05/11/2007

The Kinists are Back

As most of you know, I presented a paper critiquing the Kinism movement at the regional American Academy of Religion meeting back in March. One of the funny things about the presentation is that because of a few events, the Kinist presence on the web evaporated for a season. Kinism.net, for instance, was taken offline for reconfiguration and Harry Seabrook, proprietor of littlegeneva.com, put down the pen for a while after an investigative citizen reporter called his workplace (a diversity conscious employer). And so I was presenting a critique of a movement that perhaps no longer had any life left. (I just noticed even that Wikipedia removed its entry for Kinism - a mistake, I believe.)

And yet, now I see they are back. The same kind of "look" that littlegeneva.com had is now showing up at spiritwaterblood.com, and Kinism.net is back as a kind of portal for all things kinist. I've also noticed aspects of the Kinist worldview popping up all over, and the immigration debates are not helping matters any. Even one of Pat Buchanan's recent articles seems to be reading from the Kinist playbook. In his article "The Dark Side of Diversity" Buchanan talks about nations and how they are not simply ideas:


"To intellectuals, what makes America a nation is ideas – ideas in the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, Gettysburg Address and Dr. King’s 'I Have a Dream' speech.

But documents no matter how eloquent and words no matter how lovely do not a nation make. Before 1970, we were a people, a community, a country. Students would have said aloud of Cho: 'Who is this guy? What’s the matter with him?'

Teachers would have taken action to get him help – or get him out.

Since the 1960s, we have become alienated from one another even as millions of strangers arrive every year. And as Americans no longer share the old ties of history, heritage, faith, language, tradition, culture, music, myth or morality, how can immigrants share those ties?"

He then specifically mentions vdare.com in his article - a site that glorifies in any story about a non-caucasian who commits a crime. Even more to that side of the spectrum is Jared Taylor's amren.com, a site that includes snippy editorial addenda to each article it cites. Yes, the "racially aware" sites generally simply link to news articles in the mainstream press, but they basically cull all the ones that put non-caucasians in a bad light. In short, Kinism is back, and racial separatism is becoming respectable again in secular circles too.

Now, I'm enough of a classic conservative to recognize that there is a certain truth to the idea that nations are more than ideas. And certainly we all recognize that ethnic and cultural diversity is as difficult and challenging as it is enriching. It is not easy to stray from our comfortable paths. And so suppose tomorrow that I became an atheist, and I were left with social Darwinism and biological Darwinism, and some cold version of Aristotelian logic paired with a kind of pragmatism. I think I would probably agree with the Kinists - family comes first; the Hobbesian state of nature and all that. But I'm a Christian. And that has huge implications for this debate.

Orthodox Christianity holds that human nature mirrors the image of God - that an unavoidably social God (the one God of Christianity *is* the three persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) created unavoidably social beings in God's own likeness. We humans are enigmatic creatures - bundles of complexity. Just as God is hard to comprehend, we usually fail even to understand ourselves. And just as it is part of our glory that we were created with free will, we were also able to bring rebellion out of ourselves in some mysterious perversion of something God pronounced "good."

And yet when God set out to accomplish the repair of his image bearers, he took to himself a true and complete human nature. Jesus had a certain color of hair. He had a certain "race" so to speak. And yet Jesus formed the cornerstone of a church made of living stones (humans) that are united first to him by the power of the Spirit, and secondly to each other in him. Now, imagine the Kinist apostle who seeks to lead others to separate themselves into various neighborhoods by ethnicity. That is a difficult thing to imagine (in fact, it essentially did happen with Peter and in Galatia, but we all know that was opposed by other apostles). Imagine not wanting to live in Jesus's neighborhood because of his race!

And this is where I have hope for the Kinists. Unlike the Christian Identity movement whose soteriology is basically a story about how white people are saved, the Kinists believe in a fairly orthodox soteriology, narrowly conceived. If all salvation is about is "going to heaven when we die" then the Kinists have an orthodox soteriology - Jesus saves caucasians just as he saves those of other races. But salvation is about more than that - it looks forward to a new heavens and a new earth - a world, in the flesh, where the redeemed get their bodies back and pursue human industry as it was always intended to be. As the first possessor of a resurrection body, Jesus was recognizable to the disciples. He didn't look the same, of course, but neither did he suddenly take on the appearance of the Dread Pirate Roberts - a blonde, swashbuckling version of himself. He still was the same race, could blend into the same kinds of crowds, etc. Right now as I type this post, Jesus's human nature sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven and Jesus has a particular race. How comfortable can a Christian be with the idea that his beliefs about race would in effect rule out his being in proximity to at least one non-caucasian that he respects tremendously? Especially given the very real fact that every week, by the Spirit, caucasians are eating with and feeding upon a non-Caucasian savior - the life giving flesh of Jesus.

Let me repeat; salvation isn't simply about going to heaven when we die. One's state of salvation or damnation is a present reality - the bible speaks of people being "condemned already" - that is, life is not a neutral precursor to heaven or hell - life is hellish or heavenly here and now. The "afterlife" is simply part two of a novel whose plotline is established at some point in the first chapter. And the new heavens and the new earth will be the kind of place where, symbolically, the Bible can speak of the lion and the lamb resting near each other. If Kinism is true *and* prescriptive, then either all resurrection bodies must be of the same race or heaven must be segregated. Surely we can reject the idea that heaven will be segregated. And surely we can reject the idea that all resurrection bodies will be of the same race. And if we can't, then we have to at least recognize that they will all be one race that may or may not be selfsame with the race each of us currently is. Thus, we could potentially be adopting a worldview that risks our not wanting to live in our own neighborhood someday.

And so the only real question is whether Kinism is prescriptive, descriptive, or totally untrue. And here my answer may surprise you. I think Kinism is basically descriptive of the situation in which humans find themselves. Diversity makes us nervous, and diversity is hard. Further, it is natural to prefer our own families over other families, however dubious it may be to make an analogy between "the Barlow family" to the "family of white folks" as though I could feel a distinct loyalty to the latter. When Jared Taylor argues his case that diversity is hard and weakening to society, nearly all comers fail to mount a logical response to him. And though he calls himself a "racial realist" one of his debate partners - a professor in Halifax - made a great observation - that Taylor is not so much a "racial realist" as a "racial fatalist." And here is why Kinism can be properly descriptive and yet pernicious at the same time. It essentially teaches that humans should give up on salvation, separate from each other, and simply wait for God to make the races interact with trust and comfort. This "let go and let God" approach is unbiblical. The Bible basically affirms that while God is the power of change in the world, he generally transforms things through his instruments - humans. We can no more sit on our duffs and wait for diversity to be easy than we can sit on our duffs and wait for God to teach our children about himself or for our lawnmowers to mow our yards.

Another aspect of the Kinist case is an is / ought move from the God ordained existence of races to the goodness of perpetuating or preserving distinct races. This relates less to diversity than it does to the Kinist opposition to miscegenation. I'll leave aside my own general mistrust of natural law arguments. But notice again that from the perspective of union with Christ, opposing miscegenation treats race as more significant than the eucharist. We Christians of all races commune with each other, by the power of the Spirit of the glorified flesh of the incarnate Word, and yet we shouldn't marry each other? Try a reductio ad absurdum approach in the form of a lesser to greater argument on for size - if it is terrible for people of different races to marry each other, how much worse would it be to do something so important together as communing together as the bride of Christ? This argument hopefully leads the Christian reader to understand the monstrosity that opposition to miscegenation of the races is.

In summary, I have hope for the Kinists - that a consistent thinking through of Christianity will result in their rejection of racial fatalism. Unlike with the Christian Identity movement, which is another religion effectively, Kinism is more like a soteriologically heterodox Christian sect. There is common ground here for non-Kinist Christians to persuade the Kinists that they are on the wrong track. That their case for racial separatism gains cogency by "defining salvation down" - a price far too high to pay.

A final note to my non-Christian readers - how would you go about answering the arguments of the Kinists? I have a difficult time understanding how one might mount a defense of diversity on any other foundation than the incarnation of Jesus. In my own life, my heart buzzes humanistically; I am constantly in awe of human creativity and attainment, and yet the only thing that helps me make sense of it is my Christian theism. I would have an easier time imagining being a materialist, Darwinistic, atheist if there were no ballet, no stamp collecting, no Bach, and no J.K. Rowling.