One of my favorite sections in C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves is not actually one of the titular four loves at all. In the introductory chapter “Likings and Loves for the Sub-Human,” Lewis includes a perceptive discussion on the nature of patriotism. He delineates what he calls five ingredients of patriotism, but I think they are more productively thought of as stages because they seem to proceed from natural to unhealthy to destructive.
I find this section very useful in light of modern American politics. Over the last decade, we have seen what damage has been caused by both the abandonment of patriotism and the overindulgence in what Lewis calls “demoniac patriotism.” Like many loves, patriotism is both the sustaining force of a relationship (in this case, the unity of a nation) and also the force which may tip it into unhealthy nationalism and jingoism.
But Lewis’s arguments don’t have to apply just to a nation; they can apply just as well to any kind of in-group, out-group loyalty. This time through the book, I thought about the application of Lewis’s arguments to our identity as members of a church. Since I have called in a previous post for Latter-day Saints to re-embrace church culture, I think it’s important to clarify what I mean (and what I don’t mean), and Lewis’s stages of patriotism provide a clear framework for doing just that.
1 – Patriotism as the love of one’s home. We love the church because it is familiar and because it is ours. As Lewis says, “It would be hard to find any legitimate point of view from which this feeling could be condemned.” This type of love of funeral potatoes and primary songs and general conference needs no other justification. We love it almost with a sense of nostalgia. Of course, this means that we have to take extra care to invite converts into this homey love, but for the most part, this invitation mostly consists of time. The longer we spend in the church, the more familiar we become with its rhythms and patterns and the more we look forward to them. There’s nothing much to be done here except to maintain traditions that orient us towards a certain sense of community time.
2 – Patriotism as the love of the mythos of a country. While Lewis is right to point out that “the actual history of every country is full of shabby and even shameful doings,” there’s something about the story of a nation as a myth, as a saga, that gives fire to the imagination and creates a dedication to shared (hopefully positive) values which are much more difficult to justify in other ways. Latter-day Saints obviously have this in our shared historiography about the early saints. In some ways, the current wave of attention towards more tricky parts of church history could be seen as damaging to this kind of patriotism, and indeed, we see the recent growth of splinter groups that push back against overwhelming historical evidence in favor of the version that they learned as a child.
But Lewis asserts something that I also feel: we can have rigorous historical examination alongside a version that is presented as “the tale as such, … the picture which fires the imagination, the example which strengthens the will.” The key is to maintain both and to not mis-identify the inspiring story-version with the scholarly analysis.
Our church story is currently in a period of adjustment, which makes some people understandably uneasy about the loss of what came before. The ease of that adjustment is being helped along by creatives like Anthony Sweat or Margaret Blair Young and Darius Gray, who are helping us to repicture the story of our history to be more inclusive and accurate. In fact, probably the biggest player in this space is the church itself with the Saints series, which incorporates both current scholarship and a more diverse picture of who church members are.
3 – Patriotism as the belief that our own nation is “markedly superior to all others.” Here’s where nationalism comes in when looking from a political perspective, but I think this is also tricky territory for us as a church. For this type of love, a nation is perhaps different from a church. While it’s obvious to most of us that nations aren’t god-given (inspired? maybe), we do as a matter of faith assert that our church is the one true and living church. Perhaps Lewis with his “mere Christianity” would disagree with me, but I wholeheartedly believe this principle. Without this idea, the necessity of priesthood, prophets, and ordinances, all key to our identity, come collapsing down around us. There’s no reason for the church to exist if we don’t believe that the restoration was necessary. It becomes a culture rather than an essential institution. While I value culture, I value the truth of the Restoration more.
But it’s important for church members to realize that this idea can come across as patronizing (at best) to members of other faiths (or none). While I don’t think it’s possible for us to drop this principle and remain Latter-day Saints, I propose that it’s important for us to acknowledge the limitations of our truth claims. Priesthood authority matters; the associated tradition about wearing white shirts doesn’t. Prophets matter; using their middle initials doesn’t. Ordinances matter; the forms of our celebration of Easter don’t, and in recent years we’ve seen the church a desire to learn from the meaningful traditions of other faiths.
We need to limit the scope of the things that we think of as essential, to be willing to have holy envy and sometimes to act on it, and to acknowledge that other people feel just as strongly about their faith as we do about ours. Humility goes a long way to keeping this part of our church patriotism in a healthy place.
4 – Patriotism as the belief that because of that superiority, we have “the duties or the rights of a superior being towards” all others. Lewis notes this attitude in British history as the concept of the “white man’s burden,” but we might equally see it in America as the concept of “manifest destiny.” Again, I feel this principle applies differently in a religious setting as we do believe that the gospel should roll forth to fill the earth, not as a matter of conquest but because the principles are beneficial for the growth of heavenly Father’s children.
Again: humility. One place where this type of love goes wrong is when we (especially we white Utah saints) see ourselves as magnanimously giving our superior culture to lesser beings. We don’t make converts; the Holy Ghost does. We are not superior to other human beings by virtue of having the gospel. Again, we can believe that the true principles of the gospel are necessary for growth and salvation; but the cultural practices absolutely have to be adapted. In general, I think we actually do a good job with this; many saints return home from their missions with minds expanded about the value of another culture and with added humility about their own. Still, it’s worth acknowledging that we need to be careful about the narratives we tell around missions and missionary experiences, as this is easily a place that church patriotism can turn demonic.
5 – Patriotism as the belief that one’s own country is perfect. Lewis says this type of patriotism is dangerous not only because it’s untrue, but because it has the corollary that our country should be abandoned when it ceases to be perfect: “when the ship begins to sink he will leave her.” It’s clear how this attitude is perfectly monstrous in relation to other human beings–nothing is more obviously deplorable than the abandoning of a spouse when they lose their looks or the disowning of children when they cease to obey our commands.
With a nation or church, the vice becomes more understandable. Patriotism #2–the love of our own mythos–can easily turn into a dangerous belief in our own perfection. This principle is reflected in the snide saying that “Catholics teach that the pope is infallible, but nobody believes it. Mormons teach that the prophet is fallible, but nobody believes it.” When that image of perfect comes crashing down (and it inevitably will), it can break a testimony along with it. This is not necessarily the fault of the church or of the individual, but mostly, I think, a failure of education–and in that way, a failure of culture.
The recent coining of the phrase “the ongoing restoration” has done much to combat this danger. While technically we always believed in this principle (remember, “Mormons teach that the prophet is fallible”), now we have a clear and prophetically endorsed phrase to remind ourselves of it.
Another possible danger point for this type of unhealthy love is the transition from childhood to adulthood, in which we might go through the same crisis of perfection but on a smaller scale. When you’re a child in primary, it’s easy to believe the adults around you are perfect with all authority and knowledge. But every church member must go through a point at which they realize their leaders are human, possibly hypocrites even.
It might happen when a Young Women’s advisor’s personality rubs you completely the wrong way, or when your dad gets called as a bishop, or it might happen in college when the same girl who snubs you in the dorms is called as your Relief Society President. Heaven help you if you make it all the way to being married with kids before the Elders’ Quorum fails to show up to help with your move. However it happens, you can only get through it by finding the internal resources to understand the difference between aspiration (the mythos) and the reality (human fallibility).
In The Four Loves, Lewis makes the case that love is not all you need (sorry, Beatles-fans); you also need character. While I want us to return to celebrating our weird quirkiness as a church, we need to acknowledge that self-absorbed love can become dangerous in particular ways that I’ve tried to illuminate here. So Latter-day Saints need to balance their self-acceptance with an ability to see where self-improvement can happen and the will to help it along when necessary. This imperative applies especially to those whose profession puts them into the position of shaping our culture: writers, artists, musicians, content-producers of all sizes. The arts are sometimes a reflection of an existing culture, but they also have a position of power, which must be handled with care.
