Christian Nationalism: A new Biblical critique of its dangers

In the past six years as a church planter, I have met several unchurched young white men who want to investigate the gospel because they reject secular liberalism and the rainbow agenda.

They think we are throwing away our Christian heritage, but don’t really know what it is. Their starting point includes a suspicion of mass immigration (one called it a form of genocide), a fierce patriotism, a fear of Islam, and a strong antipathy to alternative sexualities. Some of them had already connected online with Christian men in other countries who run forest training camps to build physical and spiritual muscle. As we explored the gospel together, this strong nationalism faded as they grasped God’s grace in Christ and came to faith.

However, are they part of a bigger trend? Christian Nationalism is a movement that has gained traction in the USA, gaining attention after the January 6 protests in Washington in 2021. It takes various forms and is more a rebel militia than an organised army. Readers may be familiar with the work of Douglas Wilson or Joe Rigney. Here I limit myself to a review of Stephen Wolfe’s book The Case for Christian Nationalism, seen as a definitive statement of their position.

Wolfe’s concern is that the Enlightenment pushed God out of the public square and replaced Him with the creed of tolerance, equality and social justice. He aims to ‘enliven in the hearts of Christians a sense of home and hearth and a love of people and country out of which springs action for their good’ (p.5).

Early on he reveals a fatal misstep in his thinking. ‘I make little effort to exegete biblical text’ (p.15). Wolfe is more at home among the scholastic writers of the mediaeval period, especially Aquinas’s emphasis on nature and grace, plus a selection of the Reformers and the Puritan settlers of America. Had he delved into Scripture, he might have reached different conclusions.

Wolfe defines Christian Nationalism as ‘a totality of national action’ (p.9), which includes ‘all the actions that a nation expects of its members for their overall, national good’ (p.12). These might be civil laws or social customs that bind us together with a shared conformity to Christian values. He says that the Christian nation does this consciously, understanding itself to be a Christian nation, and therefore taking steps to protect and nurture its Christian way of life, both for its earthly and heavenly good.

Much of Wolfe’s argument rests on his understanding of Adam and Eve in the garden. He argues from the creation mandate that they were to rule here on earth in order to enter heavenly life. From this he argues that the goal of all civil government is not only our earthly but also our heavenly good. He also projects back into Eden both masculine excellence (effeminacy is a vice) and martial virtues, together with a strongly hierarchical social structure. This is all speculation, as only two people lived in the innocence of Eden!

He explores the impact of the fall, but too quickly, and hurries on to argue that our view of society is shaped by natural law rather than the gospel of redemption. Apparently, that leaves us free to love unequally, to favour those nearer to us, and not to over-extend the command to love our neighbour. ‘Much good would result in the world if we all preferred our own and minded our own business’ (p.24).

Wolfe makes a major distinction between the church and the people of God. The visible church is concerned only with heavenly things and should not involve itself in social concerns such as social justice or caring for the poor. The people of God, by contrast, are the sanctified who constitute ‘a restored humanity on earth’ (p.110). Wolfe plays down the role of the church in society so that he can replace it with his key idea: the people of God as a Christian Nation.

His definitions of a nation are mostly correct, though he makes no reference to Genesis 10. A shared language, a sense of place, and an inherited identity or clan are all key elements of nationhood. However, he uses national characteristics to argue (wrongly, I believe) for ‘particularity’ and the right to exclude others. Though European settlers colonised America and dispossessed the indigenous nations, further immigration will serve only to dispossess them in turn, so it must be resisted.

It is Wolfe’s definition of a ‘Christian nation’ that requires the greatest mental leap and leaves most unanswered questions. The ‘people of God’ are a renewed people, possessing all the natural gifts given to Adam. They are capable of ‘civil fellowship’ before God, but who makes up the ‘people of God’? What about a Christian wife with an unsaved husband? Are all citizens of a Christian nation really Christian? He argues that in a Christian nation, Christianity is so infused into national life that it affects everything. Though not a chosen nation like Israel, they are a nation that has chosen to be Christian. They can live in a Christian land, and even exclude Christians from other nations because they would not fit with their language and culture.

How is this Christian nation to be achieved? Partly through the grassroots influence of a shared Christian culture, but infant baptism is also key to his framework. ‘When the body politic are baptised, all are people of God’ (p.217). He says it is also established through civil law, founded on natural law, which should support the work of the church and outlaw heresy and blasphemy, even to the point of suppressing false religion. While rejecting the Law of Moses as the basis for civil law in a Christian nation, he sits close to the theonomists of the late 20th century. He advocates a Christian prince, using the language of the magisterial reformation, a ruler or civil magistrate who upholds both our earthly and heavenly good. ‘I envision a measured and theocratic Caesarism, the prince as a world-shaker for our time’ (p.278). Here his language is at its most dangerous. The Christian prince is to be ‘a sort of national god’ (p.287) as the mediator of divine rule for the nation, funding churches and enforcing the first table of the Law. He says that the prospect of such a Christian prince is slim, but I can’t help feeling that Wolfe’s followers will draw the line to Donald Trump as a new Cyrus (surely a grave mistake). He claims that violent revolution is justified in order to achieve a Christian nation, and that it would even advance the kingdom by outlawing threats to the church. Finally, Wolfe’s mask slips in his conclusion as he gives a strongly political rant through 38 assertions for action that play to the gallery.

Four dangers

From a long list of problems, let me highlight four.

1. In Scripture, nations are not always permanent. Genesis 10 –11 are often passed by, but they are crucial to understanding our humanity. As Noah’s family spread out from the ark ‘by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations’ (Gen.10:5,20,31), they fulfilled their calling as nations to multiply and fill the earth. But they were also fragile. Most of those nations listed faded into history. Nations are transient, with no God-given right to survive. Wars, famines and disasters can scatter them. And should they, like Babel, try to establish an empire, God will bring it down. Britain’s empire collapsed, and so could America’s.
2. Nations are porous. Nations never operate as sealed units. People are always passing from one nation to another, both through migration and marriage. Abraham sets out not knowing where he is going. Israel is redeemed in the Exodus, bringing many believing Egyptians with them (Ex.12:38). Moses marries first a Midianite and then a Cushite. Naomi comes back to Bethlehem with Ruth, who as a Moabite marries into the nation of Israel. Mary and Joseph flee with Jesus to Egypt for several years. Christians are scattered after the death of Stephen. Since God uses all these movements for His eternal purposes, how can we adopt the mindset of the Christian Nationalist who opposes migration and would prohibit one of their children marrying a foreigner?
3. A thinly veiled racism. Wolfe’s arguments are strangely familiar, similar to those used to justify Jim Crow laws in America and Apartheid in South Africa. Such systems require rigid barriers of separation, and are grounded in a theory of race that springs from enlightenment anthropology, not Scripture. The language might have been toned down, but the effect is the same. One nation has been idolised, and all others must be excluded or suppressed.
4. The Biblical doctrine of the church is either mangled or missing. Wolfe tiptoes round the church, as though it is powerless and almost irrelevant. Has he believed the secular lie, that the church has nothing to speak about except heaven and is therefore irrelevant in the public square? Yet how has God been achieving His purposes in the world since Pentecost? Through His ‘chosen people’, the church! He gave us the Great Commission, to leave behind our cherished national homes to go to all nations, proclaiming the gospel in their language and culture, making disciples and then baptising them in God’s triune name.

The local church is to bridge every cultural divide as we are united in Christ, no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens redeemed from many nations (Eph. 2:11-22). Perish the thought that a church could be all of one colour and speak only one language, where everyone has only one national history. God’s grace brings together people from all nations. Again and again, it has been the dynamic power of the gospel that has turned a culture upside down, not through a Christian prince, or legislation, or violent revolution, but through multiplying local churches that live out the gospel as society’s salt and light, reaching across divides, uniting very different people in Christ and breaking down barriers of hatred and exclusion.