Let me say from the outset that this is not a book review. Because I haven’t read Robert P. Jones’s The End of White Christian America. But I have listened to several of his academic and media presentations on the material. So even if not a review of the book, it is a review of its thesis.
Despite his offering a work of demography documenting our eclipse, Jones describes his as a distinctly priestly role: as he tells it, he envisions himself the minister conducting funerary rites over White Christian America (WCA). And he describes this role as one requiring a certain sympathy for all gathered to the wake — those in mourning as well as those come to gloat over the now still form of WCA.
Per that analogy, though, the bereaved are necessarily outnumbered by celebrants — a fact belied by the tenor of every showing Jones makes. Every venue along his book tour viewable on YouTube is populated almost entirely by gloating revelers. For my money, his St. Petersburg College talk hosted by the Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions is especially demonstrative of this schadenfreude as we witness the ministerial corps assembled only to hex the markers and memory of WCA.
In fact, amidst the this funerary procession of clergymen with Jewish surnames kvetching about the old exclusivity of White Christianity, women pastors* grousing about patriarchy, and African clerics repudiating all of America’s founding documents and even the bare existence of a White Christianity, I’ve located only one among the throng to be genuinely bereaved; or, at least, only one who would dare voice his lament. During the Q&A portion of that St. Petersburg talk one gray head rises to ask the essential question which Jones’s thesis begs:
The global demographics show that no culture ever reversed a 1.9% fertility rate and the White culture in America is 1.6, and Europe 1.5, and Europe 1.3. And this picture of this church in the front [holds up forum brochure] — I seen as I was on the computer that Muslims packed a church in Europe and they’re all on their knees bowing. And we just see our families, we see the divorce rate, we see in Newsweek Obama said the second time he got elected, “You’re old, you’re White, and you’re history.”
So as you said, when you read the writings of the American Indians they said, ‘When the White man came into America he came in like a snow storm.’ Now they have a saying down in Miami — ‘Let the last of the White men fly the flag.’ So what happens is that if we don’t see there’s something wrong with our culture, when it comes to abortion, the homosexual issue — men cannot reproduce. The whole thing now about children? Children are one of the hardest jobs that we have as human beings — to raise up children. And we see now this anti-family structure, this anti-man; we see the problems we have in this country — with drugs, taking the father out of their families, and we’re paying for it. We’re gonna pay for it.
You’ve got a major problem now with more women working now than men …
[Moderator interrupts, asks for a question]
Okay, I mean, how do you see changing the situation we’re in? I mean, what are the answers? How are we gonna fix this problem? As a culture, as the White people that are on planet Earth that are being wiped off the planet Earth [jeering, laughter, and outraged murmurs erupt from the crowd] — if the Creator isn’t judging us, who is judging us? Who is judging us as a culture? As Christians, who is judging us? [Jeering slowly subsides.]
If his framing of the question is somewhat scattered, it is only for the attempt at providing ample context. But once settled, his question struck to the heart of the matter: Jones’s entire book is, by the consensus of the author and the bulk of his audience, a chronicle of our comeuppance. It is by definition, therefore, the tale of our judgment.
But Jones knows that to grant the old man’s observation here is to acknowledge the present eclipse of WCA for a cursed tide. And this he will not do because the new order which he lauds insists these curses to be blessings. And in the eyes of zeitgeist, our killers’ bloodguilt is imputed to their victims — White Christians generally, but especially to those who dare object to our extermination. Such a one is doubly condemned; and to a tertiary degree, because the man places Jones on the horns of the dilemma — either the Creator is judging White Christians as such, or someone else is; and all the ((()))s that implies.
Of course, as Calvinists, we can see the confluence of all these things, because what man has meant for evil God intends for good. The Scripture assures us that He scourges His sons to turn us back to Him that we might live and have life more abundant. The sin for which WCA is being scourged is the same for which the old Israelite nation was so oft scourged — the sin of pluralism. And we all used to know this. As Samuel Adams wrote in his Rights of the Colonists, “And, by the charter of this Province, it is granted, ordained, and established (that is, declared as an original right) that there shall be liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of God to all Christians, except Papists, inhabiting, or which shall inhabit or be resident within, such Province or Territory.” But once the concept of Protestant freedom of religion was recast to mean freedom of false religion and anti-Christian religion, the fix was in. Judgment was imminent.
But it is precisely that new pluralism which Jones declares as the true Americanism opposite the understanding of the Reformation-era men who founded the republic.
So Jones replies:
I think one of the things that I hear in the question is this struggle, right? I think that the question is … like, so who … the question before us is “What kind of a country are we going to be/do we wanna be?”, right?
No, Dr. Jones. That was not the man’s question. At all. But it does divulge your motives: You are not so concerned with what America was founded to be, or who we are, but only with what ‘we’ (not WCA) want to become.
Continuing, he says:
And I do think there is a struggle between “So, is this country a White Christian country?” That White Christians own and everyone else sorta has guest status? Or is this country something else, where everyone has equal standing in the country? That is the fundamental debate we’re having. It really couldn’t be much clearer in the last election cycle. That was the fundamental question that I think everything is revolving around.
Again, not the man’s question.
But tossing that word salad only to avoid the question, Jones introduces another one just as important — the question of who America actually belongs to, “We the People”, the “Free White persons of good character”, and “Our Posterity” with the God-given “Rights of Englishmen”, or to every hostile antipode?
On which Jones concludes:
So, y’know, I hear anxiety, I hear worry. All that’s real. And I think that’s what we’re hearing in our debates around the country. But I think trying to have better conversations about how do we reflect? My own take is that we can’t have a pluralistic democracy that’s faithful to the Constitution as it’s written and insist that it’s a White Christian country. Okay, we can’t do it. So how are we gonna make that adjustment so that there’s a place for everyone?
Follow that? Basically, “America never was a White Christian nation because that doesn’t comport with the post-civil rights reinterpretation of the Constitution and nation (which the fathers specified to be for White Christian posterity). So we have to renovate the whole concept and history of America in order to terminate the White Christian nation that remains.”
Are logic and rhetoric not required for a doctorate these days? So it would seem. But Jones’s revisionist doublespeak on the question of American identity descends from many preceding liberal non sequiturs such as…
- Diversity is our greatest strength even if it is the near total cause of strife and mayhem everywhere.
- All men are equal so any who prove superior, or acknowledge such differences, are subhuman scum.
- Blacks, Browns, and all others are equal to Whites and Whites are all racist scum.
- There is only one race, the human race; so the White race must be abolished.
- As a pluralist society we tolerate all creeds, so Christianity must be altered or abolished.
- White Christian Americans founded a republic for the express purpose of giving it away to heathen races whose identities and perspectives preclude them from identification with it.
Et cetera, et cetera.
Which is to say that in spite of his pretensions at a sympathetic eulogy, Jones’s priesthood preaches no peace on WCA’s legacy. They identify WCA’s overwhelm as a blood atonement, and demand continued and increasing sacrifice of the same. Pursuant of these goals, vicars of the multicult care not one whit about truth. Their concern is the objective and how to twist the narrative to their ends.
For Jones knows what this demographic replacement portends. At 33:40 he says, “If you want a shorthand breakdown, White Christian groups tend to vote Republican and everyone else tends to vote Democrat.” What this “Great Replacement” spells, then, is the total destruction of the founding stock, and with it, the founding sentiment of America.
But if White Christians — the physical and spiritual descendants of the American founders — stand alone as the conservative demographic in the country, then all others’ revolutionary interpretations of America are incongruent with basic Americanism, and de facto wrong. To say that the Constitution precludes the WCA nation (as Jones & co. do) while the multicult pluralist alternative in radical liberalism demands the abolishment of the Bill of Rights, the electoral college, constitutionalism, and Anglo-Saxon common law generally, only proves the opposite of Jones’s thesis: the White Christian view of America is the true perspective by the impossibility of all alternatives. The nation for which the republic was founded was WCA by definition. WCA is the ‘us and our posterity’ for which the republic was founded, and none others. Which is why the only demographic to identify with traditional American values today is White Christians.
In spite of his best efforts to obfuscate the matter, this tracks with the central oracle of Jones book:
The racial perception gap highlights one of the most powerful—but also least discussed—divisions between Americans on the topic of race: the rift between the descendants of White Christian America and the rest of the country.
Falling below a certain percentage of the populace, White Christians shall stand politically helpless before the dismantling and inversion of our civilization. Wherein the revelers are bent on literally outlawing our birthright and all vestiges of our identity.
Of course, Jones has thereby confirmed all the worst forebodings of the furthest right-wing White Christians. Yet he condemns them the more for noticing. Jones and his accomplices deserve every dram of judgement to be poured out on them. But take heart, o little flock, the bruised reed He shall not break, and the smoking flax he shall not quench. He shall at length give us victory through justice (Isa. 42:3; Matt. 12:20).
For lack of any better conclusion, I leave you with a song that parallels the substance of this article: “Ghost Train” by North Country Gentlemen. Don’t get on that damned train, folks. It ain’t bound for glory.
I had a vision plain and true
Saw something that few people do
And Lord God I’ve seen enough.
I had a vision true and plain
That cracked broken rusty ghost train
That once you’re on you can’t get off.
I saw their eyes, I saw their eyes, I saw their eyes.
Old iron bearing down like wind
It’s built by ruin and run on sin
It had no start it has no end.
Every face it looks the same
No one can tell from where they came
Nobody knows what’s round the bend.
I saw their eyes, I saw their eyes, I saw their eyes.
Looking down from the train through those busted window panes
They were calling out my name, “Boy, you’re next.”
This train ain’t bound for glory, and I don’t want to go no no.
Lord have mercy let that ghost train pass me,
Curse its rails to the weeds and the rust.
Tell me once again that old story
Cure the pride and cure the flesh and cure the lust.
I saw their eyes, I saw their eyes, I saw their eyes.
Captured souls that test the ground, across the line, were never found
They were reaching out their hands from the wrecks.
This train ain’t bound for glory, and I don’t want to go no no no.
Come aboard the train, it’ll be okay.
Come aboard the train, it’ll be okay.
This train ain’t bound for glory, and I don’t want to go no no no.
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