Two Months into the New Year–Time to Write Something! How About a Book Analysis of “Mere Christendom” by…Douglas Wilson???

It is February 24, 2024, and I have yet to write anything on this blog this year. Well, it’s time to get back at it. Now that I’m once again a full-time high school English teacher, I don’t have as much time as I used to do. Still, I want to maintain my blog, and I see my focus here as settling on three things. First, I want to write more about Biblical Studies—primarily because my book, The Blue-Collar Bible Scholar’s Reader’s Guide to the New Testament has come out and I want to promote it. That, and (hopefully) the BCBS Reader’s Guide to the Old Testament will be coming out later this year. With those, though, I am trying to start a YouTube channel/podcast where I make videos about the NT and OT.

Another area of focus for this blog will be that I will be writing more about literature. The reason why should be obvious: it’s what I’m now teaching. Who doesn’t want to read my thoughts and analysis of The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gastsby, Macbeth, and all the great literature?

Finally, I still plan to do book analyses/reviews. And that’s how I’m going to start out this year. I’m going to look at Douglas Wilson’s recent book, Mere Christendom: The Case for Bringing Christianity Back into Modern Culture – Leading by Faith to Convert Secularism. Wilson is a Reformed, very conservative Evangelical and a “Christian nationalist” who uses words like “theocracy.” He’s also been accused of having some pretty horrible views on slavery in America. A few years ago, I wrote a blog post on something he wrote and pretty much skewered him. Before that, I watched the video/documentary of his debate tour with atheist Christopher Hitchens.

Other than that, though, I never have paid much attention to him. What convinced me to get his recent book were two things: (1) If you’ve spent any amount of time on my blog, you know I have a thing for reading and writing book analyses of books I thoroughly disagree with. It may sound petty, but it is kind of fun dissecting ridiculous books! (2) Over the past few years, I’ve recognized an odd dynamic at play in the current social/political climate. Back when I wrote The Heresy of Ham, I noted that young earth creationists like Ken Ham are ultimately, not so much concerned with Genesis 1-11 or the creation/evolution debate, as they are with the “culture war.” Issues like Genesis 1-11 and the creation/evolution debate are seen simply as “battlefronts” on the larger culture war.

Therefore, when a zealous YECist finds out you disagree with him about the age of the earth or how to interpret Genesis 1-11, he will see you as the “enemy” and will label you as a “compromiser,” or “secularist,” or “evolutionist,” and will automatically assume they know every single one of your political positions. In The Heresy of Ham, I warned about that mentality. Sadly, over the past eight years or so, I’ve seen a very violent reaction to what we might call that kind of right-wing, Fundamentalist, YECist ideology. Now, I see a lot of self-proclaimed “Ex-Evangelicals,” either now identifying themselves as “progressive” or just “atheist,” basically doing the same thing that Ken Ham does. They are knee-deep in fighting the “culture war,” but now from the opposite end of the political spectrum. And, unsurprisingly, if you disagree with them on any hot button social or political topic, you are bound to hear different labels thrown your way: “fascist,” “Christian nationalist,” “MAGA cult,” or “apologist” (meant to be derogatory).

That bugs me. It leaves absolutely no room for discussion at all. No one listens to the other side at all now. Everyone is too busy throwing verbal hand-grenades and screaming at the top of their lungs from their own, freshly-dug theological/cultural trenches.

In any case, since I’ve heard Douglas Wilson is a racist, misogynistic Christian nationalist whose dream for America is something akin to The Handmaid’s Tale, I decided to read him for myself. Let me say up front that, just as I pretty much expected, I found myself profoundly disagreeing with Wilson on a number of points, while at the same time saying to myself, “Okay, that’s a valid point. He’s right there, sort of.” So, I decided to go through his book in a new book analysis series. I fully expect those with rather a hard progressive bent to lose their minds and accuse me of catering to “Christian nationalists” or whatever because I’m actually trying to understand and interact with Wilson’s book, instead of heaving verbal nuclear missiles. That’s okay. I learned quite a while ago with my interactions with YECism that socially, culturally, and politically, I’m pretty much in no man’s land anyway.

Does that intrigue you? I hope so. In any case, if you are interested in what Wilson actually says and what I actually think about what he actually says, I hope you enjoy this book analysis series. Let’s begin.

The Preface
Before I even got to chapter 1, I looked at how Wilson presents his book, Mere Christendom, on the front and back covers, as well as the Preface. Here is what is written in the front jacket:

“Christ conquered the West the first time. And this is how He’ll do it again. And when He does it again, Christians must be ready to take the lead. Jesus really is the answer to taxes, civil resistance, and speech laws. However, Christians do not need another political platform. They need a plan. This book is that plan. …You may not live in Christendom now, but your great-grandkids could.”

My first reaction to that opening was, “Yikes! Sounds pretty militant to me!” It gives the impression that Wilson’s “plan” is to make America a “Christian nation,” right? And does he really think that Jesus is the answer to…taxes, civil resistance, and speech laws? What does that even mean?

Turning to the Preface, I found out what Wilson is going to be arguing for in the book. It can be summed up in two quotes:

“[Jesus’] Lordship applies to politics, culture, entertainment, media, and His answers to our rebellions and follies are just exactly what we need to hear” (x).

“I argue here for a principled abandonment of the disastrous experiment of secularism, and for a corporate confession of the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, and all done in such a way as to preserve and protect our liberties. This no doubt raises questions, and hence this book” (xi).

Again, I felt an immediate hesitation. What does that first quote mean? If Wilson was going to push for some kind of literal “theocracy,” with Bible verses used as the basis for laws that govern politics, culture, entertainment, and media, I’m sorry, that really does sound a bit Handmaid’s Tale-ish. At the same time, though, I am a Christian. For me, that is true. The Lordship of Jesus should have major influence on my interaction with those things. And, at a national level, what Christian wouldn’t want a more Christ-like nation? The question, of course, is, “What does Wilson mean by that?”

As for the second quotation, that is a major part of Wilson’s argument in the book. Of course, the fundamental question is, “What does he mean by ‘secularism’?” Many Fundamentalists (and YECists like Ken Ham) through that word around a lot, but it seems to mean nothing more than, “Anything that clashes with my conservative political views that I am presenting as the Gospel. That being said, I have to say that I feel our current American society has gone completely insane over the past ten years or so on a variety of fronts. I really do think that unless there is some sort of major recalibration, the whole “American experiment” of representative democracy and our Constitutional republic is going to be in its death throes really soon. It might already be there.

In any case, that is what I found laid out in the Preface. It was time to go on to Chapter 1: “The Wickedness of Secularism.” That sounds spicy! That will come in the next post.