The NXR Podcast - January 22, 2024


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

Topics
leftists hijack institutions PCUSA theology and conservatism complementarianism distinctions design Catholic nuns devotionals
Hosted by
Joel Webbon Harrison Smith Antonio Griffith Dale Partridge Wewsley Todd Calvin Robinson
Mentioned
Reconquista Richard Mary Redeemed Zoomer Episcopal Dort Charles Wesley Doug Wilson Jakari Jackson Jesus Christ Apostle Paul John Calvin N.T. Wright Bruce Gore George Washington George Whitefield Charles Finney Pastor Webman Martin Luther Brown Jackson and 20 more
SERMON - Living In “Negative World” THE LIVESTREAM - Low-T Pastors, Alistair Begg, & the Rise of Donald Trump

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 14 minutes

Words per minute

179.2

Word count

13,271

Sentence count

535

Harmful content

Misogyny

17

sentences flagged

Toxicity

13

sentences flagged

Hate speech

50

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, Pastor Joel Webman sits down with the Redeemed Zoomer to discuss 5 mainline denominations that are both winnable and significant, meaning that if they could be won, they're worth winning.

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.
00:00:00 In less than a year, our podcast has gone from an average of 10,000 downloads a month
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00:00:27 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied. I'm your host, Pastor Joel
00:00:31 Weapon with Right Response Ministries. And in this episode, I am very privileged to have for the
00:00:35 first time the Redeemed Zoomer. We're going to be talking about five mainline denominations that are 0.79
00:00:42 both winnable and also significant, meaning that if they could be won, it would matter. They're
00:00:47 worth winning. Now, the Redeemed Zoomer and I, we have our differences. We disagree on a few things.
00:00:53 And so take the winnability with a grain of salt.
00:00:56 This is going to be Richard, that's his name, Richard's opinion.
00:00:59 He thinks that these mainline denominations are in fact winnable.
00:01:03 I think that, you know, some of them might be and some of them might not be, but either
00:01:07 way, it'll be a really fruitful conversation for you, the listener, to even just figure
00:01:12 out what, you know, what is Episcopalianism?
00:01:14 What is Anglicanism?
00:01:16 You know, what are United Methodists?
00:01:19 What do they believe?
00:01:19 What do they hold to?
00:01:20 So Redeemed Zoomer is, I think, really helpful in just giving an overarching 30,000-foot view
00:01:28 with mainline Protestant denominations and understanding their theological underpinnings.
00:01:33 In addition to that, think of it as a bonus.
00:01:36 He'll give us some strategies for maybe taking them back.
00:01:38 All right, without further ado, here comes the show.
00:01:41 Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
00:01:44 This is Theology Applied.
00:01:50 In this episode, I'm privileged to welcome to the show for the first time,
00:01:56 the redeemed Zoomer. Richard, thanks for coming on.
00:02:00 Yeah, thank you, Pastor Webman, for having me here. It's an honor to be here. An honor to talk
00:02:04 about God's kingdom and how young men can glorify God, serve God, fight for the kingdom, all that
00:02:09 stuff. I know that's something you talk about a lot, something I care about a lot. So yeah,
00:02:14 this is going to be great. Amen. So let our listeners know just a little bit about you.
00:02:18 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 right so my story is i come from a very secular leftist background because i went to public school
00:02:43 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 meant i had a very very secular background and i was very opposed to religion until i had a
00:02:56 conversion experience at a christian themed music camp in the midwest i went from new york to the
00:03:01 Midwest, I saw how much more alive people seemed when they believed in God, when they believed in
00:03:07 Jesus Christ. So as a teenager, I had a dramatic conversion experience. When I went back home,
00:03:13 all my Jewish and atheist friends were really suspicious that I'd become Christian.
00:03:17 And once I started to question the religion of leftism, because it is a religion,
00:03:21 I was basically excommunicated or canceled, so to speak. And I basically, it ruined my social
00:03:29 life in high school, but that's when that motivated me to start studying the things of God,
00:03:33 start studying the faith. And I was motivated to share the faith with others because I saw how
00:03:39 absolutely terrible my generation is. Great. You said Jewish friends and atheist friends.
00:03:46 Were you trying to be redundant or are those two different groups?
00:03:50 Not really, actually. Like, yeah, I have a ethnically Jewish background myself. My dad
00:03:56 was raised reform jewish most of the jews in new york are reform jews my dad converted to
00:04:02 christianity and now he's an elder at the presbyterian church but in reform judaism it's
00:04:07 just uh ethnic social club you do not have to believe in god you could believe in no god you
00:04:13 could believe in the pagan mother goddess the only thing you cannot believe in is jesus right
00:04:17 exactly you can be a buddhist uh you know buddhist jew atheist jew you just can't be a christian 0.60
00:04:23 But no, you cannot be a Christian. That's the one thing that's off limits in those communities. 0.55
00:04:29 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 the Twitter streets, it seems as though you've got a pretty good sense of the pulse of mainline
00:04:42 Protestant denominations. Most of our listeners are going to be evangelicals. So most of them
00:04:48 are going to be theologically and culturally conservative and have little to no experience
00:04:53 with mainline denominations. And I would be one of those individuals. So I was raised in a
00:04:58 charismatic background. I think, you know, Assemblies of God would probably describe a lot
00:05:03 of it. Maybe Assemblies of God-lite. If you think of like John Piper, Wayne Grudem, a third wave
00:05:10 continuationism that moves from, you know, the 1950s healing revivals and Azusa Street and those
00:05:16 kinds of things to still, you know, exercising or attempting to exercise the sign gifts, but not
00:05:23 necessarily believing that the baptism of the Spirit is a subsequent experience to conversion
00:05:29 with the evidence, you know, having to be speaking in tongues. Instead, you know, you're baptized by
00:05:34 the Spirit at the point of conversion, and you may have, you know, a variety of different spiritual
00:05:39 gifts, and one of them may be tongues, and maybe it's not. So that's kind of my background.
00:05:42 Now, the point is, when I think of mainline Protestant denominations, I think of dark, shadowy places where we should never go. 0.97
00:05:50 So set me straight. 1.00
00:05:52 Yeah, so the mainline does have a lot of that.
00:05:55 In the mainline, you will see some of the worst things imaginable.
00:05:59 I have seen some absolutely insane things that made me want to give up and go Catholic pretty much.
00:06:04 I didn't, but it was just such a shock when I did see those things.
00:06:08 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 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 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 If a pastor simply preaches the word of God and administers the sacraments faithfully, the media doesn't care about that.
00:06:52 Like, you know, the God's flock being fed.
00:06:55 Who cares about that?
00:06:56 A huge political statement by a pastor.
00:06:58 Now, that's something we should focus on.
00:07:00 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 But both of those exist within mainline denominations.
00:07:11 So the church I was part of when I first became a Christian was one of the more moderate PCUSA churches.
00:07:18 Some of not as conservative as some, not as liberal as some.
00:07:21 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 but then when i was getting confirmed in the church i went to a confirmation retreat
00:07:31 hosted by the local presbytery rather than my congregation and i didn't know this but i happened
00:07:36 to be in like the most liberal presbytery in the country and there i found a pastor who didn't
00:07:41 believe jesus was god another pastor who called unborn children parasites another one who called
00:07:46 tim keller a fundamentalist so i was like dang and that's when i was like you know maybe the
00:07:54 Catholics were right about Protestantism being bad. So I went back to my mentor, my mentor who
00:08:00 was a solid reformed, you know, person in my church. I said, yo, what is up with our terrible
00:08:05 denomination? And he was like, you have to realize the reason it got this bad is because of
00:08:11 generations and generations of conservatives being passive, not speaking up and running away when
00:08:18 things got bad so he told me i should stay in the denomination stay and fight for it but for the
00:08:25 longest time i i didn't know how i could do that because liberalism seemed like such a powerful
00:08:30 force um but then i started to study you know cultural marxism and critical theory and i
00:08:37 realized it's not just the church that liberals have done this to or i guess you should say
00:08:41 leftists um leftists hijack absolutely everything uh leftists never create their own institutions
00:08:47 All they do is hijack institutions that Christians create. 0.99
00:08:51 They're like viruses. 1.00
00:08:52 Viruses can't reproduce on their own. 0.98
00:08:54 They have to hijack a healthy cell and turn that cell into a virus factory.
00:08:57 Likewise, leftists never make any successful institutions like the leftist factories, Harvard, Yale, Princeton. 0.51
00:09:03 They started as Christian institutions and they were hijacked by leftists.
00:09:07 Likewise, leftists hijack churches like the Presbyterian Church and the Episcopal Church and turn those into leftist factories as well.
00:09:13 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 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 All right.
00:09:34 um, in terms of, you know, that the analogy that you're using of virus host, those kinds of things,
00:09:42 um, you know, I think of cancer, I think of, you know, chemo, um, there, I think, you know, it's,
00:09:47 it's difficult because I think there are multiple strategies. There's a strategy of, uh, stay in
00:09:52 fight. There's also the strategy of, uh, allowing the host to be so weakened that it actually kills
00:09:58 of the parasite. There's nothing for it to feed on. But then, you know, there may not be much
00:10:04 life to return to. There's, you know, so there are pros and cons on both sides. Well, give us,
00:10:10 let's do this. Could you provide for the listener a list of maybe five different mainline denominations
00:10:17 that, and this would be the criteria, something that you think is significant, it's worth winning,
00:10:24 that's worth the fight. Uh, there's actually resources and I'd love to hear what maybe some
00:10:28 of those are like, what, what makes it significant? What makes it worth it? Uh, staying and fighting
00:10:33 and trying to win. And then on the flip side, not just significance, but also, um, feasibility.
00:10:39 Uh, so main five mainline denominations that are both winnable. Um, they're feasible. They
00:10:45 actually could be one, uh, but also they're significant. Uh, if they were one, it would
00:10:50 matter. Okay, great. So something all these mainline denominations have that their evangelical
00:10:57 counterparts don't is something that is honestly necessary for Protestantism to survive, and that's
00:11:03 institutional rootedness. In the Reformation, the thing that distinguished the magisterial
00:11:08 reformers from the radical reformers is institutionalism. The magisterial reformers
00:11:13 stayed in the institutions, stayed in the same churches and universities that used to be part
00:11:18 of the Catholic Church and reformed them. Martin Luther was preaching in the same church before and
00:11:22 after the Reformation. You know, Oxford was the same university before and after it was before
00:11:28 and after the Reformation. It went from Catholic to part of the Church of England. So the magisterial
00:11:33 reformers, they saw their identity, the identity of the Protestant faith, was a reformation of
00:11:41 existing institutions. Until recently, until modern evangelicalism, Protestantism has never
00:11:47 not been institutional. Protestantism has never not been traditionally rooted. And I think this
00:11:52 is kind of why we're seeing a flood of young people convert to Catholicism and orthodoxy,
00:11:56 because they're understanding the importance of tradition and institutions. And it's really hard
00:12:03 these days in Protestantism to find an institutional Protestant church that still
00:12:07 holds to traditional Protestant doctrines. So all across the board, something all the mainline
00:12:13 churches have that is worth fighting for is this institutional rootedness, this historic
00:12:18 rootedness. So the Episcopal Church, let's start with that. So many of the founders of America
00:12:24 were Episcopalian. The Episcopal Church is integral to the very identity of the United
00:12:31 States. I often like to say that you cannot revive a culture without reviving the church
00:12:37 that it was founded upon. You can say that the United States is a pan-Protestant nation,
00:12:41 but the United States culture was founded upon the Protestant churches, the descendants of which
00:12:48 are now the mainline Protestant churches, the mainstream Protestant churches. Just the way,
00:12:53 I don't think you can revive England without reviving the Church of England. I don't think
00:12:56 you can revive Sweden without reviving the Church of Sweden. And the leftists have been very
00:13:01 intentional in hijacking these churches because they know how important those churches are for
00:13:05 the culture. You can't revive Italy without reviving the Catholic Church. You cannot separate
00:13:13 religion and culture. So the Episcopal Church especially is very important for the foundation
00:13:20 of America. There's so much American heritage in the Episcopal Church. If you go to Trinity
00:13:26 Episcopal Church on Wall Street, absolutely beautiful church. It was George Washington's
00:13:31 church. And of course, they have pride flags everywhere because the left was very intentional
00:13:36 to hijack everything that matters to American Christian culture. A Christian culture is 0.86
00:13:43 enemy number one of the left. That's why they want to hijack it. So now the Episcopal church 1.00
00:13:48 is deeply hijacked, but there is a path for retaking it because there still are conservative
00:13:53 bishops. The Reconquista movement I'm part of is actively partnering with some of the
00:13:59 conservative bishops in the episcopal church and we have a map of episcopal churches that are
00:14:05 either explicitly allied with the cause or at least share some of the values of the cause of
00:14:10 being fortresses of traditional anglican christianity within the episcopal church within
00:14:16 the broader broadly liberal episcopal denomination and staying to fight for it real quick as so as
00:14:22 we're going through this list could you also for the listener um just take a moment and define
00:14:28 each of these denominations? So when you say Episcopal, what's the easiest way to explain
00:14:35 Episcopalianism? Yeah, it's another word for Anglican. Episcopal refers to the government
00:14:41 structure. Anglican refers to the theology. So Episcopal is the most high church of all the
00:14:47 Protestant denominations. It's the most Catholic out of all of them. Sometimes Anglican theology
00:14:52 is described as a via media or a middle way between Catholic and Protestant. So especially
00:14:58 a lot of people who are craving like, you know, a traditional, you know, Anglo-Saxon form of 0.76
00:15:04 Christianity, Episcopalianism is the way to go. There are a few conservative Anglican offshoot
00:15:10 denominations, but they just don't have the tradition because they split from the 300-year-old
00:15:15 denomination that contains all the American heritage. So I don't know, the ACNA, for example,
00:15:20 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 So that's what Episcopalianism is. There are conservative bishops that are on our side. They're a minority.
00:15:35 However, liberal churches always die out. The mainline denominations are all bleeding membership rapidly.
00:15:42 The only churches in the mainline that are not dying out are the conservative ones.
00:15:45 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 So next week, we have the United Methodist Church.
00:18:39 Now, this is something I get a bit angry about because the United Methodist Church 0.88
00:18:43 could have been retaken by the conservatives because in 2019 they had a gay marriage vote
00:18:49 and the conservatives won because of correct me if i'm wrong but that because of non-western
00:18:55 nations because it's an international global denomination yes but there still are a lot of
00:19:01 conservative united methodist churches in the united states it was the international ones that
00:19:05 just pushed the vote over the edge right um so when the conservatives had a victory the progressives
00:19:11 mindset was, we're not giving up. We're going to stay and fight. We're going to retake it.
00:19:15 And the progressives made plans to retaliate. They tried to rig the voting systems. And then
00:19:20 in response to that, the conservatives, fearing a future progressive victory, all split off,
00:19:25 ran away to form the Global Methodist Church in the process, losing tons of their property,
00:19:30 having to pay the liberals tons of money to leave. And it was a total disaster. The conservative
00:19:35 mindset was, we might lose, we have to run away. And the progressive mindset was, even though we
00:19:40 did lose, we're going to stay and fight. So it was the progressives that were a lot more bold
00:19:44 and courageous. And that's kind of why they won. So the conservatives totally could have won over
00:19:49 the United Methodist Church. There are some people who try to say, oh, we conservatives,
00:19:53 we had no choice. We had to run. But I've heard a lot of other United Methodist pastors who were
00:19:58 like, no, it was just pure cowardliness on the part of the conservatives. They totally could
00:20:03 have won. They just didn't want to be associated with a denomination that had any liberalism in
00:20:09 it at all. You'll hear conflicting stories. It was one big mess. But the point is, even after all
00:20:15 that, even after a lot of conservatives jump ship, there still are a lot of conservatives in the
00:20:20 United Methodist Church. And it's the same deal as with the Episcopal Church. The conservative
00:20:26 churches are a lot healthier. And the conservative churches can last the next generation. And the
00:20:34 progressive ones can't if we just fortify them. So why is the United Methodist Church very
00:20:38 important. The United Methodist Church contains the heritage of the First Great Awakening, right?
00:20:44 If the First Great Awakening is kind of why the United Methodist Church is, sorry, why the United
00:20:51 States is such a religious place. And much of the heritage of that awakening is preserved in the
00:20:57 Methodist Church. Methodism does not come from the Reformation. Methodism comes from the First
00:21:02 Great Awakening. So some people might say they're not classical Protestants the way, you know,
00:21:07 anglicans lutherans presbyterians are but so much of american faith is tied in with the first great
00:21:13 awakening so some people have said the united methodist church is a uniquely you know american
00:21:19 thing real quickly uh if we can pause on the united methodist uh just for the listeners so
00:21:25 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 and charles wesley i'm thinking arminianism um i mean i am thinking first great awakening i'm not
00:21:35 thinking, you know, Charles Finney or, you know, second great awakening, uh, but first great
00:21:38 awakening, uh, the Armenian kind of counterpart to George Whitefield and some of the reformed guys,
00:21:44 um, you know, Edwards. And then I'm also thinking, um, I think Nazarene being an offshoot, uh, coming 0.92
00:21:51 out of the Wesleyan tradition. And I know for the Nazarenes, and I think, uh, it's the same for 0.85
00:21:56 United Methodists that, uh, that these are some of the longest standing, uh, Protestant denominations
00:22:02 that have been egalitarian in terms of, in terms of ordaining female pastors. I know that for
00:22:10 Nazarenes, I think I could be wrong, but I think it's well over 50 years, close to a hundred years
00:22:14 that they've been ordaining women pastors with United Methodists. Is that, you know, when you
00:22:20 say there's, you know, the liberal ones, but then there's the conservative ones, just so that the
00:22:25 listener and I personally understand how relative we're using the term conservative there. When you
00:22:31 say conservative united methodists you're talking about lady pastors correct it depends in all the
00:22:37 denominations i don't think any of them are more egalitarian than others the egalitarian
00:22:43 complementarian split cuts basically evenly through all the protestant traditions the only
00:22:48 ones that don't have any egalitarianism are catholicism and orthodoxy um the egalitarian
00:22:54 movement of like you know the 20th century it affected every protestant tradition equally so
00:22:59 I wouldn't say there's anything uniquely egalitarian about Methodism. You're right that
00:23:03 it is generally Arminian. There are Calvinistic Methodists like Whitfield, like you said.
00:23:08 Generally, Methodism is Arminian, and it leans in a sort of Pentecostal direction. Of course,
00:23:14 that's an anachronism because Pentecostalism emerged much later out of the Methodist tradition.
00:23:20 I think Methodism provides a good place for people who want to be open to the gifts of the Spirit,
00:23:25 people who want to be continuationist, but want something a bit more traditional and regulated.
00:23:29 than pentecostalism right and for some reason the methodists get a unique reputation for being
00:23:36 liberal out of all of them i don't think that's actually true because the methodist church still
00:23:41 has not officially legalized gay marriage whereas a lot of the other ones including the presbyterian
00:23:47 and episcopal church have so yes there's liberalism in the united methodist church there's liberalism
00:23:52 in all these mainline denominations so i don't think i don't understand why they get singled out
00:23:56 as the liberal ones um the most liberal mainline denomination is the united church of christ which
00:24:01 i'm not going to include in this list of of five denominations that because they are very far gone
00:24:07 it's going to be almost impossible to retake them anytime soon i'm still leaving it open for a much
00:24:12 much later but um so that's the united methodist church arminian wesleyan theology methodist
00:24:18 theology is basically calvinism minus predestination because arminius was a calvinist
00:24:24 he agreed with calvinism on everything except predestination oh yeah i i still use on a somewhat
00:24:29 regular basis um jacobus his definition of total depravity people always think it's john calvin
00:24:34 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 underneath the banner of orthodoxy is because he wasn't a pelagian um you know it wasn't this idea
00:24:45 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 totally depraved, the linchpin is just, you know, the doctrine of pervenient grace. So it's this
00:24:55 idea that man is totally depraved, just like you would have within the Reformed scheme of 1.00
00:24:59 soteriology. But the idea was that God, you know, in the preaching of the gospel, that 0.64
00:25:04 the Holy Spirit, you know, would basically temporarily and partially, you know, so for a
00:25:11 moment and not all the way, but partially and temporarily bring someone from a state of
00:25:14 spiritual blindness, deafness, deadness, to a place of somewhat of a moral neutrality to where
00:25:22 they could, you know, choose to receive the gospel and move forward. And, you know, and then, you
00:25:26 know, with that faith be granted regeneration and a new heart and be born again, or they could,
00:25:31 you know, miss the window of grace. And that's what, you know, you have like the, you know,
00:25:35 the anxious bench, you know, as it, you know, developed further into the second great,
00:25:39 great awakening, those kinds of things. But my point is just to say that, you know, when you
00:25:43 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 nothing that john wesley would recognize uh people today when they talk about uh an arminian you know
00:25:55 they think it's arminian but an arminian idea of salvation they're saying that people really can
00:25:59 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 be this prevenient grace that brings them to this you know temporary suspended state of you know
00:26:09 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 And so, you know, yeah, that's very, very different.
00:26:20 Absolutely. Methodist theology is not semi-Pelagian the way like provisionism might be.
00:26:26 Methodist theology has basically an identical view as Calvinist theology does on the sacraments, for example.
00:26:32 So that's why I kind of like it, to be honest.
00:26:33 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 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 That's why all the Methodist logos have fire in them, because fire represents the Holy Spirit.
00:26:58 You know, the, like, I don't know, Rejoice the Lord is King.
00:27:01 That's a Methodist hymn written by Charles Wesley.
00:27:04 Beautiful hymn, amazing hymn.
00:27:06 So I really, really like the Methodist tradition, by the way.
00:27:10 I don't like how it's been hijacked, but I also want to help restore it.
00:27:15 So the next one I would say is the PCUSA, the Presbyterian Church USA, which is my denomination.
00:27:21 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 and they're hyper conservative real quick can you define uh the opc is hyper conservative i
00:27:44 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 if you're aware of that so what is a hyper conservative well when i say hyper now i would
00:27:55 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 culture like you have to make a distinction between pca conservative and opc conservative
00:28:09 i think we can all agree opc is more conservative than the pca yeah like i even if they're even
00:28:15 even if pca is not as conservative on some issues as we'd like right um anyone in our culture who
00:28:21 is opposed to abortion and gay marriage is conservative right um objectively so so when
00:28:26 i say hyper conservative i'm not saying oh they're too conservative for me gotcha i'm just saying
00:28:31 they are more conservative than the PCA is. Great. At the end of this, I'll let you keep
00:28:36 going. Sorry to interrupt. But at the end of this, I do want to hear, I think our listeners would be
00:28:39 curious, at least the ones that know you, just to hear, you know, a little bit of your own theology
00:28:45 and where you, you know, hang your coat. But go ahead. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, there's a lot of
00:28:52 offshoot predominantly denominations, but the only mainstream one, the only one that really has the
00:28:57 institutional continuity with John Knox and the Reformation and all these traditional seminaries
00:29:05 like Princeton, Princeton Theological Seminary, all those, is the PCUSA. Now, there are some
00:29:11 institutions in some of these other denominations, but one of the greatest institutional strength is
00:29:17 still the PCUSA. The PCUSA has way more resources, way more historic church buildings. I know that's
00:29:24 not everything. So unlike with the Episcopal Church, I think Presbyterianism could still
00:29:30 survive without the PCUSA. But still, the PCUSA contains so much Presbyterian heritage that
00:29:37 generations of faithful Christian men have donated their entire lives to. And, you know, it's the
00:29:43 only denomination I've ever been a part of. I don't really see a good reason to leave. So yes,
00:29:48 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 Fifty percent is basically moderate, lukewarm boomer congregations. That's sort of what my church would fall into.
00:30:09 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 there's an alliance of conservative congregations in the PCUSA. And of course, yes, it's not as
00:30:34 conservative as maybe we would like, but they still take a strong stand against gay marriage,
00:30:39 strong stand against abortion. And if you listen to some of them, like Bruce Gore, Bruce Gore
00:30:44 teaches at First Presbyterian Church in Spokane. If you listen to him, it sounds like you're
00:30:48 listening to Doug Wilson, basically. He's strongly, you know, post-millennial. He talks a ton about
00:30:53 how America's not just a Christian nation, but a Calvinist nation. It sounds like you're listening
00:30:59 to one of these Christian nationalist dudes, except he's a teacher in the PCUSA. So in many
00:31:04 ways, the conservative end of the PCUSA is indistinguishable from the PCA or the CREC,
00:31:11 except I would say a lot more high church, a lot more institutional and all that stuff.
00:31:16 So I see these two different groups of people, like the Christian nationalist Doug Wilson crowd
00:31:22 on one side and the conservatives in the PCUSA on the other side saying basically the exact same
00:31:28 things, but unaware of each other's existence. If you go to one of any, no one in the PCUSA
00:31:34 has any idea that the CREC exists. I'm probably the only person in the PCUSA who knows that it
00:31:39 exists. And most people outside the PCUSA think it's all super liberal. They don't know that
00:31:45 there is this strong conservative faction within it. So now what is Presbyterian theology for those
00:31:50 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 done a very good job representing what Presbyterian theology is, even though they've done a way better
00:32:02 job than PCUSA has. But traditionally, even though the PCUSA on average is a lot more liberal than
00:32:10 these offshoots, it's also a lot more traditional on average. Because I hate the stereotype that
00:32:15 Protestantism is not beautiful, is not traditional. Almost any PCUSA church is a beautiful stained
00:32:22 glass stone castle looking building with a beautiful choir. Everyone's wearing robes and
00:32:26 all that. And it's not even high church. It's what low church used to look like before modernism
00:32:32 struck. And of course, just because it looks like that doesn't mean it has good theology.
00:32:38 But the people who built these churches, they had great theology. They had solid reform theology.
00:32:43 those institutions were just hijacked by people who deny the beliefs that those churches were
00:32:48 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 covenant in cleveland of course there's you know it's a gay affirming church where you know case
00:32:58 western college students will just go to hang out and study like it's i don't know some meditation
00:33:02 room or something but still carved into the stone and stained glass you can see bible verses everywhere
00:33:08 you can see the reformers you can see so many great god glorifying things so the the ghosts
00:33:14 the ghosts of good theology are still present in the PCUSA and you see this tension between
00:33:20 the way it was built and the people running it now it's it's an allied battleship that's been
00:33:26 hijacked by pirates and Presbyterian theology uh its beliefs are summarized in the Westminster
00:33:31 confession but not just the Westminster confession also the Scots confession uh the PCUSA doesn't
00:33:37 just use Westminster also uses the Scots confession in the Heidelberg Catechism. I like the Scots
00:33:42 better because it has a very high view of the sacraments. Not that Westminster doesn't, just
00:33:47 Scots articulates it a lot more clearly. We also use some more modern confessions like the
00:33:52 Declaration of Barman and the Confession of 1967, which, by the way, is the only confession that
00:33:58 explicitly condemns the sexual revolution. You would think which denomination has a confession
00:34:04 that condemns the sexual revolution PCUSA or PCA you'd think it's PCA but it's actually PCUSA
00:34:11 and the canons of Dort right uh not the canons of Dort actually but it's unnecessary because
00:34:17 the contents of cans of Dort are already present in in Westminster yeah we also have the second
00:34:21 Helvetic confession okay um which funny enough confesses the perpetual virginity of Mary but
00:34:27 most PCUSA pastors don't even know that uh that's an interesting detail not sure what I think about
00:34:33 that yet but um yeah so the peace usa a lot less conservative a lot more traditional and i think
00:34:39 we want to revive traditional reform theology we need to revive the peace usa um the fourth one
00:34:45 would be the american baptist churches usa um now the there's the southern baptist church
00:34:52 and the american baptist church was which is kind of the northern baptist church they split over the
00:34:57 civil war now because the southern baptist church exists i don't think it's all that necessary
00:35:03 for the survival of baptist christianity to revive the american baptist church but the american
00:35:08 baptist church will be by far the easiest to revive because it's been the least hijacked out
00:35:13 of all the mainline denominations there are progressive american baptist congregations there
00:35:18 are you know pride flag blm congregations but they're a much smaller percentage compared to
00:35:24 all the other mainline denominations so out of all them the american baptist church has been the least
00:35:29 hijacked and you know there is a strong northern baptist tradition and i think it's a lot more
00:35:35 high church than the southern baptist church you'll always see this dichotomy in protestantism
00:35:40 generally the more high church a protestant group is the more progressive it's been and the more
00:35:45 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 it's personally because leftists hijack whatever is more institutionally powerful uh but the
00:35:57 american baptist beautiful i think i think leftist you know a part of it like i think leftists know
00:36:02 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 here on earth you know so whether it's living on the coast i mean from geography to institutions
00:36:11 to churches at every level i think um it's an infatuation with beauty you know i think it's
00:36:17 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 from somebody else so i think that there's a natural like a moth you know attracted to the
00:36:26 flame uh when it comes to leftists because because left of uh leftism is ugly like i mean that's the
00:36:32 default mechanism is you know it takes a dude and and you know puts lipstick on him and makes him
00:36:37 an ugly chick you know so so they i think they're attracted to that and i've seen so many of my you 1.00
00:36:43 know young women that i know um female friends i've had make themselves more ugly intentionally 1.00
00:36:50 as they be became leftist oh yeah as calvin robinson said when someone becomes trans they 0.73
00:36:55 try to make themselves look less human and you can see that um so yeah the northern baptist
00:37:01 heritage there's rhode island there's brown university it's like um there's a stereotype
00:37:05 that you know baptists um don't value education well if we revive brown university revive the
00:37:10 american baptist church uh we could reverse that stereotype well let me ask you a question real
00:37:15 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 of it but i am um barely you know credo baptist uh but a lot of times when people think of
00:37:24 Presbyterians and they think of Baptists, those are probably the groups that I interact with the
00:37:28 most. A lot of my friends are like, I was Baptist, but now I'm Presbyterian. And I always correct
00:37:32 them and say, no, you're not. You're a Paedo-Baptist. You're more so like a congregationalist
00:37:38 in the frame of John Owen, because here's the key word. People miss this. When it comes to
00:37:44 Presbyterianism, the key word, and you tell me if you think I'm wrong here, Richard, but
00:37:48 key word for Presbyterianism, I think would be presbytery, that it actually had something to do
00:37:54 with the polity. It's not just your mode of baptism. If you're Presbyterian, you're not,
00:38:00 Baptists are notorious for, in terms of our polity, we would hold to the autonomy of the
00:38:06 local church, whereas Presbyterians are actually a part of a Presbytery. It's not just local church
00:38:11 autonomy. And so all that being said, my point is with, whether it's Northern Baptist or Southern
00:38:16 Baptist or North American Baptist, my thought is, you know, you said it's one of the least hijacked.
00:38:24 Well, to me, that makes sense for a number of reasons. One, because it probably is more low
00:38:29 church and therefore less desirable. But then number two, it's hard to hijack Baptist because
00:38:35 you have to go individually, local church by local church by local church, because all the
00:38:40 local churches typically own their own properties, their own buildings. They're autonomous in terms
00:38:44 of their polity. They're not a part of a presbytery or, you know, there's no Episcopalian
00:38:49 hierarchy of, you know, church polity or they're, each one is independent and autonomous. So it's
00:38:55 hard to hijack, but it's also hard to win back. Like, I mean, you would have to win it back
00:39:00 organically and individually by simply, you know, taking based, you know, conservative
00:39:05 ministers and putting them in each individual pulpit. That's the only, you know, that's the
00:39:11 only thing that you can do with Baptists. And so there's, I think there's a great strength there,
00:39:14 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. 0.98
00:39:34 With Baptists, you can never take the whole thing.
00:39:36 But you also, you know, that works. 1.00
00:39:38 That's a two-way street.
00:39:40 It works both ways. 0.91
00:39:41 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 Well, no, you're stuck fighting each individual church battle.
00:39:55 Yeah, I know.
00:39:56 It's a tradeoff either way.
00:39:57 I was wondering why the American Baptist Church was the least hijacked.
00:40:01 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 whereas conservative churches in the united church of canada also congregationalist are like
00:40:26 progressive churches in the episcopal church it's absolutely insane it's like in the united church
00:40:30 of canada if you are a theist that makes you in the conservative faction um and uh also in also
00:40:40 in england the most conservative even though the church of england is getting hijacked it's not
00:40:46 nearly as liberal as the united reform church in england which is congregationalist so when you
00:40:52 say congregationalist just you are saying um that these are local autonomous churches that there's
00:40:57 no there's no hierarchy outside of the local church yeah and because of that even in the ucc
00:41:02 even though the ucc is overall the most liberal there are a few conservative ucc churches and
00:41:08 the denomination as a whole can't do anything about it so there's like yeah we're conservative
00:41:11 deal with it. So that is pretty cool. And I like how in congregationalism, like you said,
00:41:17 harder to hijack, also harder to take back. So the reason I would say, I guess I would say the
00:41:23 reason that the UCC got hijacked despite being congregationalist is probably because the seminaries
00:41:29 got hijacked. So they just began churning out progressive pastors. Whereas I don't think many
00:41:34 of the Baptist seminaries got hijacked nearly as badly. That's insightful. No, I think you're 1.00
00:41:39 right about that. I think that that's the way you do it. If it's a congregational polity and each
00:41:44 individual church is autonomous, then the way that you take an entire denomination is you just have
00:41:50 to be the guy who gets to decide how to train up the entire next generation of ministers. You know,
00:41:57 if you can hijack the seminary and start teaching, you know, like you think of like the conservative
00:42:01 resurgence that happened with, you know, Southern Seminary back in the day with Moeller, you know, 1.00
00:42:06 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. 0.99
00:42:15 And then Mueller got in there and fired them all. 0.99
00:42:18 And, you know, a bunch of people graduated, wouldn't even shake his hand on the platform, you know.
00:42:22 And that's very inspiring.
00:42:24 That's very inspiring.
00:42:25 If the Baptists could go from throwing the Bible in the trash to being the most conservative mainline denomination there is.
00:42:31 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 and then came all the way back um and well yeah i i think the sbc honestly is a a successful
00:43:08 example of reconquista working of a mainline combination that got retaken the sbc and the
00:43:14 lcms are both examples of denominations that are technically mainline historically speaking
00:43:20 the only reason they're not in the list of mainline denominations is because they're not
00:43:24 liberal anymore lcms also had a reconquista sort of not as severe as sbc but there was the whole
00:43:30 Seminex controversy. Have you heard about that? No. Yeah. And one of the LCMS seminaries, I think
00:43:35 it was Concordia seminary. Correct me if I'm wrong, but one of their seminaries was teaching
00:43:41 liberal theology. And then some conservatives swooped in and fixed it. And then there was a
00:43:47 huge walkout of students. And because they're progressives, because they're rats, they just 0.99
00:43:51 smashed everything, stole stuff from the library. They threw a huge hissy fit temper tantrum. 0.99
00:43:59 they ended up splitting off and forming something that eventually merged to join the elca so lcms
00:44:05 and sbc are examples of how even if a denomination is hijacked it could be unhijacked um respect to
00:44:13 the baptists it's like you know some people think i'm anti-baptist just because of how much of a
00:44:18 stickler i am for you know traditional liturgy and sacramentology but honestly the baptists have
00:44:24 done the best to combat liberalism within their ranks, I think you could say, as a
00:44:29 Pato Baptist, I think you could somewhat credit Pato Baptism for that, because it is, does 0.95
00:44:34 somewhat prevent, you know, unbelievers from having too high a role in the church. 0.92
00:44:40 Right, yeah, I mean, I think it's the polity, so I think it's the congregationalism, the 1.00
00:44:44 local autonomy, and then, yeah, I think that, you know, for better or worse, regardless
00:44:47 of where you land theologically in that issue, I think that regenerate church membership
00:44:52 as a conviction is, you know, it's just, it's going to naturally police its borders. Um,
00:44:58 you know, at least, at least more, you know, there's, there's no perfect policing. I, you
00:45:02 know, I'm a credo Baptist minister and I have baptized, you know, plenty of unregenerate people,
00:45:07 you know, like, I mean, at the end of the day, it's funny, you know, like, but you know, people
00:45:11 are like, I'm not, I'm not going to baptize a baby. And, you know, and then they give their,
00:45:15 their reasoning, you know, some of my Baptist friends is like, cause I'm not going to baptize
00:45:18 someone who's unregenerate. And I'm like, well, then you just need to stop baptizing, you know, 0.97
00:45:22 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. 0.58
00:45:50 than baptizing five adults who have, you know, a conversion testimony, but weren't raised in the
00:45:57 church and are coming in, you know, to faith in their 20s or 30s. In the final analysis,
00:46:02 statistically speaking, you know, if you, you know, just turn the clock forward 10 years, 0.61
00:46:08 there's a good chance that there's going to, I'm going to have a higher percentage of apostasy for,
00:46:12 you know, the five adults that I baptized without a Christian, you know, upbringing than the five 0.77
00:46:16 infants that were raised in the church by christian parents so um yeah that sounds like a very
00:46:21 classical calvinist view of you know what election even is because you know calvin said we can't
00:46:26 really know who is elect or not we can only trust in you know uh faithfulness over a long period of
00:46:32 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 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 welcome your pushback it'd be a fun conversation but i you know i do prescribe to covenant succession
00:46:47 even as um credo baptist and uh yeah and then with the sacraments when it comes to the lord's
00:46:53 supper like i'm not a memorialist or a mere memorialist um i i believe in christ's spiritual
00:46:58 presence um being uniquely there with um with the sacrament of the lord's supper um so you know we
00:47:06 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 much but um but you know more than the average baptist all right everybody's been asking can i
00:47:16 live stream your conference and the answer is a resounding no you will be there in person or you
00:47:22 will not be there at all i'm just kidding you actually can live stream the conference we're
00:47:27 excited to announce we're making it available to anybody and everybody who wants to watch this
00:47:32 conference right as it's happening which is march 1st and 2nd that's a friday and saturday of 2024
00:47:38 What conference am I even talking about? It's called Blueprints for Christendom 2.0. We've got
00:47:44 Pastor Douglas Wilson. We've got Dr. Joe Boot. We've got Brian Sauve. We've got Eric Kahn. And
00:47:49 then of course, yours truly, Joel Webben. We've got seven primary sessions in the conference,
00:47:55 each one being probably 50 to 60 minute long sessions, lectures, sermons, whatever you want
00:48:01 to call them. And then two live panels, each being an hour and a half long. Now, one of the panels
00:48:06 is on biblical patriarchy we're going to have pastor douglas wilson available for that panel
00:48:11 and we decided to get eric khan because eric khan biblical patriarchy let's just be honest it's a
00:48:16 sensitive topic but eric khan i think is known as one of the most nuanced careful and sensitive
00:48:22 individuals especially on the twitter street so we're going to have him as a part of that panel
00:48:26 it'll go really well then the second panel is haunted cosmos live show you've got brian sauvet
00:48:32 and ben garrett talking about the most unhinged things imaginable hopefully some things that are
00:48:38 actually truthful now there will be some truthful things you're going to stick to scripture and when
00:48:42 they speculate and you know they will they'll at least let you know that it's speculation and they
00:48:46 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 you do it go to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries again that's patreon.com
00:48:59 forward slash right response ministries a lot of guys charge 50 bucks 60 bucks 80 bucks we are
00:49:06 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 month live stream all the content and then cancel your subscription and if you do no harm no foul
00:49:18 if you want to stick with us and support this ministry what god's doing through right response
00:49:21 then praise god that's great and we thank you either way technically it's only 10 bucks
00:49:27 go over the last denomination yeah go quick and it's the rca the reformed church in america
00:49:32 this has also not been very hijacked i'm familiar with them yeah the rca received the reconquista
00:49:39 movement the best so um this is not in my list because it's a very liberal denomination that i
00:49:45 don't have the highest hopes for when so what we did on reformation day this past reformation day
00:49:51 all the factions of the Reconquista movement, the Reconquista members in every seven mainline
00:49:57 denomination wrote 95 theses against liberalism tailored to their own denomination and emailed
00:50:03 them to every mainline church. I mean, every mainline church in the country, you know, that
00:50:08 had an email. And we also physically posted copies of our 95 theses on the doors of hundreds of
00:50:14 mainline churches across the country. There's thousands of young people and some pastors as
00:50:20 well, involved in the Reconquista movement. And different denominations received the 95 theses
00:50:26 differently. The ELCA, the bishops all sent out emails saying, oh, these are a group of, you know,
00:50:32 Nazi terrorists, whatever, all sorts of, you know, silly left-wing screeching accusations 0.99
00:50:39 that made no sense at all. But the RCA received the 95 theses very well. They're like, oh, thanks 0.96
00:50:44 for sending us this. This is very interesting. We're going to discuss it in our next synod meeting.
00:50:48 and members of the rca reconquista they've started a organization called the reformed
00:50:54 revivalists of america they've like been invited to like rca general conferences and stuff so
00:51:00 i think of all the reconquistas so far the rca reconquista has been the most successful
00:51:06 generally the dutch reform denominations parallel to the presbyterian denominations
00:51:12 have always been a bit more doctrinally faithful so the um what i mean by that is the uh the rca
00:51:21 has always been more conservative than the pc usa on average uh the i don't know the conservative
00:51:28 dutch reform denominations have always instructed enforced confessionalism more strictly than the
00:51:34 conservative presbyterian denominations um so i i think the dutch reformed are a lot better than
00:51:41 the Presbyterians are at maintaining doctrinal purity. The churches in the Protestant churches
00:51:47 in the Netherlands are, I think, a bit more conservative than the Church of Scotland,
00:51:53 for example. So respect to my Dutch Reformed friends for that. So the RCA, I'm very optimistic
00:51:59 about. The United Methodist Church, I'm not quite as optimistic about. The two I'm most pessimistic
00:52:05 about are the two ones that I did not include in this list of five, the ELCA and the UCC.
00:52:10 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 while yes i would love to still retake the elca because there's a unique scandinavian heritage to
00:52:33 the elca whereas the lcms is more of a german heritage and they represent two different
00:52:38 theological streams within lutheranism rather than just two different ethnicities like lcm the
00:52:43 german lutheranism is a lot more you know by the book mainstream confessional and scandinavian
00:52:48 lutheranism is more pietistic more you know think kierkegaard stuff like that interesting stuff to
00:52:55 retake i'm i'm an irenic ecumenical guy so i would like to see all sorts of different expressions of
00:53:02 christianity healthy and thriving and working for i see different denominations as provinces of the
00:53:06 kingdom of god which makes um it's like nails on a chalkboard to eastern orthodox people when i say
00:53:11 that but you know what i mean so those are the five denominations so do you have any questions
00:53:17 for me about what i believe or about the reconquista movement as a whole yeah um yeah so
00:53:22 you're presbyterian um yeah i'm assuming that you're reformed with your soteriology
00:53:27 is that correct oh yes yes um so that means i get five points of calvinism even though
00:53:34 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 correct we're saved because we are because by grace alone fundamentally and faith and works
00:53:46 flow out of that right right um men and women your views on uh men and women i'm assuming that
00:53:53 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 just it's how do you define that word of course um anyone who believes that a woman should take
00:54:06 her husband's last name which i do believes in some sort of patriarchy right um patriarchy could
00:54:12 mean anything from your children should inherit the father's last name, which the majority of
00:54:18 Americans would still probably believe. It could mean anything from that to women can't sneeze in 0.78
00:54:25 public without their husband's permission. So when we say biblical patriarchy, I confess that 0.76
00:54:32 that's something I have not spent much time thinking about as of now. I'm sympathetic to
00:54:38 people i definitely oppose the feminist movements what should we believe instead of mainstream
00:54:45 feminism that's something i'm not quite decided on at this time yeah i guess that's what i'm
00:54:50 asking so if you're not a feminist uh if you're not egalitarian then you know what what word do
00:54:54 you use like what how do you describe your views of men and women i don't describe myself as
00:54:59 egalitarian or complementarian even though i am against female pastors i call myself a gender
00:55:04 essentialist. So my view of gender roles is they shouldn't be challenged. They also don't need to
00:55:11 be enforced. In middle school, nobody tells the boys and the girls to sit on opposite sides of
00:55:16 the auditorium. It just happens. Men and women are simply different by nature. So I think you
00:55:22 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 egalitarian and complementarian to refer to the question of whether women should be pastors,
00:55:34 because there are some complementarians like N.T. Wright who support female pastors. N.T. Wright
00:55:40 does not like when people argue for female pastors on the basis of men and women can do the same
00:55:45 things. His argument is men and women have different abilities, and that's why they'll 0.66
00:55:50 serve the pastor, the pastoral office in different ways. So he's supporting female pastors from a
00:55:57 complementarian perspective and there's also some egalitarians who just out of obedience to
00:56:04 tradition think of like more liberal catholics who don't think women should be pastors simply
00:56:10 because it's tradition i've heard some catholics they don't believe first timothy 2 12 forbids
00:56:16 women from being pastors they simply don't have female pastors out of obedience to tradition
00:56:21 so i don't think the labels egalitarian and complementarian are necessarily the most helpful
00:56:26 for describing the debate over whether women should be pastors i've always had a complementarian
00:56:33 view of men and women that they complement each other um in in the most abstract sense of the
00:56:38 word i used to support female pastors i used to make arguments for female pastors the whole like
00:56:44 oh women were the first witnesses to the resurrection and all that it was actually my 0.59
00:56:48 girlfriend who tore my argument to shreds and convinced me to um not support female pastors
00:56:53 because she's always been part of the PCA um so yeah I used to when I first converted to
00:56:59 Christianity it wasn't like I immediately abandoned all my left-wing views it took 0.97
00:57:03 two years after converting for me to realize homosexuality is wrong and took me three years 0.99
00:57:09 really three years three and a half years to realize women shouldn't be pastors right it took 0.98
00:57:14 me I went through a process of deconstruction but what I deconstructed was the religion of leftism 0.86
00:57:19 not my Christian faith. So yeah, I'm definitely, women should not be pastors because the Bible 1.00
00:57:26 says they should not be pastors. I, I've heard some arguments for women being pastors, 0.99
00:57:31 but I haven't heard one that does not rely on mental gymnastics. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The reason 1.00
00:57:38 I think, you know, I use biblical Patriarch one, because it's just, it's a very old word.
00:57:43 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 compare and can contrast between uh patriarchy and complementarianism i'm not a huge fan
00:57:55 of the term complementarian um one because it's you know it's the term's 15 minutes old you know
00:58:01 so piper and grudem 1988 uh coined uh the phrase and you know i i do believe that men and women
00:58:09 are created by god uh as uh similar but also distinct and you know the similarities are enough
00:58:15 to where, you know, the woman actually is a suitable helpmate and the distinctions are
00:58:19 enough to where they actually compliment one another. So I'm fine with the basic, you know,
00:58:22 the basic premise, the concept is fine. But this is what I've noticed. I think complementarianism
00:58:29 has come to, it's come to just imply people, you know, it's just assumed, baked into the term
00:58:36 that the differences between men and women are strictly physical. So, you know, so that, you
00:58:42 that there's a difference in role, distinction in role. The distinction in role stems from a
00:58:46 distinction in design, but that distinction at the level of design doesn't go any further than
00:58:51 physical design. So women are called to nurture and to rear children, these kinds of things, 1.00
00:59:01 because that's their physical design. And men are called to work out of the home or be in positions
00:59:05 of combat when it comes to the state and military and those kinds of things because of their
00:59:10 physical frame and, you know, all of it stemming from design. And I think, you know, part of my
00:59:16 problem with that is you read older theologians and, and they just, they have more to say than
00:59:22 that. It's not just men and women are called to different things because they are physically
00:59:25 different. But older theologians, and I think more importantly, scripture talks about not just
00:59:31 physical distinctions between men and women, but the distinction actually goes all the way down.
00:59:35 Uh, so like when the apostle Paul cites the reason for, um, a woman, not, uh, exercising
00:59:41 authority or teaching over a man, uh, he doesn't just give the order of creation, uh, but he
00:59:46 actually cites the order of the fall.
00:59:48 Uh, it was not man who's deceived and became a sinner, but the woman who was deceived and
00:59:51 became a sinner.
00:59:52 Uh, you read, you know, any older theologian, especially before the 1960s, and they're just
00:59:57 going to say it as though it's a matter of fact that, you know, that like with very little
01:00:01 explanation, because in their mind, it didn't need to be explained.
01:00:03 It was just a universal truth that women are more susceptible to being deceived than men.
01:00:08 So not just a physical difference, but there's a psychological, if you want to call it that,
01:00:13 or mental or spiritual or emotional, but it's beyond just the physical distinction.
01:00:17 There are other distinctions as well, rooted in the design, in the makeup of men and women,
01:00:23 that is not only a physical distinction, but emotional, spiritual distinction,
01:00:27 and that that too plays into differing roles.
01:00:31 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 And that works really great with motherhood.
01:00:48 You know, I always think of like Kentonji Brown-Jackson, you know, when she, you know,
01:00:52 when she was on the chopping block, you know, for Supreme Court justice.
01:00:55 And one of the, you know, the big objections was that she had been soft on men who had
01:01:03 harbored, you know, child pornography and pedophilia.
01:01:07 And, you know, and her, her kind of, her mindset is, you know, it seemed to be compassion.
01:01:12 It's like, well, this, this poor young man, you know, he probably didn't have a good mom.
01:01:16 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 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 That's, that's not a mere, you know, physical distinction.
01:01:46 That's, that is a, that's an emotional or mental or psychological or spiritual distinction.
01:01:52 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 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 And I think patriarchy, I'm saying, no, there's a physical difference, but there are other differences as well.
01:02:44 And just one, just all I have to do to prove the argument is one. 0.76
01:02:48 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 And I think the Apostle Paul, I don't think it's arbitrary or random. 0.88
01:02:57 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. 0.79
01:03:05 because a woman was not just because she has hips and breasts, but because she was deceived.
01:03:11 Exactly. Even when I supported female pastors, I recognized that the Bible teaches women are
01:03:18 more easily deceived. I also experienced that in my own personal life because this transgender 1.00
01:03:23 movement, it's a social contagion. Homosexuality is a contagious disease, just like the flu. 1.00
01:03:29 um and it's often social contagions happen a lot more rapidly among groups of girls than among 0.94
01:03:35 groups of guys i think depression is also a contagious disease um that circulates among
01:03:40 girls there's a big link between depression and homosexuality i think my most radically
01:03:45 right-wing view is my views of psychology and mental health that um a lot of what psychologists
01:03:51 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 supporting female pastors i recognize the reality that women are more easily deceived than men
01:04:04 what i also believe and i still think is true in some sense is women because ideas are more
01:04:12 contagious among women women think in groups women are like sort of dogs they act and think
01:04:17 groups men are like cats they act and think more independently um so in some sense women are also
01:04:23 more susceptible to the gospel um because they i think they might have less individualistic pride
01:04:30 we see that um mary the mother of god was a lot more willing to accept god's commands for her
01:04:36 um a lot more than a lot of the male heroes throughout the old testament are it's like god
01:04:41 tells a man to do something like god tells jonah like hey preach to these people jonah's like no
01:04:45 I hate them. I don't want to. And then God tells Mary through the angel that you're literally going
01:04:50 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 side to women being more easily persuaded, more. Yeah. And just to clarify, it's nothing,
01:05:06 in my assessment, it's nothing but positive. There's only the positive side. The only thing
01:05:10 that makes it negative is because it's God's design. And I think it's purposeful. I don't
01:05:16 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 have been theologically and mentally and emotionally just as resilient as Adam. I think
01:05:29 they still would have been different, that Eve would have had just a more, by nature, just a more
01:05:34 natural accepting, following, submissive disposition than her husband. I think that's
01:05:40 actually, that's not just a part of the curse, but that's a part of the design before sin ever
01:05:45 entered the world. So I think it's entirely positive. It only becomes negative when you
01:05:49 take someone who has a different design and then you put them in a male role. That's what makes it 0.99
01:05:55 bad. But if a woman is in a womanly domestic nurturing role that God intends for her, 0.99
01:06:01 then all those things are net positives. They're all strengths. None of them are weaknesses.
01:06:05 In fact, they're vital. Without that component in the home, then the home is, it's cold,
01:06:11 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 men to be men. But it also makes sense in terms of household conversions. When I think about that,
01:06:23 back to the example I was giving earlier of five children coming from good stock,
01:06:28 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 Like, I think, you know, the same kind of thing.
01:06:41 If the husband, you look at statistics, I forget exactly what it is.
01:06:44 You're probably aware.
01:06:45 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 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 Like it's very low.
01:07:11 Yeah, my family's an example of that.
01:07:12 My dad was the first to commit to Christ fully in my family.
01:07:17 In my family, I was the last one to become Christian, but the first one to become conservative,
01:07:22 because even after both my parents became Christian, it took them a much longer time
01:07:27 than it took me to deconstruct the leftism they were, you know, grew up around and stuff.
01:07:31 But yeah, my father was the first one in our family to become a Christian.
01:07:35 He got baptized in a PCA church in 2012, I believe, converted from Judaism.
01:07:41 it's really hard to convert from judaism because there's so much you know you're ostracized by the
01:07:46 jewish community if you do so uh so yeah i really uh that was that was inspirational to me yeah
01:07:52 that's that's amazing that's impressive good for him yeah and most families uh and now he's an
01:07:58 elder at our pc usa church and he prevented a pride flag from going up last june he shot down
01:08:03 that proposal by one of the liberal congregants in our um so so yeah he's uh definitely had a
01:08:11 strong conversion and i just i see in general most of the time when like uh children fall away
01:08:19 from the faith they often have like a religious mother but not a religious father and i know this
01:08:24 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 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 who is a hardcore christian and the dad just sort of goes along with it a lot of u.s presidents only 0.99
01:08:39 went to church because their wives dragged them i think overall um women are generally more
01:08:45 religious than men because just the way you know false teaching spreads among women true teaching
01:08:50 also spreads among women um but in a family i think you really need a religious father if you're
01:08:56 going to have any safe bet that the children are going to stay religious into their adulthood
01:09:00 there's many examples where the mom or the grandma cares a lot about the faith but the children do
01:09:05 not and then that's a recipe for disaster so all i told all the ladies out there whatever you do
01:09:11 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 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 stay away from him no missionary dating no missionary dating um yeah no that's good uh yeah 1.00
01:09:25 It's funny thinking about feminism.
01:09:27 Did you ever read, there's a book, I forget the author's name, but he's Roman Catholic.
01:09:31 It's called Impotent Church, and it just traces, what?
01:09:36 I have not read it, no.
01:09:37 It just traces feminism throughout church history, predominantly through Roman Catholic history.
01:09:44 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 but it was just tracing back and, you know, talking about, you know, the, you know, the
01:09:59 priesthood and, you know, the fact that, you know, Catholic priests couldn't be married and the appeal
01:10:05 for women if they really wanted to serve the Lord was to, you know, to forego, you know, being a
01:10:11 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 of the Catholic infatuation with Mary was because of nuns not being able to marry. And so because
01:10:28 they were single, perpetually single, they would associate, because they still longed, had this
01:10:33 innate longing for motherhood, they would associate with Mary, the mother of Jesus. So when they
01:10:38 thought of Jesus, it's kind of like a Ricky Bobby situation, Will Ferrell, you know, like, well, I 1.00
01:10:42 like to think of the eight pound, six ounce, you know, baby Jesus, you know, so when Catholic nuns 0.99
01:10:47 were thinking about Jesus, they naturally would think about Jesus as a baby because they so badly 0.83
01:10:52 wanted to be mothers, but weren't allowed to. And so they would actually have dolls. Like it was
01:10:56 common to find, uh, cribs in the nuns rooms. They would make cribs and then they would have like,
01:11:01 uh, you know, corn husk, uh, dolls, baby, baby dolls of baby Jesus. And they would be nursing,
01:11:07 you know, pretending. So in their, in their, uh, devotions and quiet time and praying the rosary,
01:11:11 they would be pretending to nurse this baby doll of, of Jesus, you know? And, and so, so much of,
01:11:17 uh, Catholic, um, ethos was surrounding this motherly, nurturing feminine, you know, kind of
01:11:24 thing. And this is like, this is like back with like Anselm, you know, like, uh, I mean, this is
01:11:29 a thousand years old, you know, feminism alive and well in the Catholic church. And, and wouldn't,
01:11:34 you know, it all comes down to forbidding marriage. So. Yeah. Now something I'd like to point out,
01:11:39 and this might make me feminist according to some people on twitter um women can and have had a lot 0.99
01:11:46 of good influence in the church but it's been often through their husbands like a lot of um i 0.99
01:11:52 read this i saw this mormon book title that basically said um thanks to these three queens
01:11:57 they defined what christians would believe for the rest of the centuries and it was just basic
01:12:02 nicene orthodoxy so women have had lots of influence in the church it was often you know
01:12:07 through their through their husbands under the leadership of their husbands because you know
01:12:11 women are supposed to help men not just help men do the dishes or whatever but help men in
01:12:17 all sorts of ways and there have been like their feminists tell this narrative that before the 0.95
01:12:23 feminist movement women never had any influence other than just you know domestic chores and 1.00
01:12:28 raising children and stuff well first of all raising children in itself is a massive influence
01:12:33 because everyone gets their ideas and beliefs from their mother i think it's very important
01:12:39 for women to have good theology because children often the first teacher of every child is their
01:12:44 mother so that's why um women need good theology but also it's like in the middle ages there is 1.00
01:12:49 hildegard von bingen the most the most important medieval uh christian composer so it's feminists 1.00
01:12:57 tell this narrative that it was absolute hell for women before feminism came along every statistic
01:13:03 shows that feminism has made women way more miserable and has made a culture that's a lot 0.99
01:13:08 less safe for women and has done nothing to decrease the abuse of women it's just um caused
01:13:15 women to be abused by um their boyfriends as opposed to their husbands it has done absolutely
01:13:20 nothing to change any of that yeah cool well redeemed zoomer um thank you richard this was
01:13:25 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 And I watched a couple of your videos.
01:13:33 You know, I watched some of it and I didn't know what to expect, but I, you know, I watched
01:13:38 and then just saw you building cathedrals on Minecraft.
01:13:41 And I was like, this is a big moment for me where for the first time in my life, I
01:13:47 realized I'm old.
01:13:50 I was like, what is this?
01:13:52 Building cathedrals on a video game and talking about, you know, denominations.
01:13:56 So interesting.
01:13:58 Thank you.
01:13:59 Well, thanks for having me on.
01:14:00 This is great.
01:14:02 You're welcome.
01:14:03 God bless.