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Hello there, this is A .D. Robles, and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. All right, I've got my fresca, get my John MacArthur on, and I'm ready to go. I was going to do a video about Gospel Coalition, and I was going to hopefully make it entertaining, but also, you know, an attempt at a kill shot there for the Gospel Coalition, but I'm not ready for it yet.
I'm a little bit too heated, you might say. And I want to say something crazy, so I wanted to do something that would be easier on my blood pressure, so let's get back to this Atlantic article. Now, the next part of this article is actually where you start to see the mask slip a little bit.
I think I said last week or last time that that was the best part of the article. He tries to make it seem like he's, you know, he's, well, you know, conservatives and liberals have this problem, but the mask starts to slip in the very next section.
You can really see that this is an all-out assault on conservative Christianity, and in particular, white conservative Christianity. And the thing is, they would consider me a white conservative. They consider, you know, black men that agree with a lot of what I say.
They're also white evangelicals. You know, for them, it's more about the ideology because they're always laser-focused on ideology. And it's okay, they have no problem attaching a skin color to it because they have a deep hatred towards white people.
But you can see, we're going to go into this, I'm not going to interrupt this part of the article too much, but it's an assault on Christian morality. And it's an assault on the idea of an objective morality.
You'll see that in a minute. But let's jump into it. I'm going to make one comment really quick at the beginning, and then I'm going to try to read a bunch of it. So let's go into that. It goes on to say, the former president normalized a form of discourse that made the once shocking seem routine.
Russell Moore laments the pugilism of the Trump era in which anything short of cruelty is seen as weakness. I still don't know what pugilism means, and I don't really care that much. But this is just such a preposterous lie, and there's a lot of lies in the next few paragraphs, but obviously, that's not the case at all.
What's happened here, Russ Moore, is that weakness is now finally being identified as weakness. The weakness that you and your buddies teach is being identified as weakness. It's not that anything short of cruelty is weakness.
It's just that weakness is weakness. We're starting to define our terms a lot better than we used to. And the reality is that Trump did so many merciful things. He made peace in many, many places where people were unable to make peace in the past.
He makes it seem like anything Trump did was cruelty. This is just such an obvious lie. I'm not even going to go into it. It's just so obvious that there are many, many examples of mercy and gentleness and peacemaking that Trump was involved in.
Not that many as there should have been, because the thing is, every president of the United States is just a complete warlord these days. Let's just continue. I'm going to read a little bit of this, but I want you to be thinking about what this is revealing about this.
This is an assault on conservative Christianity, Bible-believing Christianity. Let's read. The problem facing the evangelical church, then, is not just that it has failed to inculcate adherence with its values.
It's that when it has succeeded in doing so, those values have not always been biblical. But, of course, Trump did not appear ex nihilo. Kristin Kobes Dumez, a history professor at Calvin University and the author of Jesus and John Wayne, How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, argues that Trump represents the fulfillment rather than the betrayal of many white evangelicals' most deeply held values.
Her thesis is that American evangelicals have worked for decades to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism. She defines Christian nationalism as the belief that America is God's chosen nation and must be defended as such, which she says is a powerful predictor of attitudes toward non-Christians and on the issues such as immigration, race, and guns.
Immigration, race, and guns. Dumez told me, It's important to recognize that this rugged warrior Jesus is not the only Jesus many evangelicals encounter in their faith community. There's also the Jesus is my friend, popular in many devotionals, for example.
These representations might appear to be contradictory, she told me, but in practice, they can be mutually reinforcing. Jesus is a friend, protector, and savior, but according to one's own understanding of what needs to be protected and saved, not necessarily according to core biblical teachings.
Evangelicals are quick to label their values, biblical, Dumez told me, but how they interpret the scriptures, which part they decide to emphasize, and which parts they decide to ignore, all of this is informed by their historical and cultural circumstances.
That's not simply true of this one community, she added, but of all people of faith. More than most other Christians, however, conservative evangelicals insist that they are rejecting cultural influences.
She said, when in fact their faith is profoundly shaped by cultural and political values, by their racial identity, and their Christian nationalism. So you can see what's happening here, right? So she's still trying to play, well, yeah, it affects other cultures, but especially those white people, those are the ones that think that they have everything together, and nobody else thinks they have it all together, but they're the ones that reject the idea that there maybe could be multiple interpretations and stuff like that.
And of course, they're the ones that are wrong. They have the wrong opinion on guns, immigration, homosexuality, race, all that kind of stuff. You see the thrust, right? You're starting to see the thrust here.
There's definite partiality here, and it's also trying to present this perspective of, oh, you know, depending on where you're standing, it could mean anything. It's just so preposterous. It reminds me of that famous thing where it's like the monks are trying to explain what God is like, and one is feeling the trunk of the elephant, the other's feeling the butt of the elephant, and it's like, well, but it's really, what you see, you're only getting a small perspective, and I can see what God is really like, that Dumez knows everything.
She knows what the Bible really says, but you white evangelicals, you just start just saying white racist stuff, essentially, is the point. Now, let's continue, because the assault on conservative biblical values and morality is not yet complete.
She goes on, gender plays a role here as well. According to Dumez, over the past half century, evangelicals have tended to depict men and women as opposites. They believe God ordained men to be protectors and filled them with testosterone for this purpose.
Women, on the other hand, are seen as nurturers. The fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control, are deemed appropriate feminine virtues. Men, however, are to exhibit boldness, courage, even ruthlessness in order to fulfill their God-appointed role, Dumez explained.
In this way, the warrior spirit and a kinder, gentle Christianity go hand in hand. Do you know anybody that says the fruit of the Spirit are not for men? Do you know anybody that teaches that? That's one of these lies, right?
But you could see the thrust here. It's trying to put forward that masculinity, the way it actually is, is actually wrong. It's actually evil. It actually, you know, deforms Christianity somehow. Nobody teaches that the fruit of the Spirit is not for men.
That's insane. But there are some of us that recognize that the fruit of the Spirit is beautiful, it's for every man, but at the same time, a man does need to be able to get medieval if it's necessary.
Jesus is perfectly humble, perfectly loving, perfectly joyful, perfectly peaceful, patient, kind, and all of that, and he's going to destroy every enemy. Every enemy will be put under his feet. He's going to fill the nations with corpses, fill them with dead bodies.
And that's what Jesus is going to do when he comes back, and yet, he's perfectly loving, joyful, patient. We have to follow the actual full example of Jesus Christ. That's not about culture. That's about reading the Bible and accepting when it says that Jesus was meek.
He also dropped the hammer when necessary. We can kind of keep both of those together in our minds. You know, we're able to do that. We're able to do that, and we're able to follow his example to our best ability.
Let's continue, but you see, it's an assault. It's an assault on conservative Christianity. It's an assault on masculinity. It's an assault. Everything progressive, that's the good stuff. The white evangelical conservatives, that's the bad stuff.
You got to watch out for that. Otherwise, you're making an idol of, well, whatever's bad. That's what you're making an idol of. Dumez pointed out that even men who embrace a kinder, gentler version of masculinity, servant leadership, for example, may tip into a more rugged, ruthless version when they deem the situation sufficiently dire.
And for more than half a century, she said, evangelical leaders have found reason to deem the situation sufficiently dire. They rally their congregations against the threats of communism, secular humanism, feminism, gay rights, radical Islam, Democrats in the White House, demographic decline, critical race theory, and in defense of religious liberty.
So you see what's happened here is, first of all, you're not even allowed to get aggressive ever, according to Dumez, which I don't know why you would take your orders from a woman teaching at a seminary, but if you choose to do that, that's on you.
But according to her, you're not allowed to get aggressive no matter what, and all of these reasons are not good reasons to get all uppity. Communism, secular humanism, feminism, gay rights, radical Islam, critical race theory, these are not good reasons to sort of get brutal when it's necessary.
Nope, nope, nope, not threats. Christianity would never do such thing. You can see that the idea here is lay down, Christians, just lay down. That's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to lay down and just let it happen.
Obviously, if you take your advice on how to be a Christian from Dumez, you're a mental patient. You're insane. You're absolutely insane. Evangelical militancy is often depicted as a response to fear, she told me.
But it's important to recognize that in many cases, evangelical leaders actively stoked fear in the hearts of their followers in order to consolidate their own power and advance their own interests. I actually don't disagree with that.
Dumez is somewhat more sympathetic towards ordinary evangelicals than she is towards powerful evangelicals. She acknowledges that many evangelicals have genuinely sought to follow God's will. They were directed to believe what they do by pastors, Bible study leaders, Christian publishers, and Christian radio and television programming.
Many have sought certainty in troubled times. Turbulent times, she said. But they know that challenging these narratives may well involve the loss of meaningful communities. Fear has played a central role in the explosion of conflict within American evangelical churches.
Dwelling on fear and outrage is spiritually deforming. Cheri, Cheri, Cheri, Cheri, a lot of women here are making these points. This is very interesting. Cheri Harder, president of the Trinity Forum, told me, Both biblical wisdom and a large body of research holds that fear and grace or fear and gratitude are incompatible.
She quoted from one of the New Testament epistles, perfect love drives out fear. This is obviously not correct. Yeah, this is obviously not correct. So the reality is this, that if you fear God, it's going to motivate you towards standing up to every lofty opinion raised up against the knowledge of God, right?
You're going to get into conflict. You're going to be at the abortion clinics. You're going to be refusing to do things that are ungodly or unwise or anything like that. And that always is going to leave you open to the accusation of fear.
Oh, you're just a homophobe. Oh, you're just living in fear. Oh, wait, wait, you think that Christians should prepare for situations that might not be that good in the future? What do you say? Christians should own a gun?
What, are you just living in fear? The thing is, though, that the Bible talks about the prudent man. The prudent man can see trouble coming and he hides himself from it. He protects himself from it. The fool, the idiot, the moron is the one who sees the trouble coming ahead and doesn't do anything about it, right?
Doesn't prepare, doesn't get ready for it, and they suffer the penalty for that. That's what the Bible says, the prudent man versus the stupid idiot man, right? But it always leaves you open to this criticism here.
Oh, you're just living in fear. You own a gun. You're living in fear. Oh, you're saving money. You're living in fear. Oh, you're prepping. You're saving some food. You're living in fear. Don't pay any attention to it.
Don't pay any attention to it. They can always say that, and it might be true in your case, and so maybe you should consider that, but it might not be. And so this is just the kind of thing progressives like to say, but the reality is, when you fear God, it drives you into actions that the progressives aren't going to like, and they're going to say, you're a homophobe, you're a bigot, you're this or that, xenophobe.
That's their whole arsenal. And what's funny is, when you think about their arsenal, all the weapons that they have at their disposal, they're nothing. They're not that bad. It's just absolutely ridiculous how effective these tools have been on the church, but when you really think about it, they got nothing.
Once you don't care about their stupid claims, xenophobe, whatever, what are they going to do? What are they going to do? It's over at that point. I think a lot of people are waking up to this. There are moments, of course, when fear is an appropriate and necessary response, but there are risks when it becomes a constant presence.
Fear and anger should presumably function as alarm systems. An alarm is not supposed to stay perpetually on, Harder said. It is not the onset of fear or anger that is the most dangerous, but stoking it and cultivating it and dwelling within it that distorts and deforms.
And then there is a regional component to the crisis of evangelical Christianity. Claude Alexander, the senior pastor of the Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, told me, we must come to terms with the southernization of the church.
That sounds really scary. The southernization of the church. Some of the distinctive cultural forms present in the American South, masculinity, male dominance, tribal loyalties, obedience and intolerance, even the ideology of white supremacism, have spread to other parts of the country, he said.
These cultural attitudes are hardly shared by every southerner or dominant throughout the South, but they do exist and they do need to be named. Southern culture has a profound impact upon religion, Alexander told me, particularly evangelical religion.
So you see, this is stoking. The very fear that they're talking about, how when you just dwell in it and you're just stoking the fire constantly, it deforms your faith. That's what they do in the very next paragraph.
You got to watch out for those southerners. This has been going on for a century. Those southerners, the southern church, they're the ones, they're the ones having the influence. It's white supremacy.
Have you ever met a white supremacist? No, you've never met a white supremacist. But the Atlantic wants to stoke that fear. Those white supremacists, they're spreading everywhere. They're in New Hampshire, too.
There's a lot of white supremacists in New Hampshire. And then there's, oh, and they're spreading intolerance. You think our big problem here in the United States is intolerance? No, no, you probably never met an intolerant person, but yeah, that's the thing, the southerners, they're spreading that intolerance.
And male dominance, woo, that's some scary stuff. You got to watch out for that. You got to be careful. And they're stoking the fear. This whole article is stoking this fear, because what it's trying to do, if you remember how it started, it took the McLean Bible Church controversy, which is a real legitimate controversy, and now it's injecting all of this stuff into it.
And what it's trying to say is when there's controversy in your church, because we're about to get to the transition here, where it starts to talk about the local pastors, which is the most putrid part of this article, where it talks about the pastors that are just, oh, this is controversy, I'm going to quit, I'm going to quit.
And so what it's trying to do, though, it's trying to say the reason for this controversy, it's nothing that you progressives did, no, no, no, no. You guys are right. Your cause is good and righteous.
You're just looking for racial equity and women, rights for women, and tolerance. That's all you're asking for is all that good stuff. But those Southerners, they're getting into your church. It's not just in the South.
So you could be up in Washington, and this is happening in your church, and it's white supremacists, and they're intolerant, and they're male-dominant tribal loyalties. So this whole article, it's like, it's an exercise in projection.
It's like, this is what's happening. They're stoking the fear, and it deforms your faith, all while the article is saying this is happening in your church. It's those white supremacists in your church.
If anyone objects to you teaching crazy things about racism and white supremacy, well, they're the white supremacists. That's what's happening. And so you see, it stokes that fear. It stokes that fear, and it's unbelievable that they don't see this.
But that's what this article is doing. Let's finish this last section, and then we will move on. The conservative writer David French—conservative—who lives in Tennessee has written about the South's shame-honor culture and its focus on group reputation and identity.
"'What we're watching right now, in much of our nation's Christian politics,' he wrote, is an explosion not of godly Christian passion, but rather of ancient Southern shame and honor rage.'". It doesn't matter that we have an arsenal of Bible verses that refute all of your points.
It doesn't matter that we know from the Scriptures that we're not supposed to engage in partial hiring practices and things like that. No, no, that doesn't matter. It's really just the Southern shame-rage-honor—shame-honor-rage.
That's what it is. The big brain, David French, knows what it really is. I know you say you have theology, but you don't. It's just because you're a bigot, is basically the entire message of this article.
It's unbelievable, but that's really where they're at. This is just a big, long way of saying, you're a bunch of racists. That's all they have. The simple among them just say, you're a racist white supremacist bigot.
The big brains among them write a thousand words, all saying the same thing. You're a white supremacist bigot. If you want to just shorthand this article, here's what it's saying. The bigots are coming, the white supremacists are in your church, and you better be afraid.
That's the point. Anyway, I hope you found this podcast helpful. God bless. Don't forget to tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network.
