00:11:26.580Yeah, I know that from looking through your episode backlog and the titles, it just seems like that podcast is very much aligned with a lot of what we've been talking about in season one here at the King's Hall.
00:11:38.760So I think our listeners would probably enjoy that podcast as well.
00:11:43.880And then you're also, you just mentioned it, you're publishing a book, writing a book with Canon Press on Christian nationalism.
00:11:51.640Yeah, it's a defense of Christian nationalism.
00:11:53.900so it's the the manuscript is finished at least uh the the first draft i guess and it's with the
00:11:59.360editors i should get the edits back in a week uh we don't really have a timeline for publishing but
00:12:03.980i think within the next few months it should be available man i'm really excited for that one
00:12:10.400yeah i've put a lot of work into it and i i've come to respect people who write books even if
00:12:15.280i hate the book because it takes a lot of work to put it down and say things right so i'm excited
00:12:21.400to see it come out. Yeah, we are definitely excited as well. I know we plan on getting our
00:12:26.780hands on some copies of that and reading it as soon as we can. Definitely a book that needs to be
00:12:33.120written today, and it actually really brings us to the main thing we wanted to discuss today with
00:12:39.300you, which really is Christian political theology, especially in a historically rooted sort of way.
00:12:46.440I think one of the themes that our listeners have probably—if you take away nothing else from listening to Season 1 of the King's Hall, and even if you disagree with some of our conclusions from our discussions, I think most people would get a sense that something has gone wrong in the last, I don't know, century or two in the Western world, in the Western church,
00:13:11.820and that we've either been plundered or we've lost important treasures.
00:13:17.260We've given them away. We've had them taken from us.
00:13:20.160And some of the answer to growing in maturity as a church going forward
00:13:25.640is going to mean looking back over our shoulder
00:13:29.080and recovering or understanding the work of our Christian forebears.
00:13:33.580How did they think about politics? How did they think about theology?
00:13:37.500How did they think about masculinity, femininity, the family, culture, society?
00:13:43.100How did they think through these issues?
00:13:45.120And instead of making them up and maybe reading some Rick Warren and then coming to some conclusions, we should probably go farther back.
00:13:52.980So first question that I wanted to ask you really is one that I think many of us have probably thought in our head.0.95
00:14:01.300I wish someone would answer this question, but we feel like it will reveal that we're dumb.
00:14:06.420for having to ask it. So I think a good place to start would simply be to ask,0.90
00:14:12.500what do we mean by Christian nationalism? What do you mean by that? What is it?
00:14:16.900That is a good question. And I think that it's actually a very smart question.
00:14:22.200Because people throw around the word and they use it as, I mean, basically they use the
00:14:29.360connotations of, or they try to engineer connotations around the term. And then they
00:14:35.720toss it out at someone and say, you're a Christian nationalist. And because we have a sense that it's
00:14:40.140accusatory, we instantly want to deny it. And I think initially when I heard it, you know, a couple
00:14:45.140of years ago, two, three years ago, I guess my initial reaction was, no, I'm not. But then you
00:14:49.820start thinking about it. And I didn't use it of myself before then. I guess I had never thought
00:14:54.260of it. And I started thinking, but wait, that is what I believe. I am a Christian nationalist.
00:14:59.000And so I think like people, it's funny watching Twitter where people who started accusing people
00:15:04.280of Christian nationalists, all of a sudden they're like, wait, they used to be bad. Now people are
00:15:07.980saying they are Christian nationalists. So I think it's a really good question because you're1.00
00:15:12.380basically, you're confronting the people who are using it in the connotations they've engineered
00:15:19.060for it. So, I mean, you're asking kind of for a definition. I'll just give my definition,
00:15:23.420like a concise form. I have a definite, like a longer definition in the book that I don't think
00:15:27.820would make much sense over podcasts, but I think it's just a Christian nation acting for its own
00:15:34.340good. I think that's the, it's very simple. It's just a people who are aware of themselves as
00:15:39.180Christian, as a Christian people saying, we're going to, we are going to act by act. I mean,
00:15:45.040through civil laws and through social custom, we are going to act for our good. And that good is
00:15:51.820both earthly and heavenly. And so we can kind of parse what each of those means. And so that's
00:15:58.140my definition. But that's more of a kind of denoting what the words mean. It's kind of like
00:16:03.880what some people have called a top-down sort of definition, where you kind of think of it
00:16:07.820conceptually. And that's my approach in the book, is to think of it conceptually. But most of the
00:16:13.500when people are talking about christian nationalism as the definition that they assume that it's bad
00:16:19.420first of all it's assumed from the outset that it's bad whereas my definition is more neutral
00:16:24.000in the sense that yeah i mean a christian people can act poorly so there can be bad forms of
00:16:29.060christian nationalism uh and of course i want to assert the positive one and that it's it's
00:16:34.160possible and good and all that but um but if the the more neutral definition allows for it to be
00:16:38.960done well or poorly so whereas usually people assume it's bad and then they but then they
00:16:45.420approach it from okay let's let's think of cases and sort of the people out in the world there's
00:16:49.860these goofy weird charismatics you know they believe this some people think the constitution
00:16:54.440is uh equal to the bible okay we'll say that's christian nationalism some people think that0.91
00:17:00.080the christian america's found as a christian nation okay that's also christian so they they
00:17:04.040they make this list like, like those guys with Samuel Perry. And I forget the other,
00:17:09.260the historian sociologists come up with this book. I forget what the name of it is at this point,
00:17:13.860but they have a criteria of six different things. Then they have a kind of a spectrum of,
00:17:18.080if you're Christian nationalism, and it's, it's these, these things, do you affirm this or that?
00:17:22.440And so it's trying to capture, it's almost like a sociological kind of modern political
00:17:26.940scientific way of approaching the question of what it is. And so when I say I'm a Christian
00:17:31.600a nationalist, I don't necessarily affirm what you think, I don't necessarily affirm what some,
00:17:37.080you know, like charismatic church people might believe. And so I think you need to be conscious
00:17:43.060that there's various ways to define these things. But again, my definition, just to go back before
00:17:48.220we started, is just that it's a Christian people who are self-consciously acting for their own0.57
00:17:54.900good, both earthly and heavenly good. Or you could say natural and spiritual good, if you want to1.00
00:18:00.700make that distinction. So that's kind of what I mean by it as a definition.
00:18:05.760So when you're—and that's very helpful, and actually that kind of opened up a door
00:18:10.280in my mind a little bit as I've mulled this over and thought, how would I define—what does it
00:18:15.640mean to be a Christian nation? Because you get people who will respond to any positive talk
00:18:21.180about a Christian nation with this kind of flippant—nations can't be Christians, or can't0.70
00:18:27.740be Christian. Only people can be Christian. Have you heard that? What do you think about that?0.98
00:18:34.460Well, this is something that Jonathan Lehman has said and others, and they say that the only thing
00:18:39.920you can actually say as Christian are individuals and then religious assembly, like churches.
00:18:46.580So you can have a Christian church and have Christian individuals. I don't think they0.99
00:18:51.460actually thought that through because then, according to their own principle, you can't
00:18:54.880have Christian families. It's not clear you can have Christian schools. It's not clear you can
00:18:59.600have Christian clubs. So if you're restricting that designation as Christian to those individuals
00:19:06.740and churches, then you can't have a Christian family. But the thing is, most people want to0.96
00:19:11.540affirm that you have a Christian family, which means you have to kind of expand the principle.
00:19:15.740So what do you mean? I like to approach either you're kind of enmeshed in the Christian nation
00:19:20.620or you've never experienced it, and so it's harder to kind of identify it, I guess. But I think
00:19:26.860if you reflect on the family, I think that's a good way to kind of analogize into what the
00:19:32.080Christian nation is. So a Christian family, you can be living right next door to non-Christian1.00
00:19:38.580neighbors, and man and woman married. It's a valid marriage. It's a legal marriage. It's a real0.96
00:19:46.620marriage, and it's according to the natural ways of the things of nature, right? So man and woman
00:19:54.380married, they have kids. We can recognize that as a true family, true marriage. So fundamentally,
00:20:00.500they meet all the criteria, except they're not Christian. Now, if they were to become Christian,0.97
00:20:07.100that would not extinguish or eliminate the fact that fundamentally, it's a natural union. It's a
00:20:12.940natural family so but what would they do well they would add certain practices and and they
00:20:19.540would correct errors that's you know that grace and and scripture is revealed but the fundamental
00:20:25.840thing that that entity is does not change it's you could say it's perfected like nature is
00:20:30.880perfected with grace yeah so i mean so they'll add like they'll add family worship they'll forgive
00:20:35.400each other in christ they will they'll pray together and you know and so and if they're
00:20:39.660praying before they'll pray they'll still pray but now they'll pray with knowledge and fellowship
00:20:44.440of god and and in christ and so they that family is now you can designate as christian because it's
00:20:49.860added and kind of become this you know these practices i think that's the same thing is with
00:20:55.280the nation that you still can have a nation that's according to the natural ties that bind to people
00:21:01.440but but it becoming christian means that there's christian aspect there's christian manners there's
00:21:06.120Christian, there's kind of a, I hate to use the word, but there's sort of cultural liturgies
00:21:10.840that incorporate Christian themes and Christian scripture. There's a culture of worship. So just
00:21:18.120like the family attends worship, the nation kind of has this expectation of worship. And none of
00:21:23.000this means that you're redeeming nature, or you're redeeming the nation, the family, in the same
00:21:29.340sense that an individual is redeemed. It's not as if you're... I mean, some people don't agree
00:21:34.780with this, but I tend to say that you're really just restoring the natural order of things,
00:21:40.060whereas individuals are redeemed for heavenly life. But I think that you can think of nations
00:21:44.800and families as becoming Christian as a sort of restoring what they ought to have been from the
00:21:48.500beginning, which is a worshiping family, a worshiping people under God. So thinking of
00:21:54.880what a Christian family looks like and then using that as an analogy for what a Christian nation
00:21:59.840would look like i think that's uh kind of a good way to kind of picture what a christian nation
00:22:05.320would be so what it's not it's not saying you're not fusing you're not saying that the nation is
00:22:11.200now a church that is if there's like a yeah you're not saying that pre that the pastors are now the
00:22:17.160civil leaders you're not conflating magistrate or magisterium and ministerium uh you're so you're
00:22:23.320keeping all those things uh separate but now the nation's kind of oriented to the worship of god
00:22:29.140Oh, I'll say another thing. You're also not eminentizing the eschaton. In other words, you're not bringing heaven to earth. You're not making earthly life suddenly heavenly life. You're actually, what you're doing is you're orienting earthly life to heavenly life.
00:22:44.260So that means there's an encouraged people on their pilgrimage.
00:22:49.080That is, it's not only ecclesiastical encouraging,
00:23:20.740I think we often think in terms of ditches on either side of the road.
00:23:23.760You know, you're going down the road of truth, and you can err in equal and opposite directions often.
00:23:31.000And it seems like both of the errors that you just pointed at live in the wild in big ways today, where you have, you know, on the one side of the road, folks who they don't want to heavenize earth at all.
00:23:46.680They don't want to see the economy or the ways of heaven. They kind of want to see life in the natural order, in the natural world, sort of sealed off hermetically from heaven and the economy.
00:23:58.800And they don't want to pray in the same way that I'm praying, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
00:24:04.280I mean things when I pray that, or I'm asking of God things like, please make families in my church
00:24:12.980and make rulers in Weber County, Utah, and rulers in Utah, and rulers in America, and rulers in the
00:24:19.220world. Please see them either on the one hand become Christian converts, truly bend the knee0.97
00:24:26.760to Christ, and begin to do their duties with reference to the way God made the world in its
00:24:33.180natural state and intended for it to work and to obey Christ in their duties. So I think there's
00:24:41.500an error on that side of the road. And I'm going to ask you about this in a minute, but I think I
00:24:48.440would locate that in some of the expressions of people who describe themselves as two kingdoms
00:24:53.340today, two kingdoms theologians, end up sometimes, well, just kind of hand-waving the Noahic Covenant
00:25:00.040at everything and saying the scriptures and Christian morality has nothing to do with
00:25:05.620LGBT issues. But on the other side of the road, there really are people who just collapse and
00:25:13.120conflate the two and overly immunitize the eschaton and just say, yeah, heaven on earth,
00:25:19.900this isn't a pilgrimage in any meaningful sense. Is that what you're saying? Am I
00:25:24.400understanding you correctly and do you did that did those words make sense no yeah yeah i think
00:25:30.420on on one end it's interesting how sometimes they can actually converge in their own
00:25:35.140in belief sometimes michael horton sounds like uh neo-calvinist sometimes he doesn't it's it's
00:25:40.380weird uh i like the more the liberal neo-calvinist um but yeah i think on on one side yeah you have
00:25:45.340uh historically people would point to like someone like roger williams and he he certainly wanted
00:25:50.220like you said seal off the secular from the sacred and then on the other side you have the
00:25:56.180people who think everything's sacred like every aspect of life is is sacred or holy and there's
00:26:01.300that that they think that the secular sacred distinction is a false distinction both of those
00:26:05.840are are rather are rather uh new um developments that this the secular sacred distinction is you
00:26:12.920know ancient in the church and i think it'd be i think it messes with your theology and all sorts
00:26:18.380of things if you if you deny it but yeah i think that the way i the way i see it is nature itself
00:26:23.300calls for you to worship god rightly and to trust and obey god and i think that the the principles
00:26:31.100of nature dictate to civil leaders that they ought to promote true religion that's the principle you
00:26:37.280know you ought to promote true religion well what's true religion well christianity is true
00:26:41.380religion so you ought to promote christianity so there's that syllogism there and i really i say
00:26:45.460this in my book. It's kind of like the most important syllogism in the book. The natural
00:26:50.900principle is you magistrate, you're a minister of God, you want to serve and promote and secure
00:26:58.880and all that and protect true religion. God has revealed that no Christianity is the true religion.
00:27:04.400So we've kind of gone from natural religion to revealed religion. And so Christianity ought to be,0.94
00:28:14.220we will serve the Lord. Tap the link in the description of this episode to pick one up today.
00:28:21.580That's where those two things are reconciled. And I think some people want to assert something like,
00:28:27.220well, natural law doesn't contain grace. So natural law, yes, humans ought to follow natural
00:28:33.980law for their happiness and their good, but nature is different than grace. And so nature
00:28:40.660does not, should not support or point to oriented to things of grace. Or another word to put is
00:28:47.100earthly should not be oriented and pointed to and support what's heavenly. And I think that's false.
00:28:52.820So I think what's fundamentally heavenly and natural is actually that the end and the telos
00:28:58.880of all that is actually the higher things and higher life. So I think that's where you hold
00:29:05.180those two you know you want to call the dualism as neil calvin is like to say that's how you
00:29:10.120reconcile those two things so you don't have to be a roger williams who separates sacred from secular
00:29:15.220and you don't have to deny that there's a distinction at all you just affirm that one's
00:29:20.720lower and and ought to serve the higher that's how i understand so i mean again so it's like
00:29:25.780the church itself as an institute is a higher institution than the state in a sense because
00:29:32.780it serves the highest good that doesn't mean it dictates anything to the lower in terms of the
00:29:36.880civil i mean we get to that as well but the magistrate ought to serve the good of his people
00:29:40.940and why not and how could you not orient them and provide for them the highest good which is
00:29:46.360offered in the church and so the magistrate ought to encourage and legislate to the extent of his
00:29:52.800power that people would procure that that good yeah i think in that sense secular and secular
00:29:58.640are separate, but not utterly distinguished, or not utterly separated, but they are separated
00:30:03.620institutionally. You affirm sacred-secular distinction, and at the same time, they're
00:30:08.100reconciled. You don't collapse either one. And I think that's a traditional view. I think that's
00:30:13.060the classical Protestant position. Yeah. Are there any examples that come to mind for you
00:30:19.980from Protestant history of places and people and rulers and where church was working
00:30:28.280properly with state where you didn't have... You wrote the other day, one fundamental principle
00:30:34.000of sound Christian politics is that the instituted church is not the center, hub, assembly, embassy,
00:30:40.980origin, prime example, or source of Christian politics, which sounds very much like a sphere
00:30:46.560sovereignty sort of statement. Yeah, there's a lot going on there in my tweet. Yeah, that's a
00:30:52.840dense... Never require an essay. And I talk about it in the book as well. I understand that people
00:30:57.420yeah they think i'm i'm like channeling scott clark or something with that uh or some other
00:31:03.080r2k guy yeah just to explain myself on that sure it said that i see that the church and state as
00:31:09.280two separate institutions each having its primary role and the primary role of the church is to um
00:31:16.200to administer the things of heavenly life or to minister to a sacred assembly so it'd be as the
00:31:22.880people in their spiritual relation for the things that orient in, that, you know, essentially fix
00:31:28.700your eyes on Christ in heaven, that sort of thing. And that's the role of it. And that complements
00:31:34.860the role of the state, which is to support outward good directly. And of course, I think
00:31:41.160indirectly support the work of the church and Christian higher things. So in that sense,
00:31:47.060And also the states or the civil politics principles come from nature or the nature of things, as I've already talked about.
00:32:00.420And so the source of it is really just that it's not as if the church or the pastors are sort of channeling divine precepts for the state must follow.
00:32:12.860It's more that politics is a matter of deliberation over what is good, given the circumstances.
00:32:18.920And neither the pastor nor even the Institute of Church itself is equipped to do that.
00:32:23.840That's the responsibility of politics.
00:32:26.340Now, I think pastors have a teaching authority and role within that.
00:32:31.700But it's ultimately the magistrates or the civil rulers' decision on what is good, given the circumstances,
00:32:40.260according to the principles that actually originate in nature itself,
00:32:44.000not from the institution, the church institution.
00:32:47.460So, I mean, there's a lot we can talk about there,
00:32:49.500but I mean, I hope that kind of summarizes what I meant.
00:32:52.500Yeah, let me try to summarize what I think I'm hearing,
00:32:55.920and you can tell me if I'm understanding you.
00:43:09.320But this is now in the category of what do you do when sin gets into the system in a serious, you know, beyond...
00:43:17.400We disagree about a particular civil penalty within a particular subset of infraction.
00:43:23.040We're talking about a civil ruler who is now lording it over his people, you know, in many such cases.
00:43:30.120So maybe unpack that concept a little bit for us. How do we deal with tyrannical leadership? If there are any examples from history that come to mind, I think that would help as well for just kind of conceptualizing this in particular examples, maybe.
00:43:47.840yeah i mean this gets into what's uh whether or not people the people can depose their rulers
00:43:53.860and this uh we don't talk about that so much anymore just because it doesn't seem like it's
00:43:58.380going to happen anytime soon but i think it's important for us to think about these things
00:44:01.660in the u.s i think another example uh getting analogy here could be helpful i just use the
00:44:06.800word helpful and someone's gonna i usually i criticize you for these that word anyway sorry
00:44:12.160i know someone now on twitter is going to be like wolf used helpful you said i'm not so
00:44:17.260So the military officers, they're commissioned by the state to, in the U.S. military at least, they are commissioned by the state to give only ethical and moral and lawful orders.
00:44:32.360So that's the scope of their authority as military officers.
00:44:35.480If a military officer were to then order murder,
00:53:40.960None of our guys are going to do that.
00:53:42.940You know, and so I don't think that they got an A when you look at all of the,
00:53:48.520there were things that were dumb and enforced, but they didn't get an F.
00:53:53.300And then we started thinking, well, what would happen if,0.73
00:53:57.020and this is all 11 work, this is all long haul work.
00:53:59.740What would happen if the men of our church decided to start showing up at our city council meetings and respectfully engaging, just being present, not just showing up when it was stuff that was like, we're mad about this, but just showing up, being politically involved.
00:54:17.340We have some gentlemen working in the business world to kind of gain, they understand that one homeowner doesn't have the same sway in city politics as a business owner who owns an influential business in the city.
00:54:33.020so we have guys thinking through this and to me that that kind of thinking is really classed under
00:54:39.740this category of you know if you're ever going to have a situation where lesser magistrate things
00:54:46.660are going to happen work probably had to start 10 or 50 years before that in at least having
00:54:54.760some hope of some people salted through the local civil world that if they're not Christians,
00:55:05.060at least our friends of Christians have been befriended and understood and loved by Christians
00:55:11.140and say, well, these are actually people I care about, and I want to see the civil magistrate
00:55:18.260order political life for their natural good. I'm rambling, but I think this is a door that
00:55:26.940can be very fruitful in terms of application in a topic where there's a lot of theory. It can tend
00:55:32.100to be like, well, what would it be like to have a Christian name? What would all these things be
00:55:36.120like? Where most of us are not in a situation that is close to anything like Christian nationalism
00:55:44.240in our actual world. But I think it is practical if you start to look at, well,
00:55:48.780if we have a proper aim, we can actually start to aim for it. You know, we can actually,
00:55:56.620so I guess the question for you would just be, taking some of these principles and doctrines,
00:56:04.020how should they affect the life of Christian churches, normal Christian families today?
00:56:10.940are there things that we should be doing differently and ordering our lives
00:56:14.500differently and churches differently in light of, you know,
00:56:18.000maybe we could say the goodness of Christian nationalism?
00:56:21.000Yeah. I mean, it's a great, great question.
00:56:24.060I think that people will criticize my book because I don't actually get into
00:56:27.460the practical side as much as they might, might want.
00:56:32.120I think what you said about contacting the sheriffs,
00:56:35.780knowing the sheriffs well, county representatives, city and town,
00:56:40.400and the state. I think the local level is going to be very important as sort of lesser magistrates
00:56:48.660that can resist the kind of encroachments of the federal government. I think there's also,
00:56:55.420I mean, it depends on what state you're in, but some states are not any good either. States kind
00:57:00.540of have more formal power in a sense to order cities and towns than the federal government,
00:57:06.080at least. I mean, the federal government still exceeds its authority all the time. But anyway,
00:57:11.760I think encouraging that local action, like you said, is really important. I think also just
00:57:18.360Christians being in office and knowing that they... I think that the important thing about the
00:57:25.220U.S. system is that state governors, they receive their authority from God directly. So in our
00:57:32.580federal system it's not as if that it's not as if the the federal power is somehow kind of like
00:57:39.000that that civil power is kind of like uh funneled through or is is um is devolved upon from federal
00:57:45.400to the state no it's an arrangement of federal government in the states and so the state
00:57:50.240governments do not risk the state governors not receive their power from the federal you don't
00:57:54.360have the president at every state at every state governor inauguration you don't have that where
00:58:00.260the president is now doing some sort of ceremonial act to say, now you're the governor.
00:58:05.400Hominis, nominis, here's the federal authority for your office.
01:00:35.980So it's people, and the moment you would question that, people just attack you.0.98
01:00:42.560Same thing with the trans thing, which is just a few years old and around that.0.99
01:00:47.340And so, so my point is that it's, it's harder to see how revolution can even be, because it's so incremental and it's so subtle. It's not subtle, but, but the way that influence you is more subtle. The way, the way that people 20 years ago would say, like, I'm just thinking people I knew back in a couple of decades ago, they, they didn't want anything done to homosexuals. They want to just live in peace and toleration.0.99
01:01:11.520um but the idea of gay marriage that's crazy that's just ridiculous but now they're waving0.91
01:01:17.740the rainbow flag or they're very so they're um or at least they're kind of general supporters0.95
01:01:22.680don't want to rock the boat sort of people so right right um it's just the very subtle way
01:01:27.340that these ideas get ingrained and accepted socially christendom bible college offers a
01:01:34.420one-year certificate in the humanities for students who intend to pursue a degree
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01:02:45.900Yeah, I mean, the law has a pedagogical function, but the law is also a reflection of the pedagogical influence of other institutions and other factors.
01:02:56.600where the law is ultimately going to in a civil way just put on stone and say this is what we as
01:03:05.400a people think is the good this is what we think is beautiful this is what we think is uh proper
01:03:10.280for a well-ordered we think this is natural we think it's natural for two men to be in a marriage
01:03:16.700union be able to adopt children we think that's good and so we'll put that in the law and so you
01:03:23.340Obviously, you can't think of any of these institutions as pulling all the weight all the time.
01:03:31.620They're always going to be pulling some of the weight, educational institutions and entertainment.
01:03:38.560I mean, there's just so many factors that go into the discipleship of a people to believe something as crazy as what we've said we now believe about gay marriage and transgenderism, etc.
01:03:51.800but you know what i mean i think we can learn something from what we're experiencing because0.94
01:03:58.160we it's easy well it's um i guess it's easy to affirm that gay marriage is wrong as a pure
01:04:08.280intellectual matter but then it's all it's harder to like socially there it feels like
01:04:14.180it's interesting how people when people deconvert so-called deconversion
01:04:17.740it's always somehow it they just lgbtq that that's the first thing they apologize for it's almost as
01:04:25.300if it's like a release tension in their mind yeah it's as if they have it's like this release from
01:04:31.460battling something and i think that's partly the case as christians we can be committed to
01:04:36.560orthodoxy moral orthodoxy but then also have this lingering like irrational urge to reject it
01:04:44.020and that's so that's the social forces around us but i don't think that's in itself wrong that is
01:04:50.820that that that kind of social force i'm not saying the lgbt social i'm saying just as a
01:04:57.140general force power yeah it's actually good and that's why i think christian nationalism
01:05:02.740will will happen only if the people themselves want to kind of socially force it it's not just
01:05:10.260a matter of law it's not just a matter of good preaching or whatever it's it's a matter of the
01:05:14.640people as a nation saying we're christian and that's how it's going to be and so and in that
01:05:20.060you kind of encourage people to have you know good christian behavior so you think like like
01:05:24.920mayberry you know you think mayberry the annie griffith show and all these people are very
01:05:30.520friendly nice and decent but behind that what made that possible was pretty significant social
01:05:38.040expectations of behavior yeah that no you and training kids to say no this is polite this is
01:05:43.780proper as we ought to do so there is force and we but we tend to think oh that's bad that there's
01:05:49.320things that there's bad aspect that or that that it's bad that we have these social forces that
01:05:53.840that lead people to act a certain way but i think it's actually really good and so we can learn
01:05:59.260something from these people who are pushing degeneracy uh that fundamentally they're using
01:06:06.580i think a force that god has given society but they use it for corrupt ends and we as christians
01:06:12.720should say no we ought to have that kind of force too the ideal arrangement would be something like
01:06:17.080mayberry where it's kind of subtle uh it kind of relies on some some uh glances that that are just
01:06:23.580you know disapproving glances at times and maybe more like but it works and it was good and i i'd
01:06:28.880rather live in mayberry than in you know portland or or san francisco right and so uh yeah and that's
01:06:36.860it's because that there were these strong but subtle but very good yeah social expectations
01:06:45.080in a in a christian city it's not all let's let's call the police and have them go arrest that woman
01:06:50.580because her shorts are two inches too short it's there are other social forces that need to be1.00
01:06:55.620taken hold of like the glance the disapproving glance from the grandmotherly you know walking
01:07:01.060down like and you left the house looking like that again you thought this was a good idea we
01:07:06.240don't we don't do that here you know or did you see that video of there was like an italian nun0.74
01:07:12.000who was oh yes like breaking up the the lesbians yeah like that's the kind of thing where she's0.60
01:07:17.040just that's what we need just astonished and and like physically no no no so yeah yeah like what0.99
01:07:22.520what are you doing? You can't do that here. Get out of here. You need a people that will,
01:07:28.700you know, we've talked about it in terms of even, you know, let's say that in Ogden,
01:07:35.260here where our church is, there's no abortion clinic in Ogden. If we want to go evangelize
01:07:40.800at an abortion clinic, we have to drive 45 minutes to Salt Lake City. And we've sort of
01:07:45.460imagine as a thought experiment, well, what if in 30 years we had continued to have children and
01:07:53.200disciple them and raise them and grow them, and people were starting businesses and getting more
01:07:56.880and more vested ownership interest in this city so that we were very rooted and we had some kind
01:08:03.820of sway. And a lot of businesses on 25th Street, our historic street, were owned by people in
01:08:11.020the Christian community, and then they tried to open an abortion clinic, you know, and it's not
01:08:18.080just the case that we would want to work through other means like the zoning or, you know, different
01:08:23.840civil power, but there's also the aspect of, if you just said, if there was a people that said,
01:08:29.200we won't permit this here, just the people said, no, we're not going to permit this.
01:08:35.500There are lines that we won't cross. That's the kind of social force that I think one of the
01:08:41.000errors plaguing our political thinking in the American current day, really is this kind of,
01:08:49.980yeah, I just, we want to be left alone. We don't really care what's happening. You know,
01:08:57.320you can dress immodestly, you can be gay, you can do whatever you want to do. We just sort of want1.00
01:09:02.060to be left alone, and not understanding properly just this law of the universe that sin leavens
01:09:12.500everything. That if you permit sins to just work their way through the people, it's not that you're
01:09:21.640just going to be able to be left alone and kind of sit over in your box of your Christian world,
01:09:27.700because those people are going to be shaping the people
01:09:56.700If you were to rant from your front porch and say, like, the kids these days, where would you locate the problem?
01:10:05.100You know, if you were to say, these are some of the biggest problems that you see in our, and I'm talking about the Christian culture and the Christian world, maybe broadly, but also as it comes to the discourse on things like Christian political theory, Christian nationalism, politics, where are we going wrong?
01:10:21.020You know, what do you think we should do about it?
01:11:46.760I mean, it's, well, my issue with that, I mean, I think there's, well, there's conceptual issues and issues of principle there and coherence, but I think it represents this disposition we have that somehow the Christendom or the idea of a Christian nationalism or some kind of Christian state,
01:12:12.420it happens almost just by purely divine providence apart from human action or the or the only human
01:12:19.320action involved is is nothing but you or you know churches it's nothing but a sort of evangelistic
01:12:27.660strategy instead of political and and i i don't i that does i don't think i know that sounds that
01:12:35.400would sound appealing to many today but i think it's it's incoherent and i won't get into why
01:12:39.520but i think it just represents a disposition that we we have to be politically weak we have to impress
01:12:46.460non-christians we have to get their approval uh there's a certain way that christians have to do
01:12:53.020politics and i just go and it just happens to coincide with being completely ineffective and
01:12:57.640i'm not achieving anything yeah and so it's i think that's the so i think we should look at
01:13:04.100someone like, you know, Zwingli, who died in battle, defending his city, essentially defending
01:13:10.260what is understanding the church. Yeah. He was out there front lines and ministering people,
01:13:16.040then jumped on his horse and he died in battle. So I think that sort of disposition, that doesn't
01:13:21.360mean we have to shout loud on Twitter and there's strategies involved here, but I do think it
01:13:27.720requires more. We have to have a disposition of, we can actually order ourselves and we can
01:13:33.020eliminate the pornographers we can eliminate the the sexual deviance um we can we can um we can
01:13:41.000eliminate some of the excesses of kind of our market society uh we can we can do all sorts of
01:13:47.600things here and we ought to do it and we ought to do it with strength and resolve people bring
01:13:52.180out all sorts of strategies to destroy that idea but i'm i'm hoping i'm hopeful that that will
01:13:58.080return. Yeah. That there is this assertive will for this sort of action. Yeah. One of the things
01:14:04.680that seems to, I mean, this cycle that you see where the good men create good times, and ultimately
01:14:11.700hard times create good men again. You know, you see this, I think more and more Christians have
01:14:17.500woken up through various apocalypses, these revealing, unveilings, like the COVID situation
01:14:25.280where you have literally, I mean, thousands and thousands and millions of normie Christians
01:14:31.520who were probably much more on the perspective politically of like, let's just be nice.
01:14:51.500They hate everything about us, and they're not content to let us be.
01:14:55.360They actually want to see us completely go away.
01:14:58.620They want to see Christian morality literally criminalized in many cases.
01:15:03.500And so I think a lot of Christians are waking up to this,
01:15:06.480just the impotency of this kind of like the political strategy
01:15:10.740of having no political strategy other than the church's witness,
01:15:14.380where it's just, it seems to be like we've said before on the King's Hall podcast
01:15:19.480that Christians today, a lot of them seem to have, they took the spiritual gift assessment,
01:15:23.680and they found out that their spiritual gift was getting conquered by pagans.0.68
01:15:27.660So that was what, it's right between acts of mercy and administration, it's getting conquered
01:15:35.160by pagans. And I think a lot of it just comes back to this, or my hope is that Christians will,
01:15:43.440And I mean, just normal Christians, normal Christians who maybe even have no idea what the word resourcement means are just going, they're realizing the play that's being run on them, and they realize that it is going to take them, Christians organizing, coalescing, and saying,
01:18:23.420That's not to say that it can't be also possessed0.85
01:18:26.360and used for the good of non-Christians,0.67
01:18:28.440but it's firstly used for the good of Christians.0.52
01:18:31.680And so we should, if that's true, which I think it is,
01:18:36.660then we should not be afraid to hand power
01:18:40.140to someone who's going to do good for Christians.
01:18:43.500And I know that makes people uncomfortable,
01:18:46.120so I'll say this, that also means what's good for Christians
01:18:49.420is generally, is going to be good for non-Christians as well.
01:18:52.400But, you know, I say that just to satisfy people's universalizing mentality where, you know, you always have to have, well, what about the non-Christianity for them as well?0.83
01:19:02.280But I'm saying, firstly for Christians, but of course that will help non-Christians.0.69
01:19:09.040Well, if something's good for the Christians, it must be terrible for everybody.1.00
01:19:12.420Like, that's not how the world works.1.00
01:19:14.400It will be bad for some non-Christians.
01:19:16.280you know i mean it will be well they'll think it's bad because you're living in a place that
01:19:21.480they they disapprove of exactly they won't be able to do things that certain things that they believe
01:19:28.640will fulfill and satisfy and be for their good but the christian even then if he's doing it right
01:19:34.880should actually be able to say you think that you that what you want is good but what you want0.97
01:19:40.900will actually lead to your and honestly your destruction homosexuality is such a good example0.98
01:19:46.120of an activity that is so universally destructive to a human being and to a culture.0.98
01:19:56.320Pornography is another really good example. It's something that is so universally destructive to
01:20:03.860an individual, a family, a society, whatever level you want to zoom in or out on. It's just
01:20:11.540so obvious that if you say we want people to have the liberty to make hardcore pornography and
01:20:18.400distribute it freely for monetary gain that you've just done something that they might think is for
01:20:24.280their good and they might say you're hindering me from doing something i want to do which is my good
01:20:28.700well we're actually forcibly protecting you from one of the most destructive things you could do
01:20:36.520with your with your time yeah and your energy you don't have to convince him of that either
01:20:41.900and so it's um i mean you might have to practically but uh but in principle you don't uh it's you
01:20:49.280don't have a magistrate is not bound to permit injustice just because he can't convince people
01:20:55.560that it's he can persuade him he he has the he has authority by the ascent of the government but
01:21:00.700that doesn't mean every law he enacts has to be some like some democratically affirmed yeah so
01:21:07.280consent raises interesting questions too of whether non-christians in a christian state
01:21:11.680their consent matters at all but uh but yeah but but that's another but yeah i'm again it's a power
01:21:19.280ordained of god's ordained for good it's not ordained to keep things neutral i mean maybe
01:21:24.400In some cases, a magistrate might have to permit some vice just because the enforcement of it actually does more harm than good.
01:21:35.200That is, the correction of the vice does more harm than good, or it's best left to the family, or it's best left to the church.
01:21:42.280But still, if he can actually correct it and reduce the harm, then he ought to.
01:21:51.280Or he or they, if it's kind of an assembly.
01:21:53.840The big point there is that we should think, instead of thinking, we should distinguish between the government in itself and the government as it has existed often.
01:22:04.100So we might say our governments today are unjust or tyrannical, whatever you want to say they are, that they're bad in this and that way.
01:22:11.360But that doesn't mean that the government in itself, that doesn't mean that the power used for bad, for evil, which you could say isn't, you know, they're not using the power rightly.
01:22:23.840But the power in itself is good, just like government itself is good.
01:22:27.260The office of magistrate is in itself good,
01:22:29.980regardless of how those are applied in good or good ways.
01:22:35.780So in that sense, we should look at these institutions and offices
01:22:42.880I think as Americans, influenced by some dispensationalists,
01:22:49.180maybe Baptists, some Baptist backgrounds, not all Baptists,
01:22:53.020But we'll tend to have a very negative view of government. And so I think we should get over that and see at least the state governments as more forceful in their use of power.
01:23:07.020Yeah. Well, last question. I know we're running out of time here, and I'll frame this one because we have, I think, I haven't done a survey, so I don't know, but I suspect that most of the Kings Hall audience probably is somewhere in, if you were to say, describe your political theology, describe your view of the law, describe your view of these things, they would say, well, I'm Kyperian, sphere sovereignty, theonomic, of some degree.
01:23:35.060And if you started asking the listener, what do you mean by that? Some of them would say, well, everything Bonson ever said, some of them might mean something softer, well, more general equity kind of stuff.
01:23:47.080What would you want to say to an audience of theonomists? What's your assessment, I guess,
01:23:58.120of the theonomic movement? And then what would you want the theonomic camp maybe to be reading
01:24:07.100or to be looking into? And this is a spicy question. You won't offend us, right?
01:24:13.220I would direct them to my, I wrote an, um, an article for the Lyceum Institute.
01:24:20.960The title of the article is, yeah, the London Lyceum.
01:35:10.040Can you think of a work or a book or some authors even that you would say for what you would say is that this is the correct view of the two kingdoms?
01:35:23.240Where, where should someone start? I know. Well, I, my view comes from, uh, unpublished works of
01:35:30.760Samuel Rutherford, uh, which I think I think perfect. Well, they were published, but it was,
01:35:35.820you know, 1600s. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I think his, he has a book on church government that, that, um,
01:35:42.140that goes after Erastus and, uh, Richard Hooker. Yeah. Uh, it's, I forget the whole title, but
01:35:49.240I mean, you find that online, but for the Anglican side of things, which, you know,
01:35:54.220he purports to be the most common view, I don't agree, but Brad Littlejohn has a little guidebook
01:36:01.760on Two Kingdoms. I think it's like Two Kingdoms Guide for the Perplexed. And it's a short book.
01:36:08.360You may not agree with everything in it, but it's still a good presentation of
01:36:13.060Two Kingdom theology of a more historic perspective that you'd probably see in England.
01:39:49.320And that's part of the reason why I wrote that article,
01:39:50.880to say, look, I'm not, I don't agree with you, but I get where you're coming from. Here's just
01:39:57.520my way of talking, thinking theonomically. Yeah. But I think theonomists can be allies with
01:40:07.360people who have a classical Tuking approach that have a disposition to kind of have an assertive
01:40:13.720will in politics and see some sort of Christian establishment of some form in our society.
01:40:20.180Yeah, can and should get along. And the friend-enemy distinction, I think we need to get
01:40:27.320that category into the friend camp where we recognize we're aiming for similar aims and in
01:40:35.740some places identical aims and need to get that friend-enemy distinction right. We've actually
01:40:42.460talked about this on the show before, one of the issues that anybody who is in the theonomic camp
01:40:47.500has to recognize is that the theonomic world has been one of the most highly schismatic worlds
01:40:53.560in existence. I mean, within 10 years of the origins of self-consciously describing a movement
01:41:01.120as theonomic, there were like four different theonomies and camps and Tyler Textes and
01:41:05.960different groups that were at odds with each other. And one of the reasons is, I think,
01:41:11.040Because whenever you have a people who are, they're combative, they're seeing problems and they're aggressively and often rightly aggressively attacking and saying, no, we need to do this differently.
01:41:23.440We're going to be conquered if we don't, you know, we're going to continue to be conquered.
01:41:27.180The friend-enemy distinction can get blurred along minor disagreements that actually then ends up making your project at large in peril.
01:41:36.820and and that's what i you know it the project of season one of the king's hall is the new
01:41:42.140christendom it's like that's what we're talking about and you're not going to have the new
01:41:46.340christendom whether whether anybody listening thinks it's going to happen or not it won't
01:41:50.400happen uh without getting the friend enemy distinction right across in in house disagreements
01:41:58.860yeah and in terms of friends i don't want to say that these people are it that um yeah i mean
01:42:06.200Let me just say, in terms of friends, we should think of certain Baptists as friends, Presbyterians, some Anglicans, and Theonomists.
01:42:20.900Because I think if we share a certain—I keep using the word disposition—but we all know that there's some Baptists out there.
01:42:30.220The guy named William Wolfe, he's kind of a recent Twitter guy,0.99
01:42:33.360but he's going to be following All I Hate.
01:42:36.580He's a Baptist, but I think he and I could stand side by side0.84