In the never-ending debates about “nationalism,” a term that has begun to circulate is “heritage Americans.” There is something important that this discourse is trying to capture, which I will discuss below. However, there are some aspects in how the discourse has progressed that merit critical attention.

The worst version of this argument approximates racist nativism, in which only those who either (1) share a certain race or those who (2) can trace their ancestry to American soil generations ago are deemed legitimate citizens of the national community. Most of the figures I have seen advocating for this term explicitly reject the former, but there is much ambiguity about the latter. Many have come to embrace proposals for massive deportations of those who have recently become residents (or even citizens), even if they have done so through the proper legal channels. They seem to deny that relatively new residents can share the heritage in a significant way. I agree with these figures that newcomers must embrace a nation’s heritage; I just also believe that they can.

One thing that I have noticed in much of this discourse is how slippery terms can be. Often the term “nation” itself remains undefined. Furthermore, the term nation and “ethnicity” tend to be closely identified, with “ethnicity” at times seeming to overlap substantially with “race.” These advocates quickly respond with harsh denunciations of the idea of a “propositional nation,” which conceives of the national unit defined by shared adherence to certain principles, or merely an economic zone—which surely is an inadequate understanding of one’s national community.

I believe this discourse needs clearer definitions and safeguards against racist forms of nationalism that also too narrowly define who can share the heritage. It should be possible to promote our national heritage among our citizens and residents without falling into those errors.

One relatively recent work that provides such resources, which seems largely ignored by the new nationalists, is Bernard Yack’s 2012 book Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community. What I would like to accomplish in this brief essay is to highlight some key ideas Yack offers that can help address these issues.

Who is the “we” of a nation? Here the theme of heritage, which connects contemporaries to a shared identity that also connects them to generations past, is highly relevant. Like advocates for “heritage America,” Yack also draws attention to the idea of a heritage. But he explicitly denies that this is tied to race; furthermore, he explains that reception of this heritage is not a simple, static matter.

Yack, inspired by Ernest Renan, is clear that there are certain aspects of nationality that are not chosen, but objectively given. This is why he, like the vocal online nationalists, rejects the “myth of the civic nation”—which he also criticizes as the “myth of consent.” But he likewise rejects the “myth of the ethnic nation”—which he describes as the “myth of descent.” Yack believes that Renan points the way forward by explaining that nations combine an objective cultural heritage and some level of choice in subjective affirmation. Communities, of which the nation is a species, need some form of shared identity; but shared identities are always in the process of development and interpretation, if only because of the fact that people are always dying and being born, new events occur, perspectives emerge, and information is unearthed, all of which shape the life of the nation in unexpected ways. Therefore, national identity is not static. However, the nation is a unique type of community, because it is an intergenerational and heritage community.

Here Yack draws attention to the important theme of “contingency” with regard to nations. Through the contingencies of our birth and the nation into which we were born, we are given a certain cultural inheritance that did not necessarily have to be what it is, but is what it is. These contingencies give us the materials with which we have to work in order to establish a national community. As Christians, we can interpret this as a form of providence that gives rise to these particularities: “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands” (Acts 17:26). However, we need not attribute anything primordial or “natural” to them such that they can only be shared by peoples with a particular set of genes or that things can never develop in a new direction.

But this emphasis upon heritage helps us understand that we cannot choose the cultural inheritance that we were given. This cultural inheritance includes things like language, relics, symbols, stories, and so on, that link current members of nations to past and future generations. The nation lives on as members of successive generations continue to imagine themselves connected by this shared cultural heritage. A Christian could understand this as a political expression of our duty to honor our fathers and mothers, according to the fifth commandment. We honor our national fathers and mothers by receiving this cultural heritage; but the nature of this reception, or how we “honor,” is not uniformly determined or destined to remain static. From time to time, various constituencies within the national community who, driven by conviction, seek to alter the trajectory of the nation, may offer alternative interpretations of aspects of that inheritance, or even retrieve lost threads that complicate the predominant narrative. For Protestant and Reformed Christians, this should be unobjectionable in principle. We don’t uncritically receive the heritage as it has been handed to us in its present form, even if we must continually resist the temptation to discard it altogether and construct a tradition de novo. “[T]he continued existence of a nation,” Yack argues, “is quite compatible with competing and changing perceptions of its character.” But Yack is clear: compatriots must always work with the shared heritage—from within it and in solidarity with fellow citizens, committing to live together sharing a rich legacy of cultural artifacts. “[W]e need to to keep reminding ourselves,” declares Yack, “that national community grows out of a mix of two elements: a shared cultural inheritance and its affirmation as a source of mutual concern and loyalty.”

While Yack rejects the idea of a “propositional nation,” he also distinguishes his proposal for a shared cultural heritage from an emphasis on a shared culture. Yack defines a “culture” as “distinctive practices, customs, and attitudes that people share.” He explains that people can share a culture without necessarily feeling any special loyalty to one another. Yack distinguishes this from a nation, which he defines as “a group of people who express feelings of special concern and loyalty for individuals who share a cultural heritage, not a culture.” Now, I think Yack’s distinction between “culture” and “cultural heritage” here is a bit too strong. Certainly, there are cultural aspects that all Americans can and do share, such as holidays like the Fourth of July, practices like the Pledge of Allegiance, etc. Furthermore, there are cultural aspects that Americans need to share, like a public language (even if groups speak a different language at home or in private associations). But Yack’s distinction remains helpful to highlight that people can embrace the complex, contingent heritage of a nation without necessarily sharing all the same beliefs or customs. This seems to combine an implicit affirmation of providence (mentioned above) with a fairly capacious posture of hospitality. We must receive that which has shaped the nation prior to us, but we also have a duty to receive those neighbors in our midst currently — even neighbors who form different cultural communities within the nation. This can be understood as a secularized, political version of Augustine’s exposition of the “order of loves” and the parable of the Good Samaritan. We have duties to those “who are most closely bound to you by place, time, or opportunity, as if by lot” (On Christian Doctrine, 1.28.29), and are to show mercy to those neighbors—of whatever race, etc—whom we encounter in our daily life (Luke 10:29-37).

The pressure point here, which Yack helps us see, is that those neighbors and cultural communities, if they wish to be part of the nation, also have a duty to imagine themselves within the shared national heritage; however, they need not subscribe to any particular interpretation of that heritage, or share a single culture with everyone in the nation. For America, this will mean that any who wish to be part of the “we” needs to recognize the Christian, and even Protestant, character of the national heritage. America was founded largely by Protestants and framed broadly according to Protestant principles, which were embodied in its public institutions. This legacy must be honored by all contemporary Americans, even if, as Yack’s analysis helps us understand, not everyone who wishes to be American needs to embrace the Protestant faith or even the unique sets of practices and customs of any Protestant denominations.

Yack’s discussion regarding immigrants is instructive yet underdeveloped. This emphasis on a shared heritage, Yack admits, makes it hard to imagine immigrant citizens as full members of the nations in which they reside. Yack explains that “because distinct nations are grounded in forms of sharing that are inherited rather than chosen, the first generation of immigrants will always stand a little outside of the national community.” One cannot naturalize the cultural heritage, because newcomers—even though they may well enthusiastically throw themselves into ownership of these things to the best of their ability out of love and gratitude to their adoptive nation—do not share the intergenerational connections. However, this will be more possible for their children. Here one wishes that Yack would expound more on the need for a form of “assimilation” that would accord with his understanding of a national heritage, as well as identify specific mechanisms to accomplish that. One could imagine, at bare minimum, language requirements and civics exams. Furthermore, in light of his comments about first generation immigrants in comparison with their children, he might propose deferral of citizenship to second or third generations, even if legal residency remains open to the first generation. Identification of such assimilational mechanisms may well assuage some of the concerns of our nationalist neighbors. And it does seem necessary to make sure that newcomers come to embrace the cultural heritage that Yack emphasizes. However, assimilating to a shared heritage is also less narrow and more open than the ethnocentric expectations of many who promote the idea of “heritage America” would have us believe.

I think Yack’s proposals merit attention in these debates, and have used them here merely to gesture at some constructive directions in this conversation. They provide resources to turn down the heat and shed more light. To be an American, one need not be a member of any particular race or even have any particular feelings about or interpretation of the national culture; however it is imperative that all who wish to be a part of this nation embrace the heritage as a source of loyalty to fellow citizens and and to forge intergenerational connections. Thus, newcomers have a duty of assimilation, and those who refuse to embrace the nation’s heritage—and essential cultural aspects like the public language—have no right to become American, because they fundamentally refuse thereby to imagine themselves as American.

Immigration restrictions with these things in mind are certainly in order, whereas the topic of deportation, while relevant, is a bit more complicated. I am convinced that the more fundamental issue is to renew appreciation for our heritage and devise appropriate measures to inculcate embrace of it—by new residents as well as naturalized citizens. If newcomers continue to exhibit hostility to that heritage and complete unwillingness to assimilate, then it is entirely permissible to revoke visas, reject residency and citizenship applications, etc. However, Yack’s proposals also challenge those who consider themselves part of the old stock to expand their conceptions of who can share the “heritage.” Yack helps us chart a promising path combining intergenerational connection and contemporary mutual loyalty that also provides resources to avoid unnecessary divisiveness and inter-group hostility. It combines implicit conceptions of providence and hospitality, with duties of gratitude to the past but also to the neighbors in our midst today. We have a heritage which we should promote amongst ourselves and to any who wish to join with us.

James R. Wood is Assistant Professor of Religion and Theology at Redeemer University in Ancaster, ON. He is also a Commonwealth Fellow at Ad Fontes, a teaching elder in the PCA and former associate editor at First Things.