It has been drawn to my attention that some folks have wondered whether or not I was aiming at David Bahnsen (and friends) with this recent paragraph:
“Professing Christians who are nervous about Christian nationalism will see their options begin to narrow. They cannot refute these observations, or at least to date have shown no inclination to try. They cannot embrace them for that will cause them emotional distress, a thing not to be borne. This will leave one option remaining, which is that of joining with the persecutors, and declaring the newly minted state church to be the one faithful representative of the ‘way of the Master.’”
A Quick Christian Nationalism Walk Through
And I am glad to say that the answer is that I did not have them in mind at all, not even a little bit. There should be no difficulty with people who have concerns with the name Christian Nationalism, but who want the kind of moral order that only the God of Heaven can provide. Why quarrel over names if we agree on the central substantive issues?
The people I had in mind were the folks who want the name of evangelical, or Reformed, or Kuyperian, but who would be beside themselves in furrowed brow concern if they were ever to see historic evangelicalism restored, or the civic teaching of the magisterial Reformers recovered, or the logic of Abraham Kuyper applied to the public square. They are the son in the parable who says he will go and doesn’t.
But with all this said, David’s position (as I understand it) was referred to in the piece, several times, in these two paragraphs.
“But back before our activist judges and our cotquean church history professors started memory-holing everything, the God of classical liberalism really was the true God, the God of a robust Christian consensus. But that was a long time ago now, a century or more.”
A Quick Christian Nationaism Walk Through
And then . . .
“The older Christian consensus had a shelf also, but it was not a god shelf. It was a ‘lawful political order’ shelf, and one of the most beautiful objects there was the classical liberal order, the way it used to be.”
A Quick Christian Nationalism Walk Through
And so, I would say, now you know.