Greetings all,
It has been a while since I've written on here - I last wrote at the beginning of September and missed all of October. Things have been exceedingly busy in and out of my office. Between preaching, teaching, writing (just sent my fifth and second-to-last dissertation chapter to my doctoral mentor), and church administration, I simply haven't had time to write.
So this post is a Middle-Man post; that is, I want to recommend you read someone else's post. The context is this: Among conservative evangelicals, especially Reformed-leaning ones, there has been a substantial amount of dialogue on so-called Christian Nationalism. In general terms, CN is a poorly-defined term (though, see Stephen Wolfe's book here) that describes a system where a national government enforces on its nation Christian ethics and metaphysics, i.e. both tables of the Law (the Ten Commandments; the first table of the Law includes commands that assume Monotheism, and in CN, identify Jesus with the God of Israel). Such an idea is clearly offensive to some (most?) Christians, while being the seemingly logical conclusion of other Christians. If the first group says, "Only believers can confess Christ (1 Cor. 12:3), so how could a state do so?" the second group says, "If Jesus is King, should the state not recognize him as such?" Debate ensues.
Joe Rigney, who is the president of Bethlehem College and Seminary, has recently been in a friendly articular debate with Jonathan Leeman, who is a well-published pastor and leader with Nine Marks Ministries in the DMV area. Leeman represents the first group above, and his take on CN can be read here. Rigney's response, not necessarily from a pro-CN perspective, but from a "Let's be careful what we're rejecting here so that we don't throw out the baby" perspective, can be read here. While I recommend that you read both posts, I strongly recommend you read Rigney's. Note how he responds to the usual charge against a national Christian confession (that the "nominalism" it normalizes makes ministry all but impossible): Through history, this has simply not been the case. Ministry has thrived where nations acknowledged Christ. It is when Christ the King of kings is rejected that it is more difficult to let His kingly and priestly influence be allowed into the public square.
I don't want to influence your thinking too much on this. Let me just say that if General Revelation (that God has revealed himself to all people through nature) is true and is perfected by Special Revelation (that the God of nature has revealed himself perfectly through Holy Scripture), then there needn't be such a strong arm against states, countries, and nations acknowledging the Messiahship of Christ. That doesn't mean that there is an official relationship between the church and the state (nor should there be, in my opinion). It just means that Christ's kingship, attested by the fact of the Resurrection (Ac. 2:36), and therefore His Lordship as the source of all that is right, deserves acknowledgment at a broader level than just churches. A lack of this is why, as Rigney notes (echoing Carl Trueman in his monumental Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self), the United States have in the last 50 years seen the breakdown of the family unit, including but not limited to No-fault Divorce, Obergefell, and looseness-without-consequences, also known as the Abortion Genocide (which "rights" constituted the second most important topic on peoples' minds in this past week's elections).
The question is this: Is Jesus King, or is he not? It is true that His kingdom is a spiritual one in the present (Jn. 18:36), and it will come in fullness in the End. But at some point, if you are a Christian and you think that the nation should operate according to Christian morals, you have to acknowledge the source of these morals. And the fact that the United States is essentially split down the middle at a moral/ethical level shows that "common sense" simply won't do as an explanation.
But I digress. Please read Rigney.
