Christianity is on the rise in the United States, according to a new study from Pew Research. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? And what are we to do about it? All that and much more on today's episode of Relatable.
00:00:00.960Headlines circulated last week that claimed that a young woman in Texas committed suicide because of Trump's deportations and the bullying that she had endured because of his immigration policy.
00:00:16.600But it turns out there was much more to this tragic story.
00:00:21.400And really good news, Christianity seems to be on the rise.
00:00:25.560I will talk about what is behind that, what we have to be careful about, and what we should also be unabashedly celebrating.
00:00:33.500We've got all that and much more on today's episode of Relatable.
00:00:36.820It is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
00:00:59.700There's so much that I want to get to today.
00:01:02.100These are stories that we have been hoping to talk about for the past couple weeks, but so many things have come up that we just haven't been able to get to them.
00:01:11.860First, I want to talk about this amazing trend that we are seeing that has been chronicled by Pew Research, a pretty trustworthy research center.
00:01:19.680Certainly not right-wing, supposed-to-be nonpartisan, middle-of-the-road objective.
00:01:24.440I would even say in some of the language that they use that they're actually on the left side of things.
00:01:32.040Probably their principles and the guidelines that they follow follow kind of left-wing language when it comes to gender, when it comes to race.
00:01:41.280And so when you see something like this that has anything positive to say about Christianity or conservatism, I would say it's pretty trustworthy, especially when you look at their methodology.
00:01:53.640No matter what language they use, that's really what matters.
00:03:04.280By 2019, there's a pretty significant dip just five years later.
00:03:10.060And then 2020, it goes up just a little bit.
00:03:12.960Then, man, it really goes down in about 2022 and then back up slightly to 63%.
00:03:20.760And that is really the first time we have seen a steady rise, even if it's small, a steady rise for years in a row of affiliation with Christianity.
00:03:33.080So from about 2021, it looks like, to 2024, we have seen this slight uptick.
00:03:40.880Now, it is still significantly down, 15% down from where we were in 2007, which is troubling for a variety of reasons.
00:03:51.120But the fact that it's trending up when there is such an assault on the Christian faith, such an assault on truth, when progressivism, secularism is ubiquitous, it's almost seen as a given, especially in academia.
00:04:05.540It's seen as the smarter, more sophisticated option.
00:04:11.740Against all odds, against the media onslaught, against the prince of the power of the air, as Ephesians 2 describes Satan, there is an uptick in Christian affiliation.
00:04:23.480Now, the religiously unaffiliated, this group, religious nuns, they're typically called N-O-N-E-S, has increased also since 2007 from 16% identifying as this to about, it looks like, 30% in 2021.
00:04:43.160Again, doubled in this pretty short amount of time, but then it went down in about 2022, went up just a little bit in 2023, and it went down again to 28% in 2024.
00:04:58.160So again, bigger than it was in 2007, things have shifted so much, and yet it does seem to be decreasing, this unaffiliation and leveling off.
00:05:10.560Really, if you look at any graph from Pew Research, I used to, back in 2017, 18, when this study was new, I would point to this partisanship polling that Pew Research had published around this time that showed the shift in perspectives on a variety of issues between the left and the right, Republicans and Democrats.
00:05:34.280And what you saw is that Democrats have shifted to the left.
00:05:38.480And I know this study that we're talking about is not really about Republicans and Democrats, and what I'm saying really isn't either.
00:05:44.720It's simply talking about the shift in perspective and our move to the secular left over the past 20 or so years.
00:05:51.380When it came to immigration, when it came to gender, when it came to a social economic policy, the left, the Democratic Party, significantly shifted to the left during the Obama years.
00:06:05.720On everything from marriage to immigration, all of that, guns shifted to the left, whereas Republicans really stayed steady.
00:06:14.820There was barely any movement on any of the significant issues.
00:06:18.660On some things, they actually shifted to the left just a little bit, like on immigration, for example, Republicans kind of shifted to what would probably be called more like of a center position in some ways.
00:06:31.900Now, I don't know if there's an update on this. I would say that the right has probably shifted back over to the right a bit in the past few years.
00:06:41.000And the Democrats have probably stayed over to the left.
00:06:44.840But you heard so much when Trump was in office the first time that it was it was Republicans.
00:06:50.000They were the ones who became extreme. They were the ones who adopted these fascist far right policies.
00:06:54.360It's not. It's really that Republicans remained the same.
00:06:57.420And as Democrats moved to the left, normal, common sense, conservative and even center right policies became extreme to them because they had changed.
00:07:06.960And really, that marked, I think, signified a significant cultural change from Barack Obama's first term to the end of his second term.
00:07:18.140Everything changed in the culture morally. The sexual revolution quickened.
00:07:24.440We went from President Obama saying in 2008 that he believes in one man and one woman in marriage for life, like he believed in the biblical definition of marriage.
00:07:33.700He said that in 2008 on the campaign trail to Saddleback Church in California.
00:07:38.840I mean, California in 2008 passed Prop 8, which protected the sanctity of marriages between one man and one woman.
00:07:46.080And California in California in 2008 and obviously now that is the hotbed of the gender insanity where you can literally lose custody of your children because they say that they are identifying as the opposite sex.
00:07:59.560Things have changed and moved so quickly in the past 15 or so years.
00:08:06.840And certainly the loss of Christian affiliation plays into that.
00:08:12.020But what I think has happened is that things moved so quickly, the sexual revolution, the moral revolution, the degeneracy has moved so quickly over the past 15 years that the younger generations especially have started to see the consequence of that, have started to see how this chaos and confusion, this godlessness, this purposelessness in their friends' lives actually leads to a lot of misery.
00:08:38.880I mean, they, Gen Z, the most over-medicated, over-therapied generation in existence.
00:08:46.560They've really seen the destitution that this aimless, morally relativistic god of self ideology brings people to.
00:08:55.600And I wonder if this swing is in response to that.
00:08:58.840Now, obviously in a spiritual sense, like this is the Holy Spirit.
00:09:01.940Now, we can't see the hearts of the people who answered this poll and whether they are truly on fire for Jesus or if they're just identifying as Christian.
00:09:09.620But the reason why I am comforted by this, even if we don't know all the details of the spiritual lives of the people answering this poll, is that in 2007, it was simply more popular to be a Christian.
00:09:21.420Like, cultural Christianity still existed.
00:09:24.920And I'm not knocking cultural Christianity.
00:09:27.440It's not salvific to just call yourself a Christian, but there are benefits to it.
00:09:31.600There are benefits to when, as a culture, we share basic Christian values.
00:09:36.480There are benefits to the most vulnerable in the social contract that we have, in the interactions that we have.
00:09:41.400It's better to have cultural Christianity than no Christianity at all.
00:09:44.900And so that could explain why almost 80% of people identified as Christian back in 2007.
00:09:49.880Again, benefit to that, but you do wonder how much of that is genuine.
00:09:54.640How many of those people are actually going to heaven because they truly believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, that no one comes to the Father except through him.
00:10:02.120Now, it is not convenient to be a Christian.
00:10:04.880No one has to identify as a Christian to get a job, to be popular, to be accepted by society.
00:10:11.720You might end up like Jack Phillips or Lori Smith, losing your business or your business being threatened, your livelihood being threatened,
00:10:19.440simply because you stand up for the basic tenets of Christianity seen in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible that God made us male and female.
00:10:27.020Definition of gender in marriage answered right there.
00:10:54.740And they were threatened and they were lambasted and they had people protesting outside of their restaurant, trying to literally cancel their restaurant, trying to take away their livelihood.
00:11:06.920This is a family owned company, small children, their safety, their lives threatened by people who were very angry that they were simply being Christian and dared to be Christian in the public square.
00:11:20.000So the fact that there are more people now than there were a few years ago willing to say against the tide, yeah, I'm a Christian, means to me probably that there is a level of sincerity here because of the sacrifice required that maybe we didn't see all the way back in 2007, 15 years ago.
00:12:31.160I don't let my happiness or my hope, my optimism rise and fall on Pew Research or any polling, but I love to see God's eternal plan of redemption bear out in statistics.
00:12:42.620And I love to see statistics and science catching up to God and what Christians have always known.
00:12:50.460And so I wish it hadn't taken the full effect of the grossness of the sexual revolution, the promiscuity, the devaluation of marriage, the rampant divorce, the gender deception and mutilation.
00:13:05.920I wish it hadn't taken the elevation of all of those things to get people, especially young people to say, yeah, I don't know what's right, but it's not that.
00:13:15.500And, oh, maybe Jesus was onto something like maybe this good book, maybe the maybe the guy by whom we still tell time is significant.
00:13:25.660Like, I wish it hadn't taken the worst to get to the best.
00:13:29.200But again, God uses all things to work all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
00:13:47.360I think 2020 was a really big turning point for a lot of Christians who just, again, just saw the chaos of the world and said, I need a respite from that.
00:13:57.500I want to be led by the shepherd who promises to lead us by still waters, even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, that he will be with us.
00:14:06.480And some people have to get to our lowest.
00:14:09.860Maybe the country as a whole had to get to a very low point to see the goodness and the truth of God.
00:14:16.360There's been a lot of testimonies that have echoed that.
00:14:27.560It seems like, even if we don't agree on everything they say or where they are at different points in their doctrine, that they've tasted and seen that the Lord is good.
00:14:41.300Let us pray for this continued growth.
00:14:45.540When we break it down, we do see that Christians, that the affiliation with certain sects of Christianity, subgroups of Christianity have gone down.
00:15:00.980So, for example, all Christians, 78%, again, to 62%.
00:15:06.060Protestant went from 51% affiliation to 40% affiliation.
00:15:33.120And so, I mean, we're seeing the same kind of decline, but also the same kind of trend of stability and even increase.
00:15:41.400What I also thought was interesting is that for other religions, the share of Americans who identify with a religion other than Christianity has been trending upward, though still in the single digits.
00:15:51.560So it was 4.7 in 2007, and it's now up to 7.1%.
00:15:59.260This includes Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hindu.
00:16:02.080I guarantee you that uptick of about 3% is almost all Islam because of mass immigration that has occurred, especially from the Middle East over the past few years.
00:16:14.540A lot of communities feel that, that, oh, I have these Islamic centers that are now, like, across the street from this church or that are close to our neighborhood that I did not have before.
00:16:26.300And also, like, the HB1 program, you've got a lot of people from India who practice Islam who are coming over here with the boom in tech and corporate America trying to get that cheaper labor over here.
00:16:37.220That will shift the demographics, which shifts the culture and the values of your country, and I just want to say it's okay for you to care about that.
00:16:45.020It is much better for a country to have shared values, a shared belief in where truth comes from, what right and wrong is, basic definitions of reality and morality.
00:16:57.420This pie-in-the-sky idea of diversity being our strength and us living in this, like, beautiful mosaic of pluralism, yes, of course, that can work to a degree, but only if you agree on some basic fundamentals.
00:17:12.980Like, we were all created by a God who gave us inalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:17:19.520I mean, basic Western democratic principles, and if you don't believe that, which are founded upon the Bible and biblical principles, then we're going to have a hard time.
00:17:27.940We're going to have a hard time having a cohesive country and a cohesive community.
00:17:34.600It's a good thing for everyone, no matter what your belief system is, that Christianity is on the rise because Christianity has been the greatest force for good in all of history.
00:17:46.060I mean, Christians changed the world, forged Western civilization, conceptualized human rights.
00:17:52.100The Imago Dei has been the most positive force, I think, civilizational force for all of time.
00:17:59.040And so we praise God for that, and we hope for its continuance, and we do our part in that.
00:18:05.520God has ordained us to use prayer and evangelism to accomplish His will.
00:18:22.000We've got some more things to talk about.
00:18:23.620Let me pause and tell you about our first sponsor for the day, and that is ACCU, America's Christian Credit Union.
00:18:31.340I love this company and what they're about.
00:18:33.840They're not just any bank or credit union.
00:18:35.840They are a grassroots movement of believers that pull resources together to support each other and a God-glorifying worldview.
00:18:44.940ACCU offers financial solutions that empower Christians to reach their financial goals.
00:18:50.720Plus, when you bank with them, you support causes that align with your faith, like Christ-centered education, ministry building, better lending rates for borrowers, and returns for depositors.
00:19:01.020And so you're working with Christians who share your values, and that is really great in comparison to what we're seeing, which is these large banks that are sometimes debanking people for what they buy, for what they believe in.
00:20:13.880It's a horrifying story, but it's got a lot of lessons in there for us when it comes to ensuring that we are not allowing the media to whip us up, to determine our reactions to anything.
00:20:36.640And we were told this—the reason why this became national news, because unfortunately, we have young people that commit suicide consistently.
00:20:45.100The reason that this went viral is because her parents said that she committed suicide because she was bullied over her immigration status.
00:20:54.000And, of course, this was blamed on Donald Trump and Republicans.
00:20:56.440Because Donald Trump is deporting these criminal aliens, many of which are actually violent criminals, literally child rapists and murderers, that because he's doing that, there are Hispanic children in the United States that are being bullied to the point of suicide.
00:21:13.580Perfect example, very sad example of toxic empathy.
00:21:18.900So hoisting up a purported victim, creating a story around that to get you to ignore everyone on the other side of the moral equation.
00:21:27.400And so when we have two sides of the moral equation that are equally sad, because Lake and Riley's life counts just as much as this young girl's, when you've got two stories that are competing for your empathy, that's when your discernment has to kick in and you ask the important question in all issues, but what is true?
00:21:54.040And whenever a story, this is a good rule of thumb, whenever a story sounds too good or too bad to be true, according to your own perspective, this sounded too good to be true for Democrats, too bad to be true for Republicans in this case, you ask yourself, what am I missing here?
00:22:19.640When you hear things like, oh, transgender kids are killing themselves because they can't, you know, get on cross-sex hormones or something like that, the question is, how do you know?
00:22:38.760When the Trevor Project says that you have to affirm kids who say that they are the opposite sex or else you're going to have a dead daughter, a living son, that kind of thing, there are no stats that actually bear that out because we don't actually know always the reason why people kill themselves.
00:22:52.740And that was my first question that I had when I saw this horrifying headline, these stories going around that this young girl killed herself because she was bullied.
00:23:35.240And obviously, I'm very glad about that because it seems like we have more details.
00:23:40.380So this is according to the New York Post.
00:23:41.920The family of an 11 year old girl in Texas who committed suicide claimed the girl was being bullied over her immigration status, while other children came forward to say the girl had also confided in them that she had been inappropriately touched.
00:23:53.640So sexually molested by a family member.
00:23:57.420So Jocelyn Rojo Carranza was found unresponsive.
00:24:04.140Unresponsive in her family's Gainesville home on February 3rd.
00:24:06.860Died in the hospital after five days in the ICU.
00:24:09.660The girl's mother claimed her daughter was being bullied by students over the family's immigration status.
00:24:15.420And the school district investigated confirmed that a student was making comments about ICE and deportation, and the girl was close to that.
00:24:46.420But somehow this snowballed into this idea, I guess via her mother and her family, that she was being directly bullied for this.
00:24:54.460After Carranza's hospitalization, students came forward to school officials, said that the girl had been victims of bullying.
00:25:02.040But then multiple students told administrators that Jocelyn had been sexually abused and that she had been telling them to keep that a secret.
00:25:10.940The district also found that the girl had previously expressed thoughts of self-harm to her cousin.
00:25:15.480So before Donald Trump was in office, before any of this happened, she had been talking about hurting herself.
00:25:21.380Then this person, allegedly, whom she confided in, told the girl's mother.
00:25:26.860But the mother claimed that was not true.
00:25:29.500So let me just show you, and we'll put up some of these headlines, how the media and the left framed it.
00:25:36.200So CNN, an 11-year-old girl in Texas died by suicide after she was bullied about her family's immigration status.
00:25:43.760Her mother says, even after, even after, I just want to note this, the investigation showed sexual, the sexual abuse allegation.
00:26:23.320So Joaquin Castro said this, 11-year-old Jocelyn Rojo Carranza endured months of bullying about her family's immigration status at her Dallas area school before she took her own life.
00:26:33.680As I said to Jim Acosta, Trump has created a culture of cruelty and meanness that is infecting American society and our kids.
00:26:41.240My staff and I are reaching out to San Antonio schools to ask them how they're protecting students against bullying in this hostile environment.
00:27:34.500This person says a sixth grader in Texas took her life because she was getting bullied by kids, telling her that they're going to call ice on her parents and that she would end up alone.
00:28:04.220We see this over and over again with every single instance that they can use for their own purposes.
00:28:10.400They actually are glad and giddy when something like this happens.
00:28:15.040I truly think in a way now, maybe you think that's too harsh, but truly they love leveraging dead people and tragic situations to point fingers at Trump and Republicans and try to whip people up to inflict violence against the Republicans.
00:28:32.280But again, the reality is that simply wasn't true.
00:28:36.460Here is a short clip of a local news report interviewing Jocelyn's mom.
00:28:43.020It's been two days since I've spoken to an investigator.
00:28:46.760They told me they haven't found anything yet.
00:28:49.780They had an authority open Jocelyn's phone, but they have not had any access to it.
00:28:54.620They're telling me to hold on and that the Gainesville ISD police had just closed the case after taking charge of it.
00:29:00.500Now, I believe that Jocelyn's mom is truly hurt about this and she might not know everything that is going on.
00:29:09.220And again, it is also possible that bullying played a part in this.
00:29:14.280But let me read you what was reported by People magazine.
00:29:17.000On February 4th, the school district said they were informed by a member of Jocelyn's family that the girl had been hospitalized due to an accident.
00:29:24.580The next day, students began reporting that Jocelyn and her brother had been bullied.
00:29:28.120That prompted the internal investigation by the school on February 6th.
00:29:32.740During those interviews, that's when, quote unquote, according to the school, additional concerns surfaced, according to the school district,
00:29:39.300which reported that multiple students claimed Jocelyn had been inappropriately touched and wished to keep this a secret to avoid getting them in trouble.
00:29:48.320Given the presence of four other school-age children in the home, GISD, Gainesville ISD, was legally required to report this to CPS.
00:29:59.380And so we don't know what happened, but we do know that CPS is actually investigating what was going on here.
00:30:04.640Furthermore, the district said it was disclosed that Jocelyn had previously expressed thoughts of self-harm to the cousin who informed JRC's mother, as we already noted.
00:30:14.120And then when the mother was informed that, hey, there are also allegations of molestation, according to NBC, the mother said,
00:30:21.560Well, I talk with my daughter about that always.
00:30:27.880And I hope that it's true that the mother did not know that this was potentially going on.
00:30:33.200So the school district also released a statement that said that Jocelyn had a one-on-one meeting with a school counselor on October 16th.
00:30:42.740So again, this is before Trump was president, where she, quote, shared concerns about getting in trouble at home and mentioned that her siblings called her names.
00:30:51.080According to the district at this time, she did not report any bullying.
00:30:55.640The district also claimed that she participated in a social-emotional learning group led by a counselor.
00:31:00.580That's not always healthy, by the way.
00:31:03.400While her mother initially stated that she was unaware of her daughter's participation, the district has signed a permission slip authorizing her involvement.
00:31:13.340So Jocelyn attended a number of these sessions.
00:31:16.800The school district said that they concluded their internal bullying investigation on February 12th.
00:31:23.700The following day, Jocelyn's mother was notifying that bullying by another student was confirmed.
00:31:28.880This is according to the school district.
00:31:31.820The student was disciplined in accordance with the student code of conduct.
00:31:37.220Again, we don't know how direct that was.
00:31:40.520We don't know the impact that was had.
00:31:42.840And we don't know if what Jocelyn said about her experiences are true, but it's hard to believe that she would go around telling her friends that she had been molested if that weren't true.
00:31:55.680And obviously, the school, as they took seriously, apparently, had an obligation to report that to CPS.
00:32:01.900And so all this to say investigations are ongoing.
00:32:06.840The truth is this poor young girl killed herself.
00:32:08.960There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Trump had anything to do with it, that Republicans had anything to do with it, that deportations had anything to do with it.
00:32:17.980And like, what is actually the position here?
00:32:20.240Is the position here because this girl tragically took her life that we shouldn't deport people?
00:32:26.100Like, is your position that we shouldn't have borders, that we shouldn't have immigration policy, that we shouldn't kick people out who have murdered, who have raped, who have stolen?
00:32:34.080Like, try to tell me what's going on here, because it really just looks like emotional manipulation and propaganda at the expense of the peace of her family and justice for this little girl.
00:32:44.960And so let us be very careful on both sides of the aisle when we hear anything that so squarely confirms our priors.
00:32:53.360Again, that sounds too good or sounds too bad to be true.
00:32:56.840Let us dig in and ask the question, what is actually true?
00:33:01.000And if there is doubt that comes up about the veracity of a claim, we should dig deeper into those doubts and ask really good questions because lives are on the line.
00:33:11.460And by the way, this family has raised like tens of thousands of dollars at this point.
00:33:16.820And I think before donating, like you got to ask some questions about like, what is the truth that really went on here?
00:33:23.600Because if the family victimized this poor girl, then I don't think that we should be donating our dollars to them.
00:33:29.440All right, let's move on to the next story.
00:33:33.600We've got a couple other things I want to respond to.
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00:34:38.880This is a video that was going around on X.
00:34:42.560An actress named K.J. Smith, best known for starring in Tyler Perry movies, she suggested on the red carpet of the NAACP Image Awards on Saturday.
00:36:00.140You've imbibed the 1619 lie that there is this unbroken thread of racism, white supremacy, and slavery that has taken on different forms since 1619.
00:36:09.500And that you're under the thumb of white oppression.
00:36:22.300Probably things that you've earned that you've worked very hard for.
00:36:25.560But you have worked hard to earn more things than the vast majority of Americans, white, black, or brown, have ever been able to earn.
00:36:33.580How can you stand there as a movie star, on the red carpet, as a black woman, and actually say that you and other black Americans are oppressed?
00:36:43.280So you were able to do that, but other black Americans can't.
00:36:56.860You can't point to Letitia James or Ketanji Brown Jackson or Thomas Sowell or Clarence Thomas.
00:37:04.720You can't point to any of those people to try to prove your point that black Americans have upward mobility in the United States for some reason.
00:37:12.540Like, all of those people are just outside of the reality for black America, which is that they are under the iron fist of white supremacist oppression when it's just not true.
00:37:24.300Again, like, read Thomas Sowell, read Discrimination and Disparities, read Quest for Cosmic Justice, and you will see that just looking at the numbers, looking at the stats, in several ways black Americans were actually doing better.
00:37:41.420When you look at fatherlessness rates, when you look at employment rates, when you look at crime rates, when you look at marriage and divorce rates in the 50s and the 60s, when racism was actually more institutionalized and pervasive than they are doing today.
00:37:58.600Really, what we see is a steep decline across all of these categories in black Americans and white Americans, too, but especially among black Americans in the 60s and 70s, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, after the growth of the welfare state.
00:38:15.660And so, really, you can't blame this unbroken threat of slavery when really things have gotten worse since Democrats have implemented policies that are said to help black and brown minority communities.
00:38:32.040And plus, again, I just don't think that what she is saying is actually true, that this political environment is uniquely bad for black Americans.
00:38:43.900I mean, Trump got a pretty good share of the black American vote.
00:38:47.400Obviously, Democrats are always going to run away with the black vote.
00:38:50.580Maybe not always, but they do right now.
00:38:53.300But Trump got an increased share of black men.
00:39:00.160But again, when you imbibe this propaganda, this victim mentality, even as you are standing in a very expensive dress on the red carpet, like you're just unable to see things clearly.
00:39:12.860But she is literally saying that black Americans should go back to Ghana, for instance, that they offer a right of abode policy, allowing people of African descent to live and work indefinitely in the country.
00:39:29.440There's another country that has introduced a law granting citizenship to descendants of enslaved Africans who can prove their ancestry.
00:39:36.960Yeah, well, that's the issue, is that a lot of black Americans today are not ancestors of slaves.
00:39:45.400They're not actually from the lineage of African slaves.
00:39:50.140They actually might have ancestors who were enslavers.
00:39:54.600And so that's an inconvenient reality.
00:39:56.640When we talk about reparations and any of these things, who's oppressed, who's the oppressor, it actually all is very complicated.
00:40:02.960And you end up seeing that every single person, no matter their melanin count, no matter their background, has been a part of the, or their ancestry has been a part of the oppressor and the oppressed, the conquered and the conqueror.
00:40:18.600That's just the reality of human history.
00:40:22.140And so when you try to make it literally black and white, as critical race theory tries to do, you paint a binary that's just not real.
00:41:33.580Either you have power and you have leverage and you have all of these things and you're going to stay here and you're going to help make America better.
00:41:40.280I won't say great again, but make America better or you're going to flee to Ghana.
00:41:44.400I think another question in all of this is like what non-white majority country is a better place economically, is a better place opportunity wise for black people?
00:41:57.000I mean, I would want to know, is it Ghana?
00:42:02.140Are these places actually freer and economically more advantaged, offer better opportunities and more freedom and more rights and more justice for black people than, say, the United States?
00:42:15.740If so, okay, if I were a black person, I would probably want to leave there too or leave here and go there too.
00:42:22.000I'm just not sure that is the awakening they will have if they arrive there.
00:42:29.020I don't think that she even represents the majority of how black people feel, whether they voted for Donald Trump or whether they voted for Kamala Harris.
00:43:15.480And so I wanted to bring in the best and clearest and most solid and most dynamic speakers to give the women the meat that they need when it comes to theology and apologetics and how we think about culture and the world that we're in from a Christian perspective.
00:43:29.200That's what we're doing again this year.
00:44:14.340Not my experience, because I literally mostly – yeah, I have pretty much only conservative friends.
00:44:20.500Now, I have some friends that we just don't talk politics, but they're not full-on lips.
00:44:24.580Like, we agree on the basics of everything.
00:44:26.940So I wouldn't have a conversation like this.
00:44:29.760However, I could see this happening, and I've talked to people who live in California and elsewhere who have had this kind of conversation.
00:44:35.760And you tell me if you think it's realistic.
00:46:03.120If she were my friend, I would say good for you for standing firm, girl, because some people would have lied in that position.
00:46:11.080I want to know, do you think that is accurate to the independent woman's, maybe newly conservative woman's experience, especially those who voted for Trump because of the Maha movement?
00:46:25.060I think that that is probably an accurate representation because a lot of people moved from California to Austin.
00:46:32.420Their husbands were already conservative, but especially after everything in 2020, they started going to church.
00:46:39.180They started seeing, oh, these Trump supporters, they're not these like deranged Neanderthals that the media tells me they are.
00:46:45.780And huh, they have a point about things.
00:46:47.380They voted for Trump, maybe reluctantly.
00:46:49.300Maybe they don't love everything that he supports.
00:46:53.080And then they get this kind of reaction from some of their friends who have been distanced from them.
00:46:59.200I don't think it would come as a surprise, though, something like this.
00:47:03.060They definitely would have already talked about the election.
00:47:06.200Something that's interesting about White Lotus, which, again, I don't recommend.
00:47:09.760There has been a piece in the past of White Lotus that is making fun of liberals, at least that I've seen.
00:47:17.280It is, it's, they're strange, they're strange shows.
00:47:20.900There's like bits of satire in there and certainly cultural critique.
00:47:24.700And sometimes it's hard to tell like what is being made fun of from the bits of pieces and pieces that I've seen.
00:47:30.080But it's also a little self-reflective.
00:47:32.760I'm sure most people on White Lotus are truly progressive themselves.
00:47:35.920But it makes fun of these kinds of elite progressives for sure.
00:47:41.080And there is a critique of lavishness in here and all of that.
00:47:45.760But I just wanted to see what you saw.
00:47:48.940So interestingly, actress Leslie Bibb, who plays Kate, and Kate, I guess, is the person who is the conservative in that group.
00:47:59.100Okay, she told Variety that the scene was actually written back in 2022, since the season was originally set to be filmed in January 2023, before the SAG strike happened.
00:48:15.000Now that the episode dropped after the 2024 election, it takes on a new significance.
00:48:19.660When we were filming it, she said it actually felt like it was going to be irrelevant.
00:48:23.800Bibb said of the scene, everything feels so divisive, yet we're not.
00:48:27.060I mean, they're all sort of passionate women and have all these feelings with all these different stances.
00:48:33.500This is conservative coded language right here.
00:48:36.480To say that there are all different kinds of women with all different kinds of stances, it's only conservatives who talk like that, especially when you're in Hollywood.
00:48:43.500But there is some tether between them.
00:48:45.480You don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater just because of their political views.
00:48:52.000Maybe this is also true of her own life.
00:48:54.340I'm just saying, interesting to see something like this in the media.
00:48:58.880I know it was filmed previously, but it also just seems a part of this cultural shift that it's kind of like okay to not depict Trump supporters as stupid and ugly all the time.
00:49:14.500You don't want to be in a situation of disaster strikes, some kind of calamity supply chain issue where you don't have the medication that you need.
00:49:21.340You want to make sure that you have an emergency supply kit of two things.
00:49:24.600You want to make sure that you've got a year-long supply of the prescriptions that you and your family rely on.
00:49:30.500But if you rely on something that your body really needs to survive, whether it's seizure medication, thyroid medication, you want to make sure that you've got extra on hand.
00:49:38.780You don't want to rely on the pharmacy or even your doctor every month.
00:49:41.580Anything could happen, but you also need a Jace case, and this is a stash of antibiotics that you could need for a life-threatening infection.
00:49:50.940You can even add on things like Tamiflu, Ivermectin that can also be life-saving, or an EpiPen that can be life-saving.
00:49:58.860And so it's just better to be safe than sorry.
00:50:23.980We've got some fun things coming up, some exciting things coming up.
00:50:27.740The Relatable team is actually traveling a bit this month for a really fun, exclusive interview that I am so excited to reveal to you.
00:50:37.220We've got some behind-the-scenes content that will also be coming out.
00:50:40.740We filmed two relatable at-home sessions episodes last week about parenting.
00:50:48.640We get into all of the questions about parenting and also another one about how to set rhythms for your home.
00:50:54.960I love talking about the slower-paced, not-dependent-upon-the-news cycle or algorithm subjects with y'all, especially to the subscribers who love it so much.
00:51:07.100If you go to BlazeTV.com, you can use – or it's BlazeTV.com slash Allie.