Sacred Cows
When I first went public with my work proving that Stephen Wolfe’s “Christian” political theory was laundered secular authoritarianism and ethno-nationalism, I was operating under the assumption that the conservative Christian media industry—particularly of the Reformed persuasion—conducted itself in a generally altruistic fashion. My work was well received by a few personalities of the Reformed Baptist persuasion, as well as some Presbyterians who had already set themselves up as foils to the figurehead of the book’s publisher, Doug Wilson. Privately, other Reformed personalities who knew Wolfe, and who had first hand experience with his sentiments, reached out to express some support.
But other personalities, especially those who maintained openly friendly ties with Wilson and his cohort, took another angle. They somehow balked at the notion that a book lauding “a common volksgeist” tied together by “people and place”1, something Wolfe has since explicitly admitted is equivalent to the Nazi concept of Blood and Soil2 , could be ethno-nationalist. One academic, who has since been the target of ethic-based slurs from Christian Nationalists, claimed I was inventing a correlation between Wolfe’s theory and Italian corporatist fascism. In response, I laid out the distinctives of that particular school and where Wolfe advocated for the same things in his book, swapping only “the party” out with “the state church.” He responded by deleting his post. When later on a podcast with Wolfe and others, the academic admitted that he had only skimmed the book, while still defending Wolfe’s theory for what it was and wasn’t.
Going public with an X account originally dedicated to writing about Christian Nationalism, and putting my neck on the line to make some pretty bold claims about the movement, I began to pay even closer attention to the social media activity of its players. I saw how a Christian Nationalist in good favor with many mainstream Reformed personalities was openly promoting antisemitic and neo-Nazi memes and tropes, and decided to write about it. In response, some of those mainstream personalities came to his defense, using derision towards me and others as a weapon. I was shocked. One of them was someone whom I used as a resource for my personal theological study. I initially gave these men the benefit of the doubt, and even apologized to them for my initial shocked response of “Why are you defending these people?!” I soon learned their behavior was a feature and not a bug.
As my time on X continued, one by one, I watched Christian media personalities who were friendly with me defend abhorrent behavior from people within their own economic circles, and despicably disparage the people who rightly chronicled the abhorrent behavior. I learned that politics was the true currency of Christian media. My former theological resource, whom I previously apologized to, turned out to be one of the most consistently derisive towards dissent, calling people all manner of names. He even once told someone who was clearly mentally unwell, and who had called Charles Spurgeon a heretic, that they had the “clown comment of the day” accompanying it with a picture of a demonic clown. Even people who had been friendly with me, and had privately shown support for my book, engaged in utterly unchristian belittlement of anyone they deemed “godless liberals,” which conspicuously included any conservative Christian who questioned the behavior of their tribe.
What has been interesting to witness, as this behavior has continued unabated, is how these same personalities now respond to the “Reformed” Christian Nationalist movement fully removing the mask—there has been a months long public battle over whether things as caustic as Holocaust denial and Nazi propaganda should be a feature of the movement. Lines are being drawn, and even Wilson, who had previously made a habit of leveraging his “serrated edge” to deride those of us who pointed out that there were white-nationalists in his midst, has been forced to admit the truth. Men who, only months ago, said we were anything from uncharitable to slanderous towards the worst actors are now on the war path against those same people. Personalities who spent much of the last decade warning of how the church was going to be overtaken by Critical Race Theory are now trying to shove a philosophy that explicitly takes its cues from interwar fascist ideologues3 and turn-of-the-century eugenicists4 into the only rubric they know, warning of the threat of a “woke right.”
Yet, there’s one thing that’s been most fascinating to watch, at this moment when those of us who put our reputations on the line to warn of the influx of white-nationalism into Reformed Christianity have been completely vindicated: We continue to receive the same derision, including accusations of being literal demonic liars, for pointing out the malignant behavior shared by the “blue-laser-eyed anons” and the “theobro boomers.” The game hasn’t changed, only the alliances.
Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 139.
Stephen Wolfe on Joel Webbon’s podcast: “There is this thing that is—in a way—emplaced or embodied in the place. And so, of course your ancestry matters. I mean, people call that ‘blood and soil,’ but are you just dumb?”
