This Is Not America

The 1985 film The Falcon and the Snowman tells the (true) story of two young men, once Roman Catholic altar boys, who became disillusioned with the United States in the 1970s when they gained knowledge about CIA activities in Australia.  The young men pass secrets along to the Soviet Union, are charged with espionage, and imprisoned.  As the closing credits roll, the soundtrack features the song “This Is Not America” .

In 2025, as the current US administration executes deportations on questionable legal grounds, slashes budgets for domestic and international aid organizations, and makes imperial noises about the territorial integrity of Canada, Panama, and Denmark, “This Is Not America” has continuing relevance.

Also of continuing relevance is the Epistle to Diognetus, dated roughly to the second century.  This document states, in part, that

Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers.¹

Christians, it says, are foreigners in their home countries.  Note that the text does not add qualifiers here.  It does not say that Christians are foreigners in their home countries when those countries pass laws that allow or prohibit certain forms of conduct.  It says nothing about whether tax policies are just or unjust.  It says nothing about criminal justice systems or the presence / absence of political corruption.  It is silent about deportations and imperialism. Christians are foreigners in their homelands no matter the government of those lands.

In each age and in each context, no government is ever the Kingdom of God on earth.  To think otherwise is to entertain idolatry.  Love for country should characterize all Christians, but this love is to be rightly ordered, subject at all times to the latreia owed to God alone.  Christian worship is a matter of that latreia.  It may involve speaking well of state policies.  It may involve condemnation of state policies.  At all times, the Gospel is the standard by which policies are judged and the Gospel is never captured fully in any policy. 

¹Source: Epistle to Diognetus 6 at  https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0101.htm