At some point in the 800s and 900s, England more or less became “England” as such. This came about through a combination of wars, power grabs, invasions, peaceful surrenders, political marriages, and what-not. This was still before the Norman Conquest, for those keeping score.

When it became England-as-such, the rulers (perhaps borrowing from the playbook of the then-departed Romans) decided that to cast England as a country founded on Christian principles (ignoring those wars, power grabs, invasions, peaceful surrenders, political marriages, and what-not). It has actually proven historically useful to declare that a country was founded on religious principles–be it as Christian, Jewish, Judeo-Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu. By claiming this, one can ignore the displacement of indigenous persons and the less savory means by which a nation was actually cobbled together, plus it has the added benefit of casting any minority voices as speaking out against what has been Divinely Ordained.

It also creates a border-within-a-border. If you are a Judeo-Christian nation in your mythology, then not only do you need to protect your borders in the general sense of preventing enemy invasion and overthrow, but you see the work of border protection as commensurate with keeping non-Jews and non-Christians out (people such as Muslims, say). With a myth that your country has been Divinely Ordained as a home to a specific religion (or, if one must be more circumspect, that religion’s “values”), then patriotism means protecting both the country and that religion from dissenters without and within. And it becomes un-patriotic to teach the actual history of a nation’s growth and founding, not to mention the reasons for its borders. Just look at the United States. Just look at Israel. Just look at Turkey. Just look at Pakistan. Just look at . . .

Swithin’s role in the consolidation of an entity called “England” appears to be largely that of teaching its first king and princes the importance of making sure it was a called and then ruled as a Christian country (whatever that means) and of keeping out the Danes (actually a mixture of various Norse peoples) because the Danes were not Christian. Swithin was the hand that rocked the ideological cradle that helped correlate England’s identity with a faith begun eight centuries or so earlier in Palestine. (And I would note the staying power of this very idea–there is still an official “Church of England.”)

There is something very heady when people believe their patriotism is an act of faith. It keeps them from questioning their government (that would be the equivalent to questioning their God!) and it imbues them with a sense of divine mission that requires of them unquestioning obedience, even unto death. It paints all outsiders as dangerous (whether they are or not), and even extreme vetting cannot remove the ? hanging over each of them at all times.

What also goes unquestioned is why in the world a religion would ever need to be protected. After all, whether Danes (or Yemenis) are on your landmass, is the God of Christianity suddenly rendered powerless or unworthy of worship or incapable of giving the gift of new life?

Or is it actually about “a religion’s ability to control the behavior of people” that is at stake?

Maybe what we could do with a little more de-Swithinizing in our life and world.