As we’ve already seen, Wilson doesn’t focus on the term Christian Nationalism, preferring “mere Christendom” but that’s the top level architecture. Christendom is made up of Christian nations. Mere Christendom is made up of Christian Nationalisms. So, Wilson does take time to defend Christian Nationalism. However, he wants to be clear about what he is defending and not defending. He says:
A Christian nation should never be mistaken as being the same thing as a chosen nation. There is no exceptionalism in it. In the Old Testament era, Israel was God’s chosen nation, and the other nations were not. But in the era of the new covenant, the commandment that Christ left for us meant that we were to disciple all the nations. The first Christian nation (which was probably Armenia) was not an only child. She was simply the eldest, knowing that there were going to be lots of other kids. And as that family fills out, God doesn’t want us squabbling about which one is the greatest, any more than Jesus wanted His disciples to argue about that same thing on the road to Jerusalem. So the “American exceptionalism” of the neocons is actually the idolatrous construct. What we are urging is simply one more Christian nation among many, and to God be the glory.”[1]
He adds:
“In the meantime, down here on earth, you cannot teach children to have respect for other cultures by inculcating in them a contempt for their own. A son who honors his own mother deeply is going to understand why another honorable son wants to honor his mother. That makes good sense to him. A man who loves his American heritage in the proper way is going to understand and appreciate it when an Englishman loves his, and a Korean loves his, and an Israeli loves his, and an Argentinian loves his. As they are all supposed to.[2]
So, Wilson rejects the idea of American exceptionalism. This is positive. However, there are again things to consider here. It is okay insisting that you are encouraging respect for your culture but if you retell the story of your culture in a way that puts down other cultures including those that belong to prior indigenous peoples and that constantly casts your culture and nation as the hero in the story then you might have a problem.
Secondly, and this is related, he wants to deny and indeed dismiss the charge of racism in terms of white supremacy.
In our day, the mud-gobbing that calls conservative Christians names like white supremacist, or theo-fascist, or religious extremist is so overdone that it is easily answered and then dismissed.[3]
In answer to a frequently asked question on his blog, he writes:
“Is Christian Nationalism simply a dog whistle for white Christian Nationalism?
No. The people who keep bringing this up are doing so because they have forgotten how to engage with arguments, but still need a stick to beat us with. If CN grows and spreads internationally, expanding into my Mere Christendom territory, some of those nations will be white. Shoot, Finland is white now. Some of them will be black, and others Asian. And some will be a color jumble, like America. That’s all good.
In other words, we might suggest that Wilson wants a “mere Christian Nationalism” to go with his “mere Christendom”. The big question is whether or not he achieves this. Partly this will mean giving a bit of attention to how others develop the idea of Christian Nationalism and so, shortly we will have a look at Stephen Wolfe’s approach. We also have to look at criticisms and questions of Wilson himself. So, it is worth having a look at a specific challenge relating to Wilson, namely questions around his attitude to the slave trade.
Douglas Wilson on Slavery and racism
on racism, Wilson is adamant that we have been made equal in God’s image. He writes at length in his book, Black and Tan on this about his friendship with Afro-Americans as a child and his experience of seeing the horrors of segregation at work.[4]
However, he goes on to argue that whilst all humanity is equal, he argues that not all cultures are. He argues that we must value progress in terms of science, technology, academic learning and culture.
“In reaction to the legacy of racism that has long been directed toward blacks, many liberals have adopted the emotionally secure (but intellectually indefensible) position of egalitarianism, the view that equality in the sight of God means sameness in the sight of man. This is the facts-be-damned approach. But there is no effective way to address racial hatreds by insisting that everyone (all together now) start denying the obvious. All men exhibit the image of God equally, but all cultures are not equal. As we look at all the tribes of men, we see some that have landed a man on the moon, and some that have not yet worked out the concept of the wheel. We have some with one whole row in the supermarket dedicated to shampoo, while in another tribe hair is washed in cow urine. We have orchestras playing The Brandenburg Concertos compared to someone beating on a hollow log with a couple of sticks.”[5]
He insists though that where we see such developments, they are not a cause for cultural and ethnic pride because they reflect the influence of the Gospel on cultures.
“But there are such disparities, and they are present because of the uneven progress of the gospel throughout the world. Everything that we enjoy culturally is simply the grace of God. What do we of “the West” have that we did not receive as a gift? And if as a gift, then why do we boast as though it were not a gift (1 Cor. 4:7)? Before the gospel came to my ancestors, what were we whites (with our alleged soo-perior genetics) doing with ourselves? Well, we were painting ourselves blue…”[6]
At this point, I want to challenge Wilson’s view. The rhetoric here is impressive but I think that there are a couple of questionable moves in his logic. First of all, we do need to recognise that common grace has resulted in technological developments and indeed cultural developments in un-Christianised contexts, so we cannot simply say that it is solely a Gospel consequence.[7] Secondly, we would need to account for the way in which western cultures used the benefit of technological developments in transportation and military warfare in order to exploit and constrain other cultures.
Thirdly, I believe that Wilson in a way that is unhealthy and unhelpful, conflates cultural maturity and technological maturity. In the examples he gives of soap and cosmetics or music, it is clear that the two cultures exemplified share a mature and positive concern for hygiene, art and aesthetics. The difference is in the technological execution of those concerns. Furthermore, Wilson does not allow for the negative aspects of technological development on a culture and its morality. The same developments that enabled a culture to produce medicine, cosmetics, advanced musical instruments etc also enabled it to produce bombs, nuclear weapons and the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
There is therefore in Wilson’s approach, a western-centric view of how we evaluate cultures which I do not find in Scripture.
On slavery, Wilson insists that it is a positive thing that slavery has been abolished, it is not something he wants to go back to, particularly in the race based form that was prevalent in the States prior to the civil war. He writes:
“The slave trade was an abomination, and those evangelicals in England like William Wilberforce who led the fight against it are rightly considered heroes of the faith.”[8]
He further writes:
“American slavery had the additional complication of its racial basis. And so we as Christians, and especially as American Christians, must denounce as a matter of biblical principle every form of racism, racial animosity, or racial vainglory.”[9]
However, he wants to make the following arguments. First of all, that in so far as slavery was sinful, the sin was against God and not against the State.[10] Secondly, that the experience of slavery in the southern states was much more benign than has been claimed.[11] Thirdly, that the Bible did allow for and regulate slavery because whilst the result of the Gospel should have been a gradual ending of the slave trade and slave ownership, this was intended to be gradual and evolutionary rather than revolutionary. [12] This means that in his view, attacks on those like Edwards who held slaves and Dabney who resisted abolition are unfair.
I want to come back to the specifics of Wilson’s argument shortly but I think it is helpful to understand first of all what underpins his position because his argument is not primarily to do with race and slavery. Rather we need to remember these four things about Wilson.
- He is a post-millennialist who believes we should be optimist about he future because over a lengthy period of history we can expect God’s kingdom to gain ground and transform politics and culture.
- Linked to this, he believes in something called Theonomism which is the belief that as a country becomes progressively Christianised, it should conform more and more to God’s Law.
- There is a strongly related view held by those from this background that we are protected against tyranny by limiting authority to specific spheres (This is part of the concept of Lex Rex – The Rule of Law). Those spheres are family, church and state.
- These things come together so that Wilson claims to be a confederate. In other words, he believes that the southern states were right in the American Civil War in that they were resisting the imposition of an overbearing federal government, the result of which he considers to have been the introduction of such evils and legalised abortion.[13]
At this point, we can see what his issue with the abolition of slavery was. He believes that this was about the State overstepping its legitimate powers and interfering into another sphere. The matter of slave ownership for him was a private/household and family sphere issue and a sin issue so that it should have been dealt with by the preaching of the Gospel through the church enabling families to respond and to reform household life in conformity with the Gospel. He writes:
“That our nation did not remove slavery in the way it ought to have been removed helps to explain many of our nation’s problems in dealing with contemporary social evils. Those evils include abortion-on-demand, radical feminism, and rampant sodomy. In the pursuit of our constitutional rights, we have legally executed over forty million unborn children in this nation, and we are about to be oppressed with sodomite marriage.”[14]
So, here are the problems I have with Wilson’s position. First of all, I think he is seeking Biblical cover for a particular political position and I’m not sure it is there. I don’t think a Federal Government in the States is any less Biblical than a confederate one. Secondly, whilst sin is against the Lord, and him alone, because, as we acknowledge that sin also brings harm to others that does mean that the State does has a role in stepping in to protect against harm, hurt and exploitation, in those contexts we talk about crime rather than as well as sin and I do not buy into the notion that the church or the family can shut their doors and say that the state has no jurisdiction there. The point about the spheres of responsibility are to do with what you are responsible for, not where you are responsible for. This means that abuse of spouses and of children rightly comes under the criminal law too.
Now as to whether or not the African Slave Trade and its consequences in terms of ownership were benign, I would make two simple points. The first is that you can go and read the eyewitness accounts and quite rightly the abolitionists at the time gave short shrift to the notion. Secondly, the act of depriving someone of their liberty, compelling them to work for you without pay and denying them access to things like education, treating them as chattels is in and of itself anything but benign and should be recognised for the unjustifiable abuse that it was.
With regard to Christian slave owners of that time, the argument that they were justified or at least excused in holding to their position for Biblical reasons is refuted by three standards. First of all, that there were evangelical Christians carefully taking the time to show them Biblically why they were wrong. Secondly, a prominent argument of the abolitionists was that it was the enslavers who were innovators so that church history was on the side of the abolitionists. Thirdly, whilst people like Whitfield and Edwards may have argued that the issue was debatable in their day, those supporting slavery by the time of the American Civil war could no longer make that argument.
Furthermore, in suggesting that scripture isn’t categorically pushing for immediate abolition, Wilson concedes far too much to liberal theological hermeneutics. I have argued elsewhere that the redemptive movement hermeneutic which sees the Gospel of creating a trajectory towards abolition does not stand up to scrutiny and yet Wilson in effect endorses it. Furthermore, within the context of Christians not having control over state power at the time Paul writes, it is clear that he is insisting that Christians voluntarily dismantle the instruments of slave ownership. He does so by insisting that slaves are given their reward.
Wilson argues that in the 1st century, a slave owner would not have been denied membership of a church and therefore he implies that slavery is not on the same level as abortion. Yet, ironically, he chooses as his example Philemon.
“Suppose a man presented himself for membership in your church. Upon inquiring as to what he did for a living, you learned that he was an abortionist. Should he be admitted into membership? Of course not. Now suppose this same church was moved back in time, and a man presented himself for membership along with three of his slaves. Now what do you do? If he is admitted to membership, then it is clear that abortion and slavery cannot be considered to be ethically equivalent. And if he is refused membership, then what are you going to do when he (his name was Philemon) goes back and tells the apostle Paul what you did to him? For the year was not a.d. 1860 but rather a.d. 60.”[15]
This means we know what Paul would have said to Philemon when he showed up looking for church membership. He would say “okay -but you need to treat those slaves as sons now.”
Wilson is adamant that he neither endorses slavery nor racism and yet I want to suggest that his position on both issues is extremely unhealthy and out of line with what the Bible calls us to. There may not be examples of overt racism and yet his approach gives cover to the kind of ideologies that enable racism to breed. In that respect whilst his position may seem more nuanced and subtle, I would argue that it is more dangerous. Similarly, whilst he claims to reject American and white supremacy, his very understanding of how a Christian culture is meant to develop creates a big risk for that.
Technicalities?
I am now going to engage with perhaps the least easy to read and write about of the concerns raised about Doug Wilson. I think that this links significantly with Wilson’s understanding of the role of the State, especially his suspicion of what he would perceive as bureaucratic overreach.
The issue here centres on two specific cases. The first concerns a man called Stephen Sitller a paedophile who was convicted of numerous, serious offences. The concerns raised are that despite the significant concerns raised, Wilson allowed Sitler to continue to attend church and further to marry a young lady from the congregation and for them to have a child together despite concerns that this presented a potential danger to the child. Further that, as with the other case, Wilson wrote on behalf of Sitler to the court. Wilson has responded by writing to the congregation at Christchurch, Moscow, Idaho to say that whilst Sitler is welcome to attend the church, he does so accompanied by a chaperone. However, from what I can tell from the available reports, he neglects to mention that the chaperones are his wife and his mother in law both of whom failed to report on serious concerns and further abuse allegations when they arose.[16]
The second case concerns Nathalie Greenfield, a young girl who was 14 at the time and Jamin Wright, a student in his 20s who lodged with Nathalie’s family. Jamin engaged in a reltionship with Nathalie which seems to have to some extent been allowed by her parents and which is described by Wilson as a “secret courtship.” Again, Wilson is reported to have written to the court’s in support of Wright. Furthermore, when Greenfield went public about her experience in later years, Wilson’s response was to:
- Argue that Greenfield’s testimony was not reliable because of performance art videos that her Christian had produced.
- Claim that Greenfield had been happy with his pastoral care until disciplined for marrying a non-Christian. Again, he is seeking to undermine her credibility and suggest that she is motivated by bitterness.[17]
- Attempt to persuade Greenfield to be silent by suggesting that raising her grievance was unfair to her mum.
In correspondence with Nathalie, he goes on to argue that her case was not comparable with the Stephen Sitler situation. He recognises that a crime of “statutory rape” has been committed but insists that other factors should be brought into consideration. I am going to quote Wilson directly here:
“As my letter makes plain, Jamin was guilty of sexual behavior with a girl who was below the age of consent. She was underage. Our letter acknowledged fully that Jamin was guilty of criminal behavior, and we wanted him to pay the penalty for that criminal behavior, which was a species of statutory rape. The question before the court was what kind of criminal behavior it was, not whether it was criminal, and we instructed Jamin that he needed to take responsibilty for what he had done. But what he had done was very different from subsequent reconstructions that Natalie has been periodically posting.
In short, his crime was not in the same category as Steven Sitler’s crimes at all. Steven’s behavior was with young children and was simply predatory. Jamin’s crime was that of engaging in consensual sexual behavior with an underage girl.
So — Jamin was in a romantic relationship with a young girl, her parents knew of the relationship and encouraged it, her parents permitted a certain measure of physical affection to exist between them (e.g. hand-holding), Natalie was a beautiful and striking young woman, and at the time was about eight inches taller than Jamin was. Her parents believed that she was mature enough to be in that relationship, and the standards they set for the relationship would have been reasonable if she had in fact been as mature as she seemed to them.
What we wanted the court to know was simply this: it is simply not possible to have it both ways. If you are pressing charges of child abuse, you are saying that Jamin failed to respect the fact that Natalie was a child. But this was the same failure that he shared with her parents, who thought she was a remarkably mature young woman. That fact ought to be recognized on all sides. Jamin was brought into the house in order to make Natalie the object of his romantic intentions, and to do so more conveniently. He certainly abused that trust sinfully and grotesquely. He abused it in criminal ways, and the time he spent in prison for it was no miscarriage of justice. However, the time he has spent on the Internet, characterized as a pedophile, by people who were entirely ignorant of the facts of the case, and whose only interest in it was finding a rock to throw at me, is the very definition of injustice. “[18]
I want you to get a sense of what Wilson’s argument is here. He is in effect saying that whilst a technical crime has been committed that the issue is not really that serious. The basis of his argument is that the relationship was consensual and that in effect Nathalie seduced Jamin and that her family supported this. Let’s name this for what it is, it is victim blaming. It is excusing sin and it is seeking to impose shame and guilt on the victim to silence them.
We need to remember here that the point of statutory rape is that the child is not able to give consent. This is based on the law of the land and it is based on the fact that a young person aged under 18 is defined as a child Furthermore, we need to remember that what we observe in terms of predatory behaviour is the grooming and manipulation both of victims and families. Finally, it is shocking to suggest that any complicity by Greenfield’s parents in Wright’s behaviour somehow excuses him.
So, what we see here is a confusion of ethics leading to a serious failure of pastoral care and a young person put at risk but this has been further followed up with behaviour that was bullying and abusive towards Greenfield by Wilson in order to gaslight, intimidate and shame her into staying silent.
I want to raise this here because I suspect that most people within the UK conservative evangelical context will be aware that Wilson has some iffy theology on infant baptism (not just that he is a paedo-baptist but that his position would be questioned by other paedo-baptists) and justification. Some may be aware that there have been other concerns raised about possible plagiarism, issues about his views on slavery and maybe even that there was some controversy around child-safeguarding. However, I suspect that a lot of people will not be aware of the actual cases behind this and haven’t been trawling the internet to find out more because Wilson is not a key leader in the UK church but rather is simply seen as a provocative writer with some controversial views, someone we won’t always agree with but still worth hearing from time to time.
However, I think we need to be a little bit more alert, not just to Wilson himself but to the kind of views and ideas that circulate form a common theological and philosophical root. If we don’t start to understand the distinctive underpinning philosophy, then we might miss the different ways in which the problematic aspects of it might present themselves in the future and indeed may already be doing so. I think we have seen some of this here in the UK with recent negative reactions to safe-guarding agencies and reports. We also see something of this coming through in the response of some to Government regulations relating to COVID-19.
Once again, I think what we are seeing is that the issues are presented as family and then perhaps church matters. Whilst a technical offence has been committed and so the law of the land has to be considered, what really matters to Wilson is the sanctity of parental authority within the home and from his perspective, the father had already made his judgement. This sits within a philosophy where the state’s authority is seen as extremely limited. If, as Wilson has argued in mere Christendom, the State is restricted to what it has explicit authority from God to legislate for, then can it really get involved in setting arbitrary age limits?
The consequence of this is that a philosophical concept, not scripture is elevated to the point that as with slavery, it takes precedent over the immediate welfare of a victim. Furthermore,, again we see that there is confusion about what the Bible actually says about authority, submission and marital/sexual relationships. I think we also need to bare in mind my observation in the previous post that Wilson interprets, the Deuteronomy case of pre-marital sex as rape and therefore holds open the possibility of marriage as a solution to rape.
My concern remains that Wilson should not be seen as some kind of provocative shock jock, occasionally causing offence and a bit iffy on his theology. Rather, we need to be alert to the whole system of thinking that underpins this. Furthermore, what we get a sense of here is from observing how the church and magistrate interact in a real life context on a small scale, is what that would look like on the larger scale should Wilson’s mere Christendom vision be realised.
[1] Wilson, Douglas. Mere Christendom (p. 90). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
[2] Wilson, Douglas. Mere Christendom (p. 91). Canon Press. Kindle Edition. FAQ ques
[3] Wilson, Douglas. Mere Christendom (p. 87). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
[4] See especially Wilson, Douglas . Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America . Canon Press. Kindle Edition. (l444-681).
[5] Wilson, Douglas . Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America . Canon Press. Kindle Edition (l630).
[6] Wilson, Douglas . Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America . Canon Press. Kindle Edition (l644)
[7] Wilson argues that pastors should be amateur historians. Well if we are going to do that we need to be good ones too. As great as his comment about his ancestors painting themselves blue may work as a rhetorical flourish, it rather misses the point that it wasn’t so much the arrival of the Gospel on these shores that put a stop to that so much as the arrival of the Roman legions. I have great delight in the benefits the Gospel brought but because of that and because I see God’s common grace at work, I don’t need to overclaim for it.
[8] Wilson, Douglas . Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America . Canon Press. Kindle Edition (l689).
[9] Wilson, Douglas . Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America . Canon Press. Kindle Edition (l703)
[10] Wilson, Douglas . Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America . Canon Press. Kindle Edition. (l342).
[11] Wilson, Douglas . Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America . Canon Press. Kindle Edition (l741).
[12] Wilson, Douglas . Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America . Canon Press. Kindle Edition (l718)
[13] See Wilson, Douglas . Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America . Canon Press. Kindle Edition. (l309)
[14] Wilson, Douglas . Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America . Canon Press. Kindle Edition. (l129)
[15] Wilson, Douglas . Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America . Canon Press. Kindle Edition (L783)
[16] On this case see, Steven Sitler Update: The House that Doug Wilson Built | The Truth About Moscow (moscowid.net) and Steven Sitler | The Truth About Moscow (moscowid.net) see also Wilson’s statement on this case: An Open Letter from Christ Church on Steven Sitler | Blog & Mablog (dougwils.com)
[17] For these two points see Justice and the Ad Hominem | Blog & Mablog (dougwils.com)
[18] My Email Exchange With The Pastor Who Defends My Rapist (natalierose-livewithpassion.blogspot.com)
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