Why are Young Men Turning to Catholicism and Orthodoxy? (with Matt Whitman & Redeemed Zoomer)

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Welcome to Your Calvinist Podcast. My name is Keith Foskey and I am your Calvinist. Today on the show

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I'm going to be joined by Matt Whitman of the 10 -Minute Bible Hour and Redeem Zoomer, who many of you know

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I've had on the show before. I've done debates with him and we've talked a lot about the faith. Well, today we're going to be talking about a movement within Christianity that's been taking place a lot online, where a lot of young men are moving towards Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

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Why is that? What's the attraction? Why the change and why now? Well, those are some of the things we're going to discuss today, so stay tuned.

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The show begins right now. It's your

01:12

Calvinist Podcast with Keith Foskey. Beards and bow ties, laughs till sunrise.

01:26

It's your Calvinist Podcast with Keith Foskey. He's not like most

01:35

Calvinists. He's nice. Your Calvinist Podcast is filmed before a live studio audience.

01:44

Hey guys, this is Keith Foskey, your Calvinist, coming at you today with two good friends. I'm joined by Redeem Zoomer and Matt Whitman of the 10 -Minute

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Bible Hour, and it's already going great. Isn't that wonderful that it just starts out so perfectly? Yeah, we're in good shape.

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I had Matt on my show a few weeks ago, and Redeem Zoomer, who I've had on the show several times, we've done debates.

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We've been good friends now for several, well, I guess it's going on a year now. I guess we've known each other more than just a few months.

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In the comment section, we began talking to each other and said we should do something together, the three of us.

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We talked about what would be a good opportunity and what would be a good subject that might be beneficial to everyone, and we have landed on why none of us are

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Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. No, that's not what we're going to talk about. We're actually going to talk about why we are seeing, in the evangelical world, a shift toward the more traditional

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Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox views, especially among young men.

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And the reason why we chose this particular topic is because both Matt and Redeem Zoomer have had the opportunity to engage with people specifically from those backgrounds.

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Now, if you've ever watched any of my videos, you'll know that I do a lot of interviews with evangelicals. I do a lot of interviews with denominational pastors and things like that, but I haven't had a lot of Roman Catholics and Orthodox on my show.

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In fact, I don't think I've ever interviewed one yet. I look forward to one day, but I'm going to be working today sort of as the person asking the questions, since Matt and Redeem Zoomer have actually engaged on this issue and had an opportunity to talk to people, because I know

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I have a ton of questions and things that I'd like to ask them. But before we go any further, I want to just, in case you don't know who these guys are, and if you're watching on their channel, obviously you do, and you might not know who

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I am. Again, I'm Keith Foskey. I do the Your Calvinist channel on YouTube. A lot of funny stuff, especially making fun of denominations.

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That's kind of my thing. I like to be funny, hopefully not too mean, but still try to get people to smile.

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But if each of you could just introduce yourself real quick, talk about what you do on your channel, and then we'll jive right into the conversation.

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Redeem Zoomer, go first. Thank you. So I'm Redeem Zoomer, for those of you who don't know me. I'm the one here who is not a pastor, and I have zero credentials.

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What I try to do is I just try to explain theology and Christianity really simply for young people, to try and be like a gateway drug for them to investigate more advanced and credentialed theology.

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So I quickly explain denominations, quickly explain books of the Bible, quickly explain why I'm a

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Presbyterian, all those sorts of things. And I have a lot of interactions with other Gen Z Christians, and I know a lot of people, other

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Gen Z influencers, and I've been noticing a lot of patterns in Gen Z, trying to think of ways to help

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Gen Z become more religious, because right now it is the most atheist generation. And yes,

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I definitely have seen a trend in Gen Z towards more traditional forms of Christianity, which for many of them is

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Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. We've also seen a rise in classical Protestantism as well, like Presbyterian, Lutheran, Anglican stuff.

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So I just try to engage with that. But I'm a big fan of both of your guys' channels, and I have been way before I had any sort of channel myself.

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Well, we appreciate that, and love the fact that you're coming to us from Notre Dame today, which is really cool.

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This is a Presbyterian church behind me. This is not some

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Roman Catholic cathedral. Protestants used to build churches like this, and we're not just talking

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Anglicans, Lutherans. There's Baptist churches that look like this. There's Methodist churches that look like this.

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Even some historically Black Pentecostal churches that look kind of like this. So this is sort of my way of saying, if you want tradition,

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Protestantism is still an option. Nice. Matt, share with everyone what you do.

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Yeah, I've been doing internet stuff for about 10 years, which has kind of come on quickly. And mostly

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I like Bible stuff. Just the text is really interesting to me. I'm also interested in what people do with it, and what they make of it.

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So my YouTube thing that maybe the most people have seen or chatted up with me about when we run into each other has a bunch of Bible stuff on it.

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But then also I go around other people's churches that are different from my own, and I bring a camera, and I ask whoever's in charge there what they do, and why they do it, and where they're coming from.

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And we have a nice time, and my goal is to give somebody the microphone, and an opportunity to just explain what's beautiful about their tradition.

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Generally, I try to go and visit historic creedal Orthodox expressions of Christianity, so that a lot of my interviews turn out to be kind of us comparing notes on what looks similar, what looks different.

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I'm really excited about trying to find those places of common cause. I would not say

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I'm an ecumenicist. I would say that convictional unity is something

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I'm enthusiastic about. The better we understand why we think what we think, and why someone else thinks what they think, the quicker and easier it is to get past the insecurities that cause us to have no common cause, and squander all of our kingdom energy on trying to defeat other

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Christians. The quicker we can get past that, and get to the point where we're realistic about where we can partner, and where it just makes sense to have this group go it alone.

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We'll go it alone over here. And that's been a fascinating process for me. I've changed a lot.

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I've learned a lot going and doing that. And then my, I guess, my more, how do

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I want to put it? The project that's maybe the little bigger project for me is the daily Bible podcast

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I do. It's actually called The 10 Minute Bible Hour, where we just pick a book of the Bible, and we go through it.

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And if it takes 800 days to get through the book of Matthew, then I guess it took 800 days, and there are fart jokes.

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And I suppose that's everything. Yeah. And the last part, obviously the most important are those flatulent jokes are what get the likes.

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It's what gets the clicks. They always started being funny when I was like three, and it never quit. Yeah. Well, gentlemen, you both have had interactions, again, with Roman Catholics, and with Eastern Orthodox teachers, leaders, apologists.

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And Zuma, I know you've done debates, and you said you have another one coming up. Matt, have you ever done any debating, or has it just all been interview style?

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Yep. Not my game. Compare and contrast. That's more my style. Yeah. And I haven't done any official debates with Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox yet.

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So far, the only debates I've done have been with other Protestants. Two of them were with Pastor Keith himself, and one of them was with a

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Lutheran once. But I've not done any debates with Catholics or Orthodox yet. I did a discussion with Trent Horn, which was very good.

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He's an awesome guy. And I did do a conversation with Jay Dyer that turned into a debate, but it wasn't really planned to be.

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So I've had experience. I think Pastor Matt has had more experience talking to actual priests and clergy in Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

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I've mostly talked to either young catechumens or like apologists and stuff. Well, that leads to a quick question that I think might be a good way to start.

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What do you think is the drawing card for many young men?

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And the reason why I ask this is what you just said, Zuma. You said you've talked to many young, basically ones who've just become this faith.

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What is drawing them? Is it the internet? Is it hearing these apologists online?

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Or are they going into churches and being drawn by the churches themselves? Is there evangelism going on?

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Is there apostatizing going on? Or is it online that's really drawing? And that's sort of my first question.

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Yes, the first two things. It's mostly the internet. And it's this idea of wanting tradition.

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Because my generation grew up in an age where progressivism and a big disdain for tradition was just shoved down everyone's throats.

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And young men developed more of an aversion to it than young women, because a lot of the modern progressive stuff targets young women and sort of excludes young men.

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And a lot of young men also grew up in churches that also have disdain for tradition.

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They might be conservative on social ethics, but they don't really care about the church fathers. They don't care about traditional liturgy and stuff.

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So men are just starved for tradition all around. They're starved for a more masculine, traditional type of Christianity.

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And the internet advertises orthodoxy and Catholicism as the only place to get such stuff.

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If you want tradition, if you want the church fathers, if you want beautiful churches, if you want beautiful hymns and liturgy, you need to go

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Catholic and orthodox. That's what the internet says. And there really aren't very good internet representatives of traditional

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Protestantism. I try to be that, but I'm not very good at it because I'm not a pastor. I'm a Minecraft YouTuber.

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That's what I am. And people say, oh, you're not qualified to represent Protestants. I know I'm not. But there aren't many other traditional

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Protestants who have channels dedicated to defending traditional Protestantism. So there's just a huge disparity in the amount of internet apologetics for Rome and the

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East than there is for any sort of traditional Protestantism. Most Protestant apologists are very low church evangelical and stuff.

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So if someone starts out wanting something more traditional, nine out of 10 times, they're eventually going to go to Rome and the

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East. Sometimes they'll stop off at Lutheran or Anglican for two weeks or something.

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You see a lot of denomination hopping. And it's not like these people are going to churches of these denominations. They treat denominational identities like a lot of other young people treat gender identities where you have a new one every week.

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It's just like, today I'm a Lutheran, today I'm an Anglican, because today I intellectually assent to the propositions of this denomination that I have barely studied.

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So there's a lot of what we call LARPing in Gen Z. A lot of people, I don't know, people like,

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I don't know, Luke, who grew up in Missouri, identifies as Eastern Orthodox despite never attending an

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Eastern Orthodox divine liturgy. So I think there's good and bad, just like all movements.

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It's a very good thing that young men desire tradition. I think in the millennial generation, there was a big disdain for tradition.

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I think Gen Z is reacting against that. Most of Gen Z is not traditional, but there is a strong resistance movement.

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What I don't like is, I think they are being very superficial with a lot of the traditions, and in some ways valuing the aesthetic and the identity over the essence of Christianity, which is the gospel.

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And a lot of times, these people become experts on interdenominational debates while being very biblically illiterate.

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I've had a lot of people give me long essays on why they think the filioque is heretical, or why they think the papacy is true, or even in other high church

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Protestant settings, why they think Anglican apostolic succession is the most valid, and they've never read the

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Gospel of John. Like, seriously. So that's a problem with this movement.

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It's a problem with this trad movement. And also, in a lot of these trad circles, not just Catholicism and Orthodoxy, I'm talking about trad

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Protestantism as well, there's very little fruit of the spirit. So I think

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Pastor Matt's videos are a much better representative of these denominations of Catholic and Orthodox, because he's talking to actual ministers, talking to actual priests, trained priests, whereas the people

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I've interacted with in all denominations are really just the online personalities of those denominations, which usually aren't going to be the best representatives, myself included.

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Well Matt, what are your thoughts on that? The online personalities of all of these different groups are very different in person than they are on the internet.

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It's something I can... Okay, so for the people who don't have a

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YouTube channel and don't monitor the analytics, there's a phenomenon that happens where the algorithm will roam around with your videos like a prowling lion looking for which audience it might devour.

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And I can tell where it's probing, where it's trying.

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So if I don't publish a video for a few weeks, you lose the initial momentum of a new video that you've published.

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That's fine, that's the life cycle of a video, it's not weird. But then the algorithm will say, well, this channel has been around for a while, some people have seemed to like it in the past, nothing's cooking there now, let's see if this pocket of people might like it.

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And I can tell, there's no feedback loop on that. I don't get to see who the algorithm is putting stuff in front of, it's only by the comments that I can tell.

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And wow, can I tell, like, oh, okay, we are trying jilted atheists right now who used to be

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Christians and deconstructed in the mid 20 teens. Cool, yep, I recognize these comments.

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These are King James onlyists, that's who's getting served my videos this week. And they are all mad about the same thing.

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And what's interesting is as you see the different groups who are being served your video in these kind of fluky algorithmic wanderings, what you'll discover is that each of these groups, their internet identity is characterized by what they're mad about.

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All of us, evangelicals, Calvinists, ortho bros, people turning

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Catholic after years of being an evangelical, evangelicals who've turned evangelical after years of being

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Catholic. I can tell you what they're mad about. I never got the Bible when I was a Catholic. And I don't know,

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I kind of like that complaint. I like the Bible too. But there's a skewing that happens with the way videos work and are served to the audience on the internet that has a feedback loop that I think a lot of people wouldn't notice that encourages a doubling down on the most negative aspects of what people are upset about from each of these different little pockets.

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I think a really important detail to remember whenever we talk about the internet version of anything is that your feed does not look like everybody else's feed.

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There is a not human machine learning algorithm that is looking for patterns in thought and language and that rewards clicks.

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What gets clicks? You see a comment that's nice and friendly and you're like, oh, that's thoughtful. You think this thing is beautiful.

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You don't like it. You don't engage with it. You nod and you're like, that's emotionally mature and healthy and you move on.

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You see something that is born out of hurt or confusion or not a total understanding of the thing, but insecurity and anger come through, the likelihood of engagement goes up and this incentivizes the algorithm to keep doing that.

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Now, eventually that reads back onto people who read the comments and they start to imitate what the algorithm has been rewarding and thus

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I think one of the central characteristics of internet Christianity in the 2020s is what you're hurt, angry or insecure about as opposed to in real life.

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It's much more about what you think is beautiful about the tradition you're a part of. There's more humility involved.

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There's more, I'm growing and learning these things involved. They're not one -to -one in my opinion.

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A lot of times when I ask people, if people are very vocal online about being a certain

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Christian denomination, I ask them, when did you convert to this? I can just assume that that's not what they were born and raised as.

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I can assume they converted at some point and usually it's because they saw some internet content. It's often like,

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I saw some based trad orthodox TikToks. For those of you who don't know, based means a very good opinion.

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Trad means traditional. There's just this propaganda that floats around on TikTok. I don't use

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TikTok, but there's a lot of propaganda for lots of stuff on TikTok. Did you just Zoomer, they have mansplaining.

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I think you just Zoomer -splained for us old men who might not know what based is. Not you guys. I'm talking about the audience.

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It can be me. I just thought it was funny. I'm sorry. I was like, this is for my age group.

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He just defined terms and I'm so thankful. I did some Zoomer -splaining.

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It's very interesting that a lot of people these days, when I ask why are so many people going

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Catholic and Orthodox, they'll say, oh, it's because we're right. Now, two things. One, if only one of you can be right and if there's some great spiritual awakening that's happened, why is the flow going equally in both directions instead of to one or the other?

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The second thing is, why is it happening now and not before if you've always been right? There's always been

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Catholic and Orthodox books, resources. It's due to a YouTube algorithm. It's due to an

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AI algorithm that we're seeing an unprecedented move towards high church traditional

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Christianity in America. Part of it is it's motivated. It's fueled by being starved for tradition, but I think the reason we're seeing it now is because of the internet.

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I think a real Catholic or Orthodox priest would say, being convinced by internet

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TikTok propaganda is not really a good reason to join our church. You should actually talk to Catholic Orthodox priests in real life before you make some sort of decision like that.

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I guess we've got two reasons that we've thrown out, that the algorithm is a disruptive force.

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It sort of plays the role that college used to play in terms of taking things you were raised around and being an authoritative voice in the life of people at some point.

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That sort of grabs you by the shoulders. I mean, what did a college professor used to do? Hey, here's a whole bunch of scary ideas that aren't like what you already think, and it's going to unsettle you.

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I'm not saying I think or don't think these things. I'm going to teach you all of these dangerous ideas, and you're going to do something with them.

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Now, I don't get the impression that's exactly how college works now, but maybe in a way that mantle, that role has been assumed by the seemingly impartial algorithm, who is going to be incentivized to give you one of two things.

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You're either the kind of person who is going to click the most if you get stuff that deeply confirms what you already think.

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That seems to be very effective on an older generation. I don't think that's a current phenomenon.

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I think that's always been the case, sunk cost, and just wanting to feel like you didn't screw up your life by investing in the wrong things and thinking the wrong things are going to make us more likely to want reassurances that we've played our cards right and believed the right beliefs when we start to get a little bit older.

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I don't think there's even any shame in that. I think it's a reflective place to be to want to feel like your life had meaning and like you invested in something that mattered.

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It's why I like to invite people to talk about what's beautiful about their thing rather than debate.

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It's just my style. I also think that the algorithm is going to connect with the aspect of youth where you've been raised with a certain set of values, but you maybe haven't fully gamed that out for yourself.

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The clicks for younger people are going to be found in stuff that is jarring and at first offensive and troubling.

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Maybe you will end up rejecting it eventually, but wow, that flies in the face of my assumptions.

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The same way that people who maybe went to a college both hated and really valued that professor who just kept insisting on putting frustrating, difficult ideas in front of you and making you feel profoundly unsafe and challenged, but in the end, you felt like you were better for it.

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The algorithm seems to be imitating. It seems to know or anticipate these same tendencies at different points in life for how we relate to ideas that are foreign to our own or reassuring to our own.

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I think there's no surprise that there's going to be that jarring shakeup effect and that you're going to see a lot of this migration in both directions.

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It is in both directions amongst younger people. When I look at things that are taught in Roman Catholicism, things that are taught in Eastern Orthodoxy and the things that I've studied and some of it, of course,

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I would reject because I don't believe that it's in line with what

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I believe the Scripture teaches, but what are some of the aspects of it that are really appealing according to the people that you've talked to?

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What are some of the things that people say, this is what I really like? Because like I said, for me, I see things like the papacy.

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I see even things like praying the rosary and things like that. Those are to me immediate,

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I don't want anything to do with that. I'm not interested in that. That has no appeal to me at all. What is it that you think that is appealing?

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I know we've already said tradition, but I want to dig down a little deeper and say, what traditions? What do they like? What is it that's drawing them to these two movements which have major differences with Protestantism?

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I would say by tradition, I would define that as historical continuity because everyone has a tradition.

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The tradition of evangelical contemporary worship, it's a tradition that goes back to the 1980s.

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They want something that they feel is connected to the apostles where they can draw a direct line of continuity from their current church today all the way back to the apostles.

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That's why, for example, apostolic succession is a compelling idea for them. There's some Protestants who have various views about apostolic succession, but generally the apostolic denominations are

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Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, maybe Assyrian Church of the

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East, and some Anglo -Catholics try to join that club as well. We've seen this alliance of these apostolic denominations,

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Catholics, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, who historically said each other was damned to hell.

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Historically, they said that. Now, they have this alliance against Protestants. Now, you'll just see these pan -apostolic

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YouTube channels where the only thing they agree on is Protestant bad. You'll see these trad memes where it's like Catholic churches, beautiful cathedral,

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Orthodox churches, beautiful tourist attraction cathedral, Protestant churches, strip mall, as if that is a fair representation of the typical building for each denomination.

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But this idea of continuity with the past where you can have a direct line of tradition from today all the way going back to the apostles.

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Because a lot of times, like Pastor Matt mentioned, these college professors back in the day would start with tricky questions, challenge your assumptions.

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Well, a lot of these Catholic Orthodox YouTube channels will do the same thing. They will ask, when was your church started?

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When was your church's theology invented? And most Protestants will have to say, you know, if they're non -denominational, they'll say my church was started by Pastor Jim 20 years ago.

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What is the correct answer to that question? If they're Lutheran or Reformed, it'd be my church was started in the 1500s.

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I think the correct answer - I think it's Acts chapter 2. Yes. I think - I mean, my church was started the same day your church was started with a demonstrable public manifestation of the

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Holy Spirit after a clear instruction from Jesus himself that this was supposed to look different and go to different cultures, and it's not done until it's gone to a whole bunch of different cultures at the end of the earth.

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Acts 1 and Acts 2 say all these churches that teach the gospel, they all started the same day.

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I understand that's offensive. Yeah. Now that is the correct answer. That's the answer I would give, certainly.

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But these young inquirers, they don't know that. If some YouTuber tells them, your church was started by Martin Luther, your church was started by King Henry VIII, they'll be like, duh, okay.

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They'll show some graph where it's like a direct line of continuity with the Orthodox Church, and then all the Protestant churches just split off and splintered.

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And these 13 -year -old inquirers who are looking for tradition, they don't know any better. They don't know that that's not true.

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So you can't exactly blame them. I think in America, Protestantism really has been largely disconnected from its own tradition.

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In the mainline Protestant churches, you see an inward disconnect from its own tradition with an abandonment of traditional theology.

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That's why I'm part of the movement Operation Reconquista, to bring the gospel back to the mainline Protestant churches.

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That's why I'm still PCUSA. And in evangelical Protestant churches, you see more of an outward abandonment of tradition with churches abandoning traditional liturgy, aesthetics, all those things.

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Either way, Protestantism, even if it is traditional, even if it is connected to the past, it doesn't seem like that outwardly to the average person.

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And you see a pride flag on First Methodist Church. You see a non -denominational church that has no regard for the church fathers.

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Then you see an Orthodox Church with icons of the saints plastered everywhere, and they have convincing claims to apostolic succession.

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The average inquirer is going to think that that has more of a connection to the past.

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The average inquirer is going to be convinced by the claims that these apostolic denominations were started in 33

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AD at Pentecost, and that these Protestant denominations are new innovations. And obviously that's not true, but I can see,

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I don't blame people for thinking that originally. There are two categories here that I hear straight from the horse's mouth.

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One is the stuff we've been talking about so far, the really big picture intellectual theological stuff.

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And I think one of the phenomena that happens here, whether we're talking about the kid going off to college and learning about the world from their freshman year liberal arts professor, or learning about the world from content creators on the internet as curated by the algorithm, it's the same thing.

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You don't always think hard about what you were raised with, and a lot of the objections

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I hear from people about Protestantism, this was never spoken to. Yes, it was.

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Yeah, it was spoken to all the time. You were just nine. So you just missed it.

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You were bored. You drew anime characters on your bulletin. You were a kid, no judgment.

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You were a kid. You made it through church and you took it for granted. And that's part of the beauty of that college rite of passage is it does grab you by the shoulders.

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And it's meant to make you retroactively look back and have that end of the usual suspects moment where you go, all of it was taught to me.

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The Bible makes sense. My parents knew something. This is amazing. Or if you really got nothing out of it, it's meant to make you question those assumptions and do something new.

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So for me, I think it's tempting to way underestimate that aspect of humanity.

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You just take for granted what you're raised around. And you get used to it and you think everybody thinks it.

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It doesn't have any exotic factor. It doesn't have any intrigue. You think you know all of it, even though you know 2 % of it at best.

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And that gets you by socially in those circles to say the 2 % that everybody knows.

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So you assume there's nothing to it. Well, then you go out onto the internet, you don't get some Catholic who doesn't know anything and takes it as seriously as you took your childhood

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Protestantism. That's not how you're going to hear from. Their videos aren't going to get any views. They're not going to get any traction. You're never going to know who that person is.

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You're going to hear from somebody who has recently discovered more of the fullness of the

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Catholic church and they see the beauty of it and they're excited about it. And they're going to highlight these things and they're going to get out their yarn and red thumbtacks.

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And they're going to make maps and explain all the stuff that they figured out. And it's going to be compelling because you just kind of got bored and used to what you were raised around and this feels fresh and it still has

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Jesus in it. It's not that complicated in that regard. So I do think that aspect along with the algorithm,

31:21

I know I keep coming back to it. I just can't emphasize it enough. But the other thing is that I think we just need to acknowledge that Catholics and Orthodox do some stuff really well that scratches itches that Protestantism maybe has a little tougher time scratching in a very practical sense.

31:40

A whole bunch of people I know who quit being evangelical and started being Catholic or Orthodox do so because they naively believe that confession and the church authority structure solves church fights and church discipline.

31:55

Now it doesn't. They'll figure this out when they get into it. But confession is kind of useful.

32:03

Within certain expressions of evangelicalism, there isn't a clarity on this.

32:09

All anybody's got is go Matthew 18 it. Well, what does that always mean? That's really difficult to shrewdly navigate when you've had a legitimate falling out with someone or you can't resolve it, but now you've got this outstanding thing where you have guilt before somebody else and you can't fix it.

32:27

Well, bad church leadership in some evangelical and Protestant settings, we'll just let that metastasize.

32:34

And now somebody comes away feeling totally burned. Whereas within Catholicism and Orthodoxy, particular

32:40

Catholicism, you just have a thing that you do. You go to the thing, you say the things, it all happens in the little booth and it's done.

32:49

And somebody who has the authority to be like, hey dude, it's done. Make these gestures, say these words, it's done.

32:58

Is that the best? I don't know, but I think it's very satisfying for some who really just need to put a nail in the coffin on that little dust up, that little point of pain.

33:11

Again, I wouldn't say that it necessarily accomplishes that, but I think it's very appealing to have that point of closure in that regard.

33:21

I think that Catholic churches are appealing. Orthodox churches are appealing to people who have seen how much volunteerism and social dance steps are involved in being a part of a non -denominational church.

33:36

Whereas within Catholicism, you really can just receive the sacrament and you're good.

33:43

Ideally, you might do more someday when you're into it more, but it's okay to not be into it more.

33:49

There's a mechanism for that. Whereas if you're not into it in a place where belief and loudly asserting that belief is kind of how you're in, well, that can be difficult if you're not in a place where you can muster that right now.

34:04

And that can make the high church more appealing, where you kind of outsource the heavy lift of your faith a little bit to somebody else.

34:11

The church mediates. It isn't so dependent on your belief. And I think there can be an advantage that people detect in how, practically speaking, the historic apostolic high church handles some of those doldrums of faith and some of those,

34:34

I'm just not into it, but I want to go to heaven things. And we can sit here all we want as guys who are really into it and really excited about the gospel and say, well, those people should just be into it more.

34:44

They shouldn't want something where the church does more of a heavy lift, but that's easy for us to say, because we're really into it.

34:52

I have been at a point in my life in a place where I wasn't as sure about anything. And it really would have helped me to have been able in that point where my faith was wobbling, to have been able to have a theological mechanism by which

35:06

I kind of just outsource this for now. I got to go autopilot. I don't have this. I can't really fake it right now.

35:12

If I'm rightly established by my belief, my belief is in the gutter. It's damaged.

35:18

I don't know what's wrong with me. I want to believe. I want to follow Jesus better. I just suck.

35:23

And I would like to stop the suckage as soon as possible. I talk with people who get to that place and there's an appeal to having the priest kind of do the heavy lift for a while.

35:34

Am I saying that these things are right or that this is the way church ought to be? No, I'm not necessarily saying that.

35:41

What I am saying is there are just some very practical mechanisms that exist in these traditions that are often handled differently within Protestantism, particularly evangelicalism, that I think offer some appeal as well.

35:55

Right. I think that's definitely a reason. I think another reason where Catholics and Orthodox have an advantage over Protestants today is that they still have their historic, strong institutions.

36:09

Because if you have a strong institution, there's so many resources at your disposal. You can have apologetics to defend your faith.

36:14

You can have scholars to answer the hard questions of the faith for you. You can have, I don't know, campus ministries everywhere.

36:21

There are endless advantages to have strong institutions. Catholics and Orthodox have not been alienated from their own institutions.

36:27

An Orthodox church built 500 years ago, it's still Eastern Orthodox, still preaching Eastern Orthodox. A Catholic church built 500 years ago, still

36:34

Catholic, still preaching Catholicism. A Protestant church built 500 years ago, it's preaching the

36:40

United Nations and the environment and nothing else. And it's basically just turned into a museum.

36:47

Protestants used to have strong institutions. Remember, the Ivy League schools, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, founded by Bible -believing

36:53

Protestants. Brown, founded by Baptists. Baptists founded an Ivy League school. Most Protestants are just, do not know that.

37:01

The vast majority of young Christians I've talked to did not know that the Ivy League schools were founded by Bible -believing conservative

37:08

Protestants. They didn't know that. Because the public schools, like the ones I went to, teach that Christians have just been the bad guys in history.

37:16

So that's why I think we are going to continue to see a lot especially intellectual inquirers go to these traditions until Protestants get back strong institutions, whether it's by retaking old ones, which

37:29

I advocate, or building new ones, which some other people advocate. Dr. Jordan B. Cooper is my favorite

37:35

Lutheran YouTuber, theologian, has said that Protestants are excluded from today's cultural conversations because they don't have institutions.

37:43

Like you see Jordan Peterson and, I don't know, Matt Walsh or Jonathan Paggio, you see these panels of today's sort of somewhat conservative cultural thinkers, and there's someone missing at the table.

37:58

It's Protestants. Protestants are sort of seen as a joke because either Protestants are like very liberal and going along with whatever the culture says, or they just don't really have any institutional backing for what they say.

38:11

We have this unfortunate mainline evangelical split. So I think if you're writing a list of why people go

38:16

Catholic, I think one of the biggest ones today is Protestantism is in the weakest spot it's ever been institutionally today.

38:23

Now this was not the case 500 years ago. 500 years ago, the Catholic Church was in a very, very bad place.

38:28

It was in a much worse place than it is now. Back then, everyone would go Protestant the second they opened a Bible, right?

38:35

The second French Protestants, sorry, the second French Catholics opened a Bible, they would become Huguenots, and that's why the

38:42

Catholic Church began restricting transmission of the Bible. Same with the Orthodox Church with the Synod of Jerusalem.

38:48

They said laity should not read the Bible. But nowadays, now that Protestant institutions are so weak, it is very easy for those who want to be part of something big and strong to just want to defect to these older apostolic churches.

39:02

Yeah, you're making me think. The reason you got all of the surrender cobra pose from me was, okay, the institutions you're talking about that used to be expressions of Protestant thought are now extensions of the state.

39:17

The new secular leftist religion, even if I weren't criticizing it, it's still what it is.

39:24

It has orthodoxy, it has heterodoxy. The only thing that this new secular leftist religion lacks is atonement.

39:32

It has no mechanism for forgiveness or atonement, and that's why it will fail and is in the process of failing already.

39:40

Religion is meant to account for human error and failure and the human problem and aging and death.

39:47

There just happens to be only one that actually does it well, but all the others attempt to do it, and this new one, it simply doesn't accomplish that.

39:57

It has to point to the virtue of the self loudly.

40:03

It has to point to the bad behavior of others loudly. It is a form of religious fundamentalism, but even the most dour forms of Christian religious fundamentalism that I remember from the 80s and 90s had a mechanism for atonement and forgiveness.

40:18

This one does not. These institutions you're referencing are their dusky relics, their shadows of what they used to be.

40:29

Now they are representatives. They are training grounds for this new failing religion that is failing.

40:35

The more it fails, the more violent it will become, and as it is in its death throes already, what you've got are

40:44

Catholic and Orthodox institutions that don't prop up the state. That isn't why they exist.

40:51

That isn't the God they think brings the solution, whereas these formerly

40:56

Christian Protestant institutions do. So maybe this, just spitball in here, maybe this is part of what's going on.

41:04

As people start to realize that the United States of America and the Western order that has existed post -World

41:12

War II is not eternal, as we have printed $10 trillion and racked up $40 trillion in debt, a number no one can understand, that is a death number.

41:24

An economy, you can't do that. It's not going to work. I don't know how it's not going to work, but you can't do that.

41:31

That has never worked. It's not going to work this time. As people start to realize that truth isn't something that people actually value, it's manipulation.

41:42

It's 1984 -iness. As people start to realize that law is enormously selective in its application, as people start to realize, show me the man,

41:53

I'll show you the crime, everyone is guilty of something. It's just a matter of when it's politically expedient to call it in.

42:00

This isn't the Soviets who are like this, it's us. This is what raw, pure power deteriorates into.

42:09

We may be in the late stages of our empire faster than just about any other empire ever has made it to its late stages and its death throes.

42:17

I think people are figuring this out. I think particularly Protestants, as represented by the nature of the institutions you've described, have become hitched in an unhealthy way to the fate of this particular government.

42:31

As people realize, we might not be the good guys anymore. Are we the baddies?

42:36

As people start to realize, this is not economically sustainable. This has to fail.

42:42

As people realize, people don't care about our stupid dollar as much anymore. They're making up their own international dollar.

42:50

We're just bombarded with this news that tells the story of things. This isn't going to last.

42:55

I don't know how it will change, but it's going to change. Wouldn't it make sense to go looking for something else that's bigger than you, that feels like it's older than you, maybe even older than a country and a world order that's in a hard way?

43:11

I don't think progressive leftist Christianity offers any alternative to that.

43:18

It is the sinking ship I just described. I don't think evangelicalism offers a great alternative to that unless robustly articulated, but your super basic seeker -friendly evangelicalism is so in the moment.

43:33

It's so trying to be relevant while also not quite the same thing as the naughty stuff in culture.

43:39

Really, it is the historic church with institutions that look older to the eye, that sound older in the language, that feel older than the institutions we've hitched our sense of identity to in our lifetimes that are going to be appealing for that reason.

43:56

Again, I'm spitballing. You just made me think. Right. I think maybe the last reason we could jot down is no

44:05

Protestant church has all three, conservative, traditional, and has young people.

44:11

There's a lot of Protestant churches that are very traditional in terms of style, and they do feel like older institutions, like the church behind me.

44:20

Mainline Protestant churches, beautiful worship. You can tell there is literally the history of the church carved in stone with so many achievements from great men in the past.

44:29

You'll see dedications from 1850. There's often cemeteries behind these churches. They occupy a central geographic place in the towns.

44:38

There's tons of beautiful mainline Protestant churches in every American town. They're traditional, but chances are they're not conservative.

44:45

Even when some Protestant churches are still faithful to the gospel, still preaching Christianity, they'll often have female pastors and other somewhat liberal elements that young men have a strong aversion to because they just have a strong gut reaction against anything resembling liberalism.

44:59

Then you have a lot of Protestant churches, evangelical, non -denominational. They're plenty conservative, all right, but they are not traditional in any sense.

45:07

You will have some anomalies like the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, LCMS, or ARP, Presbyterians, or some conservative mainline churches.

45:16

They are conservative and traditional. Yes. It's all the youngest person there is 70. In these

45:24

Catholic - I don't know that I agree with that. I've agreed with pretty much everything else about your analysis, but what about ACNA?

45:29

Every ACNA church I've been in meets all three of those qualifications, every single one. They often do have traditional liturgy and style, but they meet in a strip mall.

45:40

There are a far greater number of historic Baptist cathedral -looking buildings than ACNA Anglican ones because when you split off from a historic denomination, you usually don't inherit the resources.

45:55

ACNA has a lot of youthful energy in it, but it does not inherit the historic resources, buildings, seminaries that the

46:01

Episcopal Church had, which is why there are some great, beautiful ACNA cathedrals, but they're very rare compared to most other denominations.

46:11

I've seen a lot of - I've been in five, and all five meet the qualifications you laid out, even in terms of look of the building.

46:17

I think that's a group that's worth looking at. I'm not them, but I think that's a group that might hit the sliver you're talking about that's flying a little bit under the radar.

46:26

I know what you're saying. I do have a map containing all the Protestant churches that do meet all three qualifications.

46:32

I do have a map. I know that there's dozens of beautiful ACNA churches, but it's rare.

46:39

I've talked to a lot of people, a lot of young inquirers. I've told them to investigate traditional

46:44

Protestantism, and they've gone to Anglican churches, but either there was liberalism there, or there was contemporary music, or it was meeting in some sort of strip mall, and there was this beautiful Roman Catholic cathedral right next door.

46:57

Yes, it's superficial, but at the same time, it speaks to this broader rootedness in tradition, institutional interconnectedness, because the

47:05

ACNA as an institution, it's 10 years old, and the Roman Catholic Church as an institution is 1 ,700 years old.

47:12

So yes, I do have a map. I have a map of thousands of churches that do meet all three criteria, but it is still a lot more rare overall than what the

47:23

Catholicism and orthodoxy offers. Okay, let me ask - Okay, I have to... Oh, go ahead.

47:29

Let me just jump in, because you just said the Roman Catholic Church is 1 ,700 years old. Are you dating it from Constantine?

47:36

Because if you are, you're going to... That's going to get some comments, but I'm assuming that's what you mean by 1 ,700...

47:44

The institutionalized Roman Catholic Church is 1 ,700 years old. It is based on bishops that came before, but...

47:52

I want to drop a bomb. The 1 ,700 thing just caught my attention. I do want to drop a bomb, and I know you have two questions,

47:59

Matt. I promise we'll come back. I just... No rush. Because you say three things are the young people, traditional institution...

48:10

Or say what the three things are again, very quickly. Young people, traditional style, feel, and being conservative in terms of beliefs.

48:20

Okay. Now, I'm going to drop a bomb, but I have to, because... And this isn't in any way...

48:26

Because I know this name has a tendency to raise hackles, and that's the question of the

48:34

Wilsonites out in Moscow. I am the Harbor Freight Doug Wilson, so I have to at least...

48:40

I don't know if you know that, Matt, if you've ever heard that, the Harbor Freight Doug Wilson. I do a skit where I pretend to be

48:45

Doug Wilson. I've actually got his studio background that I do stuff, and he knows all about it. He and I have talked about it.

48:51

It's funny. But his group, I think, is growing because of the three things you just said.

48:59

And that's why I'm throwing this out there, is within my world of the

49:06

Reformed Baptists, there is a huge movement toward the CREC, which is the

49:12

Doug Wilson group. And it is because it's younger men specifically. It's because they're traditional in their worship, at least how they would define it.

49:22

I mean, a lot of their guys wear robes. A lot of their churches are practicing liturgies and having

49:28

Holy Communion every week and all of these things that are part of this tradition that is very different from what

49:34

I grew up with watching the youth group model, which was, you know, who's down with G .O .D.? That kind of foolish behavior.

49:40

A guy walks out, and he's got skinny jeans and a mohawk. And that's what called itself church in the 90s.

49:49

And that's what was splitting away from the traditions. And now there's this movement back. So I think that's one of the reasons why we're seeing that movement, is because they have the three things you just mentioned, even though they don't have maybe the beautiful buildings that you've mentioned.

50:06

But they do have a sense of tradition. They have a sense of trying to go back to that. Real quick.

50:13

I've said I agree with their vision. I agree with their goals. But I disagree with their means. Because the

50:18

CREC is a double offshoot denomination. They split from a denomination that's split from the mainline. So they have a great vision.

50:26

But right now, they don't have nearly enough resources to achieve that vision. They have fewer resources than even other offshoots like the

50:32

PCA and the OPC. So that's why, in theory, if you go to a CREC's Instagram page, they will post pictures of cathedrals.

50:39

Where does their church actually in a public school cafeteria? So part of traditional means traditional institutions.

50:48

And I think a big problem with Americans is they're so individualistic. They don't see the value in old traditional institutions, which have accumulated wealth and resources with age.

50:59

And I think part of that's because of the behavior of those traditional institutions. They've been crappy.

51:05

People look at it and they're like, why would I keep sinking money and energy into this thing? And you're offering a compelling case and have been for a few years now as to another vision for why that might be worth reconsidering.

51:18

You've got a point. I think you've got a great point. I've been paying attention. I also think they have a point.

51:25

Eventually, people are going to look at stuff and say, I'm not going to waste my entire time on the stage of history here, trying to reform this stupid thing that is absolutely gone.

51:38

Are they right? Well, I'm not saying they're right. I'm saying I understand the pragmatism and that isn't necessarily just a function of individualism.

51:46

It's also a function of doing math and having a different strategy. I'm fascinated by your strategy.

51:54

I have, I reasoned too much of the same thing, just walking around doing the videos that I do.

52:02

I mean, I, okay, I'll explain this quickly. I absolutely scour cities that I'm going to travel to, to try to find a church that has a set of qualifications that would make for an interesting video.

52:15

The right kind of person to explain it, representative of something that I really haven't engaged with yet, a building that's going to be visually interesting enough for there to be something to explore, something to point at that can facilitate or foster, promote conversation.

52:31

And so I, I get to so many more churches than what I actually publish and I don't publish all the videos

52:39

I film. Some of them don't go well enough to get published. No hard feelings toward anyone that could be on my part, person

52:48

I pointed the camera at, but I can't help but look at these and come to the same conclusions that you are, which is you can't replace the positioning of this building.

53:01

You can't build this building again. You could repair it. It would be outrageously expensive, but you can't make it.

53:09

In a way, we don't know how to make that anymore. We, the bureaucratic hoops, the lack of political will from the community to rally behind it, the resistance, the idea that so many people in government would say a church downtown is a social ill, not a social good.

53:29

So unless your church promotes our government things, we would never be behind it or support it. There's so many hurdles to having that real estate, that central position in the community that you see all of these relic churches having.

53:44

And that's, that's why I think you've got a point that, that maybe there is something to trying to reclaim that space as best as we can.

53:53

Also, I understand why over the last 20 or 30 years is people have seen the, not just casual biblical drift, but really aggressively anti -biblical drift of certain expressions of Protestantism that they've just said,

54:10

I'm washing my hands of this. I don't want to be held accountable for this. I don't want any part.

54:15

I said my thing. I fought back. The institution was bigger. I lost. What am I going to do?

54:21

Sit around and cry or do nothing? I'm moving on. I can understand both situations. And I think there's going to be some variety from person to person as to what they're up against and the win ability of the fight.

54:33

I think the previous generation, it makes sense why they saw the institutions were bad or were like, okay,

54:38

I'm not going to waste my time on this. But then the next generation, my generation has to choose between no institutions, evangelical, bad institutions, mainline

54:46

Protestant, or good institutions, Roman Catholic. So like the

54:51

CRAC will say, they'll be very traditional in theory. And they'll be like, okay, sure. We'll have cathedrals in 200 years when we take over the government and establish

54:59

Christian nationalist theocracy or whatever. But then the Roman Catholic church next door has powerful institutions and cathedrals right here, right now.

55:07

You can go to them. You can meet people there. You can interact with them. So what's going to be more compelling?

55:14

Institutions in theory or institutions in practice? So it's like, yes, if Protestantism was the only thing that existed, it would make sense why people would abandon institutions once they got corrupted.

55:25

But we have these alternative expressions of Christianity whose institutions have not been corrupted.

55:31

So I'm saying it makes sense why people are flocking to those denominations whose institutions are still relatively strong compared to ours.

55:39

And I would maybe have to jump in and simply say, I would disagree with you that they haven't been corrupted.

55:47

I understand where, well, I would say there is corruption, especially particularly within Rome.

55:55

Some of the things that I would say have been serious corruptions. I guess what I would say is if you are considering changing denominations, don't do so lightly.

56:05

Don't change your denominational identity until you've actually visited some of those communities, interacted with reliable leaders in those communities like pastors and stuff.

56:15

Don't have a new denomination every week. If you're going to make a change, make sure to consider what all the options are and don't have the majority of your thinking and exploration be online because as we've discussed the algorithm, the internet, it's not real.

56:31

So to put it in Gen Z slang to a lot of you guys who are inquiring different denominations on the internet, touch grass.

56:42

Very cool. I think that's a great place for us to end. Yes, I did too. So thanks guys for being a part of the show today and may