Christ gave his disciples the divine mission to go and teach all nations, baptizing them. Christians are called to change society.all Company, each Company. They pursue this objective with charity and zeal, respecting the free will of individuals. Wherever Christianity has gone, its charity has transformed nations and peoples.
Every time the far left is in trouble, they label the other side as extremist. One of these labels is Christian nationalism.
The term is now used to misrepresent the Christian right. Its meaning is so elastic that it can be used on any occasion. It’s vague enough to include any Christian engaged in the culture war. It has just enough punch to insinuate a menacing agenda.
Recently, the term has made headlines again, being taken up by those who foresee the danger of an imaginary theocracy of Christian supremacists who would rule America on the basis of the Bible.
Alabama’s Tom Parker’s Opinion
Chief Justice Tom Parker sparked the new attack with his concurring opinion on the Alabama Supreme Court’s recent 8-1 ruling on embryonic personhood. The outspoken Methodist chief justice supported his opinion by citing God, Scripture, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and others.
The February 16 decision was enough to trigger indignation among leftists and moderates. Washington Post associate editor Ruth Marcus wrote a column titled: “Welcome to the Theocracy.” The most moderate New York Times Columnist David French immediately attacked this view, calling it a worrying development.
Mr. French said he had no problem with people being Christian or even asserting their beliefs in the public square. However, they should not advocate deference to Christianity in the body politic. Christians should not seek to return America to its Christian roots, even if it is done through logical and gentle persuasion.
A vague religion is ideal
Mr. French’s attitude recalls the comment of the late Senator Eugene McCarthy, who once said that there were only two types of religion allowed in America: strong beliefs that are vaguely expressed, or vague beliefs that are strongly expressed.
These liberals believe that Christians should be free to believe whatever they want, as long as it remains vague and ineffective. They may strongly desire their salvation but not make it a program for everyone else.
Mr. French’s main criticism of loudly spoken, strongly spoken Christianity is that it devolves into Christian identity politics. Christians end up wanting to change the whole of society and convert the world. Imagine that.
The mandate of the seven mountains
He joins many others who criticize Judge Parker’s support of the Seven Mountains Mandate promoted by the Pentacostalist dominionist movement. This mandate states that Christians must move out of the place of prayer and seek to exert dominion over seven key societal institutions: family, church, education, media, arts, business and government.
Liberals consider this desire to resume culture as intolerable since any Christian domination would reduce non-Christians to the rank of second-class citizens. These liberals demand more than a separation of church and state. They demand the separation of Church and culture.
If these liberals had their way, Christians would be doomed to lose the culture war since all religion would then be reduced to a sense of personal well-being for the weak of character – a typical liberal characterization. Ultimately, this is what the Liberals want.
The nature of Christianity
There are two things wrong with these recent critiques of Christian nationalism labeled left-wing.
The first involves a gross misunderstanding of the nature of Christianity itself.
Christianity is a religion of identity. Through baptism, the person is reborn in Christ and is ontologically transformed. The person and the Christian form a single unit. Christianity is not a hobby, pastime, or interest. It’s part of who we are. This Christianity manifests itself in everything Christians do – in all (seven) areas.
Christianity is also, by nature, expansive. Joyful Christians tend to spread the “good news” of the gospel to everyone so that others can share in their joy as well.
Indeed, Christ gave his disciples the divine mission to go and teach all nations, by baptizing them. Christians are called to change society.all Company, each Company. They pursue this objective with charity and zeal, respecting the free will of individuals. Wherever Christianity has gone, its charity has transformed nations and peoples.
Christians are also called to denounce sin and injustice. They cannot remain silent in the face of inequity. Thus, Christians create favorable conditions for the practice of faith and for the benefit of the whole of society, and not only its Christian portion. They oppose sins and obstacles that prevent the practice of virtue.
Change society for the better
Faithful Christians change society for the better. They will necessarily influence the seven key societal institutions and seek to change them. They have always done it with zeal. Asking them to do the opposite is asking them to stop being true Christians.
Indeed, American history has long reflected this dominant Christian influence in the public square. For example, among the English jurists Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) and Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), religious references in the country’s legal tradition date back to the colonial era. The Christian influence in other areas of the Seven Mountains is undeniable in the birth and development of the country.
This is why Christians must assert their faith forcefully and unapologetically. If they follow the liberals’ advice to practice a vague and attenuated Christianity, the result will be superficial Christians unable and unwilling to stand up for what they believe. The Church will become a sentimental group of souls seeking feel-good spiritual experiences, not faith. All will be reduced to selfish individuals who do not care for the good of their neighbor or truly love God. This policy would make everything liberal, even Christianity.
The double standards of liberalism
The second problem for those who today criticize what they call Christian nationalism is that they do not hold their own avowed ideology – liberalism – to the same rigid standards of irrelevance.
A simplified definition of liberalism is an ideology that claims the right to feel, think, and do whatever unbridled passions desire. Liberalism has other elements that define it, but it always ends in removing the brakes that Christian civilization imposes on these passions.
Over the decades, liberalism has eroded the Christian values that maintain order in society by doing exactly what it accuses sincere Christians of wanting to do: influence and dominate societal institutions. This is just another example of blatant liberal projection. However, there is a difference. Those who subscribe to liberalism impose their agenda on society. They don’t offer it.
Liberal tyranny
Those who defend the ideology of liberalism make no effort to vaguely express their deeply held beliefs. They have established themselves well within the seven key societal institutions and are dominant there. There is no concern for Christians who rightly complain about being reduced to second-class citizens at school board meetings and library hearings.
Liberal tyranny has now reached a post-liberal phase where even the will of the democratic majority must be sacrificed on the altar of consciousness-raising and identity politics. Institutions, such as schools, must accommodate the extravagant behavior of anyone who identifies with something else and demands rights. Companies like Bud Light’s Anheuser-Busch will choose lose $1.4 billion rather than apologizing to its vast consumer base for the single comment about Dylan Mulvaney’s promotion of transgender activism.
Christians have no choice but to defend moral principles and challenge these disorderly acts that harm the common good. This is not a theocracy but a return to the eternal principles that underlie the Christian order.
This is not about “Christian nationalism,” but about Christians fighting for the common good – or better, affirming that there is objective good and objective evil. They affirm the reality of a loving God who exists despite the absurd denials of liberals. They strive to uphold standards of morality and decency in a world that glorifies the opposite.
Mr. French’s call for a vaguely affirmed Christianity is consistent with his demand that everyone take a seat at his postliberal table, including the porn drag queens whose indecent stories he so passionately defends.
Indeed, it is not Christians who create theocracies but liberals like Mr. French and Ruth Marcus who construct and defend the dictatorship of relativism and imagine caricatures of what they suppose to be a Christian order. These imaginations would mimic the liberal tyranny now imposed on the nation since liberals can only think in terms of their own power structures, devoid of charity, virtue, or Christian grace. These liberal fantasies are not Christian.
Distribution of an order
Meanwhile, the liberal order collapses as the last moral constraints are abandoned. A new postmodern disorder arises, one that breaks all the old rules of engagement.
In the face of ever more radical moral outrages, Christians who respond are expected to pretend that they do not see the results of broken families, broken communities, and empty churches that litter the social landscape.
This new postliberal disorder would destroy all existing narratives that order society. It would be a phantasmagorical meeting place where wills and passions clash. This will lead to a postmodernity described by the Czech poet Václav Havel, where “everything is possible and nothing is certain”.
Americans do well when they strive for the opposite in every way possible: a Christian America that trusts in God.
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The featured image is “Christ with His Disciples” (2016) by AN Mironov. This file is licensed Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
