Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

March 28, 2021 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole

01:35:03

Reverend Jamie Franklin

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	I love Danny Paul!
	Come and subscribe to the podcast baby!
	I love Danny Paul!
	Unless another time subscribe with me!
	I love Danny Paul!
	Okay, welcome to The Delling Pod with me, James Delling Pod.
	And I know I always say I'm excited about this week's special guest, but I really am.
	I really am.
	No, it's the Reverend Jamie Franklin, host of the Irreverend podcast.
	Which I listened to this morning on the way to my weekly ride, which is one of the things that keeps me sane.
	And it was an absolute delight.
	I can highly recommend it.
	Jamie and two other... Are they both curates, Jamie?
	Or is one of the vicars as well?
	Yeah, Tom is a curate.
	He's basically a peer, so he's basically the same level as me.
	And then Daniel is a well-established vicar in Salcombe, so yeah.
	Oh, in Salcombe?
	Is he really?
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	Do you know, I'm so glad to have a vicar on the podcast.
	Sorry to use these terms interchangeably.
	I know a curate isn't quite the same as a vicar, is it?
	Is it?
	Well, yeah, well, it's not an identical term, but I think I am a vicar for sure.
	Oh, you are?
	I'm also a curate.
	Yeah, yeah, for sure.
	And I'm a priest, you know, I'm a priest as well, so I'm all of those things.
	And are you one of those priests, because I know that there's sort of different levels, like if you're high church, you quite like being called father.
	Right.
	I don't know where you are in the scheme of things.
	Look, I'm in an Anglo-Catholic church, so a very high church, as high as you can go within the Anglican church, but honestly, James, you know, I'm very, very comfortable being called Jamie and I'm not the kind of person who puts on airs and graces.
	Yeah, no, no.
	Please don't worry about that.
	No, but it's not that.
	I quite like calling priests father.
	So if I slip out occasionally into father, don't think I'm sucking up to you or anything like that.
	I just like it.
	I think it's good.
	And it's interesting that you are high church.
	I think, look, I think like a lot of Anglicans, I yearn for a church that has a sense of purpose and a sense of God, rather than this hideous, watered-down infliction that so many of us have suffered over the years.
	And I was thinking about this today.
	I've been thinking a lot about God recently, and I was thinking about the abominations that were inflicted on me at my prep school and some of the songs that this was in the 1970s and some of the christian songs that we that we learned and i was thinking i mean i i maybe i'm about to name your name your favorite religious song but i i suspect it probably isn't there was an awful one that goes i doubt it
	Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
	And I was thinking, apart from everything else, he couldn't think of anything that would rhyme with obey.
	He had to repeat the rhyme.
	It's an insulting, childish Rhyme which him that the tune is is awful as well and it just if anything was calculated to sort of destroy your faith in in God and destroy your faith in in this religion it would be stuff like that.
	Am I being fair or am I being cruel?
	No I mean I don't I don't think anything you've said is unfair um I'm just trying to think are you so you went to you went to school at Malvern right?
	Yeah yeah so this was a this is my prep school which is now dead it was called Hillstone and right it was it was a feeder school for Malvern and there was a there was a horrible um it wasn't horrible he was just a bit messed up there was the music teacher who
	He molested me in my piano lessons, but we had congregational practice, I suppose, to improve our singing, and he introduced all this really ghastly modern stuff into the repertoire that we had to sing.
	I like old hymns, I like proper stuff, none of this new stuff.
	Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure.
	Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you draw a parallel between your experience of school in the 70s, you said, right, and what's going on today.
	I mean, I went to Ipswich School and I think probably I mean, I'm not saying I had the same experience as you, but I had probably a similar experience in chapel of, you know, fairly kind of uninspiring religion, I guess.
	You know, it didn't really appeal to me in any way.
	We did actually end up with a really good chaplain towards the end of my time there, but most of it was just, you know, It's the kind of thing where you're just sitting, all you care about is just sitting in chapel and, you know, laughing with your friends that, you know, when it says, you know, not not to covet your neighbor's ass or something like that.
	Yeah.
	That's that was what I found.
	That was what I found interesting in chapel.
	Nothing else.
	No sort of.
	No spiritual or intellectual stimulation about it whatsoever.
	But I guess the thing I find interesting, James, is what's the connection there, if any, between that kind of school experience of religion, that kind of prep school religion, and what's going on now in the Church of England?
	Is it that was inculcating in you a sort of nominalism?
	A sort of, you know, a sort of dead religion, what Dietrich Bonhoeffer would refer to as cheap grace, you know, a faith which, or a religious practice which you observe, but which doesn't really make any difference to your life in any way.
	You're just a, you know, you're just another, you're just another sort of, you know, secular Western individualist, or what?
	Am I on the right track there, or what do you think?
	Yeah, I mean, look, I think that I really like the fact that I attended schools in the days when you went to chapel, as we called it, my prep school and actually my public school.
	We went to chapel every day.
	It was compulsory and it became part of the rhythm of your life.
	And although, yes, a lot of the sermons were wet and Yeah, you were reduced to a state of boredom or you spent a lot of time staring at the stained glass windows and just thinking about nothing.
	Nevertheless, it did offer a kind of maybe a hint of the numinous and also it gave you a chance to contemplate in a way that we very rarely do today.
	So I don't resent my religious education.
	And I think it is probably quite a lot to expect of school chapels and chaplains, although there was one amazing one who appeared, I think, after I'd gone, who went and became the conduct at Eton.
	He was a brilliant man, you know, inspirational and so on.
	But I think it's rare to meet inspirational priests at one school, but it does kind of set you up for a life As a person of faith, I think, to a degree, maybe?
	At least you know the stories and the hymns.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	So it's a way of passing Christianity on, on that sort of cultural level, isn't it, which is so under attack today, and which our society wants to positively discourage today, and which to a certain extent is still is still the case, but in public schools.
	Although, I mean, I haven't been involved with a public school since I went to one when I was a teenager.
	But it seems to me, when I look at, for example, what's going on at Eton, or, you know, I used to live around the corner from Winchester College.
	It seems to me that maybe that's not the case so much anymore, at least it doesn't appear to be.
	It appears to be moving in a different direction now.
	I mean, is that right?
	In a good direction or a bad direction?
	Oh, a bad direction.
	Yes, that wouldn't surprise me at all.
	I mean, I've been to a few services at Eton in that magnificent chapel with the extraordinary, I think they are 14th, 15th century wall paintings which were uncovered when they restored it.
	They pulled off some panelling and it was glory to behold.
	The quality of the music there is fantastic but I suspect like a lot of schools they've gone woke.
	And look, it's the story of every institution and I wanted to talk to you about what's happened to the church.
	Before this, just before this podcast, I was, I know this is not, this is not your church or our church, if you like.
	This is the Catholic church.
	But I read, I reread the extraordinary letter that Cardinal, sorry, Archbishop Vigano wrote to President Trump last year.
	And then I read a transcript of the interview he gave.
	And I mean, it's very dark reading.
	It's, it, I think Vigano is actually, is absolutely on the money.
	He's, as you know, he's a very senior member of the Catholic Church.
	He was the nuncio to America, appointed, I think, by the previous Pope, What's his name?
	Benedict, who I think was a much better, much, much closer to being a man of God than the current one, Bergoglio, or Francis, as he's called.
	And what Vergano was saying, I mean, he doesn't pull his punches.
	He was talking about something called the deep church.
	Have you heard this term before?
	Well, I'm not sure.
	I mean, I did read his letters, so I haven't seen this interview.
	I read the letter, but I can well imagine what you mean, but go on.
	Okay, so it will be very familiar to you.
	He describes how The Catholic Church has been eaten away from the inside by people who are clearly not men of God.
	And he calls it the deep church, which is the religious equivalent of the deep state.
	And he describes how, starting with Vatican II, which I'm not very familiar with recent Roman Catholic Church history, but Vatican II is when it all went wrong, when it got infiltrated by these people who weren't really interested in preserving the Catholic faith, but from undermining it.
	And I think something similar has happened to the Church of England.
	It's not about God anymore, it's about Gaia worship, it's about social justice, it's about all the preoccupations of the left.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, yeah, for sure.
	I mean, I don't disagree with any of that stuff you just said.
	I guess, James, you know, one of the sort of controlling thoughts for me about this whole thing over the past year is that I think of it as a kind of apocalyptic event in the technical sense of that term, right?
	So an apocalypse in the Greek technically means an unveiling, right?
	So a sort of drawing back the curtain.
	And so that you can see what's really there.
	So that's what, you know, the apocalypse of John, the book of Revelation, which, you know, I'd be interested to reference a bit more later.
	That's what it means, the word apocalypse.
	We think of the word apocalypse meaning like the end of the world, but it actually means an unveiling of what's really there.
	And that's what the book of Revelation is.
	You know, it's an unveiling of the spiritual realities that underlie this world.
	Right?
	So the way I think about what's happened is that this was going on anyway, right?
	This was all going on anyway, but now we're seeing it for what it actually is.
	And we're seeing, you know, we can see the deep church and we can see the deep state and everything like this.
	And, you know, from the perspective of faith, I mean, obviously in many ways, what's going on is an absolute disaster in so many ways.
	But from the perspective of faith, You know, I suppose I think one has to be discerning and to actually try and observe what the realities are and to have your spiritual eyes open, if you see what I mean.
	And so, yeah, I mean, I was talking to a friend earlier, James, and we were speaking about the church and we were just saying, you know, If you look at the ministry of Christ and you look at the kind of things that he went around doing, I mean, could you imagine if he was sort of petitioning to the Romans to do more recycling or going around saying that there needed to be quotas for BAME candidates in ministry?
	It just isn't what Jesus was about.
	You know, it's just not what he was doing.
	And if you look at the interaction, the interplay between Jesus and his culture, right, there were, of course, a committed band of disciples and followers, many of whom found his message very, very difficult and then abandoned him at various points.
	And indeed, at the end, they all abandoned him.
	Temporarily.
	But what did the world, if you like, do to Jesus?
	What did those in power do to Jesus?
	Well, you know, there was a climactic confrontation between Jesus and the world, and the world killed him because they didn't like what he represented, because he represented the truth, he represented judgment upon their actions, he represented righteousness and integrity, he spoke He spoke prophetically to the powers of the day, and they killed him, right?
	And so if we follow a crucified Messiah, You know, what's our expectation for the way that the world will respond to us?
	Do we expect the world to like us?
	Do we expect the world to think well of us?
	Do we expect the world to pat us on the back and say, oh, well done, you've got the right agenda when it comes to climate change, or it's great that you're... I mean, have you seen this thing that Douglas Murray has put up on The Spectator?
	I mean, he's found, somehow, this leaked document from the Church of England has got into his hands, right?
	Have you seen this?
	No, no.
	It's a gender that's coming out of there.
	Oh, well, it's on the SPEC website, but this agenda that the Church of England are going to put out as a result of their anti-racism task force.
	So we're talking about widespread changes to the Church's life as a result of this task force, which will include things like, well, there's this whole thing around statues, so contextualising statues so that they don't cause as much hurt and offence to people.
	Personally, James, I find that whole notion offensive, but apparently my offense is an irrelevance.
	But anyway, there's that.
	And then there's more quotas, just quotas everywhere, right?
	So they want to have a situation whereby every shortlist for a position includes a BAME candidate.
	I think it was every position.
	So whenever there's a post, there's got to be a BAME person on it.
	Doesn't matter who it is, just there has to be one, right?
	Another thing, they want to have 30% of ordinands, those are people training for ministry, to come from a BAME background, right?
	When, I mean, There's a whole theological problem with this.
	But apart from anything else, I mean, obviously, I don't agree with the whole idea of quotas per se.
	Target is achieved.
	That will be so over-representative, you know, it wouldn't, it wouldn't, I mean, of the population in general.
	But then if you, if you factor in, you know, Church of England churches, which are probably, you know, I don't actually know, but I imagine that 95% white, right?
	So it's, so it's massively over, it's massively over, over-representative.
	But James, I mean, the thing I want to say is, you know, it's just go back to the Anglo-Catholic thing for a minute, because this is really interesting.
	I think there's, There's a fundamental secularization of the church that's at play, right?
	By which I mean that There's a loss of belief in a basic sense, in the supernatural, in the existence of God, in God's activity in the world, and so on.
	And I think that this thing with the quota, especially when it comes to ordinance, is particularly manifest.
	And I'll tell you why.
	It's because when you go through the ordination process, so I've been living this process for six years now, you know?
	And so when you sort of first go forward with intrepidation, Because you don't know how people are going to respond to you when you say, oh, you know, I think I might be called to be a priest or whatever.
	You go forward with intrepidation.
	And from the minute you start having those conversations, the people you speak to, who are generally older priests, say to you, well, there are lots of questions we've got to answer in this process, but The number one question that we need to answer, and the most important question, is, is God calling you to this ministry?
	Is God calling you to this ministry?
	And if the answer's yes, then, you know, there may be other things that we need to sort out, but, you know, essentially, you know, if the answer's yes, and you feel it's yes, and we feel it's yes, and other people feel it's yes, then great.
	If the answer's no, if God is not calling you to this ministry, then it doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter about anything else.
	You can't do it.
	You should not do it.
	So, okay, so you take that.
	Okay, so that's great.
	Fantastic.
	I mean, I think that's brilliant.
	But then put that alongside this idea of having quotas, right?
	So there's already a quota on having 50% female ordinance.
	Now there's going to be a quota on 30% BAME ordinance.
	How do we know that's the will of God?
	How do we know that God wants 50% women and 30% fame?
	It would seem to me to be a reasonable assumption.
	To say that that's probably, you know, that's probably something we don't know.
	And I think the aspect of it, which I think is quite pernicious, James, if I may say so, is that you're dealing with people's lives here, right?
	It's a big thing to train for ordination.
	You know, you give up your job.
	I had to go and live in a college for two years.
	Most people go for three if they're young and they haven't done theological studies.
	You uproot your family, you move three times in six years, you devote your life to the ministry.
	What if you get a BAME candidate and you're not really sure, maybe they should do it, maybe they shouldn't, it's a bit of a risk, but oh well, there's a quota, you know, push them forward.
	But you get a white candidate, same situation, eh, Maybe not, you know?
	Do you see what I mean?
	It's just, it's not in keeping with a view that there is a God and he calls some people to ministry and some people not.
	Do you see the point I'm making?
	Totally.
	Totally.
	I do.
	If you have quota systems, you're going to inevitably have people who are unsuited, It's analogous, I think, to... I once went to speak at a girls' public school, and it had one of those go-ahead headmistresses who basically wanted all her girls to be astronauts and welders and things like that.
	And the result was that there was tremendous pressure on the girls to have these go-ahead...
	sort of male brain careers, basically, to which they almost certainly most of them weren't suited.
	And those who might have wanted to do other, you know, to do more feminine things were sort of marginalized.
	And I'm not sure that it was a win-win situation for anybody, you know, that both parties suffered.
	And this is the same.
	And you were talking earlier about the apocalypse, about the The sort of unveiling that's taking place.
	What we're seeing now is the acceleration to an extraordinary degree of a process that's been happening over decades, you know, throughout.
	You and I have been witnessing it through our lives.
	But this year, the last year, has just been gobsmacking.
	I mean, what you've just described to me is the final nail in the coffin, I think, of the Church of England.
	It's just destroyed.
	It's just given up the ghost, pretty much.
	I mean, I'm amazed that you, even, there's three of you at least, that have got through the system.
	I mean, how did you, what was it like for you three chaps?
	How did you get on with it?
	Because I imagine you were surrounded by wokery and stuff that didn't pass the sniff test.
	Yeah, James, James.
	You know, I'm in a slightly invidious position because many people at my college, I made great friends there.
	Yeah.
	And, you know, the vice principal, for example, has been really nice to me.
	He's helped me out towards the end of my PhD and stuff like that.
	So I don't want to speak badly of the institution as a whole, but honestly, I mean, yeah, I almost think that I could probably shock you.
	even with your experience of what it was like being at Theological College, being a conservative, a theological and political conservative.
	You know, it was like, firstly, it was like my whole life was politicized, including my family and life with my family and my children.
	The moment you step out the door, you're in a hostile political environment.
	And if you don't have the right views, you are ostracized by, I would say, 70% of the community, in a very, very obvious way.
	So I made some good friends there, you know, five or six people in the college were sort of on the same page, you know, different churchmanships and everything, but essentially I made a few friends.
	But I mean, Yeah, James, how have I got to this point?
	I think that I started out the process and I knew I was, I knew I inclined towards conservatism and I definitely knew I was a theological conservative, but I guess I guess you have to find a way of having integrity in it, right?
	So I did believe I was called to be a priest, and I do believe that.
	And I suppose you have to be prudential in terms of when you say what and to whom.
	And unfortunately, in the discernment process, I think there is a feeling that the best thing to do is You know, basically to keep your head down and then as things go on, you know, and you get more secure, then you can say more.
	But I think the situation now is, James, that I feel so strongly about what's going on.
	I mean, it's not that I don't care.
	I mean, because I care about the consequences to a degree, right?
	Because my income and my house and the future of my ministry is dependent upon what happens now, and to a certain extent, what I do.
	I think that in order for me to have integrity in this situation, I need to speak the truth.
	And if people don't speak the truth and just keep their heads down, then there will be no resistance.
	And the world will look at the church and it will be like 1930s Germany again.
	And people will say, you know, why was there nobody in the church saying anything?
	Why did the church accept this?
	And this is more important than just my salary or my home.
	The church needs to have a prophetic voice.
	And I would never arrogate to myself that status of being a prophet, but I'm convinced that this is the prophetic message, that the church is failing to confront A work of darkness, a great work of darkness.
	And I believe that that's what's going on.
	It is a work of darkness.
	It is diabolical.
	It's literally diabolical what's going on.
	And I think the, you know, it's become so clear to me over the last year, the green agenda, the BLM agenda, these things have been accelerating at the same time as this COVID thing.
	And these, these are all interlinked and all of the, it's, I mean, it's, All of the powers of the world are getting behind these things, right?
	So even things you would never have even expected, like the Queen, for example, getting behind the vaccine.
	I mean, I could still hardly believe that that happens, you know?
	So the Queen, she's the head of the Church of England, right?
	And our monarch.
	And she's been scrupulously apolitical.
	As far as I'm aware, for her, what, 60 years, right?
	But now she chooses to endorse a vaccine, which is clearly unsafe and untested.
	Why is she doing it?
	Somebody's lent on her.
	I mean, she's never done anything like that before.
	But it's not just her.
	It's everyone.
	It's all the governments.
	I mean, it's an exaggeration, obviously, because there are some Some people, some governments you don't fit into that, but governments, media, the church, monarchy, every institution has to pledge fealty to this dark ideology.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, I'm going on a bit of rant here and I can go into any of this stuff in more detail, but for me to have integrity as a person, I need to speak the truth.
	I totally agree.
	I totally agree.
	I mean, this is, look, God is truth.
	I mean, that's the deal, isn't it?
	If you don't understand that, then you're kind of missing one of the key points about everything, I think.
	Tell me what you think is satanic about what's going on.
	What's satanic about it?
	Well, I mean, let me say this as well, James.
	I've never really spoken like this about very much in my life.
	A couple of years ago, I probably would have been quite cynical about using language like this.
	I think it's grown in me.
	You know, I was struck by listening to Jonathan Miles Lee last time on your show, when he said this is about a battle between the forces of good and evil, right?
	And this calls for spiritual dissent.
	I think he's right about that.
	And I think the reason it's diabolical is, you know, you think about the words of Christ, right?
	Christ believed Satan was real.
	He didn't think that was a kind of a metaphor or anything like that.
	You know, so he says he calls Satan a liar, a deceiver, the deceiver of the nations, and a murderer.
	That's what Satan is.
	And if you look what's going on at the moment, that is it.
	The nations are being deceived, people are being Manipulated, controlled, and the upshot of it is to destroy humanity.
	And there are many ways as well.
	I mean, if you read the book of Revelation, there's many sort of... I mean, the whole figure of the Antichrist is interesting, right?
	Because it's an inversion of Christ, right?
	So this whole thing is an inversion of the gospel.
	It's a false gospel.
	And when you get rid of Christianity, you don't end up with neutral secularism.
	You end up with another religion, and you end up with religious practices.
	So again, like this thing with BLM, right?
	Why are people kneeling?
	Who are they kneeling to?
	I mean, literally, who are they kneeling to?
	What are they kneeling to?
	I've got no idea.
	I mean, it's a religious act of submission, right?
	The way the vaccine has been spoken about.
	I mean, I just went on Facebook.
	I hardly ever go on there.
	But now, you scroll down the newsfeed and you have, you know, someone has written something and then it's an advert for the vaccine.
	Then someone's written something, then another advert for the vaccine.
	And it says things like, every vaccination Spreads hope or something like that.
	And Matt Hancock himself said in the House of Commons, we're looking forward to the day when we can inject hope into every arm.
	Like the vaccine is Christ.
	Like the vaccine is our savior.
	And church leaders have been talking like this.
	I mean, I saw a video of prominent church leaders, and they were talking about how we needed hope in these days.
	And I was thinking, all right, that's great.
	They're going to talk about Christ now.
	And they start talking about the vaccine and how everyone needs the vaccine.
	Like the vaccine has a kind of salvific Yes, there definitely has been a Christ-shaped hole in the Church of England of late, and I think in the Catholic Church.
	I mean, look at Justin Welby.
	What does he believe?
	Does he believe in God?
	I mean, what's he about?
	I mean, to be honest, James, I probably see as much as you do.
	But when it came to... So my understanding is they tend to go, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, you tend to get a liberal followed by a conservative, followed by a liberal and so on, to kind of, you know, have some kind of representation.
	And the funny thing about Justin, I think, is that he came after Rowan Williams, who was considered to be a liberal.
	And he came from HTB.
	Do you know HTB, James?
	Do you know what that is?
	I know of it.
	I mean, I must say, I've never found it very tempting.
	It's a kind of evangelical church, isn't it?
	Yeah, sort of charismatic evangelical church.
	And that's where the Alpha course came from, if you've come across that.
	Yes, tell me about, what's your view of the Alpha course?
	Well, yeah, I mean, I think it's really good for all sorts of reasons.
	I mean, I've been involved in running Alpha courses and I've always found them really profitable.
	I mean, I don't use the... So what the basic idea is, you have a big meal with everyone who comes, right?
	So people invite their friends or whatever.
	You have a big meal and then you listen to a talk on a particular subject to do with some kind of basic, you know, fundamental of the Christian faith.
	And then around your tables, you have an opportunity to discuss whatever it is.
	And I think that idea is great because we don't live in the kind of age now where people pay deference to authority figures, right?
	So, you know, people have to have the opportunity to discuss and to debate and to share what they honestly think about things.
	And that works, you know.
	I mean, I've seen it work for people.
	You know, lots of people come to faith through it, but then other people, I think it's just a great opportunity to clarify their ideas or get involved in a community or whatever.
	When I've run them, I've always wanted to do the talks myself or to have speakers come and do it.
	And I think that, you know, one of the interesting things about the Alpha course, and it has been extremely influential, right, so it's significant, what I'm about to say, is that I think that it doesn't have a very strong emphasis on either the question of suffering or the question of, the kind of questions that we've just been talking about, the possibility of
	You know, being persecuted for one's faith or having courage in the face of persecution.
	What it does, I think, and to be honest with you, I would kind of extend this critique to a certain extent to HTB, but obviously it's a generalization, is it promotes a view of Christianity which is like, Christians are middle class, wealthy.
	They're like Nicky Gumbel, right?
	Lots of them are lawyers.
	They live in affluent suburbs of London.
	And if you become a Christian, You can have faith, but you can also have this kind of glitz as well.
	There's also lots of young people involved, right?
	Lots of young, good-looking people, right?
	So if you go into an HGV church, there'll often be young, good-looking people leading worship on the stage, right?
	And so the idea is, this is a vision of the Christian life which is appealing on that level.
	And that's where I think the problem is, because, you know, Is that really the message?
	Isn't the message, you know, take up your cross and follow me?
	Do you think it's fair to say that it's found a Blairite third way between God and mammon?
	Yeah, I think it probably is.
	I think, yeah, I think it probably is.
	Now, as I say, James, it's a generalization.
	There are loads of great Christians in HDB and there are good things that come out of it, but I think that that's the difficulty, is that if you prepare people, if you basically say to people, look, you've become Christian, get your life cleared up, you know, stop taking drugs or, you know, stop being an alcoholic and you can have this kind of
	this nice middle class Christian life, you know, what happens when actually I can't kick my heroin addiction or actually my marriage is broken up or, you know, the government wants to inject me with a vaccine, which I don't want, you know, what do you do?
	So I think that that's the problem.
	It's almost like, I don't know if you've heard the term prosperity gospel.
	I think it's almost like a prosperity gospel.
	Yeah, I haven't heard that term before.
	No, that would figure.
	So that's the background that Justin Welby comes from.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So then that's interesting, isn't it?
	Because Welby came as a conservative, you know?
	So somebody who would be conservative on issues around, for example, sexuality, marriage.
	He would have a high view of scripture.
	He certainly wouldn't have any business denying the resurrection or anything like that.
	But then he comes and something has changed.
	And I can't say what or why, but now he appears to be fully on board.
	He's in the vanguard now of the progressive movement around all of these issues.
	So how has that happened?
	I don't know.
	Has it got something to do with The background in HDB, the lack of, you know, the lack of those, that kind of, that depth that I was, that I was, yeah, like I was referring to maybe.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	A lack of grit, maybe, or a lack of discernment.
	I mean, I think ultimately that's what this is when Christians get mired in it.
	I think it is a lack of discernment.
	I don't really know what else it can be.
	So yeah, I think so.
	I mean, to be honest, James, I don't really know anything about Justin Welby very much, any more than you.
	I just see the fruit of it.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Are you going to get persecuted for this?
	I mean, could you lose your job for speaking?
	He's the boss, isn't he?
	He's the Archbishop of Canterbury.
	Are you allowed dissent in the current Church of England?
	Well, yeah, I mean, I was talking to someone who knows what he's talking about, about this in the church the other day, and he said, well, you know, it is a free country, right?
	So, I mean, technically, it is still a free country.
	So I can say what I like, as long as it's, you know, as long as it's not sort of libelous or I'm inciting people to You know, break the law or anything like that, which I don't think I am.
	But again, James, you know, I've come to the point where I'm willing to accept the consequences.
	Yeah, I'm willing to accept the consequences.
	And if the church wants to try and persecute me, You know, so be it.
	It hasn't happened so far, and I would have thought it would have done already if it were going to, so it hasn't happened so far, so I've just got to assume that nobody's got a problem with it.
	What's your parish like?
	Urban or rural?
	Yeah, so we're just south of the city centre of Nottingham and we're in a sort of, well, it is a council estate, but there are some private residences there as well.
	And yeah, so it's ironically, James, it's working class and we have a real spread of BAME people in our congregation.
	And we have a mixture of You know, working class people, middle class people.
	And yeah, so that's what we are.
	I mean, I guess in that sense, we do stand in some continuity with the tradition of Anglo-Catholicism, which really gets going in the 19th century.
	And because the centralised church didn't have any time for it, Anglo-Catholic clergy did end up ministering in slums and poor areas.
	And that's often where the Anglo-Catholics have been.
	Right, I was going to ask you about that.
	Presumably they identify you as an Anglo-Catholic and therefore choose particular parishes where you're going to go down well.
	Is that right?
	Yeah, kind of.
	So, when you're at the end of your time at theological college, you basically get offered curacies by whichever diocese you're in, and then you go and check them out, and you kind of, you know, you see if it's the right thing type thing.
	So, but I was released from, I was in the Winchester diocese, and they released me because they didn't have anything for me, and so I had to sort of look around.
	So, I, you know, I found this parish here through a mutual contact, and I just ended up here.
	So, So, you know, we're southerners, really, James.
	I'm from Essex and, you know, I lived in Winchester and Canterbury and Oxford.
	So, you know, the Midlands is not is not my area, really.
	Right.
	Yes.
	I was thinking of, you know, Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, I'm sure you do, you know, the sea of faith was once too at the full and round us sure lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
	But now I only hear it's melancholy long withdrawing roar.
	When I first came across that poem, I sort of thought, yeah, whatevs, you know, Matthew.
	But now I totally feel His pain.
	I mean, I don't know when he wrote that poem.
	It must have been about, what, 1860s, maybe?
	Yeah.
	So even then, he was feeling the faith ebbing away and his sense of despair at what was coming.
	Because there's something almost visionary about that poem.
	He saw what we're experiencing now.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Yeah.
	And in some ways, James, it is actually, I mean, what's going on is horrifying.
	But it is a very interesting time to be alive, because I think those visionaries like Matthew Arnold, who I have to confess, I don't know as much about Matthew Arnold, but it puts me in mind of Friedrich Nietzsche in particular.
	And oh, I've forgotten his name now.
	The guy who wrote The Darkling Thrush.
	What's his name?
	I can't remember his name.
	I've read several of his books.
	He'll come back to me in a minute.
	The point is, there were these people who understood the significance of the decline of Christianity.
	So, Nietzsche was, of course, rejected Christianity, but at the same time he understood The significance of the civilizational drift away from it.
	And the reason he understood this is because he was a philologist and he studied ancient cultures, right?
	So he understood the difference that Christianity made to the Greco-Roman world.
	And he understood that it was essentially a complete overturning of the values of that world.
	So, I mean, I guess probably the central idea of it is that All human beings are made in the image of God, that they should all be treated as though they have sort of infinite dignity, as immensely valuable and as deeply loved.
	And that, again, is something that the cross symbolizes in so many ways, you know, this death, That the son of God himself died on behalf of all, you know, including the lame, including the, as Nietzsche would put it, you know, the botched, the weak, the rejected.
	This was something Nietzsche understood, but at the same time he actually despised, despised Christianity for this reason, because of his kind of aristocratic inclination.
	There's an amazing Christian theologian called David Bentley Hart who says about Nietzsche that he had the good sense to despise Christianity for what it really was, which is inverted now.
	Despise Christianity for what they imagine it to be, but they don't realize that they get all their values from Christianity and that their entire moral framework is formed by Christianity.
	Right.
	So anyway, so Nietzsche, he was, for this reason, he was deeply ambivalent about the decline of Christianity.
	And you know, have you ever heard the parable of the madman?
	James, you know that one by Nietzsche?
	No, tell me.
	All right, so it's a parable that Nietzsche told, right?
	So there are these people hanging around in a marketplace, and they're all kind of chatting to each other, and the day is drawing to a close, and they're buying and selling whatever, and then suddenly this crazy, haggard, maniacal madman just runs into the marketplace, and he's holding a lantern, and he starts saying, He starts sort of ranting and raving and saying things like, God is dead and we've killed him.
	God is dead and now the earth is untethered from its mooring.
	Now we've wiped away the stars from the horizon with a sponge and what will become of us?
	God is dead and we are his murderers.
	And then the people are kind of They're sort of looking at him in this kind of bemused way, and they don't really understand what he's, you know, who is this guy?
	What's he going on about?
	And then the madman, he stops and he looks around, and I think he drops his lantern, right?
	And then he retires because he sees his time has not yet come, right?
	And that's where the famous phrase, God is dead, comes from.
	Okay, so yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So the point being, Not that there was a being called God, and he's died, but that we have killed the concept of God, right?
	Now the Earth is untethered from its mooring.
	We've wiped away the stars from the horizon, you know?
	Where are we drifting now?
	Where are we going?
	But the people at that stage, in the 19th century or whatever, they didn't understand this.
	They thought they could just carry on as normal, and that Christianity would continue to exert this benign influence on their Yes.
	They didn't believe it anymore.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	But the thing I'm saying is, he says at the end, my time has not yet come.
	And I think, James, that that time is now, basically.
	Yes.
	I mean, I think it is.
	I think it's... Because I think what's happening... Yeah, you go, you go.
	No, no.
	I mean, I wish I could disagree with you.
	Yeah.
	I think we're here.
	What's what I said at the beginning about end times?
	And I don't think any of us really expected it at all.
	I remember one of my best experiences, I went to Mount Athos with an American university friend of mine and we went round the various monasteries and There are some extraordinary things there.
	There's one, I think it's Magistra Lavra, one of the really big monasteries, where you see on the frescoes of cities collapsing.
	And there's one, these are sort of 14th century frescoes, You can see a mushroom cloud in the background.
	What?
	How?
	And you see these creatures, the sort of cockroaches and scorpions emerging from the wreckage.
	But the thing that made the biggest mark on me, I went to this skeet, which is like a satellite monastery, a sort of junior monastery.
	I think it was Serbian Orthodox.
	I can't remember.
	But I do remember vividly the priest who greeted us at the entrance.
	I mean, you know, it's very hot there and, you know, you walk a long way to get to these.
	They're quite remote and while you're there you don't eat in great quantities because, of course, you've got monks feeding you.
	But I do remember Father Seraphim at the Prophet Iliu skeet, this old man with these very piercing blue eyes, and one of the monks brought us this glass of of well water with blob of sherbet at the bottom to refresh us.
	And there I got a taste of God, of the divine.
	And the priests were very concerned with end times.
	This would have been back in the early 90s, very concerned with end times.
	And well, I expect there are more concerned with it now, those that are still there.
	Yeah, yeah.
	James, can I pick up on this thing about end times?
	Because I've been thinking about it and I've been thinking about what I'd like to say or to ask you.
	So, again, I've always been reticent about this, you know, saying, well, you know, this is the end or whatever.
	Because I imagine everyone thinks that at some point in their lives, you know, could this be the end of the world?
	There have been times in history which probably seemed like the end, right?
	So, for example, the fall of the Roman Empire must have felt pretty cataclysmic if you were going through it.
	But I think what feels different now is we're in a situation where So, I've just got open in front of me the book of Revelation, right?
	So, in the book of Revelation, I'm not an expert in this at all, but in the 20th chapter of the book of Revelation, it talks about Satan being thrown into a pit and bound for a thousand years, right?
	And then there's this passage which says, when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the earth, that is Gog and Magog.
	to gather them for battle and their number is like the sound of the sea.
	And they marched up over the broad earth and surrounded the camp of the saints in the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them.
	And as I say, I'm not an expert, but what that sounds like to me is it sounds like all the nations of the earth, which I understand Gog and Magog, I think a kind of symbolic code for all the nations, basically everyone, gathered together in a large army And they attack the camp of the saints, right?
	Which represents the righteous, the holy ones and so on.
	Now, it seems to me that in order for something like that to happen, there would need to be some kind of global coordination.
	And the technology for that hasn't been available until now.
	Even 30 years ago, or even, I think even 20 years ago, you know, I was, There was a significant portion of my childhood when there was no internet in my house, right?
	So this has only just become possible.
	And I can see...
	I can see that it might be going somewhat in this direction.
	There does appear to be a global coalition.
	I've become more and more convinced by it.
	I think that, apart from anything else, there are telltale signs like, for example, the fact that the IMF tried to blackmail the president of Belarus into, you know, doing a lockdown.
	The president of Tanzania has mysteriously died.
	Did you know about this?
	I share your doubts about his dying of natural causes, definitely.
	I mean...
	Yeah, I read like, you know, COVID-related death or something like that.
	I mean, it's very bizarre, isn't it?
	But anyway, the point I'm making is I can see that this could be what's happening, that we may be moving towards a global totalitarian dictatorship.
	And I think I do think that vaccines are part of it.
	I don't I don't know.
	I don't know why vaccines I imagine it's because what they what they really want is to have a situation where They know everything about us, including what kind of health treatments we've had and so on.
	And they can use this information to control us, essentially.
	I mean, and this is already going on in China, isn't it?
	With their sort of social credit system and all this kind of stuff.
	So, yeah, I mean, it feels...
	Do you not think also that it removes our kind of God-created humanity?
	It takes us from our natural state into something that's unnatural.
	I mean, you get the technocrats talking about transhumanism and that's a good thing, as though there's a kind of synthesis between are human clay and technology.
	It's almost like humans playing God and creating... Yeah, I mean, I've not read The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab, but I did read COVID-19 and the Great Reset.
	I read an article on, I think, is that website called Winter Rogue about the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
	Yeah, it's evil, James.
	It's diabolical.
	And it's mixed up with the, you know, the depopulation movement.
	And this goes back to what I was saying about the, you know, when you reject the Christian premises, you can no longer have the Christian conclusion, right?
	So you can't, it's not easy, let's say, to hold on to the conclusion that human beings are infinitely valuable, made in the image of God, and that we should respect and protect them.
	If you've rejected the Christian the Christian framework.
	And I think you see that with somebody like David Attenborough, for example.
	It appears to be that Bill Gates is mixed up with this as well.
	Johnson himself has made comments about depopulation in the past.
	Oh, totally.
	And his father, of course.
	No, I think you're right.
	I mean, I think Malthusianism, which goes back, I mean, oddly enough, Tertullian was talking about this in what, the 5th century?
	When was Tertullian around?
	A Carthaginian priest?
	Tertullian is a lot earlier than that.
	I think he's 3rd century.
	He might even be 2nd.
	Okay, well, Tertullian was lamenting how the world was overpopulated and how there would soon not be enough resources to feed everyone.
	So this has been a preoccupation.
	David Attenborough.
	And of course, the Georgia Guidestones.
	You know about the Georgia Guidestones?
	No, no, I don't know about this.
	Oh, okay.
	So, back in the 1970s, I think, this mysterious stone tablet, or I think series of stone tablets, appeared in Georgia.
	in the US, and it had all these Ten Commandments-like slogans on it to do with the optimal population of the Earth, which was considerably less, I might tell you, than the population even at the time.
	So it purported to be a kind of a tablet from on high, but of course it was man-made.
	But people like David, then there was the Club of Rome, which very much bound up with the environmental movement, with I think the same people who were behind the technocracy movement, because this is obviously a long, long plan, the Rockefellers and so on.
	They came up with that wonderful phrase, the earth has a cancer, the cancer is man.
	And of course, um, uh, what's he called?
	Um, the economist, um, known as the doom slayer.
	What was he called?
	Um, uh, Simon, um, something, Simon, um, my brain's not working.
	Um, he pointed out that the, if you compare, um, books about man's relationship with the animal kingdom.
	The ones before, say, the 1950s have this understanding that the world is kind of man's domain and the creatures of the earth are, you know...
	The man may have a responsibility towards them as Earth's guardian, but basically these things are there for the man's use and enjoyment and so on.
	And then there comes a point where there's a shift in thinking, and instead of analysing say, birds in terms of their use to mankind.
	So, you know, crows are a bit of a pain because they peck out the eyes of sheep and of lambs and things, and they're a bit of a pest and need controlling.
	You suddenly get this notion appearing, which I think is... Oh God, I need to... I made the mistake of having some nuts before this, and they're just starting to do that thing where they creep down your throat.
	Yeah, I know the feeling.
	Yeah, this idea now that we are just, that human beings are just one species next to bacteria and viruses and so on, and we're all equal.
	And I've never felt that.
	I've always, you know, not in a kind of stupid way, but I think We humans are great.
	On balance, we do more good than evil, and we've created wonderful things.
	Yeah, yeah.
	In the cosmic hierarchy, we are in between angels and apes, aren't we?
	We're part angel and part animal.
	And that's how the medieval world saw human beings, in this kind of intermediary priestly position between heaven and and the rest of creation.
	Yeah.
	And this is, again, you know, sorry to keep going on about this, but this is a diabolical inversion of that to put human beings beneath other animals, essentially.
	Yeah.
	So, but let me, James, can I ask you something?
	Yeah.
	You know, you were talking on the last episode, I think, I think it was your last episode anyway, with Jonathan.
	With Jonathan, yeah.
	This, this red, yeah, with this, this red pill, black pill thing, right.
	And I don't, I don't know whether you have the same sort of existential condition as me at the moment.
	But the way I sort of experience this is I go through periods of almost trying to convince myself that, you know, this isn't going to happen in the way that I worry it's going to happen.
	And then feeling like actually it really is going to happen, you know.
	So almost, I mean, I have, you know, I always have hope in Christ, but I also have this sort of feeling of anxiety that comes over me very, very powerfully from time to time.
	And I almost feel like it's a kind of spiritual thing, right?
	But in fact, I would say it is a spiritual thing.
	But there are, again, I was talking to my American friend today, a friend at Cambridge, and he was saying, well, yeah, it looks bad.
	And it looks really bad in Britain.
	I mean, we're, you know, Scotland is worse than us.
	Canada is worse than us.
	But we're really bad.
	We're the league of awfulness.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, it's all, it's terrible what's going on here.
	But if you look at America, there are significant exceptions there, right?
	So like, Florida, I think, Indiana, I think there are at least a few other states as well.
	South Dakota, South Carolina.
	Yeah, I was talking to a priest in Alabama the other day, and they have had some stuff, but it's essentially over there.
	In California, I was talking to another priest who's in California, and yeah, it's bad, but they don't have enough police to police it, and everyone's just ignoring it, right?
	So it is bad what's going on, and there is a degree to which it looks like it's kind of proceeding at a pace.
	And every time you think, well, Parliament's surely going to do something now, they just don't do anything.
	And it's just, you know, like this policing bill.
	You know, they're talking about putting people in jail for 10 years for protesting.
	Protesting, I know, yeah.
	You know, and the Parliament's voting it through.
	It's literally unbelievable.
	But anyway, so you think it's going to stop and it doesn't, right?
	It just keeps on going on and on and on.
	But I guess my question to you is, when you look at, say, what's going on in America, and for example, you know, with Sweden or whatever, I mean, do you think that they're just going to, do you think they're just going to eventually sort of roll over, you know, the Great Reset will just steamroller over these states, or what do you think is going to happen?
	Do you have any idea about that?
	I think if you listen to Archbishop Vigano, and I think he's obviously got his finger on the pulse, I think this is going to be a global thing.
	What I hear from other people I've had on the podcast, They feel that the West is going to suffer most.
	That it's going to be less bad in the former Eastern European countries.
	I mean, I think Putin's Russia is a good bet right now.
	I think that perhaps South America will be less bad.
	Africa, I'm not sure about.
	Oddly enough, that China Although I'm not saying that China is exactly a white hat, given that the Chinese Communist Party basically invented the lockdown and gulled us into thinking this was the solution.
	For example, if you had to take a vaccine, they're not vaccines of course right now, but if you had to take any of the vaccines on offer in order to get your leave passed, your papyrin bitter, The ones you take will be the Russian one and the Chinese one, because neither of those are gene-altering therapies.
	They're actually, I believe, fairly traditional vaccines.
	I have a family member in Hong Kong right now.
	In an odd way, even though that's CCP controlled, I just get the impression that, in an odd way, the Chinese are not as far down this Great Reset as we are.
	I mean, okay, what the Great Reset will do is turn us into serfs and there'll be a social credit system, which the Chinese kind of pioneered.
	But at the same time, I think what we're going to experience in the West will be more pernicious.
	Right.
	But it's like Laos flea time, isn't it?
	So there is no settling the point of precedency between Laos and a flea.
	It's going to be fairly grim everywhere.
	And actually, let me ask you a question, which is, can you recommend any Here I am, I'm coming closer to God, but there's no way I'm about to embark upon an alpha course.
	That just makes me, just that would put me off Christianity.
	And yet I do very much find myself being, my faith being At once tested and strengthened in these strange times.
	Is there anything you can particularly recommend for reading that can give me solace or help me understand what's going on?
	Help you understand what's going on now?
	Well, I think that, you know, there have been visionaries from the past who've foreseen this.
	Do you not think?
	Maybe.
	I think trying to discern the signs of the time, the book of Revelation is a very good shout at the moment.
	But yeah, I mean, yes, Lewis.
	Yeah, I mean, I think I think trying to discern the signs of the time, the Book of Revelation is a very good shout at the moment.
	You know, James, all my sort of all my work is my PhD was about secularism and Christianity.
	And so that's why I'm sort of quite interested in this idea of this sort of shift from the Christian civilization to a secular one and the implications of that.
	So that gives me a degree of understanding the framework, if that makes sense.
	But I mean, this specific thing going on, I'm, you know, like everyone else, I'm still coming to grips with it.
	I have to say, I don't know whether you've come across, and this isn't at all like a visionary or anything like that, but have you come across Tom Holland's book, Dominion?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Have you seen that book?
	I've read it.
	Yeah, I mean, I think... It helped me understand very much Christianity.
	Yeah.
	Totally.
	It captures what I've always found awkward about Christianity, which is that it's not a warrior.
	It's not in the heroic tradition.
	It's not like reading the Iliad.
	It's the anti-Iliad.
	It's, you know, the last should be first and stuff like that.
	And it's a hard path to take.
	To accept all that.
	Yeah, but James, I honestly don't mean this facetiously, but do you not find yourself somewhat in a Christ-like position in your life?
	I feel it totally.
	I feel it totally.
	Yeah, you were a mainstream journalist, right?
	So you were very successful.
	You went to Oxford, you were writing in the Telegraph.
	Yeah, I did all that.
	Yeah, you were on TV, you know, all that kind of stuff.
	Totally mainstream and presumably loved by the conservative world, you know.
	And, you know, I'm sure wealthy and successful, right?
	But you have decided, as far as I can see, to pursue integrity and the truth, regardless of where it leads.
	Yes, absolutely.
	And what's happened to you is, all right, you're not living in poverty or anything, but essentially you're completely ostracized now.
	The mainstream is not interested in you.
	I mean, to a certain extent, this is self-chosen, isn't it?
	And I've listened to you say this, but you're not on TV, you don't write for The Telegraph anymore, and you're an outlier.
	And you yourself use quite Christian language, if I may say so, when you talk about You know, being with the oddballs and, you know, being down the rabbit hole and everything like that.
	I would say, you know, again, I don't mean this facetiously, but in that sense, you're a type of Christ because you're sacrificing.
	You know, there's a saying of Christ you may have heard when he says, You know, he who hates his life in this world will lose it, and he who loses his life in this world will save it, right?
	And so that's what you've done.
	You've lost your life in this world, but you are... Yeah, go on, go on.
	No, I love that.
	I love that.
	And it's so true.
	And do you know what?
	The more I get ostracized and mocked and reviled by the mainstream, The better I feel, it's like, it is.
	I'm not, you know, I don't want to be casting off all my worldly goods.
	I quite like all that.
	And actually my family would be very pissed off with me anyway, if I did that.
	But I don't think it's necessary.
	I think I've, I've, I've, I've, I've cast off enough.
	I've, I've, you know, I've, I've done my bit on the, um, but it's, but I, what you say is true there, but also I love the people that I've become close to.
	It's like, almost like you must've found this.
	You become a kind of magnet for the best people.
	People who are pure, and I don't mean kind of, you know, a lot of the people I get who come up to me are just kind of, yeah, sort of, they're not smart, middle-class, university-educated people.
	And I have nothing against, you know, I don't want to be an inverted snob, but I love the real people that come to me and that I meet.
	It's great.
	It's been a privilege.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Yeah.
	And James, you know, this last year has been, for me, it's been as much a sort of voyage of self-discovery as anything else, you know.
	And I read something very profound, I thought, in Jordan Peterson recently.
	I got his new book, but then I went back to his old book, because there's a chapter there about telling the truth.
	And it really sort of summed up for me something I've been wrestling with, which is that, you know, he tells this story about how he found himself really frustrated and angry quite a lot of the time.
	And he was wondering why this was like as a young man.
	And then he realized, when he sort of looked inside himself, that almost everything he said was on some level not Truthful, in the sense that it wasn't really expressing who he was.
	He was saying things for effect, or he was saying things because he wanted to make the right impression, or because he didn't want to upset people, or whatever it was.
	And he started to pay attention to the relationship between what he was saying And what he was really feeling and thinking inside.
	And he wanted to, he tried to integrate those two things.
	And so the point is, is that as he started to integrate those two things, he became a more integrated person, which meant he was less angry.
	He was less frustrated and he was more, he was more confident.
	And because he was more truthful, he became more attractive to people as well.
	People who wanted to live a truthful existence.
	And so for me, James, just to give you a little bit about my biography, I found that incredibly profound.
	And I was at Oxford doing my PhD.
	And, you know, I was, you know, you know what the academic world is like, James, you know, the affectation and the, It's really hard to describe it, but you know, everyone wants to look clever, everyone wants to look sophisticated, everyone's terrified to speak in seminars because you don't want to look like you don't know, you know, who, I don't know, who, you know, the most recent commentators on Hegel or whatever.
	Bullshit that they're talking about, right?
	And so you get into this kind of, you get into this mindset where you're sort of, this, this affectation becomes who you are.
	And I, I've actually seen within myself over a period of time that, yeah, that's, that's what I was doing because I wanted to, you know, I wanted to do well in my PhD.
	You know, I wanted people to think I was clever.
	I wanted people to like me.
	I wanted the professors to like me.
	But that was, that's totally fake, you know, and I don't want to be like that.
	I just want to be who I am, you know, and I want to say what I think, obviously prudentially, but certainly not in a fake way.
	And I don't want to, I certainly don't want to lie.
	And I don't want to deceive myself.
	And I, you know, and I want to be an integrated person.
	And for me, having that sort of realization about myself, is, is, is liberating, you know, because, because you don't have to play the game anymore, you know, reject the game.
	It's, you know, just don't play the game.
	And, and then the best thing about that as well is exactly what you're talking about is then you end up in the right place in life, right?
	Because you're not, you're not talking crap all the time.
	You end up in the right place because you are who you are.
	And that, that naturally makes you sort of gravitate into the right arena with the right people.
	Yeah.
	It's essential, I would say, to being a happy person.
	I agree.
	It's like a... it is like a... it's a vocation.
	It is a calling.
	The closer you get to the truth, the more you achieve a sort of form of... would you call it godhead?
	I mean, it's like...
	And a lot of people talk about taking the God pill.
	And you know, I don't profess to be, you know, I'm not a happy cappy or anything like that.
	I just think that the spiritual is really important.
	But there's a guy I had on the podcast, really fantastic.
	He's, I wouldn't call him a psychotherapist, but he kind of helps you through crises when you've got, he's brilliant.
	He cures people with PTSD and stuff like that.
	He's called, he's called Steve.
	I had this.
	Yeah.
	I had this James.
	I had this.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Steve, which it, um, talks, the word he uses is congruence or congruent.
	Yeah.
	In tune with your, with your body, with your discovering who you are.
	Um, yeah.
	And it's odd.
	I mean, look, I've got these various problems.
	I mean, I really am mightily fucked off with my teeth.
	They bother me greatly.
	I wish I'd had them done when I was younger.
	And my mother always sort of berates me.
	She said, you know, I did offer you the chance to have a brace, but you didn't want the braces.
	And look at you now.
	And yeah, they really, it's just annoying.
	But actually, When you achieve congruence, you kind of become this much more attractive person.
	It's like people are just drawn to you.
	And that thing I said earlier about I love the people that I meet and I love the fact that I can help people and you're doing the same now by talking about this stuff.
	Maybe that's our mission.
	I mean, we're doing a slight better than those people who are My media contemporaries!
	What's going on?
	Why are they not talking about the Great Reset?
	Why are they not noticing what's happening?
	Why are they not railing against this vaccine?
	It's not just my media colleagues, it's the politicians.
	All of them.
	It's because, James, it's because they want to be loved by the world.
	That's the central.
	They want to be loved by the world.
	Yeah.
	So they're part of the system and they've submitted to the system of the world.
	And that's why.
	I mean, it's amazing that it's happened so ubiquitously.
	But, you know, I don't know what else to say about that.
	It is the only explanation.
	I mean, there may be bribes involved as well.
	I'm certain there are definitely bribes on a kind of indirect level with all the advertising that's in newspapers and things like that from the government.
	But yeah, just to go back to that thing with Steve Wichert, I remember listening to that when I was going for a jog along the River Trent, and you said something very profound in that interview where you said, when you were at Oxford, one of your tutors said, no, you said to one of your tutors, no, actually, sorry, it was one of your tutors said to you, I'll get there eventually, like Grandpa Simpson here, you should just go out into the world and be James Delingpole.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And that's what you've done, as far as I can tell, and that's who you are.
	You are James Denningpore.
	You're not somebody else.
	You are, figuratively speaking, wearing the right clothes.
	You're comfortable in your own skin.
	And that is a very attractive thing.
	Now, the reason that you get so much abuse is because people on some level Realised that about you.
	And they hate it because you're not playing the game.
	You're not playing their game.
	And they despise you for that.
	But again, that's the Christ motif.
	That's the same thing that Christ did.
	He wouldn't play the games.
	When people came to him with questions, he wouldn't even answer them.
	He would just subvert the question.
	So that's that dynamic that we aspire to be part of.
	Yeah, no, and it's interesting, isn't it?
	That it's not just Christianity, but I think All the great religions, they all encourage you to reject the world.
	I mean, I think the Buddha was, I think, a very rich young man.
	He had a kind of quite a racy youth, didn't he?
	In fact, so did Saint Francis of Assisi, didn't he?
	He was a rich boy.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Thomas Aquinas is another example.
	Yeah, many of them, many of them.
	Yes yeah yeah that's that's absolutely true um so i suppose can i ask you a little bit all right karen you karen karen no no no you you asked me a question i i can't i was gonna say anyway you asked me Well, I just wanted to broach this question of organised religion with you a bit, because I was fascinated by your discussion with Jonathan Marsley, like I said.
	And I guess, you know, I feel all sorts of resonances talking to you here.
	You know, we both see the need for that kind of integrity and that integration.
	And what was the word?
	The congruence, right?
	Yeah.
	So I guess I wanted to sort of ask you, I mean, we've spoken about the Church of England, haven't we, but your take on the Church in general.
	So Jonathan Marsley made this comment that he doesn't like the idea of priests being a mediator between man and God, which I understand, by the way, and I think that that's certainly not the way I would articulate what it means to be a priest.
	But I also found it very interesting that he made that comment About 20 minutes after he'd told this story about this life-changing experience he'd had, because a priest came into his hospital room and offered him the sacraments of baptism and, I think, holy unction, which is the anointing of the sick.
	So, you know, he did have an experience of proximity to a priest, which he himself said absolutely transformed his life.
	He said it gave him a sense of peace, which just never left him.
	And so, you know, I mean, he's not here to sort of answer for that, but I'm just sort of raising that as a kind of, as a way of sort of asking, you know, what are your thoughts on it?
	I'm glad you asked that, because I was actually, I wanted to mention it early on, because I noticed that in the comments below, The YouTube video, somebody, obviously a Catholic, had said, it sounds to me, Jonathan, like you are, you know, your place is in the Catholic Church.
	But actually, I think that person was, it's a bit like, it's a bit like somebody saying, I think your place is in the Conservative Party.
	And what they're, They need to be disabused of this idea that, for example, the Catholic Church, for example, is headed by, is currently headed by a guy who is the anti-Pope.
	I mean, even a representative of diabolical forces.
	There's no way that Pope Francis is in any way a decent representative of of Christianity or Catholicism.
	He is a satanic person and so I think I share Jonathan's concerns about organized religion because we've seen that it tends towards, particularly now, tends towards Things that we don't like, things that aren't true to the actual religion, you know, the purity of the faith.
	Where I'd say that Jonathan was overstepping the mark in it was sort of rejecting it altogether because there are people like you, there are people like, one reads about it all the time, you know,
	I'm reading a book about a tank regiment in World War II and the chaplain who would go inside the tanks after they'd brewed up and there'd be nothing left of the men but a kind of pool of blackened molten flesh.
	You imagine what it must have been like sort of picking the remains out of the tanks, but he'd do it because It was respected the men who'd given their lives and so on.
	You get all... Father Seraphim and Prophet Iliu.
	I think it's really important.
	I'm really glad that you became a priest because I know that you're going to do really great things and it gives me comfort talking to somebody like you.
	And I think particularly as things get We're going to need people like you.
	You need people in dog collars.
	You need people who are intermediaries between God and the people and remind us of that.
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, that's great, James, but I mean, I guess my thought when I'm talking to you is to say that we need people like you as well.
	You know, the Church needs people like you because you... and I understand why you're not part of the Church.
	Of course, of course I do.
	I mean, of course I do.
	Can you imagine me at Theological College?
	Can you imagine how I'd get on?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	But just, you know, I mean, it sounds even absurd to say it.
	And I was listening to, again, a conversation with Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Pageau, who's an Eastern Orthodox guy, talking about how he's been in church with Peterson, and Peterson would sort of cringe and squirm around in his seat because he found the experience so awkward.
	So, you know, I'm not in any way denying that whatsoever.
	But what I would say is, if you think back to that image in Revelation 20, the camp of the saints.
	The saints are together with each other.
	And there has to be, if this is the end, James, we've got to come together and, all right, you know, we use this term organized religion, but there has to be some kind of organization, you know, If the nations of the world, under the banner of Gog and Magog, are going to organize themselves, then the camp of the saints needs to organize itself in some way as well.
	Honestly, James, I don't know what that means.
	I have no idea what the church of the future will look like, but I believe that it will exist, and it will be the hope of the ends of the earth.
	And, you know, the reason I think that is not at all because of anything that's going on at the moment, because everything, prima facie, points towards an absolute collapse of the church and of Christianity in general.
	However, Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the church, and that has to be true.
	And if it's not true, then there is no hope, you know?
	If it's not true, then everything that Christ began is a lie.
	And I mean, I obviously don't believe that it is.
	So that's kind of I don't mean that to come across as sort of, you know, dogmatic or suggestive or anything.
	All I'm saying is that there must be a point at which the forces of darkness are gathered and the forces of light are gathered.
	And the forces of light will be the Church.
	You know, like St Augustine talks about this in the City of God, right?
	That the Church is visible, but the Church is also invisible as well.
	You know, there's an invisible component to the Church.
	And those are the true believers, you know.
	And I believe also when Christ does this parable of the wheat and the tares, you know, the tares that are sown into the field so that the righteous and the unrighteous are all mingled in together.
	Anyway, I guess what I'm saying, James, is just that we need one another and we need to be connected to one another.
	And at a basic sort of fundamental level, that's what the church is.
	There's much more to it than that.
	You know, I mean, I think sacraments, for example, Absolutely essential.
	And that's where the concept of priesthood comes in.
	But at a sort of fundamental level, you know, the early Christians, they gathered in catacombs to chant the name of Jesus under the shadow of the vastest and most powerful empire the world had ever seen.
	And within what, you know, what was it?
	250 years, the empire turned Christian.
	I mean, that was the power those little enclaves had to transform the world.
	So anyway, I'm just rambling.
	No, no, I agree with you.
	I think that in a way that the fact that Christianity is at just about its lowest ebb and that the forces of darkness seem to be at their most powerful But that's exactly the moment when the rebirth happens, I think.
	It's when we're most tested.
	Yeah, it's death and resurrection.
	It's Christ's descent into hell, and then the resurrection comes next.
	Yeah.
	I think it has to be.
	I think that's a good way to end.
	I'd love to have you on the podcast again, because I like talking about this stuff and I've really enjoyed it.
	It's been great.
	Absolutely.
	James, I meant to say earlier, I mean, we got into it so quickly, just how grateful I am to be allowed to come on.
	And it's an honour, really, because it's an honour to speak to you.
	As I say, James, I have a huge amount of respect for you.
	And for me personally, you've helped me a lot over the past year.
	Really, really.
	Oh, thank you.
	You're meant to help me, Father.
	No, no, no.
	You're meant to help me, Father.
	No, no, no.
	Tell us.
	We need each other.
	Tell us where we can.
	But also, I just wanted to say how much of an honor it is to share this platform with some of the people you've had on here.
	Particularly, I was thinking of Sir Roger Scruton, who was a man and a man I continue to respect immensely.
	And so to occupy a platform that somebody like he's spoken on, but many other people as well, speaking out bravely, people like Laura Perrins, for example, it's just a real honour.
	So just thanks for the opportunity.
	It's been an absolute pleasure having you on.
	Tell us where we can find your podcast.
	Cause it is good.
	Oh yeah, absolutely.
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	Yeah.
	So my, my podcast is called Irreverend.
	So like the word irreverent, but with a D at the end.
	Right.
	So, and you can find it on, on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever, but we've also got Buzzsprout website.
	So it's just irreverend.buzzsprout.com.
	So that's where you can find it irreverend.buzzsprout.com.
	That's good.
	I was worried about the amount of cereals you all eat, because you realise that sugar and refined starch is not good for you.
	can just type in irreverent faith and faith and current affairs to youtube and you'll find our channel so yeah that's good i was worried about the amount of cereals you all eat because you realize that sugar and kind of refined starch is is not good for you you should be eating is that right maybe i should eating meat What more meat did you say?
	You should eat more meat or fish on Friday, obviously.
	And less starchy, sugary stuff.
	I mean, cereals are not good for you.
	Oh man, I need to stop then.
	Yeah.
	I mean, James, you just, can I just, I know you want to finish, but can I just ask for a tip podcast wise?
	A couple of people emailed me and said, oh, there was too much banter at the beginning of this episode.
	You know, you should have, you should have got to the content more quickly.
	What do you think?
	What do you think about that?
	I think 20 minutes of banter.
	No, I think you should, you should just do whatever, whatever feels good.
	It's a bit like, you know, it's a bit like congruence.
	I sort of, I liked the fact that you, I think what matters far more is that you have, the three of you have a rapport and also you've got stuff to say.
	I mean, even if it takes a while to, you know, to get around to saying it.
	No, I think it's just stick to what you do.
	You'll find The more you do it, the more you'll know what works and what doesn't work.
	People always have strong views on what you should and shouldn't do.
	Take it on board, have it at the back of your mind, but don't think that they're necessarily right.
	Right.
	Okay.
	That's all.
	I like that.
	I like the idea of, I mean, I respect and love my listeners and I love, I love getting feedback, but I like the idea of just doing what feels, what feels right.
	Because it does, it does feel right.
	I mean, it feels, it feels like we've been doing it for about six months now.
	And I just feel like we're in a sort of really good groove, you know, just, it just sort of, we don't really plan it, it just sort of happens.
	And that's, you know, that's great.
	It feels really good.
	Oh, my other piece of advice for you, and this comes from Jonathan Marsley.
	um yeah is get a um a water purifier distiller don't drink tap water right um and the reason is that the water you drink out of the tap is full of chemicals and what it does is it calcifies the the pineal gland um and the pineal gland is your source of spiritual enlightenment it gives you that extra level of perception
	And I think you might find, this is what, I've only been on my distilled water for a couple of weeks, but what Jonathan says is that gradually you get insight.
	And you know, I mean, I think you agree, Jonathan is blessed with something special.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	And I think you are too, but you're gonna, you could be a super... Not in the same way.
	Not in the same way.
	A super maker.
	What is that, like a brittle water filter or something like that?
	Well, no, it's not.
	It's, oh, I'll give you the details.
	Where is it?
	It actually distills the water.
	It's got a fan on top and you have to scrub it out.
	Scrubbing out the crap at the end is very satisfying because you realize what rubbish they put into the water.
	So there it is.
	Finally, I'm really bad at doing this, but I really must.
	If you've enjoyed this podcast, and I hope you have, please do support me on Patreon and Subscribestar, or you can go to my website, which is dellingpoleworld.com, and you can find out how to support me on PayPal.
	I mean, increasingly, as I cut loose from the regular media, I think this is going to be my necessary support.
	You may feel that it's good for me to live an ascetic life, but I can assure you that my wife and children don't feel that way.
	Also, I think, actually, if you're worrying about money, You need a kind of stable background to do other stuff.
	I think if I were living in penury, it wouldn't help me, actually.
	It wouldn't be good for me.
	I think I've sacrificed enough.
	Yeah, you've got responsibilities, as do I. And so it's a very serious thing.
	You've got to think about it.
	How would you generate income, but in a way which has integrity?
	Yeah, well, exactly.
	It's very hard.
	I'm one of your patrons, by the way, James.
	Oh, are you?
	Oh, thank you!
	That's amazingly generous, given that I know how much you vicars get paid, or not paid.
	Well, I'll tell you what, James.
	I was so desperate to hear some sensible voices that last summer I just set up a subscription because I wanted to hear your podcast three days early.
	So, that really helped me.
	Well, I suppose it helped you.
	That's good.
	I don't give you loads, James.
	I should give you more, to be honest with you.
	No, you shouldn't.
	I feel almost embarrassed.
	I mean, I'm looking at your little chapel there and I'm thinking, In the outskirts of Nottingham.
	You know, you're not living in an old rectory.
	No, we live, we live, this is an outside office.
	It's actually quite nice.
	My house is, my house is four bedrooms and we're in a, we live in a very middle-class area.
	So.
	Oh, that's good.
	Honestly, James, I've got more money now.
	I've got more money now than I ever did before.
	I did, I did very low paid jobs before and I was a student for many years as well.
	So I really don't feel like I'm living in penury.
	That's good.
	Well, listen, more strength to your elbow and thank you.
	I've really enjoyed this podcast and let's do another one.
	And yeah, and good luck with yours.
	Thank you so much, James.
	I've had such a good time and I'd love to do it again.
	Good.
	Okay, I'm going to have a cigarette now, I think.
	This is my special treat.
	So, thank you.
	Enjoy.
	Okay.
	Bye, James.

▲