Last week, Christian nationalist Sen. Josh Hawley spoke at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky, where he declared that the United States must operate under a "Christian economy" in order to restore "biblical masculinity" in the country.
Warning that young men are being led astray by misogynistic "manosphere" influencers like Andrew Tate, Hawley said that the nation must focus on raising up men who are equipped to lead their families in accordance with the Bible. The key to accomplishing this, Hawley asserted, is creating a Christian economy "where a man can support himself and his wife and family by the work of his hands."
"The Lord calls you men to something more, and your lives are central to the revival of this nation," Hawley proclaimed. "As a culture, we have to reclaim that truth, and we have to raise up healthy examples of biblical masculinity to say that, 'No, we need strong men.' We need them. We need men and families who are leading them, who are choosing to get married, who are providing for their families."
"You know what else we need?" he continued. "We need an economy where men can get a job and afford to have a family. And increasingly, they cannot in this country and that's a problem. It's more than a problem. It's a crisis. it is almost impossible now in this country, 21st century America, to support a wife and children on a blue-collar wage."
"We need an economy where a man can support himself and his wife and family by the work of his hands," Hawley said. "Not dependent on government, not dependent on somebody else; by the work of his own hands. Today, more and more families, if people do get married, if the husband and wife do get married and have children, both spouses have to work jobs, increasingly long hours, just to pay for the basic necessities of life, just to have the family."
"The corporations love it," Hawley claimed. "I can't tell you how many corporate lobbyists I've had in my office who said, 'Sen. Hawley, we need to do more to get more people in the workforce. And particularly, we need to get all the men and all the women we can in the workforce. We need everybody working all the time.'"
"If you've got to have two incomes of full-time work in this country to raise a family, who's going to raise the children?" Hawley asked rhetorically. "I'll tell you who's going to raise the children: it's going to be government daycare, which is what the government wants and the corporations want. They would love for that to happen. They'd love for the government to raise our kids. We'll go work endlessly—husband and wife—endlessly, and the kids will be raised either by YouTube, Netflix, or the government. What a terrible series of choices."
"I just submit to you that we don't need a more conservative economy, we don't need a more liberal economy, we need a Christian economy," Hawley continued. "We need a Christian economy that rewards the family, that protects the family, that rewards marriage. And I think, as Christians, we ought to be unabashed by it."
"If we say we're for the family, we've got to be for a society that supports the family," Hawley said. "My worry right now is we're trending in this country increasingly towards one of two extremes: Either communism, and we see that in places like New York—universal basic income, just give us the money, we don't want to work, just give us the money—or a kind of neo-feudalism [where the wealthy enrich themselves while] everybody else will have to slave away for endless hours, husbands and wives together, working for companies ... and barely make enough to see their children once a week."
"I just submit to you, that's not the United States of America, and more importantly, that is not the kingdom," he declared. "No, we need a kingdom economy. Last I looked, the Lord Jesus was king over our economic life, over our labor, over our families, as much as he is over the church. Amen? We need to reassert the Lordship of Christ. And for those who say to us, 'Leave this to us. Christians, leave the economics to us. Christians, leave the social policy to us. Christians, leave the family to us,' we will say, 'Not on your life, because we serve a Lord who's lord over all of those things. And we will raise up an altar to claim this ground for him, for this country, over the innocent unborn, over our families, over our men and over their labor.'"
