Dead Men Walking Podcast Glenn Sunshine: Critical Race Theory, Social Justice, & Biblical Government

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00:11

Oh listen to that guitar! Wait for it! Wait for it! Oh there it is!

00:17

Welcome to another episode of Dead Men Walking. Got something a little bit different for y 'all don't we? Yeah if you guys been listening for a while you're going what's going on with these intros?

00:26

We had an intro for about seven eight months. Yeah. We switched a little bit for the last few months and now we're getting into this thing where Jay just brings in his guitar yeah rips a few licks on the mic and I've got about 15 of these bad boys preloaded.

00:43

I mean this this is really this is a fun this is a fun time man I mean we're we're you know just jamming in here and trying to come up with a new intro so you guys you guys will have to let us know email us and let us know which one you you're digging on.

00:56

Yeah because I think we might just do a little different one each week yeah maybe we'll even have a like a live session or something as we work through some intros get some input from the listeners see what they like but that that little lick there that little was is it called a lick?

01:10

Sure. Is it called a rhythm? A riff you know yeah yeah. That was by ours truly Jason Hamlin there just off the top of his head last week.

01:18

I can hardly wait to see when you put nine minutes into an intro instead of 45 seconds it's gonna be unbelievable.

01:25

Well I do have a little bit of Jimmy Page in these fingers so just watch it. Oh man so wow how you been man?

01:34

We took a week off. I know I know which is cool let's go it's always good to take a little bit of a break.

01:40

It's cool now you guys still got your episode every week yeah we had one banked yeah it's funny because I did have a listener reach out to me they go loved the consumerism episode last week why did you say

01:50

Christmas was coming? No really. Well little caveat there we recorded that in November.

01:55

That's hilarious. So you got one that was a few months old but we put one in there you know we do like the

02:01

TV shows do that the host takes off for two weeks yeah pre -record there yeah but we're back at it now it feels good to be back in the studio with you too man.

02:09

Definitely. I feel like when we go a week without I know I'm like missing something. It's like what's what's going on here you know like where's my bearded brother at?

02:17

Yeah yeah right I'm missing something. And then I cut it and then yeah. Well I'll tell you what we're gonna do a little introduction here and then we're gonna get into some newsy news but we have someone on the line who has been on the podcast before when we were down at the

02:32

Fight Laugh Feast conference the conference rally what was it both down in Franklin outside of Nashville we got to set up right next to a gentleman that we had not met but have come to love he is a international author a professor a theologian historian and he's host of theology podcast yep which is the coolest name it is for a podcast the coolest podcast you guys will listen to oh my gosh it's not it's much much much better than ours okay let's just much smarter people exactly a couple knuckleheads trying to yeah last last fall

03:15

I was raking leafs to one of their episodes and you know how you just kind of passively listen to a podcast when you're doing things yeah

03:20

I literally had to stop raking rewind you know rewind back 30 seconds a minute relisten happens many times okay yep well hold on go back it's such deep and introspective and like historical and theological you just go man there's a lot of meat in those podcasts but today on the podcast we have mr.

03:40

Glenn sunshine Glenn how are you sir doing great the crowds going wild for you yeah live audience pre recorded light up live audience so we do a little thing here

03:56

Glenn called newsy news we just go over two or three subjects that popped up in the news this week feel free to join in and comment on it and after that we are going to get into what we want to talk to you about tonight so Jason do we have some news we absolutely have let's go to newsy news yep we might have to put that on iTunes all of our friends out there will sell four copies of that at 99 cents no no we'll put it for free let's just give that one away okay okay but alright so yeah check this out a

04:42

Washington man arrested for allegedly stealing 400 pound slide mounting it to his child's bunk bed at his home now that sounds amazing that is totally a dad thing he's a dad right does he totally is yeah mounted to his yes

04:59

I have been tempted going down the street before and I saw an old slide in the trash and I went on rehab that right

05:07

I could put that on the side of the second -story window slide out you remember those those really dangerous slides that used to be on the playground man yeah like imagine having one right outside of your second -story window and you just well now see when

05:20

I was a kid they used to make them out of 100 % American -made steel oh yeah so in the summertime they'd be 211 degrees just one degree below boiling wear your shorts off yeah but you did get third -degree burns when you went down it and it was not slippery at all so he so he stole it and then hooked it up to the kids bunk it up to the bunk bed

05:43

I got him that's a great idea though but how did he even get caught what did he put it on Instagram like I just don't understand oh geez nowadays the government can come right into your house for a slide

05:52

I mean yeah that's geez yeah they can do anything they can't have more than five people at your Thanksgiving dinner what else they can tell you to do inside the privacy of your own home exactly what else we got there yeah it was a fun one so this one is interesting okay miss silver

06:07

State USA was awarded to a transgender person oh

06:14

I think I saw this Cataluna Enriquez was crowned in the biggest preliminary competition for the

06:20

Miss Nevada USA pageant so now we have men men winning winning miss

06:26

Nevada this is that what is Miss Nevada miss silver miss silver state yeah what is going on yeah

06:33

Nevada how is this woman's empowerment by the way to I love talking to third -wave feminists and going you know so now we're just dominating and everything

06:41

I want to know where they're at on this you know like why are they not upset you know well it's a it is a crazy thing

06:48

I mean yeah we we see you know the depravity of man you know in full force there when we can say you know eight -year -old kids can you know inject hormones and do those things and and and we call you know more than two genders which is outside of God's design but what's really funny and when

07:07

I say funny not a laughing matter yeah just ironical to me is when you have these kind of liberal sex within themselves having to war against each other right so now you have a man right winning a competition just for women where do feminists fall on this no idea

07:24

Glenn what's going on with this stuff have you ever heard of turf t -e -r -f yeah trans -exclusionary radical feminists oh and it turns out that within the feminist movement you have it split between trans -exclusionary actually rolling is a good example of this she nearly got canceled but she's too popular and too rich for that to actually work but she objected to the trans stuff and they they tried to cancel her so she's sort of the poster child for the turf but there is the split within the feminist movement between those who support trans and those who don't mmm so now even inside of that there's some intersectionality of like well

08:10

I'm with this group within that group that says yay or nay to that it's it's wild I mean even even hearing about a male winning a weightlifting competition well a male who says he's sure a woman sure winning a weightlifting competition

08:29

I mean duh I mean you what do you think's gonna happen right yeah anyone that wants to argue with me about either the depravity of man or God being a god of wisdom and and seeking after God to attain wisdom you only have to look at this culture no

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I mean it is absolutely insane that we've taken biological scientific it just about anything from the stem you know the stems and it just flipped it on its head and said there's more than one gender men can have men can become pregnant it's like we've taken the basic core of the scientific foundation and just said oh no doesn't matter it's it's all what you think feel believe and it's just insanity to me okay well why don't we finish up what do we got yeah the the last one there okay we got a vaccine passports what are they good for and how would they work experts discuss the possibility of showing proof of kovat 19 vaccinations in the u .s.

09:32

in order to travel and potentially do other social activities as more and more people receive the vaccine it becomes harder to tell who is fully vaccinated and who is not so they are talking about us possibly wearing a yellow star a bracelet are we getting a what are we gonna be putting inside of our bodies to you know in our hand

09:57

Glenn does does the government have the right to to make us produce a vaccine passport to be able to travel between states what do you think

10:12

I don't think so and there are a couple of reasons for this first of all it's a violation of federal laws that already stands it's a violation of HIPAA protection so so you know you're setting up a system where you've got contradictory laws here which is itself a problem and then then there's the right the guarantee against unlawful search and seizure which

10:38

I think this would fall under there are a whole host of things that were that are wrong with it right yeah unfortunately

10:45

I feel like this is going to catch on though and it's funny because Mark Levin who not a huge fan of but I've read some of his books just to keep up on where he is about five eight years ago maybe six or seven years ago came out with a book called

10:56

Liberty and Tyranny he has two chapters dedicated to essentially him predicting that you know the overbearing tyrannical what he called leftist government types would want to do is limit travel because it's a form of limiting freedom in the pursuit of happiness under the

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Constitution so he feels when you just from a constitutional standpoint when you limit travel you're actually limiting the expression of freedom which you know when

11:23

I read that I think six years ago and I read the book I thought that was an interesting point now now we see it coming to hey show me your piece of paper or you don't get to cross this imaginary line that separates these states well we're seeing we see in two two areas two countries right now that are already implementing this in China they have already developed a kovat 19 vaccination certificate required for citizen base of cross -border travel in Israel there's the

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Green Pass an app that connected that's connected to a database listing everyone who's received the vaccine so well you expect that from Communist China right right for sure

12:03

I I would expect that from a country that you know avows himself of being the bearer of freedom personal rights and the government having negative teched certain rights of ours it's kind of sad that we're seeing that right but you know that actually is that all we got for news yeah okay cool so that actually brings us into the kind of right into the next subject that we want to talk to Glenn about obviously like we said at the top of the show historian author

12:31

I mean some of these books that he has to which the newest book I bought from him slaying Leviathan is that is that your latest book or do you have another one coming out

12:39

Glenn slaying Leviathan that's the latest yeah and just that one's the latest there are a few others in the works yeah so for all of our listeners to I highly recommend and I mean it's available anywhere that you can purchase books pretty much

12:57

I think there's some digital ebooks of that floating around too as well you have it in eform yeah and he really covers

13:06

I mean he covers a lot of the stuff that I kind of you know wanted to ask him and Jason wanted to ask him so you know we're in a time right now where we're seeing we're really flirting with you know

13:18

I call it a soft tyranny some people go as far to say it's governmental tyranny maybe there's not a difference maybe there is but the church is you know the the church is seeing some of this you know persecution or at least not being privileged anymore like we talked about on other episodes and I just look at and I feel like a lot of my generation younger than me even some older than me don't really put it in perspective of of history and the older I get the more

13:47

I really appreciate history because those that don't understand it and study it and know what are doomed to repeat it and I said you know to Jason boy

13:55

Glenn would be great to talk to you about this I mean actually with the time that we're in I mean or in do we have a historical reference for maybe mapping out what will happen if we go down this road of government tyranny

14:09

Glenn well yes there are multiple examples that we see that where governments start off seeming to be benign or at least claiming to be benign and that take you in all kinds of places you don't want to go inevitably whenever you run into somebody who's proposing some kind of utopia they're they're totalitarian yeah you know anybody anybody who has a utopian vision is pretty much by definition at the top all

14:41

Terry because any dissent threatens becoming utopia any resistance program threatens becoming utopia so for the good of society you must wash all the time so what would you say just going off that line of reasoning what would you say to someone who's maybe and I don't want to put them in a box or you know prejudice them but let's say they're a very progressive far left and they go look at your founding fathers they had a utopia that they were creating with those documents what would you say to someone like that that calls the

15:14

Bill of Rights and the Constitution a type of utopia they don't know what utopia is the founders the founders were acutely aware of the problem of human sin

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I mean a lot of them were heavily influenced by the Puritans who went from Calvin who got it from Augusta or Luther for that matter the entire governmental system in the

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United States in the Constitution is designed as a way of trying to prevent number one the government taking too much power but number two trying to find ways to block corruption before it can do too much damage that's what the whole idea of checks and balances is about right so yeah so we know we're not dealing with utopia and I feel like even when you have these very popular quotes like the

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Jefferson quote this is government is a necessary evil maybe rightly attributed him maybe not

16:14

I feel like that gives you a little bit of an idea of what they were saying like look at we understand that it's a type of evil but sometimes a necessary one and it's not a utopia but it's the best that we can do at this time and for the foreseeable future yeah for sure yeah that's pretty much that that pretty much summarizes it

16:37

I mean in Jefferson ultimately got that idea from st. Augustine yeah yeah so so there's very long history very long tradition that the

16:46

US Constitution came out of and again it's anything but utopia so I have this

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I have this book and it is probably six or seven hundred pages thick nice big thick book and it's founding fathers quotes okay and you can look everything up by subject and then what people whatever the historical quote was on that and when

17:07

I go through that I have to say probably 85 % of those has either some mention of a creator of God of grace of some type of religious aspect and then you know

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I will get in these discussions with my more liberal leaning friends and they will say oh they weren't they weren't

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Christians they might have been deists but they weren't Christians they weren't believers where does that argument come from because when

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I read Samuel Adams and in John Adams in James Monroe and in Jefferson and all these others there's so many references to the

17:40

Bible and to Creator into you know all the things that we hold dear as Christians where does that leftist argument come from that oh no they were either atheists or deists or oh you know religious leanings whatsoever how does it even become a thing that we even have to argue that a lot of it is really the result of the post

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Enlightenment period there's no question that the well there was a book called on two wings

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I'm blanking out on the author off the top of my head but it argued I think correctly that the

18:17

American Eagle flies on two wings one of them is a Protestant Christianity and the other is the

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Enlightenment there's no question that there was an Enlightenment influence on the founders but there's also no question that there was a heavy

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Christian influence on them even the deists bought into a lot of ideas from Christianity because they thought of them as common sense they were only common sense because they grew up in a

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Christian culture so what happened after the Enlightenment as you start getting this book pushed toward increased secularism in society really in the wake of the

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French Revolution especially what you end up seeing happening is people start emphasizing the

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Enlightenment side of things and de -emphasize things the Christian side of them so this is going to hit in America probably in the early 20th century is where a lot of this is really going to start coming through before that you want yeah when when it comes to the separation of church and state

19:18

I mean how how are we looking at these subjects now since we have so many things that are starting to come into play that you know do go against our

19:33

Christian faith that do put us you know in a situation where we have to voice our opinion about abortion where we have to voice our opinion about you know certain subjects

19:45

I mean like where where do we stand on that in this moment in history where do you think we are in that Glenn Glenn just so you know he's trying to get you to admit that he that you are post mill along with him that that whole question yeah it's just about eschatology it's always about eschatology

20:06

I'm just kidding there's a very good question Jason okay well first of all the answer let's let's deal with the thing you don't have the right to bring your religious faith in you don't have the right to impose your religion there's the separation of church and state you can't bring your religion into the public square okay so let me ask this question then if I am

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NOT allowed to advocate for my values why are you allowed to advocate for yours because if in fact if in fact we're talking about no you know no special privilege given to religion but also given the way the

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First Amendment is written you can't deprive people religious people of their rights either why is it that only secular people get the right to advocate for their viewpoint religious people cannot that's nonsense by any standard yeah non -religion is a viewpoint is it is a religion in itself yeah absolutely so I think that just by the terms of their question they're basically saying it's freedom of religion means we can do and advocate and fight for whatever we want and you have to shut up yeah yeah and you know

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I think that's why this goes back to making sure we are supporting and and raising up godly leaders that actually speak that way right that speak with boldness and speak with conviction and obviously speak biblically about these issues because I see as the culture progresses it's going to get harder and harder to do that as the culture accepts

22:00

I mean you're only one generation away from from major culture shifts we've done this over the last 30 40 years and even longer than that yeah it's true

22:10

I mean like Glenn I was gonna ask you I was gonna ask you this what what do you think America's or the world's golden calf is right now where do you think we're at with the golden calf you know that that's a really interesting question

22:29

I would say that's actually a hard one to answer I don't really have a good way of looking at it right now we're very fragmented the the problem that we've got right now is that we have a whole bunch of of what

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I would describe as sub worldviews they're not complete worldviews they're just partial worldviews and these are all the glue that holds all of them together is critical theory yeah okay and all of them are built around this idea that you've got oppressors and you've got people who are oppressed and the oppressed are virtuous and the oppressors are evil and you can mix and match categories so you can you be an oppressor in one and oppressed in the other and this this whole matrix of things that we're dealing with here is increasingly what's dominating the culture but what that means is that each of these little special interest groups have their own little idol yeah so for the

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LGBTQ plus crowd it's things related to sex for the radical greens it's well the environment yeah for the critical race theorists it's racial animosity and so on there are a number of others as well but but again the glue that holds them all together is this notion of how the society is structured coming out of this academic field academic theory known as critical theory it's been around for decades but now it's really coming home to roots here so trying to identify a single golden calf in midst of all this is pretty difficult right yeah

24:09

I mean I guess I was thinking about that this week whenever all of us well not all of us most people got their stimulus check you know and you'd read online about how people are like it wasn't enough you know

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I'm not getting enough I can't do anything with this it's like this is free money you know and not free well it's not free sorry sorry talking to an elected

24:35

I know I know it's true but you don't have to say it this they're they're they're throwing this money at us and you know to you know of course we have we have many categories here some people are angry rightly so because this goes on the backs of our kids and grandkids and great -grandkids more than likely but but I mean you know well will we ever get to the point once again where you know in in slaying

25:06

Leviathan you brought up the the the Francisco's you know I thought that that was a really interesting group of people the people that were only being paid they like they would only get you're gonna have to help me with this one but they would they would be beggars that would not receive money but they would receive whatever they needed for that day maybe they were hungry so they would only receive the food you know or whatever it is but do you think we'll ever get back to that point where monetary things won't mean so much to our society to where it's just like we're more minimalist where we're not you know sitting around hoping for that next big thing in our life the bigger house the bigger car you know and and I know that's probably a far stretch to bring up the

25:58

Francisco's but but I that that's kind of my golden calf in my brain

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I think if if I could say yeah the the materialist thing the more is having more getting more acquisition and things like that I think is big

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I have a suspicion that that is not going to laugh and the reason is that I am anticipating that there is a fair likelihood of a serious economic collapse in the u .s.

26:33

in my lifetime the reason yeah well yeah and you know

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I'm actually looking at this like from the perspective of a complete shift in the global economy away from the u .s.

26:47

and the reason for that historically great powers are always sunk by debt yeah if we were to try to pay off the debt right now at a rate of one dollar a second it would take over 700 ,000 years

27:06

Wow Wow this is just simply unsustainable yeah yeah it's absolutely insane

27:14

I want to shift gears here a little bit because a little earlier you mentioned critical theory and and I think that was something

27:21

I want we wanted to talk to you about as well like even critical race theory which has been around since I think the late 70s correct me if I'm wrong mid late 70s but is now just kind of really gaining traction in the last few years if I'm a listener right now and I've said yeah

27:38

I've heard critical race theory I've heard the acronym you know CRT I hear people kind of talking about it but I'm kind of on the outskirts of it

27:46

I'm not a professor or a theologian or I don't have a degree but I want to know what it is what's a good way to explain that to our listeners without getting you know too professory is that a word but also you know explaining it correctly what's the definition of that and how that came about okay first of all there are different critical race theories a pretty pretty broad area it started off in legal studies a professor at Harvard law argued that US law is intrinsically you know it's baked into it that it's racist it's really about maintaining right white supremacy the entire

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US law code that's how it begins with that idea from there it we get a woman named

28:36

Kim really Crenshaw who is going to introduce the idea of intersectionality that is to say you know

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I talked about this matrix of oppressor oppressed classes the more oppressed classes you are in the more moral authority that you have to speak okay if you aren't in the oppressed classes you don't really have much of a right to speak so those are sort of the roots the two key roots where it emerges in Black Lives Matter in particular the way this gets popularized moving it out of the

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Academy moving it out of law school the way this this really hit is through well if you read the original manifesto of Black Lives Matter what you will find it is a smattering of all kinds of different causes many of which have nothing to do with race so anyone who is in an oppressed class is good so we want to support

29:36

LGBT because well we're in a heteronormative society and that means that heterosexuals don't have moral authority but the oppressed

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LGBTQ plus people do we want to support we want to get away from patriarchy so it talked about mothers and children and the idea that we need to have a community to raise the children to the degree that the mothers and children are comfortable with it completely omitting the father there's got to be a universal right to abortion all of these kinds of things so what critical race theory which starts in the law school morphs into something that ends up being a sort of an umbrella for all kinds of leftist organizations all kind of left kinds of leftist causes and so on they even did a

30:29

Black Trans Lives Matter rally in Washington excuse me in New York so it ends up being this this umbrella of all of these different kinds of progressive causes but the fundamental point that stands behind it right now is that America is a fundamentally racist society that it is baked into the system it's not clear whether they even believe it can be the system can be reformed some do some don't some think you have to tear the whole thing down and start over again but it basically says that everything that happens it fundamentally really revolves around race and if someone is a person of color and they perceive something as racist it is racist whether or not you intend it to be or not it doesn't matter they get the right to decide and whites have to sit down and shut up because they don't have any kind of moral authority on the issue how does something like that infiltrate the church because I know there's popular national children's curriculum out there that many evangelical churches are using and suggested reading is critical race theory white fragility you know all these things where they just take this social movement and then they put some words on it and then they put it underneath the heading of like a social gospel which all three of us here know you know that's ridiculous but how does that infiltrate and now we have

32:03

Christians that you know so -called Christians that are that are essentially espousing and teaching and saying you must learn about this critical race theory and the four or five things you just mentioned about it not one of them seemed biblical how did we get to a point where we have many churches accepting this and I would also say is a theory not a principle it's a theory right yeah so is it even true right yeah this is

32:31

I'm about to say some very unpleasant things about American evangelicalism I hope you don't mind

32:37

I'm a historian so let's look at this over time evangelicalism and fundamentalism were originally the same thing they only split in the 1950s because of Billy Graham I'm not gonna get into the details there evangelicalism gradually became more and more because they were more willing to interact with the culture unlike the fundamentalist they started having a certain degree of influence then a self -described evangelical by the name of Jimmy Carter got elected president in 1976

33:16

Time magazine declared it the year of the evangelical we have Jerry Falwell in the moral majority hitting the big time so suddenly evangelicalism became popular it became well it's not popular at least it became visible and influential and recognized and there were a lot of people who had positive feelings about it in various sorts of ways but from there what ended up happening is in order to appeal to great more and more people they began to adopt more and more elements of the culture to the point where today in many evangelical churches what you have in place of worship put that in scare quotes is a concert followed by a

34:05

TED talk and the TED talk and it is a TED talk it is not biblical exegesis right it's how to feel good about I mean unfortunately that's that's where it's ended up in a lot of places you have new churches being built that don't look like churches they look like entertainment venues concert halls what does the architecture communicate the architecture should say something to people and when people go in and see that they immediately think entertainment they immediately think concert they don't think worship so we're doing all of these things to accommodate to the culture and at a point where the evangelical fad kind of starts dying out they begin to accommodate to more and more things in the culture not just putting in a

34:56

Starbucks coffee bar or a you know the concert and TED talk thing they begin adopting ideas from the culture because by so doing they hope that they're going to hold on to this popularity that they've had they're going to keep up with it as well right no which means that you follow the fad right that's becoming relevant there's nothing less relevant than a church that thinks it's relevant or that tries to be relevant yeah and we said it's as simple as that we've said it quite a few

35:31

I'll go ahead yeah there's one more thing in this however that does need to be said and that's that although I will be the first person to argue that racism is a heck of a lot less of a problem today than it was when

35:49

I was a kid things are much better that doesn't mean that racial problems is not a way yeah and Christians do need to be aware of this we do need to be concerned about it and we do need to be fighting for true justice so when you have when you have that when you have it combined with with frankly manipulative stuff from the media telling you how awful this problem is how serious it is when you're getting bombarded with these messages it is actually appealing to something that is genuinely important and genuinely significant for Christians because we should be fighting for justice but because we've lost the biblical foundation for what justice is because we've forgotten the fact that the church has the resources to deal with the problem of racism we think that critical theory is the only game in town so it's a combination of two different things that are going on here

36:46

Wow yeah that's so good and you know I feel like sometimes this was birthed out of even the social justice movement and I would ask you

36:56

Glenn is because I've had I mean believing Christians who seem sincere

37:03

I've known for a long time you know they're not political but they just go no

37:09

Christ taught social justice right he said feed the poor and clothe them and do all these things and turn the other cheek he taught social justice and then they you know point you right towards some leftist leftist organization that doesn't have anything to do the gospel but is helping possibly air quotes again helping the poor the downtrodden or urban or underprivileged or whatever you want to name them is social justice what

37:34

Christ taught no because among the other things well for example

37:41

Jesus said feed to the poor he didn't say subcontract that out to the government amen so let's just be clear here because it turns out well let's let's do some numbers here private charitable organizations as of the last time

38:02

I looked at the number 70 % of the money that is given to them goes to feed the poor or to whatever their particular causes they've got 30 % overhead the last time

38:15

I checked the government it was 30 cents went to feed the poor and 70 cents went to government overhead it is probably it is probably worse now because all of this was before the expansion of government in the

38:31

Obama administration and since so in all likelihood it's probably down to more like 25 cents to a dollar so just in terms just in terms of financial responsibility private charity is a much much better way of dealing with issues of poverty let's take another part of it the government out of Washington can only do one size fits none policies the more effective way of dealing with with poverty is to have people on the ground who know the individuals who are involved who know the communities and those kinds of things and have them doing deciding how to administer the funds how to work with them and so on because they have local knowledge and this is this needs to be it solved at a local level this is this is something that the

39:27

Catholics call subsidiarity and the Catholics are absolutely correct subsidiarity is the best way of dealing with these problems so the problem with social justice is it tends to be really heavy on social and not so big on just it hadn't tends to be very heavy on government and it tends to be very heavy on looking like you're doing the right things rather than actually doing yeah and I've said this before on the podcast and I know

39:57

Jason we talked about it was you know I've kind of blamed the church by and large is kind of getting us into this predicament we kind of took two steps back and allowed the government to take the role of the church

40:10

I mean you just go 80 years ago and you had Catholic churches that would feed clothed train and put to work people for weeks at a time get them back on their feet put them in a job program a social program and you know in even

40:25

Baptist churches and Presbyterian churches and now we've just kind of stepped back and allowed the government to take the place of our charity and you know we have a bill in the

40:36

Congress rolling around right now that wants to make all churches taxable and I think about six months ago we said on the podcast they said you know the

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Stephen Furtick's and the Kenneth Copeland's and the Creflo dollars they're gonna ruin it for everyone when you bring in 300 million dollars and only 1 % of that is actually going to charity 2 % of to the community the government's gonna want their taste they're gonna want to wet their beak hey where's our revenue from that business because clearly you're not running a nonprofit a charity or a church so now we've gotten to this predicament to to where some bad actors within the church have not only you know abdicated their responsibility over the decades but now have gone the opposite direction and under the guise of an of not being you know not being taxable have basically been running businesses for decades and and now we have twofold coming at us as one like Glenn just said we have the social gospel being able to seep its way into the core and kind of the

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DNA of the church because we wanted that kind of popularity and kind of that mainstream relevance to be you know in the mainstream and it be at that you know maintain that and then on top of that you know we're running businesses as churches and it's just absolutely bizarre to me that it only has taken geez

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I mean even in my lifetime and I'm 39 so even just from the time that I can remember going to churches and seeing what was on the news

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I feel like the culture has shifted so much in just 30 short years Glenn I'm sure it has shifted you know you're slightly older than us so I'm sure you've seen things that we haven't and seen where it shifted and in the things that you went through and it just it just amazes me if you just get off one degree you know 10 20 30 years later you are so far apart on on issues and things like that but I'm Glenn as we finish up here and put some bookends on this can you for our listeners just kind of give us an overview of of your book slaying

42:43

Leviathan let us know I feel like it probably covers some of the things we talked about tonight but give us an overview of that and then let people know where they can reach out to you on social media okay well

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I'm gonna start at the end of slaying Leviathan because hopefully everybody who's listening is at least familiar a bit with John Locke Locke's the guy who came up with some of the key ideas behind the

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Declaration of Independence that Jefferson has been going to adapt a bit every one of Locke's core ideas really dates back to earlier

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Christian theologians you know his ideas on everyone of his unalienable rights life liberty and property go back to medieval theologians the idea of government is covenant goes back through Calvin actually to Exodus where God asked the people three times do you accept the terms of this covenant and they agreed three times before the covenant was ratified so this government this idea of government by consent of the government done by form of covenant that that's biblical and it comes to Locke through Calvin the idea of resistance to tyranny the resistance to a government that oversteps its legitimate bounds that violates the covenant comes through the

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Protestant tradition starting with through the Huguenots into the Puritans to Locke.

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Locke's genius was he took all of these things and several other things that were sort of in separate categories and he synthesized them he put them together into a coherent system and then

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Jefferson picked up on this developed it a little bit further it has a heavy influence on the Constitution and so on of ways the

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Declaration the founding documents of America the Declaration and the Constitution are really the culmination of a long process of Christian political theology all of which is built around the reason why the book is called

44:41

Playing Leviathan is Leviathan was a book by Thomas Hobbes roughly the same time as Locke that argued for absolutist government that argued that that what the king said was law and that was it nobody could question the king nobody could challenge him nobody could do anything you know the king had complete authority that totalitarian vision of government was the world in which

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Jesus lived it's the world in which the early church developed and over the years what

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Christianity does is it says the government does have certain legitimate rights but they're limited they are limited because Jesus says give to Caesar the things that are

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Caesar give to God the things that are God right so Caesar has some things but those are the things that God has given to Caesar to have so the question is where are those limitations how do we what do we do with them this is the reason why

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Christian political theology developed and ultimately it is really built around playing Leviathan it is built around limiting the power of government limiting totalitarianism and keeping government in its proper place now this whole process like I said really in a lot of ways

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I think it reaches its ultimate expression slightly secularized in the American sounding right after that we have the

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French Revolution and when the French Revolution happens it's a purely secular revolution and like all secular revolutions it ate its own it's watered many of its own people its own leaders and so on but the

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French Revolution then in the increasingly secular world of the 19th century becomes the foundation for a political thought ever since right so in a very broad base what

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I do is I trace out all of these different ideas and how they come together with blocks so that's the that would be the short version of it as far as social media goes

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I am you can I'm easily found on Facebook that's the best place to find me I don't have a lot of other social media presence

46:42

I'm trying to get into some of the new platforms but I'm not yet in the habit of being there that much so Facebook is probably your best bet yeah that's okay we found you

46:51

Glenn we hunted you down and messaged you have some awesome posts on Facebook by the way oh

46:57

I know right following Glenn yeah for sure yeah so it's Glenn sunshine G L E N N sunshine just like it sounds slaying

47:05

Leviathan and just really quick do you believe you know if I have someone come to me and say you believe in limited government is that biblical do we have certain verses that we can look at and say limited government is a biblical principle or do we have certain context where we can say well the idea of limited government is seen biblically or do we just throw it out all together and just say well just seems biblical but we don't even have any proof text for it that's what we seem seem to think works best like what's your thoughts on that I would always it's always a good idea yeah and again his statement give to Caesar the things that are

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Caesar's and give to God the things that are God's it's clear that Caesar isn't over everything you you can look at the earliest

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Christian confession Jesus is the Lord what that meant is Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not mm -hmm because Caesar claimed authority over all of life right

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Jesus says no that that's not the case you don't have authority over everything and the

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Christian confession Jesus is Lord says that Jesus is the only one who has authority over everything which by the way also includes government absolutely amen

48:15

Jason you got anything else for Glenn as we wrap it up here thank you so much for coming on and we really appreciate your time and love love your your your history mind man that's so great

48:27

I love it man absolutely so two quick things so if someone out there is going why should

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I care about history as a historian what's your paragraph answer to them well two different answers one of them is that you want to understand what's happening now and where it's going you have to know where it came from because that's the only way you can see a trajectory if you only look at what's happening now you don't get the trajectory and if you don't see the trajectory you don't know where it's going yeah the second reason is for Christian the

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Bible is a very complicated book it doesn't give us straightforward answers to any of the questions we really want to ask and as a result it has to be studied and examined very carefully people have to think long and hard on it to work out for example you know we had 1 ,700 years of pondering what the implications of the

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Bible are for government before we got the Declaration of Independence so why do you not why are you not interested in history when we have this incredible set of resources of godly men through the centuries who have pondered it long and hard very very bright people very very godly people who pondered it long and hard who thought about it and who have teased out of it what it means and what its implications are do you really want to go back and reinvent the wheel in the face of that are you really brilliant you know no

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I'm a big believer in standing on the shoulders of Giants and with that Glenn we thank you so much guys listen we're gonna put the link to the book on the podcast where you listen it'll be on our

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YouTube channel it'll be on Facebook and Instagram and all the places that we are we really love our brother

50:25

Glenn he always brings such value when we talk to him we enjoy your books as well to Glenn and guys

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I would advise you to check him out and check out the many books that he's authored because I have quite a few bought a few when we were down at fight laugh feast read through those absolutely edifying and just unbelievable whether you're a history person or not the way you relate subjects through history is just amazing you touch on you know very current things things in the past so I mean it's just a good read all around but guys we also appreciate all the new comments and reviews and the website hits and all that stuff where you guys reach out to us tell us what you're thinking you know even comments on the show

51:06

I know Jay and I talk about that we'll have someone reach out to us and say hey what about this subject or what do you about think about doing that different and we like it

51:13

I mean we like constructive criticism right oh yeah oh yeah yeah oh he's got something in his throat you good over there my allergies man my allergies are going crazy we start talking about constructive criticism he starts dying on us jeez man but Glenn thank you so much for being here and guys we appreciate you listening as always god bless be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at dead men walking podcast for full video podcast episodes and clips or email us at dead men walking podcast at gmail .com