The American Churchman: Immigration Crisis and Christianity

It's so unsafe in my neighborhood anymore.

I have the homeless that were trying to camp out and I have made concessions with them and I try to help them the best

I can to keep them from trying to squat on my property. But it is so unsafe.

I have men that cannot speak English in my front yard screaming at me, throwing mattresses in my front yard, throwing trash in my front yard.

These patients are running into trash cans, they're running into buildings, they're running into, they're flipping cars in the middle of the street.

They're in the park grabbing up ducks by their neck and cutting their head off and walking off with them.

And they're eating them. One of the things that I heard that bothered me very much, I've actually had quite a few people contact me here lately, is some pretty horrid things occurring to domesticate an animal in the neighborhood.

I'm angry that my friends and family are packing up and moving away. I'm angry that foreigners are using up the resources that were set up for the

Americans that reside here. I'm angry that another country's flag was being flown in our city.

I'm angry when I see our businesses and recreational areas littered with garbage left by people that do not know or understand our laws and culture and are making no attempt to learn about them.

These are not civilized people. Opening containers in our grocery stores, helping themselves to what's inside and throwing the rest onto the shelves and floors, stealing animals from farmers and leaving their severed heads at the site of an old school where children play.

Believing themselves in public, making some barbaric stew out of the birds that live in our park.

This is insanity and it has to stop. I'm told and I understand, I'm using this as a baseline, if $2 ,400 per month for a foreign national in terms of subsidies cash in hand, with a guarantee of seven years per run, is $201 ,600 per person.

Many of the homes have been condemned previously and now these people are living in them. They have no water sometimes, no sanitation system, no heat.

They've been seen publicly nude in Buck Creek bathing.

And that's a place that the county and the city kind of took pride in and they, you know, they put in whitewater rafting and, you know, kind of made it an attraction.

And now it seems like all of those things are being degraded a little at a time.

It's taxed our school system. The school systems are overloaded. The first week of school, we had 300 new

Haitian students that had never attended school here before. It's my understanding last year they were getting about 40 kids and that's a report that was put out by the city.

They were getting 40 new kids per week at the school system and it was costing approximately $10 ,000 per student per year to educate them.

Because when you talk about educating them, you have a language barrier, they can't speak

English, you've got to try to give them all of the amenities that you give to the actual residents.

So that takes up all the money from those funds. They're making more than the $22 ,000 that these citizens were making.

Totally backwards, totally unfair. And how are the immigrants getting this?

By our tax dollars. We've lost a whole bunch of cats. There was a van pulled over that had over 100 cats in it with the

Haitians. They said they was eating them. Actually? Yeah. Not fake news? Not fake news. A van was collecting cats and eating them.

I watched it happen, yeah. Watched them get pulled over with the cats and admit to the police that they was eating them. The landlords make the people move out so they can rent to the

Haitians to get more money. When a Haitian comes through and spends $500 in food stamps and still has five grand on their food assistance.

Five grand? Five grand. They're going down there and they're killing the Canadian geese so they can take them home and eat them.

All they're doing is raising our rent and our taxes and wrecking vehicles. And there's just been nothing but a hassle since they've been here.

All right. Well, welcome to The American Churchman. That was our cold open.

And I'm John Harris, your host and my co -host here, Matthew Pearson. How are you doing,

Matthew? I'm good, John. How are you doing? I'm grateful not to be living in Springfield, Ohio right now, based on what we just heard.

We're going to talk about this later on in the podcast. We want to address immigration.

I have a Russell Moore clip cued that we can play in reaction to some of this. Before we get to all that, though,

I just want to remind everyone that The American Churchman is a podcast sponsored by TruthScript.

And if you go to truthscript .com, you can check out the website.

We have a number of good articles there right now. We're going to talk about the postwar consensus one today.

But if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and if you feel inclined, if you think the Lord might be leading you to help us, you can click on the donate tab.

It is 501c3, so it is tax deductible. If you want to publish with us, you can click the publish tab and you can see all the specifications on what we require for that.

But TruthScript is honestly doing some great work. There's some great articles this week. This is a particularly,

I should say last week, last week at the beginning of this week are particularly good. We have an article about self -defense.

We have two film reviews, one for Matt Walsh's movie, Am I a Racist? One for the

Reagan movie. And then, of course, the one we're going to be talking about later. But before we get to all that, Matthew, I know that last week we talked about doing some material to begin these podcasts on the attributes of God.

And that brings us to an attribute of God most people probably don't know a lot about, and that is the aseity of God.

And so I asked you after the podcast if you wouldn't mind maybe introducing that topic for everyone.

Yeah, certainly. It's my pleasure. So aseity, John, like you said, it's not the most commonly known attribute of God.

I mean, maybe among like the Theo nerds, it's more prominent, but it's a very important aspect of God because what it fundamentally comes down to is the very being of God.

So well, what do I mean by that? Well, to begin with a pretty good, like popular level book that does discuss this, that I actually

I gave it away to someone before, so I had to find a PDF online. I did it legally, by the way. I did not go to I did not illegally download anything.

I found it. It was there. So not that I would have, of course, not now. But it's from R .C.

Sproul, his book, What is Reformed Theology? So he discusses this on page. I didn't write the page down.

Whatever. I'll find it later. Maybe I'll drop a comment for y 'all. But he discusses aseity, and this is what he says about it.

He says about divine aseity. God and God alone is the ground of his own being.

Our being, by contrast, is derived, dependent and contingent. We depend on the power of God's being for us to exist or to be at all.

In a word, we are creatures. By definition, a creature owes his existence to another.

So it's in that last part of the sentence where we really get like this understanding of aseity, where we as creatures who are created, we have a cause.

We owe our existence to something else. So the only reason I'm here is because my parents met and did parent things.

And I'm here. And their only reason they were there was because their parents are the same. Back, back, back. And then all of a sudden you go all the way down the chain, get to Adam and Eve.

OK, but where did Adam and Eve come from? Well, they came from God. And then this is the I don't have kids, but I do know what kids always ask when you get there.

It's like, well, who made God? Where did God come from? And so the point of divine aseity is the idea that, like Sproul said,

God and God alone is the ground of his own being. In other words, God is not made.

He alone is the uncaused cause of all things, and therefore he's the very ground of his own existence.

God alone is pure actuality. He's the only thing that there's no potential in God, like something can bring him about or he's affected by something.

No, God is pure act. He alone is self -existent, and therefore he's not dependent on his creation for any existence of himself.

His very existence derives from his being. And this also gets into the eternality of God.

God is eternal. He doesn't derive his being from anything. So big picture that we want to remember is that creation is dependent.

Creation is a dependent being. We depend on God for existence, whereas God is independent in being.

His being has no dependence on anything or anyone. God alone subsists in and of himself.

And to close, I guess this before you, if you have anything to say, John, but just to close my whole little spiel on divine aseity,

I will quote from, as a good Presbyterian, of course, the Westminster Confession of Faith. This is chapter 2 .2,

where the Westminster divines write, God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness in and of himself, and is alone in and unto himself all sufficient, not standing in any need, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them.

He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things, and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever himself pleaseth.

So in a nutshell, that is divine aseity. This comes up in debates with atheists when they require

God to have an environment, because all other living things that we know about have an environment. They need to survive.

I'm dependent on food and water and parents. And I mean, my little daughter, she's only three months old.

There's no way that she could survive on her own. So she needs an environment to help her survive.

But God's not like that. And this is the attribute, it sounds like, well, I guess you could also say self -sufficient is, how is, actually, that's a good question.

How is this different than self -sufficiency? How would it be different than self -sufficiency? Or is it included?

Is self -sufficiency included in aseity? I believe, I haven't thought of it that way, but I believe it would probably be included in that, that God is self -sufficient.

Like his aseity means that by his very nature, by his very being, he is pure act. He is the uncaused cause of all things.

And yeah, I like that you bring up the atheist point too, because I actually had another quote here. This is actually from, let me show the book.

Great book, by the way. Craig Carter's Contemplating God with the Great Tradition. That's where I got this quote from.

But he kind of delves into that a little bit. And he goes, if there were no first cause, the chain of causes could never begin.

So there has to be a first cause. But if there is a first cause, that first cause must be pure actuality in order to be uncaused.

So there has to be a being who is not caused. There's no potentiality in them. He is pure act because he alone is the one who creates all things, sustains all things.

It's not like he caused everything and then he's like, okay, goodbye. Like the deist would say, he causes all things and he upholds all things as well.

So that's another important point of aseity as well, is that not only is God uncaused, but in causing all things, he himself has to actively uphold all things as well.

That's a trait of aseity that I didn't touch on. Everything depends on him.

Yeah, certainly. He's independent of everything. This is a doctrine that I'm trying to think what cults or other religions would disagree with this.

I guess any religion that sees God as lesser than he is,

I think of Greco -Roman pagan traditions where gods are basically superior versions of men.

They don't have that quality about them. I would assume though, I mean, maybe

I'm getting out on a limb here because I don't know the answer to this, but I would assume that in monotheistic religions, they would include some, like this quality would like,

I think of like Islam or obviously in Judaism, they would have to include this quality.

Yeah, certainly. I believe divine aseity would be an attribute of God within both

Islam and Judaism. I don't know if there'd be any ancient monotheistic religions that would deny it, but it wouldn't surprise me maybe.

The only religion I can really think of today that would deny that would be the Latter -day Saints, the

Mormons. They would deny that God has aseity because God was a man like us and he became God, God is planet.

They would be ones who would contend against that. They're not monotheistic though. No, no.

The deception, I suppose. All right, well, let's switch gears a little bit here and talk about this.

People are lighting up the chat about the migrants thing. Let's talk about the migrants and then we're going to transition into the article on the post -war consensus.

So we're going to get there, but I just played obviously during the cold open there about a four and a half minute clip of just samples of what people in Springfield, Ohio themselves have said.

Most of those were before the debate. There was one video at the end that I took some clips from that were,

I think, recorded just after the debate, either just before or just after, right around the time the debate happened.

But everything else was from as far back as February actually of this year, if you can believe that.

This has been an ongoing community problem there. It didn't receive national attention though until very recently.

And it's weird to me that the way that it received national attention was because of the famous line, they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats.

And if you plug that into a search engine, what you'll find is a number of news websites all trying to debunk this and say that Trump is spreading a hoax.

He's spreading false information. That's their only interest in it is to try to debunk Trump. If you dig deeper into the story, though, you'll find out that there's a number of problems that accompany 20 ,000 migrants in a community.

I'm trying to remember, I think it was 120 ,000, I think, in Springfield. So it's something like 20 % of the community size has been imported in a very short period of time.

And it's causing all kinds of issues. The dogs and cats thing, I think, in a way, this is almost brilliant because Trump, in a sense, by repeating that line, forced people to go examine the situation.

And while the left is trying to fact check him, and I don't think doing a very good job necessarily, it seems like there are witnesses saying there's dogs or at least there's cats disappearing and geese from the park and things like this.

But that's small potatoes compared to the loss of human life,

I believe. And I probably shouldn't get too much out on a limb. I had read, though, that there was someone, I guess, murdered there, I think last year by a

Haitian immigrant. If I'm not mistaken, it was Springfield. But regardless of whether that was Springfield or somewhere else, you have a lot of traffic accidents.

And that is a threat to human life. If someone hasn't died yet, that potential is certainly there. You have a complete culture change in the community, a complete economic upheaval in the community, the places that people used to go and enjoy.

They can't anymore because they're littered and there's inappropriate things happening. So I'm kind of thankful Trump brought this up.

But I think what we probably need to get into is, as Christians, how we should approach this.

So I do have a clip from Russell Moore queued up, but that's the situation, briefly, as I understand it.

I'll just mention this one other thing before letting you, if you have a thought, weigh in, Matthew. But we do have, I do have this that I wanted to just show you.

This is from the Department of Homeland Security. This is from June 28th of this year.

The re -designation of Haiti for temporary protection status, TPS, which is how these migrants are coming here.

So it's legal, by the way. This is not illegal immigration. This is legal mechanism.

But the re -designation of Haiti for TPS status allows an estimated 309 ,000 additional

Haitian nationals or individuals having no nationality who last habitually resided in Haiti to file initial applications for TPS if they are otherwise eligible and if they established residence in the

United States on or before June 3rd, 2024. As many of you know,

Haiti's in a lot of turmoil right now, even though they have a constitution that is partially based after ours and our system of government.

And they're supposedly, you know, they have the mechanisms that they would need, supposedly, to have democracy working and all that kind of thing.

It's obviously not. It was just a short time ago. It was in the news for gangs basically running the place and that barbecue guy who got memed all over the place who was apparently a cannibal.

At least that's what was being said about him. Haiti was in turmoil over this kind of thing and there was people dying.

And so in that situation, the United States decided to take in these

Haitian migrants and give them TPS. What you'll hear from a lot of people about TPS is that it's

I think it lasts something like seven years. There's a limited time frame on it. But what takes place afterward often is the people who were

TPS status end up staying here anyway and they just live in the

United States. And so it ends up becoming a gateway to living in the

United States and becoming an illegal migrant, even though your status isn't illegal to begin with.

So that's the status. That's the situation in very basic terms that we're dealing with.

Matthew, I know you've been patiently waiting there. What do you think about this whole situation? You have anything to add to what

I just said? Not much to add other than that. It's pretty wild to see go down.

And I would I will say that I was pretty like shocked. Well, I shouldn't have really been shocked, but just a little bit surprised by how many people were immediately were like, that's a lie.

That's not true. You know, trying to slander everyone as being racist or something like that, just reclaiming that when the way that it got started off.

I don't know if John, if you're familiar with how this got like into the limelight so that Trump picked it up and set up the debate.

But it was because Twitter user Captive Dreamer seven, he pretty niche, like right wing poster.

He posted a video of this was the first clip that we opened up with of the one lady in that white shirt talking about how the people were in front of her yard and all that.

And that just took off. It had nine as ninety nine K likes on Twitter. And yeah, it was all just testimonials from the people living there.

It wasn't just like rumors being started about, oh, these evil Haitians like going and killing.

No, this was based off testimonials and people were like, OK, if you hear crazy things like that happening in a context of, you know, immigration being a huge debate, people are obviously going to get a little concerned and say, hey, maybe we should have a conversation about this.

Maybe we should talk about this. And so Trump going on the debate stage and saying they're eating cats, they're eating dogs.

Like, I mean, it makes sense. Like you're getting into the limelight. So to see the reaction like it did surprise me, which

I guess is a lack of wisdom on my part, because why should I be surprised that that's the first place that they go?

But it's just the sad part, I think, about it is that. The the left and how they responded, they're genuinely like so concerned with being called racist that they will neglect the needs of of American citizens just to make sure that they're not called racist.

And I think that's just so disordered in many ways. I mean, regardless of whether you want to call it racist or not,

I mean, these are real concerns and you could argue, oh, we don't know for sure. But if you're hearing people talking about this, why not look into it?

Why not say, hey, these things are supposedly going down. But instead, people just screech about racism.

And that's just that's just the norm of our political conversations nowadays, especially around immigration. We can't have any like grown up conversations anymore because you just have you just take the title racist throwing on an open conversation has been shut down now.

So it's kind of like that's like their their top move to do that. That is what gets you in the kneecaps is when they drop that word.

You're done. You can't talk anymore. So it's pretty annoying to see. But yeah, those are that's all my thoughts on it, really.

There's a few comments coming in. A few people have said that there is a 11 year old boy who died,

I guess, was hit by a bus and it was a Haitian driver. And then

I got the population wrong. Apparently, I said 120 at 60 K in Springfield, which makes more sense.

So you have yeah, if you have 20000 Haitians going there and the population is only 60000,

I mean, that is tremendous. That's yeah, I can't even believe that any bean counter thought that was a good idea.

So 120000 would have been bad, too. But but 60000, that's even worse. Someone said now, look,

I can't confirm that HIV has gone up one hundred eight hundred and seventeen percent at the Springfield Hospital. They can't speak

English. They need an interpreter. So the ER is backed up. I don't know if that's true or not. I can't verify it, but I'm sure there are people who are weighing in on this that seem to have some knowledge of some of the things in the situation.

No, Betty's saying no, the Haitian hit the school bus. Many injured an 11 year old boy. Oh, I see. So the boy was in the school bus.

OK, but someone just this was interesting. Joseph Santiago said,

I am a is a psychologist. Is that PSI PSY psychologist? I guess psychologists.

Yeah. And a mental health field in New York City. The city has been setting up special clinics for them, meaning migrants.

Everything is free, including medication. Many of my working patients can't afford their medicines. I mean, and this is the kind of thing we're hearing.

Michael posts the verse from Proverbs twenty five, twenty eight, he that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.

So, yeah, I hope we can talk a little bit more about the biblical teaching on this as we go forward.

But yeah, I mean, this is the debate right now. And Russell Moore decided that he would weigh in on this because it's so good of him to do that, to give everyone a

Christian understanding of the situation. Of course, Russell Moore, the editor in chief of Christianity Today, the former director of the

Ethics and Religious Liberty Institute for the Southern Baptist Convention. And he was on Morning Joe on MSNBC.

And I'm not going to play the whole full clip. I'll probably skip around a little. But here's the clip. Editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its public theology project.

He's an author of a new piece for The Atlantic titled Trump's Lie is another test for Christian America.

And Russell, on your new piece, you write in part, quote, When we are willing to see children terrorized rather than stop telling lies about their families, we should step back, forget about our dogs and cats for a moment and asked who abducted our consciences.

That's especially true for those of us who, like me, claim to be followers of Jesus of Nazareth, who told us that on the day of judgment, people will give account for every careless word they speak to sing praise songs in a church service while trafficking in the bearing of false witness against people who fled for their life, who seek to rebuild a life for their children after crushing poverty and persecution is more than just cognitive dissonance.

Christians do not need to struggle to figure out what Jesus would have would do here.

If we see children sheltering at home because they fear violence, we know that's wrong.

And when we see that this fear comes from the incitement of hatred against those children because of where their parents came from, surely we can smell the brimstone and Russell.

OK, so I'm just going to skip ahead a little here because they talk for a while and I want to get to Russell Moore saying something other than what he just said in the article.

So here's a clip from Russell Moore speaking. Who want to you want to cause us to be afraid of our neighbors?

It's happened over and over again. It happened with Italian immigrants, with Irish immigrants, with Vietnamese refugees, with others to say you should be afraid of these people and therefore you should mistreat them and you shouldn't care what happens to their children.

And even beyond that, what happens to our own consciences, our own souls? That's a that's a dangerous place to be.

And we have to the Bible says perfect love casts out fear and we have to be freed from this kind of fear.

OK, all right. Well, I guess so the motive of people who are saying that you just heard at the beginning of this who are saying cats and dogs or I don't know if anyone said dogs, but cats and geese and things are being eaten, that these these people are trafficking in fear.

They're afraid. Matthew, what do you think? So this was the first time

I've seen that clip and I had my mic muted, so no one heard me, but I just started

I burst out laughing when I had to take a picture really quick when he said we should step back, forget about our dogs and cats for a moment and ask who abducted our consciences.

Like, it's just I don't know. It just is ridiculous. And this is one of the biggest things behind like why regime evangelicals are so painful to listen to as well as like just first off, like they're trying to seem poetic and how he phrases that, like who captured our conscience, not our cats and dogs.

It's like first off, if you're if you're a pet owner, you're going to care about that. But but like second, just the framing of it, like when he's talking about the past immigration crises regarding like Italian, Vietnamese, et cetera.

And he says I wrote this down where he's like where people are saying, quote, you should mistreat them. Who like who have we been seeing saying, oh, these you should mistreat

Haitians, you shouldn't treat them well. No one who argues for more strict immigration policies is saying to mistreat these people.

No one on the Christian right, at least it just seems like the this is why, again, regime evangelicals can be so frustrating to dialogue with because they're not seeking dialogue.

They're seeking to scold you and they want to scold you using the Bible, basically, or Bible language.

There's no intent to understand. There's no intent to say, hey, maybe you're concerned about X, Y, Z.

It's just, oh, you want to mistreat them. And that's how you feel. And that's just that's not how you go about actually having conversations with people when you go in and you frame them in the worst way possible.

And also keep in mind the audience who he's framing it this way for. He's framing it for largely secular, liberal people that are listening to this.

And that's like what Russell Moore always does. Like, that's what David French always does. They go out of their way to make us seem crazy.

So they look good with the rest of the world. And of course, there is a sense in which when you're looking at the qualifications for elders given by the

Apostle Paul and Titus and First Timothy, you should be of good accord with the outside world as well.

Yes. But on certain things like it makes sense to if you're concerned and the rest of the culture saying this, why would you want why would you want a prominent figure in evangelicalism to just throw you under the bus to the secular world?

It's just it's disheartening to see because, you know, Russell Moore has been in the game for a while and many people have benefited from him.

So to just see him like throw us under the bus, it's just it's frustrating to see.

And the fact that he's not willing to listen to real concerns, concerns that aren't driven out of hatred at all, but are just like genuine, like I fear for the state of my country, the state of like what's going on here.

That's totally reasonable. And they just refuse to do that. But that that clip was was ridiculous.

I was pretty shocked when I heard that. Donna says that she got the information about the eight hundred and seventeen percent rise in HIV status or cases in Springfield from the former state representative from Springfield, Ohio.

So, OK, he had a lengthy Facebook post about it. I just wanted to clarify that. That's where that came from. Wade Nelson says

Al Mohler claims that that story is false. Of course he does. He has to. Matt Boros says that even

Joseph's brothers had to get permission from Pharaoh to dwell in the land of Goshen. Good point.

I hadn't really thought of that. And then Pal Patine's dermatologist says it takes two years on average for someone to start disability or Social Security.

Our refugees walking around with monthly finance cards and stipends for home down payments is what

I want to know. And I've gotten different numbers. I don't know to what extent, like how much money they have.

I know that as I traveled this year, everywhere I've gone, even places like Boise, Idaho, even the rural areas in Wisconsin are experiencing problems with migrants being dropped off there by the

Biden administration. And in every place they say they tell me the people who live there, the same thing, that these migrants have cards that it ranges anywhere.

I've been told from like two thousand dollars to almost three thousand dollars a month.

And they can't and then they're given housing on top of this. It's just crazy.

It's a crazy thing. But yeah, this is it's probably adjusted for socioeconomic reasons wherever they live.

But it's when you have a town where the average income is about twenty two thousand dollars a year, then you you're giving them more money than the residents have.

And that raises the prices for everyone. It means that people are kicked out of their places of where they live to make way for migrants who can pay more because they're being paid by your tax dollars.

Young Anglican says, why do liberals always say Jesus of Nazareth specifically? I've never thought of it, but he makes a point that is true.

Like when Russell Moore is talking to an evangelical audience, he doesn't say that, I don't think.

But when he talks to MSNBC, he's got to say, I think it just sounds sophisticated. Jesus of Nazareth. Like it's a it's a sophisticated sounding title.

So and then, yeah, Presbyterian Presbyterian on says they're moving into my apartment complex and all of them are somehow equipped with brand new iPhones,

Gucci purses and catalogs. Where is the money coming from? So, yeah, lots of people asking these kinds of questions.

I'll make a brief point that I think is important and vital for this whole thing. Oftentimes when you hear people like Russell Moore talk about this, they will bring up passages in the

Old Testament about foreigners, alien strangers, how you're supposed to treat them. And what they often neglect is two things.

First of all, the ways in which they were still considered foreigners, alien strangers. They weren't considered

Israelites because they stepped foot in Israel territory. And there were certain things that certain things that were different for them.

For example, an Israelite could not be in perpetual slavery, but a foreigner could be in perpetual slavery.

An Israelite would have their lands restored to them on the year of Jubilee. A foreigner didn't have any lands to be restored to them.

If they wanted to purchase land, then they got it until the year of Jubilee. It's going to revert back to the natives who actually live there.

There's different things, a different standard, not a standard in the sense of God's law and equality before the law, but there are different understood privileges with being an

Israelite as opposed to being a foreigner. It takes, what, three generations,

I think, for an Edomite to enter the temple. So there's things like this. The second thing, though, is that the conditions were different in this way.

In the ancient world, when someone, first of all, it wasn't a mass invasion, which I think when

Trump talks about it that way, it's probably shrewd because when you have the numbers that are coming here and they're not assimilating, it is more like an invasion when you are being replaced by a foreign people group.

They're not looking to assimilate. Those laws in Israel, though, that pertain to foreigners are often for people who are coming, not in those large numbers, but with an understanding that they're going to live amongst the

Israelites and they're going to conform to their ways and their laws. There is an assimilation process of some kind, even if it's a partial assimilation that does take place in that.

And the mechanism for feeding yourself, for living in our time is very different than in ancient times.

So in our time, you have migrants coming here, whether they are illegal or they have the protected status or they're asylum seekers, whatever it is.

There is waiting for them a whole mechanism, as we've already pointed out, of resources that they can take advantage of, opportunities, driver's license, jobs, food, education.

That wasn't the same in ancient Israel or any ancient country. When you would migrate to an area because you wanted to live there with those people, they didn't roll out the red carpet and then just feed you for free.

You had to make your way among them. You had to provide for yourself. And I think that's a key difference as well.

It's really more close to invasion scenarios, what we have happening now. In the ancient world, if you were taken over by a foreign people group, they came in, the military took you over, and then they started eating your grain and your cows and your animals and your probably cats.

That's what they would have done. That's an invasion scenario, and that's more close to what we have going on right now and the people of Springfield, Ohio, and I'm sure other places certainly feel that.

So I wanted to point this out. This is not just happening in Springfield, Ohio. This is also happening in other places.

Here is, if I can add it. Here is another region that this is happening.

I don't know how to pronounce that, Charleroi, I think, Pennsylvania. It's a town of only 4 ,000 people and they just imported 2 ,000

Haitian immigrants, 2 ,000. That's 50 % of the size of their population.

Half their population size has been imported and the infrastructure can't handle it.

The kids can't even get their schoolwork done. They can't advance to the next grade because the teachers are overwhelmed with students that can't speak

English. You had Russell Moore and David French saying that the cruelty to and lying about Haitian immigrants' families is satanic to the core.

Children are terrified and God is not mocked. The time for repentance is now in reaction to the claim that there were threats in Springfield, Ohio, bomb threats.

We found out since then that the governor of Ohio, who's very for, much for these migrants coming, contradicted the

Democrat narrative on this, which is the narrative that Russell Moore and David French are supporting here, and said that those were actually hoaxes, those bomb threats.

That wasn't coming from the rhetoric of people concerned about the mass migration. I'll just say on another note, the fact that the president's life was threatened once again, and they didn't seem to have much to say about that,

I think, exposes who they are. Yeah, that's really all I wanted to say on this. The biblical situation is a bit different.

If we're going to look at this through a biblical perspective, the civil magistrate has a responsibility to take care of the people that are within their jurisdiction.

What's happening now is we are caring about everyone outside of these jurisdictions and using the force of government to, as I think it was

Sam Francis maybe who coined the term, to come up with a state of anarcho -tyranny, where you're a law -abiding citizen and you can be in trouble for minor infractions, but you have people that are causing havoc, that are just allowed to live here, and they're subsidized by your tax dollars.

I do think that is an aggravating situation, and people are right to be upset about it. Anything to add there,

Matthew? Yeah, just one thing. I like how you brought up the biblical examples. In one of my classes, we're reading a lot of early

Christian works, and one of them that we recently read through was the Didache. Two prefaces before I read this brief quote.

Number one, not scripture, so it doesn't carry the same way, but it does give us a little bit of perspective on how the early

Christians thought. Number two, this is specifically not about civil government. What I'm more getting at is the principle of it, is the principle and how they treated hospitality, because oftentimes when we have these immigration debates, the people who decry theonomy the most end up becoming crypto -theonomists when they're like, but Old Testament is real, so I always find that interesting.

But yeah, just listen to the general principle here. This is about hospitality in the very early

Christian world. The Didache is a very early writing within the first century, and it says this.

This is chapter 12 of the Didache, if you want to look it up for reference. I'm just reading it from the

Shaft translation. But let everyone that cometh in the name of the Lord be received, and afterward ye shall prove and know him, for ye shall have understanding right and left.

If he who cometh is a wayfarer, assist him as far as ye are able, but he shall not remain with you except for two or three days, if need be.

But if he willeth to abide with you, being an artisan, let him work and eat. But if he hath no trade, according to your understanding, see to it that, as a

Christian, he shall not live idle with you. But if he willeth not so to do, he is a

Christmonger. Watch that ye keep aloof from such. So you see that there's a principle where hospitality does not necessitate letting someone stay forever.

You know, when you're being hospitable with someone, you may take them in for a little bit, and then the time comes.

But oftentimes, that's the thing with these programs is they say it's a refugee program, but then they end up staying for much, much longer than need be.

And another thing as well with this is, I was going somewhere, but I just lost my train of thought.

That's unfortunate. But yeah, all that to say, there's generally a principle that hospitality doesn't necessitate letting them stay forever, deprive you of all of your resources.

And then notice here, it literally says, if they are to stay for a bit, let them work so that they may eat.

It's like Paul's principle when he's talking about he who does not work shall not eat. And I think that's something very important about Christian discussions about hospitality is that there's like a sense in which you don't want to be taken advantage of.

And that's something that I think a lot of these discussions forget to take into account is the idea of you as a

Christian are like the primary target of being taken advantage of. And that's what the early church had to deal with because they were incredibly moral and pious people in a very immoral and impious society, which is why it warns about this.

It says, but if he will not so to do to work and eat, he is a Christmonger.

So that word Christmonger can also be translated literally as a Christ trafficker. He's using you and your deeds.

Philip Schaff has in the footnote here, he says, the abuse of Christian fellowship and hospitality naturally followed the remarkable extension of Christianity.

So that term was coined to designate the class of idlers who would make gain out of the professed

Christians who would obviously be hospitable. So we have to keep in mind that we are to be hospitable to people, but that doesn't mean letting them take advantage of us.

And yeah, I don't think it's loving when you send like such a huge amount of people into very small locations.

Like when you're sending the size of a third of the population, that's not going to work. That's not going to be efficient.

You're not going to see assimilation happen. And that just is never no one ever picks up on that.

So yeah, it does seem engineered because you wonder how can they be this foolish? This doesn't make sense.

I just came across a quote that I wanted to read to and great. I don't know that did a case to that's a great reference there.

But this is from a declaration in defense of an order of court made in May of 1637.

So this is from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And it says the intent of the immigration law is to preserve the welfare of the body.

And for this end to have none received into any fellowship with it who are likely to disturb the same.

And this intent, I'm sure, is lawful and good. And so this principle that the immigration policy should benefit the people who live there, if you want to have immigration, that's fine.

But it's it's for it has to benefit. It has to be. And frankly, it's dangerous if it doesn't.

If you import people and they are not a benefit to the natives, then you end up causing a lot of strife, political strife that can translate into violence and war.

So you have to be very careful with these kinds of things. Human communities are made over the course of generations.

And good things are very easy to make and are very, very hard to make, but very easy to destroy, as Rogers says.

We have a few questions and then we really need to get to the postwar consensus stuff. But Wade Nelson says, why is the invasion being pushed on mainly

Christian countries? Michael, I don't have any. I don't know if you have an answer. I don't really have an answer.

I don't know. That's it's Western countries that are doing this. So is there any chance the migrants are here just in time to teach them how to vote and the next election?

I could be cynical, maybe. I am not convinced Christianity provides a tolerable answer for the immigration issue.

Yeah, that's an interesting thing. And I'll just say this. You mentioned theonomy. I think when you look at Old Testament laws concerning Israel and the difference in the situations between what we're living in and what ancient

Israel was living in, you can certainly see principles. But if you try to import those laws into our current situation, it wouldn't be a good thing because we're just not in the same situation.

You have the possibility of all these NGOs helping millions of people make their way to the southern border.

It's not the same scenario. And you have enemies within your own country who want to assist them and really preventing them from assimilating.

So that's one of the issues that was not in play in the biblical context.

So the law of God is, of course, perfect. But I think that the law of God gives us principles.

And we have to think through in a wise and prudent manner how these principles apply to our current situations.

We have particular situations and we have universal principles. And the particular situation that God was giving the law to in Israel and the way he was applying universal law is going to be different.

So that's my way I work through that. I don't think that we necessarily have everything in scripture for an immigration policy for the

United States in 2024. Yeah. That's not the purpose of scripture. That's not why scripture is there. Scripture is about the things concerning eternal life, which have civil implications and whatnot.

But the primary focus on scripture is the things concerning eternal life. And if you want a good book on how to do

Christian politics, I guess, to get good principles from, I'd highly recommend Franciscus Junius's Mosaic Polity.

He dives into a lot of these things. But yeah, it's not as if Christianity has to have an answer to that, because why are you trying to build your immigration policy on a religion?

There's more to it than that. And God has given us his revelation. He's given us examples of good civil law, which

John very helpfully went over earlier. Yeah, but it's not going to lay it.

Here's what to do for your particular circumstance here in civil polity. That's not the purpose necessarily.

But a Christian can come to strong convictions about these things, reading natural revelation in light of scriptural revelation, which is an illuminating light for how

God reveals himself in creation. And from there, I think you can have a good answer to the immigration question.

Well said. All right, well, let's shift gears. I'm going to let you have the first word here, Matthew, on this, because we are starting to run out of time on the podcast.

But I want to get into this article on the postwar consensus. And did you have a chance to read this?

I did, yes. I read it like half an hour prior to this. So it's still fresh on the dome.

Oh, well, why don't you, since we don't have a lot of time, maybe summarize some of the main points here. It obviously is running off of the whole controversy with Darrell Cooper on the

Tucker Carlton podcast. Yeah, so essentially what our friend here,

Josias Sanchez, what he was seeking to do was just kind of lay out a little bit of the controversy around it about the martyr maid interview.

But what he really was, I think, trying to do, and this is going to be in the next paragraph down, the

Religiones Civilis, so some nice Latin there. But he tried to talk about the nature of civil religion and how when you have like a mythos for a people or a nation or something like that, generally it's held in such high esteem that if there's any questioning of that mythos, it's almost seen as a type of blasphemy against the civil religion.

And so with the post -war consensus, which he helpfully defines here, quoting RR Reno, saying, the post -war consensus is a powerful consensus in favor of fluid openness, which was embraced by the left and right in recent decades.

When you question any part of that, you are seen by many as almost blaspheming the civil religion.

And that's what we saw happen with Martyr Maid on Tucker, was that he was giving his own elucidations about the role that Winston Churchill ought to play in World War II and have whatever opinions you will have on that.

But by him doing that, all of a sudden, all these other things were put on him. He was called a

Hitler apologist, a Holocaust denier, all these kinds of things because he focused in on one primary aspect.

Now, some people have done some more research and they pull up all the Twitter receipts from Twitter to show his true motives or whatever.

But just going off of what he said in the interview, all he was doing was just bringing to light things about Winston Churchill.

And I think that part of the reason this is just it's so interesting is because it really does give a perspective on how people react to these things.

And then somewhere in the article as well, Mr. Sanchez talked about how nobody gets this up in arms when we hear religious blasphemy.

If you hear someone say GD in public, at most, all you do is go like, oh,

I wouldn't say that. But no one has the same vitriolic hatred and feelings of anger as they do when a part of that narrative is questioned surrounding

World War II. It's quite interesting when you think about it. And it's something that I've had to cultivate as well.

When I hear blasphemy, not to just be like, oh, I'm a little offended, but to say, no, that is wicked.

That is disgusting. I'll hear any bad word and it just flies right over my head. I'm like, whatever. I grew up hearing that stuff.

No big deal. But if I hear GD, I really do like feel fire in my bones.

And it's just like, I pray. I'm like, Lord, give me the feelings of anger that I feel when

I hear blasphemy as a post war consensus enjoyer feels when they hear Winston Churchill blaspheme.

But yeah, so I thought the article was very good. He also went into how in questioning these things and in the religious nature of the civil religion, it's almost like as a new article of the modern

Christian faith, any questioning about anything surrounding the war is seen as an issue of, you know, it's seen as basically you're violating the faith in some way.

And, you know, there's not totally they're not insane for thinking this. We have to we have to remember this.

Oftentimes, if you do hear like people questioning questioning these things, you can think, oh, they may just like Hitler or whatever.

And so it makes sense why people would think these things. But the problem is, is that serious historical inquiry into things does have revisionism at play.

That is how things work is people play around with different theses and things like that. And to make that in an article of faith, almost like as some people do is that is basically adding on to the gospel of Christ.

When you're saying you can't hold this opinion about Churchill, that's ridiculous.

Now, I can already see some people basically saying no one's actually doing that. But when you actually look at how people react, that is what they're practically doing is they're making it where it's almost like you're questioning the faith or they're immediately reading into it horrible motives.

And so it's just it's disheartening to see primarily because of the fact that it feels as if people are adding on to the faith.

You must ascend to this dogma and this dogma and this dogma. You must uphold the postwar consensus in order to be a true

Christian, which is ridiculous and is adding on to the gospel. Yeah, and if I could just read this summary here, that was well said,

Matthew, of what the postwar consensus is, for those who might not know. Because that was a good definition for us,

I think. But for people who have never heard this before, that's a very short sentence. So he goes on and he says, the postwar consensus forms the axle around which the modern

American civil religion turns. Let's put things in analogous Christian terms. In the beginning, the founding fathers created the

United States of America. When they created the land of freedom and equality, they saw that it was very good.

Now, the promises of freedom and equality were intended for all men. But sin had entered the world, and so the deliverer was needed.

Abraham Lincoln was sent into the world to unite the country. This is actually pretty good stuff. And bring freedom and equality to all, fulfilling the founding father's wishes.

Or so it seemed. His reign would come to an end, and the people would realize that true freedom and equality had not been bestowed on all men.

Suddenly, a wicked man named Adolf Hitler arose, threatening freedom and equality everywhere. As the chosen people,

America defeated Hitler. And the children of the generation brought about a new turning when they came of age, the civil rights movement.

Finally, through the work of faithful martyrs such as MLK, true freedom and equality were achieved.

And America could finally begin its reign as the land open to all, guarding the hard -fought prize of freedom and equality for all.

And I would add that in the left scheme, this goes on to say, you know, the Harvey Milk and gay rights and all of that.

So that's I think that's pretty funny, but that is like the cartoon of history that many people do buy into.

And when you get something out of sequence or out of order and you say, actually, it wasn't quite that way, then they're very defensive because you're really threatening their entire worldview at that point.

And this is an interesting thing because all countries need, all nations need a mythos of some kind.

They need an origin story. They need heroes to look back to, to inspire them.

Like these are actual, like real things that you can observe across nations. And you see that God himself purposefully made memorials for the ancient

Israelites to remember his great deeds and what he had done, how he delivered them and the achievements of mighty men that,

I mean, we even have a group of men called David's Mighty Men, right? And so like this is familiar to Christians.

So the question, there's so many questions, but one of the questions is like, what do you do?

Like if you realize that this is being weaponized against Christians, if this is this, because really it's running off of something that was there before.

It's this isn't start at World War II. This is the proposition nation stuff. It's equality in a universal revolutionary sense being imposed upon everyone.

That's really what this comes down to. And if you realize that that's a poison and that you, we built up a whole mythos around it, then what, what do you do?

I'll tell you what I've done. And part of my own reaction to this kind of thing long before the

Tucker interview was the 1607 project. That's why I made it. That's why we have that documentary.

Brian McClanahan did the book. I mean, we, we wanted to get back to something that used to exist, that Americans used to look back at their history and it wasn't this emancipation narrative of equality.

It was a narrative of achievement and sacrifice and that the blessings that we have and we enjoy were because of the goodness of God and the grit of people who came before us that worked hard.

And so there's a birthright we have because of that. But, but it's not the elevation of everyone who was critical of people who came before us and, you know, said your society isn't equal enough and we're going to reform it or change it or abolish it in some way.

It's, it's looking towards heroes that were, that led the whatever generation they were in into settlement initially and out

West and through wars and famines and hardships. And, and this was a narrative that was very common up until I would say after world war two and the civil rights era that does start changing.

And the mythos of America becomes different. Some of the same figures are, are still present.

You're learning about some of the same people, but not for the same reasons and not in the same ways.

And the heroes that you have before being deconstructed and now new heroes are being inserted.

And so, so anyway, that, that was my attempt at a, hopefully a responsible way to start to approach this and inspire people to offer a mythos, but not one that tears down the very country that we live in, which is what inevitably the post -war consensus will do.

Yeah, certainly. So go ahead. No, yeah. I fully agree with that. And kind of back to my point that I made earlier regarding adding onto the gospel.

I just thought of this example now, like I have a few friends of mine who they want to be a little bit edgy and quirky with their view of history.

So what they do is they'll say like, oh, the American revolution wasn't justified. You know, I'm a monarchist.

We should have had a monarch or whatever. Now, let me just say as an American, I fully, fully endorse the

American revolution and think it was, it was spectacular and it created something glorious and beautiful.

And I'm thankful for, and I hold that dear to my heart. And I do get offended when people say that, oh, they weren't justified in rebelling against the

British empire. I do get offended. I really do. Now, here's the next thing. Do I question their

Christianity? No. I actually think that many of my friends who say this are wonderful Christian men.

Do I find that they have like a, you know, they're going down a bad path and their faith in Christ is lacking?

No, no, not at all. I don't think that. And I think that that is the sort of thing that we need to do regarding something like the post -war consensus is you go to church with people who fully buy into the post -war consensus who are godly people.

These are people who love the Lord. These are people who want the church to flourish. These are people who want the lost to be saved.

Look on sinners, not only with scorn, but with broken hearts who want to save these people.

They are fully regenerate people who love the Lord. And you disagree with them on the post -war consensus.

You don't anathematize them. So that is all that many of us are asking in this regard, because I try and think of this from like an almost like a pastoral perspective.

Like we don't want to be adding burdens on to people like, oh, you must affirm this or you're not a

Christian because that is what so many people are doing with this. And it's understandable if you see someone going down like a direction where they're just like, yeah, post -war consensus is bad.

Therefore, we need to do X, Y, Z or something like that. I don't want to get you banned on YouTube, John.

But that would make sense, I guess. Then there could be some time for conversations. But even then, even then, you don't even immediately anathematize them.

I've had crazy phases, ideological phases when I was in high school. Was I regenerate throughout them?

Yeah. Was I a little nuts? Yeah. And I still came out. I came out fine. That's what a lot of people are.

That's what's happening with a lot of people. And you just need to have like real conversations with these people.

Realize they can be Christians who love Jesus. Don't add on to the gospel. Don't put a new burden on them.

Just approach them as fellow believers who you just so happen to have a disagreement on in this area that that just is that's so important from thinking from an ecclesial perspective about people who are in your pews and who believe certain things.

You can't anathematize them for things like this. I think that's so important. That's a great point. I'll end my rant there.

Yeah, I'm glad you said that. I think that's a really, really good point. And that is how many of us were treated. And it just put some more skin on or meat on the bones before we end for people who are maybe new to this concept.

But in the postwar consensus, everything that the left pretty much doesn't like becomes proto

Nazi of some kind. It's always attached to Nazism or fascism. And that's how they vilify. This is why

Christians are called Nazis, basically, because there's some hierarchy, patriarchy, authoritarianism.

They believe God's in charge. I mean, that that alone can get you that that belief in that order can get you the label.

And so I will say, I don't know. Did you have relatives or grandparent?

Great. I guess for you would be what great grandparents in World War. I had a my parents had me when I was when they were 42.

So I had a grandfather who fought in. Oh, you did? Oh, wait. We talked about this. That's right. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He was in he was in Japan. Yeah. So same with my grandpa. Right. So my my grandfather was not in the

European theater. I have a great uncle who was but my grandfather was was also in Japan, which, you know, and that's why

I thought the chief villain of World War Two was Tojo. But I digress on that. But but I'm very proud to be an

American. And yeah, I mean, I think Americans were the good guys overall. I mean, there's horrible things that happen in every war.

But but yeah, like if you're going to be if you want to force me, put my gun to my head and say, who are the good guys?

I'm going to say the Americans. I'm an American. And I love my grandpa. And I think that overall, what we did was right.

And especially responding to being attacked and then were declared on us. So yeah, yeah.

Were there problems? Yes. I talked about that on my other podcast conversations that matter a little bit. But but, you know, that said, like the reason

I'm saying this is that my grandfather, who just died this year, he would be called a

Nazi by these guys. Right. My great uncle who fought the Nazis would be called a Nazi. Harry Truman, when he was campaigning for the

Democrats against Eisenhower, Eisenhower, who is a general who defeated the

Nazis in World War Two, he insinuated Eisenhower was some kind of a Nazi or had attachments to Nazism.

I was going to bring that like that. This happened very early on. And conservatives did not get on board on that until much later.

It's only recent that conservatives have said, you know what, we're going to call the left Nazis. When you do that, though, you reinforce the frame.

And exactly. Yeah. And I don't I think Nazi ideology is bad. But it's the thing is like making it the standard, making it making

World War Two, the only event in human history that you then compare every other event to and making

Nazis the only devil characters, the only bad guys that every other Putin's a Nazi. And so are the

Palestinians are not everyone's Nazi who we don't like or whatever that the danger of doing that is you buy into an ideology, you oversimplify.

And yes, now, because you believe because of the critical theory and Adorno's F scale, everything's a

Nazi that the left doesn't like. Don't buy into it. There's there's a lot of other periods in history that resemble what's going on now.

Yeah, certainly. Those are my two cents. I'm a proud American. Wanted to say that. But but yeah, I think it's ridiculous how martyr mates being treated.

So we got a four ninety nine. Thank you, John. Four ninety nine boomer cons want to bully postwar consensus disrespectors out of their beliefs, but they'll settle for bullying them out of the church shows their true religion.

To your point, Matthew. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm going to let you have the last word and then we'll end the podcast.

So any last point you want to make, Matthew? I've said everything that I need to say. My last word will be it's been a wonderful time and I'm glad to be here.

All right. Sounds good. All right. Thanks, brother. And look for us next week on the

I've almost forgot the name of the podcast on the American Churchman podcast by now.