On the PCA’s Committee on Christian Nationalism

At its recently held 52nd General Assembly, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) passed an overture establishing an ad interim committee on “Christian Nationalism.” The stated reasons for the overture were several: there is a question, for example, whether those ordained in the PCA who hold to the view of the civil magistrate outlined in the original form of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) must “take an exception” to the American form of the WCF (1788), which is the version adopted by the PCA. There is a question whether the 1647 WCF is “Christian Nationalist,” and whether “Christian Nationalism” and “Ethno-Nationalism” are coterminous, or at least comfortable bedfellows. And, most importantly, the overture states that these and other issues “have caused confusion, division, and dissension even among the congregants of PCA churches and affected PCA pastors and officers.” The committee is thus tasked to study “the relationship between Christian Nationalism, Ethno-Nationalism, and related teachings” and “write a report that gives pastoral guidance when addressing congregations, new members, and future officers of the PCA.”

To some extent, this controversy and consequent overture may seem a bit too “inside baseball” to warrant outside attention. However, the questions raised by this committee, and by proponents of Christian Nationalism more generally, are related to a broader ongoing conversation within intellectual Protestantism about retrieval of historic Reformed thought, a project of “Ressourcement” about which much has been and continues to be written. Have we, some wonder, gone astray from important aspects of historic Protestant teaching on social and political issues? Are there older, better ways of thinking waiting to be gleaned from various reformers, both the famous and the obscure?

The landmark case for this was made several years ago by Stephen Wolfe in his book The Case for Christian Nationalism (Canon Press, 2022). Wolfe is a political theorist by training, having published scholarship on Reformed political thought in the American founding era before writing his most famous work. In it, drawing on both secular and Christian sources, Wolfe advocates for the justifiability of the “principle of similarity:” that similarity between people facilitates fellow-feeling and therefore that it is right and natural to desire to dwell with people like yourself, with whom you share a common “ethnos.” Defining who should fall within this principle of likeness is difficult, and Wolfe denies it is identical to physical appearance or skin color; instead, the likeness is predicated on a combination of language, culture, and highest ideals that unify nations. The principle of similarity and its relationship to Reformed political thought dating back hundreds of years will undoubtedly need to be addressed in whatever report the committee produces.

To be clear, Stephen Wolfe is not the only representative of Christian Nationalism, nor is his book the best or only resource for the committee to assess. It is, however, a sort of cultural touchstone for the conversation, and so the committee would undoubtedly be wise to evaluate its claims. In so doing, the committee will necessarily need to consider Wolfe’s repeated claim, both inside and outside of the book, that what he offers in The Case for Christian Nationalism is nothing more or less than the historic Reformed position on the civil magistrate.

This claim is really three claims packaged into one. The first is that the view advanced by Christian Nationalism’s contemporary proponents is a historic view. That is, it is a view drawn from the example of history and the writings of people within the broader Reformed tradition that the PCA would not be willing to haphazardly anathemize. The second claim is that Christian Nationalism is not only historically grounded, but also represents the consensus within Reformed Protestantism. That is, it is not merely one of many styles or camps of political theology within the broader tradition, but that it represents the majority or overwhelming consensus view.

These first two claims can, I think, be fairly objectively assessed by turning to the sources Wolfe and others employ. The third claim however, that Christian Nationalism should be embraced by Christians today as theologically sound and politically prudent, will require much more discernment to adjudicate. It is undeniably true, for example, that past theologians and commentators within the Reformed tradition have advocated the civil magistrate do things most PCA leaders and members today would not support (think here of the oft-repeated debates around the execution of Servetus in Calvin’s Geneva, or the laws enacted in places like Puritan New England or Knox’s Scotland).

When engaging in some sort of retrieval, then, contemporary Reformed thinkers have several options available. They could, like David VanDrunen in his Politics after Christendom, suggest that the principles and the framework established by 16th- and 17th-century thinkers like Calvin and Turretin is broadly correct and useful, establishing a difference between what is “common” and what is “sacred,” leaving the sacred to the church and the common to the magistrate. At the same time, they could suggest these thinkers are merely mistaken when they treat, for example, blasphemy laws as within the proper purview of the civil magistrate. Retrieval of this kind says that these thinkers are broadly correct in principle, incorrect in their application, and can thus be adopted with modifications.

One could, alternatively, suggest that the entire category of “social and political doctrines” is more context-dependent than those doctrines we might call “theology proper.” As my friend John Ehrett has argued,

“With this distinction in view, it makes sense to treat the retrieval of ‘theology proper’ differently from the retrieval of certain social and political doctrines. Reformation-era claims about social and political order are in general more likely to be contingent and time-bound, while the former are not.”

A proper work of retrieval, then, would not be quite as simple as “X and Y reformers agreed on A and B social doctrine, and thus all Reformed people should affirm the same.” It would instead be a project of making good cases, given the contingencies of politics and changing political and economic situations that a past teaching is in some way binding on or prudent to adopt for present believers. This is a much more difficult task for especially Protestant thinkers to undertake, but one that has been undertaken with vigor by Oliver O’Donovan, among others.

In any case, I am glad this committee has been established and I hope and pray that it will produce something of value to the church. I, along with Christian Nationalism’s proponents, sincerely hope that the committee will, as they say, “do the reading,” and will likewise avoid any imprudent anathemas of positions within the pale of our confessional tradition. At the same time, I expect the committee will find much troubling about both the teachings and the conduct of those who advocate for Christian Nationalism today, and likewise find that, among the Reformed, there is widespread disagreement on these social and political doctrines that cuts against any claim of exclusivity or unity on them within the Reformed tradition.

This article was first published in IRD’s journal of Christianity and Foreign Policy, Providence.

Philip D. Bunn is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. His research has been published in Political Research Quarterly and American Political Thought, and his reviews and essays have appeared in The Review of Politics, Plough Quarterly, Comment Magazine, and The University Bookman, among other publications