The Pivot is Real

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the congregation, conversation. There, that's a good start. Welcome to the

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Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. If you're streaming on Rumble or trying to, my apologies,

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I'll have to upload later. It looks like it's not going to Rumble. But if you are on Facebook or YouTube or X, we are live there and you can put comments or questions in the comment section and I will be sure to get to them and anything is fair game at this point.

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So if you want me to weigh in on stuff happening on X, I can try, but I'm trying to take a break from X.

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So I may not know what you're talking about. I actually had to do a search this morning. Some of you don't know what

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I'm talking about. Some of you do on red dresses. I was not sure why in some of my chat groups on Signal, people kept talking about red dresses.

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So I had to briefly go on X to figure out what they were talking about. And now I think

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I understand what they're talking about. And I have to be honest, some of the things that we argue over, and I say we not to necessarily include myself, but we as in,

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I don't know, conservative Christians some of whom are maybe more chronically online than others.

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Some of the things that we talk about and argue over are a little silly. I just saying with everything going on in the world,

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I'm amazed sometimes at the things that are the conversations. But this is the Conversations That Matter podcast.

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So I do put that one stipulation. So I suppose I'm going to amend what

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I said a minute ago. All is fair game, but it has to matter. So that's the one thing.

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The pivot is real. Moscow Ezra Apologia went woke. Why did this happen? Wow, that's a loaded question there from Michael.

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How did they, have they always been woke? What happened? I wouldn't say that those organizations are necessarily woke, but I would say that most of evangelicalism, so way beyond those organizations, have the people that are the main thinkers within them that drive the direction of the organization probably have liberal tendencies.

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And it's not because of, this is one of the things, I was actually thinking about this before the podcast. I'm glad this question came up.

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It's not necessarily because of theological conviction. And I say necessarily.

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Theological conviction can play a part, but it's not necessarily that. And I think that Christians, especially those coming from a very heavy worldview background where ideas, and especially like a framework of ideas that you adopt as a holistic world and life view become the explanation for why you do what you do and why you have downstream from that certain political opinions.

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I think that Christians who have drank deeply from that kind of thing tend to think everything is theological.

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And maybe you could qualify that in a certain sense, I would agree, but I don't actually think that the reason people do what they do in every case or the reason they even think what they think about particular issues has to do with their theological convictions.

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I think people are complicated. They can be somewhat hypocritical, to be quite honest.

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They can hold two opposing views that don't even make sense. And a lot of,

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I think what drives people to take positions that they take sometimes is style and habit and tradition and how they were raised and a whole bunch of stuff.

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So I'm not deterministic on any of these things, but I do think that it's often more complicated or more involved than simply looking at what someone believes on eschatology, for example, and then trying to trace from that everything that they do, which is such a habit evangelicals have to try to search for what's the thing.

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And so in this case, I think what you're referring to is probably some of the,

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I don't know, the Antioch Declaration maybe, and some of the pushback against that and some of the insinuations that if you don't sign it, you're somehow in favor of antisemitism.

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I don't know. I'm assuming that's what we're talking about here. Some of that I think has to do with some liberal leanings that people have, and it's everyone.

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It's not just Christians. Like everyone, myself included, if I knew where all my leanings were that were in error,

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I would correct them, right? And I try to do that, but I don't always know necessarily where my own errors are.

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So that's, hopefully as iron sharpens iron, we figure those out together, and we're on a pursuit of truth and the good, true, and the beautiful.

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But anyway, that was something I was thinking about before the program, and that question just kind of sparked it.

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We're not gonna be gamping on that today. Is Israel just a sacred cow? So I guess I was right. That is what we're talking about.

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Yeah, I think that there's a number of things converging probably.

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I think that Israel represents in the minds of many, and this is not just evangelicals.

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This is, broadly speaking, the ideal liberal society planted in a hostile region, planted in the

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Middle East where liberalism is not that respected and this is the opportunity to show that you can plant liberalism somewhere other than Europe.

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You can put it in another place and watch it blossom and grow. I think there's probably a portion of that going on.

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I think there's also, you can't get away from the fact that because of the Holocaust, and it's not just the

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Holocaust narrative, it's actually the fact that there was a Holocaust of Jewish people in Germany, there's a lot of sympathy and regard for Jewish people who have gone to Israel.

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You watch any of the 1950s, 1960s movies, and I'm trying to think what else, media.

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I'm thinking of the movie Exodus about the formation of the state of Israel, but any of the lore around that is very much a story of redemption.

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Like we were persecuted, we were in concentration camps, and here we are with a place of our own and doesn't it feel good?

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And this is also our ancestral homeland because there were Jewish people there when we came and there used to be more

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Jewish people and this is kind of like a coming home. So there is this, especially for Americans, I think there's a story there that's very compelling and appealing.

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So you have that going on and the people in Congress grew up when that was a new thing.

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And there's probably much more than even what I'm saying, but you have in our media a lot of,

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I was gonna say pro -Israel sentiment because there's a lot of Jewish people in Hollywood and so forth, but I'm not actually certain about that anymore to be quite honest with you, because there's so much, in the

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United States, this is what a lot of people don't, I think, quite grasp. In the United States, there's a lot of people who are

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Jewish and I live in New York. So just South of me, if I start traveling

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South, heading towards New York City, I'm gonna come across a lot of different Jewish groups and they are different.

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But the Jewish people that live in the United States, especially the more secular they are, the more of a tendency they have to actually support

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Hamas and not Israel. And it's a fascinating thing to see,

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Jewish people who are against Israel, but it is fairly popular.

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I don't know how popular, I don't know if there's been polling done on this, but oftentimes, if you look on X and you see the guys who are promoting

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Jewish conspiracy type things and Jews control the world and they're like one monolithic group that all have the same opinion and it all centers on the nation of Israel, that doesn't seem to hold.

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There are certainly Jewish people who very much are concerned with the nation of Israel though and I'm sure that does play a big influence, especially probably on the

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Republican side of things, but certainly on the Democrat side as well. I think it was Ben Shapiro not too long ago, someone sent me a clip of him saying how he thought he could do much more for Israel being in the

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United States and influencing things here. And I'm sure that's a big thing.

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I mean, I look at myself and I think this isn't a liberal thing. This is just, this is actually a natural human thing.

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I look back and as someone who has moved in my lifetime,

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I was very young, but from California to New York and knowing my grandparents and aunts and uncles in California and knowing beyond that, before that, their parents and grandparents were in Mississippi and Ohio, there was this sense

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I had that I was almost looking, I suppose, for a place of belonging because I knew

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New York wasn't really it. I didn't really fit in in the place where I lived. I was different and my parents were different than the people around us in many ways.

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I could go into, I'd probably do a whole podcast on that and they might be subtle to you, but they actually matter. And to have a homeland in the back of your mind, to know, to go and see there's the family farm, there's the old homestead, that makes a big difference.

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And I think there's something like that with people who are displaced. And I think the diaspora of Jewish people, they have something like that.

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And there's a spiritual connection to in their minds. So they may have never been, actually, there was a guy

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I knew, a good friend of mine. I still know him, actually, he's a good friend who is Jewish, who is

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Christian. He was raised Christian. So no secular or religious Talmudic, whatever

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Jewish background. I think he was like Calvary Chapel, that's where he was raised. But his family was ethnically

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Jewish and that meant something, that meant certain holidays. I think he celebrated Hanukkah maybe,

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I don't know. But he went to Israel and he came back and remember he told me, I can't even believe how fulfilling that was.

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I didn't even know. And so I do think that because Jewish people tend to be very, on average, very high achieving people and so they tend to be more influential and they also are gonna have a preference for people who think like them.

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I mean, just like any group of humans, newsflash, right? Any group of people is going to generally have a preference.

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They're gonna hire from people who can do the job but probably people who can do the job like they would do the job.

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And that, I think, probably does contribute to like in conservative media,

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I've noticed this, a pro -Israel sentiment. Even if that's not completely the base and I don't know whether it is actually.

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It may very well be the base of Republican voters and conservatives are very pro -Israel because the other thing that factors into this is

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Christian pro -Israel sentiment because of certain forms of dispensational pre -millennial theology.

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Interestingly though, the group that the original question was about was none of them are dispensational pre -millennialists.

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I think they're all post -millennial, Moscow, Ezra, apologia. So obviously that is not the root of the pro -Israel sentiment that exists in our country.

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Interesting conversation to start this off. I wasn't expecting that, but I guess I invited it with the anything goes, ask questions.

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We're gonna talk about today the pivot and the pivot

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I'm referring to actually is much more important, I think, and bigger than the squabbles online over the

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Antioch Declaration or these, honestly, these very smaller ministries.

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They're smaller ministries, okay? Not saying they don't have importance, but the ministries that are fighting in certain quarters online, like Right Response and Moscow.

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And I wanna talk about the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant nomination today, right?

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That's like, that is so much bigger. It dwarfs these other conflicts that we're referring to.

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So I'll wrap this up with any other questions, and then we'll go from there. I would never describe

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Doug Wilson as woke. I don't, I wouldn't either. Woke is loosely thrown around. It just means there's an awareness of some kind of discrimination, and it's obviously attached to the

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BLM narrative in 2020, and then broadly speaking, because the BLM narrative adopted this, some of the LGBTQ stuff and Me Too stuff, and then all of that.

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But it's a kind of a hardened ideological approach to those questions and issues that got brought up during that time period, and that are still in the forefront, to be quite honest.

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Doug Wilson actually was pretty good on a lot of the things he said at that time. It doesn't mean that he doesn't see, you know, like,

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I'll give you an example. Like yesterday, someone was telling me that this podcast that Doug Wilson keeps talking about, the

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Stone Choir podcast, and James White keeps talking about it, and they're making this podcast more popular because they keep talking about it.

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But it's a, I guess, there's some Nazi ideology in some of the episodes and that kind of thing.

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So in my opinion, the guys on that podcast are, they just, they say some outrageous things, and they act somewhat immaturely online, in my opinion.

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Now, they made a big deal about this, Doug Wilson and James White. Someone showed me yesterday that one of the co -hosts was bragging, or very positive about the fact that,

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I guess, on a very good day, they had like 1 ,400 downloads. Do you realize how small that is?

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That is incredibly small. I was shocked, actually. I thought, wow, I thought they had a lot more than that.

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You'd think the way these guys talk about it, they would be a lot more popular. But like this podcast that you're listening to now,

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I'm sure any given day, you're probably talking six, seven, eight, nine, it depends.

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I don't really check it, but it's well over 6 ,000 downloads a day, I'm sure. And that's the audio side of it.

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The video side of it can often have tens of thousands and much more. And this is a smaller podcast.

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So you're talking about a podcast, much smaller, it's only audio. And these guys have made such a big deal about it.

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So the whole idea that like there's Nazis in the closet, there's Nazis under the rug, there's, yeah, like I guess you could say there's this heightened awareness that's somewhat irrational, that's like,

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I can see why someone would try to make that case, that people who think that, who emphasize that are kind of woke.

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I wanna give the benefit of the doubt. I don't think that that's quite where these guys are at. And they certainly were hard against BLM.

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So not something I'd throw around. It probably increases the temperature, honestly, when you throw those things around. What causes many pastors to be allergic to conspiracy theories and love their government?

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I don't know. To love their government. There might be a patriotism in a lot of pastors who grew up in a certain era, especially the

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Cold War era. There often was a sense that the United States were the good guys, the

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Soviets, the bad guys. And even if we weren't totally Christian, we had this broad love of God or a respect for him somehow.

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And there's sort of a default setting patriotism that often

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I think is coupled with a trust in the government and a trust that the government leaders are telling us the truth.

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A lot of that was broken in 2020 though. Are there any nabals here in the chat today? I know what that's referring to and we're not gonna...

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This is conversations that matter. Sorry, I'm not gonna get into that. We're getting smaller and smaller and smaller on the list of issues to be concerned with.

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You live in New York State, not New York City. They are two different worlds. Thank you for recognizing that. They very much are. I'm looking outside my window and all

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I see are trees, rocks, and snow. We had snow last night and it's beautiful outside.

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Okay, I'm gonna see if there's any more questions and then we'll actually get started with the topic at hand. So if I can grow is...

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Yeah, I'm not... Can we not talk about Israel anymore? Is that okay? Isn't woke a term coined by progressive academic?

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Woke is not an academic term. That's what academics will tell you. They'll tell you it's a term from the black experience.

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It's a term... It's from the street. It's a popular level term that they'll argue has been used for a while to describe the noticing of patterns of oppression and that kind of thing.

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Who are the players in the New World Order agenda? All right, I'm too big of a question for this podcast.

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There are many players in the New World Order agenda and no, they are not all Jewish. Let's see here how...

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Yeah, Nolan is asking a lot of questions here. How can pastors claim to believe in Sola Scriptura while rejecting what the

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Bible says about cosmology? Because like I said at the beginning of the podcast, we as human beings sometimes have hypocrisies and sometimes it's because of tradition and habit and ideology and all kinds of things.

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John, have you read Dalrock thoughts? I don't think I even know what you're talking about.

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So I don't think I've read Dalrock. You're gonna have to explain what that is. Should I read

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Dalrock? I don't know. All right, well, let's get started here and we'll try to focus the attention of the podcast since we're 18 minutes in on the subject at hand, which is the pivot is real.

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The pivot is real, guys. And I wanna just thank everyone who supports this podcast, whether through prayer or through financial contribution or whatever.

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You share stuff on social media. It's making a difference. And sometimes

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I can't share about the differences podcast makes behind the scenes. I had a phone call with someone earlier this week that was really encouraging.

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And I could see, wow, just wow, how smaller things, in my opinion, things

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I've been a part of have culminated in much bigger things, in big organizations.

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And I'm just really, really pleased to see. I know that, and this isn't an,

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I'm not trying to make this an arrogant thing. I may have my own arrogance that needs to be worked on by the Lord. This is not a statement that I think has that embedded within it.

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But I do know if I had not been doing this podcast, I do think the landscape in evangelicalism would look differently and it would be for the worse.

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I do believe that. I mean, I have to, right? Why would I do this podcast if that wasn't the case?

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I'm not just sitting here talking to talk. I wanna get things done. I wanna see things move.

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And there have been some things moving that I really appreciate. And so one of the things

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I'm gonna talk to you about, separate from what I was, in vague terms, just mentioning, but I wanna talk about this pivot.

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And I think that there's a number of, this is a team effort, right? But I think there's a number of things converging that have led to this, mostly the election of Donald Trump.

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But there is a pivot in the Southern Baptist Convention to moderate some of their social justice language.

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And in some cases, I think guys who were very critical of voting for Trump and critical of evangelicals who would do so, and somewhat on board with the racial reconciliation slash

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CRT slash DEI agenda, they're reversing course somewhat. That's a good thing.

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And I think we should, even if we don't trust those guys completely, even if we say they have to prove that they're really conservative now politically and even theologically in some cases, we,

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I think, can still celebrate the fact that things are moving in a better direction, at least on some fronts.

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And I'm gonna show you those fronts to encourage you and to let you know your support has mattered, your views matter, you're not alone.

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And some of the people that treated you like you were crazy, or at least you looked at them and thought maybe they were crazy, they see things more the way that you're seeing them now, or at least they are beginning to.

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And I think that's very, that's tremendously encouraging when you know you're not the only one, and maybe there's people with some level of influence, and maybe a denomination you're part of that also agree with you.

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And that's always an encouraging thing. So let's get into it.

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I wrote a piece for The Federalist, okay? The Federalist is, and I don't know why I haven't done this before. I was encouraged to do so, and I'm glad I did.

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And I will probably in the future do more of it because I was realizing this was shared a whole lot more than some of the things that I've written in other outlets, because this is the political right.

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And these are the kinds of places you write stuff if you want Tucker Carlson to notice, or bigger names.

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And so it just means that the message can spread farther.

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And so I wrote this piece called How Trump's Victory Affects the Civil War to Evangelicalism on December 2nd.

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So three days ago, it came out. And in this article, I make the argument that there's been a political divide for a while.

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Surprise, surprise, no one in this audience is surprised by that. And I use David Platt as one of my big examples in the beginning that he wrote, he undermined the pro -life movement.

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He marched with BLM while his church was closed, a BLM style march, I should say. And he spoke at it and his church was closed for COVID.

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He signaled against Trump and insinuated he was connected with racial division and injustice.

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And he would give theoretical lip service to the pro -life and pro -family issues, but he was pushing the needle and choosing a side.

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And he wasn't alone in that. And this is important to see because the play that's often made is that these evangelical leaders, they transcend the political divide and they're just Christians and Christians are outside of this two -party system.

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And what they're doing is they are pushing the needle for one side. They're entering a context where Christians have primarily been pro -Republican, pro -conservative, and they are at the very least giving them the option not to be that.

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And I would say even more than that, they are giving them arguments and reasons to push things left and not push things right.

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At the very least, the things that they're even concerned with and have to pay lip service to that are on the right, they don't push hard, right?

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You can look at even the way that Russell Moore talks about things like abortion, which is kind of one of those core tenants for evangelicals, right?

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When does he talk about it and how does he talk about it, right? He says the things you're supposed to say, but it's couched in contexts where he's writing to an audience that he perceives as more on the left and he's representing evangelicals to them and usually trying to get evangelicals somewhat off the hook for being too harsh or too bigoted or he separates himself from them.

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Like, yeah, I'm pro -life like them, but some of them are nefarious and I'm not with those guys. And so he doesn't actually go into the places where the temples of the death cult and then really push the needle hard there, right?

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That's not what he does. That's not how he operates. So I talk about these lukewarm intellectuals and this was actually a subheading they gave this section, but Russell Moore, some of the stuff

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I already talked about the podcast, David French, John Piper, their reactions to this whole

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Trump victory and the threat that they see in it. And then

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I shared about an article Mike Pence actually shared from the

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Gospel Coalition by Joe Carter. And he talks about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's

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Trump's appointee for the Department of Health and Human Services. And he writes in the Gospel Coalition that the

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GOP has fully shifted from the pro -life party to the one that's unapologetically pro -choice. And this is an example of what I was just talking about.

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Okay, so we're gonna be pro -life now, right? We're gonna hit it hard when it's in the Trump administration and Robert F.

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Kennedy's coming in, let's hit it hard and be super pro -life to oppose

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Trump. Well, he also chastised the pro -life establishment that they have a temptation to trade moral clarity for political favor.

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Well, it's interesting, I looked back just to see what else Joe Carter has said about the

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HHS. And he has told Christians, and this was, I think earlier this year, that Biden issued an executive order to protect abortion.

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He wanted to use HHS to do this, Health and Human Services. And Carter told Christians that the order would not have much effect on abortion since the

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Dobbs decision has kicked back the issue to state legislatures. And that he said abortion, aside from nominating

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Supreme Court justices, most of what presidents can do is purely symbolic. So under Biden, the

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Department of Health and Human Services was not a threat to the pro -life cause, but somehow under Trump and RFK, it is.

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Despite the fact that RFK has said that he is open to appointing an anti -abortion stalwart to the senior position at HHS, and he is possibly in favor of restoring anti -abortion policies from the first Trump administration.

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So think about this, think about the difference. In just months, a matter of months,

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Joe Carter goes from HHS isn't a threat under Biden to the pro -life cause to, oh my goodness, we're at this compromise level because Robert F.

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Kennedy is in there. And I'm not gonna say that like, do I wish it was someone different than RFK? Yeah.

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Do I wish it was someone who was good on the COVID stuff, understood the threats coming from HHS and other regulatory agencies that look at drugs and these kinds of things.

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Someone who knew their stuff on that and who also was very pro -life. I do, I don't know who that person is to be quite honest.

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I'm not saying they don't exist, but I'm actually glad that someone like RFK who is going to regulate some of these other things or at least look into the lack of regulation and the collusion between pharmaceutical companies and the government and big business and the government.

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I'm glad there's someone like that there. I actually think he has, one of the things he's done is instead of just like on paper being aligned with his positions, which is really good.

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We keep electing people, right? That are aligned on paper. They say the right things, they get there and what do they do? RFK actually has sacrificed for the issues that he believes in.

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And so I actually have some respect for that and I have some hope that he'll get some things done unlike someone who might be more closely aligned on positions, but hasn't actually been proven.

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So that is something that I am positive about. But that said, yeah, do I wish there was, I wish that Christians were more involved in political things and there was more options to choose from.

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That's what I wish, but it's Christmas time. We can make wishes, I guess, but we have to deal with reality.

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And so then in this article, I talk about just the general ethos of,

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Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Gospel Coalition, Southern Baptist Policy Arm is the URLC, which

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I just mentioned and Christianity Today and how these organizations punch right, nuance left.

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And then there's this section, which we're gonna camp on. I'll actually, I'll go to the end and then come back.

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So the lasting solution is basically raise up, rank and file evangelicals need to raise up new leaders.

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And I give a shout out to the Center for Baptist Leadership in the SBC, TruthScript and American Reformer.

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I wrote this before the whole controversy over whether they republished a James Lindsay rewritten communist manifesto piece, but I would not have done anything different because I think these are good organizations, but we need fresh faces to some extent that we can trust.

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Now, this is a hard thing because I just got done telling you how you want someone who's tested, that's preferable, someone who's sacrificed for their issue.

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And I don't, I know of pastors on smaller levels who have done some of this.

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And this is one of the things with TruthScript we wanna do is raise those pastors up, raise those spiritual leaders up so you can be exposed to people who have been faithful for a long time.

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We don't want just a Christian church that's led by youth or inexperienced, that is a recipe for disaster.

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It really is like beyond, I think, what many of you probably realize. It's, we need seasoned people who have not compromised who you may never have heard of, but we need them in the ranks at the very least advising younger people who are taking the role in the mantle of pastor.

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In influential settings. So anyway, that's my lasting appeal is to let's raise these leaders up, let's identify them.

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But this is where I wanna camp out. The Southern Baptist leaders are moderating. I see something different happening in the

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SBC. And I gave a number of examples. J .D. Greer was one, kind of a minor one, but he was one because he has connected

30:47

Trump numerous times with racist and nefarious policies.

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He identified central elements of the BLM movement as gospel issue, as a gospel issue.

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He promoted diversity, equity, inclusion in his church. And yet he was very hopeful.

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That's what he said on X. He had much to be hopeful for in the wake of Trump's win. Now he's posted some things since then that make you think he's trying to signal left, but okay, he said that.

31:16

I talk about Nathan Finn a little bit. I've talked about this on the podcast before. And he's an

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ERLC fellow. And what he said about, basically, it sounded to me like he wants to drop the diversity language and go with more like class language.

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Like we need to appeal to people from different classes. Gets you to the same spot, I think, this politically diverse congregation that has

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Democrats who are comfortable being there, but it's not the DEI strategy to get there. So the other thing though, and I'm gonna play you clips from this,

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I thought was interesting was a podcast that had Dean and Sarah of City Church in Tallahassee, Florida, who some insiders in the

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SBC say he's gonna run for SBC president. You had, oh, now

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I'm blanking, Eric Reid, who's a pastor in Tennessee, who's written, I know he's written for the

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ERLC. He's also kind of like, I think, a bigger pastor in the SBC. And then you had

32:08

Andrew Walker, who is a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Now all these guys have, on some level,

32:15

I would say, been, I'm not gonna show you screenshots. I thought about it.

32:20

I'm not gonna do it because I've already done some of this, but these guys haven't been on the right side of a lot of the issues that they're talking about in a recent podcast.

32:27

I'm gonna play you clips from. For example, Andrew Walker was, you know, as early as, not early, sorry, as late as 2020, he was at a breakpoint symposium where he signals anti -Trump.

32:48

And if you vote for Trump, why? To legitimize him as a Constantinian -like savior or for pragmatic policy reasons?

32:54

Not voting for Trump, are you pronouncing, so he wants to nuance and qualify, but like you get this sense he's trying to transcend it.

33:01

Like, you know, it's fine if you don't vote for Trump, right? Christians have that, Christians have no moral, duty's too strong a word, but there's no moral concern that they should have, you know, not a strong one, at least, that, you know, what if Trump doesn't win, what's gonna happen and stuff?

33:23

Like he's like, hey, it's fine for Christians not to vote for Trump. And we don't live by political gamesmanship alone.

33:30

So he talks about this stuff. And then he's, of course, done a number of books, the Gospel for Life series.

33:36

It's him and Russell Moore are the editors. So Andrew Walker and Russell Moore. And in one of the books,

33:41

I mean, he basically swallows whole the

33:48

BLM narrative, right? Ferguson, Charleston, Americans' wounds on race are still deep.

33:55

We cannot allow our failures as society to simply simmer. In every age, the prophetic imagination must be engaged.

34:01

We saw an MLK Jr.'s. So he goes on, I'm not gonna read the whole thing. I've done this on another podcast, by the way.

34:08

What was the name of it? Maybe I can find it so that other people, let me look it up real quick.

34:15

See, I wanna be able to send people if they wanna know more about this.

34:22

I can't seem to find it right now. Maybe someone in the comment section can find this for me.

34:33

Oh, I think I might've found it. Let's see, what's it called? No, I guess not.

34:42

I thought I had found it. All right, so if someone in the comment section wants to find the episode

34:48

I'm talking about, it's something to do with like, should we allow those who have previously compromised to come back and fill the ranks of evangelical leadership, something like that.

35:00

So anyway, going back to this whole thing, we have

35:07

Andrew Walker who has been on the wrong side of some of these issues, needless to say. I remember during the

35:12

Fuller stuff, when Fuller was exposing SBTS, Andrew Walker was out there aggressively trying to do damage control and discredit

35:20

Fuller and all that kind of thing, insinuating he was bearing false witness. I mean, in my opinion, treating

35:27

Fuller like an enemy and Fuller was just telling the truth. That's all he was ever doing about what was happening to SBTS.

35:33

And one of the things they were doing was they were importing critical race theory. It's just true. Andrew Walker was on the other side of that, right?

35:41

And you have guys like Eric Reid who, not in the ancient past, like four years ago, he is online praising

35:52

Beth Moore. He's praising before that Russell Moore.

35:57

I mean, that's where he was at, right? You have guys like Dean and Sarah opposing the center, not

36:06

Center for Baptist Leadership, the conservative Baptist network for being too political and giving his reasons for why you shouldn't support

36:17

Trump and he wouldn't support Trump and these kinds of things. So this was all happening.

36:22

These guys I would have seen as totally on the other side of the divide. And yet they did a podcast.

36:29

And I want you to hear some of the clips from this and we'll talk about them together. I've seen this group of kids that, again, they're actually becoming almost feels like they're becoming more conservative than their parents because they're pushing back on all the things that have been thrown in their face that they're not for.

36:45

And they go to good churches. You know, they've preached the gospel and they've been trying to figure out how that makes sense in the rest of their lives.

36:51

And I think that was just a helpful night of going, wow, wait, I'm not crazy. I'm not all these things they tell me.

36:57

There are people like me. And it's actually the majority. If you look at election night.

37:02

I can tell you. Conditions have changed, guys. Conditions have changed.

37:08

That's what I just heard. And he seems positive about it, but look, the political conditions have changed.

37:16

And one of the things I know with evangelicals that really drives them is the youth. Where are the youth at?

37:22

He's talking about youth who are more conservative than their parents. He's talking about the fact that the majority of people elected

37:28

Donald Trump. And all of a sudden things are changing.

37:33

I'm hopeful here. I'm hoping that this is a true heart change. And I'll play you a clip that may indicate that there are some heart changes going on.

37:42

For myself personally, 2020 was the year where I was awakened.

37:54

Like we're talking about getting - Red Hill. Yeah. And so 2020 was where you had mostly peaceful but fiery protests.

38:04

You had the government more or less lying to you about the efficacy of the vaccine.

38:10

You have the mainstream media gaslighting you for the past four years. And what it -

38:16

You were on the back end of being called a racist every day. Yeah, you're always a racist. Everything is identity politics.

38:22

And this election has, I think, vindicated that those accusations and those authority structures simply do not matter anymore.

38:33

I think - Conditions have changed, guys. Andrew Walker, he carried the water for some of what he's complaining about here.

38:41

He bought into some of the BLM narrative. Shootings were racially motivated, connected to racism somehow that weren't.

38:50

And yet here he is. And he's recognizing that he was also targeted.

38:59

You couldn't get away from being targeted as a racist, even though he bought into some of the narrative. And now those authority structures, they just don't matter because people voted for Trump despite every authority structure telling them that they were racist and shouldn't.

39:13

And I think, again, these guys are doing something smart in that they are recognizing where things truly are at.

39:22

Now, this is the most encouraging clip from this whole thing. People like us, highly educated, sophisticated, kind of like, you know, urbane people.

39:36

I do, I do have to say, I would, I hope I never on a podcast saying that, you know, people like me, highly educated, sophisticated, urbane.

39:46

But I don't think he means it in an arrogant manner. Maybe I'm giving him too much benefit of the doubt here. I really don't think he does.

39:52

I think he's saying though, like that's how they, that's how he viewed himself. That's how these guys have viewed themselves.

39:58

I mean, this is, maybe this is giving away the farm a little bit. Like that is how a lot of these guys think about the underlings, right?

40:05

The people who actually are in their organizations paying the bills, attending their churches.

40:11

Like those are the plebs. We are the more sophisticated ones, right? And it's not always wrong to say like,

40:17

I have an education and I've thought through some of these things that other people have. And that's not necessarily always wrong. So I'm not trying to be too hard here, but I have noticed there is this elitist tendency in every, it's not just evangelicalism, it's in academia.

40:29

It's in like every structure that where managerial elites end up floating to the top, they cling to those things.

40:36

And I don't think a secure person clings to those things personally. I think, you know, I've been actually reluctant to even say like I have these graduate degrees and stuff.

40:44

Cause I'm like, that doesn't really, I don't know. I feel like I learned more hiking mountains, you know, listening to audio books and thinking and reflecting and like,

40:55

I don't know, like not saying it didn't matter, but it, anyway, getting away from that. This is the encouraging part here

41:01

I want you to listen to. Still struggle with a fear of man. Yes. And a desire to play this game for whatever reason it might be.

41:13

And, you know, there were a lot of people in our country who were never ashamed of Donald Trump, right?

41:19

There were people who were putting up yard signs and wearing swag in 2015. They didn't look like us.

41:25

They didn't talk like us, but they were not afraid. And they received all the disdain you can imagine for it too.

41:30

And they didn't care. And I think it highlights a cultural divide that matters a lot that we need to take responsibility for.

41:40

But it also highlights a personality divide that I think we all need to ask ourselves about.

41:46

And to the, you know, to what extent each of us, I include myself in this, still have a fear of man in us out of self -preservation, out of a desire for advancement, whatever it may be that blinds us to things that are happening.

42:02

Guys, that's, I was surprised when I heard that. That's incredibly humble, I think, because he is admitting a weakness there.

42:10

And the people on the podcast are collectively, I think admitting it with him, that we had a fear of man.

42:17

We were in the wrong. And the people who actually got this right were not the sophisticates.

42:27

They were the people that didn't maybe have as much to lose because they had blue collar jobs and maybe small businesses, but they were willing to risk their reputation, put

42:40

Trump signs on their lawn. They were willing to be seen out in public with the unpopular person in the eyes of the elites.

42:47

Whereas I think this is a huge admission from Eric Reid that look, that's not where we were at.

42:52

We were afraid of the opinions of those whom we saw as peers in upper intellectual strata.

43:00

We wanted to be known as part of what they were doing and be seen as sophisticates with them.

43:09

You can see where the separations are, right? The sophisticates in all the different arenas and industries and lanes.

43:16

And then on the other side, the plebs and the unwashed masses. And he's admitting here, guess who was right about the

43:23

Trump thing? Guess who was right about the issues surrounding Trump? It was the unwashed masses. I think that's huge.

43:30

And I don't expect necessarily people to trust all of these guys immediately.

43:37

Just let's give them more power in the SBC. I don't necessarily think that you have to after listening to something like that.

43:45

I don't create demands. I don't say, I will say in a private chat,

43:51

I did joke about this clip. I said, not until they utter the name

43:56

John Harris, William Wolf or Megan Basham in a positive light will I trust them. But I was joking. So in reality,

44:02

I don't think they have to do that but you're gonna have to start seeing a pattern of, hey, they're taking the right stance now even if it's not popular with the other sophisticates.

44:14

And they're willing to align with the unwashed masses when the unwashed masses are right against those whom they would appreciate having favor and respect from.

44:24

He nailed it there. So I just wanted to bring that up and encourage you. I think that this podcast has been part of in the books and everything else, part of that push in evangelicalism to expose the social justice stuff and to vindicate those of you who are conservative, who have felt like your leaders don't even understand you and you're in the majority.

44:48

Well, some of your leaders might be starting to and that's an encouraging thing. And I think of Trump, in 2016,

44:55

I didn't even trust him and he governed a lot better than I thought he would. And my hope is that you might see, let's say

45:03

Dean and Sarah wins SBC president, not endorsing him, by the way. My preference would be someone who didn't compromise on any of these things, but that may never happen.

45:13

And so what if it's like a race between guys who were all, they took the 2020 bait and Dean's up there but he's actually saying, hey,

45:23

I was wrong back then and he wins and then he governs to the right.

45:29

And the way like governs, I mean, he runs the SBC, stacks committees with guys who are favorable to being critical about social justice and more orthodox in their theological outlooks and that kind of thing.

45:44

I think that's a possible scenario. I don't rule that out. I think

45:50

I've encouraged churches like, look, if you're in the SBC because you think you're there doing ministry, probably not a great organization for you to be in.

45:58

I've said this kind of thing. If you're there because you're part of a political fight in the denomination and you want to see it shift and change and you're down for the fight, which means you're giving minimally to the actual organization that is undermining your beliefs and you are showing up with full representation to the

46:19

SBC meetings and you are involved in the political process and that kind of thing. Like if you're thinking smart about this,

46:25

I get it. I do get it. And you need to link up with Conservative Baptist Network if you're gonna do that.

46:32

But this is the kind of thing that I could potentially see.

46:38

I'm not saying it'll happen, but I could potentially see, yeah, this ends up being the beginning of a shift in that denomination.

46:46

And time will tell whether some of this might be pragmatic. Look, the people are not with us. Look, the youth aren't with us.

46:52

I don't know. I don't know, but it's good to see. So I wanted to encourage you with that, let you know about that.

46:59

And I will take questions now. It looks like there's just a lot of questions today. And so I would love to answer them as best

47:05

I can and we'll go from there. Obviously in this episode, I'm not refuting social justice.

47:11

I don't do that in every episode. I've done that quite a bit in my books. I'm assuming everyone's kind of on the same page with me already on that stuff.

47:18

All right, let's start here. We have a question from Jamie Young. Could this just be that they are riding the fence?

47:24

They will be on the side that's in power. Well, like I said, time will tell. I don't know. That's another possible scenario.

47:32

I've heard Republican politicians do that quite a bit. And then you find out they were, they're deceiving you, right?

47:40

Other questions. Should a wife be encouraged to inform on her husband if he goes too far right?

47:50

That's it, there's a lot of assumptions being brought to that question. And I'll tell you one of the things

47:55

I'm a little disappointed in is the way that some of the disagreements online have been framed as like a right -left thing.

48:04

And I'm not gonna do a third way. Like, you know, Christians transcend this, I promise. I think though that some of the things that people consider to be far right aren't necessarily even on the right.

48:18

And there's a difference between the right and conservative, right? The right represents, these are politically warring factions, the right and the left.

48:27

And, you know, Nazis are considered far right, or were considered far right.

48:37

And the fact that they were socialists doesn't take away from that, even though, you know, that's, we would consider that a much more left -leaning kind of position, especially for American conservatism.

48:49

So what I'm trying to say is those are somewhat, those are terms that are somewhat fluid.

48:58

Like some, it really depends on the circumstances you're in, what is right and what is left.

49:04

I think though, and this is where I think you had a more meaningful conversation, what traditionally is conservative and what accords with a biblical and traditional outlook, that's what

49:18

I'm much more interested in. And, you know, so getting back to the question, should wives report,

49:26

I guess, to the elders, their husbands that go too far right? Well, if by too far right, you mean that they developed a bunker mentality and they can't function because they're stuck in a hotel and they're suicidal because QAnon told them something.

49:40

And I picked that example because I know of a real example that is that. I didn't pick that hypothetically.

49:46

Then yes, you should be concerned for your husband's life. If what you mean by that though is, you know, they are outside the

49:55

Overton window in their conservative views on things. They, you know, they are for hierarchies that you're not supposed to be for.

50:04

Maybe they question the 19th amendment and think that, you know, that shouldn't be, that was a mistake historically.

50:10

Like that wasn't a good thing. Should you report that to your pastor? If you're concerned, like you should talk to your husband about it.

50:18

If you're concerned that there's views that he holds that aren't in accord with the Bible and maybe you're the one in the wrong, then maybe get some guidance about it.

50:27

But I would do that in that, I would do it in that, with that spirit. Letting your husband know where your concerns are and making sure you're getting his, you know,

50:40

Lord willing, his approval, his like, he should be on board with you about getting spiritual direction if there's a real concern, because this ends up being a concern in the marriage, not a political concern, right?

50:51

Like the issue eventually doesn't matter as much as the unity of the marriage matters.

50:58

And so that's where these issues tend to wind up. So I don't know if that helps. Hopefully it does, but John, you should read

51:04

Dalrock. Okay, I don't know anything about Dalrock. I'm sorry. Maybe I'm not red pilled enough. Maybe I'm not too far to the right.

51:10

I need to read Dalrock. I don't know who he is. I'll look into it. Should an elder tell those coming to him with honest questions to sit down and shut up?

51:18

Generally, no. I don't, I can't think of one circumstance where I think that would be appropriate, but maybe

51:24

I haven't thought of every circumstance. Sit down and shut up is rude. If that's a member of your flock, then why treat them so harshly?

51:33

If they're honestly coming to you with questions, I think it's frankly disgraceful. So, but I don't know the scenario.

51:41

What are your thoughts on Charles Haywood? I've had him on the podcast. Go check out the interview I did with Charles Haywood. Has anyone you invited on the show to try to clear up the

51:49

Tobias Webbin debacle answered you on this? Well, all right, so no, not on one side of it.

52:02

Immediately, Joel Webbin and A .D. Robles and all the guys in Ogden were on board with any kind of discussion.

52:12

I haven't received anything from guys on the other side, except Tobias Riemenschneider, who was open to it a few weeks ago, but said that he couldn't make a decision to be on my podcast to talk about it without the approval of others, basically.

52:28

So, so no, I haven't heard anything from Doug Wilson, James White, Joe Boot, any of those guys. To be fair, my,

52:36

I think what I've said has, by some, has been somewhat, I don't think most people misunderstood it, but a few people

52:42

I think did. And I should probably re -explain, even though I think I did explain initially.

52:48

I put out a, there's, for those who aren't initiated into this, there's two pastors that were having an issue,

52:54

Pastor Joel Webbin and Pastor Tobias Riemenschneider. And I did work, as much as I had influence behind the scenes to try to get some kind of a reconciliation.

53:08

I'll say, that's all I'll say for that. But when it was clear to me that it didn't seem like there was going to be talking to each other, even behind the scenes,

53:19

I offered my podcast as a place that people could come to talk about it. Because you feel like you're in hostile ground if you're on someone else's podcast.

53:27

And maybe some of those guys felt my podcast was hostile. I said, it didn't have to be mine, but mine is more outside of that debate than others, so I offered it.

53:38

And no, one side didn't, they practically ignored my pleas.

53:45

And they don't, here's the thing though, they're not obligated to necessarily, like they have no obligation to me to tell me whether or not they want to come on my podcast.

53:54

That is totally up to them. I thought I was being helpful. And I even said like a private conversation would be better, but since it's not happening privately and this is being adjudicated on Twitter, let's have an actual conversation, you know?

54:06

So that was my goal. Someone did reach out, one person from Tobias's side of things to tell me how unhelpful that was and it put pressure where there shouldn't have been.

54:16

And so I explained that this wasn't my intention. I'm trying to offer a lifeline here. There's a perception that one side of this isn't willing to converse or talk or get things right.

54:26

And I'm trying, I thought it was an opportunity that everyone could say, yeah, we're all committed to getting things right. But maybe in retrospect that I shouldn't have done that.

54:34

I don't know. It didn't seem to actually go anywhere. All right, other questions.

54:42

Will technology erase the left -right paradigm? I don't think so. I think you're always gonna have a left.

54:50

Well, I mean, there's always friends and enemies. There's always people who are in opposition to one another. It might not take on the characteristics of left -right or at least the framing and the terms left -right, but there's always gonna be this side of heaven,

55:06

I think, conflict. And as long as there's conflict, you're gonna have at least two sides, right? Yeah, T.

55:13

James Boone, you missed 52 minutes. You're 52 minutes late and we're ending the podcast here. So that's it for the podcast.

55:21

I don't see any more questions. I appreciate the kind words. And thank you for everyone who has supported the podcast over the years.

55:29

And I view a lot of what I shared with you today as a fruit of many of our efforts.

55:35

And so thank you. God bless. Have a good afternoon, wherever you are, or maybe morning if you're in an earlier time zone.

55:45

It's snowing here. I'm very tempted to go look for some deer because you can see their tracks in the snow, but we'll see if I get to do that.