When this magazine’s editorial board selected the topic of nation, we knew this issue  would appear shortly after a U.S. presidential election, but certainly none of us could have guessed quite how momentous that election would be or how much global commentary it would generate.   We also could not have anticipated how the final weeks of the campaign would be characterized by emotion-charged shouts of who in this country represented the “real” American nation and values and what people, classes, races, and regions were not really part of the true America.

As the campaign tried to divide voters between “real” Americas and others less worthy to call themselves true Americans, commentators of every political persuasion offered their opinions.  Many asked what would be the litmus tests for being able to define oneself, one’s values, and one’s community as truly American.  This debate raged precisely while we worked on this issue of The Living Pulpit exploring issues of inclusion and exclusion to the Kingdom of God.  The day’s campaign debates were the contemporary backdrop while our authors and editors explored the shared values, shared heritage, shared traditions, and shared faith in God that defined nation and nationhood in Scripture.  There was an increasingly clear convergence of the breaking news headlines and the timeless wisdom of Scripture that nations have far less to do with geographic borders than they do with a sense of shared values and a common destiny.

This issue of The Living Pulpit examines some of the ways that the traditional concepts of nationhood are changing.  Despite their overuse, the terms “globalization” and “citizens of the world” are the two dominant concepts that are reshaping our concepts of nationhood.  We understand these changes in light of the reality that political borders and natural barriers of mountains and oceans no longer protect people nor provide any meaningful isolation.  National borders are can not stop terrorist attacks or economic chaos coming from cultures and countries thousands of miles away. The challenge for us as citizens and as preachers is to respond faithfully to the Gospel’s call to love our neighbor in an era when our neighbors are all of humanity — a concept captured so well by Donovan Russell in this issue as “the nation of humanity.”  How do we respond to the Gospel imperative as global citizens and people of faith?  We need to ask ourselves and our congregations how to be good citizens of our own country, citizens of the “nation of humanity,” and subjects to the Kingdom of God?