News Roundup: Kelly Loving Act, Hindu Idol, Defending Woke Leaders with Same Ole' Tricks, & More

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In an age of moral drift and cultural upheaval against the waves, Christian order in a liberal age by John Harris stands as a resolute call to return to God's divine order.

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John Harris confronts the challenges of our time, disorientation, secularism, and the erosion of virtue with a compelling case for reviving the

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Christian principles that once anchored Western civilization. There is a vision of hope rooted in the timeless truths of Scripture and an overcoming spirit.

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Against the waves is more than a critique of our modern world. It equips the believer, the patriot, and the survivor with practical guidance to restore meaning, build resilient communities, and live with unwavering conviction.

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Navigate the chaos of modern society, conform your life to a higher purpose, and stand against the waves.

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People who have read it love it, and I know of at least one church that's doing this as a

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Bible study, or I should say a book study, really, and I hadn't really thought of that.

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I haven't done a lot of book studies in group settings. I've done Bible studies. I have done a few book studies,

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I guess, but it's been a while, and I'm thinking of maybe doing a study guide because this really is a book you could do that with.

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Each chapter is pretty self -contained, and if you wanted to, you could even go through and skip some chapters and use others because there's such a variety of topics.

02:48

Anyway, that's the book. Two other announcements I have real quick before we jump into things. I do want to let everyone know,

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I will be in Selinsgrove, I think that's how you pronounce it, Selinsgrove, yes, Pennsylvania, which is not far,

03:00

I don't think, from Lancaster. A lot of people recognize Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but Selinsgrove isn't far from there.

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At the Christianity and the Founding conference, Christianityandthefounding .com, that is

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April 25th through 27th, and this is what the website looks like. You can go sign up.

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It's a steal, guys. We have really great speakers. It's only $30 to register, and there's a

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VIP dinner for $50 if you choose to come to the VIP dinner. That's coming up. We also have, and I don't have a website for this, but a conference the following weekend,

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May 2nd through 4th, in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, and that is the Truth Conference, and they got some really great things.

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I know on Saturday, there's a tour of Philadelphia that you can take part in, a Christian tour, which I'm hoping to do, and there is not a website, though, and I asked the pastor,

03:48

Pastor Jeff Clearer, Pastor, is there a website, and I think he was thinking of getting one, but the thing is,

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I guess he doesn't need a lot of extra people because he's got a lot of people coming, so that's a great problem not to have,

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I suppose. You have people already coming to your conference, but I know there's people in this audience who would want to come, so I asked him if I could at least make his email address available for people, and he said yes.

04:11

If you want to email Jeff .Clearer at CornerstoneSJ .org,

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and Clearer is K -L -I -E -W -E -R. If you're watching, obviously, it's there. If you want to go to johnharrismedia .com,

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you can go to Speaking Engagements and find that email address. You can get more details. If you're in the

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Mount Laurel, New Jersey area, the Philadelphia area, then we'd love to see you there. Of course, there's other stuff coming up, too.

04:38

I've got the Operation Joshua conference, or I think it's an event more so in Melbourne, Florida on May 17th, so I'll be there and would love to see you.

04:48

Okay. With that, oh, and I should also let you know, yes, my album, it's still relatively new.

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I came out in February. Driving Down a Mountain Road is also out. You can get it on iTunes or wherever you stream.

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If you're a CD person, you can get a signed CD, and you can go to johnharristunes .com. Okay, now we can get into stuff.

05:08

Let's do that. Let's get into some things here. I want to talk today about a number of topics.

05:13

This is a news roundup, so I think we're going to start here real quick. Let's actually start, take one step back.

05:20

Let me just give you a little bit of a transgender news update here on the sexual degeneracy front, but the transgender front in particular.

05:29

Just a few headlines for you or stories there. Amber Duke from The Federalist, exclusive, more than three dozen children's hospitals continue to provide sex changes for minors as Donald Trump's executive order moving to defund gender -affirming care is under preliminary injunction.

05:45

Some hospitals confirmed to The Daily Caller that they are still offering sex change surgeries to children as young as 14.

05:51

Did I say she was with The Federalist? Daily Caller, sorry, as young as 14 years old. For the top surgery, it looks like we are seeing patients 14 years of age and older.

05:59

A receptionist at the University of Minnesota Health told The Caller that was on March 19th, so almost a month ago, but this is something that's still ongoing.

06:10

This is something that is a big moneymaker and the left does not want to give this issue up. There's other good news and bad news headlines.

06:20

Good news, the United Kingdom Supreme Court, this was surprising, ruled that men are not women in a

06:27

For Women Scotland victory, saying trans women are women was never true.

06:33

I saw that the author of the Harry Potter series, who's been pretty big on this, was involved in,

06:40

I think, advocating for this particular ruling. I don't know how you advocate for a ruling, but she was very happy with all of this.

06:49

The story goes on, it says that the vibe shift is real, quoting a former barrister in Great Britain.

06:59

I don't think this decision would have been made two or three years ago. I think this is reflective of the continuing shift in our culture towards things like reality, a shift towards things like reality, that kind of thing.

07:12

Well, the interesting thing to me on this whole thing is, I mean,

07:17

I'm keeping my eye on Great Britain, but from all the headlines I've been seeing, it seems like Great Britain's toast on the immigration front.

07:24

They've allowed so many people with different faiths, both Muslims and Hindus, into the country.

07:30

It's just changed the demographics to the extent that the birth rate will, and we're not even talking about Christians, we're just talking about people who are, people that have lineage going back a few generations or more in Great Britain, they will be minorities in their own country before too long with the way things are going, and that's kind of a scary thought.

07:52

I mean, Christianity, of course, was once the prevalent, dominant religion, and the trappings of it are still there in some ways in Great Britain, but it's a different place, and immigration is certainly a big part of that.

08:04

But I did see, and I haven't looked into it, that I think it was Jamie Bainbrick put out something, and he's in,

08:10

I think, Scotland, but, or Ireland, sorry. Sorry, Jamie. I'm trying to, now,

08:15

I know those two places are very different, but now I'm trying to remember. I think it's Ireland, so, or Orland, as they say.

08:21

Anyway, he was, he put out something about a revival going on potentially in England.

08:28

I don't know if that's true. I don't know what that looks like. That's the only place

08:33

I've heard about that kind of a thing happening, and I haven't looked at any polls, but I don't know.

08:40

You have to ask yourself, is a ruling like this reflective of a greater Christian impulse, or is it because there are liberals who are maybe not as insane?

08:52

Maybe they are a little more grounded in some common sense and reality. You know, like Elon Musk, or even, dare

08:59

I say, even someone like a Bill Maher in the United States. Are there people like that who are making this kind of a thing possible?

09:06

And I think if it is that, I'm not going to poo -poo it and say that that's wrong, or bad, or a development that we should just cast away and ignore.

09:15

It's still good. I just think that if it's not because of a, due to a

09:21

Christian impulse of some kind, and if this is a secular, secular grounded kind of thing,

09:27

I don't know that we've solved the problem completely, right? I remember a professor of mine in seminary warning that there, and at the time,

09:37

I wasn't even sure I agreed with him. I thought it was a little weird, but he said that we would get a modernistic kind of scientific enthusiasm coming in the next few years.

09:49

And of course, now we see AI and transhumanism, and let's put chips in people's brains and solve

09:54

Alzheimer's. And there is, I think, a faith now, an increasing faith in technology and science.

10:01

Not that that ever went away, but it's increasing. And anyway, in order, there is a scientism that is frankly religious, but it is hard to,

10:13

I think, navigate or embrace some of that without, you know, rooting yourself in some kind of a reality that at least takes into account biological difference.

10:28

So these are incomplete thoughts on my part, but, because I'm thinking through it in real time myself, but I'm openly optimistic, but cautious about this kind of a thing going on in Great Britain.

10:41

Great development, but I'm still cautious. I'm still, maybe I'm afraid to rejoice too much because I've been disappointed.

10:47

That could be it, right? But I do think that there's a class of people, at least in the

10:53

United States, I see, and I don't know if it's the same in Great Britain, but who want to be involved in right -wing politics, who have anything but Christian interests in mind.

11:04

And they are bolstering the ranks of conservative

11:09

Christianity, but as they do so, Christians are becoming, they have a real seat at the table, but that seat is getting smaller.

11:20

And I don't know if that's something that's happening in Great Britain. Interesting though, and keep your eye on those kinds of things.

11:26

That's a good, very good development. Another development in our own country here in the

11:31

United States, I assume most of my listeners are Americans. Maine Attorney General wildly claims no concern of safety with men and women's sports.

11:41

After the U .S. Department of Justice sued Maine for putting women and girls at risk by allowing males to compete in their sports, the state's

11:46

Attorney General claimed with zero evidence that Maine's ideology poses no concerns of safety. So that's interesting.

11:53

And there's a whole article about it here. This is a real fight. This is a real fight. This is an ongoing thing.

11:58

And that brings us to what's happening now. And what's happening now is there is a bill called the

12:06

Kelly -Loving Act that has gone through, I believe there's two assemblies, right?

12:15

That's a bicameral kind of setup in Colorado, like it is in most states. And I think it's the House has already passed this full

12:22

Democrat approval, Republicans opposed, but there's not enough Republicans to do anything now in Colorado.

12:28

And it will be going to the Senate to vote on this. And it's called the Kelly -Loving

12:33

Act, and it's a radical gender ideology bill. And you'll notice this is a headline from the ERLC.

12:39

And so I wanted to say something about this. This is from April 14th. And the

12:44

ERLC was pretty late on this. There had already been momentum.

12:50

In fact, you can go listen to, I listened to a half of it, an American Reformer podcast episode with Chase Davis and William Wolfe.

12:59

And it's the last episode. In fact, I was the guest on the one before that. Tymon was interviewing me on my book

13:04

Against the Waves. The very last one though, the most recent one is Chase and William. And Chase is just talking about the fact that there were very few organizations that were willing to partner with him and actually stand against this bill in a concerted effort.

13:22

In fact, he was instrumental in planning a rally at the Capitol building there in Denver.

13:27

It happened today as I'm recording this. And so this is late at night, but it happened this morning,

13:35

I believe. And he reached out to all kinds of Christian organizations in that particular state.

13:43

And including the ERLC, the ERLC is not based in that state, but he reached out to also national

13:50

Christian organizations. And very little support. And that's a surprising thing because Colorado is actually known for having headquarters of a lot of different Christian organizations, including

14:02

Focus and the Family. And I think the Colson Center is there and Crew is there.

14:09

I think Navigators or Crew, they're probably both there. There's just a lot of Christian ministries in that area.

14:15

And to sidestep this issue, I think that's a good barometer of where these organizations, especially if they have a slightly political bent or a fully political bent already, that is a good indicator that they are probably not doing their job.

14:30

Even if they're slow on this one, to be quite honest with you, there's really no excuse because the Kelly Loving Act would make it illegal to, we'll put it this way.

14:40

If you do not use preferred pronouns, if you use someone's birth name, you are now in violation of hate crimes legislation and you will be prosecuted.

14:53

And it turns everyone in the state into a Jack Phillips. Remember Jack Phillips who didn't want to bake the cake for a homosexual wedding?

15:01

That's the kind of thing that they're going to be doing. And it is a draconian measure.

15:08

And this is the kind of thing also, there's many elements to the bill, but one of them is parents cannot interfere in minors who want to transition, that kind of thing as I understand it.

15:21

There's a lot of bad things in this bill that are just very basic fundamental issues that Christians should be concerned with.

15:29

And to see a lackluster response is disappointing. Now the ERLC may have been a little late on this and they may not have been at the rally or anything today, but I want to just,

15:39

I'm going to give a little credit here. They at least did put something out. Now this could be because of pressure. If it is though, good.

15:46

It is good. I'm willing to give credit where credit is due here. And so I wanted to highlight that.

15:51

I do think pressure works and I do think that we need to keep that pressure up on Christian organizations to actually be part of the fights that count because this is a fight that counts.

16:08

And so that's a little bit on that whole front, the transgenderism and sexual revolution front.

16:13

Like I said, it's a mixed bag. There's some good things like what happened just recently in Great Britain. There's also some things to be concerned with.

16:21

And on the state level, I think in the next few years, as a Trump administration is in charge at the national level or the general level, we are going to find out that blue states want to be the resistance and they will start doing things like this as it suits them, as they think that they can contrast themselves with Donald Trump and the administration and that kind of thing.

16:47

All right. Well one of the other things I wanted to mention along the lines of social issues is this

16:53

Texas statue issue. Now, some of you may not be familiar. You can see this little video playing here.

16:59

This is the fourth tallest statue in the US and it is the tallest statue in the state of Texas.

17:05

That's right. It is taller than the cowboy at the Texas state fair, which I have been to.

17:10

If you've never been to the Texas state fair, it's incredible. Well, this is larger. It's the Hindu god

17:15

Hanuman and it's in Sugarland, Texas. Now, Sugarland, Texas, I associate Sugarland with more traditional

17:22

Texas. Well, there's apparently a large population of Hindus there and they have erected a statue.

17:31

I'm assuming this is on private land of this god of theirs, small g god.

17:37

I mean, it's a demon, okay? And apparently at the end of this video, there's a advertisement for immigration to the

17:44

United States. Wouldn't you know? Isn't that great? These are the kinds of people,

17:49

I guess, statue of union. That's what they're calling it. Union with what? These are the kinds of people that have come into Great Britain, people of very different understandings and religions, and have changed the very character of many of Britain's cities.

18:07

And now it's happening in our country and it's not happening perhaps at the same rate it has happened in Canada.

18:14

We, of course, people coming across the Southern border, by and large, have Roman Catholic backgrounds.

18:20

And, you know, even though there's a different language and at least there is some kind of, uh, you know,

18:26

Christian, there is a compatibility that doesn't exist with stuff like this, frankly.

18:34

And this is the kind of thing that really changes the character of a place. And so what's the normal Christian reaction to this?

18:43

I mean, this is obviously an affront to the Christian faith.

18:48

This is obviously a false religion in a very egregious sense.

18:55

I mean, it is totally, it's polytheistic. It is dark, evil.

19:03

There's elements of sexual perversion in this particular religion. There's a whole social structure that isn't in conformity at all and is not incompatible at all with what

19:18

Americans have typically been used to. It is just a foreign element in every way.

19:24

And to have that be the tallest statue in Texas, I mean, that says something, right? Especially at a time when you have just recently had, and are still having in some places, statues, hundreds of statues ripped down of our own ancestors.

19:39

I think R .A. McIntyre was the one who said, look, if you are living at a time when your own ancestor statues are being ripped down and you have something like this erected, normally that's the sign that you lost a war.

19:50

It does feel that way a little bit, like we lost a war. And I think the battle is, one of the battles at least politically, socially, is for our very identity.

20:01

Who are we? And of course under liberalism, this is all permissible because you can have a pluralistic public square and that's supposed to be fine because no one's going to inhibit anyone else.

20:14

You know, if you don't like it, you go build a bigger statue on your private property, right? That's the answer,

20:20

I think, from liberals. But as Christians, we know that the character of a country also should be reflected in the laws and preferences.

20:29

So what do you do about something like this? Well, legally, I don't know. This is not the kind of thing

20:35

I think people in Texas, especially, were expecting to have to navigate. Even 10 years ago, would you have thought, would people in Texas have thought they would have to navigate something like this?

20:45

I mean, it's not hurting anyone. It's a statue, all that, but look, it's a landmark.

20:52

It's more than a statue. It's a big statue. It's a landmark and it's an idol. It's not even a statue to, it's not like a

20:59

George Washington or a Robert E. Lee statue. This is not to a person. This is to a false demon

21:05

God that is in conflict with the majority, at least up until recently, and still it's the majority, at least of Texans.

21:15

So anyway, does this mean that Hindu, you know, clerics are going to be doing the invocations at the

21:23

Sugar Land Town Hall? I mean, what does this mean? City Hall? Where are things going?

21:29

Because obviously a statue doesn't just pop out of nowhere. This is something that had broad support and a lot of resources.

21:36

And that means you have a heavy population and a heavy investment of people who have a very different agenda and vision for a common life than people who have typically traditionally lived in Texas.

21:49

So the reactions to this from Christians you would think would be disgust, would be alarm, would be what do we do about this kind of development?

22:00

And there wasn't a lot. I mean, there was some reaction to some of this, but, you know, from people with authority, most people that I could tell that I saw online at least sidestepped the issue.

22:12

But there were some guys who actually were somewhat, were not just reluctant.

22:19

They actually seemed like they support something like this. So Malcolm Yarnell at, where is he at now?

22:25

He was at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I want to say he's at Midwestern now. He's a Southern Baptist professor.

22:31

But he said, one of the worst changes this generation of Southern Baptists could make is to undermine the Lordship of Jesus Christ even further by diminishing our commitment to religious liberty.

22:40

Now you could say, well, that seems vague in general. Well, it was inserted into this kind of environment.

22:47

And yes, a lot of people, including myself, knew how he was, knew what he was talking about when he said this.

22:55

Now, the curious thing to me is that using the Lordship of Christ, the Lordship of Christ would obviously be the thing that would,

23:05

I think, preclude something like a false idol, right? Normally idols don't jive with the

23:11

Lordship of Christ, but the Lordship of Christ apparently is associated most strongly with our commitment to religious liberty, which includes now the erection and justification and allowance of idols.

23:25

Very odd to me, very odd take from a Southern Baptist professor. But just be warned that if you have a pastor who's a

23:32

Southern Baptist, they're going to have professors who thinks like this, and they're going to be influenced by those professors.

23:38

So I think it's worth highlighting that you have guys like this saying these things. Actually, Malcolm Yarnell has a history though of saying kind of woke stuff.

23:47

He once talked about how wouldn't it be great if white people would just stand aside to let minorities have positions of influence in the

23:55

Southern Baptist Convention, and I actually put out a few tweets of his and just reminded people of who

24:02

Malcolm was. But another reaction to this, Matthew Millsatt.

24:08

Now, Matthew Millsatt, let's see, Matthew's at... He's a professor.

24:14

He's a Baptist professor. Oh, I thought it said which... Yeah, okay,

24:19

Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, okay. And here is the reaction he has to Joe Rigney.

24:29

Okay, Joe Rigney said, anyone know if Michael Cassidy has anything going on these days? Meaning Michael Cassidy toppled the

24:35

Satan statue in Iowa. Maybe he could topple this, the Baphomet statue, right?

24:42

Matthew Millsatt, professor at Midwestern Baptist said, a couple of questions,

24:47

Joe. Are you encouraging trespassing and destruction of private property? Are you suggesting that in America, Christians have the right to free and unhindered religious expression, but Hindus should not?

24:58

Megan Basham got into it and said, oh my gosh, Matthew, this is so lame. That's great.

25:05

She doesn't even... I love it. This is just lame. So Matthew says, oh, hi, Megan. While you're here, would it be morally permissible for a

25:13

Christian to trespass onto the private property to destroy another religious statues to their false gods, should adherents of non -Christian religions have the right to free religious expression?

25:28

Now, the assumption here is, again, the liberal order. It's that, I guess there's no limitations on both private property and what you can do on private property, and then religious expression.

25:41

And of course, we all know that there are limits to these things. You can't go and commit certain crimes, even if it's on private property.

25:48

If you are kidnapping people, if you are molesting people, you're murdering people. Attacks on the image of God on private property, certain ones, you don't get a pass because it's on private property.

26:00

Should non -Christian religions have the right to free religious expression? Is that an absolute rule?

26:07

Are there certain religions that should be precluded? I think Matthew Millsap would even admit, well, what about religions that believe in human sacrifice?

26:15

Should we grant them an exception because it's a religious reason that they're doing these things?

26:20

Of course not. And I think ultimately, everyone is going to have their own barriers.

26:26

They're going to have a stopping point where they say, this far and no farther.

26:32

And typically, traditionally in the West, and in our country in particular, the

26:37

United States, these restrictions have been loosened and loosened and loosened over time.

26:45

So yes, there was a time in many states, there were maybe some tolerated religious minorities.

26:52

The situation was different. They didn't have Hindus, but if they were tolerated, they were certainly not privileged and they didn't hold influence.

27:04

You couldn't be an elected official. They would have been completely appalled at a display like this.

27:11

This would have been completely outside their wheelhouse. They would not have allowed it. These are states that still had things like blasphemy laws.

27:19

So we've just had a loosening ever since the time of our original founding.

27:26

And you have to ask, I think, more principled questions here. You have to ask for a

27:32

Christian, where should, where ought the lines, where ought they, where should they be?

27:40

Where ought we draw them? And some of this is going to be suited to the kind of population that you have, knowing that you can't enforce necessarily every kind of restriction that you would want to enforce in a

27:54

Christian society. Knowing that you have to make laws that suit the people, knowing that even

27:59

Moses allowed for divorce because of hardness of heart. There's an element of prudence that I think comes into these things, but you can certainly, and this is the issue here, when you have new frontiers being exploited, new challenges to the

28:16

Christian hegemony that are being now, Christianity is being transgressed in ways it has not before, that is the time to put your foot down.

28:24

That is the time to say, no, we need a fence here. That is the time to say, to remind yourself, who are we again?

28:31

And I think the goal for Christians should be to try to reverse course on these things. And that includes personal and social or political involvement.

28:40

That means evangelizing. That means you want to see these people who are worshiping this false God. You want to see them saved, right?

28:46

But it also means you want to see public policies that suppress this kind of blatant idolatry.

28:54

And there's nothing out of step with Christianity. And that's the thing that I think I'm most concerned about is people who think that somehow this is out of step with the

29:02

Lordship of Christ or out of step with some Christian principles to be opposed to the largest statue in the state of Texas and the fourth largest in the country being to a demon

29:12

God. Yeah, I think we should be opposed to that. There's no question. All right, let's move on a little bit here and talk about some other things.

29:20

I wanted to mention this. This is just briefly,

29:28

I don't really want to get into the weeds on this, but Brian Autin, okay. Brian Autin, for those who don't know, he took the lead on the whole

29:39

Steele dossier, the Russia collusion thing, right? If you remember, I've talked about it on the podcast before, but I noticed that this came up again and I want to share something real quick about Brian Autin.

29:53

So Brian Autin wrote a blog, this was in like 2019 or so, called

30:00

Notes on the Evangelical Dark Web at Mirror Orthodoxy. And he envisions a campaign against that Christians in more institutions and pastors can wage against folks like myself, that they can try to discredit people like myself.

30:22

Now he was at the time an associate professor at Patrick Henry University. And I didn't know him from Adam, but I knew that this was someone works for the

30:32

FBI and this was subversive stuff. And so I just, I never talked to him.

30:39

I didn't want to talk to him. And I had, there were some people, there was two people in particular, that if I mentioned their names, you know who they are, who were reaching out to me and saying,

30:49

Brian Autin wants to talk to you. Can you just talk to him? One of them reached out to me multiple times and said, no, no,

30:56

I'm not talking to Brian Autin. Did you not see the article that he put out there? He does not have your best interest in mind.

31:03

If you're talking to him, he's getting information from you. I think I saw that he was leading a, if I'm not mistaken, color of compromise,

31:11

Jamar Tisby study at his church. Bright guy from what I understand, but interested in evangelical history and those kinds of things.

31:22

I'm probably doing myself no favors bringing up this guy. He probably has all kinds of tools to try to discredit me or whatever.

31:29

I don't know what they do at the FBI, but here's the thing with someone like Brian Autin, I'm very careful.

31:37

Someone who works for the administrative state, someone who now has national stories about him pushing through the

31:47

Steele dossier, the Russia collusion hoax. No way am

31:52

I going near that, right? And there's some guys who still want to stake their reputations on this. And you've got to ask yourself why.

31:58

Now, some cynical people out there might think that there's dirt that maybe people have on each other. I'm not going to assume that.

32:04

I think there may be just genuine friendship going on here, to be honest with you, birds of a feather here. Brad Littlejohn at Daventon Institute, and Brad Littlejohn, by the way, has written, wrote a great book on the two kingdoms, but Brad Littlejohn says that, all right, he goes after Molly Hemingway and Molly Hemingway, who's at the

32:30

Federalist, did a story on Brian Autin, I guess.

32:38

And Brad Littlejohn comes in and says that, he says, in an age of funhouse mirrors and disinformation overload, we're all doomed if we can't stay anchored to the personal knowledge that counts most.

32:51

And then Josh Abatoy responds to him, and then he says, I very clear, he goes, there's an epistemic environment we inhabit these days where it is often so hard to disentangle truth from falsehood.

33:02

In the tweet quoted above, which I think I'm going to show you in a minute, I emphasize that I'm not addressing any of Molly's factual claims.

33:09

So he doesn't like Molly's reporting, but her facts, I guess, are okay. It's just the way she frames it. This, I believe, is the tweet he's responding to.

33:17

This is from Miles Smith. He is a professor, I think he's actually at Hillsdale College, but he says,

33:24

I've gone back and forth on whether to say something about this or not. No, and I know

33:29

I'm kind of entering the middle here, but it'll make sense in a minute. Knowing what the reaction will be at some point, I have to ask myself what type of person

33:35

I am. Brian Auden is a friend and a good man and a good Christian. Okay. That's Miles Smith endorsement of Brian Auden.

33:43

Brad Littlejohn also saying that I guess

33:51

Molly, who makes claims about Russiagate, know very little about Brian Auden. So they're circling the wagons around Brian Auden right now.

33:58

I don't know why right now, Molly must've said something more recently that's calling this.

34:04

And Molly's saying, hey, I would love to compare my exhaustive reporting on the Russia collusion hoax with yours, Brad. So this became a little spat.

34:12

And then you had Sean Davis from the Federalists get involved and wrote this whole thing.

34:20

The reason I bring it up though, is mostly because Brad Littlejohn is associated with an evangelical institution, the

34:26

David Institute. And they have done some good work on recovery of reformed thinking and teachings from the past.

34:39

They have a history kind of bent to them. And it's just a sad thing to me to see who they are associated with and who they're willing to publicly defend.

34:52

And to me, I'm already someone who doesn't have faith in most evangelical institutions.

35:00

I just don't see a lot of good men make it to the top.

35:06

It seems like once you get to the top, you got to compromise somewhere. You either lost your virtue in order to get there from the beginning or in the process of getting there, you end up losing some of your virtue and the relationships start meaning a lot.

35:19

I mean, it's a dangerous place to be. I mean, I've thought this of myself. If I was in those positions, would

35:25

I have the strength to withstand that kind of a pressure? I hope the answer is yes, but it's hard.

35:30

These people start becoming your friends and you do get intertwined. I've said this many times before. The elites in every institution want to be known, recognized and respected by elites and other institutions.

35:43

It's revolving door theory. If you are an elite in a Christian circle, you want desperately to make inroads into other elite circles.

35:53

It's why people like Brian Auden are defended or what's his name?

36:00

The guy who headed up the Human Genome Project. I don't know why I'm forgetting his name all of a sudden. I'm going to look it up.

36:11

Francis Collins. There it is. I don't know why that talked about him enough. Anyway, it's why Francis Collins, same thing.

36:19

Why he's platformed in Christianity today. You can't disentangle these relationships.

36:26

It doesn't matter what bad things Francis Collins has done because people who are at the top, that's who they respect.

36:37

That's who they want to get in the good graces of. They don't really care about someone like myself or someone like you and what you happen to think of them.

36:47

They care much more about someone who's coming from a more elite institution.

36:54

Sad, really. But wanted to highlight that for all of you. And there's actually a story in the

37:01

Federalist by Sean Fleetwood. Maybe this is what caused it. Unsealed crossfire hurricane docks further proved

37:06

Russiagate was a hoax all along. So I'm not going to read that. And then some other sundry things.

37:13

Oh, you know what? I have a video I want to play. And this would actually be a good time to play it. And we will talk about it.

37:20

Because it actually goes right along with what I was just talking about. So this is on Sean DeMar's show.

37:27

And he's a TGC guy. He's Room for Nuance.

37:34

I can't make this up. That literally is the name of the podcast, Room for Nuance. He hosts this and he has

37:40

Nate Aiken, who is Danny Aiken's son. And I think Nate Aiken heads up the Killer Network, which is kind of an influential church planning organization within the

37:49

Southern Baptist Convention. Or at least they operate. I don't know. Maybe they're separate, but it's a lot of overlap if it is separate.

37:56

Anyway, Nate Aiken here on the Sean DeMar show. And here's what he had to say about his dad,

38:02

Danny Aiken, who's the president of Southeastern and the law amendment, which would have authorized the credentials committee to put more teeth into the credentials committee to essentially disfellowship from churches that had women pastors.

38:19

And this is what Nate Aiken had to say. The most important question. Your dad has gone woke.

38:25

How does that affect you? Oh my gosh. I'll just say this. If you had told me when

38:32

I was growing up that my dad would be considered a liberal and woke, I would have laughed in your face. Isn't that funny? Yeah, it's unbelievable.

38:38

And my dad, he's a grown man. He can fight his own battles. But I think the accusations against my dad are just from people who don't know him.

38:47

And I mean, again, I'm one of four sons. We think very, very highly of our dad. He's our hero.

38:52

I think it says a lot when people who know him best think more highly of him than people who don't know him at all. I think it says a lot.

38:58

Amen. Yeah. It's a weird thing about the internet. So I'm pretty close with Mark Dever.

39:05

And we had a family leave the church saying that we're pretty closely aligned with nine marks and they've gone woke.

39:13

And they had specific examples about Mark and Jonathan. And I sat down with them and I'm like, hey, these guys are actually my friends.

39:19

I know them very well. I just had lunch with Mark two weeks ago. And we actually talked about woke stuff.

39:26

And you're one person separated from him. And I'm telling you. And they don't want to listen. Well, I've done my research, which means

39:33

I've read bullpen and pin on the internet. Something on Facebook came across. Yeah. It's crazy to me.

39:39

I mean, here's what baffles me, because I know you just did an interview with Moeller. My dad was at Southeastern when he got turned around and was at Southern when he got turned around.

39:47

He has actually fired real theological liberals. My dad has actually fired real theological liberals.

39:54

And yet he's the one being accused of being a liberal. It just shows you that. And I do talk about this a little bit in the book.

40:00

There are some priorities that are higher priorities than even our systematic theology to some of these guys who are making these accusations.

40:09

And I think it's problematic, because what's happened is we've made temporal things more important than internal things.

40:15

And I think it's caused, it doesn't mean those things are unimportant. So I want to be very clear about that. And I have my positions.

40:22

But it is sad to me that the temporal things become a way of, they become so just overemphasized that it causes some of these fights and accusations.

40:32

Even if we agree with one another. So what I've noticed is that there will be two conservative Christians who want the same outcome, but they disagree strategically on how to get there.

40:41

And instead of saying, okay, well, there's a strategic disagreement here. Somebody will say, well, you're not a Christian. Yeah. You've compromised.

40:47

Well, that happened a ton in the SBC last year is that with the law amendment was there are people who did not think that the law amendment was the best way to accomplish what it was trying to accomplish.

40:55

I voted for the law amendment. So I actually thought it's, we needed to make a clear statement there. There were guys who were real complimentarians who wouldn't, who would not waffle on any of the things that we would kind of throw like four or five rapid questions at them to see if they're truly complimenting.

41:08

They would be like down the line with us. They just didn't like that as the specific way to put that in the constitution.

41:14

I didn't agree with them, but I also didn't think it was fair to label them as, you know, egalitarian, like closet egalitarians, which is one of the things that's happening in our discourse, which is just ridiculous.

41:25

And so, no, I, I, again, that gets into being cheerful, not just convictional. Like we there's, there's, it's okay for us to be gracious to other people who are actual brothers.

41:36

All right. Well, lots to say there. I want to first point out that this is in some ways a positive development.

41:43

The fact that they are forced to respond. I mean, you heard Sean DeMars even mentioned pulpit and pen, the source that should will not be named, but it was named.

41:53

And my name obviously wasn't mentioned. I'm probably one of the main people who has perhaps discredited

41:59

Southeastern and Danny Akin. And it's one of the things I've noticed.

42:05

I think when Sean DeMars had Lincoln Duncan on, I was pretty certain Lincoln Duncan at one point was talking about me or if not me, it was people very much like me and pretty sure it was me, but it's that they do not want to, to mention that they don't want to acknowledge that.

42:21

And I think once you do have an acknowledgement that yes, this is affecting us.

42:28

We have people in our churches who are leaving now because they're convinced that we're compromised.

42:34

That's a good thing. That's a good, they feel the need to have to say this publicly and express some frustration.

42:41

And it's because it's becoming somewhat influential. And and I, I mean, look, there's other, there's other movements out there.

42:50

Lots. There's lots of movements out there, but there there's movements out there that I've thought, you know what? I'm concerned about this.

42:56

I'm not going to talk about it. It's not that big of a deal. When it starts to becoming more of a big deal, you're going to see,

43:02

I might start mentioning it. Usually it's going to be gradual first. Usually it's going to, you know, try to be judicious and and kind of lead people down the garden path.

43:12

But if it gets, you have to assess threat level. And if things get become a real threat, then you start having to name names.

43:20

And I mean, that's where we were in 2020, 2019, when I started this, I out the gate had to really just name names.

43:27

I didn't see anyone else doing it. I had to really make it very obvious for people, what the problems were, who the, who the people were.

43:34

And one of those people was Danny Aiken. He was one of the first ones I had to talk about. And it's because I went to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

43:42

It's not because of a lack of knowledge. It's because of the knowledge I had. Um, I, I've talked to him.

43:47

I've talked to him in person. I've talked to him on the phone, even after I went after Southeastern and, uh, I, you know, and just off the top of my head,

43:55

I mean, I, it would take, you do probably three podcasts on just Danny Aiken and some of the things he's done, uh, to, in my opinion, compromise that particular school.

44:04

But one of the things that he kept, he says this many times and you just heard his son say it.

44:11

And I, and by the way, I understand his son wanting to defend his dad. So I, I, you know, there's just part of me that like, I, I wanna,

44:17

I get that. I'll just put it that way. I totally understand that. Um, and I don't think his, you know,

44:23

I've never said that Danny Aiken's not a Christian or something like that. I don't, it's not really the issue I want to address.

44:29

I think, I think he's, you know, there's either a severe amount of incompetence or there is some, some evil, there's some compromise there.

44:39

Uh, either way though, it's getting you to a destination that's not good for the training of pastors. And, uh, you know, with Danny Aiken, just off the top of my head, a few things,

44:47

I mean, he, he's the one that, um, this is what Southeastern had to make the rule that they're not going to allow it recording in class because he was recorded talking about his kinder, gentler complementarianism, which was basically egalitarianism light, uh, that women can even in some circumstances, preach on the

45:04

Sunday morning service. And, uh, that essentially you should ask what it, what can a woman do not what should a woman do, but any missing the whole entire point of why men are supposed to be leaders in the church, in the home, and even in social life, uh, in political life, that is, uh, he misses the point and just kind of treats these principles as these arbitrary things

45:29

God has put down. And that whatever you can get away with, whatever else women can lead, they should lead.

45:35

And I mean, it makes sense at Southeastern at the time you had a, a female who is the chair of the board for the seminary.

45:42

So you know that that's, you could look at that and say, well, that's not as bad as like the political liberals who don't see any difference between gender and okay, sure.

45:53

But it's, it, it's a halfway measure and you have to look at from where you're coming. Danny Aiken did not clean house at Southeastern.

46:00

Danny Aiken inherited a situation from Paige Patterson where there was a conservative default.

46:06

And that conservative default was also a raid against a liberalism that was of a different variety.

46:11

It was denying the divinity of Christ, the authority of scripture, these kinds of things.

46:17

That's not the kind of liberalism that's been coming in. That's not the woke variety that's been coming in. The woke variety of social justice, liberalism, if you want to call it that, but it's, it's post -liberal really.

46:28

It's social justice stuff has been exactly what I just described. It's been the, uh, we're going to still hold to the authority of scripture and say, we signed the

46:37

Danvers statement and say, we signed the abstract and principles. And the Baptist statement 2000 is very much a part of what we do here, but you undermine it because you subvert the very documents that you claim to, um, to support through these halfway measures that, so, so it's trying to be technically orthodox in your theology while driving the car to a completely different destination and, and gaslighting people who say they notice that that's what you're doing, which is what

47:07

Danny Akin has done. Uh, obviously defended to the bones, the professors there who have taught aspects of critical race theory, who have taught liberation theology,

47:17

Walter Strickland being the top of that list, but not the only one got the guys like Matt Mullins there. Uh, you got, you got others, uh, you know,

47:25

Danny Akin is the guy who wanted to see the SBC leadership, give up power for, for black, uh, in my mind.

47:34

I don't know if you've ever seen black or minority people, but it was, uh, people who have been disenfranchised and underrepresented in these kinds of things.

47:41

And they've been kept out of power. And this is just what we need to do as Christians. Uh, he's the guy that said, you know, he has a, he lacks in his understanding of scripture without the perspectives of minorities.

47:54

You need minorities perspectives and a multiplicity of minority perspectives in order to really grasp the full meaning of scripture.

48:02

Uh, so he he's embraced standpoint theory and then gone and claimed, oh, that's what I've just, uh,

48:07

I believe this all along. Um, I mean, you could, there's, there's just on the immigration issue, he has been in support.

48:15

I believe he, he did tweet explicit support support for the dreamer stuff, but just down the line,

48:22

I could just go on and on and on, but down the line, Danny Akin has pushed woke stuff in a conservative setting, pushing this kind of stuff

48:32

I'm describing in the setting. He was pushing it in was certainly moving the needle. And what you hear in that particular clip are the same defense fences

48:41

I've heard for years. Well, it's not theological liberalism, like the one, the kind of the eighties. No, of course not. And no one's claiming it is.

48:48

Well, I mean, I shouldn't say no one, but the major people that are making these observations are not claiming that or it's impugning motives.

48:57

So we should just be charitable. Well, you know, are you guys being charitable to us? Yeah. It doesn't sound like it you're impugning our motives.

49:04

You're saying we're just not being charitable or, or, or straw man, like, you know, they're not

49:10

Christians or something. I mean, maybe there's people who say that, but of the influential folks who have tried to point out these problems,

49:16

I haven't seen that. Yeah. Maybe you're, maybe you'll pull up the pulpit and plant pen article that insinuates it.

49:23

I don't know. I haven't seen it though. I can't remember seeing it. That, that certainly wasn't my take on any of that.

49:31

You know, I, I hesitate to get into the Mark Dever, Jonathan Lehman stuff, but you can definitely go back and you can see the material that I put out on the podcast over the course of years on, on those guys too.

49:43

And then in the law amendment itself, I mean, these guys aren't, they're not, they have an egalitarian benefit.

49:49

They're opposing the law amendment. There's a good reason to suspect that they might have an egalitarian event. This is a denomination that was fine going after sexual abuse and quote unquote racism using the credentials committee to do it.

50:02

And all of a sudden though, when it comes to enforcing their own doctrine, that it's exclusive to male pastors, they can't do it.

50:09

Why would that be? You do need to ask those kinds of questions and there aren't a lot of good options there.

50:15

I mean, J .D. Greer's whole logic on this was, was terrible. It's, these aren't the leaders that you want in the future.

50:25

I'm just telling you right now, these are not the kind of guys that you want to, to bravely stand against the waves that are here and also coming.

50:36

We don't know if Trump's going to be in power or we know Trump's not going to be, we don't know if Vance is going to be in power four years from now.

50:44

We don't know what's going to happen. And you need leaders who are tough. You need leaders with virtue, with bravery, with sobriety, with justice, with just self -control.

50:57

All these things need to characterize the kind of leaders and bravery is a pretty big one in all of that.

51:05

I've heard this stuff forever. I have entire books that refute this kind of thing.

51:14

Go check out my book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict.

51:20

I have stuff on Danny Akin in that book and other Southeastern professors. And yes,

51:26

Walter Strickland has been trafficking in a false gospel. So to call his faith into question is certainly not outside the boundaries.

51:35

All right, well, let's get into some other things before we end the podcast here. And I want to talk about just some various and sundry articles here.

51:47

This is one from the New York Times, a guest essay, Palm Sunday was a protest, not a procession.

51:54

Okay. And this is written by Andrew Thayer, who

52:00

I believe was, is an Episcopal minister. Let's see if it has a description. He is a doctor in philosophy, candidate in theology at the

52:08

University of Oxford and an Episcopal priest. Okay. So there we go. So we have an

52:13

Episcopal priest and he says that you have Palm Sunday, Jesus entered

52:19

Jerusalem to mark the day Christians recreate the procession and celebrations like this miss an uncomfortable truth about Jesus.

52:26

At the time, it was a deliberate act of theological and political confrontation. It wasn't just pageantry.

52:32

It was protest. On that first Palm Sunday, there was another procession entering Jerusalem from West came

52:37

Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor riding war horse. So he goes on on and that basically it's the whole

52:46

Jesus's death was protest against Roman domination kind of thing. Uh, and, and I would submit to you, if that's the truth, if that's the case, um, what you have to ask yourself, was this a failure?

52:59

Then the, the, the God was God not able to defeat Rome. Uh, Jesus procession should be seen as a parody of Imperial power, a deliberate mockery of the

53:09

Roman spectacle. Okay. The next day Jesus walked in the temple, the heart of Jerusalem. All right. This is, this is all just a bunch of baloney.

53:18

We too live in the shadow of empire. Oh no. Just like Jesus. We live in the shadow of empire. Ours doesn't speak

53:24

Latin or where togas, but it's logic is familiar. Our economy prioritizes the 1 % and puts corporate profits over worker dignity.

53:32

Oh my, our laws enforce inequality in the criminal justice system. Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was what

53:38

Jesus was. I, that's what he was talking about in the temple. Uh, he was, uh, he was going, he was protesting

53:44

Roman slavery. Yeah. That's what he was doing. Yeah. I don't think so. I don't think you see any of that. Actually. You don't see

53:49

Jesus protesting Roman slavery, Roman imperialism. That's not, uh, yes, he's king of the Jews, but he pilots the one who in this story is like this man's done nothing.

53:59

All right. Well, I'm not reading the rest of this, but, uh, this is how the world, some people in the world think about this.

54:06

And unfortunately this is an Episcopal priest who, uh, despite his credentials, doesn't understand just the basic story that we see in the biblical narratives.

54:18

Uh, so he wants people to be motivated to just speak truth to power. And that's the whole point of this, this whole thing, which

54:25

I would submit to you, this undermines the whole story, because if this, if this is the case that his mission wasn't to seek and save the lost, his mission was actually to just mock and subvert

54:37

Rome, then, uh, and if, if he's really God, then, you know, why couldn't he actually have carried that out?

54:44

All right. Megan Basham. Uh, let's talk about this. She put out a tweet from the, uh, what is this?

54:55

Why did I bookmark this? Okay. This is from redeeming Babel. If you remember redeeming Babel with Curtis Chang and Russell Moore and David French, this was, uh, a leftist funded political leftist funded, uh, curriculum to get into churches, to basically get them to vote

55:12

Democrat under the guise of we're just being Christians. We're not left or right. So dear friends, it says, this is recent this month marks a hundred days into Donald Trump's presidency.

55:22

If you felt like those a hundred days of carry to the emotional weight of a decade, you're not alone. It's not just presidential actions.

55:29

Every day brings another news alert. Another reason to feel the familiar, not tighten in the stomach. The economy is volatile.

55:35

I mean, this is, this isn't how guys generally write. I'm just telling you that I had not in my experience, anyway, economies, volatile institutions.

55:44

We once trusted seem either broken or breaking. Even in our churches, a sense of unease hums beneath the surface and beneath this anxiety,

55:51

I suspect something deeper is at work, a profound sense of feeling adrift. These feelings in you, in me are not arising because we've lost our convictions, but because those convictions feel less and less commonplace.

56:01

Oh no. Uh, uh, one of the most common things

56:07

I read in my inbox, Curtis, am I lazy? Am I the only one left? Oh, this is great to hear. I hope they feel that way.

56:13

Maybe this is actually encouraging me. Uh, this is deeply disorienting season and it's exactly why

56:18

I'm so looking forward to good faith podcast. Watch party. We're hosting on April 30th with two friends and fellow after party co -founders,

56:25

David French and Russell Moore. Okay. Yeah. And Megan asks, does this sound nonpartisan like a nonpartisan ministry?

56:32

Yeah, I don't think so. No, it doesn't. Uh, the, these guys were not nonpartisan from the beginning.

56:38

This is just an anti -Trump anti -political conservative front group is what it is.

56:44

Uh, all right. One, this is another thing I was going to weigh into real quick. All right. So Kat Von D posted on her ex account, she is a tattoo artist.

56:54

She's very famous for this. She got, she converted to Christianity in a Baptist church. She even sang in the choir.

57:00

And then she recently, all of a sudden just posted a video of herself in a

57:06

Eastern Orthodox setting. I think it's Greek Orthodox and she's doing the whole thing.

57:12

So the question, the question is, and it's good. I got like the

57:18

Gregorian chants in the background and that kind of thing. Um, the, the question is, what does this mean?

57:23

And some people are immediately just saying it was a fake conversion and all this I'm, I'm slower. I'm just going to let you know,

57:28

I'm slower at this. And the reason I'm slower is because, um, she's a new believer and she's got a big platform.

57:36

There's plenty of people who want to use that. And, uh, I don't, I don't know what's going on in her head.

57:42

Maybe someone closer knows, but it's, I do think here, let me make my maximize myself here.

57:52

Um, I do think that'd be, I'm going to get in trouble no matter what I say on this. There are people in the

57:58

Eastern Orthodox tradition, I believe who are genuine believers in Christ who are born again.

58:04

I believe that. I don't believe I, and I, I'm going to say that I am not an expert on Eastern Orthodox theology.

58:13

I do know there are differences that I think, um, very well could be the difference between heaven and hell.

58:19

Uh, things like, um, theosis, depending on what you think of theosis, if you're going to smash things like sanctification and justification together and just say, it's one big thing.

58:30

And so you, you end up with a works grace kind of, uh, blending then.

58:36

Yeah. If you're trusting your works and not Christ essentially for your ultimate salvation, or if it's a mixture of those things, then yeah.

58:44

I mean, you're trusting in your own efforts. You're, you're not trusting in Christ. That's a problem, but to just pick one example, uh, but I think there's people in the

58:52

Catholic tradition. I think there's people in the Eastern Orthodox tradition who are genuinely trusting in Christ, despite whatever they hear in church.

59:00

Um, and, and there are, I mean, I know in the Catholic tradition, I, there are some rogue priests out there.

59:05

So there, there are, there are, I think God does have witnesses in these traditions.

59:13

Uh, and I've asked people who are missionaries to Russia and Ukraine. Do you, what do you think?

59:19

Do you think there's, how do you judge these churches? Are they, to what extent can they partner with you?

59:26

Is the gospel there is, and, and typically what I've heard is that they think there are true

59:32

Christians, but it's probably a minority of true believers who are born again, truly in these traditions.

59:38

Now I'm telling you this as an evangelical, who's been raised evangelical, who the missionaries

59:44

I've talked to are evangelical. And, and so we have our particular beliefs or evangelical beliefs on these things.

59:52

Uh, but I am, let's just say worst case scenario. She's going into this full force, which is what the video seems to imply.

01:00:02

And, and, and there's bad doctrine and everything. I, I, I just am not willing to make a call and say, she's, she is not born again.

01:00:14

It was all fake until there's more evidence that comes out. Some, some, some evidence suggesting that she really is buying into bad doctrine.

01:00:23

And I think it does take time. And, uh, I, I think it is possible for someone, especially when they're a newer believer to get confused in the initial stages.

01:00:34

So I am, uh, I, I'm just asking you to pray for Kat Von D. It seems like at the very least she is going through transformation of some kind, and she's trying to figure things out.

01:00:44

And, uh, as a new believer or someone who's claims to at least be a new believer, uh, this is something that I think we should, we should be assisting in.

01:00:55

We should, I mean, it's similar with Nayla Ray. I've just seen this attitude from some Christians of like, man, condemning her.

01:01:02

Uh, she's not, she's not going, she just recently makes a conversion to Christianity and there's

01:01:09

Christians out there saying that because she was a webcam model and stuff, it's not legitimate.

01:01:15

Or, uh, if, if she doesn't return the money that she made, it's not legitimate or, and I'm not saying these two situations are parallel.

01:01:23

I'm just saying that this there's, there is an attitude among some that, uh, I just, I find very distasteful.

01:01:29

It's we should probably be looking at doctrine more. And, um, and so time will tell with Kat Von D, does she truly embrace the doctrine of the

01:01:40

Eastern Orthodox church? What does that mean to her? But that's the question that I want to know. And, uh, and I don't have an answer to that quite yet, just because I saw one video of her, uh, in this tradition.

01:01:52

So, uh, I don't know if there's much more for me to say on this. Uh, I mean,

01:01:59

I, you know, thinking of biblical examples of this, I mean, like was Peter, you know, he's the first one

01:02:05

I thought of was, was, is Peter because he, and he was an apostle, right. But he's giving cover to the

01:02:11

Judaizers and he has to be confronted that is his whole salvation caught, called into question.

01:02:18

No, it's the reaction to the confrontation that would probably call his salvation into question. Is he going to listen to the reproof or is he going to, uh, not listen?

01:02:29

And it's the same thing with Kat Von D. I don't even know if this has been something confronted in her life or anything. I really don't know.

01:02:35

So I guess that's more about Christians who are going after Kat Von D than, uh, Kat Von D herself, but pray for her, pray for her.

01:02:41

I mentioned her in the book, by the way, along with a bunch of other recent, uh, conversion stories in a positive light.

01:02:48

So, uh, would I have mentioned her? I mean, I don't, I probably would have had to at least mention, okay, it's

01:02:54

Eastern Orthodoxy or something. But at the time I thought she was in a Baptist church singing in the choir. Uh, here's another story that I wanted to talk about.

01:03:02

Uh, Americans are swapping organized religion for personal truth. While respected

01:03:08

Christian researchers like George Barna have been sounding the alarm on dangers of syncretism on to a biblical worldview in recent years, a new study published

01:03:15

Monday suggests more Christians are leaving organized religion in search of personalized faith perspectives that embrace syncretism, which is a fusion of different religions.

01:03:23

The study breaking free from the iron cage, individual visualization of American religion was published in a peer reviewed open access academic journal,

01:03:30

Socius. Landon Schnabel, associate professor of sociology in the college of art and science at Cornell is a lead author.

01:03:38

Uh, in the study, the researchers tracked over 1000 individuals born in the late 1980s from adolescence to early adulthood.

01:03:45

Uh, let's see here. Um, the individuals who participated in the national study of youth and religion completed four rounds of surveys, uh, between 2003 and 2013.

01:03:55

Wow. This is a long study. Uh, during that period, they were asked a series of questions about their religious practice. Some of the respondents also had to do in -depth interviews with the researchers to help them understand the patterns of institutional disengagement alongside the meaning making process, underlying them.

01:04:11

Our analysis shows how young people are responding to the bureaucratization and rationalization, uh, that German sociologies,

01:04:18

Max Weber, uh, predicted would create an iron cage in modern institutions, developing new forms of religion and spiritual expression outside formal institutions.

01:04:27

Okay. So what's the bottom line of this bottom line is that let's see here.

01:04:35

The research, which involved the tracking of a nationally represented sample of 2000 adults showed the lowest incidence of adults with biblical worldview among, this must be another study among the youngest cohorts, millennials, adults born between 1984 and 2002 and Gen X.

01:04:50

All right. So, so in other words, um, so, so things continue to slide is the point.

01:04:57

And one of the things I've made this point before, but I am not as bullish on Gen X as a lot of guys on the right.

01:05:04

I've seen tons of, um, manipulation actually of, of data to try to make it look like Gen X is, is more conservative than they really are.

01:05:16

Um, so there, I don't want to downplay anything either. I think there is a, especially with young males, there is sort of this right wing.

01:05:24

Uh, I I'm positive about it. I think I see a big opportunity. There's a right, an interest in right wing things that there is a turn to the right, but the kind of right that they're turning to is not a very grounded, right?

01:05:37

I think it's a lot of based on a lot of confusion, a lot of, um, uh,

01:05:45

I'm trying to choose my words here carefully. I think there's a lot of bitterness to be honest with you.

01:05:52

Um, and maybe rightfully so in some cases, or at least it's understandable and it's rejecting the world that has kicked them to the curb.

01:06:02

Okay. And it's, it's easy to go kind of rage bait these guys, I think, and be like, look, you guys have had these bad experiences, which they have.

01:06:10

And then, uh, and then use that to harness that energy into whatever cause, but if it,

01:06:17

I don't know that it's a genuinely grounded conservatism, especially a Christian conservatism. And he's, I look at this poll, it's just another, and you know,

01:06:24

Americans are swapping organized religion for personal truth. You have all these people that are reading the

01:06:31

Bible for the first time last year, but you're not seeing a spike in church attendance.

01:06:39

Why you see, you see some denominations get you like Easter. There's a few more people going to some traditional liturgies, but they're coming from other institutions.

01:06:48

You don't see in, in, as a whole, the institutional, uh, churches gaining members.

01:06:56

Uh, this is, I think more and more common and it's very, we have a very fragmented, destabilized, duracinated, uh, population and increasingly.

01:07:06

So, and generally when, when you have conditions like that, that means revolutions, that means civil unrest.

01:07:13

Eventually, I think it's very important. If this is going to last, if you're going to capture whatever energy is there, right wing energy, interest in religion, uh, there,

01:07:24

I think there is an interest. You have to, people have to make that connection to, to the institutional church, to the bride of Christ, that God has, uh, ordained for this world.

01:07:37

And if they don't, and they stay out of the church, you have to question whether these conversions are real.

01:07:43

Uh, you know, I'm saying over the long, over time. And, um, you have to wonder whether it's really

01:07:52

Christianity that they're going to, that, that they're, they're flocking to, or if it's something else, uh, something's going on.

01:08:00

So I, I'm cautiously optimistic. Something is going on. God seems to be getting the credit because Christian institutions can't take credit.

01:08:08

And a lot of them are so corrupt, right? And I'm, I'm talking about elites in mostly parachurch ministries and the top of denominations and so forth.

01:08:15

But when it comes to the local church where there are good guys doing work in local assemblies, people who are interested in religion and interested in Christianity need to end up there.

01:08:26

And if they're not ending up there, you have to question what's really going on. Um, even in the

01:08:33

Jesus movement in the 1970s, the numbers of people in churches swelled, numbers of people doing

01:08:40

Bible studies swelled. Uh, I mean, there were, there's all these metrics you can use. Christian music, uh, all of a sudden was born, you know, the contemporary kind.

01:08:48

There were metrics that seemed to indicate something. So that's, that's my, be caught, be optimistic, but be cautious about it.

01:08:58

When you have studies like this, they don't suggest good things. Ukraine's democracy still works without elections.

01:09:07

Uh, we're not even going to read this. I'm just going to point out something about the headline. If, if you can have democracy without elections, you have to wonder was democracy ever about the will of the people harnessed through a vote reflected in, in a vote or was democracy just a word used to justify certain ends, the liberal order, uh, being upheld and democracy being the sacred mechanism that sanctifies the liberal order.

01:09:35

And I think we all know what that means. Uh, let's go to, cause I got to, we've got to end the podcast here.

01:09:41

Some other, Oh, praise God. This is a great piece of news. The kidnapped us missionary, Josh Sullivan was rescued miraculously unharmed after a shootout left three dead.

01:09:48

So Josh, Josh, for those who don't know, Josh Sullivan was kidnapped in South Africa.

01:09:54

There's a picture of him and his family. And so he must've been, it must've been about a week. I'm thinking 34 year old pastor.

01:10:00

Oh my goodness. Younger than me. He's younger than me. Wow. He's got a lot of kids. Um, anyway, uh, yeah, he was kidnapped and held,

01:10:11

I think for ransom and he was rescued. So, uh, praise God for that.

01:10:16

Uh, that's a really good development. I know a roller coaster here, up and down Massachusetts to custody of five children after doctor reported parents for not vaccinating baby.

01:10:29

This is a scary headline. And I've told people online, I was like, just get out of Massachusetts. Honestly, if a doctor can report your family because you didn't, you chose not to vaccinate your baby and they can then after, after the family flees to Texas, uh, they can take custody of the five children.

01:10:50

Uh, that is not a state that you want to be in at all. So, uh, just an

01:10:57

FYI. Um, this is a little, this is the last, I guess,

01:11:02

I don't know why I'm ending on this story. I mean, I should have had this earlier. Okay. Uh, this isn't much of a story, but grace

01:11:08

DC, which is a PCA church in Washington, DC, someone pointed out on X that they have these affinity groups.

01:11:16

And so they have, uh, young adults, moms, women's ministry, men's ministry there.

01:11:21

And then they have men's same sex attraction group and cultural groups, the

01:11:27

Asian gatherings and the black gatherings. Okay.

01:11:34

Um, where do you start? Well, for those listening to my podcast, you already know what

01:11:40

I think, but uh, there was a, an organization at Liberty university years ago that was for men like men who are struggling with same sex attraction, which

01:11:50

I'm assuming I'm putting the best face on it. It just says, this is for encouragement and fellowship for those who love

01:11:56

Jesus, who experienced this, who are seeking to live faithfully for him. That's anyway, there was an accountability group, which doesn't, it doesn't say this on this, but I'm assuming that's part of what it is at Liberty.

01:12:07

And it became basically a hookup group and they had to end it. And I'm not saying that's what's happening here. I'm just saying, what are you thinking?

01:12:14

Right. This is, you know, the way to identify, I guess, all the other guys who are,

01:12:21

I mean, it's different than an accountability group. I'm not even a great fan of those, to be quite honest with you, but it's, it's, it's different than an accountability group for the sin of like heterosexual lust.

01:12:32

You're not getting together with women, right? So this is, you're getting together literally with other men who want the same thing.

01:12:40

And so those who, you know, in small numbers, now, you know who they are now, now you're in a room with them.

01:12:46

It's an odd thing to have at a church. I'm not going to lie. These are the kinds of things that do need to be addressed. Obviously when someone has sin, there's no doubt about that.

01:12:54

This, this is the kind of thing I think that is appropriate for counseling. It's the kind of thing that I think, you know, if you trust the guys around you,

01:13:02

I think you can share these kinds of things at men's groups, but to segment off just the same sex attracted guys and say, we're, we're going to put them in one, one group.

01:13:16

I just think of the verse that says those who are spiritual restore such a person. You're putting people with the same weaknesses together.

01:13:27

And it would be probably more prudent to have guys like that with other guys who have, who have different sets of temptations, but also have to overcome them and maybe are farther along in their maturity process or able to actually lift it to take their hand and reach it down to pull someone up.

01:13:58

Um, when you have a bunch of guys that are on the same level, kind of stuck in the same thing, I, I don't even think this works well for, like I said, um, accountability groups that are based on, on other kinds of things.

01:14:11

Uh, when, when you just get everyone with the same weakness in the same room, it's an odd thing in my mind, like even from a new

01:14:17

Testament perspectives, I can't think of any, not that you necessarily, unless you're a regular to principle, regular to principle person, not that you have to have justification.

01:14:25

I just can't think of, um, where the rationale here is. It it's, uh, you know,

01:14:33

I guess you could say like any of these groups aren't really, I mean, the family integrated people would love that, right? Like you can't have any of these groups together.

01:14:39

I think I can make arguments for why, uh, there are settings where it would be prudent to have like a young adults group, especially for finding a spouse and that kind of thing, but, or mom's groups.

01:14:49

Uh, I could see, I could see reasons for some of these things, more practical reasons that dads are working.

01:14:56

There's a demographic there and moms can, um, you know, it's, it's, it's basically like the church is helping facilitate kids being watched and moms, uh, fellowshipping with one another and that kind of thing.

01:15:07

Anyway, it, I put this at a different class, men's same sex attracting group, attraction group.

01:15:13

It just seems incredibly foolish to me. Uh, and then these cultural groups, of course, um, you, you just, you're in a segment off the

01:15:20

Asian segment off the blacks, but of course, you know, who's always missing from these, right?

01:15:26

You can't have affinity groups that are for, uh, any kind of European descendants that would be bad.

01:15:33

That would be terrible. Uh, it's, it's gotta be these other minorities and I don't know, like birds of a feather flock together.

01:15:41

Like I understand people are going to Nash naturally and organically find people who are similar to them perhaps, but to put gates up and to be, and to say only these people, you're, you're just begging for separations in your church that, uh,

01:15:57

I would suggest to you probably weakened the body, but, uh, this is a PCA church.

01:16:03

And so it's not, this isn't like your liberal Anglican or, uh, sorry, Episcopalian or, uh, it's, it's not a crazy

01:16:13

PC USA church. This is Grace DC. Uh, so this is happening in churches that are pretty conservative in their theological outlook.

01:16:25

So I wanted to let you know about that. That wasn't exactly the note that I was planning on ending on, but it is the note we ended on.

01:16:31

So that's the news roundup for this week. I hope to see some of you at Christianity and the founding next week and meet you there in Sullins Grove, Pennsylvania.

01:16:40

And if you can't make that, then I'd love to see you in Mount Laurel, New Jersey on the following weekend, johnharrismedia .com

01:16:46

to see where I'll be. And of course, if you haven't gotten the book yet, please go, go ahead and grab yourself a copy, grab one for your pastor against the waves book .com.

01:16:56

I'd really appreciate that, especially if you left a review, it definitely helps me. And I hope that you all have a wonderful resurrection