On "Christian nationalism"

I believe that rulers should obey God, and respond appropriately, within their context and era, to the fact that God has revealed himself in the Bible, because I believe the same about everyone else.

This, though, seems to me to be far from what brethren who promote "Christian Nationalism" are really talking about.

In my evaluation of what they're really doing, such brethren are often simply engaging in empty displays of beating their chests in order to persuade themselves and/or others that they are manly. i.e. They hold the doctrine in order to position themselves tribally in their largely online in-house debates with other Christians. It's not because they feel called into serving God in government, and are working on a realistic plan for that. They're largely trying to build their tribe, and this is part of their positioning. If you are genuinely trying to understand how to serve God in government today as a faithful Daniel or Joseph, then theories of building Christian nations whose constitutions begin with a recitation of the doctrine of the Trinity, detailed right down to how many times you will lash blasphemers for their third offence, do not constitute practical help for anything you're likely to be getting up to, and such help was already available in the resources of the mainstream Reformed faith.

But let's leave questions of motivation, feasibility and what would actually be a plan to accomplish this in practice aside. (I think if you really believed in "Christian Nationalism" then your main priority ought to be white-hot gospel-preaching to reach the unconverted for the next couple of decades instead of wasting time upon so much online chest-thumping). Let's consider the ideas of "Christian nationalists" in practical experience.

Here, Bob Smietana explains what these types of ideas have usually/historically meant in practice. Here too is a book centred around Roger Williams and the New England Puritans which I read recently. These are good resources. In practice, attempts to build Christian nations have meant Christians being hypocritically persecuted, and non-believers (such as the Narragansett Indians and others) having the gospel presented to them being mixed with all sorts of ungodly and carnal power-plays. That's not a one-off. That's what happens. When believers at the Reformation concluded from Scripture that infant baptism was unbiblical, Christian-nationalist-minded Reformers called for their executions, and drowned them.

We're told that that's Christendom 1.0, and that what we should now be aiming for is Christendom 2.0 in which this should play out differently.

Please pardon me for laughing at this. Very funny.

We can all sit behind our keyboards and dream out our utopia, and explain why "it'll be different this time" - because people so wise as our good selves have now arrived in the world, and we'll implement so many wonderful safeguards and checks in our visionary kingdom. I don't believe a word of it. We're still fallen, and if "by their fruits you shall know them", we may judge that the church today doesn't yet show anything like the maturity to be asking God for dominion in any other realm, so let's not confuse our adolescent day-dreams with our calling to apply Christ to all of life. If there's a time for the church to turn large amounts of energy to understanding and discussing what to do when people are asking for a society run on Christian principles, then that time isn't now - we are at a different stage of development entirely. And our grown-up duty is to live in the age in which God has placed us, not a mythical one of our fevered imaginations.

It has to be said that whenever our Presbyterian brethren start discussing what kind of Christian utopia they're going to govern when their dreams transmute into reality, we Baptists do not detect the beautiful fragrance of the humble spirit of Christ, embracing suffering and lowly service before glory, but the unpleasant odour of an unsanctified lust for worldly power. (And yes, such an unsanctified lust runs free among Baptists today too; the phenomena of independent Popes ruling their local church domains is well known). It reeks of wanting to sit at Jesus' right hand before picking up the cross. The world in 2024 is one in which we're called to pick up the cross, and the mature will surely discern that instead of discussing their schemes for governing the ungodly in the civil realm.

"But, but, this just means you don't believe in King Jesus".

I believe in King Jesus. I just don't believe that I've met the Presbyterian or other brethren who are his appointed representatives on earth, destined to rule over the civil realm for us, and we will be thankful for it. Inevitably, Christian nationalists in history move very quickly towards identifying the rule of King Jesus with their own laws, and as night follows day, those who oppose the "rule of King Jesus" must be punished for their blasphemies. Again, as Baptist, we've seen how this plays out in practice, regardless of what you say in theory. No thank you!

Anglican Evangelicals and Ecclesiology: "Leave us alone!"

 

At some point it dawned upon me that the ecclesiology of our Anglican Evangelical brethren was actually quite simple. It can be expressed in just three words: "leave us alone!".

Though they have plenty of things to say about why they believe in the Episcopal (actually Erastian) structure of their denomination, and how it ought to work, and how they labour towards that end, and why they were not independents, etc., etc., by observation you come to the simple conclusion: they are actually independents in practice. They just want the rest of the Church of England to leave them be. If they can leave them be, then they'll agree to leave the rest of the Church of England be too. (I note that in recent years this is more and more becoming the official ecclesiology of Anglican evangelicals, openly: it's now being called "structural differentiation". This is much more sophisticated than saying "leave us alone". This might be attractive to you if looking sophisticated before others is something that you think the Bible says is important).

The gospel is so far from being essential or important to these Anglicans' theology of the church, that it's actually entirely optional. It doesn't matter who denies it or how they deny it; these evangelicals are finally quite happy to ignore them, as long as they're adhering to the rule "leave us alone". This has been Anglican evangelical policy for multiple generations now. Oh yes, they'll write blog posts about them and say at their own conferences and teach in their own parishes that they personally disagree, but that's not what I mean. I mean that there will be no church discipline, and no ultimate consequences. Only when there are ultimate consequences can someone be said to believe what they're saying, and thus I say: they don't really believe in their own official ecclesiology. For someone who does believe in their own professed ecclesiology, things go like this:

• Step one: you notice, and become convinced, that someone within the church hierarchy clearly and openly contradicts essential doctrines of the faith.
• Step two: you use all available mechanisms to apply the church's discipline to this situation, to restore the offender back to the truth and so that God's name isn't dishonoured before outsiders and other genuine believers aren't harmed.
  
• Step three: either the offender is disciplined, or, when it becomes clear that the church's official doctrines do not actually apply and that these precious truths are counted as not being of the essence of the church's life, then since you yourself do personally believe them, you sadly depart in order to find a church that does believe them so that the truth is maintained (and not just in some semi-Gnostic, hidden realm of your private definition).
  

What actually happens with our Anglican brethren is that they either replace step two with tut-tutting in unofficial channels (their blogs, newsletters or in-house unofficial conferences), or at step three they show that they themselves also hold these beliefs not as cherished, essential truths, but as optional too. They just accept that these are in fact not the official doctrines of the church after all....and that they can live with that.

Of course, I know that there are and have been honourable exceptions to this: there is a growing band of ex-Anglicans who did believe what they professed to believe (which happily was not just "leave us alone!"), and ultimately acted accordingly, struggled, overcame, and paid the necessary price. Well done, friends. You have gone outside the camp, and shared in the shame of the One who went there first.

The Archbishop of Canterbury does not believe what God says about marriage, fornication or sodomy. But here's the lame get-out clause being offered to all those who hold to "leave us alone!" ecclesiology: "Lambeth Palace said the Archbishop’s views are his own, and are not the official stance of the Church of England." Well, that's OK, then. If all you want is to be left alone, that is, it's OK. But if you actually believe that either the "Church of England" ought to be something other than a synagogue of Satan (and not just in some quasi-Platonic realm of forms, but in this creation too), or that if not then you shouldn't be part of it, then that's not OK. Steps 2 and 3 above are available. We'll be rooting and praying for you to do the right thing.