Christian Nationalism Basics

Introduction

You don’t really have to like the term Christian nationalism, not at all. But given the times in which we live, you do have to understand it. This should be done without freaking out about it, and without allowing elliptical advocates of the CN position to scare you away from it. Walk with me here, step by step. Tell your fantods to calm the heck down.

And besides, if you are free, white, and 21, you will almost certainly be accused of being a Christian nationalist anyhow, so it is really incumbent on you to understand the terms that will be thrown at your head. This CN phrase will be one of them. Go ahead and catch one. Take a look at it. Check out the serial number on the bottom.

Alternative Names

Other terms that will be thrown at you—racist, misogynist, theofascist, and so on—are not usable at all. Let them whistle by. It would be a waste of your time and energy to try to explain to anybody that you were only wanting to be the good kind of Christofascist. Your only task with regard to all such slanderous accusations and names is to live in such a way as that everyone with any sense recognizes that the slanders are in fact slanders. This task will sometimes be made the more difficult for you by bots programmed to sound like Goebbels on one of his surly mornings, not to mention those brethren who decided, not sure why, to download the bot programming for themselves. For reasons best known to themselves, they decided to infuriate the left by delighting them—by giving them exactly what they wanted. Not all elevators go to the top floor, in other words.

So I think I can speak for genuine CNs everywhere when I say that such distortions ought not even to slow us down. Did I just use the phrase “genuine CNs?” Well, yes, I did. Don’t be fooled by imitations. Jesus really did rise from the dead, and this has political ramifications. One of the more obvious ramifications is the death of rancid malevolence.

And in my one oblique reference to recent controversies, this is one sure fire way for my adversaries to prove that I really am in the pay of the Jews—as this shadowy cabal, too clever by half, has apparently decided to have me preach that Jesus of Nazareth occupies the throne of David, and is the true Messiah of God. So I should warn you that some of these criticisms of my supposed Mossad connections should not be closely evaluated by you if you are asthmatic. The resultant wheezing would probably not be good for you.

So CN Is Different

But “Christian nationalist” really is in a different category from all those other jibes. You are already an American, a citizen of this nation. You want to be a productive and fruitful citizen. That should make you think immediately of the essential question—which is, of course, “by what standard?” Productive and fruitful according to whom?

And this should make you move right on to the next realization. You are a Christian, are you not? How can these two categories—American and Christian—be understood together? You are already both. You are already American and already Christian. What genuine Christian nationalism does is insist that these two categories need to be related to one another thoughtfully and properly.

In order for the two to be related properly, in order to be the genuine Christian nationalist position, the Christian part must completely outrank the American part. If the nationalist part swallows and digests your understanding of the gospel, then it is not Christian nationalism at all, but rather just “nationalism.”

You already have the ham, and you already have the cheese, and so I want to explain to you how you can make yourself a ham and cheese sandwich. Furthermore, I am also wanting to explain to you how you will have great difficulty in making anything but a ham and cheese sandwich. Some in denial will resort to semantics. Conservative Christians who want to integrate their faith and their politics, but who don’t want to be CNs, can always say, “No, no, this is a cheese and ham sandwich.” Sure. Knock yourself out.

So to confess that you want America to be a Christian nation (again) is not to embrace a slander. It is simply to recognize that the Great Commission did not exempt America from the Lord’s charge to disciple all the nations. Jesus did not claim all authority in heaven and on earth except in those regions identified as neutral zones by the Ninth Circuit.

A Nation, Not a Creed

Understanding all of this in a sane and judicious way needs to begin with the understanding that America is simply one more nation among men, like all the other nations, and that we must not be thought of as a propositional or ideological construct. To argue that America is merely a propositional nation is to set up our country as a counterfeit church, as a rival to the true faith. But to recognize that we are simply an ordinary nation—greatly blessed to be sure, but still ordinary—is to make a claim that fits nicely into the scriptural pattern. Blessed nations can bring their honor and glory into the New Jerusalem. But conceited nations do not ever get to become the New Jerusalem.

Put bluntly, if America is simply a creed, then it is a false one. But if America is a nation, held together by a complex combination of natural goods—shared history, shared legal traditions, shared language, shared customs, shared symbols, and yes, shared propositions (e.g. “Jesus rose from the dead”)—then it is possible for us to be part of a mere Christendom. As a loyal American son, I would love it if the part we were to play got to be a significant one, but it will only ever be truly significant if we learn to walk humbly with our God. That is not, incidentally, how we are currently walking.

If America is the true religion, then a man elsewhere in the world who loves his nation needs to be treated like an infidel. But if America is being summoned to submit to the true religion, along with all other nations, then no conflict arises when other nations are summoned in the same way. A man who truly loves and honors his mother will understand fully why another man loves and honors his mother, even though they are two completely different women. They love and honor different women because they are both under the authority of the same law.

A Nation, Not an Enterprise Zone

Vivek and Elon—who are still going to do lots of good stuff in the coming months—did not do lots of good stuff when it came to their comments about bringing in highly-skilled workers to the US on H-1B visas. Those comments caused kind of an uproar in the MAGA-ranks, and the reasons for that uproar are not very far away from this entire question that we are addressing right this minute, which is “what is a nation?” After the question blew up, both Vivek and Elon defended the free use of such visas, and Vivek indicated that American workers weren’t really up to snuff, having been too busy with their football games, proms, and such.

Given the fact that the American voting public was already sore enough on this issue to elect Donald Trump, to say anything like this was beyond tone deaf. During the Biden years, somewhere between 10 and 15 million illegals were deposited at various places around the country, causing massive dislocations. How much white sand can you put in the sugar bowl before it is no longer a sugar bowl?

Now someone like Vivek could object, and say that he fully supports Trump’s intention to be a border hawk with regard to illegal immigration, but that he was talking about legal immigration. H-1B visas are for highly skilled workers who come to the US legally. The number set by Congress for such visas annually is 65,000, with room for 20,000 more if they have graduate degrees from U.S. colleges. But nevertheless . . . that’s a lot of Hindus.

Remember that these are skilled and ambitious people, likely to rise to positions of influence and control. That means that when it comes to America retaining its distinct identity as a nation, they clearly represent a diluting agent. That means that much more is going on apart from the bottom line for the company that hired them.

To change the metaphor for a moment, the pressing issue right now is numbers—and not really legal v. illegal immigration. If a ship hit an iceberg and was flooding badly, and then on top of that the captain lost his mind and ordered the engineering officer to start pumping sea water into the hold as well, it would not matter that much if the crazy order were technically a “lawful” one. The need of the hour would actually be less water, not less “illegal” water.

So those who object to this kind of naked “skills/wages” calculus, as I do object, are therefore right to say that we are a “nation, not an enterprise zone.”

But one more layer needs to be added to this, and this is an area where I believe that the theonomic CNs have an insight that the non-theonomic CNs do not have.

If we are a nation seeking to live under the blessing of God, as He describes such blessings in Deuteronomy, then we will in fact be an enterprise zone—meaning we will be blessed in basket and in store (Dt. 28:5). So the issue that is being forgotten is this one—enterprise zone for whom? When the tech bros don’t really care who is the head and who is the tail, they are thinking like globalists, and not like citizens.

But of course, given theonomy, there is a ditch on the other side of the road as well. If nativists want to be lazy and entitled whiners, and want to fight for “DEI, but for white guys,” meaning they want to remain the head and not the tail as a matter of automatic birthright, then they are trying to demand God’s covenant blessings without meeting God’s covenantal conditions. God will nevertheless give them over to the Hindu and Muslim immigrants, not in deference to some cosmopolitan ideal, but rather as a covenantal chastisement for their disobedience. Covenants have conditions and stipulations.

So if you want a nation, and not a creed, and if you want a nation, and not a mere enterprise zone, then what actually matters is the blessing of God. At the end of the day, that is the only thing that matters. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord (Ps. 33:12).

Relating Two Realities That Are Already Realities

So we are a nation already. That structure already exists. The two basic alternatives to nationhood would be failed state tribalism, on the one hand, and eat-your-crickets globalism on the other. Many of our current grease fire political issues, like out-of-control immigration, are the result of deliberate attempts to degrade and destroy this national reality. If we disintegrate into a hundred pieces, then it will be easier for us all to be assimilated into the Globo-Hive. And if we don’t disintegrate, but also don’t eradicate the swollen domestic statism that is currently devouring us, then what will happen is that our portion of the Borg will eventually merge with the Euro-Borg Hive Mind. Two different routes to the same unhappy end.

But assume that the nation has not been so degraded. Assume that we still exist as an identifiable nation. Assume that the populist revolt that is currently under way has resulted in at least this blessing—i.e. that America is still a recognizable nation. It is a nation fighting for survival as a nation, but there is at least a fight that is still going on. This means there is yet one more thing that needs to be addressed. As that identifiable nation, have we been behaving in ways that make God angry? And if we are, then wouldn’t it be a good idea to stop it? To repent?

Shouldn’t that be an essential part of what we are laboring for? And if we do repent, and if we do cry out to God, using His name, then wouldn’t that be Christian nationalism? Apart from Christ, how can we be delivered from this? And if we are delivered from this by Him, shouldn’t we be willing to be called by His name?

Foundation of Tyranny

Gouverneur Morris, one of our Founding Fathers, once made this striking observation: “From the same pure fountain of wisdom we learn that vice destroys freedom; that arbitrary power is founded on public immorality” (emphasis mine).

You should already be familiar with the great John Adams quote—”Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” This is profoundly true. A moral and a religious people are the only platform upon which a structured constitutional order like ours can survive. But the Morris quote is even more profound than that.

Not only does ordered liberty have prerequisites, so also does the arbitrary power of tyranny have prerequisites. Arbitrary power is founded on public immorality. Constitutional order requires public virtue in order to function. True enough. But arbitrary power, tyrannical power, also requires a platform or foundation. That foundation is public immorality.

This is why public immorality has been so actively promoted. This is why the pride parades. This is why the drag queen story hours. This is why abortion is being treated as their blood sacrament. This is why the savage travesty of same sex mirage was imposed on all fifty states. This is why there is porn in every American hotel room. This is why students in the government schools are actively groomed in the catechesis of gender dysphoria. This is why pedophiles are hiding under the alphabet people + sign. This is why . . . why all of that.

So they are not doing all this in order to drive us to the orgy. They are driving us to the orgy so that after we have had our fill we will be too exhausted to resist when they start attaching the shackles and chains. The orgy is not the end, not the destination, not the point. The orgy has been the means. The orgy was not the trap, but rather just the bait.

And this is why it really is Christ or chaos.