Speaker A
It's good to be with you all. So, I was tasked to give an introduction to Christian nationalism.
A NXR conference talk introducing Christian nationalism, arguing that identity categories (sex, race, nation) were self-evident to earlier Christians and are now contested, and grounding racial and na
Key Takeaways
- Christian nationalism presents sex, race, and nationhood as God-ordained, obvious distinctions that modern society has wrongly contested.
- The speaker uses a Genesis-based racial taxonomy to justify ethnic and national distinctions as theologically significant.
- The talk frames the 'no distinction in Christ' passages as the main objection to be answered, and equips listeners to respond.
- The content is promotional for a conference and subscription service, with a clearly ideological perspective on race, sex, and immigration.
What the video covers
- The speaker introduces Christian nationalism as the current generational 'battle' for Christians, framed as a fight over anthropology and identity.
- He contrasts past Christian struggles (Trinity, Christendom, Crusades, Reformation doctrines, colonial religious liberty) with today's questions of what a man, woman, race, nation, and American is.
- He claims the convictions of forefathers, including positions on interracial marriage, white-only naturalization, and women's voting, are now treated as wrong or criminal.
- He argues earlier generations did not write defenses of sex and race categories because these distinctions were considered obvious rather than contested.
- He asserts early church fathers understood race and nationhood as sharp categories and not merely melanin differences or paperwork.
- He presents a biblical taxonomy: one mankind, three races from Genesis 9, hundreds of ethnicities from Genesis 10, and thousands of cultures.
- He cites historical labels (savages, barbarians, pagans, civilized) as evidence of sharp past distinctions.
- He acknowledges Galatians 3:28, Colossians 3:11, and related passages stating there is no distinction in Christ, and frames this as a challenge Christian nationalists must answer.
- He compares the 'no distinction' objection to arguments about women in ministry, citing Deborah, and urges listeners to prepare biblical responses.
- The video promotes the NXR conference 'Christ is King, America After Trump' and a paid streaming app (NXR Plus, $10).
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Christian Nationalism
- 00:20Generational Battles of the Church
- 01:14Conference Promotion and Streaming Pitch
- 02:09Forefathers' Convictions Now Contested
- 03:17Why the Past Did Not Defend Identity
- 04:19Early Church Understanding of Race and Nation
- 05:16Biblical Taxonomy of Humankind
- 06:25Historical Labels and Sharp Distinctions
- 07:00Galatians 3:28 and the No-Distinction Objection
- 07:55Preparing Answers to Critics
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
And every generation has its distinct battles. Every generation of Christian has a fight to fight.
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For the early church, it was defining the Trinity and the hypothatic union. For the early medieval Christians, it was converting pagan Europe into the christryendom that we all loved. And for the Crusades, it was eliminating the Muslims from Christian lands. And for the
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reformers, it was battling for the doctrines of justification by faith alone. Now, for the American colonists, it was freedom to worship according to conscience.
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And for the men right before us, which we all know, maybe it was John Piper, RC Sproul, or some of these men, they were dealing with the realities of the prosperity gospel or the cults. But for us, for this group of Christians, it's
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the battle of anthropology. We're fighting over identity. What is a man? What is a woman?
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What is a baby? What is a foreigner? What is an immigrant? What is race?
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What is an American? And of course, what is a nation? This is a clip from our NXR conference, Christ is King, America After Trump, which is happening right now as you've watched the clip. And if you download the NXR Plus app, you can watch every
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single one of the remaining sessions from this conference as it's happening, as well as all the previous sessions that have already taken place. You can watch it on demand at the NXR Plus app for just $10. So go to your favorite app
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store, find the NXR Plus app, and start watching the conference live as it's happening now. GK Chesterton once said, "Every great civilization decays by forgetting obvious truths." That's exactly what we're experiencing right now. The assumptions of the past
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have now become the debates of the present. and that is that what every Christian believed for thousands of years has now been put into trial in the public square. In fact, the convictions of our forefathers, whether it was the
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anti-misogenation laws, whether it was white only naturalization, whether it was that women should or should not vote, positions that were held by like men like George Washington or RL Dabney or Jonathan Edwards, these positions that these great men held are
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now considered wrong, even criminal. People will slander you as a result of holding the positions that your forefathers all each held.
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But what makes this quest for understanding identity, understanding anthropology even more difficult is that when we look to the past for those answers, we don't find much. And here's why. It's not because that they didn't understand identity. They did. They did understand
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identity, but because identity was so obvious, they had no reason to defend it. And so the same reason that I can't find writings from the early church fathers on transgenderism or I can't find, you know, a defense against female pastors from Aquinas.
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It's because those were not the debates and the issues of the day. The people at that particular time, they were so anchored into identity. These things were so clear. You just opened your eyes and you'd see that the sky is blue and
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that a man was a man or that a woman was a woman. They had no cause to write for it. They had no cause to defend it or debate these topics that we all debate today.
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And the same is true not just about what is a man and what is a woman, but they understood what race was. They understood nationhood. They understood Christian civilization which is going to be most of the focus of my talk today.
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The early church fathers understood Christianity and they also understood nationalism. They understood categories and they understood distinctions.
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They never collapsed race into differences in melanin levels. That wasn't a discussion. They never reduced nationality into paperwork or getting your passport.
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They never saw a country as an economic opportunity for us to exploit. No. And despite rarely talking about or studying these topics of anthropology, they actually had a an incredible taxonomy of humankind or or of race or understanding peoplehood.
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They knew from a basic reading of the Bible when you understand the scriptures that you see this basic taxonomy and I'm going to explain that to you now. They understood that there was one mankind and within that mankind according to
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Genesis chapter 9 there are at least three races and from those races according to Genesis 10 we have hundreds of ethnicities and from those hundreds of ethnicities we get thousands of cultures. That's the basic biblical taxonomy of race and nations according
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to scripture. And they knew this. And we know they knew this because their maps displayed it. Their writings discussed it. Their language reflected it. You can just look back. It is assumed in what you see and what you read when you read
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anything older than a hundred years ago. In fact, if you spent any time understanding ancient writings, you know that racial and national distinctions, sexual distinctions, they were quite sharp. They were quite intense. In fact, they had labels for
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people groups. You might have heard these labels in the past, right? Whether it's savages or mongrels or barbarians or pagans or nobles or the civilized, they use these terms regularly because they were terms of distinctions, sharp distinctions.
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In fact, in the ancient world, the distinctions were so clear. They were so sharp that the Apostle Paul had to clarify that those distinctions would never keep somebody out of the kingdom of God.
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Now, if you're familiar with the New Testament, you know that the apostles often emphasize this idea of no distinctions. There was no distinctions in Christ. Paul wrote in Galatians 3:28, he says, quote, "There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor
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free. There is no the there is no male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And he repeats this idea in Colossians 3:11. Talks about it again in Romans. We see Peter even talking about it in Actsap 11 and Acts chapter
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15. And so for Christians, especially when it comes to the discussion of uh Christian nationalism, the question often asked and it's going to be asked to you, it's going to be asked to you is why do Christian nationalists care so much
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about skin color or nationality or ancestry? If the Apostle Paul says there is no distinction between these groups of people, aren't we called as Christians to simply love our neighbor?
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Whether he's a Pakistani Muslim or a pagan from Congo? And if Paul says that there are no distinctions, why are pastors like me telling you that there are distinctions and that they are very important? not just to me but to
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the Lord. It's like talking about women in the church. Every time I bring up the conversation around women pastors or or women in leadership positions in ministry, what does somebody come up to say? They say, "Oh, but Deborah, right,
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Deborah?" And they want to take this one example and make it the mainstream understanding for all civilized structures. And the reality is you need to be prepared, equipped to give a biblical answer when these debates are pushed upon among you. And the same is
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true on this issue of no distinctions. When someone says to you, why are you so concerned about America being a majority white nation? Don't you know that there are no distinctions in Christ? You need to be prepared to have an answer for
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that.
Topics:Christian nationalismNXRanthropologyGenesis 9Genesis 10Galatians 3:28race and nationhoodbiblical taxonomyidentity politicsChristian conference
