The Dissident “New Christian Right” Mirrors TGC

By Brad Isbell

We are now¹ supposed to call the Online, Sometimes-Somewhat-Reformed Christian Nationalists and their assorted adjacencies the “New Christian Right” rather than the opprobrious but apt denominator “Woke Right.” Well, that's fine—movements have the risky right to attempt rebranding. Remember “New Coke”?

Obviously, the seed oil-phobic CN bros will require real cane sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup!

Nomenclature aside, we’ve noticed that the rapidly changing, lately fractious Christian Nationalist movement resembles, mirrors, or rhymes with another movement in significant ways—a movement these guys really, really don’t like: the Formerly Young, Restless, and (largely lowercase) Reformed movement, which manifests most tangibly as The Gospel Coalition and Acts 29 movements.

So, how do these two opposed movements—the New Christian Right (CN) and the (Not So) New Somewhat-Reformed Evangelicals (SRE)—resemble each other, and how do they differ?

NOT SO YOUNG ANYMORE - Grok

Both were formed or arose in response to a perceived crisis. The 2007 foundational documents of the leading SRE institution, The Gospel Coalition, make their triggering crisis explicit:

THE GOSPEL FOR ALL OF LIFE: Preamble

We are a fellowship of evangelical churches deeply committed to renewing our faith in the gospel of Christ and to reforming our ministry practices to conform fully to the Scriptures. We have become deeply concerned about some movements within traditional evangelicalism that seem to be diminishing the church’s life and leading us away from our historic beliefs and practices. On the one hand, we are troubled by the idolatry of personal consumerism and the politicization of faith; on the other hand, we are distressed by the unchallenged acceptance of theological and moral relativism. These movements have led to the easy abandonment of both biblical truth and the transformed living mandated by our historic faith. We not only hear of these influences, we see their effects. We have committed ourselves to invigorating churches with new hope and compelling joy based on the promises received by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. (2007 - archived)

(Here’s something too interesting not to mention: TGC did not change the first sentence to “We are a fellowship of evangelical churches in the Reformed tradition…” until some time in 2014.² The “Reformed” language still obtains in 2025. In this sense, they narrowed their doctrinal self-conception rather than broadening it.)

The main triggers for CN were the crises of post-Obergefell sexuality and marriage issues, and the response of many churches to COVID lockdowns and restrictions from 2020 onward.

The SRE triggers were not primarily cultural or political. Still, they were not unrelated to the cultural or the political—e.g., “the idolatry of personal consumerism and the politicization of faith…theological and moral relativism.” The socio-cultural concerns of the SRE are more explicit in the TGC “Theological Vision for Ministry” (quite obviously written by Tim Keller), which makes their transformational goals for churches and cities (if not nations) explicit:

3. Counter–cultural community.

…Regarding the family, the church should affirm the goodness of marriage between a man and a woman, calling them to serve God by reflecting his covenant love in life–long loyalty, and by teaching his ways to their children. But it also affirms the goodness of serving Christ as singles, whether for a time or for a life. The church should surround all persons suffering from the fallenness of our human sexuality with a compassionate community and family. Regarding money, the church’s members should engage in radical economic sharing with one another—so “there are no needy among them” (Acts 4:34). Such sharing also promotes a radically generous commitment of time, money, relationships, and living space to social justice and the needs of the poor, the oppressed, the immigrant, and the economically and physically weak. Regarding power, it is visibly committed to power–sharing and relationship–building among races, classes, and generations that are alienated outside of the Body of Christ. The practical evidence of this is that our local churches increasingly welcome and embrace people of all races and cultures. Each church should seek to reflect the diversity of its local geographical community, both in the congregation at large and in its leadership.

Here, we see concern for issues like marriage, homosexuality, and the rest of the sexual alphabet (by implication), immigration, race, and DEI-type diversity initiatives. Though the SRE generally proposes different solutions and connects them more to the church than the nation, the range of issues is remarkably similar to those of CN.

More from the “Theological Vision”:

5. The doing of justice and mercy.

God created both soul and body, and the resurrection of Jesus shows that he is going to redeem both the spiritual and the material. Therefore God is concerned not only for the salvation of souls but also for the relief of poverty, hunger, and injustice. The gospel opens our eyes to the fact that all our wealth (even wealth for which we worked hard) is ultimately an unmerited gift from God. Therefore the person who does not generously give away his or her wealth to others is not merely lacking in compassion, but is unjust. Christ wins our salvation through losing, achieves power through weakness and service, and comes to wealth through giving all away. Those who receive his salvation are not the strong and accomplished but those who admit they are weak and lost. We cannot look at the poor and the oppressed and callously call them to pull themselves out of their own difficulty. Jesus did not treat us that way. The gospel replaces superiority toward the poor with mercy and compassion. Christian churches must work for justice and peace in their neighborhoods through service even as they call individuals to conversion and the new birth. We must work for the eternal and common good and show our neighbors we love them sacrificially whether they believe as we do or not. Indifference to the poor and disadvantaged means there has not been a true grasp of our salvation by sheer grace.

Here, we see concern for neighbor and community from the SRE. The CN folk would have concerns of a different scope, for different spheres, and would connect those concerns to ethnicity, but both SRE and CN may well be viewed as gospels (of a sort) that are social. Both are motivated by problems in the church, neighborhood, city, and nation. Both are concerned about “people and place”—primarily neighbors (of all types) and cities with one, neighbors and kin (more narrowly defined), and nation with the other. SRE aims to be “gospel-centered” (a concept many consider to be overused and too plastic); CN is more ethnically, people-and-place (“blood and soil”)-centric. Many in the SRE camp identify (or did) with Tim Keller’s “for the city” ethos; everyone in the CN camp is “for the nation” (meaning the political nation or ethnic group), though some are more localist and some seem even to desire a “national divorce” which would Balkanize and break up the USA.

We’ve made the point before, but ultimately, both movements are a type of unhelpful ecumenism that will do no good for the doctrinal fidelity or ecclesial distinctiveness of Presbyterian and Reformed churches in the 21st century. A similar brand of ecumenism radicalized Machen in 1920 and set him on his collision course with denominational destiny.³

1. All this stuff is fast-moving and subject to change. They might have moved on to some new preferred term.

2. This capital-R “Reformed” identification for a coalition that includes charismatics, Anglicans, baptists, non-denoms, Methodists (or so we expect), and presbyterians sticks in the craw of many who are part of confessional Presbyterian and Reformed denominations. Many are also troubled by TGC’s continuing assertion that they are a “fellowship of evangelical churches,” rather than merely a fellowship of churchmen—individuals.

3. “Machen also came to see that the interdenominational and ecumenical endeavors of America’s leading denominations were vehicles for the Social Gospel. Ever since the reunion of the Old and New School (northern) Presbyterian Churches in 1869, Presbyterians had led the way in channeling the resources of the church on behalf of the nation. The Social Gospel was in fact an early example of Christian nationalism in the sense that Protestants cooperated to promote policies and laws that preserved the Christian character of American society. Evidence of the social aims of ecumenism came explicitly at the first meeting of the Federal Council where the body produced a ‘Social Creed for the Churches,’ a list of roughly fifteen points to end the unrest between organized labor and industrial capitalism.” https://journal.rts.edu/article/for-machen-fosdick-was-a-small-part-of-the-problem/