Mishnah Sanhedrin 1:6 offers a crucial rabbinic distinction: the Qahal (sounds like Ekklesia right .. right) is the formal assembly, necessary for public action, while the Eda is the witnessing body—the ones whose testimony binds heaven and earth. The former can be mustered by political power; the latter must be constituted by covenantal fidelity and moral integrity. This difference is not merely semantic—it cuts to the heart of how a community relates to God, law, and history.
Yeshayahu Leibowitz, writing in the shadow of Zionism, warned that national identity without halakhic submission to divine command becomes idolatry. Applied to Webbon’s project, we see a similar dynamic: the language of dominion, law, and Christendom is deployed not to testify to God’s righteousness, but to reassert cultural dominance and political control. This is a return to the old Gentile model of kingdom-building—one that Torat Edom decisively rejects.
Where Christian nationalists seek to weaponize biblical categories for temporal power, Torat Edom reasserts the function of the Eda: to bear witness, often in suffering, sometimes in exile, always under covenant.
The calling of the church is not to establish a geopolitical kingdom, but to walk in the way of the Sar HaPanim, the Prince of the Presence, whose throne is not of this world, yet whose judgment reorders it.
Stephan Wolfe and the Illusion of Christian Ethnos
Stephan Wolfe, author of The Case for Christian Nationalism (2022), attempts a more philosophically grounded argument for a Protestant ethnonational order. Drawing heavily from classical Reformed political thought and early modern Protestant nation-building (especially in Europe), Wolfe constructs a vision of the “Christian nation” that is theologically coherent on its own terms—but deeply problematic when placed alongside the covenantal frameworks of Scripture.
Like Joel Webbon, Wolfe operates entirely within a Qahal framework—assuming that God’s people must be externally gathered, nationally identified, and morally unified through coercive structures. But unlike Webbon, Wolfe is more candid about the need for ethnic cohesion and cultural hegemony, even arguing that each people group should develop its own national Christianity, rooted in shared cultural and linguistic heritage.
The problem here is twofold:
1. Covenantal Amnesia: Wolfe’s model forgets that the covenant was not given to ethnos as such, but to Avraham and his seed—a seed defined by obedience, not race. The whole trajectory of Scripture moves toward grafting in, conversion, and the expansion of witness (Eda) to the nations. Wolfe’s ethnos-based theology echoes Rome’s imperial syncretism more than the God of Sinai or the apostles of Jerusalem.
2. Rejection of the Oracles of God: Paul says in Romans 3:2 that the chief advantage of the Jews is that “they were entrusted with the oracles of God.” Wolfe’s system bypasses this entirely. In doing so, it constructs a Christianity abstracted from its Jewish root—what Torat Edom identifies as a core distortion of post-Constantinian theology. By excluding Jewish theological categories (like halakhah, yikus, and Eda), Wolfe inadvertently resurrects a form of Edomite Christianity—violent, national, and estranged from the oracular voice.
Torat Edom as a Critique of Christian Ethnonationalism
Wolfe and Webbon both misread the Bible as a program for building Christian Rome, rather than a covenantal library testifying to divine justice and inclusion through suffering. Torat Edom critiques this misreading not with abstract liberalism, but with the weight of halakhic history:
Wolfe and Webbon both misread the Bible as a program for building Christian Rome, rather than a covenantal library testifying to divine justice and inclusion through suffering. Torat Edom critiques this misreading not with abstract liberalism, but with the weight of halakhic history:
• Israel was chosen not to dominate, but to serve and suffer as a priestly people.
• The Eda, not the Qahal, bears the covenantal torch.
• The Messiah comes not with a sword of state, but with the fire of testimony and the wounds of obedience.
In this way, Christian Nationalism becomes a mirror image of the Sadducean and the wrong Shammite Pharisees (there we’re right ones! Matt. 23:1&2 ). What was the ERROR? — confusing power with holiness, and missing the very sar haPanim (Prince of the Presence) who stood among them.
What Stephan Wolfe and Joel Webbon miss, A.B. Simpson seemed to intuit more than a century ago.
Simpson never spoke in the language of “Eda” or “Torat Edom,” but his life and mission echo its rhythm. In founding the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Simpson rejected both Protestant respectability and American empire.
He cast his lot not with the Qahal of civic religion, but with the marginalized, the poor, the immigrant, and the unreached. His theology of the “Fourfold Gospel”—Jesus as Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King—was never meant to underpin a Christian state, but to fuel a Spirit-filled, suffering witness to the ends of the earth.
Simpson’s vision was neither Christendom nor cultural supremacy, but a prophetic alliance—an Eda—across boundaries, languages, and nations.
The rise of figures like Joel Webbon, who advocate for a muscular, Christ-centered reordering of American public life, exemplifies a return to Qahal over Eda—a vision of the church not as a witnessing community but as a theocratic nation-in-waiting.
This neo-Christian nationalism seeks to recover political power under the guise of biblical fidelity, but it mirrors the very temptation Israel faced in its own history: mistaking covenantal witness for national supremacy.
In this light, the C&MA faces a choice today.
Will it drift toward the political vision of Wolfe and Webbon—trading testimony for territory, suffering for strategy, the Sar HaPanim for Caesar’s sword?
Or will it return to Simpson’s heart cry: a missionary people, bound not by ethnos but by the fire of the Spirit, proclaiming the risen King not as ruler of a geopolitical domain but as Lord over all creation?
Torat Edom calls us back to the deeper covenant.
It reminds the church—especially the Alliance—that our identity is not as a religious nation, but as a faithful witness.
As Mishnah Sanhedrin 1:6 teaches:
The time has come to choose again.
Not Rome.
Not Edom.
Not a Christianized republic.
Not getting caught up in ‘a chosen people for the sake of race.’
Not female (wives) submission without male (husbands) love—true love, rooted in first love—by imitating Jesus of Nazareth. But both lived out together, with an egalitarian spirit and plenty of compliments!
But a return to the Eda—the covenantal people who bear the wounds of Messiah and the hope of the world.
