It’s not that long back that whenever I wrote or spoke about things like Doug Wilson, Federal Vision and Christian Nationalism that I would get the pushback “why are you even talking about them?” In recent weeks the pushback on Christian Nationalism has become “you need to be very careful about what you say about it.”
The change in pushback (both content and tone), seems to reflect the way that Christian Nationalism has been pushed up the agenda here, especially through the flag demos and the involvement of overtly “Christian Nationalists”, the so called “patriot pastors” in the Unite the Kingdom rally organised by Tommy Robinson. Whilst some people suggested at the time that this was just about Christians wanting to evangelise those on the rallies and even to acknowledge the genuineness of some grievances, it became clearer and clearer that key people, especially those invited onto the platform at Unite the Kingdom were there because they shared significantly in the ideology of the organisers. They were acknowledging that the form of nationalism desired by the organisers was in itself good and in fact tended towards Christian Nationalism, it just required some cultivating to make the Christian bit clearer.
Back when I was being told that I was raising issues that weren’t real, that didn’t matter, I was drawing attention to an overarching ideology, specifically Federal Vision and its founding fathers, perhaps most notably Douglas Wilson. I identified Christian Nationalism as one of the natural fruit of that underlying ideology. I also raised concerns about a renewed and growing influence of the ideology including into Christian private schools and colleges. Recent events suggest that I was right to be raising concerns.
Now, I thought it might be helpful to get a flavour of how Douglas Wilson connects into Christian Nationalism. So, to help us do that, I would encourage you to have a watch of this video of an interview conversation between him and a Roman Catholic.
Here are some key things to watch out for. First, he tells us that: “Christian nationalism is the conviction that secularism has failed”[1] Or indeed it is simply, “The conviction that we should stop making God angry.” In other words, this means that we should want to see nations governed by laws that align with God’s laws. At the same time, he wants to be clear that he also advocates a libertarian small government approach. We should not be making too many laws, we should not be interfering into all aspects of people’s lives. He doesn’t want puritan style moral police patrolling the streets. Indeed, later he will insist that we have to distinguish crimes from sins.[2] At this stage, it’s worth noting that there is an immediate question over the extent that he is attempting to baptise one particular political ideology and tribe as Christian.
However, given that he states that he doesn’t want us to confuse crime and sin, it is worth observing the kinds of things that he does want to tackle through the law, ro outlaw. He specifically talks about preventing things like gay pride marches and taking on transgenderism. So, sexual sins are things that matter to the State. Priorities include the rooting out of adultery and so he recommends measures such as endowing wives with financial capital so that their husband suffers loss if he chooses to desert them. He also recommends an end to no fault divorce.[3]
It is suggested to him that he is against stoning for adulterers and so he is willing to part company with the Bible, when it prescribes things he considers a step too far. His response is to say that he is not in favour of stoning but not against it. 1830 What he means by this is that he does not see this as politically achievable now, rather this and changes to universal suffrage are matters for much further downstream. Wilson believes that votes in his Christian Republic should be by household where that normally would mean that the husband/father is the one who exercises that vote.[4] All of this will take time (he is thinking in terms of 500 years because Politics is about s the art of the possible.[5]
There are three important things to note here. First of all, actually, Wilson is drawing things into the remit of the state and treating them as crimes when there might at least need to be a discussion over whether in fact they are sin. Importantly, just because some things were treated as criminal in ancient Israel does not mean that they are criminal matters for the modern state, rather in some cases, they reflect Israel’s status as God’s people and therefore it is better to follow through on the implications for the Church. Wilson continues to be quite selective on this, indeed, his interviewer pushes him, fruitlessly on why sexual morals should be criminalised and made a state matter but not worship.
Secondly, notice that Wilson isn’t always the straight talker he is sometimes made out to be. Very early on, the interviewer asks him directly about whether he thinks that Roman Catholics will go to hell, he answers that in quite a vague, round about way. Similarly, he claims not to be either in favour or against stoning but in fact it transpires that he is. It’s just a matter of timing. Would he really say, if an opportunity arose to get certain things onto the statute book “no, that’s for our descendants in 500 years to decide”?
Thirdly, notice that despite his emphasis on Christianity and the Christian nation, his emphasis is rather on particular moral standards and achieving them through political means rather tyhan through the life transforming work of the Gospel.
On immigration, he argues that the US have attempted to assimilate people from outside at too fast a rate. Of immigrants, he says, “They are coming in a parasitic way to devour a rotting empire” [6] The dehumanising language here should be of great concern. Wilson insists that he not only doesn’t believe in Kinism -the belief that we are tied together by racial or tribal connections.[7] He terms this “skinism.” And disavows the idea that people might be treated differently based on the colour of their skin. I have written before concerning his take on race and slavery and noted that in fact there are issues with his views that form a kind of ethno-cultural nationalism.[8]
Wilson has been much criticised on slavery. Here in the video, he insist that “The logic of the Gospel necessarily overturns institutions like slavery.”[9] However, his argument is that we cannot simply force slavery out of pagan societies. Here again, we see where he places things in order of priority. Some things can be forced through before a nation is Christian, others must be allowed to come with time, slavery falls into the latter. I think too that we see something of a misunderstanding of history on this point. Wilson’s argument seems to be that Paul didn’t seek to overturn slavery, it had to wait many years until the abolitionists showed up. This also is seen as a justification for benign reformed slave owners. The problem is that the abolitionists argument was that slavery had been swiftly abolished through the coming of the Gospel and so it was Christian nations that had reintroduced it.
Finally, it is worth picking up on something of his strategy for Christian political influence. He talks about connections with key people in the Trump administration. However, he also talks about the local influence of Christchurch and other connected churches in Moscow, Idaho. He states that the town has about 25000 inhabitants and that his church(es) account for about 3000 people, or over 10% giving them influence there. However, he also talks a bit ab out how the church has grown and the impression we are given, which fits with what I’ve heard from others is that this is not about a revival in the town so much as it is about Christians leaving other churches, whether there or from other parts of the States to join his church and indeed a community that includes a school and liberal arts college.
In this article, I primarily wanted to simply give an overview of the kind of thinking that lies behind the forms of Christian Nationalism we are currently seeing. It’s worth observing that some of the expressions we are seeing here in the UK now are not exactly the same as what Wilson advocates. However, there is a familial link and whilst Wilson may attack some of the extreme conclusions, I would argue that they lie in the same thinking. At the same times, there are serious concerns about the form of Christian Nationalism that Wilson expresses.
[1] 10:00
[2] 10:00 see also 45:00
[3] 10:30 I would like to see if he has pursued that further. No fault divorce was seen as controversial here in the UK when introduced because it was seen as a way of enabling people to pull out of marriages quickly simply because they thought it wasn’t working. However, it is also worth remembering that this can be a tool used when it is difficult to prove that one party has wronged and been unfaithful or where there is abuse and actually dragging out and contesting divorce proceedings becomes another means to inflict harm. There may be better ways of dealing with these issues but they do need to be recognised.
[4] This raises interesting questions about his views on the ability within families for parents to take differing views. For example, many households would have differing views between spouses and between generations on specific policies on economic matters and this played out during Brexit where husbands and wives as well as parents and children took different views on leave or remain. It raises questions on the extend and reach of a household, does it for example include adult children? Does my dad remain head of our household until he dies, or did we form a new household when I left home or when I got married? Further, we might ask about what has to be agreed on as a household. Can my wife hold a different view on Scottish Independence, whether we should abolish the monarchy (noting that Wilson is republican in his context), rates of taxation, privatisation, union powers and how to tackle inflation? Is it okay for different members of a household to support different football teams?
[5] 19:00
[6] 30:30
[8] Douglas Wilson on Slavery and racism – Faithroots
[9] 40:00
Faithroots 
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