The Antioch Declaration

“The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch” (Acts 11:26)

Just as the apostle Paul at Antioch “opposed him [Peter] to his face because he stood condemned” (Gal. 2:11, CSB) for compromising the gospel of Jesus Christ by subjecting it to racial barriers, so this brief statement opposes the ideas of some contemporary leaders and influencers seeking to introduce anti-gospel racial categories into the church. This Antioch Declaration was not conceived or developed in haste but after much prayer, thought, counsel, and soul-searching. Our task is an unpleasant one, but like the apostle Paul’s, it is necessary, even when other Christians are involved. When the gospel once for all delivered to the saints is itself at stake, we dare not remain silent.

Thus, as confessionally Reformed, Lutheran and Evangelical believers from a broad range of churches, we have come together to identify and resist a rising tide of reactionary thinking emerging on the fringes of our own circles. Those especially at risk of being led astray by wolves clothed as shepherds are among the younger generations of Christian men whom we love and care about deeply. As believers, we must always build and act upon the foundation of Scripture. This must include all our engagement in socio-cultural and political life. To react to cultural developments in a manner that denies the functional and final authority of the Word of God over us is to move against the rule of Christ and His Kingdom. Since God does not show favoritism (Rom. 2:11), the Word of God must be faithfully applied everywhere and to all.

This clearly implies that while we must never criticize the political right simply because the progressive left demand it, to declare that we will never have “enemies on the right,” simply indicates to Satan and his hordes what form his next attack on the people of God should take, and from which direction it should come.

In order to avoid a diabolic ditch on both sides of the socio-political road, and to advance God’s Kingdom purposes, we therefore offer the following declarations and invite signatories.

“By the evidence of their own scriptures they bear witness for us that we have not fabricated the prophecies about Christ . . . It follows that when the Jews do not believe in our scriptures, their scriptures are fulfilled in them, while they read them with blind eyes . . . It is in order to give this testimony which, in spite of themselves, they supply for our benefit by their possession and preservation of those books [of the Old Testament] that they are themselves dispersed among all nations, whether the Christian church spreads . . . Hence the prophecy in the Book of Psalms: Slay them not, lest they forget your law; scatter them by your might” (Augustine, City of God 18.46).

We deny that the Kingdom purposes of Christ and requirements of His Word can be equated with the seating positions of political actors during the French Revolution, or that the modern antithesis between right and left is equivalent to the antithesis that God established in the Garden of Eden between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, the kingdom of darkness and kingdom of light.

We affirm that the modern neo-pagan secular project is bankrupt and desperately trying to hold the social order together by means of a fraudulent narrative and anti-Christian worldview.  As a result, the lies of secular elites in all spheres have necessarily grown increasingly evident and outrageous.

We affirm that, as a consequence, some young men in the West have become jaded and cynical, with an element among them now rejecting or doubting the received account of virtually anything. The great danger is that now, instead of acting on the basis of revealed truth in Christ, they are in the unhappy position of reacting by choosing between opposing sets of lies.

We deny that disillusionment and resentment over the lies one has been told is adequate preparation for standing in the truth and resisting a new set of lies.

We affirm that disillusionment and resentment make a person vulnerable to deception and frequently prepare the ground for accepting new falsehoods, setting the stage for further disillusionment.

We deny that neo-pagan secularism with its utopian religious motive arose as a consensus after World War II. Rather, it manifests itself as the political outworking of the so-called Enlightenment during the French Revolution and gradually won the hearts and minds of Western nations, being well expressed in the political philosophies dominating Europe prior to the outbreak of the two great global conflagrations.

We affirm that the aftermath of World War II served as a cultural tipping point for the secular narrative and its myth of religious neutrality which has functioned as a centerpiece for these lies. It has promoted this deception with triumphal hubris throughout all Western institutions, insisting on both an idolatrous religious pluralism and a mandatory globalist cosmopolitanism.

We affirm that a contradictory and pervasive thread of self-doubt and self-loathing has also formed an essential part of this secular narrative following the horrors of World War II. Thus, when the reactionary right challenges the “post-war narrative” they are not necessarily breaking free of it—this is a reflex that the post-war narrative itself has nurtured. The narrative thrives on an unstable mix of white imperiousness and white guilt.

We deny that any particular view of the Allied leaders, their strategies, or tactics during World War II should be a test of Christian orthodoxy. We FURTHER deny that this civic adiaphora may be expanded to cover malice, vain glory, race-baiting, antisemitism, treachery, bitterness, or hatred. These issues are entirely distinct.

We deny that it is possible to harmonize the racial and antisemitic theories of Adolf Hitler and neo-pagan doctrines of the Nazi cult with the gospel of Christ and the teachings of scripture.

We affirm that if the superabundant, diverse forms and veritable glut of evidence – detailed in diaries, documented records, firsthand testimonies of eyewitnesses, extensive photography and videography all provided within living memory – for the deliberate mass destruction of millions of Jews by the Nazis does not amount to historical certitude for what specialists call the Holocaust, then the science of history itself is called into question.

We affirm that there is a vital biblical difference between the self-loathing of men in the grip of disillusionment over a failed idol, and the true repentance of the Christian man.

We deny that it is possible to recover an ethic that honors our fathers and their momentous sacrifices while actively and openly dishonoring them.

We affirm that as the secular liberal edifice crumbles, many will refuse to turn to Christ. As the “strong gods” inevitably return, godless influential figures will arise the same way Theudas did (Acts 5:34-39).[i] The temptation for some Christian leaders will be to ape such methods for the sake of clicks, followers and the ephemeral notion of ‘influence.’

We deny that it is possible to be a faithful Christian shepherd without identifying, naming and fighting the wolves which prey on the flock. As such, pastors have a duty to confront and rebuke wickedness in all its forms within their congregations.

We affirm that in deeply unsettled times there is a carnal desire in fallen man to seek out a scapegoat for sin and social corruption. This sadistic urge seeks to expiate guilt by laying the blame and punishment for all cultural ills on an identifiable group(s). The victimized group(s) is offered up to the masses as providing ostensible ‘explanatory power’ for cultural decay, which all conspiracy theories must provide if they are to gain any traction. The Jews have often been the easiest target for this kind of sinful and decrepit thinking.

We deny that scapegoating is a legitimate practice for Christians to participate in because God has already provided the final and perfect scapegoat in Christ Jesus who alone is the true sin-bearer.

We deny that our rejection of antisemitism requires us to ignore or minimize the destructive impact that various God-hating individual Jews have had in human history, just as our rejection of the hatred of Europeans and Anglo-Saxons does not require us to ignore the cultural devastation that many God-hating individual Gentiles have produced. Every ethnic people have members to be ashamed of, and every ethnic people have members to be grateful for.

We deny that Jews are in any way uniquely malevolent or sinful, that Judaism in its multifarious expressions is objectively more dangerous than other false religions, or that it represents an exceptional threat to Christianity and Christian peoples. By nature, the Jews are objects of wrath just like the rest of us, which is condemnation enough (Ps. 14:2-3), and are equally recipients of God’s grace (Rom.11:11-32).

We deny that world affairs are governed by conspiring Jews or that there is a global Jewish conspiracy to corrupt and destroy Western society.

We affirm that the Jews are as all other men—alienated from God and in need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. As a people they have nevertheless remained an object of God’s providential care. With the Puritans of old, We affirm that in God’s good time, multitudes of Jews will come to faith in Christ and be added to the true commonwealth of Israel, inheriting the same blessings as Gentile believers. Hence, the cancerous and counterproductive sin of antisemitism has no place among God’s people.

We deny that there is more than one message or way of salvation. Salvation is through Christ alone, by faith alone, and by grace alone for both Jew and Gentile, out of whom God has made one new people, removing the dividing wall of hostility (Eph 2.11-21).

We affirm that God has ordained the existence of peoples and nations (Acts 17:26-28) and as such our cultural heritage is something to be grateful for so that, in view of God’s good gifts to our people, national pride, along with a healthy patriotism, are appropriate for Christians. At the same time, it is important to reject every form of identity politics, whether of the left or right—or whether the form it takes is malicious or vainglorious.

We deny that the church of Jesus Christ in its particular locale has any compulsory quotas or assigned ratios for ethnic mix. The make-up of any local church community will be dependent on many socio-cultural, lingual and regional factors, and there is no requirement that any given congregation “look like the new Jerusalem.” But We FURTHER deny that a Christian congregation has the right to arbitrarily exclude any person based on prejudice, malice or bigotry toward their ethnic group.

We affirm that the ultimate bond or good for temporal human life is not grounded in absolute loyalty to blood and soil, family or nation, but in the totalizing bond of the Kingdom of God through the Covenant of Grace (Matt. 3:9; 6:10; 8:11;12:46-50; Lk.14:26; Eph. 2:11-21; Rev.7:9-10).

We affirm that in all things, including the treatment of our fellow human beings, the model man and example is not the life and teaching of Aristotle, nor any other merely historical personage, but the Lord Jesus Christ himself, Son of Man and eternal Son of God.

[i] Act 5:36: Theudas was a Jewish magician, revolutionary and false Messiah, who gathered followers to the river Jordan, promising to part it. The Roman governor Fadus sent troops who killed and captured members of the crowd; Theudas was himself captured and eventually beheaded.