THE CONFERENCE - Live Panel on Biblical Patriarchy & Christian Nationalism - Deevers, Wilson, Sauve, Conn, and Webbon
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Length
1 hour and 23 minutes
Words per minute
166.3744
Harmful content
Misogyny
39
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Toxicity
12
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Hate speech
85
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Summary
In this episode, we have a panel where we discuss the concept of biblical patriarchy and how it relates to the modern manosphere. We discuss the differences between the Red Pill movement and the Tradeweek movement, and how they are related to each other.
Transcript
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So the idea for this panel is to talk about biblical patriarchy.
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and now putting a little bit more into practice and discussion format.
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Father, we pray that you would bless our time together,
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help us to be wise, help us to be clear in our discourse.
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And we just pray that all that we say would be ultimately for your glory
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Okay, I'm just going to dive right in so that we don't like build up to exciting discourse. We can
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just have it right away. So this is my first question for all of you. It's a agree or disagree
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question with the follow-up being why? And we'll go individually. Everybody gets the answer. Take
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as long as you want. And it could be just the only question for 90 minutes and it might get us all
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the... I have a feeling. I have a feeling. So it has been said recently on Twitter
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that the word was mirror, and I did not like it,
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but that tradwives is the mirror kind of exact opposite,
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when you look at the the red pill movement uh i think the guy that most people will think of is
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andrew tate so if you follow the red pill moment down through like andrew tate what are you going
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to get you're going to get like bugattis and a harem right and i think then when you look at
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something like trad wives for the most part it's like if if what i get out of that is like pretty
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dresses and sourdough I'm I feel like that's a different thing than Andrew Tate so that's that's
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my basic disagree and I know Brian we were actually talking about this he's got a long
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beautiful let's hear Brian that's great I mean there's more to be said but everything you said
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I personally agree with but right um nuance and it depends as it stated if I have to say yes or
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know, I'd say no. I can see how you would get there from a certain line of reasoning. And it
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would go like this. The red pill manosphere is responding to real, actual problems in the world
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where people are disobeying God and the nature that he gave them. And so there are all sorts
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of problems when that happens. There are problems in marriages where men are getting married and
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maybe committing no covenant breaking sin. And then one day find their wife of 10, 20 years
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gone with the kids, go into court, get a no fault divorce and take his kids and half his income for
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18 years. Right? So one of the things that happens when, when that becomes the legal background of
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our culture, which it very much is, uh, is that you're going to have a reaction that's just based
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on people having eyes in their head. And some men are going to say, well, our culture has been very
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anti-men in lots of ways, so let's be pro-men. But then one of the dangers of that is that you can
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have a pro-men message, which is severely lacking in our culture, that is then but not governed by
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Christ. So then they say, what should a man be and do? And then they're just going to answer that
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question, most often in the manosphere world, through an evolutionary perspective and worldview
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and go back to Greek and Roman philosophy and Stoicism. And you do, you end up with working
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out, high tea, eat steak, and have a harem, which is just a different way of ruining the world
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than the way that they were reacting to. The same thing happens in our world on the side of
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femininity, where femininity can be corrupted in multiple directions, just like masculinity can.
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And so you're going to have counter movements reacting to that. One thing you can have that is
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certainly a part of the trad wife movement, which, by the way, I'm not an expert in and don't follow
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trad wife accounts because I'm married. I have a wife who makes sourdough and wears dresses, you
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know, a good fair bit of time. But you can have sort of a pinup pornified version of traditionalism
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that's actually, at its root, ultra not traditional,
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and it's just women who are wearing low-cut shirts
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they're getting a lot of airplay out of a trend,
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and the flattening of all sexual distinctions.
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that actually ends up not being feminine at all.
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So I see that, but the difference that I would say is that I don't think that that's the dominant note of the vast majority of the content that I see around the traditional femininity kind of world.
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a lot of it genuinely is i think women reclaiming roles in the home as being a helper
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cooking caring for your people clothing them well undoing some of the ill effects of the
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industrial revolution that's atomizing the home and tearing everybody in a million directions
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so on the surface i would say they are different because the heart of the manosphere movement
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really the dominant notes and and i've spoken at manosphere conference conferences and it's like
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at the heart of it, the dominant note is evolutionary harem building, pickup artistry,
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absolute filth, about 98% of it in my experience. And then in the trad wife movement, I think it's
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a very different ratio that's actually, a lot of it is genuinely Christian. I think quite a bit of
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it is genuinely Christian. So I want both to return to nature. Really the answer to me is like,
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teach the younger women to be workers at home,
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but some of it does have to do with your perspective.
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and then I talk for five times longer and say nuanced,
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So I agree with everything that's just been said thus far.
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I would also say there was nothing in what was just said
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that was inconsistent with what Allie Beth said
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But there's a way of pretending, which you just said.
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There was another version of the same sort of thing with the homeschool mom.
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And I came, as a pastor, I came to the conclusion that there's sometimes an inverse ratio between the size of the head covering and the submissiveness of the woman.
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Why does your wife wear her head covering to church?
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Domesticity is the calling that God has called women to.
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and this is the apostolic instruction is that women are to be busy at home there be keepers
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at home they're to give themselves over to it so that the word of god may not be blasphemed
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but discipleship is hard you know it's challenging being a godly husband and a godly father
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is challenging and it's the same with being a godly woman it and it's easy to be godly on
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And I think that we should reclaim, be working to reclaim patriarchy.
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I've never been comfortable with the word complementarian.
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And I think it's because left-wing complementarians are basically egalitarians.
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And right-wing complementarians are patriarchal.
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and then um not pastor but senator deavers your turn why not both oh yeah you're right all right
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it's just everybody gets to be a pastor the reverend none of us are cool enough to be
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senators you're the only one so you've got it you've got to own that title but pastor senator
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reverend the great dusty deavers please keep going the most reverend pastor
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The next topic is going to Indy this summer to disrupt the SBC.
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So everything that was said thus far, I agree with.
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These are my thoughts specifically on since that clip is in view,
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Like, we don't have to dance around and be coy.
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I didn't have any problem either with what was said in the clip, so I agree with you, Doug.
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For me, as I thought about it, it was the context of the hour-long panel that happened with Founders.
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And Tom Askell is incredible and deserves all our respect and all our honor and the benefit of the doubt.
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But the hour-long panel, that context didn't quite fit it for me.
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It didn't fix it for me because that's part of the context.
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And so I'll just, you know, I'll be frank, but also careful and charitable.
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There are other statements that, you know, I'm going to hear that portion, that clip,
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but I'm going to hear it in light of other things that have been said.
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And I think part of the challenge, it's kind of gets to my talk earlier this afternoon,
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So, you know, one of the statements that has been made
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is that, you know, godly motherhood, for instance,
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is not the highest calling of a Christian woman,
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but rather the highest calling of a Christian woman.
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I just, I feel like we have to, yes, of course, a million times,
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a million amens, glorify God and enjoy him forever.
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then obedience becomes androgynous, becomes generic,
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The favorite egalitarian verse that's always used
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is, you know, Ephesians 5, when you look at the headline, and then you get into Paul's case
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studies. But the headline principle is mutual submission to one another out of reverence for
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Christ. But then Paul doesn't just leave it in the abstract. He then begins to say, and this is
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what that mutual submission for one another as the body of Christ out of reverence for Christ
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looks like based off of God's sovereignly appointed station for that individual in their life.
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the verse about mutual submission in Ephesians 5
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that the husband is called to love his wife
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and lead his wife and the wife is called to submit
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but if you use that hermeneutic and you were consistent with it
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you'd have to also apply that to parents and children
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hey you need to do this and the three-year-old says no and the parent of course needs to mutually
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submit to that three-year-old and right like let's be consistent right if it's it's so it's
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mutual submission as the principle but there's a practical visible expression and that varies
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with particularity based off of station of life and gender comes into the picture man or woman or
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single or married, parent or child. And so what I'm concerned about is biblical womanhood is not
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synonymous or somehow exhaustively described by sourdough and sundresses. Sure. But then I would
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love to have a follow-up of, if not, then what? And I want the what not just to describe matters
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of the heart. I want the what at some point to also embrace matters of practice. Like there's a
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guy, you might have heard of him, but he once said, theology comes out of our fingertips. I thought it
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was really good, you know. And that's for all of us, whether you're a man or whether you're a woman,
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theology in practice, theology applied. And so, and I do believe that the practical obedience of
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a woman particularly a married woman who is a mother is a um a she's a lady of the hearth
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as brian said i think that's a great way she is um home oriented she is uh it's it's a domestic
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feminine beauty um she's not she's not a slay queen she's not a boss babe she's not uh she's
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not fierce like you got to do something with first peter three and a quiet and gentle spirit
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is the way that this inner beauty uh that's imperishable the heart is defined and and as
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quiet and gentle mean you must make sourdough of course not but if not good sourdough good sourdough
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right so i just want to hear okay so because every woman's going to look different some women are
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going to be incredibly domestic and feminine um but they're gonna be like sourdough's gross we
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just don't like it and they make something else that's really awesome but what what is it that
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that's my thoughts let me say something towards that uh jared moore uh who is running for sbc
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president i'm dropping this this guy is shameless this is a politician i'm hoping that uh somebody's
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recording these things to send to william wolf um but jared moore who's running for sbc president
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in his book uh lust of the flesh he talks about that holiness so if you tell a man who's who's
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been uh you know same sex attracted uh the point for him to overcome is not just holiness pursue
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holiness. It's pursue holiness that particularly looks like heterosexual marriage, true marriage.
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That's what you're to pursue. That's what it is to glorify God in your sexuality, in your life.
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Not just to stop doing something, but to put on Christ in these areas. So I think that's what
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you're getting at. On the ground, it's don't just put off certain sins. Don't just mortify certain
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things, but vivify, come to life and put on Christ in these ways. And whenever you think about
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men's and women's roles, be zealous for these good works that were prepared for you before
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the foundation of the world. Pretty straightforward. And one of the things I think that comes into the
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context of a lot of these conversations is we're trying to land principles that are timeless
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that is wildly disobedient to these principles.
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but one of the things that I think conservatives
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we say, well, how's the world marketing things?
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getting a a news lady or they're getting a politics lady or they're getting a and then
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they're going to send that lady out to do cultural battle and it smacks of marketing to me quite
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often and the way that we're going to do it is by basically giving away a lot of our principles
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right at the beginning because Paul really does say in Titus that if this doesn't happen
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and he's talking about older women discipling younger women to be workers at home that the
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word of god will be reviled that's a really big deal that we should take very seriously so there's
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going to be a lot of um there's going to be a lot of sparks when that that principle heads into a
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culture like ours i think but but i think we we are right to be skeptical when we see that
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nature is is commonly counter-signaled or anytime you make an argument from nature and say the
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nature of the woman is this and it lends itself it was it's not arbitrary god made the woman this
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way for this vocation and god made the man this way for this vocation um often the instinct i
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think you're pointing to joel is that we want to immediately soften that back to a spiritual thing
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that has no teeth in the real world and say well don't you know that it's about godliness not
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strength men and you'd say well no just because the manosphere uses strength to pick up 20 women
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per month at a bar strength isn't the problem their weakness is the problem that they have
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no strength and self-control over their flesh um so i i do think that that's part of this
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conversation is a lot of people miss we want to boil it down to propositions in abstract
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but we really are looking at a situation in the world
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man, I really don't want to make a state of affairs
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And we say, well, for political commentary, we're going to have our lady guy and our lady and we're going to have our guy.
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And then for theology, we're going to have our lady guy.
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But that's going to be pretty controversial in the world today because, I mean, now you're talking about something that's about, you know, a couple country miles away from where the culture is.
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I agree with all of that, and we shouldn't be, for PR reasons, sending our women out to do the fighting for us.
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Oh, you're a woman, you can talk about abortion, and we can't.
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So we shouldn't send women out to do our fight our battles.
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At the same time, and I think we have to be careful about us not fighting with the women ourselves, right?
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So if that's part of the default in the evangelical world, where there are women out there,
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and women like Allie Beth have done a lot of good and are on our side in the main,
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and I don't think we should be fighting with them either.
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If there's a better way, and there is a better way, then I think we should model it and just send them in.
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and I think a lot of godly women would say
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any other thoughts that you want to add or anybody
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to all of you guys who came to the conference that we're going to
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and I think there's some more that we can address
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an audible but we we have dusty and we have doug and we have the ogden boys i feel like christian
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nationalism is is worth uh right i mean why why do something as controversial as you know
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controversial as patriarchy when you could talk about you know christian nationalism so i think
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that'd be a worthy endeavor as well but eric is you just didn't talk much so yeah no my only other
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thought is really pastoral um one of the things we talk a lot about in ogden is kind of this idea
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one of the ways that you solve this long-term
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I think what is challenging to Doug's point
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who have essentially stepped on the agon they've gone out into the arena and stepped on what stepped
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into the agon so the arena that they're they're going out in a place where fundamentally they're
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they're being like a man but then they're they're also pulling the rug out and they're saying but
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you have to treat me like a lady too and so i think that's why it's sort of an unwinnable position
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now to doug's point i've actually wrestled with it like what do you do in that in that scenario
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because a lot of times you've got like Allie Bath she's teaching on complementarianism and
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patriarchy and making quite a mess of it in many points and then we have to pastorally deal with
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that because your women are listening to it yeah and so then you have to respond to it and you're
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like well I I don't I generally don't want to get into it with this lady she's in a role she
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shouldn't be in that would be my take in terms of particularly teaching theology in that in that
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section but you get into that and then you say what what do i do pastorally because you know
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it's it's the old like you don't hit a girl but what happens when she comes in swinging
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with with a knife yes good point good point um what that was one other thing i wanted to say
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about i can go ahead go ahead yeah filibuster i can summarize christian nationalism
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in a way that will cause all Christians everywhere to agree.
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Oh, by mimicking the woman, the leftist woman,
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who said they believe that rights come from God?
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I think all Christians should be able to agree on this.
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who's going to rise up and say no it's okay for america to continue to
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make god does 60 million unborn children slaughtered not make him angry does a
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burger fell not make him angry does the uh the scourge of porn across does that not make him
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angry are are we not visiting are we not inviting him to visit judgment upon us so i i suggest why
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don't we stop it it's like that clip uh from what i can't even remember this show new heart
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stop it yeah i have two two words for you now i find that most people can remember them yeah
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um okay this is one thing with christian nationalism just to go so and i'm curious to
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hear doug's take i've talked to you guys about it dusty i think i i haven't talked to you but
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i can assume but i'd love to hear your take too um you know i i think a lot of guys are like why
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do we need the label we already have one you know it's it's theonomy or you know uh it's it's this
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or it's that and they didn't like that one either well yeah but but i'm saying that theonomists
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like it you know and so you know and so like we already have a label um and one of the things
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that i've noticed and i'm not saying this is the definition because nobody gets that's well that's
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the trouble with it nobody gets to say this is the definition um but one of the things that i've
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noticed just in talking to guys who are you know christian nationalists self-defined you know
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self-labeled uh is one thing i've i've noticed as a distinction is they're uh they're very comfortable
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with um they're very comfortable with the civil magistrate and the nation as a whole stepping in
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coming into obedience to christ with uh one of two ways they're open to both ways the two ways
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being this, it could be a mass move of God's spirit and a revival and just sheer number of
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regenerate hearts, 50% plus one of the population of these United States that are born again through,
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you know, gospel preaching. And then that lends towards Christians who are in public office and
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begin to legislate righteous laws. But they also, and I've noticed this as a distinction from some,
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I can't speak for all theonomists, but some of the older school theonomists who have been like,
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that's cute Christian nationalism. You know, we've been doing this for, you know, 40 years.
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But I've noticed some of the theonomists are less comfortable where the CN, some of the younger guys
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are, they're comfortable with bottom up, but also top down. Like they would say something,
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and I would say this too, but they would say, you know, but like the Homo Jihad replaced the flag
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of the United States with the rainbow in the course of 40 years with less than 3% of the
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population so why why are christians not allowed to do that again that you know that a lot of
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political change and and and when we understand that the law is a tutor so we're not saying that
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that's going to save anybody but the law does function as a tutor and in a in a lawful country
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there is more of an awareness the first use of the law more of an awareness of oh i'm a sinner i need
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a savior and and it sets it works as that black velvet backdrop for the brilliance of the diamond
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for those gospel preachers now to preach a gospel that maybe falls on less deaf ears. And so I feel
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like, yeah, Lord, I'm going to pray for revival, but I'm also going to work towards, if we don't
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have the numbers, that we still, that we could have a few high caliber men called by God that
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would work into positions of civil leadership and do what's right, even if we're the minority.
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in maybe that. It could be power from a minority that paves the way for gospel preaching and
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revival. Or it could be revival. What do you guys think? Yeah, this is very true. If we got a King
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Josiah, I would take it. You can do an awful lot of good top down. So I would thank God. I would
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rejoice in it. I would pray for him. I would also be aware that after King Josiah died,
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the people went back very quickly to the old ways so it's got to be i think it has to be both
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you you have to have leadership genuine leadership godly a godly prince godly president godly
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legislators are used by god to do good but the people have got to respond in true faith there's
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got to be a genuine thing there and so i would i would like to see it meet in the middle we've been
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praying for a Josiah. And it looks like in this next election, we might get a Jehu.
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Dusty, any thoughts? Yeah. So if we get a Josiah, the Lord make it so, he's got to focus on
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repentance orienting us back to the God not of this system but the God over all systems
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whenever he does that and he's continually calling for repentance which is reorienting
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our hearts and minds to our God alongside well he can be a great tool of repentance
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not just correcting some laws but aiming at hearts aiming it not just stapling fruit to a dead tree
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but changing the roots and we've got to one of the things that that let's just take an example
00:30:05.100
out of our current day if you run legislation to abolish pornography you might find yourself on
00:30:13.340
Jimmy Fallon? Any of the Jimmys. You might find yourself on there, not because you intend to,
00:30:23.140
but because you stick out so radically. And we should all ask ourselves, why would that even
00:30:28.940
stick out? Why would that make news? It shouldn't make Jimmy Fallon. It shouldn't even make our
00:30:35.280
local news because it shouldn't be a big deal. But it's such a big deal that it drives Rolling
00:30:42.540
stone, that it drives Jimmy Fallon, that it drives the Guardian and the UK Independent. It drives all
00:30:49.540
these conversations. Drives them nuts. It drives them. Yeah, absolutely drives them nuts, and it
00:30:57.180
drives the demons that are behind them all to say, we must defeat this God. There's a God here that
00:31:06.720
is untamable and unruly and there is someone in the camp claiming him and they do not want it
00:31:14.100
to be it shouldn't stick out so if you if this sticks out if you think about in your town if you
00:31:22.340
went to a city council meeting and say it and said we are going to let's pass legislation that would
00:31:29.460
that would abolish pornography or abolish abortion
00:31:33.160
and guarantee that no business could ever open in this town
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or no one will ever practice abortion in this town.
00:31:43.440
And if anyone does, they'll all be treated as murderers
00:31:59.100
would the people care at all would they think well that's we're already doing that it's fine
00:32:06.320
great or would they say or would they maybe throw things at you would they run newspaper articles
00:32:15.400
that lambast you and just smear you uh what would be their response and so if you think about what
00:32:23.200
that response would be in your town if it would be wild and crazy like what has happened uh with
00:32:30.880
jimmy fallon and rolling stone then you you probably aren't doing much in your town there's
0.84
00:32:36.960
one additional difference if you said that in your town everybody would write you off as just a crazy
00:32:42.460
in uh lone nutcase um you're different because you ran on that platform and got elected and that
00:32:51.860
spooked them so if you had if you weren't an office holder and you just spoke up at a city
00:32:57.920
council you might be a 30 second clip on somebody's youtube channel but you got elected and you got
00:33:04.920
elected saying out loud what you wanted to do and there were a whole lot of people that agreed with
00:33:11.960
that and supported you and there were a lot of establishment christians who quietly tried to
00:33:19.060
submarine. In other words, I think your position is strategically critical.
00:33:28.260
You're at the state level. But why is it international news? Well, it's international
00:33:35.300
news because it's a harbinger of something that's coming. I completely agree. And I think
00:33:41.260
I've talked about this before. I think in a lot of ways, there are a few of us that are at the
00:33:47.820
tip of a battering ram of a door that's just made out of paper that's all it is it's no bulwark
00:33:54.760
i'll tell you that it's and if a bunch of you and if people across our nation come on uh it just
00:34:04.620
wasn't that great it wasn't that great uh if if a bunch of us would would just start taking action
00:34:15.000
you you might see god do something uh in our generation that we haven't seen in many generations
00:34:22.320
i think there's there's a a theological error that progressivism has weaponized against us
00:34:29.960
and it's it's kept it's made us to see the wielding or the the pursuit of power as an evil
00:34:36.700
as an unchristian act they've basically confused the spheres and taken if if you you know
00:34:44.960
if your eye causes you to lust, tear it out, and then said, why are you trying to ban pornography?
00:34:49.220
Why doesn't everybody just tear their eye out? Well, because there's different spheres. There's
00:34:52.760
a minister that wields a sword, and then there's you before the Lord, and those are different
00:34:56.860
things. But what the left has successfully done is they've convinced us that for Christians,
00:35:03.420
hilariously, in a Christian nation, fundamentally, a Protestant nation, which is what America
00:35:08.660
fundamentally is historically, they've convinced us that if we try to assert Protestant ethics,
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00:35:15.740
that we're sinning and that we're actually being un-Christlike and that we need to be,
00:35:22.180
well, you're not being meek enough. And it's like, well, no, you're confused. I think that's
00:35:26.000
a huge part of this is that if you didn't run, then we wouldn't know that there were enough
00:35:31.440
people there that would resonate with to elect you. And then there's a whole cascading series
00:35:36.440
of events that happens when Christians, because that's an assertion of power. You're submitting
1.00
00:35:40.540
to the system of election and all that, but you're asserting power. You're saying, no,
00:35:44.320
Christians actually want, you're saying we want the power to legislate God's law with respect to
00:35:51.100
sexual mores and marriage and currency and all these different things. And I think that's
00:35:56.880
something that we're starting to see the tide turn, particularly in the Zoomer generation,
1.00
00:36:01.680
where they're seeing, I think, this error of pietism and they're reacting in the right direction.
0.97
00:36:08.820
Yeah, honestly, my question for Dusty and maybe Doug,
00:36:16.860
It seems like one of the X factors in all this, though,
00:36:24.400
there's people at the top of the SBC that don't like that.
00:36:29.980
And my question is, A, what's that wave coming?
00:36:33.460
and how do you break through the elite establishment i would say first i just stole
00:36:40.920
joel's podcast you're the captain now i'm the captain so i would say the evangelical establishment
00:36:48.280
by and large discredited itself during covid and parts of that establishment haven't recognized
00:36:58.020
that they did that but some of them have right they've they've quietly exited retired that sort
00:37:07.580
of thing i don't think the establishment is any i believe it's a ghost of what it once was
00:37:13.620
and i believe that a lot of people and i think there's a lot of empty seats up there
00:37:19.320
i don't think god has raised up people yet to occupy the positions of influence and leadership
00:37:26.080
we're we're in the changing of the guard we've seen a good portion of the old guard leave
00:37:31.560
and we don't know who the next generation of leaders will be um but i'm hopeful i i
00:37:38.360
you know um i'm i'm hopeful i'm i'm looking at um i think god's got good things in store
00:37:46.640
and then the second part of your question was it sounded more like for dusty like how are you
00:37:51.960
going to break through the regime within evangelicalism yeah because it's twofold right
00:37:55.760
it's political but you're also going to deal with the ecclesial last you know that's fear
00:37:59.820
church and i mean i think that's exactly what's happening since covid i think it was a a shaking
00:38:06.760
awakening uh you know we've talked i think i said it in my message the things that are shakable
00:38:11.980
not only will shake but they must shake and i think that god is bringing quite the shaking
00:38:17.460
since COVID. And he is realigning some things and exposing where the, I mean, the cracks were
00:38:25.840
that needed to be just burst wide open. When we saw churches closing for long periods, we saw
00:38:33.880
people, you know, with this love your neighbor propaganda that was really submit to your
00:38:40.660
neighbor and not submit to God, submit to the powers that be. And a lot of us were saying the
00:38:46.220
powers that be don't have jurisdiction. They're illegitimate. And why have we been bowing to these
00:38:52.300
powers that are just pseudo? It's our fault. It's the fault of pastors for not telling us
00:38:58.120
better. And if you don't have strong pastors that are preaching the authority of God from
00:39:03.540
the scriptures and teaching their people that the authority lies in the scriptures and not in
00:39:09.380
the culture or in your leaders, but it's in the scriptures. And we all have to bow to the same
00:39:15.300
standard, then the pews are going to establish the culture. And the culture then establishes
0.93
00:39:22.160
your law because, you know, power arises from the people. And what we ended up with was just
00:39:28.300
a whole bunch of people who were willing to be led by weak leaders. And I think by God's grace,
00:39:34.420
um and and and i told doug this earlier um i think the role that um that doug wilson played during
00:39:46.860
covid for so many of us whether we were baptists or presbyterian or anglican or whatever
00:39:52.280
he called us back to our confessions we've dealt with this before guys are you know many many years
00:40:02.560
ago, these dead guys had solved some of these problems. And we've gone so far away from them,
00:40:09.740
trusting in our own wisdom, trusting in our own strength. We've forgotten the wisdom of our
00:40:15.840
fathers. And with that reawakening, I think that what you're seeing that I'm just a part of,
00:40:24.260
that all of you guys are a part of, we're seeing God raising up people who will trust his word,
00:40:31.640
no matter what the culture says, and be able to say, this is the last thing, you know, the sloth
00:40:37.420
says, or the sluggard says, there's a lion in the streets. We'll all be killed. And instead of saying,
0.94
00:40:41.840
oh no, there's a lion in the streets. I think God's raising up a bunch of men that say, let's go get
00:40:46.580
the lion boys. Let's go kill them. And that's the point. If there's a lion, then let's go. If there's
1.00
00:40:55.980
not then we just proved you wrong but either way we've got to fight i'm a little bit turnt up amen
00:41:04.820
turnt up you did you guys have no idea dusty was uh just ripping out you know just a cool clean
00:41:10.940
hundred set push-ups in the green room right before i'm not even it was like several hundred
00:41:16.160
push-ups seriously this guy um all right so here's here's a question that i have i also have some
00:41:22.520
answers, but I like to hear your answers. And when I say you're, I mean the plural, all of you guys.
00:41:27.260
So we're getting at, you know, is it top down? Is it bottom up? That's just one example, but I'm
00:41:32.560
sure there's other examples that you guys may think of that I don't. What are some of, I'll
00:41:38.320
first start it with if. Are there any differences, distinctions between the theonomist position
00:41:46.940
and a Christian nationalist position? Because that's been some of the pushback is just,
00:41:50.860
why do we need this we already have a label we already have a team we you know go fight win
00:41:55.700
and and you guys you know like you know again it's cute the christian nationalists showed up 15
00:42:00.620
minutes ago but we've been here for 40 years slugging it out and so what uh what are is
00:42:06.180
christian nationalism just a modern phrase for theonomy or are there actually some distinctions
00:42:11.140
if so what are there i would say the um the work on defining christian nationalism is stephen wolf's
00:42:18.120
he is very much in the magisterial protestant tradition he's in the natural law tradition
00:42:24.100
and he's a tomist the theonomists were vantilian um more uh focused on uh god telling us through
00:42:33.580
revelation does special revelation as opposed to natural law so there's some denominational
00:42:39.680
differences right so but i regard those as denominational differences because i believe
00:43:13.140
i think i think i'd make steven wolf happy and i think it'd make the i think there's a lot of
00:43:21.800
the venn diagrams there it's not circles that map onto each other perfectly but there's a
00:43:27.760
there are a lot of things that everybody who loves god loves his word wants to see and uh i think we
00:43:35.640
would be very pleased with most of it. We might say with whoever wrote Chronicles, he was a good
00:43:43.140
king, but he didn't remove the high places. There'd be some of that. But compared to what
00:43:49.800
we're dealing with now, which is just ungodliness and anarchy on stilts, we are tumbling headlong
00:43:59.400
into the abyss I would I would take a theonomist I would take a Christian nationalist of Stephen's
00:44:07.680
stripe I'd be delighted with any of them and this goes back to the earlier point of I want us to
0.70
00:44:13.740
make sure that we keep our eye on the main adversary and not have not break out into intramural
00:44:20.820
quarrels it's the it's the disciples on the road arguing about who's going to be great in the
00:44:27.740
kingdom that we don't have yet you know that's good with real quick going back a page with the
00:44:34.720
top down bottom up thing um would you say the christian nationalists seem very comfortable
00:44:39.980
with top down um and not to the expense of bottom up we don't want anything less than revival but
00:44:46.180
in terms of chronological order and what god in his sovereignty he's his prerogative what he chooses
00:44:50.240
to do the the cn guys that i talked to offline they seem very comfortable with you know a a you
00:44:56.940
You know, slim minority getting it done, at least initially.
00:45:05.820
The Theonomists, I'm thinking the Theonomists of old.
00:45:10.320
Were they as comfortable as some of the CN Young Bucks
00:45:14.320
with a minority approach of it's top-down first that leads them to bottom up?
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00:45:18.380
I believe the old guard Theonomists and their heirs
0.96
00:45:21.860
would think that a top-down Christian prince would be a good thing
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00:45:27.080
They would applaud it, but they wouldn't have high hopes for the long run.
00:45:33.720
Because they would say, this is great, but going back to what you said, we need the hearts of the people.
00:45:40.400
But there is a bully pulpit aspect to this that Solomon is the king, civil ruler, and he leads the people in worship when he dedicates the temple.
00:45:51.820
So I think that there's a number of things that the leaders could do if they agree with the theonomists that it's got to be heart change, then they can be part of that, should be part of it.
00:46:06.240
I think that's such an important point because some of the pushback that you get from people who have violently reacted against both theonomy, honestly, and Christian nationalism,
00:46:17.100
I think one of the key points they're missing is the didactic value of law.
00:46:24.700
Laws don't just result from the culture of a people.
00:46:27.840
Laws then turn around and shape the culture of the people.
00:46:30.700
So there is a very real sense in which culture is downstream from worship,
00:46:35.120
but part of our worship produces a legal system that then continues to disciple and radicalize people further and further.
00:46:42.280
So you can take something like no-fault divorce.
00:46:44.180
it didn't just capture well we we have this new idea about marriage and divorce it then turned
00:46:51.280
around and discipled people about what is marriage all about what is the nature of happiness in
00:46:55.920
marriage what is a successful marriage is marriage a permanent thing at all so like law has a
00:47:02.100
didactic value a didactic value and that's part of the top-down conversation is that that three
00:47:08.120
percent gets a dusty deavers elected and then dusty gets signal boosted by all the you know
00:47:14.680
the leftists that hate him and he ends up they end up accidentally discipling a couple thousand
00:47:19.280
more people every time they do that to agree with you who didn't previously right wing boost a very
00:47:24.040
clear gospel presentation of everything they could have cut out of our i mean any number of the
00:47:29.660
podcasts i've done they cut a three-minute gospel presentation and they sent it out and that's
00:47:34.260
exactly what we're talking about. That's why I try to be very clear whenever I'm addressing a crowd
00:47:39.860
or addressing the media. I step up. Like, we had a big event at the Capitol at the beginning of
00:47:50.360
February. And the first thing that I did, there was media lined up everywhere. And I said, media,
00:47:55.060
this is for you. You need to come to Christ. And I preached the gospel. If you, you know, if you're
00:48:00.800
bound, you are bound in your sin. You're in rebellion against our Lord. And I preached just
00:48:06.160
a very clear, straightforward gospel message, calling them to come to Christ. And I think
00:48:11.040
that's where, if we're going to talk about a top down, we have to be very clear that we're not just
00:48:16.500
here to write laws. We're writing laws that are orienting us to the lawgiver, but we can only
00:48:22.740
rightly orient ourselves to the lawgiver, not by external law, but by the internal submission to
00:48:28.480
the lawgiver and trust in him and receiving his grace, receiving the Lord Jesus, and then living
00:48:35.380
our lives in accordance with him. External law should match the internal law of the heart so
00:48:41.260
that the conscience and the law of the land are in union. They're in unity. We're not warring
00:48:46.500
against those things. So yeah, right wing, right wing boost. You know, they sent the gospel message
00:48:53.820
out to however many hundred thousand, and that's, I think, the very nature of what God is doing
00:49:00.560
right now. I think he's going to raise more people up, and if and when he does, I just want
00:49:06.080
to encourage you, let the gospel be at the front, and yes, do your job, and write your laws, and go
00:49:12.640
into the statehouse, and make good, strong biblical arguments, and write good law,
00:49:27.200
tell them about the goodness and the glory of Christ
00:49:53.240
But, you know, I've waited a long time for this.
00:49:56.600
But it seems like one of the other distinctions,
00:50:16.180
know um but it it does sometimes seem like there's there's a crew that's like uh we will have a
00:50:23.300
christian nation in 5 000 years you know and then and then a lot of the christian nationalists one
00:50:28.940
of the things that i appreciate i'm not saying i agree i'm post-millennial right so i think if you
00:50:35.060
have a different eschatology god bless you you're wrong you know as in texas we say god you know
00:50:39.080
god bless your heart you know but um but what i appreciate though is the immediacy that um you
00:50:45.720
There's this sense of maybe 50 years and not 5,000.
00:50:50.060
If you have power, then why not exercise it now?
00:50:59.120
And I think that when you enroll in a math class,
00:51:01.960
the first thing you encounter would be math problems.
00:51:08.820
the first temptation you're going to encounter is post-mill problems,
00:51:11.860
which manana you know the kingdom is going to come sometime and we don't have to worry about it
00:51:17.580
that is the temptation of the post-millennialist the pre-millennialist is tempted to think it
00:51:23.200
doesn't do any good what no matter what we do it's all going to blazes um so but everybody's
00:51:28.200
got their temptations and i i think that anybody who has authority and power and wields it for good
00:51:34.580
immediately should be applauded, supported, prayed for. I happen to think it's not going to take
00:51:42.280
as deep root as it's going to for hundreds of years, but that's no excuse to avoid doing the
00:51:50.480
good you can now. As the great theologian Shia LaBeouf says, don't let your dreams be dreams.
00:51:57.840
yesterday you said tomorrow tomorrow you'll say you know some other time why not today you know
00:52:06.120
just do it uh and so if if God puts you in that position just do it let your dreams be reality
00:52:14.300
he's he's causing that so plant your seed water it and let him bring the growth and he might bring
00:52:22.320
the growth today because it's a very fast rising seed and you don't forget about working on all the
00:52:28.100
other seeds in the garden too gk gk chesterton said the one taste of paradise on earth is to
00:52:35.560
fight in a losing cause and then not lose yep yep amen i'll have what dusty's having
00:52:42.640
it's fantastic i feel like just the vicinity is okay yeah there it is um squirrely joe's
00:52:50.060
that's christened him's coffee right there um eric or brian either but uh the idea of the
00:52:56.760
we could win and maybe we could win soon what do you think any thoughts on that or or if you don't
00:53:03.820
have something on that other distinctions in this theonomy versus cn slash where do we overlap where
00:53:09.240
is it different what what do you think i mean personally i think a lot of this stuff we get
00:53:13.460
into like the timeline questions and how much change could happen i think a lot of that is
00:53:18.760
actually beyond us, right? Like, so when I think about this, I'm like, well, have I seen change in
00:53:23.140
Ogden? Can I pastor my people? Can I love my family, right? And can I support Dusty? Can I
00:53:28.240
support that cause? So a lot of it is like, well, that's up to the Lord, right? But can you put
00:53:34.380
your shoulder behind the plow? So I think a lot of it, for most people, it's like, you're probably
00:53:38.640
not going to run for office, right? But I know that like with Dusty, like, but we can pray for
00:53:48.540
He answers the prayers of a righteous man, right?
00:53:50.760
So I think some of it is not to overcomplicate it.
00:54:05.340
on 500 years down the road and five minutes from now.
00:54:12.540
You set your compass bearing for a real long way off, and you're going to have to pass through a lot of steps on your way there.
00:54:26.180
And it just is the case that the world is very difficult to predict.
00:54:30.840
If it was easy to predict, I would have bought Bitcoin like a long, long time.
00:54:37.980
Obviously, you know, I'd have a whole lot of Bitcoin, and I'd have a yacht.
00:54:45.420
But I think it's, you see how quickly things can turn?
00:54:51.820
But I mean, Barack Obama ran on a non-pro gay marriage platform
00:55:10.240
And that's something that I think Wilson and you guys with Kings Hall and others, Rigney, have been really helpful with was thinking of like Constantine.
00:55:18.820
It's like, yeah, sometimes the Christians in the province of God all of a sudden find themselves with immense affluence and influence and power, and they weren't quite ready for it.
00:55:28.460
Like, you know, with our congregation, I've preached this sermon like almost back to back twice, but I didn't title this, but essentially the title was, you got to LARP before you can fly.
00:55:37.500
Like, sure, there is something to be said for cosplaying and LARPing and grifting
00:55:44.760
You know, there's no desire for God's glory or his kingdom or his, you know, none of that.
00:55:49.180
And so, I mean, it's strictly, you know, it's a Judas type thing.
00:55:54.060
But any time you've gotten way off the rails and you try to make a change,
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00:56:05.920
If a guy's an alcoholic, you know, he's been drinking, you know, a fifth every single day,
00:56:10.500
and now all of a sudden he's going to try to get in shape.
00:56:15.200
It'd be real easy for anybody who knows him to say, you know, like, you know, cosplay, LARPer, grifter, you know.
00:56:24.340
And repentance, initial repentance, when you're already way off the rails for an individual or society,
00:56:30.920
at least the beginning steps, even, you know, like Paul Washer talked about this.
00:56:34.760
i remember hearing this clip i was like thank goodness because every paul washer i was like
00:56:38.040
i'm going to hell for sure and then you know and then i heard this one and you know he was talking
00:56:42.280
about the kernels of repentance and i mean to hear it from anybody would be encouraging but to hear
00:56:47.140
from paul washer i was like like that guy would not i mean this guy does not preach soft sermons
00:56:52.320
like i probably hurt him to preach this sermon and like so like you know it's good and you know
00:56:56.280
you can take it to the bank but he was just saying that if our repentance is perfect if we could
00:57:00.380
achieve perfect repentance guess what we wouldn't need repentance because we could achieve perfect
00:57:04.160
living the only reason you don't live the reason you don't obey perfectly is because you have
00:57:08.000
imperfect faith and imperfect repentance because your repentance is not perfectly full and your
00:57:13.180
faith is is not always there but at times wanes that's the whole reason you said and um so then
00:57:19.540
what what does repentance look like in in vitro you know what is what does repentance look like
00:57:26.040
in its kernel stages and what does that look like at a corporate level as a society what would it
00:57:31.180
look like for the beginning of America to repent. Like, it might look like women making sourdough
1.00
00:57:38.420
and wearing, you know, sundresses. And that's why I want to say, okay, there, now there can be a
0.98
00:57:43.400
grift side of this. That is true. But I don't want to blanket, I want to be careful not to disparage
00:57:48.140
this. And then as it pertains to, you know, the Constantine kind of moment where all of a sudden
00:57:51.960
you're thrust into power, that's why, you know, back to theonomy and God's law and all these kinds
00:57:56.300
things in Christian nationality. No, it's not
0.99
00:58:06.440
That's to make sure the Baptists don't get drowned.
0.89
00:58:41.720
They're going to convert at some point, Lord willing,
00:58:49.240
But with all that being said, the point is sacralism, right?
00:58:58.000
And it's, yes, like the little, the hole, you know,
00:59:03.740
I think it was Luther, it was like next to him, right?
00:59:18.840
I think it's advantageous to not figure out Christendom
00:59:23.220
once it already happened so let's play this out for a minute so if if someone said i'm afraid
00:59:29.600
that if christian nationalism took you guys would take power and then you'd start persecuting other
00:59:35.720
christians you know the presbyterians persecuting the baptists and i'd say okay let's say we're not
00:59:41.940
going to do that but let's say that your nightmare came true and we were doing that we were persecuting
00:59:47.880
baptists would that make jesus angry or happy angry okay i think we'd all agree that would
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make him angry so do you think that we should modify our behavior down here so that we don't
01:00:01.740
make jesus angry yeah and i said well welcome to christian nationalism
01:00:06.200
we've come full circle so you think we should do more of what jesus likes
01:00:21.540
Christian nation gooder than transing kids
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01:00:43.420
we're dealing with, if God grants us any measure of success, as I believe he is in the process of
01:00:50.960
doing, it's going to involve millions of people. Right. Right. And, and among these millions of
01:00:57.620
people, there will be all sorts of differences, all sorts of different emphases. And you can thank
01:01:04.320
God for the, man, I wouldn't have done it that way, but I like their way of doing it better than
01:01:10.320
my way of not doing it and i think we can we can give thanks to god that christian nationalism
01:01:17.800
is a national conversation or a worldwide conversation in some ways because the current
01:01:25.560
or the theonomist can look and say well we've been doing this for a long time uh we've had
01:01:31.600
westminster we've had the 1689 this is we've had various flavors of theonomy you guys are late to
01:01:39.300
the game, and they should probably be saying, great, what we've wanted for a long time is
01:01:45.040
actually a mainstream conversation. The guys who are late to the game, who are saying,
01:01:51.820
well, Christian nationalism, Christian nationalism, and they don't know a whole lot about historic
01:01:57.120
perspectives on theonomy or the law of God, they can look back and say, thank you. Thank you for
01:02:04.160
laying the groundwork so that both in, in, in right now we have, we don't have enemies of each
01:02:10.500
other, but we see the true and proper enemy that is the enemy of our souls, that ancient serpent
01:02:16.000
and who is devouring people and he need not divide us. So we need to be thankful for each other.
01:02:25.300
The, the new guys coming in should be thankful for the magisterial reformers,
01:02:30.240
the theonomists thank you for all the spade work you did and the old guard should be saying thank
01:02:36.740
you lord for the fresh blood thank you for this infusion of energy thank you for this opportunity
01:02:42.580
yeah so much so much of this is um it's being thankful that god is a god who seems to delight
01:02:53.000
in lots of differentness like he just does it constantly where there's differentness
01:02:58.320
and a lot of this i think the turmoil really does come down to turf war some of the time like turf
01:03:05.400
war of this ministry you know what is it their market share of this camp versus this camp donors
01:03:12.720
yeah donors and and and power and but there's something at the bottom of that that i think
01:03:18.640
sometimes gets overlooked and it's that turf wars aren't all evil in the sense that turf wars are
01:03:26.120
fought over convictions and you don't want somebody who you think is wrong to win the hearts
01:03:31.320
and minds of more people. So when you see somebody who's turf warring with you, it's good to stop and
01:03:38.180
say, they're really convinced that they're right about this and that I'm wrong about that. And
01:03:43.680
maybe have a charity to say, I'm actually going to start with the assumption until they prove me
01:03:48.520
wrong that they love the people and they don't want them to be discipled by what they see as
01:03:53.340
error. And if we could take some of the heat out of it and start with that kind of understanding,
01:03:59.180
I think that can help. And then that's not at all inconsistent with then saying,
01:04:03.420
and I'm going to flat out believe you're wrong. Here's the 17 point reason why. And I think that
01:04:10.340
your argument should fail and that my argument should win the hearts and minds of more people
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than yours because yours happens to be wrong, right? So it's a really tough tightrope walk
01:04:19.740
because there's compromise for political reasons
01:04:53.640
but I'm saying there is such thing as Christian charity
01:04:56.420
and Christian charity is really, really important
01:05:01.180
And when we're all trying to get the right principles
01:05:06.980
we do need to be careful not to see the hordes,
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01:05:14.280
and then turn around and stab everybody around me
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01:05:19.080
constantly like that really is a temptation yeah the reason why we can have so much banter
01:05:25.960
on the platform and you guys are presbyterians clearly we're baptists the reason why we can
01:05:32.220
have the banter is because we know what time it is we're not fighting each other here
01:05:36.500
there was a time when we would fight over these things and there still are times you know
01:05:42.160
closed doors or in our churches, in our denominations. And it's still good to have
01:05:50.400
those things, but know what time it is. There's a great enemy and we need to be together on this
01:05:56.480
and fight it. Legalist was an elf and Gimli was a dwarf, but we're in the middle of Helm's Deep.
01:06:04.240
That's the situation we're in. Dr. Boot and I a while back, he was gracious enough to come on
01:06:09.740
the podcast, and we did an episode on baptism, and we just talked about how the sons of Issachar
01:06:16.100
know the times, and the debate about baptism, we don't want to make it trivial, because God's
01:06:22.400
word matters, and somebody's right, and somebody's wrong, and baptism, it's a sacrament, it matters,
01:06:26.340
but, you know, we were just talking about, you know, in some sense, you can track historically
01:06:34.540
within the church, when the Baptist, you know, kind of baptismal arguments were the fiercest,
01:06:42.060
they were, you know, they were, it was a luxury of Christendom. It was a luxury of the Christians
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01:06:47.620
are winning. Like the, you know, like the Christian talking about turf wars, the Christians have like
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01:06:52.720
a monopoly on all turf, you know, so like the Christians are in charge here. And so we can
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01:06:57.500
afford to talk about, you know, baptism and strongly disagree. And there are just a lot of
01:07:01.520
churches, right? So it's like, you've got this good Baptist church and this good Presbyterian
01:07:05.540
church, and they're both across the street. And so, of course, naturally, if you're of
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credo-baptist convictions, then you're going to go to the Baptist church. Whereas now,
01:07:14.280
part of the reason why I still have a position, but part of the reason why I've changed my
01:07:19.080
philosophy of ministry, not my theology, but my philosophy of ministry, my presentation
01:07:24.060
on baptism, I'll still tongue-in-cheek make a joke, but for the most part, people know I'm
01:07:28.020
joking, and I'm charitable with it, is because they don't have the option. There is not a
01:07:32.360
Presbyterian church across the street from mine. There is, not quite across it, but there are a
01:07:39.340
few, actually. But they closed for 16 months with COVID. They were woke with BLM. And so I've got
01:07:47.200
dear Presbyterian brothers and sisters who are like, we'd rather go to the Baptist church with
01:07:51.060
the spine than the Presbyterian church that folded like a cheap suit, you know? And that's
01:07:56.900
You just have to recognize that's a unique time.
01:07:59.960
So my position is not baptismal catholicity, lowercase c.
01:08:05.400
I would not put that as my position for all of the gospel age.
01:08:09.640
I wouldn't write that down in a book and recommend that to our spiritual sons 500 years from now
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if Christendom is shining, you know, like Pilgrim's Progress, you know,
01:08:19.400
like if religion is walking in her glass slippers.
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01:08:22.720
And I would say, well, in that case, yeah, the Baptist, get in your Baptist church,
01:08:26.700
presbyterian get in your presbyterian church and still you know have a cigar night you know on
01:08:30.900
monday but but on sunday worship in your respective places but that is not that's just not where we
01:08:36.560
are if i could throw one historical note in in here because we're sometimes the victims of
01:08:42.460
anachronistic thinking because we don't realize that one of the features of the older christendom
01:08:48.040
was that we we are so used to the voluntarist system of denominations where you just choose
01:08:54.620
where you want to go. And it's sort of baked into our American DNA. And I think it's an upgrade. I
01:09:00.360
like that. But in the older Christendom, there were all sorts of things that were tied together.
01:09:07.820
So baptism was tied to things like citizenship. You know, it wasn't just a denominational
01:09:13.860
distinctive. And I was just a year or so ago in Boston, and they've got statues. There's a statue
01:09:21.380
I saw it to a Quaker woman who was executed in Massachusetts back in the 17th century.
01:09:27.820
And you think, oh, man, you know, good grief, why'd they have to do that?
01:09:31.440
And I'm not saying it was good that they did that, but it's anachronistic thinking.
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01:09:36.140
These Quaker women would parade through Boston naked, and they would try to exile them, and they'd keep coming back.
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They wouldn't, they were just being pestilent.
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01:09:47.880
It was a legal, it was not just a theological denominational thing.
01:09:57.460
The Salem Witch Trials, the charter of Massachusetts expired.
01:10:03.880
And they didn't have any legal justification for functioning.
01:10:09.520
They sent someone back to England to get the charter renewed.
01:10:13.160
And while he was gone, the Salem Witch Trials broke out.
01:10:17.880
And it was a local trial in Salem, and it was a hysteria and a bad business.
01:10:24.940
And then when the charter came back, they had a legal government again.
01:10:29.260
The Puritan ministers of Massachusetts applied to the governor to have the witch trials suppressed.
01:10:36.640
So the Puritans suppress the witch trials is not the headline you've read.
01:10:41.800
There was a lot of legal background that we have forgotten.
01:10:47.220
So when you hear Christians fighting Christians, sometimes it was all jumbled up with national interests and legal issues.
01:11:02.260
Joe, you said something that I want to see if you can clarify.
01:11:06.660
It sounded like you were trying to wash over some of the distinctions of denominations at this time.
01:11:21.000
No, baptismal Catholicity, not washing over the distinctions of denominations,
01:11:25.160
but saying that I do think that there is a case to be made for something like the CREC
01:11:33.240
that would accommodate both positions on mode of baptism at this juncture.
01:11:40.180
I don't know, like if it was the 1700s, it may not be the position.
01:11:49.940
John Bunyan was a Baptist, and he would receive into membership people
01:11:56.360
who were baptized in infancy, provided they were godly Christians.
01:12:12.120
There's a more ecumenical position represented by Bunyan.
01:12:15.080
And on the other side, on the Presbyterian side, you've got the same hardliners.
01:12:22.480
And in our church, we have a baptismal cooperation agreement where the church is Pato-Baptist.
01:12:51.220
stream, it is much easier for the Presbyterian
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01:12:53.140
practically to accommodate the Credo Baptist
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01:12:56.600
Go ahead, Dusty. I know you have a point to make.
01:13:01.940
So just in case people are thinking, oh, no, they are moving to that fight between Baptists and Presbyterians and making it, they're forgetting what time it is.
01:13:11.160
We're not. We've moved into it in an internecine fight.
01:13:16.760
But we're still willing to say we are willing to fight for the Southern Baptist Convention.
01:13:23.520
We are willing to fight for a conservative Presbyterianism.
01:13:29.600
We're willing to fight for those things, but we're also willing to fight together for much greater fights as well.
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01:13:44.240
We want to correct and create where we need to.
01:13:46.860
but we at the same time need to come together to fight this serpentine theocracy that's been
01:13:54.880
pouring across our country all right this is maybe my my last question for you guys
01:13:59.500
um another thing that i've heard people say is well you know the christian nationalist guys are
01:14:04.560
against uh you guys just don't seem like you just don't love our sacred democracy enough you know
01:14:11.200
or you're just you know my constitution you're just not constitutioning hard enough you know what
01:14:16.040
What if we try classical liberalism even harder?
01:14:20.600
And so what do you guys, I have my answer for that.
01:14:33.080
Because what we are talking about is restoring the Constitution,
01:15:09.120
Holy Trinity versus the United States of America
01:15:11.420
that's on the nose man they should have just looked at and i won't go into the setup of the
01:15:19.880
case but they decided the case rightly it was a church named holy trinity against the united
01:15:24.600
states they decided the case rightly and then justice brewer the chief justice said and while
01:15:30.220
we're on the subject let me tell you why america is a christian nation this is the majority opinion
01:15:35.380
In 1892, and that year was closer to the year of my birth than this year, today, is to my birth.
01:15:50.400
You'd have to do a lot of math to figure that out.
01:16:02.340
and we functionally were down until the mid 20th century and and we're talking about getting back
01:16:11.120
to that i'll take that and let's take take that as a platform and work from there uh and people
01:16:16.660
say no you're destroying democracy you're destroying the constitution by what returning to it
01:16:22.740
right so i think it was madison that talked about our constitution if it's not upheld uh and there's
01:16:32.120
others who said something similar, but it can become just a parchment barrier. It depends on
01:16:38.940
the will of the people. So if the people are grounded in the Christian tradition, then that
01:16:47.520
parchment barrier is thick. It's meaningful. It matters because the standard matters in the hearts
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01:16:56.400
in the minds of the people, but it becomes just a paper, like tissue paper, parchment barrier,
01:17:02.400
if the morality of the people has slidden far away from Christian morals, and now you just
01:17:09.860
have whatever, and we don't have a standard. John Adams, our second president, said,
01:17:16.100
our constitution presupposes a moral and a religious people. He said, it is wholly unfit
01:17:50.200
who's clearly working on psychedelics and that those psychedelics are bringing him closer to a
01:17:56.900
spiritual reality than and even him saying we need Jesus and not not saying that really tongue in
01:18:03.520
cheek he's leading in and saying we need Jesus and you've got like even if he doesn't believe in
01:18:07.480
him he's like somebody needs Jesus yeah maybe not me but you need Jesus yeah Jordan Peterson
01:18:12.040
even Graham Hancock talking so much about the spiritual I think what you're seeing with the
01:18:19.780
popularity of of podcasts and um that are really talking about this um that we're we're we're
01:18:31.320
horseshoeing you know we're going back to this pharmakeia and and really tapping into the
01:18:36.820
spiritual nature and i think that's why haunted cosmos has become i was gonna say somebody's
01:18:41.020
been listening to haunted cosmos yeah cosmos thanks he corrected our pronunciation based on
01:18:46.540
the greek but i said it's the same reason i don't walk into a restaurant and say i would like
01:18:50.840
an extra tortilla with my burrito so you actually do say that though at chili's at chili's he says
01:19:01.020
it at chili's he doesn't even go to the taqueria he goes to chili's and says that so well yeah i
01:19:13.640
Did all you guys read Age of Entitlement, Christopher Caldwell?
01:19:23.300
Who's read Christopher Caldwell, Age of Entitlement?
01:19:30.240
His point, and I think it's the point that I would make
01:19:34.740
is it's not that, oh, the Constitution is terrible.
01:19:38.600
the constitution's wonderful um it'd be great if we still had it yeah that's that's his argument
01:19:45.080
is just and and how do you get rid of something like because it's you know it's just too obvious
01:19:49.240
nobody's gonna it'll never it'll never work to just you know unless you're nicholas cage nobody
01:19:54.320
can just take you know the constitution and make it disappear but yeah but he had to give it back
01:19:58.380
joel right yeah right but this is what you can do what if instead of getting rid of the constitution
01:20:02.660
Or what if you could take a lens, a particular, you know, you know, a way of interpreting and and and you don't get rid of the Constitution, but you put a lens over the Constitution that becomes the de facto Constitution to where for all intents and purposes, functionally, you now have another, you know, another binding document.
01:20:23.700
When I was reading that book, Age of Entitlement,
01:20:30.020
And I was reading this, and I looked at the spy, and who published this?
01:20:40.660
And this is another harbinger of people are saying out loud
01:20:45.700
things that they never would have said out loud 40 years ago.
01:20:50.600
And we're able to talk to this – if we'd been talking like this in the 70s, there would have been 20 of you.
01:21:04.800
I do wonder, to your original question, the people have some discomfort.
01:21:15.140
And I do think there is at least a portion of the Christian nationalist conversation that is willing to say, maybe we're too pluralistic from the foundation, even from the beginning.
01:21:28.720
Maybe there's a little bit too much enlightenment.
01:21:31.420
Maybe there's a little bit too much sprinkled in of that, even as much.
01:21:35.820
And the upgrade from today to the original thing would be, you know, miles and miles better.
01:21:40.920
but i do think that there is a willingness and maybe that's where some of this pushback comes
01:21:44.600
with as well for people to say yeah but maybe there was a little bit too much deism and maybe
01:21:50.320
there was a little bit let's not to gloss over all the disagreements and you know maybe maybe
01:21:56.860
we do want to say that there is first table of the law type of not that there wasn't a lot of
01:22:05.080
that going on but is that part of this so um yes there were there were deistic currents
01:22:10.960
but jefferson and franklin were probably the only um father founding fathers who were toying with
01:22:18.220
deism and they were both very bad deists um because they believed that god intervened in
01:22:24.120
human affairs but they were liberals and affected by the enlightenment but at the constitutional
01:22:30.060
convention there were 55 men there and 50 of the 55 were orthodox trinitarian christians and
01:22:37.720
jefferson was in france um at the time and basically it was overwhelmingly christian
01:22:44.260
with currents here and there um i'd recommend um if you want a real bracing reads go back and read
01:22:52.320
the early rush duty um this independent republic which i i've been going back and reading him again
01:22:58.360
And I just finished this Independent Republic again.
01:23:04.300
And he pinpoints the areas where there was compromise,
01:23:11.740
You left some doors unlocked in a bad neighborhood.
01:23:20.960
Thank you, guys, for serving us this evening and all day.
01:23:26.140
I know some of you guys, you brought your kids with you.
01:23:28.360
Thank you for bringing them and making it a family affair.
01:23:31.100
And so some of you are probably going to have to head out.
01:23:35.160
and then as many of you who want, stay for the after party.
01:23:38.540
We do have one more sponsor that I want to make sure to get to.
01:23:44.320
And you guys were free to go ahead and exit stage left or right.