Christian Nationalism & The Use of Force

“God’s law, and the punitive stipulations attached to it have never been rescinded.

The Gospel is to preached to all men. Those whom God has chosen from eternity will hear and believe.

God’s law is to be applied and upheld in every sphere of man’s endeavor. It is not meant to convert but to control the lawless and when necessary remove them from society. The state wields the sword and enforces the law but it must do so in submission to Christ the King.

The failure of the church to operate as described above is testimony to effeminacy. It is anti Christ.”

Mark Chambers 

This is the answer to the old canard from “Christians” insisting that Christian Nationalism (CN) should not be supported by Christians  because it implies the use of force. The argument is that CN is not legitimate because nobody can be forced to convert.

To the contrary CN can and should use force upon people in order to be installed. People have to realize that the force that CN must and should us is not intended to convert people, but rather force is intended to make the lawless respect the King’s law. Whether they will convert or not is the work of the Holy Spirit in the context of the preaching of the Gospel. That people will be forced to obey is the work of the Christian magistrates sword.

As such there is nothing desultory and there is no degradation to a Christianity which uses force to make people outwardly conform to the law of God, even if inwardly those people hate doing so. We do it all the time. We used force to make sure that people who might want to murder, rape, and steal don’t murder, rape, and steal. The fact that they are not doing the murdering, raping, and stealing that they might otherwise do if force wasn’t promised against them if they did so may make them hypocrites but that is irrelevant as to living in a social order within the bonds of God’s law.
They may secretly desire to disobey that which they are being forced to obey but they don’t and they don’t for the fear of force used against them if they do. That is a good thing.

The above explains how CN is not inconsistent with the usage of force. It is true that force can’t convert people but that is not it’s intent. The intent of force is have people obey God’s law outwardly whether they want to or not. And that would be a good thing.

The usage of force in the rise of CN is no different than the usage of force in a Christian family. 12 y/o Johnny may not like any number of the family rules but force will make sure that Johnny complies. Now, to be sure, the hope is that Johnny will one day enjoy and own the family rules but until that day arrives little Johnny is kept in line by the promises of consequences (force) if he does not comply.

“Christians” who bring up the canard about how the prospect of force in CN make CN a non-starter are not really complaining about the prospect of force. What they are complaining about are laws in God’s gracious Law-Word that they don’t want enforced. If they could force their law on the world (whatever that might be) they would be perfectly fine with force.

Think about it a second…. the Baptists are some of the Christians who are screaming the loudest about how the usage of force is not consistent with Christianity. These Baptists are therefore against CN. However, keep in mind that the pluralism that we have now that is kept as expressive of our social order by force is a pluralism that is an expression of Baptist theology. Pluralism is the child of Anabaptist thinking, so naturally many Baptists  oppose a CN coupled with the usage of force because that would mean the end of their preferred social order (pluralism) which is maintained by force.

In the end, force is an inescapable concept when it comes to how social orders operation. That force will either be put into the service of God’s law or it will be put into the service of some other god’s law (like polytheistic pluralism).

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

2 thoughts on “Christian Nationalism & The Use of Force”

  1. When their backs are put against the wall, the pacifist convictions of even many dedicated Anabaptists will wither. Take, for example, the German Mennonites who lived in Ukraine (in the Zaporozhian areas where warfare is raging at this very moment), when the Russian Civil War started. A Leftist source narrates:

    https://libcom.org/article/makhnovists-and-mennonites-war-and-peace-ukrainian-revolution

    “Many Mennonite landlords practised collective punishment; when theft was suspected ‘all the potential suspects were flogged, so as to teach a lesson to both the guilty and the innocent’ (Loewen, p-53). The principle of pacifism had therefore been abandoned by wealthy Mennonites long before the Russian Revolution.

    From the spring of 1918, Mennonite colonies (though not all individual believers) abandoned any pretence of pacifism and began to establish an armed force, which they refer to as the Selbstschutz. For those who participated and their descendants, this resort to violence presents a problem of conscience: for four hundred years, through various persecutions and martyrdoms, Mennonites had – to an extent, at least – renounced the sword; now, gangs of men armed themselves in zealous support of the invading Austro-German armies. It is worth observing the sort of logical contortions that were necessary to defend this course of action: ‘It was thus argued by Heinrich Janz and Aron Toews, for example, that one must differentiate between the principles of the Kingdom of God and the principles of this worldly kingdom. In matters of the former one must remain nonresistant, of course, but with respect to the latter one is also obligated to support law and order’ (Klippenstein, p-4).

    If the Selbstschutz was not born to defend Mennonites from ‘unprecedented terror’, how did it originate? Its initial role was to enable landlords to violently reclaim land and property from those who had (in most instances, peacefully) collectivised it. B.J. Dick acknowledges that ‘Not always and not in all cases was the conduct of (…) German soldiers commendable and inoffensive,’ but he describes the Austro-German occupation as ‘a breathing space sent by God’ – the Old Testament God, presumably.

    Needless to say, it was the prosperous Mennonites who pushed for the Selbstschutz, not their landless and poor employees (Klippenstein, p-2). As B.J. Dick recalls, ‘the more prosperous farmers were generally more in favour of the Selbstschutz than the landless and the poor’ (p-138). This was reflected in the demographic of the initial Selbstschutz units, which, as John Urry notes, ‘consisted of young Mennonites from wealthy backgrounds’ (Wiens, p-40). The aim of these landlords’ militias was to ‘restore the pre-Revolution community patterns as completely as possible’ (Klippenstein, p-2). Thus the Selbstschutz did not start as a defensive organisation but as a militia that aimed to use violence to restore the inequalities of Tsarist Russia. The hawks in the Mennonite camp coerced, intimidated, and assaulted the doves: those many Mennonites who opposed the Selbstschutz, whether for reasons theological or economic or both, were subject to scorn and derision and in some cases were beaten by their Christian brethren (Klippenstein, p-8; see also, Dick, p-136).”

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