May 27, 2016 Show with Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America PLUS Dr. John Wilsey on American Exceptionalism & Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of an Idea

Iron Sharpens Iron

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September 4, 2016

00:02: from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown
00:08: Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,
00:16: Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:24: Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:32: Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
00:46: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:57: Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,
01:05: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.
01:13: This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 27th day of May 2016 on Memorial Day weekend eve and I hope that God richly blesses you all this weekend as you prepare for a nice long time, at least most of you, a nice long three -day weekend of gathering with family, friends and loved ones and I hope that God blesses you with safety and refreshment and invigoration and fellowship and leading those that you know and love to Jesus Christ when you have the opportunity and of course don't forget the veterans that you know, the veterans in your community and those in your own family and the families of those veterans who are deceased who have laid down their lives for the freedoms that we enjoy in the
02:11: United States of America. So I just wanted to wish you all a happy Memorial Day before I run out of time but I think that it's very apropos that we have today as a guest on Memorial Day weekend eve,
02:26: Larry Pratt who is the Executive Director Emeritus of Gun Owners of America and Larry Pratt is the
02:34: Executive Director, as I said, of this organization which is a national grassroots organization representing more than 1 .5
02:43: million Americans dedicated to promoting their Second Amendment freedom to keep and bear arms.
02:50: Gun Owners of America lobbies for the pro -gun position in Washington D .C. and is in Washington D .C.
02:59: and is involved in firearm issues in the United States. GOA's work includes providing legal assistance to those involved in lawsuits with the
03:09: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the Federal Firearms Law Enforcement Agency, and Pratt has appeared on numerous national radio and TV programs such as CNN's Piers Morgan, NBC's Today Show, CBS's Good Morning America, CNN's Crossfire, and Larry King Live, Fox's Hannity and Combs, and many others.
03:34: He has dedicated, he has debated, I'm sorry, Congressman James Traficant, Jr.
03:43: of Ohio, Charles Rangel of New York, and Carolyn McCarthy of New York, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, and Vice President Al Gore, among others.
03:55: His columns have appeared in newspapers across the country and he published a book,
04:00: Armed People Victorious, in 1990 and was editor of a book, Safeguarding Liberty, The Constitution and Militias, in 1995.
04:09: His latest book, On the Firing Line, Essays in Defense of Liberty, was published in 2001 and Pratt has held elective office in the state legislature of Virginia.
04:21: Serving in the House of Delegates, Pratt directs a number of other public interest organizations and serves as the vice chairman of the
04:31: American Institute for Cancer Research. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Art Sharpens Iron, Larry Pratt.
04:41: Welcome, brother, can you hear me? That's interesting. Larry, what happened to Larry Pratt?
04:49: For some reason, our guest is not on the line and I have no idea why.
04:56: So we're going to go to a station break earlier than we thought. No idea why
05:02: Larry Pratt is not on the line with us and God willing, he will be returning any second now.
05:08: So if you could, please stay tuned with us while we go to a commercial break and find out what happened to Larry Pratt because he was on the phone just a few minutes ago.
05:21: So I'm not sure what happened here. Anyway, if you'd like to join us, by the way, with a question for Larry Pratt, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
05:35: chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back. I gain insight from the analysis and world provides clarity to the news stories that really matter.
06:08: I believe you'll also find world to be an invaluable resource to better understand critical topics with a depth that's simply not found in other media outlets.
06:17: Armed with this coverage, world can help you to be a voice of wisdom in your family and your community. This trial includes biweekly issues of world magazine on scene reporting from world radio and the fully shareable content of world digital.
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07:00: Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.
07:07: He who never quotes will never be quoted. He will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own.
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07:57: Solid ground Christian books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back and I believe we now have
08:04: Larry Pratt back on the line with us. Larry. Okay sir we're working now.
08:10: I'm not sure what happened but I'm glad that God seems to want you on the program today since we have a reconnection here and it is my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Larry.
08:24: Well I'm delighted to be with you. Thanks so much for having me. And let me repeat our email address if anybody would like to join us on the air about gun ownership with a question email us at chrisarnson at gmail .com
08:37: chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please provide your city and state and residence and your country of residence if you live outside of the
08:45: USA. Well I already gave a description before you came back on the air with us of GOA, Gun Owners of America.
08:53: How Larry did you personally get involved in GOA and what began this enthusiasm with you over guns and the second amendment?
09:05: Well it was not so much an enthusiasm over guns as the opportunity when it presented itself to defend the constitution.
09:16: I was an activist working in Washington D .C. I've been with the American conservative union among other outfits in Washington and a
09:27: California state senator had formed Gun Owners of America and was looking for somebody to head up the office because he knew that if he were going to lobby the congress that had to be done from Washington and so we got hooked up and I've been with Gun Owners of America ever since really the mid 70s and it's been quite a ride because we've over the years been able to increasingly have an impact on the legislative process here in Washington and not always to the thrill and excitement of even sometimes people on our own side because we have taken a position that the constitution can only be amended by the rather laborious procedures laid out in the constitution and it's not something for us to be at liberty to willy -nilly fiddle here and there with the constitution so we've taken a pretty hard -edged position defending the second amendment and of course that doesn't always make us popular throughout the city.
10:38: Yeah and in fact I want to give a plug to our listeners if you also want to listen to other programs that I've done on the subject of gun ownership after this program is over of course you can go to our archive at ironsharpensironradio .com
10:55: and look up our interview with John R. Lott who is the author of More Guns Less Crime and you can also look up our interview with Dr.
11:03: Ron Gleason who has a book that is soon to be released by Solid Ground Christian Books solid -ground -books .com
11:11: on the Christian and the second amendment so you can find those interviews at ironsharpensironradio .com
11:19: but what I was saying during the initial introduction at the beginning of the program
11:24: Larry is that I think it's a very fitting subject Guns Owner of America to be discussing this on the eve of Memorial Day weekend because don't you believe that this issue is at the heart of what
11:40: America has always had as a bulwark against tyranny a country that is filled with armless sitting ducks is basically open game for a tyrannical power to move in and become a dictatorship over helpless people am
11:58: I right? Most definitely there's two aspects to being defenseless disarmed that people ought to consider one is that in all of the mass murders that have occurred in our country since 1950 all but two have occurred in what we have legally designated gun -free zones obviously that doesn't work out real well they're not so gun -free when a dirt bag comes in with his own gun not really worried about whatever the penalty might be for violating the gun -free zone law because he has something much more in mind than a piddly little citizen disarmament law but to your point particularly the most recent country that has been in the news that has had a sordid history of gun control is that of Venezuela where it has become impossible to buy ammunition and new firearms this has been over the last four years or so and the last days of the not very lamented dictator
13:13: Chavez Hugo Chavez and then his successor Mr.
13:18: Maduro both of these guys are socialist
13:23: Marxist tyrants who are extremely hostile to individual gun ownership and wouldn't you know these are the two places in our hemisphere the one place that under these two dictators that has been most afflicted by socialism by starvation by government thuggery by people fleeing the country when they have the means to do so and so now we've got
13:56: Cuba followed by Venezuela and I'm afraid that our president doesn't seem to have any problem with this kind of government growing like a cancer not that far south from our own border we do have a listener in mastic beach long island new york tyler who asked why do you think that president obama is trying to blame weapons rather than the people who own them to go out on these massive and psychotic shootings sprees
14:28: I guess you could expand that to more than just president obama but every left leftist in the not only in the united states but in the world who does not believe in private gun ownership or at least wants to make it very difficult and frankly there are plenty of republicans to go around who have reported that if only tacitly by in the case of congressional republicans they had the opportunity to defund various obama programs that would have attacked his gun control assault on the american populace and they have simply declined to do so they're men without a backbone they're afraid of a political fight and they simply won't do it and so obama has been able to roll right along imposing his socialist agenda and part of that is a very concerning database that's been built up of so -called medical diagnoses which are being used starting with the veterans administration turning them over to the justice department under president bush and now becoming a much more government -wide problem under president obama where these diagnoses become the predicate of saying if you have one you can't have a gun and we've actually had members tell us about knocks on the door as a result of these bush and obama policies of conflating medicine and gun control we ought to be extremely concerned about this because this is what hitler did this is what lennon did they corrupt they prostitute medicine and use it as a tool of the regime and one of the targets of this tool is gun ownership yeah you know what's ironic and i'm assuming this must be purely out of ignorance but you have a lot of liberal people who obviously are those who are foremost opposed to gun ownership rights and or at least they want to make them extremely more difficult and yet they could very well be sitting ducks under a regime that despises what they believe for instance if you go into countries where there is sharia law under islamic rule those liberals would be the first to have their heads on the chopping block for their views on sexual immorality and so on there are there are many reasons why liberals should not even want their guns taken away even you have a lot of liberals who are uh claiming that the the police in the united states are involved in a police state kind of a situation and where they feel helpless and harmless it doesn't even make sense that liberals in that group uh within the african -american community and so on would be want would want to have weapons taken away especially even when you have people in those high crime areas uh now i'm assuming that most of those guns being used in crimes and murders and so on in the urban areas especially i'm assuming those are not legally owned guns but even if they were uh wouldn't it make more sense for those people to be armed to protect their homes and their their themselves well the liberal seems to place uh priority and in his thinking on control by the government there's something in their thinking that accepts the legitimacy of virtually anything a government might do and so they'll say well it's it's something that we need to have it's proper to have government approval a background check of somebody buying a gun but they would recoil in horror if you suggested the same thing for the first amendment uh saying that well let's have a background check then before an editorial can be published in a newspaper or broadcast over electronic media including the internet man would that ever get a backlash uh so they get it in some places and i think it is because in those places they already have control so they're not about ready to relinquish that or have any exceptions whereas in the area of guns they don't have control they don't really like guns except in the hands of the police and so that's an area that they've been particularly aggressive in trying to use the government use the state to disarm people because they're assuming that people can't own a gun for any good reason they i don't think they look at it in these very terms but their thinking ends up saying without them really having thought it through perhaps i don't mind all the dead bodies from the criminals i just don't want those uh patriot types running around with guns uh posing a potential threat to the government yeah it's uh it's really absurd when you think about it um now obviously there are those uh even who claim to be christian who have a liberal bent on this issue they view jesus christ uh and his meek and mild and humble attributes only uh they they forget about him turning over tables in the temple and with a cat of nine tails particularly nasty instrument right uh but they they you know go to passages which command that we turn the other cheek and distort them uh and so on uh why do you think that gun ownership is completely compatible with being a bible -believing christian and an obedient bible -believing christian on the gun owners news website at gunowners .org
21:05: we've got a fact sheet that we put out a number of years ago that deals with the bible and guns and it's a fairly systematic it's not completely exhaustive but it's pretty pretty systematic treatment of what the scripture says old and new testament about the legitimacy in fact i would argue the requirement of when it's necessary when it's appropriate using lethal force to defend innocent life uh that's why we have police but it goes beyond that because the police power uh both biblically and in our constitutional republic is predicated on having been vested first in the people preferably understood as the people under god and then from them emanating to the police as employees of the people under god under constitution under law and that uh is probably not something that some of these liberal theologians want to hear because they've looked at the bible from i guess i i would argue their own set of views trying to impose those views on scripture rather than trying to let scripture speak for itself which is quite capable of doing and that's what we tried to do in the piece at gun owners dot org is to show that throughout the scripture old and new testament you find a consistent teaching that well to quote one of the proverbs uh it for the righteous to give way to the wicked is the same as a murky spring or a polluted well in other words giving way doesn't mean letting somebody through on a crowded road it means giving way to a bad guy who say wants to take your wife to give way to him is disgusting in god's eyes and that's why that's a good reason why we should be armed and able to protect ourselves and those that we're responsible for and every man who's the head of a household has more than his own skin that he's responsible for so obviously you didn't do you do not believe that jesus christ taught pacifism no he didn't teach it when he was uh whipping the money changers out of the temple and nothing in the new testament i think could be shown to that effect when christ argued turn the other cheek he in part was addressing a cultural way of thinking which tried to use provocation of a relatively minor sort such as a slap on the cheek which would be intended but go back to our south where it was last kind of part of the culture in our country although i don't think it was limited to the south but if you wanted to start a duel in the south typically you'd get a glove and go whack another guy on the face with it it wasn't life -threatening but it was considered uber insulting and the only thing that a real man could do was to accept the challenge to the duel and one of the things that christians taught was that uh that's being slapped on the cheek that's exactly what christ was talking about that you don't respond in kind uh if your life is not being threatened keep your gun in its holster yeah it's interesting that even jesus christ when he was confronted by soldiers asking him questions uh he said um that he just told them to not take money from anyone by force don't don't be a thief don't use your office to abuse others right and he and don't hear uh responded by cutting off malcolm's ear when the guards were coming in from the temple to grab him illegally in the middle of the night uh he didn't uh say peter what in the world are you doing with that sword right yeah like he didn't know right like he'd only had dinner with him uh shortly before that and all during the time that they were praying or he he was praying peter had that sword and another disciple had one as well no he said uh that don't you think my father could have sent a legion of angels to save me in other words this is not the time to use it peter um and that was the point uh that peter hadn't none of the disciples nobody understood that god had actually come to earth to die to other men and that just uh you know does not compute and so peter arose and got his sword and and was going to defend uh the most magnificent person he'd ever met in his life and he was rebuked for doing it at that time in that place and it's interesting that john the baptist also told the soldiers to be content with their wages so that would infer that he wanted them to continue being soldiers absolutely he didn't rebuke them uh but as you you were indicating earlier just said you know don't take advantage of your office don't take advantage of people because you have a sword and they may not have one and of course those who are uh liberals and leftists uh who are not uh pure pacifists like say the amish and others uh they would have guns to shoot animals with right right uh but those that are uh your typical left -leaning democrat or left -leaning republican who is in favor of very strong strict uh restrictions on gun ownership uh they would even agree that the military needs guns uh and weapons and so on but uh so isn't that interesting it's okay for somebody else to kill but not them is it really a universal requirement that god would have of us that we not kill i don't think so because if they want to go back to say exodus where it doesn't really say don't kill it says don't murder but right after that commandment is given it then proceeds to give a number of circumstances we might encounter where killing is mandated killing of the aggressor killing of the murderer of the kidnapper and so forth yes it's uh it's interesting how these same left -leaning individuals claim very often to be the champions for the defenseless the poor the the women of society the children of society and yet they would rather than be sitting ducks without weaponry of any kind you know especially the women in the inner inner cities and so on uh how could you really be in favor of of women uh women's rights and in their best interest if you want them to be unarmed in dangerous places doesn't make any sense to me no it doesn't and my guess is that most of those taking this pacifistic position don't live in the very place that you're talking about because if they had the money they do what a lot of inner city women do and that is pack a piece in their purse right and that that goes to another area of hypocrisy uh i'm going we're going to go to a brief break but before we go to the break i want you to think about something that i have said to people who uh say who will rebuke me when i say anything in favor of uh gun ownership and so on gun rights the nra whatever you you may think of when you're thinking of gun ownership uh liberals who are typically at least in their rhetoric the the the ones who are far superior in their they're calling for the rights of minorities and the pot and the impoverished and so on i will say to them tongue in cheek you know something you're right i think that only the rich white and powerful should own guns and then of course they would say what on earth are you talking about what are you some kind of a racist and i and i would retort to that uh no i'm not the racist you are because you're the one that actually believes that you may consciously believe that but if you're saying that the government should be in control over all guns in a nation you're really saying the rich white and powerful are the one only ones who should have gun ownership and should have control over all of them i'll have you comment on that when we return from a break uh our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com
30:45: if you'd like to join us chrisarnson at gmail .com don't go away we'll be right back with larry pratt of gun owners of america thriving financial is not your typical financial services provider as a membership organization we help christians be wise with money and live generously every day and for the fourth year in a row we were named one of the world's most ethical companies by the ethosphere institute a leading international think tank dedicated to the creation advancement and sharing of best practices in business ethics contact me mike gallagher financial consultant at 717 -254 -6433 again 717 -254 -6433 to learn more about the thriving difference we know we were made for so much more than lending faith finances and generosity that's the thriving story hi i'm chris arnson host of iron sharpens iron radio here to tell you about an exciting offer from world magazine my trusted source for news from a christian perspective try world at no charge for 90 days and get a free copy of rc sproles book relationship between church and state i rely on world because i trust the reporting i gain insight from the analysis and world provides clarity to the news stories that really matter i believe you'll also find world to be an invaluable resource to better understand critical topics with a depth that's simply not found in other media outlets armed with this coverage world can help you to be a voice of wisdom in your family and your community this trial includes bi -weekly issues of world magazine on -scene reporting from world radio and the fully shareable content of world digital simply visit wmg .org
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33:08: forward slash iron sharpens today linbrook baptist church on 225 earl avenue in linbrook long island is teaching god's timeless truths in the 21st century our church is far more than a sunday worship service it's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant it's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement it's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people in healing we're a diverse family of all ages enthusiastically serving our lord jesus christ in fellowship play and together hi i'm pastor bob waldeman and i invite you to come and join us here at linbrook baptist church and see all that a church can be call linbrook baptist at 516 -599 -9402 that's 516 -599 -9402 or visit linbrookbaptist .org
34:00: that's linbrookbaptist .org welcome back this is chris arns and if you just tuned us in our first guest today on the program is larry pratt who is the executive director emeritus of gun owners of america and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com
34:21: but larry if you could respond to my sarcastic tongue -in -cheek retort that i give to liberals who try to shout me down against gun ownership and my retort as i said earlier was a sarcastic reply yeah sure i think you're right we should only allow the rich white and powerful to own guns so if you could respond to that well maybe they would be happy by just shifting the the situation just only a little bit um nazi germany the nazis were the only ones allowed to own guns soviet russia only the communist elite and police were allowed to own guns idiom means uganda only the police and military were able to own guns paul potts cambodia only the etc etc etc uh is that really what they want do they have some guarantee that their utopia of a gunless society won't end up being some kind of historical dystopia where the misery of the people is enormous yeah in fact a lot of what the liberals on tv the pundits and the talk show hosts and others who who chuckle at the conservatives uh who believe very passionately in gun ownership and support the nra and other things like that they chuckle at us because they think that we are like paranoid frightened people who have this science fiction view of our government here in the united states uh morphing into something like the nazi germany of the early 20th century and they think that that's ridiculous that's never going to happen in a place like the united states of america are you kidding me and they they just think it's laughable that we would think that all we gotta have our militias ready to overthrow the government in case it becomes a tyranny and a dictatorship again or whatever uh they've never talked to people that have fled communist and nazi and other tyrannies when you ask them would it have been a do you think it would have made a difference had you and others had firearms and particularly had some tradition of the people actually organizing as a separate source of power apart from the government and they kind of look at you like well of course what what world are you living in and so to call this the victims of tyranny paranoid shows at best kind of a rather dangerous ignorance yes and they also these uh liberals and leftists seem to be totally blind as to what could occur when we don't even know how many centuries uh this planet has left in store for it we don't know with certainty when christ is returning and who knows what could happen over a span of time like 20 30 40 50 years 100 years what could happen to a country like ours america may be completely evaporated from the face of the earth in such a period of time there were an awful lot of people in in germany in the 30s that just couldn't imagine those stupid street folks the nazis ending up becoming a totalitarian monopoly of power in the mid 30s and on and through the world world war same with the people living in the soviet union and other countries the the cubans that i've talked to that have fled cuba after the rise of castro just couldn't imagine that something like this would happen in fact it's interesting that senator cruz's father fought castro with uh or fought batista with castro fought the dictator preceding castro and then when they toppled him and it turned out that castro had been lying through his teeth he really was a communist it wasn't just a figment of the state department's imagination and that he was turning out to be even worse than batista had been and he went back and saw with his own eyes he got out of he fled cuba again a second time if you will people just couldn't get it through their head and many didn't ever make it out of these countries cruz's father was one of the ones who was able to but that wasn't uh that didn't come easy uh he had and as we know many cubans have fled um through the shark infested straits between cuba and florida and still do and it's a regular occurrence when our coast guard finds empty little dinghies bobbing in the water and sometimes they find a body that's been eaten by sharks yeah and uh we do have a listener it's actually a frequent co -host on iron sharpens iron reverend buzz taylor is listening today he's on a vacation day as his daughters are visiting carlisle pennsylvania from maine and other places uh spending a nice day with them and yet he still finds time to tune into iron sharpens iron and he has a question for you reverend buzz asks you if i should ever have to actually use my handgun for defense purposes is it true that i would lose my right for exercising it one has to be very sure of what the laws of the jurisdiction are where that god forbid that sort of thing might happen if you're in new york city the first question might be how did you get the gun because only about a thousand people the last i heard out of some eight million actually legally have a permit to carry a firearm and most crimes against persons occur outside the home so the question really deals with what happens to me under the law if i'm outside my home and i have to use my firearm if you're in san francisco if you're in chicago if you're in new york city and and many other cities or even sometimes other jurisdictions try hawaii you could be in real trouble so you probably need to think this thing through before you decide you're going to be carrying a firearm and it's enough that i know i was kind of aware of the laws of maryland and virginia in the district i'd gone to school in the district of columbia i had left the area to take a job uh in the midwest and i had an opportunity to come back and head up the american conservative union and i knew almost without thinking after having lived in the area and no way i'm going to live in the district even though that would have been convenient to my job it's easier to get into the district from maryland that would have been the second best commuting opportunity but i knew ahead of time no way and i did my house hunting in virginia and it wasn't so much because of the taxes although that was certainly one of the factors but mainly it's that at least in virginia there's not a presumption against your defending yourself and we do have a listener harrison in mechanicsburg pennsylvania who wants to know do you have any idea why it is that even many very conservative christians in europe when it comes to their theology and doctrine who are in alignment with the conservative conservatism in the united states when it comes to biblical inerrancy and morality and the family etc why it is that many of these european brethren are very much in favor of gun control and actually applaud our president obama for his views of strict rules against private gun ownership we need to keep in mind my because i've had i've actually had to face that very issue i've been to europe a couple of times been to england been to continental europe been to other parts of the world and it's really stunning that the use of the word conservative there's a conservative party actually the tories in england but the only thing in common between their conservative party and an american conservative is the word conservative the actual meaning is so very different politically in the two places and it's largely the same in the rest of europe it's not uniform but it's pretty much the same there's simply no tradition of resisting the government of the people being in charge of the government we even have a different nomenclature in america those of us who are here by birth are citizens in europe the best you're going to achieve is being a subject and believe me that makes a world of difference we are the boss of our government and even in england where we brought some of these concepts uh at the time of the initial colonial settlement it wasn't traditional english thinking in fact the reason they were leaving england is because their christian beliefs simply no longer comported with being a good englishman and they had to get out of dodge and that i think helps explain why the word conservative just doesn't mean the same thing over there as it does here they look at us as crazy people you know our our militia tradition and our our uh notion that uh king george uh was a tyrant and anybody that had gotten a good shot off at him would have been doing a good thing uh you know you say something like that over there and you just get a kind of stunned silence well you know that actually brings me to um another question uh there are people uh in fact um i would say the majority of conservative christians in the united states do believe that the bible is very clear that we are to be submissive to the governing authorities over us because we believe god has ordained those authorities even if we dislike them and so how do you respond to the fact that a christian even if we're overrun by a tyrannical government uh should uh just the argument would be we should just be willing to submit to them even if we hate it and despise it because we are just being obedient to the bible well if we're being obedient in the situation you describe we're not being obedient to the bible we're being obedient to usurpers who are defying god uh romans 13 describes a proper government as being a minister of god a servant of god and you can't i don't think make a very good case that hitler was a servant of god or that stalin was a servant of god or etc all these tyrants of the last century up until the present day so i think it's a major serious confusion to think that romans 13 is talking about being submissive to any tom fool tyrant that comes along and says i'm the government now you obey the proper christian responses do you understand the hebrew republic do you understand what paul was talking about if you don't then go to the back of the class and we'll talk later see if you understand after due study well what about like for instance i know that this is just a very tiny minority these days of christians but there is a tiny handful of christians maybe it's bigger than i that i know it to be but it's at least a very uh silent or rarely heard group of people who actually believe that the the patriots of the 18th century the the colonists and so on were in sin when they had the when they started a revolution against the british throne for independence of uh the colonies uh they say even if they they enjoy the freedoms that that procured uh for them today they believe that that was actually sin on the parts of those colonists and obviously back then there were loyalists who were christians who agreed with that notion how do you how do you respond to that kind of a thing well they're uh i think they're just missing the point of what we've been discussing and they're assuming that because the king uh headed the current government of the day that that made him automatically legitimate that would mean stalin was legitimate or that hitler was legitimate and frankly i think the only thing wrong with the officer's plot to blow up hitler that failed because they put the bomb on the wrong side of a heavy oak table was that they screwed up you know it's too bad the bomb didn't do what it was intended to do millions of people might well have been spared had they succeeded um the the idea that anybody in power who says i'm the government now you got to obey me really and he's sitting there giving the finger to god and we're saying that's legitimate i i really find that appalling and what when it boils down to it aren't those at least those who are genuine christians who truly cherish the second amendment and the freedoms to and the rights to bear arms that we have here in the united states isn't it true that the real uh root of that is not because they are bloodthirsty and want to shoot harm or kill people it's the opposite they want to protect innocent life which should be a goal of all humanity and according to what the liberals rhetoric is that that is a part of their it seems main uh part of the main part of the agenda that they profess is to be protectors of the underdog and the in the uh helpless and innocent isn't that really just at the root of why people want to own guns who are coming from a biblical standpoint that i think that biblical standpoint uh very much comports with what the founders had in mind when they gave us the second amendment the second amendment was based on a recognition that life is a gift from god not from the government and when the government acts without authority which is laid out in scripture uh certain limited circumstances where government can take life they can take the life of a murderer they can take the life of a kidnapper they can take the life of a rapist but once you've gone past those enumerated areas where the taking of life is legitimate self -defense obviously being another then you've got a much harder argument to make and to say that any government is legitimate because the government completely misunderstands fails to think through what it is the scripture actually teaches and what the founders of this country were very concerned when you read what the colonial pastors were preaching about the king it's clear that the king was the guy that was the lawbreaker and it was the often it was the preachers themselves in fact i am now looking at a reproduction of a painting on my wall of pastor peter mullenberg a lutheran pastor in the shenandoah valley of virginia who at the beginning of hostilities of our war for independence strode into his pulpit gave a fiery lamentations three i think it was sermon about there's a time for this and a time for that and he flung off his coat at the end of the cloak at the end of the sermon said and now there's a time no longer for peace this is a time for war and he was dressed in a colonel's uniform in the american colonial army under soon -to -be general washington he strode down the aisle of his church outside and mustered his men and many of them signed up on the spot they wrote off to fight with general washington and not to return until the war was over that's what our second amendment is designed to protect the ability to protect us against george iii and if george iii insists on it for us to be able to shoot him uh we do have another listener uh in cumberland county pennsylvania christian has a three -part question in the excellent so i'll permit three parts uh is there anyone that you believe should not be permitted to own guns what do you believe should be required of an american citizen before he can own a gun and do you believe there are any weapons at all that should be restricted uh from private ownership well let me start with the third part of that the i think it's pretty clear from not only the second amendment but the militia act of 1791 which was virtually contemporaneous with the final ratification of the bill of rights and the second amendment is that what the founders had in mind was uh whatever else they were protecting the the right of the people to protect themselves with the military arms of the day that would be carried by the average soldier now they provided for cannons and whatnot in the militia act but they made it clear that if you were in a milit if you were in the militia and you were in a company that was involved with artillery with cannon all well and good but you still had to have the military rifle with you so they were looking at the the military arm that every soldier would have today that would be a machine gun not a heavy machine gun but the m16 battle rifle that's what they were thinking about so that there would be an if you will an instant army there would be a militia that was able to take on george iii if need be give me the first two parts of that question uh is there is there anybody that should be restricted from gun ownership in your opinion and what would be the requirements of somebody an american citizen in your opinion before they are able legally to own a gun well i don't think there should be any requirements once the government gets involved in that then the creature of the constitution all of a sudden becomes the creator of the constitution and it takes primacy then over its creator so i i think it's it's completely wrong for the government to be telling people you can't have a gun this if somebody's in jail he shouldn't have a gun when he gets out of jail there's no way you're practically going to keep him from getting a gun we've seen that in gun ban cities like washington dc in the past chicago criminals just are not deterred by bans and other gun control laws so not only i think are they unconstitutional but they really don't work and we're kidding ourselves to think that the government should or can successfully be involved in gun control so i don't think the government should be saying that i can't have an m16 or a 38 and the government shouldn't be involved in keeping track of whether i sell my next door neighbor a 38 revolver or not just not their business if i do something wrong with that gun then it becomes their business that's what the government is for and it should be a terror to me and everybody else to keep us from sticking up a 7 -eleven with my 38 revolver well it's interesting that many conservatives would be very much in favor of stricter punishment for those who commit crimes and it may even include punishment that follows them outside of their prison cells when they are paroled or set free etc i'll give you an example like a child molester that person uh very conservative people and very christians are often very much in favor of that person having a scarlet letter if you will something that identifies them to the communities where they live as a danger to children uh would you not think that a dangerous criminal might have something uh that follows him outside of prison with his restriction in regard to gun gun ownership if we don't think somebody can be trusted outside of prison then we have to ask why are they outside that's a good point well i'd like you to sum up in about a minute what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we leave the the role of government should be to uh to be as romans tells us to be a minister of god should be a a comfort to the godly and a terror to the ungodly that's not necessarily the exact wording of all the translations but i think that's a pretty faithful rendition um if government is not doing that government is wrong government is not to be respected government is not to be obeyed gun control laws are only a terror to the godly not to the ungodly gun control laws should not be obeyed well it's been an honor and a privilege having you on the program today larry i look forward to having you back and i want to let listeners know that your website is gun owners dot org that's gun owners dot org thank you so much for taking the time to be with us larry it was great to be with you look forward to it again great well god bless you brother you too thank you and i also want to thank eric wallace who actually informed me about larry pratt eric wallace who's a good friend of larry who i met at the harvey cedars bible conference not long ago when the reverend buzz taylor and i went at the invitation of the alliance of confessing evangelicals and the owners of the harvey cedars bible conference and also pnr publishing who gave us uh free room and board and and entrance into the conference there the pastor's retreat that they had where i met eric wallace and thank you eric for introducing me to larry but we're going to be coming right back after this break with our second guest for the day john d wilsey who is the author of american exceptionalism and civil religion reassessing the history of an idea if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own our email address is chris arnson at gmail .com
01:00:50: chris arnson at gmail .com we'll be right back don't go away i'm james white of alpha omega ministries the new american standard bible is perfect for daily reading or in -depth study used by pastors scholars and everyday readers the nasb is widely embraced and trusted as a literal and readable bible translation the nasb offers clarity and readability while maintaining high accuracy to the original languages which the nasb is known for the nasb is available in many editions like a topical reference bible researched and prepared by biblical scholars devoted to accuracy the new topical reference bible includes contemporary topics relevant to today's issues from compact to giant print bibles find an nasb that fits your needs very affordably at nasbible .com
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01:01:45: tired of bop store christianity of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship and how about the perhaps you've begun to think that in -depth biblical exposition has vanished from long island well there's good news wedding river baptist church exists to provide believers with a meaningful and reverent worship experience featuring the systematic exposition of god's word and this loving congregation looks forward to meeting you call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times 631 -929 -3512 or check out their website at wrbc .us
01:02:28: that's wrbc .us i am chris arnson host of iron sharpens iron radio here to tell you about an exciting offer from world magazine my trusted source for news from a christian perspective try world at no charge for 90 days and get a free copy of rc sproles book relationship between church and state i rely on world because i trust the reporting i gain insight from the analysis and world provides clarity to the news stories that really matter i believe you'll also find world to be an invaluable resource to better understand critical topics with a depth that's simply not found in other media outlets armed with this coverage world can help you to be a voice of wisdom in your family and your community this trial includes bi -weekly issues of world magazine on -scene reporting from world radio and the fully shareable content of world digital simply visit wmg .org
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01:03:45: forward slash iron sharpens today and look for the new iron sharpens iron radio full -page ad in world magazine coming out on their june 25th edition dedicated to the best in christian books so we hope that you look for us in world magazine with a total of four full -page full -color ads that world magazine is gracious enough to be giving us in an advertising trade on iron sharpens iron radio and we were thrilled that they were so thrilled with our recent iron sharpens iron radio pastors luncheon that they wanted to extend that trade with us so thanks to jonathan bailey and jonathan woods and everybody over at world magazine for this wonderful partnership that we have begun on but now i'm very excited to introduce our second guest who is on our program for the very first time ever dr john d wilsey he has written a book called american exceptionalism and civil religion reassessing the history of an idea and dr john d wilsey received his phd at southeastern baptist theological seminary and he is an assistant professor of baptist history of history i'm sorry and christian apologetics at southwestern baptist theological seminary he is the author of one nation under god an evangelical critique in christian america and it's my honor and privilege to have you for the very first time on iron sharpens iron dr john d wilsey it's great to be here with me with you chris thanks a lot for having me oh the pleasure is all mine and i want to uh thank uh a pastor that i met in uh harvey cedars new jersey uh the pastor that uh basically referred me to you i believe is your pastor correct he sure is he's a great guy that's pastor benjamin right uh actually brian jensen brian i'm sorry pastor brian jensen i kind of made a morph between brian and jensen and turned it into benjamin yeah pastor brian jensen and let's give pastor brian a plug for the church tell us something about the church where you're a member yeah it's a grace family church in pearland texas and we've been we started visiting there in december and we just joined recently and it's a small church it's a small reformed church and pastor brian is the uh basically the sole elder right now and he does a great job of expository preaching at that church we have communion every sunday following the service which i think is excellent and um really the whole service uh really uh climaxes with the uh sharing of the lord's uh of the elements of the lord's table so me and my family really enjoy that we also share a meal at the end of every service a potluck meal at the end of every service where we can fellowship with one another and it's a really great model for our community and uh expositional preaching and a high view of how you've gotten god's word amen well um i gotta say i think as a conservative christian which i'm assuming you are judging from the background of your education and your church membership as a conservative christian this is kind of a gutsy book i think that you've written because it they're going to be a lot of people from the conservative realm of the christian spectrum of ideology and theology uh who may get their uh the hairs on the back of their necks stand up and they may get bristled and bothered and may even get furious by the premise of your book but if you could tell us uh about uh first of all i think a definition is in order for american exceptionalism please tell us what that exactly that means yeah it's a it's a famously ambiguous term one of those terms that's commonly used by politicians by thought leaders by just everyday people and the problem is that everybody um you know when people use it the assumption is that everybody has the same definition as has the same understanding of what the term means kind of like other terms like uh like freedom freedom is another one of those ambiguous terms everybody just assumes that everybody understands what it means and there are actually a lot of definitions of it a lot of understandings of it but what i what i what i want to say about the definition basically is the idea that america the greatest nation in the history of uh the human race the most powerful nation in human history the most uh important nation in terms of its uh prospect for doing good in the world um the more than just the greatest nation in the world but really the greatest force for good that the world has ever seen um that america is the exception to the rule that historical realities and historical um you know historical sort of movements don't really apply to america in the same way that they've applied to other nations in other words other nations arise and fall but that's not really the case with america america doesn't rise and fall all it does is rise you may recall um the speech that george hw bush gave on the floor of the republican national convention when he accepted the republican nomination in 1988 when he ran against michael dukakis um there's this moment where where bush says that he rejects the idea that america is a nation in decline and he said america is a rising nation and he got a huge um response of applause from that line um and he made that statement and it's sort of a historical moment where a lot of people were suggesting that maybe america was in decline and japan was on the rise in fact there was a book that came out that very year uh called the rise and fall of the great powers of that book um by paul kennedy uh the thesis of that book was was that very idea that america was in decline and that japan was about to become the next great power uh the next superpower on the world stage in the 21st century it's a really interesting book now to think about because that obviously didn't happen um but nevertheless this is this is what is usually thought of with american exceptionalism the greatest nation in the world the greatest force for good and and um you know we need to we need to continue the trend we need to make take policies we need to pursue policies that encourage american exceptionalism that acknowledge it that encourage it that seek to extend american hegemony in the in the in the world because america is indispensable to global peace uh and without america and without america's position as the as the first superpower then the world would descend into chaos so that's commonly what's understood with american exceptionalism but also what kind of goes along with that definition is that um is is a religious or strongly religious a strongly theological element and i identify five of those theological elements that often entail the idea of american exceptionalism in my book and that is namely that god chose america america is a chosen nation a new israel uh that god has given america a divine commission to democratize the world um some people say to make the world safe for democracy that's a line that goes back to world war one and woodrow wilson that america is enjoys a sacred land it occupies a sacred land over here in the western hemisphere that god reserved kind of hid from a civilized man until just after the reformation began and also that america has a glorious past that we need to recover that we have lost and also that america is innocent of wrongdoing that is america is a morally regenerate nation and everything that america does is right so those are five sort of religious or theological themes that sort of entailed or entailed often in american exceptionalism and as a as a christian as a conservative christian as a biblical christian i think it's important for us to reject um religious or theological american exceptionalism because it it hijacks from christian theology makes and makes the nation itself an object of worship yeah uh well that's why i know uh some not all but probably probably a minority of pastors that i know do this but uh they will not have an american flag near the pulpit in their church buildings not because they're not patriotic uh and not because they disdain this country that god has blessed us with and the freedoms accompanied with that and not because of any disrespect towards the brave heroes of this country that fought and died for our freedoms here but because of what you just said they they believe that christ is the king of those from out of every tribe and tongue and people nation all over the world and therefore the church is not to be viewed as an american idea that's right i mean imagine if you will um first century second century uh third century christians gathered underground gathered in a cave somewhere uh gathered somewhere in secret and the pastor expositing um maybe paul's letter of the galatians or something like that and and behind the pastor is he's preaching to his little congregation they're gathered in secret um the roman standard over there back behind him in the corner um that's sort of an absurd idea i don't think anybody would ever really imagine that um and so so why would it be appropriate for the u .s
01:13:57: flag to be situated on the day as well the only logical answer to that would be that well because this is a chosen nation if we want to link the nation with the with christ and his universal kingdom it's just not it's just not uh it's just not a logical it's not a christian notion to espouse now when you when you were going through the five primary uh things that you were going through about american exceptionalism that should be rejected one of them had to do with this being some kind of sacred land in the minds of many uh would you be specifically referring to mormonism or is there a broader group of people that have viewed it that way yeah i mean the mormons certainly uh seen the land in that way um what i do in the in the chapter that i write about the land is um uh for one thing i look it's more more of how not not just mormons specifically but but um protestants have looked at the land um the land you know it's one thing it's it's it's hard for us to really appreciate um a really key aspect about american exceptionalism and about the physical land that we occupy i mean one thing that one thing that makes america exceptional and i argue this in the book that one thing that makes america exceptional is that the land is new at least from a european perspective this really was a new world and when we say new we mean new i mean new in every meaning of the word i mean we might go out and buy a new car you know we just bought a a new air conditioning unit we live in houston texas we need a new air conditioning unit in our house i mean we use the word new in sort of a common way in a common use but but when we think about it the new world of the discovery of america discovery of this continent the colonization of this continent the very opening uh decades of the 17th century uh to those europeans um we have to remember that this was like the discovery of a new planet for us i mean imagine imagine uh astronauts taking off in a spaceship and finding a if you're a star trek fan which i am an m class planet you know a planet out there that's you know pretty much open to settlement open to colonization and is pristine and we would regard it as you know something that would be life -changing a paradigm shift a world view paradigm shift for for everyone in the whole world and of course that's what it is um and it's it's difficult for europeans to really process uh the reality this new reality uh that that is in front of them when they when america's discovered it begins to be colonized and so people european colonists had a choice when they encountered this new new land this new world as they called it they could either um shift their own uh world view in their own thinking and sort of adapt themselves to the new world that they discovered and also to the civilizations that were already here the indigenous people that occupied the land for thousands of years they could adapt themselves to these new realities or they could act upon the land according to their existing world view you see what i'm saying um and what they chose to do was the second thing they acted upon the land according to their own world view and on presuppositions and what that meant was they saw the land as given to them by god uh to be used however they saw fit and the history of the western hemisphere and particularly the land of the united states occupies is the history mainly of how european settlers used the land in the way that they saw fit according to their own presuppositions that they brought with them from europe that they did not uh sort of shift their own paradigm their own world view to what it already existed they were unable to do that we don't want to judge those people we don't want to say that we would have done it differently because probably we all would have done it the same way um it's human nature for us to um sort of filter reality through our own existing world view and sometimes that meant good things and sometimes that meant bad things but one of the things that they had existing in their world view was the dominion mandate of genesis one still the earth and multiple you know multiply fill the earth and subdue it so their understanding of that was that they needed to make the earth uh bear fruit they needed to make it productive they needed to cultivate the earth and make it bear fruit well um you know white englishmen thought they knew how best how to do that and then later on when america became its own nation uh white americans thought they knew how to do that best and they looked at native americans and saw that they weren't cultivating the land uh they weren't there was no plantation economy and there there was no uh sort of european style methods and ways of of settling the land so uh they thought that they weren't really fulfilling the dominion mandate and thus it was uh okay to take the land it was justifiable to take the land john quincy adams made that claim in 1846 concerning the oregon territories and he had in mind the english who were simply trapping and trading in furs and then indigenous tribes that were living there that were not cultivating the earth on a on the uh english model which was to uh you know cultivate it and you know have plantations and have small family farms and that kind of thing so because indigenous people weren't uh you know fulfilling the divine the dominion mandate in the way that um white americans uh of the united states thought they should that then it was justifiable for them to take the land um but that would have pretty big repercussions plantation economy especially would exhaust the soil of its nutrients causing people to complete you know completely uproot themselves and move west taking with them their slaves that the expansion of slavery into the territories of the of the old southwest what we now know of is the lower southeast deep south areas and ultimately this would culminate in the fighting of the civil war um over many things but primarily over slavery um so you know i'm rehearsing a lot of the things i write in that chapter but um our view of the land um that this is a land given to us by god uh and this is the homeland this is the land for the chosen people this is a sort of a narrative that goes back all the way to the puritans 30 would be like john winthrop uh uh in his view of this land as a city upon a hill and so on that's exactly right it's a great example uh john wintrip writes this sermon called a model for christian charity or model of christian charity in 1630 and he situates he sort of defines uh the the colonists that are coming over to massachusetts uh as god's chosen people and uh the colony would be a city upon a course drawing from jesus's words in matthew chapter five now uh do you believe that there is an aspect of american exceptionalism that is very true in regard to the fact of at least at one time uh we were the uh the freest land on the globe in regard to freedom of religion and christianity in its biblical uh form was flourishing and we were sending out missionaries unlike most nations and so on and so there were things uniquely uh blessed about the united states of america or about the american colonies and uh there were things about us that did separate ourselves from the lands in europe that had kings and leaders that really uh had titles and roles that only belonged to christ himself and so there were aspects of us that basically made us unique on this planet as a people but not but but it should never be viewed in a prideful way uh whereas it has anything to do with us as an innately as a people something running through our bloodstream or in the soil that we are living on it is has to do with the privileges and blessings and the stewardship that we have been entrusted with yes um so we've been spending most of our time on this uh in our time together today talking about a religious or a theological expression in american exceptionalism that is really inappropriate especially as a christian but in the book it's not simply a critique of the idea i want to make the case and i try to make the case that america is exceptional if we think about exceptionalism in a political or a social or historical way or historical method for example america is the only country first and only country to be founded after the enlightenment but before the industrial revolution america is the first constitutional republic and in fact every constitutional democracy every constitutional government in the world is modeled somehow after the american constitution which is also the shortest constitution in the world so these are just a couple of examples um the declaration of independence is that sort of the contractual basis of uh our nation of our founding um the declaration of independence informs um who we will be as a people and what our values will be as a people in fact uh abraham lincoln when he is uh rising into prominence uh national prominence in the late 1850s and of course when he wins the presidency in 1860 much of his political ideology is informed by the declaration of independence um specifically the equality clause in the declaration of independence uh martin luther king points to the moral examples of justice and equality that america professed in the declaration of independence and also other founding documents like the bill of rights for example like washington's farewell address even if you move ahead to the gettysburg address the emancipation proclamation and the second inaugural address made by lincoln in 1865 um so america is um presents itself to the world as a beacon of hope to the oppressed and um the concept of liberty that america expresses is the certainly the freest conception of liberty ever expressed by any any nation in history and so um indeed these are areas where america can claim to be exceptional historically and politically and socially and so what i try to do in the book is differentiate between two expressions of exceptionalism one is uh religious theological i call it closed exceptionalism closed uh indicating that this form of exceptionalism is very exclusivist um and it shuts out um some some groups of people uh to the benefit of other groups of people who claim to be the chosen nation of god and this is in distinction from open exceptionalism which is i think a more appropriate form of exceptionalism to say that americans enjoy and of course this is a political and historical and social uh articulation so yes um i think that americans can claim exceptionalism in sort of a um you know in a more humble way we can think of ourselves uh as um as special as uh different from other countries but just because uh those things may be true it may be real doesn't give us the right to think of ourselves um as uh commissioned by god or innocent or chosen by god in any way shape or form and uh what do you think is the most dangerous aspect of american exceptionalism when viewed wrongly what what are the the most dangerous ramifications uh some who would say you know what does this really matter well why are you so upset about this why did you even take the time and effort to write a book about this why what are you warning us about okay well that's a great question um i've had a lot of interviews and no one has ever really asked that question that's a really good question so okay if you're a christian um the most dangerous thing about closed american exceptionalism is that it has the potential to shut you out of the kingdom of heaven um because what it is is really a heretical view of the nation state it it sets america up as a thing to be worshipped if america is the chosen people of god if america has a divine commission america is innocent of all wrongdoing and morally regenerate if america is indeed a new canaan these are um these are these are affirmations that are unbiblical and they detract from the gospel of jesus christ who of course came to give his life as a ransom for many and it takes away from the glory of god who god who says in isaiah 48 that he will not share his glory with another um those who would link america with the gospel also do danger to the the legitimate great commission that christ gave before he ascended into heaven um thinking of the thinking of american democracy and american power as being uh the means to an end to spread the sort of gospel of democracy around the globe and that this is what we're put on earth for and that sort of misses the point of the gospel in fact i think for for christians american exceptionalism is extremely dangerous because it obscures the gospel in ways that can can really you know can really threaten the eternal destiny of the individual soul if not careful in fact i'm gonna read a question uh because you unknowingly stole a listener's thunder a little bit who wrote in a question but i'd like to give him at least credit for the question now his name is tyler and mastic beach long island new york he actually uh wrote in for the first guest as well but tyler says what would you say about the problem with modern evangelicals worshiping the state and placing political philosophy and ideology over the worship of the triune god of scripture now obviously i don't think anybody would consciously do that but there are people that functionally do that and perhaps if you could continue uh with uh what you've been saying because obviously you've already answered that question to a degree but perhaps if you could just yeah i could say a little more about that um it was a book that came out i think it's 2004 2006 by a gentleman by the name of david glartner and he wrote the title of the book was called americanism the fourth great western religion now if you just listen to the title of that book you think oh my goodness that can't really be what the author is going to pursue in this book and sure enough i mean that's that's definitely what he he cast americanism is what he calls it american ideals american uh mission in the world uh american identity unapologetically in theological terms calling americanism uh a religion a faith uh right up there with uh with christianity and that's just absurd i mean that's just something that a biblical christian has got to reject um now let's just take this from the standpoint of a just a person not not necessarily a christian person not necessarily a religious person just an american citizen if we think that america is um has this sort of privileged position um well first of all that's a historically problematic position to take we often hear that america is the most powerful nation in the history of mankind and this is this statement is used as sort of a uh this expresses our responsibility as a nation to go over the world looking for monsters to slay and monsters to uh to destroy because we have an obligation to use our power uh to defeat um threats to justice everywhere because we're the most powerful nation history of the world well you know when you think about that that statement that we're the most powerful country in the history of the world what does that even mean i mean are we going to sort of um line you know 20 2016 america alongside of um i don't know the british empire the 19th century and compare the two are we going to go toe -to -toe with queen victoria's england of say 1860 well we can't get in a time machine and go back and compare ourselves or fight a battle or or compete on the world market that's not really possible to do that or we're going to go up against uh you know the ming dynasty of china are we going to go up against the roman empire i mean it's really an ahistorical um anachronistic way to think about american power you don't compare american power to um long dead empires and say that we're more powerful than they are there's no way that you can really substantiate that claim certainly it's true that america is the most powerful nation in the world today um but uh to say that we're the most powerful nation in human history is really i mean if if you don't mind me saying so it's really an ignorant kind of a statement to make um but it's an exceptionalist statement it's a statement made all the time particularly by politicians by those who would want to justify um a foreign policy that is very interventionist and very uh expansionist um and i think it's dangerous i think that kind of talk is dangerous i mean just look at the last 15 years or so um you know we've made some foreign policy decisions that have uh not turned out the way that um we were expecting and not the way we were uh promised that they would for example our intervention in iraq in 2003 would be a very a very good example of that but also the vietnam war which we pursued in 1960s and 1970s um and um you know this was uh this war was launched with uh good intentions of course and with the intention to um you know fight communism in southeast asia and of course we don't have time to rehearse the history of all that but we all know how uh that story ended and how the story was narrated and so um lyndon johnson was uh responding to a speech on the senate floor by jay william fulbright a senator from arkansas um his speech was called the arrogance of power his point was that look there are limits to american power we can't we can't do everything we would like to do we can't um you know we can't meet all of our objectives um just because we want to to do something somewhere in the world doesn't mean we have the means to do it it doesn't mean we have the moral justification to do it lyndon johnson responded to that speech uh with another speech uh called the obligation of power just a few months after uh senator fulbright gave his his speech basically he made the argument that you know we have the obligation to use our power over in southeast asia and vietnam and um we saw in vietnam that we there are limits to american power and so the whole notion that there are limits to what we can do not just physical limits or material limits but there are also moral limits the fact that sometimes we as americans are blinded to because of our great power right and uh the fact that uh or the or should i say the theory or the possibility that uh those behind the scenes in uh positions of power in america may have had impure or corrupt motives in our entrance into the war in vietnam and other places uh does not take away from the very noble and pure motives of merry american many american citizens who fought there i think that there does need to be made a distinction needs to be made from brave heroes in the military who uh risked and lost their lives and and and even if they came home or often coming home maimed and with serious disabilities they are still to be viewed as heroes even if there was something going on beyond our knowledge in the private uh boardrooms and of the political elite and so on that we that we we are unaware of but uh sure absolutely absolutely i mean that distinction that you're drawing is very important distinction to draw right and right now we have to go to a station break and we'll be right back uh we do have a couple of listeners waiting to have their questions answered patiently and uh by the way i want to let tyler know if you could please email me your full mailing address because you have won absolutely free of charge a copy of dr john d wilsey's book american exceptionalism and civil religion reassessing the history of an idea compliments of ivp academic that's a academic wing of intervarsity press and we want to thank them for supplying us with these books to give away so uh shoot us your uh full mailing address tyler and we'll get that out to you as soon as possible uh by the courtesy of cvbbs .com
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01:41:02: welcome back this is chris arnson of iron sharpens iron if you just tuned us in our second guest for today until 6 p .m
01:41:11: eastern is dr john d wilsey author of american exceptionalism and civil religion reassessing the history of an idea if you'd like to join us on the air our email address is chris arnson at gmail .com
01:41:25: chris arnson at gmail .com before i go on to any further listener questions i have one of my own i don't know if it's off topic to you but i think it really dovetails on the same issue that we're addressing there are people who are staunchly conservative in their christian theology and even in much of their political ideology but they very often unconsciously allow liberalism through the back door into religion when they stand up for certain american ideals and twist how they are to be utilized in the public arena where we are a multicultural multi -ethnic and multi -religious nation and one of the things that i'm referring to is those conservatives who long for the day when a prayer was said over the pa system in the public schools and how bible was taught in the classroom and so on and prayer was being promoted by teachers in prayer and so on now i fully agree that students as american citizens and as christians should have full freedom to exercise their right to religion and free speech and they should be able to pray silently in classrooms and they should be able to have bible clubs and all kinds of christian clubs to identify with other christians and evangelize the christian faith in the public schools but to me it makes no sense for a conservative christian to want a principal or teacher in a public school who may be embracing a religion that is the antithesis of the christian faith and leading them in prayer and teaching anything about the bible is that am i right there yeah i think so and you know this i think you're referring back to a supreme court case that was handed down 1962 angle versus battali which outlawed official school prayers you know of course the country was made very different late 50s early 60s and back in those days you know there was a protestant catholic jew sort of a pluralistic society but since about 1965 um uh that that is no longer the case our our religious pluralism runs the gamut of just about every um religious commitment known to man uh in the united states so school prayer as it existed in the 50s and 60s um isn't isn't what it would be today um so yeah i mean um school prayer would not i wouldn't want um you know i really wouldn't want school prayer to be uh legalized in in the united states because there's no just like you said there's no guarantee that it would be a christian prayer and there'd be there's no guarantee that it would even be a uh even in the ballpark right and i'm assuming that you would agree with me though that that a christian student or teacher should be fully permitted to pray silently or in appropriate places pray vocally audibly and um and should be have free exercise to start bible clubs and christian clubs and things like that yes absolutely and um you know something like i used to be a youth minister for several years uh a while back and every september 30th we would celebrate um you know the time when students would gather at the flagpole and pray and that's um see at the pole i think is what that that event was called every year and you know that was always in my community where i used to live in charlesville virginia that was something that happened at all the public schools it was something that was uh purely voluntary it happened after school hour maybe it was before school hours it happened and um something that everybody was excited about if you weren't excited about it and you didn't want to join it well then you didn't have to no no worries there and it wasn't something that was uh sanctioned by the school or handed down by the school system it was a purely voluntary thing which i think is is really at the very heart of what it of what religious freedom ought to be something that's voluntary and not not coerced or not handed down by you know a bureaucracy and by the way as a christian uh even though i want to maintain a purity of worship and prayer that does not involve people with false religions joining with us in praying and so on i do not believe uh that there should be a power in the government to stop yeah a local public school from from having any kind of public prayer or anything i didn't mean to indicate that i wanted right a heavier hand of government to restrict religious activity in the in the public schools or public square i'm just talking about those uh conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists who are on one demanding or insisting that we should have these teachers and principals reading prayers over the pa system they could be a jehovah's witness or who knows what else a muslim yeah or whatever you could be a satanist yeah right especially like in places like oklahoma and i mean i think we would all agree uh conservative or liberal alike if you're a confessing christian that we uh we do have christopher in suffolk county long island who is asking what level of patriotism do you believe christians should publicly display in regard to the love of country and flag uh don't you believe that if we have been blessed by god living in a country that has afforded us much opportunity and freedom that we should be publicly frequently evoking much gratefulness and thankfulness to our nation and those who have lived before us and paid the price for maintaining freedom here yeah that's a very good question and a question that i seek to address in my book i try to draw a distinction between patriotism and nationalism in patriotism we celebrate uh the blessings of god upon our our land and upon our people in times past and in contemporary times patriotism is something that brings us together and that's what we have the title of my book refers to civil religion uh civil religion is a one of those terms that academics use a lot but it's really pretty simple term um civil religion is a political construct or a social construct that casts the nation in relationship to god in relationship to other nations and so like when you go to to a military cemetery if you go to arlington cemetery in washington dc you'll notice that it has a lot of religious sort of themes that you're walking around and noticing the changing of the tent of the guard of the team of the unknown soldier is a a religious event because it demonstrates the transcendence of the sacrifice that has been made on our behalf by brave brave men and women who have laid down their lives for our freedom and it's something that is it has a liturgy to it and it has a sort of a priesthood those soldiers that guard the team or something of priests that are guarding um the um the the men that are that lay there as unknown soldiers the liturgy is uh that um you know every every half hour there's a changing of the guard it's a um it's a a religious liturgy that is observed uh when you go there and it's not that it's not a salvation kind of a thing it's not um it doesn't cast america in any salvific terms it doesn't cast america in any uh ecclesi ecclesiological terms that is uh as a nation as a church or anything like that it doesn't do any kind of violence to the gospel or it doesn't replace their the authority of scripture over our lives with anything else but it is religious and um patriotism in that sense i don't i think it's very appropriate to an expression of gratitude to god for his blessings on our on our land but patriotism also entails calling out the nation for sins against justice um when we for example are as as conservative christians are concerned about government intrusion upon religious freedom our expression of our religious convictions in the public square um our protest against those kinds of uh infringements on our liberty those are expressions of patriotism and um whenever we dissent against the government uh over um you know ideals that uh are written in our founding documents that's an expression of patriotism when african -americans that were led by the by the african -american churches in the 50s and 60s rose up and said enough is enough in regards to segregation and in regards to uh the denial of civil rights and and basic services and access to uh um you know the good things that americans have historically had access to that was patriotism and in fact if you read martin luther king's speeches martin luther king is certainly a patriot even though he's uh coming against um official government policy so dissent against the government um is an extent where can be it's not always necessarily but it's it has a very strong patriotic element to it um and there's always just like the scripture say in ecclesiastes there's a time and a place for everything i don't think that sunday morning um in church when we are gathered together to hear the word of god preached and to worship the name of the lord jesus who died on the cross to make atonement for sin i don't think that that's the time to express gratitude uh to god for our freedom i think that's the time to worship christ um because that's the time that we set aside on the lord's day to worship the name of christ i don't think it's appropriate to to make the celebration of america the primary thing especially around memorial day and the fourth of july and veterans day and so forth but i think the church certainly can set aside time to express gratitude to god for our country a sunday night service a wednesday night service or a special time that we might gather as a local congregation on a picnic on a monday afternoon or something like that i think those are perfectly appropriate but there's a time and a place and a season for all things and i think the christians need to be thoughtful and and not just just because something seems worth doing at a particular given time that it's always appropriate to do that we have arnie in perry county pennsylvania who wants to know i know that the jehovah's witnesses are a cult but they view saluting the flag as an idolatry as an act of idolatry uh do you agree with their view on that even though you're not in that cult and do you know of any christians historically who shared that understanding of saluting the flag and treating it with reverence yeah so um i that's a complicated one it's a tough one um because you know if we go to a baseball game uh every baseball game that we go to whether it's a minor league game or a major league game or you know your child's uh little league game just about every baseball game i've ever been to uh how does every game begin begins with uh the star -spangled banner and what do you do whenever you hear the star -spangled banner song well you stand up and you put your hand over your heart and i teach my children to do that whenever the star -spangled banner is sung and that there's a particular etiquette that you have whenever the flag is present you face the flag if the flag is not present you face the music and you put your hand over your heart in salute and it's very appropriate i think to do that i think it's i think it's all it's always about the time and the place and the context um i don't think it's appropriate to do that in a church service uh because i think that it takes the place it overshadows the glory of christ and it overshadows the reason why we gather together as as believers pledging the flag is is a little bit complicated because what are you doing in that you're you're pledging unconditional loyalty to the nation you know and and i think that's appropriate in certain contexts but another context it might not be appropriate to pledge on undying unconditional loyalty to a nation what happens when the nation begins to for example deny christians religious freedom or deny anybody religious freedom do we really want to pledge unquestioned unconditional loyalty to a nation state that denies the religious freedom of christians or other groups to gather and uh according to the dictates of their conscience i don't know i don't i don't think so so it's something that um it's something that christians need to think about i think very deeply about i don't i don't know that there's an absolute answer right or wrong answer uh to give but i think it is something that needs to be thought about contextually and um you know also there's a great deal of heart self -examination that needs to go on are we um in our own in our own heart of hearts are we exalting the nation above our our own our god um that's something that every individual needs to examine in their own heart do you know of any christian group that was opposed to reverence towards the flag i know that the uh the jonathan edwards is considered like the last puritan so uh there wasn't a lot of history with an american flag uh with the puritans involvement but they had a british flag in england and so on yeah like flags flags were first put or displayed publicly in churches around the time of civil war um particularly during world war one uh flags were displayed prominently i i'm not a hundred percent sure i wouldn't want to i wouldn't want to say with any certainty will this group or that group i believe the mennonites um and i'm not a mennonite i'm a baptist but i believe the mennonites historically rejected doing that or have backed off from doing that and increasingly today more and more baptist churches are are backing off from the display of of american flags in their in their church services i have to say i have to confess a little bit of ignorance i'm not sure but uh it's a great question and i want to make sure that you uh share with our audience what you most want etched on their hearts and minds uh before the uh conclusion of this program yeah um i i would just um point to revelation 22 17 um which is uh the very the closing uh invitation that scripture gives toward um towards all humanity to come to christ and to put their faith uh in him um the verse reads the spirit and the bride say come and let the one who hears say come and let the one who is thirsty come and let the one who desires take the water of life price you know that's an invitation to salvation on the basis of christ atoning work on the cross and when you think about the gospel in those terms and biblical terms like that there is a stark contrast when we think about american greatness and american exceptionalism and are we the chosen people um i think that christians need to think deeply about this i think this is an idea that matters i think it's a it's good to affirm american exceptionalism in certain uh in certain ways in other ways it's it's highly problematic in fact maybe even heretical or blasphemous to do so and you know when it comes to the accurate presentation of the gospel in this very troubled world that we live in um an idea like american exceptionalism and its place um in our minds and in our hearts is a very a very important concept well i want to thank you so much for being our guest today and i look forward to having you back again yeah brother you did a really a wonderful job today and it was very enlightening thank you and we could definitely go on for another hour or more talking about things like this now i want to give a plug to pastor brian jensen's church again grace family church the website is gracefamilyinfo .org
01:58:58: gracefamilyinfo .org and what city and state is that again i'm sorry what city and state is grace family church oh uh it's uh pearland texas pearland texas and any other contact information that you care to share today yes uh i have a blog a website it's johndwilsey .com