Mega: 1607, More on Marriage Act, & Achord, & TGC on Christian Nationalism

The 1607 Project Trailer and Virginia as the Real Origin of America

There's a storm over America today and that storm is the distortion of American history. America wasn't founded on an idea. America wasn't founded on slavery, by slaves, and America wasn't founded as a city upon a hill.

America, the real tangible America, was born in Virginia. That's the America we should emulate. So much of what we think about America comes from Virginia. These early Virginians founded the first elected assembly in 1619, the real 1619 project.

When we think about American culture, we think of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Patrick Henry. Those Virginians were instrumental in what we think of America today. They established civil liberties in the name of the rights of Englishmen.

And much of American culture comes from Virginia, whether it's music or the military tradition, Virginia is the key to understanding what America is and what America was. That's why we created the 1607 Project.

Join us in this journey from 1607 to the present and find out what the real America is all about.

Well, welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I am your host, John Harris, as always. And good to be podcasting today. I hope you all had a good Lord's Day. What you just watched, if you started watching the podcast at the beginning, is a trailer for the 1607 Project.

You can go to 1607project .com and find out more about that and share that trailer around with your friends. I know I was going to talk about this. I said I was going to talk about this last week, and I had to put it off with everything going on.

And so I wanted to get to it now. I've talked about it on the program before, though. And this was really something that I... It was an idea that I had probably a year and a half or more now ago. It was around the time the 1619 Project was taking off.

And I said, why not have a 1607 Project and talk about when the first English settlers came to Jamestown? And so this is that. And if you want to donate, it's going to the Abbeville Institute. They've partnered with me.

I mean, really, I think it's more me partnering with them at this point. I think they're doing the heavy lifting here in many ways. I'm doing much of the film work and all that, but it is a 501c3. So giving Tuesdays tomorrow.

If this is a project you believe in and want to see out there, then I would just highly recommend giving to the 1607 Project, 1607project .com. The plan at this point is there is going to be a book. There's a number of essays already that have been written.

I think they're waiting on one to complete the book, and it's going to be on all kinds of things. Early American religion, slavery is going to be part of it, of course, because that's part of early American, the situation in early America, but also just what makes America unique.

It's going to be focused more on Virginia, and there's already some essays actually on the website you can go read as to why the rationale behind Virginia tracing the headwaters of the United States to Virginia.

But on representative form of government, I mean, there's just going to be a lot of good stuff out there, and it's going to be different than what you've seen. Obviously different than the 1619 Project, but also different than the 1776 Commission.

It's going to be different than both of those, and I think it's going to be better. So a book is going to be part of it, a documentary film is going to be part of it. Those two I already know. What I'm hoping for is if we can get the resources, we'll have a conference.

That's going to be the 1607 Project conference, and then also a homeschool curriculum so that this can be implemented in homeschool classes and co-ops, and maybe even like private schools and some of those places as well.

So there you go. John, what have you been doing? I support your efforts. What have you been doing with all these resources? This is one of the things, and there's a lot of conversations that happen behind the scenes to get to the point of actually, yes, we're going to do it.

So we're there, and I'm really grateful for that. This is another unannounced live stream, and thank you for everyone who is joining. We already have 30 people joining right now. One person says, 1607 Project is an idea whose time has come.

So yes, I believe so. Someone needs to remind Fox News that this is a republic and not just a democracy. Well, yeah. I mean, I know people say this is a democracy. I try to be careful. I don't even call it a democracy.

I just say it's a republic. It's a constitutional republic, right? That's the correct word. All right. Well, let's get into some other stuff today. I wanted to start with an article that Megan Basham put out there today, and I'll read some of this to you.

The Respect for Marriage Act and Evangelical Drift

It's on an issue that I think is, honestly, this is fundamental. This is such an important issue, maybe the most important issue of the last 10 years and of our time, and that is what's happened to the institution of marriage, how it's viewed.

I knew in 2015, when we took those parameters down, when the floodgates opened, it would be bad in so many ways. It wouldn't just be the devaluation of marriage itself more so. It's already been happening for a while with no-fault divorce and just the general trends in society, but all sorts of other things would come in as well.

I wanted to read this for you. This is from Megan Basham, and this is posted at The Federalist, posted earlier today. It's not that long. It goes over some of the things that I talked about with David French, but she also talks about other evangelical elites.

One of the things that I think would be good to reflect upon for Christians, Christians who have given, contributed, been involved with Christian institutions that have caved and people who have caved, is to reflect on this moment.

What got us here? Why is that even a remotely attractive proposition to take the institution of marriage and devalue it so much? Well, I'll read this to you. Let's go through it. This is what the article says.

Learning this month that 12 Senate Republicans had signed on with Democrats to advance the misnamed Respect for Marriage Act left many Christians stunned. Most shocking was the yes vote from Roy Blunt, a practicing Southern Baptist who served for three years as president of a small private university in a theologically conservative denomination.

How, many wondered, could a political leader with such deep roots in one of the most traditional branches of evangelicalism so publicly undermine the foremost human institution created by God? Those asking must not have been paying attention to the shift that has taken place in elite evangelical circles in recent years.

One of the earliest signs that the commitment to defend biblical marriage was weakening came from Christianity Today CEO Timothy Dalrymple. In 2012, seven years before, he took the helm of the publication founded by Billy Graham.

He went on record arguing that it might be time to stop opposing same-sex marriage as a matter of law. Just as a matter of law. We can support marriage personally. We can support it in the church. But as a matter of public consumption, I don't know if that marriage thing is...

It's kind of antiquated. Not worth defending in this modern society. And he didn't say all that, but I'm saying that. I'm saying that this is the attitude that some elites in Christian circles decided early on when they knew that this was going to work.

This was going to win for the left. They knew that after... When was it that? Was it Prop 8 in California? Proposition 8? And it passed? And then the courts just struck it down? I remember that. I remember I was in Florida with my family and we were driving.

And this is before, I know some of you Zoomers were born probably, which makes me feel old. But I remember distinctly, like it was yesterday, I think it was the mayor of San Francisco at the time, which I believe he's the governor of California now, was just making a speech and saying that this is the right thing to do and we're not going to stand for this tyranny.

At that time, the Mormon Church, for those who don't remember this, had given a significant amount of money to the effort for Prop 8. You had the CEO of, I think it was... Was it Firefox? No, Mozilla.

Mozilla Firefox, yeah. The CEO had given to Prop 8 and he was basically shamed and fired, for lack of a better term. And you had just... Like the Mormon Church got so much heat, but it passed. The population in California at that time, this is early 2000s, was against same-sex marriage.

Can you believe that? And we've come to the point now where in a lot of these conservative states, you wouldn't even be able to probably get a vote to pass. And some evangelical leaders at that time could see, oh, we have a massive change coming.

Generational change, moral change, fueled by the media, fueled by all kinds of things. And so anyway, Dalrymple assured his readers that he's among those who believe it's biblically and theologically clear that marriage was created and ordained by God for the union of male and female.

But he also encouraged them to humbly acknowledge the limitations of our knowledge and recognize the possibility that we are mistaken, calling marriage an issue of secondary importance. He went on to say that Christians needed to ask themselves whether it is still wise to press for American law to recognize only heterosexual unions.

He worried that continuing to insist on marriage as founded by God would harm our witness and suggest the church's credibility might be better spent on more important issues. Note that Dalrymple was suggesting believers should capitulate on the issue of marriage three years before the Supreme Court discovered that gay partners have a constitutional right to have the government's blessing on their affection.

And I remember this time. I don't remember Dalrymple, but I just remember that there was a softening approach. And the approach looked like this in most places. And I can't give you specifics off the top of my head.

I wasn't paying as close attention to names of people in evangelicalism. I just remember, though, that I even heard it in my friends when they were saying things like, well, you know, the church has been so mean to homosexuals over the years.

And, you know, we really just we got to be like if they ever said anything that was pro traditional marriage, they had to say about three things to say how much they love gay people. I remember this right before 2015.

A key factor Dalrymple said is that homosexual unions don't have clear victims as abortion does. He closed the essay by intimating that he was still working out his views as to whether it is worth continuing to argue for a biblical definition of marriage.

By February 2019, three months before he officially ascended to the top position at Christianity Today, there were signs he had settled those views. It was then that Dalrymple traveled to Mexico to attend the wedding ceremony of a gay coworker officiated by a prominent LGBT affirming pastor and author Jonathan Merritt.

That's James Merritt's son in the SBC. This picture posted. Let's see if we can see if I can pull this up. It is loading. Yes, these are the pictures, I guess, of this wedding. OK, these pictures posted on public website website are festive, even reverent, showing Dalrymple and his wife participating in the ceremony.

So this is the guy, long story short, the top of Christianity Today, right? And influential guy who's he's going along with it. He's giving, and this is what I see with so many issues, give you kind of like a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.

And the medicine, of course, is not real medicine. It's sewage. Give you a spoonful of sugar to help the sewage go down. And that's what I see over and over in this in the evangelical world is the elites.

They see where the where the pendulum is going and to get out ahead of it, to maintain their position, to make sure that they're not canceled. They will they realize they're between a rock and a hard place because their audience of Christians that they have been used to believing it one way, the biblical way.

And now they're pivoting to go this other direction. And how do they do it? They have to do a halfway measure. And so this was he was a pioneer. We can call him that. I guess Dalrymple was a pioneer in this kind of thinking.

And I will say this, you know, the argument here that he's giving that, well, it doesn't hurt anyone. Well, you know, does does do other things hurt people like, you know, like polygamy? Does that hurt anyone?

Does it hurt anyone to to do bestiality? I mean, some would argue now that even pedophilia doesn't hurt anyone if there's consent involved. I mean, no one's actually getting hurt in this. And of course, there are societal ramifications that go beyond these individuals when you're looking at it through a microscope versus looking at it through through a bird in a bird's eye view.

When you're looking at like an individual same sex couple, I mean, Christians should be able to argue there's damage here. Every time you go outside of God's plan, anytime you sin, there's damage. People are hurt.

It's and there's you know, you can even think of the actions that are involved in this particular kind of a relationship as being damaging and the diseases that are associated with this and all of that.

But but looking at it from a broader perspective, a societal perspective, it's it's about changing your very definition, your very standard for what this is in the first place. And that affects adoptions.

It affects inheritance. It well, I don't know to what I guess it would affect inheritance to some degree. If there's if you have your will made up, it shouldn't. I would wouldn't think. But it affects there's probably a number of things I'm not even just thinking about.

But it has a repercussions. It has rippling effects throughout all of society when you change something so fundamental. And and I don't even know if we've seen the full fruit of this. I mean, you realize this has only been now, what, seven years since this was legalized?

And we've seen the transgender sports thing is probably the biggest evidence that people have taken that inch and gone a mile. But, you know, what other things have happened? What's happened to the value for marriage?

Do people even value it as much? Is it really even that important? Is it incentivized? Is having kids, should that be part of of a marriage? What is this done with the surrogacy? And there's probably a million things, again, I'm not thinking of that that are ripple effects.

And so when you analyze something like this, I just the only point I'm making is you have to look beyond just what we were being told at the time, because I remember this clearly is like, well, it's not affecting you if those two people want to go.

Right. But like, but it is affecting me when you change the entire standard for an entire civilization that I'm part of that that changes the very context my children grow up in. Right. That kind of thing, the way education is done, who's getting canceled now and for what?

So lots of things. We have 56 streamers now. We're going to keep going with this article. And it says this as the question of attending same-sex wedding ceremonies and celebrations has become more pressing.

Many theologians have said that Christians actually discredit the faith by agreeing to participate. Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has written that Christians cannot celebrate what they know to be sin.

And this is a point where I agree totally 100 with Al Mohler. At some point, attendance will involve congratulating the couple for their union. He said, if you can't congratulate the couple, how can you attend?

And this gets into this weird situation where Russell Moore, who, by the way, Al Mohler was still supporting. There's a tweet of his in 2018 where he's saying he wishes Russell Moore many more years of success in the ERLC.

And this is after Russell Moore said, well, you can go to a same-sex wedding reception, just not the ceremony. So I don't know how Al Mohler squares that. But maybe he disagreed with Russell Moore. Russell Moore, but he didn't do so publicly at the time.

But he's been pretty consistent with marriages between a man and a woman. I agree with him. John Piper, also, same thing. To celebrate this lifestyle is to celebrate the destruction of human beings, and that is hateful.

I agree. What the relevance of Dalrymple's decision to celebrate a gay union three years ago and write about abandoning the legal fight for traditional marriage 10 years ago? It is how this outlook may be influencing the framing of the Respect for Marriage Act in Evangelical's flagship publication today.

The only essay Christianity Today has published regarding the bill has been in favor of it as a necessary concession in a pluralistic nation. All in all, RMA is a modest but good day's work. It shows that religious liberty champions and LGBT advocates can work together for the common good, writes law professor Carl Esbeck.

Like Dalrymple's 2012 article, Esbeck spares little thought to how subsequent generations may be affected by this good day's work, nor does the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Pastor Walter Kim.

According to Deseret News, in 2021, Kim participated in a virtual summit focused on persuading Congress to pass a law protecting LGBTQ Americans from discrimination. Now, this is new to me, guys. I did not know that the president of the National Association of Evangelicals had gone out and done this.

Like, doesn't that feel, to some of you, I'm sure there must be at least one person who's listening to this who had some association with the National Association of Evangelicals. I mean, it's a big organization.

This is kind of the premier neo-evangelical organization, and to think that the president was doing this, like, does it feel a little like a betrayal? I don't know. Maybe if I had a closer look at the National Association of Evangelicals, I wouldn't think so.

Maybe this is consistent. But what does the word evangelical even mean? All the definitions are falling away. I don't know what an evangelical is if it's just, yeah, let's advocate for gay marriage. This explains why Kim wrote a letter to the senator, is that senator?

Tammy Baldwin, Democrat, Wisconsin, and Susan Collins, thanking them for their efforts to get the Respect for Marriage Act past the filibuster hurdle. Let's see here. Your efforts, if successful, will produce the first significant bipartisan legislation in many years advancing religious freedom for all, Kim writes, despite the fact that numerous conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and ADF have said that Respect for Marriage Act will put targets on the back of religious organizations.

And then, of course, you have David French. I'm not going to spend a lot of time with this because we've already talked about this, but Megan Basham goes into more detail about French and how his views have evolved.

That's the term you use when you're, at least my experience, when you hear a politician coming out and saying, my views have evolved on this. Not that people don't change their mind, but it's usually of like, well, to save my shirt, to make sure that I still can maintain the influence I do.

I mean, I'm forced. I'm forced by the politics of it to, I have to adopt this new position. Remember Obama, when he first ran, was not for same-sex marriage. I mean, that wasn't long ago, guys. We are living through some extremely fascinating times, extremely fast-paced times.

Things are changing at warping next speed. There's no doubt about it. All right, well, let's see. Do we want to go farther in this? I just figured I'd highlight that this was a problem beyond just David French, and I wasn't aware of that.

Thomas Accord, Stephen Wolfe, and the Online Accusations

Let's go here. I want to, what do I want to talk about next? I want to talk about a situation that we started to talk about last, was it Friday? Friday night. It was a late night stream, and I think I'm going to revisit it a little bit with you guys.

See if I can bring it up here. I made a little slide show. There we go. I think this is it. Yes, okay. So a few things I wanted to share with you. You know, it was interesting. I thought it was providential.

I went to church yesterday, and I actually led music for the first time in a long time. I used to be a minister of music at my church, and for years, when I was away in North Carolina and Virginia, I wasn't involved much in music ministry, and I'm taking the reins again.

And so last Sunday was my first Sunday stepping back into that role. And the sermon, and normally when you choose songs, you're trying to craft them around the sermon to some extent. And the sermon happened to be on 1 Peter 2 .12, and I want to read it to you.

It says this, keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may, because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God on the day of visitation.

And I thought it was interesting because on Friday night, we had done this whole stream on a number of issues. But one of the things I touched on was this whole issue with Thomas Accord and Stephen Wolfe, and really, and I'm just going to go through a few things for people who aren't up to speed to bring them up to speed.

But I had made the point that one of the things that I noticed in all of this, all the accusations that were flying against Thomas was how many people who were close to him had given to his give, send, go.

And I encouraged all of you guys to, I mean, he lost his job, and to give to that, his family over the holidays. I mean, I can't think of a worse time to lose your job. And all these people came forward to show love, to show support.

And one of the things that I remembered as I was talking about it, it was just spur of the moment, was the situation in It's a Wonderful Life, that Christmas movie, which many of you will watch, and how the main character in that movie is accused of doing something.

And actually, George Bailey wasn't exactly the most smart person, perhaps. He gave money to, or gave his Uncle Billy, he entrusted him with money that he probably shouldn't have. But it wasn't his fault that the money was lost.

And he took responsibility for it. And anyway, for those who've seen the movie, you know the plot. And at the end, though, all these people come to him. And they're not saying George Bailey's a perfect person.

George Bailey, just in the movie, I mean, he's blown up at the teacher, his kid's teacher. He's disrespectful to his wife. He does all these things. He takes his anger out. And he almost commits suicide.

I mean, that is George Bailey, too. He's not a perfect man by any stretch of the imagination. But yet, he had touched so many people. He had done so many things, gone out of his way to help people in the community that, by the end, they are all coming to support him because of what he had done for them.

And it's a beautiful story, I think, for that reason. And this verse, it dovetailed with that in my mind. It reinforced to me that our behavior, even online behavior, I mean, I remember growing up when the internet was the fake world.

And things you put on the internet, you didn't ever think would come back to bite you at all. And now, we're to the point, it's not just things you post. It's things people post about you. It's associations you have.

It could be people making stuff up, even. And if you keep a consistent pattern, a consistent character, that is, honestly, in any situation. And Thomas Accord's, in particular, whether he did or didn't, and we'll get into that a little more, say some of the things people are accusing him of, it's the best defense to your character, keeping a consistency.

And it doesn't mean that someone's not perfect. It just means that they can see the pattern of your life. And they know the kind of person you are. And so, when someone wants to take a snapshot somewhere and say, this is who you are, then it doesn't have the same, it doesn't work, because the people around you know who you are.

And so, to me, it's a reminder for me. And I thought, because I was reminded of this, and it was impressed upon my heart, I would just share it with you. So, 1 Timothy, or 1 Peter, rather, chapter 2, verse 12.

Now, I want to get into the situation a little bit more. I want to just give you some highlights, a review here. First, you have, from the situation we talked about last Friday, Alistair Roberts, Neil Shenvey, and now Rod Dreyer, and others launched an effort last week to tie an anonymous Twitter account, Tullius Adland, to Thomas Accord.

And the arguments were mainly threefold. The account was using Thomas' alias. The account was followed by some of Thomas' friends. There is a picture from inside the school where Thomas teaches. Now, Thomas argued the possibility of impersonation at the time.

He said, I immediately petitioned a claim of imposture and defamation claims with these two social media companies which are currently under investigation. That's what he said at the time. And I strongly argued in this video, I said, the burden of proof belongs to those making the accusation, not Thomas.

That's the innocent until proven guilty. I still, I stand by that 110%, and I will always stand by that, because I think it's a biblical principle, too. I think you need a standard of evidence before— we call it beyond reasonable doubt— but you need corroboration before you're going to go out and make these kinds of accusations.

Whether true or not, you need to be able to prove it. That impersonations made more sense because the language in certain posts were not consistent with Thomas' grammar, cadence, and online activity or reputation.

And then that Christians who publicly make unsubstantiated, beyond reasonable doubt, accusations are guilty of slander and lose credibility. So that's what I said in the last podcast. Now, since then, a number of things have happened.

You have more, I don't know what you would call it, evidence that there's a particular category for this kind of evidence. In fact, let me go, I think I wrote it down here somewhere. It's not beyond the shadow of a doubt evidence.

It's circumstantial, essentially. And more of that kind of stuff has come out. There's been two big articles written, one by Rod Dreyer. One was written by Alistair Roberts. And they argue— Alistair Roberts is like 4 ,000 pages.

They argue, you know, this is beyond a shadow of a doubt in their mind. This is Thomas. And they bring up all this circumstantial stuff. And so that's all out there right now. And some of it is just a little weird to me, like Rod Dreyer posting a picture of like, hey, he posted this picture on his Facebook.

And then you see this tooliest guy posting it. And then other people are like, well, I posted this picture, right? Other stuff, like this one, I thought this was the strongest one of all of it, was it's by someone who's involved in the Christian classical education world.

So whoever this tooliest guy, he says that. Well, Thomas is involved in that. He's a headmaster in a classical school. And so those were the things that were being posted over the weekend. But nothing was beyond a shadow of a doubt or anything like that.

And so the open questions that people have asked me over the weekend are things like, if it was Thomas, why can't he delete his tooliest account, even though he deleted his Goodreads and other Twitter accounts?

If it was Thomas and he's used this tooliest account on his main Twitter account, then how is another tooliest account a suit in him? Why would someone impersonate Thomas? Why would he be forced to resign if he didn't do it?

So there's questions going all over the place. And depending on which paradigm you draw from, they were answered in different ways over the weekend. Now, one of the things that I noticed when looking at the tooliest account, and this was over yesterday and today mainly, is that there were a number of things that were so inconsistent with Thomas's other online behavior, I found it very difficult.

And I'll be honest, I still find it difficult to believe they came from Thomas. I don't know Thomas intimately, but well enough to know, and I already brought up some of this, like the grammar and stuff didn't make sense, but some of this stuff was just so odd to me.

And I've let Thomas know about this. I've let a number of people know about this. I'm going to just show you some of it. And one of the reasons I want to show you this is because I'm going to have to read later in this podcast something Thomas wrote today.

And I think the people, including myself, who have defended him on this, who have said that we don't believe it's Thomas. In fact, I'm still one of these people, and I'll probably be, you know, people will attack me for this, but I still am someone who thinks like some of these posts don't seem to make sense.

I'm going to bring you through the conversations that I've had, even with Thomas, even today, over the last couple of days. So people who are blowing up my phone right now, I'm aware guys. So just a few things.

I actually changed this image because it was inappropriate. It was the backside of a woman and was naked. So I put a filter on it so you guys can't see this. But there were things posted, 10 F words, 10 S words, or 6 S words.

Lots of profanity, lots of, you know, locker room talk. There was sexually inappropriate stuff. And my concern, the thing I was wondering was, how do I square this with a whole episode that I listened to from a podcast Thomas was on about hospitality?

And that doesn't mean it's not from Thomas. It just means I don't find this to be consistent, right? So people can be hypocrites, but it doesn't seem very consistent. I have a hard time with stuff like this.

Thomas writing things like, I'm half Mexican, and I feel a bristling anger when people insult Latinos. And Thomas posting a picture of, there's his mother who's Mexican. He's half Mexican. But then this Tulius guy talking about himself as he's white, and that he won't even go to a, he won't shop or go to a restaurant where there are non-whites.

That doesn't make any sense. I mean, if you're half Mexican, and I know, I clarified, I even asked Thomas about this. Yeah, I mean, I go to Mexican restaurants and stuff. He can't square this. Things like Tulius mocking Amy Coney Barrett, and then Thomas on his Facebook praising Amy Coney Barrett.

Things like this Tulius guy saying weird stuff about cuties, that sexually explicit show on Netflix, and how they're ugly. These cuties are ugly and stuff. And then the things Thomas says about children, which is very endearing, and I would say fatherly, and just way out of step with what this Tulius guy is saying.

Things like this, where Tulius is talking about how he's never felt in his life the kind of love that he reads about. He's never felt it. But Thomas posts on his Facebook all the time all kinds of complimentary things about his wife, about his marriage, about, like, how does this square?

Things like the importance of marriage. You know, this Tulius guy talking about how, I'm not gonna read for you the profanity in it, but Tulius basically says that a deep-seated reason people avoid marriage is because they're afraid of someone finding out they're full of, and then it's a profanity.

Well, I don't know how to square that with Thomas. Thomas's social media profiles are completely full of praising the institution of marriage, and just, and talking about how marriage is good for society, and I mean, I put a bunch of these screenshots, and for the patrons, you'll get this, you know, both, I don't think I've posted the one from last Friday, so you'll get that one, and you'll also get this one sent to you.

But they're, like, literally diametrically opposed. Thomas disagrees with Tulius on God's design for women. Thomas disagrees with Tulius on being at Temple University. I mean, Tulius talks about being at Temple University on August 31st, 2020, and you look at Thomas's social media, and it's like, well, the day before he's in Louisiana, and he has no recollection of ever being at Temple.

I think, yeah, like, things like talking about books, that he's, he keeps, Thomas keeps a very, a running count of all the books he reads on his Goodreads, and Tulius talks about reading Richard Delgado's Critical Race Theory in June of 2020, and Thomas has, like, five books from June of 2020 on his Goodreads, and none of them are Critical Race Theory by Delgado.

In fact, it's not even in his library at all. Tulius on saying that he would, he's not a fan of religious displays in public, nor of closing my eyes in public. One can pray silently, or not at all. No command is given to pray over every meal.

We are commanded to pray in secret. So he doesn't want displays of affection publicly, and yet you have Thomas making all these posts in favor of religious public displays, including prayer. Here's a weird one too, like, Tulius, I don't wave the American flag anymore.

It means nothing. And talking about how he's against the American flag. Thomas posting on his social media, here's one from this year, 4th of July, American flag on his lawn, right? So these are all the things that I have going through my head, and I don't think I'm the only one.

I think there's others, because I shared this with a few people too, but others were finding things on this account that are saying, this doesn't square. You know, how is this the same guy? And so I'm gonna read for you something that Thomas wrote, and I think he actually posted it while I was streaming.

Let me see if I can refresh here. Yep, all right, I'm gonna, this is the first time I'm reading this. I read a draft of this yesterday, but I'm gonna read for you what Thomas says, and I'm gonna ask you to pray for Thomas, okay?

And I'm gonna explain to you in a moment why I shared everything I just shared with you. This is what Thomas says. He says, from the start of this controversy, I have tried to find the truth of the matter, and I have an appreciation of those on both sides who have pursued the same end wherever it leads.

The shock of the initial accusation and immediate demands for an answer sent me into an investigation, concluding with Twitter's verification that the account in question, Tulia's account, was someone else's.

I acted quickly upon this information to defend myself under a coordinated online attack aimed at using me to damage others. Namely, Stephen Wolfe. However, after more thorough research with the help of trusted friends and advisors and a great deal of counsel and soul searching, I have come to the conclusion, or I've come to conclude, that the Tulia's Adlan Twitter account is indeed an old alias account of mine.

There are some tweets in the account that clearly only could have come from myself. An example is the location of an image or a painting where only I would have been present, or material I shared to friends on my public account on another platform, which was also posted to this Twitter account the same day.

However, if we are to follow the truth, there are also some posts that contradict connection to me. One is the statement that I would never eat at a Mexican restaurant, while in truth I am half Mexican and I grew up eating by the loving hands of my brown mother.