The Case for Christian Nationalism
The Case for Christian Nationalism
Introduction: The Great Renewal | I. The Storm
From the back cover
Evangelical elites and the progressive media complex want you to think that Christian nationalism is hopelessly racist, bigoted, and an idol for right-wing Christians. Is Christian nationalism the golden calf of the religious right - or is it the only way forward?
Beginning of commentary
With weakness of will and self-abnegation, Western Christians gaze at the ravishment of their Western heritage, either blaming themselves or, even worse, reveling in their humiliation.1
After using the storming of the Bastille as a tongue-in-cheek comparison to the January 6 riots, Stephen Wolfe opens his book with a false dilemma for Western Christendom, one that speaks to his placement of personal identity in a worldly “Western heritage” and a potential lack of a Christian eschatology in his worldview. The Christian can both lament his nation’s steady decline into sin, while still placing his trust in God’s providence and his primary directive to share the gospel and make disciples. To stand in the face of revilement (or worse) and say, “I will not do what you tell me to, nor will I hurt you,” is the exact opposite of “weakness of will”.
Following this, Rousseau’s denouncement of worldly inaction by Christians is likened to a modern “Stockholm syndrome theology” that uses Christianity as “a coping device for inaction, even when under tyranny and slavery.”2 This will further set up the false dilemma. The Christian has to be careful that he is truly driving a spoke into the wheel of injustice (as Bonhoeffer put it), and not just replacing another entity’s crushing wheel with his own.
Wolfe adds “anti-nativism” to a list of things lauded by Christians who have embraced the dogmas of “civil religion”.3 Nativism has a sordid, violent history in America, particularly towards Catholics, including multiple convent and church burnings and bombings4, an attempted murder of a papal nuncio by a mob in 18535, and as the foremost policy of the (second) Ku Klux Klan, during its height in the 1920s.6 Wolfe’s political theory will promote a “peculiar love for the people of own race and country”7, so it would go that anti-nativism would be a natural adversary to his movement.
The problem we face today is not simply the absence of arguments but the lack of will for our political objectives. I hope to enliven in the hearts of Christians a sense of home and hearth and love of people and country out of which springs action for their good.8
This is very similar to how an early-20th century authoritarian would put it - harnessing the will of the people towards an ultimate purpose dictated by their shared heritage more than any higher ethic. This will be far from the only parallel that can be drawn between his political theory and that of early-20th century ultra-nationalists.
Next:
Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 3.
Ibid., 3-4.
Ibid., 5.
Michael Williams, Shadow of the Pope (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1932), 29, 64-65, 84-85.
Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade,1800-1860, First Paperback (Chicago, Illinois: Quadrangle Books, 1964), 74-75, 220-231.
Michael Williams, 82-83.
Ibid., 128, 133.
Kenneth C. Barnes, Anti-Catholicism in Arkansas: How Politicians, the Press, the Klan, and Religious Leaders Imagined an Enemy, 1910-1960 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2016), 109, 117, 171.
Stephen Wolfe, 87.
Ibid., 5.