A recent episode of Man Rampant, the Canon Press podcast hosted by Reformed pastor and author Douglas Wilson, features political theorist Stephen Wolfe, author of The Case for Christian Nationalism.
Titled “Christian Nationalism, the American Kind,” their conversation revisits the themes of Wolfe’s controversial book, offering what he sees as a theological and political recourse for Christians who reject the dominant post–World War II liberal consensus.
At the center of Wolfe and Wilson’s argument is a call to return to a vision of the United States as they believe the Founders originally intended: a nation built upon Christian values and cultural cohesion. The postwar consensus, in their view, ushered in a godless worldview of Americans that believed they, acting out of a “helium of hubris,” no longer needed God. For dissenters, Wolfe suggests, the antidote lies in reclaiming an explicit Christian nation in all realms of society.
However, his philosophy for recourse includes a rigid adherence to a seemingly misunderstood interpretation of the American founding. This philosophy in favor of Christian nationalism opposes democratic principles and a vision of Christian nation-state with a unified identity, heritage, and culture that should pose some serious concerns for reasonable and understandably frustrated postwar dissenters.
Wolfe makes it clear in the episode that he does not believe a democratic majority is necessary to implement a Christian political order. What’s needed, he argues, is a decisive, elite minority capable of capturing the imagination of the broader public.
“I’m an elitist in that sense,” Wolfe admits. “You don’t need a majority. You need a strong minority that shapes the imagination of the rest.”
This is both a strategy and political philosophy that openly downplays democratic will in favor of ideological dominance. But this vision muddies up the very principles the Founders emphasized. While wary of mob rule, the American founders also resisted oligarchy. They emphasized checks and balances, limited government, and representative democracy as means of safeguarding liberty for all and not just for any morally assertive minority. The majority Wolfe envisions is not a majority rule in any sense but rather, dilutes the true, honest interests of the majority of American citizens and also opens up an ability for minority ideals to be exploited and oppressed.
“When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government… enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens” writes James Madison in Federalist 10.
Furthermore, the First Amendment did not emerge from indifference to religion, but from a conviction that civil government should not privilege one religious tradition over another. Many of the Founders were Christians, but they rejected the idea of a state church or a legally imposed Christian order.
Wolfe and Wilson present their political theology as a return to American roots. However, particularly in its proposed rejection of pluralism and openness to theocracy, it is closer to a repudiation.
To Wolfe’s credit, some of his theological reasoning reflects traditional and respectable Christian thought. He affirms that grace completes, rather than replaces, nature which is a long-standing view that has shaped Christian understandings of law and the common good. Properly understood, this framework sees politics not as a purely secular enterprise, but as one capable of being informed by moral and religious truth.
However, Wolfe’s application of this theological construct into specific policy based on Christian doctrine crosses into troubling territory. Even among sincere believers, there are serious disagreements about doctrine, sacraments, and worship. When Wolfe and Wilson discuss whether a Christian magistrate should enforce Sabbath laws, they raise a real concern within a pluralistic society. Their proposal of government enforcement of religious practices is founded upon the idea that leaders of the nation or a minority group can make a perfectly accurate and confident claim that they have found the one true religion and have perfected the way to worship God. This undermines the very liberty and freedom to believe based on the dictates of one’s own conscience that most in the Christian faith would argue for, especially in a nation that is now made up of various differing religious traditions.
What begins as a natural law argument quickly risks becoming an unfounded grounding for a confessional state with little room for dissenters or non-conformists, including other Christians.
Wolfe also returns often to the idea of national affection: the love of home, people, and heritage. Due to his citation of C.S. Lewis in other portions of the episode, Wolfe seems to implicitly draw on Lewis’s The Four Loves, which describes a form of patriotism grounded in familiarity and gratitude. But Lewis was also careful to warn against the kind of possessive nationalism that turns love of place into a prideful exclusion and a thing worthy of worship.
“Once it has made this transition,” Lewis wrote, “it has begun to work against the spiritual reality to which it owed its origin.”
Wolfe’s project appears to inch in that direction. While insisting that Christian nationalism is not racial, his frequent appeals to the benefit of ancestry, cultural unity, and ethnic identity tied to a specific homeland may lead to a slippery slope of dangerous policy suggestions as well as problematic theological conclusions. The result is a vision of America in which Christianity becomes more of an identity of cultural and geographical inheritance rather than identity within the body of Christ that transcends human culture and arbitrary physical boundaries as is seen in Revelation 7:9.
In the end, Wolfe and Wilson’s version of Christian nationalism presents a vision at odds not just with modern liberalism, but with the constitutional and theological traditions they claim to recover. A Christian nation, in their understanding, governed by religious law, is ruled by a decisive minority, and defines its people through shared ancestry and culture that defines America as a Christian homeland and rejects biblical ideals such as hospitality and love for the foreigner and stranger.
The genius of the American founding was not the imposition of a single religious vision, despite the fact that at the time most inhabitants of America were Protestant. It was the conviction that faith flourishes best where it is free and that government works best when it governs for a people united not by blood or creed, but by commitment to liberty, justice, peaceful tolerance, and freedom of conscience. Wolfe makes a good point when he argues, by an appeal to convenience, that people with similar cultures, ancestries, and languages will probably live and worship together best. However, this has no bearing on a right or even a benefit to institute this politically on a state or national level.
While influencing politics and persuading in the public sphere by an adherence to Christian values is a noble and upright aim of all Christians, Wolfe and Douglass take this idea too far. In their desire to reclaim a Christian order, Wolfe and Wilson, although seemingly well-intending, may actually be using non-Christian means to politically impose non-Christian ends.
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Comment by David on July 15, 2025 at 9:00 am
Eight of the thirteen original US colonies had official established churches. The First Amendment prohibition applied originally only to the Federal Government. The state established churches continued on, the last being abolished in MA in 1833.
Comment by Corvus Corax on July 15, 2025 at 10:31 am
“When Wolfe and Wilson discuss whether a Christian magistrate should enforce Sabbath laws, they raise a real concern within a pluralistic society.”
Many states still have and do enforce “Sabbath laws.” So-called Blue Laws have been common since colonial times, although they’ve diminished greatly in scope since then. Their repeal has more to do with the ascendance of Mammon to the position of quasi-state religion, and less to do with concerns over “pluralism,” although both idols have a long and healthy working relationship.
“It was the conviction that faith flourishes best where it is free”
Would you say that faith is “flourishing” in the United States today?
“Wolfe makes a good point when he argues, by an appeal to convenience, that people with similar cultures, ancestries, and languages will probably live and worship together best. However, this has no bearing on a right or even a benefit to institute this politically on a state or national level.”
What an odd thing to say. If Wolfe’s point is good, and people “live best” in more culturally homogenous societies, why is this an insufficient basis for policy?
Comment by Wilson R. on July 15, 2025 at 11:13 am
This guy is an enemy of the gospel of Jesus, pure and simple.
Comment by John on July 15, 2025 at 3:23 pm
Corvus Corax,
You asked, “If Wolfe’s point is good, and people “live best” in more culturally homogenous societies, why is this an insufficient basis for policy?” Because as Christians we are called to a higher love that can see the other person who most physically, culturally, and experientially different from us as a brother or sister in Christ. In the same Four Loves book quoted in the article, Lewis lists affection (love between family members) as the most natural form of love, but also the lowest. We have to reach higher. Wolfe wants a state where Christians are coercised by the powers of the state to follow the laws of God, but no longer expected to experience the true inner transformation theologians from St. Augustine to John Wesley described. Adherence without conversion. That’s the Christian Nationalist State.
Comment by Glenn Wheeler on July 16, 2025 at 12:22 am
The author writes about an elite minority that captures the imagination of the general public, as if this is something the Christian Nationalists propose but that we don’t have,
I would argue that’s exactly what we do now have, masquerading as a democratic process.
The elite, through their control of “the narrative” and the mass media, dictate not only what the broad masses think but what they think about.
The fact is that already in the United States, control is on the hands of an elite minority, but they have succeeded in fooling the masses to think they have a say, that they live in a country with a democratic process.
Get out on the road and drive and look at the stupid moves people make in their vehicles. Those are the people who, in a democracy, vote. It is those stupid morons who are susceptible to the mind control of the media narrative and who vote according to how the narrative tells them to vote. That’s what democracy always leads to.
So if we’re going to be ruled by an elite minority, which we presently are, why not have that elite minority be at least nominally Christian?.
Comment by John on July 16, 2025 at 1:57 pm
Glenn Wheeler,
Your case against the mainstream media is tired and outdated. Fox News has higher viewing numbers than CNN or MSNBC and all of them are just competing for the oldest common denominators since most younger Americans are getting their news from internet where they can all follow their own personally little rabbit holes. There is no such thing as mainstream media anymore, at least not as it was once defined. There’s multiple competing streams now that rarely if ever cross paths. Even basic facts that no one would have questioned 30 years ago are now disputed and fought over. Not only to people not trust the media anymore (if they ever did) but also their doctor, their elections, the weather, etc.
Comment by Glenn Wheeler on July 16, 2025 at 8:15 pm
John,
I was not talking about the so-called mainstream media. Fox News, Newsmax, etc. promote the elite narratives just as much as CNN and MSNBC. They’re two sides of the same coin.
There may be “multiple competing streams,” but by and large, no matter which “stream” you choose, you will get some variation of either Narrative A or Narrative B. There are always at least two different narratives presented. That gives the dissatisfied sections of society the ability to blow off steam by believing they are fighting against something (best example is Trump, who functions as a safety valve to let people harmlessly blow off steam without actually initiating real change). But both Narrative A and Narrative B are creations, stage shows.
Comment by Diane on July 18, 2025 at 2:44 am
Back to a theocratic state…would that be Salem and its witch trials? Or perhaps genocidal warfare, murdering thousands of indigenous peoples? Or back to the Christianity of preachers like Jonathan Edwards who have no problem owning their domestic slaves, oops, servants?
Comment by John on July 18, 2025 at 9:38 am
Glenn Wheeler,
LOL. I certain have enjoyed watching the right-wing infighting of the last few weeks over Epstein, the Big Bill, Musk’s and Trump’s mutual little hissy fits, etc. They do entertain. It’s good that more conservatives are starting to see Trump as the hustler and conman he’s always been. You know what the sad part? Democrats and liberals tried to warn you about all of this, but you wouldn’t listen to them. And instead of admitting they were right you just keep expanding the conspiracy to include everyone. But getting back to the original topic of Christian Nationalism, let me ask you this. Isn’t just another case of blowing off steam?
Comment by Glenn Wheeler on July 18, 2025 at 10:46 am
John,
Of course Christian Nationalism is just another cae of blowing off steam.
You make a mistake, though, if you assume I am a conservative and that I supported Trump.
Comment by Don Bryant on July 27, 2025 at 10:23 pm
“Reasonable” is always the catch word of 20th century liberalism. What that means in practice is that values cannot be rooted in certainty and by truth claims that shape a culture through a transcendent North Star. Certainty of truth is supposedly what got the West into trouble in the two World Wars. Certainty is the third rail of all this controversy as your interlocutor Rusty Reno of First Things lays out in “Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West”. Certainty and confidence of vision point the way to unbridled nationalism, fascism, totalitarianism as we see in Karl Popper’s “The Open Society and Its Enemies”. And where does that version of an open society lead us? To George Soros is where. This article is entirely too nervous and seems to be unaware of the mess we are in based on rejecting our heritage and confidence. As Patrick Deneen repeatedly points out, today’s mess is exactly attributable to the success of Enlightenment liberalism and its “reasonableness”. We cannot evade authority structures forever. Politics abhors a vacuum, and it’s that vacuum we need to face. Your worst readings of what Wolfe and Wilson might lead to avoids a recognition of where “reasonableness” has already led us to.
Comment by Mike Chastain on July 29, 2025 at 8:58 pm
What parts of Christianity should be left out of our nation’s civil code? I think this article really missed what Wilson and Wolfe said and then showed that the writer chooses to abridge Christianity. Some who claim to be Christians only want a salad bar approach the to Lordship of Christ.
Comment by John on July 31, 2025 at 4:25 pm
Mike Chastain,
What one man considers abridged Christianity others might see as blunted and overburdened with unnecessary baggage. We’ve never all been able to agree on what constitute mere Christianity. To Wilson and Wolfe the purest form of Christianity is 17th Century Calvinism. The vast majority of professed Christians would disagree. Who are you to decide whose right and whose wrong?
Comment by Mark Bowrrs on August 3, 2025 at 5:50 pm
If one reads the statements/quotes of the founding fathers and their writings, although they wanted to prevent the establishment of a State Church, like the Church of England (separation of church and state), they did believe that American democracy (the Constitutional Federal Republic) must be founded upon Judeo-Christian faith and jurisprudence. This is where Christian Nationalism comes into play. Christians are not to be apolitical, although many Christian denominations have moved in that direction. Christians and Christianity are to influence every sphere of life – politics, government, art, education, etc. The problem lies in how to implement it. If one attempts to legislate morality, one end up with Christian Reconstructionism, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, etc.