The Euros and the problem of nationality

In a world of populist nationalism, should you support your national team?

Sam Tomlin

Sam Tomlin is a Salvation Army officer, leading a local church in Liverpool where he lives with his wife and children.

Two England fans stand in stadium seeting holding up their flag.

England fans at Euro 2024.

@FBAwayDays.

Tony Cascarino was a footballer in the 80’s and 90’s, playing for various clubs including Aston Villa, Celtic and Chelsea. He also won 88 caps for the Republic of Ireland scoring 19 goals. A good but fairly unremarkable career was turned on its head in 2000 when it came to light that he was never actually eligible to play for Ireland. After being rejected for an Irish passport in 1985 and learning on his Irish grandfather’s deathbed that he was not the natural father of his mother, Cascarino did not tell anyone and just kept playing international football. He only went public after he retired and published an autobiography. Quite simply he represented the Republic of Ireland without being Irish.

Sport is a key marker for national identity in most nations’ cultural imaginations. Whichever nation wins this year’s Euro football tournament will have millions watching and tens or hundreds of thousands lining the streets for a victory parade, with national flags, politicians and celebrities in tow. The case of Tony Cascarino, however, exposes the shaky foundations of national identity.

The general rule of international sport is that if you are born in a country, have a parent or grandparent born there, or have lived in it for a certain number of years, you can represent that country. Over the years this has led to some odd scenarios like 23 of 39 players in a recent Scotland rugby squad being born elsewhere or England’s 2005 Ashes hero Kevin Pietersen speaking in a broad South African accent. My children could technically represent Zimbabwe at international sport through a grandparent born there, even if they never set foot in the country. Declan Rice will be at the heart of England’s midfield in this tournament, but even he represented the Republic of Ireland three times at senior level, being able to switch teams because those matches were only friendlies. Gareth Southgate once commented: ‘first we had to convince him it would be a good decision [to switch to England].’ Far from being core to our identity, it seems as if nationality can often be chosen after weighing up the pros and cons.

The best Christian teaching on identity undercuts both sides of the culture wars in a way that also avoids a centrist fudge.

Identity is a key aspect in dominant cultural discourse at the moment. The phrase ‘identity politics’ is often thrown at those who are perceived to locate the most important aspects of identity in one’s sexuality, gender or skin colour. Those on the other side are just as keen to define identity, but will stress the importance of national heritage along with accompanying national values.

What does Christianity contribute to debates about identity? It is not hard to find activist Christians on both sides of these debates, especially on social media. Yet Christian belief has something more distinctive to say than the usual tropes in wider society. The best Christian teaching on identity undercuts both sides of the culture wars in a way that also avoids a centrist fudge.

Jesus speaks about being ‘dying to yourself’ and being ‘born again’ when someone starts to follow him. While some associate these loaded phrases almost solely with a question of eternal destiny after death (heaven or hell?), surely their meaning goes beyond this to the central question of identity. In essence, Jesus tells people that the things that used to be central to their identity actually become less important once you enter the kingdom built around him – you literally die to them and are born again. The centrality of national identity is relativised in parables like the good Samaritan where it is the enemy nation rather than the compatriot who offers help. The role of women is often flipped on its head as they provide the model of discipleship where the male disciples fall short. Wealth is stripped of its cultural power as Jesus’ followers are commanded to share and hold things in common. The allure of social status and significance is shorn of its potency as we see ourselves in the light of a God who made and cares for all of us without exceptions, and indeed holds special favour for the lowly and ‘unimportant’ in the eyes of everyone else. A Christian is not supposed to allow things like nationality, wealth, status or gender be too important in comparison to her identity in Jesus Christ and the community she enters when she begins to follow him.

No other ideology or -ism in history has centred this self-giving relationship (not just ‘relationality’) at its heart.

Both sides of the culture wars – what have become known as ‘woke globalism’ and ‘populist nationalism’ – have their own promises of community. Yet neither ultimately escape the rampant individualism of our culture, the unmistakable product of Enlightenment thinking. On the ‘liberal left’, personal preferences and choices are advanced as the central parts of identity. Yet on the other side, the logic of nationalism and even patriotism, however, is still built around the self – drawing a picture of the world which looks and sounds like me as much as possible. A Christian vision of identity is founded outside of the self - on God. Christian thinking has always been wary of any self-oriented ideology because it will be unsustainable in the long run.

Other ideologies can offer a vision of identity beyond the self – communism, fascism, capitalism, for instance; all promise a fulfilling life if you submit yourself to them just as Christianity does. At their heart, however, these ideologies are simply that – ideologies without a face. Christians have always maintained that the living Jesus can never be separated from his teaching as if it is an ideology. At the heart of this faith and promise of identity is not first and foremost a way of life but a person with whom you can have a relationship. The mode of relationship is also in line with the teaching and life he lived – laying his life down for others. This, in turn, is the model for Christians – in humility considering others better than ourselves. No other ideology or -ism in history has centred this self-giving relationship (not just ‘relationality’) at its heart, and has therefore ever been able to offer as deep and fulfilling vision of identity and fellowship.

Will I be supporting England, the country of my and my parents’ birth, then? Of course I will. The call to die to yourself and the things that used to define you does not mean I can exist as a Christian without any other cultural framework that makes up my existence in the world. I am not a citizen of ‘nowhere.’ I was born in England, and have lived my life here. I understand certain cultural references, humour, enjoy certain foods. These are not bad things, and indeed create community and shared understanding. From this perspective, I will join with other English men and women to cheer Southgate and his team over the coming weeks.

But what I will resist is some deeper meaning and identity in my nation where my life and all that is important to me are seen through its lens. My Englishness is there, it has some influence in my life, but ultimately it must be subservient to my identity in Jesus Christ. It is one thing among many that in New Testament language must be ‘put under his feet’. When there is a choice between serving my nation and serving Jesus Christ, I will always choose the later and assume there will be times when this choice is a real one. I will watch this summer’s Euros with members of my church who come from various nations of the world. We will join together without denying our respective nationalities and cultures – as we do every week – but in a manner where these cultures do not get in the way of genuine fellowship as we seek to embody what the Bible speaks of as a ‘new humanity.’

Explainer

Comment

Holidays/vacations

Mental Health

Psychology

Time

12 July 2024

7 min read

How to get the best time out of your downtime

The joys and perils of taking time out for summer holidays.

Roger Bretherton

Roger is a Clinical and Coaching Psychologist.

A pair of sunglasses beside a swimming pool.

Jakob Owens on Unsplash.

For the first few days of any summer holiday there seems to be something wrong with my brain. Having looked forward for months to the moment when I can finally down tools and get some rest, having yearned for weeks to be free of the relentless schedule of emails and meetings, the moment finally arrives and I, well… hate it. I’ve wanted to stop for ages and then when I get the chance, I don’t want to. The flywheel momentum of the to-do list somehow carries over into the holiday and turns the first few days into an obsessive nightmare of drivenness.

This usually manifests in the agitation of wanting to rest while being unable to do so. My schedule says stop but my mind hasn’t got the memo. Instead of gently sculling across the pool, I’m swimming time trials through an obstacle course of inflatable beds and dayglo sea creatures. My family is quick to remind me that the languid currents of the pool were designed for relaxation, not for achieving a personal best. ‘It’s called the lazy river, Dad, not Verstappen at the Nürburgring.’ It makes me laugh, but it doesn’t make me stop. Nor does it stop them shouting things like ‘He’s taking the apex’, and ‘Dad’s got DRS’ from their sun loungers every time I sluice past.

In the old days, psychiatrists used to call it the Sunday Neurosis, the mild state of agitated low mood that afflicted people on their day off. The inescapable feeling that we should be doing something on days when there is nothing to do. The realisation that we’re not quite sure who we are when we are freed from the daily demands we can easily resent. I don’t know what you have planned for the summer- a beach party in the Bahamas or an Airbnb in Bridlington or the classic post-Covid staycation- but if you’re planning to take a break of any kind there are a few things you should perhaps keep in mind to make the best of it.

If we must work full throttle to the final hour – we may have to accept that we’ll spend the first few days on holiday getting used to being on holiday.

First. Slow down slowly.

We have a tendency to think that life can change at the speed of thought. Just because our diaries say holiday, doesn’t mean that our bodies are working to the same schedule. The autonomic nervous system that governs our state of physiological arousal largely operates automatically. It isn’t synched to our Outlook calendar and can’t deliver relaxation on demand, no matter how much we would like it to. Psychotherapist Deb Dana likens changing our state of physiological arousal to taking a lift down a few floors. It takes time to move from a highly active state, to a more relaxed and connected way of being. It doesn’t happen at the flick of a switch and we only agitate ourselves more thinking it should. She says we should befriend our nervous system. Instead of impatiently asking ourselves why we aren’t more relaxed, we should simply ask whether we need to be this agitated right now. And if we don’t, accept that it may take us some time to adapt to a less demanding environment.

When it comes to holidays, this suggests we should allow ourselves some time to acclimatise. Our bodies don’t automatically relax the moment they hit the beach, or hike the mountains, or lie under canvas - they need some time. We can do this before the holiday starts, by slowly decelerating as time off approaches. Like a car approaching a junction, if we want to stop smoothly, we might want to hit the brakes long before we reach the stop sign. And if we can’t do that – if we must work full throttle to the final hour – we may have to accept that we’ll spend the first few days on holiday getting used to being on holiday. It may not make us a pleasure to be with, but we can at least understand that it’s just how our bodies work. We are not droids, there isn’t an off switch on the back of our heads.

On holiday, we can take time to savour the experience of living- to be in our bodies, not just use them.

Second, get into your body (and out of your mind).

There’s a reason people spend so much time on holiday exercising their bodies: surfing, climbing, walking, riding. And weird stuff too, that you’d never dream of doing at home. One time in Normandy we booked a hand-pumped locomotive and huffed/puffed our way up and down a railway line for an afternoon. If I didn’t have the blisters to prove it, I’d think I’d dreamed that. Why do we do these things? Because it feels good to be aware of our bodies. Even my laps around the lazy river had a certain logic to them.

Many of us spend most of our time in disembodied thought. We can sometimes feel like the involuntary participants in a workplace time and motion study, in which worth is measured by output. It doesn’t matter where you work – home, school, office, a boat, the woods – sooner or later a spreadsheet will find you. You can run, but you cannot hide your data. And the impact this has on us is that we tend to be more aware of whether we have hit our targets than we are of the toll these targets take on our bodily wellbeing. Just recently I was asked to support a management team going through a stressful restructuring. One guy claimed he didn’t feel the stress of it- he just got on with the job. But when I sympathetically suggested he might be paying for it with his body, the litany of physical ailments he produced sounded like the list of side effects in a 1980s pharmaceutical commercial. He didn’t think he was stressed, but his body kept the score.

Let’s face it, going on holiday itself is stressful. It’s ranked 42 on the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory, just above ‘minor violations of the law’. Apparently packing for Marbella is more stressful than being pulled over by the cops. But it’s worth it if it creates a space in which we can de-stress, a space in which we can remember that we have a body, a body that needs to be looked after. Of all the benefits of bodily awareness – the positive sense of how our body feels, not the crippling consciousness of how it looks – perhaps the greatest is its capacity to turn off the hyperactive judgement of our minds. On holiday, we can take time to savour the experience of living- to be in our bodies, not just use them.

If we are defined by our output, who do we become when our output drops to zero?

Third. Make time to connect.

What happens when we slow down and learn to live in our bodies again? We become open to connection: socially, emotionally, even spiritually. Back to Deb Dana. She notes that when we take that slow elevator down from the souped-up state of busyness to a more relaxed and open state of mind, we activate the ventral vagal nervous system. She calls it our ‘home away from home’- which seems especially apt for being on holiday. In this state we are happier to be seen by others and therefore to be in relationship with them. Whether it’s a conversation while walking, or an evening card-game, or a meal together, all of them offer a chance for us to dwell in our home away from home in connection with others.

One of the things that can keep us so obsessively busy, is that we are not always sure who we would be if we stopped. We’re not certain we have a right to exist when we’re not being productive. If we are defined by our output, who do we become when our output drops to zero? This is why for thousands of years the practice of rest has been enshrined in spiritual practices. Without space to detach ourselves from the hectic pace of life we will inevitably confuse who we are with what we do. The Judeo-Christian tradition called it sabbath, not just a day of rest, but a way of being in which there is nothing left to prove. Holidays can offer us that opportunity, if we are willing to take it. Because after all what do we call someone who becomes more relaxed and embodied and connected? I think: more human.