Report of an Execution From a Future Christian Nationalist State

Idaho carries out first known execution in Christian Commonwealth amid ongoing protests

12/08/2030

Boise, ID – The Christian Commonwealth of Idaho announced on Thursday that it had executed a man arrested during the state-wide protests that have shaken the commonwealth for several months.

The protester, identified as David Hunter by the Idaho news service, is thought to be the first person executed by Idaho’s Christian Commonwealth since the former American state gained independence in 2028.

Idaho’s Constitution specifically makes blasphemy and disturbance of the religious order of the Commonwealth capital offenses for the most serious offenses. Hunter is the first person to be executed under the regime’s new Christian Constitution.

Hunter was convicted of devising, organizing, and leading protests against Idaho’s Christian state. Protesters want a return to religious freedom in Idaho. According to a spokesperson for Free Idaho, the group has no position on independence from the U.S., but they believe religious freedom is a “God-given right.”

Hunter had appealed his conviction to Idaho’s Court of Holy Magistrates, but his appeal was denied.

Governor says laws applied fairly

Idaho’s Governing Magistrate Douglas Wolfe issued a statement saying that “While we regret Mr. Hunter’s decision to violate the laws of God, we applied the law fairly in his case.”

Wolfe’s spokesman, Stephen Wilson, added, “Freedom of religious belief is the law of the land in Idaho. On the other hand, externalized false religion is the object of punishment and sadly Mr. Hunter led many souls astray with his blasphemous and scandalous actions.”

DeSantis calls for ‘restraint’

U.S. President Ron DeSantis’ responded to the execution calling for Idaho’s leaders to “show restraint.” DeSantis, a supporter of Idaho’s independence during his first term, recently told GOP leaders in Congress that he is less favorable toward similar proposals from Oklahoma and Texas.

“Even a Christian Commonwealth must respect democratic values,” said Press Secretary Joel Turnipseed. “As the president said, we expect Idaho to show restraint.”

More executions expected

However, restraint does not appear to be the policy of Idaho’s Christian government.

Rights watchdog Amnesty International has said that more people have been detained and are potentially facing the death penalty following the protests in the former U.S. state.

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Obviously, this isn’t a real news report. Note the date and the fact that Idaho is still an American state. However, the outcome isn’t too far fetched if the Christian Nationalist vision of Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism is ever allowed to come to pass in the nation or an American state.

In his book, Wolfe calls for governors to lead the way in bringing about this Christian nationalist vision.

State governors are deputies of God, not deputies of the federal government, and their power from God is for good, not for evil. Thus, they must resist and nullify unjust and tyrannical laws imposed on the people by the federal government. No unjust federal law is an ordinance of God, and so it is not backed by a power of God. Therefore, a state governor resisting an unjust law of the federal government is not resisting God but the tyranny of men. Resistance to such tyrannical laws—which are not laws at all—is obedience to God, for they harm the people, and the state governors have the power of God to eliminate what harms the people. State governors must recall their duties to God and fight against injustices of the federal government. (p. 472)

This dramatized parody was inspired by the news report of an execution of a protester in Iran just a few days ago.  My parody above follows the framework of that news report.

I had been thinking about dramatizing how awful it would be to have a government such as envisioned by Wolfe’s book when I read a short opinion piece in the Carolina Journal by David Larson titled, “Making Space for Heretics.” Indeed, a free society must make space for heretics of all sorts.

In my view, any approach to government which allows for the murder, banishment or imprisonment of people for deviating from Protestant orthodoxy is a non-starter. No need for book reviews or debates or consideration. Such an approach isn’t a serious proposal. It is a death wish.

Here is a thread with quotes from The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe on these points.

All of this is in chapter nine of the book.

Photo credit: Florida Department of Corrections/Doug Smith

This is How You Lose an Election and Love Your Country – Hershel Walker Edition

Hershel Walker’s concession speech in his loss to Raphael Warnock for the GA Senate seat.

Donald Trump and Doug Mastriano could learn something from Hershel Walker. This is the best thing I have heard from Walker. This is how you love your country.

“I want you to believe in America, and continue to believe in the Constitution, and I especially want you to believe in our elected officials and pray for them.”

Amazing.

Mark Driscoll Says Mars Hill Elders Planned to Accuse Him of Infidelity

Julie Roys did the hard work so I am going to refer you to her article on this.

In short, in a sermon last Sunday Mark Driscoll claimed that some of the elders who accused him of abusive behavior at Mars Hill Church planned to accuse of adultery if he didn’t step out of the pulpit.

From Roys article:

Driscoll alleged that prior to resigning from Mars Hill, God told him “that a trap was set.” Then, during an 18-month hiatus following his resignation, Driscoll said he met multiple times at Panera with some “critics and enemies” who used to be friends, “some who were pastors, some who are still pastors.”

Driscoll said when he asked these former friends about a possible trap, they responded that “the nuclear option was that we were going to accuse you of adultery.”

Driscoll said the plan was to get him “out of the pulpit.” And those plotting against him believed that if “we accused you of adultery, and enough of us signed the open letter, that ultimately there would be such a media firestorm that you would have to exit the ministry . . . for probably a year while a full investigation was done,’” Driscoll recounted.

Sutton Turner, former number two man at Mars Hill, denied anything like that to Roys and then today put out a tweet linking to notes taken from the meeting where Driscoll was informed of the elders findings. Significantly, Driscoll was found to be disqualified from ministry but for no reasons involving infidelity.

From my perspective, this is a fantastical story. If the elders wanted to make such an allegation, they could have made it when he resigned suddenly rather than enter a plan of restoration. Likewise, these same elders could have done this last year when they approached Christianity Today with a statement calling on Driscoll to resign from The Trinity Church in Phoenix.

Although it has taken him awhile, all I can surmise is that he is now fighting back against the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast. Elsewhere in the sermon, he encouraged his congregation to ignore what they read on the Internet. Never mind what hundreds of people say, just listen to Mark Driscoll is the message. What could go wrong?

UPDATE: Miles Rohde, one of the elders on the Board of Elders who investigated the charges against Driscoll, commented on Twitter about Driscoll’s response to the BOE’s findings.

Despite the fact that Driscoll’s book Doctrine upheld the authority of elders, he didn’t follow his own teaching when the time came to apply it.

Will Christian Nationalists Let Us Have Baseball on Sunday?

In defense of the rising National Conservative movement (which appears to be adjacent to Christian nationalism), Daily Wire reporter and Claremont fellow Meg Basham wrote this:

Oh where to begin.

Ms. Basham says biblical morality was foundational for our constitutional republic and this fact was not controversial for 200 years. I have numerous posts on this blog contesting the notion that America’s Constitution was founded on the Bible or Christianity in a deliberate manner. This assumption is the bitter fruit of David Barton’s work.

However, let’s consider this: during the founding era, there were people who believed God had a providential hand in bringing the nation together. That is a different proposition than the Christian nationalist project.  I believe with Madison that “a finger of that Almighty hand” of God providentially brought about a system which protects freedom of conscience but does not privilege one religion over another. Furthermore, I don’t believe the Constitution requires biblical morality to be a reference point for public policy. If that was true, the Constitution would have said so.

During the founding era, there were also those who believed God was left out of the process. For instance, Timothy Dwight was a prominent Congregationalist minister and the president of Yale from 1795 to 1817. In a July 23 1812 sermon to Yale students and faculty, Dwight had strong words about those who wrote the Constitution.

The second of these reasons is, the sinful character of our nation. Notwithstanding the prevalence of Religion, which I have described, the irreligion, and the wickedness, of our land are such, as to furnish a most painful and melancholy prospect to a serious mind. We formed our Constitution without any acknowledgment of God; without any recognition of his mercies to us, as a people, of his government, or even of his existence.

The Convention, by which it was formed, never asked, even once, his direction, or his blessing upon their labours. Thus we commenced our national existence under the present system, without God. I wish I could say, that a disposition to render him the reverence, due to his great Name, and the gratitude, demanded by his innumerable mercies, had been more public, visible, uniform, and fervent.

Timothy Dwight wanted more influence of biblical morality on the new government, but he didn’t see it. To him in 1812, contra Basham, the relationship between Christianity and public policy was quite controversial and not to his liking. In fact, as Dwight lamented, the formation of the Constitution was much more secular than religious. For instance, the old statesman, Ben Franklin, attempted to use prayer as a tool to bring some harmony to the contentious convention, but even the cunning Franklin couldn’t get the delegates to pray.

If we describe Christian nationalism as the belief that public policy should be influenced by biblical morality (that is to say, the teachings of the Bible about what we should and should not do), then there have always been Christian nationalists like Timothy Dwight. But there have also always been those (like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison) who don’t believe public policy should be influenced solely or inevitably by a specific version of biblical teaching. This is what I really want to address in this post.

Can We Play Baseball on Sunday?

There are some practical questions I want Christian nationalists like Basham to answer. She says there has been no controversy for 200 years about using biblical morality as a foundation for public policy. I beg to differ. Immediately, I thought of the Cincinnati Bible Wars which eventually led to the removal of Bible reading from Cincinnati schools in 1872. Then I thought of something more recent: Sunday baseball.

Christians who view Sunday as a day of rest are probably in the minority these days, but once upon a time, their biblical morality was foundational for laws restricting numerous activities on Sunday we now take for granted. One such activity was professional baseball on Sunday. Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago started the trend toward legalization of Sunday games in 1902. But what I want to focus on is my home state of Pennsylvania. In 1927, the PA Supreme Court ruled that a game played in 1926 on Sunday by the Philadelphia Athletics and Chicago White Sox was illegal. The June 27, 1927 Philadephia Evening Bulletin proclaimed:

The judges specifically appealed to the Christian character of the state of Pennsylvania as a foundation of their decision.

“Christianity is part of the common law of Pennsylvania (Updograph v. Comth., 11 S. & R. 393 and its people are Christian people. Sunday is the holy day among Christians. No one we think would contend that professional baseball partake in any way of the nature of holiness and when contrasted with things which do, it is bound to be categorized as worldly.

The court concluded that professional baseball on Sunday was a worldly activity in violation of the 1794 statute against such activities on Sunday. The court made it clear that the statute had a religious foundation.

“The statue says ‘If any person shall do or perform any worldly employment or business whatsoever on the Lord’s Day, commonly called Sunday, works of necessity and charity only excepted… and be convicted thereof, every such person, so offending shall, for every such offense, forfeit and pay four dollars, to be levied by distress; or in case he shall refuse or neglect to pay the said sum… he or she shall suffer six days imprisonment in the house of correction of the proper country.

“The word ‘worldly’ as here used means ‘concerned with the enjoyments of this present existence secular’ ‘not religious, spiritual or holy.’ Chief Justice Lowrie, speaking for the court in Comth, v. Nesbit, 34 Pa. 398, 409, said ‘Very evidently, worldly is contrasted with religious, and the worldly employments are prohibited for the sake of the religious ones.’

“We cannot imagine in this sense anything more worldly or unreligious in the way of employment than the playing of professional baseball as it is played today. It is not only worldly employment, which is forbidden, but business. There are businesses which are not trade or commerce: Hooper v. California, 155 U.S. 648.

So Christian nationalists and national conservatives, will we have Sunday baseball under your holy regime? Does your biblical morality include Sunday Sabbath? At one time, there was a Christian consensus that worldly activity on Sunday was grievous sin. What happened? What changed? Will you bring Blue Laws back?

Financial pressure brought by the Great Depression eventually brought legislative changes which allowed local communities to decide by vote to have or reject Sunday baseball. In 1934, Philadelphia voted to bring Sunday games to the city.

Some readers may think this is silly. While it may be a light topic, I think it illustrates that historically (200 years plus), Americans have not agreed about how to use biblical morality as a foundation for public policy. It is easy to say biblical morality should be the foundation of public policy in a tweet or a think piece, but it has never been easy to sort out in practice when there are hundreds of different views of what biblical teaching should be. Platitudes are easy, governing and cooperating is much harder in a society with people who disagree with you.

So Christian national conservatives, what do say? Sunday baseball? Other blue laws? Bible reading in schools? Prohibition again? Stoning adulterers?

What does your Christian new world look like?

 

Greatest Hits: Should Christians Be Nationalists? Julie Roys Radio Show 2017

My schedule these days is keeping me from blogging much so I thought I would bring up some of past material which is relevant to now. One of my earliest meetings with Julie Roy was in 2017 when she hosted a radio show with Moody. This program related to Christian nationalism.

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At noon (ET) tomorrow, I will be on the Moody Radio Network program “Up for Debate with Julie Roy” to discuss the question, “Should Christians Be Nationalists?”

The guest taking a contrasting position will be Ken Klulowski who is the Legal Editor at Breitbart News and Senior Counsel & Director of Strategic Affairs at the First Liberty Institute.

I originally wanted to debate whether or not America is a Christian nation.
You can listen online here: https://www.moodyradio.org/upfordebate (updated link).

As background, see these posts on the subject (here, here, and here)

UPDATE: (7/1/17)
The show went well I think in that both sides had the ability to make important points. I do want to correct or least amend a couple of Ken Klukowski’s claims.

On one occasion he said he didn’t recognize James Madison from my quote of Madison and then said Madision’s views could be discerned by his vote for chaplains in Congress. He also said most of the founders had seminary degrees.

One. my Madison quote is sound and two, Klukowski did not tell the rest of the story on Madison. Later, Madison forcefully disagreed with the funding of chaplains and said so here.

On the founders and seminary degrees, this is a distortion made famous by David Barton. See this piece about that misleading claim.