That PCA Report on Christian Nationalism

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Introduction

So last Thursday the first part of the PCA’s study report on Christian nationalism dropped. For those who would check it out, here you go. The following is what I tweeted at the time, and so here we are. Next Monday has arriven, if that’s the word I’m looking for.

Just finished reading the PCA report on Christian Nationalism—https://t.co/7QZskBz8Nr. The phrase that came to my mind is "grudging respect." Having said so much, I do have a handful of really awkward questions which I hope to publish next Monday at Blog & Mablog.

— Douglas Wilson (@douglaswils) June 4, 2026

The Kudos First

Before getting to my promised awkward questions, let me start by saying what was good about the report. And there was much that was good—if we restrict ourselves to various points in isolation. But depending on how the follow-up Q&A goes, we might find ourselves trying to deal with a conflicted version of Bunyan’s Mr. Facing-both-ways. We shall see.

But here are the things that I took as being good, as far as it goes, and a sign of some progress. One point in particular was a real breakthrough.

First, they recognized that there are various Christian Nationalisms out there, and they made a note of it multiple times. There is no central CN headquarters, there is no official newsletter, there is “not a single, unified position” (p. 2721, l. 25). They did not throw every political conservative in the PCA into a huge pot, in order to melt them all down into a dismissible unit.

As a consequence, the report showed that there were multiple ways in which a principled Christian Nationalist could be a member in good standing in the PCA, and the same thing goes for church officers. If such persons were committed to being good churchmen, then they were within the pale. There were of course some forms of CN that they said were not consistent with life in the PCA (e.g. kinism), and they also said that an officer who subscribed to the original Westminster Confession on the civil magistrate would have an obligation to inform his presbytery that he was taking an exception to the American Westminster on that point. The presbytery would then decide if he was okay, or should be traded to the RPCNA or the Red Sox. That by itself is fair enough, but there is also an inconsistency there . . . to be discussed in a just a bit.

The report also did very well when they noted that the peace and purity of the church could be disrupted “along multiple axes” (p. 2720, l. 7). What this meant is that they recognized that opponents of Christian nationalism are more than capable of coming unstuck in their very own disruptive ways, and needed to be handled with pastoral wisdom also. Hard-line anti-CNers also need to be told to put a sock in it. The even-handedness there was really appreciated.

Third, the report did a great job being respectful of the hard establishment assumptions of the original Westminster Confession. They did not try to paper over those historical realities, and they did not patronize our fathers in the Reformed tradition. Neither did they patronize those today who continue to agree with the historic Reformed understanding of civic law. They represented the original Westminsterian position on the civil magistrate fairly. At the same time, in this area, I do need to note a difference with them on one point. I would argue that the American Westminster was a milder version of the historic Reformed doctrine—the same doctrine in a different context—while they argued that the American was a decided alteration of that doctrine. But the report did acknowledge what the original Westminster actually said, and as we shall see in the next item of congratulation, it doesn’t really matter. But on this point I am with James Baird, who said, “I still hold that 1646 and 1788 are different, not contradictory.” But nevertheless, having made their position clear, the report made room, in principle, for a PCA man to be an originalist, so long as he was not a troublemaker and he recognized the functional authority of the American Westminster that the PCA operates under today. Again, that part is fair enough.

Fourth—and this is a place where I would side with these PCA-guys over against some in the CN world. Classical liberalism is a very different thing than the secular post-war liberal consensus, and I am happy to be identified as a classical liberal. But as a Christian nationalist also, I do not believe that classical liberalism can be sustained apart from a recognition of Christ the Lord. In brief, philosophical libertarianism cannot sustain a classical liberal order, and I believe that a Christian consensus can do so. And in this point, although they wouldn’t italicize the point the same way I would, the report seems to agree. See this entire section (p. 2711, ll. 5-22). They assert there that many civic goods have been obtained “in God’s providence” through “liberal political orders” (p. 2711, l. 5). At the same time, crucially, they note that “in some cases, liberal philosophies have severed freedom from its moral and theological foundations” (p. 2711, ll. 15-16). They say “some cases” while I say “all cases,” but what they affirm is still crucial.

Moral and theological foundations! Christ or chaos (p. 2711, ll. 18-22). That’s the ticket. Foundations are the sorts of things that everything else rests upon. Everything collapses when you don’t have them (Matt. 7:26-27). And this is the point I would press in saying that the report actually represents a version of soft establishmentarianism. A classical liberal order needs a Christian theological foundation to survive, as this report plainly states.

But coming to my last point, do you know what all of this taken together means? It means that if this report is approved, the entire PCA looked straight at the American version of the Westminster 23.3, and they said that all PCA men were bound to it, with any differences registered with presbytery. This means, of course, as the report explicitly says, that those who agree with the original British form of the chapter need to take an exception.

But because consistency matters, at least to me, do you know who else needs to take an exception? Anyone who does not believe it to be the duty of the magistrate to be a nursing father to the Christian church, protecting them all without any denominational bias. Also anyone who thinks that a magistrate, on account of some bugaboo virus, has the right to “interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise” of worship in any way . . . that man needs to take an exception too. But now I am running ahead to one of my questions here, so why don’t I just calm down? I can get to it in a minute.

Persons who adhere to non-Christian religions, or who are outright infidels, are to be entirely free from any “violence, abuse, or injury,” certainly, but the magistrate nevertheless has a positive duty to be solicitous of Christians in particular. The magistrate is to be a nursing father to Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists. He is to be partial to the Christians, those who worship our “common Lord.” He is not to be a nursing father to the Hindus or Muslims, which is actually something that can be done without persecuting them.

So using the historical/grammatical method, soft establishment it is.

Okay, Okay, So It Was Qualified Praise . . .

I do have some questions and criticisms, but none of them should be taken as ingratitude for the good things in the report. With regard to doctrinal content, what this means is that any men in the PCA who are friendly to the Moscow Mood are well within bounds, provided they are decent Christians also. General equity theonomy . . . in bounds. Soft establishment on the basis of a voluntary Christian consensus . . . in bounds. Mere Christendom . . . in bounds. Talking about the Jooozzz like you were Haman after a couple of beers . . . out of bounds.

At least that’s how I interpret all of this. Others may see it differently, and some of the issues raised below might be the reason why. There is still some murk that needs to be demurkified. There are some lacunae. And in at least one place, a thumb on the scale. Not to mention an overall sense of conflictedness.

But in the quote just above, I was also pleased to see a stout rejection of black “affinity groups” in the PCA—”we reject . . . separation as in any way permissible.” All done with that.

Who Are We Talking About Exactly?

This first criticism is one that I am holding up on an open palm. That is because it is quite possible that when the second part of this report is published this particular defect will be addressed. At least, I hope so because it really needs to be.

Having distinguished various kinds of Christian nationalists, they set up a line of buckets, each bucket representing a different variation. And I think they described these groupings pretty well. But they don’t use any individual names whatever, so we don’t know into which bucket they would place Stephen Wolfe, or Nick Fuentes, or Joel Webbon, or Zach Garris, or me, or anybody else. So we have our instrument of measurement, but with no way to calibrate it.

Even though some of these men I mentioned above are not in the PCA, these are names that influence people in the PCA, and so the report needs to make clear who they are talking about.

And here’s an example of why it matters. A good deal of space was dedicated to a discussion of rhetoric. Christian nationalists are out of bounds when they don’t watch their tongues. To the surprise of some, I affirm what they said about that, agreeing entirely. I agree that bad things are bad. I agree because they were defining balls and strikes which is not at all the same thing as calling balls and strikes.

So in the abstract, PCA pastors have now been exhorted to take a stand against “bad speech” from certain actors in the Christian nationalism space. But who are we talking about? Remember, in a moment when a PCA presbytery actually suspended Zach Garris, one of their ministers, for tweeting the verbal outrage of “sometimes things are more complex than a PhD can handle,” everybody really needs to know what the boundaries actually are.

Garris was actually found to be guilty of “unwholesome speech” in violation of Eph. 4:29, and here’s the thing. As things currently stand, the offending presbytery, Rio Grande, which inexplicably has not yet gone into hiding, could defend their atrocious action by pointing to this report. The ball bounced three times before it got to Garris, and Rio Grande called it a strike anyhow. And you could read through the report three times and not be able to say anything different. This is because the report gave us the definition of strikes, but did not give us the definition of qualified umpires.

Now all of this would be horse laugh material, but that would not be because the report is technically wrong. Bad speech is bad. Corrupt speech really is corrupt. But who are you talking about? The report makes a bunch of good points, but they are all floating around in mid-air. At whom is this allegation directed? On this matter of language, if they were talking about Nick Fuentes, then they would be entirely right. If they were talking about Garris, then this report is as risible as that Rio Grande game of “the process is the punishment.” And I know this is a stretch, but work with me—if this part of the report was talking about me . . . well, I submit that we should let the gentlemen of the jury decide whether there is a difference between scurrilous abuse and bracing metaphors—the kind that have that refreshing touch of citrus.

And no, it is not an all-white jury.

Are Borders Persecution?

There were various places in the report where an argument was made that blurred things up by talking as though Issue A were somehow Issue B. This is what I mean.

And to this I reply that we need not dispute any water that’s under the bridge. But we do need to look upstream and consider what we are going to do about the water that is not yet anywhere near the bridge. How would the principles of this report apply in the following scenario?

Does the Christian magistrate have the right, on the basis of religion, to decline to enfranchise millions of new citizens in the first place? Stated bluntly, may a Christian magistrate restrict immigration from Muslim-majority nations, bringing the flow down to zero, doing so because they are Muslim, and because their presence en masse would dilute the influence of the Christian faith in our public life?

The answer is either yes or no. Yes, a Christian magistrate could do this without being a hateful bigot, or no, he could not do so. If the answer is no, then the report would be saying that a Christian magistrate cannot defend and maintain the Christian consensus of the country. He cannot do that even if he has a means to do it without persecution of non-Christians. Denying a visa to a Muslim is not persecution. Denying a visa to a Muslim because he is a Muslim is not persecution. It is discrimination, but not persecution.

We can agree that under the soft establishment carved out by the American Westminster, infidels would not be persecuted. Great, fine. But to argue that our immigration policy must be “religion-blind” is actually to be the regular kind of blind. Importing millions of Muslims and Hindus is a failure to be a nursing father to the church. Which is contrary to the Confession.

So the report rejected the “suppression or disestablishment of citizens” on the basis of religion. Okay, but what about the deportation of illegals on the basis of religion?

Comparative Distances

The distance between the original Westminster and the American Westminster is fifteen yards. The distance between the R2K men and the American Westminster is 75 yards. So why do the conservatives have to take the exception and the Christian secularists do not?

Why is it granted that the pluralism of the Founding was a denominational pluralism, but that we are allowed to treat world religion pluralism as though it were just a bigger version of the same thing? The point I am making is not a subtle one. They are not the same thing, not even close. Compare the difference between a ministerial association of all the evangelical pastors in town, and a ministerial association that includes the Bahai, the Unitarians, the Buddhists, the Muslims and others. It is not that the second one is bigger. It is bigger, but that is not the main thing, right?

The American Westminster assumes a denominational pluralism—Baptists, Presbyterian, Episcopalians, etc. To widen this to include Muslims, Hindus, and others as a principle is to adopt a different understanding of pluralism altogether, and it is therefore not confessional. And this is a point that the report actually acknowledges, albeit implicitly.

Amen. But this means the magistrate can favor Christianity above Islam, correct? The magistrate is supposed to be an “impartial protector” (p. 2716, l. 24). But an impartial denominational protector is quite a different thing, an entirely different thing, than a protector of every conceivable worldview that has been cooked up by the wit of man.

As I stated earlier, I have detected the same kind of soft establishmentarianism in this report that I see in the American Westminster. The difference is that the 18th century Presbyterians weren’t embarrassed by that, and they didn’t speak in a conflicted way about it.

At the same time, we must realize there are many ostensible Presbyterians today who want to maintain that there are no civic implications whatever to be drawn from the number of Christians over against the number of Melanesian frog worshipers. And the reason they see no difference is that, underneath it all, they are civic secularists—or they are cowed by the secularists. That is the one worldview held where no dissent is permissible at all. So these Christian secularists will want to appeal to this report also, and I really don’t think we should let them.

So I do stick with my earlier assessment. This report has granted the foundational assumption of soft establishment. But to take just one example, by not requiring the R2K men to take an exception to the American Westminster, while at the same time requiring originalists to take an exception, it amounts to soft establishment with no immune system. This emaciated patient has AIDS. Or, more accurately, it is a system that has an immune system that fights off a problem that is not really their problem, and which does nothing with regard to the secularizing disease that is killing them.

Redemption and Sovereignty

There is one other point to be made before I conclude. And I will conclude, promise.

The church is indeed the place where the gospel is preserved and proclaimed. The church is the ministry of Word and sacrament. Indeed. Christ manifests His redemptive work in the church. Yes, amen, and that is to be jealously guarded.

But does the reign of Christ have no other aspects? He is not defined for us merely as the Savior of saviors, but also as the King of kings, and the Lord of lords. Is there anything outside the walls of the church that Christ cares about? Is there anything He commands us to do something about? In His name?

When, in God’s good providence, He brought about liberal political orders that laid the foundation for many of our freedoms . . . . did this have anything to do with Christ’s reign (p. 2711, l. 5)? Did the expansion of justice, liberty and charity have anything to do with it? Did the limitation of arbitrary political power, the recognition of human dignity, and the expansion of civil and political rights . . . was this related in any way to the reign of Messiah the Prince? Read over p. 2711, ll. 5-22 again.

If it did have something to do with Christ’s reign, then wouldn’t we have to acknowledge that Christ’s reign is cosmic, and not delimited by the church? The church is at the center of it, true, but the Lord is Lord of Heaven and earth, is He not? All authority is His, is it not?

But if the claim that all this civic progress had nothing at all to do with Christ’s reign, a reign which is redemptive only and bounded by the walls of the church, then what is God the Father doing outside the church, exercising all this providential care over the political sphere, going solo as it were? I thought we were Trinitarians.

Conclusion

And so my central critique is that the report, for all its isolated virtues, is conflicted.

By saying that our freedoms have a theological foundation—endowed by our Creator, remember—the report has rejected secularism. But for various reasons, they want to lean secular, or still give a hat tip to the secular. The report says that the change made from the original Westminster to the American “did not produce a fully secularized document” (p. 2716, ll. 32-33). Not yet fully secular? The God-haters are working on that, trying hard to get us to our civic atheism. Not a good thing.

What this means is that there were still vestiges of the old order. There were vestiges . . . like the footings and the foundation walls.

This robust commitment to religious liberty is a commitment that grew out of Christian denominational diversity. The Baptists wanted it, the Presbyterians wanted it, and so forth. The denominations that had enjoyed the privileges of establishment, like the Congregationalists, didn’t want it, but gave way over time. The principles of religious liberty were not inconsistent with any of their central tenets, and so it was not fatal compromise for them to acquiesce.

Religious liberty is itself a religious value. and the foundational concrete of such religious liberty will only be poured by those who value it.

If you expand the definitions of “denominations”—doing so quietly and without argument—to include those faiths that have no interest in religious liberty whatever, treating the Muslim Brotherhood as being on an equal footing with the Freewill Baptists, then you have actually transformed the job description of the Christian civil magistrate.

No longer a nursing father, he is now a nurse practitioner at the assisted suicide clinic.