Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 793 ｜ An Atheist & a Christian Define Christian Nationalism

00:00:00.000 What is Christian nationalism? Is it this dangerous fascist movement? Is it a push for

00:00:08.440 theocracy or is it just Christians exercising their faith as they try to influence policy

00:00:14.780 and culture just like everyone else with a worldview does? We are going to discuss and

00:00:20.100 kind of debate this a little bit with our friend James Lindsay. He is an atheist, but

00:00:25.460 he pushes back a lot against critical theory, critical race theory, queer theory. And so we

00:00:31.600 agree on a ton, but we also disagree fundamentally on where right and wrong and therefore on where

00:00:38.520 the basis of law comes from. So a really, really interesting conversation. I learned a lot from

00:00:44.040 it. I think that you will too. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Code Ranchers.

00:00:48.380 Go to goodranchers.com. Use code Allie for American meat delivered right to your front door. That's

00:00:52.960 goodranchers.com code Allie.

00:00:55.460 James, thanks so much for joining us again. How are you doing?

00:01:08.220 I am doing better, so I'm good. Thank you.

00:01:11.100 Good. Okay. We've got a lot to cover. People know last week you were supposed to be on. We had

00:01:15.980 technical difficulties. Now you're back. Everything is good to go. This will probably be a two-part

00:01:21.920 thing because our conversations are typically lengthier. Before we get into all the topics

00:01:28.220 that I want to talk about with everything going on in the news, I want to discuss something that I've

00:01:33.800 observed on your Twitter feed for, I don't know if it's the past few months or past few weeks,

00:01:38.200 but you seem to be, and you just clarify where you need to clarify. My impression is that you are in

00:01:44.380 greater conflict with Christian conservative Twitter than you have been previously. There

00:01:50.980 seems to be a lot of back and forth and arguments between you and Christian conservatives that you

00:01:56.240 probably agree with in a lot of ways, but there seems to be some, I don't know, dissent there.

00:02:02.000 There's one issue, actually. So to nitpick, I honestly don't think I'm arguing with Christians. I'm

00:02:08.080 arguing with people who think they're Christians, but that's a very Christian thing to say, which I

00:02:12.740 can't claim. So I'm arguing with people who are in favor of the Christian nationalism movement. I

00:02:19.380 don't think that the Christian nationalist movement is a good idea. I have absolutely no problem with

00:02:23.920 Christians, believing Christians. In fact, I think that preventing the Christian nationalist move is

00:02:28.960 part of protecting Christians' rights and freedoms to believe according to their pursuit and

00:02:34.860 understanding of scripture that they work out with their pastors. So like Stephen Wolf,

00:02:39.000 William Wolf, those are two examples of people who advocate for Christian nationalism. Yeah, I just

00:02:43.600 released a podcast about them. Okay. So I called it the two wolves of Christian nationalism. Their

00:02:49.180 names are kind of a funny situation, I guess. Kind of a funny, they're not related as far as I know.

00:02:56.480 It's kind of funny that their last names are both Wolf. Okay. Yeah. And tell me, I mean,

00:03:02.740 you're probably about to do this anyway, but how would you define, and maybe all three of you define

00:03:09.320 Christian nationalism and what's your issue? Well, that's the problem is that if you actually,

00:03:15.040 if you follow both Stephen and William, and this is the point of my podcast that I did about,

00:03:19.880 or part of the point of my podcast about Christian nationalism, there's not one definition. And

00:03:27.060 there are in fact, multiple definitions. And there are people that are kind of arguing within this

00:03:31.660 Christian conservative space that are pointing out that this is kind of strategically advantageous

00:03:36.420 because it allows for the so-called Mott and Bailey argumentation strategy, which is that there are

00:03:41.180 more kind of aggressive or activist views. And I think Stephen Wolf's having read a good part of his

00:03:48.000 book, the case for Christian nationalism, the book's 475 pages long, and I've got things to do that

00:03:52.760 involve communism and not reading that. So I didn't finish it, but I read a good part of it.

00:03:57.780 He's got a much more aggressive kind of activist position about what Christian nationalism means.

00:04:04.220 Williams is actually a bit softer, and that gives the ability to play between the two. You can say,

00:04:12.000 you know, you can push for this idea of Christian nationalism. And then are you talking about,

00:04:17.360 say, the view of somebody like Stephen? Are you talking about the view of somebody like William?

00:04:21.860 Are you talking about the view of some of the, you know, pastors and things that we have friends with,

00:04:25.740 I know we're both friends with, who have a much more kind of soft idea where it's, well,

00:04:30.540 we're going to bring back Christian values throughout the nation and think of ourselves

00:04:33.980 as a Christian nation. So there are a multitude of definitions. And there are people, and I feel like

00:04:39.460 Stephen Wolf could be named in this regard, and William Wolf can be named in this regard,

00:04:43.520 who are very happy to move around between definitions and mean different things at different times,

00:04:50.100 which is obviously not just something that we associate with the woke. It's something that a

00:04:54.300 philosopher named Nicholas Shackle in 2005, defined as the woke's defining characteristic.

00:05:00.400 They called it in a paper, he defined the Mont and Bailey strategy in a paper in 2005 that he titled

00:05:06.160 On the Vacuity of Postmodernist Methodology. And it's the idea that words don't have stable,

00:05:13.760 clear meanings, and people go back and forth between them. So if we read Stephen Wolf's book,

00:05:18.080 and I have done a fair amount of this, and you talk to a lot of people who say that they believe

00:05:22.900 in Christian nationalism, they say they don't recognize what is being portrayed there. Like

00:05:27.160 that we're going to have a Christian prince who is going to be the highest political office in the

00:05:30.560 land that's going to rule over everything as the avatar of Christ on earth. That's in the book.

00:05:34.960 I don't think most Christians in the United States agree with that idea. I think they actually want

00:05:38.660 religious liberty. So I'm not sure what it means. And that's a huge part of the problem.

00:05:44.640 Okay. I haven't read Stephen Wolf's book. From my understanding, there are, as you said,

00:05:51.020 different definitions that people use. When it's kind of lobbed by the left, or people who consider

00:05:56.560 themselves maybe progressive Christians, really, like they might call me a Christian nationalist.

00:06:02.320 They might say, oh, that's Christian nationalism simply for holding mainstream conservative Christian

00:06:06.820 views. Like I am against abortion. I am for these abortion regulations. I am against drag queen

00:06:14.300 story hour. I am also for, although I understand this is debated and things like that, I am for

00:06:20.460 the traditional definition of marriage that was enshrined in law for hundreds of years. But I do

00:06:27.200 not believe in a theocracy because I don't believe that's what Christians are called to. I don't believe

00:06:32.200 in forcing people to abide by the same biblical tenets that Christians abide by because we just don't

00:06:40.040 see that model in the life of Christ and in the New Testament. And so I think that there is, there's a

00:06:47.360 shifting definition there, especially when it's coming from the left to kind of use as a pejorative,

00:06:55.560 basically believing that Christians should be the only ones that should check our beliefs at the voting

00:07:00.940 booth, that we should not allow our faith to inform what we think about politics or culture. And I just

00:07:07.280 think that's impossible. Yes, my faith is going to inform how I vote. That doesn't mean that I believe

00:07:13.240 in forcing everyone to abide by my beliefs. But of course, I am going to submit to the belief that God

00:07:22.900 created the heavens and the earth and therefore his ways are better. So I would have never called that

00:07:28.380 Christian nationalism. I think up until now, it would have just been you have a worldview. Everyone has a

00:07:33.720 worldview. Everyone votes in accordance with their values. Progressive atheists vote in accordance with

00:07:39.540 their values. They wouldn't call it worship. They might not even call it a worldview, but it is voting

00:07:45.520 in accordance with their values. So like, help me understand, is what I am talking about dangerous

00:07:52.300 Christian nationalism, Christian simply doing what I think everyone does, voting in accordance to what

00:07:56.900 we believe is good and right and true? No. And as a matter of fact, I think that you should be doing

00:08:02.380 that. I think that I actually think that frankly, that the pulpit should be getting more political

00:08:06.980 right now. And I, you know, I've talked about this publicly before, you know, I get to very

00:08:12.800 controversially, I get to go speak at the pastor's conference for Turning Point USA and everybody

00:08:16.640 has to tell about this. I saw that, James. I saw that. And I do have to say, like, I thought it was

00:08:20.520 interesting. I did think it was interesting. I was like, obviously, you have so much to tell pastors and

00:08:25.800 that's why I have you on the show. I want people, I want Christians to hear from you.

00:08:29.500 So I will say I like, I was a little surprised that you were speaking at this conference,

00:08:33.940 if I'm honest. Well, I spoke at it last year too. So I'm great friends with Charlie. I'm great

00:08:38.620 friends with Rob McCoy. They respect what I have to offer to the conversation. They know that they

00:08:45.000 can trust me not to come in and try to step on people's theology or tell them how they should

00:08:49.080 interpret the Bible. I never do that or very little. I only do that kind of to shoot back when

00:08:54.580 I see somebody being kind of a snot on social media or whatever, because I did bother to read

00:08:59.900 the Bible. I did bother to try to understand, you know, something of Christian theology before I

00:09:04.540 started opening my mouth about it. But no, what you're characterizing is, in fact, the opposite of

00:09:09.540 what Stephen Wolf has characterized. Stephen Wolf has said quite openly in podcasts, for example,

00:09:14.520 that he the atheism will be stomped out. It will not exist under his view of what the country is

00:09:20.980 supposed to look like. And so that's a little bit strident. And I kind of wonder when this kind

00:09:28.360 of thing comes up, you know, well, OK, so I'm, I guess, technically agnostic, not atheist, really,

00:09:35.100 but I don't believe in God. Which church are you going to force me to go to and which government

00:09:39.540 agency are you going to set up to force me to go to church? I don't want that. I don't want a

00:09:43.680 country where we have a government agency which determines which churches are legitimate and which

00:09:47.640 ones aren't. Even if it's not about me personally forcing me to go to church, do Mormons count?

00:09:53.720 What about these woke churches? Are they Christian? Are they going to get stamped out? Or do they have

00:09:57.380 their religious freedom? Now, it's uncomfortable to say that we should protect the freedom of

00:10:00.880 these woke churches. But this is a country built off of religious freedom. So what I when we talk

00:10:08.180 about the left and the way that they use the word Christian nationalism, and then we see these kinds

00:10:12.640 of things that are being said that are much more strident. It's to me very clear that, you know,

00:10:17.900 you've got this label stuck on you by the left. We know that the left has cultural hegemony in this

00:10:22.580 country. In fact, they have the Department of Justice basically under their their their umbrella.

00:10:28.060 And we know that the Department of Justice and the FBI are extremely concerned with this so-called

00:10:33.860 rise of white nationalist extremism and all of this nonsense, which they are tying to so-called

00:10:38.940 Christian nationalist extremism. And so people like you are going to get labeled under these

00:10:43.720 kind of more extreme views when they're playing this multi-definition game. And I think that the

00:10:48.060 left has set a trap to get people to get conservative Christians to feel desperate enough to kind of

00:10:54.200 say, you know what, I woke up yesterday. Finally, I'm angry, and I'm going to put my foot down and

00:11:00.500 assert myself and we're just going to do it this way. And they think that they can reclaim to be as

00:11:05.580 generous as possible. They think they can reclaim this term. Even if we step away from the idea of

00:11:09.900 Stephen's very kind of strident Christian nationalism, look at William's kind of more

00:11:14.440 soft form that he's kind of pushing a little more vague and ambiguous form where we know we're going

00:11:19.900 to use Christianity to inform the laws. We're going to use Christianity to inform politicians.

00:11:24.700 This is the kind of thing that he's saying. We're going to have a seat at the table. Again, I ask

00:11:28.100 which government commission are you going to set up to decide which faiths get to come in and

00:11:32.380 inform? Do the Mormons get to come in and inform? You know, the woke Mormons versus the kind of more

00:11:36.920 conservative Mormons, which ones are allowed at the table, which ones aren't? Does the Presbyterian

00:11:41.000 church that has the drag queen preaching from the pulpit, are they allowed to come? Why or why not?

00:11:46.260 Which government agency are you setting up to decide which faith is legitimate and which faith isn't?

00:11:50.080 And what do you do with people who aren't? These are our questions. But what I feel like is that

00:11:53.960 even these people that have this kind of vaguer, softer definition of what Christian nationalism

00:11:59.380 might represent, even to the point where it's just what you were describing for yourself,

00:12:03.860 I feel like the problem is that the most hardcore pressing definition is going to get stuck on all

00:12:11.520 of them. And we're going to see something very much like January 6th all over again. And there's

00:12:16.660 going to be this kind of wide dragnet for Christians who have publicly admitted, yeah,

00:12:20.220 I'm a Christian nationalist. And they're all going to get labeled as extremists by an angry

00:12:24.420 department of justice after some kind of an event. Maybe it's something like Charlottesville again.

00:12:28.720 Maybe it's something like J6 again. Then all of a sudden there's this, we need to fix the Christian

00:12:34.480 nationalist extremist, white nationalist extremist, because they're going to get mixed together. And

00:12:37.920 Stephen's not helping that. He had his very controversial tweet the other day where he said,

00:12:42.340 you know, that whatever he meant by it, he said that the white evangelical block is the only thing

00:12:46.680 that can save America. This doesn't help the case. He said that only the sole or the lone

00:12:53.100 bulwark against moral insanity in America. And just to clarify that, I actually responded to that last

00:12:58.260 night because I saw a lot of people, a lot of conservative Christians who like, you know,

00:13:03.760 very conservative Christians, anti-woke for sure, disagreeing with him and saying, you know,

00:13:08.760 this is racist. Of course, this is not necessarily true. And I haven't read his book. And so just

00:13:14.580 looking at that tweet alone, I took it to mean what we see statistically that if you look at every Pew

00:13:21.380 research poll that breaks political, cultural, moral views down by subgenres of Christians or

00:13:28.880 by religions, the white evangelical block, of course, it doesn't have one for black evangelicals,

00:13:34.360 but the white evangelical block is the most conservative on every issue, marriage, gender,

00:13:40.340 abortion, guns, immigration. So I took his tweet to mean that. A lot of people took his tweet to mean

00:13:46.280 just like racism. We're back to the same problem. Yeah, I didn't see it that way. But I, I frankly,

00:13:53.020 I don't know Steven very well. I read his most of his book. I've read many reviews of his book. I've

00:14:00.080 watched his behavior online and this is the most important. I think he knows what he's doing. I

00:14:04.560 think he knows that the statement was ambiguous. I think he knows that actually somebody asked,

00:14:08.260 will you explain it? And he put a funny, you know, GIF image saying no, he won't explain himself.

00:14:14.060 I think he knows exactly what he's doing and he's playing on both sides. Well, he might have later,

00:14:18.700 but his initial reaction was that he refused to explain himself further. Uh, and so I think he

00:14:24.000 knows what he's doing. I think he's playing in that ambiguity that the same Mott and Bailey ambiguity

00:14:29.800 that we constantly see. And now Christians, conservative Christians in particular are

00:14:35.160 arguing and they're arguing across the race line. I know that Virgil Walker got upset about this,

00:14:39.360 for example. Um, these are all people like the people pushing back against him.

00:14:43.260 I totally respect them in every way. They're not like liberals pushing back against a conservative

00:14:48.280 take. These are people who I totally align with theologically. So I just thought it was an

00:14:52.620 interesting conflict online. But so I see a guy that's sowing division when he's doing things like

00:14:57.640 this. I think he knows what he's doing. Um, I see the same with William. He plays this kind of

00:15:02.520 Mott and Bailey game all the time. Uh, and so I, I'm concerned about what the purposes that they have

00:15:08.280 are. Maybe it's totally benign. Maybe they're just, you know, clumsy with how they phrase things.

00:15:14.880 Maybe they're playing a game that they know what they're doing. Maybe they're trying to create a

00:15:17.680 power grab. Maybe it's something else. But I do know that what's going to happen is that the left

00:15:21.560 is going to seize upon every single one of these examples. This is already a term that the left is

00:15:26.320 horrified by that when I was, before I got kind of more involved and started spending time with

00:15:31.600 conservative Christians regularly, which has only been in the past, what, four years or so. Right.

00:15:36.240 Um, when I first met, for example, Michael O'Fallon, I didn't know him. He called me,

00:15:43.000 said, will you come to this conference? It turns out it was the G3 conference that year

00:15:46.200 and talk about woke. And I was like, no, I don't know who you are. I don't know what this is. And I

00:15:51.540 typed him into the search engine and a media matters article came up and I was still left enough to

00:15:56.200 think media matters might be something real. Yeah. And it said that he's a Christian nationalist.

00:16:01.600 Even though Mike has spent years very studiously avoiding that label because he knew the trap that

00:16:07.120 was being set and advising people to avoid that label. So they labeled him a Christian nationalist

00:16:11.580 and in my brain, now I'm not right for this. I'm just saying this is what happened as somebody in,

00:16:16.580 you know, vaguely at the edge of no longer being left, you know, kind of emerging from that cocoon,

00:16:23.660 low information, meet this guy or encounter with this guy. And I see the words Christian

00:16:28.860 nationalist. My brain immediately switched and said white nationalist. And I remember calling

00:16:33.420 my colleague, Peter Boghossian, cause we were both invited together. And Peter's like, we have to go,

00:16:38.260 we have to do this. And I was like, no, this dude's a white nationalist. This is like Nazi stuff.

00:16:41.980 And so what I'm saying is, is that if that's where I was in, in, in 2019, how many thousands or

00:16:48.380 millions probably of, of left-leaning Americans are going to see things like what Stephen's putting out

00:16:54.160 on Twitter, playing this game, and they're going to associate that with this. And then they're going

00:16:58.360 to, when the, when the department of justice decides to throw down the hammer,

00:17:02.220 guess what dragnet you're getting caught up in.

00:17:04.720 I think that you would probably agree that our primary motivation and arguing for anything,

00:17:22.620 it's not what the reaction is going to be, but whether it is true, whether it is right. And I'm

00:17:27.740 not agreeing with them or any of their methods or whatever, but if we are to take what they're saying

00:17:34.260 at face value, if we are to be as generous as possible, maybe they're saying these things

00:17:38.540 because they genuinely believe it's right. And it's virtuous because, you know, I get called by

00:17:44.140 people on the left divisive all the time. If I disagree with any mainstream narrative,

00:17:48.840 if I disagree with president Biden, if I disagree with a false teacher presenting false theology,

00:17:54.280 I get called divisive. Now, should I not do that? Because someone's going to call me racist.

00:18:01.080 Someone's going to call me divisive. No, I'm still going to say those things because I believe

00:18:05.740 they're true no matter what the response is. So from a more like charitable perspective,

00:18:10.680 maybe they're just saying those things, not thinking about the response, not even thinking

00:18:15.560 about sowing division, but, but just because they think they're true the same way that you do.

00:18:20.100 Well, I mean, I don't disagree with that. And I don't think that we should be that concerned with

00:18:23.940 what the left is going to label us, but we're also in a war. So we need to be strategic. And

00:18:28.520 they may be saying things that they genuinely, genuinely believe for, and they probably are.

00:18:35.200 I encourage you when you get the time to read a 475 page book, you didn't have time to read

00:18:39.680 Stephen's book. I encourage you to read it and see what you think of his theology and what you think

00:18:45.040 of his, his argument. Of course, like I said, Williams is very different. And then if we were to go to our

00:18:51.120 friends like Tom Askell, who are very soft on this issue, a very gentle man, wonderful guy,

00:18:56.260 you're going to find an even softer definition. But when we're playing around in these different

00:19:00.980 definitions and we know how we know how this game is played, we're not talking about what the left

00:19:06.220 is going to call us. We're talking about what the department of justice is going to do in order to

00:19:10.040 discredit a wide swath of the country or to intervene and start saying that the churches are

00:19:16.000 some kind of a problem and use that as a pretext to start bringing government influence over the

00:19:21.300 churches. We have to play a smarter game than one where the entire basis for the argument is 10

00:19:29.660 different things that people that are involved in the argument are openly saying it's strategic to

00:19:35.220 use this Mott and Bailey strategic equivocation between definitions. So it, it's just a kind of,

00:19:42.340 it's almost a tangential point that it's a, it's definitely a trap the left is setting for,

00:19:48.980 for Christian conservatives to discredit them like the deplorables, but something that will

00:19:53.600 actually stick instead of becoming a rallying cry that has a lot of effect. Um, and in a stick in a

00:20:00.040 way where we're talking, you know, legal definitions of domestic extremism, you know, what are we going

00:20:05.280 to see? Are we going to see another stand down in the military where Christian conservatives get thrown

00:20:09.120 out of the military for, for domestic extremism or dishonorably discharged or whatever on the other

00:20:13.340 side of say Charlottesville 2.0 because of these kinds of definitions. So if they want to forward

00:20:18.260 this kind of idea about make an argument for Christian nationalism, the first thing that

00:20:21.580 needs to happen is they need to sit down and they need to get it clear what they mean.

00:20:24.860 I actually went to a conference. I sat in the audience and listened to Stephen Wolf talk about

00:20:28.760 this. There was a panel, there were five guys on the panel and I listened to them for, you know,

00:20:33.260 an hour, hour and a half, whatever the panel lasted. And my impression was that the bun just ain't ready

00:20:39.240 to come out of the oven. Like they, they, they have not organized their thoughts in a way

00:20:43.940 that's sufficient to push a mass movement in Christians, uh, across the country. Cause it is

00:20:50.440 a very large, as you said, it is the largest kind of single voting block, except for maybe,

00:20:55.360 you know, suburban wine moms. And so the bun isn't ready to come out of the oven, but I get the

00:21:02.900 impression looking at the way that they're playing this game and that they're not sitting down and

00:21:07.540 trying to clarify these things that the bun isn't meant to be ready to come out of the oven.

00:21:13.840 There's this opportunity. It's the same opportunity the left does where, you know,

00:21:17.420 they say, Oh, or, you know, Christian nationalism is going to destroy our democracy. I can guarantee

00:21:21.600 you that sentence is coming sooner or later. Right. And then they mean something by Christian

00:21:25.780 nationalism, but that's not the point because what the, the, the real tricky word there is

00:21:29.400 democracy. Our democracy means something different to the left. Right. And so they play in that space.

00:21:34.680 And you say, Oh, you're against democracy. If you don't go along with us, no, I'm against your

00:21:39.040 democracy as a matter of fact, which means that the deplorables or the Christian nationalists or

00:21:42.900 whoever else don't count for whatever reason, as, as people like Mao said to have incorrect

00:21:47.980 political opinions is like not having a soul. So you're not a person. So you don't actually have

00:21:51.800 any political rights. And this is, he explained that very clearly in 1957. I get very concerned about

00:21:56.880 that, uh, as a practical matter, but from a, from a position of, of what's my take on the

00:22:04.460 issue overall, it's very, very clear that we don't just have disagreement between different

00:22:09.200 voices. We have people who are espousing more than one position at the same time, depending

00:22:14.200 on who's looking and how much pressure is on them. Uh, and it's very unclear. Like Steven,

00:22:19.400 for example, was asked some very pointed questions in the Q and a at that conference. And he backed

00:22:24.820 off from almost everything that I read in this book. It was very circumspect when all of a sudden

00:22:29.720 he had to present his ideas out loud, but his book is very strident. And so what's going on there?

00:22:34.620 He's espousing two different positions that don't necessarily line up with one another. Um,

00:22:38.980 that's a concerning, yeah, put that's a concerning place to be. And the reason I think it's most

00:22:44.640 concerning is that it sets up Christians to, to plant a flag into something that is not ready to

00:22:53.020 have a flag planted in it. We don't, you don't know what you're actually standing up for. And that

00:22:57.180 definition might change out from under you at any time. Yeah. Here's my, before we move on from this,

00:23:02.980 um, I guess my question is because I think you would agree every law that exists speaks to

00:23:13.100 a moral view. There is a definition of right and wrong from which we get laws. This idea

00:23:22.140 that it's not good to murder, not only that it's not good, but that it should actually be

00:23:26.820 illegal. This idea that you have a right not to be assaulted, that you have a right not to get

00:23:32.040 your property stolen from. These all come from somewhere. Now I think the founders, some of them

00:23:39.080 deists, some of them agnostic, some of them probably actually religious Christians still thought as in

00:23:45.320 the tradition of England, as in the tradition of Western civilization, that as a general basis for our

00:23:52.360 morality and our laws, we should look to the Bible, which I would say is different than a theocracy.

00:23:58.760 It is simply acknowledging that every law speaks to a moral view, speaks to a belief in right and

00:24:05.180 wrong, speaks to a belief in human rights. So is it quote unquote Christian nationalism to say that I,

00:24:15.940 as a Christian, if I believe that God created all things, that means he defines all things,

00:24:22.500 that means he believes, that's the central, one of the central tenets of Christianity, Genesis 1.1,

00:24:27.800 then of course I'm going to believe that the laws that we have should in general be based in a biblical

00:24:34.260 morality. Now that is different than saying everyone must go to church, everyone must read their Bible,

00:24:40.080 you are not allowed to not believe in God. So like what's the difference there between Christian

00:24:46.360 nationalism and what I think is an inevitable conclusion or an inevitable product of Christianity

00:24:53.700 or really any belief that believes in the supreme authority of a being, which is that morality then

00:25:00.140 comes from that being, which means laws come from that morality. And so everything kind of does fall

00:25:06.200 under your worldview. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like, yeah, I understand. I don't know why we

00:25:11.000 parse that out. I mean, this is why, again, we have to be very clear on what we mean by Christian

00:25:15.620 nationalism, because it's very obvious that some people will mean that this is going to be a Christian

00:25:19.420 nation in a very kind of theocratic way and other people will not mean that. It also comes back to the

00:25:27.020 question of how do we decide whose theology gets to inform the state? The answer that we actually have

00:25:32.980 now, what it turns out is that while we do have a deep and long Judeo-Christian value set informing the

00:25:39.800 United States and the founders were a mixture primarily of Christians and deists who are kind

00:25:45.700 of working this out, which is a point, by the way, that at that conference, they equivocated upon,

00:25:51.500 they actually tried to say that they all the founders who count were actually Christian. And somebody

00:25:56.020 asked about Madison and Jefferson. And the answer was, we don't have to live under what they called

00:26:00.940 Virginia supremacy. That's Virginia supremacy. Jefferson and Madison aren't that important.

00:26:05.620 They were fringe members, is what was said. I mean, they wrote the Declaration of the Constitution.

00:26:11.200 They're a little not fringe. And so what the American legal tradition is based in, while it is

00:26:17.280 informed by Judeo-Christian value sets underneath, it's actually based in English common law, which was

00:26:22.640 also based in certain Judeo-Christian value sets as well. So it's a tradition, a long tradition of

00:26:29.440 liberty that actually begins with religious liberty. And so when we start talking about this is a

00:26:36.200 Christian nation because its laws are informed off of a biblical morality, we have to be very,

00:26:42.320 very cautious about what we mean by that. When you say informed by, you know, what does that mean?

00:26:47.380 In the broadly liberal, post-enlightenment secular tradition, the idea is that, yeah, you can inform

00:26:52.860 your laws based off of, say, the Bible, but you have to make an argument that's not rooted purely in a

00:27:01.580 sectarian interpretation in order to convince people who maybe don't have that particular

00:27:06.380 interpretation. And what we've actually kind of chosen is a natural rights theory rooted in English

00:27:10.640 common law as the pathway that that's going to happen. So the Bible can inform people and they can

00:27:15.420 come. And Christians, of course, have, I mean, there's the National Prayer Breakfast. There's

00:27:20.240 their, you know, religious advisors. We had Paula White advising President Trump, for example.

00:27:26.580 And whatever you think of her theology is irrelevant, that the character exists, this position exists.

00:27:31.600 This is actually a thing that happens. The question has to become, how does that apply to every American?

00:27:37.560 And what other basis for the law other than merely a religious tradition? Because even among

00:27:44.060 Christians, there are massive disputes in theological interpretation. And so does Stephen Wolf get to come

00:27:50.120 in and say, well, the Bible clearly says, because of some interpretation, and this is his argument,

00:27:54.380 because of some interpretation of the prelapsarian state preceding the fall in the Garden of Eden,

00:28:00.980 about how Adam and Eve were organizing what was like kind of a proto-family structure, that he makes the

00:28:08.520 argument that had the fall never occurred, what would have happened is that there would have been nations

00:28:12.560 forming anyway within the Garden, and that those nations as peoples in the Garden would have had a

00:28:22.460 biblical morality, because obviously they're in a pre-fallen state, so they would have to have a, you know,

00:28:28.340 Genesis-driven biblical morality, whatever God's law was, as it was dictated in the Garden.

00:28:33.600 And so it's perfectly reasonable and natural to extend that and say that, well, whatever interpretation,

00:28:38.440 I guess, that Stephen Wolf has is going to inform the government. And I start to wonder how we're

00:28:44.100 going to pick and choose, and how we're going to enforce that. Because the second we switch from,

00:28:49.300 yeah, we have a kind of cultural underpinning of Judeo-Christian values, and those inform how we

00:28:55.640 select our laws, and they inform how we behave culturally, and the kind of cultural mores,

00:28:59.840 because there's legal enforcement, and there's cultural enforcement of values and norms and so on.

00:29:04.040 And we slip into, all of a sudden, a position now where, no, this is what the state says,

00:29:09.280 and everybody has to do this, because of, you know, whatever particular confession decided that

00:29:15.440 it has enough power to plant its flag in the federal government, or the state government,

00:29:19.360 or a local government. We've now slipped into a completely different entity, political entity,

00:29:27.900 literally something that's like, at least light theocracy, which requires creating government

00:29:34.140 institutions that decide which faiths are valid and which aren't. And if that's what you mean by

00:29:39.500 a Christian nation, I mean, what is it? Like, is it a Presbyterian nation? Is it a, you know,

00:29:45.320 whichever, I get confused about these details, as you know, I'm not, this is a little bit outside of

00:29:49.400 my ken. But, you know, is it like the 1689 confessional nation? Which one is it? And if that's the

00:29:55.880 wrong year, just bear with me, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Yeah. The, this is, those are two

00:30:02.140 different things. And until the Christians who want to push for something as bold and obviously

00:30:08.720 dangerous, given what the DOJ, et cetera, would think, before they want to push kind of blindly

00:30:14.060 into the space of, oh, we need a Christian nation, they'd better start sorting these things out and

00:30:19.680 being very clear so that they're not misleading. This is why so often I end up having these conversations

00:30:24.620 with Christians that are, you know, much more theologically grounded than I am. And I talked

00:30:29.140 to them and they read Stephen Wolf's book or William Wolf's articles and they come back to me and they

00:30:33.840 say something about like Jeremiah 23. They immediately go to the like false teachers documents and it's

00:30:40.880 like, oh goodness, you know? And so, um, without that clarity of meaning, you should not be pushing a

00:30:49.300 movement. And if you're deliberately as I think we, we, we aren't seeing debates between William

00:30:56.100 Wolf and Stephen Wolf about what it should mean. We see both of them using the term content that they

00:31:01.280 don't mean the same thing and content that it doesn't matter because it's all kind of moving in

00:31:05.820 the same direction. What you will see invariably in those situations is that the most intolerant will

00:31:12.080 seize the direction of the movement in the end and drive it into whatever direction it's going to go.

00:31:17.080 Um, and frankly, in this case, a lot of what's driving the so-called Christian nationalist movement,

00:31:22.080 where we get back to the brass tacks is a integralist movement, which is a Catholic program

00:31:28.400 that's been made ecumenical. So you have a Roman Catholic integralist movement. Integralism is to

00:31:34.640 reintegrate the church and the state into a single entity. Um, it was developed by one of the popes,

00:31:40.880 uh, in the, I think in the 1800s, it was a disaster in South America. Every time it was tried,

00:31:46.620 it turns out liberation theology was, was applied on the left from an integralist standpoint. So it

00:31:51.540 can be a lot of different things. It isn't necessarily this right wing phenomenon. It can,

00:31:57.020 it can occupy a lot of positions, but there are also this kind of new ecumenical movement. We're

00:32:00.720 all going to pretend that Catholics and Protestants and this Protestant and that Protestant are all

00:32:04.540 kind of on the same team. And what we're going to do is integrate that into the state kind of very

00:32:09.100 formally and officially. And that's, what's actually, if you get to where the money's coming from,

00:32:13.760 that's, what's actually driving the movement. And so I wonder, because I've talked to some of

00:32:18.200 these Catholic integralist guys and they're like, we're going to have an inquisition. We're going to

00:32:22.380 force convert people to Catholicism. I wonder honestly, if Protestants are getting used by these

00:32:27.260 people. I know I'm like, okay, so when you talk about that person who I probably agree with on a

00:32:31.660 lot of things, I'm like, are you talking about me too? Like, are you going to try to convert me to

00:32:35.800 Catholicism? Um, I told them that they were going to bend my knee and I told them I was going to bend

00:32:40.380 their knee backwards. So like, um, I don't, I'm not down with that. It's not, it's not a country I

00:32:46.420 want to live in. And so I don't know. I mean, sometimes they say yes. And sometimes they say

00:32:50.760 very much like what you see in, in kind of radical Islam, which by the way, is sometimes

00:32:55.660 categorized as an integralist movement as well. You see them say, you know, no, there's going to be

00:33:00.700 people who are of the book more or less. You're close enough. So we'll tolerate you. So again,

00:33:05.500 that depends who's in power. Yeah. You know, are we talking about something like Adrian Vermeule's

00:33:09.380 common good Christianity, which means somebody gets to define what the common good looks like,

00:33:14.300 which means there's going to be a stakeholder council that gets it. This is the same thing

00:33:17.800 that, that Klaus Schwab is doing. Well, I mean, or are we talking about something? Oh, go ahead.

00:33:22.200 Go ahead. Yeah. Or are we talking about something, you know, much more literally we need an inquisition

00:33:29.240 and we're going to force convert people. Yeah. You know, maybe they're going to go around and find

00:33:32.960 the Jews by feeding them delicious pork and things like that and force them to become Catholics.

00:33:39.440 Which is what, you know, the Spanish inquisition actually did. That's why they have such delicious

00:33:42.880 prosciutto and, you know, Salty Chon and so on in Spain. Who could refuse such a gift?

00:33:48.940 So I think that, and we can't go through all of this. We got to close this portion of the

00:34:05.780 conversation out because we've got so many other things to talk about. But if you look at the

00:34:10.340 tradition of the reformers and what they believed about governance and what they believed about

00:34:16.420 morality is that, yes, there were some, I would call them fringe reformers who believed in maybe

00:34:21.900 that more theocratic form of Christian nationalism. But I think that I am from the tradition of

00:34:28.020 Augustine, who obviously wasn't a reformer, but Augustine and then Calvin, who was a reformer,

00:34:33.220 who said, he said things like this, how malicious and hateful toward public welfare would a man be

00:34:38.500 who is offended by such diversity? And by that, he means people who have different beliefs and

00:34:42.540 different backgrounds, which he believed is perfectly adapted to maintain the observance of

00:34:47.440 God's law for the statement of some that the law of God given through Moses is dishonored when it is

00:34:53.140 abrogated and new laws preferred to it is utterly vain. And then he says, it is a fact that the law of

00:34:59.640 God, which we call the moral law, is nothing else than a testimony of natural law and of that conscience,

00:35:05.740 which God has engraved on the minds of men. And he believed even unbelievers can participate in a

00:35:11.460 society like this. Even unbelievers can rule a society like this. Actually, we see that in Romans

00:35:16.440 13. Paul says, look, God has instituted these governments for your good to punish the wrongdoer

00:35:22.800 and to reward the one who does right. Not talking about whether or not that leader is Christian.

00:35:29.640 And so I know that this is kind of confusing language just because of the era that it that it

00:35:34.680 comes out of. And I don't necessarily expect you to agree with it. But I think that that is the kind of

00:35:39.440 traditional Christian thought that any anything that is moral, anything that is right, is going to be

00:35:46.660 of God ultimately. And we believe that that is kind of naturally intrinsic in moral men, if that makes

00:35:56.500 sense. And so that is different than theocracy. That is simply saying, of course, Christians believe

00:36:01.340 in a Christian morality and we are going to vote in accordance with that. But we also believe that

00:36:06.420 that can be debated. We also believe that that can adapt to a pluralistic society. It just depends on

00:36:14.320 to what degree. So that's kind of where the debate is, I think. And I think you're right. That point

00:36:19.100 that the bun is not ready to come out of the oven with people saying, yay, Christian nationalism. I don't

00:36:25.320 think that they always know exactly what they even mean. So, OK, good discussion on that. Let's talk.

00:36:32.580 OK, since we're talking about disagreements before we get into the rest of it, I do want to. OK, so

00:36:37.360 you broke you broke my rule, which is OK. My rule is that friends don't disagree, quote, tweet friends.

00:36:45.920 That's that's my rule. And so if I disagree with a friend on Twitter, then I will like message them

00:36:52.980 or I'll text them or something like that. But that's OK. You disagreed. I said about the Nashville

00:36:57.800 shooting. It's an anti-Christian terrorist attack motivated by a pervasive, unabashed,

00:37:02.800 top down anti-Christian sentiment, which I believe is part of it. And then you said,

00:37:08.500 oh, and then you posted this picture, which we can put up on YouTube. I don't know if we have it

00:37:13.380 right now. And so basically, I just think that you disagreed with me saying that you said don't do a

00:37:19.140 Christian reaction and it's not a well-reasoned argument. So break that down a little bit. Why am I

00:37:25.620 wrong? Oh, so actually, I don't think you're wrong. So I'm glad you asked me about it. I actually am

00:37:32.620 not. Again, you should speak. We talked about this before. You should speak truth the way that you

00:37:37.720 see it. And I don't think that you're wrong. I do think there's a strong anti-Christian

00:37:40.840 sentiment. I do think that, say, for example, the woke and the trans movement in particular

00:37:45.040 have a massive axe to grind against Christianity. They blame so much for Christianity. They're in fact

00:37:50.220 kind of an anti-Christianity, like an upside down or inverted Christianity. Then that they're a

00:37:55.520 Gnostic Hermetic kind of spinoff or, you know, perversion of them. And we can thank Marx for that

00:38:02.900 mostly, kind of historically speaking. What I'm very worried, and it kind of ties into the Christian

00:38:07.160 nationalist thing, that what we're going to see is a dissension into greater identity politics,

00:38:11.780 that this is Christians against trans, as opposed to this is a normal, healthy society that's under

00:38:19.840 assault by what are very obviously radical activists. So what I'm concerned, the uh-oh,

00:38:24.520 was about are Christians going to get baited into this idea of a kind of standpoint-driven

00:38:33.040 identity war? Because I don't think identity wars are going to behoove anybody. I think that the

00:38:40.660 actual fight, it's going to be very Harry Potter-ish, is that it's normal people against

00:38:45.580 people that are somehow mentally deranged by critical theory. I think critical theory actually

00:38:52.860 is designed to mentally derange people, is to create psychopathologies and entitled narcissism

00:38:57.580 and vulnerable narcissism. And these people are not particularly well. Harry Potter, I brought up

00:39:03.060 because it is a morality tale of the normal kid, the normal person, his capacity for love being

00:39:09.100 ultimately what allows him to win in the end. Sorry, spoiler, that Harry wins over the seven

00:39:14.880 books against Voldemort, who's the kind of quintessential psychopath, who's lost his ability

00:39:20.680 for empathy, who's lost his ability for love, who's lost his perspective, his tagline is there is no good

00:39:24.800 or evil, there's only power in those too weak to seek it. And I think that critical theories derange

00:39:29.140 people into seeking and believing that the world only operates in terms of power, power that they're

00:39:33.340 being unjustly excluded from. So the uh-oh is actually that I hope that we stay broader minded

00:39:40.080 and we don't start holing ourselves up or siloing ourselves into, oh, this is a war, Christians versus

00:39:46.240 this. These people are waging war on the entirety of civil, frankly, of civilization. And Christians are

00:39:53.640 a very important part of that, an important part of the American civilization, a Western civilization in

00:39:58.960 particular. Uh, I mean, like we already said, I completely agree that our traditions are largely

00:40:04.140 Judeo-Christian in, in their orientation and their faith and reason working together, which is kind of

00:40:10.340 the magic sauce of the West. And what they do is they box out this kind of entitled narcissistic

00:40:14.680 Gnosticism. And so I'm, I didn't disagree with the analysis. I am concerned. I didn't know you had this

00:40:23.780 rule, by the way. I was, I'm concerned, uh, that there will be a new identitarian movement.

00:40:33.080 That's a very us against them reaction because the way that the, the left operates operationally,

00:40:39.480 and I talked to Vivek Ramaswamy about this recently, is that what a lot of conservatives don't

00:40:43.060 understand is that the left is very operational. They are actually, I don't think they're terribly

00:40:48.440 smart. We shouldn't underestimate our enemies, but they are actually very strategic. They're very,

00:40:54.500 very tactical. I mean, they can't be that brilliant because they can't figure out what a woman is,

00:40:58.440 but they're very tactical, very strategic. And there's a principle that they have in their,

00:41:04.740 their activist manual, which is called beautiful trouble. It's derived from Saul Alinsky's work.

00:41:09.740 It's kind of an updated version. It's online. It's a beautiful trouble.org. I encourage people to go

00:41:14.600 look at it. There are thousands of tactics and principles and maybe hundreds and not thousands.

00:41:19.420 There are a lot of tactics and principles and examples of how to do leftist activism.

00:41:25.760 And one of their core principles is your real action is your target's reaction. So if you can

00:41:31.580 get Christians to hole up and say, to try to silo off a part of society, and then to argue in terms of

00:41:37.340 Christianity versus trans, instead of that, this is an assault on sanity itself, which is Christian to

00:41:43.400 bring up because it's assault on the logos, uh, which is, you know, in John one, that's Christ.

00:41:48.880 And so it is an assault on Christianity, but it's also an assault on sanity itself. If you get people

00:41:53.800 to silo up and start to argue, this is Christian identity versus trans identity, then they get to

00:41:59.760 create a dynamic that's actually been very fruitful for them. Like we talked about before, the shift in

00:42:05.960 cultural hegemony is strongly on their side. So you are, you should be making these statements very

00:42:12.240 clearly, but I think it's actually important or I guess not, but, and I think it's very important

00:42:17.040 because I don't want to cancel out that you should be saying the things that you truly see and believe.

00:42:21.640 Um, and it is very important to be very clear that this is much broader than just a war on Christians

00:42:28.700 in particular, because we don't want people to start siloing off and, um, fragmenting society

00:42:35.060 further. So I don't actually disagree with you. This was a hate crime targeting Christians on purpose

00:42:40.700 because they're Christian. And that's the thing, this specific instance did seem to be targeting

00:42:58.060 a Christian school. And we have the manifesto out there that for some reason they are just not able

00:43:03.840 to reveal to us, presumably because it, I'm guessing that it says, look, this school didn't

00:43:10.420 affirm me, this school oppressed me with the gender binary. And so I wanted to exact revenge

00:43:16.280 against them, which would be, I mean, I don't really like the term hate crime because anytime you

00:43:22.560 go murder a bunch of children, it's hateful. And so whatever the motivation is, but it's a targeted

00:43:28.600 crime specifically anti-Christian. I agree with you in one sense that the trans movement will label

00:43:36.000 everyone on the wrong side of history, no matter what their background is, even if they consider

00:43:40.500 themselves a left-wing feminist, but they are not for this idea that you can just become the opposite

00:43:48.200 sex via declaration. And so it is broader, but I guess my argument would be like you say it's normal

00:43:55.640 people versus insane people, which really great point. I do believe that critical theory causes

00:44:00.880 psychopathy and just instability, but like, what is our definition of normal? Where do we get the

00:44:07.680 baseline of normal? Again, as a Christian, like I believe that what is normal, where I shouldn't even

00:44:13.980 say normal, what is good is just like eternity as Ecclesiastes says, like is written on the human heart.

00:44:21.840 There is this innate sense of right and wrong. There's actually objectively a definition of

00:44:27.880 perverting what is normal. And you and I, even though we're not Christians, we agree on that.

00:44:32.740 But my perspective would be, even though you're not a Christian, and even though you don't believe

00:44:37.700 this, I would say that that's of what you are calling normal, I would call goodness that has been

00:44:43.760 written on your heart and that you have been given the wisdom to see. And so ultimately, like I do

00:44:49.760 believe it is light versus dark. Ultimately, I do believe it is God's truth versus a lie,

00:44:54.560 even if it's not necessarily Christians versus non-Christians. Does that make sense?

00:45:01.760 Yeah. I mean, that's just the key is the only reason I said, uh-oh, which wasn't actually,

00:45:06.080 you know, contradicting you. It's fine. I'm not offended.

00:45:08.580 It's just that I do have this concern that the goal of the left is to fragment the population so that

00:45:14.200 people have a harder time getting along. So you say, you know, it's a target on Christians and

00:45:18.480 Christians are saying this is about Christianity, which isn't totally wrong. And then a bunch of

00:45:23.240 other people who might have been, you know, colleagues with you or co-belligerents with

00:45:27.540 you get alienated. And so now what happens is you start to have a, is this Christians or is it

00:45:31.780 something else argument? Instead of being able to focus on the fact that we have deranged people

00:45:37.180 doing violence against our society and against our people, and in particular against Christians who

00:45:42.300 obviously just got completely washed out of the story. I'm sure we'll talk about these Tennessee

00:45:46.380 three here before long, um, in terms of how they washed out of the story. But I mean, there is a

00:45:52.360 very real, uh, when I said this as an anti-Christian movement, and I mean that in the kind of technical

00:45:58.040 sense, not like a just being against Christianity, meaning the trans queer theory movement. It's also,

00:46:04.020 um, like the inverse of Christianity. I mean, when I say anti, I mean like perverted or inverted

00:46:12.360 because what it is, transition is a process of death and rebirth, you know, kind of like with,

00:46:18.840 with Christians when they, when, when they profess or they become baptized or whatever.

00:46:23.300 Yeah. You are reborn. It is born.

00:46:26.220 The old has passed, the new has come. Yeah.

00:46:28.760 That's right. Well, this is the same for them, but they have a completely different religious

00:46:32.500 ritual, a completely different outlook about what they're dying and being reborn into. And I'll just,

00:46:37.240 I think I've said this with you before, but this is actually deeply rooted in their literature.

00:46:41.160 If you go back and read, not even trans people, but it's certainly the queer and trans literature,

00:46:45.600 it's all over in there that it's kind of a death and rebirth process. But if you go back and read,

00:46:49.480 say, Paulo Ferreri, who's writing about education, he says that the process of education has to be in

00:46:54.280 becoming an educator or becoming a true student has to be a process of death to the old world and a

00:47:00.560 rebirth into the new on the side of the oppressed. And so there is a very deeply religious element here

00:47:06.200 that is taking the idea of Christian renewal and turning it into something that's actually,

00:47:13.840 if I might get religiously technical with you, it's actually a hermetic idea. The goal is to

00:47:18.280 actually, in the first step, realize that you have this own, this power over yourself, that you are,

00:47:23.180 in fact, your own deity. And so then what you do is you become your own begetter. You get to the

00:47:29.220 stage where you're self-begetting. This is what trans is. They are literally saying,

00:47:32.960 I know how I was meant to be, despite what body I was born into, despite what the doctor assigned a

00:47:39.880 sex to it, despite how society had all these social constructions of what it meant to be a boy or a

00:47:46.360 girl impressed upon me. I actually know the secret truth about myself. That's Gnosticism.

00:47:53.160 It's salvific self-knowledge, the secret knowledge, hidden knowledge. And I can undergo this process to

00:47:59.260 beget myself into what I was always meant to be. And so the hermetic faith has a trinity.

00:48:04.600 And it's not Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It is, in fact, the undifferentiated all, that's the father

00:48:11.620 position, which is the unbegotten God. And then there is the self-begotten God, which is the mind

00:48:17.960 of God. So in place of Christ, there is the mind of God. And then the third position is man. And so the

00:48:24.860 goal is to first remember that you are, in fact, God, and then you are to disavow yourself of your

00:48:31.360 own body, which is fallen and corrupted, so that you can become a self-begetting entity. In other

00:48:37.180 words, you are meant to realize that you are God and then become your own Christ. So the trans thing

00:48:42.540 is, and this is what this young woman coming to this school is ultimately rebelling against,

00:48:48.460 is a different path that denies that this is possible. For her, salvation comes from realizing

00:48:55.900 who she truly is and then begetting herself as she was always meant to be. And the Christian story

00:49:02.380 says, no, that is not possible. You are not God. Salvation is through Christ alone. You don't get

00:49:09.020 to become your own Christ. You don't get to save yourself on your own terms. And I'm not saying that

00:49:14.320 this is just some kind of like thing. This is in the chief religious scripture of the Hermetic faith,

00:49:20.220 which is called the Poimondres, which is the first book of the Corpus Hermeticum.

00:49:24.120 And it explicitly says that your goal is to awaken to this, to overcome your body and to become your

00:49:31.540 own Christ so that you can save yourself and all of mankind with you. So why would you delay?

00:49:37.120 I mean, I could find the exact passage and read it. It's very, very close to that.

00:49:40.120 Yeah. And so what we're seeing is in a sense, when you say it's good against evil or dark against

00:49:46.060 light, you're not wrong at all. This is a religious battle. And there's a reason why

00:49:50.280 Christianity has to be targeted so much, which is because Jesus said, I am the way, the truth,

00:49:54.800 and life. There is no other way. And you're going to humble yourself before God and you're going to

00:49:59.100 humble yourself. You don't get to save yourself. But the trans religion is 100%. We're going to save

00:50:05.700 ourselves. And the way that they save themselves following, it turns out, Foucault, who said that it's

00:50:10.100 not that the body imprisons the soul, it's that the soul imprisons the body, trying to be, you know,

00:50:14.720 what's this weird postmodern sentence mean? What he's saying is that what they're going to do is

00:50:18.840 they're going to change themselves and then force society to affirm them so that the social

00:50:22.520 constructions around gender transform. And when that's the soul, the soul is your part of the

00:50:28.260 social construction of the socialization network of society. And so they firmly believe with religious

00:50:34.900 fervor that the only way that they can have salvation from the suffering that they have,

00:50:39.000 the inequities that they suffer. We could get as biblical in our language to copy what they're

00:50:44.240 saying as we want to, is to be able to beget themselves and force society to affirm what

00:50:49.600 they have done to themselves and thus save themselves and all of humanity. And Christianity

00:50:54.240 is an absolute rebuke of this concept. And so they have to be vigorously anti-Christian.

00:51:02.740 The idea that there is absolutely no true renewal outside of Christ is anathema to the idea that

00:51:09.400 they must actually renew themselves and use the renewal and social enforcement to transform all

00:51:16.420 of society to affirm that renewal. It's completely anathema. But if you are biblically minded,

00:51:23.180 you'll immediately see that what this is, is God versus Satan. There's no question as to what

00:51:27.180 what is meant by believing that you get to become your own self, your own savior.

00:51:33.220 Of course, it goes back to the garden. It goes back to the garden of evil that you can be like God.

00:51:36.800 It's three and four.

00:51:37.600 Christians also believe that it's not just transgenderism that does this. We also believe

00:51:55.040 Read Love Thy Body by Nancy Piercy. I always recommend that on this show to people. But she

00:51:59.580 also argues that any kind of what we would call sexual immorality, promiscuity, homosexuality,

00:52:04.640 abortion are all assault against the Imago Dei and are all this exchanging the God of Scripture for

00:52:10.300 the God of self. I mean, you hear that just even in the mantras of the abortion lobby, my body,

00:52:17.400 my choice. And I've heard it. It's that it's kind of like a perverted Eucharist, whereas like Christ

00:52:24.960 says, this is my body. So are abortion advocates. This is my body. Whereas Christ's body brought us

00:52:34.040 life. The sacrifice of his body brought us life. We are saying, this is my body. I will bring death

00:52:39.320 unto it and those who inhabit it, those who are advocating for abortion. And so Christians don't

00:52:45.740 believe.

00:52:45.940 Do you see that the abortion is the same, by the way, as this? Go ahead, finish your thought,

00:52:50.140 but I want to come back to that.

00:52:51.440 It is what I would say. What I argued in my book is that when you elevate, when autonomy and

00:52:58.040 authenticity become your gods, when they become your primary guides to what morality is, then you

00:53:06.360 will end up justifying all kinds of atrocities. You will end up sacrificing truth and reason and the

00:53:14.080 well-being of other people in the name of autonomy and authenticity. Autonomy and authenticity. So

00:53:20.580 autonomy, having control of your own body, having responsibility can be a great thing. Authenticity,

00:53:26.000 being yourself, not being a liar, not being a hypocrite, not putting up a facade, that can be

00:53:30.780 a great thing. But when these are your number one priorities or your ultimate gods, then you'll

00:53:37.700 sacrifice anything to quote unquote being yourself or being authentic. If you are your own god and

00:53:43.320 authenticity is your highest priority, then why can't you define yourself? Why can't you identify

00:53:48.600 yourself? Why can't you be whatever you want to be? What is objective truth if you are your own god?

00:53:54.140 And then the same thing with autonomy. Autonomy can be good, of course, when we're talking about we

00:53:58.680 don't want the government to tell us that we have to put vaccines in our body. But when autonomy is

00:54:04.180 your god or is your number one priority, then of course, you will even sacrifice the life and

00:54:10.140 well-being of a child inside your body because autonomy is number one. So I would argue that autonomy

00:54:15.620 and authenticity, while they can be virtues, have to be submitted to a higher authority than yourself.

00:54:21.320 And of course, I believe that higher authority is God and biblical morality. Maybe you would

00:54:26.000 believe it's natural law or truth or reason or just compassion and empathy for other people,

00:54:31.680 whatever it is. Yeah, that's what I would argue. So I don't think abortion and transgenderism are the

00:54:36.800 same. Do I think that they are absolutely derived from this same satanic idea that you are your own

00:54:42.800 god? Does it matter how it affects other people? Yes, I do. They share that commonality.

00:54:47.700 See, that's what I mean is the abortion position held by the majority of the left and the kind of

00:54:54.940 powers that be in the Democratic Party. I don't want to throw average Democrats that are low

00:54:58.700 information under the bus here because I don't think they actually think about it like this,

00:55:01.920 most of them. But when you start talking about this all the way to the moment of birth and

00:55:05.720 absolutely, you see how the activists are. We all know how the activists are. They're absolutely

00:55:10.320 about it. I'm I've I'm quite, quite certain that what they're actually what this feminist position

00:55:17.380 is of absolute autonomy for, you know, over over. It's my body. I get to make the decision up to the

00:55:24.840 moment where it's, you know, outside of my body or whatever, that this is Gnosticism, that they believe

00:55:29.920 that they know what their life was supposed to be. And that's secret salvific knowledge that they've

00:55:34.100 seen a glimpse of what was meant to be written in the, you know, the book of life or whatever

00:55:38.440 metaphor we want to use for that. And that the idea that they were they didn't ask to be born

00:55:43.680 in a woman's body that could become pregnant even by accident. They didn't ask to be put in

00:55:49.760 the position where they have to rewrite their entire life all of a sudden because of a decision

00:55:54.140 they made that resulted in a pregnancy, especially if there are medical techniques that can allow

00:55:58.860 them to, you know, and somewhat with with relative safety, you know, liberate to use their word

00:56:04.440 themselves from that case. When we understand that the position that I think there were actually

00:56:09.160 three positions in the debate, not two, it's not pro-life versus pro-choice. It's actually

00:56:13.120 there's pro-life, pro-choice, and then feminist Gnosticism, which is a kind of a third, literally,

00:56:19.180 you don't get to tell me what to do because I am the arbiter of my own life because I've seen what

00:56:23.360 my life was supposed to be. And I get to make that decision. And when we understand that there's a

00:56:28.700 third position like that, in that position, this is the same as the trans issue. And it's kind of

00:56:35.580 one step back because it's the same Gnostic idea that you believe that you had a glimpse of what

00:56:41.300 your life was actually supposed to be. And the Demiurge, which is society, doesn't get to tell

00:56:46.320 you what to do with it. And of course, when I say the Demiurge is society, that's the modern

00:56:51.400 incarnation. It's not what they believed in, you know, the first century with the Valentinius or

00:56:55.500 the Gnostic Christian cults. Demiurge has taken on this idea of the social, the cultural hegemony

00:57:02.580 and the powers, whether it's the bourgeois classes, whether it's the whites, whether it's the

00:57:06.440 patriarchy, whatever it is, this operates as a Demiurge power that is constraining people and

00:57:12.700 imprisoning people beyond their desire. So the Gnostic impulse is that you've been flung into this

00:57:18.400 situation that you didn't ask for. Again, you didn't ask to be born a woman. You didn't ask to be born

00:57:22.960 fertile. You didn't ask for the situation that, you know, by decision, likely unintentionally for

00:57:30.820 the way that they are, that you're going to have to rewrite the story of your life rather than

00:57:34.420 believing that, you know, the story of your life contained this event. And now you're going to

00:57:38.760 take that chapter. This is ultimately that same Gnostic entitlement that says that you get to be the

00:57:45.400 ultimate arbiter of your life. And so my point, when I say that you see how they're the same, and I agree

00:57:50.320 with the way that you framed these things, actually, my point is that the impulse behind both

00:57:57.320 is Gnostic. It's fundamentally, when you say it comes from that same satanic place, that satanic

00:58:03.480 place has a name, it's Gnosticism. And that name is the, it's the same story like we already

00:58:09.060 acknowledged that's in the third chapter of Genesis when the snake said, God hath not said. And I think

00:58:16.200 it's important for us to start to clarify, I'm not disagreeing with you in any way, I'm trying to say

00:58:19.920 we should clarify our understanding of what's motivating the left. And what's motivating the left

00:58:25.380 is a Gnostic impulse for liberation from what they believe is a life of imprisonment. That's why they

00:58:33.700 say emancipation, liberation, constantly. A life of imprisonment that's imposed upon them by the social

00:58:39.440 structures of a dominant power structure that they didn't ask to be born under. And if you actually

00:58:45.280 listen to the language, you'll hear this again and again and again and again, it's very clarifying.

00:58:49.560 But it also gives Christians in particular, a very powerful route to ministry, to help people

00:58:55.000 understand this, but also to reach to them and understand why the story that they're living under

00:59:00.260 in their lives is actually a very dark and dangerous story, and that it's not the best way to think of

00:59:05.240 these things, rather than getting caught in the same kind of circular arguments that we always end up

00:59:11.080 caught in that don't move anywhere. So my interest here is in trying to give people on the side of

00:59:18.540 sanity, the ability to have this discussion in a way, especially Christians, where they're going to

00:59:23.960 be able to reach to that kind of very dark view of what it means to be a woman and a fertile woman and

00:59:31.100 a pregnant woman eventually. And to speak to them in a way that maybe brings them back from that,

00:59:37.120 you know, you get to be the ultimate arbiter of your life because you think you've seen the truth,

00:59:42.200 but you don't know what's truly in store for you. You don't know what you might be missing.

00:59:47.020 You aren't actually God. I just, I think it's an important point for people to realize where the

00:59:54.060 mentality comes from. Every time I bring it up, I get firebombed because people don't seem to want

00:59:58.740 to talk about it. But I'm just trying to offer a little clarity on how the left, the hard left,

01:00:04.760 the radical left actually thinks about the issue. They were flung into a woman's body beyond their

01:00:11.840 desire, beyond their choosing, and now they're trapped in a prison of their fertility. And when

01:00:17.600 you realize that that's their mentality, then you can talk to them where their mentality is and start

01:00:22.520 to pull them away from that very poisonous way of thinking. It informs so much of the articulations

01:00:28.340 that feminism has about what a woman's life should be like and why, you know, they should, you know,

01:00:33.380 favor career over family and why families are actually toxic. So much of it unravels when you

01:00:38.700 realize that it all boils down to this Gnostic belief that they've been imprisoned in a woman's

01:00:42.520 body that they didn't ask for. All right. So if it sounded like that conversation ended kind of

01:00:51.620 abruptly, that's because remember, this was actually the first part of a long conversation that James and

01:00:59.460 I had. And the second part of that conversation, we actually played first because it had to do with

01:01:05.040 news stories that were circulated in the news cycle last week. So go back and listen to last Wednesday's

01:01:11.960 episode if you are wondering what the second part of this conversation sounded like. So I just wanted

01:01:19.640 to provide you with some clarity there. Just a reminder, just a reminder, guys, we've got awesome

01:01:24.660 merch. I'm wearing some of my merch right now. I think the version that's being sold doesn't have

01:01:29.480 the with ABS. It just has the little relatable on it. Mother's Day is coming up, guys. It's coming

01:01:34.960 up, Related Bros. You're Related Gals. You're Related Bells. They want some merch. We've got amazing

01:01:40.540 merch. Look, I've even got my little hat right here. Isn't it cute? It's a corduroy hat. So go to

01:01:47.000 AllieMerch.com. Yeah, just AllieMerch.com. I almost forgot my own link. AllieMerch.com.

01:01:52.240 You can use code Allie10 for 10% off. That's AllieMerch.com. All right. I will see you back

01:01:58.840 here tomorrow.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 24, 2023

Ep 793 ｜ An Atheist & a Christian Define Christian Nationalism ｜ Guest： James Lindsay

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