Tomorrow, America turns 250. The semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence comes with fireworks, parades, and—for more than a few missions-minded Christians—perhaps a measure of ambivalence.
For some, this ambivalence stems from the tumultuous economic and cultural circumstances and strained moral fabric experienced by our nation as of late. For others, such ambivalence stems from a theology of global missions that outwardly appears misaligned with patriotic duty. Is love of one’s own land and people a rival to the Great Commission imperative to seek the eternal welfare of all the nations? The answer lies in the clear preaching of the Baptist pastor who helped launch the modern missions movement more than two centuries ago, in a national moment far more anxious than ours.
In 1803, Britain stood on high alert. The short-lived Peace of Amiens had collapsed, and war with France resumed. On the north coast at Boulogne, Napoleon Bonaparte massed a vast “Army of England” and prepared a flotilla of flat-bottomed barges for a Channel crossing. In Kettering, Northamptonshire, Andrew Fuller (1754–1815) was ministering during these tense days. Fuller was pastor of the Baptist church and known for championing foreign missions, together with William Carey, against the apathy of the hyper-Calvinists. That August, he preached a sermon entitled “Christian Patriotism,” drawn from Jeremiah 29:7: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (ESV).
Among Bible-believing Christians today, there seem to be two distinct musical keys in which the symphony of Christian living is played. One orchestra is tuned to the pitches of missions, evangelism, and outreach; an opposing band is calibrated to the frequencies of family, place, and nation. Yet Fuller’s life stands as a refutation of this false dichotomy. He stood as the theological powerhouse driving the Baptist Missionary Society, founded at Kettering in 1792, which supported Carey and his famed band of missionaries in Bengal. And it does not appear that Fuller saw any tension between a healthy love of one’s own nation and concern for the spiritual state of other nations. The seven quotes below, all drawn from his 1803 sermon, show how Fuller’s fierce patriotism squared with his biblical convictions concerning the universal, spiritual, and missionary ethos of the Christian faith.
1. Remember You Are Pilgrims—in a Place
Though, as Christians, we are not of the world, and ought not to be conformed to it; yet, being in it, we are under various obligations to those about us.
Fuller acknowledges that Christians are exiles in the world whose true citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). Yet this fact does not overturn civic duty—an observation which at the heart of the letter to the exiles in Jeremiah 29. The manner in which we fulfill our obligations to family, community, and nation, Fuller says, “contributes not a little to the formation of our character, both in the sight of God and man.” Life within the nation, in which we faithfully discharge our temporal duties, functions as a training ground for the eternal order, instructing us in how to render service to God together in perfect harmony. That pedagogical purpose is subverted if we despise our own nation.
2. Be Patriots on Purpose
Seek the peace of the city. The term here rendered peace signifies not merely an exemption from wars and insurrections, but prosperity in general. . . . Such, brethren, is the conduct required of us, as men and as Christians. We ought to be patriots, or lovers of our country.
Fuller argues that if the Jews were called to seek the welfare of the foreign land to which they had been exiled, how much more are the Christian natives of a land required to pursue its good. All lawful loves are ordered rightly by grace. Love of one’s nation is a lawful love. Love of one’s nation, then, is ordered rightly by grace.
3. Refuse the Counterfeit
The patriotism required of us is not that love of our country which clashes with universal benevolence, or which seeks its prosperity at the expense of the general happiness of mankind. Such was the patriotism of Greece and Rome; and such is that of all others where Christian principle is not allowed to direct it.
Fuller here erects a bulwark against disordered patriotic love—the kind of parochialism that does undermine global Christian mission. Without the prevailing influence of Christianity upon a nation, natural loyalty readily devolves into self-seeking at the expense of other peoples. But pagan patriotism and Christian patriotism are different species. Grace sets in order, directs, and grounds love of nation while commanding love for people of all nations.
4. Put Righteousness Above Prosperity
If my country cannot prosper but at the expense of justice, humanity, and the happiness of mankind, let it be unprosperous! . . . Our concern is to cultivate that patriotism which harmonizes with good-will to men.
Notably, Fuller said this while condemning Britain’s slave trade from the pulpit, with an invasion fleet across the Channel. Injustice, warmongering, tyranny, oppression, and ethnic pride are not essential to nationhood but are corruptions and privations of the good, arising from sin. Grace never sanctions them but restrains such vices and reforms societies through the gospel and its fruits. Love of country must bow under the law of God.
5. Love Your Country for the Gospel’s Sake
Ought we not to seek the good of our native land . . . a land where God has been known for many centuries as a refuge; a land, in fine, where there are greater opportunities for propagating the gospel, both at home and abroad, than in any other nation under heaven?
Fuller implores his countrymen to seek the good of the nation out of gratitude for, and a desire to preserve, the blessings bound up in their land, lineage, laws, and religious heritage. These he regards not as rivals to evangelism and missions but as handmaids serving that noble cause. He loved Britain in part because it was a launching pad for world evangelization. National welfare and gospel advance are not enemies but friends.
6. Lament Its Faults Without Despising It
O my country, I will lament thy faults! Yet, with all thy faults, I will seek thy good; not only as a Briton, but as a Christian: “for my brethren and companions’ sakes, I will say, Peace be within thee: because of the house of the Lord my God, I will seek thy good!”
Notice that Fuller grounds it in Psalm 122—he seeks the nation’s welfare “because of the house of the Lord,” for the sake of the church within it. Grace works upon the particularities of nations only insofar as they accord with true religion. But no merit is gained by rejecting the common graces of one’s own culture or disdaining one’s own people to the extent that they display the manifold wisdom of God.
7. Pray for Your Nation—and Repent for It
All our dependence, as a nation, is upon God. . . . You are also aware, in some measure, of the load of guilt that lies upon your country; and should therefore supplicate mercy on its behalf.
Fuller trembled at Britain’s guilt at least as much as at the thread of Napoleon. Intercession, including confession of national sin, is one of the highest acts of patriotism. It is also a pure expression of Great Commission in that Jesus commands his followers to disciple the nations and teach them to obey him. If the Christian is called to devote himself to the mission of the church as the divinely appointed means by which the nations are redeemed, then he cannot be indifferent or hostile to the ultimate spiritual interests of his own nation.
Loving Home and Reaching the Nations
In today’s fraught landscape, temptations abound to either apathetically withdraw from cultural battles on the one hand or idolatrously plunge headlong into them on the other. The right path is the middle path: love. Fuller, Carey, and the Baptist Missionary Society show that it is possible to maintain the sort of love for one’s own nation that does not conflict with universal benevolence and that lives alongside a spirit of missionary zeal. Scripture remains our final authority here: Paul embraced suffering to carry the gospel to the most distant nations (2 Corinthians 11:23-28), while appealing to his Roman citizenship (Acts 22:25-29) and expressing deep anguish for the salvation of his own people (Romans 9:1-3). And the Lord Jesus displayed perfect love for his family (Luke 2:51), his people (Matthew 23:37), and sheep of another fold (John 10:16).
The barges at Boulogne never crossed the Channel, and Fuller spent his remaining years doing what he had always done—holding the ropes for missionaries on the far side of the world while seeking the peace of the town where God had planted him. As America enters its 250th year of independence, let us love the land God has given us with the clear-eyed, repentant, prayerful love Fuller preached, and may we spend ourselves gladly for the nations to whom we owe the gospel.
This article is adapted from Alex Kocman, “Ordered to Love: Recovering the Order of Affections from the Home to the Ends of the Earth” (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2026), which treats Fuller’s “Christian Patriotism” at length in chapter 5, “Grace and the Nation.”
Fuller quotations from Andrew Fuller, “Christian Patriotism,” in “The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller,” vol. 1, ed. Joseph Belcher (1845; repr., Paris, AR: Baptist Standard Bearer, 1988), 202-209.
