Answering 
 Kinism 

There is not any dominant single personality associated with kinism. At the time Steve Wilkins and Douglas Wilson were publishing their pamphlet 'Southern Slavery as It Was,' others were drawing from the same sources and coming to the same conclusions. Both tendencies grew in the soil of The League of the South, a Neoconfederate organization that aspires to break up the Union. Their common starting points include a commitment to the theocratic thought of Rousas Rushdoony.

Douglas Wilson's relations with this group have gone off on a strange tangent, though. He is convinced many of them, perhaps all of them, are federal agents:

"A photo was released online by a gent named Blake Callens that showed various folks associated with Church of the Redeemer in Pella sitting and talking together. These men, along with goodness knows how many feds, have been guilty of publishing various offensive things online." (Douglas Wilson, Blog and Mablog, 'As the Fighting Moderates Mount the Lone Bulwark,' Monday, February 5, 2024).

I would be surprised to discover that this CREC church in Pella, Iowa is a fed front, although admittedly, knowing Doug Wilson's penchant for calling for political violence, it would be equally surprising if the feds were unaware of this movement, in all of its various permutations.

Rousas Rushdoony

Rousas Rushdoony was an author and Bible teacher of the twentieth century who advocated the restoration of the law of Moses, which he perceived as a universal law code, binding upon all peoples in all places at all times. It is common for Christians to use the New Testament as an interpretive lens to understand the Old, believing that the New Testament is the Old unveiled, while the Old is the new hidden, cloaked in parable and similitude and likeness. Rushdoony rather makes the law of Moses determinative for the entire Bible. Not even a change of emphasis is left room for the Messiah to make:

Rushdoony's approach to Bible interpretation might best be summarized as 'steam-rollering' or 'bulldozing.' They are looking for world domination. But the Bible as it stands is not really a manual explaining how to achieve world domination. A good test case and illustration of Rushdoony's system is afforded by the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus told us, among other things, to turn the other cheek when we are slapped.

The original form of government of the twelve Israelite tribes was an amphictyony, a federation. When the people clamored for a king, Samuel solemnly warned them of what they were in for:

This is probably the least favorite Bible verse for this faction, because it's not how they roll. So what are they going to do with it? Where there's a will, there's a way:

How easy was that? It is a law for them, but not for you. Brother Rushdoony has graciously lifted from you the yoke Jesus placed upon your neck; you do not have to turn the other cheek any more. The holy land in that day was under Roman military occupation. And only under comparable circumstances would anyone suggest such a thing as turning the other cheek. Otherwise, you may fire when ready, Gridley. Lacking "civil impotence," there is no such requirement. See how easy it is? Under no circumstances should these folks be referred to as 'fundamentalists;' they have about as much respect for the text of scripture as did the late Rachel Held Evans.

For their part, the kinists tend to look at God's scattering of the nations at the time of the tower of Babel, not as a punishment for impudence and rebellion, but rather as part of His good plan for cultural differentiation of the nations, which He had intended all along. Part of the process that results in cultures differing from each other is that law codes differ. While one hopes murder, theft, rape, etc., are illegal at all times and places, some matters will likely be treated differently. Law not only restrains the hand of those who would ignore it, by arresting and incarcerating them, but long before it comes to that, it has performed a didactic function in teaching the people what is right and what is wrong. But according to Rushdoony and his followers, God intends for all mankind to live under one and the same law code. This is just about the inverse of what one would expect from people who claim to believe that cultural differentiation is a positive good. What comes next, one-world government? There is so little synergy between these two viewpoints that one would not expect to see them mashed together, barring the happenstance that there is a pre-existing cult which does mash both of them together, whose leader has the rare ability to simultaneously believe contradictory things.

How is the law of Moses to be handled by Christian interpreters?

However, on the other hand, their interpretations of the law tend to be foolish improvisations which shed no light on the topic at all. One can share Rousas Rushdoony's admiration for the law of Moses without drawing erroneous conclusions on either side. What does the Bible teach on the topic of race and ethnicity? Should people prefer the company of their own kind? Are inter-group boundaries genetically fixed or permeable through conversion? Is inter-marriage between different groups discouraged, or does Jesus' own genealogy display such marriages?:

Racism

Are the kinists racist? The term 'racism' only came into common use in the twentieth century, when Ruth Benedict and her associates proposed the rival theory that differences between human groups are culturally conditioned rather than reflecting innate biology. The people who were labelled 'racist' by this theory had not called themselves 'racists,' they had called themselves 'anthropologists' and the like. The 'scientific' racism of the nineteenth century is often labelled as pseudoscience, and indeed so it is, but not because its practitioners lacked credentials. Scientific racism was not a phenomenon like COVID denialism, when charlatans like John MacArthur assured everyone they had one chance in 19.1 million of dying of COVID. In this case, the people promoting the 'misinformation' were the people with the credentials, not the people who lacked them. It was the people who were in charge of the anthropology department who were the racists, not the people on the outside. But after Hitler took that approach as far as it could go, a reaction set in and they reversed field. Now the people in the anthropology department will tell you they don't know what 'race' is.

I suspect most of the people who used the term 'racist' did not use it with any thought whether differences between human groups are culturally determined or genetically-based, but rather just as synecdoche for 'race hatred,' or 'racial animosity.' Race hatred is undeniably a real phenomenon, which when it burns  at its hottest fever pitch leads to massacres and pogroms. 'Unreasoning hate' or 'causeless hate' is a real thing which needs a name. People who are looking right at it yet claim not to see it only convince bystanders that they share the infection. Unfortunately the phenomenon itself does not seem to be in retreat but if anything to be spreading. It seems we've almost reached a tipping point now, what with the mass shootings that take place with depressing frequency.

'Racism' has been defined and redefined to mean so many different things that at this point it might well seem to have passed its expiration date. Some of the newer meanings are actually indeterminate, that is to say, you can't reliably class people as 'racist' or 'non-racist' on the basis of available information. 'Anti-racists' like Ibram X. Kendi and Jemar Tisby take an outcome-based approach, defining 'racism' as anything that results in negative outcomes for Black people. By this logic, Ronald Reagan was a racist, because, they believe, his policies negatively impacted Black residents. The thing is, if you ask, say, Larry Elder and Thomas Sowell, what policies are deleterious to the welfare of Black inhabitants, the schedule they produce would be the inverse of Kendi and Tisby's schedule. They might say, 'Tax and spend' municipal financing is racist, because it produced the Detroit bankruptcy, which was detrimental to Black residents. Now there is grass growing in the streets of Detroit. This could have been avoided.' But someone else might say, 'No, corporate greed led to the Detroit bankruptcy.' So before you can predict whether a given speaker will class some measure or another as 'racist,' you have know his politics. Unfortunately there is available no ideologically neutral political or economic science which can predict and classify policy outcomes as beneficial or detrimental to the satisfaction of all speakers.

While it might seem tempting to discard a phrase whose meaning has become so unclear, a term like 'racism' cannot be cast aside with no available replacement. Let's say people decided to get rid of the word 'volcano,' on grounds the phenomena it identifies take up too broad a range: are we talking about the steam venting of White Island? Mt. St. Helens blowing its top?  Kilauea encasing surrounding neighborhoods in lava? These are different, not the same. We need clarity; let's stop talking about 'volcanoes.' But people cannot stop talking about volcanoes. In 1902, Mt. Pelee in Martinique erupted, killing 30,000 in one morning. A cloud of super-heated toxic gases rushed toward the doomed town of St. Pierre, with only a few able to escape and live to tell the tale, one being a criminal named Auguste Ciparis, who survived because he was incarcerated in an underground dungeon. His jailers stopped feeding him because they were dead, but he survived till a rescue party found him. How can you expect people not to talk about volcanoes? At least nominate a successor word, or words.

Years ago, visiting a nursing home while the Indonesian tsunami was in the news, a lady drew me aside and asked, 'what is a tsunami?' She did not know the term and did not understand what they were talking about on TV. 'A tidal wave,' I replied, though I knew it had nothing to do with the tides. 'Oh,' she said, now understanding, 'that's awful!' So if you are not going to talk about racism any more, realizing that the phenomenon cannot remain undescribed, then at least come up with a replacement term. May I suggest 'kinism,' which certainly is not very different and in some cases seems to be no more than a retread of the older racism? I've even heard from them that old wheeze, that Blacks were rightfully enslaved in America, because of the 'Curse of Ham.' What is the 'Curse of Ham'? No such circumstance is known to the Bible! They mean Noah's curse against Canaan, but prefer to back-date it to Ham, Canaan's father, realizing that the people brought to America as slaves were not, in fact, descended from the Canaanites.

But what would have been more futile than for Noah to curse Ham? Eight people were saved aboard the ark, and those eight people were specifically blessed by God (Genesis 9:1). Is there any point cursing those whom God has blessed? "Behold, I have received a command to bless; He has blessed, and I cannot reverse it." (Numbers 23:20). Why they want to continue recycling arguments which were worthless when first propounded I don't know. The abolitionists ridiculed these pro-slavery Bible arguments upon first publication, with very good reason, and it's depressing to think there can be people so far out of the loop they haven't yet heard about it. Or if Kinism is a new thing, not an old thing recycled, why are their arguments so thread-bare and shop-worn?

Democracy

While it is difficult to generalize about the political leanings of a group so amorphous as the kinists, their principal influencers are resoundingly of one mind when it comes to the American political system. They were against it. Like Douglas Wilson, Rousas Rushdoony was anti-democratic and anti-Constitution. He understood democracy to be a rebellion staged by the people against the rule of God:

"As a result, the authority of God has been progressively displaced in America by the authority of the new god, the people. When God is invoked, He is seen as someone who bows to the people, as a God who longs for democracy." (Rushdoony, R. J., The Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. 1 (The Institutes of Biblical Law Series) (p. 308). Chalcedon Foundation. Kindle Edition.)

This insistence that 'demos,' which is Greek for 'the people,' is a new god or an idolatrous god is seen also in Doug Wilson. The French Revolution is imagined to have invented democracy, which according to these authorities involves the worship of man in place of God: "This is basic to Rousseau and to existentialism, and to the belief in democracy, the divinity of the common man." (Rushdoony, R. J.. The Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. 1 (The Institutes of Biblical Law Series) (p. 859). Chalcedon Foundation. Kindle Edition.) They realize the United States is a democracy, not over the objections of the churches, but with their general assent. Many churches moreover practice the congregational form of church governance, which is democracy in practice. This Rushdoony realizes but despises: "The church today has fallen prey to the heresy of democracy." (Rushdoony, R. J., The Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. 1 (The Institutes of Biblical Law Series) (p. 1053).) To whom do these Solons owe their insight that Christianity is incompatible with democracy? Rushdoony cites a French Catholic philosopher, “Jean Lacroix, who 'sees in democracy first the revolt against God, resulting in the revolt against all fatherhood.' Lacroix wrote, 'One could say that to a large extent the present democratic movement is the murder of the father' (454; cf. 517).” (Rushdoony, R. J., The Institute of Biblical Law, Vol 2: Law and Society (The Institutes of Biblical Law). The Biblical theory of the divine right of kings, however, goes back to the time when there were kings willing to pay good money to hear people enlarge upon this theme. Sir Robert Filmer was up to the task, or thought that he was:

Robert Lewis Dabney was also a very reluctant adherent of democracy, at least when it comes to Black citizens, who he prefers would not vote nor attend public school. When it comes to propertied white males, he's good with the system as it existed. Incidentally, the democracy of the antebellum South, while imperfect, was light years ahead of the one-man rule of the Roman empire. While vestiges of democratic self-rule clung on at the local level, after the fall of the republic, at the top the Roman empire was an autocracy. Had the Christians of the South, where Christianity at least in its nominal forms had captured the majority of the inhabitants, desired to end slavery, the wish would have been the accomplishment; there was nothing standing between them and achieving this result other than formulating it. Just as the states of the North had criminalized and eliminated slavery, they could easily have done so had they wished. They did not wish. This was not a system imposed upon them from outside and maintained by overwhelming force. They had slavery because they wanted slavery. There is no resemblance at all between their situation and that of the early church, which had no ability to legislate for the empire.

Is this opposition to democracy an old thing or a new thing? Were the Jews of the early church days pro-democracy or anti-democracy? Did they perceive this form of government as idolatrous by definition? Philo Judaeus, a first century Jew, spoke highly of democracy on more than one occasion:

On other points, Rousas Rushdoony was not a particularly progressive type of guy, being opposed not only to democracy and freedom of religion, but also to interracial marriage and forced integration:

"The burden of the law is thus against interreligious, interracial, and intercultural marriages, in that they normally go against the very community which marriage is designed to establish.

"Unequal yoking means more than marriage. In society at large it means the enforced integration of various elements which are not congenial. Unequal yoking is in no realm productive of harmony; rather, it aggravates the differences and delays the growth of the different elements toward a Christian harmony and association." (Rushdoony, R. J., The Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. 1 (The Institutes of Biblical Law Series) (p. 366). Chalcedon Foundation. Kindle Edition.)

The people who like him undoubtedly perceive his views on this topic as more of a plus than a minus, though. Opposition to inter-marriage between ethnic groups is one common thread that binds the people calling themselves 'kinists.'

The assumption Rushdoony and his followers make today that the Bible is anti-democratic was not known to the Jewish authors of the period, like Philo Judaeus. Democracy was not invented by the Enlightenment; that is one of the most fatuous things you'll ever hear anyone say about politics. What does the Bible say about this once, and now again widely popular form of government?

Robert Lewis Dabney

The other major influence in the thinking of the kinists, reportedly, is Robert Lewis Dabney. This racist author wrote in defense of the Confederate cause in the Civil War. Even after the war and its aftermath made slavery a moot point, he continued to agitate for the deprivation of Black civil liberties. He believed there was a fixed, biological distinction between the races, and he had at least as much of a horror for race-mixing and "amalgamation" as do today's kinists:

Mashing up Rousas Rushdoony with Robert Lewis Dabney reminds me of the old poem about the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat. What happened to them? They ate each other up! Yes, sir, so not a scrap was left. I suspect that violates the laws of physics, but so it happened. These two do not go well together. Combining them leaves you with hot ice, or cold fire. If Robert Lewis Dabney had felt he had reason to care what the law of Moses says, he could not have disrespected the abolitionists the way he did. After all, an Israelite is not allowed to hold an Israelite slave in servitude for more than six years. Don't think the abolitionists were not quick to point this out. What is the reason for it, if, as Dabney confidently declared, slavery was not wrong 'in itself'? Why is something innocent prohibited? Aha, but there is an exemption for foreigners. So is there for usury and other economic crimes; it would appear that, in cases where Moses lacks jurisdiction over one party to the transaction, his law code defaults to international law.

If Dabney had explained to Rousas Rushdoony that the Mosaic law was defunct, obsolete, as he believed, Rushdoony would have informed him that the Bible intends to communicate that we are all to live under it. That's not right either, but these two teachings cannot be added together. These two worthies cancel each other out; the net summation of their teaching is a big, round zero. They are like the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat:

Why do Kinists not perceive that their two main authorities clash? Long habituation, I suspect. These 'kinists' are the children of those seeking to correct them. 'Kinist' cells keep arising in CREC churches, not in spite of what these  youngsters have been taught, but because of it. Since they were taught from a young age to revere Dabney and they were taught from a young age to revere Rushdoony, it does not enter their minds that these two do not go well together. 'Kinists' reading this might reflect, when they try to explain to those unfamiliar with their movement that American democracy is wicked and idolatrous, they get push-back. While most American Christians do not join the Mormons in counting the U.S. Constitution as an inspired document, they also do not consider it to be ungodly, or displaying any Jacobin tendency. The idea that it was the despotisms of Europe who got the Bible right and the founding fathers of our own country who got it wrong is frankly a new thought to them.

So when the 'Christian nationalists' try to explain to them that two streams which they expect to harmonize when they flow together, the Bible and the Constitution, actually contradict each other, they are surprised. That's not what they were taught in Civics class. And the 'kinists' are wrong, besides; but the same principle is operative in both cases. The 'kinists' are so long accustomed to think their two sources pull together, not apart, that this process of habituation makes it hard for them to see any conflict where others can clearly see a conflict. Of all the Christian authors in the world, why just these two, Dabney and Rushdoony? Their elders made that selection, not themselves, and they are stuck with it. That choice was actually made many years, and neither author is rising in popularity.

Realizing that Robert Lewis Dabney was a vicious racist, who even after slavery had been done away with by the Civil War and Reconstruction, did not want to see Black clergy in the Presbyterian Church, and did not want to see Black children educated at public expense, it's no misfortune to see him fall by the wayside. But neither is Rushdoony an attractive feature of this ideological mash-up. His family fled to this country from their native Armenia, fleeing Ottoman oppression, but far from being grateful to our institutions for sheltering them, he saw nothing good in this country at all. He despised our democracy, and even our very freedom of religion, which protected him, was worthless in his sight. Too arrogant ever to find out why we had adopted these usages in the first place, he spent his life hissing out his hatred of America and all that it stands for.

What the 'kinists' take from Rushdoony is a predilection for theocracy, what they take from Robert Lewis Dabney is, apparently, his racism and his abhorrence for "amalgamation":

The late Elijah Muhammad, prophet-in-residence of the Nation of Islam, instructed his people to read the Koran. It's a holy book, he told them. And so they did. When they read the Koran, they realized it says nothing whatsoever about Elijah Muhammad's elaborate racial mythology, but rather says, like the Bible, that all mankind are descended from Adam. And so, just as soon as he died, his son and heir made a bee-line for orthodox Islam and dropped his father's teachings. You might say Elijah Muhammad had sowed the seeds of his own undoing. Douglas Wilson for years has been telling the youngsters in his cult to read Robert Lewis Dabney. They will learn about Christian civilization from this man, he tells them. And so they read Dabney, imbibe his venomous racism, and become 'kinists'. Mr. Wilson expresses astonishment at this development, because he told them, he did, that racism is sinful. What's going on here? Is it a dog-whistle? An uncommon level of tolerance for cognitive dissonance? Compartmentalization? Failure to take responsibility for the obvious consequences of one's own actions?

In any event, whichever is worse, these two figures, Rousas Rushdoony and Robert Lewis Dabney, do not naturally tend to combine. Robert Lewis Dabney did not believe Christians were expected to observe Moses' law, which is part of the reason he found it so easy to ignore Exodus 21:2:

Is it really just that easy to get rid of God's law, to sweep it under the rug and have done with it once and for all? It's really all of no significance for Christians? The abolitionists knew better than that. You would not expect Rushdoony fans to concur with Dabney on this point, which is critical to his defense of slavery, but they evidently take a little from here and little from there, cafeteria style, just as they like it.

Douglas Wilson

One of the most prominent modern-days disciples of Rousas Rushdoony and Robert Lewis Dabney, both of 'em, is Douglas Wilson, who operates an authoritarian cult in Moscow, Idaho, numbering in the low thousands. He came to public attention years ago as a self-described "Paleo-Confederate" who rhapsodized about the Confederacy and the lost, lamented civilization of the Old antebellum South. Realizing the influences which shaped him are identical to those reported for the kinists, you might expect him to be suing them for copyright infringement. Rather, he makes a great show of condemning them. Opportunism? Or conviction? On what grounds does he condemn the kinists, rather than recognizing them as his own illegitimate offspring? You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind; what did he think was going to come out of encouraging young people to read Robert Lewis Dabney, so long after the Grim Reaper had mercifully sealed shut his venomous lips? Why revive and bring back into the conversation the voices of long-dead race haters? And who's next, Lester Maddox? Let's let sleeping racists lie. Wilson interacts on his blog with one kinist, who said,

"I do think though that the Rev. Wilson might want to take into some considerations that there currently is an ongoing attempt to genocide white people, or at the very least turn them into hewers of wood and drawers of water (slaves). . .I will grant that it is still sin to mock the color of a man's skin if Wilson will grant that a majority of people with pigmented skin have been co-opted to genocide White Christians and to roll Jesus Christ off His throne." (ironink.org website, McAtee Contra Doug Wilson).

This claim, that somebody somewhere is trying to replace or even commit genocide against the white population, is often heard in shooter's manifestos. Doug doesn't rebuke this 'pastor' for raising a false allegation, but rather assures him he's fighting shoulder-to-shoulder next to them on the barricades: "I grant that 'whiteness' has been made a central target, and that extermination of Western civilization, that is to say, a generically Christian civilization, is the goal." He explains that minorities have been "co-opted" to achieve this goal, but since Nancy Pelosi is white, these minorities should be seen as no more than the "cat's paw" for the commies: "But who co-opted these minorities in the first place? Who enlisted them to do this awful thing? Who is using them as a cat's paw? White people, that's who." (Douglas Wilson, Blog and Mablog, "Kin, Skin, & Sin.") The kinists' mistake is to think that "minorities" have agency and direct their own actions; if they had studied Dabney a little harder, they would have realized that's not the case; they are not capable.

This claim, that somebody is trying to 'replace' the white population, or even exterminate it as here, is what the mass shooters are likely to say. People have already died because of it:

One suspects that if you drew the Venn diagram for the white supremacists and the anti-semites, you would find yourself looking at one big circle, essentially. Yet Douglas Wilson is shocked, just shocked, that anyone could be an anti-semite. He fails to perceive Dabney's white supremacy as any reason not to celebrate the man's legacy, but the kinists he wants to throw out of CREC, the denomination he founded, in part because some of them are also anti-semites. Dabney is welcome to sit down at the table, but people who agree with him are not. The charge? Failing to master the soft-shoe routine where you lionize Dabney, while also pretending to abhor the racism he breathed out. Make it make sense. Dabney would be kicked out of CREC if he applied for membership today, but if you criticize him, you are a commie.

Apparently these impressionable young people, exposed to Robert Lewis Dabney at a tender age, never learned to do the two-step shuffle, where you praise this author effusively, then turn around and express indignation if anybody should think you might possibly agree with any of his published views. Is the problem just that the kinists are saying the quiet parts out loud, or can you build the foundation for a just, fair, non-racist polity from building blocks such as these?:

Wall of Separation

One thing which is especially obnoxious about the two authors who provide inspiration for the kinists and the Muscovites both, and the one point where they do concur, is in their hatred for freedom and democracy. One of the ways they try to 'work around' the First Amendment is to claim the concept of religious liberty is not as old as the Republic, but rather was invented post-World War II. People misunderstand if they think the First Amendment means what it say. According to Rousas Rushdoony, the founding fathers of the American Republic had no problem with a government established Christian church, however, they preferred this establishment to be at the state level rather than the federal:

Prior to the Revolutionary War, there were established state churches in colonial America. Indeed, New England was a theocracy, with excessive entanglement of church and state at every level of government. Was the intent of those who drafted the Bill of Rights to preserve this system, or to disrupt and cast shade on it? As a check of Rushdoony's theory, that this was a matter of states rights, let's look at how those founders responsible for the Bill of Rights responded when called upon to legislate for a state, in this case the state of Virginia. Is their language pro-establishment, as this theory requires?:

Hmmm, it's every bit as hostile to religious establishment as is the First Amendment. Rushdoony's theory fails. Our founders did not want a religious establishment at any level of government. This 'state's rights' concept is the operative theory governing this dark corner of anti-Constitutionalist thought; the theory gets repeated over and over, even though it's demonstrably false. Good enough for cult-world, I guess.

A modern author who gets tagged as a 'kinist' a lot is Stephen Wolfe, who wrote a political treatise calling for the restoration of monarchy and the revival of blasphemy trials. On occasion he has posted material to Twitter/X implying that he would discourage inter-ethnic marriage. He denies that he is a kinist, however. Not his section of the fruit and nut aisle, evidently:

Church of the Apostles

Reading the New Testament with an eye to whether the apostles were 'kinists' or not, there is, to put it very charitably, a lot of missing material. Where are all the instructions that Jews and Gentiles ought to form separate churches, dine separately, etc.? This is a memo the apostles never received, because they said:

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28);

"And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:  Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all." (Colossians 3:10-11).

You don't have to agree; it's a free country. But maybe Odinism would be a better fit.

Faced with these verses, the kinists reply, 'But you don't really believe that, do you?' They point out that this would imply women and men are equal, which of course they don't believe; they think women are mentally and morally inferior to men. So having enlarged the number of categories where their folks are not really on the Bible bus to two instead of one, they count that as progress and go on their way.