John Paul II JPII John Wesley United Methodist Church nationalism immigration

Defending Borders & Godly Nationalisms

on March 9, 2018

Editor’s Note: Mark Tooley shared these remarks at the Wesleyan Theological Society annual meeting on March 9, 2018 in Cleveland, Tennessee.


There has been lots of Christian conversation amid many political ecclesial declarations about immigration over the last 10 years, including from the Wesleyan world. They stress the biblical admonition to extend hospitality and justice to strangers and sojourners. Almost never do they substantively touch on other equally important godly principles about nurturing and safeguarding existing communities particularly nation states. Nations, and nationalism, are portrayed at best indifferently, and often very negatively.

A declaration of the Free Methodist Church on immigration policy in 2013 warns against “nationalistic concerns” and “exclusionary immigration laws” by nations where “good decisions and sacrificial behaviors are rewarded.” The latter is the twelve-page document’s only mention of “nation.” The Wesleyan Church’s 2008 immigration policy statement mentions nations six times. It notes the “United States and Canada are predominantly nations made up of immigrants and their descendants. Men, women, and their families seeking a better way of life, religious freedom, political asylum, opportunity to pursue great dreams and experience new beginnings have contributed to the prosperity and diversity that make our nations strong. And it says “God is sovereignly at work to establish His kingdom in heaven and on earth. He determines the times and places where the peoples of the nations should live so that people will seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him.” But there is no further elaboration on divine purposes for nations.

The United Methodist Church, which has the most permissive stance on immigration, opposing any restrictions, has a 2016 immigration resolution that negatively cites “nation-state considerations expressed in the language of ‘us’ and ‘them’—or ‘we’ the homefolks and ‘they’ the intruder/alien.” It also insists: “Christians do not approach the issue of migration from the perspective of tribe or nation, but from within a faith community of love and welcome, a community that teaches and expects hospitality to the poor, the homeless, and the oppressed.”

Some years ago I asked a well-known United Methodist theologian and seminary president whom I admire whether loyalty to nation states has any role for Christians. His response was succinct. No.

Yet embedded into Christian teaching is an appreciation of nations as organic to His creation, nations whose existence and vitality by definition entail borders, sovereignty, and special regard by its rulers for their own people. John Wesley himself without elaborating a great deal on this point seems intuitively to have cherished his nation as worthy of love and protection, established, like all nations and human communities, for providential purposes.

As Thomas Oden noted in his volume 4 of John Wesley’s Teachings: Ethics & Society when summarizing Wesley’s understanding of “Social Sin in the Covenant Relation between Rulers and People”:

When there is such a general wickedness spread abroad, all suffer, even when they did not directly participate in the decisions that eventually led to a calamity. Why? Because nations and families have entered jointly into covenant with God. Divine-human covenants may be corporately made with whole nations involved. As divine benefits accrue from just behavior, so does divine judgment accrue from unjust behavior, and it may affect everyone in the covenanting community —both the guilty and the innocent. From this we learn that we do not live a solitary existence as if in an individualistic bubble, but in a community called to social accountability. The sin we knowingly do contributes to the burden of sin dispersed through the whole society.

Wesley in his understanding of nation as a covenant community of God, along with his love and duty to his native Britain, resembles similar understanding and regard over two centuries later by Pope John Paul II when describing his own theology of nation and his own Polish patriotism. In his famous Castel Gandolfo talks, later published in Pope John Paul II: Memory & Identity, he noted the Latin word patria is related to the word pater for father, and the fatherland “can in some ways be identified with patrimony, that is, the totality of goods bequeathed to us by our forefathers,” the same being true for motherland. It refers to land, territory with values and the “spiritual content that go to make up the culture of a given nation.” His native Poland had retained its “spiritual patrimony” even when deprived of territory and partitioned, he noted. The idea of “native land” “presupposed a deep bond between the spiritual and the material, between culture and territory.” Indeed, “territory seized by force from a nation somehow becomes a plea crying out to the ‘spirit’ of the nation itself. The spirit of the nation awakens, takes on fresh vitality and struggles to restore the rights of the land.”

According to JPII, “Christ’s teachings contain the most profound elements of a theological vision of both native land and culture,” presenting “himself to humanity with particular patrimony, a particular heritage.” This “inheritance we receive from Christ orientates the patrimony of human native lands and cultures towards the eternal homeland.” This concept of native land from Christ opens into an “eternal, eschatological dimension,” without diminishing its “temporal content.” From the Polish experience, he recalled, the “thought of the eternal homeland can inspire people to serve their earthly native land.” The new “culture” that Christ initiated “re-cultivated” the world created by the Father, so that the “divine patrimony took on the form of ‘Christian culture’” and is “marking the culture of all humanity.” Poland’s original founding as a state on defined European territory owed to a “particular spiritual inspiration” one of whose expressions was the baptism of Mieszko I and his people in 966 by encouragement from his Bohemian wife.

JPII also locates patriotism in the Decalogue from the fourth commandment, honoring mother and father, which includes the spiritual heritage of native land, combining duties to patria and pietas. Such patriotism includes “everything to do with our native land: its history, its traditions, its language, its natural features,” extending to “works of our compatriots and the fruits of their genius,” with “every danger that threatens the overall good of our native land” becoming an “occasion to demonstrate this love.” His Polish countrymen had confirmed this love with the “many tombs of soldiers…widely dispersed,” and the “same could be said of every country and every nation in Europe and throughout the world.” The “native land is the common good of all citizens and as such it imposes serious duty,” often disrupted, as it had been in Poland, by “private interest” and “individualism.”

Expressing skepticism that supranationalism would displace nations, JPII noted that “Catholic social doctrine speaks of ‘natural’ societies, indicating that both the family and the nation have a particular bond with human nature,” and are not the “product of mere convention,” and “cannot in history be replaced by anything else.” Every society forms through family and also through the nation. Warning against “unhealthy nationalism,” which marred the 20th century, he offered “patriotism” as the antidote. Distinguishing the two, he said:

Whereas nationalism involves recognizing and pursuing the good of one’s own nation alone, without regard for the rights of others, patriotism, on the other hand, is a love of one’s native land that accords rights to all other nations equal to those claimed for one’s own. Patriotism, in other words, leads to a properly ordered social love.

Here I would distinguish between JPII’s pejorative description of nationalism as turbo-charged chauvinistic ideology versus merely a straightforward affirmation of the utility of nation states, which the term patriotism, which is more of a private devotion, does not describe.

JPII also cited Scripture for an “authentic theology of the nation,” pointing of course to Israel, whose recorded genealogy “illustrates how the road to nationhood passes through ‘generation,’ via the family and the clan.” God chose this nation to “reveal himself” to the world. The Incarnation also “forms part of the theology of the nation,” offer invitation into a “divine nation,” and placing God’s people among all the nations, and signifying that the “history of all nations is called to take its place in the history of salvation.” Under this New Covenant “every nation has equal rights of citizenship.”

In my view Wesley would largely agree with JPII’s perspective on the sacred calling of nations, perhaps even more so. JPII was pontiff of an institutionally global church historically often friendlier to supranational governance. Wesley was priest in a national church whose nation often defined itself against supranational religious and political structures. Wesley was at very least as patriotic an Englishman as JPII was a Pole, and perhaps he was even more zealously so.

As referenced earlier, Wesley’s 1775 sermon on “National Sins and Miseries” outlines his understanding of covenant between God and nation, and understands duties to modern nation not just as celebratory but also admonishing, as with Israel and other ancient nations chided by the Hebrew prophets. Referencing King David and Joab in Samuel II, Wesley applied David’s sin to contemporary Britain, warning: “God frequently punishes a people for the sins of their rulers, because they are generally partakers of their sins, in one kind or other. And the righteous Judge takes this occasion of punishing them for all their sins.” And he says:

Is there not in several respects, a remarkable resemblance between the case of Israel and our own? General wickedness then occasioned a general visitation; and does not the same cause now produce the same effect? We likewise have sinned, and we are punished; and perhaps these are only the beginning of sorrows. Perhaps the angel is now stretching out his hand over England to destroy it. O that the Lord would at length say to him that destroyeth, “It is enough; stay now thine hand!”

Wesley particularly chastises the British people for ingratitude for their considerable liberties:

Thousands of plain, honest people throughout the land are driven utterly out of their senses, by means of the poison which is so diligently spread through every city and town in the kingdom. They are screaming out for liberty while they have it in their hands, while they actually possess it; and to so great an extent, that the like is not known in any other nation under heaven; whether we mean civil liberty, a liberty of enjoying all our legal property, — or religious liberty, a liberty of worshipping God according to the dictates of our own conscience. Therefore all those who are either passionately or dolefully crying out, “Bondage! Slavery!” while there is no more danger of any such thing, than there is of the sky falling upon their head, are utterly distracted; their reason is gone; their intellects are quite confounded. Indeed, many of these have lately recovered their senses; yet are there multitudes still remaining, who are in this respect as perfectly mad as any of the inhabitants of Bedlam.

As Thomas Oden describes of this sermon, Wesley warns that the “anarchic threat of disruption of the rule of law had become an occasion for a social theodicy – a shared, corporate, interdependent occasion of suffering.”

Let not anyone think, this is but a small calamity which has fallen upon our land. If you saw, as I have seen, in every county, city, town, men who were once of a calm, mild, friendly temper, mad with party-zeal, foaming with rage against their quiet neighbours, ready to tear out one another’s throats, and to plunge their swords into each other’s bowels; if you had heard men who once feared God and honoured the king, now breathing out the bitterest invectives against him, and just ripe, should any occasion offer, for treason and rebellion; you would not then judge this to be a little evil, a matter of small moment, but one of the heaviest judgments which God can permit to fall upon a guilty land.

Wesley of course notes that the American colonists are just as bad and perhaps even worse, as “in our colonies also many are causing the people to drink largely of the same deadly wine.” Along with a false notion of liberty, he faults love of money, sloth and profaneness among gross national sins, along with the war in America, which leaves behind widows and orphans. He offers an alternative to divine judgement:

But now the plague is begun, and has already made such ravages both in England and America, what can we do, in order that it may be stayed? How shall we stand “between the living and the dead?” Is there any better way to turn aside the anger of God, than that prescribed by St. James: “Purge your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded?”

Wesley offers that national repentance may result in healing and national rebirth.

Show mercy more especially to the poor widows, to the helpless orphans, of your countrymen who are now numbered among the dead, who fell among the slain in a distant land. Who knoweth but the Lord will yet be entreated, will calm the madness of the people, will quench the flames of contention, and breathe into all the spirit of love, unity, and concord? Then brother shall not lift up sword against brother, neither shall they know war any more. Then shall plenty and peace flourish in our land, and all the inhabitants of it be thankful for the innumerable blessings which they enjoy, and shall “fear God, and honour the king.”

Arguably, Wesley sermon was a post-colonial critique, as Oden suggested, as he faulted Britain in its global expansion for procuring “field after field,” spreading all the “elegance of vice,” and having lost the habits of their “temperate, active forefathers” in favor of sloth. In this analysis, Wesley arguable here by implication defends the sovereignty of other lands from British colonialism.

Wesley’s “A Calm Address to Our American Colonies” though ironically a plea for continued British colonialism at least in America, echoes similar themes, while affirming his devotion to the British constitution, which offered more “rational liberty” than “any other people in the habitable world.” He notably addressed Americans as “my brethren and countrymen.” As Oden points out, Wesley rebutted American interpretations of government by individual consent by arguing for government by transgenerational consent, emphasizing the deeper, organic definition of the nation beyond just the currently living, and confirming that Wesley, as William Abraham recently asserted, was a Burkean conservative, understanding the nation and its political project as organic, transgenerational and in some ways pre-political.

In his 1777 “A Calm Address to the Inhabitants of England,” Wesley again celebrated uniquely British liberties, asking, “In what other country upon earth is such civil liberty to be found? Is it prudence to speak in so bitter and contemptuous a manner of such governors as God has given you?” In his 1778 “The Late Work of God in North America,” Wesley examined the American Revolution through Ezekiel’s vision of a “wheel within a wheel,” illustrating the mysteries of Providence working among peoples and nations.

During the Seven Years War Wesley expressed his love of England by offering to enlist troops for defense against a potential French invasion, telling a friend of his plans to “raise for His Majesty’s service at least two hundred volunteers, to be supported by contributions among themselves; and to be ready in case of an invasion to act for a year (if needed so long) at His Majesty’s pleasure, only within 10 miles of London.” John’s brother Charles, as brothers often are, was mockingly dismissive of his militarily inexperienced and middle aged brother raising troops, wondering if such troops would not be “too tardy to rescue us.”

Beyond raising troops, Wesley expressed his love of England in 1776 by writing a four volume history of his native land A Concise History of England: From the Earliest Times, to the Death of George II. His review of England’s story, which of course he saw providentially and covenantly, to “see God perfecting the moral as well as the natural world, as I would fain have others to see him in all civil events as well as in all the phenomena of nature. I want them to learn that the Lord is King, be the earth never so impatient; that He putteth down one and setteth up another, in spite of all human power and wisdom.”

Wesley’s history of England included chronicling his nation’s sins, such as having renewed the Hundred Year’s War when Henry V “attacked [France] without the least provocation.” Observed Wesley, “He filled it with widows and orphans, lamentation, misery, and every species of distress. And he died in full persuasion of having acted according to equity. So he deceived himself, as well as others! But there is one that judgeth righteously.”

Likewise Wesley chided ninth century King Egbert of Wessex, Edward I (1242-1307), and the Duke of Marlborough (John Churchill, b. 1650) for “cruel” and “unjust” conduct. These evils he describes of course as England’s failure to uphold its covenant with God.

Wesley loved England, no less than Pope John Paul II loved Poland, to which he would return, setting aside his papal office, if the Soviets had invaded, he reputedly warned during the Solidarity crisis of early 1980s. The evangelist knew he was not a disembodied spirit, but a man placed in a particular nation for particular providential purposes. The world was his parish, but his starting point was England. For him and his followers, the Methodist movement was God’s work for the renewal of their land and setting it right with Him. This love of country they bequeathed, however reluctantly to American Methodists, who were admonished by Wesley to obey their new civil authorities whose sovereignty should not be questioned.

In this historically Wesleyan understanding, mostly assumed and not articulated, nations are gifts of God, having covenants with Him, to be cherished, and protected. Nations have physical places with borders, with particular peoples and cultures that have arisen organically and providentially across decades, centuries and millennia, as Wesley recorded in his history of England. As followers of Wesley address immigration issues, we must do so with appreciation that nations are not inconsequential or obstacles to God’s universal love or the universal church. Instead, we should see them as stating points from which we begin our expression of God’s love for humanity and creation.

  1. Comment by Donald on March 10, 2018 at 2:30 pm

    Speaking as a Presbyterian, it might help my UMC colleagues to check out the Theological Declaration of Barmen (1936) and its division of roles between the church and the sovereign.

  2. Comment by Donald on March 11, 2018 at 6:00 am

    If memory serves about the hypocrisy of these liberal-to-progressive theologians and church bureaucrats, their attitudes toward government and its many boondoggles was supportive as long as the President had a “D” after their name. They supported the expansion of government programs, the increasing of the national debt and the general intrusion of government into the lives of private citizens from as fear back as President Carter.

    Many of them were so cock-sure Hillary Clinton was going to be our next President that the election of Donald Trump left them nearly voiceless in the pulpit. More than one of them confided to me that they “didn’t know what they were going to say to the congregation on the coming Sunday.” Their attitude toward President Trump since his election is nothing short of uncharitable hatred and their inability to see Hillary Clinton for the deeply flawed person that she is only reinforces their hypocrisy.

  3. Comment by Scott on March 12, 2018 at 1:22 pm

    Heartily agreed, Donald! As well, America should be able to retain its heritage, its culture, its society, its sovereignty and its language in the same manner as any other country should. The law is the law.

  4. Comment by Marilyn Martinetto on March 12, 2018 at 10:22 pm

    Faith and one’s church are personal, and can function to guide one through life with its terrible times and wonderful times.
    One’s homeland is also personal. The best way to explain it is to remind of a common feeling we have after traveling to see the World, near and far: a relief, a comfort and a gladness to return to a familiar land and home…even if it’s less beautiful…
    Government is added by people who agree they share a kindred culture and language, or who must fight together to repel to other humans who intend to invade and conquer.
    A nation functions best when the people who form it, share a culture, language, common work ethic and skills. For example, the United States was formed by people who planned ahead, endured hardship for some goal, and saved for tomorrow, had a pride in working, all of which are vital to prepare for winters that could kill otherwise. The same people weak enough Kings and emperors that they never lost a deeply held need: to have a say in their government. Citizens who only lived under kings and emperors and their changeable dictates, must learn what LAW actually means.
    Our decision was that LAW is Supreme and controls our actions, so that all obey it or must convince a majority of fellow citizens’ representatives to change that Law. Law thus protects all faiths and all ideologies that live together in peace and do no harm, or call for destruction of our government.
    As citizens of a nation, we live within its boundaries that function as the jurisdiction within which our Laws govern. All citizens are subject to their Laws, are obligated to pay government taxes and to go to war to defend both their government and their homeland WHICH ADDED TO CITIZENS ARE THE NATION
    The United States, for any citizen who has a clue about its history, exists only because of its Constitution and Legal system. We have no deep history. We are from lands Worldwide. We have Law, and when anyone or any church advocates breaking our laws, we are deeply angered and fearful, that should that entity succeed in encouraging others to break our laws, rather than convince us to change them, that our government and our nation will crumble under that corrupt, lawless attack on us all. Our nation IS LAWFUL GOVERNMENT.
    When migrants flood in due to lack of Law enforcement, in numbers that are daily seen, it drives the gut-deep human need to fight to protect the homeland, OUR LAND.
    That ANY church feels it’s right …. Or even SAFE…to attack our Rule of Law, by condoning actions violating it, is totally blind, destructive, and corrupt…for in doing so, it must have something to gain from it, that it has blessed as justifying destroying the EXPERIMENT that our wonderful NATION OF LAW has been.
    So ANY means is justified for that gain, even the destruction of their own homeland. Where will they escape to? What nation will protect them if they destroy what is the United States of America?

  5. Comment by Betsy on March 13, 2018 at 8:45 am

    From John Wesley’s prayer for Tuesday morning in “A Collection of Prayer for Every Day In the Week”:

    “Bless, O gracious Father, all nations, whom thou hast placed upon the earth, with the knowledge of thee, the only true God: But especially bless thy holy catholic Church, and fill it with truth and grace…Replenish all whom thou has called to any office therein with truth of doctrine and innocence of life.

    “…O lord, hear the King in the day of his trouble; let thy name, O God, defend him. Grant him his heart’s desire, and fulfill all his mind. Set his heart firm upon thee, and upon other things only as they are in and for thee. O defend him and his royal relations from they holy Heaven, even with the saving strength of thy right hand.

    “Have mercy upon this kingdom, and forgive the sins of this people; turn thee unto us, bless us, and cause they face to shine on our desolations. Inspire the Nobles and Magistrates with prudent zeal, the Gentry and Commons with humble loyalty. “

  6. Comment by Martin Rizley on April 6, 2018 at 1:34 pm

    It seems to me that one of the clearest biblical justifications for defending the existence of individual nation states and borders is the story of the tower of Babel. At Babel, humanity in its rebellion against God sought to create a one world empire on a purely humanistic foundation, and God judged that effort by dividing the languages and forcing the people to spread out and form distinct nations. That is because the only good world empire that can exist is that which is built on Christ– His Person, words, work, and indwelling Spirit. The kingdom of God, in other words, is the only world empire that God meets with God´s approval; and God Himself is building that spiritual empire, which transcends natonalities, through the preaching of the gospel in all the world; in the meantime, until Christ returns, it is good for nations to preserve their distinct identities and borders as a safeguard against anti-Christian forces attaining world-dominating strength through the abolition of borders and distinct national identities and the imposition of one secular, humanistic, totalitarian government system on all.

  7. Comment by Mark Jenkins on April 6, 2018 at 7:26 pm

    I agree with you Mark. But it still isn’t a very compelling (biblical) response to my brothers in the Wesleyan church who would say “This is not our ‘fatherland’ as we stole it from the Natives.” Even your quotes of Wesley are not specific and can be challenged by modern “theologians.” We need a better argument.

  8. Comment by Mark L Gedeon on April 7, 2018 at 6:07 pm

    Our constitution is a covenant or agreement if you will. It gives us a set of shared values so that we can have agreed upon freedoms and responsibilities. Those that don’t agree with it need to go elsewhere. The constitution is not for everyone. Those who come here or those that are here and disagree with it have choices. Submit, leave, or go through the process of changing the Constitution.

  9. Comment by Grateful on April 21, 2018 at 12:08 pm

    Brilliantly said, Mark!!! This article and all of the comments need to be read by every preacher, pastor, priest, rector and evangelical across this great nation. If we are to survive, we MUST return to the Christian roots and Constitution established by our founders almost 250 years ago. God led Israel in its defense of its borders against foreign invaders for hundreds of years before the Jews’ rejection of Christ led to their dispersion to the four corners of the earth. America is now in decline because the American people have rejected the Christian principles upon which this nation was founded. We can only recover by returning to those foundational roots. May God have mercy on us and guide us in that return if that be his will.

  10. Comment by cynthia curran on April 27, 2018 at 9:52 pm

    Good point, the left doesn’t think that in the world its more complex than being generous to everyone. One has to helped your own nation more.

  11. Comment by Connie on July 28, 2019 at 9:54 am

    I love your comments very enlightening and definitely spot on and hope none mind if I use and adapt your comment’s into my discussions I continually have with others. Very well written and great points to present I’m always looking for more things to say and add to the debating I just had watched a sermon on the book of maccabees seemed also very fitting to the times we are now in and how many think to make their own laws and above God. speaks and shows much on the spirit of the anti Christ, tolerance, persecution and one system trying to be ushered in. Thankyou for the comments love reading them God bless

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