The NXR Podcast - August 23, 2025


THE FRIDAY SPECIAL - The Incredible Powers Of The Christian Prince

Topics
powers of Christian prince constitutionalism
Hosted by
Joel Webbon Harrison Smith Antonio Griffith Dale Partridge Wewsley Todd Calvin Robinson
Mentioned
James Lindsay Thomas Jefferson James Madison Glenn Motts John Locke Joel Berry Tim Keller Joe Biden Blue Sky Montesquieu Baptists Jehovah Calvin Luther Trump Wolf
THE LIVESTREAM - FRIDAY MEGASTREAM： Shillsdale College and Should Protestants Partner with Catholics？ THE LIVESTREAM - The Rise of the New Christian Right

Episode Stats


Length

46 minutes

Words per minute

178.15

Word count

8,288

Sentence count

294

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

35

sentences flagged

Hate speech

58

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Dr. Wolf and I continue our discussion of the Christian Prince and the powers that he has in the United States of America. We discuss some qualifiers and disclaimers within a constitutional government and how that relates to religious liberty.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:30 Okay, this is episode eight, and myself and Dr. Wolf are going to be talking a little bit more
00:00:51 about the Christian Prince. We began that conversation in the previous episode, episode
00:00:54 seven. So if you haven't watched that, go back and check it out. We're going to continue the
00:00:59 conversation about the Christian prince, and particularly, we're going to talk about
00:01:02 the powers that are afforded to him. And, you know, you've already prepped me that you think
00:01:09 that in terms of permissibility and what's possible, that he could have a very great deal
00:01:14 of power. And then we're going to seek to give some qualifiers and disclaimers within a
00:01:20 constitutional government that we have here in America, and then also how that relates to
00:01:25 religious liberty? Yeah, so I think that the power in, like, the abstract that God grants a
00:01:34 Christian prince or a civil magistrate is very, is broad, vast, and actually not absolute.
00:01:42 There's some things that they cannot do, but it is very, it's, in principle, it can be very wide
00:01:51 and broad. Um, and this is where people criticized me because it sounded like I was saying he could
00:01:57 be like a tyrant and he could be a, um, absolute ruler. And, and, and, and I got criticism recently.
00:02:04 Someone said, well, what about, uh, like you have a birthday party and there's some, some, uh, some
00:02:09 of the, the girls' friends are not nice. Can the civil magistrate show up and say, you cannot do
00:02:14 that. That's bad. And make a law against girls being unkind or something during the birthday
00:02:18 Party, something weird like that. And I was like, I guess in principle, you could do that.
00:02:24 But there are other authorities that can do that as well. So I just, I think in principle,
00:02:28 the power that God grants is a power of God to order outward affairs in ways that we would not
00:02:36 like or think appropriate. But I think people have to understand that when we form a political
00:02:43 society, we have to make decisions on the political system. Like, so when our framers
00:02:47 got together, they used all the experience of Western civilization, the various constitutions
00:02:53 of the past, and said, actually, what's best for us, and given the political experience of the
00:02:59 ages, we should divide this power into three different branches. We should divide it into
00:03:04 legislative, executive, and judicial, and we're going to make them separate branches, and we're
00:03:09 going to give them different qualifications and functions, and we're going to limit them
00:03:12 so that all of that power of civil government is now limited, directed, it's curtailed for our
00:03:20 people. And so when I say that the prince has all this power, what I mean is that in principle he
00:03:25 does. A lot of things are permissible, but that doesn't mean they're all appropriate, and that
00:03:31 power should fall under the political system by the people. The people create the political system
00:03:39 themselves, whether it's aristocracy, a mixed regime, a monarchy, a democracy, whatever it is,
00:03:45 and that power, because they consent to it, and because it's, in a way, originates from them,
00:03:51 the design of it, then they should be the ones, then the politicians or the statesmen or the
00:03:57 civil rulers should then abide by that as a, they have a sort of fiduciary power. They have a power
00:04:05 that is granted to them in a way by the people,
00:04:08 and then they have to operate
00:04:09 within the system that is created.
00:04:13 So this is one of the criticisms I got
00:04:14 from my friend Glenn Moots,
00:04:16 who's a professor up in Michigan, a good friend.
00:04:19 And he said, you know,
00:04:20 you talk about the Christian prince,
00:04:21 but why didn't you talk about constitutionalism?
00:04:24 It's true that in the past,
00:04:26 a lot of the reformers and like earlier reformers
00:04:28 granted a lot of power to the civil magistrate,
00:04:31 but haven't you considered, you know,
00:04:33 Montesquieu's work. He's the French guy. I forgot a few episodes back. That's the French legal
00:04:39 theorist. It's Montesquieu. Or what about James Madison, Thomas Jefferson? These guys all
00:04:44 acknowledge that there's tremendous power in the abstract, but actually it's got to be curtailed
00:04:48 for the good of the people. So why don't you think of that? So I would just say we need to think,
00:04:54 yes, in principle, there's a lot of power, but we as a people, we still have a decision to make
00:05:00 on how that power is going to be directed
00:05:02 for the good of our society.
00:05:04 And that's our decision.
00:05:05 Like one of my general emphases
00:05:09 within this whole Christian Nationals project
00:05:11 is to say that we, the people,
00:05:14 have the power to order ourselves
00:05:18 as we see fit for our good.
00:05:21 And that includes the political system as well.
00:05:25 So yeah, that's it.
00:05:26 That's great.
00:05:27 Now we can move.
00:05:28 Religious liberty? 0.70
00:05:28 Religious liberty.
00:05:29 So that's it.
00:05:30 Yeah. This is, again, a criticism. I think what we have to—so from the very beginning of the
00:05:36 Reformation, one of the basic Protestant doctrines was that civil law cannot strike at the heart.
00:05:45 The civil sword cannot say, you have a bad belief, and therefore I'm going to beat that out of you.
00:05:50 I'm going to cudgel that. I'm just going to beat out that belief. So from the beginning,
00:05:55 it was that Christ is Lord of the conscience. So every time a Baptist or a modern two-kingdom 0.99
00:06:00 guy says that Christ is the Lord of the conscience, you're actually affirming the very thing Calvin 0.67
00:06:05 affirmed, Luther affirmed, everyone affirmed this. No, I've never read a single person
00:06:10 in the history of Protestantism who rejected that proposition. What they understood is that
00:06:16 that is an inward reality, and the moment something is outwardly expressed, the moment you say God
00:06:23 does not exist or the moment the moment you blaspheme christ um that becomes an outward
00:06:29 expression of something and as outward then that's something that the civil magistrate can say no
00:06:34 we're not going to allow that anymore atheism will be crushed yeah atheism will be crushed
00:06:39 right so like if somebody is an atheist in their heart and privately in their home that's that's
00:06:43 one thing um but in a christian society uh if you have a teacher who's shaping young hearts and young
00:06:50 minds. And in his curriculum and teaching, he's telling children that there is no God.
00:06:57 That's different than just a personal belief. He's publicly expressing that and indoctrinating
00:07:04 and teaching children. And it would be perfectly within the confines of a Christian prince in a 0.98
00:07:11 Christian nation to be able to come in and say, no, you can't do that. I can't make you love God, 0.95
00:07:17 believe in God or any of these things at a personal, private level, but I absolutely can
00:07:22 direct and thwart your public teaching on the matter, and to inflict some manner of penalties
00:07:32 in order to curb that kind of outward behavior is permissible.
00:07:38 Yeah, and that is a fundamental classical liberal doctrine. It's funny to see people say,
00:07:45 I'm a classical liberal. I just got in a debate with a guy at the Evangelical Philosophical
00:07:50 Society who was representing the classical liberal position, and I said that actually,
00:07:55 you know, we should crush atheism. He's like, well, I'm a classical liberal, but John Locke,
00:08:00 the father of classical liberalism, said that explicitly, very famously, that anyone who
00:08:05 denies the being of a god should not be tolerated. So the great, you know, the great
00:08:09 Enlightenment advocate of religious liberty said, there are some things that are destructive of
00:08:14 society and atheism is one of those and that's repeated over and over and over all the founders
00:08:20 believe that atheism was destructive of society um and uh and and really and blasphemy laws were
00:08:27 on the books until the mid-20th century until they were deemed unconstitutional so that is a
00:08:33 fundamental classical liberal doctrine why is that well because atheists um one i would argue that
00:08:39 atheism corrupts the soul and so it leads to destructive beliefs which statistically is true 0.91
00:08:46 so if you ask if you ask atheists what they believe in terms of social policy you know lgbt 1.00
00:08:52 stuff all that other stuff transing kids they are the majority of them actually the super majority 0.61
00:08:59 of them would affirm all those things so atheism is actually very very destructive um and you'll 0.85
00:09:06 you'll point out a few guys like, you know, James Lindsay, this and that, but James Lindsay's pro 0.80
00:09:09 gay. Like there's a reason, like they say he's a conservative, like, no, he's not. He's actually 0.70
00:09:14 just a modern liberal. Uh, and it doesn't even have to be by, by law that these things, I think
00:09:20 law would be appropriate for atheists, but also just by social opprobrium. Like it's a, it would 0.93
00:09:25 be frowned upon. And it is actually generally speaking, uh, it's not good for a politician
00:09:30 in most places to say, I'm an atheist. They will not give it wrong. So there is actually in our
00:09:34 society still that because precedence matters like like do i think joe biden is a christian
00:09:38 no do i even think he's a decent catholic no but it is worth noting that uh we have not had one
00:09:44 president of the united states that did not at least outwardly in terms of profession claim to
00:09:49 be a christian and i at the very least a theist like a personal but i don't want it like that's
00:09:54 a that's a precedent that we have that i don't want to see lost like would i prefer that it
00:09:59 would actually be true as a matter of the heart, in addition to just merely word? Of course. But
00:10:06 if I had to choose between it not being true at all, both by word and by heart, I'd rather,
00:10:12 you know, at least be present in their word, even if it's not true in their heart.
00:10:17 Yeah. And so, yeah, like we, this is the thing, like Christians lose their minds over the idea 0.95
00:10:22 of crushing the atheist. 0.97
00:10:25 But Christians are very willing to crush people 1.00
00:10:28 for naughty beliefs. 0.96
00:10:30 If someone is a racist,
00:10:34 they deem this guy a racist, 0.99
00:10:37 Christians will join hands, 0.94
00:10:40 join arms or whatever with the atheists 1.00
00:10:43 and destroy that guy. 0.99
00:10:44 They'll team up with the most progressive people 0.98
00:10:47 you could possibly imagine on the left
00:10:49 who are transing children 0.68
00:10:51 and supporting gay pride parades.
00:10:54 And they'll immediately team up with them 0.97
00:10:56 to make sure that that racist man,
00:10:59 even if he has a profession of faith
00:11:01 and even if he's repentant,
00:11:02 even if he acknowledges that he did wrong,
00:11:05 they may not have the power to enact some kind of law
00:11:09 in order to put him in jail or to fine him.
00:11:12 But in terms of cultural power, social power,
00:11:15 they will make sure that he loses his job.
00:11:17 They'll follow him to the next job,
00:11:19 make sure that he can't maintain employment.
00:11:22 And in a sense, it's even harsher than prison.
00:11:25 They effectively, in terms of their actions
00:11:28 and what they're willing to do, 0.61
00:11:30 the Christian will go to a repentant racist
00:11:33 who is a brother in Christ and say, 0.97
00:11:36 I will not relent until your kids starve.
00:11:40 Yeah. 1.00
00:11:41 I hate you. 0.99
00:11:41 And that's not an exaggeration. 1.00
00:11:43 No.
00:11:43 We know from personal experience.
00:11:45 I'm describing something actually right now.
00:11:48 Um, and, uh, but so the point is, the point is that they are willing, they are perfectly willing
00:11:54 to use the nuclear option on, on, um, on those sorts of people. And yet when I say, and by the
00:12:03 way, those are the sorts of people who probably vote the same way you do, Christian, right? So
00:12:07 you're probably, you probably agree with this, this person on 95% of things in politics, who you
00:12:15 vote for all these things and yet that one position is enough for you to join with the left
00:12:20 to utterly obliterate the guy um an atheist however uh has the the most sinful position
00:12:28 you can have which is deny god like the breaking the first commandment is the most you know is the 0.55
00:12:34 worst sin you commit and by virtue of breaking the first um yeah there should immediately be a lack
00:12:39 of trust that he's going to keep any of the other commandment yeah i mean that's yeah once you lose
00:12:44 the first, you lose the second. And that's, again, that's just demonstrated through social science
00:12:49 that atheists have the most atrocious social political positions. And yet, we don't do 1.00
00:12:57 anything with those guys. We'll join forces with like a James Lindsay to attack fellow Christians, 1.00
00:13:01 as we've seen recently. Even at Christian conferences. 1.00
00:13:06 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Sharing a stage and giving him opportunity.
00:13:10 Yeah. And it's, so my point then is that, well, one, there's an inconsistency there. You say,
00:13:16 oh, Christians should, you know, we're not of the world. Like we're not of the world.
00:13:19 We shouldn't use the world's power. We shouldn't, you know, we should be pilgrims and we should be
00:13:25 strangers and sojourners and all that. I just don't, I don't believe them.
00:13:31 I don't.
00:13:32 Maybe there's obviously some cognitive dissonance, or at least they just don't realize
00:13:38 that they are just as swept up in these things
00:13:41 as everyone else.
00:13:42 And they use, in ways, given my experience as the church,
00:13:47 people in the church are worse.
00:13:49 The people in the church who have been accused of racism 0.90
00:13:53 are hounded not by the atheists, 0.89
00:13:56 not by the non-Christians, the Muslims, 0.98
00:13:58 they're hounded by people who claim Christ. 1.00
00:14:03 They're followed by people who claim Christ.
00:14:06 So people are willing to do these things.
00:14:08 um devote their life to tracking be like what churches you go to and this and that and where
00:14:13 has he moved to now and let's do this they're willing to do that um but they're not willing
00:14:17 to do it for people who are socially destructive in their in their in their totality of their
00:14:22 beliefs um so my appeal then is to say okay fine if you if you're not gonna if you're not gonna
00:14:28 let up against the the racist why not do it against people who are actually socially destructive
00:14:33 what why do we treat why do we treat the racist worse than we do the transgender activist i mean
00:14:37 let alone like the doctors that are transing kids, 0.99
00:14:40 that's horrible, throw them in jail. 1.00
00:14:41 And I think most people be okay with that, maybe. 0.99
00:14:45 But why not also the transgender activist? 1.00
00:14:48 Isn't that more socially destructive 1.00
00:14:51 than some dude with an honest account?
00:14:54 But we're not willing to do that.
00:14:55 We're willing to winsomely engage
00:14:57 and write books where we grant
00:14:59 that we haven't been friendly and nice
00:15:01 and that we want you to come to Christ.
00:15:05 Why not do that against the guys who your own tradition of classical liberalism said are actually bad and demonstrably bad in their beliefs?
00:15:16 So anyway, let's do that.
00:15:18 Join me.
00:15:19 Join me in doing that, in shifting our social ire against the enemies of civilization.
00:15:27 Anyway.
00:15:28 Let's crush atheism. 0.74
00:15:30 That's great.
00:15:30 Okay, so a little bit more maybe on religious liberty?
00:15:34 or any other thoughts?
00:15:35 Yeah, yeah, so, right.
00:15:39 I mean, well, going back to, again,
00:15:43 so when you punish someone for an outward belief,
00:15:46 you're not doing that so that you can reform their hearts.
00:15:49 That might be an indirect, that might be a result.
00:15:53 Right, because the law is a tutor,
00:15:54 but if God uses it in that way, praise be to God,
00:15:57 but that's not, you're not,
00:16:01 the Christian prince is not saying,
00:16:02 I'm doing this solely for the sake of conversion or a change of heart. No, you're doing this
00:16:10 because his outward, if that inward belief is manifest deliberately, outwardly, it affects
00:16:18 others. Right. So yeah, your sufficient reason should not be for them reforming internally.
00:16:27 yeah that would be a good consequence um and uh yeah but yeah like you said the point is that you
00:16:36 are creating you're trying to create conditions outwardly that conduce to what is good and if
00:16:41 someone is is uh put forward in a position that is destructive of society then that that should
00:16:46 come under um unless there's reasons not to that should come under some kind of social or civil
00:16:51 penalty right so the way that i've said it is you know like people will be like well what about you
00:16:55 know the first amendment you know and uh freedom of religion and you know uh yeah i'll always say
00:17:01 the same thing that you you always say well what's the first word of the first amendment you
00:17:05 know congress and yeah um and so i i don't think that we should uh ever have uh and i don't think
00:17:10 within you know in terms of permissibility maybe elsewhere but within this you know our nation of
00:17:16 america i don't think that at the federal level that we should have you know a national church
00:17:19 um i think it is permissible although probably not a great idea but you could have state churches
00:17:25 um yeah but but but then you know more broadly than that it's like well with christian nationalism
00:17:32 are you going to round up all the muslims are you going to round up all the jews you know the
00:17:35 hindus you know the baptists right um and the answer is no um you're not again it's all about 0.88
00:17:42 outwards and particularly um public expressions um so a christian nation um by necessity uh would
00:17:51 not require, it doesn't require and it doesn't even permit the thought police. It's not like
00:17:57 minority report trying to stop a crime on a hunch before it even takes place. That's not what's
00:18:03 going on. So you're not rounding up Muslims. But the conversation where it actually lies is I think
00:18:09 there's a sliding scale spectrum within what's permissible from not allowing a mosque all the
00:18:17 way up to we're allowing a mosque but no uh public you know prayer sirens you know calls to prayer
00:18:23 um and then even further up the line you could say like okay well if you know this particular
00:18:28 town happens to be predominantly muslim and they vote for you know whatever at a local level maybe
00:18:33 it's permissible and i would say it's not but maybe it's permissible um but at a national level 0.93
00:18:38 there will be no um muslim parades uh our parades you know it would like we we will have christmas
00:18:44 parades. We will not have whatever. And so, but, but that's, but that's what we're saying. We're 1.00
00:18:50 not talking about a sweet, you know, Muslim family that lives next door. That's been neighborly and
00:18:56 kind and good, good citizens that obey the laws. And then all of a sudden you see a SWAT team,
00:19:03 you know, go into their house, you know, and dragging them out, you know, like that's not
00:19:06 what nobody's, I don't know anyone advocating for that. But what we are saying is there's a
00:19:13 preference at minimum, even before cracking down in terms of penalties. The first thing to establish
00:19:21 is not penalties, but preference given to public expressions of Christianity.
00:19:27 Yes. Right? Yeah. And it's important to emphasize that in having civil laws with regard to false
00:19:35 religion, you're not doing it for its own sake. It's not as if this is a command that if you
00:19:42 don't suppress all false religion every instance of it then therefore you're disobeying god that
00:19:48 is not what i'm saying it's not it's not that's false let's suppress it it's is the the nature of
00:19:55 that conducive or is it harm a christian people in a christian society right and if it does then
00:20:03 it still may not be appropriate to go after it for various circumstances but it could in principle be
00:20:10 um something you go after um yeah so for yeah like like you said if there's a we talked about
00:20:16 before if there's like three percent of the population or a minority of the population
00:20:20 that that is not christian then you you could very well just leave them alone right now would
00:20:26 you allow if they're they're wealthy in some way to build a gigantic um religious thing with a
00:20:34 gaudy display and all those colors and gold and everything like that 90 foot statue and i think
00:20:39 was in houston texas yeah no no no no you don't get to none of that would be none of that would
00:20:44 be allowed because uh our architecture is is public art it's one of the few there's also
00:20:51 statues but there's yeah it's one of the few public arts and public art and it should shape
00:20:56 the people and having your largest building being the church or if you want it to be the state cat
00:21:02 or like some sort of capital building whatever it is um if uh preferably it would be that there
00:21:07 would be a large church, that would indicate that these people, because it's visible, that indicates
00:21:12 what this place is. You go to an Italian village in Italy, and you'll see a, you'll generally
00:21:19 speaking, see a large Roman Catholic church that dominates the scenery. And that signals everyone
00:21:26 this is a Christian people, a Christian town, and the people inside, people outside. That's not to 1.00
00:21:32 say you deny the synagogues or the mosques um it's just that within the the the the laws of
00:21:38 public architecture that one is a prominent that is the central and that that identifies what this
00:21:44 place is because of the the place as a whole is christian rather than and that's that's for me
00:21:49 why you know as as somebody in my eschatology who's post-millennial like i i believe um you
00:21:55 know we're not going to have a temple nor will we have a mosque um in the long game in jerusalem but
00:22:00 Jerusalem actually does matter. I think the history matters and geography matters,
00:22:06 but it belongs to Christians. And one day I think we'll have a giant Christian cathedral,
00:22:12 not a mosque, not a temple, neither the Jew nor the Muslim will ultimately win, but 0.93
00:22:16 Christ has won and of the increase of his government, there shall be no end and his
00:22:21 victory will be further and further manifest in temporal and earthly ways throughout this gospel
00:22:25 Age and eventually Jerusalem. And that's why I don't want to be overly harsh on the Crusaders,
00:22:34 for instance. I don't think... There are plenty of things that I would disagree with, but the
00:22:39 general sentiment of this piece of land matters, and it belongs to Christ, and it should visibly
00:22:46 convey that, that it belongs to Christ. That was, in a general sense, that was a good-oriented
00:22:52 sentiment. That's true. And, you know, like one of my favorite of the Crusaders, Richard
00:22:59 the Lionheart, he, you know, it's really interesting. I wish that America,
00:23:05 Americans, politicians would understand this today and dispensational pastors for that matter. But
00:23:11 he was one of the first Crusaders who gave it up, who like by that point they had established,
00:23:16 I think it was like four, maybe it was seven different castles, strongholds, fortresses
00:23:22 in in jerusalem uh to the point where with you know certain innovations the crossbow was 1.00
00:23:28 significant they were able to um to defend uh the area from all you know the invading muslims
00:23:34 and things like that but the problem was geographically the way that it was centered 0.65
00:23:38 it wasn't enough to just defend um jerusalem as an outpost with you know with christians
00:23:44 um but in order for it to be viable you had to um you had to have a corridor you know stretching
00:23:50 all the way from the sea, all the way to Jerusalem for trade and to resource. And so they didn't just
00:23:56 have to defend Jerusalem, but they had to defend like a strait, and that was indefensible. And
00:24:01 Richard the Lionheart, from a strategic standpoint, not necessarily theological, but
00:24:06 strategically, he concluded, I can't quote him exactly, but he basically was one of the first
00:24:12 kind of Christian princes within the Crusades. And this is, I forget, maybe the seventh or
00:24:18 something you know this is well underway centuries into the project but he was one of the first guys
00:24:23 who famously said uh it's um it can't be done at least not now um and i think and i think about
00:24:31 that even you know in the mind of god if i can you know um speculate like even geographically the way
00:24:38 that god has constructed the earth and jerusalem kind of like that like the center of the world in
00:24:42 some ways and um i really think that you know the world being christianized um part of the problem
00:24:48 with the dispensationalists is they don't believe the world will be christianized and and so they
00:24:52 kind of want to just you know make this thing this thing that ultimately is negative um happen
00:24:57 in jerusalem because it'll just usher back the return of christ and that'll be a net positive
00:25:02 but for me i think the whole world will you know the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge
00:25:05 of the glory of god as the waters cover the sea but in terms of timing and chronological order
00:25:11 I don't think you start there. I think that's the end game. I think little by little, the corners
00:25:15 of the earth, as it were, being Christianized, and we work our way to the center. And the Crusaders, 0.92
00:25:21 in some sense, one of their gaping failures is that they tried to start with the center
00:25:26 and work out. And I don't think that it's a coincidence that in God's providence,
00:25:30 you have this little piece of land that really does matter to Christian history,
00:25:33 not Jewish history, but Christian history. But it also is smack dab like an island in a sea of
00:25:39 false religion and uh and i think it will be one but it will be one last i think in our timer maybe
00:25:45 we should talk about talk about baptists okay well two things first thing is like well don't you want
00:25:50 to like so you want a confessional state you want all presbyterianism and around like it's uh
00:25:55 everything is presbyterian or whatever and that's not that's not at all what i uh have in mind um
00:26:01 the great thing about protestantism is you like you know like i said before we can affirm each
00:26:05 other's mutual faith and be protestants at the same time it's not we're not united united by
00:26:10 being in part of a global institution like in roman catholicism so we can we can affirm each
00:26:15 other's mutual faith and uh and as we'll talk about i think in the last episode um how this
00:26:21 was a product of protestant experience and that this is why baptists today should not be afraid
00:26:27 of uh stephen wolfer or any of the christian nationalists um many of the christ they are
00:26:32 baptists like yourself and others and um there's also like so many of you that i don't think the
00:26:37 the the two percent of us as presbyterians will be able to dominate um in any sort of political
00:26:43 sense and so they should just get over that and also that we are americans who recognize that
00:26:49 there was a sort of progress in protestant understanding themselves that led to us
00:26:55 uh not killing each other or or so uh so there that all of that is not protestant not pan
00:27:01 presbyterian right and because it's protestant um i the way i word it is it's uh it would be
00:27:08 creedal by nature not confessional yeah right yeah so i think like you said in another episode
00:27:14 like the the baptists should kind of get over themselves like the victim mentality this almost
00:27:18 like dream of being um you know thrown in jail by the the anglicans or something it's fear and
00:27:25 fantasy somehow simultaneously they should get over that afraid of being a victim and also 0.95
00:27:30 secretly hoping because the greatest thing that could ever happen is to be drowned by a presbyterian
00:27:34 yeah yeah yeah but no one no one is uh out to do that right um and uh i you know that
00:27:42 you've tried yeah i don't know how to convince a guy of anything but uh but yeah that's i mean
00:27:50 friends with you friends with william wolf baptist and so it's like just it's just not the case and
00:27:56 if they read the book they'd know that's not the case um so uh but yeah i i so we're in terms of
00:28:03 like fellow christians you can even have a an established church in a state like they did in
00:28:09 the early early days of the american republic and have uh quasi establishments and also have
00:28:15 religious liberty at the same time, where you can worship however you want. And so that's
00:28:20 perfectly within the bounds of permissibility and prudence. And I would say that even if
00:28:28 you're a magisterial Protestant, that doesn't mean you are rounding up heretics or Baptists
00:28:32 and like that. Their principles are, I think, now developed over time such that that's
00:28:37 unnecessary. And I think American experience proves that. So yeah, so the Baptist should not
00:28:44 be to not be afraid um and yeah i'm not looking for like a confessional state there's also the
00:28:50 argument of i guess lastly um that well the moment you start persecuting some group or the moment you
00:28:59 start saying we're christian and not muslim well that just opens up the principle so now the
00:29:04 muslims take over and it becomes a muslim state and this and that and there is precedent for 0.80
00:29:10 something like that happening between warring uh sex of of christianity of course that happened a
00:29:16 lot uh in the 16th 70th centuries um so there is truth to that but that's also true for everything
00:29:23 we do when we legislate right like that's just a that is a in a way it's like in itself it's a
00:29:29 trivial point because if you throw people in jail it's possible that you throw an innocent guy in
00:29:34 jail right you know so that's always going to be the case that that's something that you try to
00:29:39 suppress, it can be used in a bad way. If you say, for example, that cursing is not speech,
00:29:49 and you say that actually you saying F you in a crowd is not protected speech, well, someone could
00:29:55 go, I guess, use that and say, well, it's wrong to say Christ is Lord. I mean, you can see how
00:30:01 the same principle, the moment you suppress one thing, some other guy is going to use that,
00:30:06 but it that's just true for everything um and so in this case i think there there is a there we
00:30:13 have a strong history of protestant experience that we can we don't have to just jump back into
00:30:20 you know geneva in the 1550s we can jump back into the you know the 19th century america where
00:30:28 we had broad religious liberty with robust religiosity a lot of theological discussion
00:30:34 and a lot of downsides to that, too.
00:30:36 We got Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses,
00:30:38 Christian science came out of that as well.
00:30:40 That's the downside of kind of an open, tolerant society. 0.84
00:30:44 And yet there was high religiosity
00:30:46 that is even reflected in our society to this day.
00:30:49 We are still a highly religious society
00:30:51 in terms of the Christian West.
00:30:54 We're more religious in terms of church attendance
00:30:57 than most places.
00:30:59 And when you think of it in the macro,
00:31:01 wouldn't that be such an improvement
00:31:03 if one of our biggest concerns
00:31:06 was winning out in the hearts and minds 0.98
00:31:11 and through persuasion against Mormons 0.52
00:31:13 instead of what we currently have,
00:31:16 trying to win through persuasion
00:31:19 the hearts and minds of people
00:31:20 of whether or not it's appropriate 0.99
00:31:21 to chop the genitals off of a child. 1.00
00:31:24 Yeah. 1.00
00:31:24 The point is like,
00:31:26 you're always going to,
00:31:27 all politics is identity politics.
00:31:28 You're always going to have groups.
00:31:30 They're always going to disagree with one another.
00:31:32 People are going to be vying for power. People want to win. And so the question is just, how broad are you going to have it? Are you going to have your nation so broad to where the opposing side is murdering babies and chopping off the genitals of children?
00:31:49 that that's is it going to be so broad to where that's your your chief opponent or is it going
00:31:54 to be still broad and and still uh allowing for a great degree of liberty still charity and liberty
00:32:00 and kindness but narrow enough to where now my chief opponents are um guys are saying you can
00:32:06 have more than one wife and that joseph smith is a prophet and then we have an extra book in
00:32:10 addition to the bible those are problems i'm not saying it's not a problem but like if if those are
00:32:16 bookends and that's as bad as we've got like how would that not be an improvement for where we are
00:32:23 today like that's one of the biggest arguments that i like i try to like you know i almost just
00:32:27 want to grab people by the collar and shake and say what's wrong with you like you like uh well
00:32:32 we they might uh what what if what if uh uh seven baptist ministers were drowned well but what about
00:32:40 70 million babies murdered like what like what world do you live in i i would love like you must
00:32:48 be the the happiest go luckiest you know blissfully unaware person alive like what world are you
00:32:53 living in to where the things that we're proposing are somehow worse than the current state i don't
00:33:01 get it yeah i mean it's been it's been normalized all those things seem it's why it's why the the
00:33:09 guys would align with the atheist to attack their fellow christians for being you know woke
00:33:13 woke right um because in their heart of hearts they think a guy who who might be racist whatever
00:33:20 that is yeah is objectively worse than a guy who is killing babies yeah yeah you can have a winsome
00:33:29 discussion with someone who who is uh who is pro-abortion yep but you cannot have a winsome
00:33:35 discussion with you know even us because we we don't affirm their understanding of religious
00:33:41 liberty right um so we're we're outside so every society has these norms and i i would just say
00:33:47 that like you have to be self-critical you have to think through why are these set of things the
00:33:53 sort of things i will align with these other guys you disagree with i'll have winsome discussions
00:33:58 with these guys against this other crowd why is that right um and let's let's reorient that
00:34:03 answer has to be because one is socially permissible and the other one is not and and so much of that
00:34:08 just has to do with the range of discourse given in the present time right now um we can say that
00:34:15 like oh we're making all of our decisions objectively based off of what we perceive
00:34:19 as virtue as christians but that's just not true i mean that's easily proven to be false
00:34:23 that's not what it is it's not uh the the immutable law word of god uh that's setting the discourse
00:34:29 It is the culture and what the culture at large perceives as being permissible and acceptable
00:34:35 speech at that time. And Christians are just obliging, without even putting up a fight, 1.00
00:34:42 just saying, yes, sir. Whereas, no, we should set the parameters. We should make it, 1.00
00:34:50 it should be unthinkable that someone would actually make an argument for transgenderism. 1.00
00:34:56 They should be mocked and ridiculed and laughed at. 1.00
00:35:00 And there's so much that you can do 1.00
00:35:01 even without a Christian prince, even without laws. 0.80
00:35:04 There's so much you can do culturally.
00:35:07 And that's why, like, yeah, there's a certain,
00:35:10 you know, there's a line where it becomes
00:35:11 actually objectively immoral and unchristian
00:35:16 and inappropriate.
00:35:19 But in terms of the principle,
00:35:22 that's why things like like memes are really powerful it's a powerful way of pushing the
00:35:29 discourse to where people like uh like all all the guys right now you know you've seen like all
00:35:34 the the announcements you know after the trump victory of like i'm leaving x and you know and
00:35:39 i'm going to threads and then the uh what's the other one blue sky blue sky i saw one meme it's
00:35:45 you know it's a little grotesque but i think that this is falls into the realm of appropriateness
00:35:50 And it illustrates exactly what I'm saying
00:35:51 in terms of motivating through mockery.
00:35:53 And it showed, you know, in a public bathroom,
00:35:56 it showed two guys, you know,
00:35:57 and there's like seven urinals
00:35:58 and they're as far away from each other as possible.
00:36:01 It says X, you know, one guy here, one guy there.
00:36:04 And then the next one, it shows, you know,
00:36:05 all these urinals and they're right next to each other.
00:36:07 And it says threads.
00:36:09 And the next one, it shows them facing each other
00:36:11 and urinating on each other.
00:36:12 And it said blue sky, you know?
00:36:14 And like, that's like, I understand
00:36:16 that it's a little crass for sure.
00:36:18 I'm not saying it's not crass, 0.60
00:36:19 But no, yeah, mock those people, mock them. 1.00
00:36:24 You're an embarrassment, you're a joke. 1.00
00:36:26 I want you to know you're an embarrassment 1.00
00:36:27 and you're a joke. 1.00
00:36:28 You literally virtue signaling on X,
00:36:31 your departure from the platform to go into
00:36:34 by deliberately in echo chamber
00:36:36 where you can just have your thoughts regurgitated back to you
00:36:40 by people who already agree.
00:36:42 And the reason you're doing that
00:36:43 is because you actually can't stand the test
00:36:46 of cross-examination and scrutiny
00:36:49 with those who actually disagree with you, 0.99
00:36:51 yes, you are a joke. 0.96
00:36:52 And I want you to feel like a joke, 0.99
00:36:54 not because I hate you, 0.90
00:36:55 but because hopefully you could be shamed
00:36:59 into better behavior.
00:37:01 I think it's more than that too.
00:37:02 The people going to Blue Sky,
00:37:04 they're going into a left-wing cesspool.
00:37:07 They're going, they are more comfortable.
00:37:09 So guys are on the center right,
00:37:10 like X is too right-wing.
00:37:12 Like, well, I'm going to go to where I want to go,
00:37:15 where I'm more comfortable,
00:37:16 which just happens to be all the lefty guys.
00:37:19 That's right.
00:37:20 These same people, I've seen like Joel Berry say this and others, where it's like, you know,
00:37:26 as Christians, we attack both the left and we attack the right. Of course, they don't attack
00:37:31 liberalism for some reason. Somehow liberalism is like this neutral thing you don't actually
00:37:35 attack. It's just, that's the norm and you don't.
00:37:38 Because they think that, they literally think it's synonymous with Christianity.
00:37:41 With Christianity, yeah. The timeless politics of Jesus is post-war liberalism.
00:37:45 Exactly. And it's so convenient. It's not that they don't, that they reserve their attacks 0.83
00:37:51 because they think it's neutral. They reserve their attacks because they think it's good.
00:37:55 It's not just neutral. They think it's right, that it is synonymous with the New Testament.
00:37:59 But even, this is the thing that even, even in the way, and even in the way they attack
00:38:04 the left, like I said this kind of before is like, it's really, it's very superficial to say,
00:38:10 oh, I attack both left and right. This is actually what like Tim Keller would do.
00:38:13 he's like you know you know third way i i criticize the left and the right it's the way that they go
00:38:20 about attacking each side so they will go on blue skies to have a discussion with people they
00:38:25 disagree with in the winsome manner and you know they do it with you know gentle and you know what
00:38:31 is it called a humble and what is it called gentle gentle and lowly yeah they'll be gentle and lowly
00:38:36 trademark in in blue skies but then they interact and they find some guy saying something they
00:38:42 they consider to right wing and then what do they do they mock house fire yeah not just mockery yeah
00:38:47 they mock and they condemn but they'll use the very strong it's not just that they'll mock because
00:38:51 i just advocated for mocking you know like that's fine may the best meme win well they won't actually
00:38:55 engage the ideas but they won't engage the ideas and they'll outright just condemn yeah it's not i
00:39:01 disagree with you or i think that this is wrong and here's the reason uh it's literally on the
00:39:05 one hand it's um oh i i think that you're a good person and i love you and i disagree with you but
00:39:10 i love you and i think that you know that you have dignity and public and then over here it's
00:39:14 um immediately it's amazing like you look at a thread and it's not like down the line you know
00:39:19 14 different tweets back and forth it's uh the very first comment is um you're unregenerate
00:39:25 yeah you're a false teacher uh you should step down from the pulpit um you're not a christian
00:39:31 like immediately not mocking condemning outside of being a christian yeah moral it's moral
00:39:39 denunciation that's the rhetoric and then the other side is the winsome engagement and but then
00:39:44 because they do both they can claim oh we attack both the left and the right not the same way
00:39:49 yeah it's not the same way that's how tim keller did it the entire time um and uh yeah it's all
00:39:56 it's all fake it's all fake and but really what they're doing is they are like they say that you
00:40:01 know like christians should not be of the world but they are the most of the world like if you
00:40:05 find yourself where you disagree with the the social dogma but but you engage it in a way very
00:40:14 different than someone who um someone who also disagrees from a different angle of the social
00:40:19 dogma and you just denounce them but then you engage when somebody then you're actually of
00:40:24 the world you're actually and they would say we're not of the world because look at all these
00:40:28 democrats that disagree with us yeah okay well but in god's providence from the left and the right
00:40:32 Yeah, but it's like, no, no, no. So you're saying you're not of the world because the
00:40:36 Democrats disagree with you. Well, according to the last election, that's less than half
00:40:40 of the country. But who does agree with you is literally, so I'm not of the world. And yet,
00:40:45 conveniently, the majority of citizens agree with me. The majority. The majority voted for Trump.
00:40:53 And I would be the first to say, I'm grateful for Trump, but I would admit, yeah, I think part of
00:40:58 the reason why he won is because the dude's a little bit worldly. He's a little bit of the
00:41:02 world. I mean, he is, think, I mean, think about it from all the way from The Apprentice to,
00:41:05 you know, like, I mean, he is a product of the American culture, the world. Like that's,
00:41:11 so, so I would say I'm grateful for Trump. I think that he's certainly an improvement from
00:41:14 what we've had in the past. And I think providentially God will use him. He had my
00:41:17 vote, you know, all those kinds of things. But I would never say that he's, he's, what I like
00:41:22 about Trump is that he's so distinct from the world. No, he, he is the world. And in the same
00:41:29 way, so is the Babylon Bee. It is the world. So that's fine. You can hold that position,
00:41:37 but just say, we're in the world and we look just like the world. But if you really want to say
00:41:43 we're otherworldly and you really want to actually maintain the defense that we're the remnant,
00:41:49 we're the minority, and we're fighting on all sides. It's me and 13 other dudes versus
00:41:55 everybody you know athanasius you know contramundum um well then look at the dissident right yeah we
00:42:02 could actually claim that so any final thoughts for this yeah i was just gonna say about those
00:42:07 guys they they are well like you said before that they they think that the current political order
00:42:15 which is a form of modern liberalism is the timeless politics of jesus yes and within that
00:42:22 liberal order if you are left liberal who's pro you know pro-abortion pro-gay atheist all those
00:42:28 things then you fit and so you fit in that even though you disagree with them they fit in within
00:42:36 this world of liberal contestation they fit the form yeah they fit within the yeah but if you're
00:42:42 distant right you tend to be anti-liberal or have a an older conception of liberalism that's long
00:42:49 gone. Um, and so that that's why you're out. That's, that's why you are, they can condemn you.
00:42:55 Right. Um, but, but at the same time, they'll say that, well, we're not, you know, we're not
00:42:59 of the world, but actually you're deeply embedded and committed in heart and mind with the current
00:43:05 consensus, the current consensus. And, uh, and so what we, I mean, so apart from them, they're
00:43:11 all boring, but, but I, the guys watching this, uh, that, that doesn't mean like the current
00:43:18 liberal order is bad i think it's bad i think it's wrong fundamentally foundationally um but it
00:43:23 means that i i think that we are like if you are like if you're a self-reflective person with a
00:43:30 the willingness to resist internally your socialization like if you are i i i'm not anymore
00:43:38 you're not anymore other you know all our friends are like desensitized to the social dogma
00:43:44 um but but it's a process so everyone watching this has to then say well like i've said this
00:43:51 before what are the habits that's leading me to uh engage people differently what are the habits
00:43:56 that make me uncomfortable with this idea even though you think it's true but these ideas i think
00:44:01 they're i think they're false but i'm still going to engage with but i treat them as i treat them
00:44:07 i treat as if it's permissible that is i'd say socially engineered into us to think that
00:44:14 that way. And it takes a strong, it takes a strong personal will that when that crops up,
00:44:21 you reflect on that and then you crush that. And then eventually over time, you have to do this
00:44:27 with wisdom. So don't go crazy and lose your job. But you eventually will become desensitized to the
00:44:34 social dogma and you can actually think well, think clearly. And it's very freeing. Like it
00:44:39 means you're actually you're you're freed from ideas that are really on their face stupid that 1.00
00:44:45 you know are false deep down like in the deep subconscious you know it's stupid and false 0.99
00:44:50 but at the surface you tend to um the surface of consciousness you have a habit that that that 0.97
00:44:57 wants to flee from the truth right um i would say don't flee from the truth like crush that habit
00:45:02 think rightly be prudent and wise but also be free and affirm what you know is true deep down
00:45:08 and you become free kind of like uh the freedom and the carefreeness of a child um for instance
00:45:15 like a particular child who is able to say in a crowded space the emperor has no clothes you know
00:45:20 like that's that it's that kind of freedom to just be able to to look on the face of things
00:45:26 and to be able to say out loud that which is obviously true um every you know the older ones
00:45:33 are the ones who are the most programmed
00:45:35 and actually find it,
00:45:37 they're the ones who find it the most difficult
00:45:39 to do something so simple
00:45:40 that a child actually has an advantage.
00:45:44 So thank you guys for tuning in.
00:45:46 I hope you found this episode helpful.
00:45:48 This was episode eight.
00:45:50 We have two more episodes left in this series.
00:45:52 Episode nine, we're going to discuss...
00:45:55 American history.
00:45:56 How does Christian nationalism
00:45:57 fit with the American project? 0.99
00:46:00 Right, because Christian nationalism... 1.00
00:46:02 I'm going to be mad that I said projects. 0.97
00:46:04 I'll take that back.
00:46:06 The American heritage.
00:46:09 There you go.
00:46:10 But that just right there assumes, what that implies, I should say, is you've never advocated
00:46:17 that Christian nationalism is a one size fits all and that every nation, if they all adopted
00:46:22 it, would be the same.
00:46:24 Christian nationalism in America takes America's history into account.
00:46:28 Yes.
00:46:29 Okay.
00:46:29 Well, tune in and we'll see you next time.