Christian Nationalism: Are Baptists Allowed? | Doug Wilson & James White

well it is November I think this is the first time we've ever done a sweater vest dialogue during November so I'm I I guess my first question uh to you Doug has to be uh is the sweater vest that you're wearing filled with asbestos it is not it is not okay because I'm a little concerned that that that there could be flames and smoke and and stuff like that because it's November but we're gonna I I have I seriously are concerned for you brother I really am well thank you foreign [Music] sweater vests that are those flammable I'm sure I'm sure they probably are actually so you'll you've never seen me uh doing anything near fire all right no no so and we're not not planning on doing that I'm gonna leave that up to you and uh it is it is no quarter November so uh our conversation because I got contacted and said hey we need to do another sweater vest dialogue and I said sure on what and he said Christian nationalism and I'm like uh oh what did I say what have you been told that I made a comment or anything or or is this just sort of we're flying by the seat of our pants uh mostly by the seat of our pants okay I heard you I I haven't heard anything specific that you said or didn't say Okay um but I but I heard that you may have said something [Laughter] these days well well of course yes I I think that's what I I think what I said that may have triggered this was I just briefly in passing said uh Christendom without Christ is dumb because he took Christ out of Christendom it was sort of a little bit of a pun uh but it was and we need we do need to get into it um uh you said on your you did a dialogue with uh uh is it Dr Wolf I'm not even sure um yes yeah okay with Dr Wolf um you said that you're working on a uh book called mere Christendom is that is that correct that is correct yeah so I've heard you talk about that a number of times before and maybe what people are thinking about is the fact that for many years I have opposed um what I've called Mere Christianity not the book by C.S Lewis but the movement that I've seen primarily in apologetic circles that fundamentally says that we we have enough for Christianity to exist if we can just get everybody to agree on the trinity and the death burial and resurrection of Jesus in other words we're never getting everybody a degree on the gospel so that has become a side issue it's not definitional of the faith and I have just basically said I'm a good ventilian and I I think that Dr Van till would have uh objected and so I'll object too uh I don't think that's enough to actually Define the Christian faith certainly not the basis of the New Testament we wouldn't need the book of Galatians if that was the case so I've I've said that and I've heard your discussions about how you're defining Christendom but now we have Christian nationalism and even the title of the of what you got what you guys posted just I think just a couple of days ago I I listened to it on the Canon app was Christian nationalism versus uh Christendom question mark or something like that but I didn't really hear a lot of discussion of do you think there's a difference between the two because I mean you're sort of this is all a matter of definitions it seems to me right I I don't remember the exact headline but I think it might have been Christian nationalism versus mere Christendom question mark right right right so uh what's what is the difference if any between what wolf is arguing for and what I'm arguing for and um and what I'm arguing for is a sort of a larger scale uh project so he's talking about Christian nationalism with uh focus on America right but what what he's saying applies to other nations but my take on mere Christendom uh is more post-millennial and exuberant where I want us to be talking about world evangelization and many nations um being part of a Consortium of of believing Nations and uh but the mere so the mere Christendom is to is intended to keep it from fracturing into denominational camps where you have the um where it's thought to be sort of Lutheranism here's a Lutheran State here's an Anglican State um what I'm talking about is uh a a core commitment of what distinguishes a Christian Nation from a Buddhist Nation or or an Islamic nation and I'm wanting to stay out of denominational issues right so that means I'm against an established church all right so all right so which I think would uh allay allay all the reasonable concerns of sensible Baptists among whom I I reckon you being one all right so um I I believe that the the model ought to be a a nation that's formally Christian but not attached to a particular ecclesiastical structure I'm sure you've you've read a mission of God by Joe boot um and if my recollection was he was actually quoting primarily from Russian but he talked about a a form of Christian libertarianism uh that was sort of based upon the major uh conversion of of people that bringing about the form of unity rather than an externally enforced type of unity um so I mean that makes sense with within a post-millennial context where you're talking about a major work of the spirit you know the nation's you know streaming into Jerusalem so on and so forth that makes sense in that context but it really where I think I think a lot of people are struggling is how it makes sense in our current context given that Nation you know entire States like Vermont and California uh just uh you know past abortion laws that make Roe v Wade look like Child's Play or was it Nebraska or North Dakota that what was it a Montana Montana you guys are right next door what were you guys doing up there um Montana you know defeating uh an initiative to to just not allow babies to to suffer and die on a on a cold metal table uh you know I'm looking around at gen Z and I'm not seeing the Fulfillment of the post-millennial Hope quite yet so yeah so how does that work uh here's the thing if someone said uh I want you to incorporate Vermont or California into this Christendom of yours uh by the end of this week okay uh I would say it's not going to happen that's not how this is going to happen because the only the only way that somebody might think to attempt it would be through a top-down imposition right you know um and and if you had that it would be like uh Josiah's Reformation where a bunch of good things are done top down but then as soon as Josiah is dead the people Veer off into into idolatry again so what I'm talking about rides on the back of reformation and Revival so it's what friend is what Francis Schaefer used to call um a Christian consensus so there's a there's a Christian consensus which is only possible because of massive amount of the people have been converted and then they influence those nominal Christians adjacent to them and then there are people who oppose but the people who oppose those are are on the periphery now because there's a massive Christian consensus now I I think that America had that kind of informal establishment in the 19th century okay so uh there was in there was actually a Supreme Court decision in 1892 that was uh ironically the name of the case was Holy Trinity versus the United States uh of America and so what happened was there there was a law that forbade the hiring of foreigners and there was a church I think in New York a Holy Trinity Church which hired a Brit Minister okay so so they hired a foreigner contrary to the law and uh some prosecutor brought the case and so it was Holy Trinity the church with the Brit Minister here uh against uh the United States the case went all the way to the Supreme Court the Supreme Court struck down the prohibition of hiring this Brit Minister on the one hand and then they went on to explain that the reason they were doing this is because this was a Christian Christian Nation but they made the decision it's a formal decision by the Supreme Court and but they went back to Christopher Columbus the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut and and then they said this is a a Christian Nation not because we're attached to any denomination or because there's a particular ecclesiastical structure that's supported by taxes all right it's not that all right so but that was only possible because there was a massive Christian consensus at the time and the only way we're going to get back to any such consensus is through a massive work of the spirit all right if if if there is such a work and let's say let's say 75 of the nation became convinced and practicing Christians there's there's no conceivable way to keep that from coming out in the laws right it's it's going to happen so just as currently if you're in a corporation now and you're thinking of standing up at a at a an employee's meeting and saying you know I don't think boys should marry boys I don't I don't think that we should have these trans surgeries there is a consensus that's going to run you out of town right it's uh even though uh that's not massively um imposed through force of law in all 50 states there is a secularist consensus currently that everybody who wants to say anything has to reckon with before they say it well there have been times in America's history where we've had that kind of consensus only as uh it was a Christian consensus and I think when that happens I would like to see the Apostles Creed in the Constitution but I'm I'm an anti-establishmentarian I don't think that we ought to have a church of the United States now because uh well I should say there's there's something else I should say here when the Constitution was adopted um nine of the 13 states had an official relationship with a particular denomination now I'm I'm against even that so I wouldn't want the crec my denomination to be the official denomination of Idaho all right I would be opposed to that if it came up at our Presbytery meeting or at our council meeting I'd vote against it I've I've read on websites that actually you are trying to become king of Idaho so I'm really not sure about you know are you sure about this because there are people out there now they're Anonymous so they won't tell us what their names are but they they have testified uh in English clearly that that you're seeking to become king of idol yeah clearly being anonymous they have an inside track I'm sorry it's just you know here I interrupted you're going along so well I'm agreeing with you and then it's like hey gotta gotta mention all the all the fun folks out there but so you don't want you're not trying to become king of Idaho you don't want the crec to become the official denomination yeah because yeah but but I I will say this if uh let's say I uh my debates my my debating skills have waned and I my opposition to this um is overcome come at Council and and my denomination becomes the official denomination of Idaho if that were to happen number one it'd be the kiss of death for the crac it's just it's just a bad thing for the church um it's just not good not healthy but the second thing I would want to say is even though it's a bad idea it's not an unconstitutional idea right okay because the at the time the Constitution was adopted the founders didn't want a church of the United States because that would Collide because let's say it was the Anglican Church they that would collide with the fact that the Congregational Church was the Church of Connecticut uh so if you if we have a national bird and a state bird no they're likely not going to be any wars over that or a national flower and a an estate flower we're going to be okay but if you have the anglicans at the national level and the congregationalists at the uh uh at the can at the Connecticut level and anglicans again at the South Carolinian level if you have that you're just setting yourself up for strife and so since we were a federal um Republic we said no National Church Congress shall make no law concerning the establishment of religion so that means Congress is the only entity that could could violate the First Amendment Congress shall make no law right uh but Connecticut could have an official religion and did down to the 1830s so it wasn't unconstitutional and the the thing that's really striking to me is that on the same day the the same day that the uh Congress ratified the final language of the First Amendment on that same day they proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving in prayer okay they wanted they wanted everybody in the country to give thanks to almighty god um and they they passed that measure on the same day on the same day that they uh finalized the language of the first amendment that tells you that they were not opposed to recognizing God they were not opposed to Christian morality being recognized by consensus they just didn't want a formal State church at the federal level and neither do I but they were white cisgendered misogynist uh slave owners right I mean so why should we even dig into that kind of stuff anymore and and I say that and we both go yeah right but unfortunately those are the people voting today they really do think that way let me let me throw in a a thought experiment for you John there's a a secular liberal uh legal theorist John Rawls who said you when you design your ideal Society you should design it not knowing where you you are going to be born into it okay um you should and that means in his thinking it's going to be not a a society with gross inequities right um uh is because you want you want it to be sort of Equitable and fair-minded well that that's just simply applying the Golden Rule to your thought experiments but if we said these cisgendered white heterosexual men who uh made this deal with the the slave owners in the South and brought together this um more perfect union but still an imperfect Union because of things like that even with that said it would be far better if if I were a black man deciding where to be born do I want to be born in 1858 in Charleston or in 2022 in New York City do I want to be conceived in 1858 Charleston or in New York City in our our era well my chances are of survival would be much better much stronger in Charleston okay yeah well that's the point uh we we chop up black babies into pieces and we sell the pieces right and we do this while feeling morally superior to the owners of the Charleston slave market which shows you how how blinded sin can make you and this is not a defense of the Charleston slave market it's just saying you guys you guys don't understand the difference between weightier matters of the law and lesser matters of the law our our situation is so much more unspeakably wicked than what was going on back there and we pull it off with a sense of moral superiority and we then enshrine it in uh in law when we have the opportunity to do so so um so would would it be fair to say do you are there any specific uh uh concerns you have with the current Christian nationalism movement as a whole uh oh yeah uh yeah I mean people are going to be shocked that can impress might actually publish books with different perspectives in them uh I was I was showing Rich this morning I I brought up the app and um by the way I I just want to let you know that I'm a full paying subscriber I was offered I was offered the free ride but it only worked for like two weeks and then I just said ah whatever I'll just go for the whole thing so so I'm a full paying subscriber there uh but I was showing him and I scroll down to for men and I was about the fourth or fifth person in in the in the you know when you scroll over to that one and then down under baptism you not only we not only had um the debate that you and I did but we also had some on a post of the day I did with Greg Strawbridge uh as well so I'm like hey you gotta You Gotta Give Them props for uh putting up putting it all out there that's really cool so do you have any criticisms for the the the either the book or the movement um yeah uh so uh with the book Stephen Wolfe has been here uh visiting us and I've uh met with him I believe that he's a responsible sane uh Guy arguing his case and I think his case needs to be taken seriously and he says a bunch of things that just really Delight me but he's a Thomas for example and I'm not a tomist um he he uh he has a um he would not have done he would not call himself any kind of Reconstructionist or theonomist he would be more in the historic magisterial Reformation stream there'd be there are things to differ with and talk about and and discuss which I'm happy to do with him uh but his um his book is just really wonderful it's got a lot of really good things in it and I can read it and appreciate this and differ with that and learn something momentous here and disagree with some other element that's not the thing that matters to me and to us is when we're talking about Christian nationalism we don't want to publish anything from the fever swamps all right there there are Christian nationalist fever swamps um there are people who would say well the Nazis weren't that bad they got some things right or or there there are people uh you know KU kluxers or uh hard chemists or you know that sort of thing and what what wolf is doing is he's saying the natural affection that you have for your own kids and your own family and your own place and your own people is a god-given good thing and of course in a fallen World it can get swollen and disordered and Veer off into uh different kinds of jingoism or you know it can and there are elements of that there are people out there calling themselves Christian nationalists who uh who are doing those sorts of worrisome things the right so I uh and just my blog post this morning I I wanted to make it very clear that we're having nothing to do with any of that kind of stuff but there are those same people are going to be um claiming to be patriotic claiming to be red State Americans claiming to be um you know things that other mainstream Americans don't have any problem with right well I'm yeah I'm a patriotic Red State American red meat Red State yeah okay um well doesn't it trouble you trouble you that Christian nationalists also waved the flag I don't think we should be uh consumed with uh guilt by association just so long as it's very clear that where we stand so this is something I I in the I've already turned the manuscript in on mere Christendom and one of this one of the chapters one of the sections is something I previously posted uh on my blog which was the whole issue of the Jesus mobs uh in first century Palestine there were a whole bunch of crowds Surly crowds who uh were quite capable of killing Pharisees you know in the book of Acts when they arrested the apostles who had gotten out of the prison they did so gingerly for they feared the mob right the the people who railroaded Jesus the reason they had his trial in the middle of the night was they feared the crowds they feared the crowds well the crowds that they were fearing were people who clearly had not grasped the full import of The Sermon on the Mount right but Jesus Jesus doesn't uh apologize for them for the existence of those mobs he doesn't apologize them for them not even once he he uses them as a foil uh there's the crowd standing over there and they say what Authority you are you using and Jesus said well I'll tell you what Authority I do this under if you answer this question for me was John the Baptist's baptism from heaven or not well they they reasoned among themselves if we say that John the Baptist baptism was not of God the crowd over there is going to kill us they're gonna come come after us and if we say it was from heaven then Jesus is going to say well so why weren't you baptized by by him right so Jesus used those people as part of a pincer movement uh he didn't apologize he didn't issue a press release saying uh we would like to denounce in the most firm tones the unconscionable threats that have been made against ananias and stuff uh right right yeah I I so it seems to me as and I'm I'm not claiming to be an expert on these things what do you why do you think this has become so much of a topic only since covid I mean we weren't really you know I'm sure there were people talking about certain aspects of this and always have been it's it's a generational thing but all of a sudden I don't know where the term Christian nationalism came from but that was not a normal part of our vocabulary um for my life that's for sure so uh one of the things that Stephen wolf does in his book that's very helpful is he um he gives a over overview of the history of the term Christian nationalism and in days gone by it was much more of a vanilla term not controversial but it was not controversial because it was used back in the day when there was much more of a Christian consensus in in recent years I think it has gotten it has become something of a hot property because of how some people in mega world or Trump World have been using it and some of them are using it in a reasonable way and some of them are using it in ways that are sort of a fringe element uh kind of way and what this book does is it it shows that this is a responsible position taken by responsible people who are not Kooks so so basically PG Woodhouse once said whenever you have any group of people uh one part of them are always up to something and he said the rest of them the rest of them are up to something else so so that's something we we do have to factor in if uh if Christian nobody is trying to uh restore or refurbish the term white supremacist right that because that that's got the toxin that's got the poison right in the term right you don't want to have any you don't want to have anything to do with that but Christian nationalism is something that is only racist because the progressives say that it is uh and and so we but we don't believe what they say anymore and so the reason I think this ultimately this the the reason this book is selling very well which it which it is doing uh the reason this is a hot topic of discussion is because the secular liberal order has over the last two years utterly discredited themselves there are all sorts of people who used to give the establishment the benefit of the doubt one of the things that um middle of the road Christians the kind of people who worship on Sunday and go to their job and work Faithfully the job uh they would say okay the medical establ the health establishment has our best interest in mind the um the military has our best interest in mind they're out there protecting our freedoms and then the last two years has revealed that the establishment does not have our best in first in mind and they are doing all kinds of demented and cockamami things and when people who have been saying for decades that we've been saying for decades that the secular liberal establishment is bankrupt this is all going to come Crashing Down well 20 years ago you had to take somebody could be a farsighted individual and say that but everybody would look around and everything still looked stable but the last two years nothing has looked stable and so a lot of people I think are prepared to hear um questions that go to the root matter so we can't name the name of Jesus why can't we name the name of Jesus he's he's the Savior isn't he you know that's something that you couldn't get an audience for 10 years ago but if you say no it needs to be Christian because secularism is bankrupt I think that that has traction today secularism uh as I've said to you before I think is the greatest enemy that has ever risen against the the name of Christ uh it is not only bankrupt but it's also uh the essence of the culture of death I I would everyone would jump on me if I didn't uh point out one of the texts from the book that has been floating around on the um on the interwebs uh that certainly caught my attention so I'd be interested especially in light of the debate we did back in 2004 uh nearly 20 years ago um the section on baptism in um in the book um says many readers May by now be frustrated that I have not mentioned the issue of baptism my hope is my argument so far have appealed to a pan Protestant audience but I should say here that Pato baptism I.E infant baptism is the position most most natural to Christian nationalism for baptizing infants brings them outwardly at least into the people of God when the body politic is baptized all are people of God all religious expectations are then social expectations and the socialization of children is the socialization of young Christians baptism is both a social and spiritual event for society treats that child as a full member of their Christian peoplehood um but cranial baptism likely creates problems for Christian nationalism it is no accident that Baptists tend to be advocates for near absolute religious liberty and this is not only due to their tradition of dissent their Theology of baptism restricts Christian obligation to The Credo baptized and thus the mass of society at least in people's formative years do not in principle have Christian obligations it is difficult to see how cultural Christianity as I've described it could operate effectively with that theology Pato baptism is consistent with Christian nationalism because it makes possible a society that is baptized in infancy and thus is subject to Christian demands for all of life so I read that and you can imagine it gives me a little bit of the Willies um especially in light of the fact that I look at Europe today and I look at what has happened in Europe and its history and I go we already tried this once and um again without that post-millennial spiritual work that actually creates new Hearts you end up with a society of baptized pagans um and that's what you got in the Netherlands today unfortunately uh is a bunch of baptized pagans and they love their euthanasia and uh and their lgbtq everything and everything else because there hasn't been a change of of heart in the process all right so let's let's um prepare here for perhaps what me it might be for our viewers something of a surprising Little Love Fest Okay so because there there's parts of this that uh what you're saying I agree with completely but then I would turn around and say yeah but so there'll be a little bit of pushback here one is that I I I agreed with Wolf's quotation there I agreed with it entirely and he said this thing that I'm arguing for is a problem for Baptists and I agree with that also but I don't think it was an it's an insoluble problem for Baptists okay I think this is a nut that can be cracked but I think that Baptists would have to go through one or two extra steps to uh to deal with this problem it it's it's easier and more straightforward in a presbyterian or an Anglican or Lutheran place to to be a Christian Nation with this with the Lutheran consensus or Presbyterian consensus that would be more straightforward uh if you had a a Christian consensus that was baptistic then you've got a conversionist ethic that is uh being born into that Society where a kid's an American but he's a let's say it's an overwhelmingly Baptist country and he's born into the country but he's not a member of the church you know how would that work that that's the problem that he's talking about um and so yeah uh I would say that you can deal with it by pointing to the fact that during the time I would argue that America was most successfully a Christian Nation it was so at a time when the Baptist ethos was very strong right so uh so the Baptists were very much included in the time when America had a successful run as a Christian Nation not with a formal establishment but with the cons that consensus now here's the little bit of pushback we we look at we look at Finland and Denmark and Netherlands and where you've got a continent of baptized infidels right but then we could do we could do the same thing with Alabama right in Alabama everybody's a Christian until they get their driver's license right and and so what what happens I grew up I grew up in the southern baptist church and if uh and what happens is when you're around if you're dealing with the 10 year olds the deacons do a sweep through the Sunday school and it's time to go it's time for the kids to go forward and the kids go forward and they are baptized I was baptized when I was 10. uh went forward and made profession of faith and and it was genuine and sincere but it was something it's part of the cultural expectation and so uh you can have you can have a baptistic Infidel Nation just as you have a patobaptist in Philadelphia Nation so I've long said that the issue for faithfulness and unfaithfulness for a denomination or local congregation or a nation is not whether or not when you baptize but whether or not you discipline in terms of your baptism if if you practice this church discipline of kids who are baptized in infancy and grew up in the church but they start fornicating or getting drunk when they're 17. and if you discipline them then I don't think you're going to have the same problem that they have in Europe but if they say oh well boys will be boys that kind of thing you're going to have a problem but you could have the same problem in baptistic culture as well where a kid went forward when he was 10 got baptized and started fornicating and drinking when he got his driver's license and then no no discipline what's happening there is the same thing infidelity and apostasy and unfaithfulness is overrunning the church but it can happen to baptist cultures as much as pay the Baptist ones so when when we we went over to Germany uh just before the uh 500th anniversary the Reformation at a wonderful trip where we went around to various parts of primarily Luther's life and and that's when I got to preach in the castle Church in Wittenberg and talk about a bucket list type of a thing it really really was um though I'm not sure if I've told you uh when I started to preach there was a little bit of a buzz in the in the sound system and uh it went away eventually and afterwards I I come down the winding stairs and of course that that Pulpit is directly over Luther's tomb he's he's right there and uh so I told my friends I said did you hear that little buzz I said yeah we got got it taken care of I said yeah that was actually Luther spinning in his grave because the Baptist was preaching in his Pulpit which which there's a lot more to that than than we might imagine do you know who Fritz herba was Fritz I think I do Fritz herbal was an anabaptist I guess you know I don't like that term because it was if you can use it of the people of Munster as well as everybody else I'm not really sure how useful the term it is but um Fritz erba uh was convinced by reading Luther's translation in the New Testament in German um of Credo baptism and he was arrested and placed in prison um he started preaching out of his window and converting people and so they dragged him up to the vartburg castle um where of course Luther had hid is juncker jorg and had translated the the very new testament that he that he uh uh believed and they put him in the dungeon in the second of the two spiers of the of the castle um and I I have a short video I don't know if you've ever seen it's less than five minutes long that we shot at at what they called The Terror hole um because you were lower debt you were tied up and you were lowered down through this thing into pitch Blackness there's no windows there's no doors down there it's about 40 feet down and that's where he was imprisoned for six years man before he died and they think they found his his uh skeleton in like 2006 I think something like that um outside the castle walls and I explained to people they would have Lutheran ministers that would come and sit up there at that hole and preach down at him about baptism and I'm like how many of us would have lasted would have how many of us would have changed our doctrine of baptism within the week maybe maybe faster even before going through it uh he did not and he died down there and the the problem is Luther knew he was down there and Luther Luther felt that he needed to be down there because from Luther's perspective especially after after Munster um there's Rebellion there's Anarchy and that has a huge fear in Luther's mind especially after 1525 and then the peasants were right so right so I had I had some of the people in my group you know come up to me and basically say I I don't know how I can believe Luther was actually a Christian if he knew that a man who believed his new testament believed everything else he believed but on that one issue was in that hole for six years and Luther agreed with that and my response to him was you better be very careful because if you make that your standard there weren't many Christians in history um until the modern the modern period I call that sacralism and one of the things that that um I'm not sure if you've seen uh Joe boot's recent book um ruler of Kings but the the last chapter deals with the the difference between the kingdom and the church they have to be distinguished from from one another but in sacralism they really end up becoming very much intermingled and that's where a lot of the problems came from and I think that's there's that's a picture of where that kind of a problem comes from so if the Baptists have a few extra steps they have to take in quote unquote Christian nationalism or even in your understanding of mere Christendom um how do you avoid Fritz herbas in the future is the only way around that that you really do have a 75 percent population that has been regenerated was it because there was so much nominalism I I mean how do you how do you how do you deal with that yeah so uh that what you're raising is the central question in all of this so let's say if you take the let's just postulate that there are five extra steps that a Baptist would have to take to get to the State of Affairs I as a presbyterian would take three of them right so so I think that the the Baptist concerns about not wanting a replay of this sort of thing um is uh is right and righteous and good we have to we have to prevent that sort of thing from happening again uh something similar happened with Patrick Henry Patrick Henry uh I think his father was an Anglican and his mother was a presbyterian and but uh and he would he would go his mother would take him to listen to the preaching of um uh Samuel Davies who was a great Presbyterian minister in Virginia at the time but Patrick Henry with that background was outraged at the flogging there was a Baptist minister in Virginia who was flogged for being a BAP for for being a Baptist Minister and he and they didn't have the anabaptists scare to worry about he was just a what we would think of as a Baptist and the challenge or the the Temptation for Christian nationalism of this sort is that if citizenship and your membership in the the body of Christ are interchangeable then what happens when someone pops up let's say you're it's a presbyterian or a Lutheran or an Anglican nation and someone comes in and he's he forms a Baptist congregation that's not just a different doctrinal position that's also an attack on our way of life that's a that's it becomes unpatriotic right and and and if you're having if this is happening in the same era when you're dealing with the peasants Revolt or the Munster Shenanigans it becomes people uh become convinced in their own mind that they're dealing with an existential threat to to everybody and then it's not long before Caiaphas says it's it is fitting that one man die for the sake of the people right that that's the so that's the challenge so I would jump back over to America and say I really like America's version of the uh of this mere Christendom in 1789 the first the first general assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America met in 1789 which was the same year that the constitution was adopted the general assembly met in Philadelphia and the moderator of the general assembly that was elected was Witherspoon who had signed the Declaration and he so these people are all breathing the same air the American version of the westmins if you read the original British Westminster Confession when they talk about the civil magistrate they they're they can Veer toward arastianism you have to remember the parliament convened the Westminster assembly and uh they say the civil magistrate has the power to convene a synod and he is the authority to be present at them and to determine that their findings are in accord with the word of God right okay that's a problem that's a problem so uh the American the first meeting of the Presbyterians in America basically said that the magistrate is to be a nursing father as Isaiah talks about but is to make no distinction between the churches of our common Lord all right so the the American Westminster basically so I'll say this all the squish all the PCA squish ministers out there are if they've subscribed to the Westminster Confession of Faith the American one they are Advocates of Christian nationalism because there it says expressly that the magistrate is to be supportive of the church he doesn't establish any one of them he's even-handed with all the churches of our common Lord so the uh the the founders were dealing with maybe a a a handful of Jews the probably the biggest problematic group was the Quakers and maybe the Roman Catholics so they were they were dealing with an overwhelmingly Protestant and Evangelical population and they said this is what we want the Magister to do to be even-handed among Christians if you try to absolutize that and say no you've got to be even-handed among every religious conviction whatever uh then now you've got Islamic fundamentalists and jihadists and you know uh it just is not workable so I think I think we have to come back to Amir Christendom approach and I believe the American Presbyterians uh hammered out away for Baptists to be comfortable with this kind of recognition that Jesus is Lord of all things including the Public Square so uh when does uh when do you think that book will be out because I'm really interested in seeing that you know bonson said years and years and years ago well he had to have said it years and years and years ago because he's gone but um he uh he said there's still a lot of work to be done in mapping out um theonomy and how God's law is applicable and how we do General equity and all there's a lot of work to be done and and I would agree with him there's that's that's very very true and obviously there would be a tremendous amount of work that would have to be done in the establishment of Christian nationalism and I'm really repulsed to be honest with you by some of the Maga crowd and the obvious disengagement from any kind of Christian worldview uh that is that is a part of it and that's that's problematic but it seems to me that the only way to promote this in a positive fashion is with the realization that comes with post-millennialism and that is that God has the power and capacity by his Spirit to bring massive um regeneration uh and and Revival and fulfill those promises of the the Nations streaming to uh uh to to Jerusalem and Desiring God's law and things like that outside of that kind of change I just it does not seem like the mechanics could ever ever work unless you have people who are focused upon the lordship of Christ and their own self-denial yeah you can't make a good omelet with rotten eggs and and and so it doesn't matter if you're if your theology is proper if your recipes are good the the kitchen is immaculate you've got the best pots and pans in the world the best chef in the world you bring Steven wolf in to be the chef you know making this omelette but all he has is pot smoking unregenerate fornicators you're not going to be able to build anything worthwhile it's you you can't impose you can't impose a Godly system you can restrain you can restrain them from as much evil as they were going to commit but you can't build a Godly civil order without a movement of the spirit of God but fortunately uh and this is something a point I wanted to make earlier uh God has done this before there have been great Awakenings before and uh and when we point to to baptized Infidel Europe today we have to realize that the Medieval Europe was a basket case spiritually speaking they weren't an Infidel Europe but they were superstitious Europe they were a works-oriented Europe they were suffocating under the heavy uh soaked blankets of works works works works and the all of Europe was that way and the Reformation uh was post-tenebras looks after after Darkness light and that was the kind of thing that I think we need today only I think we need it on a much larger scale because there are so many more of us that we're dealing with billions of people now and they were dealing with millions of people then but but God has done it before God knows how to bear his right arm well it seems to me and we're pretty much out of time but it seems to me that um the uh the tenebrus um may get really deep before the Lux breaks through and and maybe it is the the utter collapse of the the secular nonsense we we just every day you wake up and go oh they found a way to dig deeper astonishing I've never never even thought of it but that's exactly what they're doing it it it's how I feel each day and part of me is like yeah this will only hasten its eventual demise but then the other part of me looks at my grandkids and goes man are they gonna are they gonna be facing some challenges that that we never faced when in in our in our lifetimes um and and so have we provided them with the proper Foundation uh is is really the question that we have so so I'm looking I'm looking I'm looking forward to to that book uh and uh then we can we'll obviously get to have a chat about that Lord willing if yeah if there's still electricity in the United States at that point James hey hey please please stay away from fire uh for for a little while at least till next November that's how that's how we stay that's how we stay warm up here [Music] that's true but bar limits so anyways uh God bless you brother we'll see you next time all right you too bye [Music]

Channel: Canon Press

Views: 55,230

Keywords: canon press

Id: CEkC5nA8fIQ

Length: 52min 13sec (3133 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2022