In 2023, various Christians got together and decided to formulate a statement to articulate Christian Nationalism. At the time, they released a draft version and in the immediate aftermath of the 2024 election, they released the final version of the statement. The authors listed on the statement are James Silberman and Dusty Deevers with contributing editors listed as William Wolfe, Joel Webbon, Jeff Wright, and Cory Anderson.
The opening definition of Christian Nationalism is consistent with that which Stephen Wolfe laid out in The Case for Christian Nationalism.
DEFINITION
CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM is a set of governing principles rooted in Scripture’s teaching that Christ rules as supreme Lord and King of all creation, who has ordained civil magistrates with delegated authority to be under Him, over the people, to order their ordained jurisdiction by punishing evil and promoting good for His own glory and the common good of the nation (Isaiah 9:6-7; John 1:1-3; 3:35; 17:2; Ephesians 1:20-21; Philippians 2:9-11; Colossians 1:15-18; Romans 13:1-4; 1 Peter 2:14; Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37-39).
The “promoting for His own glory” aligns with Wolfe’s definition which includes the phrase that the nation must “procure for itself both earthly and heavenly good in Christ.” The consistency in scope is commendable.
Apart from the usual suspects, it was mainly the Stone Choir camp who objected to the statement’s definition of nation. They are at the center of various controversies, including the feud between James White and Joel Webbon, due to various statements on race and other sensitive subjects.
Article IV: The Definition of a Nation
WE AFFIRM that a nation is not merely an idea, abstract principle, or ideology but tangibly defined by a particular body of people in a particular place. We affirm that a particular people are necessarily bound together by a shared culture, customs, history, and lineage while sharing common interests, virtues, languages, and worship. We affirm, in regards to “place” that a nation is definitively set by both its borders and times physically defined by God (Acts 17:26). Thus, we affirm that nations should rightly maintain autonomous government of their people and place, with the necessary rights and duties to (1) prioritize the security of its people by maintaining its borders, providing for its common defense, and repelling invasions from without and insurrections from within; (2) promote the prosperity of its citizens; and, (3) enforce justice.
It is undeniable that the statement seeks to rebuke the propositional nation, defining that the particular people are defined by a place and “shared culture, customs, history, and lineage.” The syntactical ordering of “lineage” placed last in the list is sloppy since shared lineage should be a descriptor for “particular people,” which would better phrase the sentence to state, “We affirm that a particular people of common lineage are necessarily bound together by a shared culture, customs, and history.” The common ancestry is more foundational than the culture, history, and customs, functioning as the cornerstone while the other elements develop over time and are everchanging. While the nation can exist amidst changing customs and culture, disruptions within the lineage will erode the particularity of the people. The word order places an improper emphasis on the need for a nation to share its lineage.
The other problem with the affirmation arises when one asks the question, “Does a nation have the right to preserve its culture, customs, history, and lineage?” The statement establishes three rights and duties: common defense, prosperity, and justice. However, the preservation of the elements of particularity is not distinctly characterized in either of those three duties. The authors would unlikely deny that a nation has the right to preserve its own culture, but the statement does not establish this as a positive right, so while their affirmation establishes the definition of the nation, they did not establish a duty to preserve the culture or heritage as a positive command. From Scripture, this simple right is contained in the Law which contained numerous provisions designed to preserve the integrity of the individual tribes.
The denial garnered more controversy online, mostly from the SC crowd.
WE DENY that a nation should cede its sovereignty to international bodies that may subvert the will of the national interest for a global order. We deny any efforts to establish a “one world” governmental system before the return of Christ, as such efforts are a reenactment of the Tower of Babel. We further deny that sovereign nations must only be composed of mono-ethnic populations to be united under God. Therefore, as Christian Nationalists, we utterly repudiate sinful ethnic partiality in all its various forms. [Emphasis Added]
Scripture: Genesis 11:1-9; Deuteronomy 1:17; 16:19-20; Psalm 2:8; 22;27; 82:2-4; Isaiah 2:2-3; 49:6-8; John 7:24; Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 17:25-26; 20:21; Colossians 3:11; 1 Timothy 5:21; James 2:1-6, 9; 3:17; 1 Peter 1:17; Revelation 7:9.
The Stone Choir crowd objects to the denial that sovereign nations “must only be composed of mono-ethnic populations to be united under God.” Their reasons, though many, can be summarized through the understanding that a nation cannot be multi-ethnic since race and nation and ethnos are synonymous. That a nation is an ethnos is correct in a biblical sense; however, within the realm of political science, there are three categories: Nation, Nation-State, and Empire. Both the Statement and its detractors fail to recognize these categorical distinctions. The former two are easily conflated and nationalism can apply to all three categories in its common usage.
A nation is an ethnic group, plain and simple, as is seen in Genesis 10. Throughout time, Race and Nation were used synonymously and meant the same thing. At its core, a nation shares a common ancestry in a particular place. However, nations develop over time. Athens and Sparta were two separate nations from varying tribes of the same common ancestor yet merged and became one through shared experience, most notably in rebuffing the Persians. Alexander’s conquest established Koine Greek, or Common Greek, which merged the various dialects of the Greek tribes into one language. This then unified the various subsets into one nation. The same happened with Rome and the Latin states following the invasion of Hannibal. Ethnic tribes merge and become unified nations through shared experience. This creates a new nation in a process called ethnogenesis.
Nation-States are a more modern invention, which is where the SC crowd fails to distinguish between Nation-State and Nations. They are correct insofar as the limitations of nations to become unified via ethnogenesis. Heritage Americans (northwestern European Whites) and Blacks each underwent their own ethnogenesis, with the former merging various European strains while the latter composed of various African tribes merged into a genetically distinct people. But the process of ethnogenesis can only go so far. The shared European and shared African heritage allows for mergers within their respective groups but not necessarily between them. While some want to categorize Blacks within Heritage America, it is best to label them as their own distinct people, which is in line with how they perceive themselves. While they and the American Indians were included in American history, America is a Anglo-Protestant at its foundation. This is where the category of nation-state becomes necessary. While nation-states can be mono-ethnic, like Japan, the nation-state is foremost defined by its borders and sovereignty rather than its people. Nations can consist of multiple Nation-States, like the Union and Confederacy or Pakistan and India, where religion is the primary distinction. The Nation-State is a modern formality that still requires a prevailing culture that will invariably reflect the dominant nation within. For instance, Iran is a nation-state composed of 60% Persians, so while the Persian culture is the predominant culture, the moniker “Iran” is a unifying banner that unites all the “Aryan” peoples that embody the territory of the nation-state. While a nation-state can be multi-ethnic, there needs to be a predominant culture for the society to function. This dominant culture will naturally derive from the prevailing ethnic group.
The last category is Empire. Empires consist of multiple nations and have achieved a higher scale than a nation-state. Like the Nation-State, there is a dominant and unifying culture; however, the empire is more interested in expansionary pursuits which often involve subjugating the various nations rather than unifying them under the imperial banner. The goals of the empire are more monetary or geopolitical rather than cultural, perhaps permitting autonomy amongst the subjugated ethnos to maintain control. America is very much an empire composed of vast territory with numerous vassal states (NATO) that control much of the world through the global reserve currency. Any dreams of a monoethnic America are delusional, yet this empire is very much the product of the European peoples that formed Heritage America. This heritage should not be erased nor forgotten, but proactively preserved. The pursuit of multiculturalism and diversity is the undoing of the American Empire.
The second sentence in the denial, “Therefore, as Christian Nationalists, we utterly repudiate sinful ethnic partiality in all its various forms” follows the denial of mono-ethnic cultures. The statement acknowledges that there is nothing in Scripture that prohibits a Christian nation from being either mono-ethnic or multi-ethnic. Moreover, under Constantine, the Roman Empire became increasingly Christian at the highest levels. Even the Eastern Romans maintained a multi-ethnic Christian Empire for centuries until the Islamists eroded their territories. The objection to the notion of “sinful ethnic partiality” is that it is a cudgel for racism under a different name.
Admittedly, the term is ambiguous and undefined, being used twice in the statement. The other instance comes under Article X:
WE DENY that seeking to maintain and assert national sovereignty has anything to do with prejudice against any particular ethnicity or nation. We deny that sinful ethnic partiality has any place in the Church of Jesus Christ or in a nation that seeks to honor Him; on the contrary, a Christian nation would be impartial in judgment.
In the second instance, it asserts that Nationalism can exist without prejudice, which is juxtaposed to the Post War Consensus which inherently views nationalism as an innate assertion of ethnic supremacy. Since the election, there has been an uptick in labeling anyone who is Christian Nationalist as either Nazi, white supremacist, fascist, etc., but this is predicated on the PWC which opposes Nationalism in any form. As an aside, the words Patriotism and Nationalism are equivalent, as Patriot derives from the Latin “Pater” or Father, denoting common ancestry. To almost anyone born before the Second World War, the notion of love of nation, as understood to be a common ancestry to a particular place, was natural and unquestioned.
Nevertheless, the term remains vague and requires supplemental explanations not offered in the statement. While there is nothing objectionable about Joel Webbon’s recent commentary on the phrase, one should not have to watch a two-hour video on the subject when an annotation would suffice.
The implication of “sinful ethnic partiality” is that there are non-sinful forms of ethnic partiality, which would be objectionable to many Christians due to modern sensibilities. Webbon explains that Christians should be partial to their own nation as opposed to foreigners, which while virtuous, would constitute ethnic partiality, yet the limits of this are not fully developed in Christian thought. Should whites prefer whites and blacks their own, or is that sinful? To say that it is sinful is to argue that one must accept a different ethnic group as part of their nation simply because both parties are under the same sovereign.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan does not suggest that all men are the same ethnos but rather juxtaposes the virtue of the Samaritan helping a Jew against the priestly class of Jews’s refusal to assist one of their own. Thus, distinctions are maintained but there is established by Christ the expectation that goodwill should flow between members of differing nations based upon the proximity to the believer.
There is much to be said on what is and is not sinful with regard to “ethnic partiality.” The implications and conclusions impact every area of shared life. On a personal front, there are implications regarding marriage, commerce, association, and employment where ethnic partiality can exist and not be sinful. Furthermore, the acknowledgment of non-sinful ethnic partiality asserts that there are different ethnicities or nations, thus the statement is more realistic on the notions of race relations, much to its credit.
Just War
The Statement features a section on Just War that was edited substantially from the draft version.
18. Just War
WE AFFIRM that war is only to be waged: (1) for a just cause involving the protection of human life from persecution; (2) as a last resort when peaceful methods of conflict resolution have been diligently pursued and exhausted; (3) in pursuit of achievable goals; (4) with the pure motive and intention of establishing peace and justice as quickly as possible; and, (5) by moral means that scrupulously avoid civilian casualties and only inflicts as much violence as is necessary for the achievement of the objective. We affirm that even when a war is just according to the above criteria, nations should be extremely cautious in discerning whether a proposed war is wise, taking every contingency into account.We affirm that many imperial wars have been waged throughout human history primarily for self-serving sinful purposes such as vainglory or acquiring money, land, or natural resources and that those who declare and wage such a war are guilty of the sin of murder.We affirm that many wars throughout history have been waged for sinful purposes, such as greed, revenge, and lust for power and fortune.
WE DENY that war is ever a means by which the gospel, or simply good ideas about government and society, are to be spread.We deny that holy wars are ever morally permissible. We deny that governments may coerce civilian participation in unjust wars.
The authors evidently took feedback and revised their statement on Just War, removing the condemnation of imperialism and “Holy Wars,” which would have condemned colonialism and the Crusades as sinful. They also removed language attaching sinful guilt to participants of these wars, which was wise since this could impute sin onto US Veterans for participation in Forever Wars.
Regarding War and Christian Nationalism, there should be a distinction between wars of Christians and wars with the pagans. Overall, the authors should be praised for this revision.
Conclusion
The Statement on Christian Nationalism is a positive step towards establishing a positive vision for Christian society. Many of the answers to our current predicaments lie in the wisdom of the past. The theologians of old are a tomb of truth regarding all subjects of life, including politics. The statement is not an ideology, but a series of principles, as Christian Nationalism recognizes the particularity of a people and place.
One suggestion for improvement is for the authors to add another Wolfe to their pack. Someone like Stephen Wolfe would greatly benefit from this statement with his knowledge on historic Christian thought and natural law. While the statement is not perfect and there are ambiguities regarding certain phrases employed by the authors, there is a foundation to build upon rather than reject over tertiary concerns.
