In 2018, evangelicals in the reformed world decided it was finally time to slow down the social justice movement. Dubbed the “Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel,” several well-known theologians found their signatures on a document meant to target the Left. Unsurprisingly, the statement drew criticism from the intended audience. “They’re so imprecise in the terms that are used and defining those terms,” wrote Thabiti Anyabwile, a well-known advocate in the social justice movement.1https://www.christianitytoday.com/podcasts/quick-to-listen/john-macarthur-statement-social-justice-gospel-thabiti/ But what may be surprising to a number of signers is that after 6 years, some people on the Right found themselves offering a similar critique. The statement decried things like “postmodern ideologies derived from intersectionality” and affirmed that virtually all cultures “at times contain laws and systems that foster racist attitudes and policies.” It may have felt straightforward at the time, but, looking back, certain parts of the document did not hold up too well. The statement boldly affirms “that societies must establish laws to correct injustices that have been imposed through cultural prejudice.” It makes vague concessions on the culpability of culture (whiteness). My chief issue, as I have pointed out in previous articles, is that the statement adopts the very definition of race proposed by Critical Race Theorists. Though it may have been intended to repel the Left, it does so from a moderate position, not an explicitly Right-wing angle.
In January of 2024, Neil Shenvi conducted something of an “experiment.” He had been sensing pushback from parts of what he believed to be the anti-woke coalition. Among his followers, some were suspecting him of advancing the progressive agenda. To “test” this theory, Shenvi isolated a quote from the Statement on Social Justice & The Gospel, posting it without attribution to his X account.
“Racism is a sin rooted in pride and malice which must be condemned and renounced by all who would honor the image of God in all people.”
Almost immediately, people began to comment, questioning the definition of racism. Upon further inspection, people came to realize that this was the definition of racism offered in the 2018 statement! Racism was a self-defining sin, meaning anything to anyone. Like familialism or culturism, racism was one of those -isms that was supposed to function on a scale; it was a way of evaluating a particular matter, not a matter in and of itself. If a person told me that familialism was a sin rooted in pride and malice, I would tell them to get their head evaluated. I would also probably ask where on earth they got that ludicrous idea. As regards the present issue, apparently, the answer is “nowhere.”
Some months later, Christ Church pastor Doug Wilson took it upon himself to offer an alternative explanation to Shenvi’s experiment. He believed, in part, that Neil had been drifting a bit Left as of late. Most people probably assumed he was using racism in a Critical Theorist kind of way. He also figured that political currents had people still on edge. However, Wilson was also keen to provide another explanation.
That really is the result of the other three possibilities that Shenvi noted—the impact of CRT, the pressure of politics, and actual racism.
But as I have said before, and as Shenvi acknowledged, this open racism is the bastard child of the revolution and a classical liberal order that does not know how to defend itself.
Douglas Wilson, “Neil Shenvi Sets Up The Experiment Poorly”2https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/books/context-and-meaning.html
Rather than defining the sin, Wilson merely distinguishes “racism” from “actual racism” or “open racism.” Once again, the actual definition of the term is assumed. The only distinction that has been made is from the “actual” or “open” version of itself. Yet we also find that Wilson was right about one thing: the classical liberal order does not know how to defend itself.
Checking In On The Libs
Undeterred by its shortcomings, a number of prominent theonomists have taken it upon themselves to defend this classical liberal order. For years, Joe Boot and Andrew Sandlin have weighed in on society’s ills, prescribing a mixture of political theonomy and cultural apologetics along with heavy doses of classical liberalism. Over time, however, the exact prescription for political-cultural ills began to get a bit hazy. This became especially clear with the rise of Christian Nationalism, when many theologians began to mistakenly label the project a Right-but-actually-Left-wing phenomenon. Kevin DeYoung’s infamous review of The Case For Christian Nationalism, published by The Gospel Coalition, labeled the project “woke right.” It was a ludicrous suggestion, but it revealed a common theme among conservatives that had slowly gained momentum. Many reformed Christians and conservatives had adopted a worldview where both sides of the political aisle were essentially the same. Both the Left and the Right were simply revolutionaries or counter-revolutionaries, radicals or counter-radicals, two sides of the same tedious coin.
Three days after the January 6 protest, Sandlin found himself comparing Trump supporters to BLM. “Like the violent protesters last summer in the wake of the George Floyd killing,” he wrote, “these pro-Trump supporters justified violence on the alleged grounds of an unjust and therefore illegitimate political order.”3P. Andrew Sandlin, “The Degeneration into political soteriology” – January 9, 2021 – https://pandrewsandlin.substack.com/p/the-degeneration-into-political-soteriology It was a fragile and unsubstantiated comparison, but Sandlin continued the article. It appeared that MAGA protesters were little more than Leftists in his mind, radicals for an ideological pseudo-war where Communists and Nazis may as well have teamed up.
This insurrection is sometimes called “conservative counter-revolution,” but it never is. It claims to be restoring the moral order overturned by Leftists, but it is actually an attempt to reverse the new Leftist (dis)order after assimilating the revolutionary gains — and strategies — of Leftism. It is a variant of revolution whose eyes are hidden to this fact by its opposition to other specific tenets of Leftism. […] This is a precise description of Germany’s National Socialism in its hatred for Marxism and classical liberalism.
P. Andrew Sandlin, “The Degeneration Into Political Soteriology” – January 9, 2021
Frankly, Sandlin’s comments forge a bizarre, third-way approach to politics. He creates a paradox where opposing a political idea is the equivalent of supporting it. Sandlin has since incorporated this paradoxical thinking into other areas. Writing on masculinity, he makes the claim that “…we must be non-egalitarian and not anti-egalitarian.”4P. Andrew Sandlin, “The New Right-Wing Paganism: Bronze Age Pagan Masculinity” – November 11, 2024 – https://www.ezrainstitute.com/the-new-right-wing-paganism-bronze-age-pagan-masculinity/ — an impossible charge for anyone on this side of reality. Sandlin had done little to reframe the binary (Left/Right, egalitarian/anti-egalitarian). In his view, politics was simply a matter of staking out a spot where we could be neither.
Over at the Ezra Institute, Joe Boot found himself in a similar situation. Theonomy was supposed to become a “third way” for political discourse, but the lack of historical support was a bit problematic. To rectify this, Boot adopted his own historical records, tracing philosophies through a revised timeline. The natural law tradition, despite being a pillar of Protestant political thought, was re-imagined as a Roman Catholic dogma.
“In Boot’s world, then, Puritanism and the natural law tradition are antithetical, a wildly ahistorical claim. The paradigm of autonomy v. theonomy governs the inquiry more than any historical data understood on its own terms and by its own context.”
Timon Cline, “That One Time Theonomists Didn’t Run Puritan New England” – July 8, 20225https://thelondonlyceum.com/that-one-time-theonomists-didnt-run-puritan-new-england/
But it was more than natural law that was at stake. Boot decried Aristotle as a statist, ascribing his theories about the nature of politics to “neo-paganism.”6https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZd9dPOYZm0&t=1173s In order for the attack to encompass both sides of the political coin, Boot and Sandlin managed to decry almost every form of government that existed before the mid-17th century, eviscerating even their own tradition. This revisionism has done nothing but hamper the broader political discussion. In Boot’s mind, politics was not a battle between the Right and the Left. It was a battle between classical liberalism and the reactionaries. Borrowing DeYoung’s newly coined term for Christian Nationalists (“woke right”), Boot continued his political crusade, accusing everything from Left-wing Marxists to historic Protestantism in a single tweet.
The godless Marxist left has spent years “race-baiting” to try and sow hatred in its dialectical struggle for endless revolution, now the new woke right is doing the same thing. Both are in the grip of sin and rebellion against God.
Joe Boot – November 12, 20247https://x.com/DrJoeBoot/status/1856354620626346157
But the hunt for the revolutionaries could not go on forever. Their numbers were only increasing, as Christian Nationalists continued to abandon the narrow road of classical liberalism. They were becoming anti-egalitarian. They were becoming anti-Left. Core tenets of liberalism were being rejected, along with the ideals of the postwar ideologues.
It was time for a new line in the sand.
The Tower of Antioch
“In order to avoid a diabolic ditch on both sides of the socio-political road, and to advance God’s Kingdom purposes, we therefore offer the following declarations and invite signatories.”
Intro to the Antioch Declaration
When contrasted with the Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel, the impetus of the Antioch Declaration has so far proven to be relatively small. The collaboration was primarily the product of a small circle of old-guard theonomists and the Moscow crew, joined by the foreign internet dramatic Tobias Riemenschneider. It was obvious from the outset that the signers were concerned with “a rising tide of reactionary thinking” in reformed circles. Indeed, the rise of the new Christian Right, represented by the Christian Nationalist movement, would certainly be challenging to resist. The neo-classical liberal theonomists needed to assert themselves and their political philosophy in the strongest possible terms.
Unfortunately, the statement somehow managed to do the opposite. Instead of clearly and boldly defining the future of the Christian classical liberal movement, it somehow made the coalition of moderates even more confusing. It was riddled with turns of phrases and self-contradictory statements. Still, a number of themes cut through the noise, the most essential being a sort of fusionist narrative of the Left and Right.
We affirm that a contradictory and pervasive thread of self-doubt and self-loathing has also formed an essential part of this secular narrative following the horrors of World War II. Thus, when the reactionary right challenges the “post-war narrative” they are not necessarily breaking free of it—this is a reflex that the post-war narrative itself has nurtured. The narrative thrives on an unstable mix of white imperiousness and white guilt.
The Antioch Declaration
The political paradox of the pseudo-classical liberal once again emerges. To react to the secular narrative, to fight the Left via political opposition is to become the Left. Fighting for the middle, for moderates, is the only path available for those who want to avoid the “reactionary” or “neo-reactionary” label. As the left and right ends of the horseshoe bend toward each other, the only acceptable Christian political theory demands that we stay at the top of the horseshoe, denouncing the radicals who seem to extend a bit too far.
The statement rejects “every form of identity politics, whether of the left or right,” further denouncing the Christian Nationalist project. No more Christian people. No more evangelical bloc.
In a way, the statement reflects the absurdity of the moderate. Rather than allowing politics to flow naturally, the totalizing worldview of the liberal insists on setting the boundaries of discourse. Even thought the classical order is no longer capable of enforcing the rules, some still insist we abide by them. But the Christian Nationalists will not be deterred. The new Christian Right was born out of defying the tenets of liberalism, even the pseudo-classical kind. The frameworks of the Left will no longer determine the boundaries of the path forward. The Christian philosophers who criticize the fruits of Enlightenment while also embracing them will be left behind.
Christ is King, and we will fear God rather than man.
Sources:
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- 3P. Andrew Sandlin, “The Degeneration into political soteriology” – January 9, 2021 – https://pandrewsandlin.substack.com/p/the-degeneration-into-political-soteriology
- 4P. Andrew Sandlin, “The New Right-Wing Paganism: Bronze Age Pagan Masculinity” – November 11, 2024 – https://www.ezrainstitute.com/the-new-right-wing-paganism-bronze-age-pagan-masculinity/
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