In Watching the English, Kate Fox (a social anthropologist) wrote: 'The English are not usually given to patriotic boasting - indeed, both patriotism and boasting are regarded as unseemly, so the combination is doubly distasteful. But there is one significant exception to this rule, and that is the patriotic pride we take in our sense of humour, particularly our expert use of irony.'
This is true to my experience and seen in the contrast to the overt USAmerican expressions of national pride. I tend to find that USA'ers don't 'get' the normal English (not sure it applies to the Scots and Welsh) distaste for their national pride, to the point of being offended when we don't join in and doubly so when we point out that lots of other people love their own country and also have reasons to question the USA'ers interpretation of history and current affairs.
Of course, up until the first world war, we Brits appear to have been just as [nauseatingly, it now seems to many of us] proud of the British Empire as the citizenry of the USA appear to be of their country now. Perhaps the loss of empire had that kind of effect? The other interesting thing about that is, that when we now look on those past expressions of patriotic fervour, we often feel embarrassed by it and humour maybe the only way to cope: irony being the humour of the disillusioned [?]
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Has Britain lost its sense of humour?:
03 August 2005
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One might say we Aussies have taken Brit irony to the ultimate extreme, ie. many of us take pride in how unpatriotic we are.
By way of example, so few know the second verse of the national anthem that it makes us quite proud of our culture.
who'd 'a' thought it; two comments on this one?
So, USA patriotism is "to do with political freedom, economic opportunity, natural beauty, and general optimism"; helpful comment. For me the interest is that [with an equivocation over the optimism] many English would go with a lot of that for Britain, yet without the same degree of concomitant patriotism ... hmmmm ... freedom and natural beauty probably top the list. The latter is in the eye of the beholder?
I did wonder how the Aussies might see the thought, thanks Matt. Do you mean the 2nd verse of 'God save the Queen' or the waltzing Matilda one?
Gotta confess that I don't now remember the 2nd verse of the former and as someone with republican sympathies, am not planning to remedy the situation!
The national anthem is actually "Advance Australia Fair". That "Waltzing Matilda" is better known internationally (as we promote it more) is a perfect example of the general ambivalence. One of my mates is a monarchist and the best arguement he has for his position is, "How can you argue with a system that argues for keeping the soverign on the opposite side of the planet - the further away the better!" I hold a contary position which entails relocating our national capital to the Australian Antarctic Territories. As you might gather, the American hand-on-heart thing is deeply alien and alienating to many of us Aussies. Linking God and country is anathema. Invoking God to justify a nationalistic platform of any sort (left or right) is offensive. Australian evangelicals find themselves in a curious position of deriving much nurture from American evangelical litrature yet being left with a bad taste in the mouth whenever the issue of religious politics is raised.
PS. The reasons for the difference are entrenched in history. America's self-identity owes a lot to the pilgrims, people freeing oppression and seeing the new land as a place of opportunity. And the indiginised American church sided with the battle for independance. Australia's self-identity owes a lot to the convicts, people forcibly relocated to a harsh land where the clergy acted as judges and the advocates of aristocratic orthodoxy. Is it any wonder the Post-modern Spiritual Supermarket spread like wildfire down here. America had built in resistance to New Age - Christianity and national identity are seen as mutually supportive. Here they are seen as being mutually antagonistic as they anachronistic baggage of Anglo-European empire. One of the tasks for the emerging church in Australia (that has no counterpart in the US) is to forge an indigenous Christian spirituality that comes to grips with our land.
P.P.S. This is just one of the reasons some of us Aussies get our noses a little out of joint when Emergent-US speaks out on behalf of the global movement (or takes insufficient care to state it is limiting its comments to the US). Whilst we Aussies value American perspectives and enjoy the writings of many US authors, we feel the emerging church has some distinctive tasks ahead of it in this land that are not reflected in the American scene.
Apart from the national identity issue, another distinctive of the Australian scene (and maybe you Brits as well?) is that we are far more concerned with distancing ourselves from pseudo-christian universalism than recovering from fundamentalism. Hence Alan Hursch's recent comments which distanced FORGE from Emergent-US critiques of traditional evangelicalism did not surprise me one iota. Hamo writes Alan is currently revising the original paper to clarify a few misunderstandings but I am anticipating that his essential concern that we not alienate traditional evangelicals in Australia over American issues will remain in the foreground.
I think what needs to be remembered is that post-modernism is characterised by shifts towards both globalisation AND tribalisation. Whilst we Aussies see ourselves as part of the emerging missional movement sweeping the globe, we are simultaneously trying to forge a more deeply indigenised approach to Christian spirituality than has heretofore been attempted in this land. So respect for diversity in the global conversation is an important issue for a number of us.
Thanks Matt; all very helpful stuff.I think that a lot of Brit evos have a similar relationship to USA evo 'resourcing' though there are enough of the 'old school' defenders of the establishment of the church evos to also have a current that is wistful about the USA evo political clout.
One of the interesting things about the Brit scene is the effect of the Thatcher years when at the height of it all with the Labour party in disarray, the only real opposition turned out to be the Churches.
I quite agree about the way that the USA's issues with emerging church and culture are not always -or even mainly- the same as for the rest of the English-speaking world. A few years back, Len Sweet invited a number of us from Blighty and Mark Pierson (then in NZ) to resource a conference for the US Methodists. He did so because, correctly in my view, he understood that we were culturally further down the pomo road than the USA. Though we should also be aware that west-coast America is more similar to us than the midwest; take a look at their churchgoing rates, for example.
We seem to have come a long way from patriotism!
Indeed. An interesting digression. Also an interesting point of yours on west coast / mid west differentiation within the US. I wonder if there is any significant differentiation within the US emergent church scene along these lines?
I have a suspicion that there is; need to ask the USA'ers...
hehe =)
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