As the West spirals further into chaos and depravity, righteous men are continually given new provocations to anger. After all, what we’re experiencing isn’t just a matter of unfortunate circumstance, but deliberate attacks on our faith, our people, our civilization, and even our children by men and women who actively hate us. When a pervert attempts to groom his child, surely a father ought to get angry. When foreigners try to take away the country his fathers gave him and give it to strangers, surely a man ought to get angry. When his brothers and sisters abandon Christ’s teachings for the Spirit of the Age’s, surely a Christian ought to get angry.
As Christians, we have a surfeit of evidence that anger can indeed be righteous. Scripture tells us that God is both slow to anger and that His wrath is quickly kindled depending on the circumstance, but both acknowledge the reality of holy anger. And Jesus Christ, the only perfect and sinless man, felt and even acted in anger on several occasions towards money-changers and Pharisees. To call anger inherently sinful is therefore an explicit denial of God’s Word and condemnation of His character.
Most Christians will agree with this in principle. They will acknowledge that anger can, theoretically, be righteous. However, they will quickly point out that while God’s holy anger proceeds from His perfect justice, the same cannot be said of sinful men. Our sense of justice is corrupted by our sinful nature, and so any consequent anger will be sinful as well. When we rationalize our own sins rather than confess and repent of them, we suppress the truth in unrighteousness and thereby distort our moral judgments. What’s more, we are prone to sins like pride and envy which produce the kinds of anger which are in direct opposition to true righteousness. Add to all this the fact that we are simply fallible and therefore that our judgments may be in error due to ignorance or mistakes. All of this is true, and it is entirely necessary for Christians to understand this sinful weakness in our nature.
Burying Our Anger
Unfortunately, these truths are often immediately followed by a vile and pernicious lie: “Therefore, a Christian should strive to avoid anger.” For the shallow-minded, it seems to follow quite logically. If your anger is inevitably going to be sinful, you should do whatever you can to rid yourself of anger. You may not be able to avoid feeling angry sometimes, but you should certainly ignore it or suppress it instead of acting on it until your emotions catch up to the forgiveness God has commanded you to offer. In this view, as a Christian grows in holiness (if they even acknowledge that possibility), he’ll also find himself being less angry and more tranquil regardless of provocation.
One can recognize the error in such instruction quite easily by applying the same reasoning to the parts of our psyche which tend to oppose anger. For example, by nature, our tranquility is no less sinful than our wrath. Our judgment is still corrupted by our suppression of truth in unrighteousness, so we are liable to say “peace, peace” where there is no peace. We are prone to sins like sloth and gluttony which produce the kinds of languid calm which are in direct opposition to true righteousness. And, of course, we remain fallible beings and can therefore mistakenly think everything is fine even as it all burns down around us.
Our feelings of tranquility, peace, and calm are no less subject to concupiscence than anger is. And yet, you’ll seldom find pastors advising Christians to strive against peace or tranquility. We aren’t taught to suppress it or to rouse ourselves to anger whenever we find ourselves feeling calm so that our feelings can catch up with our zeal. Neither will most Christians ever hear warnings against such vulnerabilities in our fallen nature.
Why not? Well, it has nothing to do with Scripture. As we’ve already seen, the Bible does not condemn anger in itself, and it gives us examples of false peace. Rather, we have been burdened with the false presumption that when it comes to sin, doing nothing is safer than doing something. Whereas anger demands action, tranquility easily contents itself with inaction. Accordingly, we routinely cast suspicion on the former and baptize the latter.
Sanctifying Our Emotions
But playing it safe in this way offers only the illusion of security. For one thing, our safety before Almighty God rests completely in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ which we receive by faith alone. No amount of moral reform will help us there, and so we are free to take godly risks. But more to my current point, destroying one God-given emotion while allowing sin to freely reign in a competing one will never lead to virtue. The Christian’s need to do good works will be stymied until every aspect of our nature is brought into submission to God’s Word.
The only way in which we can mortify the flesh and bring it into submission is to judge our every impulse according to God’s Word. That doesn’t mean trying to trade one feeling for another, but disciplining both. Like sexual desire, anger needs to be shaped and directed rather than discarded.
If you want to know whether your anger is appropriate, you need to ask yourself who told you to be offended. Are you upset over what God has established as valuable or over a mere shibboleth of modern culture? Is it your business–a matter which affects those whom God has given into your care–or are you merely being a busybody? Is your anger motivating you towards truly good works or disrupting your efforts by muddling your thinking? You’ll never be able to answer such questions without a steady diet of God’s Word to inform your conscience. But if you won’t both restrain your anger when it rages against God and let it burn when it produces righteous zeal, then you’re only letting Satan teach you to pick it up and put it away as his pleasure.
The same is true of your calm and tranquility. Are you being lazy and neglecting your responsibilities or are you content that you’ve done your work well and are leaving the consequences to God? Do you abstain from a conflict because its not important in the grand scheme of things or because you don’t really care about something God Himself has commended to us? God’s Word will inform you of your responsibilities and give you wisdom to discern when stepping back is the right move. The world’s discipline, however, will sideline you from the great battles of our time while you concern yourself with minutia.
Anger According to the Law
Unfortunately, this is not what modern Christians are taught to do. On one hand, our antinomians wholeheartedly despise striving to conform our behavior to God’s Law. They would accuse me of legalism for even suggesting this approach. And under their wicked tutelage, many Christians are starved of God’s Law and have no sound basis for discerning good from evil when it comes to anger or anything else. Even their God-given impulse to do good works and love as He loved us is subverted by accusations of self-righteousness whenever they actually try to drown their sinful nature.
On the other hand, Christians have allowed the world to redefine love for us. Instead of God’s assurance that love is the fulfilling of the law, the world tells us that love is found in obsequiousness. We’ve been discipled to think that rather than requiring us to be good, kind, gentle, and respectful, love demands only a vague niceness. But the merely nice cannot stand the conflict that righteous anger brings. Those pastors and teachers who have fallen into this trap rigorously police their sheep according to tone instead of truth. And because anger offends niceness more than any other tone, that’s what we’re told to stop feeling.
Christian love must avoid both of these pitfalls lest we strangle it before it reaches our neighbors. We live in a fallen and often perilous world where the good things God has given us are under constant threat. Where danger abounds, true love must become fierce. A well-disciplined anger will always be a part of that. As Paul wrote, “Be angry, and do not sin.”
To reclaim a godly ferocity and shake off our worldly torpor, we must reject the false teachings that surround us and return to Scripture–especially to those parts of it which the world hates. And whether we’re sinfully angry or sinfully sedated against things that should make us angry, we must seek God’s grace for our sins and the power of His Spirit to turn away from them. May God thereby discipline our anger and use it for His glory.
What’s the worst curse word of all? It depends on who you ask. The FCC and MPAA have their opinions, of course, and enforce standards on the media within their purview. Progressives often have a very different standard–liberally cussing a blue streak with traditional profanity but catching the vapors when anyone uses politically incorrect terms. Conservative Christian pastors and teachers will often weigh in as well according to the wisdom God has given them. Some will be stricter than anyone, broadly applying Ephesians 5:4 to a larger-than-usual list of bad words. Others will turn a blind eye to what our culture considers more “severe” four-letter words which are merely earthy, but they forbid more common curses which are actually blasphemous or deal flippantly with grave realities like damnation.
But if we ask which common curse word breaks the most Commandments, there’s a clear frontrunner–and it’s frequently found on the lips of media personalities, progressives, and conservative Christians alike. I’m speaking, of course, of the word “Nazi.”
While it’s not exactly what we think of when we hear “curse word”, Nazi is a curse in the truest sense: It seeks to bring calamity upon those to whom it is applied. But most strikingly, whereas the F word might break the 6th Commandment because of its indecency or the 4th because your mom doesn’t want to hear you say it, “Nazi” manages to break the entire second table–and all 10 when we put it into the Church’s mouth. And the same goes for all the associated labels like “racist” or the ever ill-defined “white supremacist.”
Consider what happens when someone is called a Nazi in 2024. Everyone in the US, left and right alike, has been conditioned to react to the term as though it’s a genuine curse. Liberals use it against anyone to their right. Conservatives also use it against anyone to their right. And in each case, its entire purpose is to mark someone as a public enemy–to unperson the target and render them an untouchable. “Nazis” need neither free speech, nor due process, nor common decency because mass media has ingrained their villainy in every American mind. But if we contrast this with the Ten Commandments (and especially Luther’s explanations in the Small Catechism) the transgressions against each become quite clear.
Sins Against Our Neighbor
Most obviously, of course, calling someone a Nazi is a matter of bearing false witness. The historic Nazi party ceased to exist long ago, and former members are now exceedingly rare given the passage of time. There are some few who LARP in Nazi regalia, but that’s the closest anyone comes today. In short, “literal Nazi” no longer means literal Nazi.
Now, it’s fair to object that historical accuracy isn’t really a concern in the rhetoric of name-calling. Nevertheless, even as name-calling, “Nazi” moves beyond mere ridicule and is applied specifically to damage your neighbor’s reputation. The term’s continued use by cultural & political elites as a way to mark their very real enemies for attack ensures that such damage is far more persistent than a mere insult. But our neighbor’s reputation is precisely what the 8th Commandment is given to protect.
Modern cancel culture, however, ensures that the curse is not limited to the 8th Commandment. Labeling someone a Nazi bears with it the intention of removing him from proper society. You’re not supposed to associate with “Nazis” or employ them. Rather, you’re meant to treat them like lepers and tax collectors. We’re all too familiar with innocent men losing jobs, homes, friends, and family because of precisely the kind of pointing and shrieking accomplished through this word and its corollaries.
We must therefore consider the 9th and 10th Commandments as well. According to Luther, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house” means we should be of service to him in keeping it. Likewise, “Thou shalt not cover they neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, etc” means we should not estrange away our neighbor’s wife or workers, but urge them to stay and do their duty. Calling someone a Nazi does precisely the opposite, and it does so deliberately.
Once we run afoul of these last two Commandments, we inevitably break those against adultery and theft as well because that’s what they’re meant to hedge against. Robbing a man of his livelihood by rendering him unemployable through slander is unmistakably a matter of theft when we’re called to help our neighbor “improve and protect his property and business.” Likewise, putting someone into an “untouchable” category like Nazi is designed to destroy his personal relationships, including with his wife. One need not spend that much time on social media before you see a myriad of calls for women to divorce any husband who votes for whoever they liken to Hitler this week. Whether that call is heeded or not, the cries of the mob do damage relationships. This is a far cry from the love and honor the 6th Commandment requires us to offer our spouses.
Even the 4th Commandment is transgressed by this same dynamic. To be sure, your mother and father may or may not approve of calling someone a Nazi. They may even do it themselves. But it’s easy to see how it corrodes the bonds of love, honor, and loyalty that God commands us to cherish. Every Christmas and Thanksgiving, we hear stories of families too broken apart by politics to even share a meal together. If politics is an idol that prevents us from loving the family God has given to us, then “Nazi” is certainly the idol’s means of marking blasphemers who must be expelled.
And if there was ever any doubt that calling someone a Nazi violates the 5th Commandment, this election cycle should put it to rest. There have already been two assassination attempts against Donald Trump–the current candidate being constantly likened to Hitler by his opponents. And it should be no surprise given common rhetoric. Every movie we’ve ever watched has conditioned us to believe that killing Nazis for any reason or no reason at all is always permissible. We already heard the left proudly exhort us to punch Nazis after Charlottesville. Indeed, violence against anyone labeled a Nazi is the entire purpose of Antifa, the terrorist wing of the Democratic party. Calling someone a Nazi in 2024 is an unmistakable attempt to bring bodily harm upon him when done publicly (and a wish for bodily harm when done privately.)
Sins Against God
So that covers the Second Table of the Commandments which govern how we treat our neighbors. But for the Christian, it does not stop at the Second Table like it should. This is because many Christians have begun calling men Nazis in the name of God.
Once again, there’s one very obvious Commandment being broken: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain. Certainly, the misuse forbidden here includes cursing someone in God’s name, as Luther’s explanation explicitly states. But then, this is precisely what the LCMS did to critics of the false teachings they recently packaged with Luther’s Large Catechism when President Harrison accused them of Nazism and its usual corollaries like racism, white supremacy, etc.
But there is also the Third Commandment to consider. While Christians are not bound to keep Israel’s sabbath, we are certainly bound to treasure what the Sabbath was for. As Luther explains it, “We should fear and love God that we may not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.”
Well, President Harrison’s demands for excommunication were fulfilled not only against those labelled a Nazi but even against those merely associated with those labelled as Nazis. And in the case of the former, the congregation did the unthinkable and filed a restraining order so that police would prevent their target from ever hearing God’s Word from that congregation ever again. This can hardly be called holding the preaching of God’s Word sacred. On the contrary, by raising the stakes of the dispute to excommunication (over worldly doctrines rather than Biblical ones, no less) they displayed enormous contempt for the hearing of God’s Word.
That just leaves us with the first and greatest commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. I could take the easy road and simply point out that violating any Commandment is also a violation of the First. After all, every time we choose to sin, we choose to put something ahead of God in our lives. But the matter goes deeper than that.
In the contemporary world, “Nazi” and its corollary labels are always and only given in service to Critical Theory, which owns those terms. But as I’ve pointed out before, Critical Theory is not a run-of-the-mill philosophy, but a false religion. Its doctrines of liberation from oppression are religious in both nature and fervor, and its labels are meant to mark blasphemy against them. When Christians use these labels, they are therefore practicing syncretism–a matter of including idols alongside Christ. So those who curse men by calling them Nazis are also offering pinches of incense to false gods whether they intend to or not.
But What If He Really IS a Nazi
In my experience, pointing out the sinfulness of cursing someone as a Nazi always raises the same objection: “But this guy really IS a Nazi, so it’s OK to call a spade a spade!” Color me dubious, because everyone thinks the person they call a Nazi “really” is a Nazi. But let’s play devil’s advocate and assume you’re the very special exception.
As I’ve already explained, virtually no one is actually a Nazi in 2024, but perhaps there’s really some relevant similarity between Nazis and your target. Perhaps it’s even the kind of similarity that makes such a person your enemy. Very well, then. It is time for you to love your enemy. As God clearly tells us, love is the fulfilling of the law. You therefore cannot love your enemy by calling him a Nazi and thereby breaking all Ten Commandments. Unless you have been appointed by God to wield the sword, you have no business bringing calamity upon this person for being your personal enemy.
“But we must warn people about him!” Indeed, we ought to warn people against dangerous neighbors, false teachers, and the like. And yet, Christians have been doing so for thousands of years before the word “Nazi” was ever conceived. True morality has never changed in all this time, and we have ample language without resorting to mercurial novelties. Given the common American principle of “everyone to my right is a Nazi” even as we slide ever leftward, it’s a label that invokes harm while simultaneously being morally vapid. Surely a pious and learned watchman like yourself can compose a more meaningful warning related to something that’s actually Biblical rather than a curse born and raised exclusively in the last century.
“But we have to make sure people know that the Nazis were bad!” Our entire society is literally built around Nazis being bad. We’re so morally bankrupt that Hitler is the only remaining direction on most moral compasses. Your own input on this point is therefore wholly insignificant except to the men you sin against. What you really want to ensure is that everyone knows that you think Nazis are bad so they don’t hate you too. But sacrificing others to establish your own reputation is hardly Christian behavior. Rather, it is the behavior of the second-least popular kid in school mocking the least popular kid so he can, for a brief moment, feel like part of the “in” crowd.
The cost of this virtue signaling is high indeed, for it turns men into moral vegetables. The wise man roots moral questions in the unchanging word of God found in Scripture and Natural Law. Modern fools, however, turn every moral question into a competition to determine who can tie the opposing side to Hitler most convincingly. To make matters worse, their game of pin the tail on the Nazi is based on the most puerile version of WWII history fed to us in television and movies. As a result, contentions like “don’t be strict and orderly because Nazis were strict and orderly” bear as much emotional weight as “don’t try to exterminate lesser races because Nazis tried to exterminate lesser races.” Men who should be devoted to wisely discerning good from evil instead concern themselves with explaining to the world why their vision of good is less like the Nazis than that of their opponents.
A Spirit of Fear
There’s a reason such a severe cost is so gladly paid. The beating heart of these objections is that the entire Postwar Consensus was established specifically for the sake of burying the Nazis permanently. And whatever else you may say about it, it was quite successful in that respect. No matter what view of WWII history one takes, it’s undeniable that the Nazis were defeated so profoundly that even their name remains our greatest curse nearly a century later. But despite this, we’ve all been trained to fear questioning the Consensus because doing so might somehow unseal the grave. In short, we do it because the Spirit of the Age has us absolutely terrified.
But God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. We can find soundness of mind by basing our judgments on the Wisdom of God’s holy word instead of the passing fashions of the 20th century. We can find love by following God’s Commandments towards friends and enemies alike, rather than obsequiousness towards whoever the TV tells us to feel sorry for this week. Were we to do this faithfully, I’m certain we would discover we had far more power than what few petty dregs of authority the Spirit of the Age tosses our way when we toe his lines.
Therefore, instead of cursing our neighbors, we ought to do some soul-searching to discern whether our abject fear of a dead and defeated movement is reasonable. Are there, perhaps, more clear and present dangers facing those God has entrusted to us? For example, there might be political movements afoot which are A) demonstrably responsible for far more wickedness than the Nazis and B) aren’t completely defunct. Or perhaps our nation is so far fallen that it’s calling down upon itself Old Testament punishments like barrenness, foreign invasion, debt slavery, and female rule. Maybe our trusted religious leaders are substituting modern political doctrines for our historic confessions of Christian Truth and declaring men damned for disagreements over 20th century wars. It may even be that the Postwar Consensus in which we trust is actually driving all of these greater evils, and our continued empowerment of its curses only makes it more effective.
If so, then we ought to consider the possibility that our fear of the Spirit of the Age vastly outweighs our fear of the Lord–and repent accordingly.
Conservative Lutherans compare ourselves to liberals like the ELCA, we’d like to think the key difference is that we adhere to timeless Biblical principles and they do not. Unfortunately, the recent reality in the LCMS does not at all live up to the ideal.
From my latest at American Reformer:
Walz’s congregation is, for example, committed to “Antiracism work” and “de-centering whiteness.” But last year, President Harrison of the LCMS sent out a letter to our entire church body to “categorically reject the horrible and racist teachings of the so-called ‘alt-right’ in toto.” He even demanded the excommunication of those who falls under that defunct and ambiguous label of “alt-right” or under meaningless labels like “racist” or “Nazi” which leftists use to slander conservatives every day. And yes, it has resulted in a number of individuals being unjustly expelled from their congregations. This work of antiracism is the only doctrine for which I’ve seen our leadership go the mat so hard since the “Battle for the Bible” in the 1970’s.
It’s hardly an isolated instance either. For example, President Harrison also wrote a lengthy statement on George Floyd’s death and the subsequent riots. Therein he denounced racism as “America’s original sin,” demanded repentance from all of us, and pleaded for new policies to end racial injustice. In 2017, Synod added racism to Luther’s Small Catechism under the 5th Commandment despite racism becoming an increasingly meaningless term. Our recent Large Catechism with Annotations and Contemporary Analysis (LCACA) likewise included an essay reframing the 9th & 10th Commandments using the concepts of Critical Theory to condemn sins of “privilege” like gentrification.
And when it comes to “de-centering whiteness,” LCMS leadership is quickly getting on board. Parishioners and leadership alike often complain that at 95% Caucasian, our churches are simply “too white.” In the face of our demographic decline, President Harrison has dismissed the idea that having children again will improve our numbers and favored programs that diversify the LCMS through outreach to immigrants and “diverse communities.” And on the website for our National Youth Gathering, the first and most prominent image representing our “overly white” Synod only features people of color (with a couple white youth barely visible in the background.) It seems that much of our leadership would prefer our congregations to be statistically random samples of the United States’ diversity rather than the non-random people God has actually entrusted to us.
As the world closes in on faithful Christians, it’s only natural that those who hold to the faith of their fathers would look to their brothers and sisters in Christ for sanctuary. After all, God’s instructions to His Church about loving one-another are clear and pervade Scripture. As we pray for help, we seek answers to those prayers among other Christians and the institutions we’ve built.
This is especially true of parents as we consider our children’s futures. We can protect them for a time, but at some point, they will need to be able to make their way in a world that will hate them as long as they remain faithful. Those who need assistance in preparing their children for a difficult adulthood have long looked to Christian schools who have made such preparation their mission.
But worldliness (the temptation to pursue esteem among those who hate us) works directly against the love Christians have for one-another. Instead of caring for our brothers in need, we try to make sure everyone knows we’re not one of those Christians. We take pains to separate ourselves from them and their concerns. In some respects, this temptation is far stronger in Christian schools than elsewhere. The practicalities of operating can require more cooperation with many worldly institutions and therefore currying more favor from them.
So it is that many of our institutions have become Christian in name and branding, but not in practice. A friend of mine discovered this the hard way a few years ago. During his decade-long service at a Christian college attached to a conservative denomination, he found that it was precisely his faithfulness to Christian mission–a mission highlighted in their literature–which brought him into conflict with his employer.
Christian at a “Christian” College
This conflict first became apparent when, in addressing a history class, he presented Vasily Surikov’s painting of the Apostle Paul before Agrippa and Festus in a slide. This was, after all, a trial in which Paul explained Christ’s Resurrection as something true, rational, and public–in other words, a matter of history. One should hope that a school which seeks to serve Christ by educating its students about history would take no umbrage at such an example, but this was not the case. He was quickly relieved of his duty to train history students at a Christian school because he spent a minute telling them that the Resurrection was a matter of history.
There was also an article he wrote for the school newspaper addressing LGBT issues after a campus event which strove to create more gay-friendly viewpoints at this Christian school. I’ve read the piece, and he bent over backwards to be gracious: extending welcomes, condemning bullies, minimizing homosexuality as an issue that the church shouldn’t focus on, welcoming civil conversation on the subject, and so forth. His stated concern was merely the authority of Scripture and that a Christian school must accept that homosexuality is one sin among a great many other sins as Scripture says. Indeed, he went so far in being winsome, that I would even disagree with some of his points as a result. But none of his nuance, sensitivity, or understanding prevented him from being rebuked as judgmental by the Dean of Diversity because of it. (Note: if your “Christian” college has a Dean of Diversity or any other DEI personnel, it is actively promoting a false religion.)
But the conflicts did not stop there because my friend did not stop Christ’s mission there. Over the years, he continued to perform his remaining duties at the school as a Christian rather than a pagan. When his department held ongoing events exploring Islam, he suggested they do so from a Christian point of view. He objected that the search committee for his department’s new director contained no serious Christians. He periodically tried to persuade his coworkers to take the school’s purported Christian mission more seriously–even if it put them in tension with worldly professional organizations. And, of course, he spoke out about religious and political issues on social media. Though he did not violate the school’s policies, his views were nevertheless held against him.
Pagans in Charge
Christ warned us that such faithfulness would earn us conflict with the world, and that’s precisely what he received. “He is insane”, “unprofessional (crossing religious and political lines)”, “not neutral/not ‘welcoming all'”, “religious obsessions”, etc. These are common reactions from pagans, of course, but we often forget that the world is with us even within our “Christian” organizations.
As it turns out, making an organization’s official mission Christian does little good when unbelievers are hired to carry it out. As his supervisor once put it in a performance review, ““He is learning that since we are not a Bible College but rather a Liberal Arts College, not all colleagues appreciate his desire to integrate these into the daily life of the [organization].” Indeed, she made it clear that the department was to remain “neutral” rather than Christian so that it could “respect and honor the various belief systems that we may encounter.” This is the reign of the Spirit of the Age.
Neither does being extremely conscientious about how one contends for the faith offer us much protection. My friend picked his battles. He worked hard to perform his duties with excellence. He was diligent about cultivating good relationships with colleagues. While he was no more perfect than any of us, he strove to be respectful in all things. Christians who seldom find themselves in hostile environments think that being loving enough or “winsome” enough will save them from the world’s ire, but this has never been the case. None of us will be as loving as Jesus, but the world still hated Him enough to put Him to death.
The final straw for my friend came when the school was in danger of violating state law in its COVID procedures, and he gave them an unwelcome reminder of their legal obligations. Once again, he bent over backwards to be understanding and objective in the way he addressed it–even seeking his wife’s input to make sure it wasn’t out-of-line or taking an adversarial tone. Once again, he was treated with hostility. They dredged up a history of “infractions” which he had never even been approached about in the past. They even gaslighted and falsely accused him in the form of the insidious “I feel threatened” card, which conveniently says nothing at all about its target, but is used liberally to justify abuse. Finally, they could tolerate his faith no longer, and they fired him after over a decade of service.
Sadly, his state’s government refused to protect him as a whistleblower, and allowed the matter to fall under at-will employment, meaning an employee can be fired for any reason or no reason at all. But whatever the legality of such a choice, the morality behind it was anything but Christian.
Start Being Vigilant
So what are Christians to take away from stories like my friend’s? For parents and prospective students, the lesson should be clear: Denominational branding is woefully insufficient for judging whether or not a school is actually Christian. Mission statements and the positive aphorisms of your tour guide don’t cut it. As tempting as it is to think you can send your sons off to college without simultaneously sending them off to war, the reality is that even most conservative Christian schools simply do not offer you that option. Your efforts will be best spent preparing them for that conflict with the world just as much as for academics.
Donors need to take away that same lesson and consider exactly what they’re supporting with their money. This point will largely be lost on Boomers who blithely donate even to their secular alma maters while simultaneously complaining about how our universities have become leftist indoctrination centers. But they’re not the only class of donors anymore. Consider what the school has been up to before signing any checks for them. Suspending faculty or reprimanding students for being conservative Christians is an obvious tell, but many other victims like my friend remain anonymous. Instead of just looking for Christian affirmations in their literature and among their faculty, also make sure you look for the affirmations of the Spirit of the Age. Do they brag about their diversity? Do they have any DEI-related staff? Do they make common cause with Satan in any way that goes beyond required legal boilerplate for non-discrimination? No self-proclaimed Christian organization which dances with the devil in such a way should see a penny from a Christian.
But there’s also a lesson for Christian organizations themselves–at least those interested in remaining Christian: If you do not actively oppose infiltration by the world, the world will consume your institution. “What communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial?” This shouldn’t need to be said, but the answer to Paul’s (rhetorical) questions is not “inside my Christian service organization!” If you hire unbelievers, they will inevitably undermine your Christian mission. Not because they’re mustache-twirling villains or because they’re just much worse sinners than you, but simply because they are animated by a different spirit. Their priorities are the world’s rather than Christ’s.
To be sure, this is not as easy as it sounds. It’s hard to find people who are both faithful and qualified for very specific positions in very specific time-frames. Even my friend’s former employer had made efforts in the past to hire more Christians, but weren’t able to pull it off effectively. Like many organizations, they found that having strict standards of faith for the personnel would severely limit how many personnel they can actually have. Like many organizations, they probably thought they could be larger and serve more people if they relaxed those standards. And that’s true in the short term. But in the long term, while they can certainly grow larger, the service they provide drifts further and further from their original Christian mission. In the end, they become only a larger and more efficient servant of the Spirit of the Age. It would have been better to serve far fewer people for Christ.
Trust Not in Denominations
It’s easy to be discouraged over stories like this. It’s easy to be discouraged as yet another institution in which we might have hoped becomes just another casualty of Satan’s war against the saints. It’s easy to think we’ve been left alone, but we have not. Christ is with us, and he has given us many faithful men and women to work alongside. The difference is in how we find our allies.
The age where we sought common-cause through denominational branding is drawing to a close. We will find our brothers and sisters among those who actually act as fellow Christians have been instructed to act by God’s word. They are the ones who love one-another, who defend one-another against the world, and who actually come to your aid when you are under attack. They are the doers of the Word rather than hearers only. They have Christ’s priorities in mind rather than the world’s. They will defend you even if you are imperfect rather than letting your peccadilloes excuse them for abandoning you. As Christ says, you will know them by their love, and the Word remains true. Look for those who love their fellow Christians. And more importantly, be one of those who loves his fellow Christians.
May God provide us with many such saints; may He bless those like my brave friend who have taken wounds in His service; may He bless us all as we build new institutions and reclaim fallen ones; and may He teach us to hold them steadfast and true against the world’s incursions.
Like the old Soviet Bloc countries, America is plagued by leftists driven to punish citizens for dissenting from their doctrines. The advent of social media, however, has given them a more interesting set of means. There’s no need for a well-organized secret police force when you can crowd-source an organic information network. Whereas an organization like the Stasi had hundreds of thousands of citizen informants feeding their friends and neighbors to Marxists, we have millions. The difference, however, is that the majority of them are their own bosses as they both carry out and report their surveillance on platforms like X or Meta.
In this way, even the punishments are mostly crowdsourced these days. The government (usually) doesn’t force companies to fire the targets of our modern Stasi or (officially) send the rioters who burn down their cities. To be sure, the left does have well-organized activist networks and terrorist organizations, but the most apparent role of the state is simply turning a blind eye if these agents break the law in pursuit of their quarry.
Naturally, as conservatives have been the primary victims of cancel culture, they have also been its primary critics. But this has caused a rather curious phenomenon in the wake of the attempted assassination of President Trump and his instinctive (and photogenic) response of “Fight!” Suddenly, some of the leftists who have been openly wishing for Trump’s death for years are finally being noticed. Whether it’s a famous band like Tenacious D or a poor and unknown cashier at Home Depot, a few leftists openly calling for assassination are facing unexpected consequences. And this time, it’s the right swarming the targets and informing supervisors. For once, we are cancelling the left.
Predictably, the usual soft-hearted conservatives are shocked and appalled by this turn of events. They’ve spent decades imagining if the situation were reversed and the left responding with ashamed repentance. But now that it actually is reversed–even to the smallest extent–they are rushing to the left’s defense to make sure they don’t have to repent.
Thus far, these defenses have come in two different flavors: a moral appeal against hypocrisy and a strategic appeal to peacemaking. Let’s take a look at each of these.
Cancelling the Left is Immoral?
The appeal against hypocrisy is fairly simple: “If cancel culture is evil, then it’s evil for us to use it.” In other words, the very fact that conservatives objected to men being cancelled over political beliefs means that integrity compels them to refuse taking such actions against the pro-assassination crowd now.
This might be a valid objection if we were morally opposed to social consequences for odious beliefs, but this was never the case. The reason we opposed cancel culture in the first place is that it was being used by the wicked against good men. The left cancelled people for actions that ranged from completely harmless to morally righteous. It is only the moderates who tried to remain aloof and neutral by condemning the means rather than opposing the evil itself.
It is certainly true that adopting cancel culture represents a massive shift in custom. Free speech, after all, was as much a social contract as a legal reality in the United States. One can hardly say “I disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” and then immediately fire the person. Nevertheless, social contracts are not moral absolutes, and it is foolish to treat them as such. When one party breaks a contract, the other party is hardly obligated to continue holding up their end. If a tenant refuses to pay rent, the landlord who evicts him is not “sinking to his level.”
To be sure, I greatly preferred the old social contract where people could talk about their politics and religion in public without fear of reprisal (though openly advocating for assassination was always beyond the pale.) However, the right cannot unilaterally re-establish that contract, no matter how much we might want to. After all, the landlord can’t force delinquent tenants to pay rent simply by refusing to evict them. And that brings us to the strategic appeal to peacemaking. If conservatives want cancel culture to end, shouldn’t we refrain from cancelling the left?
Cancelling the Left Prevents Peace?
The problem with this view is that it completely fails to understand the modern left. Their long march through our institutions is nearly complete. Cancel culture has done nothing but accelerate their success. So what motivation do they have to stop cancelling their political opponents? Because it’s wrong? Well, they’ve already painted their opponents as Nazis specifically to remove moral value from the equation. Because it betrays their own principles and makes them hypocrites? Well, they don’t operate on principles, but on a narrative of good victims vs evil oppressors which they themselves manipulate. Because what goes around comes around? That one could actually work if they believed it would happen, but our frightened conservatives are working specifically to prevent that.
The left broke the old social contracts precisely because they favor a new one: constantly monitoring all speech and punishing their critics. Thus far, they’ve been quite successful in imposing this new contract on America. Conservatives, meanwhile, have done nothing to make them think they can’t have their way. Accordingly, the left won’t stop while they can still advance by attacking their opponents with absolute impunity. There’s a word for their mindset: warfare.
And that’s really the difference between those who want to return fire by cancelling leftists and those who do not: It boils down to whether “culture war” is empty rhetoric or a daily reality. Those of us who have actually lost things for stating what everyone believed until about 5 minutes ago understand that war is our reality whether we want it or not. Telling us that we’re sinking to their level by cancelling someone is therefore like telling a soldier he’s sinking to the enemy’s level by returning fire. It’s pure absurdity. They started this war, and now they’re going to have to deal with retaliation.
Finding a New Peace
Of course, like good schoolmarms, conservatives will now respond, “It doesn’t matter who started it; it’s time to stop it.” And to be fair, there are circumstances when it really doesn’t matter who started it. For example, if there’s a just authority who is ready and willing to step in and restore a just peace, then appealing to that authority makes far more sense than striking back in kind. That’s why parents tell their kids not to. Or alternatively, if a destructive conflict has gone on for so long that both sides realize they’d be better off suing for peace, then it makes sense to try and work out a treaty rather than continuing the fight. Unfortunately, Americans don’t find ourselves in either of these situations.
There’s no appropriate authority on Earth to whom we can appeal because our government has been weaponized against the American people in countless ways. They have done nothing but protect the left as they cancel us. Indeed, Donald Trump’s popularity is driven by the idea that he would become that kind of amenable authority, and we can see how threatened the left is by such a prospect.
Neither do both sides realize we’d be better off with peace. After all, the conflict has been entirely one-sided thus far. The left has been curb-stomping conservatives for a generation with virtually no reprisals. Terms for peace are dictated by the winners, and right now, that’s still the left. The only social contract they’re interested in establishing is their new one where anyone who disagrees with them is socially, economically, and (if necessary) physically destroyed. The only question in their minds is whether the right will surrender to them before they’re destroyed. Before they’ll consider peace, the right needs to show them they can’t actually win.
And that brings us back to the nature of our American Stasi. The original relied on civilian informants for its work, and that has only been amplified in our own crowd-sourced version. Is it better to target celebrities like Jack Black than random cashiers at Home Depot? Sure. But let’s not pretend that the rank-and-file aren’t legitimate targets. They are the gears of the machine. They are the foot soldiers. They drive the social media outrage, report our friends to HR, accuse us of thought crimes, and unperson us by calling us Nazis. But they don’t wear uniforms. We recognize them only by the statements they make (like asking for better assassins) and they are indeed fair game.
Conservatives cannot force leftists to end cancel culture without either subjecting them to it or to something even worse. I sympathize with the conservative desire to live in peace without the ugliness of a culture war, but at the end of the day, it’s not up to us. It only takes one side to start a war, and the left has already done so. If the right wants a just peace with more reasonable social contracts, then we have no choice but to fight for it. And we can’t afford to pull our punches.
Ever since the Fall, the evil impulses of man’s heart have needed to be restrained, lest wickedness proliferate among us. In His mercy, God sent Jesus Christ to die on our behalf, providing whoever believes in Him with the eternal remedy for our sinful natures. But even in the here and now, God has not left mankind without recourse. Out of love, He instituted human government and assigned it the sword to place hard limits on our ability to follow those sinful natures while we yet possess them.
As American Christians watch our family, friends, and neighbors suffer because evil goes increasingly unrestrained, we are stirred up with that same love shown to us by the Father. We not only pray for the gift of godly government, but work through the vocations He’s given to establish it among us. When He gives us voices and platforms, we speak against evil. When He appoints us to vote or govern, we use that authority to restrain evil. Whenever He puts people into our care, we seek the best ways of restraining evil for their protection. At its most basic level, Christian Nationalism amounts to nothing more than fulfilling this love towards our families and countrymen.
Unfortunately, the reaction against Christian Nationalism has produced a new crop of anabaptists among us. Like those sects born in the 16th century, these men have determined that it is unchristian to participate in government, but they have done so with a modernist twist. While the old anabaptists had sufficient integrity to eschew politics and government altogether due to their pacifism, this new batch has given Christians a very peculiar license: A Christian may indeed vote and govern, but never for the sake of restraining evil according to a Christian understanding of right and wrong.
The Idol of Moral Neutrality
Christian Nationalists identify evil in light of God’s eternal Word and natural law rather than popular consensus, academic fads, or legal tradition. Wherever laws and constitutions call good evil and evil good, we know we must work to amend them. When schools teach that evil is good and good is evil, we know we must rebuke them. If individuals wish to delight in evil whilst calling it good, we know we must work to restrain them. Christian Nationalists straightforwardly reject the religious and moral neutrality of the Postwar Consensus.
But neutrality is a popular idol among Americans. As more Christians repent of our idolatry, those who remain thralls of the Spirit of the Age don’t quietly accept our departure. “We lose down here.” “Trust not in princes!” “The Gospel is a suicide mission.” Many pious slogans are trotted out to convince Christians not to love their neighbors by defending them from evil.
They’ll use Christ’s promises of suffering for His sake to convince us that protecting our families is faithless. In their hands, the Gospel of eternal salvation becomes a means of despising his gifts of peace in the here and now. His commands to love our enemies are likewise leveraged to make us think the governmental task of restraining evil is, itself, an evil departure from God’s love. At least, they tell us this when it comes to actual sins condemned by Scripture. When it comes to violations of the Postwar Consensus like racism, sexism, or inequality, they quickly forget about losing down here.
Their blatant hypocrisy and slavish devotion to the Spirit of the Age should be sufficient reason to reject their false teachings. Even so, we cannot let this misuse of Scripture go unanswered. With the whole world screaming these deceptions at us, it’s easy for any Christian to be taken in when their leaders tell them God’s Word requires them to go along. But understanding Scripture well is the best remedy, so let’s take a look at these arguments.
Loving Your Enemies
By the reckoning of neutralists, Christian Nationalists who seek to restrain the wicked with the sword of government ipso facto cannot love their enemies. After all, how could the executioner’s blade possibly be loving? But the fact that so many of our pastors and teachers perceive a contradiction here proceeds from their failure to understand love in the first place.
Here, they think they have us caught. “The sword of government harms the body rather than provides for it! Therefore Christians must stay their hands when governing.” Once again, however, they only reveal their ignorance. For woven throughout God’s eternal law are the natural roles he ordained during creation.
These roles do not evaporate when we love our enemies. Loving an enemy like you love your wife, for example, would be adultery towards her and betrayal towards your children. The 4th Commandment likewise tells us we are to honor our father and mother in ways that we do not honor ordinary enemies or friends. Paul gave us far stricter responsibilities to our own children than to strangers–whether they are enemies or not. Even the parable of the Good Samaritan makes these kinds of distinctions plain. Who upon finding his own son beaten half-dead on the side of the road would simply drop him off at an inn and continue on his journey? How we love our neighbors therefore depends on relationships that run far deeper than friend or enemy. This is not a peculiarity, but the norm in Christian life. Loving your enemies is always a matter of vocation because loving your friends is as well.
The Fifth Commandment likewise leans heavily on vocation. “You shall not murder” does not forbid all killing because not all killing is murder. It depends on the roles of those involved. A soldier does not murder the enemy combatant he kills. Neither does the executioner murder the criminal or the father murder the man who breaks into his home at night. In such cases, killing is a true moral obligation done out of love for one’s neighbor who, whether friend or foe, is protected from evil. And if even killing can fulfill the Fifth Commandment by protecting our neighbors’ bodily well-being, then surely lesser punishments can be appropriate as well. A Christian with authority–even in the form of voting–is doing God’s work when he uses that authority to direct the sword against the wicked.
You see, “your enemy” and “the wicked” are not always synonymous, even for a Christian. This is especially true concerning the kind of severe, overt wickedness that government is ordained to suppress. The man who sues you for your tunic is your enemy, but the sword isn’t there to restrain him. The government official who gives you unpleasant work like carrying his baggage for a mile may be your enemy, but he is not necessarily a wicked man who deserves the sword. The person who insults you–even out of evil intent–may not have done anything worthy of the government’s attention. Enemies per se are therefore not the Christian’s target when he uses the sword; the wicked are. And the Christian who formulates laws to suppress evil must suppress evil done against friends and enemies alike. But evil is what God says it is–not simply what we (or our enemies) dislike.
This is what it means to love one’s enemies. We are to do what is morally right even when we would rather see harm come to those who have harmed us. To a judge, love means giving justice even to someone who hates you, not refusing to sentence murderers. To a soldier, love means feeding your prisoners of war, not opening your city gates to invaders. Christians who vote to suppress evil in such ways are likewise fulfilling the law of love. Christian Nationalists do not seek to make the sword a tool of personal vengeance against our enemies. Rather, we seek to establish a just peace within the lands God has given to our people so that all of us–friend and enemy alike–may have freedom from the wicked acts of wicked men.
Suffering for Christ’s Sake
What, then, about suffering for Christ’s sake? There is no question that our Lord promised us suffering and persecution from the world on his account. Rather than telling us to shy away from it, he taught us to embrace it, for our reward will be great in heaven. Those who would worship neutrality alongside Christ use these promises of His to accuse Christians of cowardice when they take any action to oppose evil and the suffering it causes. In their rhetoric, the work of restraining evil is inherently opposed to the Christian’s duty to take up his cross.
This view, however, is so childish it should embarrass any who hold it. Our Lord speaks of suffering inflicted on us by the world because we are His children. He is not instructing us to deliberately produce suffering by either harming ourselves or by neglecting our duties. For example, if I feel the ordinary suffering of hunger, that is my God-given reminder to fix myself dinner. Eating is not an act of cowardice or a rejection of any supposed cross of starvation. Those whose cross is hunger suffer due to circumstances like famine, poverty, or punishment, not by willful refusal of God’s gift of food. By both natural law and Holy Scripture, God has given each person the task of basic self-preservation, for as the Apostle says, if a man will not work, neither should he eat.
The same is true when it comes to threats of harm against ourselves or those in our care. There are times we must suffer violence due to circumstance or duty. Other times, we must resist violence for the sake of circumstance or duty. When the Jews attacked Jesus, He often chose to escape rather than submit to it because His time had not yet come. When that time did arrive, He laid down His life of His own accord rather than having it taken from Him. When Paul was threatened by evil men, there were times when he would likewise preserve his life by escaping. And when invading kings had stolen his nephew, Abraham raised a small army and took him back rather than abandoning Lot to his cross. For this action, Abraham was recognized and blessed by Melchizedek, priest of God Most High.
We do not endure suffering the way medieval monks did–retreating from our natural responsibilities so we can suffer self-imposed harm for the sake of false piety. We endure as we fulfill our callings. We endure as we marry, build homes, have children, love our neighbors, protect our people, and live as Christians. Suffering will inevitably come, but our crosses are given to us. We do not choose them for ourselves. If evil men threaten my family, then as a father, my cross is the grueling labor of contending against such men, not “bravely” abandoning my children to suffering and death. The same is true when evil men threaten my tribe or nation. The cowards are those who refuse their God-given duties and cover their shame by attacking faithful men.
And really, suffering is not such a rare resource that we must deliberately produce more. Christian Nationalism won’t put an end to it. If you think that worldly success and godly government will deprive us of our opportunity to suffer for Christ, fear not. When we get groomers out of schools and learn to respect our own borders, our trials will not cease. Satan will certainly not lie down in despair and retreat to Hell if Donald Trump is elected. The world and the pleasures of the flesh will still try to choke out your faith even if pornography is banned. Christian government may fulfill its godly duty of restraining evil without dreading the end of suffering. The only difference is that when we do so, we will suffer for doing good instead of for doing evil.
What About the Gospel?
But what about the Gospel? Ever since the Garden of Eden, Satan has worked to convince man that God’s Word is unsatisfactory. He has not ceased this endeavor in the modern age. Whether it’s Theological Liberalism, the Gospel Reductionism of the mid 20th-century, or the soft antinomianism of today, Christians are always tempted to abandon whichever parts of God’s Word the world finds offensive. Right now, Satan’s crosshairs are dead-center on God’s First Article gifts–creation and its ordinances.
This reductionist temptation bleeds into modern Christians’ theology of government. Those who embrace Gospel Reductionism or soft antinomianism often contend that the state can have nothing to do with Christianity because it has nothing to do with the Gospel. After all, what government provides is strictly limited to those first article gifts. They may or may not reject those gifts outright, but of what use could they be without the Gospel? Any temporal benefit comes at the price of creating a strictly outward appearance of righteousness which could turn everyone into legalistic pharisees. So clearly, Christians should therefore devote their energy to saving souls through proclamation of the Gospel while civil government should remain a wholly secular affair.
The problem is that the state doesn’t have “nothing to do with the Gospel” anymore than God’s Law has “nothing to do with the Gospel.” Lutherans distinguish Law and Gospel for a very specific purpose–to point those who question whether they are saved to the Cross for the only reliable answer. After all, if they consult the Law for that, they will only find condemnation because we all fall short. But faithful Christians never separate Law from Gospel because that question of justification is not the only thing Christians need to think about. As justified children of God, we have been given many blessings, instructions, and exhortations as we make our way towards heaven because we have a Father who loves us. Law and Gospel both proceed from the same mouth of our one God, and both bless the Christian continually because the Law no longer condemns us.
In the same way, Law and Gospel cannot be severed from one-another when it comes to government. The state does have a role to play in making disciples of all nations–it’s just not the same role as the Church’s. Can the state make people Christian by outwardly restraining wickedness? Certainly not in the way most people think. The Christian faith cannot be compelled by force–not even military force. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot put our fallen nature together again. The government cannot make us righteous before God.
On the other hand, civil government can indeed make people Christian in a far more mundane way. After all, parents are the most fundamental form of civil government, and it would be foolish to contend that parents cannot make their children Christian. True, it is the Holy Spirit who creates faith in the heart of every believer, but the Holy Spirit has decided to accomplish this through means: God’s Holy Word and His Sacraments. Likewise, these means do not spontaneously generate from the ether, but are administered by men on God’s behalf and by His command. That is what the Church is for.
But Christian parents have a role here as well. As God commands, we do everything in our power to ensure that our children receive these gifts. My own parents were no exception. They brought me to be baptized. They sent me to Lutheran schools. They discouraged me from sin and evil. They raised me in the faith and prepared me to worthily receive the Sacrament of the Altar. And in doing so, God’s Proverb was fulfilled: train a child up in the way he should go, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it. It would therefore be quite appropriate to say that my parents made me a Christian–even as I simultaneously confess that the Holy Spirit called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctifies, and keeps me in the one true faith. I am thankful to my parents and even more so to the God who gave them to me and used them to deliver His gifts.
As Luther points out in the Large Catechism, government is rooted in parents enlisting one-another’s aid and delegating their authority. It is ordained to assist governance among the many households within its borders. So what then happens to the parental ability to make Christians? It certainly weakens, for civil government can never take the place of parents (and it creates ungodly disaster whenever it tries.) Nevertheless, as long as government maintains its proper place of assisting parents in protecting their households by restraining the wicked and commending the good, this ability does not go away entirely.
Government cannot hold your hand as it takes you to church, but it can remove unnecessary distractions through means like blue laws. God forbid that government try to take over baptism from the Church, but it can honor the name in which we are baptized by the holy days it recognizes, the prayers its functionaries offer, and the blasphemies it punishes. It cannot preach the Word of God, but it can most certainly learn from it as it makes its judgments of what is good and what is evil. In all these senses and more, a government can be Christian, and it can serve the very Church to which its citizens belong.
Can God build His Church despite the oppression of a hostile government? Of course! He has proven time and again that no earthly power can stand against Him. And yet, His omnipotent power is not a reason to despise what He has explicitly told us about the earthly roles and earthly consequences He has ordained. Do we dare call God a liar when He tells us the fruit of raising a child properly? Do we dare call Him a liar when he speaks of the spiritual dangers of surrounding yourself with sexual immorality or men of bad character? Do we dare call Him a liar when He says he’ll punish the third or fourth generation of those who hate him? The Church is not the State, but neither does it exist in a hermetically sealed bubble. We ought not pray for God’s divine intervention out of sheer laziness–a hypocritical piety that refuses to make use of the ordinary gifts He has given.
To be sure, some Christians’ vocations are more properly restricted to the direct work of the Church. Perhaps you are a pastor and you believe your calling is exclusively to make new Christians through Word and Sacrament. May it be well with you. But if you’ve decided that government is not your business, you must hold your peace among those of us who have been given broader callings. Subjecting others to the peculiar rules of your own profession will bring them nothing but harm.
Christian Nationalist Voters May Indeed Be Saved
Christians can certainly debate whether democracy is a good form of government in general or whether it is an appropriate form of government for 21st century Americans specifically. God gave us no mandated form of government beyond Christ’s Kingship, after all. We may debate how best to restrain particular evils and commend specific goods in our own place and time. God has given us wisdom to make such decisions, and we should let iron sharpen iron as we contend for our beliefs on the subject.
But what we should never need to debate is whether government can be Christian or whether Christians may carry out its duties according to Christ’s commands. We should never need to consider whether God or popular consensus gets to delineate good from evil. And far be it from us to condemn to Hell the entire Church from Constantine to the French Revolution simply because they encouraged their rulers to kiss the Son lest He be angry. Neither should we condemn today’s Christian Nationalists who do the same. Those suggestions come from the Devil and ought to be rebuked instead. Christians should pray for God’s gift of Christian government, work towards it within the vocations he’s given us, and receive it with gratitude should He grant it to us.
When God blesses a congregation with young children, He is blessing them with a future. Given the average age in many of our churches, it’s a blessing we ought to fervently pray for. Nevertheless, when God does bless an elderly congregation with a second chance at life by placing young families with children in church, it does come with certain challenges.
One such challenge is maintaining order in worship when there are a lot of small children around. After decades of quiet, hearing the sounds and seeing the constant wiggles of a new generation during the divine service can be distracting for older members. It’s not long before the complaints arise; and finding Biblical rationalizations for their feelings comes easily. “Our Lord is a God of order rather than of chaos.” “We should be approaching Him with fear and trembling.” “Raising children in the fear and admonition of the Lord means teaching them to be quiet in church.”
As the complaints bubble to the surface, they can quickly foster resentment. To be sure, sometimes these complaints are made downright wickedly. My wife and I have been subject to that ourselves. But even innocent approaches can end up corroding church fellowship when those who object don’t really understand those they address.
They try to say “please teach your children to behave in church so we can concentrate on worship.” On the surface, that’s a very reasonable request. What’s more, they remember it as the standard when they grew up. I often hear older Christians reminisce that they would never have dared get noisy or disruptive in God’s house because their parents would bring the hammer down. “My father had to take me out of the service once, and boy oh boy, I never wanted that to happen to me again!” By and large, they not only loved their parents, but feared them as well because of how strict they were.
But as our culture severs generations from one-another, mutual understanding is one of the casualties. In this case, the older generation overlooks an important factor: Most parents today who join their children in church are already embarrassed by any disruptions and work hard to train their children appropriately. Neither a disregard for reverence nor a lack of will inhibit them.
A Culture that Hates Discipline
One can say “do something about your kids” or “work harder to discipline them” all he wants, but parents are fully engaged already. They possess nothing more they can give to resolve the complaints. To the majority of parents who are already trying their best, “we want your children to be more quiet and well-behaved in our sanctuary” is indistinguishable from “we don’t want your children in our sanctuary” because they have no concrete pathway from A to B that they haven’t already tried.
That raises another important question, however: Why? Couldn’t parents today just discipline their children the way elderly Christians remember from their own childhoods? While rose-tinted nostalgia explains some of the disconnect, I don’t think it explains all or even most of the issue. Likewise, once could point to the increase in neurological disorders and the parenting challenges they present. But while such cases skew the averages, they nevertheless aren’t responsible for the norm. No, I believe parents today cannot govern their homes the way previous generations did, and it’s not a matter of will or effort. In many respects, it’s not even a matter of skill per se, though much skill has been lost from generation to generation.
One does not parent in a vacuum. No matter how much you might wish to disregard the world and do things your own way, nobody ever reinvents parenting from scratch. You will use the examples set by your own parents, for better and for worse. You and your children alike will acquire ideas of what’s normal and expected from the children and parents in your neighborhood, from your friends & family, and from whatever media you consume. When every strict parent you’ve ever seen on television your entire life is always the bad guy, that affects how you parent even when you know it’s propaganda.
The law also gets its say. You might remember your father taking you to the woodshed, but if a modern father did that, he could end up in jail or lose custody–if he could even bring himself to do so at all. Unless you live in utter solitude like monks, the customs and norms of your community will judge and constrain you whether you like it or not.
Feminism Abhors Order
The rise of feminism is another novelty we must consider. Generally speaking, moms are considerably less inclined to be strict with children or to level effective discipline than dads are. While a father should certainly listen to and consider his wife’s input to ensure he does not provoke his children, he also needs to understand that A) she’ll always feel that discipline interferes with her instinct to nurture to some extent and B) the buck stops with him rather than her.
However, now that unilateral divorce is always in a woman’s back pocket as a solution to marital complaints, he needs to tread with excessive caution. If his son needs to be spanked but his wife has been listening to a peaceful parenting podcast lately or has even had a bad day, he has to consider the potential outcomes. The divorce threat point requires many fathers to weigh the consequences of weak discipline against the consequences of his wife nuking his family.
But discipline is a much broader matter than mere stricter punishment, and frivorce is only the symptom of a deeper issue. Many older Christians remember obeying their parents not because they threatened punishment, but because they commanded respect.
A child’s obedience should certainly proceed primarily from respect rather than threats. But where exactly are they to learn that respect? We have transitioned far away from a culture that could say “father knows best” without snickering. And while we can (and do) blame the culture all day, our churches by no means escape culpability. The same generation complaining about unruly children cultivated an environment of disrespect for fathers. At this point, many churches display contempt for men as a matter of tradition.
But fault lies even closer to home than that. By design, a mother ought to provide her children with an example of respect and obedience towards their father. Today, the average mom is far more likely to set an example of disrespect which her children will learn quite well. And once again, our churches not only tolerate this violation of God’s Word but actually facilitate it.
And the corrosion extends beyond fathers. In the end, it annihilates respect for their mother as well because a wife has only the authority delegated to her by her husband whom God has made her head. In undermining him, she undermines herself. Equality is poisonous, not only to marriage itself, but also to the families marriage creates & serves. For if the husband and wife treat each other as equals, that is how children will learn to treat father and mother alike.
Cultivating Reverent Children in Church
So what then are Christians to do? Has reverence gone extinct forevermore? Must the older generations resign themselves to chaotic services? No. But older Christians need to think less about what they’re owed and more about how they can help parents with children in church. And all of us need to repent of disregarding God’s order in home and society so that we can receive it once more.
First, complaints must be set aside whether or not they are valid simply because they are counter-productive. If you want parents to be enabled to go further in disciplining their children, they need to be confident in slowly rebuking their culture more and more. Calling them failures or constantly demanding what they cannot provide only undermines confidence. But producing confidence is also within our power. Honor parents who win the struggle to bring their children to the Lord’s house. Gladly help them wrangle their children when they need it.
Is swallowing your complaints fair? Maybe, maybe not. (Although considering how these cultural transformations occurred on the watch of the older generations, I would contend that it’s quite fair.) But either way, it is certainly more helpful to your goal of having a peaceful divine service free of distraction.
Second, our churches all need to repent of submitting to feminism rather than God’s Word. “Children, obey your parents” follows right on the heels of “Wives, submit to your husbands” and “husbands, love your wives” for a reason. That is how God designed marriage and family to work. We cannot expect that undermining His design will bear good fruit.
That also means restoring church governance to match God’s order rather than undermining it by seeking equality in every office but that of pastor. Women aren’t abandoning their vocations because their nature directs them to, but because the older generations built a society which honors and esteems them for it. Congregations must honor men and women for being God-fearing instead.
Parents can become more skilled and effective at disciplining their children. We can make reverence for God’s house normal again. We can bring order to chaos. But complaints and grumbling will never achieve it. Only once we begin shoring up the foundations we’ve neglected will we be able to build on them once more. You cannot expect children to be orderly in church if your church will not uphold God’s order in the home.
Until recently, I had only heard of one instance of excommunication in my 43 years as a Lutheran. I was only a child at the time, so my information was second-hand. But from what I remember, it was a very clear-cut matter. Two married members of the congregation were discovered to be having an affair with one-another. Rather than repent of their adultery, they both chose to divorce their faithful spouses and marry each other instead–a rather clear rebuke to any attempt at reconciliation or departure from the sinful desires they had embraced.
That is how I’ve always understood excommunication from Lutheran theology and practice: a matter of manifest sin plainly condemned by God’s Word and a persistent refusal to acknowledge that Word and repent. Church discipline, a formal attempt to win an errant brother back to Christ, is a rare sight among us–too rare, as I’ve written in the past. Not too rare because we need more excommunications, but too rare because we tend to let our conflicts fester into resentment. What’s more, we are often afraid to teach God’s Law at all on subjects where we abandoned it en masse lest we be compelled to the uncomfortable task of winning back brothers.
Mr. Turnipseed is not the only man who was caught up in this–only the most recent and outspoken about it. Others have made it public that they were excommunicated or simply driven from their churches. Still others have kept their “discipline” private. I myself was required to defend my criticism of LCACA before Synod officials, though to the credit of those particular men, it was not disciplinary, and they conducted themselves as Christians throughout.
We have some hard questions to ask ourselves as a Synod. To be sure, our leadership provoked this entire travesty from beginning to end. They put false teachings alongside our catechism; they acted as though those teachings were no big deal; they chose to retaliate against the whistleblowers rather than repent. But we cannot pass the entire matter off on them because they found fertile ground in the LCMS for their efforts. It was frightfully easy for them to turn the Office of the Keys into a weapon against the faithful. We certainly must ask ourselves who we’ve chosen as our leaders, but we must also ask why pastors and congregations have gone along with it so readily.
One of the most important reasons for our vulnerability is a perennial doctrinal failing in the LCMS often called “soft antinomianism.”
Despising God’s Law
I’ve written about this leaven before at length for those of you who want a full explanation. Here, suffice it to say that soft antinomianism does not outright deny the truth of God’s Law but does deny most of its relevance to the life of a Christian. Our Confessions recognize three ways God uses His Law: 1) curbing our outward sinfulness, 2) showing us that we’re sinners, and 3) guiding a Christian in a God-pleasing life. Soft antinomians wish to restrict the Holy Spirit to Second Use only. They need to reveal sinfulness to maintain their employment as absolvers. However, any attempt to teach God’s Law in a way that could actually alter someone’s behavior is met with suspicion of works righteousness.
The Radical Lutheranism from which these practices derive is a false teaching which draws souls away from Christ. Many of our leaders and theologians embrace Gerhard Forde, which has created a spiritually toxic environment in many sanctuaries and classrooms. But when you consider how church discipline and excommunication would need to work in a soft antinomian environment, the atrocious treatment of Ryan Turnipseed begins to make much more sense.
Church Discipline Under Antinomianism
When God’s Law has been deliberately ignored, obfuscated, and excluded from our sense of moral judgment, church discipline becomes dangerous rather than helpful. The only judgments that could draw someone into church discipline are not from the Law, but from what cannot be excised from fallen human nature: our propensity for taking personal offense. Every child knows it’s wrong when someone steals his toy or calls him a name; and he will loudly object to it. But if the child is not disciplined by his parents, he will never know the difference between another child stealing his toy and mom taking it away because it’s time for dinner. Both will offend him. Neither would he know the difference between being made fun of and being scolded. One need only look at our culture today to see this infantile dynamic at work.
As in our godless society at large, this puerile impulse is all a soft antinomian has left once he finishes training himself to ignore God’s Law. But his own personal offense and his uncultivated empathy over personal offense felt by the likeminded are still sufficient to drive him into action. He will still pursue retribution according to popular custom. In the modern church, that means having a sit-down to talk about why he’s “deeply concerned” about whatever triggered the feelings of offense.
Once those wheels have been set in motion, there’s little to hinder them because the brakes have been removed. After all, how exactly is one to recognize manifest–open, clear, and unambiguous–sin as compared to any other kind without the Law? Surely every man in Corinth was guilty of having committed adultery in his heart by lusting at some point; but Paul commanded them to expel only the man who was sleeping with his step-mother. How is a soft antinomian going to make such a distinction?
According to our sinful natures, literally every action we take involves some measure of sin, so any action at all could qualify us for excommunication. Soft antinomians consider raping children to be no more serious than being mildly discourteous, so considering severity is of no help to their discernment. And since recognizing one action as more unambiguously sinful than another would be an exercise in self-righteous judgment by their standards, that isn’t an option either. Without instruction in and understanding of the specifics of God’s Law, there’s nothing to distinguish manifest sin from A) actions that are only debatably sinful or B) the thousand peccadilloes each Christian commits every day that do not require formal church discipline. The only pertinent factor is whether someone felt sufficiently offended to make an accusation and whether the leaders sufficiently empathize with it.
But what’s left to convict someone in their eyes? Only impenitence. Once the accusation is made, if the accused does not react obsequiously enough to salve bruised egos, he will be considered impenitent. After all, shouldn’t he have just apologized and backed down if a brother in Christ was offended? And if he refuses, doesn’t that mean he self-righteously believes he’s kept God’s Law perfectly? Clearly, he must be impenitent! Soft antinomians will then latch onto the fact that any impenitent sin can separate us from God, and use that as a license to keep escalating the “discipline” because they don’t know how else to stop. Lacking any sense of proportion, they make themselves tyrants rather than peacemakers.
The Case Against Ryan Turnipseed
When we view the case against Ryan Turnipseed in this light, it begins to make more sense. Consider the nebulous and poorly-defined charges against him. There were no clear accusations of manifest sins such as adultery, murder, or other open wickedness. Indeed, specific accusations based on clear Scripture were conspicuously absent from the proceedings. What did come up repeatedly, however, was guilt-by-association, tone, and impenitence.
The guilt-by-association came from the fact that he recorded a livestream on the subject of LCACA with a small group of Lutherans that included Corey Mahler and Woe. These two hosts of the Stone Choir podcast hold political beliefs which are about as far right as one can possibly get. And whatever else you may say about those beliefs, the majority of modern Americans would certainly find many of them offensive–foremost among them, their alternate takes on WWII history.
But what was curious about how Mr. Turnipseed’s former pastor and elders pursued the issue is that they didn’t focus on whether or not he shared any particular belief. After all, as with any two people on Earth, there is both common ground and divergence. They did not ask him to deny any creed or retract any statements he himself had made. Instead, it all came down to his being “offensively” associated with “offensive” individuals.
Accordingly, they condemned him for “platforming” them at all (i.e. having public interactions with them on the internet.) Leaning on President Harrison’s letter, they condemned him for being too cozy with the “alt-right” despite admitting they were unable to even define “alt-right.” They instructed him to disavow their entire persons as his means of repentance. In all of this, they were unable to provide any Scriptural warrant for such a bizarre demand, and so Mr. Turnipseed naturally refused.
Along with guilt-by-association came the equally nebulous matter of “tone.” In the letter placing him under the minor ban, his pastor & elders decreed that he had not “clothed [him]self with humility” and was therefore “intentionally dividing the church.” They likewise decided that “many of [his] social media posts… were not made in love.”
Tone is a favorite accusation of soft antinomians and woke-scolds alike because it’s so subjective. It is certainly true that Christians are called to love and humility, but it’s also true that none of us achieve perfect love or perfect humility in this life. Everyone is guilty, and so anyone can be accused. There is no need for “impious” contemplation on whether a failure to love is mild or severe. They need not consult Scripture to consider whether a harsh tone could be a reasonable judgment call in pursuit of love. After all, men like Luther, Paul, Elijah, and Christ Himself often spoke sharply out of love for their flocks. No, our soft antinomians leave themselves with a very simple if/then that avoids any need for cultivating moral wisdom: If the accusation is rejected, then it’s ipso facto a refusal to repent.
This failure is compounded by our culture’s propensity for reducing virtues like love and humility down to mere “niceness.” Whereas love doggedly pursues the true good of another and humility unflinchingly reminds us not to think others are beneath our concern, niceness is simply the urge to keep everything on an even keel and avoid upsetting anyone. Among those who dabble in this confusion, anyone feeling offense is therefore a victim of hatred and pride. And on that same line of malformed reasoning, anyone who actually tries to defend their choice of words is an impenitent sinner self-righteously putting himself outside of the faith.
So although no clear Scriptural absolutes were violated, repentance was demanded of Ryan Turnipseed all the same. And here we get to the accusers having nothing left but impenitence to sanction the process. They told him that he “scorned God’s established authority” by not obeying his pastor and elders when they told him to repent of a sin they had utterly failed to establish from God’s Law. In reality, all he had done was ask his accusers to justify their accusations against him and attempt to defend his own actions. In minds polluted by soft antinomianism, however, such endeavors would put one firmly in the realm of impenitence.
And this is why there can be no internal brakes to any church discipline that has been thus corrupted. Any system that parses accusations in a fair and just way must incorporate opportunities to reasonably determine whether or not the accused is truly guilty of a crime. There must be due process to make sure this is accomplished impartially. For that, you must weigh evidence of wrongdoing according to specific laws in a well-ordered and reasonable manner. Soft antinomians reject such “legalisms” in favor of the sure and certain knowledge that coram deo, we’re all guilty anyway. And while British sketch comedy has famously asked the question “are we the baddies,” such self-reflection is alien to any who were instructed to avoid specifics of the Law.
The Mechanics of Going Woke
It strikes many as absurd that the LCMS, well-known as a very conservative church body, could be going woke. Though there are certainly leftists in our ranks, a great many of our leaders–even ones afflicted with soft antinomianism–would be considered right-wing by most Americans. Many of them even despise the woke left. And yet, here we have behavior that has far more in common with communist revolutionaries than with men of God. How can this be?
Well, if you consider the ideological left and how Critical Theory actually functions, the same mechanisms are at work–only for different reasons. In general, the left tends to abandon the morals and values of the past for the sake of progress. Critical Theory replaces all of that with a narrative of liberation from oppressors. The flavor of that narrative changes according to the style of the times (haves vs. have-nots, men vs women, whites vs. people of color, chaste vs perverts, etc.) but it’s always a simple matter of good guys vs bad guys. And rather than laws or principles, wrongdoing is identified by that same puerile impulse of whether the good guys feel offended by the bad guys. Those who sufficiently prostrate themselves before the good guys may be saved, but anyone else must be destroyed.
Soft antinomianism parallels this dynamic. The morals and values of the past are still abandoned, but for the sake of the Gospel rather than progress. While their goal is to replace the Law with nothing at all, they still cannot expunge human nature, and so offense remains. It’s just not tied to any of God’s commands anymore. That offense is not determined specifically by narratives of oppression as in Critical Theory, but it is determined by broader cultural narratives. They refuse to treasure God’s Law, and so there’s nothing left to feed their consciences apart from whatever they pick up from the world. And in the end, it likewise comes down to good guys vs. bad guys–with the former being the offended and the latter being those who will not “repent” enough to assuage them.
Yes, they will pick up conservative culture-war beliefs because those are out there in spades just as liberal ones are. But soft antinomians will never discipline actual manifest sins defined by Scripture like fornication, divorce, or abortion because those sins are culturally normal–they spark no outrage anymore. In sharp contrast, they will treat the Postwar Consensus as sacrosanct because that’s what virtually every American, right or left, has been trained in from their infancy. Deviations from that will offend them more than anything else. And when offense occurs, they will act the same way as the woke left because they’ve surrendered to the same childlike impulses. They’ve expunged any objective standard by which their actions could be governed. All they really needed to get started was institutional permission, which President Harrison’s letter amply provided.
Where We Go From Here
The LCMS is my home. I was raised and confirmed in her congregations. I was educated in her schools and in her seminaries. I’ve been supported and encouraged in good times and bad by her faithful members and pastors. Throughout it all, I’ve always found our Confessions to be a faithful and true witness to Biblical Truth. I am aghast at what is now going on in my home, and it needs to stop.
Soft antinomianism has left the LCMS with a culture in which the Law is habitually neglected because it is viewed with suspicion by so many of our leaders and theologians. It is only natural that practices like church discipline which touch heavily on the Law would be corrupted as a result. But if we have a void of God’s Word–or at least parts of it–our only option is to fill it, so that the whole counsel of God can be taught among us once more.
Praise be to God, the Word still remains whatever happens to our Synod. We are blessed with the means to read God’s Word for ourselves quite easily. And we are not left without a great cloud of witnesses to help us learn and understand it. The Lutheran Confessions are free online and available in pretty much any LCMS church library. Many great works of Christendom are likewise attainable for anyone at libraries or on Amazon. There are still solid Lutheran thinkers who work hard to apply this treasury of wisdom to life in the modern west; though sometimes you may find them making podcasts and blogs rather than being published by our failing institutions. And yes, there are still many faithful pastors and teachers among us. If you have any at your congregation, treat them as more precious than gold because they most certainly are.
Then, as God teaches us how to love, we must put it into practice. That includes loving brothers like Ryan Turnipseed who are being attacked by our Synod. Though our leadership loves to chant “best construction” to silence their critics, we would do well to remember what comes right before that in Luther’s Small Catechism: “defend [your neighbor], speak well of him.” If you see a brother being mugged in the street, you don’t worry about whether calling for help would damage the mugger’s reputation or wait to get the mugger’s side of the story before giving aid. Neither should we do so when we observe our brothers being subjected to a retaliatory witch-hunt by abusive clergymen.
Soft antinomianism will not stop itself because it cannot. That leaves the task to those of us know better. May God save His Church by filling us with His Word and bringing us to a real repentance so that we may be enlivened once again by His infinite grace.
Like any nascent political movement, Christian Nationalism is an idea that is still coalescing. For the time-being, it means some different things to different people–especially to critics who are inclined to construct straw-men decorated with a few of the worst examples they can find. But movements must either coalesce or die off. And because I don’t want “Christian Nationalism” to go the way of the short-lived “Alt-right,” I’ve found value in taking time to give the idea some specificity rather than merely a defense.
That’s why, a year and a half ago, I wrote down my first draft of what Christian Nationalism means to me–and certainly what I want it to end up being. But drafts are made to be updated. Between a year’s reflection and some feedback on another draft I recently posted on X, I found a number of points that needed some further clarification.
And so, my list of 14 points has now grown to 18. If you’re keeping score, the new ones are 4, 14, 16, and 18. These were added to answer common questions which I erroneously thought should have been clear such as “which denomination is going to rule?” (18) and “how can we tell one nation from another?” (4) I’ve also updated the language slightly on other points in response to silly but frequent criticisms, like “Christian Nationalism can’t make a perfect society” (10) and “Christians should never be separate for any reason” (6).
The Postwar Consensus has irrevocably failed; it’s not coming back. The West therefore needs a new way forward–one that stands for something more than just a rejection of what came before. There will be a new way whether we want one or not. When we consider the vile options being pushed by our elites, America could do far far worse than Christian Nationalism as defined below:
Christian Nationalism is a political ideology informed by the Christian faith, not a religion informed by political ideology.
The Church does not need Christian Nationalism for her wellbeing. Nations need Christian Nationalism for their wellbeing.
Christian Nationalists understand nation as meaning a people who share common ancestry, religious heritage, language, culture, and history together. Nation is not synonymous with country or with state.
Whether these traits are sufficiently “common” among a people to make them a nation is determined by whether they can peacefully agree on how to govern and how to be governed together. If these traits diverge to the point that they cannot agree, then they ought to peacefully separate instead.
We put our own nation first–not because it is superior to all others, but because it is the nation of which Christ has made us a part. Accordingly, we serve it above all other nations, love it above all other nations and, when necessary, defend it against all other nations.
We respect that other nations are likewise responsible for themselves first and therefore seek to govern ourselves separately from them but live in peace with them whenever possible–just as neighboring families live peacefully in different homes and under different rules.
Christian Nationalists reject the incoherent religious neutrality of classical liberalism, and strive to honor Jesus Christ as King in every area of life, including government, education, and public speech.
We understand that government is incapable of forcing conversion to Christianity because conversion depends on a faith that cannot be coerced into existence. The Church’s tools are sufficient to the task of conversion.
Government’s purpose is not to make men righteous, but to restrain human wickedness and establish a just peace within its borders by punishing wrongdoers and commending those who do right.
Some wrongdoing may be tolerated by government and society when legal or social suppression of an evil would lead to even greater evils. Utopia is not among Christian Nationalism’s goals; a relatively just peace among sinners is.
Christian Nationalists distinguish right from wrong and weigh greater vs lesser evils according to Christian moral principles, and we seek to carry out the purpose of government in accordance with our principles, not others’ principles.
Evils which must be legally restrained include, but are not limited to: clear blasphemy against Jesus Christ, murder (regardless of age), sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and unbridled greed. A government which does not seek to restrain such evils is negligent.
God has appointed fathers to govern their own households. National government proceeds from this household government and exists to serve it. It does not replace it and may not usurp it. Rather, government maintains peace among our many households.
Christian Nationalism rejects the modern worship of diversity & inclusion imposed by Critical Theory. We recognize the variety of nations in the world as a strength, but national diversity under a single local government as a severe weakness.
Immigration is tolerable only insofar as it neither unduly burdens nor harms our nation. Mass immigration is always harmful. Immigration is more harmful the more immigrants differ from our nation in terms of ancestry, language, history, culture and religious heritage.
Because we believe our religion is true, we do not value religious diversity. Government must provide the same just peace to Christians and non-Christians within its borders, but it ought not include or commend any foreign religious beliefs in carrying out its duties.
It is good and proper for governmental institutions to participate in religious expression so long as that expression is explicitly Christian. This includes prayers, ceremonies, holidays, and the like.
Different Christian traditions will naturally be reflected in national government according to their presence and prominence in that nation’s religious heritage. Some traditions will work well together. Others will not.
By now, we should all be aware that Western marriage and fertility rates are an unmitigated disaster. These circumstances raise a lot of questions. Among them is how Christians ought to talk about singleness in and out of the Church. Given the existential nature of this crisis for the West, the question may not be as urgent as “how can we teach fruitful chastity again,” but it’s certainly a valid one. There are a growing number of singles in our congregations and our mission fields. Many will not emerge from this societal collapse married. Some may have become unmarriageable–whether by circumstance or by their own actions. Others may simply never find success. Either way, such situations testify to the fact that we never really get over some hurdles this side of Paradise.
But worthy though the question might be, the popular answers leave a great deal to be desired. As I’ve written before, the typical attitude is a vainglorious one: singles (especially women) are said to be the unsung heroes of the Church, and voices need to be raised STAT. Marriage, we are told, is just too highly esteemed–a peculiar point of view given how our culture despises it–and singleness needs to finally receive its due.
But while the topic is timely, Concordia STM student Jacob Rhodes’ presentation, “The Never Married: Developing a Vocabulary for and about Singleness,” does little to improve the discourse. It at least attempts to avoid the common pitfalls while solving the problem he perceives. However, it’s hard to overstate how badly it fails in that attempt or how much Rhodes inadvertently undermines his own thesis.
Rhode’s Argument
According to Rhodes, the Church has become ensnared in a narrative it received from society rather than from God. If one considers the beginning, middle, and end of a normal life, family characterizes the end, and preparation for family the middle. While the Church puts its own spin on the first two stages, she nevertheless still makes holy matrimony the centerpiece of earthly life. The fruit of this narrative is the ubiquitous attitude that marriage is the normal state of a healthy and mature adult.
Rhodes claims that the consequence for those who don’t qualify as normal in this sense is to be “othered” by church and society alike. We treat singles as though something is missing in their lives. We place them in singles-only ministry ghettos. They are unrepresented among church leadership. They are implicitly unwelcome at events like family picnics. They have to endure endless familial anecdotes or Biblical instruction for spouses and parents from the pulpit. They feel lonely, alienated, and even fearful of what their communities might think about their lack of a mate.
While Christians value marriage in and of itself, he claims we put no such value on singleness. Christians only value it in two senses: The first he calls “instrumentality”, in which the single person has more bandwidth for various tasks because he’s not tied down with a wife or kids. The second is merely as a time of preparation for marriage–in other words, singleness is valued because it provides an opportunity to end itself in favor of something better. But on its own terms, we define singleness solely in terms of deficiency–the lack of a mate which a person is supposed to have.
So if Rhodes considers this the problem, what does he propose as a solution? In short, he asserts that all Christians should find their identity in Christ and in Christ alone. Appealing to Galatians 3:28, he suggests that just as there is no longer any Jew and Greek or slave and free, neither is there married and unmarried. In that “end” stage of life, we need to replace marriage with the eschaton–eternal life in a world where marriage is (perhaps) obsolete.
What does this mean in practice, though? Surely, most of the Christians about whom Rhodes objects would already say that their most important identity is in Christ and that they are striving to live in light of eternity. What needs to change?
Some of the changes are simply a matter of attitude. For example, he tells us to emphasize the value of singleness to help singles feel more included in the church. But he includes specific suggestions as well: Teach Christians how to live the Christian vocation of singleness that they already possess, rather than teaching them how to prepare for marriage. Include more single people in church leadership positions. Families should invite singles to their meals and celebrations so they won’t feel lonely. Churches should develop singles ministries which aren’t judged by their ability to make singles married. And in general, churches must reduce how often they have family events and reduce family-oriented instruction in favor of more inclusive practices. When we accomplish all this and more, Rhodes contends, singles will finally feel welcome in our churches and the congregation itself can be everyone’s true family.
You’ve no doubt noticed a number of issues with this argument already, so lets just get into the details.
The Problems
It’s an ancillary point, but I’ll begin with the title because that’s also where the disappointment starts. With a name like “The Never Married: Developing a Vocabulary for and about Singleness,” I was expecting something in the way of new terminology to aid the discussion. He offers none. Rather than helpful terms or concepts to be evaluated objectively, he only presents us with highly subjective attitudes he would like to adjust.
But is the alleged focus given to marriage an inappropriate one in society or even the church?
If so, Christians have a real problem on our hands because the Bible itself treats singleness as “other.” Marriage is very much treated as the norm in Holy Scriptures. Rhodes might complain about too much family-oriented instruction, but God told us to “be fruitful and multiply” before literally anything else. He also made sure to explicitly reiterate it after every global disaster like the Fall or the Flood. He might suggest that we have too many married people in church leadership, but when God established qualifications for certain offices, He Himself included things like “husband of one wife,” “manages his household well” and “keeps his children submissive.” And while the Bible directs a great deal of instruction specifically at wives, husbands, parents or children (alongside what it directs to everyone) it devote comparatively little specifically to the single–especially if you deliberately exclude instructions that point them towards marriage.
Just as the Bible presents marriage as the norm, it presents celibacy as “other.” Rhodes might object to the church treating singles as though something is missing, but that’s exactly how God Himself treated Adam in a perfect world before creating Eve from his side. “It is not good for man to be alone.” When Jesus and Paul talk about celibacy, they treat it as an exception that people aren’t generally equipped to handle. For those who are not so equipped, “singleness” is described as burning with desire or unable to be accepted. Jesus and Paul neither need nor command any special accommodation for their “singleness,” but simply take the sufficiency of God’s gift as already given.
Understandably, Rhodes’ analysis of the solution isn’t any better than his analysis of the problem. Given that his diagnosis matches the world’s current obsession with “marginalization” and “inclusion” it shouldn’t be any surprise that his prescription is likewise effectively the same as the world’s: Expunge every natural identity people possess for the sake of peace. Division is, inevitably, part of what identity does. And so, for the thoughtless, eliminating identity is a quick and easy way towards unity. Why would nations fight if nations are just meaningless lines on a map? Religion won’t cause friction if it’s just personal preference. If you treat your parents as a matter of happenstance rather than Providence, they can make no inconvenient claims on you. There can be no battle of the sexes if male and female are just social constructs. In the same way, if we find our identities “only” in Christ as Rhodes recommends, then singles cannot feel alienated.
Rhodes tries to find his license for expunging marital identity in Galatians 3:28 the same way theological liberals do. He also makes the same oversight in his application. The God who said there’s neither slave nor free also gave different sets of instructions to slaves and masters. The same God who said there’s no male or female also announced very different vocations for each in the church, the home, and society. Galatians 3:28 speaks to the universality of the Gospel, but clearly it neither expunges natural identities nor renders them meaningless to the Christian.
The Real Issue with Singleness
Rhode’s case is not only at odds with the plain sense of Scripture, but also with itself. He accuses the church of falsely claiming there is something incomplete about singleness. But consider his own testimony on the subject.
Even though marriage and children are already sidelined by things like education and career in church and society alike, the fleeting references to family that remain are still enough to trigger feelings of loneliness. He suggests that families invite singles to their family celebrations, but what is this except a family providing something that’s missing to someone without a family of his own? And consider this quote he highlights at the end as “enough” to demonstrate his point:
“I hate to admit it, but one of the loneliest times of my week is Sunday morning. Sitting alone in a pew amidst a sea of happy couples and families, I listen to sermons about how to be a more god-honoring spouse and parent and announcements about church-wide family picnics I won’t attend because as a single, I’d feel too out of place. When we had communion a couple of weeks ago, it was served by the deacons–and their wives. As I sat staring at the lineup of smiling couples across the front of our church, I wondered where the single leaders were. And I stopped going to church singles groups because they’re usually too ‘meat-marketty’ or too depressing.”
Setting aside the impropriety of deacons’ wives distributing communion, think critically about this confession and consider the implications. This isn’t a normal response for those who are truly called to celibacy. What Paul describes in 1 Cor 7 or Jesus in Matthew 19 is characterized by contentment. Contentment is manifestly the “gift” part of the situation. And while the Church certainly encompasses many individuals who are contentedly single, that is self-evidently not who this conversation is about. Rhodes’ descriptions make it plain that this is about people who are feeling lonely, marginalized, lost, and even ashamed. The conversation is only occurring because so many people are not content.
Why should the mere sight of happy couples or the mere mention of marital responsibilities elicit such a response among someone with the gift of celibacy? Such people do not seek marriage or desire intercourse. They may have a few wistful thoughts about what marriage might be like, but it doesn’t go beyond that because they are secure and content by the grace of God. But Rhodes’ observations about the plight of the single all attest to a deep and abiding insecurity and deprivation.
The truth of the situation is precisely what Rhodes denies: for the growing population of singles in our congregations, something very important is missing. And given what specifically triggers their feelings of alienation, it’s extremely obvious that what’s missing is marriage and family.
To be sure, they do feel excluded in church. They do feel alienated in church. They do feel abandoned in church. But modern culture fails to recognize that our feelings aren’t self-interpreting. It’s only natural they’d erroneously conclude that the church must be excluding, alienating, and abandoning them. But if you know better about feelings, then you’ll also know better about the root cause. While I have no wish to offend, respect requires that we call a thing what it is. These singles are experiencing envy.
Now, I want to be clear that it doesn’t feel like envy to our suffering singles, but that’s because envy never feels like envy. Even the fox who declared his coveted grapes to be sour walked away feeling disgust and irritation, but not envy. This is because envy isn’t really an emotion at all. Envy is a conviction that a blessing you haven’t been given ought to be yours. Convictions produce all sorts of different feelings depending on the circumstance. Nevertheless, one can see the sour grapes attitude in Rhodes’ argument. “Marriage is just for this world anyway. I’ll find my identity in the eschaton instead.” By Rhodes’ own descriptions, there is clearly a great deal of bitterness at work among Christians singles today.
The Real Solution.
All of this said, we cannot stop there. Naming the problem as envy doesn’t make the problem go away or give the Church a license to ignore it. The valuable part of Rhodes’ presentation is detailing how singles describe their own experience. While Rhodes may be misinterpreting that experience, it nevertheless is what it is. The church needs to help singles with it–all the more because there’s a very real deprivation at work. Once we can actually admit that and deal with the issue in truth, our course becomes clearer. There are at least two ways the Church is instructed to deal with deprivations.
The first and most obvious is to assist those in need. If you say “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? Inasmuch as it lies within our abilities, congregations should help their singles find appropriate spouses. We must recover the lost art of match-making. Parents must prepare their sons to be good husbands and their daughters to be good wives so that they may fulfill these natural longings in one-another. Mature Christians should teach single men and women to avoid inadvertently sabotaging themselves when it comes to finding a mate. Much could be said here, but in short, we must do precisely the opposite of what Rhodes prescribes. We must focus on marriage even more.
Admittedly, we need a lot of improvement in this regard. Rhodes quotes a statistic stating that “62 percent [of singles] felt that their church leader’s advice on relationships and issues of singleness was either not relevant, unhelpful, or virtually non-existent.” I’m only surprised that the percentage is that low. We are several generations past the point where we deliberately jettisoned our know-how on coupling for the sake of feminism. Our Boomer leadership is mostly clueless about the realities of hookup culture and modern “dating.” We’ve long been teaching our culture’s values as though they came from God. The church has put herself at a huge disadvantage in this regard. But that only means the church needs to work that much harder in order to rebuild what we’ve lost.
Nevertheless, our efforts cannot stop there. As I wrote back at the beginning of this piece, not every single Christian is going to emerge from this crisis married. Despite our best efforts, not every injury is going to be healed in this life. Not every belly will be filled. The Church must help the poor, but the poor will nevertheless always be with us. The same is true of singles–especially now.
But our course for such men and women should also be clear: mourn with those who mourn. The material abundance of Western society has greatly dulled our skills in this regard. We implicitly except the healing of our sicknesses and the filling of our bank accounts. What’s more, we expect that the right application of effort will always produce success. It does not. To make matters worse, we tend to avoid the afflicted because we don’t want remind ourselves that we aren’t always in control of our fates.
But mourning with those who mourn doesn’t involve denying that their loss is real. We don’t refuse to mention colors to avoid offending the blind. Neither should we refuse to mention marriage to avoid offending the single. That’s patronization rather than mourning.
So what does it involve? Listening, for one. We ought to give singles space to vent and listen to how they feel. We ought to respond with sympathy rather than pity. Despite what contemporary fools will tell you, we can do this without affirming their every errant interpretation of their feelings. What’s more, we ought to give them the opportunity to see that we take their needs seriously by our efforts to help them. True, those efforts will fail for some individuals. Nevertheless, “at least you cared enough to try” still provides some measure of comfort and blunts the feeling of alienation.
Rhodes’ suggestion of families inviting singles over for holidays is actually a good one–as long as we take propriety seriously. This is the domain of older couples, not couples encountering the seven-year itch. Congregations hosting holiday meals for their members would also help to make sure no one is forced to spend Christmas or Thanksgiving alone. And if singles groups feel too much like a meat market at times, Christians can also organize get-togethers for their fellow congregants centered around identities besides singleness–hobbies, service projects, book groups, movie nights, and a billion others. Giving company to the lonely is certainly within our power.
When it comes to church leadership, we don’t need the quotas for singles that Rhodes’ suggestions imply. Still, there is something to be done on that point. Consider the complaints about couples serving communion and such. There is a real problem here because leadership needs to be about the office serving the congregation, not about the people filling those offices or their familial relationships. It seems to me that promoting exclusively masculine leadership in the Church would bear much fruit towards making those positions less relationship-focused. These vocations indeed do work that is valuable in itself, and we ought to acknowledge it regardless of marital status.
Conclusion
Of course, this only begins to scratch the surface of what the church could do to help. Rhodes deliberately aimed his presentation at beginning a conversation rather than providing the final word. That is no less true of my rebuttal. But whatever course the church takes, we cannot afford to root our efforts in the presumptions of the culture, fairytales about overvaluing marriage, or sour grapes. When we take seriously what Scripture says about men and women, marriage and celibacy, sin and grace, we are provided with a multitude of tasks, both small and great to care for the singles in our congregations and communities. May God give us wisdom, direction, and success in caring for all of His sheep.
