Editor’s Note: This essay is an expanded version of an essay first posted on the Law & Liberty website on September 20, 2022.

Consistent with its commitment to traditional conservatism, National Conservatism’s “Statement of Principles” broadly re-articulates ideals found in older statements such as the 1924 Republican Party platform. The platform endorsed the protective tariff (“designed to support the high American economic level of life for the average family and to prevent a lowering to the levels of economic life prevailing in other lands”). It expressed concern with “mass immigration” to the U.S. from Europe as a result of the continuing effects of WWI. It aimed to avoid serious disturbance of American economic life “that would come from unrestricted immigration.”

While that century-old platform expressed a willingness to “cooperate with other nations in humanitarian efforts,” it repeatedly expressed opposition to entering into “political commitments” associated with those efforts. While it did endorse membership in an International Court of Justice, it more significantly rejected membership in the League of Nations, and expressed a preference for foreign policy by national agreement rather than membership in international organizations. “The basic principles of our foreign policy must be independence without indifference to the rights and necessities of others and cooperation without entangling alliances.” The platform also endorsed the adoption “at the earliest possible date [of] a federal anti-lynching law so that the full influence of the federal government may be wielded to exterminate this hideous crime.” And more.

The recent National Conservative Statement is “conservative” in the sense of reasserting, mutatis mutandis, a traditionally conservative line of policy positions. I can imagine numerous circumstances in which I would vote for a politician articulating national conservative principles over a competitor.

There are nonetheless fundamental problems with the more or less implicit political and social theory the Statement forwards in prioritizing the nation-state and other such worldly institutions. 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.

As a result, the statement misdiagnoses the sources of the ailment of modern Western societies, and so at its most critical points it prescribes the wrong remedies. It is not the nation-state but the Church that offers the only genuine alternative in this day and age.

Exaggerating the Importance of Nation-States

The Statement begins with a list of the goods and virtues offered by “the tradition of independent, self-governed nations.” The list starts just fine, if tautologically, in asserting that traditional nation-states are necessary for restoring “patriotism.” And there are undoubtedly many practical, if mundane, ways a system of nation-states can promote their respective common goods.

But as the Statement’s list continues it asserts goods and virtues with more tenuous relationships to the nation-state. According to the Statement, the nation-state provides a foundation not only for patriotism but also for “religion and wisdom, congregation and family, man and woman, the sabbath and the sacred, and reason and justice.”

What can one say? Only an untoward enthusiasm can locate a “proper public orientation toward” realities like “man and woman,” “religion and wisdom,” and even “the sacred” and “reason” itself in the restoration of the nation-state. Conservatives generally hold as a part of their conservatism that these phenomena have their own integral existence outside the existence of the nation-state. It is certainly true that they all existed prior to the rise of the nation-state. Recognition derives for these phenomena as a result of their reality irrespective of the status of the nation-state at the time.

While the Statement offers itself as sympathetic to religion in general, if not Christianity in particular, it is a decidedly subordinated role for religion in general, and the Church in particular. In fact, the word “Church” does not appear in the Statement, although the word “congregation”—with its local and particularistic overtones relative to “Church”—does.

Yet it is exclusively to the political, and not to the religious, that the Statement looks for social and political redemption. It expressly proffers the nation “as the only genuine alternative to universalist ideologies” (emphasis added).

Even in the paragraph the Statement devotes expressly to discussing “God and Public Religion,” the Church makes no appearance. Indeed, not even the word “congregation” appears in that paragraph.

While the Statement endorses Bible reading—which I heartily applaud—I am unsure what it is that the Statement thinks we derive from that reading. After all, the Statement asserts, “No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition.” It is a curious affirmation.

On the one hand, I am unsure that national endurance as a generic principle is really a top priority for the God of the Bible (see, for example, Job 12:23 and Acts 17:26).

On the other hand, and much more importantly, while I have no issues with the Statement’s invocation of God’s judgment, it is odd to invoke God’s judgment without even a word mentioning the good news of God’s love for humanity and the Bible’s grand narrative documenting God’s purpose and actions to draw humanity back into his presence.

Instead, what the Statement emphasizes about Christianity is not the Gospel but rather its “moral vision.” To be sure, the Gospel and Christianity’s moral vision are not antithetical; I do not in the least suggest that an antinomian love should replace a grim moralism. But, critically, the Gospel does not merely offer a “moral vision,” it offers transformation—literally a transfiguration of the human in Christ (Romans 12:2 and 2 Co 3:8). It is this transfiguration that critically frees the person to live in imitation of God and his righteousness. It is only after Jesus forgave the woman taken in adultery in John 8 that he added, “Go and sin no more.” Without the liberation of the Gospel, moralism only kills.

Ecclesiocentric Society

This problem is confounded by National Conservatism’s emphasis on naturally embodied communities of the world, such as the nation-state and the traditional family, in contradistinction to the supernaturally embodied community of the Church.

To be sure, here I want to be careful in drawing out the implications of my ecclesiocentric political and social theory. With the National Conservative, the ecclesiocentric of course has substantial sympathy with the protection and facilitation of these natural institutions that are so important for human flourishing in this age.

At the same time, the principles of National Conservatism do not acknowledge the profound relativization of these worldly institutions by Christ and his Church. To wit, 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.

By contrast, as noted above, the Statement asserts that the nation provides “the only genuine alternative to universalist ideologies now seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.”

This is why the Statement’s use of the word “congregation” rather than “Church” constrains.  While local congregations do not, by definition, have universal domains, the Church does. Contrary to the Statement, it is the practice and theology of the Church that is a, if not the, “genuine alternative to universalist ideologies” asserting themselves across the globe.

To be sure, as basic, if contingent, social and political institutions in this world, the family or household, the nation or ethnos, and the city-state or polis fundamentally tap into deep human needs and desires for identity and community. There is nothing wrong with that in itself, and Christianity recognizes, and even encourages and supports, these institutions in their important, if subordinate, vocations in this age.

Yet danger arises when any one of these earthly institutions is taken to be predominant rather than subordinate. This is what occurred in the ancient world when the family or household was taken as predominant, and then the polis. And this happens in the modern world when the nation-state is taken as the preeminent institution. When these earthly institutions are offered within themselves to satisfy the fundamental human longing for identity and meaning, the result is political and social distortion, and concomitant injury. Only union with Christ’s Body can uniquely satisfy the need and desire for organic solidarity and identity.

Encompassing Jurisdiction: State or Church?

But how does this work, particularly given the encompassing jurisdiction of civil authority over people in a given territorial jurisdiction, and given that the jurisdiction of the Church, even if defined territorially, is limited to the members of the Church proper, and excludes non-Christians and non-adherents from formal membership?

It is taken as common sense that civil jurisdiction encompasses the territory and all of the communities within a given jurisdiction while ecclesial jurisdiction is limited. And this view is implied by the expansive claims the Statement makes regarding the nation-state. Yet while common today, the habit of viewing civil jurisdiction as the fundamental or basic jurisdiction in society is not new. Aristotle, for example, began his Politics articulating a similar view that it is the polis, or city-state, “that has the most authority of all [communities] and encompasses all the other” communities. These subordinate communities include “households, villages, religious societies” and more. The jurisdiction of the worldly polis encompasses all the others because its “good” is the “highest” and so its conception of good “has the most authority of all.”

The view is shared today, if implicitly, even by many, if not most, Christians. Christians think of nothing of contrasting the state, which has a “monopoly on the use of force” within a given jurisdiction, with the Church which is celebrated as one of many “voluntary organizations.” This despite the many confessions and catechisms that identify the Church as a government separate from the civil government. Civil government action is treated as real and serious, while the reality and seriousness (see, for example, Mt 10.28) of ecclesial action is ignored or dismissed.

To be sure, few people today are overtly Aristotelian. And, yet, I would suggest, commentators and regular folk who opine on the topic typically draw implicitly on some form of Aristotle’s teleological argument in asserting claims in which actions by the civil government are taken as somehow fundamentally real and ultimate. And that the Church is in a real way a subordinate subcommunity within the encompassing jurisdiction of the state.

In contrast, I posit three claims: First, that the true nature of polis and ethnos (and the household as well) are found in the Church. This inverts Aristotle’s initial claim, and his view that civil government fundamentally “encompasses” all other communities more generally. Secondly, that there is a now/not yet distinction that properly locates the Church’s full exclusivity in the Age to Come, and so recognizes and provides for the integrity, if a subordinate integrity, of the earthly domains of polis, ethnos, and household. Thirdly, that only an ecclesiocentric social and political theory provides a principled basis for the flourishing of non-believers and non-adherents in civil polities.

The Telos of Marriage as an Analogical Transformation

I take a step here which may seem like a detour but, when understood, will help with understanding the implications of the Church as the telos of polis and ethnos. The claim is this, that the Church is the Christian’s first and fundamental family. Considering this claim provides a useful model outside the domain of politics and civil government to help us understand the relationship of the ecclesial telos to the corresponding worldly institutions in this age. It provides an example of a methodology linking the fullness of the Age to Come with the contingencies of this age, contingencies manifestly recognized and taught in the Scriptures.

Often included among the (in)famously “hard sayings” of Jesus is his redrawing the family around himself and his disciples. When told that his mother and brothers were outside wanting to speak with him, Jesus answered and said, “‘Who is my mother and who are my brothers?’ And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Behold my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my father who is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother'” (Mt12.48-50). So, too, Jesus taught that “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10.37). And Christians call each other “brother” and “sister.”

In the Church, it is water that is thicker than blood – the baptismal family is more basic than the natural family.

Jesus teaches that human marriage passes away in the Age to Come (Mt 22.30, cf., vv. 22-33). The reason for this is straightforward and well-known: When the fulfillment comes the type passes away. In Ephesians 5 Paul teaches that human marriage is a figure or type of the marriage between Jesus and the Church (vv. 22-33, cf., Rev 19.7-9, 21.3, 9, 22.17, cf., Is 62.5, Ez 16, 23, etc.). Human marriage is the type or figure of the one true marriage of Christ and the Church. Hence, when the anti-type comes the type passes away.

Importantly, however, the teleology of marriage and the family and its exclusive fulfillment in the marriage of Christ and the Church in the Age to Come does not abolish the institution in this age, even as it relativizes it. While the marriage of Jesus and the Church is the uniquely true and real marriage, nonetheless, in this age, as humans image Christ and his Church in marriage, we learn from him what the earthly image should look like in marriage (Eph 5.22-33) and in the household more generally (Eph 6.1-9).

Critically, that the full and true nature of marriage and the household is found in the Church in the Age to come does not undermine the integrity of marriage and the household in this age. Rather, the reality in the Age to Come provides the normative image in which flourishing human marriages are modeled in this age. Nonetheless, the full and perfect picture of marriage and the household – the true nature of marriage – is revealed only in the eschaton, when human marriage passes away.

So, too, analogically with polis and ethnos.

The True Nature of Polis and Ethnos are Found Only in the Church

Aristotle famously argued,

[W]e say that each thing’s nature – for example, that of a human being, a horse, or a household – is the character it has when its coming-into-being has been completed. Moreover, that for the sake of which something exists, that is to say, its end, is best, and self-sufficiency is both end and best.

My argument here is that because the true and full “coming-into-being” of polis and ethnos is found only in the Church, therefore the Church is the referent for understanding polis and ethnos in this age, just as the marriage of Christ and the Lamb – which occurs in (and initiates) the Age to come – is the referent for understanding the true nature of human marriage.

Aristotle’s immanentist teleology sees the earthly polis as the end or summation of earthly communities. Hence, for Aristotle, the polis is the community that encompasses all other communities. The Scriptures, however, identify the Church as the telos of the earthly polis and the earthly ethnos. Therefore the true nature of the earthly polis and the earthly ethnos is found in the Church and not vice-versa. The Christian properly understands the nation-state from and within the Church and her telos.

I want to unpack three different lines of argument related to this claim. First, the Scriptures provide us the picture of the completed or mature polis and ethnos – their full coming-into-being – being realized in the Church. Consider,

He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore; and I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the polis of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name. (Rev 3.12)

You have come to Mount Zion and to the polis of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels (Heb 12.22).

And I saw the holy polis, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband (Rev 21.2).

And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy polis, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God (Rev 21.10).

And the polis has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb (Rev 21.23).

The Scriptures are similarly explicit that the true polis – the polis in its full and true nature – is this polis. “For here we do not have a lasting polis, but we are seeking [the polis] which is to come” (Heb 13.14).

So, too, the Scriptures identify the Church as ethnos (1 Peter 2.9, Gal 3.27-28, etc.). That said, the fact of eschatological union (Gal 3.28, 1 Co 12.13, Col 3.11, etc.) does not obliterate the continuing reality of worldly nations even as it relativizes them (Rev 21.24, 26, Is 2.2-3).

So What About Nonbelievers in the Ecclesiocentric State

Secondly, whenever one asserts something akin to an “ecclesiocentric” political theory, the objection – the fear – immediately arises of religious war and oppression. I think these sort of objections are less compelling after a 20^th Century in which the bloody toll of secular ideologies rivals, if not dwarfs, the toll of religious wars than they were immediately after the religious wars associated with the Reformation and earlier. Still, there remains an entirely legitimate question of the exclusivism of the Church proper and whether that implies civil exclusivism as an implication of a distinctly ecclesiocentric political theory.

The objection asks in a phrase, whether ecclesiocentrism seeks improperly to “immanentize the eschaton.” Part of the purpose of belaboring the now/not yet aspect of the Church’s telos as polis, ethnos, and household is to draw a distinction between the integrity of these institutions in this age – even as these institutions are contingent – relative to the exclusivism of the Age of Come. And underscoring that it is the Scriptures that teach this division.

Yet an ecclesiocentric political theory, and civil governments based on it, welcomes nonbelievers within its civil jurisdiction rather than excludes them, and this welcome implicates the very Gospel itself. As such, it is never optional for ecclesiocentric civil jurisdictions.

We see this principle taught as a fundamental aspect of both the New and the Old Testaments.

I start by discussing Old Testament Israel, not because it is without problematics of how to apply its lessons today, but rather because the OT Israeli regime had a manifestly civil component to it. This can provide, mutatis mutandis, appropriately calibrated lessons for today (see, e.g., 1 Co 10.6, 11).

In the OT Israeli law, for example, instructions from YHWH to welcome non-Israeli aliens and sojourners were not simply sundry additional and minor provisions. They were a continuing implication of the grace that YHWH showed to Israel. As a result these laws were critical for Israel to implement as a reflection of the very love and grace that YHWH provided to Israel. The instructions teach nothing less than that “love” be shown to aliens and sojourners by Israel. To deny grace to the alien and sojourner would deny the grace that YHWH showed to his people. Consider:

The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God (Lev 19.34).

[S]how your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt (Dt 10.19).

He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing (Dt 10.18).

For negative implications of the instruction, see, for example, Jer 7.6, Ez 22.7.

There also is the recognition that even the covenant people were in some sense “aliens and sojourners.” So grace shown to the alien is in imitation of grace shown to them.

The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently, for the land is mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with me (Lev 25.23).

For we are sojourners before You, and tenants, as all our fathers were; our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no hope (1 Chronicles 29.15).

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; Do not be silent at my tears; For I am a stranger with you, A sojourner like all my fathers (Psalm 39.12).

While aliens and sojourners were excluded from some rites, such as the Passover (unless circumcised, Ex 12.48), nonetheless aliens were welcomed to make sacrifices at the tabernacle and temple (Lev 17.8, Nm 15.14), were included in the actual making of some covenants with YHWH (Dt 29.11-12), and were invited to pray to YHWH at the temple (1 Kings 8.41-43). With circumcision, the category “Israelite” was, with a few exceptions, an open classification.

In the New Testament, the image of the Christian as a former alien before God and granted grace is repeated, and articulated in terms closely associated with the Gospel itself:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, (Eph 2.19-20).

Although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before him holy and blameless and beyond reproach (Col 1.21-22).

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. (Romans 5.10).

The “now but not yet” aspect of life in this age is crucial to the life of the Church itself, therefore would be crucial for civil implications of ecclesiocentrism. For example, Jesus’s parable of the tares and the wheat expressly identifies the exclusivist turn with the move from the current age to the age-to-come (Mt 13.24-30). Similarly, in Paul’s second letter to Timothy, the Christian need show “patience” to the nonbeliever because the non-believer is in “the snare of the devil . . . held captive by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2.26). “Patience” and forbearance is a prudential implication of non-belief, not exclusion. So, too, in this age, Peter identifies the unique “now but not yet” aspect of this age:

The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3.9).

Even the eschaton awaits because of God’s love and grace for the unbeliever.

It is important to revisit and underscore the purpose and implications of this analysis: The argument is not that the ecclesiocentric civil government preaches or offers the Gospel. That would be by definition the opposite of ecclesiocentrism in having the civil authority administer the means of grace. Rather, the point is that locating the telos of the nation-state in the Church does not perforce introduce a religious exclusivism into civil society. In fact, just the opposite. It is because Christians were once God’s alienated and hostile towards God, and God treated them with grace and hospitality, that they cannot now do the opposite. Rather, whatever the implications of ecclesiocentrism for the civil polis in this age, its treatment of non-believers must reflect the spirit of generosity and liberalism that God and the Church show them (or at least should show them). Christians cannot receive God’s forgiveness and then turn around and deny it to others (Mt 18.23-35).

This – dare I say, liberality? – shown toward the non-believer in ecclesiocentric political theory is not a concession to unbelief; it is not based on some sort of metaphysical pluralism, relativism or skepticism. It is based on divine absolutes and the expectation that God’s people are as gracious as he is (see, e.g., Mt 5.45, 48).

As married couples learn what true marriage relationships are, mutatis mutandis, by understanding the future marriage of Christ and the Church, so civil societies learn what true civil relationships are – again with a critical mutandis mutatis – by understanding the true nature of the polis and ethnos are revealed in the Church. Further, recognizing this and acting on this premise advances human flourishing – including the flourishing of non-believers – rather than diminishes it.

The Church Uniquely Offers What the Nation-State Cannot Provide

At the same time, the Christian must insist that the Church uniquely offers what the nation-state cannot provide: A true solidarity, an ontologically real union between peoples without tyranny in their  union with Jesus Christ. Unlike the metaphorical national or state body, only the Church offers a real social Body. As French philosopher Jean-Louse Chretien pointed out,

Amongst collective bodies, only the body of Christ is truly personal and one under one head. So only here does the analogy to an individual body really work. Other collective bodies turn tyrannical because their bodiliness is incomplete and to a degree a lie.

Again to start analogically with the family: While the earthly family continues to be a vital institution in this age, its ultimate aspirations, its telos (or rather, teloi), are realized and reflected only in the Church. This is a bracing lesson of Christ as he explodes the ancient worldly institution and redraws it around himself in his bracing “hard sayings.”

The Christian confesses that the Church is his first family, the Church is his first nation or ethnos, and the Church is his first state or polis. Social reality and political reality are, for the Christian, fundamentally ecclesiocentric. From this, with the lessons detailed above, the Christian derives a distinctly and exclusively Christian understanding of what to aspire to in and through the nation-states of this world in this age.

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. Thus, with the proviso that we can make common cause on some issues—perhaps even many issues—the Statement’s foundational commitments are fundamentally wrongheaded.

James R. Rogers is associate professor of political science at Texas A&M University. He holds a Ph.D. and a J.D., and teaches and publishes scholarship at the intersection of law, politics, and mathematical models. He has published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Public Choice, and in numerous other academic journals. He edited and contributed to the book, Institutional Games and the Supreme Court, and served as editor of the Journal of Theoretical Politics from 2006 to 2013. He is currently contributing editor at Law & Liberty. He chairs the Theopolis Institute’s Civitas group.