The Case for Christian Nationalism
3. Loving Your Nation | II. People, Place, and Things
Previously:
Wolfe lays out an agreeable explanation of how “the space we inhabit is invested with meaning”.1 When he moves into how socialization transfers this meaning through generations, he stumbles into a statement that challenges his previous epistemological and hamartiological assertions:
Knowing that our children are not machines or computers but creatures of habit, we train them to have a cautious disposition toward the street. We want them to feel something in relation to it, to have a sort of habitual, pre-rational response of caution. The tone of our voice in denying them access to a street communicates the seriousness of that place.2
Why must we change to a serious, perhaps even stern, tone of voice to communicate the danger of the street to a child? Why, as any parent knows, do we have to repeat this warning multiple times? Shouldn’t the natural law of the dangerous street be apparent to our children through a combination of their own observation and our gentle, logical instruction?
Wolfe has unknowingly touched upon the real problem of sin, the actual totality of which he doubts. We must use a serious tone of voice, multiple times, to properly instruct our young children to not run into the street, not just because they are “creatures of habit”, but because of their inherent selfishness. Children often do not pay attention to their parents’ instruction, because they lack executive function and are preoccupied with the things they want to do at any given moment. They will willfully test boundaries to see what they can get away with, again, trying to do whatever they want at any given moment.
This does not significantly change in man, until his broken nature is repaired by the gospel. Fallen man perpetually drives ten miles per hour over the speed limit, slyly undercuts his professional colleagues for his own career advancement, and slips terms for his own advantage into the fine print of contracts (even redeemed man can still wrestle with this). In other words, he never stops testing and pushing boundaries to try to do what he wants at any given moment. What seems like recognition of absolute morality in the average adult has less to do with an understanding of natural law than with self-preservation within the bounds of acceptable behavior they have received through a lifetime of the type of socialization Wolfe describes in this section. Even the Stoic and Buddhist goal of attaining perpetual self-control and a detached benevolence is for the selfish purpose of personal growth. This is the effect of total depravity.
[Sacred spaces] are unique in that one can disrespect and desecrate them.3
Some initial groundwork for the later argument for civil punishment of blasphemy and irreverence is being laid here. Detailed rebuttals to that proposition will be saved for chapter 9, but it is worth discussing here how a civil magistrate’s view of “sacred spaces” applies to the broader subject of the subjectivity and objectivity of sacredness in civil and religious law.
In the United States, the primary charge for willfully defacing or destroying a federal monument is Code 16, Subsection 426i, Protection of monuments, etc., a misdemeanor, where the perpetrator “shall for each and every such offense be fined not less than $5 nor more than $100.”4 On the other hand, the primary charge for defacing or destroying everyday government property is Code 18, Subsection 1361, where “if the damage or attempted damage to such property exceeds the sum of $1,000, [the perpetrator will be punished] by a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than ten years, or both.”5 Though, in a just society, someone who severely defaces a public monument would likely be charged with violations of both of these codes, that the former is much less severe is a good example of how our creedal nation understands the subjectivity of sacredness in the civil sphere.
The eternal kingdom of the church must consider certain ideas and spaces objectively sacred and protect the communion of saints by punishing openly expressed, sinful thought and behavior, through the practice of peaceful church discipline. As Calvin wrote in the Institutes, “Wherefore, all who either wish that discipline were abolished, or who impede the restoration of it, whether they do this of design or through thoughtlessness, certainly aim at the complete devastation of the church.”6 While public blasphemy can, by itself, be damaging to order within the religious sphere, the same cannot be said of heterodox thought and irreverence in the civil sphere, where speech must first cross into the threat of action before civil order is truly challenged. A civil magistrate that properly protects the independent functioning of the church allows it to handle blasphemy though its own discipline. It need not involve itself in the fine details of spiritual matters. More so, in a religiously diverse society, sacredness must be considered subjective and, but for crimes committed with the intent to intimidate, demands leniency. Wolfe will make a later argument for “prudence” in punishment, but he does not extend that prudence to allowing the public evangelizing of other religions. While this is considered extreme by many modern Christians, it puts him inline with Calvin’s public thoughts on the duties of civil magistrates, which took on a stricter character after he regularly dealt with Anabaptists during his three year exile from Geneva.7
We are next given a description of sentiment towards people and places that have been involved in our most cherished life experiences.8 There is nothing wrong or unproductive in a sense of sentiment or nostalgia, by itself, and it can actually be a source of loving action. But, just as it is with other forms of love promoted in this book, sentiment is something explicitly required by Jesus to be wholly secondary to the disciple’s focus on Him.
Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:61-62)
In the same vein are the following sections on intergenerational love and familiarity.9 There is nothing inherently wrong with caring for your long-term posterity or having a sense of duty to your city, state, and nation, but these are secondary obligations for Christians. We are citizens of a higher nation, through Christ, which must always take precedence:
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9-10)
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, (Revelation 7:9)
Throughout all three of these sections, Wolfe fails to even give passing mention to how Christ plays into any of these earthly obligations; he genuinely believes that the gospel does not alter certain aspects of the Christian’s life. Appealing to an obligation towards kin or homeland, without, in every instance, purposefully filtering it through our primary obligation to Christ, is the very definition of idolatry, for it is serving the creature rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25). As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his seminal work, The Cost of Discipleship, “[Discipleship] is nothing else than bondage to Jesus Christ alone, completely breaking through every programme, every ideal, every set of laws. No other significance is possible, since Jesus is the only significance. Beside Jesus nothing has any significance. He alone matters.”10 Again, that Wolfe has not yet even attempted to address the person of Jesus Christ, nor his teachings, within the context of his Christian political theory, is highly suspect. America has a long history of organizations and publications that promoted the “preservation” of Western European Protestant Christianity, but that rarely, if ever, actually mentioned the person and work of Christ. As an anonymous correspondent wrote to journalist Stanley Frost in the early 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan believed “that Protestantism as a religion must be made as militant as the Klan is in its political activities, and that it should appeal to all men who are teachable and aspiring, who measure themselves by ideals of loyalty” (emphasis mine).11
Next:
Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 122.
Ibid., 123.
Ibid., 124.
Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), sec. 4.12.1.
Tuininga, Calvin’s Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church, 228–29.
Stephen Wolfe, 125-126.
Ibid., 127-134.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 1st Paperback ed (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 63.
Michael Williams, Shadow of the Pope (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1932), 135. Frost published this letter in his 1924 book, The Challenge of the Klan.