The Case for Christian Nationalism

by Stephen Wolfe

As historian Ellis Wasson wrote, “It was not unusual for a landed proprietor [i.e., aristocrat] to plant trees in his park that would not mature for more than a century. He was laying down pleasure for the eye and money in the bank for his great-great-grandson.”

Thus, the dead-living-unborn connection refers not to any given snapshot in time but to a sort of timeless linkage or, what Edmund Burke calls the “eternal society.”10 Each individual, in relation to intergenerational love, is simultaneously the dead, living, and unborn. Place, as spaces of memory, makes this possible.

In the West, people-groups have become either concealed and suppressed or celebrated and purified by an ideology of universality, partly through the homogenizing forces of state capitalism and capitalist statecraft and through the ethnic privileging of woke capitalism—all in the interest of a cosmopolitan, super-rich elite of “nowheres.”

Here is a more refined definition: complacent love with regard to one’s nation is a kind of self-love in which one delights in the totality of himself—a totality that extends to people and place. One might appropriately call it “complacent self-love.” In other words, among these people and in this place, one encounters himself, for a part of himself (phenomenologically speaking) is invested here. The delight in people and place is simultaneously a self-delight.

ethnicity is largely a product of sharing particulars—the sharing of customs, pastimes, and traditions; and the union of someone in relation to his fellow countrymen is based in those particulars.52 Thus, to encounter a countryman is to encounter oneself—to be, in a sense, with one’s self.

One might say that this is too romantic. Who goes about his daily life consciously delighting in those around him? My answer is that although the conscious delight in one’s people typically occurs only on special occasions, these occasions simply disclose what operates in the background of experience. Experiences of foreignness and patriotic celebrations, for example, do not generate delight but reveal it to consciousness. Familiarity is, in this way, pre-reflective delight—something concealed in everyday life. Your delight in your wife or children is not sporadic and occasional; rather, your delight in them is constant, but it surfaces on special occasions. The same is true with regard to one’s countrymen.

The people’s homeland is both an object of delight for the people and a basis for self-delight as a people.

The foreigner’s fundamental principle is conformity, to the greatest extent possible; they are not at home but guests in another’s home. Their posture or disposition to the place must be respect, humility, deference, and gratitude. They must have no attitude of “mine” in relation to space except to what is allotted to them. Nor may they subvert or exploit the commonwealth for their own gain. The foreigner should mute his own customary ways. His ways are not necessarily bad, evil, barbarous, or inferior in any way. Indeed, his customs might be superior and more refined than the host country’s. But the foreigner has a duty not to disrupt the host people’s way of life, and the hosts have every right to hold such people to these duties, even to the point of deportation.

You would think that Western man would come to his senses. But universality is so ingrained in him and is so strongly enforced that he psychologically cannot reject it, even in the face of its absurdity. Thus, he gets caught in a feedback loop: universality promises equality; it fails; Western man blames himself; he reaffirms the promise; he offers restitution or reparation at his own expense; he receives more immigration; equality fails again; there is further balkanization and dispossession; and it repeats over and over. It ends with his dispossession. Western man is trapped in a cycle of universality, unable to wake up into and embrace his own particularity.

The Christian nation, therefore, is the nation perfected, for Christianity makes possible the national ordering of all things to the complete good, thereby fulfilling the ends of the nation. Just as grace clarifies for sinful man his true end and supplies the means to attain it, Christianity completes the nation by ordering the law, customs, and social expectations to heavenly life.

The Christian nation acknowledges God as the author of nations in general and as the providential author of their particular nation. Such nations are indeed set apart or holy in relation to non-Christian nations, though not by divine national election or new principles but because the nation has brought itself, by grace, under God as nations ought to do by nature. Becoming or maintaining itself as a Christian nation, in an explicit sense, is an act of national will. An implicit Christian nation is an unfaithful nation, one that lacks the will to explicitly place itself under God, to conceive of itself as a Christian nation, and to will for its Christian good. Thus, the complete Christian nation comes into being synergistically—by the grace of God and the will of man.

Most importantly, this work of ordering does not redeem earthly life, properly speaking, for redemption concerns man’s original ultimate end, namely, heavenly life. Instead of being a work of redemption, the Christian’s work in the non-redemptive realm is a work of renewal. It restores this realm according to its nature and ours. To use two-kingdoms language, we do not redeem the civil kingdom; we order the civil kingdom to the redemptive kingdom.

An earthly kingdom is a Christian kingdom when it orders the people to the kingdom of heaven. Limiting the redemptive kingdom to eternal life does not preclude the Christianization of the civil kingdom.

And although redemption is monergistic, restoration is synergistic. The former is the principal end of salvific grace; the latter is an outgrowth or secondary effect of salvific grace. It follows that restoration is a work of human will. It is a matter of striving; man cooperates with grace to restore the natural world for his good.

The restored man is reconciled to nature, and as such he is set apart not from earthly life or from natural principles, but from the fallenness of the world. He is a stranger to this world because he is reconciled to nature, not because grace has elevated him above nature. He is restored to the true way, which runs contrary to the false way; and the principles of the true way are nothing but those original to Adam. A Christian is a foreigner in relation to fallenness—to a world in “bondage to decay” (Rom. 8:21)—but fallenness itself is foreign to nature.

Even Adam in the state of integrity, as he grew in maturity, would have felt as if he were a stranger in this world, not because of any defect in creation, but because his ultimate end was always heaven—where he would find his true rest. Thus, we can imagine Adam and his progeny feeling out of place on earth, ready and eager for heavenly life, though without sin and apart from any fallenness.

I suspect that people will label my position a “triumphalist” theology or a “theology of glory” as opposed to a “theology of the cross.” I’ll simply say that I’ve laid out my premises and my argument, and I welcome anyone to refute them or demonstrate my argument’s invalidity. Simply labeling my view a “theology of glory” proves nothing.

Thus, it is a categorical error to make unity in Christ the sole basis of civil fellowship. We cannot ground civic brotherhood on spiritual brotherhood. It simply doesn’t work, no matter how much modern sentiment you place on spiritual unity.

It is not sin’s fault that “diversity destroys unity,” as Althusius said.

The best way a Christian nation can help another Christian nation is by aiding it in flourishing as a people in their own place. It is not by importing that people. Just as families help families while maintaining healthy separation, nations ought to help other nations while maintaining separation.

In a Christian nation, social power is placed in the service of the Christian religion. I call this use of social power “cultural Christianity,” a term that has become an object of derision.

The Christian religion as delivered through culture prepares people to receive the Gospel and encourages them to stay on the path to eternal life. It is even necessary for a just, commodious civil society.

Cultural Christianity, as a mode of Christian religion, is pre-reflective, prejudicial judgment on the rightness of Christian belief and practice.

Cultural Christianity is social facticity in the service of the Christian religion. A Christian nation as a nation has social power and as a Christian nation, this power is directed to Christian ends. Thus, Christian nations have a social force that prejudices the people for Christian belief and practice.

Rather, a Christian self-conception permits a confident Christian people to seek God’s blessing through special and temporary acts of humiliation and then, subsequently, to carry on in their duty with self-regard. They do not suffer the indignity of perpetual humiliation.

But credobaptism likely creates problems for Christian nationalism. It is no accident that Baptists tend to be advocates for near absolute religious liberty, and this is not only due to their tradition of dissent. Their theology of baptism restricts Christian obligation to the credobaptized, and thus the mass of society, at least in people’s formative years, do not (in principle) have Christian obligations.

The ethics of mutual aid requires a collective, symbiotic life—the powerful showing an abundance of love while the lowly show an abundance of trust and service. In a community of grace—one where all parts are perfected in form by grace—the virtue of generosity is perfected, allowing what many would call “radical” generosity today, though without violating the natural principles of generosity.

The Christian nation is the complete image of eternal life on earth. For in addition to being a worshipping people, the Christian nation has submitted to magistrates and constitutes a people whose cultural practices and self-conception provide a foretaste of heaven.

Perhaps you, being a strong, independent adult, can withstand the moral degeneracy of our time. But try raising kids in today’s social environment. Or perhaps you are exceptional at protecting your children; you can afford to send them to a Christian school, effectively paying an ideological security service. But most people are not exceptional; most people are average; and most cannot pay to secure their kids from society’s ideology. Oh, if only they bought your parenting book or sat through your church seminar or sermon series or listened to all your ideas. If only they put their kids in all your church programs .

Consider the strange incongruity at work in the rejection of cultural Christianity. In Moore’s view, the Gospel flourishes when the enemies of God have social power, and it flounders when Christians have this social power. Thus, a God-ordained natural power—a means of ensuring social solidarity—aids the church when this power is hostile to Christ. The God of the Gospel turned something that he ordained, as the God of nature, against the Gospel so that it would advance. Bizarrely, social power remains a means to faith, but only when that power is abused. This is patently absurd. What is the basis for this nature/grace disharmony? Why is God the creator opposed to God the redeemer? How can the proper use of a natural power harm the Gospel but its abuse support it? We should affirm what is most obvious: the ordinary operations of nature and grace ought to cooperate for eternal life, and therefore social power ought to be put in the service of true religion.

There is good reason, therefore, to affirm that cultural Christianity is a net positive for civil society, since it effectively prepares people for faith, results (in the ordinary course of providence) in more believers, and supports civil and social institutions for the common good.

All Christians today agree that the family is a vital source for transmitting the faith to the younger generation. It is not clear, however, why the family can play this role but not civil society. Being a member of a Christian family does not save any of its members. No one accuses Christian families of being hypocrite-factories, sending their kids straight to hell. So why is preparation permitted in the home but not in civil society? It seems that the typical reasons to reject cultural Christianity strike just as hard against Christian families.

Was God’s plan really to subject the little family and local churches to such powerful hostile forces and give them this narrow window of time (perhaps a dozen or so years) to prepare children for faith before tossing them to the world for testing? It is absurd to think that this arrangement is part of God’s prescriptive will.

At least intuitively, everyone seems to recognize that when you reject the idea of Christian civil society, some essential element of life is left unaccounted for, and so you must expand the church’s functions and roles in the life of a believer. As a result, you get a church full of programs, ministry teams, and on-site outlets for Christian resources for most areas of life. You effectively get an ecclesial-civil association—a conflation of two species of association that effectively confounds both.

Christians must live in a hostile society, they will naturally begin demanding the sorts of goods and services that civil society is supposed to provide. Can we blame the average Christian for desiring a church that provides her a range of trusted services?

Churches have children’s ministries, schools, sports programs, family counseling, and an array of special-interest support groups and clubs—all accented with Christianity, each labeled a “ministry.” In consequence, Sunday morning is oriented around advertising spiritual resources for seekers or “ways to serve” rather than the worship of God. This is a natural consequence of giving up civil society to godlessness.

The rejection of cultural Christianity necessarily leads to an erroneous and confused ecclesiology in which the ecclesial sphere takes on duties suitable for civil society. As a result, it performs these duties poorly and distracts the church from its principal role, and families remain ill-equipped to resist the world.

It should be obvious that an internalized sense of duty is good for us and others. Should a father decline to minister to his family because he has no motivation but a sense of duty? What about a preacher on Sunday morning who doesn’t feel like preaching? What if you wake up on Sunday and feel compelled to sleep in and miss church? You ought to do all things to God’s glory, but our sense of duty is what makes society function and creates the conditions for good outward action and internal piety. A father may on occasion catechize his kids with no motivation but duty, but the children nevertheless are catechized.

A people must have spirit, self-affirmation, self-regard, and confidence in themselves. They must, in other words, become the opposite of what Western Christianity has become.

All civil societies, for this reason, need an explicit ordering, that is, something public and promulgated and decided upon through deliberation, wisdom, prudence, and authority. Societies need, in other words, an ordering of reason—reason expressed as civil law.

The natural law is an ordering of reason, consisting of moral principles that are innate in rational creatures, given by God, who is the author of nature. Put differently, God has ordered man with a rule by which he discerns what he must do and must avoid in order to achieve his ends.

Junius, for example, discusses Deuteronomy 22:8, which requires one to “make a railing for your roof.” This is a determination (given by God) that follows from a principle and its subsequent conclusion, namely, “no one must be injured” and “nothing that could injure anyone may be built,” respectively.4 The determination that roofs ought to have railings is suitable only if roofs in the community are designed such that they might be hazardous. Most single-family homes today do not require railings, for ordinarily roofs are not hazardous. Though this determination is no longer relevant, the principle and conclusion remain valid, and building codes (which are determinations) recognize the same principle and conclusion.

Since every sphere of life is under natural law and that natural law requires particular applications, it follows that every sphere of life requires a suitable authority, with a suitable power, to make determinations. For this reason, God has granted specific types of power by which the authorities of each sphere make judgments. The family has the pater familias with patria potestas (“fatherly power”); civil life has the civil magistrate with civil power; the instituted church has the minister with spiritual power; and the individual has a power unto himself. The nature of each sphere dictates the species of power required. These powers and their differences are not arbitrary but arise from the nature of each sphere.

Civil law has command over the outward man but not from an authority in and of itself. Its authority, as Junius states, “proceed[s] by reason from those other preceding laws,” namely, the natural law.7 Hence, it is a derived authority, and so laws are just only if they command what proceeds from the natural law. This derivative character is precisely why such laws bind our conscience to them. As Aquinas said, “[Human] laws . . . have the power of binding conscience, from the eternal law whence they are derived [via natural law].”

However, a purported law that does not order according to reason is no law at all. That is to say, unjust laws are not laws, properly speaking, and so they do not bind the conscience to obedience. This position—expressed famously in Latin as lex iniusta non est lex [an unjust law is not a law]—was affirmed from Cicero to Augustine through Aquinas to classical Protestantism. Zacharias Ursinus said, for example, that law “commands that which is upright and just, otherwise it is no law.” 9 Though this raises questions of tyranny and civil disobedience, the important point here is that civil law, when true and just, is neither arbitrary nor has its force from the will of the magistrate alone; rather, it orders civil life in accordance with a higher law and has its force from that higher law, namely, the natural law. In this way, the magistrate mediates divine civil rule, as the one who determines appropriate action from natural law principles.

Civil law now contends with the disordering effects of sin. Much of what the other spheres of life could once determine is now subject to the reach of civil law. The husband’s abuse of his power, for example, is restrained by the state. With this augmentation of civil power, civil authority is able to order civil society toward its original end, according to the same natural principles.

Coercion has become a crucial feature of civil command in the postlapsarian augmentation of civil power. Backing civil command with sanctions is necessary, given the state of things, for civil government adequately achieve its original end. It brings sinful man into compliance with the conditions for commodious civil life. Civil command becomes coercive for someone when he fails or refuses to comply or when he obeys the law simply out of fear of the sanction.

As for power over the conscience, implicit power can influence beliefs, such as assent to Christian truth, but civil law cannot command belief. It can only direct bodies. It orders outward action. Civil power cannot touch the conscience. Why? Because the conscience is a forum of persuasion and civil power is a power of command. The civil command “believe in Christ” violates a necessary condition of belief, namely, that belief is a matter of persuasion—something that one affirms.12 You cannot affirm commands, as I’ve said. Therefore, since inward faith is essentially a matter of persuasion (or motivated in part by reasons for faith), exercising faith cannot be an object of civil command, even for the baptized.

Gratian famously said that “when the reason for the law ceases, the law itself ceases.” They become laws in name only.

Though good laws require human determination, they are nevertheless from God, not only providentially but also in root and mode: They follow from God’s natural law (the root) and are promulgated and enlivened by God’s servant, the civil magistrate (the mode). Therefore, we can say with Demosthenes that “all law is a gift of God.”20 A just body of civil law is from God. It is, in this sense, theonomic.