King of Kings A Reformed Guide to Christian Government

Conversations That Matter

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The government has no authority over your conscience. It can't, right?

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The government can't reach into you and change your beliefs. Not only should it not, it just doesn't have that power.

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So it would be impossible and wrong for the government to say, start trying to regulate your beliefs or something like that.

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What the government should do and has done in America for a long time is make wise laws that make it easy to be godly and hard to be sinful.

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The Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, for a discussion today about this book. It's called

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King of Kings by James Baird. It's actually a pretty short book. I was a little intimidated when

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I first saw this. My friend, Pastor Sean McGowan, actually sent it to me in soft form and said, you got to read this.

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And I was like, oh, I got such a big stack of books. And then when I finally, today, because I knew I was going to be doing an interview,

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I took it out. I was like, oh, this isn't that bad at all. And I just want to explain to people, one of the reasons we're doing this interview with James Baird, who's the author of the book, he's also a pastor in Naples, Florida at Covenant Church, is because I think this is so accessible for your normal, average, ordinary, everyday

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Christian or your pastor, right, who doesn't have the time, most pastors don't have a lot of time to read something like The Case for Christian Nationalism or some of the other larger political works.

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This will get him a lot of the necessary information to understand the argument for, and I don't even know if James Baird takes this label on himself, but some iterations of Christian nationalism, there's the word.

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And it's I think it's just like the reformed tradition and the biblical teaching on Christianity and politics.

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But it's a good, I think, starter at the very least. So that's why

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I wanted to have James Baird on. He just wrote it. It's out through Founders. You can get it there. Welcome to the podcast,

02:10

James. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me on, John. It's a pleasure. So where can people go to get this?

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Amazon, is it just through Founders? Yeah, it's right on Amazon. You can do the paperback,

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Audible, Kindle. But if you want the really nice hardback, which is what you have, you got to go to Founders. Oh, OK, I see.

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So did you record the Audible yourself or did you pay someone? You know, I didn't even know that they were going to do an audio version.

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And then I just saw it one day on Amazon. I haven't listened to it yet. So I don't even know if it's any good.

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Yeah, a lot of publishers are doing the AI thing now. I don't know if they did that at Founders, but I don't know.

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I've always been like protective of my audio book stuff. Like when I've written a book, I always narrate it myself. But it kills me because it's so long and I mispronounce things that I got to go back.

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Anyway, why did you write the book? That's always the first question, right? For any author, what compelled you? Let's see here.

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Maybe about two and a half years ago, I was looking at becoming ordained. And trying to do some good prep so that I could be a good pastor.

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And I realized I needed a robust political theology to help our people navigate all the craziness that's happening, especially after 2020.

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And so I started digging. I did the one thing every Presbyterian pastor should do if you're trying to prep on a topic.

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You go back to Calvin, you go back to Turretin, you go back to the Westminster Divines and Charles Hodge. And I looked at their sections that in seminary,

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I would have skipped, you know, the stuff on the civil magistrate. And I realized not only did their arguments make a whole lot of sense, they also were different than I'd been told they were.

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And they seemed super practical. So that kicked off this process of me trying to figure out what does it mean to hold a classic reformed view of government in our modern world.

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And I got excited about trying to package that in a way that would be accessible for your normal person, your normal pastor, but also really practical and kind of resonate with modern lingo.

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So modern categories of how we think about things like what does it mean to be an exile people? And does living in exile as citizens of heaven contradict the calling for government to promote true religion?

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So it's kind of like a translation project a little bit. Yeah, cultural translation coming from a completely different society in many ways.

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But I'm wondering just off the top here, because some people are going to suspect you are a

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Christian nationalist or something. You take that label. How do you categorize yourself? I do the thing so many people do, like, what do you mean exactly by Christian nationalism?

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Because some people think it means like white Christian nationalism. I think recently, who was it that called Russell Moore a

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Christian nationalist? Oh, I didn't see that. I think it was Christianity Today was called like a

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Christian nationalist outlet. That's hysterical. Which is pretty funny. So yeah,

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I would say if by Christian nationalism, you mean that I think all nations should become Christian nations, then absolutely.

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The point of my book is not really focusing on the nationalism aspect of it.

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It's focusing on what I think is most important. And that is, what's the duty of civil rulers?

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What has God called them to do? So you don't cover all the controversies that are out there about all these related topics.

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I feel in a similar way. I don't take the label on myself either. And it's partially because there's multiple versions.

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And I just want to know what someone means when they say that. But I would agree with everything you put in this book as far as the duty of the civil magistrate.

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I want to get into it because I think this is one of the big controversies. There's several, but this is one of the big ones because in a liberal pluralistic society, supposedly, right?

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That's allegedly what we have. We've been told that diversity is our strength, and that's including diversity of religion.

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And in fact, today we're actually doing this interview. I think it's significant today when a number of politicians, including

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Kash Patel, have tweeted out happy. I can't say that I can't pronounce it. It's an

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Indian holiday or a Hindu holiday. I should say festival of lights, Diwali or something like that.

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So, and this is new territory. I don't remember ever seeing that from a national politician of any kind of status.

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And it's like, what do you do with that, right? Like, how do you, you know, our grandparents would have been struggling with the idea of even having

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JFK as a Catholic in the White House. We're so far past that at this point, right? You know,

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I guess I'll start here because you talk about this. Is it the duty of the magistrate, regardless of the country, to protect the church, to be

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Christian, to uphold Christian values? And what are the limits of that? Mm, great question.

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So my book hinges on a central argument. I tried to make it very simple so everyone could follow it.

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And the first premise is the government must promote the public good. This is central to how the

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West has thought about the role of government. It's central to the Western legal tradition. It's there to promote the public good.

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It's even in the Westminster Confession of Faith. And then the second premise is true religion, Christianity, we know

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Christianity is the only true religion, is part of the public good. So if the government is supposed to promote the public good and Christianity is part of the public good, then the government has a duty to promote

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Christianity. And that entails, it entails not providing support to false religions, right?

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Because if you promote Christianity that's compatible with this, well, every religion is a different way to God.

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Then what you're promoting is not the Christian faith. So you want all the

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Muslims to be in jail? No, I would not recommend that. Oh, OK. All right. So, I mean, this is what people say right away when you say something like that, right?

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Like you just want to persecute anyone who's not Christian. That's right. I suppose there's two elements that maybe,

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I don't know if you see it this way, but maybe need to be separated. There's a prudential element, the circumstances we live in, who lives under us.

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And then there's the universal kind of moral good, which we're aiming for. Maybe start there.

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What's the universal moral good when you say that the civil magistrate should promote

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Christianity? Does that mean he's going to take it upon himself to build churches? He's going to go baptize your

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Presbyterian babies? So what are the limits? Aren't there like, isn't there a different role?

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I know you talk about this at the church, Baz. That's right. So we got to make a few key distinctions. Once we say the government must promote true religion, like you need limits on that.

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The first one is that we have to understand that government and the church are different. The classic way is to say they're part of two different kingdoms.

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Both of them are ruled by Christ. You got your civil kingdom and your spiritual kingdom. So the church officers, they're responsible for preaching and church discipline, administering the sacraments, all your classic stuff.

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That's not the job of the government. And the government is in charge of protecting the church, making sure that everything goes well for it, and promoting it, encouraging people to go.

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So we're not at all saying that the government's in charge of church discipline or the government gets to pick your preacher or something like that.

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They're distinct. They're two different powers, but they work together harmoniously. So that's the first thing is that the government is supposed to support the church, not run the church.

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Very different. The second thing is that the government always has to make decisions that are wise and good for the people.

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So there may be something that is, let's say, right in principle, but would just be a horrible idea if you tried to enact it all the way right now.

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So one of them would be, let's say, making adultery illegal. It was illegal for a very long time.

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It's illegal in the Bible. But let's say that you all of a sudden make that law overnight and a whole bunch of people are fined or put in jail or something.

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Well, that would create so much social chaos that it would do the opposite of what you're intending it to do, which is promote the public good.

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So the way that you try and achieve a godly goal should always be done carefully and wisely.

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And you also have to make sure you don't fall into a purity spiral where now you're trying to make the kingdom of heaven on earth immediately and make everything perfect.

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You got to be wise. The way I like to put it is, it's the job of government officials to be profitable servants.

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What has God entrusted to you and how can you return a profit? You're not there to try and perfect everything.

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Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. So I mean, think of even what Jesus taught about adultery that Moses allowed it for the hardness of heart.

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There was a circumstance in which that wasn't the ideal, but because of the circumstances, they had to kind of regulate it in such a way.

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And I suppose there's things like that in our day. Like if we ended the welfare system tomorrow, we would have a big problem on our hands.

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And it would, in a democratic system at least, with the mechanisms that we have, I mean, it would be a complete blowback against, because of all the people that would get hurt in the process, against whoever would be trying to achieve that kind of thing.

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Even though I think we would probably both agree that he who does not work should not eat. Like there's this principle that would be, make our welfare system in violation of that at least.

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But then there are other things like abortion, right? I mean, isn't that a different thing where like, there's actually people killing and how do you separate those two?

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Yeah, well, it's always the job of a government official is always to make a good judgment call. And that means you got to weigh alternative outcomes.

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So in the case of an adultery law, for example, the goal would be to try and limit the amount of broken families, for example.

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Well, if all of a sudden you're putting everyone in jail because they've all committed adultery, what have you just made worse? Well, they just, there's no one taking care of them now.

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Well, similarly, when you think about abortion, for example, what higher good could possibly outweigh the killing of millions of babies?

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It just, it doesn't make sense. Now, the way you want to write those laws, let's say the timing that you roll them out, maybe there's a progression you see, maybe you can do it in a smart way to where it doesn't cause immediate chaos.

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But the goal there should be to as quickly as possible stop as many needless killings as you can.

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Would you go, I mean, these are moral laws, but would you do things that are like overtly Christian? What I mean by that is like, would it be like a goal to get to the point where non -Christian religions are outlawed?

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I think that's one of the things people are scared of. I know you get into liberty of conscience a little bit, like maybe work through that with us.

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Yeah, well, it's impossible for, the government has no authority over your conscience.

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It can't, right? The government can't reach into you and change your beliefs. Not only should it not, it just doesn't have that power.

13:25

So it would be impossible and wrong for the government to say, start trying to regulate your beliefs or something like that.

13:33

What the government should do and has done in America for a long time is make wise laws that make it easy to be godly and hard to be sinful.

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So the Westminster Larger Catechism, the confessional documents of my church, they talk about how it's the job of civil officials to remove monuments of idolatry.

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So if you've got a huge Hindu statue, you have a Nebuchadnezzar -like item, it's the job of the civil official to try and remove that.

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Now, did you just make Hinduism illegal? No, but you're not allowed to have a huge monument in a public space.

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The inverse, the positive way to do that would be how we used to design towns. What would be in the center of town?

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Big, beautiful church. It's easy for people to get to. There's even a law at Princeton University where no building can be taller than the chapel.

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And so when they wanted to build a big library, they had to do it multiple stories down underground because it was a regulation that was on the university.

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I did not know that. Yeah, isn't that crazy? So you can see there, we're not making a religion illegal. There's toleration for people who aren't

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Christian, like absolutely. But you're still, in this example, designing public spaces so that you're encouraging people to be

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Christian and making it very hard to be non -Christian. Right, so I guess

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I want to put a fine point on this. Restaurant that has a Buddhist statue inside.

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I mean, it's a private property. I mean, do you have an opinion on that? Because I mean,

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I see that all the time when I go to get Chinese food or something. That would be an idol. It would be an idol.

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Right, so I mean, should there be a law that says, hey, you can't put that up? Well, so now we're getting into, the first thing that I would say is like, no, you're being, we're talking about public spaces that are getting regulated, right?

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So that means, that's a private business, right? But also the important thing to know is that pastors really shouldn't be pontificating upon particular policies, right?

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I'm actually not qualified to come in here and talk about this law or that law or this law.

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You can talk in principle what the general duties are, right? So the general duty there would be encourage godliness.

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And you want to kind of discourage ungodliness, right? That's the general principle. But then it's up to policymakers to then try and write why.

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Think about all the times that laws are written that are kind of like counter, some of them are counterintuitive because they don't make sense.

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But sometimes they're good laws that are counterintuitive because they see the knock -on effects, right? That would actually happen.

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And so policy writers have to think about these second order, these third order effects, raising the tax on this thing over here to try and reduce that thing over there.

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So yeah, I don't want to pontificate too much on particular laws, but. Right, so the principle you're working off of those that in general, the government and their magistrate does have the authority to punish or regulate idolatry to try to bring the numbers down, so to speak, to discourage it.

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I think the biggest, in American Presbyterianism in particular, the focus isn't so much on regulating it the way you're talking about.

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It is about setting a positive example for the people. And that's really the point of my book, is that what's even more powerful than legislation is social customs.

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That is what the way that you're ordering our time. What's one of the big things that the

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US presidents would do to encourage godliness? They'd call it Thanksgiving Day or a day for national fasting.

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They wouldn't force you to go to church. They would invite you to go to church, but it's the president who's inviting you to go to church.

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And they would force the businesses to shut down on that day. And so those tactics tend to work way better than like coming down with a hammer.

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And those typically will create rebellion, right? But you want to persuade the people.

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Well, you did make the point that state constitutions were overtly Christian in the book. And I know that this also included even regulations around who is allowed to wield power and be a civil magistrate in some states at least, right?

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Most of the states, actually. You really couldn't be someone who wasn't a Christian.

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And I suppose even in the states that were more quote unquote liberal at the time, like Pennsylvania, I mean, you couldn't really not be theistic and be in the government and or at least it wouldn't happen.

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And I think you're right that social customs and mores were also going to prevent this, but they also were in the law itself putting down regulations to like, you can believe these things, but you can't actually like lead the people if you believe these things.

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And we've done away with all of that. And we see it now. I think so many people, at least in America, as that's un -American that anyone should be until there's some test case that's crazy.

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And then we're like, wait a minute, I didn't say the Satanists or something like that. But there was a positive standard at one time.

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And it seems like you're saying that's a good thing. Absolutely. You go through the state constitutions.

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Most of them required you to be Protestant. And sometimes they would say explicitly, like in my home state of Georgia, it said you have to be

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Protestant if you're going to serve as a representative. But other times they would be writing a general

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Christian statement of faith, but it was written in such a way that it's clearly Protestantly coded.

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So you would have to acknowledge the Trinity. And then you would also have to acknowledge the Old and New Testaments as divinely inspired and given.

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That's a very Protestant way of talking, right? You don't have a statement about the Pope in there, for example, which is exactly what you would expect.

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So yeah, these are very important. And one interesting thing is that you have a

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Presbyterian minister who was a chaplain to Congress who writes a case for Pennsylvania to have a religious test for office.

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And one thing that he hammers on time and time again is that we should not expect

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God's blessing if our leaders aren't seeking to honor God in their roles.

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So there's this deep sense of divine providence. It's not merely just your duty.

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You should do this. It's also that we want God to bless our nation. And if we have rulers who are constantly breaking his law or foolishly shirking his authority, we can't expect to prosper.

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He may be patient with us, but we should not expect it. And that applies today as much as anytime.

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And well, I think it does apply today. People wonder why it feels like America's being judged so often.

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I mean, that's been my whole life. I think I've heard Christian leaders say that we're on the precipice of or being judged.

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And the solution is we need to repent. We need to turn back to God. I don't know if this reaction to Charlie Kirk's death will be that.

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I mean, there's hope there that maybe there's some renewed interest in Christianity. But what do you see as a pastor, the next steps being?

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I mean, do you see positive direction? Do you think that civil magistrates can encourage this positive movement that we may have developing in front of us right now?

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Absolutely. I mean, you look at what J .D. Vance did on the Charlie Kirk show, leading people in the

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Lord's Prayer, reciting the Nicene Creed. You saw what him and Rubio and Hegseth did at the

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Memorial. I mean, just open with their Christian faith. And whether we like it or not, we tend to follow the examples of our rulers, either positively or in reaction to it.

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But one way or another, what our leaders do does impact us. And for lots of people, millions of people, especially young people across the

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U .S., this has now caused them to ask questions they wouldn't be asking otherwise. And I think that's awesome.

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We could see, we see two things. We see revival and we see an opportunity for conversions.

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And the revival is happening by calling people to be courageous, right, to stand up when they wouldn't have otherwise.

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Revival looks different now than it would have in the past. But then you also have people who are going to church for the first time, and that's huge.

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And a lot of that has to do with how the administration has treated Charlie's assassination.

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They took advantage of it for good things. – Yeah, and two of those people that you mentioned,

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Rubio, I believe, I think, I could be wrong here, Anne Vance, a Roman Catholic. And this is one of the questions that I see comes up so often, and obviously you're

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Protestant, but there is a certain quarter of the online, especially

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Christian reform community, that gets nervous about these things and starts trying to talk about the differences between Protestantism and Catholicism.

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If it's a Mormon, it'll be the same kind of thing. Maybe Glenn Beck says something that's actually really good. He believes in the

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Ten Commandments, but this is something that we just need to be cautious. Like those people aren't born again believers.

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And I think I have the same outlook you do, that it's great that JD Vance talks about the

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Lord's Prayer. Like I don't see any world that that's a bad thing, but there are Christians out there who do think that if it's gonna be a

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Christian nation, quote unquote, or if we're gonna be a Christian country, we have to have people that are actually born again in these positions of power.

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Otherwise, it's false religion. Otherwise, it's idolatry. Roman Catholic Church is idolatry. Otherwise, we're gonna be deceived in various ways.

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What do you have to say to people who would critique in that way? A few points. The first one would be, this is where politics is different than the church.

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So when it comes to politics, the thing that you care about most is not, did they really mean it?

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When it comes to politics, the first thing you care about most is, did they really do it? Politics is all about your external action.

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It's the world that is on the outside. The church is where you wanna come in and examine someone's soul, right?

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So this is, we get some category confusion sometimes when we don't see that distinction. It's, you can imagine someone who says,

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I don't want that godly law to get passed because it could lead to hypocrisy. People following God's law when they don't really mean it.

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Well, that's a great thing for you to ask them when you're sharing the gospel or if they're a fellow Christian when they're at church.

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When it comes to politics, the question is, was that a good law? Were they, is it encouraging them to do the right thing?

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So in this case, it's true that you want them to believe it with their heart, but you also want them to do it with their hands.

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It's the inverse of the principle that Jesus teaches us in the Sermon on the Mount, where he says, if you hated someone with your heart, you've murdered them.

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Well, the point of that is not that hating someone is as bad as killing them, right? It is worse to kill someone with your heart and hands than to just kill them with your heart by hating them.

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Well, if you flip that, it's the same idea here, where you want them to act like a Christian and you pray that they will really mean it, but you at the bare minimum want to make sure that they're doing it.

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And you also have to look at your options. You know, what's the next best alternative to what we currently have?

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And in that sense, I would say, we don't deserve Bette Vance. As a nation, you look at the way we rebelled against God, how we've been lazy and self -seeking.

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We should be thankful that we have a man who is leading people in the Lord's prayer and reciting the Nicene Creed.

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And then we ask for more on top of that. The second thing that I want to say is, first, it's about outward action.

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That's what matters most. Second, I would say that J .D. Vance is probably, I need to turn this setting off my computer.

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What is that? I've never seen that before. I think, wait, I think I got some other ones too.

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What's that? Wait, what if I do it? No, it doesn't do it for me. No, it's just my computer. Does this one want to do it? It's like, it does weird stuff.

25:52

Anyway, that was great. Yeah, the computer was agreeing with you, what you were saying there. Your second point about Vance.

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He's the most Protestant Catholic I've ever seen. It seems like everyone during Kirk's funeral was a

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Protestant, even though so many of them were not. They all spoke like it. I don't know.

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It was an interesting moment in that sense. It was very weird. It's kind of weird.

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In a good way, but yeah. I would kind of just share the concern that I think other evangelicals would have if Vance got up there and started praying the

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Rosary in front of everyone or praying to Mary or praying like a Catholic. I'd say that's bad news.

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That's not going to be good. But he sounds like a Protestant. He's acting like a

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Protestant. In many ways, American Catholics have become more Protestant than they realized. And that's what matters most.

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Yeah, there is. What was that book? I referenced it not too long ago.

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Who Are We? 2003, it was written. Who's the author? It's going to come to me in a minute. But the author of that book, he makes the case that Roman Catholics essentially have adopted

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Protestant ways, especially in the public sphere, which I think is interesting. I think

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Tom Holland makes a similar point where he's like, even new atheists are fundamentally Protestant. Yeah, like Richard Dawkins.

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These test cases seem to bring it out where they're against this evil God they see in the Old Testament.

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And then someone wants to create Islam as the establishment in their country, like Richard Dawkins.

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And he's like, wait a minute, I'm Christian. How? How are you Christian? Yeah, anyway.

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Okay, so yeah, that's a good answer, I think. And I mean, what do you have?

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I'm curious. I know you have a fairly large church. You have magistrates in your church that attend. They seek your counsel as a pastor when it comes to policy or those things.

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Like, how do you navigate that with your role as a pastor? Is it just giving them the ethical principles?

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It's really tough. I think from the pulpit, what you need to do is give a straightforward declaration of what the

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Bible says about their duty. But then you'll also have them come to you for counsel on particular questions.

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And although I don't think pastors should be basically outlining the bill they want to be passed for the county from the pulpit, it's still good to advise on particular issues.

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And man, it is always tough. It is really hard. Politics is, I mean, brutal, really tough.

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Yeah, because I was at a conference recently. This question came up about the spirituality of the church, which I know is big in the

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Presbyterian. Are you PCA, by the way? Yeah, PCA. So PCA, I know that in those circles and the OPC, it's like a big doctrine that's appealed to.

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And I think I agree with it. I want to create lines. And so the way I answered it was to say, look, the pastor should be preaching about ethical matters that do translate into political policy.

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That's right. The pastor should also be giving moral direction when it comes to elections.

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And that may even be saying this candidate is not an option. This one is an option.

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What I don't like and what I think violates the spirituality of the church is when the electioneering happens in the church.

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And this is the best I've been able to try to draw the line. Maybe you have a better way, whereby Sunday morning service becomes a rally for a political candidate or a political cause.

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And you lose the sense of, we're actually here to orient ourselves to the transcendent realm.

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And to a holy God, that's timeless. You become more immersed in the specific context of a political season.

29:42

And it's a distraction from the things that set the church apart. So I mean, do you have a way of, maybe you like the way

29:48

I said it. Is there another way to? I like the way you said it. I think that there's a theoretical answer that helps provide a framework.

29:57

And it's when you understand what the job of politics is. So politics don't decide the moral law.

30:05

God does, right? It's the 10 commandments. Politics is all about the smartest way to help people follow it in your current situation.

30:14

So best example, sixth commandment is don't kill anybody. What does that mean?

30:19

Well, it means you shouldn't be going too fast on the road because you might accidentally kill someone. Well, then you have to make a particular decision.

30:26

Should the speed limit be 35 or 36 miles per hour? That is the job of a government official, right?

30:35

Or maybe it should be 45 or 55 or 25. The pastor cannot make those determinations.

30:42

That is the job of the civil government to make that judgment call. But the pastor can say, listen, you got to protect life.

30:50

That's the sixth commandment. You guys need to be going slower. And I want to call on our government officials to do something to stop this epidemic of needless road killings because people are going too fast.

31:03

So you preach the moral duty. You can even apply the moral duty to a particular circumstance from the pulpit.

31:10

But you cannot venture into the judgment call that's left up to the civil officials.

31:16

That's the difference between the spirituality of the church. So I'm curious. I know some churches have done this where they will put like a stipulation in their church doctrine.

31:27

Usually it's abortion. I think there's probably other topics that have been inserted, but they'll say like, part of our statement of faith is we believe abortion should only be ended through immediate abolition, not gradualism or something like that.

31:38

And I know pastors that I like and I'm friends with that have done this kind of thing. Do you have an opinion on that?

31:45

Because it is endorsing a political strategy. And I don't know where you land on that whole debate, but I'll be honest.

31:55

I was just going to say, I get nervous. I just, I tend to get nervous because I've seen on the left what happens when you start going down this path.

32:04

But what do you say? Yeah, I agree that I think if we could find a way to immediately end abortion, if I could stamp my fingers in it tomorrow,

32:13

I absolutely would. But when you start, you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful about binding the conscience of your civil rulers.

32:22

So the reason is, should they be doing everything they can to end abortion immediately? Absolutely. But you gotta understand, there are so many things that they are weighing that pastors usually aren't even aware of the different trade -offs that are happening.

32:38

And you gotta give them space to make the right political judgment call in that case.

32:45

So yeah, I would be very concerned about being too detailed like that. Gotcha.

32:51

Okay. Well, I want to just let people know they can get the book. So King of Kings is the name of it.

32:56

And James Baird is the author. He's the pastor down in Covenant Church, Naples, Florida.

33:03

Is there any way that people can reach out to you if they have questions on social media or anything like that? I don't know.

33:09

So you're probably guarded with your time as a pastor, but... I try. Yeah, you can follow me on Twitter and DM me.

33:15

Yeah, talk to whoever, James Baird. Yeah, is it just James Baird is the handle? I think the handle is

33:20

James underscore D underscore Baird. I should find a better one. Well, I mean, you probably weren't the first James Baird to try to sign up.

33:28

All right. Well, I appreciate it. Thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for talking about the book. And God bless. Hope you sold a lot of copies.