The Case for Christian Nationalism

by Stephen Wolfe

Civil government is Christian not because it declares itself Christian (whether through pomp, titles, or constitutional preambles) but because it actually orders a Christian people to their complete good. This includes acting for the peace and good order of the instituted church, which administers the chief good. Thus, action, not declaration, makes a commonwealth Christian.

The Mosaic law is, as Junius states, a “perfect example” of law, for it is divinely prescribed law, and God prescribes for man only what is good and true. For this reason, “it is necessary to praise the law of Moses above other human laws because it proceeds from that legislator whose reason is most perfect,” says Junius.

Put differently, although the Mosaic law is specifically different from all other bodies of law with regard to types of content,30 it still belongs to the same genus as all bodies of civil law. Essential to that genus is that all laws ought to be both righteous and good. The Mosaic law was a perfect body of law for the Jewish people not simply because God declared it to be perfect but because it was actually perfect. It was, according to God’s natural law, both righteous and good, and it was good because it perfectly conduced to the common good of the Jewish people in their circumstances, if obeyed. But it is not thereby a suitable body of law for all nations. For this reason, as the Reformed tradition has almost universally affirmed, Mosaic law, taken as a whole, is not binding on all nations, even Christian nations. Yet because the Mosaic law perfectly follows from the natural law (albeit suited for a certain people), it can serve as a guide or source of law for all nations. The Mosaic law, therefore, remains relevant to all civil polities.

Although civil law is a sort of self-given human law—for the civil magistrate deliberates and determines it—the law still must be in accord with God’s immutable law, and every civil law is binding only if it is derived from God’s law and conduces to the end of that law. Hence, just civil law, even when determined by man, is both theonomic and, in a sense, autonomic. The magistrate enacts and enforces laws of his own design, though only as a mediator, a sort of vicar of divine civil rule.

But ordering ourselves to God must spring in large part from self-affirmation, from an instinct of peoplehood, and from the felt need to act for our good. We do not fight for Christian civilization in the abstract or according to a ready-made, universal set of civil laws. We do not fight according to a bare divine law but according to a law of God that inheres and enlivens our whole being.

The second type of unjust laws are those that in themselves conform to God’s law or are indifferent to it but are unjust in accident. This type divides into at least four sub-types: (1) Illegitimate authorities or non-authorities cannot obligate anyone to some civil action, even if the action is good; only legitimate authorities can enact law; (2) nor can legitimate authorities demand what is beyond another’s ability, for an ought always implies ability; (3) when the magistrate’s personal good is the reason for some law, then that law is unjust, for the reason for any law is the ground of its legitimacy; (4) lastly, any law that does not conduce to the common good is unjust, for essential to any just law is the suitability to achieve the end of law. In each of these cases, the purported law does not formally obligate subjects or citizens, and, therefore, God does not bind their consciences to it.

Though we can in principle disobey unjust laws, we should recognize the inherent difficulty in determining whether a law is unjust. It is one thing for law to be unjust and another for you to know that it is unjust. Civil magistrates are necessary, as I’ve said, because of natural epistemic limitations in individuals to determine expedient actions for the common good. How then can a private person reliably determine whether a law is unjust?

The lesser magistrate, or a lower civil authority, is in a better position than private persons to determine whether a law enacted from a higher civil authority is just or unjust. He is already charged with the common good and therefore can in principle determine its effects on his jurisdiction. Our first appeal, after judging that some law is unjust, should be to the lesser magistrate, who is charged with securing the common good for his civil community.

Pastors can admonish erring magistrates to correct injustice in the law, but pastors must not mistake their theological training or scriptural knowledge for expertise in jurisprudence. Pastors as pastors are no more competent to analyze or make civil law than any other private person. Now, a pastor can admonish his congregants to disobey a clearly unjust law, and he can exercise spiritual discipline over one who commits injustice in obeying that law. But his primary concern is not civil justice but souls. If civil laws forbid what is good and prescribe what is evil, they threaten the souls of his flock, and for that reason, he has a duty to admonish disobedience.

Christian nationalism exists when the Christian national will for itself is mediated through Christian civil leaders who command and inspire concrete actions performed by the people.

The prince is the first of his people—one whom the people can look upon as father or protectorate of the country. I am not calling for a monarchical regime over every civil polity, and certainly not an autocracy, though I envision a measured and theocratic Caesarism—the prince as a world-shaker for our time, who brings a Christian people to self-consciousness and who, in his rise, restores their will for their good.2 “Prince” is a fitting title for a man of dignity and greatness of soul who will lead a people to liberty, virtue, and godliness—to greatness.

Nevertheless, civil power, as to its principal part, cannot have its origin in individuals, for no man has an inherent power to bind another man’s conscience to particular applications of natural law for the common good. That is, no man, by right of his nature, can order the whole; he cannot command his neighbor to obey his positive judgments on particular actions that conduce to the common good.

Thus, as Rutherford states, “All civil power is immediately from God in its root.”10 The power to order the whole must come from God; it does not inhere in or originate from any man or men in aggregate.

Thus, as Rutherford writes, “this or that power is mediately from God, proceeding from God by the mediation of the consent of a community, which resigneth their power to one or more rulers.”20 Consent is the mechanism by which divine civil power is bestowed upon the prince.

The prince personifies their national spirit, unifies them under a mission, and inspires an intergenerational will to live. He directs men in fulfilling the dominion mandate—to fulfill man’s nature.31 He inspires noble action, sacrifice, and common affection, and he casts a vision for national greatness. “We all love great men,” said Thomas Carlyle. “Ah, does not every true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him?”

Christian prince should use civil power to ensure that the culture of his people reflects true religion. A Christian people will naturally produce this themselves, if they have the proper will for their good. But the Christian prince orders, approves, and supplements it. Christian civil culture is an adornment of the temporal with the eternal.

Likewise, in the civil sphere, the Christian prince can Christianize civil life, not by replacing what is fundamentally particular and earthly in civil life, but by adorning and perfecting it with true religion.44 This adornment does not sacramentalize earthly life (strictly speaking). It serves as support, means, and occasions for the Christian to contemplate heavenly life in earthly life.

The prince can erect monuments that recall deeds of civic virtue but that point the people heavenward—praising one of their own for his deeds in the community and, at the same time, thanking God for securing their commodious life and free worship. The prince can adorn himself and his residence with Christian symbols, as crosses were once painted on royal armor and portraits of monarchs with scepters and crosses. His military or militia, which defends a Christian people and their church, can be designated “soldiers of Christ.” Many other examples could be given. The point is that the Christian prince should exercise his power to secure and supplement Christian civil and material culture and do everything in this power to make his people’s culture, as a whole, Christian.

The Christian prince greatly serves his people when he erects a built environment that inspires them to live and live well—for this life and for the next. Contrary to deadened, modern sentiment, penultimate glory is the best medium to see and desire the ultimate glory.

To reiterate a point from a previous chapter, the Christian commonwealth—wherein a Christian prince rules over a Christian people who dwell in a Christian land—is an earthly image of heavenly life. As an image, the life of the commonwealth remains fundamentally and visibly earthly. But it is a public foretaste of the heavenly commonwealth to come—a life submitted to Christ as king who reigns over all things. Indeed, the Christian commonwealth’s heavenly adornment points to the commonwealth’s own obsolescence, though the people will remain and their glory and honor will be brought into it (Rev. 21:26). On that day, the Christian prince, tossing his crown before Christ, will yield to Christ what has always been his, and he will join his people as a spiritual co-equal in Christ.

A tyrant is not necessarily one with bad motivations or one who acts in “bad faith”; and the tyrant might even appear to be self-sacrificing or self-disregarding.12 Such tyrants ultimately serve their own psychological pathologies, and in this way serve their private good. But our principal focus should not be on motivations or pseudo-benevolent appearances but on the actions of tyrants—a body of actions that strikes at the core of civil society. A tyrant in effect is one who, though having the appearance of civil authority, is but a man ordering fellow men to great evil.

The civil ruler who attacks true religion is not acting as a minister of God. He is an enemy of his people’s good, an enemy of the human race, and an enemy of God. Having assaulted the natural right to worship the true God, which is essential to complete humanity, the civil ruler is justly subjected to revolt and removal. If a people may revolt over temporal things, why not a fortiori over eternal things?

If the old communists lived long enough to see the world of today, they would be devastated by the contrast between how little they themselves had managed to achieve in their antireligious war and how successful the liberal democrats have been. All the objectives the communists set for themselves, and which they pursued with savage brutality, were achieved by the liberal democrats who, almost without any effort and simply by allowing people to drift along with the flow of modernity, succeeded in converting churches into museums, restaurants, and public buildings, secularizing entire societies, making secularism the militant ideology, pushing religion to the sidelines, pressing the clergy into docility, and inspiring powerful mass culture with a strong antireligious bias in which a priest must be either a liberal challenging the Church or a disgusting villain. Is not—one may wonder—this nonreligious and antireligious reality of today’s Western world very close to the vision of the future without religion that the communists were so excited about, and which despite the millions of human lives sacrificed on the alter of progress, failed to materialize?

When confronted with the accusation of “Christian nationalism,” for example, we retreat to universality. That is, we claim that we want “freedom for all” and that Christian values “benefit everyone equally,” and we point to hospitals, charities, adoptions, and a love for the “outcast.” But this is a mental habit that our spiritual forefathers did not have; they were not habitually trained to retreat to universality, to justify all their claims of public life by making the other the chief beneficiary or to make the object of policy all people without discrimination. Nor did they need or seek the approval of the godless to order their communities to God. The retreat to universality is an expression not of Christianity but of normalized modern liberalism, operating as a background assumption for Christian ethics, exegesis, and theology. It ought to be deconstructed.

As Lugutko said, “In defense of pluralism, we give people the right to choose any available philosophy, provided that they choose liberalism.”

To get more technical, the authority principle clarifies the efficient cause of revolution. Complete agency in revolution is antecedently the people’s will for revolution, formally the interposing authority as mediator of that will, and consequently the people’s concrete actions of force, directed as a whole by the interposing authority. These three must be present for a true and just revolution.

In conducting just revolution, a people are fighting a defensive war against the person holding civil office, not against the office itself, i.e., not against the civil ruler as ruler. In resisting a tyrant, a people are not resisting the powers ordained of God, for a power for tyranny is not ordained of God. Thus, a people can conduct revolution against tyrannical civil rulers and, in so doing, not resist the powers ordained of God.

if one were to deny that Christian magistrates can adjudicate between true and false religion for civil society, insisting that this is the prerogative of the instituted church only, then the father in his household cannot adjudicate between true and false religion either, because his household is not the church, and all fathers lead their homes as fathers, not as pastors.21 To deny the possibility of a Christian magistrate entails denying the possibility of a Christian father.

Non-religious regimes make earthly things the ultimate end. They make politics a sort of religion—into an abstract, transcendental vision of the good, which is forcibly immanentized into earthly life. By eliminating public religion, secularism generates its own ultimate commitments that are false, idolatrous, and harmful to all but especially and most importantly harmful to the church.

Being known as a Christian is a social negative, particularly in the elite domains of society. Christian morality is expressly repudiated and seen as a threat to the public good and the new public moral order. Subscribing to Christian moral views or violating the secular moral order brings negative consequences.

Experience over the last decades has made evident that there are two options: Christian nationalism or pagan nationalism. The totality of national action will be either Christian, and thus ordered to the complete good, or pagan—ordered to the celebration of degeneracy, child sacrifice (e.g., abortion), mental illness, and idolatry. Neutrality, even if it was real for a time, will never hold, because man by his nature infuses his transcendent concerns into his way of life and into the place of that life.

But let’s give the left some credit: They are acting according to good principles. If one is serious about some robust conception of the good, then he should seek to exclude from the public square those whom he deems harmful to that good. To be sure, this praise assumes too much of the left, since their pursuits are likely rooted more in resentment, mental illness, narcissism, and hatred of beauty than in principle.

It belongs to Mohammed to advance with slaughter and blood and to establish his empire by cruelty and torments. But Christ reigns in us by the Spirit of grace and love. He seeks the salvation of men, not their blood.

We should also notice that Increase’s argument assumes a sort of Christian nationalism—that a particular people have a right to their particularity, and outsiders wishing to reside with them must conform to their way of life. If they don’t, the whole order can collapse or suffer. Increase appeals to a universal principle: that outsiders ought to respect the communities they enter, which further assumes a right of difference and a right of exclusion based on the good of particularity.

Love to God and love to man is the substance of religion; when these prevail, civil laws will have little to do.

Americans in the 19th century, for example, who wanted to Christianize the Constitution with a Christian amendment sought not to overthrow secularist principles embedded in the Constitution but to correct a mistake of omission and thereby bring the Constitution fully in line with American principles.65 Christianizing American civil institutions is simply making explicit what is already implicit in them. For example, after agreeing to place “In God We Trust” on US coinage, James Pollock, the director of the US Mint, wrote, “We claim to be a Christian nation—why should we not vindicate our character by honouring the God of Nations in the exercise of our political Sovereignty as a Nation?”

Christians should look upon the world as their inheritance—it is indeed ours by inheritance in Christ. The will for what is ours in Christ is the true revolt against the modern world. Let us passionately assert that Christian nationalism is the recovery of a Christian megalothymia—a collective will for Christian dominion in the world.

This is why women tend to be more invested in the modern state than men. The state ensures their independence; it is the ultimate third-party. It renders personal dependence on men entirely optional. The state is their father, brother, and husband. The modern state makes possible a woman’s independence and equality in society. The price for it is pathologizing masculinity.

It is no surprise that de-conversion accounts often include pictures of the de-converted smiling in some tranquil nature scene. He dove straight into the calm social pond and became elated at the release of psychological conflict and at society’s affirmation. His mind is now at ease, as he waves the “current thing” flag. Of course, this is not courageous: it is mental weakness and last-man psychology.

Christian nationalists hold beliefs that run contrary to the prevailing norms of Western society, and thus a Christian nationalist must have the strength of will to affirm what is true, even if it doesn’t feel good to him. This is the main reason why I emphasized the will throughout this book. We often have to act against our psychological inclinations; we have to run from cognitive comforts and from the embrace of modern society; we have to retrain the mind by the strength of will.

Evangelicals are rhetorically enslaved to the sentiments of coastal elite, even when they are not being addressed. These elites are the Big Brother always watching and judging in the shadows.

We’re constantly trying to wedge our views within a narrow window of credibility by checking off all these rhetorical boxes. We waste pages and pages trying to keep socio-rhetorical power at bay: “If I give this disclaimer or affirm their (likely imagined or fake) hate crimes, maybe he won’t call me a homophobe or racist.” Once you feel this habit in your own writing or speaking, you can begin to squash it. And once you’re aware of it, you will see how it operates in discourse. We’re playing a rhetorical game, one that is rigged against us. Don’t play the game.

The various Western ethnicities should view the world more through an ethnic frame. Or, put differently, they must stop universalizing their ethics, ways of life, patterns of thought, and sense of what is good and become more exclusive and ethnic-focused.

We usually treat the human-developed environment as if it were separate from nature. We “leave” the developed world to go on a “nature walk,” for example. This distinction certainly works for us, but it might also conceal an important truth. If humans are natural and if exercising dominion over non-human creation is natural, then human development is neither unnatural nor non-natural. Our development, though a product of choice, is natural to creation; it perfects creation. Thus, the developed landscapes and towns (and perhaps even cities) are natural. This should shape what we develop on the land and why we develop it.

Along these lines, American parents should no longer expect their children to leave the house after graduating high school. This was once a good rule, since there were opportunities for young adults and people could be normal. But times have changed. Staying home into one’s twenties provides a safe, secure place to chart a path for independence, though parents should have zero tolerance for laziness and encourage independence.

Masculine individualism is not opposed to but seeks harmonious hierarchy. Men are not averse to an inferior station. A man readily accepts another’s superiority, if he is recognized as a man among men, having a skill that contributes to the whole. In this way, masculinity harmonizes equality and hierarchy such that the individual is empowered to serve the good of the whole. Masculinity provides a necessary ingredient for natural hierarchy formation: agonism. Men contend with each other and compete, and they can achieve respect as an individual in a group. Individualism and hierarchy are opposites only in a feminized society.

The promise of the “American dream” was not that anyone can become a millionaire if he tries hard enough. That negative characterization is a widespread lie. The American dream was that each person’s striving can attain him a respectable place among fellow Americans. That is, you will likely not be fabulously wealthy, but you can achieve mastery in something that will earn you recognition as a man among men. And in that recognition, you have a place of your own. Your dignity was once tied to what you did and to what you could do when called to do it. Unfortunately, this sort of striving today is degrading and futile in most areas of the economy. We work for woke corporations that hate you and that force you to adopt an ideology of self-loathing and self-incrimination. Your only self-worth is grounded in the worth you ascribe to other people’s delusions about themselves.

It is important to remember that Christian nationalism is a means, not an end in itself. Let us not serve an ideology. I say this not to suppress action for Christian nationalism but to remind us of the purpose of it—the earthly and heavenly good of the people of God.

Christian nationalism should have a strong and austere aesthetic. I was dismayed when I saw the attendees of a recent PCA General Assembly—men in wrinkled, short-sleeved golf shirts, sitting plump in their seats. We have to do better. Pursue your potential. Lift weights, eat right, and lose the dad bod. We don’t all have to become bodybuilders, but we ought to be men of power and endurance. We cannot achieve our goals with such a flabby aesthetic and under the control of modern nutrition. Sneering at this aesthetic vision, which I fully expect to happen, is pure cope. Grace does not destroy T-levels; grace does not perfect testosterone into estrogen. If our opponents want to be fat, have low testosterone, and chug vegetable oil, let them. It won’t be us.

We are Christians pursuing Christian things outside the sphere of the instituted church. The instituted church is not a hub of Christian activism or the “embassy” of godly political rule. The people of God arrange for themselves their own civil rule, and it doesn’t proceed from the ecclesiastical order or from the approval of ministers. For too long, we have looked to fiery political sermons to satisfy our concerns over the “culture.” We listen and then walk out the door thinking, The secularist culture got it good! and we are satisfied. Meanwhile, the culture continues going to hell. This exaggerates things a bit, but still Christians have treated Sunday as their weekly political meeting. It should be no such thing, and practically speaking, turning it into a political church hinders Christian political movements. We must form civil associations outside the ecclesiastical sphere, and without pastoral leadership.