There was no instruction to be thankful that the Christians were special people, chosen people. There was no nationalistic, political or ethnic superiority to be thankful for.

Clayton’s statement rejects the idea that Christian gratitude should be grounded in a sense of being an elite, divinely preferred group. Instead, it frames thanksgiving as incompatible with claims of national, political, or ethnic superiority—an implicit critique of religious nationalism and ethnocentrism. The quote suggests that early Christian teaching emphasized humility and universality rather than tribal privilege: gratitude is directed toward God’s grace and moral transformation, not toward social status or collective dominance. In a modern setting, the remark functions as a corrective against conflating Christian identity with cultural or national identity, urging believers to avoid using faith as a warrant for exclusion or hierarchy.