Can a Christian Be a Nationalist?

I have taken two takes on specifically German speaking Nationalisms combined with régimes divorcing from popular vote and illegalising opposition.

Can a Christian, specifically a Catholic, be a National Socialist in the strict historic sense? No. Can he be an Austro-Fascist in the strict historical sense? Yes.

Now, let's broaden the picture.

Can a Christian be a Nationalist. We are not limited to 20th C specifically first half or second quarter, we are not limited to even post-1789.

By the way, are there Nationalisms in which a Christian cannot participate without reservation? I just mentioned 1789, so, yes, the French Revolution initiated one. If the "French nation" (or its representatives in Paris) cracks down on regional dissent from the war mongering, no, you cannot be a Blue Coat and kill Vendeans without hurt to your soul. In Italy, if in 1870 the king, formerly of Sardinia, invades the Papal States and starts deporting Neapolitans to concentration camps, no, you cannot enroll and especially you cannot rejoice in such doings. If this were the root of all Nationalism, then Nationalism would be evil.

However, there was a Spanish nationalism against the Moors (and some would add, "against the Jews too"). There was a nationalism in Sweden against Danes (pretty close to the one in the 13 Colonies against London). There was a nationalism in France against the English.

And this French nationalism against the English features Saint Joan of Arc.

There was an Irish nationalism against the English, that partly ignored Catholicism, but partly pushed its adherents back onto it, by making Anglicanism and Calvinism a kind of national treason on top of being heresies.

There was a Polish nationalism during the partitions, which in the Prussian and Russian ones helped to keep Catholicism alive. Though, Pope Pius IX mentioned, they were using partly the wrong means. And before that, there was a Polish anti-German nationalism that helped preserve Poland from the Reformation.

I think a case can be made for moderate and non-obligatory nationalism within Christianity.

Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost
Matthew 28:19

A nation doesn't have a soul, or a human body, so cannot be baptised, what does a "baptised nation" even mean?

And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying: If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us.
Acts of Apostles 16:15

So, a baptised household is one, where the head of the household is baptised and enjoins on the other members to be baptised. When all members of a household are baptised the household is said to be baptised. This solves the question what a baptised nation is: when the head of the nation is baptised and all or the vast majority of households are baptised, that nation is referred to as baptised. Christendom was not a mistake, it was a feature.

Let every soul be subject to higher powers: for there is no power but from God: and those that are, are ordained of God Therefore he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist, purchase to themselves damnation For princes are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good: and thou shalt have praise from the same For he is God's minister to thee, for good. But if thou do that which is evil, fear: for he beareth not the sword in vain. For he is God's minister: an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil Wherefore be subject of necessity, not only for wrath, but also for conscience' sake.

For therefore also you pay tribute. For they are the ministers of God, serving unto this purpose.
[Romans 13:1-6]

This is not about whether some people recently killed were obeying the due authority of Minnesota or resisting the due authority of the US. This is about a much broader picture, namely on whether a Christian can be a Nationalist. A state need not coincide with a nation. But the example of Israel and the wording of "baptised nations" suggests that it can coincide with a nation. A nation is baptised when the head of it and most households in it are baptised. So, a nation has a head that is a head of state, if it has a single one. The German nation exists in several states, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Switzerland and France. The Swiss state and the Belgian state and the French and Spanish states have more than one nation. But it also happens that a nation and a state coincide, like for instance before Strongbow, the Irish nation was under one High King (Ard Righ or Ard Rí, depending on spelling). Then the state and the nation to some extent coincide. To a much larger extent, they overlap.

Being loyal to one's household is not a fault and being loyal to one's state and one's nation is not a fault. Nationalism as such is not idolatry, any more than a woman being faithful to spouse and children is service to Juno or the intercourse with her husband is service to Venus. Heating a house with a fireplace is not service to Vesta and defending it against agressors is not service to Mars.

However, some places it happens that nations become idols. I would say this happens when you think "what is done here" trumps what is right in and of itself according to the commandments of God as interpreted by the Church of Rome, mother and teacher of the churches. But a very similar idolatry (at least on the surface) has nothing to do with the nation. It's when "what we know now" trumps what Christians have always known. Scientism is idolatry as much as Nation worship. And last time the Church spoke up in a major way against Nation worship, it was one which was highly tied to Scientism.

Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community - however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.*

The concrete depositories of power in the Germany that Pope Pius XI was adressing were not just judges and policemen, but also medical doctors. One Nazi insurgent who tried to overthrow Austrian independence in July of 1934, who was killed while carrying arms and wielding them against Austrian police or military, had his grave stone decorated with a swastika, and this recently caused a controversy in the cemetary of Graz. I thanked the cemetary for keeping the documentation:

Thanks to this, it may at last be known outside Austria too that this man, who has a Swastika and not any Cross on his grave, whose headstone features no Cross even for the date of his death (and no star for the date of his birth, just "24.3.1897 - 27.7.1934", no star and no cross), who died in the July Putsch of 1934, who was a comrade thus with the other Nazi who killed Dollfuss, who was an SA Sturmbannführer, and who was called Hans Tita Probst, was a Medical Doctor and thus likely to have been in life an Atheist or Pantheist, but at least no Catholic Christian. Unless there was a cross above the piece shown in the picture. Even so, it is likely as with Georges Lemaître he was getting more of his worldview from non-Christian, non-Catholic sources than from orthodoxly Catholic ones.**

Hans Tita Probst could wear Lederhosen or Kniehosen (leather shorts or breeches), he could yodel, he could listen to Wagner, he could enjoy archaeology celebrating the passage of Burgundians from Worms to Attila across the Danube, he could celebrate German folk music, he could have his wife and daughters wear Dirndl, quite as much in independent Austria as he could in Germany. He could also despise (but not hurt or molest) Jews as much. The one thing he could not do in independent Austria was dominate as a medical doctor as much as he could in NSDAP ruled Germany. The maternal grandfather of the Swedish king, Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was the first in German nobility to support NSDAP, and he did so because he was impressed with the excessive powers they would be giving to medical doctors. So, while in 1933 to 1945, in Germany, the worship of Science was tied to the worship of Germany as a progressive state, and of the German races*** as having produced the progressive state, the same worship of Science has of late been tied to "the International Community" and WHO. It was already internationalist in Lenin's Russia.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. John Chrysostom
27.I.2026

(14.IX) Apud Comanam, in Ponto, natalis sancti Joannis, Episcopi Constantinopolitani, Confessoris et Ecclesiae Doctoris, propter aureum eloquentiae flumen cognomento Chrysostomi; qui, ab inimicorum factione in exsilium ejectus, et, cum e sancti Innocentii Primi, Summi Pontificis, decreto inde revocaretur, in itinere, a custodientibus militibus multa mala perpessus, animam Deo reddidit. Ejus autem festivitas sexto Kalendas Februarii celebratur, quo die sacrum ipsius corpus a Theodosio juniore Constantinopolim fuit translatum. Hunc vero praeclarissimum divini verbi prasconem Pius Papa Decimus caelestem Oratorum sacrornm Patronum declaravit atque constituit.
(27.I) Sancti Joannis Chrysostomi, Episcopi Constantinopolitani, Confessoris et Ecclesiae Doctoris, caelestis Oratorum sacrorum Patroni; qui decimo octavo Kalendas Octobris obdormivit in Domino. Ejus sacrum corpus, sub Theodosio juniore, hac die Constantinopolim, inde postea Romam translatum fuit, et in Basilica Principis Apostolorum conditum.

* MIT BRENNENDER SORGE
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XI ON THE CHURCH AND THE GERMAN REICH
Given at the Vatican on Passion Sunday, March 14, 1937
https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_14031937_mit-brennender-sorge.html

** New blog on the kid: I thank the Cemetery of Graz
Saturday, 25 January 2014 | Posted by Hans Georg Lundahl at 15:26
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/01/i-thank-cemetery-of-graz.html

*** Nordic, Westic, Alpine, East Baltic and Dinaric. There was a booklet on these that a certain man loved, and it's a booklet more useful to a painter than to a politician.