Introduction
One benefit of careening headlong deep into middle age is having been around long enough to experience the truth of the oft repeated phrase that while history doesn’t repeat, it does rhyme.
I thought about this recently while watching the latest King’s Hall podcast which discusses a range of sad divisions and infighting that is reaching a crescendo among Reformed Christians. Pastor Brian Sauve began with something that by all appearances seemed odd and out of place–a long overview of the career of William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder and long-time editor of National Review magazine, who died in 2008. National Review was among the first post-WWII conservative magazines. The rise of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan are inconceivable apart from it. Founded in 1955, the magazine played a pivotal role in defining and advancing American “conservatism,” policing its boundaries, and damning “heretics,” with Buckley playing the role of Pope, issuing forth declarations and writs of excommunication. Part of this history was described by Sauve and utilized as a springboard to discuss ongoing divisions over “Christian Nationalism” and take aim at critics.
Sauve was not making an original observation. Indeed, your humble correspondent has for some time made the connection between the conservative civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s and disputation over Christian Nationalism. But Sauve and his co-pastors, Eric Conn and Dan Berkholder, spoke in great detail and length about the contextual background underlying the recent brouhaha.
The tumult roiling the waters in the conservative precincts of Reformed Christianity finds its genesis in the intramural debate that followed the publication of Stephen Wolfe's book, The Case for Christian Nationalism, in 2022. Having imbibed my political convictions during the "Neocon/Paleocon" civil war of the 80s and 90s, the response to Wolfe’s book was entirely foreseeable. Indeed, after reading a pre-publication copy of Wolfe’s book, I predicted the ensuing controversy in a social media post. Of course, it didn't take a prophet to know what was coming. Anyone who has engaged with Christians about politics in the last three decades understands that walking onto that field involves engaging a brood of vipers that have imbibed left-wing tropes, talking points, tactics, and rhetorical devices even as they call themselves “conservatives.”
But why is Wolfe, a gifted and thoughtful scholar who writes with Scholastic precision, deemed controversial by clerics and Internet theologians? Why are the current battle lines better understood not by means of bible commentaries, but by reading Sam Francis and Joe Sobran, Pat Buchanan and James Burnham, Albert Jay Nock and Murray Rothbard, or Carl Schmitt and Willmoore Kendall?
Wolfe is clearly familiar with many of the above sources and his Christian Nationalist project can best be understood as an attempt to craft a Protestant version of paleoconservatism that functions outside the parameters of the liberal order. His critics are simply holding down the right tent peg of the liberal order, whether they realize it or not. Like the earlier paleoconservatives, Wolfe offers an alternative–this one grounded in historic Protestant theology that when fleshed out could challenge the fraudulent ideological formulas on which the Regime rests (e.g., the “two-party system”, the “free-enterprise” economy, the “open society”, "democracy", the “Judeo-Christian tradition”, etc.). With exceptions, the vituperativeness and anger directed at Wolfe and adjacent allies is less theological than political, less about principle than power. The attacks aren’t primarily about doctrinal distinctives (or memes) but a result of men protecting their brands and roles as self-appointed gatekeepers. In other words, it’s all very Buckleyesque.
While providing a detailed analysis of the differences between paleoconservatism and Christian Nationalism is beyond the scope of this discussion, in what follows I will sketch a brief overview of similarities between the two movements. I will begin by reviewing a few themes that animate the paleoconservative worldview and close with a summary of Christian Nationalism as described by Dr. Wolfe. If there is interest in the topic, I may respond to other aspects of the current controversy with additional future essays.
What Is Paleoconservatism?
First, it is worth noting at the outset that there were different flavors and schools of thought within the broader paleo universe: there were libertarians cheek by jowl with traditional Catholics; nationalists and mercantilists occupied space with southern agrarians; proponents of Lockean natural rights, Thomists and Machiavellian modernists debated; there were Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians–and those leery of both, etc. In short, there was no party line, no person or magazine excommunicating heretics; there was an admirable diversity and freedom of discussion. (Parenthetically, I believe this applies to CNs as well, but this piece will already be longer than you want to read). But there were also underlying areas of agreement and these disparate factions found themselves broadly unified in the presidential campaigns of Patrick Buchanan.
Paleoconservatism is primarily, writes Chilton Williamson, a political “expression of rootedness: a sense of place and of history, a sense of self derived from forebears, kin, and culture.” This identity is both spiritual and material, collective and individual and is missing from the psychological and emotional constitution of leftists of all stripes (which includes many self-described "conservatives"). The Blob that makes up our ruling class is, says Williamson, “bent on eradicating as much of the primeval stain as they can from their consciousnesses while apologizing for the faint discoloration that remains.”
Paleoconservatives believe that the family is the central institution of social, cultural, and political life. It is the first church and first state, the place a child is socialized and introduced to civilization. Initially a child views the world through a series of domestic relations–husband, wife, parent, child. In time he learns that there are other relatives (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) that are closer to him than others. Eventually he acquires friends and learns about strangers, in the process making distinctions between these categories. Additionally, he is an American, Chinese, German, etc. because he is born into a parental unit that belongs to those nationalities. Because his parents are part of a community, so is he. Like them, he is also bound by a series of duties and obligations and is subject to its rules. He secures status and identity through these relationships.
In addition to the family are a panoply of other mediating institutions ( e.g., churches and religious institutions, schools, professional associations, etc.), what Burke called “little platoons”, that operate between the individual and the state while serving as instruments of government, formation, and identity. Paleos believe in real diversity, not the ideological fiction that is packaged by marketers and peddled by hucksters and carnival barkers.
This view of man stands in opposition to the homogenizing forces of what Wilhelm Ropke called “enmassment”, the centralization and homogenization produced by mass media, finance capitalism and managerial politics. The goal of the managerial regime that gained ascendancy during the Progressive Era and captured the institutions in the post-war period is the reproduction of “mass man” because manipulation and control requires political participants rather than citizens; consumers not producers; and passive spectators of hedonistic mass culture rather than creators.
In the post-war period, particularly in light of the failures of liberalism that became evident in the 1960s, another strain of conservatism rose to the fore: neoconservatism. Neocons embraced corporate capitalism along with the myth of economic man and the queer Lincolnian notion that America is in fact a proposition, idea or creed rather than a people–more a mystical and invisible church than a nation.
In time, neoconservatives, who historically had been on the political left (many were Trotskyites as young men), captured the financial, journalistic, academic and policy-oriented institutions of the conservative movement. This action was centered around National Review and the host of front groups that sprung from it.
Neoconservatives were useful tools of the ruling class because they embraced the ideological doctrines of what Arthur Schlesinger called the “vital center” and what has come to be called the “postwar consensus.”
Writing in 1986, Samuel Francis observed, "Neo-conservatives seek to rationalize, legitimize, defend, and conserve the managerial regime--what conservatives have usually called the ‘Liberal Establishment’--because the regime provides the social force to which they belong with its social functions and power." The neoconservatives also successfully managed to stifle the potential radicalism of the Christian Right in the 1970s and 80s and redirect its energy toward its own ends. The leaders of the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition ultimately sold themselves for less than thirty pieces of silver and Evangelical voters became an instrument wielded by the neoconservative establishment, a rent-a-mob that ultimately destroyed the last remnants of bona fide conservatism and constitutionalism by giving us the likes of Bob Dole, Mitt Romney, and George W. Bush.
The failure of Christian politics in the Reagan era and beyond happened for a slew of reasons, but one was the acceptance of a reductionistic and almost blank-slate view of man along with the implicit assumptions of equality. For all too many Christians, identity is ecclesiocentric--they "find their identity in Christ" or in a more rooted fashion in His body, the Church, to the practical exclusion of everything else. Culture, too, thus becomes divorced from ethnic and national distinctives and is nothing but an expression of religion. These views not only fail to threaten the zeitgeist but distort reality. Joseph de Maistre observed that “ there is no such thing as ‘man’ in this world. In my life I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, and so on... But as for man, I declare I’ve never encountered him." But in the hands of modern Christians, this beautiful diversity, a product of God’s creation and providence, is subsumed into a flattening and stifling anthropological unitarianism.
Paleoconservatives also had distinct policy views from the conservative mainstream that for decades controlled the Republican Party. Obvious differences lie in disagreements over immigration, trade and foreign policies, but also civil-rights issues and the larger issue of federalism and states’ rights. Nearly all of these differences can be cataloged as distinctions between particularism and universalism, with the paleos on the side of the former and the neos and mainstream conservatives (insofar as there is any distinction) allied with universalism.
Paleoconservatives are also different from more traditional conservatives in their willingness to entertain the question of legitimacy. While the current political system in the U.S. may be legally valid, paleos argue powerfully that it doesn't truly represent traditional American or Western identity. Instead, it goes against these traditions by incorporating universal values that conflict with American institutions and traditional norms.
When figures like William Bennett and George Will and publications like the Weekly Standard and National Review said that Pat Buchanan had abandoned conservatism or was “flirting with Fascism”, they were not simply talking about his views on trade, foreign policy, and immigration. These policy differences stemmed from Buchanan’s conviction that open borders, free trade and nation-building don't align with America's historical practices because they represent the importation of false ideologies resting on universalist assumptions. Buchanan clearly demonstrated in The Great Betrayal that most past presidents, especially Republicans, were economic nationalists and supported an "America First" foreign policy, unlike the post-WWII trend towards free trade and globalism.
What neoconservatives saw rightly was that Buchanan was challenging the entire political, economic, and cultural system established in the aftermath of World War II. The hysteria which greeted Buchanan’s books (A Republic, Not an Empire and The Unnecessary War) questioning the legitimacy of the war itself were to be expected because WWII provides the foundational mythology of the current regime.
Finally, paleocons, distinct from other "conservatives," have a counter-revolutionary impulse and populist inclinations. Conservatism has always been aristocratic and deferential to authorities and institutions and is instinctively opposed to populism. Paleos, on the other hand, realized that American institutions are largely unsalvageable. The goal of politics, if there can even be politics at this point, is to first unseat and smash the illegitimate regime governing us. In that effort, it is the dispossessed masses of Middle Americans who are their allies against the incumbent ruling class. The strategy is to go over the heads of "thought leaders" and get directly to the unwashed hoi polloi who are the victims of Ruling Class malevolence.
What Is Christian Nationalism?
Stephen Wolfe begins The Case For Christian Nationalism by defining his subject: “Christian nationalism is a 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.”
Much of the book is an extended unpacking of this definition. The first two chapters are a discussion of anthropology from the perspective of magisterial Reformed theology. Wolfe discusses man’s nature before the Fall, in the state of sin, and in the state of grace (restoration). The purpose is to distinguish elements of continuity and discontinuity between the prelapsarian (pre-fall) and post-fall states of man.
From this analysis Wolfe concludes that cultural particularity, nations, and civil government are natural to man; that grace restores and perfects rather than flattens nature and natural affections; that hierarchy and inequality are natural and not a result of sin; and that the task of dominion and rule is fundamental and constitutive to man’s nature. Wolfe distinguishes the heavenly and earthly ends of man and describes the distinct roles of civil and ecclesiastical authorities in pursuit of those diverse ends.
In two additional chapters, Wolfe discusses the Christian nation. Rather than a historical analysis he offers a phenomenological approach to the nation, focusing on the lived experience of everyday life. Ethnicity is therefore something primarily (but not exclusively) experienced subjectively through shared manners, stories, and rituals rather than defined by blood. Common social norms and customs along with attachment to place are foundational, says Wolfe, to the highest aspirations of earthly life. What “…is most meaningful to our lives and what is required to live well is particularity and sharing that particularity with others.”
The common good in an earthly sense is promoted when people groups share cultural similarity and experience. The “natural inclination to dwell among similar people is good and necessary,” writes Wolfe. Since a shared culture is necessary for nations to live well, they have the right and duty to exclude outsiders in the interest of cultural preservation. For example, Wolfe argues that a Christian nation has the right to bar Christian immigrants and refugees from entry because spiritual unity is an inadequate ground for civil (or even ecclesiastical) fellowship.
One theme repeated throughout this work is that Christians have imbibed a politics of guilt and a suicidal ideology of universalism that has left them impotent: “Western man is enamored with his ideology of universality; it is the chief and only ground of his self-regard…The object of his regard is the non-Westerner at the Westerner’s expense–a bizarre self-denigration rooted in guilt and malaise. Loss and humiliation is the point, however. It is euphoric to him; his own degradation is thrilling. This is his psycho-sexual ethno-masochism, the most pernicious illness of the Western mind.”
We must summon the will to affirm what is true and impose it using the instruments God has provided. The spurning of political and social power is a malady of pietism that must be rejected. Ordering ourselves to God must “spring in large part from our own self-affirmation, from an instinct for peoplehood, and from the felt need to act for our own good,” says Wolfe.
Wolfe also addresses the leader of the Christian nation, what he calls the “Christian Prince”. According to Wolfe, the true renewal of the Christian commonwealth is inconceivable without the rise of great men who rally the masses. “I envision a measured and theocratic Caesarism,” writes Wolfe, “the prince as a world-shaker for our time, who brings a Christian people to self-consciousness and who, in his rise, restores their will for their good.” The Christian prince will wield power and a social example to adorn and perfect the civil sphere with true religion.
Wolfe also argues forcefully that American institutions are broken, making a case that we already live under a liberal tyranny. Christians in the West, says Wolfe, “are enmeshed in totalizing liberal regimes” that while “seemingly limited in explicit power…have universal reach.” The regime itself has become a tyrant.
Conclusion
Whether they have studied the paleoconservatives or not, Christian Nationalists are living in their shadow. CNs are familialists and nationalists. Both believe in natural hierarchies and view egalitarianism as a revolt against human nature. Both are particularists and populists who grasp the crisis of institutions, including the churches that invariably subordinate Scripture to fashionable leftism and propound a bastardized version of Christian ethics infected with the pseudo-Christian poison of equality. Christian Nationalists would benefit from a deeper reading and application of paleoconservative thinkers, trying to grasp both the strengths and weaknesses of the movement–as well as the enemies of paleos and their tactics.