Gesture Without Motion: Defending the Weak Gods -- I

PART ONE

Preface

At the outset, I want to say that my interest in the issue of Christian nationalism is mainly in the sorts of very necessary (but unnecessarily vitriolic) conversations and debates it has engendered. Specifically, despite not being a Christian nationalist, I have given most of my attention to analyzing and critiquing arguments against Christian nationalism, finding them wanting: they are actually dismissive (the serious ones only less obviously so), as if the ones positioning them aren’t even trying, almost as if they don’t believe they should have to do in the first place. In fact, they really don’t: most of the truly heavy lifting has been done by others, as I will explain further below.

It is true, as some readers have pointed out, I have not positioned any arguments of my own against Christian nationalism, and this for four reasons. First, I don’t recognize an obligation to have an opinion about every issue that arises, if it does not involve an article of the Christian faith, the Reformed expression in particular. On that note, second, I do not regard Christian nationalism as a threat to the faith or the Church. I do not regard it as a threat to the United States — the new world order, perhaps, but not the United States. (There are those who believe it is a threat to the Constitution, but that thing has been conveniently and selectively ignored since the 1860s. Christian nationalism is not a threat to the lip service the Constitution now gets.) Third, I no longer regard anti-Christian nationalist arguments so much as positioned against anything, including Christian nationalism, as much as they are positioned for something else. Fourth, one must pick his battles carefully, and since I will not live long enough to tackle many of the practical questions involved with any depth I have limited myself to considerations about the debates themselves.

Very likely, although I may write on indirectly related matters, this will be the last piece that I write on the CN debates themselves, including the debators themselves, especially within and among members of the Presbyterian Church in America.

Note: for this article I will denote Christian nationalism and Christian nationalists as CN, and the opposing view, as well as opponents, as ~CN.¹

Now then.

I

Back in January, Brad Isbell published an updated version of his article on the Christian nationalisms , in which he (again) deftly and briefly demonstrates why CN is cosplay, which I will summarize by saying there are three reasons: (i) as matters stand today, there is nothing to which one can actually commit, no “platform” as it were; (ii) any movement currently styling itself CN is plagued by associations with various forms of political and moral turpitude and (iii) any CN movement hoping to accomplish anything is doomed by the compromises it will have to make with other groups of Christians seeking political power.

At the end of his article, Brad asks: “What are Christian pilgrims and strangers to do with the various forms of nationalism?” But before doing so, he makes one of the most important observations I have seen him make on the subject:

The one constant in American religious and political life is constant change. What these groups are now is not what they will be. They'll probably look quite different post-2024 than they do today.

By “these groups” he means the various CN groups he has identified, labelled, described, and consigned to the category of worldly theologies, (as opposed to theologies of the cross). Yes, they will look quite differently in the future. The problem is that he, like many other ~CN, make the error of taking the short view: they are looking post-2024. Those CN he lumps into the Highbrow Wolfeans (hereinafter, HW), for example, are taking the long view; and on that long view, CN in 2025 is just as much cosplay as the American founding was in 1639, when the The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, were adopted. The Declaration of Independence is an Enlightenment document, but it could not have been conceived of at the beginning of the Enlightenment, and would have been dismissed as a silly joke. Much intellectual groundwork needed to be done before a document could be written which would express convictions for the sake of which men would pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. And even in 1776, that document was a pipe-dream. The American experiment was doomed to failure; the nations of the world had only to wait. Self-evident truths about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are all the rage today; but almost 250 years ago they were nonsense, one might even say cosplay. Until they did, which is worth pointing out because Brad seems to be under the impression that the HW believe they will live to see the sort of Christian nation they seek.²

This leads to the question Brad asks: What are we to make of the various Christian nationalisms? First, we should largely ignore them, especially any strand whose adherents believe they will live to see a Christian nation. We certainly should ignore the two types he styles The Progessive Christian Center-Left and The “Hee-Haw” Wooly Christian Middle-Right: in terms of anything one might call a Christian nation, there is nothing in these two groups that cannot be placed within the understanding of a Christian nation as explained by Justice David Josiah Brewer.³

For that reason — second — we should ignore the question itself. Whether we call them (i) The Progressive Christian Center-Left, The “Hee-Haw” Wooly Christian Middle-Right, and The Christian Nationalist/Dissident Christian Right, or (ii) Folk Evangelicals, Charismatic/Megachurch/Dominionists, or Highbrow Wolfean, only the Highbrow Wolfean or The Christian Nationalist/Dissident Christian Right give us anything to make something of in the first place. Even if we disagree with him entirely, Stephen Wolfe has provided us with a definition of Christian nationalism so precise as to be the model definition of Christian nationalism (on which all other definitions will be variations).

That definition is:

[A] totality of national action, consisting of civil laws and social customs, conducted by a Christian nation as a Christian nation, in order to procure for itself both earthly and heavenly good in Christ.⁴

Neither The Progressive Christian Center-Left/Folk Evangelicals, nor The “Hee-Haw” Wooly Christian Middle-Right/Charismatic/Megachurch/Dominionists can define their goals so precisely. They provide nothing to want, nothing to achieve.

Wolfe’s definition gives us only four questions to deal with: for any nation, (i) Do we want such a nation he has defined? (ii) Why would we want such a nation? (iii) How can such a nation be achieved? and (iv) What sort of constitution/form of government should such a nation have?⁵

Of course, without a few tens of millions of sincere conversions to Christ, none of those questions are worth bothering about.

II

I have cataloged weak ~CN arguments many times, beginning with this article, which raises the question: Why have I not dealt with the strong arguments? The answer is that there are none. And the best of them are good only insofar as they repeat the same arguments positioned by secular opponents, significant elements of which one can easily find in the linked article, in a single paragraph, no less:

[The Christian Nationalist/Dissident Right] has unfortunate tinges of antisemitism, opposes aspects of the US Constitution, devalues traditional civil liberties, and leans into ethnic issues…. Some admire certain 20th-century dictators.

“Some admire certain 20th-century dictators.” How original. Attempting to smear the many who do not admire certain dictators with the excrement of those who do. For some it’s “No enemies to the right” and for others it’s “Everyone to the right of me is a fascist.” You can get that excrement from anyone — host or guest — on CNN, MSNBC, The Young Turks, Destiny, and so forth.⁶

As with progressive opponents, secular or not, everything I don’t like (even merely “noticing”) is antisemitic, goes against all that this nation holds dear (Declaration of Independence, the Constitution), wants to destroy civil rights, is racist, and neo-nazi and fascist. Loves certain 20th-century dictators. Very creative, almost like they are employing the same playbook, mostly because they are; that is, the playbook written in the wake of two world wars: the post-war consensus (PWC), described by R. R. Reno, as the consensus in favor of fluid openness embraced by the left and right in recent decades.⁷ In short, these arguments simply repeat and advance the PWC, even using the same rhetorical tactics, including slurs (but dressed up in Bible talk).

For a ~CN theology of the cross, there is no argument against CN which is legitimately based on any conflicts with the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, secular, God-loathing notions of liberty, or even on the basis of some supposed (and usually contrived) racist, neo-nazi, or fascist convictions. For a ~CN theology of the cross, there is only one argument against any CN claim: those claims contradict the teaching of Scripture, whether by contradicting the explicit teaching of Scripture, or by contradicting teachings deduced from Scripture by “good and necessary consequence.” Several academically thoughtful writers have managed to disappoint at this point.⁸

As a single example, in his review of Wolfe’s book, John D. Wilsey writes:

Consistently throughout the book, it is clear that Wolfe’s understanding of the end of the Christian national state is to secure the highest good of the people. I understand this to be the central issue of the book. Others who have parted ways with Wolfe have done so on theological, practical, or historical bases. I also part ways with Wolfe, and I do so because his model is contra-American (note: not anti-American). It is contra-American because it is closer to Hegelian state theory than to the American constitutional tradition of federalism and ordered liberty.

Note the objection: not some conflict with Scripture or standards, but with “Americanism”. Wolfe’s model is not contra- or even anti-Biblical; it is contra-American. For Christian nationalists, whether they are correct or not, this is not an objection worth bothering about: the Scriptures are supreme; and the “American” constitutional tradition of federalism and ordered liberty has no veto authority. (Yes, Wilsey defines “contra-American” as “closer to Hegelian state theory”, but I ignore that for two reasons: (i) I disagree with that characterization; and (ii) if it truly is closer to Hegelian state theory, that would make it anti-Biblical, which is worse than being contra-American

Even the more serious, recent, academically rigorous contributions by Kevin DeYoung, devoted almost solely to critiquing CN from the Scripture and Westminster standards, don’t pull it off.⁹ Most recently, in his interview with Larry Arnn, DeYoung as much as says that the change to the Westminster Confession of Faith regarding the civil magistrate was based more on expedience than exegesis:

[American Presbyterians in 1788] changed the Westminster Confession…in the article that has to do with the civil magistrate because they want to move away from [the] the older european Christendom model where the civil magistrate suppresses heresies [and] punishes blasphemers. And they have more [of] a sense of civil liberty and religious liberty going hand in hand.

“They want to move away from….” So they rewrite the Confession. Just like that. But, somehow, Wolfe and others are out of line for not wanting to move away from that older model, for wanting to request an exception to the 1788 version as it concerns the civil magistrate.

As I have pointed out elsewhere, DeYoung does not say that American Presbyterians in 1788, as a result of further studies in the Scriptures, realized that the Westminster divines, in 1646, were mistaken about what the Scriptures teach regarding the civil magistrate.¹⁰ He says they changed the Confession because they did not want the sort of civil magistrate the divines believed is taught by Scripture. To my knowledge, DeYoung has yet to acknowledge the significance of such a departure from the Westminsterian tradition, based not upon what the Scriptures teach, as one might expect of Presbyterians, but upon what American Presbyterians in 1788 wanted, or did not want. They didn't want a magistrate who could suppress heresies:

With the exception of the Reformed Presbyterian Covenanters and some Seceders, eighteenth-century Presbyterians found ways of distancing themselves from the Westminster Assembly’s teaching on the coercive powers of the godly magistrate in matters of religion…. In every part of the English-speaking world, Lockean ideas of religious liberty looked increasingly attractive to Presbyterians who feared Anglican hegemony or saw little prospect of becoming the dominant majority.¹¹

“Lockean ideas of religious liberty” were attractive to Presbyterians, who altered their standards to accommodate these attractive ideas, attractive because they could be employed as a check against the power of the perceived threat of an “Anglican hegemony”.

That was in 1788. By the late 19th century, American Presbyterians found ways of distancing themselves from the Westminster Assembly’s teaching not only on the coercive powers of the godly magistrate in matters of religion, but on doctrines such as the inerrancy of Scripture, the deity of Christ, his virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement for sin, his bodily resurrection physical return to Earth, doctrines formerly thought to be essential and necessary. By 1935, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, having found other, newer ideas attractive, was an apostate church, and it defrocked J. Gresham Machen for resisting those attractive ideas.

We can at least praise American Presbyterians in the 18th century for taking time actually to change the Confession: American Presbyterians in the 20th century simply ignored it.

In a follow-up article, DeYoung writes:

The Westminster divines could not envision a land where every church and every denomination was free to determine its own system and government. American Presbyterians, by contrast, made it a cornerstone of their ecclesiastical identity that the magistrate had no business getting involved in the church’s business.

This raises the question: Did the divines, in 1646, present the teaching of the Scriptures on the civil magistrate, based on exegesis? Or did they present a view of the civil magistrate to which they were constrained due to their lack of vision? Put in simpler terms: Were the divines in 1646 engaging in exegesis or eisegesis? These are relevant questions: according to DeYoung, the American Presbyterians in 1788 substituted their vision for that of the divines in 1646. That is not much of a commendation. And it also means that the scholars in both 1646 and in 1788, on the subject of the civil magistrate, both engaged not in exegesis, but in eisegesis, reading their historical circumstances into and then back out of the text. If we don’t think long and deeply about it we will miss the fact that we are being asked to believe that men who spent over three years, studying, writing, praying, and drafting what were intended to be the doctrinal standards of the Reformation in the United Kingdom gave short, uncritical shrift to the doctrine of the civil magistrate.

Sure. Why not? Baptists think the divines did the same thing on the doctrine of baptism.

CN may be mistaken about a lot of things; but if the standards can be changed to bring them into conformity with a change in vision from 1646 to 1788, then they can be changed to bring them into conformity with yet another vision and other attractive ideas. They can be changed to bring them into conformity with the standards as they stood in 1646; and since the 1646 standards are so objectionable, then the proper way to go about this, especially if Christian nationalists are to be treated as they are, is to demonstrate — exegetically — that the divines in 1646 were wrong and therefore deserving of the same treatment that contemporary Christian nationalists receive for believing the same things as the Westminster divines. I would like to see that.

Part two, next week.

1. To help you as you read, read ~CN as “not CN”.

2. Now, admittedly, some might do, but the intellectual vanguard (if you will) have a more sober grasp.

3. In the previous edition of this article, the three Christian nationalisms were: (i) the Highbrow Wolfean (HW), (ii) the Folk Evangelicals (FE), who speak vaguely of taking this country back, and (iii) the (barely Christian) Charismatic/Megachurch/Dominionists (CMD). With the exception of the Highbrow Wolfeans, these groups also fit well within the understanding of a Christian nation held by Justice Brewer.

4. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism, 9. As Wolfe explains, a nation is not simply a collection of people; a nation is a people, united by a body of shared loves which form a nation’s way of life, some universal (e.g., love of family), others particular to each nation (e.g., culture, language, shared national struggles and achievements).

5. This (that is, question iv) is where Wolfe has run into problems. In interviews he is badgered about matters which are constitutional in nature, involving questions his book does not address except, in some instances, indirectly. He has to point out that such answers are beyond the scope of the book, which is a book on political theory, not praxis, a distinction that not many of his harshest critics seem to grasp.

6. And it’s not the first time this tactic has been employed. In the previous version of his article, he writes:

[The Highbrow Wolfeans’] “no enemies to the right” mantra (inherited from Schmitt, a Third Reich thinker) may make quitting the most unsavory elements in their orbit impossible.

Right. Because only a Nazi would think that political allies should be presumed to be “friendlies” and not unnecessarily alienated. Du Mez, French, Moore, Vischer & Associates would be so proud.

7. See R. R. Reno, Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West, 1-31. Reno argues that after the devastation of World War II, a broad agreement emerged to weaken and dissolve loyalties to nation, faith, and family (i.e., “strong gods”), in favor of “open” societies such as Karl Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies) and others desired, as well as a rejection of dogma (a rejection required by “open” societies). He further argues that this consensus, which was initially driven by a desire to prevent future, devastating conflicts, has itself hardened into a set of dogmatic beliefs, and embraced by both political sides. It is true that talk of a post-war consensus is all the rage today, and my own reference may seem to be hopping on the band wagon. In fact, however, for many, Reno has given a name to, and an accessible explanation of, phenomena that many have intuited, but have been unable to name. The first person to come close, in my experience, is Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug), who began writing on many of the same themes in 2007, introducing what he referred to as The Cathedral, in An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives (2008), specifically Chapter Four:

The post-1945 mainstream synopsis is important enough to be a proper noun. Let’s call it the Synopsis. Let’s also give the set of institutions that produce and propagate the Synopsis—mainstream academia, journalism and education—a name. Let’s call them the Cathedral.

Reno is easier to read, and is much more concise.

8. I have discussed R. Scott Clark’s appearance on the Babylon Bee, here.

9. See “A Tale of Two Texts” (here) and “Does the American Revision of the Westminster Confession Contradict the Original Version on the Doctrine of the Civil Magistrate?” (here).

10. Strictly speaking we should normally refer to 1647, which is when the standards, with proof texts, were adopted. But most of my attention here is to the actual work of the assembly, which was completed in 1646. To avoid switching back and forth by referring in one instance to 1646 and to 1647 in another, I will simply stick with 1646.

11. John Coffey, “Between Reformation and Enlightenment: Presbyterian Clergy, Religious Liberty and Intellectual Change,” in Insular Christianity: Alternative Models of the Church in Britain and Ireland, c.1570–1700, eds. Robert Armstrong and Tadhg Ó Hannracháin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), 266.