As a Baptist, I feel almost historically and theologically compelled to sound a note of appreciation for Rogers’s commitment to the Church. Now, most importantly, I am particularly committed to the local church, specifically a local church. But on the glorious gift and goodness of the Church in general, I say “Yes and amen!”
The Church, after all, is “the gospel made visible,” as notable Baptist theologian and ecclesiologist, Mark Dever, has so aptly stated. And for those, like myself and my 14 million-plus Southern Baptist brethren, who believe that the New Testament teaches the practice of regenerate church membership, the importance of “getting church right” matters all the more. Ephesians 3:10-11 underscores the wonderful purpose of Christ’s Bride in the world, as Paul proclaims that God’s “intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
But what is this eternal purpose? In other words, what is the mission of the church? This is a critical question to raise at the outset of my response to Rogers, because this is precisely where Rogers goes most wrong in his “ecclesiocentric” critique of National Conservatism (NatCon), both the Statement of Principles (Statement) and the larger project.
The eternal purpose of the church which Paul sets forth in Ephesians 3, the same purpose echoed across the pages of the entire New Testament, is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to guard the profession of the people of Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:13-20, Matthew 18:15-19) which is demonstrated by their continued faith in the gospel message and regular attendance at the weekly gathering (Hebrews 10:24-25). Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert, in their appropriately titled book What Is the Mission of the Church, answer the question like so: “the mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and gathering these disciples into churches, that they might worship the Lord and obey his commands.”
In Brad Littlejohn’s response, he fleshes out this important clarification—that the church exists to proclaim and guard the gospel, not rule civil society. He writes:
“for Protestants, church government is not a form of coercive jurisdiction, but merely proclamatory. The task of the church qua church is to announce future acts of judgment, rather than enacting present acts of judgment. And since the future acts will be executed by Christ, who alone is infallible, the church’s announced judgments are provisional, binding on conscience only insofar as they faithfully expound and apply the Word. Particular churches may have quasi-political power over their members, but this exists within, not above, the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate.”
Given this historic Protestant understanding of the nature and role of the church, I find this angle of attack—the juxtaposing of the role of the Church in relation to the NatCon Statement—to be rather confounding. Yet this critique has been raised now by both Peter Leithart and James Rogers.
If I was limited to a one-sentence response, I would have proffered something like this: “Well, the answer is simple—NatCon is not the church, it is a political coalition seeking to re-establish sound principles of government in a confusingly global world, and the Church qua Church is not a political coalition (in the action-oriented sense), it is the gospel-generated, gospel-preaching, and gospel-preserving institution purchased by the blood of Christ on the cross.” Good? Good.
Alas, we are not good. So back to the matter at hand. Rogers begins by clarifying two main points of his brand of ecclesial evaluation, claiming that “First, the Statement provides a simplistic and reductive account of current cultural problems. Secondly, the Statement looks to the nation and other worldly institutions to provide the type of solidarity and human flourishing only the Church can provide, and aspirations only the Church can realize.”
What, then, is it that the NatCon Statement is trying to do that only the church can? From my vantage point, the Statement makes rather humble claims: “We see the tradition of independent, self-governed nations as the foundation for restoring a proper public orientation toward patriotism and courage, honor and loyalty, religion and wisdom, congregation and family, man and woman, the sabbath and the sacred, and reason and justice.”
Look closely: the goal is “restoring a proper public orientation toward…” and then what follows is many virtuous and noble, and ultimately natural and temporal (not spiritual), goods. NatCon is a project of national restoration, not spiritual revival. These, of course, are not mutually exclusive; in fact, spiritual revival can certainly accelerate national renewal and restoration. But politics and evangelism are categorically different things—just as civil government and the church are categorically different things, with different authorities given to them by God. NatCon is not trying to “save a nation” in a spiritual sense but merely help nations save themselves from being gobbled up into the woke blob of the World Economic Forum.
So, what measure of “human flourishing” is it that Rogers thinks “only the Church can provide?” Can “only the Church” help nations better defend their borders? Can “only the Church” help uphold the rule of law in public life? Can “only the Church” purge Marxism from America’s universities, overturn Roe or Obergefell, and call on our elected representatives to put America first?
The answer is obvious. Not only can “only the church” not do such things (even if it could, such tasks are beyond its capability), but the church also cannot do such things period (it is not capable), nor should it try. Thus again, I’m left wondering, why is this lens through which Rogers insists on viewing NatCon? As Littlejohn also noted in his rejoinder, “he fights without an adversary: no serious national conservative that I am aware of is guilty of the elementary errors he attributes to them.”
That error, to be clear, is an error of disorder. Rogers imagines that NatCons place their emphasis on the importance of good government, this political project regarding the nation, over the church. “Danger occurs, however, when any one of these earthly institutions is taken to be predominant rather than subordinate,” he warns. This forms the basis for his argument that “the Church is the Christian’s first and most important family, the Church is the Christian’s first polis, and the Church is the Christian’s first ethnos.”
While Ricky Bobby, fresh off of a victory at Talladega, might claim that “If you aren’t first, you’re last,” reality is far more mundane. For the record, I don’t think any NatCons are arguing that concern for the nation should trump concern for the souls of those within the nation. That said, NatCon is a diverse religious coalition, so our concerns for said souls differ both in the assessment of condition, the threat of damnation, and the nature of salvation. Even if I were to grant this point to Rogers, in general, I would want to ask of him what I asked of Leithart in my response to his article Against National Conservatism:
“Does he think that there are no penultimate national purposes? Such as bearing the sword for true justice and creating and maintaining peaceful conditions conducive to public morality and true worship. God made government for specific earthly ends. Globalism is arguably a perversion of those ends. Seeking to reestablish a global order that respects nationalism need not be discarded, prima facie, over the mistaken notion that such efforts are somehow at odds with even greater spiritual realities.”
The truth is that they are not at odds. There is no real tension here. The question of NatCon and the Church is not an either/or, it is most assuredly a both/and—and I’m not the only one who thinks so.
In Dynamics of Spiritual Life, by Richard F. Lovelace, he asks the same primordial question animating this whole conversation: “What strategies of social transformation should Christians follow?” If we answered this in a Rogerian fashion, it would follow that we must simply focus on the church, and the evangelistic work required for the growth of an eccelsiocentric political order.
But that’s not what Lovelace argued. He goes on:
“Many believers conclude from reading the New Testament that the shortest route to social change is changing hearts through preaching the gospel and making disciples through “spiritual” instruction, so that our main duty to the poor is to preach the gospel to them. I believe this conclusion is natural but wrong, for reasons which can be clearly identified both in Scripture and history.”
As for the Church, I would grant that their “main duty” is to “preach the gospel” to all, not just the poor. But to the poor, or in our case, to those who are having their homeland turned into an unrecognizable hellscape, there is more to be done—more that must be done—by Christians than simply preaching the gospel. Lovelace concludes:
“We see then that Christians are responsible to carry out a holistic ministry which cares for people’s bodies as well as their souls and which seeks to change structures as well as hearts. Under some circumstances it is strategically impossible to effect radical social change without first building up a body of believers to leaven a society with their influence. This is the lesson of Paul’s reticence about slavery, which the Holy Spirit will always call to mind in situations which demand this approach. In other circumstances it is not only possible to bring about social healing at the same time the gospel is preached, but it is even a necessary demonstration validating that preaching.
Under these conditions love and the Spirit’s leading will dictate the particular strategies to be followed. But it is never the case that we have a first priority to see that a man’s soul is saved, and then, if our funds hold out, to do something for him socially and materially. Our responsibility is to respond to him in love on every level, within the bounds of what is possible and practicable.”
That’s a good phrase: “love on every level.” It’s arguably the heart of NatCon; for fundamentally, the work of NatCon is an act of love—love for one’s country.
And what does love for one’s country require? For us to seek its good, both its heavenly good and its earthly good. The great Baptist pastor and theologian Andrew Fuller said just as much when he exhorted his congregation to be willing to take up arms against an impending French invasion. In his sermon, Christian Patriotism, Fuller asks “Ought we not to seek the good of our native land?” The good he is envisioning is a temporal, natural good—resisting an invader so that they may be free. And the answer? Of course, they should.
Fuller goes on to inquire into “The Duty of Religious People Towards Their Country.” He argues that,
“Though, as Christians, we are not of the world, and ought not to be conformed to it; yet, being in it, we are under various obligations to those about us. As husbands, wives, parents, children, masters, servants, &c., we cannot be insensible that others have a claim upon us, as well as we upon them; and it is the same as members of a community united under one civil government. If we were rulers, our country would have a serious claim upon us as rulers; and, as we are subjects, it has a serious claim upon us as subjects. The manner in which we discharge these relative duties contributes not a little to the formation of our character, both in the sight of God and man.”
Fuller here is rightly explicating the social obligations we have as citizens, not just of the heavenly kingdom, but of our respective earthly kingdoms as well. While they may overlap, they are neither mutually exclusive nor identical. In his critique of NatCon, Rogers collapses these kingdoms, these realms, in on themselves, setting the Church above both, and then blaming a political coalition for not being the Church. Littlejohn, again, puts it well: “By blurring boundaries that the Protestant confessions keep crystal-clear, Rogers sows the seeds of conflict between the Christian’s national citizenship and heavenly citizenship, without offering guidance on how to reconcile the two loyalties.”
More could be said but I must now barrel toward a conclusion. I agree, wholeheartedly, with Rogers when he claims “the Christian must insist that the Church uniquely offers what the nation-state cannot provide.” What is this offer that only the Church can make? It is the offer of the gospel. It is the glorious and powerful message of salvation (Romans 1:16). Peter answered well when he said to our Lord, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). No nation can offer that—and no one at NatCon pretends that it can.
Yet the opposite is true as well: The nation-state uniquely offers something that the Church cannot provide. What is that? It is the sword born for justice and for the God-defined good of mankind within their distinct communities, i.e., nations (Romans 13:1-7, Acts 17:26). In fact, it is the state, not the church, that is tasked by God with securing the necessary preconditions (a peaceful, stable, and ordered society) for the church to flourish. As David C. Innes has pointed out, in his work Christ and the Kingdoms of Men, Romans 13:1-7 forms a chiasm, with a “central unparalleled section that indicates the main point.” What is that main point? It is verse 4, that government is “God’s servant for your good.”
The “good” here is not just anything conceivable under the sun. And the “good” is not primarily a spiritual good, that is, one unto salvation (for that is the job of the Church). Rather, the good envisioned by Paul pertains to temporal justice and ordered peace in keeping with God’s revealed moral order. To be sure, the primary good that a legitimate government, deriving its authority from God, should secure for its citizens is the right to freely and fully worship God within His church. But it should also secure its borders, uphold the rule of law, revere marriage, protect life, honor the natural family, defend individual property rights, and punish evil. What might that look like in the 21st Century, an age adrift and under fire from woke capitalism, globalization, and Malthusian experimentation in the name of gender ideology? The NatCon Statement of principles provides a strong path forward.
We must remember that the same God who gives the keys to the church gives the sword to the state. If our politics must be ecclesiocentric, let it be so in such a way as to recognize the proper function of each and the proper relationship between the two.
Which, ultimately, is where Rogers goes wrong. He concludes by arguing, again, that “because national conservatism asserts that worldly institutions like the nation-state and the traditional family are fundamental, when they in fact are not, the political and social theory it implicitly asserts will not heal what ails society today.”
Of course, NatCon asserts that the nation-state and the traditional family are “fundamental”—for they are! God made them so. But just because they are fundamental does not mean they are ultimate. I don’t know how Rogers misses this distinction, for when I read the Statement, I see a humble and limited effort to recover some basic—and yes, fundamental—realities that have been lost or confused over the last many decades. I don’t see an attempt to storm the aisle and steal the pulpit, nor do I ever expect to see such ambitions from my NatCon friends.
National restoration and spiritual renewal are not at odds, they are allies. They go together. As J.I. Packer recounts in Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, Charles H. Spurgeon was once asked how he could reconcile divine sovereignty with human responsibility. Packer shares that Spurgeon answered, with his typical wit, like so: “‘I wouldn’t try,’ he replied; ‘I never reconcile friends.’”
Packer goes on: “Friends?—yes, friends. This is the point that we have to grasp. In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not enemies. They are not uneasy neighbors; they are not in an endless state of cold war with each other. They are friends, and they work together.”
Rogers puts a similar challenge to us, and I offer the same answer Spurgeon did: NatCon and the Church are friends, and as such, no reconciliation is needed. Again, both have different mandates and different missions. NatCon is not the church, and for that I am grateful. The Church is not NatCon, and for that, I am even more grateful. Yet even as the Church preaches the gospel and works for spiritual revival, ever-expanding the footprint of the heavenly polis, NatCon can plow along in the dust of the earthly one, working for national renewal. By doing so, NatCon helps see to it that the sword is not born in vain, but rather for good—for the good of people and for the good of nations that we are commanded to reach, teach, and baptize in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:18-20).
William Wolfe is a former Trump Administration official and is currently a student at Southern Seminary.
As a Baptist, I feel almost historically and theologically compelled to sound a note of appreciation for Rogers’s commitment to the Church. Now, most importantly, I am particularly committed to the local church, specifically a local church. But on the glorious gift and goodness of the Church in general, I say “Yes and amen!”
The Church, after all, is “the gospel made visible,” as notable Baptist theologian and ecclesiologist, Mark Dever, has so aptly stated. And for those, like myself and my 14 million-plus Southern Baptist brethren, who believe that the New Testament teaches the practice of regenerate church membership, the importance of “getting church right” matters all the more. Ephesians 3:10-11 underscores the wonderful purpose of Christ’s Bride in the world, as Paul proclaims that God’s “intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
But what is this eternal purpose? In other words, what is the mission of the church? This is a critical question to raise at the outset of my response to Rogers, because this is precisely where Rogers goes most wrong in his “ecclesiocentric” critique of National Conservatism (NatCon), both the Statement of Principles (Statement) and the larger project.
The eternal purpose of the church which Paul sets forth in Ephesians 3, the same purpose echoed across the pages of the entire New Testament, is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to guard the profession of the people of Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:13-20, Matthew 18:15-19) which is demonstrated by their continued faith in the gospel message and regular attendance at the weekly gathering (Hebrews 10:24-25). Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert, in their appropriately titled book What Is the Mission of the Church, answer the question like so: “the mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and gathering these disciples into churches, that they might worship the Lord and obey his commands.”
In Brad Littlejohn’s response, he fleshes out this important clarification—that the church exists to proclaim and guard the gospel, not rule civil society. He writes:
“for Protestants, church government is not a form of coercive jurisdiction, but merely proclamatory. The task of the church qua church is to announce future acts of judgment, rather than enacting present acts of judgment. And since the future acts will be executed by Christ, who alone is infallible, the church’s announced judgments are provisional, binding on conscience only insofar as they faithfully expound and apply the Word. Particular churches may have quasi-political power over their members, but this exists within, not above, the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate.”
Given this historic Protestant understanding of the nature and role of the church, I find this angle of attack—the juxtaposing of the role of the Church in relation to the NatCon Statement—to be rather confounding. Yet this critique has been raised now by both Peter Leithart and James Rogers.
If I was limited to a one-sentence response, I would have proffered something like this: “Well, the answer is simple—NatCon is not the church, it is a political coalition seeking to re-establish sound principles of government in a confusingly global world, and the Church qua Church is not a political coalition (in the action-oriented sense), it is the gospel-generated, gospel-preaching, and gospel-preserving institution purchased by the blood of Christ on the cross.” Good? Good.
Alas, we are not good. So back to the matter at hand. Rogers begins by clarifying two main points of his brand of ecclesial evaluation, claiming that “First, the Statement provides a simplistic and reductive account of current cultural problems. Secondly, the Statement looks to the nation and other worldly institutions to provide the type of solidarity and human flourishing only the Church can provide, and aspirations only the Church can realize.”
What, then, is it that the NatCon Statement is trying to do that only the church can? From my vantage point, the Statement makes rather humble claims: “We see the tradition of independent, self-governed nations as the foundation for restoring a proper public orientation toward patriotism and courage, honor and loyalty, religion and wisdom, congregation and family, man and woman, the sabbath and the sacred, and reason and justice.”
Look closely: the goal is “restoring a proper public orientation toward…” and then what follows is many virtuous and noble, and ultimately natural and temporal (not spiritual), goods. NatCon is a project of national restoration, not spiritual revival. These, of course, are not mutually exclusive; in fact, spiritual revival can certainly accelerate national renewal and restoration. But politics and evangelism are categorically different things—just as civil government and the church are categorically different things, with different authorities given to them by God. NatCon is not trying to “save a nation” in a spiritual sense but merely help nations save themselves from being gobbled up into the woke blob of the World Economic Forum.
So, what measure of “human flourishing” is it that Rogers thinks “only the Church can provide?” Can “only the Church” help nations better defend their borders? Can “only the Church” help uphold the rule of law in public life? Can “only the Church” purge Marxism from America’s universities, overturn Roe or Obergefell, and call on our elected representatives to put America first?
The answer is obvious. Not only can “only the church” not do such things (even if it could, such tasks are beyond its capability), but the church also cannot do such things period (it is not capable), nor should it try. Thus again, I’m left wondering, why is this lens through which Rogers insists on viewing NatCon? As Littlejohn also noted in his rejoinder, “he fights without an adversary: no serious national conservative that I am aware of is guilty of the elementary errors he attributes to them.”
That error, to be clear, is an error of disorder. Rogers imagines that NatCons place their emphasis on the importance of good government, this political project regarding the nation, over the church. “Danger occurs, however, when any one of these earthly institutions is taken to be predominant rather than subordinate,” he warns. This forms the basis for his argument that “the Church is the Christian’s first and most important family, the Church is the Christian’s first polis, and the Church is the Christian’s first ethnos.”
While Ricky Bobby, fresh off of a victory at Talladega, might claim that “If you aren’t first, you’re last,” reality is far more mundane. For the record, I don’t think any NatCons are arguing that concern for the nation should trump concern for the souls of those within the nation. That said, NatCon is a diverse religious coalition, so our concerns for said souls differ both in the assessment of condition, the threat of damnation, and the nature of salvation. Even if I were to grant this point to Rogers, in general, I would want to ask of him what I asked of Leithart in my response to his article Against National Conservatism:
“Does he think that there are no penultimate national purposes? Such as bearing the sword for true justice and creating and maintaining peaceful conditions conducive to public morality and true worship. God made government for specific earthly ends. Globalism is arguably a perversion of those ends. Seeking to reestablish a global order that respects nationalism need not be discarded, prima facie, over the mistaken notion that such efforts are somehow at odds with even greater spiritual realities.”
The truth is that they are not at odds. There is no real tension here. The question of NatCon and the Church is not an either/or, it is most assuredly a both/and—and I’m not the only one who thinks so.
In Dynamics of Spiritual Life, by Richard F. Lovelace, he asks the same primordial question animating this whole conversation: “What strategies of social transformation should Christians follow?” If we answered this in a Rogerian fashion, it would follow that we must simply focus on the church, and the evangelistic work required for the growth of an eccelsiocentric political order.
But that’s not what Lovelace argued. He goes on:
“Many believers conclude from reading the New Testament that the shortest route to social change is changing hearts through preaching the gospel and making disciples through “spiritual” instruction, so that our main duty to the poor is to preach the gospel to them. I believe this conclusion is natural but wrong, for reasons which can be clearly identified both in Scripture and history.”
As for the Church, I would grant that their “main duty” is to “preach the gospel” to all, not just the poor. But to the poor, or in our case, to those who are having their homeland turned into an unrecognizable hellscape, there is more to be done—more that must be done—by Christians than simply preaching the gospel. Lovelace concludes:
“We see then that Christians are responsible to carry out a holistic ministry which cares for people’s bodies as well as their souls and which seeks to change structures as well as hearts. Under some circumstances it is strategically impossible to effect radical social change without first building up a body of believers to leaven a society with their influence. This is the lesson of Paul’s reticence about slavery, which the Holy Spirit will always call to mind in situations which demand this approach. In other circumstances it is not only possible to bring about social healing at the same time the gospel is preached, but it is even a necessary demonstration validating that preaching.
Under these conditions love and the Spirit’s leading will dictate the particular strategies to be followed. But it is never the case that we have a first priority to see that a man’s soul is saved, and then, if our funds hold out, to do something for him socially and materially. Our responsibility is to respond to him in love on every level, within the bounds of what is possible and practicable.”
That’s a good phrase: “love on every level.” It’s arguably the heart of NatCon; for fundamentally, the work of NatCon is an act of love—love for one’s country.
And what does love for one’s country require? For us to seek its good, both its heavenly good and its earthly good. The great Baptist pastor and theologian Andrew Fuller said just as much when he exhorted his congregation to be willing to take up arms against an impending French invasion. In his sermon, Christian Patriotism, Fuller asks “Ought we not to seek the good of our native land?” The good he is envisioning is a temporal, natural good—resisting an invader so that they may be free. And the answer? Of course, they should.
Fuller goes on to inquire into “The Duty of Religious People Towards Their Country.” He argues that,
“Though, as Christians, we are not of the world, and ought not to be conformed to it; yet, being in it, we are under various obligations to those about us. As husbands, wives, parents, children, masters, servants, &c., we cannot be insensible that others have a claim upon us, as well as we upon them; and it is the same as members of a community united under one civil government. If we were rulers, our country would have a serious claim upon us as rulers; and, as we are subjects, it has a serious claim upon us as subjects. The manner in which we discharge these relative duties contributes not a little to the formation of our character, both in the sight of God and man.”
Fuller here is rightly explicating the social obligations we have as citizens, not just of the heavenly kingdom, but of our respective earthly kingdoms as well. While they may overlap, they are neither mutually exclusive nor identical. In his critique of NatCon, Rogers collapses these kingdoms, these realms, in on themselves, setting the Church above both, and then blaming a political coalition for not being the Church. Littlejohn, again, puts it well: “By blurring boundaries that the Protestant confessions keep crystal-clear, Rogers sows the seeds of conflict between the Christian’s national citizenship and heavenly citizenship, without offering guidance on how to reconcile the two loyalties.”
More could be said but I must now barrel toward a conclusion. I agree, wholeheartedly, with Rogers when he claims “the Christian must insist that the Church uniquely offers what the nation-state cannot provide.” What is this offer that only the Church can make? It is the offer of the gospel. It is the glorious and powerful message of salvation (Romans 1:16). Peter answered well when he said to our Lord, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). No nation can offer that—and no one at NatCon pretends that it can.
Yet the opposite is true as well: The nation-state uniquely offers something that the Church cannot provide. What is that? It is the sword born for justice and for the God-defined good of mankind within their distinct communities, i.e., nations (Romans 13:1-7, Acts 17:26). In fact, it is the state, not the church, that is tasked by God with securing the necessary preconditions (a peaceful, stable, and ordered society) for the church to flourish. As David C. Innes has pointed out, in his work Christ and the Kingdoms of Men, Romans 13:1-7 forms a chiasm, with a “central unparalleled section that indicates the main point.” What is that main point? It is verse 4, that government is “God’s servant for your good.”
The “good” here is not just anything conceivable under the sun. And the “good” is not primarily a spiritual good, that is, one unto salvation (for that is the job of the Church). Rather, the good envisioned by Paul pertains to temporal justice and ordered peace in keeping with God’s revealed moral order. To be sure, the primary good that a legitimate government, deriving its authority from God, should secure for its citizens is the right to freely and fully worship God within His church. But it should also secure its borders, uphold the rule of law, revere marriage, protect life, honor the natural family, defend individual property rights, and punish evil. What might that look like in the 21st Century, an age adrift and under fire from woke capitalism, globalization, and Malthusian experimentation in the name of gender ideology? The NatCon Statement of principles provides a strong path forward.
We must remember that the same God who gives the keys to the church gives the sword to the state. If our politics must be ecclesiocentric, let it be so in such a way as to recognize the proper function of each and the proper relationship between the two.
Which, ultimately, is where Rogers goes wrong. He concludes by arguing, again, that “because national conservatism asserts that worldly institutions like the nation-state and the traditional family are fundamental, when they in fact are not, the political and social theory it implicitly asserts will not heal what ails society today.”
Of course, NatCon asserts that the nation-state and the traditional family are “fundamental”—for they are! God made them so. But just because they are fundamental does not mean they are ultimate. I don’t know how Rogers misses this distinction, for when I read the Statement, I see a humble and limited effort to recover some basic—and yes, fundamental—realities that have been lost or confused over the last many decades. I don’t see an attempt to storm the aisle and steal the pulpit, nor do I ever expect to see such ambitions from my NatCon friends.
National restoration and spiritual renewal are not at odds, they are allies. They go together. As J.I. Packer recounts in Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, Charles H. Spurgeon was once asked how he could reconcile divine sovereignty with human responsibility. Packer shares that Spurgeon answered, with his typical wit, like so: “‘I wouldn’t try,’ he replied; ‘I never reconcile friends.’”
Packer goes on: “Friends?—yes, friends. This is the point that we have to grasp. In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not enemies. They are not uneasy neighbors; they are not in an endless state of cold war with each other. They are friends, and they work together.”
Rogers puts a similar challenge to us, and I offer the same answer Spurgeon did: NatCon and the Church are friends, and as such, no reconciliation is needed. Again, both have different mandates and different missions. NatCon is not the church, and for that I am grateful. The Church is not NatCon, and for that, I am even more grateful. Yet even as the Church preaches the gospel and works for spiritual revival, ever-expanding the footprint of the heavenly polis, NatCon can plow along in the dust of the earthly one, working for national renewal. By doing so, NatCon helps see to it that the sword is not born in vain, but rather for good—for the good of people and for the good of nations that we are commanded to reach, teach, and baptize in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:18-20).
William Wolfe is a former Trump Administration official and is currently a student at Southern Seminary.
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