Benedict vs Boniface

And a nod to Pope Pius XI

This is a bonus substack instalment as you might be fed up with my writing about what it means for Christ to be our King. A public disagreement broke out recently between two voices I find interesting, namely Rod Dreher and Doug Wilson. It is about Christian Nationalism, which causes alarm in some, if not most, quarters. But it might be rather too niche or geeky for this Substack. But I decided to let you be the judge. So this isn’t a Friday Substack, which I hope is reliably engaging to a slightly broader audience. This is a one-off Tuesday special.

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Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been writing about the Kingship of Christ. In fact, next month, on 26^th November, the Roman Catholic Church celebrates Christ the King Day for almost the hundredth time. It was started in 1925 by Pope Pius XI who was a little concerned about the rise of nationalism and secularism across the globe. So in his encyclical Quas primas, he instituted the Solemnity of Christ the King in 1925 as a reminder that Christ reigns above all earthly rulers.

The new feast day hardly stemmed the rising tide of unsavoury secular governments, and we still live in the light of those despotic dictators who brought about deaths of hundreds of millions in the 20th century.

A hundred years on, however, the West likes to think it has vanquished the spectre of extremism with our various versions of democratic government. The problem is that we’ve been swimming in secular liberalism for so long we now assume it is the only way in which civilised society survives.

The prospect of having secular liberalism taken away is utterly unthinkable. It would be like someone reaching into our fishbowl and pulling us out. What will happen next? Will we be flash-fried and eaten? Or allowed to flap around on a countertop, gills gasping until we die? But what if we’re dropped into a river? Or a reservoir? Maybe a Christian alternative is better. Some kind of Christian government for our nation. Oh, no! Is that Christian Nationalism?

Getting Queasy

People get very queasy about the term ‘Christian Nationalism’, even though it is just a thought experiment. We’re not being taken over by Christians any time soon, especially here in the UK. But people speak out – and freak out – at the faintest whiff of Christian Nationalism.

Danny Kruger, a Conservative MP and a Christian, has written a book called Covenant: The New Politics of Home, Neighbourhood and Nation. No-one has branded him a ‘Christian Nationalist’ anywhere I can find on the internet (and I looked for a while). But even fellow conservatives often find Kruger’s Christianity irritating, unnecessary or embarrassing.

A while back, I wrote about how Kathleen Stock wrote in centre-right publication Unherd about the National Conservatism conference in May. She wrote:

As I watched the conference unfold, I started to think that having a name that starts with “National” and ends with “ism” might be the least of National Conservatism’s image problems… I didn’t anticipate there would be a film of MP Danny Kruger coming across like a slightly sinister vicar, lecturing the British public about what many naively assume are private romantic relationships…

And there it is, inviting us to join the dots. Look out for Kruger. He’s a Christian Nationalist. He wants to poke the nose of a theocratic state into your relationships. Be afraid.

Trigger Warning: Christian Nationalism

At this point, Christians run for cover. We don’t want to be seen challenging the lovely secular liberal consensus.

But didn’t Jesus tell his disciples to make disciples of all nations? He clearly believed in nations as a meaningful unit. And that those nations should become Christian. So if you’re a Christian, and you believe in Christ and nations, then what’s the problem with wanting Christian nationalism?

Why would Christians prefer secular nationalism? Or secular liberalism? We live in one which is increasingly intolerant of Christian values. That’s no surprise. Tolerance is a Christian virtue. Not a secular one. A secular state will inevitably drift towards intolerance.

But here’s one big reason why Christians don’t want other Christians to be in charge: because it will be the wrong kind of Christian. Not my kind of Christian. The leader will be a heretical Christian, who is either too extreme, or not extreme enough.

Talking about politics only really highlights our own divisions and it makes some Christians go crazy. I have proof.

A Right Royal Ding Dong

If you want some evidence about how Christians can lose their minds over Christian Nationalism, I’d like to point you to a dispute that has arisen over the last few months on the Twittersphere (the Xosphere? Xiverse?), as well as on the good old-fashioned blogosphere. Allow me to briefly explain the spat.

These names may not mean anything to you but it concerns three men; Rod Dreher, Andrew Iskar and Doug Wilson.

Rod Dreher is the author of The Benedict Option. Once an evangelical, then Catholic and now Orthodox, he is a gloomy fellow who acknowledges that society is in bad shape and collapsing fast. Christians should emulate St Benedict, founder of the monastic order, by retreating, rethinking and regrouping.

Since then, a new book has been written by our second man, Andrew Iskar. He has written The Boniface Option in which he says Christians should emulate St Boniface by taking an axe to the collapsing society and chop it down.

On his Substack, Dreher, the Benedict guy, reviewed the book by Iskar, the Boniface guy. He gave the book a right royal kicking. The real problem for Dreher is that Andrew Iskar was once in the orbit of an unsavoury smashmouth Calvinist pastor from Moscow, Idaho by the name of Doug Wilson who is the third man in this online outragefest.

In his review of The Boniface Option, Dreher went out of his way to say very mean things about Wilson. We’ll get to those in due course. Wilson himself has been writing about Christianity and politics for years, gathering it all up into a book called Mere Christendom, published by Canon Books. Canon Books is based in Moscow, Idaho and recently published another book called The Case of Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe, which lots of Christians really hated.

Dreher is not in love with Secular Liberalism. He is not naïve about what happens when Christianity is erased from the public square. In his latest book, Live Not By Lies, he warns about how the West is slipping into “soft totalitarianism”, talking to survivors of the Stasi who can see the signs. Dreher’s book is subtitled “A Manual for Christian Dissidents,” preparing Christians for all kinds of authoritarian tyranny. For him, a secular state is really bad news.

Doug Wilson may be a proponent of Christendom but for Dreher, Wilson is, of course, the wrong kind of Christian. He assumes Wilson’s vision is a Protestant one which explains Dreher’s jaw-dropping Orwellian conclusion to his book review of The Boniface Option, writing:

… when I finished The Boniface Option last night, I could only imagine a future in which Douglas Wilson’s brogue is stamping on a fake, disgusting, corpulent, but all too human face, forever.

Yikes. But this is what happens when you talk about Christian Nationalism. It makes Christians go crazy. And despite being an Anglican with strong reformed and Calvinistic tendencies, I’m thankful to Pope Pius XI for the reminder that:

When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. — Quas primas, §19