The Michael Knowles Show - FIRED and Called a ＂TERRORIST＂ for Preaching The Gospel ｜ Rev. Dr Bernard Randall

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00:00:30.280 It's even crazier than that.

00:00:31.800 It's a sermon in a chapel by the chaplain in the Christian school.

00:00:37.420 How did we get this far?

00:00:45.180 As the state-established church of secular progressivism enforces its orthodoxies more

00:00:51.940 and more each day in the United States, in Britain, throughout the West, I am so pleased

00:00:57.820 to be able to speak today with a heretic, someone who has questioned the dominant liberal regime

00:01:05.040 and its deeply intolerant ideology of tolerance.

00:01:09.460 That person would be the Reverend Dr. Bernard Randall, who was, until very recently, chaplain

00:01:15.020 at Trent College, former chaplain at Cambridge University, graduate of Oxford University,

00:01:20.240 but we will not hold those sorts of things against him.

00:01:23.560 You're too kind.

00:01:24.540 Dr. Randall, thank you so much for being here.

00:01:26.920 It's my pleasure.

00:01:27.860 Absolutely delighted to talk to you today.

00:01:29.980 I cannot say that I was surprised when I saw what happened to you.

00:01:34.440 I was outraged.

00:01:35.600 I was horrified.

00:01:36.420 I was deeply saddened for the state of the Anglosphere in the world, but I was not surprised 1.00

00:01:42.580 that you were punished.

00:01:45.040 You were fired from your position as chaplain.

00:01:48.100 You were reported to a terror watch list because you sort of, kind of, defended the legitimacy

00:01:57.240 of being a Christian in the modern world.

00:01:59.600 Yeah, I mean, it surprised me quite how badly people took it.

00:02:06.760 I think I would be fair to say, you know, I was doing my job, Christian chaplain, in a

00:02:11.580 Christian school, and just trying to present the fact that, you know, Christian beliefs

00:02:16.740 do vary from some of this political agenda, identity politics kind of stuff, and that you're

00:02:25.260 allowed to believe the Christian beliefs.

00:02:26.660 That's all I was saying, along with where we have disagreements, respect one another.

00:02:32.760 And I said respect one another about half a dozen times in the space of a sort of 10-minute

00:02:37.860 sermon.

00:02:39.240 That was the most important takeaway, really.

00:02:42.640 But for daring to say, yes, you may believe the church is teaching on marriage.

00:02:47.980 You may believe that biological sex is real and sometimes makes a difference.

00:02:52.500 You may question whether the sort of gender identity stuff is really coherent.

00:02:57.600 Does it make sense?

00:02:58.380 And if it doesn't make sense, look at other ways of understanding these things.

00:03:03.040 For daring to say that, I was, yeah, hauled over the coals.

00:03:06.920 Absolutely.

00:03:07.760 So you were fired from your job, presumably because you were at a radical leftist college

00:03:13.840 that has no truck with Christian ideas.

00:03:17.080 Is that right?

00:03:17.580 No, the foundation of the school is according to the Protestant and evangelical principles

00:03:26.080 of the Church of England.

00:03:27.540 Wow.

00:03:27.780 So the church as established by law in Britain, in England.

00:03:33.920 And yeah, on paper, I was doing exactly what I was supposed to do.

00:03:39.740 My contract said, you will uphold and support the stated aims and purposes of the school.

00:03:45.440 Well, I did that, but certain people didn't like it.

00:03:49.780 This happens in the United States as well.

00:03:52.000 Putatively Christian institutions have been hollowed out by cultural revolutionaries. 0.92

00:03:56.680 And so now if you espouse Christian orthodoxy or anything even vaguely resembling Christian

00:04:01.800 orthodoxy, you will be punished for it.

00:04:03.880 How did that happen to your former college?

00:04:08.800 In fairness, I don't know quite how it got to the stage it got to.

00:04:13.140 I suppose, I mean, Britain is as secular in many ways as the US, I'm sure.

00:04:19.920 And because it's a fee-paying school, I guess the management, the leadership thought we need

00:04:25.660 to move in the direction of our customers rather than being true to the Christian foundation 0.93

00:04:31.120 and saying, actually, we have something to offer, which is really valuable.

00:04:34.400 And we'd like to carry on offering it, understanding that not everyone in the school is Christian.

00:04:39.360 And indeed, there were pupils of other faiths and atheists and so on.

00:04:44.900 So as a Christian chaplain, speaking to that audience, everything I say is kind of controversial.

00:04:49.740 You know, just to say God exists is controversial to some of them.

00:04:53.500 Didn't think I was doing anything much more controversial than that, in fairness.

00:04:57.300 Maybe ruffle a few feathers, fine, okay.

00:04:59.920 That's kind of the job of a minister, isn't it, I think?

00:05:03.320 But no, that was not to be done.

00:05:06.240 Yes, I thought it's the job of the Christian and the job of the shepherds to become very, 1.00

00:05:11.080 very worldly and win all the sorts of applause.

00:05:13.600 No, maybe not.

00:05:14.300 I think it might be the opposite of that.

00:05:15.900 I want to get to the substance of your lecture in a moment.

00:05:19.340 But am I correct, in what I understand, that you were not only fired, but you were reported

00:05:25.820 to the anti-terrorism agency of the United Kingdom?

00:05:30.800 That's right.

00:05:31.700 In the UK, we have this thing called PREVENT, which is to prevent extremism.

00:05:38.180 And so anybody who's a danger of being a terrorist or radicalizing others can be reported to the

00:05:44.460 police with a special PREVENT unit.

00:05:46.980 And there are units across the country.

00:05:50.540 And I was reported to them.

00:05:53.180 And fortunately, it didn't go very far.

00:05:56.760 The unit, the police said, no, this doesn't meet the threshold for a terrorist, which I

00:06:02.120 think is no great surprise.

00:06:04.560 But the police officer did say this is wholly inappropriate in a school and wholly inappropriate

00:06:09.380 in society, which says something about the state of the capture of the police by this

00:06:15.400 sort of ideology as well, unfortunately, in this country.

00:06:18.360 I'm glad that you got off the hook for your outrageous crime.

00:06:21.960 But it does raise this question, what will happen next time?

00:06:24.580 What will happen in a few years or at this rate, even in a few months?

00:06:28.560 I want to get into the lecture itself.

00:06:31.100 The lecture was called Competing Ideologies.

00:06:34.480 This does not sound particularly provocative or violent as far as I can tell.

00:06:40.400 Well, what's the thesis?

00:06:42.380 What got you into so much trouble?

00:06:44.560 Well, to start with, it's not a lecture.

00:06:46.840 It's actually a sermon in a chapel.

00:06:48.860 It's an act of worship, of Christian worship in a Christian chapel, in a Christian school

00:06:53.000 led by a Christian minister.

00:06:54.760 No great surprises that I might say some Christian-friendly things, I thought.

00:07:01.000 But there we go.

00:07:02.000 So the thesis was basically, in many areas of life, people have different sets of ideas,

00:07:09.140 ideologies.

00:07:10.060 And I use the example of Brexit.

00:07:11.640 Some people wanted to leave the European Union in this country.

00:07:14.300 Some people wanted to remain.

00:07:16.200 Some were more interested in the sort of democratic rights of a sovereign nation.

00:07:21.060 Some people more interested in the economics and making sure the jobs were preserved.

00:07:25.720 And there were two sides to that argument.

00:07:28.200 And it's not as if one is right and one is wrong.

00:07:30.220 It's just different ways of looking at the same thing.

00:07:32.920 So I started with that argument, that sort of example, and said, and actually, when it

00:07:37.380 comes to some of these LGBT areas, although there are areas of agreement, no one should 0.99

00:07:43.300 be discriminated against for who they are.

00:07:46.160 Love your neighbor as yourself is absolutely crucial.

00:07:50.320 Nevertheless, there are disagreements, such as on marriage, on biology, and the way we talk

00:07:56.720 about gender identity, and you're free to make up your own mind.

00:08:00.600 You can hear someone out and go, no, that's not for me.

00:08:04.380 And this was prompted by a pupil at school saying to me, how come we're told in a Christian

00:08:09.620 school we have to accept all this LGBT stuff? 0.99

00:08:13.960 Have to accept.

00:08:15.800 And that was the thing that really struck me about that question, that people wanted to

00:08:20.680 know.

00:08:20.920 What's going on here?

00:08:21.820 What can we do?

00:08:22.800 What can we believe?

00:08:24.760 Well, I wonder, too, if someone in a madrasa would be told that they have to accept the

00:08:29.980 LGBT stuff.

00:08:31.120 It seems to me, perhaps I'm speaking out of turn, that there is a bit of a double standard

00:08:35.320 here, where the Christians are held to a different standard than other religious people.

00:08:40.540 I think that's absolutely right.

00:08:42.420 Christians are supposed to be kind and tolerant.

00:08:45.180 And, you know, love your neighbor sounds as if you don't want to ever possibly upset your

00:08:50.280 neighbor.

00:08:50.680 But of course, it doesn't necessarily work that way.

00:08:53.760 Jesus was willing to upset people from time to time, seem to remember something about

00:08:58.740 blasphemy and nailing him to a cross.

00:09:00.800 I may be misremembering that, possibly.

00:09:02.760 But, you know, so it's a wide secular misunderstanding of what Christianity is about, I think.

00:09:10.200 I think it's just, you know, be nice.

00:09:12.260 That'll do.

00:09:13.560 There's a lot more to it.

00:09:14.880 It's got a deeper heart and a deeper mind than that, which perhaps they didn't want

00:09:20.540 to hear about.

00:09:21.600 They just thought, oh, just tell the kids, be nice to each other.

00:09:24.740 And that's enough.

00:09:25.760 It reminds me of that famous line.

00:09:28.160 I think it's from Niebuhr.

00:09:29.780 You can correct me if I'm wrong, who said that so much of the modern understanding of

00:09:34.760 Christianity is that God without wrath leads a people without sin to a kingdom without

00:09:40.140 judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.

00:09:42.740 There's just not much of a faith left.

00:09:45.320 Absolutely.

00:09:46.060 I mean, you actually have to remind people there is a core to Christianity that isn't

00:09:50.400 the same as any other faith.

00:09:53.380 And, you know, at the start of every school year, one of my first chapel services, I would

00:09:57.960 say, you know, I am unapologetically Christian.

00:10:00.680 It's a Christian school.

00:10:02.160 This is the sort of foundation that we try to run ourselves by.

00:10:06.120 But the fact that I don't apologize for being Christian means you don't have to apologize

00:10:09.720 if you are Muslim or Hindu or atheist or whatever.

00:10:12.740 You do your faith position properly, sensibly, thoroughly, and I'll do mine thoroughly.

00:10:20.380 And that's, you know, no one is neutral.

00:10:22.400 No one doesn't have a viewpoint.

00:10:25.080 But together, we rub up and work through these disagreements.

00:10:29.520 And well, that's how it should work, but apparently not.

00:10:32.500 Well, this, of course, gets to the question that is bedeviling all of us in the West today,

00:10:37.200 which is that of tolerance and free speech.

00:10:39.800 And what the radical left seems to be saying is that we cannot tolerate intolerance.

00:10:45.360 And in a way, their argument is reminiscent of that line from Chesterton, who says there

00:10:49.560 is a thought that stops thought, and that is the only thought that ought to be stopped.

00:10:53.080 And the left is now saying, no, Dr. Randall, you are preaching intolerance, and therefore,

00:11:00.380 we cannot tolerate you.

00:11:02.220 But I just wonder if, let's say, it is now unacceptable to question any aspect of the LGBT

00:11:09.360 ideology, because you will offend somebody who participates in that.

00:11:13.160 But what happens if a Muslim person quotes the Quran? 1.00

00:11:18.320 If a Muslim person quotes the Quran, which says not merely to condemn someone who engages 0.96

00:11:22.920 in that sort of behavior, but actually calls for violence against people who engage in that

00:11:26.440 sort of behavior, is the Muslim person victimizing the LGBT person on the basis of his identity?

00:11:32.280 Is the LGBT guy victimizing the Muslim on the basis of his religious identity?

00:11:39.020 Where does this end?

00:11:40.280 How can we tolerate one another in this framework?

00:11:44.460 I mean, that's the sort of big question, isn't it?

00:11:46.560 I mean, it should be that, well, either someone has to give completely, or actually, ideally,

00:11:51.820 both sides are all different opinions, give a bid.

00:11:54.260 And there's this space in the middle where we can agree to differ.

00:11:57.340 We know that some of the things we say might be a bit offensive to others, but we live with

00:12:02.520 that because that's the way that free speech has to work.

00:12:05.980 I think what we mustn't have, and what we seem to have developed, is this sense that some

00:12:11.000 people's feelings are more important than others.

00:12:13.940 And that's, you know, some people are more valuable than others.

00:12:16.300 That's a Christian value.

00:12:18.880 But that's the way it seems to happen.

00:12:20.940 So when kids in the school were being taught about this stuff, one of the sessions talked

00:12:26.000 about how can we be a more LGBT plus friendly school, well, that's okay, I guess.

00:12:33.200 What are the obstacles to being LGBT plus friendly?

00:12:37.680 And then if a pupil is sitting there thinking, well, I'm a traditional Christian, I'm a Muslim

00:12:41.980 or whatever, and I'm not totally happy with this.

00:12:44.300 Am I the obstacle to being LGBT friendly?

00:12:47.940 And how can we be LGBT allies?

00:12:50.420 That's one of the questions they were asked to explore.

00:12:53.000 Well, if we're being allies, but then that makes the enemy, am I the enemy?

00:12:57.820 Because I'm not completely happy with this.

00:13:00.060 And how deeply hurt is a person who thinks they're an obstacle and an enemy of what the

00:13:05.820 school is trying to do?

00:13:07.020 And yet that pupil's feelings matter not one little bit compared to we mustn't hurt the

00:13:12.800 feelings of LGBT pupils.

00:13:15.320 And that's not a sustainable position for a community to be in.

00:13:19.740 Well, that's such a good point.

00:13:21.360 I hadn't considered it that the feeling of the Christian student at the Christian school

00:13:26.320 who is told that he is a bigot, who is told that he's hateful because he holds a very traditional

00:13:33.140 understanding of human nature.

00:13:34.780 I mean, even if you take the LBG of it aside for a moment, even just on this issue of the

00:13:39.840 T of transgenderism, if you believe that your body has anything at all to do with who you

00:13:45.660 really are, if perhaps you hold the traditional Christian understanding that we're body and

00:13:50.400 soul together, we're not just one or the other.

00:13:53.120 Now you're told that you're a hateful bigot and you're no longer accepted even at a Christian

00:13:57.220 school. 0.52

00:13:58.600 Yeah, absolutely right.

00:13:59.640 And you can understand that gender dysphoria is a real thing.

00:14:03.840 And there are people who really suffer terribly.

00:14:06.000 And for them, sometimes that the least bad option is transition and medical treatments.

00:14:11.580 And that's not a happy thing for anyone to go through.

00:14:14.360 It's not easy.

00:14:15.500 You can believe in that and be OK with that, but not necessarily believe that there's this

00:14:20.820 thing called a gender identity, which is sort of some kind of soul inside, which is a male

00:14:27.380 identity or a female identity or whatever these other things are.

00:14:32.100 And I would say people are free to describe themselves that way if they want, but don't

00:14:37.200 make everybody else have to go along with your belief system.

00:14:41.260 And it's kind of like if I was talking to a Muslim who was very fervent and whenever he

00:14:46.720 mentioned Muhammad would say, peace be upon him, which a lot of Muslims do.

00:14:50.860 And that's fine if that's what you want to do.

00:14:52.920 But if a Muslim then says to me, if you're ever going to talk to me, you must say, Muhammad, 1.00

00:14:57.280 peace be upon him.

00:14:58.160 And that's asking me to partake in his belief system.

00:15:02.480 And I shouldn't have to do that.

00:15:04.900 I might as a courtesy, but I shouldn't have to.

00:15:07.520 And that's the problem that we have here.

00:15:10.120 Right.

00:15:10.500 You know, I actually noticed you're reminding me of this some years ago when Muhammad was 1.00

00:15:15.380 in the news quite a lot.

00:15:16.420 There was this tendency, even in the West, to refer to him as the Prophet Muhammad.

00:15:21.520 And I thought, well, it doesn't really bother me if Muslims call him the Prophet Muhammad.

00:15:25.100 But I certainly don't consider him a prophet, and I'm not going to call him such.

00:15:29.260 And you really, really oughtn't make me do that any more than I would try to change your

00:15:35.060 speech on a topic like that.

00:15:37.860 Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

00:15:39.520 And if you start saying the Prophet Muhammad, or you feel you have to say that, that's making 0.94

00:15:45.360 a claim about him.

00:15:46.760 And then it's only a very short step to Muslims saying, oh, well, why can't you just say the 1.00

00:15:51.160 Prophet Jesus?

00:15:51.800 And when you start to take the steps forward in the discussion, you realize where it could

00:15:58.060 end up.

00:15:58.640 And actually, you need to be able to say, surely it's a liberal tolerance is you have your own

00:16:05.680 beliefs and you're allowed to stick with them, respecting other people.

00:16:09.800 You don't use slurs or whatever.

00:16:11.300 But to say Muhammad is a million miles from a slur, as far as I can tell.

00:16:16.680 Of course.

00:16:17.100 You coincidentally, Dr. Randall, I have a book on this topic of speech, sort of how we

00:16:22.640 got to this point.

00:16:23.480 I have it coming out next month.

00:16:24.780 It's called Speechless.

00:16:25.680 I notice you have many, probably more worthwhile books behind you in your office, but I'll have

00:16:30.620 to send you a copy in any case, because I do fear that this ideology is, it's really just

00:16:36.340 running only in this one direction.

00:16:38.420 So I have to ask you, are we going to fight back?

00:16:42.180 And I'm using the we a little liberally here.

00:16:44.520 Are you going to fight back against this injustice that has been done to you?

00:16:49.300 I am fighting back.

00:16:50.560 I am taking the school to court to claim for discrimination and unfair dismissal.

00:16:57.620 And we'll see what comes of that.

00:16:59.680 And I'm really pleased, actually, that this story has got a lot of attention in the UK,

00:17:05.560 but also, you know, across the world, yourselves, obviously.

00:17:08.480 And it's because of the extremeness of saying this guy should be reported as a potential

00:17:16.220 terror threat.

00:17:18.440 It's allowed people to see just how far the people who buy into this identity politics,

00:17:25.340 just how far they might be willing to go.

00:17:28.180 And I didn't get arrested this time, but how soon before someone is arrested for something

00:17:33.860 as innocuous as what I said, unless now we stop and we say, no, no further, we must actually

00:17:41.660 stand up for just real tolerance, not the pseudo tolerance that the identity politics

00:17:49.900 people seem to talk about too much.

00:17:52.580 You're right.

00:17:52.880 And of course, you know, I suppose throwing back this argument of we can't tolerate intolerance

00:17:58.120 that you hear so often from the left, you might go back to Chesterton's observation that

00:18:02.700 there's a thought that stops thought and it's the only thought that ought to be stopped.

00:18:04.780 Our understanding of tolerance in our civilization derives from Christianity.

00:18:11.140 If you abuse this tolerance to chase Christianity out of a Christian school in a Christian country, 0.63

00:18:18.160 goodness gracious, you've undermined the whole system.

00:18:21.420 Yeah, absolutely right.

00:18:22.540 I think one of the things is that this sort of identity politics has a lot to do with post-modernism,

00:18:27.560 which doesn't believe there's any truth.

00:18:29.740 Whereas Christianity says there is truth. 0.99

00:18:31.800 You know, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

00:18:34.660 He doesn't say, I am the opinion, the feelings, and the lived experience or something, whatever

00:18:39.120 it might be.

00:18:39.820 That's not what Christians believe. 0.99

00:18:42.220 And yes, for Christians, truth matters, truth exists.

00:18:46.420 And you can also talk about Jesus being the logos of God, the word, the reason, the logic,

00:18:53.780 the thinking about it of God.

00:18:55.880 And if we don't think about it, how are we going to get to the truth?

00:18:59.160 And if we want the truth, we have to think about it to get there.

00:19:02.700 And that all goes together with these core liberal values, which I guess they are founded

00:19:08.420 in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

00:19:10.020 They're not found anywhere else in the world's history, as far as I can tell.

00:19:14.000 So, Dr. Randall, where can people support you, you know, get updates on the case, support

00:19:18.980 your legal defense, the case that you're bringing now against this school?

00:19:23.240 Well, I'm being supported by a really great organization called Christian Concern here

00:19:27.560 in the UK, and they are providing the lawyers for me, which unfortunately doesn't come cheap,

00:19:34.040 but they are working pro bono.

00:19:35.700 And if this wasn't for the public good, I don't know what is.

00:19:39.240 So, you can see more about me on their webpage, christianconcern.com slash Bernard.

00:19:46.480 So, easy enough to remember, I hope.

00:19:48.620 And there's lots more information.

00:19:51.000 There's the text and my sermon is on there, and there is a donate button as well, if anybody

00:19:55.920 is willing and able to help us fight this really, I think, very important fight at this

00:20:01.540 time.

00:20:02.240 Well, I look forward to hearing the whole sermon because, you know, as I'd seen a clip

00:20:06.660 of it, and I have seen some news coverage on it, but actually, my understanding was that

00:20:12.160 it was just a typical university lecture, but it's even crazier than that.

00:20:16.380 It's a sermon in a chapel by the chaplain in the Christian school.

00:20:22.020 How did we get this far?

00:20:23.540 I would highly recommend that people head on over to Christian Concern, follow Dr. Randall,

00:20:29.100 and also support this legal effort because it's about a whole lot more than just you,

00:20:34.800 Dr. Randall.

00:20:35.540 This would seem to me to be really what the whole fight is about here, to maintain any semblance

00:20:40.820 of our culture and the things that we cherish in our civilization.

00:20:43.840 I totally agree.

00:20:46.700 I think, you know, this is one of those points where if you don't stand up and be counted,

00:20:52.080 if you don't draw the line in the sand, whatever metaphor you want to use, you know, not now

00:20:56.120 when.

00:20:57.280 Right.

00:20:57.900 You always hear about, Michael, is this the hill you want to die on?

00:21:02.220 And I say, look, I don't intend to die on any hills, but the reason that one might consider

00:21:06.620 dying on a hill is because eventually you run out of hills, and eventually you've just lost

00:21:10.460 the whole battle.

00:21:11.000 So absolutely, we must take a stand here.

00:21:13.560 Dr. Bernard Randall, sorry that this has happened to you, but in a sense, I suppose it's a bit

00:21:18.120 of a felix culpa, you know, it's a kind of a happy thing because this could be a real moment

00:21:23.160 when we stop this momentum and start pushing back to reclaim our culture.

00:21:28.240 I really hope so.

00:21:29.500 And then it will have been worth it for all the hardship and the pain that it's caused.

00:21:33.400 Yeah.

00:21:34.160 Dr. Bernard Randall, thank you so much for being here.

00:21:37.140 My pleasure.

00:21:37.720 Thank you.

00:21:38.040 Thank you.

00:21:38.860 Thank you.

00:21:40.040 Thank you.

00:21:45.560 Thank you.

00:21:47.160 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - May 15, 2021

FIRED and Called a ＂TERRORIST＂ for Preaching The Gospel ｜ Rev. Dr Bernard Randall

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