The Wine of Red Forgiveness

Introduction

So it has been a while since I blogged my way through a book, and I have now decided to rectify that situation. I was recently browsing in one of my favorite bookstores—Aunties in Spokane, and judging from the staff favorites shelf there, it bears mentioning that it is the kind of bookstore that would be dismayed to find out that it is one of my favorite bookstores—where was I?—and I came across this book. The idea of blogging my way through it occurred to me almost instantly.

The book is Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor by Caleb Campbell. It is published, natcherly, by InterVarsity Press which, back in the days when it used to be staffed by gray-eyed Men from Númenor, used to publish some really good books. Some of those books are still in the back catalog, I bet. That way they can bring out quinquennial editions of doctrinally sound books that remind us all of what once was.

This particular book was in the Christianity section at Aunties, but it was the kind of Christianity section that had books by Pope Francis, Peter Enns, Tim Keller, Karen Armstrong, and the obligatory hat tip to C.S. Lewis. So one browses in places like that with a gambler’s hope, and one’s pistol loose in the holster. You know.

A Dark Parable First

Suppose there was a guy in town who, based on the behavior of my evil twin, came to believe that I had stolen his truck. He seethed with bitterness over this for years, and then one day at church a message on resentment really got through to him, and he repented, really repented, of the malice he had borne toward me. After that, he made a point of befriending me, reaching out to me in various ways, and would take me out for for a beer periodically. One day the full story came out—in his repentance he was seeking my best spiritual interest and wanted to lead me to repentance as well . . . for having stolen his truck. The only hitch in this program was the fact that I hadn’t stolen his truck. Other than that, I did appreciate the sweetness of his attitude, although I did have some difficulty in getting what I considered to be a pretty important point across.

In the turmoil that was 2020, Campbell had experienced the disintegration of many long-term relationships. He was burnt, and on the verge of being burned out in pastoral ministry.

After he was done reeling from all of this, once he had regrouped, he decided as a consequence that he was going to go to war with Christian nationalism, and so he began to study up on it. Christian nationalism was the enemy. But then, after an encounter with a young representative from Turning Point USA, he had a true heart change, and decided that far from treating Christian nationalists as the enemy, he instead needed to treat us as a mission field—and hence this book. He decided that he needed to love the people who had stolen his truck.

So put all this together. I want to acknowledge at the outset of this series of posts that Caleb Campbell appears to me to be a very nice man, and a sincere Christian. Unfortunately he has a set of paradigm blinkers on, and what those blinkers do is reveal how anemic his definition of love appears to be. “My heart melted.” But love does not mean having warm emotions toward someone. Love means treating someone lawfully from the heart. And it is not possible to treat someone lawfully from the heart when you bearing false witness against them . . . as will be shown shortly. It is good that Campbell dropped the adversarial attitude. But he has not yet dropped his adversarial interpretation of what is going on. He has not yet achieved escape velocity.

(At the same time, what he gets wrong is not false witness against everyone. There is an important expansion of my truck metaphor down below. We will get to it when we get there. Just hold your horses.)

So Speaking of False Witness . . .

He starts out with a good point, and at the beginning he is running smooth. But only at the beginning. The term Christian nationalism really is quite a broad one, and there are in fact a certain number of truck thieves among us. There is no a apriori need to deny that the fruit bar at the Christian nationalist restaurant does contain a few wild cherries. So there no need to claim that every text message Pastor Campbell received in 2020 was filled with sweetness and light. The Christian nationalist label has been claimed by a handful of Internet randos, antisemites, cranks, and so on. But Campbell has forgotten the hordes of faithful Christians who simply want us to stop slaughtering babies, and who want us to stop it in the name of Jesus. While we are at it, also in the name of Jesus, we want to stop solemnizing sodomy.

So if Campbell wanted to claim that there are some who call themselves Christian nationalists who have slipped the leash, and are answering nature’s call on some fastidious neighbor’s lawn, I can agree with him. In fact, certain names come to mind,

But please notice what he says at the conclusion of that quote. “The one thing they all have in common . . .” The one thing that all Christian nationalists have in common is that they are all of them trusting in the sword instead of in the power of Jesus. This is the kind of thing that would make John Witherspoon, were he only here, say something like crikey.

There are two things to be said about this outrageous claim. The first is that it is a gobsmacking and grandiose exercise in spiritual telepathy. Campbell is making a claim that rests upon an ability to read heart motives, and this is an ability, I venture to suggest, that he does not actually have. Absent some authoritative statement of Christian nationalist principles, which every last one of us signed, and which states that “we trust in the sword and not in Jesus,” he has no right to say anything like this.

I can say that Mormons do not trust in Jesus as the one true God because there are multiple authoritative Mormon statements that affirm their polytheism. But what Campbell did here was analogous to saying that Baptists don’t trust in Jesus as the one true God. The question that would naturally arise would be “where do they say that?” As in, “where did you even get that idea?”

What this boils down to is that he is claiming that because Christian nationalists believe the magistrate should use the sword to restrain certain behaviors that Campbell believes ought not to be addressed with the sword, this must mean that we have somehow abandoned our ultimate trust in Christ. Not only so, but all of us have. This is the one thing that all Christian nationalists supposedly have in common. But how does this follow? Campbell believes that the sword should be used to restrain certain activities (like the J6 incursion, to take a random guess). Does it then follow that he has abandoned his faith in Christ? If someone wants civic penalties for abc, they are orthodox? And if they want them for xyz, they are heretical? Really?

His misrepresentation of what is going on here can only be described as sly.

Two things. Take over government power “at all costs?” Nothing doing. Tolkien was right. The one ring that binds them must be thrown into the fire. Nothing else will serve. The ends do not justify the means. Biblical law constrains the magistrates as much as it does the people. One of the central features of Protestant political theory, which we are arguing for, is the ideal of limited government. God will not share His glory with another, and this doctrine must be applied first to the Caesars and the Pharaohs.

And secondly, the sly part of this statement is “to advance their preferred way of being in the world.” As though we are going to use every conceivable government power no matter how great in order to impose our personal preferences on others, no matter how trivial. As though I wanted to send some Federal agency to stop Murphy from mowing his lawn on Sunday evening—because he doesn’t observe the sabbath from 6 pm to 6 pm the same way I do. But what I actually want is for the magistrate to use his power to stop abortionists from dismembering little babies. But this should not be described as “my preferred way of being the world.” It is more like wanting the babies to make it into the world at all.

Cult Leaders With a False Gospel?

All this is pretty ripe, ripe to the point of putrefaction. “Cult leaders. False gospel. Preying on fear. Reached with the true gospel.” All this is said about millions of fellow evangelical Christians, and he says it without a qualm, and his basis for saying this is that they disagree with the peace that he has made with the secular post war consensus.

There are tens of thousands of people out there who would agree with him on the Trinity, on sola fide, on the Bible as the Word of God, on the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross, and numerous other doctrines central to evangelical faith. And he wants to relegate them as lost because they happen to believe that it would be appropriate for the sheriff to shut down drag queen story hour. I mean, jeepers.

Too Many Eggs in the Pudding

May I suggest something? The way to your neighbor’s Christian nationalist heart is not to take his understandable MANA desire (Make America Normal Again) and represent it as something that emerged from the sea, like the beast in Revelation.

Destroy dissidents? We are the ones being arrested for speaking out at school board meetings. Misappropriate Scripture? Like demanding we mask up to love our neighbor? Encourage acts of aggression, racism, and hatred? Like defending those who burned down a large chunk of Minneapolis? No, the beast did not emerge from the darkness in 2020. What happened was that a lot of people got tired of the beast rampaging through our villages, as it had for decades, and started looking around for a St. George.

Monstrous power, aye. Caleb Campbell needs to sit down and listen to himself for a bit.

Straight Gospel

As noted above, there are many variants on the Christian nationalist theme, and some of them are bad actors. That’s true enough. And among the many good actors, there is are some widely different approaches and strategies. That is also true enough. But with that said, it should also be noted that the Moscow Mood is certainly one of those approaches. So it should not be thought strange if we regard what we are doing as representing a large segment of the Christian nationalist movement, which means that Campbell’s book is talking about us along with all the others. Not to toot my own little horn, but the New York Times, and Politico, and NBC, and the Associated Press, and CNN seem to think we are leaders in the Christian nationalist movement. Because Campbell researched this thoroughly, we are certainly in his mix.

And so this means that Campbell has accused me of being a cult leader, and a purveyor of a false gospel. Now I am about to share with you what I believe the true gospel to be, and once you have read it—it will all be there in my concluding paragraph—you can decide. Are we bearing a false gospel, or is Caleb Campbell bearing false witness? I maintain the latter, and it consequently seems to me that bearing false witness against your neighbor is a strange way to love him.

Far from being our savior, the modern state is an idol that must be toppled from our pluralistic god shelf. The triune God of Scripture is the only true God, and must be recognized as such. He raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, and has given Him universal dominion over every nation, language, tongue, or tribe. He has commanded all men everywhere to repent. But we are a rebellious people, porn-addled and with the blood of millions of innocents on our hands, with blood up to our elbows. We are given over to our vices, and have enlisted the power of the state to punish anyone who dares to rebuke us for our vices. The only possible solution to this spiritual disease and rot is the perfect, sinless life of the Lord Jesus Christ, culminating in His sacrificial death on the cross, His burial in the tomb, and His glorious resurrection from the dead. After He was raised, He expressly told His disciples to disciple every nation, swords and all—was that a false gospel?—baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything that Jesus had commanded. This is what His apostles proceeded to do, and the Christian faith has transformed the world. Some of us are simply maintaining that the job of transforming the world is not completed. We are not even close to being done. To accomplish this end, our weapons will continue to be the proclamation of a crucified and risen Savior—our weapons are not carnal, but they are nevertheless mighty for the pulling down of strongholds. Now once the magistrates are converted, they will have to be instructed concerning what to do with their swords, and we will then tell them to stop using them on babies. But we will never get to that point by means of the sword. The only way to get to that blessed condition will be for scores of preachers to tell the people that they have offended the God of Heaven, and the only way to avoid the wrath that is coming is for them to flee to the offense of the cross—the cross being the only safe place for God to be offended with sinners. And so these are not the words of a cult leader. I am not telling anyone to drink the Kool-Aid. This the cup of the new covenant, and there is nothing in it but the wine of red forgiveness.