A Tale of Two Nationalisms

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I want to talk today about Christian nationalism, because that's the buzzword.

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That's the thing that you hear about now more than probably any other term. Now it might change next week, but right now,

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Christian nationalism is the term that is used against conservative

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Christians, political conservative Christians in evangelicalism.

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And it's been interesting watching this term become popular as of late and seeing the development.

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It seems to me, now this is this is my memory here, and I think I did a show on this at the time. It seems to me this became more popular to accuse people of Christian nationalism right about the time, really right after perhaps, the election of 2020 happened.

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And there was this period where we didn't, and as you listen to my podcast, you know kind of where I stood on that, but we didn't know what was going to happen.

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It was a bit tenuous, and there was a lot of tension, and there was a rally.

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There was a number of rallies before January 6. Now you just hear about January 6, but there was a number of rallies leading up to that that were all focused on the

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Stop the Steal, I think was the name of them, Stop the Steal rallies. And there was one rally, and I'm not sure if this was specifically called a

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Stop the Steal rally, but that was the intention it seems, and it was during that period of time. I was not there. It was in DC.

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General Flynn was there, as I remember. I think Eric Metaxas might have been there. And I remember just so vividly that day when there was that rally happened on Twitter.

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It was Beth Moore put a tweet out and just raked everyone over the coals who were involved in this, and the term as far as I remember that she used was

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Christian nationalism. And since then that has become the buzzword, and I'm not saying it wasn't used before that.

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I remember sitting in class, or it was Chapel at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and hearing

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Bruce Ashford, who was the provost at the time, talk about ethno -nationalism, and this was such a problem.

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And so nationalism has been kind of a negative thing to the left. They talk in very negative terms about nationalism for at least the last few years since Trump was elected, for certain.

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But Christian nationalism seems to be more of a recent development, and there's been news stories.

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The Atlantic, I think, put out a news story about it. The secular media has all picked this up as well, and they want to bash people for Christian nationalism.

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Now, I know I've made this point before, but I see this as a little bit like Adorno's F -scale functioned, which is,

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Adorno, Theodore Adorno was a member of the Frankfurt School. He came up with something called the F -scale, which F stood for fascist, and the way that it functioned, it was used by psychology departments across the, it probably still is, across the

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United States at universities. And the way it worked was, you may have fascist tendencies if you, for instance, if a husband is very authoritative, maybe to the point of beating his wife, right?

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Something we would all look on negatively. But maybe it's not even beating his wife, maybe it's just he sees himself as the leader.

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He's the leader of the household. Or someone takes pride in their history, their family history, that kind of thing.

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Or they take pride in their nation. There was all these different categories, these metrics that would be used to determine whether or not someone had fascistic tendencies, and then they'd be given a number on the

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F -scale, kind of how much of a tendency they had towards fascism. So it was a way of calling people fascists.

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It was a way of categorizing people as fascists. Essentially, think about when this was coming around, 1960s,

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Nazis. We're talking about Nazis. We're talking about that kind of thing. And someone who has certain tendencies might have a predisposition to be a

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Nazi. And so there were these little factors that would be used to put someone in that category.

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And I see this now all the time. I see this used whenever a left -wing person calls a right -wing person a

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Nazi. They're pointing to something about them. Obviously, they're not Nazis. 99 .99

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% of the time, it's not a Nazi that they're criticizing. But they called them Nazis. And it's very different when a right -wing person generally calls a left -wing person a commie, right?

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Or a communist. Generally, it's because of specific things, specific policies that are communist that the left -wing person wants to usher in.

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And more and more so, by the way. But when a left -wing person calls a right -wing person a Nazi, it's usually something to do with them being very patriotic or them being pro -police.

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And therefore, that means they're pro -authority and hierarchy. And the hierarchy is somehow Nazi -esque. And the police and using force is somehow

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Nazi -esque. Of course, unless it's for a left -wing movement or cause. And then, of course, it's not.

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But it's for little minor things like that that aren't necessarily fundamental to what a

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Nazi is that you get called a Nazi. Now, I think that's stretched out into other terms.

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If you're called a neo -confederate I think that's sort of like using

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Adorno's F -scale, that same principle of trying to... Now it's getting to the point where if you even like Robert E.

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Lee and don't think his statue should be taken down, you're somehow racist, right? So it's taking these little things and trying to connect them to something that in the hopes that everyone will agree that this is something very negative and bad and they'll condemn it.

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That's the tactic used. And Christian nationalist is one of those terms that's being used in that way. Just the way the

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Nazis used, the way the neo -confederate used, and the way that, you know, even the way that, you know, a patriarchal male chauvinist is used.

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These are terms, buzz terms, that the left uses. And Christian nationalist is joining the ranks of that, that genre, that category of terms, that umbrella of things the left doesn't like.

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And so I think this is interesting because, well let me just tell you before we get into all the details of what

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I want to talk about. It's interesting to me because we are at a crossroads right now.

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And this debate is significant because it demonstrates that the crossroads we're at as a country, politically, just even definitionally, is a wide chasm.

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It shows how different people are thinking about their identity, their identity, their relationship to the country that they live in.

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That's why this is important in my mind. It shows that there is a wide chasm between people. And we know that.

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We feel it. But I think through talking about this, you'll get a sense of why that is more, of just how monumental these distinctions are.

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And so that's what I want to go through a little bit today. And there's so many things that we could talk about. I think I may have to do a number of other shows just on certain elements of this and exploring more.

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But I want to just put my foot in the door. I want to start this discussion. And I've talked about Christian nationalism before.

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I talked about it in my book right here, which you can still get, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict.

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You can go on Amazon and get it. You can get it at Christianityandsocialjustice .com. I'm going to actually read for you part of that today.

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But I have a whole thing on Christian nationalism in that. And there's something I want to say to the right.

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And there's something I want to say to the left. And just something I want to inject into this whole debate. Because I think we need to have good categories.

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There's been some obscurity. There's been vagueness. People are talking past each other a bit.

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And I'm not under the delusion that you're going to be able to get some of the leftists to engage with you rationally.

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I'm just thinking, though, we who value Christianity and think that it does actually should have an influence on politics and on our country, our culture,

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I think we need to be able to articulate ourselves just a little better, some of us.

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And so I'm hoping that this podcast will help start that as well, possibly. But if anything, you'll understand more what

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Christian nationalism is. You'll understand a little more about this debate. You'll understand why there's such a significant difference between people right now in this country and in the church.

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And where those disagreements are. Because they're so fundamental. And you'll be able to,

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I think, articulate more clearly what you believe. And hopefully it will be in line with what

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Scripture teaches, or at least the examples and principles were given in Scripture. And then just what seems to be reasonable and natural.

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So let's get into it. Let's start here, if I may.

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This is a screenshot from Andrew T. Walker. He's a professor at Southern Seminary.

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And that's in Louisville, Kentucky, the flagship seminary for the Southern Baptist Convention. And some conservatives were getting really excited about this.

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Which I think really shows you probably how desperate we are to find someone who is going to push back against the left.

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The fact that this is even considered pushback to me is a little bit, I don't, yeah, it's a little bit of a pushback.

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But it's certainly lacking in some ways. But I think we're just so hungry for someone in a more elite circle to say common -sense things.

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That this is becoming, this is like out of the ordinary. So Andrew T. Walker said this.

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He said, Christian nationalism, and he put it in scare quotes, is meant to be derisive. And there are undoubtedly very concerning elements.

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But if you're a Christian and believe our nation should have the aftershocks of the resurrected Christ reflected in its customs, you too are a kind of Christian nationalist.

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So he's trying to say this is kind of inescapable. And he's been tweeting things like this all year. But he was more clear and more direct with this one.

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Now, of course, he does say there are undoubtedly very concerning elements. He doesn't say what those are. I would be curious to know, well, what are the concerning elements?

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Is this something you have to say? I don't know. Andrew T. Walker, you know, has co -written with Russell Moore.

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If you look at just his Twitter interaction with Russell Moore, very much someone who loves

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Russell Moore and is pro -Russell Moore. And he works at Southern Seminary.

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So there's a party line there. And so I think that's what makes this special to some people is, look, he's kind of bucking the trend here.

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He seems to be able to go out of step a little bit with the guild.

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And I don't want to get into his head because I don't know exactly what he's thinking. But saying there are undoubtedly very concerning elements, you know, that may be a way to try to preserve the standing in the guild or something.

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I'm not sure. But either way, he's saying something. And let's just be honest about this. This is very true. It is meant to be a derisive term, right?

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That's kind of like the Oderno's F scale thing that I was talking about. You know, this is meant to to it like that's the purpose of the term at this point is meant to bludgeon people.

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Like the term is is meaningless. It doesn't really describe much at this point. It's just meant to bludgeon people.

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And I think he's absolutely right on this. But if you're a Christian, he says, and believe our nation should have the aftershocks of the resurrected

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Christ reflected in its customs. So in other words, if you believe that that Christian principles that the law of God should have an effect on the nation, then hey, you would be a

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Christian nationalist. So how would he be defining Christian nationalism? Essentially, what he's saying here, if you cut through everything, is he's saying that it's biblical principles applied to the government.

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That's what it would be. So that we shouldn't just take the negative emotional attachment that seems to be with this term.

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And we shouldn't just take that as what it is. That this negative thing, that Nazi -esque thing.

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We should define it this way, the way he wants us to define it. And then you had this tweet from Jonathan Lehman.

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He said that Christian nationalism does not equal legislating moral principles found in the Bible. Jonathan Lehman, for those who don't know,

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I should say this first. He works at Capitol Hill Bible Church, I believe, still. But he's instrumental in the nine

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Marx ministries and friends with Mark Dever, works with Mark Dever. So that's kind of his wheelhouse.

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I've talked about him before because he really opposed John MacArthur at one point for reopening his church.

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He also, I'm trying to think, he said that identity politics, people who believe in identity politics, they could be allies with, or Christians could be allies with them to fight for common goals and things.

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And so there's things like that over the years that I've talked about with Jonathan Lehman. Definitely pushes more left, but I've seen some encouraging things from him lately.

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Now they're not perfect, but there seems to be a sense in which some of these guys are starting to try to run a little bit to the right because I think they got too out on a limb, possibly.

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And now it has hurt them. I have no doubt that that has hurt Jonathan Lehman to some extent.

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But he says this about Christian nationalism. It's not legislating moral principles found in the

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Bible. Okay, so that's basically contradictory to Andrew T. Walker. Andrew T. Walker basically says that's what it is.

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Jonathan Lehman says that, no it's not. He says Christian nationalism is confusing Christian identity and national identity or church membership and citizenship.

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So this is more, I think, the leftist definition of Christian nationalism, but there are some conservatives really encouraged by this as well.

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And the reason is because he's actually trying to make distinctions here. He's trying to say, hey, all the leftists getting worked up about Christian nationalism, look, you need to figure out what it is here.

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If it's confusing Christian identity and national identity, well, that would be a problem. But you shouldn't just throw it around loosely about people if that's not what you're talking about.

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And that's how many conservatives I know took this and they were encouraged by it. Now again, opposite definition of Andrew Walker.

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But both seemingly trying to put a shield up to some extent regarding all the accusations flying at Christians for being

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Christian nationalists. So this is an interesting development. I don't want to read too much into it more than we should.

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I think some people are getting a little too, probably, excited about this.

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And I don't want to say you shouldn't be excited, but this is small at this point.

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But it does have some significance. It does mean that there is a little bit of pushback now of like, hey, are we taking this a little too far, this whole crusade against Christian nationalism?

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So you have two contradictory definitions. That doesn't really help us much. Well, here's another definition. I want to read this to you.

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And this is, I think, this gets closer to the mark here. William Wolfe says this. And William Wolfe is a student at the

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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And he is also, he writes for the Freedom Center.

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And he has some good work that he's done. And he says, a working definition of a positive Christian nationalism

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I used recently. Christian nationalism is a biblically informed political ideology with three main features.

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Number one, it honors Christ as the one true king and commanded preeminent love of all Christians. Number two, it accepts the given reality of sovereign nation -states and calls on Americans to love with a greater love their fellow

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American citizens and to prioritize the well -being of America over the general world order and even the international global population.

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And then three, it establishes, promotes, or preserves a Christian morality and ethical framework as the preferred core content of our nation's culture, values, traditions, civic life, and legal structures without idolizing the state or requiring that all inhabitants be

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Christians. And I think he, this is, I think, the crux of the issue.

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I think he's identifying the crux of the issues here. And number two is the sticking point. And you'll see that.

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So just to review here what he's talking about here. And this is just, again, William Wolfe's opinion. I'm gonna get deeper into the historical definition of nationalism and all that and parse some things out.

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But I just want you to see where the debate is at this point. His definition is, look, it honors

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Christ as king. That's the first thing. We honor Christ. That means we honor his law. Number two, it just accepts the reality of the situation, which is that there's sovereign nation - states and Americans should, their responsibility is to love the people in their nation -state, perhaps first, or to prioritize the well -being of the people in their nation -state before people all over the world, right?

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And number three, preserving Christian morality, ethics. So there's a metaphysical component to this.

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There's an ethical component to this. And that's what it is. That's what Christian nationalism is.

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And, of course, he's very positive about this. And that's pretty consistent with what I think Andrew Walker was saying, although it's a more specific.

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Here's a sample of a number of the pushback comments that just give you an idea of where this debate is that is raging.

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And this is just a few of them. But here are some of the comments that were made against the second point.

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The second point is the sticking point that William Wolfe made, which is that Christian nationalism accepts the given reality of sovereign nation -states, calls on Americans to love with a greater love of their fellow

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Americans. And so you have Jeremy Arnold on Twitter. Now, these aren't prominent people. These are just, there's just a lot of them.

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So you had, you had a Twitter mob after him saying that, hey, if you're gonna apply Matthew 2239 to nations, then the logical application is not

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Americans loving Americans, but loving their neighbors, Canadians and Mexicans. Well, Matthew 2239 says this.

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Let's read it here. Jesus declared, love the

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Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul with all your mind. And this is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.

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All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. So this is the golden rule, right?

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Loving your neighbor as yourself. Well, what, what is loving your neighbor as yourself have to do with nations in the context of this passage?

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Well, the answer is, you don't see nations there. Now, so he's trying to draw a principle here and say, and apply it to nations.

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And, and this is really more of a individual jurisdiction. It's one of the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the

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Sadducees. They themselves gathered together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with a question, teacher, which commandment is the greatest in the law?

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So this is, this is the context here. So, so he's trying to say, well, if you're gonna love your neighbors, then

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I guess, you know, Americans should love Mexicans more than Americans, right? And, and the problem with that, of course, is that loving your neighbor is loving those in proximity to you.

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Loving this, this is your family. This is your, these are the people that live near you. These are the people that would inhabit your church and have it your society.

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And this is my contention. Okay. This is the main, I think, crux of the whole issue. It's actual people.

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Okay. And you may think that's not that significant, but I think you're going to find out as we go through this more, that is the, one of the most significant things about this whole debate.

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Loving your neighbor is loving an actual person, tangible, real, not an abstraction.

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It's not loving the idea of loving your neighbor. It's loving your neighbor. Okay. It's not just getting the government to send foreign aid to a country.

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It is a personal thing. That's, that's the commandment. You notice in verse 37, your

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God with your heart, with your soul, with your mind. So this, this is not obviously what

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Jeremy Arnold is trying to make this be. But if you take this command, literally, that this is about real people, real neighbors, then actually it's going to support

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William Wolfe's point probably more. The people that are in closer proximity to you, the people that you actually will see and have interaction with, the people that, that you actually have the ability to help more because they're in greater proximity to you.

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People that are actual neighbors are going to be the people that live near you.

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They're going to be people within the boundaries of the state or the county or the town or the nation that you're, or country that you're in.

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So not, not really, not really. Uh, here's Jackson Clemmer. The absolute joke is to use

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Matthew 2239, love your neighbor for Christian nationalism. When Jesus was asked who your neighbor is, he explicitly used a despised foreigner as his archetype, meaning the good

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Samaritan. Now here's the, the issue with this one. Again, the good Samaritan, where that story is about in, in the, in the context of the story, a real person who's there.

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I'm not saying, yeah, it's a parable, but I'm, but I'm saying in the parable, it's a real person, uh, that is, that is being helped here that someone comes across on the road.

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It's not someone that's in some distant country that they're not seeing now. Yeah. It may be someone who's of a different ethnicity.

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It may be someone who's, um, you don't agree with on everything, uh, when it comes to where to worship, but it's a

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Samaritan, right? But the point of this is loving your neighbor is actually it, there's an action behind it in, in real, for someone who's in a real proximity, who's a real person.

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And again, that would actually go again to Williams -Wolf's point more, the people who are around you, right?

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It's not this abstraction. And this is the point I want to pound home. And I'm going to,

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I'm going to keep going over this as we go through more and more. Uh, here's someone else.

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Germany first, excuse me. I mean, America first. They're basically saying you're a Nazi. Um, uh, anyway,

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I'm not going to go through all of these. Um, here's one. The Bible absolutely does not qualify the command to love your neighbor, um, along nationality lines.

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Well, I, I agree to an extent. It it's the point of the passage isn't about, uh, nation

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States and how they, uh, you know, what, what you should, your responsibility to someone who lives in your nation

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States specifically. That's not the context. The principle though, of loving your neighbor is loving the people that are near you in proximity to you, that you can help.

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That's the point. And logically that's going to be people who live in your village or town or County in nation.

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It's going to extend outward. You think about it this way. You have yourself, you have your family and then from out of your family, outside of that, you have, you have a diminishing responsibility, right?

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You know, if you don't love your family, then you're worse than an infidel, right? According to scripture, you're worse than an unbeliever.

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Uh, so you have a diminishing responsibility perhaps, uh, where the one and others are made to Christians, right?

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You have your church. Uh, but the nation is going to have, there's going to be more of a responsibility to the people who live in your nation, who share your, your culture and who live under the laws that you live under and make the decisions that affect you and you affect them, that you're gonna have more of a responsibility there than you are to people who live in Mozambique, right?

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Or somewhere else. Doesn't mean that you can't help them. Doesn't mean that you shouldn't. Doesn't mean you don't have responsibility.

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It just means there's a diminished responsibility. Uh, some, some people call them a radical, some people call them a fascist, right?

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So this is kind of, this is the thing. Uh, this is the reaction against Christian nationalism.

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And, and this is the kind of thing you're probably, some of you are undergoing in your churches and, uh, et cetera.

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So I want to, um, I want us to come back to this. All right. I know things are still kind of vague.

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I know we need to define things more, but I want to come back to this cause I want to show you something.

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This happened also. Oh, it won't play. Okay. Well, uh, I guess you'll have to go online and get this to play.

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But, uh, so we have, um, some, some screenshots at least here. There was a group,

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I was going to play the videos, but there was a group that was at the Lincoln Memorial, I guess, over the weekend.

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And they also marched near the Capitol. Uh, it looks, I don't know how many people there are, you know, a hundred people called the

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Patriot Front. And I looked them up online. And of course, uh, they're considered on Wikipedia and stuff to be a white, uh, nationalist.

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Actually, I think it's white supremacist organization. Now I look there up their website and it's clear to me there there's, they, they are some kind of like, they do think

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European, um, lineage is very significant in that you need that to stabilize that, that, that that's an essential element of the nation to stabilize the nation.

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They're nationalists, right? They believe in a nation and that this is one of the fundamental characteristics of the nation is ethnicity.

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And so being a descendant of the Europeans who colonized the American continent is very important and significant, and they're the true

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Americans, right? And so, uh, that's part of it. I think there were some, I skimmed it. They look like there were some other things that you, you, you should value some certain, certain things, but that, that's a significant element to them.

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Okay. So they ended up, they marched, uh, in Washington and it's a small group, uh, of people, but, uh, they're, they're trying to make some noise.

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They're trying to garner attention and they did, and they look somewhat paramilitary.

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They had some shields and combat boots and, uh, they wear what looks like uniforms.

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They're thin, uh, and, uh, and, and they look like they're fit.

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And so conservatives were saying, well, this just, this looks, a lot of conservatives were saying, this is FBI, this is

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CIA, this is false flag. This is, and you know, is that possible? I guess there could be some elements of that.

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That's what we've certainly seen with the, uh, the, the whole issue with the attempt to the plot against governor

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Whitmer in Michigan. We've seen even with January 6th that there were, uh, certainly deep state operatives involved in these things.

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But, uh, that doesn't mean that it has to be a deep state operation. This could mean,

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I mean, that there are people who believe this kind of thing. And, and this is the thing, this is the point I want to make is how would you, if you were confronted with someone like this, how would you reason with them?

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Okay. Uh, this is how the left reasons with someone like this. And this is going to be very illustrative, uh, a good illustration for what, what we are trying to figure out here, which is what is

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Christian nationalism? Uh, what would you say? The left says, you guys are

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Nazis. You guys are bigots. You guys are racist. You guys are, and it just lops all kinds of names.

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Maybe it gets violent with them, just rakes them over coals in the media. But the media, they never give good reasons.

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They never engage in reason really. That's been my experience. At least they don't actually take their arguments, try to understand them and then refute them.

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So this is my question. How would you refute a group like this, right? Patriot front. And, and I should know there's,

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I'm using this group cause it's the one that's on Twitter right now. Everyone is going crazy about, uh, but there's, there's groups that Twitter won't go crazy about that aren't a white nationalism.

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They're black nationalism or some other kind of nationalism and you know, politically incorrect to go after them.

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So there's, uh, there, there are other groups and, and how would you reason with them?

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What would you say? This is what I want to challenge you to think about. Now I'm going to read for you. I'm going to bring this all together.

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I'm going to read for you something from my book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions in Conflict.

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And I think it will help tie these ends together. I think it will help. And I'll stop to comment a little bit, uh, as we go along here.

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So let's do it. Uh, let's see if I'm on the right section here. Christian nationalism. I'm going to back up just a little bit.

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Uh, let's talk about loving neighbor. The Christian duty to love is also arranged by God.

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I'm kind of jumping in the middle here. So you have to get the book if you want to know the rest. I'm jumping in the middle. The Christian duty to love is also arranged by God according to responsibility and proximity.

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Jesus taught greater love has no one than this, than, uh, that one lay down his life for his friends.

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Paul said, let us do good to all people, especially those who are of the house of the faith. He also instructed husbands to love their own wives as their own bodies and provide, especially for those living in their own household.

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Moses, Jeremiah, Esther, Jesus, and Paul all exhibited a special love for their own nation.

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St. Ambrose of Milan, an early Christian leader, believed love should be directed first to God, then our parents, then our children, and lastly those, um, in our household.

30:12

This way of ranking love's obligations reflects Jesus' command to love neighbor. The Greek term translated in English as neighbor means one who is near.

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It is true that Jesus commanded Christians to ensure their love for him exceeded their love for family members.

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Yet, this was an affirmation of familial love, not a rejection of it. The love springing forth from natural relationships is the foundation for understanding how to love even one's enemies.

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Early church father John Chrysostom asked, for if a man deserts those who are united by ties of kindred and affinity, how shall he be affectionate towards others?

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Ambrose said, good will starts first with those at home, that is, with children, parents, brothers, and goes on from one step to another throughout the world.

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This preference for one's own family and neighbor and nation contradicts the premium modern social justice places on preferring those who are different.

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Influential institutions increasingly celebrate diversity while condemning patriarchy and nationalism.

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If advocates for social justice desire Christianity at all, it is a man -centered version that weakens natural relationships and flattens personal affection into caring for all humans across the globe equally.

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In a sense, social justice reasoning can replace a love for one's relatives and neighbors with a love for abstractions and fantasies.

31:32

The current hostility towards nationalism illustrates this, and I'll stop to make a comment on this. When I see social justice advocates, young people especially, who get swept away, what's one of the first things that usually happens often?

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Tension between them and their family. A disdain for the place that they grew up, their hometown, their state.

31:52

I've seen this in almost every case. A disdain for their country sometimes. Why is that?

31:58

They're all about love. They all want to love people, right? That's what they're, that's the whole point, but yet the people that are most proximate to them, they generally have tension with now and have a hard time loving.

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Now, we have to think through this. This is something worth exploring because I think it explains what the actual disagreement is over, and it's gonna help us understand how we would answer someone, too, who's into white, black, pink nationalism of some kind, and what that means, all right?

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Now, here's my section where I talk about Christian nationalism. Although today's activists for social justice condemn nationalism, an understanding of the history surrounding the term helps in explaining just what kind of nationalism they object to.

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It should be noted at the outset that there is a kind of nationalism that seeks social justice by manipulating the familial love one has for their own people into a love for the state or a set of universal propositions.

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Now, so this means, what I'm saying here is that there is something called nationalism. It's gone by that name, and it's ideological, okay?

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It takes everything in life, and it flattens it into conforming to this ideology about whether it's for or against the state, because the state represents the people, or a set of universal propositions which stand in place of a people, okay?

33:31

This is what social justice warriors are hung up on. They say that they love people, but then in their own lives, you see that they distance themselves from the people they love, or the people that they should love, the people that they actually know, the people that it would be natural to have affection for.

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Instead, they replace that with a love for abstractions generally, a love for the idea of loving, a love for taking other people's money and giving it to someone overseas.

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Love means virtue signaling, where you don't have to sacrifice anything, but you take a position that's stamped as loving, because you're accepting someone's sinful choices, or something like that.

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That's loving. Putting on a mask, right? This is loving, and it's in the name of loving people, but the people who are most hardcore about that, how do they feel about those who won't wear masks, right?

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So, is it really about loving people? So, this is what the emperor has no clothes.

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This is the moment for that, okay? Showing the hypocrisy, but showing they don't actually believe what they're saying.

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What they're saying means something else to them. And so, this is what

34:40

I want to talk about. There is a nationalism that we should all disagree with, okay? If you're conservative in the least bit, politically, or even theologically, you should, you have to disagree with this, this kind of nationalism.

34:51

The term nationalism became mainstream during the progressive era, as a kind of socialism that supported equality in distribution, while sidestepping class conflict by appealing to all classes.

35:03

Okay, so Marxism, class conflict, right? There was a nationalism that sought to usher in socialism without the class conflict, and the

35:15

Nazis, by the way, adopted this, but it predates them. Edward Bellamy popularized its usage in his extremely popular utopian novel,

35:23

Looking Backward, which sparked the creation of the Nationalist magazine and over 500

35:28

Bellamy clubs across the country. And I, by the way, just read an article from the turn of the century on Christian nationalism.

35:35

That was literally, the title was Christian nationalism, and it was all about Bellamy, the Bellamy clubs, and that they tried to usher in a

35:42

Christian nationalism. Bellamy defined nationalism as believing economic and social solutions were found in the idea, remember, the idea, an abstraction.

35:51

It's found in this idea that a united people could use their collective strength for the common welfare through nationalizing industry, providing a living wage, and becoming a universal insurance company against injustice, oppression, sickness, age, accident, and disability of every sort.

36:08

Socialism, statism, it's this idea. If you have this idea in your head that you want this goal, then you would be loving your neighbor, you would be a nationalist.

36:20

Edward Bellamy's younger cousin, Francis Bellamy, promoted these ideas and eventually wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.

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Now, for those who don't know, I know it's gonna offend some people, but the Pledge of Allegiance does not contain originally the term or the phrase under God.

36:34

It's not in there. It's actually, the state is God. And I think the original conception of the

36:43

Pledge of Allegiance, it was supposed to be this, I mean, look at the attributes that are ascribed to the state, to the flag of the

36:51

United States, the representation of the state. It's indivisible, you know, you can't divide it.

36:57

So it's a sacred union of some, it's sacred, you can't divide it. It's perpetual. I mean, this is, these are things that have a sort of a divine, a glow of divinity about them.

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Now, it was, the reason under God was added much later, I think in the 50s, was because it was, it was a way of contrasting who we were with the

37:18

Soviet Union. And you could, maybe in some ways, you could say this redeems the Pledge in some ways, or for, from at least what the original author would have thought it to be.

37:27

But, but the, the original Pledge for the Pledge of Allegiance, the

37:32

Bellamy Salute, was actually a, it would have looked, just, I'll just, I'll do this.

37:38

I'm not gonna say what it is. You can Google it, or duck -duck -go at Bing it. Just type in Bellamy Salute Pledge of Allegiance, and you will be shocked at what you see.

37:49

So, I'm gonna leave it there. In some ways, this kind of nationalism foreshadowed the National Socialist German Workers Party of the 1930s, and glimpses of it can still be seen today, especially on the political left.

38:02

This is my point. The political left does believe in a type of nationalism. Not only do members of the

38:08

Democrat Party generally believe in Bellamy's economic program, but they also share his love for controlling, for collective, power over negative individual rights and local control.

38:19

This is the kind of nationalism that elevates the central, the centralized authority to a level -approaching deity, by automatically looking to it to solve the country's problems, and granting it the right to define the common good for everyone.

38:31

In the wake of the protest for election integrity on January 6th, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi expressed her horror at seeing the desecration of the national capital, which she called our temple of democracy.

38:44

President Joe Biden referred to the capital as a sacred ground. The media echoed this prioritization of the national capital over the thousands of local businesses and hundreds of monuments devastated during the

38:55

Black Lives Matter protests less than a year before, including the taking over of a government building in Seattle to form an autonomous zone.

39:03

There is one form of nationalism still alive and well, and it does not favor the regular ordinary people residing in the nation.

39:11

Rather, it owes its allegiance to the collective will as allegedly expressed by a distant, all -powerful state.

39:17

Nevertheless, there is a kind of nationalism social justice advocates despise. So this, I could have,

39:24

I could refer to this as a tale of two nationalisms, because because that's what it is.

39:30

There's a tale of two nationalisms going on. There is a nationalism, and the left still has not fully eradicated this, where they prioritize the central authority, namely the state, over local and state authorities.

39:47

And there's a hierarchy, and the government, the national central government is at the at the top of the hierarchy.

39:57

Now, what they don't like is the rah, rah, rah America flags and patriotic militarized celebrations, military celebrations.

40:06

They don't like displays of force. They don't like, they don't they don't like the things that we would probably associate generally with the

40:15

Fourth of July. That that's kind of, they don't care for that as much. And, and so that used the progressives used to love that that was the progressive thing, right, that they would like love that too.

40:28

But they don't like that anymore. But they have still kept this prioritization of the national central central authority, the state.

40:35

And so that's, that's a nationalism that they still, they have one foot on, they have one foot in.

40:41

And what they're doing now is they're saying, well, that's Nazism, that's fascism, that's nationalism, the same kind of thing, nativism, right, all these things.

40:49

And they'll say that that's what they're against. And they'll accuse anyone, it's actually projection in some ways, they'll accuse anyone who would use force, right,

40:59

January 6, they make out like that's such a big show of force to try to take over the Capitol, take over. That's nationalism.

41:06

They'll say that's nationalism, because they're taking the elements that they don't like about national socialism.

41:13

And from from the things that their grandparents, their progressive grandparents liked, they're taking those elements they don't like, and then they are casting those, those descriptions onto general ordinary conservatives, as if that's what they're doing when they display an

41:30

American flag. And when they say they're proud of their country, and when they try to make a difference, from a conservative perspective, that's what they're doing.

41:40

So the thing to remember is this, they have one foot in nationalism, because of the way they value the state. And I'm talking about nationalism, a nationalism, meaning a socialism that doesn't operate by class conflict, but operates instead by seeding your, your power and your, your influence, and your choices to a central authority for the common good.

42:07

That is what I'm talking about. They still have a foot in that. But the foot that they've that they don't have in it, the elements that they don't like, they say that that's what conservatism is.

42:18

Conservatism are like the Nazis. So if you want to use the Nazis as your example, hey, the left still they still have a lot of the things that Nazis would have liked and had as features of themselves, they have some of those.

42:30

There's a book actually Jonah Goldberg wrote years ago, and I'm not saying Jonah Goldberg's great on everything, but this book called liberal fascism, he talks about this, and how that's a movement of the left, and that many leftists still would agree with me, even vegetarianism and some of the things, the environmental things.

42:47

But the key thing is that the socialism they like the national the socialism, then the nationalism, the being proud of your country and your heritage, and the symbols associated with that, and that kind of thing they don't like, okay.

43:02

So they take that one element, they carve it out, and they say that's what conservatives are doing. They're evil nationalists.

43:10

Okay, let's move on to nationalism B. Okay, let's talk about nationalism as I think.

43:21

So the left is saying that that's what nationalism is, but here's what

43:27

I think it actually is. When conservatives say that they're nationalists today, or they're Christian nationalists today, this would be called nationalism

43:35

B, right? This is a different kind of nationalism. And so the left is strawmanning.

43:40

They are they're saying that it's this one thing when it's actually something else.

43:46

And that's what I want to describe to you now is what that something else is. Since the Second World War, progressives gradually became suspicious of civic rituals celebrating

43:54

American identity or drawing inspiration from much of its past. In a recent televised interview, ESPN writer at large

44:01

Bill Roden criticized enjoying the Olympics opening ceremony because nationalism is not good. And displaying the

44:06

American flag was associated with a capital riots and the desire to exclude others. Instead of focusing on winning,

44:13

Roden stated the Olympics should be about soul searching and protest. Even thinking the United States should win in basketball was evidence of entitlement and privilege.

44:22

Such thinking seems entirely opposed to the main purpose of the Olympics competition between nations. Yet, a veteran sports journalist could not even root for his own country because of how it conflicted with his love for diversity, equity and inclusion.

44:34

This disdain for American symbols is grounded in a globalist mindset that, and this is the key, that we're globalist is the key, a globalist mindset that views the existence of people who prefer their own nation over others as exclusive and hateful.

44:49

In the lead up to the 2020 election, political strategist James Carville expressed his hope that in beating President Trump, Democrats would defeat the idea that the

44:56

United States of America is a place and not an idea. Okay, so James Carville wants to say

45:02

America, America is an idea. You hear this even on the right now, which breaks my heart. America is an idea.

45:07

No, it's not. It's a place. There's ideas that exist within that place, you could say, but it's not an abstraction.

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To Carville, the source of conflict between races, genders and sexual orientation stems from a love for a familiar place with its traditions and hierarchies.

45:24

Eliminating national animosity means ditching a love for one's homeland in favor of universal egalitarian principles.

45:31

Social justice enthusiasts generally assume loving people who share familiar traits means hating those who do not share such traits.

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However, major Christian thinkers usually thought learning to love those chosen by Providence as neighbors is the first step in loving people who are different or distant.

45:51

So here's the thing. This is the commonality, right?

45:58

Let's backtrack a bit. You have national socialism in Germany, right? And there's an element of that that's proud to be

46:05

German and that, you know, that's the thing that the leftists don't like. Being proud to be an American, we shouldn't, you know, there's nothing exceptional about America.

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We shouldn't rejoice in its history. It's actually a terrible history. That's the thing they don't like. They love the socialism part of it and they love the national capital and the state, you know, being the center of everything.

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They love that. They just don't love the taking pride in your country and making that part of your identity. I'm an

46:31

American. They don't like that because they're globalists. And so what's happening now is

46:40

Christians who display any kind of patriotism, any kind of love for their country, and a concern for their country, the left is looking at that and saying, well, that's just like the

46:50

Nazis. That's just like that kind of nationalism. And therefore, that's what it is.

46:57

Not realizing that the kind of nationalism that the Nazis had and that the progressives before them had was a socialism.

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And so conservatives today, for now, people on the right for now, aren't socialists, at least yet, most of them.

47:14

And they want to love everyone equally.

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They want a love for the whole globe, all the people of the world, and having a special love for your country is deeply offensive.

47:28

And they would say that this is the same thing as white supremacy or any kind of love that you would have for your quote -unquote race, for people that share your genetics, for your ancestors, for anything like that is the same thing as loving your nation.

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Because the nation is just an extension of that. It's an extension of the family. It's blood and soil.

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And that's what a nation is. And so if you're gonna love that, then you're bad.

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You're a bad person. You shouldn't have a special love for that or a greater love for that. And so that seems to be the crux of this.

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This nationalism B, that seems to be the controversy, in my mind, that's associated with it.

48:15

In contrast, many of the people considered to be modern evangelical leaders today join the anti -nationalist bandwagon.

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Just a few examples include Beth Moore, who called Christian nationalism the most dangerous, idolatrous threat facing the

48:26

Saints of God she had ever seen. Lecrae, who declared he was on the right side of history for being an anti -Christian nationalism.

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Tim Keller, who said Christian nationalists were wrong to preserve their influence by raising money and vilifying gay activists.

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Other people, other popular figures such as Jamar Tisby, Ecamini, Uwan, and Daniel Hill smeared

48:45

Christian nationalism as a form of white supremacy. The common thread setting Christian nationalism apart from nationalism seems to be a general notion that one of the chief defining traits of America is its

48:57

Christianity. Interestingly, by this standard, many of the founders, including the father of our country, were

49:02

Christian nationalists. In 1796, George Washington stated in his farewell address that Americans thought they possessed slight shades of difference, shared the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles.

49:16

The religion Washington referred to, of course, was Christianity. This does not mean that everyone in America was an

49:21

Orthodox believer or that someone could not become a citizen unless they signed a statement of faith, though nine of the thirteen states did originally require a religious test in order to hold political office.

49:32

What it meant was that, in general, Americans were culturally Christian and this was one reality that bound them together.

49:38

As the English philosopher Sir Roger Scruton rightly observed, religion is a way of life involving customs and ceremonies that validate what matters to us and which reinforce the attachments by which we live.

49:48

Without a general investment in a mutually shared homeland, history, posterity, religion, and legal system, there is no basis for trust necessary to form and preserve a society.

49:58

According to Scripture, the formation of nations was God's idea. After Noah's flood, the book of Genesis teaches that God formed distinct and separate nations according to land, language, and family.

50:08

He also made a special covenant with the nation of Israel to whom he gave land, traditions, and inheritance, religious rituals, and civil laws.

50:15

The Apostle Paul declared that God made every nation, including setting their time of existence and national boundaries.

50:21

The Great Commission itself assumes Christians are to make disciples of all nations. In the book of Revelation, the

50:27

Apostle John revealed that, at the consummation of time, it would not be an undefined group of people devoid of cultural attachments praising

50:34

God before the throne, but rather a great multitude from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues. As can be seen,

50:41

God's sovereign purpose is for families to organically form nations over time as children are born and habits form.

50:47

Loving one's own people is part of loving the Creator and His creation. It also reflects a recognition of God's particular plan in an individual's life and obligations that come with it.

50:56

The Protestant reformer John Calvin, in commenting on the parable of the Good Samaritan, acknowledged the truth that we ought to embrace the whole human race without exception in a single feeling of love.

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Yet he also stated, I do not deny that the more closely a man is linked to us, the more intimate obligation we have to assist him.

51:13

It is the common habit of mankind that the more closely men are bound together by the ties of kinship, of acquaintance, or of neighborhood, the more responsibilities for one another they share.

51:23

This does not offend God for His providence, as it were, leads us to it. Today's social justice movement seeks to replace this familial love not with a love for tangible people in distant places, but rather with a love for achieving an ever -increasing, yet always elusive, diverse society.

51:40

In essence, social justice thinking compels one to love an idea in their own mind camouflaged as love for others.

51:47

Christianity, on the other hand, actually directs love toward real people. Additionally, love is not the only quality that arranges itself according to purpose and higher responsibility.

51:59

Justice also operates that way, and then I go on about equality and justice for all. So let let us now talk about this.

52:11

How would you respond? I'm gonna go back to the question. How would you respond to the white nationalist marching in DC who think that that's one of the fundamental things, is to have a

52:24

European heritage, European genetics, and that's fundamental to being a member of the nation.

52:32

How would you respond to that? And I hope you're starting to see it's a little more complicated than you might have previously thought.

52:38

If you're trying to rationally respond, you can't just start calling names, which is all the left does.

52:43

They don't actually engage in argument. They don't actually love these people. They claim to love everyone.

52:49

They don't love these people. They're not giving them the rope to climb out of whatever they're in. I'm gonna tell you a little bit of how

52:57

I would respond, and this comes from some experience. I haven't met,

53:03

I think I've met one full -blown person that probably believed that in my entire life, that I knew that that's what they believed because they told me.

53:09

It's very rare to find people like that, but it may be becoming more increasingly common because of the attack on the country and the secularization of the country.

53:25

These forces are converging, and it's leaving people, especially young people, in a place where they feel alone.

53:34

They feel lost. They need something to identify, to take identity in, to draw inspiration from, to feel as though they belong to a group.

53:45

So a place of belonging and stability coming from broken households, all these kinds of things.

53:51

And so there is someone that a while ago was attracted to some of this stuff, and Christianity ended up being the rope that was able to pull them out.

54:06

And I was very instrumental in that. In fact, it was an individual that I was able to help lead to the Lord.

54:11

But this is what I, over a period of time, basically said, is that what you're trying to get involved in is not sufficient.

54:24

It won't ground. The kind of identity that you're trying to find will not be met in merely being with people of the same genetic, or having similar genetics, and having a country with them, alone.

54:42

That's not going to be the thing that satisfies you, completes you, and it's not actually alone, the basis or the glue that's going to keep society from unraveling into chaos.

54:55

And the reality of the situation is that we are constantly threatened by chaos.

55:01

We are constantly threatened by sin, and there needs to be something that, to keep a despot from rising and exacting tyranny, and bringing in a reign of terror on people, you have to have people who are going to govern themselves.

55:21

In order to govern themselves, you need public trust. You need people who trust each other. You need that for an economy to work.

55:27

Agreements have to mean something. In order to send people to have schools where parents are able to have their children educated, you need that.

55:37

You need that for pretty much everything in society. For anything to function, there has to be some level of trust.

55:46

Otherwise, you just stay as an island to yourself. And so the question is, what is that glue?

55:54

What is that thing that makes a society, or keeps a society together? And the reality is that the state is, the force of the state cannot actually, you can't artificially create a society.

56:08

We've learned this, by the way. We've learned this in trying, the British have learned this, I think, in trying to create, divide countries up along borders that might make sense geographically, but not culturally.

56:21

And so you have Sunnis fighting Shiites fighting Kurds. It just doesn't work too well. And I think even in our country, we've had some instability, and we have a lot of instability right now.

56:33

This is gonna, I think, help you understand why the chasm is so great. We've had a civil war in our past, but there's always been tension between different regions that have different economic interests, different even ways of talking, different values, different even religious ideas and habits as far as their worship.

56:58

If you go to Portland, Oregon, it is much different than Auburn, Alabama. Much different.

57:06

And so how do you get these people who are so divergent in their values, and not just that, you have people coming in from other countries now, and living in certain areas, parts of Michigan are essentially controlled by Islam.

57:21

How do you get all these divergent people, these people that are very different from one another, to trust each other?

57:27

That's the big question. How do you make that come about? Now, the answer that the white nationalists would have, or the black nationalists, whoever, is we kick out all the people who are of a certain ethnicity, or they get to, they get, they're second -class citizens at that point or something.

57:45

And okay, well, and that'll build public trust. Well, what do I have in common with Elizabeth Warren?

57:52

I know she says she's Native American, right? But I'm sure her genetics are probably similar to mine in some ways.

57:58

Let's just say they are for the sake of argument. What do I have in common with her, other than that? I mean, we speak

58:04

English. But can we develop trust between each other? There's a significant part of the country that has people that might share similar genetics to other people in other parts of the country, but their politics, and the way they think, and their religion, and their habits, and they're completely different.

58:23

So how are you gonna get people to trust each other? How are you gonna get a glue for society to keep together? How are you gonna make sure that it doesn't take a incredible force from a centralized authority to get people to comply with moral order?

58:39

How are you gonna maintain that? And the reality is, nations are organic things.

58:46

They're not things the state can create. Nations pre -exist the state. Nations arise organically, over time, with, and it all starts with a man and a woman loving each other, raising families, and then those families going out, and then it extends outward.

59:04

That's how it works. That's the organic, that that's what a nation is. And there is an us, a possessive, there is a group, there is the we, a we, an us.

59:15

This is our land. This is, these are our laws. These are the boundaries by which our rules and our customs are practiced and enforced.

59:27

Those kinds of things predate the state. The state arises in this environment, but it's, the state doesn't come along and create these things.

59:37

And so I think, this is just my opinion, that when you look at the

59:45

United States of America, and you look at all the differences between people, in fact

59:52

I think this is argued in David Hackett Fisher's book, Albion Seed, you actually see a number of different nations.

59:58

There's, so you have, and originally it was supposed to be, a federation of states, and even the states were different from one another, but groups of states, you could loosely say, are part of certain nations.

01:00:12

And of course we have Native American tribes as well. And large parts of some states are, you have nations there.

01:00:21

That's a nation. So if you are going to create,

01:00:27

I think that the best thing is to probably acknowledge this first, that that's just the reality. You have to acknowledge the moment we're in.

01:00:33

Okay, there's divisions here. There's political divisions, religious divisions, there's different kinds of cultures.

01:00:39

Acknowledge that, first of all. And then, and there's associations with different regions, and how people think in different regions.

01:00:46

So that's, that's the first thing. The second thing is, if you want this big group of people to function together, and to have a trust, and you don't have a

01:00:57

Soviet Union to be comparing yourself to, to form somewhat of an identity, which is,

01:01:03

I think during the Cold War period, that's kind of what, that's what kept Americans knew they weren't the

01:01:09

Soviets. And they had that kind of in common. But if you're looking for a commonality now, where is it going to come from?

01:01:17

How are you going to keep this divergent group of people together? George Washington, as I just read, said that similar customs, habits, religion, heritage, these kinds of things, that's what was keeping very different people.

01:01:33

At that time, it was very different. It's way more different now, together. Religion is going to have to be at the top of that list.

01:01:41

That's just the reality. It's not that, it's not even because I want it that way, or anyone wants it that way.

01:01:47

I'm not saying that. I'm making an observation, not, not a statement of what

01:01:52

I want, or a statement of what it ought to be. I'm saying this is just the way it is. Religion is going to be pretty near the top of that.

01:02:01

If you have a country where everyone is worshiping God, and they understand it's the

01:02:07

God of the Bible, and they have, and their customs, and their laws, and everything are going to come from that, you have a glue that can keep the nation together.

01:02:16

And you see this in the Bible. You see this in the nation of Israel. And you see, even in the ways that proselytes and foreigners could come in and participate, but by first, what was the thing they had to do?

01:02:29

They had to submit to the laws of Israel, which are based on the Word of God. There was an understanding that they would be worshiping

01:02:39

Yahweh on at least some level. And again, not the same as the ethnic

01:02:44

Jews. There was the court of the Gentiles, right, at the temple. But there was a participation.

01:02:50

And that was the basis for keeping a nation, and for what a nation even is, definitionally.

01:02:58

We're having a battle today over definitions. And to wrap this whole thing up, what

01:03:04

I would say to the white nationalists, or black nationalists, is that if you want something that's a glue that's going to make everyone trust each other more so than, and we don't have a perfect world, right, but more so than anything else, it's gonna have to be from a religion.

01:03:21

That's the essential part, that's the controlling feature of a person that's going to allow them to govern themselves.

01:03:30

And if you have a bunch of people governing themselves that share the same kind of values, and the same, they can adjudicate differences at that point.

01:03:38

They can get along. They can have a commonality, an identity, a place of belonging.

01:03:44

They can under, they can go through life understanding how to relate to people of the opposite sex, and not wondering what's the rule here, because the rules is different in every single household.

01:03:55

It makes, it makes everything smoother. And I think that's what the

01:04:00

Christian nationalism thing is all about, to be honest with you. I think that's why we've come to this place, where we are so fractured at this point, that there are

01:04:09

Christians in this country that are remembering, hey you know what, there was a time when everyone kind of basically had a respect for Christianity.

01:04:17

There was a Christian culture of some kind here, even if everyone wasn't a born again believer, they had a respect or operated out of a

01:04:25

Christian moral framework in some way. And we need to go back to that. And that's the thing that's gonna save America.

01:04:33

And then you have leftists on the other side saying, wait hold on a minute. No, no, that's wrong.

01:04:38

To say that Christianity is the fundamental thing, that should keep, that that's the guiding principle that Americans should operate under, that's exclusive.

01:04:49

You're, everyone else is excluded. And the thing is, even at the inception of this country, where you had nine of the thirteen colonies that had basically state religions, you had other people from other religions that weren't

01:05:01

Christian, but they were never a sizable enough group at that point to do anything significant, to be a political force.

01:05:11

You can have immigration in small numbers, but when it gets to a certain point, mistrust builds.

01:05:19

And that's what we're seeing now. We don't trust each other. And there's a number of reasons for it, but that's one of them.

01:05:25

We don't share the same values. And it starts with, we don't have the same religion anymore. We don't even have a respect for Christianity hardly anymore.

01:05:33

That's what we're losing. And there's a sense that that's one of the biggest problems for people who advocate, and I'm saying

01:05:39

Christian nationalism or nationalism B, people who navigate, who are for nationalism.

01:05:46

This is, this is a very fundamental thing. You either believe that there is a nation, and you believe that there needs to be, for a nation to not reduce into chaos, there needs to be an organizing principle.

01:06:01

There needs to be some common code of ethics. There needs to be something that you all have in common, right?

01:06:09

It can't all be diversity. There's got to be something you have in common. So, and that thing should be

01:06:14

Christianity. That's the best thing to have there. So either you believe that, or you believe as the left, and now

01:06:21

I will say large portions of the right believe that, well, the glue that's going to hold us together is just some abstraction, that we believe in equality.

01:06:31

We, we believe that America is an idea, the idea that everyone should be equal. That's not going to keep people together.

01:06:39

Everyone's got a different view of what equality ought to be. Equality doesn't give you, it's not like the word of God that's going to give you, in every category of social life, an understanding of how to operate in those realms.

01:06:54

Equality is just, it's almost meaningless at this point. It's just, it lacks so much definition, but that's what we're forced to believe.

01:07:04

You know, loving others means supporting some kind of equity, diversity, inclusion agenda. And loving others actually means the tangible, real people that you live with.

01:07:15

And if they share Christianity, if you share your Christianity with them, that's the, that's the greatest thing.

01:07:21

That's the most treasured thing you can share with them. And that's the thing that's going to build for the most public trust. And, and so that's a different vision for what

01:07:29

America is, or should be, than, than you get on the left or now even large portions of the elitist right.

01:07:37

And so I hope that was helpful for you in navigating this. What is Christian nationalism? Well, there was a

01:07:44

Christian nationalism that was progressive, that was socialism, that was state -controlled, loving the idea of loving your neighbor, but not really actually loving physically your neighbors.

01:07:55

It was, it was ushering in some kind of socialism, okay? That did exist.

01:08:01

But the Christian nationalism we're talking about now is not that. It is something else.

01:08:06

It is the idea that nations actually do exist, and they're based on something more than just believing in some abstract propositions.

01:08:15

That it actually requires something that's a little more meaty. And that Christianity ought to be that thing, that guiding principle.

01:08:23

So it's not, it's not chiefly, it's not about your, your ethnicity. You can be whatever ethnicity.

01:08:30

It's not about your gender. It's not about all these things the left obsesses over so much.

01:08:37

It's, it's, the main thing is going to be your Christianity. Now, it doesn't mean that there's other things that also are necessary or also are, are important.

01:08:50

Having a respect for a common heritage, a history, that is very important. You see that even in the nation of Israel, building memorials, you know, recognizing the debt we have to the past.

01:09:01

Society is always a, it's, it's not just the present generation that is, makes up a society.

01:09:07

It's the past generations and the future generations as well. It's, it's a, that's what keeps society going.

01:09:15

So there is more than just perhaps that, but that is perhaps the most important thing.

01:09:21

And from that, you can, you can actually find the building blocks for the other things you would need to have a nation that's stable.

01:09:30

Our country is not stable right now. And, and, and I, I don't see a way, anything short of a miracle for actually restoring

01:09:43

America to a, a nation, to the sort of the Lincolnian vision of a nation.

01:09:49

It seems to me like what's going to end up happening is probably different regions are going to go different ways.

01:09:54

And that there's already a natural sort, sorting that's happening where people from conservative or, or progressive areas are moving out.

01:10:02

They're moving to more conservative areas. If it doesn't share their values, there's a sorting that's going on. And I do think that that is going to end up with some kind of a,

01:10:12

I don't know. I mean, some people think there's going to be a war or something. I don't know if that's the case. But there is going to be a distance and a, a conflict.

01:10:21

It is going to be a very unstable element until there's some kind of an organizing principle.

01:10:27

And Christianity is the most logical and I think needed thing that would bring true peace, true unity.

01:10:38

But it would take a miracle for that to happen in this country at this point. And so that's something that we need to probably pray for and pray about and think about where, where, where should we be?

01:10:50

If the, if we need, want to love our neighbors and we want to be part of a community where people share our values and we can have trust, then we're going to want to think about where, where should we live?

01:11:01

All right. We want to be in the world. We want, we don't want to be in a bunker on a compound.

01:11:07

We want to minister to people. We, we have to also think about though, where can we have a community that has the glue that makes a community actually work and function properly.

01:11:19

And so if it's not Christianity, what is it? That's, that's the challenge to the leftists. If it's not Christianity, what is it?

01:11:25

Some abstraction like of equality or some, somewhere we're all devoted to this principle of equality.

01:11:33

How far is that going to get you? You know, no society ever has been able to do that. That's just an unstable element.

01:11:40

Think that's the French revolution right there. That's every communist regime. And it ends up just creating a situation where the state has to come in and be the all powerful institution that forces everyone to obey laws and things like that.

01:11:53

So hopefully this was enlightening for you. Hopefully it helps you understand a little bit more about what this debate is really about.

01:12:01

And, and maybe it'll inspire you to pick up a copy of Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict.

01:12:08

If you do have the book, though, I'll ask you this, please go on Amazon if you, if you will, you got it from Amazon especially, and make sure that you leave a review.

01:12:19

Apparently that does help. So I would appreciate that for Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict.