Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 21

Two Words of Encouragement for Parents

As you know, children are most welcome here with us. We do not have staffed nurseries or children’s church because Jesus said, let the little children come to me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Psalm 8 says that God has ordained their little voices and occasional squawks to silence our enemies. 

So the first word I want to give this morning is to the parents who find themselves in the trenches, busy with caring for little ones. Do not grow weary in doing good. God sees your faithful labors, and He is pleased. He is pleased with your cheerful corrections, your patient redirection, and all the walks (or runs!) to the bathroom or the discipline room. And please know that we are all cheering you on. Keep up the good work, and if you feel like you need some advice, feel free to ask. A number of us have been right where you are at some point and we remember those days. You need to know that they don’t last forever, but feel free to ask for pointers or advice (or a helping hand). Remember that we are a covenant family, and we have taken vows to assist you in the nurture and admonition of your children, and we really do intend to keep those vows. 

The second word is one piece of advice and that is to practice for church. Practice makes perfect, as they say, and so make a point to have times where you practice sitting still, listening quietly, using quiet voices, singing some of the songs, saying the creed, and so on. One of the blessings of having a liturgy with a fairly organized order, is that you can take the bulletin home with you and actually practice parts of the service. 

And remember, the goal is not merely for the kids to be civilized; the plan is for them to worship the King with us. And this really is a great privilege. What an honor. So don’t be stressing about the people next to you are thinking. Be good neighbors and take the screaming kid out of the service until he calms down. But remember that we are here to worship. Make sure your kids know that that is what you are focused on, what you love about coming here. And then give it some practice and some teaching and discipline, and before you know it, they will begin to love what you love. 

Photo by Edi Libedinsky on Unsplash

Christmas Extravagance

The first Christmas was extravagant. God did not merely send angels and dreams and give barren women birth. He did not merely involve the stars and stir up the Roman Emperor to perform a census. He not only involved magi from the East, and shepherds in the fields, and governors and soldiers, on top of all of these things and many more, God Himself came. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And the extravagance caused a lot of complication, even trouble. Mary and Joseph had to travel down to Bethlehem at the end of her pregnancy. The shepherds left their flocks, and the wiseman travelled far and Herod ordered the slaughter of children. Of course it’s possible to make a big deal about Christmas and forget the central thing, but it’s also possible to resent all the complications, to resent the trouble. It’s possible to despise the extravagance. It’s possible to be stingy, to have a bad attitude, to be bothered by all the parties, all the shopping, all the gifts, all the decorations, all the difficulties. But it was the extravagance of God that saved us from our sins. And it has been His extravagance that has continued to save sinners down through the centuries. He extravagance answers our prayers, gives generously, and fills up our lives with good things. And perhaps most of all, His extravagance interrupts our plans. His goodness complicates our lives. 

So the exhortation is to rejoice in the busy-ness, in the wrapping paper, in the gifts and parties and crumbs and mud tracked into the house. Rejoice in the late nights, in the last minute presents, in the early mornings, and even when the kids get sick or you aren’t able to do what you had hoped to. And even the really hard things: missing loved ones. It’s the goodness of God that highlights the hard things. Rejoice because Immanuel has come. Rejoice and give thanks and embrace the extravagance. Christmas is not about you, it’s not about your comfort, or having the perfect experience, the perfect house, the perfect day, it’s about Christ. He is Lord of Christmas, and He is Lord of your Christmas. So prepare Him room. Make room for His plans. Make room for His extravagance. 

Wolfe, Roberts, Lewis, and Friendship

Introduction
One of the more thoughtful responses to Stephen Wolfe’s book The Case for Christian Nationalism has been Susannah Black Roberts. Mrs. Roberts essentially argues that Wolfe has written an unbalanced and therefore unwise and untrustworthy book. She believes that his deep skepticism of the possibility of interethnic and multiethnic nations has led him to an unreliable reading of Western philosophy, causing him to over-emphasize texts that describe the value and centrality of particularity and familiarity to the neglect of texts from the Western canon that emphasize the universal, integrative, and unifying. She thinks that Wolfe’s book is the equivalent of someone who, wanting to write a treatise on the Case for Christian Wealth, set out to only cite all the Scriptural passages that address the goodness and blessing of wealth, only to neglect and studiously ignore every text on the warnings and pitfalls of wealth, thus creating an imbalance and therefore, unwise picture of how to proceed. 

And if the Case for Christian Nationalism did that, I think it would be a fair criticism. But that criticism assumes that nation building is primarily a sort of ethical balancing act, like gathering wealth. But what if nation-ing (and yes, I’ve just verbed that noun) is more like love, more like friendship, and building and cultivating families. If you were to write a book about looking for a spouse, I do hope it would not focus on the importance of keeping up pen pals with somebody overseas and being on good terms with your boss and how to interact with your neighbor’s visiting in-laws. On the whole, while those sorts of “Dear Abby” concerns have their place, they are not front and center to the matter at hand. The focus on finding a spouse, cultivating friendship, and building a family by nature require focus on particulars.

A man who cannot decide between asking Woman A or Woman B out on a date should not be encouraged to keep in mind balancing his love for all women with the love of one particular one. That will only prolong his indecision and bachelorhood. Or for a man who sees weakness and fracture in his family, while there are universal principals to remember and consider (which Wolfe incidentally affirms), the primary problem is not likely to be failure to love the mailman, the neighbor, or various online acquaintances. The problem is almost certainly a failure to love the particular members of his own family well. And as C.S. Lewis and others have pointed out, it is actually these particular loves that prepare us and teach us how to rightly love in broader, more universal ways. 

How’s that Multiculturalism Working Out?
Mrs. Roberts was kind enough to reply to my last essay on some of these related topics, and she thought that my description of the friendship between Legolas and Gimli was actually “damning” to Wolfe’s case and revealed the “ugliness” of Wolfe’s vision. She also wrote:

“Sumpter is wrong, however about Wolfe being *opposed* to CRT for his ethnicity, as though he were warning against it rather than calling for it in the section quoted here. Before all this started, I’d done a thread drawing attention to Wolfe’s belief in the importance of people of his own ethnicity having an ethnic awakening and beginning to act politically on behalf of their own ethnicity rather than for the common good of a multiethnic polity. Wolfe Liked the tweets in which I described this. He clearly thought that I had understood this section correctly.”

To which I asked: “Why can’t this summary be understood within the framework Lewis describes of ascending loves? When Doug Wilson interviewed him on the book, he said he was fine with recognizing the strong cross-cultural friendships that emerge from fighting in wars together, etc.” 

In other words, so long as Wolfe is clear that by “ethnos” and “ethnicity” he does not mean merely superficial physical traits like color of skin, but rather a broader matrix of shared experiences, proximity, loves, customs, culture, etc. (which Wolfe has said repeatedly), it is not at all clear to me that a focus on that kind of “ethnic awakening” and focus need be understood as anything remotely like a right wing critical race theory. This was explicitly affirmed in Doug Wilson’s interview of Wolfe, where he affirmed that two men from very different backgrounds can forge a true friendship through serving together in a war. And of course it’s always a little dangerous to read too deeply into “likes” on Twitter. 

In another thread, Mrs. Roberts explained her concerns further:

“I think that it’s good for there to be specific cultures and ethnicities, rather than just one global monoculture, which would be awful- & also that in a country like America, that’s quite complicated, because we all – well, most of us – have overlapping loyalties and identities; You can be Anglo-American or Irish-American and also American, and also a fireman on a team made up of Hispanic & Polish guys & miscellaneous American mutts, and also your family might include Italians or Asians or Black people… The point is, it’s complicated: our social realities are complicated and overlapping, and the country that God has given us is weird and wonderful and has many different ingredients and ethnicities to it, and we should receive that as a gift. It’s not as straightforward as, say, belonging to a monoethnic Swiss canton, but it’s what we’ve been given, & it’s one good way to be. Not the only good way! Not everywhere has to be America. But given this America that we’ve been given, I think leaning into the idea that ethnic difference is politically or socially insurmountable is a bad idea. It might be in some ways more challenging, but it’s what we have been given – it’s our place and time. Personally I love it. It’s certainly nothing like anywhere else! I don’t generally find it hard to become friends with, or to be in a city with, people who are quite different culturally or ethnically from me – I’m a 4th generation New Yorker; I love my city and it wouldn’t be itself if it weren’t full of all kinds of people…”

To which I replied: “Thanks, Susannah. Short answer: I agree that it’s (wonderfully) complicated in America and that love is central, but I’m fairly sure you misunderstand what Wolfe is up to. E.g. Wolfe might ask, despite “getting along” with NYCers, how’s that working out for NYC/USA? More later…” In other words, if I can borrow some of Susannah’s own language, this description of American life and New York City in particular, is rather “damning” to her own critique. Of course America is a very unique nation in its ethnic diversity, but is it not worth asking whether that diversity has always been viewed in the same ways? And even more to my point here, and Susannah’s own appeal, can it truly be said that this is “love” when what it is currently producing is socialism, mass murder of the unborn, sexual anarchy, increasing crime, instability, tension, etc.?

In other words, how’s that multiculturalism working out for you? The problem in America is not primarily a failure to balance particular and universal loves. The problem in America is a wildly careening universal love that is so disconnected to particular loves that it is nearly meaningless in every way. We are now at the point where our president is signing bills of sexual and moral incoherence and irrationality in the name of “love is love.” The problem is not balancing different loves; the problem is the lack of any real clear knowledge of love in the particulars. It’s sort of like telling an illiterate, uneducated person that what they need is to balance the rules of physics and arithmetic. They’d be forgiven for looking at you cross-eyed. The need of the hour is not the universal physics. The need of the hour is basic arithmetic in particular. We need to get back to the basics if we are ever to progress to the complicated and universal. And this is not to say that the universal principles do not continuously exist (they do), but they must be applied in particular situations. 

And while Mrs. Roberts is concerned that Wolfe seems to have denied the existence or healthy possibility of the physics (multi-ethnic nations or common life), there is no chance of physics without arithmetic. There is no chance of multiethnic nations or common life without thriving families and communities of relative similarity. And this is why I think it is reasonable for Wolfe to have written a book focusing on the priority of particular and familiar loves (without denying the universals), even if he is more skeptical of what the long term possibilities are than some. It is not an imbalanced, unwise, or injudicious work to call people back to the only natural ground of any sort of common life or nationhood.  

Sentimental Friends
It seems to me that one of the problems (there are of course many) with modern multiculturalism is a fairly sentimental and romantic notion of the very concept of friendship, community, and common life. We think because we had a lab partner in college from India, and we occasionally ate lunch together and maybe even still exchange Christmas cards, we are “friends.” Because we “get along” fine with many different people from different backgrounds, we are experiencing a multiethnic community. But this is likely wrong from at least two angles: the first is simply examining the nature of the “friendship” or “community.” How deep is it really? Is it really that higher love among the loves classically understood as “friendship?” – the sort that Jesus said would lay his life down for his friend? Or is it a pleasant acquaintance or affection? And this leads to the second question already raised previously: how’s that really working out? Is that “friendship,” that “community” really a fellowship of Christian love aimed at “earthly and heavenly goods,” is it progressing in holiness and purity? Or is it trundling along into a Hellish animosity and oblivion? Despite pockets of fierce resistance, do we really want to take the top ten populous cities in America and say they are shining cities on a hill? Is the city of “brotherly love” really that?

C.S. Lewis argues that moderns know little of actual philia friendship, and he says this is because it is “the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary” (Four Loves, 58). While the survival of the species requires Eros and Affection, “we can live and breed without Friendship.” Lewis continues: “This (so to call it) “non-natural” quality in Friendship goes far to explain why it was exalted in ancient and medieval times and has come to be made light of in our own.” Lewis also accuses the Romantics for being part of the downgrade: “But then came Romanticism and ‘tearful comedy’ and the ‘return to nature’ and the exaltation of Sentiment; and in their train all that great wallow of emotion which, though often criticized, has lasted ever since.” This is what I believe Wolfe is getting at in some ways. He is looking at the natural instincts of humans and asking what their highest and most likely ends are. If deep friendship is actually one of the least natural loves, then it isn’t a love that we ought to romantically or sentimentally count on or simplistically assume will automatically transpire. 

This all connects to our discussion at hand. Lewis says, “that outlook which values the collective above the individual necessarily disparages Friendship: it is a relationship between men at their highest level of individuality. It withdraws men from collective ‘togetherness’ as surely as solitude itself could do; and more dangerously, for it withdraws them by twos and three’s. Some forms of democratic sentiment are naturally hostile to it because it is selective and an affair of the few. To say ‘these are my friends’ implies ‘those are not.’”

It seems to me that Wolfe is saying nothing other than this: we cannot be true friends with everyone. This requires some measure of exclusivity, and that natural instinct of men to congregate around shared experience, hometowns, history, and loves is the place to start. And it flies in the face of certain “democratic sentiments” and the sentimentalism that wants everyone included or at least afforded the opportunity. As Lewis said about heaven and earth: if you aim at the particular, you will put yourself in the best possible position to gain the universal, but if you merely aim at the universal you disparage the particular, and you end up with a demonic and vacuous universal. 

Conclusion
Friendship, Lewis argues, is “absorbed in some common interest.” And while not the exact same as Friendship, the “matrix of Friendship” is that co-operation, particularly among males in a shared project, mission, or struggle – companionship. “Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden).” But Lewis emphasizes the relative rarity of such a thing: “We can imagine that among those early hunters and warriors single individuals – one in a century? One in a thousand years? – saw what others did not…” This is why I believe the friendship of Legolas and Gimli is so striking, in part because it really is so rare.

It need not be anything remotely close to CRT to say that our multicultural, rotting Western civilization really must return to the love of our particular hometowns, lands, families, experiences, and neighbors. Nor is it CRT to think that close friendships are relatively rare, and perhaps cross-culturally, ordinarily impossible apart from extraordinary movements, exiles, wars, or other surprising works of the Spirit and providence. It is not CRT to admit reality. Nor is the call to embrace the familiar and particular the sort of thing that will result for many Americans in a pasty monochrome ethnicity. Most of us in America truly are (wonderfully) woven together with folks from many different backgrounds. Beginning to relearn love here and now begins where we are here and now. And in Christ, natural loves grow, multiply, and blossom into truly supernatural loves. 

Photo by Madison Carson on Unsplash

Legolas & Gimli and Christian Nationalism

Introduction
In recent discussions of Stephen Wolfe’s book The Case for Christian Nationalism (whatever our preferences or misgivings for the word “nationalism” to describe his project), a great deal of ink (or ones and zeros) has been spent on the themes of Wolfe’s critique of Western universality. 

Jonathan Tomes quotes a representative passage:

“Western man is enamored of his ideology of universality; it is the chief and only ground of his self-regard. His in-group is all people—it is a universal in-group. Everyone is an object of his beneficence. But in perverse fashion he is his own in-group’s out-group. The object of his regard is the non-Westerner at the Westerner’s expense—a bizarre self-denigration rooted in guilt and malaise. Loss and humiliation is the point, however. It is euphoric to him; his own degradation is thrilling. This is his psycho-sexual ethno-masochism, the most pernicious illness of the Western mind…

Repeatedly, in the face of ethnic identity politics, we see Western man retreating to this universality—to the universal values of the Declaration of Independence, for example—not realizing that these values come from the collective experience of a cluster of European nations. In this retreat, he perpetuates the conditions for ethnic identity politics… Since Western values lack universality in reality, equality is never achievable.”

Tomes summarizes a prominent criticism: “whatever Wolfe believes his ethnos to be: this is taking the strategies of CRT and saying “yes, let’s use that for ‘us.’” And Tomes heartily agrees concluding later in the essay: “Such a belief would, of course, involve repudiating, and teaching children to repudiate, any classical form of natural law teaching, as expressed for example in C.S. Lewis’ idea of the Tao in his Abolition of Man.” 

However, merely based on the quotations Tomes provides, it is utterly unclear that what they say this summary indicates is in fact what Wolfe is saying. The critique of ideologies of Western universality as the “chief and only ground of his self-regard” need not imply a rejection of all universals or universality. Nor does pointing out “conditions” that perpetuate “ethnic identity politics” imply an embrace of “the strategies of CRT.” In fact, a straightforward reading of these quotations all by themselves suggests that this is almost exactly the opposite of Wolfe’s aim. He’s critiquing what he believes is an underlying tendency that leaves Western peoples susceptible to CRT, not embracing it, much less repudiating “any classical form of natural law teaching.” 

Augustine, Lewis, and Tolkien to the Rescue
But since Tomes has appealed to Lewis, to Lewis we shall go, but first St. Augustine. Augustine famously described the fallen state as a condition of “disordered loves” and the path of holiness as a restoration and right ordering of our loves. 

In The Four Loves, Lewis cites Rougemont’s maxim that love becomes a demon when it becomes a god. I take Wolfe’s critique of “ideological universality” as the “chief and only ground of his self-regard” as something of this demonic love. It is not coincidental that Lewis cites this maxim as he begins his section on patriotrism and love of country, noting that the modern world has come face to face with this demon and many are tempted to reject patriotism altogether (e.g. “some begin to suspect that it is never anything but a demon”). But Lewis pushes back against this reactionism, pointing to the “love of home, of the place we grew up in or the places, perhaps many, which have been our homes; of all places fairly near these and fairly like them; love of old acquaintances, of familiar sights, sounds and smells” (Four Loves, 23).

But Lewis isn’t describing this love of place and familiarity in opposition to the right kind of love of nation or even of a broader or more (dare I say) universal love of humanity in general: 

“It would be hard to find any legitimate point of view from which this feeling [ie. love of place, home, familiarity] could be condemned. As the family offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this offers us the first step beyond family selfishness. Of course it is not pure charity; it involves love of our neighbors in the local, not of our Neighbor [note: capital “N”], in the Dominical, sense. But those who do not love the fellow-villagers or fellow-townsmen whom they have seen are not likely to have got very far towards loving “Man” whom they have not. All natural affections, including this, can become rivals to spiritual love: but they can also be preparatory imitations of it, training (so to speak) of the spiritual muscles which Grace may later put to a higher service; as women nurse dolls in childhood and later nurse children. There may come an occasion for renouncing this love; pluck out your right eye. But you need to have an eye first: a creature which had none – which had only got so far as a “photo-sensitive” spot – would be very ill employed in meditation on that severe text” (Four Loves, 24).

I take Wolfe to be working with this basic framework, arguing that the rightly ordered love of “Man” and humanity and general is simply not possible or likely apart from beginning with the more rudimentary loves of place, home, family, and familiarity. These particular loves are the training ground for the spiritual muscles of the love that moves beyond them. The values of the West do not spring up spontaneously in every human culture universally, but they are as Wolfe says, the “products of Western experience and thus their particular inheritance.” And this brings us, of course, to J.R.R. Tolkien.

It has been noted by many that the friendship that develops between Gimli and Legolas in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is one of the more striking and moving in modern literature. And it is all the more striking and moving for the fierce and competing loyalties of the dwarf and elf princes. They are notoriously fierce lovers of their own places, their own homes, their own ways, and yet it is arguably that fierce love of their particulars that eventually blossoms into a deep and abiding friendship through the furnace of shared experiences, trials, and adventure. 

On top of this fierce love of their own things, Gimli’s family has never quite forgiven what the elves of Mirkwood did to them, imprisoning them briefly, as recorded in The Hobbit, and the elves of Lothlorien have their own historic reasons for wariness of dwarves, forbidding their entry into the land, which the elf Haldir moderates by only requiring the blindfolding Gimli. Of course when Gimli objects, Aragorn insists that the whole Fellowship be blindfolded, Legolas the elf included, to his great chagrin. 

Nevertheless, it was Gandalf who initially urged the friendship of the dwarf and the elf at the Doors of Durin, saying,

“Those were happier days, when there was still close friendship at times between folk of different race, even between Dwarves and Elves.”

“It was not the fault of the Dwarves that the friendship waned,” said Gimli.

“I have not heard that it was the fault of the Elves,” said Legolas.

“I have heard both,” said Gandalf; “and I will not give judgement now. But I beg you two, Legolas and Gimli, at least to be friends, and to help me. I need you both. The doors are shut and hidden, and the sooner we find them the better. Night is at hand!” 

Of course the password to the Doors of Durin turns out to be “friend,” and commentators note that this friendship perhaps first begins to kindle in the mines of Moria, and in the blindfolded entry into Lothlorien following. But Lothlorien is the real turning point. Galadriel herself breaks the ice when she first speaks to Gimli, specifically honoring the places that Gimli loves:

“Dark is the water of Kheled-zaram, and cold are the springs of Kibil-nala, and fair were the many-pillared halls of Khazad-Dum in Elder Days before the fall of the mighty kings beneath the stone.” She looked upon Gimli, who sat glowering and sad, and she smiled. And the Dwarf, hearing the names given in his own ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding. Wonder came into his face, and then he smiled in answer. 

He rose clumsily and bowed in dwarf-fashion, saying: “Yet more fair is the living land of Lorien, and the Lady Galadriel is above all the jewels that lie in the earth!”

What a striking description: “he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding.” Gimli joins Legolas regularly in exploring Lorien, and by the time they are leaving, they are fast friends. When Gimli leaves Lorien, and he is asked what gift he would receive, he says that merely seeing and hearing Galadriel has been enough. But when pressed, he asks for a single strand of her hair. A new, broader love has stirred in the dwarf’s heart, emerging with a fierce defensiveness of the Lady of the Wood when the Men of the Mark come upon them and cross examine them while on their search for Merry and Pippin. 

But it’s important to note that the friendship of Legolas and Gimli never devolves into a “blended” or “universal” love. Rather, while they certainly come to share some particular loves, the basis of their friendship seems to be a deep appreciation for the love that the other has for his particular places, home, ways, and familiarities. Both the dwarf and the elf sing songs recalling the beauty and glory of their homes and histories, of Khazad-dum and Nimrodel, respectively. And in one of the more moving moments between them, in the chapter entitled “The Road to Isengard,” Gimli describes the beauty of the caverns of Helm’s Deep with its translucence – “translucent as the living hands of Queen Galadriel.” And the elf replies,

“You move me, Gimli,” said Legolas. “I have never heard you speak like this before. Almost you make me regret that I have not seen these caves. Come! Let us make this bargain – if we both return safe out of the perils that await us, we will journey for a while together. You shall visit Fangorn with me, and then I will come with you to see Helm’s Deep.”

“That would not be the way of return that I should choose,” said Gimli. “But I will endure Fangorn, if I have your promise to come back to the caves and share their wonder with me.

Gimli and Legolas promise each other to visit again both the forest of Fangorn and the caves of Helm’s Deep together. But notice that it is not despite their fierce loves and loyalties to their particular places and homes that they have forged a friendship. It is precisely because of those loves of their places and homes that a friendship has emerged and will continue into the future. 

Later, after the One Ring is destroyed, they did visit the caves of Helm’s Deep, and it says that Legolas emerged silent and only Gimli could find words fit for the moment, and Tolkien writes: “and never before has a Dwarf claimed a victory over an Elf in a contest of words.”

Conclusion
Much remains to discuss and debate regarding the call for a Christian Nationalism, but perhaps we may at least recognize that the project of Western universality, at least in its postmodern multicultural manifestations has been an abject failure. Love of humanity does not simply arise from nothing. Love of the other, the universal, arises from the love of the particular, the familiar, one’s favorite places and peoples. No doubt these familiar loves and natural affections can become demons when they are elevated to positions they were never intended to occupy, but by the same token (or Tolkien?), without them the love of the other, the foreign, and universal would seem to be impossible. The love of the universal divorced from the right ordering of particulars can turn into its own demon, and in the name of multiculturalism and pluralism, only anxiety and enmity and hatred fills a land. 

Wolfe has been quoted as saying, “People of different groups can exercise respect for difference, conduct some routine business with each other, join in inter-ethnic alliances for mutual good, and exercise common humanity (e.g. the Good Samaritan), but they cannot have a life together that goes beyond mutual alliance.” And it very well may be necessary to admit this grim reality, something like the ways of dwarves and elves in Middle Earth, and yet perhaps, the friendship of Gimli and Legolas, suggests that something more is possible, but only forged through the fires of trial and adventure, through the supernatural working of the Spirit, something not to be sentimentally banked on or simplistically presumed upon.

Wolfe’s critique of conservatism on this point also seems accurate: a vague return to the universal principles of the Declaration of Independence is not a radical enough repentance. By itself, it can function as merely another form of ideological multiculturalism. The French Revolution was waged upon universal ideals and the blood and treachery that flowed in the Parisian streets is enough evidence of its vacuity. But the American War for Independence was waged from a love of particular people, customs, places, families, neighborhoods, hills, rivers, and covenants. In the furnace of fighting side by side for our loves, true friendships and loyalties form. That isn’t a “melting pot” per se, but it is a true nation. 

It has been pointed out a number of times that conservatism finds itself routinely on the defensive. All we know is what we are against, and so conservatism so often seems to be nothing but a rearguard action, a well-meaning retreat. But a faithful culture war, one that succeeds, one that takes back and occupies the ground of a society will be one that is driven by a host of rightly ordered loves. As Chesterton said, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” And that love behind him is of particular places, friendships, families, streets, and smells. 

The Thomas Achord Affair or It’s All in Lewis

Introduction
I haven’t read a single word of Stephen Wolfe’s new book The Case for Christian Nationalism – unless you count the back cover. But I have had pretty good seats up here in the nosebleed section of the world wide stadium and I’ve been watching the conversations, blood sport, and what shall we call it, world cup theatrics? running apace. And here I am to add my three cents. 

I’ll begin with the overarching point I’d like to make, proceed to throw a few rocks in various directions, and then tie it all off with a nice rhetorical bow. 

Bless Me
I’ve seen not a few folks taking Wolfe’s book to task for being so dern Thomistic. In fact, when I watched the sit down conversation Wolfe had with Douglas Wilson introducing his book on Christian Nationalism my initial thought was that Wolfe is a real life, flesh and blood Christian Platonist. It boggled my mind, in an exciting sort of way. Because I thought those were all extinct. But there was a real one sitting there talking about the highest good and ends and all that. I guess technically, he must be more Aristotelian, since as I understand it, that was Thomas Aquinas’s primary classical muse. But regardless, the thrill hasn’t really died down. 

At any rate, not a few critics have wondered what in the blue blazes a thoroughly Vantillian, Kuyperian outfit like Canon Press could possibly be doing hooking up with a blue haired chick like that. My metaphors may have gotten carried away, but hopefully my point is clear. Moscow has been internationally identified as something of a successful Reconstructionist project. Christ Church and New St. Andrews College and many of the related projects are direct offshoots of the influences of Van Til, Rushdoony, Francis Shaefer, Greg Bahnsen, John Frame, etc. One of the themes of much of their work has been the demolition of unbiblical dualisms: sacred vs. secular, material vs. spiritual, political vs. religious, etc. Nothing is neutral. Christ is Lord of all. Worship is warfare. And not a little suspicion of Greek metaphysics. 

And again, I say, not a few folks have cocked their heads slightly to the left as if listening for a distant screech owl, scratched the side of their head, and wondered out loud whether there has been some kind of mistake. Why would Douglas Wilson, Vantillian to his back molars, find a Thomistic, natural law defense of Christian Nationalism helpful, edifying, or worthwhile?

OK, that took a few more paragraphs to set up than I originally anticipated, but here’s my thesis: Clive Staples Lewis. 

There you go. 

Just zings you right in the forehead doesn’t it. You’ve got that woozy Goliath feeling in your legs, don’t you? Don’t worry. No one is going to be stealing your sword and decapitating you. We promise to wake you up shortly. 

Alright. Ready to go? What I was saying is C.S. Lewis is the key to understanding why a thoroughly Kuyperian community like Moscow would find a Thomistic natural law defense of Christian Nationalism helpful. 

As Dr. Kirke might say to some of our interlocutors: “It’s all in Lewis, all in Lewis: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?” 

Which, if you recall your Chronicles, in The Last Battle, is Kirke’s comment regarding Plato and the fact that the real and best Narnia is what we might call the eschatological Narnia, the Narnia that is further up and further in. The notion that anything good in this world must answer to its highest, perfected version or highest good comes from Plato, Aristotle, et al. Now before sketching why I think Lewis is the answer to the question about why our community might have a measure of appreciation for Wolfe’s book, let me share my heart on some of the recent doings on the interwebs regarding Wolfe, his friend Thomas Achord, Alastair Roberts, and company and that little firestorm.

Now for a Few Rocks
Douglas Wilson has already pointed out what seems to be a screaming double standard on the part of those who justly tarred and pilloried Thomas Achord, erstwhile podcast cohost with Stephen Wolfe, for running a pseudonymous Twitter account with enough racial filth and bile for a mosh pit at Woodstock. The problem, in my opinion, was not people publicly pointing this out. It was a public account. Thomas Achord was Stephen Wolfe’s cohost on a public podcast, and The Case for Christian Nationalism is right out there in public for all to see. If you want to play with the big boys, you need to put your big boy pants on. I also agree with critics who have pointed out that Achord’s apology was lame and sub-Christian, and while I respect Wolfe standing by his friend, I wish he would have been a better friend by insisting that Achord speak more clearly into the microphone, taking full responsibility for his actions, whatever other factors may have been in play. 

The problem was not pointing out confused and twisted sentiments on an obscure Twitter account. No, the problem is what was driving the attacks. And I’m not talking about personal animus. As far as I know Alastair Roberts and company have clean consciences and simply did what they did because they thought it was the right thing to do. I have no reason to doubt Roberts’ own description of why he did what he did (concern for the branding of Christian Nationalism and keeping it far from racialists). No, the problem is embedded in the double standard that Doug Wilson has pointed out. The problem is that everyone is acting as though racial sin is the nuclear bomb while acting like sexual sin is a difference of opinion. 

I’m repeating Doug’s point, but I want to jump up and down on the point and launch a few Roman Candles and try to draw a crowd. Alastair Roberts has the luxury of sharing a podcast with Matt Anderson who is on the board of Revoice. You know, the Revoice of “supporting and encouraging sexual minorities so they can flourish in historic Christian traditions.” Revoice of Greg Johnson fame. Revoice of “What Queer Treasure will be in the New Jerusalem?” infamy. That Revoice. Now, Roberts has voiced his opinion publicly that he disagrees with Revoice. He is very much not fine with that mission or organization. OK, fine. But let’s do a little thought experiment. What if it came out that Thomas Achord was on the board of a Kinist organization? Let’s call it ReKindle (get it?). And let’s say ReKindle’s mission statement is to “support and encourage white separatist Christians so they can flourish in historic Christian traditions.” Would it be just as well for Stephen Wolfe to say, well of course I disagree with that, now let’s carry on talking about Christian Nationalism? 

Or the same thing has been pointed out regarding Matt Anderson’s Mere Orthodoxy blog and writer Tara Isabella Burton and her Lesbian erotica book Social Creature. On the one hand, there is the simple double standard, but the fact that many have a hard time even caring about the double standard reveals the more profound point. What is driving the attacks is an alien and profoundly pagan worldview. My point is not to accuse any particular person of embracing this worldview consciously; my point is the proxy war being waged at the tectonic plate level. This is not merely a case of sin being revealed in somebody’s life. No problem with that at all. No, this is a case of sin being revealed by a troupe of folks who are casually getting drinks with the enemies of our civilization. Again, I have no problem with sin being pointed out, even by full-throated enemies, but to the extent that Alastair Roberts has openly said that he’s personally concerned about all of this because he cares about the branding and trajectory of the Christian Nationalism project, we need to be clear that Roberts must not be allowed anywhere close to the steering wheel. 

All racial prejudice, vainglory, pride, and animosity is sinful and will burn in Hell forever. And to Hell with the soft forms of it in Kinism. But Jesus has some words for those who strain out gnats while swallowing camels. And that wasn’t Jesus giving gnats a pass. Despite the fact that Neil Shenvi’s pastor infamously insisted that God only whispers about sexual sin but shouts about other sins, the Bible is actually profoundly clear that sexual perversion is an abomination, the kind of sin that gets into the water supply, kills all the fish, and gives the next three generations in town birth defects.

The Bible is very clear that all hatred and pride is also sin, and God judges nations for those sins as well. But the Bible shouts that sexual perversion is a nuclear waste site, a veritable Chernobyl. But Alastair Roberts is fine doing a podcast with a notorious supporter of soft sexual perversion. No doubt, Roberts honestly, sincerely disagrees with Anderson. But what is absolutely clear is that Roberts doesn’t think that the kind of error Anderson is involved in is of the same toxicity-levels as the confused bigotry of Thomas Achord’s Twitter account with 20-some followers. It is clear that Roberts does not believe that a nationally renowned conference celebrating flirtation with toxic perversion is nearly as soul-destroying or brand-degrading as a small town Christian school headmaster saying troubling things anonymously. Again, my point is not that Roberts didn’t have any reasonable questions, my point is that Roberts clearly doesn’t believe that Anderson is doing for his scholarship what he claims he’s afraid Achord (and by the connection) Wolfe may be doing to Christian Nationalism. 

Roberts is perfectly fine with being adjacent to the national movement that has been threatening the orthodoxy of the PCA and many other conservatives, but is quite concerned about the face of Christian Nationalism being adjacent to (checks notes) a rancid twitter account with 20 followers and what Stephen Wolfe might be thinking in his heart of hearts. We have Revoicers holding conferences telling us exactly what they think out loud about their confused sexual identities, Greg Johnson saying he’s “gay” in Christianity Today, but even though Wolfe has repeatedly denied tying natural affection to blood or genes or biology, he’s the real concern?

Conclusion: What Do They Teach?
And this brings us full circle to C.S. Lewis. And what, you may be wondering, do those rocks I just chucked, have to do with Lewis? Well, as the Apostle Paul might say, much in every way.

To begin with, simply on structural grounds, Lewis was definitely very comfortable in the scholastic, Thomistic, and medieval worldview. His Abolition of Man is certainly a defense of natural law. And at the same time, Lewis was way more Vantillian than he knew. He rejected the naturalists and materialists early on in Miracles because he realized that unless intelligence preceded nature, you could not reason from irrationality and chaos to rationality and intelligence. He pointed out that that you actually couldn’t reason at all. This is a sort of intelligent design presuppositionalism, or deconstructive presuppositionalism. Unless you presuppose an original, foundational order and coherence, an ultimate, transcendent standard, it’s completely irrational to reason at all. This is Lewis’s version of there is no neutrality. You cannot go anywhere in this cosmos and presuppose not-God and then reason anywhere intelligent. For Lewis, the Tao exists because there is an Intelligence behind the world (even if I think he was a bit too optimistic about human nature on this point).

But the primary way that Lewis acts as a bridge of sorts is in his insistence on consistency. Lewis had his own blind spots and inconsistencies, but not for lack of trying to avoid it. He was remarkably consistent in his thought, concerned to apply as one writer has said, what he thought about everything in what he said about anything. And this is the point for Alastair Roberts and company to consider: what is the consistent standard you are appealing to? No doubt the answer will come back “the Christian Scriptures and tradition,” but then we really must have this conversation about playing footsie with homosexuality. It is not a tu quoque fallacy to ask for the ground rules. It is not a tu quoque fallacy to ask for the rule book. Or as Van Til and Rushdoony taught us to ask: “By what standard?”

Lewis said in Screwtape Letters: “The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers when there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under.” Now as it happens, I’m happy to admit that a fire has broken out in some parts, with some so-called conservatives abandoning their principles and embracing their own brand of racialist identity politics, antisemitism, etc. But the flood in our land has been and continues to be sexual perversion and debauchery. We are gunwale under in sexual perversion.

The Senate just passed a Disrespect for Marriage Act, attempting to couple sodomite marriage with interracial marriage, as if those are remotely similar concerns, and at best, we might assume that Roberts and company would nod sagely regarding these twin threats to society. But in reality, the flood is an LGBT+ jihad; the flood is children being chemically castrated and mutilated and groomed for exploitation by Drag Queens and sex ed curricula and in many so-called conservative Christian churches Revoicers. And for all of Rod Dreher’s concerns about sexual exploitation and abuse in the church, his radar seems to be a bit busted. Where are the KKK rallies? Where are the serious (note: I said “serious”) contemplations of white supremacy or separatism in any halls of political or cultural power. At best you can point to Kanye melting down on Twitter or Alex Jones and obscure Twitter or QAnon accounts. OK, now who’s warming conservative Christians up to sexual confusion in the PCA and SBC? 

If Stephen Wolfe says that what he is arguing for from a natural law, Reformed-Thomistic framework is building something much closer to what theonomists and Vantillians are praying and working for, why wouldn’t we be grateful and receptive of the conversation? If Wolfe is aiming at the idols of our day: feminism, egalitarianism, and sexual paganism, then we have a ton of common ground, especially when some of his fiercest critics do not appear to see how they have made peace with the enemy’s shock troops. 

That Primal Wound: On Boys Becoming Men

Introduction
A great deal has been written about the decline of men and masculinity: falling marriage rates, falling birthrates, falling testosterone levels, combined with staggering numbers of suicides, substance abuse, crime, and incarceration – the destruction of manhood would seem to be almost complete. 

We can point to many causes, and the causes are almost certainly in many cases mutually reinforcing. Lack of physical labor or activity leads to falling testosterone levels, and falling testosterone levels leads to depression, anxiety, and lack of activity. Lack of moral and spiritual formation, standards, and goals leads to spiritual and moral apathy, lethargy, and intemperance, which reinforces lack of physical activity and anxiety. Lack of role models, fathers in the home, ubiquitous porn, and a constant barrage of lies in every form of entertainment discourages moral formation, encourages depression, and lack of activity.  And the cycles go on and on. 

While this situation surely effects both young men and women, the particular damage being done to young men seems disastrous. While a young woman may face this world as a single mom or navigating unhealthy relationships, many women manage to carve out a space of relative stability in society, even if less than ideal. But the societal destruction that results from the mass decline of stable and productive men has been catastrophic. 

Coming of Age Crisis
Many people have noted that a woman comes to maturity biologically. While this certainly doesn’t guarantee moral, spiritual, or intellectual maturity, a woman’s body signals maturity through her menstrual cycle. This recurring reality reminds a woman that she is a woman, and that her body was created to bear children, that she was made for motherhood. This complex biological, hormonal, and emotional cocktail reinforces maternal instincts, desires to make a home, to marry, to conceive and nurture children. This is central to her crisis, her uniquely feminine struggle, her great battle. Whatever else may be going on, a woman’s biology has a way of grounding her to some extent in the world and toward a purpose, however distorted or tenuous that reality may be on the ground.

But no such clear physiological threshold occurs in men. Sure, adolescence brings its own biological cocktail to bear in men, but not with such unmistakable signs, not with such pain or trauma or crisis. This is why many ancient societies (and some modern cultures) planned to give young men some kind of coming-of-age ceremony or trial. Ranging from the grotesque and sexual in some pagan cultures to liturgical, adventurous, or comedic, there’s often been a recognition that it is helpful and healthy for young men to be told that now they are men, accompanied by some kind of public, objective signs or symbols, or sometimes a difficult or painful ritual.

Jews have their Bar Mitzvahs, and modern evangelical Christians have sometimes invented their own rites of passage with camping trips, testimonies, and spiritual blessings, sometimes accompanied by particular gifts, maybe an heirloom Bible or a gun or both. In some traditional Protestant denominations, coming of age is marked publicly in church for both sexes with decisions to be baptized or begin taking communion (or both). But arguably these rites have the greatest benefit for young men, given the lack of clear demarcation between boyhood and manhood. And this confusion has been well documented and referenced in modern culture with clichés like “failure to launch” or “man-boys.” 

Therefore Shall a Man Leave
But the Bible actually indicates that God already has a plan for young men to enter maturity as men. In the beginning, when God created the first woman, Genesis says that the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took of his ribs, and closed up the flesh; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man, he made a woman, and brought her unto the man” (Gen. 2:21-22). Adam sees the woman and exclaims that she is his great glory, and then either he or the narrator explains: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). 

While we ordinarily rush to the wedding scene, we would do well to consider the first statement alone: “Therefore, shall a man leave his father and mother…” And we should stop and ask: Why? Why should a man leave his father and mother? And the answer is because God took out Adam’s rib and fashioned a woman for him. And that might understandably seem like a strange answer. Young men should leave their parents because God made the first woman from Adam’s rib? And the answer is yes. Adam was wounded by God, God fashioned the woman and brought her to him, and Adam breaks out into poetry or song. And the texts say, and that’s why a man must leave his father and mother, cleave to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. 

My thesis is that while God has given a woman a biological marker of maturity, he has given men an experiential marker of maturity, through the “blood” of crisis and survival, wounding and healing from the wound. While the first man was cut and broken open, and a rib was taken out to form the first woman, all men thereafter must have a similar experience. They must be cut open and experience the pain and loss of leaving home and then healing, stronger for it. This is the primal wound of manhood. A man must leave and learn to take care of himself. A man must leave and take responsibility for himself, for his choices, for his needs, and for the consequences of his choices and actions. A man must endure the crisis of isolation, loneliness, roommates, bills, work, bosses, classes, sins, mistakes, and wake up to the glory of blessing on the other side. 

This is why young boys must be taught from an early age to be tough, to endure the hardship of hunger, the hardship of pain, the hardship of fatigue. They must be taught to embrace danger and risks and to suffer and endure. And they must be taught to see that obedient suffering results in glory on the other side. The pain goes away; the wound heals. Patient and joyful endurance in obedience results in general in success, in measures of gratification and joy. Boys must be taught that all of these trials are short missions, short adventures, short exiles and returns, healing, restoration, and glory. 

A Short Primer for Boyhood
When a little boy falls down and scrapes his knee, and the pain is excruciating, and his mom wisely requires him to blow it out or growl and show her tough, instead of shrieking or bawling, the boy is being challenged to go on that mission, that adventure – to use his strength for good, endure the hardship for a moment, and then see the glory on the other side: the pain goes away and the praise of his mother, greater self-discipline and self-confidence is a greater glory. When a boy must wait patiently for dinner, he is being challenged to go into that exile of hunger, into that wilderness, learning to trust God, learning to govern his feelings and appetites, and then when the dinner bell rings, he learns that he can endure the agony of hunger and then enjoy the glory of deep gratitude in God’s provision (as well as his mom’s). The same thing goes for emotional self-control: requiring a young boy to be joyful when he feels sad is requiring him to emotionally leave those sad circumstances behind and go in search of that great treasure called “joy.” And finding it, he wakes up from the “wound,” healing up just fine.

Of course there are plenty of ways that young women need these same lessons, and there is plenty of overlap in the early years, but there really are different goals, long term. You are raising your boys to leave. You are raising your boys to be prepared for that primal wound: for leaving and enduring, for leaving and embracing the adventure of finding their mission, their purpose, their calling, their wife, and finding that joy in what God has made them for. 

Faithful fathers also embody this pattern. Godly husbands and fathers continuously picture this leaving and returning, this exile and glory. A man ordinarily goes out into the world, leaving his family behind in order to work, in order to struggle, in order to fight back the curses of the Fall, in order to bring the world a little more under the dominion of Christ, and then ordinarily the man returns in the evening to his family for respite, for encouragement, to bring with him stories of the battle and of course, provision and protection. This is also pictured in leaving to go hunting or fishing or a workout, or leaving for work trips or deployments, but the point is to provide a stable picture for boys of leaving and surviving, leaving and facing crisis and the healing and restoration and glory on the other side.

As young men grow up, they will begin to imitate that pattern by accompanying their fathers in some things, going to school, by participating in sports and other activities, with a million little battles and scars and adventures within each one, embracing the adventure of obedience, until one day they will leave for good to start their own families, to begin their own missions, their own adventures. But by then, they should know that feeling, those nerves, and remember all the other missions and be hungry for an even greater glory.

Conclusion: Blessing, Abandonment, and Restoration 
When this leaving is under the blessing of God, it includes ongoing fellowship with family, plenty of counsel, feedback, encouragement, and care packages, and many calls or texts or trips back home for holidays, weekends, etc. And that blessed launch ordinarily leads to marriage, vocational direction, and a newly established, thriving household. While there is still pain involved, it resembles something more like what happened in that first garden, with the addition of sin and the application of much grace. 

But when this leaving is cursed, it looks more like abandonment, aimlessness, apathy, anger, and what we are seeing all around us. It produces plenty of wounds, but virtually no healing, no restoration, just infections festering, bitterness, and pain. We live in a culture that is facing the increasing results of young men abandoned, particularly by their fathers, so they are growing up failing to see that pattern of leaving, suffering, healing, and glory, lacking the practice of preparing for that crisis. Fatherlessness creates homes where young men don’t have a role model, and many mothers left to their own instincts will coddle and over protect their sons, to the point of resentment on the part of the sons (who know they were made for danger and adventure) or else to the point of effeminacy and softness, and attempts to embrace a “safe” life, failing to launch, failing to marry, failing to become productive, since they cannot actually become mothers and frustrations and dysfunction all around. In many of these homes, boys are being killed softly. 

But all of this is why the message of the gospel is still very much for our culture: Christ, the perfect Son, came and endured this particular curse, the curse of abandonment and fatherlessness. He came to endure that specific God-forsaken Hell, and when He did, His side was cut open just like the first Adam’s and from that side flows the blood and water of the New Covenant, the birth of the Christian Church, the new Eve, the Bride of Christ. And it is by that wound that all other wounds are healed. It is by that wound, that the curse of abandonment is undone. Christ, the perfect Son, was abandoned by His perfect Father, in order to receive that curse, in order to restore all the lost and estranged and abandoned boys back to their Good Heavenly Father. And in that restoration, they are assured of their Heavenly Father’s love and protection and provision and then sent back out into the world to become men. 

The Son left the Father and endured the cross and rose from the dead so that all men who trust in Him might know that it is safe to leave home, safe to go out into the world, safe to fight for what is good and right and true, safe to endure hardships and suffering, safe to pursue a woman, love her and her children until your dying day (Ok, not really “safe,” but definitely good), and they can be completely assured that there is nothing but glory on the other side.

Photo by Vance Osterhout on Unsplash

What Our Land Needs: The Glory of Sacrificial Strength

Introduction
The glory of men is their strength. God made men to be strong in order to provide, protect, build, discover, explore, and lead in taking dominion of this world. But never forget that it is a bleeding, sacrificial strength to be spent gladly on the altar of our King, trusting Him to raise us up.

The Glory of Men
“The glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray hair” (Prov. 20:29). And just in case somebody wants to object that strength is clearly only the glory of young men, say under the age of 30, I would simply point out that 40 is the new 30, and gray hair is the result of all that strength being spent. But the same thing is clear in Paul’s charge to the Corinthian church: “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13). When we say that something is your glory, we mean it makes you shine. We mean that it highlights what you are for, what you were made for. Men were created to shine through the use of their physical, emotional, and spiritual strength. 

This glory is evidenced in the creation of the first man. And the New Testament repeatedly points back to this fact: that man was made first (1 Cor. 11:8, 1 Tim. 2:13). And why was man made first? Man was made first in order to be cut first, in order to bleed first, in order to lay his life down first. And so he did, and God put him into a deep sleep, cut him open, broke out one of his ribs, and closed the wound back up. And from that bloody rib, God formed the first woman and brought her to the man (Gen. 2:22). Before sin entered the world, before there was any curse, any death, God showed Adam that the way to glory was through obedient suffering and sacrifice. There was no glory-bride apart from Adam’s pierced side. And many centuries later, when Jesus came as the new Adam, He was crucified for His bride, and the Christian Church was formed from His bloody side: “For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (Eph. 5:30). 

Sacrificial Strength
So, putting these things together, we insist that the glory of man is his strength, but it is particularly the glory of using his strength sacrificially. It is not his glory merely to look strong, to feel strong, but to actually work, to labor, to bleed, to suffer, to struggle, to fight, to endure many hardships in obedience to his Lord. 

One modern evangelical heresy is to deny the goodness of male strength. This heresy says that men must effectively castrate themselves. They must destroy their strength, deny their strength, and directly embrace weakness. While this primarily attracts beta males who can’t stand the thought of actually working or fighting or breaking a sweat (or someone not liking them), there’s also a surface level plausibility to the claims, since some Bible verses do speak of how God uses weakness. 

The incarnation certainly was a comparative weakness for God to become a mere human being, and Paul says that he came and preached in weakness and God uses the weak things of this world to confound the strong (1 Cor. 1:27). But we are Christians and this means that we must interpret all of Scripture together and not camp out on our favorite verses. The same Paul who says that God confounds the mighty things of this world with His weakness is the one who urged the Corinthians to act like men and be strong. In fact, he does it in the very same letter. So which is it, Paul? 

And of course, the answer is yes and both. But we must be mature in our thinking, not childish, not simplistic. The glory of men is their strength, and they are to use all of the strength they have been given to do good, to stand firm in the faith, and to bleed and die in obedience to the King for the good of their people. But when men have done all that they can, exerting all of their strength gloriously, it is still a plain fact that it is not strong enough to eradicate sin and death from this world, nor is it enough on its own to complete the Great Commission and Dominion Mandate. The strength of man is still comparatively weak. It is comparatively weak to God on the one hand and to evil on the other. 

But there are at least two kinds of human strength and two kinds of human weakness. There is human strength that is submitted to God and His purposes (think of Samson, David, Jesus), and there is human strength that is autonomous and rebellious (think of Babel, Absalom, Herod). Likewise, that human strength which is submitted to God and His purposes knows that it is hardly anything compared to God’s power and certainly not strong enough to overcome all evil. It is weak in that it needs God’s blessing, God’s power. And meanwhile, that human strength that is full of hubris and pride is actually very brittle and weak both because it lacks God’s blessing and because it is full of folly and blindness. 

So godly men embrace the glory of strength, pressing their bodies, minds, and hearts to their limits in obedience to the King, looking to Him for His blessing, understanding full well that their strength alone cannot accomplish what must be accomplished. A wife must be well-loved, children must be well-cared for, taught, and disciplined, a household must be provided for and protected, neighbors must be served, schools must be established, churches must be planted and maintained, cities must be built and guarded, nations must be loved and sustained, and the whole world must be baptized and discipled. And in and through it all, God must be worshiped and obeyed, the beauty of His world must be adored and celebrated in songs and stories and poetry, creation must be explored and the treasures of the King must be discovered, new glories must be invented, and joy and laughter and feasting must fill it all. 

But who is sufficient for these things? Christ is. Christ in us is the hope of glory. Christ in us is the certainty that despite all our glorious strength, we are certainly all like little boys standing on our tiptoes trying to peer over a a great windowsill into the glory of God. But God is pleased to call that boyish straining, “strength,” and by His grace it is our glory. 

But the particular glory is not merely in the strength itself. The particular glory is in the strength spent, in the strength given away, in the strength poured out, bleeding, sacrificed for the King, for the good of others gladly. The plan is to go down fighting. The plan is to go down bleeding. The plan is to be cut first, to bleed first, to limp first, and to leave it all on the field. Of course all Christians are called to this sacrificial love, but men are called to lead in it, to set the example. 

Conclusion
The reason why we balk at this, the reason why we are tempted to stop short of actual sacrifice is because we are afraid of what will happen after that. What happens when you go down? What happens when it’s all spent? What happens when you’re rejected, when you’re fired, when you face the darkness? We’re afraid of losing. And so men frequently despair. We frequently stay in the gym where it seems safe, or in the garage where it feels safe, or out hunting where it feels relatively safe, or in the office where it seems safe, but that is not what our strength is for and that is not where our glory shines. Our glory shines in obedient sacrifice. We are called to listen to our King, to obey His orders, and spend our strength sacrificially for Him, laying our lives down for our families, for our neighbors, for our communities, for our nations. But we can be assured that it really is glory, not in that tragic-Greek sense, of merely dying well (although there is that), but even more gloriously, in the promise of resurrection. 

Adam was made first in order to bleed first, in order to die first, but when He obeyed and submitted to that sacrifice it was not only glorious in that moment, but the greatest glory was in the bride he was presented with on the other side. Likewise, the glory of Christ is not merely the glory of the Cross, though that certainly is a great glory, but never forget that the cross is empty and so is the tomb forever. Christ died and Christ rose again, and He did so for the joy that was set before Him, for the glory of His Bride presented to Him without spot or wrinkle, His crown.

There is no glory apart from sacrifice. That is what your strength is for. That is what you were made for. You were made for the glory of sacrifice, and when that sacrifice is obedient to the King, you can be sure that you are following your King into the very same grave He once went down into, and He is there waiting for you, to lead you out into a glory that will never fade. 

This is what our land needs, what our churches need, what our families need. We need men who do not count their lives dear themselves, men willing to spend the strength gladly for the good of their people, for the glory of the King. 

Photo by Shivendu Shukla on Unsplash

Our Doctrine of Courage

Justification by faith alone is our doctrine of courage. We are living in days that are increasingly hostile to the Christian faith, and we must be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. No other foundation will do except God’s sovereign verdict that we are not guilty and completely righteous by faith alone in Christ alone.  

Why do bad things happen in this world? The simple answer is sin. Our father Adam sinned, and all have sinned in him. Sin brought the curses of that first covenant upon this world, bringing enmity between man and creation, man and other men, and man and God. But God sent His Son into the world as a true man to bear the curse of sin. He died on the cursed cross, so that all who look to Him might have their sin reckoned to Jesus. He died so that you might die, and His resurrection is His vindication, His justification, proving that He was innocent. So He died that you might die, and He rose so that you might rise. All those who trust in Him are truly united to Christ, and therefore, all of your sins have been fully paid for, and you are risen in Christ, vindicated in Christ, declared innocent and perfect in Jesus. 

And so the question comes: what must happen to those who have died and risen in Christ? What must happen to us in this life? And the answer is: this life must be a vindication of that reality. Whatever happens to us must prove that we have been bound to Christ forever. 

It is true that there are times when God’s justified people go through horrific trials and persecution, but the Bible says, that in all of those things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. Justification by faith alone is the doctrine of Christian courage because by it, God promises and declares that whatever comes next, He will use it to prove that you belong to Him. Whatever comes next, God promises to stand with You. What can separate us from His love? No hardship, no persecution, no slander, no sickness, not even death itself. In all these things, despite our sin, God has determined to display the resurrection of Jesus in us.  

Will the Real Conservative Please Stand Up?

[These are notes from a recent Collegiate Reformed Fellowship talk I gave.]

Introduction
So it’s election season once again, and nearly every Republican political ad touts that adjective “conservative,” but not all those who claim the name mean the same things by it. What I want to argue is that real conservatism must recover the notion of multi-generational covenants. In other words, real conservatism is presbyterian.   

Dave Rubin & Conservatives
There have been waves of conservative influence in our land with some notable accomplishments (most notably, the reversal of Roe), but in many respects, these waves have arguably not accomplished significant conservative gains. In recent months, the situation that has brought this to the fore for me is Dave Rubin’s announcement that he and his homosexual partner are “starting a family.” In case you don’t know, Dave Rubin was your average liberal Democrat who began interacting with notable conservatives and in significant ways changed his convictions. However, Rubin is a practicing homosexual, and together with his partner, they purchased eggs from egg donors, fertilized eggs with their respective sperm, and have rented surrogate wombs to carry two children to birth. Upon this announcement, many within the broad conservative world congratulated Rubin. 

Jordan Peterson just joined the DailyWire team in the last few months, and for his premiere on the network, he interviewed Dave Rubin about this process. It appears that Peterson and Rubin view this situation as something akin to an infertile couple doing something like this to obtain children. Rubin’s marital situation is seen as something like a disability. They say it isn’t normal or ideal, but somehow, because of Rubin’s so-called sexual orientation, this somehow makes it OK. Jordan encouraged Rubin to consider how he and his partner might in some ways make up for the lack of a mother in the home, and Rubin exuberantly agreed and explained that’s why his partner is studying up on skin-to-skin care and also why they have stored up “freezers full of breastmilk.” 

Drag Queens & Consistency
Meanwhile, mainstream media continues to push debauchery in every way. The trans train continues to pick up steam, with many hospitals beginning to perform transition surgeries or prescribing hormone therapies. And Drag Queens have showed up everywhere: in libraries, public parks, deliberately targeting children. One recent politician running for office vowed to put a Drag Queen in every public school in their state. In this context, a number of “conservatives,” including Dave Rubin himself, have spoken out against the sexualization of children, grooming children, and the transgender train. And it really is encouraging to see the backlash of many conservatives against the targeting of children. There was a Drag Show for children scheduled for a Pride Festival in Boise this Fall that was sort-of cancelled because of the backlash. And that’s all to the good. 

But what many “conservatives” don’t seem to have thought through is the moral and logical consistency of their positions. And the question is this: if it is perfectly acceptable for an adult man to wear women’s underwear and dance provocatively in public, why is it not acceptable for children to be introduced to this lifestyle choice? If some grown up men are really women on the inside, why can’t young boys be offered hormones or sex change surgeries? And just to be clear, I think we should apply this principle across the board: fornication, adultery, homosexuality – not just transgenderism and drag queens. No doubt Dave Rubin will raise his son to believe that homosexuality is an acceptable option (even if unusual). 

Frequently, the argument in favor of this is free speech and the First Amendment. The claim from some is that if we ban the free expression of Drag Queens in public, then the Leftists can ban our free expression of religion in public. But this position is pretending that there is no right and wrong, no moral compass at all. It has never been legal for someone to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. There have always been limits to freedom based on immediate threats to life and safety. And laws against public indecency and obscenity have generally limited free speech/expression because certain displays were considered threats to morality, and morality is essential to life. Good morals are not just good ideas; they are the conditions under which societies flourish. Bad morals are not just bad; they are literally destructive to society.  

And it’s actually this point that I want to jump up and down on. Real conservatism is not liberalism in slow motion. Real conservatism is not liberalism riding the brakes. So for example, Barack Obama began his first term as president insisting that marriage should be continued to be defined as one man and one woman. But now prominent “conservatives” are congratulating Dave Rubin on his “family.” Real conservatism is committed to the generations. Dave Rubin literally cannot make a generation through his “family” except by practicing eugenics, and even then, he is intentionally creating a “Frankenfamily,” with two dads and no mothers. 

John Locke and Edmund Burke 
John Locke (1632-1704) wrote two Treatises of Civil Government and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and they are his most important works that still influence many discussions of civics and political theory today. One of Locke’s principle opponents was Thomas Hobbes – who had argued that people are basically selfish brutes and only band together in nations as a tactic of self-preservation. The civil government/nation is a monster (Leviathan) that keeps everyone in check. Locke on the other hand argued that nations are formed by the free agreement of the people – through social contracts. That free consent is represented in the Parliament, and executive power (e.g. monarch, president) is delegated by the legislature. Therefore, the people can withdraw their support for government when the trust is violated and government devolves into tyranny. Locke argued for what he called the “natural rights” of men, principally life, liberty, and property – which is partially echoed in our Declaration of Independence. John Locke is often known today as the “Father of Liberalism.” But here, you should think traditional or classical liberalism. 

Rather than grounding individual rights and dignity in the image of God and creation, Locke emphasized a vague notion of freedom and rights arising out of a hazy primitive state of nature. But this means that Locke assumed a basic, original goodness in man, with the ability to reason and tolerate others naturally. While Locke intended to give the people the ability to check raw, political power, he actually left them relatively defenseless as mere individuals. Rousseau would come later during the French Revolution arguing from Locke’s writings for the “General Will” of the people, a vague notion that either amounts to pure democracy or else a raw might-makes-right majoritarianism. And Karl Marx didn’t mind using Locke’s individualism tied to labor and property to develop his theories.

Against Jean Jacque Rousseau and John Locke who taught this mere “social contract” between those living in the present, malleable and changeable into virtually anything the majority demands, Edmund Burke taught that a truly free society was a partnership with science and art and virtue between many generations, “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” This “partnership” concept was a lot closer to the older biblical covenantal/feudal notions of society than a mere present tense contract.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) is often considered the “Father of Conservatism.” Burke decried the abstraction of some “pure” or “absolute” liberty, which is what he saw in France with the French Revolution. True liberty is the freedom to do what is right under God and toward our neighbors. But an undefined “spirit” of liberty – doing whatever you want, whenever you want is actually a form of arbitrary power. Therefore, Burke taught that to let that revolutionary spirit run wild is to invite tyranny. And right on schedule as the French Revolution burned itself out in the name of the abstract, vague notions of “liberty, fraternity, and equality,” Napoleon Bonaparte showed up as a military dictator. 

The American Revolution vs. French Revolution
The Americans broke with England not to demolish their way of life, customs, laws, and traditions, but to preserve them. The French revolted against the monarchy and hierarchy in France in order to burn the whole thing to the ground. While the Americans appealed to God as the Creator and Final Judge of truth and goodness and justice, the French Revolutionaries abolished Christianity as the official religion and attempted to establish a new religion to the goddess of Reason. The Americans recognized the long standing Christian practice of resting on Sunday, and the US Constitution gives the President the day off from official duties. But the French abolished the seven day week, and tried to establish a ten day week. The Americans fought an entirely defensive war to defend their English common law, charters, and feudal rights going back to the Magna Charta. The French fought an offensive war with no clear objective except for some abstract notion of the “Rights of Man” grounded in no historic or transcendent standard. Commentators note how conservative, sober, and limited were the aims of the Americans, whereas the French broke out into something of a drunken frenzy, with murder and theft and debauchery running wild. 

The American War for Independence was called by King George, “The Presbyterian Revolt” both because it was driven by an age old Scots-Irish covenantor skittishness for British overreach but also because of the 100 proof covenant theology that permeated the colonies. 

In England during the War for Independence, the presbyterian pastors were derisively called the “Blackrobe Regiment,” not because there was literally a regiment of soldiers in black robes but because England was well aware that behind the fierce courage of the American colonists were thousands of presbyterian preachers (often preaching in black robes), preaching freedom in Christ alone, a freedom that flowed out into the public square. In fact, John Adams wrote that these pastors had “effected a revolution in the hearts and minds of the people,” well before the actual war had commenced, culminating in the presbyterian General Assembly endorsing independence a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed. 

The War for Independence itself was led by many psalm singing presbyterian elders and ministers and members. One anecdote recalls the presbyterian minister Rev. James Caldwell, who helped win some battles, when they ran out of paper for musket wads, he pulled out Isaac Watts’ Psalter-Hymnal and started ripping out pages, saying, “Give ’em Watts, boys!”

The prime minister of England, Horace Walpole said in Parliament that “Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson,” apparently referring to John Witherspoon, presbyterian minister, signer of the Declaration of Independence and president of the presbyterian college Princeton. And when Gen. Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown all but one of the American Colonels were presbyterian elders.

Conclusion: Reformation & Radical Repentance
Edmund Burke was a fierce critic of revolution but a staunch supporter of reformation. Revolution is violent; reformation is generational. Revolution seeks to burn the previous iteration of society to the ground and start over; reformation assumes that much goodness was been passed down and only some moderate changes or improvements should be made. Revolution aims only at immediate solutions without regard to long term effects; reformation considers the outcomes for children and grandchildren for generations.  

Of course Burke was writing as a Christian in a Christian Britain with a long tradition of relative Christian influence in his land. What might conservatism look like in communist China or North Korea today? Perhaps initially far more disruptive, but in the covenant, we are grafted into a generational line that is beyond kin. In the covenant, you’ve been given a faithful generational past in history and Scripture. In Christ, you become Abraham’s children, the descendants of Augustine, Alfred the Great, Samuel Rutherford, and George Washington. To that past, conservatives always seek to be in partnership with, a covenantal partnership with those “who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” 

Finally, repentance is always to be radical. We are not to modify our sins; we are to mortify them. We are not to regulate idolatry; we are to topple the idols. Conservatives frequently compromise with sin, and then make peace with it, rather than repent of it. Just because our fathers sinned, doesn’t make that sin now a venerable tradition. We must seek the good paths of our fathers while casting down their idols, so that our children and grandchildren will be blessed. 

Jonathan Leeman & TikTok Christianity

Introduction
I really do appreciate Jonathan Leeman, and he’s been a kind and gracious interlocutor in the past both in responding to me personally and joining us on CrossPolitic. So what follows should be considered a friendly critique, not any kind of guns blazing heresy hunt. However, Jonathan Leeman’s latest article on Christian Nationalism is quite the bundle of, what shall we say, assertions. It feels a bit like the character in the old Looney Tune cartoons when asked ‘which way did he go?’ who crosses his arms and points in opposite directions. Or maybe at the end of Pixar’s Incredibles where the boy, Dashiell Parr, is competing in track and his dad is cheering him on while also telling him to slow down. Go faster! Not that fast! Or something like that…

Leeman writes forcefully at one point: “The public square, I’ve said over and over, is a battleground of gods. Either my God or yours will win the majorities and pull the levers of power.” And I’m standing on my seat cheering. And then in a somewhat jarring juxtaposition: 

“Yet an actual Christian nation has never existed and never will.” And there I am standing on my chair with a confused look on my face. Go faster! He says, No neutrality! Either my God or another! And then a moment later, it feels like he pulls the chair out from under me. Nevermind! Not that fast! Slow down! Don’t try to win!

Identity vs. Influence
At the center of his confusing declarations is some kind of tension he sees between a Christian nationalism that self-consciously seeks an identity as a Christian nation, and a Christian nationalism that merely desires to be influenced by Christian norms. “Advocates of Christian nationalism in terms of influence have in mind Christians opening their Bibles; doing their best to understand what God requires of a nation; and then stepping into the public square and seeking to pass laws, establish practices, and encourage traditions in keeping with a biblical view of justice and righteousness… you can count me in with this group. To deny the role of Christian influence in the public square is to deny the Lordship of Christ.”

So, Jonathan Leeman wants Jesus to be “Lord” of the public square, but when Jesus shows up in the public square His job is to be a TikTok influencer. Jesus is Lord like Taylor Swift on Instagram. Now Leeman is trying to eek out his position in terms of a pseudo-Kuyperian sphere sovereignty, what he calls a “jurisdictional limit.” He wants his God to win the majority and pull the levers of power, but he also insists that a “religion that require[s] the force of the sword [i]s a weak religion.” Leeman is playing with words. Are there godly levers of power or not? And if Jesus Christ commands a righteous magistrate to execute a murderer, is that an example of weak religion requiring the force of a sword? 

Let me assure Leeman that I’m firmly in his distestablishmentarian camp. No state sponsored churches for me, and I also happen to agree with his general assessment that American disestablishmentarianism has likely preserved our Christianity longer than those European nations with established churches. Agreed. 

But when Leeman writes, “a senator’s job isn’t to tell us who to worship, but to protect life. That job is not morally (or religiously) neutral.” He’s sucking and blowing at the same time. His job isn’t morally or religiously neutral – says who? Says Leeman? Or says God? My guess is that Leeman would say God. And I would say, which God? And presumably, again, Leeman would say the Triune God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if all Leeman means is that a senator must not compel or coerce worship of the Christian God, all well and good. But the word he used was “tell,” a senator must not tell you which God to worship, but it is not unjust coercion for a civil magistrate to “tell” his subjects that He serves the only true God who made heaven and earth who sent His Son for the salvation of the world, and that all his people should serve Him too. In this sense, it is a senator’s job to “praise the righteous” (Rom. 13:3) and in so doing, he most certainly is telling us who to worship. Or even if you limit his job to protecting life, by what standard will he do so? Presumably, Leeman means that the senator ought to protect life according to God’s Word, but how can a Christian do that and not proclaim that Christ is Lord, and that everyone ought to worship Him? Isn’t the ministry of biblical justice a testimony that Christ is Lord and worthy of all worship?

The Nations of Them That Are Saved
But when Leeman says that the Lordship of Christ merely means influence, we’ve got a problem, Houston. Leeman quibbles over whether a nation as a nation can even be “Christian,” and as a presbyterian in the covenantor tradition of John Knox, I think that’s a bit silly. But I think the central question is whether magistrates (elected or appointed) have a duty to submit to Jesus Christ in all that they do. Is the gospel a command to every magistrate, judge, mayor, senator, president, and prime minister to repent (Acts 17:30)? And does that repentance include obedience to King Jesus not only in their personal lives but also in their public roles as public civil servants? And if Leeman agrees, as I would hope he would, must they do so in the name of Jesus or anonymously? Must they announce that the slaughter of the unborn will no longer be legal in their jurisdictions because Jesus is Lord and they have submitted to His authoritative reign over the nations of men or merely because they considered the matter deeply and have arrived at vague notions of morality that arose from the influence of a deeply personal faith that subtly impacts what they do?

Leeman has serious doubts that any nation has ever actually repented and turned to Christ. Actually, he’s very sure that no nation ever has. Although, Jonah might have been surprised to hear that: “So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them” (Jon. 3:5). Too bad Leeman wasn’t there to warn the king of Nineveh about nominalism and the dangers of Christian nationalism. But I do wonder if Nineveh would count. And man, that sure sounds like Jeremiah 31, doesn’t it – “from the greatest of them to the least of them”?

Or what about the nations who walk in the light of the New Jerusalem and the kings who bring their treasures into it? “And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it” (Rev. 21:24). Now Leeman may want to point out that technically “nations” cannot “walk.” No one has ever seen a “nation” “walk.” And I happily grant this point. But may we not speak of the nations of them which are saved? 

Here I Am With a Third Way
In other words, there really is another alternative to the two options Jonathan Leeman has presented. It is not merely a national Christian identity that is institutionalized and formal like old Europe or else some kind of TikTok “lordship” that influences the public square sort of passive-aggressively, wielding levers of power, but not really, except maybe, but not. 

There really is another way, a better way. That way is through obedience to King Jesus in every sphere, in each respective jurisdiction. Civil magistrates are required to bow their knees to Jesus, to kiss the Son, lest they perish when His anger is kindled (Ps. 2). We are not interested in an ecclesiocracy, like in Islam, even if that’s what we are frequently accused of. No, we simply insist and preach that civil magistrates are required to punish evil doers and so protect life and property in direct obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, their Sovereign Lord. I don’t really have a dog in the fight over the nomenclature of Christian Nationalism per se, although, if the leaders of a nation are obedient to Jesus and want to be faithful leaders under their Lord Jesus, I’m not sure how that nation wouldn’t *in some sense* be Christian, while rejecting an established church and doing everything to combat nominalism. 

Conclusion: Lordship Nationalism
What happens when the King of Nineveh repents? What happens when Constantine converts? We are supposed to pray for the conversion and obedience of kings and all authority, right? And what if God answers those prayers? What if King Alfred asks you for advice on how to rule England in a godly way? It is certainly true that nations do not exist apart from the people that make them, and therefore “nations” cannot be baptized and discipled, but let us be done with silly grammatical ploys and simply admit that we’re talking about the people of the nation. We are to disciple the nations. We are to teach them, the people, everything Jesus commanded. We are to preach and teach and baptize until every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord. And He must reign until every enemy is put beneath His feet, and the last enemy will be death itself. 

I call this position Lordship Nationalism. In this position there are no established churches, but Jesus is acknowledged as Lord openly, explicitly because happy is that nation whose God is the Lord (Ps. 33:12).