While I am not a Kinist, (in point of fact I’ve been severely insulted by them in the past for my rejection of their doctrines) I do believe that Kinism has put its finger on a significant problem (i.e. — the death of the West & the death of the faith, culture and people who made the West the West) and that problem must be addressed with precision and nuance. It will do no good to just dismiss Kinist arguments by ad-hominem. I will go on the record as saying I do not believe that all Kinists are racists (whatever that word means) and I do not believe Kinism automatically means heresy in every person who takes to themselves that descriptive title. The issues that Kinism raise are tougher nuts to crack then many people believe.
Here are a few starting points. These are not written in stone but just represent a bit of brain storming on my part.
1.) Salvation is by grace alone and people from every tribe tongue and nation will be represented in the New Jerusalem.
2.) Christianity, as a faith and belief system is the only faith and belief system that can build beautiful civilization.
3.) It is possible for varying ethnic groups / races to be Christian and yet have significantly different civilizations. It is not necessary for all Christian civilizations to look the same.
4.) It is a reasonable postulate that the differences that might exist between different Christian civilizations might be accounted for by the God ordained differences between varying peoples.
5.) Just as family lines have particular traits which include both strengths and weaknesses so people groups likewise will have particular traits that are characteristic of those people groups. (i.e. — Irish temper [speaking from experience] … Scottish pugnaciousness [again speaking from experience], Dutch frugality, Italian passion, German precision, etc.) Those traits will reveal themselves in the varying Christian civilizations that those people build.
6.) It is possible for a individual who belongs to one people group to denounce his or her people group and bond with a people group that is not his or her own. This accounts for why many blacks will be referred to as “Uncle Toms” by their own people.
7.) People groups are not to be understood solely as a genetic grouping. People groups also include belief systems. It is the interplay of nurture, nature, and belief that makes people groups, people groups. This is why the subject is so complex and difficult … you just can’t extract any of those three from the other two without involving oneself in significant error.
8.) Just as most family members prefer their family to all other families, so most people groups instinctively and rightly prefer their people group to all other people groups. Even the Apostle Paul reveals this (Romans 9:2f).
9.) While the tribe that Christians should most identify with is the Christian Tribe there can still be diversity of people groupings within this tribe so that a Mongolian Christian, while identifying primarily with the Christian tribe, would, within that tribe, identify most significantly with his or her Mongolian Christian tribe. Trinitarian Christians should have no problem with this since to deny this would be to deny the trinity in favor of a Unitarian God. Think “The One and The Many” here folks.
10.) A civilization composed of various people groups can only work if those various people groups are christian and are committed to a harmony of interests. When set civilizations seek to incorporate various pagan people groups under the umbrella of one civilization chaos is insured since the sin induced conflict of interests will have each people group seeking to be advantaged at the expense of the other people groups.
11.) This does not mean, however that civilizations which are composed of one people group that is pagan will be harmonious. Where pagan people groups compose one civilization it is my conviction that those pagan people groups, not having some other alien people group to despise, will look for some sub-grouping within their own group to be the red-headed step child that will be taken advantage of.
12.) People groups that are pagan will manifests their pagan-ness in their own unique ways. Ugly civilization that comes from pagan Tibetans will be a different ugly civilization that comes from pagan white Europeans.
13.) The only cure for all pagan people groups is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. However, when the Gospel of Jesus Christ covers the world as the water covers the sea it still will not be the case that all cultures and civilizations will be the same or that all the colors will bleed into one.
14.) The death of the West has many factors … the chief of which is unbelief. Further, the primary race and ethnicity that is responsible for the death of the West are the descendants of White Europeans. The white man has torn down his own house by his abandoning of the Christian faith. However, having admitted that doesn’t explain the “how” in which that has happened or the accelerating factors of the last 40 years. In order to understand the “how” and the accelerating factors I believe that we have to look in some of the directions that kinism points us toward.
Superb, Bret!
I know I have a bad habit of reading too much good into what people say (I’m still not convinced that EVERY person who thinks the Auburn Avenue folks have some good points is necessarily hiding their horns under their hairpiece), but what I’ve read of the Kinists, I’m not seeing (based on what you’ve written, above) in what specifics you would disagree with them. Where would you say your biggest difference of opinion with them lies?
In the spirit of full disclosure, let me say that when I read “Spirit/Water/Blood” and “Cambria Will Not Yield,” I find myself in agreement FAR more often than I disagree.
Jay,
The biggest disagreement I have w/ them is that I allow that miscegenation is not always sin all the time. In the past, I have been taken severely to task by some of them for that conviction.
I’ve also said that a charitable reading of Rushdoony does not require us to believe that he believed miscegenation always and all the time is sin. I’ve also been lampooned for that.
And I do think that Auburn Avenue pointed us in some felicitous directions.
Hello Pastor Bret, I was wondering whether the same reasoning used by the pro interracial marriage crowd on Facebook could easily be used to justify the practice of polygyny? The criteria appear to match and in all fairness I think that a more convincing case can be made biblically for polygyny than for interracial marriage though for various practical and biblical reasons I do not believe that Christians should practice polygyny. Basically, the argument would go as follows, cite various examples of biblical men who practiced polygyny, the laws in the OT concerning polygyny and the laws in the NT concerning polygyny. Then maybe throw in a lot of disgusting insults and 9th commandments violations and label anyone who disagrees with polygyny a heretic due to canceling out the gospel and being guilty of the legalistic galation heresy. Perhaps the pro polygynous could even have a reconciliation day at their church where they encourage young people to be involved in polygynous marriages in order to lessen discrimination and hatred against polygynous people. As it appears that the pro interracial marriage group demands explicit scripture saying that interracial marriage is a sin and are not content to observe God’s warnings on the subject, nor the importance of racial differences, nor the reasons why God separated the peoples, nor certain extra biblical evidence, why should they continue to oppose Polygyny given that their arguments against the position would have to appeal to texts systematically in a similar way that the kinists do along with pointing out the problems in the way that polygyny often works out in the world?
Very well articulated, Bret. I agree with you in your one disagreement with kinism… although it is (in the vast majority of cases) unwise, and can occur as the result of sinful motives, I can’t find Biblical evidence that miscegenation itself is a sin. That said, I couldn’t care less whether a hispanic marries a black person.
Very nice article. Just as a clarification, it is not universal among Kinists to believe that miscegenation is a sin. Since Kinists don’t hold any power in any denomination, the critical common ground we should all seek is the Christian liberty of conscience to teach our children our beliefs on the sin and/or wisdom of miscegenation without interference from church authorities threatening charges of heresy over something that is really an “open-handed” issue, except many of the church authorities are cowed by the Left’s psychological warfare and thus are way too eager to purge those labeled as “racists”. So many “conservatives” are like abused children, fighting the Left in some ways but still yearning for its approval.
What we especially have to fight is the charge that Kinists believe only whites can be saved. I have never encountered a Kinist who believed such a thing, yet this is the libel with which the other side continually smears them. They ought to be called on this libel each and every time they make it.
Josh K, I don’t think it’s wise for Kinists to pursue the pro-polygyny analogy too far. Such a position (that polygyny is not explicitly proscribed by Scripture, but it simply unwise or un-European) is disputed by very learned scholars, not the least of which is Robert L. Dabney.
Context (ironically for Kinists): the abolitionists attacked OT support of slavery by citing its permitting polygamy and divorce (thus OT law was morally invalid), and Dabney showed how a true exegesis of OT law actually forbade both polygamy and divorce. See starting at page 132:
http://dabneyarchive.com/Defense%20of%20Virginia/Chapter%205%20-%20The%20Old%20Testament%20Argument.pdf
So I’d hate to be in the position of arguing FOR polygamy as non-sinful against the likes of Dabney. Matthew 19:9 seems to be the strongest statement:
And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
If as Christ says putting away one’s wife to marry another is adultery, what exactly makes it adultery? Not the divorce (as shown by the “and shall marry another”), but the remarriage. So logically it would seem to imply that even absent the divorce, it would still be adultery to “marry another”.
Just a thought!
Dear Bret,
While I agree there is no obvious sin w/ interracial marriage, I tend to look at it in a way akin to divorce. The argument against miscegenation belongs more properly to laws regarding inheritance and property. First, the bible describes nations by as extended families. Next, nations have been given lots w/ boundaries, much like each tribe in Israel. The problem with interracial marriage across national groups, is property ultimately switch family hands. So, it’s really a stewardship issue, and God has set forth ways to maintain inherited lots by instituting marriage “proprieties”. As a general rule of thumb interracial is erosive (Gen. 34:23 for example). But in certain cases we can see occasional exceptions to the rule (Joseph, Ruth, Moses).
I would say the same with divorce and remarriage. There are circumstances where both a permitted. However, our sin is making what God would have as “irregular” for a celebrated, perverse ‘norm’. After all, diversity and miscegenation is not the ‘normal’ way a nation functions, and we have no reason to believe nations any more than families disappear in the NT. There may be permissible instances thereof, just as we might have community sharing of property or polygamy, but today these have been wrongly elevated to moral virtues and societal standards. That’s wrong headedness. So, I guess I would call myself a ‘moderate kinist’, but the kinist are indeed being true to the traditional and scriptural argument than the neo-babalists. And, as painful or embarrassing as it might be, I believe christians have a responsibility, especially considering the extent this bad leaven has spread, to dispute or refute neo-babalist opinion.
Note: I don’t mean to divorce property from family. Indeed, the covenant and its many blessings was ‘given to you and your children’. That said, things become clearer when one considers the boundaries, banners, and lots divided upon the earth for nations in the NT (Acts. 17:26) w/ those in the OT (Gen. 10:32 and the encampment eschatologically point to the same Num. 2). We have no evidence or command in either Old or New Testaments to eliminate these boundaries, allotments, or inheritances assigned to the particular families of men. It stand to reason a collectivist might liquidate one by extinguishing the other. Behind this, I think, is a deep hermenuetical error, i.e., God ceases to work in physical nature after the cross.