INSIDER: MLK50 for Theonomists
Admittedly, Protestia hasn’t taken much of a stance on Christian Nationalism, if for no other reason, the definition is fluid. And it’s not the fake kind of fluid, like the gender of a blue-haired freshman at a public university. It’s legitimately fluid, changing all the time. For us, it has sufficed to merely lay out its potential problems and potential benefits while encouraging everybody involved to be thoroughly biblical.
That said, it hasn’t been difficult to make a stance on the Antioch Declaration, with both David Morrill and myself writing various pieces explaining its suspect motivations and broad-brushing of so many good brethren with accusations that lack either substance or charity to whom charity is well-deserved.
Consider this the last piece, at least from me, because I don’t want to get distracted in a trivial matter of hogwash while a lost world is perishing. Also, the Polemicist’s Manifesto #1 urges us to stop beating dead horses. A veterinarian hasn’t yet been called to the scene, but the horse does not appear to be breathing.
If you’re unaware of the Antioch Declaration, this is the basic gist (in case you missed the last Protestia INSIDER article from me, which can be found here):
Some self-identified Christian Nationalists are being accused of anti-semitism. A few, as I can see it, legitimately are anti-semitic, and the rest have just stopped caring about being called anti-semitic (or racists or bigots or misogynists or patriarchists or sexists or xenophobes or fascists or kitten-strangling, cotton-headed ninny mugginses). We have all, after all, been worn out from the insults coming from those who lack arguments.
However, certain antisemites do exist on the alt-right (but probably not as many who exist on the alt-left). James White and Douglas Wilson had been working with a German pastor, Tobias Reimensomethingorother to mitigate the influence of Joel Webbon (and some other pastors), who they allegedly perceive as being ethnocentric bigots. The German fellow accused Webbon of saying some things in a Zoom call that were not, in fact, said. The Zoom call, much to his surprise, had been recorded. While everyone was being told to patiently wait for the German fellow to respond in full, White and Wilson released the Antioch Declaration, which clearly seems pointed at Webbon, for what we found out later from Wilson was for the expressed purpose of helping Pete Hegseth’s Senate confirmation hearings. Hegeth, you see, is somewhat associated with Wilson, and the fear is that if Wilson and Company are painted as antisemitic bigots, it will be used against Hegseth’s nomination for Secretary of Defense (which they are correct, will likely will come up).
Our position on the Antioch Declaration, which is that it should not be signed, is largely due to the suspect reasons it was published, which for James White is that it deflects from their scheming against Webbon and doubles down on their accusations instead of their admitting error, and for Doug Wilson it’s political. The former is our speculation, but the latter has been admitted.
Impugning Christian brothers with such an accusation, we believe, should be done with actual evidence and for pure motives. And, there’s a small part of us that has grown so tired of the left’s baseless accusations of bigotry that we are naturally slow to jump on that bandwagon.
But there’s a single line that stands out to me from Doug Wilson, in his complaint against the Christian Nationalists, uttered on a podcast after the statement came out.
Wilson called them – and I quote – “Revoice for Nazis.”
Revoice, if you recall, was a gaggle of sodomites put together by Preston Sparkles (I just found out he’s not gay last week; he had me fooled) and Nate Collins that sought to normalize gayness in evangelicalism. It was promoted even by some within the ERLC (like Karen Swallow Prior, who claimed they had a ‘Biblical sexual ethic’) until the last second, after which they repudiated it from the pressure we put on them. We found out after the fact that its after-party was basically a gay hook-up scene. I mean, these guys literally have “Taylor Swift parties” to paint their fingernails (I kid you not, click here).
I tried to sneak into Revoice by putting on my best pink shirt and pair of Starbucks glasses, but they were like, “You’re JD Hall. We know you. Go away.” Apparently, I don’t pass for gay, even when doing my best Russell Moore impression.
So then, the comparison between the Christian Nationalists and Revoice, to me, seemed below the belt. I couldn’t imagine those guys using their get-togethers to commit the sin for which God smitted smiteded smoted had smitten Sodom and Gomorrah.
But, perhaps it’s only projection on their part.
I don’t want to tit-for-tat (although I kinda do), but if we’re making comparisons, I think an apt comparison would the Antioch Declaration and MLK50. I’ve called it MLK50 for Theonomists (as most of the Antioch drafters are, although they’re mostly of the Theonomy 2.0 version and not the Rushdoony version).
If you don’t remember, MLK50 was a joint conference between the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention and The Gospel Coalition (TGC). That was back when – as I pointed out at the time – the two entities shared so many board members and employees it was basically the same Democratic PAC.
Capitalizing on the national crises and riots caused by the deaths of various criminals (this was pre-George Floyd’s martyrdom), in 2018, the leftist progressive evangelicals converged to venerate Martin Luther King. And in case you don’t recall (just kidding, you do), Martin Luther King was not by any stretch of the imagination a practicing Christian, even though, perhaps, he was a professing one.
King’s academic work demonstrated that he denied core Christian doctrines like the Holy Trinity and the divinity of Christ, not to mention denying Christ’s miracles. But on top of that, his personal behavior showed no signs of Christianity. For example, the man was a whoremonger and homosexual, and those reports have been so highly verified by official sources both within the federal government and his fellow civil rights leaders it would be silly to deny them.
And so, the venerators of King at MLK50 did not deny any of the substantive accusations of heresy or homosexuality. They just didn’t let that get in the way of raising him up as a new exemplar of Christ. Questioning King was, for them, strictly forbidden.
Meanwhile, it appears as though the signers and drafters of the Antioch Declaration are alleging that conversations about Judaism are strictly forbidden. Whether or not Talmudic Judaism is dissimilar to Mosaic Judaism cannot be discussed. Whether or not the Judeo should join a hyphen to create a new term, Judeo-Christian, to describe our worldview or whether or not Jews hold our worldview is not a topic worth discussion.
One can understand why, with the Holocaust only fresh behind us, discussing whether or not there were 5.1 million Jews killed in the Holocaust or 6 million is distasteful. I, for one, would be the first to acknowledge that it doesn’t really matter and, therefore, isn’t worth being brought up.
But neither are we permitted, apparently, to discuss the besetting sins of this one particular culture.
Why would we want to do that, anyway? Well, for example, I recently explained at Protestia the besetting sin of Haiti, which is that almost all of them practice (to some degree) Vodou. Given the news cycle was revolving around Haitian immigrants eating cats in Ohio, I thought it relevant to explain exactly what our country was importing.
And nobody called us racist for that. I would suspect, for example, if we explained how pornography became a Jewish cottage industry – or why a Rabbi owns PornHub, we would be called anti-semitic in no time flat. But after all, nobody recently tried to put Haitians into the ovens of Auschwitz.
The fact that wild speculations, historical revisionism, and anti-semitic tropes have made legitimate victims out of the Jewish people does not logically mean that there are not legitimate issues with sin in their culture. It would only be remiss (and wrong) of us to claim that their sin issues are somehow uniquely evil. But they are obvious, to those paying attention.
Questioning why Germans supported Adolf Hitler and why the Final Solution seemed like a good idea at the time should not be off-topic for discussion (knowing why people are wrong is valuable). This is especially true as America is again on the cusp of war in Europe. Someone should be able to respectfully suggest that Winston Churchill committed war crimes without it being assumed that they are a Nazi. We should be able to look to the Talmud and explain why many Jews in the 21st Century seem so far removed from the ethical standards given to Moses without a declaration being written to deride us.
Or, as another example, we should be able to say out loud that the Jews killed Jesus (because that’s what the Apostle Peter said in the church’s first sermon) without being accused of blood libel.
However, the Antioch Declaration has a ‘chilling effect’ that warns us all that saying those things or making certain historical assertions (true or not) is a sign that we secretly want to gas the lineage of Abraham. The message of the statement seems clear; this topic is verboten. These questions are forbidden. And if you discuss this topic or ask these questions, you’re a threat somehow to the Christian church.
We simply have to deny that this approach has any merit or any Biblical justification. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it treats fair-minded and honest Christians slanderously.
And finally, I’d say that because you’re all supporters of Protestia (because this is a Protestia INSIDER article), you’re quite aware that we don’t like being told we can’t say things, think things or believe things so long as they are true things.