UUFS, July 3, 2011: My Thoughts on Patriotism

Beth Butterfield

When I was a kid, the idea of patriotism just didn’t make any sense to me. For this, I blame the Christians – specifically, the Seventh-Day Adventists. As some of you know, I was raised by my very devout Adventist grandmother. And the older I get, the more I see how parts of my early Christian upbringing actually shaped me into a good little Unitarian Universalist.

There is a song that we used to sing every Saturday in Sabbath School, called “Jesus loves the little children.” Some of you probably know it too, and you are welcome to sing it with me:

Jesus loves the little children

All the children of the world

Red and yellow, black and white

All are precious in his sight

Jesus loves the little children of the world

Now as a kid, I really took that song to heart. The lesson I got was that all human beings are members of one big family, God’s family, and that it doesn’t matter where you’re born, or what you look like, or what language you speak – all people are important and deserving of respect and love. (Hmm, sound familiar, like our first UU principle?)

Well, what that meant to me as a little kid was that there was nothing particularly special about being American – it didn’t matter what country I was from. What mattered was that I was a part of the big human family. Being American was merely a worldly identity, and it seemed arbitrary and irrelevant.

I also grew up surrounded by missionaries and stories of mission work, and every month at church we would watch a slideshow with updates from the mission field. These always included a soundtrack with music played on African or Asian instruments, and songs sung in languages I didn’t understand, and I loved it. I took it as a celebration of both our common humanity and our diversity.

Now, as a kid, somehow I did not get the message that the missionaries were out to convert these people. I suspect it might have been my own selective listening, but I naively thought the goal was simply to help those who are less fortunate, because it’s our duty to love. What does this have to do with patriotism? Well, as I saw them building schools, and hospitals, and wells for clean water, and I got the impression that being born as an American meant being born into privilege. And I knew I hadn’t done anything to deserve this privilege – it felt to me like my nationality, where I was born, was simply a matter of accident or luck. So instead of feeling proud to be American, I felt almost embarrassed by the fact that I was born into so much when others had so little. This is how Christianity also got me started down the path of social justice. (Again, sound familiar? I’m thinking of our 6^th principle, about creating a world with peace and justice for all)

Well, by age 15, I left the Adventist church, and by 17, I lost my faith altogether, but the feelings of being a part of one human family, and of having a duty to help others, stayed with me. Patriotism, on the other hand, became even more problematic.

As a teenager, I went through what I think might be a typical experience for a young leftist who’s coming to consciousness. I learned more and more about the darker parts of our history, and of our present, I learned about racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, corruption, injustice, and a society that sometimes cares more about profit than what is right. And I entered a period of real anger and shame at being American. This was also at the time of the first Gulf War, and while the song “I’m proud to be an American” played non-stop on the radio, I listened to political protest music that sang “no blood for oil.” I was painfully aware of the ways we failed to live up to our values, and I was turned off by the wave of patriotic pride around me that seemed to be too arrogant or overconfident or blind.

Today, as I look back on that period of anger, I recognize it as an important step in developing what has come to be my own adult sense of patriotism. It’s almost 20 years later, and today I still do not think that our country is perfect, or blameless, or that “we’re number one.” I am still angry – in the words of our UU hymn, “we are a gentle angry people.”

But what I understand now is that this anger comes from the fact that I do really care about the values that America stands for, even if and when we don’t live up to them. I care about them – not because they’re ours or because this is where I was born – but because I see many of these values as right and good. And I admire the people in our past and in the present who work to make those values a reality. And I really do care about all of the potential for good that is here.

It would be sad if, in frustration with our country’s failings, we abandoned patriotism to the people who are unreflective, or unwilling to question. At this point in my life, patriotism has come to mean taking responsibility as a citizen, to now help to make this a place I can be proud of.

I have reached the point of being able to occupy this ambiguous place of recognizing our failings and loving our virtues at the same time. Patriotism does not have to mean believing that we are perfect, or denying our mistakes. Patriotism can mean taking our values seriously, and demanding that we live up to them. In this way, criticism and dissent can be truly patriotic too. I want to be proud of my country, not just because it’s mine, but because it is good.