The Case for Christian Nationalism

3. Loving Your Nation | I. Method

Previously:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

One of the conclusions from the previous chapter is that neither the fall nor grace destroyed or abrogated human natural relations. The fall did not introduce the natural instinct to love one’s own, and grace does not “critique” or subvert our natural inclinations to love and prefer those nearest and most bound to us.¹

Here is the fulcrum of Wolfe’s entire theory. As has been proven, has he no scriptural basis to make this absolute claim, which is required for his theory to be remotely plausible for a Christian audience (nor does he attempt to make one). To make matters worse, he has now disqualified his theology by saying that “grace does not ‘critique’… our natural inclinations… The fall introduced the abuse of social relations and malice towards ethnic difference”.² Again, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the doctrinal standard of Wolfe’s Presbyterian church, states that fallen man is “wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body.”³ Critiquing what we wrongly perceive as natural to us is exactly what grace does. Turning our notion of “natural instinct to love one’s own” on its head is exactly what Christ does (Matthew 10:37). That Wolfe does not even attempt to wrestle with these basic notions of what it means to be Christian is heavy evidence of rotten spiritual fruit.

He then lays out his objective of making readers aware of their pre-rational preference for those similar to them. He embraces his genetic ethnicity that is “rooted ancestrally in Western Europe”, accepts that he is primarily addressing a “Western European male audience,” and states his ultimate aim to “reinvigorate Christendom in the West”. The false dilemma from the introduction is then restated:

“Which way, Western Man - the suicide of the West or its revitalization?”⁴

In the companion book to his 1976 film series, How Should We Then Live, an exposition on the rise and fall of Christendom, Francis Schaeffer described the near-ubiquitous, modern value of personal peace and affluence:

Gradually, that which had become the basic thought form of modern people became the almost totally accepted viewpoint, an almost monolithic consensus. And as it came to the majority of people through art, music, drama, theology, and the mass media, values died. As the more Christian-dominated consensus weakened, the majority of people adopted two impoverished values: personal peace and affluence.

Personal peace means just to be let alone, not to be troubled by the troubles of other people, whether across the world or across the city - to live one’s life with minimal possibilities of being personally disturbed. Personal peace means wanting to have my personal life pattern undisturbed in my lifetime, regardless of what the result will be in the lifetimes of my children and grandchildren. Affluence means an overwhelming and ever-increasing prosperity - a life made up of things, things, and more things - a success judged by an ever-higher level of material abundance.⁵

The desire to create - by violence if necessary - an ethnically, culturally, and religiously homogeneous nation, for the purpose of protecting one’s own praxis, is the ultimate “Christianization” of personal peace and affluence. Wolfe is not referring to any gospel principles in the naming of the supposed existential threat, but is instead appealing to his audience’s fear of losing the personal peace of cultural dominance and the affluence of not having to regularly interact with vocal dissent to one’s religion. Our Lord tells us:

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. (John 15:19)

Though some have been blessed to have been born in times and places where the true faith was genuinely shared and practiced by a plurality of their immediate physical neighbors, most have not, including 21st century Christians in the West. For those with a proper eschatology, this is not the existential threat Wolfe makes it out to be. Though I cannot say for certain whether I will die peacefully, with my family by my side, or by the hands of my countrymen, who seem increasingly interested in physically persecuting me for my faith, I know that, either way, I will be greeted by Christ on the other end. This is why the prime directive has been, and will always be, the peaceful application of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20). For Western Christians to eschew this, in order to violently seek their personal peace and affluence in a supposedly Christian nation, is nothing short of abandoning the commandment of Christ.

An account from Fox’s Book of Martyrs on the fourth Roman persecution of Christians, under Marcus Aurelius, who, ironically, is often quoted by modern Christians as a pagan who rightly interpreted natural law, puts this predicament in perspective. The fourth persecution included the execution of the early-church bishop, Polycarp, reportedly discipled by the Apostle John himself.

The cruelties used in this persecution were such that many of the spectators shuddered with horror at the sight, and were astonished at the intrepidity of the sufferers. Some of the martyrs were obliged to pass, with their already wounded feet, over thorns, nails, sharp shells, etc. upon their points, others were scourged until their sinews and veins lay bare, and after suffering the most excruciating tortures that could be devised, they were destroyed by the most terrible deaths.⁶

I ask the reader, “Which way, Christian Man - will you honor the suffering of your Lord, and that of your spiritual ancestors, or will you retreat into your personal peace and affluence?”

Wolfe now moves to an argument that is terribly similar to that of early-20th century, fascist political theory, the naming of liberal democracy, the “creedal nation”, as the enemy of the proper “intimate connection of people and place”.⁷ Like Wolfe in the beginning of this section, fascists identified this enemy of the true nation as an immediate, existential threat. Also like him, they often presented this threat under the terms of suicide or revitalization. Georgia Priorelli, quoting the Falangist leader, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, notes his belief that Spain, through its democratically elected republic, “had been reduced to the ‘farce of the ballots in a glass urn’ that decided ‘at any instant if God existed or did not exist, if the truth was the truth or not the truth, if the fatherland had to live or if it had to commit suicide.’”⁸

This section is closed with an admission that not all political and social creeds are bad, in of themselves, and that, “The statement ‘Jesus is Lord,’ which is a universally true statement, certainly serves to unite the people of a Christian nation.”⁹ What of the creed that “All human beings are made in the image of God?” The real trouble with Wolfe’s incorrect belief that the redeemed receive a different “restored image”, mixed with the now repeated claim that “the nation is rooted in a pre-reflective, pre-propositional love for one's own”, begins to take shape.

Next:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 117-118.

2. Ibid., 118.

3. 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), sec. 6.2.

4. Stephen Wolfe, 118-119.

Which Way Western Man? was a book written by white supremacist, William Gayley Simpson, in 1978.

5. Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Old Tappan, N.J: F. H. Revell Co, 1976), 205.

6. William Byron Forbush, ed., Fox’s Book of Martyrs (United States: The John C. Winston Company, 1926), 8–9.

7. Stephen Wolfe, 119.

8. Giorgia Priorelli, Italian Fascism and Spanish Falangism in Comparison: Constructing the Nation, Palgrave Studies in Political History (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 41, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46056-3.

9. Stephen Wolfe, 120.