All this flag waving makes me feel deeply uncomfortable – disturbed even – and I have been trying to get a handle on why it affects me so much.

The latest version began as a right-wing ‘take our country back’ surge in England. It is easy to condemn it as barely disguised racism. I have written before about how it has been playing out in my place of birth in Nottinghamshire, urged on by local Reform MP Lee Anderson. It has become a toxic contagion, celebrating division but fueled by disaffection and a deep sense of injustice amongst working people who have been bombarded with stories and ideas that scapegoat and victimise excluded groups.

It makes me feel ill, but there is a disturbance beyond that about naitonalism itself.

A few years ago – around the time of the rise of the Scottish National Party and the referendum on Scottish independence – I went to listen to a talk at Greenbelt festival. The speaker outlined a clever, provocative argument for nationalism being a kind of God-ordained goodness, drawing on biblical stories like the Tower of Babel and the way that Israel was chosen as special. Something inside me rebelled and I walked out before the end. Again, why was I so disturbed?

Surely there is indeed a good nationalism – proud nations that are a force for good, who welcome refugees and embrace them in their new homes? After all, I live in Scotland, so what did I find so difficult?

There is also this rather revealing question – Is any expression of caution or disquiet at the Scottish version of nationalism ever acceptable from an incomer like me? I have only rarely experienced direct anti-English hatred, but it is always there, just below the surface. This is quite understandable given our shared history in these lands, and the sense of unjustice felt in those parts not English, but let us not pretend that hatred is good, or that the sense of victimhood and tribalism it unleashes is healthy.

It is no accident that nationalism rises up in times of economic depression and difficulty because it has always been that way. It has so often been a political force used to galvanise mass movements against a feared other, either inside our outside the borders, or both. I know there are other much more positive versions of nationalism, based on pride and shared values, but can we point to a single version that was not in some way defined against the other?

I must be clear that sometimes nations or peoples have a legitimate struggle for freedom against oppression. Nationalism here becomes a rallying call – albeit a dangerous one. Many colonised nations have been forced to make that journey, and many in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales see themselves in the same place – struggling for freedom against an English colonial power. I hear that argument, but am not fully convinced by it. Colonial power, such as they still exist, are no longer bordered, they have become corporate. They serve the interests of a wealthy elite, not a crown. You do not fight this kind of colonialism by re-flagging it.

I think I walked out of that talk because Jesus was not Scottish, or English, or American. Those whom Jesus is recorded as being most angry with were the religious nationalists from his own nation so how dare we presume to co-opt him to a our national cause? The Biblical nationalists wanted a politcal messiah, not an advocate for the poorest and most broken. Certainly not one that pointed at the feared other and said we should love them – even the Romans invaders. Even the Samaritan apostates. Even the English. His solution was clearly NOT to proclaim a national revolution, but an entirely different kind of cross-border subversive nation called theKingdom of God.

I should perhaps interject here that I am not talking about the nation state as an organisational unit, with tax power, social and welfare policies, justice systems and housing provision. I believe strongly in a civic exchange of rights between individual and state, which shapes our national and individual wellbeing. The role of the state in this vision of nationhood is not to disappear (behind the glorious rise of free market capitalism for example) but rather to be the place where the national good is carefully negotatiated and legislated. It is messy, full of compromise but (we hope) there is a progression based on the value of humanity and a desire to preserve the land in all its beauty and variety. It is quite possible that a smaller nation such as Scotland, set free from the clutches of a greater Britain could achieve these things more effectively. If so, bring it on.

Human civilisations have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, whereas nation states as we might understand them now, are an invention of the last few hundred years. When we define ourselves by our nationalism – often citing ancient precident – we mostly delude ourselve, and apply selective historical analysis. We tend to look at this kind of nationalism through the lens given to us be someone else who is using it to persuade, to sell, to co-opt us to their vision of the world. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but we should at least call it what it is.

Neither let us not pretend that nationalism is just about sensible self direction of economic or social policies. It always contains other, darker things too- perhaps only visible to outsiders, to edge walkers and poets. Boundaries look both outwards and inwards.

Perhaps my discomfort is also about my own somewhat confused national make-up. I was born in England, but had an Irish father and now live in Scotland. I have always found identity hard to define or own. This seems less to do with where my parents were from and more to do with my sense of being an outsider. My troubled background was never likely to gift me with a sense of belonging. There are many others just like me. When the flags go up and people get teary-eyed and start to shout-sing their anthems, we shrink inside.

I say this not to claim any victimhood – after all, I am a white, middle-class sis male. All the world belongs to me and my kind, so this really is not a just me puffing up my privilege.

The point here is to consider how nationalism draws lines on the land that cut between people. Nationalism is a way to look at the land and also at those who are on it and outside it. Even the more positive forms of nationalism – those which celebrate a place and pride in a shared heritage – have a shadow side, in that we tend to defind ourselves against other nations, other peoples. It becomes a way to simplify and stereotype, and what might seem benign can easily turn into something more unpleasant.

There is more though. I tried to express some of what I was feeling in this poem.

Nationality

I don’t believe in borders
Or the tyranny of maps
I fear the way they fence us in
And split the white from black
So I will not raise up Saltires 
Nor wave the Union Jack
I will not sing those angry songs
My troops will not attack

What makes us what we are?
Whose stories are we telling?
What mix of blood pumps through these veins?
Whose products are we selling?
What shades of grey do we convey?
Whose history compelling?
Who pipes the tunes, who reads the runes?
In whose land are we dwelling?

Send them out then bring them home
Let roads be laid wide open
This way of love, the pilgrim path
Requires walls to be broken
Then we lay down in fold of ground
Where soil is warm and welcome
The crops we sow must surely grow
For the rains fill up the ocean

Perhaps we can turn now to another word. Here it is, with the dictionary definition – and as it is often used by a certain kind of flag waver. (Along with other words like ‘Judeo-Christian’ and ‘shared culture’.)

indigenous
/ɪnˈdɪdʒɪnəs/
adjective
1.originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native.
“coriander is indigenous to southern Europe”
2. (of people) inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times or from before the arrival of colonists.
“she wants the territorial government to speak with Indigenous people before implementing a programme”

By strict application of this definition, I can never fully ‘belong’ to the place where I live. I can never say without qualification that I am ‘from’ there. I am always an incomer, a wanderer, an immigrant. Recently, I heard a different use of the word that felt very important. This came from Brian McLaren, during a talk he gave in Iona Abbey. He said something like this;

There are two kinds of people in this world- indiginous people and colonisers, but you can choose which one you want to be.

I know, I know there are all sorts of problems with this simplistic dialectical statement- not least that it seems to imply that I could impose my belonging in a way that sounds like colonialism, but in the context of his words they sang clear. He was talking about the way the Bible has been defined, decoded (or perhaps encoded) and packaged by colonisers, but if you look again at the stories and people inside it, they are all in fact about people who have been colonised. In fact, the Bible is better to be understood as the record of oppressed colonised people trying to make sense of their lives and what the divine meant in a colonised context. I could say a lot more about this, but for now, let me just describe what this meant to me.

If Brian is right, I can choose to live as an inigenous person, seeking deep connection to the place where I live, to the people where I live and to the land and non-human occupiers of this land. I do not need to be invited or embraced politically or legally – I just need to learn to listen to the land and love it.

The invitation was always there. Even when I felt like a stranger. I say this because I have come to beleive that at the heart of everything that is and ever was is God, and she was always waiting with love.

In accepting this invitation to become indigenous, I also resist the pull towards colonial domination and exploitation. I try to live simply and in harmony. I try to listen rather than tell. I seek to forgive what I can, even in myself – even when I fail in my attempt to become indigenous.

I start where I am, right here. I try to offer hospitality to all who also arrive here, in the same way that the earth welcomes me.

I also look beyond the borders of my land and imagine a world in which there was no border, just people who are loved, and people who have not yet learned that this was always what their land was calling them to.