Over here;
https://wng.org/opinions/its-not-too-late-to-abandon-christian-nationalism-1741834794
You can find an article criticizing Christian Nationalism. You will find that, just as I have predicted, that having villainized the word “Kinism” the “Christian” enemy is now seeking to villainize the term “Christian Nationalism.” If they are successful in villainizing that term they will villainize the next word or term someone comes up with to describe soci0-political action that aligns with the Christian faith.
You can read the article for yourself. I am going to offer bullet point critiques.
1.) Walker complains that the term “Christian Nationalism” is malleable and so should be given up. However, if this logic applied we would give up most controversial terms or descriptor words. For example, it could be rightly said of the word “Christian” that it is endlessly malleable and essentially vacuous and so should be given up. When a Lesbian Priest of the congregational church says she’s a “Christian,” and Andrew Walker says he is a “Christian” and I say, “I am a Christian” we all mean significantly different things. According to Walker’s logic we should give up the term Christian and move on to another word. Indeed, as Walker writes about Christian Nationalism so we could write about the word “Christian,” “the term has proven an unhelpful distraction.”
Walker is just being stupid here. If we always give up words or terms because the enemy seeks to villainize our language we will never have our own linguistics.
“Christian Nationalism,” like the word “Christian,” or the word “Kinism” should be retained with the very purpose of enraging the reactionary vanguards. There people are the enemy. What do we care what the enemy thinks of our language? It strikes me that as Walker aligns with the enemy in their project in forcing us to give up our language Walker demonstrates he is in league with the enemies of a Biblical and well thought out Christian Nationalism.
2.) Walker next demonstrates that he himself agrees with the enemies of Christian Nationalism (hereafter CN) on the left. Walker criticizes CN because it understands that as it applies to Western Nations CN will have a particularly European ethnic expression. Walker (who is an egghead at some Baptist Seminary) wrings his hands over the fact that CN’s today understand that Christianity does NOT have deeply Jewish roots, thus rejecting what is quite possibly a lingering Dispensationalism on the Baptist Walker’s observations. Christianity has deeply Jewish roots the way the Reformation had deeply Trentian Roman Catholic Roots.
3.) Next Walker tries to convince the reader that Christianity also benefited from North African developments, doubtlessly thinking of Augustine. However, Walker does not mention that his North African developments on Christianity are substantially different than what is meant by North African today. The man thus leaves an impression that the Christian faith was influenced by a black Athanasius or a black Augustine. Of course this is bunkum.
4.) Next Walker implies that the modern CN movement doesn’t embrace the idea that the Christian faith is to be accepted by all nations. Of course we understand that the Gospel is to conquer all nations and that all nations in their nations will one day embrace a Christianity that is colored by the ethnicities of the various peoples that embrace our undoubted catholic Christian faith.
5.) Walker then accuses CN of not treating the Christian faith as transcendent truth. Andrew Walker seems to think that CN today limits the Christian faith to only one ethno-racial vision of national identity. Again, this is absolutely false. See #4 above. Of course Christian Nationalists who belong to the West do see CN as something that will look particularly Western and European in Western and European contexts as existing among Western European peoples.
6.) Walker severely misread Ephesians 2:14-16 which applies to the Church and not necessarily to nations.
Paul is not talking about generic ethnic divides in Eph. 2 but specifically the aspects of the law-covenant that divided Jew from Gentiles. Therefore, someone cannot impose ethnic distinctions onto Paul’s words. The apostle has something uniquely covenantal in mind.
Second, the dividing wall was originally the will of God. To take the word “hostility” in and apply it as if multiculturalism is the goal is dangerous. The dividing wall to which Paul is referring is the Mosaic Law, and the Mosaic Law was God’s idea. He made the wall; then he removed it in Christ. The division was God’s will, not the by-product of human sin. “Racism,” on the other hand, is the result of human sin and never is the result of what God commands. By applying Ephesians 2:14 to ethnic strife today you effectively turn God into a “racist.”
Third, did Christ remove by his death the various differences between ethnicities and cultures today? Not at all. Before Christ’s death, one culture may prefer beer. Another culture may prefer wine. After the death of Christ the first culture still likes beer and the second culture still likes wine. The death of Christ was not intended to move the needle on these types of ethno-cultural differences (except for the aspects of man’s culture that are sinful). Nor did it overturn other aspects of human relations grounded in creation and nature.
More fundamentally, the church and nation are two different entities governed by Christ in different ways–with different laws and rules of citizenship. Walker collapsing the way the Church operates and the way Nations operate is problematic at best.
In brief, a racialized form of nationalism is no more evil than a racialized form of family.
7.) Next, Walker gives us the much tossed around meme of “anti-Semitism,” which, as Joe Sobran informed us long ago, is defined as “anybody who disagrees with a Jew.” Walker accuses some strains of CN of being Anti-Semitic. Of course Walker doesn’t give us any definition of Anti-Semitic so we are left having to imagine exactly what Walker means. The simple fact however is that any reading of Church history will quickly demonstrate that throughout the European history of Christianity the Jewish people have been at loggerheads with Christian peoples. This observation was not controversial in the least until after World War II. The fact that CN today might recognize that Jewish interests are often at loggerheads with Jewish interests is realism and not Anti-Semitism in the least. I could offer Walker several books documenting this conflict in history should he need some reading material. Contra Walker, it is not abandoning of biblical Christianity to understand that since Jewish people have historically opposed Christianity in the lands of the West that they might have an interest in continuing to do so even today.
8.) Walker accuses CN of seeking to fuse Darwin with Christianity. He makes this accusation quite without any concrete evidence. Clearly, CN cannot be called CN if it really were the case that it was seeking to import Atheistic/Evolutionist Darwinism into CN. However, having said that it is simply the case that one can believe in genetics and average IQ levels among different peoples without being Darwinian and without being “fixated on genetics.” Further, despite Walker’s accusation to the contrary, a person can believe in genetics and the reality of ethnic IQ levels and still believe human dignity is rooted in the image of God. These accusations by Walker against CN’s are guilty of the red herring logical fallacy.
9.) Walker gives us an article obsessing over the virtue of ethnic heterogeneity and so accuses Christian Nationalists of obsessing over the virtue of ethnic homogeneity.
10.) Walker then offers up another false dichotomy by writing that “Christianity grants the legitimacy of nationhood, Christianity has never required nationalism to thrive.” The problem here is that nationhood implies Nationalism. If a nation is to be a nation it must protect its National interests. To protect one’s national interests (the chief of which is one’s own people) then one needs to, by default, embrace nationalism to thrive.
11.) Next Walker complains about the lack of evangelistic zeal and personal holiness. Keep in mind though that when the conversation is on CN one expects people to talk about CN and not evangelism and personal holiness. For my part, I quite agree that CN needs to embrace evangelism, which is one reason I encourage young Christian people to have lots of children. Being a Pastor, I am constantly encouraging my people in personal holiness.
12.) I want to be fair and say that the critique of Walker here are not critiques that need to be brought against all those who oppose CN. However, men like Walker (Pope Doug, David Bahnsen, James White, Andrew Sandlin, Joe Boot) do need to have this kind of critique brought against them. I’m sure there are many others who oppose CN who do not bring the kinds of false charges against CN as Walker brings in his article against CN.
13.) Just as Kinism before it, CN is a fine handle to use to describe a Biblical position on Christian social order. We shouldn’t let Karens like Andrew Walker dissuade us from the use of this phrase. To be sure there have been evil versions of Nationalism in world history but those Nationalisms were never Christian in their orientation, though to be sure some tried to co-op Christianity in their version of Nationalism. The Nazi use of “Positive Christianity” is one such example. However, distortions can arise from all kinds of origins just as Andrew Walker distorts CN in his article today.
14.) Walker begins to round off his article by complaining about the Church wielding political force under the banner of CN. However, CN never argues that the Church should be running the affairs of State so I’m not sure where Walker gets this idea. As far as I know all Christians applaud the necessity of personal repentance, cultural renewal, and moral leadership — just as Walker mentions.
15.) Walker next writes that Christianity has never required nationalism to survive. That may be true but that doesn’t mean that Christianity doesn’t thrive more successfully being aided by a Nationalism that finds the state favoring the Christian faith. Walker gives another false dichotomy.
16.) Walker, seemingly complains about Christians having (wielding) political force as if that ability to wield political force is inherently wrong or evil. Where in Scripture are we taught that it is evil for Christian magistrates to wield political force in favor of the Christian faith? There is nothing inherently evil about the proper use of force and Christians in the project of CN should pray that a day comes when Christian Magistrates use force as honoring unto God in a Christian nation.
17.) What is hilarious now is that Walker appeals to Natural Law to overturn Stephen Wolfe’s appeal to Natural Law for the establishing of CN. Would the real Natural Law please stand up?
18.) Walker next insists that “We should advocate for policies that promote common good, not just interests of Christians”
The problem here is that advocating for policies that promote the interests of Christians are always policies that serve the common good. Walker is involved in a false dichotomy. Again, we need to reject Andrew Walker’s boneheaded advice that would find us embracing a “Thirdwayism.” We have seen in the past what this kind of quietism and milquetoast approach achieves.
19.) Walker next argues that the Christianizing of the West will only happen by a bottom up approach, villainizing a top down approach. I quite agree that a top down approach alone will never give us a CN. However, I also thoroughly disagree that a bottom up alone approach will give us Christian culture. Change in a nation has to come from both top down and bottom up as well as from the inside out. An alone bottom up approach alone that Walker advocates will never succeed when the top down is ignored because those on the top will use the means of the state to crush an alone bottom up approach. A label like CN which emphasized both bottom up and top down as well as inside out will communicate what all biblical Christians desire in their social order. Ideas like Walker’s only distract us from the mission.
20.) It is not too late to ignore chaps like Andrew Walker as well as those who would so water down CN. Men like Pope Doug and those several other mentioned above must be defeated. They do not belong to the work of Christian renewal.
