Full Contact Christianity

Christian Nationalism has gotten to be enough of a talking point that even I am speaking to it; it has come to this. I commend to your attention Kevin DeYoung’s Six Questions for Christian Nationalists, but not particularly because I’m a fan. Beginning by talking about how he could almost be a Christian nationalist (but not quite), DeYoung positions himself as the loyal opposition, the thoughtful friend who’s just raising some things that more impetuous voices maybe haven’t thought of. By most accounts, he’s eminently qualified to be just such a voice: frequently grounded, charitable, and quite thoughtful.

Which makes his performance all the more disappointing.

While I haven’t felt a need to embroider “Christian Nationalist” on the back of my jacket or anything, I’ve certainly been accused of being one, and I’ve a bunch of friends who cheerfully cop to it. So it seems like something worth speaking to. Without further ado, here are the questions:

1. Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?
2. When and how does the nation act as a corporate moral person?
3. What is the purpose of civil government?
4. What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion?
5. Was the First Amendment a mistake?
6. What is the historical example of the political order you would like to see in America?

I’ll take up questions 2-6 in another post, because it turns out that first question deserves a whole lot of consideration.

Antisemitism, racism, and Nazism are sin, and not the subtle kind that takes grey hair and decades of walking with God to see. All three of them are big, ugly, obvious violations of very basic biblical ethics. If you’re feeling like antisemites, racists, or Nazis might “kind of have a point,” I suggest prayer, fasting, and several gallons of brain bleach. Of course, all three terms have been badly debased in current discourse; in their slur-from-left-of-center usage, they apply to anybody to the right of Trotsky, especially if he’s winning an argument. That’s another discussion; here I’m assuming the real definitions of all three terms. Which is assuming quite a lot, but let that go for now.

With that said, why a whole blog post about the question? Let’s look at it again: Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?

Notice anything odd about this? I see two things that concern me. The first is the rhetorical strategy of leading with this question. The assumption none-too-subtly embedded here is that the mere designation “Christian nationalist” implies some sort of legacy of antisemitism, racism, or Nazism which must be dealt with. If a person is a Christian nationalist, then we should immediately check for those other things too — or so DeYoung would have us believe.

Pardon me, schoolmarm, but who sez? This purported legacy would be news to the Armenians, who were the first to become a Christian nation in A.D. 301. It would be a real shock to the Kingdom of Aksum (in modern-day Ethiopia), which became the second Christian nation shortly thereafter, in the 320s. That’s where Christian nationalism got its start: Asia and Africa. When, exactly, did the idea of a Christian nation acquire antisemitic/racist/Nazi connotations? Or did it ever?

I think this is bald assumption on DeYoung’s part, and a particularly odd assumption given his admission that the term “Christian nationalism” has no single accepted definition. The term is being applied to everybody from George Washington to Randall Terry to pastors who just think America should stop doing things that make God mad. Which is a good idea, come to think of it. What is it about that that somehow suggests antisemitism? Nothing, that’s what — which means DeYoung is just indulging in a little old-fashioned guilt-by-association smear here. Balls.

“Come on, Tim,” you’ll say. “Surely you’re overthinking this. It’s just a question. You can just say you’re against those things and move on.”

Which brings us to the second issue. Look at the question again: Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism? Consulting a dictionary, I find that “renounce” means to give up something once held, to reject something once believed, to repudiate an authority once followed. In other words, “Do you renounce antisemitism, etc.?” is the equivalent of “Have you stopped beating your wife?” I never held to any of that bilge; I have no need to renounce it. DeYoung thinks Christian nationalists need to renounce these things. What’s he trying to say?

Kevin DeYoung may not be doing this entirely consciously — I don’t know his heart, after all, just what he said — but he’s far too educated and articulate not to know what the words mean. What he’s doing with his very first question is positioning Christian Nationalism as necessarily connected to antisemitism, racism, and Nazism in some undefined way. Then he generously offers the particular person answering the question an opportunity to repent of their associations. “Why yes, Kevin, I have stopped beating my wife” is the price of admission to even have the rest of the conversation.

This is a clinic in well-constructed, if cheap, rhetoric. I commend it as an example worthy of study by all rhetoricians. The mechanics of the smear are subtle; the effect is anything but. It is a verbal act of war, and he’s employing it against his brothers.

Kevin DeYoung should renounce his unjustified smear tactics. And yes, I meant renounce.