Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide For Taking Dominion And Discipling Nations

This is a book that would offend and anger a lot of people. I get that. I read it so I could understand a friend’s point-of-view a little better.

I read it at the same time as The Boniface Option which is even more extreme, but I’m calling out the chance of offense here just because of the title. Where Boniface is enigmatic, the title of this book straight out uses the phrase “Christian Nationalism,” which provokes anger in a lot of people.

It was written by Andrew Isker, a Minnesota pastor and the author of Boniface, and Andrew Torba, who is the founder of Gab, which is a…social media platform-cum-payment system, I think?

(Gab has been known to have very lax content moderation policies, which have enabled a lot of objectionable stuff to be published on it. And Torba is commonly characterized as a blatant antisemite, but more on that later.)

The book is a call for Christians to take control of America. Not by force, but by election and by “default-ness.” The book would like all Christians to run for office or otherwise occupy positions of authority, and then unapologetically exert Christian influence in public affairs. And it also wants Christians to understand the history of this nation in a Christian context, and effectively treat that as the default standard for America.

It makes no apologies for the phrase Christian Nationalism. They point out that Jesus Himself directed Christian to “make disciples of all nations.” At one point in the book the authors say (I’m paraphrasing because I can’t locate it right now):

If you’re a Christian and you don’t like the idea of Christian Nationalism, then you’re just a disobedient Christian.

The entire book is like that. They pull no punches.

The key to all this is that they believe the United States is fundamentally a Christian nation. They claim it was founded as such, and needs to be returned to such. Christianity should be the national religion, and all the world should consider America and Christianity as two sides of the same coin.

Their reasoning is interesting. They make the point that this country didn’t begin when the Constitution was written. It began when pilgrims set up colonies in the 1500s and 1600s. And they’ve gone back to the founding documents of those colonies to offer proof that each one was founding as an explicitly Christian society.

They have an appendix of excerpts from these documents. For example, here’s a excerpt from The First Charter of Virginia in 1606:

[Virginia will work] in propagating of Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and miserable ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God, and may in time bring the Infidels and Savages, living in those parts, to human Civility […]

Then they make the point that when the states were founded, they each had an official religion – some denomination of Christianity. Virginia was Anglican, New York was Dutch Reformed, Massachusetts was Puritan Congregationalist, Maryland was Catholic, etc.

This culminates in their point that the Establishment Clause of the Constitution was not meant to separate government and religion, but just to prevent the federal government from establishing a single, federal religion. Essentially, each state wanted their own denomination, and they were worried that the government was going to coerce them into something else.

(Note: the current Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, has made a similar point. He’s been quoted as saying, “The founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.”)

Now, I don’t know the actual legal validity of all this, but it’s a unique argument I’ve never heard before.

Isker is less angry here than he is in Boniface. This book has a…nicer, veneer to it? Even thought a lot of people would be really upset with it, it’s wrapped in a cloak of kindness.

As for Torba’s claimed antisemitism, he has a whole chapter on Judaism, in which he makes two very strident points:

• He says that Judaism is a false religion, and that it bears no relationship with Christianity. He does not like the label: “Judeo-Christian” – he says this is a contradiction in terms. In Torba’s view, Judaism is effectively no different than Islam, and Christians need to work to convert Jews.
• He says that the United States shouldn’t help Israel any more than any other country in the Middle East or give Judaism any more consideration than any other faith. Our political sympathies and allegiance to Israel are misplaced.

Is this antisemitic? …I don’t think so? These are just two strong religious and political claims.

(Now, to be fair, I’m only looking at what Torba wrote in this book. He might be wildly antisemitic in other places. I haven’t read anything else he’s written. Maybe he was just really careful in this book.)

Torba uses the phrase “ethnic Jews” in many places. I’m sure he does this to undercut claims of bias, but I get confused because I’m not totally sure Jewish-ness is even an ethnicity (see: Ashkenazi Jew). When he says “ethnic Jew,” I think he just means “people who would normally have the Jewish faith.”

In addition to becoming Christian authority, the book calls people to “parallel systems.” They use the quote:

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

They talk about creating Christian businesses and Christian schools, and essentially creating a separate Christian society that – one presumes – would eventually overwhelm and subsume the secular one.

Gab is one such attempt. Torba talks about how Gab is designed for Christians to be able to exert and express their Christianity without fear of “cancellation.” (The book feels like a bit of an advertisement for Gab in places. In fact, there’s an explicit promotional blurb in the front matter.)

However, I get confused because this seems to be the exact opposite of what Isker is promoting in Boniface. In that book, Isker says we have to attack secularism. As I mention in the review for that book, it’s framed around rebutting The Benedict Option, which I need to read, I think, to get a fuller understanding.

I’m glad I read the book, because it was refreshing to hear someone just say the quiet part out loud. A lot of times, people qualify their strong opinions because they’re trying to get elected or win public favor or something. But this book takes the shackles off and just blatantly and clearly explains what Christian Nationalism is and what it wants.

Depending on your spiritual inclinations, this will either be horrifying or inspiring to you.