Review of Stephen Wolfe's The Case for Christian Nationalism

Part Two

Okay, following up from part one, here is part two of my review of Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism, oh boy, this is bad, I mean like, grandma fell head first into the wood chipper bad.

In terms of critique …

Power in Power rather than Power in Weakness

First, my biggest gripe about Wolfe is that he complains that Christianity has become servile, effeminate, and powerless.

He says Christians “take pleasure in their oppression” (3 and 342-43) and that “Christianity is often used as a coping device for inaction, even when under tyranny and slavery. It is a theological means to psychologically endure one’s gnostic unwillingness to struggle against earthly abuse. At its worst, theology is to be wielded to find pleasure in one’s humiliation” (4).

He is incensed that Christians have been excluded from public institutions and been forced to “affirm the language of universal dignity, tolerance, human rights, anti-nationalism, anti-nativism, social justice, and equality” (5). His protest is that Christianity has been ousted from its Constantinian heights, cast out of the public square, lacks the courage to seize its throne back, and is forced to tolerate people he regards as intolerable.

But I want to point out that servile, effeminate, and powerless is what Christians were proudly known for!

Remember this, to be crucified was to be made powerless, to be “pierced,” which had sexual connotations. The Romans always portrayed the victims of their conquest as womanish, dominated, and violated by their Roman superiors. To be crucified was to be made feminine, and far from shrieking at that notion, shying away from that symbol, Christians embraced Jesus’s cross for their identity and mission, with all of its connotations, as the central symbol of their values: power in weakness, greatness in servility, honor in humiliation, equality in Christ, love conquers hate, better to be abused than to abuse others.

The very values of tolerance, justice, and equality that Wolfe despises are the products of the Christian tradition that have fermented and flourished in the west and developed into their current forms. We should not be despising those values, but pointing out their Christian roots. Let me add too that one of the reasons the Romans despised Christianity is because it was the religion of the stulti, the foolish, the nobodies, the weak, the lowly, the impoverished, unmanly, lacking status and power. The pagan philosopher Celsus in the second century derided Christianity as full of “foolishly and lowly persons, insufferably obtuse, full of slaves, women, and children.” I think Wolfe would agree that Celsus was right, instead of being the religion of women, slaves, and children, Christianity should be the religion of senators and gladiators, the masculine, mighty, and magnificent.

What Wolfe finds so utterly appalling about modern Christianity is how much it resembles ancient Christianity with its belief that God is on the side of the poor, the oppressed, and the disempowered.

Heavy on White Nationalism But Light on Christianity

Second, Wolfe is explicitly and perniciously Kinist in his account of a Christian Nation.

For Wolfe, “nation” and “ethnicity” are synonyms, at least in his prescription as to what a nation should be: ethnically homogenous (135). A nation is a Volk a group who is like-minded, look-a-like, speak a common tongue, and have a history of exchange with each other (138-39). Solidarity needs similarity, which requires the exclusion of an out-group, in order to fulfill a natural right to be different from other groups (145).

He is open to amicable relations and mutual alliances with others, but not adoption, inclusion, or even acculturation of others (148-49). He doesn’t want to rescind the citizenship of ethnic minorities, but is open to an “amicable ethnic separation along political lines,” which sounds either like segregation or the resettlement of some ethnic groups abroad, like sending Blacks to Liberia in Africa (149). He is clear on one thing, non-Christians might be entitled to justice, peace, and safety, “but they are not entitled to political equality” (346). That sounds like the Islamic concept of dhimmitude where infidels are treated as second-class citizens. As if that were not bad enough, he sounds like a villain in a Marvel movie when he says, “The Christian’s posture towards the earth ought to be that it is ours, not theirs, for we are co-heirs with Christ” (347).

For Wolfe, the bonds between people in his Christian Nation are not creedal, he explicitly rejects that, instead the bonds are primarily ethno-geographic. He says the “natural inclination” to dwell among similar people “is good and necessary” (24). Civil unity cannot be built on a spiritual unity but rather needs to include “a common language” (27) and “cultural similarity” (201). The mere confession that Jesus is Lord can unite people of a Christian Nation, but it is too abstract to be the basis for a civil society. Spiritual truth, for Wolfe, is superseded by “love for one’s own” (120).

Wolfe doesn’t think a spiritual unity in Christ warrants a civic and local union as he warns “cultural diversity harms civil unity” (200). He seems to reject any idea of immigration, not only from culturally alien nations (166), but even from fellow White Christian Nations. One of the weirdest parts of the book is where Wolfe argues that during the Reformation, Reformed cities of Europe should not have received fellow-Protestant exiles such as the French Huguenots and Marian exiles because of problems like over-crowding (201-2). I think this is Wolfe’s way of saying that he doesn’t want Latin American Pentecostals or Asian Protestants moving in next door. It’s funny, because Viktor Orban, the Hungarian semi-Christian Nationalist, is in favor of Syrian immigrants coming to Hungary if they are Christians. So even Orban disagrees with Wolfe on this point.

Wolfe claims that it is natural to love the familiar rather than the foreign (118), that’s so true, but only for people who have never read the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37), or who have never read about the unity of the church in Antioch that was united with Greeks and Jews who had faith in Jesus (Acts 11:19-21). Moses married an Ethiopian and last time I checked they were black (Numbers 12:1-10).

The gospel has always compelled people to break-down ethno-spatial barriers, which is why Jesus does feeding miracles on the Jewish and Gentiles sides of the Sea of Galilee (Mark 6:30-44; 8:1-10). Peter dared to go into the house of a Gentile centurion and break bread with him (Acts 10-11). Paul says that the ethnic, class, and gendered divisions that separated people and that were tools for hierarchy are broken down (Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11). Paul’s sermon at the Areopagus celebrated how God “hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26 [KJV]) which was the go-to verse of abolitionists (see Lisa Bowens book African American Readings of Paul).  

Also, there is no group that is ethnically static, totally particular, or completely immune from external influence. All cultures and groups are hybridizing in some way. All of us move around the state, the nation, and the world, interacting with other people, and often marrying foreigners. Imagine a Christian guy in the US Army, meets a nice Turkish Pentecostal girl while stationed in Germany, moves back to Idaho, and they open a Turkish coffee house while he resettles into civilian life as a computer programmer. Their kids are Turkish-American-German and they represent an amalgam of cultures. I say, “Hallelujah,” while Wolfe says, “Hell no!” But his basis for rejecting it is that his ethno-spatial context must retain its particulars, of kin and custom, but kin and custom are constantly interacting with wider groups and changing. You can’t stop it unless everyone is forced into some kind of concentration camp with no access to the outside world and you restrict yourself to a very limited dating pool.

I can understand his concerns about open borders and mass migration, but his psychologizing of the political left as having a suicidal need to self-abuse and disinherit itself because of white guilt is verging into unhinged territory (168-71). There is no doubt that Wolfe is writing with a sense of prejudice towards foreigners and ethnic “others” along with a strong desire to keep his “kin” unadulterated from foreign contact, foreign customs and especially from inter-racial marriage. He is aware of the charge that this might be called “ethno-narcissism” (161) but I think it is white supremacy, aiming to keep white people supreme over other ethnic groups that they are in proximity to.

The sad thing is that Wolfe’s Christianity, far from restraining or curing his ethnic prejudices (as it has done for so many), is turned into an instrument for amplifying it.

Presbyterians and Their Baptist Underclass

Third, Wolfe proposes a pan-Protestant alliance to be the basis for his Christian Nation. Wolfe himself is explicitly Presbyterian, but he’s open to co-belligerence with other Protestants, in some cases, even Baptists.

That said, Wolfe is suspicious of Baptists because of their tradition of dissent and advocacy for near-absolute religious liberty (217). He repudiates “neo-Anabaptists” for subverting the durable Christian order (241, 270, 354). Accordingly, he says “paedobaptists would be the most stabilizing force in a pan-Protestant political community” (218). Which I think he means, in his Christian Nation, Presbyterians will be first among equals, and in practice probably more equal than others (218).

---

To read further, consider joining the “Aviary” by taking out a paid subscription, only $7 per month or $75 per year, supports me in my ministry and scholarship, and gets you 3-4 posts per week on biblical studies, Christianity and gender relationships, cultural commentary, book reviews, previews of my forthcoming books, and some cool videos.

Wolfe’s Christian Nationalism says the state is to direct people towards the true Christian Religion, but which Christian denomination’s definition of true religion gets to be hegemonic? The SBC, the OPC, PCA, or PCUSA? He never even mentions the Greek Orthodox and Catholics who are persona non grata, they are either banned or in theological re-education camp. I get the feeling that Wolfe would not want Anglicans forcing Presbyterians to worship exclusively using the 1662 BCP, but if Anglicans were in the ascendency, his theology of the magistrate gives us no reason not to do it.

Wolfe thinks the magistrates and municipal leaders will be theologically trained, be able to decide matters of public order and solve theological disputes, without infringing on the spiritual authority of ministers of religion (362-72). The Prince and the magistrate can fund the ministry of the word and theological education, call synods to resolve disputes, moderate proceedings (312-13), impose a uniformity of worship (315-16) and force attendance to church (395). The civic leaders will know with due “prudence” what are the essential and non-essential elements to their pan-Protestant political community.

Wolfe straddles many inconsistencies in his thought. In the same paragraph, he says that the prince or magistrate cannot force people to kneel to receive the Lord’s Supper (because it’s not mandated in Scripture), but the prince/magistrate can insist on the elevation of the pulpit above the Lord’s Table in a church (even though that too is not stipulated in Scripture). Such is indicative of the legal and ecclesiastical chaos that would ensue if Christian Nationalism was ever put into effect (317).

But think about this. The Presbyterian church governance system is highly litigious so there would be constant suits brought against people with allegations and disputations pertaining to “six-day creation,” “paedo-communion,” “preterism,” “post-millennialism,” “theonomy,” watching Netflix on the Sabbath, and confusing “law and gospel.” The danger is either that orthodoxy will be either stringently narrowed or else defined so broadly as to make heresy impossible. This is why I believe, that in a religiously diverse state – even if the diversity is only intra-Protestant – the state must consider itself neutral in religious affairs and incompetent to adjudicate on religious disputes, otherwise it’s blasphemy trials as far as the eye can see. The irony is that if such a Presbyterian political setup was ever practiced, the OPC and PCA would probably expel Douglas Wilson and perhaps Stephen Wolfe for heresies related to theonomy and paedo-communion. Maybe all revolutions really do eat their own children. Wolfe is aware of this objection, but doesn’t take it seriously for my mind (386).

Recall too, that a state that can impose orthodoxy can also impose heresy. Wolfe himself proves it! He is grieved that America is dominated by “a regime-enforced moral ideology as the standard of moral respectability” (224). I agree that’s a problem, but the solution is not to establish a new regime to enforce Christian values, but to limit the moral authority and coercive powers of any regime!!!

Wolfe forgets that the first American colonists were fleeing the Christian Nationalism of England, with its Anglican autocracy, to find religious freedom on foreign soil. Wolfe fails to recall that the separation of church and state was intended in America to protect one group of Christians from another group of Christians.

Even more alarming is Wolfe’s account of the Christian Prince which to my ears sounds like a job description for Donald Trump. He rejects administrative “wonks” and “regulators” and instead hails the prince as “first of his people,” a “father or protectorate of the country” (279) which sounds like Augustus and Cromwell in a blender. He writes:

I am not calling for a monarchial regime over every civil polity, and certainly not an autocracy, though I envision a measured and theocratic Caesarism – the prince as a world-shaker for our time, who brings a Christian people to self-consciousness and who, in his rise, restores their will for their good (279).

Such a figure for Wolfe is a mediator of God, we see the image of God in the Prince, who is a kind of “national god” in the tradition of Psalm 45 (286-87). He is not the “head of the church” (310-11), but his rule has a spiritual quality about it, while careful not to usurp spiritual roles as a mediator of grace.

The principal task of such a Prince is to dismantle the “gynocracy” with its obsession about equity and victimology, as well as wimpy notions of therapy and self-care, and replace it with a Spartan sense of masculinity married a Nietzschean mode of will-to-power, all scaffolded along a hierarchy of nature (290-92).

If you believe in total depravity as I do, then you know that a Prince armed with the rhetoric of divine office and without checks on his power can go very bad very quickly. That is why the Virginian state motto is sic semper tyrannis, always stick it to the tyrant!

I have no doubt that Wolfe’s pan-Protestant apparatus would very quickly begin to either fray into civil conflict over something like paedo-communion or else it would lead to a tyrant imposing a single form of Protestantism on everyone through violence.

Freedom for Non-Christians is Not Acceptable

Fourth, Wolfe does not believe in, engage with, or even acknowledge the liberal political tradition.

In other words, Wolfe doesn’t understand why Cromwell’s England, Calvin’s Geneva, John Knox’s Scotland, and Hendrik Verwoerd’s South Africa, were so quickly abandoned. A Christian state run by a symphony of magistrate and ministers of religion did not last long where it was practiced. Why? Because it sucked! It sucked because it ran roughshod over people’s liberties.

Also, rather than fight each other over religious differences, people preferred a state neutral on religious matters, i.e., a degree of secularity. Rather than burn Catholics, drown Baptists, and lock up Methodists for preaching without a license, the people decided that the state should be neutral in religious affairs and consider itself incompetent to adjudicate upon religious disputes.

Wolfe is allergic to creating a neutral public square or neutral state apparatus (342). He rejects universal notions of fairness and equality for all. He sees this as a Trojan horse for creating an aggressive secularism, disguised as neutrality, but in practice predatory and coercive. I would object that this need not be the case and is not normally not the case. I hasten to point out, that most religious freedom cases that come before SCOTUS usually win – Hobby Lobby or Master Piece Cake Shop – and that was long before the current conservative-dominated judiciary.

Stranger still, Wolfe thinks the First Amendment only applies to the Federal Government and not to State governments, so states could “establish” their own religion if they wanted to (425-30). This is interesting because in Australia, s116 of the constitution is basically a Westminster appropriation of the non-establishment and free exercise clauses of the US First Amendment. But it only applies to the federal government and this has proved to be a problem. There have been two referenda to change it and expand it to apply it to the states (1944 and 1988), but both have failed. The result is disastrous because there is a massive lacuna in religious freedom protections in Australia at the state level which are currently filled with an inconsistent patchwork of laws about discrimination. This is what I wrote about in my Religious Freedom in a Secular Age, it’s why Australia does not have robust religious freedom protections.

Wolfe’s dismissal of liberalism is ironic because missional Protestantism is what really birthed the liberal tradition, with its emphasis on liberty, freedoms, and rights. Just read Tom Holland’s Dominion or James Simpson’s Permanent Revolution: The Illiberal Roots of Liberalism. So the liberal political tradition is a Protestant tradition. It is biblical too. We have liberty of conscience in religious matters, because, as Paul said, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17), and “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).