On the Christian Question

Posted By David Lewis On In North American New Right | Comments Disabled

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Giles Corey; Preface by Kevin MacDonald
The Sword of Christ
Deus Vult, 2020; soon to be reprinted by Antelope Hill

Does Christianity help or hinder, in the words of Sam Francis, “the efforts of the Right to defend the European-American way of life”? According to Giles Corey, that is the Christian Question (p. 2), and The Sword of Christ is his attempt to defend Christianity as not merely compatible with, but essential to, white European civilization. In his statement of “Mission,” Corey makes clear that he is writing for two audiences:

It is my greatest desire that this work will equip real Christians with the tools that they need to understand that our Faith is in total alignment with White racial identity, and with the arguments that they need to refute those egalitarian “Christian” Leftists who wave the bloody shirt and pervert the Word of God to argue for ethnomasochism and racial suicide. For atheist or pagan Whites, I hope to at least take the sting out of their Christophobia by demonstrating that those who work for our dispossession under the ensign of the cross are not Christians. (“Mission,” unnumbered; emphases in original)

As suggested in this passage, a key part of Corey’s strategy is to distinguish between true and false Christianity, and to claim that only the latter is at odds with white interests. Whether or not he succeeds in proving his case, anyone concerned about the relationship between Christianity and the ethnonationalist Right will find much of interest in this book.

The Sword of Christ consists of 16 chapters divided into four sections. Chapters 1-3 introduce “The Christian Question,” chapters 4-10 (“The Heresy of Christian Zionism”) explore the relationship of Christianity to Judaism, chapters 11-13 explore several topics in the relationship of Christianity to non-whites under the heading “Toward a Doctrine of Christian Racialism,” and chapters 14-16, “Theories of Christian Violence,” critique pacifism. I will describe the contents of each section and end with my own appraisal of the book.

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The Christian Question

The chapters in this first section, along with those in the third section on “Christian Racialism,” are the most central to Corey’s project. The first chapter, “Christianity Today,” is a damning and depressing precis of the betrayal of whites by institutional Christianity in its Catholic, mainline, and evangelical forms. Corey documents the role of Christian churches and leaders in promoting non-white immigration, smearing their white ancestors, and condemning modern expressions of white solidarity (e.g., Charlottesville). He also catalogs some examples of white families’ pathological forgiveness of non-white killers and rapists in the name of Christianity. Given his stated goal of defending Christianity as a white-friendly religion, Corey seems to be digging himself into a deep hole. But to his credit, he is demonstrating forthrightly why his opponents on the Right might see Christianity as a threat to white interests.

Chapter 2, “Christianity, Yesterday and Tomorrow,” is among the most suggestive in the book, and it is a shame that it is only five pages long. Here, Corey claims that for most of the sweep of known history, Europeans understood themselves first and foremost as Christians, that respect for our ancestors requires us to respect their faith, and that Christianity is a suitable spiritual anchor to give our people courage to face the future. Moreover, claims Corey, historic Christianity’s universalism concerns only the availability of salvation to all, and does not entail any sort of social equality. For most of its long history, Christianity has been understood as a hierarchical faith; Leftist egalitarian interpretations of it are recent innovations. Given the significance of these claims to Corey’s project, it is disappointing that he does not develop and defend them at greater length.

Chapter 3, “Christian Reformation,” summarizes James Russell’s work in The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity. According to Russell, early Christianity was an egalitarian movement that appealed mostly to social outcasts in need of community. Christian missionary efforts in pagan Europe were initially hindered by the world-affirming, hierarchical, militaristic culture of pre-Christian Germanic tribes. Missionaries eventually overcame this resistance by recasting Christianity “from a universal salvation religion to a Germanic, and eventually European, folk religion” (Russell, quoted on p. 35). It is this Germanized Christianity that is our spiritual patrimony, that the Left is corrupting, and that Corey seeks to retrieve. As we will see below, this understanding of the Christian faith creates problems that Corey does not seem to recognize.

The Heresy of Christian Zionism

In the second section of Corey’s book, which is longer than the other three sections combined, he argues that Zionism is a recent Christian heresy and that Judaism has a long and sordid history of victimizing Christians. Chapters 4 and 5, on the history and theology of Christian Zionism, respectively, summarize the work of Stephen Sizer to show that Zionism is a heresy that denies that Jews must repent of their sins and trust in the forgiveness secured by Jesus Christ to be saved. These chapters will be of interest primarily to readers who can follow the minutiae of competing theories of Christian eschatology (the study of the end times).

Chapter 6 argues against “The Myth of Judeo-Christianity,” claiming that this mongrelized civic religion was foisted upon Americans by Jewish and liberal Christian leaders in the wake of the Second World War. Chapter 7 presents lengthy quotations from St. John Chrysostom and Martin Luther to demonstrate that historically, Christianity viewed Jews as enemies.

The next three chapters examine Judaism more directly. Chapter 8, “Jewish Gentile Hatred,” argues that modern Judaism is not the religion of the ancient Israelites, but rather a post-Christian, and fervently anti-Christian, religion based on the oral tradition of the Talmud. On Corey’s reading, the Talmud is an almost infinitely malleable (and easily obscured) collection of texts that consistently justifies almost any mistreatment of non-Jews to advance the interests of Jews.

Chapter 9 documents the “Jewish Promotion of Sexual Degeneracy,” a topic well known to many readers of Counter-Currents, The Occidental Observer, and similar sites. Corey summarizes the role of Jews inside and outside the legal system in gutting obscenity laws and in producing and promoting pornography. He draws on the work of Kevin MacDonald (who wrote the book’s Preface) to argue that the Jewish promotion of non-generative forms of sex is, at least functionally, an attack on white fertility, which has plummeted since the Jewish-led sexual revolution.

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Chapter 10, “Jewish Ritual Murder,” is perhaps the most disturbing in the book. Corey presents the findings of Ariel Toaff and others to show that the “blood libel” — namely, the claim that Jews murdered many Christians, especially children, as sacrifices for Purim and Passover rituals, is well-supported by the historical evidence.

Toward a Doctrine of Christian Racialism

In his book’s third section, Corey’s stated aim is to “demonstrat[e] Biblically that ethnonationalism is most certainly not ‘unChristian,’ that White pride is not ‘unBiblical’” (p. 206). Unfortunately, this important task is confined to a mere six pages in Chapter 11, “Christian Ethnonationalism.” Examining several passages from the Old and New Testaments, Corey argues that God ordained the separation of mankind into different nations when He confounded the raising of the Tower of Babel, and that the rest of the Bible takes for granted this division without condemning it. But Corey does not, as far as I can tell, offer any detailed defense of contemporary White Nationalism in biblical terms.

In Chapter 12, “Evangelism at What Cost?”, Corey takes on the claim that non-whites are the future of Christianity. He points to the syncretism of Hispanic and other third-world missionary churches, as well as to the emotionalism and endemic Leftism of black American churches, to conclude that “non-White ‘Christianity’ is not Christian, just as egalitarian ‘Christians’ are not Christian” (pp. 214-15). And in Chapter 13, “Proslavery Theology,” Corey summarizes the work of Gary Roper and Eugene Genovese to argue that there was nothing unbiblical in either the theory or practice of Negro slavery in the American South.

Theories of Christian Violence

Corey devotes the fourth and final section of The Sword of Christ to refuting the claim that Christianity is a religion of peace that commits its followers to pacifism. He takes up this task primarily in Chapter 13, “Against Absolute Pacifism.” He offers non-pacifist interpretations of a number of New Testament passages commonly cited as justifying pacifism. While I found many of his interpretations strained, Corey’s overarching points that violence is repeatedly sanctioned by God throughout the Bible and that Christ does not condemn it as such are surely sound.

Chapter 14, “The Theology of Christian Holy War,” is devoted to the relationship between Christianity and Islam. Corey borrows from Jonathan Riley-Smith and Thomas Madden to construct a defense of the Crusades as just wars to repulse Muslim expansion. He then summarizes contemporary Muslim aggression against whites in the form of the rape gangs that have colonized many European cities. Though not entirely clear, Corey’s point seems to be to contrast the muscular Christianity of our forebears with the flaccid acquiescence in our own destruction amongst contemporary post-Christian whites.

The final short chapter, “Violence Against Infanticide,” cites Eric Rudolph and others to construct a biblical justification for killing abortionists. While I personally am untroubled by the killing of abortionists, the biblical case that Corey constructs strikes me as somewhat flimsy. For example, Corey writes that “Infanticide [i.e., abortion] may be seen as a return to the pagan child sacrifice practiced by the Canaanites and Moabites, who ritually murdered their children in worshipping Moloch” (p. 285). I can see no reason to assimilate these practices. They are both evil insofar as they involve the intentional killing of young humans, but citing biblical injunctions against Moloch worship (as Corey does) does not have any direct bearing on the moral status of abortion (or abortionists, or those who might seek to kill them).

Appraisal

The Sword of Christ is clearly the fruit of much reading and reflection. I am in Corey’s debt for pointing me to a number of promising books and articles on the topics he covers. I am also sympathetic to Corey’s main conclusions as summarized in his introductory “Mission,” in the brief prefaces to each section, and in his Afterword, “Revival.” In fact, readers of the book might do well to begin by reading these short passages in sequence. Together they make up only 11 of the book’s 300 pages, yet they amount to nearly all of its dialectical framing. Reading the individual chapters, I often felt somewhat lost; it was unclear what exactly Corey’s treatments of various subjects (Protestant soteriology, Jewish murders of Christian children, the looniness of black churches, the evil of Muslim rape gangs) contributed to the promised project of showing that Christianity is an ally, not an adversary, of white racial interests.

Corey’s incorporation of many outside sources is both a strength and a weakness. It is a strength insofar as it allows the reader to benefit not just from Corey’s own insights but from those of several eminent historians and thinkers of the Right. But Corey’s reliance on other authors is so heavy at times as to crowd out his own contribution. Most of the words in the book are direct quotations from other authors, and many pages contain few of Corey’s own words. Unfortunately, Corey does not follow the convention of indenting long quotations to set them off visually from the main text, and spotting the quotation marks that mark the beginning and end of the many very long quotations can be a challenge.

Moreover, Corey’s citation scheme is unclear and incomplete. Some chapters begin with a footnote stating that all the information contained therein is derived from one or a few specified sources. And sometimes (but not always), the first quotation from an author will have a footnote pointing to its source. But page numbers are never included, and many quotations do not include clear references to any particular source, or sometimes to any source (or author) at all. For The Sword of Christ to be maximally effective as a tool to persuade skeptics of Christianity’s compatibility with white interests, it must invite readers to verify its many controversial claims for themselves. Unfortunately, without a more complete system of source citations, it is impossible to check Corey’s interpretations of his sources against the originals, or to consult their evidence and sources. For that reason, I would be reluctant to recommend this book to a skeptical friend.

Beyond these editorial shortcomings, Corey’s book left me with an unanswered question: What is real, true Christianity? As noted above, Corey’s basic strategy in resolving the apparent incompatibility of white interests with certain modern strains of Christianity is to claim that those strains are not genuinely Christian at all. For example, he writes (his emphases):

[T]he pharisaical teachers of false doctrine whom we witness on parade today simply are not Christians, no matter what they may say. (“Mission,” unnumbered)

[T]hose who work for our dispossession under the ensign of the cross are not Christians. (“Mission,” unnumbered)

[W]hat cloaks itself in the garb of Christianity today is not Christian, nor even close to it; modern Christianity is a disgusting aberration from the Faith. The egalitarian “Christians” of the Left and of the cocktail “conservative” class are not Christians. (p. 3)

[T]he non-White “Christianity” of the Global South that the Church celebrates as successful world evangelism is not Christian, but rather a bastardized and amalgamated paganism masquerading as Christianity. (p. 206)

In short, non-White “Christianity” is not Christian, just as egalitarian Christians are not Christian. (pp. 214-15)

We must . . . show Christians that they have been blinded and deceived by agents of Satan masquerading as men of God, that their faith has been infiltrated, subverted, and transformed into something that does not resemble Biblical Christianity in any way, shape, or form. (“Revival,” unnumbered)

But what, then, is Christianity? On what basis can we say that all these alleged deviations from Christianity are not, in fact, merely developments or even purifications of Christianity? Who decides?

Corey does not propose a creedal definition of Christianity, but his identification of it with the world-affirming amalgamation of German folk religion and missionary Gospel (chapter 3) might seem to invite problems. If third-world missionary Christianity is inauthentic because it adulterates the biblical Gospel with existing pagan traditions (chapter 12), why isn’t European Christianity, adulterated as it is on Corey’s telling (following Russell) with pagan Germanic traditions, equally inauthentic? Why would some deviations from the early Church’s teachings count as real Christianity, whereas others count as intolerable frauds?

One possibility is that the identification of European Christianity with true Christianity is simply stipulative: The religion of the medieval Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Reformation (but are these the same religion?) is what we mean when we say “Christianity,” and any set of beliefs that strays too far (but how far, and how do we measure that?) is therefore not truly Christian. At one point Corey writes, “The Christianity that built the West is necessarily the only true Christianity” (p. 222; his emphasis); this strong claim is at least compatible with the stipulative interpretation of his claims that deviations from historic Western European Christianity are not truly Christian. Why else would this historically conditioned and modified version of Christianity count as the only true Christianity, apart from the fact that it is simply what we mean to refer to when we use the term “Christianity”?

Understanding Christianity as historically-conditioned Western European Christianity by stipulation comes with a price. Christians accept the tenets of their religion because they believe them to be true, not merely because they believe them to be theirs. And most Protestant Christians (I’d wager) accept as their highest authorities Jesus Christ and the biblical texts that bear him witness. Learning from Corey and Russell that their received faith is an accommodation of early Christian doctrine to German paganism is likely to undermine their confidence in that faith, and to send them seeking after its unadulterated antecedents in the New Testament and early Church. On Corey’s reading, this, too, would be a kind of declension from true (i.e., Western European) Christianity, even though it would be closer to the earliest Christianity that he deprecates.

In the end, Corey makes a strong case that the religion of European Christendom was not egalitarian in any modern sense and supported a healthy resistance to Jewish and Islamic threats. Whether a historicized interpretation of that faith can sustain its self-understanding as true Christianity in the modern world and spiritually fortify its followers to resist white dispossession are unsettled questions.

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