The economy is in a recession, but it's not a real recession. It's a recession that will be over soon. Glenn and Stu are here to tell you why and why not, and what you should do about it.
00:06:10.580The article, An Imposter Christianity is Threatening American Democracy.
00:06:17.640And I read it Sunday, and my eyes started to bleed.
00:06:22.320So I went to our Mercury Museum and started doing some research, asked Tim Barton, David Barton, and the research staff to be able to do it.
00:06:32.920Can we compile some evidence that everything CNN is contending here is wrong?
00:06:39.600And, gee, after nine pages of footnotes, yeah, we can do that.
00:07:15.100The insurrection marked the first time many Americans realized the U.S. is facing a burgeoning white Christian nationalist movement.
00:07:24.500This movement uses Christian language to cloak sexism and hostility to black people and non-white immigrants in its quest to create a white Christian America.
00:07:39.240Now we really know what happened on January 6th.
00:07:42.180It was white Christians that were trying to get anybody with different color to get them out of here because that's what Jesus says, according to CNN.
00:07:49.780The media is so busy looking for anyone and anything to blame for January 6th and also at the same time serve two masters.
00:08:01.300Also take down not just the country, not just conservatives, but also Christianity.
00:08:08.820And if you have faith, now you are on trial.
00:08:14.300And the way they do it is by taking your faith and assigning a false label to it.
00:08:21.360Your faith, as you will see in this article, is now white Christian nationalist.
00:08:28.360Do you know of a church that promotes sexism and hostility to black people and non-white immigrants?
00:08:33.940If you do, please call because you're probably proud.
00:08:36.520I don't know of a church that is preaching that even in the language of dog whistles.
00:08:45.260Now, you might be thinking that CNN is referring to some random offshoot of Christianity, a minority whose relevancy must be called out because the article goes on to elaborate.
00:08:57.300White Christian nationalist belief has infiltrated the religious mainstream thoroughly, so thoroughly that virtually any conservative Christian pastor who tries to challenge its ideology risks their career, says Christian Cobes Dumez.
00:09:24.820Well, she's the author of the New York Times bestseller, Jesus and John Wayne, How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.
00:09:33.800She says, these ideas are so widespread that any individual pastor or Christian leader who tries to turn the tide and say, let's look again at Jesus and scripture are going to be tossed aside.
00:09:51.920OK, so first, CNN is clearly not talking about some random minority offshoot here.
00:09:57.380They're insinuating that every church in America, especially if you have a white pastor, is infected, quote, virtually any conservative Christian pastor and any individual pastor or Christian leader.
00:10:16.280Well, I think that pretty much encapsulates almost all Christian churches.
00:10:22.900But funny enough, you're probably still grouped under this label, even if you're not white.
00:10:30.220If you believe in Christian doctrine to these people, you're the enemy.
00:10:34.840You know what they're really talking about here, right?
00:11:39.500I don't know about Hobbes University, but Calvin is definitely a Christian, which gives her a basis as a Christian authority to criticize other Christians and to point out they're all off base.
00:11:54.340She's referenced six times in the article.
00:11:57.100It's an amazing high number, but she is a Dumez and she has a view of Christianity and whether she's a good authority on Christian beliefs.
00:12:33.460And I quote, having spent a lot of time reading the sermons and the diaries of intrepid Methodist women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
00:12:44.920I couldn't help but see Hillary Clinton as a torchbearer of this vibrant tradition of progressive faith and activism.
00:12:53.860Yet it puzzled me that so many people on the left and the right saw her as secular or even a pagan.
00:13:03.060The more I begin to dig into her story, the more I begin to realize to tell her story is to tell the story of Christianity itself in recent American history.
00:13:15.960And the heavens open and the sun beams down on the truth.
00:13:21.100By the way, CNN also fails to acknowledge that Gomez is currently openly contending against the university's Christian beliefs in important areas, such as sexuality.
00:13:33.820She is currently the leader in opposition to the Christian beliefs in her church in that area.
00:13:40.720Not only debating the university's position, but also being photographed in front of a pride flag.
00:13:51.100Now, just this one source alone, it's pretty clear, CNN, we know what they have a problem with here.
00:14:00.140The Christian faith, what bothers them, gets them so hot, and oh my gosh, they're after us, is the doctrine of the bubble, which is on trial here.
00:14:12.060And anyone willing to pervert it is an expert, a theologian, or a historian.
00:14:19.160The article goes on to identify the key beliefs, three key beliefs associated with the white Christian nationalists.
00:14:28.940Oh, well, I'm going to take a break because you need to have a sip of water because you're going to realize pretty darn quickly that you have been calling for the overthrow of this government all because of black and Hispanic people.
00:14:47.020Or people of another color, which I shan't express at this time.
00:15:06.800Time passes quickly, and in case you haven't noticed, the seasons build up and turn into years, and the years build up and turn into decades.
00:15:13.940And before you know it, you go from a college kid to a spouse to a parent to a parent to a homeowner to death.
00:15:21.580Next thing you know, you're in the coffin, laying there.
00:15:47.820America's Home for Home Loans for over 20 years have been helping people just like you save a ton of money, refinancing, consolidation, or even accessing your home's equity.
00:15:58.400They do all of it, and they do it right, and they work for you, not the bank.
00:16:03.060So call American Financing at 800-906-2440.
00:16:54.460CNN says that we are all worshiping an imposter Christianity, and they have somebody named Christian Anampur that kind of has Christ in the name, so I think we should pay attention.
00:17:10.140The article, released on Sunday, identifies three key beliefs associated with the white Christian nationalists.
00:17:17.680And here they are, and ask yourself right now, do I belong to a hate group?
00:18:34.540Aren't I told every day that I am just somebody that is just a horrible, horrible person unless I apply the politics of this new woke religion?
00:18:49.000Anyway, erasing the line separating piety from politics is a key characteristic of white Christian nationalism.
00:18:54.840Many want to reduce or erase the separation of church and state, say those who study the movement.
00:19:06.380What is separation of church and state?
00:19:09.580Well, according to our court and public policy decisions, it includes an individual personally expressing his faith and beliefs in public.
00:19:19.880So, they believe Christians are theocrats for wanting to see individuals receive the Constitution's guaranteed protection for free speech and religious expression that many courts have ignored recently.
00:19:35.180Now, consider some of the separation of church and state restrictions that CNN and this Yale professor just think as nonsense.
00:19:44.680For instance, a student was prohibited from writing a research paper on a religious topic or drawing religious artwork in class or carry a personal Bible onto the school grounds.
00:19:57.480A school forbade a Bible from being placed in its reference library.
00:20:02.180Wow, try to understand Shakespeare without the Bible.
00:20:06.100Cadets at a state military academy were banned from praying over their meals individually.
00:20:12.540A state employee in Minnesota was barred from parking his car in the state parking lot because of a religious sticker on his bumper.
00:20:19.700Five-year-old kindergarten student in Saratoga Springs, New York, was forbidden to say a prayer over her lunch and was scolded by the teacher for doing so.
00:20:27.360Senior citizens who regularly gathered at a community center in Bulk Springs, Texas, prohibited from praying over their meals.
00:20:35.620A library employee in Russellville, Kentucky was barred from wearing her necklace because it had a small cross on it.
00:20:42.380College students serving residential assistance in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, prohibited from holding Bible studies in their own personal dorm rooms.
00:20:51.480A school lunch official in St. Louis, Missouri, caught an elementary student praying over his lunch, lifted the student from his seat, reprimanded him from other students, took him to the principal, who ordered him, stop praying!
00:21:04.320Now, there are hundreds of these examples, and that's what they claim is the separation of church and state.
00:21:11.100So, what does the separation of church and state actually mean in a historic sense?
00:21:20.040Well, the only founder that talked about the separation of church and state was Thomas Jefferson.
00:21:27.940So, we should ask him, because the progressives credit him with the origin of that phrase, and they love it so much.
00:21:36.660So, it was Jefferson's firm position that the federal government had no authority to interfere, limit, regulate, or prohibit public religious expressions.
00:22:36.660Both for your personal finances and for a bigger cause.
00:22:39.380I want you to check out Patriot Mobile and consider making the switch.
00:22:44.080This is a company that I don't just endorse, I admire.
00:22:47.960They offer plans for just about any budget, and they're on the same cell towers as the big guys, so you know you're going to get great service while saving money.
00:22:55.300And more importantly, Patriot Mobile stands for the same values you and I stand for.
00:23:00.760They're America's only Christian conservative mobile company, and they're standing right next to us in the fight against the creeping rot of leftism in this country.
00:23:09.940They donate to causes that you can get behind, which is a lot better than you can say for, let's say, Verizon, who gives money to Planned Parenthood.
00:23:31.900Call 972-PATRIOT-972-PATRIOT or PatriotMobile.com slash Beck.
00:23:38.240You're running out of time to save 20 bucks off your Blaze TV subscription.
00:23:47.000Go to BlazeTV.com slash Glenn and use the promo code UNSAFE.
00:23:50.340All right, so we're debunking the CNN article that America has a real problem because Christianity, all the churches have been taken hostage, and now they're white nationalist Christian churches.
00:24:12.900So they have gone on to identify the three key beliefs associated with white Christian nationalists.
00:24:18.840The first one is, I believe the United States was founded as a Christian nation.
00:24:23.160Okay, so we told you about this, and then the separation of church and state.
00:24:36.540We have to go to Thomas Jefferson because he's the only one that said this.
00:24:39.580It was Jefferson's firm position that the federal government had no authority to interfere with, limit, regulate, or prohibit public religious expressions, a position he stated on many occasions like this.
00:24:53.820Quote, no power over the freedom of religion is delegated to the United States by the Constitution, First Amendment.
00:25:02.180In the matter of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the federal government.
00:25:13.420Quote, our excellent Constitution has not placed our religious rights under the power of any public functionary.
00:25:22.200Now, none of these statements or other statements by Jefferson contain even the slightest hint that religion should be isolated or removed from public square or that the public square should be secularized.
00:25:34.420Rather, that the government could not limit or regulate any religious expressions.
00:25:41.940So now, let's understand the concern here.
00:25:45.380Jefferson wrote about the separation of church and state to people of faith who were saying, I don't trust this government.
00:25:58.880Jefferson replied to them, January 1st, 1802, assuring them that they had nothing to fear.
00:26:05.400Quote, the government would not meddle with your religious expression, whether it occurs in public or private.
00:26:12.680Quoting, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people, which declared in the First Amendment that their legislature should, quote, make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
00:26:30.960Thus, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.
00:26:35.620So he was using that as a metaphor, saying, don't worry about it.
00:26:40.240They're not going to touch religion because they're not able to touch religion.
00:27:04.560I mean, I really hate completely blowing up CNN's first key belief of white Christian nationalists right at the beginning.
00:27:11.740But, you know, maybe they're just ignorant or they're being completely dishonest.
00:27:16.880You'll have to figure out the article and ignorance goes on.
00:27:20.200One of the most popular beliefs, writes CNN, among white Christian nationalists is that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation.
00:27:28.660The founding fathers were all Orthodox, evangelical Christians, and that God has chosen the U.S. for a special role in history.
00:27:37.260But the notion that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation is bad history and bad theology, says Philip Gorsky, the sociologist who is neither, again, a theologian or a historian.
00:27:48.680But he is the co-author of The Flag and the Cross, White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy.
00:27:55.780So it makes him authority on his opinion.
00:27:59.200He says it's a half-truth, a mythological version of American history.
00:28:03.760So sayeth the Yale sociology professor.
00:28:07.880Well, since I didn't get any real historians to comment for this article, let me give you some very well-documented footnotes and quotes that are actually historically accurate.
00:28:21.200On literally hundreds of occasions in the past two centuries, state and federal courts have routinely declared America as a Christian nation.
00:28:29.940For starters, in a unanimous decision in 1844, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed America as, quote, a Christian country.
00:28:39.3801892, Supreme Court did it again, delivered a unanimous ruling declaring America is, quote, a Christian nation.
00:28:47.160In 1931, Supreme Court reaffirmed the same position for a third time, stating we are, quote, a Christian people.
00:28:54.460Now, I know you have no respect for the Supreme Court unless it agrees with you, but that's what the Supreme Court has said.
00:29:01.360But maybe we can go for some presidents, because presidents have all made comments on this, including John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, John Taylor, Zachary Taylor, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon.
00:29:21.280And, hey, here's one from Lyndon Baines Johnson that you'll like if you're a progressive.
00:29:26.240In these last 200 years, we have guided the building of our nation and our society by those principles and precepts brought to earth nearly 2,000 years ago on that first Christmas.
00:29:39.880Oh, and then, if I may quote, America was born as a Christian nation.
00:29:46.340America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.
00:29:59.280Oh, it gives me great joy to say Woodrow frickin' Wilson, your God on the left.
00:30:06.300But let's go back even further in our history.
00:30:09.8001606, Virginia Charter declared the colony was started for the propagation of Christian religion to such people as yet live in ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God and Jesus Christ.
00:30:22.860The Mayflower Compact of 1620 declared their endeavor was undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith.
00:30:31.1401629, Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared that winning the country to the knowledge and obedience of the only one true God and Savior of mankind in the Christian faith is the principal end of this plantation or colony.
00:30:54.820Now, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, I believe no one can read history of our country without realizing the good book and the spirit of the Savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses.
00:31:06.660Whether we look at the first charter of Virginia or the charter of New England or the charter of Massachusetts Bay, the fundamental order of Connecticut, same objective is present.
00:31:15.160A Christian land governed by Christian principles.
00:31:17.960Congress has also said, 1852, 1853, when a group sought to complete secularization of the public square, House Judiciary Committee had the people during the revolution had a suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity.
00:31:32.240That revolution would have been strangled in its cradle.
00:31:34.820At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments and the universal sentiment that it was Christianity that should be encouraged, not any one sect or denomination.
00:31:46.020In this age, there could be no substitute for Christianity.
00:31:49.820The Judiciary Committee, we are Christians, not because the law demands it, not to gain exclusive benefits or to avoid legal disabilities, but from choice and education.
00:32:00.020And this in a land is thus universally Christian, which is what is expected, what is desired, and what we shall pay due regard to Christianity.
00:32:13.020House of Representatives said the same thing.
00:32:15.300Now, they immediately on CNN counter with, yeah, but you really don't need to go any further.
00:32:23.520I mean, none of virtually, I'm quoting virtually, none of the founding fathers could be classified as evangelical Christians.
00:32:31.820John Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence.
00:32:35.540The Holy Ghost carries with it the whole Christian system in this earth.
00:32:37.940Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered, but by through the Holy Ghost and authority religious, blah, blah, blah.
00:32:43.460Samuel Adams, I reply, I rely upon the merits of Jesus Christ for a pardon of all my sins.
00:32:48.400I conceive I can we cannot better express ourselves than by humbly supplicating the supreme rule of the world and promoting the speedy bringing up of the holy and happy period when the kingdoms of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ may.
00:33:21.220Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration.
00:33:24.600On the mercy of my Redeemer, I rely for salvation and on his merits, not the works I have done.
00:33:32.460I hope that through and by merits, sufferings, and meditation of my only Savior and Jesus Christ, I may be admitted to the kingdom, blah, blah, blah.
00:34:17.640I give and recommend my soul to the hands of the Almighty God who gave me my body to be here in the earth, to be buried in a decent and Christian-like manner.
00:34:26.780Patrick Henry, being a Christian, is a character which I prize far above all this world has or can boast.
00:34:34.660Samuel Huntington, signer of the Declaration.
00:34:37.020It becomes a people publicly to supplicate the pardon that we must obtain forgiveness through the merits and meditation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
00:34:45.600James Madison, you know, the guy who wrote the Constitution and the signer of the Constitution.
00:34:53.680A washful eye must be kept on ourselves, lest while we are building ideal monuments of renown and bliss here, we might neglect to have our names enrolled in the annals of heaven.
00:35:05.760Robert Payne, signer of the Declaration.
00:35:20.620For evidence that the United States was founded as a secular nation, look no further than the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli.
00:35:30.020As an agreement, the U.S. negotiated with a country in present-day Libya to end the practice of pirates attacking American ships.
00:35:38.800And it was ratified unanimously by a Senate, still half-filled with the signers of the Constitution, that declared the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on a Christian religion.
00:35:53.660Now, I want you to notice that little gotcha quote.
00:40:42.360OK, so she says that's targeting black people.
00:40:46.060That'll as long as they have the immunity to sell their weapons of war like this, black and brown communities will continue to be targeted.
00:40:52.900Well, yeah, it's interesting because there was another time in history where masked people were threatening people and the government took their guns away.
00:48:10.980White Christian nationalist beliefs have been infiltrated, have infiltrated the religious mainstream so thoroughly
00:48:18.620that virtually any conservative Christian pastor who tries to challenge its ideology risks their career.
00:48:25.640These ideas so widespread that any, any individual pastor or Christian leader who tries to turn the tide and say,
00:48:36.220let's look again at Jesus and scripture is going to be tossed aside.
00:48:40.140This according to their so-called experts, which I debunked last hour, first hour of the podcast.
00:48:46.800So let me take you now to the three points, because they say there are three points that are absolute lies that Americans need to know.
00:49:00.080And they, they go in to say the three key beliefs associated with white Christian nationalists are a belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation.
00:49:13.140Uh, and the second one is that, uh, we, uh, our signers also said that, uh, we were, uh, Christians and people claim that the signers of the declaration in the constitution that they somehow or another didn't have faith.
00:49:32.860We've already gone through all of those.
00:49:34.620You can listen back to the podcast, but I want to stop now at the last point.
00:49:41.500They made in this section and the section was one of the most popular beliefs among white Christian nationalists is that the U S was founded as a Christian nation.
00:49:52.460Founding fathers were Orthodox evangelical Christians, and God has chosen the U S for a special role in history.
00:49:59.280So they went on to say that this was absolutely not true.
00:50:05.060And it goes on for evidence that the United States was founded as a secular nation.
00:50:09.940And look no further than the 1797 treaty of Tripoli, an agreement.
00:50:15.460The U S negotiated with a country in present day Libya to end the practice of private pirates, attacking American ships.
00:50:22.900It was ratified unanimously by a Senate still half filled with the signers of the constitution and declared the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on a Christian religion.
00:50:34.100Now, this is really important because this will show you where they make the error, where they're going.
00:51:44.060Let me give you just a little bit of history on this.
00:51:46.380America was engaged in a war on terror against Muslims.
00:51:51.600Our first foreign war were terrorists called Muslims.
00:51:57.460This was a 32 year war, much longer than second world war or the second war on terror, which many under-informed commentators today wrongly claim that the latest war on terror is the longest war in American history.
00:52:13.020The roots of that earlier conflict, uh, go back to the end of the American war for independence.
00:52:19.000When five Islamic nations, Turkey, Tunis, Morocco, Algiers, and Tripoli began making indiscriminate attacks against the property and interests of what they claim to be Christian nations, America, England, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden.
00:52:37.320Those five, uh, attacking nations were called the Barbary States named for the Berber ethnic people who became Muslims, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:52:46.840And they attacked American civilian merchant vessels wherever they found them, seizing the ships and the cargo and making slaves out of the crew.
00:52:55.800Now, the slaves were both white and black for American ships at the time.
00:53:25.980In 1784, Congress had sent a American diplomats, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin overseas to try to negotiate with these Muslim terrorists and, and, uh, stop the, the attacks.
00:53:40.820And after two years, Adam and Jefferson asked the ambassador from Tripoli, what is up with these people?
00:53:47.960What is their motivation against the attacks of America?
00:53:51.240And he said, quote, it is founded on the laws of their prophet Muhammad, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who shall have not acknowledged their authority were sinners.
00:54:05.160And it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found and to make more slaves so they could take them as prisoners.
00:54:14.700And that every Muslim who should be slain in battle was to go to paradise, end quote.
00:54:19.260So, the Muslims, he was saying there, viewed this controversy as one between religions.
00:54:27.900Well, the Americans said, our government is not a religious government.
00:54:33.220Our people are, but our government is not.
00:54:36.780And so, they tried to convince the Muslims that it wasn't a holy war against their faith.
00:54:44.020We just wanted to stop the terrorism and the attacks.
00:54:47.700Earlier, 18, or 1786, the treaty negotiated by Jefferson and Adams eventually ended the Moroccan hostilities against the United States.
00:54:57.740And it had contained three separate clauses making this point.
00:55:04.100The 1795 treaty with Algiers contained similar acknowledgments as did subsequent treaties with other Muslim nations.
00:55:12.420So, the treaty with Tripoli, likewise declared, quote,
00:55:16.780As the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion,
00:55:22.300as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Muslims,
00:55:31.140and as the said states of America have never entered in any war or act of hostility against Mohammed nations,
00:55:39.120it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between our two countries.
00:55:51.280This is acknowledging that America was not the kind of nation that they were used to.
00:55:58.900Americans were not, or America, was not like the Christian nations of Europe during the Middle Ages that fought the Muslims with the Crusades.
01:02:36.200quarters does not mean it's a recession and all the job growth and all the spin you've been hearing from the White House has also been filtering through John Harwood as a CNN reporter.