News Roundup: ERLC, Matthew Barrett, Sidney Sweeney, & More

Conversations That Matter

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Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. Hope everyone is doing well this weekend. I don't usually podcast on a

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Saturday, but this is the time I have. So this is when we're doing it. So I know some of you will be listening probably after the weekend, but we have a lot of things to obviously discuss from this week.

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And for those who are interested in Christian news, specifically Southern Baptist news,

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I do have a number of things to share with you today that I don't think have been shared on any other platforms. So that should be good.

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And you can pray for me and for my church. You know, this is kind of a big last two weeks, really.

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I've been a big two weeks for evangelism. We had a BBS, which I wasn't really involved with, but there were a lot of people at my church who were.

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We had a lot of kids. And then this week we do an evangelism ministry at the County Fair. I was there last night.

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I'll be there again tonight, possibly tomorrow. If I can swing it, we'll see.

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But, you know, I'm just reminded about how we do talk about these things related to evangelical news, which

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I think are very important. We want a strong, thriving church. And there are so many inhibitors to that, right?

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I think it's a little bit like the toil that goes into farming, or, you know, think of some kind of blue collar, sweaty work that you would do outside.

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I mean, it's hard. That is kind of like how ministry is.

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And there are a lot of people who want to take shortcuts and false teachers and all, you know, all kinds of threats that threaten the flock.

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And I think there's a reason God says that he makes the comparison that Christians are like sheep and they need shepherds, right?

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That's, we need good shepherds. We need virtuous men in leadership positions. And so we talk about that a lot, but I'm so reminded that yes, they're sheep, but there's also people outside the fold, right?

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There's people who are not sheep or have not become sheep yet. And that's the ministry as well.

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And so it's, you know, there's more than enough work to do out there. There's more than enough things to pray for out there.

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There's more than enough things to labor toward and do ministry. And, you know, if you don't know your spiritual gifts, figure that out and then use them in the context of a local church.

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Get yourself plugged in. That's my encouragement here as we start the podcast, because I just, I don't know.

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I just see a lot of effort going into sometimes things that I wonder, is this really where effort should go into? Right?

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Not everyone can be a podcaster. I obviously we're doing a podcast here. I think podcasts can be great, but it's not for everyone.

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Not everyone's going to be in the limelight. Not everyone's going to be doing a, you know,

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Twitter or Facebook or Instagram kind of ministry. We need people in those places, but there's, you know,

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I think at 1 Corinthians chapter 12, when Paul talks about the showy gifts, right?

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Not everyone's going to be in the showy gifts. Some people are, some people aren't. I don't even know if I consider those things necessarily gifts for a local church.

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I mean, I guess para -church, I don't know. How would you consider that? But we actually have a full range of things that God has gifted us in that need to be done.

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And we're only complete when we function in the ways God has specifically ordained and gifted us.

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And that only comes through stepping out in faith and using gifts and testing to see whether you have the gifts that you think you might have.

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Seeing if it blesses other people, seeing if there's fruit from it, right? And being, walking with the

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Lord on a close level, day to day, in the word, praying, trying to ascertain what is the direction that the

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Holy Spirit wants for me today. That's what it's all about, guys. And so anyway,

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I wasn't planning on saying that, but that's how we're going to open the podcast today. And tomorrow's the Lord's day. So anything that I just said landed, you can go talk to your pastor.

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If you don't have a pastor, find a solid Bible -believing church in your community. All right, yeah, we're going to talk about Leatherwood, Brent Leatherwood today from the

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ERLC a little bit. We're going to talk about a number of things today. We already have some comments coming in.

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Conceptual clarity. Man, conceptual clarity. You are such a faithful listener. If one simply says our community is founded by and for conservative

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Christians or traditional Americans. I think this is in relation to a topic we will get to about a community that was, is,

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I guess it's still around. I don't think it's even a community yet. It's in a dream of what a community could be for a whites -only community,

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I believe. And it was at Arkansas. We'll get to the story, but the conceptual clarity is saying, well, what about if it's just a

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Christians -only kind of thing, right? You're probably asking for all kinds of legal trouble.

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And if you don't dot your I's and cross your T's in our current environment, you try to do something like that. But I would challenge you just, you know,

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I'm going to go down the rabbit hole here in just a minute. As Christians, we're salt and light in the world, right?

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We're in the world. We're not of the world, we're in the world. I'm not a big fan of a

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Christians -only community. That idea, I don't like that. Because I think we're supposed to make an impact on the world around us.

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And yes, I do know of places around us, around where I live, that, you know, think of some

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Anabaptist groups that essentially have commune -type structures. So that's maybe not exactly what conceptual clarity is talking about, but it definitely shields you from the world.

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But the problem is the sin is in the human heart. And when you have children, it's not a guarantee all of them are going to be

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Christians. And especially if you give them formulas and you try to shield it, they're going to be more curious about what's out there.

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I think it's better to raise your children to have discernment, teach them at appropriate ages what to look for and what to be aware of, the potential evil and the temptations that are out there, and strengthen them so that they can meet those temptations.

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That's, I think that's the Christian way. That's the way Christians have done it. And to sequester yourself off oftentimes has bad consequences, and it also inhibits you from your mission.

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It's hard to reach people in the world. And you also get weird. And I know that's not a biblical category, maybe.

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That's my thing. Like, you also get weird the more you segment yourself off. So, but I get it.

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If you live in like the Northeast or the Pacific Northwest, especially, it's like, man, the culture around me doesn't support the values that I believe.

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And wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be nice to just get back to nature and have a community of people that are just like me?

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Rarely works out that way. I think there's some prudential ways to approach that question, and there's some very unwise ways.

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And we're gonna be talking about that later in the podcast. So let's see, there's more comments coming in, but I gotta get to the stuff here.

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So let's, oh, I didn't even have it pulled up. So we're gonna pull it up right now. Oh, I need to mention to you real quick, two things, three things actually, before we get started with all the info.

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So the Politico, the Politico, I guess it's just Politico. Politico did a story on the term, the

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Heritage America. And I was interviewed for the story, and I'm gonna be honest with you, Politico didn't do a bad job.

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Politico did not do a bad job, which is a little surprising because I would expect

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Politico to do a bad job, and they didn't. I would expect a more leftist tilted news source to not handle this issue well, and Politico surprised me pleasantly.

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So I'll just get to the portion if I can find it where I'm quoted. It's like one paragraph.

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I had like a 40 minute conversation, something like that with the reporter, but then it's like a documentary film, only a little bit of it.

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I'm gonna have to search for my name here. Only a little bit gets put in. So, oh, that wasn't what

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I wanted. Let's try this. Okay.

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So it says, there it is. Heritage America just isn't a demographic category though.

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It's also, for lack of a better word, a vibe. As the conservative writer and documentarian, John Harris, who has written about Heritage America, the

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Heritage America debate, put it. Online, a loose aesthetic has developed around the term cultivated by memes and viral posts.

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The aesthetic draws heavily on the nostalgic symbolism of the colonial period and the 19th century frontier, supplemented by a hefty dose of gauzy

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Americana. Images of Daniel Boone and his coon skin capped pioneers abound alongside

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Norman Rockwell paintings of the mid 20th century American life. "'It's the knight, the cavalier, "'and then the cowboy,' said

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Harris, "'who claims direct ancestry "'from Daniel Boone's father, Squire Boone.'" It's about what it looks like to be a gallant and to be gallant and to have these virtuous characteristics that we associate with the leaders of our civilization.

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So that is the Heritage America article there. And the other thing

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I wanted to just show you real quick is this. So I don't know if I did this on the podcast yet.

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I feel like I did, but I don't remember, but I'll just repeat myself. So the Fight, Laugh, Feast magazine, if some of you might get this,

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I'm impressed. I've never had, I've been subscribed, but I was looking at the magazine and it has recipes as barbecue recipes as like sort of tilted towards guys,

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I think. And it's got actual sheet music for this psalm you can sing. And it's just very professionally done.

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And this is not, they didn't pay me to say this. I'm just telling you it's good quality paper. And there's a number of articles from different perspectives, all

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Christian Orthodox people from what I understand, but their perspectives on natural law and theonomy.

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And so I wrote one of the articles for this on natural law and theonomy, and you can go check that out. If you are a patron and you're in our signal group on Patreon, you of course have already had access to this.

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I actually just posted on Patreon itself a link for those who want to read this, but I can't publish this anywhere for six months.

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So you're on your honor. Don't put this anywhere else, right? This is just an essay that if you are a supporter on Patreon, you can read, but hopefully after six months,

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I'll be getting it out there via TruthScript or some other organization. So there you go.

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All right, and the one last thing I wanted to mention before we get into the news of the day is this speaking, some of the speaking engagements

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I have coming up. So we'll start here in August. So at the end of this month, the 28th through the 30th,

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I will be at the World Right in Front of You Conference in Batavia, Ohio. And you can go to my website,

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John Harris Media, and go to speaking if you want to find out more, just click the link there, but it's hosted by East River Church.

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And we have a number of good folks speaking. William Wolfe is going to be there. Michael Foster is going to be there.

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Ryan Denton, Keith Foskey, Jake Mentzel. So check it out.

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I would love for you if you are in that area, if you're in Ohio, just come on out and we'd love to see you. And then of course the men's retreat, music and masculinity is the theme in Speculator New York that we do every year,

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September 25th through the 28th. It'll be beautiful. That's a great weekend in the Adirondacks because it depends on the rainfall and the temperature, but usually you have color by that time.

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There's really no question you will have color, but oftentimes that is the peak in the Adirondacks.

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So it's the best time to see the fall colors. And the people who have come out to the men's retreat absolutely love that aspect of it, getting into nature, being with friends, making new relationships.

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And so I'm looking forward to that and I hope you are too, and we'll see you there. All right, well, let's get into some of the stuff today because there's a lot of stuff and we're gonna start with the

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ERLC, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, the

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ERLC. And I wanna start off here. I wrote an article for The Federalist a while back and the end of the article,

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I talk a little bit about Brent Leatherwood on the subject of immigration, right? So I say that in 2019 denominational leaders in the

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SBC, including Brent Leatherwood and Dean and Sarah assigned an evangelical call for restitution -based immigration reform.

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And this was published by the Evangelical Immigration Table. The statement portrayed deportation as unjust, insinuated the

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United States government was to blame for separating families and supported a restitution -based pathway to legal permanent residency for illegal migrants, right?

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This is the thing we have been fighting forever. This category people want to give us that includes illegal migrants who have come here but doesn't want to give them full citizenship.

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It's like this halfway measure, but these halfway measures often end up being a path to amnesty.

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And they'll always say, well, we're not for amnesty, right? Well, I understand that, but it's a stepping stone and we can recognize that.

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For the next four years though, during the Joe Biden presidency, the SBC took hardly any action on immigration issues despite the fact that illegal migrants poured across the border at record numbers.

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Then suddenly Brent Leatherwood and the ERLC took a strong stand in February, 2024 to support

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Senator Lankford's Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act which prohibited Homeland Security from continuing to exercise emergency authority to respond to the border crisis if the weekly crossings were under 21 ,000 encounters per week.

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So, you know, as long as it's 21 ,000 encounters for a week or less, things are okay. Since Trump became president again, the

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ERLC signed on to the Evangelical Immigration Table's letter urging Trump to reinstate sensitive locations, policies that would prohibit

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ICE from entering churches. Leatherwood also signed on to World Relief Statement to sustain the U .S.

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Refugee Resettlement Program. So there you go. That's on just one issue, that's immigration.

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But Brent Leatherwood has not just been bad on immigration policy, he's been bad on gun rights.

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He was calling for red flag laws. He denied they were red flag laws, but they were in Tennessee. He was the one that was very upfront about suppressing the

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Trans Shooter Manifesto. He has been bad on the abortion issue from the standpoint that he has been part, he has given his influence and the

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ERLC's influence to briefs to influence lawmakers towards denying bills that would actually abolish abortion.

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And it's crazy to me that you have someone like this to be quite honest with you at the ERLC, but it's not crazy when you understand the history.

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And Russell Moore was his predecessor and Brent Leatherwood was his protege.

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Now Brent Leatherwood has stepped down, he's gone. And so this creates an opportunity and I kind of joked on X, I think

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I fooled some people. I wasn't trying to fool anyone, but I just joked that William Wolfe would make a great next president of the

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ERLC, ha, ha, ha, right? Like that'll happen. The guy who's the acting director now, now this is a question, the acting president,

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I guess you could say, I think he's been the vice president. It's possible maybe he'll be the next guy, but here's the thing that I want you to see.

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If he's the next guy, we just get a continuation. Southern Baptist just get a continuation of what has been.

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So I'm gonna give you a sample of a number of things. And it took me probably 10 minutes, 15 minutes, just on his

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X account to find all this. Here's a article from 2015 by Miles Mullen.

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He is the acting president right now of the ERLC. Evangelicals and the immigration 1940 style starts off with the

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Statue of Liberties. Give me your poor, or your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, right?

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All of that. And he goes through kind of this, you know, Ellis Island vibe and talks about, he talks about it in really positive terms, right?

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And then he says, three years after VE Day, the United States passed the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, temporarily expanding immigration in order to welcome people displaced due to World War II.

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Barely four years old at the time, the NAE, the National Association of Evangelicals, unhesitatingly agreed to the

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State Department's request that it sponsor 3 ,000 such displaced persons. Leaders hustled into action, raising money.

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So this is the whole point, right? He's saying this in 2015. And then he ends the article by saying, in our current context, let us at least, at least, it's in italics, demonstrate the same attitude as our compassionate evangelical forebears.

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So what he's trying to do is saying, look, you had this context after World War II, you had this context during the

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Ellis Island time, and let's just parallel that with 2015. It's kind of the same thing.

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We just need to do what they did. And I would argue, actually, we probably don't.

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Not just for circumstantial reasons, but which I think are enough to say these are different circumstances.

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But also I think from the standpoint that, I don't necessarily think the

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National Association of Evangelicals spoke for everyone. That's a Christian in the United States that's a conservative or an evangelical.

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I also don't know that even if they did, whether that was the right thing at the time.

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And at the time it might've looked good, but the question is years later.

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And the numbers, again, are we talking only 3 ,000 people? Is that all we're talking?

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Because that's also, again, circumstantially, it's a very different number when we're talking about millions and millions.

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30 million is very different than 3 ,000. So this is the kind of thing that you can expect from a

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Miles Mullen, and it's very consistent with the ERLC. Here's some Twitter stuff. Miles Mullen, because, and he's answering a question.

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This is actually a very revealing thread. And I don't think I'm gonna read the whole thing just for the sake of time. But he's trying, he's talking about sort of like,

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I guess, 20th century evangelical history, okay? And why evangelicals identify politically the way they do and that kind of thing.

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And he thinks they got duped into, I'm summarizing here, but he thinks they basically got included in a broader coalition that they should have never been included in.

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They got kind of whipped into this conservative political energy. And that's not really who they are.

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And so this guy who's interacting with him, named Heath Carter, and this is 2019, this happened. He goes, why are they, meaning these evangelicals, so overwhelmingly white then, these conservative political evangelicals, when so many black believers held those same beliefs?

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So he's saying, look, if you have similar theologies and so forth, then explain this to me, right?

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And that's a good question. And Myles Mullen goes, well, because while whites have the luxury of making religious identity their primary identity,

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African -Americans had a race hoisted on them as their primary identity by others, which is kind of interesting because earlier in the thread, he's saying that they,

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I probably shouldn't have said duped, but they were definitely included in something that they shouldn't have been included in, or it wasn't really part of who they were, this conservative coalition, if you will, in the

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Republican Party. So then this guy, Heath Carter goes, yeah, we'll have to agree to disagree.

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White evangelicals fought to preserve systems that privileged whiteness and punished blackness.

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Their own racial commitments were not incidental. So Myles Mullen goes, I'm not sure

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I disagree with that. Okay. All right, well, so you got Mr. CRT guy, right?

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You got Mr. CRT analysis guy that's still right now heading up the ERLC. Has anything actually changed?

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I mean, that was 2019. Maybe he's changed his mind, but there's no public record indicating this. Here's what he said in 2021 when

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Russell Moore left the ERLC. Godspeed, may you flourish in this new role. Now, I understand this is a nice thing to say publicly to someone, but Russell Moore is just not someone.

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Russell Moore is someone who slammed the door leaving the Southern Baptist Convention and slammed the convention itself and made accusations against Mike Stone, which have been challenged, which do not seem accurate.

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And this is Myles Mullen's, I would suggest, I mean, he could have been quiet on this, right?

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But I would suggest that that might mean that this might indicate that he kind of appreciates

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Russell Moore. And I don't think a self -respecting SBC guy at that point should be appreciating Russell Moore. Also during 2020, one of my students was

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George Floyd's pastor in Houston. He speaks here about Floyd and what his death means. Well worth a listen.

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And the name of the article is Houston Pastor Remembers George Floyd as a Protective Hospitable Gentle Giant. I don't know if you remember that.

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I remember that from that time. I didn't even know this guy had been a student in a

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Southern Baptist seminary or something like that, which I'm assuming he was. I remember the article.

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And I mean, gushing about George Floyd and how unjust this whole situation was and all that.

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Okay, Myles Mullen, right? On the wrong side of a number of issues. Here, what is this?

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Dr. Moore, okay. Russell Moore, the word evangelical no longer has any meaning. Just call me a gospel Christian, right?

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A gospel Christian. It's actually one of the most, I didn't even know Russell Moore said that.

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You know the word evangelical. That's basically what it means. Okay, so Kevin Smith.

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And Kevin Smith, the WOKE ERLC member goes, Dr. Moore, another edition of our

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Southern Baptist Evangelicals. And Myles Smith goes to, or Myles Mullen, sorry, says to both of them, it has historical meaning wherein there is theological content, but white evangelical

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GOP alliance has undermined it, right? That's the problem, guys. That's the problem with the whole evangelical thing.

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It's these white people. It's these conservative white people. They've ruined the brand, right? Rather than just, you know, maybe people that have these convictions theologically, maybe they tend to align.

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Maybe there's cultural things also that go into this, but maybe they tend to align under conservative politics more.

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Maybe it has something to do with their theology. Could that be the clue? Could that be an issue? No, probably not.

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And then you have Walter Strickland, right? Who's, this is kind of earlier, this is 2014.

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Now at the time, I guess you could argue that Myles Mullen, maybe he didn't know that Walter Strickland was on board with liberation theology, because this is back in 2014, but he's very, you know, he says that Walter Strickland is a wise voice.

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So, or wise choice, sorry, by Russell Moore in the ERLC. He's serving on the

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ERLC as a research fellow. I mean, I find that hard to believe because, you know, Walter Strickland, this has been his thing for a long time.

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So, but okay, let's give him that one. Benefit of the doubt. Myles Mullen, the moral burden of history requires a more direct, he's quoting from here, a candid acknowledgement of the legacy of this school, meaning

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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in the horrifying realities of American slavery, Jim Crow segregation, racism, and even the avowal of white racial supremacy.

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This is from 2018. You might remember the task force at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary that was discovering and, or trying to rediscover all these things that were connected to what they considered to be racially oppressive things from the past, right?

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And this is where Russell Moore, or sorry, Al Mohler, at that time,

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Al Mohler was trying to kind of walk a very fine line of saying, condemning the school, right?

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And acting like the specter is still haunting the Southern Baptist School. This is while they're doing the critical race theory panels on campus.

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This is, you know, this is the time when people wanna get rid of the names of previous influential figures that have their names on buildings on the campus, right?

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And Al Mohler's trying to say, well, let's not get rid of the names, but, you know, let's be real with our history here.

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And I remember, I do remember. Yes, I remember correctly. This was also the time that you had

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Al Mohler saying, we're gonna have like this special scholarship for black people, essentially.

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So here's Miles Mullen, and he's just, he's trumpeting this task force.

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Miles Mullen always, this is him. Oh man, why did I include this? Oh, I guess, I don't know.

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This is kind of a minor one, but he just talks about the de facto segregation and racism of areas was harder to dislodge than the ugly de jure ones in the

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South. So, I don't know, to me, what he's saying is like, because he follows it up, more like soft de jure in many

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Northern and Midwestern places. So he's saying that you, when people just naturally kind of filter into groups as people often do, like that's harder to root out.

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That's a problem, right? Then you have Miles Mullen saying, an open letter from the

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Christian scholars on racism in America today. And it's from the, oh, the gospel, 2017.

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He responds to Jamar Tisby. Let's see, we have hard stops on racism, end of the civil war, but when legalized shadow slavery ended, racism didn't.

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Miles Mullen says, as bad as it was, shadow slavery was a severe symptom of the much deeper problem of racism. And then

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Miles Mullen, oh, I already had this one. So there's so much more, but I only, it took me like 10, 15 minutes to just grab these.

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And I guess it's enough for people to realize, okay, like Miles Mullen is the guy who is in charge essentially right now of the

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Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is probably gonna be no different than a Brent Leatherwood, than a Russell Moore. Don't expect, if he becomes the next president, that it's going to change anything.

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The likely scenario, because people have wanted to know, what's your opinion, John? I don't have any inside track here, okay? I don't think anyone really knows exactly what's gonna happen, at least no one from my side of the fence on this particular topic of social justice.

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It will likely be someone else who's similar to Brent Leatherwood and Russell Moore. Unless, I mean, it's just kind of how it works.

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Now, I would be pleasantly surprised if that wasn't the case. I don't think you're getting William Wolfe in there though. I don't think you're gonna get someone who's truly, the best you can hope for is someone who doesn't want to upset the apple cart in any direction.

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And so we'll remain somewhat neutral, but then you wonder why do you have an Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission? If it's not to aggressively pursue issues that Southern Baptists care about and to do so in an effective way, which

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I would argue Brent Leatherwood's not even, he hasn't even been effective, then what's the point of even having it?

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You should just disband the whole thing. There's no point. So I am not optimistic about the future of the

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ERLC as you can see. And this is playing into it to some extent who the acting president is at this point.

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Matthew Barrett. Some people have wanted me to comment on this Matthew Barrett thing. And I don't have much to say, to be honest.

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I wasn't even gonna cover it. Cause I'm like, what? But I don't know, I've had so many people. It's been one of the top things people said, are you gonna say anything about Matthew Barrett?

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So just to catch people up who don't know about this, Matthew Barrett was a Southern Baptist professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City.

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And when I first heard his name, I was like, I think I know that name. And sure enough, I talked about him once on the podcast, probably two years ago.

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And it was a very passing comment. I don't even know if I talked about him. I think I would play the clip where someone else talked about him.

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It was a passing comment. And it seemed to indicate he was supportive of some of the Me Too stuff going on in the

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SBC. I haven't looked into him beyond that, but I know others have said, and maybe they've done digging that, yeah, he was kind of more on the leftist,

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I don't know, kind of like Miles Mullen. Like he was with those guys. So I don't know.

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But the issue here is that he converted to Anglicanism and he became a research professor of theology at Trinity Anglican Seminary in Ambridge, Pennsylvania.

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And this happened kind of immediately. This just happened. Like, you know, one day

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I'm a Southern Baptist professor and the next I'm an Anglican professor. And this is,

29:51

I think, that's the, I don't even know if I need to say anything else. Maybe we'll go through his reasons. But to me, that is incredibly foolish.

30:00

The Bible warns, especially throughout Proverbs, but in many places, I mean, James, right?

30:06

Be quick to hear, slow to speak, be cautious. When you take on a new position, and these are very new positions, you need to be careful.

30:19

Another passage, Proverbs 19, two says, desire without knowledge is not good. How much more will hasty feet miss the way?

30:26

This is hasty feet. That's my thing on this. This is hasty feet. Now you might say, oh no, he's been going this direction for a long time or whatever.

30:33

Well, if that's true, why is he teaching at a Southern Baptist school? And if they, so you got two options.

30:39

They either know about it at the school and they're fine with someone who does not share their convictions teaching there. That's a problem.

30:45

Or he knew about it, but didn't tell anyone. That's a problem. And I don't like, look,

30:53

I can name other names here that people who have abrupt changes, that I just, it makes me kind of queasy.

31:03

Jared Longshore is another one. I don't care, I'll say the name. Jared Longshore is another one. I'm at school every week.

31:10

He's at Founders. And they started this Founders. I think at the time it was an institute.

31:16

It wasn't the seminary, but it was like mid semester or something. Like he just all of a sudden, hey,

31:21

I'm convinced to pay for baptism. And whoa, I got a place to go now that's going to receive me that has these convictions and I can pastor there.

31:28

I don't like that guys. When you do a monumental shift like this, because these are big shifts.

31:36

It's not even just baptism when it comes to this issue, right? This is, this concerns baptism.

31:42

This also concerns polity. Those are, I would say those are probably the two primary things. You, and you've been a professor at a seminary.

31:52

This isn't a layman making a move. This is someone you're teaching theology. You're teaching students one theology one day and another theology the next.

32:00

It's probably best to just slow down, take a breather, you know, let's let, don't become the cheerleader for the new theology you just found.

32:11

The new ideas you just came to. Get a sure footing first, then proceed and proceed with the wisdom of others.

32:19

Proceed, I think it's foolish for any institution to receive someone like this too.

32:26

So I'm not saying that he didn't have conviction. I'm not, you know, well, we'll go through some of his reasons. Some of them I'm like, what?

32:34

But conviction and all this, that's the issue I have with all of this, right? And I'm, see, I'm very appreciative of Anglicanism.

32:40

I'm very, I'm very appreciative of many different Protestant traditions. So I don't have like any ill will with someone going this direction.

32:49

I mean, you know, some of my best friends are Anglican, right? Some of my best friends are Presbyterian. They really are. I just want men of virtue.

32:57

And I just don't see it as a virtuous thing to hide a belief or to, for an institution to just kind of rubber stamp someone who doesn't share their convictions.

33:07

That's kind of a big deal. So anyway, let's go to the sub stack he wrote.

33:17

This is now going back to July 24th. So I guess this is over a week ago. So he says that he can no longer be

33:25

SBC. What happened? We were hit by a storm, a tornado. It's just circumstances, guys.

33:31

We had no idea the tornado was coming. And for the longest time we told ourselves it cannot be. But in much suffering, we have discovered that the

33:38

Lord himself sent this tornado. Okay, this is so dramatic. This is so dramatic.

33:43

The first pillar started to crack years ago when a group of Southern Baptists stood before the SBC asking for the inclusion of the

33:49

Nicene Creed in the Baptist faith and message. And it didn't happen.

33:54

So that's a weird thing to me. He says that the committee officially rejected the creed.

34:00

No, it's more like they just didn't choose to include it. It wasn't a rejection of the Nicene Creed as the, you know, theologically, it was just a rejection of incorporating into the

34:10

Baptist faith and message. And how long ago was that? I mean, this has been brewing then for a while. That was years ago.

34:16

He said, I will of course pray that the SBC changes its mind. Actually, let's see how long that was.

34:21

I'm curious about this. 20, oh, wait a minute. That was from the last convention? No way. I did not think that was, wait a minute, wait a minute.

34:31

This changes everything. I thought this was years ago. He said, oh, a year ago.

34:37

Oh, wait, this changes everything, guys. It started a year ago. Think about this.

34:46

I made a major denominational shift as a professor at a theological seminary. It all started a year ago.

34:54

What's wrong with that sentence? That's kind of scary.

35:01

It's scary that people would just accept that too and be like, oh yeah, I just keep teaching theology. I mean, you, and that's not a really a reason, in my opinion.

35:09

That's, you've been in a Southern Baptist convention your whole life. It never included the Nicene Creed. And so all of a sudden you're gonna include the

35:15

Nicene. This is just weird. This is just weird. I don't believe that's the reason. I'm just gonna be honest with you.

35:22

I will of course pray that the SBC changes its mind. Okay. The second pillar that started to crack was polity. Okay, so this is actual substantive reason.

35:30

More specifically, the culture in which is embedded, my experience after two decades, both at the local level and the institutional level is for the

35:36

Southern Baptist image is everything. Well, no kidding, dude. That's what I've been talking about for years. No kidding.

35:41

There is nothing and no one they will not sacrifice on the altar of their image. No kidding. Yeah, you're just preaching to the choir here, but it's not just a commitment.

35:51

It's embedded in the culture itself. When image is everything, a culture of fear follows so that anyone who does not match up with that image is considered a threat, blah, blah, blah.

36:01

Okay. So here's, this is what I'm gonna say about this. He's, this isn't,

36:09

I mean, I guess he's getting to the more substantive polity difference because obviously there's a heavier hand

36:15

Anglicans have and they have a stronger polity. It's not an independent thing. There's oversight. So he develops a conviction, but if you notice the order, it seems to me, it starts with recognizing a problem.

36:27

So he, and that's often how things start, right? So you recognize a problem. Now is the problem with the

36:32

Southern Baptist, this is my take on this. Is it that the Southern Baptist theology, okay?

36:38

Theology, so separate theology from the politics of the convention.

36:45

The theology, does it support this image driven, the autonomy of the local church specifically, does that constitute a support for an image driven kind of packaging and gossip and backbiting and all the things he complains about?

37:07

No, it doesn't actually. And in fact, it has shielded, I think churches from following some of the decisions because they're not binding because they still have their independence.

37:20

It's actually a strength of the Southern Baptist convention in one way because they have so many conservative people in the lower ranks.

37:29

And here's the thing, if you didn't have conservative people in the lower ranks, let's say you were the PCUSA or the,

37:35

I don't know, a Northern Baptist who are now American Baptists who have gone more liberal.

37:40

Like once you lose that, then it's a different scenario. And actually it would be much better to have a heavy hand because if the people who are

37:50

Orthodox are at the top of the denomination, then they can institute changes using their power, right?

37:57

But how often does that happen, right? So experience, I think, especially an experience in the

38:02

United States shows us that actually the independent model is probably gonna be a better way to conserve orthodoxy and smaller churches.

38:11

I mean, I don't know where he's been. Smaller Southern Baptist churches tend to be oblivious to what's going on in the convention.

38:19

That's been my experience. They don't tend to care about image that much. When you get into bigger churches, when you get into the

38:26

SBC politics, when you get into denominational life in the entities, then yes, absolutely there's politics.

38:32

That's the same thing David Platt said when he jumped ship, right? He didn't like what it was making him to be. He didn't like what he was becoming because I don't think he ever stopped becoming what he was becoming.

38:42

The spin room he talked about, that's absolutely part of the

38:47

Southern Baptist climate at those levels. And it's worse than any of you know, okay?

38:55

Maybe not any of you, I don't know who's listening, but there's been years now

39:00

I've had conversations with people in denominational insiders, people on the executive committee, people who served as professors at seminaries, people who are trustees at seminaries, people at NAM, people at the

39:11

IMB, it's worse than any of you know. I'm just saying, it is so bad, the politics that can happen in that denomination.

39:19

But I don't think it's because of a theology. I think it's because they're the largest

39:24

Protestant nomination in the country. And when you have Sauron's eye on you constantly and you hunger for a reception among the elites, you are going to do the

39:37

Russell Moore thing. You are going, if you're ambitious, you're selfishly ambitious, which is a lot of people who rise to those levels, it's just managerialism.

39:46

You will do the very things that Matthew Barrett's talking about. The North American Anglican Church, is there any media coverage of the

39:55

North American Anglican Church? What kinds of pressures exist on them, right? So I don't see this so much as a theological thing and certainly not a polity thing.

40:04

I see this as a, I'm just telling you, this is where I'm coming down.

40:11

I see this more as a scale thing and a climate thing, the climate of the convention.

40:20

And I think that gets more complicated. Why is it that way? I've had guys tell me who are in the know on these things, very much so that there's a big resentment that basically the boomer generation had of those who are just older than them, who had the greatest generation and the silent generation pulled off the conservative resurgence, but the people that come later, the

40:45

Al Muellers, the Danny Aikens, now

40:50

I'm blinking on names. Who's the guy at the, man, North American Mission, Kevin Eazell.

40:57

These guys were more or less at the kid's table and that factors into even what's going on now.

41:05

I don't know fully, but that's what I think. It's more probably those kinds of things. To try to make this a theological thing,

41:13

I just don't think, I don't think so. I mean, one of the things,

41:19

I'll just add this and then we'll move on. It is true that the Southern Baptists do have a heavy polity at the top, even though they don't officially have that.

41:29

Nature just, it's just natural to have leadership. There's gonna be hierarchy. So Southern Baptist, maybe you could say they're not as honest about it or something, who knows.

41:39

But yes, of course, when J .D. Greer says something, even though he's not even the president of the Southern Baptist Convention anymore, it means something in the

41:45

Southern Baptist Convention because he once held a position and he's got connections. So you can't really get away from that. In the

41:52

North American Anglican Church, it's gonna be more honest in the sense of, not that anyone's lying, but it's just,

41:59

I would think that those positions are very public.

42:05

You know where pressure's coming from if there's gonna be pressure. Okay, the third pillar was baptism.

42:12

And this one's a weird thing to me too. Like you've been in the Southern Baptist Convention for most of your life, you're teaching theology, but really the argument that you just couldn't account for acts, acts finally got to you, that Peter's stalwart promise at Pentecost, at the end of the evangelistic message,

42:30

Peter calls on the crowd to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins and to receive the spirit. But that's not all,

42:35

Peter adds, for the promise is for you and your children. I think Peter was smart enough to know what he was doing.

42:43

He knew he was echoing God's covenant promises. This is a weird thing to me. It's like, you never heard this, really?

42:49

I mean, I was just a seminary student at Southern Baptist, but we obviously had to work through that.

42:55

So like, I was just weird. Like, I wouldn't trust a guy like that to do theology. Like, you had to wait until you were a professor for years before you actually worked through that.

43:08

That's very odd. All right, so I don't know obviously what the main, what's really going on here. It might be more this, because he talks about the beauty of Anglicanism.

43:16

I think that's probably more likely what happened. The book of common prayer is meant to be experienced. Guys, I've talked,

43:21

I've told you about this. I love my book of common prayer. I love the Anglican chants. I think some people think

43:27

I'm weird for that, but hey, I think it's beautiful. I think there is something lofty.

43:33

I think there is something about the character of God that is trumpeted loudly in a very lofty way when you get back to some of these more traditional liturgies and so forth.

43:44

And sort of lower level evangelicalism, low church has become somewhat of a show, much of it.

43:54

And, you know, if it's not a show, it's basically, it's very simple, it's very plain.

44:02

And, you know, Anglicans, they wear robes, it's ornate. It's, you know, there's a lot of effort put into the aesthetics of it.

44:10

And the effort, if there is effort put into aesthetics in lower church settings, oftentimes,

44:15

I'm not saying every time, but oftentimes it is for the rock show. So I think that, let's just say that that probably is contributing here.

44:25

All right, so I don't really need to read any more of this, but people ask me, people really wanted me to comment on this, so I'm commenting.

44:31

Then Trinity Anglican Seminary welcomes Dr. Matthew Barrett to faculty. Wow, beginning in August of 2025.

44:38

Wow, dude, like it was one year ago when it all started for you, this transition, and now you're teaching at an

44:45

Anglican seminary. It does not give me confidence for the North American Anglicans, I can tell you that. But that's all

44:51

I have to say about it. I just think it's unwise, it's hasty, I don't get it. All right, so this is another listener requested thing they wanted me to talk about briefly.

45:01

I'm not spending a long time here, but there's a blog website, the Roy's Report, okay?

45:07

I don't know if I've ever actually talked about them or mentioned them by name, maybe I have, but someone really who is a supporter of the podcast really wanted me to point this out, and I looked into it and it's true.

45:18

So I'll just say, yeah, I'll point it out. They featured an article back in July 22nd,

45:24

Chip and Joanna Gaines tried to build a big tent, conservative Christians aren't having it. Now, I don't even know if I'll read the article.

45:31

You can go read it yourself if you want, but it's basically giving you the long and the short of Christians who are for and against the

45:40

Gaineses. Now here's the thing though, it's obvious when you read it, it is slanted toward favoring those who would be in support of the

45:51

Gaines, okay? And it is written by someone named Catherine Post.

45:57

And if you look up Catherine Post, she is, she writes for all the progressive, she works with sojourners and those kinds of outlets, progressive

46:05

Christian outlets. She is pro -LGBT, she's progressive.

46:11

And so what this particular supporter wanted me to point out and I'll just say it, because I think it's true, is that there are outlets, and this is one of them, that focus, that they give a lot of time to things like sexual abuse.

46:29

If they can find a sexual abuse case or an alleged sexual abuse case, that's a focus.

46:34

That's something that they, and I mean, obviously, if there's a legitimate case of that happening, that's a horrible thing.

46:40

And if anyone who is in any position of leadership is involved in that, that is something that needs to be exposed, et cetera, right?

46:49

But here's the rub, biblical sexual ethics also sees these other perversions, including what the

46:57

Gaines covered for, as evil and worthy of hell, okay?

47:02

That's just Christian theology, that's just biblical theology. And I think it is somewhat of a barometer to if you're going to, if you want to support a source or you want to read a source that you think is gonna give you a discernment or a news about corruption in evangelical church, because you're interested in that kind of thing, which

47:29

I'm sure so many of the audience members here are, you probably might read Protestia, there's other things you look into that are along those lines.

47:38

Outlets like this must have a different agenda on some level, because the motivation that an orthodox

47:47

Bible -believing Christian has when they approach these things, and this would go into who they platform and what they platform, is going to be a defense of God's law, the whole thing, right?

48:00

We don't just cherry pick and say, this sexual perversion is worthy of condemnation, but this one is not.

48:10

That's a big problem. So I agree that's a problem and I'm just throwing it out there. So that was sort of like a passing thing that I wanted to say, but this was something that someone wanted me to point out.

48:22

Sidney Sweeney, all right, we're gonna talk about this, it's not gonna be that long. I know that this is, I didn't even want to really talk about this, but this is huge.

48:29

Apparently, it's lighting up all kinds of podcasts out there. And I really only have one point to make, because I noticed today,

48:37

I actually befriended someone on Facebook over this. I noticed today, there was someone on Facebook who has a lot of those same mutual friends and stuff.

48:46

And they were posting these pictures, these provocative pictures of Sidney Sweeney, and then other pictures of, provocative pictures of girls in jeans, and then just saying, talking about how great their jeans are, ha, ha, ha, double entendre.

49:02

It's because they're, I guess they're white and they're beautiful looking or something, but it's provocative.

49:09

And that's not a direction we wanna go, guys. This jeans commercial was obviously not in keeping with Christian ethics.

49:21

I understand the human body is beautiful. The form of the human body can be beautiful.

49:26

And when you abuse your body, it's not beautiful anymore. There are objective things when you start studying beauty, maybe start with like Roger Scruton, right?

49:37

I love Roger Scruton. Why Beauty Matters was one of his documentaries that I've watched a few times. There are objective things like symmetry, for example, that the human eye finds attractive or beautiful or pleasing or healthy.

49:54

There are things that sometimes you can sense it, but you don't even know how to articulate it.

49:59

That's just true, right? God designed things that way. So taking a beautiful actress and advertising your product by linking it to, you could look like this person that's obviously going to work in sales.

50:15

That's what advertisers have been doing forever, except a very little anomaly over the past 10 years where all of a sudden some clothing companies decided, you know what would be good to show that we're inclusive?

50:26

Let's just try to find people who are not beautiful and call them beautiful.

50:31

And we'll twist everything up, right? We'll even find people who are, let's say male, but they think they're female and we'll make them our model for female, for feminine clothing, right?

50:45

This is an anomaly. This doesn't make sense. It's, I don't even know how you make that kind of thing last.

50:52

You obviously have to be selling to a very warped crowd who has not just desensitized themselves, but twisted their own sense of what beauty is into something ugly.

51:04

And that's what evil does, right? So, you know, kudos for,

51:09

I guess, recognizing, hey, that was dumb, let's knock it off. American Eagle figured out maybe we should put healthy looking people in our advertisements.

51:19

I guess you could call that sort of a win, right? In contrast to the crazy warped sense of thinking that someone who's grossly obese is going to be beautiful, right?

51:33

And I mean, I could even get in trouble for saying that on a podcast or I could a few years ago. I don't know what would happen now, but it's like, that's an obvious thing.

51:42

Like you could have beautiful people who are grossly obese in certain ways. Their faces might shine and they might have a nice smile.

51:48

That's very true, actually. There could be features. They could have nice hair, right, or that kind of thing.

51:54

But obviously that feature itself is not something that is by the majority considered beautiful, nor has it really ever been that way in human history.

52:04

And so a little pudgy, yes, because it shows you that you have wealth and you can survive a famine,

52:10

I guess. I mean, that's what the Darwinists say, right? It's all survival. But I think it shows well. Some of the old paintings are like that, but they never go grossly obese.

52:18

So kudos for American Eagle for figuring that out. But what do they do? Let's just be a scant, let's be provocative.

52:27

Let's be sexual about this. And then they add in the line, and I'm not showing you any of this for obvious reasons, obvious reasons, but at the end, because I didn't even see the whole ad.

52:39

I just kind of like saw the beginning and I skipped to the end. The end of the ad is them saying that Sidney Sweeney has good genes, essentially.

52:48

And that was taken by some, not all, by the way. It's important to realize that. Not all, like the LA Times this morning, so I was reading one of their pieces on this.

52:57

They didn't think that it was Nazi dog whistles, but there were enough liberals who said this is a

53:03

Nazi dog whistle because it's a double entendre with genes. And you're saying that because she has blue eyes and blonde or dirty blonde hair, that you're saying that people with good genes have these features.

53:13

I don't think there's any reason to take it that way, to be quite honest with you. I know there's even guys who

53:18

I respect on X who are saying, hey, you know, American Eagle finally figured out how to market to the young -based kind of race realist crowd among whites.

53:27

I don't, maybe, you know, I could stand corrected if something comes out from their marketing team that says that, but I don't think that was it.

53:34

I really don't. I think it was just a recognition that beauty actually does exist.

53:43

And they could have had someone who wasn't white in the same thing and said the same. It's just, it's literally just, it's a very broad statement saying, and it probably was a joke, that someone who's got, who looks nice, who has good stock, that's what they used to say in the back in the old days, right?

54:01

Someone from good stock that, you know, pointing out the fact that this beautiful person is wearing our product and likes our product.

54:11

That's it. There's really nothing else to it. This is no different than the ads that would be at the mall up until, you know, 2013 or so.

54:22

So I don't think this is like a big, big thing, but it's become a big, big thing. And, you know, Ted Cruz has weighed in and J .D.

54:28

Vance has weighed in and it's become this political thing. And I'm just looking at it and I'm like, well,

54:33

I don't, let's take beauty and let's platform that, or let's recognize that, but let's not sexualize it.

54:44

That's also a twisting, okay? When you let the whole world in on things that are meant for the context of a covenantal relationship in a marriage.

54:56

Okay. I'm gonna, I have a lot more to talk about, but I feel like I've had a number of comments.

55:02

So I'm just gonna get to some comments real quick. Brianna Hill says, so she's a white girl who said she has good genes.

55:10

And that means no one with a different makeup can also have good genes. Alrighty then. I mean, that's, yeah, exactly.

55:15

That's my point. Why is that unique to her type or something, right?

55:22

Are the blue jeans even that good? No one is asking that, right? Right, no one cares, right?

55:29

And I'm a jeans guy, like, especially in the fall, like in the summer, I can't, because it's so hot, but in the fall, in the winter and the spring,

55:37

I am total jeans guy. That's what I like to wear. I mean, jean shirts, jean jacket, you know, it's,

55:46

I mean, it's the Western kind of thing. And I tend to have a Western flair to the way I dress, always have. So I don't buy from American Eagle though.

55:53

I go to like, you know, Boot Barn or, you know, is it Sheplers online and those kinds of places, but they did not pay me to say that by the way, but I think

56:04

I have pretty good jeans, you know, just saying. Well, all that is, has exposed the depravity of man, says

56:13

Breon Hill, which was there the whole time, Republican or Democrat, it doesn't matter. When it comes to depravity without Christ, we stand condemned.

56:20

Yep, that's what I think. I'll try to get to some other comments here in the chat.

56:33

See, if you put a question mark, it's gonna be easier for me to find it, by the way. Scott, Scott, a former

56:40

Southern Baptist, now Presbyterian, says, John, what happened to me while at SCBTS? I wrestled with this for two years.

56:45

I understand, bear it on that point. The infant baptism point. Here's the thing, Scott, I think that's appropriate, actually.

56:52

You wrestled with it, right? You, and you even say for years, and I don't see,

56:59

I mean, you're a student, you were learning these things. You weren't for years, teaching at a

57:05

Bible school and then adopting these beliefs instantly and then making a transition to another school.

57:11

That's the difference. I understand. I think in basic terms,

57:17

I get the arguments for both sides. All right, let's see. Oh, Vaughn, Vaughn Bry Off Go Hard, for 199, says, it's a beautiful day here in Northern Indiana, John.

57:33

Well, thank you for the 199 there. I appreciate it. And I hope you enjoy your beautiful day in Indiana.

57:41

David Laity says, if Miles Mullins is the next head of the URLC or any other Democrat left as socialist, then that guarantees

57:46

SBC won't be getting one cent of my money. All right, well, we're gonna keep going here because we have so much more to talk about and we're almost an hour in.

57:58

We have, where am I? Oh, yes. What I started talking about at the beginning.

58:04

Man, this website has a lot of ads. The Daily Mail, exclusive, leader of Whites Only Enclave, Eric Orwell, starred in series of live stream porn videos with his wife for cash, okay.

58:17

All right, so I don't even know if I wanna read the whole story. Just, if you follow this at all, which

58:25

I saw an advertisement for it, and I'll be honest with you, the first thing I thought when I saw this advertisement, for a community where, actually, let me get the, do we have the exact language of how he advertised it?

58:39

I'm trying to look for an exact quote because I don't wanna misrepresent it in my own words. Maybe I'm just gonna have to summarize.

58:49

Okay, so it's a community outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. Actually, it's way more than outside.

58:56

It's in the country. It's in Ravenden, Arkansas. And it's not even that big. It's 140 miles north of Arkansas' state capital.

59:06

I don't remember how many. They didn't have a lot of acreage, but they were building houses.

59:12

And it was one of these Whites Only, we don't want Jews, we don't want LGBT, we don't want anyone else.

59:18

It's gotta be European. And then, of course, the obvious, why are you saying we couldn't do this?

59:24

Why is that controversial? Blacks can have their space and Jews can have their space. Why can't we have our space? I don't get it, right?

59:30

And so, oh, here's a tweet, okay. He goes, Jews on Reddit found out about return to the land.

59:36

That's the name of it. And now they're all riled up against this. God forbid a single explicitly White community should exist.

59:43

This is a losing battle for them if they decide to press it. They get a state and nukes, but we can't have a neighborhood.

59:49

They get a state and nukes. I'm sorry. Yeah, because Israel exists.

59:58

They have a country that they can live in. We don't have anything. It's not like there's a place called

01:00:05

Europe or Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada. But John, those places are all being taken from the populations that exist there, right?

01:00:14

They are because of very stupid policies, which on this podcast, in the

01:00:20

Christian world, at least, we have tried to oppose at every turn. Because they're extremely foolish, mostly immigration policies.

01:00:26

But also the over -sexualization and all that kind of stuff, that makes a big impact.

01:00:33

The depravity of people when they live for themselves and they don't see their role as passing on something to the next generation.

01:00:41

The raising kids is no longer part of what's attractive to people. Well, that also is going to make a major impact on your population too.

01:00:50

The way you raise kids and what they grow up to be and whether or not they're productive and whether or not you need foreigners who will do jobs in certain industries.

01:01:03

I never have actually bought the argument, you actually need. I've always thought, well, the prices are gonna go up for everything until it matches a point when people will actually do it.

01:01:15

But I can't really argue against the fact that my own eyes have seen over the course of years that yes, there does seem to be a major lazy streak.

01:01:24

And the kinds of jobs that go to foreign workforces who come here aren't the kinds of jobs that many

01:01:29

Americans, at least in suburban environments, seem very interested in doing, who normally would have done those jobs, teenagers and so forth.

01:01:36

So all of these things factor and all of these things are part of the moral decay. I don't attribute this,

01:01:44

I don't think this is all determined based on genetics. I think that otherwise you'd have to think,

01:01:50

I guess white people in general must be really dumb and their countries are doing terrible things.

01:01:57

So that means maybe, especially if you're Darwinist, maybe they just need to go, maybe they just need to lose all these battles.

01:02:05

Maybe their country shouldn't continue to exist, the countries they've established because they're just weak or something.

01:02:11

That's obviously an argument out there. So anyway, what was I saying? So this community exists for whites only to create kind of like a safe space.

01:02:23

Now, here's why I was kind of like laughing though, because you look at a map of this and you're like, okay, for anyone who's well -traveled, right?

01:02:34

Ravened in Arkansas. Here's the question. If you really want to live among descendants of Europeans, there are a number of places you can go in this country and you can actually do that.

01:02:48

One of them would probably be ravened in Arkansas or any of the surrounding areas. That's the thing.

01:02:54

Anyone ever driven through Arkansas, right? Outside of an urban area into a rural area. I mean, yeah, you pretty much are gonna be in a community that fits that description.

01:03:04

So you'd almost have to have like an apocalyptic kind of like scenario in your head,

01:03:10

I suppose, for thinking that like you're not gonna be able to have that kind of a community anywhere.

01:03:17

There's a lot of places in the United States you can have that kind of a community. I think it's a little different for places like South Africa or South Africa is the only one

01:03:28

I'm really thinking. That's the first one I'm thinking of at least where you'd have a little bit of a different history but there's a massive crime problem and that crime problem extends to these rural areas.

01:03:41

And so you need these big gated communities and there are communities there that vet. I don't know. I think there's more than one but I know there's one that's famous because they basically limit it to white people.

01:03:51

Now in South Africa, that means you're basically talking about Boers and you're talking about the descendants of British people or those who have intermarried between the

01:04:02

Boers and the British. In America, when you talk about white, what are you talking about? That's another question that you have.

01:04:08

There's a different scaling. So it's a different set of circumstances. You're talking about Italians and Irish and different waves of Irish immigration.

01:04:18

You're talking about Germans and Scandinavians and Swiss and people in the

01:04:24

Midwest who have gone there. You're talking about maybe even Russians and Finnish people in California.

01:04:32

It's kind of a broad category. And I'm here to tell you just having traveled a lot and lived in different places and so forth, there's a lot of differences just there.

01:04:42

There's a lot of differences. Even just North -South basic differences are, there's a lot of resentment in Southern areas for Northerners who are coming down or white who are descendants of Europeans.

01:04:55

And they have completely different views about what society should look like. They want it to look like the

01:05:00

Northeast where they have their little socialism going on and Southern areas hate that.

01:05:06

So it's a very broad kind of thing. It's not very particular, right? And so when

01:05:12

I saw it, I was like, this has to be, like he was, the interview

01:05:18

I saw with this guy was just, he was just saying like edgy stuff to say it, right?

01:05:25

And I get it sort of like it's an engagement farming thing probably. Like if I say edgy things, I get more negative media coverage, but that translates into positive media coverage for people interested in this kind of thing.

01:05:35

But it's got a pioneer feel to it, right? Like you're gonna be part of like the ground, you're returning to the land.

01:05:41

So it's got sort of this naturalistic sort of bent. But what the product he's offering though,

01:05:47

I don't think is like, so the words he's saying is it's for whites. But I think the product he's offering isn't so much that because you can get that in the surrounding area.

01:05:57

The product he's actually offering is, he's offering significance.

01:06:04

He's offering, the grass is greener on the other side. And this is someone who's a showman, I think.

01:06:10

This is my, that was my take just after watching one video that he can sell this as you're part of something really big.

01:06:17

You're part of like, even comparing it to the state of Israel, right? Like, man, Jews have a state, it's

01:06:23

Israel. Like you're part of something like that here. Like it makes you think you're on the cutting edge of history.

01:06:31

It's like, and you know, the scenes are all like building houses in the wilderness. I mean, that's really, that's kind of a cool thing, especially for guys who want to go out there.

01:06:39

I'm not lying. You know, I'm not going to deny that. That's, you know, let's build a log cabin in the middle of nowhere, right?

01:06:45

And be with our buddies and that kind of thing. But I think that's what it is.

01:06:50

It's a very small club. This isn't going to appeal to the majority of people.

01:06:56

And it probably is going to cause friction with neighbors and so forth who are also white. Now, how is that natural question?

01:07:03

And so this was one of the things that got me thinking about it. This guy, Phil Williams keeps doing hit pieces. Reporter or a journalist in Nashville keeps doing these hit pieces on the

01:07:14

Ridge Runner community, but it's not even a Ridge Runner community. It's literally just a, Ridge Runner is a company that buys land and then sells it.

01:07:25

And the appeal is for people who are very, on a very broad level, seeking to escape blue states mostly and live in a place that's going to respect their civil liberties and a culture that will hopefully reinforce

01:07:44

Christian values and those kinds of things. That is something that actually is in demand, much more so.

01:07:51

And it's not like a commune or anything like that.

01:07:57

It's more organic, right? There's not like one church people are going to. There's not any centralized.

01:08:03

The only centralized thing is that you have a company that's interested in providing a way that mostly people who would be, not commuters, but let me call it, when you work from your computer, people who are working from their computer and they can, they're mobile like that.

01:08:22

They can go and they can live at a place that is already naturally conservative and just integrate into the community.

01:08:31

That's basically the idea behind it. It's actually a very different idea than this. This is more cloistered.

01:08:36

This is more, let's play up the edginess. Let's make this about, you got the pioneer spirit and you're building something that's grandiose.

01:08:44

And so it's giving significance. Ridge Runner is different because Ridge Runner is just basically a real estate company that is offering a product that people are after because they want to be normal and have kids and raise them in an environment that generally is going to reinforce the values they share.

01:09:03

So that's my separation, but I see people online trying to couple these things together.

01:09:10

And I'm just like, no, no, no. One's kind of, one's grifty, one's a grift. One's a guy who knows how to be a salesman.

01:09:18

And now it's come out, yes, he was acting. Yeah, no LGBT people allowed. We're gonna have high integrity and morals here.

01:09:24

Meanwhile, the dude's been like in the recent past has been acting in pornographic films with his ex -wife that he's divorced.

01:09:32

And so a totally different look. He's obviously changed his entire demeanor and what he looks like, including dying his hair apparently to fit a certain persona to try to sell this.

01:09:44

I mean, that's what's going on. That's much different than, hey, let's leave our blue state to go to a red state where they support our gun rights, right?

01:09:53

Little different guys, just a little different. All right. I don't know if laptop jobs, says

01:09:58

Steven Smith. That wasn't the thing, but that'll work. Telecommuters, I think that's what I was thinking. Telecommuters, but that's kind of an old word now because you don't use a telephone, do you?

01:10:07

John, didn't you have a man in your cast years ago that started a community on a river in Kentucky, I think.

01:10:13

Actually, that's what I was just talking about was Ridge Runner. It's Kentucky and Tennessee. And it's more of an integration into communities that are already there.

01:10:22

It's just buying land that happens to be a better price than the kind of land you're gonna get in the suburban and blue areas.

01:10:29

And then you get to move there and be in an environment that already exists where you can raise your children.

01:10:34

And this was started at a time when people were obviously doing this a lot more because of COVID and all that. They were looking for places.

01:10:40

And yes, I think Ridge Runner saw an opportunity there. Like, oh, we could get in on this and we could also provide a very, a natural fit for people who are looking for that kind of a life.

01:10:53

But I would even caution people in that. You gotta be ready for what you're going to expect.

01:10:59

The grass is always greener. There's no utopia. You will carry a lot of the same problems you think you have where you live.

01:11:04

You're gonna carry them wherever you go. And you might think this is great. I'm gonna have all these friends. You may, but give it time.

01:11:12

People are people. You're going to have church fractures. You're going to have fallouts with people.

01:11:18

I mean, this is just the human condition. So don't expect you'd get away from the human condition by moving anywhere.

01:11:24

You won't. And that's why communes generally, and the tighter they are, usually the worse, they tend to fall apart unless you have a very,

01:11:33

I mean, what's the scale at which they work? The family, right? So if you have a scale where it's like people all accept one authority, it's like dad, he's the patriarch, right?

01:11:44

Then it seems to work. But it doesn't work when the scales get too big. And it just doesn't, that's human history.

01:11:52

I live in New York, right? I mean, the Oneonta community was here. I mean, all sorts of utopian schemes in the

01:11:57

Northeast. And it's just, just be careful of that kind of thinking. Cause we can do that even just with moving to a new place, right?

01:12:05

It's going to be so great. Yeah, some things might be, you might love some things, but you're also dealing with humans and you're human.

01:12:11

So that's a Christian understanding there. As far as confirming one's faith and making it strong and its deception, the book,

01:12:19

The Ultimate Proof of Creation by Jason Lyle is fantastic, says Cosmic Treason. Together with AIG's Answer books and the

01:12:24

Genesis Flood. I used to hand that one out, The Ultimate Proof of Creation. I've changed a little bit in my feeling on apologetics, but I still think that's a good book to work through.

01:12:37

There's a lot of good points that are made in that. Okay, well, let's keep going. We are going to talk a little bit about some abortion stuff cause

01:12:45

I think this stuff actually is important. I want to remind you about something. And look, Senator James Lankford, the guy that loves the

01:12:51

ERLC is at the top of this, but he's applauding something Trump did that's actually good at the

01:12:56

Department of Veterans Affairs. And that is they are no longer allowed to perform abortions.

01:13:03

So the administration posted the proposed rule change in the federal register, which will be formally published on Monday.

01:13:09

So by Monday, abortions are prohibited. They cannot be performed by the

01:13:14

Department of Veterans Affairs. So for all you out there who think Trump is going to be so anti -pro -life or he's going to be pro -abortion and stuff.

01:13:24

I mean, you just keep getting these stories where he's limiting it. And then I wanted to point out, oh, where did

01:13:29

I want to go next? Let's see here. Oh no, I can't read this.

01:13:36

Okay, oh, I didn't sign in on the Epoch Times. It's on my other browser. Well, I'll summarize the story.

01:13:41

The Epoch Times reported that New York and Texas are fighting. And this is funny because, not funny, it's sad actually, but it's interesting because the, what official was it?

01:13:54

It was, I think the county commissioner or something, but it was an official in Ulster County, which is the county that I live in, in New York, that this particular official was, is resisting a lawsuit from Texas.

01:14:14

And it's all over a doctor, apparently in this county, mailing abortifacients, pills, to someone in Texas.

01:14:26

And in New York, there's a law that the governor signed that you cannot limit access to these kinds of things.

01:14:35

Texas has a law that's the exact opposite. So now you have a clash that will probably be decided in a federal court, but that's the situation we live in post -Roe is these states are now grinding gears against each other.

01:14:51

So I am thankful in the White House, there's at least someone who is going to, it sounds like listen more often than not to his constituency and we'll see what happens with it.

01:15:04

But you can pray for that situation. These are actual tangible situations we can pray for. I was also gonna mention this.

01:15:10

I actually know this man, not like deeply, but years ago, I've met him a few times and his name is

01:15:17

Jason McGuire and pray for him. New Yorkers Families Foundation, this is probably the one organization in New York state that does lobbying on behalf of Christians, evangelical

01:15:27

Christians at the state Capitol, very liberal state, but they actually do effective lobbying. And Jason McGuire is the president and he has been sentenced to eight weekends in the

01:15:37

Livingston County Jail, following a guilty plea by two misdemeanors earlier this year. The board directors of New Yorker Families Foundation is outraged and grieved at the result of the recent legal proceedings involving our executive director,

01:15:50

Jason McGuire. We believe that New York state attorney general, Letitia James and her staff abused the legal privilege.

01:15:57

And so anyway, Jason pleaded guilty, but to two misdemeanors, he did so for the purpose of making a time -consuming, onerous and expensive legal problem go away.

01:16:06

Based on Jason's long tenure with our organization and his character's integrity, we are confident that Jason did not engage in any intentional wrongdoing.

01:16:12

We would hope that the legal process would see Jason's case for the politically motivated. Okay, so it's a political targeting of Jason and his ministry.

01:16:23

And I did see there was a video, it's not on this page, but there's a video of Jason explaining all of it. And he basically got probed by New York state.

01:16:32

I mean, they're just looking for anything. And it was some very minor sort of, I don't even remember what they were.

01:16:38

It was like, you know, financial, supposed financial discrepancies that were extremely minor that actually were explainable and he could have fought in court, but it was like, it would take half a million dollars and they are already on a shoestring budget.

01:16:51

So he's just gonna go to jail. And I don't know, it just, it kind of breaks my heart a little bit. I mean, this is the problem in New York.

01:16:57

If you have any kind of resistance, even though they have a leftist monopoly, you get targeted. And with the tax codes, the way they are and everything, it doesn't really matter.

01:17:06

You can find something, you can find a technicality and just put someone away, which is not the way it should be.

01:17:15

I also wanted to highlight the fact that there are Nigerian Christians who have blocked a highway to protest the government inaction after 200

01:17:23

Christians killed in a massacre. This just happened. This is, the massacre itself was

01:17:29

June 1st. And I mean, this just keeps happening in Nigeria. This is why I really recommend following voice, or sorry,

01:17:38

Equipping the Persecuted. That's the name of it, not Voice of the Martyrs. No, Equipping the Persecuted. It's just sad.

01:17:44

Pray for our Nigerian brothers and sisters. They are going through things we just cannot even conceive of in our country.

01:17:53

They are being targeted. I mean, someone just goes into the village and starts bombing and mowing down people. That's what they have to deal with because of Boko Haram, Islamic terrorism.

01:18:02

So pray for them. And then I thought this was sort of sad.

01:18:07

Spurgeon's College, an influential evangelical training center in London to close after 169 years. And it says the decision by the board of trustees was made with a deep sadness and great regret.

01:18:18

This marks the end of the United Kingdom's most influential evangelical training centers. Trustees stated that ongoing financial challenges compounded by declining student enrollment and difficult funding landscape for theological education had left the college in a precarious position.

01:18:34

It's just sad. It tells you about the state of Great Britain as well, where they're going.

01:18:40

And it's, I don't know what the Lord's doing, guys. I really don't. There's a lot of hard hearts out there.

01:18:46

There's still people that the Lord is working on. And we've even seen that at the fair. I was talking to one of the people who was working the booth previous day this week, and someone made a profession of faith right there.

01:19:00

Convicted of sin, you know. But the vast majority of people you talk to, they're not interested.

01:19:07

And I'm in the Northeast. It's a little different here. I recognize that. But you wonder sometimes, what is the

01:19:13

Lord doing? What is He, what's He moving us towards? Now, I know some people look for those answers in eschatology and their specific flavor of Christian eschatology, that one world government or that kind of thing.

01:19:27

And I think it's hard to, even if you believe that that's the ultimate destination, you don't know where the hills and valleys are.

01:19:38

Things ebb and flow. And so in the here and now, and as you look back at history, you can see times where God's spirit moved just massive, miraculous ways.

01:19:49

And the Welsh revivals, obviously, being one of the recent example like that, the Great Awakening. But there's also examples of just, you know, it's slow.

01:20:00

And, you know, I don't know, why are Christians being persecuted in Nigeria? And why is

01:20:07

Christianity, the lights are going out on Christianity in Great Britain, which was the main country that sent missionaries to the other parts of the world.

01:20:16

It was Great Britain and then the United States. And I see the United States as very much an extension of Great Britain, as I do

01:20:22

Australia, South Africa, New Zealand. These are all places that are a part, they're all cousins, essentially.

01:20:27

They're all part of the Anglosphere. And they have been the foremost proponents of Christian cultural values.

01:20:36

And when Christianity goes, the values go with it. They're tied together. You don't have, you know, this is one of the problems with some of the more secular or pagan right elements, including what

01:20:48

I would imagine to be this guy who thinks he's starting this whites -only commune, or I don't know if he calls it a commune, it's community, but it's on a very, what is it, 100 and, how many acres is that community?

01:21:00

I'm actually curious now. I don't think it's that big of a plot. So it's, you know, if the scale is so small, it's gonna, it could end up being more of a commune.

01:21:09

It doesn't say in the piece, but anyway. You can say all day long, we want to get back to our

01:21:18

Christian identity. I mean, the Christian identity movement, by the way, that's something to also be on the lookout for, because there is a, and it's been very fringy, but I have seen guys promoting some of these ideas lately that are not as fringy.

01:21:34

And basically it looks at Europe and Christianity as intrinsically tied together, which they have been for quite a few centuries, but it wants to essentially reduce

01:21:44

Christian identity to a European thing. It's a European identity. And in so doing, it's, for lack of a better term, it's like, if you're white, you're

01:21:59

Christian because this is the religion that we have, right? And so you need to just be true to the religion of your ancestors.

01:22:06

Of course, there's people making the same argument for worshiping Odin, but there's Christian identitarians who are making this argument.

01:22:14

Some, the more radical sects, like the Hebrew Israelite guys, think that the white people are the actual

01:22:19

Jews, right? Which is nuts, but this is the argument that's being made. And that, you have to separate that from true

01:22:27

Christianity. You have to be able to look and say, yes, Christianity did make an impact on these communities.

01:22:32

And we are thankful for cultural Christianity because of those values, because we want clean streets, because we want safety for our children.

01:22:40

But I'm not going to confuse that with authentic born -again Christianity. I'm not going to confuse that with a conversion experience just because someone happens to echo some of the moral laws that Christianity teaches.

01:22:52

See, they may be benefiting from a Christian society, and that is a great thing, we wanna support it, but it doesn't mean they're

01:22:58

Christian. And good works don't get you there, right? Obviously, this is Christianity 101. So, I see this as sort of a trap, and this is gonna be the peril that some of these more secular slash

01:23:13

Christian identitarian groups want to move toward without actually having

01:23:18

Christianity. You can't say we want our Christian enclave, but yeah, you know,

01:23:25

I was working in pornography very recently, like that's, obviously those two are incongruent.

01:23:33

The morality has to start internally. The virtue has to be internal. It has to be conviction.

01:23:39

Who you are in private matters, right? Those are the kinds of things, and I'm not saying perfection, I'm saying direction.

01:23:45

You must be battling sin, right? In your private self to then go and battle it out there.

01:23:54

It must be something the Holy Spirit, without the Spirit's help, I just don't see the efforts lasting to try to preserve

01:24:04

Christianity, cultural Christianity. It relies on authentic Christianity, or you can't really have one without the other.

01:24:13

So, that's, the Lord is doing something, though. The people want, there's enough people that have interest in Christianity and Christian identity.

01:24:21

Will it make the jump, though? And that depends on, does the Lord move? So, pray for that, and also, are we gonna be faithful?

01:24:28

So, do we go out there, and do we faithfully exemplify what it looks like to be a

01:24:36

Christian? Do we show that to the people that we're around? And do we proclaim the gospel message so people's hearts are transformed?

01:24:43

Because without that transformation, you're just not gonna have it, guys. It's not, you don't have the restoration that we all want, the going back to heritage, and all the rest.

01:24:52

Christianity's tied to that, but it's real Christianity, and so you need real Christianity. You have to have at least enough real

01:25:00

Christians to support that kind of society. All right, well, a few comments, and we'll end the show.

01:25:06

John, what do you think about Israel starving Christians in Gaza? Oh, wow, that'd probably be enough for a whole podcast.

01:25:15

I'm gonna be honest and just say I have seen tons of stuff online, and yes,

01:25:21

I've heard Tucker Carlson things, and probably many of the things many of you are listening to. I would have to really look at the issue deeply myself to get past all the propaganda potential, and sometimes it's hard to tell what's propaganda and what is not.

01:25:39

I tend to think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. So here's the debate on the starving thing, or at least these are the two sides.

01:25:49

One version is Israel is preventing these humanitarian aid from going into the

01:25:56

Gaza Strip. Another version is Hamas is confiscating the humanitarian aid that's going into the Gaza Strip.

01:26:02

Could both, so your options are, right, one's true, the other's true, both are true, and it's not something

01:26:10

I've looked into deeply. Now, how many Christians are in that region at this point? I don't think that many, but there are

01:26:17

Christians who come from that region of the world. So how, you know, people have thrown out stats, like it's 1%, it's 2%,

01:26:26

I don't know. I'm not sure, but obviously I want, I don't want anyone to get hurt. I don't want anyone to die.

01:26:32

I want the killing to stop. I want Hamas to stop.

01:26:38

I want Israel to stop. I want the whole thing to stop. But like I've said on my previous podcasts on Middle Eastern politics, it seems like it's a problem that can only be managed, and it doesn't go away until one side wins.

01:26:51

And if you listen to my podcast earlier this week on Christian Zionism, this problem goes right back to the formation of the state of Israel, when you had so many people fleeing their homes, and then they were replaced by Jewish people fleeing surrounding

01:27:05

Muslim nations. And the Muslim nations did not want to absorb the people who fled.

01:27:11

I mean, that would, you would think that would be somewhat of a simple fix. I mean, obviously you have, the cameras will find the

01:27:18

Palestinians who say, this is our home. We don't want to leave. We're not going to leave. At this point, you don't leave though.

01:27:23

And you're subject to these conditions. You're in a war zone. And I'm a big advocate of, let's get these people out of there.

01:27:34

But I really don't want it to be the refugee crisis that we saw in 2015. I would prefer this is not

01:27:41

Europe that takes this problem, that this is something that surrounding Muslim nations take.

01:27:47

And maybe, and I don't know. I mean, I don't know enough about the politics of the region to know what kind of levers are there, if there's even a lever available to influence.

01:27:56

It doesn't seem like there is. It doesn't seem like there's a way to get, it's like all these Muslim countries are going to support in their rhetoric, the people in the

01:28:06

Gaza Strip, but they don't want to, for some reason, absorb them into their countries. I don't know.

01:28:11

I don't know what to say. Pray for the problem, especially for our Christian brothers who are there. Absolutely. I'm definitely skeptical of Israel, just so you know, too.

01:28:23

I am not just thinking Israel, everything they do is pure as the driven snow. I think Israel does have an interest in getting people out of there and in expanding their territory.

01:28:33

They've obviously given up territory many times, I think because of political considerations. And there's obviously a growing group in Israel who does not want that to happen anymore.

01:28:45

And they would prefer that Israel actually takes some of the land that they captured in 1967 and then 1973 and gave up again.

01:28:56

So guys, it's complicated. It's complicated. Man, I didn't really want to get into this, but if you guys really want me to,

01:29:04

I'll tell you what, if you really want me to, I will talk about this issue more. I've already, there's a piece that I have coming out.

01:29:12

My patrons have access to it. And I appreciate all your support. If you go to patreon .com forward slash

01:29:17

John Harris podcast, you will have access, but hopefully it will be published by American Reformer this next week, but it's on Christian Zionism.

01:29:27

And it's gonna parallel a lot of the things I said in my podcast, but it's obviously cleaned up for a publication and you can share it with your friends and that kind of thing.

01:29:36

If you want me to tackle this stuff a little more, I will, but I'm not gonna let, I don't want my focus to totally shift to that, which

01:29:44

I've seen a lot of podcasters do. I'm the George Washington foreign policy guy.

01:29:49

I want to unwind ourselves from the foreign conflicts as much as possible at a governmental level.

01:29:56

And I'm really interested in, hey, let's get back to, people need to be educated on their actual

01:30:03

Anglo, American conservative tradition that they've forgotten. That's one of my big missions now, and I don't want to be dissuaded from that.

01:30:11

So I can do a little more stuff in the Middle East if people really want me to, but just between you and me, I'm gonna be spending a big portion of next week preparing and then airing the patron exclusive on the

01:30:24

Anti -Federalist Papers. So I see that as very important. People need to get in touch with their past.

01:30:31

We need to find, we need to go back to the roots, okay? And that's part of it. So, yeah,

01:30:38

I don't know if there's anything more, a few more comments and we'll go. More than 45 million states, none will take the

01:30:44

Gazans, why? I don't want to, I have ideas, but I don't want to get into it.

01:30:51

Tucker has become way too emotional, way too focused on foreign affairs, which are his weak area. I will admit

01:30:56

I've caught, I have heard, I don't know if I want to even say this. I have an appreciation for Tucker Carlson.

01:31:04

I've had an appreciation for years for his, I actually watched him when he was on MSNBC, if you could remember back that far, if it was like 15, 20 years ago.

01:31:15

And I always kind of liked his personality. I liked, he was just not afraid to ask questions, it seemed like, and hold people accountable.

01:31:24

And I appreciate that about him. Here's the thing that I think is hard when you're a Tucker Carlson. When you are covering such a broad array of topics, such a broad array, and we all have a scale.

01:31:40

We know certain things, we can't know everything. It becomes difficult. And I heard one interview he was doing, and one of his guests said something that I knew.

01:31:50

I was like, I know about that topic. And I'm like, that was false. And Tucker was just kind of nodding along. I think that's just, that's sort of the trade -off.

01:31:58

Like if you're going to output the amount of content from the amount of perspectives on the amount of topics he's doing, you have to look at it that way.

01:32:07

He's providing a platform for people he considers interesting. That's all his show is basically at this point. People he considers interesting get to go and talk about what he finds interesting.

01:32:17

You have to do the research yourself. I don't always just assume that just because they're on his show that everything they're saying is true.

01:32:26

It may or may not be. And it's, yeah, that's all

01:32:32

I'll say about that. But I do appreciate Tucker. So, anyone not sympathetic with our brothers and sisters in Christ and demanding they move out of their homeland in Palestine for Christ rejecting

01:32:40

Israel is in sin. Not sympathetic, okay. I mean, I am sympathetic. I'm not demanding they move out of their homeland either.

01:32:48

I'm just saying, here's the thing, like you can look on paper and say like, here's what right and wrong would be in this situation.

01:32:56

And let's go back to 1948 and re, let's re -adjudicate all of these things. The reality of politics in that region especially is it's extremely messy.

01:33:06

And you have to, if you're going to have an avenue that makes the most sense for everyone who's a party to the conflict or a victim in the conflict, you have to be practical with the on -the -ground reality.

01:33:20

The on -the -ground reality is, this has been a war zone for a while and it will probably continue to be a war zone.

01:33:30

And when your home is rubble or in danger of becoming rubble because everything around you is rubble, then what's the best solution?

01:33:41

The best solution that I can think of, the most immediate way to try to gain relief is to, even if it's temporary is to allow some of these people into surrounding countries where they can at least be out of harm's way.

01:33:56

That's what I would hope for, for Christians in that area. So, but I guess

01:34:02

I'm in sin. So we have a very small contingent of brothers and sisters in both sides of the

01:34:08

Holy Land conflict. That's a good point too. We're going to end the stream because I don't want to get sucked into this too deeply. But yes, there are

01:34:13

Christians in Israel as well. That is very true. There's Christians on both sides of that. There's even, there's even

01:34:19

Muslims. There's like usually between eight to 12. I think there's 10 right now who sit on the Knesset if you can believe it.

01:34:26

So, I mean, Israel's population is like 73 .5 % Jewish, but there's a number of Muslims there.

01:34:32

There's also Druze and Christians. And I mean, it's a secular state. That's what it is.

01:34:39

That's why I see people saying, oh, it's an ethno state. I'm like, well, I mean, I guess you could say because if you're

01:34:46

Jewish and you can immigrate there more easily. But I mean, for all intents and purposes, it is a secular state.

01:34:53

And that's one of the main reasons Western European countries support it. But you will find all that out in my article being published next week, hopefully by American Reformer, we'll see.

01:35:02

If not, I'll find somewhere else. All right, God bless guys. Hope you have a wonderful weekend and more coming.