Bullinger is of great utility and I leave you now with his thoughts on patriotism:
Now touching the country wherein every one is born and brought up; every man doth well esteem of it, love it, wish to advance it; every man doth deck it with his virtue and prowess; every one doth help it with all sorts of benefits, stoutly defending it, and valiantly fighting for it, if need be, to save it from violent robbers. What is, I pray you, more to be delighted in, than the good platform of a well ordered city, wherein there is (as one did say) the church well grounded; wherein God is rightly worshipped; and wherein the word of God in faith and charity is duly obeyed, so far forth as it pleaseth God to give the gift of grace; wherein also the magistrate doth defend good discipline and upright laws; wherein the citizens are obedient and at unity among themselves, having their assemblies for true religion and matters of justice; wherein they use to have honest meetings in the church, in the court, and places of common exercise; wherein they apply themselves to virtue and the study of learning, seeking an honest living by such sciences as man’s life hath need of, by tillage, by merchandise, and other handy occupations; wherein children are honestly trained up, parents recompensed for their pains, the poor maintained of alms, and strangers harboured in their distress? There are therefore in the commonweal virgins, married women, children, old men, matrons, widows, and fatherless children. If any (by the naughty disposition of nature) transgress the laws, they are worthily punished; the guiltless are defended; peace, justice, and civility doth flourish, and is upheld. Now what is he, that can abide to behold such a commonweal, the country where he is born and bred up, to be troubled, vexed, torn, and pulled in pieces, either by seditious citizens or foreign enemies? In civil seditions and foreign wars all virtue and honesty is utterly overthrown, virgins defiled, matrons uncivilly dealt withal, old men derided, and religion destroyed. Wherefore the valiant captain Joab, being ready to fight against the Syrians in defense of his country, speaketh to his brother Abisai, saying: “If the Syrians be stronger than I, then shalt thou help me; but if the sons of Ammon be too strong for thee, then will I come and aid thee. Be courageous therefore, and let us fight lustily for our people, and for the cities of our God: and let the Lord do the thing that is good in his own eyes.” Moreover Judas Maccabeus, a man among the Israelites worthily esteemed, and a famous warrior, and singularly affected toward his country, encouraging his soldiers and countrymen against their enemies, said: “They come upon us wrongfully in hope of their force, to spoil and make havoc of us, with our wives and children; but we fight for our lives and liberty of our laws, and the Lord will destroy them before our faces.” The people also among themselves, exhorting one another, do cry out and say: “Let us take this affliction from our people, and let us fight for our nation and our religion.”
Let not any man make an objection here, and say: “Tush, these are the works pertaining to the law, which we, that are of the church of Christ, have nothing to do withal.” For the apostle Paul, speaking to the Hebrews, as concerning Christian faith, doth say: “These through faith did subdue kingdoms, wrought righteousness, were valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of aliens.” Now, since our faith is all one, and the very same with theirs, it is lawful for us, as well as for them, in a rightful quarrel by war to defend our country and religion, our virgins and old men, our wives and children, our liberty and possessions. They are flatly unnatural to their country and countrymen, and do transgress this fifth commandment, whatsoever do (under the pretense of religion) forsake their country afflicted with war, not endeavoring to deliver it from barbarous soldiers and foreign nations, even by offering their lives to the push and prick of present death for the safeguard thereof. St John saith: “By this we know his love, because he gave his life for us; and we ought to give our lives for the brethren.” The hired soldiers, who fight unlawful battles for pay of wages, and sell their bodies for greediness of money, shall judge the men that leave their country in peril and danger. For the one put loss of life and limbs in adventure for gain of a few odd crowns; whereas the other dainty fools and effeminate hearts will not hazard the loss of a limb for their religion, magistrates, wives, children, and all their possessions. What, I beseech you, shall those traitors to their country say in that day, wherein the Lord shall reward the lovers and the unnatural traitors of their country and countrymen; when before their eyes they shall see the Gentiles to excel them in virtue and love to their country-people? Publii Decii, the father and the son, gave their lives freely for the safeguard of the commonweal, and died willingly for the love of their country. Codrus, the natural and loving king of the Athenians, when he understood by the oracle of Apollo that Athens could not be saved but by the king’s death, and that therefore the enemies had given commandment that no man should wound the king; this Codrus laid aside his kinglike furniture, and, clothing himself in base apparel, rushed into the thickest of his enemies, and found the means by egging to provoke one of them perforce to kill him. The two brethren, called Phileni, chose rather to lengthen their country with a mile of ground than to prolong their lives with many days; and therefore did they suffer themselves to be buried alive. But what suffer we for the health and safeguard of our country? Hierocles saith: “Our country is as it were a certain other god, and our first and chiefest parent. Wherefore he, that first called our country by the name of patria, did not unadvisedly give it that name, but called it so in respect of the thing which it was indeed; for patria, ‘our country,’ is derived of pater, ‘a father,’ and hath his ending or termination in the feminine gender, thereby declaring, that it taketh the name of both the parents. And this reason doth covertly lead us to think that our country, which is but one, ought to be reverenced and loved as well as both our parents, jointly knitting them together, to make them equal in honor.”
Furthermore, we must make our earnest prayer for the safeguard of our country. Babylon was not the country of the Jews; but yet, for because the Jews for their sins were banished by God to Babylon for the space of seventy years, Babylon was counted to them instead of their country. And therefore saith the prophet Jeremy: “Build up houses, and dwell therein; plant gardens, and eat the fruit thereof; marry wives, and beget sons and daughters, and give them in marriage, that they may get children. Seek the peace of that city to which I do carry you, and pray to the Lord for it; because your peace and safeguard is joined to the peace thereof.” Traitors to their country therefore sin exceedingly, whom the laws of the realm do command their foul offence to be hanged and quartered.
The author is a research associate with the Pactum Institute.