The NXR Podcast - THE INTERVIEW - Top 5 Mainline Denominations & Where They Compromised with RedeemedZoomer

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00:00:27.500 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied. I'm your host, Pastor Joel

00:00:31.700 Weapon with Right Response Ministries. And in this episode, I am very privileged to have for the

00:00:35.960 first time the Redeemed Zoomer. We're going to be talking about five mainline denominations that are

00:00:42.040 both winnable and also significant, meaning that if they could be won, it would matter. They're

00:00:47.600 worth winning. Now, the Redeemed Zoomer and I, we have our differences. We disagree on a few things.

00:00:53.280 And so take the winnability with a grain of salt.

00:00:56.860 This is going to be Richard, that's his name, Richard's opinion.

00:00:59.860 He thinks that these mainline denominations are in fact winnable.

00:01:03.140 I think that, you know, some of them might be and some of them might not be, but either

00:01:07.200 way, it'll be a really fruitful conversation for you, the listener, to even just figure

00:01:12.420 out what, you know, what is Episcopalianism?

00:01:14.780 What is Anglicanism?

00:01:16.680 You know, what are United Methodists?

00:01:19.120 What do they believe?

00:01:19.820 What do they hold to?

00:01:20.540 So Redeemed Zoomer is, I think, really helpful in just giving an overarching 30,000-foot view

00:01:28.260 with mainline Protestant denominations and understanding their theological underpinnings.

00:01:33.520 In addition to that, think of it as a bonus.

00:01:36.100 He'll give us some strategies for maybe taking them back.

00:01:38.700 All right, without further ado, here comes the show.

00:01:41.620 Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.

00:01:44.900 This is Theology Applied.

00:01:50.540 In this episode, I'm privileged to welcome to the show for the first time,

00:01:56.840 the redeemed Zoomer. Richard, thanks for coming on.

00:02:00.880 Yeah, thank you, Pastor Webman, for having me here. It's an honor to be here. An honor to talk

00:02:04.520 about God's kingdom and how young men can glorify God, serve God, fight for the kingdom, all that

00:02:09.980 stuff. I know that's something you talk about a lot, something I care about a lot. So yeah,

00:02:14.260 this is going to be great. Amen. So let our listeners know just a little bit about you.

00:02:18.660 Most of our audience is probably, I don't know, probably, I think the bulk of our audience is like 35 to 50 years old, but we have younger guys who follow. So I'm sure some people are perfectly aware of who you are. And then there are other people who are probably not. So what is the redeemed Zoomer? What do you do?

00:02:36.000 right so my story is i come from a very secular leftist background because i went to public school

00:02:43.960 in new york my entire life i'm a i'm a yankee still not ashamed of being a yankee but that

00:02:49.960 meant i had a very very secular background and i was very opposed to religion until i had a

00:02:56.120 conversion experience at a christian themed music camp in the midwest i went from new york to the

00:03:01.860 Midwest, I saw how much more alive people seemed when they believed in God, when they believed in

00:03:07.420 Jesus Christ. So as a teenager, I had a dramatic conversion experience. When I went back home,

00:03:13.180 all my Jewish and atheist friends were really suspicious that I'd become Christian.

00:03:17.660 And once I started to question the religion of leftism, because it is a religion,

00:03:21.780 I was basically excommunicated or canceled, so to speak. And I basically, it ruined my social

00:03:29.360 life in high school, but that's when that motivated me to start studying the things of God,

00:03:33.480 start studying the faith. And I was motivated to share the faith with others because I saw how

00:03:39.040 absolutely terrible my generation is. Great. You said Jewish friends and atheist friends.

00:03:46.100 Were you trying to be redundant or are those two different groups?

00:03:50.160 Not really, actually. Like, yeah, I have a ethnically Jewish background myself. My dad

00:03:56.380 was raised reform jewish most of the jews in new york are reform jews my dad converted to

00:04:02.620 christianity and now he's an elder at the presbyterian church but in reform judaism it's

00:04:07.900 just uh ethnic social club you do not have to believe in god you could believe in no god you

00:04:13.580 could believe in the pagan mother goddess the only thing you cannot believe in is jesus right

00:04:17.920 exactly you can be a buddhist uh you know buddhist jew atheist jew you just can't be a christian

00:04:23.480 But no, you cannot be a Christian. That's the one thing that's off limits in those communities.

00:04:29.020 Yep. So I hear. All right. Well, what we want to do with this episode is, from what I've seen in

00:04:35.860 the Twitter streets, it seems as though you've got a pretty good sense of the pulse of mainline

00:04:42.180 Protestant denominations. Most of our listeners are going to be evangelicals. So most of them

00:04:48.200 are going to be theologically and culturally conservative and have little to no experience

00:04:53.780 with mainline denominations. And I would be one of those individuals. So I was raised in a

00:04:58.260 charismatic background. I think, you know, Assemblies of God would probably describe a lot

00:05:03.960 of it. Maybe Assemblies of God-lite. If you think of like John Piper, Wayne Grudem, a third wave

00:05:10.220 continuationism that moves from, you know, the 1950s healing revivals and Azusa Street and those

00:05:16.240 kinds of things to still, you know, exercising or attempting to exercise the sign gifts, but not

00:05:23.420 necessarily believing that the baptism of the Spirit is a subsequent experience to conversion

00:05:29.100 with the evidence, you know, having to be speaking in tongues. Instead, you know, you're baptized by

00:05:34.160 the Spirit at the point of conversion, and you may have, you know, a variety of different spiritual

00:05:39.020 gifts, and one of them may be tongues, and maybe it's not. So that's kind of my background.

00:05:42.580 Now, the point is, when I think of mainline Protestant denominations, I think of dark, shadowy places where we should never go.

00:05:50.340 So set me straight.

00:05:52.560 Yeah, so the mainline does have a lot of that.

00:05:55.660 In the mainline, you will see some of the worst things imaginable.

00:05:59.180 I have seen some absolutely insane things that made me want to give up and go Catholic pretty much.

00:06:04.460 I didn't, but it was just such a shock when I did see those things.

00:06:08.700 The main line, all these mainline denominations, whether the PCUSA, the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, all of them are big tent denominations, big tent, where you'll have conservatives, moderates, liberals, and atheist communists all in one big denomination.

00:06:27.140 So the media will only, both Christian and secular media, by the way, will only give attention to the absolute most crazy radical wings of these denominations.

00:06:37.740 So if if a pastor wears a Planned Parenthood robe and said, you know, God loves abortion or whatever, the media is going to focus that on that.

00:06:46.300 If a pastor simply preaches the word of God and administers the sacraments faithfully, the media doesn't care about that.

00:06:52.460 Like, you know, the God's flock being fed.

00:06:55.620 Who cares about that?

00:06:56.480 A huge political statement by a pastor.

00:06:58.180 Now, that's something we should focus on.

00:07:00.200 So the only time the mainline Protestant churches get any media attention, it's when there's some crazy liberal thing going on.

00:07:08.220 But both of those exist within mainline denominations.

00:07:11.300 So the church I was part of when I first became a Christian was one of the more moderate PCUSA churches.

00:07:18.340 Some of not as conservative as some, not as liberal as some.

00:07:21.380 It was just moderate. It was just your average, you know, normal boomer, sort of lukewarm, but still pretty all right mainline church.

00:07:27.700 but then when i was getting confirmed in the church i went to a confirmation retreat

00:07:31.440 hosted by the local presbytery rather than my congregation and i didn't know this but i happened

00:07:36.780 to be in like the most liberal presbytery in the country and there i found a pastor who didn't

00:07:41.840 believe jesus was god another pastor who called unborn children parasites another one who called

00:07:46.820 tim keller a fundamentalist so i was like dang and that's when i was like you know maybe the

00:07:54.620 Catholics were right about Protestantism being bad. So I went back to my mentor, my mentor who

00:08:00.180 was a solid reformed, you know, person in my church. I said, yo, what is up with our terrible

00:08:05.760 denomination? And he was like, you have to realize the reason it got this bad is because of

00:08:11.980 generations and generations of conservatives being passive, not speaking up and running away when

00:08:18.280 things got bad so he told me i should stay in the denomination stay and fight for it but for the

00:08:25.320 longest time i i didn't know how i could do that because liberalism seemed like such a powerful

00:08:30.900 force um but then i started to study you know cultural marxism and critical theory and i

00:08:37.000 realized it's not just the church that liberals have done this to or i guess you should say

00:08:41.180 leftists um leftists hijack absolutely everything uh leftists never create their own institutions

00:08:47.460 All they do is hijack institutions that Christians create.

00:08:51.680 They're like viruses.

00:08:52.960 Viruses can't reproduce on their own.

00:08:54.600 They have to hijack a healthy cell and turn that cell into a virus factory.

00:08:57.980 Likewise, leftists never make any successful institutions like the leftist factories, Harvard, Yale, Princeton.

00:09:03.900 They started as Christian institutions and they were hijacked by leftists.

00:09:07.300 Likewise, leftists hijack churches like the Presbyterian Church and the Episcopal Church and turn those into leftist factories as well.

00:09:13.560 So I realized if we're ever going to stop the long march through the institutions that was planned by the cultural Marxists, we need to take back the institutions that they have taken from us.

00:09:25.420 And that sort of motivated me to stay and fight for my deeply historically rooted denomination rather than just running away from the fight.

00:09:33.500 All right.

00:09:34.260 um, in terms of, you know, that the analogy that you're using of virus host, those kinds of things,

00:09:42.600 um, you know, I think of cancer, I think of, you know, chemo, um, there, I think, you know, it's,

00:09:47.940 it's difficult because I think there are multiple strategies. There's a strategy of, uh, stay in

00:09:52.600 fight. There's also the strategy of, uh, allowing the host to be so weakened that it actually kills

00:09:58.760 of the parasite. There's nothing for it to feed on. But then, you know, there may not be much

00:10:04.300 life to return to. There's, you know, so there are pros and cons on both sides. Well, give us,

00:10:10.100 let's do this. Could you provide for the listener a list of maybe five different mainline denominations

00:10:17.440 that, and this would be the criteria, something that you think is significant, it's worth winning,

00:10:24.500 that's worth the fight. Uh, there's actually resources and I'd love to hear what maybe some

00:10:28.680 of those are like, what, what makes it significant? What makes it worth it? Uh, staying and fighting

00:10:33.280 and trying to win. And then on the flip side, not just significance, but also, um, feasibility.

00:10:39.100 Uh, so main five mainline denominations that are both winnable. Um, they're feasible. They

00:10:45.360 actually could be one, uh, but also they're significant. Uh, if they were one, it would

00:10:50.280 matter. Okay, great. So something all these mainline denominations have that their evangelical

00:10:57.000 counterparts don't is something that is honestly necessary for Protestantism to survive, and that's

00:11:03.260 institutional rootedness. In the Reformation, the thing that distinguished the magisterial

00:11:08.420 reformers from the radical reformers is institutionalism. The magisterial reformers

00:11:13.700 stayed in the institutions, stayed in the same churches and universities that used to be part

00:11:18.300 of the Catholic Church and reformed them. Martin Luther was preaching in the same church before and

00:11:22.800 after the Reformation. You know, Oxford was the same university before and after it was before

00:11:28.860 and after the Reformation. It went from Catholic to part of the Church of England. So the magisterial

00:11:33.540 reformers, they saw their identity, the identity of the Protestant faith, was a reformation of

00:11:41.100 existing institutions. Until recently, until modern evangelicalism, Protestantism has never

00:11:47.200 not been institutional. Protestantism has never not been traditionally rooted. And I think this

00:11:52.640 is kind of why we're seeing a flood of young people convert to Catholicism and orthodoxy,

00:11:56.940 because they're understanding the importance of tradition and institutions. And it's really hard

00:12:03.100 these days in Protestantism to find an institutional Protestant church that still

00:12:07.960 holds to traditional Protestant doctrines. So all across the board, something all the mainline

00:12:13.800 churches have that is worth fighting for is this institutional rootedness, this historic

00:12:18.660 rootedness. So the Episcopal Church, let's start with that. So many of the founders of America

00:12:24.860 were Episcopalian. The Episcopal Church is integral to the very identity of the United

00:12:31.680 States. I often like to say that you cannot revive a culture without reviving the church

00:12:37.360 that it was founded upon. You can say that the United States is a pan-Protestant nation,

00:12:41.280 but the United States culture was founded upon the Protestant churches, the descendants of which

00:12:48.580 are now the mainline Protestant churches, the mainstream Protestant churches. Just the way,

00:12:53.400 I don't think you can revive England without reviving the Church of England. I don't think

00:12:56.840 you can revive Sweden without reviving the Church of Sweden. And the leftists have been very

00:13:01.400 intentional in hijacking these churches because they know how important those churches are for

00:13:05.340 the culture. You can't revive Italy without reviving the Catholic Church. You cannot separate

00:13:13.900 religion and culture. So the Episcopal Church especially is very important for the foundation

00:13:20.620 of America. There's so much American heritage in the Episcopal Church. If you go to Trinity

00:13:26.020 Episcopal Church on Wall Street, absolutely beautiful church. It was George Washington's

00:13:31.780 church. And of course, they have pride flags everywhere because the left was very intentional

00:13:36.060 to hijack everything that matters to American Christian culture. A Christian culture is

00:13:43.160 enemy number one of the left. That's why they want to hijack it. So now the Episcopal church

00:13:48.180 is deeply hijacked, but there is a path for retaking it because there still are conservative

00:13:53.900 bishops. The Reconquista movement I'm part of is actively partnering with some of the

00:13:59.240 conservative bishops in the episcopal church and we have a map of episcopal churches that are

00:14:05.380 either explicitly allied with the cause or at least share some of the values of the cause of

00:14:10.220 being fortresses of traditional anglican christianity within the episcopal church within

00:14:16.200 the broader broadly liberal episcopal denomination and staying to fight for it real quick as so as

00:14:22.620 we're going through this list could you also for the listener um just take a moment and define

00:14:28.100 each of these denominations? So when you say Episcopal, what's the easiest way to explain

00:14:35.120 Episcopalianism? Yeah, it's another word for Anglican. Episcopal refers to the government

00:14:41.200 structure. Anglican refers to the theology. So Episcopal is the most high church of all the

00:14:47.660 Protestant denominations. It's the most Catholic out of all of them. Sometimes Anglican theology

00:14:52.920 is described as a via media or a middle way between Catholic and Protestant. So especially

00:14:58.380 a lot of people who are craving like, you know, a traditional, you know, Anglo-Saxon form of

00:15:04.580 Christianity, Episcopalianism is the way to go. There are a few conservative Anglican offshoot

00:15:10.240 denominations, but they just don't have the tradition because they split from the 300-year-old

00:15:15.140 denomination that contains all the American heritage. So I don't know, the ACNA, for example,

00:15:20.540 Yeah, it's got great theology, but I'm sure all of them would really like to see a revival of these traditional Anglican institutions like the Episcopal Church.

00:15:29.800 So that's what Episcopalianism is. There are conservative bishops that are on our side. They're a minority.

00:15:35.140 However, liberal churches always die out. The mainline denominations are all bleeding membership rapidly.

00:15:42.120 The only churches in the mainline that are not dying out are the conservative ones.

00:15:45.980 So this strategy is basically just weathering the storm, fortifying those conservative churches and just waiting for the liberal ones to die off, which they will. Everyone in the Episcopal Church, liberal and conservative, knows that the conservative parishes are the ones that are going to survive the next generation and the liberal ones will not.

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00:18:35.820 So next week, we have the United Methodist Church.

00:18:39.300 Now, this is something I get a bit angry about because the United Methodist Church

00:18:43.640 could have been retaken by the conservatives because in 2019 they had a gay marriage vote

00:18:49.480 and the conservatives won because of correct me if i'm wrong but that because of non-western

00:18:55.640 nations because it's an international global denomination yes but there still are a lot of

00:19:01.920 conservative united methodist churches in the united states it was the international ones that

00:19:05.580 just pushed the vote over the edge right um so when the conservatives had a victory the progressives

00:19:11.560 mindset was, we're not giving up. We're going to stay and fight. We're going to retake it.

00:19:15.840 And the progressives made plans to retaliate. They tried to rig the voting systems. And then

00:19:20.440 in response to that, the conservatives, fearing a future progressive victory, all split off,

00:19:25.600 ran away to form the Global Methodist Church in the process, losing tons of their property,

00:19:30.000 having to pay the liberals tons of money to leave. And it was a total disaster. The conservative

00:19:35.960 mindset was, we might lose, we have to run away. And the progressive mindset was, even though we

00:19:40.860 did lose, we're going to stay and fight. So it was the progressives that were a lot more bold

00:19:44.640 and courageous. And that's kind of why they won. So the conservatives totally could have won over

00:19:49.780 the United Methodist Church. There are some people who try to say, oh, we conservatives,

00:19:53.820 we had no choice. We had to run. But I've heard a lot of other United Methodist pastors who were

00:19:58.740 like, no, it was just pure cowardliness on the part of the conservatives. They totally could

00:20:03.780 have won. They just didn't want to be associated with a denomination that had any liberalism in

00:20:09.220 it at all. You'll hear conflicting stories. It was one big mess. But the point is, even after all

00:20:15.600 that, even after a lot of conservatives jump ship, there still are a lot of conservatives in the

00:20:20.400 United Methodist Church. And it's the same deal as with the Episcopal Church. The conservative

00:20:26.400 churches are a lot healthier. And the conservative churches can last the next generation. And the

00:20:34.700 progressive ones can't if we just fortify them. So why is the United Methodist Church very

00:20:38.560 important. The United Methodist Church contains the heritage of the First Great Awakening, right?

00:20:44.360 If the First Great Awakening is kind of why the United Methodist Church is, sorry, why the United

00:20:51.620 States is such a religious place. And much of the heritage of that awakening is preserved in the

00:20:57.600 Methodist Church. Methodism does not come from the Reformation. Methodism comes from the First

00:21:02.280 Great Awakening. So some people might say they're not classical Protestants the way, you know,

00:21:07.100 anglicans lutherans presbyterians are but so much of american faith is tied in with the first great

00:21:13.600 awakening so some people have said the united methodist church is a uniquely you know american

00:21:19.400 thing real quickly uh if we can pause on the united methodist uh just for the listeners so

00:21:25.120 when um you correct me if i'm wrong when i think methodist i think wesley's so i'm thinking john

00:21:29.700 and charles wesley i'm thinking arminianism um i mean i am thinking first great awakening i'm not

00:21:35.000 thinking, you know, Charles Finney or, you know, second great awakening, uh, but first great

00:21:38.820 awakening, uh, the Armenian kind of counterpart to George Whitefield and some of the reformed guys,

00:21:44.120 um, you know, Edwards. And then I'm also thinking, um, I think Nazarene being an offshoot, uh, coming

00:21:51.200 out of the Wesleyan tradition. And I know for the Nazarenes, and I think, uh, it's the same for

00:21:56.420 United Methodists that, uh, that these are some of the longest standing, uh, Protestant denominations

00:22:02.180 that have been egalitarian in terms of, in terms of ordaining female pastors. I know that for

00:22:10.160 Nazarenes, I think I could be wrong, but I think it's well over 50 years, close to a hundred years

00:22:14.860 that they've been ordaining women pastors with United Methodists. Is that, you know, when you

00:22:20.480 say there's, you know, the liberal ones, but then there's the conservative ones, just so that the

00:22:25.220 listener and I personally understand how relative we're using the term conservative there. When you

00:22:31.960 say conservative united methodists you're talking about lady pastors correct it depends in all the

00:22:37.940 denominations i don't think any of them are more egalitarian than others the egalitarian

00:22:43.140 complementarian split cuts basically evenly through all the protestant traditions the only

00:22:48.480 ones that don't have any egalitarianism are catholicism and orthodoxy um the egalitarian

00:22:54.520 movement of like you know the 20th century it affected every protestant tradition equally so

00:22:59.820 I wouldn't say there's anything uniquely egalitarian about Methodism. You're right that

00:23:03.380 it is generally Arminian. There are Calvinistic Methodists like Whitfield, like you said.

00:23:08.220 Generally, Methodism is Arminian, and it leans in a sort of Pentecostal direction. Of course,

00:23:14.920 that's an anachronism because Pentecostalism emerged much later out of the Methodist tradition.

00:23:20.220 I think Methodism provides a good place for people who want to be open to the gifts of the Spirit,

00:23:25.180 people who want to be continuationist, but want something a bit more traditional and regulated.

00:23:29.820 than pentecostalism right and for some reason the methodists get a unique reputation for being

00:23:36.700 liberal out of all of them i don't think that's actually true because the methodist church still

00:23:41.800 has not officially legalized gay marriage whereas a lot of the other ones including the presbyterian

00:23:47.240 and episcopal church have so yes there's liberalism in the united methodist church there's liberalism

00:23:52.080 in all these mainline denominations so i don't think i don't understand why they get singled out

00:23:56.100 as the liberal ones um the most liberal mainline denomination is the united church of christ which

00:24:01.080 i'm not going to include in this list of of five denominations that because they are very far gone

00:24:07.040 it's going to be almost impossible to retake them anytime soon i'm still leaving it open for a much

00:24:12.940 much later but um so that's the united methodist church arminian wesleyan theology methodist

00:24:18.840 theology is basically calvinism minus predestination because arminius was a calvinist

00:24:24.800 he agreed with calvinism on everything except predestination oh yeah i i still use on a somewhat

00:24:29.840 regular basis um jacobus his definition of total depravity people always think it's john calvin

00:24:34.940 but uh yeah i mean the whole the whole thing that you know the reason why he was able to squeak in

00:24:39.780 underneath the banner of orthodoxy is because he wasn't a pelagian um you know it wasn't this idea

00:24:45.720 that you know man is innately neutral or good and that he's reaching up to god it was no man's

00:24:50.260 totally depraved, the linchpin is just, you know, the doctrine of pervenient grace. So it's this

00:24:55.300 idea that man is totally depraved, just like you would have within the Reformed scheme of

00:24:59.480 soteriology. But the idea was that God, you know, in the preaching of the gospel, that

00:25:04.860 the Holy Spirit, you know, would basically temporarily and partially, you know, so for a

00:25:11.080 moment and not all the way, but partially and temporarily bring someone from a state of

00:25:14.960 spiritual blindness, deafness, deadness, to a place of somewhat of a moral neutrality to where

00:25:22.000 they could, you know, choose to receive the gospel and move forward. And, you know, and then, you

00:25:26.560 know, with that faith be granted regeneration and a new heart and be born again, or they could,

00:25:31.240 you know, miss the window of grace. And that's what, you know, you have like the, you know,

00:25:35.060 the anxious bench, you know, as it, you know, developed further into the second great,

00:25:39.720 great awakening, those kinds of things. But my point is just to say that, you know, when you

00:25:43.180 talk to the typical arminian today um it's it's not actually it's it's not wesleyan it's it's

00:25:49.620 nothing that john wesley would recognize uh people today when they talk about uh an arminian you know

00:25:55.060 they think it's arminian but an arminian idea of salvation they're saying that people really can

00:25:59.560 just choose god whereas uh you know jacobus would have said no of course they can't um it's got to

00:26:04.820 be this prevenient grace that brings them to this you know temporary suspended state of you know

00:26:09.360 where the spiritual blindness is dissipated, at least to an extent to where they can choose Christ upon the hearing of the gospel and move to faith.

00:26:16.960 And so, you know, yeah, that's very, very different.

00:26:20.520 Absolutely. Methodist theology is not semi-Pelagian the way like provisionism might be.

00:26:26.040 Methodist theology has basically an identical view as Calvinist theology does on the sacraments, for example.

00:26:32.000 So that's why I kind of like it, to be honest.

00:26:33.820 And another thing that I think is very inspiring that's been inspiring to me is how many military analogies Methodism traditionally uses, because their whole point is the Christian faith needs to be alive and active.

00:26:46.720 You can't just have a passive faith. So it's like, yeah, you're saved by faith, but that faith needs to be alive and active or the flames will die out.

00:26:53.480 That's why all the Methodist logos have fire in them, because fire represents the Holy Spirit.

00:26:58.120 You know, the, like, I don't know, Rejoice the Lord is King.

00:27:01.660 That's a Methodist hymn written by Charles Wesley.

00:27:04.940 Beautiful hymn, amazing hymn.

00:27:06.860 So I really, really like the Methodist tradition, by the way.

00:27:10.340 I don't like how it's been hijacked, but I also want to help restore it.

00:27:15.000 So the next one I would say is the PCUSA, the Presbyterian Church USA, which is my denomination.

00:27:21.660 It's not the only Presbyterian church. There's a bunch of different denominations that have split from the mainline Presbyterian church over various years. So like the first one was the OPC, which is like hyper conservative. Then there's the PCA, which is mainstream conservative.

00:27:38.740 and they're hyper conservative real quick can you define uh the opc is hyper conservative i

00:27:44.340 so i i don't know uh i'm a bit of a hyper conservative myself richard um i'm not sure

00:27:49.640 if you're aware of that so what is a hyper conservative well when i say hyper now i would

00:27:55.440 in some ways i am a hyper conservative as well um but because i'm i've been immersed in a liberal

00:28:03.060 culture like you have to make a distinction between pca conservative and opc conservative

00:28:09.920 i think we can all agree opc is more conservative than the pca yeah like i even if they're even

00:28:15.720 even if pca is not as conservative on some issues as we'd like right um anyone in our culture who

00:28:21.340 is opposed to abortion and gay marriage is conservative right um objectively so so when

00:28:26.500 i say hyper conservative i'm not saying oh they're too conservative for me gotcha i'm just saying

00:28:31.700 they are more conservative than the PCA is. Great. At the end of this, I'll let you keep

00:28:36.320 going. Sorry to interrupt. But at the end of this, I do want to hear, I think our listeners would be

00:28:39.640 curious, at least the ones that know you, just to hear, you know, a little bit of your own theology

00:28:45.520 and where you, you know, hang your coat. But go ahead. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, there's a lot of

00:28:52.200 offshoot predominantly denominations, but the only mainstream one, the only one that really has the

00:28:57.640 institutional continuity with John Knox and the Reformation and all these traditional seminaries

00:29:05.080 like Princeton, Princeton Theological Seminary, all those, is the PCUSA. Now, there are some

00:29:11.980 institutions in some of these other denominations, but one of the greatest institutional strength is

00:29:17.080 still the PCUSA. The PCUSA has way more resources, way more historic church buildings. I know that's

00:29:24.040 not everything. So unlike with the Episcopal Church, I think Presbyterianism could still

00:29:30.580 survive without the PCUSA. But still, the PCUSA contains so much Presbyterian heritage that

00:29:37.320 generations of faithful Christian men have donated their entire lives to. And, you know, it's the

00:29:43.560 only denomination I've ever been a part of. I don't really see a good reason to leave. So yes,

00:29:48.480 The PCUSA has tons of liberalism in it. I think in the PCUSA, the way the numbers would work is 40 percent is progressive, meaning, you know, pride flags, pastors who don't believe God is real, all that stuff.

00:30:03.300 Fifty percent is basically moderate, lukewarm boomer congregations. That's sort of what my church would fall into.

00:30:09.520 So it's like in those congregations, there are you could be a liberal and be fine. You could be a conservative and be fine. And the pastor is careful to not say anything that would offend liberals or conservatives. And then 10% would be solid conservative congregations. There's I have a whole map listing where these solid conservative congregations are.

00:30:28.520 there's an alliance of conservative congregations in the PCUSA. And of course, yes, it's not as

00:30:34.860 conservative as maybe we would like, but they still take a strong stand against gay marriage,

00:30:39.440 strong stand against abortion. And if you listen to some of them, like Bruce Gore, Bruce Gore

00:30:44.140 teaches at First Presbyterian Church in Spokane. If you listen to him, it sounds like you're

00:30:48.820 listening to Doug Wilson, basically. He's strongly, you know, post-millennial. He talks a ton about

00:30:53.380 how America's not just a Christian nation, but a Calvinist nation. It sounds like you're listening

00:30:59.180 to one of these Christian nationalist dudes, except he's a teacher in the PCUSA. So in many

00:31:04.640 ways, the conservative end of the PCUSA is indistinguishable from the PCA or the CREC,

00:31:11.360 except I would say a lot more high church, a lot more institutional and all that stuff.

00:31:16.560 So I see these two different groups of people, like the Christian nationalist Doug Wilson crowd

00:31:22.460 on one side and the conservatives in the PCUSA on the other side saying basically the exact same

00:31:28.340 things, but unaware of each other's existence. If you go to one of any, no one in the PCUSA

00:31:34.780 has any idea that the CREC exists. I'm probably the only person in the PCUSA who knows that it

00:31:39.360 exists. And most people outside the PCUSA think it's all super liberal. They don't know that

00:31:45.800 there is this strong conservative faction within it. So now what is Presbyterian theology for those

00:31:50.360 who don't know. I honestly don't think the PCA, our OPC, especially the PCA, I don't think they've

00:31:57.060 done a very good job representing what Presbyterian theology is, even though they've done a way better

00:32:02.980 job than PCUSA has. But traditionally, even though the PCUSA on average is a lot more liberal than

00:32:10.040 these offshoots, it's also a lot more traditional on average. Because I hate the stereotype that

00:32:15.800 Protestantism is not beautiful, is not traditional. Almost any PCUSA church is a beautiful stained

00:32:22.440 glass stone castle looking building with a beautiful choir. Everyone's wearing robes and

00:32:26.740 all that. And it's not even high church. It's what low church used to look like before modernism

00:32:32.520 struck. And of course, just because it looks like that doesn't mean it has good theology.

00:32:38.860 But the people who built these churches, they had great theology. They had solid reform theology.

00:32:43.660 those institutions were just hijacked by people who deny the beliefs that those churches were

00:32:48.620 founded on a great example is if i don't know if you go to covenant presbytery or no church of the

00:32:53.420 covenant in cleveland of course there's you know it's a gay affirming church where you know case

00:32:58.580 western college students will just go to hang out and study like it's i don't know some meditation

00:33:02.620 room or something but still carved into the stone and stained glass you can see bible verses everywhere

00:33:08.820 you can see the reformers you can see so many great god glorifying things so the the ghosts

00:33:14.300 the ghosts of good theology are still present in the PCUSA and you see this tension between

00:33:20.160 the way it was built and the people running it now it's it's an allied battleship that's been

00:33:26.300 hijacked by pirates and Presbyterian theology uh its beliefs are summarized in the Westminster

00:33:31.480 confession but not just the Westminster confession also the Scots confession uh the PCUSA doesn't

00:33:37.320 just use Westminster also uses the Scots confession in the Heidelberg Catechism. I like the Scots

00:33:42.300 better because it has a very high view of the sacraments. Not that Westminster doesn't, just

00:33:47.240 Scots articulates it a lot more clearly. We also use some more modern confessions like the

00:33:52.740 Declaration of Barman and the Confession of 1967, which, by the way, is the only confession that

00:33:58.740 explicitly condemns the sexual revolution. You would think which denomination has a confession

00:34:04.820 that condemns the sexual revolution PCUSA or PCA you'd think it's PCA but it's actually PCUSA

00:34:11.000 and the canons of Dort right uh not the canons of Dort actually but it's unnecessary because

00:34:17.020 the contents of cans of Dort are already present in in Westminster yeah we also have the second

00:34:21.840 Helvetic confession okay um which funny enough confesses the perpetual virginity of Mary but

00:34:27.640 most PCUSA pastors don't even know that uh that's an interesting detail not sure what I think about

00:34:33.200 that yet but um yeah so the peace usa a lot less conservative a lot more traditional and i think

00:34:39.620 we want to revive traditional reform theology we need to revive the peace usa um the fourth one

00:34:45.000 would be the american baptist churches usa um now the there's the southern baptist church

00:34:52.980 and the american baptist church was which is kind of the northern baptist church they split over the

00:34:57.680 civil war now because the southern baptist church exists i don't think it's all that necessary

00:35:03.140 for the survival of baptist christianity to revive the american baptist church but the american

00:35:08.360 baptist church will be by far the easiest to revive because it's been the least hijacked out

00:35:13.620 of all the mainline denominations there are progressive american baptist congregations there

00:35:18.800 are you know pride flag blm congregations but they're a much smaller percentage compared to

00:35:24.840 all the other mainline denominations so out of all them the american baptist church has been the least

00:35:29.140 hijacked and you know there is a strong northern baptist tradition and i think it's a lot more

00:35:35.840 high church than the southern baptist church you'll always see this dichotomy in protestantism

00:35:40.460 generally the more high church a protestant group is the more progressive it's been and the more

00:35:45.660 low church it is the more the more conservative it has remained i don't know why that is i i think

00:35:51.180 it's personally because leftists hijack whatever is more institutionally powerful uh but the

00:35:57.040 american baptist beautiful i think i think leftist you know a part of it like i think leftists know

00:36:02.460 they're going to hell and so they you know they want to grab a little piece of heaven while they're

00:36:06.780 here on earth you know so whether it's living on the coast i mean from geography to institutions

00:36:11.940 to churches at every level i think um it's an infatuation with beauty you know i think it's

00:36:17.720 it's like this is as close as we can get we can't create beauty ourselves all we can do is take it

00:36:21.780 from somebody else so i think that there's a natural like a moth you know attracted to the

00:36:26.460 flame uh when it comes to leftists because because left of uh leftism is ugly like i mean that's the

00:36:32.440 default mechanism is you know it takes a dude and and you know puts lipstick on him and makes him

00:36:37.520 an ugly chick you know so so they i think they're attracted to that and i've seen so many of my you

00:36:43.620 know young women that i know um female friends i've had make themselves more ugly intentionally

00:36:50.200 as they be became leftist oh yeah as calvin robinson said when someone becomes trans they

00:36:55.780 try to make themselves look less human and you can see that um so yeah the northern baptist

00:37:01.120 heritage there's rhode island there's brown university it's like um there's a stereotype

00:37:05.340 that you know baptists um don't value education well if we revive brown university revive the

00:37:10.740 american baptist church uh we could reverse that stereotype well let me ask you a question real

00:37:15.260 quick so i you know i'm a baptist for better or worse i don't you know i'm not necessarily proud

00:37:19.300 of it but i am um barely you know credo baptist uh but a lot of times when people think of

00:37:24.320 Presbyterians and they think of Baptists, those are probably the groups that I interact with the

00:37:28.080 most. A lot of my friends are like, I was Baptist, but now I'm Presbyterian. And I always correct

00:37:32.840 them and say, no, you're not. You're a Paedo-Baptist. You're more so like a congregationalist

00:37:38.940 in the frame of John Owen, because here's the key word. People miss this. When it comes to

00:37:44.460 Presbyterianism, the key word, and you tell me if you think I'm wrong here, Richard, but

00:37:48.540 key word for Presbyterianism, I think would be presbytery, that it actually had something to do

00:37:54.760 with the polity. It's not just your mode of baptism. If you're Presbyterian, you're not,

00:38:00.840 Baptists are notorious for, in terms of our polity, we would hold to the autonomy of the

00:38:06.220 local church, whereas Presbyterians are actually a part of a Presbytery. It's not just local church

00:38:11.440 autonomy. And so all that being said, my point is with, whether it's Northern Baptist or Southern

00:38:16.740 Baptist or North American Baptist, my thought is, you know, you said it's one of the least hijacked.

00:38:24.200 Well, to me, that makes sense for a number of reasons. One, because it probably is more low

00:38:29.080 church and therefore less desirable. But then number two, it's hard to hijack Baptist because

00:38:35.460 you have to go individually, local church by local church by local church, because all the

00:38:40.620 local churches typically own their own properties, their own buildings. They're autonomous in terms

00:38:44.860 of their polity. They're not a part of a presbytery or, you know, there's no Episcopalian

00:38:49.260 hierarchy of, you know, church polity or they're, each one is independent and autonomous. So it's

00:38:55.080 hard to hijack, but it's also hard to win back. Like, I mean, you would have to win it back

00:39:00.300 organically and individually by simply, you know, taking based, you know, conservative

00:39:05.940 ministers and putting them in each individual pulpit. That's the only, you know, that's the

00:39:11.200 only thing that you can do with Baptists. And so there's, I think there's a great strength there,

00:39:14.020 But I also am, you know, I'm not disillusioned. I recognize that there's a massive weakness to Baptist polity. You know, so anyway, so how do you, I guess my question is, the Baptists, I think, are more resilient, because if you take over, if it's Presbyterian or Episcopalian or Anglican, you can take the whole thing.

00:39:34.280 With Baptists, you can never take the whole thing.

00:39:36.960 But you also, you know, that works.

00:39:38.980 That's a two-way street.

00:39:40.280 It works both ways.

00:39:41.080 You can't take the whole thing, you know, in a progressive sense, but you also, you can't just say, hey, we're going to take back this whole Baptist denomination.

00:39:49.740 Well, no, you're stuck fighting each individual church battle.

00:39:55.760 Yeah, I know.

00:39:56.260 It's a tradeoff either way.

00:39:57.260 I was wondering why the American Baptist Church was the least hijacked.

00:40:01.560 And I was wondering if it was congregationalism. But then I remember the most hijacked denomination is also Congregationalist, the United Church of Christ. They are the descendants of the Puritans. They're by far the most liberal, most hijacked. And the same is true in other countries. I think the most liberal denomination in the world is the United Church of Canada.

00:40:20.500 whereas conservative churches in the united church of canada also congregationalist are like

00:40:26.260 progressive churches in the episcopal church it's absolutely insane it's like in the united church

00:40:30.980 of canada if you are a theist that makes you in the conservative faction um and uh also in also

00:40:40.380 in england the most conservative even though the church of england is getting hijacked it's not

00:40:46.420 nearly as liberal as the united reform church in england which is congregationalist so when you

00:40:52.720 say congregationalist just you are saying um that these are local autonomous churches that there's

00:40:57.940 no there's no hierarchy outside of the local church yeah and because of that even in the ucc

00:41:02.960 even though the ucc is overall the most liberal there are a few conservative ucc churches and

00:41:08.140 the denomination as a whole can't do anything about it so there's like yeah we're conservative

00:41:11.940 deal with it. So that is pretty cool. And I like how in congregationalism, like you said,

00:41:17.460 harder to hijack, also harder to take back. So the reason I would say, I guess I would say the

00:41:23.840 reason that the UCC got hijacked despite being congregationalist is probably because the seminaries

00:41:29.420 got hijacked. So they just began churning out progressive pastors. Whereas I don't think many

00:41:34.800 of the Baptist seminaries got hijacked nearly as badly. That's insightful. No, I think you're

00:41:39.580 right about that. I think that that's the way you do it. If it's a congregational polity and each

00:41:44.760 individual church is autonomous, then the way that you take an entire denomination is you just have

00:41:50.760 to be the guy who gets to decide how to train up the entire next generation of ministers. You know,

00:41:57.100 if you can hijack the seminary and start teaching, you know, like you think of like the conservative

00:42:01.800 resurgence that happened with, you know, Southern Seminary back in the day with Moeller, you know,

00:42:06.120 It was like there were professors on the first day, you know, taking the Bible, throwing it in the trash can in front of their students and saying that Jesus was the bastard son of a whore, you know.

00:42:15.320 And then Mueller got in there and fired them all.

00:42:18.500 And, you know, a bunch of people graduated, wouldn't even shake his hand on the platform, you know.

00:42:22.520 And that's very inspiring.

00:42:24.540 That's very inspiring.

00:42:25.340 If the Baptists could go from throwing the Bible in the trash to being the most conservative mainline denomination there is.

00:42:31.580 From what I know, you obviously are more informed on mainline denominations, and I'm not saying Southern Baptists even fits that category, but if we're talking about just sheer size, take history out of the equation, but if we're just talking about sheer size, from what I know, it's a fact that's indisputable that Southern Baptists are the only mainline Protestant denomination of even close to that size that went full left in the seminaries.

00:43:00.880 and then came all the way back um and well yeah i i think the sbc honestly is a a successful

00:43:08.040 example of reconquista working of a mainline combination that got retaken the sbc and the

00:43:14.380 lcms are both examples of denominations that are technically mainline historically speaking

00:43:20.200 the only reason they're not in the list of mainline denominations is because they're not

00:43:24.000 liberal anymore lcms also had a reconquista sort of not as severe as sbc but there was the whole

00:43:30.200 Seminex controversy. Have you heard about that? No. Yeah. And one of the LCMS seminaries, I think

00:43:35.920 it was Concordia seminary. Correct me if I'm wrong, but one of their seminaries was teaching

00:43:41.160 liberal theology. And then some conservatives swooped in and fixed it. And then there was a

00:43:47.360 huge walkout of students. And because they're progressives, because they're rats, they just

00:43:51.780 smashed everything, stole stuff from the library. They threw a huge hissy fit temper tantrum.

00:43:59.240 they ended up splitting off and forming something that eventually merged to join the elca so lcms

00:44:05.760 and sbc are examples of how even if a denomination is hijacked it could be unhijacked um respect to

00:44:13.120 the baptists it's like you know some people think i'm anti-baptist just because of how much of a

00:44:18.340 stickler i am for you know traditional liturgy and sacramentology but honestly the baptists have

00:44:24.480 done the best to combat liberalism within their ranks, I think you could say, as a

00:44:29.540 Pato Baptist, I think you could somewhat credit Pato Baptism for that, because it is, does

00:44:34.760 somewhat prevent, you know, unbelievers from having too high a role in the church.

00:44:40.920 Right, yeah, I mean, I think it's the polity, so I think it's the congregationalism, the

00:44:44.460 local autonomy, and then, yeah, I think that, you know, for better or worse, regardless

00:44:47.780 of where you land theologically in that issue, I think that regenerate church membership

00:44:52.600 as a conviction is, you know, it's just, it's going to naturally police its borders. Um,

00:44:58.180 you know, at least, at least more, you know, there's, there's no perfect policing. I, you

00:45:02.000 know, I'm a credo Baptist minister and I have baptized, you know, plenty of unregenerate people,

00:45:07.400 you know, like, I mean, at the end of the day, it's funny, you know, like, but you know, people

00:45:11.660 are like, I'm not, I'm not going to baptize a baby. And, you know, and then they give their,

00:45:15.420 their reasoning, you know, some of my Baptist friends is like, cause I'm not going to baptize

00:45:18.820 someone who's unregenerate. And I'm like, well, then you just need to stop baptizing, you know,

00:45:22.240 Because I can look at families in the church, and if it's a longstanding Christian family in the church that's been there for a decade, and they've got five kids, I know that statistically speaking, my chances, if I was to baptize those five children in infancy that are coming from good stock, for lack of a better term, they're coming from good, solid Christian parents, I've got a higher chance of all five of them turning out to be regenerate.

00:45:50.120 than baptizing five adults who have, you know, a conversion testimony, but weren't raised in the

00:45:57.260 church and are coming in, you know, to faith in their 20s or 30s. In the final analysis,

00:46:02.720 statistically speaking, you know, if you, you know, just turn the clock forward 10 years,

00:46:08.160 there's a good chance that there's going to, I'm going to have a higher percentage of apostasy for,

00:46:12.040 you know, the five adults that I baptized without a Christian, you know, upbringing than the five

00:46:16.640 infants that were raised in the church by christian parents so um yeah that sounds like a very

00:46:21.160 classical calvinist view of you know what election even is because you know calvin said we can't

00:46:26.560 really know who is elect or not we can only trust in you know uh faithfulness over a long period of

00:46:32.120 time right right so well and i'm one of the rare baptists that i actually i do you know you might

00:46:39.160 find this funny and say no you don't you know and that's fine you can disagree with me i in fact i

00:46:43.380 welcome your pushback it'd be a fun conversation but i you know i do prescribe to covenant succession

00:46:47.400 even as um credo baptist and uh yeah and then with the sacraments when it comes to the lord's

00:46:53.780 supper like i'm not a memorialist or a mere memorialist um i i believe in christ's spiritual

00:46:58.800 presence um being uniquely there with um with the sacrament of the lord's supper um so you know we

00:47:06.240 were you know it's we're as high church i guess as you could get you know as a baptist so not saying

00:47:11.660 much but um but you know more than the average baptist all right everybody's been asking can i

00:47:16.600 live stream your conference and the answer is a resounding no you will be there in person or you

00:47:22.600 will not be there at all i'm just kidding you actually can live stream the conference we're

00:47:27.020 excited to announce we're making it available to anybody and everybody who wants to watch this

00:47:32.260 conference right as it's happening which is march 1st and 2nd that's a friday and saturday of 2024

00:47:38.600 What conference am I even talking about? It's called Blueprints for Christendom 2.0. We've got

00:47:44.240 Pastor Douglas Wilson. We've got Dr. Joe Boot. We've got Brian Sauve. We've got Eric Kahn. And

00:47:49.580 then of course, yours truly, Joel Webben. We've got seven primary sessions in the conference,

00:47:55.420 each one being probably 50 to 60 minute long sessions, lectures, sermons, whatever you want

00:48:01.440 to call them. And then two live panels, each being an hour and a half long. Now, one of the panels

00:48:06.380 is on biblical patriarchy we're going to have pastor douglas wilson available for that panel

00:48:11.340 and we decided to get eric khan because eric khan biblical patriarchy let's just be honest it's a

00:48:16.960 sensitive topic but eric khan i think is known as one of the most nuanced careful and sensitive

00:48:22.400 individuals especially on the twitter street so we're going to have him as a part of that panel

00:48:26.680 it'll go really well then the second panel is haunted cosmos live show you've got brian sauvet

00:48:32.560 and ben garrett talking about the most unhinged things imaginable hopefully some things that are

00:48:38.000 actually truthful now there will be some truthful things you're going to stick to scripture and when

00:48:42.280 they speculate and you know they will they'll at least let you know that it's speculation and they

00:48:46.960 won't pass it off as though it's in the infallible word of god so live stream this conference how do

00:48:51.840 you do it go to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries again that's patreon.com

00:48:59.340 forward slash right response ministries a lot of guys charge 50 bucks 60 bucks 80 bucks we are

00:49:06.380 asking that you would simply partner with us for 10 a month and let's be real you could do it one

00:49:12.540 month live stream all the content and then cancel your subscription and if you do no harm no foul

00:49:18.040 if you want to stick with us and support this ministry what god's doing through right response

00:49:21.940 then praise god that's great and we thank you either way technically it's only 10 bucks

00:49:27.140 go over the last denomination yeah go quick and it's the rca the reformed church in america

00:49:32.140 this has also not been very hijacked i'm familiar with them yeah the rca received the reconquista

00:49:39.740 movement the best so um this is not in my list because it's a very liberal denomination that i

00:49:45.700 don't have the highest hopes for when so what we did on reformation day this past reformation day

00:49:51.000 all the factions of the Reconquista movement, the Reconquista members in every seven mainline

00:49:57.220 denomination wrote 95 theses against liberalism tailored to their own denomination and emailed

00:50:03.300 them to every mainline church. I mean, every mainline church in the country, you know, that

00:50:08.740 had an email. And we also physically posted copies of our 95 theses on the doors of hundreds of

00:50:14.740 mainline churches across the country. There's thousands of young people and some pastors as

00:50:20.280 well, involved in the Reconquista movement. And different denominations received the 95 theses

00:50:26.880 differently. The ELCA, the bishops all sent out emails saying, oh, these are a group of, you know,

00:50:32.200 Nazi terrorists, whatever, all sorts of, you know, silly left-wing screeching accusations

00:50:39.080 that made no sense at all. But the RCA received the 95 theses very well. They're like, oh, thanks

00:50:44.980 for sending us this. This is very interesting. We're going to discuss it in our next synod meeting.

00:50:48.580 and members of the rca reconquista they've started a organization called the reformed

00:50:54.580 revivalists of america they've like been invited to like rca general conferences and stuff so

00:51:00.180 i think of all the reconquistas so far the rca reconquista has been the most successful

00:51:06.500 generally the dutch reform denominations parallel to the presbyterian denominations

00:51:12.800 have always been a bit more doctrinally faithful so the um what i mean by that is the uh the rca

00:51:21.140 has always been more conservative than the pc usa on average uh the i don't know the conservative

00:51:28.520 dutch reform denominations have always instructed enforced confessionalism more strictly than the

00:51:34.780 conservative presbyterian denominations um so i i think the dutch reformed are a lot better than

00:51:41.620 the Presbyterians are at maintaining doctrinal purity. The churches in the Protestant churches

00:51:47.580 in the Netherlands are, I think, a bit more conservative than the Church of Scotland,

00:51:53.140 for example. So respect to my Dutch Reformed friends for that. So the RCA, I'm very optimistic

00:51:59.180 about. The United Methodist Church, I'm not quite as optimistic about. The two I'm most pessimistic

00:52:05.460 about are the two ones that I did not include in this list of five, the ELCA and the UCC.

00:52:10.060 Luckily for the ELCA, I think by God's providence, the denomination that's going to be hardest to Reconquista is also the one that is least necessary to Reconquista because we also have a parallel mainline conservative Lutheran denomination, which is the LCMS.

00:52:26.660 while yes i would love to still retake the elca because there's a unique scandinavian heritage to

00:52:33.880 the elca whereas the lcms is more of a german heritage and they represent two different

00:52:38.440 theological streams within lutheranism rather than just two different ethnicities like lcm the

00:52:43.360 german lutheranism is a lot more you know by the book mainstream confessional and scandinavian

00:52:48.720 lutheranism is more pietistic more you know think kierkegaard stuff like that interesting stuff to

00:52:55.720 retake i'm i'm an irenic ecumenical guy so i would like to see all sorts of different expressions of

00:53:02.140 christianity healthy and thriving and working for i see different denominations as provinces of the

00:53:06.800 kingdom of god which makes um it's like nails on a chalkboard to eastern orthodox people when i say

00:53:11.940 that but you know what i mean so those are the five denominations so do you have any questions

00:53:17.260 for me about what i believe or about the reconquista movement as a whole yeah um yeah so

00:53:22.820 you're presbyterian um yeah i'm assuming that you're reformed with your soteriology

00:53:27.880 is that correct oh yes yes um so that means i get five points of calvinism even though

00:53:34.600 those that's just a small part of what calvinism actually is i know it's still correct all of it's

00:53:40.080 correct we're saved because we are because by grace alone fundamentally and faith and works

00:53:46.020 flow out of that right right um men and women your views on uh men and women i'm assuming that

00:53:53.680 you're i don't know you may not like the word patriarchy what do you think about that well it's

00:53:59.720 just it's how do you define that word of course um anyone who believes that a woman should take

00:54:06.440 her husband's last name which i do believes in some sort of patriarchy right um patriarchy could

00:54:12.720 mean anything from your children should inherit the father's last name, which the majority of

00:54:18.500 Americans would still probably believe. It could mean anything from that to women can't sneeze in

00:54:25.320 public without their husband's permission. So when we say biblical patriarchy, I confess that

00:54:32.000 that's something I have not spent much time thinking about as of now. I'm sympathetic to

00:54:38.560 people i definitely oppose the feminist movements what should we believe instead of mainstream

00:54:45.000 feminism that's something i'm not quite decided on at this time yeah i guess that's what i'm

00:54:50.080 asking so if you're not a feminist uh if you're not egalitarian then you know what what word do

00:54:54.860 you use like what how do you describe your views of men and women i don't describe myself as

00:54:59.820 egalitarian or complementarian even though i am against female pastors i call myself a gender

00:55:04.080 essentialist. So my view of gender roles is they shouldn't be challenged. They also don't need to

00:55:11.760 be enforced. In middle school, nobody tells the boys and the girls to sit on opposite sides of

00:55:16.340 the auditorium. It just happens. Men and women are simply different by nature. So I think you

00:55:22.240 just let those differences play out. And that's just how it's going to be. I don't like the terms

00:55:28.680 egalitarian and complementarian to refer to the question of whether women should be pastors,

00:55:34.420 because there are some complementarians like N.T. Wright who support female pastors. N.T. Wright

00:55:40.380 does not like when people argue for female pastors on the basis of men and women can do the same

00:55:45.380 things. His argument is men and women have different abilities, and that's why they'll

00:55:50.020 serve the pastor, the pastoral office in different ways. So he's supporting female pastors from a

00:55:57.540 complementarian perspective and there's also some egalitarians who just out of obedience to

00:56:04.080 tradition think of like more liberal catholics who don't think women should be pastors simply

00:56:10.220 because it's tradition i've heard some catholics they don't believe first timothy 2 12 forbids

00:56:16.800 women from being pastors they simply don't have female pastors out of obedience to tradition

00:56:21.320 so i don't think the labels egalitarian and complementarian are necessarily the most helpful

00:56:26.820 for describing the debate over whether women should be pastors i've always had a complementarian

00:56:33.180 view of men and women that they complement each other um in in the most abstract sense of the

00:56:38.960 word i used to support female pastors i used to make arguments for female pastors the whole like

00:56:44.440 oh women were the first witnesses to the resurrection and all that it was actually my

00:56:48.000 girlfriend who tore my argument to shreds and convinced me to um not support female pastors

00:56:53.780 because she's always been part of the PCA um so yeah I used to when I first converted to

00:56:59.720 Christianity it wasn't like I immediately abandoned all my left-wing views it took

00:57:03.840 two years after converting for me to realize homosexuality is wrong and took me three years

00:57:09.820 really three years three and a half years to realize women shouldn't be pastors right it took

00:57:14.560 me I went through a process of deconstruction but what I deconstructed was the religion of leftism

00:57:19.480 not my Christian faith. So yeah, I'm definitely, women should not be pastors because the Bible

00:57:26.280 says they should not be pastors. I, I've heard some arguments for women being pastors,

00:57:31.700 but I haven't heard one that does not rely on mental gymnastics. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The reason

00:57:38.920 I think, you know, I use biblical Patriarch one, because it's just, it's a very old word.

00:57:43.200 And I think it's a good word. I think it's a biblical word. But also I use it to, you know,

00:57:48.500 compare and can contrast between uh patriarchy and complementarianism i'm not a huge fan

00:57:55.780 of the term complementarian um one because it's you know it's the term's 15 minutes old you know

00:58:01.880 so piper and grudem 1988 uh coined uh the phrase and you know i i do believe that men and women

00:58:09.280 are created by god uh as uh similar but also distinct and you know the similarities are enough

00:58:15.460 to where, you know, the woman actually is a suitable helpmate and the distinctions are

00:58:19.000 enough to where they actually compliment one another. So I'm fine with the basic, you know,

00:58:22.720 the basic premise, the concept is fine. But this is what I've noticed. I think complementarianism

00:58:29.280 has come to, it's come to just imply people, you know, it's just assumed, baked into the term

00:58:36.640 that the differences between men and women are strictly physical. So, you know, so that, you

00:58:42.600 that there's a difference in role, distinction in role. The distinction in role stems from a

00:58:46.800 distinction in design, but that distinction at the level of design doesn't go any further than

00:58:51.880 physical design. So women are called to nurture and to rear children, these kinds of things,

00:59:01.020 because that's their physical design. And men are called to work out of the home or be in positions

00:59:05.780 of combat when it comes to the state and military and those kinds of things because of their

00:59:10.900 physical frame and, you know, all of it stemming from design. And I think, you know, part of my

00:59:16.480 problem with that is you read older theologians and, and they just, they have more to say than

00:59:22.420 that. It's not just men and women are called to different things because they are physically

00:59:25.840 different. But older theologians, and I think more importantly, scripture talks about not just

00:59:31.760 physical distinctions between men and women, but the distinction actually goes all the way down.

00:59:35.960 Uh, so like when the apostle Paul cites the reason for, um, a woman, not, uh, exercising

00:59:41.320 authority or teaching over a man, uh, he doesn't just give the order of creation, uh, but he

00:59:46.280 actually cites the order of the fall.

00:59:48.160 Uh, it was not man who's deceived and became a sinner, but the woman who was deceived and

00:59:51.780 became a sinner.

00:59:52.480 Uh, you read, you know, any older theologian, especially before the 1960s, and they're just

00:59:57.660 going to say it as though it's a matter of fact that, you know, that like with very little

01:00:01.000 explanation, because in their mind, it didn't need to be explained.

01:00:03.400 It was just a universal truth that women are more susceptible to being deceived than men.

01:00:08.980 So not just a physical difference, but there's a psychological, if you want to call it that,

01:00:13.600 or mental or spiritual or emotional, but it's beyond just the physical distinction.

01:00:17.940 There are other distinctions as well, rooted in the design, in the makeup of men and women,

01:00:23.380 that is not only a physical distinction, but emotional, spiritual distinction,

01:00:27.860 and that that too plays into differing roles.

01:00:31.120 So that a man is going to be more resilient in a teaching role and in a leadership role than a wife who's going to be a woman, you know, who's going to be more susceptible to, well, let me hear you out and what is your argument and let me sympathize with you.

01:00:46.720 And that works really great with motherhood.

01:00:48.800 You know, I always think of like Kentonji Brown-Jackson, you know, when she, you know,

01:00:52.640 when she was on the chopping block, you know, for Supreme Court justice.

01:00:55.400 And one of the, you know, the big objections was that she had been soft on men who had

01:01:03.540 harbored, you know, child pornography and pedophilia.

01:01:07.500 And, you know, and her, her kind of, her mindset is, you know, it seemed to be compassion.

01:01:12.840 It's like, well, this, this poor young man, you know, he probably didn't have a good mom.

01:01:16.720 And that's great if she wants to be a mom, you know, but if she wants to be a Supreme Court justice, you know, a man's perspective is you did what with kids? Okay, let's get a rope and find a tree and, and let's, you know, take care, you know, like it's very, you know, men are very, you know, we're just different.

01:01:33.380 And so, but my point is that difference that I just described with Kentonji, you know, Brown Jackson, none of that is, has to do with how much you can bench press or, you know, hip radius.

01:01:43.420 That's, that's not a mere, you know, physical distinction.

01:01:46.580 That's, that is a, that's an emotional or mental or psychological or spiritual distinction.

01:01:52.820 So when I say patriarchal, all I mean is father rule. We live in the father's world, and the father has chosen to disseminate his blessings to his image-bearing creatures through fathers. Familial fathers, ecclesiastical fathers, civil fathers. So we live in the father's world, and he blesses his image-bearing creatures through fathers. That's what I mean by patriarchy.

01:02:14.600 But beyond that, the reason why I use patriarchy instead of complementarian is because in my experience, anytime I'm talking to somebody who's complementarian, they believe that men and women in the area, the realm of role, that their roles complement one another because they're distinct, but the distinction of roles is exclusively stemming from a distinction in physical design, but not emotional or mental or anything else.

01:02:39.940 And I think patriarchy, I'm saying, no, there's a physical difference, but there are other differences as well.

01:02:44.520 And just one, just all I have to do to prove the argument is one.

01:02:48.240 And I think biblically I can cite, you know, the example of, but woman was, you know, deceived and became a sinner.

01:02:54.700 And I think the Apostle Paul, I don't think it's arbitrary or random.

01:02:57.220 I think he's citing the order, not just of creation, but the order of the fall for his reasoning for why a woman should not teach a man.

01:03:05.100 because a woman was not just because she has hips and breasts, but because she was deceived.

01:03:11.380 Exactly. Even when I supported female pastors, I recognized that the Bible teaches women are

01:03:18.140 more easily deceived. I also experienced that in my own personal life because this transgender

01:03:23.000 movement, it's a social contagion. Homosexuality is a contagious disease, just like the flu.

01:03:29.200 um and it's often social contagions happen a lot more rapidly among groups of girls than among

01:03:35.500 groups of guys i think depression is also a contagious disease um that circulates among

01:03:40.140 girls there's a big link between depression and homosexuality i think my most radically

01:03:45.860 right-wing view is my views of psychology and mental health that um a lot of what psychologists

01:03:51.280 to say is total bs but yeah i've seen is i even when i try to mental gymnastics my way into

01:03:59.640 supporting female pastors i recognize the reality that women are more easily deceived than men

01:04:04.880 what i also believe and i still think is true in some sense is women because ideas are more

01:04:12.380 contagious among women women think in groups women are like sort of dogs they act and think

01:04:17.300 groups men are like cats they act and think more independently um so in some sense women are also

01:04:23.680 more susceptible to the gospel um because they i think they might have less individualistic pride

01:04:30.520 we see that um mary the mother of god was a lot more willing to accept god's commands for her

01:04:36.100 um a lot more than a lot of the male heroes throughout the old testament are it's like god

01:04:41.200 tells a man to do something like god tells jonah like hey preach to these people jonah's like no

01:04:45.940 I hate them. I don't want to. And then God tells Mary through the angel that you're literally going

01:04:50.760 to give birth to God. And she's like, okay, sure. So I think there's a, of course, there's a good

01:04:57.880 side to women being more easily persuaded, more. Yeah. And just to clarify, it's nothing,

01:05:06.660 in my assessment, it's nothing but positive. There's only the positive side. The only thing

01:05:10.940 that makes it negative is because it's God's design. And I think it's purposeful. I don't

01:05:16.480 think it's just a result of the fall. So I don't think that in a pre-lapsarian world that Eve would

01:05:22.500 have been theologically and mentally and emotionally just as resilient as Adam. I think

01:05:29.400 they still would have been different, that Eve would have had just a more, by nature, just a more

01:05:34.360 natural accepting, following, submissive disposition than her husband. I think that's

01:05:40.560 actually, that's not just a part of the curse, but that's a part of the design before sin ever

01:05:45.360 entered the world. So I think it's entirely positive. It only becomes negative when you

01:05:49.920 take someone who has a different design and then you put them in a male role. That's what makes it

01:05:55.320 bad. But if a woman is in a womanly domestic nurturing role that God intends for her,

01:06:01.180 then all those things are net positives. They're all strengths. None of them are weaknesses.

01:06:05.540 In fact, they're vital. Without that component in the home, then the home is, it's cold,

01:06:11.840 it's stale. It's not a place where children want to be. So we need women to be women and we need

01:06:18.740 men to be men. But it also makes sense in terms of household conversions. When I think about that,

01:06:23.860 back to the example I was giving earlier of five children coming from good stock,

01:06:28.780 You know, they're, you know, they're the fourth generation of a Christian family, you know, where there's been no apostasies, you know, and their parents have loved the Lord and grandparents have loved the Lord.

01:06:38.360 Like, I think, you know, the same kind of thing.

01:06:41.120 If the husband, you look at statistics, I forget exactly what it is.

01:06:44.740 You're probably aware.

01:06:45.600 But if a man comes to Christ, the likelihood of his children, you know, ending up being followers of Christ when they're older, I think it's like 70-something, high 70s, like 77, 78% chance.

01:06:59.340 Whereas if the man is not a believer and does not attend church, but the wife, the mother does, the children, I think it's like 11% or 12%.

01:07:09.420 Like it's very low.

01:07:11.320 Yeah, my family's an example of that.

01:07:12.460 My dad was the first to commit to Christ fully in my family.

01:07:17.720 In my family, I was the last one to become Christian, but the first one to become conservative,

01:07:22.380 because even after both my parents became Christian, it took them a much longer time

01:07:27.040 than it took me to deconstruct the leftism they were, you know, grew up around and stuff.

01:07:31.780 But yeah, my father was the first one in our family to become a Christian.

01:07:35.440 He got baptized in a PCA church in 2012, I believe, converted from Judaism.

01:07:41.420 it's really hard to convert from judaism because there's so much you know you're ostracized by the

01:07:46.300 jewish community if you do so uh so yeah i really uh that was that was inspirational to me yeah

01:07:52.520 that's that's amazing that's impressive good for him yeah and most families uh and now he's an

01:07:58.800 elder at our pc usa church and he prevented a pride flag from going up last june he shot down

01:08:03.500 that proposal by one of the liberal congregants in our um so so yeah he's uh definitely had a

01:08:11.440 strong conversion and i just i see in general most of the time when like uh children fall away

01:08:19.580 from the faith they often have like a religious mother but not a religious father and i know this

01:08:24.200 is fictional but you know i'm not sure if you've ever watched young sheldon um uh i i'm familiar

01:08:30.080 with it i haven't watched but yeah so it's like the uh the mom is really the only one in the family

01:08:34.500 who is a hardcore christian and the dad just sort of goes along with it a lot of u.s presidents only

01:08:39.960 went to church because their wives dragged them i think overall um women are generally more

01:08:45.020 religious than men because just the way you know false teaching spreads among women true teaching

01:08:50.820 also spreads among women um but in a family i think you really need a religious father if you're

01:08:56.060 going to have any safe bet that the children are going to stay religious into their adulthood

01:09:00.080 there's many examples where the mom or the grandma cares a lot about the faith but the children do

01:09:05.440 not and then that's a recipe for disaster so all i told all the ladies out there whatever you do

01:09:11.680 stay far away from a guy who is not committed to going to church on his own it doesn't matter if

01:09:15.940 he'll go along with you to make you happy if he's not committed to going to church on his own

01:09:19.340 stay away from him no missionary dating no missionary dating um yeah no that's good uh yeah

01:09:25.400 It's funny thinking about feminism.

01:09:27.120 Did you ever read, there's a book, I forget the author's name, but he's Roman Catholic.

01:09:31.760 It's called Impotent Church, and it just traces, what?

01:09:36.540 I have not read it, no.

01:09:37.480 It just traces feminism throughout church history, predominantly through Roman Catholic history.

01:09:44.340 But it was just interesting because I always, you know, I think I just assumed that feminism was a much more modern development and that it hadn't been in the church that long.

01:09:53.600 but it was just tracing back and, you know, talking about, you know, the, you know, the

01:09:59.980 priesthood and, you know, the fact that, you know, Catholic priests couldn't be married and the appeal

01:10:05.180 for women if they really wanted to serve the Lord was to, you know, to forego, you know, being a

01:10:11.260 wife and being a mother and instead to be a nun, you know, and so then there was, you know, so much

01:10:16.740 of the Catholic infatuation with Mary was because of nuns not being able to marry. And so because

01:10:28.020 they were single, perpetually single, they would associate, because they still longed, had this

01:10:33.540 innate longing for motherhood, they would associate with Mary, the mother of Jesus. So when they

01:10:38.500 thought of Jesus, it's kind of like a Ricky Bobby situation, Will Ferrell, you know, like, well, I

01:10:42.660 like to think of the eight pound, six ounce, you know, baby Jesus, you know, so when Catholic nuns

01:10:47.020 were thinking about Jesus, they naturally would think about Jesus as a baby because they so badly

01:10:52.600 wanted to be mothers, but weren't allowed to. And so they would actually have dolls. Like it was

01:10:56.780 common to find, uh, cribs in the nuns rooms. They would make cribs and then they would have like,

01:11:01.540 uh, you know, corn husk, uh, dolls, baby, baby dolls of baby Jesus. And they would be nursing,

01:11:07.400 you know, pretending. So in their, in their, uh, devotions and quiet time and praying the rosary,

01:11:11.640 they would be pretending to nurse this baby doll of, of Jesus, you know? And, and so, so much of,

01:11:17.800 uh, Catholic, um, ethos was surrounding this motherly, nurturing feminine, you know, kind of

01:11:24.760 thing. And this is like, this is like back with like Anselm, you know, like, uh, I mean, this is

01:11:29.920 a thousand years old, you know, feminism alive and well in the Catholic church. And, and wouldn't,

01:11:34.820 you know, it all comes down to forbidding marriage. So. Yeah. Now something I'd like to point out,

01:11:39.720 and this might make me feminist according to some people on twitter um women can and have had a lot

01:11:46.380 of good influence in the church but it's been often through their husbands like a lot of um i

01:11:52.100 read this i saw this mormon book title that basically said um thanks to these three queens

01:11:57.900 they defined what christians would believe for the rest of the centuries and it was just basic

01:12:02.560 nicene orthodoxy so women have had lots of influence in the church it was often you know

01:12:07.000 through their through their husbands under the leadership of their husbands because you know

01:12:11.660 women are supposed to help men not just help men do the dishes or whatever but help men in

01:12:17.520 all sorts of ways and there have been like their feminists tell this narrative that before the

01:12:23.040 feminist movement women never had any influence other than just you know domestic chores and

01:12:28.640 raising children and stuff well first of all raising children in itself is a massive influence

01:12:33.420 because everyone gets their ideas and beliefs from their mother i think it's very important

01:12:39.600 for women to have good theology because children often the first teacher of every child is their

01:12:44.920 mother so that's why um women need good theology but also it's like in the middle ages there is

01:12:49.980 hildegard von bingen the most the most important medieval uh christian composer so it's feminists

01:12:57.880 tell this narrative that it was absolute hell for women before feminism came along every statistic

01:13:03.220 shows that feminism has made women way more miserable and has made a culture that's a lot

01:13:08.080 less safe for women and has done nothing to decrease the abuse of women it's just um caused

01:13:15.020 women to be abused by um their boyfriends as opposed to their husbands it has done absolutely

01:13:20.160 nothing to change any of that yeah cool well redeemed zoomer um thank you richard this was

01:13:25.660 great it was good to get to know you a little bit i've seen you you know on twitter a little bit and

01:13:30.000 And I watched a couple of your videos.

01:13:33.240 You know, I watched some of it and I didn't know what to expect, but I, you know, I watched

01:13:38.180 and then just saw you building cathedrals on Minecraft.

01:13:41.920 And I was like, this is a big moment for me where for the first time in my life, I

01:13:47.980 realized I'm old.

01:13:50.880 I was like, what is this?

01:13:52.600 Building cathedrals on a video game and talking about, you know, denominations.

01:13:56.540 So interesting.

01:13:58.800 Thank you.

01:13:59.440 Well, thanks for having me on.

01:14:00.180 This is great.

01:14:02.100 You're welcome.

01:14:03.040 God bless.

The NXR Podcast - January 22, 2024

THE INTERVIEW - Top 5 Mainline Denominations & Where They Compromised with RedeemedZoomer

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