Nationalism and Self-criticism

One of the reasons I sometimes struggle with nationalism is because I’ve been influenced by the thinking of Rosemary Radford Ruether. She says that all ideologies, regardless of how good they are, are at best partial, motivated by self-interest, and potentially dangerous. I agree. We’re all products of ideologies. My own worldview is like everyone’s – partial and limited. Her solution isn’t to disavow oneself from an ideology, even if that were possible. Instead, she says that we should root ourselves in a tradition/ideology, while at the same time recognizing the limits of that tradition. But then it means that I adopt self-criticism. The place to start in criticizing worldviews is not with others, but my own. That means as a Christian, before I attack Islam or any other religion, I mourn the shortcomings of Christianity and the church, which have been many. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when Americans are proud and patriotic. I welcome the debate that Josh will start. I just sometimes wonder if we would be better off looking for the plank in our own eye rather than extolling our virtues.