The Case for Christian Nationalism
The Case for Christian Nationalism
4. Perfecting Your Nation | IV. Excluding Fellow Christians
Previously:
After spending copious amounts of ink on the “blood-ties in ethno-genesis”, the necessity of a “community of blood”, that “blood relations matter for your ethnicity”, that they create a “common volksgeist”, that there is group-level variance in beauty and other immutable characteristics between ethnicities, and that the instinct to gather in such groups is a prelapsarian, universal good that is completed by grace, Wolfe now attempts to gaslight the charitable reader into thinking his call for segregation is primarily about common language - as if first generation immigrants cannot learn the common tongue, and as if the nation’s language and culture would not be native to the second generation. He acknowledges that Christians of all ethnic groups “share in the highest good… and thus have a spiritual brotherhood,” but says this is “wholly inadequate as to its kind for cooperating to procure the full range of goods necessary for living well in this world.”1 He presents no statistical evidence for his argument, because studies show the exact opposite of what he claims. As noted by the Harvard Business Review:
A study in 1996 from the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI) used the issuance of new patents to measure immigrants’ inventiveness and spirit of enterprise. Examining 250 recently-issued U.S. patents chosen at random, AdTI found that over 19% of them were issued to immigrants alone, or to immigrants collaborating with U.S.-born co-inventors. These patents generated more than 1,600 jobs. A 2011 study by Partnership for a New American Economy found that 76% of patents awarded to the top 10 patent-producing U.S. universities that year had at least one foreign-born inventor.
According to another study, more than 40% of Fortune 500 companies operating in 2010 were founded by immigrants or their children — including some of the most well-known brands, from Apple and IBM to Disney and McDonalds. The companies noted in this study had combined revenues of $4.2 trillion — more than the GDP of most countries. (emphasis mine)2
A 2021 study published in the American Economic Review found that, over the last two centuries, children of immigrants have had a higher upward mobility than those of native born parents.3 Immigrant families, even those who do not share our faith, contribute more, per capita, to the economic prosperity of the nation than native born citizens. When you add in Wolfe’s hypothetical filter of immigrants being professing Christians, the biggest potential multi-generational, ideological barrier is removed, showing his assertion to be even more ridiculous.
With no empirical evidence to stand on, he resorts to a red herring, when he writes, “Thus, it is a categorical error to make unity in Christ the sole basis of civil fellowship. We cannot ground civic brotherhood on spiritual brotherhood.”4 It is fine to list this as a hypothetical “categorical error”, but he goes on to write, “It simply doesn’t work, no matter how much modern sentiment you place on spiritual unity,” implying he has opposition arguing for this. There is no serious movement - if any at all - calling for immigration and naturalization based solely on a profession of faith in Christ; it makes no sense to structure a society larger than a primitive tribe based on any single factor. But, a different creedal unity has been the predominant basis for citizenship within the United states for two centuries. Despite our religious and cultural differences, it was a creedal common thread of a brotherhood of ideals, based on the Christian truth that all men are created equal, that held us together when we were “engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”5 Therefore, a successful, primarily creedal, nation in Christ, without genetic homogeneity, is hypothetically possible.
Culturally distinct groups of Christians could, of course, start their own churches, and this would solve one problem. But it remains the case that cultural diversity harms civil unity, for it undermines the ability for a community to act with unity for its good.6
Cultural diversity does not harm civil unity, significant ideological diversity does. Many of the most prosperous and well organized empires in history had high levels of cultural diversity (i.e., the Persian, Roman, and the Mongol Empires). Logic would dictate that having neighbors who only religiously vary in their particular sect of Christianity would result in more societal cohesion than these empires. Wolfe appeals to “a common language” as a “bare minimum” requirement7 which, yet again, highlights the weakness of his argument. All nations and empires naturally settle on a language of business that becomes the common tongue. The New Testament is written in just such a language (Koine Greek).
Wolfe presents another red herring when, mid-paragraph, he switches the subsection’s stated intent of “excluding fellow Christians” with the wholly different topic of secular multiculturalism and its “injection of diversity… on a mass scale”.8 This is the authoritarian’s binary, existential crisis at play, yet again; we have more options to choose from than to a) acquiesce to all the demands of secular humanist globalization or b) develop a genetically and ideologically homogeneous nation that civilly punishes heterodoxy. We must remember that both fascists and communists have long been each other’s greatest enemy and that they spend much of their propaganda efforts attempting to convince the majority, who have other options, that there is a black-and-white, existential crisis requiring them to put aside pragmatism for extreme measures.9
… the chief practical argument against Christian nationalism in Western countries, especially in the United States, is that cultural diversity renders it politically impossible.10
I argue that the chief practical argument against Christian nationalism in Western countries is that ideological diversity renders it morally reprehensible. Bible-believing Christians are in an extreme minority in the West - depending on how that is categorized, we make up as little as 6% of the population in the United States11 - which presents multiple issues for Wolfe’s argument and ultimate vision:
The vast majority of people who belong to the same genetic ancestry and wider culture as him would oppose such a government. This would include many of his fellow orthodox Presbyterians of Western European descent, who are probably not interested in his ethnology, once laid bare, and who often ascribe to Neo-Calvinism or general equity theonomy, both of which argue for peaceful, democratic change through the Great Commission.
Due to the extreme minority of adherents to his theory, a violent revolution would be required to accomplish its goals, which would constitute a collective Sixth Commandment violation. The exegetical tradition of the 16th and 17th century agrees that such a revolution would be sinful. As Tuininga writes of the 1536 version of the Institutes, “That the Israelites had to obey the very Babylonian king who destroyed Jerusalem and took them into exile is compelling for Calvin. Like Augustine before him, he invokes the prophet Jeremiah’s instructions to the exiles to seek the peace of Babylon.”12
A successful revolution would require continued, collective violations of the Sixth, Eighth, and Tenth Commandments. There is no area in the West that is not heavily populated by people who have extreme ideological disagreements with Wolfe’s position. He would be forced to banish a massive amount of people, usurping their property in the process; these types of policies have historically resulted in the perpetration of great evils. When he attempts to morally justify banishment (and worse) in chapter 9, I will describe how such actions by the state of Missouri in 1838, against the Mormons, resulted in multiple atrocities, such as the murder of eighteen, initially unarmed, civilians by the state militia, including a young boy who was shot, point-blank, in the head after fighting had ceased.
Wolfe then describes issues with the integration of religious refugees in various cities in the 16th century, unwittingly undermining his own case when he quotes historian Cristina Garrett. She writes that troubles were “due in a part to native distaste for foreigners.”13 That issue would be solved today by not inculcating the population with Wolfe’s brand of ethnocentrism, in the first place. The second reason given, of there being a lack of common tongue, is an issue of mass migration under special circumstances. Naturally occurring, legally restricted immigration (of the type conservatives usually argue for) would not present nearly as much of an issue, in this regard, especially with the educational and technological resources available in the modern West.
He writes, “Reformation history is replete with examples of Christian refugees in foreign Christian countries causing public disturbance, civil strife and social segregation.”14 As was mentioned earlier, this would include the reformer whose political theology he is most utilizing, John Calvin, a French refugee to Geneva, who caused so much civil strife that the city banished him in 1538. The true irony of this statement is lost on Wolfe; he is also looking to cause “public disturbance, civil strife and social segregation” with the only difference being that he is not a refugee. Wolfe then returns to the strawmanning of his opposition as people who advocate for unfettered immigration, as if that would be the standard, conservative Christian rebuttal to the ethnic segregation of his authoritarian Christian nationalism.
He closes this section by once again demonstrating his broken hamartiology and soteriology when he states, “It is not due to sin that dissimilar people cannot (ordinarily) achieve together what similar people can achieve... those who want to be radically selfless should return to their instincts lest they harm people for generations” (emphasis mine).15 As mentioned earlier, sin is the very reason we have different languages and culture (Genesis 11:1-9), so his first statement is totally false. Wolfe cannot deride radical selflessness in others, and still claim to be a disciple of Christ, without at least putting it in the context of His perfect example that can be described with those exact two words. Otherwise, what are we to do with Paul’s instruction to, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1)?
As a pastor friend of mine likes to say, “We’re not called to judge someone’s salvation, but we are called to be fruit inspectors.” There is a distinct, rotten odor to what Wolfe brings forth. Genuine disciples of Christ would rather die than “return to their instincts”, which are nothing but sin and rebellion.
Next:
Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 199.
Glenn Llopis, “Adopt an Immigrant Mindset to Advance Your Career,” Harvard Business Review, August 24, 2012, https://hbr.org/2012/08/adopt-an-immigrant-mindset-to.
Ran Abramitzky et al., “Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in the United States over Two Centuries,” American Economic Review 111, no. 2 (February 2021): 580–608, https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20191586.
Stephen Wolfe, 200.
Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address.
Ibid., 200.
Ibid., 200.
Ibid., 200-201.
This is best highlighted in the phrase “no enemies to the right”, which is gaining in popularity among self-described Christian Nationalists. Logic would dictate that adherents with this principle would join forces with, or at least turn a blind eye to, ethno-nationalists, something explicitly stated by the most notable proponent of the phrase, Charles Haywood, when he used it regarding Wolfe’s podcast co-host, Thomas Achord.
Stephen Wolfe, 201.
George Barna, “What Does It Mean When People Say They Are ‘Christian’?,” Cultural Research Center, Arizona Christian University, American Worldview Inventory 2021, no. 6 (August 31, 2021): 9.
Matthew J. Tuininga, Calvin’s Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church: Christ’s Two Kingdoms, Cambridge Studies in Law and Christianity (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 241.
Stephen Wolfe, 201-202.
Stephen Wolfe, 202-203.
Ibid., 203-204.