Perhaps this seems to be a trifling matter to you. Perhaps you think that the Left is so evil and so near to destroying our whole way of life that the only thing that matters is fighting them, even if it means doing so in alliance (or at least as independent co-belligerents)  with some seedy people, including ones who are infidels or hostile to the faith themselves.

“Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’” (1 Cor. 15:33)

In a recent article, Brad Isbell appraises American Reformer (AR) negatively in light of its association with other outlets (Center for Baptist Leadership, North American Anglican), the secretive fraternal organization Society for American Civil Renewal (SACR), and the for-profit initiative New Founding. His language and tone are sharp, but he brings to light poignant concerns about AR and the larger network of which it is a part. Reviewing his commentary and sources, it is hard to escape the feeling that, for all Isbell’s sarcasm and ill-concealed disapproval, he has, if anything, understated the grave problems with AR.

One may perhaps be inclined to dismiss Isbell’s concerns as so much imputing guilt by association. But while tracing associations can lead to some absurd conclusions if applied clumsily, it also has its valid uses, not least because the company one keeps influences one’s own thinking and behavior (Prov. 13:20; 27:17; Rev. 2:14-16; 20-23). And as Isbell notes, AR draws on some bad sources and keeps some dubious company.

SACR is noteworthy here, as its scant public statements raise more questions than answers. The society’s symbol is a mix of “Saint Peter’s Cross and the Anchor Cross” that is meant to “evoke the goals of the Society and signify what binds the members of the Society,” namely “Christianity,” “within a Trinitarian framework, and rejecting Modernist philosophies and heresies”; “Authority and the Exercise of Power” in the face of “sustained attack by the powers of the current age”; and a “Renaissance” that “looks forward and upward” to “a new America, for a new age, informed by the wisdom of the old—the future Renaissance” and “demanding of us that we excel in the works of Man, under the eyes of God.” A “Trinitarian framework” is a low standard of common ground (“even the demons believe,” James 2:19), especially since many at Rome and the East consider the Reformation to be a “Modernist” philosophy and heresy in its various branches. And though Isbell says SACR “sounds like a sort of drinking club/think tank/investors group with vague goals to resurrect Christendom,” arguably it sounds like it is mimicking the medieval chivalric orders: the founder, Charles Haywood, says that he “wishes he could be a Knight Hospitaller, but with a railgun and warp drive,” and that “ultimately no final question can be solved without conflict, usually involving violence.” More on that below, but first consider how that bit about exercising power flies in the face of the humility and lowliness that characterizes believers, both by God’s choice of the lowly to abase the proud, and by their obedience to his instructions on that point:

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Cor 1:26-31)

Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. (Rom. 12:16)

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! (Isa. 5:21)

One wonders what those “works of Man” the society promotes are, though its lament that “a man is no longer encouraged to fly to the stars, to tame the wilderness, to plant the seeds that his children will inherit,” suggests they are things of this life that will perish at the Last Day, if not long before (1 Cor 3:10-15; comp. Lk. 12:13-21, 1 Tim. 6:6-9).

As for SACR founder Charles Haywood, the most charitable thing that can be said of him is that he is eccentric, narcissistic, has too much money and spare time, and lets his mind run much freer than is healthy. Arguably justice to the truth requires regarding him less charitably. If this seems harsh, consider that he calls himself “Maximum Leader” of his website, The Worthy House. He says, without obvious irony, things like this, in a featured sidebar on the home page:

As with most of my book reviews, I am not actually reviewing this book, at least in the traditional sense. Rather, I am delivering my own thoughts. If you don’t like that, well, you’re in the wrong place.

He brags that “his style tends to be megalomaniacal and apocalyptic. He likes to fight.” He says “his politico-tactical sensibilities are encapsulated in the seven quotes at the very bottom of every page,” which quotes include ones from Elvis Pressley’s song “A Little Less Conversation” and Warren Zevon’s “Boom Boom Mancini.” His “applied political philosophy” of “foundationalism” – which he adamantly insists is not an “ideology” – includes twelve pillars, the first of which is space, which Haywood wants to “conquer,” and the ninth of which is “Christian religion.” While not saying what tradition of professing Christian faith he prefers, he favors some form of it because it is the only religion that “has ever been associated with success in both areas” of “virtue” and “achievement”; but for good measure, in his ideal foundationalist society “paganism and polytheism will be allowed, and even preferred to the extent that virtue is their focus.”

A question, reader. If a man boasts about his megalomania, regards the thoughts of others as being valuable only as a pretext for advancing his own, lays grand plans for reforming the world in accordance with his dreamt up master philosophy, values following God incarnate only for its utility in impelling “achievement” in this life, and makes up concepts like “politico-tactical sensibilities” that are drawn from such sources as Elvis songs, is he more likely: a) an upstanding and virtuous sage, with whose organization you ought to partner, and whose ideas you ought to adopt; or b) a profane, babbling lunatic who is best avoided, lest he bewitch you with his nonsense?[1] Recall that this man founded and at least partly leads one of AR’s partner organizations. That may or may not mean that he and the contributors at AR have much to do with each other, but it raises the question of how much they have been influenced by him. (Better: how much of their funding comes from him?)

Granting that my own words have become sharper now than his, Isbell noted that on at least one point AR and the wider ‘Christian Nationalism’ movement have drawn on Haywood, namely their adoption of the concept of “No Enemies to (or On) the Right.” Isbell quotes an AR article admitting this:

NETTR (or NEOTR) has been brought back into discussion among the online Right largely through the work of Charles Haywood and his blog and podcast, The Worthy House. Haywood is an Eastern Orthodox former Mergers and Acquisitions attorney who built a highly successful business in shampoo products. He is now semi-retired and reviews books, ponders the future, hobby farms and makes the rounds as a guest on all the cool podcasts.

That podcast linked under “cool” is episode one (May, 2023) of AR partner New Founding’s podcast, discussing whether Elon Musk is a “red Caesar.” The article itself was written by Terry Gant, AR’s managing editor who “edits, revises and formats every article American Reformer publishes.” And, as Isbell notes, NETTR comes from Carl Schmitt, a Romanist German jurist who was a sometime member of the Nazi party (replete with anti-Semitism).[2]

So, AR’s editorship is drawing from a man who finds inspiration and ideas from an anti-Semitic Nazi jurist—and knows it. Elsewhere in the article Gant says “Haywood prefers to use the definition of an enemy that is articulated by Carl Schmitt,” and links an article by a “prospective student at Reformed Theological Seminary” (emphasis mine) arguing the validity of the friend-enemy distinction of Schmitt and trying to find a similar concept in Peter Vermigli. Gant also adopts Haywood’s definition that “anyone who is not on the Left, is necessarily on the Right” and says “among Haywood’s most impactful contributions to the current discourse is his manifesto of Foundationalism.”

It is quite an understatement that this draws into suspicion AR’s claim to pursue a “vigorous Christian approach to the cultural challenges of our day, rooted in the rich tradition of Protestant social and political thought.” Their partner organization, SACR, is not Protestant but apparently maintains a position that is minimalistic and not that of any professing church (call it, ‘mere trinitarianism’); unless indeed there is more to the “rejecting Modernist philosophies” bit. Certainly, Carl Schmitt and Charles Haywood are not part of Protestant thought. And even if they form a small influence on the material content of much of what AR publishes, that they have any influence on AR’s leadership is significant.

And their managing editor calling Haywood’s bizarre manifesto an “impactful” contribution to current Christian discourse makes me think they’re not so small after all; indeed, the best interpretation of all of this is that AR is only one front in a larger, multi-pronged effort mounted by people who may or may not be Protestant themselves, but who are acting on the NETTR principle. I.e., Haywood and the other movers and shakers behind the coalition that runs New Founding, AR, and SACR are animated by the principle of opposing the Left, and will gladly fight that battle on multiple fronts, and in conjunction with people with whom they are not in agreement on many matters of great (read: eternal) consequence. AR is the generically Protestant outlet for advancing counter-Left material touching upon matters of family, culture, church, politics, etc. The Center for Baptist Leadership is the Southern-Baptist-Convention-specific outlet to accompany efforts to regain that denomination from Leftist dominance. By acquiring the North American Anglican AR extends its efforts in the Anglican Church in North America, which is a scene of continued disagreement of sundry types.

Perhaps, reader, this seems to be a trifling matter to you. Perhaps you think that the Left is so evil and so near to destroying our whole way of life that the only thing that matters is fighting them, even if it means doing so in alliance (or at least as independent co-belligerents)[3] with some seedy people, including ones who are infidels or hostile to the faith themselves. But are you so desperate for ideas that you think it wise to look to Carl Schmitt and his admirers? Are we really so impoverished that we need their ideas as our own? Is scripture really so poor that we ought not to use its definitions of neighbors and enemies, and its respective commands regarding them?

Will you trade the inerrant Word of God for the ravings (however polished or apparently learned) of a man who hated God’s people and said, in essence, that might makes right? (Schmitt justified Hitler’s murder of rivals in The Night of the Long Knives on the ground “that in the moment of danger, he immediately create[d] law by force of his character.”) How does that mesh with the sufficiency of scripture? And could it be that in this matter some men have had itching ears (2 Tim. 4:3) because of their obsession with worldly politics, and in so doing opened their ears to those whom they ought to have shunned? Of AR and its peers there is more to be said, but in closing I ask: Does imbibing Schmitt’s or Haywood’s ideas fulfill the command to “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2)?

Tom Hervey is a member of Friendship Presbyterian Church in Laurens County, SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation, and helped modernize Volume I of James Hervey’s classic dialogue on evangelical faith, Theron and Aspasio, available now at Monergism.

[1] If one is inclined to say that Haywood is just going a little overboard with being a provocateur (or edgy, or trolling people, or whatever the current lingo is), then I ask: that is mature, prudent, and helpful . . . how?

[2] He later fell from favor with the leadership and much of the rest of the party, but there are other problems with him, as that linked article notes.  Haywood deems his Nazi connections insignificant, as if being a fellow traveler to one of the worst political and military failures in history in no way speaks ill of Schmitt’s judgment or character. Haywood says of it that “nobody should care at all, except as a matter of minor historical interest, what Schmitt’s relationship with the National Socialists was, at this point or later.” His fascination with Schmitt can be gleaned from his determination to read and review all of his books in order (as he says here).

[3] I.e., as people who share an enemy and refrain from fighting each other.