nationalism again...

Nationalism is a temptation to which the Christian churches are often prone in the modern era. Bonhoeffer locates the rise of modern nationalism in the era of French Revolution: ‘[T]he nation is a revolutionary concept’. This is hardly a novel reading: however, he makes the provocative assertion that revolutionary nationalism, which is openly hostile to God, arose partly in reaction to the political theology of Catholic Church (lacking the ‘two-kingdoms’ theology of Luther) which was unable to prevent the loss of ‘the unity created by the form of Jesus Christ’.

In the Anglo-Saxon world – and this relates directly to the situation of Archbishop Thomas in this very Anglo-Saxon of plays – the problem has been rather ‘a collapse of the church into the world’. In other words, though there is in the Anglo-Saxon world the phenomenon of a democracy based on a Christian foundation, this has not prevented severe secularization. There is a temptation to blur the distinction between ‘the offices and kingdoms of the state and the church’, a temptation to which modern Protestant Christianity has certainly (for Bonhoeffer) succumbed.[1]

In the Acts of the Apostles, the idea of national identity is not dissolved even as the Gospel spreads to the nations. The symbolic key is Pentecost. This miraculous sign comes not to Gentiles, granted, but to Jews dispersed among the nations and who are speakers of many languages. At this moment they are gathered in Jerusalem for the festival. The tongues of flame lead to the speaking in many tongues: the apostles are given the gift of speaking in the languages of those present. There is not one language that all are given to hear – the miracle is in the apostles’ mouths not just in the hearers’ ears. Peter, for his sermon on the event, takes as his text the ancient prophecy of Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people’ (2:14). If there is a reversal of Babel here, it is not in terms of a restoration of a primordial universal language. The Spirit, which makes possible the hearing of the gospel of the Son, is the unificatory principle in this event: the message, not the language, is what is held in common. Though dispersed Israel is addressed here, the rest of the narrative of the book shows how this invitation is extended to the Gentiles as well. Interestingly, Luke’s Paul does not renounce or deny his Roman citizenship and is in fact happy to use the fact that he was born to this status to gain a hearing (Acts 22:25-29).

The inauguration of the church does not therefore mean the dissolution of the nations. This is how the promise to Abraham that ‘all nations will be blessed through you’ (Gen 18:18; Gal 3:18) comes to pass in preaching of the apostles. This means an engrafting of the nations into Israel: an offering of membership in the people of God extended to the whole globe (Rom 9-11; Eph 2). John of Patmos seems to imply that nations maintain their identity even in the eternal vision, where they bring their glory and honour (21:26), and receive healing from the leaves of the tree of life (Rev 22:2). Around the great throne is gathered a multitude visible to the seer as ‘from every nation, tribe, people and language’, singing the song of the salvation of the Lamb (Rev 7:9). However, insofar as the nations (and their kings) are ranged against the Lord and his Son, they are utterly defeated (Rev 19:15-16; see Psalm 2). The martyr, therefore, does not witness against all national or tribal identifications per se, but to their relative, penultimate significance.

Thomas Beckett is actually given back to England as her martyr (or at least to Canterbury) – and seen as a focus of national pride. Eliot's play itself is a demonstration of English ownership of this martyr, even in the 1930s. This is an ambivalent side of the story: the ‘having’ of martyrs and saints by various locales perhaps fosters the very kind of tribalism that the martyr dies to avoid. However, there is a sense in which Thomas’ rejection of Englishness as an absolute makes a godly pride in Englishness possible. In addition, the telling and re-telling (or rather, re-enacting) of the martyr’s tale stands as a rebuke to a certain form of nationalism – as evidence of its self-destructive consequences.

This is of course in marked contrast to the use of martyrology as a way of establishing the rightness of my cause and my identity as a victim: this is what suicide bombers do...
[1] ‘Heritage and Decay’ in Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p. 103-33