The Case for Christian Nationalism

5. The Good of Cultural Christianity | IV. Celebrating Decline

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The Case for Christian Nationalism

Wolfe is very much correct that a “regime-enforced moral ideology” is being forced upon us, especially our children, “as the standard of moral respectability”.¹ There is genuine reason to lament the decline of Second Table morality in the West, and to vociferously advocate against it, regardless of what an increasing majority of our countrymen believe. But, this is very different from the “Bible Belt near-Christianity” Russel Moore referred to in his blog post, and that Wolfe attempts to champion; the social pressures of Southern cultural Christianity have a very dark past, one that even Moore avoided in his post, but which should not be omitted from the discussion. Wolfe should be given some benefit of the doubt here, because he is possibly not familiar with much of the history of the Southern Baptist Convention, or other ecclesial institutions in the South - although he should be, as a Southern Christian. Aspects of this history comport, at least tangentially, with much of what he has promoted in his book.

One of the more commonly known facts of the SBC’s history is that it was founded in 1845 specifically to uphold the institution of slavery² (Presbyterians had a similar schism³). During reconstruction, SBC churches continued to force Black Christians to the back of the church (a direct violation of James 2:1-6) and initially attempted to prevent them from forming their own churches, fearing Northern influence would make them “uppity”. They quickly changed their position, as the majority of members wanted separation, though James Clement Furman, son of the founder of then SBC affiliated Furman University, told the 1866 SBC convention that integration was fine as long as Blacks maintained a lower status within mixed congregations. Several sub-associations began adding “all-white” clauses to their constitutions, at that time.⁴

Virulent anti-Catholicism was rampant in the South well into the 20th century. In 1928 the Missionary Baptist Association passed a resolution that stated, “We recommend that the members of the Churches of this Association, the pastors and the missionaries use their utmost influence as citizens against the political encroachments of the Papacy… And in order to preserve our religious and civil liberties let us preach, pray, teach and work against our common enemy at all times and places.”⁵ In the early 20th century the South had a number of regional newspapers dedicated to anti-Catholicism, and many were edited by active ministers; the most popular anti-Catholic paper, The Menace, published in Aurora, Missouri, had nearly 1.5 million subscribers at its height in 1914.⁶ Arkansan Missionary Baptist pastor, Joseph Addison Scarboro, and his weekly, The Liberator, are a good example of the content of these papers. Regularly accused of using his publication to advocate for mob violence, he promoted such policies as government inspection of all convents, Houses of the Good Shepherd and nunneries if twenty citizens signed a petition, something that was made state law in 1915 and not repealed until 1937; in the October 12, 1913 issue, he wrote, “Preacher, load your gun and go after Romanism. The hunting season is now and the game is plentiful.”⁷ In both the 1928 and 1960 presidential elections, where Catholics Al Smith and John Kennedy were run by the Democratic party, respectively, the SBC, made up mostly of Democrats, took an official stance against voting for Roman Catholics to public office.⁸

Many SBC congregations were openly against desegregation, and some were even voting to remain segregated as late as 1968.⁹ South Carolina’s Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist, non-denominational school whose namesake was a devout segregationist, officially prohibited interracial dating between students until 2000.¹⁰ Clearly, “Bible Belt near-Christianity” has far more implications than the “mild social norms” Wolfe attempts to make it out as.¹¹

Russel Moore left his position within the SBC in 2021 over his disagreement with how allegations of racism and sexual abuse were handled by the organization¹², something I have much agreement with him on. Since then, he has quickly made a name for himself as a foil to theological conservatives, joining an ever-growing group of former conservative Christian thought-leaders now championing “winsome” cultural engagement towards regime-promoted, relative morality. This is especially disconcerting, considering the position he resigned from was the leadership of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s commission responsible for promoting absolute ethics. Still, the 2015 blog post that Wolfe takes issue with is quite different than how it is painted.

That people in the 1940s avoided divorce when, as Moore writes, “the motive wasn’t obedience to Jesus’ command on marriage but instead because they knew that a divorce would marginalize them from their communities,” is dismissed by Wolfe as “the social benefits of cultural Christianity”. Though I think it is more guided by ignorance than maleficence, the implications of this dismissal are that a not too uncommon situation, a woman with a husband who beats her and their children deciding to not speak up or leave the marriage, due to social pressures, was a good thing for society. Wolfe’s portrayal of the spirit of the piece is almost wholly inaccurate. For example, a quote from Moore that is glossed over in the book has a decidedly conservative character:

Secularization in America means that we have fewer incognito atheists. Those who don’t believe can say so - and still find spouses, get jobs, volunteer with the PTA, and even run for office. This is good news because the kind of “Christianity” that is a means to an end - even if that end is “traditional family values” - is what J. Gresham Machen rightly called “liberalism,” and it is an entirely different religion from the apostolic faith handed down by Jesus Christ.¹³

This sentiment of secularization serving as a natural, intermediary separation of wheat from tares (Matthew 13:24-30) is something I have heard from several, very conservative PCA pastors. Moore is also correct in his description of what Machen wrote of cultural Christianity in his exceptional book, Christianity and Liberalism. In his time and place, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) had become little more than a social club, where many of the pastors did not believe the core tenets of the gospel, such as the divinity of Christ (and it has remained this way). This is likely what would happen to congregations under Wolfe’s government too, with even more potential for wrongdoing. How many people, including ministers, would become more interested in maintaining social order than privately working with those who struggle with sin? How many members would become legalistic terrors to their congregation, ready to denounce people who struggle with doubt to both church and state? It is clear that Wolfe glossed over this paragraph, because it derides the exact type of cultural Christianity he wants to enforce. His strawmanning of Moore as someone who “wants a society and government that actively destroy communities like Mayberry”¹⁴, when he was referring to small town, “nosy neighbor”, performative “Christianity” for social status, is a taste of the type of unnecessary and unfair personal attacks that are commonplace on his Twitter account. This accusation is also very leftist in its character, in that it assumes that someone who does not like the proposed solution must not care about the problem (i.e., If you are against universal basic income then you must hate poor people).

But I must ask: How is the loss of cultural Christianity going for you?¹⁵

Considering that the disciple counts it as joy when he meets “trials of various kinds”, knowing that the “testing of [his] faith produces steadfastness” (James 1:2-3), I’m doing just fine, thank you. As shown above, this does not mean that I am happy with the rapid moral devolution of our society, nor will I stop advocating for its reversal, but my joy is not subject to such a reversal (Matthew 6:19-20); and, as Moore described, I have an extended church family of people who genuinely seek Christ, and who are committed to unpretentious life together. Wolfe thinks it egregious that Moore, in his view, believes “the Gospel flourishes when the enemies of God have social power,”¹⁶ but this is perfectly inline with early-church thought. As the 2nd century Christian author, Tertullian, famously wrote in his Apologeticus, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” The stoning of Stephen (Acts 7) served as a watershed moment for the New Testament’s most prolific author, and as the motivation for Christians in Jerusalem to “scatter” and preach the word of God elsewhere (Acts 8:4).

What would Wolfe tell our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan, China, North Korea, and anywhere else where governments physically persecute believers? Should they resign themselves to a life of absolute misery, because they will never know the complete good? There is a saying in the military that, as a fellow veteran, I know Wolfe will understand the full weight of: though he sees his aggressive stance as strong, as a Christian, his position lacks intestinal fortitude, because he does not fully trust in his chain of command. He is unsatisfied with the scriptural position of exile and sojourner; he has outright berated such thought at several points in the book, thus far. Unfortunately for him, that is the state of a Bible-believing Christian in every generation of Christendom, including one of the sources of his appeals to tradition, 16th century Switzerland. Reformer Pierre Viret, in a letter to Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, noted the common, unscriptural proverb among the Swiss and French, “If you act like a sheep, you’ll be eaten by a wolf.” He went on to discuss one of the great paradoxes of Christian life in any era:

This is why He said to His disciples: “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves” (Matthew 10:16). He Himself is the Good Shepherd who gives His life for His sheep (John 10:11). But here it doesn’t seem like He’s performing the office of a good shepherd. Instead, it looks like He’s doing the complete opposite when He sends His sheep among the wolves instead of guarding and defending them. For, if it’s contrary to the office of a good shepherd to abandon his sheep to the wolves, it’s much worse for him to send them to the wolves. For, according to human reason, this is exactly the same as delivering them into their paws and giving them up as a prey.

But God forbid that we should consider Jesus Christ as such a shepherd, for He bears such affection for His sheep that He didn’t spare His own life for them. And He guards them in such good keeping that, just as He Himself promised and testified, not a single one of them can be snatched from His hands by any power at all, either human or demonic…

But when He said, “Behold, I send you,” we can be even more assured that, since it is He Himself who sends them, He sends them in such a way that He always maintains their care and is always right beside them and always guards and protects them in the midst of the cruelest and fiercest wolves in the world. Therefore by this He shows by effect what kind of Shepherd He is and what power and strength He possesses, since by it He works in such a way that the sheep under His protection conquer and overcome the wolves in the end.¹⁷

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The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 224.

2. “Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,” SBTS, https://www.sbts.edu/southern-project/.

3. Elwyn A. Smith, “The Role of the South in the Presbyterian Schism of 1837–38,” Church History 29, no. 1 (1960): 44–63, https://doi.org/10.2307/3161616.

4. John W. Storey, “Southern Baptists and the Racial Controversy in the Churches and Schools During Reconstruction,” The Mississippi Quarterly 31, no. 2 (1978): 211–28.

5. Kenneth C. Barnes, Anti-Catholicism in Arkansas: How Politicians, the Press, the Klan, and Religious Leaders Imagined an Enemy, 1910-1960 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2016), 166.

6. Ibid., 69.

Michael Williams, Shadow of the Pope (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1932), 29, 64–65, 84–85; Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade,1800-1860, First Paperback (Chicago, Illinois: Quadrangle Books, 1964), 117.

7. Kenneth C. Barnes, 18, 20, 54, 67.

8. Ibid., 182.

Michael Williams, 195.

9. “Love the Sinner,” The Economist, October 22, 2015, https://www.economist.com/united-states/2015/10/22/love-the-sinner.

10. “Bob Jones University Apologizes for Its Racist Past,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Winter 2008/2009, https://www.jbhe.com/news_views/62_bobjones.html.

11. Stephen Wolfe, 225.

12. Bob Smietana, “Russell Moore, Baptist Ethicist and Trump Critic, to Leave ERLC for Christianity Today,” Religion News Service (blog), May 19, 2021, https://religionnews.com/2021/05/18/russell-moore-baptist-ethicist-and-trump-critic-to-leave-erlc-for-christianity-today/.

13. Russell Moore, “Is Christianity Dying?,” Russell Moore, May 12, 2015, https://www.russellmoore.com/2015/05/12/is-christianity-dying/.

14. Stephen Wolfe, 226.

15. Ibid., 227.

16. Ibid., 227.

17. Peirre Viret, When to Disobey, ed. Rebekah Sheats and Scott T. Brown, 1st edition (Church and Family Life, 2021), 126, 128-129.