With the mainstream media routinely denouncing Brexit, Trump and the rise of European populism, Spirit-filled Christians have long sensed the spiritual conflict raging over the issue of nationhood. Liberals equate nationalism with misguided patriotism at best, chauvinism or racism at worst. Others feel a genuine sense of love and defensiveness for their nation but find it difficult to explain why.
So Israeli academic Yoram Hazony has done conservative evangelicals a great favour with his biblically accurate defence of the nation. A Princeton-educated political theorist and Orthodox Jew, Hazony worked as an aide to Netanyahu in the 1990s and is President of the Herzl Institute research centre in Jerusalem. He is uniquely placed to offer insights into what he terms “two visions of world order” (p16): nation and empire. While the nation state “seeks to rule over one nation alone”, the ‘imperial’ (i.e. globalist/internationalist) worldview seeks “to bring peace and prosperity by uniting mankind under a single political regime” (pp6-7).
What makes this book particularly valuable for both Jews and Christians is its treatment of the Hebrew scriptures as political philosophy. The author demonstrates how the Protestant idea of national self-determination originates with God’s instructions to ancient Israel. In contrast to the ever-expanding empires surrounding Israel (e.g. Assyria, Babylon, Persia), “the Bible puts a new political conception on the table: a state of a single nation that is unified, self-governing, and uninterested in bringing its neighbours under its rule” (p19).
The Protestant idea of national self-determination originates with God’s instructions to ancient Israel.
Protestantism and the Nation State
In Part One, ‘Nationalism and Western freedom’, Hazony unpacks the Protestant conception of the nation state. When Christianity became the state religion of Rome, it took on Rome’s aim of universal peace (pax Romana), which could only be achieved through world empire. This imperial ideal held sway in the West for 13 centuries, ending with the Westphalia treaties of 1648 which brought the Thirty Years’ War to a close – and with it, German-Catholic dreams of a universal Christian empire.
Subsequently, independent nation states based on the Protestant political model emerged, including England, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland and later the USA.
However, the West was cut adrift from its Protestant moorings when Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke started emphasising reason and personal freedom, rather than biblical revelation, as the basis for the state. Locke argued that human beings possessed freedom and equality simply by virtue of being human, and only entered collectives by their own consent. This liberal view is at odds with the Bible’s teaching that man has certain non-negotiable responsibilities towards his family and society. Today, mainstream Western academia is firmly entrenched in the Lockean paradigm, which helps explain its hostility towards the concepts of the nation and the traditional family.
Meanwhile, thinkers like Immanuel Kant argued for the “moral superiority of international government” (p42), paving the way for 20th-Century moves towards globalism. Reeling with the horrors of Nazism, the international community turned to transnational cooperation as the only way to prevent another world war, hence such “empire-building projects” (p4) as the European Union.
Mutual Loyalty
In Part Two, ‘The case for the national state’ (the most substantial section of the book), the author sets out the benefits of a world of independent nation states. He suggests that the nation strikes the right balance between the instability of anarchy (absence of political authority) and the distant, abstract nature of empire, with its vague devotion to the “ultimate good of all humanity” (p99).
A key point is that mutual loyalty forms the ‘glue’ that binds together families, institutions and ultimately nations. This causes a citizen to identify with his nation, experiencing its hardships and triumphs “as if they were happening to his own self” (p105); for example, a soldier is willing to risk his own life out of love for his country.
Mutual loyalty forms the ‘glue’ that binds together families, institutions and ultimately nations.
What About Racism?
In Part Three, ‘Anti-nationalism and hate’, Hazony addresses the question that may be lingering at the back of readers’ minds: doesn’t nationalism breed racism and hatred? He essentially responds with another question: have proponents of a universal political order been guilty of anything less? While not denying that tensions between nations can lead to bloodshed, Hazony claims that historically, it is imperialist governments which have been responsible for the most casualties – including the regimes of Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin.
The chapter entitled ‘Two lessons of Auschwitz’ unpacks the practical implications of nationalist and internationalist outlooks in the context of Zionism. Under the nationalist model, what David Ben-Gurion called the “sin” of Jewish powerlessness during the Holocaust (p203) is solved by a Jewish homeland: “Israel is the opposite of Auschwitz” (p205). Under the globalist model, the power wielded by the nation of Germany was the problem; therefore, Israel stands in the way of a single international government which would eliminate the danger of warring nations. In short, “Israel is Auschwitz” (p205). Thus, Israel is compared with Nazism and subjected to vicious de-legitimisation campaigns, ultimately because she poses a threat to aspirations of world government.
Despite the book’s weighty subject matter, Hazony’s style remains accessible to the layperson and there are detailed endnotes for readers keen to do further research. Judging by its enthusiastic reception in conservative circles, this book looks set to become a modern classic.
‘The Virtue of Nationalism’ (285pp, hardcover) is available for £18.99 from Amazon and Book Depository. Also on Kindle.