Gesture Without Motion: Defending the Weak Gods -- II

PART TWO

I see a world of open borders, open trade and…open minds; a world that celebrates the common heritage that belongs to all the world’s people, taking pride not just in hometown or homeland but in humanity itself…. This is…why the present aggression in the Gulf is a menace not only to one region’s security but to the entire world’s vision of our future. It threatens to turn the dream of a new international order into a grim nightmare of anarchy in which the law of the jungle supplants the law of nations.¹

Resuming where I left off in part one:

III

Why are ~CN arguments so weak? In all fairness, they are not: it is difficult to demonstrate a negative. Consider “The Great Debate”.

Resolved: that God exists.

The denial of the proposition is that, God does not exist, which, strictly, would impose an obligation to prove that some being we shall for purposes of argument refer to as God, does not exist.

Presuming that the theist bears the burden of proof, many atheists claim that their best argument for the non-existence of God is that the theistic case has not been successfully proven. The atheist is therefore justified in denying the existence of God. God does not exist because theistic arguments fail.

The ~CN arguments suffer a similar problem. In the end, all they really do is argue that CN arguments fail to make the case. But they really don’t do even that: Christian nationalists make very few, if any, of the arguments that their opponents refute. And the one man (namely, Kevin DeYoung) who consistently comes the closest to demonstrating the failure of CN arguments only ends up giving the store away by claiming the Confession was deliberately altered to suit the desires of the men who altered it. When you are arguing that your opponents are out of accord with the standards, asserting that the standards were deliberately altered is not a winning move. Even were that not the case, the Confession, as amended in 1788, does not rule out CN per se; it merely restricts the sorts of CN there can be. More important, however, is the relative absence of attempts to refute the affirmative CN arguments, which in essence come to this:

The gospel must be proclaimed and the Scriptures taught, believed and obeyed in such a way that it can legitimately be said that the nations have been taught to observe all that Christ has commanded and have been baptized into Him, (as Israel was baptized into Moses).

And the chief reason for that relative absence is “Americanism” — the acceptance, by ~CN, of the fact that religious beliefs must be held and expressed within the bounds imposed by the Constitution. Refusal to do that, is the greatest sin perpetrated by CN. Another way of putting that: the CN are no longer interested in that bit of historical and legal fiction called the American Settlement, which, strictly speaking, did not exist until the middle of the 20th century. And here is one major point on which I agree with them: what we call the American Settlement should more accurately be called the post-War Settlement, imposed upon the US not by state legislatures, or by Congress, but by the Supreme Court, beginning in 1947 with Arch R. Everson v. Board of Education of the Township of Ewing, et al (330 U.S. 1).

I raised the matter of atheism because it is relevant to point out that despite its weaknesses, both in arguing for a negative, as well as being the minority view in world history, it has ruled the formerly Christian west in the guise of “religious neutrality”, as supposedly intended by The Founders. The fact is, non-theistic, religious, secularism is propped up by the managerial class (our governmental, educational and cultural institutions): its utility as a weapon against the strong gods makes it a priceless ally. Secularism proposes no values, no causes, no relationships, no affinity groups worth fighting a war over — or protecting any borders over. In the same way that ancient ruling classes employed theistic religions (mono- or poly-theistic) to control the masses, so do contemporary ruling classes use godless religions (including Marxism and Fascism) for the same purposes.² Atheism (precisely, virtual atheism, advertised as religious neutrality) serves the interests of the PWC, and defends the weak gods.

Similarly for ~CN arguments. They are indeed negative arguments, but their purpose (or unintended results), like our official secularism, is to preserve the PWC and to protect the weak gods. No doubt ~CN are sincere; I am not accusing DeYoung — or anyone else — of dishonesty. They are sincerely defending what they call and believe to be “the American settlement”. But for all practical purposes, intentional or not, they are regime theologians, serving the interests of the weak gods.

All of this, on my view, has been the true weakness of ~CN arguments: they are all arguments for the weak gods, the open society, of which CN are the arch enemies. Just like their secular (or non-Christian) counterparts, they serve to prop up a system that everyone knows is crumbling, requiring ever more force to maintain. The “strong gods” as Reno calls them, are returning.³ So far, all of the ~CN arguments inure to the benefit of the weak gods, who, despite whatever settlement we have (supposedly) lived under since the founding, are enemies of Christ. And it is just because those arguments against CN defend the weak gods, that they do not actually respond to CN arguments: “Muh constitution” is not a rejoinder to “The successful preaching, and embrace, of the gospel by significant majorities of nations’ populations, will result in a plurality of nations, pursuing, in accordance with their forms of government, ‘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’.”

Thus far, all arguments against Christian nationalism are in essence summed up by Larry Arnn in his conversation with Kevin DeYoung: a Christian nation is impossible because Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world — very convenient for the weak gods. When that is your argument, you have no rejoinder to any actual argument being positioned by Christian nationalists. And that already-weak argument is worsened when you present as supporting argumentation an admission that your confessional standards were deliberately altered, not as a result of further study and reflection on the Scriptures, but because the men who altered them did not want what the original text required because — and this is key — they would not be in the majority of the new nation. Because then you have raised the question: Would they have felt differently if they had any reasonable expectation of being the majority?

IV

At base, just about all of the arguments positioned against CN are in fact arguments in support of the PWC (which includes the so-called American settlement). Very few critiques of Christian nationalism fail to mention the supposed threats to the American way (which should actually be called the American way of proclaiming, promoting, and protecting the New World Order, a.k.a the PWC). All one really needs to do is point out the fact that it is contra-American and the job is done. That, I have come to believe, is the real purpose of most ~CN arguments, to defend the myth of the American Settlement, itself a creation of the PWC, and which did not exist until 1962 with the SCOTUS decision, Engel v Vitale, (but began developing in 1947 with the decision in Everson v Board of Education).

There is just one small problem with the American Settlement: it is not an invention of the founders; it is not really reflected in the Constitution of 1789. The Constitution did prohibit Congress from establishing a federal state religion; but it did not prohibit the states from doing so. (And if you don’t understand how the Constitution allows states to do things that the federal government cannot do, then you do not understand federalism as it was.) No surprise then that, at the founding, several of the original thirteen states had established, or otherwise official, religions. The “American Settlement” that we know today, is not a creation of the founders, and is not the result of an amendment to the US Constitution.

This decision to impose religious neutrality on the states was not merely legal. It was a response to the cultural and geopolitical context of the post-WWII era, serving at least three (but certainly more) strategic and philosophical goals, not in any particular order of importance. The first of these goals is civic unity and pluralism. The United States were becoming increasingly diverse, especially in the growth of Roman Catholic and Jewish populations, and the former soft-established Anglo-Protestantism was viewed as divisive and exclusionary. It is no surprise that this era witnesses the entry into political discourse of the concept of a “Judeo-Christian” ethic. It should come as no surprise now that reference is make less and less to “Judeo-Christian” but rather, more and more to “the Abrahamic faiths” or to “Abrahamism” — and for the same reasons, the same reasons why we must acknowledge Islam as a religion of peace, why we must not discuss Islamic military expansion without mentioning the (morally equivalent) crusades, why Islamic terrorism must always be characterized as a hijacking of a beautiful religion by extremists, why in more and more places in the western (formerly Christian) world criticizing Islam may be punished by law. The goals of civic unity and pluralism require not only that no religion is superior, but also that no religion is inferior.

The neutrality imposed on the federal government by the explicit text of the Constitution needed to be applied against the states as well to facilitate the integration of these groups. The second of these goals was to advance American ideals on the global stage. After the defeat of the fascist regimes in WWII, the U.S. were engaged in the Cold War, and the Union was promoting itself as the global leader in liberal democracy and religious freedom, as a sharp contrast both to fascism and to the Soviet Union’s state atheism. Allowing state-sponsored religious practices (especially those favoring one Christian tradition, or even any single religious tradition at all) would undercut the advertising campaign of America as the world’s leader in universal liberty and non-coercion. Pursuant to both of those goals, the third goal was to prevent the coercion of religious minorities. To that end, the justices who supported incorporation, such as Hugo Black, were keen to prevent even minor, indirect forms of state-sanctioned religious coercion. By making the wall of separation “high and impregnable” at every level of government, they sought to protect religious minorities from conforming to a majority’s expectations, a concern that ultimately resulted in the decision in Engel v. Vitale (1962), banning school prayer. So, while the Establishment Clause itself was an 18th-century principle, and applicable only to the federal government,⁴ its aggressive application to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment in the mid-20th century was a deliberate instrumentalizing of the amendment, serving the political, social, and ideological goals of the post-WWII American consensus.⁵

Concluding Thoughts

There is some debate about whether the PWC is still operative. Some see the neo-liberal revolutions of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as marking the end of the PWC. Others see the rise of post-liberalism further solidifying the end of the PWC. I believe the PWC is still very much alive (though battered in the last ten years or so) and struggling to stay that way. And if the purpose of a system is what it actually does, then, at least occasionally, the purpose of an argument is what it actually supports, not what it purports to refute. After almost ten years of listening to anti-Christian nationalist arguments, I can think of none that do not, in some way or other, serve the interests of the post-war consensus, especially in the PWC’s loathing for “rogue” (or great) nations: one thing that Christian and non-Christian critics of Christian nationalism have in common is the PWC’s resistance to strong nationalism. In other words, it’s the nationalism, not the Christian, that is the real problem.⁶

Having said that, I am not accusing anyone of lacking integrity. It is not as tight as it once was, but there is a connection between Christianity and the United States. Regardless the number of official state churches or denominations, the Union was the creation of a largely Christian population. In a sense, defending “Americanism” is a defense of Christianity, and why “Un-American” is just about heresy. But the “Americanism” of our experience is a creation of the PWC. That is what is being defended, wittingly or not. I do not believe the men and women proffering arguments against Christian nationalism which have the effect of defending and propping up the PWC do so dishonestly. The PWC is the reality in which just about everyone alive today grew up. It is our reality, of which we are inclined to think, “T’was always thus and always thus should be.”

There is a line from the movie The Truman Show that illustrates this. The character, Christophe, answering the question, why has Truman never come close to discovering the true nature of his world, replies:

We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented. It’s as simple as that.

It truly is as simple as that. Critics of Christian nationalism are defending the world — the post-WWII world — they grew up in, a world no one really asked for, a world — a cosmos, really — crafted by humans, a cosmos that is crumbling, eaten up by The Nothing. I don’t fault them for that. So did I. But that world was propped up by force and political intrigue and it is crumbling; and in the scramble to keep propping it up, the managerial class are resorting to ever more authoritarian measures, and the application of force, including, I believe it can be justly argued, two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, a man whose candidacy bothered no one until he uttered the words, “Drain the swamp.” Oh yeah, and, “America first,” and, guaranteed to make PWC types wet themselves, “Make America Great Again.” That is when all the tired PWC defeaters came out, the preemptive stigmatizing and preset moral panics: racism, white supremacy, fascism, authoritarianism, et cetera, ad nauseam.⁷ Nations? Yes. Great nations? No. That is not conducive to a “partnership of nations.” PWC proponents don’t like great nations; great nations start and prosecute great wars. PWC advocates prefer equal, managed nations.⁸ Great nations must be given the Tarquinius Superbus treatment.⁹ And the fact is, I have observed that, eventually, all of the anti-Christian nationalist arguments eventually employ the very same defeaters, preemptive stigmatizing, and moral panics and other tactics of PWC managers — even those arguments proffered by CN’s Christian critics.

On my view, this is a sign that co-option of Christians by managerial elites is as alive and thriving today as it was when the Moral Majority was founded.¹⁰ That’s not good.

And with that, I am out.

1. George H. W. Bush, “Address to the United Nations,” 25 September 1989, emphases added. The “present aggression in the Gulf” refers to the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, sparking The Gulf War.

2. This doesn’t mean that the ruling classes no longer use monotheistic religions for control. It is no coincidence that the left’s monotheistic regime theologians push for the same leftist policies as the Marxian and fascistic regime theologians.

3. See R. R. Reno, Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West, 1-31.

4. “The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States for themselves, for their own government, and not for the government of the individual States. Each State established a constitution for itself, and in that constitution provided such limitations and restrictions on the powers of its particular government as its judgment dictated. The people of the United States framed such a government for the United States as they supposed best adapted to their situation and best calculated to promote their interests. The powers they conferred on this government were to be exercised by itself, and the limitations on power, if expressed in general terms, are naturally, and we think necessarily, applicable to the government created by the instrument. They are limitations of power granted in the instrument itself, not of distinct governments framed by different persons and for different purposes.” Barron v Baltimore (32 U.S. 243 [1833]), holding, among other things, that the Bill of Rights limited the federal government, not the states. Note: the 14th Amendment, (supposedly, and selectively) incorporating the Bill of Rights and applying them to the states, means that Barron is no longer valid law.

5. In many respects, this process was already in motion long before: the incorporation of the Bill of Rights against the states via the 14th Amendment effectively resulted in the reduction of the states to virtual autonomous communities. Again, if the purpose of a system is what it does, then the purpose of the Civil War, from the Republican perspective, was to reduce the states to mere autonomous communities (in a unitary republic); and the Confederacy’s purpose was to preserve the existence of the states as states (in a federal republic).

6. To the extent that a Christian nation is worse, it is likely worse because, as a nation seeking its collective earthly and heavenly good, it would not be inclined to submit its pursuit of those goods to the judgment of an international body, such as the United Nations, which does not recognize the authority of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.

7. It has been instructive to see the same preemptive stigmatizing hurled at Japan’s new prime minister. The goals of the PWC are so reasonable that resistance to those goals must be irrational and reactionary: racism, ethnic supremacy, fascism, and authoritarianism. There are no rational objections to the PWC.

8. Refer back to the passage from Bush's UN address, and note his use of the word anarchy.

9. Tarquinius Superbus was the last legendary king of Rome. He was visited by his son, Sextus, seeking advice on how to secure power in the town of Gabii. Instead of answering, Superbus went out to his garden and used a stick to strike off the heads of the tallest plants. The lesson understood by Sextus was this: in order to maintain power, a ruler must eliminate the most prominent and powerful citizens who might challenge him. Whether this story is true or not, it nicely illustrates a tyrant’s strategy to maintain power by preventing anyone from rising above the general populace. On the world stage, the principle is applied to nations. There must be no great nations, no nation putting itself first.

10. This is not an off-the-cuff remark. I was 14 years old when the Moral Majority was founded. As I was growing up, I occasionally wondered if evangelical churches were disciplining members for not being sufficiently oikophilic. We may not need to wonder if evangelical churches will discipline members for not being sufficiently oikophobic. When I was in my teens, claims were that right-leaning evangelicals were an aberration that had been co-opted by the Republican Party as part of its anti-communist platform, but that left-leaning evangelicals represented the historic, mainstream of Christianity. I largely agree, but believe it is clear that left-leaning evangelicals have been co-opted by the Democrat party. In both cases, each Party has its own “expression” of PWC goals, and pursues those goals almost in cooperation with each other. This is no better demonstrated than by the work of the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, both of which are “core institutes” of the National Endowment for Democracy. The boards of directors for the IRI and the NDI comprise a virtual ”Who’s Who?” of their respective parties. Separation of church and state notwithstanding, Christianity is still a powerful force in American politics; therefore both of these institutes have practical, vested interests in harnessing and directing that power in pursuit of their goals.