The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant religious body in the United States, making it one of the most influential organizations at least in the religious life of the country. Its parishioners are usually some of its most abased people, and its leadership often strays. And unfortunately, just like every different religious organization in the U.S., the SBC is receiving a lot of influence from outside actors who aren t really interested in Christianity. Talking to me today about that is the Executive Director of the Center for Baptist Leadership, William Wolfe.
00:02:53.280All right, William, I think a lot of people may just be unfamiliar with the structure of something like the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:03:00.760It's a little different from some other organizations.
00:03:03.200So could you maybe give just a basic outline of what the SBC is and what some of the important committees or organizations inside or under its umbrella, what they would be?
00:03:15.220So the Southern Baptist Convention, as you said, is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States of America.
00:03:20.720We have approximately 40,000 churches across the United States.
00:03:25.340They are largely where you think they would be in the South.
00:03:28.520As soon as you go north past Virginia, not too many SBC churches.
00:03:32.340West past Kansas and Missouri, not too many, though there is a decent presence in California.
00:03:37.000Those 40,000 churches, approximately 13 million members, they all join together and work together for the purpose of spreading the gospel overseas, planting churches here in America, and theological education.
00:03:50.660We do this through a mechanism called the cooperative program in which churches contribute money annually to the cooperative program.
00:03:58.540And then it's divvied up amongst our various entities and institutions.
00:04:02.760This is very important because I talked about the Southern Baptist Convention as an institution, and it is, but it's composed of a variety of institutions, including six seminaries, which train over 50% of all future pastors in America.
00:04:16.980So if you're listeners who are unfamiliar, I'll say this, you should care about the Southern Baptist Convention, because there's a good chance your pastor, whether Baptist or not, or non-denominational, or even Presbyterian, might be getting trained at one of our six seminaries.
00:04:29.040We have an international missions organization, the IMB, the largest international missions organization in the world.
00:04:34.920We have a group called the North American Mission Board that plants churches on the North American continent.
00:04:39.420And then we have the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which is our official public policy and lobbying arm, and even a publisher called Lifeway, which I'm sure many of your listeners have read a Lifeway book once or twice in their life.
00:04:53.660So like you said, this is an issue that's important to everyone, because even if you don't find yourself in an SBC church, it's very likely that you could be sitting under a pastor who has been trained there.
00:05:04.580So what happens with the SBC really does impact a lot of people.
00:05:08.800Now, I've had Megan Basham and some others on to discuss some of the issues that are affecting, frankly, all churches across the United States, but they can also be impacting the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:05:21.760And, you know, she's outlined a number of the different problems.
00:05:26.440But one of the issues that I think most people don't recognize is the influence that someone like George Soros might be able to have that impact on what the SBC is doing or teaching.
00:05:40.480Can you tell me a little bit about how George Soros or different foundations connected to him might be influencing the Southern Baptist Convention?
00:05:47.960Yeah, absolutely. And so I think the story really begins in the transition to the neutral and negative world that Aaron Wren talks about when Christianity was no longer a sort of favored religion in America.
00:06:01.080But instead, being a Christian was increasingly frowned upon and ostracized and demonized.
00:06:06.960During that time, we had a class of leaders rise up in the Southern Baptist Convention, who I would argue were pretty desperate for approval from the secular world, including, you know, secular media outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN.
00:06:20.780And at the same time, scandals breaking out across the country, Me Too, etc., put focus on Christian organizations.
00:06:28.500And so during this, progressive organizations saw an opportunity to infiltrate the Southern Baptist Convention and lead them to the left, really preying upon these instincts of, I would say, insecure elites in the Southern Baptist Convention who so desperately wanted to appear likable to the world.
00:06:45.400I mean, this is crazy. We had a president, J.D. Greer, who wanted to change our name and get rid of Southern Baptists because that had negative connotations and instead make us Great Commission Baptists, really erasing our history and lifetime.
00:06:57.700And so what George Soros did through organizations like the Open Society Foundations, he propped up these front groups that were intentionally targeting Southern Baptists to move us to the left, particularly on issues like immigration for George Soros, but other organizations like the Democracy Fund, etc., targeted us on climate change, on LGBT issues as well.
00:07:20.960And so to break it down very neatly on the George Soros immigration front, Open Societies Foundation started an organization called the National Immigration Forum, and documents show millions of dollars flowing from Open Societies to the National Immigration Forum.
00:07:35.240The National Immigration Forum started another astroturf group called the Evangelical Immigration Table, which is not a legal entity.
00:07:42.360It's just a front for the National Immigration Forum, which then convened, quote unquote, conservative evangelical leaders to talk to them about, quote unquote, biblical approaches to immigration, which were fundamentally amnesty, welcoming the stranger, facilitating mass invasion, mass refugee numbers.
00:07:59.360And that evangelical immigration table, one of their main partners and sponsors is the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:08:07.400They are joined at the hip, and there's a tie that traces directly back to Soros there.
00:08:26.320But you would think that they would know that a guy like George Soros, no matter how desperate you are for worldly approval or status, isn't a good actor.
00:08:34.220This is a guy who has a reputation as being rather nefarious.
00:08:38.220Did they know George Soros was putting this kind of influence into the organization?
00:08:42.960Were they aware of the number of kind of different shell foundations and things between masking that influence?
00:08:49.240Well, I think initially when the evangelical immigration table was launched, the direct Soros connection was buried.
00:08:57.120It was buried so deep, in fact, that when Eric Metaxas was made aware of it, he pulled himself out of the evangelical immigration table and says, I want nothing to do with this.
00:09:07.860But quite frankly, our Southern Baptist elites and the leaders at organizations like the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Russell Moore, Brent Leatherwood and others, they took an approach.
00:09:18.240They took the let's plunder the Egyptians approach.
00:09:21.720Let's go ahead and take this progressive money and do what we want with it.
00:09:25.320But at the same time, their values on immigration were significantly to the left than the average Southern Baptist.
00:09:30.900So they didn't really have any issue promoting this biblical immigration policy that really was fundamentally amnesty for all illegal immigrants welcome the stranger.
00:09:40.880And so whether they knew or not, I think ultimately they might not have cared because the George Soros immigration agenda was their immigration agenda, too.
00:09:49.160So this is so difficult because I've seen this even being in a church, you know, you know that the people around you have good biblical grounding in most of their beliefs.
00:10:01.980But immigration is so difficult for them because they, of course, want to be compassionate.
00:10:07.960And often the way that this is phrased to people is, well, look, these people are coming anyway.
00:10:15.100There are already starving children inside this country because of what's happening.
00:10:20.380We're not facilitating them moving in and out.
00:10:23.080We're just taking care of our neighbor once they're here.
00:10:26.580And that is, I think, a message that resonates with the compassion and those that want to care for the stranger, as it's so often emphasized.
00:10:35.700And they have a very hard time pushing back against that.
00:10:38.680What can we do to firm up the understanding of churchgoers that you can care for your neighbor, but part of caring for your neighbor is defending your neighbor's property, their safety, their livelihood.
00:10:52.840You're not caring for your neighbor when you import a large number of people who often are uneducated, don't speak the language, don't have work, and turn to crime.
00:11:02.800You're actually, in many cases, facilitating human smuggling operations, yet it's very difficult for people to come up with arguments when they get in kind of this framework that's been laid out by organizations that are ultimately exploiting the word of God.
00:11:20.880You know, I worked in politics myself in Washington, D.C. for 10 years before I became more of a public commentator and leading this public organization.
00:11:27.980But I'll say I never realized that the Great Commission came with open borders.
00:11:32.800I didn't know that until recently, or that being a Christian from any country gives you a global passport and allows you to come to the United States whenever you want, regardless of our immigration laws or policies.
00:11:44.500So on that point, I'd say one of the most important things we can do rhetorically is remind Christians that fundamentally we are law-abiding citizens.
00:11:51.860Sometimes it is appropriate to reject the tyranny of governmental overreach.
00:11:56.580I mean, you have a whole book on that, right?
00:12:00.040But there are legitimate laws that should be followed, and there's a basis for that in Romans 13.
00:12:05.120And fundamentally, Romans 13 also teaches that it's the role of a government, in that case Caesar, in our case our president, to ensure that the well-being and the priority of his citizens are cared for first according to principles of justice and righteousness.
00:12:20.500I think high-profile crimes like the tragic murder of Lake and Riley, this horrific event that happened in the New York subway, and many others has helped sort of change the narrative on this some.
00:12:33.560But it really gets back to what you said, this weaponized emotional rhetoric, or as Joe Rigney would say, the sin of empathy being deployed to really coerce Christians, and Southern Baptists in particular, to support what amounts to national suicide.
00:12:48.200And you can't find that anywhere in the Bible.
00:12:51.420So you already mentioned immigration, talked a little bit about global warming.
00:12:55.060Are there other organizations or other vectors that George Soros or other nefarious actors are using to try to infiltrate the Southern Baptist Coalition and warm the views of its different members?
00:13:07.180Yeah, well, George Soros on immigration is one of the big ones.
00:13:12.080And I just want to read one quote here real quick, and then I'll get on to the other ones.
00:13:15.140In Open Society Foundation documents, they say,
00:13:18.620In the course of our work, we were able to generate engagement by conservative voices, such as evangelical Christians and Southern Baptists, through Grantee National Immigration Forum.
00:13:31.100So Soros on immigration, Democracy Fund on climate change, and LGBT issues as well.
00:13:37.780And then also I would point out that the Me Too scandal and movement in America really gripped the Southern Baptist Convention during the height of the Me Too, which is really just weaponized feminism out to destroy the lives of men.
00:13:52.140It completely destroys the concept of due process, which is a very biblical concept as well.
00:13:58.200There was this report that the Southern Baptist Convention had had sort of decades of historic levels of abuse within our churches.
00:14:07.020But when you drill down into the details, you see that the incident rates in Southern Baptist churches over the time that this report purports to speak to 20 years, they're far lower than average.
00:14:18.040They're certainly lower than average than public schools or any other sort of major institution.
00:14:28.760But really, the Southern Baptist Convention is not some den of abusers.
00:14:32.360And that rhetoric, Oren, was really used against us now to the tune of millions of dollars having been spent on consultants and legal fees and settlements.
00:14:42.400And as many pastors claim, we're not any better off for it or any safer for it.
00:14:46.840And then the last thing I will also mention, too, is race.
00:14:51.520When you can go find records of top Southern Baptist leaders who are still in their positions today, men like Trevin Wax and others who he works for NAMM, where when the killing of Michael Brown happened in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, which now we know was not driven by race at all, that the officer was justified in his use of force.
00:15:11.780They totally bought into the hands up, don't shoot narrative, and they started incredibly race guilting your average Southern Baptist white member to adopt a DEI, CRT, BLM narrative about who we are as a church and a country.
00:15:26.020So they really hit all of it, race, immigration, LGBT issues, climate change.
00:15:30.960We as Southern Baptists have been the target of a massive subversion campaign for over a decade now, and it's weakened us and hurt the country.
00:15:39.180Well, I want to talk to you about changing that, because obviously here on this show, we talk a lot about elite theory and how difficult it could be for the average person to get out from under the thumb of these teachings, especially even as they seem to have momentum beyond the influence of these other actors.
00:16:00.220So we'll get to all that in just a moment.
00:16:01.740But before we do, let's hear from a sponsor.
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00:16:56.680So one thing that's pretty interesting, even though these influences are being unearthed, even though probably awareness of them is rising, it seems like in many cases a lot of churches are embracing these issues after the fact.
00:17:16.180Even though it's now becoming less socially popular, I think, to have a lot of these progressive beliefs, now that we're seeing, I think, the rise of MAGA and Donald Trump's second presidency solidifying some movement to the right in the country, it seems like a lot of churches, including in some cases Southern Baptist churches, are kind of continuing with that momentum.
00:17:37.440Like they've bought in and they have to continue to push this agenda, even as it becomes less and less popular with the average person going to their church.
00:17:46.440Is that because there's a true buy-in for the average pastor? Is that because they think it's still going to raise their clout?
00:17:53.680Is it just the nasty habit of many evangelical churches of being 20 years behind the culture no matter what happens?
00:18:00.780What do you think is driving that continued push, even as it becomes less and less popular in the country at large?
00:18:07.440Yeah, that's a great question. I think it has a multifaceted answer.
00:18:11.080The first one is certainly what you just said in terms of how the church lags behind the culture on trends.
00:18:16.980So much of what our Southern Baptist leaders have done, and in particular, three of our past presidents, Bart Barber, Ed Litton, and J.D. Greer, which spans six years of a leadership role in the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:18:29.640They baptized DEI and CRT and feminism under Me Too after the culture adopted it, so they followed the culture.
00:18:39.360And so now that the culture is shifting, I mean, quite frankly, this is sort of sad, but I hope that some of our new leaders will follow the culture again as it moves to the right a little bit.
00:18:47.740But fundamentally, what the church should be doing is leading and not following.
00:18:51.960Our current president, Clint Presley from North Carolina, he's doing a much better job than our last three presidents.
00:18:57.500So that's a positive change in the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:19:01.120And I do think that many of your average members, as books like Shepherds for Sale took the nation by storm from Megan Basham, read that and wake up and they get involved.
00:19:10.740But what we do have, back to elite theory, is we still have a fundamental mismatch between the vast majority of elites, the 5% to 10% of Southern Baptists, who are at odds with their conservative base.
00:19:23.780I think conquest laws of politics are very much at play in the Southern Baptist Convention, particularly with our massive bureaucracy working.
00:19:32.340The way that the massive bureaucracy works, you can assume it's controlled by a cabal of your enemies, and it certainly looks like that in Southern Baptist life.
00:19:39.380Thankfully, Southern Baptists have a mechanism of change available to them that hardly any other denomination out there does.
00:19:46.740We gather once a year, every year, for an annual meeting where 10,000 to 12,000, sometimes even 20,000 Southern Baptists show up, and we can vote on new leaders.
00:19:56.460We can vote on amendments and reforms and changes.
00:19:59.320And so really, we're in this cusp of a slow but steady wake-up, driving the base to the meeting to drive real change.
00:20:06.100The power is within the churches and the people.
00:20:08.020They just have to wake up and show up, and we can take this thing back again.
00:20:13.240Yeah, and that is, of course, a noble effort, and I encourage people who can involve themselves to do so.
00:20:21.620But as we've kind of both pointed to, often it's very difficult to get the laity of the church, the average member, to really get animated about something like this.
00:20:31.120Again, leak theory does tend to play itself out.
00:20:34.580And so while I, again, hope that that mechanism, as you discussed, really is one that allows you to leverage change, ultimately, we're probably going to need to see a difference in what, I guess, the tastemakers in culture ultimately think, right?
00:20:51.140That this is, if the leadership is trying to elevate itself by aligning itself with the world and these elite organizations, then ultimately, you know, they should be leading.
00:21:01.580They should be the ones setting the culture and not the other way around.
00:21:04.720But if that really is the spirit in which they're operating without an outside influence of some kind,
00:21:10.400they're probably just going to continue to chase that dragon unless they really get a full-on revolt from the average person in the pew, right?
00:21:19.460And so that's one of the things that we focus on at Center for Baptist Leadership is trying to cultivate a new class of essentially Southern Baptist Convention elites.
00:21:28.680For lack of a better word, elite's a dirty word, right?
00:21:32.840A rightly ordered elite with virtue and care for the people under his charge takes care of them, looks out for their interests, and defends them in the public square against the secular media.
00:21:44.080He doesn't sell them out for, you know, a few head nods from Anderson Cooper, as one of our former presidents did.
00:21:51.220And so, you know, when we call ourselves the Center for Baptist Leadership, we're not necessarily saying we're the leaders.
00:21:56.240We're saying we want to cultivate a really anti-fragile and biblical Baptist leaders for the 21st century to reunite the base with the head in the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:22:08.540And I'll say sort of three ways I think about doing that is disgrace, replace, and credential, right?
00:22:14.760So the ones who are failing, and we've seen Chris Ruffo do a good job of this, I think, in many ways at Harvard, just exposing and disgracing the corrupted elites.
00:22:22.780That's where sort of you make the enemies, but you've got to do it.
00:22:29.300But in order to replace them, you have to be credentialing new leaders.
00:22:32.420And this is important too, Orin, as I've thought about this, is giving a new incentive structure.
00:22:36.840Right now, the incentive structure in the Southern Baptist Convention are for compromise and cowardice.
00:22:42.020We want to provide an alternative incentive structure that rewards courage and clarity and boldness, both within the Southern Baptist Convention and in the public square.
00:22:52.780Excellent. Well, I want to ask you a little bit about how you think the Trump administration is doing in relation to the interests of Christians and specifically the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:23:04.320I also want to talk a little bit about how it is difficult for many Southern Baptists to see themselves as a group with an interest that they should be advocating for.
00:23:13.340But before we do, let's talk a little bit about winning.
00:23:15.460Hey guys, if you've been watching this show for a while, then you know that around here we encourage something that conservatives usually don't do.
00:23:23.180That's why it was so great to see Donald Trump's electoral victory along with the cultural and political momentum that the right just hasn't had in a very long time.
00:23:31.700But we also know that the fight is far from over and at some point the left will start pushing for censorship again.
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00:24:15.720So, William, one of the problems, I think, for a lot of Southern Baptists and Christians in general, but I think especially Southern Baptists, because I don't just say this because they're my people.
00:24:26.540But they are the heart of, I think, the United States.
00:24:29.800It really is the core of what the United States is to me.
00:24:34.540And so for a lot of Southern Baptists, it's hard to see them as having some kind of definitive group interest, somehow separate from the American population.
00:24:44.260Everything that's going to be good for America is good for the Southern Baptists and vice versa.
00:24:48.220And so I think that mindset can make it very difficult for them to recognize themselves as a group that has to advocate, that has interests, that needs to be aware of how politicians are impacting them and how politicians might be targeting or influencing the things that they care about.
00:25:08.340Do you think that there's a lack of ability for Southern Baptists to understand themselves as a group that does need to advocate for their own interests?
00:25:16.840Or do you think there's anything else at play there?
00:25:19.760Well, I love this question because it's a core part of our mission.
00:25:23.800And I will go ahead and offer a disclaimer for the haters and the enemies listening to this.
00:25:28.420The Southern Baptist Convention's work, spreading the gospel and planting churches is so important.
00:25:33.180That's the core of what we do and what we want to protect.
00:25:35.700When we fight against this wokeness, these insidious ideologies, we do that because they compromise the gospel.
00:25:41.760But also the Southern Baptist Convention is a massive block within the United States of America.
00:25:46.260There are 13 million of us with political interests and civic interests in this country.
00:25:51.260And I would say also along with having interests, we have responsibilities as citizens to the United States of America.
00:25:57.560And for us to sit on the sidelines while the country goes to hell in a handbasket, I would argue is fundamentally a terrible stewardship of the talents of this country that God has entrusted us with.
00:26:08.600So we're trying to encourage Southern Baptists fundamentally to be better citizens.
00:26:13.600And that doesn't make us some naughty, bad political organization.
00:26:17.820There's plenty of people planting churches, plenty of people sending missionaries overseas.
00:26:22.060But Southern Baptists need to do this.
00:26:26.300Well, I would say one thing, and you might appreciate this in some other areas as well.
00:26:29.980I think Southern Baptists have been sold a false history of who we are and what we believe throughout the latter half of the 20th century.
00:26:38.560Baptists have always supported religious liberty, and that has often included a form of religious pluralism as well.
00:26:45.700But so many Baptists have been taught to believe in the idea of sort of a neutral public square.
00:26:50.120Now, when we step out there, we can't defend our interests as Christians or even as conservatives or Americans, but we just have to argue on these pre-rational bases of these are my interests.
00:27:01.140You know, we can't bring God into this.
00:27:03.020They really bought that hook, line, and sinker, and they really were, I'd say, captured by a post-war liberalism that really denies our fundamental Baptist interest.
00:27:12.340There's one Baptist I love to point to, Andrew Fuller.
00:27:14.820He was a British Baptist pastor in England, and he preached this incredible sermon called Christian Patriotism when he was, his congregation was fearing an invasion by Napoleon, in which he countered all these objections and encouraged them to be willing to even fight for their country, saying, we owed a debt to this land.
00:27:34.360Should we not defend the land of our father's graves, is what he said.
00:27:41.540We need to relearn our responsibilities as citizens.
00:27:45.560And to your point, we need to recognize that we're a major block in the United States of America, and we should collectively argue and influence things for what's good for us fundamentally, because we also believe it's good for everybody else.
00:27:57.880Yeah, I think it's a real problem that is caused sometimes by just being a majority so that you're not aware of different interests and the need to advocate for them.
00:28:10.800So you have a scenario, of course, where Catholics or Jews in the United States, they had to found their own different schools and organizations and these things because the culture wasn't naturally their own, right?
00:28:22.500If they wanted to persist inside what was an Anglo-Protestant nation primarily when they arrived, then they needed to go ahead and create these different organizations, advocate for themselves in different areas.
00:28:35.060That was a natural part of what they did.
00:28:36.940They made these social organizations, they made these religious organizations, and they got politically active.
00:28:42.900And you can tell because, you know, there's so many Catholics and, you know, different groups inside of politics that there's a pipeline to ensure that they are grooming leadership, that the leadership is getting placed in important organizations and taking important roles and ensuring that those groups have the type of representation that they're looking for.
00:29:02.160But I think because, again, the Southern Baptists just saw themselves as kind of, you know, being the same thing as America, it's just exactly the same thing.
00:29:10.000They never developed that separate understanding of, oh, no, actually, people have to work to get into these political positions.
00:29:18.320It's okay to advocate for your interest when you're in those positions.
00:29:22.000They saw that as kind of dirty work, the work that the world does, you know, not something that, you know, religious organizations should be involved in.
00:29:28.860And so that's why it's been, you know, so lacking.
00:29:31.460We don't, even though the Southern Baptist Convention is so overrepresented inside the country when it comes to membership, it's vastly underrepresented when it comes to political organization or elite formation.
00:29:43.100And I think that's a huge problem, but I'm glad that, you know, different organizations like your own are looking to change that because I think that's a critical step in ensuring that ultimately, like you said, we're not treating these organizations as some kind of neutral arbiter in the public square, but things that need to be influenced with the truth of Christ and represent the interests of a large body that really dominates Protestant America in many ways.
00:30:44.480They think political power, having it and using it is fundamentally engaging in corruption and even sin.
00:30:53.820And there are many Southern Baptists who have Anabaptist political theology.
00:30:58.260And so we're seeing a resurgence in a more robust and historical Baptist political theology that leads us to engaging in our country right now.
00:31:05.920But it's going to take a little more time to shake off this Anabaptist rot that sort of clipped our Achilles heels and had us sit on the sidelines.
00:31:14.020Well, let's shift gears for a second and talk about how Donald Trump has been doing and how the wider administration has been doing.
00:31:22.740I know that you got to visit the White House and speak with Donald Trump.
00:31:26.200And I know that there have been some outrages recently about Pete Hegseth having a prayer meeting.
00:31:33.140You know, oh, it's the end of church and state.
00:31:36.560Someone's praying inside a government building.
00:31:38.980It's the end of the world where Handmaid's Tale has finally arrived.
00:31:42.840Have you seen a significant shift in the way the administration is approaching Christians and involving Christians in their work, taking their needs into consideration?
00:31:56.420I mean, for four years under Biden and then really for eight years under Obama.
00:32:00.940So when you stack that up, 12 of the last 16 years, the gears of the federal government, you know, the behemoth and the deep state were all grinding after Christians.
00:32:12.260IRS targeting conservative Christian groups, Biden's FBI, no knock rating, Catholic pro-life protesters trying to throw pro-life grandmas in jail for seven years, which could have been the end of their life.
00:32:39.840He genuinely wants to hear what we believe in and how we want to see government policies pursued that really just defend the American history, basic morals, virtues and values that we all shared in this country for hundreds of years before the revolution swept it all away of the mid 20th century.
00:32:58.540And so I haven't seen a White House in my lifetime so open to hearing from pastors and Christian leaders and intent on actually following through on policy agendas.
00:33:09.460Donald Trump, New York billionaire, real estate developer, playboy is delivering for Christians as a president more than any president has in my lifetime.
00:33:19.840When I found out my friend got a great deal on a designer dress from Winners, I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners?
00:33:29.000Like that woman over there with the Italian leather handbag.
00:33:51.440You know, that's a that's an interesting thing we might explore for a second, because there has been, you know, there's a lot of people, of course, who look at Trump, obviously a very imperfect past and somebody who I don't, you know, I don't even know if he's truly Christian, you know, in this moment, if he is actually, you know, taken that step towards regenerate salvation.
00:34:11.180But I do know, but I do know that he has had one of the largest impacts, even as a non-Christian, like you said, on behalf of Christians in the United States.
00:34:20.440We look at, you know, we look at, you know, we look at, you know, you know, Joe Rogan, you know, you know, Joe Rogan is going to church now, you know, Jordan Peterson, despite his many faults, you know, is bringing lots of people closer to Christ, even if he himself struggles with many of these things.
00:34:39.900It does feel at a certain level, like there is a form of revival starting to bubble up inside the United States, but it is coming in many cases from outside the church, from places that perhaps you would not expect people you would not expect.
00:34:56.380And of course, celebrity high profile conversions, they're always a mixed bag because, you know, for every great one, you get a Kanye West or something like that, right?
00:35:06.800So you don't want to immediately rush in and just say, oh, great, someone, you know, said something good about Jesus.
00:35:11.940So obviously we need to elevate them to some kind of leadership position.
00:35:15.820But it is interesting that, you know, a guy who ultimately does not have this long record of piety like Donald Trump would outperform many people like, say, Mike Pence, if he was in that position when it comes to caring about the interests of Christians.
00:35:32.320And so many people who otherwise would not be interested in Christianity now seem to be searching for that.
00:35:38.500What do you think about this possible revival that seems to be coming from outside the influence of the church, but ultimately still seems to be driving people towards the things of Christ?
00:35:49.200Yeah, well, as you said, we're probably not putting woke away quite yet, but I will have to say that wokeness really ripped out the bottom of all sort of transcendental and permanent things in our life.
00:36:02.500It was an acid that swept across our country, destroying faith, family, borders, prosperity, and opportunity for people all across America.
00:36:13.060And when you're seeing things like Kamala Harris advocating for transgender surgeries for incarcerated illegal aliens, I think people start asking themselves, what is going on with the country that I'm in?
00:36:25.920And we're seeing that young men in particular are being attracted to tradition, to the church, to the idea of having a family.
00:36:32.840There's still a desire for the hope of a better life.
00:36:35.340And after many decades of being told religion was this ugly and backwards thing, we saw what was really ugly and backwards was this crazy wokeness, which functioned as religion in many ways.
00:36:46.640So I think that's definitely tied into it.
00:36:48.740And the church, I think, really, because so many of the leaders, particularly in the evangelical world, adopted baptized forms of wokeness, it sent young men, and I'm going to say it in particular, young white men looking for that hope and that transcendental truth, those permanent things outside of the church.
00:37:06.860And fundamentally, that just comes down to the truth.
00:37:09.900Where can I go to hear somebody who's going to tell it like it is?
00:37:12.800And they find someone like Peterson and Rogan, you know, Peterson, who was famously made popular for refusing to use transgender pronouns, contrast that with this guy, Preston Sprinkle, who's a major evangelical theologian, who tells Christians to practice pronoun hospitality, that we should use trans pronouns to, quote unquote, love our neighbor.
00:37:32.380If you're a young white guy who's 20 dealing with woke HR scolds, who are you going to listen to there?
00:37:38.940So I'll tie all that up by saying that I think God has been very gracious to us.
00:37:43.420God uses crooked sticks to draw straight lines.
00:37:46.280He tells us to pray for kings and rulers that we may live peaceable and quiet lives.
00:37:51.120And Donald Trump is giving us the opportunity to do that and sort of recreate cultural conditions in our country that drive people to church.
00:37:59.520And I hope as we see a resurgence of what's called cultural Christianity, true spiritual revival would come along with it.
00:38:06.360But I will say this. Give me the conditions of cultural Christianity that allow me to pursue spiritual revival any day and twice on Sunday before we demand sort of neutral, secular pluralism that demonize Christians and sends us into the closet.
00:38:22.680Yeah, I was amazed, you know, because I wasn't plugged into kind of these wider debates across different Christian, you know, political sects about, you know, whether or not we should have cultural Christianity, whether that's a good or an evil thing.
00:38:37.780I didn't know any of these debates existed.
00:38:39.480I always assumed, of course, it was better because even if someone is not immediately completely, you know, saved, if they have not completely committed themselves to Christ, ultimately they are at least familiar with, you know, the biblical truths.
00:38:55.480They kind of marinate in the culture and they absorb some of these things.
00:39:00.880Because, you know, I taught in public schools and the amount of just basic biblical ignorance.
00:39:06.100People are so biblically illiterate, they didn't, if you make a reference to Jonah and the whale or David and Goliath, you just got blinks from all these different kids sitting across you.
00:39:15.920So it's not just that you don't have a saving knowledge of Christ.
00:39:19.340You don't even have a culture anymore because you've lost the basic touchstone that allowed you to have conversations.
00:39:25.420You know, again, Peterson, for all his faults, has brought a lot of people to the understanding that real truth is actually contained in metaphor.
00:39:33.640That is the stories, the narratives that we tell ourselves.
00:39:37.560You know, they are the things that define us and make us who they are and allow us to understand each other and have these conversations and have a common culture.
00:39:45.380And so a cultural Christianity is critical, I think, both for ultimately the possibility of salvation for the average person, but also the fact that it binds us together and gives us a real organic identity, something that is wholesome and pushes us towards the good.
00:40:04.220And it just blows my mind that there are people out there who are like, no, no, some person might be a false Christian if we have cultural Christianity.
00:40:11.240So we need to turn every institution over to people who literally hate God and their fathers just so that we can, you know, what, can be punished?
00:40:20.020Like that's the greatest thing in the world, that the goal is persecution?
00:40:27.000I mean, fundamentally what happened over the last 50 to 70 years here in America is that men have forgotten God.
00:40:32.340And it was an intentional thing too, right?
00:40:34.260They took the Bible out of public schools and by doing that really took it out of our public life in the 1960s.
00:40:41.480You know, sometimes on the right we talk about what's the most important date in the 1960s, 1965 and the Civil Rights Act or was it the Immigration and Nationality Act?
00:40:51.200Well, I would say it might be 1963 when a Supreme Court ruling, you know, said that prayer and Bible reading in public schools could not be compulsory and it really drove it out.
00:41:00.620And when you do that, Oren, is you rip out the foundations of Western civilization and the United States of America.
00:41:07.560The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bible are what this country was built upon and what it ran on really for almost 200 years.
00:41:18.480And when we ripped out those foundations, which the secular left did very intentionally, the Marxists did, that gets right back into the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:41:25.860As they marched through the institutions, they called pastors suckers because they were so such soft targets.
00:41:32.040They brought them into this project of cultural annihilation by taking our eyes off of our creator and bringing them down onto ourselves saying, you make your future.
00:41:56.080The American dream seems out of reach to so many other people.
00:41:59.060And underneath all these issues, economics, marriage, immigration is the truth that we need to recover, that we need to remember God and worship him and order our lives accordingly.
00:42:08.240You know, it came up, I hadn't expected us to discuss it, or I would have pulled the clip, but I'm sure you saw the Jordan Peterson debating 20 atheists video that's been going around.
00:42:21.840There's, for those who don't know, there's this channel Jubilee, and they do a lot of these kind of clickbaity, you know, two groups.
00:42:29.000We're having a real talk type discussion things.
00:42:31.720They go out and hire actors for this stuff.
00:42:33.660So you never know if there's any actual organic interaction, but I imagine there had to be at some level because otherwise we wouldn't have got the clip that we got here.
00:42:43.400It was apparently the video was originally supposed to be 20 Atheist Debate, One Christian, but Jordan Peterson kept refusing to declare himself a Christian.
00:42:53.640And that confused so many of the atheist debaters that they had to change the video title after they posted it.
00:42:59.840And, you know, it's an interesting moment because, again, I have a lot of respect for Peterson's work.
00:43:05.620I'm somebody who was personally helped by it in a difficult time.
00:43:09.320Peterson has ultimately said some things about, you know, even realizing the resurrection of Christ and, you know, giving, acknowledging that to be a truth.
00:43:21.240But he seems so hesitant to be able to embrace Christianity, even though he draws so deeply from it.
00:43:28.460And I just didn't know what your thoughts were on that.
00:43:30.900There's a particularly difficult moment where he's sitting with a – and don't get me wrong, the atheist is a little snot, right?
00:43:36.680He's incredibly rude to him, you know, the personification of a Reddit atheist.
00:43:41.740But, you know, Jordan Peterson kind of looks at him and says, well, you're quite something, aren't you?
00:43:46.120And I thought that was just so brutal because for all of Peterson's wisdom, his lack of ability to kind of cross the finish line and embrace Christ in a public way seems to wound his overall ability to actually hold these conversations.
00:44:03.900Well, it certainly does, and if I were to venture a guess at what his maybe epistemological hangup there is, that fundamentally coming to Christ truly, salvifically, involves, you know, recognizing you're a sinner and bending the knee and asking for forgiveness from a crucified and risen Savior.
00:44:24.500It's giving up control of your life in a way that I think is truly uncomfortable to so many people.
00:44:29.860And this is a great opportunity for me to say, well, I want cultural Christianity back in America.
00:44:53.740Jesus is the incarnate second member of the Trinity, God becoming man for us, perfectly human, perfectly divine, living a perfect life in our stead, dying on the cross to suffer the just wrath of God that we deserve for our sins.
00:45:08.340And we know, as Roman teaches us, that we have all fallen short of the glory of God.
00:45:12.640Everyone is a sinner, and our only hope of being justified on that final day of judgment before our creator is to cling to the perfect and finished work of Jesus Christ.
00:45:23.720Thank you for giving me an opportunity to preach it here on your program, brother.
00:45:27.500And that's what I think the hang up is for Jordan Peterson, is he would need to bend the knee to the risen Savior, Jesus Christ, and see him for who he really is, and not just a useful archetype or metaphor for ordering our lives or making our beds.
00:45:44.480So, William, before we go to the questions of the people, I want to ask you two questions.
00:45:49.340One, if you are sitting down with Donald Trump and you say there's one thing that you could do, one change you could make that would help the cause of Christians and the spread of Christianity and the salvation of Americans, what would that be?
00:46:05.360And two, I know, like you said, you're looking to make a big impact on the upcoming meeting here for the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:46:14.060What should the average person be doing?
00:46:17.720Those are two great questions, and I would say the first one is a tad tricky.
00:46:22.980I would say if I had a long enough time to have a conversation with Donald Trump and the requisite personal relationship to do it, I would encourage him to publicly repent of his sins and profess faith in Jesus Christ.
00:46:36.780I hear reports that, you know, his faith and his beliefs have been changed since his, you know, brush with death and that assassination attempt.
00:46:49.460And so I think Donald Trump really does recognize the gracious hand of providence of God in his life.
00:46:56.440But I think there could be few things more beneficial for this country and for Christianity, for Donald Trump to even pull, I think it's Eisenhower, and, you know, be baptized in office as a president.
00:47:09.480You know, that would be incredible on the personal front.
00:47:12.540On the policy front, I would say one of the most important things that he can continue to do is to reground our understanding of America as a fundamentally Christian nation.
00:47:25.080That doesn't mean that other religions aren't welcome here, but they come here on our terms.
00:47:29.660They assimilate into our culture and they don't try to erode and destroy the Christian heritage that built this country.
00:47:37.520And then to your second question, what can people do at the Southern Baptist annual meeting in Dallas?
00:47:41.980Well, first come, if you're listening to this and you're Southern Baptist, it's not too late to come.
00:47:47.900Second, come ready to take three major votes.
00:47:51.060One, we're going to have a major vote on reforming the ethics and religious liberty convention commission, which we believe is deeply out of step with Southern Baptist priorities.
00:47:59.560And frankly, biblical priorities, that vote will look like a vote to get rid of it.
00:48:06.820If you want to see it saved, vote to get rid of it this year, make them come back next year with key changes in leadership, trustee, and their mission.
00:48:15.040Second votes on financial transparency.
00:49:05.180Like I said, I think we've got some super chats, so we'll check on those real quick.
00:49:08.420But before we do, is there anywhere you want to direct people, any place they can check out your work or keep up with what the leadership organization is doing?
00:49:17.880You can go to centerforbaptistleadership.org.
00:49:20.880You can follow us on X at Baptist Leaders.
00:49:23.640And because you've got a YouTube-heavy audience, and mine is much more on X, I'll say, find our YouTube channel, Center for Baptist Leadership.
00:49:32.620We're producing podcasts, live streams to help you be informed about what's happening in the Southern Baptist Convention and to equip you to be a bolder and more courageous Baptist voice in the public square.
00:49:49.000He says, I think Protestants are going to relearn a lot of old lessons and eventually land at a hierarchical structure of collective power under some sort of universal bishop.