The Case for Christian Nationalism
By Stephen Wolfe
A Review by Dwight A. Moody
Stephen Wolfe lives on another planet. I am not sure which one, but I am certain it is not the same space where you and I live.
I know this because things that are routine among us when writing books about religion and life in America are completely absent from this book. But before I list those things let me acknowledge what is here: 478 pages of pseudo scholarship purporting to be a serious description of what America should and could look like if only we took as our authorities a half dozen dead white men whose best thinking created John Calvin’s Geneva (16th century) and Cotton Mather’s New England (17th century).
The book is a call for the Great Renewal, for individuals and families to reject the secular liberalism of modernity which he describes as emphasizing “universal dignity, tolerance, human rights, anti-nationalism, anti-nativism, multiculturalism, social justice and equality” (5). In its place, Wolfe wants Christian Nationalism which he defines as “a totality of national action, consisting of civil laws and social customs, conducted by a Christian nation as a Christian nation, in order to procure for itself both earthly and heaven good in Christ” (9).
Wolfe never defines “earthly good” and “heavenly good” and never gives any examples of when and where either of these “goods” have been actualized in history. He writes extensively about the “Christian prince”—one who will “suppress the enemies of God and elevate his people; recover a worshipping people; restore masculine prominence in the land and a spirit of dominion; affirm and conserve his people and place, not permitting their dissolution or capture; and inspire a love for one’s Christian country” (323). But, again, he never points to any person in history as the ideal Christian prince.
The absence of illustrations or examples of what he desires is but one serious deficiency of this presentation of Christian Nationalism. There are others, such as the narrow focus on white European male theologians of bygone centuries, ignoring all that African, Latino, and Asian thinkers (to name a few) have to offer in cultivating the flourishing of a people. He ignores women, thoroughly and totally. I found only one feminine name cited among the 558 footnotes in the book.
Which comports with sustained denigration of women, generally under the rubric of that great bane of modern Western culture, gynocracy! And I quote: “The most insane and damaging sociological trends of our modern society are female-driven. The gynocracy is self-destructive and breeds social disorder. Feminine virtues greatly benefit individuals and society; they are indispensable. But they operate for good only when complemented with masculine leadership” (451). And earlier: “Our age suffers from a dearth of great men. This is largely because acquiring power and influence requires one to debase himself with egalitarian appeal. We live under a de facto gynocracy where masculinity is pathologized in the name of “fairness” and “equity” (290).
Women are absent in this treatise, except in these derogatory declamations, and so is any evidence of anything Dr. Wolfe describes or asserts. Sociological data has become the norm in modern argumentation and dear doctor Wolfe ignores this entirely. Everything is pompous pronouncement.
Democracy is strangely absent. The “Christian prince” rather than the ballot box is the key to renewal. Theocracy reigns supreme, as exampled by the early American experiments (in one of the few and brief use of historical illustration) which he extols thusly: “the whole tradition—between the early settlements to the early American republic—is an American, ethno-cultural inheritance that must be reclaimed and serve as an animating element of American Christian nationalism and a resource for American renewal” (431).
What he ignores here is, of course, slaves and slavery, and native Americans, and Latinos already inhabiting our land. It is as if these people and their place in our culture (then and now) do not matter, do not matter at all. They do come into play, however, as silent witnesses to his sustained insistence that nations maintain their ethnic, religious, and racial uniformity, even refusing to accept as refugees Christian people fleeing danger and death in their own country.
Who else is missing in this yearning for “a Christian nation” is Jesus. I don’t recall seeing that name once in this book. Christ, yes, and repeatedly; but no Jesus. There is no reference to the life and teaching of Jesus, to the Sermon on the Mount, or the Passion story. Nothing. Isn’t this strange?
It is a strange book, and I read it because I wanted a first-hand description of Christian Nationalism written by a proponent of same. But this is, frankly, trash. But I read it also so you won’t have to. You can thank me for that!
