News Roundup: Dawkins, Duncan, and Driscoll

John Harris for the weekend edition here. It is the 19th of April and I hope everyone's doing well.

I hope spring is in your area, treating you well. It's just coming to New York where I am right now.

Last weekend I was in Mississippi and it was, it's funny, it was like late spring there, going into summer.

It's like early spring here. Flowers are coming up, it's beautiful. You know, and I had a wonderful time.

Thank you. I know some of you do pray for me when I travel and I mentioned, I know to the patrons at Patreon that it was gonna be a little hard for me to go to a memorial service and it was.

And so I appreciate that. And I won't take up too much of your time on the personal stuff, but for those who are interested, it was different for me.

I went to a graveside service in California when my grandfather passed away. And you don't think about these differences, but this was in a church and there was more people there.

And so I wasn't even expecting to speak, but then my brother spoke. So I was like, well,

I gotta speak. So I went up there and I almost lost it. And I did record it, but I may not share that.

I may never share it, we'll see. It was just, I was just super emotional, but it was really good and had a great time being with family and it's great to have a place.

I realized how blessed I am in that. So many people in this transitive world don't have a place that they feel like they belong.

And I think of even like Jewish people who don't go to Israel, right?

They live in the United States their whole lives and then they go to Israel and what happens? Every person

I know, all my Jewish friends who have done this, they come back and they say, wow,

I could live there. I felt like this was, it was a place that I belonged though they had never been there before.

And of course I have been to Mississippi many times, but I think that I have a sense of that. Like there's a place to belong to, there's a home.

There's, especially in the more where we were in the more rural areas where, I mean, it is true.

Old times there are not forgotten. And there's a lot of old stories. There's a lot of just traditions that are still around that are passed down, that time just seems to kind of slow down.

And I'm grateful places like that still do exist even as they are contending with modernity and the liberal order and all of that.

So anyway, I had a great time and thank you for your prayers. I don't know exactly where to begin.

This is gonna be an interesting episode. I think this is gonna be a long episode too. I have a bunch of stuff to talk about and I have so many thoughts.

I debated whether I should do two episodes and maybe we'll do that. We'll see, if I can talk fast enough, we can get through these stories, then that won't be the case.

But there's a few things that I think will interest you more than a few and things

I've wanted to comment on, frankly, some of them for weeks and I just haven't had the opportunity. If you're on Patreon, I think it's patreon .com

forward slash worldview conversation, you will know that I've also been doing a lot of writing.

And in fact, the other day, if you're on Patreon, I guess one of the,

I don't know if this is a perk, I don't know, but you will see some things I'm doing before they happen. So I wrote this essay on identity politics and the title that I gave it,

I don't know if I'll change it, but it was the inescapability of identity politics. I mean, that already sounds kind of provocative, right?

I mean, it catches your attention. What do you mean it's inescapable? And I explain all of that and what

I mean by that. But I just sent that to the Patreons and said, hey, give me feedback if you can.

If you get the chance to read it, I would love that, help me make this better. And so that's one of the things, if you're someone who does support the program in that way, you do get to influence my work and this is gonna go into a book, but I've been doing a lot of writing.

And of course, some of that is in preparation, probably should have had this pulled up, but it's in preparation for what's happening next week, not this weekend, but next weekend in St.

Croix Falls, Wisconsin. You can come if you're in the Twin Cities area.

It's a great place to go. Man, it's not coming up. It's okay.

For some reason, this doesn't wanna load. So I wanna give you the page so you can register. But if you go to johnharrispodcast .com,

you can find it. I'll just keep talking, I guess, as this loads. I don't know why my computer's being so slow.

Hopefully people are still hearing me. Hopefully it's not my internet connection. So yeah,

St. Croix Falls, right outside of the Twin Cities. It's the Be Not Conformed Conference.

And I'll just show you here the list. If I click on this,

I hope this works. Yep, there it is, okay. It's at Eureka Baptist Church and you can see the other speakers,

David Wheaton, Pastor Seth Brickley's hosting it. Dr. Russell Fuller's gonna be there. Jeff Clewer's gonna be there.

I mean, a lot of really bold, courageous guys. I mean, I really think this is gonna be great. And you can go there as well.

It's, like I said, next weekend and registration details. You can either go to worldviewconversation .com

or you can go to truthscript .com and you can check that stuff out. So there you go.

All right, let's get into it, shall we? Where should we start? That was the question

I was asking at the beginning of this podcast. Where should I start? And I think what

I'll do is I'll kind of, I'll start with some broader things, some just cultural things, cultural news that caught my eye and then we'll kind of zone in on some more church related, most of it's gonna be church related or Christian related directly things.

But there were some things that caught my eye that I thought, hey, I might wanna talk about that.

So as you know, there's a lot of cultural changes going on and Christians aren't the only ones apparently concerned about them.

That was not the video. That was not the video. Now you know everything that I'm gonna say.

This is the video. I'll say I was slightly horrified to hear that Ramadan is being promoted instead. I do think that we are culturally a

Christian country. I call myself a cultural Christian. I'm not a believer, but there's a distinction between being a believing

Christian and being a cultural Christian. And so, I love hymns and Christmas carols and I sort of feel at home in the

Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense. It's true that statistically the number of people who actually believe in Christianity is going down and I'm happy with that, but I would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches.

So I count myself a cultural Christian. I think it would matter if we, certainly if we substituted any alternative religion, that would be truly dreadful.

Well, which brings me to my supplementary point, which is that, as we know, church attendance is plummeting, but the building, the erection of mosques across Europe, I think 6 ,000 are under construction and there are many more,

I mean, are being planned. So do you think, do you regard that as a problem?

Do you think that matters? Yes, I do, really. I mean, I might just choose my words carefully.

I mean, if I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I'd choose Christianity every single time.

I mean, it seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think

Islam is not. I think you're gonna have to explain why you say that, Professor Dawkins.

Why is Islam a profundely - Well, the way - Fundamentally not decent like Christianity.

Yes, I mean, the way women are treated, I mean, Christianity is not great about that. It's had its problems with female vicars and female bishops and things, but there's an active hostility to women, which is promoted,

I think, by the holy books of Islam. I'm not talking about individual Muslims, who of course are quite, quite different, but the doctrines of Islam, the

Hadiths and the Quran, it's fundamentally hostile to women, hostile to gays, and I find that I like to live in a culturally

Christian country, although I do not believe a single word of the Christian faith.

Well, I might - Okay, that was a few weeks ago, so some of you on social media already have seen that, but I never really said anything about it, and I do wanna say something about it.

First of all, wow, because I'm used to, on college campuses, since I've done a lot of college ministry at various places,

I'm used to the Richard Dawkins disciples coming at me with how evil Christianity is, like it's the most evil thing that there's ever been, and they usually lump it in with Islam, like they're all bad, but they have a special hatred for Christianity, more than Islam, I'd say, and this is a common joke, actually, in the apologetics world, was that people like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, I dare you to go speak against Islam, because if you do it the same way that you speak against Christianity, for example, in the

God Delusion, Dawkins has this whole tirade against the God of Christianity, that he's this, it's like all these adjectives, misogynistic, genocidal, whatever, and it goes through all these negative things, hateful, judgmental.

God, I dare you to say that about Islam, and they're never as hard on Islam, and this was just out of the way it was for a long time, and now that they're losing, that Dawkins, especially in Great Britain, is completely losing the culture that he grew up in, he's concerned, finally, and it's too late,

I mean, we tried to, we as meaning Christians, tried to warn about this, and really, actually, it wasn't even

Christians, evangelical Christians doing apologetics quite as much as it was conservative, populist, paleo -conservative thinkers who saw immigration as a threat to the culture of the

West, they're the ones that really, I think of websites today that are considered fringe, like VDare, right,

Peter Brimlow was warning about these things, and now that those guys are all terrible, they're racist and stuff, but they've been proven right, like what they predicted would happen is exactly what's happened, and Richard Dawkins doesn't wanna live with the consequences of his own decisions, of his own worldview, the things that he's done to attack

Christianity have left a void that has allowed Islam to come in, and he doesn't like it, and he says he's a cultural

Christian, meaning he likes the cathedrals, he likes the hymns, he likes all these things that only exist because there are people who believe that they were good and true, he wants to separate them, he wants to get rid of the people who believe they're good and true, we don't need those people anymore, but what reason is there to go into a cathedral?

What reason is there to sing songs that contain theological truths that you no longer believe?

I mean, cathedrals are supposed to give you a sense of awe, they inspire you, they're big, you look at them and you think about how small you are in light of the greatness of God, what's the point once you don't believe

God is great? I think that was the title of Christopher Hitchens' book, right?

God is not great. What's the point? Why even have a cathedral? So the fact, Dawkins obviously is being totally irrational here, but I don't know,

I mean, what do you expect? He's reaping what he's sown, and so do

I have compassion? I guess maybe not so much on Richard Dawkins, but I do on Great Britain. I mean, it is sad,

I'm not there, I actually haven't ever been to Great Britain, but just knowing what they've gone through and seeing the mirror image happen in the

United States, different demographics, it's a different country, so it looks different, but seeing similar things happen, for example, in certain parts of the

Midwest, there are whole regions now that are pretty much Islamic and the government and the social institutions have been captured by Islamic people and Muslims, and I'm gonna show you actually an example of that in a minute.

That's sad for the people who live there, who have seen the changes, and it's the call to prayer that,

I think in one city, was it? I think they made the call to prayer legal. They're not hearing church bells anymore, that's what they're hearing.

So anyway, it's just the way things are, but we brought it on ourselves, and it's the liberal order that has allowed these things to take place, and you heard at the end of that clip that Dawkins, the reason that he doesn't like Islam is because he sees that as a bigger threat to, so he has the sentimental thing, and then he has his rational thing, right?

So his sentimental thing is like, hey, I like Christmas carols and cathedrals, I like the art. I don't wanna see that go away, but then his reasons that he gives are, well, it seems like Islam's a bigger threat to the liberal order than Christianity because of the way it views women, and that's all he can come up with.

That's not what's driving this, though. There's something deeper inside of him, something more sentimental that he deeply knows there's something beautiful about Christianity, and I don't think he probably wants to say that,

Christianity's just more beautiful, or it's precious to me because this is who

I am, and this is the character of my country, and I mean, then you start sounding to the left, like, oh, you're racist, right?

So he's being very careful here, but the only thing he can say is like, well, Islam's a greater threat to the liberal order because they really just don't treat women well, even though Christianity doesn't, too, but so there you go.

Comments coming in. Richard Dawkins is touring the UK and the US. He just asked for suggestions of who to invite on stage with him.

I offered a few suggestions on his page. Do you have any ideas who he could invite? I don't know what that means, to be quite frank.

Invite on stage for what? To debate, to, if it's to debate, yeah,

I mean, I don't know, there's good apologists out there that could probably, I mean,

I know some of you might think I'm weird by saying this, or like, this is, like, maybe you think

I should pick, is it, I'm trying to remember his name now. Big apologist,

Mike something. Hmm, can't remember his name now, or William Lane Craig. I'm trying to think of like, you know,

James White, Matt Slick, maybe, I don't know, but I actually would love to see him on stage with Ray Comfort.

That's who I would, if I could pick anyone to be on stage with Richard Dawkins, it would be Ray Comfort. Not only because I think it would be hysterical, because Ray Comfort's a funny guy, and he would just take it in good humor, but because I know it's not gonna be this highbrow, just like, oh,

I've got better reasons than you. It's gonna be, there's gonna be a gospel presentation, and then it's gonna be like, it's gonna be down to earth.

The common man can understand what's going on. So that would be my suggestion. Okay, well, now that I, now that I talked about that, speaking of cultural changes, it's a little story, but it caught my eye, and I figured

I would say something about it, because a lot of Christians seem to have, in my estimation, an issue here.

So this is not the story. Man, I thought, I don't know what's happening.

I'm like totally disheveled here. Okay, there was a story. There it is. Ah, Seattle Line Dancing Squad says they were booted from competition because their

American flag shirts made crowd triggered and unsafe, and there they are. Now, I could think of maybe a decent argument against the

American flag shirts from the standpoint of flag etiquette. I was taught that in Boy Scouts. You're not supposed to wear the

American flag, but that's kind of like become more popular in especially more conservative circles since I learned my flag etiquette, and I think the people who do that, they're well -meaning.

They wanna be patriotic. They wanna show that they love the United States and that kind of thing. Well, this is now forbidden in certain areas, and I remember when

I was in Seattle and Portland, I remember this. I remember a friend that I was with, we were driving around.

We had a contest, or like just a challenge. How many American flags could we find?

And we couldn't cite, like if we saw it at a post office on federal property, didn't count, and we had just been in Auburn, Alabama filming the day before.

Of course, there are tons of American flags, right? So we're just like, hey, could we find any in Seattle? And I'm pretty sure that we did not find any except the ones that were on federal buildings.

And so it's just a part of the country more than any other part that I've seen, even more than the

Northeast. The Northeast, you still have American flags, I think because of that colonial thing, but in that part of the country, they don't like them not as much.

And so they see that. So the way that people in, let's say,

New York, the typical New Yorker might view symbols from the South with like, oh, that's gotta be bigoted or something.

That's how someone from Seattle views an American flag. And how do you know that,

John? Because I was in Seattle doing a documentary on the monument issue, asking people what they thought of George Washington.

And I couldn't get anyone who liked him. I mean, pretty universally hated in the state that bears his name.

Really, really interesting. And just on the street, asking people questions. So anyway, all that to say, conservatives and Christians out there, it's important.

I just had a discussion with someone not long ago about this who wanted to say that, hey, it's good that, to just kind of make sure that we can get along, smooth sailing, let's get rid of some of those symbols that make people feel,

I don't know, seem divisive, people get upset about them. And I was just like, where are you gonna draw that line?

And how are you, what logic are you gonna use to draw it? The American flag, I mean, it was the flag that flew over the slave ships.

It was the flag that flew over the United States Army as they conquered tribes out

West. It's the flag that, it was the imperial flag of the United States. It's flown over the deaths of how many millions of children who have died from abortion.

And what do you say to that? Now, I know what I say to that. Those things don't define, those things aren't, you can't reduce the symbol to those evil things.

It's an identity marker of the people of the United States that represents particular things about them.

And there's people, you can go back to the symbols of what the 13 stripes mean and the 50 stars and the colors and all of that.

But it's also the flag that my grandfather fought under in World War II, right? It's also the flag. I can start coming up with things that have been shared national experiences, positive things, achievements.

We put a man on the moon and that was the flag we used. And so we don't reduce it down to these things, but we're content letting other symbols go that direction.

And so I just wanna caution conservatives. Once again, I've done this many times. It's like, you gotta be careful of that because that will come back to bite you.

If you let the left, you give the moose a muffin, that's what happens. All right, well, another story here just from general kind of new stuff is an international,

I don't have the video cue because there's too many videos in this podcast as it is, but I'll just summarize. At an international,

I don't know how to pronounce that, Al -Quds Day rally in Dearborn, Michigan.

For those who don't know, Dearborn, Michigan, high Muslim population. Protestors chant death to America. Speakers at the rally,

America is one of the rottenest countries on earth. Israel is ISIS, Nazis are cancer. Now I checked the video out, it all checks out.

That is what happened. People were chanting death to America. Now, and they don't even have, you know, is that, what is that flag?

Is that the Iranian flag? It's not even, you know, these aren't even

American symbols. It's like, are you even in the United States at this point? This is what this has done for us. Now, what do we do with that?

How do we think about that? I mean, I think in prior times, this would be considered treasonous.

Kind of wanting the death of the country you live in, kind of treasonous, right? It kind of undermines the order that is allowing you to live there.

There's probably laws on the books that actually do condemn that kind of thing and punish it in some way,

I'm assuming. But nothing's gonna happen to these people.

That's just, Dearborn, is it part of the United States? I guess, you know, in a technical sense, it's within the boundaries of the map, but culturally, is it

American? This is a challenging question for the Proposition Nation people. This is a question for mainstream people on the right who wanna say,

America, there's no religion, there's no ethnicity, there's no, it doesn't, what do they say usually?

Like, doesn't matter where you're from or what you believe. I think that's what they usually say. Like, doesn't matter where you're from or what you believe, you're an

American, if what? If you subscribe to this common creed of freedom and equality, whatever that is.

These people are saying they want freedom. They're saying they want equality. That's what they're saying.

They're saying that Israel, and because we support Israel, doesn't grant that. And so they are championing things that aren't those quintessentially

American. How come they're not Americans? And if there's a question in your mind, if you think like, but they're not culturally

American, then you gotta start answering the question, then what is a cultural American? I'm more brazing this to help people ask these questions.

These are questions most people don't wanna think through and ask. But if you live in Dearborn, you don't really have an option. Now, if you live there, and I've met

Christians from Dearborn, Michigan, these are your neighbors, they're your mission field. They're people you have to live with and try to build trust with and do commerce with and evangelize and all of these things.

And that's just life. But if you had lived there for decades, you know what's been lost.

And I'm sure that probably grieves many people who live there. By the way, Dearborn, Michigan has one of the best museums, if not the best museum in my estimation in the whole country, and that's the

Ford Museum. So if you ever go there, check it out. It's interesting, because they always did this big classic car collection.

And I remember I was there and there's like women with hijabs and stuff walking around. It just feels like you're, it feels weird.

It feels like you're in another country when you're in Dearborn. So, all right. Yeah, chanting death to America should get you a free ticket out of here.

It is treasonous, says Betty. I don't think that's actually, like that's super controversial to say that, but I don't know exactly why other than,

I mean, I know why, but like, it shouldn't be, especially in conservative circles to say like, hey, if you hate it, then, and you're willing to say like it should be destroyed, like maybe we'll find you another country.

Maybe we'll find you one that's better. You wanna be here though. Why do you wanna be here if it's so terrible? Okay, let's talk about some other things going on.

I think the first thing I wanna start with is this, just this anti -abortion stuff coming from, frankly, evangelical leaders who kind of, they went woke.

I'll just put it that way. They went woke in 2020 and they've been kind of woke. And I've done some work on that.

I've traced down exactly how and why and all of that, but you have Russell Moore and you have

J .D. Greer, okay? And there might've been more, but at least these two. And Russell Moore, there's a story here,

MSN. Evangelical leader, roast Republican waffling on abortion, pro -life with three exceptions, rape, incest, and declining poll numbers.

And Russell Moore, you know, I'll give him credit for one thing. He's good at some of those little zingers.

Like he does that every once in a while. Now, usually they're like totally, like they're just straw men.

He makes stuff up, but like, hey, rape, incest, and declining poll numbers. Like, you didn't expect me to say that.

You thought I was going to say life of the mother, but I didn't because I'm talking about Donald Trump. And so he's on with Anderson Cooper.

I'm not playing the video, but he's finally gained the courage to really stand against a leader who's pro -abortion in his mind.

And of course, you know, I already did an episode on this. I don't want to reinvent the wheel, but you know, I pointed out how like, yeah,

Donald Trump has always been for exceptions. I don't see really any, I don't see any change in his policies on this.

I think he's going to govern the same way. I think he's, I mean, he accomplished more than the pro -life lobby.

And frankly, even, I mean, the abolitionist movement included in that, you know, anti -abortion.

I mean, he's accomplished more on a federal level than really any group's been able to do thus far since the

Roe v. Wade decision by appointing judges who eventually overturned it. I didn't use to buy that argument, by the way.

I do now, I do now. Partially, I guess it's not the only reason, but it actually happened.

So credit where credit's due. Does Donald Trump have a problem? He's always had a problem on this issue because he always wants all these exceptions.

He wants to be pro -life. He wants to limit abortion, but he doesn't want to end abortion.

Completely. So there's not much new, but Donald Trump makes a statement and there's an opportunity here.

And so you see J .D. Greer saying, President Trump's statements betrays the heart of the pro -life movement. Unborn babies are humans bearing the image of God.

Full stop. What President Trump said is not pro -life. It's basically just less aggressive pro -choice. And of course, the comments,

I knew this would happen in the comments. So you got a Rhett Koppel here.

He says, and I just, I know his actual name. It's Mostly Peaceful John Bone Enthusiast.

Oh, there it is. It's at Rhett Koppel. He's not hiding. Okay. There are radically pro -choice people, he says, in your congregation and you serve them communion fraud.

All you're doing here is cynically serving your own regime overlord. Now, do you remember that?

I talked about it on the podcast a few years ago that he, this went all public and everything. He had someone who was the president who was radically pro -choice in his congregation.

And I think she had some level of authority, if I'm not mistaken. And, you know, is he gonna counter signal

Biden in the same way? That's the question. And they often seem reluctant to do that.

I know in the past Greer and Moore have tried to make the argument that, well, there's just this wide array of pro -life issues.

And so they insinuate, you can vote Democrat and be pro -life because you care about these other issues.

But they're willing to take this bold stand against Donald Trump, which, you know, it's interesting.

It's interesting that they're finally fighting their fighting legs. And it's on the guy that's probably, you know, at least between Biden, Trump, and I guess

Kennedy, if you wanna throw him in there. Between the three of them, Trump's clearly going to have the most pro -life administration.

People against abortion are going to be in strategic positions in his cabinet.

And the other two are very ideologically committed to abortion. So Carl Truman, do

I wanna go over this? I might skip this one, guys. Maybe I'll give you like a really... I think

I'm gonna have to skip this one. I'm just gonna say this for the sake of time. Carl Truman came out and kind of recycled what we've heard for years about the whole, like, you know, the church.

The church has these two bad options. You know, it's Trump and Biden, these two bad options. And the church kind of transcends these things.

And like, we're getting raw deals either way. That's basically the article. You could read it and tell me if my assessment is accurate.

But we've seen this for years, especially since Donald Trump, that there's not a dime's worth of difference.

Like they're both bad, they're both equally evil. And the thing is about that, the distinction between a friend and an enemy, evangelicals have a very hard time knowing the difference between those two things.

Or even a co -belligerent for that matter. Biden's not a co -belligerent. He's certainly not a friend. He is definitely an enemy.

Trump is a co -belligerent on many issues. In some ways, he's probably a friend because he appoints people to strategic positions who are dyed -in -the -wool evangelical

Christians pro -life down the whole line. He's not an enemy in that sense.

And there are some issues in which evangelicals are gonna differ with President Trump. But it's like not even a close comparison between him and Biden when it comes to policy, when it comes to how they govern.

But it reminds me of John Piper. Remember John Piper did that whole article where he was saying Trump has these character flaws.

It's like, well, he does. But those character flaws might make him a person who has a bad character on a personal level especially, but they don't identify him as a threat necessarily to evangelicals and the lives, our civilization, the lives that we want.

On the other hand, the Democrats, their platform is against our civilization. It is not, it's not really even close in that respect.

So just wanna point out that logic is being floated around. We're probably gonna hear more of it as we get closer to the election.

Now, some church news. I said I would get to this. I said I would give you an example here.

And sure enough, I am. Concordia University, Wisconsin wishes you a blessed

Ramadan. Don't forget, Concordia tomorrow is Kanemara Matsuri.

I don't know what that is, sorry. But yeah, Concordia University.

This is a Christian university supposedly. And I mean,

I know even conservatives recently, like within the last year, someone, I don't remember what it was, like a conference or something.

Someone said, yeah, Concordia is not going woke, right? They're okay. I said, I'm pretty sure there are some things there and can't remember exactly what.

It's a smaller university in the Midwest and I know I've seen some things, but here we go. So what is this?

What's the lesson I wanna draw from this? The lesson is they're located in Wisconsin. Now, like Michigan, you know where else has a high

Muslim population because of immigration, Wisconsin. Don't tell me it doesn't change the culture.

If it was liberal neutrality, they wouldn't put this, they wouldn't, you know, a university, I'm thinking more like a secular university, they wouldn't celebrate anything, right?

At least their attempt would be to not recognize, either recognize all or don't recognize any. Christian university, you would think, well, they had the freedom to exist as a

Christian university and they don't have to tip their hat to any other religion. In fact, that's part of the freedom, but here they are, and I think it's because they're in Wisconsin, that's my guess.

And they got to somehow tip their hat to Ramadan. Celebrate, so they have people, I guess, presumably celebrating it at their

Christian university and they're encouraging it. Yes, that is how you will keep your Christian university.

Encourage the students who celebrate anti -Christian holidays or holidays,

I mean, you can't, yeah, there's no reconciliation there. You can't reconcile Christianity with that. Another Christian university recently,

Baylor has a professor, Greg Jarrett, and he said today in my Harry Potter class, now I'm gonna stop there. Now, I did go to college.

I have an AA, I have a bachelor's, I have two master's degrees. I never once saw a class on Harry Potter.

I had a professor who liked to read Harry Potter. I thought that was a little unusual. He's a World War II professor. I liked him at Liberty, good guy.

That was his thing in his spare time, but he didn't teach a class on it. Sorry, they have a class on Harry Potter.

No wonder college graduates are having a hard time finding jobs. Can you imagine they're going to apply for a job somewhere?

I don't know, their multicultural studies degree, and they're gonna try to get a job at the factory or something.

And it's like, what experience do you have? It's like, well, I know what it's like to do factory work.

I took the Harry Potter class. I'm very familiar with the life of Harry Potter and all the hardship he went through.

I think I'd be a good fit. I don't even want to ask. I don't understand this.

But anyway, he says in his Harry Potter class, they had a hard, very hard, and necessary conversation about J .K.

Rowling and her hatred of trans people. We decided, novelist Rowling, we decided, we decided, who wrote with compassion about diversity, equity, and inclusion is worth our attention.

Twitter Rowling, shame on her. I could probably spend a whole episode just dissecting this tweet.

I hate to say it, because there's so many things in it. But it's a Christian university.

This is your professor. And so Megan Basham, thank God for Megan Basham. She catches stuff. She's sharp.

She said, hey, you're in violation of your school statement on human sexuality. Please explain yourself. And the school's policy says each faculty and staff member and student employee is obligated to be aware and comply with university policies.

And apparently, included in that is, is expected that Baylor students will not participate in advocacy groups which promote understanding of sexuality that are contrary to biblical teaching.

So there you go. Well, it's happening. You can say, it's like the Constitution. You're like, it's written right here.

Well, you could say that all day, that it's written right there, that that's what the law is.

But if you have people flagrantly denying it, what difference does it make? And that's the situation that many of our Christian universities.

And to be quite honest with you, I saw a little bit of that, even in my own experience. I saw that at Liberty University.

I remember Karen Swallow Pryor had a book called, I think it was called Cultural Engagement or something.

And there was a chapter by Matthew Vines which advocates for same -sex marriage. Now that's against Liberty University, but there she is,

Liberty sanctioned book signings of her book. And she claims in the, I remember she claimed in the beginning of the book that everyone,

I think she used the word orthodox, that all the authors, including Matthew Vines, were orthodox believers. So here you have a message to students saying, someone who believes in gay marriage and believes that's certainly in line with New Testament teaching or Bible teaching, they're orthodox.

It's against Liberty University's code. I guess I could say their code of conduct. I think there's another document though, but it's against their policies.

But there you have it. So if these things aren't stopped, they just continue.

There's no way to really, in my opinion, put an end to it. So this is where, if you're at a

Christian university, if your children are going there, just be aware of these kinds of things. Be vigilant. If you're a student or a teacher, if you have some kind of a role where you can apply some pressure, be vigilant in those things.

You know what the policies are. And when you see infractions, report those things. Now, I don't know if that'll go anywhere or not, but at least someone's doing it.

And if there's pressure, people will respond to that. Half the problem is there's usually not enough pressure.

Another development that I thought was super interesting in my estimation, J. Chase Davis, who's a former Acts 29 pastor.

I guess he got ahold of some documents. I don't know. He didn't link to the documents that I can see, but Acts 29 completed their annual process where member churches renew their partnership with the network, and just 220 churches in the

United States renewed. That's down from 509 just over a year ago. That means that Acts 29 lost 57 % of their

American churches. That's 57 % in a year. That's crazy.

Now, what do I attribute that to? I mean, I think it's probably the woke stuff. I think, now

Acts 29 was kind of the new up and coming, hip church planning network. Mark Driscoll was the one who

I think started it. And then Matt Chandler was the one who continued it. And I mean, they're falling apart.

And they brought in the woke church stuff. They brought in Eric Mason. They brought in, I don't even know.

There was a few guys they brought in. They brought, who's that guy? And I can't remember, Tony Miranda, Miranda something, down at Southeastern.

They brought people like that in. And what do you say?

I mean, the ministry, this is like one of the examples of go woke, go broke. And it's sad because,

I don't know if I would agree with all of Acts 29 stuff, but a few years ago, I remember, I literally remember this.

It wasn't even a few. It was like 10, 11, 12 years ago. I remember when people were moving to an area, I would say, look at Sermon Audio.

Let's look at the IFCA list, the Greece, the Master's Seminary Alumni list.

At the time, this is what I said. Let's look at the Acts 29 list. You know, I was looking at all the churches.

Let's see what's in your area. Acts 29 was one of them. And not anymore, not anymore.

So that's what's going on with Acts 29. And then let's see. Oh, this is, speaking of the mainline denominations, we were talking about Great Britain a little bit and the

Church of England, but the Episcopal Church has some stuff going on. This is an article in the

Living Church, Serving the One Body of Christ, and it's by Kirk Peterson.

Title is Weaponizing Clergy Disciplinary Canons for Ideological Purposes. So basically, this article is about Operation Reconquista.

We've talked about it on this podcast. Jake Dell is mentioned in this, and also

Redeem Zumer. They've both been on this podcast, and they really wanna, what they really want is, they've wanted to look at these mainlines that have gone pretty off the rails in certain areas that have only like a few conservative clergy left, if any.

And they look at them, they're dying, and they think, how can we reinvigorate this? How can we, you know, bring, maybe bring people in that can take these buildings?

Because the buildings are beautiful, some of them. And breathe new life into these denominations, and take them back for orthodoxy.

Maybe, maybe Acts 29 needs their Operation Reconquista at this point. But anyway, this was in the mainlines mainly.

And so he talks about these guys, and by the way, I should say, well, no,

I shouldn't say, nevermind. I was gonna say that, I was just gonna talk about how some of the guys who want this,

I think have started to realize that maybe the Reconquista thing's not really gonna happen.

At least the way they thought, in the manner in which they thought it could happen. But one of the reasons it might not be happening is because of people receiving letters, complaints, from, does he name the person?

I think he does in this article. I know, I know the person because I have some backstory stuff here.

But there was, so there was a guy who was contacting people in the denomination to try to get conservative clergy who are part of this

Operation Reconquista, basically to not have jobs available to them, to prevent them, to gatekeep, to prevent them from having jobs.

And so that's what this article is about, and saying like, you know, this is part of the problem. You're not gonna have an

Operation Reconquista when you have guys that are actively looking to find and suppress.

The left does this. I mean, they locate, suppress any dissidents, even if in a denomination where, there's hardly any conservative clergy in the

Episcopal Church. But you get the one guy and it's whack -a -mole. It's like, let's whack him down.

Let's make sure that we make an example of him. We don't want anyone else getting ideas. So that's one of the things that challenges that something like Operation Reconquista would face.

Okay, much more can be said about that that I don't have time for, but if you go to thelivingchurch .org, you can find that article.

Do I wanna do this next? I don't know if I wanna do this next. I guess I wanna do this next.

Ha ha. No, you know what? You know what I'll do? I'll come back to this stuff. Let's do the SBC and the

ERLC first. I have some more bigger stuff that'll take me longer.

Okay, so I just wanted to talk about this real quick. So I mentioned it on the podcast. John Avery Emison, who's a mayor in Tennessee, of Alamo, Tennessee, he wrote a letter to Randy Davis, who's the president and the executive director of the

Tennessee Baptist Mission Board. And it was pretty, it was direct.

It was, you shouldn't be ushering in DEI, diversity requirements or diversity.

You shouldn't have like a diversity policy for who you appoint to board memberships, which they make it public that they do.

So I just wanted to let you know, I think this may be an encouragement that they had a conversation, apparently it went well.

Jeff Wright, who very conservative pastor in the Southern Baptist Convention, also had a conversation with Randy Davis and seemed pretty positive about it.

But he says that he hopes that they're gonna take that section about diversity down from their website. Now, I guess what

I wanna say about this is, like, that's good. I've seen this scenario though, many times. And what often happens is, you know who has this happen a lot, that I remember at least was

Tom Askell. Like he would call, he'd make the phone calls and say, hey, this has happened at Southern Seminary.

Hey, this has happened at the North American Mission Board or at the IMB or wherever. And then he would get the super respectful, just, oh, we are in your corner.

We agree with you kind of treatment, but then nothing changes, right? That's the danger with these kinds of things.

You have to watch and you have to hold people's feet to the fire. But there's a response to the pressure. At the very least, there's an acknowledgement.

Yes, this is a problem. We have this. We shouldn't have this. The conversation happened. Now what's left, the action has to follow, right?

So there you go. Let's see, other SBC related stuff.

Okay, this is kind of a big thing. The evangelical dark web did a thread on this and I was so grateful, so I don't have to.

Bruce Frank just announced his candidacy for the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. I would say that's debatable.

I don't know enough about him. I know enough though to know he's on the left in the SBC. I don't know enough about him to know if he's the farthest left among the can.

I think it's Keybone, if I'm not mistaken. The other guy, that guy might be on the farther left.

I'm not sure. But Bruce Frank, I knew him from the Marcus Hayes situation in Naples, Florida because he,

Marcus Hayes, I think came from his church and he sent a video to First Baptist Naples basically saying, supporting

Marcus Hayes. You gotta hire Marcus Hayes. And Marcus Hayes was a woke pastor and would have probably destroyed that church even more than it ended up getting.

It ended up going through some fairly hard times because of what happened. Marcus Hayes now is in Texas.

And from what I understand, the people from that church contacted me and that church has been pretty fragmented up because of him.

But who was behind some of that? Bruce Frank. And so I'm like, I know this guy is on the social justice train.

And sure enough, Evangelical Dark Web did a good thread and talks about,

I guess he preached a sermon. His most popular sermon is that Jesus wasn't white. All right.

And he argues that in John four, Jesus sent the disciples into town to teach them about racism. Right, that's what he was doing.

Even he lectures his church for being too white. I don't even need to read more about this.

I just don't even. But he has so many clips that are just too cringy that he's on the board with the

Me Too agenda. Talks about transgenderism.

And this is recent, 2023. And he presented alienation as a worldly solution to transgenderism, but doesn't ever explain how or why.

Sounds like he's in line with Alistair Begg's recent wokeness on this issue. So there you go,

Bruce Frank. Yeah, not the guy, if you're in the SBC, you want to be the next president. I think he would be further to the left than someone like a

Bart Barber. Megan Basham, she does really good work, especially on this

Me Too stuff, but another SBC related thing. She asks, should a 35 year old married mother with no mental incapacity be able to tell when a brief encounter with a man who is not her husband qualifies as a sexual assault?

It is plausible for her to claim, is it possible for her to claim years later that a trauma counselor helped her understand the encounter was not consensual?

She asked this because both the SBC president and Guidepost accepted this claim at face value, and now they are being sued.

Up till now, she says, I did not know for certain the age of the woman involved. According to Guidepost, the woman believed it was consensual at the time of the event.

According to the Houston Chronicle, she did not come to see it as abuse until nearly 10 years later after she and her husband began working with trauma expert,

Diane Laneberg. And I've talked about Diane Laneberg before. So this is the problem, this is the issue.

You have people who they did immoral things, adultery, fornication, but it was consensual.

Like they chose to do it. And then years down the line, they go to some counselor who helps convince them, actually you were abused.

You didn't make that choice because of the context it was in, perhaps. Like maybe you thought you wanted it, but that's only because the person exerted power over you and convinced you.

And if they hadn't have done that, you wouldn't have. So it becomes like the responsibility is taken off the quote unquote victim, right?

Now, of course there's responsibility with the person who, you know, it takes two, right?

But it doesn't mean that you're off the hook in an adulterous affair or in fornication just because, you know what?

Years down the line, I'm thinking about it. And as I think about it, I don't think I really did wanna do it because of some complicated social context you saw yourself in.

This is foreign to the Bible, by the way. The Bible is pretty cut and dry on this stuff, right? And there's punishments for adultery.

And, you know, if you cry out in the city for people to hear you, then you're off the hook.

That's evidence that you weren't consenting to this. I don't know if there's much more to say about it, but this is part of the problem with guideposts and just the me too stance the

SBC has had in recent years. It just opens them up to lawsuits like this. All right,

ERLC, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention. A few things about them. Brent Leatherwood, last week, he says, the

ERLC sent a letter to Speaker Johnson, all members of Congress, urging them to pass critical support for Ukraine.

All right. They're spending money. If you're in a Southern Baptist Convention, they're spending your cooperative program money.

You give to the offering. Some of it goes to this, to lobbying for Ukraine. And they're doing it because why?

They wanna stop Putin's invasion. They wanna help Ukraine defend itself. That means guns. This is the same

Brent Leatherwood who also lobbies for the state government in Tennessee to adopt what are basically red flag laws to limit

Tennesseans from owning guns. So I kind of mockingly said,

I guess guns for Ukraine, but not for Tennesseans. Do you want your money going to this?

And this is a question, I think a lot of Southern Baptists have pulled out of the convention just because of this alone. They see this nonsense and they're just like,

I don't wanna pay for that. That's not part of the agenda that I sent you there for. Speaking of Brent Leatherwood, these are two people

I didn't expect to cross paths. The ERLC president, Brent Leatherwood was confronted by, it's funny actually, it's funny how he, so Steven Crowder put this on.

He goes, breaking, our team in Nashville confronted Democrat activist Brent Leatherwood, Democrat activist, who is leading the charge against releasing the full manifesto of transgender covenant school shooter,

Audrey Hale. Are you being paid at all to be the opposition here? If you watch the video, it's just Brent Leatherwood not answering questions.

But yeah, he doesn't want this manifesto being released. There's all sorts of theories floating out there about why that might be the case.

I do have my ideas on it, but it's not really important. The point is, again, is this what you pay your cooperative program tithes to, the

ERLC for? I don't think so for most people. All right, now

I said I was gonna go back to some things. I am gonna do, and I'll end with these kind of three bigger things. I'm gonna talk about, what order do

I wanna do this in? I'm gonna talk about Driscoll. I'm gonna talk about Ligon Duncan.

And I'm gonna talk about a discussion or a Twitter thread that I had with Phil Johnson.

So I will start with the Mark Driscoll stuff but that's okay.

So I posted this meme and I said, it's true. I can vote for Trump and support Driscoll's courage without endorsing everything about them.

And I think that still holds up because there's a lot of people online that were saying that you couldn't do this.

That Driscoll is just, he's such a terrible person. He's a heretic, he's a false teacher.

This is a grift. He's trying to, it's a setup, it's all fake. And what it is, is he was at a men's conference and he essentially called out the conference for allowing this guy who's a former male stripper,

I guess, do a performative sword swallowing routine. But it kind of looked like,

I'm not gonna, I mean, I can see it from Mark Driscoll's perspective. It did kind of look like male stripper stuff.

It really did. Like he took his shirt off and he's like doing all these moves and he's crawling up and down this pole.

And it's just not really, in my opinion, not really, I wouldn't make a big deal about it if it was just in society.

If it was like, if you're in Las Vegas and it's one of the shows, as you're walking down the street, I don't know why you would be walking down the street in Las Vegas, but I got family there.

So I visited there before, in the day, much better than at night. And you're walking down the street and you see like, you're not gonna sit, whatever.

But this is a Christian men's conference. And so, yeah, I was like, okay, well, anyway, that's the only thing

I'm saying, like I agreed with Driscoll. I thought it took courage for him to do that. He's standing up to this whole men's conference. And so Justin Peters, I'm not gonna go through everything we went back and forth on, but Justin Peters, pretty cynical about this whole thing.

And why shouldn't he be? Mark Driscoll has done things in the past that, and I remember when

I was at Master's Seminary, we had a discipleship class and it was called D -Lab.

And I don't know why we had a whole, we had a whole class. It was either half a class or a whole class.

I can't remember. Cause we talked about this and we also talked about Francis Chan. But the professor,

I remember for that class, he spent like almost the entire time talking about basically how bad

Mark Driscoll is, how dangerous he is, how terrible he is. And it's one of the reasons I think it's the only class in seminary

I ever got to see in because I didn't attend much after that. I was kind of like, well, I mean, I don't know.

It was a discipleship class and I wasn't really at the time, just didn't fit in with like what

I was, what I thought I was in seminary for and stuff. I can see, by the way though, I can see a benefit to knowing where there's dangers.

Obviously I do this podcast and there's a benefit to that. So maybe I was wrong on that. I don't know. But I remember like getting the full file, like here's all the issues with Driscoll and like this is his crass language and this is what he has, he says pornographic things.

I remember I read his book on marriage and I thought it was terrible. I did a whole review and I was like, this is terrible. So I know, just for the people who, maybe my information's a little dated, but I know,

I get it. Like you don't like Mark Driscoll. I don't really particularly care for Mark Driscoll.

But you know what? The guy, here's the thing, he said some really true things that are hard to say in the context of today.

Some against, he's one of the few people, major pastors, really taking a whack at the woke movement. Like really trying to stand up for masculinity and stuff.

And I just thought, man, like it's, to be honest, my first thought was that's great. My second thought was it's a shame it's him and there aren't other guys doing the same thing that are more solid theologically.

Like shame on you, theologically solid guys who, you know, maybe you're just like in your expository preaching mode every

Sunday, but you never get to the point of confronting the gods of this age. Shame on you. That's, your people need that.

I'm gonna go on my own rant and I gotta stop. So that's what

I thought when I saw those things. Well, this was another thing like that. And so I'll show you some of the video just so you can see what

I'm talking about. By the way, this is the conference. I didn't see this until after I posted that, but this is apparently what the conference is like.

Welcome to the Stronger Men's Conference. When you're in the presence of the Lord, powerful things happen.

God, whatever you have for me, I wanna hear it. Help me to grow because I wanna be a stronger man.

That was crazy. What God did in your life, it's meant to impact the world around you.

It's meant to be multiplied. That's the plan of God for you. We can change and impact the world because we serve the strong man,

Jesus Christ. He says, I will go with you, but hold on with you always. I'm gonna give you strength.

Never leave any warfare the same way as you entered it because you've been through something with Jesus. You've had an encounter with the most high

God. He's changed you and transformed you and renewed you. All right, so that's the, now when

I saw that, I was like, wait a minute, like every, like half the things in that are offensive in the, maybe

I'll just briefly just say this before, I'll get back to the Driscoll thing. But when you look at something like that, the first thing

I think is like, is this for youth group or is this for men? Is this for kids?

Is this like a evangelistic outreach? We have something in New York called the Super Bowl, but Word of Life puts it on and it's basically this.

People come and they, you know, you invite your friends and you're gonna have fun all night and it's gonna be crazy. And then, you know, there's a gospel present.

Is that what this is? Or is it like, what is that? And it seems to me it appeals to boys more than men.

I mean, some of the stuff, I mean, I was saying some of it's cool. Like I wanna see a monster truck sometimes, right? I'm a guy and I wouldn't mind seeing a monster truck every now and then, but at a men's conference, like I'm thinking

I'm going there for things that are a little more serious. And it just makes, the whole tone of it isn't just, you can't take it seriously when it's like Tonka trucks and stuff like that.

And people are dressed so casually and stuff. It's just, to me, it shows the sacredness of the situation of the church.

It's left the building. There's no awe, loftiness, sacredness. You know, our God is a consuming fire.

It's not there. It is, you know, just casual approach to God.

If they're even approaching God, it seems like they're just approaching each other. So Driscoll was already at what

I would consider to be somewhat of a compromised event. I mean, he could have probably picked 10 things to go after. Now, admittedly, he probably went after the thing that was maybe highest on the list, but this is what he did.

For those who don't know, I'm just gonna show you a brief. Let's see here. Okay, I don't wanna, there's so much.

I have like over 15 minutes of video here. So I don't wanna show you everything. All right.

I've been up since one o 'clock in the morning. The reason I'm hoarse is I have been praying with this and it's not what

I wanna say, but the Jezebel spirit has already been here. Now, for those watching, this is deceptive because this picture of this male stripper,

I guess, is from years ago or it's before he was a Christian. And that did not happen at the event.

Jezebel spirit opened our event. This is a rebuke and a correction of no one. This is an observation.

Before the word of God was opened, there was a platform. It was a high place.

On it was a pole, an astronaut.

The same thing that's used in the strip club for women who have the Jezebel spirit to seduce men.

And in front of that was a man who ripped his shirt off like a woman does in front of a pole at a strip club.

That man then ascended. See, our God is not arrogant.

He doesn't us and our God is humble. He's decent. And then he swallowed a sword and Jesus cried, okay,

Pastor John, I'll receive that. Thank you. Okay, all right.

Let's just stop there for a second. There's some problems with what he said, right?

It wasn't necessarily a high place or an Asherah pole and it's not necessarily even the

Jezebel spirit. It's just immoral.

It's just, I don't know. I guess you could say, so Jezebel spirit was like, let's start worshiping false gods.

I don't know. That's a little murky to me to start applying that this is like Jezebel saying, let's just go worship

Baal. But it's definitely inappropriate. And it did seem sensual.

There is some, I guess, cultural stuff coming into this too. Like we as Christians in the

United States with the traditions that we've inherited, I think that we see this probably different than maybe some other countries where this would be more acceptable.

I don't know. I'm spitballing a little on that because I'm trying to think what countries would that be more acceptable? But I'm just open to the possibility that there might be.

And so, yeah, there's some cultural kind of like decency that's been violated.

But I think that's even worth saying something about, like, hey, we're trying to uphold standards. We're trying to be decent.

We're trying to, we don't want the world even, not that the world's the main one we should be concerned about, but we don't want them to look at this and think that's appropriate.

We wanna uphold the standard of righteousness. I would say, when it comes to worship and God, and who knows, there's a room full of men, but there may be some homosexuals in the room too.

And just because men aren't sexually attracted to that, hey, there's other guys. We need to be sensitive. We don't wanna produce temptation, right?

So there's all kinds of things he could have said. Now he went for the jugular and he kind of, he said what he said, but I just thought, hey, that takes some courage to call it out.

I doubt this was an act. It didn't come across like an act, but people were saying that online, that this was just, this is all an act.

It's all a marketing ploy. Maybe in the back of Mark Driscoll's mind, it was. I guess he's writing a book on the Jezebel spirit.

And so who knows, maybe it was on his mind or maybe he thought I could sell books because of this.

That's all speculation. You can look at the pattern. You can look at him trying to give his books away at the Shepherd's Conference and showing up unannounced like 10 years ago, but it doesn't mean that that's what he was doing here.

I don't know, but that's what he does. And then I'll just finish the story here for everyone.

So we can kind of get through it. What ends up happening is he comes back out on stage.

And this is the point I think in my back and forth with Justin Peters, I had said something along the lines of, hey, take some courage.

I'm not saying I endorse everything about him, but there's consequences. He's not gonna be invited back.

And then Justin Peters came back with like, hey, have you seen this video? And I hadn't, where it was, they're making nice.

Everything's fine. There's gonna be no consequences. And he said that because of this. So Mark, they're cheering.

Mark Driscoll comes back out on stage. And then he talks. See if I can get a clip of them talking. Oh, sorry.

That's the pastor rebuking Mark Driscoll. So the pastor rebukes Mark Driscoll. Then Mark Driscoll comes back out and they have a sit down.

To help me. I never forgot that. Mark and Grace have been friends for the years.

When there was chocolate bars built every night sat on our couch. Okay, so he's saying we have this personal relationship.

Mark Driscoll then says that I should have come to you and talked about it to you first.

And he says, you wanna know who John the Baptist was like? The pastor says it's like Mark Driscoll. So here's my whole thing on that.

People were then saying, Mark Driscoll apologized. I didn't catch an apology.

A lot of people were saying that. Like everyone was saying that. I'm not gonna name the names, but it was like a lot of conservative evangelicals and leaders in conservative evangelicals don't like Mark Driscoll saying he apologized.

He didn't apologize. It wasn't an actual apology. He just says, I should have come to you first and honored your authority.

He didn't say that what he said was wrong. He didn't apologize for saying what he said. The message he never apologized for.

You also had the pastor of this conference, he's hosting compliment

Mark Driscoll. And I thought this was kind of a win for Mark Driscoll in a way, like the pastor is kind of, he doesn't say

I agree with your point outrightly, but he says things like, you wanna know what John the Baptist was like?

Look at Mark Driscoll. Mark Driscoll is a gift to the church. Mark Driscoll is this and that. And so it seemed to me like it was going more towards Mark Driscoll's direction.

Like, yeah, maybe there was a problem. It's insinuated more so, but yeah, they're making nice, right?

And I thought, wow, that seems like it takes some humility to go back out there and to at least admit you were wrong that you should have for Mark Driscoll to come to the pastor first.

And I made an error in that regard. So someone says, Mark Driscoll is a wolf fleeing duly enacted church discipline.

Why is anyone surprised by the circus he created? I'm not, but as with Trump, I'm not required to just read every single thing he does cynically.

That's my point. And if Paul and Philippians could look at people preaching the gospel from wrong motives and say, hey, at least the gospel is going forward.

I think I can look at Mark Driscoll saying something true about this wasn't good.

It's not good to have someone that looks like they're almost, they're stripping. That's what it looks like at your men's conference.

That's all I'm saying. And I think there's an ideological component or there's something out there in our circles and like reformed evangelical circles.

And some of you I know aren't reformed, but like, I'll say this, more conservative evangelical circles. There's something out there that it just makes us,

I don't know what it is exactly. I can assume, but we see things really black and white sometimes.

It's like either everything he does is bad or everything he does is good. It's like heroes, like someone who likes

John MacArthur a lot, John MacArthur can do no wrong. And I guess I've never really been that way. Like I'm not that way.

Like there's good things that I do. There's sometimes bad things I do have to apologize for. And with all the podcasts

I've put out there, I'm sure someone could find something I've said in the past. And I'd be like, I wish I hadn't said that, that was wrong.

I just don't know where, but we're people. And that's my point. And whether we're, even if we're heretics, the we as in the corporate we, not me, but even if you're a heretic, it doesn't mean you can't say something that's true at times.

Even if Trump is degenerate in his personal life or has been, doesn't mean he can't do some good things or make some appropriate right decisions.

Like it is possible, doesn't mean we should trust that he will at every sentence, but like doesn't mean that he can't and we can't approve of those things when they happen and rejoice in them and say, great, the

Lord worked through that. It's all I'm saying. So that was my point from the beginning. And frankly, it's not something

I thought I'd even discuss in the podcast, but it just became such a big thing. So here's the end of the story. I know I said earlier,

I would give the end of the story. So, and it's a long end of the story and I'm sorry for that. But then the pastor, apparently this was a few days ago, gets up there and he starts saying stuff like this.

But it seems that Mark is more interested in the controversy that will sell books, gain clicks and increase donations to his ministry.

At no time during our conversation, was there any mention of his angst over Alex McDowell's performance or his concerns about the event?

Mark could have easily mentioned Alex, but he did not. Okay, so this is a whole thing against Mark Driscoll.

You can go to Protesty and watch more. I could probably land anywhere in this clip and you'll get a sense of it.

I mean, he reads texts from Mark Driscoll. So what is this all about? I think

I'm probably right as far as my prediction that Mark Driscoll is not getting invited back to this event next year.

I think I'm probably right. Driscoll did risk not getting an invite back.

That's a big conference. Maybe he was trying to sell books and get clicks.

Maybe that was what his strategy was, I don't know. But he definitely gave up a lot to do that.

I mean, that's a conference he could have sold books at. He's not gonna, I'm pretty certain. Now we'll see if I'm right, maybe

I'll be wrong, but I'm pretty certain he's not gonna be there next year. They had their kumbaya, but then when

Mark Driscoll got home, things were said and there's a disagreement. And there was, there always was, over this quote unquote former male stripper guy.

So if that, and I have to say, if that guy had pure motives and didn't even think about what he was doing and was immature about it,

I feel bad for him to be quite honest, because now he's in the center of this controversy and he's, but I don't know anything about him.

So there you go. That's just, I don't know why I even had to take everyone through that other than to say like, hey, can we just cool it a little bit and just say, hey, sometimes even evil people, even people that could be even heretics, sometimes they can say some true things.

Sometimes they can do some good things. And when that happens, I just kind of want to be like Paul and be like, hey, the way that Paul was when people preach the gospel from bad motives, that's where I'm at.

Good, good, good for them. And let's not have a hard time doing this. Let's be open to that.

I'm willing to do that with any of the woke preachers I've criticized, even Ligon Duncan, even him. I have a hard time with him.

Just really don't care for Ligon Duncan. But even with him, he says something true.

Good, praise God. That's great. I think the thing that the main takeaway is that Mark Driscoll showed, he revealed something about even people who tend to be more orthodox in their theology, but aren't willing to take these kinds of risks because of decorum or whatever.

He is willing to say something that frankly is masculine. He's willing to stand up and say hard things.

He's willing to risk in order to, now some people think it's sell books, but even if it's that, it's to deliver a true message in this case.

And to call something out that's wrong. And so that's admirable on whatever level you wanna take that at.

Maybe there's all these other competing motives, but there is something admirable about that. And it's something that I hope,

I just really hope that more solid people, doctrinally sound people do this kind of thing.

I'm not saying no one does, but it's a rarity. And I think that's why Driscoll has followers in the first place, especially among young men, because he is willing to do that kind of thing.

So you want those followers, you want people, young men, especially that would normally follow

Driscoll to follow what you're doing, then you gotta be like that. Joel Webbin the other day,

I didn't ask him permission to share this. I'm just gonna do it. I think it's okay. Joel Webbin sent a picture and it was a protester outside his house.

And why did that happen? Because Joel Webbin takes risks. He says things that get him into hot water.

And often those things are true things that probably need to be said, but people are afraid to say them.

So it's an admirable trait. And it's what Russell Moore thinks he's doing, speaking truth to power, but not really.

So someone says that this was a life coach, motivational event, no Bible doctrine and Driscoll's words weren't either. That's why it wasn't courage.

Okay, I mean, I'm just saying courage because it's a hard thing to stand up in front of thousands of people and offend the people who invited you and not be invited back and risk separating the entire room and having people, like he could have just gone through the whole speech and everyone would have applauded and thought he was great, right?

But he decided to invite the ire of powerful people. All right, is that it on Driscoll?

I hope that's it on Driscoll. Man, what else do we have? This is a mega edition, man. This is like hour and 15 minutes so far and we're still going strong.

I wanna talk about Lincoln Duncan and there's also this Phil Johnson. Let's do the Phil Johnson thread thing next.

Can I pull it up? Yeah, I can. I can pull it up. There it is.

All right. Okay, so why do I wanna talk? I wanna talk about this, I think because it's for the people in the pews who are watching.

I wasn't gonna talk about this, but then I had some people reach out to me who saw it and were thanking me for engaging and clarifying the issues or helping clarify for them what the issues are in this disagreement.

I think it's a disagreement. And I thought that'd be helpful for everyone because I'm seeing these clashes more and more online and I might have to talk about this kind of thing more going forward, but I thought this was a good example.

And Phil Johnson and I have been fairly friendly over the years. I even reached out to him personally during this and just said, reaffirmed that I care about him, that I see him as a friend and all of that.

I haven't heard back from him yet, but I see

Phil Johnson as someone who has stood strong against the woke stuff when it was hot.

Like if you remember the Shepard's Q &A from years ago, hardly anyone wanted to confront that and he was willing.

And so he actually had some bravery in that. And I appreciated that.

And I remember, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things I could say positive about Phil Johnson. So I don't wanna touch, probably sounds like I'm trying to numb the skin so the needle goes in or something, but we had somewhat of a disagreement.

And godly men can have disagreements with each other, I think. So here's what he says.

It was always my contention that today's evangelical groipers are functionally and ideologically identical to yesterday's kinists.

It's the exact same ideology, just rebranded. And because they refer to themselves as Christian nationalists, it throws a pale of suspicion over everyone who uses the term

Christian nationalists. Now, I was confused by this legitimately. And so I said, like my initial thought was like, okay, we're just, what is this?

Like, is this just like different flavors of racism are out there and Christian nationalism is one of them.

I didn't know exactly what he was getting at. So I said, I asked the question. I said, honest question, what does this mean? If I understand, a groiper follows

Nick Fuentes. I have no clue why they call them groipers. And they're Catholics. So I don't know who an evangelical groiper is.

And I really, either I'm ignorant or there's no such thing as an evangelical groiper.

I don't know what that is. All right. I said, a kinist thinks one should not marry outside their genetic group.

Hopefully that, I hope that satisfies kinists out there. I hope they would say, yeah, that's basically it. I don't know though, because I've gotten different definitions from people.

But I said, a Christian nationalist consciously engages politically to conceive of the nation as Christian, all different.

So that's what I thought. So Phil Johnson says, you're not naive. Surely you realize these are not discrete and mutually exclusive ideologies, but there is a lot of overlap.

And there are plenty of young men who to some degree fit in all these categories, all three.

You are a Southern heritage. This is the weird part to me a little bit. He goes, you're a Southern heritage aficionado. So I would expect you to get a lot of these guys in your comment threads.

And I was like, what is that supposed to mean? So I said, you seem, this is what I said. I said, you seem to present them as synonymous, not mutually exclusive.

Those three groups. Most Christian nationalists I know say they reject kinism and I doubt they know what a groiper is.

And I said, well, I'm unashamed of my heritage. I don't see those comments. I don't know if Southern aficionados like Fuentes or Tate, both arguably

Yankees. So like the situation seems to be Phil Johnson is getting all these like comments in his threads that I don't get in mine.

And from people that he says fit into these categories that are, I guess, similar, they have some connection.

And he thinks that I should know about this, I guess, because I like the South. And I do,

I was just in Mississippi. I'm pretty unashamed of it to be quite honest with you. And I'm not going to be forced to be ashamed of it.

That's been one of the battles that I probably will contend with for a while.

People who want to make me ashamed of that and I'm just not going to do it. But anyway, I'm not saying

Phil Johnson was doing that. I'm not sure why he brought that up. But he goes, I have never suggested or implied they are synonymous, but they do overlap.

Your argument is the same retort emergents used to give. So I'm like, okay, well, yes,

I'm using emergent logic. We're not all exactly the same. So we're exempt from any critique that sees the similarities or overlap among us.

So I wasn't saying that any of those guys were exempt from critique. I was just trying to like parse out, they are different, like pretty different.

Like apples and oranges may be different. Like a Groyper, I think of like a

Catholic follower of Nick Fuentes would be different than a Christian nationalist, they're Protestant.

And then a kinist, like Stephen Wolf is not a kinist because he says that, he says he's not at all.

And there's probably kinists who call themselves Christian nationalists, but like the major Christian nationalists, quote unquote thinkers don't think they're kinists.

So that's all I was trying to say. But anyway, I don't know. I don't even know what to say to that.

So he says, so I just responded and I was like, pointed out that, hey, look, it seemed like you were saying they were synonymous.

You said they're functionally ideological identical. They're the exact same ideology. They refer to themselves as Christian.

So I was like, it seems like that's what you're saying. But he said, no, again, and I like this because I was like, okay, all right.

Well, again, to say Groypers are like kinists and they often call themselves Christian nationalists, thus tainting the reputations of other

Christian nationalists is not the same as saying all Christian nationalists are Groypers. So the connection between, so he's trying to say they're not synonymous, but there's,

I guess, overlap now. So, okay, I mean, I'll just accept that and that's fine. Like, but then there's another thread.

Twitter is so hard to find these. Let's see, where is it? It might be here.

Okay, so then this was the other part of the thread. He goes, so a guy like this, and he gives this example of this guy who says that if you roll back liberalism, then there's going to be social pressure against miscegenation, meaning mixing of races.

So, so Phil Johnson uses this comment from someone who's anonymous, who doesn't have really, I don't think hardly any followers.

And he says, so a guy like this may say he rejects kinism, but for him, and this is like,

I think this is a Latin word that I'm going to just say that I'm ignorant, sine qua non of rolling back liberalism would be anti -miscegenation laws.

So the, I guess, logical conclusion, do you acknowledge that the growing popularity of this idea is a troubling trend, or do you agree with this view?

And then I said, I'm not aware of anyone who wants to establish anti -miscegenation laws. That guy didn't either. He didn't say that at least.

I think it's natural for groups to generally prefer to marry within themselves. This preference isn't reducible to genetics.

There are still situations where genetics factor little compared to other traits. Not exactly sure in context what the purpose of a question like this is.

Are you trying to demonstrate that kinism and Christian nationalism share a common view here? I thought we established that you weren't trying to say they were synonymous in that respect.

So he says, I promise you, this is almost done. Phil Johnson then responds. He says, the purpose was stated in the question itself.

Specifically, I was asking. So he asks again, if you share my concern about the growing squad of self -styled Christians who want to revive and intensify the social stigma against inter -ethnic marriages, or if you personally share their opinion.

So I said, you suspect I may harbor kinist view since I don't express enough concern over something apparently happening in your threads, question mark.

It would be odd on a personal level for me to oppose racial miscegenation given the mixed marriages in my family and public statements

I've made. And it's true on this podcast, especially I have talked about this before. It's not the first time. I said, when kinists gain control of things like education, government, parachurch, orgs, entertainment, finance, the military, corporations, et cetera, and decide to use their power to force an end to miscegenation, let me know.

Until then, there's a real enemy I need to oppose. And I'm trying to read that without the sarcasm some might have supplied as they read it, because I really am serious about that.

Like that is how I view it. So if I could find the thread, this is the last bit of this.

Phil Johnson responds. He says, I didn't suspect anything I asked. Okay, all right.

It's a foolish stance to think a wicked ideology is not an enemy unless it gains dominance.

I hope you wouldn't ignore or tolerate a nest of Aryans in your church, just because none of them have attained the office of elder yet.

So then I respond. I say, a nest of Aryans in my church threatens doctrine and unity. An apparent nest of kinists, question mark, with little following in your

X threads doesn't concern me. Lumping them in nebulously with Christian nationalists, which smears guys doing good work, invites evil regime condemnation, and that does concern me.

So I'm sorry for those who maybe got bored with me dragging you through all of that.

I did it for this reason though. It's probably frustrating for some people watching this, because it's like, what are the issues here?

And then they get, I think as we went back and forth, they started to get clarified more, especially that last comment. Bill Johnson seems to indicate, and he's not the only one that has done this, but he's the latest one in my experience, to indicate that quote -unquote kinism, which he seems to think that that is, it's against interethnic marriage, being against that, or wanting social pressure against it, wanting laws against it, that kind of thing.

He sees that as on par, as much of a threat as Aryanism is a threat.

That's what it seems like he's saying to me. And maybe I'm reading it wrong, but that's what's jumping out to me, that he makes the comparison if I had a nest of Aryans at my church.

And I'm thinking, that's really clarifying, because if someone doesn't, thing is,

I've never actually met anyone, even the people, and I don't really know any personally, but online, when

I've seen people who I've interacted with, not much, but a little bit, well, it doesn't matter who they are, but when

I've seen people who will take the label and say, yeah, I'm a kinist, they don't even want anti -miscegenation laws.

All I've gathered is that they think that people should generally marry, and maybe some of them draw lines a little sharper, but people should generally marry within their groups genetically.

As far as their genetics are concerned, they should marry people who are similar. So, sorry if I'm not doing that full justice, but that's what

I've picked up on. Now, if that's what's going on, if that's what's got Phil Johnson all concerned, do

I disagree with that? Yeah, I mean, I think in general, people are probably going to do that, but I'm not for drawing a line and saying, like, the government's gonna force you now that you have to marry within your group or something like that.

I think there's also other considerations, especially in our transitive day and age, where, hey, you might be in a situation where the person you marry is from a different racial background, but they share more in common with you because of religion, especially in the area

I live, because of maybe even other cultural factors, that they are the ones that are most close to you in proximity, those situations do happen.

So, yeah, I'm not on board with that, but I don't view them as like Aryans.

That's the thing, like, I don't, like, as far as like, like Aryanism, you're talking about something very serious in the sense of like, that sends people to hell.

If I had a nest of Aryans in my church, they're a threat to people's eternal souls.

They're worshiping the wrong Jesus. And in the context of a church, that's super concerning.

I can't see how kinism, if that's what it is, is going to send someone to hell.

I may disagree with it ethically or something, but I would not put it in the same category.

You know, like, and there's all kinds of disagreements. Here's the thing, like, there's all kinds of disagreements that we have as believers in the

United States over all, like, I'm thinking of like infant baptism, you know, eschatology, even

Armenian is free will predestination. Like, there's all these differences that Christians have with one another.

And I have my opinions on those things, but you have to be able to make, you have to be able to recognize when something is a threat and when it is not.

And this goes back to what I was talking about earlier with the whole like Trump and is he a threat?

Is he a co -belligerent? Is he an enemy? And I'm talking like politically, but on a spiritual level, we have to be able to do the same thing and recognize what's a threat and what's not.

If you had someone in your church or a Baptist, let's say, and some Presbyterians come in or Anglicans or whatever, and they say, we're a member of this church now, we're gonna undermine the doctrine here.

Well, that's a threat. Is it a threat to your eternal salvation? No, it's not like an Aryan threat, not the same level at all, but it's a threat to your church's doctrine.

If they're in the Presbyterian church down the street, not a threat to your doctrine. Like we have to be able to recognize when something is truly a threat.

So if there are anonymous accounts on Twitter and these people, let's just say,

I'm gonna make it as bad as it possibly can be. Let's just say that they are in the minds of people that they want the government to come and declare marriages illegitimate if they're between people of different races.

Let's say that's going on and they're supporting this, but they have, and I haven't seen that happening at all, but just go with me on this.

And they are accounts that have hardly any followers. They're anonymous. They have no institutional authority at all.

If they are in your churches, they're keeping awfully quiet about it. You can't recognize that they're there.

Is that something that we should expend our limited resources trying to fight? Because the regime, here's the thing, the regime, when

I mean the regime, I mean like the liberal order, every institution is already set up with guns pointing at those kinds of people anyway.

They're gonna destroy them wherever they, that's why they're anonymous. It shows how much influence they have. They're gonna destroy them, or I should say institutional influence, wherever they pop up, they're gonna destroy them.

And that's the thing that I'm concerned about with something like this. You have Christian, quote unquote, Christian nationalists.

The term is used very broadly, but you have some guys doing some very good work who I think of like Dusty Devers, who unapologetically a

Christian nationalist. William Wolfe is unapologetically a Christian nationalist, doing a lot of things for the

SBC right now. And you have these guys out there doing their thing, and the regime already wants to take these guys out.

It wants to target them, it wants to destroy them. How often are they on right -wing watch? You know,

I don't see, people like Phil Johnson aren't going to be on right -wing watch. William Wolfe is a threat, and the left can recognize their threats.

The leftist, the liberal religion, and the woke religion, they recognized who is a threat to them, and it's

Dusty Devers and William Wolfe. It's guys like that. They have to destroy them, right, already. When you start having

Christians casting an air of suspicion on them, that maybe, you know, they're attached to kinism in some way, and which is like, you know, and this is a horrible thing.

It's like Aryanism, it's like so bad. Then it kind of pulls out the support from under them. And I know for a fact, with some of these guys, like it does undermine what they're trying to do.

And that's my concern. And that's why I recognized, I don't call myself a Christian nationalist, but William Wolfe is an ally, okay?

Dusty Devers is an ally. Stephen Wolfe is an ally. I may not agree with every single thing they say, but in the competition, and it's not even a competition, in the war that we're in right now, political war, social war, and spiritual war, and there's overlap there, believe me, they're allies in that.

And so I'm going to try to work with them and treat them as friends. I'm not going to try to pull the regimes, the eye of Sauron onto them to try to make them look even more bad.

I'm not going to try to undermine in the eyes of other Christians, you know, make associations there.

And this is what the left does all the time, right? They're big on the association game. I'm not gonna try to destroy them through that, which, and it does destroy people.

So that's what I wanted to say. And that's my respectful, hopefully that came across respectful, because I love Phil Johnson, I truly do.

That's my concern. And if Phil Johnson watches this, that's what I would probably want to say to him.

It's like, that's the bigger picture. And that's where I think we, I want to have our priorities straight, recognize the true threats.

And those are the people that will, I mean, Grace Community Church kind of went through this in California in 2020.

Like, those are the bad guys. Those are the guys that truly want to suppress the church by closing it, by putting restrictions on it that they don't put on other institutions, by connecting it with things that are viewed as intolerable and deplorable and irredeemable.

So I don't know if there's much more for me to say about that, but if anyone has questions, I'd be more than happy to take them.

We're over an hour and a half in. I do see some questions. My last thing is going to be Ling and Duncan. So let me take a few questions.

John Driscoll isn't a Christian. So you can admire courage for my false and unrighteous motive, but who cares when it comes to this, to this who hate

Christ? So, I mean, I guess, I don't know though, that apply to all Christians, I guess. Like all Christians have bad motives.

I mean, so in one sense, the non -Christian cannot please God. Bible says that.

In another sense though, Jesus said that even evil fathers give their children fish when they ask for fish and not a snake.

So the way I look at this is that there are certain good things God has baked into creation that we can recognize.

Even Trump can recognize them. There's a moral order that we can, to some degree, ascertain.

And we function on, even if you're not a Christian, even if you're not redeemed, there is an earthly good that you can accomplish.

Now you can't accomplish a heavenly good, but you can accomplish an earthly good. Now it'd probably take me more time to really fine tune that.

But this is one of the things that I see a lot of times, especially in more fundamentalist evangelical circles.

They're really more reformed circles too, I guess, that depravity is such a big thing that it becomes very difficult to recognize when someone who's not a

Christian does something good. And people who aren't Christians do do good things.

It does happen. Even Paul, what was he doing when he appealed to Rome? He was hoping to get,

I guess, some kind of justice. From non -Christians? Yeah. Yeah, he was. So maybe that's something to think through more.

Jake says, I wonder if Phil Johnson realizes throwing up a billboard against abortion or denying COVID orders makes his church,

Christian Nationalists, in the eyes of the majority of Twitter users regardless of his protesting it. Yeah, I mean, a point that I guess

I've made to you before that you can try to separate yourselves from racists all you want. And maybe you think that's a good in and of itself.

But if you ever have the motive of, I'm gonna show people that I'm not a bigot, it's like, yeah, it's too late for that.

They're not gonna make distinctions between being anti -gay and being quote -unquote racist. Funny enough too,

I'm thinking Grace Community Church, I went there for a while when I was in California.

It's in a very Hispanic area. And it happens to be, though, a very white church.

I just thought of this. And there's an Asian kind of contingent there.

But I remember the makeup was interesting because I would walk, I would walk through neighborhoods that were everyone speaking

Spanish and get there where a lot of people were. And yeah, it's just a very, very white church.

I don't know what to make of that exactly. But why is that?

Why is it that groups tend to want to be together and they're not attracted to certain kinds of churches even if those churches are,

I'm getting into a whole nother topic, but anyway, just an interesting thought. I go to a super diverse church.

And so we've wondered about what makes it that way. And my theory is that it's got solid doctrine and there's just not a lot of churches like that.

So if we had churches, we have some Dominicans in our church. I would guess that if we had a

Dominican church down the street with all the same doctrines, it would probably be attractive to some of the Dominicans, but they don't have that option.

So like doctrine tends to trump those things, but those cultural things do matter or they do like help bind people together somehow.

All right, let's see. Other questions that we have or statements.

There's a few, but let me just get to the last thing here and we'll end it with that.

Lig and Duncan, Lig and Duncan. All right, I've been waiting to talk about this clip. There's so much that could be said, but here's what

Lig and Duncan said on the Room for Nuance podcast. And this was like a week ago,

I think. Let me say, if people wonder why I wrote the foreword to Woke Church, this will not take you five minutes to do, read

Neil Shenvey's short review of Woke Church. It will take you less than five minutes.

Go to Neil Shenvey's site. He is no fan of Wokeness. He is no fan of Wokeness. Read his review of Woke Church.

You will know why I wrote the foreword to Woke Church when you read Neil Shenvey's foreword or review.

Now, let me just briefly explain because I love it when people that I respect ask me those kinds of questions because I believe that I owe clarity to good faith questions, even and especially from people who disagree with me.

So I wanna paint the target on my back. I'm not trying to be shifty and avoid concerns.

I wanna answer concerns directly. So I love it when people ask me questions like that directly.

Now, when Neo -Confederates who are podcasting from their mother's spare bedroom wanna call me woke because of that, then

I don't care what they say. And frankly, they influence very, very few people.

But I've had good questions about this. So let me say, here's the answer. I wanted to send a message that I thought guys in our theological neck of the woods who are inerrantist, who are unapologetically committed to reform theology, and who wanna see the church shaped by scripture, not by the culture, need to understand sympathetically what a lot of our brothers and sisters from black churches and in evangelical spaces are experiencing through that cultural transition that we started going through in 2012.

And Eric's book was the best one at that point to sorta, where's this coming from?

What's all the upset about? Why are people reacting the way they are to whether it's

Trayvon Martin or whether it's George Floyd or whatever. And I can't remember when that book came out.

Did it come out in 2019 or so, somewhere in there? It's trying to explain why did things blow up like this?

And the commendation is not, I agree with everything that Eric says.

It's go listen to somebody who in good faith both believes the gospel, believes the

Bible, wants to love the church and serve the church and doesn't wanna give up on evangelicalism.

Listen to him trying to explain his perspective. All right, well, that's a ligand

Duncan. There's so much I wanna say about that. But I guess the first thing is, he brings up Neil Shenvey as like, he's good.

So he's making a friend enemy distinction, actually. He's saying, Neil's a friend. These Neo -Confederates in their, what do you say?

Mom's basement or mom's spare bedroom. Now he said plural. So I guess there's more than one, but there's a few people who said,

John, I think he's talking about you. And I think he probably is. I think there's most likely he is probably talking about me, but it was, maybe there's others, cause he used plural.

But, and I never call myself a Neo -Confederate. People call me that, but who don't like me.

But I just believe, I mean, I believe in the constitution and I am not unashamed of my

Southern heritage. It's really not more complicated than that. I mean, I don't really need to use terms or box myself in, but the very fact that he appeals to that term shows that he's operating from a leftist frame, right?

So he's trying, what he's trying to do is he's saying like, there's a range of acceptability. The range of acceptability is,

Neil Shenby is good criticism. He's the kind of criticism you want. So friend, people that, he apparently they're threats, but he can't name who they are by name.

He just has to smear them as like they're Neo -Confederates and they're also in their mom's spare bedroom, which means

I guess they're probably like, they don't have a job, they're losers, that kind of thing. So it's a smear tactic.

It's to make the people listening to him dismiss other kinds of criticism from podcasts, he said.

But the article from Neil Shenby, that's good. So that's the first thing

I noticed. Now the interesting thing to me, one of the things about that is that Neil Shenby technically,

I'm not saying he can't talk about these things, but his background is in chemistry.

Now my background, I think I already said in the podcast, in this podcast, like I have a seminary degree,

I have a history degree on a master's level. I'm probably more qualified to talk about these things from an academic standpoint, at least.

Doesn't mean you might, someone might not agree with what I say, but it doesn't mean like I have, I've done the work.

In other words, I've done the reading as Stephen Wolf likes to say. So it's not degrees,

I don't think that in Duncan's mind, it's not like putting in the work and knowing the material necessarily that like qualifies you to comment on his support for woke church.

It's style, it's fashion. That's what it is. It's, if you look a certain way and come from a certain place and have maybe certain other beliefs that could be related, maybe not, then you're disqualified because you're outside of the bounds of acceptability.

It's a gatekeeping maneuver to keep criticism he doesn't want out and only allow the criticism he does want in.

Now, on a certain level, I suppose we all do this. We all, like I dismiss on social media, people who just make serious, stupid, like ignorant sounding things.

But if someone has like a legitimate point, I wanna hear it. Like I wanna interact with that. And even if there's someone

I disagree with, God forbid, I guess for someone like Phil Johnson, I mean, they could be a kinnest.

If they have a good point about something else, I'm not gonna start like just bringing out that, yeah, but we disagree over here, or I'm just gonna smear you with this label that you don't even apply to yourself.

Or the thing that Lincoln Duncan just did. I'm not gonna paint a cartoon about the person if they have a good point.

And that's kind of my barometer more. It's like, hey, do you have a good point? Do you have, this is one of the reasons debates don't happen much over these issues.

I've done two formal moderated debates at a local university over abortion and atheism.

People have asked me, why not about wokeness? Part of the reason is I really can't find someone who's a good representative to debate me on it.

It's like, they're either unhinged, they're just, it's all ad hominem. They're like finding someone who's a good debate partner is almost impossible.

And I also know this because I think it was Chris Arms and was trying to look for someone to debate James White on that. And I don't think he could find anyone.

I think they finally found like, I forget who it was, someone to debate him on gay orientation or it wasn't even wokeness in its fullness.

So anyway, it's a hard thing to do. So, but we all do this. We all look for people that would be suitable for a worthwhile discussion and those who aren't.

But the barometer that Lincoln Duncan uses is kind of a leftist frame. Leftist frame of acceptability for who is able to have the privilege of criticizing.

And it shows, I think, more of a disdain for people who are not part of the guild. Neal Shenaby is part of the guild.

His first, he goes to J .D. Greer's church. He's spoken at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

His first article on this stuff was for the Gospel Coalition. He's part of the guild. He's a team player. If you look at his review of woke church, in fact,

I just pulled it up and I'm not gonna go through all of it, but he thinks there's some really good aspects of it because, not all of it, he has some good critiques, but the good things he thinks are like, it's not permissible.

He don't think it's permissible for a church to intentionally drive divide along racial lines. And I suspect that Dr.

Mason would readily agree. So, and that's something we just actually talked about. Like, why do people tend to flock together?

Why are there like Korean churches that are intentionally Korean churches? There's one down the road, actually.

I, you know, would they probably let me come? Yeah, but like, it's suited for Koreans. Neil Shoenibbe doesn't like that,

I guess, or at least, I don't know, with white people, he doesn't. He says, given the fact that whites are numerically majority in the US, I think that whites should be especially sensitive to not impose their cultural preferences on blacks.

Well, are you gonna say that to black churches that they shouldn't impose on, like, churches are gonna have certain cultural expressions and that's just inescapable.

So I would say his review, yeah, it's like, it's not all the way woke, but Neil Shoenibbe shows that there's a slight wokeness there that he's got, or at least what there is, is an allegiance to the liberal order, and on some level, and this sort of a neutrality.

So anyway, Neil Shoenibbe's acceptable. He's part of the Guild. I don't think

Lincoln Duncan really wants real criticism. That's really my two cents on it. I don't think he wants people who are really gonna criticize, play hardball with them over his endorsement of a heretical book, and I'll just say it, because it is.

If you think you can learn how to better preach or appropriate, live out the gospel from pagans, which is what he does, then you've left orthodoxy at that point.

You can gain an understanding of the gospel from anti -apartheid and denazification programs.

Sorry, you've left orthodoxy, and that's what the woke church essentially does.

Yeah, so anyway, I made a few notes on this when it first happened, when someone sent it to me,

I should say. The other thing that bothers me about this is Lincoln Duncan is from Mississippi, and again, that's where my grandfather's from, and I know a little bit about the history there and stuff, and there have been race relations issues in Mississippi, for sure.

The thing that bothers me about Lincoln Duncan, though, is that I think he fans the flames of that kind of thing.

He's the one that incubated Jamar Tisby. He's the one that really pushed hard for Mississippi to change the flag under conditions, and again,

I was talking to some relatives about this. I was saying, look, and many of them agreed. Actually, all of them agreed that, hey, if you wanna change the flag, we can have that argument, and maybe there's a situation and a good argument for doing so, but it's not in a highly pressurized moment where it's a knee -jerk, you must change it because George Floyd died, and you're racist if you don't, not with a gun to our head, and Lincoln Duncan really did participate in that.

I read his whole thing against the Mississippi state flag where he smeared it and all the rest, and if you know anything about the history of that,

I think it was like 1894, 1896, the governor who signed the bill or however it happened,

I think he signed a bill to implement the Confederate symbolism in the

Mississippi state flag, he said what his reason was. It was to honor the bravery of the dead.

That was it. There wasn't anything else. So to impose other meanings on it is a problem.

That's a problem for biblical interpretation too when you start imposing modern social meanings onto things. And so anyway,

I see Lincoln Duncan as someone from this area. When he starts smearing Neo -Confederates, can't listen to them and this and that, and there's sort of a betrayal element to this, and I know there's other people in Mississippi who knew

Lincoln who feel this way, that there's a sense of betrayal that you're joining in the leftist mob and in saying all the negative things they say about us and reinforcing all the stereotypes and adopting all their framing, and you know better.

And I think I feel that way too. It's like, you know better. You know that's not the full picture, but you're willing to engage in the cartoon.

What does it gain you? Well, it may gain you accolades in the world or broadly speaking, but you have to kind of throw your own heritage under the bus to do it.

And I can't do that, and I won't do that. Let's see.

So there's a willingness I think in Lincoln's mind to engage in woke thinking by using the woke tactics to discredit.

He seems to have no self -reflection. He blames the division caused by his endorsement of woke church on the critics of woke church instead of on himself.

And it's like the woke people have, they are not to blame. It's like Jamar Tisby, who he essentially incubated, you know, helped, nurtured, whatever.

I mean, he had the let's leave loud movement, right? That was Jamar Tisby. Let's leave these evangelical institutions and churches and let's do it loudly and say why we're doing it because we don't like racism.

We don't like Donald Trump. We don't like whatever. We support the kneeling at the football games, whatever it was.

That was Jamar Tisby. And they're not blamed for any of it. You know, Eric Mason's not to blame for some of the division.

How does he get off the hook on this? But he does somehow. He can't name names to actually warn the church about gospel deniers because he goes on,

I don't know if I played the rest of the clip, but he goes on to talk about how the people who criticize him are gospel deniers.

I guess I'm a gospel denier somehow because I guess don't want the unity of the church or something. It's pretty vague, but he can't name the name.

So if that's true, if the church, if he really cares about the church, he would be naming names. He'd be telling people, these are the people that you need to watch out for.

And here's how that they're denying the gospel, but he doesn't do that. He has bitterness that just comes through. And then the other thing is,

I think he watches my stuff. Probably watch this, but he's watching some of the critics he's aware.

And he tries to make out like they're insignificant. No one's listening to them. I'm telling you this podcast, and I'm not bragging by the way, but this podcast will get more views than Sean DeMars and Sean DeMars podcast with him.

It just will. And I think what this actually ultimately reveals is we're winning in some corners of the woke war, if you want to call it that, in evangelicalism, we are winning.

And I think it's causing some outbursts of anger. It's a tantrum in my mind. I think that's what's going on.

So I'd be curious, you know, Lincoln Duncan says if he disagrees with parts of woke church, he doesn't say which parts. And I would be curious, which parts exactly?

Which parts? Because there's some dangerous things in there. Which ones? So that's the podcast.

Any questions or cries of outrage or conundrums or anything, comments,

I am here. Lincoln creating more Kinnis per minute than any Confederate basement dweller could dream of.

Jake. That's probably true, actually. I hate to say it. Who is listening to Lincoln these days?

His influence and audience dwindles by the hour. And I think that's part of the problem. He's still trying to pretend like he has all this following.

And he does have some influence, but he's living in the past. A lot of Al Mohler's the same way.

Al Mohler, even Mark Dever to some extent, Lincoln Duncan, John Piper, to some extent.

These guys have lost. Definitely Matt Chandler, David Platt. These guys who have gone woke or half woke, they have lost influence over it.

And some of them, I don't know if they want to admit it, but it's true. They're not going to have the same legacy and stuff.

They're not gonna fill the conference rooms like they once did. Part of me is sad over that, to be honest. It didn't have to be that way, and yet it is.

Why things blew up, Paul says. Understand the role of Marxists paying educated idiots to be their shock troops consulting their riots.

Yeah, I think that's true. The field has shifted from Big Eva to Mid Eva. Ooh, yeah, oof.

If you're on X, yeah, Mid Eva's thrown out there quite a bit. I usually,

I would call them Little Eva. I used to think of G3 and like G3 founders.

I don't remember who all, like even Moscow and Grace Tiu and some of these. I was like, oh, they're kind of like Little Eva. Now I see

Mid Eva applied to G3 and I guess the more MacArthurite types.

So yeah, it does seem that way. Like there's not as, the battle, it seems like there was a permanent split between the woke guys and the guys who didn't want to go that direction.

And now we're encountering another split along the liberal order, people who want that in some sense, and those who want something resembling

Christendom in pre -modern societies. That's what I see happening, broadly speaking. Evangelicalism will be better off without Eric Mason and Lincoln Duncan.

We need real men of strong biblical faith, agreed. Agreed. All right, very helpful,

John Jesse says. Thank you, I appreciate it, Jesse. Hey, well, God bless you, everyone out there who's listening and I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

My wife has a baby shower tomorrow. And so I've been told that the etiquette for a baby shower is

I show up at the end, which I will do. I was trying to debate that.

I'm like, did men ever go to baby showers? I don't think so. I don't think I'm gonna, but my wife's like, you have to come at the end and get all the gifts.

So she's been baking and getting ready and all. It's exciting time in our lives for that reason. So I'll just leave that little personal aside there.

Thanks, someone said, congrats. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, T. James Boone. I appreciate it. It took us a long time to get to this point.

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I've been to one baby shower. It was awkward. And I'm sorry. Is it

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