Pointing Out The Errors of Leithart On Nationalism

“Conservatives often present the nation as a throwback to pre-modern forms of political order, a restoration of natural, organic bonds in place of anemic cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism or the purely functional relations of the market. Nationalism promotes Gemeinschaft against the prevailing Gesellschaft. While nations existed in the pre-modern world, national-ism is arguably a product of post-Enlightenment political thought.”

Peter Leithart
On The “Nation” of Christian Nationalism
First Things
President of the Heretical “Theopolis Institute”Don’t miss the word “arguably” in the quote above. It is our clue that Leithart knows that this point is traversing thin ice. The whole point is arguable because long before “post-enlightenment” one finds OT Israel practicing a unmistakable Nationalism. Strangers couldn’t join the worship cult in Israel for three, or 10 generations, while some strangers never were to be welcomed in. Boundaries for each tribe belonging to the nation were strictly set. The genealogies of the OT demonstrate that Israel was very specific about marrying within the lineage lines of the nation. This all sounds like Nationalism to me. To suggest that Israel in the OT didn’t practice nationalism is just insane, and thus so is Leithart’s “arguable” statement.Dan Brannan offers that Leithart’s error is magnificent;

“The idea that nations never had a concept of sustaining themselves prior to the Enlightenment isn’t just wrong, but precisely the opposite of the case. It was the Enlightenment which proposed the abnegation of both local provinces and nations as a great good. Leithart is a buffoon.”

Despite these observations some will still argue, that “of course, Leithart does have a point. The modern nation state is a post French Revolution phenomenon. Lincoln ushered it in here, unfortunately.”

In response to that line of reasoning we note;

1.) This is a severe misreading of history as one could just as easily argue that the modern nation state arose with the Reformation but that was 275 years prior to the French Revolution and of course was being driven by a completely different set of ideas then those ideas which drove the French Revolution.

2.) Lincoln ushered in a Consolidated Nation State here but that doesn’t mean that Americans before Lincoln didn’t have a sense of unity in their diversity, thus having a kind of Nationalism.

We see Nationalism prior to the Enlightenment in the works of Wm. Shakespeare (1564-1616) who was often referred to as “England’s national poet.” Sounds like English nationalism to me in Richard II;

This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

And again later we hear Christian nationalism with a whiff of antisemitism from the Bard;

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,

Fear’d by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,

Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son,

As Darrell Dow notes;

“Peter Leithart looks to his right and sees a political movement and proceeds to pick it apart –to deconstruct. The goal is to suppress action. As such he is a Regime Theologian.”

This is not the first time that Leithart has inveighed against Nationalism. He seems to have no problem with Christianity being the faith of the land but the notion of Nationalism leaves him with a case of the hives. This is true of many in the CREC as well. These folks salute the flag of “propositional nationalism,” believing that as long as people from all over the globe, who are migrating here, regardless of their third world status, are “Christian” then everyone is going to get along just fine. This theory though, is just a Christian version of NWO Globalism. It is our current Evangelical/Reformed leadership’s impersonation of Saruman to the Sauron played by the globalists like Schwaab, Gates, and the World Economic forum types. In order for a nation to be cohesive it must have not only a common faith, but it also must have a common genetic heritage. Heterogeneity in either faith or genetic heritage is sure to find people living in the same geographic area at one another’s throats.

Christian Nationalism is the only way forward because the only option in lieu of that is Pagan Nationalism or Pagan Internationalism. There will be no such thing as Christian Internationalism until Christ returns in order to rule over the confederated Christian Nations that are each pledging fidelity to Him in their own nations.

Doug Wilson Interviewed by Tucker Carlson…. McAtee on Carlson’s Interview of Wilson

“Rutherford was a practical and pastoral theologian who could soar to great heights of glorious consolation. . . But Rutherford was also a bare-knuckle brawler who was clearly able to hold his own in the theological bar fight that was the seventeenth century. You are now holding in your hands the evidence of that.”

Introduction to Canon Press’ Lex Rex
Douglas Wilson

Start @ the 5:13 point;

Doug Wilson — “Our current rulers are very ambitious and they want to aspire to that height (to be God). We don’t want to resist them in the name of Christ because we don’t want to launch another series of interminable religious wars.”

Tucker Carlson — Right

Bret responds;

1.) Will someone please send Pope Doug a copy of Wm. Cavanaugh’s “The Myth of Religious violence?”

2.) We don’t want to resist them in the name of Christ because we don’t want to launch another series of interminable religious wars? So, Doug prefers the current interminable religious war where the God state is attacking us? Honestly, what does it matter if we are fighting an interminable religious war against Jews and Muslims as opposed to fighting an interminable religious war against the humanist cultural Marxist?

I hope I am misunderstanding this because this sounds like Doug is not a Christian Nationalist but rather is a squishy Theistic nationalist where the God of the people can be the god of the Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

DW continues — “OK, because we don’t want the Muslims fighting w/ the Jews fighting w/ the Christians fighting w/, you know, all of that. OK that’s the most reasonable question.

When they say, ‘which God?’ – And here is the answer to your question of ‘What is Christian Nationalism,’ the Christian Nationalist is the one who is willing to answer that question and speaking into the microphone, ‘The true God. The living God. The one who exists. Not the God on our money…'”

Bret responds,

1.) Notice how Doug here avoids answering the question of what is Christian Nationalism. The answer to “what is Christian nationalism” is NOT what Doug says because what Doug says could be embraced by Jews, Mormons, Muslims, and Christians alike. They all believe they are serving the “true God, the living God, the God who exists.” No, the answer to the question “What is Christian Nationalism” is, “The Christian Nationalist is one who insists that Jesus Christ alone is the King of all the nations and those who conspire against His Lordship, whether they be the cultural Marxist State, or the Mormon, or the Jew, or the Muslim must all bow to Jesus Christ in this nation lest the Son become angry and they perish in the way.”

Now, I’m willing to admit that I may be misunderstanding the Protestant Pope but if I am somebody is going to have to show me how I am.

In the last minute of the clip Doug gets it partially right erring when he notes that the Preachers we need aren’t going to change this nation by preaching law. This only half right and so totally wrong.

It is half right because it is true that grace must be preached but grace never makes any sense without the prior preaching of God’s law. So, by all means Christian preachers must preach grace, but only after law has done its proper work of conviction. As preaching to those who hate Christ the first use of the law is thundered so that grace may be seen to be as gracious as it is. The preaching of the law is the hot needle that pulls through the scarlet thread of grace. If law is not preached there will be no desire for grace.

Secondly Wilson is half right on this score when he suggests that the nation can only be changed from the bottom up and that a top down concurrence isn’t part of the equation here. This idea that Reformation only comes from the bottom up is a Baptist idea that suggest renewal is purely individual and voluntaristic. Certainly, a bottom up approach is needed as Wilson suggests when he talks about preachers preaching a hot gospel, however, pursuing a Christian nation is both bottom up and top down at the same time. This has been seen throughout history. Whether it is Alfred the Great pressing on his people the book of doom or whether it was Luther’s Elector Fredrick making way for the Reformation in the area he ruled or whether it was Lord Protector Cromwell pressing on the English a particular expression of Christianity. It was seen in the Missionary efforts where early Missionaries would commonly go to the Chieftain or the Medicine man to convert him knowing if he were converted the whole nation would be forced to convert as well. When Wilson suggests that renewal is purely individual and voluntaristic his original Baptist impulses show themselves. Those who are not Baptist will not be impressed.

Finally, Wilson is not a Christian Nationalist because he clearly holds to the view of propositional nationhood. One cannot be a Christian Nationalist in the classical sense unless one understands that a nation is comprised both of a shared belief system along with a overwhelmingly shared genetic inheritance. Certainly, a nation does not have to aim at perfect genetic homogeneity but a overwhelming majority if required if homogeneity and true nationhood is to be achieved. You know, like what we had here in the States until 1980 or so.

Would that Wilson was more like Samuel Rutherford than like Doug Wilson.

 

Joel Beeke On The Weakness Of The Puritans

Dr. Beeke loves the Puritans so much he named the Seminary he founded “Puritan Reformed Seminary.” He clearly is a man who believes he is a champion of all things Puritan. Yet, in this question and answer below we see how far Beeke is away from the core of the Puritan ethos and mindset. Beeke like so much of our “Conservative” churchmen today is infected with the modernist, “Enlightenment” post WW II Liberal consensus. This infection then shapes everything that a man believes even if all else he believes is perfectly orthodox. It is like running perfectly good sausage through a filter made of Carolina reaper peppers. No matter how good the sausage is, in and of itself, that Carolina reaper pepper is going to make the meat inedible.

“Q: Where do the Puritans speak least helpfully to the contemporary church?

A: Political Liberty and Equality. (1) The concepts of liberty and equality now dear to us in the Western world hadn’t yet matured during the Puritan era. (2) Civil powers had established the church for more than a thousand years. (3) Full liberty of conscience was untested, and the disestablishment of religion seemed foolhardy in the context of multiplying heresies and sects. (4) Sensitivity to racism and sexism simply didn’t exist in any developed form in the British and European mindset as it does today. (5) We’d argue, however, that the seeds of truth that would blossom and bear fruit in contemporary freedoms are found in Puritan theology.(6)

We need to read the Puritans realizing that, while the Reformation had transformed much of their thinking by the Scriptures, in some ways they were more like medieval Christians in their cultural viewpoint than modern Christians. (7) Yet even here they are helpful, since they enable us to step outside our modern cultural box.” (8)

(1a) Keep in mind that “Liberty and Equality” were two of the watchwords of the anti-Christ French Revolution. There may have been a reason why the Puritans were not interested in “Liberty and Equality” the way those have come to us in from the hand of modernism.

(1b) Political Liberty and Equality can never work in a multicultural reality. The only reason Political Liberty and Equality worked where it worked in the West is because where it worked you found people sharing a Christian world and life view. Where a Christian world and life view does not obtain Political Liberty and Equality only yields chaos as seen in the French Revolution where Political Liberty and Equality sought to guillotine all the Christians (Royalists) who did not believe in Liberty and Equality.

(2a) Political Liberty and Equality are dear to us in the Western World because we have reinterpreted our Christianity though the lens of the Liberal Enlightenment project. There is more of Robespierre than there is of Jesus Christ in Dr. Beeke’s post. All men are not created ontologically equal. Political Liberty for the Christ hater who works diligently to overthrow Christian expression in the public square is a violation of the 1st commandment.

(2b) A nation is destroyed when Political Equality is given to a third world illegal immigrant who knows nothing of culture, history, and religion of the Christian West. The pursuit of political equality has been the destruction of this once Christian nation as seen in giving the vote to women. Political Equality has made slaves of us all to the Federal Government.

(2c) Political Liberty has given the voice of the Muslim and other assorted Christ haters the same volume as the Christian who owns Christ as King over the nation. Thank God the Puritans avoided this claptrap.

(3) Civil Powers continue to establish the Church here in the US. The only difference is that the church the civil powers are establishing is the church of Humanism found in both public schools and all Churches who join Beeke praising Political Equality and Liberty. Political Equality and Liberty mean that King Jesus is not free to be the alone King.

(4a) Note here that Beeke praises the disestablishment of the Christian religion. The reason that this is noteworthy is that as it is impossible for a Government not to be beholden to some form of an established religion, what Beeke is telling us is that it was good when Christianity was disestablished in favor of some other non-Christian religion. Would Beeke really surrender the Established religion of Christianity during the Puritan era for the disestablishment of religion that is now characteristic of the West where Christianity is being overthrown root, twig, and branch?

(4b) So, we finally disestablish Christianity and what has eventually followed? What has eventually followed is multiplying heresies, sects and competing religion. Does Beeke really think that His avowed King Jesus is pleased with his support of that which undermines the authority of Christ?

(5a) Here Beeke, by appealing to the faults of the Puritans for not being sensitive to “racism” and “sexism,” is demonstrating that he is not a Puritan man but is a true blue modernist. “Racism” is a category popularized by the communist Trotsky in order to overthrow Christian culture that was resistant to Communist inroads. Sexism is a category that was inflated by the likes of Alexandra Kollontai, Margaret Sanger, Betty Friedan, and other Feminists of their ilk. It is hard not to see Beeke preening for the despisers of Christianity, seeking to demonstrate how Modernist the nouveau riche Puritans like Beeke can be.

(6) No Puritan, should he be able to come back from the dead, would not absolutely excoriate Beeke’s “Christian” support for Political Liberty and Equality. The Puritans are absolutely opposed to Beeke’s position and so Beeke claims that “the seeds of Political Liberty and Equality” are in the Puritans. That is utter fantasy talk.

(7) Praise God the Puritans were more like medieval Christendom than they were like Christ hating Enlightenment modernist post-War consensus. At least by reading the medieval Puritans I can escape the current insanity in which I am now living both in the broader culture and the broader “conservative” “Evangelical” “Church.”

(8) This last sentence if hilarious. There is Beeke living fondly in our “superior” modernist Enlightenment culture and yet he says we can get outside our cultural box by reading the Puritans but obviously only so as to critique the Puritans for not embracing the Political Liberty and Equality doctrines that have destroyed Christendom.

The Nature Of Law-Order

“All law order is warfare against criminals and against enemies of the social order.”

Rousa J. Rushdoony
Law: Partial and Impartial
Pocket College

When you see the law being used to criminalize those who will not bake cakes for sodomites or who will not provide flowers for a sodomite wedding there you find that the official statist law order is supporting a religion that is counter to Christianity and that this new law order is intent on making you as a Christian, a criminal. When you see the law being used to normalize deviant and abominable perverted behavior so that any normative behavior that opposes said perverted behavior is criminalize there you find lawfare against Christianity. Where you find any legal movement that criminalizes a Christian championing of Christian law there you find warfare against Christianity. Where ever you find the law allowing breasts to be cut off of girls and hormone blockers being given to boys there you find a law order system that is seeking to bury Christianity. Where ever you find a law order supporting Transgender day of visibility on the highest Holy Day of the Christian calendar there you know that Christianity is under attack.

The law can be neither tolerant nor neutral. It is always intolerant of whatever it casts as deviancy, and it, not being neutral, hunts for the those who fall outside its constraints.

The fact that law orders, which organize all social orders, always are working to normalize and criminalize one behavior or another demonstrates that all governments are inescapably religious since the law demonstrates a standard by which right and wrong are being measured. That standard, whatever it is, is the religion or God of the state. This in turn demonstrates that R2K is idiotic when it champions a a-religious state, or a non-theocratic state. Such a beast has ever existed nor can it ever exist.

Atheist James Lindsey on “Christ is King”… McAtee on James Lindsey

“‘Christ is King’ is, in addition to its malicious uses, a Christian virtue signal. Christians say it’s true. Nobody else does. Repeating it shows you’re on the team. Refusing to brings suspicions. That’s why it works. Bad actors can abuse it and lots will go along and defend it.”

James Lindsey
Atheist
Platformed by “Christian” Michael O’Fallon

1.) What possible malicious uses can a true statement possibly be leveraged?

2.) Of course it is, at the very least, a virtue signal. Just as someone saying “There is only one God; Allah, and Muhammed is his prophet” is a virtue signal among some types.

3.) Of course only people who believe it is true say it is true. This statement by Lindsey is like warning people that water is wet. NSS.

4.) Of course saying it proves one is on the team. And your point is?

5.) If I were an employer, for example, I would be so suspicious of someone not confessing “Christ is King,” I would not hire them. Yet another Captain Obvious statement by Lindsey.

6.) The primary reason why saying “Christ is King” works is because Christ is King.

7.) The idea that there is, out there, this galaxy of bad actors who will say “Christ is King” in order to abuse it is the kind of reasoning that the denizens of Hell come up with in order to make sure nobody ever says “Christ is King.”

8.) Of course “lots will go along and defend people saying “Christ is King.” That is primarily due to the fact that lots of people believe that “Christ is King.”

Michael O’Fallon, if he is a Christian, will have a good deal to answer for by platforming James Lindsey, the Christ hater.