My People?

Christianity and Nationhood

A few weeks ago, Owen Strachan tweeted that his people were not those who shared his cultural heritage (he also added skin color). “As a Christian, ‘my people’ are Christ’s people—all who know and love the gospel of grace.” He issued several announcements of this kind over the course of several days, obviously imagining himself to be combating the “woke right.” Strachan was right when he tweeted more recently that “men like Russell Moore, David French, Ray Ortlund, and Tim Keller have led Christians to move left politically. Under the banner of ‘love your neighbor,’ they have confused the church of Christ.” True enough, but Strachan is introducing another kind of confusion. Whilst this confusion may not move the church left electorally, it will limit their capacity to think well politically. The sentiment that Strachan offers, whether intended or not, is a thin gruel, that of a Christianized proposition nation. Nationhood or peoplehood is more robust than he makes it out to be and commands more attention and loyalty than he insinuates. (If he intends less than this then he is simply trading in cheap wordplay for reactionary clicks.)

To insert the annoyingly necessary caveat, no earthly loyalties or commitments can demand the type of loyalty Christians owe to Christ himself, nor should they be permitted to induce sin against the same. With that assumed, we are talking of temporal matters now, the extent to which Christianity can and does impact the principles of nature and the ingredients of nationhood or peoplehood. I will not say pure nature, for we are already throwing grace into the mix. But let us consider these things politically and naturally in their operation. Is Christianity necessary and sufficient to establish a nation or a people? Does it do so anew? Or is more required? Does the introduction of the Gospel radically alter the principles of things natural? And is it then in any way sensible to designate Christianity as your people?

Comparing the actions of Christ with those of Moses, Pufendorf points out that Christ “acted in a quite different manner… his intention was not to Erect a new State here upon Earth.” His actions “had not the least Relation towards the laying of the Foundation of a new State.” He didn’t give any new laws, but only recalled the “Antient Law, as far as it was given to Mankind in general,” explained it and exhorted the people “to a due observance of it.” In other words, Christ did nothing consistent with “the Nature and Office of a Temporal Sovereign.” Nor did he subvert the existing temporal sovereigns. All these things Moses had done with Old Testament Israel.

Hence, “When we therefore speak of Christians, we do not understand a certain Nation or People, subject to any particular Government, but in general, all such, as make profession of a certain Doctrine or Religion.” Christianity did not supplant natural principles of politics (as I’ve said before). Nor did it establish a new nation or people in the sense that Moses constituted one. Whereas the “Divine Worship of the Jews, was so adapted to that State, as scarce to be suitable to any other,” Christianity is accessible to all nations and peoples. Your nation or people is not established by Christianity. The question is whether your nation or people will be Christian, whether Christianity will supply the central, shared cult.

As Pufendorf said, shared religion is the best bond of unity and stability (hence the magistrate’s interest in its maintenance). Indeed, religion is one of the key ingredients of peoplehood; it is necessary but insufficient. Law, language, custom, heritage, and land must also be present and shared. These are the ingredients of a nation, as they were for the Israelites, and as they are according to natural principles which were not abrogated by Christ. That is, the introduction of Christianity has not “altered the Nature of Civil Societies, or the Right of Sovereigns.” (To say otherwise is to adopt the very Papist position Pufendorf, and many other Protestants before him, was out to refute.)

The new people and new priesthood established by Christ in the New Testament pertains not to these things for, as our Savior said, his kingdom is not of this world. Only at the eschaton will such things be realized. Inside of human history, the outbreak of Christianity captured many nations, but it did not supplant them. Rather, it supplied a new (and true) religion to the ingredients of nationhood, a new founding of the national cult.

Hence, Galatians 3:28—Christ does not require what Moses did in this sense. Entrance into Christianity does not consider whether one is Jew, Gentile, male, or female, slave or free. But neither does it destroy those distinctions, as Paul made clear. Only heretics have thought that Christianity untethered adherents from the earth, that it offered androgynous transcendence, that it demanded socio-political egalitarianism. Rather, Christianity merely conditions the exercise and character of natural principles, which themselves are encoded in and extend from creation. God made us sociable and rational, hence society and law; and he providential drew the boundaries of nations themselves. It would be odd to claim a revolution against rather than a restoration of these things as a consequence of the Gospel.

Christianity as such does not establish a new government, people or nation. It may serve, inside of a nation, as a requirement for membership, but this according to a natural principle. Christianity may also enable cooperation between nations, providing shared interests and a basis for trust. But Christianity in itself does not thereby unify them into a new conglomerate.

As we see in Pufendorf, the same reasons that Christianity does not establish a new nation, people, or government is the same reason that it does not wash them away. For the incarnate Christ came to preach the truth, and true doctrine in itself is no more a basis for nationhood than would be true science or true philosophy. Propositions, even true propositions, do not supply the requisite ingredients for society.

As Michael Lind put it, “The very notion of a country based on an idea is absurd… A nation may be dedicated to a proposition, but it cannot be a proposition—this is the central insight of American nationalism, the doctrine that is the major alternative to multiculturalism and democratic universalism.” By contrast, “A real nation is a concrete historical community, defined primarily by a common language, common folkways, and a common vernacular culture.”  

Again, there may (and should) be a religious test for membership in a nation or people or country—here these are all synonymous—but the religion itself does not constitute the people; it does not stand in for them. Without delving yet again into the ordo amoris—so many have done it—loyalty to one’s people or nation should, all things being equal, of higher priority and identity than those of another nation or people even if the latter shares one ingredient (religion) of nationhood with you. Neither is this priority of duty, one bound up in a covenant of shared things (e.g., history, language, culture), dissolved by the erosion of shared religion, albeit it, it is well on its way to dissolution and incoherence, a fact Pufendorf and nearly everyone else before him would’ve recognized.  

Image: Robert S. Duncanson, untitled, oil on canvas, 1861.

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