The Antioch Declaration
The Far Right Attacks the Far, Far Right
As part of the preparation for my debate with Ps Douglas Wilson, I read The Antioch Declaration.
This is a Christian Nationalist document that attempts to divest the movement of unseemly views of race and ethnicity, while still assuming an adversarial posture with the surrounding American culture. In the preamble, it says:
Just as the apostle Paul at Antioch “opposed him [Peter] to his face because he stood condemned” (Gal. 2:11, CSB) for compromising the gospel of Jesus Christ by subjecting it to racial barriers, so this brief statement opposes the ideas of some contemporary leaders and influencers seeking to introduce anti-gospel racial categories into the church. This Antioch Declaration was not conceived or developed in haste but after much prayer, thought, counsel, and soul-searching. Our task is an unpleasant one, but like the apostle Paul’s, it is necessary, even when other Christians are involved. When the gospel once for all delivered to the saints is itself at stake, we dare not remain silent.
The document and its signatories aim to affirm a type of cultural conservatism while distinguishing themselves from the far, far-right.
Of course, it still reveals much about the American religious-right as it stands today, including some elements that remain deeply concerning.
The document consists of a series of affirmations and denials about various things, including: the left-right political divide, neo-pagan secular, the idolatry of pluralism, the disillusionment of young men, white guilt, the ethnic make-up of churches, and the racial and antisemitic theories of Adolf Hitler, and a lot about the Jews ranging from “God-hating individual Jews” to a denial that “world affairs are governed by conspiring Jews.”
