Dirty, Rotten Politics
Why Escondido 2K hates Christian Nationalism so much
This originally appeared as an X thread on June 18, 2025, with a quote post of the following post from Stephen Wolfe:
It is here that some of my former fellow Escondidans might jump in and say “But it’s a Venn diagram! They overlap! VanDrunen’s book even has it on the cover!” But while that overlap is claimed, the political is thought about/talked about in an almost exclusively negative way.
In this camp, the church is what matters, the political doesn’t. So even if someone from the camp happens to be politically positioned and active, they’re more or less expected to do so in a disinterested fashion, primarily preserving the American status quo.
Basically, just do whatever it takes to keep politics separate from us. The moment any political activity starts to look assertive in a pro-Christian direction, the hand-wringing begins about kingdom confusion, theology of glory, eschatological expectations, etc.
A good case study in this was Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska. He was a friend of WSCAL and would at times even appear on campus. He is a decent and Christian man, but his philosophy of government was basically the “this is fine” burning room meme.
You see this particularly illustrated in Sasse’s interactions with and critiques of Donald Trump. Though Sasse’s record was pretty standard GOP, he was particularly critical of Trump, who for whatever else he is is an assertive politician.
Republican Sen. Ben Sasse Blasts Donald Trump (USA Today)
For all his sparring with Trump, Sasse never really offered an alternative, a more Christian and moral set of legislation and priorities. Which would make sense if one doesn’t really believe in the concept of Christian politics. 6/
Sasse’s positive vision was not so much about any particular policy as it was about preservation--get rid of all the division, partisanship, and political obsession, and “heal.” Settle politics down so we don’t have to engage them. He even wrote a book to that effect.
Sasse is emblematic of the Esco2K problem: their brand of Christians in politics will rarely if ever do anything particularly Christian because they fundamentally believe that Christianity and politics don’t go together. Politics is a secular enterprise, keep it separate.
This, by the way, is not only a problem for politics. The Escondido camp has a weak doctrine of vocation (you’ll also hear at WSCAL frequent lambasts of “Christian plumbing” and “Christian baseball”). The church matters, keep everything else separate.
Of course, they can’t maintain this separation consistently. Myopic focus on the church leads to an inevitable misappropriation of churchly things into the world previously kept separate. I’ve talked about this before.
For example, current ecclesiastical wranglings about Christian Nationalism are an attempt to include/exclude particular political programs and ideologies by the use of ecclesiastical power. 11/
You don’t have to look very far to find calls for the church to investigate and discipline people who are orthodox theologically but heterodox politically. You can find many church leaders (including those who normally insist on separation) suddenly taking political stands.
Because, for however we would like to dress it up, the question of Christianity and politics is not one of whether but of which. We are whole people and the Bible prescribes a comprehensive way of life. We will be political, we will think and act politically, but how?
If Christian politics are of a pretended disinterest and neutrality, they will be status quo politics like Sasse’s. Of course, others are fighting against the status quo in the direction of degeneracy and decline, and they have been winning for a long time.
Because another overlooked aspect of modern 2K is that it is a luxury ideology. It works fine when one is able to insulate from the political and its implications. That’s easy if you’re a pastor of a big wealthy church, a professor, or a professional parachurcher.
This is why the New Christian Right/Christian Nationalism/whatever you call it is a (very ideologically broad and diverse) bottom-up movement largely driven by the laity. They can’t avoid the political or its implications.
This is also why the pushback against CN/NCR is largely top-down, from those either benefiting from the status quo or too insulated from it to realize how bad things got while they were reciting and perfecting their luxury ideologies.
“It’s not a luxury ideology, it’s biblical and true!” Open any Reformed works of exegesis and theology from before 1900 and read them (thoroughly and in context on relevant topics). You won’t find modern 2K and it’s insistence on separation there.
Modern 2K is novel, it’s luxury, it’s counterproductive, it’s disconnected from reality. It doesn’t even accomplish its stated goal of keeping the church and political separate. The best time to abandon it was 20 years ago, the second-best time is now.