Progressive Evangelicals lose their minds again! RFK, Asylum Seekers, and the Ordo Amoris

Conversations That Matter

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00:01

Hey everyone, welcome to the conversations that matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. I'm a little bit of a jumpy

00:06

John this morning. I'm not sure what's going on with my camera. I thought I had rectified this issue.

00:12

So my apologies to those who are watching but you're not gonna see a whole lot of me for this podcast. You're gonna see William Wolfe, who is our guest today.

00:18

We're gonna be talking about the Trump administration the first few weeks and the reaction from progressive evangelicals.

00:24

William Wolfe is the former deputy assistant secretary for the Pentagon. He is the founder and executive director of the

00:30

Center for Baptist Leadership, centerforbaptistleadership .org. Welcome again, William. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, it's great to be here,

00:37

John. Thanks for having me back on the show. My pleasure. So I'm gonna minimize myself and let you talk.

00:42

The first question we're gonna jump into it is how is Trump doing the first few weeks in office?

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What grade would you give him? And as a Christian, are you happy with his performance so far with his policies and his administrative picks?

00:57

Yeah, well, that's a really, really difficult question, John, way to put me on the spot, right, as we join the show here.

01:04

But no, I mean, he's doing incredible. I mean, in terms of a grade, A plus plus,

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I know Trump likes his superlatives. So I mean, he's doing excellent.

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Right out of the gate, we have seen what I was telling people I thought we would see and was really hoping that we would see and that he's organized, he knows what he wants to do.

01:26

And he's going after it. He's clearly staffed up his administration right out the gate with like absolute experts and people who are our guys, so to speak, people who are swimming in the waters that we're swimming in.

01:38

I mean, look at JD Vance just recently defending the order of Morris, rightly ordered loves, and dunking on midwit academic professors on X.

01:46

But to get back to what Trump is doing, over 200 executive orders in the first two days, some of them were just absolutely incredible working to end the invasion at the border, revoke birthright citizenship, which is an unconstitutional interpretation under the 14th amendment currently, to end, get radical gender ideology out of the federal government and defend the biological reality of male and female from conception in that language.

02:13

Since then, he's done more to take on the transgender industrial complex going after, and he even uses the right language.

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He calls them so -called gender affirming surgeries for minors which is really just horrific physical bodily mutilation upon these poor confused teenagers that need real mental and spiritual help.

02:32

He's gone after that. He's gone after getting DEI out of the federal government. I mean, he's just firing at all cylinders.

02:38

His deputies are doing fantastic. Marco Rubio, who many of us know if you've been following conservative politics over the last decade,

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Rubio really got a bad name for being a big author on this massive amnesty bill back in the day, part of the so -called gang of eight.

02:53

And then he sort of crashed and burned when he ran in the 2016 primary against Trump. And he's understood to be a big part of the neocon wing, but he's come up, it seems, almost all the way over to the

03:03

MAGA agenda. He tweeted out from the official State Department account, the age of mass migration is over.

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They've shut down the refugee admissions program. They're sending the National Guard and other military services to the border.

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I mean, it could not be better. And of course, right at the end of the first week, we've had a national catastrophe with the helicopter and plane accident over DC.

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And I feel like we've seen good leadership from Trump and his other surrogates on that issue, including Sean Duffy, who's the

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Secretary of Transportation. Pete Hegseth, we've got him confirmed, which is huge. That seemed touch and go for a while there.

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I mean, I could keep going on, but it seems like on every cylinder, Trump 2 .0 is shock and awe pursuing a fantastic conservative and right -wing agenda that Christians absolutely can and should be excited about.

03:52

Yeah, I mean, it's been startling for me to see how much he has done, how quickly he's done it, how he is rolling back so many of the

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Biden administration policies. Let me ask you this before we get into specifics. Talk to me a little bit about the

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Southern Baptist Convention in relationship to this. Obviously, Southern Baptist helped put Trump in office. No, I'm not talking about necessarily the leadership of the denomination, but the people in the pews certainly did.

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And I think that they obviously wanted certain things from his policy prescriptions, and I think they're probably getting that, and I would assume happy with what he's doing, but what are you seeing?

04:32

And obviously, plug too, because you have a podcast that you do on YouTube if people wanna hear more about this who are concerned about the

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SBC, but I don't know if you have other content related to this question that you've already put out there. Yeah, I mean, we've already, we've done some great content on the question of sort of Southern Baptist and Christians and Trump.

04:52

Our latest podcast episode for the Center for Baptist Leadership, which you can find us on YouTube, Center for Baptist Leadership.

04:59

Would love for you to like and subscribe to that on how Trump is really a mercy from God in our country, an undeserved mercy that gives us four years to build and to take this country back for the good of the church and for the good of the nation.

05:13

We had a great article published at the Center for Baptist Leadership by a PhD student at SBTS.

05:19

John, one of the things I'm really excited about with Center for Baptist Leadership is reaching the next generation of Baptist leaders.

05:25

I mean, that's why we called it what we did, Center for Baptist Leadership, not because we're necessarily saying, we're the leaders right now.

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I mean, our group doesn't control the entities of the SBC, but we're trying to find the guys who will. And so Nick Spencer, he's the policy director at the

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Kentucky Family Foundation, wrote a great article on how the return of Trump is the return of the true politics of joy.

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This was a campaign slogan that Harris tried to commandeer for herself, but Spencer really artfully argues that Trump is governing according to natural law, principles, and reason.

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And when we live according to God's good created order, that actually does bring true joy into our lives. So great podcast, great article there.

06:04

Check us out. But in terms of Southern Baptist and Trump, John, what I would really say is that Trump 2 .0,

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the beginning of the end of what will be 12 years of Trump dominating the political discourse in the

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United States of America is an utter and total repudiation of the failed leadership class of the

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Southern Baptist Convention, elites, and regime evangelicals. Many of the guys at the highest levels of the

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SBC were never Trumpers in 2016, including most notably people like Russell Moore, and even someone like Al Mohler, who

06:36

I appreciate a lot of what Mohler does. And Mohler actually came back in 2020 and did support

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Trump, which cost him, I believe, amongst some of these people who are still anti -Trump. But in 2016, Mohler was a never

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Trumper. These guys, they did not want Donald Trump. Many of them were never Trumpers, and the base overwhelmingly went for him in 2016.

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Then we got four years of an incredible, I'd say success from Trump with some bumps in the road, COVID, things like that, appointing justices that overturned

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Roe v. Wade. And so we got to 2020, I thought it was sort of, he had won a lot more support, but then the 2020 election came, and we got four years of Biden, and a lot of those same

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Southern Baptist leaders, they wanted to move on from Trump. I guarantee you the vast majority of the big name

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Southern Baptist Convention pastors during the primary were even as conservative as they may be or may not be.

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They were sort of DeSantis guys. They wanted to move on from Trump, and the base absolutely did not want that. And then we get the law fair.

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Then we get the assassination attempt. Everyone finally sort of rallies behind Trump, and now he's just doing things,

07:37

John. He is going to the executive branch, and he's rooting out DEI, rooting out wokeness, rooting out gender ideology, which quite frankly shames the

07:44

Southern Baptist Convention leaders, particularly people like J .D. Greer and others, who have really made wokeness a key pillar of their quote -unquote

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Christian doctrine, and they've infused it all across their convention. I've said this to somebody, and this can't happen, but I would love to have a

08:01

Southern Baptist Convention president with sort of the powers that Trump has. With just the stroke of a pen, he can start rooting out this nonsense across our convention.

08:09

That's not how it works for us, but that's frankly what we need. So I would put it like this. The return of Trump and what he's done in the last 10 days, and really this last eight -year saga and four more to go, is a repudiation of the winsome -to -the -left, embracing -wokeness approach that Southern Baptist Convention elites have taken over the last eight years, and I will argue it's people like us at Center for Baptist Leadership, people like yourself and others, the ones who've been proven right.

08:33

We are the ones who are clearly sort of fit to lead in a moment like this, and organizations like the

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ERLC, led by Russell Moore, acolyte and crony Brett Leatherwood, they've disgraced themselves, and they've shown that they're unfit for political leadership in this moment.

08:48

Excellent, well stated. I'm gonna pull up some articles and some videos for us to go over, and I'll get your reaction.

08:55

Let's start here with the asylum seekers and the, well, the immigration issue more broadly.

09:01

Well, actually, I'm struggling to know if I should play the Noam thing first, or we should talk about illegal migration. Maybe we'll start with illegal migration, because those are different issues, the asylum -seeking issue.

09:12

They're very similar and related, though, so not saying they're totally different, but there's some articles. This one first from, this actually isn't an article,

09:20

I guess this is more of a statement from the Evangelical Immigration Table to President Trump, Secretary Rubio, and Governor Noam, and it is signed by a number of Christian leaders, as I understand it.

09:34

I don't see the name on here, Brett Leatherwood. I think you were telling me Brett Leatherwood was, he maybe shared it.

09:40

No, you can see the stamps of the organizations that have signed it, so Evangel, the

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Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission has signed onto this letter under Brent. Okay, explain this to us then.

09:53

What's this letter from the Evangelical Immigration Table, and why is, remind everyone why the

09:58

EIT is significant. Yeah, I mean, this just shows us, John, that these people really have not learned their lessons.

10:05

The Evangelical Immigration Table actually technically does not exist as its own separate legal entity or organization.

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It is entirely a project and a front group of another organization called the

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National Immigration Forum. I think I'm getting, I may or may not be getting that name wrong, but I think that's right.

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The National Immigration Forum, which is a Soros -funded pro -amnesty, pro -open borders group.

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This is the National Immigration Forum's sort of cover group, astroturfed organization trying to bring

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Christians into supporting a progressive immigration agenda. This has caused a lot of consternation in the

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Southern Baptist Convention over the last decade with really, unfortunately, no real accountability, but they're up to their old tricks again.

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And so here we have this Soros -funded front group, Evangelical Immigration Table, getting ostensibly conservative

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Christian organizations like the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and the CCCU, which I have no idea why they think this is an interesting concern for them.

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And what they're doing here is they're complaining about an executive action taken by DHS to say that criminal illegal aliens, such as rapists and murderers, cannot be sheltered in places like churches and schools.

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So that was actually, this was a longstanding order under previous administrations that you could have immigration enforcement and removals, arrests and removals of criminal illegal aliens and most likely dangerous ones in places like churches and schools.

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The Biden administration, they changed that longstanding order and they essentially revoked it and said,

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ICE stay out of these quote unquote sensitive locations, churches and schools, except in the most extenuating circumstances.

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And so on January, 2021, I have the order up on my phone here, statement from DHS spokesperson on directives, expanding law enforcement and ending the abuse of humanitarian parole.

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They rescinded the Biden administration guidelines for ICE and CPB on enforcement actions that thwart law enforcement in or near so -called sensitive areas.

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And the way they describe it as this, they say this action empowers the brave men and women in CPB and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens, including murderers and rapists who have illegally come to our country.

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Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America's schools and churches to avoid arrest. So this is a very sensible policy, undoing sort of a dangerous policy for the

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Biden administration. And yet the evangelical immigration table led this letter sort of saying this potentially violates religious liberty.

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It's so concerning to our churches and schools that there might be an ICE raid during a service, which is highly unlikely.

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But essentially there's no way around this, John. This letter from the evangelical immigration table with ethics and religious liberty commission on it is essentially saying, quote unquote, religious liberty is an excuse to allow churches to harbor some of the most violent and dangerous criminal illegal aliens in our country.

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Here's one of the quotes from it. It says that the effect of the revocation of the guidance that you just explained from the

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Biden administration has been that many immigrants and their U .S. citizen family members, so it's expanding this to those who are

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U .S. citizens, are afraid that attending a Sunday morning worship service or a Wednesday night Bible study could put them at risk of deportation or of separation from their loved ones, which to me is such a sneaky way to approach this.

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Look at any other crime and say that the criminal who has committed a crime,

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I don't care what it is, is afraid to go to church because there could be a police officer who arrests them in the church.

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Do we treat any other crime this way? I'd like to know. I mean, I know that there are situations where you need warrants, and I think that does depend probably on the locality and so forth, but maybe go into that a little bit.

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I mean, is this going to, even if it hasn't happened yet, lead to raids, warrantless raids from ICE in churches and so forth?

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Yeah, well, that's a good question. So let me try to break down a little bit of the immigration law for individuals listening.

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First of all, you don't need a warrant to apprehend and remove an illegal alien. Every single illegal alien in the

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United States of America is subject to apprehension and removal. That's what's in the code.

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So you don't need a warrant. They are lawbreakers. There's no warrant needed. They're not subject to the jurisdiction of the

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United States. So there's that just in general. And you're absolutely right, John, that immigration law is not some sort of special law that Christians get to break because they're

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Christians. So many people act like that, though. It's like somehow, you know, if you were, say, an

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American citizen and you had committed a murder and there was a warrant out for your arrest, and just, again, in this analogy, every illegal alien essentially has a standing warrant for the apprehension or removal because they're here illegally, you know, you wouldn't be able to go into a church and avoid being rolled up by the police, you know, because you're a murderer.

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It's the same thing going on here. Like churches can't give safe haven to criminals.

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Just because you come into a church doesn't mean the law enforcement can't get you there. But the reality is this is going to be so few and far between that such things could happen.

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But let's keep in mind how many liberal churches are out there in this country that I actually believe would do things like try to shelter criminal illegal aliens from enforcement.

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And so this is just a sensible policy from the Biden administration, and we're seeing emotionally manipulative language coming from people like Brent Leatherwood, the

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ERLC, the EIT. I have Brent's statement, well, you might pull it up in the Hispanic Baptist article here, but this is common sense, and they are just,

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I think, looking for opportunities to make Trump sound heartless, quite frankly. Here's the article from Baptist Press.

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Hispanic Baptist leaders say loss of sensitive location rule hurts church. Is there a quote from Brent Leatherwood of the

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ERLC that you wanna read from this? Yeah, he says, and so first of all, the framing of this article is really important.

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Go back up to that headline. So first of all, look at this.

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They couch it in terms of a minority group, right? Hispanic Baptist leaders say loss of sensitive location rules hurts church.

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So the first I have to say, again, there's no exception for being Hispanic Baptists from following the law.

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Why are we assuming that all these Hispanic Baptists are congregations full of illegal aliens?

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Why would that be the case? Why are these churches breaking the law more than anybody else? So it's ridiculous, emotionally manipulative framing, appealing to sort of DEI minority sensibilities, but in it,

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Brent says this. If you scroll down, he says, no church that I'm aware of harbors criminal actors, whether they're here legally or illegally, and no church leader wants that.

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Okay, that is a crazy statement, John. How in the world can Brent know that? How can

17:04

Brent know, and he throws in the I'm aware of. Of course, Brent, there are literally millions of churches across this country, and you have no idea what's happening there.

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But to make this even worse, this guy, Matt Crawford, who's a Southern Baptist Convention pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Cordova, Tennessee, he stood in his pulpit on a

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Sunday recently, I think you covered this, and he said that, you know, he was raising concerns with this rule, and he said at a previous church of his in Miami, there was an undocumented immigrant there for many years.

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Okay, an undocumented immigrant is an illegal alien. An illegal alien has broken our laws.

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They essentially are a criminal. And he said that there was no pathway for citizenship to that guy, and he wished that there were.

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And that makes me know that Matt Crawford never did anything to turn in this illegal alien to ICE.

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And so Matt Crawford did exactly what Brent says he thinks nobody is doing, which is essentially harboring, you know, an illegal immigrant at his church.

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And so like that Leatherwood is just out to lunch kind of phrasing it like this. And again, as I said,

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I guarantee you, there are tons of radically progressive churches, Episcopalians, Methodists, et cetera, who do knowingly harbor illegal aliens and might even harbor those illegal aliens if they've committed other additional criminal actions in our country.

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And so Brent's statement there is truly laughable on its face. But then what's worse is he goes on and he tries to make it like into a religious liberty argument.

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Down there he says, not only can this be done in a way that respects religious liberty, it is something that would be strongly supported by our churches.

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So the inference there is that somehow this infringes upon religious liberty to which all of your listeners, to Brent Leatherwood and to all

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Baptists, I would say there is no such thing as a religious liberty, you know, excuse or exemption for harboring illegal aliens.

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They have broken our law. It is, we're not infringing upon religious liberty to remove those illegal aliens wherever and however we find them.

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Yeah, and you know, they would still need probable cause to go into a church. This is one of the things I think that they're leaving open -ended and this manipulates people.

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There's not going to be ICE agents walking into your church like, you know, the Gestapo or the

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Stasi to see everyone's papers and just make sure that there's no illegal migrants present.

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They have to go, if they're going to go in, they're going to have to have some reason for going in there.

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And I think as you rightly pointed out, there was a pastor, Matt Crawford, who admitted that this has happened.

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It was even a staff member at his church. And I'm going to point out something that I know I've pointed out before, but the current president of the

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Southern Baptist Convention years ago admitted that he had on staff at his very church an illegal migrant.

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And that was one of the reasons he was lobbying for the DREAM Act. Now, I don't know if Clint Presley, the president of the

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SBC has weighed in on this at all. Do you know where he stands on this issue since his

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ERLC director is certainly signaling strong anti -Trump sentiments here?

20:15

Yeah, I've had a conversation with Clint about this. So just reading the tea leaves, I think

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Clint has probably moved in a more conservative direction on a lot of these issues. I do believe, again, not speaking about any particular conversation

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I've had with him, but I believe that there's general frustration across the Southern Baptist Convention about Brent Leatherwood's leadership.

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I will say this, I'm pretty confident nobody at the ERLC board knew Leatherwood was signing onto this evangelical immigration letter table, immigration table letter, or the other one we're gonna talk about.

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He's just sort of doing these things, giving these quotes. And so I think Brent's really on an island. I mean,

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I'm looking at just another portion of his quote here. He says, the unintended impact of this change will be that many law abiding immigrants will be fearful to attend our churches.

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That makes no sense. The scripture teaches us that the government is supposed to be a terror to law breakers and to commend law doers.

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Well, so if you are a law abiding immigrant, you have absolutely nothing to fear. This is about the removal of illegal aliens, particularly illegal aliens who have committed other crimes.

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I mean, Brent just clearly doesn't understand immigration law. And actually, John, you might disagree with me on this, and I'm happy to debate you a little bit, but I would actually say that if ICE is aware that there are congregations that have high percentages of illegal aliens gathering there,

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I mean, I could be wrong about this, but I think ICE has every warrant and reason to go make immigration enforcement checks at churches.

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Again, I don't think that the First Amendment protects illegal activity from occurring within a church.

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So you and I might disagree on that, but I'm okay with that. I think what you're describing though is probable cause, as I understand it, at least.

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They have to first have a strong suspicion, a reasoned suspicion. Sure, of course.

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That doesn't go into any church. And that's how they're presenting it here, is that any church a Hispanic enters is going to be, the

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ICE is gonna be right there waiting for them to make sure that their legal migrant status is all in order or something.

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And I think that's ridiculous. Yeah, that's certainly not happening. But this is a very, obviously a very few cases, but really again, let me put it this way.

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I trust the Trump administration and the people who are leading his immigration policy. And as you pull the camera back out, every little thing leads to another.

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If the Trump DHS is saying, we need to revoke this Biden administration sensitive locations rule, which

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I mean, just on the basis of the fact that it was the Biden administration who did it, I think it should probably be revoked.

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That they have, I think, good grounds to think there may be some very few cases where it's necessary to go and remove dangerous, violent, criminal, illegal aliens from either a school or church.

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And the schools, it's a big part of this too. I mean, I've seen some reports recently that have shown that there are incredible numbers of illegal aliens attending schools across this country.

23:29

And so again, if ICE becomes aware that a legal alien is attending a school, just, and again, probable cause, because they know, okay, this illegal alien is there, they have the right to go and remove that illegal alien and catch them on campus if need be, right?

23:45

So it's like, the point that Trump is sending here is that there's no safe place to hide and you can't use places like schools and churches to shield yourself from reasonable apprehension and removal.

23:59

Let's talk about the asylum seeker issue. I wanna play a little clip from Kristi Noem and then we will talk about the

24:06

Christian reaction to this, especially from World Vision. Okay, so now let's turn back to the border quickly. Can you hear this all right?

24:11

Now join - Was that volume okay for you? Yeah, it's great. All right. Joining me is the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has an exclusive announcement on more action her department is taking.

24:23

Secretary, thanks for being with us here today. I understand you have something to share with us that we haven't heard yet about what you're gonna be doing at DHS.

24:30

Yes, well, thank you, Will, for inviting me to be with you. Today, we are announcing that we have stopped all grant funding that's being abused by NGOs to facilitate illegal immigration into this country.

24:43

So it's amazing to me the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent by the federal government that has been sent to NGOs to facilitate this invasion of our country.

24:54

So I've taken action to stop those funds, to reevaluate them and to make sure that we're actually using the taxpayer dollars in a way that strengthens this country, that keeps us safe.

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So I think people are curious when we look at grants that are given out by federal agencies at how they're utilized, and that evaluation needs to be done.

25:13

We're not spending another dime to help the destruction of this country. We're gonna make sure that we follow through on what

25:19

President Trump has promised, and that's to make sure that we're securing our border, departing those who are here illegally, and committing criminal actions, and that our taxpayer dollars aren't spent to help it.

25:33

And let's stop it right there. She goes on to talk about how some of these non -government entities essentially operate on both sides of the border, and they facilitate people coming into this country illegally or taking advantage,

25:49

I suppose, of the asylum system. We can talk about that in a moment. But that they're doing the kinds of things that the government is prohibited from doing, but they're still getting government money for doing it.

25:59

So essentially, they're acting as an extension of the administrative state. And this is what they're trying to put an end to.

26:07

And of course, the reaction from many Christian progressives, if you wanna call them that on X and social media, was pretty severe.

26:17

Trump is shutting down Christian ministries, says Tish Harrison Warren. Ministries I've supported may have to close their doors.

26:23

I've never seen anything like this. And then of course, you have from, this is from World Relief, the statement that they made on this, which another statement signed by Brent Leatherwood.

26:35

He's been busy the last week, where they take a stand against what you just heard from Kristi Noem. So maybe put a little meat on that.

26:43

What exactly is going on? Isn't this a legal migration? I know Neil Shenvey and some others tried to say on X that this is different, that there's a line between the illegal and illegal migration and this is shutting down a legitimate path to actual legal citizenship and so it's wrong.

27:01

Yeah, so I mean, so again, let me commend something that I just did recently. This was two nights ago.

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I hosted a space on X and you can go find the recording. It's my pinned tweet on X right now at William underscore

27:14

E underscore Wolf, where I convened some actual immigration experts, which Brent Leatherwood is not.

27:21

And quite frankly, World Relief is not either. Or if they are, they certainly ignore vast swaths of immigration law.

27:26

I brought together people from the Immigration Accountability Project, experts from Heritage and the

27:32

Oversight Project at Heritage as well, including Nate Hoekman, who's a journalist at America 2100, who's done a deep dive on the

27:40

Refugee Resettlement NGO Industrial Complex. So I highly recommend, that's a deep dive on this issue.

27:47

But what's going on in here is sort of, there's one topic that's being adjudicated across a couple of different agencies and there's refugee resettlement

27:55

NGOs and then there's other NGOs. So I'm not quite as particularly familiar in terms of what the

28:02

NGOs are that partner with DHS grants, but it's really sort of the same thing across state and DHS.

28:08

So at state, the State Department, Rubio issued the same sort of ruling and that's what World Relief is responding to.

28:15

There are nine or 10 major NGOs that do refugee resettlement. Almost all of them are explicitly religious.

28:23

You have the Catholic Charities, which is part of the U .S. Catholic Conference of Catholic Bishops.

28:29

You've got World Relief, which is essentially the major evangelical one. And this is fascinating. You'll recognize this name,

28:35

John, maybe some of your listeners will too. World Relief is technically the World Relief of the

28:41

National Association of Evangelicals. So it is the, which was originally a conservative evangelical group and isn't by any means anymore.

28:50

And so what these organizations do is they take your taxpayer dollars, essentially laundered through the federal government, and then they use them to facilitate mass migration into America, focusing particularly on the piece of refugee resettlement.

29:04

And the resettling hundreds of thousands of refugees across our country, year over year,

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Biden's refugee admissions cap over the last four years was 125 ,000 each year.

29:15

They're coming into small towns across America that don't have the infrastructure or resources to support or care for them.

29:21

And they're doing it all on your taxpayer dollars. World Relief in 2022 got 126 million in federal grants.

29:30

And so now that Trump's back and he's recognized that this is essentially taking your taxpayer dollars to fund the destruction of the

29:37

United States, he's put an end to it. And that's why we've seen this World Relief PR campaign essentially out there shilling for your money to cover the quote unquote gap of their taxpayer dollars that are being turned off.

29:49

That's what Tish Warren Harrison was talking about. She's totally getting it wrong. Trump's not shutting them down.

29:55

He's just turning off the taxpayer grift. If people wanna give to these organizations, they certainly can, though I would not recommend it.

30:02

And so they're presenting themselves as sort of Catholic charities being targeted by Trump, which isn't the case at all.

30:07

Trump is recognizing that these so -called charities are facilitating the destruction of America's communities, bringing in people who are potentially dangerous.

30:16

This is another really important point too, John, is that they claim that all these refugees are quote unquote vetted.

30:22

But as Mike Howell with the Oversight Project at Heritage said on our space, there's really no such thing as vetting these people.

30:29

I mean, many of these people don't have a social media imprint. Many of them are committed Muslims and Islamists, and there's no way to sort of vet them for potential acts of terrorists.

30:38

In fact, there was a man who came in as a quote unquote Afghan refugee who was arrested right before the election,

30:46

I believe in Dallas, who was planning a terrorist attack on the country. He came in through this program.

30:52

And for someone like me, John, like one is too many, right? One is too many. I don't care if you've sort of resettled 95 ,000 so -called peaceful refugees who aren't gonna commit terrorist attacks.

31:06

If in those 95 ,000 comes one who's going to potentially kill dozens of American citizens, that's one too many.

31:14

And so Trump is doing the right thing here to shut it off. Noam is hitting all the right notes and saying, we're not gonna use taxpayer dollars to fund these programs anymore.

31:23

This is the moral thing to do. This is the Christian thing to do as the American government and all these organizations out there, again, using weaponized pseudo religious language to guilt people into opposing

31:33

Trump on this are really just trying to look out for their bottom line. Speaking of organizations that are looking out for their bottom line, let's start out with Christianity Today, an article from Russell Moore.

31:44

Yes, Jesus was a refugee, he says, and I'll give you some quotes. He says that the question of whether Jesus was a refugee is straightforward.

31:52

United Nations defines a refugee as someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence.

31:58

And that fits Jesus essentially. And then at the end of the article, he says that most Americans are not refugees.

32:04

Many won't know a refugee family in their community personally. These Christians might then simply ignore the plight of refugees, and yet no

32:12

Christian conscience can allow their mistreatment to stand. We all know a refugee family. As a matter of fact, we are part of one.

32:19

If we are in Christ, his history is ours. Refugees are unpopular. Often they are scapegoated and maligned.

32:25

So let me get your reaction to that. Yeah, I mean, the man is supposedly a public theologian, and yet his theology is absolutely terrible.

32:38

You know, and first of all, I completely disagree. I do not think it is accurate in any way, shape or form to refer to Jesus as a refugee, particularly when what

32:48

Russell Moore is doing there is he's trying to evoke modern day refugees, you know, from failed nation states or people fleeing religious persecution or political violence, and they need to be relocated out of one country, ideally to another country.

33:03

And I didn't say this. There's so much on path. But again, if we wanna talk about smart refugee resettlement policy, the best thing to do, the most cost effective thing to do, and the way to best care for these individuals is to resettle them in a country as close as possible to their country of origin.

33:19

First of all, it costs way less. Mark Krikorian has done a study on this, I believe at the Center for Immigration Studies, showing that you get essentially a tenfold return on your money caring for refugees in the closest country next to their country of origin, as opposed to importing them all the way to the

33:37

United States of America. But getting back out of the policy weeds and to the point about Jesus was a refugee, first of all, if an angel appears to you in a dream because a particular violent, mad dictator king like Herod is coming to kill the

33:53

Messiah, the Son of God, and you need to flee, well, then we could maybe have a conversation about who's a refugee, but that was clearly a providential and extenuating circumstance for the purpose of protecting

34:05

Jesus Christ as a incarnate child from the violence of Herod.

34:11

They told, an angel told Mary and Joseph exactly where to flee, go to Egypt. Also, the point there was to fulfill prophecy, out of Egypt, I've called my son.

34:20

And arguably, Egypt at that time and where they went was under the domain of the

34:27

Roman Empire at the time. So technically, while Jesus might have sort of gone to another quote unquote country or province, he actually was still staying within sort of the boundaries of the

34:36

Roman Empire. It's not like he was illegally crossing or anything like that. And so like, it's just, it is honestly,

34:42

I would say this, John, trying to argue that Jesus was a refugee in order to argue for the continuation of refugee resettlement policies into America, particularly on taxpayer dollars, is a way of taking the

34:55

Lord's name in vain. That is not the point of that story, and it is not applicable to our situation today.

35:02

William, I wanna get your reaction to another news article here, or it's not really news,

35:08

I suppose, but the Gospel Coalition, Joe Carter wrote an article, and he says in the article this, last year, about 30 ,000

35:15

Christian refugees from the 50 countries where religious persecution, Washtaug, Open Wars USA, says that Christians face the most severe persecution in the world were resettled in the

35:24

United States. So that's point one, Christian refugees are part of this. So we have a responsibility or an obligation to other

35:32

Christians. And then he says, a 2024 LifeWay research study found that 71 % of evangelical

35:38

Christians believe the United States has a moral responsibility to receive refugees.

35:44

Last, I'll say that Trump has also, he says Trump has also issued an order that would overturn birthright citizenship, and this is gonna probably be overturned in the courts because it's a clear violation, he says, of the 14th

35:56

Amendment. So your reaction to that, number one, is it a Christian duty to allow

36:02

Christian refugees into the country or to allow all refugees in, because some of them are Christians, is I think the point he's making.

36:09

And then are most Christians in support of this? I mean, it seems like evangelicals voted for Trump knowing he'd do this.

36:16

And then last, the 14th Amendment issue. Yeah, okay, so I'm trying to understand where that number is coming from.

36:25

So I've got the article up on my phone and I'm following the link tree here. And guess what? You know, you click on that 30 ,000

36:31

Christian refugees, like, so where's he getting that number from? It takes you to World Relief, how about that? Okay, so you click on the number again in World Relief, and what does it take you to?

36:42

It takes you to, again, a World Relief product. So are we going to take

36:48

World Relief's word on this, that we did resettle 30 ,000 Christian refugees?

36:53

I mean, I haven't looked at this document, but maybe we have, maybe we haven't, I have no idea.

36:59

But again, mixed in with any of those, quote unquote, Christian refugees could be any number of violent actors who aren't

37:06

Christians, who aren't committed to the American way of life. And furthermore, back to that point that I was making, the smarter and more responsible, arguably the more

37:13

Christian and loving thing to do is to relocate Christians who are fleeing persecution in other countries to, you know, either can they go somewhere else in their own country or can they be resettled in a country that borders their country of origin for the purposes of being able to return them to where they're from as soon as possible.

37:33

I saw this, Elon Musk shared it on X. I think this was from Sweden. It was saying that 75 % of the refugees and asylum seekers that have come to Sweden over the last many years have taken vacations, vacations back to their home countries.

37:49

And so like, we cannot take any of this at face value, John. I mean, so I don't know if that's true or not.

37:54

I certainly won't take it at face value. It's not the right way to do it either way. And this gets into what

37:59

JD Vance raised recently on X just yesterday in terms of the order of Morris and confusing

38:05

Christian duties with the acts of charity. I do not actually think that we have a

38:11

Christian obligation to open the doors of America to any and all potential refugees fleeing, you know, violence around the world just because they claim to be

38:22

Christians. You know, just because you claim to be a Christian, just because you are a Christian doesn't actually give you an inherent right or privilege to come to the

38:30

United States of America. The way that we need to order our immigration laws in America from refugee and asylum resettlement to legal immigration, like H -1B visas is in the interest of American citizens.

38:42

That's the first question that we need to ask. And Joe Carter's not even asking that question. Do you want to get into the 14th amendment stuff or?

38:51

I know I have a question already because I know I'm going to get to questions at the end, but Arne says, show me the black person in 1870 who was born here of parents not born here, which

39:02

I understand that is probably the crux of the issue is the context in which the 14th amendment was ratified and how the original audience would have understood it.

39:13

Yeah, no, I mean, this is the 14th amendment debate, John, is a classic example of common sense versus intellectual midwittery.

39:23

I mean, you know, actually no offense to Joe Carter. You know, I don't know the guy, but this is a midwit argument.

39:30

The idea that somehow when the 14th amendment was passed to ensure that descendants of African -American slaves in the

39:36

United States of America, you know, who were born to parents who were potentially forcibly brought here against their will, and now we're here, you know, that they could have

39:45

American citizenship. It was never meant to mean that anybody at any time who showed up on our magic

39:52

American soil and had a kid, that that kid became a full citizen of the United States of America.

39:58

There isn't, I think I'm right about this. There isn't a single other major Western country, developed

40:03

Western country, France, England, Germany, Australia, et cetera, that gives full citizenship to just any random individual born on their soil.

40:14

This has been a misinterpretation of the 14th amendment. Trump's common sense understanding of this is the constitutional argument, the constitutional case for it.

40:24

And so this is gonna be obviously a major legal battle, but Joe Carter is quite frankly, just repeating midwit leftist talking points that really kind of come more out of a sort of living constitution, a progressive constitutional approach to how we interpret amendments like this.

40:41

Trump's spot on, Carter's wrong, and this is a very sensible policy. All right, well, let's talk about this next issue which you already brought up, which is the

40:51

Ordo Maris. So I'm gonna play a clip from J .D. Vance and we're gonna just look at,

40:58

I think I have at least one reaction to this queued up and then we'll end on the

41:03

RFK stuff. So here's J .D. Vance. J .D. Vance said this on Fox News, I guess recently.

41:11

But there's this old school and I think it's a very Christian concept by the way, that you love your family and then you love your neighbor and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.

41:28

A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders.

41:36

That is no way to run a society. And I think the profound difference that Donald Trump brings to the leadership of this country is the simple concept,

41:45

America first. It doesn't mean you hate anybody else. It means that you have leadership and President Trump has been very clear about this.

41:52

It puts the interests of American citizens first. In the same way that the British Prime Minister should care about Brits and the

41:59

French should care about the French, we have an American president who cares primarily about Americans and that's a very welcome change.

42:05

All right, so Thabiti Anabwile who, I don't know, is he still with the landmarks or is he on his own?

42:11

He was with them at one point, I know. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's on his own. Yeah, okay, so I don't know that he is connected to an evangelical organization at this point, but he used to speak at Southeastern all the time when

42:24

I was a student there. And I know he was very influential in Southern Baptist circles, but he says that this may be an old school concept, meaning the

42:33

Ordo Amoris, but it's not a very Christian concept. He's describing natural affection, a fleshly notion of love.

42:39

He's describing self -love spread over a wider area. He's not describing Christian or supernatural love.

42:46

And he goes on, but I just think this is so rich because Thabiti Anabwile is one of these guys that is very big on the black church and making sure that the black church is well accepted in the larger evangelical community and that kind of thing.

43:03

He certainly cares for his own in that sense, but he is counter signaling

43:08

Vance here with honestly a very, I would say, powerful insinuation.

43:15

He's saying that Vance is out of step with Christianity and that this is actually not

43:21

Christian love at all. And he goes on, he says this, he says, the country has so baptized the flag in civil religion or wrapped

43:30

Christianity in the flag that it cannot distinguish the two and therefore distorts the two. So that's a pretty serious charge.

43:38

What's your thought on that? Yeah, I mean, how much time do we have on this segment? But, you know,

43:43

I'm kidding, but, you know, look, I gave a talk at the National Conservatism Conference in 2022 titled

43:49

A Christian Case for America First. In that talk, it was about 17 minutes. I had two basic points.

43:57

One was a Christian case for America First rests on one, rejecting national

44:02

Gnosticism, rejecting the idea that nations aren't good, that they're not sort of ordered by God, they're not part of God's design, that defending our borders, defending our people is somehow anti -Christian, it's not.

44:15

Nations are a good part of this natural world, just like our gender is. You know, it's funny, we talk about Gnosticism, we sort of deny the goodness of the created order and seeking this secret spiritual knowledge for salvation.

44:26

That's really what underlines the transgender movement, right? And that's what we're seeing in our modern day and age is just this full frontal attack on all of God's creation order, from marriage to biological realities of male and female and to nations themselves.

44:40

So I said, reject national Gnosticism. My second point was embrace rightly ordered loves because this is actually a deeply

44:48

Christian idea that Deity Vance is articulating. One, you can find it directly from scripture.

44:53

You can begin with, you know, one of the 10 commandments, honor your father and mother.

45:00

And, you know, Paul picks that up in Ephesians and he says, this is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you in the land.

45:07

I mean, Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit ties this question of natural and ordered affections, rightly ordered loves, honoring your father and mother to the wellbeing of your land and your country.

45:18

Paul also picks up on this idea in 1 Timothy 5, 8, where he says, anyone who does not provide for their relatives, especially for their own household has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

45:32

Paul also in the New Testament gives commands to Christians to prioritize loving those of the people of faith, you know, the

45:38

Christian faith. But this right here is a command to make sure you love and care and provide for just your own relatives, whether they're

45:45

Christians or not. Augustine articulated a similar doctrine. One of the greatest, you know, theologians and philosophers of the entire

45:53

Western tradition, who also I will point out, this is very funny, during the height of wokeness, many in Thabiti's camp, probably

46:00

Thabiti himself at some point, they always wanted to make sure that we remembered that Augustine was an

46:05

African theologian. So there's some, you know, DEI representation in our theology there. And now they're pitting

46:11

Augustine's theology against so -called Christianity. Well, Augustine is Christian and Augustine is right. Further developed by Catholic theologian,

46:18

Thomas Aquinas, and largely understood by everybody up until the 1960s.

46:23

I mean, this is a question about moral proximity. It's fundamentally actually a question about obligations and duties.

46:29

We're born into this world with unchosen demands upon us. Obligations, we call these moral duties.

46:36

J .D. Vance uses that language in a follow -up tweet on this issue. I have a moral duty to care for my family, to care for my wife, to care for my children, to care for my parents in a way that I do not have a moral duty to care for any other random individual.

46:49

I also have finite resources. If I were to open up my home to anybody who just wanted to walk in off the street and provide for them, and by the time that my resources and my food runs out, that my children are starving,

47:01

I have inverted and subverted Christian love, love in general. I failed at my duties.

47:07

And you can extrapolate that out to a nation, which is what Vance is doing here. The government of the

47:13

United States, the president of the United States has a moral duty and obligation to put our citizens first.

47:19

Once you've done that, and you've done it rightly, which we have not in the United States of America, not for a long time, and we're not even close to it.

47:25

I mean, mass deportations need to happen in order to even begin to get back to sort of equilibrium where we're caring for our citizens first.

47:33

Once you've done that and you've fulfilled your duties, whatever else you have left over is arguably an exercise of charity and hospitality that must always be done with prudence, but we've totally inverted this in the age of globalism, social media activism, we've turned charity and hospitality into sort of this

47:51

Christian duty that supersedes all where we essentially say, invite the whole world here and we have an obligation to love them.

47:59

It's completely nonsensical. J .D. Vance is spot on on this and it's fascinating to see the people who are counter signaling it.

48:05

Frankly, they're not making Christian arguments. That's such a good point that you raised about them claiming

48:11

Augustine, because I heard that over and over. It was pretty universal for a lot of these woke guys to say,

48:17

Augustine is an African theologian and you must categorize him as such. And that meant reading him and now they don't want you to quote him.

48:23

So very fascinating. Okay, let's move on to the last issue, which is

48:28

RFK and the nomination of RFK. This is creating a stir because RFK, of course, does not have a history of even being a

48:38

Republican and that means he has not been pro -life. I've noticed there's been a big shift with him over the last maybe year or so.

48:46

And he started saying things about his own reconsideration of the topic and making allegedly a promise to keep

48:55

Trump's from 2016 pro -life policies in place there. But I wanna read for you from Mike Cosper, I think, and Mike Pence, we'll start with Mike Pence.

49:06

Mike Pence shared an article from the National Review and it says pro -lifers should vote no on RFK.

49:12

And then we can talk about that article if you want. And then Mike Cosper, who I believe if,

49:19

I don't know why I'm blanking on this. I think he's affiliated with Christianity Today, right? Oh, yes, yes. Okay, pretty sure.

49:26

Okay, so then he says, until five minutes ago, the pro -life movement understood that human dignity in the womb was valuable, sorry, enough to aspire to federal protection for the unborn.

49:36

This is not incrementalism. This is accepting Trump's decree that it's a state -by -state issue, which is to say abandoning the dignity of the unborn in service of Trump and his movement.

49:46

Now, this is in a context of obviously we're talking about federalism here, but Mike Cosper is saying that the Trump administration and their nomination of RFK for the

49:56

Director of Health and Human Services, and then in accordance with Trump's policies, making sure that the abortion issue is more of a state issue, is a capitulation from the evangelicals and that we're, basically we're compromising on this.

50:13

So tell me, what do you think of RFK? Do you think he's a good nominee? Why, if you do? And whether or not evangelicals, by voting for Trump in large numbers, have sold their pro -life bona fides in?

50:27

Well, I mean, first of all, to answer that question, absolutely not. I mean, again, I love so much of the way that Donald Trump is just an absolute rebuke and a shame to the evangelical establishment, to the pro -life establishment, to the conservative movement, because the man was essentially a lifelong

50:47

New York Democrat who loved America. I mean, the man is a patriot. I really appreciate that about him, who ran for president to fix this country, to make us great again.

50:57

And social concerns were not his primary concern. They never were from day one.

51:02

And if you expected them to be, I don't know what world you're living in or what you've been watching, Trump ran primarily on trade and immigration policies, on getting other countries to pay their fair share for defense, reinvigorating the

51:13

American industrial base, essentially making life better again for so many people. And that's important. Of course, the social conservatives, these policies would care about pro -life being at the absolute top of the ticket, matters.

51:24

And we got Trump to care about those issues, even though they weren't his main issues. And he got the justices across the finish line that overturned

51:32

Roe v. Wade, despite 50 years of the pro -life establishment's failure to do so.

51:38

And so Trump won that. I mean, his pro -life policies, what he could do at the federal level when he was in the first term, turning off all the funding from HHS to abortion providers at the

51:49

State Department, making sure that our federal funds that go overseas, again, to NGOs overseas, aren't being used to go to any organization that either performs or promotes abortion.

51:59

That's called the Mexico City policy, making sure to implement the Hyde Amendment, which makes sure that no federal funds can go to any abortion providers or promoters across America on our domestic soil.

52:12

I mean, Trump did all of that. And so then he ran on essentially that same platform for 2024.

52:17

He's doing it again. And RFK Jr. has articulated some very reprehensible pro -choice positions in the past.

52:27

I've heard him do it. He's also been sort of inconsistent. Some people point to statements he's made where he said essentially he supports abortion all the way up to nine months, but he's also made other statements where he's walked that back.

52:38

So RFK Jr., I would say, is sort of developing on this issue. But regardless of whatever his own personal beliefs are on this, which

52:46

I do think they matter, I'm not discounting them entirely by any means, he has clearly articulated to multiple senators and to Donald Trump.

52:54

And one of the main senators pushing him on this has been Josh Hawley, who's done great work. Hawley has secured commitments from RFK Jr.

53:00

to implement every single pro -life policy that was present in the first Trump administration, if confirmed to be the secretary of HHS.

53:09

He said he'll do it. I know Trump wants him to do it. RFK Jr. has committed to appointing pro -life deputies to critical positions at HHS.

53:17

And in his confirmation hearing the other day, he committed to ensuring that research with aborted fetal embryos or baby body parts would be stopped at the

53:30

HHS and NIH. And this brings me to Francis Collins. Francis Collins is the darling of evangelical elites when it comes to a quote unquote model public servant who says he's a

53:43

Christian and serves at high levels of government. I mean, Tim Keller loved Francis Collins.

53:48

Dan Darling at Southwestern Southern Baptist associated with the ERLC loves Francis Collins.

53:54

Mike Pence loves Francis Collins. Mike Cosper had Francis Collins on his podcast recently.

54:00

When Francis Collins oversaw the NIH, he greenlit multiple horrific experiments and studies on both transgender issues.

54:10

I mean, he funded studies that were essentially experimenting on so -called trans identified teens.

54:15

And in those studies, at least one, if not more of the teens ended up committing suicide. This Francis Collins also greenlit studies with NIH funding, your taxpayer funding, that this is so disgusting.

54:28

So trigger warning for your audience, they were sewing aborted baby scalp onto rats.

54:35

That's what Francis Collins was doing. And so there's people, you know, I will say this, the abortion abolitionist movement would have a leg to stand on to oppose

54:44

RFK Jr. on pro -life issues. There's not a single regime evangelical who has been in bed with Francis Collins for as long as I can remember, who's still promoting him to this day.

54:54

And keep in mind too that Francis Collins joined hands with Fauci to try to discredit the people who were trying to find truth on the

55:01

COVID issue as well. I mean, the dude was just essentially a corrupt swamp government operator using, you know, a

55:07

Christian mask in the public square. And of course all big evil loved him for it. But if you have been a friend or promoter of Francis Collins, I do not want to hear a single word of your opposition to RFK Jr.

55:19

I said this yesterday on X and I stand by it today. Given all the commitments that RFK Jr. has given to senators, his commitment to advancing the

55:26

Trump pro -life agenda at HHS and his commitment to ending experiments with aborted baby body parts, fetal research.

55:34

I actually am confident at this point that RFK Jr., if confirmed, would be a more pro -life HHS secretary in action than somebody like Francis Collins ever was.

55:45

And so that's my position on RFK. And I will say this, RFK also brings in a very important piece of this whole conversation about what's going on in American life with his

55:53

Make America Healthy Again agenda. I mean, the big pharma and big ag are poisoning our children.

56:00

Vaccines are becoming increasingly questioned as to their efficacy and their deleterious impacts and effects, the adverse effects on individuals.

56:08

The COVID vaccine is a great example. There's lots of others. Science in America has essentially become a dogma and a religion that you can't question, which means it isn't science because science is an exploratory process of testing hypotheses, always available to be questioned.

56:23

And RFK Jr. is a rebuke to those industries. So if you can find me somebody who wants to make

56:29

America healthy again, who is also pro -life, who's willing to take on big pharma and big ag, put their name out there, but these guys aren't doing that.

56:36

And so my hopeful position, and I'll say, John, I've been right on so many things that I feel confident in my predictions at this point, is that in RFK Jr.,

56:45

somebody who's committed to advancing the pro -life agenda of Trump and even go further than some of his previous iterations there and going after the big pharma industries, it could be a powerful combination there.

56:56

And I'm very, I'd say, not even cautiously optimistic, I'm very optimistic that he would do a great job there. You know, this is a clear divide between elites and those who are in the favor of the people,

57:09

I suppose. I mean, you could say populist, I suppose, if you want to use that term, but the Christians who seem to be against RFK are against him because he is not part of that elite class.

57:20

And Francis Collins was, and they aspired to be accepted like Francis Collins. And JFK, or RFK rather, does not really care whether he's accepted or not by that strata of society, which

57:31

I find interesting. So let's go to some questions and then, you know, we'll end the podcast.

57:37

But Dr. Bob, this was early on in the podcast, says, the J .D. Vance -styled beard that Mr. Wolf was wearing is triggering me.

57:43

I need a safe space with therapy animals and rainbow flags. Dr. Bob, I think you're gonna be okay. You know,

57:49

J .D. Vance is the first vice president in a long time to have a beard, but he's bringing the beard back.

57:54

And so we need to, it's part of the Order Omarus, I think, for all of us as men to bring beards back.

58:00

Bob from Canada says, Will, when your politics are bad, are they still

58:05

Christian? Yeah, so I guess, you know, it's Russell Moore. He says he's Christian. I mean, does he even have

58:10

Christian politics? I, no. I have no idea what that question means.

58:17

When my politics are bad, are they still Christian? They claim I'm a Christian and looking at things in a

58:23

Christian view, but they're really not, I suppose. Do we still give them the dignity of calling their position a

58:28

Christian position? Like I say, progressive evangelicals, because I don't know what to call them. But, you know, obviously there's some fakeness there.

58:37

So I don't know if there's a solution, but certainly they agree with many things. Like, you know,

58:42

Russell Moore would be in agreement with the Athanasian Creed and with the

58:47

Solas and so forth. So, you know, is he a Christian in that sense? I mean, yeah, but his politics are so liberal and not in keeping with Christianity.

58:58

All right, let's go to the next one. It says, question, lots of reasons to be optimistic, but what are the fights we need to be paying more attention to?

59:04

AI, something else? What do you think, William? Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. You know, look, I'm not big in the tech world, but I think that is something that very smart people are working on.

59:15

AI and sort of tech optimism is an issue I think Christians need to develop sort of a robust theological foundation for.

59:23

It's like, you know, the question facing us on AI and other tech development is sort of that classic question from Jurassic Park, which is like, you know, we were so busy, you know, asking ourselves if we could, we didn't ask ourselves if we should.

59:35

So it was like, so like, why do we want to colonize Mars? You know, what happens when we automate, you know, so many industries in America?

59:43

What happens with AI? I mean, I've read some, you know, I read some science fiction. I've read some books that paint a very dystopian future, you know, pertaining fundamentally to artificial intelligence.

59:55

And I mean, I think as Christians though, like, you know, we recognize that artificial intelligence is not in any way something that is greater than God.

01:00:02

It can't reason beyond God. God has given us as humans made in his image, no matter the best chatbot in the world will never be made in God's image.

01:00:10

And we need to keep that in mind. They're gonna be fundamentally, you know, artificial actors. There are tools that we can use, but I will say this,

01:00:18

I'm cautiously optimistic that AI is gonna replace a lot of the managerial bloat across our country.

01:00:25

And it will make, it'll force people to actually have to produce things of quality. Yes, there are some individuals that are doing good services that I'm concerned about.

01:00:33

Like there's this classic back and forth between Tucker and Ben Shapiro on automated trucks.

01:00:38

Like those are the things where I would be much more sort of in defense of truckers than automated trucks.

01:00:44

But there's this whole entire managerial HR, corporate bloated class in America that AI might get rid of.

01:00:51

And that could be a positive thing. Yeah, I know the classic interview,

01:00:57

I don't know what it was you're talking about. And it's a hard issue to approach, but I do think there's some negative things attached to it.

01:01:05

What kind of church would want to keep violent criminals amongst their flocks? Good question. W .T.

01:01:12

Henry says, if they have broken the law, that they should be afraid on every inch of U .S. territory, meaning illegal migrants.

01:01:18

World Relief, as a Christian org, that is very funny. Okay. And then we are to care for the church.

01:01:26

After that, if someone has tons of extra resources and wants to show Christian benevolence, they can do that personally. This is something that I saw the other day when

01:01:32

I was streaming with Matt Pearson. Some people think that the Ordo Amoris essentially means the household of faith first.

01:01:40

Whatever resources you have go to Christians and then to non -Christians. And of course, I use the illustration of your own child and the many times in scripture that Jesus talks about even evil fathers feed their children.

01:01:52

Paul says, if you don't, you're worse than an unbeliever, that kind of thing. And so I don't think that that's exactly how the

01:01:58

Ordo Amoris works in every way. There's different kinds of duties. We're more complicated than just, you have one kind of duty that you give in different measures.

01:02:08

There's different kinds of duties we have. But I don't know if you wanna speak to that because this seems to be a very common misunderstanding.

01:02:14

Yeah, I do wanna take that on because I see something online quite a bit that I disagree with.

01:02:20

And it's the idea that somehow I have like greater kinship, I don't mean to use a loaded term there, like kinship or responsibilities to like a

01:02:29

Christian around the world. Like a Christian halfway around the world should matter more to me than like a non -Christian

01:02:36

American citizen down the street. And I do not think that that's Christian at all. Like, I mean, the idea is like, if I have additional resources and I have hurting

01:02:45

American citizens in close moral and physical proximity to me, and all

01:02:51

I'm doing is sort of like writing checks to help Christians around the world, while I walk by, while I pass by on the other side of the street for my embodied

01:03:00

American citizen neighbors, regardless of whether they're Christians or not, I think you're actually getting that order wrong.

01:03:06

There's one group of guys, I'm not gonna name names because I don't wanna get into it, but there's sort of, there is a cadre of actors out there who are constantly making this argument and I think it's fundamentally an un -Christian argument, inverts the order of Morris as well, fails to recognize the differences between like moral duties and charity.

01:03:23

And so, yeah, it's like bringing in sort of like the spiritual nature of it sometimes confuses the natural aspect of it.

01:03:31

And I think that's what that question is getting at. This is a good point. So the progressives are

01:03:37

Christian nationalists that demand we all let Christians in because it's an obligation of a Christian nation. It's funny how they rest their logic on Christianity when they then claim, turn around and claim that we're a pluralist nation of some kind and religiously neutral.

01:03:51

So I think that's amazing. Thabiti found out that Augustine's building count was lacking.

01:03:57

So yeah, they had to shift on the Augustine stuff because we figured out Augustine was supporting ascendant

01:04:04

Christian right arguments. So he's disqualified. That's pretty funny. Yeah, and back to that question, right?

01:04:10

I mean, that's a great point. Just like the Bishop Boudet Episcopalian woke scold that was going after Trump about showing mercy is a great example of that.

01:04:18

The world relief is a great example of that. These people, if you step out into the public square as a Christian, a conservative

01:04:24

Christian say, the Bible says our government should support natural marriage.

01:04:30

We should defend the unborn in the womb. We should have closed borders. They say, you're a scary Christian nationalist. You step out in the public square and say, the

01:04:36

Bible and Christian faith demands that we show mercy to transgender individuals. We show mercy to legal immigrants that we support, these ministries on the backs of the taxpayer dollars.

01:04:46

They say, yes, that's exactly what Christians are supposed to do. The Christian nationalism industry is so hypocritical because fundamentally all the opponents are just progressive

01:04:54

Christian nationalists themselves. W .T. Henry again, Trump got the repeal of Roe v.

01:05:00

Wade where Reagan was unable to. Trudell says lots of people would rather be told that they want what they want to hear about abortion by Bush or Reagan than actually see movement on it from Trump.

01:05:11

Man, I don't think we have time for this. I don't even know if you have thoughts on this. Thoughts on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. I'm not familiar myself.

01:05:18

I'm not tracking. Yeah. Why is the leader of the advocacy arm of the SBC allowed by the people in the pews to take a stance in favor of government funding for illegals?

01:05:28

That's a good question. All right, let me take that question because fundamentally the trustee system of the

01:05:34

Southern Baptist Convention has failed. The Southern Baptist Convention is the body of churches that come together for our gospel mission.

01:05:42

We have these entities and then we elect a president who then elects, who appoints people to another committee, a committee on nominations, committee on committee, committee on nominations.

01:05:52

And then the committee on nominations gives us as the messengers year over year at our annual meeting, people to vote on to become trustees.

01:05:59

Then the trustees are entrusted to govern these entities, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, IMB, NAM, the seminaries, et cetera.

01:06:07

Well, these trustees quite frankly have stopped caring what your average evangelical Southern Baptist thinks.

01:06:14

So fundamentally it's a failure of Brent Leatherwood who's abusing his position as president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

01:06:20

But the only people that can, first and foremost can hold them in check is the trustee board. Where is the chairman,

01:06:26

Tony Beam, I believe, is the chairman of the board of the trustees at ERLC right now. Where's Tony Beam? We had a previous chairman of the board at ERLC, this guy named

01:06:34

Kevin Smith, who actually tried to fire Brent Leatherwood over the summer because Brent was so out to lunch and over his skis on this progressive activism.

01:06:42

And what did Brent Leatherwood do? He told Kevin Smith, no, I'm not gonna be fired. And then he went to Russell Moore, who's not even an

01:06:48

SPC anymore, and ginned up this total social media campaign, like articles at CNN about Brent Leatherwood.

01:06:54

Why do they care? Because Russell Moore told them to care and essentially bullied the board into backing down and giving him his position back.

01:07:00

So if you're listening to this and you're a Southern Baptist holding the ERLC accountable continues to be one of the top priorities, fixing our broken trustee system.

01:07:08

This is why you need to come to Dallas in June. And like, this is a long -term fight, John. You know,

01:07:13

I've said this on your podcast many times before, but we have to reform the trustee boards. It's gonna take years to do it.

01:07:19

I'm in it for the long haul and I hope you are too. All right, with that, we're gonna end the podcast.

01:07:24

William, well, thank you so much for your contributions and navigating so many of these issues with us that are controversial in the evangelical world right now.

01:07:33

I really appreciate it. You did a great job. And if people want to go and follow more of your work, what's your

01:07:38

Twitter handle and where else should they go? Yeah, if you're gonna do one thing, go subscribe to Center for Baptist Leadership on YouTube.

01:07:46

Beyond that, you can find us on xatbaptistleaders and you can find us online at centerforbaptistleadership .org.