Rod Dreher has a scathing and important review of the new book by Andrew Isker, The Boniface Option, which riffs on Dreher’s own 2017 title, The Benedict Option. I have read the latter, but not the former. So, I’ll leave it to others to determine how accurate the review is. But Dreher’s piece is important in its own right as a diagnosis of a broader phenomenon, namely, the very online angry young men who are so attracted to the Christian Nationalist cause. Here are a few relevant lines from Rod’s post:

Isker is “not interested in thinking and conversing, but only emoting and getting high-fives from church bros for owning the libs. I can’t emphasize this enough: The Boniface Option is a book for angry young men who enjoy being angry, young, and male.”

“Again, every page of The Boniface Option bristles with intense anger. Over and over, Isker says that we must train ourselves to ‘hate’ — but he offers no advice on how to keep that hatred of evil from turning into hatred of human beings, or the hatred from poisoning one’s heart. One gets the clear impression that he thinks hatred in defense of holiness is no vice.”

“In the end, I know very well what Andrew Isker hates, but I have no idea what he loves. I know what he thinks war should be like, but I can’t figure out what peace is to him, other than the vanquishing of his enemies. I know what his idea of justice looks like, but I can’t see even the slightest hint that mercy matters to him.”

Again, these are problems that are broader than any one author or book. The Christian Nationalist Right, or whatever we want to call it, has a Christian virtue problem. They revel in transgression–in hate and name-calling, not to mention the often overt anti-semitism and racism–and call it courage and faithfulness.

What use is Christian Nationalism if it isn’t even Christian in any demonstrable sense of the term?

Incidentally I’m reading Benedict XVI’s final writings, and it’s striking how different his perspective is from the Protestant Nationalist/Catholic Integralist tendencies that are so en vogue in certain corners of the Christian internet. Ratzinger, of course, knew the problems of modern liberalism well. And he, too, was concerned that Christians stand strong against the cultural pressures–like the Maccabean words of defiance, “We will not obey the king’s words.” But the “zeal” of the Maccabeans “is not the form in which Christian zeal is expressed. Authentic ‘zeal’ takes its essential form from the Cross of Jesus Christ.” 

Christian responses to what Ratzinger often called the “dictatorship of relativism” must be, well, Christian, which is to say, they must be cruciform. More Ratzinger:

“As far  as the truth is concerned, I would simply like to defer to Origen: ‘Christ wins no victory over someone who is unwilling. He conquers only by persuasion. Not for nothing is he the Word of God.’ But at the end, as an authentic counterbalance to all forms of intolerance, stands Jesus Christ crucified. The victory of faith can always be achieved only in communion with Jesus Crucified. The theology of the Cross is the Christian response to the question about freedom and violence; and in fact, even historically, Christianity won its victories only thanks to the persecuted and never when it sided with the persecutors.”

I’m not on Twitter anymore. So, mercifully, I don’t see the daily crazy. But it came to my attention this week that a group of posters associated with the Christian Nationalist right were on there feigning ignorance of and then questioning the “narrative” about the lynching of Emmett Till. Apparently, we can’t acknowledge one of the most well-documented cases of racist terrorism in American history simply because it is a part of the “official narrative” of “the left.” The brutal disfigurement, mutilation, and murder of a 14-year-old boy, which was racially motivated by his murderers’ own admission, may have not been “wholly unprovoked, or as thoroughly driven by racism as is claimed.” This vile and tribalistic thinking betrays a profoundly relativistic mindset that is more concerned with posturing in the contemporary political landscape than it is with the truth or with Christian morality. Flagrantly racist attitudes are now treated as merely different “opinions on race.” And it appears to be a part of a growing trend on the so-called dissident right to cozy up to anti-Semitic and overtly white supremacist voices. One of the leaders in this movement suggested to me on Twitter a couple years ago that genetic inferiority is as likely an explanation for racial disparities in America as any lingering effects of systemic racism. The ethnic dimension to the rising ethno-nationalism on the right is becoming more transparent. The mask is coming off.

It is easy to get angry about all of this. And to be sure, righteous indignation is appropriate. But I would suggest the leavening of another emotion: pity. I genuinely pity those who still find a perverted solace in the myth of racial superiority and the hardened path of racial division. I feel sorry for those who are so blinded by a “no enemies to the right” way of thinking that they have departed so disastrously from the way of Christ, where “there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11).

There is a reason why we included an article on racial unity in our Manifesto for Evangelical Baptist Catholicity. Racist attitudes and expressions even within the church aren’t making a comeback. Sadly, they never went away. In the Manifesto, we write,

We affirm that all people, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender, are created in God’s image and, if they have repented and believed in Christ, are brothers and sisters together in the one body of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Because of this shared imago dei and because of Christ’s saving work among all nations, peoples, and tongues, we believe that one major task of Baptist catholicity is to promote racial unity, especially within the body of Christ.

The last several years have put a major strain on efforts toward racial reconciliation within evangelical and Baptist circles. We are at a point now where things that almost everyone agreed on a decade ago—about the need for empathy, the acknowledgement of past wrongs (and their lingering effects), and the pursuit of racial diversity in the body of Christ—are dismissed as “critical race theory” or “cultural Marxism.” Few have the courage to poke their heads up in favor of racial reconciliation in this landscape. This too is pitiable.

For Southern Baptists, it would be a good time to revisit our Resolution on Racial Reconciliation on the 150^th Anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention. Again, it says things that would get you run out of town as an allegedly CRT proponent today. It spoke of both conscious and unconscious racism and of both individual and “systemic racism.” It apologized and repented for our racist past. It sought forgiveness and healing. It made commitments to eradicate racism from our midst. And it anchored all of it in the Great Commission that our Lord solemnly gave to the church to make disciples of every tribe, tongue, and nation. We should pursue racial justice, unity, and reconciliation not because they map onto any left-right analysis of contemporary American politics, but because they are demanded by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Rediscovering and making good on these resolutions is the only possible path for a Baptist future blessed by the Savior of the world.

Myk Habets and I have recently published a book with Lexham Press on how the theology of T. F. Torrance interfaces with evangelical theology. Lexham interviewed Myk and I about the book here. One of Myk’s comments sums up well why you should be interested in the book and in Torrance’s theology more generally:

At the heart of Torrance’s theology is the conviction, from Scripture and the tradition, that Jesus is the exclusive two-fold movement from God to humanity and humanity to God. Christ is our High Priest, Mediator, Savior, Model, and King. What Evangelical would disagree with that! But, Torrance goes further and takes this as seriously as anyone in the Tradition, and argues for the vicarious humanity and ministry of Christ. This is something that is fundamental to the Gospel and yet subtly eclipsed in much modern Evangelicalism. This book is an attempt to in part, correct this. To do this, a clear and compelling doctrine of the Trinity is required, a mature and faithful commitment to the authority of Scripture is needed, and from there, everything else will flow. This book is a partial contribution to the renewal of Evangelical thought and practice today. 

Check it out the whole interview (note my last reply especially) and buy the book here!

One my favorite British Baptist theologians, Steve Holmes, has written a reflection on the Coronation liturgy of King Charles. It’s straight Baptist fire. His concerns center on the Baptist conviction, beautifully expressed in the First London Baptist Confession of Faith, that Christ alone is the true Prophet-Priest-King of the New Covenant people of God. As Holmes explains, this doctrine of Christ’s threefold office (munus triplex) had important precedents in earlier Christian history, but it takes on a particular force in Baptist theology:

Thomas Aquinas presents the doctrine like this; Calvin starts to use it as an organising principle for narrating the work of Christ. The expansion of its range amongst the English Separatists and Baptists is extensive and perhaps surprising. It is also dependent on a further claim that King Jesus does not delegate any of these offices: he is our great high priest, so there is no need for any human priesthood; he alone is the true prophet, and so we look for truth nowhere other than his word; he alone is king, and so no-one else may presume to command any congregation of his people.

Now, both the expansion of the scope of the offices and this point about the lack of delegation are contestable, of course, and so other theological constructions than a Baptist one are possible. But the instinctive Baptist fear/complaint/demand is always that some human authority is trying to muscle in on a role that belongs to Christ alone.

British Baptists have not, generally, been anti-monarchy: there is a temporal realm, that requires governing, and a monarchy is a possible way to do that. The seventeenth-century English Baptists, even when persecuted, did not stop declaring their loyalty to the crown—but they thought that, in imposing forms of worship and doctrine, the crown had badly over-reached its authority, and was trying to govern where Jesus alone can reign.

Read the whole thing. If the coronation represents an expression of “Christian nationalism” or whatever you want to call it, the Baptist complaint against it not just that it’s a relatively empty symbol in a nation even more secular and progressive than the United States. No, even if the ceremony had more teeth–especially if it had more teeth–the problems are systemic, on a Baptist reckoning. No king or government should pretend to usurp the place that belongs to Jesus alone as the King of the Church and Lord of the conscience.

To prevent mistakes, however, it is proper to observe that the patriotism required of us is not that love of our country which clashes with universal benevolence, or which seeks its prosperity at the expense of the general happiness of mankind. Such was the patriotism of Greece and Rome; and such is that of all others where Christian principle is not allowed to direct it. Such, I am ashamed to say, is that with which some have advocated the cause of negro slavery. It is necessary, forsooth, to the wealth of this country! No; if my country cannot prosper but at the expense of justice, humanity, and the happiness of mankind, let it be unprosperous! But this is not the case. Righteousness will be found to exalt a nation, and so to be true wisdom. The prosperity which we are directed to seek in behalf of our country involves no ill to any one, except to those who shall attempt its overthrow. Let those who fear not God, nor regard man, engage in schemes of aggrandizement, and let sordid parasites pray for their success. Our concern is to cultivate that patriotism which harmonizes with good-will to men. O my country, I will lament thy faults! Yet, with all thy faults, I will seek thy good; not only as a Briton, but as a Christian: “for my brethren and companions sakes, I will say, Peace be within thee: because of the house of the Lord my God, I will seek thy good!”

Andrew Fuller, “Christian Patriotism,” 1803