Religion Matters — Looking at Christian Nationalism in a Nuanced Way
The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe
Christian Nationalism is the current “Emmanuel Goldstein” of the Left. Christian Nationalists (CNs) are “white supremacists,” and they are everywhere. All conservative Christians merit the label of CN.
This perplexes me because I am a conservative Catholic — which some people consider “Christian” — and, therefore, I have been labeled a “Christian Nationalist,” but I’ve never met a Christian Nationalist. The Left thinks that someone who is both Christian and patriotic is, for that reason, a CN. If that’s the case, then guilty as charged.
However, this book shows that this is not the case. I decided to read this book to see if there is something more to this CN phenomenon.
Author Stephen Wolfe identifies himself as CN. His version of Christianity is the Reformed Christian — i.e., Calvinist/Presbyterian — variety. This book shows that Leftism is producing a reaction that is not healthy for our body politic, albeit this particular reaction is castles in the air, unhinged from reality. It’s aspirational, not practical.
The book starts with some solid and very good points. Incidentally, these points agree with St. Thomas Aquinas’s explanation of love in the Summa Theologica. Namely, human beings are ordered to love. In that order, we are naturally ordered to love those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our community, and our nation. This is natural and good since we spend most of our time with those closest to us. A love that ignores those closest to us in favor of those distant is inhuman and uncharitable.
It seems to me that it is akin to the love of Communists who love the working class in the abstract and hate the individual working man. It is worth quoting Eugene Lyons on this point:
“The recognition of this fact enabled me to solve (or so I thought) the most disturbing of the paradoxes of Soviet power: the deification of the Proletariat in the abstract — on posters and postage stamps, in official theses and official literature — while the flesh-and-blood working masses were treated most cavalierly. The communist functionary who worships the Proletariat as a class and spits on the self-seeking, wretched specimens of the class whom he handles in everyday life is not necessarily a fraud.
On the contrary, his contempt for Ivan Ivanovich may be a measure of his respect for the Ivan lvanovich-to-be. The selfish, stubbornly unappreciative people whom he must whip into the shape of his vision seem to him an affront to the idealized Proletarian for whom he went to tsarist prisons, for whom he fought civil wars. Workers who achieve power cannot be expected to idealize other workers as romantic upper-class people do, they know the creatures too intimately.”
Eugene Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, p. 326.
Love should be concrete, not abstract.
Wolfe concludes that there is nothing wrong with “nationalism” in the sense of “love of one’s country,” also called patriotism.
In my opinion, he jumps the shark when he starts defining what he means by “one’s country.” In this part of the book, he begins to abstract like a Bolshevik.
For Wolfe, America is a Christian country. It was founded as a Christian country, and it is still a majority Christian. So far, so good as a historical matter.
However, he then defines Americans as Christians. Only Christians can be Americans.
Previously, he had explained his Christian political theory as involving Christians exercising “dominion.” Adam was given dominion over the world. Christ restored his followers to the status of Adam. Therefore, Christians have the same authority and dominion as Adam.
Leftists often prattle about “Dominionists.” This may be what they are talking about.
Having identified Christians as restored in Christ to the status of Adam in exercising “dominion,” Wolfe argues that Christians should not be afraid of forthrightly exercising dominion in a Christian country.
Where does this leave non-Christians? The answer is “second-class citizens” without political power:
“But what about consent? Would not Christians have to disregard the non-Christian withholding of consent? They likely would. But no one and no group can withhold consent such that they effectively deny the establishment of a properly constituted commonwealth. None can withhold consent in order to prevent the establishment of true justice.
Can a group of people withhold consent to prevent laws against murder? We would find this unacceptable and disregard their lack of consent. But if we would disregard them in the case of murder, why not for a group’s disregard for the highest good and the things of God? If we can disregard in the name of lesser goods, then certainly we can disregard in the name of the highest good. Therefore, if a Christian minority can constitute a secure commonwealth for true justice and the complete good, then they can disregard the withholding of consent by non-Christians.
Non-Christians living among us are entitled to justice, peace, and safety, but they are not entitled to political equality, nor do they have a right to deny the people of God their right to order civil institutions to God and to their complete good.
Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 346). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
Wolfe is trying to recreate the kind of state that existed in Holland in the late 17th century. Holland had a reputation for tolerance, apart from Catholics and Unitarians. Wolfe expressly argues that there would be a “Christian” — which is to say Protestant — magistrate who would rule in an enlightened biblical way, which should allow for “religious tolerance”:
“Indeed, the unfolding of Protestant principles — not Enlightenment or Roman Catholic “doctrinal development” — led Americans to affirm religious liberty in the 18th century, which I demonstrate in the next chapter. The point here is that Protestant magistrates ruling a Protestant people have principled flexibility when faced with religious diversity.
Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 375). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
Wolfe’s Christian Nationalism is, not surprisingly, an expressly Protestant Nationalism. Throughout the book, he acknowledges that he is appealing to Protestants, but he does not discuss the implications for Christians who are not Protestants. For example:
“Many readers may by now be frustrated that I have not mentioned the issue of baptism. My hope is that my arguments so far have appealed to a pan-Protestant audience.
Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 217). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
And:
“Protestant harmony amid diversity does not require disestablishment. But granting religious liberty to all orthodox Christians, if deemed suitable, would effectively end dissension, as I’ve defined it, and create a sort of pan-Protestant civil society. This is precisely what I hope for future arrangements in North America. Still, there are times when establishment is necessary and good.49
Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (pp. 394–395). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
That last paragraph is ambiguous. It seems that Protestantism will be established, i.e., state-supported, but it isn’t clear whether non-Protestant churches will be tolerated but not established or not tolerated at all.
Wolfe tries to finesse his pan-Protestantism by making disagreements between Protestants something that concerns only secondary issues:
“An established church that is a true church, though erroneous on something secondary, is better for a people than having an embattled church or no church at all.
Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 379). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
Wolfe offers many observations that suggest he is thinking about a real return to the era of the Wars of Religion. For example, Wolfe has lengthy discussions about the suppression of heresy. Wolfe explains that religious belief cannot be compelled because human beings are free in their conscience, but heretical public acts can be punished because of the “harm” such actions — speech, worship, persuasion — do to others. Wolfe admonishes:
“False belief itself must never be the basis of civil punishment.8 False religion externalized is the only principled object of punishment.
Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 357). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
The punishment can be quite extreme:
“This is a remedy to stop the “poison,” as Calvin said. Turretin cites a great number of Reformed theologians who supported capital punishment for arch-heretics: Zanchi, Becanus, Bullinger, Beza, Franciscus Junius, Danaeus, Gerhard, Bucer, and Melanchthon.46 This is not to say that capital punishment is the necessary, sole, or desired punishment. Banishment and long-term imprisonment may suffice as well.
And perhaps a Christian people may consider some heretics harmless, or they might conclude that suppressing heresy is, in at least some cases, more harmful than the heresy itself. The crucial point here is that civil action against heretics is justified in principle but the practice of it requires considerable discernment, care, gentleness, and prudence.
Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 391). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
Wolfe attempts to construct a fire-wall against the charge of persecution by this argument and suggestion:
In our time, the suppression of false religion is not an end in itself but a means and a matter of prudence; and such actions are prudent only if they conduce concretely to the good of the church. The church is ordinarily not well served by inciting powerful and destructive rage against it.
Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (pp. 373–374). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
Wolfe’s approach unwittingly mirrors that of the Nazis, who also thought that they were preserving religious liberty by allowing churches to do what they wanted inside the doors of their churches but punishing them sternly if they brought that Christian stuff into the public square. In that regard, it is also the policy approach that Obama sought to follow during his administration.
Like the Nazis, and maybe President Obama, whose policies often accommodated religion no further than the front steps of a church, Wolfe thinks that those who are not “orthodox Protestants” can’t complain if they have access to their (false) means of grace through their churches:
“My point is that if it were false, its establishment would not separate Baptists from the means of grace. Ensuring equal access to the administration of grace mitigates the consequences of established error. Thus, an established church that is in error on a secondary matter is dangerous to Christian brethren only if that establishment denies dissenting believers access to the means of grace.28 Further mitigation might include extending toleration to dissenting Christians, allowing them to erect their own churches.
Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 378). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
Initially, Wolfe suggested prioritizing the love of those with whom one is physically closest, i.e., “our neighbors,” is natural. Somehow, this morphed into the argument that loving one’s neighbors would be given the highest priority if they shared a common belief. This then became an argument that the Protestant state has no obligation to take in foreign Protestants who have a different culture and speak a different language because it “would stress the culture.”
Then, weirdly, Wolfe discards the Thomistic point that natural love is directed at those who are our neighbors by gratuitously tossing in an “ethnic” qualifier:
“To be sure, I am not saying that ethnic majorities today should work to rescind citizenship from ethnic minorities, though perhaps in some cases amicable ethnic separation along political lines is mutually desired.
Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 149). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
So, apparently, Protestant Nationalism may exclude Protestants in the community who are of different skin color or have different ancestry.
This is pretty much an impeachment of the first part—the good part—of the book since it is obvious that Wolfe is not arguing for the natural virtue of loving our actual neighbors but dividing them up along religious and ethnic lines. Wolfe commits the same fallacy that Communists commit; he abstracts the people he should be loving rather than loving the concrete individuals in front of him.
Are there people who don’t recognize the obvious folly of such an approach? Worse, it denies the natural emotion of charity we have toward our neighbors. Pluralism in a community is bound together by a shared love of the community’s common good, no matter their religion. It took a long time for us to realize this fact.
According to Rodney Stark, the first interfaith prayer assembly occurred in New York in the late 19th century after a tragic ferry sinking. Different faiths in a community have learned to work together and adopt a shared civic religion while keeping their separate faiths alive. Further, the competition of different religions has strengthened all faiths in America. America does not have a dying religious economy because pluralism fosters healthy competition.
Wolfe is reacting to the very real threat posed by secular culture. Secular culture is at war with religion. Secular culture seeks to do to all religions what Wolfe proposes to do for non-Protestants, namely drive faith in doors into different churches and nail the door shut. The threat is real.
But the answer is not to start a war of Protestants against Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. The answer is pluralism, the real tradition developed in Protestant North America.
