“Mere Christendom” by Doug Wilson (A Book Analysis Series: Part 6–Analyzing How Wilson Thinks How Christendom Will be Restored)

Here in Part 6 of my book analysis of Doug Wilson’s Mere Christendom, we will look at Part 4 of his book, entitled, “How to Restore Christendom.” Quite frankly, because I am ready to be done with this book, I’m going to tackle the entirety of Part 4 in this post. First, I’m going to provide a summary/overview of each chapter, and then save my comments for the end.

Chapter 14: Two Revolutions
In this chapter, Wilson gives a bit of a history lesson on the differences between the American (1776) and French (1789) Revolutions. He points out that according to the founding documents of the various colonies, they had “various degrees of relationship to the king, but not one of them had any relationship to the Parliament whatever” (193). Therefore, when it came to taxation, the British Parliament was an alien body that didn’t hold authority over the colonies—the king did. But in 1775, in the Prohibitory Act, Parliament stripped the colonies of the king’s protection, and the king chose not to step in to prevent that from happening. From that point on, because of both Parliamentary taxation (without representation) and the king’s refusal to hold his end up in the feudal arrangement (where he provides protection, and the colonies offer loyalty), “the colonies declared themselves free of any allegiance to the king” (195).

All that said, the American Revolution was “waged and won by a collection of Christian states” (198). They wanted to begin their own nation and, as Patrick Henry wanted, join the other Christian states on the world stage.

The French Revolution was something entirely different. The aim of the French Revolution wasn’t just to have a turnover in government, but rather to overthrow and demolish everything in the previous order, Christianity included. In fact (and I did not know this), the current political terms of “right” and “left” actually come from the French Revolution, distinguishing between the more conservative revolutionaries and the more radical ones. Wilson argues (as do others) that the reason the French Revolution descended into the Reign of Terror and the guillotine, followed by another tyrant (Napoleon), was because it attempted to wipe away the Christian foundation of a just society. The same thing happened in the Russian Revolution in the early 20^th century.

Chapter 15: American Exceptionalism
I have often been told that Christian Nationalists worship Donald Trump, envision a hostile takeover of the United States by some kind of Christian militia, and long to enforce Old Testament law on the country. Oh, also that they think America is God’s favorite country in the world, and He loves us best!

Here is what Wilson says about American exceptionalism: “The Founders knew we were not exceptional, and they drafted a constitution that did not trust us, not even a little bit” (202). The thing about the Founding Fathers that was “exceptional” was that tremendous sense of self-awareness and a sense of national humility, knowing that unchecked power almost always degenerates into authoritarianism. Hence the three branches of government, with checks and balances. Wilson again: “When it comes to the patterns of history and the temptations of fallen human nature, America is not exceptional at all” (203).

He then says that in his experience, “those who are most ambivalent or cynical about patriotic pieties—flags, fireworks, and fun—…are most likely to support the abuses of statist power when the state is attempting to be some jitney god in the lives of its citizens” (204). He sees this unpatriotic abuse of statist power in a number of literal states (can you guess which ones he’s talking about?) and says he’d like to see the Constitution having some kind of provision that would allow the Federal government to somehow “impeach” a state that has abused its power.

Wilson goes on to say that a civilization can only work well when there is a certain amount of unity in terms of culture—i.e. some kind of unifying worldview outlook. As he said earlier in his book, it isn’t a matter of imposing morality or not; it’s a matter of which morality will you impose. And for him, secularism and Christianity simply cannot co-exist. Christianity is the culture and outlook that will allow the kind of civil government that allows for “self-government in a federal and decentralized republic” to exist. For that to work, it needs a Christian worldview. Wilson says, “It grows nowhere else” (210).

For Wilson, the current secular order in the United States is increasing in its authoritarian tendencies and has become a “decadent liberalism.” He questions Christians who act like all we need is for Christ to “patch” up a few of the more blatant excesses. No, Wilson essentially says. The entire construct of the current secular state has taken the Christian values that lay at the foundation of the Constitutional republic that is the United States and has twisted them into something that the Founders never intended.

Chapter 16: Courage and Civil Disobedience
The basic question Wilson addresses in this chapter is, “When it is okay for Christians to resist the government?” He goes through the standard biblical passages and then makes the point that when the government is doing its God-ordained duty to punish evil and reward the good, Christians should comply. But when the government punishes the good and rewards the evil and insists “as a matter of dogma that there is no authority above them, that they are fully secular, the servants of no God” (218), then that is when resistance to tyrants equals submission to God.

Wilson also notes that tyrannical governments have their ways to try and keep the populace docile and obedient. He writes, “A people who are enslaved to their lusts will never be the kind of people who successfully throw off tyrants. We have been offered a series of bribes—free love, porn, drunkenness, government handouts, and other forms of lotus-eating—and these are the bribes that make us content with the dimensions of our prison cell” (219). Simply put, those kinds of people don’t want to stand up to government abuses, because they want their particular fix.

Chapter 17: Preaching and Prayer
The basic point of this chapter is simple: the only way we will ever have a Christian nation is if Christians fulfill the great commission and change hearts and minds. In order for this to happen, Wilson says that pastors and everyday Christians alike have to “read the world” and “read the story their people are actually in” (222). Basically, they need to have informed views on the state of the culture so that they can effectively engage with the culture.

Wilson also criticizes the “sentimentalist kitten hugging” that passes for much of the preaching in many churches. Instead, he says we get people back to God by preaching what the early Christians preached: “declaring that wrath to come, and the staggering provision that God has made for ugly and defiant sinners against that day of wrath. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (226). In the end, Wilson says, “Christian civilization is absolutely necessary, but without those new hearts, Christian standards of civilization are intolerable, as can be easily verified” (227). What he means by that is simply this: Christian morality and worldview is necessary for a truly free society, but unless people are actually Christian, such Christian standards will be rejected and viewed as intolerable.

Chapter 18: Nothing New
In the end, Wilson sees this current, secular culture as despotic, evil, tyrannical, and humanistic. He says it has a different god and a different law, and therefore the Christian response “must be to insist that all of their idols have to be overthrown” (230). That is to be done by discipling the nations.

At the same time, Wilson says there really isn’t anything unique about our current culture when seen against the backdrop of history. All cultures, Wilson says, apart from Christ, end up the same way: “Cultures apart from Christ cannot avoid decadence. Cultures apart from Christ cannot avoid the abyss. Cultures apart from Christ cannot stand. Cultures apart from Christ cannot contain or hide their hatred of the Father. Cultures apart from Christ must eventually call down the chaos. And here we are” (230).

In that respect, Wilson refers to both C.S. Lewis’ “men without chests” in his book The Abolition of Man, as well as Y.B. Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming,” where it speaks of “the center cannot hold.” Both men were referring to the godlessness in current, modern society. Wilson therefore says that what they saw in the early and mid-twentieth century has now come to full fruition, and only a fool can’t see it: “Cultural decadence is something that has happened routinely to civilizations for millennia, and it is a sign of our cultural narcissism that we are somehow surprised by it happening to us” (233).

All that said, Wilson re-emphasizes that Christians worship a God who knows the way out of the grave. “And not only does He know the way out of the grave, but it has been His plan and intention to govern all history by this means. He leads us, always, out of the grave” (237).

Chapter 19: Inevitability
In the last chapter, Wilson says, despite the current state of our culture, Christians should still remain optimistic. In the end Christ will be victorious, but the victory will be a long-time coming, and it will be accomplished in the way God wants it to happen. Wilson writes, “The kingdom of God does not arrive as coup de main. The kingdom of God does not arrive like a tsunami. The kingdom of God does not arrive like the 101^st Airborne. Jesus said, and He said repeatedly, that the kingdom was a slow-growth affair, working through the loaf like yeast” (243). And again, “But God works a different calculus, and He had His only-begotten Son hanged on a gibbet instead. What was He doing? He was making the world Christian, but He was doing it His way and on His timetable” (244).

In the end, Wilson says that the process of discipling the nations won’t happen overnight. Instead, it will happen “…with centuries, nay, with millennia of bumpity-bumpity” (245).

Finally, My Thoughts On All of It
When I first decided to read Mere Christendom, based upon what I had been told about Doug Wilson and Christian Nationalism, I expected to read a completely bonkers book by an unhinged lunatic, someone who worships Donald Trump, who longs to implement the Mosaic Law on modern America, who thinks the Constitution was inspired by God just like the Bible, who wants an actual armed insurrection that would “Christianize” America, and who is a raving racist to boot. As it turns out, I didn’t find any of that at all. Instead, I found a rather coherent critique of our modern American culture and government overreach by a guy who, even though I didn’t agree with completely, seemed, overall, pretty rational and sane.

On top of that, Wilson’s frequent allusions to the likes of Chesterton and Lewis had me constantly wondering, “If Chesterton and Lewis were alive today, would the people screaming about Wilson be screaming the same things about them?” For much of Wilson’s criticisms of 20^th century modernism and postmodernism pretty much align with the criticisms of many writers and thinkers I have long admired…that that genuinely surprised me.

In Part 4 alone, I found his “history lesson” about the American and French Revolutions (chapter 14) to be spot on and true. I found his insistence that America is not exceptional and his rejection of “American exceptionalism” (chapter 15) to be completely surprising, given when I had been told about how Christian Nationalists think God loves America best. On top of that, his explanation that the only “exceptional” thing about the Founding Fathers is that they were wise enough to craft a government of checks and balances to help curb the sinful human tendency to amass power.

His discussion in chapter 16 as to when civil disobedience is warranted is, again, pretty spot on, and is reflected in the testimony of the New Testament. And again, much to my surprise, at no time does he ever call for armed insurgency or insurrection. He simply says Christians need to engage in civil disobedience when the government does ungodly things. I also found it interesting that he points out how one way tyrants keep its subjects from wanting to resist is by essentially bribing them in various ways. I’m about to teach Brave New World in one of my classes and have long thought that present day America is approaching that very kind of society.

In chapter 17, Wilson correctly sees that the only way to have “mere Christendom” is to have a society of Christians in the first place. Basically, Christians have to do their job to “disciple the nations” before any talk of “mere Christendom” can even begin. This is true—the irony, of course, is that Wilson spends a lot of time talking about “mere Christendom” in the here and now. And that is probably my biggest criticism of the book—certainly putting the cart before the horse. That being said, again, there was hardly anything in the book that matched the radical caricatures I had been told about Wilson.

Finally, the thing that stood out to me in chapter 18 is Wilson’s comments about how Christians worship a God who knows the way out of the grave. Back when I was a Worldview teacher at a Christian high school, I had this optimistic view of things that if we engaged culture and had vigorous debates about pressing issues, that Christians could influence the culture and come to a better hold of the truth. This coincided with the rise of Facebook, incidentally. I tried to “practice what I preached” to my students and got involved in a lot of social and political discussions and debates online.

Over time, especially ever since around 2015, it became increasingly obvious that most such discussions and debates simply degenerate into the worst kind of hostility and vitriol. So much so that one of my New Year’s resolutions this year is not to get involved in any political discussions on social media this year. So far, almost three months in, I’ve been able to keep that resolution.

My point is this: I used to think open discussion and debate could help fix and repair the ailments in our society. Now, though, I think our current society is beyond repair. This is not an “anti-Democrat” or “anti-Republican” thing. I just see so much in our current culture that can only be described as outright insanity, both in government policies and societal attitudes as a whole. And yes, I do think it is ultimately the result of the eroding Christian base upon which the United States was founded on. In any case, the best thing is to just let things play out and let this current culture self-destruct. There’s little to no point in debating over certain issues anymore because a society bent on societal suicide is bent on societal suicide.

The early Christians didn’t “take over” Rome or try to “make Rome a Christian nation.” They bore witness to Christ, and by doing so bore witness against the dying pagan culture of Rome. Over time, as more hearts and minds were transformed, Constantine himself became a Christian, and that reality obviously drastically changed things. But the point is that Christians didn’t seek to “conquer Rome.” They simply bore witness to Christ and let the ancient pagan culture of Rome deteriorate and die all on its own. That is how I feel about our present society. Resurrection will come afterwards.

With all that said, when it comes to “Christian Nationalism,” I’m sure there are some complete nutters out there that actually resemble the stereotypes I’ve been told about “Christian Nationalism.” There is always a grain of truth in stereotypes. Such people are crazy, yes. But, to my surprise, even though I don’t agree with everything he says, Doug Wilson doesn’t strike me to be that kind of crazy. Because of that, I am forced to no trust what the people who are screaming about “Christian Nationalism” have been telling me. Broadbrushing all conservative Christians as “Christian Nationalists” doesn’t do anyone any good.

….Of course, when Wilson actually describes himself as a “Christian Nationalist,” that doesn’t help! Bottom line, if I was to summarize the entirety of Mere Christendom, I’d make the following two points:

1. Wilson argues that Christianity provides the foundational basis for a truly free society—I agree.
2. Wilson wants the government to stay constrained according to the framework of the Constitution—again, I agree.

It seems that is how he is defining his own “Christian nationalism.” I wouldn’t call it that, though. I’d call it just common sense.