Should Believers Affirm Christian Nationalism?

Christian Nationalism and the Gospel

Christoph, would you say that America is, or ever was, a Christian nation?

I would say that it is not, and has never been.

The following persons shall be disqualified for office. Any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God. Amen.

Even though we know that many of our elected officials currently would not meet that standard, you know, hashtag Bernie Sanders and guys like that, who...

I think that by God's grace, eventually, I believe that it's possible that we would get to a point where we'd say, wait a second, they're killing babies in California. Send in the National Guard.

Hey guys, it's Keith, and welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist. Today I am excited to have with me a couple of men who are going to be talking about the subject of Christian nationalism. Now this subject, as many of you know, has been blowing up on social media lately.

I've seen videos come out from all different types of perspectives and people holding and saying that we have to believe in Christian nationalism, and some people saying that Christian nationalism is bad and no good and something that we should shy away from.

So I have two friends that I'm bringing onto the show with me today who are going to be sharing two different perspectives on the subject of Christian nationalism, and I also have a friend of the show who most of you will already know, and that's Matthew Hinson, my not-yet-Calvinist friend, and he's going to be helping me moderate the conversation and asking some additional questions.

So let me introduce the men that I have today for the show. First, I want to introduce someone who many of you may already know. This is Joel Webben. Joel Webben is the president of Right Response Ministries, and he is the senior pastor at Covenant Bible, yeah, am I right, Covenant Bible Church.

And we want to thank you for being a part today of Conversations with a Calvinist. Yes, sir. Thanks for inviting me. Yes, sir. Absolutely. And as I say many times, you look super serious in that very cool wingback chair.

Not everybody is able to have such a cool-looking background, but we're very—.

Presbyterians always have the nice stuff, and so I'm trying to represent the Baptist and say, we don't have to be bumpkins all the time. We can step it up a notch.

Absolutely. Well, you've stepped it up with that chair alone. Now, I do have to ask, is that a green screen, or is that really a room in your house? That's a room in my house.

Yeah, it's real. So there's a Christian guy, solid guy, and he's Presbyterian, but he came in, and he's a construction guy, and so he came in, he built the wood walls, and I was like, think R .C. Sproul, and he nailed it.

Very cool, very cool. Well, you're going to be taking the position, Joel, of the positive position, defending Christian nationalism. And on the other side, we have an author whose name is Christoph Brill.

Christoph, thank you for being with me today. I appreciate it. Yes, thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here. Yes, sir. And you are an author who focuses on ethics, political philosophy, and theology, and your publications include Actionable Justice, A Manifesto for American Conservatives, and Why Christians Should Oppose Christian Nationalism.

And that last one is the one that has brought us all together today, because you were the first one to reach out to me. You sent me a copy of your book. Matthew and I both have looked at it, have read it, and that's what sort of sparked the idea to have this conversation, because you wanted to talk about the book, and I said, I'd love to have you on the show.

But I also knew Joel from Twitter, and I said, let's have a point and counterpoint conversation where both of you can share differing views. Because even though you have never spoken to Joel before today, I imagine your views are going to be quite a bit different.

And so we're going to try to hear both of you and hear your positions. And thankfully, you did send us a copy of the book, and I shared it with Joel. Joel, did you get a chance to look at Christoph's book?

Yeah, I read it. Okay, all right. So he's coming in at least familiar with your information, Christoph. And before we get started, I did talk to Joel a little bit about his position. What do you do ministry-wise outside of writing and things like that?

What's your role right now?

Well, I don't have any particular role in the church. I'm not an elder or anything. However, I do write with the approval of the elders of my church. So it's not as if I'm doing this by myself without any supervision.

Sure. And you are in a Reformed Baptist church? Indeed. Okay. So the only person in this whole group who is not a Calvinist, Matthew. Yep. See, we're still working on you.

That's going to keep happening. You're contractually obligated to not yet Calvinist friend. That's okay. That's right. You're my not yet Calvinist friend.

And every time we get together, me. And for those, again, who don't know Matthew, again, Matthew has been a moderator in multiple debates, including a debate I did and a debate that was done with Dr. James White here in Jacksonville, Florida.

So he has experience in moderation debate and in studying legal issues. He has done reports in our podcast before about the Supreme Court. So he is going to be coming at this, asking some questions that are going to hopefully be pointed and important when we get to that side.

So what we're going to do, this is, and let me explain to the audience, this is not a formal debate. This is a conversation, but both sides do have differing positions. So we want to give each side the opportunity to share their position, explain what they mean when they say Christian nationalism, and explain why they are either for it on behalf of Joel or against it on behalf of Christoph.

And in that opening interaction, being able to both give their positions, we're going to build from there a conversation, allowing them to ask each other questions and allowing Matthew and I to also engage both of them with questions.

So as is often the case in a, even though this isn't a formal debate, in a situation where there's a positive and negative, it's often best to let the positive go first. So Joel, we're going to give you the first time to go, and you can have as much time as you like, but obviously we do want to try to keep this within 90 minutes or so.

So take a few minutes, explain to us what you mean by Christian nationalism and why it is that you would support that term, and give us your position, if you would.

Okay, thanks. I'll go ahead by just starting with the statement on Christian nationalism and the gospel. I'll read a little bit of that. The primary authors were Dusty Deavers. Dusty Deavers is a Reformed Baptist guy.

He's an abolitionist. He's done a lot of wonderful work working to abolish abortion. He's a local pastor in Oklahoma and a friend of mine. Also, James Silberman was intricately involved in the original draft and those things.

And then guys like William Wolfe, myself, Jeff Wright, Corey Anderson, we came in the 11th hour and still got the same pay. So anyways, we put this out and it caused a little bit of a stir. And part of the reason it caused a stir was because of the arguments, but part of it is because of 2023 font gate, which will go down in infamous history where we apparently took the same font as G3 and it was the same font.

And it wasn't my decision and I wish it didn't happen, but it also was kind of funny. And G3, in the final analysis, they were charitable about it. So all that being said, I'm going to read from the beginning of that statement.

Some of your listeners may have already checked it out. Some of them may not have, but if you open it up, the very first thing that it says is a definition. So Christian nationalism is a set of governing principles rooted in scriptures teaching that Christ rules as Supreme Lord and King of all creation, who has ordained civil magistrates with delegated authority to be under him over the people to order their ordained jurisdiction by punishing evil and promoting good for his own glory and the common good of the nation.

And there's a lot of scripture references. Then the next thing that we say is introduction. Christian nationalism is primarily concerned with the righteous rule of civil authorities, not spiritual matters pertaining to salvation.

The desire for a Christian nation is not a distraction from the gospel, but rather an effort to faithfully apply all of scripture to all of life, including the public square. As such, Christian nationalism is not just for civil authorities, just as submitting to Christ's Lordship is not just for civil authorities, but for all people.

After the Lord Jesus declared His sovereign authority in Matthew 28, verse 18, He gave the Great Commission and commanded His followers, empowered by His everlasting presence, to make disciples of all nations and to baptize them and teach them to obey all that I have commanded.

That's Matthew 28, verses 19 and 20. Our Lord did not exclude all civil authorities from the command to submit to His authority and display allegiance to Him. We recognize the existence of other definitions of Christian nationalism, because Lord knows not everybody agrees, and that's part of the confusion.

Going on now, we certainly do not endorse every iteration of Christian nationalism and explicitly repudiate some such forms, as will be evident in our affirmations and denials. What follows is 20 different affirmations and 20 denials.

Lastly, we said that if you agree with the document, you can check it out online. I believe the website, and you could sign it, I think it leaves space for guys who are willing to sign it. The final draft is something that we'll work on in the future.

I believe the website is statementonchristiannationalism .com, statementonchristiannationalism .com. Anyway, that's just the definition and introduction to the statement. Then what follows are affirmations and denials.

We can get into some of those later on, but I'll just stop reading. The last thing that I'll say is, and I know that you've addressed this, Christoph, and it'll be an interesting thing for us to get to, but I think some of the guys, myself at least, I'll speak for myself, some of the guys who have said, all right, it's a pejorative.

Christian, little Christ, that was a first century pejorative, but it stuck. Guys were willing to wear it, followers of the way. Then you got Puritan, that was a pejorative, but people are like, well, I guess I kind of am a Puritan.

Christian nationalism has been a pejorative from the woke progressive left to say, these are radical Christian nationalists. It's funny, James Lindsay, initially, he even had in his Twitter handle for a while that I'm a Christian nationalist because everybody knew that it was this pejorative from the woke left that hates Christ saying, you guys are extremists.

But then, little by little, some guys, myself included, said, well, I guess there is a truth in that. I don't mean it the way you're saying it, but I am a nationalist and I am a Christian. We decided to start working with the term because we felt like, well, we could reject the term, but if we reject the term, it's still going to be placed on us anyway.

The question at the end of the day is not always what is the ideal scenario and what I would pick for myself, but what box, what definitions, what terminology can I work with? I think you can work with Puritan, you can work with Christian, and I think you can work with Christian nationalism.

That's not to say there's no baggage with the ism in the nation part because there is, but I think it's something that you can work with. That, at the end of the day, is where a lot of guys have landed.

For myself, personally, I would disagree with some guys like Stephen Wolfe. I appreciate Stephen Wolfe. I think he's got a lot of unfair criticism. One of my criticisms that I think would be fair is that he's a Thomist, so he's going to place a lot of emphasis on Thomas Aquinas, whereas I would be much more presuppositional and follow Cornelius Van Til.

He's also all-millennial and I would be post-millennial. There's different camps within the CN big tent group. There's the Doug Wilson camp. I would be more in that camp. I'm not Presbyterian. I do hold to a Credo Baptist position, but I am post-millennial and I am a general equity theonomist.

There's a lot of guys in that camp that would say, okay, yeah, we're in the CN, Christian nationalist orbit, and then there's other guys that place a bigger emphasis on natural law and are not necessarily post-millennial in their eschatology.

That gives you a little bit of—I'll stop there, but that's my opening statement.

Absolutely. Thank you so much, and there was certainly a lot in that. Give us one more time the website for the document. If somebody wanted to pause right here and just go read that again so that they hear that again.

What was that website again?

I believe it's Christian—or www .statementonchristiannationalism .com. Statement on Christian nationalism. If that doesn't work, add the word the, the statement on Christian nationalism. Okay, no the.

Yep, so statementonchristiannationalism .com.

Okay, wonderful. Thank you, Joel, for that opening statement, letting us know what you mean. And I also want to say this. As I was preparing for this, I watched a video of you saying—if I remember correctly, it was something to the effect of Christian nationalists are the ones that are hated by the other side or something.

It was just a short little 10-minute video. It looked like you were preaching at your church, but it was saying nobody hates the people who are writing papers on the Hypostatic Union. Nobody's giving any trouble to the ivory tower theologians.

It's the Christian nationalists who are wearing the mega hats and those things. I thought that was an interesting point that you made, that this issue is one that the other side does see as the battleground.

So where we stand on—yeah, it's the threat. And where we stand on this is probably going to place us somewhere in the view of the—in the sights of the opponents of the gospel, for sure. So I thought that was an interesting point.

I've never been accused of being winsome, so if those who hate Christ see me as threatening, I feel pretty good about that.

Defining Christian Nationalism and Popular Sovereignty

Okay, all right. All right, Mr. Kristoff, I'm going to now turn over to you. You'll have, again, as much time as you'd like. We don't—this isn't a time debate or anything like that, so you have plenty of time to share your position.

Don't have time to read your whole book, unfortunately. But for those who do want to read it, it is available on Amazon. It is called—remind me of the title. I just read it a minute ago, but remind me.

Yeah, Why Christians Should Oppose Christian Nationalism. Okay, and they can get that on Amazon.

And it's a relatively short read. Somebody who's a good reader should be able to read it in one sitting. And I'm going to turn it over to you and give you the opportunity to come out and share with us why you would oppose Christian nationalism and what the heart of your book was.

Okay, anyway, I wrote the book Why Christians Should Oppose Christian Nationalism, and it is, of course, discussing this from a perspective looking at exegesis, looking at what does the Bible say about various related issues.

But before you can get into the exegesis on this matter, it's, of course, necessary to define what Christian nationalism is. And the way I define it is that I obviously would say that we all know what a Christian is, so then we have to understand what nationalism is.

Nationalism is an ideology that focuses on the identification of the nation with the state so that there is a popular sovereignty. The people, which is the nation, are considered equivalent in their sovereignty together with the state.

And so there's a merger of nation and state based on national identity. Now, I would argue that there is a biblical distinction between nation and kingdom or nation and state. This is seen in the Hebrew Old Testament, where there is the goy and the malacha, and in the New Testament where you see ethnos and basilia.

And, of course, this also exists in modern political philosophy, where people can talk about nations or people groups and then also states. Now, the problem with merging these two things, the nation and the state, in how they operate is that in one case, we need to understand that there is already a type of nation that is talked about biblically, and that is the holy nation that is mentioned in Exodus 19 and 1 Peter 2, which, of course, is understood to refer to both ancient Israel and to the church in the latter passage.

So there's an understanding that the church in some ways is a fulfillment of the promise of the holy nation. And so there is a special holiness that applies to this nation, which is Christian. And how does one become a member of a nation?

Well, typically it would be by being born into one. And in the case of this holy nation, or the true Christian nation, as I might call it, it is by being born into it, by being born again. As Reverend Webben has said in a recent video, all members of a new covenant are born again.

And that is something that I think should influence our understanding of what we believe the Christian nation can be identified as. Now, the problem with popular sovereignty in understanding nations is that, as Abraham Kuyper himself has said, this goes against the sovereignty of God.

And this was in one of his 1898 lectures on Calvinism at Princeton University, where he argued that the sovereignty of God comes and influences how we should understand all other things, and that the concept of popular sovereignty was a competing theory to the Calvinist understanding of God's sovereignty.

And this is, of course, also brought out in his other politics, as he was the founder of the anti-revolutionary party, referring to the French Revolution and other European revolutions which were led by nationalists who sought to put the people in power, as opposed to the more traditional perspective seen by earlier theologians that view power as coming from God and being invested in the sovereign, who then has authority from God, rather than as intrinsically taken from the people.

Now, another issue with identifying this holy nation with the more secular understanding of nationalism is the idea of merging the holy and the common, because God has ruled over all things, but he has not consecrated all things.

Likewise, we have to understand that we should not identify things that are opposed to Christ with Christ. That is another thing that I think is very important. And then there's also some other philosophical issues relating to understandings of identitarianism, as opposed to relationalism, where the identity of nations is, in my view, scripturally less emphasized than the relationship that God has with nations.

So those are just some of the ideas that I put forward in my book on Christian nationalism.

Christ Over Nations, States, and the Great Commission

Okay. So I have to ask this, and this is, I think, an important thing that I want to hear both of you answer this, because I appreciate you both for your opening statements, but I want to simplify this for the listener, and I'm trying to pretend I'm the audience, and that's what Matthew and I are here to do, not only moderate, but also to be the audience.

And if someone were to say, and I'll let Joel go first, since you just spoke, Christophe. Joel, if I were to say, give me your understanding of what Christian nationalism is in just a short sentence or two.

Just what is Christian nationalism that you're defending?

Yeah. Christian nationalism is the idea that nations, not just ours, not just America, but that all the nations are Christ's inheritance, that they should explicitly declare an allegiance to Christ and His Lordship as demonstrated through the Scripture, that they should execute their powers, they should execute their duties, their responsibilities Christianly.

So, and I want to go to Christophe quickly, but I do have to, I want to make sure I understand. So, you're not endorsing necessarily Christian Americanism because of what you just said. You said it's all nations, not just the upholding of the Christian flag and the American flag and making them one.

No. I'm post-millennial. We're going to take the whole thing. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. So, Christophe, based upon Joel's definition, can you give me a, is your working definition the same as his, or do you have a different definition for Christian nationalism?

Because as I was listening to you, I was trying to just clarify this for the audience, because I want to make sure we're not talking past one another.

Yeah. I'll give you a brief couple Sentence definition. Christian nationalism may be defined as the position that there is a Christian nation that ought to operate as a sovereign nation state while fully affirming its Christian faith and identity.

This definition emphasizes the centrality of Christianity while preserving the analogical similarity with other ideologies that are properly called nationalist, like Irish nationalism, French nationalism, Kurdish nationalism, et cetera.

Okay. So, it seems like, in that sense, it would almost seem like we have two working definitions. It would seem like there's not exactly an agreement on what we mean by Christian nationalism. And I want to give you what I think, and maybe if Matthew wants to jump in here, based on what I've heard, it sounds like Joel is saying that Christ is the head of all nations, therefore all nations should be submissive to his lordship.

Am I being fair to that, Joel? Is that fair to what? Yep. Yes, sir. And C .A. or Christoph, you're saying that Christian nationalism is more of a form of secular identification, that we are a nation that is a Christian nation, and you're saying that we can't do that.

Um, I'm not saying that specifically. I would rather say that Christian nationalism, if we are to use the term nationalism, ought to mean the same thing as what other nationalist movements use the term for, which means that a group, which is the nation, has its own sovereignty in a popular sense.

Okay, explain that, or go ahead, Joel, I'm sorry.

Well, I was just going to say, so are you a globalist? Like, I don't understand, what would be your objection to the statement you just made? Well, my objection How much is George Soros paying you, is my question.

Yeah, well, I'm not a globalist.

My objection is that popular sovereignty, I view that as something that is unbiblical, and something that is contrary to a number of principles of the faith, particularly

Define, real quick, can you define that for me? I really just, popular sovereignty, define that.

Popular sovereignty is the idea that in a state or in a country, the people are the sovereigns.

Oh, okay, all right. So like in America, where we would say, we the people hold these truths, you know, that's referring to the consent of the governed kind of thing?

No, not necessarily. This is more of a more philosophical idea, because historically, under what people would call classical republicanism, in a pre-modern sense, there existed republics that operated with the consent of the governed, but that did not necessarily believe in things like popular sovereignty.

Okay, I'm still not certain that I understand popular sovereignty. I'm trying my best. I'm really not trying to make it more difficult than it has to be. I just want to make sure, when you say popular sovereignty, so the population, the people, have the power?

Yes, yes. Okay, to elect They have the power outside of the existence of a hierarchy from God to the ruler to the people. And because So no elected officials? Is that what you're saying? Just the people, like mob rule?

Like a raw democracy? No representation? No, it can be structured in a number of different ways. For example, there's dictatorships that affirm popular sovereignty. For example, the People's Republic of China, they believe in popular sovereignty, but they have a communist dictatorship.

Yeah, I'm having a little bit of a difficulty sort of understanding the philosophy.

Well, I think the problem here is that it's something that exists only in philosophy and not in the real world, which is also one of my other objections to it, that it's not something that's actually realistic.

I think it would also help to look at origin and source. So if there was an autocratic, wicked, evil tyrant in charge of a particular country, let's call him, I don't know, Stalin, for instance, and you could magically pull all of the people of the Soviet Union in, say, 1939, and say, do you approve of this man leading the country, even though he's evil, wicked, mean, and nasty?

If he got a bare majority, 50 plus one, are you saying that it's an error to say he's a legitimate ruler because of that? Or how does the interplay between consent of the governed and the legitimacy of the ruler come about?

Because if it's a majority of the people don't approve of the ruler and you're saying, well, biblically, that doesn't matter, he's the ruler, I guess the question would be, how did the ruler get there?

Because if it's under a system where the people selected him, then it's a where is his authority drawn from? And if he, let's say he coups his way in there in an illegitimate show of force and topples the previous regime, just because he sits in the seat and signs his name to whatever governing document it is, or in the case of old monarchies, he wears the crown, does that then immediately demand allegiance if his usurpation was illegal, so to speak, based upon the laws of the country?

So where's, I guess, where's the hierarchy of authority come from in a nation that way?

Ultimately, it comes from God. And then, as we understand it in Romans 13, it goes to the people in charge. Now, in the context of Romans 13, that's the Roman state and its subordinate entities. So that's a mixture of both monarchies and republics.

So you could say that in that context, there's a possibility for things like constitutionality to exist in how governments operate. And so if there is a law that says that a ruler can only come into charge in a certain way, then that is something that must be obeyed, of course.

However, if such things do not exist, then you end up in a situation where the only way to usurp the ruler's authority would be in a way that I would say is ungodly.

So when Paul, for instance, appeals to his rights as a Roman citizen, he says, you can't do this to me because I'm a Roman citizen. And they're extremely nervous after that, because they're like, oh no, I didn't know we were dealing with a Roman citizen.

They have a fear of the law that has been passed based upon the representative structure that they had. But if they had an edict from Caesar that said, I know what the law says, but I don't care, you know, lash him 39 times, because he's the ruler, but he's acting in a manner inconsistent with the constitution, so to speak, of the nation, would he have been right in doing so?

That's kind of what I'm trying to tease out. Who has the ultimate authority? If it is a ruler, and he topples this ruler, and he has done so illegitimately, does he then, just because he's a ruler, does Romans 13 instantly kick in to the new guy who toppled the old guy?

Well, I would say that it would have to be up to those who are in charge, because it is not up to us to decide, at least not intrinsically. Now, we could get a right to decide by the law, but we don't have an automatic ability to decide who is in charge of us, just like we don't have a right to elect which God is God.

How do you feel about the war for independence, America?

I actually have, I'm a critic of the Declaration of Independence. I'm not a critic of America's sovereignty. I think that the Treaty of Paris resolved the issues related to that, but I am a critic of the Declaration of Independence.

So you didn't fire off fireworks last night then, huh? Actually, I did. Oh, okay, all right. I don't hate this country. No, no, no, no, no, nobody's accusing you of being a...

I just have a specific historical critique.

Okay, so with that being said, I want to ask you a question. You sat down in front of your computer, and you, I'm speaking to you, Christophe. You sat down in front of your computer. You decided to write a book.

And in your book, you made some defining things in the first portion of the book you talked about. I'm not saying this is... I'm not saying against theonomy or a different thing. You really sort of narrowed down Christian nationalism and specifically to a certain thing.

But what made you write the book? What is your concern with someone like Joel? And I'm not making this personal. I'm just saying, when I say someone like Joel, I'm not saying that he's the archetypal Christian nationalist.

But when someone like Joel says, Christ is king, all governments should submit to him. And when they don't do so, the people have the responsibility. And correct me if I'm wrong, Joel, you would say especially the church has a responsibility to call the government to repentance, right?

Because they have a responsibility to... Okay. I just want to make sure I'm... Again, if I say anything wrong, correct me, because I want to represent both of your sides as best as I can. So Christoph, where would you say he's in error?

Or do you think that that in and of itself is a problem?

As you have read in the book, I don't actually say that everybody who calls himself a Christian nationalist falls into the errors of the nationalist ideology. So I think that saying that Christ is king and ruler over everything, I think that is something that is very agreeable to me.

I also agree with the idea that the church should be calling people to repentance, that Christians should be vocal on political issues, especially when they concern virtues. I think that that is actually very important and good.

My objection, therefore, for people that don't actually hold to ideas like popular sovereignty is that it could be misleading to people that assume those things because all sorts of other types of nationalism exist that do affirm those things.

So I think it's important to respect the terminology that people are using.

So on a philosophical level, there may be not a lot of differences in what you are saying people should do, but rather you think that the title is problematic. By calling someone a Christian nationalist, that's a wrong term.

Yes, sir. I think I can find some disagreement, because I feel like, Keith, you're sitting there, you're like, hey, do we even have a debate here? So if you'd like a debate, I think I could pick a fight.

Well, I definitely want to get there. I'm just trying to make sure we are rightly defining our terms. I know there's things we're going to disagree on, and probably things that all four of us may have different views on.

But particularly, you two gentlemen are the ones who've graciously come in today, so I definitely want to hear your points first. So, Joel, let's do that then. Let's talk about the things where you think there would be legitimate differences between you and Christophe.

Great. So it sounds like, Christophe, you affirm Christ being head of all things. I remember in 2020, with COVID and everything, MacArthur came out with his famous article that Christ, not Caesar, is head of the church.

And I remember saying to myself, yes and amen, and would you go just a little bit further and say that Christ, not Caesar, is head of the church? Also, Christ, not Caesar, is head of the state. So Ephesians 1, verse 22, and he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, that is, to the benefit of the church.

So what I would say is, you know, theologically, Christ is uniquely head of the church. He is not exclusively head of the church. Uniquely head of the church in the sense that the church is the only entity for which Christ died.

It's the only eternally redeemed people in that sense. We could say it's the only eternally saved nation, to use the term nation. But Christ is head over the public square. He's head over governments.

He's head over states and all those kinds of things. So my position is I'm simply trying to say Christ is head over everything and Caesar has a law that he has to follow. And Romans 13 is just as much written to Caesar and how Caesar should behave as it is to the people underneath Caesar's, underneath his earthly authority.

And so all that being said, I think the place, it sounds like there's maybe a lot of agreement there. I think the place where we might not agree would be in terms of, now I'm not going to get nitpicky with definitions of nationalism.

If you want to define some more things there and maybe just do, ask me 20 questions like, do you affirm that one or deny it? Do you affirm that one? And we can go back and forth with definitions of nationalism.

But here's the heart of what I mean when I say nationalism. I know this is what William Wolfe and guys like John Harris, this is what we would mean. We would say that everything I've already said, Christ is Lord, he's king of all kings.

But beyond that, and nations have an explicit allegiance to Christ and not an ever evolving standard of man, but a transcendent universal standard that comes from the Bible. So all that. Beyond that though, the other part, I think a part of the nationalism piece, not all the definitions that you threw out, but one that I will abide by and I'll say, yeah, I agree with that, is that nations are, that it's permissible by God for nations to prioritize in their order of loves.

So thinking of St. Augustine, the order of loves, order of affections, that nations, it is morally permissible. And I would go so far as to say, even commanded that a nation prioritize the wellbeing, that not just eternal, salvific, eternal things, but the temporal earthly good of its citizens above other citizens of other nations.

So that doesn't mean that that nation needs to bust out an Adolf Hitler third right kind of thing and try to take over the world. But it does mean that there is a way of nations being suicidal. And I believe that's part of my concern.

That's part of the reason why I've been willing to wear the moniker, put on the label Christian nationalist is because I think the West, I think France right now would be an example of this. I think that a lot of Western civilization that has been historically Christian in some shape, form or fashion, coming off of 500 years of Christendom, a thousand, arguably going back to King Alfred and biblical case law and these kinds of things, the West, America, European countries, the whole nine yards that we have become in recent, it's a post-war mentality, it's very recent.