Trinity Forum Conversations

How to be a Patriotic Christian

The topic of Christian nationalism takes us into deep questions of how we understand and live out our allegiances to both our country and the kingdom of God, how we ought to relate to our neighbors, and how we should pursue justice and flourishing within our nation.

It's also a topic rife with confusion and uncertainty. But what is Christian nationalism, and how is it different from a robust patriotism? On our podcast we explore these questions with scholars and authors Richard Mouw and Paul D. Miller who help us distinguish between living out one's faith in the public square and instrumentalizing faith for political ends:

"Because I think America is in fact, so great, it means it is so tempting to idolize America because it's just one of the greatest things. Anything we idolize becomes destructive, and it can be destructive individually of our spiritual lives. But when you idolize a nation, that nation can be unbelievably destructive." - Paul D. Miller

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2023. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Richard Mouw and Paul D. Miller

We hope that this conversation has been helpful in articulating what it means to be a patriotic Christian, and in offering better language and frameworks for wrestling with questions of how to live out our faith in the public square.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World, by Richard Mouw

Pluralisms and Horizons, by Richard Mouw

Praying at Burger King, by Richard Mouw

How to Be a Patriotic Christian: Love of Country as Love of Neighbor, by Richard Mouw

The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism, by Paul D. Miller

This America: The Case for the Nation, by Jill Lepore

Aristotle

Plato

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Augustine

C.S. Lewis

Richard John Neuhaus

Simone Weil

John Calvin

St. Thérèse of Lisieux

George Orwell

Curt Thompson

Frederick Douglass

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

City of God, by Augustine

The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness, by Reinhold Niebuhr

Wrestling with God, by Simone Weil

Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King Jr's

Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

What is Trinity Forum Conversations?

Trinity Forum Conversations is a podcast exploring the big questions in life by looking to the best of the Christian intellectual tradition and elevating the voices, both ancient and modern, who grapple with these questions and direct our hearts to the Author of the answers. We invite you to join us in one of the great joys of life: a conversation among friends on the things that matter most.

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