With Charity For All

As our country celebrates its 250 years, I had the privilege of being in the nation’s capital for  meetings in May and July. I love walking the Mall, seeing the monuments and the big museums (my love language is museums!). And I made sure to get to the Lincoln Memorial. I am always moved by the two addresses that are chiseled into either side of that grand space. His Gettysburg Address includes the call that our country would not allow the dead to have died in vain, but that a greater resolve should push us to “a new birth of freedom,” in which government of the people, is also by the people and for the people. In his Second Inaugural Address, chiseled on the opposite wall, he makes the point that “both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other.” Sadly, these words seem descriptive of so much of our current war of words within denominations, even individual churches. Lincoln continues, “Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it much be said, ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” He concludes with a phrase that might be familiar, “With malice toward none with charity for all,” but he continues, “with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.”

As we celebrate the 250^th anniversary of our great nation, I want to do so as a patriot, not a Christian nationalist. Amy Orr-Ewing in her new book, Forgiveness: Reclaiming Its Power in a Culture of Outrage and Fear, differentiates nationalism and patriotism.[1] On the one hand, patriotism embraces its country’s values and traditions, and seeks to make them stronger while at the same time it avoids vilifying another country. Nationalism, on the other hand, promotes a sense of superiority over another, which has the result (however unintended) of tearing apart, of underlining differences as bad, even evil. In an effort to uplift one’s own country, nationalism condemns the other, including other believers. There is a lack of humility, an inability to admit to the speck in own’s own eye.

Orr-Ewing continues that today national identity in the West is deeply formed by the Christian meaning of goodness, which includes a humble willingness to see one’s own faults, and to recognize that full human flourishing occurs when Christ’s peace reigns, when truth – admitting both the good and the bad realities of one’s own country’s history – are stated from a position that imitates our Lord, who loved us and gave himself for us (5:2). We know that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We know that God is love, and that the love of Christ was shown in laying down his life, for his enemies and friends. We see the creative power of peace that literally changes people to be children of God in Christ, a new humanity. 

[1] Amy Orr-Ewing, Forgiveness: Reclaiming Its Power in a Culture of Outrage and Fear (IVP, 2026): 150–52.