January 5, 2026 Show with Daniel Darling on “In Defense of Christian Patriotism”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this very first live broadcast of 2026, Monday, January 5th.

And I hope that all of you had a wonderful New Year's Eve celebration with loved ones and that you have started off the year with optimism of our Lord's blessings upon your life. Well, one of the things that I love to do here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is take up the very strong suggestions and recommendations of people for whom I have the highest esteem, such as my friend David Dykstra, retired pastor who was recently on this broadcast discussing his book Yearning to Breathe Free, Thoughts on Immigration, Islam, and Freedom.

And if you haven't heard that interview with Brother Dykstra, I strongly urge you to look that up in our archives at dykstra. You could type in his last name in the search engine and you'll find that.

But he, in social media, was strongly recommending that folks get a copy of a book called In Defense of Christian Patriotism by Daniel Darling. And I immediately knew, having such a strong confidence in the discernment of Brother Dykstra, that I had to get this man on my program.

And Daniel Darling is our guest today, author, pastor, thought leader, director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and assistant professor of faith and culture at Texas Baptist College.

And today we are addressing that very book that I mentioned, In Defense of Christian Patriotism. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Daniel Darling.

Well, Chris, thank you for having me, and so grateful for the ministry you have here on the radio. I love what you're doing, and just glad to be joining you today.

And I am thrilled about it myself, and I'm sure our listeners are as well. And well, tell us something about Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where you are director of the Land Center, and you could tell us about that as well.

Yeah, so Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has been around since 1908. It was founded by B .H. Carroll, and it was the second Southern Baptist Seminary founded after Southern Seminary. And we've been faithfully training young men and women for gospel ministry in a variety of vocations and callings, primarily training young men to be pastors, but also a lot of young women to go into ministry in a variety of roles.

We've got a lot of young men and women going to the mission field. It's a great legacy here, and you probably know a pastor or two in your life that is a Southwestern alum. We also have a college, Texas Baptist College, which does great work.

And I teach in the college, and I lead the center, the Richard Land Center for Cultural Engagement. If you remember, Richard Land was a Southern Baptist statesman. He was the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for about 25 years and was well-known on radio and was on TV a lot and wrote books and things, and was just a well-known and respected conservative leader.

And we lead the center that's in his honor, and we have a faith and culture concentration. So if young men or women want to come and kind of get equipped on how to think through public policy ideas and public theology and maybe feel a calling to go into public service, it's definitely an option for them.

We host events. We have content. We have all kinds of things to try to help equip the church to think well about the moral and ethical issues facing us here in the 21st century.

Well, if anybody wants to find out anything about my guest, Daniel Darling, his website, very easy to remember, DanielDarling .com, DanielDarling .com. And God willing, I will be announcing that toward the end of the program as well.

And keep in mind, folks, when you hear me referring to my guest as Daniel Darling, that's not a term of affection for him. That is his last name. And I pay you tribute, brother, for surviving your childhood and teen years with the name Darling.

Well, you know, occasionally I still, if I'm calling for something, people say, is that really your name? That's a great name. Or they'll give me the whole, you know, ask me about that. You know, am I related to the people in Peter Pan?

Have I seen the Andy Griffith special? There's a couple of famous Darlings. You know, Ron Darling pitched for the Mets in the 60s, and now he's a color commentator. But yeah, I mean, my wife always calls me Darling.

It's not always a term of endearment, but she does always call me Darling.

Well, we have a tradition here on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, whenever we have a first-time guest such as yourself, that guest will provide a summary of their salvation testimony, which will include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

And I would love to hear a summary of your story, brother.

Salvation Testimony and Calling to Ministry

Well, I'm honored to tell the story. It really starts even before I was born. You know, my dad grew up in a very dysfunctional home in Chicago area, a broken home and dysfunctional, unchurched. And his older sister had encouraged him to start watching this guy on TV named Billy Graham.

You may have heard of him. And long story short, my dad walked forward at a Billy Graham crusade in 1971 in Chicago. I actually have a picture of that crusade in my office up on the wall. And it really changed the trajectory of his life, of really the whole family.

He was in his, I think, early 20s. And so my dad became a Christian, radically changed his life. He married my mom, who's, my mom who passed away a couple of years ago, but my mom was Jewish. She converted to Christianity and they raised us in the church, grew up in the Baptist church.

And so I heard the gospel my whole life. We went to church three times a week, every time the doors were open and sometimes when the doors weren't open. And my dad was a faithful lay person, a church elder.

And my mom was very active as well. And I remember distinctly becoming a Christian at the age of four years old. I was riding the back of our Chevy, red Chevy Malibu here in the Chicago area and made the decision to follow Christ.

Of course, we know, you know, I believe in, you know, the theology that says that, you know, God is the one who first acts to save us. And of course, being dead in our trespasses and sins, he comes and rescues us.

And I believe that with my whole heart that God saved me. And I really have always loved the ministry. I've always loved church. I still do. You know, I'm almost, I'll be 48 here in a few weeks. And I look forward to Sundays.

I can't wait to go to church, to sing, to worship, to hear preaching. God has given me that love for his people. And so that's my story. I always felt called to ministry work. I've really had three loves in my life.

I love ministry work. I love, I felt called to full-time pastoral ministry, vocational ministry in junior high, really. I've always loved writing, you know, ever since I turned a few essays in junior high and had a teacher say, hey, I think you might pursue this.

So I've always loved either putting words on paper or reading. Just love, love kind of doing that. And that's taken me to a lot of really cool places. And I've always loved sort of history and politics.

My parents took a trip. I think it was like, I was like 10 or 11. It was 1988 or something like that or 89. We took a trip. We packed our Chevy station wagon in Chicago and we drove to Washington, D .C.

And, you know, I was captivated, you know, seeing the monuments and all that kind of stuff. So I've always had those three loves, the church, the cultural stuff and politics and writing. The Lord sort of put all those three together in various ways.

I've served as a pastor, which I loved. I've served as an executive doing public policy in D .C. and state capitals. And now I get to teach here in the Southwestern Seminary. So the Lord's given me those opportunities and really thankful for it.

Why Christian Patriotism Is Controversial

Hallelujah. Well, this is a fascinating subject to me because you would think that the subject of Christian patriotism would not be controversial. But sadly it is. And not only is it controversial in how those on the left react to the expression of patriotism by conservative Christians.

Of course, those on the left often, especially if they are running for office, have some kind of patriotism that they will wear as a facade. And not to be overly broad-brushing there, I know that there are fine men who fought in all of our wars that are from a far more left-leaning perspective than I adhere to.

So I can't say that no one on the left has any valid form of patriotism. But when it comes to Christian patriotism, there seems to be not only a visceral reaction from the left, but even within conservative Bible-believing circles, there is a spectrum of view on this.

And it can cause heated debate and division. And so what was the reason that compelled you to write this book to begin with? Because obviously the very title itself, in defense of Christian patriotism, reveals that there are critics of this concept.

Yeah, well, a few things. I think, one, you touched on it. I want to expand a little bit more. I think over the last several decades, there's been a decline in patriotism, really, in the United States.

I think actually what's been fairly chic and popular is a sort of American self-loathing, thinking the worst about America. And I think we mostly see this on the left, but you see some of it on the right, the sort of black-billed idea that everything's terrible and whatever.

But most of it's simply on the left. Some of it's our educational system that's kind of—kind of take the Howard Zinn view of history, that we're only defined by America's sins and bad things that we've done, which we have.

And then I think in the evangelical world, Christian world, even among good conservative Bible-believing Christians, there's a real renaissance, I think, to say that you love the country, you're proud of the country.

You love being America. America is a good country. I think in part because we've been hit so hard from the media and other places that say, you know, anytime a Christian does that, you're conflating the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man.

And so there's this real hesitance, real reticence, like any expression of love for country is somehow idolatry. And I think there are idolatrous ways to love your country. I talk about this in the book, right?

I think Jonah, for instance, is someone who was so patriotic. He loved his country so much that he didn't want to participate in the mission of God. However, I think today we have an imbalance the other way, that people just sort of loathe their country or are indifferent.

And first of all, I think we've created a false dichotomy that you have to choose loving God or country. And sometimes you have to make that choice, right? When Peter is saying, you know, being told not to preach the gospel, he has to say, no, I obey God rather than man, you know, the book of Acts.

But most of the time, it's not a binary choice. It's about ordering our loves. And here's where I borrow from C .S. Lewis and G .K. Chesterton and others, Augustine, where we order our love. So, of course, God is first, the kingdom of God is first.

But underneath that, we have lesser allegiances and lesser loves that we can order rightly. And, you know, we know how to do this in other areas of our lives, right? I mean, I've had friends say, well, I can't do the Pledge of Allegiance to America because I only pledge allegiance to Christ.

I've seen people post it on social media. I say, well, I don't know. We know how to do lesser allegiances. Twenty-three years ago, I pledged allegiance to my wife. And I knew, of course, that my allegiance to Christ supersedes that, right?

But the pastor didn't stand there and say, OK, Dan, you have to choose between allegiance to Christ and allegiance to Angela. No, we order it rightly. And, of course, Christ is highest. But then we do it underneath that.

And we know how to do this in other areas, right? I mean, in a sense, I'm pledging allegiance every month to my mortgage company, to my cell phone company. These are lesser things, right? And so I think we could do that with America.

And so not only do I think it's OK to be patriotic, I actually go a step further, Chris, and say I think it's incumbent on a Christian to love their country. And the reason I say that is because, first of all, it springs from gratitude that this is the place God has given us.

We are Christians. Yes, we're members of the kingdom of God, but we're not disembodied people. We're born to a place and we have a home. And it's good to love that and be grateful for it. But secondly, when Jeremiah speaks to the exiles in Jeremiah 29, and I think New Testament Christians can consider themselves exiles.

Peter says this, we're strangers and exiles, citizens of the kingdom of God. What does he say to the exiles in Jeremiah? He says, seek the welfare of your city. Seek the flourishing of your city. I don't know how, Chris, to seek the flourishing of our cities and our country if we hate or loathe our country.

I think it's fundamentally incompatible. Richard John Newhouse said, I think 40 years ago, he said, patriotism is a species of discipleship. And I think he's right that indifference or loathing of our country is not only not more spiritual.

I think it's actually at odds with how God would have us think about the place where we've been born and or where we are as citizens. And so I really want to help Christians think through this. This was kind of the genesis of the book.

And then what does that look like in terms of our politics? How do we think about our history? How do we think about what are some of the things, if we love our country, how can we renew the country for the next 250 years?

What does that look like?

Patriotism in Oppressive or Poor Nations

Excellent. Now, before I go into some questions that are specifically related to our country, you and I as American citizens, how does the Christian, and is it required of a Christian in some other country, perhaps even a third world country, perhaps even a country under Sharia law, where they are just oppressed by the weight of tyranny, by their lives being threatened by a dictatorship that hates Christianity.

They themselves may have been imprisoned and perhaps faced death. Perhaps they have loved ones who have been tortured and killed. And even beyond that realm, but even a country wracked with poverty, where there is little joy to be found anywhere as far as what their native land can provide for them.

Is that person of that kind of a country required of God to be patriotic?

Well, that's a great question. I get asked that. I get asked that periodically. And I think the way to think about it is this, that love of country and patriotism doesn't always equate to support and love of policies or even the current state of the country, right?

I mean, Teddy Roosevelt had a great quote where he said, you know, patriotism doesn't imply that you're going to support an administration or president or policy. In fact, sometimes patriotism causes you to oppose that.

So it's obviously a lot harder to think about this when you get outside of America, which, you know, we have for all of our issues is very prosperous and free and wonderful. If you're in one of these countries, say if you're a Christian in North Korea or in a closed Islamic country and you're suffering or any of these places, or even, you know, a house church member, you know, arrested in China.

I think you can love the place you're at and the distinct culture and the good redemptive virtues of that country while also being really sorrowful and remorseful and really maybe even angry about the state of the country, the policies, right?

I think of a place like China where if you're a Christian in China facing persecution, you don't like the communist government. There's not a lot for you to like about the current state of the politics or of the governing of the country.

But there are distinctly Chinese, you know, redemptive things about the nation and the land that are good. And sometimes patriotism of a country causes you to really fight for a better system in a better way.

I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer going to Germany. You know, everyone pleaded with him to stay in America or stay in the UK during World War II when Hitler had taken over his country. And he went back to oppose Hitler and oppose Nazism in part because that was his nation and he loved that nation.

He wanted to see it differently. He wanted to see the good Germany, not this kind of Germany. So, you know, it's complicated, like you said, but I think every country has a story, has a history, has redeemable virtues, even if it's been taken over by tyrannical governments.

And in some ways, the truest form of patriotism is to say, no, I want to, you know, if I have agency to fight and make it, you know, to push back on these policies. Sometimes you can't, right? Sometimes you have no voice, you have no agency.

But I think of like even today, the protesters in Iran. These people in Iran that are protesting the totalitarian government of the Mullahs and of the Islamic State. They love their country. They know Iran has beauty and natural resources and a wonderful history going back centuries, and they want to restore that.

So they're actually protesting, in a sense, because they love the country. So it is a little complicated, but I think we can say that, you know, that we can be proud or we can love a country, be patriotic, even if things aren't going as well as we would like.

Idolatrous Patriotism and Misordered Loves

Now, before we go to our first commercial break, you mentioned before in generalities that a person can be guilty of a wrongly motivated or expressed patriotism. Perhaps a patriotism that either borders on or even leaps over the border of heresy in some way, idolatry.

Can you give us some specific examples of that kind of a patriotism that you've witnessed, perhaps even from those who have an identity as a conservative, patriotic, American-loving individual?

Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, like any of our good things, our loves, they can turn into idols, right? And we want to be wise about that, right? And I use the example in the book about Jonah.

Jonah was a patriot. He was a prophet in Israel who had prophesied correctly good times to come in the Northern Kingdom. He was very close to the king. And Israel's main threat, main enemy was Assyria.

They were bloodthirsty and terrible people. And they were Israel's sworn enemy. And God had a special assignment for him to go to Assyria to preach repentance, to show the world—you know, Israel is supposed to be a light to the nations—that Israel, you know, to show the nations, declare to the nations that God wanted them to repent.

And Jonah didn't want to be part of that mission. It's not because he didn't think God couldn't save them, but it's because he knew they couldn't. He didn't want them to experience God's love. And so his love of country became the ultimate thing.

You know, when good things become ultimate, I really think that's where we get in trouble. And so, you know, that's an example there. I think, you know, if our patriotism causes us to be—to see the mission of God, to bring the gospel to the nations as inconvenient or even an impediment to what we're—to our patriotism.

If our patriotism causes us to think that we're better than other people because we're born in America. If it causes us to be stingy and not generous, all those kinds of things. If it becomes the overriding thing.

I think a good test of that is to see—another way that—another symptom of a love of country that is too foreign, too idolatrous is, you know, do we put our entire hope in our country? Now, I love this country.

I think we have a bright future. I'm bullish on America. But it's not my hope, right? The hope is in the kingdom of God. I think you can—sometimes it can express in a kind of politics that is existential and we sweat it and it's all or nothing.

And I do think politics has ramifications. I think policy matters. I'm not saying we should be different. In fact, I have an old chapter saying we should be engaged and involved. But when that becomes our overriding sense and we lose hope in Christ, I think that's where we say, OK, this has gotten a little bit out of order here, right?

Just like anything else. And here's the thing about ordering our loves. When something that is good becomes ultimate, we actually don't enjoy it in the way God intended, right? If I make my wife my ultimate allegiance, I'll actually expect her to fulfill things in me that only God can do.

I actually won't treat her well. Same with my kids. My kids are my everything. I won't treat them the way God wants me to treat them. I'll make them little gods. And they're not equipped for that. And same with our country.

If we invest so much in our country that it'd be expected to fulfill in us, or politics, something that only God can fulfill, then I think we're boarding an idolatry. By the way, I think patriotism is the healthiest expression.

I think when it gets into idolatry, it gets into something different, something more perverted, something more sub-Christian.

And we have to go to our first commercial break. And if you'd like to join us with a question of your own, submit it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you have issue with either the demonstration of patriotism that is manifested in your own church, or lack thereof, and you are troubled by it.

That kind of a thing, we would understand why you would want to remain anonymous. We don't want to be smirching the reputation of churches that we know nothing about here as the host and guest of this program.

So we would actually insist that you remain anonymous. But if you're just asking a general question about the church, the Bible, and history in regard to patriotism, please give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence.

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Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, my guest today for the full two hours is Daniel Darling, and we are addressing his book, In Defense of Christian Patriotism. If you have a question for Daniel, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. And we do have Tony with an I in Santee, South Carolina, and Tony says, I recall that a very good friend of the host of this show, Chris Arnzen, James White of Alpha Omega Ministries, had a campaign, as it were, after the horrific attack of America by a foreign enemy on September 11, 2001, whereby Dr. White was urging Christians not merely to be singing praises about America like God bless America, but that we should be singing things like God bless America with repentance.

Isn't one of the false ways that people even who identify as Christians can demonstrate patriotism is when they give a glowing, wonderful, rosy picture of the country while acting like ostriches and putting their heads in the sand when it comes to things like the countless murders of unborn babies and now people of the same gender marrying each other?

Very good question, and I actually agree with Dr. White that in response, especially back then, and perhaps it's not even especially back then, in the early days, in the aftermath of the most horrific attack on American soil by a foreign enemy, whereby there was the highest death count from a foreign attack on our soil, you had a lot of Christian ministries, churches, very well-known figures in media, in Christian media.

It seemed as if they were giving nothing but the praise and adoration side of how to address America in defense of ourselves after we were the victims of such a brutal assault. But Dr. White was saying that basically we really need to be praying for God for repentance if we expect from him to be spared of even greater terrorism and devastation.

I don't know if I'm making sense there.

Well, I do think the person that asked that question has a really good point. I think America should always, particularly Christians in America, should always be in a state of repentance, and I think calling for repentance and renewal in the country is a good thing.

I think the way we look at our country, we have to look at it—I think there's really two wrong ways to look at our country in terms of our history and even some of the things we don't like today, right?

Like you mentioned, abortion on demand, which I think is wicked and evil. If we think of past sins in our past, like shadow slavery or other things, I think there's two wrong ways to look at the country when you think through some of those America's sins.

I think the one way is to gloss over it and act like it's not that big of a deal. Or that it didn't happen, right? Maybe try to minimize some of our sins, like slavery, or minimize abortion, like it's not a big deal.

It is a big deal, and it's an offense to God. It's a denial of human dignity. Both those things are. So to try to whitewash our history or broad brush it and say everything's fine. The other wrong way to do it, and the opposite, I think, is to act like that's the only story of America, that it's only defined by our sins.

And I think most of the tendencies to do that on the left, to say, you know, America is uniquely—it was founded on racism. It was founded on subjugation. That's the only story, which is not true. But, you know, there could be a tendency for those of us conservatives to say it's hopeless, it's irredeemable, it's wicked, all that.

And I think we have to have some balance here. I think a good way to look at it is the way that you see the Bible tell history, right, some of its heroes, that it tells it warts and all. But it also, you know, you think about how Hebrews 11 talks about some of the heroes, that we know they had sins and warts, but also here's some of the good redeeming things.