I’m currently writing a book on A. Maude Royden (1876-1956), suffragist, pacifist, pioneer of women’s ordination in the Church of England, and dynamic preacher and author. She’s nearly forgotten: a pity, because so much of what she has to say speaks to our current cultural, social, political, and religious climate. I aim to make her better known.
In her 1922 book Women at the World’s Crossroads, Royden includes a chapter on Christian patriotism, the concluding pages1 of which I offer below as a Fourth of July meditation. It’s the transcript of a lecture she gave while on tour in the United States. Granted, a few of her references are dated; granted, again, that some readers will balk at her defense of a “Christian” patriotism, since any such locution unfortunately is now associated with rightwingers who pretend that their politics are religion. But Royden’s vision of what America might be—a place which offers its citizens and the world opportunity, hope, and the spirit of love—is worth remembering in these dark, dark days when all three virtues seem dismally remote.
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That nation whose patriotism takes the form of desiring forever to be mightier and mightier, engenders in the hearts of its citizens contempt for the genius of other nations and a determination to dominate them at any cost to Humanity.
Now is it possible for you of America to give to the world a nobler conception than that? It seems to me sometimes as though it were peculiarly your vocation. In the Old World we are so torn with war, our spirits are so poisoned with suffering and hatred that it seems, humanly speaking, impossible for a newer, saner, more human conception, a more Christian idea of patriotism to be born. I have no desire, even in the remotest corner of my mind, to suggest to you in what way your country should come to the help of the world. I am perhaps fortunate in this, that I have truly no prepossession as to any particular political or economic entanglement which might help us and cost you something. I cannot myself see what it is that in actual, practical terms of politics or economics, you ought, as a nation, to do or not to do. But I am certain that there is a spiritual gift that you can give to the world, and I do not see from what other nation that gift today is possible. In the history of the ages, is it not possible that the United States Christian Patriotism will stand for something more wonderful, more glorious than greatness in numbers, size or wealth?
That you are great in numbers and in wealth and in the vast area of your country is absolutely nothing to Humanity, except an opportunity. In itself it is nothing, absolutely nothing! Greatness does not consist in your numbers or your wealth. Do not be proud of these things. But there are two things that you have, and one of them is opportunity; for what a nation so great materially does in the world comes to the world with an added prestige because of its material greatness. It is a stupid judgment, if you will forgive my saying so, a very stupid judgment, for the smallest countries have sometimes done the greatest things. But it is a fact that that which comes from a country so great materially does come with peculiar prestige and authority. What you do here is of enormous importance, just because you are materially so impressive.
Secondly, you have not—will you forgive my saying it?—suffered quite so much as the Old World has. You have known what it is to be at war for a little while, and that must have left—as modern war does leave—a shadow on your hearts. But if you will try to realize what it means to have lived in that shadow for nearly four and a half years, you will also realize, I think, that your comparative immunity gives you a certain responsibility for the world's future.
I cannot help sympathizing deeply with the feeling that some of you have, that the Old World is too rancorous, too vindictive, too cruel, too blood-thirsty for you to be able to help it. Yet I would like to convince you that, if we do not forgive one another in Europe today, it is not our hearts that refuse, nor is it our judgment; it is our nerves. It is because we are in such grief; because the wounds of war are so terrible and so recent, that we are like people who have got on each other's nerves. Such nervous ten- sion often leads to greater cruelty, to a greater vindictiveness and wickedness, than there seems any reason or excuse for.
Today what is the matter with the Old World is the impossibility of reacting quickly from so great a nervous strain. In such an atmosphere, people hate as easily as, normally, they loved, and the new world cannot be born out of hatred. They hate, and they despair. What strikes me most, in coming to your country out of that atmosphere, is that hope is so easy to most of you. Hope is a virtue that is almost dead outside America, and despair is the characteristic vice of the war-stricken countries.
Your service to the world is in some way, which is for you to find, to convince us that love is still a practicable virtue and that hope is the normal condition of mankind. Can you solve your own problems by love? You have problems as great as ours, in some respects even greater. The great strike which is going on at this moment2 is symbolic of labor troubles more full of the possibility of disaster than even the labor troubles of the Old World; your long line of unemployed, your color problem, all the problems that you have to face—you know them better than I—seem to me, in some respects, even greater than ours. But you have hope to solve them with, and your spirits are not poisoned with hatred. Therefore, you ought to be able to solve them, and, therefore, you should be determined to do so. The vastness of their scale, the great size of the country with which you have to deal, your distances, your crowds, ought not to depress your spirit, because your spirit is still capable of hope, thinks of hope as a normal, an ordinary state of mind.
This is the spiritual debt that you owe to the world: to keep alive here in the United States that spirit of love which is comparatively easy to you (and if it does not seem easy to you, I ask you to consider how impossible it must seem to us), to keep alive here in America not only hope but that on which hope is built—achievement.
You should not rest content to leave any of your problems unsolved. This is the spiritual opportunity of America; all the rest is a little thing—your material greatness, your wealth, your power, all those things that constitute "one hundred per cent Americanism," are nothing but your opportunity. They are to you simply the chance of giving a leadership, a spiritual leadership to all the world.
I repeat, I am not dictating to you or even suggesting to you in what way such a spirit of Christian patriotism can be worked out in practice. But I beseech you to remember that of all the peoples in the world, you have the greatest gift of hope; love is to you most possible. To give to the world that hope, to convince the world that love is still the normal condition of Humanity, to purify the atmosphere so that our poisoned spirits shall at last recover the possibility also of love and hope, this is to conceive of patriotism as Christ did; this is to render to the world a service which will constitute your claim to the immortal gratitude of all the world. This is indeed to give to the world a new gift and to civilization new wealth. O God, to Whom every nation is holy, make this great nation holier yet. Amen.
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Pp. 40-46.
Royden refers here to the Great Railroad Strike of 1922, which lasted from 1 July to 1 September, when it was ended by a court injunction. The government’s response to the strikers, it must ve said, was strikingly contrary to the hope and spirit of love which Royden argues is the gift American can give to the world.