Review: The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe

What's the big deal with this book?

Late last year, I noticed the evangelical and Reformed literati losing their minds over a book, The Case for Christian Nationalism, being published, not by Crossway or Nelson, but by little Canon Press in Moscow, Idaho. Such evangelical celebrities as Phil Vischer, the creator of Veggietales and the intellectual heavyweight* behind “BellyButton,” chimed in to describe the book as “abominable,” you know, like the snowman.

(*I’m having a little fun here. Vischer is a gifted communicator, and his evangelical street cred makes his recent radical turns all the more concerning. And I have nothing but love for the BellyButton song, as it brings back memories of tow-headed toddlers dancing in their diapers in front of the television, days long past in the Owens household.)

Somehow this book became The Current Thing requiring vigorous condemnation in late 2022, and that made it all the more attractive for me to read. As a synthesis thinker, I find controversial ideas are often the most interesting and likely to have aspects of truth I had not previously considered. Readers should know that I tend to avoid tough criticism of books I review. I understand how hard it is to write things, and if I’m picking books that have interesting insights, I try to show respect for the effort by presenting authors’ arguments as charitably as I can and focus on positive things I can learn rather than poke too many holes in their arguments.

I had never heard of the author, Stephen Wolfe, before, but in reading about his background it occurred to me that Wolfe has the sort of mainstream credentials his critics find impressive, with a Ph.D. in political science from LSU and a post-doc fellowship at Princeton University. He is not a crank easily dismissed and ignored, and he dared to provide an intellectual defense for the political instincts of the Trump-voting evangelical masses that many respectable evangelical leaders find embarrassing. Why this need not be controversial is best summed up by Voddie Bauchum in a recent interview with Allie Beth Stuckey:

Smash Baals @smashbaals

Voddie Baucham on why Christian Nationalism is the only way forward:

I have not read many theological works in recent years. While I find theology interesting as a topic of discussion, I inevitably get bored with it due to much of its impracticality. Unlike science or business, there is no means of objective falsification to determine with certainty, for example, which mode of baptism is supported by Scripture. And as a pragmatist, without any way to prove who's wrong, I just tend to see a lot of hot air, an interesting hobby for people to seek a type of status in an insular world but ultimately not terribly useful at the margin. I choose to outsource my theology to my church’s 17th century confession, figuring that without any way to test theological claims, and lacking a theological education, I’m more likely to make errors if I try to figure these things out for myself, or even worse, rely on contemporary scholars tainted by postmodernism. Some things, like predestination or the doctrine of eternal hell, I accept on faith because I can’t fully reconcile them internally, and I trust God has a purpose in leaving many theological details ambiguous in Scripture. So this book review is a bit of a departure for me, but Wolfe’s ideas do have practical applications I find interesting.

I will not be touching heavily on the spicier aspects of this book, but I think I understand why it makes people uncomfortable. I think much of that has to do with Wolfe’s style of writing, which is refreshing if you like logically argued theses without regard to political correctness, but scary if following arguments into possible crimethink makes you squirm. I’ll do my best to provide a high-level summary:

1. On Nations and Nationalism: While it is true that nature is part of God’s revelation, relying on nature can be unreliable in distinguishing “is” from “ought.” To untangle this, Wolfe spends an inordinate amount of time discussing a theoretical prelapsarian humanity. That is, had Adam never sinned, and humanity had subdued and filled the Earth without falling, would there have been separate nations and civil rulers, or are those a consequence of sin? Was the Tower of Babel in part sinful because mankind was attempting to eradicate national distinctions, or were the stronger national distinctions imposed afterward a mechanism to prevent such hubris from happening again? If a consequence of sin, to what extent do the “already but not yet” aspects of grace modify those judgments or necessities? Did Pentecost undo Babel, as many modern theologians argue, and if so, to what extent? Does that mean a Christianized Earth should have open borders and a global government? Wolfe’s answer is that even in a sinless state, mankind, being a time and space-bound creature, would have naturally developed into nations out of geographic necessity. Different dialects, appearances, customs, cultural qualities, etc, would result from geographic isolation and adaptations to local conditions. He argues that these particular attachments, radiating out from the family to the extended family of the nation, are a positive good in focusing our service to others. Similarly, he argues that civil government, in a weaker form, would still be necessary to coordinate positive action, since man would still be a creature with limited knowledge. He cites traffic laws as a simple example, which are arbitrary laws that coordinate action. Had sinless man eventually invented automobiles, he would still need to have red lights, speed limits, and stop signs to prevent auto accidents and general chaos on the roads. Wolfe further argues that since these would have both developed naturally in the sinless state, both are part of God’s original, entirely good design for humanity. As a result, the nation-state is a universal positive good for man and should be preserved. Nationalism, then, is simply a political movement that seeks to establish or preserve a nation-state, and “Christian Nationalism” is a movement of Christians as members of predominantly Christian nations to do the same.

2. On Christian Government: Wolfe goes to great lengths to preserve natural principles which liberals, including classical liberals, find problematic. However, he is clear that good principles must be combined with prudence to make good law; I’d argue the ideal mix is approximately that of the golden ratio, 60% pragmatism and 40% principle. Much of the book is spent arguing that the early Reformation writers were correct in advocating for separate governments for church and state, but also that the state should not be entirely religiously neutral, and distinguishing between liberty of conscience and liberty of speech and action. A naive reader not used to his very logical, Thomas-Aquinas-style arguments might assume he’s endorsing some sort of Calvinist inquisition. Later, however, he argues that historical experience shows that broad Christian toleration is most prudent while preserving the principle of a non-secular state against the later reactionary arguments of the Radical Reformation. In reaction to persecution, dissenting Christian groups (most notably Baptists) adopted principles of civil neutrality, principles which today prevent the coordinated action Wolfe sees as necessary to pursue certain goods. As these principles reached their natural conclusions in American history, for example with the gutting of obscenity laws, they became more and more unworkable in pursuing the common good.

3. On Principles: Wolfe also tries to demonstrate one of his practical psychological principles by holding back from "apologizing in advance" when arguing conservative principles by not making immediate disclaimers as to their application, which tends to make people assume he's saying something he's not. Some degree of vagueness is also useful as the prudent application of these principles may change based on conditions on the ground. Post-2019, particularly with the emergence of pre-genocidal language among much of the Left, it’s clear that a lot of tyrannical things are possible that may require defensive strategies heretofore unthinkable.

4. On Reformation Political Theology: Perhaps his most subversive approach vis-a-vis the Reformed world is to demonstrate how the principles he argues are part of the classical Reformed tradition, by relying exclusively on early Protestant thinkers for his Scriptural exegesis. I thought while reading, and Wolfe later commented, that one of his goals was to rescue a muscular conservative political program from being joined at the hip with particular interpretations of prophecy or niche, reactionary, largely spent late-1900s theological systems like theonomy and Christian Reconstruction. This is annoying to nerds who like to read the Reformers on the mechanics of salvation but ignore their thoroughly anti-modern political views. A lot of these Reformed guys, cigar and craft IPA / bourbon in hand, like to pound the table on “angels on the head of a pin” type details of how predestination works and pretend that makes them big, tough theological conservatives while ignoring practical issues that might get them into trouble. The New York Times doesn’t care about your tilting at Arminian windmills in a neo-Calvinist echo chamber, but they will cancel you for providing a Christian framework for questioning immigration policy.

5. On the Spiritual Mission of the Church: In contrast to some of the niche reactionary theological movements mentioned earlier, Wolfe argues forcefully for the sole spiritual mission of the church. He says we demand too much of Christian ministers, who are, in his view, mere “instruments” in applying the ordinary means of grace and whose mission cannot possibly include politics, except incidentally when teaching the moral law. The primary focus of the book is to clear away the theological-political deadwood of the Radical Reformation that might prevent a “Christian prince,” his term for a Christian civil magistrate, from having the freedom of action necessary to forcefully pursue the good for his Christian constituents. He further argues for the nobility of this calling, in that while ministers are instruments of grace with Christ as mediator, civil rulers are direct mediators between God’s natural law and the prudent application of that law to their people’s particular circumstances.

6. On Prudence: Some Christians are prone to black-and-white thinking. Either something must be banned entirely, or not at all. Prudence is the application of valid principles to specific situations, given the limited capacity of man. A good example of this are drug laws. The principle here is that the civil magistrate should discourage destructive, addictive behaviors. Some hard drugs that are difficult to manufacture and not entrenched in the culture can be somewhat successfully prohibited. Others, like alcohol, are destructive in excess but have legitimate use in moderation. Alcohol is also easy to manufacture and deeply entrenched in human culture. As such, total prohibition was both wrong and impractical. However, it strikes me as prudent that alcohol should be taxed and regulated. Otherwise, a gallon of vodka would be as cheap as vinegar, $2 a gallon at the supermarket, and sold to anyone, including children. With current laws and taxes, however, 750 mL of hard liquor is about $9 at minimum (i.e. $45 a gallon), and it’s not available at general retailers. These costs and inconveniences are low enough to be non-burdensome for legitimate use and prevent the emergence of a black market, while making abuse at least less convenient and relatively expensive. It is a prudent compromise between two extremes.

On Cultural Christianity

Wolfe's defense of Cultural Christianity was the part of the book that connected with me the most. He quotes a particularly tone-deaf column by Russell Moore from 2015 celebrating the demise of Christian cultural norms:

In the Bible Belt of, say, the 1940s, there were people who didn’t, for example, divorce, even though they wanted out of their marriages. In many of these cases, the motive wasn’t obedience to Jesus’ command on marriage but instead because they knew that a divorce would marginalize them from their communities. In that sense, their “traditional family values” were motivated by the same thing that motivated the religious leaders who rejected Jesus—fear of being “put out of the synagogue.” Now, to be sure, that kept some children in intact families. But that’s hardly revival.

…

We don’t have Mayberry anymore, if we ever did. Good. Mayberry leads to hell just as surely as Gomorrah does.

Sorry, Russell, I agree with Rascal Flatts on this one. Given what we know about the harms of broken homes to children, it is callous to celebrate no-fault divorce because it results in fewer hypocrites. In celebrating the decline of cultural Christianity, he celebrates the decline of many practical benefits that accrue to the most vulnerable members of society and the rest of us as well. If my community is so high trust I can leave my doors unlocked, I’m blessed regardless of the private reasons people have for conforming to moral norms.

I think Moore also fails to appreciate that the great mass of humanity are not intellectuals who rationally consider religious claims; fewer hypocrites do not mean more sincere believers. The average person is not rational but tends to believe sincerely whatever is expected of them by the broader culture; thus, cultural power plays no insignificant role in fostering sincere belief. Further, as Wolfe points out, if hearing the gospel preached converts sinners, then a culture that socially pressures people to go to church is going to result in more gospel presentations and conversions, in addition, of course, to more hypocrites. What’s good for the tares is also good for the wheat.

As it is, with the decline of cultural Christianity, the larger, irrational portion of the population now marinates in a cultural sewage of drugs, broken homes, addictive entertainment, and obscenity, making it difficult for people to be employed and form stable families. This traps many in a multigenerational cycle of dysfunction and trauma.

It’s hard enough for the most motivated parents to insulate their children from the culture. How many of us have been able to avoid subscribing to Netflix (I’m guilty, but I cancel often!), which catechizes our children in defective moral values which we then have to carefully discuss to avoid them taking root? What hope does the average parent have?

A small minority of Christian parents are able to overcome the cultural momentum, but only with overwhelming effort, and then only imperfectly. The median household income in my county is $65,000 per year, and this is with most families having two earners - this is not enough to afford either private school or in many cases, even homeschooling if it requires one spouse to quit working. People of average energy levels and conscientiousness are also not going to be able to parse media products for destructive moral messages, however much they might wish in the abstract for their children to develop constructive moral values. It’s exhausting for the most engaged parents, and I feel like I often fail, giving in when I shouldn’t.

It would be much easier for everyone if there were consistent quality standards. I’d much rather not, for example, have to explain casual references to various forms of non-procreative sexual practices in “PG” rated sitcoms to a ten-year-old when we’re just trying to relax and enjoy family entertainment. Wolfe makes the point that if we are to solve our cultural problems at scale, it’s going to require some degree of explicit Christian influence over government and culture. Whether doing so is achievable again, it makes for an interesting thought experiment.

Such a program would at a minimum include something like the following:

1. The return of basic Christian religious instruction in public schools and public funding of Christian schools.

2. Reform of family law to incentivize the needs of children for intact families over adults’ preferences for absolute autonomy.

3. A restoration of laws defining and enforcing standards of obscenity.

4. Bringing the media culture to heel with a revival of decency codes for mass market movies and entertainment.

5. Aggressive enforcement action (including possible peacekeeping operations in Mexico) to raise the street price of drugs to more like $100 per dose from $10 per dose, pricing out most addiction and abuse.

What’s interesting about all of these, despite how radical they appear from our vantage point*, is that they were seen as perfectly compatible with the Constitution as recently as 70 years ago. Wisdom would probably dictate implementing them differently. Outright bans with criminal penalties tend to create martyrs. Instead, a crafty magistrate would copy the success of the Left in creating many soft penalties, a legal cloud of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, to incentivize compliance. The entire DEI industry, for example, is based on cloudy legal FUD surrounding “hostile work environment” extensions of civil rights laws.

*As recently as the 1990s, the Democratic Clinton Administration supported the V-chip in televisions, regulating Internet content for obscenity, and explicit lyrics labeling because a broad consensus of Americans demanded it. Now Taylor Swift routinely drops f-bombs on her junior high audience and no one seems to care.

Soft cancellation is simply more effective because it lowers the wealth and visibility of its targets with a thousand cuts. Perhaps the most effective tactic would be to create private causes of action for parents whose children are exposed to inappropriate content with certain provisions for presumed damages, like the laws governing “defamation per se.” Add in a provision for statutorily required recovery of attorney’s fees and a magistrate can create a private army of motivated activists and lawyers to harass the targets into compliance (and, a self-motivated constituency to keep the laws in place). As in so many things, Governor DeSantis shows the way; they will fold like a cheap tent despite their most sacred principles when threatened financially.

Some may object that technology makes a return to these kinds of standards impossible. I disagree. The digital world is much more centralized than it was twenty years ago. If Google can make all contrary opinions on Covid vaccines disappear, it certainly has the technology to make obscenity disappear. In addition, young people today, despite all of the talk about “digital natives,” actually understand very little about how technology works. Just as the Baby Boomers were the last generation to broadly understand how automobiles work, Gen X is the last generation that broadly understands how computers and the Internet work underneath the hood. Remove convenience and use will drop 90-95%, especially the dopamine loops driving compulsive use.

An interesting aspect about #4 (the movie decency codes) is that historically they were primarily driven by Catholics. Hollywood had begun to produce rather indecent movies for the time in the 1920s and the industry feared the Catholic Church would forbid their parishioners from watching their products. The organized power of the Catholic Church forced Hollywood to adopt industry-wide decency codes to ensure the national distribution of their films. Protestants, unfortunately, had long de-emphasized cultural efforts through an overemphasis on liberty of conscience, which subtly morphed into total liberty of expression, a historical artifact at odds with the thinking of the Reformers, which Wolfe ably demonstrates.

Wolfe argues for the principle that the government, while according to Protestant principles must be a separate entity from the church, nevertheless has an interest in regulating external conditions to encourage true religion. He utilizes the following syllogism, which I have lightly modified for clarity:

1. The civil magistrate, to promote order and the good of the people, has an interest in promoting external societal conditions conducive to true religion.

2. Christianity is the true religion.

3. The civil magistrate has an interest in promoting external societal conditions conducive to Christianity.

Wolfe is clear that the government cannot convert people, but the government can create conditions through prudent laws and regulations that either impede or promote the operations of the church. And while the spicier aspects of the book have gotten the most attention, this is where he spends most of his time arguing. Specifically, there are parts of the country that remain overwhelmingly Christian, and these parts should be allowed to govern themselves according to Christian principles.

Wolfe demonstrates that such principles are not alien to American history. At the time of the founding, most statesmen, including George Washington and Patrick Henry, supported established state churches. Most of the colonies had state churches, some of them continuing into the mid-1800s, and the First Amendment merely prevented Congress, i.e. the federal government, from interfering in religious matters. Jefferson and Madison, whose ideas eventually prevailed, were seen as radicals by most in their insistence on the complete separation of church and state. That American theologians later largely adapted their views to complete separation does not negate the fact that the principle was well within the norms of American political discourse among the Founding Fathers.

Of course, an established church is probably a bad idea for all sorts of reasons, but Wolfe thinks the principle - that Christian magistrates of Christian peoples should rule as Christians without a duty to complete religious neutrality - is important to preserve. But this takes us to what I think is the weakest link in Wolfe’s arguments.

In his defense of natural law, Wolfe cites the universal testimony of pagan societies as not completely corrupted heirs of the Noahic Covenant. Indeed, Hammurabi’s Code is broadly directionally consistent with the Ten Commandments. As recently as 100 years ago, there was a secular consensus on morality in America, regardless of religious belief. This made secular moral government at least plausible, which would tend to question Wolfe’s idea, at least practically, that the government ought not to be religiously neutral. Natural law does seem to hold at least somewhat in other traditional, religious societies, among serious Muslims, Hindus, and orthodox Jews for example, but it seems to evaporate entirely in any post-Christian cultural environment. How can an appeal to natural law work in a post-Christian society, especially when many of today’s Christians are to the left of traditional non-Christian societies on many issues? I think Wolfe might argue that religious neutrality is an unstable arrangement, a perversion of natural law, and will eventually lead to moral confusion, since most humans take their cues for belief from whoever holds power at any moment. Religious neutrality in government, to the extent it works for a time, is parasitic in bleeding down the moral capital of the authoritative religious regime that precedes it. This implies that natural law can only be restored by the exercise of power, and like all politics, it is a battle between competing minority factions with the majority of people falling in line with whoever wins power.

The earliest examples of post-Christian societies were Revolutionary France and Weimar Germany. In such moral vacuums, the people eventually demand a return to at least pagan standards of order and call forth tyrants to restore it. In both cases, the failure of conservatives to intervene effectively before the people tired of moral disorder led to continent-wide disasters in Europe. Like today, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Had conservative German Catholics like Claus von Stauffenburg taken action during the Weimar period against the excesses of that government, history might have turned out differently. Conservatives are by nature cautious, a virtue most of the time but a terrible vice at key historical junctures. They are often uncomfortable with winning, preferring to be tragic, beautiful losers out of misplaced principles their enemies never respect.

Most controversially, Wolfe argues that the United States government has already exceeded its proper Romans 13 bounds and revolution against it is in principle, justified (though, in prudence, not yet). He follows his Presbyterian forebears and the Founders, in agreeing that:

“…it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Thus, perhaps the most disturbing element to many about this book is that Wolfe intends to promulgate a practical political theology of winning consistent with historical Protestant and American thought. Many conservatives have resigned themselves to losing, to always giving ground, to a conservatism that never actually conserves anything. Many are convinced that minimizing differences with the culture is the key to reversing the decline of Christianity to minority status across the Western world. Wolfe and his compatriots seem to endorse a different strategy, one aligned with the realist perspective of Nassim Taleb in his work on the coercive cultural power of intolerant minorities. In a postmodern world with people looking for some anchor of certainty, strength is attractive and weakness is repulsive.

In one of the ad hominem controversies following the book’s publication, a defender of Wolfe, the entrepreneur-turned-provocateur Charles Haywood defined what winning meant to him:

What is our end? That is easy — winning. What is the winning condition? It is the total, permanent defeat of the Left, of the ideology at the heart of the Enlightenment, with its two core principles of total emancipation from all bonds not continuously chosen, and of total forced equality of all people. When this defeat is accomplished, Right principles, those based in reality and recognizing the nature of man, his limitations, and his capabilities, can again become ascendant.

Winning does not mean electoral victory such that Right principles may be voted into law, and then nullified or voted out again. It means the total, permanent elimination of all Left power, and, even more importantly, the total discrediting, both on a moral and practical basis, of all Left ideology. What is Left should be seen for what it is, evil, and it should be seen as not only destructive in practice, but laughable, the ideology of losers and idiots, or at most something from the discredited past, viewed with vague curiosity, as the cult of Mithras is today.

That’s heavy stuff, and perhaps unattainable. But it’s also true that winning is usually impossible unless one at least believes winning is both possible and morally desirable. Haywood and the ascendant Right associated with the Claremont Institute are very different from the soft corporate-libertarian policy wonks of the Heritage Foundation.

This new, realist Right agrees with the Founding Fathers that classical liberalism is unworkable in a mass democracy with deficient civic virtues, yet, like the Left, is willing to use power to enact a morally confident vision of the future to restore the conditions necessary for those virtues to redevelop in the long term. If they can get the still-formidable bloc of evangelical voters to buy into this vision, American politics is going to be exciting for a long time to come, and evangelical leaders with nostalgia for “neutral world” tactics will be left behind.