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RL writes,

“Our loves flows out through the concentric circles of local church, family,  extended family, city, state, and nation. There is nothing wrong with prioritizing those who are closest to us in terms of geography, family relations, national citizenship, etc. Indeed, we have greater and more particularized obligations  to our own family (1 Timothy 5:8), to our local church body (Galatians 6:10; Hebrews 13:7, 17), and to the rulers of our particular locales (Romans 13:1ff). But the ultimate priority is Christ and his faithful bride. Kinists are right that the Christian’s identity is very much tied to creational and providential realities — your sex, your last name, your skin color, your cultural heritage, your language, your nationality are all integral and essential features of your identity. But what the kinists miss is that Christian identity is also transcendant, supernatural, heavenly and, yes, ecclesial (Phil. 3:20; Eph. 2:19; Col. 3:11; Rev. 5:9, 7:9).”

BLM responds,

All, I can say to this is that Lusk’s last sentence is horse hockey. I know as many Kinists as anyone out there and the idea that Kinists miss that there Christian identity is transcendent, supernatural, heavenly, and, yes, ecclesial, is just a case of Lusk (like most Alienists I have interacted with over the years) projecting his irrational animus upon Kinists. What the man says here is just not true.

RL writes,

(1.) Kinists also seem to be naive about the degree to which nationalism (just like globalism) can be bent to serve idolatrous ends that are diametrically opposed to the public and cosmic scope of the church’s mission. (2.) National solidarity is good, but nationalism can become an enemy if separated from other truths and loves. Globalism can set up a rival religion to the gospel — but the family, the nation, and even compromised churches can become rivals as well. (3.) While kinism might have appeal as a reaction against the excesses globalizing trends, we must beware of the ditch on the other side. (4.) The pathway through these landmines is a strong commitment to an ecclesiocentric order, as set forth in Augustine’s City of God and Book 4 of Calvin’s Institutes.

BLM responds,

(1.) This is an assertion with no proof. Something that Lusk has done throughout his piece. Kinism are well aware that there exists such a thing as non-Biblical Nationalism. I can’t tell RL how many times I have been in drop down drag out flame wars with non-Biblical Nationalists. We know that there is a difference between Nationalism that embraces Christ as King of the Nation and Nationalism that is just humanism dressed up in evening clothes. Rich can put his mind to ease on this score.

(2.) NSS

(3.) Yet another Captain Obvious statement

(4.) Rome loves them some ecclesiocentrism. Apparently, so does the CREC.

Elsewhere RL has written as a kind of addendum to his train wreck blog post

A bit more — I think most of the qualifications I have put into my essays have been ignored by the kinist crowd. I’m actually sympathetic with much of Buchanan’s agenda. I don’t object to “ America first” type policies to a point, since we have a greater obligation to those nearest to us. But his illustration of assimilation is not complete for the purposes of our discussion. I’d agree Englishmen could assimilate into Virginia more readily than Zulus. But in the kind of culture I want to build, Clarence Thomas can be assimilated far more readily than Joe Biden. Faith is ultimately more important than genetics. The antithesis cuts through every race.

BLM responds,

Lusk can prevail here because he wants to move the observations of Kinists from a general rule to a universal rule. Kinists say, “generally speaking different races will not mix well and so should not be pursued in terms of a social order.” Along comes Lusk and finds the exceptions to the rule and then seeks to universalize those exceptions. Of course there are some examples of people of other races who would fit into a WASP social order better than Christ hating White person. This is a no duh statement. However, it is not a defeater of Kinism because Kinism is dealing in terms of general truths. As a general rule different races cheek by jowl do not a harmonious social order make and that even if they were all Christian. This has been empirically demonstrated in the book “Bowling Alone.”

This is not to deny that mixing Christ haters with Christ lovers of the same race also does not make for harmonious social order. However, if we take the OT seriously it was a greater curse to be ruled by the foreigner and alien than to be ruled by a wicked King belonging to one’s own people.

RL writes,

Further, I do not reduce culture to worship, though worship is central. I do not agree with the line that “culture is religion externalized” and have written criticism of it in the past. Religion is always already embodied and does not await the formation of culture at a later stage in order to become external. Religion drives culture but there is no a-cultural religion.

BLM responds,

It is not true that worship is central to culture. It is the case that what is central to culture is theology and genetics as those genetics are shaped by our environment. Worship cannot be central to culture because worship presupposes theology. Doxology cannot get off the ground apart from theology. We can only worship that which we know something of and in the knowing is theology. Before man can be Homo Adorans man must first be Homo theologus.

Lusk apparently misunderstands the line; “Culture is religion externalized.” Imagine that. Nobody is arguing that religion isn’t always already embodied. The point is that religion is the animating agent that makes culture to be whatever a culture is. If anything it is culture that isn’t already embodied and is awaiting religion to be the afflatus so that it might become enlivened. If there is no a-cultural religion it is only because there is at the same time no such thing as no a-religion culture.

RL writes,

I think Bill and Jarred are giving kinists good advice: Do not make this about race. Stick to the biblical categories. And do not so emphasize kinship relations that other important truths get negated.

BLM responds,

The problem here Rich is that race is a biblical category;

Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil. — Jeremiah 13:23

And it is a Biblical category our fathers have long recognized;

“The vast majority of good thinking people prefer to associate with, and intermarry with, people of their respective race; this is part of the God-given inclination to honor and uphold the distinctiveness of separate races. But there are many false prophets of oneness, and many shallow stooges, who seek to force the amalgamation of the races.” ~

Dr. John E. Richards
One of the Founding Fathers of the PCA

We thank Lusk for the reminder of all the great truths present in Holy Writ that we need to keep in mind. It is always good to be reminded not to become lopsided. Now if only Lusk would follow his own advice.

By way of introduction to this installment I think, from reading Lusk, that Lusk thinks that Kinists absolutize race/ethnicity/kin. I get that from his first paragraph of his essay when he mentions that Kinists take the love of people and place to an unwarranted, unbiblical, even idolatrous extreme. With this language Lusk demonstrates that he thinks that Kinists are involved in what we might tag as Familialolatry or Kinolatry. This is kind of darkly humorous when one considers that many Kinists have had to sunder their relationships with family members because their family members like Lusk are Alienists.  It is of course just ridiculous that any Kinist would absolutize their family over Christ.

Having said that though we should add that if it is possible to make an idol out of family (and it is) it is just as possible to make an idol out of the Church and so practice Churcholatry. This is where I see Lusk is tending with his ecclesiocentrism. I fear that Lusk is taking his love of the Church to an unwarranted, unbiblical, even idolatrous extreme.

Man’s heart is an idol factory and it can make an idol out of family, Church, spouse, children, and anything else you can imagine. Our love is to be focused on the Triune God and no love is to be lifted up over love to the One only God. Kinists understand that and most certainly do no seek to wrongly love their family. Lusk would be wise to turn down his rhetoric if he desires fruitful conversations.

RL writes,

“In an age that hates father, and therefore fatherland, many will find kinism attractive. In the globalizing, multicultural hellscape our so-called elites are creating for us, kinism might seem like a port in the storm — a way to bring order and stability back to a world that is falling apart. But kinism will not save Western civilization or build a better alternative. Only Jesus can do that. And if he does so, it will through the ministry of his church, not through a recovery of racial homogeneity.”

BLM responds,

Yes, Kinism will save Western Civilization because all Kinism is, is a return to Biblical Christianity. Kinism is the faith of out fathers. This truth Dow and Achord demonstrated exhaustively in their Anthology, “Who is My Neighbor;  An Anthology In Natural Relations.”

Just take a moment to listen to just some of the voices of the Fathers throughout Church History.

“Nationalism, within proper limits, has the divine sanction; an imperialism that would, in the interest of one people, obliterate all lines of distinction is everywhere condemned as contrary to the divine will. Later prophecy raises its voice against the attempt at world-power, and that not only, as is sometimes assumed, because it threatens Israel, but for the far more principal reason, that the whole idea is pagan and immoral.

Now it is through maintaining the national diversities, as these express themselves in the difference of language, and are in turn upheld by this difference, that God prevents realization of the attempted scheme… [In this] was a positive intent that concerned the natural life of humanity. Under the providence of God each race or nation has a positive purpose to serve, fulfillment of which depends on relative seclusion from others.”

-Geerhardus Vos,
Biblical Theology

” [The] differences between the Caucasian, Mongolian, and Negro races, which is known to have been as distinctly marked two or three thousand years before Christ as it is now. . . . [T]hese varieties of race are not the effect of the blind operation of physical causes, but by those cause as intelligently guided by God for the accomplishment of some wise purpose. . . . God fashions the different races of men in their peculiarities to suit them to the regions which they inhabit.”

Charles Hodge (1797-1878)
Systematic Theology, Volume 2, Chapter 1, Section 3 (1872–73)

“All are not created on equal terms … This God has testified, not only in the case of single individuals; He has also given a specimen of it in the whole posterity of Abraham, to make it plain that the future condition of each nation was entirely at His disposal.”

(Calvin, Institutes …,bk.iii, pp.206-205 Beveridge translation)

“We now reply to the question, Can we know the sense of the prophetic law of Noah with absolute certainty ? We answer most unequivocally, Yes. How, then, is it to be known ? By the perfect conformity of the fulfilment of the law to its legitimate interpretation. Has such fulfilment occurred? Most unquestionably. “Where is it seen ? In all quarters of the globe since the flood, but most sublimely in America. It is obvious in a universal and permanent trinity of races ; in their political inequality of condition; in the Christianization of all the Japhetic nations, and of no others ; in the occupation of the Shemitic wilderness of America by Japheth.”

Rev. Samuel Davies,
Dominion or, the Unity and Trinity of the Human Race, p.18

“The Church Catholic is one in Christ, but it is not necessarily one visible, all-absorbing organization upon the earth. There is no schism where there is no breach of charity. Churches may be perfectly at one in every principle of faith and order, and yet geographically distinct, and mutually independent. As the unity of the human race is not disturbed by its division into countries and nations, so the unity of the spiritual seed of Christ is neither broken nor impaired by separation and division into various Church constitutions. Accordingly, in the Protestant countries, Church organizations have followed national lines.”

-Rev. Thornwell, address to the PCCSA GA 1861

“The Javanese are a different race than us; they live in a different region; they stand on a wholly different level of development; they are created differently in their inner life; they have a wholly different past behind them; and they have grown up in wholly different ideas. To expect of them that they should find the fitting expression of their faith in our Confession and in our Catechism is therefore absurd.

Now this is not something special for the Javanese, but stems from a general rule. The men are not all alike among whom the Church occurs. They differ according to origin, race, country, region, history, construction, mood and soul, and they do not always remain the same, but undergo various stages of development. Now the Gospel will not objectively remain outside their reach, but subjectively be appropriated by them, and the fruit thereof will come to confession and expression, the result may not be the same for all nations and times. The objective truth remains the same, but the matter in appropriation, application and confession must be different, as the color of the light varies according to the glass in which it is collected. He who has traveled and came into contact with Christians in different parts of the world of distinct races, countries and traditions cannot be blind for the sober fact of this reality. It is evident to him. He observes it everywhere.”……

Abraham Kuyper:
Common Grace (1902–1905)

These five quotes are just a Whitman’s sampler of scores and scores of quotes from the Fathers we could have chosen from. The idea of Kinism is latent in all these quotes and demonstrates that Kinism is just historic Christianity returning to a later generation. Lusk desires to continue with the aberration of the last 60 years or so, but the the voice of the church through the centuries has been Kinsim.

Next, we note that Lusk is involved in yet another false dichotomy when he says that Kinsim  will not save Western civilization or build a better alternative. Only Jesus can do that. This, of course is assuming that Kinism and Jesus are in contradiction one with another. A point that we have repeatedly shown throughout this series of blog posts is in no way true. Jesus and Kinism imply one another. There is no Kinism without Jesus and there is no Jesus without Kinism. Once again, Lusk is just wrong in his baseless assertion.

Finally, we note that contra Lusk, if Jesus saves Western Civilization it will be through the ministry of His church that has embraced the biblical tenets of Kinism. A racial heterogeneous Luskian church infected with the globo-homo multicult agenda which celebrates all colors bleeding into one will never be able to have a saving word for a world which has likewise fallen to the same globo-homo multicult agenda. Saruman will never defeat Sauron. Lusk’s syncretization of CRT with Christianity can never win out.