On this episode of The Disciple-Making Parent Podcast, we talk with Dan Darling about what healthy Christian patriotism looks like. We unpack why love of country can be an expression of gratitude and a part of discipleship, and how we can teach children and grandchildren to think biblically about their nation without slipping into cynicism or idolatry. We discuss how to tell the full story of history, including real sins and real progress, and why reform is strongest when it grows out of love for a country’s ideals. We also clarify the difference between patriotism and Christian nationalism, and why robust Christian engagement in the public square matters while maintaining a clear distinction between church and state. Along the way, we reflect on American exceptionalism, ordered loves, and practical ways families can cultivate civic gratitude and responsibility.
Topics Covered in This Week’s Podcast
03:26 Why the book was written
06:33 Patriotism Is a Duty
16:10 How should Christians evaluate history?
22:54 American exceptionalism
29:08 Christian nationalism vs the biblical view
39:23 Advice for parents
Resources From This Podcast
In Defense of Christian Patriotism, by Daniel Darling
The Land Center for Cultural Engagement
Daniel Darling at World Magazine
The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America, by Richard John Neuhaus
Podcast Transcript
Chap Bettis: I am Chap Bettis and you’re listening to The Disciple-Making Parent, where we seek to equip parents and churches to pass the gospel to their children. What relationship should a Christian have to their country? Is it okay to be patriotic? Or since we live for another world, should we be ambivalent or perhaps even cynical? And furthermore, how do we teach our children and grandchildren to think about these things? Hi, my name is Chap Bettis, and I’m the author of The Disciple-Making Parent.
The United States is approaching the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and yet we’re also experiencing much turmoil in our own country. I find that even some Christians are confused about how to think. Should we be proud of our country? Should we be apologetic for our sins? Or should we be detached and above it? We live for a different world. And how should we discuss this with our children and grandchildren? Surveys reveal that the younger generation is increasingly cynical about the United States. Well, Dan Darling is going to help us think biblically, and that is true whether you are in the United States or in a different country, as I know many of my listeners are.
He has released a well-researched and well-reasoned book entitled In Defense of Christian Patriotism. Now, if you think that sounds a lot like Christian nationalism, hang on. It’s not. It’s not. I promise. You’ll have to listen to the end of the podcast where we touch on this subject. But I think you’re going to enjoy this discussion. I certainly did, and reading the book helped me articulate my thoughts even better.
Well, Dan is an author, a co-author, or editor of over 20 books. He’s an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications. He has a column in World Magazine, and his work is often featured in Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, and numerous other places. He holds a master’s degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he’s currently a professor at Southwestern Seminary, as well as leading the Land Center, and we’ll talk more about that at the end. He’s married to Angela, and they have four teenage children, so I know that when I was going through that period, I would say, “Buy books. Buy lots of his books,” because he’s trying to put kids through college. And he’s also a member of Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth.
Well, before we start, I want to remind you of a resource that we always highlight because we give away the audiobook of The Disciple-Making Parent absolutely free. And really, that idea of disciple making is what is behind this discussion. How do we speak to our kids? How do we raise them to honor the Lord in this specific area of ethics? So if you’ll head on over to thedisciplemakingparent.com, you can get the audiobook of The Disciple-Making Parent absolutely free. We’re on a mission to equip parents and grandparents to raise children to love the Lord and stand as salt and light in the country that God has put them in, and that’s where this discussion falls in. So head on over to thedisciplemakingparent.com for your free audiobook. But for now, let’s listen in to an edifying conversation on how a Christian should think about patriotism.
Chap: Well, it’s a joy to interview Dan Darling on The Disciple-Making Parent podcast. So Dan, welcome. Thanks for taking the time.
Daniel Darling: Great to be here with you, and just honored to have this conversation. Grateful for the work of Disciple-Making Parent.
Chap: Well, thank you. Thanks for putting in the time as a board member. Well, we’re going to talk about Dan’s book, In Defense of Christian Patriotism, and I have enjoyed reading it. It’s not even your latest book. Man, you’re so prolific. It’s been out a while. We couldn’t get our schedules together. But the question I always ask when we talk about a book is tell us a little bit about what caused you to write it. What was the prompt?
Dan: Well, a few things. One, I’ve always been very patriotic. I think I grew up in a patriotic family. My grandfather fought in World War II. He fought in the Pacific, and would always tell us stories about that, and I actually have… You can actually see it, I think, a little bit in the background, that flag that was given to me when he passed away. It’s very meaningful. My parents took a trip with us when I was maybe 10 or 11. We lived in the Chicago area, and we packed up our station wagon and went to Washington, DC. Now, somehow my mom planned a trip before the internet. I don’t know how people did that. And I was just really overwhelmed by seeing the monuments and seeing the Lincoln Memorial, and I’ve always had a love for America and the ideals. So that’s one motivation.
I think another motivation is- you know, in the last few years, Christians have really felt uneasy about how to feel about their country. There’s been a lot of books written, I think by well-meaning people, really discouraging patriotism. That to love your country is idolatry, it’s a distraction from the gospel. And clearly, and I talk about it in the book, there are ways to make your country, to put it higher in terms of your love than God that are damaging and unhealthy, right? But I think the problem we actually face today is less about that. I think there’s a lot of folks who are ambivalent or even maybe don’t have a affection for the country where God has put them. So I think that’s a real question, particularly as we celebrate America’s 250th birthday. I just really wanted to have a book that could help Christians think through what does it look like to love God and love your country in a healthy way? How do I think about American history, the good and the bad? Is America a Christian nation? Do we want it to be? What is the role of Christianity in democracy? And then really, what are ways that ordinary Christians can get involved with whatever resources and time that they have to help renew the country for the next 250 years? And so those are really all my motivations to tackle this topic.
Chap: Those are great, and I enjoyed different aspects. We’re going to talk about some of those aspects, but I want to start with a sentence that’s not even in the text. It’s the section header for part one which is, “Patriotism is a Duty.” And that was- Yeah … that’s kind of a shocking statement. So you’re writing to Christians, and you’re calling it to duty. So I want to unpack really two things. One is, define this word because as I’ve bounced this off some younger believers here in New England and they’re, they’re saying to me, It feels like that word is associated with one party.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Chap: And so let’s define patriotism, and then let’s talk about how you get to the point of saying it’s actually a duty.
Dan: Yeah, I think the way I define patriotism is kind of a love for the people, the place, the ideals, the culture of the home, the place God has put you. In Acts 17, Paul says that God has sovereignly appointed people and their lands and their borders for His purposes. We say that every good and perfect gift comes from above. I think it’s a sense of gratitude and love for the place, even a temporal place that God has given you. Patriotism doesn’t mean unconditional support for a particular president or his policies or her policies or a party or whatever. In fact, sometimes patriotism requires us to oppose certain policies or oppose certain things or people or people in power. Teddy Roosevelt has a great quote about that, where he talks about patriotism that I include in the book, in terms of it being a duty. I really thought hard about this.
I think of Jeremiah’s word to the exiles in Jeremiah 29. These are people who have lost their homeland. They’re in a strange country in Babylon. They have a lot of false prophets telling them that they’re going to be out of there quickly, so they sort of huddle together and don’t really engage the world around them. And Jeremiah comes and says, No, you’re going to be here a while, and you need to make roots, deep roots, build, plant, have children, have families. But then he says to seek the flourishing of the welfare of the city where God has called you. And of course, it’s not directly applicable to us because we’re not Israel, but in the New Testament, we’re called exiles. And so we do feel that this land is not our home, that the kingdom of God is our future home. And yet if we take Jeremiah’s instructions to the exiles, I think we can apply that and say even in a place where we know one day it’s going to not exist and the kingdom of God is forever, we should seek the flourishing and the welfare of the places where God has put us. And I don’t know how we c- you can seek the welfare or flourishing of a city or a country that you despise or you’re ambivalent about. You just won’t do it. And so I think it’s born out of that.
It’s born out of loving our neighbors as ourselves. It’s an outflow of that. I think citizenship is a stewardship. It’s one aspect of how we live out discipleship. Richard John Neuhaus said 40 years ago that patriotism is a species of discipleship. It’s a part of discipleship. And so I really believe that not only is patriotism okay and acceptable, I actually think it’s a natural response to a grateful heart for what God’s given us and a stewardship of our citizenship.
Chap: Yeah, that’s great. So actually, those are the two reasons. The main purpose of the Disciple-Making Parent Podcast is to equip parents and grandparents, and we do talk about apologetics and different things, but just this idea that it being an aspect of discipleship.
And then, you really hammered more in the book than in that answer, just this idea that of gratitude. So to me, it’s an application of gratitude. Grateful people love their country, and we’re to be a thankful people. I remember reading, I think it was Wayne Grudem’s book on government where he talks about, basically to say. . . So this first part here, we’re talking about Christians all around the world. And so a German Christian should be patriotic-
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Chap: … and acknowledge the bad things, but also say Germany has some great qualities that I love, and God put me here.
Dan: Absolutely. Absolutely. And a couple thoughts about that. One is, I talk a lot in the book about ordering our loves. You know, a lot of times this is pitted as a binary choice. You either love God or love your country. And I’ve had Christians say, “I can’t say the pledge of allegiance because we only pledge allegiance to Christ.” But the truth is, if our love for God is primary, we do have lesser allegiances and lesser commitments. 23 years ago I stood at the altar and I pledged allegiance to my wife. And the pastor didn’t say, “You know, Dan, you have to choose love for God or love for Angela.” No, he said, “If you love God supremely, you’ll love Angela well.” And it’s the same thing with our country. If we love our country above everything. . . it’s not going to go well. We’re going to expect more things from our country than it can give us, that only God can. We’re going to be anxious about the future. But if we love God first, it flows and gives us a love for our country.
G.K. Chesterton has a great quote in his essays on patriotism, and he says actually, loving the thing that’s closest to us helps us love the things that are farther away. [“Patriotism begins the praise of the world at the nearest thing, instead of beginning it at the most distant, and thus it insures what is, perhaps, the most essential of all earthly considerations, that nothing upon earth shall go without its due appreciation.” -Ed.] Right? We start with the thing that’s close to us. And we can say in a nebulous way that we should love the world as God loves the world in terms of in a salvific way. But if we can’t say that if we hate the thing that’s closest to us. 1 John says, You can say you love God, but if you don’t love your neighbor who’s standing right next to you, you don’t really love God. So I think it’s that kind of ordering of our loves.
1 Peter talks about honor, respect all men, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king. That’s a sort of hierarchy, right? We don’t fear our government. We fear God, but we do honor the government. So I think it’s that sense of ordering these things well. And when it comes to gratitude… You know, America’s not perfect. America has a lot of flaws. I could tell you a list of all the flaws that we have, things I’d love to see changed, things that concern me. But we still enjoy religious liberty more than maybe any people group in human history, more freedom, more prosperity. I think we should be grateful for those things. I also think, Chap, when it comes to nations, when you look in the Revelation at the end of the age and it says every nation, tribe, and tongue gathers around the throne of God, it’s interesting it still mentions their nations. That people, even if you think of the mosaic of humanity with all of our diversity and nationalities that will be gathered there in heaven, We’re not going to lose our distinctiveness. We will still gather as nations. Those are things that God allowed and created in some way. And so it’s okay to love the things that are familiar, the things that are home, as long as we have it in the right perspective.
Chap: So on one hand, you’re saying it’s okay for some people, and I would say as a parent wanting to disciple, I’m going to say no. I agree with this imperative, that it’s actually comes out of we are so grateful. You have a great quotation by Aldous Huxley, not a Christian, right?
Dan: Right.
Chap: Who says, “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.” And I think, just traveling the world and you see the blessings that are here. Well, let’s shift to being… I feel like in one sense you’re saying Christians, wherever you are, should be patriotic. You should love your country out of gratefulness. But then the emphasis is on the United States.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Chap: You say Christians should not be bullied into retreating from the public square. And I’m thinking of New England, and I’m thinking we shouldn’t be bullied from retreating from celebrating our 250th birthday. That may be very different than Texas, but I just read where Mamdami is not going to allow the ball to drop on July 3rd to ring in July 4th, you know? So there’s definitely this anti-US sentiment. You quote where the sort of “love of country” drops based on age. Mm-hmm. And I’m old enough, I don’t think you are, but I’m old enough to remember 1976, our 200th anniversary. And there was not this partisanship. And I think you’re getting into that with the cynicism versus gratitude.
But one of the things that people would say is talk about the flaws of our country. And so I want ask you this: You have a chapter title, Are National Myths Just Made Up? The winners write the history. . .
Dan: Mm-hmm …
Chap: We need to know our history, but can we trust our history?
Dan: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great question, and how should Christians think about history? I want to go back a little bit to the cynicism you mentioned, because I think it’s really important to think through. You know, I don’t think a nation can survive without a sense of civic pride, a sense of togetherness. I think it’s important for our survival that we have this shared civic love for the country. When we have a love for the country, we have a love for the ideals. We’re not saying we love all the bad stuff. But the ideals and the people and all of that.
And I would say if you look at the great social reformers, if you really care about change, you, you see things wrong in the country and you want to change them, as you do and I do, cynicism is actually the worst way to do that. You know, you only seek to change things or people that you love. I mean, think about it with our children. If my kids don’t know that I love them, how can I motivate them to change? And the same thing with the country. The greatest social reformers, whether it’s Frederick Douglass or Martin Luther King, or anybody, I think pro-life activism today, were doing it out of love of country. They all expressed love for the founders, love for the country. They just wanted the country to live up to the promise that it has made. And so I think that’s really important.
When it comes to history, I really think there’s two wrong ways to look at history, and I think it’s important to teach our kids. We have these conversations in our house. We have a house full of teenagers, so we have these conversations all the time. And on the one hand, one wrong way to look at history is to whitewash things that are genuinely grievous and genuine sins. And I think in American history, to whitewash slavery or segregation or the internment of the Japanese or other things, to pretend that maybe it wasn’t as bad as we thought or maybe it didn’t happen is really not to do justice to history, to what actually happened. I think the opposite problem, and I think this is more prevalent today, is to pull one thread from that history, the worst thing that happened, as if that’s the whole story. That the only story of America is slavery and segregation and I don’t think that’s true either. I think we should look at history the way the Bible looks at history. It portrays all of these heroes in the Bible, warts and all, with all their flaws, Abraham and David and Jacob. And yet when you get to Hebrews chapter 11, when it looks at the arc of their lives, it commends their faith and the good things that they did. It’s not being dishonest about who they were, and I think we need to look at America that way, to say America has had some sinful, wrong things because we are a fallen people. It’s sinners who are in charge of our country at times and sinners who are as citizens. And yet to act like the entire story is one of just unmitigated wrong things is, I think, a wrong way of looking at it.
We have things we can be proud of in our history. We have progress we’ve made on things like slavery and segregation. We have a long way to go on some of these things. But we can look back and say, No, we’re proud of this. We should be proud that the United States liberated Europe. We should be proud that we got rid of slavery. We should be proud of all those kinds of things.
Chap: That’s a very thoughtful response. I appreciate that. And yes, as you said, I’m talking to my teens all the time. We should be teaching our teens how to view history because they’re going to be getting some of these thoughts, pulling that one thread and forgetting that people died on the beaches of Normandy to free Europe, and different things like that.
One of the things that really impacted me that I didn’t know- But you make a strong argument that even as we talk about some of these bad things, that Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, and others were patriotic in the sense that they loved deeply the country- your sentence is, “They loved deeply the flawed country that didn’t always love them back.” But they were patriotic in the sense that they were calling America to live up its ideals. I think you make the point that America, in one sense, is an idea.
Dan: It really is an idea. I mean, it’s a people, right? We have Anglo-Saxon heritage in many ways. We come from England as King Charles. I just watched his speech yesterday, which was a great speech. But America is, as Ronald Reagan said, the single country that’s an idea. It’s this radical experiment in human government. David McCullough, the late historian, said something like this had never been tried before. And the great reformers, the great people that we look back and revere in many ways, they pointed out social problems in America, but they still loved the country and the ideals. I mean, Frederick Douglass’ speech, for instance, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Here he is really commending the founders and the government they created, and yet he’s saying, Can we live up to this? Can Black people have the same experience and have the same freedoms?” Martin Luther King did something similar. Even the pro-life movement, the March for Life, we’re saying we love our country so much, we want to see our country give full rights to the unborn. You can’t really do social reform like that, you can’t really work for change if you are cynical about the thing you’re changing, and if you hate the country and if you think, Well, the Constitution is fraudulent. We need to rip it up and start over.
And I see some of the cynicism really mostly on the far left, but I see some of it on the far right too, to say, Well, maybe this isn’t working. Maybe we start over. I just think that’s unproductive, and I think it’s ungrateful. As Christians, I think that is the one way we can rally even people who don’t agree with us theologically. We can say, Well, here’s what the Constitution says. Here’s how we can better live up to those things.
Chap: That’s good. That’s good. You started to touch a little bit on something I wanted you to address. These words are almost- Again, thinking in New England, like, oh my goodness, you should not even think this, but what has been called American exceptionalism. And I think it goes with gratitude as well, which, all you’ve got to do is travel. And I was blessed this year to do a little international travel, and you see just the how broken the world is. So even as we look at the problems of the United States, you’re like, Man, you should travel and see how really broken the world is. So talk to that about that. And then I want to shift gears a little bit, but yeah, American exceptionalism.
Dan: Even the idea of American exceptionalism, even a lot of my fellow Christians recoil at that, and I think it’s a natural thing because we don’t want to act like we’re superior to other folks just because we’re Americans and all this kind of thing. And I talk in the book that there’s really two kinds of approaches to American exceptionalism. One, and I borrow this from John Wilsey who teaches at Southern Seminary. He wrote a book on this about a decade ago. There’s a closed exceptionalism where we say America is the greatest country in the history of the world, therefore it gives us the right to do whatever we want around the world. And at times we’ve done that, right? Whether it’s Manifest Destiny or whether it’s other things. That leads to hubris and bad choices, and I don’t think it’s a Christian way to think. But there’s an open exceptionalism that basically says, “To whom much is given, much is required.” God has blessed this country. We do believe it’s the greatest country, therefore we should be open-handed and generous. I think the founders had this perspective. I think if you read Benjamin Franklin’s Thanksgiving prayer at the Constitutional Congress, he was saying, We’ve been blessed by God, and we need to be grateful for it and open-handed, and all those kinds of things.
Now, is it right for a Christian to think that the place he lives is the best place? Again, I go back to G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, who basically said, Well, look, naturally humans are going to think their home is the best. And they were talking about England. They said it’s natural. I think that about my family. I know my family has issues and problems, but I like my family best, right? Now, if that makes me insular and I don’t want to help any of the other families in the world, that’s a sinful attitude. But if it just gives me love and affection for them and I recognize that, then I can be open-handed. And I also think by just some objective metrics, you can say America is a pretty unique place, and it’s a unique experiment. A lot of our historians have said that, whether it’s David McCullough and others. Whether you want to measure GDP, whether you want to measure liberty and freedom. Alexis de Tocqueville, when he came in the 1800s, essentially said this. But again, it should not make us prideful. I think there’s a wrong way to, to think about this where we can do whatever we want, we shouldn’t have any accountability. We shouldn’t have alliances with other nations. We shouldn’t use our prosperity for good. No, I think it should make us open-handed and generous and thankful to God.
What’s interesting, Chap, you mentioned traveling, and I really think if this is all you know, then all you see are the bad things. Does that make sense? You know, it’s like your kids, all they see is your flaws, and Man, our family. . . And then they go out in the world, and they’re like, Man, these families are all… It’s like, Man, maybe my family’s pretty good. I know I felt that way in my 20s. I’m like, Okay, my parents did pretty well. I had a roof over my head. My parents stayed together. I have all this. And I think that’s the way some people think about America, where if this is all you know, all you see are the flaws, right?
The most patriotic people I encounter, interestingly enough, are immigrants, and we have a number of foreign students that study here at Southwestern. We have a number of students that are children of immigrants. And I remember talking to them on Election Day last year and just kind of, “Hey, what are you thinking? What are you guys voting for? What are your parents thinking?” And to a person- and these are all children of immigrants- they all said, “We love this country. It’s the greatest country in the world.” And they said, “Our parents are the most patriotic people you know.” I mean, they’re playing Lee Greenwood every day. They’ve got flags everywhere because they, they’ve seen both, right? If you came here from Cuba under communism and you came here, you see the contrast. If you came here from a communist nation or totalitarian, you see the contrast. Doesn’t mean we’re perfect.
So I just think, again, it’s an expression of gratitude to say, It’s okay to think this is the best country and this is where God has me as long as it doesn’t make us prideful, doesn’t make us like Jonah, where we think God loves us more than He loves the nations, as long as it doesn’t take away from our commitment to the Great Commission to love all the nations and to seek salvation for people from every tribe, nation, and tongue.
Chap: Yeah, that’s a good word. I think it goes back to gratitude. And again, you don’t take things for granted. So I was in one country and talking to a person there from the United States, and that person said, “One of the hardest things has been the inconsistency of the electricity. Just going to the grocery store …” We had that. Thankfully, I wasn’t in an elevator, but there was 30 minutes when the electricity in a very Western hotel just went out. So everything from spiritual to just material.
Dan: That’s right.
Chap: Well, I want to take our remaining time and really start to make it even more personal here. I want to talk about two things, and you can decide with our remaining time how much you give to each. I want to talk about-Christian involvement in our nation. But maybe the way to start before asking that question has to do with what is Christian nationalism and what is the Baptist view? Or we would say, the biblical view-
Dan: Right. That’s right.
Chap: That’s what we would say, of course. -of church and state. And I think it’s just very interesting to get that clear, because I think patriotism can be accused of nationalism. Riff on that for a while.
Dan: Great question, and I’m asked about this a lot. And I’m always wondering what people mean by nationalism, because, as you know, that term has been expanded to cover anybody who’s patriotic. If you watch Chris Stapleton sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl and you get a little tear in your eye, as I did, you’re a nationalist. Or if you’re a conservative Christian who wants to just help to impact public policy in some way, somehow you’re a nationalist. And I think that’s unfair. Or even if you’re a political figure who’s a Christian and you’re quoting Bible verses, whether it’s Mike Johnson or George Bush 25 years ago or whatever, Oh, you’re a theocrat. You’re a nationalist. I don’t think that’s fair.
But I do think there is a narrow group of people, Catholics, you know, they call themselves Catholic Integralists. I think Protestants self-describe as Christian nationalists, people like Steven Wolfe and others. And those folks are sort of dissatisfied with the constitutional arrangement. They think it’s allowed too much freedom and it’s not working, and they look sort of longingly back at a medieval era where you had an established church, an official Christian state church. As Baptists, we disagree with that. We believe that God has given certain roles to the state and certain roles to the church. Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God’s what is God’s. Paul, when he’s telling Timothy to pray in 1 Timothy 2, he’s telling him to pray that the government essentially leaves us alone so that we can share the gospel. We don’t believe it’s the government’s job to compel faith. Faith at the end of a sword is not true faith. We believe that Christ, and not the government, is the one who separates the sheep from the goats and the wheat from the tares. And so I believe religious liberty is biblical. As a limited government guy, the government can barely run a functioning post office or a healthcare website or a DMV. We’re not going to task them with deciding between right and wrong forms of worship. I just don’t think it’s right. And so we don’t want the government doing that.
The founders were wise because they looked back on church history and saw that every time you had a state church, it wasn’t good for the state or the church. I think you even see that today. Look at the state churches around the world. You have Russia where the state church throws Baptists and Evangelicals in jail for preaching the gospel. You have the Church of England, which is about to endorse maybe same-sex marriage. You have the state church in Finland, which just put a lady in jail for posting something that people didn’t like online. So I don’t think those things work. At the same time, as I talk about in the book, we aren’t necessarily for secularism either, this idea that you push Christians out of the public square. And we acknowledge that the United States has a significant Christian influence, that our founding documents say that our rights come from God. And the founders understood that this experiment in human liberty, in ordered liberty, will not survive without a thick layer of religion and virtue, and I would argue Christianity. And many of our leaders have argued that from the founders even to down through the 20th century, people like FDR and Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, that without a really robust Christianity in the country, liberty turns to license, freedom turns to all these kinds of things.
And so I don’t think we have to choose between secularism and a state church, but we want a very robust Christian engagement in the public square, Christians involved. It’s interesting, Baptists believe this way about church and state, but Baptists are always very engaged and have been from the beginning. Baptists were there with Thomas Jefferson helping to form the Bill of Rights, and we have Baptists serving in Congress and all levels of society. This is good and healthy. That’s how we should think of these things. I think in a fallen world, giving the government the power to tell you how to believe is really a bad idea. At the same time, the effort to push Christianity out of the public square is unhealthy as well.
Chap: Yeah, it was very helpful, but I think to say Christian nationalism is to say we need a church of America similar to the Church of England where Caesar, where the government is now deciding theological issues. . . But what that [phrase] is thrown around at is people actually getting involved in [politics] and then actually, and I want you to speak to this, quote unquote, “imposing Christian morality.”
Dan: Right.
Chap: And you’re the expert. I’m not. But aren’t all laws moral in the sense of- and I was just reading this morning in my devotions in Proverbs, and it talks about defending the rights of the poor. So these rights, whether they’re life, free speech, et cetera, the Christian can come and say, “These are rights from God, Christian or not.”
Dan: Absolutely. I mean, Richard John Neuhaus, again, I quote him. He had a great book about 40 years ago called The Naked Public Square, and he basically said there’s no such thing as a neutral public square. Everybody brings their values to the table. And so when people tell Christians, Well, you shouldn’t advocate for pro-life laws or for marriage and all that, well, you’re trying to impose your values on us, and I’m saying everybody’s trying to impose values on somebody, right? Secularists or whatever that want to make laws, they’re imposing their values, and every law, as you said, is a moral statement. Laws that say, “Thou shalt,” laws that say it’s a crime to murder somebody are based on the morality that murder is wrong, and I think a lot of that is stemmed from natural law where God has written on human hearts certain ideas that even if you’re not a Christian, you tend toward. And so, yes, Christians should absolutely be involved.
I think it’s funny that of all the interest groups in the United States, it’s only Christians who are told to check their beliefs at the door. Everyone else can bring theirs. And so I think we should reject that. I think we need to be realistic about what we can accomplish, and I think in a democracy, we’re not going to win every fight. We’re going to lose elections. We’re going to lose policy fights, but we should still try. I think Christians should be engaged. Now, this depends on your calling and your resources and your ability. God calls some people to run for office locally, nationally, some people to comment on it, to equip people about it. For others, it’s just a quiet sort of faithfulness, but you’re voting. You’re expressing yourself. So it depends on where your calling is. You have to steward that well, but I think citizenship is something to be stewarded. I don’t think we can read “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and yet if we have an opportunity to shape the policies that affect our neighbor’s flourishing, we say we’re not going to do it. I just think we have to, and we have been given something really unique in human history. Most Christians throughout the ages did not have the opportunity to shape the laws or the people who ruled over us. We don’t have as much influence as we wish we did. We may not get everything we like, but I think we should be engaged as a stewardship, knowing that it’s temporal, knowing that one day Christ will return and make all things new, and that we look for a city, as Hebrews says, whose builder and maker is God. But in the meantime, there is a lot of good we can do.
And if you look through human history, this is one thing I argue about with journalists and secularists, Christianity has been a net plus for the world, for society. And even the values by which sometimes Christians are judged are rooted in Christianity. And this is why you’re seeing even atheists like Richard Dawkins saying,Look, all things being equal, I want to live in a Christian country. Why? Because there’s certain values that are there. You’re not going to get your head cut off for disagreeing with the state church. So I think we shouldn’t be ashamed of being engaged. We should do it in a Christ-like way. We should do it with some realism, knowing that we’re not going to accomplish everything we’d like to, but we can do some good.
Chap: I wonder if we’re going through a resurgence at where we need to relearn and be able to rearticulate some of the ways that Christianity [causes humanity to flourish]. That our Constitution, that our form of government, just the separation of powers, that’s based on the sinfulness of man. It’s very inefficient to have three branches of government. But it’s also good because based on our own sinfulness.
Dan: Yeah, absolutely. I do think civics education, we need a re-education in that, and that’s one thing parents can do.
Chap: I was going ask about that for the final question. What would you encourage other parents if you had the microphone at an assembly?
Dan: From an early age, have them appreciate the country God has given them, trying to teach them some good history. I think history is important. God told the children of Israel to always remember their history, and history helps us avoid panicking in the moment and to think, Oh, this is the worst thing ever. It helps shape our thinking, helps us have gratitude. Maybe talking to our kids about civics and how this works. You don’t have to be like our family, where we dragged our kids to a lot of historical places in America, but I actually think it can be good to go visit some of these places, battlefields or presidential libraries or monuments, just to give them an appreciation of where they live.
And I would say this, not even just if you live in the United States, but wherever you live: to appreciate the culture and the place that God has put you.
Chap: That’s good. That’s good. Well, Dan, thank you. Thank you so much for your time. I do think it’s a discipleship issue, and I do think love of country is a stewardship, and it’s a gratitude issue.
One last thing, tell us a little bit about the Land Center, what you do, because you’re just such a reasonable voice in the noisy world, and then we’ll sign off.
Dan: Well, I lead the Land Center for Cultural Engagement here at Southwestern Seminary, and I teach in the college, Texas Baptist College. We have a faith and culture concentration, so I teach Intro to Ethics, Intro to Apologetics, and Christianity in Government. I teach a class on human dignity, the Imago Dei. And we host events on campus, and we have fellows that write for various places that we promote their work. But really trying to help equip pastors and church leaders and parents and ordinary people how to think through all these things. That’s kind of my desire, is how do we apply scripture to all these issues that we confront and how do we live faithfully that way?
Chap: Well, Dan is an articulate and insightful writer. Check out his column at World Magazine. Check out his 20 books. I really appreciate your ministry and your faithfulness. So thanks for taking the time.
Dan: Well, thank you.
Chap: Well, thank you for listening to The Disciple-Making Parent podcast. Again, the book we were talking about is In Defense of Christian Patriotism, by Daniel Darling. Get a copy wherever Christian books are sold. It’s well-researched and well-reasoned. And before we go on, I want to say we love creating free content for you, but we can only do that because of financial partners, and would you join us? You know, the family is the foundation of a strong church and a strong nation, and the Lord is using our ministry here in the United States and around the world. We have partners in Germany, Latin America, and even French-speaking Africa. There’s so many opportunities in front of us, but we need your help. And so would you consider, prayerfully consider investing your kingdom dollars with us? You can go to thedisciplemakingparent.com/partner. Thanks for listening.
