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.

A Small Glimpse Inside

Recently, I had a local evangelical military wife inform me that “I ignore people with my constant reading and that the only time I interact is to fight.” Now in fairness to her I was getting in her kitchen about the sagacity of our youth signing up to go into the military after they graduate high school, and I was making the case that Biblical Christians serving in the US military struck me as more than a bit oxymoronic and so her words hurled at me were hurled out of defensiveness on her part. Still, three days later I am musing over her words and I must admit there is some truth in her words. And so for those who have come to similar conclusions about “the pastor who always ignores people with his reading and only interacts in order to fight” allow me a small apologetic for my idiosyncrasies.

First, I am not a particularly bright person by nature. Consequently, if I desire to have anything at all interesting to say in my role as Preacher and counselor I have to read, and I have to read with a vengeance. Inherently brighter men might be able to be in the ministry and not read and be successful but if I am going to be worth my wage and keep I have to read.

Second, we live in a culture that is stupid. This is not a malicious opinion. This is a fact. I struggle with that residue clinging to me as much as the next person. If I wish to rise out of the stream of this culture that is carrying so many of its sons and daughters along to destruction then I have to read. If I want to be an answer for the culture that I love and hate at the same time then I have to offer it something better then what it is offering. The only way I can do that is to read till I bleed. I read not in order to ignore people but to be a boon to them (even if they just wish I’d shut up).

Third, if I don’t read I’ll be a captive to this zeitgeist, and as I am convinced that this zeitgeist is from its father the devil I have to do all I can to saturate myself in the wisdom of other times. So, when I read, I try to read old books and old authors and the reason I do so is that I have hopes, as silly as they might be given our zeitgeist, that Christian men and women alive today might tire of the wickedness of this age and long for something other — a something other that I might be able to offer because of my reading of old authors, old books and of times and wisdom now forgotten.

Fourth, to be perfectly honest, the people I meet in my books are usually 100 times more interesting than the people who are walking expressions of this culture. If I have to choose between Charlemagne and Joe the Dispensationalist, my tendency is to choose Charlemagne’s company every time. If I have to choose between the insights of Robert Nisbet or the wisdom of Daphney the Government school teacher it’s Nisbet every time. Now, I realize that this is a weakness and even a sin. Joe and Daphney still need Jesus and Charlemagne and Nisbet don’t and so I should expend more effort with Joe and Daphney, but I have to tell you when Joe and Daphney insist that I’m an idiot or respond with strained silence when I bring up conversation that goes beyond conversational pleasantries Nisbet and Charlemagne look more and more attractive.

This is why I read. I make no apology for it. If you see me reading try to keep in mind that at least somewhere in this vessel of clay — despite all the sin that still clings to me, there is a small motive of love for God, people, and the desire for Reformation that has me turning page after page in book after book.

Now as to the fighting part of my interlocutor’s accusatory words I must once again plead guilty. But, please, I ask that you would once again hear me out.

First, understand that I wear myself out resisting fighting. I doubt that there are more people who chew more holes in their tongues then I do. I literally, bite my tongue. I literally pinch myself. I literally walk away in order to allow for conversational and relational bonhomie. A little credit where credit is due if you please.

Second, y’all have to realize that I am convinced that this culture needs Reformation. Allow me to suggest that Reformation isn’t going to come without fighting. So, yes, I’m often in the midst of intense conversation. In the Lansing area I’ve warred with the Evangelicals about their love for America and civil religion that is above their love for Jesus. I’ve argued the doctrines of grace vs. the doctrines of self-salvation that most evangelicals embrace. I’ve debated with them about their constant need to plight their fidelity to the flag. I’ve debated with them about the wisdom of sending their children into the Military of a country that is doing its utmost to destroy Christianity. I’ve debated with them about the density of Dispensationalism, trying to get them to take my standing wager that my great grandchildren will die of natural causes before Jesus comes back. I’ve debated with them about their happy clappy churches and their “God is my girl-friend” church hymns. I’ve debated with them their strange notion that their covenant seed shouldn’t be Baptized and the notion that the important decision is not God’s decision for their seed as proclaimed in the waters of Baptism, but rater their seeds decision for God when they reach the age of accountability. I’ve debated with them about the utter nonsense that we should care about Red Heifer’s being born in Israel, or that Israel has anything more to do with God’s eschatological intentions or timetable then any other nation. I’ve argue with them about the advisability of sending their children to “youth-groups.” I’ve argued with them about the propriety of holding Church in their “living rooms,” where the blind lead the blind. So, yes I have fought — I have fought about these things and a million more — but don’t you see that unless someone fights this culture is going to go the way of Rome. Listen, my evangelical friends — the problem isn’t with the pornographers, or the homosexuals, or the abortionists, the problem is with us and our twisted theology and thinking. Somebody has to fight to try and set these things straight.

Hey, I’m not any different, instinctively speaking, then the next guy. I’d love to go along to get along. I’d love to glide along with the cultural current. It sure would be a lot easier to float downstream then swim against the tide. But until God grants Reformation and Awakening, I will continue to be “the pastor who always ignores people with his reading and only interacts in order to fight.”

Won’t you join me?

There is always room for one more.

1865 & 2009

“Madam, do not train up your children in hostility to the government of the United States. Remember, we are all one country now. Dismiss from your mind all sectional feelings, and bring them up to be Americans.”

Robert E. Lee
Letter To Confederate Widow

Robert E. Lee had spent four years leading a Army in hostility to the government of the United States but upon defeat he realized that what the war had largely been about was the destruction of regional identities in favor of the creation of monolithic nation-state America that demanded that all of its citizens find their identities as Americans. Lee understood that loyalties that had once been regional and sectional were now to be loyalties that were national. Whereas a child in the 1840’s might be raised to think of himself as first and foremost Virginian, a child raised in the 1870’s must be raised to think of himself as first and foremost American. And so Lee, seeking to help his beloved South integrate into the new national reality, urged his people to accept and live in light of the consequences of the War of Northern aggression.

This might be simply interesting history if it were not the case that I believe we are living in similar times where there is a vast push in place to reorient people into how they think about sovereignty. Whereas in the 19th century the shift was accomplished where people moved from thinking about the sovereignty they lived under and were loyal to from regional or sectional considerations to National considerations, now in the 21st century I believe we are being pushed into thinking about sovereignty we live under and are loyal to from National considerations to international considerations. If the War of Northern aggression accomplished destroying regional sovereignty (and so regional citizen identity) thinking for National sovereignty thinking what is being pursued in our lifetime is the pursuit of destroying concepts of National sovereignty (and so national citizen identity) in favor of One world sovereignty where people think of themselves as citizens of the planet.

It is interesting that in both pursuits race has been used as a fulcrum on the part of those who desire to increasingly centralize power. Whereas in the 1860’s the issue was ostensibly slavery, the issue today is illegal immigration. The putative sin of slavery was used by those who desired a federalized nation state to give excuse for destroying the concept of regionalism and sectionalism. Similarly today the ill defined sin of racism is being used by those who desire America to become part of a centralized world state. As the elimination of slavery was used as the moral excuse to achieve great heights of immorality in the name of the State conquering all, so the need to eliminate immoral racism against illegal immigration becomes the excuse for erasing borders in pursuit of the building of a world wide Babel.

In both cases traditional understandings of family and ethnicity were and must be demolished in order for new understandings of family and ethnicity to take root. The reason for this is that any organizational unit (familial or ecclesiastical) that can possibly create and demand a loyalty that rivals loyalty to the ever expanding State is a loyalty that must be exterminated by those seeking to create a world state. Just as a nation cannot have a citizenry that thinks of itself primarily according to its regional roots so a state that is seeking to be one world cannot have a citizenry that thinks of itself primarily in terms of ethnic or familial or faith terms. Just as the North crushed Southern identity in order to build a new centralized nation state, so the one worlders will have to crush any who hold on to an American identity in order to build a new centralized World state. What is interesting to observe here is that both in the 1860’s and today it is people with a shared mindset and ethos who were and will be crushed.

The evidence of the push to one world government is everywhere. From the North American Union to the current financial crisis to the education that is pursued in the government schools, to the multicultural and politically correct agenda what is being attacked is not only American sovereignty but also the idea that America means something that should not be allowed to be put in a one world blender.

If you love your children you will first investigate what America means. You can hardly defend them from the ubiquitous one world clap trap if you don’t realize what America means. In order to find that out you will have to go behind the recreation in America in 1865 to original sources — Federalist papers, anti-federalists papers, speeches by Patrick Henry, Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, Fairfax resolves, original state constitutions, etc. — and read for yourself what our founders were doing when they made America.

Unfortunately, I can see another day coming when somebody writes a letter to a widow of somebody who died defending America saying,

“Madam, do not train up your children in hostility to the government of the New World order. Remember, we are all one country now. Dismiss from your mind all Nationalistic feelings, and bring them up to be Worlders.”

Wherein We Speak To Issues Of Church, Culture & Ethnicity

“Here’s what I’m having trouble with: either 1, genetics are as strong as you say, meaning that no matter the “environment”, a good deal of the traits of a person’s soul will shine through, or 2, genetics are as weak as you say, so much so that we need to be concerned about loosing it. A Christian worldview HAS TO transcend the genetics (I think this is clear in Scriptures), and that being the case, isn’t that the culture we should be striving to build? I am not contending that we build a democratic utopia – that has never worked and will never work, however, stating that “one can [NOT] get to Anglo-Protestant culture apart from a majority of Anglo-Protestant people” confuses me because we don’t FIRST want an AP culture. We must believe that the under-pinnings of the AP, because it has been successful pulls deeply from the the well of Christianity, which, no matter what the genetics is in the realm of possibility for an genetic club to achieve.”

Letter From DSE

Dave,

I once read someone define culture as faith poured over ethnicity. I think there is something to be said for that.

If we really believe that God loves diversity then we should expect there to be as many Christian cultures as there are ethnic people groups. While I am looking for all the world to be christian, I am not looking for all the world to have the same exact culture. I believe that Anglo-Protestant culture is distinct and unique to Anglo-Protestant people and that even if all the African continent genuinely converted and became “Reformed,” that wouldn’t mean that they would have a culture that was Anglo-protestant. (Nor should it mean that.)

In the book of Revelation we find the peoples streaming into the New Jerusalem by nation (ethnicity). There is a sense that even in the new Jerusalem distinctions remain. Now, they are certainly, one and all, Christian but they are not all the same culture or ethnicity as they file in.

I would say genetics are strong but not beyond experiencing extinction.

A Christian Worldview does transcend genetics in the sense that it has the power to alter the thinking habits of all people groups as well as individuals but it does not transcend genetics in the sense that genetics becomes irrelevant to who the people group are who have been converted. If the Mongolian nation (people) were to be given Repentance there would still be something about them that was Mongolian and their Christian faith would be expressed in a Mongolian way. Similarly if the Albanian nation (people) were to be given repentance there would still be something about them that remained Albanian and their Christian faith would be expressed in an Albanian fashion. Mongolians and Albanians would be brothers in Christ but they would not cease being Mongolians and Albanians and neither would their cultures become automatically the same. Now, there certainly would be touchstones between them but they also would remain distinct.

Now, as to the whole issue of not first wanting a Anglo-Protestant culture. That is true in and of itself but when we consider that an Anglo-Protestant culture was what it was because of Christ (always in need of ongoing sanctification to be sure) then the desire to have a Anglo-Protestant culture is the desire to have Christ. The Anglo-Protestant culture was a culture built by faith being poured over ethnicity.

Missiologists spend a great deal of time talking about contextualization and planting a truly indigenous Church. Well, that is what happened in the West. The Church was planted in the West and it became truly indigenous. That is what we should desire for every tribe, tongue and nation. A Christianity that is universal in the sense of making all men brothers because of the finished work of Christ as applied by the Spirit and yet distinct in the sense that God’s plan doesn’t mean we all become the same. In my estimation this satisfies the character of God who is both One and Many.

So Christianity will change a people regardless of their genetics but it will change them in keeping with their genetics. Welsh, Xhosa, Cantonese, and Indian (to take some arbitrary examples) will all be converted and become brothers and be members of the one universal Church of Christ but that does not mean they will all build the same culture or that the distinctions that make them who they are, ethnically, culturally or even ecclesiastically speaking, have to go away.

God loves diversity and Revelation seems to indicate that diversity remains in the New Heavens and Earth.

Thanks for helping me think through this and articulate it. I think there is something important in all of this because the prevailing tendency today is to put all of our differences in a blender and mix them all up. Multi-culturalism can’t exist without the support of multi-faithism and multi-racialism. The result of this project is not a honoring of the distinctives that God has created of race, ethnicity, and culture (and even gender) but the elimination of them and the creation of a unipolar world where all the colors bleed into one. Honestly, such a project strikes me as being familiar and similar to the project of Babel in Genesis 11. Further, such a project, I am convinced, has as its real goal the elimination of the only faith, and the resultant culture that refuses to “bleed into one.”

I suppose for the sake of those who will willfully try to twist what I have said I should try to articulate some other ideas. First, because I am Anglo-Protestant it is only natural that I prefer Anglo-Protestant culture, just as because I am a McAtee I prefer my own children over against someone elses children. This doesn’t mean I hate other peoples children, it merely means that I prioritize my own. Similarly, I don’t have to hate other people’s race, ethnicity, or culture in order to prefer my own. Second, when Reformation comes to the World the differing Christian cultures that will result will become various body parts of the one body. They will each have their strengths that will serve the whole, but the whole body will not become a hand or an eye, nor needs to. Differences can remain, be honored and should be sustained for the good of the body.

God gave us a picture of all this in the covenant people of the Old Testament. They were all God’s people and yet they all belonged to distinct tribes. In the New and Better covenant the one people of God are drawn from every tribe, tongue and nation but they remain according to “tribe, tongue, and nation.” The Scriptures teach me that the Gentiles come in. The Scripture does not teach me that the Gentiles have to lose their distinct culture in order to come in. (Indeed, Galatians suggests that Gentiles don’t have to become culturally Jewish in order to be Christian.)

I’ve spent some time in my life with dear Christian brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe. I love them dearly and have tried to show that love by supporting them financially in their time of need. Having said that, I wouldn’t want to become part of their culture in order to become Christian and I wouldn’t expect them to become part of my culture to become Christian. There is enough diversity in God that both cultures could be “Christian” having one Lord, one Faith, and one Baptism.

Well, I’ve gone on a little because such discussions are, for whatever reason, open to hostile reactions. Thanks for listening.

More On Samuel Huntington and Fouad Ajami

“Critics who branded (Huntingdon’s) book as a work of undisguised nativism missed an essential point. Huntington observed that his was an ‘argument for the importance of Anglo-Protestant culture, not for the importance of Anglo-Protestant people.’ The success of this great republic, he said, had hitherto depended on the willingness of generations of Americans to honor the creed of the founding settlers and to shed their old affinities. But that willingness was being battered by globalization and multiculturalism, and by new waves of immigrants with no deep attachments to America’s national identity. ‘The Stars and Stripes were at half-mast’ he wrote in ‘Who Are We?’, ‘and other flags flew higher on the flagpole of American identities.'”

Faoud Ajami
Wall Street Journal Article On Huntington

1.) It is difficult to see how one can get to Anglo-Protestant culture apart from a majority of Anglo-Protestant people. Huntington desired A native America maintaining its original meaning but manned by a people shaped and drawn by a plethora of alien cultures. This is the ridiculous notion of America as a “proposition nation.” Now certainly people from other cultures and nations can become American but only as America remains a majority of Anglo-Protestant people. When America becomes a majority of non Anglo-Protestant people America will no longer have a Anglo-protestant culture.

2.) The third sentence of that quote above is also questionable. During the war of Northern Aggression many immigrants did not honor the creed of the founding settlers and did not shed their old affinities but instead forced those old socialistic affinities on the South and the country through the war and the reconstruction that followed. An argument might be made that what happened in the war of Northern aggression was that America was battered by the use of those immigrants who had no deep attachment to America’s national identity.

This can be seen in how the Union cause attracted to itself numerous German revolutionaries who had fled to America after collapse of the European uprisings of 1848. Though they had left the Deutschland behind, these Germans had not abandoned a radicalism that was anything but American. As a result they were among the greatest haters of all things American. Professor Clyde Wilson reminds us of an encounter between one of these German radicals and Confederate General Richard Taylor. In his elegant memoir, “Destruction and Reconstruction,” General Taylor recalled the occasion in 1865 when the duty fell to him to surrender the last Confederate army east of the Mississippi River. At Union headquarters, a German, wearing the uniform of a Yankee general and speaking in heavily accented English, lectured General Taylor that now that the war was over, Southerners would be taught “the true American principles.” To which General Taylor — the son of Zachary Taylor — replied that he regretted that his grandfather, an officer in the Revolution, and his father, President of the United States, had not passed on to him these “true American principles.”

It is not politically correct or multi-culturally proper but the fact of the matter is that you can not sustain Anglo-Protestant culture apart from a clear majority of Anglo-Protestant people who have been trained to cherish what makes them uniquely them which includes their ethnicity, family ties, faith, language, traditions, customs, and land. If this is not pursued what will result is that those who are Anglo-Protestant will be ashamed of their own unique culture and exchange their unique culture for the mono-culture of multi-culturalism.