The Tucker Carlson Show - Tucker Carlson - Which county is more welcoming to Christians, Ukraine or Russia? That’s a fair question. Why is no one allowed to ask it?
Aired: 2023-09-26
Duration: 06:23


=== Don't Be Afraid (06:23) ===

[00:00:00]  So Christians can absolutely get it wrong and do.
[00:00:04]  They can follow the wrong path.
[00:00:06]  They can be mistaken.
[00:00:08]  They can be silly and profane.
[00:00:10]  They can commit the worst sins imaginable.
[00:00:12]  The one thing they cannot do is be afraid.
[00:00:17]  Period.
[00:00:20]  And so boldness, again, is not just a status extra.
[00:00:24]  It's a baseline requirement for following the gospel.
[00:00:29]  And if you're not doing that, you're not doing it right.
[00:00:32]  Okay?
[00:00:32]  So that's the first thing.
[00:00:35]  Don't be afraid.
[00:00:37]  The second thing I notice in reading Paul's letters is his deep concern for his fellow Christians.
[00:00:43]  Now, it was a universalist message to the uncircumcised and the circumcised, and that's the beauty of Christianity.
[00:00:48]  It's for everybody.
[00:00:49]  No matter what you look like, no matter where you're from, your language, it's truly a universal faith.
[00:00:56]  Which was a...
[00:00:57]  Completely radical idea when Jesus was crucified.
[00:01:01]  Like, I don't think anyone had ever thought of anything.
[00:01:03]  Like, there was nothing like that.
[00:01:04]  Never had been anything like that.
[00:01:06]  And I love that.
[00:01:08]  And so Paul was preaching to everybody.
[00:01:10]  In fact, in a lot of ways, he was preaching to the Greeks a lot of the time.
[00:01:16]  But even though his concern was for everybody, his heart was focused, and you see this again and again in his letters, on his fellow Christians.
[00:01:24]  Titus, Timothy, how are they doing?
[00:01:26]  How are you?
[00:01:27]  I love you.
[00:01:28]  He really cares about his brothers in the faith.
[00:01:32]  He really, really does.
[00:01:33]  And it's intimate and kind of raw in these letters.
[00:01:36]  It's wonderful.
[00:01:38]  And I think that's a model for us.
[00:01:40]  We should care about everybody.
[00:01:42]  But we should have a soft spot for other Christians.
[00:01:44]  We should.
[00:01:45]  And we don't at all.
[00:01:47]  We don't at all.
[00:01:49]  And that's one thing I've noticed the whole time I've been in D.C. I'm totally opposed to tribalism, particularly religious tribalism.
[00:01:56]  My instinct is ecumenical.
[00:01:57]  We're all in this.
[00:01:58]  Let's speak to everybody.
[00:02:00]  I'm American.
[00:02:01]  Very American.
[00:02:02]  And that's an American idea.
[00:02:04]  But I can't help but notice how the Christian church has almost specifically excluded concern for other Christians from its portfolio.
[00:02:13]  I see it all the time.
[00:02:15]  I'll never forget going to Iraq to cover the war in 2003 and running into a Christian.
[00:02:21]  I didn't know there were Christians in Iraq.
[00:02:23]  1.5 million of them, actually.
[00:02:25]  It was one of the biggest and oldest Christian communities in the world.
[00:02:28]  It's gone now.
[00:02:30]  1.5 million Christians in Iraq in 2003. They're about, we think, 150,000 or fewer.
[00:02:38]  So that's like, I don't know.
[00:02:41]  Kind of qualifies as a genocide, I think.
[00:02:44]  I mean, they're gone.
[00:02:45]  A lot of them were murdered.
[00:02:47]  Not a lot of them came here because they were excluded, specifically excluded, by the Obama State Department.
[00:02:53]  This was a news story at the time.
[00:02:55]  So we're getting a lot of refugees from Iraq.
[00:02:57]  What percentage were Christian?
[00:02:58]  None.
[00:03:00]  And no one said anything about it.
[00:03:02]  This wasn't hidden information.
[00:03:03]  I reported it at the time.
[00:03:04]  Oh, okay.
[00:03:05]  Yeah, well, a lot of great people coming.
[00:03:06]  Well, okay, but if you're a Christian church, what about the Christians?
[00:03:10]  The president who sent them there was a self-described Christian.
[00:03:14]  But there was not one word in 20 years, I have not heard one word of concern about what happened to all those Christians.
[00:03:20]  Nobody seems to care.
[00:03:21]  We should care.
[00:03:23]  Not just about them, but certainly about them.
[00:03:26]  Why wouldn't we?
[00:03:27]  They're Christians, so are we.
[00:03:29]  The Christians of Syria.
[00:03:30]  Never hear a word about it.
[00:03:32]  Look, the world is super complicated, and any time someone tries to reduce a conflict, say, or a rivalry in another part of the world to a bumper sticker, you know that person's lying.
[00:03:44]  Because the closer you get to anything, whether it's a country or a marriage...
[00:03:48]  For any human interaction, the closer you get, the more you know, the more you understand.
[00:03:52]  It's indescribably complex, and you can never fully know the truth.
[00:03:56]  Okay?
[00:03:58]  I'm only suggesting that one factor that Christians use to assess the behavior of their government and other governments ought to be the treatment of Christians.
[00:04:07]  It ought to be.
[00:04:08]  Why is it not?
[00:04:10]  So if there's a conflict in, say, Syria...
[00:04:13]  And you're being told by everybody in the media that the bad guy in that conflict is Bashar al-Assad.
[00:04:18]  I'm sure he's bad.
[00:04:18]  I'm not endorsing the guy.
[00:04:19]  Never met him.
[00:04:21]  Glad I don't live in Damascus.
[00:04:22]  On the other hand, I think one of the questions you can ask is, how are the Christians faring?
[00:04:27]  Are they going to do better under Bashar al-Assad?
[00:04:29]  There's a massive Christian community in Syria.
[00:04:31]  There was.
[00:04:32]  We funded the Islamists who killed a lot of them.
[00:04:35]  We're funding the Islamists who are killing the Christians.
[00:04:38]  Anyone know that?
[00:04:38]  No, of course not.
[00:04:39]  Churches never talk about it.
[00:04:40]  That's true.
[00:04:42]  Are we for that?
[00:04:43]  I'm not for that.
[00:04:45]  Look, it's far away.
[00:04:47]  I don't think it has anything to do with us.
[00:04:48]  I don't think we should be involved.
[00:04:49]  But as long as we are involved, why doesn't someone stand up and say, wait a second, we're funding the killing of Christians?
[00:04:53]  No, I'm a Christian.
[00:04:54]  I'm against that.
[00:04:55]  How's that?
[00:04:56]  Let's start there.
[00:04:59]  Right?
[00:05:02]  The conflict between Russia and Ukraine, super complicated.
[00:05:07]  I don't think there's an easy answer.
[00:05:08]  I don't think there's a...
[00:05:09]  Good guy and a bad guy.
[00:05:10]  I don't think it's Churchill versus Hitler.
[00:05:12]  I just don't think that.
[00:05:13]  And the more I learn about it, the more I'm confused.
[00:05:14]  I'm certainly not endorsing Russia.
[00:05:16]  I don't live there either.
[00:05:17]  I've never been there.
[00:05:18]  But one of the guides that we as Christians should use to assess that situation is how do Christians fare in those countries?
[00:05:26]  It's totally legitimate to ask that question.
[00:05:29]  Is it easier to be a Christian in Russia or Ukraine?
[00:05:31]  They're forcing us to pick.
[00:05:33]  I mean, I kind of happily live in a world where I don't have to pick.
[00:05:35]  I don't know.
[00:05:35]  There are foreign countries far away.
[00:05:36]  They're not America.
[00:05:37]  I'm not that interested, but they're making us be interested.
[00:05:40]  So now that we're required to be interested and pay for the war, why doesn't some Christian minister stand up and say, is it easier to be a Christian in Ukraine or Russia?
[00:05:51]  One of those countries just arrested a bunch of priests and shut down churches with political police in the army.
[00:05:58]  It wasn't Russia.
[00:06:00]  I raised that question at a Christian gathering and people scowled at me.
[00:06:03]  Really?
[00:06:05]  They're arresting priests?
[00:06:06]  I don't need to know more, actually.
[00:06:07]  Well, they had bad opinions.
[00:06:08]  Well, okay.
[00:06:09]  So?
[00:06:10]  I have bad opinions.
[00:06:12]  I don't want to be arrested.
[00:06:13]  Bad opinions are not grounds for arrest.
[00:06:15]  Sorry.
[00:06:16]  And moreover, the gut-level reaction of Christians to the arrests of Christian clergy should be horror.
[00:06:23]  Period.