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Christianity and Patriotism: An Inter-disciplinary and Contextual Reflection

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Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice

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Abstract

The tension between patriotism and religious identity is an acute issue for Chinese Christianity. This chapter reconsiders patriotism from an inter-disciplinary and contextual perspective. It starts with a survey of the academic studies of patriotism from the perspectives of biological and cultural evolution, with a contextual analysis of the problem of patriotism in contemporary China, particularly Hong Kong. Based on the above survey and analysis, together with a review of patriotism from a Christian theological perspective, this chapter concludes with several suggestions concerning whether and how a Chinese Christian may love his/her country. There are several characteristics to this love: free and resistant to hegemony; with criticism and forgiveness; participation in diaspora; universal rather than exclusive; and with proper order.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Zhongguo Jidu jiao san zi ai guo yun dong wei yuan hui [41].

  2. 2.

    For a recent discussion, see: Zhao and Edmond [40] (articles in Chinese with English abstract), especially He [10].

  3. 3.

    The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1989), s.vv. ‘patriot’, ‘patriotism’.

  4. 4.

    Darwin [5].

  5. 5.

    See: Heinrich and Heinrich [11]; also, Bowles and Gintis [3].

  6. 6.

    See: Wilson [37].

  7. 7.

    Flescher and Worthen [8].

  8. 8.

    Richerson and Boyd [29].

  9. 9.

    de Waal [35].

  10. 10.

    See: Boyd and Richerson [4], Richerson and Boyd [30].

  11. 11.

    Troeltsch [34, pp. 161–163].

  12. 12.

    Baker [1].

  13. 13.

    Parekh [28].

  14. 14.

    Parekh [28, p. 240].

  15. 15.

    Maclear [22].

  16. 16.

    Jenks [13].

  17. 17.

    Baker [1, pp. 252–288].

  18. 18.

    See: Beck [2].

  19. 19.

    Nussbaum [24].

  20. 20.

    Nussbaum [25].

  21. 21.

    See: Parekh [28, pp. 56–79, 239–258].

  22. 22.

    See: Fairbrother [7].

  23. 23.

    Epistula ad Diognetum 5.5 [6].

  24. 24.

    Winter [39].

  25. 25.

    Oberman [26].

  26. 26.

    See: Stephens [32], Gäbler [9].

  27. 27.

    Lewis [15].

  28. 28.

    Ibid., p. 28.

  29. 29.

    Niebuhr [23].

  30. 30.

    Long and Sadd [21].

  31. 31.

    Long and Sadd [20, p. 3].

  32. 32.

    Jenson [14, pp. 147–148].

  33. 33.

    Weber [36, pp. 238–239].

  34. 34.

    Wink [38, p. 22].

  35. 35.

    Tillich [33].

  36. 36.

    Tillich [33, p. 17].

  37. 37.

    Tillich [33, pp. 27–51].

  38. 38.

    Lai [16].

  39. 39.

    See further: Oord [27].

  40. 40.

    See: Schindler [31].

  41. 41.

    Lai and Tao [18] (in Chinese with abstract in English).

  42. 42.

    See: Lai and Tao [17, pp. 183–214 at 197–205] (in Chinese with abstract in English).

  43. 43.

    Hinze [12, p. 134].

  44. 44.

    This essay is a substantially abridged and revised English version of a chapter of my book in Chinese: Lai [19].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cultural & Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, P. R. China

    Pan-chiu Lai

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  1. Pan-chiu Lai
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Correspondence to Pan-chiu Lai .

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  1. Shanghai, China

    Zhibin Xie

  2. York, UK

    Pauline Kollontai

  3. Pasadena, CA, USA

    Sebastian Kim

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Lai, Pc. (2020). Christianity and Patriotism: An Inter-disciplinary and Contextual Reflection. In: Xie, Z., Kollontai, P., Kim, S. (eds) Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5081-2_7

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