After reading this comment thread over at Chris’ blog, it ocurred to me that there might be a communication breakdown of sorts between mainline Protestant and evangelical responses to the quote from Stanley Hauerwas under discussion.

When Hauerwas first started churning out his jeremiads, they were aimed primarily at the liberal mainline establishment that, in his view, had compromised itself in taking “responsibility” for American society. But now, it seems that he’s finding a lot of readers among American evangelicals who find him a bracing antidote to the uncritical nationalism of a lot of their churches.

To a large extent, these two groups may have very different experiences of what it means to be a church in American society. For instance, I’ve never been a member of a church that traffics in the kind of uncritical nationalism that others seem to be referring to here; if anything, the churches I’ve attended have no problem recounting the litany of American evil. Plus, I’m well-acquainted with secular critiques of American exceptionalism, nationalism, and military intervention; so hearing that God’s kingdom isn’t to be identified with the Pax Americana doesn’t exactly comes as shocking news. Becuase of that I tend to focus on what I see as the dangers of quietism and churcholatry arising from Hauerwas’ perspective. But if I was an evangelical I might have a very different impression.

In light of this conversation I was particularly attuned to any potential nationalistic overtones at church this morning. I worship at an ELCA church that is definitely left-of-center, but also has many congregants who work for the government, non-profits, are in the military, etc. (The church is on Capitol Hill just a few blocks from our place.) The pastor’s sermon, as far as I was concerned, struck just the right notes. He talked, based on the gospel passage, about how Jesus’ yoke being “easy” means that it is perfectly fitted for us. He then went on to talk about how the American colonists threw off the yoke of the British Empire in order to craft a “yoke” based on human rights, democracy, and opposition to monarchical power.

We are, he said, inheritors of that legacy which carries with it a responsibility to extend those blessings more consitently throughout our society. But beyond this, he went on, is our higher loyalty to Jesus’ more excellent way of agapic love. What we do as citizens of a republic must be set in the context of our allegiance to Jesus and the way of being in the world that he pioneered.

We did sing “America the Beautiful,” but we closed with this song, which one would, I think, be hard pressed to identify with jingoistic nationalism:

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on clover-leaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
Oh, hear my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

I quite like this vision of patriotism. We can love our country and have a special responsibility for it because its ours, not because we think it’s better than everyone else’s. And we can recognize that other people love their homelands too, and that this shouldn’t be an obstacle to peace between nations. It appeals to my “little Americaner” sensibilities (or whatever the proper analogue of a “Little Englander” is).

At any rate, though, I think this illustrates my point about different experiences of what it means to be a church in America and how to relate to the larger society.