The Case for Christian Nationalism
Epilogue: Now What? | IV. Dominion (Part 1)
Previously:
The chief end of men is not protecting women… But the man is given the mission from God and the woman is made his helper, and his mission is not directed at the woman but outside himself - to the world. The woman is an object of protection because she is integral to the mission, not because she is the mission or the chief agent of that mission.1
The chief end of men is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.2 This does not depend on Wolfe’s worldly, self-centered definition of taking dominion, to “inscribe one’s will into a piece of dirt, to stand at its boundaries and with resolve say mine to both fellow man and the world.”3 Peter emphatically instructs us, “But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name” (1 Peter 4:15-16). Wolfe would have us banish proselytizers of false religion and usurp their property, and even potentially kill them; he would have us upend our God ordained liberal democracy by waging violent religious revolution to instate a theocratic monarchy. The one thing he does not entreat us to do is peaceably suffer as Christians.
Wolfe devotes the next three subsections to promoting a “rugged austerity” among Christian nationalists, through homesteading and similar practices. He complains that others deride this as “LARPing, or live action role playing - that one’s anti-modernity is superficial, imaginary, and made possible by modernity itself.”4 Learning skills such as gardening and tending livestock, canning your own goods, and maintaining a home without full reliance on modern consumerist infrastructure is commendable. But, much like the idolatry of “manliness” or the worship of classical art and architecture, it is strange to frame homesteading as part of a Christian Nationalist aesthetic. When one goes beyond learning and adopting new activities and perspectives, and declares them markers of self-identification, he is trying on identities, like a teenager deciding he is now a “metal head” or “goth”. That is what makes it LARPing.
If you are a white, heterosexual, cis-gendered male, then the world will not offer you any favors. Indeed, your career advancement depends on sacrificing your self-respect by praising and pandering to your inferiors who rule over you.5
Again, by his resume, Wolfe does not have first-hand experience in the day-to-day life of white-collar corporate work. There has most certainly been a sharp increase in the broadcasting of left-wing politics in the workplace, and to counter such official company opinions will not endear you to management and will most likely cost you professionally, but active “praising and pandering” is only required in the most malignantly political companies that conservative Christians would likely not choose to work at in the first place. Most “socially conscious” companies are not at all like this, and “white, heterosexual, cis-gendered male” Christians currently do just fine in them, as long as they are nice people who do good work. What one cannot do is be a vocally belligerent patriarchist lamenting the psycho-sexual ethno-masochism of “Western Man” inside the modern American office. This is not a new development; it has not been acceptable for decades. After all, what manager would put up with a subordinate who considers him an inferior only placed in his position as a “diversity hire”?
Next:
Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 459.
The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms: As Adopted by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church : With Proof Texts (Lawrenceville, Ga.: Christian Education & Publications Committee of the Presbyterian Church in America, 2007), WSC Q. 1.
Stephen Wolfe, 462.
Ibid., 460-463.
Ibid., 464.