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Biblical Blueprint Series
Healer of the Nations: Biblical Principles for International Relations
Does the Bible have answers for the overwhelming problems of international relations and foreign policy? Yes. Absolutely. We are in the midst of a massive global crisis of confidence. War and rumors of wars have made detente nigh unto impossible. Enmity and strife pervade every summit. Envy and suspicion cloud every treaty. Avarice and schism threaten every alliance. Most international theorists and foreign policy analysts can't offer much hope in the way of change. They simply don't have answers. But the Bible does. In this volume of the ground-breaking Biblical Blueprints Series, Dr. Gary North outlines specifically what those answers are. He shows how the obstacles to justice, peace, and harmony can be overcome if only we would act decisively and Scripturally. The Bible tell us what to do, when, where, how, and why. It offers us "blueprints" for global security. Healer of the Nations lays out those "blueprints" simply, practically, and understandably. It demonstrates that despite the pessimism of the experts there is still hope for our world.
470 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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About the author
Gary North
173 books96 followersGary North received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside. He served on the Senior Staff of the Foundation for Economic Education, in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, and was the president of the Institute for Christian Economics. Dr. North’s essays and reviews have appeared in three dozen magazines and journals, including The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The American Spectator, and others.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 21, 2025
Eight years have passed since I first read this book. In 2017 it had a profound impact on me: at a time when more people I knew were turning towards nationalism, it provided cogent theological reasons why I should not. Its take on a Christian internationalism based on the internationalism of the Church Universal was not something I had ever come across before, but it had (and still has) the ring of truth. As I commenced work on a 9-book project inspired by the history of the medieval crusader states, this book helped me sort out some vital presuppositions.
Eight years later and the nationalists appear firmly in control, not only of at least three world superpowers, but also much of the globally influential US church. I wanted to re-read the book for a refresher of what I found helpful and an opportunity to more deeply think through North's thesis.
On a re-read, I found this book to be severely flawed. For instance:
- North explicitly states, many times, in this book that the changes he proposes should be grassroots, democratic, and bottom-up. P301, for instance, states that "a top-down political transformation [is] something quite foreign to Christian social theory." However, North sometimes undermines these pronouncements in the next breath, by envisioning a post-transformation reality that seems quite authoritarian - banning any non-Christian public worship, for instance. For nuance, this book was written nearly 40 years ago, and thinkers in North's tradition have since done excellent work in identifying and repairing these inconsistencies. See, for instance, North's own son-in-law, Joel McDurmon's work in THE BOUNDS OF LOVE and A CONSUMING FIRE, and Joseph Foreman's radical understanding of Matthew 20:25-28 which challenges the very existence of executive power. However, this book, taken in isolation, without later correctives, remains weak on this point and potentially dangerous.
- Related, North's applications of his central thesis are not always well reasoned or well-thought out, and his attitude is often problematic - dismissive of Christians and scholars who disagree with him, and alarmist, paranoid, and apocalyptic in ways that do not consort well with a postmillennial view. The book leans too heavily on argumentation done better elsewhere in other books. For just one instance, had a Bachelor of Laws not persuaded me of the intellectual bankruptcy of natural law theory, this book would not have convinced me.
- More substantively, it's ironic how closely this book focuses on the USSR, given that that entity was already in the process of disintegration in 1987 after the shattering blow struck in 1986 at Chernobyl. It's understandable, of course, that in 1987 an officially atheist superpower, highly deceptive, strongly armed, and actively malicious, would have taken up all North's attention. The reality remains that North failed to anticipate the reality as it would stand 38 years later. Today an aggressive nationalist Russian empire has arisen from the ashes of the USSR and now employs the Russian Orthodox Church as a tool of international propaganda. Today the USA has fallen to an irresponsible cadre of empire-building nationalists who have had wild success co-opting and using American evangelicalism as a tool of political power. North was, quite simply, wrong about the future, and wrong about the greatest threat that would face Christians in the developed world: namely, governments that loudly claim the name of Christ, while brazenly defying all His commandments. The book, therefore, is limited in its present-day usefulness.
There are also, however, elements of the book that remain sharply relevant today.
- In 2017, this book made it impossible for me to be a nationalist, and these elements still hold up, although they are somewhat less of the book's focus than I remember.
- The central thesis remains strong: North's argument that the international Church, which is free to every tribe, tongue, and nation, ought to be the model for international relations. As an optimistic Christian who expects to see the Great Commission fulfilled in history via a grassroots process of evangelism and individual conversion, I naturally agree that these future Christians will prioritise their citizenship in the city of God above their own national interests and tribal loyalties. "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples: that you have love, one for another." Enough of this, and international relations are bound to be affected. By the same token, in Christ's kingdom no nation gets to see itself as exceptional. The nations may be invited into the kingdom of God, but they do not get to identify themselves with the kingdom of God, or put their own good above that of other nations.
- Meanwhile, I think North is absolutely correct about the fact that ethics and ideology DO divide nations, and it is useless to pretend that it doesn't. Putin in 2025 is exactly as malicious, deceptive, and deadly as the USSR in 1987, for all that he goes to church. For the past three years so-called "realists" have been publishing up-eds in the New York Times arguing that if Putin can be offered a good enough deal he'll be willing to leave Ukraine in peace. This completely ignores the fact that Putin wants to destroy Ukraine's national identity and absorb it into Russia, and will abandon that goal only when forced to do so. While I, unlike North, am in favour of a certain form of humanism (it is good and proper to acknowledge that all people are made in God's image and deserve to be treated with respect), the fact is that whether we're talking about Christian or secular humanism, it's a perspective which not everyone shares. Plenty of nationalist authoritarians categorically refuse to accept or respect any kind of brotherhood of mankind. They are even willing to pursue their own will to the destruction of their own nations, yet the foreign policy boffins of the liberal democratic world persist in believing that these thinly veiled dictators can be bargained with, or trusted to keep those bargains. In 2025 the hardest-hitting part of the book, which rang absolutely true to me, was the part where North describes and explains this phenomenon.
In thinking over this book, I remain convinced that while Christian Nationalism is a vile and wicked heresy, I still do believe that "a Christian nation" is something that can and hopefully will happen in history. If it does, it will be through a truly grassroots, bottom-up, anarcho-something process that results in a model of government we have never seen before and can barely imagine, but which Christ described when he said that the one who would be the greatest of all must be the servant of all. I still believe that God's law-word will be instrumental in that process and that it is not a mistake that the Great Commission told us to disciple the nations, specifically. But I have come to a radically laissez-faire interpretation of what government power ought to be; I have come to question the necessity of having an executive branch of government altogether, or at least an executive branch with any real power as we think of it today.
Meanwhile, I would either not recommend this book, or I would recommend it only with strong reservations. Despite North's libertarian credentials and decades of later refining, this book contains the seeds of the very authoritarianism it explicitly rejects. It was helpful to me both times I read it, but like any book - perhaps more than most - it demands wisdom and discernment and a readiness to spit the bones.
--
Gary North takes the Church Universal as the model for a Christian perspective on international relations, and it's great. The book is somewhat dated in its close focus on US-Soviet relations before the fall of the USSR, which seems nowhere near as scary in hindsight as it did in 1987 when the book was published, but the general principles provided here are fantastic. I'm working on a series of novels set in the Crusader States, and felt that I needed to be able to critique crusading from a solid Biblical perspective, and this book was exactly what I needed.
Available as a free PDF here.
Eight years later and the nationalists appear firmly in control, not only of at least three world superpowers, but also much of the globally influential US church. I wanted to re-read the book for a refresher of what I found helpful and an opportunity to more deeply think through North's thesis.
On a re-read, I found this book to be severely flawed. For instance:
- North explicitly states, many times, in this book that the changes he proposes should be grassroots, democratic, and bottom-up. P301, for instance, states that "a top-down political transformation [is] something quite foreign to Christian social theory." However, North sometimes undermines these pronouncements in the next breath, by envisioning a post-transformation reality that seems quite authoritarian - banning any non-Christian public worship, for instance. For nuance, this book was written nearly 40 years ago, and thinkers in North's tradition have since done excellent work in identifying and repairing these inconsistencies. See, for instance, North's own son-in-law, Joel McDurmon's work in THE BOUNDS OF LOVE and A CONSUMING FIRE, and Joseph Foreman's radical understanding of Matthew 20:25-28 which challenges the very existence of executive power. However, this book, taken in isolation, without later correctives, remains weak on this point and potentially dangerous.
- Related, North's applications of his central thesis are not always well reasoned or well-thought out, and his attitude is often problematic - dismissive of Christians and scholars who disagree with him, and alarmist, paranoid, and apocalyptic in ways that do not consort well with a postmillennial view. The book leans too heavily on argumentation done better elsewhere in other books. For just one instance, had a Bachelor of Laws not persuaded me of the intellectual bankruptcy of natural law theory, this book would not have convinced me.
- More substantively, it's ironic how closely this book focuses on the USSR, given that that entity was already in the process of disintegration in 1987 after the shattering blow struck in 1986 at Chernobyl. It's understandable, of course, that in 1987 an officially atheist superpower, highly deceptive, strongly armed, and actively malicious, would have taken up all North's attention. The reality remains that North failed to anticipate the reality as it would stand 38 years later. Today an aggressive nationalist Russian empire has arisen from the ashes of the USSR and now employs the Russian Orthodox Church as a tool of international propaganda. Today the USA has fallen to an irresponsible cadre of empire-building nationalists who have had wild success co-opting and using American evangelicalism as a tool of political power. North was, quite simply, wrong about the future, and wrong about the greatest threat that would face Christians in the developed world: namely, governments that loudly claim the name of Christ, while brazenly defying all His commandments. The book, therefore, is limited in its present-day usefulness.
There are also, however, elements of the book that remain sharply relevant today.
- In 2017, this book made it impossible for me to be a nationalist, and these elements still hold up, although they are somewhat less of the book's focus than I remember.
- The central thesis remains strong: North's argument that the international Church, which is free to every tribe, tongue, and nation, ought to be the model for international relations. As an optimistic Christian who expects to see the Great Commission fulfilled in history via a grassroots process of evangelism and individual conversion, I naturally agree that these future Christians will prioritise their citizenship in the city of God above their own national interests and tribal loyalties. "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples: that you have love, one for another." Enough of this, and international relations are bound to be affected. By the same token, in Christ's kingdom no nation gets to see itself as exceptional. The nations may be invited into the kingdom of God, but they do not get to identify themselves with the kingdom of God, or put their own good above that of other nations.
- Meanwhile, I think North is absolutely correct about the fact that ethics and ideology DO divide nations, and it is useless to pretend that it doesn't. Putin in 2025 is exactly as malicious, deceptive, and deadly as the USSR in 1987, for all that he goes to church. For the past three years so-called "realists" have been publishing up-eds in the New York Times arguing that if Putin can be offered a good enough deal he'll be willing to leave Ukraine in peace. This completely ignores the fact that Putin wants to destroy Ukraine's national identity and absorb it into Russia, and will abandon that goal only when forced to do so. While I, unlike North, am in favour of a certain form of humanism (it is good and proper to acknowledge that all people are made in God's image and deserve to be treated with respect), the fact is that whether we're talking about Christian or secular humanism, it's a perspective which not everyone shares. Plenty of nationalist authoritarians categorically refuse to accept or respect any kind of brotherhood of mankind. They are even willing to pursue their own will to the destruction of their own nations, yet the foreign policy boffins of the liberal democratic world persist in believing that these thinly veiled dictators can be bargained with, or trusted to keep those bargains. In 2025 the hardest-hitting part of the book, which rang absolutely true to me, was the part where North describes and explains this phenomenon.
In thinking over this book, I remain convinced that while Christian Nationalism is a vile and wicked heresy, I still do believe that "a Christian nation" is something that can and hopefully will happen in history. If it does, it will be through a truly grassroots, bottom-up, anarcho-something process that results in a model of government we have never seen before and can barely imagine, but which Christ described when he said that the one who would be the greatest of all must be the servant of all. I still believe that God's law-word will be instrumental in that process and that it is not a mistake that the Great Commission told us to disciple the nations, specifically. But I have come to a radically laissez-faire interpretation of what government power ought to be; I have come to question the necessity of having an executive branch of government altogether, or at least an executive branch with any real power as we think of it today.
Meanwhile, I would either not recommend this book, or I would recommend it only with strong reservations. Despite North's libertarian credentials and decades of later refining, this book contains the seeds of the very authoritarianism it explicitly rejects. It was helpful to me both times I read it, but like any book - perhaps more than most - it demands wisdom and discernment and a readiness to spit the bones.
--
Gary North takes the Church Universal as the model for a Christian perspective on international relations, and it's great. The book is somewhat dated in its close focus on US-Soviet relations before the fall of the USSR, which seems nowhere near as scary in hindsight as it did in 1987 when the book was published, but the general principles provided here are fantastic. I'm working on a series of novels set in the Crusader States, and felt that I needed to be able to critique crusading from a solid Biblical perspective, and this book was exactly what I needed.
Available as a free PDF here.
February 1, 2018
A very dense work from Dr North. Much of it went over my head. This is a book you have to probably read a few times to grasp all the information he is putting forth.
April 19, 2020
Really good. It will stretch you.
Want to read
December 10, 2012North is a pretty prickly author and his polemics are tough to get past at times, but I figured that in an election year, it would be good to read a little bit on how Christendom should think about international relations. It is the ONLY book I know of that specifically examines how biblical principles come to bear on int'l relations.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews