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

Conversations That Matter

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There's a storm over America today and that storm is the distortion of American history.

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America wasn't founded on an idea. America wasn't founded on slavery or by slaves and America wasn't founded as a city upon a hill.

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America, the real tangible America, was born in Virginia. That's the America we should emulate.

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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.

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When we think about American culture, we think of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Patrick Henry.

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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.

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Whether it's music or the military tradition, Virginia is the key to understanding what

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America is and what America was. That's why we created the 1607 Project.

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Join us in this journey from 1607 to the present and find out what the real

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America is all about. Well, welcome to the

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Conversations That Matter podcast. I am your host, John Harris, as always.

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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

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Project. You can go to 1607project .com and find out more about that and share that trailer around with your friends.

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I know I was going to talk about this. I said I was going to talk about this last week. I had to put it off with everything going on.

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I wanted to get to it now. I've talked about it on the program before, though. This was really something that I ...

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It was an idea that I had probably a year and a half or more now ago. It was around the time the 1619

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Project was taking off. I said, why not have a 1607 Project and talk about when the first English settlers came to Jamestown.

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This is that. If you want to donate, it's going to the

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Abbeville Institute. They've partnered with me. Really, I think it's more me partnering with them at this point.

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They're doing the heavy lifting here in many ways. I'm doing much of the film work and all that.

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It is a 501c3. Giving Tuesdays tomorrow. If this is a project you believe in and want to see out there, then

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I would just highly recommend giving to the 1607 Project. 1607project .com.

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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.

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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 the situation in early

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America. Also, just what makes America unique. It's going to be focused more on Virginia.

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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

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United States to Virginia. But on representative form of government. There's just going to be a lot of good stuff out there.

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It's going to be different than what you've seen. Obviously, different than the 1619 Project, but also different than the 1776

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Commission. It's going to be different than both of those. I think it's going to be better. A book is going to be part of it.

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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.

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

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There you go. John, what have you been doing? I support your efforts.

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What have you been doing with all these resources? This is one of the things. 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.

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We're there, and I'm really grateful for that. This is another unannounced live stream.

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Thank you for everyone who is joining. We already have 30 people joining right now.

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One person says, 1607 Project is an idea whose time has come. Yes, I believe so.

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Someone needs to remind Fox News that this is a republic and not just a democracy. I know people say this is a democracy.

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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.

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That's the correct word. Let's get into some other stuff today.

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I wanted to start with an article that Megan Basham put out there today.

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I'll read some of this to you. It's on an issue that I think is, honestly, this is fundamental.

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This is such an important issue, maybe the most important issue of the last 10 years and of our time.

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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.

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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.

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But all sorts of other things would come in as well. I wanted to read this for you.

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This is from Megan Basham. This is posted at The Federalist, posted earlier today.

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It's not that long. It goes over some of the things that I talked about with David French.

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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.

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What got us here? Why is that even a remotely attractive proposition to take the institution of marriage and devalue it so much?

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Well, I'll read this to you. Let's go through it. This is what the article says.

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Learning this month that 12 Senate Republicans had signed on with Democrats to advance the misnamed

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Respect for Marriage Act left many Christians stunned. Most shocking was the yes vote from Roy Blunt, a practicing

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Southern Baptist who served for three years as president of a small private university in a theologically conservative denomination.

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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?

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Those asking must not have been paying attention to the shift that has taken place in elite evangelical circles in recent years.

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Christianity Today's initial concession. One of the earliest signs that the commitment to defend biblical marriage was weakening came from Christianity Today CEO Timothy Dalrymple.

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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, right, just as a matter of law.

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We can support marriage personally. We can support it in the church, but as a matter of, you know, for public consumption,

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I don't know if that marriage thing is—it's kind of antiquated. It's not worth defending in this modern society.

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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.

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This was going to win for the left. They knew that after—when was it that?

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Was it Prop 8 in California? Proposition 8, and it passed, and then the courts just struck it down?

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I remember that. I remember I was in Florida with my family, and we were driving, and this is before—

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I know some of you Zoomers were born probably, which makes me feel old. But I remember distinctly, like it was yesterday,

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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, you know, this is the right thing to do, and we're not going to stand for this tyranny.

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And 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.

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You had the CEO of—I think it was—was it Firefox? No, Mozilla.

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Mozilla Firefox, yeah. The CEO had given to Prop 8, and he was basically shamed and fired, for lack of a better term.

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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.

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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.

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And some evangelical leaders at that time could see, oh, we have a massive change coming.

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Generational change, moral change, fueled by the media, fueled by all kinds of things.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And I remember this time. I don't remember Dalrymple, but I just remember that there was a softening approach.

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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.

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I just remember, though, that I even heard it in my friends when they were saying things like,

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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.

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And I remember this right before 2015. A key factor, Dalrymple said, is that homosexual unions don't have clear victims, as abortion does.

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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.

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By February 2019, three months before he officially ascended to the top position at Christianity Today, there were signs he had settled those views.

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It was then that Dalrymple traveled to Mexico to attend the wedding ceremony of a gay co -worker officiated by a prominent

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LGBT affirming pastor and author, Jonathan Merritt. That's James Merritt's son in the SBC.

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This picture posted, let's see if we can see if I can pull this up.

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It is loading. Yes, these are the pictures, I guess, of this wedding. Okay, these pictures posted on a public website are festive, even, reverent, showing

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Dalrymple and his wife participating in the ceremony. So this is the guy, long story short, the top of Christianity Today, right?

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And influential guy who's, he's going along with it. He's giving, and this is what

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I see with so many issues, give you kind of like a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.

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And the medicine, of course, is not real medicine, it's sewage. Give you a spoonful of sugar to help the sewage go down.

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And that's what I see over and over in the evangelical world, is the elites, they see 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, they have been used to believing it one way, the biblical way, and now they're pivoting to go this other direction.

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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,

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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, well, it doesn't hurt anyone.

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Well, you know, do other things hurt people, like polygamy?

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Does that hurt anyone? Does it hurt anyone to do bestiality? I mean, some would argue now that even pedophilia doesn't hurt anyone if there's consent involved.

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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 a bird's eye view.

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When you're looking at like an individual same -sex couple, I mean, Christians should be able to argue there's damage here.

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Every time you go outside of God's plan, anytime you sin, there's damage. People are hurt. 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.

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

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And that affects adoptions. It affects inheritance. Well, I don't know. I guess it would affect inheritance to some degree.

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If you have your will made up, it shouldn't, I wouldn't think. But it affects – there's probably a number of things

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I'm not even just thinking about. But it has repercussions. It has rippling effects throughout all of society when you change something so fundamental.

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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?

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And we've seen – the transgender sports thing is probably the biggest evidence that people have taken that inch and gone a mile.

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But what other things have happened? What's happened to the value for marriage?

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Do people even value it as much? Is it really even that important? Is it incentivized?

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Is having kids, should that be part of a marriage? What has this done with the surrogacy?

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And there's probably a million things, again, I'm not thinking of that are ripple effects. And so when you analyze something like this, the only point

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I'm making is you have to look beyond just what we were being told at the time. Because I remember this clearly.

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It's like, well, it's not affecting you if those two people want to go do – right. But it is affecting me when you change the entire standard for an entire civilization that I'm part of.

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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?

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So lots of things. We have 56 streamers now. We're going to keep going with this article. And it says this.

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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.

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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.

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If you can't congratulate the couple, how can you attend? This gets into this weird situation where Russell Moore, who, by the way,

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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

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ERLC. And this is after Russell Moore said, well, you can go to a same -sex wedding reception, just not the ceremony.

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So I don't know how Al Mohler squares that. But maybe he disagreed with Russell Moore.

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But he didn't do so publicly at the time. But he's been pretty consistent with marriages between a man and a woman.

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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.

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And 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?

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It is how this outlook may be influencing the framing of the Respect for Marriage Act and Evangelicals flagship publication today.

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The only essay Christianity Today has published regarding the bill has been in favor of it as a necessary concession in a pluralistic nation.

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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

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Carl Esbeck. Like Dalrymple's 2012 article, Esbeck spares little thought to how subsequent generations may be affected by this good day's work.

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Nor does the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Pastor Walter Kim. According to Deseret News, in 2021,

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Kim participated in a virtual summit focused on persuading Congress to pass a law protecting LGBTQ Americans from discrimination.

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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.

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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

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National Association of Evangelicals. I mean, it's a big organization. This is kind of the premier neo -evangelical organization.

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And to think that the president was doing this, does it feel a little like a betrayal?

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I don't know. Maybe if I had a closer look at the National Association of Evangelicals, I wouldn't think so.

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Maybe this is consistent. But what does the word evangelical even mean? Like, all the definitions are falling away.

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I don't know what an evangelical is if it's just, yeah, let's advocate for gay marriage. This explains why

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Kim wrote a letter to Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat, Wisconsin, and Susan Collins, thanking them for their efforts to get the

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Respect for Marriage Act past the filibuster hurdle. Let's see here.

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Your efforts, if successful, will produce the first significant bipartisan legislation in many years advancing religious freedom for all,

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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.

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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.

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That's the term you use when you're, at least in my experience, when you hear a politician coming out and saying, my views have evolved on this.

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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

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I do. I mean, I'm forced. I'm forced by the politics of it to, I have to adopt this new position.

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Remember Obama, when he first ran, was not for same -sex marriage. I mean, that wasn't long ago, guys.

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That wasn't long ago. So we are living through some extremely fascinating times, extremely fast -paced times.

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Things are changing at warp and neck speed. There's no doubt about it. All right, well, let's see.

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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.

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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

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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.

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I made a little slideshow. There we go.

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I think this is it. Yes, okay. So a few things I wanted to share with you.

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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.

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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.

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And I'm taking the reins again. And so last Sunday was my first Sunday stepping back into that role.

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And the sermon, and normally when you choose songs, you're trying to craft them around the sermon to some extent.

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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

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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

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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.

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But one of the things I touched on was this whole issue with Thomas Accord and Stephen Wolfe.

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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.

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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.

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And I encouraged all of you guys to, I mean, he lost his job. And to give to that, his family over the holidays.

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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.

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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

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Wonderful Life, that Christmas movie, which many of you will watch. And how the main character in that movie is accused of doing something.

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And actually, George Bailey wasn't exactly the most smart person, perhaps. He gave money to, or gave his

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Uncle Billy, he entrusted him with money that he probably shouldn't have. But it wasn't his fault that the money was lost.

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And he took responsibility for it. And anyway, for those who have seen the movie, you know the plot. And at the end, though, all these people come to him.

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And they're not saying George Bailey is a perfect person. George Bailey, just in the movie, I mean, he's blown up at the teacher, his kid's teacher.

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He's disrespectful to his wife. He does all these things. He takes his anger out. And he almost commits suicide.

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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.

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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.

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Because of what he had done for them. And it's a beautiful story, I think, for that reason. And this verse dovetailed with that in my mind.

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And it just, it reinforced to me that our behavior, even online behavior, I mean,

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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.

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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.

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It could be people making stuff up, even. And if you keep a consistent pattern, a consistent character, that is, honestly, in any situation.

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In 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.

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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.

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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.

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Because the people around you know who you are. And so, to me, it's a reminder for me.

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And I thought, because I was reminded of this, and it was impressed upon my heart, I would just share it with you.

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So, 1 Peter 2, verse 12. Now, I want to get into the situation a little bit more.

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I want to just give you some highlights, a review here. First, you have, from the situation we talked about last

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Friday, Alistair Roberts, Neal Shenvey, and now Rod Dreyer and others, launched an effort last week to tie an anonymous

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Twitter account, Tullius Adland, to Thomas Accord. And the arguments were mainly threefold.

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The account was using Thomas' alias. The account was followed by some of Thomas' friends.

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There is a picture from inside the school where Thomas teaches. Now, Thomas argued the possibility of impersonation at the time.

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He said, I immediately petitioned a claim of imposture and defamation claims with these two social media companies, which are currently under investigation.

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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

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Thomas. That's the innocent until proven guilty. And I still, I stand by that 110%, and I will always stand by that, because I think it's a biblical principle too.

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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.

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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.

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And then that Christians who publicly make unsubstantiated, beyond reasonable doubt, accusations are guilty of slander and lose credibility.

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So that's what I said in the last podcast. Now, since then, a number of things have happened.

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You have more, I don't know what you would call it, evidence that there's a particular category for this kind of evidence.

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In fact, let me go, I think I wrote it down here somewhere. It's not beyond the shadow of a doubt evidence.

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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.

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One was written by Alistair Roberts. And they argue, Alistair Roberts is like 4 ,000 pages.

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They argue this is beyond a shadow of a doubt in their mind. This is Thomas. And they bring up all this circumstantial stuff.

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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

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Facebook. And then you see this Tulius guy posting it. And then other people are like, well, I posted this picture. Other stuff, like this one,

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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.

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So whoever this Tulius 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.

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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

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Thomas, why can't he delete his Tulius account, even though he deleted his Goodreads and other Twitter accounts? If it was

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Thomas and he's used this Tulius account on his main Twitter account, then how is another

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Tulius account a pseudonym? 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.

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And depending on which paradigm you draw from, they were answered in different ways over the weekend.

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Now, one of the things that I noticed when looking at the

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Tulius account, and this was over yesterday and today mainly, is that there were a number of things that were so inconsistent with Thomas' other online behavior,

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I found it very difficult. And I'll be honest, I still find it difficult to believe they came from Thomas.

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Now, 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.

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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

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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

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Thomas. In fact, I'm still one of these people, and I'll probably be, people will attack me for this, but I still am someone who thinks some of these posts don't seem to make sense.

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I'm going to bring you through the conversations that I've had even with Thomas, even today, over the last couple of days.

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So people who are blowing up my phone right now, I'm aware, guys. So just a few things.

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I actually changed this image because it was inappropriate. It was the backside of a woman and it was naked.

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So I put a filter on it so you guys can't see this. But there were things posted, 10 F words, 6

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S words, lots of profanity, lots of locker room talk. There was sexually inappropriate stuff.

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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

30:33

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?

30:41

So people can be hypocrites, but it doesn't seem very consistent. I have a hard time with stuff like this.

30:47

Thomas writing things like, I'm half Mexican and I feel a bristling anger when people insult

30:53

Latinos. And Thomas posting a picture of, there's his mother who's Mexican.

30:58

He's half Mexican. But then this Tullius 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.

31:11

That doesn't make any sense. I mean, if you're half Mexican and I know, I clarified, I even asked

31:17

Thomas about this. Yeah, I mean, I go to Mexican restaurants and stuff. He can't square this. Things like Tullius mocking

31:25

Amy Coney Barrett and then Thomas on his Facebook praising Amy Coney Barrett. Things like this

31:31

Tullius guy saying weird stuff about cuties, that sexually explicit show on Netflix and how they're ugly.

31:40

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

31:52

Tullius guy is saying. Things like this where Tullius is talking about how he's never felt in his life the kind of love that he reads about.

32:03

He's never felt it. And then, 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?

32:15

Things like the importance of marriage. You know, this Tullius guy talking about how,

32:22

I'm not gonna read for you the profanity in it, but Tullius 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.

32:35

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.

32:46

And just 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.

32:55

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.

33:00

But they're like literally diametrically opposed. Thomas disagrees with Tullius on God's design for women.

33:11

Thomas disagrees with Tullius on being at Temple University. I mean, Tullius talks about being at Temple University on August 31st, 2020.

33:19

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.

33:26

I think, yeah, like things like talking about books that he keeps, Thomas keeps a very, a running count of all the books he reads on his

33:34

Goodreads. And Tullius talks about reading Richard Delgado's Critical Race Theory in June of 2020.

33:40

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.

33:48

Tullius on saying that he would, he's not a fan of religious displays in public nor of closing my eyes in public.

33:54

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 it doesn't want displays of affection publicly.

34:03

And yet you have Thomas making all these posts in favor of religious public displays, including prayer.

34:10

Here's a weird one too, like Tullius, I don't wave the American flag anymore. It means nothing. And talking about how he's against the

34:17

American flag. Thomas posting on his social media, here's one from this year, 4th of July, American flag on his lawn, right?

34:25

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.

34:34

They're saying, this doesn't square. 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.

34:47

Let me see if I can refresh here. Yep. All right. This is the first time I'm reading this.

34:54

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?

35:01

And I'm gonna explain to you in a moment why I shared everything I just shared with you. This is what

35:06

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.

35:16

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,

35:24

Tullius 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.

35:33

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,

35:41

I have come to the conclusion, or I've come to conclude, that the Tullius Adlan Twitter account is indeed an old alias account of mine.

35:48

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

35:55

I would have been present or material I shared to friends on my public account on another platform, which was also posted to this

36:02

Twitter account on the same day. However, if we are to follow the truth, there are also some posts that contradict connection to me.

36:09

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.

36:16

Or a statement that we should abandon the defense of Western civilization, while I myself have devoted my career to promoting classical and Western education.

36:24

What explains these incongruities? After some deep reflection and consultation, I believe this period of my life was a spiritually dark time marked by pessimism and anger and strained relationships.

36:34

The Twitter account reflects a despairing man angry with the whole world. It is interesting that my tweets even vilified white people.

36:42

I maintain that I have trouble recollecting tweets and the entire account in this period, and I think this helps explain why.

36:51

I think this also explains why so many friends reached out to me to say this Tullius online sounds nothing like Thomas in real life, like me.

36:58

That's what I've done. Although all of this occurred more than a year ago, going forward I am seeking counsel and repentance under godly authority.

37:05

My close friends and colleagues had little to no awareness of or interaction with my online activity and I did not repeat to them in conversations the things

37:14

I said online. Certain people want to associate the opinions I expressed on that account with Sequitur or with Stephen Wolfe.

37:21

Sequitur is his school. Who was a co -host with me on a podcast we started in an effort to discredit his new book.

37:27

These people insinuate that those near me likewise hold those opinions. That charge is baseless.

37:33

I pray that good people of Sequitur and Enstruma, which is the church that the school is at, recover from this turmoil that I regrettably brought into their midst and are able to forgive me and move ahead.

37:45

I know some people pledged financial support to me on the assumption that I was wrongfully accused. If they want to withdraw their support now,

37:52

I understand. Lastly, I want to apologize to my friends who acted in good faith and supported me based upon misleading information that I now must retract.

38:00

I pray that the online proxy wars move on and allow good people to do the same. Thank you for your prayers.

38:06

Now, here's what I want to share with you. I'm just going to blow myself up. So I had a number of conversations with Thomas, and I don't talk to Thomas regularly at all.

38:18

In fact, I think I've had him on the podcast a few times. I don't know if I've ever talked to him on the phone until this past week.

38:26

I've read some of his stuff. I've read his posts and stuff. I've followed him on social media. Not the

38:32

Toolius account. I've never seen that before, to my knowledge. I've followed his podcast to some extent.

38:39

I've listened to some of the Ars Politica podcast episodes with him and Stephen Wolfe. And I've talked to Thomas now more in the last few days than I think

38:47

I ever have. And the Thomas that I spoke to was very different, depending on when

38:54

I spoke to him, than the Thomas I heard in those podcasts. And I think that's probably the same for everyone who's going through a tough time.

39:00

But the thing that stood out to me was the incredible amount of pressure he was under.

39:07

Initially, when this whole thing started on Wednesday morning, Thomas at first thought that the tweet thread that Alistair Roberts highlighted may have been his.

39:18

And Neil Shenvey was making a lot about that, well, this sounds like Thomas. This is

39:23

Thomas. Thomas owned it. And then when Thomas started seeing these other tweets, these profane things, all this other stuff, he said, wait a minute, that can't be me.

39:33

There's no way. And then he couldn't log in. And some of you have read his previous statement on this.

39:40

And so it was very believable. And to some extent, and this is where I'm at with all this,

39:48

I still see that as a very reasonable paradigm to view this whole situation through.

39:56

And I know I'm going to be attacked by some people that, you know, John's hanging on to pride or something here. I talked to a man, though, on Friday night who could barely, just barely speak.

40:10

He was in tears. He was devastated. He hadn't slept. He hadn't eaten. And it still makes me mad when

40:16

I think about it, what these people have done to his life, to get to Stephen Wolfe, to dox him to try to destroy

40:23

Stephen Wolfe. And he couldn't make heads or tails about hardly anything.

40:28

I mean, it was just, it wasn't great. And three theories over the course of about three days, three different theories

40:37

Thomas was leaning towards. The first theory, when I talked to him, was that this could be like a deep state kind of thing, like they're trying to frame him.

40:46

You know, this could be a framing thing. I mean, he just could not conceive. He couldn't remember. He still can't remember or conceive of himself posting some of the things that I showed you.

40:56

Then it went to a, this could be potentially someone in my circles.

41:03

And he had an idea of possibly a person that it might be. And there was some reinforcement from even another friend of his that it could be someone in his circles who admired him, perhaps, to an extent and sought to copy him.

41:17

Was aware of his online activities, but also knew him, might've had an attachment to the school somehow. So that became the next theory that he was going with.

41:26

And then it changed. And I've asked Thomas, you know, I talked to him this morning about it because he sent me, it was

41:33

Sunday morning when I woke up, a draft of what you just read. It was a little different on Sunday morning, but it's mainly the same, the same kind of thing that I just read to you.

41:44

And I asked him, what changed? What's the difference? What kind of new information surfaced? I mean, and I still, even this morning,

41:51

I asked him, okay, well, you explain to me, do you remember taking this picture? Do you remember this tweet? I mean, there's 2 ,000 tweets here he doesn't remember.

41:59

And I'm like, what does your wife say about your memory? It's good. It's sharp. Okay. Now what, what did the people around you,

42:06

I mean, are you forgetting things normally? Do you have an alcohol or drug problem? No. But you don't remember any of this.

42:13

It doesn't sound like you. Your friends don't see some of these other, you know, these tweets in question as being you.

42:19

And, but he said, but I must have done it. I must have done it. And I don't know the truth, to be honest with you, at the end of the day.

42:27

And I didn't when I came out on Friday night. All I knew was that, well, what I said was that there's two paradigms to make sense of this.

42:35

And that the burden of proof lies with the people making the accusation. And I also said, the most aggressive thing

42:41

I said was that this isn't Thomas. When I was reading some of the tweets and the language in the tweets,

42:47

I said, this isn't Thomas. Thomas speaks eloquently. He uses good grammar. This sounds like a trucker.

42:53

I still feel that way. I don't know how to square it. I don't understand it. And the thing is, Thomas can't help me square it.

43:00

Thomas doesn't seem to be able to satisfy those answers, those questions. And so I'm left with this.

43:07

I don't know whether or not it's Thomas. I do know it's, even if it is, it's absolutely wrong what these people did to him.

43:15

And I'm going to talk about that more moving forward. But I was asked a question this afternoon.

43:22

Hey, if this is all proven wrong, are you going to apologize, John? And this is what I'll say to that. I don't mind apologizing for anything that I said that was inaccurate, if it can be proven to me.

43:34

So far, I haven't seen it yet. And the audience, you guys can think whatever you want about that.

43:41

What I see right now is a guy who has been sleep deprived, who has been in a situation where he's not been eating right.

43:51

He's not had rest. He's been in a, this is hard for guys who, this comes out of nowhere.

43:57

They don't have platforms and they're not prepared to deal with this kind of thing. It may be that Thomas had some kind of an alt life that takes everyone that he knows by surprise.

44:09

And some of the things that he wrote were just surprising. People can't square it with who he is.

44:16

He says contradictory things on his public profiles. He can't log into the account. None of his emails work.

44:22

None of his passwords work. I mean, if you notice, he deleted his personal Twitter account. He deleted his Goodreads account.

44:27

He can't delete the one account he wants to delete, which is this Tullius Adlin account. Things like that still make me wonder what's going on here.

44:36

And I don't have a great answer. I don't have an answer that's going to satisfy, I think, many of you guys. I think it's appropriate for those who think it's

44:43

Thomas and are going with what Thomas himself is now saying, I think it's totally appropriate for people to go that direction, to believe what he's saying now.

44:51

I think it's also, though, fine for people who still have questions to say, I haven't come down on this yet. And you don't have to come down.

44:58

It's not, you know, no one's forcing you to come down on it. I think that's a permissible thing to do here. That's where I'm at.

45:05

And I wrestled with this today a little bit. People who are in this same fight against social justice in evangelical circles can testify to that because I was bouncing my views.

45:17

I was like, listen, explain this to me. And I was giving them, here's all the facts. And that's all I really wanted to give you guys on this podcast.

45:23

Here are all the facts. Here's what we know. What can we ascertain from that? And based on what

45:29

I know, I can't ascertain much in either direction. I know it doesn't fit Thomas. I know there's a lot of things that contradict it.

45:35

At the same time, Thomas has convinced himself that he must have done it and he just can't remember it. So it could be,

45:41

I mean, I have read about this. Maybe some of you can put in the comments section. When people go through traumatic times of life, they can sometimes forget whole years.

45:53

I've heard of this happening. I've never had this. I mean, there have been like situations where I look back and I'm like, huh, it's funny I don't remember that, but I remember that.

46:01

I can't account for 2 ,000 tweets in two years of them. I don't get that. That doesn't make any sense to me.

46:06

But it's possible if someone's going through a really dark period of time that I've heard people say that that can't happen.

46:14

And if that can't happen and if it was Thomas, in fact, I think that the appropriate

46:19

Christian response to all of this, guys, and the appropriate response Alistair should have had, and Shenvey and Rod Dreyer now, and all these guys, instead of using it to ambush

46:30

Thomas, really to ambush Stephen Wolfe, and to publicly shame Thomas to try to get to Wolfe and to get to Canon Press and to discredit the case for Christian nationalism, what they should have done was reached out to him, to his church, to his pastors perhaps, to the school if they want, but they should have first reached out to him.

46:49

And they should have done so out of Christian concern. Because if what Thomas is saying is true here, if it's him and he just can't remember this, but some of this stuff seems consistent, so it must be me.

47:01

You can't figure out how that picture got on there. It must be me. Okay, let's put our minds in that framework for a minute.

47:09

And I'm open to this. But if that's Thomas, then we're talking about someone who's very unwell, or has been very unwell.

47:16

Because you have a man who forgot 2 ,000 tweets over a two -year period posting any of them, who forgot who he was, his own identity, about being half

47:27

Mexican. This is kind of serious stuff. This is the kind of stuff you get help for, which is

47:33

I'm really glad Thomas is getting help for, if that's what's actually going on. Or maybe it's a highly pressurized situation.

47:42

The FBI is able to get confessions from people under highly pressurized situations just to make it seem like the pain will go away.

47:49

I don't know which one it is. I don't think Thomas is lying in this. I think he's being sincere in both the posts he's put up there.

47:57

But it impresses upon me even more, is what I'm trying to say, if this truly is him, that there's an individual that needs help and not the condemnation of the cancel mob.

48:09

The sad part of all this is inevitably what's going to happen. Me even coming out with what

48:14

I'm saying, which some of you can tell I'm a little nervous about talking about this. I don't normally do this, but I'm willing to do it.

48:20

I'm going to put myself in a vulnerable position here because I think you guys, I owe you the truth because I encourage you to give to Thomas' family, and I still do.

48:30

I say the Accord family, they were fighting. He was let go. It was a forced resignation,

48:35

I guess, for lack of a better term. But on Thanksgiving Eve, this is his wife, this is his children.

48:41

I'm thankful for those who gave to him, and I still think that that's the right thing to do, myself included. I gave to him, and I have no shame in any of that.

48:48

AD posted something earlier today about those who have sympathy for racists will basically, they get shredded by the mob.

48:57

And it is interesting to me, there is such a double standard, and I'm going to show you that double standard in just a moment with some of these guys that are going hard after Thomas, like hard.

49:06

Where's the compassion for this man? Where's the, first of all, no benefit of the doubt in any of this.

49:13

Highly pressurized environment right now, and no approaching this the way a

49:19

Christian would approach it. No, you know, going to the public courts, the court of public opinion, instead of going to the church to deal with this.

49:30

Protecting your brother's reputation. I mean, I was just reading the Westminster Confession this morning on the ninth commandment, and it expounds on the application of that, is protecting the reputation of your brother and sister.

49:44

We ought to do that. When it's in our power, and this is our brother and sister, what do you do in Matthew 18?

49:50

You go to them first. Even in that situation where it's a personal offense, which this wasn't, but you go to the person privately, and see if you've warned your brother.

50:00

I mean, these guys, man, what kind of jealousy, what kind of deviousness? You know, if Thomas didn't say this today, if he didn't come out and say, you know,

50:09

I think it's me. I can't remember, but I think it's me. If he didn't do this, then, you know, these guys were operating on what

50:16

I still consider to be purely circumstantial evidence that does not, it does not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

50:26

I think it's kind of weak, to be honest. I think their case isn't that strong. I still think that. That's me.

50:31

Maybe I'll change my mind over time. I've spent hours on the Tullius account and hours on Thomas' accounts just comparing things, comparing dates, you know, and I just showed you a bunch of the things that I thought were incongruities, but so, you know, for me, like, if Thomas didn't say this, those guys, man, the nerve of doing this.

50:51

Thomas just gave them, I think, what probably is going to make them double down and be even more aggressive and go after people like me, perhaps, or go after anyone who's defended

51:02

Thomas and called out their actions, which I'm still going to do, by the way. But what they should be doing as Christians is encouraging people to give to this family that's lost, the guy's lost his job during the holidays, has a baby on the way.

51:22

They should be apologizing that they did this, they handled this the exact wrong way. So I remain where I was, pretty much.

51:34

I'm pretty unapologetic about supporting the Accord family through this, and I'll remain so, no matter what people think.

51:45

So, I'm getting all sorts of texts right now.

51:51

Maybe I'll have to read them. I don't even know what's going on on the page. It's blowing up. We have 116 people following.

51:57

All right. Now, I am going to go a little bit on the offensive, if you will, and I want to take these guys to task a little bit.

52:05

Here's a Bible verse for you. Matthew 7, 1 through 5. Do not judge so that you will not be judged. Oh, it's the most misunderstood and taken out of context

52:12

Bible passage. For in the way you judge, you will be judged, and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.

52:19

Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye, and behold, the log is in your own eye?

52:27

You hypocrite. First, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

52:32

Now, this is often misquoted, right? Because we're supposed to judge in certain... In fact, how do you navigate life without making assessments, right?

52:43

You have to. In fact, in the very passage, there's judgments happening towards the later part of this chapter,

52:48

Matthew 7. Go read it. The point of this, though, is don't be a hypocrite.

52:55

Unequal weights and measures, God hates those things. If you want to know something God really hates, guys, let's throw aside the standard of the world, which all of these people who are judging

53:05

Thomas... The whole thing against Thomas is he's a racist. Okay, he said a few things if it's his account.

53:12

And if he's the one posted, if it's not... Because I pitch scenarios where I'm like, you know, maybe some of these tweets aren't yours.

53:20

They need multiple people have access. But let's just assume Thomas is taking responsibility for it, so it's fair for us to assume it's

53:26

Thomas' account. He's saying these racially charged things about protecting white people and things that sound...

53:36

I don't know if I found anything that was pro -segregation, but there were things that were definitely...

53:41

I think... If you weren't pro -segregation, they were awfully close to the line, right?

53:51

The things that seemed to indicate that segregation was better than the current scenario. There's things like that. I just remember coming across stuff like that.

53:57

That's the great sin in all this, is that Thomas said things like that. Well, if that's true,

54:04

I want to ask you a question if he said it. What does

54:09

God hate more? Does he hate ethnic segregation more or does he hate hypocrites more and unjust weights and measures?

54:16

If J .D. Greer can go out there and say the Bible whispers about certain sins, just whispers about them, whispers about sexuality, but hates hypocrisy, what does

54:25

God think about segregation? Oh, John's defending segregation. No, I'm not. I'm totally against it.

54:32

In fact, you want to hear something funny, everyone? I went back and I watched an episode

54:38

I did with Thomas Accord. You can go watch it. It's called, Who is My Neighbor? I interviewed Thomas. In the episode,

54:44

I make an argument against ethnic segregation, and I'm doing it to Thomas.

54:50

I thought about playing it for everyone, but you can go watch it yourself. And in this particular podcast,

54:58

I say that, look, if you're going to go for natural relations, then if you force, if the government forces ethnic segregation, that's not natural.

55:07

And guess what Thomas did? He nodded along and he agreed. This is one of the reasons I was looking at this account, and I'm like,

55:13

I don't think this is Thomas. That was in, what, 2021, early 2021 or something when I did that.

55:20

I'm against it. But that said, I can find you a whole lot more

55:26

Bible verses on unequal weights and measures. I can find you a whole lot more Bible verses on sexual sin.

55:37

Well, these are the kinds of things that are surfacing right now. I'm not taking this seriously, and there's no reason for me to take this particular thing seriously.

55:47

I'm going to show you things that are in the public domain, but I want to show you this is the kind of thing that is being now wielded against Rod Dreyer who came out against Thomas Accord.

55:56

For those who don't know, there's been rumors about Rod Dreyer going around that he's homosexual. I don't know the guy.

56:04

I would say, if there are rumors and there's no substantiation, we don't believe it, okay?

56:10

We don't act on that. You go to Rod and ask, all right? But now that Pandora's box has been opened,

56:18

Rod is being, someone, this is probably a pseudonym account, but someone's coming out and accusing

56:23

Rod of this stuff. This is the world I don't want to live in, guys, where if it's unsubstantiated, let's just make accusations and see if they're stick.

56:31

This is why the Me Too stuff scares me. However, there are things out there.

56:38

Here's one of them that Rod Dreyer has put on his personal social media. This isn't an anon account.

56:44

This isn't a pseudonym of Rod Dreyer. This is his actual account.

56:50

You can go look it up. I'm not going to read for you all of this, but it's even on his blog, as late as 2021,

56:57

I think, 2022. The guy posts, this isn't even comprehensive. The guy posts about,

57:03

I'm just going to say it, penises and wieners, an awful lot. Guys, it's weird. It's weird and it's inappropriate, so much of the stuff.

57:12

Stories he tells about people's penises, graphics he puts out there talking about how people look like penises, primitive root wiener.

57:25

It might be a joke to him, but this is Rod Dreyer. This is the guy in his public knowledge out there with kind of how his,

57:33

I don't want to get into all the details of it, but I confirmed before the podcast, because people were telling me,

57:40

Rod, he's divorced, and he didn't really fight for the marriage, and this is all known. Okay, well, if that's true, and if this is the guy, this is what his social media looks like, how in the world is he taking the moral high ground?

57:54

A guy that possibly posted things that could be taken as pro -segregation is now, that's so horrible.

58:03

We got to cancel the guy who does that, but yet this stuff, this stuff is okay?

58:09

That's what I don't get. How do you square that? If we're going to do the associational thing, what about this kind of stuff where you have

58:18

Alistair Roberts, and this isn't to attack his wife at all,

58:23

I have to make that clear, but his wife, who is very involved with mirror orthodoxy, at that particular website, they also post, have posted,

58:34

Tara Burton. Tara Burton claims to be queer. In 2018, it's not like it's ancient history, it's a wall she was posting even at mirror orthodoxy.

58:44

She claims to be in a lifestyle that the Bible condemns in no uncertain terms.

58:51

I mean, I hope Alistair doesn't treat his wife that way, and it's not an attack on his wife, it's just, if we're going to use the same standard, if these guys are going to be consistent, what about their lives?

59:01

What about the fact that Alistair Roberts is deeply, this is a tweet from Jeff Wright, he's deeply concerned about Wolf's podcast and friendship with Accord, betraying

59:10

Wolf's racism, but Roberts does a regular podcast with Matthew Lee Anderson, the Revoice board member, and shares

59:16

MLA's SSA content. So, what do we draw from all of this, is my question, and I think what we draw from it is that there is a new sheriff in town, there is a new standard that is being used to cancel

59:30

Christians, and it is aggressive, it's pernicious, it has no grace, it's not a 1

59:37

Corinthians 6 thing, it doesn't protect one's reputation, it is, basically it parallels what we see in the world.

59:45

It's just to go out there and destroy your political enemy, and if you need to walk over someone who doesn't even have much of a platform, a little guy, and you need to use that guy to get to your goal, which is discrediting the case for Christian nationalism in this case, then you go ahead and you do it.

01:00:02

And all those associations that you might have with things that the Bible condemns in no uncertain terms, in strong language, eh, the world doesn't think that stuff is a big deal, so maybe in the church we don't think it's a big deal.

01:00:17

That's what I'm seeing, guys. And that scares me, that does. I want our standard to be

01:00:24

Scripture on this, more than anything else, more than what the world has going, but we've seen this now for years, and now

01:00:32

I'm seeing it in our circles, in conservative evangelical circles, supposedly, we're implementing the moral standards from the world.

01:00:39

And that's one of the main points I wanted to make in this. Oh, lots of people lighting up the chat.

01:00:46

We've got 112 people. I don't even know where to start with all this.

01:00:53

Some people are, yeah, and I knew this would happen. I said this to someone. Some people are going to be upset at Thomas, who went out to bat for him, and now they're thinking that he's betraying them, and there may be a few of you that feel that way.

01:01:06

Look, here's my takeaway on this. I, again,

01:01:14

I want to just reiterate, I have a lot of sympathy still. Yeah, am I frustrated to some extent because I don't have satisfactory answers to this?

01:01:22

Yeah, Thomas doesn't. Like, this whole thing was very highly pressurized. My counsel was to wait, and Thomas decided to do what he wanted to do in that situation, and that was what his conscience dictated.

01:01:35

So that's up to him, okay? But I view this as a man who, over the course of days, deteriorated so much to the point that he was a shell of his former self.

01:01:48

And I know what this is like, guys. I shared this in the last podcast. When you have a cancellation attempt on you, you think the world's coming down on you.

01:01:56

You think your life is over. You want to go crawl into a hole. You don't even know these people who are saying vile things about you.

01:02:04

And I understand that if you're... I remember I was sitting in a movie theater, and I couldn't even concentrate because there was a cancellation attempt on me.

01:02:12

I was on vacation with my family. That's what happens. I was giving up.

01:02:17

I remember I was making my preparations for my next job and stuff because I was like, well, you know, clearly

01:02:22

I'm never going to work in academia. Clearly I'm never going to have a podcast. And lo and behold, people swarmed to the podcast.

01:02:29

I mean, it really is psychological warfare. And it puts you into a situation where you're not thinking straight.

01:02:37

And I saw this with Thomas over the course of days, that he deteriorated.

01:02:43

And so for me, I have to have compassion here. This is a brother who needs help, and he needs our prayer, and he needs our support.

01:02:50

And he's still a brother. And guess what? Even if he posted all those things, even if that's him, even if he became, you know, swore like a sailor in certain instances and started, there's nothing in scripture that tells me he's not our brother.

01:03:03

Do we have examples in scripture of people who have sinned, like David? Yes. Do we have examples of people like Samson who were used mightily by God to do his will, who did not lead at all lifestyles that are anything resembling perfection?

01:03:21

Yeah, we do. I mean, we have a whole Bible full of people who are, guess what, sinners. The key is this, repentance.

01:03:27

And I see that from Thomas in this. Thomas doesn't even quite know what to repent of. He's seeking repentance.

01:03:34

He's seeking spirit. He's under spiritual authority, which is where he should be. And I think he wanted, he wanted to let you all know that if you were compelled to give because you thought he was innocent, he doesn't want you to feel compelled for that reason.

01:03:46

I think there's another reason to give, and that's to support his family through this time. But I have compassion, and I understand some of your sentiments here.

01:03:56

I totally get it, guys. But look, he doesn't believe, even if these tweets are his, he doesn't believe any of them.

01:04:02

He decries them. He doesn't remember posting them, but he doesn't believe them. In the here and now, he's against them, and he's willing to submit,

01:04:09

I don't see that from these other guys. I don't see that level of humility. And this gets back to my

01:04:14

It's a Wonderful Life example and your good reputation preceding you. The people that are close to him have given over $20 ,000.

01:04:21

I think it's like $23 ,000 now to help his family out in this hard time. I don't even know how many.

01:04:27

It's over 100, well over 100 people. That doesn't just happen, guys. Before I said a word, it was close to 90 people.

01:04:35

Just people. Just spreading organically through the grapevine. We heard Thomas lost his job. We want to help him. That speaks to someone's character, guys.

01:04:43

And so I'm not ashamed here at all. I wouldn't agree.

01:04:48

Obviously, I've already said this. I don't have to, but I think what you're going to see is some people are going to run for the hills on this, and that's just not me.

01:04:55

I don't run for the hills. I don't agree with sentiments that I don't agree with, and I'm willing to say that, but I'm not afraid of being seen as icky.

01:05:05

I'm not going to go delete all the podcasts I did with Thomas. In fact, I'd encourage you, go watch them. Go watch them and see if there's anything objectionable in them that if you're someone who's watching this for oppo research,

01:05:17

I'm not afraid of you. This is a man who needs our compassion and our help, and I don't have any ill will towards him.

01:05:23

So that's where I'm at on this, even though I understand where some of you guys are at. It's already starting in the comments.

01:05:34

Very disappointed with John. You sound like you make the same excuses than the woke left.

01:05:40

I don't know how. How am I making excuses for the woke left? If it's proven, if you can prove to me beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's

01:05:48

Thomas, and he did this, and this is what I would say. Thomas needs to absolutely repent of the things that are sinful on there and do what he's doing, seeking help.

01:05:57

What else do you want? That's the question. What do the woke people do? They don't do that. They justify.

01:06:05

They do the whataboutism thing. I mean, when it's truly, clearly sin, they're the ones who double down, who don't give an inch, who just turn it.

01:06:15

They just attack, attack, attack, attack, and that's it. They don't know any other speed here. They don't take any ownership.

01:06:21

I don't see that heart coming from Thomas at all. So wrong again, guys. This is nothing like how the woke left operates.

01:06:26

Sorry. Okay. Let's... I've...

01:06:35

These... I've never seen the comment thread this zesty today. We're gonna move on to some other things.

01:06:41

I was possibly going to read for you this, Doug Wilson, but there's really no point in me reading this for you.

01:06:47

Doug Wilson basically came out and did a whole... It's a shrewd,

01:06:52

I don't even know what I want to call it, distancing maneuver before... Right before Thomas dropped his thing,

01:06:59

Doug Wilson came out with kind of like a... Because Cannon Press published the case for Christian nationalism, and the whole point of this was to try to discredit that by saying

01:07:06

Stephen's friends with Thomas and did a podcast with him. So if you want to go read that, you can go read that.

01:07:11

I think some of the points Doug makes are some of the same points that you heard me make. Yeah, really nothing more to say about that.

01:07:23

Wanted to go here and share this with you. The Rise of Right -Wing Wokeism, A Review of the

01:07:29

Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolf. This is by Kevin D. Young, and I want you to see how long this is.

01:07:35

It was posted today. This is insanely long. This is a very long book review.

01:07:41

Yeah, it's going. I'm still scrolling, as you can see, and we haven't even... There we go.

01:07:46

We're at the end now. I'm not going to read this whole thing. If people think it'll be helpful,

01:07:53

I'll do it, but this was the... From the beginning, the case that was being made against Thomas from the beginning was to take down this book.

01:08:05

I first encountered Stephen Wolf through his writing when I was doing my doctoral work. We were both working on similar intellectual themes and looking at similar sources.

01:08:12

I quoted Wolf, who has a Ph .D. from Louisiana State University and is now a country scholar at Wolfshire once or twice in my dissertation.

01:08:21

Since then, I've read an article here. He's saying, basically, I had some familiarity. He goes, this is a long review.

01:08:27

The message... Can I give you the summation? This is the summation. Here's what the case for Christian nationalism is, according to Kevin D.

01:08:33

Young. The message, that ethnicity shouldn't mix, that heretics can be killed, that violent revolution is already justified, and that our nation needs a charismatic

01:08:43

Caesar -like leader to raise our consciousness and galvanize the will of the people may bear resemblance to a certain blood and soil nationalisms of the 19th and 20th centuries.

01:08:52

But it's not a nationalism that honors and represents the name of Christ. So part of me doesn't need to read the review because you're

01:09:01

Nazis. It's the you're Nazis thing. That's what he starts this whole thing off with. And the way he frames this, that ethnicities shouldn't mix, well, you know, if you're not going to...

01:09:13

If you're going to just let that hang out there and you don't go with Stephen Wolf's definition of what an ethnicity is, which we went through with him on this podcast, then

01:09:20

I wouldn't just throw it out there like it. I would have to put a qualification there to honestly...

01:09:25

Because Stephen's not against interracial marriage. This has been one of the biggest controversies here. Stephen's not against interracial marriage.

01:09:31

He has a specific definition for ethnicity. That's actually more of a rooted scholarly one. And it's not that they shouldn't marry even.

01:09:40

It's that in general, the natural order that God has set up is for nations, and he sees nations and ethnicities as the same thing, to be uniform, to control their borders.

01:09:54

Immigration is his big thing. To be for their own people. And so if you import large groups of refugees and other peoples, then you compromise that.

01:10:07

And that's his main argument. But my point is, when Kevin DeYoung phrases it this way, what jumps in your head, right?

01:10:15

That heretics can be killed. Any heretic? Or is it specific things?

01:10:22

The qualifications are in the book. That violent revolution is already justified. Well, I mean, then you have to go...

01:10:29

And here's a whole section here on the founding fathers, but you have to square it with our own war for independence, to some extent, which

01:10:35

Stephen draws heavily upon. So anyway, a lot of these things... If you just put it in a smattering of...

01:10:43

Here's a summation of these things, and you put kind of a bad... In my opinion, a bad caricature, a spin on it like this, then yeah,

01:10:51

I guess you could work yourself to the point of, it's Hitler. Case for Christian nationalism is Hitler. And I think people who have read it, most of them are going to say, nah, no, that's not a fair read of this book at all.

01:11:02

Let me start by acknowledging that the understandable desire for something like Christian nationalism, the best part of the book is Wolf's chapter on the good of cultural

01:11:09

Christianity. So he complements some things. He compliments some things in the book. Let's go to...

01:11:18

Let's see. He commends Neil Shenvey's four -part review, which Stephen has tweeted against a bunch.

01:11:26

And he says this, by Wolf's own admission, his definitions are often idiosyncratic, and by my estimation, they are not entirely consistent.

01:11:33

For example, the all -important concept of nation sometimes operates in Wolf's thinking more organically, like an ethnicity, sometimes more loosely, like a culture, sometimes more locally, like a love of people and place, and sometimes more traditionally, like a nation -state with a recognizable set of laws, a governing magistrate and the power of the sword.

01:11:51

The front cover contains a picture of America. But at other times, it's clear that Wolf doesn't like that idea of nation and is animated by a different understanding of nation, one that defines nationalism as the natural good of becoming conscious of your own people group, being for your own people group, and keeping your people group distinct from other people groups.

01:12:10

So there's a lot of stuff in this review like this where Kevin DeYoung sees a conflict in his mind from the book, and for those who have read the book,

01:12:19

I don't think you or I see this conflict when you read it, that yes, the nation -state is a place.

01:12:27

It's a people in a place with a set of laws. It's all those things that Kevin DeYoung just said, and the ism part of it is the being for your people.

01:12:38

So if you were a family, how would you define family? You could talk about the biology of it.

01:12:44

You could talk about what they have. They have a house generally. They live together. You could talk about all the things that make a family a family,

01:12:53

I suppose. But what does it mean to be a family? When you have a family meeting, let's say, what does a father or mother do?

01:13:01

They're saying, well, as a family, this is what we do. I mean, that's at least what I did when we were kids. We had our Harris family rules.

01:13:07

Harris's do this. They don't do that. They show respect. So is that within the purview of being a family?

01:13:15

Yeah, families are generally for themselves. It's not until very recently that we have a weird kind of suicidal culture in the

01:13:21

West that wants to just kind of like genocide their own culture. That's a weird thing, and Stephen Wolfe's against that.

01:13:27

So I don't see a conflict here between those two things, being for your people and then defining nation as the people.

01:13:34

But Kevin DeYoung parses things like this all throughout his review, if you read it. And so I just don't think it's a,

01:13:40

I don't think it's a great review, in my opinion. It is long. It is very thorough. One of the things,

01:13:46

I'll just skip to the end. One of the things that I saw in this review that I thought was interesting, if I could find it here,

01:13:53

Kevin DeYoung, so I want you to ask this question. Why is this so offensive?

01:13:59

Kevin DeYoung is offended by a number of quotes. I'm going to read you the quotes. And here, so he says this.

01:14:06

The epilogue gives the whole book a different feel. Wolfe's epilogue purports to answer the question of now what, but the chapter consists of a string of loosely connected topics that can fairly be described as a rant.

01:14:16

Several examples will suffice to justify this conclusion. Here's one of the quotes. Every step of progress is overcoming you.

01:14:24

Ask yourself, what sort of villain does each event of progress have in common? The straight white male. This is the chief outgroup of New America, the embodiment of regression and oppression.

01:14:33

That's it. Like, that's... So, like, this is a problem to Kevin DeYoung.

01:14:40

He goes to the end, he goes, that Wolfe thinks all this is concerning, that he wrote it down as extra troubling.

01:14:48

That he and his editors thought it was a good idea to end the book with a series of, if I can pronounce this big word, vituperative harangues, is baffling.

01:14:57

Is this the civilizational answer we've been looking for? Living off the grid, complaining about women, complaining about the regime.

01:15:03

See, this is the heart of it, in my opinion, for Kevin DeYoung, is Wolfe says these things that you're not supposed to say in polite society today.

01:15:11

To even point out the fact that it's the straight white male who is being attacked, that's a problem.

01:15:18

And this is a weird part to me. Are we not supposed to believe our lying eyes? That the straight white male is the demographic that is the most maligned and attacked.

01:15:27

On living under a gynocracy, so here's another one of these quotes. We live under a gynocracy, a rule by women.

01:15:36

This may not be apparent on the surface, since men still run many things, but the governing virtues of America are feminine vices associated with certain feminine virtues, such as empathy, fairness, and equality.

01:15:49

So pointing out that we live in a feministic dominated society today, you're not supposed to do that,

01:15:56

I guess. This is strange to me, because again, it's like, do I believe my lying eyes then?

01:16:02

We certainly are under feminism. We certainly are under attacks on white Christian males, especially.

01:16:11

Let's just do one more. On choosing a career, he says,

01:16:17

I say now to my kids, find a career that maximizes your autonomy from the forces of a secularist ruling class.

01:16:23

If you are a white, heterosexual, cisgendered male, then the world will not do you any favors. Indeed, your career advancement depends on sacrificing your self -respect by praising and pandering to your inferiors who rule over you.

01:16:35

Even the CEOs, in the end, are dominated by woke skulls. Isn't that true?

01:16:43

These are things that Kevin DeYoung, for some reason, thinks are problems, but this is the world I think most of us are living in.

01:16:50

It's stuff like this that made me wonder, is the blowback to Stephen Wolf, is a lot of it this insular kind of managerial class, this elite class, that they just, they're on a different page for some reason on this.

01:17:03

They don't see the same attacks, they don't see them in the same way at least, or they think it's impolite to talk about them the way

01:17:10

Stephen does here, or to bring them up. How else do you bring them up? So it's an honest question, and this would be consistent with TGC stuff, which is disappointing in my mind, because I kind of had high hopes for Kevin DeYoung, but there's lots more if you guys want to check it out on the

01:17:25

Gospel Coalition webpage. We have been streaming now for 100 and almost 20 minutes, so this is definitely a mega edition.

01:17:32

I'm gonna go to comments to see, John Harris, you might be the most loyal friend

01:17:40

I've ever witnessed. Well, I don't need the, I appreciate it. I definitely,

01:17:47

I love, look, I love everyone. I do, even the woke guys that I get mad at. Even the guys who did what they did to try to discredit

01:17:56

Stephen. Look, I want them to repent. And look, the instant, the instant there's repentance here with guys, we shouldn't have done this.

01:18:04

We couldn't prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. We didn't even bring it to the offending party. We ruined this guy's reputation.

01:18:12

We did not handle this the way Christians do within the context of the church. We went to the court of public opinion to shame for a political, like as soon as one of them does that, man, dude, they don't have to apologize to me.

01:18:25

I mean, I'm not the one they've offended, but absolutely they should be forgiven. Absolutely. Because that's what

01:18:31

Christians do. It's the arrogance and the pride and the doubling down and the, just the in, the lack of humanness to this, the willingness to destroy someone for a political objective that I just, that disgusts me thoroughly.

01:18:44

And look, I hope I'm correct in this. I think I am. But if something, let's say I found out about an

01:18:52

Anon account someone had, you know, or I suspected because that's all you really have in this case from the beginning. It was,

01:18:57

I highly suspect this Anon account is what's, belongs to someone who's a political enemy. And I found out all these things and they're a

01:19:06

Christian. And the first thing I'm going to do, if they're truly a Christian, is, and they're a brother or sister,

01:19:14

I'm going to them. I'm going to the church. I'm trying to handle this in a way that glorifies the Lord. This is why on this podcast, you see me talk about things in the public domain.

01:19:23

I don't, I don't do that kind of thing. And guess what? People have sent me stuff before. I'm not going to lie to you.

01:19:28

People have sent me stuff like, John, this is what this person's said or done in private. I'm like, look, I'm not sharing screenshots like that on this podcast that are, that will damage someone's reputation when it's, this isn't information that's in the public domain.

01:19:44

Have you confronted this person? Have you gone to their, have you, let's exhaust these things first. Right? That's, that's the way to do it.

01:19:52

All right. Let's see. What else is going on? Let's look at the chat. Merry Christmas.

01:19:58

Merry Christmas to you. We can say that now, right? Even though Trump's not president, he said that he's going to bring back Merry Christmas.

01:20:05

and he did. Even during the Biden administration, we can still say Merry Christmas. One person telling me, let's see, you're speculating about other people around him agreeing with those views.

01:20:19

I don't know what that means. If I'm doing something wrong, feel free to put it in the live chat. And I'm willing to own it, man. I'm willing to apologize.

01:20:25

If, look, if I've done something wrong, if I've, if I've even said something inaccurate, I will totally own it.

01:20:32

But I've already, I've already gone through this and why, why I'm at where I'm at. But I'm going to give this more time, this whole situation, and we'll see what, if anything more comes up.

01:20:48

Let's see. And I hope that,

01:20:53

One Nation Under Christ. I love that. Yeah. I believe in repentance and forgiveness,

01:20:59

Mark Bowen says. However, I'm not naive. I know that what being sorry you were caught looks like.

01:21:04

I also believe in not allowing false teachers to stay. Yeah, man. Look, hey, if that's something that, if you were someone that was like, look, you know, hey,

01:21:13

I saw this from the beginning. I suspected this was all, this was nervous lying.

01:21:19

This was, and you saw it that way, you know, and I'm naive, you know, good for you.

01:21:24

I, I do have a different way of seeing this, and there is information that I don't want to get into details on, but, you know,

01:21:32

I think there are people who are wise out there, but I, by staying, staying distant from the situation,

01:21:38

I waited, what, three days until there was a public statement made. And that's when I decided, now

01:21:44

I want to weigh in on this. But honestly, the depressing thing time -wise for me was the guy lost his job.

01:21:50

And, if anything, I wanted to at least give you guys an opportunity to, to help a brother out this holiday season.

01:21:58

So yeah, it's possible. I, I could be naive. I'm open to that suggestion. Absolutely.

01:22:04

But again, on this podcast, what you're going to get is what I endeavor to do is to give you all the facts. I'm going to tell you my interpretation of them, but I want the facts to drive the paradigm more than anything.

01:22:14

And I don't think we have a good paradigm right now. In fact, the paradigm that's now the received paradigm to me doesn't seem to add up.

01:22:25

Yeah, man. I mean, I don't know why people are arguing this with me. His racial animus was clearly false fleshly and worldly doctrine.

01:22:32

Like I'm not, I disagree with it. I'm not downplaying it. I'm not saying that it's,

01:22:39

I haven't seen like all the tweets on that, but the ones I have seen, the most aggressive

01:22:44

I've seen is essentially one that looked like it could be potentially a iteration of an

01:22:52

N -word. And then another one that was, looked like it might've been an argument for segregation, which both, yep,

01:22:59

I would say, don't do that. That's wrong. Anything that would,

01:23:06

I'm trying to think how to put this in the most biblically consistent way. I mean, most people that are Christians, you know, they have a very general standard of, it's against the image of God, but they don't get specific on this particular point.

01:23:18

And I think as Christians, we ought to be precise on when we say racism, we shouldn't just throw it out there.

01:23:24

That's my belief, because the world is throwing it out there and there's so much confusion over the term. So I use, I say ethnic partiality.

01:23:30

And I say, if you are advocating some kind of a genetic determinism, a proto -Darwinian idea, an idea that genetics is the sole determiner of who people are, if you are advocating that it's a sin, that's against God's will, that two people who are married that are in an interracial marriage, that they're in sin because of that,

01:23:53

I would say that's wrong. God hates divorce. That would be a violation to besmirch that marriage,

01:24:00

I would think. That would be against that institution, right? So what did I see on Thomas's?

01:24:06

Well, what Thomas thinks was an anon account of his. I saw stuff that would be consistent,

01:24:14

I suppose, with potential racial determinism or ethnic genetic determinism type stuff, possibly.

01:24:23

And if that underlying root would be, would lead you into a biological kind of semi -Darwinian eventually.

01:24:32

Now the thing is, I know Thomas Accord doesn't believe any of that stuff and he argues against evolution and stuff. That's why it doesn't make sense. But that kind of stuff, if that's what he thought and that's what he said, if that's, absolutely, that's wrong.

01:24:43

So no one's arguing that these things are right or that they're not important. I'm just saying, the Bible is so clear guys on so many things.

01:24:51

The Bible is, is crystal clear on hypocrisy. It's crystal clear on sexuality.

01:24:57

And my only point is those things are not highlighted at all. Like it doesn't even matter that you could co -host a podcast with a revoiced guy.

01:25:06

Doesn't matter. But co -hosting a podcast with a guy who has a secret account that has some racial things.

01:25:12

Like, guys, give me a break. Like how, you can't, that's my, what

01:25:17

I'm saying is like, that's utter hypocrisy to do that. That's all I'm saying. That's literally the only argument I'm making for that.

01:25:26

Well, I'm probably gonna have to end the podcast. I appreciate all you guys and everyone. I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of talking about this over the next few days.

01:25:35

But you heard it here first on the podcast. Moving forward, tomorrow, just to give you some preview of things that are coming up, we are gonna talk about Nigeria.

01:25:46

There is a battle going on there in Nigeria. Muslims against Christians. And, man, guys, if there's suffering, if there's persecution, like,

01:25:58

I see what's happening in our country. I see that it's very sad to me that Christians, we're having so much infighting even in conservative evangelical circles when we are, we have like no institutional power.

01:26:12

We have, Kevin DeYoung in his article, I didn't go over it, but he talks about how like Christians have more power in the

01:26:19

United States than anywhere else. And like what Stephen Wolfe is saying is just out of step. And I'm like, we're losing it really quick.

01:26:27

I mean, where? Where to point to it? People celebrate Christmas still? I mean, for conservative evangelicals, real

01:26:33

Christians will say, there's really no institutional power left in the media, hardly at all in politics.

01:26:39

That's like the last vestige that maybe, you know, the religious, what was the religious right?

01:26:45

It has some, I'd see it at the table for the Republicans, but other than that, like they don't have any influence in the education system.

01:26:52

They don't have any influence in media or education or any of that. None of the influential institutions.

01:27:01

And so I see this, and that's what makes, I guess, some of this infighting silly. In Nigeria though, it's a different situation.

01:27:08

Like they're heading towards a civil war at breakneck speed and the shots are already being fired. And we got brothers and sisters there in need.

01:27:15

And so I know that I've asked you, I'm going to ask you to dig deep this holiday season to support different causes.

01:27:24

And I think, yeah, support the 1607 project. There's tons of good things to support, but support the children in Nigeria.

01:27:31

And Judd Saul's going to be on tomorrow to talk about that. And so you have that to look forward to. I am planning on getting to the

01:27:37

Tim Keller stuff later this week. Obviously, with the way that the political circles or the political news cycle's going,

01:27:48

I don't know what each day is going to hold. So it's possible I won't get to it because there'll be other pressing needs that need to be taken care of.

01:27:56

But that is my goal is to start on that stuff later this week because I know some of you really need that. That's the stuff that you listen to this podcast for mainly is you really want to understand how to navigate conversations with your pastor about certain evangelical leaders and what they've taught and what they believe.

01:28:16

And so I think we'll start doing that and examining that hopefully no later than Friday.

01:28:23

So you can look forward to that as well. And I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season this

01:28:28

December. You are free to listen to Christmas carols now. God bless. More coming. Bye now.