Dangerous Alliances w/Joe Boot

Matthew 16 and the Need to Interpret the Signs of the Times

In Matthew 16, Jesus chastised the Pharisees who could interpret the appearance of the sky but failed to interpret the signs of the time in which they lived. Who are the Pharisees of our day?

This strong hold of sort of whiteness and white identity and pristineness is really part of what keeps us from making progress.

We need to do better. The Church, rich in theological scholarship, has lingered in academic sanctuaries and ivory towers, failing to translate its lofty doctrines into a tangible and practical cultural apologetic.

At the Worldview Youth Academy, we bridge this critical gap. Here, theological depth is not an end in itself but a means to engage with contemporary cultural issues for the glory of God and the expansion of his kingdom.

Our mission is to cultivate thinkers who can articulate and apply Christian truths within contemporary societal challenges. So embrace this call to worship God with all your heart, all your soul and with all your mind.

We will do better as this next generation tears down the idols of our modern culture and works to build a brighter future toward Christendom. 2 .0.

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their.

Courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Don't go into the world and make homies.

Right.

Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck.

That's a joke, pastor.

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

Separation from Unbelief and the Church’s Boundaries

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? What portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?

What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them and I will be their God and they shall be my people.

Therefore go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing. Then I will welcome you and I will be a father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.

That is 2 Corinthians chapter 6 verses 14 through 18. Welcome back to another episode of Apology Radio. The first of 2025.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year to you. We got an exciting month ahead of us. Actually, I'm going to ask our guest in a minute how that's going to affect him the next couple of weeks. Anyways, it's going to be interesting and fun and I don't know, fun may not be the right.

Word.

We'll see.

We'll see.

We'll see.

Welcome everyone. My pastor Jeff is somewhere in Kentucky or Cincinnati maybe. He's trying to get back.

He's in transit.

Yeah, weather's been no bueno and he's had to cancel a lot of flights so he's trying hard to get back here.

Pray for safe travels.

But he's doing work for an abortion over there. We got bills in California. No, we don't. I don't know where California even came from. I guess the wildfires is in my brain.

California's got its hands full.

Kentucky was the word I was looking for.

Yes, Kentucky and Ohio.

Yes, Kentucky and Ohio.

Thank you.

So please be praying for that. I want to get right into here because our very awesome special guest has a very limited time with us. So Joe Boot, hey brother, welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio.

You are in England in some amazing English cottage with an amazing library and it's eight o 'clock, 8 .15 at night and he's needing to eat dinner. So what's going on brother?

Well, yeah, that's a fairly apt description. Happy New Year to you guys. And yeah, this is my English cottage or house. It's called Dairy House actually and it has a barn on the back where the Ezra offices.

Are.

So very cool.

It's a it's a it's a cool setup.

I am.

I just got back from Scotland a few days ago. We were up there in Aberdeen in the cold weather doing an education conference. And and actually after speaking at a conference for evangelists next week in England, I will be on my way over to you guys.

So I'll be two weeks in the US and I think I'm starting in San Antonio in Texas and then I'll be Denver and then Kentucky and then and then somewhere in Chattanooga, Georgia.

Area.

So Tennessee and Georgia.

Yeah, that's quite a tour.

Are you. Are you glad to be back in the UK?

Yes, I am. And but that's not because it's not without problems or issues here. I'm glad to be back for the Battle of Britain, for the struggle that's on here. You know, moving from home from Canada, although Canada's home from home.

I was there for 20 years. I'm a citizen of countries. But being back in back home in the UK is out of the chip pan into the fire in some respects. It's a challenging time economically, politically, socially here.

But I'm very I am very glad to be back. And, you know, I have to divide my time between our works in the US and Canada and in the.

UK.

Of course, some of our work as a ministry takes us well beyond that. So, for example, I'll be in the Philippines in February.

So it passed us there.

So or maybe even Germany.

Yeah, I was. I saw you guys in in Germany or last year, and I'm sure we'll be back in Germany, too. So, yes, exciting, as you say, an exciting few months ahead. And I know that you guys have got, well, some minor things happening on the ground there in the next few.

Some minor things. Before we get to that, I was before we get there, I was just to say we you know, it's kind of sad that we have to go to Germany to hang out together. But I got to spend time with Joe's dad, whose name is Michael.

Awesome. Awesome, brother. But he he sounds just like Michael Caine. It's uncanny.

No, the actor.

It's uncanny.

Sir Michael Caine.

Sir Michael Caine. I told him that. But it was like every time he opened his mouth, all I could picture was like Michael Batman.

Or Alfred.

Alfred. Yeah, it was amazing. But he's great. I love that.

Oh, I love that.

So how is this inauguration going to affect you in the UK? How do you foresee that?

What's the date of the inauguration?

20th. Yeah.

It's interesting. I will be in the States for the inauguration. So I'll be kind of experiencing it with you. But yeah, it absolutely affects the United Kingdom. The Trump administration will undoubtedly impact British politics and, you know, the global perspective from the UK point of view in a number of in a number of different ways.

First of all, there's there is a relatively new party in the UK called Reform UK. You guys might have heard of Nigel Farage, who is the Reform UK leader, and he is very friendly with Donald Trump.

OK.

And this has been very supportive of Trump and and vice versa. And reform is rising very, very quickly in the in the polls here and in popularity. While the popularity of the prime minister, who is basically a socialist who got in in the fall, is cratering very fast.

Really? So even things like that, this this government here, the Labour government trying to get one or two things done before Trump takes office because they're afraid that he might scuttle them. So there's a disastrous plan that our government has to give away the the Chagos Islands, which has both British and American military bases on it.

Very important, especially with regard to China. The Trump administration doesn't support this woke giveaway of the island, I think, to Mauritius, which has no legal claim on the island at all. So this they're running around trying to get that done.

So even in very sort of practical ways, politically, the the Trump administration and it's taking office does have an impact here. I think it will. My my guess is that it's going to help to the the ongoing shift of public opinion in the UK to the right and in particular towards towards reform UK.

We're heading under this socialist government right now into economic disaster area, potentially recession already. They're looking at interest rates rising. They've done all the usual socialist tinkering with the economy, you know, trying to fix putting up minimum wage, slapping VAT on private schools, increasing corporation tax, trying to tax farmers land with inheritance taxes, all the usual things that socialists try and.

Do.

And it's already starting to crater our economy. So the the change in administration in the U .S. will have significant ramifications over here. And the first part, from my perspective, positive ones.

Yeah, well, I think it'll be positive for us, too.

There comes a point, I guess, where there's nowhere to go but up.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

True.

Well, I don't want to derail us too far. I I'm always fascinated by this conversation. I'm just curious what the transition has been like for you guys from Queen Elizabeth to King Charles. How that how that's been.

Has there been any major changes or kind of the same stuff?

Well, Queen Elizabeth II was not a replaceable figure in the straightforward sense. She commanded tremendous respect all over the globe. Even you Americans tended to refer to her in popular parlance as the queen, not Queen.

Elizabeth II.

And partly because she was around for so long. I mean, she she book ended an era, really.

Yeah.

From the 1950s. You know, the only the only monarch that I could remember.

Yeah.

It's now a 50 year old man. So and she she did take her Christian faith very seriously and was very public about it. And she was great, not just she was greatly respected in this country, basically by everyone across the political spectrum.

And in many respects, she represented the the her death was the end of an era.

Yeah.

And it's not been as sort of disastrous as some people feared with Charles. He did pretty much stick to the traditional coronation oath. And he's he's more controversial figure in so far. He's on board with a whole load of what I would call generally left leaning projects, especially the whole climate issue.

But but it's sort of been business as usual for the monarchy. But he and he's not unpopular, but he's certainly not the the he's not Queen Elizabeth II. He's not as popular as she was. And he doesn't command the same global respect.

Yeah.

Interesting. Thank you for that. I was actually in Belfast the day the queen passed. And that was a very interesting experience.

I was in Texas.

Oh, that's funny. It was cool to be there and experience that. I had my middle middle daughter with me. And that was it was very it was cool to be a kind of part of that and see how that all It was a sad day, but just to see the see something like that.

So anyways, I don't like I said, I want to get us too far off track. So there's a couple of things we want to talk about. First, ReformCon 2025. That's coming up very quickly here in about four months.

We're partnering with Joe and Ezra Institute and very excited for that. Of course, Joe will be there and Doug Wilson, Pastor Jeff Durbin, James White, Andrew Sandlin, David Bonson, Toby Sumter and more.

Virgil Walker is going to be emceeing. Very excited about that. Virgil's a good friend of mine from G3. So yeah, we're very excited. We've been talking a little bit, but the tickets are for sale. And we'd love to see you guys out there.

It'll be in Tucson, Arizona this time. We're going to do some cool stuff. I'm excited for that. So yeah, we're glad to be partnering with you, Joe. And the topic kind of theme is up from the ashes. And so how do we rebuild society from a Christian worldview perspective?

So yeah, anything you want to say about that, Joe?

Can we convince John Cooper from Skillet to come?

I am trying.

There's got to be room for a concert.

Brother, I am trying, man.

I need to send him another note. I did see him in London recently at one of his concerts.

Yeah.

Wow.

And I need to lean on him again, see if we can. I know we've got that sort of question mark empty space on the website right now.

Yeah, exactly.

To be confirmed, I think we can try and convince John to come in there. But as you say, we're coming at this out of the ashes from a distinctly Christian worldview perspective. And for us, that means a reformational perspective.

Yeah.

A right out of the reform faith, which centers in the sovereignty of God. The principles of sphere sovereignty, a presuppositional standpoint in terms of the absolute authority of the word of God. And there won't be any praying to Mary or saints either at the conference.

Great transition.

That was perfect. Perfect transition into our first topic.

This all kind of relates together. I think this topic that we're about to dive into, how do we think through building God-glorifying alliances?

Yeah.

How should we think through that Christianly, as you always say, Joe? What is to inform the kind of co-belligerence we are to demonstrate with other like-minded folks, especially when they don't share our core convictions.

As Christians, we want to, in every way possible, strive to unify around our core principles. So these would be our beliefs of the word of God and the gospel. And then sometimes we're also faced with opportunities to, as you may say, move the ball down the floor a little bit and advance a social cause.

But that would require working together, cooperating with people that may have the same social goals that we do, but don't share some of those core Christian convictions. Is there a way?

There are foundations.

How do we navigate that space? I guess it's the question of ecumenism, right? Not just in the ecclesiastical setting, but also in the political public space, too. How do we work together, or to what degree can we work together with other people with whom we differ?

And how deep can those differences be? And how does the Bible guide that engagement in that? How should we think through that? Maybe that would be a good place to start.

Yeah.

Great question. I'll let Joe run with it from there, and we'll chime in.

Well, I mean, probably a general remark is helpful to begin with. And that is that from the reformational starting point, from a biblical worldview starting point, we recognize that there is no neutrality in any area of life.

We're dealing with a fundamental religious antithesis that runs through all of reality. When we think about the world and creation, we don't think of an artificial division of nature and grace, of creation and redemption, as though those are separated from one another.

As though there are two kingdoms, a common kingdom and a redemptive kingdom. We think about the one kingdom of God and God's creation. But the antithesis that runs through history is a religious one. So it's not about domains of life.

So, well, if you think about perhaps the realm of the arts and think, well, the arts has lots of evil in it. So if I flee the arts, I can get away from evil there. Or politics has lots of evil in it. So if I flee politics, I can get away from evil there.

No, there is both obedience and disobedience, faithfulness and apostasy in every sphere of life. So the dichotomy that runs throughout existence is the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. That means there is no neutrality anywhere.

And so we can't say, well, we can all in the area of, let's say, political life, we can just operate in terms of common principles based in natural law. There's no fundamental difference. And we can just have co-belligerence with pretty much anyone who recognizes a similar kind of principle.

We recognize that religiously and ultimately there is no neutrality. And the task in many respects for Christians is to push that antithesis, as Greg Barnson liked to say. So we don't lose sight in any of this, first of all, of that no neutrality principle.

And Paul's pretty clear about that in Romans 1. There's worship of the creation or there's worship of the creator. That affects every area of life, right down to our idea about social mores and sexuality and so on.

So I think probably that's our starting point. Practically, though, when it comes to thinking through questions of co-belligerence and partnership, it is in part a prudential question. And it does depend somewhat on the sphere of life and its guiding principle, the sphere of life that we're talking about.

It's going to look slightly different, isn't it, in the sphere of marriage and family or the sphere of the church, as opposed to maybe looking in the sphere of business or the civil sphere as to what degree of partnership or co-belligerency might be possible.

And I think that there are, we can come to them in just a second. I want to punt it back to you so I don't do all the talking. But I think there are two texts I'd like to look at, one of which Luke has read part of already, but there's another one.

I think there's a text that I think applies for us within, that is within the Christian community, and then there's a text that applies with relationships without, outside the Christian community, that I think give us guidance into how we sort of work this through in the different spheres of life.

Well, let's go for it.

So we have 2 Corinthians 6, which has come out from among them. Be separate, would this be what you were referring to in terms of the ecclesiastical sphere? And then in terms of the other text, where would you point to as a jumping off point?

Well, we've got 1 Corinthians 5, and let me see here, I think it's 10 through 13, which is the text that I think that deals with actually relationships within. I think 2 Corinthians 6 is actually dealing with the external relationships, not being unequally yoked.

So if we looked at 1 Corinthians 5 and verses 10 through 15, let me read them to you. Paul says, in the letter I wrote to you, I told you to avoid the company of fornicators, not meaning everyone in the world around you who is debauched or a miser or an extortioner or an idolater.

To do that, you would have to cut yourselves off from the world altogether. Now, my letter meant that if anyone who is counted among the brethren, that's the key thing, counted among the brethren is debauched or a miser or an idolater or bitter of speech or a drunkard or an extortioner, you must avoid his company.

You must not even sit at table with him. Why should I claim jurisdiction over those who are without? It is for you to pass judgment within your own number, leaving God to judge those who are without. Banish then the offender from your company.

So there Paul is talking about, I think, how we address relationships, questions of partnership, questions of co-belligerency, questions even of fellowship with those on the inside. That is, those who claim to be Christians, who claim to be brethren, claim to be brothers.

And actually, if you look at the list that he deals with and addresses, it's quite challenging, isn't it? The debauched, the fornicator, the miser, the extortioner, and of course, the idolater. Even those who are bitter of speech, and that might relate a little bit to the conversation we can have about social media.

Contentions, right?

Being, fighting one another, stirring up strife for the sake of the controversy.

For the sake of strife. I'm reading from the Knox translation. Bitter of speech, the drunkard, and so on. We're to avoid their company, we're told. That's the jurisdiction there of the church. And in fact, in the case of the unrepentant, we're told to banish the offender.

So there's pretty clear guidance as to how we are to build relationships, partnerships, fellowship, and co-belligerency. With those explicitly who claim to be brothers, who claim to be fellow Christians.

Paul is pretty clear about the kind of standards that would dictate who we can build meaningful partnerships with.

Co-Belligerence, Ecclesiastical Boundaries, and the Question of Calvin Robinson

Okay. Now, I have an example of our own activity here that we use in the area of life and fighting for the unborn. The example I think that maybe people that watch this will currently have swirling around in their minds is what's going on on social media.

With, I mean, I don't have any reservations about name-dropping here, but Calvin Robinson. So he was invited to this conference by Clear Truth Media, and then his invitation was recently rescinded. There was a lot of assumptions made in terms of, you know, he's had commentary against WOKE and DEI during this time, and even the COVID tyranny.

And so a lot of evangelical Protestants were under the impression, okay, this is an Anglican in the same vein as J .C. Ryle. But, you know, the last several days here, and even week, there's been an increasingly contentious pattern of speech on the part of Calvin to, you know, you know, denounce Protestantism, John Calvin, and, you know, speak badly about the Reformation in that sense.

And then also positively putting forth the Marian dogma, which you alluded to earlier. But, so he was disinvited. His invitation was rescinded. You know, once the, you know, board members of Clear Truth found these things out, examined this, you know, this pattern of speech, and saying, listen, if you're insulting your base, you know, we can't in good conscience allow you to participate in this.

And he's also taking part in another conference coming up as well. But as this is the example floating around in people's minds right now, that's why I wanted to speak to it, because I think we need to have an answer.

We do need to have a fully formed biblical engagement on this topic, because as we deal in the area of abortion, we're confronted with the possibility of partnering, working together with Roman Catholics often, that are very involved in the pro-life world.

You know, their methodology is secular humanism, if you look at the bottom of this, whereas ours, we're approaching this from an explicitly Christian perspective. We're saying this is a gospel issue. We're saying that the woman is a sinner, and the problem is a heart that needs forgiveness.

That the gospel needs to change the culture, and that we need to actually apply biblical standards of justice in terms of how we care for and protect unborn children. Those are the lines that we're drawing up front.

That's what we're making clear. And we would never say, have this person from a different system or worldview come in and speak, perhaps, at one of our gatherings, because we realize that the gospel is the line.

It has to be that. We've drawn this line because we believe God draws it here. And we say we can't have partnership in that way, right, in this context, to this degree, in the same way we wouldn't, if we were invited to speak at one of their events, we would make our position very clear up front.

Listen, we're Christians. We believe in the authority of Scripture. I'm Trinitarian, etc., etc. So we draw those lines very, very clearly up front. But at the same time, we realize that in a social political context, when you're trying to affect political change, you want people pulling the same direction as you politically, even if they don't share your core Christian convictions, right?

They may vote very, very similarly as you. They might have the same views on family and sexuality and life and so on and so forth. So you want that in place. So I guess that's what you're providing here, a framework, I suppose, Joe, with introducing these two verses of how do we think through the context of co-laboring, working together with people in these various aspects of life.

Yeah, and I think, and I'll let you speak, Joe. I mean, that's why Joe said at the beginning, it's important. To what sphere of jurisdiction are we talking about?

There are degrees.

Yes, for sure. And so, yeah, I'd love to hear it. And obviously, you mean Calvin Robinson's British, I believe, right? So I know Joe has a lot of kind of inside information. I don't mean inside is not the right word, but he's very much more familiar with Calvin Robinson, his work in the UK.

So yeah, I want to hear your thoughts on that.

Well, to the general point, I think that we, you know, when we look at the history of the Western world since the Reformation, you know, cultures in Christendom developed along very different and distinctive lines, depending on whether they were Roman Catholic, whether they were Protestant.

I mean, in England, in Britain, we have an establishment of the Protestant faith. It's not a Roman Catholic faith. And so, and of course, our forebears thought that that was significant and important.

It's not that there's not toleration. The act of toleration, you know, following basically the bloodless revolution of 1688, there was increasing measures of toleration for Christians of all shapes and sizes and types.

But the establishment, which the king, even at the last coronation, and we've already talked about the king briefly, swore to uphold the Protestant faith. And so that is established by law in Britain.

And of course, in the United States, in the earlier constitutional period, there were states that established different churches, Protestant churches. So, this is not an insignificant issue, if we're to take the historical questions and the actual substantive issues seriously.

Now, that doesn't mean to say that, you know, John Calvin said of Rome that there was a true church amongst them. It's like a snowball that's rolled down the hill. It's not what's in the center, the creedal ecumenical creeds and confessions that are at stake so much as all the accretions that were picked up as Rome rolled down the hill of culture, as it were, like a snowball picked up all this other stuff to the point where it eventually was obscuring the gospel itself.

And so, yes, I obviously have observed some of the online activity and commentary. You raised the issue of the personality, the character of Calvin Robinson. He has been involved, I think, in a number of different churches in a very short space of time.

He has been a media personality on television and on podcasts and so on and so forth. He has seemed to bounce from one thing to another quite quickly. I'm always a little bit reticent and concerned when I see somebody bouncing from one thing to another very quickly.

The Free Church of England, which he was a part of until very recently, was actually established in the 19th century when many Anglicans thought that the Church of England was becoming too Roman. And so they established a much more distinctively sort of Puritan evangelical free church in England.

He was part of that. Now, he appears to have bounced over to Rome. I have friends who are Roman Catholics, and I've had lots of dialogue with Roman Catholics. I've seen some evangelicals in Britain go over to Rome in the last few years.

But what that does, inevitably, is with the organizations they were once part of, I can think of one former bishop in particular, it tends to breach a certain degree of fellowship and partnership. You can have partnership on a certain level, things that don't tie you in, but having a deeper level of fellowship, for example, having them preach in your church or speak and preach at an evangelical conference, that becomes highly problematic.

Because of the step that they've taken. And when somebody starts talking about John Calvin and Luther as heretics, as the Reformation as a mistake, talking fairly anti-Protestant terms, talking about Mary as the Queen of Heaven, England as Mary's dowry, prayers offered to saints, the notion that even the thief on the cross was converted because of the influence of the church.

The intercessions of Mary and this sort of thing, all of those sorts of dogmas. Well, in the sphere of civil life, of civil government, there's a certain amount of co-belligerence you can have with a Roman Catholic who believes in God and accepts the creeds, the historic creeds of the church, who's concerned about abortion.

You can sign the same petitions, you can present the same pieces of legislation, but the degree to which that partnership can be sustained, I mean, if you go to, I think, Luke, you read from 2 Corinthians 6, didn't you?

In my translation here, Paul says, you must not consent to be yoke fellows with unbelievers. What has innocence to do with lawlessness? What is there in common between light and darkness? What harmony between Christ and Belial?

How can a believer throw in his lot with an infidel? How can the temple of God have any commerce with idols? And you are the temple of the living God. God has told us so. I will live and move among them and be their God and they should be my people.

Come out then from among them. The Lord says to us, separate yourselves from them and do not even touch what is unclean and I will make you welcome. So the question becomes, with the Christian, we saw in 1 Corinthians 5, there's some very clear lines.

They're moral lines. They're questions of faithfulness, idolatry, immorality, and so on. With the unbeliever, there's this question of being yoke fellows. Now, the Roman Catholic, the challenge comes is, are we going to refer to them as brothers and sisters in the Lord?

Well, that's a prudential question that would very much depend on the individual, wouldn't it? On the particular person. We'd have to say that, you know, in general, nations and indeed many persons that identify themselves as Roman Catholics, who think they are Christian because they attend mass twice a year, it's problematic for the evangelical to refer to them as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Because their understanding of salvation and redemption and how that takes place and what is going on there is different. But with the unbeliever, and I think we could put many who identify as Roman Catholics, certainly as Muslims, atheists and so on in the unbelieving camp, not all, as I say, in the Roman Catholic church.

I agree with Calvin, there is a true church amongst them. I want to be careful to state that. There is a limit then put in 1 Corinthians 5 on the depth of fellowship. In 2 Corinthians 6, we've got this question of what does it really mean to be yoked?

And my take on that is that, again, depending on which sphere we're talking about, we think about the sphere of the family in marriage. Well, of course, you cannot, which is led by the moral aspect of the dimension of life in the love relationship.

Well, if we don't love the same thing, we don't love the same person, and we can't structure marriage around love for Christ, mutual submission to Christ, then obviously that's an unequal yoking. You can't be married to an unbeliever and not expect difficulties and disaster.

Paul gives very clear guidance, of course, to those who have become Christians and are already in those relationships. And he says, look, if the unbeliever will stay with you, stay. And perhaps your faith and your conduct will be sanctifying and bring that win them over.

Exactly, win them over. But you don't enter into such a thing as a Christian in the life of the church. And obviously, you can't place an unbeliever in a position of an office of authority or responsibility in the life of the church.

The unbeliever can attend church, but they can't be admitted to the Lord's table or to baptism unless they turn to Christ. In the civil realm, though, and in the business realm, civil life, economic life, the lines, the sphere of life that we're in there, which Paul talks about, you can't take yourself out of the world, of the world of human culture.

It's a much more prudential kind of question. And I think the yoking then has to do with the depth or the degree of partnership that we're talking about. I mean, there are varying degrees of relationship, partnership and collaboration.

I think that the yoking has to do with entering into relationships, partnerships, agreements, contracts, whatever that would be very, very difficult to get out of that are binding in a very unique kind of way that would lead to difficulty or trouble for the believer.

Most business relationships, you know, contracts have clauses that you can withdraw from relatively easily. We can have all kinds of political cobelligerence that doesn't involve us in binding, yoking kinds of relationships that have a kind of lightness of touch, as it were.

And so I think in those political and business economic sphere of life, commerce and in certain elements of culture, there can be degrees of cobelligerence on the basis of creation, grace or common grace.