For God and Country
Christian patriotism--an appreciation of what was, a realism about what is, and a devotion to what must be: all three at once. If we stop short, at the first, we deserve the charge of being anachronists, ancestor worshippers, reactionaries. If we try to base everything on the second, it's too easy to fall into the trap of parochialism, sectionalism, nationalism. And, of course, if we ignore the past and the present--putting all our eggs into only the basket of the future--we end up hopelessly out-of-touch idealists and utopians.

What a Christian view does for patriotism is to provide balance--protecting us from falling for fast but simplistic answers, jumping on trends and bandwagons of extremism. All other brands of patriotism are partial. When all three dimensions are
in balance, we're looking at a higher patriotism, one that is firmly rooted in a regard for the rich lessons of the past, one that enables us to take seriously our present-day responsibility to work constructively within all the various family groupings of today's world, and a patriotism that looks beyond today's limited and temporary goals to envision a world made one--as the Kingdom of God.

--from "Patriotism--From a Christian Perspective"
By the Rev. Dr. Robert Hansel

Read the text in its entirety.