My Political Theology Hope

Political theology is hot right now. I don't want to get into a deep analysis of why that is, but one popular perspective is that there's been, for a few decades, at least a perceived gap in popular Christian thinking on the subject.

Yet political theology has always been around. It didn't go away. Personally, I spent several years as a devoted Christian Reconstructionist (a tradition I've departed from) and devoured heaps and heaps of books on the subject. I even contributed, to a small degree, to that project. We also have significant materials on political theology from historical thinkers like Bavinck and Kuyper, contemporary writers like Oliver O'Donovan who are becoming more well known, and, of course, tremendous amounts of material from classical Protestant sources.

But on a popular level, there's been a perception that the Reformed tradition has largely shied away from political theology. I, as a young man, sensed this, and I know many others did as well. My own story is that I found theonomic Christian Reconstructionism in order to fill that gap. They had answers to my questions and I didn't see other "camps" even attempting to answer those questions. In short, the folks with an answer have an advantage over the folks who do not.

But those answers haven’t always been helpful. I’m hopeful, though. I’m sure some will think me naïve or perhaps even “part of the problem.” But I think hope is generally a good thing, and in the face of uncertainty it’s something worth trying.

Over the last few years Christian Nationalism has, in some ways, replaced Christian Reconstructionism in these conversations. But now, unlike 2006, political theology has gained significant public popularity. Back then I was a theology nerd with a peculiar interest in the intersection of faith and politics, but today everyone is talking about it. And I think that's a good thing.

Naturally, anytime there's a "boom" in a subject within evangelicalism, there will be those who will "race to market" with podcasts and books. Rarely are these first fruits the most helpful, thoughtful, or lasting. I recall the CRT conversation and the massive surge in publishing on the subject. While it was always a mixed bag, many of the early evangelical and Reformed books were sloppy, sensational, and far more polemical — edgy and geared towards engaging a pre-existing audience more than deeply engaging with the subject matter. They made some great points but also made serious errors.

It took awhile to get books on the subject that were both serious and accessible. But we did eventually get excellently researched work from guys like Neil Shenvi while also getting valuable adjacent work from Watkins on Biblical Critical Theory. Others as well.

I believe we're seeing a similar dynamic now, albeit with a retrieval factor also in play. We will get polemical works, we will get heretical works, we will get slop of all sorts. We already have.

But we will also get serious, accessible, and impactful work that will have a lasting and positive influence. My hope is that this work will "fill the gap" that many feel and provide popular and accessible alternatives to both political passivity and political extremism of all sorts. Specifically, as more and more good work is done, those who have chosen to infuse their political theology with racialist dogmas will rightly be rejected in favor of more serious and more orthodox thinkers who retain the good of Protestant political theology while purging foreign and cancerous ideas that have no place in our churches.

I think we're already beginning to see this with the "Wolfean" Christian Nationalism of Garris, McGowan, and Wolfe. Wolfe's first book on the subject was more forthright with his racialist ideas and it garnered him significant support from "full bodied" kinists, paleo-confederates, Christian Identity adherents, and run-of-the-mill Christian racists. But it also earned deserved sharp criticism from men such as Kevin DeYoung, Neil Shenvi, and many others. The mainstream, even among those sympathetic to a sort of Christendom, didn’t fully buy-in.

The more recent book from Wolfe alongside cowriters Zachary Garris and Sean McGowan tempers the racialist language while never correcting or replacing the same racialist ideas. But the pressure is certainly being felt. There is a shift. They know the racialism is a PR problem.

The fallout is that they're alienating themselves from all sides. The hardline kinists and racists are angry at the perceived ideological betrayal and personal slights, while academics, ecclesiastical leaders, and a whole host of serious interlocutors accurately assess that there's been no clear repudiation of Wolfe's previous racialist work. Even more, the same ideas are still affirmed, albeit in a softer way. They refuse to clearly break from racial-nationalism and all that implies, but they also refuse to give up their attempts at mainstreaming their ideas by backing the full-bodied kinism that their ideology is, at least, adjacent to. This will leave them with an awkward and narrow audience to the left of “Protestant Hitler” Spanglerism but to the right of anyone who rejects racial-nationalism.

Yet many will be reluctant to distance themselves from these works and ideas. They want solutions and they want answers, and Wolfe/Garris/McGowan has those in spades. They see them and their work as a needed, albeit imperfect, bulwark.

But I’m hopeful. While my strong preference is that more would be convinced by Biblical and natural law to strongly reject blood and soil nationalism, I’ll also be thankful when folks quietly prefer better options with less poisonous baggage.

More and more, folks are seeing the alternatives and they’re seeing much better answers. You don’t have to hold your nose and stomach the racialism in order to get the Protestant political theology. You don’t have to tolerate heterodox (at best) anthropology in order to build better civil understanding. You don’t have to center ethnicity as your core virtue in order to seek Christendom.

Again, these better options have always been there. They may not have been the subject of the most popular celebrity Christian pulpits, podcasts, or conference stages, but the ideas were still there for those willing to look harder. There’s no good excuse to cling onto blood and soil ideology and I don’t want to patronize folks, especially young men, as if they’re victims of society and have no personal responsibility for their own ideas. No sincere anxieties, grievances, or cultural dangers justifies embracing these ideas.

Yet, I’m genuinely hopeful that a new batch of both academic and popular, accessible, and serious work on the subject will be beneficial to those who yearn for robust answers to pressing issues. In addition to practical matters of civil governance, my hope is that the church and the love we are to have for others will regain its proper place in political theology. The centering of the debate will slowly but healthily move from the prerequisite task of cutting away the racialism and onto matters more constructive. Differences and disagreements will remain, even sharp ones, but my prayer is that by cutting away the cancer it will provide space for robust but brotherly debate. Racial-infused “blood and soil” nationalism is not only an error, but also a significant obstacle in the way of sober-minded, faithful, and honest conversations concerning the retrieval of Protestant political theology. My hope is that God will be glorified by the upcoming PCA study report on this subject and all future endeavors from men who fear God.

We've already seen some good work emerging, but I believe the best is yet to come.