ClaytonB
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- Oct 30, 2011
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The dangers of Christian nationalism
OK, before jumping in, I want to clarify that I consider MAGA and many of the aligned groups under that relatively broad tent to be allies. Whatever their particular cultural and religious background and ideology may be, the shared vision that I think unites MAGA and similar movements is that the public space should be a place where (genuine) religious expression is welcome, and that this is possible by taking seriously the Christian principles on which our nation was founded. That said, there are dangers lurking in MAGA and there are insidious infiltrators within it, just as there were in the early days of the first-century church. There are sophisticated operators who understand why MAGA works, and they want to implode it from within.
MAGA itself is not exactly "Christian nationalism" even though that epithet is frequently applied to it. Christian nationalism is a somewhat vague term and can mean different things to a Catholic, versus a Presbyterian, versus a Christian "sovereignty movement" member. To be concrete, I find many of the ideas espoused by Doug Wilson (Presbyterian) or many "trad Catholics" to be quite attractive. However, I cannot sign up to "join the movement" because there are fatal flaws hidden within their overall outlooks.
Let's briefly review some history:
- Christian nationalism 1.0 => Catholicism
- Christian nationalism 2.0 => European/Anglican Protestantism
- Christian nationalism 3.0 => various attempts at re-establishing American government as a "Christian government"
There are two primary problems with making a human government "Christian". First of all, as the video above discusses, the Gospel cannot be spread through the means of compulsion, no matter how indirect. The Gospel is about escaping the slavery of the present evil world-order, which is made in the image and likeness of Satan himself. To dabble in the methods of the enemy, even in the smallest degree, is to completely moot the Gospel itself, and the devil has lured Christians in times past, many of them quite sincere, devout and well-meaning, into making exactly this mistake.
Second, almost everything that we mean by the word "government" is inherently wicked, especially in the modern world. In times past, the most powerful governments in the world managed to collect maybe 10% of the productive output of their people in taxes. There was simply no efficient method for the king's revenuers to be everywhere at all times. Yes, the systems of control increased in their ruthlessness (and effectiveness) over time, but even with all of these terrible advances in the wicked art of annuitized plundering of the people that they were entrusted by God to govern righteously, the wicked rulers of mankind only managed to capture a vast minority of their productive output. In short, in the past, God restrained the wickedness of human governments primarily through starvation of resources. They could only wreak so much havoc because they only had so much wealth and other resources available to them. But in the modern world, God has clearly given the wicked rulers over to their own devices. While official taxation numbers suggest that modern governments take somewhere around 40-60% of total economic output, a more accurate accounting is reached by broadening the franchise to include private-sector cronies, and including inflation as a tax, which it is. When these adjustments are made, the modern nation-state can be argued to capture a fraction of national output in the regime of 90% or even more. Almost all the fruits of the labor of the ordinary worker are captured by the State and turned to its own wicked uses.
For these reasons, the idea of having a "Christian" version of the State is as silly as "Christian death-metal". It's a walking contradiction in terms. The Gospel cannot move forward by any assistance which a government may provide, because all such assistance is inherently compulsory in nature, thus, aggressive and immoral. And virtually all of everything that modern States do is inherently wicked and so the idea that what we mean by the word "governing" could ever be conducted in a Christian manner, is as absurd as a "Christian mafia" would be.
But what does the Bible teach? In light of the hopelessly corrupt nature of modern governments and in light of the perfect ideal of truth and morality which the Gospel embodies, are we to simply throw our hands up in the air, bury our heads in the sand, and "wait till Jesus gets back"? On the one hand, if we have no better ideas of what to do, it's not wrong to simply wait on Jesus. It's not on my shoulders or your shoulders to fix the world, or even know how to fix it, or even try to figure out how to fix it. Honestly assessed, it's a problem too big for any mere human to address or solve. However, I think that it's a mistake to conclude that the Bible doesn't tell us anything about what we are to do in respect to the corruption of the present world-order, and what God is going to do about it. The Bible actually gives us quite a bit of detail about these topics, and we do well to study them carefully so that we can be prepared for his return.
The first and most important lesson that Scripture teaches in respect to how we are to prepare for the coming Kingdom is that we are to focus on preparing ourselves, rather than focusing on preparing others. Pluck the beam from your own eye first. The way we prepare ourselves is by eradicating sin from our own life. And the way we prepare others is by sharing the Gospel (not by "reforming" the government, which is impossible through human means.)
OK, so we're sanctifying ourselves and we're sharing the Gospel. Now what? My view of the Bible's teachings on the coming Kingdom is this: it is not something that we are going to build (sorry postmills) and it is not something that God is going to build alone while we just bide our time here (sorry amills), rather, it is something that we actively align ourselves with, as God builds it. The metaphor I use is like that of synchros in a manual transmission. The syncrhos ratio-match the speed of the gears so that when they are meshed, they do not grind. Without synchros, it would be very difficult to shift a transmission. We are the shaft gears, the kingdom of God is the drive gear, and the Gospel is the synchros. The Gospel gets us spinning at the right speed so that when the shift comes, we are already prepared for it, and able to join it without grinding.
This way of thinking about the kingdom of God has transformed my understanding of Scripture. When read through this lens, the New Testament becomes crystal-clear and everything that the various first-century writers were saying suddenly makes sense. The Gospel is inherently apocalyptic, in that, we are doing everything we do for the end of the world. And this apocalyptic orientation is inherently dual -- it has to do with both our individual apocalypse (death) and the general apocalypse (end of the Age). How we prepare for these two events is exactly one and the same thing: sanctification. We must be passive where God is active, and we must be active where God commands us to be. Only by adopting this flexible mindset is it possible to understand "how it all fits together".
To understand, in detail, where you individually fit into God's kingdom, you must begin by going back to the gospels and the New Testament. What is the universal template or pattern to which the individual believer is to conform? Obviously, it is none other than Jesus himself. Thus, to understand "what does God want me (us) to do?", you must understand how the life of Jesus himself is really your life. Romans 6:3,4 tells us that we have been baptized into his death, and so we look forward to a resurrection like his. Spiritually, then, we are in the tomb of Jesus right now. It's important to really absorb this fact, because the implications to "what we oughtta do" are enormous. Every attribute of this present evil world, especially the governments of this world, is an attribute of death. That is, they are things that belong in a tomb, and the only reason we are interacting with them is because, for now, we are trapped in this tomb with them.
For a Christian to try to "reform the government" is as absurd as it would have been for Jesus to have decorated his tomb and set up a nice comfortable man-cave. The tomb is not our home, we're not staying here, we're going somewhere else. "Going somewhere else" is not necessarily referring to a material journey, although it might. It's referring to the inevitable coming of the kingdom of God. We will know what that is, in fullness, only when it gets here. But we do have enough detail in Scripture to meditate on, to help us understand it, and spending time doing this, in prayer, is one of the ways that we are to fight the spiritual war. It will begin with Jesus the Messiah smashing those who rebel against the Gospel to the bitter end with an iron rod, smashing through them like an iron rod shattering glass-brittle clay pots. Our contempt for this present evil world is itself part of the warning-sign that God has sent in the Gospel to an evil world: Repent or perish! The victory of the Gospel is inevitable, the only question facing each of us is finding where we have been assigned to march in the Gospel battalion.
Let me clarify that I do not mean that Christian political involvement is wrong. Nor is it impossible for a Christian to work for the government in any capacity. There are still morally-legitimate functions that are performed within the government, it's just that they form the vast minority of the government's overall activity. And while we should avoid the error of believing that we will "usher in the kingdom", it is not wrong to prepare ourselves, our homes, our churches and our communities for its arrival, in fact, that's exactly what the New Testament says we are to be doing on almost every page! The key is to realize that 90% of this preparation is just the arduous work of sanctification. Organizing committees and social gatherings is easy... the hard work is in sanctification and personal holiness. Living holy lives, being holy families, striving to be a holy congregation... *that* is the real work of the Christian "nationalist". I put it in quotes to set it apart from Christian nationalism versions 1-3 above. If you love your nation (perfectly natural) and you want to see it healed (also perfectly natural), then the place to start is holiness. Are you holy?If the answer to that question is no, you've got your work cut out for you -- the details are all explained in the New Testament. This is the only correct and biblical view on how Christians are to change the world. We change the world not through "political strategy", "movement building", "social influencing" or even "chess moves" -- not even missions! -- but through suffering for the sake of the Gospel. "Deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me." The Cross is how Jesus changed the whole world, and he set that example in order so that he could have the authority to ask us to follow his example and bear the cross that he gives to each of us. It is in bearing that cross that we forward the Gospel more than all the social movements added together ever could.
OK, before jumping in, I want to clarify that I consider MAGA and many of the aligned groups under that relatively broad tent to be allies. Whatever their particular cultural and religious background and ideology may be, the shared vision that I think unites MAGA and similar movements is that the public space should be a place where (genuine) religious expression is welcome, and that this is possible by taking seriously the Christian principles on which our nation was founded. That said, there are dangers lurking in MAGA and there are insidious infiltrators within it, just as there were in the early days of the first-century church. There are sophisticated operators who understand why MAGA works, and they want to implode it from within.
MAGA itself is not exactly "Christian nationalism" even though that epithet is frequently applied to it. Christian nationalism is a somewhat vague term and can mean different things to a Catholic, versus a Presbyterian, versus a Christian "sovereignty movement" member. To be concrete, I find many of the ideas espoused by Doug Wilson (Presbyterian) or many "trad Catholics" to be quite attractive. However, I cannot sign up to "join the movement" because there are fatal flaws hidden within their overall outlooks.
Let's briefly review some history:
- Christian nationalism 1.0 => Catholicism
- Christian nationalism 2.0 => European/Anglican Protestantism
- Christian nationalism 3.0 => various attempts at re-establishing American government as a "Christian government"
There are two primary problems with making a human government "Christian". First of all, as the video above discusses, the Gospel cannot be spread through the means of compulsion, no matter how indirect. The Gospel is about escaping the slavery of the present evil world-order, which is made in the image and likeness of Satan himself. To dabble in the methods of the enemy, even in the smallest degree, is to completely moot the Gospel itself, and the devil has lured Christians in times past, many of them quite sincere, devout and well-meaning, into making exactly this mistake.
Second, almost everything that we mean by the word "government" is inherently wicked, especially in the modern world. In times past, the most powerful governments in the world managed to collect maybe 10% of the productive output of their people in taxes. There was simply no efficient method for the king's revenuers to be everywhere at all times. Yes, the systems of control increased in their ruthlessness (and effectiveness) over time, but even with all of these terrible advances in the wicked art of annuitized plundering of the people that they were entrusted by God to govern righteously, the wicked rulers of mankind only managed to capture a vast minority of their productive output. In short, in the past, God restrained the wickedness of human governments primarily through starvation of resources. They could only wreak so much havoc because they only had so much wealth and other resources available to them. But in the modern world, God has clearly given the wicked rulers over to their own devices. While official taxation numbers suggest that modern governments take somewhere around 40-60% of total economic output, a more accurate accounting is reached by broadening the franchise to include private-sector cronies, and including inflation as a tax, which it is. When these adjustments are made, the modern nation-state can be argued to capture a fraction of national output in the regime of 90% or even more. Almost all the fruits of the labor of the ordinary worker are captured by the State and turned to its own wicked uses.
For these reasons, the idea of having a "Christian" version of the State is as silly as "Christian death-metal". It's a walking contradiction in terms. The Gospel cannot move forward by any assistance which a government may provide, because all such assistance is inherently compulsory in nature, thus, aggressive and immoral. And virtually all of everything that modern States do is inherently wicked and so the idea that what we mean by the word "governing" could ever be conducted in a Christian manner, is as absurd as a "Christian mafia" would be.
But what does the Bible teach? In light of the hopelessly corrupt nature of modern governments and in light of the perfect ideal of truth and morality which the Gospel embodies, are we to simply throw our hands up in the air, bury our heads in the sand, and "wait till Jesus gets back"? On the one hand, if we have no better ideas of what to do, it's not wrong to simply wait on Jesus. It's not on my shoulders or your shoulders to fix the world, or even know how to fix it, or even try to figure out how to fix it. Honestly assessed, it's a problem too big for any mere human to address or solve. However, I think that it's a mistake to conclude that the Bible doesn't tell us anything about what we are to do in respect to the corruption of the present world-order, and what God is going to do about it. The Bible actually gives us quite a bit of detail about these topics, and we do well to study them carefully so that we can be prepared for his return.
The first and most important lesson that Scripture teaches in respect to how we are to prepare for the coming Kingdom is that we are to focus on preparing ourselves, rather than focusing on preparing others. Pluck the beam from your own eye first. The way we prepare ourselves is by eradicating sin from our own life. And the way we prepare others is by sharing the Gospel (not by "reforming" the government, which is impossible through human means.)
OK, so we're sanctifying ourselves and we're sharing the Gospel. Now what? My view of the Bible's teachings on the coming Kingdom is this: it is not something that we are going to build (sorry postmills) and it is not something that God is going to build alone while we just bide our time here (sorry amills), rather, it is something that we actively align ourselves with, as God builds it. The metaphor I use is like that of synchros in a manual transmission. The syncrhos ratio-match the speed of the gears so that when they are meshed, they do not grind. Without synchros, it would be very difficult to shift a transmission. We are the shaft gears, the kingdom of God is the drive gear, and the Gospel is the synchros. The Gospel gets us spinning at the right speed so that when the shift comes, we are already prepared for it, and able to join it without grinding.
This way of thinking about the kingdom of God has transformed my understanding of Scripture. When read through this lens, the New Testament becomes crystal-clear and everything that the various first-century writers were saying suddenly makes sense. The Gospel is inherently apocalyptic, in that, we are doing everything we do for the end of the world. And this apocalyptic orientation is inherently dual -- it has to do with both our individual apocalypse (death) and the general apocalypse (end of the Age). How we prepare for these two events is exactly one and the same thing: sanctification. We must be passive where God is active, and we must be active where God commands us to be. Only by adopting this flexible mindset is it possible to understand "how it all fits together".
To understand, in detail, where you individually fit into God's kingdom, you must begin by going back to the gospels and the New Testament. What is the universal template or pattern to which the individual believer is to conform? Obviously, it is none other than Jesus himself. Thus, to understand "what does God want me (us) to do?", you must understand how the life of Jesus himself is really your life. Romans 6:3,4 tells us that we have been baptized into his death, and so we look forward to a resurrection like his. Spiritually, then, we are in the tomb of Jesus right now. It's important to really absorb this fact, because the implications to "what we oughtta do" are enormous. Every attribute of this present evil world, especially the governments of this world, is an attribute of death. That is, they are things that belong in a tomb, and the only reason we are interacting with them is because, for now, we are trapped in this tomb with them.
For a Christian to try to "reform the government" is as absurd as it would have been for Jesus to have decorated his tomb and set up a nice comfortable man-cave. The tomb is not our home, we're not staying here, we're going somewhere else. "Going somewhere else" is not necessarily referring to a material journey, although it might. It's referring to the inevitable coming of the kingdom of God. We will know what that is, in fullness, only when it gets here. But we do have enough detail in Scripture to meditate on, to help us understand it, and spending time doing this, in prayer, is one of the ways that we are to fight the spiritual war. It will begin with Jesus the Messiah smashing those who rebel against the Gospel to the bitter end with an iron rod, smashing through them like an iron rod shattering glass-brittle clay pots. Our contempt for this present evil world is itself part of the warning-sign that God has sent in the Gospel to an evil world: Repent or perish! The victory of the Gospel is inevitable, the only question facing each of us is finding where we have been assigned to march in the Gospel battalion.
Let me clarify that I do not mean that Christian political involvement is wrong. Nor is it impossible for a Christian to work for the government in any capacity. There are still morally-legitimate functions that are performed within the government, it's just that they form the vast minority of the government's overall activity. And while we should avoid the error of believing that we will "usher in the kingdom", it is not wrong to prepare ourselves, our homes, our churches and our communities for its arrival, in fact, that's exactly what the New Testament says we are to be doing on almost every page! The key is to realize that 90% of this preparation is just the arduous work of sanctification. Organizing committees and social gatherings is easy... the hard work is in sanctification and personal holiness. Living holy lives, being holy families, striving to be a holy congregation... *that* is the real work of the Christian "nationalist". I put it in quotes to set it apart from Christian nationalism versions 1-3 above. If you love your nation (perfectly natural) and you want to see it healed (also perfectly natural), then the place to start is holiness. Are you holy?
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