Christian Nationalism

Answering Kevin De Young’s Six Questions on Christian Nationalism

Kevin De Young wrote,

1.) Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?

2.) When and how does the nation act as a corporate moral person?

3.) What is the purpose of civil government?

4.) What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion?

5.) Was the First Amendment a mistake?

6.) What is the historical example of the political order you would like to see in America?

Kevin De Young

Six Questions for Christian Nationalists

1.) Unequivocally? No … and that because those terms are merely pejoratives that the left uses in order to shut down conversation. To the left everyone who disagrees with them are “racists, antisemites, and Nazis.” I am not going to be dictated in my beliefs by the insults of the far left.

2.) Every time it passes laws.

3.) To glorify the God of the Bible and no other God and to do so by acting as God’s enforcer of justice bringing justice by God’s standards.

4.) “The Magistrates office is not only to have regard unto and watch for the welfare of the civil state, but also that they protect the sacred ministry, and thus may remove and prevent all idolatry and false worship; that the kingdom of antichrist may be thus destroyed and the kingdom of Christ promoted. Magistrates must, therefore, countenance the preaching of the word of the gospel everywhere, that God may be honored and worshipped by every one, as He commands in His Word.” (Belgic Confession Article 36)

5.) No, because the 1st amendment only applied to the FEDS and presupposed that the states would be Christian states. The states could and often did have established denominations. The purpose of the 1st amendment was to keep the FEDS from naming any one denominational expression of Christianity from being the established denomination. However, it was understood that since the State were Christian the nation would be Christian.

Listen to Supreme Court Justice Joseph Storey here,

“Indeed, in a republic, there would seem to be a peculiar propriety in viewing the Christian religion as the great basis on which it must rest for its support and permanence, if it be, what it has ever been deemed by its truest friends to be, the religion of liberty.”

“[O]r it may establish the doctrines of a particular sect as exclusively the religion of the state, tolerating others to a limited extent, or excluding all not belonging to it from all public honors, trusts, emoluments, privileges, and immunities.”

Joseph Storey
Associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1812 to 1845

6.) 1789 America w/ the one change of inserting the Lordship of Jesus Christ into the Constitution.

Continuing to Expose De Young’s Soft Underbelly

“Religious nationalism, by contrast, usually calls for the state to protect the religious interests of one group, while marginalizing or suppressing other groups. “In so doing,” Marshall explains, “it treats the members of the dominant religion and/or language, ethnicity, and culture as the core citizens and others as second class.”

Kevin De Young
6 Questions for Christian Nationalists

We already have this. We have what De Young calls “religious nationalism.” We have the state protecting the religious interests of one group (the polytheists) while it is, at the same time, marginalizing or suppressing Biblical Christianity’s demand that we should be ruled by laws and principles rooted in God’s revelation. Indeed, as I (and many others) have said ad nauseam, it is not possible to not have a state that protects the religious interests of one group while it simultaneously marginalizes the religious interests of another group. The neutrality that De Young pines for is a myth.

Right now, White Christians are being treated as second class citizens. This is what all the statistics from the white replacement reality has been pointing. White people, and especially White Christians are being treated as second class citizens. The affirmative action legislation which favors non-whites, the defunding of American whites in order to pay for the current immigrant invasion, the whole WOKE ideology pushed in Government universities all testify to the fact that De Young can’t see, and that is that we currently have a religious nationalism (humanistic polytheism) that favors non-Christians and non-Whites.

De Young, by not recognizing this and identifying it and by favoring a kind of bogus governmental neutrality, is bringing that mindset into the Church and calling it “Christianity.”

He is doing irreparable harm to the body of Christ.

Examining Kevin De Young’s Anti-Christian Nationalism Speech VII

“I remember the late Voddie Baucham giving a talk and saying the only two choices we have are pagan nationalism and Christian Nationalism. I don’t think that is the most helpful way to frame the debate, but that gets a lot of traction with a lot of people.

‘OK, you’re not for Christian nationalism? I guess your for pagan globalism.’

Those are the two opposites. ‘Well, no, I’m not for (pagan globalism).’

Well, if you’re not for pagans running it, don’t you want Christians? And if you don’t want Christ on the throne, who do you want on the throne.”

Kevin De Young
“I Hate Christian Nationalism” Screed
TGC conference

This kind of thinking that De Young criticizes is the thinking of what is known as “The Reformed anti-thesis.” It finds its roots in Jesus saying,

He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad. — Matthew 12:30

And again,

He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad. — Matthew 6:24

The idea here is that there is no neutral ground. As applied to this subject either one is advocating for some version of Christian Nationalism or they are advocating for some version of Pagan nationalism. Kev says this isn’t the best way to frame the matter but Kev says that because he doesn’t want that kind of clear cut demarcation. Notice that De Young never gives an alternative to this framing. He merely says it is not the best way to frame it.

Let me say it bluntly. De Young is for pagan globalism or pagan nationalism, but he wants it in a way where it is kind of diluted by some remnants of a Christian garnish. De Young is looking for a hybrid wherein we can still call what we have “Christian,” but in point of fact is thorough going paganism. He wants a pagan social order that has a patina of a Christian gloss on it. Kev, in point of fact, does not want Christ on the throne.

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“We were talking throughout the break (and asking) what’s the bigger threat. You know, the radical right or the progressive left. The answer, of course, depends on the denomination you’re part of, and where you are. And I was, you know, I’m thinking in my head, ‘Stephen Wolfe,’ and, you know, all the guys online and the dangers of CN that I’ve written about. And these dear saints in my church are thinking people who want to drive Christianity out of the public square and don’t want prayer…”

Kevin De Young

Anti CN screed

TGC

This is an incredible admission from De Young and demonstrates how far on the left the man is. This man thinks that Stephen Wolfe’s rather tepid Christian Nationalism is a bigger threat to our current social order then those who want to drive Christianity out of the public square. Well, this shouldn’t be surprising since De Young is infected with R2K, Now, De Young isn’t as far down the drain as a R. Scott Clark or a Chrissy Gordon, but De Young definitely embraces some of the principles of R2K.

It is jaw-dropping that any member of the “conservative” clergy would even toy with the idea that the right is more of a danger to the West or, even the Church, than the left. One has to already be on the left to make that kind of statement.

Another thing to note here that we see with this statement is that De Young is seeking to navigate his position by staking out a hybrid position that he would say is neither “progressive left,” nor, “radical right,” but he is doing so as a man on the left. The only reason he sees the “right” as radical is because his Christianity has been shaped by Enlightenment left worldview. To De Young anyone who desires a “Christian Prince,” or a explicitly Christian government is on the radical right.

De Young’s Christianity has been so interpreted through a Enlightenment left lens that he can’t see that he occupies the the left and so anything that is genuinely conservative, in a historic sense, is to the man the progressive left.

This is where much of our conservative clergy is today in the US. They have reinterpreted Christianity through the grid of the Endarkenment left grid. This is a grid that forbids the God of the Bible from being alone God over the public square. These chaps really are invested in making sure the social order remains polytheistic. They understand that Christian Nationalism is a threat to our current polytheistic political order and they are screaming at the top of their lungs that anybody who disagrees with them is on the radical right and is an enemy of Christ.

Examining Kevin De Young’s Anti-Christian Nationalism Speech V

Kevin De Young’s recent lecture on Christian Nationalism really is an attack on not only Kinism but also theonomic postmillennialism. He attacks a “new postmillennialism.” That newer postillennialism understood that their was a connection between God’s people living in terms of God’s revealed law-Word (third use of the law) and the advance of the Kingdom of God. De Young bitterly complains about this “new postmillennialism,” saying that previously amillennialists like himself and postmillennialists really weren’t that different.

From there De Young insists that he is an optimistic amillennialist. But where is the optimism? It certainly is not found in the idea that the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the earth covers the sea. It certainly not in the conviction that Christ shall reign UNTIL He makes His enemies His footstool. It certainly is not wrapped up in the declaration that the “Kings must Kiss the son, lest they perish in the way.” Except in asserting optimism where is you optimism Kevin? Where is the evidence that you are optimistic besides your just saying, “I really am optimistic.”

What we see here from Kevin is what we see from so many Amillennialists today and that is a rabid militancy against any notion of working towards the reality that Christ, having dominion, shall have dominion. Kev is all “not yet,” in his eschatology (like all Amils) with no, “now,” in his eschatology and because of that the one group he wants to inveigh against in the Church are those who do have a “now” that goes with their eschatological, “not yet.”

Examining Kevin De Young’s Anti-Christian Nationalism Speech IV

To be an American, for example, means a lot of different things but many people would still say if you can affirm the declaration of Independence and you affirm the Constitution – if you’re not an American – at least that kind of what it is at its heart – what it means to be an American.”

Kevin De Young

Lecture Against CN

TGC

Hey Kev, which interpretation of the Constitution must we believe before we are an American? The Charles and Mary Beard version of the Constitution or Forrest McDonald or John Eidsmoe or R. J. Rushdoony’s version of the Constitution? Kevin says to be good Americans we must believe in the Constitution but there is no consensus on what the Constitution means. So, Kevin’s answer to what is an American is not really an answer.

Of course, De Young’s view, is demanded by his a-priori belief in multiculturalism. There is no way one can get to his notion of “what it means to be an American,” without having first embraced the idea that a Nation has ZERO common ancestor component.

Again, this is Gnosticism. Per De Young, belonging to a people has nothing to do with genetic inheritance. Rather, per De Young, belonging to a people is completely about what goes on between one’s ears. If you believe you’re in Kansas, then you’re in Kansas even if you and your family line go 1000 years back in Han China.

This is Gnostic insanity.

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“Others say nation is more like ethnicity and that’s when you get to nations perhaps shouldn’t intermarry. Nations as ethnicities have such different cultures. Alan Guelzo has made the case that it really has more in common with blood and soil nationalism from German romanticism than anything that grew up in American soil.”

Kevin De Young

Lecture Against Christian Nationalism

TGC

Why is it so difficult to understand that different peoples in combination with different beliefs create different cultures? De Young’s view really is born of the Enlightenment which believed and believes that human being are interchangeable cogs that can be mixed and matched in any way desirable since all humans are basically the same. Thus the accusation that Christian Nationalism is born of Germanic Romanticism can be returned on De Young’s head by saying that Kev’s Liberal vision of social order has more in common with Rousseau’s Enlightenment thought than anything that grew up in American soil.

Finally, in terms of De Young’s claim that America never had an interest in what he calls “blood and soil,” consider just one quote of sundry that could be adduced that contradicts De Young,

“With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.”

John Jay

Federalist Papers

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“Nation is amorphously defined (by the Christian Nationalists).”

Kevin De Young

The 1828 Webster’s dictionary didn’t have a problem,

“Nation as its etymology imports, originally denoted a family or race of men descended from a common progenitor, like tribe…”

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De Young argues that because Christian Nationalism in America (“there is not even a county that is Christian Nationalist”) has not yet happened therefore it cannot or perhaps, will not happen.

We would respond, “With God all things are possible.”

So, we see, with all the above, that Kevin De Young is now on record as being one who four-square supports propositional nationalism given his recent lecture where he salutes “Creedal Nationalism.” He even insists that the idea of “Heritage American” is bogus and malevolent. De Young’s thinking is that if you can own the basic American creed (whatever he thinks that is) then one can be considered “American.” As such, he completely denies the etymological origins of the word, “nation.” Given Kev’s statements, theoretically one could be living in Korea as from a long line of Koreans who have never left Korea and still be an American because somehow, while living in Korea our imaginary Korean began to believe in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

This is a position charted out by the progressives and puts De Young in the camp of the Gnostics.