Why Christian Nationalism Must be Rejected
God made from one man every nation of mankind to dwell upon the earth, having determined their appointed times and boundaries of their habitations, Acts 17:26.
If you are a white, Christian, American male and are at least forty years old, you might, to a greater or lesser degree, think you are on the most hated list of people. Feminists, especially, save much of their vitriol for the white, American male, telling us that we are the problem in our country. After all, we have held sway for years in the world of politics, business, and the military. Therefore, we are told that all our nation’s foibles, including homelessness, poverty, and racism are all due to our “toxic masculinity.” On top of this we see our once, largely Christian nation slowly being taken over by secularism and even more recently, the threat of socialism which we all know is another word for communism. And we might also add that too many men today are effeminate, unwilling to take a strong headship role in the family and who figuratively or literally suffer from low testosterone which makes men fat, docile, and cowardly.
It is within this social milieu that a movement called Christian Nationalism has gained a strong and ever growing presence. Scoff Wolfe’s book A Case for Christian Nationalism, which I read in 2022, made the top 100 books on Amazon. The PCA and other denominations are now seeking to address this issue from a Biblical and theological position. Kevin DeYoung, a few years ago, wrote a very fair critique of Wolfe’s book and I encourage you to read it.[1]
Christian Nationalism is hard to define. There are many variations on the theme, but it seems to flow very naturally from Theonomy which I critiqued last week. Simply put, both of these movements are built upon the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith view of the state having sway over the church. While the Constitutional Convention was busy ratifying the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia in June, 1788, the Presbyterian Church also met at the same time in Philadelphia and amended their doctrinal standard which they had adopted in 1727. Four changes were made to the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), but only one was truly significant. The original 1646 WCF in chapter 23, paragraph 3, “Of the Civil Magistrate,” mandated the civil magistrate (the government) to oversee the church and to maintain its purity, to suppress heresies, and to call ecclesiastical assemblies or synods whenever they deemed them necessary. The American Presbyterians completely rejected that notion and gave people the freedom of religion, of worshipping in whatever denomination they desired and even allowed the people to worship no god at all. Obviously this was a major departure from the original Confession. Presbyterians in the United States, almost without exception, have embraced and lived by the 1788 Confession’s espousal of religious liberty.
