My Reaction to the American Solidarity Party

Conversations That Matter

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00:12

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm John Harris. It is extremely late where I am.

00:17

I'm gonna keep it short. I've been kind of doing a lot of these podcasts over the last few days late because I've been so busy during the day.

00:24

I'm trying to finish Christianity and social justice, religions and conflict, and there's just so much

00:30

I wanna say, and I gotta narrow it down, and then we're moving. So there's boxes everywhere behind me, and my wife and I actually went for a little walk earlier today, just around the neighborhood, kind of reminiscing a little bit, and one of the things we talked about was the podcast briefly, and just this whole thing that I'm in right now with the podcast and writing about social justice and the documentary stuff, and just all of it, and I was just saying,

01:02

I never would have anticipated. I never expected. If you said,

01:08

John, what's your five -year plan five years ago, I just never would have thought, oh, this is one of the main focuses that I'm gonna have.

01:16

It's not the only thing. I mean, I have a life. There's other things, but it's been a lot.

01:21

I mean, it's a lot of time that I've put into this and continue to put into it, and it's because I have a conviction.

01:29

I think that God arranged things in such a way that the opportunity was there, and while I had to shut, well,

01:37

I had to say goodbye to a lot of other opportunities, a lot of doors were shut when I stepped foot in this arena, it's helped so many people that are trying to understand this on the local level, at their church especially, but not just laymen, but even pastors that have just been helped by this, and I get those emails, and I appreciate those emails and messages, and it does encourage me because I do realize, okay, this is really making a difference.

02:05

It is helping people, and that's the goal is to help the people of God on this issue, and the

02:11

Lord has blessed that, and I appreciate it. I think there's a lot of things I probably would have done differently. If I, at the beginning of my life, or even when

02:17

I was a teenager, was thinking, you know, this is what I'm gonna be doing, I would have done a lot of things differently, made a lot of different choices, but I never expected that I would be here, and I think all of our lives are like that to some extent, right?

02:32

Whatever job that you have, whatever you're doing with your life, you probably look back, and there's very few of us that can say, oh yeah,

02:39

I planned that all along. The mind of man plans his direction, his way.

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The Lord is one who directs his steps, though, ultimately, and we wind up in places that we never expected, but we enjoy the blessings of God along the way, and so that's, anyway,

02:58

I'm in that reminiscent mood, I guess, and it's also late as I'm recording this, but I was thinking about, there's so many things,

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I take little screenshots on my phone sometimes when people send me something, and I think, oh, I gotta talk about that, or I have a list also going on my phone, and then

03:12

I'll have a PowerPoint on my computer, I'll input things in, and those lists are getting long, those screenshots, there's a lot of them, but it's just, like, there's so many things, like, how do you narrow it down?

03:24

And each thing is gonna take time to investigate, so out of all the things we could've talked about today, and there's a lot of them,

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I'll briefly mention just a few that are just on my mind today, there's a lot of talk right now about lockdowns, and federal lockdowns coming soon, and I know everyone is, when you hear that, you're nervous about it, you do not want that, but I think this is the opportunity for especially pastors who have said, and it's not just pastors, but pastors are, because of the nature of this podcast,

03:57

I'm specifically saying pastors, who have said that they would never shut down the church again, you may be tested real soon, whether or not you're going to comply with another mandate to lock down, and so my hope is that we learn something from the last time around, and it's not gonna be kind of, it's not gonna be the same thing.

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I tend to think that a lot of people who said that when the coast was clear are going to end up locking down their church anyway, and I'm not trying to just be cynical,

04:28

I just think that as popular opinion shifts, and a lot of pastors, and I just know this from talking to people, and hearing what's going on at different churches, there's a lot of pastors who kind of were very hardcore for the lockdown, for masks, for regulations, and when the people got tired of it, when the people rebelled against it, or started going to other churches, that's when they started shifting their opinions more, and if your opinions are based on what your people think, or what kind of pressure is applied, then your opinions are going to be as malleable as that kind of pressure, so we're gonna find out,

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I think, how many pastors have that conviction if we get to this point, and I think a lot of people thought, well, you know, the first time around, we can kind of understand.

05:15

This time around, if it happens, which it very well may, then it's really gonna show the true character of some of the people that are in pulpits, that are

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Christian leaders, so I just wanted to just throw that out there, and let you know kind of how

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I'm thinking about this. Obviously, there's a bunch of scary things involved in that, as far as what are the plans of global elites, how is this gonna, how is this going to manipulate things so the

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Great Reset can happen more effectively, all of that stuff, I know.

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I know it's going on. I know it's scary stuff for many of us. We have to just trust God, though, and I don't know what's gonna happen.

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I don't know 100 % if we're even going towards that right now, but there are a lot of indications that make it look like at least there's an attempt.

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There are people in very high, powerful places who want that. They want control. They wanna go for another lockdown.

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They wanna use anything they can to, and in places like Louisiana right now, where they can try to point to, hey, here's an area where there's a spike.

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They're gonna use anything and everything, and so my purpose is not to get involved too much in that discussion, but that's one of the things that I heard today that I've been thinking about a little bit, and so it could be interesting for me.

06:41

I'm supposed to, we're supposed to move, and then we're supposed to go on a vacation, which is,

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I think that's how you should do it, right? You move, and you're exhausted, and then you go on a vacation, so we're supposed to go on a vacation, and that could be interesting with flights and everything, especially since I need to visit my family, some of them who are in California, and that's one of the states that I'm sure that they will be totally compliant, and probably more than compliant with any kind of lockdown.

07:09

You can, debating whether, I'm gonna say this. You can pray, if you would, for some of my family.

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I'm not gonna be maybe completely specific on this, but I do have some family members, one of them in particular, who right now has, and it probably,

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I think it was sparked probably from COVID, but has pneumonia and is in the hospital, and so I would appreciate your prayers for that.

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I do think, you know, I've been hopefully consistent on this for the last year and a half. I do think that, because I'm pretty sure

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I had it, COVID is definitely a real thing. Don't deny that, but I do think it is much exaggerated, but like any kind of flu, any kind of bad flu, it still is life -threatening, and especially, it's not the

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COVID that'll get you. It's the pneumonia, and it's the preexisting conditions and that kind of thing, and in this particular situation, that would be, it would be consistent with that view, so I would,

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I'd just appreciate your prayers. I might maybe give more info on that as time progresses, but for now, that's all

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I'm gonna say. Other things, let's see. One, there was actually one other thing

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I was gonna mention. I don't wanna spend a lot of time on it. The only reason

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I'm gonna talk about it, though, is because there has been a stir over it. It's not, and it has the potential to go bigger, and I've, a number of people have emailed me about this and wanted to know my opinion, so there's two things, two accusations,

08:44

I guess, that are being made right now against, one against Votie Bauckham, one against Owen Strand, and I'm hoping I'm pronouncing his name right,

08:50

Owen Strand. The one against, I'm gonna start with the one against Votie Bauckham, and just briefly,

08:56

I hope I don't have to talk about this anymore, but I just, I wanna help some of you navigate this a little bit, and so the accusation is that Votie Bauckham basically did what

09:08

Ed Litton did. He plagiarized, in his book, Fault Lines, and it's based off of, what it appears to be is just one sentence.

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Now, I don't know if maybe bloggers are looking into the rest of the book, but they found it looks like one sentence that might have been lifted from a

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James Lindsay blog or interview or book or something, but it's one sentence, and then there's a block quote in the book,

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I guess, where if, so if you're reading the book and you read this block quote, the rules are supposed to be, if it's a block quote, it's all a quote, but in this particular block quote,

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I don't know if it was the editor or if it was the author, if it was Votie Bauckham, but they included some commentary in the block quote, and so the block quote looks like it's specified by parentheses, but then there's commentary.

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It's an interesting way of organizing it. I don't know if I've ever seen that before. It's not, I'll say this, it's not an academic book, and I don't think it's meant to be.

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It's a popular book, Fault Lines, so I would say, I would put that in a formatting issue kind of category, and a very minor,

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I think, formatting issue. I think if you're reading the book, you understand as you go through the block quote, so I think the people who are criticizing that are being very nitpicky.

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As far as the sentence, though, that may, that looks like it probably was lifted from something else, what's very possible, and I don't know,

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I haven't talked to Votie Bauckham specifically about this. It's probably not something he may even know about or probably doesn't even need to know about because I consider it to be, at this point at least, pretty minor stuff.

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If he was, as the beginning of the book seems to indicate, consulting with James Lindsay about the nature of social justice theory, and if you're talking to someone for hours and hours and hours, and you're writing, you're taking notes, things they're saying on the phone, et cetera, that could be one of the ways that that got to his book.

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He took notes, he's reviewing the notes, he didn't realize that he was quoting. Could also be there was an editing mistake, and forgot to put a citation there.

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It's really minor, though, guys. In my, this is my humble opinion. I would say this if Votie Bauckham was writing from the opposite side.

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If he was a social justice warrior writing, because he loved social justice, I would say the same thing. This is pretty minor stuff.

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Like, not really worthy of talking about like so minor. The only reason I'm talking about it is because there's a whole bunch of people out there that think they got one up on Votie because of this.

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Now, look, there may be things that haven't been discovered yet. I'm not talking about any of that. I'm just talking about what's known right now, what

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I've been shown. It's pretty petty stuff. Now, I'll probably be accused of downplaying this, but what

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I wanna say is that with the Ed Litton situation, here's the difference.

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You have a serial plagiarizer, premeditated plagiarizer. I mean, he's ripping sermons from other guys and not giving any attribution and making it look like he's the one.

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These are his ideas, right, to his congregation, over and over and over. And these sermons are not just, it's not just one sentence.

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It's an entire sermon. It's 45 minutes of talking and he's ripping it.

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That's the kind of thing that we would consider. That's actual plagiarism with intent, with there's a motive behind this to deceive people in part, and it's absolutely wrong.

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And as someone who has graded undergraduate papers and stuff, there's actually software today that it'll show you sometimes.

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Like if something else is posted online and there's a parallel, it'll show you, hey, this could be plagiarized. You might wanna look into it.

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If there was a student who did an Ed Litton, it would look like you just cut and pasted an entire paper and maybe added a few of your own comments just to make it look like it wasn't a cut and paste, but it pretty much was.

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And you pond it off as if it was your own. Compare that to what

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Vodi may have done, because I'm not even quite sure. I don't think anyone's quite sure exactly what happened with one sentence.

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You forgot to put a footnote in one area. It probably, honestly, it probably wouldn't even come up as something, usually on that software that people use to grade papers, it's gotta be at a certain level, like 50 % or whatever.

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I forgot what the one that we were using was. But if it's one sentence like that, it's not even gonna show.

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It's not even gonna be high enough to even look into it, most likely. So if you do happen to catch it and you're grading, you might just take a point off.

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You might just be like, oh, you forgot this. And that's, and it's an easy fix. You just, for someone like, for a book like Vodi's, and this happens all the time, by the way, little mistakes like this, grammatical errors, this is the kind of thing we're talking about.

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You just say in the future editions, I'm gonna put a little footnote there. That's all you do. Problem solved.

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No intent behind this, not trying to deceive anyone. It's pretty, honestly,

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I debated whether I should even say anything about this. Again, the only reason, and maybe I made a mistake in talking about it, because it's so minor,

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I probably shouldn't even give it airtime, but the only reason is because I was asked by multiple people about it, and I decided because of that, and because it did seem to start to be causing a stir,

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I would just address it briefly. So if you're trying to be political about this,

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I guess if someone brought it up, you could just say, you know, you're right. There should have been maybe a footnote there.

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I wonder why the editor didn't add one, or why it was overlooked, and maybe we should email the editor, or the publisher, and say, hey, on future editions, in the

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Kindle version, can we just put a footnote there? By the way, what do you think of Ed Litton and all the people defending him?

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Just, you know, let's talk about some real, actual, premeditated plagiarism. So I'm in agreement there should be a footnote.

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I'm in agreement that that kind of stuff is important, and again, most of you probably don't care too much about this.

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I'm coming from a little bit of an academic standpoint, just slightly. I try not to be too much that way, but I am very,

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I'm a stickler for footnotes. That's one thing that I did. You read Social Justice Goes to Church.

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If you read the book I'm about to release, both of them are very heavily researched, and if someone pointed that out in one of my books,

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I'd be right away contacting my publisher, hey, put a footnote there. That's just who I am. I know I'm different than a lot of people, but yeah, it's just a simple thing.

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Way different than, oh, all these sermons that you've plagiarized.

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Wow, you know, taking all these ideas. So plagiarism's not just about, and I need to say this, it's not just about quoting someone without attribution.

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Plagiarism is also about stealing someone's ideas without attribution, and that's serious. And so the other, oh, the other thing, oh, and strand stuff.

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So yeah, I have multiple people asking me about this. It's kind of a similar situation that Owen Strand apparently wrote some stuff, and by the way,

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I should say, I haven't read his new book yet. I do want to at some point. From the people that I know who have read it, they've just told me it's a very basic kind of overview of social justice and stuff, so it's good, it's not like in -depth, it's not as big into naming names and that kind of thing, but I do wanna read it, and in fact,

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I did actually even email Owen and just, I thanked, what did I thank him for? The, oh, he wrote an article about David French, and I just thanked him for that and said, look,

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I know where he is. He's in a different area. He's still in the academic world.

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You're kind of risking your neck when you go against the Guild a little bit, and David French is very much part of the Guild, and he wrote what

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I thought was a very good article about David French, and so I just thanked him for that, and I wrote him,

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I think, one other time in the past and just thanked him that he was coming out to take a stand, and maybe that was a few months ago when he really started to say things, and so anyway, maybe that was half a year ago.

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Time's escaping me now, but anyway. Apparently, it's not even apparently.

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I did look into it some. It's true, and I'll put it this way. Owen Strand did tweet some things over the course of like 2000, maybe 11 or 10, all the way up to 2017, and then he also wrote an article on,

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I forget, was it Patheos? 2014, I think, and there's some woke stuff.

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I can't sugarcoat it. There's some woke stuff there, and I don't want, I wanna be honest with you guys. So what people are saying, what they're trying to do is they're saying that there's hypocrisy going on.

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Now, I don't know everything that's been said. I don't follow Owen Strand very closely.

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I am not aware of him. I never met him. I'm more familiar with Vody. I'm more familiar with some other guys, like John MacArthur, some of the

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Dallas signers. Owen's been always kind of on the periphery in my mind, and I just, I hear about him every now and then, and maybe that'll change, but I haven't read a lot, and so I just have to let you know that, because there might be things that I don't know about that I could bring up if I knew about them, but as far as what

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I know, it appears that Owen's probably changed his positions on some things. He's changed his mind.

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Now, I can't speak to whether or not he's, this is an opportunity, and he's, this is,

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I mean, I think what's going on here, let me say this, I'll back up. I think a lot of people in this

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SBC feel like they can't trust anyone. They've watched Al Mohler, especially, and they thought, this is

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Mr. Conservative, he's just gonna hit this thing out of the park, and then they've come to the realization, slowly over time, but now they're coming to the realization, this guy's an opportunist.

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This guy's not principled like I thought. He'll take a side when it's popular, if it's conservative.

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He'll take a side if it's popular when it's progressive. He'll kind of, he navigates and tries to swim in between troubled waters, as if he, or just not address them, or he'll try to transcend them somehow, and he's very much about Team Al Mohler, not about the people that maybe you thought he was about.

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I mean, that's what a lot of people, I think, are thinking right now. They're coming to this realization that there's opportunists out there, and they sound one way, and they can sound a different way on a different day, depending on what audience they're talking to, right?

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So it's a politician type of thing. I think that might be also what's motivating some of this, why

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I got a number of messages about it. What do you think of Owen, and so forth? I don't know what to say.

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Because I don't know him, I can't say a lot, but this is one thing I can say.

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People do change their minds on things, and you have to at least allow that as a possibility, okay?

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And this goes for the more woke social justice type people who think they really found something here.

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It could very well be that someone like Owen has changed his mind on some things. We all change our mind on things.

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And maturity, I think, says that you admit that over time. You don't try to hide that.

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You're not trying to pretend to be the same person, or hold the same positions, or be consistent if you're not that way.

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You just say, you know what, I changed my mind on that. And then you move on. And you give your reasons maybe why you changed your mind.

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I think there's a lot of people who initially, when the social justice stuff started, they thought, oh yeah, you know, there have been some bad things against women.

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And there have been some bad things against African Americans, or whatever other ethnic minority,

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Chinese, this year especially, focusing on that. But there just have been.

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I've been in churches where they said some insensitive things about this or that. And they kind of started to go down that path.

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And then they realized, wait, hold on. Hold on, you're making very firm designations about oppress and oppressive, oppressor classes.

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And you want some kind of a redistribution of privilege or resources. And hold on, they started seeing red flags.

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So could that not be possible in this scenario? I think it very well could be. And it's probably what is going on.

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Again, I don't know 100%, but I'm just saying that's gotta be a possibility you're considering. And hopefully, though, if this gets any bigger, maybe it's too small to even talk about.

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But I think it might merit at least some kind of a statement of like, hey, yeah. Some of those older things,

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I don't agree with everything I wrote. I don't agree with everything I wrote, even 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

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I said a number of things that now I look back and I think, man, I would have phrased that differently.

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We all change, we all mature. So just wanted to say that. And hopefully, that was helpful to some of you as you're trying to think through this.

22:41

What else? All right, so we're getting in. This is the main topic here. So we're 20 minutes in.

22:47

I didn't expect to spend that much time on this. Let's get into the main topic, if I can pull it up here.

22:54

The American Solidarity Party, that's what we're gonna talk about today. And I probably spent about five minutes just poking around.

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But I want to spend more than that. And we're gonna discover some things, I guess, together.

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Reason I'm doing this is I was asked to. Someone today sent me that. Karen Swallow Pryor, who works at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, known to be kind of a social justice proponent, not just in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, but just in evangelicalism more broadly. She's got some influence. Written some books.

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And they said, hey, can you check out this party, this American Solidarity Party? It's a third party that's supposed to appeal to Christians, specifically.

23:39

And could you take a look at it and tell us what is this? Because maybe, and here's the thing.

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You probably haven't heard of this. And maybe I'm focusing on something that doesn't affect your life a whole lot.

23:52

But it may in the future. And that's really why. And if it's not the American Solidarity Party, it'll be another party that rises up as kind of like this third way in between progressives and conservatives,

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Christian option. I sense that there's kind of this undercurrent of people who just, they really want to vote

24:14

Democrat, but they cannot, the abortion thing is just keeping them from doing it.

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Or maybe the abortion thing and some of the pro -transgender stuff, they just can't quite swallow that pill.

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So they have to come up with an alternative. That's just my perception, that there's a demand for this in more elite

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Christian circles. I don't think anything's ever gonna get off the ground too far. I don't think it's gonna be a serious contender.

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But it does give people kind of, what it does is it neutralizes, I think, what would have probably been a

24:46

Republican vote at one time. I don't necessarily think, and I could be wrong, maybe it does take from the

24:53

Democrats, but I don't necessarily think that's mainly what it does. I don't think it's taking from the Democrats as much as it is from evangelicals who probably at one time would have been more on the right.

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Maybe it takes from some Democrats, it probably does. But I think more so it's gonna be evangelicals who have kind of devolved, in my opinion, to embrace social justice, and now they don't, they're homeless, they don't know, they can't be in the

25:14

Republican Party anymore in good conscience in their minds. So what do we do? Or the conservative parties, there's various conservative parties,

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Constitution Party, they have to be part of some option that values pro -life, but also values social justice.

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So I think that's what this is, and we're gonna look at it more to kind of determine that.

25:36

So this is the American Solidarity Party. If you click on it, it's gonna take us to American Solidarity Party, 2021 convention, which already happened,

25:46

I guess, right? Yeah. So I don't, hmm, okay. Well, they had a convention.

25:54

And some of the names here, Karen Swallow Pryor is the first one here in kind of bold print here.

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I didn't really recognize, maybe I should have, but I don't recognize any of these other people, except I recognize the name

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George Yancey. And the reason I recognize the name George Yancey, I think, because I looked him up, is because of a crazy open letter,

26:20

I guess, if you wanna call it that, that he wrote back. You can go look it up.

26:25

I'm not gonna spend any time on it today. It's total critical race theory. It's an open letter that he wrote in the

26:31

New York Times. I think it's called Dear White People or something like that. But basically, he basically accuses all white people of being racists because they're benefiting from a system of privilege.

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It's all of that. And it's terrible, total woke guy. And so that was one,

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I was like, oh, red flag right there. That's someone that, I mean, that caused controversy at the time.

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And he was put on even a list of really radical professors. And so, yeah, he's part of the

27:01

American Solidarity Party, so it wasn't very encouraging. So here's the about section, about us.

27:07

The American Solidarity Party is a true organically grown grassroots party that was formed by people looking for a third way, there it is, a third way, in the polarized and interest group -driven landscape of American politics modeled on the

27:18

Christian Democrat parties throughout the world, shaped by unique aspects of American culture and law.

27:24

So what's Christian Democrat Party? So if you click on that, it takes you to this. Christian Democracy.

27:30

Christian Democracy is a political movement that first emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, influenced by Catholic social teaching, starting with the papal encyclical,

27:41

I'm not gonna pronounce this Latin right, probably, Rerum Noverum, I hope

27:47

I got that right, by Pope Leo XIII. And by the way, Rerum Noverum is actually, it is, in the book that I'm writing right now,

27:58

I actually talk about this encyclical and what it was attempting to do. In fact,

28:03

I will read for you what I said. Following the Industrial Revolution, Roman Catholic social teaching sought to preserve the natural order which had previously existed through agrarian social bonds and obligations.

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Neither capitalism's unrestricted competition of forces nor socialism's opposition of classes was an acceptable philosophy.

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Instead, a social justice concerned with the common good was to ensure both the right to private property and a living wage.

28:30

However, okay, so then I go on and basically say that that totally changed and morphed into socialism, beginning in the 1960s.

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But this is one of the things, because it uses the term social justice and a lot of Christians, now it's not a lot,

28:44

I shouldn't say that. There's a guy at the Heritage Foundation, okay, so it's like one guy, who wants to go back, there's probably a few of them, and reclaim social justice, it's a conservative thing.

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In fact, I think it was in 2010, the Heritage Foundation did a whole series on social justice, and it's hard to find it, but I think

29:02

I actually have all the videos downloaded to my computer. Al Mohler's in one of them. And they're trying to say social justice is it's just like a concern for the common good, and it's conservative.

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And they're trying to reclaim the term. I think they gave up on that, and with good reason, because it's actually not, that's not the root.

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Like social justice today, when you hear the word, it's not rooted in that. It's not rooted in rerum noverum.

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I think a lot of people would want it to be, it's not though. It's rooted more in Fabian socialists, who went to Great Britain, and came back to America, and thought, we can't really market socialism, we have to say social justice, because they don't like socialism in America.

29:44

That's the kind of social justice we're dealing with. And I trace it all out in the book that I'm writing. That's why when people say that, oh, we can reclaim this term, or this term, it actually means,

29:54

I'm like, no, no, no, it doesn't. It's always meant in the trajectory, the context, how it's been passed down to us, in that tradition, it's always meant, the reallocation of, well, trying to attain an egalitarian society by reducing the influence, or deconstructing hierarchies that get in the way, and using an all -powerful centralized authority to do that somehow.

30:23

It's always meant that, pretty much. So, anyway, so they're referencing that, and I don't have a huge problem with that, but generally, when people try to reference that today, well,

30:35

I'll go on. If they try to reference Catholic social teaching, my red flag goes up. And by the neocatalanist worldview, as heralded by Dutch Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper, my red flag goes up a little bit on this, too, by the way.

30:46

And it's not, or yellow flag, I should say. It's because of the way Kuyper has been, it could be just the way

30:53

Kuyper's been interpreted. I think it's more than that, though. I think it's more. I think it's because of Kuyper's common grace. He ended up getting very murky in some of his writings, not making clear delineations between common grace and the grace that saves us in a solidific kind of way.

31:12

In fact, I think there's one quote where he talks about common grace being kind of like the, it's the foundation for the special grace that saves us.

31:21

And it's just, you can't be doing that, theologically, it's just, it's really careless at the very least.

31:28

I write about this in Social Justice Goes to Church, but generally people today that really like Kuyper, George Marston, I'm trying to think who all, there's a lot of, there's a guy at just, he's a professor still at Southeastern, I'm blanking on his name now.

31:44

Ashford, Bruce Ashford, really loves Abraham Kuyper. Tim Keller loves Abraham Kuyper. Richard Mao is like the

31:50

Kuyper guy who kind of reintroduced Kuyper, or I should say first really introduced him to evangelicalism in the modern form.

31:58

These guys are pretty much all on the left, in my opinion, more so. They're, at least in evangelicalism, they'd be on the left.

32:06

Richard Mao, certainly. And I mean, he's the guy that was part of Evangelicals for Biden, pro -life evangelicals for Biden, something like that.

32:15

So when I see this, I don't, it's not like a disqualification, but I'm just, I'm giving you some of the red flags that I see when

32:22

I look at things like this. All right, we're gonna move along faster. The strength of this ecumenical collaboration led to Christian Democratic parties coming to power in various countries of Europe, as well as Latin America, where they emphasized several unique concepts that promoted the common good.

32:35

Okay, if you're talking about Latin America, they're talking about liberation theology.

32:41

They have to be. I don't know what else they could be talking about. And if someone wants to correct me on that and say, well, here's one in Latin America that's

32:47

Protestant, or here's one that's not liberation theology, let me know. But pretty sure if you're talking about,

32:53

I'm pretty sure that they have to be. And if they're not, they need to be specific. Because if you just talk about Latin America, that's what

32:58

I'm gonna think and what most people will. Who know kind of the history of that region. Where they emphasize several unique concepts that promoted the common good.

33:07

Watch out for that word, the common good. It doesn't have to be bad, but when I hear it used a lot today, it's like, hey, everyone needs to take the vaccine for the common good, right?

33:16

It's used to trump individual rights. The American Solidarity Party identifies itself as a

33:22

Christian democratic political party. All right, we're gonna keep going. Let's see.

33:27

They embrace the concepts of solidarity, subsidiary, severe sovereignty, and stewardship.

33:33

Those are actually all pretty good. Subsidiary, if I pronounce this right, subsidiarity, there we go.

33:40

That's actually a Catholic doctrine. And it basically means, it's kind of more like local control is better.

33:47

And so I would agree, I think, with at least, if you're applying it to politics, yeah, sure.

33:56

So nothing huge, huge yet. Let's see. They believe in different spheres of authority.

34:04

That's good. Stewardship or creation care. Now that's a buzzword I don't like, creation care. That's often environmentalism in the church.

34:11

Emphasizes the responsibility of humanity to look after the environment that offers us resources that we use in everyday life. Okay, well, I think we should be conservationists.

34:18

We should be taking care of our neck of the woods. That's part of being a good steward.

34:25

Let's see. In order to prevent the monopolization of power, as well as to encourage ingenuity, while still pursuing the common good and social welfare.

34:32

Okay, now we're getting some buzzwords that, I think this is phrased very intentionally. Christian Democrats have historically advocated a social market economy in contrast to a government -controlled command economy.

34:43

Okay, social market. So they didn't say free market, it said social market. This social market approach represents a third way between socialism and a laissez -faire economy, combining free enterprise with the government regulation.

34:54

To this end, Christian democracy has advocated for labor unions, which help in ensuring that workers have a day of rest, a living wage, and a leave for familial responsibility.

35:07

Okay, so if you're for local government, you're for all of that, then why be for these labor unions that force under government sanction,

35:21

I should say, force companies, in really contradiction to the parable of the laborers, they force companies, they force employers to do things with their wealth, with their money, that it's up to them to do what they wanna do with their private property.

35:39

But this basically says that there's a claim that the government has on those things.

35:46

And that claim is, it's a claim not to defend society in times of war or anything like that, it is a claim that they have simply because of, for the common good.

36:01

And this is a, there's a lot of wiggle room in this. This is kind of a blank check.

36:06

So I would like to suggest there really isn't a third way on this. If there is,

36:13

I think there, you could say that you're skeptical of commercialism or unbridled,

36:18

I guess, capitalism, free trade that's unbridled on like a, in a modern state sense, crony capitalism, that kind of thing.

36:26

You could probably say that and still be in favor of a general free market and local controls and that kind of thing.

36:34

There is, I think, a way in localism, kind of a more agrarian, but localism to do that.

36:40

But that's not what they're talking about. They're talking about a, today, as things stand today, they're gonna support the labor unions.

36:49

They're going to support what really are positive rights. This is in direct contradiction to the founders, right?

36:56

The founders believe in negative rights. Rights are tethered to responsibilities. Well, this is positive rights.

37:02

You have a right to a living wage, right? I mean, this is socialism right here.

37:08

This is, Bernie Sanders would love this, this kind of framing at the end here. So I wouldn't buy this idea that this is a halfway measure.

37:17

No, this is socialism, it's Christian socialism. That's probably a more honest way to put this. So that's their, about us,

37:26

I guess, who they are. Statement of principles, let's go there. Sanctity of life, social justice.

37:34

What do they say there? We affirm a special collective responsibility to the most vulnerable members of society and call for societal structures that uphold the equal value and dignity of each person, regardless of any personal characteristics.

37:44

This requires efforts to address systemic and historic injustices. Okay, there's your reparations right there, including longstanding racial injustice in a way that confronts inequalities that disparage innate personal dignity.

37:53

All right, you're getting socialism with these guys. You're gonna get it. The central authority is going to force the redistribution of certain things.

38:03

Let's see, centrality of the family, economic, security, community -oriented society. Let's see,

38:13

I wanna go for the stuff here. Care for the environment. Both government and civil society have responsibility.

38:21

Like, in what sense, though? Is it local government? Is it state government? Is it the federal government? That's where I usually get a little hung up, is like, why the federal government or the national government has, if you look at a map of the

38:34

West and look at Arizona or Utah or some of these Western states, look how much the federal government owns. And you might wanna think to yourself, would it be better if this was in the hands of the people who actually live there, local control over it?

38:46

They get to manage it, steward it. If there's a national park, if it could be a state park that they chart.

38:52

I mean, I don't know. All right, so that's, I'm seeing a pro -life socialist when

39:00

I look at this. What else do they talk about? I felt like I saw something when

39:07

I was poking around here earlier on the pro -life stuff, but I'm not seeing it. Elected officials, have they elected anyone?

39:14

Let's look at that. So they got some local folks, I guess. City manager of St.

39:20

Mary's, Pennsylvania, Board of Education in Connecticut. So it's really local folks. It's only a few people.

39:26

Town council member here or there, okay. Party leadership.

39:32

Let's see if we recognize any of these folks. I do not recognize one person on this.

39:42

There was something that was about holistic pro -life stuff, though. Let's see if I can find it.

39:49

Oh, here it is. Due to these values, we are a proud member of the Consistent Life Network. So I looked at it,

39:54

Consistent Life Network. And let's see, we are a network of organizations and individuals committed to the protection of life which is threatened in today's world by war, abortion, poverty, racism, the death penalty, and euthanasia.

40:09

We believe these issues are linked under a consistent ethic of life. This is, again, the Ron Sider just flatlining pro -life issues.

40:19

So smoking's a pro -life issue, so is abortion. So do not murder is the same as an adult making a decision, a quality of life decision that they wanna make for themselves.

40:29

So this is the death penalty. That's even something that's advocated in scripture.

40:35

So how Christian is this party? So I just view that as a

40:41

Trojan horse. That is a weakening of the pro -life movement. What else we got here?

40:48

Let's look at their Twitter. This was interesting. One hour ago, they posted, it's been five years since Obama wore a tan suit and we're feeling nostalgic for a more innocent time when that whole news cycle was considered an exceptionally dumb one.

41:03

That's interesting. I don't know. Is like, I guess they're sentimental for Obama, just remembering

41:10

Obama. This was the post today that someone wanted, I think why they wanted me to comment. We're pleased to announce that Dr.

41:16

Karen Swall Pryor has graciously agreed to join our board of advisors. So that gives them, I guess, some credibility with some folks in the more progressive evangelical world, if I can use that term.

41:28

It doesn't, a lot of their posts don't seem all that serious. There's a lot of just like kind of Twitter, like not serious

41:34

Twitter stuff going on here. Like this, like it's just, you wouldn't think a political party would be posting a gif like that of a knight dancing.

41:44

But let's see. All right, so let's, oh, so I did this.

41:50

I just, okay, you can do like a Twitter advanced search. I just put socialism. And I just wanna see, okay, what do they say about socialism?

42:01

And I haven't looked into all of this, but I just, I typed in that whole thing. Let's see. Neither libertarianism nor socialism, okay.

42:14

This is interesting. Oh, stop, Ted Cruz. Denmark does not equal East Germany. Democratic socialism does not equal communism.

42:21

Senator Sanders' vision doesn't need guns or atheism. Yeah, it kind of does.

42:28

Government, that's naive. Government, if they are going to force, they bear the sword.

42:35

That's the whole job of government. If they are going to compel you to pay a tax to redistribute to someone else who doesn't have money or something, eventually, if you refuse to pay it, it winds up with guns.

42:45

That's where you wind up. And yes, the foundation for these things, one of the aspects of it would be atheism, would be this notion that it's not

42:57

God and a created order, but mankind, who can craft things according to man's own ideas and will, and shape things, and live in a utopia of some kind.

43:09

And that's why this stuff started out in atheism, a lot of it.

43:15

So, let's see. Capitalism and socialism clearly do not provide a cure for what ails us.

43:20

Yeah, so they keep, if they rack on socialism, it's capitalism's in the same breath.

43:31

All right, so, I'm not seeing a lot here.

43:37

I'll read this, I haven't read it yet. The real problem with, oh, I don't even know, they're responding to something. See, this is so complicated,

43:43

I can't even get into it. I don't know what they're responding to. They're not making a lot of general statements here. I don't know who's running the Twitter account.

43:50

Making fun of a Fox News contributor here, I guess, for not knowing what socialism is. This is actually telling.

43:56

I should have seen this first and said something. Okay, so, you have a Fox News guy saying that, claiming that it's socialism, that Biden is suggesting a universal basic income, which is, that is.

44:07

And the American Solidarity Party says, when you definitely know what socialism is in a sarcastic way. So, they're saying that universal basic income is not socialism.

44:16

So, that's fascinating. All right, so that's the American Solidarity Party, and the person who asked me to talk about it,

44:25

I have talked about it now, and you are aware. It is pretty much what I thought it was gonna be. It is a political party dedicated to being, basically, socialist, even though they say they're halfway between the two.

44:40

Government provides, is the provider, gives you universal basic income. You're guaranteed a living wage, et cetera, and, which actually, universal basic income is a step beyond that.

44:56

And at the same time, we don't like abortion. That's what you're getting from this. It is not a viable option,

45:03

I think, for a truly consistent Christian who has an ethic. And one of the things, and I'll say this, one of the things that I find interesting is that so many people on the

45:14

Christian progressive side, Tim Keller, David Platt, John Piper even, to sort of some extent,

45:23

Jonathan Lehman, Ed Stetzer, I mean, it's almost like everyone.

45:30

It's a lot of people. They have this sort of idea that they have to reinvent the wheel, or Christians say they kind of have to reinvent the wheel.

45:38

Like, Christians haven't really had any ideas on politics, apparently. There is no tradition of political thinking or political theory within Christianity.

45:47

I mean, they have to go to the Catholics. It's not gonna be like a Protestant one if they're gonna point to anything.

45:55

But it's sort of this idea that today, in the political environment in the United States, and in the English -speaking world, but the

46:01

United States specifically, there's just, there's Democrats, there's Republicans, there's conservatives, there's progressives, but there's no

46:08

Christian, real Christian option here. And you gotta transcend these things.

46:14

And there's no Christian tradition, as if Christianity was just absent from these things. And it's up to them to come along and guide you.

46:22

David Platt's book about voting was just like this. The problem, though, with that is there actually is, there are

46:29

Christian traditions. And in the English -speaking world, and in the United States, there is a conservatism, kind of a

46:37

Burkean conservatism, but there is a conservatism that does trace back to, and English common law is part of that, in preserving negative rights and separation of powers.

46:50

These things are part of a tradition that developed over time, but much of it stemming from principles within Christianity.

46:59

And it's not revolutionary. Christianity is not revolutionary. So we already have a tradition, or at least there is,

47:10

I'm not saying the Republican Party exemplifies this in every way, but you read their platform, a lot of it is influenced by a

47:15

Christianity. It streams into the Republican Party. There's other streams now coming in that are getting deeper and wider, and we want to, as best we possibly can, preserve the true and valuable and good things that we've had.

47:30

That's what being a conservative is. But this tradition that we have, this conservative tradition, is rooted in a

47:38

Christian understanding of the world, Christian metaphysic, Christian ethics. And to pretend like that just doesn't exist, and that's secular, that's totally secular, and progressivism is totally secular, and that you gotta come up with some third way that's truly

47:55

Christian, that is a mixture of the two, or is something supposedly transcending them, or brand new, and an invention of modern people who are finally going to apply

48:08

Christianity to the political realm, it's just naive. And it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

48:15

Why not work with what you already have? Why not start there and build a common foundation there?

48:21

Now, I'm all in favor of a political party, especially on the local level.

48:26

If you can form a political party, especially if you're in a place like New York, where the Republicans, for the most part, are pro -choice, or they've caved on so many things.

48:37

It's happening now at the national level more, but especially in more progressive areas. And there are alternatives there, but if you wanna form an alternative third party, nothing against that, but don't pretend like we're the

48:53

Christian one. We're totally, and we're innovative. We're just starting this.

48:59

Maybe we bring in some Catholic social teaching, maybe a little from the Dutch, but there was never an

49:04

English -speaking Christian tradition to draw from, apparently. So we gotta go to these outside sources.

49:10

It's just strange to me. And maybe someone can figure that out and tell me why they do that, and put it in the comments, because you could draw from the

49:18

English tradition, English -speaking tradition, but they don't wanna do it. They don't wanna point back to Americans who have been

49:24

Christians, who have been involved in politics as much. They really just,

49:29

I don't know, I don't know. What's up with that? So just an observation. All right, so that's all

49:36

I have for today. I hope that was helpful. I know I'm kind of, I feel like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel a little bit with this particular podcast, just because it is so late, and I'm just,

49:45

I'm so busy with so many things, but I wanted to put something out there rather than not put something out there, and I wanted to try to encourage you.

49:52

There will be more coming this week, by the way. You can pray for me, and just for our move, for my relative who's sick with pneumonia.

50:02

I'd appreciate that, and I just appreciate all your encouraging notes, your prayers. And one last thing, because I should plug it again, because many of you took advantage of it.

50:14

A .D. Robla's book, Social Justice Pharisees. I have a copy of it, I'm gonna grab it.

50:24

Social Justice Pharisees. Woke church tactics and how to engage them. Link is in the info section. For patrons, it's five bucks shipping, that's it.

50:32

For everyone else, 20 bucks. So five bucks for shipping, $15 for the book. But the links are in the info section if you want that.

50:38

Social Justice goes to church as well. Reason I'm saying this now is because when I move and I go on vacation, there'll be a whole gap of time

50:45

I won't be able to send books. So if you get it right now, I'll be able to send it immediately. So you might wanna take advantage of that offer.

50:53

It is still available. It won't be available for long. It's wall supplies last. So there you go.

50:59

Links are in the info section if you want to take advantage of that. Hope that was helpful. God bless and have a good rest of your day.