Love of people and place is virtuous. It is good to love one's family, and love of one's family easily extends to a love of nation, which is largely an extension of the family. One way to honor my mother and father (and grandmother and grandfather, etc.) is to honor the land in which I was born. Cultivating love of people and place is an application of the fifth commandment, among other things.

But kinists take the love of people and place to an unwarranted, unbiblical, even idolatrous extreme. For the kinist, "my people" comes to mean primarily people of a certain skin color. Skin color becomes more essential to identity than faith. Skin color becomes synonymous with culture, so that defending one is the same as defending the other. Kinists want to build a racially homogenous civilization because they believe racial unity is the key to social harmony. But this is a misplacement of the antithesis, which divides people not according to skin color but according to their spiritual state.  Biblically, it is faith rather than skin color that is determinative. To put it in concrete terms: I would much rather build a culture with Clarence Thomas and Voddie Baucham (who share my faith but not my skin color) than Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi (who share my skin color but not my faith). Culture is not tied to skin to skin color in the way kinists seem to think. Insofar as culture is the product of religious conviction (which it always is), white people do not share a common culture because not all white people share a common faith. And many people with other skin colors might be much closer to some white people in culture because they do share the same faith. God's Word requires us to make careful distinctions. Further, the Great Commission requires the Christian faith to permeate every nation -- indeed, every culture and subculture -- with the gospel. If kinists claim that cultures should remain homogenous and closed off to all outside influence, they make the mission of the church impossible. The Great Commission requires a certain level of cross-cultural intermixing and influence. That is not the same thing as the borderless, multi-cultural "new world order" the globalists dream of, but neither is it identical to the racially segregated world he kinists want.

There is certainly a connection between love of father (= patriarchy) and love of fatherland (= patritiotism). Kinists have that right. But the central driving force in history is the church, not any particular kin group. Or to put it another way, water is thicker than blood. Spiritual kinship will always trump genetic kinship. The Christian's primary culture will always be the culture of the kingdom of God. "My people" are first and foremost those who are in God's family, those who are in the covenant of grace, those with whom I will spend all eternity. This does not make personal identity an abstraction and it does not destroy localized connections. But it does situate my personal identity as a white, male American (or whatever) within the larger story of the kingdom of God, which is destined to overtake and transform all the kingdoms of the world (Rev. 11:15).

The question has been asked: Did the original American colonists have a kinist vision of people and place? I think the answer is quite obviously, no, they did not. The Europeans who came to America to settle the “new world” came precisely because they put faith ahead of their love for people and place. Leaving their native land, including many family members, behind in order to found a new civilization, they put their faith and their commitment to a purified church above everything else. The Europeans who settled on this continent were ecclesiocentrists rather than kinists, and if they had been kinists, they would have never left Europe. No matter how important people and place were in their minds, they put their commitment to the church ahead of them, which is why they were willing to leave people and place behind (much as biblical saints like Abraham and Ruth did centuries before).

People and place do matter. Blood and soil matter. Biological and ethnic connections matter. We are not gnostics. But we are also not kinists. We are Christians, which means the blood of Christ is the ultimate tie that binds for us. The covenant is the most important connection we have. As Christians, we are churchmen. The church is not our only nation, city, and family — but it is our first nation, city, and family.

Kinists like to point to the example of John Knox, who prayed, “Give me Scotland, lest I die!” Obviously Knox had a deep, natural affection for his homeland. But note a couple things. First, Knox did not equate his “people" with a race but with a geopolitical nation. He did not pray “Give me white people lest I die.” Knox understood the Bible does not categorize people according to skin color, but according to nations, tribes, peoples, and languages, which can include genetic ties, but can also be much more permeable and fluid. Second, Knox was also an ecclesiocentrist, willing to leave his homeland for Geneva to escape persecution and to get better pastoral training. He loved Scotland but he was also willing to leave it if necessary. He loved his homeland but it was subordinate to other loves. His top priority was the gospel. He prayed for Scotland not merely because of his natural affection for his national kin, but because of a supernatural affection that drove him to want to see his nation discipled in terms of the Great Commission. But precisely because he put the gospel first, Knox could find deep spiritual kinship with men from other nations, like the Frenchman Calvin and the German Bucer.

 
Calvin held similar ecclesiocentric convictions. Calvin was a kind of exile in Geneva, and while in Geneva, he ensured the city accepted religious refugees from countless other European cities and lands. He also trained and commissioned missionaries who traveled to other lands, including South America. His love and concern were not limited to people of the same skin color but extended to all people groups. Yes, Calvin loved his homeland of France. But he left his fatherland precisely because his commitment to the the gospel, the cause of the Reformation, and the Protestant church trumped his love of his native country. In the introductory preface of his Institutes, addressed to King Francs, Calvin shows he embraced the cause of Christ above the cause of his nation:

Even though I regard my country with as much natural affection as becomes me, as things now stand, I do not much regret being excluded. Rather, I embrace the common cause of all believers, that of Christ himself – a cause completely torn and trampled in your realm today, lying as it were utterly forlorn.

Calvin knew he served a greater King than Francis – the Lord Jesus. He knew the church of Jesus Christ was primary home, and this ecclesial allegiance was to be maintained, whatever earthly, temporal loyalties had to be sacrificed. He put kinship with fellow churchmen above his kinship with fellow Frenchmen.
 
In an age that hates father, and therefore fatherland, many will find kinism attractive. In the globalizing, multicultural hellscape our so-called elites are creating for us, kinism might seem like a port in the storm — a way to bring order and stability back to a world that is falling apart. But kinism will not save Western civilization or build a better alternative. Only Jesus can do that. And if he does so, it will through the ministry of his church, not through a recovery of racial homogeneity. Our loves flow out through the concentric circles of local church, family,  extended family, city, state, and nation. There is nothing wrong with prioritizing those who are closest to us in terms of geography, family relations, national citizenship, etc. Indeed, we have greater and more particularized obligations  to our own family (1 Timothy 5:8), to our local church body (Galatians 6:10; Hebrews 13:7, 17), and to the rulers of our particular locales (Romans 13:1ff). But the ultimate priority is Christ and his faithful bride. Kinists are right that the Christian's identity is very much tied to creational and providential realities -- your sex, your last name, your skin color, your cultural heritage, your language, your nationality are all integral and essential features of your identity. But what the kinists miss is that Christian identity is also transcendant, supernatural, heavenly and, yes, ecclesial (Phil. 3:20; Eph. 2:19; Col. 3:11; Rev. 5:9, 7:9).
 
Kinists also seem to be naive about the degree to which nationalism (just like globalism) can be bent to serve idolatrous ends that are diametrically opposed to the public and cosmic scope of the church's mission. National solidarity is good, but nationalism can become an enemy if separated from other truths and loves. Globalism can set up a rival religion to the gospel -- but the family, the nation, and even compromised churches can become rivals as well. While kinism might have appeal as a reaction against the excesses globalizing trends, we must beware of the ditch on the other side. The pathway through these landmines is a strong commitment to an ecclesiocentric order, as set forth in Augustine's City of God and Book 4 of Calvin's Institutes.