While influencing politics and persuading in the public sphere by an adherence to Christian values is a noble and upright aim of all Christians, Wolfe and Douglas [Wilson] take this idea too far.

A recent episode of Man Rampant, the Canon Press podcast hosted by Reformed pastor and author Douglas Wilson, features political theorist Stephen Wolfe, author of The Case for Christian Nationalism.

Titled “Christian Nationalism, the American Kind,” their conversation revisits the themes of Wolfe’s controversial book, offering what he sees as a theological and political recourse for Christians who reject the dominant post–World War II liberal consensus.

At the center of Wolfe and Wilson’s argument is a call to return to a vision of the United States as they believe the Founders originally intended: a nation built upon Christian values and cultural cohesion. The postwar consensus, in their view, ushered in a godless worldview of Americans that believed they, acting out of a “helium of hubris,” no longer needed God. For dissenters, Wolfe suggests, the antidote lies in reclaiming an explicit Christian nation in all realms of society.

However, his philosophy for recourse includes a rigid adherence to a seemingly misunderstood interpretation of the American founding. This philosophy in favor of Christian nationalism opposes democratic principles and a vision of Christian nation-state with a unified identity, heritage, and culture that should pose some serious concerns for reasonable and understandably frustrated postwar dissenters.

Wolfe makes it clear in the episode that he does not believe a democratic majority is necessary to implement a Christian political order. What’s needed, he argues, is a decisive, elite minority capable of capturing the imagination of the broader public.

“I’m an elitist in that sense,” Wolfe admits. “You don’t need a majority. You need a strong minority that shapes the imagination of the rest.”

This is both a strategy and political philosophy that openly downplays democratic will in favor of ideological dominance. But this vision muddies up the very principles the Founders emphasized. While wary of mob rule, the American founders also resisted oligarchy. They emphasized checks and balances, limited government, and representative democracy as means of safeguarding liberty for all and not just for any morally assertive minority. The majority Wolfe envisions is not a majority rule in any sense but rather, dilutes the true, honest interests of the majority of American citizens and also opens up an ability for minority ideals to be exploited and oppressed.

“When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government… enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens” writes James Madison in Federalist 10.

Furthermore, the First Amendment did not emerge from indifference to religion, but from a conviction that civil government should not privilege one religious tradition over another. Many of the Founders were Christians, but they rejected the idea of a state church or a legally imposed Christian order.

Wolfe and Wilson present their political theology as a return to American roots. However, particularly in its proposed rejection of pluralism and openness to theocracy, it is closer to a repudiation.

To Wolfe’s credit, some of his theological reasoning reflects traditional and respectable Christian thought. He affirms that grace completes, rather than replaces, nature which is a long-standing view that has shaped Christian understandings of law and the common good. Properly understood, this framework sees politics not as a purely secular enterprise, but as one capable of being informed by moral and religious truth.

Read More