News Roundup: Branding and Rebranding, Doug Wilson's Resistance, James Dobson's Legacy

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00:00

senior pastor Doug Wilson makes no apologies for his beliefs on God and country.

00:06

I'd like to see the town be a Christian town, like to see this the state be a Christian state, like to see the nation be a

00:13

Christian nation. I'd like to see the world be a Christian world. And now Wilson's controversial views as a christian nationalists are gaining sway in the nation's center of power with the recent opening of his new church and high profile parishioners like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

00:29

Is planting a church in D. C. Part of your mission to try to turn this into a christian nation?

00:35

Yes. So every society is theocratic. The only question is who's theo in a secular democracy.

00:43

It would be Demos the people in a christian republic could be christ. What would you say to someone watching this and say, look,

00:50

I'm a muslim, who are you to say your world view is better than mine, that your God is better than mine?

00:57

Well, if I went to Saudi Arabia, I would fully expect to live under their God's rules. But you said earlier that you want this to be a christian world.

01:04

Yes. So you want to supplant their religion with your christian. Yes, by peaceful means by sharing the gospel.

01:09

There's a lot of work yet to do. I believe that we are working our little corner of the vineyard.

01:16

Wilson's little corner, a picturesque campus nestled on the outskirts of downtown Moscow, Idaho is growing by the day with thousands of like minded christians.

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Parishioners of his church, known as Kirkers, own and operate several businesses downtown next to liberal college town stores.

01:35

If it's true, if it's true, why did he yell boots because it's because of you.

01:41

Yeah. Well, you have, there you go. That's, that's a regular day for you. That's not unusual.

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A big focus of his christian movement is on a patriarchal society where men are dominant and women are expected to submit to their husbands.

01:58

Women. All right. Well, that's enough of that. Welcome to the conversations that matter podcast is a news roundup edition on this fine weekend.

02:08

It is a fine weekend. Let me tell you, the only little damper in my day so far has been the traffic is backed up down the street from me because they're doing roadwork.

02:18

Other than that, it's pristine. It is. I love this time of year because it's like it's summer, but you start to feel the thin fall air coming in and I'm getting ready today to go to the county fair.

02:29

So, uh, this it's podcast. I say now it'll be an hour, but you know me, it'll be an hour and a half.

02:35

I can't go longer though. I got to go to the county fair. My daughter's first time at a fair, but I wanted to open with that video because it's going to set the stage for what we're going to talk about.

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We have a lot to talk about, but I think that's what helps connect a lot of the different things we're going to talk about today.

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And you, you know, you ask why, why is that video in particular? Uh, so newsworthy it's because of a few things.

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One is we live in a time right now where the new cycles are very short.

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And because of that, and I think a number of things, but that's one of them. Uh, new cycles are short.

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There's a lot of discussions on social media that influence, uh, our minds, but only for a brief moment.

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And we don't, sometimes I say we collectively, we, as those who are living on, um, in this current age and somewhat connected to society and news and that kind of thing, we will often form an opinion before we've really thought through something because we don't have time to think through it because the new cycles are so short and we have to form an opinion and there's pressure and it's, uh, it gets tribal quickly.

03:49

Now that's such human nature, I suppose, but technology is of course, accelerated this and the term Christian nationalist has been a term that people are willing to fight over.

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There's the PCA right now, a commission that's looking into this and is it dangerous?

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Is it not dangerous? Is it just basic Christian teaching or is it something novel? Is it this version of quote unquote

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Christian nationalism? Is it that version? What exactly is it? And lots of ink is spilled on this particular topic.

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It's not the only topic like that, but it's certainly one of them. And I think there has been a movement among conservative

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Christians post 2020 we'll say, especially to be the resistance, try to, whether it's for brand curation or because of sincerity or mixture of both, there are people who want to be, whether it's in the limelight or just instrumental, they want to help be the resistance against everything that we saw rear it's ugly head in 2020

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Christian nationalism has been, of course, one of the key words, key terms that is identifiable as a resistance term, whatever else it is, that's how it's been used by the left.

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That's how it's been used by those on the right, whether the resistance is good or bad, everyone can agree. This is a term that emerged as at least this recent emergence that was used in the past in different ways, but this recent emergence is a term of resistance.

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And what you just saw there is I think Doug Wilson, and I've been watching this closely over the last few years,

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Doug Wilson emerging as the. Definer of that term as the agreed upon the consensus is whatever

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Christian nationalism is, that's the person who is at the top of it more than anyone else.

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That's the person who's leading the charge. He owns the brand. Now, some of you might not like that.

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I'm not saying whether it's good or bad, I'm just saying what it is. In our, it might be, you know, other people might try to take it away from him.

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Other people might like the fact that because they view it negatively, that he, they don't like him now. And they think it's a mistake for this to happen.

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That's the reality though, that it, the consensus I think has formed. That was the moment I saw that CNN interview.

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I thought Doug Wilson's not only the resistance because of Christian nationalism and that he's not only the leader of that, but he's a leader.

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I think now broadly speaking in, if you want to call it the evangelical reformed wing might even be broader than that, to be honest, but I think at least the reformed wing of evangelicalism, he is, he's emerged as the alternative.

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The there's a competing positive visions. Some people don't have even fully formed positive visions, but there's competing visions that will be the alternative to whatever liberalism is.

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Whatever we've been living in. We know that's not good. What are we going to do next? What's the next thing? And I think this is the culmination of many experiences, but it's the agreement between left and right

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CNN. And I don't need to go over all the social media with you, but yes, I've been keeping an eye on who's saying what.

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And I would say on the other side, it's the, it's the, your terms are acceptable.

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It's the agreement between enough conservative Christians and the

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CNN to say, this is what it looks like. This is kind of what we're heading towards. Um, now there might be a shelf life on that, but for now, and I think for the foreseeable future, the next few years, unless something drastic happens, that's.

07:41

What Christian nationalism quote unquote is going to look like. It's going to be what's going on in Moscow, Idaho. It's going to be what that CNN, uh, feature.

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And of course went on and talked about, um, taking dominion through businesses, the forming businesses.

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It talks about, uh, male patriarchy and leadership roles and, uh, sort of like a, a self, an in -group preference and a self -sustaining, self -made, uh, kind of holistic, uh, focus and building an alternative community with people who share the same similar vision, at least similar vision.

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So I'm, I'm calling it as I see it. That's what I see. And that's, uh, I think it was, it's been sort of a struggle to get to this point because of all the competing.

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Uh, I mean, you have Steven Wolf's version of Christian nationalism. You have the statement on Christian nationals, and that's just in the reformed world.

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Then you have the God and country type of Christian nationalism, quote unquote, uh, with people like Marjorie Taylor green.

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And I think even, uh, Lauren Bobart and the charismatic wing of Christianity, you have the pejorative, the term, uh, the way that it's used, according to the left, you, you have all these different things, and I think there was kind of a consensus when that story broke.

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So that's what I see out there. And, um, yeah, some of you, even in the chat, some of you think this is good.

09:07

I don't, you know, I don't know at all. Some of you might think this is bad. We're going to talk obviously about other things. We're talking about James Dobson.

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We're going to talk about, uh, all the people in the thumbnail for this video. So I don't even remember who's all in the thumbnail,

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J .D. Greer, Walter Strickland, David Gibbs, the third from the

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Gibbs law firm. Who else? There's a bunch we're going to talk about cracker barrel, all of this stuff, but it's all within,

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I think this frame of branding and rebranding. We, we live in a hyper branded age, lots of gimmicks, lots of curated images.

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It's easy to curate an image. You can do it on your phone. You don't always even have to present an authentic image, even though people want authenticity.

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Uh, they're inundated with images, whether they're deceptive or not all around us, terms flying around.

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What do they mean? The short shelf life of these terms, it makes it hard even to define people and to figure people are changing sides and tribes and, uh, writing this person off and then the next day they're friends, that's what's going on.

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And I think it's going to accelerate. I think part of its technology, part of it though, is just the fractured world we live in.

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I was reading for the patrons. I'm going to be doing a survey of the anti -federalist papers.

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So I've read all the federalist papers. I've read all the anti -federalist papers. I've read some books about the controversy surrounding the constitutional convention.

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There was a great biography of, of Patrick Henry. I just went through, I went through, uh, Brian McClanahan's book on J Alexander Hamilton.

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And one of the things that you just keep seeing people warn about from the founding generation, there is a factions.

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There's a suspicion that factions easily form. Now they're talking about geographical factions, people who live in certain areas, have certain interests.

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They're, they're bound to certain activities, loyalties, and business.

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Uh, engagements. So if in a commercial state, you're not going to be as concerned about agrarian things and in agrarian state, you're not going to be as concerned about commercial things that's going to influence the way that you collect taxes and everything else.

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And to form a federal union of these diverse

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States while keeping them together for the purposes of, uh, regulating things like trade and common defense, you have to have some compromises.

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And it was a difficult thing. They, and George Washington even warns in his farewell address, uh, careful, careful of foreign alliances, careful of factions, careful of the party spirit.

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These parties will get you into trouble. Remember who you are. You're all Americans. And here's the things that bind you together.

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Well, if he could see the world we live in now. That factional spirit is on steroids and it's not bound completely land as part of it, but it's not bound to land.

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It is, it transcends land now. And it's, um, I think land should be a very strong identity formation, uh, factor, but it's, it's, it's your internet tribe.

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It's who you, who are you in signal chats with? Who do you follow on X or Instagram or Tik TOK?

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Uh, who do you like? A lot of it. I mean, when you watch reels, which is what a lot of young people do, right?

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You're taking an information, whether you realize it or not. Even if it's entertainment, it's standup comedians.

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You're taking an information. It's forming you. It is, it's giving you inputs.

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It's steering you towards things. The algorithm catches it, right? We all know this. And you are actually forming the way that you perceive the world based on the, these experiences to some extent.

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Video of course, does not allow for reflection as much as reading does, or even listening to a lecture that's live where you can ask questions afterward.

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It's just short sound bites. It's there, it's gone. And you,

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I think a lot of people lack the discernment to realize, is it the information that I like? It was attracting me to this particular figure or movement or video style.

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Is it because what is being said is true? Is it because it's helpful and practical?

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Is it pragmatic? Is it because I just happened to like that color and that style and the way that person looks personally.

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And so I'm going to believe what they say because of that. I think a lot of people don't know they just, they're just taking it in.

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And, and so this leads to, I think even more tribalism. If you kind of slide into groups, many people do.

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And I think it's important to have our convictions firm as Christians. We need to have our convictions firm.

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I'm, I'm prepared to preach this Sunday at a grace Baptist church in Highland falls,

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New York, which is near West point. And I'm going to be talking about the end of Isaiah or Isaiah, according to the

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British. And you have through the book of Isaiah judgment, judgment, judgment, blessings.

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Of course, the whole old Testament really has this blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. And you get to the last chapter of Isaiah and God has all these judgments, but he, but there's always this little element of grace and he says, you know, the kind of person that I actually will allow into my kingdom, the kind of person

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I bestow grace on. And it all boils down to really one thing, fearing the

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Lord and the humility attached to that. Do you fear the Lord? Are you humble? Theme that runs throughout scripture.

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I've been trying to memorize Psalm 25. I didn't even notice it. I mean,

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I I'm like, I've been for so long. It's hard. The older you get, it gets harder to memorize things.

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I just noticed, I think it was yesterday or the day before. The core message of that Psalm. And it's a beautiful Psalm.

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It starts off with a prayer for protection from enemies.

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It goes on to describe the character and nature of God. And in that description, it talks about the way that God deals with men.

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And there's two things that seem contradictory. David says on the one hand,

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God will punish evil doers. He is a just God and we ought to fear him.

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We ought to do right. That is the righteous person that he's going to reward. And on the other hand,

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David says, guess what? I've sinned greatly. And so for the sake of your name, forgive me because you honor covenant keepers.

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And I'm trying to reconcile this in my mind. And I'm like, okay, God's going to punish sin.

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He rewards the righteous. David's saying, I'm not righteous. So how's David going to get rewarded?

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It's because David part of God's covenant, part of the righteousness.

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It's baked into the righteousness that David's describing is humility, repentance, fear of the

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Lord. That's why that's the only way it's the center. Everyone's a sinner. It's the center though, who knows they're a sinner, repents of the sin and direction, not perfection.

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But their direction of their life is I keep God's law. Part of that keeping God's law is

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I repent when I sin. That's the humility God's looking for, but there must be in a knowledge of who

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God is to have that to fear the Lord. You need to know something about him.

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You need to have some convictions. You need to know his law. That means ethical views. So really in the opening to this podcast,

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I haven't gotten over anything newsworthy yet, we're almost 20 minutes in, but I think this is a good point that needs to be made when you're consuming information or maybe you're producing information.

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You could be an influencer. Everyone's an influencer on some level, right? You ought to have some convictions about what you're talking about.

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Be careful of making snap judgments based on vibes. I'm not saying vibes are bad. I'm just saying, don't let them form your core convictions.

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Let the fear of the Lord drive your core convictions. Let the circumstances

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God has put you in define your responsibilities. Ponder things, reflect on things.

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Don't be plugged into the internet 24 seven and arguing, getting, going from zero to a hundred, getting irate upon things that maybe you haven't reflected on.

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I think if we all did that, it would change the discourse a bit online for the better, for the better.

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But yes, terms are flying around. Um, we're filtering into tribes and those kinds of things.

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And we want to make sure as we do that, when we stand for convictions, there actually are convictions and they actually make sense.

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And we're not making stuff up on the fly. It's a trend. It's a trend. I see it's a trend. I see all over the place and people become the main advocates for positions that they've recently taken and it's whether right or wrong, it's positions that haven't, they haven't marinated in yet and they could form new positions because of a new direction things go in the coming months, be careful of that kind of thing.

18:45

I think we're to a point with the Christian nationalism debate though, where there's a solidification. And I think that CNN interview was the solidification.

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You want to know what it is? That's what it is now. That's what I think most people are going to agree upon.

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And, uh, there's, I suppose a stability associated with it, but it took years to get to that point.

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There's still going to be people who disagree that Doug Wilson's the one who embodies or represents this. So, uh,

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I didn't, I wasn't actually expecting on saying all of that, but, uh, I think it's hopefully important for all of you out there.

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And, um, I have so many things to share with you. So why don't we get to them? I want to, before I dive into everything, just share this with you real quick.

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This is my speaking schedule for the next few months. And if you notice

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August 28th through 30th, so that's next week, I'm going to be in Batavia, Ohio for the world, right in front of you conference.

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And if you go to my website, johnharrismedia .com, you can sign up. There is a way to sign up.

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Uh, it's hard for me to give you the link because it's at event bright .com. Best way is just go to johnharrismedia .com

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find that link, but if you're anywhere near the Cincinnati, Ohio area, I would love to see you.

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And of course the men's retreats coming up, musicandmasculinity .com. And that's all I'll say about that for now.

20:21

Let's get into a few of these stories. Shall we? Uh, we started with this discussion about Christian nationalism.

20:29

Um, I think a lot of the environment we're in today is determined by on shallow things like branding terms or branding, everything's branding.

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So in that spirit of branding, I want to play this little clip from the CEO of Cracker Barrel.

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On a new branding or logo that they have developed.

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The feedback's been overwhelmingly positive that people like what we're doing. I'll give you another soundbite.

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I actually happened to be in Orlando last week with all of our managers. We bring them together and once every other year, and the number one question that I got asked

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Michael was, how can I get a remodel? When can I get a remodel? How do I get on the list? So, because the feedback and the buzz is so good, not only from our customers, but from our team members, they want to work in a, in a wonderful restaurant.

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So we're doing everything for our guests and our team members. When Julian Messina was wonderful. All right.

21:25

Everything's just great. Yeah. Right. Here's the Cracker Barrel stock on the NASDAQ. It's down, um, quite a bit over it's tanked.

21:33

We'll just put it that way since they released this brand, the rebrand, the stock has just tanked.

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So here, here's also a, uh, I put this together, just, uh, combined two, uh, pictures

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I saw. So you can see the evolution, uh, or de -evolution of the Cracker Barrel logo.

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So we have 1969 to 1977. It's, I don't know if that's like a binder

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D font. It's, it's like an old Western type old, you know, like the saloon font you'd expect in a

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Western movie. That's the Cracker Barrel font. Old country stores also emphasize there.

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It's more prominent than what you see from 1977 to 2015.

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And there's three changes that are made. It's minor changes. And then finally a drastic change in 2025.

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Uh, not only is it just the, the term Cracker Barrel and it's by the way, the font is less, uh,

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I guess, traditional kind of frontier it's more modern looking.

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And it's just a, it's a, it's a shape it's, it's not even, it's like a badge you'd put on your shirt for your name or something like, you know, at a conference.

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It's kind of weird. And then, uh, some of their branding is just CB. It's not even

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Cracker Barrel. It's just CB, you know, it's, it reminds me of like campus crusade went to crew, right?

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The nickname becomes more important, uh, than the actual branding.

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And of course, a lot of these rebrands, people are saying this is woke and a lot of rebrands are. And the

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CEO, some people have dug into her history. She's woke and all this. Okay. I got it. It's not just that though.

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That's it's not just wokeness. That's driving this. This is, this is more than that.

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It's modernity. It is, uh, make everything becomes a logo, right?

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So, so like when Cracker Barrel first started old country store, it was, it was a frontier font, but it was just telling you, this is the establishment that you are entering.

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That's the name of it. That's our name. That's how you identify it in contrast to other establishments.

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But it describes it's a term of description, right? It's an, when you walk into Cracker Barrel, it's an old country store.

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Now the old country store is gone. I think that's actually more significant than getting rid of the guy and the barrel, uh, which every people are joking about that, that it's anti -white or something,

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I don't know, maybe, but, um, is it an old country store anymore? Is that what it is?

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Or is it just like, um, a modern looking diner, sort of like a neo -traditional style that it it's flattened.

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It's a cartoonized kind of distilled, uh, neutral vacuous, uh, sterile version of what was before.

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That's really what's going on. It's the boiling down. Modernity really is this tendency to boil down, to, to centralize and pull everything on the perimeter into the one thing, the one principle, the one, uh, central thing that you want everyone to focus on.

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So you're trying to get everyone's attention. What is all branding is right? Like, how do I stand out? What makes me different?

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And people will make up things or they'll, they'll shift who they are, or, or maybe they do have something that's makes them stand out, but they, that like becomes the thing.

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People have short attention spans. What's the thing, right? My eye only has two, 2 .5 seconds to look at whatever you have.

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And then I'm off to the next thing. So, I mean, it's kind of complicated. You got a whole picture of a guy in a barrel and an old country store.

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I don't have time to read all that. I want my IDA to, to just kind of, it's like impressionism and art, right?

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I'm going to just like, sort of, I'm going to get the, the snap, uh, picture this, the, the, the central kind of shape.

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And, uh, and that's going to evoke a feeling within me. Actually, it's more like modern art, I suppose, not impressionism, but it's going to evoke,

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I don't know. I'm attracted to it perhaps because I like the color and I like the shape.

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And that's, that's going to be the little hook because I don't have time to look at these other things. It's too complicated, right?

25:54

It's like that's whether it's ideology. I mean, I've explained ideology before is this reductionistic impulse to reduce everything to the one thing and to make an interpretive grid that is all encompassing, all inclusive.

26:12

Um, it's, uh, you know, feminism reduces everything to give you an example to the patriarchy, every problem, every success, it's a one or a zero.

26:21

Right? Well, when it comes to branding and architecture and design and logos, and there's something kind of similar going on, and I'm not saying logos are all wrong, but we've seen the same thing with churches, right?

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It's like the formula now is it looks like a strip mall. It's looks like it's a new fast food restaurant.

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You, you, you don't even know kids. The logo is so simple. And then you walk in and it's like, you know, you get your coffee, you get the pictures on the wall, look like you're in a bank, uh, it's smiling faces and casual people and superficial conversation.

27:00

And that's the formula. That's how, you know, you're loved. Apparently, uh, you don't want to walk past dead people on the way.

27:05

And that would be a bummer cemeteries. You shouldn't have those, uh, steeple. I mean, that kind of looks imposing kind of prominent.

27:14

We're trying to fit in guys. It's, you know, you don't want to do that. Uh, too many crosses, you know, it's not a little bit of scandal there.

27:20

I don't know, unless you can like make this cross like a plus sign and create a logo out of it. I don't know.

27:25

I don't know about the cross thing. You know, I'm just telling you, this is like the typical modern church and it's all under the guise of right motivations and attracting people.

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But Cracker Barrel is doing the same thing. Like all the, the corporate, it's just a corporate world.

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That's what it is. And the problem with Cracker Barrel doing it though, is it's like you had one job.

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You cornered the market on people who wanted what you offered because no one else was offering it.

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And there's still some people who like to see some farm equipment on the wall who like to remember. Yeah, that's what grandma and grandpa had.

28:00

That's what people used to live that way. I'd love to explain to my kid. Uh, that's how they used to wash clothes.

28:06

That's how they used to plow the field. That's how they used to take pictures in the serious pose because you had to stand still.

28:14

Um, ABC, you fill in the blank, all of those things from yesteryear, all the good, true, valuable things that now you can't get anywhere else.

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Uh, you can go to Cracker Barrel and you can get them. It's like the one thing they still had going for them and they decided we're just going to kind of crash that.

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And I think there's a lesson in that for all of us, especially churches. What's the one thing you have that's really does separate you.

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I'm talking branding here a little bit, I suppose. But what, you know, what does separate you from the rest of the corporate entities out there?

28:48

Maybe it's the fact that you have the truth of the word of God and that you're not afraid to talk about death and what happens after death and eternal things, and you're an institution of heaven and you redirect man, you orient him towards the higher things, what other companies, what other institutions are doing that?

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But you sacrifice it to look like all of them, to be in a competitive market with them, to out edge them.

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Somehow it doesn't make any sense. And Cracker Barrel is learning. I think this lesson the hard way now, if they were a different company, it might've worked, but it's kind of like against the very core identity of who they are, but they thought it would help them.

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I mean, the stock's been going down for a while, but it's now really going down. So rather than leaning into who they are and their identity, they decide we'll just take a nosedive, right?

29:43

So in that vein, uh, I want to, let's see, I had an order to this and I'm out of order now, so I'm trying to think what's the next thing.

29:52

Um, I do want to kind of shift gears and talk about the, this is part of rebranding, but, um, it's something that Michael Foster, he calls it the great rehab.

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Now I put out a video, I don't know about this, uh, eight months ago, and I think

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I called it the pivot or something like that, but I'm talking about the same thing and it's essentially rebranding.

30:17

Okay. So you saw Cracker Barrel rebrand. There's another rebranding that's happening right now.

30:23

And, uh, it's, it's the move away from wokeness. If you want to call what happened during 2020 wokeness, and it's the move toward a brand that will help get attention again and recapture some of the support that's been lost.

30:40

So Michael Foster, he talks about this. He says that a large portions of what many thought were conservative or modern institutions were exposed as something else entirely.

30:50

Yeah. No kidding. I was one of the ones exposing that stuff, but three things happened. First, Trump was reelected.

30:56

Second, new voices in the reformed world moved in. And he says, actually, this is interesting.

31:02

I'll read this paragraph early on. They thrive in the chaos by asking the questions others wouldn't. But once the dust settled, many pivoted hard into racial issues and weird.

31:10

He's really misspelled weird. Maybe he did that. Ironically, it's a weird spelling of weird, weird interests that didn't resonate broadly.

31:17

They also splintered into endless fights and factions. No kidding. What could have been a unified movement with real staying power fraction in a dozen little tribes instead of becoming major winners.

31:27

They ended up as minor players. Now that's the second thing. I'll just say the third thing, and I'll come back to the second. The third thing he says is the compromise leaders had powerful friends, former colleagues, seminary buddies, and allies who had avoided the same landmines began quietly helping them back into the spotlight.

31:41

All right. So he doesn't tell you who he's talking about. I know he's talking about, I don't even have to ask him.

31:47

I know, I know what this is about. This is about this stuff. This is about what's happening at what

31:54

Andrew Walker just did with kind of rehabilitating J .D. Greer. It's about Walter Strickland now doing these courses for the

32:04

North American mission board and the Southern Baptist convention. Um, it may be to some extent, it's also Alistair bake who's, this wasn't really 2020, but he's, uh, giving the, given the opportunity from expositors collective to explain himself, right.

32:18

And what he really meant by giving advice to attend a gay wedding ceremony. So I think that's what he's talking about.

32:25

Now I'm going to go back to 0 .2 here on Michael Foster's piece. And just,

32:31

I, I'm going to put a little meat on the bones here. Cause I think I know what he's talking about here. He's talking about Joel Webben.

32:37

He's talking about Ogden. He's talking probably about Steven Wolf. He's talking about some of the people who have written for American reformer.

32:43

He's talking about, um, probably, I don't even know, maybe some elements of G3.

32:50

So, uh, James White and Jeff Durbin. And so, so this is like everything that spans from theonomy to natural law, uh, to it, it's kind of a broad group.

33:02

It's the group that wasn't like, if you rewind and you go back 10 years and you think to yourself, okay, a decade ago, who was popular?

33:14

Now G3, I don't think even 10 years ago, G3 was really, they had ascended. They were a thing, but they were, um, yeah, maybe, maybe if we go back 15 years, this would work better.

33:25

I don't know. So let's do 15, 15 years. Okay. G3 probably hadn't really heard of it. Uh, who, who are the big players in evangelical

33:33

Christianity or reformed evangelical Christianity? We'll say you got the gospel coalition.

33:38

You got T4G. Um, you got, uh, you have the MacArthur's, uh, coalition and the shepherd's conference and all that.

33:46

You got Ligonier and R .C. Sproul's coalition. You have Alistair Begg to some extent, although he's partnering with Calvary chapel.

33:52

His influence is broader. You do have Doug Wilson, but he has not ascended really. The, you wouldn't have probably heard of him unless you were in a certain circle.

34:03

Now he has a lot of influence, like a lot of institutional influence, uh, homeschooling curriculum and private schools that are associated with him and a denomination, the

34:14

CREC. And, um, I don't even know at all, to be honest with you, a huge publishing company, they have an app that's widely used by people who don't even like him, they'll use the app.

34:24

Uh, they have, have, um, they just have a lot of stuff. And with that institution building comes influence.

34:36

Oh, excuse me. I have a cough and a cold a little bit here. So Doug Wilson, right? Um, you have

34:42

G3 ascends and they feature people like, uh, James white. And he,

34:48

I listened to James white before that, but now he's gaining a little bit more prominence. Jeff Durbin of course, comes onto the show.

34:54

You have, um, who else? I mean, I'm blanking now. Uh, you have even like minor figures like Dale Partridge and, um, there's all these guys that are kind of getting in on the patriarchy brand.

35:09

Michael Foster's one of them to some extent. And he's getting in on that. He's writing books. I come in. And what was the 20

35:16

January, 2019 and AD Robles was kind of like right before me and we're on YouTube and we're kind of the only people that are really criticizing.

35:25

I shouldn't say the only, but on YouTube. So you have pulpit and pen and stuff, but like on YouTube, where are the main figures that are criticizing the social justice movement in evangelical circles is pre 2020.

35:37

And kind of under me, a platform built. So I wasn't even intending that, but it just happens because there's a demand that's being filled.

35:44

Uh, you have then fast forward. Uh, I don't even know when the haunted cosmos podcast became popular.

35:52

I don't really listen to it, but I know there's a lot of people who do. My brother actually likes it. So he sent me episodes before it's,

35:57

I don't know. I I'm not, I'm maybe I'm weird. I just, I'm like, you could, you could have told me that in about three minutes.

36:04

Like I didn't need all the melodrama and like, that's just who I am. No, no criticism of it. It's well done.

36:09

I'm just, I'm like, you know, just, just do the Scooby doo thing at the end unmask it.

36:16

Oh, it's demons. Okay. Got it. When sleep apnea demons, that was 30 seconds.

36:21

I got it. Right. That's just who I am. But, but the show is tremendously popular. I've even recommended it to people who are in the world that are like into,

36:28

I'm in New York, so there's a lot of witchcraft and stuff and they're into the occult or whatever. And I'm like, have you, have you checked this out?

36:34

Cause I want them to hear the gospel. Right. Anyway, side tangent there. Uh, that that's for fairly recent

36:40

Joel weapons podcast, fairly recent. Um, but, but there's, there's a lot of jostling, a lot of new voices.

36:49

That's what Michael Foster is talking about here. Cause he's talking about the reformed world and he's saying there seemed to be for a split second, a united front forming.

36:56

Yeah. It was around the term Christian nationalist. And before that it was just resistance to the 2020 ethos, whatever that was really, it was, it was sort of a negative thing that was binding everyone together.

37:08

But then when it came time to, to do a positive movement and Christian nationalism becomes one of the terms, not everyone uses the term.

37:16

I I've never used the term to describe myself, but I was very sympathetic to people who wanted to use it positively.

37:22

Many of them, at least I wanted to give them a hearing at least for what they were saying.

37:29

Uh, but you know, it's not really theonomy anymore, right? It's this Christian national thing. Well, who's going to take, is it theonomous natural law giving you,

37:35

I guess, a brief history. But now my, the tweet that I made last year, I made a tweet.

37:41

I remember this. It's like fall of last year, I think I was like, look, the Christian nationalist movement is fractured.

37:46

And I got, I got blowback for it. I got people private chatting me, especially like I'm off script and all this, and I'm like, guys,

37:54

I'm just telling you what I see out there. The, there were, there was a lot of unification and working together and it's, it's become splintered off even more into different visions and tribes and new coalition.

38:08

That's just how it is. That's the world we're in. That's what Michael Foster saying. He's saying there's, because of that, there's now a new opening.

38:15

What that, that little window that was there post 2020, where you could have had, let's say the guys who did not, they, they didn't make the limelight before, but they now had an opportunity to show themselves to be virtuous.

38:30

An alternative positive vision. They could have outmaneuvered

38:36

TGC and Christianity today and TV, T4G, and they, they, they could have done something new, but it shattered.

38:45

It doesn't mean there still isn't influence from those people. You know, I would be one of them, I suppose. It doesn't mean there's not opportunities to build this and that, but that, that moment where there was like a, a scale issue and it could have, if people were in agreement enough, the scale issue could have been solved by shared resources.

39:03

That moment is gone. That's what he's saying. And in the wake of that, that power vacuum, there is a reemergence of the same old figures.

39:12

The figures that drove us into the ditch in 2020 now would like you to have a little amnesia from the accident and forget who actually had the car keys.

39:25

That's what's going on. That's and it's Michael's. I think, right. I think it's actually working to some extent.

39:32

People, a lot of the there's normal, common people out there. They, they looked at the excesses of 2020 and they're like, I don't want that.

39:38

I don't, whatever that was. I don't want that, but I don't want to go to a, B or C and they see things, especially online, getting increasingly edgy, increasingly provocative and transgressive.

39:49

And they're not a positive vision that maybe they relate to. And there's a big group of people out there.

39:57

That's just been kind of like open. And, uh, and I think mostly open to guys who are going to give them a positive vision that usually is a pastor in the evangelical world, because that's, we're just trained to recognize pastoral authority.

40:11

Uh, that's, that gives you a great advantage. If you're a pastor, if you can at least have a church and claim that. I think, um, maybe someone in the political world, if they're kind of a right -leaning

40:21

Christian, but that's the situation that we're in. And there's a cast of characters that are saying,

40:28

I, I think I can kind of go rebrand myself. I, yes, I talked about woke things before, but I'm not going to talk about that now.

40:36

I'll talk about this and hope people forget. So I'm going to give you a few examples of that, because I I've been exposing these guys for a long time and I'll tell you what,

40:45

I still think they're dangerous, especially if they don't repent. That's the thing. Like it's like I said before, what does

40:50

God require? The fear of the Lord? What is that? Repentance humility. I was wrong. You know,

40:56

I was so wrong on such a fundamental issue. I drove people away so fast. Maybe I got to take a breather here. You know, who did that?

41:02

Well, Rosario Butterfield. And I don't know, she wants me saying it or not. I, I just admire her because she realized she got some things wrong and she didn't take to the conference stage to, uh, this is my newfound belief that she, she, she waited, she, uh, she gained her footing, gained convictions, and she wrote a book of retractions, essentially.

41:24

And that's what is required. When you mess up egregiously on things that are fundamental, uh, especially you get bad advice, let's say you get bad advice and you realize later, man, that was really bad.

41:35

I gave a lot of people bad advice. Cause I had a big trumpet. You, you correct it as soon as you know that you did something on, you correct it, obviously, but, but then when it's time to craft the positive vision and to be the leader again of something, right.

41:50

You want to encourage women and write books for them. And in this case, then you make sure that you got your ducks in a row, make sure your convictions are solid.

41:58

And then, uh, like Davy Crockett said, be sure you're right. Go ahead. That's what you do.

42:03

That's what, that's not what these people are doing. I'm just telling you it's not. And it's so disappointing to me because it's like Christianity.

42:09

One -on -one in my mind is you just, you're a pet, you turn around, go the other direction, right?

42:15

If, if, if at least you think you were wrong now, I don't know that these people all think they're wrong, but so here's a few examples, just real quick.

42:22

Andrew Walker, I'm not going to reinvent the wheel on Andrew Walker, but I did an episode eight months ago where I pointed out all the ways that he compromised in 2020, but he was not as compromised as some, so he didn't get a lot of the limelight, but he says, this is tremendous word from JD Greer on the zero sum reality of accepting

42:38

God's word as God's authority. Now this is an

42:43

Instagram reel. I'm just telling you, I don't think this just happens. I don't think

42:50

Andrew Walker is making a move. That's not calculated already. This is calculated. So he puts this out there.

42:58

This is, I mean, this is the Southern Baptist politics too. Southern Baptist. I've explained this before. It's like run by three mobs.

43:04

One's in Nashville, one's in North Carolina, and then one's kind of the fragmented pieces of the old page

43:11

Patterson coalition, the traditionalists. And those are the three elements that basically run the convention.

43:17

You, you, JD Greer is he, he probably has dirt on people and so forth, but he's prominent on the, uh, in the

43:25

North Carolina, you know, the Kevin Eazell, Danny Aiken, Southeastern, uh, NAM sort of world, and he's the main pastor.

43:33

He was the president of the convention, uh, in that region, I would say. So, um, if you're going to get anywhere in S SBC politics, you really don't want to upset

43:41

JD Greer. You have to be nice to him. You better make sure that he doesn't make the phone calls in the background to say no to you.

43:52

So Andrew, I'm not saying that motivates Andrew necessarily. I'm just saying that, that I know how SBC politics works and it wouldn't surprise me if that's, what's behind some of this.

44:01

So, you know, maybe he just liked the real, it could be, but he, he posts this and no JD Greer's reputation, it's been terrible, uh, cause he, he messed up so bad on the diversity hire thing on the, uh, homosexuality and the whispering about sins and, uh, the

44:21

Romans one sermon. That was like one of the first videos I did in 2019 was on that Romans one sermon and on the, the me too issue.

44:29

He's just, he's been a train wreck on so many things. And of course I've exposed a lot of that.

44:35

Megan Basham has exposed a lot of that. Uh, he, this is the reputation that he's cultivated.

44:42

Now the worst thing I think for JD Greer, and this is happening right now. Is this issue with faith

44:48

Baptist Nightdale? Cause it's fresh. It's there's really no way for him to wiggle out of it. It's cut and dry.

44:53

You'll watch those document, the documentary. There's no way to wiggle out of it. The directional elders, uh, release statement to try to respond was pathetic and I pointed that out.

45:03

We have nothing to hide. And then it's like, you know, but we, we wanted to make sure that people, uh, the plaintiffs, um, were, were, or actually

45:15

I should say the, um, the, the members of first Baptist Naples who are trying to get their church back that they were, they were not allowed to share some of the things that happened in the court case.

45:29

Right. It's like, they don't, they don't want depositions of JD Greer. It's like, but we got nothing to hide. So it was such a weird contradictory letter that they put out there.

45:39

But there's new developments in that whole case, and I should have had it pulled up.

45:44

I'm going to pull it up right now. Uh, there was a story just recently from revolver news, and I want to pull it up for you, here it is, it's called the faith

45:57

Baptist files. JD Greer's woke church merger meltdown part two, three days ago, revolver news puts this out there.

46:05

There's JD Greer. I think this is the same day. Andrew Walker, maybe right after that, Andrew Walker's releasing this thing.

46:12

Anyway, revolver previously covered a viral documentary detailing the collapse of a proposed merger between mega church led by JD Greer, former president of the

46:19

SBC, America's largest process and domination and much smaller congregation faith Baptist church. And it's, it talks about the documentary combined over 700 ,000 views on YouTube.

46:31

By the way, I have tried to get larger media outlets to consider this, including Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson is

46:37

I, I'm not going to give you the intimate details here, but I haven't been able to get a lot of big media.

46:45

I was on the Lauren Robinson show talking about this, but there's not a lot of interest. And that's been the case really until Megan Bastian.

46:52

Megan's the only one that I've seen. That's been able to penetrate into more media exposure of some of these issues.

46:59

And there's probably a whole host of reasons for that, but it's not something even, even she has expressed to me, it's hard to get people in the political world, especially to notice these things.

47:08

Well, this organically without paying for any advertisements without on a small

47:14

YouTube channel was able to garner that many views it's because the people demand this, they want to know who's telling me the truth goes out there.

47:24

Turning David Gibbs, the third representing the smaller faith Baptist church in Nightdale now representing the church in the capacity of the, so not there's, there's obviously two factions here, right?

47:32

You have the defenders of faith Nightdale, and then you have the leadership, which is in league with summit church.

47:39

So this is the Gibbs is representing those who are in league with summit, the leadership there.

47:45

All right. So he told lawyers for greeters, far larger summit church that he was intentionally delaying review of a proposed court order, granting a preliminary injunction against his clients, a move in Gibbs own words meant to get faith

47:58

Baptist time to file bankruptcy prior to an order actually being entered. Gibbs sent the email on May 1st in late

48:06

February, 2024. Uh, this is, so this is all of in 2024, two members of faith Baptist sued the church before a scheduled vote.

48:13

Okay. So basically here's what happened. And here's a copy of the email or a screenshot of it.

48:19

Um, you have David Gibbs, the third advising the people he represents in leadership who are in league with summit, but in leadership at faith

48:31

Nightdale, you have him advising a slow walk on reviewing a court order.

48:40

And the reason he's doing that is to slow down the legal process, slow it down long enough so that the church can file bankruptcy.

48:54

Now, when they file bankruptcy, when leadership files bankruptcy, which is questionable in my mind, whether that was even a good legal strategy, but that's what they did, obviously it's not because he lost, but they, they, they determined they could do this unilaterally.

49:07

They didn't need con congregational approval for it. They didn't need the same mechanism they would have need for the supposed merger, which wasn't even a merger with a dissolution and in order.

49:19

Um, when you end up doing that, what it does is it frees all the actions that are taking place currently in state court.

49:26

So a preliminary injunction is issued in state court saying, Hey, this vote, the results of this vote, they don't count stop, uh, cease and desist everything because we got to figure this out before moving forward, you're not going to dissolve the church and merge it with summit, not on our watch.

49:43

No court says you can't do it. So David Gibbs says, let's slow walk. Let's buy enough time to file bankruptcy, to freeze that ruling until the bankruptcy issue is adjudicated, but the bankruptcy issue would have gotten, it's another road to drive you to the same place who ends up getting the church and all the assets summit church does that's who now this is for a

50:11

Christian to do this for a Christian to stop the, to slow walk this in order to buy time so that a bankruptcy motion can be filed, does not seem to reflect the interest of a church that cares about their congregation.

50:35

We'll put it that way. Gibbs revealed his delay tactic. We are slow rolling on our side to give the church time for, to file bankruptcy prior to an order actually be entered.

50:44

He added the other side is not thrilled having to put a, a 25 K bond two minutes later, summits attorney replied.

50:52

Thanks. That is interesting. On the other side, not being thrilled about a 25 K bond. The email contains no objection to Gibbs.

50:58

Slow rolling goes into more details. Now what's the scandal about this?

51:07

Well, I don't know if it's a scandal so much. It's just a legal maneuver that is kind of dirty.

51:13

That's what it is. And it shows what the members of faith, the defenders of faith were actually up against.

51:21

They're dealing with someone who's making the argument. Gibbs has made this argument that, uh, the church constitution summit nightdale does not, uh, it actually says in the constitution, essentially

51:38

I'm summarizing that disputes need to be solved through non -legal means arbitration mediation.

51:50

And this is wrong. This is actually a church specific matter and it's wrong to take it to the court.

51:55

Now the courts reject this. This is early on in that speed.

52:02

You would think that same spirit, if that's truly who David Gibbs is, right. Would, if that's his character, it would be demonstrated throughout the whole case.

52:13

He's committed to Christian unity. Let's solve this problem. Let's adjudicate the matter. Let's get mediation arbitration.

52:19

If we're going to be in court, let's try to get, get an amicable discussion and arrangement, but he employs the tactics you would expect instead from some kind of a corporate lawyer whose intentions are to get, get the best situation financially for their client.

52:41

We've talked about the difference, the disparity between the financial treasure chest that the defenders of faith had, and then the leadership of night

52:51

Dale who are connected to summit. If that doesn't make you upset,

52:58

I don't really know what will, because David Gibbs raised, I think it was at 20, 22, he raised about,

53:04

I think it's $3 million if I'm not mistaken. Because his, he's got one of those law firms.

53:10

It's like some of those other prominent law firms, whether it's J seculos or Matt Stavers, it's like, we, where are the ones that are doing the religious

53:17

Liberty thing? Where are the ones that are protecting your church? Where are the ones you need to give to a 501 C three.

53:24

And, or, you know, I think it's, I think he has got a 501 C three. Anyway, I wouldn't give to him.

53:31

I'm just telling you, look at it. This puts a, such a bad taste in my mouth for the guy. I just wouldn't,

53:37

I wouldn't do it. All right. So Greer, obviously this is Greer's name back in the news because of this.

53:43

And you have simultaneously Andrew Walker from Southern seminary wanting to promote

53:52

Greer, the theologian Greer, going back to the things that normal Christians resonate with God's word,

54:02

God's authority, when in doubt, cut the political stuff and go back to things that aren't as controversial.

54:10

Walter Strickland is now doing what sound to be scripted master classes.

54:18

They're calling them for the North American mission board master classes, which is interesting.

54:26

I didn't, I mean, white horse in, I know took him on, but I, I don't need to give you more information.

54:32

If you've listened to this podcast, cause there's been, I put out books that have this information. There's also many episodes that have this information.

54:39

And the information is that Walter Strickland has numerous times. It's a pattern with him promoted a false gospel.

54:45

I've pointed it out. I've argued the case. There's really the right thing to do is just for him to repent of it, to publicly repent of it as loud as he proclaimed his false gospel, his liberation theology driven gospel that merges works that merges law and not even a right

55:03

Christian law with grace. Well, none of that happened.

55:09

Instead you have the church planting arm of the Southern Baptists. So this is under who's the,

55:16

I'm actually kind of curious here. Does it say no? Cause I'm on the masterclass website.

55:24

Um, I'm, I'm trying to try to remember who's still, uh, the head of NAM. Is it, is it chip?

55:30

Is it chip something? Let me see if I can find out it's no, sorry. Name is

55:35

Kevin Eazell. I knew that. Sorry. What, who am I thinking of then? Who's the head of send his send different than them?

55:43

Who's the director of the send network. All right. I'm going to do this one last search. And if I can't find it,

55:48

I can't find it. Vance Pittman. That's what it says. Vance Pittman, president of send network.

55:56

Okay. I know that face. I'm sure I can't remember why I know that Trevin wax, the vice president of NAM also on the gospel coalition.

56:04

They, the, these organizations are so, uh, there's so much overlap between them. It's like the revolving door theory.

56:12

Of managerial elitism. Anyway, send is doing these masterclasses and three of them,

56:17

I think now are Walter Strickland. So what's he talking about?

56:26

Basic stuff. He's talking about faith and repentance.

56:31

By the way, I listened to it and I was just casually listening. Sounded pretty good. It sounded scripted.

56:37

Actually sounded pretty good though. I was like, why don't you just repent of all the times that you got this wrong? And I don't know, put this up there, but it's a, this is my retraction, but now they're not going to do that.

56:50

The function of scripture with Walter Strickland inerrancy of scripture with Walter strict Strickland. And I think these are all, so these are part of new churches masterclass.

57:00

And then there's theology masterclass. And I guess he's involved with that too, somewhere. So I don't know if that's maybe, maybe they're all the same thing, but Walter Strickland, he's still out there enjoying prominence and it's, it's not the liberation theology stuff.

57:17

When he was before speaking, people would have him on because he was going to be the black voice, quote unquote. He was going to tell us what the

57:23

Bible said about justice and our duty to those who are less fortunate. And now he's not doing that stuff, right?

57:30

It's not, that's not the thing. It's it's go back to the very basic things that all Christians resonate with. And, and I, it works to some extent.

57:37

I'm not going to lie. I think it does. People will see it and they'll hear something bad about Walter Strickland.

57:44

And it's like, well, yeah, he told the New York times he was teaching liberation theology. And then you go to with the latest thing that NAM is putting out there and you're like, well, this sounds good.

57:52

I mean, he's talking about faith and repentance. It sounds biblical. That's how it's done.

57:59

You got Alistair Begg out there, Alistair Begg. Now Alistair Begg situation is a little bit different.

58:05

It wasn't 2020, but it was the same kind of woke ethos. He told an older lady that she should go and attend.

58:14

I don't remember. It was daughter, sons, homosexual wedding ceremony, bring a gift. And he got a lot of flack for it.

58:21

He got pulled off some radio networks and here he is talking about it now. And this is the, uh, this is the defense,

58:28

I guess, that we're going to get. No, if everybody in the room's aware of an incident that occurred maybe a year, a year and a half ago or something like that, where, um, and you could if you didn't wouldn't mind telling us exactly what it was.

58:41

I mean, I, I, I know, but obviously, you know, better. So, uh, but it was a situation where Alistair gave some council advice and then he took a ton of heat for the council that he had given.

58:54

So do you mind sharing that? Yeah. Um, well, yeah, I just say this, that I think, uh, public perception,

59:01

I'm not actually, if people said, what do you, what do you know about Begg? Uh, I don't think compassion is necessarily the first word they would use.

59:11

Um, I, I mean, I'm not trying to be unkind to myself, but I think realistically they might say he's very direct.

59:17

They might say he's funny. I mean, they could say a bunch of stuff, but I don't think, say compassion. So now in my one attempt at compassion,

59:26

I should have known better. I don't do compassion.

59:32

I do compassion. All hell breaks loose against me. It's like, now what, what the crazy thing about it was it, the, the, the, we all get tons of mail from the radio.

59:44

There's so much mail and I read tons and tons of it, either in its initial form or whatever it gets to me.

59:53

And, uh, I received a letter from a grandmother with a picture of her granddaughter who, who, when

01:00:04

I, when I looked, before I read the letter, I got the picture. I thought it was a joke, I mean, a bad joke, but it was, it was a girl that had already begun to grow facial hair.

01:00:15

And so she, it was, it was a very sad looking picture anyway. So the grandmother writes this letter.

01:00:23

I read it. I think Joey was in the room when I read it. I put it down. I said, this is a fearful thing.

01:00:28

I put it down and I left it. And one day, maybe three weeks later, my assistant said, are you ever going to reply to that lady's letter?

01:00:39

And I said, you know, I don't want to get into it. I'm not going to try and write a reply. I said, why don't you phone her up?

01:00:46

And so I phoned her up. And in the conversation on the phone, that's how it went. She said, you know, they're going to get married.

01:00:52

What do I do? I said, well, you got to talk to your husband. You got to think it out. And then I said to her, does your granddaughter know your views?

01:01:01

Oh, yes, she says she knows. Does she know that you're opposed to her lifestyle because of what the

01:01:07

Bible says? Oh, yes, she knows that too. And so I said, so she obviously assumes that whatever this event is that there's going to take place, she would assume on the strength of that, that you would not be present.

01:01:21

She said, yeah, that's right. I said, so the only way that you could disavow of that notion would be to be present.

01:01:30

I said, because if she knows that you're opposed to that and you show up, she's not going to say, oh, my grandmother came because she has changed her view.

01:01:40

She's going to say my grandmother came because she loves me. We're going to stop it right there.

01:01:46

He goes on and it's the same. He's looking down, kind of hunched over.

01:01:55

That's not the Alistair Begg I'm used to. He's got the look of shame in this particular interview.

01:02:03

He's not he's usually quick with his words. He's very smart guy. I've met him and. I think he's actually a very kind and gracious man, he's a funny man.

01:02:16

You're seeing a man who's troubled, though, and I don't know whether he's troubled by his.

01:02:23

It doesn't seem like he's troubled by what he said. Except for the fact that maybe it was the context in which he said it maybe wasn't wise, but it seems like more of it is he's troubled by the reaction that he got in the lack of the benefit of the doubt that he thinks he should have gotten.

01:02:39

We went over this at the time, but I'll reiterate. He gave very bad advice,

01:02:45

John MacArthur actually said this afterward, he talked to Alistair Begg on the phone and he said. Why would you say that publicly, why you're using this one example, this very exact particular example, but then you're publicly broadcasting it and how many people are going to hear that and try to apply that.

01:03:06

I don't even, I don't know the full situation, but I don't even think it was wise to say that to the grandmother.

01:03:12

What's the granddaughter going to think when the grandmother shows up, knowing the grandmother is against same sex weddings, but showed up anyway.

01:03:22

Well, she might think my grandmother loves me. She might also think there's hope that I can convince my grandmother that this sin is acceptable.

01:03:31

If my grandmother is just able to experience the joy or the happiness, whatever that I have in this arrangement, it doesn't just send a message to the daughter though.

01:03:44

It sends a message to everyone else who's in attendance. Do they know that the grandmother disapproves?

01:03:51

Make it a different sin, make it something else. That's a violation at a very basic level.

01:03:57

Okay. I mean, there are ceremonial procedures that someone may not do themselves agree with.

01:04:08

Sometimes even in different national or faith traditions, there are things that are considered to be an honor.

01:04:15

For example, let me, let me say a what do they call it? When a,

01:04:22

I know Lutherans have this, I think Anglican like liturgical conditions have a situation when you're usually an early teenager, you're approved.

01:04:33

I can't remember the name of it. Why can't I remember it? Um, you're confirmed. I think it's confirmation if I'm not mistaken, but there's usually some kind of a ceremony attached to it, right?

01:04:43

So you go to a church, someone's confirmed or, or a baby baptism. Maybe that's a better example. It's a baby baptism, you know, you're.

01:04:50

And you're going, you've been asked to be the godfather or whatever, and you're not

01:04:55

Catholic, or maybe, maybe it's not, it's a Protestant one. You're not a Anglican or Presbyterian or whatever you're going.

01:05:02

I think that's actually different. And maybe that's not even a right thing, but I think that's different than this because it's, it's a, it's a, an occasion where you're bestowing a particular honor.

01:05:14

The community's bestowing it. And it, there's a recognition that there are good things attached to this.

01:05:20

Even if you don't believe in. Pedo baptism or confirmation, whatever it is.

01:05:27

Uh, you are there because you are to hold someone accountable to something.

01:05:33

That's good. Let's say like there's this, this good thing attached to it that everyone recognizes. Yeah. We want this baby to grow up and, uh, walk in the ways of the

01:05:43

Lord. And I'm here because I want to make sure that happens too. Even though I don't think this, this whole ceremony is meaningful in the way, fully the way that you say it's meaningful.

01:05:52

That still may be wrong, but I think that's different. I think, you know, confirmation is different going to a same sex wedding.

01:05:59

There's, there's nothing you can pick out. That's redeemable at all about it. Nothing, not one thing. Uh, oh, the, the cake was decorated.

01:06:07

Nice. Yeah. I don't think anyone's thinking, oh, the grandmother came to admire the cake. No, the grandmother's there because she's a participant.

01:06:14

And if she gives a gift, my goodness, you're, you are a participant. Now you're not there to object.

01:06:20

You're not there as a reporter. Who's neutral. You're not, you were there because that's your family member and you're giving a gift.

01:06:26

You're solemnizing the occasion. And it's an occasion that is wicked on every level because it's against the very created order that God has established.

01:06:36

It's sinful. I don't know how better to explain it. Alistair still years later is not, was it two years since this happened?

01:06:46

He is not, um, I mean, maybe, maybe it's only been a year and a half, but he's not coming clean.

01:06:54

It's still, you know, it's just one attempt at compassion. That's how he frames it. It's just one attempt at compassion.

01:07:00

He's not a compassionate man, but boy, that was a good example of compassion. No, that wasn't compassion. That if anything, you are in danger of giving approval to sin.

01:07:10

How's that compassion? You know, someone's going to, uh, I don't know, change the example.

01:07:16

It's, uh, something that is not a socially accepted in society.

01:07:23

You know, I don't know here. Let's pick something that I don't think Alistair would consider a socially acceptable.

01:07:31

Um, someone is getting a ranking in the Ku Klux Klan. They are now the

01:07:37

Imperial wizard. I don't know how the rankings work exactly, but they are, they've achieved a new rank.

01:07:42

And you've told your friend, you say, I don't agree with the message of the Klan. I don't agree with their activity, whatever it is.

01:07:49

You know, I'm only using this example because I know this is one that Alistair would condemn, or I'm pretty sure at least, and you know,

01:07:56

Alistair would Alistair say, well, you know, as long as your nephew or your, your son, he knows that you don't approve of that, this organization or this activity, you can go to the, the, uh, ceremony, bring a gift, bring a gift.

01:08:10

Um, I, I don't think he would approve of that. And I'm not saying there's a moral equivalency between the two. I think actually under God's law, a same sex wedding is far worse.

01:08:20

And the only reason we, uh, some of us at least don't think that is because we're probably more rooted in a liberal tradition than we are in the law of God, when we start ranking how egregious things are in his eyes.

01:08:35

It's very agree. Read Romans one. It is very egregious. Read the old Testament. It's toy, VA it's abomination.

01:08:41

Okay. And that's, that's what you have to point out.

01:08:48

I think that's, what's actually going on here. It shows where the, the, the, there's only one direction.

01:08:53

This quote unquote compassion seems to run in. Right. So I don't think we should let Alistair get away with it.

01:08:58

No, you're not going to be able to rebrand this, hang your head down. And well, you know, I'm just trying to be compassionate and people weren't nice to me.

01:09:06

No, you actually are the one that is in serious jeopardy of harming people through that advice.

01:09:13

And we're not going to go along with that. Uh, we're not going to go along with Walter Strickland or J .D.

01:09:19

Greer pushing so many aspects of the woke agenda and now whistling past the graveyard saying, well, uh, we're just about basic things, basic theology.

01:09:29

That's where we're going back to that. You need to repent. You need to repent of the errors and take a time out and maybe, you know, maybe years from now,

01:09:39

I don't know, but if you want to come back into the limelight and have influence again, it's going to require building trust, pretty common sense stuff, but in the internet age, uh, you can just make a new video, right?

01:09:55

Curate a new image, all that kind of thing. All right. Well, it's a hour and 10 and I, what did

01:10:02

I say? I said an hour, then I said hour and a half, probably we might even break an hour and a half. We'll see. Um, but I do have more to share with you.

01:10:10

I want to share, let's see next. Uh, where do I want to go? I want to share some comments that Larry Arnn gave, but I'm getting some comments.

01:10:21

So why don't we go to comments that are related to what I've already said? And then I will, uh, we'll, we'll do the

01:10:28

Larry Arnn stuff and the proposition nation stuff. So, uh, cosmic treason,

01:10:35

John CR Wiley shares, stares disapprovingly at you while you use AI search to help you find out who the send network head is.

01:10:42

I did not use AI search. I actually was on, I think duck, duck, go. So, uh,

01:10:47

CR Wiley, he, he approves of me. Trust me. Uh, cosmic trees. And also says, what, why did

01:10:52

James White say webin implodes? I haven't listened to yesterday's dividing line yet. I haven't either.

01:10:58

I don't know exactly. Um, I think it probably has something to do with disagreements that they have.

01:11:06

So I know that this, that issue with, uh, last fall with Tobias Riemenschneider and Joel Levin, making some comments on a podcast about the

01:11:16

Holocaust was a point of disagreement and it may be that. I don't know.

01:11:22

T James Boone. I want JD Greer kicked out of the convention. I'm going to every annual meeting for the rest of my life until we succeed.

01:11:33

If you're going to stay in, that's the attitude you have to have Nathan Eccle, we may do well to ponder Rosario's own admission that she is quick to repent and retract as she has zero job or paycheck to lose implications for the managerialism of which you often speak.

01:11:46

Yes. Yeah. Rosario. Uh, now, now here's the thing with Rosario though, she actually does have superstar power and I think she's humble and I think she, uh, downplays that or doesn't realize it.

01:11:59

Wonderful thing about her. And I actually, I have been to her house. I will say this. She's extremely hospitable and extremely normal.

01:12:06

It's one of the things I love you. When you walk into her house, you're walking into her life and it gets crazy on the farm, right?

01:12:13

People are coming in, they're going there. Activity it's bustling. Uh, and she's just there to say, come on in and join us.

01:12:22

They're not trying to put on a show. I really gained a lot of respect just going to her house.

01:12:28

She, um, and her husband, by the way, Kent, uh, very gracious, very, um, he's got convictions,

01:12:35

I'll tell you that he's got his opinions and his convictions, but he is the kind of person that you can actually have a strong disagreement with him and he will gently, he'll, he'll tell you.

01:12:45

I think you're a hundred percent wrong and he'll gently say it though, calmly. And he's not excommunicating you for it.

01:12:50

And he kind of hopes you come to his side of thinking on things. So I respect the Butterfields tremendously. I, I could probably learn a lot from them.

01:13:01

And I guess what I'll say is Rosaria does have the ability to be a superstar.

01:13:07

If you want to call it that a celebrity in evangelicalism, she, she still has a large following and a lot of people like her partially because of those things, because she is so normal.

01:13:17

Uh, she's just comes across very down to earth, but I don't think she takes herself too seriously.

01:13:25

I think that's what it is. There's a humility there that just, so yeah, she's not on the payroll anywhere.

01:13:30

She, her, her livelihood does not depend on her having be on good terms with the gospel coalition, but there is still,

01:13:38

I think, uh, an incentive. So she may downplay that, but that's my own. I think that there could be an incentive there if she wanted it.

01:13:46

Stormy squad says new Christian, right? Guys being, are being, are you including me?

01:13:51

I've, I've, I've, I don't, I guess I've taken the term, right? I I've defended the new graph.

01:13:56

I thought it was an alternative to Christian nationalism. It was like a broader kind of like, okay, we're new and that we're younger now.

01:14:02

I don't know if I am 36 now. I don't know. Uh, we're Christian and we're on the right. It's like being a Christian conservative.

01:14:08

We're just young. Well, uh, we're, we questioning the liberal order. Well, I don't, you know, now who knows the definition now?

01:14:15

Up for grabs and someone's going to try to take it new Christian, right? Guys being absolute wackos, pushing the

01:14:20

Overton window farther and farther instead of working, uh, where we're at. Aren't helping.

01:14:27

I'll be honest. I kind of agree with that. I think that there's some, there's something to be said for some guys who are doing some of those things.

01:14:35

I don't know if I'd frame it quite that way. I don't know if it's pushing the Overton window. I think when you think of an

01:14:41

Overton window, you're thinking of like a left, right scale. Right. And it's like, um, and it's usually the liberal framework that you're operating off of.

01:14:50

So it's like on one side is communism, full -on authoritarian communism.

01:14:55

On the other side is full -on authoritarian fascism. And then you have the liberals in the middle somewhere who are the reasonable ones.

01:15:02

And in, on that scale, you push the Overton window and it's like, if you're going to, it's been sliding too far to the left, so we're going to push it to the right.

01:15:09

And, uh, and that means getting into pagan right ideas.

01:15:14

Sometimes it means getting into, uh, anything that offends the liberal order, whether it's a neo -Nazi type of, uh, ideology or, um, you know, bronze age, age, pervert stuff.

01:15:29

Uh, Andrew Tate stuff, Nick Fuentes, whatever it is, groper stuff. It's like, that's, it's just, it's just transgressive.

01:15:37

It's actually in the Steve day show that he did recently, where he talked about my article, red pills without roots. It's that stuff.

01:15:43

I, I think we should push. Here's the thing. True. I would say authentic, conservative thinking, the conservative approach to things in the

01:15:54

Anglo -American tradition. And I'm doing a whole series on this from Burke to all the way to even

01:16:01

Pat Buchanan, you know, who's Roman Catholic, but I think embodies a lot of this. It basically is an instinct that one has for the preservation of timeless virtues applied in particular contexts.

01:16:16

So it's, it's seeing tradition as a good thing that actually communicates across generations, the timeless, immaterial, transcendental truths and protects them.

01:16:29

That's the purpose of it. You can't, if that's what right -wing is in an American context,

01:16:34

I'm not saying European, you can't be too far to the right. There's no way to be too far to the right because being to the right just means that you're protecting the timeless truths and how they're preserved.

01:16:44

You want mechanisms to preserve them. There there's no such thing as too far to the left, too far to the right.

01:16:50

That's a liberal kind of like way to even frame it in my mind. It's not, it's not really about that.

01:16:55

The scale in my head, the important scale, there's many scales, but the important one for political purposes today, more than any other scale is you have

01:17:04

God's order on one end. His created order that he's laid down. It's reflected in his law, in a natural and special revelation.

01:17:13

It's defined in special revelation, but that his law created order. I should say it's propositional.

01:17:20

The propositional truths are in special revelation, but his order on one end. And on the other end, man's novelty, man's ideology, man's ideas.

01:17:29

That are out of step with that positive visions. That'll never work. That's the scale.

01:17:35

Okay. As long as you're going racing towards God's order, if it offends people, it offends people.

01:17:41

Okay. Uh, who cares? Right. You don't just be edgy to be edgy.

01:17:46

You want to be strategic to some extent. You want to bring people down the garden path. So they understand you want to be practical.

01:17:52

What is possible? What's achievable. What's not. But as far as your actual positions, uh, you're just conforming to God's law.

01:18:01

That's the whole point. That's what you want to do. God's told you what is good.

01:18:07

Oh man. Right. Uh, that's it. Love justice. Um, love mercy, walk humbly with your

01:18:15

God. That's it. So anyway, um, we we've had, let's see if there's other comments.

01:18:22

Uh, you stole the extra consonant from Larry Arnn to add in cracker barrel.

01:18:28

Okay. Uh, what pastor is not compassionate? It seems disqualifying, but not sure about chapter and verse for not being compassionate.

01:18:35

The ironic thing about James White and Joel Webben is that you can't use their initials in the same sentence without getting confused.

01:18:42

Okay. Cause JW or it, and don't talk about Jehovah's witnesses in the same sentence. I embarrass myself when

01:18:49

John takes my random ideas. Should I even show this? Or side conversations as comments, fear of this keeps me in check.

01:18:57

Well, as long as something's keeping in check, uh, cosmic treason. So, uh, we appreciate all of you.

01:19:02

I appreciate you cosmic trees and you're here for every video. I don't know what that means about you. I don't know what your line of work is or how you're able to be present, even on a moment's notice when

01:19:11

I do a live stream, but I think you get the number one fan award if there's an award for that kind of thing.

01:19:18

Okay. Uh, let's, we're going to switch gears here and we're going to talk about James Dobson leading up to that.

01:19:28

I want to say something though. So this is what I want to say leading off of that discussion or monologue that I just made.

01:19:39

I recently was in a discussion on X with someone, Will Spencer. And it was about the reformed evangelical world reformed world.

01:19:49

I think it's how he said it. And why is it that the reformed world, they don't seem to be able to, they're open, they like dangerous ideas in his mind come in and there's not, there's no antivirus that's installed to be able to prevent ideology or whatever it is.

01:20:10

And I said, look, don't, don't look, don't blame this on reformed theology.

01:20:15

What is reformed theology? We're reformation teaching generally the solos and the tulip. So the solo scriptura didn't get us here.

01:20:24

Uh, Calvinism didn't get us here, right? These are, these things didn't reformational teaching. And if you want to say more broadly, just the solos, that teaching didn't get us here.

01:20:35

And I pointed out to him and he's picking at, uh, provocative things that some people on the new

01:20:43

Christian right are saying some elements of new Christian right. People who are just, you know,

01:20:48

I, and I don't understand, I do. And I don't like I, if you're trying to build a platform right now, just being edgy gets you a lot of eyeballs.

01:20:55

It gets you a lot of free press. It's, um, it's kind of in vogue. It's a style thing in my mind.

01:21:01

Okay. I'm not about that kind of thing. You're not going to see that kind of thing for me. Cause it's not who I am.

01:21:06

And I, I don't like it. I'll I have reasons for it, but I can see why some people might do that and why it's a good strategy, actually, if you're trying to build a big network, um, company, whatever, but I pointed out to will,

01:21:21

I said, that's what you're complaining about. Now rewind the clock a few years, the reformed world was going way harder hook, line, and sinker in the institutional places.

01:21:33

Okay. Like powerful institutions for awokeness. Me too. BLM COVID stuff, even some of the soft peddling of LGBT.

01:21:44

So it's not like, it's, it's not just like, oh, these, uh, transgressive ideas when it comes to, to, to a woman's role, uh, that's, you know, that's not the thing, like, like just a few years ago, the people who believe in reform theology were pushing the needle.

01:22:03

Towards the me too stuff and pushing egalitarian ideas. So I pointed that out and I made a distinction.

01:22:09

I said, there's neo -evangelicalism and there's reformed theology. Reformed theology is it's, it's a fixed, uh, theology.

01:22:16

It's, it's a belief system. Um, there's then there's neo -evangelicalism, which is more of an approach.

01:22:24

You could try to boil it down into some beliefs, but it really is more of an instinct to try to gain influence that's been lost and I've done a lot of work on this.

01:22:33

I wrote about it quite a bit in my book, social justice goes to church. You can go check that out, but I made a distinction. I said, it may sound like you're talking about the neo -evangelical spirit, which

01:22:40

I agree with you. You know, it's in reformed theology. A lot of people jumped into reformed theology who were not reformed.

01:22:48

They jumped into it because it was trendy like 10, 15 years ago. Uh, Mark Driscoll was popular.

01:22:54

The gospel coalition was ascending and all of a sudden John Piper and John MacArthur become the grandfathers of a movement that they didn't even cultivate.

01:23:02

Maybe John Piper did, but it's just sort of like emerging underneath them. And he got like, they're your Francis Chan and you're

01:23:07

Mark Driscoll and you're Matt Chandler and you're David Platt and you know, X, Y, Z, CJ Mahaney and all these guys, and they're, they're making, uh, the

01:23:18

BDN Abouille, we're making the gospel cool and diverse and blah, blah, blah. Uh, and, um, and social, there's some social justice stuff at the root of some of that, it was the

01:23:28

Tim Keller's really the godfather more than John Piper, but I think Piper and Keller, sure. Both of those guys, very big influences in this.

01:23:38

And there was a lot of guys. I remember at the time jumping ship, a lot of them from Calvary chapel, a lot of them from charismatic backgrounds into reform theology, look,

01:23:48

Ray jumped into reform, reform theology. Everyone was doing it. It was the cool hip thing. It was on time magazines, one of the top, whatever it was, 50 ideas.

01:23:58

It was, you know, worldwide. It was gaining sway. Chinese universities were talking about Calvinism and it was like,

01:24:07

God, God's spirit's doing something. I think God's spirit's at work now. I was on the outskirts of that in a way

01:24:14

I was, I was involved in it. I was excited about it, but I actually already grew up in a home where we were very familiar with what the doctrines of grace and the soul is way before this stuff emerged as a pop thing as a branding thing.

01:24:31

And I, and the reason I see branding too, is you notice the style is all changed. It there, there's a feel to it.

01:24:38

That is very early two thousands. It's casual. It's the, it's the skinny jean thing, right?

01:24:45

It's like, no, who wears that now? But it's the hipster thing. It was hipster Christianity. It's like sort of a modicum of intellectualism, but it's not really that intellectual.

01:24:53

It's the actual intellectuals. Uh, but it, it gives you the impression that it is. We're going to wear a satchel pack and our hair is going to be a little longer and we're going to have like, uh, you know, the, the sweater thing over the collar and you know, people who lived it, no, it, it, and it was kind of like in the same water as the, the emergent church, the emergent church was kind of there and it was like, are things going to go that direction?

01:25:19

And it, it, it never really solidified. And, but, but there was always a similarity between what took place.

01:25:27

Even Mark Driscoll early on was even saying, I think he was emergent church. And then he kind of split off from them. So, um, it was a trendy thing and it was a trend, like at all, in all trends, it faded out.

01:25:40

Here's what happened though. And, and this is, so I don't blame reform theology for adopting the

01:25:46

LM stuff. I don't blame reform theology for, for imbibing any other transgressive ideologies that the people on the right have to offer.

01:25:54

Uh, I, I, I don't think the issue is reform teaching it. That's a fixed teaching.

01:26:00

I think sometimes we expect too much of reform teaching. Okay. Let me repeat that.

01:26:06

I think sometimes we, who believe in reform theology, and some of you listening might not, so you can substitute maybe whatever your theology is, but we expect too much of it.

01:26:16

We expect because someone believes in election, for example, that they're going to have good political theology.

01:26:25

It became a barometer. It's like, well, Hey, if someone doesn't believe in election, man, I don't want to listen to them.

01:26:30

They're probably wrong about all kinds of other things. And if someone believes in election, well then everything else just flows from that. That's ideological thinking.

01:26:36

That's not theological thinking. That's not like the reformers would have probably been quick to say.

01:26:45

No, just, that means they got election rights. Doesn't mean they got everything else. Right. It means they got election, right.

01:26:52

It affects other things, but not everything. I think too much was expected.

01:26:57

People thought let's reinvent the wheel. Let's we'll have a new political approach. Well, the paleo conservative or the

01:27:04

Anglo conservative tradition has been developed for hundreds of years by reformed people,

01:27:11

Anglicans and Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians. And I'm probably leaving people out.

01:27:19

It's been there for a while guys. And it's like, oh, no, we're just going to, it affects the arrangements of our society.

01:27:26

That's why I'm trying to recover some of these things, but there was this attitude of like, throw that out. You know, whatever the religious right is, whatever broadly speaking,

01:27:35

American conservative political takes are, that's just not the gospel. It's not, we're going to have a gospel focused and it was silly.

01:27:43

It was absolutely silly. It was, and a lot of it was a Kuyperian. It was trying to look at Kuyper's every, you know, there's no stray molecules, every square inch belongs to Christ and then create this worldview thinking that is going to encapsulate every activity into it.

01:28:01

And it's like at the center of that is reformed theology. And looking back,

01:28:07

I can't believe how silly actually some of it looks now. I'm realizing I didn't see it as much at the time because I think where there was a need for correcting some problems in the church that stemmed from easy believism, if I actually,

01:28:20

I don't like that word, uh, we'll say revivalism. Okay. Some revivalism that people were told they're saved when they weren't.

01:28:27

And there was some corrections that needed to be made, but it doesn't mean that that's the only issue or because you saw that issue, you solved every other issue.

01:28:34

So what was going to fill the vacuum? Well, wokeness came in, here's your political ideology. And there was a way that guys who are hip and trendy saw that,

01:28:43

Hey, that's also hip and trendy. We could use that. That will resonate with the young people. We want, uh, also, um, we see on ramps for us.

01:28:53

Our theology can merge with that. Let me give you an example of how that worked. One of the things that I kept hearing was if we believe in total depravity, we have to believe everyone's a racist.

01:29:04

I don't know how many times, you know, I'm a racist, Matt, Matt's hall at Southern seminary. Now he's in California somewhere.

01:29:11

I'm a racist because I've have to be say that I believe in total depravity. We were retooling reform theology.

01:29:18

We not me, but we in reform people that were caught up in the celebrity of it. So this doesn't mean all reformed

01:29:24

OPC people. I don't think, I don't want to actually say that. Um, let me rephrase that people who were very focused on church life in.

01:29:33

Denominational church life. Many of them didn't go down this route, the theologically focused people who already had a political understanding of public theology and a political view.

01:29:44

But the people who didn't, who were kind of open slates, who hadn't thought about it too deeply. They were just sucked into that.

01:29:50

And then made to think that, well, if you believe reform theology, then you got to believe the woke stuff. That's how it happens.

01:29:56

It was a branding thing. It was a tribal thing. It became a line that was put down and there wasn't much thinking, but there was hardly any thinking behind trying to be consistent.

01:30:05

It wasn't about consistency. It was trends and vibes and all the rest. So you want to know how that works?

01:30:11

It's it's take a step back. It's not the reform theology. It's not the group of reform people.

01:30:17

There's a lot of reform people who don't go with trendiness and so forth. It's just happens to be the fact that reform theology at one time was a trendy thing, and there's a way people are trying to, some people are trying to recapture that wave.

01:30:30

Um, it's going to be hard to evaluate this objectively. I like historians better than journalists, right?

01:30:36

In 30 years, we'll be able to look back and see more of what actually has taken place, but I think right now where we're living now. Some people want to recapture that wave.

01:30:44

And there was a lot of people who came from other backgrounds, okay. Charismatic backgrounds and the rest into reform theology because of the trendiness of it, and maybe they develop convictions, but the trending, you can't separate it.

01:30:56

Uh, I don't think completely. And now there's new trends. So where do you think those people are going to go?

01:31:02

Right. Uh, I, I'm not accusing anyone in particular of this. I'm not saying

01:31:07

I can't, I don't know everyone's heart fully, but I say that is a pattern and I do see a pattern and it wouldn't, that would be my best explanation, right.

01:31:19

Uh, for, for how things go. So how did reformed evangelicalism get to the point it is well, we've been going through rebrands.

01:31:30

We're in another one right now, or former reform people want to now appeal to the base that left them because they went too far, quote unquote woke, and it wasn't a trendy thing anymore.

01:31:41

Um, we expect too much. We expect too much sometimes, and not everyone knows everything.

01:31:50

Just remember that not everyone knows everything. Your pastor has limitations too. I think what's happened now is there are some people who've realized some of what

01:32:01

I'm saying and they say, well, not all the answers are found in Calvinism or Christianity, even, uh, there's actually some truth that just exists as part of the fabric of existence that God has established that we are running up against and we need to understand that you can explore differences between, let's say different cultures or male and female differences, and not everything has to be, uh, have a

01:32:27

Bible verse behind it. And because of that, also people who are coming out of this and this, this sort of like,

01:32:35

I D the one they're jumping from white ideology to another, they had, you know, intense worldview thinking in this reformed world to now, oh,

01:32:42

I don't need that, but now it's kind of like slopping into, I mean, that's, sometimes that's the only thinking, you know, and I think other ideologies become appealing.

01:32:50

So, um, so we know that, you know, Christianity doesn't fully give us extensive exhaustive information on all the differences between men and women.

01:33:00

So therefore we can just kind of like put that to the side and I'm going to go listen to,

01:33:06

I don't know, some red pill influencer, and they're going to influence me more now on that particular subject.

01:33:14

And I'm going to craft things that are edgy like they do. And I'm going to, uh, phrase things and let them affect my thinking.

01:33:23

Remember all thinking needs to be subject to the word of God. If you're a Christian, doesn't mean that every truth available is necessarily found in the word of God.

01:33:32

Okay. That's a very important distinction, by the way. It means that God has given us what he wants for life and godliness.

01:33:40

He's given us, um, principles to apply in various contexts. You have to know about context to be able to apply those principles.

01:33:48

So that's a good example of what I'm talking about. You're not going to have a full extensive understanding of every single difference between a male and a female in scripture or cultures that emerged after scripture was, uh, was written.

01:34:03

Uh, there's principles in there to apply to those situations surely. But yes, you can learn from people like Jordan Peterson.

01:34:11

You can learn from a Jordan Peterson. It doesn't mean you have to go just, I'm just going to reject all the biblical teaching on these things.

01:34:17

No, you know, it's the teaching that people who claim to give me biblical teaching were giving me, and now

01:34:22

I'm going to listen to this guy. You, you can, you can take what God has said and you can apply it.

01:34:29

And then you can also go and take what you, uh, observational science or, uh, experience tradition, the things that God has given to you through means of natural revelation.

01:34:41

And so long as it's not contradicting what scripture teaches plainly, you can also learn from that and apply wisdom from that that's the whole point of wisdom.

01:34:50

That's what wisdom is. That's why there's a whole book on wisdom called Proverbs. And James is a book on wisdom in the new Testament. And how many of the examples are just look around you, look what

01:34:58

God has established, right? This is part of how in our, the blessing of our society is this is what, what we have is a rich heritage.

01:35:09

We have generations, centuries of Christians thinking through principles, thinking through what the word of God says, go back to Alfred the

01:35:18

Great in the book of doom, go back all the way to, to, to that early point of English history, when they're applying the 10 commandments to public life, and we can see the development that's taken place.

01:35:31

Not all development is good. Some's bad. So you got to go back and got to find out where do we get off track? And I mean, while I'm doing the anti -federalist papers, where did we go off track?

01:35:39

What was the problem? We, we, we, but the whole point is we have the wisdom of the ages of good godly men too, that have been given to us.

01:35:51

That's something God's given us. That's something you don't, you don't dismiss that you don't reinvent the wheel because of some ideology that just it's, it's a rich thing to immerse yourself in.

01:36:05

And I think that the branding is, is quick. It's you take shortcuts.

01:36:11

You, you, you have something that's like the one thing it stands out. It can be gimmicky. And when these market forces and popularity contests become the sole thing, driving what voices you listen to, what information you'll choose to trust, and then the tribes that emerge around these brands, you have to be very careful that you're not getting swept up into a party spirit as George Washington would say.

01:36:38

And instead reflect, we have such a rich heritage to reflect on. Um, and that's part of the point of this podcast, by the way.

01:36:46

I mean, this is why I do keep doing the podcast is because I want to give you, here's what scripture says. Here's some wisdom that we have from, uh, from the annals of history.

01:36:54

Let let's rediscover some of these things. They have answers for many of the problems that we're encountering.

01:37:00

You don't have to go back and reinvent the wheel on everything. And you don't have to be overly simplistic and trendy and all that stuff actually kind of dissuades me.

01:37:10

I just don't even listen to stuff, content like that. So that brings us to James Dobson.

01:37:19

Tell me how that brought us to James Dobson, John. Well, I'll tell you this James Dobson is a villain in many of the circles that I've been in Christian circles.

01:37:29

He's a villain because he thought psychology had something to say about counseling,

01:37:38

Christianity, soul care as you know, the term psychology site psych soul. He thought that there were observations and regimens that could be applied by Christians in counseling situations.

01:37:52

Now I've had many classes on counseling, both integrated and non -integrated biblical counseling and Christian counseling.

01:38:02

And this has been something I've always struggled with to some extent. I think I'm coming down though, more and more over the years on the side of the, uh, this is kind of where I'm at.

01:38:12

I was just like, let you know. I think that the Bible gives us what we need for life and godliness, which means

01:38:20

I'm going to lean more towards the biblical counseling side of things. And the reason

01:38:26

I do that is because I think there are assumptions in Christian counseling that are at war with biblical assumptions, like evolutionary assumptions, for example, that treat humans like animals or have an explanation for human behavior.

01:38:39

That's just not who humans are. I'm going to lean more towards is what the Bible gives us. The Bible speaks to matters of the soul.

01:38:47

I also know this though, many of the matters that affect us and affect our, uh, our soul are connected to physical things where it's, there is a separation between your immaterial self and your material self, but there's also a connection between them and there's something mysterious about that.

01:39:07

And it's why David goes and he plays music for King Saul. It's, uh,

01:39:15

I can't explain that. I don't know why, you know, you're being bothered by demons. Here's some music. Music does soothe the soul.

01:39:22

Tames a savage beast. Scripture brings that out. It's why, you know, a little wine for your stomach isn't a wrong thing.

01:39:30

It's actually a good, it's taking care of your body. So every ailment is not solved through a biblical principle that you need to apply.

01:39:38

And another tendency about new thetic counseling or Christian or a biblical counseling is, and I've seen this many times is a self -confrontation type of approach where whatever the issue is, you can't control the circumstances that you can't control, which is true.

01:39:53

So you can only focus on yourself really. And it can become hyper self -critical. It can get right into the

01:39:59

Puritan stuff of you. You're really just, you're very navel gazing and there's, and so you're trying to solve a problem that may not actually be mostly you, you could be being affected by other people's sin primarily, and yes, your reaction to that is something that you can control, but the focus becomes so much on you that it just leads to depression.

01:40:20

I've seen this happen. So here's where I've come down. I think that there are things from observation that are valuable that we as Christians should use.

01:40:31

There are behaviors that if they are linked to a certain, a diet, you know, a hormonal imbalance, a particular set of circumstances that you can get out of, a,

01:40:51

I don't know, habits in your life that seem that, you know, there's nothing sinful, but we're linked to these problems that are forming downstream.

01:41:01

I think it's perfectly fine to look at that data, to look at that information, to look at what, here's a good example.

01:41:07

Uh, pornography. That's a big issue in Christian men's groups, right?

01:41:17

I don't think it's wrong. If someone wants to go look at strategies, practical strategies that secular people have implemented to try to break that.

01:41:28

Now we don't want to do a switch out one vice for another, right?

01:41:35

We want the motive should be the glorified, you know, all the right motives that Christians have. But if you want to look at strategies,

01:41:42

I don't have a problem with that. It's, it's not in the Bible, but I don't even know. I'm trying to think, cause

01:41:47

I, I don't know what, uh, what's in Vogue right now, uh, for doing that.

01:41:53

But I, I interviewed a guy though, I'm trying to think what he said about a year ago on screen addiction. And, um, he had some practical things as I remember,

01:42:03

I think he said things like, what, like, you know, I don't know, get a lock box for your phone. Right.

01:42:09

Things like that. Anyway, I think you can learn something from those things. So that's kind of where I'm at with that.

01:42:14

I don't know what that makes me. I don't know if there's a label attached to that, but I'm kind of like, yeah, bring it, bring in all the wisdom you can.

01:42:20

And, uh, obviously though, the, the principles and the, what we're going to be working off of as far as motivation is the word of God.

01:42:28

So James Dobson though, in this regard, he's looked upon negatively by a lot of conservative

01:42:35

Christians, and he's also looked on positively by a lot of political conservative

01:42:40

Christians. If I can pull this up, I'm having trouble. Hold on a minute. So here's an article from Christianity today, conservative political

01:42:53

Christians like James Dobson, because he influenced people to the right. Politically, a lot of theological, maybe reformed

01:43:02

Christians didn't like James Dobson because they thought he was implementing psychology.

01:43:09

He was introducing psychology where there shouldn't have been, but I think his legacy is actually this James Dobson was a pioneer in bringing back certain things that had biblical things that psychology was saying not to do and psychology was wrong.

01:43:26

It's absolutely wrong. The Bible corrects psychology. Okay. James Dobson was instrumental because he wrote dare to discipline.

01:43:32

That's the pioneer work he did. And I think that if you want to break out of the ideological thinking, that's that, you know, his cage stage and goes, you know, everything's back down to reform theology.

01:43:52

And that's the only thing that matters. And it just, uh, all solutions stem from this or whatever. I think it's actually good to talk about the legacy of James Dobson, because while I do not agree with some of the things that he said that I know about, at least he, he, he did say some things that I think were damaging.

01:44:12

I actually have a respect for the fact that I think he, his aim was as far as I know, to uphold the word of God and also to take the best that he could from the world around him, from what he observed from, uh, observation and studies and that kind of thing.

01:44:35

Now, I don't, I think he leaned way towards that too much at times. I think though that he w

01:44:43

I don't know that he was an ideologue. I don't know that he w I think he was someone you could have a discussion with.

01:44:49

Okay. That's how I view him. I I'm very, I'm actually sad about this, to be honest with you. Focus on the family radio,

01:44:54

I think has been a force for good for the most part. And you know, the reason you haven't heard me talk about them much is because I don't have much to say naked.

01:45:02

I I'm sure I could find things, but during the woke stuff, I wasn't playing you clips from focus on the family.

01:45:08

There's a reason for that. Christianity today, James Dobson, author and child psychologist.

01:45:13

Who's told millions of evangelicals how to raise children in order. Their families died on August 21st at the age of 89 Dobson believed in strict, but loving discipline and obedience, which he held out as an antidote to America's cultural permissiveness and slide toward moral chaos and social disorder.

01:45:27

I don't know how many of you realize that his book dare to discipline was a pioneer work.

01:45:32

He was bringing back things that were forgotten. He was contradicting Dr.

01:45:37

Spock. He was doing things at the time that were risky. We stand on his shoulders.

01:45:43

Frankly, his advice was embraced by Christian parents. Um, and part of it was he was a medical professional who upheld traditional family values.

01:45:55

Now it should have been enough for a pastor to say these things. There are some people that will listen to a medical professional though.

01:46:02

For nearly five decades, he was one of the most influential Christian leaders in the country. Franklin Graham wrote in the

01:46:07

Tribune on social media. Staunch defender of the family and stood for morality and biblical values as much as any person in our country's history.

01:46:15

I think that is his legacy. To be honest, he appeared on the cover of Christianity day in 1982. He was one man behind the pro -family phenomenon.

01:46:23

Part of Dobson's power, the magazine noted was his gentleness and moderation. His writings have a sensible tone, wrote

01:46:29

Rodney Cloud. This is exactly what I'm talking about, by the way, measured. Okay. He gets things wrong, but he's measured.

01:46:36

He rejects extremes, fishes methodically for the logical middle. Now this isn't, I don't know if this applies to James Dobson, but I don't think it does.

01:46:44

This isn't moderation as an end in itself. This is so, so moderation actually is a good thing, not as a political view, but as a general sentiment, as a disposition one has being moderate means you are even keeled.

01:46:59

You know what you believe. You examine evidence. You don't just jump from boat to boat based on gimmicks or tribes or the, it's the bandwagons going here.

01:47:10

Your measures, you want to make sure, let me test it. Be sure you're right. Then go ahead. Right. The quote,

01:47:16

John Wayne, uh, or David, is that David Crockett? I don't know. I keep getting David Crockett and John Wayne mixed up.

01:47:21

I probably shouldn't. All right. His writings have a sensible tone. Uh, he grew up more political.

01:47:27

Let's see. He grew more political as time went on. Uh, cause things got worse. He was opposed to abortion, pornography, and the social acceptance of homosexuality.

01:47:37

Talks about all the things that he did, the administrations he helped in. Now here's something interesting. Historian, Christian Kobez Dumez argued that evangelicals were inspired by men like James Dobson to embrace an ideology, militant masculinity in the home and in politics.

01:47:50

Now, William Wolfe, I saw point this out and he got it from somewhere else, but, uh, no, that's not it. Where is it? Okay. We're going to get to Larry Arnn at the end here, but, uh, here it is.

01:48:04

Okay. Christianity Today edited this and I don't know why. So here's the original, uh, I think this is the original.

01:48:10

Let's see. Critics have accused or no. Okay. Sorry. Some Christians critics have also accused Dobson of replacing the gospel with family values.

01:48:17

They argue he held up patriarchal authoritarianism as a hallmark of the Christian life. Historian Dumez said evangelicals were inspired by men like James Dobson to embrace an ideology of militant masculinity.

01:48:31

Pardon me. In the home, fathers disciplined children and husbands exercise authority over their wives, Dumez wrote in Jesus and John Wayne beyond the home, the enforcement of patriarchal authority and all its facets would occupy the heart of evangelical politics for decades to come.

01:48:44

That's what it originally said. They changed it to, uh, they, they, they took most of that out.

01:48:51

Actually, they took that whole paragraph out, I guess. And it just, it jumps from to embrace an ideology of militant masculinity to some critics of Dobson's politics, however, nonetheless praised his positive impact.

01:49:03

So I don't know that they were extra critical before and then they changed. So I don't know what that means, but there you go. Christina today changed the way they reported this, uh, without,

01:49:12

I guess, offering a retraction from what William was saying. All right, let's continue.

01:49:23

Dobson taught my father that he should exercise paternal discipline because children had strong wills that needed breaking, but that such discipline should never be delivered in a spirit of anger.

01:49:35

Uh, Dobson was born in Louisiana. So it gives his biography. Um, I don't know if I want to get too deep into the, okay.

01:49:45

So that's basically the gist of it. It just goes on to more like who he was honored by his political involvement, what administrations he was served in, uh,

01:49:56

TV appearances, all of that, he got pretty big. He got pretty big.

01:50:01

So a sad day. I mean, John MacArthur just passed. James Dobson has passed. The old guard is passing away quickly.

01:50:08

And it doesn't seem like there's a lot, at least of equal prominence to replace those guys.

01:50:14

And I'm willing to take whatever shellacking I need to take for my positive view here of James Dobson.

01:50:21

But, um, I do think that is a good thing to learn from him and, and, and to, um, to be willing to take the hits too.

01:50:29

He, he, he was brave in that way. He was willing to, at a time when it was very looked down upon to spank your children, he wrote a whole book in favor of it.

01:50:40

So, uh, all right, we're going to switch to the Larry Arnn stuff for the last part of the podcast, our two hour podcast that was only supposed to go an hour and a half.

01:50:50

And, uh, and then I'm going to the County fair. So, uh, our Torno says, what if most people go to heaven and the church isn't a gatekeeper?

01:50:58

The church isn't about identifying out who saved. It's about disciplining in the name of Christ, becoming ever more like him.

01:51:06

Uh, I don't know. We'd have to get into a longer discussion there. I mean, there's, oh, maybe this is the first comment.

01:51:13

What if most, okay, no, this is kind of the same comment repeated. Actually, he keeps saying it. He said it like five times.

01:51:21

Um, Art, Arturo, I might have to ban you if you keep saying that, uh, comment over and over and over.

01:51:28

Don't ignore this. The second, okay. All right. I, I don't know what, what is the point of bringing that up?

01:51:35

I mean, Peter was, uh, Jesus gave Peter the keys and of course there's different interpretations.

01:51:40

There's a Catholic and a Protestant interpretation of that. But I do think the, there's no way to be in God's good favor and go to heaven in our, if you want to call it the church age that you can't be a follower of Christ and be outside the church currently.

01:52:00

How about I put it that way? So. The it's about, I don't know what you mean by the church being the gate.

01:52:06

Like you can have someone in leadership say that you're not a Christian and you could be a Christian in a church setting, but the universal spiritual body of the church, you need to be a member of that in order to be in God's grace.

01:52:21

So that's membership happens. The moment of salvation. Helpful history lesson on Dobson by John.

01:52:27

I didn't know much about him. Dr. Dobson stance on rubbing one out was always confusing to me, but on balance, he seemed good.

01:52:38

Rubbing one out. I don't know if that's a euphemism for something. I remember Javier says,

01:52:43

I remember listening to focus on the family when they were based in California. Uh, yeah.

01:52:49

So California, he was in a psych. So was John MacArthur, right? A lot of things, a lot of good things came out of California. I came out of California.

01:52:56

Uh, I don't know if I'm a good thing, but I'll let the audience decide. Uh, Jamie star versus on using secular psychology and Christian counseling, our sufficiency in Christ by John MacArthur is excellent.

01:53:08

Yeah, I know this is one of the places I first heard very negative things said about James Dobson was that masters.

01:53:14

So I, I, I do, I think I understand the position and, um, I think there's a lot of good to learn.

01:53:21

I, that's why I'm conflicted. I actually, I do think there's, uh,

01:53:26

I think scriptural or biblical sufficiency pertaining to things that affect that are matters of life and godliness,

01:53:34

I do think that soul care does fall in, in that category.

01:53:41

So the Bible does give us the moral guidance that we need to, uh, navigate moral dilemmas in our personal lives.

01:53:51

I also though, believe that there, we have a physical dimension to us and that physical dimension can affect our spirit.

01:54:01

And I also believe other people sin against us is a very important category that needs to be examined.

01:54:11

And I think what I'm hesitant about is trying to make everything new make everything about, uh, a correction, a correction in the way, you know, you're having these problems because you're just not, everything would be, you, you would be, things would be going well, if you were,

01:54:32

I don't know, uh, to, to think rightly about this environment that change your attitude on these things,

01:54:37

I'll put it to you this way, Jesus, sweating drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane was the best possible scenario to be in, in that moment, because he was for the joy set before him fulfilling the will of the father, he was in obedience.

01:54:57

His mindset was absolutely perfect and right. Other people were about to sin against him.

01:55:03

There was nothing in his attitude to change. There was a counselor wouldn't have been able to make him do any homework to make it better.

01:55:11

There's things in life like that, where sometimes you actually just need an encouragement. Sometimes you just need a very practical application that you might get from a secular source and that's not bad.

01:55:24

Right. But yes, the, I, I do believe in biblical sufficiency. I do believe what the Bible teaches about the nature of man.

01:55:31

Our anthropology is absolutely correct. And the solutions to the principles that drive the solutions to man's maladies that are caused by sin are found in scripture.

01:55:48

So I don't know, do with that what you will. I am open to more discussion on it. In fact,

01:55:53

I've been trying to get a guy on from masters who wrote a book on like why the things your counselor says that lies to you, maybe he disagreed with me, but how your, your counselor can lie to you.

01:56:03

Cause I do, I really do believe, you know, vast majority of counseling out there. That's not, that doesn't take into account what the

01:56:11

Bible teaches is terrible and will, you're going to get rid of one demon and trade in seven.

01:56:18

So anyway. All right. Uh, one last comment and then

01:56:25

I got to switch gears and end the podcast. Um, okay, let's do this.

01:56:33

Oh, okay. One last comment. Here it is. Secular psychiatric analysis is stupefying and destructive.

01:56:40

I would agree. I would agree most of the time. I don't, I'm not, and I haven't gotten in deep into those things.

01:56:46

I just know there, there's a lot of like self -help stuff out there. Most of it's junk, but there are some guys who

01:56:52

I have seen. And then look, some of this is like man is fear stuff that they're like, you know, they say things that are true and they arrived at it independently.

01:57:01

And then they have like observations and applications, uh, that'll that are tricks to help your life.

01:57:07

And it's not all bad. I'm just saying, um, you don't have to like say it's of the devil just because, uh, it didn't come directly from a

01:57:15

Bible verse or something. All right. Last but not least, we are going to talk about this thing.

01:57:22

Okay. This thing, this, uh, president of Hillsdale college, Larry Arden, what he had to say recently about the, uh,

01:57:32

Christian being a Christian nation, Christian nationalism, I guess. There's Washington's first inaugural. Part of it written by James Madison.

01:57:40

Our Republic is founded in the great fact and the whole course and economy of nature, the indissoluble connection between virtue and happiness.

01:57:49

That's just a summary of Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics. And you said something really important with the letter that Washington writes to the, to the

01:57:58

Jewish synagogue. There is a difference between liberty and toleration that those were not identical.

01:58:05

So religious toleration is we have an established church. We have a state religion.

01:58:10

We will tolerate those who are dissenters. Liberty is a more expansive definition.

01:58:17

And I, until you were reading it there again, I had forgotten that Washington makes that important connection.

01:58:24

You, um, you know, I, uh, Hillsdale college is famous, which is a good thing, almost always, but some mischievous journalist writes, uh, but they are admired by the

01:58:38

Christian nation. And it sort of, and I wrote a letter to the editor and they probably printed it.

01:58:44

I just said, uh, somebody admiring somebody else doesn't necessarily say anything about somebody else.

01:58:51

That's right. But if they do admire Hillsdale college, they will learn from it. That a

01:58:57

Christian nation is not possible because Jesus kingdom is not of this world.

01:59:03

There you have it. A Christian nation is not possible because Jesus kingdom is not of this world. And I have pulled up here some of the tweets surrounding this.

01:59:18

So Tanner Cartwright pointed out immediately Hillsdale college describes itself as a Christian school.

01:59:24

So as a Christian school possible, a Christian nation isn't apparently because Jesus kingdom is not of this world, but apparently

01:59:30

Hillsdale is a, is okay to describe itself as a Christian school, but I thought Jesus kingdom was not of this world. And I, I said,

01:59:37

I'd like to report a murder because I just thought that was such a good comeback. Uh, Larry Arnn though, tried to clarify this and he said,

01:59:44

I appear to have made some people mad. Let me propose another formulation.

01:59:53

America is a, let's see, I am trying to read this and it's kind of, let me pull it up on somewhere else.

02:00:03

It's probably too small for you to read too. That sometimes happens. Okay. So he says

02:00:09

America is the most Christian nation because it recognizes the principle of religious liberty, which comes from the mouth of the founders and Jesus himself, when he says that his kingdom is not of this world.

02:00:21

At Hillsdale, we believe that Jesus is the maker and savior of all. We also believe that the founders, that no law is good.

02:00:27

That compels anyone to believe that laws that compel belief are what led to centuries of religious persecution and warfare and so -called

02:00:33

Christian Europe, so -called Christian Europe wasn't really Christian. Okay, here, let me break through the confusion.

02:00:40

If, if I may, there's, there's a few problems. The first one is compelled belief.

02:00:48

Larry Arnn, Larry Arnn is not compelling people's belief at Hillsdale because they're free to believe what they want.

02:01:00

They have freedom of conscience. But neither was even,

02:01:06

I'm trying to think of the most restrictive elements of this country's history. Neither was Puritan, New England, Cotton Mather, John Winthrop.

02:01:14

These guys actually were not, they would even tell you, I'm sure I haven't pulled up the quotes to try to substantiate this, but they would not have believed that they were able to in their power with the mechanisms of the government to compel someone's belief.

02:01:30

All you can do is you can compel public respect. You can compel adherence, but you can't actually get at the internal part of man, the soul, and compel that through force.

02:01:42

If someone doesn't want to, that's up to them. So this is,

02:01:48

I think this is misleading. I think, I don't know that that's even the formulation in Catholic or Protestant Europe, maybe,

02:01:54

I don't know. I don't think so. Yeah. I'd have to see the quotes on this. Cause I've never seen them. And I've seen just the opposite.

02:02:00

Uh, and, and Steven Wolf actually pointed this out and I think did provide some substantiation. So that's, that's one thing.

02:02:06

It's not the most important thing to me, but that's one thing. So I think that's kind of a, uh, a red herring. It's that's not when people say

02:02:12

Christian nation, they're not saying today, we're going to go compel belief.

02:02:17

We're going to compel adherence. So we're a Christian nation. You shouldn't blaspheme. Okay. Does that mean you're someone's a

02:02:24

Christian now because they're not blaspheme? No, you're just saying publicly, you can't do that because we respect Christianity. That's the difference.

02:02:31

So he says that now I, I pointed something out about this and I, a lot of people,

02:02:39

I don't think knew this about Larry Arnn. Larry Arnn was a student of Harry Jaffa. Now I've done a lot of work on Harry Jaffa.

02:02:44

The whole chapter in my book, Against the Waves, about Harry Jaffa. And Harry Jaffa said this,

02:02:53

Locke's, John Locke's idea of religious toleration represented the fulfillment of the doctrine set in motion by Jesus, that a man's relationship to his

02:03:02

God was a private matter and that it had nothing to do with civil government. It's kind of similar to what you just heard me quote from Larry Arnn.

02:03:11

Larry Arnn is saying, this is the bigger thing I wanted to focus on. That a, so a

02:03:19

Christian nation, if there was, we don't believe that, but if there was such a thing as a Christian nation, essentially what he's saying, it would be religious toleration.

02:03:27

That's what Christianity compels us to do. So it's a weird thing. And I was talking to someone recently about this with Russell Moore.

02:03:34

Russell Moore was, you know, thought it was our Christian duty to go into Iraq and thought it's our Christian duty to, uh, you know, love the stranger and the immigrant and thought, you know, he applies our

02:03:43

Christian due to all these social things, and then he's against Christian nationalism and it's like, but what you're saying sounds like Christian nationalism.

02:03:50

Larry Arnn's doing the same thing here. What you're saying sounds like you want Christianity to be the default setting.

02:03:57

You want Christianity to rule the country, but in your mind, Christianity is religious toleration. So Christianity and religious pluralism end up being or toleration, at least.

02:04:09

Let's stick with toleration. We'll say pluralism for Russell Moore, toleration for Larry Arnn, religious toleration is a

02:04:16

Christian is, you know, you could say that's Christian nationalism. Richard Mao did this whole article for,

02:04:22

I think it was Christianity today, last year, and, or two years ago, and he said the same thing that he's like,

02:04:30

I'm pro -theocracy and it was one of these like catchy things and you go read it. And he's, you'd find out, oh, theocracy is the liberal order.

02:04:37

Okay. That would be foreign to our

02:04:43

Christian forefathers in any country. The idea that religious toleration, tolerating other false religions, that's what

02:04:50

Jesus meant when he said his kingdom is an of this world. That's what Harry Jaffa did though, when he, in Harry Jaffa, I mean,

02:04:58

PragerU, the Claremont Institute, I'd say the Heritage Foundation to an extent,

02:05:04

Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and, and Dinesh D'Souza documentaries, and I just go on and on and on, the neocon right is basically living within Jaffa's frame.

02:05:17

Okay. Harry Jaffa is that important. And Jaffa's whole thing was that he put it in religious terms.

02:05:25

He, he put religious veneer on it, Christian veneer, but that this pluralistic kind of neutral liberal society, that's what being on the right should mean.

02:05:38

And that's what Christianity itself even teaches. That's not what Jesus was saying. My kingdom is not of this world does not mean, oh, and have a religious thought, that's a public policy thing.

02:05:48

No, my kingdom, he's saying my, the source of my kingdom's power ain't from here and we don't get ahead in the spiritual kingdom of the church by going and defeating armies.

02:06:02

That's what he was saying. That's what he meant by my kingdom is not of this world. And he's going to come back with an army. He's gonna, he's gonna subdue, you know, the nations are going to kiss the sun and that all is going to happen.

02:06:15

But he's, um, we're in a situation where, um, the, the kingdom is represented, but it's in a spiritual form.

02:06:28

And so there's, you know, again, it's like we were just talking about with physical and spiritual.

02:06:34

Where are the lines, right? Of course there's a difference between the two, uh, even when it comes to an individual, but when it comes to a country, when it comes to a society, we'll say that comes to a society.

02:06:45

Uh, there's also some elements of continuity, or maybe that's not the best word, probably the best word for me to use would be there's, they affect each other, it's impossible for a government to enact laws without a moral, some kind of a moral, uh, framing that it's, it has to be standard somewhere, right?

02:07:08

So it's Christians can be Muslim. It's gonna be something. And if it's going to be

02:07:13

Christian 10, it's gotta be Christian, right? It's that means that Christianity is going to be favored.

02:07:20

If Christianity is not favored, there's another moral framework that will come in. And that's what we've been dealing with lately. We've been losing our identity.

02:07:26

It's been changing our laws. And it's because a new religion, a secular, if you want to call it secular humanist, if you want to call it pagan, whatever is outpacing

02:07:35

Christianity in some regions. If you don't acknowledge that fact, then I don't know what to say. I mean, that's secularism and Christianity cannot exist together.

02:07:44

The only time you can have a neutrality on some of these issues is when you have a society that's monolithic enough that most of them are

02:07:53

Christian and most of them behave and most of them are self -governed otherwise you to create order, you have to come in with a moral standard, that's just how it works.

02:08:01

And I think we were under a deception for a long time of thinking, oh yeah, you don't need all these laws because you don't need, you know, most people aren't blaspheming publicly and they're not engaging in public, uh, uh, you know, pornographic content obscenity.

02:08:19

So we don't really need the laws anyway. It's not going to change society drastically. And you, you overturn those laws and nothing happens overnight.

02:08:26

Oh, I guess it was okay. And then it's like decades later, you're like, oh, the cultural rot that we've allowed, what have we done?

02:08:34

So I think Larry Arnn's out to lunch on this and I think it's self -refuting. If that's what a Christian nation is, then you could easily, you just say

02:08:40

Christian nationalism means pluralism. Clearly that's not what people mean when they say Christian nation, they mean kind of like Hillsdale means

02:08:45

Christian school, not everyone's a Christian there, but we have Christian standards. That's it. There you go. That's all it is.

02:08:51

So I would just, you know, I don't think Larry Arnn's going to watch this, but I would encourage people at Hillsdale to maybe get ahold of them and just say, look, that we could be, you could have a

02:09:01

Christian country, a Christian government in the same way you can have a Christian college at Hillsdale. Not everyone's a Christian, but we got to abide by these rules.

02:09:07

That's all we're saying. All right. Well, I'll take some questions and then we end. Uh, Marbie dogs is the original interview you played mentioned

02:09:14

Washington's letter to a Jewish synagogue who benefits from multiculturalism and repression of Christian ethics. It is the eternal minority.

02:09:21

Uh, the benefits. Um, so the Jewish, so when you had 2000 Jewish people in the country, they're, they're a tolerated minority.

02:09:30

That's a, that's not something for prudence, to be quite honest with you. They're not challenging the Christian hegemony, the

02:09:36

Christian domination. They understand their guests and they're not going to try to do that. That's a little different than, um, and, and, and I would argue also

02:09:43

Judaism. Um, I know there's, uh, man, I don't know if I want to open that can of worms right now.

02:09:50

There's some dovetailing between Christianity and, I mean, they both respect the 10 commandments, right? We'll put it that way.

02:09:55

There's some things that, uh, it's different than like Hinduism. It's those statues that we see being erected now.

02:10:04

Um, Arturo says obscenity laws are about harassment. I mean, look, you're going to have harassment.

02:10:10

Uh, I mean, I, I don't, I don't like the word harassment, but you're going to have obscenity laws.

02:10:16

It's inescapable. Your nature of pores of vacuum. Someone's the law has to be respected. The source of law, the moral foundation for law has to be respected.

02:10:25

So whether it's going to be hate speech stuff or it's going to be Christian obscenity laws, you're going to have it somehow.

02:10:32

We just happen to have ones that aren't directly derived from a Christian ethic. Trudell says, took our kid out or first County fair last weekend.

02:10:41

She loves the ducks and horses. Have a great weekend, John. Thanks. All right. Well, that is the podcast guys.

02:10:46

God bless. I hope that was helpful as a summation of some of the things that are in the news right now, and maybe some helpful food for thought if you don't pull anything else from the episode,

02:10:54

I hope that, uh, at least some, some, some, some patience, some, uh, prudence, some measuredness is maybe what you take away that trends come and go.

02:11:07

Brands come and go. Cracker barrels won't cracker barrels come and go. There are some things that last forever.

02:11:13

Okay. The word of God lasts forever. The, our God is forever and the transcendentals, meaning the things that, um, derived from his character.

02:11:23

Those are the things that are forever. And those are the things that we need to anchor ourselves in. Don't get too caught up in social media.

02:11:30

I saw one comment. I forget who put it on in the chat, but they, they deleted their Facebook. Some of us might need to do that, right?

02:11:36

Be careful of the short attention spans. Be careful of the tribalism. Take measure things, measure things.