Chuck Darwin<p>Stephen Wolfe grew up in Napa, California, <br>and his father was an admirer of the right-wing pundit and erstwhile GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. </p><p>After attending West Point and serving in the Army, Wolfe earned advanced degrees before leaving academia to <br>“do the Wendell Berry thing” <br>in North Carolina with his wife and four kids.</p><p>Over the summer, Wolfe, 41, agreed to speak with me on the condition that I refer to him as “Dr. Wolfe” <br>and call him an “expert on Christian nationalism.” </p><p>The Dr. Wolfe I spoke with was a more muted version of the firebrand I’d watched online. </p><p>He said his ideal version of America would be led by a Caesar figure. </p><p>Gay marriage would be strictly prohibited. </p><p>Women would not be allowed to vote<br>—instead, men would vote for their households.</p><p>When I brought up the bit from his book about heretics being killed, he grew annoyed.</p><p> “I do think it’s permissible, in principle, for a state to suppress theological heresy, <br>but that doesn’t mean that it’s prudent or proper, <br>suitable in every circumstance or every tradition or way of life.” </p><p>The Founding Fathers, he added, had encouraged religious liberty, <br>so killing heretics would not be appropriate in the United States that we inhabit.</p><p>We turned to remarks he had made at a recent conference convened by Brian Sauvé:<br> “I think we need to reflect on this idea of Judeo-Christianity, <br>or Judeo-Christian worldview, <br>or Judeo-Christian whatever, <br>and really eradicate that from our thinking. </p><p>Because if we say that America is a <br>Judeo-Christian country, <br>then it can’t be a Christian country, okay?” </p><p>What role, I asked him, would Jews play? </p><p>After a deep sigh, he told me that they would be allowed to “exercise their religion freely.”</p><p>We spoke a week before Vance’s RNC speech, <br>and Wolfe’s remarks helped me understand what the TheoBros heard in Vance’s phrase about <br>"America as a people". </p><p>The founders, Wolfe noted, intended for their country to be “Anglo-Protestant with an American inflection.” </p><p>America, he continued, is “a place of settlement and rootedness, <br>but it’s an open ethnicity in which people can become one of us.” </p><p>Which is to say that, like some others, Wolfe is not necessarily opposed to the idea of nonwhite people in America<br>—as long as they agree to assimilate to the Anglo-Protestant dominant culture.</p><p>In this telling, America is not a pluralistic society at all, <br>but rather one in which there exists an uneasy truce between Christians and those they reluctantly tolerate. </p><p>Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Wolfe what motivated him. </p><p>“I want Christians to be more assertive and to recognize the Christian heritage of the American way of life, <br>and to seek to restore that,” he said. </p><p>“This is a Christian country, and we’ve got to work to restore it to what it once was"</p><p>In his keynote address at Sauvé’s conference, titled “Why Multicultural Pluralism Fails and What to Build Instead,” <br>Wolfe called the concept of America as a melting pot <br>“an early 20th-century idea cooked up by a Jew in New York who despised the confident Anglo-Protestant establishment.” </p><p>WASPs were the “distinct ethnicity” of America, he insisted, </p><p>and America should only welcome those who aspired to assimilate. </p><p>As he put it, “This is our homeland, and we welcome you on the condition of conformity.” </p><p>Or, in the words of JD Vance, America “is a group of people.”</p><p><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/09/theobros-jd-vance-christian-nationalism/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">motherjones.com/politics/2024/</span><span class="invisible">09/theobros-jd-vance-christian-nationalism/</span></a></p><p> <a 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