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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I am back from the trip I was taking and the reason I had to do yesterday's podcast in a hotel. But I'm actually about to leave for a camping trip.
I haven't gone camping actually. I used to do it a lot more. It's been a few years. So now you can pray I don't get eaten by a bear I guess or something like that. I was the guy, I remember in Boy Scouts.
Yes, I did used to be in Boy Scouts that they would say, go learn how to start a fire and John will teach you like how not to do it. Even though I was the senior patrol leader for a little bit. I was never good at that.
That was one of the things. So hopefully tonight I can start a fire. It's one of those skills. It's like one of the major skills that every man should know. And I just, I don't know what it was. I don't know.
I was good at a lot of the other stuff. I could tie knots, you know, I could, but for whatever reason, but again, you know they did have a starting fires when the wood was wet. That was one of the things I distinctly remember.
We had to be able to start fire in like a rainstorm. And I don't know if anyone would be good at that but early memories from camping flooding my mind right now. But that's not what we're talking about today.
Had a bunch of stuff. Actually it's a bunch of info, but I want to, what's tying it all together? I'm not sure if it's all completely tied together other than in my mind, I sometimes feel like I catalog and I think a lot of other conservative political probably talk show guys feel like they're doing the same thing, cataloging the downfall of Western civilization and the United States or wherever they're living in particular.
And so I have a few things I wanted to talk about today that just, they just hit me. Just little things that I thought, this is just a, this shows you so clearly the direction we're heading. And it's not looking at hardcore leftists, hardcore progressives.
It's not looking at the Democrats and that's what they are. They're hardcore leftists. It's looking at those on the right, today's political right, or they'd say they're on the political right and what they believe and what they're saying and in different institutions.
That's how I know that, that's what I'm actually using to evaluate it. I was talking to someone yesterday because I was doing some work for the documentary. And we were talking about different monuments coming down and stuff.
And this person said to me, you know what, some of these monuments, he wasn't saying give up, but he was saying some of these monuments are, we've just kind of lost the symbol. The people don't know. They think that some of these people were horrible.
It's all based on personality. They're saying, well, Robert E. Lee or George Washington or whoever, they're just a horrible man. And it's all based on personality. They're ignoring the fact that monuments were put out because of accomplishments that those men or women in certain cases did.
And one of the things I said to him, I said, look, because it's discouraging when you start thinking about all the things that are happening. I said, that's not really what bothers me. Those who wanted to take them down because they misunderstand them because they are ideologically driven.
It's those in those communities who won't defend them because they're afraid of cancel culture. There is a cowardice out there. And that is the thing that bothers me more than anything else. It's what I see on the quote unquote right.
It's what I see among conservatives that bothers me. And it's not all conservatives, but there are very few who are willing to make the sacrifice, to take a stand, to have faith in God and to say, you know what?
I care a lot more what God thinks about me than a social media mob. Or I care a lot more about honoring my ancestors, the extension of the fifth commandment in a way there, honoring people who deserve honor than I do about some random person I don't even know on Twitter and what they'll say about me.
Courage is in short supply and we need to rebuild that. We need to get back to the virtues that are timeless, those intangible virtues. And to me, that's what conservatism is about. And so I wanna talk to you a little bit today about conservatism and just in this drift I'm seeing, but I wanna give you a contrast.
I wanna sort of show you this is what I can, this is what I think conservatism is. And I've read some Russell Kirk, conservative mind, that's pretty much that's the standard book you would look to, to see what's conservatism, political conservatism.
I think Roger Scruton's got some good stuff on this, but Burkean conservatism, paleo-conservatism, whatever you wanna call it, there's an underlying Christianity, Christian assumptions at least in that brand of conservatism.
And there's a tendency today in Christian circles and evangelical circles and reform circles to think that there's the left, there's the right politically, and then there's Christianity. It's something totally separate or it transcends them or it's in between them, or it's irrelevant to, or those things are irrelevant to the real important things which are what Christianity teaches.
And some kind of approach it as if they have to from scratch create a political ideology or political system of some kind or tradition from scratch that's Christian because we just don't have one. And this is one of the tactics I see more leftist-oriented people in evangelicalism.
This is what they're doing. They are essentially saying that the Bible says one thing, and everyone wants to be biblical, right? So the Bible says this, and the right deviates from the Bible and the left deviates from the Bible, and they have the truth and they're gonna teach it to you.
And of course, they're bringing in their own assumptions, and usually there's a leftist slant to it. But more importantly, they're disregarding something. And this is what I've been thinking about a little bit lately in relation to all that I just talked about.
There is a tradition that's political and Christian. It already exists. You don't have to go reinvent it. Is it perfect? No tradition is really perfect, except it's something that directly comes from God, but no human tradition is perfect.
But we already have a tradition, and it is the conservative tradition. It is that, what I just talked about, it is that paleo-conservative tradition. We have it. Now, you can reform it. You can change.
There are things you can do to change it here and there within the tradition itself, within the assumptions, the working assumptions, but the principles, the working assumptions that exist in the conservative tradition are primarily Christian assumptions.
And they're built off of that there. And of course, there's been hundreds of years of time, and that's how tradition works, and things, trial and error, and things of this nature, but there's a lot of Christian assumptions behind conservative political positions.
And there's a reason for that, and it's not a mystery. And progressivism does not have, or leftism does not have that same, you can have Christians who say they're leftists, but their tradition is very new.
If you wanna call it a tradition, it is very new. It's more of an ideology. And it is not rooted in Christianity whatsoever. It's just Christians have tried to somehow, I mean, this is what I wrote about in Social Justice Goes to Church.
Christians have tried to co-opt it, have tried to use it, have tried to ally with it, but it's not built on Christian assumptions. And that's a key difference between the two. Russell Kirk has 10. I would encourage you to look it up to the 10 principles of conservatism.
I can't remember them all at the top of my head, but by and large, or when you boil it down, conservatism is about conserving things that are true and valuable, useful, things that should stand the test of time, things that are worthwhile.
We all, in some ways, are conservatives because we conserve certain things, but political conservatism in England and the United States is about conserving not just principles, but ways of life, traditions, people.
It has underneath it an idea that there's sin in this world and that things need to be defended that are true and good and valuable because there's other forces of evil that work against those things.
And that's the kind of world we live in. And they come from the human heart. And so we do need things like law enforcement. We do need checks and balances in our government. We do need to restrain the human heart because that is where these evil things come from.
But at the same time, we're also made in God's image. And there's beautiful things in this world. And we seek to conserve those things as best we can. There's so much I could say. I've been listening to some Kirk and some Roger Scruton on this.
And I want, this isn't the point of this episode, so I don't wanna get on a big rabbit trail about it. I'll develop this a little further as we go on with the different examples. Because the point of this is I want to show how what's being called conservatism today isn't really conservatism.
If you're not conserving something, you're not a conservative. You're not conserving something that's true, that's valuable, that's worthwhile, worth defending, things that are worth defending. If you're not doing that, if you're not, the present order, if you're not trying to conserve the present order, and you can wanna reform things in the present order while still conserving the order itself, that's different than the radicals.
The radicals want to revolutionize everything and rip it all down, burn it down, start something new. Very different, two different, completely different mindsets. But if you're not defending the order that's built off of a natural flow of things, natural order, organic culture, community, human scale, the things that value human beings who are made in God's image, if you're not defending the created order, and then the good things in that created order, the things based off of God's law, the things based off of, if you wanna call it natural law, you're not a conservative.
If you're siding with the revolutionaries and you're moving the needle in their direction, you still claim to be conservative, I don't think you are. That's just, and it's nothing personal, but I don't think you are.
And that is a belief that I have, and I think it's very important that we think through this. If you're moving the needle in the progressive direction, then you're a progressive. If you're moving the needle to the left, you're a leftist.
And you can have all sorts of conservative views that you hold, but in your corner of the woods, if the influence that you have, if you're exerting it in such a way that you're moving things away from the conservative direction towards the revolutionary direction, or deconstructing true and valuable things, then you're not a conservative.
So these are just, I'm spitballing here, this is shooting from the hip a little bit, but these are some of the things I've been mulling over. And I wanna give you some examples. Example number one I wanna talk about is, last week, this is very disturbing to me, Turning Point USA, some of you might have heard this, had a conference and there was a, trying to think if you have kids in the car, how I wanna phrase this, there was an adult entertainer, shall we say, who signed up and ended up being booted from the conference.
Now, this particular individual used their stage name, so they have a real name, but they use their stage name, and was very, and posting on social media where they post their images, if you know what I mean, evil things, they were putting, hey, I'm at Turning Point.
So very much under the brand of this person, this person was trying to go to this event. And she was kicked out, essentially, said, we'll give you a refund and everything, but, and let's talk about future events, but this one you can't come to.
And this is an event where there's minors, as I understand it, there's young, there's certainly young people, there's minors, there's parents who trust that their kids are gonna be fine there. And these are conservatives.
And there was an outcry. There was an outcry from many on the quote unquote right, who were upset that this happened. How could you do this if you're so mean? And Christians being made fun of, there were Taliban, I saw that thrown out there, that this is the modern Taliban, these Christians, right-wingers, they need to loosen up.
And I thought, well, what are you conserving then anymore? If you're, this is, if you're conservatives, what are you conserving? What's the point? If someone, and it's, again, this is kind of like the homosexual cake baking controversy, whether or not, when you're asked to do like a wedding cake for a homosexual couple or something, should you do it?
Well, the issue is never like we don't serve homosexuals here because those bakeries do. The issue is always, we don't want to, we can't put ourselves in a position where we approve of your sinful choices because our religion, our Christian heritage, what we believe the Bible says is against this.
These are our fundamental core convictions. That's the issue. And it's the same with this. It's not so much that they're kicking this person out. It's that they were there not as who their real name was, but there as a adult actress.
And so can they endorse that kind of behavior? This is the kind of behavior that leads to broken homes. This is the kind of behavior that leads to all sorts of horrible things. It is a sin, obviously, biblically.
Jesus said, if you look with lust, you commit adultery, but it's more than that. It's from a conservative, a political conservative standpoint, the social conservatism and economic conservatism have always been connected.
Constitutional conservatism, these things, they've always been connected, but they're breaking up now. And this particular individual who was kicked out said that they were a, what was it, a kid rock conservative.
And that's what most conservatives are. And they like to use foul language and they like to drink and do what this person does. And, but they still believe that you're still pro-life, right, went down the list for the border, being secured and for the military and for, went down the list, I'm for all these things.
I just, in this area over here, I believe in freedom. And that's part of freedom, freedom. See, expressing yourself in these ways, these adult ways. I'm using the word adult because I don't know who's got kids in the car, but as you're driving and you're listening to this.
But that is somehow now consistent with conservatism. That idea is becoming prevalent, guys and gals. That idea is becoming prevalent. This is not the conservatism we grew up with. Conservatism is about protecting the good things.
The family is a good thing. It's a necessary thing. It's the building block. We don't think of, real conservatives don't think of individuals as the building blocks of society. It's the family unit. That's the building block.
Yeah, there's individual rights, but it's community. It's social bonds that start in the family that creates the glue for society to survive. And we need to preserve those. And if you don't have them, then you don't have a country anymore.
Just like if the border comes down, you don't have a country anymore. It's the same thing in a way. We need borders. I mean, I can say, hey, take the border out. It's just freedom, right? Just freedom.
Anyone can go wherever they want. Well, no, we know there's designations and there's a very important designation set up in the realm of that adult activity. It's supposed to be taking place in marriage.
So, and it's sexual activity. I think I can say that. Sexual activity is supposed to be taking place in marriage. So, the conservatism is selling out. And once you do that, once you undermine the family, or you say that everyone's an individual, atomistic individual that can do what they want, then you've lost it.
You don't really have much to fight for anymore. You don't have a community to fight for, certainly. And what happens is these people that are the results of broken families, et cetera, end up, who are they going to try to get to meet their needs?
It's not gonna be their family safety net. It's gonna be the government. So, if you're an economic conservative, you better care about the family. You better care about people who are looking at these things online and getting addicted to them, and marriages breaking up, and responsibilities going out the window, and what the other things that are the product of that.
So, on the same day that this all happens, that I saw, at least, Kelly Ripa and Dolly Parton, two older women, posted extremely provocative things online that I thought to myself, this can't be true. And I know they're not claiming to be conservative, but these are people that normally, even 10 years ago, I don't know if they would have done this at their ages.
I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. But certainly not 50 years ago. There was a certain modicum of respect in setting an example that one had when they got older. That's gone now. How many people actually look like grandmas today?
Think about this. And I don't mean you have to all be knitting all the time, and sitting in a rocking chair, wearing what grandmas wore in the 1930s. But how many people are trying to dress like they're 16 years old, but they're 65 years old?
It says something about us, what we value. We don't value wisdom anymore. Not like we did. And you need that for society. You need wisdom for your culture to survive. So anyway, that's that. I wanted to talk about that.
And I also wanted to mention one other thing. This is another indicator here in Virginia. For local Virginians, you'll find this interesting. So the NRA decided not to endorse Glenn Youngkin, who's running as the Republican nominee for the governor, gubernatorial race.
And I did a whole video about Glenn Youngkin. Anyway, social justice warrior, in my opinion. Here are the reasons. The Youngkin campaign says, someone reached out to the Youngkin campaign and emailed me.
And so the Youngkin campaign told them that I was paid by the Democrats to spread lies about Glenn Youngkin, which I just laughed. That's hysterical. I wish I was getting some of that money. I'm not. But Youngkin tells one thing to one audience and one thing to another.
There was recently, he said, look, he told someone who's a pro-life activist, hey, look, I'm with you, but I just can't let my views be known, because I won't get elected. There's an article in Capstone Report that has a lot of the facts I'm gonna share with you, but Youngkin never apologized for supporting the Equal Justice Initiative.
So he had a statement of faith at his church, not a statement of faith, a statement he signed against racism that agreed to read Letitia Morrison's Build to Be the Bridge, critical race theory book, totally.
I did a whole video on it. But it's scrubbed now. Ever since I put it out there, it's scrubbed, interestingly. But he did sign it. Never apologized, never backtracked. I heard his campaign was telling people that I lied about that, that it never existed.
It did, and now they've scrubbed it. The book that he committed to reading, Be the Bridge, is critical race theory. Didn't ever return statements on his position on gun rights to the NRA or the Virginia Citizens Defense League, which is weird.
And now the NRA has just said, oh, we can't endorse him. He praised the United States' dependence on China at the World Economic Forum in 2019. And this is the person who's the Republican. This is a person who's a Republican.
There's no character here. There's no honesty here. There's no integrity here. No virtue here. Because there's no honesty here about who he is, what he actually believes. It's pretending to be one thing.
You have two Democrats in Virginia running for the governorship, in theory. Only one of them's claiming to be. The other one's claiming to be a Republican. That's where we're at. This is Virginia, for goodness sakes.
Another indicator in my mind, things are, corruption is rising. Virtue is diminishing. And as Christians, this is what we need to be prepared for. It's not to be gloomy about it and just complain about it, but we need to realize it.
Many of you are, and I know that. Maybe this isn't even the best thing for you to hear because you're well aware, but not everyone is well aware. They think that there is a right that is pushing back.
And I want you to know, a lot of the time, the right is not the right. We need to be super discerning about these things. And if we need to create another political party, or, I mean, I'm open to suggestions.
I honestly think during the time of the revolution, there were these kind of shadow government things. They were called, oh goodness, it's blam. I know this. It should be on the tip of my tongue here.
Committees of correspondence. Committees of correspondence. I don't know why I didn't remember that at first, but they were all over the country. I think that's what we need to get back to, local government, county over country.
And we need to identify who's actually promoting the values, or the virtues, I should say, that we believe, and who's not. And if we keep supporting people who believe the opposite of what we believe, what do we expect?
Now, on that note, I want to also respond because this docent controversy is kind of a big deal, and there were some questions I got about it, and I want to respond to two of them. For those who don't know, docent is an organization that helps with sermon prep, but it really does more than that.
They're writing sermons for people, significant portions of sermons, even doing exegetical work. And this has been admitted. I went over some of this. But ERLCs use them. Anyway, go watch my video if you're curious about that.
There's a section in the video, it's about maybe three minutes long. It's not long at all. Actually, before I get to that, I forgot there's a shorter question I want to answer. In that video, on the cover, I put Mark Driscoll, and I think the title was something like Evangelical Leftist Docent in the Evangelical Leftist Swamp.
And some people pointed out, they said, look, Mark Driscoll's not a leftist. And I believe that, I think at least. I mean, Mark Driscoll's teaching against critical race theory. He kind of endorsed James Lindsay's cynical theories, and he's speaking out from what I understand.
The reason I put him on the cover for that, because I anticipated this a little bit. I'm not saying he's a leftist. I'm saying that the swamp, the leftist swamp, I don't know what to call it. What do you call it?
It's pushing towards the left? Anyway, the people that inhabit this, and it's the bureaucratic state, in the United States government. I use the swamp for that reason, because it's usually called the swamp.
There's a parallel in the Christian industrial complex. And it's progressive. It's leftist. Its orientation is towards the left. Pushes that direction. And I think that's been demonstrated. The people who work for Docent, who are helping write these sermons for major pastors, et cetera.
They are on the left. You can't find someone who works for them that's on the right, within the framework of evangelicalism. It's important for me to explain. I'll explain it in a minute more. So Mark Driscoll, he's a conservative.
The thing is, though, he was using Docent, though. Docent researchers were helping him write sermons. He said, Driscoll said that they did everything but cut his grass. So they're writing stuff for him.
And that's my point, is he was using that swamp. Whether or not he agrees with them on everything, I don't know. I'm sure he certainly doesn't. But I don't know if he's changed his positions on some things.
But that was why I put him there. So I just wanted to explain that to some people who are curious. Hey, you're calling Mark Driscoll a leftist? No, I'm saying that there's a leftist swamp. And Mark Driscoll was drawing upon them to help with some of his sermons, et cetera.
Now, I wanted to go over this. So I had a very gracious email from Brad Vermolen. He worked for Docent up until, I think, 2020. And what I showed, these are the two slides I showed. I had to, I didn't have to, I guess, but I did delete a three-minute section in the last podcast off of YouTube about Brad Vermolen because he reached out to me.
And I wanna say this, Brad was very gracious. 9 .9999 times out of 10, if someone reaches out to me who I've talked about in any kind of negative fashion or just even exposed or something like that, it is anger, right?
And maybe he had some anger, but he was able to craft a very gracious email and said I misrepresented him and pointed out the places that he thought I did. And since I only talked for about three minutes, I mean, it's not a lot of material, but I was part of a work group that was, so the way that this happened was there was a few different people that had information on Docent and Docent writers, et cetera, and we started comparing notes, and then I was invited to be in this work group.
And so some of the stuff was from the work group that I just pulled from them, from there. Others, I think some tweets that I had looked up, but the two issues seem to be this, and I want to make a retraction, and I've apologized, by the way, for my error on this to Brad.
But that being said, I'm gonna show you some other stuff here and why I'm not going to, I certainly cannot in good conscience back down from my overall assessment. I think there was some minor things that I got wrong, but getting them wrong is still, it doesn't happen often, but it does, I'm a human, and it has happened, and I welcome, there's an opportunity for me to say, I welcome anyone who thinks that I get something factually wrong, contact me.
I'm not the final authority. I can err, and we sharpen each other as iron sharpens iron, so I am very happy to be corrected when I'm wrong, and I will make a retraction if that's true. I'm not like some of the people that I'm thinking in particular of, maybe a place in Louisville, Kentucky, where there's a bunch of people who can never admit that they're wrong at a certain Southern Baptist institution.
I'm able to do that, and we should all be able to do that, publicly admit error if we've said something wrong in public, so there's two things at issue here. One is, Brad VerMillen says he draws a lot, what he said is, I pretty much subscribe entirely to Catholic social teaching, and I said that, you know, most of the time I hear that that's someone from the left.
They believe in a holistic pro-life movement. They combine, I mean, Catholic teaching, usually they combine categories of law with gospel, so the social justice stuff kind of becomes part of the gospel.
I mean, the current Pope is doing this, for sure. The common good arguments kind of play into it, whatever's good for the common good. Like I said, holistic pro-life. Immigration is definitely one that Catholic social teaching, they're generally very against deportations and stuff, or at least they're so much softer on that.
They're more like Russell Moore's kind of variety of thinking about that issue. There's some liberation theology in it. The current Pope believes that. There's also a tradition aspect to Catholic social teaching, because the Catholics, tradition's one of their final authorities, so in their minds at least, that trifecta, I guess, or the, I'm sorry, the authority, the word of God, but in tradition, right?
And then when the Pope speaks at his cathedral, et cetera. So tradition means that Catholic social teaching can kind of change over time, right? And it's certainly become, if you even trace the use of the word social justice, you can trace it from encyclicals back in the 1800s where, hey, this is just about trying to preserve social bonds that existed in pre-industrial societies to now, and really, like maybe the 50s forward especially, like, no, there's like socialism coming in here, and now it's full-fledged socialism.
The Catholic Church, I mean, and present, on the left, we would say, compared to where they were, that's the direction they're moving, and that's the important part, is the direction they're moving, the assumptions they're making, and if when they take these assumptions to their logical conclusions, you end up with an egalitarian society of some kind.
And so that's why I said, look, most of the people that say that, just like everyone I've ever met that says, who's a Protestant that says, why subscribe to Catholic social teaching? They're on the left every time.
Brad Vermilion says he's not. He says, look, I'm not part of the left. The reasons that he agrees with them is pro-life, it's defensive marriage, it's these kinds of things, and these are the things he believes in.
So I'll take him at his word that that's what he finds in Catholic social teaching that he likes. And I do stand by the claim, though, that when I hear that, my ears perk up, and I think someone's progressive.
And I think, I still think Brad Vermilion's progressive. In fact, I think it more now than I did when I made the video last week. But whether or not that's due to Catholic social teaching, I mean, I'm not gonna comment.
He's saying that he's not, that I misrepresented him, he's not a leftist, and he's very kind in the way that he told me this, and that he is attracted to things that we would mutually agree upon in Catholic social teaching.
Now, I know there's all sorts of questions popping up in some of your minds, probably, about that. I'm not gonna follow all the rabbit trails here. I just wanna show you a few things. Here's the second thing.
I wanna retract some things about this. So I showed you some tweets, and I said, look, I think he's on the left. That's where his orientation is politically. Because he retweeted this thing, and it was the call to replace critical race theory by natural law as a dog whistle to white Christian nationalism.
Well, he was actually not retweeting that. He was retweeting a tweet that said, David French shared a byline with this. Now, apparently, I'm misreading this. I misread this, because he's actually opposing the tweet.
He's saying, look, this is bad. He disagrees with David French. That's what he's saying. I don't quite understand it completely, and because Brad Vermollen deleted his Twitter account since the video came out that I made last week, I can't go on and see if there was a, I don't know.
There probably wasn't a context. He just retweeted it, but if there was, I can't go on and see it. But I'm taking him at his word for that, and I do apologize for, or I admit that at least I could very well be, and I think I am, in error on this, on thinking that this was evidence that he's on the left.
This would not be evidence for that if, in fact, he's actually opposing, so it's the opposite of what I thought. Other thing he said, when I first started calling the movement to erase biological sex and gender ideology, I got blank stares from activists.
It hadn't occurred to them that there were other possible perspectives. That's threatening to them, because it forces them to actually defend a position. So this is, and I can see this one. This is actually, he's retweeting it, because he's saying that biological sex, what he's doing is actually the opposite of what I thought he was doing.
The movement to erase biological sex, gender ideology, is he's saying that this is the natural progression. That's where they're going. And Brad Ramone's saying, yeah, that's an astute point basically being made here, that this individual, Colin Wright, who Brad retweeted, he was able to see down the path to where these activists were going to head, and it's threatening their position, because they have to define themselves.
So I would agree with Brad that this is not evidence that he's on the left. It's actually, in a way, the opposite of that. He's actually trying to say that there's a problem with activists who believe that.
And then the other tweet was this black feminist sociology. He retweeted them, because they compiled a list of black feminist sociologists. Now this is, again, not necessarily proving that he's on the left.
It just shows it's important for him, and he thinks people should know that there's a list of black feminist sociologists out there, and maybe that's to identify them in a negative way. So that doesn't prove that he's on the left or anything like that, or he's pushing for the left, necessarily.
So I retract what I said, and I have edited what I said out of the video, where I just said, hey, look, this looks like evidence that Brad is on the left. However, I went back to that work group, and I just wanted to ask them, I said, did we get this all wrong?
And there was someone there who had done, I guess, without getting into all the details, was closer in relationship to Brad Ramolin. And so there's some articles out there, and you can go check them out.
I'll reference them in podcasts and things. And I'm very secure in my belief that Brad is on the left, according to the definition I gave you earlier, where conservatism, if you're not conserving something, if you're pushing in the opposite direction, within the place in which you have authority or influence, you can't call yourself a conservative.
Now, look, I don't know everything about Brad Ramolin, so maybe he is pushing to the right on some things. But here's the thing. This is the important thing. Oh, let me, I'll get to the important thing in a minute.
I forgot I had this slide. I guess this was just for context. I wanted to post this. So yeah, so he worked from docent from May 2016, I guess, till 2020. And then he also posted Tim Keller's video. So it's not just that Keller is endorsing him.
Brad wanted people to see, hey, look, Keller's endorsed me. So he's lectured at Tim Keller's church. He's helped Tim Keller, I guess, do research. According to what Tim Keller said, Brad can do these things.
He's capable of doing these things. And his friends seem very impressed with this. Now, here's the important thing. And this is where I want to focus. So in the sociological world, where someone like Brad Ramolin operates, he would probably be on the far right in a lot of the minds, it's because sociology is to the left of Stalin.
I mean, they're really far left. I'm using hyperbole there, but in some ways they are to the left of Stalin, right? On issues like gender and stuff. So Brad would probably be looked at as like, he's very conservative.
But in the context in which we're speaking is this service that's doing sociological surveys and work and helping pastors write sermons, et cetera, in evangelical churches, traditional conservative evangelical churches, supposedly, right?
Or what used to be that movement, the reform churches, et cetera. I mean, these are the clients of Dosen. And in that context, the people who, and I showed you last time, all the people doing work seem to be on the left, and some of them hard left, more so.
Now, Brad, he seems to endorse a version of ecumenicism, subjectivity, normalizing homosexuality, and flatlining the political divide. So I wanna go through each of these, because this is where I see, these are some of Brad's views, and I don't know all of them, but this is enough for me to say, he is, broadly speaking, in the same camp I would put Tim Keller and J .D. Greer and Russell Moore, et cetera.
In fact, he says Russell Moore is one of his influences. He cites people that I would consider way to the left as influences upon him. He also says R .C. Sproul. But most of them, like James K .A. Smith, right, is one of his influences.
These are people on the left in evangelicalism. They're pushing towards that. Now, I don't wanna focus on all his influences. I wanna focus on what he himself has said. And the reason I'm doing this is because I want you all to know, many of you, I think, already do, but I want you to understand, when I talk about a leftist, when I talk about someone who is on the left in evangelicalism, this is kind of what I'm talking about.
It's this posture of moderation and sophistication, et cetera, academic neutrality, perhaps. But at the same time, though, critiquing, in their own tradition, in evangelicalism, critiquing evangelicals who are too far to the right, et cetera, but withholding those critiques from the left, or giving, you know, soft-pedaling those things.
But ultimately, the end goal seems to be breaking down, deconstructing, moving, sort of living in the middle of the Hegelian dialectic. That's where Tim Keller lives, right? He's in the middle of that dialectic, so that he can say he's a conservative, because he believes in marriage, he is against abortion, right?
But at the same time, we know what he's doing to push traditions that were farther to the right to the left. And so, this is where I see Brad Vermollen as well. That's my opinion on it. Now, he can be the nicest guy in the world, and he may be.
He can be all sorts of things that are great, but this is where I would disagree. This is where I would think, if this is the guy that you're having consult your church, teaching them about culture for cultural engagement purposes, he's gonna explain culture to you.
And really, maybe that's the bigger thing in all this. This is a guy who, I mean, I don't see it on his CV at all, or any of his LinkedIn or anything. He's not a guy who's pastoring. He's not a guy who has pastored.
I don't even think he has an MDiv or anything like that. Why is this the guy that's gonna go teach pastors about their congregation, and about their culture, and how to minister, and what, it's this sort of, I'm gonna, before I get into all this information, I need to go on a little tangent about this.
This is, it's not about Brad. This is way bigger. Brad's just part of this, in a way. This is about the professionalizing for, it is about the neo-evangelical project, trying to go so far outside what would be considered ministry, and then bringing those expertises, et cetera, into ministry, that it deludes what ministry actually is.
This is what I saw in Southeastern. This is what I'm seeing everywhere in the evangelical world. They, I mean, you think about Fuller Theological Seminary, and Wheaton College, and Gordon-Conwell to some extent, but Fuller specifically, and how Fuller went left so hard, so fast, because this idea of, well, pastors aren't respected.
We need to be respected. Let's create the best sociologists. Let's create the best, or psychologists. Let's create the best, I don't know, whatever, political activists. We're gonna do this thing over here.
And mission drift set in right away. Authority, the authority of the word of God, the authority of the pulpit, and the preaching of the word of God diminished further, was eroded. It was a bad plan. Even neo-evangelicalism is a failed plan, but they keep going back to the, they never go back to the drawing board.
They keep going back to the same old things, and they keep trying. Well, we're gonna engage it differently this time, and we got the experts, and this is Barna. This is, all the polls are gonna, we're gonna use the polls, and just keep repackaging our theology until you don't even, it doesn't even resemble hardly anything anymore.
And the authority to voices are not pastors doing the work of exegesis. Now pastors don't even do that all the time. Pastors are doing, you know, they're going to docents, some of them, right? They're outsourcing what they should be doing to the quote-unquote experts, but the experts aren't pastors.
The thing that should bother you about all this is spiritual gifts come by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's the one, right? That equips, yes, we should study. Holy Spirit, though, is the one that gives those gifts.
And when it's not the Holy Spirit anymore that pastors are relying on, or Christians, to give them the truth when it's the sociologists coming from usually secular universities, or if not, they're influenced heavily by secular thinking.
When it's the psychologists and the historians that aren't even historians anymore, they're activists. You've lost the authority of God's word. You've lost the influence of the Holy Spirit in this task.
Now, look, I'm all for, and this is what they'll hide behind. It's the Mott Bailey trick. I'm all for, you know, hey, look up some sociological stats to put in your sermon. Okay, that's fine if you want to do that.
I'm talking about authority. Talking about, I mean, when you're paying a group to come in and do these evaluations, you're saying something. You're saying there's an authority in what they have. They're providing something you're just not capable of.
You can't do it. I mean, what do you have? Just the word of God and the Holy Spirit? It's more than just a sermon illustration. This is an authority shift. I want you to see that. That's what I'm concerned about, and that's what I see happening all over the place.
Now, this doesn't mean that there's guys in a smoke-filled room. Docent, including docent, it doesn't mean there's a bunch of guys in a smoke-filled room saying, we're gonna influence the church left and we're gonna do this.
No, this happens in a much different way, usually. Now, I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but usually what happens is the people that are doing this, they don't even know they're doing it. They don't think of themselves as doing it.
They're going with the herd. They're going with the pack. They're doing what they were trained to do. And so this, I don't have any accusations, and I never made any accusations, I don't think, against any of those who work for docent that they're part of this plan and they're subversive change agents with the knowledge that that's exactly what they're doing.
Some of them may be, but I think by and large, it's just, it's who you associate with and these elite circles are gonna be towards the left. And you make connections, you go to conferences, and it just kind of naturally happens that these groups of people form and they're naturally leftists are gonna be attracted to one another.
And that's mostly what inhabits academia anyway. So if, so that's how I think this works. I don't think it's this necessarily big green conspiracy. But let's go over these things here with Bradford Mullen.
So I would say he's ecumenical. He said, a good way to understand my religious views is that I embrace whatever reformed Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy hold in common, i .e. the great tradition, while finding many of their distinctive teachings reasonable and compelling in different ways.
Although I recognize this as a precarious position, this is why I refer to myself as an ecumenical Christian traditionalist. I mean, he says it himself, he's an ecumenical Christian traditionalist. That's confusing, guys.
And there's a reason for that. Because reformed Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy are different religions. And they will, I mean, I was talking to an Eastern Orthodox priest a few weeks ago and we just, I mean, disagreed on, yeah, are there things we agree on?
Yeah, but it's a different religion in a way. They completely disagreed on original sin. Free will, and that whole issue. Trying to think, there's a bunch of stuff. Sola Scriptura, right? He disagreed with all these things.
I even asked him, is Jesus the only way to heaven? Yeah, well, I can't really say. I mean, so I'm not saying he represents all Eastern Orthodox, but it's clearly different. Roman Catholicism, clearly different than Protestantism.
And there was a time when your convictions mattered. I mean, there were wars fought over some of this stuff. Not saying we should do that, but there was a time when convictions were much more strong. And the fact that you can just blend all these things, well, I like some of this, I like some of that.
All right, but what's your religious view? What's your belief? These are mutually, these are diametrically opposed, mutually exclusive faith traditions here. If you jump into one, you can't have the other two.
And at least you should, used to be. You'll be anathematized, right? If you're a Protestant and you leave the Catholic church, you're not, you've left the true church. We're losing that, we're losing conviction.
And this is a part of breaking down the church. I don't care what you, how religious you say you are. If those walls really, they're so thin, they don't really matter that much. I can just kind of be part of all these things or glean from all these things and call that my theology.
Then this is a very, it is a precarious position. That's what he says. I recognize this is a precarious position. He recognizes it. And this is, he's not the only one. This is happening all over the place.
And there's a few reasons for it. I won't go into all of it. I have some theories at least of why this is happening. But I would put that on, in my mind, on the left. And the reason I would put that more on the left, that's a leftward tendency, not just because of, it's the way that like World Council churches, some of those kinds of organizations sort of go.
But it's on the left because of this tendency to break down a tradition, which is what it does. It devalues the tradition by claiming, well, it's just, it's not important enough to hold onto the tradition as a whole.
You can kind of pick what you want from it. And it's, and so if that's the case, if you can just kind of cafeteria style, be a Protestant, and take some of your Catholic stuff from here and your Eastern Orthodox stuff from here, how important is that Protestant theology really?
How important is the Westminster or the 1689 Heidelberg, whatever? So that's why I think it deconstructs it, it weakens it. It's, you really aren't, well, I could, I don't, I think I made my point. I'm not gonna go further into that, but I put that on the left.
That's not a facet of conservatism. That's a facet of more of a liberal tendency there. Second one here, introducing subjectivity. And this is interesting because Bradford Mullen believes in something called critical realism.
And it basically, without getting into all of it, it's kind of like an objective metaphysic and a subjective epistemology. It's against objectivity in my, that I believe. And a lot of people believe this.
They think they kind of get the best of both worlds, I guess, but they'll say they're not postmodern and et cetera, but it is against objectivity. Here's some quotes. Regardless of what passes as objective sociology, objectivity is simply not the kind of epistemic perspective any sociologist can take.
All of our perceptions, he quotes, I guess one of his influences, Christian Smith, I think worked under him. All of our perceptions and knowledge are conceptually mediated. All of our observations are also necessary and simultaneously interpretations.
There simply is no universal, neutral, pre-conceptual and indubitable foundation for knowledge. So if you apply that logic to the statement itself that was just made, you wind up with subjectivity. You're sawing off the branch you're sitting on.
All facts are theory-laden. No one has a God's eye view. This is the kind of stuff you would hear from a postmodernist. I know he's against that. He doesn't say he is that, but this is against objectivity.
An objective way of approaching truth. So this is from the Human Space Between Activism and Objectivity in American Sociology, November 27th, 2018. And I should note, he makes the point that basically social justice activism should not, sociology shouldn't be going down this road.
That's really not the point of it. So he says things, and like I said, in a sociology sense, he would be considered on the right, just like Tim Keller would be considered on the right for those living in New York City.
You take all the New York City residents, well, Tim Keller's on the right. But within, where he's exerting his influence, Tim Keller is moving things to the left. And introducing subjectivity would be moving things to the left, in my mind.
This is a big one for me. This is a really big one for me. Normalizing homosexuality. He says this about, and you can read it on, I think it's Christ and Pop Culture, Single Gay Christian by Gregory Coles.
He does a review of it. Now, I've read the book. You can go, I just did a review of it the other day. I think it's the last podcast. Terrible book. Awful book. Dangerous book. I've seen how it's been used in a dangerous way.
It is soft-peddling homosexuality. And this is what he says about the book. "'Coles' short autobiography is a wonderfully written, "'refreshingly honest, deep personal reflection "'on a timely and contested issue in our culture "'and in American Christianity.
"'It is a testimony to the traditional, beautiful, "'orthodox Christian view of human sexuality.'". Okay, if you think that his view is an orthodox Christian view of human sexuality, that makes me wonder, what do you think an orthodox Christian view of human sexuality is?
"'Coles' view is anything but an orthodox view "'of human sexuality. "'Namely,' he says, "'that sexual intimacy "'is properly reserved only for a man "'and a woman in marriage.'". Okay, well, number one, Coles is open to the idea that it could be same-sex, but here's the thing.
If that's all that it is, that's really, that's all you need for an orthodox Christian view of human sexuality, then that's weak, that is not, there's much more to it than that. There's a grounding issue here.
Creation grounds the differences between men and women. And to say that you're a sexual minority, that you were created this way, this is a strength that you have, that the church has just got, they're just so mean, they get it wrong, they don't have ministries for you, they need to understand you, it's good that you're not masculine, your struggle is so noble.
I mean, I went through everything in the last podcast, there's so many problems with this book, it's unbelievable. I mean, he is so, he bases everything on emotion. It's just, his final authority is himself.
It is Romans 1, that's what I said when I went over this book, it's Romans 1. He's living in his head, worshiping the creature himself rather than the creator. But for some reason, that's something that Ramon seems to, he seems to like this book.
So he says, whether you experience same-sex attraction, or let's see here, what it really entails for Christian faithfulness for persons with same-sex desires, don't miss this book, he says, he's in, so anyway, he endorses it, and you can read the rest of the article.
This is a problem for me, and this is why I would say, I would put him on the left. If, you know, Ron Sider endorses this, Wesley Hill writes the forward, this is moving evangelicals, this is within evangelicalism to the left.
That is the whole, that's what this book does, and I've seen it happen. I've seen it with this book happen, this very book. And so there's a personal element I have in this as well, but I would not trust someone for discerning purposes to help with sociological information for my church, or any direction for my church, and it's nothing personal, it's just I wouldn't trust someone if that's what they thought, and I'm just like, hey, you're here, give me advice on what my church should be doing.
Okay, flatlining the political divide, this is the other thing. He says, there's so many quotes here, I don't think I'm gonna go over all of them, but basically, it sounds like the article he wrote here, which is Jesus and the Populist Cosmopolitan Christ could have been written by Tim Keller.
He, it's one of those things where it's like, well, you know, Jesus is kind of a populist, he's kind of a cosmopolitan, he's got the best of both worlds, you can't categorize him, and, you know, populism is more the Republicans and Trump, and the Democrats are the cosmopolitans, and Jesus, he just has the best of both worlds.
He is more cosmopolitan than your typical Trump rally, and many ordinary Americans seem to recognize. Jesus doesn't fit in the worst elements of populism, which is resentment, xenophobia, nationalism, and insularity.
But bro, so, that's his conception of populism. Jesus embodies the contemporary cosmopolitan spirit as well, because, let's see, Jesus isn't afraid of education, research, and expertise. Well, I guess populists are afraid of, so you can see these stereotypes just working themselves out.
He says, Jesus understands, and, let's see, he likes the life of the mind. He says, I suspect Jesus might even like Yale or the University of Michigan at least as much as he likes Liberty University. What?
So, a Christian school that admittedly has problems, but a Christian school where there's actually an attempt to try to live to the moral teachings that Jesus himself laid down, he might be more pleased with Yale or the University of Michigan, or at least as much.
Like, what? Okay. Okay. He says, I'm not gonna go through all of this. Oh, I will, I have to read this. He is cosmopolitan in a more fundamental way than merely appreciating upper-middle-class tastes and having upper-middle-class friends.
Jesus is the true and better globalist. You heard it here first. Jesus is the true and better globalist whose sovereign reign and reach encompasses the entire world and all of history. His rule is global, universal.
People of every tongue, tribe, and nation were, yeah, well, this is one of the things that I hear progressive Christians cite all the time. This is a categorical error, though. This is not a prescriptive thing.
Globalists, they're trying to create something, globalist thing here on earth, right? Jesus, this is descriptive of what Jesus is gonna do in the future. This is the final state. Globalist today is trying to erase the lines that nationalism creates, the nation's state.
Where you need to move beyond the nation state. Jesus isn't like that. Jesus, actually, God divided up people according to cultural distinctives and acts. It says he created the boundaries. So, no. Jesus tends to embody paradoxes and hold binaries, intention, grace, and truth, eternal life, and dying to oneself, inclusivity and exclusivity, God and man, and among these, I say just as populism and cosmopolitanism.
Yeah. Okay. And especially, I mean, again, this is in the context of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I don't know what to say to that. Jesus, grace and truth, God and man. And also, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and their followers and what they believe.
He's got both. The binaries are intention there. No, no. I don't think they are on that. And especially in light of the tightly knotted package recently of President Trump, populism, the white working class, and evangelical America, it seems particularly important to highlight the fact that Jesus, the Christ, is more complex, more surprising, and more cosmopolitan than many of us make him out.
That's the last line. Jesus is more cosmopolitan than many of us make him out. I guess we should be making out Jesus like he's cosmopolitan. Now, if you can hear all this and you think, oh, yeah, no, he's totally not on the left.
Okay, in evangelicalism, that's fine. And again, he's very gracious, at least in the way that he approached me and said that I had gotten his tweets wrong and he thought that I had gotten his statement about his Roman Catholic views wrong.
But I would certainly stand by the idea that this is someone who worked for Dosen for years. Ties to Tim Keller there. Tim Keller, you've seen the video. So I think this is actually a perfect example of the kind of people Dosen employs.
And if this is where they're at, if they have this orientation within evangelicalism, at least towards the left, what kind of views is Dosen putting in their manuscripts and their research, et cetera?
What kinds of influences are getting in there? One last thing I'll say, and I don't think I have the quote in front of me. No, I don't. There was a number of podcasts I listened to as well, and I didn't include the quotes, but essentially, Brad Ramolin, to summarize, says things like, and this is kind of from a sociological standpoint, but he's on Christian podcasts, and he says, look, if you're an evangelical, there's things you can disagree on, like the existence of hell, like gay marriage, like social justice, critical race theory.
You can disagree on these things and be evangelical. He'll include the emergent church in that. Now, some of that's sociological, but I get very uncomfortable hearing things like that. I would, as a conservative, would never do that, in my opinion.
They wouldn't say that these people, now, they may designate, if they call themselves evangelical or they associate in evangelical circles, actual evangelical circles, you may end up categorizing that way.
Like, for instance, the 70s progressive evangelicals, et cetera, like Ron Sider. But it's, to say that you can, you know, you believe in hell or not believe in hell, you know, gay marriage or not gay marriage, still be evangelical, that's really, that's loose.
That's really loose. I don't even know what evangelical means then. Um, other thing is his research on the young reformed movement, the neo-Calvinism. He, there is an objective, you know, he's going about it trying to listen or to research passively, kind of being an observer in an academic sense.
But he admits in one of the podcasts I was listening to, he says, hey, basically the reason I did this is I want to show that this worked, that the young reform movement is a religious movement. And he outlined, in fact, I think I have, I may have the quote on my phone.
I think I wrote it down. I should have included this now that I'm thinking about it, but I don't know if I did. So he also says that basically you can, in his book on new Calvinism, that he wanted to show the religious strength is actually something that can be fought for through things like strategic action and good arguments and moving into cities, the urbanization, right?
And being polished and having really interesting things to say and putting on good church services. So that's the way that you can, so I understand he's a sociologist, but the people listening to this are people who are in the reform world primarily.
They're the ones interviewing him. And this is what he has to say. Well, where's the room for, where's the Holy Spirit in this? And this is where my concern comes in when you start treating sociologists like they're the ones that are gonna show the way.
They're the ones that are gonna show you how to really do ministry. Because what are they gonna tell you? They're gonna tell you things like this. Very pragmatic. So, anyway, these are some of the reasons I would put him in that category.
And I would encourage you when you're evaluating, when you're looking at people and you're saying, okay, are they on the left, on the right? Where are they pushing things? Towards orthodoxy, away from orthodoxy, et cetera.
Look at what they say about, look at the current battles, the fault lines, if you would, to take Voti's title. And what fault line are they on? What are they pushing for? What are they not saying as well?
And you'll be able to figure it out. And I think with Brad Vermont, it's very easy to figure out. It's not a mystery. I would encourage you though, go reach out to him. I think he's on Facebook. Reach out to him if you have any questions about any of that.
And I'm sure he'll be happy to explain his own beliefs. Or maybe he'll post something about what I just said. And I think his views are pretty straightforward. They're out there for all to see. But I wanted to say that.
And to tie everything together, I don't think conservatism is what it used to be. That's the main point. We need to conserve things that are, and recognize who are the ones who are trying to rip them down.
We need to prevent them from ripping them down. Really not much more than that. Yeah, there's a lot more things we could talk about. But in a nutshell, that's what conservatism is. Preserving those true and valuable things that are under attack, and recognizing the people who want to attack them and preventing them from doing it.
All right, well, God bless. Hope this was helpful. We're not just gonna catalog the fall of Western civilization. We are also gonna try to do something about it. And I have an announcement in the next podcast on that subject.
Have a good day, bye.