My recent association with Christian Nationalists over on Gab Social may raise a few eyebrows among my fellow Catholics. Before I’m accused of being “too Protestant” (again), please read on. Everything I wrote in the Declaration of Christian Nationalism, published as the prologue in the book “Christian Nationalism” by Andrew Torba and Andrew Isker, is consistent with Catholic teaching, grouped under the topic of Integralism. In fact, what I wrote in that Declaration might more accurately be called Integralism-Lite.
The Catholic Church has always taught Integralism, and while some have said that Vatican II revoked Church teaching on Integralism, that is not the case at all. What Vatican II did was correct errors associated with the abuse of Integralism, but it did not revoke the teaching of Integralism itself. If you don’t know what Integralism is, or what it’s about, Church Militant has produced this wonderful little video on it. Please watch…
As you can see, Catholic Integralism is pretty much what the Church has always taught, and being an Integralist means being a good Catholic in a political and social sense. Recently, an article was written by Thomas Storck for the New Oxford Review (NOR) stating pretty much the same thing. The New Oxford Review (NOR) is a Catholic publication, founded by Traditional Anglicans who converted to the Catholic Church in 1983. If you’re a member of the Personal Ordinariates of English Patrimony, you probably should get a subscription. If you’re a regular Catholic, who is remotely conservative or traditional, you’ll probably like it too. It’s similar to The Wanderer.
Integralism, properly understood, allows for the complete and total integration of the Catholic faith into the realm of politics and government. It encapsulates all of Catholic social teaching, in a cohesive manner, and couches it properly in the history of the Catholic Church and Christendom for the last 1,500 years. In other words, Integralism eliminates the compulsion to compartmentalize our Catholic Faith, separating it from politics entirely, which has led to the likes of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.
Several weeks back, Andrew Torba, CEO of Gab Social, asked if he could include my Declaration of Christian Nationalism in his upcoming book by the same name. I happily agreed, and that’s how it happened.
I agreed to this because I thought it would be a good way to help the Christian Nationalist movement with some cohesive thought of what that might look like in the United States using the principles of Catholic Integralism, without all the trappings of Catholic religion. As I said in the Declaration, with modern America’s Christian diversity, a truly Christian Nationalist movement is going to have to be more ecumenical than what was seen in the past. It will have to include Evangelicals and Catholics working together. This was in keeping with the ecumenical accord signed in 1994 entitled Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium.
Additionally, an American version of Christian Nationalism has to keep with the principle of subsidiarity but in a uniquely American way. The system of federalism, as given to us by America’s Founding Fathers, as a secular union of Christian states, is more than sufficient when the difference between secularity and secularism is properly understood. I explained this in the Declaration as well.
In calling for the repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment, we strike at the very thing that turned the original intent of this secular union of Christian states upside-down, manifesting itself eight decades later in the 1947 Supreme Court decision Everson v. Board of Education. This led the United States down a dark path of federally enforced secularism from the state government, all the way down to the city hall and even the public school boardroom. It was here, in 1947, that the decline of the United States began, but the seeds of it were planted in 1868 with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.
While the argument could be made that the Fourteenth Amendment has been used by the Supreme Court to enact some positive changes in American society, this is insufficient. Those same benefits can be re-asserted today both through federal and state legislation without the need of the Fourteenth Amendment. And when we consider the catastrophic damage the Fourteenth has done to this Christian nation with Everson v. Board of Education (1947), Roe v. Wade (1973), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the legacy of this amendment has earned the call for its repeal many times over. These three Supreme Court catastrophes would be enough on their own, but the Fourteenth has also given us an oversized and massively inflated federal bureaucracy, legislation by judicial fiat, and even anchor babies used by illegal aliens to guarantee entrance into the United States. Indeed, nothing can restore the principle of subsidiarity to American federalism more than complete and total repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment. If we truly desire to return to the federal republic given to us by America’s Founding Fathers, there is only one way to do it. Repeal the Fourteenth!
Lastly, on the term Christian Nationalism itself, it was never our desire to adopt it. The term Christian Patriotism seems to fit our movement more appropriately. However, it was not our choice. The mainstream media has spent the greater part of a year branding all Trump-supporting Christians as “Christian Nationalists” in story after story across the entire media spectrum. They seek to attach all Christian supporters of Donald Trump with that tiny minority who raided the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
Nearly a million people peacefully protested in Washington DC that day, most of whom were oblivious to what was going on down the street. A couple thousand raided the Capitol Building, and of that number, a few hundred got in. Of that number, a couple dozen (at most) said some kind of “prayer” on the Senate Floor. We’re talking about a very small number of people here. And the mainstream media has sought tirelessly to attach the good names of millions of Trump-supporting Christians to the actions of this small band of rioters. They have labelled us “Christian Nationalists,” and all attempts to rebrand ourselves properly as “Christian Patriots” have failed.
So rather than resign in defeat, we have adopted the term happily, because we know something the mainstream media doesn’t. American’s don’t share the dark history of 20th Century Europe. We’ve never had a fascist dictator, and as much as Joe Biden might like to become one, based on his recent speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, it’s not going to happen. The average American has never really seen fascism, outside of the history books, so the average American mind doesn’t really link nationalism to fascism at all, and it shouldn’t, because they’re not the same thing. Nationalism is simply the love of a nation, sometimes to a fault, but it is just the love of a nation and nothing more. Fascism, on the other hand, is the love of a nation’s leader, so much so that the leader becomes the embodiment of the nation itself. We, the people of the United States, have known nationalism many times in our history, but we have never known fascism, and we probably never will. So as much as the mainstream media is trying to make patriotic Christians look like fascists, it’s backfiring, because in the average American mind, nationalism and patriotism are basically the same thing. I noted that in the first line of the Declaration as well.
It seems the experts on American English agree. According to Webster’s Dictionary…
“NATIONALISM: loyalty and devotion to a nation, especially: a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups. Synonyms: patriotism.”
Notice it does not say “fascism, totalitarianism,” or “racism” as the political Left would have you believe. If you think “nationalism” is a bad word, that means bad things, the Left has a strong hold on your mind. I suggest you free yourself. Words only mean what the dictionary says they mean. Anything more is propaganda.
So if you want to know what an American version of Christian Nationalism actually looks like, straight from the horse’s mouth “so to speak,” written by the people who promoted it, crystalized it and defined it, go ahead and pick up a copy of Torba and Isker’s book — “Christian Nationalism.” I’m glad I got to play a small part.
Shane Schaetzel is an author of Catholic books and an Evangelical convert to the Catholic Church through Anglicanism. His articles have been featured on LifeSiteNews, The Remnant Newspaper, Forward in Christ, and Catholic Online. You can read Shane’s books at ShaneSchaetzel.Com
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