Long War

The centuries of acclaim are, in many ways, well deserved. No revisionist Cadaver Trial need be held here. Meditations is full of sage advice. Its espousal of “wisdom, temperance, justice, and courage” rings true in these infantilized, puritan times. At its heart is autonomy and the responsibility that comes with it. “If you regard anything that is independent of your will as good or bad for yourself,” he writes, “it will necessarily follow that whenever you fail to escape such an evil or attain such a good, you will cast blame on the gods and hate the people who are responsible for your failing.” The key to breaking the cycles of misdirection and resentment that ensue is to find “contentment” in one’s “own just conduct and benevolent disposition.” The answer, that is, lies not outside but within, “for nowhere can one retreat into greater peace or freedom from care than within one’s own soul.” Meditations urges flexibility, the ability to adapt to being wrong, and a generosity toward the less advantaged. It discourages tribalism, fallacious thinking, and dogma, and promotes a healthy skepticism toward critics.

As a matter of conviction, Baptists would tend to reject Christian nationalism because of their strong emphasis on a regenerate church community. That means that they envision a church whose members have voluntarily and enthusiastically embraced the Christian faith. It also means Baptists have tended to be great advocates of religious liberty, as they deem forced religion to be an offense to God through its production of hypocrisy. It is no surprise, then, that Miller opposes Christian nationalism.

Wolfe, as a Presbyterian, comes from a denominational background that is connected to the Magisterial Reformation, which was certainly comfortable with national churches. It is probably no accident that the Baptists vigorously reject infant baptism, while both Presbyterians and Catholics embrace it. One cannot fail to notice that in the national churches of the types Magisterial Reformation traditions and the Catholic Church employed, to be born effectively meant to simultaneously enter the church as a Christian and the state as a citizen. This style of Christianity is comprehensive (in that it comprehends almost all citizens within its community) as opposed to the regenerate style that has appeared to work well in modernity. Wolfe would like to return to the comprehensive Christianity of the old national churches and their partner states.

[I]nstead of sailing through the Republican-dominated legislature, the DeSantis-backed bill died a quick legislative death, making it only as far as one subcommittee.

It wasn’t the only culture war proposal from conservative lawmakers to end up in the bill graveyard during the session that ended Friday. One rejected bill would have banned the removal of Confederate monuments. Another would have required transgender people to use their sex assigned at birth on driver’s licenses — something the state Department of Motor Vehicles is already mandating. A third proposed forbidding local and state government officials from using transgender people’s pronouns. […]

But the pushback is growing.

Parents and others have organized and protested schoolbook bans. Abortion rights advocates gathered enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot in Florida in November. A bill that would have established “fetal personhood” stalled before it could reach a full vote.

Judges are also canceling some of DeSantis’s marquee laws, including the “Stop Woke Act.” A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled Monday that the law “exceeds the bounds” of the Constitution’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression.

Even the governor recently admitted the state might have gone too far in trying to remove certain books from school shelves, suggesting laws on book challenges should be “tweaked” to prevent “bad actors” from having too much influence.

Such politicians are not exceptional. For example, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France is Trumpist, as is Matteo Salvini’s League in Italy. They, too, lean left on economics and right on immigration and have a weird thing about their leaders. It is hardly surprising that some Americans should be in that tradition.

The surprising thing, the thing I am still no closer to understanding after eight years, is how the GOP rolled over for someone who so obviously despised it. The most basic Republican principle is a suspicion of concentrated power. Yet the only nonnegotiable requirement to belong to MAGA is to grovel publicly before former President Donald Trump. Again and again, senior Republicans who had previously called Trump dishonest, vain, self-obsessed, cowardly, megalomaniac, or deranged have dropped to their knees before him. […]

It’s so un-American, this fawning, this cultishness, this Führerprinzip. Yet it has taken over a party that used to believe in the dispersal of power, the constraint of executive authority, and the equality of all adult citizens before the law.

[T]his has been a persistent problem in the Christian Nationalism discourse virtually since it started. There are really two types of “Christian Nationalist”: When the term is used by basically anyone to the left of The Gospel Coalition, it is being used as a scary sounding word for “non-libertarian socially conservative Christians.” And that’s not a great definition, not least because there’s very little that today’s non-libertarian socially conservative Christians are saying that we haven’t been saying for decades. What’s more, using the label in that way represents utterly normal Christian beliefs you find across church history as being somehow uniquely pernicious and dangerous in some brand new way.

That said, when many people more to the right use the term, they have something specific in mind. Stephen Wolfe’s (no relation to William Wolfe) The Case for Christian Nationalism isn’t arguing for a pro-life, pro-natural marriage Christian liberalism. He is, rather, echoing interwar European right ideas about natural greatness, hierarchy, and political power. […]

So: The Christian Nationalist political project, as defined by Stephen Wolfe, Andrew Isker, and Andrew Torba and their close associates is a) Nazi-adjacent, b) seeks to retrieve such political tradition as the Confederacy and the interwar European right, and c) routinely engages in anti-Semitic and anti-Black racial speech. These are the core ideas and practices that define the movement.