Who Is My Neighbor? A Review of Kinism

 

Who Is My Neighbor?: An Anthology In Natural Relations by Thomas Achord
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Unlike most books I review, I only spent an hour with this one. A near-600-page encyclopedic gathering of quotes from Scripture, the Western canon, and scholarship, it calls itself a reference up front. So I read the summaries at the beginning of each section, and sampled the more interesting sources.

I borrowed this from a friend when we began discussing Kinism.

The strength of the book is the huge compilation of various sources.

The huge weakness is that most of the quotations do not support the thesis of the book. To quote the Puritans or Jewish sources on the importance of family and patriotism is a far cry from what the authors argue for in the introduction.

I’d like to lay out and then critique that thesis, from page 41:
Society is inescapably hierarchical, and so our duties are also prioritized, “favoring the near over the far. The implication is that we have obligations to our families, neighbors and countrymen over strangers and foreigners…. This is piety and gratitude.”

On one level, this is just common sense. I’m going to invest more time parenting my kids, than the kids next door. I take more time consuming news concerning my country than Zimbabwe’s, so I can vote and act faithfully where I live.

The problem comes with the flip side – a non sequitur which Scripture does not endorse: to favor those not of your kind is impiety. This turns out to be a call for segregation, though kinists don’t seem to like to use that word. A people’s culture should not be tainted by intermixing, they say, which breeds confusion in personal identity, and a dilution of energy which should be focused on positive, tangible culture building.

Insofar as this is a negative reaction to multi-culturalism, I get it. I recently heard Mark Bauerlein, of First Things, on the Theology Pugcast podcast, define decadence as an inability to distinguish the significant from the insignificant. These days in academia and sitcoms, we treat the history of cross-dressing basketweavers with as much seriousness as the themes of human nature in Macbeth. The neuroticism of George Costanza and trivial pet peeves of Elaine are as important as sleeping with the latest girlfriend. We ought to invest energy in significant, not trivial, things. Go to the opera. Read great literature.

If that’s Kinism, I’m for it. I have no interest in painting Kinism with the white supremacist or racist brush, if that truly isn’t there, without interacting with their self-described ideas. But this book’s thesis in the introduction is: don’t favor the foreigner over your own kin. That may be proverbial wisdom, like the common sense above, but it should not be made a moral absolute on racial or national lines.


Let’s look to Scripture for guidance.

I believe the Kinist standing in Boaz’ field would rebuke him for looking favorably on Ruth, the Moabite.
He would look on with horror as a faithful Israelite of the tribe of Judah, Salmon, married a Canaanite whore from Jericho – Rahab.
He would believe that Ahithophel’s family was sinning to allow the Hittite Uriah to marry a daughter of their clan - Bathsheba.

Yet each of these are mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy. Not as cautionary tales, but as laudable examples to God’s people that we are to “welcome the stranger.” This is a ubiquitous phrase in Deuteronomy, “for you yourselves were sojourners in Egypt.” So it was astonishing to see in print that we should NOT favor the stranger and foreigner.

Now, do we favor them to the impoverishment of our own estate and family or nation? Of course not. American immigration policy is insanely impoverishing us. But Kinism seems to go too far the other way, calling for separation. Ruth should have been sent back to Moab: “let her own kind take care of her.” I believe they would say this, regardless of her assumed spiritual conversion. Even as believers across cultures (it appears to me they assert), we ought to keep distinct tribes and cultures to flourish best.



Another way to come at this problem is to examine Acts 17:26:
“He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.”

The Kinist emphasizes the second half of this, to the detriment of the first, assuming it means that the times and boundaries of nations are more static and set in stone than the verse intends. The point was more to assert God’s sovereignty over proud Greece, not to give Greece pride in its distinct civilization.

The first half of the verse is an indirect rebuke of the pervasive racial superiority found in Greece and Rome. “Hey, the African, and the ‘barbarian’ in Gaul is one blood with you, by God’s design.”


When the objection is raised that there is no Scripture commanding this, the usual response seems to be to agree, but also say that it is normal and according to nature. But in the examples above, we see that conversion trumps nature. We ought to seek covenantal succession from one natural generation to the next. But there is also the Ethiopian eunuch. Cornelius the Roman. Luke, the Greek doctor. All are welcomed into the church. They don’t continue building their own separate ethnic cultures, while just playing church on Sundays. The church herself is a new polis – a city on a hill. We spend and are spent for her as a family, and even if our family rejects us for it.

Nurture can determine culture-building as much as nature. Uriah chose to fight FOR David and Israel, though a Hittite. Rahab believed and feared the God of Israel. God’s enemies become His friends by redemption. That’s the heart of the gospel.

And this gets very practical. Almost everyone today is of some mixed race. I’m German-Dutch, but most people have even more mixed of an ancestry. This is not a problem, but we should claim and work for some specific nation and heritage. Yet to work for a specific RACE, is not Scripturally warranted, or even allowed. Every believer should say with Ruth, “your God and my God,” and we should go on to say, “your people and my people.” What people? The latter means the church, primarily, but also secondarily a specific family, nation, and culture. If you are part Latino and part white, for example, you are not Scripture-bound to choose the “superior culture” and only “act white.” But you want to make wise choices about where you will put your energy. Invest yourself such that you aren’t just sampling the fun parts from the smorgasbord of cultures you’ve been exposed to. Rather, form a solid identity for yourself and your children. (Solid doesn’t always mean white or Western.) So that you are building something for the long-term future, for your grandchildren.

Doing this contributes to keeping the tyranny of the state at bay (a prevailing motivation of most kinists). Mediating institutions are needed: church, art guilds, faithful extended families, universities, non-profit organizations, social groups, etc. Find ways to build these up. There were several quotes in this book by Communists, who sought to blur and eliminate natural distinctions, to eliminate mediating institutions, so it would be easier to control the masses. There’s something to that. But the way to counter it isn’t to promote segregation. We may need walls to protect the church or societies, but they need to be permeable. Too many liberal churches insist on no walls or boundaries at all. Everyone is welcome, no matter what you advocate for. Some conservative churches in response have a Checkpoint Charlie, shooting anyone attempting to cross the Berlin Wall they erect. The proper response is to fence the Lord’s Table each Lord’s Day properly, with the basic gospel. The dividing line is Christ, not kin.

We should be able to build and appreciate something positive in our culture (Bach, Rembrandt, Chaucer) without denigrating other cultures. Growing up in Holland, MI, we had the Dutch festival Tulip Time every year. It is a great way to celebrate your cultural heritage. But there were also sayings that crossed the line: “If you’re not Dutch, you’re not much.” Just as individuals have strengths and weaknesses, and need to interact to learn from each other, so do civilizations.

In the political sphere, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, and Walter Williams are great examples today of those like Ruth. Their people were not ours – they were marginalized outsiders. But their evident hard work, giftedness, and dedication to Western culture is a cause of celebration, and they rightly have/had places of prominence. There are many such recent immigrants today in the middle class that we should rejoice over, patriotically, not despise or separate from.

I am quite aware of the cultural relativistic dangers of woke-ism, and of the mass immigration of those who are intent on subverting our culture, etc.

But racial segregation, or even a milder definition of Kinism, is NOT the way to fight it.

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