Should Believers Affirm Christian Nationalism?

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00:00

Christoph, would you say that America is, or ever was, a Christian nation? I would say that it is not, and has never been.

00:10

The following persons shall be disqualified for office.

00:13

Any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.

00:16

Amen.

00:17

Even though we know that many of our elected officials currently would not meet that standard, you know, hashtag Bernie Sanders and guys like that.

00:26

I think that by God's grace, eventually, I believe that it's possible that we would get to a point where we'd say, wait a second, they're killing babies in California.

00:35

Send in the National Guard.

00:56

Hey guys, it's Keith, and welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

01:00

Today I am excited to have with me a couple of men who are going to be talking about the subject of Christian nationalism.

01:09

Now this subject, as many of you know, has been blowing up on social media lately.

01:13

I've seen videos come out from all different types of perspectives and people holding and saying that we have to believe in Christian nationalism, and some people saying that Christian nationalism is bad and no good and something that we should shy away from.

01:26

So I have two friends that I'm bringing onto the show with me today who are going to be sharing two different perspectives on the subject of Christian nationalism, and I also have a friend of the show who most of you will already know, and that's Matthew Hinson, my not-yet-Calvinist friend, and he's going to be helping me moderate the conversation and asking some additional questions.

01:48

So let me introduce the men that I have today for the show.

01:51

First, I want to introduce someone who many of you may already know.

01:55

This is Joel Webben.

01:57

Joel Webben is the president of Right Response Ministries, and he is the senior pastor at Covenant Bible, yeah, am I right? Covenant Bible Church.

02:09

And we want to thank you for being a part today of Conversations with a Calvinist.

02:14

Yes, sir.

02:14

Thanks for inviting me.

02:16

Yes, sir, absolutely.

02:17

And as I say many times, you look super serious in that very cool wingback chair.

02:22

Not everybody is able to have such a cool-looking background, but we're very— Presbyterians always have the nice stuff, and so I'm trying to represent the Baptist and say, we don't have to be bumpkins all the time.

02:35

We can step it up a notch.

02:38

Absolutely.

02:38

Well, you've stepped it up with that chair alone.

02:41

Now, I do have to ask, is that a green screen, or is that really a room in your house? That's a room in my house.

02:47

Yeah, it's real.

02:48

So there's a Christian guy, solid guy, and he's Presbyterian, but he came in, and he's a construction guy, and so he came in, and he built the wood walls, and I was like, think R.C.

03:01

Sproul, and he nailed it.

03:04

Very cool, very cool.

03:06

Well, you're going to be taking the position, Joel, of the positive position defending Christian nationalism, and on the other side, we have an author whose name is Christoph Brill.

03:19

Christoph, thank you for being with me today.

03:21

I appreciate it.

03:22

Yes, thank you very much.

03:23

I'm very happy to be here.

03:25

Yes, sir.

03:25

And you are an author who focuses on ethics, political philosophy, and theology, and your publications include Actionable Justice, A Manifesto for American Conservatives, and Why Christians Should Oppose Christian Nationalism, and that last one is the one that has brought us all together today, because you were the first one to reach out to me.

03:48

You sent me a copy of your book.

03:50

Matthew and I both have looked at it, have read it, and that's what sort of sparked the idea to have this conversation, because you wanted to talk about the book, and I said, well, I'd love to have you on the show, but I also knew Joel from Twitter, and I said, let's have a point and counterpoint conversation where both of you can share differing views, because even though you have never spoken to Joel before today, I imagine your views are going to be quite a bit different, and so we're going to try to hear both of you and hear your positions, and thankfully, you did send us a copy of the book, and I shared it with Joel.

04:26

Joel, did you get a chance to look at Christoph's book? Yeah, I read it.

04:29

Okay, all right, so he's coming in at least familiar with your information, Christoph, and before we get started, I did talk to Joel a little bit about his position.

04:39

What do you do ministry-wise outside of writing and things like that? What's your role right now? Well, I don't have any particular role in the church.

04:51

I'm not an elder or anything.

04:52

However, I do write with the approval of the elders of my church, so it's not as if I'm doing this by myself without any supervision.

05:01

Sure, and you are in a Reformed Baptist church? Indeed.

05:05

Okay, so the only person in this whole group who is not a Calvinist, Matthew.

05:13

Yep.

05:13

See, we're still working on you.

05:16

That's going to keep happening.

05:17

You're contractually obligated to the not-yet-Calvinist friend.

05:19

That's okay.

05:20

That's right.

05:21

You're my not-yet-Calvinist friend, and every time we get together, me.

05:24

And for those, again, who don't know Matthew, again, Matthew has been a moderator in multiple debates, including a debate I did and a debate that was done with Dr.

05:31

James White here in Jacksonville, Florida.

05:33

So he has experience in moderation debate and in studying legal issues.

05:39

He has done reports in our podcast before about the Supreme Court.

05:44

So he is going to be coming at this, asking some questions that are going to hopefully be pointed and important when we get to that side.

05:51

So what we're going to do, and let me explain to the audience, this is not a formal debate.

05:56

This is a conversation, but both sides do have differing positions.

06:02

So we want to give each side the opportunity to share their position, explain what they mean when they say Christian nationalism, and explain why they are either for it on behalf of Joel or against it on behalf of Christoph.

06:17

And in that opening interaction, being able to both give their positions, we're going to build from there a conversation, allowing them to ask each other questions and allowing Matthew and I to also engage both of them with questions.

06:33

So as is often the case, even though this isn't a formal debate, in a situation where there's a positive and negative, it's often best to let the positive go first.

06:44

So Joel, we're going to give you the first time to go, and you can have as much time as you like, but obviously we do want to try to keep this within 90 minutes or so.

06:54

So take a few minutes, explain to us what you mean by Christian nationalism and why it is that you would support that term, and give us your position, if you would.

07:07

Okay, thanks.

07:08

I'll go ahead by just starting with the statement on Christian nationalism and the gospel.

07:13

I'll read a little bit of that.

07:14

The primary authors were Dusty Deavers.

07:16

Dusty Deavers is a Reformed Baptist guy.

07:18

He's an abolitionist.

07:19

He's done a lot of wonderful work working to abolish abortion.

07:23

He's a local pastor in Oklahoma and a friend of mine.

07:25

Also, James Silberman was intricately involved in the original draft and those things.

07:32

And then guys like William Wolfe, myself, Jeff Wright, Corey Anderson, we came in in the 11th hour and still got the same pay.

07:40

So anyways, we put this out, and it caused a little bit of a stir.

07:43

And part of the reason it caused a stir was because of the arguments, but part of it is of 2023 Fontgate, which will go down in infamous history, where we apparently took the same font as G3, and it was the same font.

07:59

And it wasn't my decision, and I wish it didn't happen, but it also was kind of funny.

08:03

And G3, in the final analysis, they were charitable about it.

08:06

So all that being said, I'm going to read from the beginning of that statement.

08:09

Some of your listeners may have already checked it out.

08:10

Some of them may not have.

08:11

But if you open it up, the very first thing that it says is a definition.

08:15

So Christian nationalism is a set of governing principles rooted in Scripture's teaching that Christ rules as Supreme Lord and King of all creation, who has ordained civil magistrates with delegated authority to be under him over the people, to order their ordained jurisdiction by punishing evil and promoting good for his own glory and the common good of the nation.

08:40

And there's a lot of Scripture references.

08:43

Then the next thing that we say is introduction.

08:46

Christian nationalism is primarily concerned with the righteous rule of civil authorities, not spiritual matters pertaining to salvation.

08:55

The desire for a Christian nation is not a distraction from the gospel, but rather an effort to faithfully apply all of Scripture to all of life, including the public square.

09:06

As such, Christian nationalism is not just for civil authorities, just as submitting to Christ's Lordship is not just for civil authorities, but for all people.

09:16

After the Lord Jesus declared his sovereign authority in Matthew 28, verse 18, He gave the Great Commission and commanded His followers, empowered by His everlasting presence, to make disciples of all nations and to baptize them and teach them to obey all that I have commanded.

09:34

That's Matthew 28, verses 19 and 20.

09:37

Our Lord did not exclude all civil authorities from the command to submit to His authority and display allegiance to Him.

09:45

We recognize the existence of other definitions of Christian nationalism, because, Lord knows, not everybody agrees, and that's part of the confusion going on now.

09:56

We certainly do not endorse every iteration of Christian nationalism and explicitly repudiate some such forms, as will be evident in our affirmations and denials.

10:06

And what follows is 20 different affirmations and 20 denials.

10:11

Lastly, we said that if you agree with the document, you can check it out online.

10:15

I believe the website, and you could sign it, I think it leaves space for guys who are willing to sign it.

10:20

The final draft is something that we'll work on in the future, but I believe the website is statementonchristiannationalism.com, statementonchristiannationalism.com.

10:32

So anyway, that's just the definition and introduction to the statement, and then what follows are affirmations and denials, and we can get into some of those later on, but I'll just stop reading.

10:43

And the last thing that I'll say is, and I know that you've addressed this, Christoph, and it'll be an interesting thing for us to get to, but I think some of the guys, myself, at least, I'll speak for myself.

10:53

Some of the guys who have said, all right, it's a pejorative, Christian, little Christ, that was a first century pejorative, but it stuck.

11:02

Guys were willing to wear it, followers of the way.

11:04

And then you got Puritan, that was a pejorative, but people are like, well, I guess I kind of am a Puritan.

11:09

And Christian nationalism has been a pejorative from the woke, progressive left to say, these are radical Christian nationalists.

11:16

It's funny, James Lindsay, initially, he even had in his Twitter handle for a while that, I'm a Christian nationalist, because everybody knew that it was this pejorative from the woke left that hates Christ saying, you guys are extremists.

11:30

But then little by little, some guys, myself included, said, well, I guess there is a truth in that.

11:36

I don't mean it the way you're saying it, but I am a nationalist and I am a Christian.

11:42

And so we decided to start working with the term because we felt like, well, we could reject the term, but if we reject the term, it's still going to be placed on us anyway.

11:50

So the question at the end of the day is not always, what is the ideal scenario and what I would pick for myself, but what box, what definitions, what terminology can I work with? And I think you can work with Puritan, you can work with Christian, and I think you can work with Christian nationalism.

12:08

And that's not to say there's no baggage with the ism in the nation part, because there is, but I think it's something that you can work with.

12:16

So that at the end of the day is where a lot of guys have landed.

12:19

For myself personally, I would disagree with some guys like Stephen Wolfe.

12:24

I appreciate Stephen Wolfe.

12:26

I think he's got a lot of unfair criticism.

12:28

One of my criticisms that I think would be fair is that he's a Thomist, so he's going to place a lot of emphasis on Thomas Aquinas, whereas I would be much more presuppositional and follow Cornelius Van Til.

12:41

He's also all millennial and I would be post-millennial.

12:43

So there's different camps within the CN big tent group.

12:48

There's the Doug Wilson camp.

12:49

I would be more in that camp.

12:51

I'm not Presbyterian.

12:52

I do hold to a Credo Baptist position, but I am post-millennial and I am a general equity theonomist.

12:57

And so there's a lot of guys in that camp that would say, okay, yeah, we're in the CN, you know, Christian nationalist orbit.

13:05

And then there's other guys that place a bigger emphasis on natural law and are not necessarily post-millennial in their eschatology.

13:11

So that gives you a little bit of, you know, I'll stop there, but that's my opening statement.

13:16

Absolutely.

13:17

Thank you so much.

13:18

And there was certainly a lot in that.

13:20

And give us one more time the website for the document.

13:23

If somebody wanted to pause right here and just go read that again so that they hear that again.

13:27

What was that website again? I believe it's Christian or www.statementonchristiannationalism.com.

13:36

Statement on Christian nationalism.

13:38

If that doesn't work, add the word the.

13:40

The statement on Christian nationalism.

13:42

Okay, no the.

13:43

Yep.

13:43

So statementonchristiannationalism.com.

13:45

Okay, wonderful.

13:47

Thank you, Joel, for that opening statement, letting us know what you mean.

13:50

And I also want to say this.

13:52

As I was preparing for this, I watched a video of you saying, if I remember correctly, it was something to the effect of Christian nationalists are the ones that are hated by the other side or something.

14:08

It was just a short little 10-minute video.

14:10

It looked like you were preaching at your church, but it was saying nobody hates the people who are writing papers on the Hypostatic Union.

14:19

Nobody's giving any trouble to the ivory tower theologians.

14:23

It's the Christian nationalists who are wearing the mega hats and those things.

14:26

I thought that was an interesting point that you made, that this issue is one that the other side does see as the battleground.

14:35

So where we stand on, yeah, it's the threat, and where we stand on this is probably going to place us somewhere in the view of the, in the sights of the opponents of the gospel, for sure.

14:48

So I thought that was an interesting point.

14:50

I've never been accused of being winsome.

14:53

So if those who hate Christ see me as threatening, I feel pretty good about that.

14:59

Okay, all right.

15:02

All right, Mr.

15:03

Christoph, I'm going to now turn over to you.

15:06

You'll have, again, as much time as you'd like.

15:08

This isn't a time debate or anything like that, so you have plenty of time to share your position.

15:13

Don't have time to read your whole book, unfortunately.

15:15

But for those who do want to read it, it is available on Amazon.

15:20

It is called, remind me of the title.

15:23

I just read it a minute ago.

15:24

Why Christians Should Oppose Christian Nationalism.

15:28

Okay, and they can get that on Amazon.

15:29

And it's a relatively short read.

15:31

Somebody who's a good reader should be able to read it in one sitting.

15:34

And I'm going to turn it over to you and give you the opportunity to come out and share with us why you would oppose Christian nationalism and what the heart of your book was.

15:47

Okay, anyway, I wrote the book, Why Christians Should Oppose Christian Nationalism.

15:51

And it is, of course, discussing this from a perspective looking at exegesis, looking at what does the Bible say about various related issues.

16:01

But before you can get into the exegesis on this matter, it's, of course, necessary to define what Christian nationalism is.

16:09

And the way I define it is that I obviously would say that we all know what a Christian is.

16:16

So then we have to understand what nationalism is.

16:19

Nationalism is an ideology that focuses on the identification of the nation with the state so that there is a popular sovereignty.

16:32

The people, which is the nation, are considered equivalent in their sovereignty together with the state.

16:42

And so there's a merger of nation and state based on national identity.

16:48

Now, I would argue that there is a biblical distinction between nation and kingdom or nation and state.

16:55

This is seen in the Hebrew Old Testament, where there is the Goy and the Malacha, and in the New Testament, where you see Ethnos and Basilia.

17:09

And, of course, this also exists in modern political philosophy, where people can talk about nations or people groups and then also states.

17:18

Now, the problem with merging these two things, the nation and the state, in how they operate is that in one case, we need to understand that there is already a type of nation that is talked about biblically, and that is the holy nation that is mentioned in Exodus 19 and 1 Peter 2, which, of course, is understood to refer to both ancient Israel and to the church in the latter passage.

17:49

So there's an understanding that the church in some ways is a fulfillment of the promise of the holy nation.

17:58

And so there is a special holiness that applies to this nation, which is Christian.

18:04

And how does one become a member of a nation? Well, typically, it would be by being born into one.

18:10

And in the case of this holy nation, or the true Christian nation, as I might call it, it is by being born into it, by being born again.

18:22

As Reverend Webben has said in a recent video, all members of a new covenant are born again.

18:30

And that is something that I think should influence our understanding of what we believe the Christian nation can be identified as.

18:38

Now, the problem with popular sovereignty in understanding nations is that, as Abraham Kuyper himself has said, this goes against the sovereignty of God.

18:51

And this was in one of his 1898 lectures on Calvinism at Princeton University, where he argued that the sovereignty of God comes and influences how we should understand all other things, and that the concept of popular sovereignty was a competing theory to the Calvinist understanding of God's sovereignty.

19:15

And this is, of course, also brought out in his other politics, as he was the founder of the anti-revolutionary party, referring to the French Revolution and other European revolutions which were led by nationalists who sought to put the people in power, as opposed to the more traditional perspective seen by earlier theologians that view power as coming from God and being invested in the sovereign, who then has authority from God, rather than as intrinsically taken from the people.

19:47

Now, another issue with identifying this holy nation with the more secular understanding of nationalism is the idea of merging the holy and the common, because God has ruled over all things, but he has not consecrated all things.

20:08

Likewise, we have to understand that we should not identify things that are opposed to Christ with Christ.

20:15

That is another thing that I think is very important.

20:18

And then there's also some other philosophical issues relating to understandings of identitarianism, as opposed to relationalism, where the identity of nations is, in my view, scripturally less emphasized than the relationship that God has with nations.

20:39

So those are just some of the ideas that I put forward in my book on Christian nationalism.

20:50

Okay.

20:50

So I have to ask this, and this is, I think, an important thing that I want to hear both of you answer this, because I appreciate you both for your opening statements, but I want to simplify this for the listener, and I'm trying to pretend I'm the audience, and that's what Matthew and I are here to do, not only moderate, but also to be the audience.

21:09

And if someone were to say—and I'll let Joel go first, since you just spoke, Christoph—Joel, if I were to say, give me your understanding of what Christian nationalism is in just a short sentence or two.

21:25

Just what is Christian nationalism that you're defending? Yeah.

21:31

Christian nationalism is the idea that nations, not just ours, not just America, but that all the nations are Christ's inheritance, that they should explicitly declare an allegiance to Christ and His Lordship as demonstrated through the Scripture, that they should execute their powers, they should execute their duties, their responsibilities Christianly.

21:57

So—and I want to go to Christoph quickly, but I do have to—I want to make sure I understand.

22:02

So you're not endorsing necessarily Christian Americanism because of what you just said.

22:12

You said it's all nations, not just the upholding of the Christian flag and the American flag and making them one.

22:19

No.

22:19

I'm post-millennial.

22:20

We're going to take the whole thing.

22:22

Okay, okay.

22:24

Okay.

22:26

All right.

22:26

So Christoph, based upon Joel's definition, can you give me a—is your working definition the same as his, or do you have a different definition for Christian nationalism? Because as I was listening to you, I was trying to just clarify this for the audience, because I want to make sure we're not talking past one another.

22:46

Yeah, I'll give you a brief couple-sentence definition.

22:50

Christian nationalism may be defined as the position that there is a Christian nation that ought to operate as a sovereign nation state while fully affirming its Christian faith and identity.

23:02

This definition emphasizes the centrality of Christianity while preserving the analogical similarity with other ideologies that are properly called nationalist, like Irish nationalism, French nationalism, Kurdish nationalism, etc.

23:16

Okay.

23:17

So it seems like it—in that sense, it would almost seem like there—we have two working definitions.

23:23

It would seem like there's not exactly an agreement on what we mean by Christian nationalism, and I want to give you what I think, and maybe if Matthew wants to jump in here, based on what I've heard, it sounds like Joel is saying that Christ is the head of all nations, therefore all nations should be submissive to his lordship.

23:48

Am I being fair to that, Joel? Is that fair to what— Yep.

23:52

Yes, sir.

23:53

And Christoph, you're saying that Christian nationalism is more of a form of secular identification, that we are a nation that is a Christian nation, and you're saying that we can't do that.

24:11

I'm not saying that specifically.

24:14

I would rather say that Christian nationalism, if we are to use the term nationalism, ought to mean the same thing as what other nationalist movements use the term for, which means that a group, which is the nation, has its own sovereignty in a popular sense.

24:38

Okay, explain that—or go ahead, Joel.

24:40

I'm sorry.

24:41

Well, I was just going to say, so are you a globalist? Like, I don't understand.

24:46

What would be your objection to the statement you just made? Well, my objection— How much is George Soros paying you, is my question.

24:54

Yeah, well, I'm not a globalist.

24:57

My objection is that popular sovereignty, I view that as something that is unbiblical and something that is contrary to a number of principles of the faith, particularly— Define—real quick, can you define that for me? I really just—popular sovereignty.

25:17

Define that, please.

25:18

Popular sovereignty is the idea that, in a state or in a country, the people are the sovereigns.

25:27

Oh, okay.

25:28

All right.

25:29

So, like in America, where we would say, we the people hold these truths, that's what you're referring to, the consent of the governed kind of thing? No, not necessarily.

25:40

This is more of a more philosophical idea, because historically, under what people would call classical republicanism, in a pre-modern sense, there existed republics that operated with the consent of the governed, but that did not necessarily believe in things like popular sovereignty.

26:03

Okay.

26:04

I'm still not certain that I understand popular sovereignty.

26:06

I'm trying my best.

26:07

I'm really not trying to make it more difficult than it has to be.

26:09

When you say popular sovereignty, so the population, the people, have the power? Yes, yes.

26:18

Okay.

26:18

To elect— They have the power outside of the existence of a hierarchy from God to the ruler to the people.

26:28

And because— So, not elected officials.

26:30

Is that what you're saying? Just the people, like mob rule, like a raw democracy, no representation? No, it can be structured in a number of different ways.

26:39

For example, there's dictatorships that affirm popular sovereignty.

26:44

For example, the People's Republic of China, they believe in popular sovereignty, but they have a communist dictatorship.

26:54

Yeah, I'm having a little bit of a difficulty sort of understanding the philosophy.

26:59

I think the problem here is that it's something that exists only in philosophy and not in the real world, which is also one of my other objections to it, that it's not something that's actually realistic.

27:11

I think it would also help to look at origin and source.

27:15

So, if there was an autocratic, wicked, evil tyrant in charge of a particular country, let's call him, I don't know, Stalin, for instance, and you could magically poll all of the people of the Soviet Union in, say, 1939, and say, do you approve of this man leading the country, even though he's evil, wicked, mean, and nasty? If he got a bare majority, 50% plus one, are you saying that it's an error to say he's a legitimate ruler because of that? Or is it, how does the interplay between consent of the governed and the legitimacy of the ruler come about? Because if it's a majority of the people don't approve of the ruler, and you're saying, well, biblically, that doesn't matter, he's the ruler, I guess the question would be, how did the ruler get there? Because if it's under a system where the people selected him, then it's a where is his authority drawn from? And if he, let's say he coups his way in there in an illegitimate show of force and topples the previous regime, just because he sits in the seat and signs his name to whatever governing document it is, or in the case of old monarchies, he wears the crown, does that then immediately demand allegiance if his usurpation was illegal, so to speak, based upon the laws of the country? So where's, I guess, where's the hierarchy of authority come from in a nation that way? Well, ultimately, it comes from God.

28:49

And then, as we understand it, in Romans 13, it goes to the people in charge.

28:57

Now, in the context of Romans 13, that's the Roman state and its subordinate entities.

29:03

So that's a mixture of both monarchies and republics.

29:07

So you could say that in that context, there's a possibility for things like constitutionality to exist in how governments operate.

29:16

And so if there is a law that says that a ruler can only come into charge in a certain way, then that is something that must be obeyed, of course.

29:31

However, if such things do not exist, then you end up in a situation where the only way to usurp the ruler's authority would be in a way that I would say is ungodly.

29:48

So when Paul, for instance, appeals to his rights as a Roman citizen, he says, you can't do this to me because I'm a Roman citizen.

29:56

And they're extremely nervous after that.

29:58

They're like, oh, no, I didn't know we were dealing with a Roman citizen.

30:01

They have a fear of the law that has been passed based upon the representative structure that they had.

30:07

But if they had an edict from Caesar that said, I know what the law says, but I don't care, you know, lash him 39 times because he's the ruler, but he's acting in a manner inconsistent with the constitution, so to speak, of the nation, would he have been right in doing so? That's kind of what I'm trying to tease out.

30:26

Who has the ultimate authority? If it is a ruler and he topples this ruler, and he has done so illegitimately, does he then, just because he's a ruler, does Romans 13 instantly kick in to the new guy who toppled the old guy? Well, I would say that it would have to be up to those who are in charge, because it is not up to us to decide, at least not intrinsically.

30:58

Now, we could get a right to decide by the law, but we don't have an automatic ability to decide who is in charge of us, just like we don't have a right to elect which god is god.

31:10

How do you feel about the War for Independence, America? I actually have, I'm a critic of the Declaration of Independence.

31:23

I'm not a critic of America's sovereignty.

31:26

I think that the Treaty of Paris resolved the issues related to that, but I am a critic of the Declaration of Independence.

31:36

So you didn't fire off fireworks last night then, huh? Actually, I did.

31:43

Oh, okay, all right.

31:44

I don't hate this country.

31:46

No, no, no, no, no, nobody's accusing you of being a...

31:49

I just have a specific historical critique.

31:53

Okay, so with that being said, I want to ask you a question.

31:56

You sat down in front of your computer, and you, I'm speaking to you, Christophe.

32:01

You sat down in front of your computer, you decided to write a book.

32:03

And in your book, you made some defining things in the first portion of the book you talked about.

32:09

I'm not saying this is, I'm not saying against theonomy or a different thing.

32:13

You really sort of narrowed down Christian nationalism and specifically to a certain thing.

32:19

But what made you write the book? What is your concern with someone like Joel? And I'm not making this personal, I'm just saying, when I say someone like Joel, I'm not saying that he's the archetypal Christian nationalist.

32:33

But when someone like Joel says, Christ is king, all governments should submit to him.

32:41

And when they don't do so, the people have the responsibility.

32:45

And correct me if I'm wrong, Joel, you would say, especially the church has a responsibility to call the government to repentance, right? Because they have a responsibility to...

32:52

Okay, I just want to make sure, again, if I say anything wrong, correct me, because I want to represent both of your sides as best as I can.

32:59

So Christoph, where would you say he's in error? Or do you think that that in and of itself is a problem? As you have read in the book, I don't actually say that everybody who calls himself a Christian nationalist falls into the errors of the nationalist ideology.

33:22

So I think that saying that Christ is king and ruler over everything, I think that is something that is very agreeable to me.

33:30

I also agree with the idea that the church should be calling people to repentance, that Christians should be vocal on political issues, especially when they concern virtues.

33:42

I think that that is actually very important and good.

33:47

My objection, therefore, for people that don't actually hold to ideas like popular sovereignty is that it could be misleading to people that assume those things because all sorts of other types of nationalism exist that do affirm those things.

34:05

So I think it's important to respect the terminology that people are using.

34:12

So on a philosophical level, there may be not a lot of differences in what you are saying people should do, but rather you think that the title is problematic.

34:22

By calling someone a Christian nationalist, that's a wrong term.

34:28

Yes, sir.

34:28

I think I can find some disagreement, you know, because I feel like, Keith, you're sitting there, you're like, hey, oh, do we even have a debate here? So if you'd like a debate, I think I could pick a fight.

34:40

Oh, well, I definitely want to get there.

34:43

I'm just trying to make sure we are rightly defining our terms.

34:47

I know there's things we're going to disagree on and probably things that all four of us may have different views on, but particularly you two gentlemen are the ones who've graciously come in today.

34:56

So I definitely want to hear your points first.

34:59

So, Joel, let's do that then.

35:00

Let's talk about the things where you think there would be legitimate differences between you and Christophe.

35:07

Great.

35:07

So it sounds like, Christophe, you affirm Christ being head of all things.

35:12

I remember, you know, in 2020 with COVID and everything, MacArthur came out with his famous article that, you know, Christ, not Caesar, is head of the church.

35:21

And I remember saying to myself, yes and amen, and I wish you'd go just a little bit further and say that Christ, not Caesar, is head of the church.

35:28

Also, Christ, not Caesar, is head of the state.

35:30

So Ephesians chapter 1 verse 22, and he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, that is, to the benefit of the church.

35:40

So what I would say is, you know, theologically, Christ is uniquely head of the church.

35:45

He is not exclusively head of the church.

35:47

Uniquely head of the church in the sense that the church is the only entity for which Christ died.

35:53

It's the only eternally redeemed people in that sense.

35:57

We could say it's the only eternally saved nation, to use the term nation.

36:03

But Christ is head over the public square.

36:07

He's head over governments.

36:08

He's head over states and all those kinds of things.

36:10

So my position is I'm simply trying to say Christ is head over everything, and Caesar has a law that he has to follow.

36:18

And Romans 13 is just as much written to Caesar and how Caesar should behave as it is to the people underneath Caesar's, underneath his earthly authority.

36:28

And so all that being said, I think the place, it sounds like there's maybe a lot of agreement there.

36:32

I think the place where we might not agree would be in terms of, now, I'm not going to get nitpicky with definitions of nationalism.

36:41

If you want to, you know, define some more things there and maybe just do, you know, ask me 20 questions like, do you affirm that one or deny it? Do you affirm that one? And we can go back and forth with definitions of nationalism.

36:52

But here's the heart of what I mean when I say nationalism.

36:55

I know this is what William Wolfe and guys like John Harris, this is what we would mean.

37:00

We would say that everything I've already said, Christ is Lord.

37:03

He's King of all Kings.

37:05

But beyond that, and nations have an explicit allegiance to Christ and not an ever evolving standard of man, but a transcendent universal standard that comes from the Bible.

37:17

So all that.

37:18

Beyond that though, the other part, I think a part of the nationalism piece, not all the definitions that you threw out, but one that I will abide by, and I'll say, yeah, I agree with that, is that nations are, that it's permissible by God for nations to prioritize in their order of loves.

37:40

So thinking of St.

37:41

Augustine, the order of loves, order of affections, that nations, it is morally permissible.

37:47

And I would go so far as to say even commanded that a nation prioritize the wellbeing, that not just eternal, salvific, eternal things, but the temporal earthly good of its citizens above other citizens of other nations.

38:06

So that doesn't mean that that nation needs to bust out an Adolf Hitler, Third Reich kind of thing and try to take over the world.

38:13

But it does mean that there is a way of nations being suicidal.

38:18

And I believe that's part of my concern.

38:19

That's part of the reason why I've been willing to wear the moniker, put on the label Christian nationalist, is because I think the West, I think France right now would be an example of this.

38:31

I think that a lot of Western civilization that has been historically Christian in some shape, form or fashion, coming off of 500 years of Christendom, a thousand, arguably going back to King Alfred and biblical case law and these kinds of things, the West, America, European countries, the whole nine yards, that we have become in recent, it's a post-war mentality, it's very recent.

38:57

But this post-war mentality, we have become so sensitive, and I believe overly sensitive to the charge of selfishness, to the charge of supremacy, to the charge of the terrible R word, racist, that we basically have gotten to a point where we're just going to implode.

39:19

We're suicidal.

39:20

The West is suicidal.

39:22

And so what I want to say is I love every nation in the world.

39:27

I want to see them all come to the saving knowledge of Christ as Lord.

39:31

I want to see them organize themselves in a civil sense, organize themselves rightly under the word of God and be Christian nations.

39:38

And I love those Christians and nations that are not Christian nations, but the people themselves are individual Christians in the true, regenerate, eternal sense.

39:47

I love Christians in China, Christians in Uganda, Christians here, Christians there.

39:51

But I am going to prioritize America above other nations.

39:56

And I think it's not only biblically permissible, but it's actually mandated that the civil magistrates in a given nation, that they prioritize their efforts in triaging, their efforts, their love, their devotion to their citizens and not strangers on the other side of the planet.

40:18

Great.

40:19

Christophe, you want to respond? I have a question, but I'm going to let you go first.

40:22

Yes, please respond.

40:24

Yes.

40:24

Well, my position, of course, is a position that makes a hard distinction between nations and states.

40:33

So I don't necessarily view things like France and the French people to be necessarily the same.

40:41

So in that sense, I view it as something where I do agree with the idea that people ought to love within their community and to clean their own house before they go out and go into other places.

41:01

So I do think that that is a good approach that people can take.

41:06

However, I also think that it is appropriate and allowed that empires can arise, that is to say, multi-national things like, for example, the Persian Empire established by Cyrus the Great and the Roman Empire and other empires throughout history.

41:29

And I think that this is something that God allows, something that is not forbidden, that it is okay to conquer and it is also okay to submit to the rulers that God has placed over you, even if they are from a different nation.

41:47

Now, I'm not a globalist.

41:48

I don't think that people have to care about everything that happens in every other country, that they have to look after everyone.

41:58

So in that sense, I would say my objection to some of the nationalist sentiment is the idea that some people have that it is necessary or commanded to have nation states, that is to say, a nation that specifically has a state attached to it, because in many cases, this involves the dismantling of various empires or the forcible invasion of other countries as has occurred, for example, in many post-colonial conflicts and in various other things.

42:36

I'm not saying that all nationalists are like that.

42:39

I'm not saying that all nationalists want to violently separate or unite nations.

42:44

However, I also am of the position that looking at Romans 13, I think the status quo of political boundaries is something that ought to be preferred unless it is changing through a method that is justifiable.

43:11

Okay.

43:11

With that in mind, I want to ask, I'm going to ask Joel and then I'm going to ask you, Christoph, because Joel said something and it raised a question in my mind.

43:21

Joel, do you believe that right now it would be appropriate to call the United States a Christian nation? And I'm asking this only because you said a Christian nation and a non-Christian nation, so you were defining what I assume would be those that are and those that aren't, and so would you say currently you would define America as a Christian nation and tell us why? Yes, I would.

43:47

I would say that America is currently a Christian nation in the midst of apostatizing.

43:53

So I would say that it is a Christian nation because of its founding.

43:57

That's not to say that it is behaving as a Christian nation today.

44:00

It's not.

44:02

We have essentially replaced not the Christian flag, but the American flag itself with the rainbow jihad flag.

44:10

So no, we're not behaving like a Christian nation.

44:13

But I believe that we're experiencing judgment, and if there's no repentance, and that repentance can't just be a conservative political resurgence, but a distinctly Christian repentance and reformation.

44:27

If we don't call upon Christ by name, if we don't turn from our sin, I think that judgment will only increase progressively, and I think it'll be even greater than other nations like China, for instance, because of our founding.

44:41

I think that there will be a stricter judgment for the West and for certain European nations.

44:47

England would be an example.

44:50

It's a mockery, right? You see the coronation, King Charles, and it's distinctly Christian.

44:57

That is their heritage, and that means something.

45:00

It's not just pomp and circumstance.

45:01

I believe that it means something, that there actually is a covenant, not the new covenant that God establishes with unreformed Baptists.

45:08

I believe the new covenant is by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

45:12

It's established by God with individuals, so not the new covenant, but I think that's part of the problem is that the Presbyterians, I say in a nutshell, the Presbyterians, I think they overstretch the new covenant to encompass everything, a Christian family, a Christian nation, a Christian school, and I think the Baptists, the problem with the Baptists is we're very intent on not overstretching the new covenant, which I appreciate, but we pretend as though the new covenant is the only covenant there is.

45:40

There are other covenants.

45:41

I'm in a marriage covenant with my wife, but Jesus tells me that marriage is not eternal, not marriage to my wife, marriage to him, so there won't be marriage in heaven, and yet I'm still in a covenant with my wife, and so then the question is, do I have a Christian marriage? Is that a Christian marriage covenant? And so, yes, I believe that nations can establish in a legitimate fashion a genuine Christian covenant with the Lord, not a saving covenant, not the new covenant, but an earthly, temporal, national covenant with the Lord, and I believe that they will be blessed, and if they apostatize as much of the West, including our nation currently is, then there will actually be not only judgment, but a stricter judgment.

46:21

That would be my answer.

46:23

Okay.

46:23

I want to come back to that because I have a follow-up, but I don't want to leave Christophe out of this, or Matthew, and if you want to jump in here with a question, Matthew, I want to ask Christophe, would you say that America is, or ever was, a Christian nation? I would say that it is not, and has never been.

46:43

Now, of course, that does not mean that I don't think that there aren't American Christians, or that there wasn't a Christian culture, or that there wasn't a Christian majority, possibly, at some point.

46:57

I just have a different perspective on what it means for something to be Christian.

47:04

I think a nation, which is a group of people, can only be as Christian as its members are Christian individually, and so the calling it Christian as a whole, in my view, I don't see that as something that I could do.

47:23

Now, that being said, of course, there's also the perspective that America wasn't originally a nation, as George Washington and Alexander Hamilton called it, an empire.

47:34

That is to say, it was composed of several distinct lands that eventually, throughout the past few centuries, have now merged into what we now call a nation, so there's this ethnogenesis going on.

47:50

However, I don't really think that I could call something Christian unless it is, or specifically, I could call a nation Christian unless it is born of Christ.

48:04

That is to say, born of the Spirit, or born again, because nation, as an English term, it refers to nativity, which is birth, and how do we become Christians? Well, it is by being born again.

48:23

Now, I think also it is questionable whether the founders of a country can, by themselves and without prophetic fiat, make a covenant, a permanent national covenant with God.

48:39

I also think that that is something that is questionable to do outside of the help of a prophet.

48:48

Okay, that's an interesting point.

48:50

I would ask, and that sort of goes to my question, Joel, and this is just thinking along the lines of what you said.

48:56

You believe that America is in covenant with God and now is in an apostate position because of that covenant, right? Because that's where apostasy comes from.

49:05

You're in a covenant, and then you're abandoning the responsibilities of that covenant.

49:10

When do you believe, Joel, that the covenant that you believe that America is in, when do you believe it was established, and upon what basis? Yeah, I think that that's a part of our founding.

49:24

I think that we see...

49:26

So George Washington, I know that there were many deists.

49:30

Well, I don't know if many is fair.

49:31

There were some deists, some Unitarians.

49:35

There were plenty of people who were not evangelical Christians.

49:38

I think that George Washington was.

49:40

I think that what you see with the covenanters, with the pilgrims, with many of the founders is distinctly Christian language, constant thanksgiving to God, the triune God, the Christian God for his favorable providence and being able to weather certain storms or make it through this winter or this happened or that happened.

50:02

And then you see that as a lot of the motivation.

50:05

There's many individuals who are involved, and so not everybody has the same incentives.

50:11

But a lot of the motivation, especially for the Puritans, was freedom of worship.

50:15

It was to be able to worship as their conscience dictated, but as their conscience was ultimately shaped and bound by the word of God.

50:23

It was to flee religious persecution in England.

50:26

And so I think just all throughout the beginning of the United States of America, we see it drenched in Christian motivations, Christian orthodoxy and doctrines.

50:40

Yeah, that's my answer.

50:43

Great, wonderful.

50:44

And that's what I was trying to get to.

50:46

Okay, so how do you see that covenant come together? Because obviously, you mentioned a marriage covenant.

50:50

A marriage covenant, we can look to a specific date where vows are made, specific things.

50:54

But you would say it's more of an amalgamation over time.

50:57

Maybe amalgamation, not the right word, but a process over time where people were recognizing the authority of God in the founding of this nation, which we see even in the founding documents.

51:09

Right.

51:09

Yeah, not one particular day with one particular document, but I think multiple leaders spread across multiple years in multiple documents and multiple decisions and multiple hearings and all these different things that again and again and again, the headline of the story is that we are followers of Christ and that we're doing this.

51:33

This whole endeavor is for his glory and for his fame.

51:38

Okay, what other nations, and I'm not going to ask you to give an exhaustive list, but if I were to say, okay, so you said earlier there were nations that are Christians, nations and the ones that aren't, and you're identifying America as, or the United States of America as one of the ones that are, what other nations would you say are Christian nations, even if they're in apostasy now? England.

52:02

I think England would be a good example.

52:04

And that's an important clarification.

52:07

I don't think that it requires that a nation from its origin starts off Christian, because many of these nations, the gospel was brought to them.

52:17

So the nation is already blown and going, and it's typically some form of paganism.

52:23

It's not worshiping Christ, but the gospel comes to that particular people in that particular land, and by the sovereign power and work of the Holy Spirit, people are born again.

52:34

They're converted to the gospel.

52:36

They begin to plant churches.

52:37

They begin to preach, and they begin to orient not just their families and their churches, but all of life, all of Christ for all of life, including their civil affairs in a Christianly manner, and I think that England certainly would be an example of a nation that has been distinctly Christian for a very long time and is currently apostatizing, and maybe just a decade or so ahead of us in their apostasy, whereas there are other nations that if you look at their history have never really been Christian, not at a national level.

53:13

That doesn't mean there aren't individual Christian people within the nation, underground churches.

53:18

That doesn't mean missionaries haven't gone there.

53:20

That doesn't mean that no one has believed, and there might even be a sizable population of Christians, but in a formal sense, you don't have the leadership of that nation.

53:31

You don't have its documents.

53:32

You don't have its laws.

53:33

You don't have its leaders declaring an explicit allegiance to Christ as the one true God.

53:43

Okay.

53:45

Christoph, thinking about that issue, the question of Christian nations, do you believe that—you said you don't believe America counts as a Christian nation.

53:53

I appreciate your argument on that.

53:55

You said you don't believe they ever have been, but do you believe there are any nations that are identifiable as Christian nations? Well, as I have said before, my perspective on that is that it depends on people being born again and therefore being part of the Church and the body of Christ.

54:17

Of course, I can't see into people's souls to know whether they are Christians or not, so I can't really tell 100% whether there is a nation other than the Holy Nation, which I believe to be the sum totality of all Christian nations, the Holy Nation of Exodus 19 and 1 Peter 2, which I believe should be identified as being coterminous with the Church rather than any particular earthly nation.

54:53

So, because I can't tell whether everybody in a particular society is saved, I will not say that any particular nation is Christian other than that one nation.

55:08

So, when the English monarchy, for instance, we just saw the changing over with the death of Queen Elizabeth and the adopting of the new king, there was a lot of Christian language that was used in the coronation of the new king.

55:29

I don't have it in front of me, so I can't give it to you verbatim, but certainly there were words he's referred to, through many Christian words, are used to identify his role, a defender of the faith, things like that.

55:44

So, Christophe, you would say that even though on a national level—and again, I'm not making an argument, I'm asking a question—on a national level, England has, at least at some point, had in their national liturgy—I know that may not even be the right term, but it is the national language of the people.

56:02

They have said that the king represents Christ's authority in the world.

56:08

He's defender of the faith, he's meant to do that.

56:12

So, you would say that doesn't constitute any type of distinguishing of making that a Christian nation.

56:18

Well, I would say that, once again, I make a distinction between the nation and the state.

56:25

So, I would say that legal language is something that pertains to the government or the state rather than to the nation, necessarily.

56:35

Of course, we know a defensor, a fide defender of the faith is a title given to the king by the pope, and I don't know if the pope has the authority to give such a title, or perhaps we do know, but… I see, now you're drawing us all into our oppositions to Catholicism, I like it.

56:59

Anyway, beyond that, not prejudicing the idea, I think that I do make a distinction between nation and state as such.

57:10

I will not affirm of one that which is true of the other because they are very different structurally.

57:19

The nation is the people, and the state is the specific governing institutions that rule over the people, but are not necessarily identical to the people.

57:34

Go ahead, Matthew, please.

57:36

Well, I was going to say, I'm somewhat sympathetic to that because when we hear things like China did this or China did that, well, that concept matters.

57:46

Is it the Chinese Communist Party? Is it the random rural rice farmer had some hand in this or that military operation? Probably not.

57:55

So I am sympathetic to the fact that we need to be really clear on the difference between nation and state.

58:00

Let me sort of poke at it from a different angle then.

58:05

And like I said, I read the book as well, and you take great pains to define your terms, and I appreciate that.

58:12

Would you be opposed to Christian statism? And let me, because you're making a distinction between nation and state, and I appreciate that.

58:19

But a state, a specific government that has a book of laws, and those laws, as best we can in modern society, reflect God's standards of morality.

58:32

So not just the easy ones like, you know, don't kill, don't rape, don't steal, that kind of thing.

58:38

But pretty far down the line are, and I know this is a theonomy question, I know that's where we're going here, would Christian statism be a more appropriate label for something you would support or no? And if not that, then on what basis should law spring from? You know, when the presuppositional kind of, it's not a joke, it is important when we say by what standard, that does matter.

59:03

When someone who doesn't have Christ says that's wrong, it is perfectly fair for us to say, by what standard are you calling that wrong? So if not Christian nationalism, because you're very concerned that nation means people, and I get that, what about Christian statism? Could we do that? And if not, why not? Well, in relation to the state, I would say that politicians should always be true to their religious beliefs, which are of course founded upon, they are the foundation of the morals which they express in their policies.

59:42

I think separating religion from politics therefore is wrong, because if you separate somebody's sense of ethics from the policies that they make, then that really messes things up in a sense, because it essentially forbids the type of thinking that actually leads to good laws, or to actually understand which laws are good and which laws are not good.

01:00:06

Now that being said, I would say that I take a position similar to that of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, which I understand might be a bit controversial in some circles, but I view it as the idea that you ought to do unto others as you would have done unto you.

01:00:30

So I try to design political systems so that they can work both when Christians are a minority and when they are a majority, because I don't assume that the number of elect in each generation will be the same.

01:00:47

It could go up, it could go down, and even if you are a post-millennialist, that doesn't mean it's always a smooth sailing all the way to the end.

01:00:58

So I think it's better to create safeguards rather than create systems that, through the excessive positive enforcement of all principles in the statutory law, lead to a situation where if a heretic comes into power, it will lead to a disadvantage to the church.

01:01:24

So I think I'm not in favor of neutrality, but I am in favor of robust systems that allow the church to prosper both when they are in the majority and when they are in the minority.

01:01:39

And I don't think that being hyper-theonomic is conducive to that.

01:01:49

Well, that raises a question, though.

01:01:51

You said something in that where, and I want to make sure I'm clarifying.

01:01:56

You said that the state government should base itself off its religious convictions.

01:02:04

Did I hear you say that correctly? Did you say that? Okay.

01:02:10

So what if the state government was Muslim? Then it would be logical that they would do that.

01:02:16

I don't think it's good, but I think it is logical.

01:02:19

Okay.

01:02:20

All right.

01:02:20

So I would assume that, and I don't want to speak for Joel, so I'm going to ask him the same question.

01:02:27

We would not, or I say we, I can honestly say I don't take a position on this.

01:02:33

I've never spoken publicly on this issue.

01:02:34

When I say we, I'm saying believers.

01:02:36

I'm not saying we, like me and Joel, are ganging up on Kristoff, or me and Kristoff are ganging up on anyone.

01:02:41

I can honestly say I'm trying to learn myself, but when I say we as believers, we would not be in favor of a Muslim government because a Muslim government would be in denial of the Lordship of Christ.

01:02:57

Am I right? Wrong? Is that correct, Joel? Is that what you're saying, or am I saying it just, am I totally out to lunch on that? I don't want a Muslim nation.

01:03:09

No, absolutely.

01:03:09

I mean, right now in Michigan, you have a town that now has five times a day public Islamic prayer calls, and you can thank principal pluralism and classical liberalism for that reality.

01:03:23

So no, I want a distinctly Christian nation.

01:03:27

I think that neutrality is a myth.

01:03:29

I think that what we had was we had Christendom as one big ship slowly leaving port, going out to sea, and you got paganism like Islam and other forms.

01:03:39

Coming into port, and because ships move slowly when we're talking about not just individual people, but whole groups of people, nations of people, and you're talking about generations of time.

01:03:51

As these ships are moving slowly, there was a period of time that felt long for us, but in God's purview was really just a blip on the map where these ships are just passing each other in the night, overlapping, and it gave the optic, a momentary optic of neutrality.

01:04:08

But I think that was always a myth.

01:04:10

It was always a lie.

01:04:11

It'll be Christ, or it'll be chaos, that you can have Christian nationalism, or you can have tranny nationalism.

01:04:19

I think those are the options.

01:04:22

So here I stand.

01:04:25

That was sort of among the Twitter, let's say, object throwing, we'll call it that.

01:04:34

That was sort of used as a pejorative, I think, against the Christian nationalist position that I was reading a lot of.

01:04:39

It was this sort of simplistic like, you know, Christian nationalism better than trans kids.

01:04:46

And it was a pejorative mocking kind of thing to- Not better, Matthew, gooder.

01:04:51

I'm sorry? Not better, gooder.

01:04:52

Thank you.

01:04:53

Thank you, gooder.

01:04:54

Yeah, he remembers about it.

01:04:56

You were in those more than I was.

01:04:57

But yeah, Christian nationalism, gooder than trans and kids.

01:04:59

On the one hand, I saw where it was a mockery because the idea was that anytime anything bad happened, the claim was the Christian nationalists are sitting there saying if we implemented Christian nationalism, this would never have happened.

01:05:19

And so that was sort of a retort in the other direction.

01:05:23

But I think we would all agree that a system of law, at least respecting, you know, what God has said, because we're all soloscripture advocates here, we would say that there's not any other higher authority or descriptor of God or standard for human behavior higher than that.

01:05:42

A system of law that respects that would be preferable.

01:05:46

And we would like that.

01:05:49

I think it sounds to me very much like a terminology dispute.

01:05:52

That's why I asked the Christian statism question.

01:05:54

Because if a nation is people, then in a state is the government.

01:06:02

The conflation of those two seems to be, Christoph, what you're taking, or at least what our conversation has taken a lot of issue with.

01:06:09

Is that conflation the error? Because I want to get back to that Christian statism.

01:06:14

Is a general theonomy, is that a good thing? That is a system of law, at least mostly structured on God's standards of behavior? Should people and Christians specifically advocate for that under the rules of their systems that they have? Well, I would say that as a Baptist, having been, our predecessors have been persecuted even by fellow Christians in a few centuries past.

01:06:44

Sacralism, yeah.

01:06:45

Yeah, I am very much concerned about where exactly we ought to have that power.

01:06:52

So let me be very clear.

01:06:54

I do categorically reject the idea of neutrality.

01:06:59

I just think that we should throw such things into a different sphere rather than put everything at the highest level.

01:07:08

So I think that in my opinion, and of course this goes into more political theory than theology, it would be better for a lot of these issues to be managed on a community level rather than on a higher level.

01:07:26

And I would want to structure political systems to do that rather than creating a situation where potentially heretics or members of other faiths are able to oppress Christians through the tools that we ourselves have implemented.

01:07:46

I'll follow up a little bit on that because Joel, I know about your book and I know about your position and there was this whole red state, blue state thing that blew up in the last couple of weeks on Twitter.

01:07:56

That was because of my book.

01:07:59

Well, exactly.

01:08:00

And so that was sort of the, yeah.

01:08:01

And then, but let's go with that for a minute, given that the United States at least is a federal republic.

01:08:10

We still have a thing called federalism.

01:08:12

Something I've been saying a lot lately is let Florida be Florida and let California be California.

01:08:17

Let the contentious issues be decided at the local level.

01:08:20

And then let's only have the smallest amount of issues at the federal level possible.

01:08:25

And that will promote general harmony and this and that and the other.

01:08:27

And I had someone push back on me and say, not a great plan when New York or California or whatever pass a law that says abortion up to the moment of birth.

01:08:38

And in some cases, a couple hours after in case you don't get around to it.

01:08:43

And then our position in quote unquote red state should just be, eh, well, let California be California.

01:08:50

Is there some, I mean, should there be more action taken? Do we just shrug and say, that's just what they're going to do? Well, from what standpoint as a citizen of the United States or as a resident of Texas, as a resident of Texas, my only option at that level is to say, should Texas go to war against California? And so, no, I'm not eager to get into a war.

01:09:15

Doug Wilson says it like this, and this is getting out of state by state and going back to the federal level.

01:09:20

You know, he says, you know, slavery was wrong, but so was the American Civil War.

01:09:28

He said, if you believe that the Civil War was a legitimate action, 650,000 of our sons bled out and died.

01:09:35

If you think that that was a legitimate action, then Christians are in such a degree of high sinful compromise right now.

01:09:43

I don't even know how we can go to church and worship God on the Lord's day.

01:09:46

We should have taken up arms decades ago over the issue of abortion.

01:09:50

We should be at war, physical, literal war.

01:09:54

Or if you want to be consistent, which I appreciate about Doug Wilson, right? Paedo-baptism, paedo-communism, he's anything if not consistent.

01:10:03

And so what I appreciate is he said, if you want to be consistent, he's saying, I hate abortion.

01:10:09

I believe it will be stamped out.

01:10:11

He's post-millennial and believes that that's going to take place and is working in the proper avenues to ensure that that takes place.

01:10:17

But he's saying, yeah, maybe keep your powder dry, but no, I'm not taking up arms.

01:10:24

And so in the same way, I also can condemn the Civil War.

01:10:28

But if you're a conservative Christian, evangelical Christian, who because you believe that slavery was wrong, you're pro-Lincoln and pro-Civil War, then you're actually being inconsistent.

01:10:41

You're being a coward.

01:10:42

And so all that being said, yeah, I think some things can be done at the federal level.

01:10:47

But I don't think that the solution is just, let's take up arms and go to war.

01:10:54

But you would believe in just war theory and those things? Yes, just war theory, absolutely.

01:10:59

Yeah, there is a necessity.

01:11:01

War is legitimate.

01:11:02

So I think the war for independence, I don't like calling it the Revolutionary War because we're not France, right? It was a war for independence.

01:11:09

And I think it was a legitimate war.

01:11:11

And so, yeah, absolutely.

01:11:12

There are times where it's legitimate to take up arms and fight.

01:11:15

And we may get there as a nation.

01:11:18

I hope we don't.

01:11:19

I pray we don't.

01:11:21

But absolutely, war is legitimate.

01:11:25

And I believe per Isaiah 65 and other places in Scripture that even before the final physical return of Christ, the nations will no longer know war, will beat our swords into plowshares, and that the gospel will prevail.

01:11:38

And it'll affect all of life, including international warfare and civil war.

01:11:43

Mm-hmm.

01:11:44

So Christoph, in Scripture, when God brings nations against one another, often as an instrument of judgment.

01:11:50

We see this in the prophets all the time.

01:11:54

Yeah, so let's say there was a nation nearby that was practicing the sword.

01:12:05

I mean, abortion is obviously an atrocity on a commercial scale that beggars belief, but let's pick a more contemporary one.

01:12:12

Like China's treatment of the Uyghur Muslims, for instance, putting them in concentration camps and all this horrid stuff.

01:12:19

And I want to say it this way.

01:12:22

Would God approve or judge a nation that rose up with arms to take down that other nation committing these atrocities? Would that be good or bad? Would God judge it or bless it, him doing that? Well, I would say God would bless the righteous actions and he would curse the unrighteous actions.

01:12:49

So I would say I actually disagree with the UN.

01:12:54

The UN believes that it's a just war to end such things happening in other countries.

01:13:01

I actually disagree.

01:13:02

I think that each sovereign is a sovereign under God and therefore it requires an act of aggression of some kind in order to justify a war between states.

01:13:18

So in that sense, I do not believe that it is justifiable to initiate such a war.

01:13:25

However, I do believe that it is justifiable to end such things if such a war were to be initiated.

01:13:32

Of course, in the case of the US and China, I think there's plenty of reasons that they can go to war other than that legitimately anyway.

01:13:41

But that's a bit of a more foreign policy perspective there.

01:13:46

Matthew, can I say one other thing? Go ahead.

01:13:49

I'm sorry.

01:13:49

Sure.

01:13:50

No, please.

01:13:51

Okay, thanks.

01:13:53

I was just going to say what you were saying earlier about your abortion example and let California be California and Florida can be Florida.

01:14:03

You're right to push back.

01:14:05

There's got to be some pushback on that.

01:14:07

So I was just thinking about Roe being overturned and thinking about Dobbs.

01:14:12

I am grateful that by God's grace that Roe has been overturned.

01:14:17

But as a Christian, I can't say that Dobbs is a righteous ruling because it's not merely a state's issue.

01:14:25

So I think that at the federal level, what the Supreme Court, I'm grateful for what we got.

01:14:30

But I think what the Supreme Court should have done is gone even further and said, this is murder and it should be treated as such.

01:14:40

Equal protection, equal penalties, equal dignity, equal value.

01:14:45

And so I wish that that had been the official ruling of the Supreme Court.

01:14:49

And then, of course, individual states could just resist and go against the federal government the same way they did with marijuana.

01:14:56

You know what I mean? The same way.

01:14:57

So I think at the federal level, I just want to clarify, my position is not just let California be California, let Florida be Florida.

01:15:06

No, each civil magistrate in his various sphere needs to kiss the sun lest he be angry, per Psalm 2.

01:15:14

Well, if you're a federal civil magistrate, if you're sitting on a federal court or if you're a federal part of the executive branch or whatever it may be, I think that you have an obligation to rule righteously according to God's immutable standard at a federal level, federally, and so for the nation as a whole.

01:15:32

So I think that what should have been done is so what I'm saying is my position is not to say that there really shouldn't be any federal government whatsoever and just let California do whatever California is going to do.

01:15:45

But I think that by God's grace, eventually, I believe that it's possible that we would get to a point where we'd say, wait a second, they're killing babies in California.

01:15:55

Send in the National Guard.

01:15:57

I'm sorry, state sovereignty, that's fine, and you can take your little state militia and come up against us, but you're killing babies, and we're going to involve ourselves.

01:16:06

But that would be the way it would go through these proper avenues.

01:16:10

It's the whole doctrine of the lesser civil magistrate, trying to find someone.

01:16:14

So Christians, okay, it may come to something like this, but let's not be vigilantes.

01:16:18

Let's not go rogue.

01:16:19

Let's see if we can find a proper channel, a lower level civil.

01:16:23

So if I'm going to resist Biden, let me see if I can find a good state governor.

01:16:28

Maybe I go and move to Florida and stand behind Ron DeSantis.

01:16:33

That's the way to do it.

01:16:35

That's my point.

01:16:37

So I'm not saying at the federal level that they shouldn't have just laws and say, no state, no California.

01:16:42

You're wrong.

01:16:43

You're wrong.

01:16:44

This is wicked.

01:16:45

So yeah, I'd just like to say, because I didn't get to talk about abortion, that I have, in fact, opposed abortion entirely, and I do believe that it should be banned on the federal level.

01:17:00

So when I say that there are some matters which I think are better delegated to lower levels because of potentials for abuse, I don't think that areas like murder, theft, fraud, and such things are things that need to be delegated because such things are not only moral, but they also are things that are necessary for the stability of the state.

01:17:26

So I think that banning abortion completely is something that is a worthy goal that I think we should all be able to agree on.

01:17:34

Yeah.

01:17:35

So with that in mind, I do want to sort of go into the Christian nationalist mindset.

01:17:43

So if you say, Christoph, you're not into Christian nationalism, but you do believe that the state should enforce godly rule.

01:17:55

Am I right? Yes.

01:17:56

Okay.

01:17:57

Not necessarily everywhere.

01:17:59

I don't think that you should have compulsory church attendance or things like that, but that's not godly anyway.

01:18:07

But, you know.

01:18:08

Okay.

01:18:08

Neither do I, for the record.

01:18:11

Yeah, and that's what I was going to say.

01:18:13

Let's tick off, if we could, just a few things that we would say.

01:18:19

We're not saying this.

01:18:20

Nobody's saying that there should be compulsory church attendance, and that's not what Christian nationalists would teach, right? Or do some believe that? None.

01:18:31

So, you know, there are guys who are second table of the law only guys, which, you know, it's fine.

01:18:39

But I think that most Christian nationalists, whether you're coming from the Thomas Aquinas natural law kind of standpoint, or whether you're coming from the Cornelius Vantill, but when I tell people I'm presuppositional and they're like, what's that? I basically just, the short definition is God wrote a book, and we're allowed to use the book.

01:18:58

That's what I mean by that.

01:18:59

So natural law is great.

01:19:01

The book talks about it.

01:19:02

You know, Romans 1 is in there.

01:19:04

Romans 2 is in there.

01:19:05

But also, we can just say, thus saith the Lord, and read a page out of the Bible.

01:19:09

And it's binding on all people in all places in all time because it is the God-breathed words of God.

01:19:14

So all that being said, most of the Christian nationalists, whether they're coming from the Aquinas perspective, or they're coming from the, you know, Vantill presuppositional perspective, they believe that what it means is that the nation would be explicitly Christian in their wording, in their documents, like Zambia adopting a preamble.

01:19:33

So I would, just for the record, I would not advocate for any change to the Constitution.

01:19:37

I would argue for getting back to authorial intent for the First Amendment in regards to religious freedom.

01:19:47

And so I would say, okay, yeah, sure.

01:19:49

Religious freedom, when it comes to worshiping our common Lord, I don't think that they were arguing for atheism or polytheism.

01:19:58

I think they were arguing about different denominations.

01:20:01

So getting back to authorial intent.

01:20:03

And then I don't think you would even have to amend the First Amendment.

01:20:06

I think what you could do is you could adopt, like Zambia, a preamble, perhaps, a distinctly Christian triune preamble.

01:20:12

I've always publicly advocated for a Christian nationalism that would be creedal, not confessional.

01:20:19

So it's not Presbyterian nationalism or Baptist nationalism or Anglican nationalism.

01:20:24

It's creedal.

01:20:25

So I'm thinking, you know, Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasius Creed.

01:20:28

That's what we spell out in the statement on Christian nationalism in the gospel.

01:20:32

And then we add, because we do believe it's a pan-Protestant project, and part of that because we believe that that is the heart of the gospel, the five solas, but also because that is America's unique founding.

01:20:42

America does not have a Catholic founding, whereas you could argue something like that for France, you know, or other European nations.

01:20:50

But America is distinctly not only Christian, but Protestant Christian.

01:20:54

And so we would have it be creedal, not confessional.

01:20:57

Then added to these creeds, we would add the five solas.

01:21:00

By grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, according to the scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.

01:21:05

Adopt a distinctly pan-Protestant creedal and sola introduction or preamble to the constitution, and then in terms of laws, I would hold to the second table, that's commandments five through 10, our love for neighbor, but also the first table.

01:21:22

Now, that being said, if you look back and you read old Protestant guides, you read the reformers, you read Calvin, you read all these guys, a lot of what they would say is that no one has the authority to command a day of worship except for the Lord Jesus Christ.

01:21:38

But the civil magistrate can't command a day of rest.

01:21:42

So there's a difference, for instance.

01:21:44

What I'm saying is there's a difference in saying we have a law that businesses will not operate on the Lord's day.

01:21:50

That's very different than we have a law that each man, woman, and child must be in church on the Lord's day, and we have election goggles, and we're going to make sure that you're worshiping through faith, and that it's not just outward mannerisms.

01:22:05

But no, that's not a thing.

01:22:08

But Sabbath laws, that's the thing.

01:22:10

Christian nationalism is so extreme.

01:22:13

We're not talking about some hypothetical utopian society that's never happened.

01:22:18

We're talking about something that's happened before, happened recently before, and happened here recently before.

01:22:24

And I think there were a lot of good things.

01:22:26

Were there bugs? Yes, sirree.

01:22:28

That's why I'm having a conference coming up next year, Christendom 2.0.

01:22:31

There's some bugs with 1.0, but I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water.

01:22:35

I think that there's a lot of good.

01:22:37

And so, yes, the first four commandments, Sabbath laws, also blasphemy laws.

01:22:42

Again, this would be the theonomic Rush Dooney kind of sentiment, is it's not whether but which.

01:22:47

There's always going to be a reigning orthodoxy.

01:22:50

There always are going to be certain priests and priestess in congruence with that orthodoxy.

01:22:55

There's going to be sacraments, right? You're going to have certain sacraments.

01:22:58

Wear the mask, get the jab.

01:23:00

You know, and then outside of that, there's going to be wrong speech, wrong think.

01:23:05

There's going to be things that you're not allowed to say, blasphemy.

01:23:08

And so, I mean, right now you have certain cases.

01:23:11

We'll see what happens.

01:23:12

But where people are trying to actually penalize under a court of law people for desecrating a rainbow flag, right? Because that's the new orthodoxy.

01:23:23

So what I'm saying is, well, why don't you know, it's not whether but which there's going to be certain penalties one way or the other.

01:23:29

I'd like the penalties to be in the right direction.

01:23:31

I'd like them to be in the right direction.

01:23:33

So I would like to say that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, you know, at the Dodger State, I would like to nation a nation where they're rounded up and arrested for having someone dress up like Jesus, tied to a cross, and then have a nun, you know, drag queen somebody shaking around on the son of God or the image of this.

01:23:54

Yeah, I'm fine with that person going to jail.

01:23:57

Now, that's different sins and crimes.

01:24:00

There's a distinction.

01:24:01

One of the distinctions, there are multiple, but one of the primary distinctions is the difference between private and public.

01:24:08

So we're not talking about police going and rounding up people of a different religion, let's say Islam, in their private homes for worship.

01:24:17

But there's a difference between that and Islamic prayer calls citywide in an American city five times a day.

01:24:24

There's also a difference between going and rounding up somebody for homosexuality privately in a home versus naked men riding bicycles down the street in New York when there are children on the sidewalks watching the whole thing go down.

01:24:40

So, all right, I'm going to arrest this guy, but we're not—that's the thing that people forget is, you know, I'm a theonomist.

01:24:46

So my Christian nationalism, the version that I'm advocating for, would actually have—it would be, in many ways, a theocratic libertarianism.

01:24:55

It would be smaller government, less police, believe it or not, but when laws are broken, there's actually penalties when justice is delayed, right? If it's not swift, then the people rebel.

01:25:07

So there would be swift justice for the right things and the right measure, the right degree.

01:25:11

And the last thing I'll say is, in terms of, well, homosexuality, the Bible talks about, you know, that if a man lies with another man, he should be put to death.

01:25:19

I would hold, like Joe Boot and other theonomists, that the only command that must—it must—inflict capital punishment per the Noahic covenant would be murder.

01:25:30

Life for life, tooth for tooth.

01:25:32

Biblical justice is swift, but it's also proportional.

01:25:35

It's impartial, it's blind, but it's also proportional.

01:25:38

And so, that being said, there are certain things—it was not unjust if Israel did these things.

01:25:43

God is saying, this is just.

01:25:45

It is just that if you commit, the act of homosexuality to be put to death is a just penalty.

01:25:51

But I would view those, in line with other theonomic guise, as a maximal penalty.

01:25:56

So it must—capital punishment must be the penalty for murder, but it would be a maximum penalty in other instances.

01:26:03

So, you know, I said, when Uganda passed its laws, I said, hashtag Uganda forever, black laws matter, right? Black laws matter.

01:26:10

Quit being racist, all you Americans.

01:26:12

And so, what I was saying is, if you look at the laws and you read them, aggravated homosexuality.

01:26:18

It's not just, oh, we went into someone's private residence and round up two sodomites and we're going to put them to death.

01:26:25

No, this is for rape of minors or the elderly, and it would also be repeat offenders that escalate and get more and more public and unashamed.

01:26:37

It would be those kinds of instances that they've been penalized.

01:26:41

Maybe it's a fine.

01:26:42

Maybe it's this.

01:26:43

Maybe it's that.

01:26:44

Eventually escalates because there's no regard for the culture, no regard for the public, the well-being of the body politic as a whole.

01:26:51

There's just brazen rebellion repeated multiple times, or it's actually reached the level of rape.

01:27:00

You're actually forcing your will on somebody else, and at that point, the person is put to death.

01:27:05

I think that's actually a really great rendering on Uganda's part of the theonomic position of this Old Testament case law in Israel and saying this is the maximum penalty, and it is just.

01:27:18

But there also can be lower penalties before we get there along the way.

01:27:22

It's not whether but which.

01:27:23

We've had blasphemy laws on the books.

01:27:27

We've had Sabbath laws on the books, and we've had sodomy laws on the books.

01:27:32

So we're not advocating for something crazy.

01:27:34

We're advocating for something that has been done, recently done, and recently done here.

01:27:41

It's interesting to think about when I grew up, the road that went to my house was right on the border of two counties, and there was a little liquor store that sat right there.

01:27:52

And the reason why that liquor store was there on the border of the two counties is the one county would not allow drinking on Sunday, but the other county would.

01:28:03

So on Sunday, there was a line of cars that surrounded this little liquor store where people were driving over from Duval County into Nassau County just to line up around the liquor store and take back to Duval County their illegally—well, not illegally purchased.

01:28:19

They purchased it legally, but their liquor that they couldn't have on Sunday.

01:28:26

And that was a Sabbath law, yeah, you're right.

01:28:28

Exactly, yeah, yeah.

01:28:30

I've got a question I think might be answered differently by you two gentlemen that I wanted to pose to you.

01:28:36

This comes from the state constitution of the great state of North Carolina, and it's in Article 6, Section 8.

01:28:43

It refers to—the section is entitled Disqualifications for Office.

01:28:48

So this would be any elected or appointed, so judges or state representatives, whatever, for the state of North Carolina, this is their constitution as adopted.

01:28:58

Disqualifications for Office.

01:29:00

The following persons shall be disqualified for office.

01:29:03

First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.

01:29:09

Amen.

01:29:09

Yeah, there's some other ones in there about—there's some other ones in there about have they committed treason, felony, breach of the peace, things like that.

01:29:17

But the first one they put there was anyone who shall deny the being of capital A, capital G, Almighty God.

01:29:24

Now, I'm going to ask a slightly different question to the two of you because I think it'll be important in figuring out the position.

01:29:30

Christoph, so this was the highest authority, the highest legal authority for the state of North Carolina adopted by their people, passed by their elected legislature, and signed by their ruler, the governor.

01:29:49

Is that—does that therefore—even if we bring popular sovereignty out of it, the governor signed it.

01:29:55

The ruler of the state signed it.

01:29:58

Is—does that—does that make it legitimate? And if so, is it a good thing that it's there? And is it—and should it be enforceable? Never mind, I know it would never work today because of the 14th Amendment Incorporation Doctrine, but we're not going to go there for the minute.

01:30:12

But was it good and legitimate, and should it be enforced? I think it is legitimate, and as long as it is on the books, it is something that ought to be enforced.

01:30:23

My only disagreement on it would be perhaps whether it is 100% practicable, because as I said before, I'm not always sure how many Christians there will be in each generation.

01:30:38

And of course, even if we do have Christians in a particular generation, not all offices of politics are equal.

01:30:47

And I think that in my preference, I would say, obviously, we want people to have at least common grace virtues, but we also want them to be competent at their jobs.

01:31:00

Now, I have a—perhaps a somewhat greater faith in common grace than some other people do, but I do think that virtue is necessarily central, and that on who you consider to be your leader, virtue should be a central decision-making factor, of course.

01:31:23

Okay.

01:31:24

And so, Joel, I heard you were amening earlier, so I'll just go ahead and take that as part of your answer, but this would be a good thing, you think, in all 50 state constitutions down to the local level and at a federal level, if it could be passed, you would be 100% in favor of that.

01:31:38

Yeah.

01:31:39

Politicians, those who are rulers, civil rulers, should be moral, and there is no morality outside—I mean, the Bible says, the fool says in his heart, there is no God, right? April Fool's Day, we celebrate National Atheist Day, you know, April 1st every year, and James Lindsay, you know, he gets his day, but yeah, I don't want somebody who thinks that we became—I don't know if you saw the video recently, it's been on Twitter, where it's like there's a dog and it turns into a whale, and it's like, no, I don't want that person deciding what's moral for me and my children and my grandchildren.

01:32:13

So yes, I know that Christians are sinners, I'm one, but yeah, I would like, at least as a basis, as a starting point, I would like somebody who says there's a God in heaven, he made heaven and earth, he wrote a book, and he decides what morality is, I feel like that should just be the basic starting point when considering whether or not somebody should rule over me.

01:32:37

And so that would, herein might raise a bigger distinction between you two guys, and that is the distinction of what standards should there be for leaders.

01:32:52

You know, we just said the capital A, capital G, Almighty God is a minimum standard, even though we know that many of our elected officials currently would not meet that standard, you know, hashtag Bernie Sanders and guys like that, who would say, well, I don't know if he's an atheist, but I know that he is an ungodly man, and I remember him saying specifically to a man that he was questioning, we do not have a religious standard in this country, or a religious test that someone has to pass to serve.

01:33:27

I remember him saying that to a gentleman who had written a book of some sort, I don't know, I had to go back to the actual context of that.

01:33:35

But the point is, do you think that is the minimum standard, they have to believe in God, or do you think that they should have to be Christians to serve? And I think I know Christophe's answer, I think he would say no, but I do want to hear both, I don't want to put words in your mouth, I'm just assuming, should a person have to be a Christian to serve in the government? Christophe, I'll let you first, since I said I put the words in your mouth, so I didn't mean to.

01:34:03

Okay, so I would say that, in my opinion, the answer is no, and one of the reasons for is that we can't always assume that there will be a Christian majority, and in fact, in many countries in history, there has not been.

01:34:20

Also, another problem is that if we just have a simple test like that, then people will just simply either study for the test, or they will lie, or something like that, so I don't really think it guarantees what we're trying to guarantee.

01:34:35

I also think that competence on politics, in many cases, may be independent in some areas.

01:34:44

That's not to say that people are intrinsically, could be more righteous than Christians, because, of course, Christians have the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

01:34:55

However, when we are talking about people who are not Christians, they still have the the moral law that is written on their hearts, what we might call the natural law or common grace, and by that measure, we can say that although we can't expect them to be moral in as many areas, or to be actually truly righteous, that does not mean that they will be incompetent as politicians, and that's why, throughout history, you see people John Calvin cites a lot of ancient Roman philosophers.

01:35:37

He cites Cicero.

01:35:38

He cites Seneca, and people like that, because although they are not faithful men, their opinions are still useful, despite the fact that they are faithless.

01:35:53

Amen.

01:35:54

Okay.

01:35:54

All right.

01:35:55

So, Joel, your thoughts on that same question.

01:35:59

What do you think is the minimum, and should a person have to be a Christian? Again, I don't know your thoughts, so I'm really curious to hear your thought on that.

01:36:07

Yeah.

01:36:08

Well, I think all this, it's going to take time.

01:36:10

You know, it's not going to be accomplished overnight, and so I think right now, unfortunately, a lot of what we're dealing with is trying to choose between the lesser of two evils, and so, yeah, I think it's going to take time, but eventually, yeah, I think that that would be perfectly permissible, and that's not to throw out history.

01:36:34

So, I agree with you, Crystal.

01:36:37

You know, Babylon, do you burn the libraries, or do you plunder them? I would plunder them, so I'm an advocate of common grace.

01:36:46

I'm a fan of classical, Christian classical education, where you're going to be reading Beowulf, and you're going to be reading Homer, you know, and these kinds of things, and so I'm a fan.

01:36:56

I think that all truth is God's truth, and God has used pagans in his common grace to do wonderful things, but as we're trying to orient as a nation towards God's law, God's will, I think that that would be perfectly permissible, and not even just permissible, but I think it would be ideal.

01:37:15

I think it would be honoring to the Lord, and a blessing to the people, and the one thing that I would think of now, you know, because I've kind of cited things from the past, not just things that I would like to see in an ideal utopian future, but things that are realistic that we've even done before here, I think of, you know, certain elected officials being sworn in using the Bible, you know, and I think that even that is at a national level, it's this acknowledgement.

01:37:42

Now, I know it's come year by year as we've gravitated away from the Christian faith, it's come to mean less and less, but there's a reason why even Joe Biden, so do I think Joe Biden's regenerate? No, no, no, no, no, no.

01:37:58

That dude's going to hell, and I hope God saves him, I hope he doesn't, you know, I hope he repents, but right now, and goodness gracious, he could die at any second.

01:38:07

I mean, he's really playing with fire, like to be on God's doorstep, so close to death, you can taste it, you know, and then at the same time to be so rebellious, like, yeah, we need some Christian nationalists or whatever you want to call them to tell that guy to repent for just for his own eternal sake.

01:38:23

And so all that being said, my point is, even with Joe Biden is rebellious and just God hating as that man is, there's a reason he keeps trying to hold on to his Roman Catholic card and Nancy Pelosi, and, you know, and then Trump on the other side of the aisle, you know, now, I mean, like, so you can, you know, you got the, well, I'm a Christian and I'm for abortion, then you got Trump, I'm a Christian and Paula White's my, you know, my advisor, and so I'm not saying that, you know, that Trump can't mess up too.

01:38:54

And for the record, I am grateful for Trump, that guy appointed three Supreme Court justices.

01:39:00

I think that we can give honor where honor is due, and then we can also say, yeah, and I don't know, he's not my favorite, but all that being said, here's the deal.

01:39:10

Trump, Biden, like you go down the line.

01:39:13

I mean, that was a big issue with Obama when I remember in the news, people were like, oh, I think he's Muslim, you know, and like, does he have a birth certificate? Like the American public, even non-Christians, non-regenerate people still have like this sentiment, it's waning, but this general sentiment of, I want my president to be American by birth, and I'd like him to go to church, I'd like him to be a Christian, because that's American, that's American.

01:39:41

And so my point is, whether it's on the books or not, that has been the history of this country until very, very recently, and even now, as godless as we are, as rebellious as we are, there's still, it's still pretty dang hard to win an election.

01:39:58

We've never had an atheist for a president.

01:40:00

I don't think an atheist, even now in 2024 coming up, I don't think an atheist could win.

01:40:05

I think the general public, even in 2024 with drag queen story hour, I think the general public as a whole would say, uh-uh, no, we're not voting for an atheist, and I think that's a good thing.

01:40:17

So sure, I think we already do it.

01:40:19

That's what I'm arguing, is I think there's already just a general underlining sentiment of a majority of the population.

01:40:26

It's been on the books before, as Matthew pointed out.

01:40:29

Let's get it back on the books again.

01:40:31

Yeah.

01:40:33

Well, gentlemen, we passed a little while ago.

01:40:35

We passed the 90-minute mark, and I know that you have donated your time today, and I appreciate it, but I don't want to keep you forever, so I do want to begin to draw to a close.

01:40:45

And so I'd like to just give, since I let you go first at the beginning, Joel, I'm going to let Christoph go first here at the end.

01:40:52

If you were speaking to a group of people, you are speaking to a group of people, you're going to speak to the audience of Conversations with a Calvinist, which is not, they're growing, but they're not huge, but growing.

01:41:07

You're going to speak to our audience.

01:41:09

Tell us just your final thoughts on this issue.

01:41:13

Encourage people, if they want to get your book, how to get it, and bring your thoughts to a close on this issue.

01:41:20

I'm going to give you as much time as you'd like.

01:41:22

Yes.

01:41:22

So anyway, I'm very happy to be here.

01:41:25

I'm very glad to have had this conversation, to have had this opportunity to talk about this issue.

01:41:31

And I think that if you are looking into Christian nationalism, I think it's always good to look at the different sides of the issue, read what people are saying, and of course compare that carefully to what is written in Scripture.

01:41:49

So both I and Reverend Webben have supported our own documents, he with his statement on Christian nationalism, and I with my book, Why Christians Should Oppose Christian Nationalism, which is available on Amazon Kindle.

01:42:07

And in doing so, we have also included various verses and Scripture passages that we believe support our position.

01:42:17

So I encourage you to carefully look at both works and to compare and contrast and see how you fall on this issue.

01:42:26

And another thing I would say that regardless of how you turn out here, I think one thing that we should all emphasize is that regardless of how we would see non-Christians in our society, we as Christians should come together in mutual love for each other and for Christ, as that is really what it all is about.

01:42:46

Jesus Christ and how do you best honor Him in your life, in politics, in the church, and in every other area, because He is Lord over all things.

01:43:00

Amen.

01:43:01

Thank you.

01:43:01

And I didn't mean to leave you out of that last conversation, Matthew.

01:43:04

I do want to tell you how much I appreciate you being here as well.

01:43:08

And if you have any final thoughts, you can be getting ready.

01:43:11

I'll let you maybe close us out if you have anything you want to add after we give Joel his time here.

01:43:17

Sure.

01:43:18

So just to the listener, something that occurs to me is this may have gotten a little bit philosophical and esoteric, and we're really trying to tease out the meaning of words, which I think is a way to do honor to both of these men's positions, to not try and talk past.

01:43:32

So I hope that that was edifying to you.

01:43:35

I was reminded of this clip I saw.

01:43:39

It was Congressman Greg Stubbe from Florida was speaking in Congress.

01:43:44

They were debating the, boy, the Stasi would have a real go with this one, the Equality Act, which would have enshrined all sorts of same-sex protections into the Civil Rights Act and completely destroyed religious liberty in a lot of serious ways.

01:43:59

And Greg Stubbe didn't kind of beat around the bush or whatever.

01:44:03

The dude straight up starts reading Genesis 2 from the floor of Congress, starts saying, this is how God made man and woman.

01:44:09

He repeatedly judges it.

01:44:11

We as creatures are in no position to be trying to counteract what God has done.

01:44:16

I mean, something that would not have been out of place from a pulpit and appropriately so.

01:44:21

And when he was done, the presiding Democrat at the time, Jerry Nadler from New York, almost runs up to the podium or to the lectern to speak.

01:44:31

And he says, Congressman Stubbe, what any religious view has on what God says is of no concern to this house? And then he continues about his business.

01:44:41

That's a Democrat right there.

01:44:43

I'm sorry? That's a Democrat right there.

01:44:45

Well, that to me a year or two ago when that happened, maybe it was 12, 18 months ago, I said, okay, I don't know if I would call myself a Christian nationalist.

01:44:57

I don't know what Christian nationalism really is.

01:44:59

I've been a bit ostrich in the sand on this issue, but that's not good.

01:45:02

And I'm pretty sure God promises to judge that.

01:45:04

So maybe we shouldn't do that.

01:45:08

So I say that to say this may sound a bit esoteric, but it is very much a live issue that either has affected you or will very soon.

01:45:17

And so I would just encourage you to open your Bibles and appropriately open your minds to good sources on this and establish a position on it because it's coming, and it is already here in many ways.

01:45:30

Yep.

01:45:30

Amen.

01:45:31

Amen.

01:45:31

Thank you.

01:45:32

Well, Joel, as I said, I wanted to give you the same opportunity that I gave to Christoph in sort of closing out your position and encouraging people to whatever resources you might have available, including your upcoming conference, which seems like it's going to be a blast.

01:45:48

You got you and Doug Wilson and a bunch of other guys.

01:45:52

So tell us your final thoughts.

01:45:55

Thanks, Keith.

01:45:56

Appreciate you having me on.

01:45:58

Yeah, I think my final thought would simply be this.

01:46:01

If I was a betting man, which I'm not, but if I were, I think in 10 years, maybe even just five, but for sure 10 years, I think we'll look back on the Christian nationalism controversy, excitement, parade, and we'll say, nobody's really calling themselves a Christian nationalist.

01:46:25

It pittered out.

01:46:28

I think the label is probably not going to stick.

01:46:33

I'm just being real honest here at the end.

01:46:35

Not everybody will like that I'm saying this on my team.

01:46:38

I don't know if the label will stick, but I think the doctrine will.

01:46:44

I think that in God's providence, he's used these last few years of clown world, and we've been slowly, like the frog slowly boiling in the hot pot of water gradually, but it really was a mercy, because if you turn it up slow, the heat, the frog just sits there and gets boiled alive.

01:47:01

It never really notices the spike in temperature because it's so gradual.

01:47:05

In God's mercy, and I think mercy is the proper word, he just spiked the temperature these last few years, and a lot of people woke up, and a lot of Christians woke up, and we started thinking, wait a second, is Jesus, is it a privatized lordship of Christ? Is he Lord of my heart only, or is he Lord of all, and if so, what does that mean? I think people just started having some good conversations, started thinking some good thoughts, and started reading some theologians that are dead.

01:47:37

I really like dead theologians.

01:47:39

They don't disappoint dead people.

01:47:42

The verdict's out.

01:47:43

They're not going to go woke two years later, and you regret that they endorsed your book, and now the name's there forever.

01:47:49

Dead guys are good like that.

01:47:51

They don't disappoint, but also, I think there's a lot of really, really novel, unique post-war sentiment, kind of boomer theology, I call it, that just, it got forged in a very particular, very unique time, and very unique place where certain things were just taken for granted, but you look at the swath of church history, you look at older writings, and they talk about things like the Christian prince, and for me, because I'm an American, I would like a bunch of little Christian princes, and not necessarily one Christian prince, but man, I think there's something to that, so my prediction is I think the label Christian nationalism will fade away, and maybe nationalism isn't the best label to have.

01:48:45

I think the only thing that we're trying to do with that is we're just trying to say we're not tribalist, and we're not globalist, but I understand there's some baggage there, and so I think it may get better, but I think just the left is, well, you're racist, you're this, you're that, and then eventually, well, you're a Christian nationalist, and with that one, a few of us, we just stopped for a second.

01:49:04

We said, all right, that's it.

01:49:07

You call me a racist, and I'm going to disagree because I'm not.

01:49:10

I'm not, but you call me a Christian nationalist.

01:49:14

Well, what do you mean by that? And then they start saying, well, you think nations should be Christian, and they should have Christian laws, and I'm like, wait a second.

01:49:22

Yeah, I do believe that.

01:49:24

I'll dig my heels down on that one.

01:49:26

I'll double down on that, so all that being said, if 10 years from now, Christian nationalism, there's no Christian nationalist hashtag anymore.

01:49:33

There's no Christian nationalist statement.

01:49:35

There's nobody's using that term.

01:49:36

I will not be disappointed, nor would I even be surprised, but I guarantee you because God is so merciful and so kind, I don't think for a very long time that anyone will think in terms of the actual doctrine, the actual theology, what just about all of us were thinking just five or 10 years ago.

01:49:57

It was not that long ago that we just kind of had this naive theology, but now we have a much bigger, broader view of Christ's lordship, and you can call it what you want to call it, but I think that big view of Christ's lordship, even over the civil magistrate, that's here to stay, and you're going to have to reconcile with that.

01:50:22

Well, I want to thank all of you brothers for being on the show today and for sharing your thoughts and your ideas and where we disagreed and where we agreed, and Matthew, thank you for being my co-host.

01:50:35

I appreciate our friendship and your continued support of the program.

01:50:38

Joel, the one thing I did want to mention, your conference, when is it and what's...

01:50:44

Thank you, Keith.

01:50:45

It's March 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, 2024, the year of our Lord, March 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

01:50:51

It's going to be in Taylor, Texas.

01:50:53

It's Williamson County.

01:50:55

The church I pastor is in Georgetown, Taylor's a neighboring town.

01:50:58

Doug Wilson is going to be there.

01:51:00

We've got the Ogden, Utah guys.

01:51:04

I really appreciate them.

01:51:05

That's Brian Sovey.

01:51:06

A lot of guys know him for his psalm singing, and Eric Kahn is going to be there, and also Ben Garrett.

01:51:12

He does the Haunted Cosmos podcast, and we're still working with speakers and trying to get a couple more and stuff, but Joe Boot's going to be there, so we're excited about that, March 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

01:51:25

That's a Friday, Saturday, and holdover.

01:51:27

One of the speakers will stay and preach at our church that Lord's Day, and we've got a venue that can seat 1,000.

01:51:34

We had James White this year back in May, and Joe Boot, and Dale Partridge, and myself, and we had about 550 people that came out, so we're hoping, Lord willing, to double that.

01:51:45

Our venue seats about 1,000, and you can register by just going to RightResponseConference.com, RightResponseConference.com, and it's going to be the stuff that we're talking about today on your show, Keith.

01:51:56

We're going to talk about theonomy.

01:51:58

We're going to talk about post-millennialism.

01:51:59

We're going to talk about Kuyperianism that Christophe was talking about, you know, Abraham Kuyper's fear of sovereignty and this all of Christ for all of life sentiment, and I think it'll be a really good time.

01:52:10

Not everybody will agree or have the same eschatology, but I think everybody will get a lot out of it if they come.

01:52:16

Excellent, excellent.

01:52:17

Well, gentlemen, again, thank you all.

01:52:19

I'm going to close us out here unless anyone has anything to add.

01:52:22

I don't want to leave anybody hanging.

01:52:24

No, I'd just like to say thank you very much.

01:52:27

I think it's good that we all have good respect for each other and that we were able to have a friendly conversation.

01:52:35

Yes, I agree.

01:52:37

Amen, amen.

01:52:38

And again, I want to thank you all for being a part of Conversations with a Calvinist and listening to today's conversation.

01:52:44

I want to encourage you.

01:52:46

I'm sure that there were things that were said today that you may agree or disagree with.

01:52:51

Just remember, we have comments below on our YouTube page, and I encourage you to leave comments.

01:52:56

I go back, I read them, and I often respond.

01:52:58

And if you have something that you would like to point towards one of these men, I'm happy to do that.

01:53:03

Just leave a comment below, and I'll try to point that question to them.

01:53:07

And again, keep in mind that there are books available on this.

01:53:11

There are documents that have been written.

01:53:13

And as Matthew said, educate yourself.

01:53:16

I know I'm going to continue to try to grow in my education so that I can better understand and articulate the views on this and better form my own according to the Word of God.

01:53:25

I want to remind you again that we have a podcast that comes out every week, and you can find us at calvinistpodcast.com.

01:53:31

You can send me questions if you have a subject that you'd like for me to address at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.

01:53:37

You can follow me at YourCalvinist on Twitter.

01:53:40

And don't forget, along with the podcast, we also have a weekly news program called Church Soup, as well as funny videos that come out all the time.

01:53:47

So if you find us on YouTube, please remember to subscribe and like and know that you'll be getting good Christian content for as long as God allows me to continue to do this.

01:53:57

So thank you again for being a part of Conversations with a Calvinist.

01:54:01

I've been Keith Foskey, and I've been Your Calvinist.

01:54:03

May God bless you.