The Case for Christian Nationalism

5. The Good of Cultural Christianity | II. Definition and Explication (Part 2)

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The Case for Christian Nationalism

Likewise, civil government, though arising from the instinct of man, is established voluntarily, since no man is king over another by reason of pure nature.¹

This may seem to contradict his earlier statement that a “natural aristocracy would arise”², but he likely believes that the naturally occurring better disposition of this aristocracy serves as a first-line filter, a sort of primary election driven by nature in a society with some democratic processes. One wonders if this aristocracy would be recognized by his nationalist state through membership in one or more state-sanctioned political parties, with the others outright banned. When people who proselytize false religions would face civil punishment, his government would obviously not allow political parties formed to defend religious freedom.

Christian peoplehood does not refer simply to a people who are submitted to both the church and the state. In a fundamental sense, the people are prior to both, as those who established these public administrations for their good.³

This subsection, entitled Christian Self-Conception, has a very Nietzschian will to power feel to it, in the collectivist way 20th century authoritarians interpreted the phrase. There are multiple references to an “antecedent Christian national will for action”⁴ that are seemingly inline with the German philosopher’s view of a similarly pre-rational force in all individuals that was later shoehorned into fascist political theory. In Falangist thought, a Spanish “radical romantic” philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset, was similarly utilized though he was publicly against the “dead ends” of both communism and fascism.⁵ Like Nietzsche, he also had a philosophy of an irrational force driving the ordering of life, which he gave the moniker of ratiovitalism. Though more of an individualist than his collectivist contemporaries, such as Martin Heidegger, and although his philosophy’s version of the Nietzschian ubermensch is also able to create his own morality, he would have agreed, at least in philosophical principle, with Wolfe’s assertion that social pressures on the state level are something the masses must accept. As political scientist Kenneth R. Hoover described Ortega y Gasset’s thoughts on social self-conception, “Our circumstance is a part of us. It is not merely an external reality with which we have relations; it is something we are. This relation of mutual submersion, so to speak, of the self and circumstance implies a dependent relation between man and the state.”⁶ Ortega y Gasset also shared a similar disdain for liberal modernity with the Falangist leader, Primo de Rivera. Priorelli notes that he developed a “Nietzschean pessimism” with Spanish society where he believed “disentegrating impulses overwhelmed the anarchist and undisciplined masses.”⁷ This description would fit right into Wolfe’s thoughts on Anarcho-Tyranny and the globalist American empire; Wolfe directly references Nietzsche’s distaste for modern life in his epilogue.⁸ In essence, his belief in a pre-rational national will as the force that puts a nation in order is perfectly inline with how fascists across Europe interpreted and utilized contemporary philosophical thought to collectivist ends.

This subsection is closed with more aspects of Christian nationalist political theory that are in no way distinctive from its early-20th century predecessors. Wolfe lauds giving homage to one’s country from “a gratitude for the various modes of religion” displayed through “loyalty oaths, pledges, and other acts of national solidarity”, then pushes the very common authoritarian-nationalist trope of saving the people from suffering the “indignity of perpetual humiliation”.⁹ Again, Scripture tells us that “if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God” (1 Peter 2:20). As long as we remain faithful to Christ, we can find joy and peace regardless of how the world reacts.

Wolfe then lists the first, specific policy position of the book by broaching the controversial subject of who would be baptized in his state church. It is unsurprising that, as a Presbyterian, he would argue for paedobaptism as most conducive to his political theory. Unfortunately for him, credobaptists exponentially outnumber paedobaptists in America, especially among the theologically conservative.¹⁰ It stands to reason that, unless the majority of conservative Christians in America change one of their most closely held doctrinal beliefs, Wolfe would be potentially excluded from any state church formed on our shores. To make matters worse for him, the Southern Baptist Convention’s statement of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message, since its first adoption in 1925, has stated that “The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work,” and that “The state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind.”¹¹ This is especially awkward for one of his most prolific defenders online, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary student and former Trump official, William Wolfe.

The majority of American baptists are maligned by Stephen Wolfe, when he states, “Their theology of baptism restricts Christian obligation to the credobaptized, and thus the mass of society, at least in people’s formative years, do not (in principle) have Christian obligations.”¹² This is a common calumny of credobaptist belief that, as with nativist anti-Catholic sentiment of the 19th century, is often promulgated by people who have little personal experience with that tradition’s polity. As someone who sees baptism as a clear liberty of conscience issue, and who has been a member of both the PCA and SBC, I have seen their very similar views on the obligations of children, first-hand. Baptists often perform a baby dedication that is practically identical to a Presbyterian baptism, but for the absence of water; the family and church commit to raising the child in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. These children are still raised with a sense of obligation to both their physical and spiritual families, in Christ. When the child makes a profession of faith they are baptized by immersion and are given official membership in the church. Likewise, Presbyterian children are catechized in the faith and, usually around age thirteen, make a public profession of faith to the congregation and are given membership in the church. Wolfe’s claim that paedobaptism in a state church “makes possible a society that is baptized in infancy and thus is subject to Christian demands for all life”¹³ is either a statement of near total ignorance or a purposeful calumny to bolster his claims regarding the integration of the visible church into the state. His statement that “Since [he is] not credobaptist” he does not have “any great personal interest in reconciling Baptist doctrine and Christian nationalism” points to both being factors, especially considering the amount of ink he spent to defend a baseless theory of prelapsarian man.

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The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 215.

2. Ibid., 72.

3. Ibid., 215.

4. Ibid., 216.

5. Oliver Holmes, “José Ortega y Gasset,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2022 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2022), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/gasset/.

6. Kenneth R. Hoover, “The Political Thought of Jose Ortega y Gasset,” Midwest Journal of Political Science 10, no. 2 (May 1966): 235, https://doi.org/10.2307/2109151.

7. Giorgia Priorelli, Italian Fascism and Spanish Falangism in Comparison: Constructing the Nation, Palgrave Studies in Political History (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 32, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46056-3.

8. Stephen Wolfe, 446, 447.

9. Ibid., 216, 217.

10. “Religious Landscape Study,” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project (blog), accessed March 17, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/.

11. Baptist Faith and Message (1925), sec. 18, https://www.utm.edu/staff/caldwell/bfm/1925/18.html.

12. Stephen Wolfe, 217-218.

13. Ibid., 218.