In the early 1950’s a young man named William F. Buckley was tapped by the CIA to serve as the single head of the conservative movement that was rising then in America. The problem the CIA hoped to correct by tapping Buckley as their guy is that the conservative movement was getting out of control because it was such a broad and variegated movement. By anointing Buckley as the head of the movement that gave the CIA the ability to streamline the conservative movement into one single expression and thus could be monitored, controlled, and manipulated more easily. In his position as unofficial head of the conservative movement Buckley became the guy who was the gatekeeper of conservatism. Without Buckley’s legitimizing nod any hopeful movement conservative was out in the wasteland. By not granting that nod Buckley read Robert Welch and the Birchers out of the conservative movement early on. In later years Buckley threw Sam Francis, Peter Brimelow, and Joe Sobran out of the conservative movement. Murray N. Rothbard’s “The Betrayal of the American Right,” exposes all this.

The reason I go into all this history is to suggest that it may well be being repeated. Here we are in a time where Christian Nationalism is on the rise and suddenly we find the left wing Media anointing who the “Leader” is going to be by hotfooting it out to Moscow Idaho to do a mild hit piece on Doug Wilson. They hit Doug just hard enough for everyone to think that Doug must now be the leader of this Christian Nationalism movement that they kind of like. Next, we learn the BBC is coming out to do another mild hit piece on Doug.

The irony in all this is that Doug has said how he was a National Review junkie for years and years. Doug loved him some William F. Buckley. Now Doug has become Wm. F. Buckley. Pity poor Doug.

Now, any other time Conservatives know that they are not going to get a fair shake from the National and International media and so they decline the opportunity to be flayed alive. Conservatives know that in interviews their words will be spliced and segments will be edited by the Lugenpresse. But does that stop Doug from opening his doors to the Lugenpresse? Not Doug … nope, Doug steps right up to the microphone and speaks. And in so doing what has happened is that Doug becomes the leader of the “Christian Nationalism” movement and this despite the fact that all Doug is offering is warmed over classical Liberalism and not Christian Nationalism at all. Doug now has what Buckley had long ago and that is the ability to read who is and who is not part of a movement that the media says is such a danger. The man steps right up to the microphone in his latest column and thanks the media for making him the titular head of the Christian Nationalist movement;

“Christian nationalism is on the rise!”, they (the Lugenpresse) shout, like Paul Revere riding off into the night, and then their Exhibit A is the work God has assigned to us in our little town. Okay, so now we are part of the face of Christian nationalism. Now this is a term I would not have picked out at a store, but it is a term (for reasons explained elsewhere) I am willing to work with). Now the fly in their ointment is this. I have been publicly arguing against various forms of anti-Semitism for years now, and I have been brawling with white supremacists and kinists for decades. So as part of my acceptance speech, I am now in a position begin this way. “Thank you, thank you. This is truly a great honor. I want to begin by saying that Christian nationalism stands for the need for mankind to base all of our laws on the firm foundation of coming to God the Father through the worship of a Jew. And because of this we have good news for all mankind, for the Jew first, and then also for the Greek (Rom. 1:16 ; 2:9-10).

The hilarious thing is that Doug has already said that Kinists are not allowed in his Christian Nationalism and so Doug is already acting like Buckley in assigning who does and does not get to be part of his movement. And as I said earlier Doug is no more Christian Nationalist with his classical liberal lean then Lenin was a Russian Royalist.

In short, those of us who are Christian Nationalist are being betrayed by the Lugenpresse being allowed to choose for us who is the head of the movement we have been serving as winter soldiers now for years. Wilson’s is as much of a dead end for Christian Nationalism as Buckley now in retrospect is seen as having been a dead end for conservatism.

What are the alternatives?

Well, I think we need to start looking more and more towards Dr. Adi Schlebush’s “Pactum Institute,” as providing the only real resistance left. Publishers like Zach Garris and Ruben Alvarado need our support if we are going to raise a protest to the dishwater vision of Doug Wilson’s Christian Nationalism ruining us all.

At the recent “County before Country” conference held in our favorite kinist hater’s (Michael Foster) church I had several friends in attendance who later reported back to me their impressions. What I found most interesting about their impressions is that they were thoroughly under-impressed with the speakers. I think the common input was “Meh.” However, they did enjoy the conference and were glad they went because of the networking that they did as combined with the ability to be around other men who shared their some world and life view as well as Christian confession.

One other motif I wanted to touch on in defense of myself was the common report from more than one chap that I knew who was in attendance. It seems that my name came up in more than one conversation. Christian Nationalism is catching on and being a public Kinist and a Reformed minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ my standing is a bit unique. Most Reformed clergy are running full tilt away from any notion of Christian ethno-Nationalism, while I, following the words and sentiments of the Reformed Fathers, am pleading with Reformed believers everywhere to embrace this basic building block of Reformed Christianity. Anyway, it seems that a consensus is forming that little old shy and retiring me is “over the top with his rhetoric.”

Now normally, this might cause me to reflect on whether this may be true or not but I know that the problem here is not my over the top rhetoric but the inability of people to understand how dangerous of a situation we are presently in. We are in a situation where all that is left to people like me is the strength of my rhetoric as combined with the cogency of my arguments.

People seem to forget that this charge of being “over the top with his rhetoric” is not new to me. They charged the Reformers with the same sin;

Neither the vulgarity nor the violence nor the charges of satanic motivation nor the sarcastic mocking is unique to [Luther’s later Jewish] treatises. If anything, Luther’s 1541 Against Hanswurst and his 1545 Against the Papacy at Rome, Founded by the Devil contain more scatology, more sallies against the devil, more heavy sarcasm, and more violence of language and recommendations. The polemics of the older Luther against the Turks and Protestant opponents are only slightly more restrained. Against each of these opponents- Catholics, Turks, other Protestants and Jews- he occasionally passed on libelous tales and gave credence to improbable charges. In all these respects Luther treated the Jews no differently than he treated his other opponents.

Mark U Edwards
Luther’s Last Battles (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 140.

If the language of Calvin’s Institutes seems harsh in places we should remember that this was the mark … of theological controversy in that age. The times in which Calvin lived were polemic. The Protestants were engaged in a life and death struggle with Rome and the provocations to impatience were numerous and grievous. Calvin, however, was surpassed by Luther in the use of harsh language as will readily be seen by an examination of the latter’s work, The Bondage of the Will which was a polemic written against the free-will ideas of Erasmus. And furthermore, none of the Protestant writings of the period were so harsh and abusive as were the Roman Catholic decrees of excommunication, anathemas, etc., which were directed against the Protestants.

Loraine Boettner
Calvinism in History: John Calvin

People may not want to believe this but the times we are living in, in terms of the safety and health of the visible Church, are even more dangerous than they were in the 16th century at the dawn of the Reformation.  These times call for the sharpest rhetoric one can find in their quiver. My detractors will be interested in knowing that I’ve, more than once, begged forgiveness during my times of confessing sin before the throne of God for being too lackluster and retiring in conversations.

We are currently sitting on the precipice of a long continuance of the Church’s second Babylonian captivity. This is not a time for a kind of speech that will fail to communicate the danger(s) we are under currently. I will not apologize for my rhetoric and I will not moderate my sense of urgency that my rhetoric is seeking to communicate.

Buckle up normies and sophisticates alike. This is a ride that is going to require a re-engineering of your sensitive sensibilities.

It is not only in the States where the Reformed Church is absolutely cucked by errant Church and State thinking. Here Dr. Adi Schlebusch reports that South Africa has the same problem of being Anabaptistized on the issue of Church and State.

24 August 2022

All three lectures held during this week’s conference on church and state held by the Reformed Church East-Moot was a major disappointment. The first speaker, Erik van Alten from the Free Reformed Church Pretoria went on about how damaging the narrow relationship between church and state as found in the symbiotic practice of Eastern Orthodoxy is. He criticizes the “symphonic” relationship between church and state, especially in Russia, as a step away from the ideal of “a secular constitution, which in principle leaves room for any religion.” Van Alten then also most peculiarly succeeds to deconstruct and re-interpret article 36 of the Belgic Confession in such a way that he would have it imply that civil government should allow complete freedom of religious practice. For him, the idea of restricting any false religious practices “cannot be found in Scripture.” One can only wonder what Bible Van Alten reads, or rather, doesn’t read, in order to come to this conclusion.

Given the zealotic mood of Van Alten’s lecture, its most predictable part by far was the apartheid-cliché with which he concluded. He noted that while Eastern Orthodox countries “might seem far away to us … I wonder if this is truly that far away.” And so right there he concludes his lecture by showing off his woke-credentials in getting in a few more kicks to the stomach of the dead horse that is apartheid. Moreover, anyone who, in 2022 still refers to the ANC-regime as “this new dispensation” lives a life separated from reality.

Dr Victor d’Assonville junior remarkably managed to spend quite a large chunk of his lecture lamenting how little time he has to discuss his subject “Calvin on Church and Civil Government.” Given his experience as public speaker, this can only be attributed to his desire to say as little as possible on a reformer to whom he wants to appeal for legitimacy, but without having to go into any details about the practical implications of his ideas. D’Assonville does mention that Calvin believed that government has the duty to uphold the ten commandments, but only mentions this as a brief comment, immediately adding that he has received a lot of criticism for this fact from those that d’Assonville wrongly describes as “Reformed theologians.” Towards the end of his lecture he even goes as far as to ascribe the Enlightenment heresy of egalitarianism to Calvin as well as its accompanying idea of social justice—something which Christian philosophers have repeatedly shown to be completely at odds with Biblical justice. None of his claims are backed up by primary sources.

As expected, dr Gerhard Meijer from the Reformed Church East-Moot emphasized his denomination’s revision of article 36 of the Belgic Confession so that fighting idolatry would not be understood as the duty of civil government, but only the result of its protection of the church. What he fails to mention is of course the fact that there are many denominations in which this article has not been revised.

The most shocking part of the entire conference, however, was when Meijer had to answer a question relating to the forced closure of church services during the lockdown. He answered:

“If the authorities stopped services. Well, I don’t know if that is the question. The authorities did say that there is a serious disease and that we should be careful. But I don’t know if government ever said that people are not allowed to hold services. This isn’t written in any law … I don’t think one can jump from health regulations to conclude that this is a ban on church services.”

This is nothing short of a blatant, outright lie. If Meijer’s elders are worth their salt, they should immediately start the process of disciplining him. During the French Revolution Christians were murdered in the name of public safety. During the Russian Revolution Christians were murdered in the name of equality and justice. It is utterly absurd for Meijer to claim that policies are not tyrannical on the basis of the narrative justification of tyranny on the part of the tyrannical government itself.

At the end of the conference all three speakers re-iterated that they support the idea of complete religious freedom—something that is at odds with both Scripture and the Reformed Confessions. While the renewed interest in this topic is encouraging, it remains immensely disappointing that Reformed scholars such as Van Alten, d’Assonville and Meijer clearly identifies with a humanist approach to the relationship between church and state.

The Pactum Institute strongly condemns this humanist perspective as at odds with Christian orthodoxy and as a view which inevitably leads to the divination of the state. RJ Rushdoony rightly describes the heresy promoted during this conference as follows:

The Enlightenment shifted the center of interest from God to man, and from the Church to the State … Man was now the measure of all things, and it was man’s will that needed to be done … Enlightenment humanism began with the ‘moral baggage’ of its context, Christendom, but, in practice, it steadily stripped off all morality in favor of self-enjoyment. At the same time, being at war with God, profanation became a prized pleasure … One of the quiet goals of the Enlightenment was the disestablishment of Churches and of Christianity… A first step in this process of disestablishment was to reduce Christianity to an option for man, a matter of choice, not of necessity. The realm of necessity was held to be the civil government. Freedom came to mean deliverance from the Church to the State, from supernatural mandates and laws to ‘natural’ and statist laws. The Reformation had said plainly that Biblical faith requires belief in God’s predestination, in God’s sovereign choice… This was reversed by the Enlightenment, and then by Arminianism. Sovereign choice was transferred to man. Man, it was held, has the option to choose God or reject Him, to declare God to be elect or non-elect.^[1]

[1] Rousas John Rushdoony, To Be as God: A Study of Modern Thought since the Marquis de Sade (Vallecito, CA: Ross House, 2003), 9-10, 17.