All of us have a deep desire to belong to something larger than ourselves. We want to have close ties with other people and to contribute in some fashion to a community in which we can take pride. Liberal individualism fails to fulfil this desire, due to its tendency to fragment people into self-interested actors, seeking to define themselves as they see fit and to accumulate a share of the world’s resources. However, as liberalism demonstrates its own incapacities as people try to live out its implications in the real world, many decide instead to cast their lot with some form of community. For socialists, this community is economic in character. For others, the most significant community in our lives is the nation.
What is a nation? As it turns out, our efforts to define nation are likely to be inadequate, because so many candidates for the label fail to conform easily to preconceived categories. Hannah Arendt called France the nation par excellence. From the time of the Bourbon kings, France has been a highly centralized political entity, run initially by a monarch and later by a succession of post-revolutionary regimes ruling in the name of a shadowy entity called the people. In France all roads lead to Paris, with the country’s capital city serving as the centre for French culture, economics, education, and the arts, in addition to its status as seat of government. This is in contrast to, for example, Germany or the United States, polycentric countries with various activities concentrated in different cities throughout.
But perhaps nation has less to do with a territorial entity than with a community of shared culture and sentiment. My father was born and raised in Cyprus during the British colonial era. During much of this period, Cyprus was embroiled in domestic turmoil due to its unclear national status. Were Greek Cypriots part of a larger Greek nation stretching from the Ionian Islands to the island of Aphrodite, as Cyprus is often called? Or were Greek and Turkish Cypriots alike part of a Cypriot nation, better off going it alone? The sentiments of Greek Cypriots differed, causing division within that community, eventually leading to guerrilla war in the late 1950s and partition in 1974.
Here in Canada, we regularly fret about our identity. Is Canada one nation? Or is it composed of two nations, one French and the other English? Complicating our discussions is the existence of our First Nations, the aboriginal communities scatted across our vast territory that preceded European settlement.
In principle we can recognize the legitimacy of national communities, however we define them. However, it is possible to make too much of our nation. And when we do so, we run the risk of idolizing it, thereby embracing nationalism as an ideology. In Cyprus, the partisans of enosis, or union with Greece, were so persuaded of their cause that they were willing to sacrifice the lives of those who stood in their way, including Turkish Cypriots and the less persuaded Greek Cypriots. Because their efforts led eventually to my paternal relatives losing their homes and becoming refugees in their own country, I have long been exceedingly wary of even a hint of nationalism, especially the ethnic variety. I dislike seeing the flag of Greece flying outside Orthodox church buildings in Cyprus because it represents a cause that disturbed the peace of the island and uprooted its people.
Some observers have distinguished between ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism. Unlike the ethnic variety, which divides states into a privileged nationality and less privileged minorities, civic nationalism focusses less on ethnic identity than on a common political identity, which in my view is a very good thing. Our English-speaking countries are more likely to embrace a civic nationalism, at least partly because of the resilience of our political institutions and their capacity to command the loyalty of diverse citizens.
However, a civic nation can become unhealthily nationalistic if it privileges its own position above that of neighbouring nations. During its golden age of empire, the United Kingdom extended its rule over far-flung territories around the globe, persuaded that it had a civilizing mission to less advanced peoples, especially in Asia and Africa. The United States similarly created a vast continental land-based empire as its citizens moved west, eventually extending its rule into the Caribbean and Pacific regions. At the beginning of this century, it embarked on a nation-building project in Iraq in an unsuccessful attempt to create a shining beacon of democracy and stability in the Middle East. This illustrates the hubris associated even with a more inclusive civic nationalism.
As Christians, we recognize that our national allegiances, along with our loyalties to family, friends, neighbourhoods, civic associations, and the like, are relative to our ultimate allegiance to the kingdom of God in Christ. The apostle Peter wrote to his readers:
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy (1 Peter 2:9-10).
There is a sense in which the people of God constitute a nation, but one not attached to either ethnic or civic community. Indeed, if we are a nation, we are a multinational one, speaking different languages and embedded in different cultures. Moreover, ancient tradition has it that we are in some sense exiles, seeking the welfare of our respective earthly nations, as the prophet Jeremiah puts it (Jeremiah 29:7). As such, we await the final consummation of God’s kingdom, when we will be united at last with our Saviour, who will fulfil our desire to belong more deeply than any mere earthly nation could ever hope to do.
