Dale Partridge is one of the most influential voices in the culture on masculinity and moral authority. He is the author of several books, including The Manliness of Christ, The Ground of Good Theology, and the best selling children s book Jesus and My Gender. He is also the President of Reformation Seminary and the Founder of the Reformation Institute. His Real Christianity Podcast has surpassed millions and millions of downloads. But his influence and the way he communicates runs well beyond the pulpit and into the cultural, philosophical, and political conversations that most men are having behind closed doors in private, but few, like us, actually have the courage to talk about in public.
00:05:03.100So I feel like, yeah, so we're going on 10 years.
00:05:06.620And yeah, I've been following along your stuff, you know, on Instagram and social media and vice versa.
00:05:12.480So it's been cool to see that we're still doing the same things.
00:05:16.480And, you know, I mean, relatively the same things.
00:05:19.580Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that I really appreciate about what you bring to the table is your message has been very, very consistent.
00:05:26.340I wonder, though, too, sometimes, do you think it is more polarizing just based on external circumstances, or have you taken a different approach to the way that you communicate your message?
00:05:43.040Yeah, I think that there's certainly been a polarizing aspect of culture over the last 10 years.
00:05:47.600I mean, we've seen, you know, since Trump has been in office, politics have become more moral.
00:05:53.380Because they've been more moral, we've had to have more moral authorities, like pastors, step into the political sphere.
00:06:01.100And so this has created issues around clarity on things like abortion or homosexuality or immigration or pornography or adultery or divorce or whatever it may be.
00:06:16.100And so there's been a kind of a requirement for pastors to speak morality into the culture in a way that maybe they only spoke in a private sphere before, and now it's more public, which I think has caused more conflict.
00:06:31.740That being said, I also think that the volume knob is turning up.
00:06:39.460There is a polarizing aspect that the right is getting more right, the left is getting more left.
00:06:44.240you used to be able to stand in the middle kind of look like you know hey you know what I'm a
00:06:50.340I'm a moderate and you can kind of lean to the left on certain issues and then you can lean to
00:06:55.200the right on the certain issues and you can kind of play both fields I think now you just look like0.99
00:07:00.060an idiot and people need to figure out what side they're on now there's there's right and then0.99
00:07:06.600there's far right and there's left and there's far left but there really is no middle anymore1.00
00:07:10.420And so the middle and the reason is because everything has become clearly moral, clearly religious, clearly worldview.
00:07:21.460We're not talking about, you know, economic budgets for foreign immigration policies, you know, the way we did in the 1980s.
00:07:30.360We are talking about the legalization of particular religious practices, of sexual practices, of surgical practices that, you know, really overlap with extremely important values with people.
00:07:48.000And so the coexist sticker, which it's always been dumb, but the idea that right now we are in a time where everybody is fighting for their worldview.
00:08:02.600And that's why, you know, and you can stop me whenever, but my whole thing about multiculturalism is the reason it doesn't work is because essentially you have multiple different people groups, whether they're ethnic or religious or both.
00:08:16.620but they are fighting for governmental influence and power so that the government would support
00:08:22.900and potentially outlaw or disincentivize those views that are against them. So you have
00:08:30.740essentially an interior civil war between worldviews when you have multiculturalism. So0.87
00:08:38.040you have all of these things at play over the last 10 years that I think are just magnifying.
00:08:44.740And I'm not sure that it's ever going to get better0.98
00:22:41.480because distinctions mean conflict and superiority and inferiority. And we can't deal with the idea
00:22:48.140of oppression and oppressor, all that crap. It's all Marxist garbage. And we've been so afraid to1.00
00:22:54.480embrace history in the last 60 years. It's just been this post-war consensus of pure emotional
00:23:03.180feministic structure. And so we are, we're coming back. The young men are pissed.
00:23:10.720The young men are mad. I'm 41. I pastor a lot of young men. And yeah, the young men,
00:23:18.640they can't find wives that are feminine. They can't find jobs that pay decent. They can't buy
00:23:25.320homes because the economy is what it is. They feel like they're losing their country because
00:23:29.960of immigration, they're angry. And when men get angry, things change. And so I do believe that
00:23:38.960we're on the cusp of some sort of adjustment, maybe in the next 10 years. It is interesting
00:23:46.060when you talk about this spiritual component of it, because I don't know if you knew this,
00:23:50.200but for most of my adult life, I have been LDS Mormon. And about, gosh, has it been six years?
00:24:01.240I left the LDS church. And the first church I went to was a Baptist church. And there was a
00:24:06.740pastor by the name of Ryan. And this guy's incredible, man. Part of the reason I left
00:24:12.300the LDS church is I got so tired of this weak male leadership. I could not, I could not follow
00:24:20.340it anymore. I just, I couldn't. Everything inside of me said, that guy is weak. You are not to be
00:24:25.780led by him. He needs to follow other people. He is not to shepherd these people. Like I felt like
00:24:33.300that to my core. And then I went to this Baptist church and pastor Ryan, man, he spoke like fire.
00:24:39.920He said things that were uncomfortable. He called out his congregation, not individually, probably in private he did that, but he called out his congregation. He expected obedience to the word. He spoke with conviction. I'm like, finally, finally, I find somebody who's got the moral courage to buck what society tells us to do. It's very attractive to men.
00:25:07.140It is. We're seeing a revival of young men in the church. They're coming back to the church
00:25:13.560at greater rates than the young women. I do believe the young women will eventually follow,1.00
00:25:18.300but a lot of this kind of mega churchianity does cater to the emotional side. It creates like,
00:25:28.860just some of the songs, this kind of the sway your hips to Jesus kind of stuff. It's all
00:25:34.900relational language rather than conquering language. And so, yeah, there are men that I
00:25:41.880think are moving to a few directions in the church. I think that we're seeing groups of
00:25:49.000kind of the megachurch world moving toward more serious and historic positions of the church.
00:25:55.300They want more serious doctrine. They want more historic stability. But if they can't find a
00:26:02.420pastor who's willing to administer the word in a faithful and historic manner, that's kind of a
00:26:09.560bottleneck for a lot of guys. Our church is pretty rare. There's a handful of churches around the
00:26:17.460United States that I think are similar to us. We are by no means special, and I stick to the word
00:26:26.860every Sunday. So people always can't grasp the reality of me being so vocal around politics
00:26:33.120or other cultural issues as a pastor. But I remind people that on Sunday, I am sticking
00:26:41.060verse by verse to the scriptures, getting to the gospel. Yes, if I go past a particular element
00:26:47.500that intersects with a cultural issue, I'm going to hit it. But if I'm talking about
00:26:55.260Genesis 8-9 right now of Noah's flood, and I'm sticking to the text. But it is. It's coming
00:27:03.120with authority. It's coming with expectation. It's coming with masculinity. We have to remember
00:27:08.040that Christianity is a masculine religion. I mean, you know of my book, Ryan, but my book,0.99
00:27:14.240The Manliness of Christ, I wrote that book because I realized that Christ was the most
00:27:20.040masculine man that ever lived. But I grew up in a generation that told me that Jesus was just
00:27:27.380gentle and lowly. And he was just the soft and sensitive savior. Because again, we created a
00:27:35.660feminine version of Christianity to attract women. And it expelled the men. And once you realize,0.94
00:27:44.080so I wrote this book really as an emphasis to go, I want to look at all of the masculine elements
00:27:49.280of Christ. And I hadn't seen anybody done that work yet. And his resolve, his courage, his
00:27:56.220intensity, his use of language, he would insult people, his aggression, obviously all of it
00:28:02.760without sin. But it really helped me go, oh, praise the Lord, I have a Savior worth following.
00:28:11.160And it became a very helpful book for many men to kind of feel like, okay, Christianity,
00:28:19.280isn't actually, you know, weak or lame.
00:28:24.000It's the church's expression in this current generation.
00:28:28.760And so we are, we're seeing some revival.
00:28:31.880We're seeing some strong pastors being lifted up.
00:28:45.940It is funny when people talk about the infusion of morality into politics and then you think about John F. Kennedy, for example, and I think that's really where this started to reach the surface a little bit, so to speak, when we had this congruence or this overlap between politics and spirituality or religion is people were very concerned with his Catholicism.
00:29:08.400what his catholic beliefs pour into his decision-making process as the leader of our country
00:29:15.300and now you look at it and like you said earlier everything is moral you know and it's like you
00:29:21.260can look at at trump for example and i agree with a lot of what trump does and i disagree with a lot
00:29:25.580of what he does and it's it it is interesting because everybody now is has taken the moral
00:29:33.080route. And what I found to be fascinating is I don't need to, to necessarily agree with every
00:29:39.520moral ideology or moral belief that he might have in order to realize that some of the policies are,
00:29:46.960are, are good. I can separate the two. Do you think there should be a distinction
00:29:51.060between, you know, church and state, so to speak, or should it be completely congruent?
00:29:56.300A few things. One, you're just a man and you know how to think in categories.
00:29:59.900Okay, women can't do that that well, all right?1.00
00:30:01.720So this is why when you have somebody,1.00
00:30:04.000they can't read between the lines, as you said earlier.
00:30:06.560Men know how to look and think in categories.
00:30:09.320Two things can be true at the same time.
00:30:12.460So a few things I wanted to point out is,
00:30:17.420because you had my train of thought on something there.
00:30:27.540So, oh, I know what I forgot, and then I'll come back to separation of church and state.
00:30:33.840So we need, right now, you said earlier, unity works, or diversity works if we're moving the
00:30:40.960same direction. I thought that was a good way of saying that. And the reason I would agree with
00:30:45.060that is this is the line that I've been using lately in terms of Christians. So I think the1.00
00:30:50.980movement right now toward what I would call Christian nationalism needs to be creedal,
00:30:55.540not confessional. So creedal, meaning that we have really historic creeds. We have the Apostles
00:31:01.660Creed, we have the Nicene Creed, we have the, you know, Athanasius Creed, which are really
00:31:08.120core fundamentals about Christianity. Now that would exclude Jehovah's Witnesses, it would exclude0.96
00:31:14.200LDS because they are not going to buy into those positions, but it will include Eastern Orthodoxy,0.61
00:31:19.940roman catholicism and historic protestantism and you so we need to be creedal in this time
00:31:26.560not confessional now confessional at the local level is good so at your local church you want
00:31:31.840to be in a confessional church where you have a clear confession of doctrine where you have
00:31:36.220greater unity than just creedal unity right so our church we don't quite understand the difference
00:31:41.920between creedal and confessional can you help unpack that just a little bit yeah so so uh in
00:31:47.600the Reformed world, you know, you have, so you have like Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians,
00:31:54.840right? Those are generally the three streams of historic Protestantism out of the 1500s.
00:32:01.180So the Lutherans hold to the Augsburg Confession. The Presbyterians hold to the Westminster
00:32:06.240Confession. The Anglicans hold to the 39 Articles. You know, you have the Catholic Church that holds
00:32:12.380to, you know, the Catholic catechism of the church, right? And so you have these, what I
00:32:18.680think are more confessional, they're deeply precise and are for greater theological and
00:32:26.720doctrinal unity at a local level. And so, you know, so our church will hold to kind of all
00:32:33.600three of those Protestant positions. We would hold, you know, any kind of high church reformed
00:32:40.120But they're large, they're thick, they're dense, they go on very specifics, where creeds are very broad, and they allow a lot of unity without uniformity.
00:32:57.360And so I can say the Apostles' Creed with my Roman Catholic brother in Christ and my Eastern Orthodox brother in Christ while still having very serious doctrinal disagreements at a confessional level.
00:33:11.100And so I think it's important right now that we need to have a creedal movement where we're all diverse for sure.
00:33:19.640Like I'll fight to the death over some doctrines with Rome.
00:33:23.280but we are on the same team moving the same direction.
00:33:28.220We all can stand and recite the Apostles' Creed
00:37:36.700It's systems. It's standards that most guys, they didn't really know they were hungry for
00:37:43.720until they found it or until they met catastrophe, job loss, breakdown of relationship,
00:37:52.060addiction issues, medical issues. And I don't want you to wait to build up this incredible
00:37:57.000band of brothers until it's too late, until you're dealing with the fallout of something
00:38:01.220tragic, whether self-imposed or existential. So make sure you join me on the call. It's
00:38:08.380an hour. This is your chance to find out if it's for you. No pressure. Join us or not.
00:38:14.980Band with us or not. But at least come have some real conversations with us tonight. And
00:38:19.200we're going to talk about intentional manhood when you stop going at it alone in life. So
00:38:24.680again, it's tonight, Tuesday, May 19th, 8 p.m. Eastern. You can get registered RSVP and reserve
00:38:30.480your spot at theironcouncil.com slash preview. That's theironcouncil.com slash preview. All right,
00:38:39.480guys, let me get back to it with Dale and we'll enjoy the rest of the conversation.
00:38:45.760And these are, the Reformation is essentially the Bible. The printing press really is what
00:38:54.280started the Reformation. Once the Bible became available to the average person, they essentially
00:39:00.660started reading the Bible. And they looked at the practices of the Roman Catholic Church,
00:39:06.800and there was stark contrast between the text that they were reading and the practice they
00:39:11.160were doing. And that, people want to blame it on Martin Luther. And I go, well, if Martin Luther
00:39:18.060never lived, and the printing press did, it was just a matter of time before the average person
00:39:23.600was able to read the scriptures and see it would have been somebody else it would have been somebody
00:39:28.700else and so that created the protestant reformation now when the church of england
00:39:35.380formed its 39 articles and uh the book of common prayer there was a handful of protestant ministers
00:39:44.880that said that this still felt like they were binding your conscience to something else other
00:39:50.600than the word of God. It felt too Roman Catholic. And that created a group called the Puritans. And
00:39:55.740there was this thing called the Great Ejection. And the Great Ejection was these pastors that
00:40:00.100were losing their church because the church was controlled by the state. The king was the head of
00:40:05.620the church. It wasn't the pope anymore. It was now the king. And so these men hopped in 1620.
00:40:13.460the Mayflower went over to America to start a new world. And these were all Protestants that0.99
00:40:20.700were even more Protestant than the Anglican church. They were kind of more, more Presbyterian
00:40:26.340reformed in that perspective. Now, as the colonies grew, you had some Catholics come over. That's why
00:40:33.600you have Maryland, Maryland. You had a Catholic state there. I never put that together. Interesting.
00:40:40.220Yep. That's why you also have Providence, Rhode Island, because you have these ideas of providence that God. So this is very much a Christian colonial space. Now, they get here, and as the culture is set and the colonies are built, there is a desire driven from the very beginning of the freedom of religion.
00:41:06.660Now, freedom of religion always meant freedom of Christian denominations.
00:41:12.220It never meant freedom to worship whoever you wanted.
00:41:15.840That was never in view of anybody in the founding era of our nation.
00:41:22.160The problem is, it also meant, from the way I understand it, it also meant freedom from persecution of the government, not other institutions or organizations, just the government primarily.
00:41:31.920Correct. And so you had, again, historically in Europe, you had the government attacking certain ministers for different theological convictions within Christianity. So they get here, and the problem is they use the word religion all the time instead of saying Christianity. It was just the word they used for the day. They should have said Christianity would have been so much more clear in all of our founding documents.
00:41:59.580but how do you know that so i've just read it there's a book there's a book that i have behind
00:42:05.600what is it like if somebody's listening to me listening to this right now and they're like well
00:42:09.500like are you sure like i don't know how would somebody validate what you're saying that it
00:42:14.340should have been christianity versus the word religion yeah so uh i have a book behind me um
00:42:21.020called uh political sermons from the american founding era and it's thick it's like a brick
00:42:28.600and it's a multi-volume set. So there's multiple books and it's all of these excellent sermons
00:42:33.900from about 1730 to 1830. And I read them quite often. In fact, I read one this morning on the
00:42:42.780love of country and the constant use of these very Christian ministers. They use the word
00:42:51.320religion for Christianity everywhere constantly. It's like, it's the way that it was used at that
00:42:55.800time. It would be mathematically impossible to view it any other way. If you just spent time
00:43:01.920reading enough literature from that time, you go, oh yeah, when they say religion, they mean
00:43:05.980Christianity. No one meant Islam. No one meant Hinduism.
00:43:11.240Yeah. And I imagine from the perspective of coming from England, the amount of exposure to
00:43:17.820Islam or Hinduism was probably minimal relative to what it is today, which is why they didn't say
00:43:24.920anything else. Yeah, of course. And the only experience they had with it was that their1.00
00:43:30.040forefathers had absolutely conquered them after they had invaded their lands through the Crusades,
00:43:34.860right? So it was very much, they had a love for all mankind, but they were very much against
00:43:43.260Islam or Hinduism. Like the idea of having what we have today would, our forefathers would have0.95
00:43:50.080started wars a hundred years ago. You know, it was just, it's unbelievable, maybe not a hundred
00:43:54.580years ago, but certainly 60 years ago. And so, so the separation of church and state, this is,
00:44:01.100this is another key distinction is, well, let me back up one. I want to say one more thing on
00:44:06.100freedom of religion. So freedom of religion is that the first commandment is no other gods.
00:44:10.660Okay. The second commandment is no idols. All right. So Jesus says, if you love me,
00:44:15.340you keep my commandments. Right. So that we know that, you know, that we obviously aren't
00:44:18.840saved by keeping the law, but when we're saved, we try to keep the law, not because it saves us,
00:44:24.400but because it pleases God, right? So the first commandment, no other gods. Jesus is not for
00:44:32.160freedom of religion. I mean, the Great Commission literally says, go therefore make disciples of all
00:44:36.220nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that
00:44:41.640I have commanded you. So you can't be a Christian and say, yeah, freedom of religion. No, I don't
00:44:48.760think you want forced christianity so you can say it that way i i don't think anybody was thinking
00:44:53.760well that takes away his ability to give us agency and we know that's one of the greatest
00:44:58.060gifts that we have is our ability to choose for ourselves yeah so you have this idea of
00:45:02.960you don't want forced religion um but you don't want freedom of go choose your god no jesus is
00:45:10.160not for that at all um so back to to separate separation of church and state church and state
00:45:15.480essentially are, when we get here, we go,
00:45:19.680we want a separation of church and state
00:45:21.320because they came out of a tyrannical element
00:45:24.280where there was a perversion of the spheres of sovereignty.
00:45:27.320And the spheres of sovereignty are the family,