The Case for Christian Nationalism

9. Liberty of Conscience | IV. Specific Groups

Previously:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

This section applies my discussion of principle and prudence to specific groups, namely, heretics, non-Christians, dissenting Christians, and conforming Christians.¹

As he gets to brass tacks, what Wolfe describes as “prudence” will likely not seem as such to most Western Christians. He advocates for a range of actions, from the “active suppression” of “fellow Christians” who dissent from the doctrine of the state-church, to the execution of recalcitrant “arch-heretics” and proselytizers of false religion. The dryness of his description of sin and punishment gives this section a clinical air, but the actual application of his “principle” would be bloody atrocity. I will not attempt to directly argue what is or is not heresy, nor will I argue what is or is not “the Reformed tradition”. Instead, I will focus on the practical outcomes of using state-violence to suppress religious dissent in the 21st century West. It will become quickly clear that such actions would almost assuredly result in multiple Second Table violations, meaning that the revolutionary movement, its hypothetical nation, and its leaders would be guilty of condemnable sin themselves.

Arch-heretics are publicly persistent in their damnable error and actively seek to convince others of this error to subvert the established church, to denounce its ministers, or to instigate rebellion against magistrates. For this reasons [sic], they can be justly put to death…

This is not to say that capital punishment is the necessary, sole or desired punishment. Banishment and long-term imprisonment may suffice as well…

Those who do not profess Christianity and yet actively proselytize their non-Christian religion or belief system or actively seek to refute the Christian religion are subject to the same principles outlined above.²

The lowest category of punishment would be meted out to those whom he calls “conforming Christians” who commit “sins of commission and sins of omission”, including punishing those who do not attend church.³ He again plays a semantics game with civil punishment, by writing, “In other words, the magistrate punishes for the violation not of failing to worship itself but because the failure to attend violates a fundamental norm of Christian civil community.” It is hard to believe that such regulations would allow for non-state-sanctioned forms of Christianity to function in peace within such a nation. For example, what would happen to Catholics, who profess to be Christian but who would refuse to attend a state-sanctioned church?

One out of every five Americans identifies as Catholic, over fifty times the amount that belong to the Presbyterian Church in America, Wolfe’s denomination.⁴ Let us temporarily put aside the ridiculous notion that an orthodox, “pan-Protestant” order in the West can be achieved, above the objections and resistance of the overwhelming, non-Protestant majority. Mississippi, the state with the lowest percentage of Catholics (4%), still has roughly a quarter of a million practitioners. There is nowhere in the modern United States where Wolfe and his compatriots could bring about his preferred government without having to violently suppress Catholics. As shown with the 1838 Mormon war in Missouri, it is highly unlikely that such an embedded population would peacefully deport themselves. The same can be said of Pentecostals, who outnumber all orthodox Presbyterians by over four to one. Many Charismatics still claim someone is not truly saved until they demonstrate the gift of tongues, something that would likely constitute a heresy in Wolfe’s nation.

Perhaps he would concede this point, and allow Catholics and Charismatics to peacefully practice their religion, as long as they did not evangelize. What of Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses who would refuse a Sunday Sabbath? What of those same Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as Mormons, who would likely refuse to cease their evangelization efforts and would qualify as arch-heretics, the latter also as active proselytizers of non-Christian religion? What would Wolfe do to an entire population of recalcitrant non-Christians? Would he kick them off their land and mass banish them (a violation of the Eighth Commandment)? What if they refused? Would he send the “soldiers of Christ” to violently remove them (a violation of the Sixth Commandment)? He would likely reject these questions as hyperbolic, pointing to his statement on the “status of non-Christians”, where he writes, “Since civil society is a human institution, it must guarantee equal protection and due process with regard to human things with all people. That is, it must guarantee justice and secure natural rights.”⁵ But this is a negated principle in a nation where to publicly disagree with the state religion is to “subvert the established church” and be marked for civil punishment. In order to guarantee religious minorities’ natural rights, Wolfe’s nation would need to do the near-impossible and be the very first in human history to explicitly create an underclass of conscience that is not actively oppressed by the in-group. This is especially unlikely, considering he immediately contradicts his guarantee of natural rights by stating that “non-Christians are more limited in [exercising rights] due to their rejection of Christianity.”⁶

There is simply no way that such a government could come into being, in the 21st century, without immense atrocity being committed. Even in the most Christianized areas of the West, orthodox Protestant Christians are in the minority, before one even stratifies for those who would sign on to Wolfe’s vision. Hypothetically speaking, if the United States military was not a factor (a failed state scenario), even to form a micro-nation, he and his compatriots would need to violently expel a significant portion of any locale’s population - likely the majority, for what city in the modern West has a majority population interested in instating a state-church, let alone an orthodox Presbyterian one? Yet he will end the book with a call to action to organize Christian Nationalist movements on the local level. I believe this impracticality makes his philosophy more dangerous, because, when combined with his call for revolution, those who sign on will become increasingly interested in guerrilla activities when their low numbers result in little to no conventional political progress. That they believe unrepentant pagans deserve execution will only exacerbate the problem.

Next:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 386.

2. Ibid., 391, 392.

3. Ibid., 395-396.

4. “Religious Landscape Study,” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project (blog), accessed March 17, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/.

5. Ibid., 392.

6. Ibid., 392.