For reasons I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m taking up Kevin DeYoung’s Six Questions for Christian Nationalists. I tackled the first one in that post, and got sidetracked — or did I? — talking about the rhetoric of that one. That turned out to be a discussion unto itself, so we’re handling the rest of them here. To review, here are the questions:
- Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?
- When and how does the nation act as a corporate moral person?
- What is the purpose of civil government?
- What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion?
- Was the First Amendment a mistake?
- What is the historical example of the political order you would like to see in America?
When and how does the nation act as a corporate moral person? Based on how God talks to nations, always. Now of course we’re using a metaphor here; a nation is not a person. But a nation can sin; Daniel and Ezra both confess the sins of their nations, and the prophets regularly take whole nations to task for their sins. A nation really isn’t just a collection of individuals; there’s authority in the entity. When we went to war in WWII, it wasn’t just a collection of Americans who all decided to grab a rifle out of the closet and go across the pond to pot a German or three. America went to war. The war is just or not; the treaty that ends it is just or not; we keep it or not. All these are things the nation does, and they have moral qualities.
Likewise, the nation has internal responsibilities, and those responsibilities include limitations. We can’t make certain sins illegal, because they’re beyond the province of the civil magistrate (lust, hatred, covetousness). We must make other sins illegal, because they are within the province of the civil magistrate, like adultery, murder (including in utero), or theft.
What is the purpose of civil government? Paul says the civil magistrate is God’s servant (diakonos) to be a reward to good and a terror to evil. The one time God ever laid out a whole system of law, it was in Torah. God did not say that system should spread to all the Gentile nations, but He did say that the nations would see it in action and be impressed by the wisdom of it. God institutes multiple authorities (family, civil, ecclesial), each with their separate responsibilities and powers.
What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion? Solomon built the Temple and dedicated it; he didn’t serve as a priest in it. The civil magistrate should never endorse a false religion, should be visibly devoted to the true religion, and should have the sort of public space that the true religion cultivates. Ultimately, every single person in the civil government should be an orthodox Christian, not because there’s some sort of religious test for office, but because every single person in the world should be an orthodox Christian. That’s what the Great Commission means, and it’s high time we embraced it.
Was the First Amendment a mistake? Of course not. Some of the uses to which it’s been put certainly have been, though. We’ve had some absurdly broad readings of the establishment clause (e.g., pretending it requires a federal judge to be officially agnostic on the question of whether God has spoken in the Ten Commandments) and some absurdly narrow readings of the free exercise clause (e.g., pretending that covid panic justified closing churches but not BLM rallies).
What is the historical example of the political order you would like to see in America? Having begun with a trick question, DeYoung is ending the same way. The American political order was historically unprecedented, and he knows it. It was an experiment, widely acknowledged as such at the time, and continues to be widely acknowledged. (For evidence of this claim, if you need it, Google “the American experiment” and have a look at the 575,000 results.)
There’s no reason to think a more Christian America is going to morph into something we can find in a history book. Our past has lessons worth mining, and there have been some wrong turns that we should repent of — taking the Ten Commandments out of the courthouse comes to mind — but we’re headed to the New Jerusalem! You can’t ignore the rearview mirror, but “Eyes on the road!” is an expression for a reason — you gotta look where you’re going. Our goal is to get closer to the New Jerusalem within the framework we’ve been providentially given, not to recapture some bygone age.
DeYoung is, in the main, a grounded and sensible guy, and his work is often helpful. I hope that this reflection on his questions will be helpful to you.
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