The American Churchman: Advice for the New Christian Right

Welcome to the American Churchmen podcast. Once again, we are a podcast that aims at encouraging men to fulfill their

God -given responsibilities and conquer in the realms that God has given them in this world for Christ.

So I appreciate everyone being with me as always. My co -host Matthew Pearson is with us tonight. And we also have a special guest.

We have Pastor Danny Steinmeier on the podcast. You might know Pastor Steinmeier from seeing him on Conversations That Matter or he's been featured on the

TruthScript website. He's one of the board members. He's written some articles. So welcome, Pastor Steinmeier.

It's good to have you. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. So we have a lot to talk about today. We're gonna jump into it here.

Welcome, by the way, everyone who came from Conversations That Matter. I just ended the podcast a few minutes ago and I can tell people are already filling up.

So as promised, we are gonna talk about what I said we would talk about, the new Christian rights. But before we get there, we wanna talk about the attributes of God and here to lead us off with that,

Matthew, what do we got today? Excellent. Well, thank you, John, as always, for throwing this whole little program together.

But yes, I do know that we have a lot to talk about. So this one may be a little bit shorter, maybe not.

I'm not sure. It depends on where we go with this. But as always, for the most part,

I either use Bob Inker Moeller today. I just, I threw something together using Moeller.

So guys, you should be reading Richard Moeller, but if you don't feel like reading him on the divine attributes, you can come get my watered down version here.

But today we will be discussing God's attribute of wisdom, or we could call it divine wisdom.

So just to start us off, I'm gonna be reading just three verses from Romans chapter 16.

So it'll be Romans 16, verses 25 through 27, where the apostle Paul writes, "'Now to him who is able to strengthen you "'according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, "'according to the revelation of the mystery "'that was kept secret for long ages, "'but has now been disclosed "'and through the prophetic writings "'has been made known to all nations, "'according to the command of the eternal

God, "'to bring about the obedience of faith, "'to the only wise God be glory forevermore "'through

Jesus Christ, amen.'" Now that was a lot of verses, but the key thing I wanted us to notice there is in verse 27, where it says, "'To the only wise

God be glory forever.'" So as I stated, we will be talking a little bit about divine wisdom.

So essentially, and again, as I stated, this is a lot of, this is pulled from Richard Muller, great resource on many things.

But according to Muller, the way that he talks about God's wisdom is he basically says that God's wisdom can be defined as the correspondence of God's thought with the highest good of all things.

So I'm gonna say it again. God's wisdom can be defined as the correspondence of God's thought with the highest good of all things.

So there's two sorts of little things that we see there. We see this idea of God's thought or God's knowledge of things, but also you see the highest good of all things.

So there's a correspondence between knowledge and some particular end in mind, the highest end, the highest good,

God. Because God is himself the highest good towards which all things tend, his wisdom can thus be defined as this correspondence of God's thought with his essence as it is considered the highest good.

Because when we speak about the divine attributes, all that is in God is God, something I've said many times and will continue to say.

Basically his wisdom is this knowledge which orders towards himself, his own essence.

So when we speak about divine wisdom, as I just stated, there's like a statement of knowledge there.

And this talk of knowledge, if you're a consistent American churchman, listener or watcher, you may think, hey, we just covered in the divine attributes, we just talked about omniscience,

God's knowledge of all, God's immediate knowledge of all things. And that's because even though God's wisdom can be distinguished from his omniscience, both of these attributes, they still concern his knowledge.

So God's knowledge according to omniscience can be thought of as a more theoretical knowledge. It simply is an immediate knowledge of all things that God possesses.

While his knowledge according to wisdom can be conceived of as more of a practical knowledge because it is inherently ordered towards something.

And something that I sort of thought of when I was looking into this briefly is that wisdom itself as an attribute is inherently teleological.

That's from the word telos, which is end. It is inherently ordered towards something.

So because this, and the reason why we can say that wisdom is practical is because this wisdom itself is defined according to his end, namely that end being participation in God.

Wisdom is us. And when we just think of wisdom in general, like apart from God being wisdom itself, when we just think of wisdom in general, wisdom would just be a knowledge of first principles and the conclusions which may be drawn from them.

Thus the wisdom of God would be, as was stated earlier, the correspondence of this knowledge of God according to his essence.

So that was a lot of big things that I said, but I'd say that the big thing that I want us to take away when thinking about the wisdom of God is that this is an ordered knowledge.

This is a knowledge which is ordered towards, it corresponds with the highest good. Now, what is the highest good?

The highest good is God. So when we think of someone who is wise, who is able to be wise and know things, knowledge is not wisdom.

You can have the smartest person in the world. You can have someone who just nerds out on theology or any other subject, but they're stupid.

They don't actually live a virtuous life. They don't know how to behave well. They're not even pious or truly loving

God. So wisdom would be using this knowledge and ordering it to the highest good. So God as wisdom would essentially be his knowledge in correspondence with his own essence as the highest good.

So that's how we would speak of God's wisdom. Good, Pastor Steinmeier, you have anything to say regarding any of that?

I think there's something good there that you said towards the end that it's not the one -to -one with knowledge.

Certainly it's hard to be wise without knowledge. So sometimes knowledge and wisdom can sometimes be used interchangeably.

But the point that you're making there is that of course you can have a lot of knowledge, but if you deny

God, you're a fool, right? That's what the scripture speaks of it. And so if you're not really corresponding to the way in which

God has ordered the world, you might know a lot of things, but it's out of order and it doesn't have the proper end.

And so you are truly a fool because you're outside of God's wisdom, the starting place of knowing him and of understanding and acknowledging him in all things.

So I think that's an interesting part. That's very true. Very smart people can be very foolish and unwise.

Yes. I was curious about someone who does something that's, so like wise on a basic level, like they not just smart, but they, well, maybe this, you would categorize this as smart.

I don't know, but I'm thinking of someone who has like practical life advice for marriage or how to navigate, you know, the coming of age or something like that.

And sometimes older men who aren't Christians will say some seemingly wise things that might just be part of the nature that God's given us and experience that they've had.

So how does, like, where do we put that? How do we categorize that? Yeah, I would say that people that are unregenerate can have true wisdom.

I mean, many in the Christian faith have taken from people who were themselves not Christian.

Think of like appropriate, think of classical appropriations of Plato or Aristotle, or even if we want to talk about presuppositionalism, think about their interactions with Immanuel Kant and wrestling through his philosophical implications in order to build a system of presuppositional thought.

Throughout the history of the church, people have always wrestled with the wisdom of those who are not in Christ.

And so there's a sense in which there are certain things which are a good and insofar as they're good and you're ordered towards that good, there's a participation in God, yet it is not a participation which is ordered, which is actually like good in the sight of God in that it's seen as something which is righteous and which is thus seen as fruitful for their salvation.

But, you know, you think of this instance of like someone who's not a Christian who saves a woman from like a building that's on fire.

We can say that what he did was good in the eyes of God, his action was not good in that it doesn't orient him towards eternal life, but it is still a earthly good that God sees as good, it's simply not a good which is sufficient to be pleasing in the eyes of the

Lord. That's kind of how I would think about it. Would you say it's oriented towards God's design then in a temporal world?

So like if someone who's an engineer figures out a really efficient way to organize a parking lot, like he's working in God's, with God's tools, mathematics, he's acknowledging the order

God has put into the world and then he's doing something that's good for people.

Like we would all say, oh, it's great that we have a parking lot and a mall or a store that doesn't cave in.

Like I wouldn't wanna go in there if it did. So, you know, is that wisdom, but it's not, it like terminates though at the level of,

I guess, the temporal world so that if it was a Christian, hopefully engineer doing that, they would then be able to also worship

God in doing this. It's natural wisdom. It wouldn't be a supernatural wisdom, which God would look at and be pleased with.

That's what I would say. And that's why we need the Holy Spirit to regenerate us so that all that we do is to the glory of God.

Well, in the ultimate sense, I think is where you kind of get to that element of the fool. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?

You can have a success with knowledge in God's world that he's made. Insofar as you are able to function and order your life in the way in which things truly are, genuine science and for instance, and just remember too,

Solomon and his wisdom, what did his wisdom actually look like? It was knowledge of plants and animals and humanity and what a mother's desire and heart is for her child to know, if I suggest we split the baby,

I'll figure out who the real mom is, right? That was the whole point. So he understood humanity and understood femininity and motherhood in those types of things.

But he also had a sense of who God is, right? Understanding and writing the Proverbs.

So the person that makes that parking lot, John, they are able to be successful and apply knowledge to the real world that God has made.

But in so far as he doesn't know God, ultimately he is a fool in the ultimate sense in that the end of things is simply a parking lot and the damnation of his soul.

Well, he probably thinks that the math arrived by chance or something crazy. Yeah, yeah. But insofar as he functions in the world that God has made in common grace and different things like that, that you have things that demonstrate the wisdom of God actually in a world that's broken and fallen where he restrains and provides even knowledge in ways that to even fools.

Yeah, yeah. Well, Bill, this has been good. I haven't thought of wisdom in those terms,

Matthew, but I think that's a good way to frame it. And the phrase comes to mind, you hear it all the time.

It's often abused, but all truth is God's truth. But I mean, that actually is true. Like all truth is God's truth.

So many times when people say that though, they're talking about something false and they're trying to attribute it. They're saying, yeah, this false thing.

All truth is God's truth. Muslims and Christians worship the same God. All truth is God's truth. Yeah, we can turn to psychology.

All truth is God's truth. That's usually the play. Yeah. All right, well, having said that,

I don't see any questions in the chat about that particular section. We can move on to the article and let me see if I can pull it up.

I actually think I have it here, but did you both read it? I know you read it, Pastor Steinmeier.

Did you read it, Matthew? I did, yes, I read it. Okay, all right. So it's on the

TrueScript website. I think it's actually the featured article right now, but I'll put it up here.

So here we go. It says six cautions for the new Christian right.

And so I wrote this. I'm not gonna read the whole thing to you. People can go to the website if they wanna read it, but I basically start out by saying

I am in largely, not even largely, I'm in agreement with, broadly speaking, with the new

Christian right. I guess I would see myself as part of it. There are these areas that I think we should pay attention to.

And I give six of them, though. Do not repay evil for evil. Do not center your life around new

Christian right leaders. Honor the gray -headed. Beware of ideology. Let scripture guide you and avoid ecumenicism.

Or, yeah, I guess I should have put ecumenicalism. I don't know if that's - No, ecumenism's a real word. That works.

I know it is, but it, well, okay. So someone actually, they corrected me and said that I used the wrong word there, but I don't know.

We're gonna go with it since the editors thought it was fine. So maybe we start with that.

But maybe we start before the first point here, just on these three paragraphs, where I describe what the new

Christian right is and affirm my general positivity towards them.

I'd like to hear, if possible, from you, Pastor Steinmeier, first, since you read this. What, like, what did you think of that?

Did you agree with my definition of the new Christian right that, like, this is a broad movement of, well,

I should probably, maybe on this one I should read what I actually wrote. So I said, the new Christian right is primarily composed of younger

American Protestants interested in overcoming liberal ideology or restoring Christian order to their lives, churches, and society.

The movement is broad in that it encompasses different flavors and visions for how life ought to be arranged.

It includes general equity theonomists, paleo -conservatives, self -described Christian nationalists, traditional Baptists, and others.

And then I basically say they're not fascists, even though they keep being called that. So did you agree with that definition or would you add anything to that?

Yeah, I do agree with it. I think that's a good definition. I like one of my, I've got some of these young guys in my church as well, and we had a little back and forth.

One of them suggested the new movement of Christians reclaiming the old right. I, it doesn't roll off the tongue, the new

Christian right. Yeah, that catches. Everyone's gonna remember that. No, but the idea of it's, I think we have to be careful of the new part, just typically.

Because I think the big idea of the new Christian right is the discovery of old paths. And that's actually been a huge element of my own ministry.

I've said this from the very beginning, because as you know, John, we're a church plant, we're about six years old.

And, but we've not been wanting to invent anything new. We've been wanting to be,

I've been saying, chart walking old paths. And so that's really what we wanna be about.

It's really trying to return to conservative ideas, but it's not just the conservatism that is conserving the last 10 years.

But it's actually trying to go backwards further and understand a little bit more of where the last 10 years have failed us in conservatism and to really look back further.

And I think you've really described it really well of looking back to older writings, some things that were trying to win the last era, the postmodern era and other political fights that some of them lost.

Guys like Pat Buchanan, former presidential candidate and things like that. So, but I thought it was well said and well defined and it is broad.

And I think that's one of the challenges and it hasn't landed in some regards. So, but overall

I thought it was good. Yeah, there's a lot of guys that wanna pigeonhole it into something. Right. And I was actually just critiquing a

Kevin DeYoung speech at a conference last weekend where he quotes Stephen Wolfe and then proceeds to argue for something that Stephen Wolfe himself repudiates.

And he broad brushes this whole movement. And these younger guys, they want to use the church, he said, for the purpose of Christianizing the country or the state.

And so the church becomes a means to an end and that's what everyone's doing, which Stephen Wolfe himself doesn't even agree with.

And I just thought, well, there might be some guys that do think that, but it's a broad movement.

You can't just pick one or two guys or even reach back into, well, this seems like it's reconstruction from the 70s.

I'm just gonna pick that and say that that's what this is. It's not. And that makes it hard to define.

I looked at the paper when I was writing it and I thought, what do I even put here? And I think that captures it.

That is what it is, but it's in the process of defining itself, even as we speak.

Different figures are coming to new conclusions or not old conclusions, but they're newly coming to them and their platforms are getting bigger.

And so it's changing the movement as we speak. So Matthew, did you have any thoughts about any of that being the

Zoomer who, I don't even know where you would put yourself in all of that. Like where I'd label myself among people on the new

Christian right? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the millennials hated labels. Zoomers hate labels. I mean,

I don't really care much about them. I'm not opposed to it, but I guess, I mean, given my political theology and where I would just align on the political spectrum, what my ideology is,

I only said that to annoy you. No, I guess I would be on the new Christian right, sure.

I mean, yeah, you gave a good description of it in that first paragraph. A lot of those people definitely are a part of the movement.

And yeah, I really like what the one young fella at Pastor Steinmeier's church, how he defined it as kind of like,

I don't remember the exact words, but it's almost like an appropriation, like a reappropriation of the old right.

Because at the end of the day, that's mostly what it is. Because where we are now, it's like the default is this sort of like a very wimpy conservatism that doesn't actually seek to conserve like anything like traditional moral values or what historically the

United States was. I mean, even like the progressives, like historically in the

United States, like I'm thinking like 19th, 20th century progressives, even they are far more conservative than conservatives nowadays.

So I think that's mainly what it is. And because of that, we would call it new, like as new

Christian right, because it's like, it's a reappropriation. It's like a revivification of that, which is in our history.

It's not like we're coming up with these things out of nowhere. There are certain elements of which are, I guess you could say are reactionary, like based off the circumstances we're in, but it's all just old principles.

It's, you know how there's old time religion. This is just old time political thinking. It sort of is something like that.

But no, I thought that your opening paragraph was succinct to the point and accurate. Yeah, okay, cool.

Well, let's get to the first point then. It says, or I wrote that we should not repay evil for evil.

And you know, there's a lot of hurt feelings and there's a lot of mistrust and I don't,

I guess disagreement too. I mean, it's a whole soup of different things, but I've seen legacy ministries and I'll be blunt.

None of you guys have to say what I'm about to say unless you want to, but I think that frankly, Doug Wilson, James White, those two especially recently have been kind of unfair to some of the guys in Ogden, to Joel Webben.

I know some of my listeners probably don't want to hear that, but as I've looked at, to the best of my ability,

I've looked at the back and forth and I've talked to some of these guys behind the scenes. I just,

I think that it's, there's been a lot of mistrust zone that in my opinion was unnecessary.

I don't want to see those things, but there's an attempt to stamp out,

I think the new Christian rights. And I don't think it's just represented by Stephen Wolfe or just represented by Ogden or Joel Webben or American reformer.

I think it's probably in flux and there's gonna be names that will be more prominent, perhaps we've never heard of, that will come into being even in the next year or two.

But it's, there is a, if you want, I guess I'll call it gatekeeping.

There is this attempt to kind of gatekeep these guys. So I don't know if you, you don't have to agree with me, but I'm curious, especially

Pastor Steinmeier, what you think of some of this. We've talked about some of this and it's not something

I like talking about necessarily, but people do want direction on it and they're confused.

And so I think they need some wisdom right now to talk about the attribute of God we were just referencing.

Well, you stole my thunder on this. I mean, I appreciate that you named those names.

And that's actually what I, exactly what I would say. Doug Wilson and James White, this is part of the disappointment is that these would be leaders that you would hope to be.

And in some ways have been on the right wing of conservative evangelicalism.

They have been, as even Doug's system and explanation, I thought the Ogden guys did a fantastic job, even just demonstrating the self own that Doug has had here with his three, one, two, three, and four system, where now

Doug is acting like a three punching right against the fours and acting as that gatekeeper. And I think it's lacking in real self -awareness of he is doing to his disciples and those people who have benefited from him, who have learned from him, what those who he benefited from and learned from as well had did to him, the embargo.

All the ways that Canon Press, for instance, is not part of the publishing groups accepted at respectable conferences and so forth.

And now he's one that's now laying down embargoes. If you do this, you're not welcome here. If Moscow's closed to you,

I'm withdrawing from your stage and you won't be invited to my stage. And that's, you're exactly right.

It's an effort to stamp out this all because, well, not because you guys necessarily are the problem, but you are now the problem because you're not policing

Anons in comment sections, as opposed to, guys, get over the comment section, maybe don't even read them.

And you're chasing ghosts, but now you're gonna lay this at the feet. And by the way, this is what people accused

Doug of for a long time. Hey, Doug, maybe you might be okay, you might mean things, but your rhetoric is radicalizing these other guys.

And he wouldn't own that. And now he's gonna punish these guys for quote unquote, not owning the people that they are, the

Anons that are taking their side or whatever else. I look, I think there's probably some imperfection.

I think you acknowledge that some lack of wisdom from some of those younger guys and some of the guys on the new right, but the way that, and James White, I think has been horrible in this entire thing.

And I think just at the moment, look, there's a vibe shift. Wokeness is dying.

Companies are canceling DEI and stuff like that. Trump is coming in.

There's a new, even interest in God, in religion.

I think post -modernism having died and given way to wokeism.

Wokeism now being bankrupt and being shown to be fraudulent. Woken, wokeism is very sure of itself, but it's sure of things that aren't so.

And that's been made clear. Now what's happening is there's an opportunity for truth.

There's an opportunity for foundations and people are hungry for the Lord and for foundations.

And I think the evangelicals, the reformed evangelicals are poised to gag away an opportunity because they're gonna fight each other and gatekeep those who are actually,

I think, ready to lead us in the best way of older conservatism. So before we get to you,

Matthew, I gotta ask you this, and I'm gonna set it up with this comment that just came in from Cam Beck. Danny, that is not an accurate representation of Doug Wilson's position.

He never said he wouldn't talk with them, just that there are certain partnerships that are closed off from them as long as they entertain certain ideologies.

And so I guess the question that I have in conglomeration with that is, aren't there movements or people that you do want to gatekeep?

Every movement has to actually have a gate somewhere. And obviously to the left, conservative organizations, especially supposed conservative organizations have let that gate open so wide they get infiltrated.

I don't buy, this is a whole nother discussion I don't wanna get into. I do not buy that neo -Nazi ideologue types are to the right of the new

Christian right or anything like that. I just have to put that out there just because I don't think, that's the framing that some of the

Anons online will give that like, we're being gate kept out. I do think there is a place for some of that with prudence.

It's not gatekeeping the right though. It's gatekeeping out ideologies that can scuttle your movement.

Would you agree with that? And if so, where are the boundaries? Maybe approach that comment about Doug Wilson that he's just trying to preserve the movement that he has.

Well, so if I said that he wouldn't talk to them, that was maybe a mistake if that's what

I said. He certainly has indicated, I think it's been demonstrated, Moscow is closed to Joel Webben if he does certain things.

And also he's removed himself from their conferences and so forth. He is essentially cutting ties with those guys and there really is a separation going on.

When it comes to the concept of gatekeeping, of course you're trying to keep out those influences that are unorthodox.

But what we have is really again, a group of people who are learning and growing and asking questions and questioning narratives that we've been given for a long period of time.

And I remember some of these when I was growing up as well. I mean, I am old enough,

I just turned 45. So I do remember Pat Buchanan. I remember reading his book, Death of the

West 20 years ago or whatever it was. Those are some things that these guys are discovering or recognizing we weren't taught.

And I don't think that's the same thing as gatekeep. Look, you're gonna try to gatekeep this supposed anti -Semitism that's on the right.

And I don't think that that's... I think there may be legitimacy if you got the receipts.

And I don't think we're bringing receipts. I think we're chasing ghosts and the Anon movement is what they're upset about.

And these guys are getting the albatross hung around their neck for owning it.

Yeah, yeah. One of the recent examples was I saw Doug Wilson cut ties with Ogden, with the church there,

Eric Kahn and Brian Sauve and some of those guys. And the ultimate, I guess, straw that broke the camel's back according to him was this video they shared, this white boy summer

Christmas montage. It was a silly little thing. I didn't share it.

Would I share it? Probably not. But it had a scene in it. See, this even gets in the weeds trying to explain it because it's so...

But it had a scene from a slasher movie, actually, which apparently had a Jewish director.

But the scene was, according to Doug Wilson, anti -Semitic because the scene that came before it had someone murdered who was

Jewish with a, I guess, some Jewish symbol. I forget what it was.

It might've been a - Yeah, it was a menorah. Okay, there you go. Anyway - But Doug shared the clip, okay?

That wasn't - Yeah, oh, man. Not a clip it's edifying for anyone to see. Well, so that's sort of the...

It's good for the goose, but it's not good for the gander, apparently, unfortunately, in Doug Wilson's paradigm right now.

Because he's played that game with his own sometimes, pushing the envelope with language and the middle finger controversy and stuff like that.

And when people would share it around, or I forget his analogy, serving up something on a cracker or whatever.

And the idea, well, now you just shared it around. And so now you're the guilty one. These guys didn't share the clip that included the killing of the -

Right, it was just Santa Claus walking down the street. It was the clip immediately after that, that apparently was in that video.

I haven't seen the other video. I saw the one that Doug shared. Doug is the one that actually promoted the viewing of that abhorrent scene.

Well, the point is though, that the interpretation he had was not the interpretation any of these guys who shared this montage had.

And whether it was unwise or not to share this montage and whether or not the source of it was someone you should be sharing, okay, that's a discussion you can have.

And I can see merit to someone saying it's unwise or whatever, you shouldn't do it as a pastor.

I don't know. But to make that like exhibit A, we're breaking fellowship.

And it's because of antisemitism. And it wasn't even that. That wasn't in any of these guys' minds.

I think that's where there's a lot of head scratching. And then to come back to the point of the article, that's where there's an opportunity to repay evil for evil here.

To say like, we got treated this way and now we're gonna treat you bad. We're gonna say nasty things about you.

And maybe to bring you in here, Matthew, a little bit. I mean, you're plugged into the social media discourse on some of these things.

Some of the people listening probably don't even know what we're talking about right now, or at least they haven't seen stuff on X. I mean, have you seen what

I've seen with some people, especially, it's more Anons, I would say, or Anons, however you say that, doing it.

But there is sort of like a nasty, kind of vengeful, like, you did this to us now, we're gonna say nasty things to you.

We're gonna use a lot of profanity and stuff. I've noticed that at times. Yeah, no,

I've definitely seen similar things to that. I mean, when you get an Anon account, you can kind of just say whatever you want.

Like I've had an Anon account before. And so I know how that sort of thing is.

But at the same time, you do have to think where a lot of these people are coming from.

We talk about empathy, having empathy for the oppressed. Why not have empathy for the Anon here, okay?

Put yourself in their shoes. They're starting to discover all these new things. They're starting to question all these interesting narratives.

They were really big Doug Wilson fans. And then as a matter of fact, you know who Doug Wilson put them on?

They watched that one man rampant interview. Oh, this guy named E. Michael Jones. Yeah, let's look up E.

Michael Jones. And then they pull up his book list and they see, oh, the Jewish revolutionary spirit. Oh, the

Holocaust narrative. Oh, the Catholic church and the Jews. Like, you know, you see, so all of a sudden they love

Doug Wilson. They see this video of him with E. Michael Jones. They look up his books, they start reading. They start getting super excited because now they discovered that Jews are the bad guys.

And they finally go to Doug and they're like, Doug, I figured it out. And then, you know, I can kind of understand why there is some of that nasty behavior out there, honestly.

And I do think that there's a bit of, you know, like kind of what Pastor Steinmeier was saying, you know, it sort of is like,

I feel like Doug would have canceled Doug from three to seven years ago.

Like, you know, just based off how things are going. But of course there is a sense in which there is a time for righteous anger.

There is even a time for language, which is harsh. But in doing those sorts of things, you do have to do so with the heart, which is ordered to,

I mean, when we were talking about wisdom, with wisdom and prudence, a heart that's ordered towards the highest good, thinking, is this unjust anger?

Is this pleasing to God? Or is this just me like spark, like, you know, like crashing out because I'm just angry in general.

So a lot of this thing, these things need to be done with prayer. And of course there are some people that they may like be investigating more like,

I don't know, spicy topics they may feel, and they're scared to like, you know, talk about it with people because they don't want those people to turn on them because there've been a lot of people that have been put under church discipline for exploring certain like topics or whatever.

But it is good to find a older godly mentor in your life who you can discuss these sorts of things with, who you can work through issues with, who can disagree with you on something without threatening to cancel you or something like that.

And I think that at the end of the day, sometimes the anger does come from not having someone in your life, because I personally have been blessed being able to think through certain topics, knowing that I have someone who

I can go to discuss it with who is older than me, wiser than me, and who I can trust wouldn't like destroy my life.

So that's always been helpful. And that's something that I would probably say is that anybody, it's important to not repay evil for evil.

And part of being able to do that is to be able to vent your frustrations, think through topics with somebody who is able to mentor you without being a concern troll, without being like, you're thinking the wrong thing.

So that's something I consider as like a seminary student who does wanna go into ministry is, okay, say I get like a spurg in my congregation who like just thinks a crazy thing.

How would I approach this? How would I like walk him through this without making him feel like he's threatened?

Because if he feels like he's super threatened, he may go all the way on the other side and then he's left your church and now he's a bit crazier.

So that's what I would say. Sometimes you can't avoid that. Sometimes that happens. If someone has gone so deep into like,

Jews control everything and it's all a Jewish conspiracy and they like get that bunker mentality, there are times like you can say, you can try to reason with the person all you want, but they've, or whatever conspiracy you wanna put out there, that ideological kind of reduction of like, this is the one element, we'll solve all the problems if we got rid of this one thing.

But yeah, I think you're onto something there and it might surprise you guys. I don't know if you know this, Doug Wilson shared this article that we're talking about and he said that it was a really good article.

So did some other guys in Moscow. So some of them might be wondering right now, man, I thought John was, thought he was maybe coming around or something to be a little self -critical of the new

Christian right. And you know, why is he doing this? But - No, that's good. I think we are self -critical of the new Christian right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's appropriate. I think so too, yeah. But you know, we don't want to start repaying evil for evil by using harsh, you know, evil language, sinning against someone.

And one of the big things I'm thinking is like, when someone can do no right, right?

So it's like you look at James White and you're like, well, he can just do no right now because of that one time that he went after someone that I liked and now, you know, we're just gonna read bad motives into everything he does.

Like that would be wrong too. And that's what I want to avoid doing is, I would love it if in,

I don't know if this will happen, but it would be great if in years in the future, months in the future, whatever, like we could, there could be a reuniting and a spirit of camaraderie and tackling some of these threats together.

Absolutely. John, I don't think we should be canceling Doug Wilson or James White. That's, especially when they,

I think, have so much still to offer and I still appreciate. I think in this, this has been the most disappointing element of interaction with their content that I've seen.

I'm a huge Doug Wilson proponent. I have Canon Plus and I'm not canceling my

Canon Plus, right? So these are things that I think we can recognize that we disagree. I think we can have reformers.

Look, we've seen this in the past. Reformers are gonna sometimes spar and they're gonna have significant disagreements.

What's disappointing is that when sometimes that happens, when different groups, factions of reformation don't get together, it does bog down and slow down reformation.

And so when opportunities are presented, we're not gonna be well poised to step into them.

We're gonna, I think, miss those opportunities to grow and to spread the gospel, to build the kingdom.

I think it's a missed opportunity and there's gonna be costs. Yeah. Well, let's go to the next topic here, the next bullet point, which is, all right.

So it says, do not center your life around new Christian right leaders. We could probably spend shorter time on this.

I've noticed though, there's a tendency with some guys to really take the celebrity preacher model and then just transfer it to the next thing they're into.

So, hey, I was in on the Big Eva, Together for the Gospel, Young Restless Reform, whatever.

And I love those guys. I love David Platt and I love Mark Driscoll and Matt Chandler. And now it's like, so this would be some of the older guys,

I guess, older millennials who are part of that. They've now transferred to, they're part of the young Christian right on some of these more cultural questions.

And so they haven't changed the way that they view leadership. They've just thrown out the old ones. And now, anything

Joel Webben says or anything John Harris says, I have guys like that or anything that Stephen Wolf says, like they're gonna build a church on it.

I'll be honest, those guys make me nervous because I know I can get things wrong at times and I want scripture to be the guide.

But I don't know if you've seen that yourself. I mean, as a pastor, I'm sure that's come up even in your congregation.

I just wanna caution people, don't do that. Take wisdom from people, but don't outsource your thinking to them.

Well, I would start off by saying, what's the name of this podcast again? The American Churchman. You need to be a churchman.

That means your church. That means your local congregation. And so if you're just a dyed -in -the -wool fanatic for your celebrity guy who's online, and that's where you primarily live and your allegiances are, you're doing it wrong.

Those are supplemental. Those are valuable. We can appreciate and really be benefited from those online resources.

That's what this is. That's what all of us, that's what all pastors who post their sermons online, to people that are benefited outside of their church.

There's good and there's value. We have an abundance of riches in that regard.

But you need to be a churchman, and you need to be one who is submitted to your own leadership, that you are there in my church,

Sunday morning, Sunday night. You need to show up Sunday night. You need to be part of your local body. And in that case, you need to be centered around your leadership and working with them, discipled by them, and centered in serving your local church.

And that's gonna be, I think, the greatest guide to avoiding this error of centering your life around these new

Christian right leaders. They're helpful, but they're not your pastor. Yeah. And because many of us are younger and some of us have changed some very big views in the matter of a very short period of time.

That's right. You gotta even be more careful with that. There's nothing wrong with changing your views when you're wrong, but you might, well, it kind of goes into,

I think, the next point, which is honor the gray, yeah, honor the gray headed. Did you have anything to say, Matthew, though, before we go to the next point?

Or you could go into the - Read more books. Read more old dead people. The old dead people do not have ad revenue they need to make.

They don't have clickbait thumbnails. They don't have drama they need to discuss. All they have is condensed wisdom that will help you to orient yourself according to your circumstances, according to that which is going on right now.

You can continue to consume content. I mean, I'm thankful you're listening to me here. It's pretty cool. I mean, you're probably here for John Harris, but I'm thankful you're here regardless.

You know, it's cool. It's a great opportunity, but read more books. It's going to give you more wisdom.

Read your Bible. It's wisdom from above. That is sufficient for all things, really.

Of course, you know, we distinguish it's not gonna be sufficient to help you fix your car, sure. But it's sufficient for all godly wisdom and a life of virtue.

It's that simple. I don't really have anything else to say. Just get your, you don't need to get your wisdom from all of us.

You can always stop by and say hi. We appreciate it. Not that I'm a new right leader necessarily, but just, yeah, read your

Bible. Read older people. Who's the Puritan that you'll know, Matthew, the Puritan who is, you know, we're just trying to tell other beggars where to find bread, right?

The kids. Who said that? I have no idea, but that's - You're an expert on the Puritans. I quoted a Puritan. You should be happy.

I'm very proud of you, John. Thank you. All right, well, Honor the Gray -Headed is the next one.

So I'll just open it up. I wanted Pastor Steinmeier to be on here because he, you look at his beard, you look at mine.

I do have a few gray hairs, but I can't hold a candle. I have a gray right here, but it's not on my beard.

Oh, I see it. Yeah. Matthew, I'm gonna have to find a younger guy. You're getting -

Hey, I'm 23. 23 is still young, I think. It's seminary. It's studying for Greek that'll give you gray hair.

I think that's when, seriously, when I was studying languages in seminary, that's when the balding process, the receding, the gray, it all started then.

I can trace it. Yeah, maybe. I'm getting Norwood Reapers coming from my hair. Anyway. So yeah,

Pastor Steinmeier, any thoughts on that? Older people being involved in the movement with more experience and concerns that maybe there's too many young leaders.

Well, I think you made it even the point earlier, I think probably in the introduction, that one of the challenges with the new

Christian right is that the leaders are students. So they're changing their position quite a bit because they're sharing what they're learning real time.

And so they're moving and changing positions. And I think Joel Webbin's a great example of that.

I have a guy in my church who isn't the greatest fan of Joel Webbin because he's held the position for five minutes, but he is an expert as if he's held to it for a very long time.

That's sort of the air that he sometimes kind of projects sometimes. And I get that. I think it is necessary and valuable to have, that's why

I think the James White and Doug Wilson disappointment, just kind of squashing this movement is disappointing because I think these are some of the gray hairs that people have looked to, or in James White's case, and it still needs to be, they still need to be honored.

I do think that we need to be careful about the mocking, whether it's about weight or anything else.

I think some of that stuff is really ridiculous and I think it does need to be ridiculed and move back.

I mean, I think we have a scriptural example of the young men who mock

Elijah, you'll go up you bald head and the Lord had something to say on his behalf on that.

I think the way in which we treat older saints and also those who are in ministry is important.

We disagree and make cases, but I think we do need to be careful of honoring them appropriately.

I wanted to step back for just briefly. I think it is challenging because when, in our day and with younger people, there can be the tendency to, hey, look, if you hold a wrong position, then you're gonna be, you're mockable.

If I disagree with you, then I don't need to respect you. And that's a really wrong place to be.

When we're talking about the 10 commands, we're talking about the fifth commandment and honoring father and mother, it's very important that we recognize that this is honoring all those who are in authority and all those who really are the gray -headed as we see in Leviticus 19 .32.

So even, it doesn't mean, only if you've got great parents, do you honor your parents. Only if they've done everything right, do you honor them and do you respect them or even submit to them, whether it's your pastor or leaders or even your parents.

So I think it's an extremely important principle that you've added here and we all need to make sure that we are wise to that.

Thanks. Yeah, and I wanna commend Joel too. You were just saying that I guess you have a member of the congregation who doesn't like this aspect of he'll hold a position and he articulates it very clearly, very quickly.

He is a smart guy and he can do that in ways I can't. He's admitted that. Yeah, yeah, he's admitted that.

Yeah, that's one of the things actually too, like when he messes up on something, which we all do at times, like I have seen him own it, which is something that some of the legacy ministries, they seem allergic to that.

They have a very hard time saying they messed up. But I was gonna say though with Joel, he actually has incorporated, like if you look at his podcast, like he does have a guy who's older than him now that will join him for many of the shows.

I know I've tried to do this, like, well, you're actually coming out. We have to, I still have to make arrangements with you.

But the last week of September, you and your father, who's the pianist at your church are coming out. We got

Tim Bushong now coming out to do a conference. That's the men's retreat this year on music.

And every year when I plan that, I try to think of like, okay, who's someone who's a little older, has more wisdom.

And so I wanna promote, with young guys too, you need your Matthews, we're all gonna be old one day, but I think

I wanna bring that flavor. And so I just wanna let people know, some of us are aware of that, we're working on it.

We're trying to find these guys. And most of them have not been leaders in Big Eva or Medieva or whatever you wanna call the legacy ministries.

They've just, they haven't been given those opportunities because they were probably saying true things and no one wanted to hear them.

So they're at small Bible churches and they're in other places, but they are around and I've met them and yeah.

So yeah, anyway, Matthew, you have anything on that or can we go to the next one? We can go to the next one.

All right, beware of ideology. I'll let you have the first word, Matthew. Beware of ideology.

Oh yeah, okay. Let me pull it up on my screen now. Do you want me to?

You can actually get us started so I can get a look at. I promise you, I did read your article. I just need a little refresher.

So I try to keep this short. As you can see, it was my longest section though. I had five paragraphs, but I talk about ideology and first relate it to social justice since people recognize that as ideology.

It reduces all of human action to simple precepts that don't describe the whole, that don't actually account for all of our human actions.

And so this is where you get social justice guys accusing you of racism or some other problem based upon inaction or something you say or do.

And there was no motive whatsoever that had to do with that, but they link, it's like everything in reality has a tag on it that says either like injustice or justice and it's a binary, it's rigid.

So I try to bring that up to sort of describe what is ideology, how it takes over your mind, how it reduces everything.

And you feel like an expert when you really don't know anything, but you've just created a system that accounts for everything.

And so, cage -stage Calvinism, that's the other one I use. Like that's ideology in those, in that initial stage, like every

Bible verse is about predestination. It's like, no, it's not, but the cage -stage Calvinist can relate everything to it.

And so I just try to make people aware that look, almost like anything, any ideology usually has like a sliver of truth somewhat there, somewhere in it.

Like there is oppression in the world, right? Like that does exist, but it doesn't make every human interaction oppression or non -oppression, right?

There's, or anti -oppression, I should say. Like there are other motivations for why humans do things.

And so it's the same thing with this. Like you don't wanna take like anti -feminism, let's say, and say, well, patriarchy is the solution for everything, when it's not.

Like there are some things, legitimate problems that are not, that really have nothing to do with patriarchy.

Patriarchy, maybe you could find in two steps or three steps, or you could find a link, but you don't wanna reduce everything to one thing.

And that's, you even mentioned earlier, Matthew, with like some of the guys who have gotten into the

Jewish revolutionary spirit accounts for everything. No, it doesn't. Yes, there are

Jewish people who do not love Christ, who I think specifically in Hollywood, secular Jewish people who have values that are not in keeping with Christianity, who do have a lot of influence.

And we can look at some of that as negative. I think Christians should start to try to get into some of these roles or create companies to challenge that degeneracy in these areas.

But if you start making like every problem is Jewish people, like that just, everything sources back in that, you're in an ideology at that point.

And so, and there's a lot of different things that I think ideas floating around the new Christian right that are like that, that could be made into an ideology.

So did that jog your memory on anything there, Matthew? Oh yeah, of course. No, that was a good kind of explanation of yeah, what you put down here.

No, I certainly agree with you that, I guess in the way that you define ideology here in the way that people think ideologically, there can be a problem, like you just said, where you take like something which has like a nugget of truth, but you try and turn that chicken nugget into a rotisserie chicken.

I hope that illustration worked at all. But yeah, where it's basically like, for example, yeah,

I guess if we wanna go down like the Jew path again and get me in trouble or something like that. Yeah, I really get all right, okay.

No, but like the idea of there, in the same way that like one of the dominant ethno -religious groups in the

US for a while was the Anglo -Protestants and you have the Irish Catholics and now you have like Jews in like certain positions or whatever in the same way that you can like notice those sorts of things that then for some people, obviously like not everybody, but for some people it can turn into,

I ran over, I got a flat tire this morning cause I ran over a nail and I'm almost certain that Rabbi Shmuley put that nail on the road because he was trying to mess my day up.

Obviously that's an insane exaggeration, but I mean, that can happen when you have like the brain rot from certain like a more niche understandings of things.

And like, well, again, there's like certain parts of that, you can say like, oh yes, there's

Jewish influence here, yada, yada, yada, or feminism. Yes, feminism has impacted gender dynamics here, but it's like, it's kind of like, it's not fully fitting everything into the big picture.

The problem is, is that I think I don't wanna be too mean or offensive, but I think that some of the ways that certain people think is very almost midwitted and it's just like, this is the solution, it's this.

Like, that's like the only thing they can point to, all they can do, you ask them a question, they just point here, they point here. That's the problem, that's the problem.

And it's just like, okay. You start with post -war consensus, like no one knew what it was. And then five minutes later, they're like everything in life.

Yeah, well, I mean, like, again, there's like a degree, again, there's a degree of truth there for sure. Like there is a post -war consensus.

There is, yes. Heavy influence on everything, but you have to be able to situate the post -war consensus alongside other things that are going on that may be connected to the post -war consensus perhaps.

But like, I feel like there's a lack of an ability to like situate everything.

And that's like a part of the problem is that when you think in terms of ideology and the way that you're defining and things like that, it ends up where everything is too simplistic when there's like better ways to sort of analyze sayings and explain things regardless of how much truth is in like someone's conception of a particular topic.

But yeah. No, that's good. Yeah, I could talk all day about ideology.

I don't want to though. So Pastor Steinmeier, anything on that? No, I think we can go to the next one. I think you guys covered it as well.

Yeah, good, cool. All right, let scripture guide you is the next one. That's pretty like straightforward and simple in my mind.

Let scripture guide you. But yeah, I don't really want to expand on it much because I don't think there's much more to expand.

As Christians, we believe scripture is the final authority in everything concerning life and practice and doctrine.

And we need to appeal to it. And I think, maybe there's just been a, and I don't want to say this is across the board, it's not.

But there has been like a wanting to get into historical sources and avoid biblicism like a blank slate biblicism where you're just in a room by yourself trying to grapple with what the text means.

And so there's less referring to scripture at least with some figures because they're filling their time up with trying to learn what they were deprived of.

They're trying to learn history, Christian history and how people approached biblical doctrines. And so there is maybe in some sectors, a theological focus.

I think the classic example, obviously Stephen Wolfe, he didn't reference scripture which his book was a political philosophy.

It wasn't meant to do that, but people really got after him for it. I'm not criticizing that, but I do think just in general as believers and especially when we're talking to Christians, we should just talk in terms of the

Bible. So. Yeah, I would take it, I'll be a little different direction myself.

I agree with what you just said, but to me, one of the things that sort of stood out to me is

Charlie Kirk and some of his arguments, he's done some of these campus tours and seen some of his videos and they want to pin him down on scripture.

And then he goes, I'm not gonna really address scripture because I can just argue everything on the basis of natural law.

Oh yeah, I've heard him say that. And I just think there needs to be a boldness and a willingness to turn to the scripture and actually call the lost and call everyone to bow the knee to Christ and to identify scripture as the source of truth.

And so that's, I think where some of the danger can go if you want to just try to make too big of an issue of this natural law thing to where you do minimize and just try to, you can try to back away from the embarrassment of scripture and just appeal to, well, but it's, everybody knows this is just naturally observed and the law is just written on everybody's hearts.

That's why you know murder is wrong. Well, I do think we need to appeal to scripture and everything in this argument because we are advancing the gospel which is found in the word of God.

And so we need to appeal to scripture in everything. Anything to add to that,

Matthew? Yes, this conversation actually reminded me of a tweet from one of my favorite accounts who sadly has closed his account down and he's just not on Twitter anymore, but he still substacks but his name is

Cal Crucis. He was a great poster. I miss him dearly, but something, he said something and I think it's actually like, it's a little bit of an edgy tweet, but I have it screenshot and I'm gonna read it anyways.

But part of the thing is that a lot of people are trying to be like super base now. They wanna be like the most key person around.

And, but you know, if you really wanna be that way, you can read your

Bible. A lot of these things that we talk about are just go read through the Old Testament, seriously.

Just shut off all your priors and things like that and just read the Bible as the Bible. And I just pulled up the tweet from him.

Again, it's a bit edgy, but it's really good. I'm gonna read it. He says, Christianity is bigoted, misogynistic, weird, incompatible with most modern sentiments from a very different age that's primitive.

The woke more correct than big Eva feminists. The Bible doesn't belong to them. Break off the rusty shackles of respectability.

And it's like, that is just like absolutely true. Again, read through the

Old Testament and let it soak. And you will see, no, yeah, this is sufficient for a lot.

This is sufficient for what I need. So I absolutely agree, John. I think that's a good point that you make that we always ought to go back to the scriptures.

There's nothing wrong with using natural law. There are many natural principles that are required. The Bible doesn't explicitly spell out how to run a government or something like that.

I guess maybe unless you're theonomist and you wanna say that the government of Israel can directly apply to what we have now.

But I mean, if you're not a theonomist, you don't think that that is the case. But the wisdom that the scriptures has, even in its stories, it's timeless.

And according to, and it is bigoted and misogynistic and all of these things according to modern standards.

So we don't need to, we can always rely on the scriptures to be our guide, even in some of these more crazy conversations.

Conversations that matter in particular. Well, we're about an hour in. So I wanna go to the next topic or it's the last one.

Good, okay. So avoid ecumenicism is the last heading here. Avoid ecumenicism.

And of course, I actually have a, I think it's queued up. I have someone who asked, should people avoid

Calvin Robinson? I was saving that question. And I'll say avoid in what sense?

I'd have to ask a question back. I think that we're in a situation where we've come back to such fundamental creation level issues.

We're gonna have Mormons and Catholics and others who might see some of the things that we wanna do politically and say,

I agree, I wanna be part of that. I wanna help. And we can have cobelligerency. But we don't want to ever,

I guess the point I was making was that we don't wanna ever give the impression that we agree on doctrine, fundamental doctrines that like salvation and who

Christ is and these kinds of things. So at a political event, I mean, I'm having Paul Godfrey come to Christianity and the

Founding Conference, Christianityfoundingconference .com for those who wanna see it and sign up. I'd love for you to come.

It's in Pennsylvania in April, but he's gonna be talking about how

Protestantism made America great essentially. And he's approaching it from an academic and political standpoint.

He does not, I believe, attend any church. I think he's secular, but he told me that he largely agrees with Protestantism.

He's very attracted to Protestant Christianity. So I think it's a good opportunity, but I'm not gonna give the impression that he is a

Bible -believing Christian and that we agree on everything. And I don't think he'd want me to. And so that's the kind of cooperation

I think we can have, but we can get into trouble easily if we don't put those boundaries up.

Because agreement over anti -abortion or the COVID was terrible, the reaction to that, we agree, like that's a strong agreement because we actually disagree with like half the country when we say that, but that doesn't mean that we're gonna go to the same place after we die, so.

Yeah, I do think it's difficult because I think we are fairly used to a lot of conferences right now being doctrinally oriented, doctrines of grace, pastor's conferences, together for the gospel conferences, things like that.

And so I think you are definitely much more discriminatory towards who you're gonna share platforms with and so forth.

So I think it's a little bit, I think it's questionable to some degree as to how you present these unbelievers or those outside of orthodoxy in your conferences when they're

Christian conferences. I would say, I'm not exactly sure. I don't know enough about Calvin Robinson, particularly.

I'm not sure exactly how that applies to Joel's conference on Christ is King, and I don't know enough about Calvin to really make a judgment.

I have some concerns about some things I've seen recently, but I don't know enough. What we've seen from him is him take bold stands.

Certainly he names and claims the name of Christ as his savior. I don't know the full nature of his understanding of the gospel, but he's taken stands against wokeness and stuff like that.

So in that sense, there's a co -belligerency, but I don't know exactly, I don't know that I would have him at any of my conferences, but I don't know that it's necessarily one where, okay, let's cancel

Joel, because he is, you can get into this weird fundamentalism of if you don't cancel so -and -so, then I have to cancel you.

And I think we gotta be careful with those. I can give it just a little behind the scenes on that, because I asked

Joel when some of this started coming out. He didn't know the full extent of Calvin Robinson's beliefs. And when it came out, he didn't want to disinvite him.

He thought he had a good story of courage. And of course this has developed since we even had this talk, but he then said, you know what?

I'm not gonna do worship music. It's already being held at a community center. This is gonna be a political, like a social political conference.

And yeah, it's aimed at Christians. It's about Christ being king and stuff in the political world and everywhere.

And we're gonna limit, well, I guess this was already the case. Calvin's talk is just gonna be on his experience in Great Britain and what the

Church of England did to him. But no, we're not gonna have him speak on any of these doctrines. So I admire that he did try to, he was given no slack from the guys that were coming after him for it, but that's how he tried to approach it.

And now since then, Calvin Robinson has stopped following me on X. He has said, he has implied that I guess

I'm, I don't know, a heretic or I'm, what was it? It was something really nasty.

Like, I forget what it was, but it was, he doesn't care. He's like doing the canceling himself of us in a way.

It feels that way, even though he's still coming to the event. But he told me it's gonna be his last event with the

Reformed and I'm like, whoa. So I pray for Calvin Robinson. That's what I would say. I mean, he knows if the lines weren't there, they're there now.

And he knows he's walking into a room of Protestants who are maybe not exactly happy with how he's treated some of us and Protestantism.

But yeah, no, I think what you just said is wise and good. Anything to add to that,

Matthew, before I go to questions? I would just say I don't have a problem in principle with someone like him speaking there, but maybe before you go to a

Reformed conference, don't spend all your time on Twitter, trash talking most holy

Reformed theology or calling Calvin a heretic. You know, that's just like a piece of, if you're listening to this

Calvin, don't be mean to the St. John Calvin because that's not really a good look for you if you're going to a

Reformed conference. Look, I'm just saying, like I have many friends that are Eastern Orthodox and I've not said the nicest things about Eastern Orthodoxy, but hypothetically there is a political event that was led by Eastern Orthodox and they wanted me to speak there.

I think that just for the time being, the last thing I would do is call them a bunch of wood -worshiping sand eaters, even though deep down that's what

I tell my friends when we debate back and forth, because that's just how we roll.

We're mean to each other, but it's all in love. I remembered what he said, it was brood of vipers. That's what he said.

I'm sorry. Well, the thing is like, it's not actually a Reformed conference because Steve Dace is there and he's

Arminian, but it's - But the audience is primarily Reformed people.

A lot of people there are speaking their Reformed, so it's not a Reformed theology conference, but it's sort of like read the room,

I guess, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a lot more that can be said, but I want to get to the questions and then we'll end the podcast here.

So get your questions in now. Would like to hear that older guys like Doug Wilson or James White think of John's article.

Okay, yes. So Doug Wilson and some guys from Moscow and others who have been critical of the new

Christian right shared it. And I was happy about that. I mean, I want there to be bridges built. And as far as I know, a lot of the guys on the new

Christian right also - Not burned. Did I say burned? No, no. Built, yeah.

NQN was all about burning bridges. So you're a bridge builder, John. I'm trying to be a bridge builder.

I don't want to burn them all up, that's true. All right, in my opinion, John, you should ignore fascists on Twitter.

I don't like them picking fights with you. They do like to pick fights with me. And I think it's a mistake for you to critique them.

Well, I mean, look, I care about, I actually have a personal friend who kind of came out of that and it's given me a heart for guys in that.

I feel the same thing about woke guys, actually. There's sometimes like, there's people that I might critique.

This is speaking for myself, but I might critique because I care about them and I want to do it as gently and directly as I can.

So it's not everything I do is politically motivated. But yes, I appreciate that comment.

Harsh language. Have you read Ezekiel 16? Okay, I want to give this one to Pastor Steinmeier. You can use the middle finger, right?

Ezekiel 16. What do you say? No, I don't think that's an appropriate equivalent.

Well, if we're talking about the middle finger controversy and stuff like that, I think what we have is a stoking of a fire by one side and then having issues with language on that side that was sort of stoked.

When it comes to harsh language, I do think we need to be much more prudent about our language, because James certainly has a lot to say about the types of language that we use, the way we speak, and the way we actually then speak to older honorable people.

And so I'm all for the serrated edge. I think there's an appropriateness to it, but I also think that there does need to be a guard and a guide and a spirit filled mind that is using things and words in proper ways for the sake of edification, that we do still need to remember that we have speech filled with grace.

And so it's a big topic, but it's one of those things where, yeah, harsh language, of course, it has a point, but at some point we give ourselves an excuse and justify everything that we do as, well, we're using it rightly.

And actually that's one of the beefs I have with some of the way that Moscow has used some of their rhetoric, especially over the

Johnny Cash thing. I think that was messed up. And just because they use harsh language, whenever they do it, it must be right.

And I think they used it improperly. I'm not perfect in this regard, but I try to think of like the direction that I'm bringing someone, because there's times to use really harsh language to get someone like, hey, stop, you're going the wrong way, danger.

And that's like one thing, but then it's something crass that's unnecessary just to put people's minds in the gutter.

That's where I'm like, it's just immature in my mind. Like, why would you do it? It's putting people in the wrong direction, but Anita Smith says nothing filthy should come out of our lips.

So yeah, Luther was a huge spurg. Okay, Matthew, you agree with that?

So true. Yeah, and he denounced people too. I mean, he was, oh no, I lost.

Now her comment is gonna be permanently up there. I think, wait, let me see if I can. Okay, I got rid of it.

I just pray for unity after this public disagreement. May God humble hearts that forgiveness is extended where it's needed and it's clearly needed.

Please pray. Yeah, I agree. Robinson has another gospel. I am beginning to,

I'm pretty certain that's probably true at this point. More in Calvin Robinson, we won't go there.

Shout out to Rabbi Shmuley for ruining everybody's day. Yeah, that's,

I don't even think, you know, it's not Jews, Matthew. It is Rabbi Shmuley personally, who is -

Michael Foster says, as far as I can tell, a lot of this is driven by deep generational differences, not theological. That's, so that's an interesting thing.

Pastor Steinmeier, what generation, are you older millennial? Are you gen - I was 45, is that X?

Is it? I don't even know. I actually never really kept track of that very far. I think you would, you're like younger than us.

So what do you think? Because I think you and Michael Foster are the same generation there. I mean, you can kind of see,

I think, from a more bird's eye view, because you're like, you're close enough to the boomers. Your dad's a boomer.

Right. Yeah. My dad is too. Actually, all three of our dads are. That's the funny part. But so, but you're also like young enough that you're aware of kind of like what the millennials are doing.

So what, do you see that as well, that generational divide? I don't,

I don't, I don't know that it's a, maybe the generational divide in terms of what you mentioned earlier, John, the idea of not really owning mistakes and apologizing very well.

I think that's, that doesn't really characterize that generation, the older generation as much.

I think there is a, perhaps a tendency of the younger generation to be a little bit more edgy and rebellious and so forth.

But I'm not sure it's just a generational issue. In my view,

I think there's just right now issues of sin, issues of behaving badly and lack of charity towards one another.

And I do think the young guys need to be aware of demanding that the torch be passed to them and disrespecting the, and using that okay boomer mentality.

But I also do think that there is a sense of these older guys do need to be recognizing who are you going to be passing the torch to and do these young guys who are your proteges, your disciples, do they have a proper place to be discipled further and to be loved and to be appreciated as opposed to just squash?

Yeah, that's good. It's 1965 to 1980, Matt says, that's Gen X, I guess.

All right, well, I was born in 1979. So I guess I'll - You just made the cut. You just made the cut. Pray for unity.

Thank you. Let's see. Okay, I think that was it. I think that's it for the comments. Okay, this is the last one.

I just got to read. Generational stuff is just the latest form of astrology. Believing that your nature is determined by the arbitrary circumstances surrounding your birth.

We don't have time, but interesting perspective there. There are sets of circumstances you're born into, though,

I think that do shape you. Like 9 -11 was a huge thing. You know, I mean, you remember, you know,

Matthew, you wouldn't remember this, but before 9 -11, you could go on a plane and there wasn't any security. You just went on the plane.

Yeah, that's wild. But I do vividly remember 9 -11. I was two and a half months old. It was a really insane time.

That was a joke. I don't vividly remember 9 -11. I was gonna say, that's incredible. I was two and a half months old. I was kidding. Yeah, it just makes me cautious of what

I, you know, because now if that was true, I'm like, I guess make sure my daughter, you know, I don't know what she remembers and what she doesn't, but she's only seven months now.

But yeah, so I think I have memories from when I was two, but I remember distinctly before 9 -11, getting on planes, no security.

And when they brought it in right after 9 -11, I thought, that's never gonna last. No one's gonna go for this.

So it's so inconvenient. And here we are, so. All right, well, thank you everyone for being part of the

American Church and Podcast. Special thanks to Matthew Pearson, Pastor Danny Steinmeier. If you wanna follow Matthew on Twitter, you go too.

That's where you could jump in, Matthew. Oh yeah, underscore Matthew Pearson, all one little word.

I don't know, I thought you had it pulled up, John. You like looked up like you're about to read it. I'm looking, no, I was looking to see if I had a tab with Twitter, I don't though.

So Pastor Danny Steinmeier, where do people follow you? I'm pretty much not active on Twitter, so nowhere to follow me there, but we do have our podcast.

It's Time for Truth is on your podcast platforms. And then also Truth Family Bible Church on YouTube.

All right, well, God bless, pray for unity. And until next time, we will be, next