A Pastor’s Advice for Young Right-Wingers

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I am your host, John Harris. We're talking to a pastor who has not been here before, a special guest,

00:39

Gabriel Render, who is the pastor of Stone Mountain Baptist Church in Nampa, Idaho.

00:47

You can go find his sermons at stonemountainchurch .com. And he hosts the It's Time for Truth podcast with Danny Steinmeier on the

00:55

TruthScript YouTube channel if you want to go check that out. And we're going to talk about whatever he wants to talk about.

01:01

So with that, welcome, Pastor Gabriel Render. Thank you for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me,

01:08

John. It's good to talk to you again, sort of face -to -face. Yeah, so you reached out to me, and we've met before, obviously, at Danny's conference,

01:19

I think, was it last year or the year before? But I know I've met you even before that, because I've been out there a few times.

01:25

And you're fighting the good fight there in Idaho, not just as a pastor in the church on that spiritual level, but you get involved, you get your hands dirty in politics a bit.

01:34

I know you've gone to the Capitol, and you advocate for anti -abortion legislation and that kind of thing.

01:42

So you're one of these pastors, I really respect this, that isn't afraid to go outside the walls of the church and exhort the people around you who aren't following the

01:53

Lord. So kudos to you for that. And when you reached out, you wanted to talk about,

01:58

I think, some of the themes along the lines of the article you wrote for TruthScript, which was, is

02:04

Germany's present America's future, which I thought was a really good article. And fleshing out some parallels.

02:11

Obviously not completely parallel at all, but history does rhyme, right?

02:16

And there are parallels between the situation in Germany preceding World War II and the situation that we're in right now,

02:23

I suppose, in some ways, or at least you see that. So I want to just give you the floor and let you talk about what you see and what you think and concerns you have and whatever.

02:35

You said concern to start me off. I'm in trouble already. All right. We don't have concern, we're in bigger trouble.

02:45

There's always threats out there. That's a good point. Yeah. And I think that's actually interesting.

02:51

Another article I'm working on right now for my blog and for TruthScript is, I'm calling it the

02:57

Ordo Odius, rightly ordered hatreds. I've considered the fact that we need to work on threat detection a little bit in the church.

03:05

I think, and this kind of ties into our conversation is, there's a certain amount of pressure within the church to isolate threats, to detect them, to try to know what is our greatest threat right now.

03:17

And I think part of the challenge in the church right now is this idea that everyone has a fight that they're trying to push and trying to work together and unify over what is the greatest threat facing the

03:29

American church? What is the greatest threat facing the West? There's lots of overlap. So yeah, when

03:35

I wrote the article on Germany, I was an exchange student back in 2001. It was actually fascinating.

03:41

I was there during 9 -11. So it was interesting to watch sort of the German response. We were sort of a victim for a little bit and we were all of a sudden doted upon by every

03:52

German I ran into. And by the end of the year, we were in Afghanistan and all of a sudden I was just an angry

03:58

American. I was terrible because of my nation. So it was fascinating to watch the

04:03

European response. But all that to say, I studied a lot. I learned a lot about Germany when

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I was there, obviously. My father was in the military. He was in the army station there for multiple years, but that was prior to my birth.

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So I had a heritage there. My family is sort of Scandinavian, German, and British. And so I had a desire to go.

04:25

And one of the things I thought was fascinating was just how a period of about 10 years of time in this giant history that Germany has is basically its defining factor.

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We can look at our own society and recognize that if you think of Germany, if you're not thinking of beer and lederhosen, you're thinking of Nazis.

04:43

That's just what we think of as most of the world. But what was fascinating for me was actually putting people to this,

04:52

I guess, this historical event. One of the things that struck me when I walked into my host family's house is they had a wall of family photos.

05:01

And there were some very old black and white ones. And I noticed one of them kind of looked like it almost had Vaseline smudges on it. And I realized, put two to two together, that they had essentially doctored the photos so that it removed sort of World War II insignias from the uniform, if you will.

05:15

And I realized that this is a Catholic German family I was staying with that had family members that lived through that engagement.

05:25

And so I think a lot of times when we look at history, when we look at the world around us, especially our history in the

05:32

West, I mean, this is our many of our ancestors came from Europe and Germany. And so when

05:38

I considered that, I sort of had that familial connection of thinking about Armistice on Christmas Day, the fact that we have

05:45

Christian brothers fighting Christian brothers, hypothetically, you know, it's a very different scenario in my brain than it ever had been.

05:51

You know, you grow up in America and you think about sort of the situation in World War II. We always view ourselves as ultimately the heroes.

05:59

And that's not to say that we didn't do good. But I also got to walk the streets of Dresden and I watched videos about the firebombing.

06:08

I walked through Buchenwald, one of the camps. So, I mean, I've seen the atrocities on both sides,

06:15

I guess you could say. But what really struck me in my time in Germany was just the fact that the nation was utterly

06:22

Christless. I was there 2001 to 2002, and it's only gotten worse in the past 20 years.

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But the nation that was, you know, the birthplace of the Reformation has ultimately become a secular pagan nation with Catholic trappings.

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And when I saw that, I started asking myself, well, what happened? And as I studied World War I, World War II, and then eventually when

06:43

I went to Bible college and seminary and I'm studying things like, you know, Kantian philosophy and Karl Barth's reaction, what

06:50

I found is that there was the hyper -liberal push, right? The Kantian sort of there is no real truth.

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It's sort of you can have these perspectival ideas that are sort of ascending to it.

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It was almost like a new form of Gnosticism in a lot of ways. You have a sort of higher ethereal truth that doesn't actually, it's not physical, it's not tangible.

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As opposed to the Orthodox Christian belief that our whole faith is grounded in history. We believe in the little resurrection of Christ.

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We believe in the historical eyewitness accounts. Like we ground our truth in scripture and a reality in history.

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And so that led obviously to a giant vacuum of just horrible postmodern thought, really.

07:30

It sort of gave birth to it. And then Barth and sort of the neo -Orthodox movement that was birthed out of that as a reaction, you know, it was one of those situations where the cure was almost worse than the poison, you know.

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We're going to sort of recover actual truth, but we're going to do it in such a way that is divorced from tradition, divorced from confession, and divorced really from strong pastoral leadership.

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And so really the correlations that I see to today are, yes, I do see sort of Weimar Republic conditions if we look around at some of the sexual debauchery.

08:05

Yes, I do see some of the similar economic situations. That's fine. I don't think it's a true one -to -one correlation, but there's some.

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But what I really see is that if you look at sort of the generation that came after World War I, is there was sort of this vacuum of church leaders and fathers in the church.

08:26

Many of that was due to the fact that they died on the front, right? A lot of these men that were strong leaders died in World War I.

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And so when you look at the church leadership and the male leadership of the nation that was formulating in Germany, I see a lot of correlations to us.

08:43

You know, if you think about the sexual revolution in the 60s and sort of the whole Gen X generation,

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I can't think of a lot of strong pastors from that generation that are well -known.

08:55

Most of the guys that are really influential today I think are older than that or younger than that. And so where I think the challenge for us as the church in the

09:05

West and as a young church, if you will, is that we're missing a lot of the maturity that marks confessional

09:11

Christianity. And so I think what I want to address today and what

09:16

I want to encourage is that there is a lot of young zeal and there is a lot of old cynicism.

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And we need to try and get the old cynics and the young zeal to find harmony to work together and to pursue biblical balance.

09:32

And when I say that word, I'll say a comment that I'm happy to kind of get your feedback, but I think all of us perceive ourselves as balanced.

09:39

When we think about what do I believe? How do I interpret the Bible? How do I rightly apply it?

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A lot of this comes down to is, you know, most of us in the Christian, you know, that are engaged in civics, if you want to call us

09:51

Christian right, whatever you want to call us, we, you know, we have a common orthodoxy, generally speaking, where typically a lot of this is a highly reformed movement, confessional.

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There's Presbyterians and Lutherans and Baptists. Yes, we have different confessions, but we're all confessional, strong orthodox

10:08

Christians, at least from a theological standpoint. So really where the disconnect I think is, is on orthopraxy.

10:13

How do I actually put my faith into practice, not just at church, but in my home, in the civil sphere?

10:20

So what we're seeing, I think today are a lot of good reactions, a lot of good recognitions of problems, sort of the rise of, you know, biblical patriarchy as a pushback against feminism.

10:29

That's good. The rise of, hey, we need to actually not be fat Baptists. Yeah, a hundred percent.

10:36

We need to actually care about our bodies. We need to not purely be spiritual. It is good for us to be out in nature and to be, you know, athletic and eat well and recover sort of an understanding of the land.

10:49

Those are good reactions to sort of the hyper -processed everything that we experienced in the seventies, eighties and nineties.

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You know, pushing back against spinelessness in the civil sphere, sort of a reaction to hyper -dispensationalism, a withdrawal from the world.

11:05

I think a lot of the political ills we see in the world today come from a lack of strong biblical pastors and men leading men to be men.

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And so we're seeing a lot of good reactions, but what that also births is a lot of young zeal and a lot of people who are looking for quick and immediate resolve.

11:27

And so I see a lot of parallels as well to, hey, if we don't make these radical changes now, then we're going to lose our nation.

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And maybe I'm just way too optimistic. I'm a post -meal type. So I understand there's going to be failures along the way, but I have hope that gradually over time we will gain victory and Christ will be esteemed.

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And so what I'm hoping to build is a recognition of the fact that there is a zeal that leads to idolatry.

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There is a zeal that leads to a lack of the fruit of the spirit. There is a zeal that leads to vulgarity and pragmatism when at all costs.

12:08

And so for a lot of these young men that are in the fight, who didn't have strong pastors that were willing to shut down during 2020, they haven't had a strong leader.

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And I count myself there. I know I've got a white beard, but I'm only 40. I still feel relatively young in this whole thing.

12:32

You know, we need godly, mature men to help shape this movement. If we want to actually be a work of Christ and a work of God and be successful, that's,

12:41

I guess, the message that I want to encourage. Because otherwise, if we purely rely on pragmatism, if we rely on when it all costs now, and I'm not saying one -to -one that what we're seeing in our sort of rising

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Christian right is a one -to -one correlation to Germany, but look what became of Germany. There was no maturity.

12:59

There was no actual strong leadership from a Christian perspective.

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Some of the most herald heroes of the World War II era of Christianity, frankly, were heterodox, minimally, if not heretics.

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So when you look at the people who were the strong Christians of World War II, many of them were not orthodox at all.

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They may have had a good political position, or they may have tried to do good here or there, but they weren't actually fighting the good fight from a biblical basis.

13:29

So if we want to have success, if we want to see the Lordship of Christ esteemed, you mentioned we go to the

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Capitol. We'll be there in a couple of weeks, April 26. We go the beginning and the end of every legislative season. We pray.

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We sing Psalms. We ask God to rule over Idaho because we believe

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He is the head of the state. We believe that, and we want to see that happen, and we join with other churches in the state to do so.

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But if that's going to happen, we start with that worship as warfare concept. We start with esteeming the name of Christ.

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And so whatever we do, I don't want to paw down the zeal. I don't want to Jesus juke, if you will, and say, make sure to keep it about Christ.

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But at the same point, I want to encourage young men in this movement, if me saying, hey, we got to make sure we keep this about Christ, if that's offensive to you, you probably should be questioning your motivations about how we're pursuing this whole engagement.

14:24

So you just asked a pastor to ramble, so that's what I did. Hopefully that was clear and engaging.

14:31

I'm happy to engage with any of that that I said. But I really want to just reiterate to young men that we need your zeal.

14:39

We want your fire. I want to see strong men teaching their sons to be responsible, building up the next generation.

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It all starts in the household. If we get the household right, and we are forming strong Christian households, I have so much hope for the future of our nation.

14:56

But that starts with family worship. That starts with Christ, and that starts with Scripture.

15:03

And if we're not being good churchmen, at the end of the day, whatever political good we're seeking to do is going to fall apart, just like it did in Europe, just like it did in Germany, just like it did in France and England.

15:13

Even in the quote -unquote victor's side, they have all become very Christless nations. And I think that's because they allowed their cynicism and their pragmatism for political good to become their gospel.

15:25

And that's what I don't want to see happen to us, because I think we're in such a better spot than they were. And I want to see us maintain that.

15:33

Yeah, maybe flesh out what you're, because I don't even know myself, like what you're looking at that causes you to have these concerns.

15:41

Is it online interactions? Is it young men? It sounds like you're saying that, and you're saying also older men with cynical views, but are these people in your local church that you're looking at?

15:53

Like, how are you establishing the metrics that you're establishing here? Yeah, no, that's a good question.

15:59

I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, I engage with people obviously at the local level.

16:05

I have conversations with men in my church and men from other churches. But yeah, definitely a lot of it comes to what

16:11

I'm seeing online. I'm not a huge social media guy. I didn't even have an ex -account until,

16:17

I don't know, 14 months ago, something like that. And that was only because some of the men in my church asked me to be engaged and to be aware of what was going on.

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But what I'm seeing with a lot of the online engagement, I guess let me be clear on this.

16:34

There is so much distraction first and foremost. So just as a pastoral exhortation, probably the chief thing that I'm seeing that I think needs to be worthy of paying attention to is just that I think a lot of men are exchanging real life church community for sort of online church communities or chat group church communities, at least the calling them church communities.

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This isn't an assault on online social media. I think obviously you have a platform you're using right now.

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I don't have a problem with us using technology and using it regularly for the edification of the brother, for the advancement of the gospel.

17:14

Those are all good things. However, there is a tendency it seems right now, and I think this probably happens every generation, but there's a tendency right now to be so hyper online and so hyper engaged with all of the various doctrines and engagements that are happening.

17:31

So to be clear, there are a lot of strong leaders in sort of the nationalist movement, if you will, that I think are godly men who

17:40

I think are brothers who are fighting the good fight. A lot of the guys that are coming alongside following them, though, some of the stuff

17:47

I see is just pure vitriol. I mean, it's just arrogance. It's frustration.

17:54

It's a desire to see their nation changed, but it's also sort of a reviling of their fathers.

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And so while I'm going to wholeheartedly admit that my father's generation failed our nation in a lot of ways, and our grandfathers,

18:09

I do think, became cynical. I've talked to a lot of older men who I think could be a lot more gracious and charitable towards these young men.

18:18

I guess I'll put it that way, is that you talk to some of these older men and they're just kind of cynical. Hey, these young bucks don't know what they're talking about.

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And they just kind of shove them to the side rather than engage with them. And so I think we have a tendency to, when we run into someone who's very passionate about wanting to see our nation become

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Christian, wanting to see the Lordship of Christ extended, and wanting to see sort of the debauchery in our society put down, whether that be

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LGBT advancement or just the rampant immigration issues we've had, whatever those things may be, those are good fights to fight.

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It's all a matter of strategy. It's all a matter of prudence. It's all a matter of grace and charity and applying scripture to it.

19:01

So I think a lot of these guys are finding the right battles, finding the right problems, but there's a lot of voices that are vying, if you will, for how do we fight and how do we execute a strategy for victory?

19:13

So I hope that's helpful. Yeah. I think it's important to remember whenever you're looking at online, that's why

19:21

I asked if you saw this in your church, what you're referring to, that you are looking at a sliver. You're looking at a certain demographic of the population.

19:30

And I would be part of that because I am online and even that's part of my living is being online and paying attention and engaging.

19:38

And this is a unique though, I think, at least the people who are active, there's a lot of passive people who just watch what's happening.

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Maybe they're on X because they want to see news or something. Because X is a great source for breaking news.

19:52

It's better than any of the established media platforms at this point. But anyway,

19:57

I think there's guys though who are very active. And that's not everyone.

20:03

It's important to remember, there's a lot of people who are active in their local communities and with life, they don't have time to be hyper online like you're talking about.

20:14

So when you see it in your church, I think that becomes a more serious thing, if you will, or if you see it in real life on the ground, that kind of thing.

20:25

Yep. Yeah. And so to be clear, what I'm seeing is that a lot of these people that are online, it has more of an effect,

20:37

I guess, at the local level than you realize. I'll run into guys from other churches and they'll reference a podcast or they'll reference an idea or whatever it may be.

20:47

And I'm putting things together in my head because I've seen that conversation thread somewhere online, on Twitter or something.

20:54

And so for me, it's recognizing that at least within the Reformed world, we're sort of already a niche world to begin with.

21:02

Within the Reformed world, though, we do see, I think, greater influence there than I guess

21:08

I realized. And so I'm trying to strike balance with my men.

21:14

So I think there's been... Go ahead. Let me see if I can help people and you can tell me whether this resonates to put a little flesh on the bones and then we can kind of move on with what the right approach is and the current conditions that we have in the

21:29

United States. Sounds good. So I put out a tweet maybe three or four weeks ago now.

21:37

Yeah, it's funny. Time does fly, but it was about a month ago, I guess. And I said something about how the...

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And I was very specific. I chose my words carefully, but it still got misconstrued. But I said that the online, specifically the online

21:51

Reformed Christian nationalist movement was beginning kind of the end of the iteration that included a lot of broad support in that movement, in the

22:07

Reformed kind of online movement, if you will. And I outlined three different directions that I saw people fracturing alongside.

22:17

And a lot of this describes audiences. Audiences can pull, especially if you're someone who's not very grounded.

22:24

They can certainly pull platforms in their directions. There's no doubt about that. So anyway, I was looking mostly at audiences and seeing, okay, you got a lot of guys who want to go a very transgressive direction and I don't see them as very moored.

22:39

I think a lot of them think that they are accelerationists and they're getting us to a point where we're going to enter some kind of a white nationalism or white supremacy environment.

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This is inevitable. And people like me are in the way of that. But there's even a spectrum there with those guys.

22:57

But really the broad kind of category I put some of that in is, it's people who don't really wield power on any kind of an institutional level.

23:08

And they probably never will because they're just qualifying themselves at such low stages. But they think they do because they have an account.

23:18

It might even be anonymous, but they have an account. And sometimes you can get a following in this internet age on that for their ideas.

23:26

So anyway, they kind of think we memed our way into the White House, and now we're going to meme our way into whatever the final state is.

23:35

And I mean, some of them have some kooky ideas. Some of them may be a little more reasonable, but the bottom line is there's a transgressive element there.

23:41

Let's just, let's blow stuff up. And typically females, women,

23:50

Jewish people, boomers tend to get very vilified in those circles as the main problems that are inhibiting social progress.

24:00

And so much work could be said, but I You also have a direction of guys who are,

24:09

I would say a little more rooted, tapped into kind of a heritage and a theological outlook.

24:18

So they may be more confessional, not that people who are in the first category aren't confessional at all, but that's what lights them up.

24:28

That's what motivates them. That's what they're looking to do is to restore the heritage that we've lost, both in Christianity and in our country or region as it were.

24:38

I would put myself in that category. I'm very locked into an older conservative tradition.

24:45

And I think that if you study history, the long view, I think that that's probably the prudent thing to do.

24:54

You get, when you have deracinated people who don't have a lot of moorings, you're going to get ideology and you're going to get,

24:59

I think, as you rightly stated at the People who are want instant fixes.

25:05

Well, that's one of the kind of key components of ideology is believing that any solution that you have in your head must be imposed and kind of like, damn the consequences.

25:19

Right. And I do mean that not in a profane way. I mean that like, like in they like curse the consequences, like we don't care about what happens.

25:29

We will pursue this, this, this idea in our heads, whether it's utopian or just, it hasn't manifested itself, but that's what we're pursuing.

25:41

And it's easy to get there when it's, it's ideology at work and not rooted in experience and tradition and these kinds of things.

25:47

So anyway, there, there's kind of like a more heritage American Anglo Protestant kind of American bent,

25:55

I would say Christian bent. And then and then you have guys who are,

26:00

I forgot what the, actually I had a third category and I'm now totally forgetting what it was. So, I mean, you could break it down to those two, like the ideologues versus the heritage guys, but you know, now

26:11

I can't remember, maybe it's more a liberal direction. I don't know. Cause you definitely see that out there. And we've had, I think we've had this, this sort of fault choice of it's either go with liberals, modern liberals or neoliberal, even classical liberals, libertarian, all that whole thing, liberals, or, or you need to adopt some kind of like this hyper red pilled almost semi,

26:35

I don't know, rationalistic sometimes even elements of like a prior kind of Nazi -esque or fascistic type elements.

26:46

But, but this, that's like your alternative to liberalism. There's nothing else. And anyway,

26:51

I got some blowback for that. I got, there's, I think a lot of people were like, John's or I shouldn't say a lot, but there were definitely people who thought

26:59

John is going in a bad direction here. He's trying to, but the thing is like, I I've been saying this for a long time, you know, my prediction is totally true and it's coming more true every day.

27:10

I mean, you had a movement that had Al Mohler in it and Doug Wilson in it and they were calling themselves

27:16

Christian now. I mean, Al Mohler was calling himself a Christian nationalist. You even had like senators like Marjorie Taylor Greene saying

27:22

I'm a Christian nationalist, Lauren Bobard. And I mean, there, there was this kind of moment we had where the media was using that smear and it was, and the real question was, you want drag queen story hour or do you want

27:33

Christian nationalism? And I think a lot of people resonated with, oh yeah, Christian, we want Christian. We don't want that. And we're, we're downstream past that.

27:41

And as we have a return to normalcy, people want to inject their ideas into that.

27:47

They want to steer that return to normalcy towards their own vision. And there's competing visions. And a lot of people are unaware and don't realize that's what's happening.

27:55

But, but you have novel ideas. You have all kinds of different kind of players.

28:01

You, I mean, I mentioned to you, I think before we recorded, I was like, I noticed you got your post -mill guys.

28:06

You got your natural law guys. You got your, and that's just kind of the reformed evangelical camp.

28:11

But you have a kind of a guys who are fascinated with neo -Nazi race kind of science productionistic stuff.

28:21

You got your guys who are wanting to, to do the, like me who want to do like the heritage

28:26

American thing again, and focus on decentralization and federalism and small, small government and localism and regionalism and that kind of thing.

28:34

You got guys do, you know, I could just go down the line. There's all kinds of visions that want to steer whatever return to normalcy there is.

28:43

And there's bad guys in there. There's, there's good guys in there. And it's hard for people who haven't thought through these things, which is one of the reasons

28:49

I wrote my book against the way to try to engage some of these topics. You know, even like what the definition of what is a nation becomes such a big part of determining what direction are you going to go in?

29:01

So at the end of the day, we want obviously the Bible to be central. We want

29:06

I think, you know, speaking for you and me here and maybe we're not even in full agreement, but I think broadly speaking as just believers who are

29:14

Christians in the United States we should want a return to the things that made

29:19

America great in the first place. And, and that obviously includes a certain kind of Christianity, this

29:26

Anglo Protestant form of Christianity. It also includes the centuries of tradition that have given us

29:34

English laws and culture. And we want to preserve our language and we want to preserve our past times and even our cuisine.

29:40

I mean, all these things are what make us particularly unique and they do convey identity to people.

29:46

And that's what people desperately need is to understand who they are and they're looking for in all these places.

29:51

So so now that I've rambled, I'll pitch it back to you and see if you have a reaction or you're tracking with what

29:58

I'm saying. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the last thing you said, you really nailed it.

30:03

Having a connection to your culture, your heritage, you know, bringing it back to where this started with sort of the concept of comparing to Germany.

30:12

That was what made, you know, the Nazi uprising so formidable is that it was a, a nationalistic pride that revolved around what does it mean to be

30:24

German? Now, some of that was ideology. Some of that was a sort of a made up fantasy of what it meant to be

30:30

Germany. But I understand why that resonated from a defeated people, from a people that were honestly,

30:37

I think we abused as the rest of the West. I think we abused our, our victory after World War One with the

30:45

Treaty of Versailles. I think we imposed, I mean, just poverty upon a nation.

30:52

So I think we for a people that have been kicked and were down for them to actually be proud for a moment of, hey, this is our heritage.

31:00

This is who we are. I can see why then what happens is, you know, that movement doesn't start off radical, right?

31:08

That movement starts off in a lot of ways, just as a rebuilding of the economy, a rebuilding of, of, of, you know, the, the people.

31:15

And so we're seeing a lot of the same tendencies here. That doesn't mean that we're, we're going to have the same end game. And so I want to be charitable to even the guys that are more on that end of the spectrum.

31:26

I think there are guys who are flirting with those ideas, who are thinking about those ideas, who are genuine brothers that I want them to also know that, you know, if you're a member of my church, for example, and someone were to come up to me and start talking about these ideas,

31:40

I'm not going to put them in a church discipline. I'm not going to lecture them. I'm not going to kick them out. I'm going to sit down and talk through these things.

31:46

And we're going to work through this because that's what shepherds do. And so if I can speak to maybe other pastors that might hear this, if you have young men in your church that have been engaging with these ideas online, the panic mode of you shouldn't listen to that freak out can be very counterproductive.

32:06

I mean, that's kind of how cults think. You're not allowed to think about this. You're not allowed to listen to that. You're not allowed to read that. I don't want there to be anything forbidden,

32:13

I guess, to consider and read. Now, that doesn't mean I'm not going to warn. That doesn't mean I'm not going to say, hey, that's genuinely sinful where what they're talking about.

32:21

Absolutely. I mean, there are genuine bad actors that need to be called out. But I do think there's a tendency of sort of this panic reaction that's been happening that's not helpful.

32:34

But no, I really appreciate your push on talking about heritage. You know, that's sort of the thing that I'm seeing is, you know, monarchy is a perfectly fine form of government.

32:46

There's multiple governments, if you will, that are perfectly fine for a Christian nation.

32:52

I would push back about some of the socialist tendencies that I'm seeing from some of these groups. I don't see that as moored in biblical understanding of private possession.

33:02

And, you know, I see most social policies as being a form of theft. So I would push back there a little bit.

33:09

But in general, there are multiple types of governments that can be Christianized, if you will. Right.

33:14

Multiple. I mean, every nation, if God's going to make the nations his own, every nation is going to reflect that Christianity in a different way.

33:22

But what does it mean for us as Americans? For me as American, I'm not ready to give up the ship, so to speak.

33:28

I'm going to keep bailing water and I want to save what we have because I think what our forefathers built was powerful.

33:35

It's not just a proposition nation. It's not just an idea. It's not just this sort of, I don't know, crazy, crazy thing.

33:43

It was people. It was families. It was settlers. It was, you know, it wasn't immigrants.

33:48

It was a nation of conquerors and a nation of settlers. And so, you know, our forefathers were willing to sacrifice, especially for me out here in Idaho, when

33:59

I even just think about, you know, the people that forged the Oregon Trail and went west, like how insane that would be in modern context.

34:06

We've got guys that aren't willing to pick up a shovel for two minutes, let alone, you know, hop and put all their family and possessions on a wagon and head across, you know, the desert.

34:15

I don't know how much you've explored out here, but there's some barren wastelands that I couldn't imagine taking a four -wheeler over, let alone a horse and carriage.

34:24

So it's a wild thing that I think we have been so far removed from that we don't know what that means.

34:31

And so for me, that's what I want to recover. I mean, I, my son, my oldest son plays baseball.

34:37

I've coached him in baseball forever. I mean, sitting out in a farm field, listening to country music, playing, watching high school baseball in Southern Idaho.

34:46

For me, that's about as American as I can feel, right? It's sort of part of my heritage, you know?

34:52

And so I'm sitting out here, you know what I mean? Whatever we become as a nation, we can't be divorced from what we've been.

35:02

And so I really want to see a focus on that, is that we want to fight the good fight.

35:08

You know, we don't want to, um, I guess what I want to say is, is I want to see the zeal of some of these young men who want those immediate responses.

35:17

Um, I want to employ that and I want to encourage that. And I want to sharpen that because what

35:22

I think, uh, you know, I posted about this recently, I was talking to, you know, a guy in my church and we were talking about how, when you, when you learn new truth, actually it was, uh, we're reading maturity by Sinclair Ferguson as the men of our church right now.

35:35

And I'm, it was actually our conversation we were having around, uh, around the fire pit Sunday. Um, but we were talking about how you become cage stagy very easily.

35:44

And that a sign of maturity is being able to recognize when you're wielding a powerful truth, but you don't know how to wield it well yet.

35:51

Uh, and so we were talking about how, you know, like for many of us, you know, my, my other pastor, Luke, uh, my co -elder asked them,

35:58

Hey, what are some, some things that you've become cage stagy about? And most of the men were like, Oh man, do you have enough time?

36:03

Let me list it off. Right. And for most of us in our, in our world as reformed Baptist, you know, first, first things first was

36:09

Calvinism. And then it was, uh, you know, maybe post -millennialism or eschatology, uh, confessionalism, you can be cagey about that.

36:16

Uh, biblical patriarchy. I mean, you name all good things, um, but doing it well. So Christian nationalism is an extension of that.

36:23

And, you know, we would, uh, the majority of us men would refer to ourselves, I think as Christian nationalists over the past few years.

36:30

And so I'm not even a hundred percent against the label still. I think it may still serve a purpose, but what

36:37

I think we're seeing is sort of a fraction in a sectarian, uh, you know, response because we can't all agree on how to apply that idea idea well.

36:47

And I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that, Hey, here's this really powerful truth. We've, we're aware of the fact that we have sort of forfeited our nation to paganism.

36:57

Multiculturalism has done a number on our nation. Uh, I mean, you don't have to look very far to see, you know, giant monkey statues, if you go on social media right now.

37:06

So we recognize the fact that our sort of rampant paganism that we've allowed and secularism that we've allowed to invade our nation has had a negative effect.

37:15

But when you're aware of that truth and you have an answer, the answer is Christ Lordship. The answer is, uh, advancing biblically just laws.

37:23

The answer is actually enforcing Christianity as the norm in our culture. The question is how do

37:30

I wield that very sharp truth? Well, we need to master our martial ability to use that truth and apply it well.

37:37

Uh, and so I think that's really what the discussion is going forward is how do we talk to these men who are, who are genuinely desiring good things, right?

37:45

They want to wield the sword. Well, they want to cut down idols. They want to destroy the pagan demons that have run our nation and they want to see

37:56

Christ worshiped. Yes. And amen. How do you do that? Well, without wounding yourself with that sharp blade that you're wielding,

38:03

I think is really the question. Uh, cause I don't want these men who are to my right. I mean, I thought I've discovered in the past couple of years that I'm not as far, right.

38:11

As I thought I was, I felt like a radical and now I feel like, I don't know, a normie. But, uh, but I want to, uh, but I want to encourage these young men,

38:21

Hey, your, your passion, your zeal. We just need to hone that. We need to sharpen that. We need to train that and apply it well, uh, so that we can build this together.

38:30

Because I think even the, I guess the ideas themselves aren't what is harmful or what is inherently evil.

38:37

It's what you do with the ideas, noticing the problems, even talking about, I mean, you've done, I appreciate you deal with things like race and nations.

38:45

Those are untaught, you know, untouchable topics and a lot of Christian evangelical world. And you're trying to deal with it in a very practical and biblical manner.

38:53

And I appreciate that we can't just ignore the fact that we have natures, uh, you know, that we have ethnicity, that we have heritage, that we have these sorts of things.

39:03

And so the answer is not to just beat it down and say, you're not allowed to talk about those things. It's how do we talk about them in a way that scripture does?

39:11

How do we apply it biblically? And I think that the end game of all that is, is when I look at these guys, when

39:17

I talk to men in my church, when I talk to guys online, I just want to ask them, like, are you more joyful in Christ now after studying these ideas, engaging with these ideas and engaging with this community?

39:30

Are you bearing the fruit of the spirit more now? Or were you doing so before? Because what I find some of these guys, some of these guys are invigorated and they are, they have a level head.

39:40

They're, they're thinking through the ideas wisely. They're seeking counsel from elders and they're in a good spot.

39:46

But some of these guys I think are becoming bitter. They're becoming darkened. They're, uh, they're finding themselves so focused on the problem rather than the solution.

39:55

Uh, and what I mean by that is they look at the darkness of the world and they just want to cut it down, which is a good response, but they're not seeing the glory of the gospel in the midst of it.

40:07

And so I just want to encourage these young men that you, if you're not bearing the fruit of the spirit, if you're not increasing in peace and joy and hope, contentment, self -control, self -control is another huge thing.

40:17

A lot of these guys, the way they talk, it's like you're saying right things, but you're saying it in such crass and vulgar ways.

40:23

It's, I'm becoming a Christian, right? Like, so, so learning to grow in self -control and apply these things with wisdom.

40:30

That's what I want to see. And if that's happening, then grace and peace, keep up the good fight. We might be in different trenches fighting the same war and that's okay.

40:38

But if you're not exemplifying those fruit of the spirit, then that's when I'm, as a pastor, I'm, you know,

40:43

I'm worried that you're being embraced by an ideology rather than an application of the gospel in the real world.

40:51

Yeah, man, a lot of stuff there. A lot of, a lot of good things to ponder and chew on. Have you heard of horseshoe theory or like, you're familiar with that?

40:58

Heard that term? I don't think so. Tell me about it. So horseshoe theory without giving like a full explanation, it's, it's the idea that you get far right, you get far left and the two kind of meet.

41:12

They get close together, but there's very similar tendencies on the far left and the far right. And it's, I think, primarily a liberal way of looking at it because liberals have for a long time in our country assumed that they are the default position.

41:28

They assume the middle and anyone on either side is too imbalanced and has tendencies that are scary.

41:35

So I see a lot of guys use this. I mean, James Lindsay kind of, I think he appeals to horseshoe theory quite a bit.

41:43

But we are used to seeing these charts of political views along the lines of things like totalitarianism on one side and freedom on the other.

41:54

I think that's a very common politics. So that determines what right is and what left is, you know, or maybe you think of it in terms of you know, how

42:04

I guess keyed in, are you to your people and preserving, you know, your ways.

42:10

And that's, that actually hasn't gained as much traction, but that's another way of looking at politics. I'll tell you the way that I look at it.

42:16

And I think this, I can generally speak for the kind of Anglo American conservative tradition on this and say that this is the conservative way that we traditionally look at things up until very recently.

42:30

The way to look at a political spectrum, I think is on the one side, you have order that conforms to the godly or the created order that we have been handed down.

42:44

So we have a duty or an obligation to conform ourselves to things like I'm a man.

42:49

So that means something in society. I'm the protector. It means that I'm responsible for providing for my family.

42:56

It means that I have a duty when a foreign invader comes to go defend against my land. My wife doesn't have these obligations.

43:02

I have these obligations though, at least primarily as a man. And we can go down the line with the different roles that people play in society based upon a divine order that we assume exists, right?

43:16

So that is the conservative position. Now, of course, this order is mediated through tradition. It is applied in a particular context, but the extent to which we are doing things right and achieving our vision is the extent to which our arrangements are reflecting the order of heaven.

43:34

And so you can have different, you can have monarchies in this. You can have democratic mechanisms, republican forms of government.

43:43

And there's different ways of looking at this or different ways of, I would say, depending on the condition of things, having a governing structure.

43:53

But at the end of the day, that's the telos. That's the whole purpose, right? And then on the other end, you have man's innovations.

44:01

You have ideas of how a society should be arranged that do not conform to that natural order or that godly order.

44:10

And so those are the things that would be in error and things that conservatives oppose.

44:18

So to this, frankly, what ends up sometimes being a very fragile arrangement that has organically formed over time between peoples.

44:29

Things like, I mentioned this example the other day, but in certain places in Europe, I don't know if you saw this when you were there, there's ancient understandings where you have things like grazing lands that families have honored for centuries and they've never imposed their own private ownership on them and they actually take care of them because they realize the good of the local region depends on these local grazing lands remaining public.

44:54

And so for some reason, the tragedy of the commons doesn't apply there.

45:00

Why is that? Well, it's because of this. It's a fragile arrangement in the sense that if you came in with ideology and just smashed it all and said, we're going to do complete private property here because of the tragedy of the commons.

45:15

And so you would be disrupting their entire way of life. And these things have taken time as trust is built, as marriages have happened, as people have lived together, as threats have been repelled, as people have engaged in the marketplace, that we've developed, they've developed this arrangement, which is actually pretty good for them.

45:38

Anyway, all that to say, I don't think, and this is one of the misnomers,

45:43

I don't actually think, I'm assuming you're talking about racial determinists or genetic determinists and I don't know who else, but people who have more of a fascination with Nazis and stuff.

45:59

I don't see those people as to my right at all. You know what I mean? Bavarian German Catholics were to the right of Hitler.

46:08

Richard Weaver wrote about Southerners in the United States during World War II and how opposed to fascism Southerners were.

46:13

They were to the right. I mean, if you ever see fascism, even rising in the

46:19

United States, it wasn't in the South. And this was something that was noted at the time.

46:24

Even the rallies and stuff. Where is it? It's places like New York. It's places like Chicago. It's in these areas where you see more of that.

46:33

I think the more traditional minded people are going to conserve local arrangements more and they don't like one size fits all solutions for things.

46:45

They don't like ideology. They like their particular habits and their flavor of Christianity.

46:52

They want that with the pews and the hymns and whatever that looks like, the steeples. They want those things.

47:00

And that's one of the things I think that I've noticed. And this is broader than the church.

47:05

But I've noticed that we are in trouble as a society on because we had thousands of statues taken down in a very short period of time.

47:16

We have had our history absolutely assaulted. And that is an assault on our identity as a people.

47:21

And the pushback against that is a nothing burger. And the fascination, though, people have with sometimes even foreign elements, foreign inspiration and so forth.

47:33

That's a little bonkers to me. I'm not saying you can't learn from other places. I even I wrote down,

47:39

I don't know if we'll get to it, but I wrote down a bunch of the parallels between Weimar and us as we were talking, just in case

47:44

I wanted to talk about it. There are parallels and so forth. But one of the things that even as we learn those lessons is the inspiration we gain, even fascists understand this.

47:56

They don't look outside their own country unless it's like to the wellspring of Western civilization, like the

48:02

Romans or Greeks, like they look to their own country for inspiration themselves even.

48:08

And that's a very natural tendency. And if we lose that tendency, if we've been so deracinated that nothing really like we see

48:16

George Washington and feel nothing, we don't really care that much about restoring what's been lost, then in a sense we have lost.

48:25

We have lost who we are and we're just open to anyone's innovation. So anyway,

48:31

I've been talking a while, but that is one of the things I focused on that I've been concerned about shoring up is why

48:38

I did the 1607 project. I mean, I'm like, let's, we can learn lessons.

48:43

And I'm more than happy. I mean, I've had grad level studies on World War II and the Holocaust, and I have very firm views on some of these things.

48:51

But I would really love to expend whatever limited efforts we have on getting back to what we've lost in America.

49:00

Because if we, it takes one generation to permanently lose some of these things. And it's very hard sometimes to get back.

49:08

You know, you got to drill, you got to find out who your family, study your family history, study your local region, start drilling into that now for your children.

49:16

Because if they grew up without it, they won't have it. And once they have it, there is no society for them to belong to because you don't care, your neighbors don't really matter.

49:28

It's all about like ideological alignment and that's not going to get us through the future. We're going to have to have virtuous leaders who are tested on a local level and shared loves with the people around us for us to weather what's coming.

49:43

Ideology is not the glue that we'll do. And this is the experiment of the 20th century. And I don't care what idea, communism, like it doesn't, even fascists recognized there has to be the shared kind of like fatherland type of thing.

49:59

But they ran roughshod over so many local and religious traditions that they ended up, they ended up creating their own problems with deracination.

50:10

You know, that's what happened in World War II. I mean, you probably saw this when you were in Germany, like they had been so stripped already in the

50:18

Weimar and, you know, post Kaiser, really, they've been so stripped of any kind of heritage, identity, especially religion.

50:26

And after Germany fell, I mean, it was, they were open. It was over.

50:31

Like it was just, and you look at Germans today and it's the saddest thing to me. They have been so disconnected from their past.

50:37

So ashamed of their past that it's like, there's nothing, they don't think there's anything that they should put efforts into preserving.

50:45

Right. And that's what I don't want to see America do is like, oh, there's nothing really of value. No, there is, there is.

50:51

And if you're a Christian, you would recognize that there's a whole lot of value in our heritage.

50:59

So I have other things written down here that I, but I want you to yeah, feel we, well, we only had like 10 minutes left, so I'll let you.

51:08

Yeah. Well, I'll bounce, bounce back on that just since you brought up Germany again. One thing that struck me,

51:16

I lived in Northwest Germany when I was there, right on the border of Holland. So it was very much like farmland, you know, the, the windmill area of Germany.

51:25

And, but I was very close to code to Cologne, sort of South of Dusseldorf there. And if you've ever seen the cathedral in Cologne, it's one of the most beautiful Catholic cathedrals,

51:35

I think on the planet, it took hundreds of years to build. That was a people who were invested in the future that new generationally, they had to count the cost to build that giant, beautiful cathedral in the middle, the middle of the city.

51:49

And when you ride the train, you cross the bridge across the Rhine river and you come into Cologne, the entire train station as a glass roof.

51:57

And the train station is in the shadow of the cathedral. You pull in and you look out that roof and you see this massive monument to the church.

52:06

Now we can talk about whether or not the Catholic church should have been wasting money on, on all of the gaudy things that are inside of it, but nevertheless, beautiful structure and beautiful reflection of beauty is something that's sort of lost in modern

52:18

Christendom. I'm, I mean, I'm a good Baptist and all, but I'd love to have a beautiful building one day. We meet at the

52:24

American legion. So we're very, very small scale right now. But, but what struck me is if you want to start with the history of the

52:30

German people, I mean, that cathedral was built, you know, over hundreds of years. And recently in the last,

52:37

I don't know, 50 years when I was there, they had at some point in the late 20th century been doing restoration and they were on the cathedral and restoring it.

52:47

And they found underground just next to where the cathedral is a facade of an old

52:53

Roman temple. So there is actually, if you go to Cologne today, there is a

52:59

Roman history museum they built on top of that site right next to the cathedral. So within a hundred yards space, you have this massive

53:06

Gothic cathedral, Catholicism, you know, before the reformation.

53:12

And then right next to it, a building that inside houses all sorts of old

53:18

Roman empire era artifacts that you can go look at. And then just across the platform on the other side, you have this modern all glass, beautiful, you know, train station.

53:29

That to an American is mind blowing, right? You've got thousands of years of history just in a hundred square foot space.

53:38

It's crazy. We don't recognize that. So what's tragic for me, when I think about Germany is that their entire history is being defined by a few year period of time.

53:50

And they, as a result, lost their identity. I agree with that. The only time you ever see German flags is during the world cup.

53:58

There's no such thing as patriotism really in that nation, let alone nationalism. And so I think that's a shame because there's plenty of great

54:06

German heritage things that have done a net good for the West.

54:13

And so as we seek to recover our American identity, we need to be careful that we don't completely destroy the things that made

54:21

America great in the first place. I think it's a good summation of what we're talking about here is that I want to see a restoration of, you know, pre -civil war

54:31

America, right? I want to go back to when they talked about, I know,

54:38

I know a lot of people talk about trying to like, you know, restore classical conservatism.

54:43

It's like, they want to go back to like maybe 1945. And it's like, okay, no, no, no, no. Like, let's go back to, you know, maybe 1812, right?

54:49

But then you don't even have Idaho. I mean, no, I know. Right. No, no.

54:55

But what I mean, as far as like the way we think, the way that we're structured, I think there is a benefit there.

55:00

And again, that's a whole other conversation, but I'm with you that I would love to see stronger states rights, stronger state identity that I'd like to see, you know, a small federal government, but I still,

55:13

I love our Republic. I love what we are built upon. I think we've done a lot of damage through iteration and amendments and sort of the way that we structure the

55:23

Senate, for example, over the years, there's plenty of things that we can work on fixing rather than radically destroying and rebuilding.

55:30

And I think the potential loss of a radical rebuild is much greater than, than being willing to be in the trenches and fight.

55:40

And so it was sort of a final rallying cry, you know, you mentioned deracination and sort of the biodeterminism genetics, all that stuff.

55:49

Yeah, those are real ideas we have to engage with. We can't just pretend that, that those things don't exist.

55:56

But it's not the end all be all when you make it the answer to every problem, you know, that you're being sucked into something that is an ideology.

56:04

If we pretend that, you know, genetics don't affect anything, or if we don't, don't believe in, in, you know, certain certain things that are obviously true, you know, the world just tells us that then we're going to have trouble.

56:17

But as you engage with those topics, they have to come under submission to the word of God. And so if I'm engaging with those ideas,

56:24

I want to submit them to Christ, I want to submit them to his word. And I want to rightly apply them in the world. I mean, there's, there's plenty of wisdom that we can think about with regards to how nations and ethnicities interact.

56:34

There's plenty of wisdom and ideas that we can engage with there that I think are good, and biblical and healthy.

56:39

But when we make it the end all be all that we think it'll just solve all the world's problems. That's when you have an issue, because we still have sin at the end of the day.

56:48

You know, even if we were restored back to our original infancy as a nation, and everything was perfect.

56:54

Well, we got here somehow, how do we get here, we got here through sin. So even if we restored everything back to what we think were the glory days, we can still end up right back where we're at now, if we're not willing to submit ourselves to Christ.

57:06

And so at the end of the day, we need strong pastors that are willing, I really appreciated what a pastor said recently, an event

57:12

I was at, he was asked the question, should pastors be political? Pastor Danny actually asked him that. He said, should pastors be political?

57:19

And he sat there, and he looked right at us, and he said, Christos Kyrios, Christ is Lord is a political statement.

57:26

And so you can't help but be political if you apply the gospel. You're going to apply the gospel in the civil sphere at some level, whenever you ascend to the

57:35

Lordship of Christ. And so we have all the fire power in the world we need to take the nation back for Christ, to take our states back for Christ.

57:44

And if I can echo to something you said, sort of as a closing thought then, I think localism is where it's at.

57:51

We have so much ability at the local level that we don't on the national level. And how do you affect the nation at the grandest stage,

57:59

I think is by affecting at the lowest stage. And so my exhortation is men, rule your household well, lead your family well, love your wife, love your children, lead them in family worship, have lots of kids, take them to church, be churchmen, be churchmen.

58:14

Exactly, be normal. And then on top of that, be engaged in the local civil sphere.

58:21

We have a group of men here that are getting engaged in the Republican party, because we recognize that if you go to a county meeting or a district meeting, it's a bunch of old people and women.

58:33

And so our opportunity for engagement to come in and actually have a voice and make shape some change here at the local level is massive, massive.

58:43

And so if more people would actually just engage in the system that we already have, rather than wanting to burn it to the ground, man, we could make a huge impact.

58:51

I mean, you can literally just go to a meeting and actually say, hey, we should ban this, or we should do this, or we should do that.

58:59

And then people talk, this crazy thing that happens. But instead, I think a lot of people just kind of sit on the sidelines, happy to rant online about their opinions.

59:08

And it's like, okay, go do something, right? Don't just be a hearer of the word, but be a doer of the word. And I think if we're faithful,

59:15

John, I hope that we'll see an America that resembles much more an America than it did in the past.

59:21

I want my children's children to have the joy of being able to walk around the city without fear.

59:27

I mean, I rode my bike all over the place when I was a kid, that was in the 80s and 90s. That wasn't that long ago, right?

59:33

I want our children to be able to enjoy America, enjoy a society that has common ethics, common heritage, common religion.

59:43

And I think that it just takes faithful men saying, hey, you're fighting the good fight. You see the right problems.

59:50

Let's work on finding common solutions. And that solution ultimately has to be in grounding ourselves in the scriptural and historic

59:57

Christianity that has shaped our nation. I mean, you mentioned the South and whatnot. I've got a book on Puritans and Dabney right next to each other over here.

01:00:06

So - Look, they both settled there. Exactly. So 1607

01:00:12

Project can be applied here too. If you ever read, if you haven't read it, you need to.

01:00:17

The Turner thesis or the frontier thesis really helps,

01:00:23

I think, explain what America is. So someone, a pastor recently asked me, hey, we need like an

01:00:30

American Lord of the Rings, like our own mythology. And I'm like, what do you think the Western is? What is the

01:00:36

Western? That's exactly, what is the cowboy? Cowboy is an archetype that was passed down from the knight, the cavalier.

01:00:42

And that's where you see different regions of the country coming together to accomplish this task of settling out

01:00:48

West and getting rid of threats and these kinds of things. And there's obviously terrible things that happened in that.

01:00:56

There's victories. There's all kinds of, I mean, there's a reason there were so many stories that came out of this experience.

01:01:03

And that's the kind of America that I think we are losing that. People are kind of black pilling on that.

01:01:12

There was actually a movie that came out last year, Kevin Costner did called Horizon. And it was, I don't think

01:01:18

Kevin Costner's conservative, but I think that he does understand kind of what that America was.

01:01:24

And he's trying to tap back into that shared experience to bring it to a broader audience, to remind people of who we are.

01:01:32

And it didn't do so well at the box office. It just, people aren't that interested. They'd rather watch

01:01:38

Yellowstone with all its vulgarity and dysfunctional. I mean, that's a subversive show in my opinion.

01:01:46

And I haven't even watched, I think I got like 10 minutes through the first episode and turned it off, but you know, it's,

01:01:52

I am familiar somewhat with the plot, but that's what people, that's what people in America think of their own country.

01:01:59

And so anyway, I was just going to say as a sort of a final charge here, a lot of guys come to me with, you would say,

01:02:06

I want to change the world and I'm going to start a podcast. I don't know how many times I think that, like, I want to change the world.

01:02:12

I'm going to start a podcast. And I've encouraged people. I don't think it's wrong to start a podcast. We're talking on a podcast, but I think that you do need a lot more people involved at the local level.

01:02:25

That's where the real power is. That's where you're going to be able to restore monuments and do all the things that we've, all the things we've lost.

01:02:31

That's where you can restore them. A podcast has a benefit, but it is, if we all just talk to each other and do podcasts and none of us actually goes and changes policy and wields power, real institutional power, we're in trouble.

01:02:45

You know, I, I view what the podcast does is more of a cheerleader kind of thing. Like I'm, we're encouraging people.

01:02:51

We're trying to spot and one of the problems I've thought of this for well over a year now, it's been something that I have been concerned with.

01:03:00

I realized, you know, 2019 to 2021, especially

01:03:05

I was really exposing these tradition or these legacy evangelical institutions. And my hope was the entire time, my hope was there's some good guys in them and, or there's alternatives that exist that are going to take power when these institutions meet their demise, they'll either other institutions will replace them or they'll be purified with the exposure.

01:03:28

And it was always the intention. And what's happened is a lot of these institutions, they just doubled down and there really wasn't an alternative.

01:03:37

And that scares me. That scares me to death in ways that I think a lot of people don't understand.

01:03:42

Like this means nature abhors a vacuum. If you rip down the institutions that everyone trusts and there's no one left, there's no one that they trust, then that's the opportunity for bad, genuinely bad actors to enter that space and to say, follow me.

01:03:59

I'm not like that. And they can manipulate. They can, you need people that have virtue and trust and have been tested and all of that.

01:04:08

And institutions were supposed to do this, but they, they, they have failed. And so we're left in a very volatile situation now.

01:04:16

And I would encourage young guys who are setting out, be a virtuous man, starts, put

01:04:21

Gates in your own life, put Gates on your home, have self -control, the cardinal virtues, okay. Bravery, sobriety, self -control, justice, have these things, go out and prove yourself in your community, in your church.

01:04:34

Let, let it happen more organically. Now that doesn't mean that there aren't times when God puts you at the right place, right time.

01:04:39

And a social media thing happens. Are you, I get that. But for most of us, that's what it's going to look like.

01:04:45

That's the door you have to walk through. And I think that ideology, the nature of modernity is to take the shortcut, to reduce everything down to one thing, to not have to do the thinking, not have to do the reading.

01:04:57

You can maybe get nerdy about one little thread and you know that one area, but, but, but the prudent man is a generalist as much as possible.

01:05:08

And they can see the patterns. They understand how to apply scripture to different situations. And one of the things

01:05:14

I see happening with some guys who are going down this path of more ideological stuff is they, they, they reduce everything, but they can't actually escape the very things they complain about, right?

01:05:25

They actually don't escape the post -war consensus because they just make their identity, the mirror image of it.

01:05:31

They just reverse heroes and villains, right? Or they can't escape economic forces that try to brand and sell you things that are going to be the quick fix.

01:05:41

That's what we've all grown up in this. Like the commercials that say, this is going to change it. Like they just do it on a political level.

01:05:46

Like this is the thing that's going to, it's like your nation, your country, your region, it's always going to be the character of its people, no matter what form of government will always be the people.

01:05:57

And if you're like, like, let's take porn is just one closing example here. Like I I'd love to see that band.

01:06:03

You'd love to see that band. We actually have some momentum in some States now with trying to get it restricted for children, which I'm all for.

01:06:09

I'm, I'm a fine with being a gradualist on that, I guess like, all right, let's do it. And let's now let's go to the next one of them.

01:06:16

Hey, if it's bad for kids, who else is it bad for? Oh yeah. Everyone. But anyway, that's happening.

01:06:22

And you know, here's the difference I'm talking about. You can go online and you can complain all day that this is, this is

01:06:29

Jews. This is Jewish people who have been, uh, they're, they're, oh, they're have, uh, you know, in group preference for themselves.

01:06:35

They're high achievers and they've been involved in this industry and okay. Yeah. They're, I mean, they do a bad above their, their class and things like Hollywood and that industry and other influential industries.

01:06:48

However, I looked this up the other day. I don't know if there's one top major pornographic company that is actually has a

01:06:56

CEO that's Jewish. None of them are that I looked up. I looked up like, go ahead.

01:07:02

It's yeah. It's an Austrian guy. I think, uh, I saw,

01:07:08

I saw a podcast clip the other day and that the, this guy who runs, I don't know, mind geek or some giant conglomerate, it's an

01:07:14

Austrian dude, right? Yeah. And most, but they're not, when I looked at,

01:07:20

I looked it up the other day and it was like of the five big ones, none of them were had the CEO that was Jewish.

01:07:25

Most, but I see a lot of guys even now online sharing over and over. I think it was porn hub had a

01:07:31

CEO who was supposedly a rabbi. He wasn't, he just had, he just had seminary training. He wasn't an actual rabbi, but this, this, and he's not even the

01:07:40

CEO anymore. This gets, this is still going around and it's proof that it's all Jewish.

01:07:45

And I'm like, look, I read a whole book on the history of, of that particular industry.

01:07:50

And yeah, there's a lot of Jewish people who were very involved in this, but you got to also look at who's consuming this, who's actually producing these things.

01:08:01

Who's like with the people around you in Idaho, the people around me, it's not

01:08:07

Jewish people that are making, you know, exclusively, I'll put it that way. It's not, you could take

01:08:12

Jewish people out of the equation. You're still going to have a problem with this issue. That's the point. There's a lot of problems like that out there.

01:08:19

You could take whatever the thing you're concerned about, you know, take, we're going to stop feminism or we're going to stop

01:08:25

DEI. These are, these are good things by the way to do. It's not going to solve all the problems though, because the problems have developed over a period of time.

01:08:33

They're complex and their history is converging forces. There's all kinds of things that are reinforcing themselves to bring us to the situation that we're in.

01:08:43

So it's like a, a ball of yarn you have to unravel. You do have to start somewhere, but you need to start in the most prudent place, the most immediate place.

01:08:52

And what I'm seeing right now is people want to jump to things that they can't control and they can't do much about.

01:08:58

And they want to make that the crusade. And it's like, guys, if you get involved in the, yeah, you don't want to fall prey to escape scapegoatism.

01:09:06

Yeah. You don't want to make like the one thing, the only thing. And, but, but you know, these communities, especially in regions where you've had a monument taken down, or you've had, you know, your public school is doing the transgender stuff or your library's doing the drag queen story hour or like, that's the first order of business.

01:09:25

If Planned Parenthood still running in your community, what's the first order of business, right? Like, that's what

01:09:31

I'm saying. We gotta, we have to prioritize. Here are the threats in my neighborhood. I'm a young man.

01:09:37

I have zeal. I have energy. I love Christ. I'm going to go be faithful and little so that he will make me faithful and much.

01:09:45

And if you, if you do spot threats that are beyond your level or the scale at which you operate now, trust him that he'll put you in those places to deal with them in the future.

01:09:56

You know, if you're a young man, you can't do much about the border. You could give your two cents. You can vote.

01:10:02

You can do something about where you live though. You can do something about your town. And that's kind of my charge.

01:10:08

And also for pastors, you can go to your city council. You can go to your city council, sir.

01:10:13

Yeah. And for pastors, when you got young guys showing up and we have several guys who have come through our church or who are still attending our church who have, you know, very alt -right backgrounds, you know,

01:10:25

Richard Spencer fan, people, people who are going down these transgressive paths more.

01:10:31

And, and I I'm blessed to go to a church that they weren't shut down.

01:10:37

These are conversations that have happened in private. I know I've had many of them and, and they're honest and, you know, we try to be as careful as we can on a public level, but also on a private level, uh, be as, um, charitable and, uh, gracious and, and also, uh, honest as we can be.

01:10:59

And, and that's, I think what you're encouraging and people need to hear that pastors need to hear that. Don't freak out that you have,

01:11:04

I'll just pick one example, uh, from my own church. Don't freak out when a young man comes to you as happened to me not too long ago and start saying, you know what?

01:11:12

We need to bring segregation back. And Andrew Tate is right about women. Okay. Is it the actual things that came out of the mouth of someone who's a zoomer?

01:11:20

I didn't freak out at all. Uh, so there's no reason to freak out about that. You know, exactly why they're going like, they're looking for the answers where they're looking for them.

01:11:29

And people are going to clip that and be like, John's church is what my church is the most, this, this church has so, so many people who are from different backgrounds.

01:11:40

I mean, we have a Spanish translation going on. It is a very unique situation we're in. And, uh,

01:11:46

I think, you know, if the numbers grow that we may have to have a separate Spanish church or something, but, but, but we have people from all over the world going to my church.

01:11:54

So this, this young man, uh, he, he knows that, you know, but he's just, he felt like he was in a position where he could finally in private start to say, these are what

01:12:02

I, these are the thoughts I'm really having. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about the history of, uh, of segregation in this.

01:12:08

I don't have any problem talking to someone about that, you know, and why things were, they were the way they were, why there were conditions the way they were.

01:12:15

I just actually read a book on a plane from like 1918. That was just the history of lynching and segregation.

01:12:22

And like, so, yeah, I mean, I, I, I read some of this stuff. I get it. Um, I know why young guys start thinking that, uh, that, that we need that, that, uh, our, our world has gone awry and it's because of like this one thing or this one historical moment where things went off the drills.

01:12:40

But the important thing I think for a pastor in those moments, other than not freaking out is then to route whatever zeal in, in, you know, obviously shine the light of truth on that, right?

01:12:51

You know, you don't want that stuff disrupting your congregation. So you need to shine the light, help them apply it, apply it the right way.

01:12:59

Yeah. So what, what, what's the base concern here? Andrew Tate is right about women. What's Andrew Tate right about, well, men are different than women.

01:13:05

And when, okay, yeah, he's right about that. Guess what? Andrew Tate is right about that. Or, you know, look, look at all the, the, the crime statistics.

01:13:12

You have this small number of people doing the majority of the crime. All right, let's talk about that, right?

01:13:17

Those are definitely things that pastors should be addressing, but the point is to route that guy into how can you be used in the fight, the political fight, the spiritual fight, how, what can you do at the scale

01:13:30

God puts you in? Because God's providence is what's running the show and all the trials that we're engaged in.

01:13:35

He promised something. He said, he'd make us stronger in that. He said that those would bring about maturity in us.

01:13:42

So if, if your conditions, and most of the time, this is the case, if your conditions in your life are terrible and you're looking, you want to blame, it's this social thing.

01:13:50

What, what does the Lord see? Why did he put you here and what does he expect you to do? And then the vision is you're going to be an overcomer in this.

01:13:58

We're more than conquerors through Christ. We're going to overcome these challenges and, uh, you know, we're going to do it in the smartest, most prudent, wise, godly way.

01:14:08

And we're going to make sure our honor is intact as we deal with this. And we're not going to be stupid about it and, uh, you know, get unnecessarily, um, clipped and, you know, as much as we can, you can't always help these things, but we're not going to give ammunition for free to our enemies either.

01:14:24

We're going to be, we're going to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. And that's how we're going to tackle these issues. That's it.

01:14:30

That's what a pastor does. So last word, Gabe. Yeah, I appreciate that brother.

01:14:38

That's very encouraging. And, and yeah, at the end of the day, I think we have to recognize that there is no sin that should not be confronted.

01:14:44

And so where there is unique sin to a particular group or a particular person, we should be able to address that openly and say, look, this is what the word of God has to say about that.

01:14:54

Uh, so a hundred percent, we need to be encouraging young men. We need to recognize that if you are looking at statistics, you're looking at things, these are real world things that we have to engage with.

01:15:04

We need to apply the word of God to them, uh, not hide behind pietistic slogans, not ignore them.

01:15:10

Right. Uh, so I appreciate that. I mean, our church is only about 14 households. We're a small church. And the funny thing is, is we've been called white nationalists by some groups.

01:15:18

We've been accused of all sorts of things. And I have probably one of the most diverse churches I've ever pastored.

01:15:24

It's it's, and not by pursuing it. Like I, I fought against CRT before, you know, it was the thing

01:15:32

I actually had, uh, had people in Idaho saying, why are you even talking about this? It's not a thing here. Uh, you know, six years ago, seven years ago.

01:15:39

Uh, and ironically, now I pastor a church where I've got a family from Brazil. I've got a guy whose wife is, you know,

01:15:45

Slovakian or like, like, it's just, I don't know what happened, but here we are. Right. Uh, and, and what it is is we preach the word of God and people come.

01:15:55

Right. And so at the end of the day, I'm going to minister to the person in front of me. They're my closest neighbor at the moment, other than my own family.

01:16:02

And those are the people that God has providentially brought for me to care for. And I'm going to do my best to shepherd them uniquely through these trials.

01:16:08

And, and I don't think it's by accident that I have people from international communities.

01:16:14

My church, when we're talking about things like immigration and nationalism, it's been a blessing to be able to work through those ideas to be able to say that we should have strong immigration laws.

01:16:24

We should have strong, you know, uh, national identity, and we can still talk about how to rightly apply immigration in the future.

01:16:32

That's a whole different topic, but BS, I concur with you. We need to rally around these young men.

01:16:38

We need to give them the Christian charge to now take their zeal and employ it for the, for the kingdom of God. Uh, and at the end of the day, like no topic should be off topic or, or, you know, forbidden for a pastor.

01:16:50

If you're struggling with the sin, young man, if you're struggling, struggling with any particular ideology or trying to understand something, young woman, right?

01:16:58

You should be able to go to your pastor and say, this is what I'm thinking through help. The fact that we've created a, a managerial class on one side, but also sort of this expert class on the other.

01:17:09

And somehow pastors don't, you know, don't operate in our God -given capacity anymore. We are called to be shepherds, shepherds lead, and are also willing to drive off the wolves with that same stick that they lead with.

01:17:21

And so we recognize that we are called to humbly guide people knowing that we ourselves are sinners as well.

01:17:27

So at the end of the day, um, I have hope in all of this. I'm not going to black pill on any of this.

01:17:32

Um, I'm going to recognize that there are truths that we need to keep, you know, coming to, we need to keep growing in our understanding.

01:17:39

We need to rightly wield those sharp truths well. Uh, and we need to work together and have unity. My, my brothers in Christ that are, you know, maybe focusing on the race or the

01:17:48

Jew component more than I think is healthy. I'm still going to call them brothers and say, Hey brothers, let's work through this.

01:17:54

Let's walk through this. Let's talk through this. Let's rightly fight this battle together. Be careful. You don't go over here, but I'm not going to completely ostracize them.

01:18:02

Like a lot of people are want to do, and we need to work together in that. And I also am going to try to show that same charity to people that are more maybe in the traditional evangelical side of things is

01:18:11

I want to strengthen them. I want to call them like, Hey, guys, you believe the scripture is true. Fight, apply it.

01:18:17

Let's go. Uh, don't, don't back down. You don't have to be a coward. You need to have a spine. We need more pastors willing to fight the good fight.

01:18:25

And I believe that the problems we're seeing emerging would go away within a generation. If we have faithful fathers leading

01:18:31

Christian homes and faithful pastors willing to actually rebuke sin and lovingly shepherd people through these ideas, man,

01:18:38

I have hope that my grandchildren, when they're worshiping alongside us in our church, you know, some, some generation down the road, uh, that we're going to be sitting in an

01:18:46

Idaho that is even more Christ honoring, because we have a lot of sin. We still need to repent of, even in this deep red state, there's a lot of things we need to set.

01:18:54

Right. And, uh, immigration wise, it's a mess. I mean, we, we literally pass immigration laws and then we have

01:19:01

Republicans passing laws to try to keep the illegals so they can work on the dairy farms. Like it's just, it's cognitive dissonance everywhere in Idaho.

01:19:08

Uh, the LDS church works against Christian initiatives. It's just weird. Uh, but I have nothing but hope for the future because many of these men who people are concerned about are also some of the hardest working men.

01:19:21

They're family men. They're not just the basement dwellers that I think a lot of people make them out to be. And so they just need godly brothers to come alongside them, sharpen them, extend a hand of fellowship and say, don't go down this path of darkness.

01:19:33

Keep fighting the good fight. Don't lose sight of the prize. Christ is King. And when we do that, honestly,

01:19:39

John, I I'm, I'm excited to, to see what will come from it because I believe that the Lord is sovereign over all things and that we were born into a time such as this.

01:19:46

Many of us long, I think for like part of us as men wish we grew up in the wild west, right?

01:19:52

Part of me wished I grew up in the frontier days and that I could actually have that experience that shaped, you know, my forefathers.

01:19:58

But I recognize that God called us to be born into this day for this purpose, for this time so that we might set the ship right.

01:20:06

All it takes is a small change of that rudder to ship, to guide the ship into, into the new dawn.

01:20:12

And so that's what I hope we can be part of is, is let's, let's use our tongue well. That's, that's an example

01:20:18

James uses. Let's use our tongues wisely. Let's be, be sharp, but guarded and let's change that rudder and go in the right direction and keep fighting for the, for the identity of our nation.

01:20:30

Keep fighting for America and keep fighting for the future generations. I want my neighbors to be loved well, and I want them to be cared for.

01:20:36

And I want to see policies enacted today that are going to provide for my future, you know, progeny, but also my neighbors for generations to come.

01:20:44

So I appreciate you, brother. Keep up the good fight. And I look forward to continuing to, to minister alongside brothers that are willing to take the word of God and apply it to things like race, nation, politics.

01:20:58

The word of God is sovereign over all these things. We just need to rightly apply it. Well, I'll see you,

01:21:03

I think, October at some point. I don't know. I don't think Danny sent me the actual link yet, but I know that I'm supposed to be going out there and Stephen Wolf's supposed to be going out there and we're doing a conference or something.

01:21:13

So when we have more information, I guess we'll share, but it's, it's great to talk to you again.

01:21:19

And yeah, God bless people who want to see more. They can go to Stone Mountain Baptist Church online, stonemountainchurch .com,

01:21:28

or check out the It's Time for Truth podcast, which is also goes through TruthScript on YouTube, and that's co -hosted with Danny Steinmeier.