The Purge in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome once again everyone to the Conversations That Matter Podcast. I'm your host John Harris with a special guest today.

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We're going to talk about the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. We've talked about this denomination before and David Ramirez, I think

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I had on twice to talk about the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and then we reviewed one of the statements

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I think it was Matthew Harrison, the president made a few months ago, but things have been developing.

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I've been keeping my eye on this particular case especially for the last couple months with an individual named

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Ryan Turnipseed. Ryan is a student actually. He's studying economics and he wants to go to law school.

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He has a website for people who want to see his YouTube channel or his blogs. It's findmyfriends .net forward slash

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Ryan Turnipseed and I'll put the link in the info section for those who are curious about that. But Ryan is going through a process or has gone through a process.

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He'll fine tune my language and explain to you exactly what's happening. What I can only describe as an outsider is disciplinary action of some kind.

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Attempts to control, attempts to make sure that someone's neutralized or at least,

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I think from the perspective of the Lutheran Church, it would probably be putting the best face on it, trying to call a sinner to repent, but there's clearly some other things going on.

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There's a political angle to what's going on. I think this gives us a window into what's happening more broadly in the

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Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. With that, I just want to thank Ryan Turnipseed for being willing to talk about this.

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Thank you for coming on, Ryan. Ryan Turnipseed Thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Tim Cernak So I saw your thread.

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You have a very extensive Twitter thread. I should just never get into a conversation with you about details and facts because you're so sourced.

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If anything, it was over -sourced with all the emails, all the messages, all the recordings of conversations that you've had.

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I have a few of them, a few choice recordings that I pulled out that I wanted to play. Before I do that though, could you give everyone a background to how this started?

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I think the scope, if you agree with this, we can start here, is when you decided to come out and critique publicly the

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Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod's new publication of the larger catechism that included commentary that was unorthodox.

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That kind of put you on the map and gained the attention of the bigwigs in the denomination.

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Is that correct? Yes, unorthodox. I think the audience would understand it more.

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A lot of it was just explicitly woke. You had essays literally entitled social justice and Lutheranism and all this other stuff.

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Essays saying that gentrification was a sin. Essays saying that self -defense was immoral. You only defend your neighbor or yourself for your neighbor and all this other stuff that I would say is very anti -scriptural.

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I read through this book. One third of it was Luther's large catechism, a very old book, about 500 years old.

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He goes through the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and a couple of other things and the sacraments.

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That's the other things. He goes through them and he basically just explains here's what they are, here's what you need, you

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Christian, but on a higher level than the small catechism. This is meant for more learned people.

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The small catechism is meant for either children, the illiterate, new converts. That's the sort of dynamic you have there.

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This new thing that was put out, about a third of it was that. Another third of it was essays that had been bound into the same book.

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They were attempting to annotate and bring up to speed, sort of put a modern angle on the whole thing for each of the different parts of the large catechism.

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Some of these essays were fine. Some of these essays were good. This is why my thread wasn't a page -by -page critique of the whole thing, because there was some good, some alright things in there.

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Some things that I kind of questioned why it was in there. I didn't really know the use, but not bad, obviously.

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Then you come across self -defense is immoral. You can only defend yourself for your neighbor.

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You can only view this through vocation. You come across things like the gentrification is sinful.

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You have one person say that Genesis is not a scientific textbook and should not be viewed in that way, to which technically is correct, but the only times in which

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I'm sure you or I have heard that is when people are trying to then argue for in the next sentence, therefore we can view this in sort of a

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Darwinistic way. I'm sure that the author didn't intend that to be the case, but you and I have seen enough institutions, and a lot of the audience,

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I'm sure, have seen enough institutions get subverted because of sloppy language by people who might have had good intentions.

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You had a few essays that were talking about sexuality, transgenderism.

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Once again, this is a prime example of just how poorly worded this is, because I'm sure that the author did not intend to do so, but the way it was written was specifically that homosexual lust, transgenderism, pornography consumption, and pedophilia are the speck in your neighbor's eye rather than the log in your own, because we have overlooked fornication in this society for too long.

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I can agree with the second point, but the first point is completely superfluous. You could axe the whole sentence and the point would stand stronger, but for whatever reason we have a sentence right before it that equalizes pedophilia, pornography, homosexuality, and transgenderism with fornication, which

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I view as wrong, and many others did as well. Pastors, laymen, people from other denominations, they were absolutely appalled by this.

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So that's the other 300 pages is those essays. Now, if I'm not mistaken, your critique, because I think that became the most popular, a lot of people were sharing that, did not take the wind out of the sails, because Matthew Harrison had followed up with a,

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I think he put a pause on it. What's the status of that now? Right, and just for completion's sake, the other third was citations and like, go read this other thing.

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It was very strangely formatted, but so that critique went out, probably got a couple hundred thousand views, which is insane for the

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Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. Usually they don't get any press coverage at all, it seems. So a bunch of pastors, a bunch of laymen, a bunch of other people from other denominations would not shock me if that happened, basically wrote to him and said, this is, you know, do something, please.

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This is terrible. And in about two or three days from me publishing that thread, he pulled it from distribution and said,

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I am the president, I'm going to review this, which seemed like everything was going our way.

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It didn't matter that he had okayed it beforehand and that it passed review three times or whatever. He had heard us and he was going to review it.

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And then I think about nine days later, at the very start of February, he put out a statement saying the accusations were unfounded.

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We can have discussion, but I am putting this back out there with full support. Well, that was quite the turnaround.

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And then, and he also had a statement. I know I reviewed it a few months ago on this podcast condemning,

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I think he might've used the phrase alt -right and identifying some of the origin of the controversy over the larger catechism as stemming from people who had alt -right sympathies.

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Is that correct? Yes. So that was a couple of weeks later. I remember it because I was at dinner with my grandmother for her birthday.

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And I had asked a couple of friends, you know, I haven't been paying attention. Has anything happened today? And I got told, nope, nothing's happened.

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And two minutes later, someone said, oh, by the way, here's this from Facebook. One of the pastors posted it and it was that letter.

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And I read through it and I was absolutely amazed that in the span of like three or four or three weeks at that point,

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I think it would be three and a half maybe. We went from, yeah, we're going to pull this from distribution.

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There's obviously a lot wrong with it. A lot of things are poorly worded. We can do better. And then like three and a half weeks later, it is these accusations are unfounded.

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The alt -right did this and we are going to excommunicate them. That was the other part that was included in the letter that was very strange because the

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LCMS is organized on a congregational level, I guess you could say. There's a synod that has oversight, coordinates funds for like missionaries and all this other stuff.

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But like excommunications, church discipline, congregational matters are handled on the locality.

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So whenever he has this paragraph saying, I am not going to upend our form of church governance here, but I want these people excommunicated.

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It's kind of like saying, you know, I don't want X, but we're going to do X. And I remember that some of the complaints were even things like,

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I think, upholding Old Testament penalties for certain sexual sins and things of that nature, which

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I just thought to myself, I think Martin Luther would have probably been condemned under that kind of a standard.

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He specifically would. There's a body of Luther's works, all of his sermons, notes, essays, theses, and all, whatever else.

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And the one for Christian society, he's talking about marriage and specifically adultery.

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And, you know, what do you do? And he basically just says, if someone has committed adultery, the innocent party can remarry.

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Why can they remarry? Well, it's because the person who committed the sin is already dead as per the Old Testament law, and therefore should be executed.

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If the Prince doesn't do this, that's on them. I guess you can just banish them or something. There's the summary of like two pages of writing there.

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He draws upon the Old Testament there. Very few Lutherans would do that today.

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Right. Like I've read Calvin, he does something very similar. All the other reformers, this is not something they disagreed on somehow.

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We've only just found out 500 years later that they were in grave error for advocating this.

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So, you know, that's one thing. I don't even know who was advocating, you know, like executing homosexuals.

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I know that the nation of Uganda since then has enacted that into law. So that hasn't stopped the

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LCMS seeking fellowship with the Ugandan Lutheran Church. And one of the greater ironies in this, but that was one of the charges.

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That is interesting. It is. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, I better not say what I'm thinking, but I'll just say this.

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It would be probably to their disadvantage in trying to get some kind of social justice credentials if they were going to condemn the

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Ugandan church. This is the same way, though, for not just the Lutherans, the same way for the Anglicans, for the Methodists. They all have this hard time with the fact that many of the members of their denomination in Africa, who they are supposed to be platforming and redistributing resources to go or at least channeling resources to go help and all of this, don't agree with their stance or the stance, the direction they want to go on sexual ethics.

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And it just ties them up in knots. And it is a little humorous, I suppose, but it's it shows the hypocrisy and it shows

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I think it gives a window into some motivations, which motivations are hard.

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Motivations are difficult. You only can go with what people say, but what people say can often reveal what's what's in their heart.

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And we're going to hear today what some people have said to you since the time that you just described.

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So I think we're going back. Was it last fall that you started this process of critiquing the larger catechism?

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It would have been this January. So, oh, yeah, it feels like longer. It was really not recent. It was like longer.

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Yeah. OK, so it wasn't as long ago as I thought. So it was in January. Since that time, a number of developments have taken place and we'll talk about some of them.

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I think I think the best way probably is to proceed as we go through your recording. So let me just play. This is the first we'll play the first recording.

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I think I have nine of them here and they're each about a minute or a minute and a half long. Is there a list of statements I'm supposed to disavow?

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And I think you said, you know who they are or something like that. Well, I can't give you specifics.

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Joseph has all the specifics. OK. But I don't imagine it's probably that hard to find.

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OK. So I am going to be asked to disavow statements and not people.

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I don't know what you mean by that. Well, well, you know,

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I mean, association as well, probably.

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My impression is that the thing that you say and do online with these guys is perceived as being too cozy.

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Or like a better word. OK, so let's stop right there.

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What's going on there? We just kind of fly in the wall, landed in the middle of a meeting. This is one of the first or if not the first meeting that you had where there were there was a run in with LCMS leadership.

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So what's going on? So that's the second meeting. And I don't know which clips you pulled. Do you have the why I recorded this thing just so that I can if not,

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I can throw that out here now. Why did I record these meetings? Oh, there was a recording where you explained why you were.

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Yeah, it was the justification. You had so many recordings. I was trying to zone in on the ones that I thought were the most significant.

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But feel free to elaborate and let people know additional things you recorded just at the outset here.

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Why was this recorded? Because that seems like a pretty untrustworthy, sneaky and terrible move.

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Well, in actuality, you would be correct. But in this case, it was defensive because I am not the first person that had this happen to them.

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I am about the first person that got everything on recording. Why did I get everything on recording?

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Well, the person that had this happen to them immediately before me was an elder in an LCMS congregation.

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And he was asked to meet with his pastor. He showed up and the pastor and a few elders were there.

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And they told him, we're going to record this, by the way. And he asked if he could have it afterwards. And they said yes.

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So after this had happened, the guy was pressured to resign his office of the eldership, which he complied with for whatever reason.

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And then he asked for the recording and they told him, no, we're keeping it. So this was an

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LCMS church and they had recorded him and they had withheld the recording.

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And then whenever I brought this up to the pastor and the recording here, the guy with the deeper voice who I was talking to,

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I brought that up and I basically just said, is this not unjust or something like that? And he, his first response was, why didn't this other guy have his own recording?

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And then he kind of laughed to which point, you know, I had kind of been hoping that I could have just deleted this recording, gone about everything as normal without recording everything, but whenever you have other

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LCMS churches recording people and the outsiders are saying, well, you should have just brought your own recording and laughed about it, what else am

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I going to take from that than I'm going to record myself from here on out forever? Yeah, and for the purpose,

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I mean, in another podcast, I, or we can talk about the circumstances under which a recording's appropriate.

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I didn't sense that this needed to be justified and probably because I've seen this train before so many times as well.

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And I understand fully why someone would record a meeting of that nature. It's a little weird when

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I hear about people who record every conversation they have, or just record, keep their phone on record when they're with friends.

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That's weird. I'm sorry. Or just assume that every friendly phone call is, or that puts a strain on a phone call where you know that things are serious.

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But in this case, you're in a meeting and it's serious. It's already serious. Who's the gentleman that you're talking to in that particular clip?

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He is my college pastor, the campus ministry pastor, but he's also the circuit visitor is what they're called for this little area that I'm in.

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And for the way that the LCMS works in it's a hierarchy or government. You have pastors who are just normal pastors.

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You have circuit visitors who are kind of over a small geographic area and they basically provide oversight for pastors.

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I don't know if they are officially above pastors, like in a hierarchy, but I do know that they provide oversight.

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They're kind of like an overseer for this small group. And the person that are above them is like the district president for like a whole state or part of a state if there's a lot of people there.

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So that's kind of the hierarchy. So he called the meeting then that we just pulled the recording from?

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I actually called that meeting. And so this is for context here, and this is in the thread.

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I had met with him once before when the first email was sent to my dad saying, we're going to be talking about Ryan's internet associations.

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We're deeply concerned. I should stop you real quick. And your dad is an elder at your church, so people know. Right. So he was included in his email asking him to recuse himself under the charge that he would be inherently biased because we're talking about his son.

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A bunch of people pointed out that that kind of goes against the idea of a presbyter or an elder supposed to have spiritual leadership over people younger than them.

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But in this case, he's being asked not to do that for his own son. He didn't end up recusing himself.

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But that day that I heard about this, basically, I asked that pastor and that recording, can

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I meet with you and talk about this? You know, what on earth is going on? Because up until this point,

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I had been told that most of the people around here anyways were in support of that catechism thread that I did and the criticisms with it.

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So it was kind of like a complete 180 that I found out about in the afternoon when my dad called me while I was at school and he said, hey,

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I've got something important here. Here's an email from your pastor saying we're going to talk about your internet associations.

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Now, I had asked him if this was going to happen, if I was going to be gone after by other pastors, probably a few days after that thread took off.

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And he kind of just laughed and he said, no, that'll never happen. I'll defend you if so. This is the campus pastor?

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This is this pastor in that recording. And this is that a month later, obviously didn't happen. But in that first meeting, he basically just said, the district president is very concerned with what you're doing online.

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And I kind of, I asked him, all right, what's happening? And didn't really get anything solid.

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So kind of like a gesture of goodwill, I went through like the last few things that I had posted up until that point.

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And I just said, all right, here's what I'm arguing here. I know I've had one pastor take this out of context and tried to paint me as some like ethnic cleanser or something was what he was calling me.

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Very obviously not true. There's going to be a lot of things that get thrown at me that just aren't backed up by evidence.

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And you'd expect it to have some kernel of truth, considering these are clergy, but they don't.

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So I basically just walked him through because I thought that was the issue was this one pastor that was in fellowship with the

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LCMS. He misunderstood something that I was doing. So I just kind of showed my pastor.

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I was like, here's the point I was making. Here's nowhere in here do I call for any of the things he says

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I do. And we both left kind of, you're both happy. We went to the service afterwards.

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And then I get a text message on, I think like March, might have been

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March 1st or 2nd or something like that, early March. And it's a text message that was sent out to four people in total, counting the sender.

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My pastor at home, the circuit pastor that we've been talking about, and one of the congregants at my church, and then me.

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And it basically just said, do you have time to meet this next week? And I said, I gave him a time eventually.

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And he said, all right, I had to ask him, what are we meeting about? And he said, we are very concerned about your online involvement.

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And I asked him, well, do you have any specifics? And he said, that's what we're going to get into. And the last message for that entire group or whatever was me saying, if you were trying to broadcast any sense of good faith or security or anything like that, you would say the charges or the discussion topic or anything like that beforehand.

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Because even in normal conversation, I don't think people just say, hey, let's meet on this day, I'll tell you why later.

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That's a pretty strange thing. It's especially strange when I kind of know the backdrop already. My dad had told me all this other stuff.

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I had gone to one, the pastor's indicating I knew kind of what they were on about. And then I kind of get brushed aside whenever I ask, can you tell me what we're going to talk about?

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I just, I don't even get a response after that. It's just ignored. So this recording is me trying to find out what this meeting is going to be discussing.

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This is interesting to me because I've seen this pattern. In fact, right now, in the

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Acts 29 church planning network, which obviously is not Lutheran or related to the Church of Missouri Synod at all.

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I don't think there's any cross -pollination there. There was a recording released, I think, two days ago from Pastor Chase Davis.

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It struck some similar notes in my mind where they get on a call for a meeting and they're not told what the meeting is going to be about.

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And they're essentially booted from the network. And then they are asking questions as to why.

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And there's vacuous answers that they're getting without specifics. And this is the way

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I've seen over and over in the Southern Baptists and all these denominations where these problems concerning social justice emerge.

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There's a sense in which the elites in denominations act as though they are the managers who need to somehow make sure that the institution smoothly sails and that this person who's responsible for waves in their mind or negative attention or is a threat to the institution because they question leadership decisions, things of that nature, that threat must be neutralized.

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And they treat that person as a threat in a way that's more pronounced than the actual threats facing the

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Church. And this is, I think, what confuses a lot of laymen out there in evangelicalism in their institutions and denominations because they think the deck is stacked against us in so many ways.

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And why are these squabbles important sometimes? Why is this a big deal?

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And you just turned 20. You were 19 when these charges,

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I think, were made. And you're a layman. You don't have any official position in the denomination.

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You made a Twitter threat. That's the only thing I can think of that even puts you on the map as far as being a threat because you were critical of some of this really concerning language that Luther himself would not have approved of, let alone

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Saint Paul or Jesus. So anyway, I don't want to put too much commentary out there, but I did want to note that this doesn't seem to me like it's out of the ordinary just because it's happening in another denomination.

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This has already happened in other places, in other ways. Right. And I saw the thing that you're referencing here.

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Did you? Yeah. Yeah. I got tagged and someone quoted it and said, this sounds really familiar,

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Ryan. So I was kind of shocked that that happened, and then not so shocked because I promise

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I can tie this in very quickly. You said I was studying economics, also entrepreneurship, some of the more social sides of things.

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One of the things that you saw happen in this last century is the rise of managerialism.

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Everything has to be managed, not necessarily owned by some venture or some entrepreneur or something like that.

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It has to be managed and brought to total efficiency. And this is why you see various companies go woke, if you will, because they're not owned by people that are concerned about profit.

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They're concerned about serving consumers or whatever else. They're concerned about managing people. They're concerned about whatever other causes you can do while not concerned about profit.

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I think you can very clearly see something similar happen in Christianity in that it's very managerial now.

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And you basically just mentioned that they're trying to make sure that the organization keeps floating steadily along.

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I can basically prove that now with a new development.

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We can get that later if you want to, if we have time. But the charges against me now are explicitly tied to the catechism in the comments that I made.

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I actually got a written list of charges now, and they're specifically saying, you misrepresented the catechism, you were too mean about the catechism authors and all this other stuff, and therefore you must repent.

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Well, they haven't told me that they've said I've misrepresented and all this other stuff. They haven't explained why

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I'm wrong. They haven't explained or taken into account any of my concerns. But what they have said is that I have caused a big stir about the catechism and I must repent of that.

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It's a very managerial way of looking at the whole thing. It's not about truth or about where will this lead.

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It's not about being good stewards for your children and your church later. Can people take this and run wild with it in the next 10 years?

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Well, we don't care about that anymore, apparently, because we live right now, I suppose. It's a very managerial outlook for what's supposed to be an eternal institution.

27:41

It sounds like the guilt by association tactic didn't work out as would be hoped.

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In trying to get specific on specific things you've said, personally, that's probably the best they can come up with is your critiques of their larger catechism commentary.

28:03

Let's play another. Well, we didn't really even comment on the clip I just played, I guess. We just gave context around it.

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But the clip I just played, you're asking for specifics and you're not getting them.

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That seems to be a thread that's woven throughout this exchange. A lot of people have called me too lawyer -like, too legalistic and all this other stuff trying to get specifics because a lot of people hear this and they just immediately assume that I'm doing this for malicious,

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I need to justify myself and all this other stuff reasons. That's not really true because I'm being directly accused here of doing something wrong.

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It is a very basic standard in Christianity that if you're going to accuse someone, you need to have a good reason to do it and you need to do it properly.

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A lot of people will point to Matthew 18. You approach first in person and then with a group of people and then you take it to a larger group of people and whatever else.

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There's a lot of discussion about how to apply that in any form and time afterwards and whatever else, but I don't really think the principle is being followed here considering I wasn't approached.

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It was taken immediately to a managerial organization in the form of a board of elders.

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That sounds harsh, but I don't see any reason not to call it that at this point. They were told we have to do something about this and then

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I get told, all right, we have to meet this next week. I tried to ask for specifics. I can't find any, which is a very big red flag if I'm being accused of something.

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I would like some sort of tangible evidence so that at most

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I can contemplate, did I do this incorrectly? Or at least I can try to see, is this being represented fairly?

29:54

I can't do either if I don't have substance. Well, let's listen to another clip here and then we'll get your comments on that.

30:02

Is this precedent going to be applied to anyone but me? It already had been applied to some. They kicked out a professor at a certain point not too long ago.

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In the normal congregations, being as I am a layman, is this going to be applied to other laymen whose views are against the

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LCMS doctrine? I could not tell you. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to persecute

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Democrats. So what I'm looking at here is that I am going to be told to disavow these people because of their views.

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But you potentially have people in your own congregation that are actually voting in views that are much more contrary to Scripture and actually get enacted.

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Things like allowing mothers to kill their own children. That won't be brought under church discipline or anything like that, but if you hang out with the wrong people online, that will be.

30:57

Okay, so is that the same meeting? That is the same meeting, yes. And he's essentially telling you that there's a guilt by association here.

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You have, I guess, explain that to people. What have you done that's making them concerned?

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So this wasn't revealed in this meeting because we've already heard the extent of what I got from this meeting. I'm being perceived as too cozy with certain elements online, which could mean anything.

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I later find out, maybe about a month ago, that the charge is that I have been retweeting and liking people on Twitter whom my church and the

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LCMS has deemed persona non grata, and therefore any interaction that I have with them is proof of absolute support.

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Their line of reasoning, not mine, and that I need to be disciplined for it if I do not stop, and I should be told to stop immediately.

31:55

It's an absolutely insane line of reasoning, not because this is the internet, it's just how people talk or something like that, but I have in the past, this is just the way

32:04

I do things, is I will read people and post or platform or talk about or like or whatever else, excerpts that I think are particularly striking about a subject, and I will incorporate that into my own writing, my own work, my own academic use, not as just a student, but I have papers that I'm writing for at least one journal, so I'll do that because I think that it's a good point that's not really made elsewhere.

32:34

If it was made elsewhere, I would have taken it up already from wherever I found it beforehand. Let me just boil this down for everyone, because it sounds like what you're saying is that you shared information, so as not to plagiarize perhaps, from people who don't share your views on other matters, who might have some views that are you know, problems or in disagreement with, all that is good and decent, whatever, but you weren't sharing those views, you were only sharing the views that you did agree with.

33:04

What were those posts, you might not even remember, maybe they haven't even told you, what were those posts about that were, was it about like economics or?

33:15

Let me see, so I haven't, that's strange because some of the things that I find when

33:20

I do the economics work I would consider more extreme, but we haven't gone after that, which might point to some ulterior motive.

33:28

I have been accused, and this is the only substantial point that I've been brought across, because we'll get into this weird, strangely legalistic reasoning on the

33:37

LCMS's end, but I had one person bring up something of substance. I had retweeted a Stonechoir podcast where they had talked about race and nations and all this other stuff in scripture, and I remember listening to most of that at the very least, and they were basically just saying race is real, shocker,

33:59

God delineated the nations, they have their own borders, their own homelands, and trying to destroy all of this is itself sinful.

34:07

Well this is a basic talking point from any sort of nationalistic sphere for eight, nine years now, any

34:14

Christian nationalistic sphere, you know, there is such a thing as a difference between Africans, Europeans, Asians, somehow the

34:24

Africans and Asians can notice this, most Europeans seem to have trouble reasoning this out, and then we see multiple times in scripture

34:34

God upholds nations, he upholds homelands for people, such that you then have laws for sojourners away from their homelands and in yours.

34:44

Um, if you try to get rid of all this or pretend it doesn't exist, you end up gutting quite a lot of scripture, um, quite a lot of God's order.

34:52

This is, this is what I had shared, um, but because it came from, uh, Stonechoir, I therefore must be an anti -Christian fascist.

35:02

I don't think most people know what Stonechoir is or why that, so what is Stonechoir? Um, Stonechoir is a podcast that is, uh, ran by, uh, a guy by the pseudonym of Woe, or Woe to Those Who Dwell Upon the

35:14

Earth, I think is his Twitter handle, and, uh, co -hosted by Cory Mahler. Um, Cory Mahler is, uh, known to people on Twitter for being a very extreme provocateur.

35:24

Um, Woe, um, I find to be much less, uh, extreme if he does provoke people, and I think he usually just says things very direct to the

35:38

I think Woe had either tweeted out or said or something like that, Old Testament problems require Old Testament solutions, um, which, you know,

35:46

I found funny. I, you know, that was it? That was the retweet? Well, I, I don't even know if I retweeted it, but it was used against me in one of these recordings, and I basically had to say,

35:55

I don't see a problem with that, um, nor do I think you should either, like, this seems very, uh, uh, very standard, in fact.

36:02

Well, it's also very general. We don't know, I mean, it sounds like that could be a statement of, we need harsher penalties for certain crimes or something, but, uh, but, but you're not putting any meat on those bones.

36:15

No one knows exactly what you're talking about there. Um, with, uh, I just, a brief thing about, uh, you mentioned

36:20

Cory Mahler, because I recently had 80 Robles on the podcast, uh, because Tom Buck had tried to use a

36:27

Cory Mahler tweet where he compared interracial marriage with, um, murder or said it was murder, something of the nature, which was just in my mind, one of the most ridiculous things

36:37

I think I've read in the last few months, uh, because it's just not biblical. It's that you're not going to find Christian support for this in antiquity at all.

36:44

That, uh, that's not breaking, not breaking the commandment, uh, to preserve life or to prove, uh, this did not unjustified, um, unjustified killing to marry someone of a different race, but, uh, or, or ethnicity or whatever.

37:02

But, um, but this was used as a, uh, a standard by which to impose upon quote unquote,

37:08

Christian nationalists, uh, or a, a bellwether. So to determine whether or not they were, uh, uh, appropriate or not,

37:17

I guess I had any legitimacy. So the funny part was AD is actually in an interracial marriage.

37:25

He's, he's a Latino, his wife is, is white. And, uh, so he's like, obviously, you know,

37:32

I think it was just annoying and slightly offensive to him to even be questioned on that. But, um, it was being promoted.

37:41

The Cory Mahler tweet was being promoted as this is kind of like, uh, a significant influential stream of Christian nationalism that must be condemned in order to be taken seriously.

37:55

Uh, it sounds like something similar was happening with you. Um, now your attachment might be a little closer cause you retweeted a podcast, which, uh, from what you're saying, it, it didn't contain that particular opinion or some of the opinions that, uh,

38:09

Nazi -esque opinions or whatever that you would disagree with. And I, well, no, it didn't. And then here's the other thing as well, is that it doesn't really matter what else it contained because that's the reason

38:18

I retweeted it. Like you have the reason I'm telling you, I shared it because of these points, um, which I don't think would be hard to prove or kind of just thrown by the wayside now.

38:26

You're not, here's the thing too, with a retweet, you gotta be careful of this. I've used retweets to show how someone thinks if you see a pattern of retweeting certain views.

38:36

Um, but just because someone retweets a podcast or retweets a book recommendation or something, that's not always a full endorsement of everything.

38:45

It's not everything the author's written in other places or, uh, every chapter in the book or every teaching that that author subscribes to.

38:53

It's more of a, this is, I do that sometimes I'll say, this is interesting. I may not agree with all of it, but this is an interesting point.

39:01

Uh, it would, I've had people on the podcast, uh, that I find interesting. We don't agree on everything.

39:06

So this, um, associationalism that is often, uh,

39:12

I see it with social justice warriors, but it's often associated with like old line fundamentalists is just running rampant now, uh, where, you know, any kind of slight association one might have in this case, a retweet ends up being the cause for cancellation.

39:30

Uh, that that's what it seems like is going on, which to me, it just seems extremely uncharitable and just annoying,

39:38

I guess. Right. And the line of reasoning that they use is not even necessarily that a retweet is full endorsement.

39:44

The line of reasoning that gets used against me, and this might be in one of your clips later, so I could be spoiling. Um, but they use this to reason out that I'm sharing their entire platform.

39:53

Yeah, I have that. Yeah. So we'll get there. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, we'll get there.

39:58

Um, yeah, we'll get there. That's, that's the weird goofy reasoning that's being used here.

40:04

It's a very strange, it's reaching for a cancellation is what it is. Um, which

40:09

I don't like using that term on me because I'm not some giant influential figure, but it's, um, you know,

40:16

I'm, I'm facing that if, if ever there is such a thing and we'll, we'll get to that later. I should know, uh, we talked about it beforehand, but, uh,

40:24

I think when I first called you, um, I asked you about your views and, and so people, just so people know you work, uh, or I don't know if you get paid, do you get paid by Mises?

40:34

Uh, I, I, I work with them. You work with the Mises Institute. Okay. Which is a libertarian think tank.

40:40

Which would be very against, uh, Nazism as a political philosophy for sure.

40:46

Um, you, you know, I asked you about your views on, uh, not, and Nazism is, you know,

40:53

I don't know what that means half the time, but you assured me that you were not, um, in league with Nazis or anything like that.

41:00

You didn't, uh, one of, and this is a point I can't develop fully right now, but one of the interesting things to me is to see the right, um, change their critique on Nazis because it used to be that Nazism was an ideology and that was the problem with it more than anything else.

41:16

And it led to these horrific atrocities in certain cases. And, uh, and so it was, uh, taking blood and soil and then making that into an ideology that that's one in the same with the government and state power and, um, and running roughshod over all the local, uh, local distinctions and those kinds of things.

41:39

Whereas, um, almost making it an abstraction. Whereas today, the critique from the right supposed right is that no, the problem with Nazism isn't the ideological aspect of it and how it, uh, use state power to forward this socialism, but rather that they valued their country too much and their people too much.

42:01

Yeah. And, um, and, and then connecting them with a segregationist and things, which that is a very, people just need to understand this audience.

42:09

That is pretty new critique coming from the right. That was a left -leaning critique for years, but the right didn't buy into that critique.

42:16

The rights critique was, was a different critique. And now I'm seeing this critique being made, um, by, well,

42:25

I think this is probably fair to say that this is one of the things you're up against that, you know, these guys, uh, you know, they, they have some of them,

42:33

I guess, have some Nazi views. Um, you might have a commonly shared, uh, opinion about the fact that nations actually do exist.

42:43

Right. Um, that's like, if that makes you a Nazi, then it's like, we're in trouble, right? Right. Um, so yeah,

42:49

I'm going on too long. No, no. And I, I feel like I can, uh, I can help here with something else with a more common sort of counter argument.

42:57

Um, this is a, I believe it's Paul Gottfried's famous things that, um, Nazis really only exist in the 1930s and 40s.

43:06

Um, everything thereafter can't really be the NSDAP, um, because, you know, one, the party is a major source of that.

43:14

Party's gone. You don't have the coalition anymore. Two, um, if you actually read the platform, this is what the

43:20

National Socialist state looks like by their own words. Um, most of it is, uh, contemporary to them.

43:27

So if times change, it doesn't really make sense anymore. And they acknowledge this in their own philosophy. Um, so if I, if I take,

43:35

I, I'm going to assume that National Socialists can define what National Socialism is. If I take their own definitions, um, it would be very difficult for me to be one because I don't have a time machine, nor do

43:46

I have a Weimar Germany just sitting in the closet. Um, but you know, that sounds very trite.

43:52

So if you want something a little bit more substantial, um, I don't find it trite, but maybe some, someone in the audience will, um, the

43:58

German historian Ernst Nolte, um, he was part of the historians dispute, which was a group of German historians trying to find out how on earth do we incorporate the, uh, the

44:09

National Socialist regime into our history and our, into our historiography. Um, the left -weaning critique basically won out, um, where they basically phrase it as this is the worst moral low point for Germany in its history.

44:21

Um, and that's how we must never again experience this. Uh, Nolte and the conservatives, and I believe this would be the seventies and the eighties.

44:29

Um, they basically just looked at every other country at the exact same time and came to the conclusion that there was nothing really special about the regime other than it lost.

44:41

Um, and he has a book called the European Civil War over this. Um, he does a, basically for half the book, he does a year by year comparison.

44:48

Here's what the Soviet Union was doing. Here's what the NSDAP was doing. Um, and every single atrocity, um, that the

44:55

Germans get harangued over in the modern day to show that this is the worst government ever in human history. Um, the

45:01

Stalinists were doing probably that times 10. Um, the British were doing something worse in the colonies and the

45:06

Americans and the British after the war even had their own concentration camps and ethnic cleansings in Europe. So if we're going to say this is the worst thing ever because of, you know, mass killings, fine.

45:16

Um, every other country therefore has to do this themselves, not just the Germans. And this is what they were arguing.

45:22

They say, this is a stupid example because if you just take a fair look at world history, there's nothing really new here other than mass media.

45:31

Uh, so whatever you want to make of that, I'd encourage you to read the book and get the full, full thing. That's where I lie on it.

45:37

I'm not a national socialist, but I can also take a fair look at history and say, you know, the

45:43

Bolsheviks were way worse. Yeah. Well, yeah. And I don't want to get too off track on, uh, on the historical stuff, but it is important,

45:52

I think, for people to understand exactly where you're coming from because, um, the charges don't if you know, uh, where, what your perspective is and that you're not sympathetic to these things.

46:02

Um, and I feel similar. I, I think, um, there was a red pill moment I had, uh, when

46:08

I was looking into the, some of the bombings that were going on, like the bombing of Dresden and things like this, that, uh,

46:15

I just think, why don't I hear about this? How come I don't hear about, um, the whole and, and things that should be really like major events in world history, but they're overshadowed by, uh, what the

46:30

Nazis did and what the Nazis did. And, you know, I, I don't want to say collectively, they all participated in this, but their policies led to, and their government did enact this horrific

46:39

Holocaust. And, um, and, and I think that's rightly condemned and people should, you know, if you were advocating those kinds of things that we need a

46:46

Holocaust or something like that, then I would totally understand you being, uh, that's unjustified killing and, and you should be, um, before some kind of, uh, uh,

46:56

I don't know if they call it tribunal. I think that's the word I saw. Um, church discipline, right.

47:02

Yeah. I mean, this is clearly sin, but it's gotta be sin. That's, that's the point. It's gotta be sin. It just, it can't all be smoke and mirrors, labels, associations.

47:11

Uh, those are the, you gotta have some, something to put your teeth into. It's gotta be an actual source.

47:17

And that's what we're, we're struggling with, uh, in your case. So let's, um, let's, let's play another clip here and maybe we'll dry out some of these things as we go further.

47:28

Availed threats about old Testament problems requiring old Testament solutions, the entire

47:33

LCMS leadership being apostate and derelict and barred and removed forever. And if God beats us to the punch so much, the better saying that women specifically are property calling pastors,

47:47

Jews, and labeling them as Jews who are not Jewish people and slurring them with Jewish slurs, saying that they're here to carry out

47:57

God's judgment of sentence, saying they're going to hunt people down and bring them to justice.

48:06

Going against, uh, supporting Nazi fascism, um, that sort of thing.

48:17

Antisemitism, application of genocide, comparing women who write about theology to whores actually saying whores are better than women who write about theology.

48:31

Okay. So, so these are examples, I guess, of the pod, these are the podcast hosts and you happen to retreat one of their podcasts where they didn't say those things, but in other places they said these things.

48:42

Oh, well, okay. So this is interesting because I, uh, in this meeting, I can't just check everything.

48:47

I'm, I have like the last shred of good faith in all of this here. Um, I'm assuming that what they're telling me is correct and that they've sourced this somehow.

48:55

They just aren't showing it to me because that, um, verbal reading off of summaries there is all that I got throughout this whole meeting.

49:01

I didn't even get like a paper or proof or anything. So I, I took them at their word. After this meeting,

49:07

I went through and looked for half of that stuff and I couldn't find it anywhere. Telegram, Twitter, and all this other stuff.

49:13

So they don't have any links to share with you. No. So it sounds like this was, it wasn't an

49:18

Antifa related group that had done, dug some of this stuff up and brought it to the attention of the leaders.

49:24

There was an Antifa related group, um, that got half the facts wrong, uh, just factually inaccurate.

49:31

And, uh, they basically tried to paint the picture that Mr. Corey Mahler, um, was heading some sort of fascist, uh, underground party within the

49:39

LCMS and that his great co -conspirators were that woe character who co -hosts with him, me, and then a

49:47

Jewish Roman Catholic. But, um, that last one should just show the absurdity of the whole thing because they didn't pick up on the fact that he was a

49:57

Jewish Roman Catholic. Um, they had peroused, I think like a, a telegram comment section where the guy had said something to Corey as a joke.

50:06

Um, and they also, this, this, this Nazi -esque guy is in a good relationship with the

50:12

Jewish Roman Catholic. I have no clue what the relationship is like. I just know he talks to them on amicable terms.

50:17

So, um, at least in public. So I very great Nazi that we have on our hands here, but, um, um, but, and they also painted me as a fascist.

50:28

Um, and I knew that this was going to cause some sort of trouble to me cause I was being sarcastic. Um, but I was in a, my public high school's world history class, and they were trying to explain to the class what fascism is.

50:40

And I'm tend to be a, a smart Alec. I'll, I'll use the, you know, the culture here.

50:47

Um, I, I'd actually, uh, read like the was a 10 page doctrine of fascism that Mussolini and, uh,

50:54

Gentile wrote at the time. And what they showed on the board was not that, um, what they showed on the board in this public high school, um, was that fascism is when you suppress a divorce and homosexuality.

51:06

Um, and that's, uh, the more that you do that, the more fascist it is. Oh, this is Adorno's F scale. They just gave you the

51:12

F scale, right? So, um, that was the, I found that funny. I took a picture of that in class at the time.

51:17

Cause I'm like, there's, there's no way they're passing this off. This is like, this is conservatism from 15 years ago.

51:23

And that's now fascism in the public school mind. I posted that on my channel and I was like a flashback to that time that my public high school turned me into a fascist.

51:32

And it was just those bullet points of, uh, fascism is when divorce is suppressed, homosexuality is, is suppressed and you know, all this and traditional gender roles are made more rigid was the other bullet point.

51:43

And I was obviously a joke because most Christians support all three of those things in some way, shape or fashion, um, which

51:50

I suppose makes all Christians fascist. Oh yeah. The last 2000 years of church history means they're all fascists.

51:56

So you, so you shared that and, right. And, uh, the Santifa group took that as proof that I am a self -avowed fascist.

52:03

Okay. That's interesting. So these guys, I just want everyone to understand these guys that you're talking about Mo or what was his name?

52:11

Whoa. Whoa. Okay. Whoa. And so we don't actually know his name. Uh, yeah, he's anonymous to me.

52:16

Uh, we'll get into that later. So this anonymous guy and then this Corey guy and, uh, this

52:22

Roman Catholic Jewish guy, uh, they, they don't have any positions officially in the

52:28

LCMS, right? They're not elders. They're not. Okay. So they're, they're just at least one of them we know of is, is a layman.

52:36

That's about the only connection we have to LCMS. Yeah. All of us are laymen to my understanding.

52:42

Okay. Uh, I say all of us as if we were any coherent group to begin with. Um, this article that was published by an

52:49

Antifa front that pastors have since ran within the LCMS at large has ran with, um, they made us out to be some coherent group.

52:56

Like we were some secret Illuminati society in the LCMS. It's not that, um, we're very, very clearly we are, uh, maybe if you take a very loose definition of the term, we might be one for four on the fascist accusation.

53:12

And, um, you know, there's not, there's not really much else to it. We all have facts wrong. Yeah. Everyone that the, um, the

53:20

Antifa front dug up dirt on supposedly. Okay. Let's, let's play another clip. So that would be the sampling of things.

53:27

Okay. And, uh, which one of these did I share? For sharing their entire platform?

53:34

Uh, I don't recall sharing any of those statements. I'm glad that you haven't. We would be having a very different discussion if you had.

53:42

So that's why we're having this discussion now. Which of their statements did I share that were objectionable?

53:49

Sharing and platforming the work that they're doing as a whole, which gives credence to the wolves that they are currently in Christchurch.

54:01

So, okay, let's just stop there for a moment. Um, set this, the scene for everyone here that we're, this is, uh, another meeting.

54:09

So we, we, the first clips were from just a meeting you called to get specifics with your, uh, youth pastor,

54:16

I guess. Not a youth pastor, actual pastor congregation, just at the college town.

54:22

At the college. Okay. And then the second one, this is another, this is the meeting that they called that we're listening to right now, right?

54:28

Right. Yes. Okay. So far we've had three meetings, one not recorded the second one to get specifics for the third meeting, which is this thing, which is the one we're listening to now.

54:38

Okay. And, and the person we heard talking there, who is that? Uh, that is my pastor at my home congregation.

54:45

Um, so are you trying to withhold the names of the, of your church and stuff? I mean, it's out there in the thread.

54:53

Um, but I don't know that the names are necessarily important because I'm not, I have a feeling it could have been any other pastor that I was attached to that would have done this.

55:02

We'll get into that why that is. But, um, the first clip that I threw out in the thread at all, um, was being told that the district president, um,

55:11

I think probably three down in the hierarchy from the top. So, you know, pretty high up, um, was, um, he says advising, um, and the meeting beforehand, he used a little bit more direct words that implied a little bit more of, uh, of action taken.

55:28

Um, but in this recording, he says that the district president was advising my pastor and everyone else, um, to do this.

55:35

So I, I have a feeling that it's not necessarily the persons that are going after me, especially considering that I was on good terms with them, uh, basically until this happened.

55:46

Um, I have a feeling this is, uh, people being sort of coerced by hierarchy, but I can't prove that. I can only just draw inferences from what

55:52

I was told. So what we heard, the significant part of that clip was that he's admitting though, your pastor saying, look, yeah, you haven't, the views that we're concerned about, you haven't endorsed those.

56:02

So it's like, to me, I'm like, well, that's the end of it. Right? I mean, you didn't endorse any of those things.

56:08

I mean, it'd be one thing for them to come and say, Hey, we're concerned that you retweeted this podcast.

56:14

Uh, be careful of those guys. You want to be, you want to watch out for those guys. They have, you know, a,

56:20

B and C here's what they believe. And here's what we want you to watch out for. Um, right. Or here's why they're wrong or here's a, why are you founded?

56:29

Yeah, that would be a pastoral thing that I could understand. It wouldn't be disciplinary proceedings. It would just be a pastoral thing, but you know, pastors should do that even more.

56:39

So I'd say a hundred times more so with any of their kids who are going to public school or turning on a television or have, has it have an internet connection, uh, because they're getting ideas that are so much more, uh, for this day and age, alluring, um, damaging, destructive, all of that from just going to public school and hearing the garbage that they're being taught there.

57:03

And so I'm assuming they're not having these kinds of meetings for everyone in their church who's in a public school.

57:08

Right. And saying, Hey, look, there's all these pitfalls. Like they're, they're doing it with you for sharing a podcast episode.

57:16

And one of those clips, uh, in the second meeting, the, the one before this one, uh, you hear the guy say,

57:22

I'm not going to persecute Democrats. And that's because I had asked them and I will in this meeting as well. Is this going to be applied to anyone else?

57:29

And they took that clip. Yeah. They took that. And a bunch of other people took that as me trying to grasp for some, what about ISM there's worse people and whatever else, which may be a valid concern.

57:39

But in reality, I'm trying to like establish some sort of good faith on their end. So I can trust it. Hey, if you're going to just,

57:45

I, I'm not going to appreciate just being solo targeted here. Can you, uh, show me that this is a concern you hold for the rest of your flock?

57:51

It's the Pharisees. One of the things Jesus said about them is they strained at gnats and swallowed camels. So it's a sense of proportion.

57:58

And that's what I, that's what we're getting at. That's not, uh, I don't know. What about is what about, what about ISM? Uh, but this is just looking at, okay.

58:07

If they, if they're so concerned about this, um, why are they not concerned about this over here, which is far more alluring and damaging.

58:16

Um, right. And so, you know, that that's, that's part of it. But like the thing that I was trying to do to begin with, and this seems to have just gone over everyone's heads is like,

58:24

I can trust this process, at least somewhat if they are going to then go after every single other person that they can and should.

58:33

Um, because if they don't, if they recognize there's a problem and they don't try to do this, that's an abdication of authority because they, they admit there's something wrong here, but as a shepherd of a flock, they're not going to do the job of shepherding, but they don't even do that.

58:47

Um, they basically admit by saying, we're not going to do that or I'm not going to persecute these people, or that's not what we're talking about.

58:53

Um, there's the, what you were talking about, there's much bigger issues here. I think like, uh, a few years ago, whenever Pew did their research polls,

59:01

I think like half the LCMS supported abortion in some cases. Oh my goodness. Are you serious? Half of them supported, uh, same sex marriage as being legalized.

59:10

Um, we're not talking about Lutherans broadly. We're talking about the Missouri Senate. I, if I remember correctly, I believe it said

59:16

LCMS, uh, members that support. Um, and so, you know, that's one thing there's bigger issues here, but the other thing is like, for me on my end, if I'm to trust this, um, which is already sort of strained by the point that I'm at this meeting and there were people here who

59:31

I wasn't even told were going to be there. Um, asking, are you going to apply this to other people for which it applies?

59:39

Isn't me trying to deflect blame or something like that, which they accused me of. It's me trying to make sure that this is a legitimate process, which they can't, they can't cement that at all.

59:48

Okay. Let's, let's listen to some more clips. Anyone else on the list that I'm going to be not supposed to platform?

59:56

I would recommend anyone else who's associated with any of the work that they're doing. The two that we're most concerned about are

01:00:02

Corey Mauler and Woe. So none of the people that are unrelated, but more extreme. Those I would also ask you to not associate with or platform or host or retweet.

01:00:14

All right. Which ones? I'm not familiar enough with any of who the specific ones are.

01:00:20

Luthen Pauler I know is a particularly devious account as well. Which one? Luthen Pauler. Okay.

01:00:29

And want to call him a particularly devious account. Okay. So these are just some of the people we've already gone over some of this, but these are the people that they're concerned that you're, you have an association with, because I guess you've retweeted the podcast.

01:00:48

Okay. Let me see if I go ahead just, just for clarification from the audience there that Luthen Pauler real name at the time was

01:00:57

Luthenplar. I believe now on Twitter, he's like Elthemplar or something like that. He changes his name to some old

01:01:02

English stuff all the time. He is the Jewish Roman Catholic. I don't know how he's devious.

01:01:11

I invite anyone to just take four seconds to look for him on Twitter. He's very benign.

01:01:16

I don't suspect it's an anti -Catholic thing because they're Lutheran. No, I think that it's, and this is anti -Jewish, probably.

01:01:24

It's probably not that. My dad brought this up in his letter. The only reason, because they just said they haven't looked enough and all this other stuff.

01:01:31

They just know he's particularly devious. The only reason that they would bring him up in relation to me,

01:01:36

Woe, and Corey is the Antifa letter. Oh gosh. So, or the

01:01:41

Antifa article. So that's a very telling thing there. And notice the lack of concern for people that I self -labeled more radical.

01:01:48

They just said, oh yeah, we're, well, don't have any associations with them, but we're worried about these people over here.

01:01:54

Yeah, because it sounds like their information was sourced and they don't have, they didn't do a lot of due diligence beyond that.

01:02:01

Okay, let's keep playing. Understand this. The thing that I am doing wrong is that I have talked to these people and I have platformed them on my group of, what, 4 ,000 subscribers.

01:02:19

And elsewhere, the things that I weren't platforming them for, they had opinions that go against Lutheran doctrine,

01:02:25

I'm presuming is the charge. Christian doctrine, if some of the other accusations against the other guys are to be correct.

01:02:33

I wasn't specifically sharing the things that they were saying that was evil. I've just had them on and that is itself the bad thing.

01:02:41

And then there are also other people, including Mr. Luthemplar, that I'm supposed to mark and avoid.

01:02:47

That would be another one to mark and avoid. Did I get anything wrong there? I would say that I think you're understating the support that your interaction with them is displaying to the world.

01:03:03

Okay, and what would that be? That I don't think that it's just a casual acquaintanceship with them.

01:03:10

And it is? It's supporting the messaging that they're sending out.

01:03:21

Which one? Mahler and Woe. Okay, which messaging?

01:03:27

Because we've already established— The wholeness of their messaging. But I publicly went against part of this wholeness of their messaging before.

01:03:34

I don't know if you caught that. Did you? No. What part did you go against directly?

01:03:40

Well, for starters, you mentioned a lot of accusations here that they support the National Socialist Party in Germany, they support

01:03:47

Hitler and all these other places. I don't know if you know this about me, being, as you said, you've investigated my online footprint and all this other stuff.

01:03:55

I would expect you to know this. Investigation is a very low bar. This is pretty much just a casual glancing.

01:04:03

There are people, I'm sure, who know way more about what you're doing online than I do. But it's enough to have you concerned, so I will hold you to the bar that you did the proper research before accusing me of something that I'm not doing.

01:04:20

It shouldn't be new to you that I do write for work with people in a very libertarian economics institute.

01:04:29

I would hope that I would not have to explain the difference between libertarian economics and National Socialist economics, and the policies that they both would espouse, both socially and politically and economically, part of which

01:04:43

I have publicly disputed Mr. Mahler with, particularly on one of my streams. I believe we were talking about the

01:04:49

Supreme Court's EPA versus West Virginia stream. That would have been back in June, I think, where he was talking about the supposed merits of public land ownership, and the historian that I had on at the time also happened to agree with him, citing that it was mentioned in common law quite a few times.

01:05:09

I disagreed with both of them because I'm an advocate of private property, and they know this because I've publicly spoken against them.

01:05:17

Okay, let's stop right there. I'm trying to synthesize this all in my head.

01:05:25

What we're hearing, it sounds like to me, is the continued attempt to paint you as endorsing their whole person, as we just heard.

01:05:40

I guess if you have any interaction, you've endorsed their whole person. You then try to point out places in which you've disagreed openly with at least one of these individuals on some of the very related issues that they're concerned about.

01:05:57

Did that make a dent at all, or no? No. This is the strangest thing.

01:06:06

I've told this to their faces. We could probably write a book or have a 100 -part live stream where it's just us disagreeing on certain topics if we wanted to be that officially tied.

01:06:19

That doesn't matter to the people accusing me because I have liked something that they've said.

01:06:25

I've retweeted them, and that's enough to just axe me if they need to, which is an absolutely insane standard for anyone,

01:06:34

I think. This is something else I get accused of, is they think I'm downplaying it because that's just how the internet is.

01:06:40

I've never once said that. Rather, this is how anything works. If I write a book and take an excerpt out of it, it doesn't matter who the author is.

01:06:47

If the excerpt is right or wrong, I'm going to share it and say this is right or wrong. That's their proof. Let me ask you this on a personal level because I'm sure people are wondering this.

01:06:55

I don't follow your online stuff that much. I'm not even on Twitter. Do you make it a regular habit to, in general, to retweet or share other things from people you disagree with politically or morally or non -Christian?

01:07:09

We just had this whole thing with people who are conservative

01:07:14

Christians allegedly, and some of them are, platforming James Lindsay, who's an atheist, pro -abortion, pro -homosexual, all of this stuff.

01:07:24

They have a specific reason they're doing it, and they're not in trouble. They're not going to be before any tribunals for posting a

01:07:30

James Lindsay thing. Do you do that kind of thing as well? I was going to say libertarians, but you are a libertarian.

01:07:41

People from more left -leaning persuasions that share true things, have you shared some of their material saying, oh, what they said here was true or good?

01:07:49

Yes. One of my good friends wrote a book called The Populist Delusion. Basically, he's trying to talk about how human societies and governments work.

01:07:59

One of the main influences for the book, the whole thing is centered around elite theory, is what it's called, and using that to refute notions of populism, explaining why doesn't voting change things and whatever else.

01:08:12

One of the main influences for it is Gramsci, Antonio Gramsci. In case people don't know—

01:08:18

Yeah, father of cultural Marxism. Yeah, and he was also the leader of the Italian Communist Party, the PCI.

01:08:26

I don't agree with Mr. Gramsci on probably I don't know how many things, but the book is good, because whatever's included in Gramsci there is true.

01:08:34

Whenever he's talking about this is just how societies function and you can use this to your will or whatever, I don't know about the last statement, use it to your will, but when he's saying societies must have leaders and leaders will shape their populations, that's undeniably true.

01:08:47

You can find that in scripture and 40 ,000 other books. Pareto.

01:08:52

Most engineers or mathematicians or statisticians would know him for his Pareto fronts and distributions and whatever.

01:08:58

He was also an economist. He did obviously engineering, but also social philosophy. If I remember correctly,

01:09:06

I think he was a left liberal, which I don't think would describe me too terribly well. I disagree with him on a few things.

01:09:13

The book takes out his good points about social organization. I don't think anyone would disagree that you can apply

01:09:18

Pareto distributions to human organizations. It's been a mainstay for quite a long time.

01:09:26

Then Mosca, probably Gaetano Mosca, probably closer to me,

01:09:33

I would imagine out of the three I've mentioned, probably not fully aligned. James Burnham, who's the topic of one of my research papers right now on managerialism and economics and the market.

01:09:44

He was a Trotskyite until he was like 30. I know you can keep going, but I'm trying to get back to the purpose of the podcast here.

01:09:52

I think that's sufficient. That is more than sufficient, I think, to establish the point that you do share things.

01:09:59

A lot of people are like that. They share things from people they disagree with because they say, well, I agree with this point over here.

01:10:04

If you can do it with James Lindsay, I'm sorry. You can do it with someone like a Corey Muller if you want to.

01:10:10

I don't know everything. I would probably think that many of his views are sick or twisted or whatever. Who knows?

01:10:16

I haven't looked into him enough. If that's the case and he gets something right one time and you share it, then

01:10:22

I don't see why a disciplinary process is in order. All right, let's keep going here.

01:10:29

Maybe we'll get through the end of it. Well, and once again, this is why

01:10:53

I asked if you actually read through the things that I publicly done, stated, shared, and all this other stuff. That doesn't sound like you have a very strong disagreement.

01:11:06

Well, hold on. Have they been excommunicated? That is still up in the air. Have they been excommunicated?

01:11:13

They are currently undergoing church discipline. How can I defend them from excommunication if they aren't in the process?

01:11:20

It's my understanding— Your writing specifically said they're being excommunicated for these things.

01:11:26

They should not be. They're being treated unjustly. My writing specifically said that we, as the

01:11:31

LCMS, completely broke our ecclesiology by letting, one, the civil authorities, and then, two, the higher -ups in the clerical hierarchy get involved, completely throw out the church's written constitution, bar someone from property without prior warning on a

01:11:46

Sunday morning, and then put him up for excommunication later, supposedly. That is—

01:11:53

That's my objection. That is Mahler's interpretation of the events. That is my interpretation of the events.

01:11:58

It was an incorrect interpretation of the events. That's why everyone keeps saying that the genesis of the large catechism thing was

01:12:06

Nazis and fascists and that you're one of them because you're one of the two of them. If you're going to make that accusation and say it's true,

01:12:13

I want you to point out the beliefs that I hold which are Nazi and fascist. I don't think that you do. Okay, then why are you going along with it?

01:12:19

That's the point. Because I want you to be away from the Nazis and fascists. Then why are— Okay, hold on. You just said this is true, that this whole thing came from Nazis and fascists, and then

01:12:27

I said, what beliefs do I hold that are Nazi and fascist, and you cannot tell me what I hold. You— Do you not see the disconnect there?

01:12:35

I'm saying the reason why people think you're a Nazi and a fascist is because of the company you keep.

01:12:40

I don't have a question as to why people might label me that. There are a ton of people that would call me anything because they dislike me,

01:12:46

Pastor. Okay. Man, lots there. There's two things specifically.

01:12:51

One, it shifts, it seems like, from the guilt by association to you've defended them on the specific thing, which is standing against an excommunication.

01:13:06

The second thing is, and this is where I think it gets to the root issue, that this does have something to do with the critiques of the larger catechism.

01:13:17

That seems to be what might— Me listening to all these recordings, that's what I thought, okay, that's what's behind this.

01:13:23

You ruffled feathers when you critiqued the larger catechism, and now the best way to go about discrediting you and not just you, but everyone who had a problem with the larger catechism's endorsement of certain things that aren't very orthodox is to paint them all as a bunch of Nazis and fascists, even while saying that you're not one.

01:13:48

We've already been over the company you keep thing and stuff, and that you share things from a lot of different sources, and that's just not the case.

01:13:56

What about this thing where they're saying that, well, you stood against or are accusing the

01:14:05

Church of Excommunicating Corey Mahler, and you stood against that.

01:14:11

What's that all about? Right, so I wrote an article for one of Gab's news outlets.

01:14:19

I don't know how they structure it necessarily. And at the time, I believe that would have been

01:14:25

March 4th, before this meeting, basically a few days before this meeting,

01:14:32

I had seen, along with everyone else, the fact that Corey Mahler had showed up to church one

01:14:38

Sunday, and there were police waiting for him, trying to bar him from the property. Mr. Mahler claims that this is without any prior notice.

01:14:46

I don't know what the Church claims, because the Church refuses to comment on the whole thing, so if the

01:14:51

Church won't contradict that, and the only people who will say that it's false are people completely disconnected from the event,

01:14:58

I'm inclined to believe the guy that was there, just as a matter of a method.

01:15:04

There's a video of this, isn't there? Yeah, there is a video of it. I'm vaguely remembering someone sent me something. Okay. Right, and so that happened, and then we find out that also the

01:15:14

Church had basically hounded out a convert to Lutheranism that was good friends with Mahler, because they assumed that he would vote in support of Mahler if they tried to exclude him from the congregation, so he doesn't get mentioned in most of this at all, because he was a very young layman.

01:15:32

I kind of feel bad for him. I think he's since gone to the Eastern Orthodox or something like that, after basically being hounded out of the

01:15:38

Lutheran Church, and they don't care about that, because they're trying to get the

01:15:45

Nazis. Mr. Mahler then was barred from any of the proceedings.

01:15:50

He had no opportunity to defend himself, explain himself, talk to anyone else. If he is to be believed, which

01:15:56

I don't see any reason not to, he seemed to have been on good terms with his Church. In fact, now

01:16:02

I say that I think there's the reason to believe the opposite, because there were pastors that wrote letters against him to Mahler's pastor,

01:16:09

I think a year ago, in a month or so, and nothing really happened.

01:16:16

They thought that the charge was out overblown. So this has happened before. It didn't result in this. So I wrote in this article that this is insane, and it's coming from the top down, which completely breaks the

01:16:28

LCMS. That's not how we're organized. It's not what any of our rules say. The rules are not necessarily

01:16:34

God -given. You have to organize like the LCMS does, but it is something that they have committed to. They've written down what it is.

01:16:41

They've said, we will follow this, and now they're breaking it. It's a let your guesses be guesses and your no's be no's.

01:16:46

So what's it supposed to be? The local church has jurisdiction over these matters? So the way, if I understand correctly, the way an excommunication works in the

01:16:56

LCMS is you have the minor ban, which is a pastor is concerned over one person. He or the board of elders, or however the church works it, just withholds communion from them for a short time until they can sort something out.

01:17:08

Can happen for any number of reasons. I think you can kind of understand why that would be.

01:17:15

The larger, what most places would call an excommunication, usually happens from the congregation.

01:17:23

There is some sort of vote or meeting held by the congregation where they with any number of margin.

01:17:29

Corey's church had unanimity as the bar. My church, I think, has two thirds majority.

01:17:36

And this is where they kick you out of this church and the LCMS. So it's a weird thing where the proceedings are local, but the decision has to be used by the rest of the

01:17:48

LCMS. So that's kind of why this is an issue.

01:17:53

Because yeah, the proceedings are on the local level and like Knoxville or wherever this is for Corey. But also every other

01:18:01

LCMS church is expected to abide by this decision or by this excommunication, whatever you want to call it.

01:18:08

So whenever it's not being done properly, whenever they're going against their own written words, whenever they're skipping written steps and whatever else, whenever they're trying to hound out other people that would have been sympathetic to Corey.

01:18:21

Two things. One, they've completely shown themselves to be untrustworthy. Two, it also kind of looks like they think their position is weak.

01:18:31

If they knew that they were in the right and they could argue it successfully, they should not need to be skipping these steps, hounding out his supporters and whatever else.

01:18:39

They should not need to skip conversation, explanation, and all this other stuff. That's the point that I made in my article.

01:18:48

And that comes off as too sympathetic because I want churches to hold to their written words. It's a procedural critique.

01:18:56

You're not saying they don't possibly have a case. You're just saying the way you're going about this is not in keeping with our tradition and the way we're supposed to do it.

01:19:05

I can't make any comments on the case because we never really got to hear it. Corey didn't get to hear it.

01:19:10

I don't know what it was. I think they said something about misogyny when they administered the right of excommunication on one of their live streams.

01:19:17

I would have loved to hear the reasoning for that because if we're doing misogyny as an excommunicable offense, there's a lot of work to be done,

01:19:26

I think, from their end. I just got to ask. You're in this denomination.

01:19:32

Have they excommunicated someone voting for pro -abortion candidates or someone who claims to be homosexual?

01:19:41

Anyone on the left, does this happen? I would be shocked if that was the case for two reasons.

01:19:49

There's the conservative pastors who go against that. I don't think they usually bring in those people.

01:19:54

Then there's the liberal pastors—lefty, theological, liberal, whatever you want to call them—pastors who harangue the conservative pastors for not affirming queer identity or whatever,

01:20:05

I think is the word they use. I do not know of such a case. I would personally be very shocked if it was the case.

01:20:11

If you were to ask a pastor when was the last time anyone was excommunicated, they could probably name you the instances off the top of their head because they are so far and few in between, and usually they're weird, wacky things.

01:20:24

We don't excommunicate, as that guy said, we don't excommunicate Democrats who vote for abortion being put into law, who vote for all these other wicked things with transgenders, and whatever else.

01:20:35

We just don't do that for some reason. It's weird. Well, it's not weird. It's understandable. It reminds me of a quote that's often attributed to Luther, though he probably didn't say it, where something along the lines of, if at every point

01:20:50

I resist evil, except at the point in which Christianity is under attack,

01:20:55

I'm really paraphrasing, then I'm not really being effective. I'm not resisting at all.

01:21:01

That's what's happening right here, it sounds like. They want to fight big and talk big and fight on issues that will give them some brownie points,

01:21:15

I guess, with the world, will be seen favorably in the eyes of the media, but on the issues that are real and present dangers within their own denomination affecting even their larger catechism, they can't fight on those issues.

01:21:29

That's very telling to me. Those are the issues that are the actual threats right now. You're talking about a layman with Corey.

01:21:37

It's like a guy, a layman, who says some things online, and some of them might be terrible, versus people with actual authority in the denomination position who have gotten to the point of writing commentary on the larger catechism, and they're fine.

01:21:56

That's just nuts. Do you have any hope for the LCMS? Entirely depends on what the pastors do.

01:22:03

Well, pastors and laymen. There's a convention this year. I don't know what can be done here, but I do know that there have been groups of pastors who have influenced the synod whenever it does try to go off the rails.

01:22:16

I don't want to sound egocentric or self -centered or anything like that here, but I don't think that any

01:22:22

Lutheran from 30 years ago would find any of these proceedings against me or any of the other people, to be honest, with how sloppily it's been done.

01:22:30

I don't think they'd find this legitimate. One of the clips that I found most telling was that my pastor admitted by his word 75 % of the work was handed to him, but I'm not allowed to know what that work is or who gave it to him or any of this other stuff.

01:22:46

So we have secret accusers, secret evidence from who knows where, and supposedly conservatives are the ones doing this, if my pastor is to be taken at his word.

01:22:59

The same tactic's happening in the Southern Baptists, just so you know. It's the same exact thing. They say, these are conservative pastors who just really think that the abuse problem is so bad we've got to have this task force and rethink our whole entire polity, or women aren't platformed enough.

01:23:17

It's the conservatives who think that. It's always the conservatives. I'm like, well, where's the liberals then?

01:23:24

Do you have any? I guess if everyone's a conservative, then I don't know where all this leftism's coming from.

01:23:29

And then in the LCMS, it sounds like the conservatives get their marching orders from an Antifa article, but I don't know what that says.

01:23:37

Antifa's always been a very German invention, so maybe that's the Lutheranism speaking. I don't know.

01:23:43

Yeah. Well, Ryan, I appreciate you talking about this. I'm sorry you're going through this as a young man.

01:23:49

You haven't even graduated college yet, and this has already put you into the—well, you've allowed this to happen too, but you're in a national spotlight now for doing this, at least in your denomination.

01:24:04

I know you want to fight this. I know you want to expose what's happening, which

01:24:09

I just am appreciative of it because it takes some bravery to be able to do that. So, man, my best to you.

01:24:18

I'll give you the last final thoughts, whatever you want to share. Go for it. Well, usually

01:24:24

I'll be at economics, politics, theology, or this. I get told that I don't offer enough solutions.

01:24:31

I just do a bunch of critique. So I think in this case, more than ever, the proof is here.

01:24:37

You need to work on your local level because that's going to be what matters most in any situation. It's going to be what you build new institutions out of.

01:24:43

It's going to be how you defend yourself and your family, provide for your family, your neighbors, and everyone else. In my case,

01:24:50

I'm sure there's probably more that I could have done on that front that probably could have prevented some of this, but I also didn't anticipate most of it.

01:24:59

So if you are in another denomination, regardless of how safe you think you are from these things, I would get to work strengthening your relationships with people on the local level, strengthening the work that you do for your neighbors, strengthening the ties that you have with your neighbors, people that live next to you, not in the broad overuse sense

01:25:20

I think some pastors will do. So I would advise people to do that, whatever form it may take.

01:25:28

Everyone has their talents and their vocations. There's something that everyone can do, and this is something more future -oriented.

01:25:36

I think it's probably time to be looking where the next institutions will rise out from that are faithful.

01:25:42

That's not me saying we need to schism. That's not me saying we need to burn everything down and start over again. It's just a realist look at how things progress in society.

01:25:51

You have cycles. Things will rise and fall. No human institution will last forever.

01:25:57

The church will stand forever. What sign is outside the building might not.

01:26:02

So I would be looking for those new institutions, maybe try to help them get off the ground, be they churches, stores, educational institutions, whatever else.

01:26:16

Look for those, do what you can, and just look towards the future.

01:26:22

We are definitely planting the trees that we will never sit under the shade of. Well said,

01:26:28

Ryan. I appreciate it. Hopefully next time we'll have you on to repent of your libertarianism. Anyway, God bless, brother.