Dr. Stephen Wolfe argues that America's strength lies in Anglo-Protestant unity rather than multiculturalism, citing social science on low trust in diverse nations and asserting the founders designed a republic for a specific cultural particularity. He contends current demographics lack the self-governance capacity for ordered liberty, framing labor, fitness, and family duties as spiritual obligations restored in Christ. Wolfe defends figures like Clarence Thomas and Vladimir Bukovsky as assimilationists within this tradition, criticizing modern policies that separate benefits from heritage while promoting his upcoming Dallas conference and writings on American reform. Ultimately, the interview challenges progressive narratives by positing that rejecting ancestral culture undermines the collective projects necessary for societal flourishing. [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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Welcome to Theology Applied00:02:33
All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
And in this episode, I was privileged to welcome to the show Dr. Stephen Wolf.
He is the author of The Case for Christian Nationalism.
And we are talking about multiculturalism and that it is bad.
Diversity in terms of culture is not our strength.
And so we're talking about multiculturalism, particularly here in America, the negative effects that we have suffered as a nation because of it, especially over the last 60 years.
And what to do about it, and then answering some of the big questions of okay, well, if we're going to have a monoculture, then doesn't that mean that you are racist?
And the answer is no.
And we'll flesh that out and show you how we can have unity.
Diversity is not our strength, unity is our strength.
And yet, how we can be welcoming and hospitable to different ethnicities and all these things that we find in scripture.
That's the episode.
And Dr. Stephen Wolfe, you've probably heard all the scary, you know, he's the boogeyman hiding under your bed.
Try to lower your shields for a moment.
Use discernment.
You may disagree, but give him a chance.
He's got some really good things to say, and I'd like you to hear it for yourself.
So tune in now.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
And in this episode, I'm privileged to welcome to the show Stephen Wolf, Dr. Stephen Wolf.
He's not a pastor.
Praise God, we need pastors, but we don't need everyone to be a pastor.
So he's doing what God's called him to do.
He is also the author, you probably recognize his name.
He's the author of The Case for Christian Nationalism.
And Stephen and I just recently were able to have the privilege of speaking at the New Christendom Conference with the Ogden Boys.
That's Brian Sauvay and Eric Kahn, Dan Burkholder, and Ben Garrett.
That was a blessing.
And one of the talks at the conference that Stephen presented for us was on multiculturalism, arguing that Well, diversity is not our strength, but the type of diversity in view might surprise you, and I think it's worth fleshing out.
So, Stephen, can you give us maybe a recap of that talk that you presented?
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, thanks for having me on.
Yeah, so what I was trying to address was several things.
Religious Liberty and Protestantism00:15:44
One was whether or not multiculturalism is actually a good thing, not only theoretically, but actually in effect.
So, like in the world, Is there any indicator through social science and research that multiculturalism is actually good for society?
And in every society, it's actually bad.
It's one of the funny things that actually liberals, liberal and leftist researchers who have really tried to prove that multiculturalism is good have actually demonstrated and been honest about it that it's actually bad.
There's been actually researchers who've done research on social trust around the country, around the world.
And they sat on the research because they got the data.
They're expecting to show this great result of multiculturalism is great and britches and it's magical and all that.
But then in the end, it actually shows that it's not good.
And so they sit on it for like five, six years until they just found, well, we got to get it out there.
So they publish it and it shows that essentially, ethnically and culturally diverse countries actually have very low social trust, even down to the local level.
And there's all sorts of research on this.
I mean, even in like businesses, it's basically people admit deep down in the academic journals that diversity in the workplace actually doesn't add any benefit, despite the propaganda in that area from businesses to the military.
It's just not shown to actually increase effectiveness.
So I talked about that.
I mentioned, I discussed some of the research on that, which is pretty conclusive.
And then I also talk about the United States.
So we tend to think that the United States.
From its very beginning, it was intended to be a sort of multi ethnic state or multi ethnic people, meaning basically meaning that there is no ethnicity or cultural group that is more American than anyone else.
That's the idea that we've all been taught for our entire lives.
Most people, actually, I would say everyone's lives at this point.
And that's kind of our ideology.
But one of the things I wanted to show is that actually, from the beginning, that was not the case.
And that the founders were self consciously, they understood themselves to be British or at least stem from the British.
And even this sort of American self consciousness, there was early on, both in the founding, I'd say in the early American Republic, a sense of peoplehood that was around an ethnic core that you can call uniquely American.
Some people have called it like sort of Britishness on steroids or.
Like a, so there is something kind of distinct, but also rooted ancestrally in a British ethnos.
And so that was the core.
And so they considered that particularity to be necessary to uphold the universal.
So when we think of the American like political thought, we think of these very universal ideas of all men are created equal, you know, they have natural rights.
So these things are universal.
If natural rights are natural, that means that.
Each human being has these rights.
And so we've taken that recently in the last, I'd say, 50 years to say essentially that's all it means to Americans is to affirm the propositions.
But the founders, and I would say well into the 19th century, even into the early 20th century, even past World War II, I'd say the predominant thinking was that there's a cultural particularity, a people that undergird those, affirming those propositions.
So to believe in natural rights, to believe in sort of American liberty, to believe in religious liberty as the Kind of Anglo tradition affirms it.
To believe in equality, those sorts of ideas stem and are supported by a cultural particularity that people have identified as Anglo Protestant.
So it's both rooted in English, but also it's the product of a Protestant tradition that I'm sure we can get to.
But that's what I was trying to get at is actually, okay, multiculturalism is bad.
And oh, by the way, we as Americans are not committed.
To multiculturalism in principle, we are actually committed to the idea that we have a people, uh, and we have a place, and we have ideas that are associated with those people.
And, um, we cannot expect everyone around the world who are not part of that, uh, political, um, that the that essentially Western civilization, but, um, but even kind of people who are not Western European to affirm those ideas, at least not readily.
So they can't just show up to America.
And all of a sudden, they affirm the propositions, and then they're exactly one of us as historically understood.
So, we're not actually historically committed to that as good Americans.
And I mean, yeah.
And so that's kind of the over, that's what I'm saying is that we actually should, as Americans, say there is a core ethnicity or there is a core culture that is an open culture, meaning that people can assimilate into it.
So, it's not bound by perfect genetic markers as if you're this sort of, you know, if you're too German, you're out.
That's not the principle.
Nevertheless, there is a core way of life, a core heritage to which newcomers should conform.
And that is necessary to maintain our old American principles.
So, all those principles that the older folks love, that they heard from Reagan, and all those core conservative principles we talk about of liberty and freedom and justice for all and all that, those are actually undergirded by an old American conception of people.
That is not as universal as we are taught.
And that is actually that teaching is very new.
Right.
The post war sentiment is what you and others have referred to it as.
So basically, your talk in a nutshell was multiculturalism is not our strength, that America from its founding, that was not the intent, but it was meant to be a monoculture.
And then you went on to say, okay, so which one is it?
Which culture?
And you described that as Anglo Protestant.
So, could you take just a moment and maybe taking those two words and breaking each of them down?
What do you mean by Protestant?
And what do you mean by Anglo?
Do Catholics have a place?
And do people who aren't white have a place?
What does it mean, Anglo Protestant culture?
Yeah, so it's rooted in a British intellectual political tradition.
So, this is explicitly affirmed by the founders.
So, if you look at the Continental Congress in 1774, 75, 76, you'll see them regularly appeal to their Britishness, and they are actually asserting their rights as Englishmen.
So they self consciously knew they were part of a tradition extending to the Magna Carta, all the way back to the Saxon kings of the ninth century and eighth century.
So there was a self conscious Britishness to the founders.
And it's from a legal tradition, or not just legal, but also a political tradition that you can see reflected everything from.
From Fortescue on law, but getting back to the Magna Carta, which is regularly appealed to by people like Samuel Adams.
You can see this through some expressions through John Locke and also religious liberty as well.
So, and this ties to Protestantism.
The reason why we as Protestants can affirm religious liberty is not this sort of, okay, I guess we'll tolerate you guys, you Baptists.
We're Congregationalists and Presbyterians.
I guess we can tolerate you guys even though we think you're heathen.
That was actually not the Protestant tradition, but within the Anglo world, there was a steady recognition that we as fellow Protestants can get along without wanting to suppress each other.
And this is even, you can see this even in New England in the 17th century, where they did actually say, Baptists, look, you can be part of our churches.
You can be in our churches, our Congregationalist church, we just can't have your own.
So you see this in the 1630s, 40s, 50s, 60s.
But Baptists, of course, one of their own churches.
But so eventually you see this in the 17 teens that Cotton Mather is now ordaining a Baptist in there in a Baptist church.
So, there is a development where they see, okay, look, we've always affirmed that a Baptist can have the same faith as us in themselves, that they can be true Christians, and that's why we let them in our churches.
But now we've realized, hey, we can actually form a civil polity, a civil society where we tolerate one another and we affirm each other's mutual Protestantism and each other's mutual faith, that we disagree on things.
And that's all, again, I mean, this is.
New England was a few decades later where England recognized this earlier in the 1600s.
But this is all just like our Anglo Protestant tradition.
And so when you get to the founding and we talk about religious liberty, this is not like the Enlightenment showing up.
It's not like all of a sudden they read John Locke and, oh, my dogmatic slumber, I finally woke out of that.
No, it was a progress into it.
And the First Amendment actually is an expression of a long Anglo Protestant tradition of experience, or it was the experience with each other that then developed.
Into the First Amendment, saying we can form a civil union despite theological differences.
And that's what is expressed in the First Amendment.
And that, so that's the Anglo Protestant tradition.
It's rooted in Protestantism, which says, so like Roman Catholicism, you have an ecclesiastical earthly head of the church, namely the Pope.
And to be in, you have to be aligned institutionally.
Right.
That's not true in Protestantism.
This is why you could have the Calvinists at least appealing to the Lutherans and saying, Lutherans, we think your brothers, and Lutherans just like scoff at us.
But, but you know, But the same thing with like Presbyterians and Baptists and Congregationalists and Baptists and Anglicans, Anglicans and Presbyterians, we could all affirm each other's mutual faith because we do not believe that you have to be aligned with an institution, a singular institution to be in.
And so for that reason, you can have principled religious liberty that, as I said, affirms each other's mutual faith.
And that was developed within the Anglo world, which comes to expression and comes to, I think, it's.
Its ultimate expression is 19th century in America, where eventually you have disestablishment.
Like I think the last quasi establishment goes disestablished in the 1830s in one of the states.
But then you still have flourishing and high religiosity.
And this is what Tocqueville shows up to the United States and he looks around and says, Wow, you guys don't have establishment.
And you have all this high religiosity.
Everyone cares intensely about religion.
And people are attending church.
And anyone who's an atheist has to remain.
Silent about it because there's a high social cost.
And so it came to this expression with the 19th century that we've lost, of course.
But anyway, there's a lot to say about Anglo Protestantism with the work ethic and a sense of ordered liberty that comes without a heavy handed order.
That's one of the unique things about the American tradition we can have high liberty with also high order without a kind of magistrate.
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Right.
No, that's really helpful.
You know, part of that is just the belief of self governing men, which unfortunately, I think, you know, I think we've lost a lot of that with our current population that men must be governed.
And if they won't govern themselves, then you might need a heavy hand in America, which isn't really conducive to our founding and, you know, the American project.
But sadly, our population has slipped.
I have two questions.
So, one, Well, on that, if I can comment on that, I think that's really important to point out.
So, again, we have this overly universalistic conception of our way of life.
And so, whenever someone mentions Protestant Franco or they mention the old classical conception of a dictator, all that, people freak out.
But they don't realize that, again, our American principles were designed for people who could, Who could govern themselves, who could have ordered liberty without a heavy handed law.
We don't have those people anymore.
And we don't, yeah, and we no longer have that.
And it's, again, it's undergirded by an Anglo Protestant culture.
And so a lot of people on the right are saying, well, look, you'll get the country now, and it's foolish to try to continue this idea of ordered liberty with self government if you don't have the people for that.
Like, we would all love to go back to times where.
We could have ordered liberty, but we can't have that anymore because it's that was undergirded by a particular core people, right?
Um, and once those people are gone, once that particularity and that culture is gone, then well, guess what?
You now men must be governed, meaning that like now you need the heavy hand of law.
And this is like this, like Burke has a great line which I wish I could quote right now, but it's essentially that people who can't self govern are have to be controlled by heavy handed government.
Ordered Liberty Without Aristocracy00:14:46
He's talking about the French Revolution, um, which back then.
A lot of people thought that the French could not actually govern, that they didn't, they, a lot of the, even French themselves recognized that they didn't have a tradition of liberty like the Anglos did.
And so you get the French Revolution, people are predicting that it's just going to be a disaster, which is exactly what happened because they didn't have, they had a tradition of royal absolutism.
Right.
Whereas the, this is what Montesquieu's praising in the mid 1800s, 1700s.
He's saying, look, I'm French, but the model is England.
And then you get to the late 1780s and you have the French Revolution, and you have, like I said in my talk, like Gouverneur Morris, who was a founding father, is saying, Look, like these people, these Frenchmen don't know liberty.
It's going to take time.
So, again, the point is, like, you can have a, you can list the universal abstract rights all day long, and people could say, Yay, cheer on them on.
But if you don't have, if you're not part of a people whose experience and tradition and culture can govern themselves, Can actually bring about order to liberty, then it's not going to work.
And that's the state we're in now.
Right.
Yeah.
Systems, I'm with you.
Systems of government, I think, have to fit the people.
And so, you know, this we've talked a little bit.
Like, I am happy and unashamed to wear the moniker of a general equity theonomist, meaning that I don't have, you know, I would remain, reserve some distinctions from some of the OG reconstructionists, although I appreciate Rush Dooney and a lot of what he said and Bonson, but I would be distinct from them and I would kind of give that disclaimer of general equity, lowercase T theonomist.
But what I'm saying is that sometimes the OG, you know, hardcore capital T theonomist, reconstructionist, Not only do they say, well, you know, the general equity of the civil codes given to Israel, these things need to be, you know, they need to be legislated in governments and in all places and all times.
But sometimes they'll go even further than that and say that the Bible actually prescribes not just laws, but a particular form of government.
And I would reserve that.
I do think there are some basic principles in terms of not just laws, but forms of government, representative government.
I think of Deuteronomy 18, you know, and.
There's, you know, guys over, you know, Jethro, the father in law of Moses, over tens and fifties and hundreds and thousands.
One thing that I will point out with that is a lot of guys will say, you know, we shouldn't vote for Trump because he doesn't, you know, it's a low bar.
We're not saying he has to be a perfect Christian or a Calvinist or this, that, and the other, but he's got to meet at least this, you know, this gracious standard that God put forth through Jethro, you know, to Moses in Deuteronomy 18.
But I would say, which is, you love justice, you don't take a bribe, those kind of things.
You could not even be regenerate and still meet the standard.
And so that should be the standard for our elective.
Elected officials, you know, and the president would be one of those.
And I would push back on that and just say number one, that's the standard given to Moses to appoint these men.
That's different than in our two party system.
Once we've gone through the primaries and all these things and we have two candidates before us, right?
Politics is the realm of the possible.
There's two candidates that can actually win, and neither of them, you know, meet this Deuteronomy 18 standard.
And it's not Moses, it's not a prophet, monarch type figure from on high who gets to.
Pick down, it's all the people at the bottom picking up, choosing up, and one of them will be chosen.
There will be, you know, it's not going to be, hey, well, I guess we just don't have a president this year because nobody meets the standard.
No, you're going to have one.
And so that's why I think the lesser of two evils comes into play in Deuteronomy 18, which I think is a great ideal standard.
I think it's very different in that being a standard for Moses as a monarch type figure to choose and select down than for us, you know, in a representative democracy type thing, the people to choose.
So, all that being said, my point is yes, there are some principles you can glean, I think, from the scripture in the Old Testament, some major principles of forms, not just laws, but forms of government like representative government.
That said, I like republics.
I think republics are ideal.
But as Benjamin Franklin allegedly said, what did you give us?
A republic, if there's a condition, you can keep it.
And I think the jury has come back in, the verdict is here.
We did not keep it.
And I don't think that we currently have, and this is unfortunate, I'm not happy about it, but I don't think we currently have the quality of people required in order to sustain a republic.
So, this whole Protestant Franco or monarchy or whatever, none of these things, I don't know anybody on the right or dissident right or whatever you want to call it, New Christendom, whatever.
I don't know anybody who's giddy about it and saying, yes, this is what we've always wanted.
We never wanted a republic, we've always wanted a king.
I don't hear that.
I hear people saying, you know what, it's just time not to make something happen.
It's time to simply recognize what already has happened.
We need to know where we currently are and not just deal.
We can't afford to have this five year old idealism.
We need to put our big boy pants on, grow up, be an adult, recognize the times where we currently are and what our people are currently suited for so that we can get back to the ideal.
So I think a representative constitutional republic is still the ideal.
I'd love to see us have it, but we don't have it now.
We have it in pretense, but not in practice.
And I don't think that we're qualified for it.
Do you think?
Yeah.
I don't think that's a crazy thing.
Right Wing Watch will pick me up saying these kinds of things, you know, and like, oh my goodness, this right wing extremist.
And I'm like, what world do you live in?
Like, we don't have a high trust society.
I can't put fruit in a cart on the street and a little sign that says, take one banana and leave 50 cents.
And like, what America do people think we're living in?
Joel, the hysterical women at Right Wing Watch are losing their minds right now.
They need to pop some more pills.
But yeah, no, I mean, it's just the, it's a, it's a, one of the most basic.
I mean, you pick up any, pretty much any text in the Western political canon going all the way back to Plato's Republic.
And it's, you'll see different regime types.
And the regime, some of the regime types take on their own character and they shape the way that people think.
But also, they just, the reason why these regime types work, so regime types usually like, you know, king or aristocracy, Or, sort of, democracy, and there's others, but that's a basic idea.
Like, why do you have these different regime types?
And it's because, well, this one, this particular type is actually more suited to the people than another type.
And this is not just some pagan saying this.
I even found this once in pagans or pagan Calvin's commentaries.
And of course, it's among the founders, and everyone affirmed this.
And it's the idea that the form.
That not every form fits with every sort of person or people.
And that some people can be, at one point, a king would best suit them.
And then a few generations later, an aristocracy or democracy or whatever would best suit them.
Or, you know, a republic is probably better to say than a democracy.
And this is just basic stuff.
It's really just, as Time and Klein would say, it's just basic stuff in the tradition.
And we should recognize that.
So if we move away, as a people, we move away such that the form of government is not actually producing good.
I mean, that's the purpose, right?
So this is one thing people have to realize is that the form of government, this also includes laws, customs, everything.
If none of that, if that together is not actually producing good, then something's wrong and it needs to be changed.
Like it's a form of government is good only insofar that it actually produces good.
If there's something Unsuitable about it or ill suited for the people and it produces their bad, well, then something needs to change.
But the purpose of the system is what it does, not what particular label is assigned to it.
Well, this is public education.
Okay, but what does it actually accomplish?
Oh, well, it trains kids and indoctrinates them to be gay and communist.
The purpose of the system is what it actually does.
Yeah, and also it's not just good in itself, absolutely.
So if you take, like, just take our constitution, our constitution is Is good as a sort of wise document for the people that it governed initially.
But the question is is it absolutely good such that even if it ends up not working for people, you have to retain it?
Same thing with republic, or like just saying everything has to be a republican form of government or has to be a democracy is really treating the form as the end in itself.
But no one in history, I mean, this is like, again, why we're weird.
No one in history has affirmed that the form of government is an absolute necessity, even if it doesn't suit the people.
Right.
So, again, this is just that the founders thought that our system of government.
Was well suited for a people of self government and an order of liberty.
And if it was a different group of people, they would have produced a different document.
So we can't have this absolutist view of the form of government.
Now, I'm not saying right now we have to change the form of government to be clear, but we just have to get away from that thinking that there is a sort of perfect, that the perfect is the only thing we can have.
Right.
Whereas oftentimes, as again, the tradition and basic stuff, the perfect is the enemy of the good, in the sense that the perfect can actually produce bad because the people aren't perfect or it's not suited for them.
They're not ready for it.
It's just so much of it reminds me of parenting.
It's like the ideal, the ideal as a father is that my children would be self governed and I would be able to have a high degree of trust with them and be more lax in regards to.
Rules for the household and expectations, and that they would just get it done.
The problem is that my children are currently six, four, three, and one years old.
So that's not, so the ideal, you know, I mean, that's what I'm working towards.
We'll get there by God's grace one day.
That's what we're working towards.
But here's the irony putting the ideal into play today, ironically, often ensures that the ideal is never accomplished tomorrow.
If you put the ideal, the ideal is not always the means to the ideal.
There's usually another means that shapes and forms and prepares a people, whether it be children or whether it be a populace of a nation.
It's usually some other regiment that serves as the training ground that prepares people for the ideal.
It's not just ideal from A to Z, it's Z is the ideal, and there's other steps along.
The way, and I think of even the American project, you know, guys is well, this is the best form of government, and I'm even willing to concede that point.
Say, I could be wrong, I'm fallible, but yeah, I like it.
I like a constitutional republic, I think that's great if the people, you know, are conducive for that.
Um, but but people say, you know, and that's been our thing from the beginning it's like, okay, but these people didn't just grow on trees, they weren't hanging in midair, they didn't just appear.
Americans didn't just the founders and the covenanters and the you know, the pilgrims and the Puritans, they didn't just appear.
And that's your point that I find so refreshing and helpful.
These aren't people that just grew out of American soil one day and popped into existence.
These are people who transitioned from another place and another heritage and a thousand years of history, namely this Anglo Protestant heritage from Great Britain.
And the funny thing is, what's the thing that prepared for generations these people and their posterity to one day be in America and have this constitutional republic?
What's the thing that prepared them for centuries in England?
A monarchy.
Isn't that interesting?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, more than that, too, it was the people's interaction with the monarchy.
I mean, some of the major events in the history of England, going back to the Magna Carta, was the people or the various powers having a conflict resolution, conflict and then resolution.
So that's essentially what the Magna Carta was.
Same thing with the Glorious Restoration in the 1680s.
And so, I mean, even the English Civil War was essentially a war, of course, against the king.
So there was this.
The tradition of resistance, which again is what the founders appealed to.
So it was monarchy, but it was also this interaction with monarchy.
And then add to that the nature of the New World was explicitly from the very beginning, you see this reflected in early Massachusetts Bay Colony, this like rejection of aristocracy that was rooted in a kind of Puritan religion, essentially.
And so self government.
Without aristocracy.
And then you get into the founding where you have George Washington, who could have, if he wanted to, just become the king of America.
And he denied that and they called him Mr. President, not king or some royal title.
And with that, there was, again, a development of ordered liberty that didn't need this sort of aristocracy.
I mean, people have said, like, why was there so much trouble in France and there was so much trouble?
In Germany and in the 19th century.
And a lot of people think it's because of the stability of the monarchy and that people could look up.
The Christian Prince Concept00:03:55
This is like an old, what's his name?
Badgett or Badshot.
I forget how to say his name.
But it's an old claim of England that the people could look to the aristocracy and kind of have a sort of stability.
And that's what's held England together for so long.
But in America, we didn't have the aristocracy, but still kind of held together.
I mean, you have the Civil War and other things.
But generally speaking, the idea of ordered liberty existed apart from these kind of aristocratic figures.
I mean, you have Andrew Jackson's and Lincoln's and that sort, but still, that's our tradition.
And you wonder now if we could still have that without a figure.
This is one reason why I brought up the idea of a Christian prince in my book.
And that was that we need some guy to be a unifier.
But within the tradition, the American tradition, people think when I say, Christian Prince, they.
A dictator.
I'm thinking some sort of like some sort of modern form of dictator.
Right.
I really, in our tradition, mean someone like George Washington.
Right.
So, someone whose own presence, he was a tall man.
He sat in the federal convention debates that produced our Constitution as presiding, and he didn't say much, but his presence there added to legitimacy, added to the gravity of the event.
His support for it, of course, helped.
He did two terms and then humbly said, I'm done.
And even decades afterwards, people would have a little on their mantle, they'd have a little image of George Washington as if he was the guy who held the country together.
He knew it.
He knew that he was a type of Cincinnatus who, he was a sort of, as my envision, a Christian prince who was the embodiment of the people.
But he also had this, again, this Anglo Protestant humility to say, I'm not going to become king or dominate you guys, even though I could probably do that.
I'm going to retire.
And go back to the farm.
And he did that.
And he established that tradition ever since.
So that's the sort of people, person I'm talking about.
This, like the classical notion of someone like Cincinnati is leaving his farm to solve the issues of the day for the people to then rally around and solve it and then go back.
And that's the genius of our system or the genius of our tradition, the American Anglo Protestant tradition, is that you have a sense of duty mixed with the type of humility to then exit when you must.
Right.
And someone like FDR violated that and all that.
But you have the George Washington's, and that's my notion of an American.
Christian prince.
Right.
No, that's good.
And we still have those systems, but the problem is that that's not just like, that's not just a form or a system of a guy who comes in and has a humble presence presiding over these things and, you know, courage and, you know, all these.
And then when he's done, he doesn't try to hold on to power, but he lets it go and is content to go back to the farm.
That's not just a system.
That's a certain type.
That's a high caliber man.
It's not just the system.
It's the person.
We don't have those people.
We have, instead, we have, you know, boomers who want to, you know, Like, take organ donors and AI and live forever, you know, and never let go of power.
Meanwhile, they, you know, they can't control their bowel movements, you know, in a public speech like that.
I mean, that we're nowhere near is the exact opposite of George Washington, you know, again.
So, at the leader level and then at the people level, at the populace, in both regards, it seems like one of the major problems is we just don't have the people.
We don't have that caliber of man, of person for the current form of government that we have.
Yeah.
And, uh, and, yeah.
Beyond Eternal Salvation Alone00:02:52
And unfortunately, the sort of people we have in mind to rise up in the younger generations are being, in a way, held back by the boomers and others.
I mean, you just see in the church when I talk about having, you know, young men fulfilling their potential in all aspects of their life, not only spiritual, not only mental, but also physical, you see these guys lose their minds as if, oh, it's Nietzschean.
You know, like us encouraging people who are 20 to maximize the potential of their youth violates the boomer mentality.
It's as if they prefer everyone to be fat and weak and just obey whatever the church ladies say.
Instead of being strong and assertive and physically, mentally and physically fit for that to serve their country and people, it's like anathema.
And so it's very unfortunate.
It's as if they're trying to hold back.
And prevent the rise of a greatness that does tremendous good in the world.
I don't like the word Gnostic toss, but there is a sort of Gnosticism there that there's a spiritualism side.
So it doesn't matter if you're fat or get trampled on by the church ladies.
That's all kind of good in a sense because you're denying yourself or something.
It's a perversion and subversion of Christian truth.
And so what I'm trying to do, what I know you're trying to do, and other people, is encourage younger people, guys who are like, I don't know how old you are, but I'm 40, 41.
Trying to say, hey, look, like if you're 20, you don't need to be fat and lazy and weak.
You don't need to do that.
Like you should seek to do within the limits of your capacities and capabilities, try to maximize yourself.
I wish that I did that when I was 20, and you get older and you're like, well, yeah, I should have done that.
So I'm saying, look, like youth is good, and take advantage of it to develop yourself and be the best person you can be.
And I think if we have that kind of environment, we have that sort of ethos within the Christian world, we would have men that are just outstanding and great.
And not think that, I mean, I know you're a pastor, but there is this thing.
I beat on this.
I'm always saying, you got to stop thinking that the pinnacle of greatness is being a pastor.
Being a pastor is wonderful.
It's great.
It's essential.
It's crucial for people's, for the good life to submit to a pastor.
But at the same time, it's not, there's other forms of greatness.
There's greatness in politics, there's greatness in athletics, and there's all sorts of things that you can achieve in a Christian life and you can do these other things.
And most people are best suited for those other things and not being a pastor.
Greatness Beyond Pastoring00:03:21
But in the evangelical world, it's like you get a job and your job is so that you have enough money so you can do your international missions trip twice a year.
Yeah.
Anything else that you see?
You talked about this during your talk.
It's like people think that everything is purely instrumental for some spiritual end.
When actually, no, there's earthly goods here of inheritance, of self development that actually can produce tremendous amounts of good.
Right.
And those things do serve a spiritual end, but the spiritual end is not always global missions.
It's not always simply eternal salvation of individual souls.
It's not just that there are spiritual ends and then there are temporal earthly goods.
It's no, there are actually a multitude of different spiritual ends beyond just eternal individual.
Conversion and justification.
Even with the gospel, you know, Owen, John Owen talked about how, you know, justification is the heart of the gospel, but it's not the end of the gospel.
The end of the gospel is not just being reminded again and again of justification by faith alone, but the end, purpose, aim of the gospel is not justification, but rather communion with the triune God.
That all of this is serving the purpose of being able to eternally belly up to the table.
The wedding supper of the Lamb and commune and dine and feast and fellowship with the triune God, enjoying fellowship with Him forever.
And so, even in terms of spiritual ends, it's not just conversion, it's never less.
I'm not saying it's something other than or less than, but it's more than merely conversion.
So, these temporal goods, whether it be physical training, which is of some value, and that's part of the problem is that we, yeah, we just, we're, we have this.
Because it's easy.
It's easy to just say everything else is of no value.
This one thing is of ultimate value.
That's actually really easy.
Like there's the old moniker.
I had a friend who had the tattoo and he deeply regrets it, you know, but it said moderation is for cowards, which is a really foolish saying, you know.
So it's basically like just, you know, pick one or two or three things and go all in and then everything else don't do it at all, which is not a Christian idea.
The Christian idea is no, there's actually like a thousand things.
And they're not necessarily of ultimate value.
And there's a triage, and some things are more valuable, and spiritual things are of eternal value.
But it's not as simple as just saying, hey, everything's a distraction.
Leave it entirely alone.
Pick these two or three things, give it everything you got.
That's actually easier.
That appeals, I think, to apathy, a lazy person, a lazy man.
But in reality, the actuality is that no, there's like a foul at any given point in my life.
There's probably a thousand things that have varied degrees of value.
And I'm expected to weigh through these things with discernment and wisdom and give 30 minutes here and three hours there and 20 minutes.
So, you know, physical training is not of ultimate value.
It's also not of no value.
It's of some value, which means I need to give it some time.
And that's just one example that the Apostle Paul cites.
Private Family Banking Sponsorship00:02:29
But I think there are a million different temporal goods that could fall into the some value bucket, that category.
And to figure that out and then to give the things of some value some energy and some time.
Is a lot of work, which is, I think, why pietism appeals and Gnosticism appeals because it's easy.
It's actually easier.
It sounds really good, but it's actually way easier.
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Restored Service to Neighbors00:05:41
Yeah.
I mean, one thing is that we tend to treat these goods as kind of like zero sum in the sense that if you're devoting your attention to politics or some issue that you care for, well, then you must not be devoting your attention to something that's higher in value.
And so we kind of have this zero sum mentality.
And this is where what we call the Jesus juke comes in.
It's like you really care about this one issue that's kind of more of a temporal thing, I guess, or earthly thing.
And then, but oh, you care.
Like you caring about that means you're not caring about these other things, like these more spiritual things.
So it's like a zero sum mentality.
And there is a legitimate concern, a pastoral concern.
Like if someone's intense about an issue, a good pastor would be like, okay, look, I affirm that you care about this.
I think it's good that you care about this, but let's make sure that it's not a distraction from something that's more important.
So you will say, you will affirm that it's good that they care about an issue.
But the pastoral concern is that make sure it doesn't distract from these other things as well.
Nevertheless, it should never be, oh, you shouldn't care about this issue intensely because then you can't care about these other things intensely.
Right.
And so that's like the Jesus juke, and pastors can do that sometimes if they're not thinking clearly.
But yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
Like you have these, there's a bunch of different goods out in the world.
And to be a complete person is not only to be hyper spiritual, but it's also to be a good father that provides material support.
For their family.
I mean, that means you have to go outside and work usually and bring home money.
And then all that, there's a good there, and it's a duty.
Same thing with duty to your parents, you know, and duty to your community, to your church, and their material needs.
So there's all sorts of goods that we have to kind of devote our attention to.
And to devote one, like we become a quasi hermit, you know, like one of those hermits of old where they essentially distance themselves from society to focus on their own particular spiritual life.
Like the Desert Fathers or something like that.
Yeah.
Or they end up neglecting the completeness of your duty.
So they fulfill the principle, but miss all the secondaries, which then means you fail.
You fall short.
So that's the problem.
But yeah, I mean, and what I say is like, yeah, when you are united to Christ, you justify, but you're also restored, meaning that the things of this life, the faculties have been.
Restored in Him such that you can now actually act as intended by God, meaning that you can't act perfectly.
You're never going to be perfect in this side of life, but you still are regenerated.
You still are, in a way, definitively sanctified.
And so, then what does it mean to be human in this world?
It's not only to do spiritual things or to go to church and worship God, it's also to labor, to have a vocation that you do well at and that you do good to others.
Through that vocation, not only directly in the service, but also in acquiring the means to support those who depend upon you.
So, all those things are just the.
So, we're restored to do these things.
And so, they're part of our duty.
And I would say for the one reason, like, well, why do I need to be physically fit?
Well, I mean, you don't have to be a bodybuilder.
Well, I mean, to be a bodybuilder takes a tremendous amount of time.
And so, you could actually be doing other things.
I'm not saying don't be a bodybuilder, but I'm saying we shouldn't think that.
That if, like, if you're like a builder, for example, or construction worker, you can't devote two hours a day to go working out.
You have to have your strength to do construction, right?
So, the point being that, but whatever it is, you should be fit such that you can aid and be of service to your neighbor.
And one thing I realized when I moved to the South, when I moved to Louisiana for several years, is that one reason why these guys have big trucks, I mean, part of it's a cultural thing.
But it's also the people like owning trucks because they can be resourceful to others.
What I found is that whenever I needed some help, there were just guys open up, oh, I got my truck.
You can borrow it or I'll come over and I'll help you with this stuff.
It's to be a useful person to your neighbor, for your friends and others to have this resource.
And so that's what I mean.
Like you be fit and you have these things in service to others.
That's why I'm scared to get a truck, Stephen, because if I get a truck, then I think people in the church are going to every Saturday ask me to help them move.
That is true.
Yeah.
No, that's really helpful.
These are my last two questions, and then you can maybe do your best to answer these and then any concluding thoughts, and we can land the plane.
But just for the listener, I know what you mean.
And so I think, you know, yeah, I read your book, took me a second to figure it out.
I saw, you know, your infamous tweet that everybody was, you know, denouncing and like, how could you, you know, the Lone Bulwark tweet.
And I, you know, I didn't have, I'll say it publicly I did not retweet you and say this is insightful and undeniably true.
I also, Uh, did not retweet you and say, Oh my goodness, let me clutch my pearls.
I was like, I'm gonna let that one, we're not ready for that one.
In a couple of years, you know, now, now, time in the province of God has, for the most part, vindicated you.
I mean, you've gotten a lot of people have come around.
Clarence Thomas and Anglo Roots00:15:42
It's pretty crazy how the Overton window has moved so quickly to where something so controversial that never should have been, but was, um, has now people are like, Oh, yeah, that's not crazy at all.
That's just the statistics of, you know, voting patterns and speaking not of individuals, but group dynamics.
And anyway, so all that, all that being said, I know what you mean.
I read your book.
I've been watching you online.
We've had a little bit of conversation in person.
And I think I'm just kind of on that same trajectory theologically and politically and those kinds of things.
But for the listener who may not understand some of these things, it was helpful probably for guys in the audience during your talk when towards the end you said, Here are some of my favorite Anglo Protestants.
And you said, Well, like Booker T. Washington or Clarence Thomas.
And then also, so one, First question, two questions.
First question, how is Clarence Thomas?
And for the listener, if you don't know, he's a black Supreme Court justice married to a white woman, very conservative and one of the best Supreme Court justices we have and we're grateful for.
But how is he an Anglo Protestant?
And then, secondly, when you say ethnicity, even in your book, one of the things that I was able to pick up on, I guess a year and a half ago now, but I was like, he's using ethnicity the way that dead guys used to use the word.
We've boiled, we've truncated ethnicity.
The word ethnicity to exclusively referring to color, pigment, shades of skin pigment.
But used to ethnicity, it seems as though it was much more encompassing.
It baked into ethnicity was culture and customs and nationality.
And that's one of the problems because in the old world, it was uncommon in my, maybe I'm wrong, but in my perception, you didn't have a lot of countries like America.
Japan.
Is Japanese, you know?
And so when you say, you know, Japanese, it's like, well, are you referring to ethnicity or nationality?
And the answer is yes, because it's just, it's both.
And China is the same way, and the Sudan is the same way.
And, you know, and so it's really not until very recently, in terms of human history, and predominantly in the West and most, you know, most blatantly in our country, in America, that we've severed nationality from ethnicity.
So ethnicity just means color now, and nationality means citizenship.
And, you know, these, Kinds of things.
So, anyways, all that being said, how is Clarence Thomas an Anglo Protestant?
Because we're talking about culture and not just pigment.
And then on the pigment topic, what does the word ethnicity mean?
How would you advocate for guys, you know, using that word and entailing in it more than just color?
Do those questions make sense?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
When I chose to write the chapter on the nation, I did use the word ethnicity instead of race and instead of.
Instead of culture.
And the reason was that culture strikes me as too much like, oh, we all agree in the same culture at that moment.
There's a sort of snapshot in time type mentality.
Like when you think of culture, not necessarily.
But then race also doesn't work because you could have a bunch of white folks who are actually very different in terms of their culture and their national.
So the difference between French and English is just really striking, or just between Hungarian and English would be very striking and different.
And so it wouldn't make any sense to use race, but ethnicity, the reason why I use it the way I did, which refers to culture but also ancestry.
So I wanted to connect because, of course, it matters that your people are connected to this place through generations going back.
So, of course, I'm connected to the United States because my grandfather was in World War II.
I mean, I am.
I'm connected because he fought, a loved one fought in that major.
That major kind of national struggle, or you know, my grandparents went through the Great Depression as kids.
Like, these history things, the history we learn in the books is not simply these random things that, or these things that happened to these humans I'm now studying on a page.
It's people who are my ancestors, my loved ones.
So, of course, like, your ancestry matters.
I mean, imagine if you, I mean, everyone, or a lot of people have had experience with, hey, this is my grandparents' house or their property.
And even if you don't know who owns it now, you'll drive by that and you'll see it and you'll have a sort of affection for it because it embodies the life and activity of your grandparents.
So in Napa, California, the wolf side of my family owned the Wolf Ranch.
And I remember driving up the driveway to go to Christmas parties and seeing aunts and uncles and cousins and having this great time.
And now it's not owned by the family, unfortunately, anymore.
But I still occasionally, when I'm going back to Napa to see grandmother from the other side, I drive by and they still have this little wolf up that's called the Wolf Ranch and the Wolf Holiness Star and all that.
And so there's affection there built into memories.
So, of course, like that place, my dad and his uncle and grandfather built the house there with their own hands.
Wow.
So we don't own it.
I don't even know who owns it now.
But if that house burned down, I wouldn't lose anything materially, but of course, I'd lose something else.
And so, what I'm trying to describe.
In the book, is that something else?
That there is that thing that is in a way like in place or embodied in the place.
And so, of course, like your ancestry matters.
I mean, people call that like blood and soil, but are you just, are you dumb?
I mean, like who can be so kind of insensitive and lack the affection of seeing a field or a battlefield or some house, even a shack that your grandparents or great grandparents.
Lived life in or on, or whatever.
Like, who can be so unfeeling that they wouldn't have something, some connection to that that is beyond property rights or something like that?
Right.
And so, yeah, that's what I was trying to get.
Like, so ethnicity is that a rhetorical question?
Cause I haven't answered boomers.
Boomers is the answer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a property right.
And it's worth this much money.
And that's all it is.
No, I'm just kidding.
Yeah.
Not all boomers, but a lot.
Yeah.
And to the credit of like our generation, I think millennials started to try to recover something.
A different mentality on that.
Yeah.
Even though we covered all sorts of bad things, too.
But yeah, so of course it matters.
And so that means that your connection to the American people, if you take that broader, your connection to the American people and our history does matter that your ancestry goes back into that.
And this is why, if your people were Germans back in 1810, I mean, you're just as American as anyone else because you have been here and interacted and lived with this and you've participated in the major events.
Since you got here, you have an actual connection to the people and the place, and you've probably intermarried and all that.
And so, yeah, so it matters.
But at the same time, my way of ethnicity is not entirely just an ancestral, like genetic thing, genetics thing.
And this is why you asked about Clarence Thomas.
I also mentioned Santiago Pliego, who is actually born in Mexico and now he's here and he's an American citizen, naturalized citizen.
And you talk to him, and it's like he desires.
Not only that he can be sort of grafted into this American heritage, but also that his kids will be as well.
He wants his kids to be just as American as me or in you and anyone else.
So, the ethnicity then is like an open thing in that the people who come here or have existed here, but are self consciously kind of bringing themselves into that heritage and want to be part of it, not subvert it, not undermine it, not like hold on to the other stuff.
But like become one of us.
A similar.
And they can be.
And I think, and I think like even Santiago could be like, yeah, my people is like George Washington.
Yeah.
Like, so I, and this is again, this is like the American, I don't think this is me being sentimental.
I think that's just the American tradition has always been very open, also very kind of like exclusivist and what the left would call xenophobic.
But also, when people come here, this openness to conformity.
But that's the problem is the problem is that we're, America was open, but it was open to people.
Who wanted to be American?
They wanted to join.
Now America is open to people who have no desire to be.
I mean, on voting ballots, we have, you know, there are voting ballots in some places where you have three languages.
Like, if that's not a sign of a nation that's just utterly defeated, then I don't know what is.
I mean, to like, we're going to have this voting ballot in Spanish.
Why?
We're English.
We speak English.
We're Americans, you know, and so to have some measure of principled openness.
Is great, but it's not an openness to come here and still be a Somalian.
No, it's to come here because you love America and you want to be American, right?
Right.
It's the desire.
Yeah.
So you can either, you can either, yeah, you can come here and kind of exist as a kind of, as like a second culture, but not the core.
So you would essentially be, you'd have a tolerated way of life, but it wouldn't be the part of the core.
Or you can actually kind of bring and graft yourself into, The core.
And that's what I mean by, I mean, even Clarence Thomas, of course, he's descended from slaves.
So, in a way, like when we talk about heritage Americans, it's proper to speak of even the sort of black subcultures that are here.
The reason I would say that Clarence Thomas is part of a sort of Anglo Protestant ethnos.
Is that he has, from what I can tell, self consciously said, I'm American, and this is who I am.
And so he's kind of brought himself into that.
I mean, this is why people call him like the Oreo and all sorts of horrible names Uncle Tom.
Uncle Tom, all that.
I think that's what it is.
This is the same thing that Webb Du Bois would call Booker T. Washington.
People hate him because he's an Anglo Protestant.
Yeah, they call him that because they have identified Anglo Protestant as.
As only as essentially a white man's, which broadly speaking, in terms of population, has been.
But then they just say, oh, you're no longer black and now you're white.
And there's no truth in that in itself, but it is recognizing when they accuse people like Sowell and Clarence Thomas and others of being those things, they are recognizing rightfully that they have actually now, that they are part of.
The core American ethnos.
And that's why they want to denounce them and call them all those names.
They'd prefer that they're no longer or not in that core and they would be a sort of like secondary stream of American ethnos, but not the.
I mean, the core has always been Anglo Protestant.
But again, it's an open ethnicity such that you can have like Antonin Scalia.
He is an Italian Roman Catholic.
And he has this great story you can watch.
It's a minute and a half.
And he says that he was in.
Italy first, right?
He went to Italy.
He was in.
And then he went to England.
Yeah, yeah, right.
He was in like continental Europe for a while from Switzerland and Italy.
And then he said he went to England.
I had never been there before after all that time in continental Europe.
And he says he was home, like this is home.
And he was essentially saying, we're Anglo Saxon.
I would say Anglo Protestant, but we're an Anglo Saxon people, even though he's genetically from, I don't know, Southern Italy, or something like that.
Right.
No, I love that story because it's, you know, here he is, he's American in terms of, you know, both culture and his citizenship, nationality.
But then he goes to Italy, and that's what, you know, that's his blood, his, you know, his ancestry.
But he feels more at home in Great Britain than he does in Italy.
Why?
Because his whole life he's been in America, and America came, America is this British project, it's this Anglo Protestant project.
And so naturally, his, his, His Italian ness did not resonate as profoundly in Italy as his American ness resonated in England.
So, yeah, exactly.
And again, that just shows it.
So, it would be again, I don't want us to think that this is just a cultural thing as we think.
It does matter.
I think people need to remind themselves and become conscious of this.
And this is one reason why I emphasize it.
You need to be conscious of the fact that you have ancestry here.
Right.
You need to restore that.
You may not even know.
I know that I have some preacher from Connecticut in the late 1600s in my ancestral line.
I don't know everything else.
But you know what does matter, though?
Is that literally my great, great, great grandparents have been here since 16 something.
And that matters.
And everyone here, and if it means that you don't have anyone here, well, you're interacting with people who do.
And you're living life with people who do, and you can see yourself as your sort of life project as bringing yourself into that to tell.
I forget who it was.
I think Andy Robles was it him who said that his father said, We're not speaking Spanish in this house, we're speaking English.
And that's because we're becoming American.
So you can deliberately do these things to become one of us.
But again, today, the governing principle now is that actually, no, you just.
Be exactly what you were before and just affirm these propositions, take an oath, and you're in.
And live in America is just an idea and an economic zone and reap the benefits without really any commitment.
Yeah.
And that is not sustainable.
And really send a good portion of your income overseas.
I mean, in Central and South America, it's amazing how much of their economies are actually sustained by people in the U.S. sending money back.
Dominant Culture and Assimilation00:06:41
And so the incentive structure for it.
So, anyway, yeah.
That's for South America.
But then when it comes to Ukraine, We send money through tax dollars, you know, or Israel.
Yeah, you're right.
You know, but no, that's really helpful.
I'd like, just as you were, you know, whether it be Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, I mean, even Vodi Bakum would fall into this category, but that was helpful thinking because I watched the documentaries.
I don't know if you saw them.
There was an Uncle Tom documentary and then an Uncle Tom 2.
And they were helpful.
And especially the second one.
I really liked the second one.
They had Vodi Bakum in it a lot.
And, but it's helpful to think like, okay, what is this accusation, this pejorative that's being levied against, you know, Black men who are, you know, like Clarence Thomas, Anglo Protestants that have really adopted and fully committed and assimilated into this American heritage and love it and identify with it.
And, you know, and so they're being, you know, cursed and demeaned because of that decision and because of that assimilation.
And, you know, what, but what's contained in this, you know, pejorative of Uncle Tom that's being levied?
And I think one of the things that's, you know, two things that's being contained.
One is that there really is a hegemony, there really is a core.
Culture of America, and it must be the dominant culture.
If not, then we're just fractured and splintered, and a house divided against itself cannot stand.
It's just not sustainable.
So, there one, there really is a core culture, and that core culture is Anglo Protestant.
And the fact that that's levied against a black man, whereas it wouldn't be levied against necessarily a white man, we just say, Hey, I hate whiteness.
But there'd be a recognition of, like, but of course you're white, because, you know, of course you're acting like an Anglo Protestant, because you're white, and I hate it.
But with a black man, it's The levied charge of Uncle Tom is basically a charge of betrayal.
You're a traitor to your own kind.
And what that to me indicates is that not only is there a dominant culture in America's history and heritage that's Anglo Protestant, but that that dominant culture has been, in terms of skin color, predominantly made up of white people.
And it doesn't mean that non white people can't be a part of it, but it has been majority European in terms of color.
It has been predominantly white.
And that's why someone like Votie Bacham would be accused.
By the left, you know, as being a turncoat, a traitor.
And that's what Uncle Tom means.
And so I think to recognize that is not to be exclusive and it's certainly not to be racist, which is a word that just has virtually no meaning at this point.
It's none of those things, but it is to recognize we are a distinct people, a distinct country.
We have a heritage, a history, a foundation.
What is that?
What is that culture?
Multiculturalism is not our strength.
We want to have a dominant culture.
What is it?
What has it historically been made up of?
And then who all can join, but then what, you know, in joining, what are the distinctives and what are the commitments and what does this entail?
All these are incredibly important questions.
And none of these are, they're not colorblind, but they're also not, but they're also, it's, it's, it is not a sinful, a sinful racial partiality.
It's acknowledging race, but not sinfully.
Like I remember even the statement, I think we showed you or somebody in our little crew showed you, this was a year and a half.
Half ago, and we're going to actually make it the final draft public.
It's been forever.
A lot of the guys are SBC and they're fighting for the life, you know, to try to keep out women pastors right now.
But eventually, when all that's done, we're going to publish our statement on Christian nationalism in the gospel, the final draft.
And one of the things that we changed was, you know, initially we said, you know, we repudiate the sin of ethnic partiality.
And after getting some feedback from other guys and thinking through that and thinking biblically about that, we changed it to we repudiate instead of the sin of ethnic partiality.
We change it to we repudiate sinful ethnic partiality, recognizing that in the realm of partiality, it can be done sinfully, but not inherently.
And for Japan to have a preference for Japanese people is not inherently simple.
It could be.
There can be sinful expressions of that, just kind of in the same way that anger, Jesus says, in your anger, do not sin.
So it's not just to be angry is inherently sinful, but there is a way in anger to behave sinfully.
And that's just, I don't know.
I'm thinking through these things, and that's just a conversation that right now the typical American just can't handle.
They just lose their mind.
What people don't get, like when I say things like you should prefer your own or you should prefer your own ethnicity, as I've defined it already, when I say that, I'm saying that it's actually, it's not that it's good in itself, regardless of the effects, but that.
It's good to prefer your own family, your own parents, your own children, and your own people, your own kin and group, ethnicity, because of the way that we are made by God.
That is the way to bring about good.
So, a nation should prefer people who are similar because if you bring people in who are similar, they can assimilate into the collective life of that people.
Just like, again, Japan, why would, I mean, Japan's slipping on this a little bit, but one reason why they've preferred to have very restrictive immigration. is to keep Japan Japanese as a distinct ethnicity.
And they knew that, wisely knew that if you bring in a mass outsiders, it'll change the nature of Japan.
And what's happened in Japan, I mean, you go there, it's the safest, cleanest country in the entire world.
And there's been recent, actually, some immigrants they've brought in and there's been videos I've seen where, well, not so safe and not so clean.
And so, yeah, so like if the point being is that, that, That the ability to interact with people not only via language, but also through cultural and mutual understanding of manners and customs, and to be able to, like, just even people with accent.
I remember I was just at the airport, I was struggling to try to get answers in Dallas.
It was like, where do I go to get the courtesy van?
And I couldn't communicate with anyone because it was just such a thing, you know, it's like being in Babel and all.
Judgment, Pride, and Babel00:09:15
So, right.
Texas is crazy, man.
It's crazy.
It's like, where am I?
Yeah, yeah.
And in a way, the point being is that there's actually good, it's good to be around people where you can communicate as well as possible so that we can all achieve not only collective projects, but your own individual project or what you're up to at the moment.
So again, Americans have to get, like everyone, Christians have to get out of their mind this idea that preferring your own ethnic group is some good in itself that we ought to do.
No, it's like if you just look at not only the social science data, but your own experience.
You'll see that you gravitate towards people who are similar precisely because of the good involved in that, the good in effect.
And that's what my argument, that's my argument from the book.
But people just, I don't know if it's race brain or what it is, but they're incapable of seeing that, even though they experience it nowadays daily.
Right.
Almost daily.
They experience the difficulty of being around difference.
Just language alone.
You call a helpline, you know, whatever, technical support, you know, because your webcam's not working.
And.
Like the almost audible sigh of relief that I'll have when the person who answers on the other side of the line speaks coherent English.
And I'm just like, oh, phew.
Because I know that so much has been outsourced, and especially with technical support and those kinds of things, and hotlines and support staff.
And I know that I've got like a 90% chance that the person who's going to pick up the phone, I can barely understand.
And so it's just, it's.
If nothing else, I mean, God even says that in Genesis 11 that you know, if they remain united, one people, um, that they uh, there's nothing they cannot do, and therefore He confuses their languages.
And not, it is a judgment, but it's a judgment with mercy baked into the judgment pie because really what it does is it gets mankind, um, it doesn't throw them off the rails in their sin and arrogance and pride.
They were off the rails.
God's judgment of confusing their languages actually gets them back on track with their original design.
Like they actually say, it's not just a sin of arrogance saying.
Will build a tower to the heavens, but it's also a sin of direct rebellion to the command given in the garden to be fruitful and multiply and to spread out and fill the earth and subdue it.
They say, If we do this, not only will we make a name for ourselves and ascend to heaven and be on par with God, but let us make a name for ourselves so that we will not be scattered over the face of the earth, aka so that we will not fulfill the very command that God has given us, which was to spread out and to fill the earth.
And God's mercy is a judgment for their sin of arrogance, but it's also a mercy of them trying to not obey God.
And, you know, the judgment at Babel is God working as a catalyst to really just not to put man in some now on some track that was never the intended good or purpose, but it's actually as a catalyst.
Man had gotten off track because of sin, and God now, in a catalytic way, puts him back on track of spreading out over the face of the earth.
And then, naturally, out of that comes certain distinct distinctions and cultural distinctions.
And, you know, and that's.
And that's a good.
That is a natural good.
And the other thing about that story, I don't think people pick up on is like they could achieve their project, even though it was sinful in orientation.
They could achieve that precisely because they were the same people.
They spoke the same language, right?
Like you could achieve great projects.
I mean, they use greatness to evil ends, but you can achieve greatness to good ends.
And how do you do that?
Well, you have to be able to speak each other's language perfectly.
I know it turns out that, like, once no one speaks the same language, you can't actually fulfill and achieve the same project.
So, if you have this, if you essentially recreate, you know, the post judgment babble in America, well, sorry, you're not, we're not actually going to achieve any sort of natural greatness for good.
Right.
Yeah.
So, and the story itself should communicate to us that you need to have similarity in order to achieve anything great.
Amen.
And without it, you actually can't, you, yeah.
One last biblical example for the listeners, because, I am, after all, a pastor.
And so I, you know, but one other big example that I'm sure, you know, you've used a million times, but just thinking of the Apostle Paul, there's an order of loves, you know, there's a hierarchy and prioritization of commitments and affections.
And, you know, Paul doesn't say, hey, for the Cretans, I'd be willing to go to hell.
But he says, for his own people, Romans 9, from, you know, for my own kin, my own, you know, kinsmen according to the flesh.
I would be willing to be cut off from the riches and the mercies of God if it might somehow reconcile them, save them.
And then, you know, back to like benefits, right?
Like, so like physical training is not ultimate value, but it's not no value, it's some value.
Well, then he talks about, you know, the value of heritage and ancestry, you know, and particularly of the Jewish sort.
And he says, you know, well, you know, if it's if salvation is for the Gentiles and for the Jews and it's not, you know, it's according to the promise and not according to the flesh, then of what benefit is there in being a Jew?
And you would expect him to say, like, he's it feels like he's building it all up to say, none.
You know, boomers for the win, and you know, race doesn't exist.
But he doesn't say that.
He says, well, actually, what benefit is there in being a Jew?
Even though you can be saved as a Gentile and co heirs of grace and all that, well, there's still much in every way.
There is a benefit in being a Jew, for theirs is the law and theirs is the prophets.
And so then I think of that like in an Anglo sense, you know, like, well, if, you know, the white race is not superior and doesn't have any special promises or, you know, Christianity 2.0 or We can get salvation, not just salvation, but salvation twice.
We can be saved three times.
If there's none of that in the eternal, spiritual, truest, ultimate sense, well, then of what advantage is there in being of European descent?
And I feel like I could answer that much in the way Scripture does.
Paul doesn't say, well, much in every way.
For theirs are the reformers, theirs are the Puritans.
Like Paul says, here are the prophets, and here is the law in our history.
Currently, we've rejected that history by the Jews rejecting the prophets, killing the prophets, and then killing Christ.
And yet, still, that's part of our story.
And it's a good story.
It's a great story that the prophets are in our lineage.
And I think for the European to say that Calvin and Luther and the reformers and the Puritans are in that European lineage and to identify with that and to be proud of that.
And not a sinful pride, but a good sense of pride.
These are my people.
This is my history.
And I just don't think it's a coincidence that all that can be defended biblically without being sinfully racist.
But the whole world, including much of the church right now, wants to demonize that and wants to get, particularly young, straight, white men, to hate their ancestors, to absolutely disobey the fifth commandment, to hate their fathers and to hate their mothers.
And to hate their heritage.
And when somebody's trying to get you to hate something and, like, oh, it's really bad.
It's so, so bad.
Why is it bad?
I can't really, you know, I can't really back up with substance my argument, but it's so bad.
You should hate it and it's terrible.
That, like, that just makes me pause.
I'm like, I don't think I will hate this.
No, I don't think I will.
You know, so that, I don't know.
And I think a lot of young men right now are waking up.
And my concern, not to be a concern, bro, but my concern is that, man, there's just not a lot of good Christian, older Christian men in that space to say, you're waking up, good.
You're right.
This is evil.
You should hate this.
You should hate it.
And here's how to hate it well.
Instead, you've got all these guys, pastors in the church saying, Oh, you shouldn't be angry at all.
And why are you so mad?
And are you just jealous?
And then we're shocked when they flock to Nick Fuentes or something, because there's no reasonable right on this particular issue, especially within pastors in the evangelical church.
So I'm trying, by the grace of God, to maybe be a reasonable right.
You're doing it as an author and politically and these kinds of things.
And I'm trying to, you know, maybe I can be one of the few pastors that doesn't have the race brain and the boomer mentality.
Rejecting Self-Hating Narratives00:05:28
Yeah.
I mean, what I've said before is that we tend to be, like, we tend to view the Western world as this very universal human thing.
So any and all can be a part of it.
And yet we're also cast as the villains of it.
So if you take American history, the history we want to say is the march of progress and freedom.
But, like, who's being marched over or who's the loser in that narrative?
It's the white male.
And so, essentially, the church and in the left, everyone's basically saying that we have this progressive narrative of history.
And yet, of course, we have to cast ourselves as a villain.
So, it's not surprising, again, that people would, young men who said, wait, I don't want to be a villain.
I don't want to go through my life as this self hating white guy.
They go to the people who are telling them that, no, you don't have to be a self hating white guy, which is you and I are one of those people.
And we're attacked relentlessly for, for, For denying that you have to be a self hating white guy.
But on the thing of being proud of your history and to be European, the way I look at it is like, look at the sort of books, look at the works that are part of your heritage that you've inherited as being someone who's not only American, but America as rooted in the old world.
I mean, everything from Shakespeare and then political tradition, you have everyone from John Locke to the Scottish Enlightenment, all these different works.
That reflects a discourse and discussion that's gone over through centuries that started in part from reading the ancient Greeks and the Romans and how it came to expression in different places in Europe.
All of that is part of your inheritance.
And they are good.
So they are objectively good in themselves, but they're also yours.
I think we should get away from this idea that you have this, that the great books of the Western tradition, they're in and some are out.
Simply for objective, universal human merit.
Of course, they all have merit, but we should also say they're in there because they are distinctly ours.
They are our great books, our works that when we talk about politics as a Westerner, we reference Adam Smith, we reference John Locke, we reference John Calvin or Thomas Aquinas, because they are part of the broad discussion of our tradition.
And that's why it would be weird to cite.
You typically, some kind of sort of Chinese author.
It would make a lot of sense for someone in China to cite a Chinese author when it comes to their political tradition.
And perhaps at times it would make sense for us as well.
But for the most part.
If we're talking about the art of war, maybe we'll cite, you know.
What's that?
I was saying if we're talking about fighting and the art of war, then that's the only time I hear that.
Yeah, certainly there's like some crossover.
No, yeah, absolutely.
But I mean, just in general.
I take your point.
In general, when someone cites Aquinas or they cite Montesquieu, there's a sense in which there's some authority there, even if you disagree.
There's some seriousness to it that needs to be contended with.
And that is true because this is our tradition.
And these are the great books that have arisen in that tradition and should be taken seriously.
But that'll be different in different places.
But unfortunately, either.
Like you go to your class at like your classical Christian school or college, and they'll say, Oh, these just have objective human worth.
And that's why they're in.
And that's why there's movements to like include international works, like non Western or in the canon or in the curricula, because now they're following the logic.
Like, well, why are you excluding these others if it's just objective human merit and not something about inheritance?
But we need to get back to saying, No, like this is ours.
Because they're not as good.
See, I would say, you know, this is controversial, but I would say it's both.
I would say the great tradition, Western tradition, is of immense value because, one, it's ours.
Everything you're saying, it's ours.
Also, what's ours is also best.
And I believe that.
And I think part of the reason I believe that is because, C point A, it's ours.
And I'm a descendant of this tradition.
So, naturally, of course, I think it's best.
So, one, it's my tradition.
But two, I believe that my tradition is the best tradition.
Probably in part because it's my tradition.
Yeah, I mean, exactly.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
And even when there's things that would be kind of like people say, well, why do we focus on the works from ancient Greece when they're so far away from England?
And there's an argument there.
But the fact of the matter is, everyone read Aristotle, everyone read Plato.
And so, how can you understand your own, even from Scottish to English to French to Italian, Spanish, how can you even understand what they're saying if you haven't read Aristotle's Ethics or his Politics or, you know, Plato's Republic?
Trailblazing for Younger Generations00:02:45
So, but yeah, yeah.
So, so affirm your tradition, love it, and don't let someone say that it's, don't let them villainize you for saying this is, we love it because it's ours and it's an inheritance.
Yeah.
Don't let the bug eating pod, Living regime convince you to disobey God and the fifth commandment and hate your father and mother.
That's a sin.
That's a sin.
So, Stephen, thanks for your work.
And thank you for being willing in a lot of ways to kind of be a bit of a trailblazer.
I mean, none of it's really new in the big picture of going back to dead guys, you know.
But in our particular moment in time, sadly, we've gotten so far off the rails that the things that you've been saying to a lot of, you know, People today are heard as though they're completely novel and nobody has ever had the unmitigated gall to say such a thing before.
And yet, you seem perfectly content to say those things, stick to your guns, not back down, and then, you know, and then in your free time, go hang out with your kids on your farm and play with goats.
And it's great.
I mean, your ministry and the way that the Lord's using you is great because it's, you're providing the cover fire for guys like me and some of the guys in the pulpit, pastors.
And we need, like you said, more than pastors.
But you, as a non pastor, and being in a little bit less of a cancelable, Position.
You're utilizing that position well and providing some cover fire.
And I hope that more pastors will wake up and see the cover fire you're providing and the trail that you're blazing and take advantage of it instead of just turning on you and lobbing grenades.
But I don't know.
I don't know if you feel this way, but as a bystander looking in, it does feel hopeful that the tide is turning a little bit.
Do you feel that way?
Yeah, I think absolutely.
Especially among the younger generations.
I think there's some dangers among the younger guys.
I think because they're so unmoored from a lot of things.
But there's also a lot of opportunity to kind of break out of some of the ideology that you see in the older generations.
But yeah, I mean, I appreciate what you have to say, and I try my best.
I do, in the spirit of the fifth commandment, I do have to credit my father for leading me on the path to.
Become the sort of thinker I am today.
So I give credit, a lot of credit to him for that.
Praise God.
All right.
Social Media Influence and Growth00:01:47
Last thing, how can people follow you?
Any projects on the horizon?
Boy, I do have an event in Texas.
Yeah, it's like the true Texas conference.
It's in Dallas.
CJ Engel is going to be there.
Cool.
Who else is going to be there?
I like CJ.
Yeah, that's in Paul Gottfried.
So we're speaking of that.
Already got media inquiries about how, you know, You know, there's nefarious people there, Wolf.
Are you sure you want to associate with those people?
But I didn't reply back, of course.
But I usually mess with the journalists a little bit.
I try, like, I demand that they call me Dr. Wolf and all sorts of things.
It's kind of fun.
But Dr. Jill Biden, if she can demand, then I think you're good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So also, Twitter, you'll see me.
I won't try to give you my Twitter handle, but you'll see me.
I'm the guy with 20,000 followers.
And that's about it.
But yeah, I have articles on American Reformer.
My speech or talk at the Ogden event will be published there.
Right.
It's on Patreon now if you're a club member on their Patreon, New Christendom, New Christendom Press.com slash Patreon or something.
But it will be available to the public.
And then lastly, though, you're starting your own YouTube channel, right?
You want to plug that?
Yeah, I'm trying to do that more, trying to improve all around quality and all that.
But yeah, you'll find me there.
I think it's like SM Wolf.
I think it's Stephen Wolf, maybe.
Okay.
I don't know.
I don't know YouTube as well as YouTube.
Just Google Stephen Wolf on YouTube, I'm sure.
Yeah, you'll find me.
And yeah, you can see me there as well.
Yeah, I'm trying to do more of those videos.
Great.
Well, thanks for your work and thanks for coming on the show today.