Why I’m Not a Christian Nationalist: An Old Baptist Alternative

This post likely won’t win me many friends. Obviously, Christian nationalists won’t like me criticizing their position. But this post will likely frustrate many on the anti-Christian nationalist side of things too, because this post is NOT about principled pluralism, post-WWII conceptions of religious liberty, or really anything that would satisfy secular America today. Indeed, I suspect that my biggest pushback will be from people who are also against Christian nationalism, but for different reasons than me. But that’s okay. I’m not particularly concerned with pleasing either of those crowds. My goal is to be a voice for Baptists who are likewise wary of the kind of mixing of church and state that we see in the Christian nationalist camps, but who also recognize that the definition of religious liberty has changed from what it meant at America’s founding. I want to be a voice for people who have principled objections to a “Christian” state, but who also suspect that the popular alternatives have been fundamentally infused with post-modern ideas that would have been foreign to our Baptist forebears. In short, I want to be a modern advocate of the old Baptist principles — a third way that aligns neither with Christian nationalism nor modern secularism.

What is Christian Nationalism?

Before we look at the definition of Christian nationalism, I think it’s helpful to say what I don’t mean by it. When I argue against Christian nationalism, I am not arguing against every sense of the term, “Christian nation.” People mean a variety of different things when they say a nation is Christian. Some may call America a Christian nation because the majority of its citizens profess Christianity, or they may call a nation “Christian” because of the great cultural influence that Christianity and the Bible has had upon it. I wish that all nations were more Christian in those two senses! If anyone defines Christian nationalism as merely the desire for more conversions in a nation and the increase of Christianity’s influence on its culture, I’d be happy to wear the label. But when I oppose Christian nationalism, I’m opposing it as defined by Stephen Wolfe’s representative work on the subject:

“Christian nationalism is a totality of national action, consisting of civil laws and social customs, conducted by a Christian nation as a Christian nation, in order to procure for itself both earthly and heavenly good in Christ.”

Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism, p. 9

The reader will notice that this definition involves more than a simple affirmation of Christian influence. Wolfe is talking about more than a nation full of many Christians or a nation whose culture has heavy Christian overtones — he is talking about a nation with a Christian identity, such that it can be said to be “in Christ,” in some sense. He’s talking about a nation that’s a self-consciously Christian institution, which wields not just social but civil authority in achieving specifically Christian ends. He’s talking about a nation that sees itself as an instrument for obtaining heavenly good, not just earthly good. These things are what I’ll be arguing against in this post as incompatible with historic Baptist thought.

A Baptist Alternative

But before arguing why the old Baptist position is better, we need to see what it is. It’s well-known that Baptists were instrumental in securing religious liberty in early America and that they had been seeking such liberty ever since the baptistic reformation began in 17th Century England. This is one of our great distinctives, a noble part of our heritage that we ought to be proud of. However, as I have already alluded to in the introduction, their ideas of religious liberty were not necessarily the same as those of the secular West today. Immediately after pointing out that the First London Baptist Confession of Faith only grants civil authority to the magistrate (as opposed to ecclesiastic), James Renihan gives the following qualification in his commentary: “We must be careful, for the confessors were not arguing for universal religious toleration” (For the Vindication of the Truth: A Brief Exposition of the First London Baptist Confession of Faith, p. 198). In support of this, Renihan gives a lengthy quote from a representative early Particular Baptist, Christopher Blackwood, which I will also quote here:

Objection 2. Magistrates are to be a terror to evil workers, Rom. 13. But heresy is an evil work.

Answer. Evil works are of three sorts.

1. Those that are committed against the light of nature and reason, as the setting up of Muhammad, or any other God besides him that is the creator of heaven and earth; Atheism, when any man shall boldly affirm there is no God, Polytheism, when men affirm many gods, Blasphemy, Murder, Adultery, False witness, Perjury, Theft, Disobedience to parents, Sedition, Sodomy, Buggery, Drunkenness, tumults against the public peace, &c. These and such like, the Magistrate, whether heathen or christian, is to be a terror unto.

2. Against the light of Nations; there is no nation in the world, but in it the magistrate will punish those that speak against the God they profess, and against that which they think his Scripture; So if any one rail against Christ, or deny the Scriptures to be his Word, or affirm the Epistles to be only Letters written to particular churches, and no rule for us, and so unsettle our faith; This I take may be punished by the Magistrate, because all or most Nations in the world do it.

3. A third sort of evil works, are those that are committed against the light of faith, as denial of Christ, walking contrary to a mans own principles, presenting our selves at false worship, pride, covetousness, unbelief, impenitence, rotten communication, heresy, schism; these I suppose, and many such, which are no less evil works, then the other, the Magistrate cannot be a terror unto, but they must be left to the respective Churches, of which the persons offending are members. The Apostle calls the Magistrate a terror to evil works, but not to all evil works, and if he be a terror to all evil works done against light of faith, what need we contend for any government by Ecclesiastical discipline, being the Magistrate hath power in his own hand to punish, therefore evil workers against the light of faith, may be permitted in the world, though not in the Churches.

Christopher Blackwood, The Storming of Antichrist, pp. 23-24 (spelling modernized)

In this quote, Blackwood first gives an anticipated objection to his position (namely, against his position that heresy should not be punished by the civil magistrate), and then he gives his answer explaining that magistrates are not commissioned to be a terror to every type of evil work. There are three types of evil works: sins against the light of nature, sins again the light of nations, and sins against the light of faith. In defense of true religious liberty, Blackwood affirms that the government has no role in punishing sins against the light of faith and therefore should not be punishing heresy. Throughout the work, Blackwood expressly denounces religious compulsion and persecution, saying clearly, “Compulsion is unlawful in Religion” (p. 16). However, in what might seem to be contradictory to modern ears, he says with equal clarity in the above that sins against the light of nature and sins against the light of nations can be punished by civil authorities, and these include sins that people today would classify as religious in nature! The reason for this will be explained shortly, but here I’ll say that it is this basic framework that I will be defending in this post, and this is what I mean by the old Baptist perspective. I will present a few qualifications (especially in regard to the category of sins against the light of nations), but on the whole I will be defending the government’s role in the first two categories while safeguarding true religious liberty by excluding them from the third.

The Bait and Switch

Many readers will undoubtedly see an irreconcilable contradiction in the words of Christopher Blackwood. In one place, he fiercely denies government compulsion in religion, but then in another place says that the civil magistrate can defend a commonwealth against the dangers of atheism, polytheism, blasphemy, and certain false religions like Islam. Which is it? The answer to this riddle isn’t that Blackwood is just hopelessly contradictory, there’s something more fundamental at the bottom of the confusion: language has changed over time. Religion, in its more original sense, refers more to acts and structures of worship and piety, but it has a considerably broader meaning today. In our current setting, anything that concerns God or the supernatural is considered to be religious in nature. Even the very belief in God is considered to be a religious belief. In the past, however, belief in God was considered to be more of a prerequisite for religion rather than a religious belief itself, since the bare acknowledgement of Deity is not in itself an act of worship or piety. John Gill, for example, calls the Being of God “the foundation of all religion,” rather than being a religious notion itself, “for if there is no God, religion is a vain thing” (Body of Doctrinal Divinity, Book One: Of the Being of God).

Really, to believe in the existence of God is simply for man to be man. It does not require faith, but simply requires that we don’t suppress the light of nature we possess from birth. As Calvin says, “a sense of Deity is indelibly engraven on the human heart” (Institutes, I.III.3). It’s not a matter of sect, denomination, or a religious order of any kind. And indeed, while man is made to be religious and was originally created in natural religious fellowship with God, true religion is impossible to exercise from this light of nature alone. The light of nature (which, in its innate form, is none other than the essence of the Ten Commandments graven on the heart) demands that we worship God, but does nothing to tell us how He is supposed to be worshiped. The light of nature does not teach us about the incarnation, the atonement, the hypostatic union, or church membership. The light of nature demands another necessary light which it doesn’t itself supply — the light of faith. It is by means of this latter light that true religion is conducted, and it’s freedom in regards to this latter light that was so passionately argued for by our Baptist forebears. Hence, during the era of the American founding, the famous Baptist advocate for religious liberty, Isaac Backus, didn’t say a word about the belief in God in general in his famous work, An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty. His concern was only about forced involvement and support of specific religious orders/churches — i.e., things that concern the light of faith.

And here’s where the bait and switch comes in. When the old Baptists talked about religious liberty, they were primarily focused on liberty with respect to the light of faith, i.e., worshiping God according to the light that our conscience receives from special revelation — the word of God. When moderns talk of religious liberty, however, they’re referring to liberty of conscience in all three of the areas that Blackwood identified. When they speak of religious liberty, they desire to shut out the government from not only the light of faith, but also from the light of nature and the light of nations as traditionally understood. This is a radically different conception of religious liberty than our forebears had. But because this understanding of religion has become so pervasive in every day life, many unthinkingly defend it while believing they are doing the same thing that Baptists were doing in the past. But that’s simply not the case. A secularist will understandably want to claim that belief in God is simply a matter of religion rather than natural knowledge, but in doing so they are only suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, because they know that God exists regardless of whether or not they have any or no religious orientation. And we join them in suppressing the truth in unrighteousness if we pretend that they don’t know that there is a God by nature, as if it’s simply a matter of conscience and according to the light they’ve received. They do know there’s a God, and both their conscience and ours condemns them for their professed unbelief. We ought not pander to their sin by pretending that the situation is otherwise, or by pretending that the recognition of God’s existence by a government would be an imposition on a sincerely held belief. There is no such thing as sincere unbelief for what you know by nature. We need to properly define our terms and not let the secularists do it for us.

Why Exclude the Light of Faith?

So far, I’ve explained what kind of religious liberty the old Baptists were pushing for, but I haven’t explained why we should follow them. The most basic reason goes back to what Blackwood has already stated for us: “If [the civil magistrate] be a terror to all evil works done against light of faith, what need we contend for any government by Ecclesiastical discipline?” This reason is grounded upon the issue of authority, an issue of great importance to the Baptist tradition. Christ is the only Head of His Church — His spiritual Kingdom — and He alone has the authority to dictate how to handle the controversies of His Kingdom. And this He has done in the New Testament, where He’s appointed the officers and the proceedings that should be followed for handling sins against the light of faith among His people, and He simply has not given any place to the civil government for these matters. If He intended the civil magistrate to handle sins peculiar to the spiritual Kingdom, why establish ecclesiastical discipline at all? The Church is established as a distinct institution with distinct authority, and it’s nothing but an usurpation for the state to take things to itself that God only gave to the Church.

But this isn’t the only reason, and this will get us to the heart of why I don’t believe it’s right to consider a nation “Christian” in the sense that Wolfe and others propose. This other reason has to do with covenant theology. Contrary to the claims of others, there is no evidence of civil government before the fall of man. While it’s true that Adam was a prophet, priest, and king over the original creation, his kingship is not to be equated with the kind of kingship exercised in the world today, because the essence of civil governments is the possession of the sword to punish evil doers and reward the good among mankind (Rom. 13). Adam was not given a sword to judge among men in the Garden because there were no evil doers to punish, nor were any civil incentives necessary to do good. His authority over his posterity was paternal, not the authority of a civil legislator or judge. We do not see God giving the power of the sword until Genesis 9:6: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” In other words, we see God establishing civil government in the Noahic Covenant, which is not an administration of the Covenant of Grace, but rather a covenant of preservation established with all creation, binding on Christians and pagans alike until the end of the world (Gen. 9:8-17). As John Gill says, commenting on verse 9, “[It is] not the covenant of grace in Christ, but of the preservation of the creatures in common, a promise that they should not be destroyed any more by a flood … this covenant was made and established not only with Noah, and his sons, but with all their succeeding offspring.” By fulfilling the duties of the magistrate, a man is doing work commissioned by the Noahic covenant, not Christ’s New Covenant, and the primary end is the preservation of order in natural, everyday life. This everyday life of what’s often called the “common kingdom” today is not only participated in by Christians and non-Christians, but even irrational animals (Gen. 9:10), and thus is not at all to be conflated with the Spiritual Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

As a covenant for natural life, it concerns natural things. Contrary to secularists, the knowledge of God and His moral law are indeed contained among those natural things, and it’s His Law written on our hearts that enable us to see that sins of any kind — including sins purely of the second table — are truly sins and worthy of the punishment of the sword. How could man receive the common kingdom by way of covenant from God without any awareness of God! However, while general truths about God are known through nature, this should not be confused with thinking that the entirety of the New Testament is downloaded into your brain from birth. Not all truths of God are innate. Not only are the truths unique to special revelation unknown from birth, they cannot be known by any employment of natural capacities even in a sinless state. The truths that are unique to special revelation are things of God, and “the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:11). Thus, Paul concludes that it’s only by the Spirit of God we come to know these things: “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God … But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor. 2:12,14). Natural man has no inborn ability to know things that are of the Spirit of God, not simply because of his present corruption (although that certainly aggravates it and is the reason why it’s foolishness to him), but because of the more fundamental reason that he isn’t God and doesn’t possess His Spirit by nature. Therefore, he depends on the revelation of God, because just like only the spirit of man knows the things of man, only the Spirit of God knows the things of God (1 Cor. 2:11). In fact, even the perfect angels didn’t fully know God’s plan in the gospel until He was pleased to reveal it (e.g., 1 Pet. 1:12).

Therefore, if these things aren’t of common knowledge, how can they be matters of common judgement upon a natural nation full of believers and unbelievers? Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying that unbelievers have no culpability for rejecting the things of special revelation, what I’m saying is that it’s only in accordance with the light God gives them through the external ministry of the word, and also that any judgement they do receive concerning it is reserved for the last day (Jn. 12:47-48). All men receive light — at the very least, the light of nature — and they all can and will be judged by that light, but not all men receive the light of faith, nor do all receive the same amount of light when they do. For some men, Satan immediately snatches the word sown in their heart, whereas others endure for a while and receive more of the common workings of the Spirit before they fall away to greater damnation (Mt. 13:18-21, 2 Pet. 2:20-22). This greater condemnation shows that the degree of accountability is not equal across the board. To quote Gill again, “The obligation to believe in Christ, and so the faith to which men are obliged, are in proportion, and according to the nature of the revelation of the gospel, which obliges them” (Gill, The Cause of God and Truth, Part 1, Section 28).

When we see Paul talk about the universal condemnation of man, he does not list unbelief in the Person and work of Christ as a grounds of universal condemnation. Unbelief in Christ is a particular aggravation of the condemnation for both unbelieving Jews (whose covenant demanded they receive Him) and for others who rejected the external ministry of the word as it came to them, but it’s not the grounds of the universal condemnation upon all men everywhere. In Romans 1-3, Paul shuts up all men everywhere as guilty before God on account of what they know by nature — i.e., His eternal power and Godhead, and the law graven on their hearts. Although rejection of Christ can aggravate one’s condemnation, He ultimately came not to condemn man, but to save. Man is condemned already without ever hearing of Christ, which is why the gospel is good news.

Here’s the rub: The civil government is an institution of Noah’s Covenant and made to preserve order for mankind in their universal, common state. It’s meant to be of service for believers and unbelievers alike. But to embed truths of special revelation into the civil code so that we punish or reward people based on their adherence to it is to design it for a different order of people than civil government was meant to serve. It’s to effectively create a grounds for universal judgement that is broader than the one Paul and others employ in the New Testament. The New Testament only condemns people for what they do/could know, but such civil laws would condemn people for what they can’t know without an additional revelation from God, which revelation goes beyond what they receive by nature. And this revelation of God is not a mechanical one whose effects can be guaranteed by the orchestration of men, but in its efficacy depends on the sovereign will of the free Spirit who blows where He will, convicting and enlightening through the external ministry of the word to the degree that He pleases to do. For people who have not even heard this external ministry at all, punishing them for matters of special revelation would be like punishing a fish for not flying — it’s not just a matter of moral inability at that point, it’s a matter of natural inability.

Therefore, matters concerning the light of faith must be excluded from civil government, because including them results in civil government being ordered around a different class of people than it was intended to serve, which form only a subset of those it must deal with (the very subset of people that the power of the sword is least needed for). Since Christianity concerns truths that are unique to special revelation, this is reason enough for us to reject the idea of Christian nationalism. Civil laws should not be created to serve “a Christian nation as a Christian nation,” but instead should be created in accordance with the light of nature for the preservation of an orderly civil life. This is what it was instituted to do. There is no parallel between it and a Christian household, because the family is a pre-fall institution that entrusts the head of it to proclaim God’s word to the rest of his household, maintaining some vestiges of Adam’s prophetic office. Accordingly, fathers have been given the commission to raise their kids in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4), but the civil magistrate is never told to do the same for his citizens. To do so would be a breach of the authority God has given them and the purpose of their institution.

Some Qualifications for Blackwood’s Framework

Having established why I believe the civil government has no role in the light of faith and why I reject the idea of a national Christian identity, properly speaking, it now remains to discuss the government’s role for Blackwood’s first two lights: the light of nature and the light of nations. Undoubtedly, much of what Blackwood said will sound scary to modern ears, even un-American. Of course, we should not let modern sensibilities or patriotism interfere with what Scripture and reason suggests is permissible, but I do feel compelled to argue that his framework in application is not as radical as it might seem at first glance, and it’s certainly not un-American if we can consider more than the last half-century or so. Even though he speaks against atheism, polytheism, and blasphemy from a civil context, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are the direct target of civil law. Even the self-identified Christian nationalists who are most aggressive about enforcing the first table of the law (the first four of the Ten Commandments) will typically admit that the civil government does not regulate the conscience and thus can only regulate public expressions of first table violations, at the most. The reason for this is twofold, one of which is a matter of practicality and the other a matter of principle. For the first, legislating the conscience is impractical — even impossible — because the government has no direct insight to the conscience. The ability to read hearts is a distinguishing mark of the Lord’s Christ (Isa. 11:3), and not within the power of ordinary kings. It is impossible to force anyone to love the Lord our God and worship Him only, at best we can only force men to pay hypocritical lip service — the kind that He tells us He hates (Isa. 1:11-14).

Secondly, as a matter of principle, directly targeting the first table of the law goes beyond the scope of the civil government as instituted in Genesis. The purpose of the civil government is to maintain civil order — in other words, to regulate societal life and interpersonal behavior, not individuals as considered in isolation from society. Hence, when the power of the sword was granted, the immediate reason given was to apply capital punishment to murderers, which is a second table issue. The ultimate aim of civil government is to create civil peace in a fallen world by punishing the evil doers and rewarding the good, which puts matters that are purely of the heart outside of the government’s purview. Private atheism, polytheism, and the like cannot be targets of the sword.

Hence, if these things are to be legislated against in any capacity, they can only be legislated against insofar as they cross over into the domain of the second table, i.e., when they in some sense sin against your neighbor. This is the kernel of truth behind the second table-onlyism position. However, it’s only a kernel of truth, because second table-onlyism will exclude the first table from consideration altogether, but I argue that there aren’t any grounds to do that, at least not in principle. Let’s consider a practical example: Civil governments have public decency laws to ban inappropriate conduct and profanity. These laws typically don’t directly target the behavior itself (e.g., they’re not concerned with someone swearing in the privacy of their own home), but rather its public expression to the degree that it’s judged to be harmful to the health of the society. And it’s judged to be harmful in a variety of ways — it can pollute the minds of unsuspecting citizens, it can lead to temptations, it can serve as a bad example for the youth, it can normalize wickedness, and it can cause civil unrest by justifiably upsetting those around them. We typically take it for granted that these kinds of laws are just, and we do not see them as tyrannizing the life of citizens as long as the laws are concerned with those public spaces that we are all obliged to conduct our daily lives in. But now let’s look at an alternate example: someone sets up a statue of Satan in a statehouse. Can we not appeal to many of the same reasons to ban this that we did for laws against public indecency? Does it not pollute the minds, normalize wickedness, and lead to civil unrest? The controversies over the last few weeks should be more than enough to prove that it leads to civil unrest!

But under second table-onlyism, we’d have to essentially ignore what’s staring in front of everyone’s face. We not only know that the Satan statue is evil, we also know that it has the potential to cause real harm in the civil sphere — the domain of the civil magistrate — in much the same way that public profanity and indecency causes harm. And it’s not merely a certain order of people within the common kingdom that knows this, all the people of the common kingdom know it’s evil by nature. The common kingdom itself, as an institution by God in Genesis, ought to recognize that it’s wicked to worship a deity whose attributes are the antithesis of the attributes of the God that instituted it. Yet, are we still supposed to ignore it simply because our knowledge of the wickedness of beings like Satan comes from the first table? Does the source of the fact make the act any less harmful to our neighbor, and thus any less of a civil evil? Does its first table source make the revelation any less clear and universally binding than things we know from the second table? Is it any less clear of a sin than public profanity?

Secularists, of course, will insist that a satanic statue is fine because it’s just a matter of “religion,” and different people have different, earnest, and deeply held convictions about the goodness or evilness of the Devil. But this is a lie. No one “earnestly” believes a being such as Satan is good, and if they profess to it’s only a symptom of their deep and willful depravity. It’s a matter of nature, not religion. The magistrate knows it’s wrong, the people know it’s wrong, and the people who set up the statue know it’s wrong. Are we supposed to join in the lie and pretend otherwise? Are we supposed to suppress the truth in unrighteousness with them and pretend that they’re doing what they’re doing with a good-faith sincerity? Pretending that they don’t know, in some way, that they are causing harm to their neighbor in the civil sphere and are culpable for doing so? Why should we pander government to the willful delusions of truth-suppressors? While it might not be the government’s role to deal with the first table directly, that doesn’t mean first table truths aren’t relevant when determining whether or not an action is a second table violation. Even at the establishment of civil government, the reason given for enforcing a second table law was a first table truth: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” Such truths can hardly be said to be irrelevant.

Light of Nations?

But the most controversial of Blackwood’s three lights is probably the light of nations, and it is the one that sounds closest to Christian nationalism on the surface. I am not going to pretend to mind-read what Blackwood himself meant by it, and I do think that the way he lays this one out is somewhat deficient, but either way I believe it can still be helpful if we qualify it. The chief mark of this light is that, unlike the light of faith, this light is negative in orientation. In other words, rather than teach positively what true religion is and demanding worship like the light of faith does, the light of nations is a prohibition on publicly reproaching the religion of the society and its foundations. Again, I think this needs some qualification, because if taken in an absolute sense it would mean that it’s sinful to even reproach a society’s false religion, which we know is not the case. And, as framed by Blackwood, it might sound a bit too much like a government adopting official religious views which — even though they don’t mandate religious worship — still result in a government officially embracing the kind of special revelation truths that result in it being designed around a different order of people than it’s commissioned to serve. Nevertheless, I think we can appropriate a biblically-sound understanding of this light as long as we understand it to allow prohibitions against irrational and belligerent public derision against the commonly held convictions of the people. This does not mean that the government has a right to say that those convictions are correct (at least not in its official capacity), but it’s rather an application of its duty to maintain civil peace by ensuring that people don’t aggravate fellow citizens for no good reason. It’s a desire to allow its citizens to conduct their lives without being involuntarily subjected to vitriolic disrespect shown to them and the things they hold most dear. It’s also a recognition that public peace could be compromised otherwise. If the light of nations is understood as being about this and not about either establishing official views on matters of special revelation, forbidding inquiry into truths people don’t know by nature, or reproaching things that are known to be wrong by nature, then I see nothing wrong with governments making these kinds of laws. Even if it’s not the government’s place to declare that Christ is Lord, does that mean it has to sanction the open profaning of His name against the desires of its citizens?

In Conclusion

This article has been a rather lengthy journey for a blog post, but I figured this was unavoidable in light of how foreign many of these ideas would inevitably be to readers. Some defense was needed. But at a high-level, the main arguments can be reduced to these four points: 1. The civil government is a post-fall institution meant to maintain civil order in a post-fall common kingdom; 2. Civil order is directly concerned with the second table, but it’s built upon first table truths and can take them into consideration when evaluating second table violations; 3. Due to the limited nature of special revelation’s disclosure, truths unique to it are unfit to be used as a basis for the laws of a mixed, common kingdom; 4. Nevertheless, certain bans against the open profanation of religious truths may be appropriate for the peace and tranquility of a society.

I believe that these are acceptable, moderate positions that avoid the pitfalls of both modern secularism and inappropriate mixes of Church and state, cohering well with how religious liberty was originally understood both by Baptists and at America’s founding. The distinction between religious liberty and a right to open profanation was understood and explicitly acknowledged in several US court decisions prior to World War II, and some states continue to have a few laws on the books against the latter to this present day. Nor were these cases outliers: In a discussion in the Harvard Law Review, it was noted that “From the Founding era to the end of the nineteenth century, every appellate judge who ruled on the validity of an anti-blasphemy statute under a speech or press guarantee voted to uphold the statute. For these judges, the law protected ‘opinions seriously, temperately, and argumentatively expressed,’ but not the ‘despiteful railings’ of blasphemers.”

This isn’t Shariah law, it’s simply what the Constitution was historically understood to allow in this country. If we think the near-universal judgement on this matter by a country known for championing religious liberty is “extreme,” maybe we’re the extremists.

I’ll close with a final clarification. What I’ve been discussing in this article is what governments principally can do, not what they should necessarily do for every single issue in every single context. The government doesn’t punish every single violation of exclusively second table issues, nor does it have to punish every violation that involves first table truths or the light of nations. Real-life application depends on prudence and the practicality of a specific circumstance. If you think, for example, that it’s unwise to involve our present government in these matters any more than it already is, I definitely understand that. In my opinion, the present government has too much power, not too little. But this is not a “Thus saith the LORD” situation, it’s a matter of prudence. In principle, the government can exercise such power in the appropriate circumstances, and this is what I’m defending. That’s not, however, the case with the Christian nationalist conception of mixing Church and state. As we defined it here, we can safely reject it as unbiblical without falling into the opposite error of 21st Century secularism.