Josh Hawley Invokes Christianity at National Conservatism Conference

Rubbish. I invented obscene feats out of bravado, lest I be thought innocent or cowardly. I walked the streets of Babylon with low companions, sweating from the fires of lust. When I was in Carthage I carried about with me a cauldron of unrealised debauchery. God in his majesty was tempting me. But Book Two of my Confessions is all shocking exaggeration. I lived within my rough time....I was weak at the time but I find your condescension offensive. You talk of the Fathers. How about that ante-Nicene thooleramawn, Origen of Alexandria? What did he do when he found that lusting after women distracted him from his sacred scrivenery? I’ll tell you. He stood up, hurried out to the kitchen, grabbed a carving knife and—pwitch!—in one swipe deprived himself of his personality! Ah?...How could Origen be the Father of Anything and he with no knackers on him? Answer me that one.

—Attributed to the shade of St. Augustine (Flann O’Brien, The Dalkey Archive)

It seems that there was a real hootenanny in D.C. over the weekend hosted by something called the National Conservatism Conference, which seems to be an attempt to fill the void on the Right where CPAC leaves off and where actual goose-stepping begins. On Monday night, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Full Retreat) of Missouri gave a real rouser of a dinner speech in which he enlisted St. Augustine as a consultant for Project 2025.

For even as Rome lay shattered and smoldering, a thousand miles away across the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Christian bishop of Hippo—a man named Augustine—took up his pen to describe a new age. His vision would inspire the West for millennia to come and help define the destiny of this country. He called his work “The City of God.”

What “country”? Numidia? Algeria? Please show your work.

Augustine’s first ambition was to defend Christians from blame for Rome’s fall. Some said the Christian religion, with its new virtues, like humility and service; with its glorification of common things, like marriage and labor; with its praise for “the poor in spirit,” the common people, had made the empire soft and left it vulnerable to its enemies. Augustine knew just the opposite was true. The Christian religion was the only vital force left in Rome at the time of its collapse. And now Augustine imagined that religion rising from the ruins of the ancient world to forge a new one, to create a new and better civilization.

How’d that work out down through the millennia? Let’s ask young Mr. Madison over in the corner. Stand up, James. Oh, you are? Sorry about that.

“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”

Hawley pressed on.

And while Augustine said all nations are constituted by what they love, his philosophizing actually described an entirely new idea of the nation unknown to the ancient world: a new kind of nationalism, if you like—a Christian nationalism organized around Christian ideals. A nationalism driven not by conquest but by common purpose; united not by fear but by common love; a nation made not for the rich or for the strong, but for the “poor in spirit,” the common man.

“A nationalism driven not by conquest...” He has to be kidding about this, right? Let’s ask the Albigensians. What do you mean they’re all dead?

And his dream became our reality. A thousand years after Augustine wrote, some 20,000 practicing Augustinians ventured to these shores to found a society here on his principles. History knows them as the Puritans. Inspired by the City of God, they founded the City on a Hill. We are a nation forged from Augustine’s vision. A nation defined by the dignity of the common man, as given to us in the Christian religion; a nation held together by the homely affections articulated in the Christian faith—love for God, love for family, love for neighbor, home, and country.

History also knows that Augustine would have called the Puritans heretics and had nothing to do with them. You know what else history knows? History knows that those Puritans were vicious religious bigots who drove Roger Williams out, hanged impolite women for being witches, hanged Mary Dyer for being a Quaker, ran all the Catholics and Jews out of the colony, and slaughtered the Native populations because the Puritans thought them possessed by demons. This wasn’t “Christian nationalism.” It was religious insanity. And speaking of which:

And some will say now that I am calling America a Christian nation. And so I am. And some will say I am advocating Christian nationalism. And so I do. Is there any other kind worth having?...The truth is, Christian nationalism is not a threat to American democracy. Christian nationalism founded American democracy.

[Narrator: Slavery, too?]