The Case for Christian Nationalism

7. The Christian Prince | VI. The King and Kingdom of God (Part 2)

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The Case for Christian Nationalism

A husband does not ordinarily fulfull the duties of his wife, but he procures what is necessary for her to perform those duties, establishes the conditions for her to perform them well, approves her good performance, and corrects her when she performs her duty poorly. (emphasis mine)¹

Wolfe shows his ultra-complimentarian view of marriage, where assessment of performance and spousal correction appears to be a one-way street. He then compares this arrangement to a restaurant owner’s relationship to his chef employee, which is troublesome, on multiple stereotypical levels; Wolfe is providing egalitarians with the type of extreme statement they often use as a biased sample in their arguments. As those who are in a healthy complimentarian marriage can affirm, one of a wife’s greatest values to her husband is correcting him when he’s about to make an error. Strong complimentarian marriages are those of teamwork and mutual respect. When Wolfe’s version of marital hierarchy is applied to the Christian prince’s rapport with the church, we get a clear picture of a temporal kingdom that pays lip-service to Two Kingdoms Theology, but does not actually respect the separation of the kingdoms, in practice. This is made exceedingly clear several paragraphs later:

Lastly, [the prince] has the power to call synods in order to resolve doctrinal conflicts and to moderate the proceedings. following the proceedings, he can confirm or deny their theological judgments; and in confirming them, they become the settled doctrine of the land. But he considers the pastors’ doctrinal articulations as a father might look to his medically trained son for medical advice. He still retains his superiority.²

How is this not the Christian prince acting within the spiritual kingdom? Should not the civil magistrate exist wholly to enforce the doctrine of the church, and have no hand in shaping it? How can someone supposedly relegated to civil enforcement have veto power over theological judgments? The pope considers the cardinals’ “doctrinal articulations”, but holds ultimate power over final decisions in the same way. How does this statement not confirm everything that some of Wolfe’s detractors have said about a “Protestant pope”? He goes on to write that pastors’ decisions may be good in principle but injudicious in execution, and it is therefore the job of civil leaders to determine application³, but this is wholly different from having control over doctrinal decisions. These are absolute standards set apart from how adherence to them will be enforced; Sola Fide (by faith alone), in and of itself, has nothing to do with how someone inside or outside of the church should be rebuked if they argue for justification by works. Wolfe writes that ministers can “cast spiritual judgment, admonish, and even excommunicate” the prince⁴, but how would that be possible when he sets the boundaries of official doctrine? Why would he not veto any doctrinal proposal that could later entrap him? Though he accurately described the concept a few pages back, with this subsection Wolfe has sunk his entire claim that he is promoting a Calvinist view of two separate kingdoms.

National uniformity in sacred ceremonies will certainly contribute to national solidarity. What better way for a people to imagine their Christian community than for all to worship the same way? The question, however, is not whether uniformity is possible, desirable, and ideal. I affirm that it is, and the magistrate ought to strive within the limits of his power to achieve uniformity.⁵

This statement is utterly utopian and totalitarian; Wolfe is not speaking of uniformity of Second Table, societal morals but uniformity of thought. He is speaking of using civil power to shape people’s understanding of “Christian community” and “worship” into a uniform worldview; these are two of the key experiences of and individual’s Christian life, that drive how he engages the world on the most base level. Wolfe claims that the Christian prince cannot force people to uphold this worldview, but what of those who, instead of remaining silent and hidden, openly condemn such measures? We can see the pernicious side of such a top-down civil arrangement by looking at how similar dissent was treated in other authoritarian nations. As Priorelli writes of the Spanish and Italian squadrists, “In a comparative perspective, by monopolising the ideal of the fatherland, the camisas azules [Spanish blue shirts] and the camicie nere [Italian black shirts] conceptualised the image of the anti-national enemy in a very similar way, often dehumanising it for its violence and cowardice” (emphasis mine).⁶ Once the black shirts attained power, they graduated from Antifa-like mob action to utilizing state power in their active suppression of ideological dissent. Similarly, what would happen to anyone who would dare claim that one of the Christian prince’s “sacred ceremonies” was not within the will of God? Would they not be cast into an Emmanuel Goldstein-like mold by a Caesar who believes it his highest duty to center “national solidarity” and “national uniformity” around his personal mediation as an “image of Christ”?

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The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 312.

2. Ibid., 313.

3. Ibid., 314.

4. Ibid., 314.

5. Ibid., 316.

6. Giorgia Priorelli, Italian Fascism and Spanish Falangism in Comparison: Constructing the Nation, Palgrave Studies in Political History (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 48, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46056-3.