Reckoning with Christian Nationalism

On saturday, 6 June, I was privileged to participate in a conference at Wycliffe College in Toronto devoted to Reckoning with Christian Nationalism: A Reformed Response. The principal speaker was James Wood, who teaches theology at Redeemer University and is one of the contributors to the Presbyterian Church in America's just-released report on the subject. There was obviously a lot of interest in the subject matter, as reflected in the large number of people who registered for the event.

Wood gave three talks, and two of us served as respondents, including yours truly and Kristen Deede Johnson, the 11th principal of Wycliffe College, which celebrates its 150th year of existence in 2027. Last weekend's conference occurred under the auspices of the recently established Reformed House of Studies at Wycliffe. The first talk was devoted to "Contemporary Arguments for Christian Nationalism," the second to "Christian Nationalism in the Reformed Tradition," and the third to "Critiquing Christian Nationalism," in which Wood proposed as an alternative to both CN and two-kingdoms separatism what he labels ecclesiocentric post-liberalism. Near the end the three of us formed a panel at the front to interact with questions posed from the audience.

Although my own response was scheduled after the second talk, my response covered all three talks. I pointed to what I believe are the two principal flaws of CN: First, it unduly ascribes responsible agency to a phenomenon better understood as a mere network of individuals, institutions, associations, and communities bound together by shared language, mores, and customs, and possibly, but not necessarily, by a shared political framework. Second, even if one could identify more precisely what a nation is, CN makes entirely too much of it, elevating it to godlike status.

I wrapped up my response by offering four points to be kept in mind in articulating an alternative to CN:

First, politics is a distinctive area of life whose structure must be taken seriously and ought not be bent to fit into preconceived theological categories. Politics is politics, no more and no less. In the present age it functions modestly, and in nonutopian fashion, to enable people with different interests, convictions, and aspirations to live with each other under a common constitutional and legal framework. The late British political scientist Sir Bernard Crick aptly defined politics as the peaceful conciliation of diversity within a particular unit of rule. Politics becomes necessary because of this diversity and is the principal alternative to civil conflict. In this respect, subordinating politics to ecclesiology in the narrow sense, viz., to the church institution, is to ignore the empirical structure of political life in a differentiated society.

Second, while Christians, as members of the body of Christ, have every right and responsibility to call political authority to its God-given task of doing public justice, we do well to recognize that our success in so doing will depend on a variety of factors lying outside our control. A major such factor is that Christians share political space with other faith communities, and these may thwart our efforts, not because they are necessarily vicious or evil, but because they differ in their understanding of what justice requires both in general and on specifics. Moreover, as Christians we should be the first to admit that we may err in our understanding of justice, simply because our vision is so often distorted by sin. Kuyper’s notion of common grace, namely, that God’s blessings flow to the just and the unjust alike (Matthew 5:45), stands as an element tempering our own pride, teaching us to listen before we speak. And that means listening even to those whom we already suspect may prove to be our opponents.

Third, we need to take seriously historical development, recognizing that what may have been appropriate at one historical moment may not necessarily be so in a later age. To indicate what the classical Reformed confessions envisioned to be the task of the civil magistrate in the 16th and 17th centuries cannot by itself tell us what its task should be in the more differentiated societies of the 21st century. The confessions generally charged the magistrate with upholding both tables of the Decalogue, based on the assumption of religious uniformity within a particular princely realm. This was in an era before the development of a distinct political life potentially engaging large numbers of citizens with varying convictions and interests, and before the differentiation of political from ecclesiastical authority. In our present context, the expectation that the magistrate will simply receive the wisdom of the church will have to be tempered by the more modest hope that our political communities will at least listen to the wisdom that the body of Christ has to offer. But we will not be the only community that our political leaders will be hearing and taking account of. And that’s probably the best that we can expect in the present age.

Fourth, we should all hope and pray that the nations, however we define them, will one day bow before the Prince of Peace and acknowledge the sovereignty of God over the whole of life, including political life. This is obviously a worthy goal to work for. But it is almost certainly an eschatological hope for a distant future in which every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord (Philippians 2:10-11). In the meantime, we are responsible, not so much for taking our political systems captive for Christ but, as James Davison Hunter puts it, for being a faithful presence in the many spheres of life in which God has placed us, confident that his will shall indeed be done on earth as in heaven.

The event took place in a large hall at Wycliffe College flanked by portraits of past principals.

 

Photographs were taken by my great friend Eric Hogeterp, who accompanied me to Toronto and back on the GO bus. Here we are at Union Station, downtown Toronto: