Toward a Protestant Feudalism

Introduction
A little while ago, I posted, “The multicultural globalists want to blend all cultures into a bland humanism, but the blood-and-soil types end up insisting on superficial divisions. Covenant is the key to an earthy and biblical unity and diversity, or what we might call a Protestant feudalism and Christendom.”

Everything hinges on what centers what. If covenant is the center, then yes, there are certain biblical notions of blood and soil (as well as biblical doctrines with universal, global ramifications). If mere blood and soil or mereglobal/multicultural becomes the center, they veer into their respective ditches (e.g. racialism, communism, etc.). The notion of “covenant” gives us a category, and actually, a multiplicity of categories for rightly ordering our loyalties and loves and duties. 

From Taylor Swift to John Knox
We’re at that moment in the story where it seems like anything could happen, and it would be hard to be surprised. Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, and Douglas Wilson walk into a bar together… it might sound like the beginning of a bad joke, but that’s where we are. All the wheels have come off, and there’s no apparent center, no centrifugal force, no gravity, no apparent arche.

But I say: no apparent center or gravity. In reality, in the real world, there is a center, there is an inextricable center: Jesus Christ is the arche of the universe, the One in Whom all things hold together (Col. 1). But it’s like walking on the moon (or so it would seem). You have to submit to the actual gravitational pull and not what you think it ought to be. You have to adjust your balance and rhythm to match reality. But we’re living in a time when many are trying to get reality to match their capricious and destructive whims, whether by transing little kids with hormone blockers or cozying up to Nazi sympathizers. Martin Luther said that the human race is generally like a drunk guy on a horse, and having fallen off the horse on one side, he believes it his moral duty to bring balance to the universe by falling off the horse on the other side next time just to keep things even. 

And some of you are starting to wonder where this blog post is going. My point is that when there is no center, everyone is looking for a center, something to hold it all together, an integration point. The commies want the state to be that integration point. They want the federal government (for now) and the World Economic Forum or the United Nations (eventually) to be the center, with the benevolent Karen-Nanny State to provide, protect, save, and otherwise usher in the New Jerusalem, which, it turns out looks a lot like Portland, a favela of homeless camps under tattooed overpasses. 

In reaction to all of that, a bunch of people are, what shall we say, a bit nonplussed. They are chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” at NASCAR races and threatening to elect Donald Trump for a second round of chemo. But everyone knows this is only a very temporary treatment, and then what? The commies and their media whores have slapped the name “Christian Nationalism” on everyone who objects to turning our country into Zimbabwe, and a bunch of us have said, well, OK, fine: we do want a Christian Nation, not this secular trashworld you’re trying to foist on us and our grandchildren.

But there’s a fair bit of maneuvering and posting up and boxing out going on under the political basket among ostensible conservative types. Trump was mauled at the three-point line and is determined to get a second free throw before banking the third one off the rim to some eager heir apparent. But let’s not scrutinize this analogy too closely. Among the heir-apparents, you’ve got the obvious JD Vance and his broadly conservative Catholic crowd, you’ve got an amalgam of Protestant academics unearthing everything the 16^th and 17^thcentury Reformers ever said on civil government, you’ve got Russell Brand baptizing people in his skivvies, and you’ve got the based edgelords ransacking history for memes that give their moms nightmares, and finally, what I’m arguing for: a small, but hearty band of old school Scottish covenantors.

All of these have some vision for a center of gravity: traditional values and the working class, cultural-ethnicity, Christian revival, R.L. Dabney smoking a cigarette, and John Knox with a double-edged battle axe. As it happens, I think some elements of all of these are possible to be included, but only if we let John Knox lead the way. 

Covenant Defined
As Glenn Moots demonstrates in detail in his book Politics Reformed, perhaps the greatest, most pervasive concept unearthed during the 16^th century Protestant Reformation with immediate political ramifications was the idea of covenant. The ancient Hebrew word seems to have meant both “to cut” and “to bind,” as well as “to eat.” Think of the way a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and that covenant is sealed with vows and a feast and conjugal union. A covenant is a solemn bond, often sealed with signs and pledges, with various duties and obligations, and attendant blessings and curses, depending on faithfulness. 

As the High Middle Ages let out its final gasps of life, riddled with the widespread corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, the “Magisterial” Reformers (as they have often been called) were as much concerned with society, political power, and civic structures as they were with theology. If the Roman Pontiff was not to be the center of the world, how was the world to be organized? What did it mean that Christ was Lord? They answered that pressing question by saying that it meant that Christ had established different kinds of powers in this world: spiritual and political powers. The church had true authority over matters assigned to it (Word and Sacrament) and the State had true authority over matters assigned to it (law and order and the punishment of evildoers). 

And very quickly, as the Reformers looked at Scripture for the mechanism of these assignments, they saw very clearly that it was by covenant. They saw that in Scripture there is an overarching, unilateral Covenant of Grace by which God is saving the world through Christ. But they also saw that there were many other covenants in Scripture: marriage covenants, political covenants, family covenants, business covenants, and various civil covenants. But there was virtually nothing significant or important established apart from these covenants. Reaching back to the Covenant of Creation (or Covenant of Works) and the Noahic Covenant, various Reformers saw that some universal covenants applied to all men everywhere, descended from Adam and Noah, and thus, while not salvific covenants, they were nevertheless still in effect and therefore binding on society as a whole. 

As civil government was being rehabilitated by Reformers, you almost immediately had political power problems: Bloody Mary in England and persecution and massacres in France. But it was the covenant that gave the Reformers categories that held together the seeming disparate requirements of Scripture. Generally, Scripture taught submission and obedience to civil authorities, but at times, there was clear evidence of biblical permission or even blessing for disobedience and insurrection. As Calvin wrote, “Since kings and princes are bound by covenant to the people, to administer the law in truest equality, sincerity, and integrity; if they break faith and usurp tyrannical power… is it not possible for the people to consider together taking measures in order to remedy the evil?”

Just as Scripture ordinarily teaches the obedience and honor of a wife to her own husband, it also clearly affirms the right of a wife to subvert the authority of her husband or flee his authority if it becomes tyrannical and abusive. The lines for these judgments are admittedly sometimes debatable, but they do exist by virtue of the marriage covenant. The same is true for the covenant obligations of rulers and their people. In Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, the pseudonymous “Brutus” argued that in every nation there are at least two civil covenants in effect: one between God, the king, and the people, and another between the king and the people. As Moots writes: “The first enables the people to act should the king turn away from God. The second obliges the king to act in the interests of the common good.”   

Conclusion: Blood and Soil & Covenant
So God made the world covenantally. This means that the notion and nature of covenant is woven into almost everything. This is true of the natural world and therefore underpins any coherent defense of “natural rights,” but it is also the basis for the institution of marriage and family, whether or not the parties involved acknowledge God or His Christ. Marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman with particular obligations to both parties, quite apart from whether the parties understand that. It is what God says it is, not what liberal activists hopped up on Marxist shrooms claim it is. The universal church is bound in covenant to Christ, her head, and nations are bound together by covenants, as are states and counties and cities. We have written down these covenant-constitutions, the agreed upon duties and obligations. We have various ceremonies, anniversaries, elections, oaths of office, shared language, culture, and history in particular places, and occasional celebrations and feasts to commemorate these covenants. We have these familial, ecclesial, and civil covenants, and they require different duties and obligations at different levels.

The thing to note is that these covenants are not mere ideas or creeds. They are earthy bonds that bind peoples together in families, tribes, and nations, in particular locations, with particular shared commitments and values. There is something blood-and-soil-ish about this. But by the very nature of covenants, the bond is not static, wooden, or fixed. Marriage itself requires a leaving and a cleaving. Often, this occurs with a broadly shared culture and ethnicity, but not always. Thus, the center of our identities is not blood-and-soil, but rather our various covenantal bonds which have their foundations in the nature of the world and ultimately God Himself. These covenantal bonds can bless blood-and-soil, but they can also curse blood-and-soil (e.g. Dt. 28). Thus, covenantal bonds are not bound to blood-and-soil. It is the other way around: blood and soil must answer to covenant and covenant obligations. “Honor thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth” (Eph. 6:2-3).

As Moots demonstrates in his book, some covenants in Scripture are clearly unilateral, while others are bilateral. Some are unconditional; others are conditional. Some covenantal duties are imposed; others are freely chosen. You are born into a particular family/race/ethnicity, but you often have some freedom to choose a spouse. You are born into a nation, but you often have some freedom to choose whether or not to stay. The exigencies of life are a multitude and mixture of both personal responsibilities and choices (on the one hand) and events you did not choose: famines, war, sickness, death, migration, exile, friendship, betrayal, etc.

The Moabite Ruth famously swore a covenant-like oath to her Jewish mother in-law Naomi: “for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me” (Ruth 1:16-17). This is no humanistic “melting pot” multiculturalism orchestrated by neopagan HR department of witchdoctors, but it is rather the true joining of different cultures in a covenantal bond of life together, including loyalty to land and family and God, to the death. While the Christian church does not magically dissolve family or cultural bonds or obligations like some modern regime Evangelicals pretend, it does nevertheless relativize those bonds. Christ at the center means that while I must ordinarily provide for my own wife and kids first, if my family were to betray Christ, I would have higher duties to Christ and his people.  

It is absolutely true that without a covenantal center, the globalists will continue to manipulate and destroy our culture. But the wrong center (race, family, ethnicity) cannot help but absolutize things that (though right and good in their proper place) cannot hold the center, much less be absolutized. It’s good and right to love your people, to protect and provide for your family first (1 Tim. 5). But the real world is far more complex and complicated, and covenant is the category you need. Covenant loyalty with Christ at the center, allows for a multiplicity of loyalties and duties (family, place, church, school, business, city, nation, etc.) in a sort of Protestant feudalism.