Giving Tuesday: American Reformer, Truthscript, Chronicles, Equipping the Persecuted

Conversations That Matter

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00:12

Hello and welcome to the Conversations at Matter podcast. I'm your coach, John Harris. It is Giving Tuesday.

00:18

And I've done this in the past, but not maybe to the extent we're doing it today. I've highlighted organizations that I think are worth your dollars.

00:27

And I don't say that lightly. I think many of us have lost faith in our institutions. We don't trust sometimes even our churches in some cases, which is very sad.

00:37

And that obviously if you don't trust your church, you probably need to find a church you do trust. But since 2020 especially, the institutions that have failed us have not regained our trust in most cases.

00:49

And a lot of evangelicals, conservatives are looking to put their money towards organizations that are actually going to do what they say they're going to do with it.

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And that's part of the problem is you give to an organization, you later on find out they're wasting it or they're using it to contradict the very things you believe that are foundational and you don't wanna give to them anymore.

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And so my goal with this is to actually help you. And I know for some of you, this may not be appealing to you because it sounds like one long advertisement, but I hope you'll stick around because I have four different people from four different organizations that are gonna talk a little bit about what they're doing and what they would like to do if they had the funds to do it.

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We have Paul Godfrey from Chronicles Magazine. We have Josh Abattoie from American Reformer, my brother David Harris from TruthScript.

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And we also have Judd Saul from Equipping the Persecuted, all representing 501c3s. And all looking to make a difference, a positive difference.

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And they're all, if people in the audience care about this, vetted by me. So it takes a lot to build trust with me so that I am supportive and positive about something because I've been, let's just say, it's been one too many times

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I've been told something only to find out it's not exactly true. And so it takes a while to build that trust, but these are organizations that I have trust built up with, whether that's through personal relationships and knowing these people, knowing their character, knowing their hearts, or whether it's a combination of that and just seeing these organizations take hard stands, take risks, willing to even do things that make them not so popular because they care about the truth.

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That's what I think you care about. That's what I care about. And so as we go through these different organizations,

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I hope you'll listen and consider maybe contributing or in some cases, like in Chronicles, subscribing or helping in some way.

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I know TruthScript could always use volunteers and people to write for them and that kind of thing. So these are just some great organizations.

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Before I get to that though, I just want to share with you briefly, this is a sponsor for this month for the podcast, mudhenmama .com,

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mudhenmama .com. And they have a number of books, speaking of curating lists and making sure that organizations are vetted.

03:02

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And rather than just going to a publisher and trying to wade through all the junk, if you just go to mudhenmama .com,

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you can find books that don't have social justice stuff in them that are good, that are profitable.

03:24

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And again, it's mudhenmama .com. There's a picture of the homeschool family there who runs the website.

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So this is a family business. These are people who are, they're like you and me. They believe in Christianity and in this country.

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And it's not a corporate board that's, you know, controlling what kinds of books are shown here.

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So, I mean, you can even go on the front page. It says great gifts for your first through third grader, great gifts for your second through fourth grader.

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So all the reading levels are already there. So check it out. Oh, that's a book I read when

04:13

I was a kid. Great life in the great, I didn't expect to see that. Life in the great ice age. That's a,

04:18

I guess an older book, but I remember as a kid, that was, I mean, I'm having a flashback myself right now. Okay. Use the promo code

04:24

Harris, get 10 % off your order. So let's talk about some of these organizations.

04:29

I'm going to start with TruthScript, which you know is an organization near and dear to my heart.

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And this is an organization that from, I've seen this from the ground floor building up and it's exciting to see what's happening.

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We haven't paid for any advertising yet. And there's already a lot of interest being generated.

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So here's my brother, David Harris from TruthScript. Howdy, how's everybody doing?

04:54

So tell us a little bit about what's going on this year. TruthScript started what, in the spring, I think, or maybe late winter last year or this year,

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I should say. Well, we've been talking about it for a little bit over a year. It became a reality in April.

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That's when we filed the 501C3 paperwork. And then in May, it was officially a nonprofit.

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So we've been operating since then. We really didn't start, we didn't launch the website till June.

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So we're going on roughly six months that we've been going. And in that time, there's, you know,

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God's done a lot of really cool things. And I think there's a lot of things that are gonna happen in the future too.

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And we've been really blessed. What are the top articles? Cause I know that's one of the things

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TruthScript has done for the primary thing is probably put out these articles that are similar to like Gospel Coalition type style, but obviously from a more orthodox and conservative standpoint.

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Like give us a sampling to people, what kinds of articles have gone out there that are popular? Yeah, the most popular articles been from Rosaria Butterfield, which was over,

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I think that was back in July. And she kind of went into her testimony and then talked about sort of her rescinding on the use of pronouns and other things with her, sort of her right wing slide,

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I guess, in a way. I don't know if she'd want me to put it that way, but it was a great article. So that has been our top performing article.

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One of our directors, Danny Steinmeier, he wrote an article about called expository preaching doesn't necessarily mean good preaching.

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And this was a really, really great article, very timely, where he sort of went over how a lot of conservative churches will sort of stand behind exegetical, like doing exegesis and expositional preaching as a way of not having to deal with pressing issues of our day, or even pressing issues within their churches, because you can sort of say like, well, you know, we're not gonna address that because I'm in Romans and we gotta do the next verse.

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So he makes some really good points and gives a really good challenge to pastors. We also had,

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I wrote an article about the Duggar Amazon show, Shiny Happy People.

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And that's been pretty well -received, well -received by some, very much not well -received by others, but we did get contacted from even some of the people on that show that had been interviewed and they gave us some support and agreed with what we put out.

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So those are a few we've had. We had a guy from a pastor from Northern Ireland write for us, and he wrote about immigration and sort of explained that throwing your border open is not necessarily a loving thing.

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That's not necessarily the Christian perspective and went over biblical principles of nations and borders and things like that.

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So that's sort of a smattering, a sampling of different articles that we've had over the last six months or so.

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And I know I sent you, cause Mark Coppinger had sent me an article on aesthetics, beauty, I think, and it was aesthetics, right?

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Music, aesthetics and music. And so he's, I mean, he's a heavy hitter.

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He's a former professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And so,

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I mean, we have some people from across the spectrum people who are in institutions and evangelicalism or have been, and then also people who are just laymen, who are good writers and have something to say, and they're not going to be platform likely in other places, but they need to be.

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And I think that's part of the intention behind TruthScript is to put out articles that are necessary or timely that other outlets may not wanna put out, maybe because of the political backlash or because it doesn't match the winsome kind of flavor that they're going for.

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But TruthScript is that website that's hard hitting, that's, you know, and I compared it to the

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Gospel Coalition and of course, both are known for articles, but I know there's more than just articles that you've done and that you wanna do.

09:15

So talk to us a little bit about that, maybe plans for next year and the years ahead and how people can be involved.

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Sure, so, I mean, as to the articles, one thing that hopefully we'll be launching either this week or next week is we'll have sort of a podcast form of the articles.

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So, you know, speaking for myself, I spend a lot of time in the car during my day job. So it's hard for me and I know a lot of other people to sit down and physically read a blog.

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I don't even have a lot of time, really. I don't look at my phone much during my work day. But if a blog is an audio form,

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I'm much more likely to actually consume it, to actually, you know, to get what's being written.

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So what we're gonna do is start putting the articles in audio form and putting that on the podcast so that people can stream them as well and get the good stuff that's coming out.

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We've had a couple, we had a men's retreat back in September. So we're also trying to sort of do some organizing when it comes to events.

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So we found that, and you put the retreat together, so you know this, and you put some of the other conferences together.

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But we've had people in various parts of the country, Idaho, Wisconsin, hopefully we'll do something in Tennessee.

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There's a lot of hunger for people to kind of get together around this statement of faith.

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We're evangelical unapologetically, but we're conservative and we're seeking to apply

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God's word to everyday life and to society in a way that's consistent with the truth of the

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Bible. So having events, having conferences, places where people can mingle.

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And then that also goes to just sort of the general like networking. So that as our economy sort of descends into madness, we are taking care of each other.

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Christians are looking out for other Christians and not just because they are

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Christians, but also because maybe they have stands that have not been popular with their jobs or the states that they live in, or they were fired for not getting a vaccine or something like that.

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So we're looking also to create a job board that should be live within the next few weeks that people can post and look for jobs that probably more orientated towards ministry, but that there are opportunities for people in that way.

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So conferences, job board, and then I think we're gonna be working on a church finder too in the near future.

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Yeah, I think that's actually almost done. There's some programmers working on that, but we'll need people to sign up once that is live.

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You know, one of the things I was just thinking about when you were talking is that there are a whole lot of people out there, it seems to me, that they want something.

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Like if you think about like American Reformer, which they're doing work that's not being done in more intellectual circles and in higher levels of institutions, they're not tackling so much like the layman level, which is,

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I think that's where TruthScript comes in. There's a lot of people, probably the lion's share in Christianity and evangelicalism, who are hungering for good material that will inspire them, encourage them in their daily lives, that is primarily positive, accessible, tackles the relevant issues of the day that they're having to navigate.

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But isn't Christianity today? Isn't the Gospel Coalition? Isn't Relevant Magazine? And all we seem to have on our side, if you wanna call it side, and I'm saying side as in like the more orthodox, conservative wing of evangelicalism, is discernment blogs and then like exegetical or like preaching ministries.

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So, I mean, you do have your G3s, you do have your Grace to Use, you do have your Founders, you do have your

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Protestias and your Dissenter and Capstone Report, all these things, but none of them are actually doing though what like Gospel Coalition or Christianity Today are doing on the left, right?

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And that's where TruthScript I think comes in is it fills that empty place that's been there for so many years.

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And it seems like things are growing. I mean, do you see more traffic and more people becoming interested, signing up for the email list, et cetera?

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Yeah, we have a steady stream of email signups. How many views an article gets depends on the article.

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Obviously, more controversial topics will probably get more hits, but also just articles that are really relevant to where people are.

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And what you're saying about laymen, I mean, that is a big part of the mission. There's people who have written for TruthScript that maybe never would have thought to, nobody's ever gonna read what

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I have to write, but we have editors, even if it's not perfect, we can make things sometimes just with a little bit of tweaking.

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And we've also just had people send in stuff and they're excellent writers. They just, nobody knows who they are. So it's sort of an opportunity to allow

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God to use their abilities to a wider audience. But then just in general, we live in tough times in a lot of ways.

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And Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, I mean, The Gospel Coalition was posting articles about Taylor Swift a couple of weeks ago, and the gospel elements from Taylor Swift's tour.

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Maybe that connects to somebody somewhere, but as an average father, husband, working man, that doesn't do anything for me.

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That doesn't help me where I'm at. I'm dealing with things like, how are we gonna afford to pay this bill?

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And how should I be disciplining my child? And how do

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I model a godly leadership role for my wife?

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And how do I make sure that our relationship is honoring to God? Those are the kinds of things that are on my mind.

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And I think a lot of other Christians who are tired of getting just fluff.

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And if it's not fluff, then it's usually from coming from the left. And we're not on the left.

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So we need to be served where we are. And trying to apply

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God's principles that he's laid out in the scripture, and make those things accessible, oftentimes in bite -sized chunks to your normal Christian, your normal pew -sitting

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Christian who doesn't have the time to go to seminary and get a degree, but it just desires to live their life in a way that's honoring to God.

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Yeah. And you're not afraid to dabble in some politics. I think there's a series coming, right, on the pros and cons of voting for Trump, or voting for another candidate, or voting third party.

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Yeah, and let me say something about that. So I put something up about that. But if anybody wants to write a book or an article making a case for voting right now, we already have one voting for a third party,

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Constitution Party. But if you want to make a case for voting for DeSantis or Trump, I'm not going to guarantee that your article is going to get run, because maybe we'll probably get several.

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But go ahead and submit an article if you'd like, and you can make a case. So this is something that,

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I mean, we're not going to do an article on why you should vote for a Democrat, probably. But unless it's like, well, we're just trying to hasten the collapse of everything so that we can rebuild from the ashes.

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I think that's totally valid at this point. But right now, most conservative

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Christians are going to be assessing who do they vote for in the primary. So we'll tackle that, we'll examine that, and we'll have some

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Christians make a case, and we'll do so charitably and treat each other as brothers and not as enemies, because we don't line up 100 % on every political issue.

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See, that's something, though, that's been missing, I think, from the online discourse in Christian Twitter, if you will.

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And in many of these ministries, and even Gospel Coalition is not going to probably run pieces like that, leading up, they will run,

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I'm sure, pieces leading up to the election, but it's going to either be vague or general so it doesn't offend anyone, or it's going to be, and I'm not just speaking for them, but other outlets as well, they tend to either shy away from that stuff, do it very generally and vague, or they pick a position and they're like, this is our position.

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And usually the position is like, we just stay out of politics. Both these parties are evil, or we're just Republican, and that's it.

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I don't know what, I'm trying to even think of, though, a Christian outlet at this point that would even say that.

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There's definitely some political groups on the religious right, but - It's usually a reiteration of George Bush's compassionate conservatism, just sort of repackaged over and over and over again.

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Which we're all so nauseated. The younger people in both conservatism and evangelicalism are just not listening to that stuff anymore, and they don't buy it.

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And I think TruthScript has an opportunity here to be more of a fresh, fresh may not even be the word, a practical take on the world as it is currently.

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Not the world as it was in 1985, but right now. And we're in the collapse of Western Civ.

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So what do you do? How should you live during the collapse of an empire? If you were at the last stage of the Roman Empire, what would you do? And that's a good point, too.

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I mean, we're looking to sort of publish more about what is and not what should be.

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We know what should be. What should be is, you know, I mean, the return of Christ, the setting of all things right, that is what should be, and that is what will be.

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But it's not what is right now. And God has specific tasks and responsibilities imparted to his people, even in the times that we're in now.

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Which is something I have to remind myself of, because I don't always love being alive in 2023. I love history, and there's other periods that I wish

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I was in. But, you know, if God is sovereign, then he's appointed this particular time for me to be alive, and for all of us who know him and love him and are called according to his purpose.

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And so we're looking to equip people as they are now in the real situations they're in, so that they can obviously promote the gospel, but also promote the biblical view of, you know, of family, of government, of society, of culture, and practical ways that you can live that out today.

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Things that you can do with your family, things that you can do in your church. You know, to quote Gandalf, all we can do,

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I'm probably botching the quote. When he says to Frodo, right, we can only choose to do the right thing with what we're given, the time that we're given.

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We can't choose what time to be in. So - Ripped out of the first book and planted in the third movie.

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Is it? Yes, it's in the beginning. It's actually when he first gets the ring. That's where that quote comes from.

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But they put it way later, I think. No, I think it's in the first movie.

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Is it in the first? I think it is. Oh, I think I'm mixing up with when he talks to Pippin about what happens after death, but.

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Okay, well. We haven't published anything about Tolkien, and we know probably a good, you know -

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We can have a debate on whether Tolkien was, he's Catholic, right, so. Whether he was actually saved. You know,

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Doug Wilson says he made it in, and he was saved. I'm pretty sure he says that.

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Yeah, and I know there's some people whose minds just like exploded with me just saying that.

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Both of the words Doug Wilson and the words Catholic made it in. I'm not saying he did, by the way.

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Or that he didn't. Or that he, I don't know him well enough. I just know Lord of the Rings. Clearly not well enough.

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Doug Wilson or Gandalf? Or Tolkien? Oh, this has gone off the rails.

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All right, well. Debate about whether Gandalf made it into heaven. No, Gandalf made it into something.

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It was, he became a white wizard. So that happened somewhere. I just don't, I don't know where that was.

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But, all right. We're just kidding. Don't worry, people. Qualifier.

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Just joking. No, that was serious. People were just about to contribute to TruthScript, and then they decided not to. Forward your hate mail to info at truthscript .com.

22:19

Yeah, well, that's what I was gonna say. Truthscript .com is the website for such a time as this.

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The motto, or the verse is Romans chapter 12, verse one.

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Be not conformed to the world, but transformed by the ruining of your mind. You go to truthscript .com to find out more.

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You can scroll down to the bottom if you wanna donate. It's a 501c3. You can also contribute by scrolling down to the bottom.

22:46

There's a tab for that, and we'd appreciate it. So, David, thank you for stopping by.

22:52

Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Well, the next organization I wanna talk about is

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Chronicles Magazine. Chronicles Magazine is one of my favorite magazines. It's the only magazine I subscribe to, and I had the privilege of interviewing

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Paul Godfrey for the Conversations That Matter podcast. Here's our interview.

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Dr. Godfrey, thank you for coming on. How are you doing? Except for my devil's palsy, which leaves one side of my face numb,

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I'm doing quite well, thank you. Yeah, well, please, everyone pray for Dr. Godfrey because that's no fun.

23:26

I'm thankful that you can at least communicate and we can talk about Chronicles a little bit because it is Giving Tuesday, and Chronicles, I tell people when they ask, not many people ask, but when people do ask, do you get any magazines,

23:38

John? Magazines, I guess, a little bit of a thing of the past, but there is one print magazine that I really look forward to and I enjoy getting, and that's

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Chronicles. I have a copy of it right here. This is the latest issue. And it's the best political analysis, cultural political analysis that I know of.

23:59

Of course, I'll try to get updates and stuff from the Epoch Times or another outlet for quick things that are happening, but as far as understanding current events,

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Chronicles is my go -to. And so I just wanna encourage people to subscribe to Chronicles. And I think you have a digital edition as well.

24:17

Is that correct? Yes, we do. Yeah, so tell us a little bit about Chronicles.

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I know you're one of the founding fathers of not just Chronicles, but paleoconservatism, which is really the point of view or points of view that the magazine advocates.

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What are you intending to do with the magazine? What kinds of things have been accomplished through the influence of the magazine?

24:39

And what kinds of things then in the future do you wanna do? Well, given my advanced age, probably somebody else will have to take over the reins eventually.

24:51

But I think one could say that Chronicles has been moving more or less in the same direction and examining the same issues for the last 45 years.

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We are really an independent magazine of the intellectual right. We are entirely independent in terms of what we say.

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We would agree with your listeners that we support biblical morality. We are critical of gay marriage, defend traditional gender roles, all these other things.

25:29

In that respect, we are unchanging. But we are willing to examine all kinds of positions that the conservative movement takes from a very critical perspective.

25:42

For instance, one of the arguments that I make, I make all the time and some of our other contributors do is that wokeness is not

25:50

Marxism. It's much more pernicious than Marxism. It is not a socioeconomic critique of capitalism or anything like that.

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In fact, it is led by woke corporate capitalists. This is one of the great dangers of it, that it merges with capitalism to destroy traditional

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Judeo -Christian morality and the constitutional principles in which this country was based.

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But we dare say this because we're not part of the Murdoch media empire.

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We don't get onto Fox News ever. And we go our own way on most issues and we're open to other points of view.

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I can't say I'm entirely open to other points of view. I admit to loathing anything woke.

26:43

I think it is evil and perverse, but on academic political issues, we are open to a wide variety of views and we value our independence.

26:54

So we've been isolated because of our independence for decades. We just do not fit into the conservative establishment and they'd be delighted if we disappeared tomorrow.

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Therefore, we are entirely dependent on the goodwill of our readers and donors. And we have a very small base of them.

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And every now and then we look for new donors because the other ones die. And we need new benefactors in order to keep the publication going.

27:26

And we are right now in the process of rebuilding the magazine. At one time, we had a readership comparable to that of National Review for back into the 1990s.

27:38

We've been losing readers because the conservative movement has sort of given us the cold shoulder and is very hard to maintain our independent status.

27:51

Now, we say we are paleoconservative, even that term. You know, if you read our anthology on the paleoconservatism, you would find out that it embraces, it's really wide variety of positions and persuasions.

28:07

And, you know, we have people who are traditional Christian conservatives. We have people who are in the populist camp.

28:14

I think among the younger generation, we have moved very much toward the populist right.

28:21

Although we're not all backers of Trump. Some of us, like myself, are strong dissenters supporters.

28:31

So, you know, there is independence. We do not, if you read our magazine on the

28:36

Russian -Ukrainian war, you'd probably find 10 different positions there. We are not being paid off by anybody.

28:44

We are open to dissenting views. And the same thing is true, even in our approach to the

28:53

Israeli Hamas war, that although I think most of us side with the

28:59

Israelis, I think we all do to some extent, the Palestinian issue is much more complicated than one would gather from watching

29:07

Fox News, which presents the same view 24 seven. So in order to maintain this independent voice on the right, we are very much dependent upon the goodwill of donors.

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And we're trying now to increase our donor base as well as our list of subscribers.

29:29

Dr. Gottfried, correct me if I'm wrong. This is just my assessment reading Chronicles. The thing that binds the people who write in Chronicles together is shared loves more than anything else.

29:40

So you have dissent among the way we should approach policy issues, but the people who contribute all love this country.

29:49

They love the things that I think we all share in common that truly matter, traditional marriage, the institutions, as we say.

29:58

And that's something that I don't find in other conservative publications where it seems like it's more about political victory or trying to outsmart the left in some clever way where we're going to adopt some of their positions or look the way that they look in order to defeat them.

30:17

One of the things that I was impressed with initially my introduction to Chronicles was I was at an Abbeville event, which

30:22

I know you and I met at an Abbeville event earlier this year. And I met Aaron Wolfe, who has since passed on, but he held up a copy of Chronicles.

30:32

I think he was the editor -in -chief. He had a position there. He was sort of the associate editor, but in effect he ran the magazine.

30:40

He and his wife ran the magazine for years. He had given a speech on Robert E.

30:46

Lee and defending the monuments. And I just thought this is remarkable because The Daily Wire, The Blaze, Fox News, all these conservative ink, they had no interest in defending any of that.

30:57

And I've seen the same thing now with gay marriage. They don't have any interest in, they're just willing to concede that.

31:03

And Chronicles has been consistent. They haven't budged on these issues, which I think is appealing to conservative

31:09

Christians out there who they haven't budged on these issues. And some of them are subscribing to Daily Wire thinking that this is going to do something.

31:17

And so I would just ask you, what can someone expect if they want to see political victory, maybe they have been subscribed to Daily Wire or they're watching

31:26

Fox News or something, what can they expect different from Chronicles when they get a Chronicles magazine or go online and read it in a digital form?

31:34

Well, let me express my own view here. I think the way the conservatism incorporated has given in to pulling down Confederate statues, to treating gay marriage as some kind of sacred

31:48

Christian institution is utterly contemptible. These are contemptible positions.

31:54

And I keep saying, growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, I could not imagine a communist taking more radical social positions than the conservative movement is doing right now.

32:06

They're shameless. I picked up the New York Post about a week ago and there was an article by someone named

32:14

Chadwick Moore, who's a gay conservative, there's lots and lots of them. And he was explaining that the real battle now is between the gay community and the transgenders and the conservatives over the gate.

32:31

I mean, if it comes to that, I don't care which side wins. Everything is lost.

32:38

And these people are shameless on these moral social issues. And by the way,

32:45

I am surprised that the Blaze and Daily Wire supported the removal of Confederate statues.

32:51

I mean, I know National Review does, but I wouldn't expect anything more from them. They didn't in 2015 though,

32:57

I don't think. I mean, David French even wrote an article defending the flag and, you know, but they shift as the culture or as the left shifts, they shift with them.

33:08

So let me ask you this, because Elon Musk, as we all know, big time supporter of my podcast, not really.

33:15

But if we do happen to have some donors out there who are thinking about organizations to give to, and let's say someone did give you a couple million dollars, what kinds of things would you want to see done?

33:28

I mean, would you start a news channel? What would Chronicles Magazine do? Yeah, survival.

33:34

You know, the German poet Rilke had some famous statement in German.

33:41

Das war, sprich nicht von siegen, das war überstehen, das war alles. That don't speak of victory, just survival is everything.

33:50

And that is exactly our position right now. We need to survive. We need to find more young subscribers and we have to rebuild.

34:01

We are, as I said, a unique, and I know that word unique is obvious, we are a unique publication on the right.

34:08

If Chronicles falls, there'll be no one to replace us. And I think your evangelical listeners might take that into account when they're deciding to which magazines they would like to give their donations.

34:24

And, you know, if Elon Musk gave us money, it would simply be, it wouldn't even do us any, we wouldn't take added salaries.

34:31

We would just try to build up the magazine, rebuild the magazine to where it was in the 1990s when it was a major force in the conservative movement.

34:41

Yeah, that needs to return. And I think, yeah, I do see some movement among young people.

34:47

I know CJ Engel, who I've had on the podcast a few times, he runs your podcast. So there's a

34:52

Chronicles Magazine podcast you can subscribe to. Stephen Wolfe wrote an article in,

34:58

I know a magazine that you have there on religion and, yeah, you wanna show it?

35:03

Yeah, there you go. Yep, so Stephen Wolfe wrote an article. And it's been a place where people who are even like Stephen quote unquote,

35:13

Christian nationalists can get a fair hearing, which they can't really anywhere else, at least in the mainstream.

35:20

So yeah, I'm very supportive of Chronicles. I hope that you'll be supportive of Chronicles. Where can people go to subscribe and also give to the effort?

35:30

Well, the first place you might wanna start is go on Chronicles Magazine org. It's online and you can donate there.

35:40

You can also subscribe. So that would be probably the fastest way to do it. You could also send me a message or send a message to our publisher,

35:50

Robert Roach. I mean, either is gonna work, but perhaps the easiest way to do it is simply to go online.

35:56

And look up Chronicles Magazine .org. Okay, and one last, so I know the

36:02

Charlemagne Institute is what I think they run Chronicles, right? That it's under, Chronicles is under the Charlemagne Institute.

36:08

Right, right. The Charlemagne Institute took it over from the Rockford Institute, which sort of became merged with the

36:14

Charlemagne Institute several years ago, before I actually came on board as editor -in -chief.

36:20

So, and that is a 501c3? Yes, absolutely. It is, okay. So if you give to the

36:26

Charlemagne Institute, that helps Chronicles, and that's a 501c3 as well. So, all right.

36:31

Well, no, that's good. So people can go look up the Charlemagne Institute or just go to chroniclesmagazine .org

36:37

and check it out and subscribe. There's also a search engine there.

36:42

You can go back to old editions of the magazine if you wanna look up a particular subject. Anyway, I appreciate all the work you're doing.

36:49

Dr. Godfrey, thank you for your time. Thank you for having me on. All right, well, here's another interview.

36:56

This is with Josh Abatoy. If you're someone who likes Chronicles Magazine and you're an evangelical, you'll also like American Reformer.

37:03

Josh and I had the privilege of speaking yesterday, and here's our conversation. Josh has been on the podcast before.

37:09

How are you doing, Josh? Doing great. Thanks for having me. And Josh is the president of American Reformer. How's everything going over there at American Reformer?

37:17

Oh man, it's been such a good year. God's really blessed us with growth, with great authors.

37:25

We've put together an excellent team. It's just confirmation,

37:32

I think, that we're kind of fulfilling the calling that God has for this journal. We were founded in 2021, and as you and probably a lot of your audience recalls, 2020 was a year where the failures of evangelical leadership were made known in a very public way and whether it was on COVID or on the

38:02

BLM riots that spread across our nation or the 2020 election, on issue after issue, a lot of Christians in the pews, and I'd say a lot of really thoughtful Christians, had this feeling that they'd been betrayed by their leaders.

38:18

And American Reformer, what we're all about is this idea that to serve the church and to really hopefully to save the country, we need better evangelical leaders.

38:31

And so that's really what we're about with both our journal, with our written content, and then also our reform work, which is where we try to engage with different Christian institutions and leaders of those institutions to try to influence them, help them to wield their leadership in a more responsible way.

38:52

So it's been a really big year. We've been, I think, one of the centers of all of the really good debates happening about Christian nationalism.

39:03

We've run, I think, some of the best positive cases for it, and then also negative cases. I mean, we're open to disagreement on that, but we've tried to be a platform where that discussion can happen.

39:15

Seen really good growth, talking on just a wide variety of issues that you're not gonna see in a lot of more mainstream evangelical outlets.

39:26

And I think a lot of that effect is challenging church leaders and other evangelical leaders to lead with a stronger sense of self -determination, not taking their agenda from the world, but charting a course that aligns with scripture and our

39:45

Christian tradition for what the future should look like for these institutions. So yeah, really pleased by all of that.

39:54

And we had this over the summer, Tymon Klein came in as the editor -in -chief of American Reformer.

40:01

So he's now captaining that ship. Ben Dunson, our founding editor, remains highly involved and engaged in the work as well.

40:12

Our publication pace has increased significantly. So we're getting at least one article a day out. And that may not sound like a lot, but our articles tend to be pretty long, two to 3 ,000 words, deep dives on particular issues, and producing those takes a fair amount of work.

40:27

As you know, we got to run your debut, I think it was in August, we ran your first article for American Reformer.

40:35

Yeah, yeah, I was grateful for that. And one of the things about American Reformer that stands out to me is, you know, you're broad in a sense, you're broad though, like in an

40:45

Orthodox sense, not, you're not going to run pieces by people who are just so outside of the faith that they want to critique it from the outside.

40:54

You understand where the lines are, like the Apostles' Creed, the basic doctrines like the

41:02

Trinity and the deity of Christ and salvation by grace through faith. And so there is this like understanding of orthodoxy there.

41:11

But at the same time, you're willing to run pieces that do disagree with each other.

41:17

And I think you mentioned Christian nationalism, some of the best debates about that and things that I think move the conversation forward happened on American Reformer.

41:27

Without you guys, I just don't even know, it would be far worse, the dialogue about this, than with you, because you're clarifying things and you're running very intelligent people whose goal seems to be to increase the wisdom and knowledge of Christians, not just to make a name for themselves or raise money or any of that.

41:46

Like, it's not just a branding for an institution, it's, we want to contribute here. And so that's what

41:51

I've appreciated about what you guys are doing. What about for the next year ahead? Like, what do you have planned?

41:57

Because that's the blog, that's the, or I don't even know, blog's maybe not the best word, but that's the journal side of it.

42:05

But like, what kinds of things are you doing to actually raise up these leaders and influence institutions, that kind of thing?

42:12

Yeah, so a couple things, what we've done in the past on that front, I very publicly got involved with a grassroots group at Grove City College.

42:22

And I've, you know, we've discussed that before. They were a group of parents who were concerned about a

42:28

CRT woke incursion at Grove City College. I was very sort of publicly involved in helping to make the case for their position and, you know, advising them on how to go about their interactions with the administration and the board at that institution.

42:44

And ultimately what they were able to achieve was pressuring the board into conducting a very thorough investigation, shutting down a diversity council at Grove City, taking a number of other good steps.

42:56

Some people were, there were some personnel changes that were made, all very good stuff. The other thing that we've done in the past is, you know, people involved with American Reformer have weighed in on matters in the

43:10

SBC. And we've done this a number of different ways. But so if you look at these two fronts, these are two really important sets of Christian institutions.

43:19

One is Christian higher education. And then the other one is a Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest

43:25

Protestant denomination in the country has $500 million a year budget. Massive institution that is, you know,

43:33

I think we all have to admit, it's like currently compromised. It's to some extent ineffective.

43:39

All of those resources are being squandered. And, you know, we would like to push, you know, on both of those fronts.

43:47

The coming year, we have some very, very big stuff. I can't spill too much of the details here and now, but we'll have public announcements coming out in the next couple of weeks, announcing more structured efforts to both work with Christian colleges on the one hand, and then on the other hand, to work with Baptists and particularly the

44:07

Southern Baptist Convention. So really grateful for, you know, the support that we've received to get those efforts to the point where they're about ready to launch.

44:18

And, you know, and then have a lot of plans if the Lord is willing, you know, and makes it possible.

44:26

We, you know, we have a lot of stuff where we'd like to see, you know, raise up, you know, help equip, help equip, you know, faithful leaders that are there right now, but they need more tools to work with, and then also help raise up new leaders.

44:41

Now, you know, hypothetically, Josh, if someone very wealthy by the grace of God is listening to the podcast,

44:47

I mean, I know Elon Musk regularly listens to the Conversations That Matter podcast, and if he's hearing this and he says, you know,

44:53

I'm gonna convert to the Southern Baptist, to Christianity, and yeah, I got that in the wrong order, and then join the

45:01

Southern Baptist Convention. You know, I have a million dollars sitting here that I just wanna give to them.

45:07

I mean, what kinds of things could you guys do with that? I mean, I'm sure that you have your like agenda of like here are the top five, like things we would love to do if we had the money.

45:17

You know, is it start a seminary? Is it like, what is it? Yeah, yeah. It's hypothetical. No, totally.

45:24

So we would like to do a conference next year, and that's a big, you know, a large conference with big keynote speakers.

45:33

So that's one that's very sort of high on our wishlist. You know, the other one is, you know, with the engaging different Christian denominations, especially something like the

45:46

Southern Baptist Convention, you know, the Southern Baptist Convention is kind of like politics in the sense that it's a turnout game.

45:58

And, you know, and if you can get funding to help create issue awareness and recruit people to come as messengers to the

46:08

Southern Baptist Convention, you know, you can have a good chance at changing the outcome of that meeting, because, you know, again, like it's, most churches could send people and they don't even send any messengers to the convention.

46:23

And so, you know, we are, we have lots of ideas about how money could be spent well to generate conservative turnout to the

46:34

Southern Baptist Convention, get people to show up to vote, you know, for example, to vote in support of Mike Law's amendment to the

46:43

SBC constitution that will clarify whether churches with women pastors can be in the

46:49

Southern Baptist Convention. There's a number of other issues like that. Another one is financial accountability in the convention.

46:56

You know, the, you know, I know you've covered this and others have as well, but the North American Mission Board is this, you know, massive

47:03

Southern Baptist entity that has a lot of funds under its management with very little control or financial accountability on it.

47:11

And, you know, we would, you know, there's efforts underway. There have been for years to get these

47:18

Southern Baptist entities that have a ton of money under management to do some very basic transparency steps.

47:24

And so we're really looking at how we can support those efforts with issue awareness.

47:30

And again, just getting word out and trying to recruit people to come to conventions to actually vote in support of those initiatives.

47:38

So, you know, there's a lot more we could get into, but I think those are the two big ones that are really top of mind right now, you know, a conference,

47:48

Southern Baptist engagement, you know, and then of course I would like to, our journal's been growing very steadily and, you know, we would, of course, we would like to be putting out five articles a day and, you know, and some of that just requires growing our editorial staff.

48:07

We're very lean, you know, if you look at, if you go to some website like the Gospel Coalition or First Things or something, you know, you'll see these really massive staff pages.

48:18

On our staff page, we're just, we're a very tight ship. I mean, we have, you know, one full -time employee running that journal.

48:24

And so we would like to grow that as well. And what that does is it allows us to publish more frequently and, you know, grow our audience, grow the extent to which we can move the conversation within evangelicalism.

48:40

Yeah. Well, I appreciate what you've done and you have been a platform for good ideas that we're not getting a hearing.

48:49

And I think if you're a Southern Baptist in particular, if you want a viable path forward for the convention,

48:55

I know I've said it for years that there needs to be a ground game that's financed in some way to actually match what's happening on the other side, on the left, you know, they have their people that are basically paid to come, many of them, and that needs to be matched on the right.

49:11

So if you're interested in that, American Reformer is a place you can go and try to influence things in a more,

49:17

I would say, orthodox direction. So Josh, with that, thank you so much for your time and for what you do and God bless.

49:25

Last but not least, I want to highlight Equipping the Persecuted. Equipping the Persecuted is an organization that helps

49:32

Nigerian Christians essentially protect themselves, provides food and all kinds of things to help supply them security stuff because they are under constant attack from Boko Haram, a

49:48

Muslim terrorist organization. And it's a shame to me that Israel gets so much press when things have been happening on a much larger scale for much longer in places like Nigeria, but they're

49:59

Christians. And so, Judd, Saul has been doing work there for the last few years.

50:05

I don't even know how long he's been flying there, but we had the privilege of talking last week. Here's our conversation. Hi, Judd, how are you?

50:11

Hey, John, it's good to see you. Thanks for having me on again. My pleasure. I mean, it is

50:16

Giving Tuesday and I want to highlight organizations that are doing good work, not spending money on social justice stuff.

50:22

And I know you well enough to know you're not doing anything close to that. You are, of course though, helping

50:28

Christians that are, well, let's just say they're not getting the same coverage that Israelis are getting right now, even though they're enduring the same kinds of things, if not worse in some ways.

50:40

Yeah, John, it's really sad. What's happening in Israel is being done in Nigeria, but it's been done there for the last 10 years on a much greater scale.

50:50

We're talking about 10 ,000 Christians murdered every year. And that number keeps increasing from the same ideology and the same brutality, but no one talks about it.

51:03

No one talks about what is happening. And just like in the video with a case like little

51:08

Manny, she was shot, the bullet went through her into her mother, killing her mother.

51:15

Every one of her family members were killed in that attack and Manny was able to survive. And we don't highlight

51:24

Manny and the help we're giving her to shed, to say, oh, look at what we're doing, look at the great job we're doing.

51:31

We're telling you this story to raise awareness as to what's going on in Nigeria. And helping

51:37

Manny and many like her is what we do as an organization. We actually help persecuted

51:43

Christians on the ground in Nigeria. We don't just talk about it. We put our money and resources into actually helping persecuted

51:50

Christians there. And I just want people to know the same brutality and the same things you saw in the pictures from what happened to the innocent

51:58

Israelis is exactly what's happening to Christians, but on a much larger scale and the world completely ignores it.

52:05

I don't know why, but word needs to get out about what's going on. Well, of course, in many situations, you have a government, the

52:12

U .S. government, or you have some kind of global organization from the West that will come in and give relief and aid and things like that.

52:20

And in this situation, how much of that have you seen? Have you seen any humanitarian support or even other

52:27

Christian organizations coming in and helping with this issue? Very, very little.

52:33

Very, very little. The UN will talk about numbers and talk about displaced persons, but the problem is that we estimate 50 to 60 % of the internal refugee camps that exist, the

52:47

UN says doesn't exist, the Nigerian government says it doesn't exist. And we estimate that there's between two and a half to 3 million

52:55

Christians without homes living in these awful impoverished camps with no foreign aid, no

53:02

U .S. aid. And I mean, they are literally just suffering and trying to get anything they can get to survive.

53:10

And there's very little being done about it. And as far as Christian organizations go, John, I don't see a lot of other

53:18

Christian organizations on the ground, including some big name organizations that raise money off the backs of persecuted

53:24

Christians. I don't see them there. I'm just being very honest. Yeah, no, that's sad. And this is an opportunity then for Christians in the

53:31

United States who do care about that, who do have the resources to help and want to and have been, or at least they think they have been, maybe they've been giving to organizations,

53:40

I'll say names, Compassion International, or perhaps they've been giving to Voice of the

53:45

Martyrs, something like that. And maybe they're not happy with some of the direction they've seen, which

53:52

I know you've highlighted in the past. And they're looking for an organization like yours that's doing very tangible things.

53:58

Tell us a little bit about some of the tangible things that you guys have accomplished over the last year.

54:04

I know you told me about an orphanage the last time we talked, but what else? So we've done, we've been around three years, and here's what we've been able to accomplish.

54:15

We've built an orphanage. We now serve 28 children at that orphanage. And these are for kids whose parents have been killed by terrorism.

54:22

We support monthly over 200 widows, many of whom husbands were pastors that have been killed.

54:29

And these ladies have been left out to dry and they have hardly anything.

54:35

So we come in, we give them monthly support, we try to get them into vocations, whatever we can do to help those ladies.

54:42

And we're looking to double that number next year. We have a school that serves over 300

54:49

IDP children. IDP is like an internal refugee camp. And we started off with a school of about 90, it grew to 170, and now we have 300 students that we are completely paying for.

55:03

All of their education is covered, all the books, everything they have is covered by equipping the persecuted.

55:10

And then on top of that, we run interventions, meaning after an attack occurs, we are there within 48 hours to bring food, aid, medicine, rescue wounded victims, like in the case of Manny, and many others that, whether it's machete wounds, bullet wounds, survivors, we come in and if we have the availability, we get them the medical care they need to survive.

55:37

And just in the last three years, John, we have been able to touch over 400 ,000 lives of persecuted

55:44

Christians in Nigeria. Wow. And I would like to quadruple that next year, is what we'd like to be able to do, because the needs are endless, but if we have the resources, we can make a difference.

55:58

And the other thing that makes us controversial, John, is of course, we train and work with village security teams.

56:04

We provide radios, bulletproof vests, we train them on how to gather intelligence, and that has saved many, many lives.

56:14

And then one more thing, I'll throw this out there, is we created the Truth Nigeria project, truthnigeria .com,

56:21

where we're working with Nigerian journalists and US journalists to tell the truth about what's going on in Nigeria, document the attacks properly, and get the right numbers, because by the time the news filters through the

56:37

Nigerian news service, if 100 were killed, they say 50 were killed. If 50 were killed, they say 15 were killed.

56:45

And then they water down what's happened. Why is that? Why did they do that? One, it's politically incorrect to talk about Muslims killing

56:55

Christians. And then two, the Nigerian government tries to make themselves look better than they are by whitewashing the numbers.

57:06

Is what's happening a genocide? Yes, it is a total genocide that is going on.

57:12

And so between all these efforts, and with Truth Nigeria, the interesting thing is, we've been able to get intelligence of when terror attacks are going to occur.

57:24

Wow. We notify the villagers, we notify the government, we notify the police.

57:31

And in most of those instances, the government has turned and looked the other way. But in some instances, the villagers were able to galvanize other villages to thwart off these attacks.

57:41

Because of our intelligence network we have built and what we're able to do through Truth Nigeria. No one's ever done this before.

57:49

Are you, well, that's the scary part in a way. Like, are you nervous about going over there, being someone who now is saving the lives of Christians who these terrorists want destroyed?

58:01

Do you have a target on your back? Yeah. Yeah, we do. But it's a risk we live with, and this is what we're called to do.

58:11

So I guess let me ask you this, sort of in closing with, I mean, there's so much to talk about,

58:18

I suppose, in regards to this. I know we've explored many aspects of it.

58:23

But when people give, I know they wanna make sure, especially in a situation like this where you're the only game in town, that the money's really going to those villagers.

58:34

So is there, I don't know if you have a, I know you've only been around three years. I don't know if you have auditors who come in.

58:39

I know some organizations have that. But what's the percentage as far as like of a dollar that someone gives?

58:45

How much of that is actually going toward the people that need it? We are working as close as we can to the 90 -10 model.

58:54

Right, okay. And so 10 % goes for overhead. Other things, 90 % goes to Nigerians.

59:01

The thing is though, and I'm just gonna be honest, is we are a small game compared to the organizations that have millions and millions of dollars behind them.

59:10

So we are working hard also to raise awareness about the issue. And that's costing resources to let people know we exist, but also let people know what the problem is.

59:19

And so it's kind of a dual fight, but we do our best to do a 90 -10 model where 90 % goes right to the persecuted

59:26

Christians and 10 % goes to overhead. And we have a staff of 40 on the ground in Nigeria.

59:34

This is how we're so effective. Wow, I didn't realize that. Yeah, we have 40 staffers on the ground in Nigeria and three satellite offices, one in each of the hard hit states where the persecution is happening, which allows us to respond faster and be able to be more effective with our ministry.

59:51

Yeah, no, that's great. Well, it's only been three years. I remember when you were starting this and I think

59:58

I had called you one day and you were at a gas station selling baked goods with your children to raise money for this, which

01:00:05

I don't know of a lot of ministries that, especially big ministries

01:00:11

I'm thinking of, that have that origin story where the founder is at a gas station selling baked goods to try to help these people.

01:00:19

So I know you're in it for the right reasons. And if people wanna help, where can they go and what can they do?

01:00:25

Go to equippingthepersecuted .org, all one word, and make sure you go to equippingthepersecuted .org

01:00:35

and donate, pray for us, pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters, pray for the safety of our team, but we need all the help we can get.

01:00:43

And John, I just can't thank you enough for having me back on your show to talk about this mission.

01:00:51

I really appreciate it. And I appreciate all of your supporters and all the people watching John Harris.

01:00:57

Guys, John's the real deal. I'm gonna vouch for him too. John is the real deal. Keep listening, keep watching.

01:01:04

Yeah, thank you, Judd. Judd, I appreciate it. We'll talk soon, God bless. All right, well, those are the four organizations that I wanted to highlight.

01:01:10

Thank you for listening to the podcast. I do hope everyone, I should have said this at the beginning, had a great Thanksgiving. I did, except for the fact that I did burn my face a little bit and my arms, and I burned a hole in my pants, and I burned my leg because I learned a good lesson.

01:01:26

When you're smoking meat, make sure that the propane is off for a few minutes before you try to relight it, because yeah, not good.

01:01:34

Some of you know what I'm talking about. So you can might even tell, even though my face is kind of washed out, my nose is red and it singed my hair, but anyway, other than that,

01:01:43

I had a pretty good Thanksgiving. I did want to say one thing at the outset, or at the end of this podcast.

01:01:49

I wanted to just say that I am taking a trip this week. I may not be able to get to another podcast till the end of the week, and it's a very important trip.

01:01:56

It's one of the most important, if not, I mean, it's up there. It might be the most important thing I've done as far as the evangelical world is concerned, and I can't really give any details yet.

01:02:05

If you're a patron, you'll know more sooner, but I just would appreciate your prayers that everything

01:02:13

I do this week, I am working on a project, would be glorifying to God, that I would have safe travel mercies, and I'll announce more in the coming weeks, but I just appreciate all your support and prayers, and as we go into the

01:02:27

Advent season, I pray that your thoughts would be on Christ and prepared to celebrate his first coming.