[feyth-ree-uh-tiz-uhm]


NOUN

1. religiously based devotion, love or support of one's country
2. a system of religious belief which is tied to a belief in a particular country
3. a mixing of god (or God) and country found in many places in the world and prominent in some churches in the United States.

I learned this word from Matthew Paul Turner's blog.  A search of ye olde intertubes found no record of that word outside of his blog post today.  I think the word gets at one of the main issues that the Protestant Church in America will need to grapple with as they reach out to the rest of the world.  And my issues with said "faithriotism" go back to my days at Duke Divinity School and the classes I had with ethicist Stanley Hauerwas.  Yoking God to our country might make our country much bigger.  But it makes our God much smaller.