This is a time when challenges to the biblical faith are coming fast and furious. Just this week, in opposition to the pervasive cultural lie that men are “toxic,” my new book on The War on Men releases; I pray it strengthens many men in Christ.
Other threats have proliferated. Governmental authoritarianism plays in the headlines on a daily basis, as socialism in different garb steals, kills, and destroys everywhere it goes. Wokeness, of course, continues to be a massive force in America and the West, opposing the goodness of God’s created order and spreading division in the name of “social justice.”
We are also witnessing the rise and gradual mainstreaming of yet another challenger to true Christianity in our time. It is, strangely, a mirror ideology to wokeness: Kinism. Kinism is the partial (thus sinful) preferring of your own people over others. It usually is applied within marriage to the effect that marrying outside of your ethnicity is considered either wrong or a failure of moral duty. Put positively, marrying inside your ethnicity is a moral duty or a moral good.
This same ideology is often applied at the national level, as “ethno-nationalists” generally argue that a given nation should be composed along mono-ethnic lines. Don’t take my word for it; here’s Oxford defining this term: “The term ethnonationalism (or ethno-nationalism) elicits understandings and forms of nationalism that regard ethnicity and ethnic ties as core components of conceptions and experiences of the “nation”.”
The argument made by this group is that failing to build the nation along ethnic lines will lead to societal chaos and even destruction. (This system of thought strenuously opposes the Western liberal tradition and its attempt to create nations around core ideas, not family and heritage.) So ethno-nationalists generally speak of ethnic preservation and propagation as a collective duty, a social imperative, or a moral good.
Is Enjoying Your Heritage Bad?
We know why such proposals are surfacing. As mentioned above, Western countries face major challenges to societal stability today. Globalist immigration “policy” is a scourge. Further, woke voices of today really do target “white” people in evil ways that we must resist. Operating from prejudice, they wrongly demean the foundations of Western culture, Western tradition, and Western peoples.
We must think carefully about such matters as Christians anchored in Scripture. Understanding the “common grace” operating in this world (Matthew 5:45), we want to honor the goodness of human culture (along moral boundaries). Against what some on the left argue, it is not wrong to enjoy your own heritage, culture, and background. Neither is it wrong to prefer your family’s or country’s customs, habits, and traditions, or even—to flip this around—to enjoy them and preserve them at some level (while for believers, the gospel is always paramount, soaring above every culture—see below for more on this count).
This is true at the level of marriage and family, too. You can desire to marry someone from your background; that’s not evil. You can enjoy, once your family is created, the food and language and customs of your background (or, if in an inter-ethnic marriage, of diverse backgrounds). So far, so good. But again, what is not sound is thinking that preserving your ethnicity through marriage is a moral good or a collective duty. Though we hear clear cases for doing so today, the New Testament gives us no such mandate.
Nor are we individually charged with preserving our culture as a spiritual imperative, such that to fail to do so would be sin. We can do so; we are free to do so; doing so is not wrong; doing so can bring happiness and cultivate like-mindedness that is pleasant and peaceable (perhaps a part of the shalom-filled “quiet life” of 1 Timothy 2:1-5).
There can surely be common grace at work in loving our heritage, whether at the family or community level. We have freedom here, much freedom. But we must say this and repeat it lest any misunderstand: preserving ethnicity and culture cannot be absolutized. In the simplest terms per a biblical worldview, doing so is flatly not a spiritual duty on which hangs the blessing or cursing of God.
This is also true at the societal level. It is good for believers to be patriots (but not nationalists). Like the Babylonian exiles, we seek the good of the city in which we live, after all (Jeremiah 29:7). We love our neighbor (Matthew 22:34-39). We can be thankful to God for our country, and pray for its good, and we should be “salt and light” in it (Matthew 5:13-16). We should fight for our country, even where it has severe failings.
I even believe, in proper framing, that Christians are right to love their country, provided they understand their country not as the new Israel (as can happen in America), but as the place where God has providentially planted them and given them common bonds. In such a framework, however, we must not think that preserving our nation—any nation—is our Christ-given biblical mission. It is not.
My Central Argument: Kinism and Ethno-Nationalism Are Unsound
Nor should we fall prey to the “ethno-nationalist” argument that preserving a single national ethnicity or shared “racial” identity is our spiritual duty. We are not called in the New Testament to form a Christian nation or take over existing nations for this purpose. None of these views rightly captures our mission as the church, wherever we find ourselves across the world (see Matthew 28:16-20). We are a Great Commission people, called to make disciples from all nations, not to make nations our disciples. (See Scott Aniol’s very helpful book for a strong treatment of this mission.)
We have thus far laid a foundation for a broader discussion. In what follows, as I have already signaled, I will speak against Kinism and ethno-nationalism. In doing so, I will expand on the case I made in my recent message at The Gospel & the State, an official pre-conference of G3 Ministries. Here is the message, entitled “Christianity and Kinism,” which was released publicly today. (You need to subscribe to the new G3+ service to watch it, please note—it will be well worth your time given what a sound ministry G3 is.)
In this essay, I will amplify and further substantiate the material presented in the conference message, treating numerous public statements of today’s leading “Christian nationalist” thinker, Stephen Wolfe. My central thesis in the following paragraphs is simple. While Wolfe does not—to my knowledge—explicitly affirm “white nationalism” or Kinism, his body of thought lays the ground for, and is consonant with, ethno-nationalist and Kinist principles.
This represents a real challenge to the gospel in our time, one that must be taken with great seriousness. We seek to address this challenge by “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Our goal is not war with the spreading circle of those influenced by Wolfe’s ideas; our goal is witness, and ultimately, rescue. Said differently, public teaching calls for a public response (see the apostle Paul responding to Peter per Galatians 2:11-21 and a host of leaders in his epistles).
My prayer in all this, then, is that my humble efforts are used to help lead people to the Word and gospel. This only God can do, not any man. I write, in fact, under the banner that I am no perfect thinker, but a common sinner saved by grace who must daily kill my own iniquity and confess my own stumbling (James 3:2).
Is Inter-Ethnic Marriage Supported by the Bible? 5 Brief Responses
Before we treat Wolfe’s public statements, let me give a summary response to the Kinist ideas I have surfaced in this essay thus far. Scripture does not forbid inter-ethnic marriage. Nor does it leave room for anyone to see inter-ethnic unions as immoral, untoward, or even less than ideal. This is clear from a study of Bible teaching, which is often lacking in the conversation over public theology.
First, there are several examples of God-honoring inter-ethnic marriages in Scripture:
--Moses and a Cushite woman (a woman who hails from modern Ethiopia as found in Numbers 12; God honors this union even as he curses hostile Miriam, who wrongly speaks against it, with leprosy)
--Boaz and Ruth, a Moabite (Ruth 4)
--Salmon and Rahab, a Canaanite (Matt. 1:4-5)
Second, inter-ethnic marriage is not problematic or less than ideal. It is neither commanded nor prohibited in the Bible, and so no one has any right to either command it or prohibit it. It is not wrong to want to marry someone of a certain background, whether like you or unlike you; what is wrong is attaching moral categories to such considerations, as in a sentence like “We should marry in our tribe” or “We should not marry in our ethnic community.”
Third, at the heart of the New Covenant is the musterion of the gospel: the “mystery” now revealed that Jew and Gentile (primarily covenantal categories, secondarily ethnic) are one through the blood of Christ per Ephesians 3:6 and 10. All the momentum in the New Covenant runs in the direction of gospel unity across all dividing lines; none of it in exegetical terms runs toward ethnic separation and exclusion.
Fourth, all the church is now the family of God per Matthew 12:46-50. While the natural family still stands, and we still honor it and serve it, true Christians belong to the greater family, the family of God. This so matters for believers, in fact, that Jesus says that entering the kingdom of God necessitates that one “hates” father and mother. Consider Luke 14:26 in the context of Kinism: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” As is evident, Jesus’ words represent a very strong counter to the idea that faith in Christ does not reprioritize our loves (as Wolfe claims).
Fifth, Scripture calls the whole church “a holy nation.” The people of God in the new covenant era are an ethnos hagios as Peter says in 1 Peter 2:9. We thus are not called to build a Christian nation; we are called to watch as God builds his Christian nation, the people composed of the repentant from every tribe, tongue, nation, and people group (Rev. 21). We certainly are not called anywhere in the New Testament to build a mono-ethnic nation; we are to be “salt and light” everywhere we are found, and take as our “Great Commission” the formation of disciples from all nations (Matthew 28:16-20).
Stephen Wolfe’s Project
Having responded briefly to Kinist ideas, we move to consider Wolfe’s thought. To date, he has articulated the densest case for “Christian Nationalism.” Wolfe holds a PhD in Political Theory from LSU and has written The Case for Christian Nationalism (Canon Press). Wolfe is a deep thinker. He rightly sees much Christian public theology as anemic, he rightly despises sinfully soft manhood, he rightly wants the church to act with moral authority, he rightly understands the importance of pushing back forcefully against darkness, and he has done some heavy lifting in terms of research and study.
An array of erudite theologians and critical thinkers have engaged Christian Nationalism and Wolfe’s body of thought (see Buice and Walker and Aniol and DeYoung and Shenvi and Wilsey and Roberts and Walker). Many have raised concerns—even serious ones—about the possible connection to Kinism and ethno-nationalism in Wolfe’s program. I share these concerns in no small measure.
Kinism and ethno-nationalism, we note, are not synonymous with “Christian Nationalism” (CN). Indeed, numerous figures who advocate for CN deny Kinism and ethno-nationalism, and their body of work fits that claim. In addition, I personally have identified different streams of CN, some more gospel-focused, others more law-focused, and still others homed in on mono-ethnic nation-building. CN is not one perspective alone; there are different views of CN, and those who closely connect it to the Word and gospel (the first two groups just mentioned) are worth engaging within the context of biblical debate as possible views Christians can hold.
But in my judgment, the vision of CN that is connected, whether explicitly or implicitly, to Kinist and ethno-nationalist ideas deserves still closer scrutiny. These ideas go against Scripture, as I am at pains to say in this essay. So we find in the case of some who belong to the CN movement. While they may deny a given term like Kinism and its provenance, their arguments (and public actions) at the very least fit with a Kinist and ethno-nationalist framework. So with Wolfe, I believe.
As noted, Wolfe denies that he believes inter-ethnic marriage is sinful (see the discussion starting at about the 36-minute mark here—this followed him saying it was “relatively sinful” on social media). I cannot know Wolfe’s heart and will not try. But as we will see below, other statements made by Wolfe seem to run in the opposite direction from his denial. I am no perfect interpreter to be sure, but Wolfe has been at the very least an inconsistent and less-than-clear communicator on this issue.
Beyond this, Wolfe traffics in racialist or ethno-centrist categories and references positively others who do the same. One example of this troubling tendency: his citation of an article written by Samuel Francis for the white-nationalist organization VDARE. Let us think for a moment about VDARE, Wolfe, and the specter of ethno-nationalism.
The VDARE Problem
The citation of VDARE and Francis in The Case for Christian Nationalism (page 39) is relevant in tracking Wolfe’s thought, I believe. Francis was a white-nationalist who spoke positively of “tribal behavior” (which is what Wolfe cited in his book). It is not easy to know exactly how Wolfe reads Francis. What we can know from Wolfe’s VDARE engagement is this, though: in leaning on Samuel Francis, Wolfe is not only starting a fire. He is playing with fire.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Francis was a racialist thinker. Here at some length is Francis writing for VDARE on the need for a “white racial consciousness”:
But the formation of white racial consciousness does mean that whites would recognize themselves as a race and their racially based behavior as legitimate, and hence it would mean the end of tolerance for non-white assaults on white people and the norms of white civilization. Whites would simply no longer countenance non-white aggression and insults or the idolization of non-white heroes, icons, and culture; white children would be raised in accordance with what is proper to being white, and norms openly recognized as appropriate to whites would be the legitimizing and dominant norms of American society as they were prior to the 1960s. Racial guilt and truckling would end.
(2) Based on this racial consciousness, whites must counter the demographic threat they face from immigration and non-white fertility and whites’ own infertility. This means (a) an absolute halt to all future legal immigration into the United States, deployment of the armed forces on the appropriate borders to cut off illegal immigration, and deportation of all illegal immigrants (and perhaps many recent legal immigrants); (b) the end of subsidies for the non-white birth rate through welfare programs, obligatory use of contraception by welfare recipients, and encouragement of its use among non-whites, and (c) encouragement of increases in white fertility.
(3) Whites must correct the political and legal order to end the political power of non-white minorities and their white anti-white allies. This political effort would involve a radical dismantling of all affirmative action and civil rights legislation as well as a good part of the federal governmental superstructure that entrenches minority power. It also would require recovering an understanding of constitutional law that permits local and state governments to govern, and private institutions to function independently of government.
The desire Francis held for social stability is an understandable one. As I have said elsewhere on one closely-related matter, Christians should approach immigration as a principled good, not an unbounded good (Israel was called to welcome the stranger per Leviticus 19:34, even as Nehemiah built walls around Jerusalem, and rightfully so.) It is right to advocate for bordered nations, to practice immigration carefully, and to oppose illegal immigration with all due energy.
But in the above paragraphs from the white-nationalist Samuel Francis, one sees a rather different vision of societal strengthening than the one I just briefly sketched. This is a program anchored in white grievance, as we could call it, that seeks the preservation and propagation of white identity and white political power. As we shall see below from a read of Scripture, the ethno-nationalism of Francis represents an altogether different mandate than that of the gospel-driven Great Commission. (So too does Wolfe elsewhere cite the white-nationalist William Gayley Simpson, as Virgil Walker adroitly notes.)
Hard and Soft Forms of Kinism and Ethno-Nationalism
As noted, Wolfe is a highly independent figure, and his brand of thought is quixotic and can be hard to follow in his writing. He does not directly avow belief in Kinism, for example, but on this subject his public body of work zigs and zags. Here, for example, is Wolfe’s name attached to a anti-liberal (and openly Kinist) text by Jan Adrian Schlebusch. Wolfe wrote the foreword to Schlebusch’s text, no incidental action. See this image:
This is a good moment for us to pause and think about different forms of godless ideologies that take people captive (Colossians 2:8). As I noted in my study of “social justice” for my 2021 book Christianity and Wokeness, there are hard and soft forms of ideologies. For example, there is hard postmodernism of the academic kind, and there is also soft postmodernism of the “live-and-let-live” Epicurean college student kind.
Some who embrace and affirm the softer forms of ideologies deny the key vocabulary and terms of the harder kind; they thus claim that they do not fit the ideological paradigm. This was true, for example, with many woke evangelical voices, who did not traffic in hard CRT philosophy but openly embraced softer versions of it, decrying “systemic injustice” and “racial inequity” (terminology owing squarely to Marxism, not Christianity).
So too with Kinism. One can reject the hard form (“white supremacy” akin to Aryan nationalism that most every Christian Nationalist I am aware of—including Wolfe, to my knowledge—would reject) but embrace a softer form (and see marrying within one’s own ethnicity as a societal duty or moral good). One can do so as a genuine Christian, in fact, albeit one who is retreating from the light into the shadows. In truth, I sense that some Christians and conservatives may not even fully know that they are being slowly taken captive by the aforementioned ideologies.
Here is the point: one can reject Kinist or ethno-nationalist terminology, including the Kinist or ethno-nationalist label, but nonetheless adopt a functionally Kinist or ethno-nationalist system. Labels alone do not worldviews make. Said differently, it does not only matter what terms you embrace; it matters what arguments you make, what telos those arguments have, and what worldview you display and advocate for publicly. In theology, philosophy, and all intellectual life, we deal primarily in systems, after all, not scattered ideas.
This was surely the case with wokeness (and still is, sadly). That is part of why I read woke-affirming evangelicals in different categories, as my 2021 book lays out plainly: 1) Confused and Undecided, 2) Engaged Yet Cautious, and 3) Convinced and Committed. I think all three of these categories likely apply in some measure to those trafficking in Kinist and ethno-nationalist systems as well. Promotion of these ideologies in full-blown measure per the third category, Convinced and Committed, is not merely concerning; it must be considered in the context of church discipline, in order that unstable men would not lead others astray, and would themselves be brought back to soundness and health by God’s grace.
This last comment matters. As I have said and now repeat, none of the foregoing or following is animated by hatred, but by love. We want Wolfe’s good. Without knowing where his heart and mind are (for I cannot know such matters), this much is apparent: the ideas we have referenced above—and will reference below—are dangerous ideas. They leave us concerned for Wolfe and others who follow him—not, again, out of animosity, but out of love, even the tough love of intellectual and theological critique.
Five Signs of Unhealthy Elements in Wolfe’s Project
Having introduced my concerns, I transition to consider five additional signs that Wolfe is in unbiblical territory in his thinking. In my limited judgment, these problems are not random, but are connected, as will be shown.
First, Wolfe has been very clear about the “collective duty” of “groups” to “be separate and marry among themselves.” Here’s the social-media receipt:
Wolfe is unequivocal about the need—the “collective duty,” in his verbiage—for groups to separate based on ethnicity and “marry among themselves.” Without triumphalism, this is the whole shooting match. While Wolfe may disavow the “Kinist” label, you couldn’t get a more direct affirmation of the core imperative of Kinism than this. By duty, groups should be separate; they ought not (by implication) inter-marry; they should not practice inter-ethnic marriage.
In response, we must be clear as crystal on this count. What Wolfe labels a “collective duty” is no collective duty at all. Stated simply, this idea is not a biblical idea. The gospel of the New Testament, after all, unites disparate peoples; it does not in any way direct us to “be separate” from any other Christian for reason of ethnicity or background (Gal. 3:27-28). We have freedom to marry within our ethnicity or outside it. But there simply is no mandate upon the people of God to “separate” as Wolfe plainly argues.
Second, Wolfe is openly racialist or ethno-centrist in the way he communicates. This, again, is not up for debate. See this social-media post:
See also this post, which rightly started a firestorm:
Wolfe has not taken back this claim. Though he regularly claims that he is misrepresented and misunderstood, he is not nearly as bashful as he presents himself to be. In fact, instead of repenting for his statement, he publicly called for “merch” based on it:
In similarly racialist lines, Wolfe wrote this in an article entitled Anarcho-Tyranny in 2022: "In the United States, this anarchic element is composed largely of black Americans." These statements, simply put, are not sound. They lack needed nuance and texture. (As an aside, note that the Western figures who have inflicted some of the greatest ideological damage upon the world—men like Hitler and Marx—would be considered “white.” So too for many of the most unsound voices in Western liberal Protestant religion—Schleiermacher and Fosdick and their ilk—were also “white.”)
In a given society, immorality may skew in certain demographic directions, yes. But demographic patterns, whatever they may be, do not allow Christians to speak in such uncareful racialist tones. Not all “white evangelicals” are part of the “lone bulwark” against “moral insanity.” Many are not, tragically. On a separate count, many of the strongest evangelical voices against woke paganism in the American context are not “white” in terms of skin color. That hardly amounts to a “lone bulwark” that is “white” alone.
In addition, though I do not have time to touch upon the matter of race essentialism, which Wolfe seems to traffic in here, I can say this. Race essentialism is completely bogus as a concept—see Acts 17:26, which I treat in this book.
Third, Wolfe has shown shocking ungraciousness to people of color. Here’s an example:
The death of Emmitt Till was not some esoteric “1955 event” that “libs care about.” It was a flashpoint that showed the inhumanity many “black” people faced under Jim Crow codes. An African American, Till was fourteen when he supposedly engaged a woman named Carolyn Bryant in a sexually suggestive way. For doing so, he was abducted, tortured at length, and lynched.
Whatever precisely happened in the encounter between Till and Bryant, caring about the horrifying injustice suffered by Till is not evidence of a “captured mind.” No matter who champions Till’s cause (and causal exploitation is real), all people should care about Till’s case. This response is simply a failure of Christian compassion.
Where, by the way, is Matthew 5:43-45 in Wolfe’s project? Where is loving your neighbor? Where is praying for your enemies? Where is application of this (admittedly challenging) command from the apostle Peter: …in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15).
Sure, we know that Peter’s fellow apostle Paul could arm up against his opponents, and fight fire with fire (Galatians 5:12). Peter was no shrinking violet himself, nor need we be. But having noted this biblical reality, we cannot help but ask: where exactly is “gentleness and respect” for one’s opponents found in the brasher elements of the CN program? In pushing back (rightly) against wokeness and weak-sauce public theology, is there a serious over-correction occurring?
Are the fruit of the Spirit—patience, gentleness, kindness, love, peace—in some cases equated with weak-kneed “Pietism”? If so, if the fruit of the Spirit are minimized by some promoters of a “Christian” movement, we cannot help but ask: in what sense is that movement still meaningfully “Christian”? So too with foul language, coarse descriptions, and derogatory terms. If that is our normal mode of engagement with intellectual opponents, how precisely are we honoring the biblical call—at least normatively—to exhibit gentleness and respect?
We find Wolfe being similarly disrespectful in his discussion of ill forces in culture. See this as an example:
“Longhouse mammies” is a term originating from the openly white-nationalist account Bronze-Age Pervert. This term derisively refers to “black" women in a derisive way. It is not appropriate speech, and it is tellingly sourced to a deeply problematic voice, one that is not Christian in any sense. One may well disagree with voices on the left; I certainly do as a thoroughgoing conservative. But this kind of speech has no place in the church.
Fourth, Wolfe has engaged kinist and white-nationalist voices in affirmatory terms. Here, for example, is Wolfe reposting a take on blasphemy from Bret McAtee:
Bret McAtee is not a widely-known voice, but he is an open kinist who was dismissed from the Christian Reformed Church for advocacy of such ideology. McAtee writes the “IronInk” blog. Here is how Alastair Roberts has described IronInk:
This is important. In plain view, Wolfe recommended a text steeped in Kinism (Wolfe’s post, linked in the screenshot above, no longer exists). This is not a text that dodges the Kinist question; it is a text that is openly and evangelistically Kinist.
On a different count, Wolfe has also engaged the white-nationalist “Zero HP Lovecraft” social-media account. Here’s an example:
Zero HP Lovecraft is a white-nationalist account that openly espouses a Nietzschean worldview. At minimum, Wolfe has acted with a considerable lack of wisdom in platforming such dangerous accounts. He does this regularly, often enough that such behavior is not a glitch in his system. It is a feature of it, and very few Christians have the background or training to know how troubling such platforming truly is.
Fifth, Wolfe openly affirms the application of Critical Theory to worldview. This may startle those who know Wolfe as an unwoke voice, but it is plain as day:
He has said the very same on other occasions:
This is remarkable and very telling material. Instead of rejecting “Critical Theory,” Wolfe gives some measure of approval to its power-based ideological approach. So we see that Wolfe’s program depends at least in part upon the employment of Marxist power dynamics. Again, this is deeply unsound. Those who affirm and employ Critical Theory approach the public square as if it is a power-game where most anything goes, not the place where we debate and test truth claims.
Because their approach sidelines truth, practitioners of Critical Theory often feel great freedom to color outside the moral lines. Here is how they operate in some cases:
—Instead of “open statement of the truth” (2 Cor. 4:2), they may obfuscate, manipulate, deliberately confuse people, and hide some of their true convictions and aims
—Instead of accepting the rules of scholarly engagement (back-and-forth exchanges, acknowledging the strengths in an opponent’s argument, responding in a mature way), they may reject those rules and play smashmouth ball, imputing motives, impugning their opponents, and claiming they are perpetually misread or misunderstood
—Instead of practicing fruit of the Spirit that include, but are not limited to, meekness and gentleness and reasonableness, they may posture and accuse and attack, staying perpetually on the offensive
—Instead of attempting to believe the best about others, their optimism and hopefulness and trust may recede into a shadow-world, leaving them with a jaded and fundamentally darkened vision of the world that tempts them to read only close associates as friends and all others as enemies
In noting these real corruptions of character that Critical Theory can and does produce, I do not imply that Wolfe never shows any Christian virtue in his public work. But I do know this: Critical Theory is not a system of the light; it is a system of the shadows, and those who embrace it will not easily resist its deformative influences.
Instead of embracing Critical Theory, Critical Theory should dynamited to oblivion. In its place, a worldview built on the rock-solid grace and truth of God should be constructed through the Spirit’s power.
A Theological Synthesis of the Issues At Stake: The Gospel Above All
Having surveyed Wolfe’s ideas in brief, we are better positioned to understand why—as seen above—Wolfe wants “groups” to undertake the “collective duty” of marrying one another. As mapped by ethno-nationalists, such a program yields social stability. A nation in tatters rises with a collective will to power and reasserts its ethno-centrist national identity, defeating the gynocracy, the longhouse, and the nanny state.
As articulated by Wolfe, this project has little to do with the musterion, the “mystery” of the gospel, which unites Jew and Gentile through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 3:6, 10). Wolfe’s worldview and life are seemingly impacted by the gospel in some form (he speaks of the Gospel but rarely gives it much definition, nor does he say much at all about the atoning work of Christ even where he speaks of the gospel—see 174 and 194 and 270 in his book, for example), but we can say this at minimum: the gospel is neither the focus nor the animating core of his project.
Indeed, Wolfe recognizes certain goods of the gospel to a degree (he seems quite disposed to the doctrine of definitive sanctification, curiously), but he does not put them front and center in his proposal for society. Instead, he makes gospel identity secondary and ethno-cultural identity primary. This is a reversal of the biblical framework, which recognizes our status as Jew or Gentile (covenantal categories first, ethnic categories second), but puts our shared identity in Christ at the foreground. We are “one new man” in Christ (Ephesians 2:15); we are not tribalists or ethno-preservationists.
This, in the final analysis, is the biggest problem with the Wolfean version of “Christian Nationalism.” It is theologically deficient. It is not sufficiently gospel-driven. By this I do not mean that the word “Gospel” is missing from the text; I mean that the entire project, unlike the New Testament, has little to do with the biblical gospel that unites believers and forms the one true holy nation of God (1 Peter 2:9). This is in fact what is missing from Wolfe’s public proposal: the gospel as the stabilizing center. It plays on the margins, yes, but is not the burning core.
Conclusion
When our identity in Christ is locked in place in our worldview and doctrine, we honor the witness of Matthew 12:49–50. Here, as referenced earlier, Jesus irrevocably alters the believer’s conception of blood ties, changing it forever, like magma passed into stone:
And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Juxtapose Jesus’ words with Wolfe’s confident declaration: Since grace restores nature and natural law contains all the moral principles concerning social relations, the Gospel does not alter the priority and inequality of loves amongst those relations (101).
These are opposite visions of our identity in Christ. Jesus centers his disciples’ identity in God, emphasizing the unity of God’s people. Wolfe tells us that the Gospel offers no challenge, no alteration, of our loves. This is what I mean by summarizing Wolfe’s project as gospel-deficient. The word “Gospel” is there; certain goods of the gospel are referenced; but the unifying force of the gospel is missing.
In contrast to this program, let me say in conclusion that the gospel definitely and irrevocably alters the priority of our loves. The gospel, in fact, rewires our entire theology, our natural loves, our understanding of blood ties, and even our political philosophy. Again, so far from being an abstruse excursion into the finer points of intellectual exchange, this is what at stake in this conversation: the very gospel itself.
Tragically, when a “Christian” system is proposed, even by a deep thinker like Wolfe, but exegesis and sound doctrine are minimized, the author’s own personal ideas and ex cathedra pronouncements (some of them sourced in “natural law,” albeit by simple assertion) take center stage. In the end, whatever motive is in play (and we cannot know anyone else’s heart as God does), we are left with a different vision of the church’s mission and identity than our gospel-driven Scripture communicates.
In summary, we confess this: by his cross-work for us, Jesus has altogether transformed our understanding of kin, of family, of allegiance, of community. Against what the world tells us today from polar-opposite ideologies, we are not divided by blood as believers. By the grace of God, we are united by blood—the blood of Christ.
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My thanks to Blake Callen for his research assistance—see his new eBook as a strong resource on the matters in question.