Insofar as Christian nationalism requires the state to use its power to privilege Christian faith and practice over other religions, it is technically illegal under current American law. Insofar as traditional Presbyterian/Westminsterian political theology requires the magistrate to use his power to promote Christian faith/piety and suppress false worship, it is technically contrary to current American jurisprudence. Anything a magistrate who is a traditional Presbyterian tried to do to act on the teaching WCF 23, including the duty of the magistrate to “maintain piety” and execute his office so that “the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed…” would immediately be struck down by the courts as a violation of the contemporary understanding of the first and fourteenth amendments.
From one perspective, Christian nationalists want to restore America to her original factory settings, a time when Christian faith held a position of privilege, protection, and influence. But modern America has, for all practical purposes, declared classic America illegal. That’s our dilemma. Christian nationalists in America want to rebuild a version of America that is impossible under the current constitutional structure because, as Christopher Caldwell has argued, our constitution’s meaning and use have been radically overhauled over the last 250 years.
Older America had no problem saying “no” to Muslim mosques and Hindu temples. Immigration law selected for those coming from nations had been part of Christendom. Modern America says the state must be religiously neutral and treat all religions exactly the same at every level of government. If church bells are allowed to be rung, the Muslim adhan must be allowed as well. If Christians can build sanctuaries, Hindus can build temples and statues. Never-mind the fact that Christian faith built this country and has been woven into our national DNA from the start; Islam, Hinduism, and other religions, no matter how incompatible they may be with historic Western civilization or how contrary to the America’s historic culture and constitutional system, must be given equal footing in the public square. America must be religiously agnostic. Public and political life must be secular. Of course the problem with this is that secular humanism is actually every bit as religious as Christian faith. It is actually not neutral at all, and it is (ironically) actually more hostile to Christian faith than other religions.
Older America held to largely (albeit not perfectly) biblical and Christian views of what a man is, what a woman is, what a family is, what a marriage is, what a baby in the womb is, etc. Modern America, in the name of neutrality, takes no religious position on these things, but then defaults to a kind of progressivism disguised as neutrality. Older America had laws restricting blasphemy against Jesus and the Triune God, Sabbath laws protecting Christian worship, and anti-sodomy laws. Modern America has new blasphemy laws that protect criticizing sexual perverts in the name of “hate speech,” and has rejected other forms of legislation based on Christian premises. Older America had a carefully constructed immigration policy, designed to protect America’s heritage, culture and economy. Modern America is globalist and multiculturalist; it thinks any expectation of immigrants to assimilate is racist, borders are racist, stopping welfare fraud to illegal immigrants is racist, and criticisms of third world peoples and ideologies are racist.
Classic America would not recognize modern America. America is trapped in a web of its own making. There is no way to fix what ails America without violating the new norms and standards. There is no way to save what’s left of classic America without breaking modern America. The sooner we recognize this, the better. Look at it this way: The modern American view of religious liberty would make it illegal for Boniface to cut down Thor’s sacred oak.
Modern American law has essentially outlawed public expressions of Christian faith. It has outlawed Christendom for all practical purposes. Sure, a privatized form of Christian faith can still get along; you can whatever ideas you want in your head and you are entitled to believe in your heart whatever you want. But all religions are totalizing in one way or another. They make claims on public life, not just private belief. Most religions have a vision for the wider community. But the kind of Christian faith that impacts and shapes the public square, the kind of Christian faith that would be informally or softly established, as we had in early American history, is now outlawed.
We desperately need Christian magistrates at the municipal, county, and state levels who will openly privilege Christian faith and suppress false religions, whether Islamic, Hindu, secular, or whatever. Such magistrates will have a hard time getting elected. They might have to fight all kinds of challenges to stay out of court and in office. But there really isn’t any other way forward in the political sphere. Christendom was not built by the sword, but neither can it be established or maintained without the sword. The sword of political power must be discipled just like the rest the culture. God ordained the sword of the magistrate to protect the righteous and terrorize the wicked; it must be wielded accordingly. Various levels of government should simply say “no” to Muslim immigration, “no” to sharia within their borders, “no” to the building of mosques and other places of demon worship, and so on. Further, we must rise up and say “no” to murdering babies in the womb, “no” to sodomy, “no” to drag queen story hour, “no” to no-fault divorce. We must dismantle godless, secular educational systems that use tax dollars to subvert Christian faith. We must destroy welfare systems that waste billions, subsidize immorality and laziness, and draw in third-world scammers who have no interest in fitting into the historic American way of life.
The public schools are a good test case in how America has changed. It is well known that in the early days of American history, the schools were deeply Protestant in character. They were “our” schools, reflective of the faith and morality of the people. Beginning in the 1830s and accelerating in the 1870s, the American common schools became government schools. Dabney and the Hodges famously warned what would happen: prayer, Bibles, and catechisms would be driven from the schools; he who believes the most (Christians) would have to give way to he who believes the least (atheists) in order to keep the schools neutral; the secularized schools would become the greatest engines of atheism and nihilism the world have ever seen. All those predictions eventually came true. It took a while. For example, in the 1950s, Dallas city schools were still offering high school classes for credit in the Old Testament and New Testament that taught orthodox Christian faith. Students would memorize verses on the deity of Christ. Today, those same schools have students draw pictures of genitalia and are taught gender ideology — but in the name of neutrality, of course.
Is there any way to re-Christianize the content of government education in America today? No, not easily. Not without breaking the system as it currently exists. This is why Christians are turning to Christian schools and homeschooling, even though they are time and money intensive, on top of property taxes paid for an educational system they do not use because it is totally contrary to their own worldview. But while we still have educational options available to us (and far more Christians should take them), we do not have the option to do that with our government. We can have many types of schools (at least for now); we cannot have many different types of government. We all live under the same government. And as of now, that government is deeply secular and idolatrous. To reverse secularization and re-Christianize our public square is no easy task, and most Christians simply aren’t up to the task, even if they would like to see it happen. Christians are a conquered people in their own land; a nation built by Christians has now driven Christian faith out of the public square for the most part.
Zoning laws are another example of this kind of problem. Where I live in Hoover, AL, a Muslim school/study center was kept out of the town, but the arguments used against were indirect, e.g., traffic impact. According to current Alabama religious freedom law (ARFA), a church or Christian school would have to be shown the exact same treatment in the same circumstances. Despite the unique role the Christian church played in the rise and formation of America, Christians cannot be shown any unique treatment. All religions — even in Alabama! even in the Bible Belt! — must be treated exactly the same. As far as the state is concerned, it’s not just that Baptists cannot be favored over Presbyterians or vice versa; it’s that Christians cannot be favored over Muslims or Hindus. The “no favored religion” principle makes the state officially atheistic or agnostic; it participates in the lie that all religions really worship the same God and Jesus is no different from Allah. But if the state is atheistic or agnostic, how can the state have any kind of moral basis for its laws? In a world with no God, there can be no right or wrong. In a world where God is unknowable, right and wrong are unknowable. American government now lives in this world of atheism/agnosticism. It is schizophrenic for a state to want the fruits of Christian civilization without acknowledging the kind of tree that produces those fruits. Do we think that Islamic and Christian civilization are equal? That Sharia is just as good as the Western, Christianized common law tradition that gave us due process, innocent until proven guilty, and trial by jury? If we do not think Sharia is equal to the law codes of the Christian West, we have to say so openly and legislate accordingly. We cannot treat churches and mosques as interchangeable religious entities and then wonder why our civilization is looking more and more like the third world. The West needs its defenders; Christendom needs its knights; classic, Christian America needs its godly and courageous patriots. Western civilization was not built on a doctrine of religious pluralism; it was built explicitly on the Christian faith. And Western civilization will collapse under the weight of religious pluralism; we need champions of public Christianity to step forward and speak up. If this brings us into conflict with current American religious liberty jurisprudence, so be it. We cannot run and hide from this battle forever. It’s coming for us; it would be better for us to ride out and meet it.
The culture war in the West is really a religious war. Abraham fought a battle against four armies to rescue Lot. “The Hobbit” ends with a battle of five armies. Christians in the West must fight on multiple fronts at once, against progressivism/LGBTQism, Islam, Hinduism, and other idolatrous faiths. If we are not willing to fight, we have implicitly engaged in a slow motion surrender. But at some point that slow motion surrender will accelerate into full scale defeat and we will realize we waited too long to do what needs to be done. We will have completely lost our country.
I’d encourage Christians in the public square to make explicitly Christian arguments that privilege uniquely Christian policy positions. Christ is King. The church is his body and bride, not just another nameless religion community. We should obey the Bible, Christ’s law book, in all of life. We should seek to reform or, better, dismantle secularized government schools. We should argue for zoning laws that do not treat mosques and churches as if they were the same thing. We should call abortion murder and sodomy an abomination because this is what the Bible says they are. We should insist on the magistrate’s role, under God, to seek the good of his own people, because preserving their way of life, insofar as it is compatible with Christian living, is worthy of preservation. We should seek punishments for crimes much more closely aligned with the penal code of Torah and the historic West. Many forms of sexual perversion should be criminalized because they are an assault on God’s sacred design for marriage. Divorce laws and family court need to be reformed to more closely match God’s standards and to recognize the sexual architecture God has built into the family. We need to ramp up the war on psychedelic drugs because they are a form of witchcraft/sorcery. And so on. We have to stop hiding behind a doctrine of religious liberty as currently framed; we have to reject and attack the notion of religious pluralism; we have to have to aim at recovering the Christian norms that normed American life, with varying degrees of consistency, for much of our history. Only this can save America; only this can make America great once again.
In line with the historic Christian faith, I am totally in favor of persuasion and opposed to coercion in matters of religious belief. The church should be evangelizing the lost (including the demon-worshipping idolaters who have been flocking to America in recent times) and Christian citizens should seek to persuade voters of principled Christian policy positions (where we have had some success in recent history). But political power always serves some religious end. There is always a G/god of the state and political power is always bent to serve the will of that deity. Unlike, say, a market economy in which there can be multiple winners and the pie of economic prosperity can grow, political power is a zero sum game. There will be winners and losers. Some will wield power while others live under that power. Christians should be a people who want their religion to win. And the only way to rescue America from becoming an Islamic/progressive hell-hole is for Christians to win. The point is not just to fight the political war or the culture war; the point is to win. Jesus is Lord; Christians should act like it, even in the public square. Jesus is Lord; Christians in political office should act like it in the way they wield power. The old constitutional system is largely dead; but Jesus lives and reigns.
The issue here is not the use of state force to compel belief. The Westminsterian tradition does not give the Christian magistrate the right or power to force or coerce belief. On that point the Westminsterian system and the American system are in alignment. But the American system, at least as it functions today, seeks to keep all religions siloed in a private box. The public square is to be kept free of religion, and intrusions of religion into public life (especially the Christian religion) cause immediate scandal in many parts of the country. “That violates the separation of church and state!” No, that’s true. We are saying the state should evangelize and we are not saying the church should wield the sword. Church and state are distinct institution, each with their own officers, functions, etc. Christian nationalists have no problem keeping church and state separated, with each institution in its own lane. The problem is not the separation of church and state; the problem is the separation of Christ and state, of God and state, of the Bible and state. The church should not rule the state — but Christ does rule the state. His Word is over the state. He is King of kings, Ruler of rulers, Judge of judges. Does the state as the state have any duty to acknowledge Christ as king? Historic Presbyterianism says yes, modern American jurisprudence says no. That’s the dilemma. Samuel Adams made it clear that when the colonists threw off the tyranny of King George, it was precisely so they could live freely under the gracious reign of King Jesus. That was the American project. But modern America has thrown off the reign of King Jesus the same way the colonists threw off the reign of King George. Classic America rebelled against tyranny in the name of Jesus; modern America rebels against Jesus and ends up in tyranny.
While the state cannot compel or coerce religious belief, the state certainly governs certain public actions. The laws and customs enforced and encouraged by the civil magistrate shape the people. Civil law has a pedagogical function in teaching people right from wrong. The civil magistrate’s words and example matter because they exert influence. The state ought to acknowledge Christ as king. The state should confess trust in God at an institutional level. The state should acknowledge the church as the body of Christ and the Bible as his Word. And so it is perfectly appropriate for the state to outlaw abortion and sodomy; to restrain blasphemy and obscenity; to conform marriage and divorce laws to biblical teaching; to implement biblical principles of justice (such as due process) and economics (such as private property). For Christian citizens to seek to influence the state to do these things, or for a Christian civil magistrate to seek to implement these things is not “setting up a theocracy.” The world is already a theocracy – or a Christocracy, to be more exact. It’s simply a matter of acknowledging that the gospel is public truth.
If Christians in America are to be faithful, they will have to challenge certain aspects of the contemporary American system. We have to be against America precisely because we are for America. We might be considered bad American citizens by some, but this is only because we want our citizenship in heaven to control the way we fulfill our obligations as citizens of America. We want to use civil power to encourage and privilege the true religion and the way of life that comes with it. How could we do otherwise? Isn’t this inherent in what it means to disciple a nation?
The notion of “exercising political power Christianly” might ruffle some feathers – including many American Christians who are, frankly, more American than Christian and have accommodated themselves to the dominance of secularism. But there is nothing godly about eschewing political power or influence. Throughout Scripture, we see godly people pursuing and exercising political power, using political means to accomplish godly ends. Christians in America today should continue that pattern.
It’s interesting that many who object to Christian political power do not object to Islamic political power. The same progressives who accuse Christians of seeking to set up a “theocracy” when Christians seek to outlaw and criminalize abortion or overturn Obergefell have no objection to and raise no alarms over what’s happening in Dearborn, Michigan. Everyone else is allowed to advocate for the worldview in the public square, but Christians are supposed to either check their religion at the door to the public square or just stay out of public life altogether.
Christians must reject and expose the myth of neutrality. Christians must seek a privileged place for Christian faith in America public life – as was the case for the first segment of our nation’s history. We must do this for the sake of the public good, not just for our own sake. The only way to preserve what has made America great – high social trust, the rule of law, freedom from state control, a virtuous and educated citizenry – is by promoting Christ as the King of America. These kinds of fruits only grow on one kind of tree – the Christian tree.
The classic American way of life has been almost entirely liquidated at this point. Christians have put up little resistance for much of the last 100+ years as our historic inheritance of Christendom has been systematically attacked, subverted, and destroyed. A perverted doctrine of religious liberty has been weaponized against the very religion that created the nation; an amendment (1A) designed to protect the exercise of Christian faith has been reworked in such a way that the proper exercise of Christian faith in public life is well-nigh impossible and illegal. We have betrayed our ancestors, and failed to preserve what they passed on to us. Like the prodigal son, we have wasted our inheritance. It’s time to return to our senses; it’s time to return to our Heavenly Father. We can only make America great again if we make America Christian again, and we can only make America Christian again if we make Christianity legal again.
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