American Muslims & American Christians

Noting that the Pew poll found that 47 percent consider themselves Muslim first and American second, while 42 percent consider themselves Christian first and American second, an Andrew Sullivan reader writes, snarkily, that he hopes American can assimilate those Christians too.

That's an understandable remark, but an ill-informed one. I think of myself as a Christian first, and American second. If the state forced me to choose between my God and my country, I hope I have the courage in the moment to choose my God. And I would expect that any true Muslim would believe the same. If you want to see what happens when a people are persuaded to worship their nation instead of their God, observe the behavior of the Christian churches in Nazi Germany. Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer grasped early the mortal threat nationalism posed to the church, but he was in a minority. Do those who sneer at Christians (or any religious believer) who considers his primary loyalty to be not to the state, but to his God, really want the church (or the synagogue, or the mosque) to be subservient to Caesar? If yes, then Thomas More was a villain, and "A Man For All Seasons" is a play and film about a traitor who got his just desserts.

Secondly, the reason this figure about Muslim loyalty causes anxiety whereas the Christian figure doesn't has to do with the concrete circumstances of the present moment. Some Muslims are making war on this nation in the name of the Islamic religion. Given that, it is neither unsurprising nor irrational for most Americans to look with suspicion upon Muslims who proclaim (with total justification, I emphasize) a higher loyalty to Allah than to America. A more apt historical analogy from the Christian side would be the 1570 papal bull in which Rome declared Elizabeth I of England to be a heretic, and instructing English Catholics that they no longer had any loyalty to her. Thus did the pope stupidly make every English Catholic into a traitor in the eyes of the state, no matter how much they loved their country. This is not, of course, in any way to justify the terrible persecutions and martyrdoms visited upon faithful English Catholics during the time of the English Reformation. But it must be admitted that given that the Pope declared war on the English throne and attempted to incite Catholics in England to rebel against their sovereign, patriotic Englishmen would understandably regard the Queen's Catholic subjects with suspicion.