One Nation - Two Masters: The Confusion that is Sacralist-Nationalist Evangelicalism

https://cne.news/article/4851-why-one-nation-can-never-serve-two-masters

We read in Matthew 6.24:

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Not long ago I head Charlie Kirk twist this passage and use it to justify nationalism. You have to serve and love your country or not. You can't have divided loyalty. It was a complete distortion of the passage as it actually precludes the very nationalism Kirk was arguing for. Kirk was advocating a divided loyalty that contradicted the words of Christ.

Unfortunately it was yet another testimony to Kirk's confusion and the fact that he never actually understood the New Testament. The passage in question utterly repudiates the notion of undivided loyalty to the United States - or loyalty at all for that matter. Such a statement can only make sense if you confuse the United States with the Kingdom and thus the realm and service of God - which is idolatrous and heretical - and literally damning.

Placentino launches into a confused discussion of Christendom (the notion that Western Civilisation is a sanctified culture and thus the Kingdom of God) and contrasts this with Pluralism which tolerates different political and cultural outlooks. Placentino laments the fall of Christendom and suggests that Pluralism implies religion is no longer necessary to interpret the world.

In addition to begging the question regarding the identity, extent, reality, and justification for Christendom, he's actually calling into question something the apostle Paul said. In 1 Corinthians 5 he refers to those who are outside and that God (and not us) will judge them. In other words there was (and is) an extant plurality and it's not a problem for the Christian Church. In fact it's normative and when that norm is confused or erased, the discernment and sense of identity that Paul argues from becomes shaky if not meaningless or impossible.

Christendom destroys the Church's ability to interpret the world because the world and the Church become confused - even indistinguishable.

Placentino is dead wrong.

While the assumptions of French Laicite are far from Christian, they are compatible with the expectations of New Testament Christianity. We can live under a system if indeed it will leave us alone. This is opposed to a sacral order which mandates conformity. For argument's sake we might say that's fine if it happens to be the version of Christianity to which you subscribe, but if not, such an order results in persecution. The history of Christendom bears this out. It was a dark age for those attempting to be faithful to the New Testament and live out its imperatives and its concept of Churchly life.

Since the world is fallen and given over to idolatry all systems fail and while laicite or Liberalism might work for awhile and leave the Church alone, it's inevitable that at some point the tide will shift and conformity will be demanded. At that juncture the Church must resist and refuse to go along with it - and suffer or flee as required. If we're pilgrims, (contrary to Kirk) we have no national loyalties or affections and such realities are not as painful for us as they would be to those who possess deep patriotic feeling and have invested in these societies and their economies.

Humanism is most certainly a religion and a very evil one. It will run its course. Indeed its end is already visible to those who have eyes to see. But as flawed as it has been, be careful what you wish for because what's coming next might be worse.

A return to Christendom is no solution but a case of a dog returning to its vomit. Christendom was not shattered in 1789. It broke in the 14th century, shattered in the 16th, destroyed itself in the 17th - and began to be replaced in the 18th. Humanism has been the dominant religion for a few centuries now and it has infiltrated and corrupted the Church - many confusing its ideals with New Testament doctrine and ethics. Discernment is what is needed now, not a return to a romanticised version of Christendom that rested on foundations that were shattered centuries ago. The unified worldview, the consensus that held it together was always erroneous and has been destroyed. No one is turning back to Ptolemy, Galen, Aristotle, or the Chain of Being and few would want to. Placentino needs to understand that whatever these modern Dominionists and Integralists attempt to erect will necessarily be something quite different and necessarily fragmented and riddled with even more inconsistencies and internal contradictions than the Christendom of the Scholastics. It's not of God and thus doomed to fail.

Nations cannot confess that they are under God - they cannot unilaterally claim covenantal prerogative. They cannot legislate Christianity without fundamentally redefining it. That's what happened before in the 4th century under Constantine and Theodosius. In order to survive the following millennium it further redefined the concepts again and again - to the point that it was not even recognizable vis-à-vis the New Testament.

Some would argue that's to be expected. Some would argue it was wrought by the Spirit. These arguments actually generate more problems than they solve.

Placentino suggests pluralism leads to syncretism. It certainly can and most certainly has when one looks at American Catholicism or Western Evangelicalism. But the sacral order he considers the ideal, results in the same because the New Testament provides no basis for a political order, an economic system, a social structuring, or the epistemology required to flesh out a society and culture. All along the way the architects of Christendom will beg, borrow, and steal from other cultures. They will innovate. They will twist Scripture, extrapolating things from the text that aren't there and reading things into the text that were never what the Spirit intended. This is actually a far worse scenario then simply having to deal with humanism - though the Church has failed to do so.

Halfway through the article we finally come to the point. Placentino is primarily concerned about Muslim immigration and yet wants to cast the question in terms of Christendom (alongside the confused notion of nationalism and national-identity).

And so Placentino falls into the same error as Charlie Kirk - he wants to posit that the antithetical choice offered by Christ is cast in terms of national identity and allegiance as opposed to pluralist laxity. It's a false choice and a twisting of Christ's words. The only holy nation is the Church and it is the only Kingdom to which we belong and owe allegiance. Submitting to Providence, we honour Earthly rulers by obeying laws and we and pay our taxes but we do not share in their Babel visions or participate in their sword and coin strategies.

Having a state is better than the anarchic alternative - which is fiction anyway. Nations built on ideal are necessarily anti-Christian and we reject all tribal identity. Though many a fool and false teacher tries to find 'nationalism' in the Scripture, the concept is alien to New Testament thinking. Acts 2 reverses Babel (for the Church in the Spirit), Acts 10 reiterates this reality as well as what we find in Galatians 3.28 and Colossians 3.11. 1 Peter 2.9-17 identifies our nation, contrasts it with the 'Gentiles' and in light of that exhorts us how to live. Are we called to be super-citizens as per Kirk? Hardly, we're told to submit to ordinances. In other words we live as subjects not as rights-demanding citizens invested in the flourishing of Rome, Babel, Britain, or America. Honouring the king is on the basis of understanding the powers that be are ordained by God and that's true whether it's Trump, Obama, or Xi Jinping. But nationalism is nowhere to be found let along the bigotry of racism, class, or tribe.

To follow Christ is to reject Islam but it's also to reject nationalism in all its forms. New Testament Christianity has no political platform or agenda but one could say it offers an internationalist perspective - not in terms of a universal, utopian plan for all nations but rather a rejection of nationalism, national identity, and patriotism. Our allegiance - our only allegiance, is to Zion and that Kingdom is comprised of people from all nations. These are our brothers and sisters, our fellow-citizens. And we must put them above any other loyalty. The fact that Christians invest in Wall Street schemes that exploit believers in other lands and profit off their sweat, pain, and displacement is nothing less than apostasy.

If the secular governments of France or Spain want to restrict or ban Muslim immigration - so be it. Although I do consider it grossly hypocritical when one sees how the West sows discord and wreaks havoc in these lands and then resents when these people seek security and economic prosperity in their lands. Quit bombing them and manipulating their politics and economies, and let them alone - and maybe they'll stay put and try to build their own nations.

But I would never want the attacks on immigrants in any way to be associated with Christians, the Church - let alone (God forbid) some twisted understanding of applied Christian ethics. And yet that's exactly what we're seeing as even now the Right (and many deceived Christians) are gearing up for a violent struggle and an attempted purge. Many actively support parties like the AfD and its implicit suggestions of violence and coming civil war - not to mention its de facto alliance with vigilantism.

Sacralism is a man-made worldly ideology - man's attempt to manipulate the Kingdom and force into terms that are coherent with the reason and lustful desires of fallen man. It's all about mammon and mammonism - the systems of politics and economics that flow out of this desire. Placentino is woefully ignorant of this and the very wisdom he seeks to understand.

To appeal to Solomon or the Old Testament theocracy is to misread Scripture and to misunderstand and misapply the typology. Solomon's kingdom is not a pattern for France, Spain, or America. It was typological picture of Zion and is fulfilled in the Church - the Kingdom of Heaven which is eschatological. And Christ and his apostles explicitly reject the assumptions upon which Placentino stands.

For one that possesses a theological education, this article represents a woeful misunderstanding of basic New Testament Christianity. This is the all too common reality regarding modern Evangelicalism and it's all the more ironic given that the Evangelicalism of Placentino is so utterly divorced (in doctrinal terms) from the theological frameworks of historic Christendom and even the Magisterial Reformation. It is an ecclesiology that represents the very kind of humanistic hybrid Placentino warns against. The end result is that the article comes across as not only erroneous but somewhat absurd.