By Davis Carlton

I’m pleased that the topic of the Biblical concept of nationhood is gaining more traction. I have gone on record saying that Kinists need to press the question: What is a nation? The reason being that the answer to this question is thoroughly and unambiguously Kinist. The Biblical authors absolutely and uniformly consider nations to be hereditary subdivisions of mankind. Opponents of Kinism or ethno-nationalism are backed into a corner of having to oppose the concept of nationhood that is taught in the Bible. The Biblical definition of nationhood is being rediscovered by a younger generation of Christians who are finding out that the concept of nationhood has been redefined in recent decades to mean something other than what it has meant throughout history. Once one understands what the Bible means about nationhood, the rest of Kinism naturally follows. Those who oppose ethno-nationalism are given the tough task of trying to show that the Biblical concept of nationhood is, in fact, not tied to ethnicity or common ancestry. Enter Cody Lawrence.

Cody Lawrence has a YouTube channel called, Spare No Arrows. Recently it seems that Lawrence’s brain has been broken by Joel Webbon and Christian Nationalism. Lawrence is particularly irked by those defending the traditional concept of nationhood as tied to, if not absolutely synonymous with, ethnicity and common ancestry. Recently Lawrence made a video in which he attempts to debunk ethno-nationalism. There are two broad problems with the claims that Lawrence makes in his video. The first is that he fails to make a Biblical case, and the second is that he doesn’t engage in actual history to substantiate his claims. Let’s begin with his argument from the Bible.

The first thing that jumped out at me after watching this video for the first time as it did for The Other Paul, was that Cody Lawrence failed to actually define what a nation is in a video that is supposed to be about this very definition! Cody Lawrence titles his video, “What is a Nation?” and then fails to provide an answer. His argument is more geared towards arguing for what he believes a nation is not, and to Lawrence that belief is that a nation is most certainly not innately tied to ethnicity or common ancestry. Lawrence starts off his analysis of the Bible at the 6:40 mark. He states that one of the verses that is commonly used against giving immigrants immediate citizenship is Deuteronomy 23:8 which states that those eligible to enter the congregation of the Lord can do so in the third generation.

Cody Lawrence accurately states that the congregation of the Lord would be akin to Israel’s national church, and questions how this would be applicable to the question of national citizenship. Obviously, church membership and national citizenship are different concepts. Of primary concern, he doesn’t cite anyone who starts their argument at this verse. I think that Deut. 23 is relevant to the discussion of national identity, but I wouldn’t necessarily start there. If Cody Lawrence wants more robust argumentation for ethno-nationalism, I would suggest consulting the archives at Faith & Heritage, other articles on Tribal Theocrat, as well as Iron Ink and the Pactum Institute. I believe that Deut. 23 is relevant because at the very least it identifies Israel as Edom’s brother (in verse 7, cf. Num. 20:14), and this can only make sense if Israel is understood as a hereditary extension of family.

Israel and Edom are brothers because of their descent from Isaac and Rebekah through Jacob and Esau. This is the constant in Israel’s identity as a nation. The Israelites experienced periods in which they were faithful to God and periods in which they strayed into idol worship. The Israelites spoke Hebrew, but later spoke Aramaic and Greek while Hebrew was more confined to liturgical usage. Israel’s culture was also shaped by its history of freedom and prosperity under God and captivity as punishment for their sin. The one thing that continuously defined Israel as a nation was its common descent from the patriarchs.

Many other Biblical texts confirm this observation. The Table of Nations states that the nations were separated out “after their families, in their nations” (Gen. 10) as it identifies nations based upon their particular descent from Noah. This is also confirmed at the beginning of 1 Chronicles by establishing Israel’s identity “by genealogies.” The Law recognizes the distinction between Israelites (“of your own nation”) and friendly, covenant-keeping strangers that dwell among them (Lev. 18:26). Everyone was to receive the same standard of justice, but there are certain civil privileges reserved in Israel for the Israelites. The civil government is reserved for blood Israelites (Deut. 1, 17:15). This is why it is significant that David is of the “bone and flesh” of the Israelites he is to rule (2 Sam. 5:1/1 Chr. 11:1). When the prophet Jeremiah asks rhetorically (in Jer. 13:23), “Can the Ethiopian change his skin,” he presupposes that nations have a definite outward appearance which is brought about by common descent from a common set of patriarchs.

This concept is carried over into the New Testament. We can acknowledge that all nations descend from Adam and share a common origin, while still maintaining their legitimacy as distinct nations. Francis Nigel Lee states it this way: “Pentecost sanctified the legitimacy of separate nationality rather than saying this is something we should outgrow. In fact, even in the new earth to come, after the Second Coming of Christ, we are told that the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the kings of the earth shall bring the glory and the honor – the cultural treasures – of the nations into it… But nowhere in Scripture are any indications to be found that such peoples should ever be amalgamated into one huge nation.” (Dr. Francis Nigel Lee. Race, People, and Nationality. 2/2/2005). Dr. Lee is referencing the Apostle John’s vision of the New Heaven and New Earth in which multiple nations worship and glorify God (Rev. 21:24-26).

Cody Lawrence’s argument hinges upon his interpretation of 1 Pet. 2:9 which he gives beginning at the 11 minute mark. He points out that the Church is identified as a nation, and then points out that Christians are called a family, presumably alluding to Gal. 6:10. He states that all Christians are part of a nation and a family and relate as brothers and sisters in spite of everyone not looking alike. He states that the church is the “platonic ideal” of a nation and asks if America should try to look like the world or look like the nation that God established. He continues by arguing that we should want America to be multi-racial because that’s how “God’s nation” operates, “if we actually want America to be modeled after Christ, if we live in a Christian nation.”

Cody Lawrence’s error is that he is committing a massive category fallacy. The church is a nation in a manner of speaking, as it is a family, a bride, a body, a building, etc. None of these analogies actually replace or override the concept or thing to which they are referring. If we take Lawrence’s argument and apply it to the church being the bride of Christ as in Ephesians 5, we would have to conclude that because the church includes men and women from all nations of the world, that we should seek to emulate this in our individual marriages…presumably by marrying men and women from all the nations of the world and practicing something akin to Oneida-style “communal marriage.” Lawrence is committing a species of the illegitimate totality transfer fallacy, in which he is assuming that the word “nation” in 1 Pet. 2:9 has the same meaning as when the word is used elsewhere. In this particular case, Cody Lawrence suggests that 1 Pet. 2:9 represents a sort of “platonic ideal” of nationhood that other nations should strive to accomplish. This misses the point of the analogy.

The church is a spiritual nation because the Bible presupposes that nations are societies linked by common ancestry and birth. The very meaning of the English word nation is derived from natal, meaning birth. Thus the church is a “holy nation” because Christians are united by a common rebirth by the Holy Spirit. The same logic works for other analogies used by the New Testament authors as well. The church is a body in that it contains many members having different functions, but all under the head and coordinated to work together. The church is the bride of Christ in that the church submits to Christ as her lord and protector, while husbands ought to emulate Christ in their relationship to their wives in sacrificially loving them as Christ does the church. Common rebirth by the Holy Spirit makes all Christians brothers and sisters in this sense, while not in any way mitigating the particular relationships that we have with our own families and extended families.

The irony is that Cody Lawrence seemingly misses the actual point of contact in the church being a spiritual nation in 1 Pet. 2:9 in that Peter presupposes that nations are grounded in shared ancestry in order to make the analogy work. The spiritual nation of the church is comprised of Christians from all the physical nations of the world. The Bible affirms the goodness of nations as nations in that Jesus makes them the subjects of evangelization, baptism, and discipleship (Matt. 28:19-20). Ps. 86:9 affirms that the plurality of nations is a part of God’s good design when it proclaims that all nations which God has made will worship Him. Moses affirms that it is God who divided the nations and gave them their inheritance (Deut. 32:8-9).

The ingathering of all the nations to the true worship of God permeates the entire Old Testament to a degree that many more instances could be cited, but the above examples suffice. All of this is meaningless if we don’t maintain the distinction between the spiritual nationhood of the church from legitimate physical national identity which the Bible repeatedly affirms as a good aspect of God’s intentional creation. Finally, Cody Lawrence also predictably invokes the oft-abused Gal. 3:28 by noting that in God’s kingdom both Jew and Greek, male and female have “equal value.” That isn’t being disputed by anyone. Even Corey Mahler recognizes the existence of black Christians who he acknowledges as brothers in Christ. Gal. 3:28 is simply not about national identity or immigration and naturalization policy.

The second major issue with Cody Lawrence’s presentation on national identity is his abuse of history. He accuses ethno-nationalists of being “woke right” and “Marxist” and seeking to deceptively “change the dictionary.” Later in the video he also claims that while the word ethnicity comes from the Greek word ethnos, and that this word is translated as “nation” in English editions of the Bible, nevertheless our concept of ethnicity has been “corrupted” since this time. His grandiose historical claims are made without any evidence offered in their defense. Ethno-nationalists have not changed the definition of nation. I’ve already established how the word nation is used consistently throughout the Bible, and that this usage tied to common ancestry is even assumed by its metaphorical application in 1 Pet. 2:9. It’s also worth pointing out that this definition wasn’t invented by ethno-nationalists as part of some covert psy-op to fool everyone.

A reliable definition of nationhood can be found in Black’s Law Dictionary: “A people, or aggregation of men, existing in the form of an organized jural society, usually inhabiting a distinct portion of the earth, speaking the same language, using the same customs, possessing historic continuity, and distinguished from other like groups by their racial origin and characteristics, and generally, but not necessarily, living under the same government and sovereignty.” (Emphasis mine)

Is the above definition dating to the early 20th century part of the “woke right” conspiracy to “change the dictionary?” Modern scholarship on the concept of ethnicity indicates that it has only recently become regularly used in the English language. The fact that the word doesn’t appear in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1953 indicates that it has become a means of discussing the traditional attributes of nationhood during the time in which the traditional concept of nationhood has been supplanted by the idea of propositional nations based upon ideas and abstractions in the post-WWII West. Professor Baumann isn’t saying anything controversial when he writes: “The true origins of ‘ethnic’ have been traced back to Greece and the term ethnos, which was used in reference to band, tribe, race, a people, or a swarm.”

Cody Lawrence’s knowledge of America’s founding is just as bad if not worse than his knowledge of the dictionary. This is what he has to say about American identity: “America is unique and beautiful among the world because we have a uniquely Christian founding. One of the ways that makes us unique is that the Founders actually sort of modeled becoming a member of our nation from the Bible…America, even the Founders, came from all over the place. People who founded America had very different cultures, but they came and became a part of one culture. That’s the important thing.” Later he suggests that ethno-nationalism is “un-America” and opposed “to the principles that America was founded upon…America is completely different than any other nation on earth because America is a Christian nation.”

This is melting pot mythology, not actual American history. America’s foundation can be traced to permanent English colonization of what was then known as the New World. These colonies were explicitly Christian in nature, and at least some of them continued this way for some time after the American Revolution. These Christian Founders restricted naturalized citizenship to “free white persons.” Cody Lawrence’s contention that America’s founders “came from all over the place” with “very different cultures” is also pure fiction. The occasional Dutch or German settler does not a polyglot polity make.

John Jay wrote in defense of the Constitutional union: “With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.” (John Jay, Federalist #5, emphasis mine).

It’s painful to watch Cody Lawrence be so obviously wrong while fuming at those with whom he disagrees. During his video he accuses those who dare to disagree with Ronald Reagan’s assessment that anyone can become an American of “hating people who don’t look like them.” Later he accuses ethno-nationalists of “hating people other than themselves” and “lacking hospitality for foreigners.” This is gratuitous slander, and tantamount to saying that those who don’t want to abolish private property only do so because they hate everyone who isn’t a member of their family. He stated on X that “Ethno-nationalism is for men what blue haired feminism is for women. Both do a great job at making you unmarriable and ensuring the next generation won’t believe that crap. Keep up the good work.” Even if he believes that ethno-nationalists are as vile as he seems to think, how is this not returning evil for evil?

Cody Lawrence is a disciple of atheist James Lindsay when it comes to the political spectrum, which is why he is so enamored of the phrase Lindsay coined, “woke right.” As we’ve just seen, if modern ethno-nationalists are “woke right,” then so are America’s Christian Founding Fathers and virtually everyone in the Christian West prior to the middle of the 20^th century. This was recently exposed during the debate between Joel Berry and Dave Greene. He accuses ethno-nationalists of trying to change the dictionary when he is profoundly ignorant of both the teachings of Scripture about national identity and the history of the word “nation” as it has been traditionally understood. He ought to know better because he’s been corrected several times on these matters. If he cannot learn from these mistakes then I suggest Mr. Lawrence change the name of his YouTube channel to Spare No Errors.