Judging from the attention given to Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism, one could be excused for thinking it is a significant work of scholarship. But Wolfe’s book matters more for the stir it has created than for any weight it carries. One of Wolfe’s first reviewers got it right when he said he felt compelled to review it, not because of its merits, but because so many people would take it seriously. That has turned out to be true. We must engage it even at the risk of increasing its significance. Other reviewers have pointed out Wolfe’s deficiencies in handling Cicero and the Reformers, for example, so I want to focus on his mishandling of historical and other sources that readers might be less likely to notice. Wolfe says he is not reasoning from Scripture or history, and yet he uses both when it suits his purposes. When he condemns the condition of modern culture, he appeals to experience, which is an appeal to history. Past experience ought to be at least as relevant to judge Christian nationalism.
Wolfe opens his book with a dramatic retelling of the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. He warns that “this day changed everything, and we live in its consequences.” I will let the hyperbole of “everything” pass (history is a matter of both continuity and change). The consequences of the Revolution have indeed damaged Europe and America, if not the world at large. He attributes to the Revolution a radically secularized politics, the birth of “political atheism.” Ominously, “The children of the French Revolution, both Christian and non-Christian, are still with us and continue the revolution” (2). (It is not clear who these Christian children of the Revolution are, but it seems likely that they are the advocates of a secular politics that Wolfe opposes, especially the political theology of so-called R2K, Radical Two Kingdom, not to be confused with Reformed Two Kingdom)
Granting for the moment the truth of this claim about the consequences of 1789, what it ignores reveals something important about Wolfe’s story. The irony is that nationalism, far from the solution to our present woes, was itself one of the principal consequences of the Revolution. To embrace nationalism is to embrace one of the most destructive ideologies of the last two centuries. To embrace nationalism is to “continue the revolution” just as much, if not more than, to embrace political atheism. Nationalism is an ersatz religion that fills the void left by the end of Christian political theology that Wolfe laments. This is what it was intended to be. Nationalism endures as the most potent ideological offspring of the French Revolution. It appropriates the language and promises of Christianity and the church, speaking of the nation as if it were the church, heir to the promises of God, and complete with martyrs, prophets, apostles, a canon of sacred scriptures, and holy wars and crusade. It has outlived liberalism, Marxism, and communism. Combined with populism and socialism, it has been particularly destructive, as the history of the twentieth century attests. Nations are old, but nationalism is not. Projecting it back across the centuries to include the sixteenth century Reformers makes no sense. It is an exercise in what historian David Hackett Fischer called “retrospective symmetry.” It is an optical illusion that only confuses the question. To be sure, the Reformers cared about the well-being of their provinces, realms, principalities, and empires, but that concern needs to be kept in proper tension with what they wrote about the mystery of divine providence and their pilgrim identity as strangers and exiles. They knew that, ultimately, they were guests in this world. Many of them lived in a “negative world” far more negative than Aaron Renn’s categorization of contemporary America, and yet they held to a profound pilgrim identity at the same time. One need only read East Anglian pastor John Rogers’s exegesis of 1 Peter 2:11 (sojourners and exiles) to see this. Rogers helped shape the consciousness of the very Puritans who settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony under John Winthrop, a go-to source for Wolfe for the communal ethics of Christian nationalism.
Richard M. Gamble | “Christianity and Nationalism: A Review Article” | June–July 2024
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Thank you for sharing this book review of The Case for Christian Nationalism. You might remember my history of being involved with theonomy and the struggles I’ve had down through the years with sorting through that erroneous teaching and Scripture. It’s dangerous and also easy for folks who are zealous for the Lord to get caught up in. Something that always troubled me was the focus on culture and not on Christ. We weren’t looking forward to Heaven, but instead our focus was on trying to build a Christian utopia here on earth. I’m so glad the good Lord changed the direction I was headed in. Your blog was a tool He used and is still using to this day. I am forever grateful.
I chased this rabbit to the full article in context.
Could not get the images of The Village people singing and forming the letters Y-M-C-A, morphing into the slow bellies of harsh manliness defined by Moscow, softening into the matter-of-fact and somewhat harmless enunciation of fundamentals of Basic Dude Stuff.
Leaving these aside, my focus sharpened on the loveliness and manliness of God seen in the life of Christ.
Turning our eyes on Jesus helps avoid the extremes of cruel tyranny or genderless apathy.
By realizing where phrases originated and the equivocal and dialectical misuse of the enticing sounds of words to rally our tribe against partisan enemies, we can and should gird up our minds and avoid repeating history.
This article provides a balanced pox on both toxic extremes.
Weak effeminates provide cover for pacifist, and derive their rhetoric from the seeds and errors of anarchy found in Genesis 3:16, while the celebration and elevation of bravado leads to cruelty in lording over their heritage or flock.
The root of bitter chafing against decency and order results from saying I will not have this man you’ve put me under to rule over. And conversely these helpers you’ve given are falling in line so I have to crack down.
Bothe extremes are consequences of loving and believing the lie that God is not good, or wise in the way he sets things up.
It doesn’t gently lead those that are with young. They bite and devour the ones they’re ordered to protect.
That power is best unleashed in mortifying the remaining seeds of sinful desires. If not plowed up and rooted out at conception, they sprout up they defile self and many others.
And that breaks the basics of the perfect law of Christ.