Doug Wilson on Mere Christendom

Reflections on church, state and so much more:

Recently I discussed a new article written by Douglas Wilson. Since it had to do with an earlier book that he had penned, I was glad to revisit it. To my mind it contains a fair amount of sound and biblical thinking on the situation the church in the West – and especially America – finds itself in today.

I refer to Empires of Dirt: Secularism, Radical Islam, and the Mere Christendom Alternative (Canon Press, 2016). Those who have been following Wilson and the sorts of things he speaks and writes about will find some familiar territory here.

And even if one does not always agree with the guy, he certainly writes well and he does get you thinking. And since questions of religion and politics are some of the most important questions that we can and should think about, all the more reason to see what he has to say.

I have already discussed the book and quoted from it. See that piece here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2026/08/21/doug-wilson-on-the-islamo-commies/

But more discussion and quotes are worth offering. As mentioned, one can disagree with Wilson – and many do – yet still learn much from the man. He knows that eschatology is important, and much of what he argues for flows from his eschatology – which happens to be postmillennial. But in my humble view all three main millennial camps have some things worth saying.

So let’s look at a few quotes that speak to the big issues that are involved here. Consider the matter of just what we mean by the notion of the lordship of Christ. Writes Wilson:

In my view, it means discipling the nations, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded. It does not mean, just to be clear, invoking the name of Jesus in order to justify every damn fool idea that might be floating around in our heads. It means preaching the gospel in the narrow sense, saving souls, planting churches, building parish life, and then expecting the right worship of God in that place to transform that region over the course of centuries, and eventually to transform the world over the course of millennia. Patience. (pp. 125-126)

The matter of how the church should be impacting the world is of course also discussed. Gospel preaching is essential, but so too is being salt and light:

When the Church is being the Church, we will have an impact on slavery, cocaine use, poverty, debt levels, abortions, and homosexual marriage. Salt with its savor affects everything. Salt without savor is trampled on by men, and Jesus says that such trampling is fitting….

 

The bottom line issue is this. If the Church is not transforming the culture around her, then the culture around her is transforming the Church. There was no static equilibrium point. That means that the Church will either be prophetically addressing the problem of gay mirage, or it will be in the process of adopting gay mirage herself. Either the church will speak about the carnage of abortion, God’s hatred of it, or the church will be in the process of bringing that hated object into the sanctuary.

 

God did not send his Son into the world to form and establish the Church in order that this Church could float through the world like a ghost…. (pp. 133-134)

Wilson further discusses the phrase ‘mere Christendom’:

First we need to address what mere does not mean. And it does not mean “diluted.” It does not mean Christendom Lite. It does not mean “faith-based” civilization, the same way you might have faith-based soup kitchens, with the content of the faith being diluted just enough to not bother those who are providing the secularist tax monies. If Christ is Lord, and He is, then those who believe that He is Lord should also think that it follows that He is the Lord of these United States and, going beyond our shores, that He is the Lord of every other place as well. Once this is accepted in multiple nations, in a formal and public way, you have the beginnings of the next Christendom. (p. 139)

He continues:

This means that a return to Christendom does not entail a return to Geneva, circa A.D. 1590. It means that we are allowed to remember some of the things we have learned in the interim. I am simply insisting that we place the lessons we have learned in an explicitly Christ-honoring context and that we reject, throw away, and otherwise dispose of those bogus things we just thought we learned. An example of the former would be a true political space for true liberty of conscience—a development demonstrably grounded in Christian theology. An example of the latter would be the clear Darwinian idea that we are all nothing more than a raggle-taggle collection of protoplasm with no more rights than what the ruling classes decide we should have this coming week.

 

Now, one of the basic lessons we should have learned in the interim is this. The leaven works through the loaf slowly. The mustard seed grows slowly. The living water from Ezekiel’s temple gets gradually deeper. But when doctrinaire Christians get power, one of their temptations is that they want to impose their whole system, down to the jots and tittles. We must refrain from doing this not because truth is relative, because it isn’t, not because truth is a matter of community-perspective and there are multiple communities, for that is incoherent, but because Jesus Christ demands that we refrain. (p. 142)

Moreover, whenever talk is made by believers that we must challenge secularism, the other side claims we are pushing theocracy down their throats. But as Wilson says so often, all worldviews have their gods that they are trying to foist upon others. He says:

One of the problems with using Constantine as a marker is that there is a tendency to anachronism, attributing to him any subsequent malfeasance on the part of Christians in power. But the Constantinian settlement was, by and large, a tolerant one. Lactantius, the early church father who tutored Constantine’s children, was an apologist for this kind of toleration, which, in his day, was a toleration of pagans.

 

But there is a distinction between toleration of the views held by others, and toleration as an absolute desideratum. The former is crucial to every form of civilized society, Constantine let pagans continue to be pagans, and to think like pagans, and he let them continue to serve in the army (for example), but at the same time, Constantine ended the pagan sacrifices — a momentous step, and foundational to all religious liberty.

 

This distinction is necessary because at a certain level, the whole society has to decide whether to go this way or that way. For example, democracy does not mean that everybody votes for president, and the winner gets to be president 57 percent of the time, while the loser only gets to be president on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It is not like a custody battle. The public sacrifices for the whole society either have to be performed or not. The public square cannot be a pantheon — for if it is, then the state is god, and that is idolatry. Calling it “secularism” doesn’t fix it. (pp. 175-176)

And with the tsunami of Islam now sweeping over the West almost unopposed, his words from ten years ago are certainly to the point:

There must be a God over all. That God may tell us not to hassle the people who don’t believe in Him, and that is precisely what the triune God does tell us. In this mere Christendom I am talking about (you know, the idyllic one, down the road), Muslims could come from other lands and live peaceably, they could buy and sell, write letters to the editor, own property, have that property protected by the cops, and worship Allah in their hearts and homes. What they could not do is argue that minarets have the same rights of public expression that church bells do. The public space would belong to Jesus.

 

Our secular gods promised to do exactly this kind of thing, saying that if we kept this public space “neutral” (as they defined neutral), then all would be allowed to do our own thing on our own time. But this secularism is teetering, and is clearly displaying its hostility to the Christian faith. What I am saying here is that a Christian settlement would do a better job of protecting the true rights of Muslims and secularists, than secularists do in protecting the rights of Christians.

 

The argument goes this way. If I wanted Muslims to have the right to refuse baptism (which I would certainly want), then I would have to argue that case in the name of Jesus, and from the Bible. Obviously, I think that it can be done. But if I wanted to argue from the premises of secularism that all of us are anything more than meat, bones, and protoplasm, where do I go to make the argument? The implications of a godless universe have worked their way into the structure of our laws, and it is not too long afterwards that the darkness falls. And it won’t be the kind of night that you can dance away.

 

When tolerance becomes a universal virtue, suspended upon its own air hook and nothing else, then you come to think you can’t say no to virtually anything — including those things which will issue a fatwa against your silly views of tolerance. The universally tolerant do say no to one thing, however, and that is to any idea of Christendom. If you mention sharia law, they will talk about the rich cultural diversity that is found in certain parts of Ohio. But if you mention biblical theonomy, as being perhaps more attractive in other parts of Ohio, you will find these folks with heads between their knees, breathing into paper bags, in preparation for writing a hysterical letter to the editor. This is because universal toleration is suicidal. In Proverbs, Wisdom says that all who hate her love death (Prov. 8:36), and they really do.

 

Our fin de siecle secularism is fully prepared to embrace that which will destroy it pronto, and to shun as a menace that faith which actually invented true toleration.

 

But I propose a contest. Let’s build an altar of stones, an altar of absolute toleration. Let’s have ACLU lawyers dance around it until noon, cutting themselves with knives, and hitting themselves on the head with briefcases. Let us build another altar, and ask Elijah to stretch out his hands toward Heaven, and call upon Yahweh. The God that answers with a truly free and tolerant society . . .  He is God. Let us serve Him. (pp. 176-178)

Thanks Doug for helping us think through these big-ticket items. All believers should be exercising their minds and hearts about these sorts of issues.

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