Eric, Brian, Pastor Dunn, Senator Devers, and others debate biblical patriarchy versus the red pill movement, arguing that domesticity counters industrial atomization while avoiding theoretical obedience. They distinguish Christian nationalism from theonomy, advocating immediate post-millennial legislative action to abolish pornography and abortion as didactic tools despite establishment discrediting. Citing Madison and Holy Trinity v. United States, they refute secular democracy's efficacy, asserting the Constitution presupposes a moral people. Ultimately, they frame political "LARPing" as necessary for cultural renewal, urging believers to exercise current authority against existential secular threats rather than waiting for distant eschatological outcomes. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Red Pill Manosphere Response00:10:56
So the idea for this panel is to talk about biblical patriarchy.
Eric just did a great job on the topic and now putting into a little bit more into practice and discussion format.
And let's begin by just praying.
Father, we pray that you would bless our time together.
Help us to be wise.
Help us to be clear in our discourse.
And we just pray that all that we say would be ultimately for your glory and the good of your people.
We pray this for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Okay, I'm just going to dive right in so that we don't like, build up to exciting discourse.
We can just have it right away.
So, this is my first question for all of you.
It's an agree or disagree question, with the follow up being why.
And we'll go individually.
Everybody gets to answer.
Take as long as you want.
And it could be just the only question for 90 minutes, and it might get us all the time.
I have a feeling.
I have a feeling.
So, it has been said recently on Twitter that the word was mirror, and I did not like it.
But that trad wives is the mirror.
Kind of exact opposite, like two sides but of the same coin.
The mirror movement of red pill.
Agreeing, disagreeing, and why?
Eric, I'd love to hear from you first.
Yeah, so I would disagree.
And the basic reason why is I think when you look at the red pill movement, I think the guy that most people will think of is Andrew Tate.
So if you follow the red pill movement down through like Andrew Tate, what are you gonna get?
You're gonna get like Bugatti's and a harem.
Right?
And I think then when you look at something like trad wives, for the most part, it's like if what I get out of that is like pretty dresses and sourdough, I feel like that's a different thing than Andrew Tate.
So that's my basic disagree.
And I know Brian, we were actually talking about this.
He's got a long, beautiful.
Let's hear Brian.
That's great.
He's a sweet psalmist of Ogden.
There's more to be said, but everything you said, I personally agree with.
But Brian.
Nuance, and it depends.
As it's stated, if I have to say yes or no, I'd say no.
I can see how you would get there from a certain line of reasoning, and it would go like this The red pill manosphere is responding to real, actual problems in the world where people are disobeying God and the nature that He gave them.
And so there are all sorts of problems when that happens.
There are problems in marriages where men are getting married and maybe committing no covenant breaking sin, and then one day find their wife of 10, 20 years.
Gone with the kids, go into court, get a no fault divorce, and take his kids and half his income for 18 years.
Right?
So, one of the things that happens when that becomes the legal background of our culture, which it very much is, is that you're going to have a reaction that's just based on people having eyes in their head.
And some men are going to say, well, our culture's been very anti men in lots of ways, so let's be pro men.
But then, one of the dangers of that is that you can have a pro men message, which is severely lacking in our culture.
That is then, but not governed by Christ.
So then they say, What should a man be and do?
And then they're just going to answer that question, most often in the manosphere world, through an evolutionary perspective and worldview, and go back to Greek and Roman philosophy and Stoicism.
And you do, you end up with working out, high tea, eat steak, and have a harem, which is just a different way of ruining the world than the way that they were reacting to.
The same thing happens in our world on the side of femininity.
where femininity can be corrupted in multiple directions, just like masculinity can.
And so you're going to have counter movements reacting to that.
One thing you can have that is certainly a part of the trad wife movement, which, by the way, I'm not an expert in and don't follow trad wife accounts because I'm married.
I have a wife who makes sourdough and wears dresses a good fair bit of the time.
But you can have sort of a pin up, pornified version of traditionalism that's actually, at its root, ultra not traditional.
And it's just women who are wearing low-cut shirts on Instagram or TikTok and monetized.
They're getting a lot of airplay out of a trend, which is a reaction to feminism and the flattening of all sexual distinctions.
So then we have androgyny.
Well, what are we going to do?
We're going to have hyper-femininity that actually ends up not being feminine at all.
Same thing with the red pill in a sense.
So I see that.
But the difference that I would say is that I don't think that that's the dominant note.
of the vast majority of the content that I see around the traditional femininity kind of world.
A lot of it genuinely is, I think, women reclaiming roles in the home as being a helper, cooking, caring for your people, clothing them well, undoing some of the ill effects of the Industrial Revolution that's atomizing the home and tearing everybody in a million directions.
So on the surface, I would say they are different because the heart of the manosphere movement Really the dominant notes and and I've spoken at Manistere conference conferences and it's like at the heart of it the dominant note is evolutionary harem building pickup artistry Absolute filth about 98% of it in my experience and then in the in the trad wife movement.
I think it's a very different ratio that's actually a lot of it is genuinely Christian.
I think quite a bit of it is is genuinely Christian.
So I want both to return to nature really the answer to me is like I want men to return to faithful, monogamous, covenant marriage in Christ's name.
I want women to return to older women teach the younger women to be workers at home, love your children, love your husband, lest the word of God be reviled.
That's what I want to see.
So I think there's some missing on both sides, but some of it does have to do with your perspective.
What are you looking at on Instagram?
What's the algorithm feeding you?
Because there certainly is a pinup version of trad wife culture out there.
So that was a typical, Eric says no, and then I talk for five times longer and say nuanced.
Welcome to the King's Hall podcast.
That's basically.
He really just means no.
Right?
Pastor Dunn.
So I agree with everything that's just been said thus far.
I would maybe set the cat among the pigeons.
I would also say there was nothing in what was just said that was inconsistent with what Allie Beth said in that first clip.
She was saying, okay, this is great.
Nothing against sourdough, nothing against, but there's a way of pretending, which you just said.
And I've certainly seen before.
We went through this back in the 80s and 90s.
There was another version of the same sort of thing with homeschool mom, and there was the same sort of thing.
And I came, as a pastor, I came to the conclusion that there's sometimes an inverse ratio between the size of the head covering and the submissiveness of the woman.
Why does your wife wear a head covering to church?
She insisted.
So, okay.
But to echo what you just said and to amen it, domesticity is discipleship.
Domesticity is the calling that God has called women to.
And this is the apostolic instruction is that women are to be busy at home.
They're to be keepers at home.
They're to give themselves over to it so that the word of God may not be blasphemed.
But discipleship is hard.
You know, it's challenging.
Being a godly husband and a godly father.
Is challenging.
And it's the same with being a godly woman.
And it's easy to be godly on Instagram, basically.
I can take a photo of my quiet time and not have to go through it.
So, agree.
And I think I would, I'm certain that I would have disagreements with Alibeth at various junctures.
But I think that what she was saying in that initial clip was something that the conservative Christians ought to hear.
Okay, no role playing.
Let's not do role playing.
Let's do it for real because we mean it, and it's a sacrifice to the Father.
And I think that we should reclaim, be working to reclaim patriarchy.
I'll just finish with the word patriarchy.
I've never been comfortable with the word complementarian, and I think it's because left-wing complementarians are basically egalitarians, and right-wing complementarians are patriarchal.
So let's just call it what it is.
Great.
And then not pastor.
But Senator Devers.
Your turn.
Why not both?
Oh, yeah, you're right.
All right.
It's just everybody gets to be a pastor.
The reverend, the great.
None of us are cool enough to be senators.
You're the only one.
So you've got to own that title.
But Pastor, Senator, Reverend, the great.
Dusty Devers, please.
Keep going.
The most reverend pastor.
Now we're getting somewhere.
So I didn't catch any of the Alibeth Stuckey trad wife conversation because I was out legislating morality.
I'm sorry.
And about time.
Speaking of no fault divorce.
Hey.
I'm not going to make any further comment on that issue.
I'd rather talk about abolishing pornography or abolishing abortion, not smashing it.
Or no fault divorce.
Oh, Dusty.
Come on.
All right, we'll have to have a sidebar because he gets a chance to respond to that.
He gets a chance to smash it in his mouth.
Oh, yeah.
But any, go ahead.
You guys get to take that.
Dusty said, look at me.
This is my panel now.
Look at me.
I'm the captain now.
I'm the senator now.
The next topic is going to Indy this summer to disrupt the SBC.
Christian Nationalist Obedience00:15:34
Amen?
Who's coming with me?
All right.
So these are my thoughts.
So everything that was said thus far, I agree with.
These are my thoughts specifically on since that clip is in view, and it should be.
Like, we don't have to dance around and be coy.
I didn't have any problem either with what was said in the clip, so I agree with you, Doug.
For me, as I thought about it, it was the context of the hour long panel that happened with founders, and Tom Askell is incredible and deserves all our respect and all our honor and the benefit of the Tao.
But the hour long panel, that context didn't quite fit it for me.
It didn't fix it for me because that's part of the context, but then the larger context is not the hour, but For me, it's the last nine months.
And so I'll just, you know, I'll be frank, but also careful and charitable.
There are other statements that I, you know, I'm going to hear that portion, that clip, but I'm going to hear it in light of other things that have been said.
And I think part of the challenge, it's kind of got to my talk earlier this afternoon, is obedience in theory.
I think that's one of my big concerns.
I'm concerned about pietism, I'm concerned about theoretical obedience.
So, you know, one of the statements that has been made is that, Godly motherhood, for instance, is not the highest calling of a Christian woman, but rather the highest calling of a Christian woman.
The woman portion is irrelevant, whether it be Christian woman or Christian man or child or adult.
The highest calling of all Christians is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
And my immediate response is, how?
I feel like we have to, yes, of course, a million times, a million amens, glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
But if it's merely theory, then obedience becomes androgynous, becomes generic, becomes theoretical.
The favorite egalitarian verse that's always used is Ephesians 5.
When you look at the headline, and then you get into Paul's case studies, but the headline principle is mutual submission to one another out of reverence for Christ.
But then Paul doesn't just leave it in the abstract, he then begins to say, and this is what that mutual submission for one another as the body of Christ, out of reverence for Christ, looks like.
Based off of God's sovereignly appointed station for that individual in their life.
Because the egalitarian wants to have the verse about mutual submission in Ephesians 5 override what Paul later says about husbands and wives, particularly that the husband is called to love his wife and lead his wife, and the wife is called to submit.
But if you use that hermeneutic and you were consistent with it, you'd have to also apply that to parents and children.
So you'd have to say to the parents, you know, They go and tell their three year old, hey, you need to do this.
And the three year old says, no.
And the parent, of course, needs to mutually submit to that three year old.
And, right?
Like, let's be consistent, right?
So, it's mutual submission as the principle, but there's a practical, visible expression, and that varies with particularity based off of station of life.
And gender comes into the picture man or woman, or single or married, parent or child.
And so, what I'm concerned about is biblical womanhood is not synonymous or somehow exhaustively described.
Buy sourdough in sundresses.
Sure.
But then I would love to have a follow up of, if not, then what?
And I want the what not just to describe matters of the heart.
I want the what at some point to also embrace matters of practice.
Like there's a guy, you might have heard of him, but he once said, Theology comes out of our fingertips.
I thought it was really good.
And that's for all of us, whether you're a man or whether you're a woman, theology in practice, theology.
And so, and I do believe that the practical obedience of a woman, particularly a married woman who is a mother, is a lady of the hearth, as Brian said.
I think that's a great way.
She is home oriented.
She is, it's a domestic feminine beauty.
She's not a slay queen.
She's not a boss babe.
She's not fierce.
Like, you got to do something with 1 Peter 3.
And a quiet and gentle spirit is the way that this inner beauty that's imperishable, the heart, is defined.
And as quiet and gentle as Mean you must make sourdough.
Of course not.
But it's good sourdough.
Good sourdough.
Right.
So I just want to hear, okay, so because every woman's going to look different.
Some women are going to be incredibly domestic and feminine, but they're going to be like, sourdough's gross.
We just don't like it.
And they make something else that's really awesome.
But what is it?
That's my thoughts.
Let me say something towards that.
Jared Moore, who is running for SBC president, I'm dropping the SBC.
This guy is shameless.
This is a politician.
I'm hoping that somebody's recording these things to send a William Wolf.
But Jared Moore, who's running for SBC president, in his book, Lust of the Flesh, he talks about that holiness.
So, if you tell a man who's been same sex attracted, the point for him to overcome is not just holiness, pursue holiness, it's pursue holiness that particularly looks like heterosexual marriage, true marriage.
That's what you're to pursue.
That's what it is to glorify God in Christ.
In your sexuality, in your life, not just to stop doing something, but to put on Christ in these areas.
So I think that's what you're getting at.
On the ground, it's don't just put off certain sins, don't just mortify certain things, but vivify, come to life, and put on Christ in these ways.
And whenever you think about men's and women's roles, be zealous for these good works that were prepared for you before the foundation of the world.
Pretty straightforward.
And one of the things I think that comes into the context of a lot of these conversations is we're trying to land principles that are timeless in actual practical situations in a world that is wildly disobedient to these principles.
So there's going to be some sparks.
But one of the things that I think conservatives in particular have done just profoundly poorly is that often one of the things we do.
Is to put our message forward, we say, well, how's the world marketing things?
Well, they're getting a pretty lady to be their spokesman for their thing, getting a news lady, or they're getting a politics lady, or they're getting a.
And then they're going to send that lady out to do cultural battle.
And it smacks of marketing to me quite often.
And the way that we're going to do it is by basically giving away a lot of our principles right at the beginning.
Because Paul really does say in Titus that if this doesn't happen, and he's talking about.
Older women discipling younger women to be workers at home, that the word of God will be reviled.
That's a really big deal that we should take very seriously.
So there's going to be a lot of sparks when that principle heads into a culture like ours, I think.
But I think we are right to be skeptical when we see that nature is commonly countersignaled, or anytime you make an argument from nature and say, The woman is this, and it lends itself.
It's not arbitrary.
God made the woman this way for this vocation, and God made the man this way for this vocation.
Often, the instinct I think you're pointing to, Joel, is that we want to immediately soften that back to a spiritual thing that has no teeth in the real world and say, Well, don't you know that it's about godliness, not strength, men?
And you'd say, Well, no, just because the manosphere uses strength to pick up 20 women per month at a bar, strength isn't the problem.
Their weakness is the problem, that they have no strength and self control over their flesh.
So I do think that that's part of this conversation, is a lot of people miss.
We want to boil it down to propositions in abstract, but we really are looking at a situation in the world where conservatism for too long has just been leftism with a different flavor, like cherry leftism, grape leftism, slow leftism.
And so when you say something like, Man, I really don't want to make a state of affairs where we just, conservatives begin to prop up and we say, well, for political commentary, we're going to have our lady guy and our lady, and then we're going to have our guy.
And then for theology, we're going to have our and our lady guy.
And our lady guy.
But enough of that Russian boy.
But that's going to be pretty controversial in the world today because, I mean, now you're talking about something that's about a couple country miles away from where the culture is.
I agree with all of that.
And we shouldn't be, for PR reasons, sending our women out to do the fighting for us.
Oh, you're a woman, you can talk about abortion, and we can't.
That's ceding the territory to the enemy.
So we shouldn't send women out to fight our battles.
At the same time, and I think we have to be careful about us not fighting with the women ourselves, right?
So that's part of the default in the evangelical world.
where there are women out there and women like Alibeth have done a lot of good and are on our side in the main and I don't think we should be fighting with them either.
If there's a better way and there is a better way then I think we should model it and just send the men.
Where are the men?
Send the men into the fray and I think a lot of godly women would say thanks for the reinforcements and I'm going to go home and make some sourdough.
Any more thoughts, Eric?
You didn't talk much.
Any other thoughts that you want to add or anybody else?
And if not, I definitely want to, you know, this is what we said to all of you guys who came to the conference that we're going to talk about biblical patriarchy.
And I think there's some more that we can address.
But I also, it was an audible.
We just ran an Audible, but we have Dusty and we have Doug and we have the Ogden boys.
I feel like Christian nationalism is worth a.
I mean, why do something as controversial as patriarchy when you could talk about Christian nationalism?
So I think that would be a worthy endeavor as well.
But Eric, you just didn't talk much.
Yeah, no, my only other thought is really pastoral.
One of the things we talk a lot about in Ogden is kind of this idea that women can't be pastored by men.
So, sort of to Doug's point, we need a lady for everything.
So, this was sort of the problem, I think, with Matt Chandler.
What was the?
Jen Wilkins.
Jen Wilkins.
You need a woman pastor for women.
So, I think just practically, one of the ways that you solve this long term is actually by men pastoring all the people in their congregation.
And so then they're used to that.
I think what is challenging, to Doug's point, is you do have women who have essentially stepped on the agon.
They've gone out into the arena and stepped on what?
Stepped into the agon.
So, the arena, they're.
They're going out in a place where fundamentally they're being like a man, but then they're also pulling the rug out and they're saying, But you have to treat me like a lady, too.
And so I think that's why it's sort of an unwinnable position.
Now, to Doug's point, I've actually wrestled with it.
Like, what do you do in that scenario?
Because a lot of times you've got, like, Ali Bath, she's teaching on complementarianism and patriarchy and making quite a mess of it in many points.
And then we have to pastorally deal with that because your women are listening to it.
Yeah.
And so then you have to respond to it, and you're like, Well, I.
I don't.
I generally don't want to get into it with this lady.
She's in a role she shouldn't be in.
That would be my take in terms of particularly teaching theology in that section.
But you get into that, and then you say, what do I do pastorally?
Because, you know, it's the old, like, you don't hit a girl, but what happens when she comes in swinging?
With a knife.
With a knife, yes.
Good point.
Good point.
There was one other thing I wanted to say about.
I can summarize Christian nationalism in a way that will cause all Christians everywhere to agree.
Oh, by mimicking the woman, the leftist woman who said they believe that rights come from God?
No.
I think all Christians should be able to agree on this America should stop making God angry.
Who's going to rise up and say, no, it's okay for America to continue to make God?
Does 60 million unborn children slaughtered not make him angry?
Does a Burgerfell not make him angry?
Does the scourge of porn across, does that not make him angry?
Are we not inviting him to visit judgment upon us?
So I suggest, why don't we stop it?
It's like that clip from, I can't even remember the show.
New Heart.
Stop it.
Yeah, I have two words for you.
No, I find that most people can remember them.
Yeah.
Okay, this is one thing with Christian nationalism, just to go.
And I'm curious to hear Doug's take.
I've talked to you guys about it.
Dusty, I think I haven't talked to you, but I can assume, but I'd love to hear your take too.
You know, I think a lot of guys are like, why do we need the label?
We already have one, you know, it's Theonomy, or, you know, it's this or it's that.
They didn't like that one either.
Well, yeah, but I'm saying that Theonomists like it, you know, and so, you know, and so, like, we already have a label.
And one of the things that I've noticed, and I'm not saying this is the definition because nobody gets, well, that's the trouble with it.
Nobody gets to say this is the definition.
But one of the things that I've noticed just in talking to guys who are, you know, Christian nationalists, self defined, you know, self labeled, is one thing I've noticed as a distinction is they're very comfortable with the civil magistrate and the nation as a whole stepping in, coming into obedience to Christ with one of two ways.
They're open to both ways.
The two ways mean this it could be a mass move of God's Spirit and a revival and just Sheer number of regenerate hearts, 50% plus one of the population of these United States that are born again through gospel preaching.
King Josiah and Repentance00:02:43
And then that lends towards Christians who are in public office and begin to legislate righteous laws.
But they also, and I've noticed this as a distinction from some, I can't speak for all theonomists, but some of the older school theonomists who have been like, that's cute, Christian nationalism.
We've been doing this for 40 years.
But I've noticed some of the theonomists are less comfortable where the CN, some of the younger guys are.
They're comfortable with bottom up, but also top down.
Like they would say something, and I would say this too, but they would say, you know, but like the homo jihad replaced the flag of the United States with the rainbow in the course of 40 years with less than 3% of the population.
So why are Christians not allowed to do that again?
That, you know, that a lot of political change, and when we understand that the law is a tutor.
So we're not saying that that's going to save anybody, but the law does function as a A tutor and in a lawful country, there is more of an awareness in the first use of the law, more of an awareness of, oh, I'm a sinner, I need a savior.
And it sets, it works as that black velvet backdrop for the brilliance of the diamond for those gospel preachers now to preach a gospel that maybe falls on less deaf ears.
And so I feel like, yeah, Lord, I'm going to pray for revival, but I'm also going to work towards if we don't have the numbers, that we still could have a few.
High caliber men called by God that would work into positions of civil leadership and do what's right, even if we're the minority.
And maybe that shapes it.
It could be power from a minority that paves the way for gospel preaching and revival.
Or it could be revival.
What do you guys say?
That's very true.
If we got a king, Josiah, I would take it.
You can do an awful lot of good top down.
So I would thank God.
I would rejoice in it.
I would pray for him.
I would also be aware that after King Josiah died, the people went back very quickly to the old ways.
So it's got to be, I think it has to be both.
You have to have leadership, genuine leadership.
A godly prince, godly president, godly legislators are used by God to do good.
But the people have got to respond in true faith.
There's got to be a genuine thing there.
And so I would like to see it meet in the middle.
We've been praying for Josiah.
And it looks like in this next election we might get a Jehu.
But I'll take the Jehu.
Dusty, any thoughts?
Yeah.
Genuine Leadership Required00:11:33
So if we get a Josiah, Lord, make it so, he's got to focus on repentance, orienting us back to the God, not of this system, but the God over all systems.
Whenever he does that, and he's.
Continually calling for repentance, which is reorienting our hearts and minds to our God, alongside, well, He can be a great tool of repentance, not just correcting some laws, but aiming at hearts, aiming at not just stapling fruit to a dead tree, but changing the roots.
And we've got to, one of the things that, that, that, Let's just take an example out of our current day.
If you run legislation to abolish pornography, you might find yourself on Jimmy Fallon.
Any of the Jimmys.
You might find yourself on there, not because you intend to, but because you stick out so radically.
And we should all ask ourselves why would that even stick out?
Why would that make news?
It shouldn't make Jimmy Fallon.
It shouldn't even make our local news because.
It shouldn't be a big deal, but it's such a big deal that it drives Rolling Stone, that it drives Jimmy Fallon, that it drives the Guardian and the UK Independent.
It drives all these conversations.
Drives them nuts.
It drives them.
It, yeah, absolutely drives them nuts and it drives them, it drives the demons that are behind them all to say, we must defeat this God.
There's a God here that is untamable and unruly.
There is someone in the camp claiming him, and they do not want it to be.
It shouldn't stick out.
So, if this sticks out, if you think about it in your town, if you went to a city council meeting and said, We are going to, let's pass legislation that would abolish pornography or abolish abortion and guarantee that no business could ever open in this town or no one will ever practice.
Abortion in this town, and if anyone does, they'll all be treated as murderers from the top to the bottom.
And if we start a pornography, any place that allows pornography, they're going to see steep fines.
If you went to your city council meeting and said those kinds of things, would the people care at all?
Would they think, We're already doing that, it's fine, great?
Or would they say, or would they maybe throw things at you?
Would they run newspaper articles that lambast you and just smear you?
What would be their response?
And so, if you think about what that response would be in your town, if it would be wild and crazy like what has happened with Jimmy Fallon and Rolling Stone, then you probably aren't doing much in your town.
There's one additional difference.
If you said that in your town, everybody would write you off as just a crazy lone nutcase.
You're different because you ran on that platform and got elected, and that spooked them.
So, if you weren't an office holder and you just spoke up at a city council, you might be a 30 second clip on somebody's YouTube channel.
But you got elected, and you got elected saying out loud what you wanted to do, and there were a whole lot of people that agreed with that and supported you, and there were a lot of establishment Christians.
Who quietly tried to submarine?
In other words, I think your position is strategically critical.
You're at the state level, but why is it international news?
Well, it's international news because it's a harbinger of something that's coming.
I completely agree.
And I think I've talked about this before.
I think in a lot of ways, there are a few of us that are at the tip of a battering ram of a door that's just made out of paper.
That's all it is.
It's no bulwark, I'll tell you that.
And a bunch of you.
And if people across our nation.
I had four laughs, come on.
It just wasn't that great.
It wasn't that great.
If a bunch of us would just start taking action, you might see God do something in our generation that we haven't seen in many generations.
I think there's a theological error that progressivism has weaponized against us.
And it's made us to see the wielding or the.
The pursuit of power as an evil, as an unchristian act.
They've basically confused the spheres and taken, if your eye causes you to lust, tear it out, and then said, Why are you trying to ban pornography?
Why doesn't everybody just tear their eye out?
Well, because there's different spheres.
There's a minister that wields a sword, and then there's you before the Lord, and those are different things.
But what the left has successfully done is they've convinced us that for Christians, hilariously, in a Christian nation, Fundamentally, a Protestant nation, which is what America fundamentally is historically, they've convinced us that if we try to assert Protestant ethics, that we're sinning and that we're actually being un Christ like, and that we need to be, well, you're not being meek enough.
And it's like, well, no, you're confused.
I think that's a huge part of this if you didn't run, then we wouldn't know that there were enough people there that would resonate with to elect you.
And then there's a whole cascading series of events that happens when Christians, because that's an assertion of power.
You're submitting to the system of election and all that, but you're asserting power.
You're saying, no, Christians actually want, you're saying we want the power to legislate God's law with respect to sexual mores and marriage and currency and all these different things.
And I think that that's something that we're starting to see the tide turn, particularly in the Zoomer generation, where they're seeing, I think, this error of pietism and they're reacting in the right direction.
Eric, anything you want to add?
Yeah, honestly, my question for Dusty and maybe Doug.
Doug, you talked about.
Kind of a coming wave or something, you know, something's coming that's changing.
It seems like one of the X factors in all this, though, is the evangelical establishment.
Okay, because it's not just like when you win, there's people at the top of the SBC that don't like that, right?
So you've actually got to overcome more.
And my question is A, what's that wave coming?
So for Doug, and how do you break through the elite establishment?
I would say first, I just stole Joel's podcast.
You're the captain now.
I'm the captain.
So I would say the evangelical establishment, by and large, discredited itself during COVID.
And parts of that establishment haven't recognized that they did that.
But some of them have, right?
They've quietly exited, retired, that sort of thing.
I don't think the establishment is any, I believe it's a ghost of what it once was.
And I believe that a lot of people, and I think there's a lot of empty seats up there.
I don't think God has raised up people yet to occupy the positions of influence and leadership.
We're in the changing of the guard.
We've seen a good portion of the old guard leave, and we don't know who the next generation of leaders will be.
But I'm hopeful.
I'm hopeful.
I'm looking at, I think God's got good things in store.
And then the second part of your question sounded more like for Dusty.
How are you going to break through the regime within evangelicalism?
Yeah, because it's twofold, right?
It's political, but you also got to deal with the ecclesial aspect.
That's fear.
Church and.
I mean, I think that's exactly what's happening.
Since COVID, I think it was a shaking, awakening.
You know, we've talked, I think I said it in my message, the things that are shakable not only will shake, but they must shake.
And I think that God is bringing quite the shaking since COVID.
And he is realigning some things and exposing where the cracks were that needed to be just burst wide open.
When we saw churches closing for long periods, we saw people with this love your neighbor propaganda that was really submit to your neighbor and not submit to God, submit to the powers that be.
And a lot of us were saying the powers that be don't have jurisdiction, they're illegitimate.
And why have we been bowing to these?
Powers that are just pseudo.
It's our fault.
It's the fault of pastors for not telling us better.
And if you don't have strong pastors that are preaching the authority of God from the scriptures and teaching their people that the authority lies in the scriptures and not in the culture or in your leaders, but it's in the scriptures, and we all have to bow to the same standard, then the pews are going to establish the culture, and the culture then establishes your law because.
You know, power arises from the people.
And what we ended up with was just a whole bunch of people who were willing to be led by weak leaders.
And I think by God's grace, and I told Doug this earlier.
I think the role that Doug Wilson played during COVID for so many of us, whether we were Baptist or Presbyterian or Anglican or whatever, he called us back to our confessions.
We've dealt with this before, guys.
Our, you know, many, many years ago, these dead guys had solved some of these problems.
And we've gone so far away from them, trusting in our own wisdom, trusting in our own strength.
We've forgotten the wisdom of our fathers.
And with that reawakening, I think that what you're seeing, that I'm just a part of, that all of you guys are a part of, we're seeing God raising up.
People who will trust his word no matter what the culture says and be able to say, This is the last thing.
You know, the sloth says, or the sluggard says, there's a lion in the streets.
We'll all be killed.
And instead of saying, oh, no, there's a lion in the streets, I think God's raising up a bunch of men that say, let's go get the lion, boys.
Kingdom Building Now00:15:33
Let's go kill them.
And that's the point.
If there's a lion, then let's go.
If there's not, then we just proved you wrong.
But either way, we've got to fight.
I'm a little bit turned up.
Amen.
Turned up.
You did.
You guys have no idea.
Dusty was just ripping out, you know, just a Cool, clean, 100 set push ups in the green room right before.
I'm not even.
It was like several hundred push ups.
Seriously, this guy.
All right, so here's a question that I have.
I also have some answers, but I like to hear your answers.
And when I say your, I mean the plural, all of you guys.
So we're getting at, you know, is it top down?
Is it bottom up?
That's just one example, but I'm sure there's other examples that you guys may think of that I don't.
What are some of.
I'll first start it with if.
Are there any differences, distinctions between.
The theonomist position and a Christian nationalist position because that's been some of the pushback is just why do we need this?
We already have a label, we already have a team, we you know, go fight, win.
And and you guys, you know, like it, you know, again, it's cute.
The Christian nationalists showed up 15 minutes ago, but we've been here for 40 years slugging it out.
And so, what uh, what are is Christian nationalism just a modern phrase for theonomy, or are there actually some distinctions?
If so, what are they?
I would say the um, the work on defining Christian nationalism is Stephen Wolfe's.
He is very much in the magisterial Protestant tradition.
He's in the natural law tradition, and he's a Thomist.
The Theonomists were Vantillian, more focused on God telling us through revelation, special revelation, as opposed to natural law.
So there's some denominational differences, right?
But I regard those as denominational differences because I believe that if Stephen Wolfe, Got to be in charge, I think the theonomists would be very happy with most of what he does, way happier than what we have now.
And if the theonomists were in charge, I think Stephen Wolf would be way happier than what we've got now.
And I like to joke if I were president, and what a glorious three days that would be.
I think I'd make Stephen Wolf happy, and I think there's a lot of the Venn diagrams, it's not circles that map onto each other perfectly, but there are a lot of things that everybody who loves God, loves his word, wants to see.
And I think we would be very pleased with most of it.
We might say with whoever wrote Chronicles, he was a good king, but he didn't remove the high places.
There would be some of that.
But compared to what we're dealing with now, which is just ungodliness and anarchy on stilts.
We are tumbling headlong into the abyss.
I would take a theonomist, I would take a Christian nationalist of Stephen's stripe.
I'd be delighted with any of them.
And this goes back to the earlier point of I want us to make sure that we keep our eye on the main adversary and not break out into intramural quarrels.
It's the disciples on the road arguing about who's going to be great in the kingdom that we don't have yet.
That's good.
Real quick, going back a page with the top down, bottom up thing, would you say the Christian nationalists seem very comfortable with top down?
And not to the expense of bottom up.
We don't want anything less than revival, but in terms of chronological order and what God in His sovereignty, it's His prerogative, what He chooses to do.
The CN guys that I talk to offline, they seem very comfortable with a slim minority getting it done, at least initially.
You know this crew much more than I do.
You've been around the block.
The Theonomist.
I'm thinking the Theonomists of old.
I'm thinking of Bonson.
I'm thinking of.
Were they as comfortable as some of the CN Young Bucks with a minority approach of it's top down first that leads them to the bottom?
I believe the Old Guard Theonomists and their heirs would think that a top down Christian prince would be a good thing.
They would applaud it, but they wouldn't have high hopes for the long run because they would say, this is great, but going back to what you said, we need the hearts of the people.
But there is a bully pulpit aspect to this that Solomon is the king, civil ruler, and he leads the people in worship when he dedicates the temple.
So I think that there's a number of things that the leaders could do if they agree with the Theonomist that it's got to be heart change, then they can be part of that, should be part of it.
I think that's such an important point because some of the pushback.
That you get from people who have violently reacted against both theonomy, honestly, and Christian nationalism.
I think one of the key points they're missing is the didactic value of law.
Laws don't just result from the culture of a people, laws then turn around and shape the culture of the people.
So there is a very real sense in which culture is downstream from worship, but part of our worship produces a legal system that then continues to disciple and radicalize people further and further.
So you can take something like no fault divorce.
It didn't just capture, well, we have this new idea about marriage and divorce.
It then turned around and discipled people about what is marriage all about?
What is the nature of happiness in marriage?
What is a successful marriage?
Is marriage a permanent thing at all?
So, law has a didactic value, a didactic value.
And that's part of the top down conversation that 3% gets a Dusty Devers elected, and then Dusty gets signal boosted by all the leftists that hate him.
And they end up accidentally discipling a couple thousand more people every time they do that to agree with you, who didn't previously.
And they made a very clear gospel presentation of everything they could have cut out of our, I mean, any number of the podcasts I've done.
They cut a three minute gospel presentation and they sent it out.
And that's exactly what we're talking about.
That's why I try to be very clear whenever I'm addressing a crowd or addressing the media.
I step up, like we had a big event at the Capitol.
The beginning of February, and the first thing that I did, there was media lined up everywhere.
And I said, Media, this is for you.
You need to come to Christ.
And I preached the gospel.
If you are bound in your sin, you're in rebellion against our Lord.
And I preached just a very clear, straightforward gospel message calling them to come to Christ.
And I think that's where, if we're going to talk about a top down, we have to be very clear that we're not just here to write laws.
We're writing laws that are orienting us.
To the lawgiver, but we can only rightly orient ourselves to the lawgiver, not by external law, but by the internal submission to the lawgiver and trust in him and receiving his grace, receiving the Lord Jesus, and then living our lives in accordance with him.
External law should match the internal law of the heart so that the conscience and the law of the land are in union.
They're in unity.
We're not warring against those things.
So, yeah, right wing boost.
You know, they sent the gospel message out to.
However, many hundred thousand.
And that's, I think, the very nature of what God is doing right now.
I think He's going to raise more people up.
And if and when He does, I just want to encourage you let the gospel be at the front.
And yes, do your job and write your laws and go into the state house and make good, strong biblical arguments and write good law, but have conversation and be in the public sphere.
If they stick a mic in your face, Tell them about the goodness and the glory of Christ.
Amen.
Amen.
Here's another question about distinctions, Theonomy, CN.
Sometimes you have to plan a conference and plan a panel just so that you can get Doug to answer your personal questions.
So, indulge me.
But I've waited a little bit longer.
No shame, Joel.
No shame.
But it seems like one of the other distinctions.
Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but would be so top down, bottom up.
Another one would be what about timeline?
Like, I think sometimes, and this is less of a theonomy thing, although certainly they overlap, but more of an eschatology thing, a post millennial thing.
I think, Dusty, you're post mill, right?
Yep.
So all five of us are post millennial.
But it does sometimes seem like there's a crew that's like, we will have a Christian nation in 5,000 years, you know?
And then a lot of the Christian nationalists, one of the things that I appreciate, I'm not saying I agree.
I'm post millennial.
So I think if you have a different eschatology, God bless you, you're wrong.
In Texas, we say, God bless your heart.
But what I appreciate, though, is the immediacy.
There's a sense of maybe 50 years and not 5,000.
Stephen Wolfe says, why not now?
If you have power, then why not exercise it now?
And I think that that's great.
And I think that when you enroll in a math class, the first thing you encounter would be math problems.
If you're a post-millennialist, the first temptation you're going to encounter is post-mill problems, which mañana, you know, the kingdom is going to come sometime and we don't have to worry about it.
That is the temptation of the post-millennialist.
The premillennialist is tempted to think it doesn't do any good no matter what we do.
It's all going to blazes.
But everybody's got their temptations.
And I think that anybody who has authority and power and wields it for good immediately should be applauded, supported, prayed for.
I happen to think it's not going to take as deep root as it's going to for hundreds of years, but that's no excuse to avoid doing the good you can now.
As the great theologian Shia LaBeouf says, don't let your dreams be dreams.
Yesterday you said tomorrow.
Tomorrow you'll say, you know, some other time.
Why not today?
You know, just do it.
And so if God puts you in that position, Just do it.
Let your dreams be reality.
He's causing that.
So, plant your seed, water it, and let him bring the growth.
And he might bring the growth today because it's a very fast-rising seed.
And you don't forget about working on all the other seeds in the garden, too.
G.K. Chesterton said: The one taste of paradise on earth is to fight in a losing cause and then not lose.
Yep.
Yep.
Amen.
I'll have what Dusty's having.
It's fantastic.
I feel like just the vicinity is.
Okay.
There it is.
Squirrelly Joe's.
That's Christendom's coffee right there.
Eric or Brian either, but the idea of the we could win and maybe we could win soon.
What do you think?
Any thoughts on that?
Or if you don't have something on that, other distinctions in this Theonomy versus CN, where do we overlap?
Where is it different?
What do you think?
Well, I mean, personally, I think a lot of this stuff we get into like the timeline questions and how much change could happen.
I think a lot of that is actually beyond us, right?
Like, so when I think about this, I'm like, well, have I seen change in Ogden?
Can I pastor my people?
Can I love my family?
Right?
And can I support Dusty?
Can I support that cause?
So a lot of it is like, well, that's up to the Lord, right?
But can you put your shoulder behind the plow?
So I think a lot of it, for most people, it's like you're probably not going to run for office, right?
But I know that, like with Dusty, like, but we can pray for him in Sunday worship.
Like, we can do that.
We know the Lord answers prayer, He answers the prayers of a righteous man, right?
So I think some of it is not to overcomplicate it.
You do whatever you can do today.
With all your heart, with all your might, and you pray and you see what the Lord does.
Yeah, that's right.
We're always trying to keep our eye on 500 years down the road and five minutes from now.
And those aren't mutually exclusive goals.
You set your compass bearing for a real long way off, and you're going to have to pass through a lot of steps on your way there.
And to God be the results.
Like, amen.
God's going to be the Lord of those results.
And it just is the case that the world is.
Very difficult to predict.
If it was easy to predict, I would have bought Bitcoin.
Like a long, long time.
Obviously, I'd have a whole lot of Bitcoin and I'd have a yacht and Joel Webbin would be invited on and you could do your podcast on the yacht.
But I think it's, you see how quickly things can turn?
Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Yeah, woulda, coulda, shoulda.
But I mean, Barack Obama ran on a non pro gay marriage platform like in what, 2008?
And here we are today.
Like things can change fast.
And not only fast in the wrong direction.
That's correct.
And that's something I think that Wilson and you guys with Kings Hall and others, Rigney, like have been really helpful with was thinking of like Constantine.
It's like, yeah, sometimes the Christians in the providence of God all of a sudden find themselves with immense affluence and influence and power and they weren't quite ready for it.
So maybe it's not just LARPing.
Like, you know, with our congregation, I've preached this sermon like almost back to back twice, but I.
I didn't title this, but essentially the title was You Gotta LARP Before You Can Fly.
Like, sure, there is something to be said for cosplaying and LARPing and grifting where the person has no inward pure motive.
You know, there's no desire for God's glory or his kingdom or his, you know, none of that.
And so, I mean, it's strictly, you know, it's a Judas type thing.
He's helping himself out of the money bag.
That's it.
But anytime you've gotten way off the rails and you try to make a change, it's gonna look silly at first.
You know, if, if, yeah.
Any kind of major change.
If a guy's an alcoholic, you know, he's been drinking, you know, a fifth every single day, and now all of a sudden he's going to try to get in shape.
He's going to try to be healthy.
He's going to try to get a job.
It'd be real easy for anybody who knows him to say, you know, like, you know, cosplay, LARPer, grifter, you know.
Turf Wars and Charity00:14:58
It's like, or repenter.
And repentance, initial repentance, when you're already way off the rails for an individual or society, at least the beginning steps, even, you know, like Paul Washer talked about this.
I remember hearing this clip, and I was like, thank goodness, because every Paul Washer, I was like, I'm going to hell.
For sure.
And then I heard this one, and he was talking about the kernels of repentance.
And I mean, to hear it from anybody would be encouraging, but to hear it from Paul Washer, I was like, that guy would not, I mean, this guy does not preach soft sermons.
Like, I probably hurt him to preach this sermon.
And so, you know, it's good and you know you can take it to the bank.
But he was just saying that if our repentance is perfect, if we could achieve perfect repentance, guess what?
We wouldn't need repentance because we could achieve perfect living.
The only reason you don't live, the reason you don't obey perfectly is because you have imperfect faith and imperfect repentance.
Because your repentance is not perfectly full and your faith is not always there, but at times wanes.
That's the whole reason you said.
And so then, what does repentance look like in vitro?
What does repentance look like in its kernel stages?
And what does that look like at a corporate level as a society?
What would it look like for the beginning of America to repent?
It might look like women making sourdough and wearing sundresses.
And that's why I want to say, okay, now there can be a grift side of this.
That is true.
But I don't want to blanket.
I want to be careful not to disparage this.
And then, as it pertains to the Constantine kind of moment where all of a sudden you're thrust into power, that's why back to theonomy and God's law and all these kinds of things and Christian nationalism.
No, it's not LARPing to talk about if the Presbyterians get power, what will they do with the Baptists?
That's not a silly conversation.
That's to make sure the Baptists don't get drowned.
Sit them down and talk to them.
There, yeah, exactly.
But that's next to a lake.
We complain.
No, Eric.
No.
We'll complain about.
Well, so far, it looks like, if anything, the Baptists are going to be, you know, you're outnumbered 10 to 1 years old.
They're going to sit us down.
Yeah, exactly.
I saw Dusty doing push-ups.
Yeah, I'm going to dry off your children.
It's too late.
Dry off your children.
Too late, Dusty.
In my mind, they're metaphorically wet.
They're still wet, yeah.
The sprinkling has happened, Dusty.
It can't be undone.
Remember the Baptists.
They're going to convert at some point, Lord willing, and then they can truly be baptized.
So with all right, that's enough.
So, with all that being said, the point is, you know, like sacralism, right?
Like James White has talked about this.
James White is awesome.
Praise God for him.
And it's, yes, like the little hole, you know, and you're down there, and Luther, I think it was Luther, was like next to him, right?
The Baptist that was kept in a hole.
Was it Luther that was in the same room?
No, not in the same room.
I think it was the same castle.
But close, yeah.
And he knew.
And he knew.
And so then, how do you, I think it's advantageous to not figure out Christendom.
Once it already happened.
So let's play this out for a minute.
So if someone said, I'm afraid if Christian nationalism took, you guys would take power and then you'd start persecuting other Christians, you know, the Presbyterians persecuting the Baptists.
And I'd say, okay, let's say we're not going to do that, but let's say that your nightmare came true and we were doing that.
We were persecuting Baptists.
Would that make Jesus angry or happy?
Angry.
Angry.
Okay, I think we'd all agree that would make him angry.
So do you think that we should modify our behavior down here so that we don't make Jesus angry?
Yeah.
And I said, Well, welcome to Christian nationalism.
Right.
Back to it again.
We've come full circle.
So, you think we should do more of what Jesus likes?
I, too, am a Christian nationalist.
And Stephen Wolfe took 400 pages to write that.
Do what Jesus likes.
Christian nation, better than transing kids.
That's it.
Love it.
Hashtag.
That's a good one.
Any thoughts, Brian or Eric?
No.
Any other last distinctions with a CN versus.
The Reconstruction is not a versus thing.
No, it shouldn't be, but I just, I know, I hear it framed sometimes.
Yeah.
I believe that we're dealing with, if God grants us any measure of success, as I believe he is in the process of doing, it's going to involve millions of people.
Right.
Right.
And among these millions of people, there will be all sorts of differences, all sorts of different emphases, and you can thank God for the, Man, I wouldn't have done it that way, but I like their way of doing it better than my way of not doing it.
I think we can give thanks to God that Christian nationalism is a national conversation or a worldwide conversation in some ways because the current or the theonomist can look and say, well, we've been doing this for a long time.
We've had Westminster, we've had the 1689.
We've had various flavors of theonomy.
You guys are late to the game.
And they should probably be saying, Great, what we've wanted for a long time is actually a mainstream conversation.
The guys who are late to the game, who are saying, Well, Christian nationalism, Christian nationalism, and they don't know a whole lot about historic perspectives on theonomy or the law of God, they can look back and say, Thank you.
Thank you for laying the groundwork so that both, right now, we don't have enemies of each other, but we see the true and proper enemy.
That is the enemy of our souls, that ancient serpent, and who is devouring people, and he need not divide us.
So we need to be thankful for each other.
The new guys coming in should be thankful for the magisterial reformers, the theonomists.
Thank you for all the spade work you did.
And the old guard should be saying, Thank you, Lord, for the fresh blood.
Thank you for this infusion of energy.
Thank you for this opportunity.
So much of this is.
It's being thankful that God is a God who seems to delight in lots of differentness.
Like, he just does it constantly where there's differentness.
And a lot of this, I think the turmoil really does come down to turf war some of the time.
Like, turf war of this ministry, you know, what is it?
Their market share of this camp versus this camp.
Donors.
Yeah, donors and power.
But there's something at the bottom of that that I think sometimes gets overlooked, and it's that.
Turf wars aren't all evil in the sense that turf wars are fought over convictions, and you don't want somebody who you think is wrong to win the hearts and minds of more people.
So, when you see somebody who's turf warring with you, it's good to stop and say, They're really convinced that they're right about this and that I'm wrong about that, and maybe have a charity to say, I'm actually going to start with the assumption until they prove me wrong that they love the people.
And they don't want them to be discipled by what they see as error.
And if we could take some of the heat out of it and start with that kind of understanding, I think that can help.
And then that's not at all inconsistent with then saying, and I'm going to flat out believe you're wrong.
Here's the 17 point reason why.
And I think that your argument should fail and that my argument should win the hearts and minds of more people than yours because yours happens to be wrong.
So it's a really tough tightrope walk because there's compromise for political reasons that's a temptation there.
But I think you can't just start with the presupposition well, there are two people in this debate me and people who agree with me, and then idiots.
Which is what the flesh wants to do with literally everything.
Two ministers were having lunch one time, and one of them said, Well, we both serve God, you in your way, and I in his.
Exactly.
So it doesn't mean compromise.
I'm not saying compromise.
I'm not saying relativism, but I'm saying there is such a thing as Christian charity.
And Christian charity is really, really important for what Pastor Wilson's talking about.
And when we're all trying to get the right principles landed the right way, We do need to be careful not to see the hordes, the Viking hordes approaching, and then turn around and stab everybody around me constantly.
Like that really is a temptation.
Yeah, the reason why we can have so much banter on the platform, and you guys are Presbyterians, clearly we're Baptists.
The reason why we can have the banter is because we know what time it is, we're not fighting each other here.
There was a time when we would fight over these things, and there still are times, you know, close doors or in our churches.
Because we're not relatives.
In our denominations, and it's still good to have those things, but know what time it is.
There is a great enemy, and we need to be together on this and fight it.
Legalists was an elf, and Gimli was a dwarf, but we're in the middle of Helm's Deep.
That's the situation we're in.
Right.
Dr. Boot and I, a while back, we did a, he was.
Gracious enough to come on the podcast, and we did an episode on baptism.
And we just talked about how the sons of Issachar know the times and the debate about baptism.
We don't want to make it trivial because God's word matters, and somebody's right and somebody's wrong, and baptism is a sacrament, it matters.
But we were just talking about, in some sense, you can track historically within the church when the Baptist baptismal arguments were the fiercest.
They were You know, they were it was a luxury of Christendom, it was a luxury of the Christians are winning, like the you know, that like the Christian talking about turf wars, the Christians have like a monopoly on all turf, you know, so like the Christians are in charge here, and so we can afford to talk about you know baptism and strongly disagree.
And there are just a lot of churches, right?
So it's like you've got this good Baptist church and this good Presbyterian church, and they're both across the street, and so, of course, naturally, if you're of credo Baptist convictions, then you're going to go to the Baptist church.
Um, whereas now.
Part of the reason why I still have a position, but part of the reason why I've changed my philosophy of ministry, not my theology, but my philosophy of ministry, my presentation on baptism, I'll still tongue in cheek make a joke, but for the most part, people know I'm joking and I'm charitable with it, is because they don't have the option.
There is not a Presbyterian church across the street from mine.
There is, not quite across it, but there are a few, actually.
But they closed for 16 months with COVID, they were woke with BLM.
And so I've got dear Presbyterian brothers and sisters who are like, we'd rather go to the Baptist church with a spine than the Presbyterian church that folded like a cheap suit, you know?
And that's just a unique, you just have to recognize that's a unique time.
So that's not my position, it is not baptismal Catholicity, lowercase c.
I would not put that as my position for all of the gospel age.
I wouldn't write that down in a book and recommend that to our spiritual sons 500 years from now if Christendom is shining, you know, if like Pilgrim's Progress, you know, like if religion is walking in her, you know, her glass slippers.
And I would say, well, in that case, yeah, the Baptists get in your Baptist church.
Presbyterian, get in your Presbyterian church and still, you know, have a cigar night, you know on Monday, but but on Sunday worship in your respective places.
But that is not.
That's just not where we are.
If I could throw one historical note in in here, because we're sometimes the victims of anachronistic thinking, because we don't realize that one of the features of the older Christendom was that we, we are so used to the voluntarist system of denominations you where, you just choose where you want to go, and it's sort of baked into our American DNA And I think it's an upgrade.
I like that.
But in the older Christendom, there were all sorts of things that were tied together.
So baptism was tied to things like citizenship.
You know, it wasn't just a denominational distinctive.
And I was just a year or so ago in Boston, and they've got statues.
There's a statue I saw to a Quaker woman who was executed in Massachusetts back in the 17th century.
And you think, oh, man, you know.
Good grief, why'd they have to do that?
And I'm not saying it was good that they did that, but it's anachronistic thinking.
These Quaker women would parade through Boston naked, and they would try to exile them, and they'd keep coming back.
They wouldn't, they were just being pestilent.
It was a legal, it was not just a theological denominational thing, it was a legal sort of thing.
The Salem witch trials, the The charter of Massachusetts expired and they didn't have any legal justification for functioning.
They sent someone back to England to get the charter renewed.
And while he was gone, the Salem witch trials broke out.
And it was a local trial in Salem and it was a hysteria and a bad business.
And then when the charter came back, they had a legal government again.
The Puritan ministers of Massachusetts. applied to the governor to have the witch trials suppressed.
So the Puritans suppress the witch trials is not the headline you've read.
There was a lot of legal background that we have forgotten.
So when you hear of Christians fighting Christians, sometimes it was all jumbled up with national interests and legal issues, and it was not just what we would have today.
Joe, you said something that I want to see if you can clarify.
It sounded like you were trying to wash over some of the distinctions of denominations at this time.
I'm not for that.
Is that what you were saying?
Denominational Distinctions Matter00:06:28
No, baptismal Catholicity, not washing over the distinctions of denominations, but saying that I do think that there is a case to be made for something like the CREC that would accommodate.
Both positions on the mode of baptism at this juncture.
I don't know, like if the CREC, if it was the 1700s, it may not be the position.
Yeah, but John Bunyan's church did it.
John Bunyan was a Baptist, and he would receive into membership people who were baptized in infancy, provided they were godly Christians.
So this division, this issue is not a new one.
It goes all the way back.
So there's a hardline Baptist position.
There's a more ecumenical position represented by Bunyan.
And on the other side, on the Presbyterian side, you've got the same hardliners.
Nope.
You've got to do it this way.
And in our church we have a baptismal cooperation agreement where the church is paid a baptist.
We subscribe to the Westminster confession but we receive baptists into membership in good standing and we defer to the parents understanding of baptism.
So when their child professes faith then we baptize them.
The tough thing with that is that baptism unfortunately just logically the way that it plays out is not a two-way street as much as it is a one-way.
It is much easier for the Presbyterian practically to accommodate the Credo Baptist than it is.
Well, that's why we do it.
Amen.
Go ahead, Desi.
I know you have a point.
We go the easy route.
So, just in case people are thinking, oh no, they are moving to that fight between Baptists and Presbyterians and making it, they're forgetting what time it is.
We're not.
We've moved into an internecine fight.
But we're still willing to say, we are willing to fight for the Southern Baptist Convention.
We are willing to fight for.
A conservative Presbyterianism.
We're willing to fight for a CREC.
We're willing to fight for those things, but we're also willing to fight together for much greater fights as well.
We want to retain the denominations.
We want to retain the infrastructures.
We want to conserve.
We want to criticize.
We want to correct and create where we need to.
But we, at the same time, need to come together to fight this serpentine theocracy that's been pouring across our country.
All right, this is maybe my last question for you guys.
Another thing that I've heard people say is well, you know, the Christian nationalist guys are against, you guys just don't seem like you just don't love our sacred democracy enough, you know, or you're just, you know, my constitution, you're just not constitutioning hard enough, you know.
What if we try classical liberalism even harder?
You know, have we thought about that?
And so, what do you guys, I have my answer for that.
I like the constitution a lot.
I would tell them to read a book.
I read a book.
There's just flagrant historical ignorance because what we are talking about is restoring the Constitution, returning to the way it was.
People think that James Madison, they've confused Earl Warren with James Madison.
So the changes that were brought about in the mid-20th century that were ushered in was a subversion of the Constitution.
It was a subversion of our constitutional way of governing ourselves, which was explicitly Christian.
There was a Supreme Court decision in 1892, exquisitely named Holy Trinity versus the United States of America.
That's on the nose.
Man, they should have just looked at it.
And I won't go into the setup of the case, but they decided the case rightly.
It was a church named Holy Trinity against the United States.
They decided the case rightly.
And then Justice Brewer, the Chief Justice, said, and while we're on the subject, let me tell you why America is a Christian nation.
This is the majority opinion in 1892, and that year was closer to the year of my birth than this year today is to my birth.
It wasn't that long ago.
You might say, well, how old are you?
You'd have to do a lot of math to figure that out.
Well, 1892, basically, that was one lifetime, one lifetime before my birth.
1892, we're a Christian nation.
And we functionally were down until the mid-20th century.
And we're talking about getting back to that.
I'll take that.
And let's take that as a platform and work from there.
And people say, no, you're destroying.
Democracy, you're destroying the Constitution by what?
Returning to it?
Right.
So I think it was Madison that talked about our Constitution, if it's not upheld, and there's others who said something similar, but it can become just a parchment barrier.
It depends on the will of the people.
So if the people are grounded in the Christian tradition, then that parchment barrier is.
Thick, it's meaningful.
It matters because the standard matters in the hearts and the minds of the people.
But it becomes just a paper, like tissue paper, parchment barrier, if the morality of the people has slidden far away from Christian morals.
And now you just have whatever, and we don't have a standard.
John Adams, our second president, said, Our Constitution presupposes a moral and a religious people.
He said, It is wholly unfit for any other.
And that's true.
And I think one of the interesting things is shameless plug coming that if you look at the spirituality or the cosmology that's starting to rise among our, at least in America, they're looking towards spiritual things far more than they have been for years.
Moral People Needed00:03:05
If you've got Joe Rogan who's clearly working on psychedelics, And that those psychedelics are bringing him closer to a spiritual reality than, and even him saying, We need Jesus, and not saying that really tongue in cheek.
He's leading in and saying, We need Jesus.
And you've got like, even if he doesn't believe in him, he's like, Somebody needs Jesus.
Yeah.
Maybe not me, but you need Jesus.
Yeah.
Jordan Peterson, even Graham Hancock talking so much about the spiritual.
I think what you're seeing with the popularity of podcasts and podcasts.
That are really talking about this.
We're horseshoeing, you know, we're going back to this pharmacea and really tapping into the spiritual nature.
And I think that's why Haunted Cosmos has become so.
I was going to say, somebody's been listening to Haunted Cosmos.
Yeah, Cosmos, thanks.
He corrected our pronunciation based on the Greek, but I said it's the same reason I don't walk into a restaurant and say, I would like an extra tortilla with my burrito.
So I'd be.
You actually do say that, though.
At Chili's.
At Chili's.
He says it at Chili's today.
He doesn't even go to the taqueria.
He goes to Chili's and says that.
Well, yeah, I mean, intelligent guy, great restaurant.
Did all you guys read Age of Entitlement, Christopher Caldwell?
Yeah.
Who has read in the audience, who's read Christopher Caldwell, Age of Entitlement?
Raise your hand.
I'm just curious how many.
I'd highly recommend it.
I think it's really helpful.
His point, and I think it's the point that I would make and a lot of other guys would make, is it's not that, oh, the Constitution is terrible.
The Constitution's wonderful.
It'd be great if we still had it.
Yeah.
That's his argument is just, and how do you get rid of something?
Because it's just too obvious.
Nobody's going to, it'll never work to just, unless you're Nicolas Cage, nobody can just take the Constitution and make it disappear.
Yeah, but he had to give it back, Joel.
Right.
But this is what you can do.
What if instead of getting rid of the Constitution, what if you could take a lens, a particular way of interpreting, and you don't get rid of the Constitution, but you put a lens over the Constitution that becomes the.
The de facto constitution to where, for all intents and purposes, functionally, you now have another binding document.
When I was reading that book, Age of Entitlement, he was throwing hand grenades every direction.
And I was reading this and I looked at the spine, who published this?
I know it's pretty bold.
Well, Claremont.
And I thought, what's going on over there?
And this is another harbinger of people saying out loud things that they never would have said out loud.
40 years ago.
And we're able to talk to this.
Too Much Enlightenment00:02:16
If we'd been talking like this in the 70s, there would have been 20 of you.
This is a very different time.
I do wonder to your original question the people have some discomfort.
I don't remember what it was.
What was the first one?
To worship our sacred democracy.
And I do think there is at least a portion of the Christian nationalist conversation that is willing to say, Maybe we're too pluralistic from the foundation, even from the beginning.
Maybe there's a little bit too much enlightenment.
Maybe there's a little bit too much sprinkled in of that.
Even as much, and the upgrade from today to the original thing would be, you know, miles and miles better.
But I do think that there is a willingness, and maybe that's where some of this pushback comes with as well, for people to say, yeah, but maybe there was a little bit too much deism.
And maybe there was a little bit, not to gloss over all the disagreements, and, you know, maybe.
Maybe we do want to say that there is first table of the law type of stuff.
Not that there wasn't a lot of that going on.
But is that part of this?
So, yes, there were deistic currents, but Jefferson and Franklin were probably the only founding fathers who were toying with deism.
And they were both very bad deists because they believed that God intervened in human affairs.
But they were liberals and affected by the Enlightenment.
But at the Constitutional Convention, there were 55 men there, and 50 of the 55 were Orthodox Trinitarian Christians.
And Jefferson was in France at the time, and basically it was overwhelmingly Christian with currents here and there.
I'd recommend, if you want real bracing reads, go back and read the early Rush Dooney, This Independent Republic, which I've been going back and reading him again.
I just finished This Independent Republic again.
Really bracing read, and he pinpoints the areas where there was compromise, where the founders left a few doors unlocked.
Unlocked Constitutional Doors00:00:38
That they they, you left some doors unlocked in a bad neighborhood.
Um, it's that level of um great, all right.
Um, thank you guys for serving us this evening and all day and uh, we look forward to tomorrow.
I know some of you guys you brought your kids with you.
God bless you, thank you for bringing them and making it a family affair, and so some of you are probably going to have to head out, but real quick, before some of you dismiss and then, as many of you who want stay for the after party, we do have one more sponsor that I want to make sure to get to.
So this is Nate from the Ezra Institute, and you guys were free to go ahead and exit stage left or right.