I watched Canon Press’ discussion on Christian Nationalism this week featuring Al Mohler, Doug Wilson, Joe Rigney, Paul D. Miller and I thought it was worth reviewing. As I begin this I want to highlight a criticism I made of another video a while back. In that post (here) I criticized Voddie Baucham’s claim that the critics of Christian Nationalism tried to used a 19th century definition of nation to abuse Christian Nationalists. In that post I said that Voddie was completely wrong and that it is Christian Nationalists themselves who use the 19th century definition of nation as “a body of people living in the same country or united under the same government, as well as a large group sharing a common language, ancestry, or history.” rather than a modern definition of a Geo-political union.
Al Mohler
Mohler leads by saying that the discussion around Christian Nationalism is intentionally “misdirected, and misconstrued”. He asserts that the political left lies (intentionally misconstrued is lying, it is knowing the truth and misrepresenting it to deceive). But he never provides one example of what he means. this is a running theme through his opening speech. He claims that England looked to Ancient Israel while the Roman Church looked to Rome (11:30) said without supporting evidence or any explanation. Then he makes the absolutely false claim that this led to the renaissance of learning Hebrew at Oxford and Cambridge.
The bulk of Mohler’s time was spent in repeating the claim that America was founded on an ontological reality of Christianity and of course this was substantiated by the references to a creator in the Declaration of Independence. And like others, Mohler forgets that a deist wrote those words and that they do not necessarily refer back to Christianity in any way. In fact the closest he gets to justifying his claim is citing that many of the founders were Christian. He does not recognize that “many” is not a valid argument for what he is claiming, nor does he recognize that of those he alludes to most do not meet the definition of Christian he provided during his speech. Yet this does not stop him from claiming that America needs to have Christianity as its defining unifying characteristic. This is explicitly connecting the idea of a nation to the 19th century definition.”The Christian truth claim is the necessary precondition for the American experiment… the precondition for what it means to be a nation.”
But of course for Mohler, Christianity is not truly his aim, he takes numerous shots at Christians who are to his political left and claims these individuals are not truly saved. And as with the rest of his speech he does not use specifics nor does he provide any true rationale, he just broadly labels them “the Left” and allows the audience to draw their own conclusions.
Doug Wilson
Doug employed his usual rambling non-sequiturs style that uses an extreme amount of words to say nothing. His entire talk was meant to be about post- millennial eschatology and its relationship to Christian Nationalism, but he did not say anything of substance on either topic. He endorsed Mohler’s points but then just said that Christian Nationalism gets mixed up because proponents want to make it either top down or bottom up and the solution is both. But that’s it, there was nothing to even discuss.
First Panel Discussion
The discussion started around eschatology and a group rejection of dispensationalism. This discussion completely esoteric and really did not provide anything of substance to discuss. This part of the discussion is exemplified by Joe Rigney’s comment, “I think Kuyperianism needs post-mil theonomy so that it doesn’t become gay.” a comment offered and not explained much like the rest of this discussion.
The panel discussion did become more interesting when Paul Miller began to speak. He offers a theology more similar to a classic “two-swords” theology, that the government has a responsibility to the world and that while it is good for the government to acknowledge “nature’s God” it should not be explicitly Christian. His rationale is that the countries that have explicit statements about being Christian nations show no greater fidelity to Christianity and therefore such a label is irrelevant and even hypocritical. What was interesting is that Wilson fired back that other nations are hypocritical when they appeal to human rights. What is interesting is that Wilson’s comment is implying that since nations are hypocritical it is okay for nations professing Christianity to be hypocritical. As us usual Wilson says more in his off-the-cuff remarks than prepared remarks because he reveals his true nature. In his prepared remarks Wilson says it is better to live next to cultural Christians who do not truly believe than open pagans, in his response to Miller he says that this is the point that unlike others we will really mean it. This is a contradiction in his claims, when he presents his case he claims it is not about whether people live to the example it is about having the name of Jesus proclaimed, when that idea is challenged he switches gears. Wilson never recognizes how his principles shift depending on whether he is promoting or defending his ideas. And Miller rightly pointed out this contradiction in Wilson’s statements. Wilson also during this time (50:00) directly connects the definition of America with the “christian milieu” that he says is part of the founding and must be preserved. He is at this point reasoning back to the 19th century definition of “nation” as a group united by culture and saying that must be preserved. While again appealing to only a segment of the nation being truly Christian “a hot core of believers” which directly challenges his earlier response to Miller.
This question also showed how confused Mohler is on the topic. When he responded to this point he claims he is looking for some kind of theism, but in his prepared remarks he stated he wanted a full-fledged acknowledgment of Christianity and making Christianity a foundation for citizenship. And he continued to flip-flop on this issue at points seeming to want a full-fledged Christian government and at others saying he wanted a broadly theist one.
Mohler and Wilson’s flip-flopping came to a head when Miller pointed out obvious, that if the government is made Christian in the way they suggest it will lead to state sponsored sectarianism. Wilson and Mohler both jumped at this denying that they wanted that and as they explained their logic both admitted that they did in fact want a sectarian government so long as it stood with their ideals.
Rigney did not speak as much as the others during this time, but he did make one telling remark. He asked Miller if Christian Nationalism could be put on par with a Baptism theology of the household where parents tell children what to do (children being explicitly unbelievers). What was telling about this for me is that only Miller on the stage seemed to understand that it is wrong in a Christian conception of society to treat unbelievers as children and tell them explicitly what to do. Mohler, Rigney, and Wilson all seemed perfectly comfortable with treating people like children simply because they did not accept Christianity. This is a blatantly unChristian mindset
Paul Miller
One thing of interest when Miller took the stage the host announced the title of his talk was “Nationalists on my right deviants on my left.” When Miller stood up he said his title was “Progressives on my left Nationalists on my right.” (he being the only non- Christian Nationalist). I frankly find it distressing that the moderator of the evening would intentionally make that change to slur progressives and then try to act as though Miller came up with the title, it is insulting both to Progressives and Miller himself.
On to Miller’s presentation. The first thing to notice is that Miller took on the distinction between the older view of nation represented above and our modern view and clearly said that the Bible speaks in terms of the older definition not our modern one therefore it is anachronistic to read the Bible’s ideas of nations into the modern day. And he is correct. (I again think of Voddie Bauchham’s attempted defense of Christian Nationalism and how this discussion demonstrates how wrong he was). Miller then went on to outline a traditional Baptist approach to politics (unlike Mohler whose SBC connections did not come out at all). His basic point was that Jesus is king but that does not give us the right to be kings on this earth and when we try to do so even in his name we usurp his position. And that when we try to wield Caesar’s sword (governmental power) as an overtly Christian government then we turn the faith into just another of the world’s competing ideologies.He demonstrates this through examples of the current Christian Nationalist state of Hungary. While this particular example might be challenged as somehow “not truly Christian Nationalist” it does sit within the entire history of examples that all fall into the same failure.
Miller did provide one of the stranger comments that he thinks of Amish and Mennonites as his political left because they disavow government.
Joe Rigney
Rigney’s talk begins with an explicit appeal to the Bible (Old Testament only) within the framework of the 19th century definition of a nation. He then bolsters this with a highly sectarian reading of the Old Testament ideas on foreigners that owes more to his own political outlook than to strict exegesis. But again this is all addressed under the idea that a nation is a culturally united people and that is a good thing. He then explicitly engages this in how he describes 20th century American immigration. His views of the history of immigration are idiosyncratic to put it generously and completely overlook the explicit racism involved in immigration policies and American attitudes in the late 28th and early 20th centuries.This presentation was full of right-wing talking points combined with culture war allusions to say that immigration is bad. Overall, this entire presentation was simply a politically conservative talk with absolutely zero real connection to the Bible. His quote, “We have abandoned God therefore he has abandoned us” sums this up. He believes that because we do not fight for conservative politics we have somehow lost the country. But this totally disregards Jesus’ words “I will never leave you or abandon you”. There is no room in Rigney’s approach for Jesus being with us to the end of the age unless we have political control and that is fundamentally at odds with what Jesus says. Rigney explicitly says we need to “repent of our multiculturalism” this is simply racism and there is no other way to put it. Repenting of multiculturalism means deporting Christians of other cultures, this violates what Scripture teaches, it is sinful, yet it is his stated desire. He then goes on to call empathy a sin (one of his pet talking points) despite the fact that 1 Peter calls empathy a Christian virtue. This talk was simply an exercise in turning Christianity on its head to support his desired political ends.
Second Panel Discussion
This discussion begins with Wilson asking Miller a question where Miller shows the same kind of inconsistency that Wilson and Mohler showed earlier. Miller admits he would like a state where there was a religious test for office but that religious test would be to ensure a person was a theist. This is where we discover that Miller’s only concern about Christian Nationalism is the fact that it will inherently become sectarian and have the authority to define what is Christian. The trouble is just like Wilson and Mohler he tries to sit on both sides of the fence. He wants “as much neutrality as possible” because he is inclined to a classical liberal approach to politics. But just like Mohler and Wilson when someone truly presents a threat to his ideal of culture he wants an authoritative regime to block that person from participation.
When Miller pushes back on Wilson about neutrality he asks about what Wilson believes is the limiting factor and Wilson’s immediate reaction is “the Bible”. And while this cliche answer might sound cute it demonstrates that Wilson has absolutely no clue what he’s talking about since it is precisely the differences in understanding the Bible that lead to sectarian differences. If the Bible causes sectarian differences then it will not be an adequate boundary for preventing one sectarian group from oppressing another, at least not in Wilson’s system.
The next major discussion was on Natural Law which was more of the same with Rigney and Wilson poorly representing Natural Law theology (Miller did better on this than the others) Mohler does not even seem to believe in Natural Law or has a very poor conception of the doctrine. But what struck me was Wilson’s claim that we “live in a different world”. With no evidence he simply claims that the 20th century opened the door to a new paradigm and so now we must take a different approach to the world. Not only is this claim completely unsupported but in making it he is grounding his Christian Nationalism in an entriely different philosophy than he did earlier in the conversation. He started by saying that we are building toward a Christian Nation and so imposing Christian Nationalism is the next logical step (Postmillennialism). At this point he is arguing that the world is so corrupt that we need to enact this movement so we do not lose more ground. These are competing claims with different foundations and he does nothing to reconcile them, he just allows the contradiction to stand. His position (this time) is summed up with “the sword is inescapable” meaning someone is going to wield power like this so it should be us. Jesus though said our goal is to work to escape the sword “the one who lives by the sword will die by the sword”.
Miller though is not without criticism in this section since his approach is still about gaining political power, he simply sees conservative religious individuals like Muslims and Jews as allies. His approach is not approaching politics from the same lens Jesus does, or about treating people fairly, it is about how many political allies he can move to his coalition. I will also suggest that Miller is correct that many on the left side of the aisle do this as well, but that does not make it good or Christian it just means he is in the same boat as the others, using standard political ends to the advantage of my in-group.
It was not a surprise to me that the discussion ended with the usual strategic misrepresentation of American history that overblows America’s Christian heritage. It was the typical argument that uses selective history to make the case that America was more moral and Christian back then while neglecting all of the unChristian activities of the government. Along with this was the expected blame on immigration and diatribes that immigration is the root of our evils and therefore we need to end it. Wilson was simply defending the kind of cultural Christianity that at other points he claims is wrong. But this whole discussion was Wilson (and somewhat Mohler and Rigney) providing cover for their conservative politics.
It was great to hear that Mohler, Wilson and Rigney all believe that society must be Anglo-Protestant to flourish. That is literally saying that you must accept white culture to flourish. Yet these are the same people who claim they do not hold such views. And even when Miller pushed back on this WIlson admitted Anglo-Protestant is coded for white and then doubled down on it. He did not listen to what Miller said and simply pointed back to Anglo-Protestantism.
One last point, in the entire 2:48 discussion there was not one time when any person considered the New Testament or Jesus. The only Biblical refences were brief allusions to the Old Testament often from an explicitly 17th century Reformed perspective.
Squinting in the Light 
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