C.S. Lewis on Why We Need Patriotism
U.S. adults are less likely than ever to say they're proud “to be an American.”
Breaking the heart of Lee Greenwood, U.S. adults are less likely than ever to say they’re “proud to be an American.” According to Gallup, 58% of Americans say they are “extremely” (41%) or “very” (17%) proud of their citizenry.
2025 marks the first year fewer than 3 in 5 Americans felt such pride. Many would conclude this is good and healthy, even Christian, progress. C.S. Lewis would disagree.
In The Four Loves, Lewis makes clear that there are significant dangers in a love for country. Next week, we’ll talk about how patriotism can turn demonic and elevate the nation above God. But not all types of patriotism flow from that misunderstanding.
If we reject it all as sinful, Lewis writes, we have to say Jesus sinned. “We cannot keep even Christ’s lament over Jerusalem,” Lewis says, “He too exhibits love for His country.”
What makes patriotism good
Many claim to love their country, but only based on its merit, only when it “deserves” it. Lewis argues these people don’t actually love their country.
Love never spoke that way. It is like loving your children only “if they’re good”, your wife only while she keeps her looks, your husband only so long as he is famous and successful. “No man,” said one of the Greeks, “loves his city because it is great, but because it is his.” A man who really loves his country will love her in her ruin and degeneration.
Again, some may argue that this is a positive thing. We should leave behind all national ties and love our global neighbor instead. Lewis points out that patriotism cannot be the end of our love, but it is often the beginning of an expansion of our love.
As the family offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this offers us the first step beyond family selfishness. Of course, it is not pure charity; it involves love of our neighbors in the local, not our Neighbor, in the Dominical1 sense. But those who do not love the fellow-villagers or fellow-townsmen whom they have seen are not likely to have got very far towards loving “Man” whom they have not.2
Yes, Lewis agrees that any natural affections can sour and become rivals to our command to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. But those lower loves can also prepare our hearts and grow our spiritual muscles to better exercise God-given and directed love.
And not only is rightly ordered patriotism inherently good, it also keeps us from something much worse.
What makes rejecting all patriotism dangerous
Lewis argued that removing all patriotism from a people was demonic because it leads, somewhat paradoxically, to the nation claiming an even higher place.
When nations invariably have to defend themselves, they could point to patriotism as a justification to call citizens to action. If patriotism no longer exists, however, every conflict must be driven by the nation’s status as morally right.
“If people will spend neither sweat nor blood for ‘their country,’” Lewis writes, “they must be made to feel that they are spending them for justice, or civilization, or humanity.”3 On the surface, this may seem like a positive. But Lewis argues this is a step down, not up.
Yes, nations should only engage in ethical actions. Patriotism doesn’t disregard ethics. “Good men needed to be convinced that their country’s cause was just; but it was still their country’s cause, not the cause of justice as such.”
If the root of the cause is Justice and not a simple love of country that is consistent with justice, every conflict must be made to seem as if it were between good and evil.
I may, without self-righteousness or hypocrisy, think it just to defend my house by force against a burglar; but if I start pretending that I blacked his eye purely on moral grounds, wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in question was mine, I become insufferable.
… If our country’s cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world.
Those who would rid our society of all forms of patriotism would unleash something much worse—rulers who feel as if all of their actions are divinely mandated. “Nonsense draws evil after it,” he wrote.
Every nation fights for its self-interest, and that self-interest should not contradict ideas of justice and freedom. But if rulers cannot draw from the well of patriotism to motivate their citizens, then they will point to pools of propaganda. They will work to convince people that to fight for their national cause is to fight for God’s cause or moral Goodness.
Their actions will not be any more just than they would be had they been motivated by patriotism, but they will be justified based on a significantly higher plane. Those who regret the actions are no longer merely unpatriotic; they are heretics. People shame the first, but burn the latter.
Lewis found two paths to demonic patriotism—one that loves the nation too much and one that loves it too little. Both end up at the same point: leaders who believe they can do no wrong. He would argue true and good patriotism loves its country unconditionally but also refuses to grant it transcendence.4
Next week, we’ll walk through Lewis’ other points on patriotism, what it looks like in its healthy forms, and how it can turn demonic.
Dominical means related to Jesus as Lord, so Lewis is referencing Jesus’ command to love our neighbor as ourselves in Mark 12:31, which is from Leviticus 19:18.
An allusion to 1 John 4:20 — “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
Having fought in World War I and lived through World War II, Lewis would have frequently heard this sentiment expressed.
It’s important to continually keep in mind Lewis’ admonition about nations compared to individuals from The Weight of Glory: “You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”