May 18, 2023 Show with Virgil Walker on “Christian Nationalism: A Review of the Broad Spectrum of Its Professed Adherents”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father, James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer, George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister, George Norcross, and sports legend, Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27, verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, the host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 18th May, the 18th day of May, 2023.

I'm so thrilled to have back as a returning guest one of my favorite guests to interview. His name is Virgil Walker. His name should be very familiar to the regular listeners of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio since I have interviewed him many times and hope to interview him many more times in the future.

He's an author, he's a conference speaker, he's the executive director of operations at G3 Ministries, and he's the co-host of the Just Thinking podcast. Today, we're gonna be addressing an extremely controversial issue, Christian nationalism, a review of the broad spectrum of its professed adherence, and we're also going to be announcing the upcoming 2023 G3 National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my dear friend Virgil Walker. Are you there, Virgil?

I am always glad to be with you, brother. It's a joy to get a chance to, once again, to talk about all the issues that matter.

Amen, and I was so thrilled to finally meet face-to-face your sweet, wonderful, godly wife, T. Diane, at the Church and Family Life Conference that took place, I guess it was two weeks ago?

Yeah, yeah, we had a great time there with the folks for the Church and Family Conference there, and a wonderful opportunity to bring her along. That's not something that happens as often as I would like, but when it does, it's an absolute joy to get to bring her into spaces and places where I've been and meet people who I've talked about or whose names she's heard me mention.

And for you, it was, you know, she'd hear your voice as I would be doing interviews. She would hear your voice in the background on speakers, and so for her to put a face and a voice, in your case, with a name and a face and all that was just great.

Got a chance to go out and grab a bite to eat in a couple of spots and get some great fellowship in, so it was a good time.

Yeah, and what a beautiful area Black Mountain, North Carolina is.

It really was, really was. Great, very picturesque, and weather was perfect, and so we really got a chance to enjoy some time there. Yeah, it was good.

Well, I'm thrilled also that Scott Brown, who is the host and orchestrator of these annual Church and Family Life Conferences, he has invited me back to Man and Exhibitor's booth at their next conference, which already has a phenomenal lineup for that as well.

Yeah.

And I am really excited about that, and I thank him for that invitation and opportunity. But I'm also coming up in the much closer future. I'm really thrilled again, as I always am, to be attending the 2023 G3 National Conference.

And why don't you tell our listeners about this year's National Conference?

The Sovereignty of God at the 2023 G3 National Conference

Yeah, this year's National Conference is going to be amazing. Every time I even think about it, a smile jumps on my face, because I know the plans that we have here and what people are gonna be experiencing at the conference.

The conference is our national biennial conference, so it's a once every other year opportunity to connect with the National Conference at G3. And this year, it's September 21st through the 23rd. It will cover the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.

And so for us, this was an important doctrine as we seem to be encountering attacks related to God's sovereignty in almost every sphere of culture, whether it's the LGBTQIA plus mafia, if you will, the alphabet mafia, if you will, who are challenging whether a man is a man and a woman is a woman, or some facet of the gender spectrum, whether it's the idea of the challenge of marriage, or even in school systems, how children should indeed be educated.

Well, God has ordained all of those things, that he's created one man and one woman, that marriage is between a man and a woman in a covenant union for life, that children are the responsibility of parents, not the state, and that we have an obligation as human beings and believers, particularly believers in Christ, to educate our children to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

With that said, everywhere we turn, that is under attack. And so it's important for us to gather as believers to revisit the important doctrine of God's sovereignty. As we equip ourselves, local churches are equipped, and the body of Christ overall is equipped to deal with the onslaught that we're encountering from the culture.

Like always at the national conference, we have just a host of some of the best speakers around the world, Josh Bice, Bodhi Bakom, Stephen Lawson, Paul Washer, Phil Johnson, James White, Mike Riccardi, Justin Peters, Owen Strand, Ken Ham.

I mean, the list goes on and on and on. We've got more than, we'll have more than 30 speakers. Yeah, who will eventually make our roster that will be joining us for our event. And so it's gonna be an important time for those who want to come and hear the best of preaching and come away with just the sound doctrine of God's sovereignty to join us.

In addition to all of the preaching, we are gonna have a lot of different events. I'm always kind of working with Josh Bice to create unique events and unique fellowship opportunities and the like. And so this is kind of the, I'd call this the world's largest family reunion as we gather.

We anticipate somewhere in the neighborhood of about 8 ,500 people from within United States and literally around the world that will be joining us. So right now, I think our numbers are somewhere in the neighborhood of about 6 ,200, 6 ,300.

So we're pushing record numbers for our conference. And again, it's gonna be an absolutely amazing time. For those who are interested in participating or learning more, you can go to g3men .org. That's G -3-M-I-N, like Mary, Indigo, Nancy, g3men .org to learn more.

And don't forget, when you register, use promo code G -3-I-S-I-R. That is the promo code for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And you will get 30 off the registration fee by using that promo code. That's G -3-I-S-I-R, standing for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, G -3-I-S-I-R.

I hope that as many of you who listen to this program will attend, will visit me at my exhibitor booth. And G3 has always been a wonderful time for me, not only to reunite with old friends, but to make new acquaintances.

And some of those new acquaintances have become lasting friendships. And even new sponsors of my program, new guests on my program. It is always just such a worthwhile experience for me to be manning an exhibitor's booth there.

I always have a blast, and I'm always disappointed the day that it's over. And so I, and in fact, this, I don't see all of those 30 people on your website yet, but everybody who's on your website, I have interviewed all of them at some point or another, with the exception of James Coates.

And I'm looking forward to getting him on the program if I ever have that opportunity. I did interview James Coates' attorney when he was still in jail.

Yeah, yeah.

In fact, it was the day he was being released for not shutting down his church when the Canadian government was enforcing that mandate upon worship services. And I was also very delighted that G3 Press had been so generous to donate a copy of James Coates' book to every man that attended my recent Iron Trip and Zion Radio Free Pastors Luncheon.

And that was a rich blessing. I thank you and everyone at G3 Press. And Scott Annual was the specific brother who put that into action and got me those books. So I just, I got a big place in my heart for G3, that's obvious.

Yeah, yeah, well, we're happy to do it. And the whole goal of G3 is for the whole purpose of educating and encouraging and equipping the body of Christ with sound biblical doctrine. And so I know our Executive Vice President, Editor-in-Chief Scott Annual was excited to have the opportunity to serve in that way.

I remember when the request came and he was in his office and wanted to participate in that way. And so we were grateful to do so.

And that book, by the way, is Preaching and Hearing God's Word by James Coates. Well, as I said before, today's conversation involves a very controversial issue. Now, it has occurred to me, I've been a Reformed Baptist as long as I have been saved.

Well, perhaps two months or so after I was saved by the grace and mercy of Christ, I came to embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace. Thankfully, I was saved in a Reformed Baptist church. I didn't have to go through years of hearing a false gospel or other than the fact that I was raised Roman Catholic, of course, but I mean, during my years as an evangelical, I didn't have to be deprogrammed from a lot of stuff.

God was very kind to me in his providence that I was saved in a confessional Reformed Baptist church. And it has occurred to me that within the last five years, and keep in mind, that was about the mid -1980s when I was saved.

Over the last five years, it's been amazing how many issues have arisen amongst Reformed people, and specifically even Reformed Baptists, that have caused a lot of infighting, and splits, and heated argument, and unfortunately, ad hominem, and mockery, coming from all sides of every issue that rises up.

And I've never seen anything like this amongst the formerly fairly close-knit circles of confessional Reformed Baptists before. We've always had division of some degree, but one issue after another over the past five years, I mean, friendships have been destroyed over some of these divisions.

And it boggles my mind why some of these issues would end friendships. But we are talking about another one of those issues that has raised the ire of a lot of folks on all sides, Christian nationalism.

Now, usually when I'm doing a program, and we're addressing a specific theme like that, I would say, please give us a working definition of Christian nationalism. But unfortunately, you can't just cite one working definition of that.

That's one of the reasons we're doing the program today, is because there seems to be a broad spectrum of professed adherence of Christian nationalism that don't even agree with each other on a working definition.

So perhaps give us what you can from your knowledge of this phenomenon, at least a bare minimum of things that are typically found in a list of descriptions of an ideology known as Christian nationalism.

What Christian Nationalism Means and Why Its Definitions Vary

Yeah, I'd be happy to. I wanna go back to something that you mentioned earlier, which is the tendency and the natural inclination for divisions to arise among those who are indeed believers. And I think that has been historically true.

I mean, even as far back as my evangelical experience with the emergent church, right? You had these young, hip progressives who started out with rather sound kind of biblical doctrine and theology, wanting to get away from more formalized expressions of church worship and the like, and kind of pontificate, if you will, about doctrine, about what the word of God said.

And they, for a time, were a force. Those who leaned a little bit more leftward and were a little bit more progressive and who wanted to kind of take a more of a postmodern approach to their understanding of theology would go that direction.

And so there were good people who we knew that we would see that would take that shift. And then you had another group that kind of young, restless, reformed folks who were trying to figure out how to kind of, they had previously experienced a more feminized form of evangelicalism, from the music to the preaching to the softening of every aspect of church experience.

And their thought was, I want a muscular, kind of robust approach to Christianity. And so they would follow people like Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill and some of those guys into that direction. And then as things began to kind of teeter off, you began to see a division there, even with Mark Driscoll and others who kind of got sideways with people like John MacArthur.

And so you would see that kind of expression, things separated and then ultimately where things would land. I, as I witnessed this next movement, while I make a comparison only to say that groups like that who start out with great relationships with one another and have the tendency to break off, often do so as a result of a reaction to what they're seeing in current culture.

And just like the two previous movements that I mentioned, I don't believe that this current quote unquote movement is any different in that I think most of them, many of them have just witnessed the rise of drag queen story hour, right?

They've witnessed the rise of the LGBTQ movement in culture. They've witnessed the rise of woke-ism. And as they've witnessed that and seen that, they're trying to figure out how do we move forward? And so their thought is there must be something missing in the church that is allowing that to take place and we must do something to move forward.

By the way, I just want to divert from our subject temporarily. I just heard from a very credible source while this program has been on the air that someone who I highly revered, who I have had on this program at least twice, who has written a glowing, wonderful commendation for Iron Trip and Zion Radio that I will treasure forever.

Dr. Harry L. Reader was killed in an automobile accident and pronounced dead on the scene. Very tragic news and we will be providing you with more details on future Iron Trip and Zion Radio broadcasts and we will certainly be having, God willing, a tribute program to him since he had such a significant role in the body of Christ as being a powerful, unwavering voice for truth.

And Harry Reader, who was the senior pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama. I last interviewed him on August 22nd of 2022 on the authority and trustworthiness of scripture. And he will certainly be missed.

And as I said, we'll keep you folks updated and let you know when we will be airing a tribute program to him. And I ask of you all to pray for the Reader family and for that fine congregation, Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama, as they have lost a giant whose shoes will never be able to be quite sufficiently filled as most giants of the church seem to be irreplaceable.

But we know that he is in a far better place now and that's just not a rote placard as people will say very often about the loss to die. He or she is in a much better place. Well, we know that Dr. Harry L. Reader certainly is in a much better place.

I'm gonna give our listeners our email address if you have a question on Christian nationalism. I would love it if those who are on both sides of this issue were to write in questions. Please don't write in speeches.

I won't read speeches, but send in questions whether you affirm Christian nationalism, at least a brand of it, a specific brand of it, or if you are radically opposed to it, or if you just don't know.

Like many people, I have been seeing over and over again, people who are widely known and highly respected pastors, theologians, scholars, seminary professors, authors, and so on, when it comes to this subject, they are at a loss to be too definitive about it because of the fact that there are different voices within the umbrella of that title, Christian nationalism.

And so therefore, there are many people who I know and love and respect who will tell you they don't know if they're a Christian nationalist or not. As Votie Baucom said in one of his recent messages at a conference that Founders Ministries orchestrated, Votie Baucom said, well, if you ask me if I'm a Christian nationalist, my answer will depend on who you are and why you are asking me that.

So that may be the case with you. I am at a great loss. I'm interviewing a guest today that is a lot more knowledgeable on the spectrum of beliefs on this issue than I am. And there are things about what I have heard that sound very appealing, and there are other things that make me very nervous depending upon who is voicing their opinion about it.

But our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state and country of residence. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you are a Christian nationalist, you're in a church that is opposed to that ideology or vice versa, and you'd rather not identify yourself at this point in time. I understand things like that.

But if it's a general question, please give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Well, before we go to the first commercial break, Virgil, if you could give us some kind of a definition that most, if not all, of the adherence of what is called Christian nationalism agree upon in regards to their worldview and their theology and their eschatology and so on.

Yeah, I think in short, it's difficult to do that, primarily because there is no one definition. There are multifaceted definitions. I think there are people who are trying to wrestle with the ideas and issues.

And I know you're heading into break. I said this in my article. I said, if by Christian nationalism, what is meant is an active form of patriotism where borders are protected, national sovereignty is enforced, and society moves back toward a Judeo-Christian ethic, then you could call me a Christian nationalist.

However, I think it's important to think through what those two words mean, the words Christian and nationalism. When we come back, we can talk about that. I'll also, by way of directly answering your question, give you the definition as written by Stephen Wolf.

Stephen Wolf's a writer of a very voluminous work, 490 pages in his book, A Case for Christian Nationalism. He writes this, quote, my definition of Christian nationalism is a Christianized form of nationalism, or put differently, a species of nationalism.

This, he said, thus, I treat nationalism as a genus, meaning that all that is essential to generic nationalism is true of Christian nationalism, end quote. And so there you have Stephen Wolf's definition of Christian nationalism.

The reason I mentioned him is because within theological circles, his work is the work that most are interacting with because it is a published work. Within evangelicalism, there are a myriad of different ideas around that, and people are every day kind of forming their ideas, shaping their ideas, and trying to put forth statements to land the plane on what they believe, why they believe it, and the like.

And so that'll provide a framework for our conversation. Like when we get back, I would love to talk through the two words that are trying to be blended together, Christian and nationalism. We could unpack that on the other side.

And since you mentioned Steve Wolf, I just wanna quickly say that there are those who have a high regard for some of the voices within Christian nationalism and are contemplating the adoption of that ideology for themselves who are very opposed, at least in certain cases, with Stephen Wolf's book.

Absolutely.

So I just don't want anybody to think that he is a monolithic voice for Christian nationalism. And perhaps one day he will come on the program to give a rebuttal to this, or we can have perhaps a debate or something like that.

But we are going to our first break. The email address for your questions, again, is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Virgil Walker of G3 Ministries right after these messages.

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here. I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend, Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the G3 National Conference.

That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I have been preaching, teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries. And there's more great news. Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio can get you a 30 discount off the registration fee.

Go to g3min .org, that's g3min .org, and enter promo code G3ISIR. That's G3ISIR for the 30 discount. Chris Arnson, I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd for the G3 National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on the sovereignty of God.

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And please mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio so we get 100 of the profits. We're now back with Virgil Walker. He is the Executive Director of Operations with G3 Ministries. And we are talking about a very controversial theme, Christian nationalism.

And pick up where you left off, Virgil. You are going to get more involved in a description of what we are talking about today.

The Difference Between Christian Conviction and Top-Down Nationalism

Yeah, yeah. I initially kind of led with the definition given by Stephen Wolfe. His book, A Case for Christian Nationalism has really become kind of the gold standard for the theological facet of Christian nationalism.

And again, that's solely because he's written a 490 page volume about the topic and subject. So it's with that printed material, that printed work that I and others here at G3 have interacted with. While again, you mentioned it as we took to break, Stephen Wolfe is not the standard bearer in that he is emblematic, the example of all of quote unquote Christian nationalism.

But because of the fact that he does have a published work on the subject matter, we took that seriously and reviewed it. There are other published pieces, but the work that kind of lands into our lane of Christianity and the like would be Wolfe's book.

And so that's what we dealt with. I will say this, there are versions of this that differ. And you could even categorize some of the ideas around it. You've got everything from what we would call maybe a conservative patriotism, right?

Those who are conservative patriots to those who are maybe conservative and political with their patriotism. Those who are quote unquote Christian nationalists. And then there are brothers who are more theonomist and post mill and their eschatology and the like who hold to kind of what's being called mere Christendom.

And so there's a wide variety, a wide range of people that we're dealing with, more of the folks who are more Trumpian and where you get a lot of the Trump ideas and that kind of thing. Those folks are kind of General Flynn followers and the like, and they're more charismatic.

And they're large numbers. They're the ones who are showing up at rallies and are trying to push Trump across the victory line. And again, not to say anything negative about Trump or positive about Trump or affirming in any way, just trying to lay out the landscape of this broad idea known as Christian nationalism.

But before folks like you and me who are in very serious circles, Reformed Baptist circles particularly, I think it's important for us to step back and look at what this actually is. And I think you have to begin at the beginning.

If you remember, Chris, when we started looking at woke church, things like woke church from Eric Mason, and we looked at the social justice movement as it began to enter evangelical circles. And we began to look at CRT, critical race theory.

And we actually walked backwards to say, where are these ideas coming from? We know that there's nothing new under the sun. So it's important that we go back and see where these ideas germinated from.

And when we did, we walked all the way back to Karl Marx and the Marxist ideas that began what we know as critical theory. And so out of critical theory comes critical race theory. Out of that, we get intersectionality.

Out of that, we get the movement for social justice. Out of that, we get cries for justice within a particular racial ethnic group, right? But black lives then matter, right? And so unfortunately, I think what's happened in evangelical circles is we followed movements, adopted their ideas, branded ourselves with them, only later to find out it probably wasn't the wisest thing in the world to begin parroting things like black lives matter without going back and doing kind of a historical dive into where is this stuff coming from?

Only later to have the ladies who started the black lives matter movement admit that they had been trained Marxists. And so then we had to go back and say, okay, what does that mean? In the same way, I think it's important before we adopt quote unquote Christian nationalism to go back and understand what is nationalism.

And so I wanted us to do that. I wanted to go back and do that. So I wrote a piece about this subject matter. You can find it at g3men .org. And the title of the article is The Dangerous Intersection of Christian Nationalism and Ethnocentrism.

Now, folks have kind of given me flag for using the term ethnocentrism. Some believe that I think that ethnocentrism is equivalent to racism. I wanna categorically say that that is not true at all. Ethnocentrism is a central focus on an ethnic group.

There's nothing inherently sinful about focusing on a particular ethnic group, but there can be something sinful about focusing on a particular ethnic group. So I think we need to pause and talk about that.

That's as it relates to the actual title of the article. As it pertains to nationalism, nationalism for the most part is defined in this way. And again, just defining our terms. Nationalism is an ideology that emphasizes loyalty, devotion, or allegiance to a nation or nation state and holds that such obligations outweigh other individual interests.

So in other words, when you think about nationalism, nationalism in and of itself considers a nation, an entity of itself with values, ideas, and interests that actually supersede those of an individual group.

That's important to know. And the reason why that's important to note as it pertains to the word nationalism is this, we live in a democratic republic. And one of the things that the founders embedded into our constitution is the idea of individual rights and that individuals are innately endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.