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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to having you in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
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. Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen.
Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, 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 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 a very apropos that we have today as a guest on Memorial Day weekend Eve, Larry Pratt who is the Executive Director Emeritus of Gun Owners of America and Larry Pratt is the Executive Director, as I said, of this organization which is a national grassroots organization representing more than 1 .5 million Americans dedicated to promoting their Second Amendment freedom to keep and bear arms.
Gun Owners of America lobbies for the pro-gun position in Washington, D .C. and is in Washington, D .C. and is involved in firearm issues in the United States. GOA's work includes providing legal assistance to those involved in lawsuits with the 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.
He has dedicated, he has debated, I'm Jr. 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. His columns have appeared in newspapers across the country and he published a book, Armed People Victorious in 1990 and was editor of a book, Safeguarding Liberty, The Constitution and Militias in 1995.
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. Serving in the House of Delegates, Pratt directs a number of other public interest organizations and serves as the Vice Chairman of the American Institute for Cancer Research.
It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first on Iron Shark, Art Sharpens Iron, Larry Pratt. Welcome, brother. Can you hear me? That's interesting. Larry, what happened to Larry Pratt?
For some reason, our guest is not on the line and I have no idea why. So we're going to go to a station break earlier than we thought. No idea why Larry Pratt is not on the line with us and God willing, he will be returning any second now.
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. 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, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back. 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.
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Welcome back, and I believe we now have Larry Pratt back on the line with us. Larry?
Okay, sir. We're working now.
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.
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. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please provide your city and state and residence and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.
Well, I already gave a description before you came back on the air with us of GOA, Gun Owners of America. How, Larry, did you personally get involved in GOA, and what began this enthusiasm with you over guns and the Second Amendment?
Enthusiasm over Washington, D .C. I've been with the American Conservative Union, among other formed gun owners of an office because he knew that if he were going to lobby the Congress, that had to be done from Washington.
I got hooked up. Increasingly, excitement of even sometimes people on our own side taking a position that can only be amended by the rather laborious procedures laid out in the Constitution, at liberty.
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 ironsharpensirenradio .com and look up our interview with John M. Arlott, who is the author of More Guns, Less Crime.
And you can also look up our interview with Dr. Ron Gleason, who has a book that is soon to be released by Solid Ground Christian Books, solid-ground-books .com, on the Christian and the Second Amendment.
So you can find those interviews at ironsharpensirenradio .com. But what I was saying during the initial introduction at the beginning of the program, 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 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 I right?
Most definitely. There's two aspects to being defenseless, disarmed, that people ought to consider. One is that what we have legally designated gun-free zones. The penalty might be for violating the gun-free zone law, something much more in mind than that.
But to your point particularly, people are told to buy ammunition and new firearms by people fleeing Cuba followed by Venezuela. I'm afraid that our president doesn't seem to have any problem.
We do have a listener in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, Tyler, who asks, 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 shooting sprees?
I guess you could expand that to more than just President Obama, but every leftist 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 declined to do so.
And they simply know Obama has been able to. And part of that is a very concerning medical diagnosis, starting with the veterans, turning them over to the Justice Department, and now becoming a much more government-wide problem under President Obama, where these diagnoses become the predicate.
If you have one, you can't have a gun. And we've actually had members tell us about knocks on the door, relating medicine and gun control. We ought to be extremely concerned about this, because this is what Hitler did.
This is what Lenin did.
Yeah, you know, it'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, 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 many reasons why liberals should not even want their guns taken away. Even you have a lot of liberals who are claiming that 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 within the African American community and so on would want to have weapons taken away, especially even when you have people in those high crime areas.
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, wouldn't it make more sense for those people to be armed to protect their homes and their family and themselves?
...by the government, and they're thinking that except a government might do. They'll say, well, it's something that we need to have, it's probably somebody buying a gun, but they would recoil in horror if you suggested electronic media, including the internet.
So they get it in some places, they like guns except in the hands of the government. In trying to use the government, use the state people because they're assuming people can't own a gun for any good reason.
I don't think they look at it and their thinking ends up saying, without them really, I don't mind all the dead bodies from the criminals, I just don't want cops running around with guns.
Yeah, it's really absurd when you think about it. Now, obviously there are those, even who claim to be Christian, who have a liberal bent on this issue. They view Jesus Christ and his meek and mild and humble attributes only.
They forget about him turning over tables in the temple.
With a cat-and-nine-tails.
Right.
Particularly nasty instrument.
Right. But they go to passages which command that we turn the other cheek and distort them and so on. Why do you think that gun ownership is completely compatible with being a Bible believing Christian and an obedient Bible believing Christian?
On the website gunowners .org, we've got a fact requirement of innocent life. That's why we have police. But it goes beyond that because the Constitutional Republic, them under God, under Constitution, under law.
Because they've looked at the Bible from, I guess I would argue, their own perspective rather than trying to let Scripture itself, which it's quite capable of doing. And that's what we tried to do in the piece Find a Concealed Wicked, is the same.
In other words, giving away doesn't mean letting somebody through. To him, that's 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 do not believe that Jesus Christ taught pacifism.
No, he didn't teach it when he was whipping the money. Nothing in the New Testament, I think, could be shown thinking which tried to use a really minor sword, which would be intended, it was limited to this thing.
And the only thing that a real man could challenge to the duel. One of the things that Christians taught, that's being slapped on the cheek, that's exactly what Christ was talking about, that you don't respond in kind.
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, he said that he just told them to not take money from anyone by force.
Right, don't be a thief, don't kill others.
And Peter responded by cutting off Malchus' ear when they were coming in from the temple the night. He didn't say, Peter, what in the world are you doing with that sword?
Like he didn't know, right? Like he'd only had dinner. He was praying. I don't think my father could have sent a legion of angels. Not the time to use it, Peter. That was the point. None of the disciples, nobody understood that God had actually come to earth.
And so Peter arose and got his sword and was going to defend for doing it.
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 was indicating earlier, just said, you know, don't take advantage.
And of course, those who are liberals and leftists, who are not pure pacifists, like say the Amish and others, they would.
By the way, have guns to shoot animals with.
Right, right. But those that are your typical left-leaning Democrat or left-leaning Republican who is in favor of very strong, strict restrictions on gun ownership, they would even agree that the military needs guns and weapons and so on.
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 want to go back to say as we might encounter mandated killing of the aggressor, of the kidnapper?
Yes, it's interesting how these same left-leaning individuals claim very often to be the champions for the defenseless, the poor, the women of society, the children of society, and yet they would rather than be sitting ducks without weaponry of any kind, especially the women in the inner cities and so on.
How could you really be in favor of women's rights and in their best interest if you want them to be unarmed in dangerous places? It doesn't make any sense to me.
My guess is that most are talking about, because if they had the money, they'd do it.
Right. And that goes to another area of hypocrisy. 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 will rebuke me when I say anything in favor of gun ownership and so on, gun rights, the NRA, whatever you may think of when you're thinking of gun ownership, liberals who are typically, at least in their rhetoric, the ones who are far superior in their calling for the rights of minorities 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 would retort to that.
No, I'm not the racist. You are, because you're the one that actually believes that. You may unconsciously 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 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. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. 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.
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Welcome back. This is Chris Zarnes, 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.
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 Soviet Russia, only the communist elite. Idiom means you got only the... Is that really what they want? Being some kind of historic...
Yeah, in fact, a lot of what the liberals on TV, the pundits, and the talk show hosts, and others who chuckle at the conservatives 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 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 just think it's laughable that we would think that, oh, we got to have our militias ready to overthrow the government in case it becomes a tyranny and a dictatorship again, or whatever.
Well, they've never talked about Nazi and other... Do you think it would have made a difference?
Of course.
What world are you living in? And so to call paranoid...
Yes, and they also, these liberals and leftists seem to be totally blind as to what could occur when we don't even know how many centuries 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 Germany ending up becoming a totalitarian monopoly. Other countries, the Cubans that I've talked to, something like this, fought Batista with Castro, fought the dictator preceding Castro.
And then when they toppled him, and it turned out that 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.
And he went back and saw with his own eyes, he got out of people's heads, make it out of these countries, the ones who, that didn't come easy. No, many Cubans have fled shark-infested straits between Florida and still find a body that's been eaten by sharks.
Yeah. And 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 vacation day as his daughters are visiting Carlisle, Pennsylvania from Maine and other places, 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?
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? Legally, crimes against persons. He deals with what happens to have to use my firearm.
If you're in San Francisco and many other cities, 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 Maryland and Virginia and the district.
I'd gone to school in the District of Columbia. I had left the area to take a job opportunity to come back and head up the American Conservative Union. And I knew almost without thinking, after having lived in the area, there's no way I'm going to live in the disconvenient to get into the district from Maryland 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 conservativism 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?
Keep in mind, Mike, because I've actually had to face mental Europe, and it's really stunning that the use of the word conservative in England, but the only thing in common between 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, they're simply knowing the government of the people being in charge.
We even have a difference in America, those of us who were here by birth, in Europe, and both thinking, in fact, the reason they were leaving England is because their Christian beliefs simply no longer comported, they had to get out of Dodge.
And that, I think, helps explorative, just doesn't mean the same thing over there as it does here. They look at us as crazy people, our militia tradition, and it had gotten a good shot off at him, would have been doing a good thing, something like that over there, and you just get a kind of stunned silence.
Well, you know, that actually brings me to another question. There are people, in fact, 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, should 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 you defying God as being a minister of God, a servant of God. And you can't, I don't think, make a very good case that Stalin I think it's a major to think that Romans 13 is talking about being submissive to any Tom that comes along and says, I'm the government, now you obey.
The proper Christian response is, do you understand the Hebrew Republic? Do you understand what Paul was talking about? If you don't, then 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 know it to be, but it's at least a very silent or rarely heard group of people who actually believe that the patriots of the 18th century, the colonists and so on, were in sin when they started a revolution against the British throne for independence of the colonies.
They say, even if they enjoy the freedoms that procured 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 respond to that kind of a thing?
Well, I think they're just missing the point of what we've been assuming, that because that made him automatically legitimate, that would mean Stalin was legitimate, or that Hitler. And frankly, I think the only thing wrong with the officers' plot to blow up Hitler, 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, people might well have been succeeded. The idea that anybody in power who says, I'm the government now, you've got to obey me, really? Finger to God?
And we're saying that's legitimate? I really find that appalling.
And 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 and the rights to bear arms that we have here in the United States, isn't it true that the real root of that is not because they are bloodthirsty and want to shoot, harm, or kill people?
They want to protect innocent life, which should be a goal of all humanity. And according to what the liberals' rhetoric is, that is a part of their, it seems, main part of the agenda that they profess is to be protectors of the underdog and the 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?
I think that biblical standpoint 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, life, take the life of a rapist, but once you've gone past those enumerated areas where the taking of life is legitimate, to say that any government is legitimate completely misunderstands, fails to think through what it is that Scripture actually teaches and what the Founders of this country, 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 Muhlenberg in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. At the beginning of hostilities of our war for independence, there's a time, flung off his coat at the end of the cloak at the end of, now there's a time 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 rode off to fight with General Washington, not to return until the war was over.
That's what our Second Amendment is designed to protect us against George III, and if George III insists on it, for us to be able to shoot him.
We do have another listener in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Christian has a three-part question, and they're all excellent, so I'll permit three parts. 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 from private ownership?
Well, let me start with the third. 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. What the founders had in mind was the right of the arms of the day, 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 company that was involved with artillery, that would be a machine battle rifle. About so that an instant army, there would be a militia to take on George III if need be.
Give me the first two.
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. And it takes its creator, telling people you can't have a gun.
If somebody's in jail, he shouldn't have a gun. When he gets out of jail, there's no way you're practicing that in gun-banned cities like Washington, D .C. So not only I think the government should be involved, 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 trying to sell my next-door neighbor a .38 revolver.
If I do something, it becomes their business, and everybody else, to keep us from sticking up a 7 -11 with my .38.
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 very conservative people and very conservative 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.
Would you not think that a dangerous criminal might have something that follows him outside of prison with his restriction in regard to gun ownership?
If we don't think somebody can be trusted outside of prison….
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 goal of government, as Romans tells us, is to be a minister to the godly, to the ungodly. That's not necessarily the exact wording of all the translations, but I think that's a pretty faithful rendition.
If government is not doing that, government is wrong. Gun control, not to the ungodly. Gun control law….
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 our listeners know that your website is gunowners .org. That's gunowners .org.
Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us, Larry.
It was great.
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 free room and board 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 chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Chris Arnson at gmail dot com. We'll be right back. Don't go away.
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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 preaching?
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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 Ph .D. at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. And he is an assistant professor of history 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. Oh, the pleasure is all mine, and I want to thank a pastor that I met in Harvey Cedars, New Jersey.
The pastor that basically referred me to you I believe is your pastor, correct?
He sure is. He's a great guy.
That's Pastor Benjamin, right?
Jensen.
Brian, I'm sorry, Pastor Brian Jensen.
No, that's all right.
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. Amen. Well, 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 there are going to be a lot of people from the conservative realm of the Christian spectrum of ideology and theology who may get 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 about... First of all, I think the definition is in order for American exceptionalism. Please tell us what exactly that means.
It's one of those terms that's commonly used in the world we've ever seen. That America is the exception to the rule. That historical... You may recall a convention in 1988, when he rejects the idea that America is a nation in decline, and he said America is a rising nation.
We're 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 called The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and that book by Paul Kennedy, the thesis of that book was that very idea, that America was in decline and that Japan was about...
Obviously, it didn't happen. But nevertheless, this is... We need to continue the trend. Without America, it's chaos. It kind of goes along with that definition. Strongly religious, a strongly theological element.
And I identify five. Democracy, sacred land over here in the Western... After the Reformation began... Yeah, well, that's why I know some, not all,.
But probably a minority of pastors that I know do this, but they will not have an American flag near the pulpit in their church buildings, not because they're not patriotic, 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 believe that Christ is the king of those from out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation all over the world, and therefore the church is not to be viewed as an American idea. Now, when you were going through the five primary 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.
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 more we say new over the word, I mean, we might go out and buy a new air conditioning unit or a house. I mean, we use the word new in sort of a common way and a common use, but when we think about it in the opening decades of the 17th century, to those Europeans, we have to remember that this was like the discovery of a new planet for us.
I mean, imagine finding a— you would regard it as the European colonists had a choice when they encountered this new civilization 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 worldview. You see what I'm saying? And what they chose to do was the second thing. They acted upon the land according to their own worldview and own presuppositions.
And what that meant was they saw the land as given to them by God to be used heavenly because probably the dominion mandate of Genesis 1, fill the earth and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. So their understanding of that was that they needed to make it productive.
They needed to cultivate the earth and make it bear fruit. Well, white Englishmen thought they knew how best how to do that and lay an economy of settling the land, so they thought that they weren't really fulfilling the dominion mandate and thus it was okay to take the land.
It was justifying the Oregon territories. And he had in mind the English who were simply trapping and trading in furs and fulfilling the dominion mandate in the way that white Americans of the United States thought they should, that that would have pretty big repercussions.
People to completely uproot themselves and move west, take an expansion of slavery into the territories of the old southwest, what we now know of as the lower southeast, deep south areas. And ultimately this would culminate in the fighting of the Civil War, many things.
I'm rehearsing a lot of the things I write in that chapter. This is sort of a narrative that goes back 30, 40 years.
Would it be like John Winthrop and his view of this land as a city upon a hill and so on?
Great example. John Winthrop writing people.
Now, 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 we were the freest land on the globe in regard to freedom of religion and Christianity in its biblical form was flourishing and we were sending out missionaries unlike most nations and so on.
And so there were things uniquely blessed about the United States of America or about the American colonies. And there were things about us that did separate ourselves from the lands in Europe that had kings and leaders that really had titles and roles that only belong to Christ himself.
And so there were aspects of us that basically made us unique on this planet as a people, but it should never be viewed in a prideful way where it has anything to do with us innately as a people, something running through our bloodstream or in the soil that we are living on.
It has to do with the privileges and blessings and the stewardship that we have been entrusted with.
So what I try to do in the book is differentiate between exceptionalism as very exclusivist and it shuts out groups of people, which is I think a more appropriate form of exceptionalism. In sort of a humble way, we can be special as other countries.
True, it may be real, it doesn't have to be questioned by God or innocent.
And what do you think is the most dangerous aspect of American exceptionalism when viewed wrongly? What are the most dangerous ramifications? Some who would say, you know, what does this really matter?
Why are you so upset about this? Why did you even take the time and effort to write a book about this? What are you warning us about?
Okay, well, let's just shut you out of the kingdom of heaven. Because what it is is really a heretical view of the nation-state. It sets America up as a thing to be worshipped. His life is a ransom, takes away from the glory of God, who says in Isaiah 48 that he will not share his glory to heaven.
Thinking of American exceptionalism is extremely dangerous because it's not careful.
In fact, I'm going to read a question, 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 in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York.
He actually wrote in for the first guest as well. Tyler says, what would you say about the problem with modern evangelicals worshipping 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 with what you've been saying, because obviously you've already answered that question to a degree, but perhaps if you could just continue.
Yeah, I can say a little bit more. This statement is used of an obligation to you. If you think about 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 line 2016 America alongside of, I don't know, the British Empire toe-to-toe with Queen Victoria's England? Get a time machine and go back and compare ourselves or fight a battle?
Or compete on the world market? That's not really possible to do that. Or are we going to go up against the Ming Dynasty of China? Are we going to go up against the Roman Empire? I mean, it's really an ahistorical, anachronistic way to think about America.
America is the most powerful nation in the world today. It's a statement made all the time, particularly by politicians. That kind of talk is dangerous. I mean, just look at the last 50 ,000 foreign policy decisions that have not turned out the way that, for example, the Vietnam War.
You know, this was good intentions, of course, with the 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 that story ended and how that story was narrated.
And on that floor by J. William Fulbright, a senator from Arkansas, the point was that, look, there are limits to American power. We can't do everything we would like to do. We can't, just because we want to do something somewhere in the world doesn't mean we have the means to do it, the justification to do it.
And Lyndon Johnson responded to that speech. I called the obligation of power. He made the argument that we are blinded to because of—.
Right, and the fact that, or should I say the theory or the possibility that those behind the scenes in positions of power in America may have had impure or corrupt motives in our entrance into the war in Vietnam and other places does not take away from the very noble and pure motives of 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 risked and lost their lives and even if they came home or were 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 boardrooms of the political elite and so on that we are unaware of.
Sure, absolutely. That distinction—.
And right now we have to go to a station break and we'll be right back. We do have a couple of listeners waiting to have their questions answered patiently. And 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 the academic wing of InterVarsity Press and we want to thank them for supplying us with these books to give away.
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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.
We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.
That's not the best recipe for popularity but since that wasn't the apostles priority, it must not be ours either. We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.
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See the Long Island Galleries display ad at ironsharpensironradio .com. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron. If you just tuned us in, our second guest for today until 6 p .m. 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 chrisarnzen 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.
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.
Am I right there? And I'm assuming that you would agree with me, though, that a Christian student or teacher should be fully permitted to pray silently or, in appropriate places, pray vocally, audibly, and should have free exercise to start Bible clubs and Christian clubs and things like that.
I used to be excited about it and it wasn't something that was a scary thing, which I think is really at the very heart of what religious freedom ought to be.
By the way, as a Christian, 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 that there should be a power in the government to stop a local public school from having any kind of public prayer or anything.
I didn't mean to indicate that I wanted a heavier hand of government to restrict religious activity in the public schools or public square. I'm just talking about those conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists who are, on one hand, 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 or whatever.
They could be a Satanist.
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? 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?
It's something that has a liturgy to it. It has sort of a priesthood guard to it or something of a priest. The men that are in charge of the guard, it's when you go there. It's not a salvation kind of a thing.
It doesn't cast America in any salvific terms. It doesn't cast America in any ecclesiological terms. A nation is a church or anything like that. It doesn't do any kind of violence to the gospel, or it doesn't replace the authority of Scripture over our lives with anything else.
But it is religious, and patriotism in that sense I think is very appropriate to an expression of gratitude to God for his blessings on our home. But patriotism also entails calling out the nation for sins against justice.
When we, for example, are concerned about government intrusion upon religious freedom, our expression of our religious convictions in the public square, infringements on our liberty, those are expressions of patriotism.
And whenever we dissent against the government over ideals that are written in our founding documents, that's an expression. African Americans that were led by the African American churches and rose up and said enough is enough in regards to segregation and in regards to the denial of civil rights and basic services and access to, historically had access to, that was patriotism.
In fact, if you read Martin Luther King's speeches, Martin Luther King is certainly a patriot, even though he's coming against official government policy. So dissent against the government, but it has a very strong patriotic element to it.
And just like the Scriptures say in Ecclesiastes, there's a time and a place for everything. I don't think that Sunday morning 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 to God for our freedom.
I think that's the time to worship Christ, because that's the time that we set aside on the Lord's Day to worship the name of the Lord. I don't think it's appropriate 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 that the church certainly can set aside time 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 that Christians need to be thoughtful, and not just because something seems worth doing at a particular given time.
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. 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?
In the context, it might not be appropriate. When the nation begins to deny anybody religious freedom, according to the dictates of their conscience,. I don't know. I don't know. We're a nation above our God.
That's something that every individual needs to examine in their own heart and their own life.
Do you know of any Christian group that was opposed to reverence towards the flag? I know that Jonathan Edwards is considered like the last Puritan, so there wasn't a lot of history with an American flag with the Puritans' involvement.
But they had a British flag in England and so on.
Yeah, like flags are laid publicly in churches around. I'm not 100 sure.
And I want to make sure that you share with our audience what you most want etched on their hearts and minds before the conclusion of this program.
It's an invitation to felt. It's good to affirm American exceptionalism in certain ways. In other ways, it's highly problematic. In fact, maybe even heretical or blasphemous. When it comes to the accurate presentation of the gospel in this very troubled world that we live in, an idea like American exceptionalism and its place in our minds and in our hearts is a very...
Well, I want to thank you so much for being our guest today, and I look forward to having you back again, brother. You did a really 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.
Gracefamilyinfo .org. And what city and state is that again?
I'm sorry?
What city and state is Grace Family Church?
Oh, it's Pearland, Texas.
Pearland, Texas. And any other contact information that you care to share today? And we'll see is W-I-L-S-E-Y.
S-E-Y, yes. It's like when you're...
Well, thank you so much. I want to remind our listeners that I hope you have a joyful, safe, and blessed Memorial Day weekend. Reach out to the families and loved ones of veterans and veterans themselves and thank them for their service.
We'll see you next week on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater Savior than you are a sinner. God bless.