On The (Underwhelming) Antioch Declaration

In the days of the early church, councils gathered in response to serious heresies and responded to them with new creeds and canons. Today, it’s a parade of “declarations,” with the latest one proving that even some of the best-known enablers of “Woke Right” Christian Nationalism are finding the movement hard to defend anymore.

Enter “The Antioch Declaration,” billed by its collaborators as: “A Statement on Racial Ideologies Threatening the Church.” Among its drafters and initial signers are Doug Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho; James White, founder of Alpha & Omega Ministries; Joe Boot, founder of the Ezra Institute; and Jeff Durbin, pastor of Apologia Church in Arizona.

The men state that they are coming together to oppose “the ideas of some contemporary leaders and influencers seeking to introduce anti-gospel racial categories into the church” and to “identify and resist a rising tide of reactionary thinking emerging on the fringes of our own circles.”

Who are these “contemporary leaders and influencers,” and what is this “reactionary thinking” of which they speak? They never name the former, but the “reactionary thinking” they reference includes blatant anti-Semitism, kinism, Holocaust denial and white nationalism. And it’s coming from a growing swath of younger “Woke Right” men -- who often are called the TheoBros -- in their churches, social-media feeds and, worst of all, personal circles.

But search the declaration in vain for any detailed explanation of why the collaborators only now feel compelled to oppose the ideas of the contemporary “Woke Right” leaders or identify the rising tide of reactionary thinking in their circles. That might require an admission that other Christians painstakingly “identified” all this rot in their circles to these men a long time ago, and they didn’t do anything meaningful to address it.

Right out of the gate, the declaration cites the incident in Antioch, which the Apostle Paul references in Galatians 2:11-14. There, Paul recounts how he rebuked the Apostle Peter to his face. Peter had been eating with Gentile Christians, but he had stopped doing so in order to appease the Judaizers, who believed that Gentile Christians must uphold the Mosaic Law. Paul upbraided him for this, stressing in Gal. 2:16 that both Jews and Gentiles are “not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.”

Strangely, The Antioch Declaration uses the Antioch incident as an example of “compromising the gospel of Jesus Christ by subjecting it to racial barriers” and attempts a strained parallel between that mischaracterization and their reasons for addressing the “Woke Right” TheoBro mess. It’s not a great exegetical start, considering that the issue Paul had with Peter was not his alleged subjection of the gospel to “racial barriers” but his functional denial of the gospel, period.

The declaration goes on to deny some of the abhorrent dogmas of the TheoBros, including the idea that it’s possible to harmonize Christianity with “the racial and anti-Semitic theories of Adolf Hitler and neo-pagan doctrines of the Nazi cult” and the idea that “Jews are in any way uniquely malevolent or sinful, that Judaism in its multifarious expressions is objectively more dangerous than other religions, or that it represents an exceptional threat to Christianity and Christian peoples.” The collaborators also affirm that the Holocaust is a matter of historical certitude and that “the Jews are as all other men … in need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ.”

Casual observers might ask: All well and good, but exactly who is believing and saying all of this? These collaborators said this declaration was about “identifying” reactionary thinking, but thinking is merely a human action. It is the actual people who think -- people whose thoughts are expressed through verbal and keyboard output. Yet the declaration, for all its admittedly good and appropriate denials and affirmations, fails to name even one leader or person in the collaborators’ “circles" who believes or advances the ideology and reactionary thinking it was drafted to rebuke.

This only makes the irony of launching this declaration with a reference to the Antioch incident that much more striking. When Peter was in error, Paul not only rebuked him to his face, but he recorded the rebuke in his letter to the church in Galatia – and God further ensured that Peter’s error and Paul’s rebuke were recorded for all time in His Word! So why be so vague?

There’s no need to get into the complicated, “inside baseball” backstory to The Antioch Declaration (it involves a German pastor, a podcast and a leaked Zoom call; feel free to look it up), but suffice it to say that there’s likely more to this declaration than mere pastoral-care concerns. The TheoBro leaders and followers, it would appear, have just become inconveniently bad for branding.

Consider the link between many of these collaborators and Joel Webbon, a small-church Texas pastor and “Woke Right” Christian Nationalist agitator. He was a virtual unknown two years ago. But through untold hours of working to create a name for himself online and successfully drafting better-known Christian leaders to be part of his webcasts and conferences, he is now increasingly known for his myriad offensive positions and remarks.

He’s highlighted many of them in his X posts, including: “America has long had a separation of Church and State. Perhaps one day we might also have a separation of Synagogue and State.” He’s also written: “You thought Christian Nationalism was scary. Enjoy Jewish Nationalism.”

In his webcast, Webbon recently declared Judaism to be “parasitical” and told an interviewer that the Talmud is “uniquely hostile” to Jesus Christ and Christians, compared with other religions. He’s also advocated against allowing practicing Jews to serve in public office and said that “if you are not being called a Nazi, then you are not pushing against the post-war consensus hard enough.” Webbon also is a favorite of many TheoBros who openly affirm white-nationalist and anti-Semitic ideology.

Disturbingly, some of the very men who collaborated on The Antioch Declaration helped Webbon’s star to rise:

• Wilson spoke at Webbon’s Right Response Ministries conference in 2024. So did Boot.

• Both Boot and White spoke at Webbon’s Right Response Ministries conference in 2023.

• Webbon announced in May that Durbin was slated to speak at the Right Response Ministries conference in April 2025 and released a graphic including Durbin’s picture. Shortly afterward, thankfully, Durbin’s name disappeared from the speaker lineup.

• Wilson, White, Durbin and Boot all have done webcast interviews with Joel Webbon.

It’s certainly true that some of these collaborators have criticized Webbon by name elsewhere; White comes instantly to mind. And perhaps they all appeared with him unwittingly and, now, regretfully. That can happen, and no one would blame them if it had, as long as they admit their unintended error and cop to it.

But if that’s the case, why didn’t they just call out Webbon and those like him by name and express their repentance over lending their reputations to help popularize him? Why not do like the Apostle Paul and also name some of Webbon’s many “Woke Right” leader friends, who continue to enable the young men about whom Antioch Declaration expresses distinct concern? Why not name the worst of the TheoBros? Or are there just too many names to list?

It’s also worth noting that Wilson has an openly stated political and church PR motivation for collaborating on The Antioch Declaration. Pete Hegseth, who’s been tapped to become the next U.S. Secretary of Defense, is a member of one of Wilson’s CREC churches, and Wilson has admitted he is concerned about potential blowback.

In an oddly veiled “interview” Wilson posted at his website, he stated: “(Hegseth) was already going to be attacked as a white nationalist, far-right extremist, a theo-fascist, and all the rest of their tired drill. That was already going to happen. He is already being attacked as being part of our circles, and as someone who has been influenced by little old me.

“And so then, like there was a signal given or something, a bunch of guys, non-astute, let us call them — Nazis, Nazi-adjacent types, and aficionados of Nazi iconography — pop up in CREC circles, and we have ourselves our controversy. This means that the commies, during Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, will attempt to slander him with this kind of stuff. And they don’t even have to make up any of the raw material for their slander.”

So unsurprisingly, it seems Wilson didn’t sign onto this declaration purely out of biblical motives. In fact, as I wrote back in September, he’s long delayed “a direct moral and biblical repudiation of the rising racial prejudices and anti-Semitism among ‘Woke Right’ Christian Nationalists in his own backyard.” Has he made references to various “Woke Right” problems over time and stated that some of his own views aren’t in line with the extremes of the radicalized TheoBros? Sure, but it all kind of adds up to the line: “I can’t hear what you’re saying, because your life is too loud.” Especially when he just admitted that Hegseth’s political confirmation was what finally made him speak up.

Consider his recent commentary on Webbon, whom he is “not saying is a crypto-Nazi” (faint praise indeed) but did accuse of “displaying a calloused pastoral ineptitude when it comes to understanding and responding to the dank anons” who post hateful, white-nationalist garbage.

Wilson further acknowledges that Webbon called for these “dank anons” to attack and hound anti-Woke Right Owen Strachan, senior director of the Dobson Culture Center, off X. Yet instead of saying, “Webbon should be ashamed of himself for wanting Strachan to be hounded off X,” Wilson instead reminds Webbon that he shouldn’t do that, because he doesn’t know if the anons who would do his bidding are feds or under church discipline.

He also hails Webbon for finally signing a (ED. NOTE: kinist-tainted) statement condemning Nazis. Says Wilson: “It’s about time!” The irony is beyond rich.

It’s also relevant to reiterate that Wilson’s Canon Press published 2022’s “The Case for Christian Nationalism” by Stephen Wolfe, which kicked off this whole “Woke Right” Christian Nationalist impulse at the start. It is an utterly awful ethno-nationalist book (one that Wilson also endorsed) whose author notoriously posted the infamously dubbed “Eleven Words” on X: “White evangelicals are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America,” a spin on the “Fourteen Words” of white nationalism. But apparently we are supposed to ignore all that.

And Wilson is hardly kicking his endorsed author to the curb, either, saying Wolfe “has not yet violated any of the terms of his contract. In his Twitter exchanges online, he can really be rude and ungracious, but he is right 80 percent of the time … Stephen has assured us that he is no kinist.” We should apparently all feel so much better now and pay no attention to the way-under-calculated “20 percent” of the time that Wolfe says or writes something that is totally unbiblical and indefensible.

Awkwardly for Wilson, Wolfe’s former podcast host was the famously outed “anonymous” racist Thomas Achord, who co-authored a book on “natural relations.” Wolfe told people on X to “buy this book by my friends.” Wilson wrote that Achord deserved to be fired from the Christian school where he worked but noted: “What if it comes out a couple years from now that Stephen Wolfe knew about Achord all along, and agreed with all the dark stuff he said? That would not reveal the true meaning of ‘The Case for Christian Nationalism.’” So judge the book, but the “80 percent OK” author should be left alone? This attitude is very much in keeping with the mood of The Antioch Declaration, which aims to “identify and resist reactionary thinking” but apparently not enough to come down on the actual leaders or “reactionary thinkers” who are responsible for spreading it.

The Antioch Declaration does have some good content, but it’s overshadowed by the fact that its collaborators both waited so long to do it and the fact that they just can’t seem to manage a biblically based, name-’em rebuke to Webbon, his comrades in TheoBro influencing or their cadre of white-nationalist fanboys. Nor can the collaborators bring themselves to say anything much stronger than “we deny” and “we affirm” about such insanely obvious, shouldn’t-even-need-to-be-stated truths and errors.

Let’s just be honest. When you get to the point where you have to tell people — even on the supposed “fringes” of your circles — that Nazis are bad, that the Holocaust really happened and that Jews are not inherently evil, then maybe your circles have developed much bigger problems than you’re willing to admit.