Arriving a day after James White’s exceptional exposé comes Doug Wilson’s equally devastating refutation of the Hitlerization of the Reformed world. In the big scheme of things, this is not a big problem, but it’s not a nothingburger either. Allegedly the offending conference garnered 1000 attendees.
That’s not nothing.
Doug marshals his obvious rhetorical gifts to lay bare the outrageous depravity of this group, which includes Nazi sympathizers, Nazi tolerators, as well as actual professed Nazis (yes, really). This is Doug Wilson at his best, and he didn’t even need his vaunted “serrated edge” to do the job.
Yet a third devastating treatment comes from my CCL colleague Brian G. Mattson, and it warrants the most careful reading. Follow the links in his article to discover how early and how often he was exposing these very errors.
While I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to change anybody, I don’t believe humanly speaking the leaders of this movement will be moved by either James or Doug, or by me or Brian Mattson or Jeffery Ventrella or David Bahnsen. I do believe, however, that more and more of their sympathizers and “adjacent” members can be dissuaded from soft-soaping this ideological sin. I’m praying this is precisely what happens.
A Christian Nationalism That Is Christian But Not Nationalist
Here is Doug’s section distinguishing his version of Christian Nationalism from the Christian Nationalism of the Reformed (not reformed) Nazis:
Real Christian nationalists . . . love the Lord Jesus Christ, and intend to live for Him. They love the holy Scriptures, both Old Testament and New, and intend to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. They love the worship of God on the Lord’s Day, revolving around Word and sacrament. They love singing the psalms of David. They love their wives, love their neighbors, and love their enemies. They love football in the fall and baseball in the spring. They love their nation and desire to see America blessed with true reformation and revival. They love the Jews, and pray for their coming conversion to Christ. They love dispensationalists, and pray that they would drop their peculiar form of Christian Zionism. They love the fact that they get slandered from both directions—as the longhouse anti-feminists. They love Trumpkin the dwarf and his dogged loyalty to Caspian and his equally dogged refusal to have anything to do with Nikabrik’s proposed alliances.
They hate every evil way, which would include every form of socialism there is. This would include national socialism, international socialism, and greater metro area socialism. They hate abortion, child pornography, and white self-loathing.
Two observations come immediately to mind.
First, I don’t disagree with a single line in that description.
Second, nothing Doug said had anything whatsoever to do with nationalism. What he is actually describing here is Christian culture, including its political component, which it inevitably must feature.
This is why I have urged Doug to shed this moniker, which has as much credence as Christian Marxism. Nationalism has a particular historical reference, just like Marxism. You don’t simply get to pour creative content into it when it suits your culture-war strategy. It is a secular ideology that began late in the 18th century and came to the fore in the 19th and, thank God, was vanquished in flames, and atomic detonations, in the middle of the 20th.
It has only reappeared in the fever swamps of the American Right and at the New Christendom conferences.
Little Explosions and Big Ones
Most, perhaps all, of the young men now leading this Hitlerization Project either spent time in Moscow or were heavily influenced by Doug in the past. No one should hold Doug responsible for this. And this realization no doubt is partly what impels Doug to oppose them so vocally and extensively right now. He is not responsible for what they have become, but he is responsible to create a chasm between himself and them. This is just what he is doing.
And not a moment too soon.
One wishes, in fact, this sort of opposition would’ve appeared 3-5 years ago. I’m willing to concede their depravity was not nearly as evident 3-5 years ago, but the seeds of it were, and some of us were opposing it at that time, and it would’ve been helpful to nip it in the proverbial bud before it bloomed into a full-blown project.
To switch metaphors: We avoid big destructive explosions by unleashing little disruptive explosions.
Regardless of when it happens, this Hitlerization Project does need exploding, and I’m grateful to my CCL colleagues for launching that explosion several years ago and for James and Doug doing it now.
Because, heaven knows, this project needs — like Berlin and Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 — to die on the ash heap of history.✞
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Amen and amen! I'll be teaching a group of young men tomorrow evening about the dangers of that peculiar love-child of Enlightenment Skepticism and Convulsive Revolution: Ideological Nationalism--in all its nefarious ways, shapes, and forms.
Great word brother!