Nationalism & Patriotism.

I had a couple of follow-up thoughts to my earlier post, Immigration: The Hidden Underbelly.

And they center around some thoughts on the idea of allegiance. I fear that in most conversations about immigration that both sides (at least the people of God) get lost in thinking and seeing things through a purely American, national, and patriotic lens.

In response to immigration, our responsibility as Americans (specific, national, local) may be to close our borders to illegal immigrants. But as compassionate, concerned members of the kingdom of God (embracing, global) where does our responsibility lay?

As members of the kingdom of God we are not defined by borders and flags . . . imaginary lines on pieces of paper . . . concrete walls separating the same dirt and air. We are defined by a cross.

As members of the kingdom of God, this is not our home, prompting Hauerwas to call us resident aliens and for Derek Webb to sing, “My first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man. My first allegiance is not to democracy or blood. It’s to a king & a kingdom.” And as the writer of Hebrews says, “This is not our home. The insider world is not our home.”

As members of the kingdom of God we can not approach immigration from a purely American perspective. Obviously, illegal immigration is not in the best interest of us as individual people or as a individual nation.

As members of the kingdom of God we have to approach immigration as members of a community and family that is larger than America. As members of the kingdom of God we are to wrestle with the kind of broad reform that makes immigrating to another country and unnecessary.

As members of the kingdom of God we can not fight to close our borders to those who do not belong when our call as members of the God’s family is to open our arms to those who do not belong.

As members of the kingdom of God talk of turning desperate, hopeless, poor, and hurting people away is difficult to reconcile with the words and actions of Jesus.

As members of the kingdom of God nationalism and patriotism are irrelevant terms to us. They make little sense unless they are framed in the larger story of diversity in the global community of nations.

This is why I’m so frustrated with the current conversations about immigration coming from those who are pushing hardest for reform. As I said yesterday, we need distance and a consistent ethic in our positions. And we need to approach the conversation as compassionate, concerned members of the kingdom of God as opposed to staunch proponents of the flag that happens to be sticking into a particular point on this rock floating through space.

For some larger context, although I’m about 7 months late in posting this link, Aaron Monts has a great post that he wrote back in June of last year on the differences between nationalism and patriotism. You definitely need to read his distinctions.