The Case for Christian Nationalism

Epilogue: Now What? | IV. Dominion (Part 4)

Previously:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

For too long, we have looked to fiery political sermons to satisfy our concerns over the “culture”… This exaggerates things a bit, but still Christians have treated Sunday as their weekly political meeting. It should be no such thing, and practically speaking turning it into a political church hinders Christian political movements. We must form civil associations outside ecclesiastical sphere, and without pastoral leadership.¹

I agree with Wolfe that politics should not be the primary messaging from behind the pulpit and that political churches hinder Christian political movements - but they also hinder individual Christian growth. The prevalence of political sermons in churches is one reason so many conservative American Christians have joined the world in equating political opinions with moral action, to the point where some now argue that Christians who vote for Democrats should face church discipline. Is there a more undeserved sense of moral superiority than believing you are a good person because you hold the “correct” opinions and vote for the “right” candidates?

Christian political movements should live outside the direct supervision of the church, but Christians themselves should not. Many of the core arguments of Wolfe’s theory, if promoted within all but the most reactionary churches in America, would be considered discipline-worthy sins: for example, the belief that variance in “climate” produces differences in beauty and personal traits among people groups, that Christians should seek to live with people who are ethnically similar to them, and that ethnically differing Christians cannot live a fully beneficial life together.² The local church and its pastor serve as a guard against such extremist ideology among Christians, through the processes of discipleship and discipline.

Producing numbers [by having more babies] will not make a people, especially when the secularists actively try to steal them from us. Having babies is only one part of a greater project. Let us not be passive in things we can accomplish now.³

Wolfe rightly chides the popular notion of having children for the purpose of sending them into the world as little missionaries. Sending your children to secular high schools and colleges is more likely to make them like the world than the other way around. Wolfe is correct that Christian parents should take more personal responsibility and be less passive in “things we can accomplish”, but his obsession with political victory undercuts the most important goal, to preach Christ crucified. If Christians spend their lives hyper-focused on political victories for an imagined better future position for their tribe, what makes them any different than their secularist liberal opposition, but for the claim to be “doing God’s will”? What makes this any different than the prosperity preacher who also claims he has devoted his life to giving Christians access to God’s material blessings?

The section is ended with an appeal to read “old books, especially the epics - Homer and Virgil.”⁴ Wolfe could not more telegraph how little he is concerned with genuine Christian ethics than to only name pagan Greek and Roman authors when discussing classic writings for “morally formative education”. What of Augustine of Hippo, John Bunyan, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, J.C. Ryle, Charles Spurgeon, and C.S. Lewis? What of the Bible? How could any dedicated Christian take the diatribes in this chapter seriously when Wolfe is so little concerned with the actual tenets and implications of the faith?

Next:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 470-471.

2. Ibid., 23, 67, 117-118, 142, 149, 151.

3. Ibid., 471.

4. Ibid., 471-473.