News Roundup: Cru, SBTS, Baylor, & Shifting Narratives

identity and what you think is being erased about white identity? Certain types of Anglo -derived culture that comes from our history.

Like what? Let me think about this. You know,

Senator, I would say if you were to look at the book by one of your former Senate colleagues,

Born Fighting, about the sort of Scotch -Irish military culture and certain pride that went with that, that would be one example.

Obviously, you could have sub -elements of that culture. You could have Italians, you could have Irish, and those are in many ways more distinct.

You're worried about white culture. You're not worried about, you're now retreating to ethnic identity.

You don't speak about ethnic identity, you speak about white identity. So tell me the values that stitch together white identity and that make it different than black identity.

I would say that the white church is very different than the black church in terms of its tone and style on average.

Food ways could often be different. And those are being erased.

Music could be different. If you look at the Super Bowl halftime show, which was not in English this year. So our ability to access white churches or white food or white music is being erased?

I am concerned with the majority common American culture that we had for some time, that through particularly mass immigration,

I think has become much more balkanized and I think that weakens us. And again, I'm not running away from that comment.

I'm not apologizing for it. Well, I'm way over my time. I think you're struggling to answer this question, right?

Because underlying your beliefs is a sentiment that white culture is just simply better.

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I am your host, John Harris, where we are forging a bold Christian vision for America.

That was Jeremy Carl that you just heard before a Senate confirmation hearing.

He is being confirmed, hopefully he'll be confirmed for the position of Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations.

And Mr. Murphy here, Senator Murphy, where is he from? I think Connecticut, if I'm not mistaken.

He is the Democrat that is cross examining him on this question of white identity, white culture, trying to get him to trip up.

And Jeremy Carl, of course, a friend, he's been on the show before. He wrote a great book called

The Unprotected Class that if you don't have it, you should get it. And I think he actually gave a pretty good answer there. I think it was a little difficult for him at first just because he was trying to figure out what angle this was coming from.

But he gave a good example. And I think his answer is actually pretty solid.

And I want to point out two things about this. The difficulty of that question, and I've heard this question asked many times before.

So if you're in politics, be prepared for a question similar to this, is if you defend against the attacks on Western civilization, white culture, cultures, plural, really, on European civilization, however you want to frame all of that, then there will be an attempt to reduce this all to one kind of bland soup of some kind that is superior to the others.

And it's difficult to identify a specifically white language.

There's multiple languages or even religion. You could say Christianity broadly, but that's that's even kind of stretching it.

I mean, Western civilization, I suppose you could say, is influenced by Christendom. But there's similarities, but it's not specific.

And a lot of other cultures in the United States and minority groups have very specific things that they advocate, including

European cultures. You have the Irish Americans that do their march, their parade in New York City.

You have Italian Americans have their own celebrations and they're very both

Irish and Catholics are very attached to the Roman Catholic Church. And so you have your

St. Patrick's Day. You have now, depending on who's doing the defining, you have

Latinos who are celebrating Cinco de Mayo. And I believe it or not, in some a lot of the times they're framed as minorities, but I've actually now started to hear them, even from left wing sources, framed as they're part of the white culture, white identity, white cultures, whatever.

And so it gets confusing. And I think that was the attempt of a question like that is to try to get someone who is interested in putting up a shield against all the attacks on Western civilization, white culture, cultures,

European ancestry and what they've produced, all of that. He's interested in stop the attacks.

Let's put up a shield here. Let's let's get together to put up that shield. And then he's being forced into a situation where he has to now give this particular senator the the glue, the that kernel, that thing, that bedrock.

It's not really even it's not even a kernel. It is the fundamental ingredient is what it is for binding a society together.

And it's a straw man. Jeremy Carl's not to my knowledge he's ever said that being white is the ingredient that binds a culture or a civilization together.

But that's what the senator wants him to do. So just because he's interested in forming a shield to defend against that, now he's got to be put in a position to now define that more consistently.

And I think Jeremy Carl handled it well because he started identifying specific subgroups, specific instances of European civilization that are in danger, under threat.

And then you notice the next move that the senator did. The next move that he did is he tried to say, well, are these things not accessible?

Can't you through your personal choice go to an Irish pub? Last time I checked, you could go into a church that had liturgy that was in English and you could hear a pastor preach in English and traditional hymns.

I don't understand. What's the threat? What's the problem? And of course, that also kind of gets it skirts the issue, because the issue is not whether or not you have a choice personally.

That's not what's under threat now. Eventually, as cultures diminish, it does become under threat.

But that's not the immediate threat. The immediate threat is one of influence. It's one of the character of something.

Right. I can go to right now if I wanted to. I could go to a barbecue restaurant that is like 30 miles.

Well, I guess as the crow flies 15 miles from my house, there's hardly any of them in New York, but I could find one. I know of one.

Not the best, but I could go there. And if someone were to say, like, you know,

Southern culture, barbecue and all the rest, that must that you have the option of going and enjoying those things.

You can go to a country music concert tomorrow and go to a barbecue restaurant. Therefore, there's no like the influence of Southern culture must be strong or something.

You say that's ridiculous. I'm in I'm sitting right now in New York. It's not Southern, but I could find a restaurant.

The same goes for, you know, a German restaurant. I know a German restaurant that's actually pretty good.

It's better than the barbecue restaurant. That's like 10 miles, 15 miles, I guess, actually is from my house.

I could go there and I could eat German food. Does that mean the rest of society is speaking

German? Does that mean it's characterized by German interests and German politics and German identity and all the rest?

Of course not. That's the difference between the two. So if we lose.

Are the various cultures that have made America what it is, these ingredients they have combined to make the current situation that we all live in, the arrangement that we've enjoyed and that has guaranteed our freedoms and all of that really at the root of an

Anglo -Protestant ethos. If that is threatened, if that core is threatened, that Anglo -Protestant ethos.

I can probably still find some food, I can still speak in English, I can still do certain things, but I'm going to be outvoted.

I'm going to be marginalized. Culturally speaking. So, yes, is this about power?

It's always been about power for the left and reducing it to personal choice or the fundamental ingredient that binds a culture together instead of seeing what's actually happening.

What Jeremy Carl is actually doing is disingenuous. But these questions are meant to obfuscate.

They make you calculate more because you're trying to think, how do I answer this without landing on a mine that's going to detract from everything else

I'm trying to do here? I don't want the soundbite to be the distraction. And I think he handled it actually very well under the circumstances.

So for those who watch the podcast, you know, I'm friends with Jeremy Carl and I'm a little animated about it because I really want him to be confirmed.

Republicans need to hang tight on this and not let the Democrats frame it the way they're framing it. And the way they're framing it is that Jeremy Carl is a big old white supremacist.

He's he's a big meanie. He's he's actually an anti -Semite, even though he is Jewish himself.

He's Christian. And this is another angle of this. I mean, he's ethnically Jewish, but he is a member of the

PCA. He is an evangelical Christian. And I just talked to Aaron Ren in the last podcast about why aren't there

Christians in these impressive levels as much like evangelical Christians? Well, here's one of them. And this is what they do to to those people.

So I'm hanging by Jeremy Carl. I'm going to stand by one of our own, an evangelical

Christian who loves the Lord. He's actually, I think, very from from what

I can tell in my interactions with him, he is a very gracious man. He's been gracious with me, very generous, very kind, very measured and very wise.

And he'd be really good in this position. So you can see, you know, look at this article here.

This is the way they're framing it. Here's the NBC News. Look at that angry looking.

They always take one of these pictures. And there he is at the National Conservatism. Ooh, scary.

They're nationalists, right? This is Yoram Hazony's group. And he's speaking there. And that's the picture they use. And the story says

John Curtis of Utah came out against Jeremy Carl's nomination. After reviewing his record and participating in today's hearing,

I do not believe that Carl is the right person. I find his anti -Israel views and insensitive remarks about the

Jewish people unbecoming of the position for which he's been nominated, Curtis said. Carl told NBC News in a statement responding to Curtis's opposition that he still is confident the majority of senators will see through these political games and support my confirmation to the

Department of State as President Trump intends. It's never pleasant to be falsely accused, but I'm grateful for the continued support of the

White House. So, I mean, he's denying this. This is not what's happening. I'm being falsely accused. And the

Republicans have a 12 -10 majority on the Foreign Relations Committee, but we'll see what they do.

I mean, sometimes Republicans run scared for the hills when these accusations start coming out. So that's what's going on in our neck of the woods, in our small little world,

I guess, or it's not that small, I guess. I mean, the evangelical kind of ecosystem here, this is part of it.

So we got we got Cenk. What is Cenk doing here? How do you do, fellow

Christians? Hey, this is definitely a parody account. We have

Bibi Jonas. Thank you for your reflections, Sean. And more are coming into the stream as we commence this unscheduled surprise podcast here on a

Friday afternoon. Great for starting off the weekend, isn't it? We're going to go through a number of stories and I'm going to land on a positive note.

I have a bunch of positive stories lined up for you, including one on Crew, if you can believe it. I know some of you have been waiting years for a positive story on Crew and their direction, and I have it for you.

And we're going to get there. So pray for Jeremy Carl. That's the first thing I really wanted to say on the podcast.

Pray for Jeremy Carl. A little bit of news here, just a framing part of this.

Like, I want to give you a trend here, right? So the Washington Post, Chronicles Magazine reported on this last

Thursday. They laid off 300 of their 790 unionized newsroom staff, along with several dozen other employees who work as editors, managers or foreign correspondents.

Entire sections of the paper, including the anemic book world and its sports page, which have covered the city's triumphant athletic teams, were eliminated.

Now, I'm going to cut through to the chase here. The company had lost too much money for too long and had not been meeting readers' needs, says one of the,

I guess, its staffers there. But here's the issue. The Washington Post is not able to command people's attention enough so that advertisers are making money off of what they're doing.

And as the Internet and AI, especially now, become more and more and more prominent, and these legacy institutions have to keep up with that, they have to be on top of it, so they have to have an

Internet presence of some kind. And if they don't, they will fall behind.

Advertisers are, I mean, I get emails every day. I can't tell you how many emails I get from people who want to advertise on this podcast.

In fact, right now, there is a company that wants to advertise with this podcast.

And I said, look, I'll do it, but I'm not doing it until I can try and endorse your product. That's my trust bond with my audience.

Obviously, I never do something unless I really believe in it. But there are offers all the time.

Now, this is not something I saw a few years ago. This is new and it's happening at an incredible rate because I think people are realizing that the

Internet is where people are more and more. They're listening to people in their niche groups.

The algorithms are tuned this way. And these legacy companies that had mass appeal just don't have the same appeal anymore.

They're not suited to you. And with very specific niche identities being formed, especially online, it is they're no longer going to have the same audiences, which

I think inevitably means they're going to have to adapt or cut staff. In this case, Washington Post cut staff.

So is that a good thing in one sense? Well, I don't like the Washington Post. In another sense, what's going to replace it, which is always what

I'm thinking as a conservative, right? A conservative always asks the question, what's the alternative? Not just whether something good will happen, but if something good happens, what are the repercussions of that?

Will that lead to something bad happening or is it going to be a net gain?

And my hope is that as this, I'm going to presume, continues over the next few years and you see more and more of either institutions adapting or falling behind, my hope is that so far it hasn't panned out too well.

But wiser voices will ascend and people will be listening to to good content.

So far, maybe I'm going against my better instincts, even hoping for that.

But I still have the hope. Right. And I don't want anyone to to get rid of that for me. I think we we need that to live in this world.

We need to think that our efforts matter. And I do see evidence that they do. This podcast certainly does.

And that we're fighting for something that actually makes a difference.

And so I think being prudent with how much time we spend online and if you're a content creator who listens,

I know some do being prudent with your interactions in the real world. Those are much more important.

Those are much more defining of who you are. But then using the bigger platform in prudent ways that don't take your eyes off the important things.

That is the challenge for the years to come. And people who can do it well, I am very positive about and optimistic about.

All right. Moving on here, we have the Christian Post. And I was

I told someone reached out to me about this and I said I would cover it. Why we voted unsuccessfully to keep

Amir Kaner as the president of Truett McConnell University. And Amir Kaner was terminated as the president of Truett McConnell, a

Baptist school in Cleveland, Georgia, on September 25th, 2025. 19 of the trustees concluded that there was sufficient reason.

And the reason comes down to ongoing sexual impropriety with a student who became one of the school's employees.

The vote of the trustees to bring Kaner's tenure to a close was based on a 19 to 10 vote. That is not insignificant.

You don't usually get 10 people who say, wait a minute, which definitely makes you ask the question, why were there 10 people who said, wait a minute?

And so this story gives their side of it. The vote of the minority or what might be considered a dissenting vote reportedly has value in the

Supreme Court decisions. The minority vote can give some balance to decisions that are made. OK, there seemed to be an orchestrated attempt to bring

Kaner's presidency to an end. Trustees have voted to release him from his responsibilities. Trustees received emails prior to our meeting, alleging that hundreds of graduates were calling for his termination.

Some students were mobilized to picket. So you had kind of what happened to Page Patterson. You had students mobilized.

I remember seeing this at Southeastern when I was there. It wasn't so much like people would picket picketing with signs.

It was more online. But it was definitely happening. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito once stated, I think that the legitimacy of the court would be undermined in any case if the court made a decision based on its perception of public opinion.

And that's what they're saying happened. The president had affirmed that he dismissed the offending vice president as soon as he was given conclusive evidence that he was guilty of engaging in a sinful relationship.

We chose to believe Dr. Kaner. So this is a he said, she said. University's attorney had met with the trustees on several occasions.

There was no complaint filed with the Title nine office at the school. So that's kind of a red flag.

However, to properly examine all facets of the circumstances under consideration, an independent investigator was hired.

It appeared that there was no evidence to prove that Kaner knew about the sexual abuse, that he covered up any sexual propriety or handled the situation properly.

Two artists made the investigator presented his report to the trustees verbally without furnishing board members with a printed copy of this report.

It was difficult to accept. His findings were reduced to verbal generalizations without actual documentation. Well, that's weird, too, but presented as a compelling rationale for terminating the president.

Furthermore, after the investigators report, the president was not given the opportunity to defend himself. OK, so this is like a due process thing.

They're saying, look, if he's guilty, OK, but you haven't proven it.

He denies it. And everything that you're doing makes it look like a pressure campaign. And this is one of the best

Christian colleges in Georgia, voted best Christian colleges in Georgia. So I figured I would let you know this.

And yes, this is the brother of Ergen Kaner, the guy who I don't know if someone can remember this.

It was like 15 years ago, but he it was found out that he had plagiarized some of his testimony and stuff. So I'm not holding any of that against his brother,

Amir Kaner. He's a separate person here. But there is a question about this. And I think the thing that interests me here more is.

Why are the two things still happening, like whether he's guilty or not, why is it happening in this way with just sloppy due process rushed decision pressure campaign, large minority saying we're not going for this?

Like how come this stuff is still happening? Like and it's because that's pressure still exists, just like we saw with the

Jeremy Carl hearing. The pressure still exists. There's still a sizable amount of people in it.

And no matter what your algorithm says online, don't forget there's a sizable amount of liberals out there and leftists.

And they are both still doing things to push the needle in their direction, especially on the state level where they have control.

Blue states, blue cities. I'll give you some examples of that in this podcast. They're moving on like nothing happened.

And I think it's it's easy for some people. If you just have your own podcast, your own algorithm, you forget about this.

You think that your world is just what's in front of you and realize what's actually going on. It's there's still very much a battle.

Now there are shifting things happening. There are shifting narratives. Some of them are not very good, in my opinion, but there there's still a radical left that would love to impose itself based on DEI metrics.

Just because the president's in the White House and there is a broader vibe shift, quote unquote. And that does have some real tangible meaning at some of these places, which

I'll show you as BTS. Actually, that's that's happening to some extent. That does not mean that there's still not a big problem out there, and it doesn't mean it can't be reversed when

Trump gets out of office. I think sometimes watching the

George Floyd stuff happen, we can be one one little match away from an inferno.

And I was hoping with the stuff happening with ICE that that wouldn't take place in Minneapolis.

Because they need just enough people to get riled up and the narrative start changing and they still have the most of the media.

Yes, they're on the same monopoly, but they still have a sizable influence. So a reminder there.

And it's still to some extent some of these narratives are still within the Christian fold. All right.

So I want to talk now a little bit about the situation that I guess

I have a personal connection to this to some extent that took place on the

Kenwood Institute's podcast. You think yourself, what in the world is the Kenwood Institute and why do I care about the

Kenwood Institute? The Kenwood Institute is an organization that comes out of,

I think it's a Kenwood Baptist Church. It's a church in the Louisville, Kentucky area. But it's a bunch of SBTS guys,

Southern Seminary. And these guys, whether I think one of them's a graduate to one of them teaches at Boyce College, one of them is a professor at the college.

And then there's others who I think join them at various times. But most of them are professors at Boyce or Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

And they all have a connection to the seminary in some way. I'm pretty sure that's that's the truth.

If it's not all, it's most of them. It's very dominated by SBTS. And this like, why would

I bring this up? Because it's kind of rich. Michael Corleone, you know, it's

Carlino says that some great content in the latest

Kenwood Institute review and William Wolfe tagged me in this. And I was like, yeah, I'll cover it. I said, William, I'll cover it.

Quote, Robert E. Lee was a great man. Quote, a lot of seminarians treat church history as the chicken on the menu at a fancy seafood restaurant.

Quote, a patriot is someone who loves his country, the people, the land and the ideals of America, all three. Can you be a

Christian and not a patriot? No, you cannot. And the interview is with Dr. Tom or conversation,

Tom Skullthorpe, Dr. John Wisely, Dr. Clint Armani.

And William Wolfe says, who said Robert E. Lee was a great man? And Michael says, listen and find out.

And actually, I think if I click on this. Let's see here, we all did from the

Kenwood Institute, we all did the Kenwood Institute speaking for everyone more where that came from.

Now, I'm going to say I'm very positive about this and good. Thank you for doing this.

What do you say? Paging John Harris. I'm sure you'll be interested. And sure enough, I am a little interested. And I want to point out two things here.

This is Jim Hamilton. Jim Hamilton is on the board for the Kenwood Institute. He is a professor at the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And here's a long thread on neoconfederates from 2020 and what a problem they are.

Let me just read for you part of it. I have a problem with the pro -confederate position because of a love for neighbor, particularly love for brothers and sisters in Christ of African -American descent.

I think that the biblical and theological arguments that the pro -slavery position is again, that neoconfederate pro -slavery, one in the same is a fail.

And it's not because I'm a liberal and conservative Bible, believing arguments against pro -slavery position have been around for a long time.

Some social media shark will no doubt jump on this, but it's hard for me to imagine a brother, sister in Christ of African -American descent, feeling loved by those who are pro -slavery or pro -confederate.

All right. And it goes on and on. And you can guess. I mean, it's easy to figure out what he's saying there. Denny Burke, another guy on the board for the

Kenwood Institute is from 2016, the confederate battle flag and Southern Baptists. And he first plays this clip from James Merritt.

And he says he has a lump in his throat as this happened. James Merritt is saying that from the floor of the

Southern Baptist convention, that I rise to say that all the confederate flags in the world are not worth one soul of any race.

Well, no kidding, James. They're not. Could we, we could say that about the American flag. We could even say that about the

Christian flag. I mean, I guess we could say that about any flag, right? So, so here's James Merritt, you know, going all on about, we got to denounce the confederate flag.

And Denny Burke's reaction is I got a lump in my throat watching that unfold. And I was on the floor of the

Southern Baptist convention. The messengers considered a resolution against the confederate battle flag. People spoke forward against it.

But it was James Merritt's speech that really got it all going. And then he says, amen, amen. Dr. Merritt's speech and the subsequent vote are not going to be forgotten by those who witnessed what happened.

Russell Moore has put this in a historical perspective. Russell Moore, what did Russell Moore have to say? And you know what

Russell Moore had to say. He said the cross and the confederate flag cannot coexist without one setting the other on fire.

And, you know, going on and on about how the Southern Baptist decided our African -American brothers and sisters are more important than family heritage.

We decided that we are defined not by the lost cause, but by amazing grace and a bunch of more platitudes and slogans.

All right. So why bring any of this up? I want to make a point, okay.

And this is the point I've made over and over about the Southern Baptist world. And maybe this is like every institution, but the

Southern Baptist in particular have a bit of a good old boys club where you can say basically the same thing.

You can say very similar things. And if you're inside the club, you are protected. It is fine.

If you're outside the club, you are not. And let me just give you a sample.

And nothing against any of these guys, by the way, that are saying this. I mean, they're right. They're right where they're saying, but this is what is happening inside the club.

Removed from the Capitol. No, the one in the Capitol. Oh, that's right. That's right. It was just removed. Yeah. So this was recent.

It was removed from the Capitol Rotunda and replaced with a statue of a female civil rights advocate from Virginia.

So I guess every state has a couple of statues. Two statues. Two statues in the Rotunda. Virginia replaced

Robert E. Lee with this no name woman. No, I don't even remember her name. Isn't that fascinating and sad?

I mean, Robert E. Lee was a great man. And Americans received him with great admiration and respect for over a century.

And the turn away from that to condemn him to, you know, to perdition has been so quick, so fast.

And I do think that it is as a result of a very intentional effort on the part of New Left historiography,

New Left historians, postmodernists, Marxists, critical theorists to take the long march through American institutions, one of those being education.

And one of the agendas there is to reframe and recast history as simply a story of the oppressed and the oppressor.

Yeah. Yeah, we're not good. That was Dr. John Weiss.

Weiss? Sorry. We'll see. We'll see. I think I said wisely before. We'll see. Dr. John, we'll see.

And I'm kind of a fan now. I mean, I don't know him that well, but I agree with what he said.

He's absolutely right. That's exactly what was going on. The sad part of it, though, is he's got board members for his organization that are part of that problem, part of the reframing.

So if Robert E. Lee's a good guy, I mean, the guy who commanded the Army of Northern Virginia, the most prominent, prestigious

Confederate Army, basically the entire Eastern theater, if he's redeemable, if he's good, if he's been redefined, who's the one that's done this?

New Left historians. Who are the people that have carried water for them? I already showed you.

And I guess what would be great is if people just not him specifically, but if guys who are like, if you have the official account for the

Kenwood Institute weighing in on this, it'd be good if the guys who are on the board for it would just come out and be like, we were wrong.

We were wrong about all that. We should have seen where that all went. We were.

Yeah, I know it was 2020. It was six years ago. It was 2016. It was 10 years ago. But at the time we were serving in these influential positions.

We weren't kids like. We were wrong. We've changed our positions, and I apologize for what we did and the damage that it that it did and then how it became a broader critique of all of American identity and culture and so forth.

I don't think that's going to happen, but I don't expect an attack on these guys for saying that.

Right, I do wonder kind of where, where were some of these guys when the Southern Baptist Convention was doing these votes?

And like I said, the vibes shifted, the narrative shifted. And in the Southern Baptist Convention, there is an aversion,

I think, right now to being seen as on the left. The ERLC doesn't really know where it's going to go.

There's a really good opportunity for a conservative to actually become the president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

I think now is the time to really push. Last year was the first year they didn't have a resolution on something racism adjacent, like something's happening there where they're nervous about,

I think, because they have so many Trump users in their base, and they some enough of them, I think, woke up.

That must be what it is that they're nervous about saying left coded things. Now, I'm not. I think it's still happening.

It's it's just not being broadcast as much. And this is a good sign.

OK, so I'm going to take it for what it is. It's a good sign. Maybe some people don't like me pointing this out, but I'm encouraging it.

I think it needs to continue. And it just means that podcasts like this one work that William Wolfe is doing and Megan Basham and everyone else at Center for Baptist Leadership and and even, you know, going back farther than that conservative

Baptist Network founders and like all of that stuff, all of that pressure is starting to,

I think, make a difference. And I'm not expecting the guys who were foremost in that to get credit for it.

But just notice what is being said out loud. Would that have been said out loud six years ago? It would not have.

It would not have. OK, I'm going to get to some comments and then we'll continue on with the podcast because we got a lot of stories that I got to get to.

We're going to talk about sacred harp next. If you can believe it, sacred harp music. Romans eight shaman says,

I disagree. Saving just one more soul is not worth my trading my culture. Well, I'm thinking of a flag as a piece of cloth, which

I think is how James Merritt is framing it of like, oh, it's this piece of cloth. We could trade that.

Yeah, and I think I agree with what you're saying as far as like it's actually a categorical mistake.

Like it's a false decision. No one's asking you to trade, you know, your culture in or your flag or your symbol in for one person's soul.

But the assumption behind it is that this is such a barrier to black people and they're getting saved, that there's people in our convention that might have a flag on the back of their truck that we just need to basically make them retire their identity.

And and I think it's sort of the mott in this is, oh, it's just a piece of cloth.

Who cares? Right. Just just take the cloth down. You're not you can still go to a barbecue restaurant.

Right. It's that kind of thing. It's like what was happening with Jeremy Carl. Like you could still go and sing

English hymns, right? Like no one's stopping you from honoring your culture. We just want you to take a flag down. But there is a truth to this, that you start taking down symbols.

It leads to figures. It leads to similar symbols and figures. And then you're taking down the entire template of what makes a civilization what it is.

It's a character, the glue that binds it together, which is events and people and leaders and activities and shared experience.

And that includes cuisine and religion and songs and art. And that's all part of who you are.

And so so so I agree with you as far as like this is a false decision.

And it's not a decision you should ever be required to make. Like, would you ever? I don't know.

Like, oh, it's a it's it's a barrier for sharing the gospel with someone who misunderstands what your family's about.

So therefore, you should take down the coat of arms that's displayed. I mean, there might be a prudence thing to that, but it's an opportunity to educate, too.

Right. Like, like, where's the also the sensitivity to like, why does it always flow in one direction?

Where's the sensitivity towards this is a person's culture and there's nothing sinful about it.

If there was, then yes. There's nothing sinful innately about this. It's being redefined by people with ill intent.

I agree with Dr. John. We'll see about this. Robert E. Lee was redefined.

And and so to engage in the lie with someone, is that is there a limit to that being loving?

Like at some point, shouldn't that person be confronted with the truth? If that's that's really such a hang up for them.

Now, at the same time, if I'm going out there, I don't know why I'm getting sidetracked on this, it's worth it.

OK, it's worth it. I think if you're going out there as a pastor and your soul, the function of your office is you have a job to do, which is to proclaim the gospel, to make disciples, then you don't want to insert into that office barriers, unnecessary barriers.

We'll put it that way. But I think, you know, in your capacity as, let's say, an

American, as someone who lives in a particular region, a particular town and has particular heroes, you shouldn't be expected to condemn things that are not sinful, that are part of the character of your civilization or culture.

And that's that's the difference. Right. And I think for too long, conservatives have bought have not fought because they've bought into this thinking of like, well, it's just a piece of cloth or it's just one figure or it's like we can just give this away.

We can just rip this town. We can just forego this because, oh, there's some bigger picture.

There's some peace that we can achieve if we do that. And before you know it, you're cleaned out.

So good for the Kenwood Institute podcast. And I would just encourage you maybe check them out.

Sounds like a good podcast if they're saying that kind of stuff. All right. Well, Jeremy Carl knows if he explicitly explicitly says white culture is superior, the rhinos will defect and refuse to approve them.

All this will do is provide the Democrats soundbites for the midterms. Yeah, but I think there is not to be too nitpicky on this.

I do think Western civilization, if you want to say white civilization, if you want to say European civilization, it's broader than a particular culture.

It's a it's a civilization. And, yeah, it's impacted by I mean, typically it's framed as Jerusalem and Athens.

Right. It's like Greco Roman and then the Bible. This is what's made this civilization kind of going across all languages and various iterations.

There's a commitment to these two things on some level. But there these these cultures have killed each other in the most brutal wars ever in human history, like and twice in a very short period of time and in about a century ago.

So it's like it's it's not like there is an accuracy thing here where it's like, yes, that whole thing is being destroyed by third world ism by the very people who are the leaders in those countries.

They all seem united with this sort of an elite. That's one thing they all have in common, right?

There's sort of an elite managerialist that seem to think that this is what they need to do unless you're

Poland or Hungary. That's pretty much the standard operating procedure.

And and so the necessity is for these people who are under attack, whose cultures are being threatened directly.

They need to come. They need to band together, share resources, do whatever they need to do to.

And if it's not banding together, it's not. But whatever they need to do, they need to do it to fight for the specific cultures that they have.

And for me and for the people who are listeners to this podcast, that means the

Anglo Protestant ethos of the United States. That's our identity. That's that's.

And for us, it's a Protestant Christianity. I mean, that's what I stand for, basically, on this show. I think that's the civilization we need to lean into, defend, protect, and where it still exists, which it does very much still exist.

We need to barricade it so that it is not eroded. I mean, that's what against the waves back there is basically about.

So Biba Jonah says these preacher boys see guys like preacher boys.

You must be from the South. You see guys like Al Mohler is the pinnacle of what can be achieved in ministry. They love the idea of accolades and praise from their fellows.

Yeah, you see it all the time. I used to see it all the time. More with like all these these appreciation posts like constantly.

I got so sick of it. OK, well, let's keep going here. We're going to talk a little bit about sacred harp.

Speaking of cultures, sacred harp is a interesting form of music that I think now it mainly lives in Appalachia.

I know in the Northeast, this was actually brought, I think, by the Puritans initially, if I'm not mistaken.

I don't think it was the Cavaliers are the ones who brought it over, but it has it is a form that, you know, and I should probably look at the history of this more because I'm not sure if, you know, did

Scotch Irish people also have that or did they inherit it from interactions with other groups?

I'm not exactly sure, but it in New England, if you go to a sacred harp singing event, you're basically going to be sitting with a bunch of like PC USA liberals and secularists.

You'll the atheist next to you. And it's just like this sort of quaint cultural thing. If you go to Appalachia, there are still churches that actually do this.

It's quite beautiful and is is from England. And you should you should check it out.

If you go on YouTube and type in sacred heart, it is a beautiful type of music. They use these shaped notes anyway.

That tradition is kind of falling on hard times. And so I'm optimistic about people who want to recover that.

It's a beautiful thing that has been lost, but not this way. And this is one of the things that I've seen more and more of is it's the

MPR PBS kind of leftist take on some traditional art form, whether it's bluegrass or whatever.

It's like, you know, why is it why is it the bluegrass conventions are often coded left?

Like doesn't make any sense. But this is a dynamic and it's a real dynamic that's out there.

And so this is what I'm talking about. Baylor University has, which is as far as I know, it's still technically

Christian. They claim to be celebrating their tradition. Baylor University hosts the 25th annual sacred harp saying, well,

I mean, that's great. I'm glad they're doing that. But there's an account on X, and I think they've done some interesting work cataloging some of some of this.

They've been sounding the alarm on a takeover of sacred heart music. And you think, well, why would any leftist be interested in this?

Well, they are, because here's a book online, the Imagine Space and Sacred Harp Singing by Jonathan M.

Smith. And chapter six, queering sacred harp traditional space as queer space.

OK, queering southern imagination, imagination, is that what it is? Queering, it's just like it's looks like it's seven different sections about queering different things, queering traditional space.

And here's some of the things that it says. When folk music enthusiasts began singing from the sacred harp in the 60s, they discovered that the traditions musical practices afforded them a unique kind of expressive space.

OK, so we're talking about like Bob Dylan and those guys like they a lot of like folk music leftist went to these traditional forms and they saw something useful in it.

The conventions of the sacred harp performance gave them the opportunity to participate in a form of public expression that nonetheless allowed individuals considerable license in adopting the music, their own personal identities.

They engage in the spaces of sacred harp to emphasize ideals of democratic community involvement. Singers sit facing each other in a hollow square where each participant gets a chance to stand and direct the music no matter their musical or social background.

OK, so it's egalitarian now. Furthermore, they constructed a wider social space around the same pluralistic ideal, fashioning a community that OK, so it just goes on and on about how sacred harp can be really egalitarian and leftist coded.

And how do musicians build and maintain a community of practice, a sound economy around electric sound making? How do visual arts for so asking all these questions?

And let's see, I think that was the main screenshot here. So they're interested in there.

There's a group apparently interested in doing this. Now, Truett Seminary also just hosted an event.

These are the people, Cherry Tree of Liberty says, you could have taken a stand against by rejecting the 2025 sacred harp revision.

Sacred harp revision and this revision includes some of these more subversive elements.

You chose to stand, Truett Seminary, with people who have no respect for your institution or your faith.

And here's here's a screenshot. This is from Baylor.

So Truett Seminary hosted this. Baylor Seminary hosted a sacred harp thing. And this is a screenshot from Baylor at the

Baylor University sacred harp singing today with many Baylor students. Let's see.

There's a painting on the wall that shows Jesus partying so hard that there is a person passed out in his lap.

So good to know that's going on at Baylor. OK, Cherry Tree of Liberty also says,

Truett Seminary and the Dunn School of Music at Baylor hosted a singing from this book. Here's the book in question.

So I'm going to click on it. Trans love stories. I am a woman she loves not because of my transness and not in spite of it.

OK, oh, these are the authors. That's great. From Cosmopolitan Magazine, Lorelei and Becky.

And they're they're, quote, unquote, married lesbians. And they were the composers of this new sacred harp or one of the composers of this new sacred harp curriculum, hymnal songbook that they're using.

All right, and for the pleasure of social media followers, I guess Becky mocked

Charlie's Charlie Kirk's assassination live at the unveiling of her new book. Well, that's just great.

Great for these Christian institutions to be. I mean, come on now.

You might think, OK, it's an ignorance. Here's a screenshot about that.

Truett and Baylor leadership were informed of the Marxist subversion and presented with clear opportunity to make the right choice. They declined and instead posted a pile of horse manure defending their decision to use the 2025 book.

May the Lord deal with them. All right. Well, I don't know if there's anyone at Truett Seminary or Baylor that still believes that that kind of behavior is sinful and might want to do something about this, but their attempts have been made and they have been declined and rejected.

Let's talk about some broader things happening here. Let's talk about the apparently the according to Fox News, the largest

ISIS plot could have been the deadly. Sorry. Sorry. The potentially the deadliest terrorist attack in the

United Kingdom's history in an ISIS plot recently was foiled. Thank goodness.

It is crazy what is happening in Great Britain. And here here's your I mean, look, look, just they're importing people from these places where you have

Islamization and those who would forward that kind of thinking into their country.

And you're going to get people from ISIS who want to kill you. And I don't know what to even say about it.

I mean, it's crazy. And this was against apparently against Jewish people. They wanted to kill Jewish people in England. So, I mean, you can't here's the thing about it.

Like you can't get into Israel as easily, even though it's closer geographically. If you are a terrorist and it's not

October 7th, 2023, it is very difficult to get into Israel because they do this thing called protecting their border.

I know it's crazy idea. And you know what? They're not the only country that does it. A lot of countries do this.

And England, for some reason, decided that they're not going to do this. And they've decided to just bring in a whole bunch of people from the third world, the second world, countries that have strong Islamization.

And now they have a terrorist problem. And thank God it was foiled. But is that going to keep being foiled?

What's the final end point of all of this? Where does this end?

And what's the actual way to go about solving this problem? England doesn't seem very interested in it.

And some people have said there's going to be a war there. I mean, you think it's bad in places like Minneapolis and Dearborn.

Like you haven't seen anything until you go to London. Right. And I do plan to get there one day.

I have not been there. I do have a relative who lives there. And I talk to a lot of people who go there.

I mean, and the descriptions are just like, it's not even London anymore in some sections. Birmingham is not

Birmingham. So we want to keep that out of America. Right. That's and especially if you're interested in a

Christian society. These two things cannot coexist. They quite literally can't. You know, even as a tolerated minority, you see what's happening in places like Dearborn and Minneapolis.

Like a tolerated minority ends up forming an enclave where they then make their own rules, their own laws, their own schemes in Minneapolis, taking advantage of the tax benefits and everything else, the welfare benefits that the

United States citizens are supposed to be receiving. And and it's just it's a mess.

And I mean, there are other minority groups that come to this country and don't do that kind of thing. They assimilate or they're so they're spread out.

They're not they're independent. That's not the way that people from this particular religious group seem to.

I mean, experiment history shows that they don't interact that way and they are committed to taking over when there's enough of them.

So we better be learning these lessons. Right. And I mean, I'm not I'm kind of preaching to the choir. You all know that.

But this is really what's at stake. And if we're going to not confirm someone like Jeremy Carl, because he is too beyond the pale, because he actually had the gall to defend white people from attacks against them, then we don't have a shield anymore.

We need a shield. We need a civilizational barrier. Yeah, we need to be wise about this.

Why is a serpent innocent as doves? But we do need to get serious about this kind of thing and realize where the real problems are.

And and Islam, let me tell you what I mean, I know this is like super controversial now to say it, but Islam in America poses a much greater threat just on a sort of.

Basic on the ground. Like solid rooted level like the world right in front of you, the one you interact with Islamization poses a very real threat to that in ways that Judaism just hasn't.

Right. It's not I don't know about Jewish terrorist attacks that happened in America today.

I can't think of the last time it happened. Right. But this kind of stuff happens in Western countries and including

America on a fairly regular basis from Islamic groups. So if we already have enough of our own problems, like we don't need more.

Right. That's kind of the idea here, which is kind of why I was glad Trump was even paying attention to Minneapolis.

You know, that doesn't happen much. Usually when there's talk about we're going to secure the border, it's all border states.

But going to the heart of some of these issues is what is necessary. So. In that vein,

I want to show you some places where where where things aren't exactly going in the best direction on this front,

Mdami, New York City Health Department staffers launched a global oppression working group accusing Israel of genocide.

Now, you might wonder to yourself, what in the world does the government of New York City? It's not even a state government.

It's a city government. What does that have to do with the, quote, unquote, ongoing genocide in Palestine? And I think the answer would be it.

It doesn't. But if you can indoctrinate people, which is what they're doing, they are shoving their interpretation of events in the face of people developing curriculum, developing narratives to attempt to steer the allegiance and the thinking of the population on a foreign policy decision.

This is a meeting using a New York City Department of Health resources that promote a libel against Jewish people, railed

Yale Halas, president of the American Jewish Medical Association. So there are some Jewish people that are getting upset about this.

But I'm telling you what, when this is like the third biggest issue that put Mdami in office was the concern for the

Gaza and anti -Israel. I don't think that these complaints are going to be going anywhere. Global Oppression and Public Health Workings Group mission statement included as part of the slide presentation at the meeting, they had a cross -divisional effort led by the division's equity liaisons,

DEI sounds like, and action teams for disease control developed in response to ongoing genocide in Palestine.

The working group aims to address the growing interest among health department staff to learn about current and ongoing global oppression in its many forms and how it influences the advancement of health equity.

Now health equity, that's, that's really big. City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has a $1 .6

billion budget and employs more than 7 ,000 people. And it will also address the genocide in Sudan and issues impacting the

LGBTQ community and asylum seekers. Funny how Nigeria is not on this list, right?

Nigeria? No, not bad. Those are Christians there. We don't talk about that.

Local, local issue, right? This is not far from where I live right now. So now, lest you think that this is only happening on the left.

Carrie Prejean Bowler. Here she is pictured with the, let's see if I can blow this up.

Palestinehouseoffreedom .org, Palestinehouseoffreedom .org. There's a bunch of Palestinian flag emblems.

She, you can't see it because of her hair, but she is wearing a Palestine flag there as she's posing with them.

And she says, this is every Zionist supremacist's worst nightmare. Muslims, Christians, and Jews all united under the banner of religious freedom.

We condemn Zionist supremacy and demand we deny our individual faith for the fear of being called an anti -Semite.

Religious freedom lives on. And let's see, what did

I, okay. I guess that's all I had of her. So I'll just say this. I watched some of the hearing and basically, I kid you not,

Carrie Prejean, by the way, let me backtrack a minute. Does anyone remember Carrie Prejean from like 20 years ago almost?

So she was the one, and I really admired her at the time for it. She, she was right. She was at, she was

Miss California and she was asked a question at a beauty pageant about whether she supported same -sex marriage.

She basically said no. And she was mocked for this. And I thought that's a brave woman.

And then she failed to fulfill her duties as Miss California. This is at the time

Trump was running the, it's funny that Trump was still involved with this thing. It was the Miss USA pageant.

So Trump fired her. And, and then there were some, it sort of became mixed up with the whole thing.

There were these, there was a sex tape apparently of her that emerged. And this became a problem in the whole thing.

It kind of put a whole mar on, on the situation. So I don't know if that rings a bell, but that's who this is. So you know, she, she, she has now just recently converted to Catholicism, which she makes a big deal about in this hearing.

And the hearing is on religious freedom and antisemitism. And this is, this is one of the things that Trump administration is focused on here and there.

They are paying attention to mostly college campuses and what's going on there. And you're, they're using it as a pretext to try to defund call it or go after college campuses that have allowed or promoted the free

Palestine protests and whatever violence and destruction that has led to. That's from what

I understand the thinking behind this. Now, I'm not the craziest guy about the framing and the way they're doing it.

I kind of get it though. I think they see this as an opportunity and I know

I've said this a million times, like why wasn't it more like during 2020? Wasn't there a great opportunity with all the anti -European anti -white stuff to go after that?

And now there is some stuff, there is some movement in that direction at least. But it's, this, this has been in the water in the liberal consciousness for a long time to go after quote unquote antisemitism.

And so they're pushing and they're going to weaponize it against the left. So, okay.

That's, that's basically the pretext for all this. Well, Carrie Prejean is a bowler, bowler.

She starts just basically becoming kind of a jerk. She jams the panel and starts just interrupting and going on and on.

And it's about what Israel is doing to Gaza. And she says things like,

I don't, she can't, she doesn't like to hear Islamophobia being presented at the panel.

There was no Islamophobia, but she's using these buzzwords, the same buzzwords that the left uses.

She has a Palestinian flag lapel. She starts saying things like Israel has admitted to a genocide of 70 ,000 people, which is just isn't true.

That's, that never, that literally never happened. It's made up out of thin air almost. I mean, there's one, there's this one general who made an off the hand remark that got interpreted.

And it's, it's the interpretation that's being, making things up out of thin air. It just never happened. But she's saying these things, and these are just free

Palestine talking points, basically. She's, she's saying she's, she's conflating.

I mean, there was at one point, one of the guys, and I don't think I have the video queued up, so I'll just describe it. But one of the panelists says that Zionism, anti -Zionism is related to anti -Semitism because anti -Zionism is a hypocrisy.

You're saying that the Jewish people don't have a right to have their state and they don't have a right to exist, but you say other countries do.

And look at all the Muslim countries that, you know, they have a right, but Palestine has a right, but not the Jewish state.

And the response to this is that from Carrie Prejean is that she's a

Catholic and that Catholics do not support Zionism. Now there's so much confusion. On Twitter, the airwaves are like just jammed for like two days with some of the most inane takes on this.

There's two things being said in that. And it's sort of a sleight of hand. One person is saying that they're thinking of Zionism in more of a historic definition.

There's religion, there's Christian Zionism, and then there's just Zionism, right? Zionism just means that you think the Jews have on a basic level, the right to exist.

And now, since they have the land by, even if you want to say by right of conquest, they have a right to keep that land and defend themselves and continue to exist.

That's basically it. If you believe that you're a Zionist. Now you might say, I'm not a Zionist. Because there's another definition that's emerged.

Now there's a Christian sort of angle to this, which says that there's going to be an in gathering that happens eventually, and that the

Jews returning to their homeland will eventually happen and be a fulfillment of the prophecy. Whether that's happened yet is an open theological question.

I do not believe it has. And I don't think most people who are Christians believe it has, but there are many who think that this could be the beginning of that.

So they have a now behind all of this, both Zionism and Christian Zionism. Behind all of that is at the base, a view that Palestine or that that region is connected because of the biblical history.

So you could say, no matter what, even if you're a secularist who fought after World War II, it was good for the

Jewish people to have a place where they can have it for their own. And the British mandate allowed them a place to do this.

That you could even say in that that Ben Gurion is a very secular

Marxist guy, but behind all of this is this idea that, yes, there is a connection to the land that goes back to ancient times.

So you could say there's a religious connection there. But that's about it, right? It's to say the

Catholic Church, as opposed to that, is just not accurate. Catholic Church's teaching on this is a little more open ended than some.

I mean, there's some I actually I don't even know if I want to say it this way, because trying to think of what Protestant denominations even have official positions on this stuff.

I don't know of many. There's groups that have positions or Zionist groups that have firm positions on things like this is the in gathering and united.

And some of them even think the United States needs to support Israel with funding and military and all that, all the stuff that I've said.

I don't think that's that's right. You can't get that necessarily from the Bible. You can support

Israel. You can support the seat of Abraham, physical Abraham by sharing the gospel with Jewish people in your own country, right?

This doesn't mean you have to give them missiles and stuff. But the

Catholic Church has their teaching on this, especially since 1965, has basically been that the

Jewish people do have a special place. They are not they're not supersessionists.

They say this. But at the same time, and I think the pope, the current pope just reiterated this.

They believe in a two state solution. So on a practical level, is that even possible?

Can a two is a two state solution even possible? You can believe in a two state solution and still be on a you could be maybe naive to what the

Palestinian Authority and Hamas want to do, which I'll show you in a minute.

Palestinian Authority is more mild, and they don't acknowledge Israel's claim to Jerusalem.

I mean, this is part of the problem. How do you negotiate with that? You really can't. But you can believe in a two state solution, and you can still at the same time think the

Jews have a right to exist in the land. So this is sort of why the debate is so muddy and jammed.

Terms aren't being defined very often. And there's a lot of emotional knee jerking.

You'll probably see it in the comments to this video. A lot of emotional knee jerking about what people think I said and what people just listen to what is actually being said.

And that's not something that Kerry Perjambola was doing very well. So I wanted to point that out because I think the right is starting to have the same problem the left is.

And the problem is that you have someone here who is blatantly advocating for a foreign group of people while saying at the same time,

I don't have allegiance to a foreign country. And I pointed this out. I don't know how many times I pointed it out with Tucker.

And I said, look, watch what's happening here. It's not just so much that there's people who don't want foreign influence and are saying no foreign influence.

It's the fact that you have people who are saying, let's switch out foreign influence.

We should be allies with Qatar, right? We should be allies with Saudi Arabia more. We should be stronger friends with them.

Jordan's better for Christians. I mean, they're a better friend. Palestine, free

Palestine. I don't know. Islamophobia. That's bad. I think it's disgusting what people here at Turning Point are saying about Muslim.

Like, this is all what's happening on the right, quote unquote. And it's mirrors what's happening on the left.

That's been my point all along. Anti -Israel is not the same. Don't conflate that for America first.

America first isn't pro -Israel or pro -America in the sense that it looks out for those for anti or sorry, it's pro -America first is not pro -Israel and it's not anti -Israel in the sense of putting those things ahead of American interest.

It's pro -America. That's where it should be. And I'll have more content coming as promised.

I know I said this back in December, but I am going to talk about this a little more because it's just everywhere

I look. I see mostly in my circles. I just see anti -Israel stuff all day. And some of it is just it's not well thought out at all.

And I've always had the same position on this, which is basically that since I've been aware, we should be allies with Israel.

I don't think there's any reason not to be. I think there's benefits to it. But at the same time, we shouldn't be giving them all the money that we give them.

And thank goodness that that's something that Netanyahu doesn't want anymore. So we can look forward to that being phased out.

But that's where I'm coming from on this. So if you're interested in what I have to say in the weeks ahead, I will be saying more on it.

But I think we need to be reasonable about this stuff. And there's just a lot of minds that are not being very reasonable.

So let me just give you a little shed a little bit of light on some of the things I just said real quick. The Palestinian Authority, according to the media line,

Palestinian Authority, which, by the way, is an American news outlet. The Palestinian Authority's draft constitution contains no mention of protecting

Jewish holy sites, promises, funds for prisoners, families of martyrs. So if you get into the story, it says the draft outlines a welfare framework that includes state responsibility for families of martyrs, wounded and prisoners, as well as individuals released from prison.

The repeated reference to martyrs and prisoners appears to revive the Palestinian Authority's longstanding practice of providing stipends to families of convicted terrorists.

So if you have someone in your family who dies in a terrorist attack, you get money for that. You get you got all this money flowing into these regions, the

West Bank and Gaza from some of it from us, but also from the European Union and other countries,

Muslim countries as well. And some of this gets incentivized as terrorism by paying people whose families, if you're a father, like if you're in the

George Bailey moment, right, and you you go kill yourself in a terrorist attack, your family gets monthly stipends from the

Palestinian Authority. And Hamas does the same thing. Hamas, by the way, just for those who don't know, they control the

Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority controls the the other region where there's

Palestinians, the West Bank. And so that's what this is talking about is the West Bank.

And so this is a draft constitution that they are forming and they do not acknowledge in their draft constitution the they won't protect

Jewish holy sites. And there are a number of them in the West Bank. And I must not have read it on this one.

I must have read it in a different article. But as far as I know, there was also something in it that oh, I think it's right here.

It defines Jerusalem as the capital and national symbol of the state. So and it omits any reference to Jewish holy sites or Jewish historical ties to the city.

So how do you even negotiate with someone like that that are like, yeah, your capital?

That's ours. Like you don't have any business being there. And yeah, we're going to reward people who go kill themselves in terrorist attacks against you.

I ask you, I don't know how you negotiate with that. And that and those are the moderates. Those are not that's not

Hamas. Hamas, on the other hand, their numbers have been trumpeted by not just Kerry Perjon, but and not just this outfit that Mamdani's put together, but also the major media in the world that they talk about 70 ,000 deaths, 70 ,000 deaths in Gaza.

And this has been floated that they're civilians and that the state of Israel admits to this.

What happened was one general made a comment about it and just said, we accept, I accept the numbers or we accept the numbers.

And the reason is because Israel is not keeping count themselves. Now, that is profoundly. Now, you might say there's a reason for that, like they're trying to hide or whatever.

Like, well, why would they do that? Because they're challenging Hamas, Hamas narratives and saying it's not a genocide at every step.

So it would be to their advantage to to to not to try to challenge, to not accept what the terrorist organization is saying.

Maybe this is incompetence, but they they do not have any sector of their government keeping tabs on this.

And so a general just said, oh, we accept the numbers. Now, this is this is the thing that happened right after every media organization said

Israel admits to genocide, which genocide, by the way, would be a systematic and intentional wiping out of a people.

So there's a motivation element to that as well. It's not just numbers. It's also motivation.

Jerusalem Post Hamas admits 72 percent of combat age fatalities are men quietly reduces civilian death toll report.

Hamas quietly removed the names of thousands of Palestinians that had previously alleged were killing killed during the

Israel Hamas war. Hamas has previously claimed that 70 percent of casualties have been women and children. The claim no longer reflected in their recently updated list, according to the research, 72 percent of fatalities between 13 and 55 are men.

The demographic category aligns with Hamas combatants. And let me just sort of cut through all this for you, because President Trump made a statement about this this week.

President Trump said in a press conference that 58000 of the people who died and these are using

Hamas's numbers are are terrorists, are fighters for Hamas.

They're not, quote unquote, civilians. Now, it's hard to conduct battles in that area. It's urban warfare.

There's more tunnels than the subway system in New York City underneath schools and hospitals. And they are the kind of people that will booby trap the entire place and kill their own civilians.

And this is something I've been studying more and more that I will talk to you more about in a future podcast.

It's really not for this podcast, but I think as Westerners, we we really have no clue about the mentality that we're fighting.

This is the same for England. When England imports people from these regions and they have

ISIS terrorists on their hands, they just do not understand. They think that these people just want food and it's an economic problem or something.

They're after the same things we're after. They're not. And I have confirmed this in so many ways.

It's actually not that hard to figure this out if you just do a little bit of research on it. But the long and short of it is this.

President Trump said 58 ,000 of, according to Hamas, are are basically terrorists.

There are people that are fighting the Israeli army. And the reason he says that is because I think it was 50 ,000 of the widows are, according to Hamas, getting stipends.

They get stipends for their family. And the the conditions that that operates in are when it that you have someone in your family who dies in jihad.

So some of these families, I think just how it's not just fathers, it's brothers and stuff, too. So Trump Trump somehow got to 58 ,000, which leaves what, 12 ,000 civilians.

It's not the same as the numbers that are being bandied around by people like Kerry and there's an attempt to make foreign policy decisions based on the moral play of what's happening in a foreign conflict based off of this.

I'm just telling you, if we're going to go down this path, which I've tried kicking and screaming to get people not to go down as much as I can.

But this is I guess this is how it's going to happen. Then we have to talk about a little bit because it's being jammed into our discourse.

So so that came out. I'm just letting you know, these are the things you're probably not hearing about in many of your feeds and so forth.

All right. Let's shift gears a little bit. And I'll get to any questions on that in this podcast if if we need to.

But I'm including some of this stuff in the news roundups because it's affecting the Christian discourse online very heavily.

And so hopefully this is temporary and we don't have to talk about it that much. But while it's being talked about a lot, then

I'm going to weigh in a little bit. So in my state that I live in right now, rats are holding a convention and they nominate statewide candidates.

Is that the I don't think that was the headline I wanted. Let's see. New York Family Foundation. Let's see.

Events, articles. I was going to get to the governor. There it is. Hochul. OK, Governor Hochul. Governor Hochul has signed an assisted suicide law that will enable people to have the doctors help them kill themselves.

So that's happening. And that's obviously a very bad step in a wrong direction.

But just another illustration of how the leftists in heavy blue states are continuing on as if nothing happened.

And unless the Trump administration can strike something down or the courts will strike it down, they're going to continue on.

And so this was kind of a major defeat. Now, there's another thing happening, though, and this is a good thing.

This came through the courts, though. A landmark malpractice practice case shakes transgender medical industry.

And so there was a person, Fox Varian, a 16 year old girl with gender dysphoria.

And according to the article, she she got a surgery.

But the problem was this sex reassignment procedure, which did not do good things to her physically, did not the doctors did not receive.

They did not get the proper consent that they needed to do this surgery. And so her court victory is the first of its kind.

And hopefully it'll set a precedent. The medical establishment is expressing long overdue skepticism about the wisdom of performing sex reassignment surgeries on minors.

On February 3rd, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons issued a position asserting that gender related surgery should be delayed until the age of 19.

That's actually a very good shift. So there is somewhat of a shift happening here.

And so on a broad level, I think there is some good stuff happening in the heavy blue areas where there's a lot of cultural power, though things are still going in not a great direction.

But this particular case was from Westchester County. So in the state of New York is a malpractice lawsuit.

And she won the case. And apparently she's a Christian as well, this article says.

So she regretted her choice later on, says she was 16 and she was mentally ill and wasn't mature enough to make that decision.

And the attorney, Adam Deutsch, said that I did not argue that performing sex reassignment surgeries on minors is inherently wrong or negligent.

Instead, he argued that Einhorn and Cheen, who are the I guess the doctors, failed to obtain informed consent and to adhere to the standard of care in these cases.

So it's the informed consent issue. More good news, In -N -Out Burger. I mean, that is one of the best just I don't even have to continue the article, just In -N -Out

Burger saying that particular franchise's name is good news. And it gets better because the president refused to remove

Bible verses from packaging despite backlash. So for those who go to In -N -Out Burger, which is now headquartered in Tennessee, it was in California, they have tiny

Bible verses, John 3, 16 references usually on the bottom of their cups and their burger wrappers.

And I guess this was under fire recently. And they dug in their heels and said, we're not changing.

We're going to keep we don't care about boycotts either. So there's an attempt to boycott them for this, and they don't care.

Very good and better than Chick -fil -A, I guess. So go to In -N -Out and not

Chick -fil -A. Now, here's the best news of all for this audience, because I know many of you care about Campus Crusade and Crew, sexuality and gender.

They have they have updated their position on sexuality and gender. And I want to read for you a portion of this. There is a section on same -sex attraction, and it starts off this way.

Same -sex attraction is contrary to God's design and reflects disordered sexual desires. It is important to distinguish between the capacity or propensity to experience same -sex attraction, the initial experience of personal attraction towards someone of the same sex, same -sex sexual desire or lust, and same -sex sexual acts.

As an expression of indwelling sin, the capacity or propensity to experience same -sex attraction is a potential source of temptation.

The initial experience of personal attraction towards someone of the same sex presents a temptation arising from indwelling sin.

There you go. Concupiscence to be resisted by the power of the Holy Spirit. Same -sex sexual desire or lust, like any other fallen desire that orients us towards sin, is an actual sin that requires confession and repentance.

Same -sex sexual behavior, like any other sinful behavior, requires confession. OK, I already read that.

In all this, Jesus is a faithful high priest for those who come for him. OK, transgender identities. The Bible affirms that God created humanity as male and female.

The scripture presents sex and gender as inseparable aspects of our God -given embodiment.

Transgender ideology separates sex and gender, so it looks pretty good on that. Some adopt transgender identities without experiencing gender dysphoria.

OK, let's see. They talk about gender dysphoria. God's good design of our sexuality calls us to receive our created sex as a gift.

This is so good. I wanted to let you know about that.

I wanted to give you the update. I don't want to be the guy who does the expose of these organizations and then never comes back to tell you what eventually happened.

And this has been years in the making, years. I think there's some acknowledgments that people should be getting for this, right?

We've had Uriah and Marissa Mundell. They've come out publicly and talked about this.

I mean, they got punished for it, and here they are, vindicated. Crew's now adopting their position,

I hope. Now, here's the deal. A lot of people have left Crew.

A lot of people have left Crew. Staffers, donors, this has been terribly damaging for them.

And the right thing to do in this situation is for them to publicly apologize and issue a statement that they were wrong and they should repent.

I don't think they're going to do it, but that would be the right thing to do.

Otherwise, you end up thinking they just did it because of pressure, pressure from podcasts like this.

Is it a heartfelt thing? If it's heartfelt, then they're going to issue a statement and they will apologize to the people that they have wronged, the people that have been eliminated from the organization, the people that have even felt the need to whistleblow because they didn't get anywhere with those above them and they were silenced.

That needs to happen. So that's my encouragement to Crew. Do the right thing here. And thank you to all of those who did sacrifice big because without you, this would not have happened.

So I wanted to say that in closing. All right, let's go for the comments. I don't even know if I want to look.

Let's see what's going on in the comments section here. We have, there's actually not a lot of comments.

Is Israel protecting Christian holy sites in any capacity? Yes, I mean, most of the holy sites in the

Palestine region have been protected by Christian groups going back a long ways.

So the question that you would have is, does Israel allow Christian groups the latitude to protect their holy sites?

And the answer is yes. The other question you would have is, does Israel have the

Western values associated with thinking other belief systems or cultures?

So that would include even previous pagan cultures that are there have something to teach us.

In other words, is there an archaeological interest that exists? And the answer is yes.

Not all countries have this. I went to Turkey years ago and I was able to visit

Ephesus. And they go to Istanbul and all these places. And they are extremely big on their own history, which didn't start until the

Middle Ages, right? When they, when the Turks took over Byzantium, Constantinople.

And if it's Byzantine history or Roman history, it's like they don't care. There's a

Roman port I saw and there were homeless people living in it. They just trashed it. Same thing with the Byzantine wall.

To do, you know, restoration work on these sites. I mean, it's, it's outside groups that have to come in.

They don't consider previous pagan or Christian sites to be national sites.

Whereas I think it's very different for us in the West. In the West, we, like in America, because that's obviously the country

I'm most familiar with, we tend to think everything is valuable except some of our own history.

That's the funny part. But historical locations like archeology and stuff, like where there's all sorts of laws that go into, if you're digging and you find something, like you better get a survey.

You better stop the dig. You better conserve whatever's there. Oh my goodness. It's a Native American burial mound, right?

Israel is more like that. So, so the answer is yes. They do allow for those who have been guarding these sites for a long time, whether it's the

Catholic church or various strands of orthodoxy, they are still allowed to manage their holy sites.

So, let's see. What other questions do we have? I figured most of the questions would be about Israel.

Let's see. I'll just focus on this real quick because I don't have a lot of questions.

It's a Friday night, right? People are out. I think the motivation is there. The celebrations and threats on Twitter got so out of hand at one point, they disabled the translate feature of Hebrew.

I'm not exactly sure what he's talking about. And to justify the continuing execution of a 2000 year old blood libel against Christians.

Okay. I'm not exactly sure what this is referring to on X. Sorry, wish I could weigh in, but I'm assuming it has something to do with Jewish people saying things that are against Christians or something like that.

But maybe someone can inform me on what happened recently along these lines. I have not been aware of that.

Pretty wild that our greatest ally treats J -O -H -N -A -T -H -A -N.

So, Jonathan, not to be confused with Jonathan Pollard as a national hero.

Do they treat Jonathan Pollard as a national hero? I have to look this up. I don't know if these are... I kind of expected this stuff to come up because this isn't directly related to the podcast.

But I guess I'll just look it up real quick while we're here live. Okay. So, intelligence guy.

I know I've heard the name before. Oh, okay. All right. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. I've heard about this.

Okay. Interviews discussing his prison experience. He's spoken about plans to run for the

Knesset. All right. Oh, I know who this guy is. Yes, I was just reading about him.

Yes, I was just reading about him. So, I'm not an expert on Jonathan Pollard, but he was selling intelligence from what

I understand. And that's not a good thing. So, to Israel, from us. That's my understanding, at least.

That's the... I haven't looked at the other side of it. All I've gotten is the mainstream narrative on it. But I just accepted it.

I'm pretty sure that that's what he did. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government under the

Espionage Act. And he got paroled and ended up in Israel.

So, I don't know the details of that, but I would agree with you that if those facts are all... And there's nothing to add to that to clarify anything, then that's very bad.

Now, do young life. I... Young life is pretty woke from what

I understand. You see, there are some organizations I just didn't touch. Young life was one of them and neither were the

InterVarsity. Because InterVarsity is so woke. I was like, I don't think there's any hope. I thought with Navigators and with Campus Crusade, okay, there's some hope there.

We might be able to flip it over time. So, I invested my efforts there. As a former high school staff member of years ago,

I'm so glad to hear Cruz turn around on this issue. I pray for them that they do the right thing and make a public apology as a result.

And I appreciate this channel and your content. Thanks for everything, John. You're welcome, Basil. All right.

Well, that's the podcast. I hope this has been helpful to you in thinking through all these issues and hopefully not coming down rigidly in a rah -rah team spirit on sides in a foreign conflict.

But understanding the full picture as much as you can so that when these issues come up, you can have an informed decision and not just go for what one particular side is saying.

Because I've seen both of these things and that's why I think it needs to be addressed. There are Christian groups out there.

They're not really on X that prominently, or on other social media websites, but there are definitely powerful pro -Christian

Zionist groups that have a very slanted view. And there are also, and what

I'm surrounded by, are very pro -Palestinian, pro -Gaza, frankly, pro -Hamas narratives that have a very strong sway.

And you gotta be careful about those things. Check stuff out. Don't just accept things and then publicly advocate for things after accepting them.

I mean, I understand we have a human... You can become really boisterous or rambunctious or just motivated towards a cause if you haven't really done the homework on it.

That's really my message. So God bless. Hopefully this was helpful for you and more coming. Bye now.