The Case for Christian Nationalism

First off, um, I'm the least controversial speaker you have today.

You have, [laughs] you have Stephen Wolfe, the author of The Rise of Christian Na- or The Case for Christian Nationalism.

Absolutely brilliant.

You've got Beau French, you've got Mike Howe, others, a whole slate of others.

And, and, and then it's like in both of those situations that, that the author talks about in, in his book, it's almost like the same thing, right? It's like a person that was willing to meet them on their terms and not judge them or view them as crazy, right? Um, it's, it's one of the things we do a lot on this show.

Like we talk to all kinds of people, you know, the, the co-founder of the Satanic Temple, um, you know, Kevin Roberts, um, all kinds of people, um, the, uh, the author of the, uh, "The Case for Christian Nationalism," you know, people that like I would not agree with like on the surface, but I can have a man-to-man conversation with them.

Like, "Yeah, tell me why did you write that?" You know? And it seems like for you, that was sort of like the thing, the thing that sort of like that made you have a second thought about the way you were treating people or at least the views you had about people.

Um, like I, I'd love to get your thoughts on that, on whether or not like, like w- was that a, an effective strategy sort of tailor-made for you, or have you actually seen this sort of like play out in other sort of forms, especially with like your, your, um, your organization that, that you have, um, going right now?

And then as you were having this debate, he compared David Van Drunen to Stephen Wolfe.

Stephen Wolfe wrote The Case for Christian Nationalism, which Moscow, Idaho published a couple of years ago now.

And it obviously took this whole conversation by storm.

And people are still debating over that book and all those things.

a theocratic monarchy, right? That's not what I'm saying.

I would instead like to summarize how Stephen Wolfe, the author of The Case for Christian Nationalism, defines the term.

So Of course, when you have a conversation, you need to all be in agreement of what the definition of these terms means.

So let me just go ahead and do that so that this can't be misconstrued.

According to Paul Miller, I'm probably a Christian nationalist.

And then you use Stephen Wolfe in his book, The Case for Christian Nationalism, as the primary foil for your basic argument.

And you say, according to that person's definition, I'm definitely not a Christian nationalist.

My criticism is Stephen Wolfe's definition, as important as it is, as serious a scholar and as impressive the work that his book is, is not the final word on what Christian nationalism means.

And in fact – I'm going to let you finish.

No, no, no. You're good.

I'm just kidding.

In fact – The fact that we just had yet another book, a very important and terrific book that we've previously talked about, written by numerous authors, including Al Mohler, Rusty Reno, Paul Miller, Doug Wilson, and Joe Rigney, illustrates that there are still a very vibrant conversation to be had about what exactly it is that we are trying to talk about and how we get there.

... just to be clear.

But the criticism of, like, we're taking two steps from scripture, and by the way, the biblical hermeneutic that we, we've talked about, also the natural, the natural revelation, right? The, uh, uh, cr- you know, Stephen Wolfe makes this argument at the beginning of The Case for Christian Nationalism where he talks about how we can from nature determine man's telos, and it's actually from how he's created and what he does.

In other words, God has made man for a pers- particular purpose.

Therefore, by, by observing, interestingly enough, observing how man acts, we can actually determine what he's meant for.