“We encounter the Gospel when we experience the places made spiritually significant by our Christian loved ones.”
“The instrumentalities of the family are chosen and ordained of God as the most efficient of all means of grace—more truly and efficaciously means of saving grace than all other ordinances of the church” (p. 693)
R. L. Dabney
The Reformed are sticklers for advocating that the only means of grace are Word and Sacrament. However, I must say that I appreciate what Wolfe and before him Dabney were communicating. There can be no doubt that place and people having been ornamented by the Gospel can indeed evoke in us a great depth of thankfulness to God for bringing those Christian people and those grounds which are now hallowed in our thinking into our lives.
II.) “Those who exhibit a preference for foreigners have disordered loves — a condition we can call xenophilia, or the love of foreigners. Its conjoined condition is what Roger Scruton called ‘oikophobia,’ or the fear of home and familiarity.”
The Case for Christian Nationalism — p. 150 / FN 37
Here we discover that the modern Christian Church, exceptions notwithstanding, is now a institution characterized by xenophilia. The contemporary White Church in the West is all hot to trot to have minorities in their midst seemingly thinking that to have such means that they are “really holy now.” What else can this be called except xenophilia?
On this same score, Scruton was exactly right with his label “oikophobia.” White Christians in our mega-churches are characterized by their hatred of their own ethnic people. Indeed, it has gotten so bad that it really is the case now that the stranger and alien are so loved and there is such fear of racial kin that the stranger and alien are in point of fact the new kin for these whom Wolfe and Scruton are describing. If that observation is indeed true it teaches us that “Kinism” is an inescapable categoriy.
III.) “Non-Christians living among us are entitled to justice, peace, and safety, but they are not entitled to political equality, nor do they have the right to deny the people of God their right to order civil institutions to God and their complete good.”
The Case for Christian Nationalism — p. 346
That will make the R2K crowd pee their pants.
IV.) “Spiritual unity is inadequate for formal ecclesial unity.”
The Case for Christian Nationalism
I agree 100% but I would bet my retirement fund that 90% of conservative clergy would viciously disagree with that quote.
Dr. Wolfe’s point here is, I believe, that people from different cultures, races, and/or classes can indeed be one in Christ but still not be able to have formal ecclesial unity. As an obvious example, imagine a group of Reformed Hmong people here in the states trying to establish formal ecclesial unity with a group of Reformed Mexicans. The very real spiritual unity would not overcome the very real cultural differences. This reality is not to diminish the reality that each people are indeed Christian through and through. It is merely to recognize that cultures and peoples differ enough to make the kind of difference that would not allow formal ecclesial unity.
V.) “It is time to recognize that the theonomists were right about the direction of Reformed political theology as it manifested itself in the late 20th century up to today.”
The Case for Christian Nationalism — p. 270
