"Coveting Cesar's Throne: The case against Christian Nationalism" Sunday Evening Worship Service

Well, as I mentioned tonight, I do want to give a critique of Christian nationalism on the one side as well as religious uh liberty uh on the other side.

And to do that, um I uh want to talk particularly about these two books.

The first is called The Case for Christian Nationalism by a guy named Stephen Wolfe, and the second is The Religion of American Greatness by uh Paul Miller.

Um many of you perhaps know one of these two people.

Uh they are um both believers.

Paul Miller has a lot of overlap with with our own church and our own world and is a is a godly guy who was nice enough to meet with me and help me better understand his uh his book here.

So when I'm critiquing both of these views tonight, know that I'm not coming at these like they are um evil, villainous, treacherous things or anything.

Uh, but I do see uh errors or dangers in them that I want to make sure we're aware of as we engage with them.

But as I was preparing for tonight, uh these two guys often debate each other.

Um they've had debates with each other, and I've I've listened to one of them, and then I also thought it'd be helpful for me to go and listen to podcasts that they've done about their books.

And so I chose the most recent podcast that each of them did, and I just want to share this anecdote with you before we begin.

Uh the podcast I listened to with Paul Miller was hosted by Phil Visher.

Uh many of you might know Phil Vischer as um Bob the Tomato, uh, but he is now has a podcast on you know religious liberty and critiquing evangelicalism.

It is sponsored by uh Talbot, Biola University, Talbot Seminary.

Um this, the book I or the podcast I listened to with Stephen Wolf was hosted by a guy named uh Chocolate Knox.

He's an African-American Presbyterian out of Moscow, Idaho.

Uh uh really a phenomenal dude, and it's a pretty interesting podcast to listen to.

And it, that podcast was not sponsored by Talbot or by Olive.

That podcast was sponsored by a literal body armor company.

And that about summarizes this debate.

Talbot Seminary, body armor.

Uh let the reader understand.

When people, when I said this morning I was gonna be talking about Christian nationalism tonight, many people came to me and said, you know, the first thing you need to do is to define Christian nationalism.

If you're going to critique it, you have to define it, because on this, the whole uh everything else hinges.

And there are lots of competing definitions for Christian nationalism, of course.

Uh there's the one that NPR uses.

Never listen to anybody who's an expert on Christian nationalism, by the way, or an expert uh on NPR.

But NPR defines Christian nationalism essentially this way.

It's tough to nail any one of their commentators down, but they often do uh episodes devoted to Christian nationalism.

Um as far as I can tell, their functioning definition of Christian nationalism is anyone who voted for President Trump, anyone who thinks abortion should be illegal, and anyone who's a racist.

And they lump all of those together.

And if you check any one of those boxes, you're a Christian nationalist and you stand in for the whole of it all.

And this is an old trick to take a couple of good things and put in one bad thing and mix it together and make you answer for all of it.

That is kind of the functioning definition.

I I joke with NPR a little bit, but that is kind of the functioning definition of Christian nationalism in our society.

Uh if if you had any uh sympathy for President Trump, then you are a Christian nationalist.

If you think abortion is bad, you are a Christian nationalist, and all of that leads to racism.

A better definition of Christian nationalism, and one that you might be more familiar with, is uh given by a guy named Joram Hasnoy.

Uh he's a uh Jewish political philosopher from Jerusalem, and uh he has written a lot on conservative politics.

You probably know his name.

He's often on uh Fox News and different um news episodes there.

He defines Christian nationalism this way.

He first starts by defining nationalism, and he says that nationalism is a belief that nations are defined by a shared culture and history, and that nations should put their own interest above others.

That's nationalism.

There is such a thing as distinct nations, that nations have a shared culture and heritage, and that it is good, right, and proper for nations to look out for themselves over and against others.

That's nationalism, and Yoram just says, take Christianity and put it into that, have a nation that sees its shared culture and heritage as Christian, and that is Christian nationalism.

Now, by that, he often describes himself as a Christian nationalist, even though uh he's in Jerusalem.

Um, but when he uses the phrase Christian nationalism, he means more what he refers to as the Anglo-Protestant tradition.

He doesn't mean Anglo by uh race or anything, he means Anglo by Western Europe, the Protestant tradition, the legal tradition, the kind of laws and judicial system and separation of powers that came out of Western Europe.

That's what he means essentially by Christian nationalism.

The term, when he uses Christian nationalism, it is definitely more descriptive than prescriptive.

It's more like describing what our history has been than prescribing what it should be going forward.

And uh yeah, and he in his book on this often notes that people use the Christian nationalism label to mix good things and bad things together, and he says they do that intentionally to dilute what is good about our history.

So they intentionally take things that are good and bad, mix them together to get you to question what is good in our nation or any nation's past.

Now I spend a few seconds with him just because uh that might be a definition of Christian nationalism that you are exposed to.

He and Al Moller have been on each other's programs a few times.

When Al Moeller calls himself a Christian nationalist, this is what he means, that definition.

Nationalism, with our country having a you know a Christian influence and Anglo-Protestant tradition.

And so when you hear Al Moller say he's a Christian nationalist, that that's what he means.

Nationalism is good.

There is such a thing as Christianity, Christianity is good, bring them together, Christian nationalism.

So uh yeah, that Muller also, when he describes himself as a Christian nationalist, means basically he doesn't want to run from labels that NPR throws at him.

So when the liberals say, aha, you're a Christian nationalist, Muller is fine, just basically saying, fine, I'll take that.

I'm not gonna run for what you say is bad.

So those two definitions of Christian nationalism, I think uh both of them fail to get what is what I'm gonna call the kind of Christian nationalism that is pervasive, are growing more and more today.

Um by Christian nationalism you mean nationalism plus Christianity in our country's past and pro-life ethics, then great, be a Christian nationalist, go for it.

Um that's Al Moller.

But that's not what is meant by this book, for example, the case for Christian nationalism, or for the growing push for Christian nationalism in a lot of corners of evangelicalism.

Um I want to define it from these two guys.

First, I'm gonna start with Paul Miller's definition of Christian nationalism.

I'll put it on your screen.

Uh, Christian nationalism, according to Paul Miller, is the belief that there is something identifiable as an American nation, distinct from other nations.

That American nationhood is and should remain defined by Christianity or Christian cultural norms, and the American people and their government should actively work to defend, sustain, and cultivate America's Christian culture, heritage, and values.

So this is what Paul Miller means by that.

It's a very charitable definition.

It puts Christian national, he's going to go on to critique it throughout the rest of his book.

He puts it really in the most favorable light so that he's critiquing a good version of it.

Um he goes on to say the nationalist argument boils down to an assertion that our ideology cannot survive if it is disconnected from our um the components of our culture and our Christian heritage.

So that's Paul Miller's definition of Christian nationalism.

Let me give you another definition of Christian nationalism here from uh Stephen Wolfe.

He defines Christian nationalism this way: it's the totality of national action consisting of civil laws and social customs conducted by a Christian nation as a Christian nation in order to procure for itself both earthly and heavenly good in Christ.

So that's a more complicated definition, and you'll see some tautologies in it.

You'll see some kind of circular uh thinking here that Christian nationalism is what a nation does as a Christian nation.

So if you are a Christian nation, whatever you do as a Christian nation, in his estimation, is Christian nationalism.

And he, of course, goes beyond that in this book to really talk about the role of government.

You see it hinted at in his definition here.

The role of government is to procure earthly and heavenly good for its citizens.

And it does that by defending and advancing the gospel through legislation, through oversight of churches.

In his view of Christian nationalism, the government should have oversight of churches, and the churches should be informing government.

So as I critique Christian nationalism this evening, know that my concern of Christian nationalism is what is presented in this book and is what is critiqued by this book, and not the Al Molar, Joram Harznai, uh, you know, case for conservative politics form of Christian nationalism, but more this version.

Because I think this version is certainly more prevalent and more dangerous.

I'm going to give you a fourfold critique of it tonight, of the case for Christian nationalism, four uh critiques of it, and I'll put them on the screen one at a time.

First of all, uh Christian nationalism, it idealizes the past.

It idealizes the past.

Stephen Wolfe says that for a nation to be a truly Christian nation, it has to recover a former shared Christian ethnic tradition and heritage.

And when it you define Christian nationalism that way, that our job is an American nation, and by the way, you'll notice with both of these, even it's got the American flag on the front of it, with both of these books, Christian nationalism is a very American-centered thing.

Uh, something that really only exists in the United States.

And in that sense, it's disconnected from the history of Christian nationalism, which of course was not American and can exist all over the world, but the form that these two guys are interacting with is certainly American, and it calls Americans, Stephen Wolfe does, calls Americans to recover our shared Christian ethnic tradition and heritage.

So by putting it in the language of recovery that we need to recover what is in the past, it forces an examination of the past.

You know, examining the past is always good and helpful so you don't make the same mistakes or so you learn positive lessons from it.

But by saying that the role of the church and the role of government is to recover a shared ethnic history and heritage that makes you think about the past.

And it raises just kind of a basic question.

At what point of our country is a Christian nation and should continue to act as a Christian nation, but we need to recover that Christian heritage?

At what point in our nation's history did we possess that kind of Christian ethnic and Christian heritage that was worth protecting and passing down?

What generation or what decade or what little segment of American history was when we had what we want to recover?

Can you think of a time period in America's past where you said, that was it?

That's the Christian heritage, that's the Christian legacy that we want to pass down.

By the way, his use of the word heritage is not coincidental.

Heritage is something that you've been given, that you have the custodianship of and the duty to pass down to your children.

So when in our country's past did the U.S.

have a shared Christian identity?

Can you think of a time?

And here's a thought exercise for you.

When you think of that time period, go to other Christians that you know and respect, pastors and Christian authors from that time period, and ask yourself, how did they describe that culture that you're saying is the Christian culture we want to recover?

So, for example, Al Moller often pegs our country's Christian heritage, kind of the zenith of it, 1962.

You know, he talks about in the early 1960s there was not a spit of difference, is the phrase he often uses, between Republicans and Democrats.

Their foreign policy was the same, their domestic policy was practically the same.

There's almost no difference between Democrats and Republicans, 1962, and then of course the two parties divide.

So he goes back to that period.

There's other stuff going on in our country's history of that period, but it's just interesting to go back to what were people like, I don't know, Billy Graham or Martin Lloyd Jones saying about the American culture in that time period.

Were they describing it as a Christian culture or were they critiquing it and rebuking it?

I mean, Martin Lloyd Jones, uh Billy Graham was talking then about how our nation had lost God and lost sight of God.

Martin Lloyd Jones was critiquing the materialism of the American culture.

How we were such a materialistic and selfish people, the sexual revolution is kicking off then, and all of that.

I mean, the Christians who were then writing are critiquing evolution and how our country is fully embraced, we've lost the fundamentals, the church is denying the virgin birth, denying the inerrancy of scripture and all of that.

That's what was going on in that time period.

Some people want to go back further to the second great awakening.

And you think, what Christians were alive in the second great awakening?

What were they describing America's culture as?

I recently read a book about the lost sermons of Spurgeon by, again, Christian George.

He has an introduction to it.

The book itself is by Spurgeon, but Christian George's introduction.

It's incredible, and it talks a lot about how Spurgeon was critiquing the United States in the late 1800s.

Spurgeon called the American culture, quote, shameful and abominable.

He said that the United States should be receiving bloodshed sent by the Lord, and when we received it, it would be our just punishment for our abhorrent and bloodthirsty culture.

That's how Spurgeon viewed the United States in the 1800s.

Abhorrent and bloodthirsty.

You can keep going back to the founding fathers.

You know, how in the first Great Awakening, how did they view the Christianity in our nation?

What were pastors in the 1770s saying about Christianity in the United States?

And you're going to find the same kind of language, the same kind of critiques.

When you go back to our country's founding, it's worth asking yourself, like our nation's documents, the Constitution has in it the religious test clause, that there can't be a religious test for government service.

Is that the kind of thing you would put into a constitution if you were intentionally launching a specific Christian nation?

Our country's own history chose the route of E.

Pluribus Unum, out of many one, rather than in Christosola, rather than in Christ alone.

Our country took an assimilation route, just as it's founding.

Now, my point in saying all that is not to say, hey, the year of our Lord 2023, everything is fine, there's no cultural degradation, uh, the LGBTQ movement, the transgender movement, that's totally fine, it's always been this way.

I'm not saying that.

Nor is my point like the 1619 project is good and all of that.

No, that's bonkers also.

My point is just that if you're going to advocate for Christian nationalism, you need a sober view about the past.

And when you say that we need to recover our country's shared Christian heritage that we used to have, when did you see it?

It's a common refrain in people talking about Christian nationalism right now to say today we're living in Sodom because we've lost Mayberry.

You know, and I just I hear that and I think, you know, Mayberry didn't exist.

It was fiction.

Sodom was real, but the Leave It to Beaver era was not.

And this desperation is not unique today either.

Our country's first real presidential election, Jefferson versus Adams.

I mean, you read about what Christians at the time were saying then, they were rending their garments.

You know, if Jefferson wins, our country's history is over.

This religious experiment is game over if Jefferson wins the White House.

No more nation to pass down to our kids.

And lo and behold, Adams won.

Yay.

But then Jefferson eventually won.

And guess what?

Our country survived, didn't it?

We're still here.

We built a monument for them and everything.

It's right across the bridge.

It's really nice at night to walk by and see it.

It's great.

It didn't result in the end of our nation.

So it's just worth being sober-minded about what our nation's past really is.

My point is not to elevate or denigrate the past, but merely to point out by focusing on the desire to return to our nation's prior Christian status, that roots the argument in past culture rather than in scripture.

And there's a reason for that because the scriptural argument gets pretty weak, which leads to number two.

It idealizes the past and it impossibilizes the present.

I'm trying to get an outline that rhymes here, and I came up with impossibilizes.

So just work with me.

Stephen Wolf says that the goal of government is to recover a Christian heritage and pass it down a Christian ethnicity and a Christian identity and pass it down to our children.

It just takes place in the context of the United States, which is of course a democracy.

And the way the argument is presented, I think, is impossible.

It's impossible.

Wolf says in this book, it's not that Christian, he grants that Christian nationalism, in a sense, has never really worked in our nation's past.

But then he says in here, it's not because the ideas of Christian nationalism are wrong, but because we haven't tried as a nation strong enough.

And that I think kind of gives the game away.

I mean, what are you supposed to do?

Vote harder?

Press the voting button harder?

I mean, at some point it is a pure numbers game.

And you're dealing with the fact that the way of the gospel is narrow and we live in a democracy which is wide, and you take those two paths together, and you're not going to end up with a Christian nation.

If you stake your identity as a nation on the result of the ballot box rather than on the existence of the ballot box, you end up making political alliances that will corrode the integrity of the gospel.

If you take the Benedict option, if you remember the Benedict Option book, the advocation that Christians should withdraw from culture and make their own societies, if you take the Benedict option, don't be surprised when you partner with Benedictine monks.

I mean, the option is named after them.

We exist in a pluralistic society.

Now, for law issues, that's fine.

When you're advocating against gay marriage, for example, it's fine to partner with Catholics and Mormons and Muslims to advocate for a better definite more ethical definition of marriage.

That's totally fine.

On law issues, that's fine.

When you're advocating for criminal justice reform or whatever, a law issue, that's fine.

Partner with whoever shares your ethic on that particular issue.

But for gospel issues, that's not fine.

And the problem with Christian nationalism is that it erodes that distinction and it promotes a partnership on both law and gospel issues, with those, and you're gonna have to partner with those that are outside of where you are theologically in order to succeed in a democracy.

This is one of the genius behind the design of democracy, it forces collaboration, it forces compromise, it dilutes everybody.

That might make for a functioning democratic society, but it does not make for a healthy theological vision.

If you have any form of remnant theology that the church is the remnant in the world, then Christian nationalism will not work.

It's just simply impossible to have both a vision of Christian nationalism and a vision of the remnant theology that God has designed the church to be the minority, to be the remnant through this church age.

The way is narrow, and elections are real, and the majority wins.

And so I hear all the time people saying, like, the church, in order to take our society back, the church needs to rise up and vote.

If only the church, but look at all those liberal churches, they vote.

They line the buses up outside and they have all their people vote, and that's why the liberals always win.

If the conservative churches did the same thing, the conservatives would win.

And I mean, it's just not true.

There's more of them than us.

I mean, that's the reality.

It's not an issue of how many buses you guys vote.

I mean, it's not we don't need buses out here.

I think that whenever people want to hand out voter guides in the church, I'm like, do you really do you really not know the difference between the two parties?

Do you need help with that?

I mean, come on.

Come on.

And it's not an issue of getting more people to vote, it's a numbers game.

We are outnumbered.

So we want to grow the church, but we don't grow the church through political advocacy.

That's not the model for church growth.

The model for church growth is gospel proclamation.

And so if you have any form of Christian nationalism, you're gonna have to come to the point where you ask some basic questions like who decides what is best for society?

If that's your goal, the Christian nationalism is the government working what's best for society, what's best for society is the gospel truth, then who is deciding what that is once you get down to specifics?

What is the things government should be doing to advance the gospel in our world?

And in in this book, uh Wolf says, you know, one of the easiest things the government can do is Sabbath laws.

And I think, man, I'm I'm a dispensationalist.

I want to get off the train at the first stop here.

I would have liked to ride on the train longer, but I have to get off at the first stop.

You know, he says Sabbath laws are things that exist all over the country already.

Even in Fairfax County, there is a remnant of a Sabbath law.

You can't shoot deer with a gun on Sunday right now in Fairfax County.

Okay.

I don't know why.

There's probably some story.

Some church service got interrupted once, or I have no idea why.

But it's a rule that's around.

All right.

Whatever.

But phrasing that as a Sabbath law, and in the podcast I listened to, Stephen Wolf actually said, you know, you exempt people, you give conscientious objections.

So if if somebody conscientiously doesn't want to honor Sunday as Lord's Day, they don't have to.

They don't have to.

Like you wouldn't make a Jew follow the Sabbath law.

And I heard that sentence and it just gave me a long chuckle.

Of course, the Jews wouldn't follow the Sabbath laws, you know.

And of course, dispensationalists need not apply either, which is fine because Stephen Wolfe also says that premillennialists are dead weight when it comes to Christian nationalism.

Like we're an obstacle because of our eschatology, we're an obstacle for trying to create a Christian nation.

So if I sound like I'm critiquing this in a harsh way, it's okay, he started it.

Another reason it impossibilizes the present is he advocates that every nation should have one ethnicity.

Every nation should have one ethnicity.

And I'll talk more about that later on under point four, but for now, uh, you know, basically just the argument is that the Greek word ethnos is the word for nation, which is true.

The Greek word in the New Testament for nation is ethnos.

That does not mean the same thing that we mean by ethnicity, though.

So he argues that because of that, you know, the Greek word ethnos is the word for nation, that every nation should have one ethnicity.

I don't think that's logically solid or etymologically valid or right either as far as language goes.

But even if it was, like even if the word ethnos is applied to the Roman Empire meant one ethnicity, whatever.

Let me I'll pretend I believe the argument for a second.

Great, every nation should every nation should only have one ethnicity.

Okay.

Now what?

I mean, what do we do?

We have a nation with lots of ethnicities.

How do you where would you even begin?

And so he says, well, first of all, you freeze immigration, you stop immigration so that more ethnic diversity stops being added to your country.

But even if you could do that, and the government in some sense has been trying to regulate immigration for forever, even if you could do that, that doesn't help our current issue, if our issue is to have one and only one ethnicity within our nation.

It's an impossible task.

And so to hitch Christian nationalism to it makes it uh impossible.

And if you think I'm misrepresenting him, let me read you one of the sentences he said, quote, no nation, properly speaking, is composed of two or more ethnicities.

Well then, what do we do?

We're out of luck.

It's impossible.

And I would this goes back to the first point, it impos it idealizes the past.

Our nation intentionally didn't go down that road.

We intentionally incorporated many ethnicities into our nation.

Number three, it idealizes the past, it impossibilizes the present.

Thirdly, it institutionalizes the church.

It institutionalizes the church.

Democracy, I would say, and liberty thrive when there's a separation of church and state.

This is what I would call two kingdom theology.

I've preached in this many, many times from this pulpit, especially the Sunday night crew, and so you guys know what two kingdom theology is, I hope, but the the bottom line of two kingdom theology is that God oversees uh through the church, God oversees souls, and through the government, the government oversees roads.

So the government gets the roads, the church gets souls, everybody stays in their own lane, and we can partner just fine together.

But when the government starts regulating church worship, or when the church starts uh uh legislating or influencing uh legislation as a church proper, that's where the lines are blurred.

In Catholicism, there's the doctrine of two swords.

It says the church should have authority over both the government and the church.

I reject that doctrine.

And instead, the Puritan tradition advocates for two kingdoms.

There are two different spheres.

God is Lord of both, God is Lord of our government, and he is Lord of the Church, but he exercises that lordship distinctly in those two different spheres.

That's two kingdom theology, and that is the Puritan theology.

And the Puritan theology was a work in progress when you know John Owen, who advocated for the separation of church and state, he meant something very different than what we mean by the separation of church and state.

John Owen, the one who wrote uh mortification of sin and sin and temptation and all that, that John Owen, he writes in describing the separation of church and state that it's the government's job, or it's the church's job to identify who the heretics are, and it's the government's job to kill them.

Separation of church and state means that the government is not allowed to identify heretics, and the church is not allowed to kill them.

Separate, function distinctly.

That's what a lot of the early Puritans meant by separation of church and state.

That's what Calvin is going through in Geneva.

When you hear about Calvin, you know, drowning the Anabaptists or whatever, putting people to death, I understand that's the world, that's what Calvin is wrestling against.

He's trying to disentangle them.

But that's the world where, you know, it was considered progress when it was the church who told the government who the heretics were.

This happened in the United States.

This is the Salem witch trials, which are often misrepresented in the school and everything.

You jog your mind back to the Salem witch trials.

That's what was happening there.

There's these people that were accused of witchcraft, and the judge summons the main pastor in the area, Samuel Willard, very well-known Puritan, gets subpoenaed to testify in court, and this is basically the questions for him.

It was nothing about the particular girls, but the questions were, is witchcraft sinful?

And what's the punishment for?

What should the government do if we found witches?

You can see how this is a mess.

In our country, just bear the Constitution and the First Amendment is our escape from that world.

It's our escape from that world.

And I'm not saying that Stephen Wolfe advocates for a return to the Salem Witch trials, but he does advocate for a blurring of those lines.

He does advocate for the civil government overseeing the church.

In his language, he's rebuking slothful ministers, that pastors who are who are lazy should have to answer before the city council.

That would be a step in the wrong direction, but that is definitely the crux of Christian nationalism.

His argument for Christian nationalism hinges on this syllogism.

And I say his Stephen Wolfe, but this is typical in this form of Christian nationalism.

This is the syllogism.

A, if a civil government ought to direct its people to the true religion, and B, Christianity is a true religion, therefore, civil government ought to direct people to the true religion.

That's the main syllogism that drives Christian nationalism.

And so every syllogism is as solid as the logic behind it or is the truth of the premises.

So it's worth looking at uh looking at on the screen and seeing if you can identify the error.

And I would say the error is not B.

I'm all in on B.

But the error is A.

I would say the role of civil government is not to direct people to the true religion.

I'll close tonight by talking about what the role of civil government is, but that's the error right there.

The government should not regulate the church, the government should not reprove lazy ministers, the government should not police statements of faith.

In this vision of Christian nationalism, the government would sign off on changes of statement in faith, for example.

Most Baptist churches have a statement in their uh doctrinal statement about local church autonomy.

That churches do not answer to the government, but each church stands or falls on its own.

In contrast, Christian nationalism says, quote, government was always intended to order matters to man's complete good, which includes the heavenly life.

And I would disagree with that.

I would say government, that's the quote right there.

I would say that's not true.

It's not government's job to order matters for your heavenly life.

That's the church's job.

That's the church's job.

So that's my third objection to Christian nationalism is it institutionalizes the church and hinges or connects the church to the government in an unhealthy and in a dangerous way.

And number four.

My fourth critique of Christian nationalism is it idolizes ethnicity.

It idolizes ethnicity.

Now, overall, Christian nationalism comes from this desire to guard an ethnic heritage.

And I do want to say this carefully and clearly because I don't want to uh uh slander this this view.

When they talk about guarding an ethnic heritage, they are not talking about race.

And I and I believe him when he says he's not being racist or he's not advocating for a supremacy of one race over another.

When he using uses ethnicity, he's not talking about, I think he would even grant that race is a biological fiction.

Here's where he and I would agree.

Race is a biological fiction.

There's one human race.

There's not more than one human race.

There's only one human race.

We all come from Adam, we all come from Noah's family.

There is only one race.

Everything else is cultural, everything else is social, everything else is the result of people collaborating together and intermarrying with one another, and you get physical distinctions that way, language distinctions that way, but there is no true and proper racial distinction in mankind at all.

And I think he would agree with that statement.

So he's advocating for an ethnic tradition that is shared language, shared culture, shared heritage, shared history.

And every nation should have only one of those.

And so he says this is not racist.

So take him at his word that he's not advocating for racial distinctions, but ethnic distinctions.

And even if you grant that, you still run into the problem that the United States has multiple ethnicities by design.

From our founding, there were slaves in our country at its founding.

There were Indians in our country at its founding.

There were French people in our country at its founding.

The French.

Can you imagine?

Spaniards in our country at its founding.

They were all together.

They were all together.

Even in this area, you recognize Delaware's history is a different ethnic heritage than Virginia's.

That's true.

So if every nation properly has one ethnicity, and the secret for cultivating a Christian heritage is to guard that ethnicity, it is impossible for our own nation because our nation does not have that.

And I say idolizes ethnicity, not just to make the sermon outline work with all the eyes here, but I chose that word actually carefully.

It's the one I started with.

Because think about what a definition of an idol is.

An idol is what you put your trust and your hope in and what you think will deliver you and secure a future for you and your children, providing peace and prosperity for your posterity.

That's an idol.

If you think I serve this the right way and it will give my children a successful and healthy future, that is an idol.

That's what an idol is.

And so much of this push for Christian nationalism is built around ethnicity as an idol.

Language like, do you want to have a country left to pass on to your children?

Unless our country has a shared ethnic heritage, you will not have anything left to pass on to your children.

That is idolatry.

And everything I've said until this point, I would imagine Wolf would agree with me on.

I'm trying to present his view as as he presents it.

But I'm sure on this one he would object and say he's not idolizing ethnicity, and Christian nationalism does not idolize ethnicity, but I disagree.

I come away reading their books, and this is not the only Christian nationalism book I read, but this is just probably the most articulate one, which is why I'm picking on it.

It makes the argument most persuasively.

It certainly comes across to me as idolizing ethnicity.

And that leads to all kinds of clumsiness.

You know, Wolf has gotten himself in trouble for saying the inter-ethnic marriages or interracial marriages.

I'm going to use the phrase interracial just because it's a phrase that we often use.

The interracial marriages, they might not be sinful, but they're certainly not preferable, he argues.

In fact, he he gives this analogy, like gay marriage is no marriage at all.

A so-called gay marriage is not a valid marriage, period.

So he says interracial marriages aren't like a gay marriage, because interracial marriages are a real marriage.

But they're more along the lines of like a believer to a non-believer kind of marriage.

That it's it might be a real marriage, it's just not going to be good.

It's not preferable.

Your kids are not going to fit in anywhere, they're not going to have their own shared culture.

It's like that kind of language.

And so it dilutes what is being passed down to your children.

If you're this whole thing is hinging on you having a heritage to pass down to your kids, the heritage is a single ethnicity that is guarding Christian values and whatnot.

You can see how an interracial or multi-ethnic marriage would dilute that.

So it ends up with him trying to explain why, okay, I guess not all inter-ethnic marriages are bad, but it's just not wise.

I think when you find yourself having to explain yourself out of that, it's time to take a step back and realize that somewhere in your thinking something went wrong.

I mean, me, a dispensationalist premillennial Credo Baptist, I read this and I'm like, you know, I think a sign of ethnic a sign of unity and of the glory of a shared heritage is when two Christians marry, especially if they're from different ethnic backgrounds.

Like the more divergent their ethnic backgrounds, the more glorious the unity in Christ is, right?

I mean, that's kind of the way my mind thinks.

But if you've elevated ethnicity to the level of what's going to provide a secure future for your children, to the level where you say, hey, it's a close call.

That's his language.

It's a close call if it's okay.

Well, if it's a close call, if something is as glorious as the unity in Christ, like if your ethnic unit unity is a close call to your unity in Christ, if it's a close call, you're doing this wrong.

You're doing this wrong.

Elsewhere, he writes, quote, an important question is whether a Christian nation can refuse to allow the immigration of fellow Christians from foreign lands.

I argue they can.

And in the context, he's arguing about guarding the ethnic diversity.

So it's that kind of lines, again, that show an elevation of ethnicity to a point where it's providing you a unity that is more pure and more defined than a unity in Christ.

My response to this is to say that principles of liberty are better pursued than ethnic continuity.

Like at a government scale, the government is better off when they pursue liberty than when they pursue ethnic unity.

As I said earlier, a country decided to go with the pluribus unum.

Like that became our motto.

Out of many ethnicities, becomes a shared national identity.

Now it's debatable.

I grant it's debatable if a nation that's so given to that kind of pursuit of uh identity can survive.

Or if our current approach to immigration does threaten the future of our national identity, that's debatable, but that's a debate distinct and disconnected from the integrity and the role of the church in a pluralistic society.

Let me say it this way The New Testament does not give the church the mandate of preserving an ethnicity, but it gives the church the mandate of transforming all ethnicities.

We go into all the world not to make a new nation, but to transform every nation.

That's the Great Commission.

And the means of transformation is not the government, by the way.

A lot of this is just idolizing the government, honestly.

If you think the government can bring about ethnic unity or provide a secure future for your children, I mean, have you met a government before?

Like, government is bad at everything it does.

You definitely don't want to hand over to the government securing a future for your children or a heritage or anything like that.

Yikes.

So the Great Commission doesn't send you into the world to transform even the governments.

It sends you to transform people groups and language groups and ethnicities through the proclamation of the gospel as people are transformed one at a time, one at a time, one at a time.

They're transformed.

That's the Great Commission.

And the means for doing it is not co-belligerence, it's not political activism.

The means of doing that is the normal, ordinary means of grace.

The preaching of the gospel, evangelism, corporate worship.

That's how a society is transformed more than government intervention.

Now, a lot of this idea idolizes ethnicity.

It has, you see it as it reworks the order of the greatest commandments.

The greatest commandments is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

The second greatest command is to love your neighbor as yourself.

And so there's a big argument inside of Christian nationalism that says, listen, for you to love your neighbor as yourself, you first have to love yourself.

And when I was preaching through Matthew 5 earlier, I you know, I was preparing for this at the time, you know, a couple months ago when I was preaching to Matthew 5.

And that's what was on my heart right there.

I'd read so many people that are saying, in order to love your neighbor, you first have to love yourself.

That used to be like the self-help guru.

It was like before you can love somebody else, you've got to love give yourself a warm hug.

But they don't mean it by that like that.

They mean like in order for you to have any love for your neighbor, you first have to carefully protect and care for your own.

So you prioritize your own over neighbor.

Well, that becomes the opposite of the second greatest commandment, not the fulfillment of it.

Like I get on a national level, in principle, the case for nationalism, a nation should look out for their own interests.

That's fine.

That ethic does not apply to individuals.

There is a different ethic approach to governments than individuals.

And if you take the individual ethic and try to apply it to government, you end up corrupting the individual ethic.

You end up saying, like, listen, for the government to care for other nations, it first has to care for itself.

I get that when it comes to government.

But when you tie that to the second greatest command and say, for you to care for your neighbor, you first got to care for yourself.

That's the opposite of the second greatest commandment, not the fulfillment of it.

And even in the Old Testament, where the second greatest commandment is drawn from, it's usually drawn from interactions with foreigners.

Or with your enemy.

If you see your enemy, the load on his donkey shifts and the donkey falls over.

You're not supposed to laugh and rejoice.

Leviticus says, go help the donkey up because you're supposed to love your neighbor.

Or the foreigner, the stranger.

Exodus 23.

His ox is in trouble.

You help him because you love your neighbor.

Leviticus 19 says, you love your neighbor because you once were foreigners in Egypt.

And so when the Old Testament talks about loving your neighbor, it ties it to this idea of strangers and of foreigners.

You as an individual are supposed to love them, and the idea that you've got to love yourself first just dilutes the whole thing.

You got to get a difference between national and individual ethics.

Samuel, as the leader of Israel, was called to enforce justice.

And as an individual, he's supposed to love his neighbor.

He's supposed to love the foreigners in his midst.

Samuel was under Leviticus 19 and Exodus 23 also, and he was under them when he hacked Agag into tiny pieces.

I mean, Samuel gets it.

This is national ethics right here, and he is going to hack Agag to pieces.

That's because he's acting as a government agent right then.

You see the same thing with Elijah.

You know, Elijah will capture the enemy troops and he will feed them and give them Thanksgiving dinner and send them on their way.

And when King Ahab rebukes him, he says, Hey, I'm not going to punish them.

Come on.

He's acting as an individual then.

You have to have a distinction in those kind of ethics.

When I talk about idolizing ethnicity, one more place this kind of gives the game away.

Much of this, and without exaggeration, I would say the main theological point this book makes, and this is true in a lot of Christian nationalism, is that ethnicities would have developed in a sinless world.

Had Adam and Eve not sinned and kept going on their own ways, he argues ethnic groups still would have developed.

Even without sin in the world.

And his argument goes basically like, you know, as people begin to multiply, uh, this farmer here would need a little dam for his retention, you know, make a retention pond for his crops, but that is depriving water from somebody down the stream, and so he's gonna go with his neighbors and they're gonna advocate for more water, and this guy's gonna go with his neighbors and advocate for more water for them, and they're gonna need somebody to sort through this, and so you see ethnicity starting to develop right there.

And it occurs to me that a lot of the woke, like a lot of the liberal left and the woke movement, also makes that same argument that they so prize diversity that they they make diversity an end, and diversity something everybody should pursue.

They so prize it, you see them arguing also that ethnic ethnic diversity would have existed in a sinless world.

It's one of those cases where the far left and the far right end up making the same arguments as each other, they've gone so far around.

The world they met on the other side.

And it's a pretty easy argument to shoot down because you just ask yourself, where did nations come from?

Like, nations came from Babel.

They didn't even come from, even the fallen world didn't settle themselves into nations until God intervened, can infused the languages, and skedaddled them.

That's where nations came from.

That's where government comes from, Antony, right?

And so the idea that one nation is going to guard an ethnic heritage that will preserve Christianity to pass it down to the next nation through their government, I mean, every nation and every government in human history has tried to build paradise for their people.

And everyone has failed.

So I would say you should reject this form of Christian nationalism because of all those reasons on the board.

It creates, it's theologically problematic, it's problematic when it comes to church, it's problematic when it comes to history, it's problematic when it comes to the present.

There's no time period, past, present, or future, where it works, where it's even helpful.

It's just divisive.

But that doesn't mean that I embrace every critique of Christian nationalism or those that promote religious liberty over and against Christian nationalism.

Because the way this often plays out in the political world is those who are opposed to Christian nationalism do so from like First Amendment grounds, that there should be no establishment of church religion, and that and that argument also goes astray pretty quickly too.

When you start reading the arguments for it, you realize that those people find themselves, and I'm calling the religious liberty complex here.

I'm not talking about like the good religiously religious liberty groups, um, like the Liberty Council or those kind of groups that are very active and powerful in religious liberty in good ways.

I'm talking about some of the ones that have made like a an industry for themselves critiquing evangelicals and critiquing Christianity in the name of religious liberty.

That's what I'm talking about.

And those arguments I think also are very, very flawed.

And they're flawed, I think, for um four reasons.

I'm gonna put them on the screen for you real quick.

I'm not, I mean, are three reasons.

I'm not gonna go through all these, I'm not gonna belabor them, I'm just gonna go through quickly so we can end on time tonight.

But that whole religious liberty enterprise that critiques Christian nationalism itself has problems.

For example, they were silent during COVID.

It is not an exaggeration to say when a lot of the religious liberty movement spent more time.

If you remember, there was a thing where they were trying to open a mosque at ground zero in Manhattan.

Do any of you remember this?

They're trying to open a mosque, and one government agency said yes, and another government agency said no, and all this religious liberty energy was spent defending the mosque's right to open.

It was a big deal.

Like the ERLC, the Ethics, Religious, Religious Liberty Council, and all that.

Those people went all in to defend the mosque's right to open at ground zero because they said if the government can say no to the mosque today, they can say no to a Baptist church tomorrow.

Okay, that was the argument and whatever.

I kind of don't really care if the mosque opens at ground zero.

There's a million things I care more about in the world than that.

Maybe I should care more, but I don't, sorry.

But it was interesting to follow that debate, and then the COVID thing happens.

And those groups that were so powerfully advocating for a mosque's ability to open went missing in action entirely when the government closed churches.

Did you notice that?

All the people rending their garments about the mosque in Manhattan went to the Caribbean during COVID.

I don't know if they actually went to the Caribbean, they but they disappeared.

They spent more energy to help Muslims worship than to help Christians worship.

And that should be the warning sign that something is seriously wrong in that worldview.

In fact, a lot of them critiqued churches when churches started appealing the government and suing and winning lawsuits.

And even in Virginia, the Virginia governor at the time, the Democratic Virginia governor at the time, allowed churches to exempt, granted, he had a judge ordering him to, but he allowed churches to exempt themselves from certain religious mandates.

Those religious liberty enterprise people started writing letters to churches to say you shouldn't take advantage of religious exemptions because that's not what religious freedom is for.

And these people worked harder against churches than in favor of churches.

It really is tragic.

And I'm talking like letters they sent to school parents and to school administrators and to everybody saying don't take advantage of religious liberty because it dilutes it.

Just a thoroughly whacked argument.

Secondly, this religious liberty enterprise has this over-reliance on natural law.

And I bring this up when I talk about uh, because I want to talk about how they find themselves unable to interact in a coherent way with the moral dilemmas of today.

This kind of gets to the third issue.

They don't want to say, hey, homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says it's wrong.

Their whole worldview becomes an appeal to natural law.

What is best for human flourishing?

So they would oppose the transgender movement because it's not good for human flourishing.

They would oppose homosexual marriage because it is not good for human flourishing.

And so that puts them in kind of all kinds of weird arguments with like, well, what about a gay couple that adopts a kid and that kid's life is better now than it would have been had he, you know, been in an orphanage his whole life, so isn't that good for human flourishing?

And the debate becomes on that level, which is kind of missing the main points.

Natural law ends up failing.

Natural law is good and helpful in a lot of ways.

Like you can appeal to people.

Like, it's wrong to steal somebody's wallet because you wouldn't want your wallet stolen.

Like that's natural law.

Okay, marriage is good because that's how children are made, and children need parents.

Like, that's natural law.

Natural law is good, but it is not infallible, and it fails to persuade people.

What do you do with people who don't care about human flourishing?

Oh, that's good for human flourishing.

Who cares?

I hate people.

That's a lot of our argument today.

You know, if you find yourself putting all your eggs in the basket of natural law, don't be surprised when people start worshiping the chickens.

Don't be surprised when this whole worldview embraces just the worship of itself, really.

And thirdly, this religious liberty enterprise is unable to adequately address current cultural issues.

By current cultural issues, here's one.

The drag shows that are taking place in libraries and elementary schools and all that.

You know, a lot of these advocates for religious liberty say, hey, there's no we have no grounds on which to critique that.

Because if the government got to say no to a drag show in an elementary school, then they would also get to say no to the Baptist pastor in the elementary school.

So you gotta allow the drag show for kids so that the bat the pastor can come next week and share the gospel with kids or whatever.

And you know, I hear that argument, I think, man, the Baptist got kicked out of the library decades ago.

They're not allowed to give out Christian books in the library, are you kidding me?

And it's not, it shouldn't be hard to say that the transgender movement is wrong and sinful because God condemns it as sinful.

Like it should be that simple.

When John the Baptist opposed Herod's marriage, for example, you know, he didn't make an argument from natural law.

You know, marrying your brother's wife is not good for human flourishing.

He said, What you're doing is wrong.

God's gonna judge you.

And he got his head chopped off.

John the Baptist didn't get his head chopped off, by the way, for pointing people to Jesus.

He got his head chopped off for bypassing natural law and saying, thus says the Lord.

And so my critique of the religious liberty enterprise is that it dilutes that power.

It negates people.

It tells you, don't tell people, thus says the Lord.

Because then they can turn around and say, Why would I believe the Lord?

Well, thus says my God.

I'm very happy.

That's why I started some of reading Acts 17.

I'm very happy to engage in that level.

This is what God says.

Jesus died on the cross and rose in the grave, and you better put your faith in that because there is no hope for eternal life outside of that.

That's what God says.

God has a word for every moral encounter.

You can call things sin and you can call things righteous because God calls them sinful and God calls them righteous, and you don't need to tether that to natural law.

Sometimes if it's with natural law, great.

Sometimes it doesn't, who cares?

And if you say, yeah, but if you make an argument that way, that God says this or God says that, then what do you do when they make the same kind of argument?

I say my argument will win.

And if it doesn't, I don't care, because I'm not building a nation, I'm preaching in a church.

It's just fundamentally different.

I'm afraid that this religious liberty push causes Christians to be quiet about social issues that they should be loud about.

By tethering everything to natural law, it leads you silent.

It leads you looking at, you know, drag shows and the gay pride flag at every embassy around the world.

And it leads you looking at those and going, man, I wish I could say something about that.

I don't know what to say.

So that's my critique of that side as well.

Rather, I would encourage you to return to what the Bible actually teaches.

Reject Christian nationalism, reject that, I think, inadequate approach to religious liberty, and instead embrace the idea that God rules this world through two kingdoms, the kingdom of government and the kingdom of the church.

And government gets the roads, we get souls, everybody stay in their lane.

And he recognizes the government will not stay in its lane, and the Christian nationalism approach shows you the church often won't stay in its lane, and it falls to us to say, you know what?

The church is going to be the church.

We're just going to lead our Christian lives together.

So, what did God make government for?

I'm just going to put this on the screen.

This is what God made government to do.

Protect worship of the true God.

Notice I put protect, not advocate.

Protect.

I always think of the example in India right now.

We've sponsored a church that's planted in India that kept getting burned down.

They finally built across the street from the police station.

Steve Hawley always joked, they should have built across the street from the fire station.

But since they built across the street from the police station, it has not burned down again.

I mean, that's the right balance here.

We're not asking the Indian police to, you know, promote the preaching of the gospel.

We're just asking them to not let the church get burned down the fifth time.

You know, that's what I say, that's what I mean by protect the worship of the true God.

Protect resources.

This goes back to Genesis 8.9.

The animals come off the ark.

Government is supposed to protect the way wildlife flourishes and the food supply and all that, so we have food to eat and water to drink.

And again, in a limited sense, in a prioritized sense, you know, banning farming because there's a you know an owl in a tree.

You can't go down that tree because it's in danger.

I mean, the owl has wings, it can fly to the next tree, okay?

But protect resources so that there is food and water, to protect family, in Genesis 9, to protect life, whoever sheds man's blood by man's hand shall his blood be shed, and to punish evil.

That's what God gave government to do.

Government does that, great.

It tries to do more than that, bad.

What is on that list, that's what God designed government to do.

Notice what's not on that list.

Cultivate a shared ethnic heritage to pass down to your children so you have a country to give them.

Not on the list.

To transform nations from the inside out, not on the list.

To rebuke slothful ministers, not on the list.

To police statements of faith, not on the list.

Government can do that and be just fine.

Remember in Acts 17, God made from one man every nation on earth, and he let them go their own way.

So that the gospel could come and go through all of them.

There is not a Christian nation.

There can be good things in our legal past and our heritage that are worth guarding and cultivating.

That's great.

It's very different than what is meant by Christian nationalism.

God, we're thankful for uh the way you designed the world.

We know that liberty is better than slavery, that freedom is better than bondage, even as an analogy for the gospel, that we were enslaved to our sins, but we have freedom in Christ.

So we're thankful for that.

And we're grateful for our own country, for the United States, that has had a past that has promoted liberty in so many nations around the world, that there is such a thing as American exceptionalism, that missionaries have gone around the world to the freedoms that were first on display here.

We're grateful for that.

We embrace it.

We know our country has sin in its past, of course, that's unavoidable, that we have been a bloodthirsty and materialistic society, as both Spurgeon and Martin Lloyd John said.

We have been a society that is uh trafficked in slavery and in the brutality towards the children and the unborn, that has built bigger barns for ourselves and all of that.

None of that is um lost on us.

And so we look in the past with the good and the bad and are thankful for the gospel, which has a word for every moment of our culture.

We are thankful for the clarity of scripture and gives us a rock to stand on and encompass it, be guided through difficulty.