The Case for Christian Nationalism

Epilogue: Now What? | I. The New America (Part 1)

Previously:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

The Christian nationalist project is not “conservative.” Post-WWII conservatism is inadequate for our situation. I have no interest in conserving the liberalism of the 1980s or 1990s or the militaristic adventure-imperialism of the “compassionate” conservatives of the 2000s… [O]ur institutions are not only captured by the left; they have become fundamentally oriented against us. The conservative cannot fathom this. He is an institution man, the sort who lined up against Donald Trump to “protect the institutions.”¹

I must agree with Wolfe about the “adventure-imperialism” of George W. Bush and his associates - how can I not, having been sent halfway around the world to kill people over a lie about weapons of mass destruction? Our institutions most certainly are captured by a bureaucracy that overwhelmingly leans left, and the organs of the state are increasingly turned against those who would question its authority; one need only look at how the vaccine-hesitant were treated in 2021 to see how far the state is willing to go to enforce compliance. But Wolfe’s “conservative” is not the average self-identifying American conservative, it is the small number of beltway insiders and their champions in legacy media who do not want to rock the boat of the military-industrial complex, for fear of losing meal-tickets, perks, and kickbacks. The average center-right American is as fed up with Washington as Wolfe is, but painting the entirety of the center-right as tools of the state is a common, politically expedient talking point of authoritarian rightists. Primo de Rivera who, like Wolfe, sought to replace his dysfunctional liberal democratic government with an authoritarian state, also made the regime conservative his ideological scapegoat:

How often have you heard men of the Right say: “We live in a new age, we must set up a strong state, we must harmonize capital and labor, we have to seek a corporative form of existence? I assure you that none of all that means a thing, it is all mere windbaggery… So that when they talk of harmonizing capital and labor, what is meant is to go on nourishing an insignificant privileged minority upon the exertions of all…²

The truth is that, despite the self-serving machinations of the political class, the day-to-day life of most Americans is very much worth conserving; we still have our life, liberty, and property. We are still allowed to worship God as we please and publicly associate with whomever we want. We are free to choose our education and professions. Can our Christian brothers and sisters in nations like China and Iran say the same? We face serious societal challenges, but the notion that the average American is under a dire threat that requires the abandonment of “conservatism” for radical action is simply not true. We still very much have recourse within the constitutional system, and there is no Christian justification for abandoning that approach until it has been fully cut off.

Thus, we are past the time of “conservative principles.” People conserve what they know and love. How can you love institutions that hate you? Why would you want to “conserve” them? The solution is renewal, not conservation. What we need is the instauratio magna, the Great Renewal.³

The word renewal is a highly inaccurate euphemism, because what Wolfe actually advocates for is the violent overthrow of these institutions, a secession from the United States, and the instantiation of a new nation governed by theocratic Caesarism. Those who would be caught on the other side of his proposed actions would see this more as retrogradation and persecution than renewal.

Thus, the narrative of America as embodied in our institutions today is relentlessly hostile to Old America. That means that New America is relentlessly hostile toward you. Every step is overcoming you. Ask yourself, “What sort of villain does each event of progress have in common?” The straight white male. That is the chief out-group of New America, the embodiment of regression and oppression.⁴

This is true; the New America is relentlessly hostile to the average white male Christian. So what? “For what have I to do with judging outsiders?” (1 Corinthians 5:12) If you are active in your local church, and your church family shares your values, how much of your daily life is actually altered by this hostility? Do you have to consume mainstream media? Do you have to buy products from companies that promote values antithetical to yours? Do you have to participate in public celebrations of worldviews hostile to orthodox Christianity? When we have brothers and sisters around the world dying for the faith, is your faith in Christ so weak that you are more willing to get violent than to peacefully lose a job?

Perhaps the only area in which our nation’s descent into postmodernism persistently breaks through the insulation of Christian community is public schools. But if there is any call-to-action to be made to Christian men in a post-Christian nation, it is to make the necessary sacrifices to allow for your children to be raised within, and instructed in accordance with, Christian values. Most American Christian families, if they accepted downsizing to a more modest lifestyle, or returned to the pre-WWII norm of multi-generational homes, could afford to either homeschool or send their children to a private Christian school. What stops many of them - and what drives much of Wolfe’s own angst over not possessing the supposed “complete good” - is worship of personal peace and affluence. What prevents most American Christians from attaining their idealized lifestyle is not the “New America”, but their own idolatry.

It is worth recounting that, in chapter 3, Wolfe wrote that “Most left-wing social movements exploit Western universality and Western guilt, leveraging the bizarre tendency of Western man to out-group himself.”⁵ Before writing The Case for Christian Nationalism, he put this same sentiment in an explicitly white context, in his review of Jake Meador’s book, writing, “Meador - a white male - can ‘prove’ his assertions only by out-grouping himself and by speaking ill of his civilization.”⁶ Here, again, we see that Wolfe’s concern is not the betterment of a generic “Western Man”, but of white men. This chapter’s rallying cry is specifically directed at his “Western European male audience,”⁷ and its proclamations should be viewed through that lens.

Next:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 434.

2. Nick W. Sinan Greger, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera: The Foundations of the Spanish Phalanx (o.A: Independently published, 2018), 112.

3. Stephen Wolfe, 435.

4. Ibid., 436.

5. Ibid., 170.

6. Stephen Wolfe, “An Unhelpful Review of ‘What Are Christians For?’ By Jake Meador,” Sovereign Nations (blog), March 2, 2022, https://sovereignnations.com/2022/03/02/unhelpful-review-what-are-christians-for/.

7. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism, 119.