The Case for Christian Nationalism

9. Liberty of Conscience | III. Prudence (Part 1)

Previously:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

As Althusius points out, suppressing false religion to the degree that the commonwealth itself is threatened may violate the very end of such suppression, for the false religionists may overthrow the state and attack the church.¹

With this sentence the notion that a Christian nation, adhering to Wolfe’s model, could naturally and peaceably come to be in our generation is completely sunk. This is why he must promote violent revolution to achieve it, but the revolutionary overthrow of a majority secular government negates any notion of prudence he would attempt to put forth. He later specifies the highly limited boundaries of his tolerance, when he writes, “The point here is that Protestant magistrates ruling a Protestant people have principled flexibility when faced with religious diversity.” Given everything he has written, thus far, it must be assumed that he would outlaw the practice of all non-Protestant religion, including Catholicism. Imagine the atrocities that would have to take place to enforce such a policy in the modern West.

Thus there is little need to parse out the minutiae of his “prudence” in enforcing orthodoxy, because it is no real prudence at all. The discussion of what may or may not be “secondary matters”² among Protestants means nothing in the post-Christian West; Wolfe would have to banish or execute the majority of people in any locale before he could begin to worry about such matters. This is more sociopathy than political theory. That he later chastises secular governments for “mak[ing] politics a sort of religion - into an abstract, transcendental vision of the good, which is forcibly immanentized into earthy life”³ is the peak of self-unawareness.

Wolfe would replace “the moral insanity of our time” with his own brand, one where a single man, his Christian Prince, would be the final word on what Protestant beliefs are acceptable to hold. He would form an army of the “soldiers of Christ”, who would likely be tasked with the violent suppression of false religion, at the very least banishing its adherents and, as we will see later in this chapter, executing those who refuse to relent in proselytizing. His nation would, in every way, live up to the left-wing pejorative of “Christian Taliban”. Scripture has instructions for those of us who fully understand his call to action:

If you faint in the day of adversity,
your strength is small.
Rescue those who are being taken away to death;
hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.
If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,
and will he not repay man according to his work? (Proverbs 24:10-12)

There are very few things in this world that would cause me to advocate for, and personally return to, proactive violence. Stephen Wolfe and his compatriots attempting to enact his vision, through violent revolution, would be one of them.

The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 373.

2. Ibid., 377-379.

3. Ibid., 379.