Premils have held to this as well. The difference would be that a postmil holds it "will" become a reality before Christ comes.
Why are so many Christians against Christian Nationalism?
- Thread starter erickinho1bra
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Premils have held to this as well. The difference would be that a postmil holds it "will" become a reality before Christ comes.
Me too. That is why I think it is good to encourage movements in that direction while pointing out the faults.
pilgrimmum
Puritan Board Freshman
I think the Free Western Nations are already Christian Nations with Constitutions and laws based on the Bible and societies generally.Christian societies. However since the Age of Enlightenment in the mid to late 1800's Christianity has been under attack and we now see a great demise of Christian Civilization on this earth. As an Ammillenialist I believe we may be in.the time of "Satan's loosing for a short season" Rev 20:7-9 and this probably began as early as the 1920s but definitely.by the 1960s. In Rev 20:7-9 Satan gathers God's enemies to surround the Camp of the Saints (Gods people and particularly once Christian based countries) and the Beloved City ( Jerusalem in the NT is the invisible Church of God). So I believe these national movements bringing together Roman Catholics and Protestant Christians are machinations of the Papacy in their ongoing Counter Reformation assault against the Protestant Reformation. Viva La Reformation!
pilgrimmum
Puritan Board Freshman
pilgrimmum
Puritan Board Freshman
Of course we can never have a perfect society in a world of fallen men. We must await the New Eternal Kingdom for that to come at Jesus return, the Resurrection and the Day of judgment. Rev 20:10-15 and Rev 21 and 22.
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Freshman
Well, if you're going to be a fascist, Franco is the best of a bad lot.
And also the only one smart enough to recognize that Hitler was seriously bad news, and that Mussolini was an idiot corporal promoted beyond his competence level. Franco actually understood how to run an army and was able to apply that to running a government. Hitler and Mussolini were rabble-rousing populists who didn't understand governance, plunged their nations into chaos, and obtained power mostly because the "ruling class" was afraid of communism and socialism.
Fascism was much more widespread in the second-tier European nations than we often recognize today, and some places that became allies of the German-Italian axis (Hungary is the biggest example) were much less supportive of Hitler than others. There were sincere Christian nationalists in Europe who supported fascism because they viewed it as the only viable alternative to Communist mobs in the streets.
In Roman Catholic conservative circles, there has been a lot of discussion for many years about whether Francisco Franco was a good guy or a bad guy. It doesn't surprise me that some of this is moving into Reformed circles as Christian nationalists of different theological orientations start communicating with each other and comparing notes.
I have a decades-long history of opposing fascism, even its Spanish form, and the "caudillo culture" of Latin American military dictatorships. I believe the "Lex Rex" principle, that no man is above the law and the law is king, is crucial to a Reformed understanding of civil government. But I'm the first one to say that if the alternative is a Marxist guerilla movement funded by the Soviet Union via Cuba and Nicaragua, as was a very real problem in the Cold War era... well, Franco's model is better than Moscow, and a lot closer to Latin American culture that Wilsonian ideas of American town hall democracy.
The caudillos, as bad as they were, worked to keep Communism out and to defend a Catholic version of Christian culture in Latin America.
That's why some American Catholics like Franco.
We need to know where these things are coming from and where their roots are.
Sure…Franco was great…if you were Catholic. If you were Protestant, not so much. Some of us are perfectly aware of history.
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Freshman
We concur. But sadly, many conservative Christians are NOT aware of that history.
I've been reading in political opinion journals and commentaries in national media that America would eventually develop a "Protestant Franco" or a "Protestant Mussolini," and some argue that Donald Trump is that. The discussion predates Trump appearing on the American political scene, and most but not all of the people who talk that way today fear Trump and are political liberals and are trying to attack him with those labels. I have lots of problems with all sorts of underlying assumptions in that and I think most conservative Reformed people would say that Trump is far from what we would like to see in a Christian leader.
But many of those Reformed people, and I include myself in that number, voted for Rick Santorum in the Republican primaries, and supported Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
I am perfectly willing to follow Abraham Kuyper and Francis Schaeffer and the modern American pro-life movement in working with Roman Catholics in the sphere of the civil magistrate. That's been the default position for decades in American conservative Christian circles (and yes, I know it's NOT the RPCNA default position, to which you belong, and I respect that).
The problem we face is that if American conservative Christians decide that the American constitutional republic no longer works, and is on its last legs, and has to be replaced using some sort of recovery of federalist principles with a return to widespread diversity between the states (which I could support), or defiance of the law or outright secession, which I definitely do not support -- and those are being seriously floated in Christian Nationalist circles -- we're going to have to deal with a resurgent form of Roman Catholic traditionalism that seeks to create something utterly foreign to the American experience.
We need to know and understand why a significant number of traditional Roman Catholics like Franco.
It's not our tradition in America. It's not our tradition as Protestant Christians, and it certainly is NOT part of our Reformed heritage.
It's fascism, not used as a curse word, but an accurate description of a type of government that ascribes power to the state over private individuals and private industry in promoting traditional values that goes beyond what we have historically taught in Reformed political theory. Also, it places authority in people, not principles, and leads to many of the problems of monarchy except that the ruler is not hereditary and is selected, at least in theory, by merit.
We take for granted in America things like plurality of the eldership in the church (or equivalents, such as boards of deacons in Baptist churches) and governance of companies and of cities, counties, states and the nation being by a board of people elected for that purpose. Those principles of civil government stem from a Reformed view of church government.
Caudillo culture developed in Latin America for a reason, and the reasons are very similar to why fascism developed in Italy and Spain. A different cultural view of authority leads to a different approach to government.
We don't want to go there.
ZackF
Puritan Board Professor
Darrell has hit the points that make the subject difficult on CN in general and the Spanish Civil War as a particular case. There is not always a clear "good guy" side. People found themselves communists or fascists because they often thought the other was worse and sided for protection. They picked a tribe and tried to survive. For many the dogmas came along for the ride. The more I learn about the brutality of 20th century political movemants, the less judgemental I get about everyman individuals. Mercifully, I'm not a Russian in 1917, not a German in 1933 as well not being a Spaniard in 1936. There but for the grace of God I am neither a Bolshevik nor Nazi. Sadly, I can see myself as either or both of them.
Northern Crofter
Puritan Board Junior
You don't need to be either. Perhaps we need to revisit the wisdom of the (albeit relatively small) tradition of political dissent within the history of the Reformed (especially in the entrenched two-party system of the secular US).
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darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Freshman
Thank you.
I do think we are at an inflection point in modern American politics with Donald Trump. I've made my decision and made it back in 2016 when Ted Cruz (who had his own problems) was defeated by Trump for the Republican nomination. But as I did so, I was very much aware I was voting **AGAINST** Hillary Clinton. Still, I will be held accountable for my choice just as people were in the 1930s in a number of European countries, not only Spain and Germany.
People who say "Trump is Hitler" are either ignorant or deceptively malicious and I definitely am not saying that. The people who compare Trump to Mussolini are on better grounds, though I think in Italian politics, Berlusconi is a far closer parallel.
But what I expected would happen, not just in the United States but overseas, has now happened. Based on what is happening in the United States and "normalization" of things that didn't use to be normal, we now have "national conservative" parties winning elections all over Europe, and increasingly elsewhere, that sometimes have direct roots in fascism but more often are populist. Some are very old (Meloni's "Brothers of Italy," for example) and have taken the necessary steps to address their past and try to identify what went wrong while continuing to address the legitimate grievances that led to the creation of their parties decades ago. That's also partly true with France's "National Front," now "National Rally," in which Marine LePen has had to essentially disown her own father because of his anti-Semitism. But a number of the newer populist parties have been founded by political outsiders, often fairly young, who do not know their nations' histories very well and are making some of the same mistakes as populist parties of previous generations.
The United States, and before us, Great Britain, have been known for two centuries as the major advocates for the rule of law. We take "Lex Rex" for granted in the Anglosphere and fail to recognize how truly unusual that principle has been in world history, and even in Western history in Europe. "I am the state" and similar claims of divine right of kings had effectively dismantled parliamentary and pro-parliamentary institutions that once existed in many countries of Europe, and the nightmares of the French Revolution and Prussian militarism were built on a long history of lack of respect for law, but great respect being demanded for central authority.
American liberals began to destroy that concept of "Lex Rex" by turning our Constitution into a wax nose and declaring anything "unconstitutional" they didn't like if they could muster five votes on the Supreme Court. In response, for a long time, conservatives were winning not only the battles but also the war by convincing Americans that words have meaning and no contract is safe if judges don't accept the plain meaning of the texts in front of them in deciding what the text means. (That has direct relevance to theology as well -- Protestant liberalism was doing to the Bible what the Supreme Court liberals were doing to the Constitution, and ecclesiastical liberals were doing it long before secular liberals. An excellent case can be made that theological liberalism led to political liberalism by making it acceptable to "deconstruct" an authoritative text, whether the Bible or the US Constitution.)
What gravely concerns me is that, with the liberal use of "lawfare" against conservatives, we're well down the road now to a position in which conservatives are giving up on the whole concept of binding authority of a written Constitution and that judges exist to interpret the law, not make the law. Too many conservatives have given up on the project of making the courts neutral interpreters of the text of the law in front of them and say, "Win by whatever means it takes because the other side no longer follows the rules."
This will end not just badly but horribly.
Likely not anywhere near as badly as the 1930s, but we may spend decades cleaning up the mess and restoring the concept of the rule of law.
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ZackF
Puritan Board Professor
That I am grateful for!
Northern Crofter
Puritan Board Junior
Sorry about the two- edited!
I oppose it because it is a battle that is not gospel centered.
Paul had a great opportunity to promote CN as he stood trial. Acts 26 can teach us on these matters. He saw Agrippa as needing the gospel.
Controlling the narrative doesn't alter the moral duty to act on the knowledge that one has. The Bible doesn't give moral directions on the basis of cynical views of what people do in high places. God will judge them. We follow God.
Beware of false prophets ... Ye shall know them by their fruits. The magistrate isn't a prophet. Evil surmising is no part of a Christian's calling.
The Holy Spirit's answer to your question is, "Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake."
I wrestled with whether or not to respond to this. Yes, historical circumstances are hard and we need to take them into consideration instead of dealing merely in abstracts. However, the issue surrounding the modern US CN movement is that too many (not all, lest we paint with too broad a brush and be slanderous) are idolizing people and systems apart from the historical circumstances. We don’t live in those times. Our threats are not the same and we have the benefit of hindsight. There is no excuse for approving of and/or idolizing bankrupt ideologies and their proponents, regardless of the circumstances that created them. We know they were wrong in the tack they took.
ZackF
Puritan Board Professor
Exactly, that is my point. It is sad there is no shortage of pining for and subsequently larping in all kinds of left/right garbage. For left-wing examples, there are many Reddit forums of millenials and younger waxing eloquent about Marx, Lennin, Trotsky, Mao, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Guevara, Castro and other lovables. They wish they lived in places like the Soviet Union and the DDR. Also, Hitler is making a comeback on social media.
Neil Shenvi has an interesting piece on what he calls the "woke right" here. It maps on to your comment fairly well.
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