Coveting Caesar’s Throne: Navigating Christian Nationalism in an Election Year - Jesse Johnson
00:00:00.000 | Well, in the early 5th century, Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, found himself on the
00:00:11.080 | precipice of unparalleled societal collapse.
00:00:16.360 | The Roman Empire was on the verge of falling and the Visigoths were basically knocking
00:00:23.640 | at his door and his congregation was asking him questions about how to understand the
00:00:29.240 | fall of Rome.
00:00:31.120 | And here was the dynamic that Augustine was trying to navigate as you looked back through
00:00:35.800 | the previous centuries of the Roman Empire, when Rome was at its strongest is when they
00:00:42.200 | were persecuting Christians.
00:00:45.040 | When Christianity was on the rise, Rome fell.
00:00:50.600 | So how do you navigate that as a pastor when people are asking you what is the Lord doing?
00:00:56.780 | Why is God bringing this empire to a screeching halt?
00:01:02.280 | People were quick to blame the Christians.
00:01:03.880 | If only the Christians would have also served the Roman gods, then God would have seen fit
00:01:08.200 | to extend the length of the Roman Empire, but instead the Romans were being converted
00:01:14.000 | to Christ and the empire fell.
00:01:17.680 | Augustine spent, you know, ten years plus writing an answer to that question, which
00:01:21.880 | is the form of his book, The City of God, and the book is so complex, if you've read
00:01:27.920 | City of God, you know it defies summary, really.
00:01:31.280 | It's part philosophy, part theology, part history.
00:01:34.380 | The first eight or nine books or so he spends largely making fun of the Roman deities, which
00:01:40.760 | should not win him friends or influence people.
00:01:44.260 | From there he moved on to addressing the reality that there is a city on earth, it's a city
00:01:50.280 | of men.
00:01:51.280 | They have hopes in the city of man, they have loves, compassions, desires, they have
00:01:55.480 | all the ethos and pathos of city of man is alive in people's hearts, and there's a city
00:02:01.280 | of God in the world as well.
00:02:03.400 | You have people that interact with both of those cities, but they couldn't be more different.
00:02:08.200 | On the outside, the two cities could even look the same, but their ends are categorically
00:02:13.000 | different.
00:02:14.000 | I think we would all agree with that, and I think the American church by and large would
00:02:17.300 | agree with that as well.
00:02:18.600 | But what would get Augustine in trouble today if he were to say it is his main conclusion
00:02:22.960 | of the book as I read it, which is that the fate of the city of man is disconnected from
00:02:30.200 | the activity in the city of God.
00:02:32.840 | That as the kingdom of God advances and waxes and wanes, it does not affect the duration
00:02:40.040 | of the city of man.
00:02:41.040 | I mean that's, as I read Augustine, I take that away to be his main point.
00:02:45.280 | Augustine's militates against the idea that is so prevalent in American Christianity that
00:02:49.460 | if only the church would stand up and do this, we could win back our culture.
00:02:53.480 | If only the church would do this or that or the other thing, you're sick of inflation,
00:02:56.880 | you're sick of open borders, you're sick of rainbow flags on your elementary school teachers'
00:03:01.360 | lapels.
00:03:02.360 | Well, if only the church would stand up and be the church, we could bring a stop to that.
00:03:07.560 | And there's this contradiction in so much of American Christianity that the United States
00:03:11.560 | is a nation under judgment by God for our conduct and at the same time, the church has
00:03:16.800 | the power to stop that judgment or to avoid that judgment or to direct society in a different
00:03:21.320 | direction.
00:03:22.320 | And you can see that those two are in conflict with each other.
00:03:24.800 | Either we're under the judgment of God or we're not.
00:03:28.720 | How do you engage with people that are under God's judgment?
00:03:31.080 | Of course, you preach the gospel to them and appeal for repentance.
00:03:35.720 | Augustine comes along and says, "The spiritual condition of a society is disconnected from
00:03:42.080 | the rise and fall of the city of man."
00:03:45.800 | Nations come and nations go and the word of the Lord lives forever.
00:03:50.200 | And you cannot, as a Christian, try to manipulate that or direct that.
00:03:54.840 | You cannot control the way God causes nations to rise and fall.
00:03:58.600 | If Augustine couldn't control the rise and fall of Rome, what do you think you're going
00:04:04.120 | to do?
00:04:06.520 | That's the reality behind Augustine's city of God.
00:04:09.160 | It's in that context today that I want to talk to you about Christian nationalism.
00:04:13.440 | The title is how you shepherd Christian nationalism or shepherd people through Christian nationalism
00:04:18.760 | in an election year, which is like three subtitles in that, but that's fine.
00:04:23.320 | I thought of that while I was reading Augustine.
00:04:24.760 | He's the king of 87 subtitles.
00:04:28.080 | You know, does your church hand out voter guides?
00:04:29.960 | Do you have the American flag on the pulpit?
00:04:31.800 | Do you organize little buses to take the elderly to go vote and cure their ballots?
00:04:36.360 | Do you get involved in elections?
00:04:38.280 | Do you have people running for office come and speak to your church?
00:04:41.200 | Do you tell your church to mobilize and get active in order to win over society?
00:04:46.680 | Do you go after an election as a motivation in your church?
00:04:52.660 | And Christian nationalism is rising right now.
00:04:55.600 | I think there was by and large a consensus that ten years ago it was waning, that it
00:05:00.280 | was on the decline, but then COVID comes and churches get closed and, you know, the borders
00:05:05.340 | get opened and inflation goes up and you have the kind of the so-called evangelical elites
00:05:10.120 | that sat back and seemed to cheer all of that on, didn't they?
00:05:13.120 | They seemed to rejoice in the open borders and they seemed to rejoice in the churches
00:05:17.040 | being closed.
00:05:18.040 | And when you have groups like the ERLC and other groups like that that are really celebrating
00:05:21.600 | restrictions on church, you have a lot of people in your own churches, I'm sure, that
00:05:25.400 | are looking at that and going, "Our Christian leaders, our religious leaders are selling
00:05:29.560 | us out.
00:05:31.280 | There has to be a better way to navigate this."
00:05:33.900 | And so they're drawn to people that are talking with conviction and clarity in the political
00:05:38.440 | world.
00:05:39.440 | At least that has been my experience.
00:05:40.800 | The people that I have met in the last few years have been drawn towards Christian nationalism.
00:05:44.360 | That's what's drawn them that way is they think, you know, it used to be, even five
00:05:50.240 | years ago, it was just in Christianese, when you were asked a layperson in your church
00:05:54.560 | to pray before a meal at a church potluck or before an evening service or whatever,
00:05:59.880 | and they weren't prepared, they would get up behind the pulpit or behind the casserole
00:06:03.760 | and they would start their prayer by saying, "God, we're thankful that we live in a country
00:06:08.120 | that is free and lets us meet here without restrictions and we don't take that for granted
00:06:11.760 | and thank God for the casserole."
00:06:14.920 | And you don't hear those prayers anymore, do you?
00:06:17.080 | And the people that used to pray them are looking around going, "What happened?"
00:06:23.720 | And they're being drawn towards Christian nationalism.
00:06:27.120 | So of course any discussion on Christian nationalism has to begin with definitions.
00:06:31.720 | How do you define Christian nationalism?
00:06:33.520 | I'll start there.
00:06:35.200 | If you ask NPR, which I don't recommend, a Christian nationalist is anyone who is to
00:06:46.520 | the right of Justice Sotomayor.
00:06:49.840 | A Christian nationalist is anyone who is pro-life, has a Bible, a Jesus fish on their car, or
00:06:58.880 | has voted Republican in the last 20 years.
00:07:02.080 | Would make you a Christian nationalist.
00:07:04.000 | Not a very helpful definition.
00:07:05.960 | If you ask somebody like Al Mohler, he defines, he describes himself as a Christian nationalist.
00:07:11.520 | The definition he operates from is kind of just the two words exist independently of
00:07:16.960 | each other.
00:07:17.960 | And Mohler's lexicon, nationalism, is the belief that there are nations and that nations
00:07:22.000 | should generally speaking look out for their own interests above other nations.
00:07:25.400 | That's just a larger political theory.
00:07:28.120 | Christian is attaching the word Christian to that.
00:07:30.480 | There's nations that look out for their own interests and some of those nations are Christian
00:07:34.560 | and Mohler would clarify that that's by their Judeo-Christian heritage, the Anglo-Protestant
00:07:40.360 | legal tradition is the phrase Mohler often uses that Western civilization has come out
00:07:45.200 | of this Anglo-Protestant tradition from the Reformation forward that has given us common
00:07:49.360 | law, the notion of common law, and the sense of liberty and democracy and all of that.
00:07:54.680 | And that's what he means by Christian nationalism.
00:07:57.040 | And I think Mohler's description of Christian nationalism makes so much more sense if you
00:08:00.720 | just take it out and substitute the word conservatism.
00:08:04.040 | When he talks about it, he really means conservative, not in like conserving, slowing down the cultural
00:08:09.200 | decline, but in recognizing that there's a legal tradition that stretches back hundreds
00:08:13.040 | of years that is the basis of liberty and democracy and we should embrace that legal
00:08:17.080 | tradition.
00:08:18.080 | And that's fine and well.
00:08:19.080 | I mean, that's fully compatible with every statement of faith that is probably represented
00:08:24.080 | in this room.
00:08:25.080 | There's nothing overly controversial with that form of Christian nationalism.
00:08:28.360 | And so that's not my desire to critique that form of Christian nationalism at all for lots
00:08:33.520 | of reasons.
00:08:34.520 | But the form of Christian nationalism that is more prevalent in our churches, in my experience,
00:08:38.880 | that is more dangerous in our churches, and is probably why you're here today, is much
00:08:43.200 | more of the active form of nationalism, the call for some kind of Christian prince or
00:08:47.940 | Christian leader to engage in leadership in our nation, to galvanize the church, and to
00:08:54.320 | see some kind of melding of the church-state relationship.
00:08:57.080 | I'm thinking of, I brought this up for show and tell today, The Case for Christian Nationalism
00:09:01.160 | by Stephen Wolf.
00:09:02.160 | This is a, it's a long book.
00:09:04.480 | It's very well written and well researched and it's had an outsized impact on a lot of
00:09:09.320 | our churches as people have read it and they're reading it and they're being drawn to the
00:09:13.600 | answers that he's offering, that there's hope in the church by placing this desire to see
00:09:20.200 | a reformation inside of government and see our nation linked with a kind of Christian
00:09:25.180 | nationalism.
00:09:26.180 | Wolf, in this book, defines Christian nationalism as, quote, "The totality of national action
00:09:32.320 | consisting of civil laws and social customs conducted by a Christian nation as a Christian
00:09:39.280 | nation to procure for itself both earthly and heavenly good in Christ."
00:09:45.160 | So it's a, it's a detailed definition.
00:09:47.560 | It's a little bit circular.
00:09:49.600 | His version of Christian nationalism is basically things the Christian nation does.
00:09:53.380 | So it becomes a little bit circular, but when you go through his understanding of Christian
00:09:56.760 | nationalism and what is appealing to people about it, it's very much an active role from
00:10:02.240 | the government in propagating the Christian faith.
00:10:06.060 | It's this idea that the government is, has an active command of God or an active duty
00:10:11.280 | from God to propagate the Christian faith, to guard the church from heretics, to rebuke
00:10:16.360 | slothful or lazy ministers, to summon church synods and councils, to clarify statements
00:10:22.980 | of faith, to fund missions, to have oversight and general sense of the church of God on
00:10:29.280 | earth.
00:10:32.440 | Say it in a way that I think would honor Wolf's larger argument in most of the Christian nationalism
00:10:37.000 | books that I have read.
00:10:38.640 | They would argue the government has a role in fostering true religion, in keeping the
00:10:44.040 | church accountable, in guarding them from heretics.
00:10:48.760 | The core of that form of Christian nationalism is the idea that a nation properly expressed
00:10:54.680 | exists of one ethnicity and ethnicity there is almost a synonym for nation.
00:10:59.840 | Wolf would say, you know, there's some differences between them, but as I read him, he defines
00:11:05.200 | a nation properly constituted as existing of only one ethnicity, and that ethnicity
00:11:10.400 | is a shared culture, language, values, traditions, calendars, you know, foods and social customs
00:11:16.960 | and all of that.
00:11:19.000 | And then Christian nationalism is a nation that is deliberately and intentionally Christian
00:11:23.080 | in those holidays, Christian in those rituals where a government guards the Sabbath and
00:11:28.400 | facilitates church worship on the Sabbath is an example he often uses.
00:11:32.840 | And again, rebukes slothful ministers and has oversight in a general sense of the church.
00:11:37.680 | In this form of Christian nationalism, the political leader, in a sense, is the protector
00:11:41.680 | of the church.
00:11:44.600 | The political leader in this kind of Christian nationalism is not a pastor.
00:11:47.620 | He's not doing the sacraments or the ordinances.
00:11:50.260 | He's not preaching.
00:11:51.260 | He's not baptizing babies in this form of Christian nationalism.
00:11:54.600 | He's not doing those things, but he's keeping watch over it.
00:12:00.160 | That has an appeal to our current generation of evangelicals, especially younger people
00:12:05.800 | who are drawn towards kind of an authoritative protector of the church when they see, as
00:12:10.720 | I mentioned earlier, a previous generation of people who were to be protecting the church
00:12:14.920 | have kind of abdicated their responsibilities.
00:12:18.440 | I won't drag you through all of this book, but I did just to let you know where I'm going.
00:12:22.040 | I have four critiques of this form of Christian nationalism, not just this book, but that
00:12:26.000 | form of Christian nationalism that are philosophical, and then I have five critiques that are theological.
00:12:32.700 | So that's where I'm headed.
00:12:33.700 | I want to critique this view of Christian nationalism from a philosophical perspective
00:12:38.180 | or kind of just like reading the book and saying, "Here's four things that I really
00:12:41.880 | don't like, and then I'll give you five theological reasons that you should not be a Christian
00:12:46.920 | nationalist."
00:12:48.680 | That's where we're headed.
00:12:49.940 | So first of all, I will say this, there are some good things in this kind of Christian
00:12:53.160 | nationalism.
00:12:54.160 | There are some good things.
00:12:55.160 | The way he esteems parts of our country's past kind of Christian heritage, the way he
00:13:00.800 | defends Mayberry.
00:13:01.920 | There's a section in this book where he defends Mayberry like, "Don't you wish your kids could
00:13:05.320 | grow up in the kind of cul-de-sac where they can play with their neighbors, and you don't
00:13:09.360 | have to know where your 10-year-old is 24/7."
00:13:12.520 | There's a kind of wholesomeness that's there that he feels like we've lost, and not only
00:13:16.800 | have we lost it, but you have people that had criticized it, that spent decades criticizing
00:13:21.480 | the Christian cultures, creating false morality, and Pharisees, and Christian culture are bad,
00:13:26.360 | it interferes with the gospel.
00:13:27.880 | And so now everybody's listening to them, and now we've lost that culture, and we've
00:13:30.640 | lost Mayberry, and we've lost the cul-de-sac where kids can play in, and all of that.
00:13:34.840 | So I do appreciate that about his book, along with other things as well.
00:13:38.920 | But I do want to clearly say my four big concerns with the book from a philosophical perspective.
00:13:44.400 | First of all, it idolizes the past.
00:13:47.720 | It idolizes the past.
00:13:48.840 | He calls on Christians to kind of bring a restoration to our nation's own Christian
00:13:56.240 | past.
00:13:57.240 | He describes it as, quote, "a recovery of a former shared Christian ethic and ethnic
00:14:02.360 | tradition and heritage."
00:14:04.360 | And when you start describing it like that, it forces you to reexamine the past.
00:14:07.680 | It forces you to ask a question, was our nation founded properly as a Christian nation?
00:14:13.240 | Was there a period in our nation's past where we really did function like a Christian nation?
00:14:17.720 | Once you start using the language of recovery, it's appropriate to ask, what are you recovering,
00:14:21.840 | and where are you looking for it?
00:14:23.560 | You know, what are you retrieving from the past?
00:14:26.360 | Not everything that you retrieve from the past is good.
00:14:28.560 | Sometimes your golden retriever brings back a dead squirrel.
00:14:30.720 | You didn't want that.
00:14:33.500 | So what exactly is being retrieved from the past?
00:14:37.000 | And you would ask yourself, was there a time in the U.S. history that it was functioning
00:14:41.040 | as a Christian kind of nation or culture?
00:14:44.560 | And it's very difficult to identify that time.
00:14:46.920 | I mean, I dare you.
00:14:49.940 | Start naming a decade where you're like, that's where we had a Christian culture.
00:14:54.080 | And here's a thought experiment for you.
00:14:55.600 | You would think of that and go back to that decade and ask yourself, the Christian leaders
00:15:00.960 | and pastors and ministers who were around back then, what did they say about the culture
00:15:05.440 | when they were there?
00:15:06.440 | You know, Al Mohler often goes to the 1960s.
00:15:09.600 | That's where everything changed, he said, you know.
00:15:13.440 | 1961, Democrats and Republicans basically were the same when it came to social issues.
00:15:17.920 | And the sexual revolution comes, the wheels come off the car and, you know, here we are.
00:15:23.720 | But go back in your mind to that era of world history or American history and ask yourself,
00:15:29.320 | what did the leaders of that day say about American Christianity?
00:15:33.880 | Evolution was on the rise.
00:15:35.240 | This is the decline of inerrancy, the attack on the fundamentals of the faith.
00:15:39.360 | This is the era where Martin Lloyd-Jones lamented American culture, particularly for its materialism,
00:15:46.280 | its embracing of liberalism, the racism that was rampant back then.
00:15:50.920 | All of that is worthy of substantial critique.
00:15:54.600 | Or you go back further, okay, the 1800s there.
00:15:59.100 | Certainly that was the Christian zenith, the 1800s, before all of liberalism, before evolution
00:16:04.180 | became a thing, when the denominations were rocking and you got evangelists preaching
00:16:08.400 | in the streets, like that's where you're at.
00:16:10.760 | And then you go and read Spurgeon about that time period.
00:16:14.320 | Christian George's introduction of the Lost Sermons of Spurgeon has some quotes of Spurgeon
00:16:18.200 | about the United States then.
00:16:20.440 | He called the American culture of the 1800s, quote, "shameful and abominable, abhorrent
00:16:25.840 | and bloodthirsty."
00:16:26.840 | And he said that unless the United States was punished with a graphic and brutal civil
00:16:32.360 | war, then the kind of justice he associates with God must not really exist.
00:16:37.200 | Spurgeon did not mince his words when it came to the United States.
00:16:41.160 | And largely Spurgeon's critique was over slavery and race relations, which he didn't excuse
00:16:45.560 | England from either.
00:16:47.240 | He said, quote, "if slavery would not have come to the United States had it not been
00:16:51.640 | carried there from Manchester and Liverpool," he understood his own nation's complicity
00:16:56.640 | in that.
00:16:57.640 | Nevertheless, he critiqued the American culture for its bloodthirsty and shameful and abominable
00:17:02.600 | ways.
00:17:03.600 | I mean, you can go back all the way to the United States founding and think about what
00:17:07.520 | the evangelists of that era said about our culture.
00:17:10.920 | Think of the kind of things that are in our founding from the Revolution forward.
00:17:14.960 | Even, you know, the religious test clause in the Constitution.
00:17:17.640 | You can't have a religious test for government service.
00:17:20.440 | It's in our Constitution.
00:17:21.440 | That's not the kind of thing that you would put in your Constitution if you were deliberately
00:17:24.740 | constructing a Christian nation.
00:17:27.220 | And to prove that, you could ask any of the Christian nationalists you see today, in your
00:17:30.300 | view of Christian nationalism, should unbelievers be allowed to have high seats in the government?
00:17:35.320 | Of course, it's antithetical to what they're putting forward.
00:17:38.680 | You know, the truth is our country wasn't founded by that concept of Christian nationalism.
00:17:42.400 | Obviously, there's an Anglo-Protestant legal tradition in our country.
00:17:45.840 | There's a form of liberty.
00:17:47.280 | There's a form of God providing rights to us, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
00:17:52.120 | all men are created equal kind of language.
00:17:54.180 | You can't say people are created equal unless you believe that there's a creator.
00:17:57.160 | I mean, that's just straightforward right there.
00:17:59.200 | That's obviously in our country's fast, but our country chose the route of e pluribus
00:18:03.200 | unum, not in Christosolis.
00:18:05.360 | You know, we chose to embrace multiple ethnicities, multiple cultures, and amalgamate them into
00:18:11.160 | one nation rather than to say that we are a nation of a distinct Christian ethnic identity.
00:18:17.560 | It's also not the 1619 Project.
00:18:20.120 | My point is that at no point in America's history did we have really a Christian culture,
00:18:25.320 | the kind of which that is argued for by proponents of Christian nationalism.
00:18:29.880 | My second concern about this form of Christian nationalism is that, first of all, it idealizes
00:18:34.480 | the past, but second, it impossibilizes the present.
00:18:39.120 | Impossibilizes is not a real word, but it's going to fit with my outline, and I'm a preacher
00:18:43.640 | more than I am an English major.
00:18:46.160 | It impossibilizes the present.
00:18:48.360 | It presents an ideal for people that draws them in that is impossible to obtain.
00:18:56.880 | Wolfe says that Christian nationalism has never truly been experienced in our country,
00:19:01.360 | but that's almost, he reads as if he's saying it's because we haven't tried enough.
00:19:05.600 | We haven't sought to put it into place with enough effort.
00:19:09.400 | In other words, all that's missing is willpower, but the truth is that's not what's missing
00:19:13.140 | in our country.
00:19:14.140 | It's not a matter of the church standing up and being the church and getting more of your
00:19:17.680 | congregation to vote and finally take our country back.
00:19:19.960 | That's not it at all.
00:19:21.560 | The problem in our own country is that we're just dealing with a numbers game.
00:19:25.360 | The way is narrow that leads to life.
00:19:28.400 | If you're dealing in a democracy, the majority wins, and the church, the true church, is
00:19:32.920 | never going to be the majority.
00:19:36.840 | We're dealing in a culture now that is what is often called the negative world for Christianity,
00:19:41.320 | and that language I think is helpful.
00:19:43.080 | Before the 1960s, Christianity had more or less a positive connotation in our culture.
00:19:47.440 | From the 1960s to 2010 or so, it had a neutral connotation.
00:19:51.120 | In other words, if you wanted to excel in politics in the 1940s or '50s, you probably
00:19:55.120 | had to be a church member.
00:19:56.400 | From the 1960s to 2010, it didn't matter.
00:19:59.320 | You could be or you didn't have to be.
00:20:01.480 | Nobody really cared, but now it's a detriment.
00:20:03.800 | Now it's a negative association with you.
00:20:06.160 | If you want to rise in society, being associated with the church has a negative impact on you,
00:20:10.640 | so it's hard to make that jive with this idea of Christian nationalism that if only the
00:20:16.520 | majority of people would rise up and reclaim their Christian identity if you're functioning
00:20:20.780 | in a society with a negative view of Christianity.
00:20:24.720 | The reality is that we are the remnant.
00:20:26.360 | I mean, I even think back to what presidential election was in the 2000s where Rick Warren
00:20:32.620 | moderated the debates.
00:20:34.080 | Do you remember that?
00:20:35.260 | He moderated a presidential debate.
00:20:36.720 | Could you imagine today?
00:20:39.320 | And he got lambasted for it even back then for being too, you know, too Christian and
00:20:43.000 | what's President Obama doing in this age with Rick Warren, of all people.
00:20:45.800 | The whole thing just seems comical in retrospect.
00:20:48.760 | It's such a different world even from now.
00:20:52.680 | The truth is the church is the remnant.
00:20:55.240 | The church is the remnant.
00:20:56.600 | And when you start angling for a victory at the box office, that makes you at the ballot
00:21:02.440 | box -- California football right there -- if you're angling for a victory at the ballot
00:21:07.840 | box, it forces you to make coalitions and partnerships and political alliances to drum
00:21:12.560 | up a majority.
00:21:13.880 | That's the way politics works.
00:21:15.760 | If you're going to lobby for a certain measure to be passed, you have to partner with the
00:21:19.680 | Catholic church.
00:21:20.680 | You have to partner with the Mormon church, what's so called.
00:21:23.760 | You have to partner with all of the different groups to get it across the finish line because
00:21:27.120 | the objective is political.
00:21:28.920 | In our culture today, the church cannot advance something that far.
00:21:32.640 | If you take the Benedict option as your political model that you're going to, you know, retreat
00:21:36.920 | and make your own Christian society, don't be surprised if you have to partner with Benedictine
00:21:40.960 | monks.
00:21:41.960 | That's how that strategy works.
00:21:45.440 | Now for law issues, that's fine.
00:21:47.040 | You know, to pass pro-life legislation for issues of law where the government is checking
00:21:51.440 | evil pro-life legislation, school vouchers, that kind of stuff that is law issues, it's
00:21:56.400 | fine to be co-belligerents with people that aren't Christians.
00:21:59.000 | That's fine.
00:22:00.000 | But not for gospel issues.
00:22:02.200 | Gospel issues, there's an exclusivity of it.
00:22:04.560 | You're not a co-belligerent in a gospel issue with people that aren't regenerates.
00:22:10.040 | But in Christian nationalism, that divide gets erased.
00:22:15.120 | And the way it's presented, as I read this form of Christian nationalism, it presents
00:22:18.800 | a union between law and gospel issues both under the general authority of the government
00:22:23.680 | which requires a kind of partnership that erodes gospel distinctives.
00:22:28.320 | The majority of a nation will never be able to institutionalize true religion.
00:22:32.080 | That's the problem.
00:22:33.080 | What's missing from all these books about Christian nationalism is examples of this
00:22:37.080 | kind of government actually having occurred in church history.
00:22:40.880 | And that's because the majority is generally wrong, the true church is the minority, and
00:22:46.840 | at some point you just have to ask yourself, what am I supposed to do?
00:22:49.080 | If I believe in Christian nationalism, I want to be a Christian nationalist, let's roll,
00:22:52.520 | let's go do this thing, let's do it.
00:22:55.200 | What do I do now?
00:22:57.400 | Vote harder?
00:22:59.280 | Press the button harder?
00:23:00.560 | Harder?
00:23:01.560 | I'm running out of options here.
00:23:03.480 | Get my neighbor to press the button?
00:23:05.320 | I mean, you're in California, how many people you got to get to vote here to make a difference?
00:23:09.800 | It just makes it an impossible situation.
00:23:12.040 | My third concern with Christian nationalism, it idealizes the past, it impossibilizes the
00:23:15.840 | present.
00:23:16.840 | Thirdly, it institutionalizes the church.
00:23:19.960 | It institutionalizes the church.
00:23:22.240 | The classic Baptist political theory has a separation of church and state, and by separation
00:23:27.520 | of church and state, of course we don't mean it as it's often used today, but more of the
00:23:31.080 | classic two-kingdom theology.
00:23:33.240 | There's a civil magistrate that rules the civil affairs of the world, the law category
00:23:37.760 | in the world, and there is the church that has ecclesiastical oversight that oversees
00:23:42.680 | the souls.
00:23:45.240 | This form of Christian nationalism erodes that distinction by institutionalizing the
00:23:50.160 | church, by giving the government oversight and authority in the realm of the church.
00:23:55.280 | I think it's helpful to think through how this develops, you know, Augustine's approach,
00:23:59.280 | the city of God and the city of man, when Augustine's using that language, he doesn't
00:24:02.320 | mean by the city of man, government, and the city of God, church, he meant really like
00:24:05.560 | your hopes and how you're partnering with people.
00:24:08.460 | It maps onto government really well, but he means more or less that non-Christians are
00:24:12.720 | the city of man.
00:24:13.760 | But that developed in the Catholic church to what's called the doctrine of the two swords.
00:24:16.760 | In the Catholic church, you have really two spheres, you have the kingdom of man, ruled
00:24:21.280 | by kings and presidents and whatever, and then you have the kingdom of the church, ruled
00:24:25.360 | by the church, and the doctrine of the two swords, it's one person who holds both swords.
00:24:30.320 | One person who has oversight of both, that's the pope in the Roman Catholic church.
00:24:34.440 | Well, that's been morphed over time to this idea in Catholicism where the actual political
00:24:40.040 | leadership is more of a hands-off kind of association, you have the king of England,
00:24:44.840 | he's the oversight of the church really, but not really, he protects it, he's the protector
00:24:49.580 | of the church, but he's not really the head of the church, even though that's what the
00:24:53.320 | documents might say.
00:24:54.840 | That's the classic doctrine of the two swords.
00:24:56.600 | The Puritan tradition went a different way.
00:24:58.400 | The Puritan legal tradition went separately and said you have two kingdoms, but let's
00:25:02.580 | keep them separate from each other.
00:25:05.520 | We don't want one person ruling the church and one person ruling the state.
00:25:09.120 | That would be bad.
00:25:10.120 | There has to be distinctions.
00:25:11.120 | And granted, in early Puritan history, those distinctions were somewhat unfortunate.
00:25:16.520 | Like when you think of the kind of church-state separation that some of the Puritans had like
00:25:20.280 | John Owen or Samuel Willard or people like that, I mean, it was often the church IDs
00:25:25.920 | the heretics and the government kills them.
00:25:28.080 | That was their view of separation of church and state.
00:25:30.860 | They told the government, "Would you stop calling people heretics?
00:25:33.200 | Let us do that."
00:25:34.200 | And the government tells the church, "Okay, would you stop killing them?
00:25:36.240 | Let us do that."
00:25:37.240 | Great.
00:25:38.240 | Deal.
00:25:39.240 | Let's roll.
00:25:40.760 | We've moved on from that, of course, but you should have sympathy for some of those guys.
00:25:45.360 | You know, Samuel Willard, he's called to testify at the Salem witch trials.
00:25:48.760 | There's somebody on trial for being a witch and the judge says, "What did the pastor say?
00:25:55.040 | Call him up.
00:25:56.040 | Bring the pastor.
00:25:57.040 | Swear him in.
00:25:58.040 | Are there witches?
00:25:59.040 | What should we do to him?"
00:26:00.040 | I mean, how would you respond to that?
00:26:01.040 | It's just, again, such a different world that we're in now.
00:26:04.400 | But that was the idea of separation of church and state.
00:26:06.640 | Christian identity, Christian nationalism often melds those and brings them back together.
00:26:13.600 | To use, I think, their own terminology, I would say that the state should be overseeing
00:26:17.840 | the law and not the gospel.
00:26:19.380 | You don't want to give the state the gospel also.
00:26:22.040 | The state or the government messes everything up, don't they?
00:26:25.600 | Have you ever encountered something the government's done well?
00:26:28.520 | And this is hard for me pastoring in DC because when I use the word government, it's like
00:26:32.320 | the people.
00:26:33.320 | They're in front of me at the pews.
00:26:34.320 | I'm like, "The government's awful."
00:26:35.320 | And they're like, "Hey, I stayed late on Friday.
00:26:39.960 | Back off."
00:26:40.960 | You know, it was Reagan, right, who said the nine most frightening words in the English
00:26:49.480 | language.
00:26:50.480 | "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
00:26:51.480 | There's some truth to that.
00:26:55.880 | Would you want to shift gospel implications and church oversight and the power to rebuke
00:27:01.760 | slothful ministers and whatnot over to a category of people that don't do their own obligations
00:27:06.880 | well?
00:27:08.200 | You want them to have more power and power in the realm of the church?
00:27:12.160 | Please no.
00:27:13.920 | Please no.
00:27:14.920 | You know, you want the government to be able to get power to the church to turn the lights
00:27:19.840 | on.
00:27:20.840 | To have the water come out of the faucet.
00:27:23.960 | Those kind of things.
00:27:24.960 | You don't want them to oversee the ordinances of the church.
00:27:29.000 | Fourthly, my first concern is that Christian nationalism idealizes the past.
00:27:32.960 | The second, it impossibilizes the present.
00:27:34.880 | Thirdly, it institutionalizes the church.
00:27:37.120 | Fourthly, it idolizes ethnicity.
00:27:39.640 | It idolizes ethnicity.
00:27:42.060 | And forgive me for reading now because I want to stay close to my words.
00:27:46.680 | Overall this desire, and presented in books like this, is a desire to guard ethnic heritage.
00:27:52.520 | And they use the language of ethnicity, not the language of race.
00:27:55.920 | We understand that we are all one race.
00:27:57.640 | There's not multiple races.
00:27:58.640 | Race is a biological fiction, granted.
00:28:01.620 | In their world, they embrace this concept of ethnicity to describe certain shared cultural
00:28:07.660 | features.
00:28:09.660 | But then they argue that every nation, properly comprised, is made up of only one ethnicity.
00:28:16.940 | And as I mentioned earlier, that's just not the route that the United States took.
00:28:19.900 | The United States deliberately was designed with multiple ethnicities embraced inside
00:28:25.780 | of its borders, from Spanish Catholics to, you know, the Dutch to the slaves to the Puritans
00:28:32.060 | and everyone in between.
00:28:34.860 | You know, the founding of New Mexico predates the founding of Plymouth Rock.
00:28:38.420 | Do we count as properly constituted in the United States?
00:28:43.140 | And I use the word "idolize ethnicity" because so much of this argument hinges on putting
00:28:49.060 | ethnicity back into the Garden of Eden and seeing it before the fall.
00:28:52.700 | A lot of these Christian nationalist arguments hinge on the idea that governments and ethnic
00:28:56.700 | divisions would have happened without the fall in the world.
00:29:00.460 | Had no sin entered in the world, there still would have been government because people
00:29:03.580 | on one part of the stream need the water for farming and people on another part of the
00:29:07.060 | stream need it for, you know, cooling metals or whatever.
00:29:09.660 | And so they're going to have to, even though there's no sin, they're going to have to break
00:29:12.740 | up into different government divisions to regulate the shared use of resources and that
00:29:16.740 | over time will have cultural implications.
00:29:19.940 | So it's this desire to put ethnic distinctions and government back before the fall.
00:29:24.660 | And that's why I use the word "idolize" because if you have such a care and a hope in something
00:29:31.060 | that is important to you, it existed in a sinless world, it might be an idol.
00:29:36.900 | It might be an idol.
00:29:39.020 | Of course, they would stay away from the concept of race, as I mentioned earlier, yet so much
00:29:44.380 | of their description of ethnicity has racial overtones to it, which leads to all kinds
00:29:49.440 | of clumsiness.
00:29:50.440 | In a lot of the Christian national circles, there's, you know, debates over are interethnic
00:29:54.380 | marriages appropriate?
00:29:55.380 | You know, and I've heard some of these Christian leaders say, you know, interethnic marriages
00:30:00.740 | are, you know, marriages between people of two different ethnicities are not wise because
00:30:04.220 | your kids will be confused, they won't know, you know, where their people are, they won't
00:30:07.700 | know what their culture is, they're just, you're setting them up to lose if they're
00:30:10.460 | part of the fruit of an interethnic marriage and it's just, it's sad, really, the way it's
00:30:17.580 | described.
00:30:18.580 | And I've heard one of the leaders say, there's a category for a marriage between people of
00:30:22.780 | different ethnicities.
00:30:24.060 | It's not gay marriage.
00:30:25.060 | Gay marriage is no marriage at all, but it's closer to a marriage between a believer and
00:30:28.680 | an unbeliever.
00:30:29.680 | It's unwise and it's foolish and it's not going to be good, but it's still a valid marriage.
00:30:33.980 | I'm hearing that going, wow, thanks, you know, if you're married to someone who's not your
00:30:41.420 | ethnicity, it's in the category of a foolish marriage to a non-believer.
00:30:46.060 | It's just unhelpful and very confusing language and, of course, when they're criticized for
00:30:51.700 | that, they always say, but you're not using the word ethnicity the right way.
00:30:54.360 | Well, I'm, I'm sorry, I'm trying to use it the right way.
00:30:57.420 | I've read all the reading.
00:30:58.420 | I've done all the books.
00:30:59.420 | Like, I've really done my homework.
00:31:00.420 | I'm trying to use it like you're using it and it seems like you're defining ethnicity
00:31:03.500 | as shared culture, shared values, shared language, shared traditions, foods, and all of that.
00:31:09.740 | I got a concept for that and people marry from different ethnic groups and, you know,
00:31:13.980 | there's a society that you should freeze all kind of marriages outside of your own nation
00:31:17.860 | or language group or whatever for a period of time until our country sorts itself out
00:31:22.380 | and has its own ethnicity that's kind of recovered from the inside out.
00:31:25.740 | And it's just really insane, honestly, and it's so different in the way the Bible describes
00:31:30.740 | Christians with ethnicity.
00:31:31.740 | Isn't it?
00:31:32.740 | I mean, the Bible doesn't speak of Christian ethnicity like that.
00:31:35.660 | The Bible does use the term ethnicity for Christians, of course, but we are a holy priesthood.
00:31:40.260 | We are our own kind of nation, so to speak.
00:31:43.580 | So to elevate culture or ethnicity to where you're like, "Oh, it's a close call of two
00:31:47.180 | people from different ethnic groups should get married.
00:31:49.340 | It's just such a close call," shows that you've really lost touch with the overarching force
00:31:53.580 | of ethnicity in the Bible.
00:31:55.740 | The New Testament does not give the church the mandate of preserving ethnic groups but
00:31:59.460 | of transforming them with the gospel.
00:32:02.660 | That's the great commission.
00:32:05.100 | So those are my concerns.
00:32:06.940 | Christian nationalism, presented by Wolf and other Christian nationalists, idealizes the
00:32:11.780 | past and possibleizes the present, institutionalizes the church, and idolizes ethnicity.
00:32:17.980 | Now here's my theological concern.
00:32:19.460 | So this is the part where I want to convince you, you're like, "Okay, I get that, but still,
00:32:22.820 | can I be a Christian nationalist if I don't, you know, for other reasons?"
00:32:26.300 | And so here's why Christian nationalism is just frankly not compatible with premillennialism,
00:32:32.100 | not compatible with the Baptist worldview, not compatible with what I would consider
00:32:36.380 | proper theology.
00:32:37.380 | So that's the first reason.
00:32:39.940 | Christian nationalism presents the partnership of government and church in a confusing way,
00:32:46.060 | and I'll give you five of these ways.
00:32:47.420 | First of all, those two groups have different covenants.
00:32:49.540 | Government and nations have a different covenant than the church.
00:32:55.540 | The origin of government -- I know the word covenant makes some of you uneasy.
00:33:02.100 | The origin of government is from the Noahic covenant.
00:33:05.340 | Government comes from God entering the world after the flood and telling Noah, first of
00:33:09.980 | all, there's animals for you to eat, there's a food source involved, be fruitful and multiply,
00:33:15.100 | which is, you know, goes back to the garden, but then God adds, "Whoever sheds man's blood
00:33:19.140 | by man's hand shall his blood be shed," and God gives the sword to the world to punish
00:33:23.960 | evildoers.
00:33:24.960 | This is the origins of government.
00:33:27.180 | Government comes into the world through the Noahic covenant to check evil, and this is
00:33:31.100 | how government is often ascribed throughout the rest of Scripture.
00:33:33.980 | After government instituted, the nations go their own way.
00:33:36.940 | That's the language of Acts 17.
00:33:38.720 | God allowed the nations to go their own way.
00:33:41.060 | He appoints from one man every nation of mankind to live, speaking of Noah, on all the face
00:33:45.800 | of the earth, having determined the allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place.
00:33:50.020 | In the days of Peleg, the nations divided and they shifted from each other, and Paul
00:33:54.900 | says God did this so that people one day might grope their way back to the gospel.
00:33:58.820 | One day they might encounter Christ.
00:33:59.980 | So God designed nations.
00:34:01.660 | He designed them to go their own way, but to bear the sword to check evil.
00:34:06.460 | They were designed by God.
00:34:08.500 | God invented nations, not in the Garden of Eden, but after the flood, and He did not
00:34:12.700 | tell nations that their job was to promote true religion, or to check evil, I mean, not
00:34:19.740 | to promote true religion, but to check evil, to protect life, and to protect family.
00:34:24.500 | In Christian nationalism, there's a syllogism that they often use.
00:34:29.700 | The syllogism is that civil government ought to direct its people to true religion.
00:34:36.860 | Christianity is the true religion, therefore civil government should direct people to Christianity.
00:34:41.820 | Do you follow that logic?
00:34:44.020 | And so what's the problem with that?
00:34:45.380 | And not every syllogism is, you know, valid, of course.
00:34:50.140 | You know, people with two legs can run a marathon.
00:34:52.300 | I have two legs, therefore I can run a marathon.
00:34:54.660 | Something broke down in that syllogism.
00:34:59.380 | Civil government's obligation is to promote the true religion.
00:35:03.220 | That's where it breaks down.
00:35:05.180 | Did God design civil government with the obligation to promote true religion?
00:35:10.340 | I say He did not.
00:35:11.860 | The Noahic Covenant is not a redemptive covenant.
00:35:14.380 | The Noahic Covenant restrains wrath.
00:35:17.660 | It says as long as the rainbow is there, I'm not going to, you know, flood the earth again.
00:35:20.940 | There's universal judgment is coming.
00:35:22.980 | God will destroy the earth, but the rainbow, in a sense, holds it back.
00:35:26.420 | The rainbow does not prophesy a Redeemer.
00:35:29.720 | The rainbow hangs in the sky, but it doesn't have blood on it.
00:35:32.940 | There's no blood of the lamb in the rainbow.
00:35:35.540 | That's a covenant that restrains evil.
00:35:38.940 | Much like government, which comes in as part of this covenant, is designed to check evil
00:35:42.740 | and restrain it.
00:35:43.740 | The government does not produce the Savior.
00:35:45.940 | Government doesn't even point to the Savior.
00:35:47.700 | The nations go their own way, because one day the Savior will come independent of them
00:35:51.740 | through God's special nation, Israel, through the Abrahamic Covenant.
00:35:55.540 | The Savior will come through that, through the Davidic Covenant.
00:35:57.900 | He'll be a king from that line.
00:35:59.300 | But He doesn't come as a fulfillment of the Noahic Covenant.
00:36:02.680 | He comes so the nations that went their own way, founded by God in the Noahic Covenant,
00:36:06.360 | can grow up their own way and find Him.
00:36:09.180 | It's just categorically different.
00:36:11.060 | The church, meanwhile, comes on the foundation of the new covenant, that Jesus was resurrected
00:36:15.900 | from the grave, on the basis of the blood of an eternal covenant.
00:36:19.980 | And we now have a church that's based in the new covenant that is going to the nations.
00:36:23.980 | It transcends national divisions, transcends ethnic divisions, bringing the gospel to the
00:36:28.740 | world.
00:36:29.740 | It's categorically different than the nations.
00:36:32.940 | So this idea that the two, the nations and church, have some kind of union under the
00:36:39.780 | common administration of government, is so flawed.
00:36:42.980 | It's so flawed.
00:36:44.380 | They have different designs.
00:36:45.740 | They're from different covenants.
00:36:47.340 | That means they have different goals.
00:36:48.740 | The goal of the nation is not to promote the true religion.
00:36:51.140 | The goal of the nation is to check evil and make sure there's peace.
00:36:54.620 | That's what a good government does.
00:36:56.180 | You want a good government that punishes evildoers, throws them in jail, and promotes the corporate
00:37:01.420 | well-being of the people through common peace.
00:37:05.380 | It's the church's job to promote the true religion.
00:37:08.100 | If everybody would stay in their own lanes, things would be so much better.
00:37:15.060 | Don't remove those lane lines.
00:37:16.980 | They have different goals.
00:37:18.420 | Because they have different goals, they have a different focus.
00:37:20.940 | The focus of the church is the mediator of the new covenant, the Lord and Savior Jesus
00:37:25.400 | Christ.
00:37:26.400 | The focus of government is the common peace of the people.
00:37:30.960 | And because they have a different focus, they have different agents.
00:37:33.460 | The government agents bear the sword to check evil.
00:37:36.040 | The Christian agents, I mean, are the ministers of the gospel, the priesthood of all believers
00:37:40.800 | through the mediatorial role of Jesus Christ.
00:37:44.680 | And because they have different agents, they have different laws.
00:37:48.640 | The government operates from common grace, natural law, general revelation, which of
00:37:55.040 | course is flawed because of sin.
00:37:56.720 | And there's the prophetic voice of believers that tell people, "Hey, homosexuality is wrong
00:38:00.240 | and transgenderism is wrong.
00:38:01.420 | We use our prophetic voice."
00:38:02.640 | So those kinds of things are deducible from just natural revelation and human reasoning.
00:38:09.000 | That's very different than the law that binds the church together.
00:38:11.840 | The kind of commands that the New Testament gives for the church are not given to nations.
00:38:16.440 | The commands you see to nations, like Romans 13 style, are the same thing nations were
00:38:20.400 | told back in Genesis 8.
00:38:22.600 | There's not new commands in Genesis 9.
00:38:24.800 | There's not new commands in the church, I mean, in the New Testament to nations.
00:38:29.860 | But all of the structuring of the church is brand new in the New Testament.
00:38:33.560 | So nations have their origin long before the church in time.
00:38:38.980 | They have, because of that, different goals, different focus, different agents, different
00:38:43.040 | laws, different ethnicity.
00:38:44.600 | Nations, if you want to grant the case, which I don't.
00:38:47.320 | But if you want to grant the case, which again I don't, but if you want to for the sake of
00:38:50.640 | argument that every nation should have only one ethnicity, okay, whatever.
00:38:54.460 | It's just different how the church works.
00:38:56.440 | The church, a multi-ethnic church is a glorious thing.
00:39:01.200 | It celebrates the transcendent power of the gospel.
00:39:04.000 | If you say a multi-ethnic nation is prone to divisions and divides and race riots and
00:39:08.480 | all that, okay, whatever.
00:39:09.480 | I'm not even that interested in that argument.
00:39:11.600 | I'll grant it for the sake of discussion.
00:39:13.600 | The church is so different.
00:39:15.160 | The more diverse the church is, the more glorious the gospel that's presented in the churches.
00:39:20.320 | That's why a multi-ethnic church can be a wonderful sense of the transcendent power
00:39:24.560 | of the gospel.
00:39:25.680 | And so if you're coming and looking at that, like a multi-ethnic church and you're looking
00:39:28.600 | at that and you're going, "Wow, that celebrates the glories of the gospel," and somebody else
00:39:32.780 | comes along, "Yeah, but that's not good for civic identity.
00:39:35.960 | That confuses civic identity."
00:39:37.720 | You're painting a civic goal that is at odds with a religious goal.
00:39:44.120 | And that's a problem.
00:39:45.120 | That's a problem.
00:39:46.380 | When you're turning something that's positive, namely the transcendent power of the gospel
00:39:49.680 | is present in a multi-ethnic church, into a negative, a threat to social cohesion and
00:39:54.800 | identity, you're doing something wrong.
00:39:57.160 | In fact, I have a definition from Stephen Wolfe of ethnicity.
00:40:03.480 | He says, "Ethnicity is," and listen to this so carefully, "familiarity with others based
00:40:08.920 | on common language, manners, customs, stories, taboos, rituals, calendars, social expectations,
00:40:14.880 | duties, loves, and religions."
00:40:18.320 | I love that definition.
00:40:20.520 | That's the church.
00:40:23.320 | We have our common language.
00:40:24.400 | We have Christianese.
00:40:25.400 | I made fun of it earlier.
00:40:26.400 | Do you remember?
00:40:27.400 | We have Christianese.
00:40:28.400 | We have common taboos.
00:40:29.400 | We have common calendars and rituals and ordinances or sacraments, whatever word you want to describe
00:40:33.680 | it.
00:40:34.680 | We're bound together by a common entity.
00:40:36.240 | That's the church.
00:40:37.240 | And if you say a nation is only properly composed of one ethnicity, I object.
00:40:45.080 | I object.
00:40:46.080 | And because they have all those different things, they have different ends.
00:40:49.040 | The end of the city of man is not good.
00:40:52.160 | God will judge it.
00:40:53.160 | It will burn away.
00:40:55.200 | The end of the city of God is triumph.
00:40:57.520 | It's triumph.
00:40:59.160 | Now in Christian nationalism, they would grant a distinction between the city of man and
00:41:02.640 | the city of God.
00:41:03.640 | They would grant a distinction between government and church.
00:41:05.760 | They would grant all those.
00:41:06.960 | But I'm saying that in Christian nationalism, as I read it, while they would say they function
00:41:11.840 | with different ordinances and all of this, while they would say they have those differences,
00:41:15.140 | they conflate them.
00:41:16.560 | They argue that you should have a Christian prince that leads the Christian nation.
00:41:20.480 | A Christian prince who aspires to rule justly and who doesn't long for power for its own
00:41:26.320 | sake, who will fund missions and restrain heretics and can mediate any problems with
00:41:30.280 | wisdom and an almost omniscient grace.
00:41:32.640 | That's their description of the Christian prince.
00:41:34.120 | And I'm reading that description going, yeah, please tell me that's Jesus.
00:41:39.480 | Please, is that, because you just described him.
00:41:43.120 | A glorious ruler who's practically omniscient, who knows how to handle every problem and
00:41:47.140 | bring societal peace.
00:41:48.200 | I want that person.
00:41:49.280 | I want him to be my king.
00:41:50.280 | Is that who you're talking about?
00:41:52.080 | No.
00:41:53.080 | No.
00:41:54.080 | Well, shucks, because I'm looking at the people on the ballot and I don't see that guy.
00:41:59.360 | All right, so my first theological concern is the two nations are rooted in different
00:42:06.520 | covenants, which produced all those other differences.
00:42:09.200 | Secondly, they have different law.
00:42:11.400 | They have different law.
00:42:13.600 | Political authorities make and enforce laws that are grounded in the Noahic covenant to
00:42:18.560 | promote the common peace.
00:42:20.340 | In the church, there's nothing like that.
00:42:24.580 | There's no new covenant commands to the church about how to make laws for the common good
00:42:29.320 | in society.
00:42:31.440 | The language of the Christian nationalists is don't you want the government to function
00:42:34.560 | according to Christian ethics?
00:42:37.600 | And they say it like it's, you know, the second class condition in Greek, like the answer
00:42:41.040 | should be obvious.
00:42:42.040 | Obviously, you're a Christian, you want the government to function according to Christian
00:42:45.280 | ethics.
00:42:46.280 | You don't want to just say, "Hold on.
00:42:48.560 | What ethics are we talking about here?"
00:42:50.680 | When you say Christian ethics, what do you mean?
00:42:52.800 | Do you mean turn the other cheek?
00:42:55.800 | Do you mean take no vengeance for yourself?
00:42:59.240 | Do you mean those kind of ethics?
00:43:02.080 | Because no, I don't want the government to do that.
00:43:04.040 | You hit a police officer.
00:43:05.040 | I don't want the police officers to say, "Brother, sermon on the mount style.
00:43:09.520 | Hit the other cheek."
00:43:13.000 | Romans 12, don't take vengeance on people.
00:43:17.320 | Let the Lord do that.
00:43:18.320 | Imagine if you tried to have a government that lived out that Christian ethic.
00:43:23.440 | In fact, Romans 13 comes with the government bearing the sword.
00:43:27.960 | If you want the Romans 12 ethic, you need the Romans 13 government or it will not work.
00:43:33.200 | The reason you can turn the other cheek when somebody hits you is because the police are
00:43:36.200 | not far behind.
00:43:40.400 | It's so important to see those two spheres operating.
00:43:47.120 | There's some overlap, of course.
00:43:48.120 | You live in both spheres.
00:43:49.440 | You're a Christian.
00:43:50.480 | You call 911 and say, "A guy's punching my neighbor."
00:43:53.440 | They don't say, "Are you a Christian?"
00:43:58.280 | You know, they just roll in.
00:44:00.160 | It's different laws.
00:44:01.640 | And the laws I'm telling you that the God designed government to engage in are rooted
00:44:06.000 | in Genesis 8, apply to the nations at large.
00:44:10.800 | The laws God gave Israel in the Old Testament are different than that for their own particular
00:44:15.240 | purpose in the Old Testament, and the instruction in the New Testament does not rewire the nations,
00:44:20.480 | but it does rewire the church.
00:44:23.500 | We derive our ethic from the New Testament teaching of the Lord.
00:44:27.880 | The personal ethics of the new covenant and the kingdom of God go well so much together.
00:44:35.520 | They cleave together so well, and that's not the ethics of a functioning government.
00:44:43.280 | Number three, they have different covenants, different law.
00:44:45.680 | Thirdly, they have different obligations.
00:44:47.360 | As I mentioned, the government's obligation is to punish evil and protect life, to protect
00:44:51.640 | the family, to regulate the food sources.
00:44:54.780 | That's the government's obligation.
00:44:56.520 | That creates the conditions where true religion thrives.
00:44:59.720 | True religion thrives in a nation where the government checks evil.
00:45:04.620 | This is, again, Acts 17.
00:45:05.980 | God designed the nations to go their own way so that one day they can turn and look for
00:45:09.640 | the Savior.
00:45:10.640 | So government is doing its job when it checks evil.
00:45:12.880 | The gospel comes in from the inside out.
00:45:15.760 | You know, missionaries come into the nation.
00:45:17.640 | The gospel takes root in the nation, and the gospel spreads from there while the government
00:45:21.520 | is checking evil.
00:45:22.760 | The government doesn't promote the propagation of the gospel.
00:45:25.560 | The government checks evil, and Christians promote the propagation of the gospel.
00:45:29.760 | They have different obligations.
00:45:31.880 | The government should not be making decisions based on what's best for Christianity.
00:45:35.880 | The government should be making decisions based on what is best for the common peace.
00:45:40.840 | And that's largely – you could say it's a distinction without difference, I suppose,
00:45:46.140 | but it is different motivations.
00:45:47.580 | And it's important because then you have non-Christian leaders in your governments.
00:45:54.380 | Non-Christians can be excellent government leaders.
00:45:56.180 | They really can.
00:45:57.180 | They can check evil.
00:45:58.700 | They can refuse bribes.
00:45:59.800 | They can operate with an ethic that they have achieved from natural revelation for the common
00:46:04.920 | good and human reasoning.
00:46:06.460 | Of course they can.
00:46:07.460 | That doesn't mean they're redeemed.
00:46:11.180 | It's the age-old question, would you rather have a competent non-Christian president or
00:46:15.840 | an incompetent Christian president?
00:46:18.580 | That's why it's kind of superficial to say, you know, if the guy's a Christian, I'll vote
00:46:22.140 | for him.
00:46:23.140 | Well, maybe have some other follow-up questions.
00:46:25.780 | And if you don't understand that, try owning your own business.
00:46:27.820 | You know, do you want the 16-year-old who doesn't know what they're doing but is a Christian
00:46:32.720 | or the 16-year-old who's like a hard worker and shows up early?
00:46:35.700 | At least you can evangelize a second one.
00:46:42.580 | You know, the government takes liberty away from people.
00:46:46.620 | The government, of course, does that.
00:46:47.620 | But the government can't grant liberty.
00:46:49.440 | Liberty comes from God.
00:46:50.660 | We know that.
00:46:51.660 | And so that's why I say different obligations.
00:46:52.840 | The obligation of the government is not to grant you rights or grant you liberty but
00:46:56.280 | to make sure they're not taken from you.
00:46:59.080 | The church's job, then, is to come in and preach the gospel to all people making disciples.
00:47:04.320 | Number four, they have a different identity, a different identity.
00:47:09.680 | Government identifies as the majority by definition.
00:47:12.320 | There's the British expression.
00:47:13.320 | It doesn't matter who wins the election, the government will always take its seat.
00:47:16.000 | It doesn't matter if the Democrats win, the Republicans win, the government will be in
00:47:19.500 | power tomorrow.
00:47:20.500 | That's just the reality.
00:47:22.840 | The church is always the minority.
00:47:24.440 | We have a sojourner identity.
00:47:26.840 | And that is not just a New Testament reality.
00:47:28.720 | That is Old Testament as well.
00:47:29.920 | Think of the sojourner kind of language of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
00:47:33.720 | How did they relate to the world as a sojourner?
00:47:35.720 | They entered in contracts with government.
00:47:37.280 | They subjected themselves to kings and governors and little city council members.
00:47:41.000 | They bought wells and they bought graves.
00:47:43.560 | And when they didn't honor the government, they repented, right?
00:47:45.600 | When Abraham lied, he repents.
00:47:48.760 | Isaac lies, he repents.
00:47:50.480 | But they're engaging with the nation, so to speak.
00:47:56.400 | Identifying as a sojourner.
00:47:57.400 | Joseph, even, identifying as a sojourner, even though he's rising in power, even though
00:48:01.120 | he practically is the government by the end of Genesis, he's still very clearly a sojourner.
00:48:06.640 | Daniel, in Babylon, literally in Babylon, not figuratively, literally in Babylon, operating
00:48:12.840 | as a sojourner without compromising his own identity.
00:48:15.800 | That's the pattern for the church.
00:48:18.320 | And that language is picked up in the New Testament as we are called sojourners.
00:48:22.880 | So the question is, does the New Testament change your sojourner identity?
00:48:26.440 | And the answer is no.
00:48:27.440 | The New Testament embraces the sojourner identity, embraces our identity as aliens and exiles
00:48:32.080 | in this world.
00:48:33.080 | And so, this is why premillennialism is not compatible with Christian nationalism.
00:48:37.080 | Even though it's, in the last few weeks, I've seen all kinds of Christian nationalists
00:48:39.680 | say, "Eschatology has nothing to do with this.
00:48:41.520 | You can be a premillennialist and be just happy as a Christian nationalist.
00:48:44.560 | Come on, we don't care about eschatology.
00:48:47.060 | Just vote harder."
00:48:49.880 | But it's so important because in premillennialism, we recognize the sojourner identity of the
00:48:55.320 | church.
00:48:56.320 | In postmillennialism, of course, you're operating an assumption that the gospel's going to grow
00:48:59.240 | in a nation until it eventually becomes the predominant culture and ushers in some kind
00:49:03.440 | of Christian national identity.
00:49:04.920 | That's fine.
00:49:05.920 | That's postmillennialism.
00:49:06.920 | That's Christian nationalism.
00:49:08.040 | Go for it.
00:49:09.040 | That's your thing.
00:49:10.040 | But it's not my thing because of my premillennial convictions about the nature and the identity
00:49:15.120 | of the church.
00:49:16.120 | And that touches on my fifth and final point.
00:49:19.080 | They have different hopes.
00:49:21.160 | Different hopes.
00:49:23.160 | The hope of the city of man is fickle.
00:49:27.640 | This is where it's so dangerous for our church, brothers.
00:49:32.280 | Election year is coming up.
00:49:35.480 | The government's going to win.
00:49:41.080 | And you have people in your congregation.
00:49:43.960 | Their hearts are going to be so drawn to this.
00:49:48.120 | Right now.
00:49:49.120 | Let me check what's happening.
00:49:50.120 | What did Trump do?
00:49:51.480 | Their hearts are so drawn to this.
00:49:52.960 | And they're invested in it.
00:49:54.920 | And they want to do more.
00:49:56.560 | And you know, you're in a state that hasn't voted red in like, you know, forever.
00:50:03.440 | And your people's hearts are all wrapped up in this.
00:50:07.640 | And they're distracted.
00:50:09.560 | It's too much hope in elections.
00:50:12.520 | Last presidential election, you know, the election happened on Tuesday.
00:50:16.560 | And by Sunday, people at church were just like talking about it and talking about it
00:50:20.400 | and talking about it.
00:50:21.400 | And what's going to happen?
00:50:22.400 | And the MyPillow guy is on TV.
00:50:23.400 | And it's the whole thing, remember?
00:50:28.480 | And so I pulled the car over and I preached Psalm 131, a song of ascents of David.
00:50:35.720 | Oh, Yahweh, my heart's not lifted up.
00:50:37.440 | My eyes are not raised too high.
00:50:38.960 | I don't occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous.
00:50:43.080 | I've quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child within me.
00:50:48.400 | Oh, Israel, hope in Yahweh.
00:50:49.760 | That's the whole Psalm right there.
00:50:51.760 | That's David as king writing, God, I don't want to think about things above my pay grade.
00:50:56.280 | If David can look at the political landscape of the world and go, that's above my pay grade,
00:51:00.360 | you can quiet your soul.
00:51:03.600 | What's a bigger risk?
00:51:05.800 | The outcome of the election or you just losing your first love?
00:51:09.640 | I mean, it's true.
00:51:12.640 | And the more you love the election and all that, and the more you love the whatever, politics,
00:51:17.620 | it just sucks your heart in.
00:51:19.400 | I had somebody come to me and say, you know, the liberal churches in town, all the African-American
00:51:27.000 | churches and the denominational churches, they're bringing buses in.
00:51:31.840 | You know, show me clips in their phone of like the preacher who's like, you know, all
00:51:35.520 | fired up for Biden and they got buses lined up to help everybody go vote early.
00:51:39.560 | And it's like, if only our church would do that, we could offset them.
00:51:44.000 | Like those are, that pastor's preaching on election.
00:51:46.240 | I'm like, I'm happy to preach on election.
00:51:47.760 | No, not that one.
00:51:53.760 | Like why don't we get the buses?
00:51:55.560 | Why don't we do the voter guides?
00:51:57.080 | Why don't we do all that stuff?
00:51:59.620 | If the other, if the liberal churches are doing it, why don't we do it?
00:52:03.400 | And it's not a numbers game in that regard.
00:52:06.200 | For us, it's this totally philosophy of ministry, because I'm so concerned you get distracted
00:52:10.940 | about this world, the kingdom of man, man, the kingdom, you want to know what's going
00:52:14.360 | to happen to the kingdom of man.
00:52:15.360 | What does God say about it?
00:52:16.360 | It's going to go down.
00:52:17.360 | So don't love it.
00:52:21.040 | Run from it.
00:52:22.040 | You want other churches to take you, bus you to go get your, you know, vote 27 times for
00:52:26.800 | election day.
00:52:27.800 | It's not going to be our church.
00:52:30.180 | And they say, it's time for the church to stand up.
00:52:32.340 | Let me tell you, the true church is always standing up.
00:52:35.240 | That's all we do.
00:52:37.920 | That's all we do.
00:52:38.920 | And this is why I'm so weary even of saying, yeah, okay, so you want to impact elections
00:52:42.600 | and politics.
00:52:43.600 | You evangelize people.
00:52:44.600 | And once they get saved, they'll vote the so-called right way.
00:52:46.320 | It's like, no, because I have Piper sermon from a few nights ago in my head that you
00:52:49.860 | can tell the glory of something by the end of it.
00:52:53.140 | If you're like, yeah, evangelism is good and conversions are good, because then we'll finally
00:52:56.340 | get an election outcome.
00:52:57.500 | That's still missing the point.
00:53:01.960 | Evangelism is not the means to the end of better elections.
00:53:04.320 | Oh no.
00:53:06.920 | Evangelism is the means to the church expanding and magnifying the glory of God on earth.
00:53:12.160 | Don't confuse those two.
00:53:15.140 | So what's the alternative to Christian nationalism then?
00:53:18.480 | What's the alternative?
00:53:20.440 | It's the embassy identity.
00:53:21.700 | The church is an embassy.
00:53:24.080 | The church is an embassy.
00:53:25.480 | We're a foreign outpost in a foreign land.
00:53:28.620 | And in our embassy, we have people from all kinds of nations.
00:53:31.860 | That's fine.
00:53:32.860 | That's great.
00:53:33.860 | Come on in.
00:53:34.860 | And in our own embassy outpost, we develop our own culture, our own language, our own
00:53:41.120 | rituals, our own customs.
00:53:43.200 | We develop all those.
00:53:45.280 | And we send our people back out into the foreign and hostile worlds.
00:53:48.800 | 1215, Sunday morning, they go back out in the world.
00:53:53.160 | Tell me you, 1230, 1245.
00:53:57.460 | They go back out in the world and they're going to come back again next Sunday for strengthening
00:54:00.960 | and equipping.
00:54:01.960 | And they're going to go back out in the world.
00:54:03.480 | That's their embassy identity.
00:54:05.320 | And you tear that down when you conflate the two kingdoms.
00:54:09.180 | Christian nationalism tears that down.
00:54:10.560 | It says the church isn't an embassy.
00:54:12.480 | It's the kingdom.
00:54:13.480 | It's headquarters.
00:54:14.480 | It's HQ.
00:54:15.480 | It's not HQ of this world, my friends.
00:54:17.860 | We do not have a lasting city.
00:54:21.300 | You want to build a lasting city?
00:54:23.700 | You better not be building in this world because nothing will last.
00:54:27.560 | We do not have a lasting city.
00:54:29.760 | We fight.
00:54:30.760 | We labor.
00:54:31.760 | And we strive.
00:54:32.760 | And we try to wrestle our eyes off of this world and onto the next.
00:54:36.080 | You know, I think talking about voting is fine and helpful, especially in discipleship
00:54:42.720 | conversations because it reveals so much of a person's heart.
00:54:45.120 | You know, a person's heart is like, you know, I'm just torn, like, you know, this person
00:54:50.580 | is pro-abortion, but this person, you know, wants to fight global warming, you know, so
00:54:57.140 | I can't tell.
00:54:59.140 | I can't tell which is worse, help.
00:55:02.540 | And so those are good conversations in just normal discipleship.
00:55:05.340 | That's fine.
00:55:06.340 | That brings that stuff out.
00:55:08.900 | But your goal in that conversation is not to get the person to vote the right way.
00:55:12.880 | Your goal, honestly, is to get the person to get his eyes off of this world onto Christ
00:55:16.700 | who will, of course, transform everything else.
00:55:19.060 | Listen, I don't want open borders.
00:55:21.180 | I don't want gay flags in schools.
00:55:23.780 | I don't want that kind of stuff.
00:55:26.140 | But I don't want to lose the preciousness of the church.
00:55:30.060 | I don't want to sacrifice our embassy outpost for an election that's going to happen next
00:55:33.260 | year because even if you get away with it and even if the person you want to win wins
00:55:37.460 | and whatever, it's going to happen again in four years.
00:55:39.780 | Which is sucked into a cycle of craziness.
00:55:44.640 | We don't have a lasting city.
00:55:46.820 | You want an embassy?
00:55:47.820 | Get the flag out of your church.
00:55:50.040 | You want an embassy?
00:55:51.040 | Get the voter guides out of your church.
00:55:53.040 | You want an embassy?
00:55:54.040 | Get courage and convictions to compel the gospel forward.
00:56:00.840 | You know, people get so wrapped up about an election and it's so helpful to know the theme
00:56:05.320 | of this conference, truth triumphs.
00:56:07.720 | Jesus is coming back and He's not going to be voted into office.
00:56:14.320 | He's got the throne pre-made.
00:56:17.920 | The oath appointing Him the mediator and the King of the world that is uttered in Psalm
00:56:22.240 | 2, repeated in Hebrews 1 and 5, that oath already happened.
00:56:25.160 | That oath was already recorded back in David's day.
00:56:27.560 | Of course, spoken at an event when He ascends into heaven.
00:56:30.120 | It's a timeless oath.
00:56:32.040 | And He's going to come back and take over His throne and rule over the nations.
00:56:37.520 | We long for that day, and that's the day we set our eyes on.
00:56:40.200 | God, we're grateful for the promise of a kingdom that won't fail, for the promise of a new
00:56:45.400 | Jerusalem that will come from heaven, established on the earth.
00:56:51.000 | Lord, we do pray for our own country and the leaders in our own country, we pray that You
00:56:56.400 | would give them wisdom to rule justly, and we pray that they would leave us alone so
00:57:00.360 | that we can work quietly with our hands, leading a quiet and dignified life, spreading the
00:57:05.200 | gospel wherever You give us opportunity.
00:57:06.920 | We want to be wise as serpents, innocent as doves, knowing that ultimately, we are lambs
00:57:13.400 | among lions.
00:57:14.800 | God, give us grace until the day of slaughter causes us to stand for You.
00:57:20.320 | We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.
00:57:22.200 | [BLANK_AUDIO]