When ‘Christ Is Lord’ is actually bad news [column]

Driving north on Route 501 into Lititz recently, I noticed a prominent black billboard. “Christ Is Lord,” it reads in all caps, followed by “.com” in a smaller font. In the lower left corner, the sign reads, “paid for by Canon Press.” Immediately I knew this was bad news.

“Christ Is Lord” constitutes one of our foundational Christian confessions. We Christians believe it is very good news: In a world dominated by rulers who claw for power, exploit their own people, rule corruptly and buttress their power with violence, Christians look to Jesus for mercy and justice. We adapted this idea from Judaism, in which God alone is ruler and judge.

But when you click on christislord.com, you won’t find standard presentations of the Christian message. Instead, you encounter white Christian nationalism: “when the nations confess that Christ is Lord, you get Christendom.” Not Christianity. Christendom.

Christendom is a system in which sectarian Christians claim religious authority to dominate everyone else. Christislord.com is an advertisement for a book, “Mere Christendom” by Douglas Wilson, an Idaho pastor. And it’s very bad news.

I know about Wilson and Canon Press from studying white Christian nationalism and other forms of radical Christianity over the past several years. I recognized Wilson immediately as a key figure in the movement and Canon Press as his creation. A promotional video for his new book leads with the declaration that’s he’s “America’s most hated pastor” and follows with anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.

I am convinced that white Christian nationalism poses a dire threat to our democracy and to the vitality of American Christianity. Recent research identifies an aversion to right-wing Christianity as a primary contributor to the masses of people abandoning the church.

The ‘paleo-Confederate’

Wilson is the founding pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and quite the institution-builder. In addition to that church and Canon Press, he established New Saint Andrews College (its credo: “Graduating leaders who shape culture living faithfully under the Lordship of Jesus Christ”), the Association of Classical Christian Schools (which claims to have 475 member schools) and other organizations.

Christ Church openly aims to “make Moscow a Christian town.” Its website makes for interesting reading — particularly the section devoted to its position papers.

Regarding this nation’s cultural divisions, Wilson has declared that “we are not yet in a hot civil war, with shooting and all, but we are in a cold war/civil war.”

Perhaps Wilson finds it funny to describe his politics as “slightly to the right of Jeb Stuart.” James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart was a Confederate cavalry general. Wilson uses this “joke” more than once, having also characterized himself as “paleo-Confederate.” Wilson vehemently denies accusations of racism, but he co-authored the monograph, “Southern Slavery, as It Was.” In it, he criticizes Southern slavery not because it existed but because it was not practiced according to biblical principles. Here are some gems from Wilson’s “research”:

— “Slavery as it existed in the South … was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence.”

— “There has never been a multiracial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world” as was the case in the slaveholding South.

— “Slave life was to them (the enslaved) a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care.”

The “Christ Is Lord” billboard is sponsored by an Idaho press that promotes Christian dominion over society, founded by a pastor who has published abominable opinions on race. If you imagine that Wilson also wants a society that punishes LGBTQ+ folks, subordinates women to men, and enforces one narrow stream of Christian theology upon everyone else, well, trust your instincts.

Another Canon Press offering

One might wonder why Canon Press is publishing a book to promote Christian nationalism less than a year after releasing Stephen Wolfe’s “The Case for Christian Nationalism.” That book initially received broad attention, especially in conservative evangelical circles.

But Wolfe’s book quickly hit the rocks. Even conservative evangelical reviewers noted the parts in which Wolfe argues that people of different ethnicities should keep separate; heretics should be executed; and our country needs a “Christian prince.” Wolfe’s argument that every ethnic group has a right to look out for itself reminds this native Alabamian of Ku Klux Klan rhetoric. When Wolfe argues that nationalism should be defined by ethnicity, how does one not hear echoes of Nazism?

Over time folks learned a lot more about Wolfe and his racist associations. He co-hosted a podcast with someone named Thomas Achord until Achord’s racist and antisemitic tweets came to light. Noting that Wolfe frequently cites white nationalist thinkers, one reader identified an earlier essay in which Wolfe wrote that Blacks “in America, considered as a group, are reliable sources for criminality.” I can’t prove it, but I suspect Wilson and Canon Press are launching another book because Wolfe’s — which they promoted — has been disgraced.

Racist, antisemitic attitudes

One might object that it’s unfair to associate Christian nationalism with racism and authoritarianism. However, Andrew Torba — founder of the extremist right-wing social media platform Gab — also co-authored a book on Christian nationalism in September 2022.

That same fall, the Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaign of state Sen. Doug Mastriano drew heat for paying consulting fees to Gab. In response to those reports, Torba claimed that neither he nor Mastriano would give interviews to non-Christian journalists. (In a statement on Twitter, Mastriano said Torba didn’t “speak for me or my campaign.”)

This is all part of a pattern.

Social scientists such as Andrew L. Whitehead, Samuel L. Perry and Philip S. Gorski have demonstrated clear links between white Christian nationalism and racist attitudes. For example, as Perry and Gorski have noted, survey data shows that white “Christian nationalists sincerely believe that whites and Christians are the most persecuted groups in America.”

White Christian nationalism is bad news indeed, even when it packages itself in an innocuous-looking billboard. Most Christians would not subscribe to the agenda of a Douglas Wilson; most Americans would find his politics entirely repulsive. But Christian nationalism looks for the cracks in a democratic society and exploits them to insinuate its narrow politics into places of power. As the LNP | LancasterOnline Editorial Board has noted, we’re experiencing this right now in the assault on school boards in Lancaster County. Responsible citizens and faithful Christians should remain alert.

Greg Carey, Ph.D., is professor of New Testament at Lancaster Theological Seminary. His opinions do not necessarily represent those of the seminary.