May 14, 2025 • 39 mins
In this episode of Christendom and the World, Pastor Andrew Preus and Pastor Jim Wilshusen tackle recent debates over Christian nationalism in Lutheran circles. They discuss the growing conversation around Christendom, the role of the church in public life, and how Lutherans understand the relationship between church and state. From theological reflections to real-world implications, they explore what faithful political engagement looks like without compromising core doctrine. Whether you're deep in the debate or just curious, this episode offers a clear and thoughtful perspective.
Korcok's piece
Stephenson's piece:
Ristau's piece:
*Christian News 5/5/2025: A Rebuttal to “A Lutheran Response to Christian Nationalism” by James Preus*
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Great.
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(00:22):
I'm just kidding.
Yeah, you can.
So today we're going to talk about the idea of, well, Lutheran debates on Christiannationalism.
And I think it's good that this is all out in the open and we can have these debates.
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ah So there are a few different uh articles that have been written recently and a littlebit less recently, perhaps.
ah And I guess I'll just summarize them.
So first, okay, so, and these are all people I know very well.
uh But it's good that we're having this debate.
(01:12):
So one is...
uh
Reverend Dr.
Thomas Korczak.
ah He is a friend of mine from Canada when I was a student there at St.
Catharines.
He was actually my landlord.
uh my brother James and I were good friends with his son and went to church together andall that.
(01:35):
Anyway, so he wrote an article.
on Christian nationalism.
Now, he first wrote one for the Lutheran Theological Review, which is more of a, probablya longer, I would think it's certainly longer.
And I read that uh when that came out, and that would have been a number of months ago, afew months ago.
And then more recently, he wrote an article, I suppose a summary version of it, that hasbeen going around the interwebs from
(02:06):
the Canadian Lutheran, which is sort of like the Lutheran witness of Canada.
And
And that's when I read that you read that February.
Yeah, that was late, was that late February?
was it that long ago?
Okay.
Yeah, so then, uh then uh there were a couple other articles, a few of them written inresponse to his, more or less.
(02:35):
One are these aphorisms.
uh Dr.
Stevenson, Dr.
John
R.
Stevenson, I want to get the title exactly right, aphorisms on Christendom in the shadowof Christian nationalism.
uh these are published on ad crucem or ad crucem or whatever, however they uh pronounceit, uh A-D-C-R-U-C-E-M.
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uh then there's, so what he does, he goes through and just makes a case for Christendom.
and explains what Christendom is, talking about uh the two realms of the oh state and thechurch, two civilizations, so to speak, and talks about Christendom's place within the
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world and that these are distinct from one another, but they still interact with oneanother.
And then there was an article uh published also by Ad Crucum,
by Reverend Dr.
Harold Ristow.
Now all three of these guys were on the faculty together at my alma mater, uh ConcordiaLutheran Theological Seminary in St.
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Catharines.
When I was there, only Dr.
Stevenson was there.
Ristow was, I think, serving as a military chaplain somewhere.
well-respected guy.
I remember hearing of him all the time.
I don't know if I ever met him when I was in seminary.
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And then uh Korczak was finishing up his doctorate and he was around.
He uh was serving...
He was also actually serving as a military chaplain uh that I just remembered.
I'm pretty sure that that's what he was doing.
I can't remember.
He was doing all sorts of stuff, but...
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But he was around.
And so he was he was kind of serving at the church somewhat, one of the churches that Iwent to.
And so I got to know him and his family.
um And and then by the time after I left, then eventually all three of these guys, as wellas Dr.
Winger and uh maybe a couple others, were on the faculty together.
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And this would have been right around the time of COVID.
They they would have all been
on the faculty at the same time.
And so, the elephant in the room is COVID, obviously.
And what happened, uh not just in the United States, but really in Canada.
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Yeah.
And so, what COVID did was it opened up or amplified a lot of these issues of church andstate.
And
particularly the kind of anti-Christian agenda which has perhaps been a little bit morecovert over the years in kind of mainstream media and pushed by left-wing uh governments,
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but perhaps got more amplified.
And so basically to summarize the two takes, you have on the one side you have Ristow andStevenson who take the position that uh
The Church should speak uh to uh social issues that pertain to God's Word and God's Law,even if they are deemed political.
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uh Dr.
Korczak's take is, well, we need to be careful that we don't fall into a kind of Calvinismthat would uh frame it to be that somehow we need to
make sure that the governments are and the institutions are Christian so that Christ canrightly reign.
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And his point is that Christ reigns simply through his gospel and sacraments.
so, I think that he makes some good points.
And I think that some good points about the dangers of Calvinism.
pre and post-millennialism, Zionism, dispensationalism, this idea that there are all sortsof different versions of this.
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The idea, for example, that uh the Jews need to be able to rebuild the temple or somethinglike that for Jesus to be able to come back.
we have to do yet before Jesus can come back.
yeah.
And, you know, as the small catechism says, the kingdom of God comes indeed without ourprayers of itself.
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Our political...
That's right.
And so, he's making that point.
Now, why is there a response from Rizzo and Stevenson and others?
Is it because they disagree with that point?
Well, no.
They would agree, of course, that...
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kingdom of God comes of itself.
That there is the kingdom of heaven comes not by observation, right?
It doesn't come from our own mechanisms, uh but it comes through faith in the gospel.
But what they would also maintain is that we live, they would want to emphasize that westill live within these three estates.
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And so, I think that for our listeners, I don't think we have time to go through
all of the points that everyone makes.
But it would be helpful for people to go and read Dr.
Korchak's article, A Lutheran Response to Christian Nationalism, uh and then read Dr.
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Ristow's response uh and Dr.
Stevenson's aphorisms that kind of explain what Christendom is.
But what I would also recommend is what uh
the time this podcast comes out, it will have already been published in Christian News.
But my brother James, James Price, wrote a rebuttal to a Lutheran response to Christiannationalism.
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ah And he wrote this for the Christian News.
And so, what I'd like to, I'd like to just talk about the points that James makes.
And then we can just speak freely about the issue.
So,
What James says, I'm just going to read a little bit of what he says.
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He says, uh
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And and this gets to kind of part of the challenge of this whole debate is that when youtalk about Christian nationalism, are you talking about a bad eschatology?
Are you talking about dispensationalism?
Are you talking about this idea that Christ's kingdom is somehow dependent upon our socialmechanisms and political activity?
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Or are you simply talking about uh
Christians in their various stations in life, confessing the truth and holding theirrulers accountable to the Word of God, to the law of God.
So first, I'll just read these.
First is that government should be based explicitly on Christian morality and order theirpriorities according to God's law.
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uh James makes the argument that they should, right?
That they should do that.
ah
And then the second one is that the Christian's calling is to defend against alienworldviews and foreign influences that are contrary to the law of God.
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again, James says that they should, and he gives the example of Philip Melanchthon inArticle 21 of the Augsburg Confession on the Prayer to the Saints, where he says that the
saints shouldn't be prayed to, but rather they should be looked at as examples of faith.
sort of like how ah we should look at David, rulers should look at David as an examplewhen they make war to drive away the Turk from our country, right?
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So here in our Confessions, certainly the rulers are expected to follow the example ofChristian faith and morality.
The third statement is Western institutions, governments, schools, universities, churchbodies are beyond reform.
Christians need to reclaim these failed institutions by rebuilding them according toChristian moral precepts.
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Again, James makes the point that, this is what the Missouri Synod did in its ah earlyyears.
There's a reason why we have so many parochial schools even to this day.
And James also makes the point that government, whether we like it or not, does affect themorality of the people.
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because the law not only curbs, it also teaches.
And so, for example, after Roe versus Wade, uh before Roe versus Wade, most Americans wereopposed to abortion.
After Roe versus Wade, that shift that shifted.
And the same thing with gay marriage.
After Obergefell uh came out in 2015, uh people's before that, people were in favor, wereagainst gay marriage for the most part.
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I mean, it failed proposition eight.
Remember that in California in 2008 failed and then 2015 at not long after that, all of asudden, most people are on board with it.
so, so these are so, and these things hinder faith.
Do they prevent the gospel from having effect?
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Have it being efficacious?
No.
Do they prevent God's plan of his kingdom?
No.
But nonetheless, we still are duty bound to proclaim the truth in whatever station we'rein.
that gives us kind of a summary of the issues here as far as we can get a summary.
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aah But I just want to hear your thoughts on where would you start?
What are your first thoughts with this whole debate on Christian nationalism amongLutherans?
As usual, we want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
There is a place in the life of every Christian, and in fact, your Christian faith shouldinfluence how you live all parts of your life, which includes how we live in the
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government, how we interact with the government, what we have to say to the government.
This idea that that politics is this third rail that we cannot touch.
in the Church, that if I am preaching on issues of morality, for instance, uh abortion orsame-sex marriage or transgenderism or DEI or whatever along those lines, if I'm preaching
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on that, then I divorce.
Yeah.
If I am mentioning that teaching and preaching, I should say, on those issues that I havesomehow stepped over the line,
Mm-hmm.
This is just buying into the whole modernist view that faith, yeah, it's something inprivate and we can't bring it into the public.
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The reality is there is no aspect of a Christian's life that is not influenced by who theyare in Christ.
And we should allow our faith to
tell us how to live and interact in the public environment.
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Yeah.
What would you say if someone says, we get into this then issue of whether America or theWest in general is Christian.
And you gotta kind of unpack what you mean by that.
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Yeah, Ristow points out these charters in the early colonies, you know, like Delaware andVirginia.
that said that one of their purposes was for the Christian faith to be able to thrive.
Right?
And they were very explicit about that.
Now, someone might come in and say, well, you know, our second president was a Unitarian,not really, not a Christian, right?
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We would not consider Unitarians Christians.
And there were a handful of other presidents who were Unitarians.
And so you...
You know, then you get the Mormons, that's another issue.
So when we talk about Christendom, and if we understand Christendom in its broader senseof just the kingdoms of the world influenced by Christianity, or Christianity as it
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manifests in the various estates within the world.
If someone comes along and says, well, and points out that, know, John Adams was aUnitarian, Thomas Jefferson was a deist.
A deist, Right.
So, how can you say that this is, that we ever even have a leg to stand on as far asChristian influence?
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And what we have done is thrown out what we're trying to do is throw out all of that.
Here's the whole reality behind.
the theory of evolution.
If we can get rid of the Creator, we can get rid of His created order, and then we get tomake it all up on our own.
And we can see where that's leading us.
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Is it better or worse?
Sure.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
And you can make a case for...
I remember when Romney was running and I just didn't vote because I couldn't vote forObama because he opposed the Christian orthodoxy at every turn.
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But I couldn't vote for...
for Romney and one of the reasons, it wasn't the only reason, but one of the reasons isbecause he's a Mormon.
And there's something about that.
I think that Christians can have that conversation about whether you can vote for aUnitarian, but nonetheless, what you said is still true, that they're still being governed
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by, from a law standpoint, even though they're blinded from the gospel truth.
there's still a certain Christian influence that's there that is seen in natural law.
And it reminds me of uh St.
Augustine's uh City of God, where he's arguing with those who say that Rome fell becauseof the Christians, because the Christians brought a weakness to the strong Roman spirit,
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and then Rome fell because of that.
And what he says is that, Rome fell because
of their own decadence and their own moral uh debauchery and stuff like that.
But one thing he points out is that the Goths who came and sacked Rome, they were Aryans.
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They were heretics, right?
They didn't believe that Jesus uh was the eternal Son of God.
They believed that the Son of God was the first and greatest creation of the Father.
So we would not consider them Christians and properly speaking,
Of course, we would not consider them part of Christendom.
But what a point that Augustine makes, though, is that nonetheless, the name of Christ wasstill uh still had providential influence on them in that, for example, they would allow
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people to uh take shelter and refuge in churches and they would not tear down the churchesand attack the churches.
they were still influenced by a Christian mores.
They were still influenced by the name of Christ.
And I think today you could see a similar thing happening that you don't have to make thecase that this particular ruler is a Christian or is Orthodox in any way.
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And even in the founding of America and the colonies, you have your Puritans who are veryuh
killjoy Kelvinists.
But nonetheless, the name of Christ, the name of Christ has not only a spiritual eternaluh effect, which is the main, that's how his kingdom comes, the gospel, but it also has a
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providential effect.
And what we're seeing today is people are becoming more and more brazen in their
rejection of Christ's teaching outright.
I mean, I remember in 2015 or so, maybe it a little earlier than that, ah there was, uh Isaw a speech by uh Hillary Clinton and she brought up abortion.
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She was talking about abortion.
And she said, well, there are some people who say that they oppose this because ofreligious reasons.
And she said, well, their uh position needs to change.
They need to change their religious position.
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And the people started cheering.
And I'm thinking to myself, this lady is running for president and saying very clearlythat we stodgy evangelicals, if they want to call us that.
that we stodgy conservative Christians need to change our position.
So did she say that she had an agenda to enact this or that law?
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No, she didn't elaborate that.
But as a Christian, to hear that and to say, well, stay out of politics, it justdoesn't...
What you're doing is you're leaving people out to dry who want to know, how do I respondto this as a Christian?
was listening, I told you earlier about this, it was Adam Kuntz and you don't remind me ofthe guy's name, the pastor out of Canada.
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Oh, Smellick.
Smellick.
Yeah, Dave Smellick.
I was listening to them.
And that was one of his points as to what has happened in Canada is that the pastors ofthe LCC, Lutheran Church in Canada have been quiet on these things, have not mentioned
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them from the pulpit, have not bothered to teach their people.
And if we don't teach our people what God's Word has to say, then we're leaving them outto dry to fall prey to.
the Hillary Clintons and the Barack Obamas and whatever.
Yeah.
Well, and, that, that would also go with those who were on the right.
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You know, like when, when, when Trump has what, who's that lady is this spiritual advisor.
yeah.
I can't remember her name.
I don't remember these.
Yeah.
So prosperity gospel lady.
And yeah, I mean that, that we, we should call that stuff out too.
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We should.
Absolutely.
And, uh
And so, but the idea that somehow when things are in the political realm that now all of asudden they're off base.
It's really, I've talked about this before, it's a trick that the devil pulls.
Where in politics, he turns things into religious issues so that you can't talk about themin politics.
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And then in the church, he makes those
political issues, so you can't talk about them in the church either.
And abortion is the prime example of this.
If you talk about abortion in the political realm, I remember this when I was in college,arguing about abortion, they'd say, separation of church and state.
Keep your religious views out of the conversation.
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And I say, well, this is a natural law issue.
This is a civil issue.
But then also I've heard of people complaining in the church when a pastor preachesagainst abortion.
and saying, keep politics out of the pulpit.
Well, which is it?
Yeah.
Well, it's both, obviously.
Yeah, sure it is.
And we, you know, we we should speak of his testimonies even before Kings.
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Yeah.
And like, think of it like John, think James maybe mentioned this or someone else.
John the Baptist.
Why did Hannah?
I'm to I'm going to quiz you.
uh Don't worry, no one will hear you and I'll just I'll never mind.
uh
Why did John the Baptist get arrested?
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He was speaking God's word.
That's good.
That's a good answer.
What got him in prison was it that he said, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away thesin of the world and we're only saved by faith, by God's grace and not by works.
Didn't he say something to He did say something to someone about something.
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see, he didn't get arrested, at least this was not the cited cause.
for preaching the gospel in its narrow sense.
He got arrested.
He preached the law to Herodias.
Yeah.
Telling him he should not have taken his brother Philip's wife Herodias.
Yeah, and it was a rodeo's who made him Did he arrest?
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Did she make him she made him kill him?
But yeah, she make him arrest him.
Well, I'm go back and I'm sure
was like a Jezebel character.
now, I would say theologically that ultimately, because of our understanding of the Wordof God, that the Gospel is at the center of everything, that Christ crucified for sinners
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is at the center of everything.
So, even if you are proclaiming the sixth commandment, you shall not commit adultery, orthe tenth commandment, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, you are still...
uh if you're doing so in the name of Christ, you are at the center of your whole messageis uh Christ crucified for sinners as John the Baptist most certainly taught.
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But the particular thing that got John to lose his head, thrown in prison and losing hishead, was that he preached the law.
And this is the thing, I think as Christians, we might think to ourselves of
You know, if I'm going to be a martyr, if I'm going to suffer for the cause of Christ, I'mgoing to make sure that it's because I refuse to back down on justification by faith
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alone.
Well, great.
That's wonderful.
That's center of everything.
you should know that you might get your head cut off for saying that boys are boys andgirls are girls.
But you should know that when you say that, at the center of what you're saying is reallythat Christ is the savior of boys and girls and for all people, right?
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So I think that when we talk about these issues, you can fall into a kind of reductionism,a gospel reductionism or whatever you want to call it.
But I think what I find to be helpful is to see all doctrine, all truth,
centered in Christ, right?
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What does Jesus say?
Keep my commandments.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
and he says, I am the truth.
I am the truth.
A new commandment I give you.
Love everyone as I love you.
Yeah.
Yeah, which means keep my commandments.
Yeah.
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Yeah.
And at the, what's the heading above the Augsburg Confession is from Psalm 119 that says,will speak of thy testimonies also before kings and shall not be put to shame.
So, when we, we don't want to fall into the kind of Christian nationalism that would lookat, you know,
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Christ kingdom somehow depending upon the movements of social and politicalaccomplishments.
But at the same time, though, we don't want to lump that in with just simply living theChristian life in the estate of the home or the civil estate and the state of the church
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and speaking what's true.
this is...
Because when we do that,
what we end up doing is seeding ground, not just politically, not just culturally, buteven seeding ground in our hearts to the secularists who are going to say, keep your
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religion out of our public square.
Right.
And I like, I remember when I was in college, we started a paper.
I wrote for a paper called The Counterweight.
My brother James and I wrote for this paper called The Counterweight, which was aconservative counterpart to the uh official school paper.
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And then we got mad at The Counterweight one day and we decided to come out with our own.
And we came out with one issue of The Liberator.
And then we went back to The Counterweight.
But in this Liberator, this issue of The Liberator, we had
We had articles from friends and foes alike.
And then I decided to publish an advertisement for my church on the back of it because Iwas the editor and I thought, why not?
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And so, and then I also uh put in, uh I wrote a poem on, Christ and I put that on theback.
And then one of the lady, one of the girls who was in one of my classes,
accused us of pushing for a theocracy because I confessed Christ in the same publicationwhere we were also discussing political issues.
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And the way I thought was that this is just public square.
uh So, should this surprise us when people accuse us of being theocrats or
Christian Nationalists when we are...
being Christians, just being Christians speaking the truth.
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you shouldn't be surprised.
What's new about it?
Yeah.
No, what's new?
Yeah, what's new about it?
There's nothing new.
in my mind, I keep going back to what Paul writes in Romans 1, where he's speaking of, wehave creation, you should see creation, and you should see God in it.
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So, we are without excuse.
They are without excuse.
Yeah.
So, now he gives them over to their debased minds to practice things that man should notpractice.
in the end, what's it end with?
destruction.
It's a form of judgment.
And I guess if take that truth, take that as reality, then we have to realize that maybeGod is in the process of judging our own.
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We've got to take that seriously.
that doesn't mean that we take a lying down.
mean, God, uh yeah.
But yeah, but we should recognize that's right.
Yeah.
that we should be trying to pull them back from the cliff.
right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, our goal is not to like make the world a better place or make the world like some kindof humanist utopia with a conservative bent.
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Right.
And I think sometimes that seems to be what some people push.
that is their goal.
Yeah.
But rather is to the gospel, the law and the gospel call us to repentance to rescue us.
from this crooked generation.
um Now, in the meantime though, God in His providence, and we should pray for this, thatHe does provide like the centurion, right?
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The Philippian jailer, Constantine, even though He still had His faults, but we stillthank God for that.
um And so, yeah, now one thing that, I'll just mention this, we're kind of running out oftime here, but uh
One thing I found I really appreciated uh was this article speaking of Dr.
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Korczak.
He gave this paper, he gave this presentation during the CCLE, some conference on theconfessional, what, I can't remember the CCLE, what does that stand for again?
uh Classical, confessional Lutheran classical, know, classical.
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uh education anyway consortium for classical Lutheran education that's what it means okayand he uh and what he said was instead of focusing on the classical we should focus on the
Lutheran and he said that doesn't mean that we don't
care about the classical, we should talk about that stuff.
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But that shouldn't, like what we have to offer as Lutherans is our theology, ourcatechetical instruction.
I thought that was so refreshing and helpful because I think it does happen a lot where wecan easily fall into the maybe social and political hype uh and then end up being led
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by Calvinists or by Roman Catholics.
We teach our kids at home and so we subscribe to some stuff, Memoria Press, and we havethis thing called The Classical Educator, I think, is the name of this magazine that we
get.
And it has this, you know, this Roman Catholic equivocating of God's grace and talkingabout participating in God's presence and all this, you know, the good, the true and the
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beautiful are spoken of in a way that doesn't really articulate the law and the gospeldistinctions.
And so I can definitely see where Pastor Korczak is coming from.
uh And I think that he has
that he has...
When we have these public debates among brethren, I think it's important that we don't,either of us, either lump people in or equivocate positions or throw the baby out with the
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bathwater.
So, I think it uh is very uh good message to send that we should focus on teaching thefaith
ah according to the small catechism.
But what I would also then say to that is that, well, in the catechism, you have the tableof duties.
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We need to teach people how to confess their faith within these stations in life.
And that means that you are going to get into the realm of politics.
You can't avoid it.
And that doesn't mean that, you know, we...
doesn't mean that we go and rant about immigration policy from the pulpit.
(36:29):
uh But also at the same time, as Christians, we can talk about multiculturalism, we cantalk about the nefarious agendas that kind of resemble the Assyrians, a softer version of
the Assyrians and the Babylonians, in their attempt to destroy any uh semblance ofChristian culture left.
(36:52):
Yeah.
Within our society.
And that this has been going on.
And so, as pastors, we have to be careful that we're not taking people, distracting peoplefrom the main point of repentance and faith and love and duty.
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But we also have to be careful that we don't neglect teaching them that there is aresponsibility to live out our faith in a way that everyone knows who and whose we are.
Yeah.
No, that is right.
And uh I think we could leave it at that.
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I'll commend to our audience, uh again, these articles.
They're worth reading and reading them in comparison to the Scriptures and the clearteaching that we receive from the Scriptures, from the Catechism.
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Um, and, uh, and not to be afraid to talk about this issue, um, because the, the devilwants to divide the church and the, the best way to allow the devil to divide the church
is to, uh, not debate the truth, not confess the truth and compartmentalize it into thislittle bubble of
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politics or whatever and say that's off base.
We should be able to speak the truth and uh hold one another accountable, even as we holdfathers and mothers and ah rulers and all other authorities accountable to the authority
under which we all stand, which is God.
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So, any last words?
for now.
That sounded kind of great.
All right.
Well, thanks again, uh Pastor Will Susan for for uh this conversation.
And we'll have more of these in the.
There's a lot to be discussed about this issue yet.
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Hello.
Hello, hello.
Oh, OK.
Well, I don't think I bumped it.
OK.
All right.
Well, that means that I need to speak louder.
(00:22):
I'm just kidding.
Yeah, you can.
So today we're going to talk about the idea of, well, Lutheran debates on Christiannationalism.
And I think it's good that this is all out in the open and we can have these debates.
(00:45):
ah So there are a few different uh articles that have been written recently and a littlebit less recently, perhaps.
ah And I guess I'll just summarize them.
So first, okay, so, and these are all people I know very well.
uh But it's good that we're having this debate.
(01:12):
So one is...
uh
Reverend Dr.
Thomas Korczak.
ah He is a friend of mine from Canada when I was a student there at St.
Catharines.
He was actually my landlord.
uh my brother James and I were good friends with his son and went to church together andall that.
(01:35):
Anyway, so he wrote an article.
on Christian nationalism.
Now, he first wrote one for the Lutheran Theological Review, which is more of a, probablya longer, I would think it's certainly longer.
And I read that uh when that came out, and that would have been a number of months ago, afew months ago.
And then more recently, he wrote an article, I suppose a summary version of it, that hasbeen going around the interwebs from
(02:06):
the Canadian Lutheran, which is sort of like the Lutheran witness of Canada.
And
And that's when I read that you read that February.
Yeah, that was late, was that late February?
was it that long ago?
Okay.
Yeah, so then, uh then uh there were a couple other articles, a few of them written inresponse to his, more or less.
(02:35):
One are these aphorisms.
uh Dr.
Stevenson, Dr.
John
R.
Stevenson, I want to get the title exactly right, aphorisms on Christendom in the shadowof Christian nationalism.
uh these are published on ad crucem or ad crucem or whatever, however they uh pronounceit, uh A-D-C-R-U-C-E-M.
(03:04):
uh then there's, so what he does, he goes through and just makes a case for Christendom.
and explains what Christendom is, talking about uh the two realms of the oh state and thechurch, two civilizations, so to speak, and talks about Christendom's place within the
(03:28):
world and that these are distinct from one another, but they still interact with oneanother.
And then there was an article uh published also by Ad Crucum,
by Reverend Dr.
Harold Ristow.
Now all three of these guys were on the faculty together at my alma mater, uh ConcordiaLutheran Theological Seminary in St.
(03:58):
Catharines.
When I was there, only Dr.
Stevenson was there.
Ristow was, I think, serving as a military chaplain somewhere.
well-respected guy.
I remember hearing of him all the time.
I don't know if I ever met him when I was in seminary.
(04:19):
And then uh Korczak was finishing up his doctorate and he was around.
He uh was serving...
He was also actually serving as a military chaplain uh that I just remembered.
I'm pretty sure that that's what he was doing.
I can't remember.
He was doing all sorts of stuff, but...
(04:40):
But he was around.
And so he was he was kind of serving at the church somewhat, one of the churches that Iwent to.
And so I got to know him and his family.
um And and then by the time after I left, then eventually all three of these guys, as wellas Dr.
Winger and uh maybe a couple others, were on the faculty together.
(05:04):
And this would have been right around the time of COVID.
They they would have all been
on the faculty at the same time.
And so, the elephant in the room is COVID, obviously.
And what happened, uh not just in the United States, but really in Canada.
(05:26):
Yeah.
And so, what COVID did was it opened up or amplified a lot of these issues of church andstate.
And
particularly the kind of anti-Christian agenda which has perhaps been a little bit morecovert over the years in kind of mainstream media and pushed by left-wing uh governments,
(05:53):
but perhaps got more amplified.
And so basically to summarize the two takes, you have on the one side you have Ristow andStevenson who take the position that uh
The Church should speak uh to uh social issues that pertain to God's Word and God's Law,even if they are deemed political.
(06:21):
uh Dr.
Korczak's take is, well, we need to be careful that we don't fall into a kind of Calvinismthat would uh frame it to be that somehow we need to
make sure that the governments are and the institutions are Christian so that Christ canrightly reign.
(06:47):
And his point is that Christ reigns simply through his gospel and sacraments.
so, I think that he makes some good points.
And I think that some good points about the dangers of Calvinism.
pre and post-millennialism, Zionism, dispensationalism, this idea that there are all sortsof different versions of this.
(07:15):
The idea, for example, that uh the Jews need to be able to rebuild the temple or somethinglike that for Jesus to be able to come back.
we have to do yet before Jesus can come back.
yeah.
And, you know, as the small catechism says, the kingdom of God comes indeed without ourprayers of itself.
(07:36):
Our political...
That's right.
And so, he's making that point.
Now, why is there a response from Rizzo and Stevenson and others?
Is it because they disagree with that point?
Well, no.
They would agree, of course, that...
(07:58):
kingdom of God comes of itself.
That there is the kingdom of heaven comes not by observation, right?
It doesn't come from our own mechanisms, uh but it comes through faith in the gospel.
But what they would also maintain is that we live, they would want to emphasize that westill live within these three estates.
(08:21):
And so, I think that for our listeners, I don't think we have time to go through
all of the points that everyone makes.
But it would be helpful for people to go and read Dr.
Korchak's article, A Lutheran Response to Christian Nationalism, uh and then read Dr.
(08:43):
Ristow's response uh and Dr.
Stevenson's aphorisms that kind of explain what Christendom is.
But what I would also recommend is what uh
the time this podcast comes out, it will have already been published in Christian News.
But my brother James, James Price, wrote a rebuttal to a Lutheran response to Christiannationalism.
(09:08):
ah And he wrote this for the Christian News.
And so, what I'd like to, I'd like to just talk about the points that James makes.
And then we can just speak freely about the issue.
So,
What James says, I'm just going to read a little bit of what he says.
(09:28):
He says, uh
(09:54):
And and this gets to kind of part of the challenge of this whole debate is that when youtalk about Christian nationalism, are you talking about a bad eschatology?
Are you talking about dispensationalism?
Are you talking about this idea that Christ's kingdom is somehow dependent upon our socialmechanisms and political activity?
(10:20):
Or are you simply talking about uh
Christians in their various stations in life, confessing the truth and holding theirrulers accountable to the Word of God, to the law of God.
So first, I'll just read these.
First is that government should be based explicitly on Christian morality and order theirpriorities according to God's law.
(10:44):
uh James makes the argument that they should, right?
That they should do that.
ah
And then the second one is that the Christian's calling is to defend against alienworldviews and foreign influences that are contrary to the law of God.
(11:07):
again, James says that they should, and he gives the example of Philip Melanchthon inArticle 21 of the Augsburg Confession on the Prayer to the Saints, where he says that the
saints shouldn't be prayed to, but rather they should be looked at as examples of faith.
sort of like how ah we should look at David, rulers should look at David as an examplewhen they make war to drive away the Turk from our country, right?
(11:33):
So here in our Confessions, certainly the rulers are expected to follow the example ofChristian faith and morality.
The third statement is Western institutions, governments, schools, universities, churchbodies are beyond reform.
Christians need to reclaim these failed institutions by rebuilding them according toChristian moral precepts.
(11:56):
Again, James makes the point that, this is what the Missouri Synod did in its ah earlyyears.
There's a reason why we have so many parochial schools even to this day.
And James also makes the point that government, whether we like it or not, does affect themorality of the people.
(12:20):
because the law not only curbs, it also teaches.
And so, for example, after Roe versus Wade, uh before Roe versus Wade, most Americans wereopposed to abortion.
After Roe versus Wade, that shift that shifted.
And the same thing with gay marriage.
After Obergefell uh came out in 2015, uh people's before that, people were in favor, wereagainst gay marriage for the most part.
(12:45):
I mean, it failed proposition eight.
Remember that in California in 2008 failed and then 2015 at not long after that, all of asudden, most people are on board with it.
so, so these are so, and these things hinder faith.
Do they prevent the gospel from having effect?
(13:06):
Have it being efficacious?
No.
Do they prevent God's plan of his kingdom?
No.
But nonetheless, we still are duty bound to proclaim the truth in whatever station we'rein.
that gives us kind of a summary of the issues here as far as we can get a summary.
(13:27):
aah But I just want to hear your thoughts on where would you start?
What are your first thoughts with this whole debate on Christian nationalism amongLutherans?
As usual, we want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
There is a place in the life of every Christian, and in fact, your Christian faith shouldinfluence how you live all parts of your life, which includes how we live in the
(14:00):
government, how we interact with the government, what we have to say to the government.
This idea that that politics is this third rail that we cannot touch.
in the Church, that if I am preaching on issues of morality, for instance, uh abortion orsame-sex marriage or transgenderism or DEI or whatever along those lines, if I'm preaching
(14:29):
on that, then I divorce.
Yeah.
If I am mentioning that teaching and preaching, I should say, on those issues that I havesomehow stepped over the line,
Mm-hmm.
This is just buying into the whole modernist view that faith, yeah, it's something inprivate and we can't bring it into the public.
(14:53):
The reality is there is no aspect of a Christian's life that is not influenced by who theyare in Christ.
And we should allow our faith to
tell us how to live and interact in the public environment.
(15:13):
Yeah.
What would you say if someone says, we get into this then issue of whether America or theWest in general is Christian.
And you gotta kind of unpack what you mean by that.
(15:35):
Yeah, Ristow points out these charters in the early colonies, you know, like Delaware andVirginia.
that said that one of their purposes was for the Christian faith to be able to thrive.
Right?
And they were very explicit about that.
Now, someone might come in and say, well, you know, our second president was a Unitarian,not really, not a Christian, right?
(16:02):
We would not consider Unitarians Christians.
And there were a handful of other presidents who were Unitarians.
And so you...
You know, then you get the Mormons, that's another issue.
So when we talk about Christendom, and if we understand Christendom in its broader senseof just the kingdoms of the world influenced by Christianity, or Christianity as it
(16:35):
manifests in the various estates within the world.
If someone comes along and says, well, and points out that, know, John Adams was aUnitarian, Thomas Jefferson was a deist.
A deist, Right.
So, how can you say that this is, that we ever even have a leg to stand on as far asChristian influence?
(17:21):
And what we have done is thrown out what we're trying to do is throw out all of that.
Here's the whole reality behind.
the theory of evolution.
If we can get rid of the Creator, we can get rid of His created order, and then we get tomake it all up on our own.
And we can see where that's leading us.
(17:44):
Is it better or worse?
Sure.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
And you can make a case for...
I remember when Romney was running and I just didn't vote because I couldn't vote forObama because he opposed the Christian orthodoxy at every turn.
(18:14):
But I couldn't vote for...
for Romney and one of the reasons, it wasn't the only reason, but one of the reasons isbecause he's a Mormon.
And there's something about that.
I think that Christians can have that conversation about whether you can vote for aUnitarian, but nonetheless, what you said is still true, that they're still being governed
(18:37):
by, from a law standpoint, even though they're blinded from the gospel truth.
there's still a certain Christian influence that's there that is seen in natural law.
And it reminds me of uh St.
Augustine's uh City of God, where he's arguing with those who say that Rome fell becauseof the Christians, because the Christians brought a weakness to the strong Roman spirit,
(19:06):
and then Rome fell because of that.
And what he says is that, Rome fell because
of their own decadence and their own moral uh debauchery and stuff like that.
But one thing he points out is that the Goths who came and sacked Rome, they were Aryans.
(19:27):
They were heretics, right?
They didn't believe that Jesus uh was the eternal Son of God.
They believed that the Son of God was the first and greatest creation of the Father.
So we would not consider them Christians and properly speaking,
Of course, we would not consider them part of Christendom.
But what a point that Augustine makes, though, is that nonetheless, the name of Christ wasstill uh still had providential influence on them in that, for example, they would allow
(19:59):
people to uh take shelter and refuge in churches and they would not tear down the churchesand attack the churches.
they were still influenced by a Christian mores.
They were still influenced by the name of Christ.
And I think today you could see a similar thing happening that you don't have to make thecase that this particular ruler is a Christian or is Orthodox in any way.
(20:29):
And even in the founding of America and the colonies, you have your Puritans who are veryuh
killjoy Kelvinists.
But nonetheless, the name of Christ, the name of Christ has not only a spiritual eternaluh effect, which is the main, that's how his kingdom comes, the gospel, but it also has a
(20:58):
providential effect.
And what we're seeing today is people are becoming more and more brazen in their
rejection of Christ's teaching outright.
I mean, I remember in 2015 or so, maybe it a little earlier than that, ah there was, uh Isaw a speech by uh Hillary Clinton and she brought up abortion.
(21:29):
She was talking about abortion.
And she said, well, there are some people who say that they oppose this because ofreligious reasons.
And she said, well, their uh position needs to change.
They need to change their religious position.
(21:50):
And the people started cheering.
And I'm thinking to myself, this lady is running for president and saying very clearlythat we stodgy evangelicals, if they want to call us that.
that we stodgy conservative Christians need to change our position.
So did she say that she had an agenda to enact this or that law?
(22:13):
No, she didn't elaborate that.
But as a Christian, to hear that and to say, well, stay out of politics, it justdoesn't...
What you're doing is you're leaving people out to dry who want to know, how do I respondto this as a Christian?
was listening, I told you earlier about this, it was Adam Kuntz and you don't remind me ofthe guy's name, the pastor out of Canada.
(22:41):
Oh, Smellick.
Smellick.
Yeah, Dave Smellick.
I was listening to them.
And that was one of his points as to what has happened in Canada is that the pastors ofthe LCC, Lutheran Church in Canada have been quiet on these things, have not mentioned
(23:02):
them from the pulpit, have not bothered to teach their people.
And if we don't teach our people what God's Word has to say, then we're leaving them outto dry to fall prey to.
the Hillary Clintons and the Barack Obamas and whatever.
Yeah.
Well, and, that, that would also go with those who were on the right.
(23:25):
You know, like when, when, when Trump has what, who's that lady is this spiritual advisor.
yeah.
I can't remember her name.
I don't remember these.
Yeah.
So prosperity gospel lady.
And yeah, I mean that, that we, we should call that stuff out too.
(23:46):
We should.
Absolutely.
And, uh
And so, but the idea that somehow when things are in the political realm that now all of asudden they're off base.
It's really, I've talked about this before, it's a trick that the devil pulls.
Where in politics, he turns things into religious issues so that you can't talk about themin politics.
(24:12):
And then in the church, he makes those
political issues, so you can't talk about them in the church either.
And abortion is the prime example of this.
If you talk about abortion in the political realm, I remember this when I was in college,arguing about abortion, they'd say, separation of church and state.
Keep your religious views out of the conversation.
(24:34):
And I say, well, this is a natural law issue.
This is a civil issue.
But then also I've heard of people complaining in the church when a pastor preachesagainst abortion.
and saying, keep politics out of the pulpit.
Well, which is it?
Yeah.
Well, it's both, obviously.
Yeah, sure it is.
And we, you know, we we should speak of his testimonies even before Kings.
(24:56):
Yeah.
And like, think of it like John, think James maybe mentioned this or someone else.
John the Baptist.
Why did Hannah?
I'm to I'm going to quiz you.
uh Don't worry, no one will hear you and I'll just I'll never mind.
uh
Why did John the Baptist get arrested?
(25:20):
He was speaking God's word.
That's good.
That's a good answer.
What got him in prison was it that he said, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away thesin of the world and we're only saved by faith, by God's grace and not by works.
Didn't he say something to He did say something to someone about something.
(25:44):
see, he didn't get arrested, at least this was not the cited cause.
for preaching the gospel in its narrow sense.
He got arrested.
He preached the law to Herodias.
Yeah.
Telling him he should not have taken his brother Philip's wife Herodias.
Yeah, and it was a rodeo's who made him Did he arrest?
(26:08):
Did she make him she made him kill him?
But yeah, she make him arrest him.
Well, I'm go back and I'm sure
was like a Jezebel character.
now, I would say theologically that ultimately, because of our understanding of the Wordof God, that the Gospel is at the center of everything, that Christ crucified for sinners
(26:31):
is at the center of everything.
So, even if you are proclaiming the sixth commandment, you shall not commit adultery, orthe tenth commandment, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, you are still...
uh if you're doing so in the name of Christ, you are at the center of your whole messageis uh Christ crucified for sinners as John the Baptist most certainly taught.
(26:55):
But the particular thing that got John to lose his head, thrown in prison and losing hishead, was that he preached the law.
And this is the thing, I think as Christians, we might think to ourselves of
You know, if I'm going to be a martyr, if I'm going to suffer for the cause of Christ, I'mgoing to make sure that it's because I refuse to back down on justification by faith
(27:24):
alone.
Well, great.
That's wonderful.
That's center of everything.
you should know that you might get your head cut off for saying that boys are boys andgirls are girls.
But you should know that when you say that, at the center of what you're saying is reallythat Christ is the savior of boys and girls and for all people, right?
(27:51):
So I think that when we talk about these issues, you can fall into a kind of reductionism,a gospel reductionism or whatever you want to call it.
But I think what I find to be helpful is to see all doctrine, all truth,
centered in Christ, right?
(28:11):
What does Jesus say?
Keep my commandments.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
and he says, I am the truth.
I am the truth.
A new commandment I give you.
Love everyone as I love you.
Yeah.
Yeah, which means keep my commandments.
Yeah.
(28:32):
Yeah.
And at the, what's the heading above the Augsburg Confession is from Psalm 119 that says,will speak of thy testimonies also before kings and shall not be put to shame.
So, when we, we don't want to fall into the kind of Christian nationalism that would lookat, you know,
(28:59):
Christ kingdom somehow depending upon the movements of social and politicalaccomplishments.
But at the same time, though, we don't want to lump that in with just simply living theChristian life in the estate of the home or the civil estate and the state of the church
(29:20):
and speaking what's true.
this is...
Because when we do that,
what we end up doing is seeding ground, not just politically, not just culturally, buteven seeding ground in our hearts to the secularists who are going to say, keep your
(29:45):
religion out of our public square.
Right.
And I like, I remember when I was in college, we started a paper.
I wrote for a paper called The Counterweight.
My brother James and I wrote for this paper called The Counterweight, which was aconservative counterpart to the uh official school paper.
(30:10):
And then we got mad at The Counterweight one day and we decided to come out with our own.
And we came out with one issue of The Liberator.
And then we went back to The Counterweight.
But in this Liberator, this issue of The Liberator, we had
We had articles from friends and foes alike.
And then I decided to publish an advertisement for my church on the back of it because Iwas the editor and I thought, why not?
(30:39):
And so, and then I also uh put in, uh I wrote a poem on, Christ and I put that on theback.
And then one of the lady, one of the girls who was in one of my classes,
accused us of pushing for a theocracy because I confessed Christ in the same publicationwhere we were also discussing political issues.
(31:06):
And the way I thought was that this is just public square.
uh So, should this surprise us when people accuse us of being theocrats or
Christian Nationalists when we are...
being Christians, just being Christians speaking the truth.
(31:28):
you shouldn't be surprised.
What's new about it?
Yeah.
No, what's new?
Yeah, what's new about it?
There's nothing new.
in my mind, I keep going back to what Paul writes in Romans 1, where he's speaking of, wehave creation, you should see creation, and you should see God in it.
(31:51):
So, we are without excuse.
They are without excuse.
Yeah.
So, now he gives them over to their debased minds to practice things that man should notpractice.
in the end, what's it end with?
destruction.
It's a form of judgment.
And I guess if take that truth, take that as reality, then we have to realize that maybeGod is in the process of judging our own.
(32:19):
We've got to take that seriously.
that doesn't mean that we take a lying down.
mean, God, uh yeah.
But yeah, but we should recognize that's right.
Yeah.
that we should be trying to pull them back from the cliff.
right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, our goal is not to like make the world a better place or make the world like some kindof humanist utopia with a conservative bent.
(32:43):
Right.
And I think sometimes that seems to be what some people push.
that is their goal.
Yeah.
But rather is to the gospel, the law and the gospel call us to repentance to rescue us.
from this crooked generation.
um Now, in the meantime though, God in His providence, and we should pray for this, thatHe does provide like the centurion, right?
(33:10):
The Philippian jailer, Constantine, even though He still had His faults, but we stillthank God for that.
um And so, yeah, now one thing that, I'll just mention this, we're kind of running out oftime here, but uh
One thing I found I really appreciated uh was this article speaking of Dr.
(33:32):
Korczak.
He gave this paper, he gave this presentation during the CCLE, some conference on theconfessional, what, I can't remember the CCLE, what does that stand for again?
uh Classical, confessional Lutheran classical, know, classical.
(33:55):
uh education anyway consortium for classical Lutheran education that's what it means okayand he uh and what he said was instead of focusing on the classical we should focus on the
Lutheran and he said that doesn't mean that we don't
care about the classical, we should talk about that stuff.
(34:17):
But that shouldn't, like what we have to offer as Lutherans is our theology, ourcatechetical instruction.
I thought that was so refreshing and helpful because I think it does happen a lot where wecan easily fall into the maybe social and political hype uh and then end up being led
(34:41):
by Calvinists or by Roman Catholics.
We teach our kids at home and so we subscribe to some stuff, Memoria Press, and we havethis thing called The Classical Educator, I think, is the name of this magazine that we
get.
And it has this, you know, this Roman Catholic equivocating of God's grace and talkingabout participating in God's presence and all this, you know, the good, the true and the
(35:10):
beautiful are spoken of in a way that doesn't really articulate the law and the gospeldistinctions.
And so I can definitely see where Pastor Korczak is coming from.
uh And I think that he has
that he has...
When we have these public debates among brethren, I think it's important that we don't,either of us, either lump people in or equivocate positions or throw the baby out with the
(35:45):
bathwater.
So, I think it uh is very uh good message to send that we should focus on teaching thefaith
ah according to the small catechism.
But what I would also then say to that is that, well, in the catechism, you have the tableof duties.
(36:08):
We need to teach people how to confess their faith within these stations in life.
And that means that you are going to get into the realm of politics.
You can't avoid it.
And that doesn't mean that, you know, we...
doesn't mean that we go and rant about immigration policy from the pulpit.
(36:29):
uh But also at the same time, as Christians, we can talk about multiculturalism, we cantalk about the nefarious agendas that kind of resemble the Assyrians, a softer version of
the Assyrians and the Babylonians, in their attempt to destroy any uh semblance ofChristian culture left.
(36:52):
Yeah.
Within our society.
And that this has been going on.
And so, as pastors, we have to be careful that we're not taking people, distracting peoplefrom the main point of repentance and faith and love and duty.
(37:14):
But we also have to be careful that we don't neglect teaching them that there is aresponsibility to live out our faith in a way that everyone knows who and whose we are.
Yeah.
No, that is right.
And uh I think we could leave it at that.
(37:37):
I'll commend to our audience, uh again, these articles.
They're worth reading and reading them in comparison to the Scriptures and the clearteaching that we receive from the Scriptures, from the Catechism.
(37:58):
Um, and, uh, and not to be afraid to talk about this issue, um, because the, the devilwants to divide the church and the, the best way to allow the devil to divide the church
is to, uh, not debate the truth, not confess the truth and compartmentalize it into thislittle bubble of
(38:25):
politics or whatever and say that's off base.
We should be able to speak the truth and uh hold one another accountable, even as we holdfathers and mothers and ah rulers and all other authorities accountable to the authority
under which we all stand, which is God.
(38:49):
So, any last words?
for now.
That sounded kind of great.
All right.
Well, thanks again, uh Pastor Will Susan for for uh this conversation.
And we'll have more of these in the.
There's a lot to be discussed about this issue yet.
(39:11):
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com