Rarely now does a day go by when I am not confronted by the claim that a particular product is immeasurably life-enhancing and vital to my and my family’s well-being. The strategies range from TV and magazine advertisements, which can always be easily enough avoided, to the more intrusive emails, which can still mostly be blocked, to the distinctly manipulative telephone and door-to-door marketing strategies, which are much more difficult to ignore. But at least I know what is coming and I can prepare my repose accordingly. So when my telephone caller addresses me as ‘Mr.’ McDowell, obviously obtaining my surname and number from the telephone directory, I am learning to quickly inform them of my disinterest in their product.

But what continually disturbs me, since it is even more widely intrusive, is a sales-pitch that hides (whether deliberately or not) its intentions. Door-to-door evangelists, for instance, while they present friendly faces they do not offer the friendly face of sweet reason – what they have to sell (and it does come with a cost) is often carefully spun and attractively packaged so that I do not have to think deeper (there is an answer for everything). The sale is of an idea, a belief, a dream, a way of life, and the fact that it is a sale is understandably often missed by virtue of the fact that these ‘things’ are not tangible entities like life-assurance policies and enhanced mobile phone packages are.

Immediately before and during the most recent military hostilities in the Gulf region, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair spoke with ease of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, and Bush also of the ‘American way of life’. Certainly they were admirably articulating their desire for their states to be free from the fear of terrorist atrocities and from a political dictatorship that massacres its opposition. But there is much more going on here than that – a particular ideal is being sold, and it comes at a high cost.

My initial suspiciousness was accentuated. These so-called democratically ‘representative’ governments acted without UN sanction – a very difficult decision and complicated affair to be sure, but this unilateral action of a pre-emptive strike raises worrying questions about the nature of public accountability. The price for permitting this may yet be felt, even if it is only by way of the rest of the world’s perception of the interests driving the nations of the anti-terrorism coalition, and the internationally growing anti-American resentment.

Secondly, potentially influential dissenters were silenced through calls for patriotism – the implication being that dissent to government policy is unpatriotic – and were threatened with dismissal. A report in the Times Higher Education Supplement, among other places, confirmed rumours that certain American academics were silenced in this way for their vocal opposition. What we have seen is the development of what Peter J. Gomes has called "culture of patriotic intimidation". Freedom of speech and conscientious objection, those highly prized assets of democracy, were suspended when it mattered most (the ‘permitted’ public protests were insufficiently influential to be more than an irritant in policy-making), and a significant proportion of the US and Bt populations were thereby not represented.

Jews and Christians, among others, have very good reasons to be suspicious of this form of patriotism. Many Hebrew prophets were censured by their monarchical governments for denying the moral legitimacy of governmental actions. Good government for the prophets is that which faithfully participates in God’s covenantal rule, existing before God for the wellbeing of God’s chosen people. Being patriotic, then, frequently required serious dissent, an apparently ‘unpatriotic’ gesture for the greater wellbeing of the nation for which they have love.

Moreover, particularly the later prophets turn their attentions to concern with the good of the nations. Our national government understandably seeks to protect its people’s interests. But what globalisation in trade and communications systems can remind, in its more benign moments, is that our humanity is more common and shared than our encounters with those living within our state could otherwise suggest. The humanity we are responsible for and to may just well have to take on global proportions.

That at least is what Christians assert when they proclaim the universal relevance of the humanity of Jesus Christ – the One who represents not our best interests and desires but our very wellbeing itself. In our witness to the truth of Human Being, that which is the image of God in Christ, do our actions measure up to our words? Is our patriotism prepared to appear unpatriotic for the sake of the flourishing of all of God’s creatures? Or are we willing to deny the difficulty of our responsibility by superficially reading Paul’s injunction to the Roman Christians to obey our rulers in everything? That, of course, as Paul’s apparent martyrdom at the hands of the imperial government around AD64, was not prepared to take literally.

[A much fuller version of this paper will appear soon at the following website: http://www.oocities.org/johnnymcdowell/papers/patriotism.htm]