New Patriotism                                                                                  11/8/42

 

Scripture:  Psalm 33: 8-22

 

Text:  Psalm 33: 12a;  “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”

 

Samuel Johnson said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”  Edith Cavell, behind prison bars, facing a sentence of death before a firing squad, said, “Patriotism is not enough.”

 

What did they mean?  Is there something unwholesome or wrong about love of country?  Not at all!  Each of them had something beyond that in mind.

 

Doubtless Johnson was calling attention to the fact that scoundrels will hide their deviltry behind any sort of respectability; beneath any standard of honor.  Has not economic and spiritual enslavement been accomplished before our eyes today by men and powers who talk of “liberation,” of a “new order?”  These men and powers have been activated by a “patriotism” that is monstrous in our eyes.  But, while hurling stones, it is always well to look at the same time to our own glass windows in order that we may keep our heads level.

 

Edith Cavell was dying because she had helped more than 200 wounded and derelict British and French soldiers to escape capture, and to get to the safety of the Dutch harbor.  She was not casting any dark reflections on love of country.  She was, in the giving of her life, saying that there is something even more noble than the partisan love of country.  It is the love of right, as God gives us to see the right.

 

What Miss Cavell said to the English Chaplain at Brussels the night before her execution was this:  “Standing as I do in the view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough.  I must have no hatred or bitterness toward anyone.  They have all been very kind to me here.”  She had been supremely loyal to her country, living for it, serving it in the dangers of warfare, now giving her life in its cause.  But her greater loyalty is that which is expressed in the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

 

It is because our love of country is (1) being mightily tested just now; because under the stress and strain of the day, (2) the scoundrel in us can easily come out, parading hatreds, revenge, injustices under the cloak of patriotism; because (3) our love of country is poisoned with a kind of idolatry if we allow it to be the ultimate loyalty; and because (4) is worthy of the truest sort of patriotism and loyalty, that we must think about the patriotism that emerges anew, and renewed, amid the tumult of the present conflict.

 

The minister of the Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church in Minneapolis, Richard C. Raines, has reminded his congregation and his readers, that “Love of country has been and can be a very real blessing to human beings.”

 

(a)  It blesses the individual.  It helps rescue the individual from himself.  Perhaps life’s most basic struggle is the struggle with self.  We are endangered by the growing of a shell of self concern, self desire, self exaltation which, unchecked, is fatal to all we think of as fine and noble when we speak of the soul.  Love of country gives one a cause which draws one out of planning his own comfort, his own wealth, or security or privilege.

 

If patriotism can draw him out of the shell of self, introducing him to life’s richest experience - love of something outside himself - then it blesses him beyond measure.  For thousands of our boys, thousands of our men and women, love of country is giving them something worth self discipline, worth self sacrifice, worth the offering of life itself.  New patriotism can rescue the average American from the desperate danger that he may give his ultimate loyalty to himself and his own success.

 

(b)  Patriotism blesses the family.  I hold family loyalty to be highly necessary to a Christian civilization.  But it must be a loyalty inspired in Christian fashion.

 

We are told that in China, family loyalty is carried farther than among us; the father, the grandfather or the grandmother is always the head of the household.  When sons and grandsons marry, they bring their wives back to live in their boyhood home.  They form a clan, or cooperating group.  There are good results to be seen in this system.  They take care of their own relief, employment, and retirement.  The economic status of each is stable.  The impulsiveness and independence of youth is tempered by the needs and rights of the larger group.

 

But there are bad features to this system, too.  China was passive; backward in the things that mark a modern civilization.  Little industrial progress was made and she was an easy prey to peoples who seemed to have attached ultimate loyalty to a larger group, the nation.  Patriotism saves the family from becoming an ultimate loyalty, for family loyalty alone is not enough.

 

(c)  And patriotism blesses the state.  Love of country has taught competing groups of people to cooperate for the benefit of all.  Do you remember how Scotland and England hated each other in earlier days?  And what bloody wars they fought against each other?  But patriotism has taught them to include all of themselves in one love of country.

 

What of our own country in 1760?  An Englishman who visited our country at that time wrote about it in this fashion: “Fire and water are not more heterogeneous than the different colonies in North America.  Nothing can exceed the jealousy which they possess in regard to each other.  The inhabitants of Pennsylvania and New York have an inexhaustible source of animosity in their jealousy for the trade of the Jerseys.  Massachusetts Bay and Rhode Island are not less interested in that of Connecticut.  Even the limits and boundaries of each colony are a constant source of litigation.  In short, such is the difference of character, of manner of religion, of interest in the different colonies, that I think, if I am not wholly ignorant of the human mind, were they left to themselves, there would soon be a civil war from one end of the continent to the other; while the Indians and Negroes would, with better reason, impatiently watch the opportunity of exterminating them altogether.”

 

Is it possible that we were once like that?  It seems we were!  Then patriotism pulled us together, and a long step was taken toward a better world when these rival states united, erased complicated boundary procedure and put away their animosities and pride and hatred.  Blessed be the patriotism of our forefathers!

 

But patriotism is not enough for the state!  Just as self respect is saved from self centeredness and egoism by a larger loyalty, so the state is saved from itself by a larger loyalty.  Worship of the state is the essence of Nazism and is dangerous to the world whether found in Germany or Japan or (God forbid) in the United States of America.  For the sake of our dear country, we must obey the first commandment and worship no gods before the Lord - not self, nor family nor nation.  “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”

 

God was Lord of those faithful Pilgrims who first came to New England’s shores.  Theirs was a patriotism far beyond mere worship of the state or sovereign.  A new patriotism arises in our hearts - perhaps different in some respects from tthat of a generation or two ago, perhaps differing in some particulars even from that of the Pilgrim fathers.

 

1)  For one thing, our new patriotism is not blind.  When a particularly attractive and personable young lady was married to a man whose face, though kind, was utterly devoid of good looks - so that his very homeliness caused many a joking remark - someone remarked, amid the good-natured ribbing of the groom, “Well, Winifred [the bride] you think he’s good looking, don’t you?”  With a mischievous glance at her bridegroom, and with utter candor, she retorted “I’m not blind!”

 

Our patriotic love and respect for America is so true, so devoted, so confident that the patriot can see America’s faults and mistakes, admit them, and seek sacrificially to remedy them.  For instance, while keenly aware of the solemn duties of citizenship, we are also aware of injustice and inequality in some of the dealings of white American citizens with black and brown American citizens.  We cannot rest complacent until this weakness is strengthened in righteousness.

 

2)  Our new patriotism is not blind to others’ greatness.  We rejoice in the sportsmanship of the English and the glorious ability they show to stick it out against impossible pressure.  We admire their Browning, their Tennyson, their Wesley.

 

We respect the Bach, the Beethoven, the Goethe of Germany.  We acknowledge our indebtedness to the medical scientist Nogouchi and our admiration for the high quality of leadership in Chiang Kai Shek.

 

3)  Our patriotism tries to see the bad and the good in all.  If we are asked to focus our attention on only the admirable qualities of our allies and only that which is unlovely in our enemies, we decline to do that.  We require no blinders, no deceit, no propaganda of misrepresentation to express our love of country.  Our patriotism is discerning enough so that we can still have an honest difference of opinion on political issues, such as thoughtful people must rejoice to see in the election conducted this past week.

 

4)  Our patriotism is emotionally stable; I hope it may be as much so as that of the British.  John Sutherland Bonnell, reporting on the profound declaration of the Church of Scotland entitled “The Interpretation of the Will of God in the Present Crisis” makes this comment:  “A great deal of heart searching has been going on in Britain and probably the most powerful reason for the lack of hate is a spiritual one.  I have heard not a few religious leaders and lay people in Britain say that they believe the war to be a judgment of God upon the sins and selfishness of Britain as of other nations, that the peoples of the world are reaping today a harvest which they themselves had sown, that only as the laws of God are accepted as the ruling principle in international and economic affairs as well as in the life of individuals may we hope to break the cycle of recurring wars.”

 

Not hatred of the German people or of the Japanese people or of the Italian people, but love of liberty and truth and decency will sustain us in the long pull which lies ahead in winning the war and establishing enduring peace.

 

This new patriotism of ours makes demands upon us, for responsible duty goes with every privilege.

 

1) Our patriotism calls for some sort of world organization.  The idea that any state is the sole judge of the right and wrong of its own acts is a Nazi idea whether held in Germany or Japan or anywhere else.  If the world is to have any new birth of freedom, it will be because, under God, we find ways of uniting with other nations for promotions of the wider common welfare.

 

I emphasize the words - “under God.”  Chief Justice Hughes handed down a decision in which he said that “in the forum of conscience, duty to a moral power higher than the state has always been maintained .... The essence of religion is belief in a relation to God involving duties superior to those arising from any human relation.”  That is a basic article in our patriotism

 

Thus, every Sunday in our navy the flag of religion is flown above the stars and stripes.  Here is a symbol of our American theory of life; God, and God only, above the state.

 

2)  Our new patriotism demands that the flag be everywhere honored.  It is determined that not only shall the flag be saluted and cherished in action and utterance at public meetings, but in the spirit of our acts and attitudes as citizens. 

 

If Negroes are still excluded by unions or management, from industry vital to our nation, that dishonors the flag.

 

If 433,000 men of draft age were without sufficient education (4th grade) to serve in the armed forces of the country, that dishonors the flag.

 

If a million babies born this year are to be reared in misfortune, delinquency, disease, despair as is estimated by those who should know, that is no honor to the flag.

 

We determine that these blots shall be cleansed from the flag of liberty, that honor may be lived to that flag.

 

Our friends - sons, husbands, fathers - are doing a stern duty to that flag this morning and our fervent prayers go to God for them in this hour and in the days to come.  They will not dishonor the flag.  Neither let us, who accept its bounties here, do ought but pay it sacrificial honor!

 

“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”

 

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Dates and places delivered:

 

            Wisconsin Rapids, November 8, 1942