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Darrell Dow Unravels Lusk’s Lunacy on Kinism — Part III

I don’t believe in reinventing the wheel when it comes to dismantling nonsense. As such in this post I yield to my fellow Michigander and one of my best friends Darrell Dow as Dow just demolishes Rev. Rich Lusk’s claim that Colonial America was not Kinist in its conviction.

Before turning it over to Darrell allow me to apologize if some find some of my responses jagged. You have to understand dear reader I have been going at this hammer and tong for over a decade now. It gets a bit frustrating when you have to answer the same questions and accusations over and over again. Rev. Lusk now shows up trotting out the same old tired accusations and arguments as if now that someone of his stature is making them somehow those arguments which have been repeatedly dismissed by Kinists over the years somehow gain more traction because they have fallen from his fingertips. It is well past aggravating. We Kinists keep returning the same service of the Alienists and all they can do is keep serving the same serve that was smashed returned for game, set, and match. Now combine this with the insults that come in our direction of being racist, or of identifying more with our people group then with Christ, or of being heretics and it just gets well past old — especially when we are the orthodox ones, bowing to the weight of Scripture and Church history.

Anyway, having said that we turn it over to Dow’s spanking of Lusk. Seriously, once Dow is done here with Lusk it becomes instantly apparent that Lusk should go sit down, shut up, and never write another work on this subject as long as he lives. This response reveals that Lusk is no better a Historian than he is a theologian.

Rev. Lusk wrote,

The question has been asked: Did the original American colonists have a kinist vision of people and place? I think the answer is quite obviously, no, they did not. The Europeans who came to America to settle the “new world” came precisely because they put faith ahead of their love for people and place. Leaving their native land, including many family members, behind in order to found a new civilization, they put their faith and their commitment to a purified church above everything else. The Europeans who settled on this continent were ecclesiocentrists rather than kinists, and if they had been kinists, they would have never left Europe. No matter how important people and place were in their minds, they put their commitment to the church ahead of them, which is why they were willing to leave people and place behind (much as biblical saints like Abraham and Ruth did centuries before).

Darrell Dow Responds,

Rich Lusk has written an article on race and nationalism. It should come as no surprise but there are numerous half-truths and logical fallacies, and good bit of misrepresentation. Untangling the various threads will take some work, but I want to begin by unpacking just one comment and comparing it with the historical record.

Lusk is effectively asking in the quote above if America’s Founders on the whole could be described as ethno-nationalists rather than propositionalists. In short, was citizenship tied to blood? Lusk claims that the answer is obvious, though he does not provide a single citation from any American statesman or early documents to make his case. He simply asserts that is true and expects his readers to believe it to be so. But is it? I’ll provide a sampler to help evaluate the claim. Note that I could have pulled MANY more quotes (see the link in the first comment). I begin with Revolution Era figures and also provide a number of citations from later figures. Again, this could go on almost indefinitely.

Let us begin with legislation offered in the state of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson which was designed to define citizenship in the commonwealth.

“Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any alien, BEING A FREE WHTE PERSON, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof, on application to any common law court of record, in any one of the states wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such court, that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law, to support the constitution of the United States, which oath or affirmation such court shall administer; and the clerk of such court shall record such application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a citizen of the United States. And the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty-one years at the time of such naturalization,”

In a letter, Jefferson explains his concern with having too many German immigrants and the need to disperse them (Benjamin Franklin held this same view.)

“Although as to other foreigners it is thought better to discourage their settling together in large masses, wherein, as in our German settlements, they preserve for a long time their own languages, habits, and principles of government, and that they should distribute themselves sparsely among the natives for quicker amalgamation, yet English emigrants are without this inconvenience.” – Letter to George Fowler, Sept. 12, 1817

Alexander Hamilton who disagreed with Jefferson on many important questions in the life of the early republic, agreed with him on the debilitating consequences of immigration.

“The opinion advanced in the Notes on Virginia is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived, or if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism? There may as to particular individuals, and at particular times, be occasional exceptions to these remarks, yet such is the general rule. The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”

Benjamin Franklin

“[T]he Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably [sic] very small… . I could wish their Numbers were increased…. But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.” – Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc. “Which leads me to add one remark: That the number of purely white people in the world is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes are generally of what we call a swarthy complexion ; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English make the principal body of white people on the face of the earth. I could wish their numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, scouring our planet, by clearing America of woods, and so making this side of our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the sight of superior beings, darken its people? why increase the sons of Africa, by planting them in America, where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks and tawneys, of increasing the lovely white and red? But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my Country, for such kind of partiality is natural to Mankind.”

– Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.

Here is the language of the Naturalization Act of 1790, which the first Congress passed.

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States. And the children of such person so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty one years at the time of such naturalization, shall also be considered as citizens of the United States. And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States .”

James Madison endorsed colonization and indeed later ran the colonization society.

“To be consistent with existing and probably unalterable prejudices in the U.S. freed blacks ought to be permanently removed beyond the region occupied by or allotted to a White population.”

Abraham Lincoln (who also supported colonization).

“I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold oﬃce, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical diﬀerence between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”

Stephen Douglas.

For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any form. I believe that this government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the beneﬁt of white men and their posterity forever, and I am in favor of conﬁning the citizenship to white men—men of European birth and European descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes and Indians, and other inferior races.”

Calvin Coolidge.

“There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend…. Quality of mind and body suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation as immigration law.”

McAtee Unravels Lusk’s Lunacy on Kinism — Part II

In Rev. Rich Lusk (RL) we learn that some people are more clever than they are intelligent.

RL writes,

There is certainly a connection between love of father (= patriarchy) and love of fatherland (= patritiotism). Kinists have that right. But the central driving force in history is the church, not any particular kin group.

BLM responds,

Of course Kinists have right the connection between patriarchy and patriotism. Kinists have an annoying habit of being right.

Once again, Lusk embraces the Christian faith as an abstraction, as if it can exist apart from and independent of particular ethnic groups/races. It is true that conceptually Christianity is a set of doctrines and confessional commitments. However, it is also true that the Christian faith in order to have hands and feet has to be incarnated into people groups. The Church that RL appeals to is a Church as it exists in a time and place as inhabited by a particular people. As such RL once again gives us a false dichotomy (do they sell false dichotomies in the CREC by the ton?) when he says that the central driving force in history is the church, not any particular kin group. The central driving force in world history for the last 1000 years (at least) has been the Church has it has been, by God’s grace alone, inhabited to the White European Christian. Now, to say this anymore is not considered in good taste and it definitely is now thought to be a hate fact but, as they say, it is what it is. It is the White European Christian Church who brought the Christian faith to pagandom. It is the White European Christian Church who claimed pagan lands for Christ. It is the White European Christian Church who gave us Christian Western civilization. It is the White European Christian Church that gave us the printing press, gave us the age of exploration, gave us the Reformation, gave us these United States as a Reformed nation, gave us the possibility of science in the best sense of that word, gave us Martel, Sobieski, Calvin, Knox, Cromwell, Viret, Beza, Rutherford, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, Hus, Luther, Wycliffe, Warfield, the Hodges, Machen, Vos, Turretin, Lavellette, Whitfield, Lloyd-Jones, Clark, Van Til, Bahnsen, Sproul, Singer, Kuyper, Chalmers, Dabney, Thornwell, Girardeau, Palmer, Van Prinesterer, Bavinck, These are all men of the Church who are also at the same time men who were White European Christians. So, we see again that all because the central driving force of history is the Church that does not mean that no particular kin group, completely as in God’s providence, hasn’t also been a central driving force in history. Like so many of the Chieftains in the CREC Rev. Lusk specializes in false dichotomies.

RL writes,

Or to put it another way, water is thicker than blood. Spiritual kinship will always trump genetic kinship.

BLM responds,

Another false dichotomy. It is true that the water of Baptism is thick but keep in mind that God hath also said;

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children,

And again,

The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

Of course blood alone does not save just as water alone does not save. However the thick water of Baptism is, in God’s grace and providence, runs in blood generations. Is water therefore really thicker than blood?

RL writes,

The Christian’s primary culture will always be the culture of the kingdom of God. “My people” are first and foremost those who are in God’s family, those who are in the covenant of grace, those with whom I will spend all eternity. This does not make personal identity an abstraction and it does not destroy localized connections. But it does situate my personal identity as a white, male American (or whatever) within the larger story of the kingdom of God, which is destined to overtake and transform all the kingdoms of the world (Rev. 11:15).

BLM responds,

That is not what St. Paul says in Romans 9:3. Paul can still speak of the unconverted Hebrew people as “His Kin” whom he loves with an especial passion. As such we have to qualify carefully on this matter of “My People.” Is the Iranian Christian in Christ that I don’t know really more “my people” than my Father who is a pagan? In some sense “yes,” and in some sense “no.” Careful distinctions have to be made here Rich.

And despite Rev. Lusk’s protestations to the contrary his argumentation does make personal identity a Gnostic abstraction and it does destroy localized connections. Lusk wants to have it both ways. He wants to hint that he is a little bit kinist while being whole hog Alienist. Sorry Rich … it is not possible to be a little bit Country and a little bit Rock -n- Roll.

In the last sentence Lusk tips his hand in how he views the Kingdom of God. Lusk views the Kingdom of God like we would expect an Alienist to view the Kingdom of God. He views it as an amalgamated multicult Kingdom where all the peoples are jammed together without kin or national distinction. This is not what we find in Revelation 21 where

24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.

Notice it is the nations as nations that are walking by its light and it is the Kings are Kings over their respective nations who will bring the splendor of their distinct nations into the new Jerusalem. Further on in Revelation we learn that the “leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations.” Once again it is nations as nations … peoples as peoples who are considered as gathered in the New Jerusalem. Scripture does not teach that we will enter into a multicult heaven but rather we will enter into the New Jerusalem as part of our Christian National and Church community. The Church we can conclude therefore is comprised as a confederation of nations having a one and many unity. The Oneness as found in our joint confession of the great and magnificent Lord Jesus Christ. The diversity found in the retaining of our assigned distinctive creational reality. We will no more lose our ethnicity in the Kingdom of God then we will lose our gender.

The Kingdom of God will indeed transform the Kingdoms of this world but He will transform them from pagan to Christian. He will not be transforming them by way of deleting from them their ethnic identity.

This quote of Dr. Vos points in the direction I have laid out above;

Romans 11:17, 19, with its “branches broken off” metaphor has frequently been viewed as proof of the relativity and changeability of election, and it is pointed out that at the end of vs. 23, the Gentile Christians are threatened with being cut off in case they do not continue in the kindness of God. But wrongly. Already this image of engrafting should have restrained such an explanation. This image is nowhere and never used of the implanting of an individual Christian, into the mystical body of Christ by regeneration. Rather, it signifies the reception of a racial line or national line into the dispensation of the covenant or their exclusion from it. This reception of course occurs by faith in the preached word, and to that extent, with this engrafting of a race or a nation, there is also connected the implanting of individuals into the body of Christ. The cutting off, of course, occurs by unbelief; not, however, by the unbelief of person who first believed, but solely by the remaining in unbelief of those who, by virtue of their belonging to the racial line, should have believed and were reckoned as believers. So, a rejection ( = multiple rejections) of an elect race is possible, without it being connected to a reprobation of elect believers. Certainly, however, the rejection of a race or nation involves at the same time the personal reprobation of a sequence of people. Nearly all the Israelites who are born and die between the rejection of Israel as a nation and the reception of Israel at the end times appear to belong to those reprobated. And the thread of Romans 11:22 (of being broken off) is not directed to the Gentile Christians as individual believers but to them considered racially.”

Geerhardus Vos
Dogmatic Theology Vol. 1 — 118

Also, listen to Calvin Seminary Professor Martin Wyngaarden from the 1960’s on Isaiah 19 thus suggesting that it is you Rev. Lusk who is in error;

“Now the predicates of the covenant are applied in Isa. 19 to the Gentiles of the future, — “Egypt my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance,” Egypt, the people of “Jehovah of hosts,” (Isa. 19:25) is therefore also expected to live up to the covenant obligations, implied for Jehovah’s people. And Assyria comes under similar obligations and privileges. These nations are representative of the great Gentile world, to which the covenant privileges will therefore be extended.”

Martin J. Wyngaarden, The Future of the Kingdom in Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of the Scope of “Spiritualization” in Scripture (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011), p. 94.

“More than a dozen excellent commentaries could be mentioned that all interpret Israel as thus inclusive of Jew and Gentile, in this verse, — the Gentile adherents thus being merged with the covenant people of Israel, THOUGH EACH REMAINS NATIONALLY DISTINCT.”

“For, though Israel is frequently called Jehovah’s People, the work of his hands, his inheritance, yet these three epithets severally are applied not only to Israel, but also to Assyria and to Egypt: “Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance.” 19:25.

Thus the highest description of Jehovah’s covenant people is applied to Egypt, — “my people,” — showing that the Gentiles will share the covenant blessings, not less than Israel. YET the several nationalities are here kept distinct, even when Gentiles share, in the covenant blessing, on a level of equality with Israel. Egypt, Assyria and Israel are not nationally merged. And the same principles, that nationalities are not obliterated, by membership in the covenant, applies, of course, also in the New Testament dispensation.”

Wyngaarden, pp. 101-102.

McAtee Unravels Lusk’s Lunacy on Kinism — Part I

I’ve been away for awhile with various matters drawing me away from Iron Ink. However, Rev. Rich Lusk has a way of bringing me back to my love of writing. This is not the first time I’ve had a go at something Lusk has written on Kinism. Last year on the same subject we find

McAtee Contra Lusk’s Gnosticism

Lusk and I also in years past have tangled on his support of the heresy of Federal Vision across different sites on the web. I’m not a big fan of Rich and I suppose he is not president of my fan club — such as it is.

Before I engage Rev. Lusk’s offering let me say that my Spidey senses are tingling on the matter of the CREC (Doug Wilson’s own personal paedo-creedo denomination) and Kinism. That is to say that there is some circumstantial evidence that begins to suggest that there is unrest in what is thought to be the last Elven home (Rivendell) of “conservative” Reformed denominationalism. Members of the CREC keep turning to the issue of Kinism in denunciation which makes one think there must be some kind of threat of Kinism prospering in the denomination. I mean, why else do CREC types online keeps returning to the subject?

Rev. Lusk (Hereafter RL) writes,

Love of people and place is virtuous. It is good to love one’s family, and love of one’s family easily extends to a love of nation, which is largely an extension of the family. One way to honor my mother and father (and grandmother and grandfather, etc.) is to honor the land in which I was born. Cultivating love of people and place is an application of the fifth commandment, among other things.

BLM responds,

This paragraph is pure on Kinism. I’m glad to see Lusk confessing what the Scripture routinely teaches.

RL writes,

(1) But kinists take the love of people and place to an unwarranted, unbiblical, even idolatrous extreme. (2) For the kinist, “my people” comes to mean primarily people of a certain skin color. (3) Skin color becomes more essential to identity than faith. (4) Skin color becomes synonymous with culture, so that defending one is the same as defending the other. (5) Kinists want to build a racially homogenous civilization because they believe racial unity is the key to social harmony. (6) But this is a misplacement of the antithesis, which divides people not according to skin color but according to their spiritual state. (7) Biblically, it is faith rather than skin color that is determinative. (8) To put it in concrete terms: I would much rather build a culture with Clarence Thomas and Voddie Baucham (who share my faith but not my skin color) than Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi (who share my skin color but not my faith). (9) Culture is not tied to skin to skin color in the way kinists seem to think. (10)Insofar as culture is the product of religious conviction (which it always is), white people do not share a common culture because not all white people share a common faith. (11) And many people with other skin colors might be much closer to some white people in culture because they do share the same faith. (12) God’s Word requires us to make careful distinctions. (13) Further, the Great Commission requires the Christian faith to permeate every nation — indeed, every culture and subculture — with the gospel. (14) If kinists claim that cultures should remain homogenous and closed off to all outside influence, they make the mission of the church impossible. (15) The Great Commission requires a certain level of cross-cultural intermixing and influence. (16) That is not the same thing as the borderless, multi-cultural “new world order” the globalists dream of, but neither is it identical to the racially segregated world he kinists want.

BLM responds,

(1.) I always get a jolt by reading what Alienists say kinists believe. It is akin to reading Arminians describe what Calvinists believe or listening to Baptists tell me what covenant means.

But, I must admit that just this morning I demonstrated my idolatrous extreme by entering my kinist shrine which I have in my house (all kinists have shrines to their ancestors in their homes). Once in my shrine I went through the steps of my idolatrous extreme by lighting candles and reciting chants to my ancestors. This was only after I forced my children to recite their ancestors names back to me going back 15th generations.

(2a.) Lusk writes in his first paragraph about how it is proper to love one’s own nation and yet he seems to forget that etymologically to love one’s own nation means to love those who are descended from a common ancestor. Webster’s 1828 dictionary notes,

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

Now obviously, it is very unusual any more to be able to limit “nation” to this definition what with immigration, and conquest or forced intermixture, it still remains the case that nation by etymological definition means what we find italicized in the definition above.

If all men in a nation are descended from a common ancestor then obviously skin color is going to part of that dynamic. Therefore, Lusk has a serious contradiction between his first paragraph and the first sentence of his second paragraph.

(2b.) Next on this score Lusk goes all reductionistic on us by suggesting that people groups can be reduced to being just a matter of skin color (melanin level). This is the constant nonsense that emanates from the communication hole of Alienists. Kinists reject the suggestion that a people group is primarily only about skin color. Certainly skin color may be one particular aspect about a people group but to suggest that is all that Kinists care about is just stupidity parading as profundity.

(2c.) Is Lusk going to fault the Apostle Paul when he speaks of the special love for people of his own race in Romans 9:3? Has the Holy Spirit in that passage suddenly found himself involved in an unwarranted, unbiblical, and even idolatrous extreme?

For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race — Romans 9:3

(3.) This is utter bull feces. The Kinist raises Christ above all other considerations. They can sing with Luther, “Let goods and kindred go,” unlike the Alienist who having no love for kindred think it no big deal to “let kindred go.” However, all because Christ must have the preeminence that does not mean that therefore there shouldn’t be a proper natural affection for one’s own people just as we find in St. Paul.

There is an implied false dichotomy in what Lusk writes. His false dichotomy is that a person can only love Christ or he can only love his God ordained extended family as if those two loves are necessarily exclusive and contradictory.

It is interesting that Lusk would never warn that maleness or femaleness not become more essential to identity than Christ. All Christians immediately understand that their maleness or femaleness is part of their identity that they have as in Christ. However, Lusk seemingly thinks that somehow we should automatically separate our belongingness to our people as not being part of our identity in Christ as if grace doesn’t automatically restore nature. Lusk is positing a false dichotomy here between grace and nature and thus demonstrates what he has been accused of before in the Federal Vision debate that he is a latent Gnostic.

(4a.) Once again Lusk continues with his reductionistic nonsense by constantly referring to races and peoples are merely a matter of “skin color.”

(4b.) While one’s ethnicity and/or race certainly is not exactly synonymous with culture it is also the case that the two can not be disentangled from one another. To think that culture has nothing to do with race as Lusk is proposing once again finds the door opened to bringing forth the charge of Gnosticism against Lusk. To suggest that culture and race have nothing to do with each other defies the definition that culture is the outward manifestation of a people’s inward beliefs. Culture is comprised of two realities; i.) a people groups genetic disposition — who God has created a people to be and ii.) what it is that people group believes regarding ultimate reality. To suggest that culture is only about what goes on between the ears of assorted and random individuals is just nothing but Gnosticism. It is a dishonoring of the corporeal side of who we are as humans as God as God has created us.

(5.) Kinists do not believe that racial unity is the only key to social harmony. However, they do believe it is one key to social harmony. Certainly, racial unity absent worldview/faith unity is not going to yield social harmony. However, we see in Acts 6 that neither does faith unity as existing among different people groups necessarily yield social harmony. So, we see that Kinists believe that social harmony is best achieved by the presence of both racial unity as combined with worldview/faith unity. Therefore, here we have established that Lusk is just in error with his assertion.

(6.) The antithesis is drawn so as to distinguish who is in Christ and who is not in Christ. The Reformed antithesis is not about what makes for the best social order circumstances. As John Frame has noted with regard to both Society and Church (which is a much smaller subset than a nation)

“Scripture, as I read it, does not require societies, or even churches, to be integrated racially. Jews and Gentiles were brought together by God’s grace into one body. They were expected to love one another and to accept one another as brothers in the faith. But the Jewish Christians continued to maintain a distinct culture, and house churches were not required to include members of both groups.”

John Frame,
“Racism, Sexism, Marxism”

(7.) Biblically it is faith and not skin color that is determinative of who is in Christ. All agree with Lusk there but that has nothing to do with what makes for the greatest harmony among a nation and its social order.

(8.) Who can disagree with what Lusk says in #8 above? However, that does nothing to disprove the issue at hand. It may be true that I would rather build a culture with biblical Christians of other ethnicities/races than I would to try to build a culture with pagans who belong to my own ethnicity/race but it is even more true that people from different races/ethnicity would prefer to build a culture with Christians from their own race and ethnicity than with Christians from a WASP race/ethnicity. And there is not the slightest thing wrong with that or un-Christian about that. Being in Christ doesn’t mean that grace destroys nature so that being in Christ means that all nature differences and distinctions no longer exist. It is perfectly acceptable, for example, for Koreans to want to worship with other Koreans vis-a-vis worshiping with WASPs. It is perfectly acceptable, for example, for the historic American Black Churches to desire to remain an entity that remains Black. All of this is about natural affections that God made.

(9.) Another Gnostic statement from Lusk. Culture and ethnicity/race while distinct are not divorced and are intimately tied together.

(10.) See #4b above.

(11.) And many ethnicities/races might be even closer still to their own Christian peoples/races than they are to WASPs because those people of other ethnicities/races shared the same faith with their people.

Note again here though the Gnostic Lusk reducing ethnicity/race to “skin color.” This is like reducing the meaning of Christianity to people agreeing only on the statement “I love Jesus.”

(12.) And here I continue to wait for Lusk to make the careful distinctions necessary instead of the hatchet job he is making of all this.

(13.) Elsewhere we learn that water is wet.

(14.) No Kinist is so stupid as to believe that social-orders can be hermetically sealed off so that heterogenous influences don’t weigh on particular social orders. Only Alienists could be stupid enough to think this way.

(15.) Lusk needs to read Roland Allen’s “St. Paul’s Missionary Methods and Ours.” In that book Lusk would learn that St. Paul would stay something like 6 months in different lands before he would push on to the next land. In that time St. Paul would entrust the nascent church to indigenous leadership so that the Church planted there would be kinist. There would thus be comparatively little intermixing and influence.

(16.) What the Kinist pray for is for all the nations — all the distinct ethnic/racial peoples that God has ordained to exist to find themselves all swearing allegiance to Jesus Christ as in their nations.

From the Mailbag … Jack takes Pastor Bret to the Woodshed … Bret Demurs.

As I look at the list of authors you seem to adhere to, who are the usual suspects tied to Christian reconstruction, it is no shock at all you speak out against folks like Horton, because it is a necessity on your part. It is also not a shock to see one who is tied to Christian reconstruction twist what one has to say, because it has been my experience to witness this being the case. As an example, in the quote you supply by Horton, he does not in any way say, “Islam is not an external threat to the United States.” Rather, what Horton actually said was, “Islam is not an external threat to Christianity.” Let us look at the quote you supply again,

“Islam is not an external threat in the United State to Christianity”

There is a tremendous difference between saying, “Islam is not an external threat IN the United States” as opposed to saying, “Islam is not an external threat TO the United States” as you have Horton saying. In other words, Horton is saying, Islam is not in any way an external threat to Christianity in the U.S. If you are under the impression Islam is a threat to Christianity, then I would have to wonder who you think is in charge? In other words, if it is Christ who is advancing His Kingdom, then how can Islam, or anything else be a threat to this advancement? The bottom line here is though, Horton does not say anything, “about Islam not being an external threat to the US” as you have him saying. Therefore, one is not reading very carefully. Or are they are being less than honest about what was actually said?

Allow me to end here by saying, I have no stomach at all for, Christian nationalism, Christian reconstruction, Federal vision, and the like. I have no interest in engaging in the culture wars. Because you see, while a large portion of the Church has been so preoccupied with what is going on outside the Church, with the likes of science, the homosexuals, abortionists, and what Disney World is doing, it has failed to actually nurture those inside the Church. It is a fact that the Church has involved itself in the culture wars, and it is a fact the Church has lost the war. The Church lost the war, not because of science, homosexuals, abortionists, and Disney World, but rather because the Church itself has produced more atheists, than any of these other perceived threats, because the Church is more concerned about culture, (what was going on outside the Church) than it is about what was going on inside the Church. Therefore, while the Church was so busy outside, it’s children were leaving the Church in droves, as atheists. Maybe it is time for the Chruch to worry about those inside the Church, ensuring the flock is thoroughly equipped, getting the Gospel correct, in order for the flock to go out in order to share the true Gospel to a world in desperate need, instead of being under the impression that law has the power to save us as opposed to Gospel.

This sort of reminds me of when Paul said,

“For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside?”

So then, it does not seem as if Paul was concerned with the behavior of those outside the Church. Rather, his concern seems to be with those inside. Just before Paul said this, he had this to say,

“I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person.”

Again, where is the focus? Is it with the culture war? My point is, maybe it is time for the Chruch to focus upon those who name the Name of Christ, instead upon those who do not? In this way, instead of the Church boycotting the likes of Disney World, who does not name the Name of Christ, we would instead boycott those ministries who do name the Name of Christ who are preaching a false Gospel forbidding any of our members from supporting such ministries. If this were the case, it would have been impossible to have such ministries as, Praise the Lord Club, Oral Roberts, Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, and the like. Instead, we are concerned about Disney.

Jack O’Neal Hanley

1.) As I read your comment I see that you are a fanboy of some kind of version of Radical Two Kingdom theology. It’s not a shock that you speak against people like me or that you have a bad case of understanding historic Biblical Christianity as that is a necessity for your Weltanschauung.

2.) Reconstruction is basic Christianity. Reconstruction is an inescapable category. By your refusal to engage the culture wars (culture is merely religion externalized) you are, by your retreat, reconstructing the culture in a non-Christian direction inasmuch as your absence allows the wicked to reconstruct religion externalized as they like without your loyalty to Jesus Christ being advanced in the culture (which is defined as religion externalized). All who reconstruct by not reconstructing are cowards. That’s right. I called you a coward. A Nancy boy. A Pajama boy. One of Christ’s soldiers who refuses to engage the enemy under a cloak of pietistic “but we’re not supposed to hate that which is evil and cling to that which is good.” We’re not really supposed to take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.” We’re not really supposed to be “pulling down strongholds, ⁵casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” You say to me … “Don’t you know that Christianity is a private matter. It is not supposed to impact the public square.”

3.) Your sophistry is epic. On the one hand you fault me for saying that Horton did not say the Islam was not a threat to the US while on the other hand you say that because God is sovereign therefore Islam can not be a threat to Christianity in the US. But if God is sovereign than it is also true that Islam can’t be a threat to the US. If God is sovereign Islam was never a threat to the northern littoral of Africa in the 7th century and neither was Islam ever a threat to Christianity in the Northern littoral of Africa in the 7th century. Indeed, we may as well lose the word “threatening” since God is sovereign. God is sovereign therefore stupidity is no threat to your ability to reason. God is sovereign therefore the enemies design on His Kingdom can never be spoken of as a “threat.”

The fact that I might think that Islam is a threat to Christianity is grounded in the on the ground facts we are living. It is not a confession that Islam will stop God’s Kingdom advance. It is not surrendering. It is merely saying that God has ordained means to His sovereign ends and those sovereign means to His sovereign ends means conceding that certain areas are threatening.

As another example, when I say your kind of stupidity is a threat to Biblical Christianity, I don’t mean that in the end, I think your kind of stupidity might actually conquer all, though there are some days when my faith is smaller than other days.

4.) Yes you have no stomach for nationalism, Christian Reconstructionism, Federal Vision and the like. And you probably gag at the notion of shooting firearms, eating hot peppers, bench pressing weights, getting dirty or competing in any arena. I imagine when you filled out your Passport form when it asked for your sex you checked “other.”

And just for the record… this blog is filled with anti-Federal Vision posts. That was a swing and a miss on your part.

5.) “Failed to nurture those inside the Church”

LOL … I’ve heard your Escondido preacher-boys preach. Don’t try to tell me that they are “nurturing the Church.” The Escondido boys traverse land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, they make him twice as much a son of hell as they are. The Escondido boys are poisonous sacks infecting the whole visible Church with their Gnosticism and their Reformed Dispensationalism. If they win out the Church will either collapse until the Augean R2K stables are cleaned out in some certain future day or the Church will end up being a pale reflection of the culture (religion externalized) as it already currently is.

6.) “It is a fact that the Church has lost the culture wars.”

a.) Can you give me a brief time period when the Church was fighting the culture wars? The Church has been filled with pietists and quietists and retreatists like you for decades if not centuries in America.

b.) Since God is sovereign how can you dare say that the Church has lost the culture wars? Here, I would have to wonder who you think is in charge? In other words, if it is Christ who is advancing His Kingdom, then how can the Church lose the culture war? (Psst… that’s a “you’ve been hoisted on your own petard argument.)

c.) Certainly the Church as asleep has lost the culture wars. Certainly the Church as disobedient has lost the culture wars. Certainly the Church effeminate has lost the culture wars.

7.)

“The Church lost the war, not because of science, homosexuals, abortionists, and Disney World, but rather because the Church itself has produced more atheists, than any of these other perceived threats, because the Church is more concerned about culture, (what was going on outside the Church) than it is about what was going on inside the Church.”

The Church lost you tihspid because it quit being salt and light to the area where religion is externalized (culture). The loss began way back in the American revision of the WCF where the American Presbyterians anabaptized the document by playing with the section on the Magistrate. The church lost because it turned Christianity into a privatized affair that is only relevant as between the individual and God and as occurring in the individuals “heart.” The Church lost because in the movement from Princeton to Westminster the pestiferous Dutch theologians with their ruinous Amillennialism changed the Reformed narrative from Postmillennialism to Amillennialism. Because of this the Church thinks it is winning when it is losing. “It’s the way it is supposed to happen according to the Bible,” says the militant Amillennialists. “Jesus is going to come rescue us just when it looks like we are swirling the drain.” The Church lost because it didn’t intellectually engage with the myth of Scientism. The Church lost because it didn’t insist that Homosexuality and infant murder remain capital crimes. The Church lost because it lost the backbone of men like Calvin, Knox, Rutherford, Cromwell, and Goodman. The Church lost because they got more of their theology from Walt Disney than they did Groen Van Prinisterer.

Finally, my little plaything, lets keep in mind that it was only because of the above explanation that the Church needed to start addressing Abortion, Sodomy, Disney, and Scientism because those came into the Church because the Church refused to FIGHT.

8.) “Getting the Gospel correct”

LOL … yep boys… belly up to the R2K bar where Reformed Dispensationalism and Rot Gut Lutheran Law and Gospel are the house specials. At the R2K “Bar & Grill” we will teach you the proper ordo salutis. We will teach you the proper view of Lapsarianism. We will teach you a High Presbyterian ecclesiology. At the R2K Bar and Grill you’ll be able to learn to recite the Westminster catechism (the long one even) but what you will never ever be equipped to do is to take that sharp sword and know how to use it. All we teach you will be abstractions. Concrete praxis need not apply. Worldviews? We don’t do no stinking worldviews. After all, we are too busy getting the Gospel correct.

I despise the R2K Gospel. I spit on it. Any Gospel that apriori diminishes and negates the Mediatorial Kingship of Jesus Christ over every area of life is complete emesis. Any Gospel that says that there are some areas wherein Christ’s Kingdom never touch so as to be Reformed along Biblical lines is a treasonous proposition.

9.) “Law has the power to save.”

Insert loud buzzer sound.

Insert announcer’s voiceover: “I’m sorry Mr. Hanley you guessed wrong on the subject you chose: “What do Reconstructionists believe.” We are sorry to inform you Mr. Contestant that now Reconstructionists believes that the Law saves. You can now continue on with the game and experience ever increasing embarrassment and shame at being so consistently in error or you can quit now with your tail between your legs and save whatever little dignity you have left.

No Reconstructionists believes the law saves. However, basic Christianity does hold to the 2nd use (politicus usus) of the law and so there is a place for Christians to insist that the Magistrate rule by God’s law and God’s law alone. You do remember John the B. telling the Pagan Herod that he was not to have his Brother’s wife? Stupid John the Baptist… didn’t he know that the law did not have the power to save Herod?

Dude, your categories are so buggered up that I’d have to reconstruct them before I could thoroughly show you how completely wrong you are.

We agree … the law has no power to save. We do not agree that because God’s law in it’s first use cannot save therefore we should not employ God’s second use of the law as in the civil realm.

10.) “the Church itself has produced more atheists, than any of these other perceived threats,”

Now, I’m going to resist listing the prominent Reformed Pillars of the Church and their sons by name who have gone off the rails because I’m a polite guy. But I can think of five just off the top of my head. All of these sons were nurtured in the Church that you envision and all of them went belly up doctrinally or morally.

Which son can we NOT add to that list? I know … we can’t add Mark Rushdoony, son of the Reconstructionist R. J. Rushdoony.

11.) Now in terms of your spoof texting: Here i am Bubba … judging you who is in the Church just as you are Judging me who is in the Church. How’s that going for you?

12.) That’s God’s law is totalistic and applicable to all men is seen in Jonah’s ministry to pagan (non-covenant) Nineveh. It is seen in Daniel’s declaration to Nebuchadnezzar. Let’s remember the pagan Canaanites whose cup of wickedness was not yet full when God spoke to Father Abraham but when it became full God judged them for their violations against His law-Character.

It is seen in Paul’s words to Timothy;

“Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,”

Now … go away before you begin to irk me.

AP Lugenpresse Expresses the Vapors Over the Rise of Not Particularly Christian White Nationalism

https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-pennsylvania-religion-nationalism-8bf7a6115725f508a37ef944333bc145

Pity then mock the poor “intellectual” who fears the rise of “Christian White Nationalism.” It is precisely that he has spent his life seeking to obliterate and bury. Yet, despite all his efforts he is now writing articles about the rise and threat of Christian White Nationalism. He must be stone cold petrified at even the whiff of Christian White Nationalism since he knows that Christian White Nationalism alone can sink his hopes for his Luciferian New World Order. Furthermore, he knows, that should such a reverse happen at this late hour it would by necessity mean the pulling down of his own social order house and possibly his very life.

Just imagine if AP News came across the 100 proof variety of Christian White Nationalism. They would first wet, and then soil their pants. The Christian Nationalism they are whining about in the article is the watered down hooch. What they are scared of in the article is some variant of Dispensational, Pentecostalism, or squishy Evanjellyfishism. Just imagine how out of their minds they would be if a Calvin, Knox, Rutherford or Goodman showed up at the party.

Of course, before Christian White Nationalism can arise it must be driven by a Christian Church teaching garden variety Christianity — you know the kind of Christianity that built the West. Since that is true before there can be counter-Revolution in the social order there must first be counter-Revolution in the Church. There are many clergy that must have done to them what Friar Tuck does to the conniving money hungry Bishop in Kevin Costner’s Robinhood. They must be defenestrated — preferably, metaphorically. Christian White Nationalism will not return in the Social Order before the foundation is recognized again in Christian White Churches.

We see this assault against Christian White Nationalism by Doug Wilson in his CREC denomination. Recently the Maven from Moscow posted;

“So the need of the hour is repentance and reformation—and the reformation as outlined above is going to be genuinely radical. It will go to the root (radix), and so it will be radical reformation. Simple reaction to all the regnant follies may seem more radical, at least initially, but it is actually just the radicalism of a Kleenex fire. I am talking about all those possible Nietzschean reactions, of the sort that you can find among the proud boys, or the alt-right, or with white boy summer memes. “

Pope Doug Wilson I

Doug, “there is no such thing as races” Wilson never misses the opportunity to bang on some form of race-realism or ethno-Nationalism” and in the above we see that impulse again. This is especially seen when it is realized how the “White Boy Summer” memes have just been crushing the Alienism of Doug “open the borders” Wilson.

I am here to tell you there will be no Reformation as long as the ideology that Pope Doug is selling is the currency in the Reformed Church. One wonders what world Pope Doug is living in? Is he still caught in the 1960’s Lugenpresse civil rights matrix narrative? Is he still drinking the swill from Brown vs. the Board of Education? Is he still caressing his Martin Luther King poster every morning? The man is unhinged on this issue — that is, he is completely divorced from the reality that Christians are living.

The NWO, Great Reset Crowd is obviously seeking, in the words of Clare Ellis to “Blacken Europe.” It doesn’t take many power of observation to see the same attempt is being made here. Note that the real agenda behind this blender reality pursuit is to deconstruct what little remains of Western Christendom, and Pope Doug, along with his alleged R2K opposition is paving the way for this Christian Replacement to occur.

You see what is interesting here is I also have no tuck with the Alt. Right and much of the Proud Boys but I have no tuck with it as arguing from the Christian Right and not the pagan left where Pope Doug is.

At the end of the day the man is embracing the deracinated, globalist, non-Christian, vision that the NWO and Great Reset and Agenda 2030 are advocating. Pope Doug is playing Sauruman to Klaus Schwab’s Sauron. Praying that God would raise up for His people a Gandalf type.

Let’s be clear here. I think what Wilson envisions is the same New World Order type of reality that NWO is after with the exception that Doug envisions this blender globalist reality to be Christian. So, the difference between Wilson (and his former running mate Leithart) and say someone like Justin Trudeau is that whereas for Trudeau the eventually globalist cosmopolitanism that arises by the mixing of all is aimed as being anchored in some kind of Luciferianism/humanism whereas for Doug the elimination of the Nations will birth a cosmopolitan coffee latte Kingdom of God that covers the globe. I think Doug thinks that nations will go into eclipse once Christ’s Kingship is established.

And if I’m right about this then Doug will understandably continue to seek to immanentize the eschaton that he envisions. Which means he’s not going to give up on his Alienism since it is how he envisions the coming success of postmillennialism.

I’d kind of like to hope that Pope Doug is not doing so intentionally but clearly, regardless of intentions, New World Orderism is what Pope Doug is pushing.

But… it’s not to late Pope Doug. If you will just repent you too can still enjoy the White Boy Summer.

It may be that in God’s inscrutable providence that the era of Christian White Nationalism and the Christian West is over. It may be that it will no more return than Czarist Russia or the Ante-bellum South. If that is so, God has something even better for the future. But until such a time that is clear we as God’s people — White or non-White, need to pray and work to the end that God would restore Christianity to the previous Christian White nations of the West.

Returning to the story linked we find some interesting statements:

“Scholars generally define Christian nationalism as going beyond policy debates and championing a fusion of American and Christian values, symbols and identity.”

Scholars are atwitter at the notion of Christian nationalism but they have no problem with the fusion of American and Humanist values. The reader should go look up the Humanist manifestos (they are the Humanist version of Creed or Confession) and see how much fusion has already occurred between American and Luciferian values. But of course the “Scholars” in question who are writing about the dangers of Christian nationalism and are sweating nervously about potential fusion of American and Christian values are themselves practicing Humanists/Luciferians whatever they may protest to the contrary. No Biblical Christian wakes up with the night sweats worried that a country may desire to bow the knee to Christ.

“Christian nationalism, they (scholars) say, is often accompanied by a belief that God has destined America, like the biblical Israel, for a special role in history, and that it will receive divine blessing or judgment depending on its obedience.”

Well, since Christians believe that God has destined everything then of course postmillennial Christians would believe that God has destined America for a special role in history. What is unsaid in that quote above is that these scholars believe that America’s teleology is guided by time + chance + circumstance. They hate the idea that God is sovereign. They hate the idea that all men everywhere are commanded to repent. They hate the idea that the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. They hate that the rock carved out of the Mountain mentioned in Daniel crushes all those nations that don’t pledge fealty to Christ.

Let it be said here also that White Christian Nationalist believe that every nation as inhabited by all the races of men finds God having for them a plan for them wherein they will glorify and honor the God of the Bible.

Finally, Scripture clearly teaches that God sanctions for rebellion and rewards obedience. That is Christianity 101.

Let us pray that it will be genuine Christianity that is restored in America and not this rotgut Pentecostal/Dispensational crap that we find so routinely among us. It is only the Christianity of the Reformation that can once again successfully inform a successful Christian White Nationalism.