Nationalism vs Patriotism

Father Andrew takes a close look at the good and bad of these two ideas and others in ‘On Conquering Nationalism and Globalism’:

Introduction: Patriotism

We define patriotism as the love of our country in its God-created beauty. This has nothing to do with the blindly fanatical promotion of man-created States, institutions and menacing armies as ‘better’ than others; patriotism has nothing to do with hatred for other countries, for in patriotism there is nothing negative, only positive. We have always maintained that love for other countries, inter-patriotism, is a virtue, but that it comes from love for one’s own country, where it was God’s will for us to be born. Indeed, we say that he who does not love his own country cannot love other countries, just as he who hates himself also hates others. This we can see throughout history in the stories of one pathological and self-obsessed ruler after another, from pagan Roman Emperors to Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, Napoleon, the Kaiser, Lenin, Hitler and those more recent.

The Origin and Spread of Nationalism

We define nationalism as a secularist lack of love for other countries, which originates in ignorance of them and arrogance with regard to one’s own country. Modern nationalism was born in 16th century Western Europe as a secular reaction to the oppressive centralism of Papist Europe. Nationalism was thus born in the Protestant countries of Europe, the classic case being England, whose greedy ruler made himself head of his own national ‘Church’, a department of state, a secular institution or ‘establishment’ with a religious exterior. However, nationalism soon spread outside Protestant England, Holland, Scandinavia and Lutheran German principalities to Roman Catholic countries like Spain, Poland, Ireland and France which were soon infected. Ultimately, the evil of nationalism, evident in Western European nations, small but powerful through their technological superiority, was to result in the Satanic, inter-tribal slaughter of the First and then the Second World Wars.

Nationalism in the Orthodox World

However, it was not only the Protestant and then Roman Catholic world that underwent the inherently secular process of nationalism. Later, in the 18th century in Russia and in the 19th century the Orthodox world also underwent the same process, especially in the Balkans, thus repeating the ‘Balkanisation’ that had already affected Western Europe, causing warfare and strife there. As a result, a Council in Constantinople on 10 September 1872 qualified such nationalism, or ‘phyletism’, as a heresy: the Church, it said, should not be confused with a single nation or race. . . .

The rest, including the answer to globalism and nationalism, is available here:  http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/on-conquering-nationalism-and-globalism/