When I read Christian Nationalists, Catholic post-liberals, communitarians, and others, I feel like the elderly woman in the old Wendy's commercial.

She bit into a burger, got a mouthful of bun, and shouted, "Where's the beef?" I nibble on essays, and books, and tweets, get a mouthful of ethnicity, and want to scream, "Where's the church?"

Whether we view her theologically or sociologically, the church is an utterly unique social reality.

Theologically, she is the Bride and Body of the incarnate Son, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the family of the Father.

Sociologically, the church uniquely joins people from every tribe, tongue, nation, and people in what the apostles were bold enough to call a genos and an ethnos, a chosen race and a holy nation (1 Pet 2:9; cf. Eph 2-3).

Paul acknowledged Abraham as father of nations (Rom 4:18), but in another register describes Christians as "former Gentiles" (1 Cor 12:2; cf. 1 Thes 4:5; 1 Pet 2:12). 

Jason Staples has argued that, for Paul, Gentiles who receive the Spirit of Jesus undergo both an ethical and an "ethnic" conversion.

Grafted into the olive tree, Gentiles become "Israelitized, transformed from one ethnicity to another and integrated into the ethnic people of Israel."

Yes to the "order of loves," but whatever we say about the legitimacy of our love for those nearest to us must be subordinated to this central message of the New Testament: 

He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity (Eph 2:14-16).