I’m sorry, this is a long one.
I came across an article by Stephen Wolfe yesterday. Wolfe is a political theorist who wrote a book-length argument for Christian nationalism, which I critiqued at length. In this piece, he attempts a syllogistic argument for why a Christian nation is an ideal to be pursued. The argument is as follows:
All moral entities ought to acknowledge the true God in word and deed.
Nations are moral entities.
Therefore, nations ought to acknowledge the true God in word and deed.
The true God is the Triune God.
Therefore, nations ought to acknowledge the Triune God in word and deed.
It’s got spunk, and may seem compelling at first blush. However, the argument has two crucial holes.
Problem 1: Nations-As-Moral-Entities
Wolfe argues that nations are moral entities. This is a crucial step, because for him to argue that a Christian nation is ideal, he must argue that nations themselves are culpable before God, and can submit to God.
On the one hand, I get where he’s coming from. If you read through the OT prophets, the nations are frequently addressed (and condemned) as a singular entity. God doesn’t single out individuals, but Edom, or Assyria, or Egypt. So perhaps Wolfe is correct, after all.
The way he gets to this conclusion is shaky, however. He argues that nations are legitimate political communities that are formed by consent, “consent being a collective expression of an entity.” Granting this, then, nations have collective personhood, and therefore are moral persons, and therefore “act morally as singular entities.”
Are nations actually formed via consent? It’s part and parcel of our American founding doctrine, so it’s reasonable to think so. But how many nations exist which do so on the of consent only of its powerful leaders? While the divine right of kings is no longer in vogue, might-gives-right certainly holds sway over many nations.
But leaving aside authoritarian cases, even within democratic structures, it’s worth interrogating whether consent is truly given. Unless we immigrate, or at the headwaters of a revolution, we are born into a political world and are formed by it. There is never a moment we are invited to consider whether we consent to the reality we inhabit. Add to this the fact that most democratic processes are effected via representation, and the notion of consent becomes little more than a vague catch-phrase, assigning a non-existent level of rationality to the body politic.
This issue gets more complex when we consider the nature of dissent. Any nation contains dissenting groups—democracies are rife with them. And while we can withdraw consent by removing ourselves from any particular world, at the end of the day, that’s about the scope of our control over consent. By remaining, we remain bound by the state’s rules and laws.
This point is crucial for Wolfe’s argument. Consent operates as a crucial prerequisite for moral agency and culpability. If we are real moral agents in the moral world, and we consent collectively to be a nation, then we can be a moral agent (collective) in the moral world.
However, hinging his argument on consent leaves his argument vulnerable to the reality that our consent is not strictly volitional, and therefore the body politic cannot exist as a free moral agent in the world. Rather, the body politic exists due to numerous preconditions and factors, and goes on existing more from inertia than active consent.
Furthermore, his argument ignores the many ways in which dissent is factored out of a nation via threat of physical violence, or some other sanctions, or by social and cultural pressures. Consent is once again weakened to the point where the moral agent of the nation can only be an agent that is comprised by powerful actors, and not organically by its individuals.
Wolfe attempts to ameliorate this problem by asserting that “members of civil societies are bound by majoritarian decision (unless grossly unjust or tyrannical),” and so its members, even dissenting minorities, are “bound together as a whole.” Dissent becomes, therefore, less problematic, because the majoritarian rule (or minority-tyrannical rule) obligates the whole by this same standard.
It is a convenient move. He leverages conceptual macro-level ideas from the sociologists to view the nation as a thing that exists above, and acting upon the individual. It’s convenient because, once so established, I would assume from the argument, the nation then possesses a kind of life of its own.
This fails, however, when we consistently employ less deterministic social theory (i.e., Weber, Berger and not Durkheim whom he appeals to), to recognize the ways that agents shape society (or the nation), and the nation bears down on the individual, in reciprocal, ever-evolving fashion.
At the end of the day, Wolfe needs the nation to be a moral agent, and so he describes the end he would like, rather than demonstrating how a nation becomes, or remains a singular moral agent.
Problem 2: Arriving at the Ideal
The argument, conveniently in my opinion, stops short of the crucial next step. I agree with Wolfe that nations should acknowledge the triune God. This is the end of history, after all. It is the story the Scriptures tell, and it is my great hope for this world.
But Wolfe is not talking about eschatology. His argumentation is situated in the present world, prior to the parousia. He is arguing for this now. Which, for me at least, begs the question, “how in the world do you plan to make that a reality, Mr. Wolfe?”
There is, in this, a hidden move that is necessary for the success of Wolfe’s Christian nationalism. He makes the move when he argues that nations are moral agents which are “bound together as a whole” by majoritarian decision. This is important, because the Achilles heel of Christian nationalism is, of course, the ongoing existence of non-Christians. How do you create a nation bounded by Christ’s law, when being a Christian—at least from a Protestant perspective, from which Wolfe operates—is expressly contingent upon individual submission to Jesus Christ?
One way is via totalitarian rule; implementing strong, authoritarian rule that manages and legislates the whole of life for citizens. But, of course, this approach utterly negates consent! Another way is to generate sufficient consent to alter the legislative and cultural institutions, such that Christianity becomes a persistently dominant and shaping influence upon a nation. That seems to be the implication of describing the way the laws of the land bind the whole. Wolfe has been open about his belief that a strong form of cultural Christianity is a net good, and should be pursued.
But this, once again, is naive. Without a clear articulation of how this all comes about, it’s no more than a quaint theoretical exercise. As it stands, however, Wolfe’s existing proposals demonstrate a simplistic understanding of the way societies work, and as such, he will ultimately fail to achieve the ends he hopes for.
Conclusion
In short, the syllogism may be coherent, but it fails on account of two faulty premises: one stated, and one unstated. At the end of the day, Christian nationalism fails because it cannot succeed without cultural dominance (which it will not get in the near future), or a strong use of force (which Christ prohibits). Which is why it should be put to rest as a dead theory.