As this series wraps up the question is being asked, “How does the Church stay on the fairway?” Or how does the Church navigate Christian Nationalism while accepting the good and discarding the bad. Last installment looked at some biblical consideration that would help the Church in its gracious pursuit of the truth. Part of faithfulness comes from recognizing error. From the basic biblical considerations considered before come more specific doctrinal objections to some of the “water hazards” that have been promoted by some thinkers in the Christian Nationalism camp.
Total Depravity
The first doctrinal consideration is that of total depravity. It is crucial to hold to a biblically true and faithful account of the depravity of all men. When the Westminster Confession of Faith treats the effects of man’s fall into sin, it describes it as follows: “By this sin (eating the forbidden fruit) they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body.”[1] The Belgic Confession gives a similar definition: “We believe that by the disobedience of Adam original sin has spread throughout the whole human race. It is a corruption of the entire nature of man and a hereditary evil which infects even infants in their mother’s womb.”[2] Perhaps less frequently used, but no less potent than the other Reformed confessions, the Second Helvetic Confession describes man’s state this way: “By sin we understand that innate corruption of man which has been derived or propagated in us all from our first parents, by which we, immersed in perverse desires and averse to all good, are inclined to all evil. Full of all wickedness, distrust, contempt and hatred of God, we are unable to do or even to think anything good of ourselves.”[3]The variety of sources help establish the similarity in views of man’s state after sin in the Reformed theological tradition.
All acknowledge that the depravity of man caused by the fall is now the universal condition of corruption in the entirety of the whole human race. That is important. The sin nature is the same in all men, the sins of action are all alike failures to conform to, or willful transgress the law of God. Because the problems are all the same, all God’s children need the same grace in justification and sanctification. This unified view of the complete depravity of man points to the unity all men have in the one man Adam. The universal total depravity of man has implications for all of the “water hazard” categories above. Take, as an example, Kinism. For the Christian, a mandatory, hard separation between people based on race, as proposed in this philosophy, is not only the wrong line to draw, but it also fights against the future state of unity. Another way to think of it is that the Christian should live today anticipating the great hope of heaven. However, Kinism emphasizes the separation caused by sin rather that the peace that has been purchased by Christ and will be experienced by all the saints.
Comparing the tenets of race realism, this way of thinking draws sweeping conclusions about race and various qualities which even more directly attack the biblical explanation of man, his origins, his nature after the fall, and the hope each believer has of heaven. That is not to imply that there are not differences between people. It is even possible to make specific observations about certain groups living in a certain place at a certain time. By doing so an observer may to point to instances of more egregious sin that is practiced within a particular racial group. However, race realism grounds that deficiency in that race as a whole rather than seeing as a sinful expression confined to one specific time and place. The line Scripture draws is not a matter of race, but rather of sin and righteousness.
When it comes to language which invokes “international Jewry” as the responsible party for society’s evil, it makes moral victims out of sinners exercising their own agency in indulging sin and the flesh. The claims of an “International Jewry” controlling bolshevism, pornography, and banks is a laughable position and easily countered with a simple question: will these vices or sinful systems disappear if this supposed international Jewry were to be removed? A Christian with a biblical understanding of sin will rightly say, “No.” Sin has been expressed in all cultures since the fall. Therefore the problem is not with the man’s ethnicity but rather in the sinful way he is living. And as that is the case, the Christian’s preoccupation is to speak of Christ who is able to forgive any man who comes to Him in faith of his sin, and his ethnicity should be left off altogether.
Sanctification
The second doctrine that has bearing must be clearly understood to protect against distortion from this water hazard views is that of sanctification. The Westminster Confession of Faith defines it as the work of God in a man wherein “the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified; and they more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.”[4] That same radical change is noted in the Belgic Confession when it says, “We believe that this true faith, worked in man by the hearing of God’s Word and by the operation of the Holy Spirit, regenerates him and makes him a new man. It makes him live a new life and frees him from the slavery of sin.”[5] One further example from the Second Helvetic Confession confirms the agreement of the Reformed theological tradition on this point. It says, “In regeneration the understanding is illumined by the Holy Spirit in order that it may understand both the mysteries and the will of God. And the will itself is not only changed by the Spirit, but it is also equipped with faculties so that it wills and is able to do the good of its own accord (Rom. 8:1ff.).”[6]
The three different confessions describe the same process from different angles. Westminster emphasizes the process at work in the converted believer. The Belgic demonstrates the reality that holiness will be worked out in the believer. The Helvetic point to the changed heart of the believer. Taking them all together, sanctification can be defined as God’s work of changing the heart of the born-again believer so that he most certainly is made new unto holiness. Regeneration and faith precede its application. It is not applied on the basis of kin, race, or Jewishness or a lack thereof. Sanctification is the same unescapable doctrine for anyone who is given new life in Christ.
To think of both the depravity of man and sanctification as universal experiences for all races (recognizing that sanctification is reserved only for believers), These doctrines are expressed without consideration of race. The way to achieve new life in Christ is the same for all people, regardless of race. The effect of new life in Christ is the same, regardless of race. In regeneration, the benefits of the works and blood of Christ are applied to the sinner through faith, exclusively an act of God’s grace. No group of people has a greater need than the other, because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”[7] All men are equally desperate in their natural condition. The process of sanctification is applied in the same way. The specific expressions of sin that must be mortified may be different based on time and place, but all men are equally in need of being sanctified. Thus, the most that can be said is that for each man there are different sins that need to be addressed. That is not controversial for any observant human being. However, as soon as someone claims or implies that some racial group of people is by nature in more need of sanctification or more resistant to it based on some inherited unchangeable racial quality, that man has lost a proper sense of what God does in sanctifying the regenerated soul.
Creation
A third doctrine that has some bearing on this matter is the doctrine of creation. I do not intend to belabor this point for too long. Confession of Faith chapter 4.2 say that God “created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after his own image.” The Westminster’s point to emphasize is that all men are created after the image of God. The Belgic Confession is silent on this point, but the Second Helvetic makes a similar point to theWestminster Confession when it says, “Scripture says that in the beginning he was made good according to the image and likeness of God.”[8] Any language that implies or states that some have more of the image of God than others stands against this doctrine of creation. And, of course, some will claim that those words have never been used. And that may be correct. However, to imply that some races based on unchangeable traits, are more prone to sin is to make exactly that point, though the words may not be identical.
The biblical record on sin and salvation and the confessional statements’ positions on things like the depravity of man, sanctification, and creation are clear and objective guideposts hammered out in history that inform the Church in the present. However, there are also some other cautions that may perhaps be somewhat less objective and yet are worthy of consideration.
Pastor Geoff Gleason
Cliffwood Presbyterian Church
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[1] Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 6.2.
[2] Belgic Confession, Article 15, (as quoted on the Canadian and American Reformed Churches website), accessed January 8, 2026, https://canrc.org/the-belgic-confession#article-15
[3] Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter VIII, (as found on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library website), accessed January 8, 2026, https://ccel.org/creeds/helvetic.htm
[4] Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 13.1.
[5] Belgic Confession, Article 24
[6] Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter IX.
[7] Romans 3:23a.
[8] Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter VII.