Christian Men and White Nationalism

From this recent piece by Rod Dreher:

Christians: if you don’t want to lose your sons to the false god of white nationalism, then you had better introduce them (and yourselves) to the God of the Bible, who is rather different from the God of the comfortable American middle class.

It is widely acknowledged among conservative Christians today that the white church in the South failed terribly in the civil rights era. The failure was not primarily because they stood for white supremacy (though some did). The failure was mostly because the churches did not preach against white supremacy, preferring instead to stay neutral, and cultivate an ethos that was suited to supporting the Southern white middle class at prayer.

Today, I am aware of young white men who attend comfortable middle-class churches, but who identify as white nationalists. I doubt very much their parents or their pastors know. But it’s happening. These aren’t young men who have been downtrodden by society; that would at least give some sort of social and economic rationale for their race radicalism. These are relatively privileged young men. Why do they find no anchor in the church? Why is the god of racial nationalism more appealing to them than the God of the Bible?

Rod is spot on here. I recommend that Christians, and especially clergy, familarize themselves withthe kinds of neopaganism that influenced the National Socialists in the middle of the 20th century and the European "Nouvelle Droite" now in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Many American young men are reading the intellectuals of the Novelle Droite and accordingly find attractive the American alt-right, which takes much of its philosophy from this European movement. These authors, Faye, Benoit, et al., make their disdain for the Christian religion abundantly clear: it is a pacifist, feminized, non-European religion that has given rise to the liberal-left elite who are at the helm of the suicide of the West. That's why they will only scornfully laugh at such things as the recent public statements and sermons of Christian clergy about Charlottesville and their condemnation of neo-Nazism, white supremacism, racism, etc. They believe Christian clergy are merely feminized, feckless sell-outs to the Western liberal elite and who are merely the natural offspring of that religion of the "pale Galilean", as one such Nordic neopagan group refers to our Lord.

And the thing is, while the Nouvelle Droite's and the American alt-right's assessment of the Christian faith in extremely jaudiced and mostly incorrect, its assessment of the Western liberal-elite is spot on. Dreher is correct about that in his litany of things the Left does to summon the demon of white nationalism. But he is also right about the Christian disease of feminization, which many Christians such as Leon Podles have warned us about. We need to find a way to dissuade young traditionalist men from putting stock in the Nouvelle Droite/alt-right assessment of Christianity, but in order to do so we DO need to reverse this unfortunate trend in the Church. Dreher recommends that we preach the *real* God of the Bible. I heartily concur. Tolkien had some additional ideas:

Tolkien & Anglo-Saxon England: Protectors of Christendom