transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] They're going to say that the woke right is a reaction to the woke left. You know, we've seen this. You have all these young men in particular, they've been proverbially kicked in the teeth for the last number of years as it relates to race and jobs and how their theology operates and all the rest. And people are going to say, it's just a reaction. They're reacting to this concept. And in one sense, I see what people are saying, but here's what I want us to see. The woke right is not actually a reaction against the woke left. It's actually the continuation of the same ideological project, repackaging it in conservative language to infiltrate and ultimately destroy right leaning institutions from within.

Speaker 2:
[00:56] Hey, friends, welcome to the show. Today's episode is all about the confusing topic of Christian nationalism. If you haven't noticed, there are many different definitions. There are different factions. There are different ways it's applied, the different ways that it's talked about. We're gonna cover all of it today with my expert guest, Dr. William Roach, or as you may see him online, Dr. Bill Roach, who serves as the Dean of the Norman L. Geisler School of Apologetics at Veritas International University. He's an author, an editor, a lecturer who specializes in philosophical theology and classical apologetics. He has recently done a deep dive into this topic of Christian nationalism. He's authored so many books and scholarly articles in the fields of Christian apologetics and philosophical theology, and also in evangelical doctrine. And in our conversation today, we covered topics like the definition problem, the problem that this phrase, Christian nationalism, is defined in various ways. He takes us through the different parallel movements that claim this title. We talked through what Christian nationalism claims versus what it actually is. Then we look at the philosophical, excuse me, the theological and historical roots of it. And really what it all comes down to is the core issue of religious liberty. We talk about what is biblical about it, what isn't biblical about it, how this applies to the American experiment. And then what I love is that Dr. Roach talks about some of the internal fractures that are happening within the movement and then ends with a pastoral conclusion, just a way for us to really understand this from a pastoral perspective. So so many great nuggets to take away from today's conversation. So here is Dr. Bill Roach. All right, Bill, this issue is, it's like a hot potato. This one is just, it's difficult because people define Christian nationalism in so many different ways. And so I think that's like the first problem we have. And so just to give a little bit of background into my introduction of this conversation, in 2017, I wrote an article that was comparing the beliefs of progressive Christians and atheists. There was nothing political about the article whatsoever. But because it was published on a bigger platform than I had at the time, it was the first article in which progressive Christians became aware of what I was doing. So it kind of went viral on progressive Christian Twitter at the time is what it was. And what really surprised me is in all of the comments, I didn't see people interacting with what I had written or really giving any rebuttals. They were just calling me a white Christian nationalist. And so I was very confused by that because I remember thinking, well, there wasn't anything even political in this article. And so that was kind of my first introduction into the phrase Christian nationalism. So up until more recently, I've kind of thought that it was more of a boogeyman, just kind of the phrase that people throw out to silence you if you're conservative. But then I began to see this actual movement of Christians identifying themselves as Christian nationalists emerging. And so you've done so much work on this topic. I want to start with definitions. So what is Christian, like real Christian nationalism versus maybe the more boogeyman version that gets thrown around?

Speaker 1:
[04:23] Exactly. You know, we're used to seeing a variety of terms in the history of just the church used as labels, sort of as a smear campaign. We've seen this, for example, even the word Christian was used in that regard. But we're also familiar with a lot of other terms that could be used that way. For example, there was a group of individuals that arose in England about four centuries ago, known as the Quakers, and they were given this smear term because they said that they would quake before the Lord. And many of the people adopted that term, and they saw it as fitting to represent the Society of Friends or the Quakers movement. So the reason we bring that up is that there are a lot of people today who say, you know what, they're going to call you a Christian nationalist anyway. They're going to give you the label. So why not just accept the label and run with it? Well, the problem with that is, is that in a really practical sense, if I had somebody who was walking down the street, say they were some kind of progressive, and they wanted to rename my child, would I let them do that? And the reality is no, we fight for definitions, we fight for names, and we fight for our identity. And that's so much of what it means to be even evangelical, because we even know that term is used in a variety of different ways. Is it a progressive evangelical? Is it a classic evangelical? Is it a neo-evangelical? Is it a neo-Orthodox evangelical? And that's what makes this conversation so difficult, is that there are a variety of different definitions, and there are a variety of different means that people are using rhetoric and slander, and some are adopting the term, some are rejecting the term. So that makes me back up and say, we have to deal with this in a little different fashion. And namely, we need to look at it, is that we live in a politically charged atmosphere, and we live in a postmodern atmosphere where, in one sense, reality is always shifting for these people. And if we can keep the definitions fluid, and we can keep the ideas fluid, and we don't tack them down, then we can keep the rhetoric of the debate going. So, in one sense, Christian nationalism is white Christian nationalism. But here's an interesting thing. I did a little bit of research on this, and I found several different definitions of Christian nationalism over the years. First of all, at one point in time, it was considered Puritan millennialism. We're bringing in the millennium like the Puritans wanted. Another one was this idea of Christian republicanism, and the idea of manifest destiny with America's future, turning its back on its past and turning towards the future. Another one was Abraham Lincoln casting America as being in the throes of a national death, or Woodrow Wilson and John Foster Dulles looking forward to an international order with America as the indispensable nation. So my point of all that is that there's a lot of different definitions, and they're being used in what's known as dialectically, and they're being used as thesis and antithesis and synthesis. The idea is that if we can keep horizontal confusion about the definitions, we can achieve vertical goals, which for the progressive left is authoritarianism. But what's interesting is that on the right, there's an equal authoritarianism that's taking place. So my point is to summarize it. We live in a postmodern era, dialectics take place where there's horizontal confusion, and both sides of the debate are wanting to have some type of authoritarian control, either from the left or from the right. That's what makes it so difficult here.

Speaker 2:
[08:08] Wow. Okay. So that is helpful. But at the same time, I look out and I see different versions of Christian nationalism being argued for. So maybe can you talk about what some of those models are, and even who the players are behind them? What's the difference between? Because the reason I'm asking that is I see some people saying, well, when I say I'm a Christian nationalist, I just mean that I want to get back to the principles that this country was founded upon. You know, one nation under God, that sort of thing. But then you might have somebody else arguing to bring in the penalties of Old Testament law. And those are two very, very different things. So maybe talk about the major models that are being... Now, I'm not talking about the Boogeyman version. I'm talking about like real Christian nationalism, self-identified people saying, this is what I'm arguing for. What are those different models and who are the players behind those models?

Speaker 1:
[09:05] Exactly. So let's continue to look at it in this sense. So the big models that some people will look at, and they'll say things like this, well, you're a Christian, right? And people will go, well, yeah. And you like your nation more than some kind of global order, right? So in that, if you like a national order over a global order, and you consider yourself a Christian, wouldn't that make you a Christian nationalist? And we see the play that's going on there is that one can affirm being a Christian, another person can affirm also being some form of a nationalist, but the hybrid of bringing them together makes a totally different understanding of it. And here's what I mean by this. I'm setting this up so you can see the major players and how they play it out. Let's flip it to the left real quick. So you're going to hear people say things like this. So you believe in justice, right? People go, yeah, I believe in justice. I believe in the concept of justice. Well, you believe in the notion of justice applied socially, right? People, yeah, I agree with that. Well, don't you see that you believe in the concept of social justice? And you go, wait a minute, we've seen this before, because what they meant by social justice wasn't just justice applied socially. What it meant in that particular context was this idea that we are trying to have this notion of diversity, equity and inclusion, where we are instilling a form of critical consciousness into people, diversity, and inclusion meant the idea that we're actually excluding those who don't have critical consciousness and the notion of equity was really just cultural Marxism and practical Marxism. And I argue that there's a similar play at hand that's going on with the right in this regard. When people are bringing together the notion of Christian nationalism, they're not just arguing for the idea that we want to be a Christian nation in the sense that, you know, blessed is the nation whose Lord is God, or returning to the idea that we want to have a significant Christian influence in our nation, or the idea that we want to have Christians in politics. I think we would agree with all of those kinds of things. I have no problem with any of those ideas. But when you start to look at a lot of the major players, and what's really interesting is that there's kind of been this notion of you have this idea of wolf the greater and wolf the lesser, and it's sort of been a play that's on social media. One of the key figures, sort of wolf the greater, was an individual named Stephen Wolf, who put forth a book titled The Case for Christian Nationalism. When you read that book, several of the things within it are speaking about good things like human nature, which he grounds in the classic Aristotelian Thomistic sense in that regard. But then when he starts to get into things about natural law and how it applies socially, he's trying to revive the concept of the Magisterial Reformation, in which the government not only promotes good, but then there's a phrase that can be taken from the Westminster Confession, where it's also the role of the state to suppress heresy. By that, they're introducing this idea in which we must bring together the church and the state where the church plays as the moral conscience, and the state enacts that in order to suppress heresy, which is the idea of blasphemy laws, and this idea, not of just legislating morality, but intentionally suppressing those who don't bring about this idea of this sacralist, integralist movement of church and state being brought together. Other figures that are bringing this about are guys like Andrew Torba, who admits to being an integralist. We can get into that term here because it has a very specific definition, more figures like William Wolfe and other people like Joel Webin, who put out the statement, the case for Christian nationalism. So it's not something as simple as, hey, I'm a Christian and I love my nation. It's much more. It's a total redefinition for how we understand the classical liberal political order, which gave rise to the United States Constitution and the notion of religious liberty and the idea of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. It's pushing back against those. And that's what makes it so much different than the idea of, I just want a Christian nation. It's almost too simplistic when people sell you on something being like that.

Speaker 2:
[13:44] Okay. So where's the line drawn then? Because if we think about, you know, somebody would say, well, it's Christian nationalism if you're enforcing Christianity or I would say, from what I'm hearing you say, it's sort of this idea that, you know, heresy laws and that sort of thing. So what's the difference between like a hair like informing, excuse me, enforcing a heresy law versus like enforcing the Ten Commandments or something like that? Where is that line drawn?

Speaker 1:
[14:12] Well, sometimes what's really interesting is that we have to look back on history in order to understand what that actually looks like. And a lot of these figures point to, you know, the idea of Boston Commons or Magisterial Reformation Europe, and that's where things get really interesting. And, you know, I was up in Boston a few years ago, and I wanted to go see a few different sites. And this is sort of the idea of where we see this idea of Christian nationalism in its early form in the United States of America. So it wasn't just an issue of we're having individuals enforce the idea of thou shalt not murder or thou shalt not kill, sort of sometimes the second table of the law in that regard, of the Ten Commandments, but also the first table of the law. And it gets really interesting as it relates to like Sabbath laws. Can you really, in many respects, punish somebody for not following the Sabbath? So in Boston, they had this really interesting case of this, with a woman named Mary Dyer. She was brought over to the United States and she was a Puritan. She came to Boston as a Puritan. But over the years, she would travel back and forth between the United States and England. And during one of those trips, she converted to the Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers. And the way that they handled the situation is, is that during this particular time, she had a miscarriage. The Puritan said things like, the reason you had a miscarriage is because you gave up the Puritan vision of the Christian life and God was bringing punishment upon you. And she started to have different Quaker meetings and she would participate in some of those. What ultimately happened is, is they said, if you're not going to go along with our understanding of church and state in this regard, we're going to punish you. And you know how they punished her? They hung her in Boston Commons. So when you're standing in front of the state house, there are two statues. You got John F. Kennedy Jr. and you have Mary Dyer, who's a living example of what happens when we're doing much more than just enforcing morality in the social order. They're actually enforcing a particular understanding of Christianity or religion broadly defined in this regard. We say that just because it's very important to the idea of religious freedom in the United States. So then it raises a whole litany of questions. So if I'm not part of whatever the group that's in charge, can I be killed for these kinds of things? And the reality is, Mary Baker, or Mary Dyer, I mean, is an example of yes, this has happened. These guys keep pointing back to this type of religious order that's put in place. You go, where am I supposed to live if I disagree with them? How am I supposed to engage with somebody that disagrees with them? And what's interesting is, is that when you look at the history of this kind of movement, you find there's really not much tolerance for people who have any religious disagreements. Second example, you have an individual named Fritz Erba. Fritz Erba was a lesser known Baptist. And what happened to him is that in the midst of living his life and holding his convictions and his ministry that was taking place, he differed with those who affirmed paedobaptism, infant baptism. And he was put into a prison, buried underground in that regard, and eventually they punished him like they did many other Baptists by saying, oh, you want immersion? We'll give you immersion, and we're not going to bring you out of the water. And they were killed in this regard. That's the fear that a lot of people have with this. Because again, the idea that they're trying to enact is not the idea of religious freedom. The role of the government following the Westminster confession in this regard is to suppress heresy. Well, what does that look like? Just denying the deity of Christ, denying the resurrection of Christ, when the long history of this has shown over and over again in sacralist Rome and in Europe in this regard, is that if you differ with them, you pay for it with your life. And that's what makes this conversation such a big deal. Because they say they're not going to do it, but you go read their literature, they want to have blasphemy laws again. They want to put people who differ with them into different regions in that regard. There's going to be no place for atheists in the society. There's going to be no place for agnostics in the society. And you go, well, this is a very perilous thing, because are we going to return back to that, or is there an idea, this kind of a vision? We want religious freedom in order that we who are faithful Christians can reach out to these individuals, hope that they come to saving faith in Christ, and if they differ with us, it doesn't mean their death here and now, means they may face their savior on the side of judgment in that regard. But we're not going to use the state to enforce religious laws in that regard, that's what one of the big concerns are, the biggest concern. It really is a matter of life and death historically.

Speaker 2:
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Speaker 1:
[20:36] So the concept of integralism and what we're trying to look at here is integralism. Ironically, it's a specific Catholic political theology that developed in 19th and 20th centuries and it's the idea that the state should be ordered towards true religion. So for Roman Catholics, if the state is to be ordered towards true religion, it's Catholicism and ultimately, the state should be subordinate to the spiritual authority of the church. So in simple terms, it's a structured version of sacralism and sacralism is the idea of bringing church and state together, but it has a clear hierarchy. You have the church which is the spiritual authority and it's higher and you have the state which is a temporal authority and it's lower even though it's real. So this is not just the idea of different spheres of authority. It's an ordering of authority in which the state is subordinate to the church and the state must enforce church ideals. Now here's the twist on it. That's what integralism is, but what's going on within Christian nationalism is that it is integralism with Protestant flavors added to it. So they're not wanting to subordinate this movement under the Catholic Church. They want to subordinate it onto some kind of Protestant vision that's taking place. Even more concerning on this is that it's not just Roman Catholic integralism with Protestant flavor. It's becoming an ecumenical integralism that's trying to bring Roman Catholics and Protestants together. And that's what you're starting to see right now in all the buzz in the political world. You have a man like Jack Posobik, who is an integralist, I mean, confessed it on video, and he's going to say that he wants to bring this about. You're going to have people that are going to deny the term that are still trying to bring this about. So let's pick one who hasn't denied the term. Figures like Andrew Torba and these people that have their books on Christian nationalism. So you have a guy that says, I want to have integralism that's Roman Catholicism, another one that says they want it to be Protestant, but yet they're constantly working together and they want this ecumenical order. That's what makes it very interesting because again, I look at this and I go, did the Reformation really matter? Do the solas even matter? Does the idea of the finished atonement of Jesus Christ in the final authority in Scripture and Scripture alone matter? I push back against the ecumenical side of it so much because I go, the heart of the matter is the heart of the Gospel. The solas are the heart of the Gospel in that regard. But in addition to this, you see these things coming together with it, and it's not just the integralism that's taking place, it's also the way that they're trying to use this as an idea to push things like post-liberalism, which is the idea of post-liberal order, not the idea of post-theological liberalism, but post-classical liberalism to give us a new understanding of what it looks like to have church-state relations within the United States of America.

Speaker 2:
[23:49] And for this to happen, my understanding is you'd have to almost abolish the Constitution, and some are arguing for that, is that right? Yeah, and they're arguing for that, right?

Speaker 1:
[24:01] Exactly. So what's really interesting is that is specifically what post-liberalism is. It's this idea of, you know, been there, tried that, got the t-shirt, didn't work, came home. So when we look at this, the United States was birthed within the classical liberal order. And the classical liberal order is going to give things like the objectivity of reason, the concept of natural law. But it's also the recipient of this idea that, you know, in Magisterial Europe, you had this idea of the magistrate would, in many respects, punish heresy. And you start to see, as you come to the United States, the Westminster Confession, that clause was removed in the Savoy Declaration, which is the confession that the Puritans brought over, but yet still kind of enacted. And the London Baptist Confession got rid of it and all the rest. But the point is, it's the objectivity of reason, it's the absolute nature of morality, moral law, religious freedom. And that's what gave birth to the United States constitutional order and our Bill of Rights. So these people are saying, well, those things didn't work. Look at what it gave us now. So you have figures like Adrian Vermeule, Patrick Deenan, and other figures who say that we are post the classical liberal order. And what we need now is a new founding. Well, what would a new founding actually look like? If the Constitution was built off of the old founding, the new founding would require what? A new form of Constitution. And what's the new form of Constitution? One that's not going to have religious liberty, one that's not going to have liberty and freedom for all, but one that's going to bring about a form of sacralism, integralism, and the denial of religious liberty for people in our state. And that's what's so troubling about it.

Speaker 2:
[25:53] That is troubling. So where would somebody like a Doug Wilson fit into all of this?

Speaker 1:
[25:58] It depends on which Doug Wilson you're reading that day.

Speaker 2:
[26:01] Okay. I don't follow him that closely, so I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[26:06] Well, what's interesting is, is that Doug Wilson would call himself a Christian Nationalist. And Doug Wilson would give this notion that, you know, every nation has laws, and all laws are giving us this idea of morality. And it's really just a matter of which God are you going to serve? Are you going to bow down to the text of scripture and serve the God of the Bible? Or are you going to follow the morality of some other religion and that understanding of the gods of that order in that regard? But what's really interesting is, is that, let me give it in two respects. Doug Wilson is an individual that can sometimes be difficult to tack down. He's fluid on different things, and you'll even see it sometimes in particular articles he does this. Classic example is that sometimes in debates, he's even changed his positions in the middle of a debate on something. Like, for example, there was a debate that he did with James White on the validity of the Roman Catholic baptism and whether or not Protestants should actually affirm it. He actually said we should, but yet he started to switch his views right in the middle of that debate. I actually know the moderator of the debate, and he was like, what am I supposed to do with this? The guy is shifting, but you see him doing this in this regard. Now, what's interesting about Doug Wilson in the second sense is this, is that Doug Wilson has been the leading voice on this. He's trying to give us this post-mil theonomy, this vision of masculine Christianity, and all the rest. But what also came with this is, is you started to see individuals bringing not only those concepts and not only the integralism. Remember, Doug Wilson endorsed the book by Torba, which specifically says Christian nationalism is integralism. And he starts walking this back. But you also start to see the fringe movements come into it. All the anti-Semitism and all of those people coming in. So what was interesting is, is that Doug kept saying, go forward, go forward, go forward. Then the guys went too far. And then he chides them for going too far. So it's like, Doug, where are the limits on this? Where are the boundaries on this? And that's why I say, I don't know which Doug Wilson we're interacting with. Some days he goes this far. Sometimes he goes that far. And what's difficult with that is that he can never be tacked down. He's fluid, and he's moving in that. So I'll probably get an article written about it. He'll probably give his exact position or point to his book. And I would say, well, how does that reconcile with the other things you said on the other side of the aisle regarding it? That's what makes it so difficult with Doug.

Speaker 2:
[28:41] Right, okay. And you mentioned a name a few minutes ago, Joel Webin, and anti-Semitism. And I've just seen so much of that from Joel Webin, where it's almost like that version of Christian nationalism is very white-centric, very kind of ethnically based. Where is that coming from? And are there others that are united together within the Christian nationalist movement that would say, no, we're not worried about that? And then some are, where are we at with that sort of thing?

Speaker 1:
[29:11] Let's be very clear on this. The vast majority of people who are calling themselves Christian nationalists in the primary literature about this are arguing for some kind of white Christian nationalism. Ironically, even Stephen Wolf's book, The Case for Christian Nationalism, is very clear on that. And what's interesting is, is that a lot of people got very worried about the idea of white Christian nationalism. And given all of the debates that we've had over the last 10 years with CRT and wokeness and all the rest, people jumped on the idea of white Christian nationalism, as they should, because any idea where we're going to segregate people according to the race, that's objectively wrong. Now, we recognize that that's exactly what CRT was doing. They were just doing it in a different fashion. But what I want to say is, is that the white Christian nationalism aspect of it is very concerning, but we cannot forget that it's going to be a white Christian integralist nationalism that's going to be enforcing these particular ideals. Now, when you look at Joel Webin, he is a Christian nationalist. I mean, he helped co-author the statement on Christian nationalism. When you read through it, you'll find that I think Webin is evolving. That statement really was giving in many respects a magisterial understanding of the relationship between church and state, in which the state enforces orthodoxy and suppresses heresy. But when you look at Webin over the last couple of years, he keeps going much further beyond that. What's interesting, over the last few weeks, he's even going so far and pushing a true anti-Semitic concepts, where he's even saying things like, well, Jesus wasn't a Jew. You're like, how in the world can you say Jesus wasn't Jewish? The entire promise plan of God in the Old Testament points to, Jesus was born of a woman, we can all fulfill that, a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob of the tribe of Judah, descendant of David for the Davidic line in that regard, born of a virgin, born in Israel, born in Bethlehem in that regard, of the flesh of David in this sense, of all these concepts. You're like, Jesus is clearly Jewish. Then he pushes back and says, well, it's not that Jesus wasn't just Jewish. He's not Azekazi Jewish, which is the idea that they're like Polish descent. Even then, you go, wait a minute, Joel, if the idea is that if individuals who are part of the diaspora of Israel, whether it's early on or late on and they come back or they're related, aren't part of national Israel in this regard, well, what do you do about the fact that even prior to the time of Christ, you had Jews that were scattered, people coming to the temple during the life of Christ, people had to travel, that's a diaspora concept, they've been scattered, they're still recognized as Jews. After the life of Christ, they were scattered, came back, still recognized as Jews. So why is it fine then but not now? The reality is that many of the people pushing forms of Christian nationalism, they've transformed into an anti-Semitic form of Christian nationalism, sort of, we're done with the Jews, there are these blasphemous Christ killers, we want nothing to do with that, and they've cut themselves off from the branch, and they are very open about it, which is very concerning in that regard.

Speaker 2:
[32:43] Yeah. So you've already mentioned some parallels. You have kind of the ethnically centralized views of the woke left, and then now what people are calling the woke right, which I've been persuaded by Corey Miller to call the dissident right, because he thinks there's some very distinctive differences between what's happening on the woke left and the woke right. So dissident right is the term he prefers. But whatever you call it, there are definite parallels between the two, and ultimately kind of leading toward this sort of conformity of thought, authoritarianism. Can you expand on that a little bit more about the parallels and what's actually going on there? In a world of mass-produced disposables, Range Leather really does stand apart. I remember early COVID, I was online more and I ended up buying this leather bag from a company in Portland, Oregon. The bag was fine. It was flimsy, it was small. But when I got a similar tote bag from Range Leather, it was big and buttery and beautiful. I love that the more I use it, the more it wears in and not out. That's because every product they craft in their Laramie, Wyoming workshop is built to last a lifetime. Here's what I also love. They're Christians. They're not going to give your money to woke companies. You know Mother's Day is coming up and maybe your mom wants a full grain Horween leather Apple watch band or maybe a cute trucker hat with a patch or maybe you want to spring for a nice tote bag or a clutch or a wallet. They have belts. They have so many amazing products. They have a forever guarantee. They are just awesome. Check out Range Leather today by going to rangeleather.com. Use my code Alisa for 15% off. Again, that's rangeleather.com. Use my code Alisa.

Speaker 1:
[34:27] Exactly. Well, I would say this. Woke Right and Dissident Right, they're all in the family. So we can be hyper nuanced on one or the other. And I get why people take the differences on them. And I'm not going to hyper split hairs on that. But what's really interesting is that William Wolfe, who is one of the leading voices on this, he kind of goes berserk if you call him Woke Right, but his own YouTube channel was called Dissident Theology, and he admits being a member of the Dissident Right. So take that for whatever it's worth. But here's what I want us to look at is this. A lot of people are going to say this. I'm just going to use Woke Right just for the sake of this. They're going to say that the Woke Right is a reaction to the Woke Left. We've seen this. You have all these young men in particular, they've been proverbially kicked in the teeth for the last number of years as it relates to race and jobs and how their theology operates and all the rest. People are going to say it's just a reaction. They're reacting to this concept. In one sense, I see what people are saying, but here's what I want us to see. The Woke Right is not actually a reaction against the Woke Left. It's actually the continuation of the same ideological project, repackaging it in conservative language to infiltrate and ultimately destroy right-leaning institutions from within. Think about it like this. For the last 10 years, we've dealt with people infiltrating individuals on the left. We've seen exactly how this is operating. They get into institutions, they put in diversity programs or kingdom diversity programs. If we baptize it in the name of Jesus, it's not CRT anymore. We all have seen the game. We know what they're doing. But what it didn't do is it didn't capture a large segment of people on the conservative right, and that's where this movement comes into place. It's a continuation ultimately of the long march through the institutions. We've seen this come out in classic critical theory and critical studies in this regard, where it's the idea of cultural revolutions occur by capturing institutions, whether they be churches or media or the academy or politics. The strategy of both is this, infiltrate and take it over and destroy if the takeover fails. Like we said, around 2022, the left had, in many respects, already captured the left-leaning institutions. You could never convince me that institutions, like theological institutions like Duke Divinity or Princeton or any of those were not captured by the left. I mean, they're doing these lament services at Duke University, right down the road from where I live to the plants. No joke.

Speaker 2:
[37:18] I've seen some of that, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[37:19] Some of us were eating you and all the rest. I'm like, you got to be kidding me. What happened was is that there was high resistance in conservative circles. The movement had to adapt in order to keep advancing. Hence, enter the woke right. What it is, it's properly defined as this notion as a mutated version of wokeness and it's disguised in conservative language of faith or nationalism or patriotism, but those things are used to gain trust on the inside of conservative institutions and to turn them ultimately inward and unsustainable and extreme. So the point is this, it's the same playbook with different packaging. And it mirrors left-wing politics in these regards. First of all, it has identity politics now reframed as white identity versus black identity. So the woke left would say things like this. If you're in the black community, you have been the recipient of some kind of form of systemic racism, which has left you oppressed. This other side is going to say things like this. If you're part of the white community, you've had your teeth kicked in so much because of these kinds of polities. Now, you and your white identity are oppressed or from secular ideology and all the rest. One is going to base all of this in the identity on the left of secular identity. This movement now is trying to say, you know, it's not only because of your whiteness that you're being oppressed, it's because of your Christian whiteness is being oppressed. So the point is both of them are using this emotional leverage, grievance, distrust of institutions and cultural frustration. In short, it's the same engine with different branding. We can go into a lot more details on this, but the point is, is that the end game is very clear. It's institutional capture. Both goals on the woke left, they want authoritarianism, and they've done it through the means of institutional capture. Those who were on the woke right and embracing, in particular, integralist understandings of Christian nationalism, they want authoritarianism. So the divide here is not between left versus right. It's authoritarianism on one side, and liberty and justice for all on the other side. We are going to promote, quote, true religion and suppress heresy. We know what that looks like. For example, Fox's Book of Martyrs is a long list of what happens when you have integralism and sacralism. The other side is religious liberty based off of the classical constitutional order with the Bill of Rights. And what that looks like is religious freedom and the idea of, we can, yes, promote Christianity. Yes, Christians can serve in politics. Yes, Christians can write laws that are going to, in many respects, serve the community. But we are not going to have a religious test because we've seen what that's done throughout history. So that's what they're pushing. And that's what makes it so interesting when we look at woke left versus woke right and the notion of grievance studies and authoritarianism.

Speaker 2:
[40:30] So if authority is the ultimate end game of both sides, I guess I'm trying to ponder that because it seems like they're arguing for a totally different kind of authority, are they in competition with one another? Or it sounds more like they're kind of in cahoots. But how does that play out with the type of authority the woke left is wanting versus the type of authority that the woke right is wanting?

Speaker 1:
[40:54] So what's interesting is we're not against authority as Christians. We recognize there are authorities in the text of scripture. Government is an authority. Parents are an authority. Leaders in your church is an authority. But we recognize that authority can be abused. And we recognize that it's all in the ism. That's where the problem takes place. Authoritarianism, and it's the idea of it doesn't respect one's conscious, specifically one's religious conscience, as it relates to that concept of the suppression of heresy. Now, here's where this gets really interesting. When we look at the history of how ideas have come about, we recognize that there have been just different revolutions throughout the history of the United States, but also in the history of the West. You have different industrial revolutions, you have different ideas like that. But bringing this back even further, you have this notion within the religious understandings that have been coming out of the World Economic Forum, which they published their literature. And we cannot act like they're just, you know, this conspiracy group that's out way out there that nobody's listening to. No, we have key figures in our United States government who participate in the World Economic Forum. And when you look at their sustainability goals and their religious understandings, they're moving us into a digital form of authoritarianism. And let's look at it in this sense. You know, you will understand when I say this. It's funny, I talked to some people, they don't get this. Like people in high school today, they think it's always like this or younger. You remember the days when you could go to the airport and you didn't have to go through those wonderful security lines.

Speaker 2:
[42:31] You could just walk in.

Speaker 1:
[42:32] It's wonderful. But in order to preserve our safety, they had to bring all of these different kinds of things in. Well, what's interesting is that we've seen over the last several years, the rise of an authoritarian state in the entire West. And for example, out in the West, they would have issues where they would video record individuals with facial recognition in order to go into just generic stores because they were having the problem of too many people stealing things. And that sounds great. Like, hey, we want to know who's in here. If some little kid comes in here and steals $50 worth of whatever product, we can track them down until it gets to things like what we saw happening on many digital platforms. If you don't go along with what we're going to say and what we want you to do, your YouTube channel will get cut, your Twitter account will be removed. Thankfully, Elon bought it, turned it into X and all the rest. Well, the idea is that we're moving into a digital age. We see this all the time. I mean, education's digital. What's interesting is that one of the largest Southern Baptist institutions right now, 67 percent of all the hours taken at that institution are online education. So the point is education's digital, banking's digital, our cars are digitally operated. What if something like this were to happen? We always see it as a parallel on the left. Okay, you can't get on Twitter anymore. You can't get on Facebook anymore. What if they're going to say things like this? You can't get on the Internet anymore because of our terms and services. That's authoritarianism. That's why the idea is that in the United States, we recognize that we are being captured by this notion known as American Maoism or American Marxism, in which yes, the government has a strong play on saying what we can and cannot do. But now, you're starting to not see the government say you can't get on things like the Internet or whatever. You're having individual corporate businesses that are passing laws to keep you from it. So what's to say the same thing can't happen on the right? What you find is that these people are trying to build digital economies or digital parallel economies or even parallel economies on these different sides. So you go, well, this would never happen. Well, it is happening. First of all, the digital takeover is what the World Economic Forum is pushing. Just go read their literature. I can give you guys the resources on that. The second thing is that you're starting to see these ideas where people say, you know, I can't get along with my crazy liberal neighbor anymore or I can't get along with this wacko conservative neighbor. You go live where you want. I'll go live where I want. What is that called? Balkanization. So now you're starting to see people Balkanizing, which ironically, Joel Webin wrote a whole book on that, Calling for People to Balkanize. That's one of the books that made him famous. You're seeing people say, we're going to go to these small towns. We're going to start doing a lot of real estate investment. It's easier to take over those local governments and then we can have the smaller Christian towns that we want and we can run them according to Christian nationalist ideals or all the rest. And it's not just the right that's doing this. You see Dearborn Michigan has done this religiously. There's a group, I can't remember the name of the town, but there was a video that went very popular and it viral recently up in New Jersey, where there's two or three Jewish towns that are doing this. And if you're not Jewish, you're not living a very good life there and Christians are doing the exact same thing. So there's nothing wrong with a group of religiously minded people wanting to live together. But if that is a pay to play authoritarianism where you can't buy or sell or maybe even digitally participate, that's a problem. So what you're finding is that you're having another individual, I think his name is Andrew Torba with gab.com. That's exactly what he's tried to put forth in gab.com. It's this idea of the right version of a digital parallel economy that can be used. So when the Balkanization in many respects happens, which let's just call that for what it is, it can turn into civil war very quickly. Then people are going to go to their different respective areas, and from that, they can sustain and survive. But here's what the big picture. I want to give this big picture as the final comment. All of this is not if this happens or it's just naturally happened. No, this is how dialectics work, especially cultural dialectics work. You pit two groups of people together and you have horizontal confusion all while you are achieving vertical goals. So what's the definition? We're arguing while they're getting more control. Who's in control? Who's doing this? All these different debates that people have. But when you look, people are moving more and more towards those sustainability goals for digital authoritarianism. Now, here's what else is interesting is that if it's an ecumenical authoritarianism, where do confessional Protestants go? Where do confessional Orthodox Christians go? Because when you look at it, they're bringing together all of these different groups. Do you think the World Economic Forum is going to have any kind of Orthodox Biblical Christianity? No. The Christians that are going along with this, I hate to say it, they're playing the part of the fool. Because you're going to give them all the power. You're going to, in a sense, check the terms of agreement, and then it's going to come back to bite you, just like the people that check the terms of agreement on Twitter, and had all of their accounts canceled. So it's not conspiratorial. You just have to read the literature that comes out from these different peoples, starting from the World Economic Forum on down.

Speaker 2:
[48:24] Springtime is here, which means summertime is right around the corner. And I don't know about you guys, but every springtime, I feel a little more creative. I start to get ideas for meals that I don't necessarily get throughout the winter. And right now in the Childers House, we have been making a lot of tacos. And that is why I'm so grateful for Good Ranchers, because I know that all of the grass-fed beef and better-than-organic chicken that comes to my door in a box on dry ice every month, I can just put in the freezer and pull out when we're ready to have it for tacos, which we've made tacos with all of that, including the ground beef that I get from Good Ranchers. It makes it so easy. You can just thaw it out and do whatever you want with it. And especially in grilling season, it's perfect just to throw something on the barbecue. Now I want to tell you, the upgrade I've been waiting for has come to Good Ranchers, and that is custom boxes. I just launched this, which means that you can now build your own box with what exactly what your family wants. So I'm a subscriber. I love the product. I love that I can just go on the website and skip my order, postpone my order, or cancel. It's super easy. So if you go to goodranchers.com today, you're going to get $25 off your first order plus free meat for life when you use my code ALISA. Again, goodranchers.com, use my code ALISA for that discount and for the free meat for life. goodranchers.com, American meat delivered. Okay, so help me understand this on a real practical level, what you've just described. So there are situations in which maybe you don't want to give your money to an overtly woke company. So there's a Christian alternative. What's the difference between that and what you're describing as being balkanized? In other words, it's like even health care, like there's health care programs where it's Christian run and therefore they're not funding abortions and things like that. So where do we find the healthy bullseye for Christians?

Speaker 1:
[50:25] Yeah. I want to support Christians. I want to support friends of mine that are Christians. I support all of the ideas of I don't want my health care performing abortions in that regard. But those things are all aspects that can be given in the sense of a moral law dictating that regard. And we find that as Christians, there's no separation between the moral law and God's revealed law in that regard. They're both in that sense. Now, here's the difference, is that we would hate it if the left made us buy their particular health care. Because we know all the things that it's going to do, and it's going to bind our conscious. In one sense, the problem with Europe is that it's one choice option, which really isn't a choice. Well, what if the right did that, and they started to instill particular things that they're going to put about in their religious understandings of how things must take place? So, for example, let's take it out of the realm of health care, just because that can be interesting, and let's look at it as a political movement, and look at some of the things that these people have said. So, for example, we recognize that there is a world of difference between being a radical leftist feminist and somebody who is a godly, biblical woman, who has the ability to think about matters of her family and in society and would rightly vote for it. So, what is this movement trying to do in this regard as it relates to something like that? They want to do away with the 19th Amendment. They do not want to give the right for women to vote. And I go, guys, women voting is not some radical feminist ideal. This is an idea that women are equally made in the image of God. They equally have the idea or the mind to discern the good, the true, the beautiful, and they can enact that into laws. So you go, man, where does the authoritarianism go too far? When it forces people to act in a particular way and it destroys true liberty of conscience and things that we've fought for, that are true rights engaged in society. Where that goes on all those other things, I don't really know. And the reason is, is that I hate to say it, we'll find out once we get there. But I will tell you this, the people, when you read their literature on it, I'm going to tell you this, there's going to be no freedom for Jews in that society. There's going to be no freedom for atheists in that society or agnostics. But historically, there's no freedom for whoever wasn't the dominant Christian denomination at the particular time also. So what is that going to look like? I don't know, and I don't think they know either. But we know that whatever it's going to be, you cannot differ with them in any way, shape, or form, just like the left wants to have. So think of it like this, it's like a socialist program. It's just a socialism on the right.

Speaker 2:
[53:16] It's kind of like to your point of the Pato baptism that you brought up earlier.

Speaker 1:
[53:21] Exactly. Pato baptism, or unfortunately, even the Lord's Supper in this regard, how many people, what's the Lord's Supper in one sense? Yes, it's a memorial of what the Lord did and all these things, but it's also supposed to be a very clear, unifying factor for Christians. We are the body of Christ. How many people have died over battles concerning the Lord's Supper in that regard? And here's what's really interesting is that when these people want these things, we have to hear the language that they're bringing about in this regard. A lot of people will say things like this, well, we just want a Christian America and Christian laws. Well, these exact same people have put out things like, we want a Protestant Franco. That's frightening. Or just this last week, another one of these individuals said, we want a Protestant Hitler. And you go, wait a minute, what in the world are you guys talking about? That's the kind of authoritarianism these people want. It's like, well, we don't just want a Hitler, we want a Protestant Hitler. Why? The two orders, if they're Protestant, they're going to be rightly religiously ordered, and they're going to bring about an authoritarian form of government. And when people call them on this, they'll retreat and say, oh, that's not really what we meant. We meant this. And then when things are moving in their favor, they come out and say what they're saying. That's why it's the old idea that the woke did. It's the Mott and Bailey fallacy. When they are out there and they feel like they can be very bold, they get the Bailey statements. When people call them on it, they retreat back into their Mott softer statements, and they play them back and forth. When the reality is they want the Bailey, but they play the Mott in order to get you to the Bailey.

Speaker 2:
[55:00] Okay, very good. So can you give us some quotes from people who are promoting these ideas just to kind of give us a really practical example of how this is being communicated?

Speaker 1:
[55:10] Exactly. So here's one coming from The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolf, page 391 to be precise. He says this, Our heretics are publicly persistent in their damnable error and actively seek to convince others of this error to subvert the established church, to denounce its ministers, or to instigate rebellion against magistrates. For this reason, they can be justly put to death, dot, dot, dot. This is not to say that capital punishment is the necessary soul or desired punishment. Banishment and long-term imprisonment may suffice as well, end quote. And you look at this and you go, okay, so you come out and you say that you can put them to death over this. That's the idea of the suppression of heresy clause that's coming out of the Magisterial Confirmation that we rejected in the American experiment. And they'll say, well, even if we don't go that far, think about it in this sense. Banishment, you're going to send these people somewhere else if they're not going to go along with what you want, or long-term imprisonment. Think about what that's doing to the society in which we live in that sense. And people go, well, these are for our heretics. How can we not do this to them? And it's like, well, again, does it come down to, do you want to have a society in which we enforce a particular religion from the state? Or do you want to have a society that allows for religious freedom? And I know what that's going to bring. It's going to bring a lot of issues. But it also gives us the right to evangelize these type of people, to pray that they come to see the gospel of Jesus Christ. But also it allows for, you know, the whole issue is what's an archerotic? You know, if you are a Protestant in a Catholic nation, well, you're an archerotic. Do you want that to be the case? You know, if you don't affirm infant baptism, well, there's a lot of Baptists that died for that. And, you know, there are just a whole host of things that we've said here. And, you know, we can give quote after quote on these. That's a concern that we should have as it relates to the case for Christian nationalism. It's straight from the horse's mouth in that regard.

Speaker 2:
[57:22] Okay, well, you mentioned the American experiment. And I know you've talked about the model of religious liberty that was developed in Pennsylvania under William Penn and how that really shaped the American approach. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you argue that the founding reflects a move toward a free church in a free state, like that kind of vision?

Speaker 1:
[57:45] Exactly. You know, what's interesting is that we study these things as historical theologians, and most people don't do this. Historical theologians, they like to squabble over words and why was this phrase included and why was that phrase not included. And when you look at the history of some key confessions, you notice things that are changing. So for example, you have the Westminster Confession of Faith that was brought about by the Westminster Divines. And I think there are 33 chapters in it. And as you go through with it, you see that it has a whole thing on the church and also on the Magistrate in that regard. And one of the key things that it talks about in there that we keep bringing up is this notion of how does the notion of the suppression of heresy clauses work. The idea that the civil rulers should protect true religion and suppress blasphemy. But what you find is, is that as people moved away, so you start to get to 1788 and we're in the United States of America, you have the American revision to the Westminster Confession and they dropped the suppression of heresy language and affirmed religious liberty and the church's independence from the state, which is very interesting. And you go, well, why is that? Well, first of all, one doesn't have to say in order to be a Presbyterian, you have to affirm just this. Like we see even the American revisions allowing for liberty on it. But you also find that there's another family of documents that relates to this, and it's the Savoy Declaration. The Savoy Declaration was the Congregationalist understanding of the Westminster Confession. So you have it, it's a classic Calvinist understanding of a confession. It would have been the confession used by the Congregationalists in the early United States of America, meaning it would have been the declaration that was used by the Puritans. Were they always consistent with it? No, but that's what it would have affirmed. And it also dropped this particular blasphemy law language. You find the same thing happening in the London Baptist Confession of Faith, and you go, okay, what's the significance of this? As time marched on and we are in Magisterial Europe, Sacralist Europe, you find individuals not strengthening their understanding of church-state relationships, but moving towards a free church in a free state. So then you're going to have a lot of people that are going to talk about things like, well, you know, what do we do with this idea of colony laws versus the United States government and the First Amendment? Because we do recognize that there were colony laws, like in Boston Commons, where they did do these kinds of things, where they would suppress heresy. That's why Mary Dyer lost her life was based off of these types of colony laws. Well, you know, a lot of people, when they study American church history or American history in this regard, we're used to hearing about guys like, you know, Washington or Jefferson and all the rest. But there's one person that was sort of a pre-individual, and his name was William Pinn. And most people have not studied Pinn very much. And what brought this back to my remembrance is that I was walking around on William Pinn University last summer, and I'm reading some of the things in the Declarations by William Pinn with a mentor of mine who lives right down the road from there. And it sparked my remembrance, which I've known from a youth, I just kind of forgot about it, is that you have William Pinn's holy experiment. William Pinn was a Quaker, and the Quakers, just like the Baptists, were a group of individuals that received significant religious persecution. So when Pinn came to the United States, it was chartered unto him to have his holy experiment, which was this idea that he could have a society with religious freedom. And in that society, you weren't punished if you were of a different Protestant denomination. He allowed for even Jews to be within the state of Pennsylvania, his religious experiment there. But in addition to it, what you find within Pinn's idea is that you see a rather different thing from the colony laws. So in the colony laws, you saw the compulsion of taxes for clergy, or the legal penalties for dissenters, or bans on unlicensed preaching from the state. And even the, quote, tolerate colonies like Rhode Island, they still have these kinds of things. We see that the congregationalists were softening them, the Baptists were softening them. But then you have William Pinn, and in 1681, he received the Charter for Pennsylvania. So what he wanted to do is he wanted to have a frame of government that guaranteed the freedom of worship for all who acknowledged God, no compulsory tithes to a state church, elected assemblies and fair trials. And this was radical for his time. So Pinn was no secularist. He believed in Christianity, but he also recognized that coercion corrupts and it can even corrupt the Christian faith. So for him, force makes hypocrites in this regard. So the Pennsylvania experiment showed that in a broad sense, you can allow for a variety of different views that are out there and still produce civic and cultural order and prosperity with no establishment of a church, and yet society still flourished. So all of that to say, this was what's going on in Penn's holy order. Well, what's in Pennsylvania? Philadelphia. What happened with the founding of the United States? You have the Philadelphia conventions that were taking place as it relates to our constitutional conventions. Well, who visited these kinds of things? Individuals like Washington and Jefferson. And there's strong evidence that in their engagements, they recognized something was going on, that namely, Pennsylvania was a society that was flourishing better than places like Virginia, which had all of these kinds of things because of its religious freedom. So during that exact same time, you start to look at it and you go, well, which one out in the United States Bill of Rights in its constitutional order? Was it religious freedom? Yes, and that religious freedom was in a long history coming from the American version of the Westminster Confession, which is a little later, but also into the Savoy, and to the Second London Baptist Confession. But ultimately, William Penn's vision for religious liberty won out, and William Penn's vision of religious liberty is what's under attack today. It's literally on the chopping blocks with this movement. It makes a significant difference. People's lives have been on the matter of it. That's why William Penn and that idea is so important as it relates to church politics discussions in that regard.

Speaker 2:
[64:47] So, man, it seems like that needs to be taught more in history classes, the William Penn, because you hear people talk about how some of the colonies required certain confessions and things like that, even to vote, he had to confess to be a Christian. Then you do see this move toward more religious liberty, which went out for good reason. Now it seems like we're trying to go backwards with this Christian nationalism that we're seeing. But I think also we're seeing the movement splinter. Can you talk about that? There's fractures within the movement. But really anytime you have something that's driven by identity and identity politics, you're going to see that instability. So what do you think is going on with all of the fracturing?

Speaker 1:
[65:32] I think it's fracturing quite a bit right now. I don't know if it's going to go away. There's a lot of money and a lot of big players involved with this. And I mean, let's just be absolutely honest as it relates to it. We've got some key people in high-up politics that are integralists, and they want to see this come about. So it's not going to go away anytime soon. And that's why I've said a lot of these guys are kind of like paid ops. You know, they're out there to be agitators in that regard. But I agree that in the big picture of it, you're seeing splits happening over and over and over and again as it relates to it. So the future of this, I do not think that Christian nationalism is reconcilable with the American vision of religious liberty. And I think what you're ultimately going to find is, is that it's a small movement and they're fracturing within their movement. But ultimately, they're going to have to do a lot to get this thing passed at the federal level. I mean, let's just be honest. You can't even get everybody in your average confessional church that's going to affirm like one of the London Baptists, the Savoy or the Westminster Confession to even affirm practically some kind of keeping of the Sabbath in that regard. Like you can't even get your own church members. Sometimes you can't even get elders of these churches to do it. How are you going to get whole states, whole people? You know, if anything, there's still a trend of like, you're not going to tell me what to do in the United States of America, especially as it relates to these kinds of things. So I get it in theory, what they're trying to do. But I think in practice, they're going to have a very difficult time achieving their goals. So it's going to continue to splinter. And here's why it's going to continue to splinter. You know, from, we want to be Christian in the way that we understand human nature in this regard. And there was an article that was put out by John Frame, and it was, in essence, titled, Machen's Warrior Children. And we know what Machen did. He fought theological liberalism within the Presbyterian Church at that point. And he rightly did it. We need to be people who stand forth on truth, doctrine, divides. We recognize that theological liberalism is not just another expression of Christianity. It's a completely different religion in every sense of the term, whether we, whatever we want to call it. And, you know, the idea is, is that we must stand forth. But Frayn was right in this sense. We rightly won that battle. But many of the people that got caught up in that battle, they adopted this warrior-child mood in which every single thing that they dealt with had to be fought with the same vigilance and with the same thrust and power. And it's one thing to fight one battle that really needs to be fought that way. It's another thing to make your whole mode of existence like that. And I think what it did, when you look at it is, is you have some people that just became overly argumentative about every single issue, and it just kept splitting churches and splitting denominations. And I think that's what we're running into here. We found that there were a large group of people who rightly fought the progressive left. I was part of it. You were part of it. Many of the people that are participating in this, I know them personally. They fought against it. Yes, we should speak up against Southern Baptist institutions that are buying into wokeness. No ifs, ands or buts. We should fight those kinds of things. Kingdom diversity is not Biblical in any sense of the term. CRT is not Biblical in any sense of the term. But what it did is you take that plus COVID, let's be honest, COVID kind of rewrote the whole world.

Speaker 2:
[69:15] Sure did.

Speaker 1:
[69:15] For example, my wife's a speech pathologist, and they're still dealing with the consequences of kids not having real interaction and not being able to see people's mouths. You learn how to talk because of that. We're inheriting it. So you're in a society of lockdowns and all those kinds of things. What it did is it created a group of people who rightly fought real evil. My fear is, is this going forward, is we're going to turn into a group of people that are like matron's warrior children and these individuals are going to keep fighting and sponging and they're not getting along. I know they're not getting along. You see people distancing themselves that used to be united. For example, there was a conference about a year ago and you had Joel Webin and several of these other key figures that all have spoken at it. But now you see a lot of these guys like Joel who? They're trying to separate them. It's another division. My whole point is this, is that we need to fight air where it's found. But I think the movement is going to fracture because they've made it into a mode of life. When you watch these guys on Twitter, it's like, do you wake up and drink a cup of coffee that's just fueled with anger every single day? How do you reconcile that with Christian nationalism or their whole idea that they give for how the Christian prince? I think it's just fundamentally incompatible with the text of scripture. The pushback that I give on it is this, is that there's a book that recently came out that I highly recommend. It came out by a guy named Bruce Little. The book is titled, Why Truth Matters. The book is on Francis Schaeffer. And we recognize Schaeffer pinned the idea of true truth. We don't want existential truth. We don't want dialectical truth. We don't want postmodern truth. We understand that there's false definitions out there calling themselves true, but they're not true truth. And what Schaeffer argued is not only that concept, but he also had true spirituality based off of fake spirituality. Is it Gnostic spirituality? Is it this idea of progressive Christianity spirituality, whatever that can turn into any moment, and he says you have to have them aligned, true truth and true spirituality. That's what the evangelical life is. And my fear is, is that you're starting to see within a lot of these individuals, they wanted true truth, and I think in some areas maybe they got it, in some areas they didn't. But when it comes to the idea of living that out in true spirituality, in the Schaeffer sense of the term, I think that's where the movement's objectively failing, and it's doomed to failure because we recognize that virtue builds society and virtue builds individuals, and you find that vices divide society, it divides movements, and that's why the division's there. They can't get along with one another. The true spirituality is not present.

Speaker 2:
[72:08] Well, that's interesting. And, you know, watching this movement, I truly thought, I don't know, sometimes I feel like I'm naive. I truly thought that once the more overt anti-Semitic rhetoric was present, that people would be like, oh, wow, let me back up. And some did. But it seems like it's really catching on. You look at people like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and you have otherwise very smart people, these aren't stupid people, kind of going along with the anti-Jewish rhetoric. And I wonder if you can speak to that. And, you know, what does that signal historically, you know, theologically, it's just it's puzzling to me why that's becoming so normalized.

Speaker 1:
[72:50] Yeah, it's there's a few things related to it. To one, have you noticed that both on the left, on the right, it just kind of popped up out of nowhere and it was everywhere all at once?

Speaker 2:
[73:00] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[73:00] Did you notice that?

Speaker 2:
[73:01] Yes, I did.

Speaker 1:
[73:02] You know, whatever it is, I mean, even if like we're playing some kind of children's capture the flag kind of game, if like all the players from your team happened to be in one spot doing the same thing at the exact same time, you're like, this is a coordinated effort. So like when all the wokeness came down, everything happened at one point in time. And the same thing is happening here on the right. It's an intentional, entryist movement that has worked its way into a variety of different organizations. And it's almost like the light switch came on and it happened everywhere. And nobody was calling it out. Everybody was buying into it. And we saw this, the huge debates that were happening with Heritage Foundation. You clearly have issues of anti-Semitism taking place, and you're like, guys, what is going on with this? But this brings us to the second issue. A lot of these individuals fall into a political philosophy from an individual named Carl Schmidt. Carl Schmidt was, ironically, one of the leading figures in Hitler's political government in that regard. He's one of the leading political philosophers. And he gave us this idea where there's two aspects. It's what's known as the friend-enemy distinction. So you're either my friend or you're my enemy. There's no middle ground. And if they're your friend, you don't speak out against them. Even if, you know, crazy uncle gets a little too crazy, he's part of the friend group. You keep him in there. But your enemies, you're in a united front against them. That's the first step that we had. And we see this in act that all the time. You ever wonder why these people will never, ever speak out against somebody within their group? Because they're following the political philosophy of Carl Schmitt.

Speaker 2:
[74:36] Is this like what we talk about when we say no enemies to the left or no enemies to the right?

Speaker 1:
[74:40] Exactly. It's exactly. And that's the other side of it. No enemies to the right. Netter is the same thing. It's based off of the friend-enemy distinction. And the means by which they do it is no enemies to the right. Well, what does that ultimately mean? You can never keep somebody in the right accountable on anything. And you know, some of the fundamental Christian ideal is that we do have accountability with one another. If I were sinning and we were in the same church, I would feel like it's your duty as a Christian to approach me and say, hey, Bill, you're really dropping the ball here. Let's talk about this and rightfully try to correct this for the sake of my soul, but also for the health of the church. Well, what about when we apply this to a whole political movement that's trying to take over the church? No enemies to the right is truly unbiblical because it removes the idea of Christian discipleship.

Speaker 2:
[75:35] Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[75:35] So then you start to get people who come out with all of this anti-Semitism. And anti-Semitism is not something that's just new. Anti-Semitism has been around throughout the entire Old Testament. It was during the inter-testamental time period. It was during the time of Christ in this regard, after the time of Christ. And we see a variety of things that are going on with this. And there's two factors that we must look at it. When you read Hitler's Mein Kampf, he asks this question, you know, what are we going to do about the problem of the Jews? And he was not the first one to raise that question. That's a question that's been asked for generations. And the issue is, we don't want them here. We don't like them here. Where do we send them or what do we do with them? Some kind of idea. So, what happens with this is that Hitler's ultimate answer to this came in a variety of things. One, we either need to put them somewhere, maybe we need to find a country for them, maybe we need to do something with them, something along those lines. Well, ultimately, we know what Hitler did. He decided to deal with the problem of the Jews by getting rid of them in that regard. But we also find in church history, if the Jews were prosperous, well, it's because there's some conspiracy about how they're overtaking society. If they're poor, then there's something related to how they're the drudge of society. They can never win in this regard. So when you look at the nation state of Israel coming about, you find the answer to the question, what do we do with the problem, the Jews? Well, they have a place to go now, and they can go to the particular country. So Hitler could have sent them to a country, and obviously, that's an exaggeration in the sense. But the idea is that we can send somebody from a particular ethnicity back to a particular country if they have one. Here's where the extension comes. The question of what do we do with the problem, the Jews and the anti-Semitism there, is now morphed by these exact same figures into, what do we do with the problem of the nation of Israel? It's the same kind of question with the same driving motives, and it's creating not only an anti-Semitism of the people, but an anti-Semitism of the nation itself. So if that's the medium causes, what's the ultimate cause of this? It's ultimately a spiritual battle, if you think about it. What is the role of the nation of Israel and the people of the Jews? They are the people who were entrusted with the oracles of God. They are the people of the Abrahamic and the Davidic covenant. They're the lineage by which the Messiah was to come, and they are the people to whom the Messiah will come back to. They will look upon him whom they pierced. So why is there so much anti-Semitism? I know this may not fly in the scientific, materialistic, positivistic society, but ultimately, it's a spiritual battle. It's a satanic attack against his people and his particular place and God's particular place for those people in order to either eradicate the Messiah or not let them go into the land to fulfill the messianic promises given to the Jews for a particular place in which they can have the Davidic Covenant fulfilled. So there's a lot of issues there. That's the ultimate theological significance of what's going on. So when these people are giving all this, all this Jew hate, I'm like, guys, have you not read Romans 9, 10, and 11, specifically Romans 11? Like, hey, you wild branches, don't you, don't you get haughty? Don't you get arrogant against these natural branches? Like you're not sustained enough yourself. Like we are, we are grafted into them. The New Covenant was made with the nation of Israel, we are grafted into them. So ultimately in the spiritual significance, if you can undo that, it has eternal consequences for what happens with the promised plan of God and the plan of salvation. One good resource I would really point people to on that is anything by Walter Kaiser on this. He's absolutely excellent as it relates to these particular topics.

Speaker 2:
[79:44] Do you think, not to get off on a whole thing on eschatology, but do you think that, oh gosh, I want to be so careful how I ask this because I know wonderful Christians who have different eschatologies, of course, but particularly what is referred to as replacement theology, do you think that that is undergirding some of this stuff or what do you think?

Speaker 1:
[80:05] What's interesting is this is that if we want to get into a lot of the anti-Semitism, yes, a huge driving factor of this is replacement theology. It's a significant factor and you look at issues that relate. It wasn't just Luther who had a negative view of the Jews. There were several, even sometimes church fathers that had a negative view of the Jews. This isn't just things like reading the text of scripture, where when the apostles are preaching and they say the Christ whom you crucified, it's not just that. They use that as a justification and you see early condemnation of it, but then you start to also look at it in this sense. When did it ramp up even more? When Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. You have a state religion by the Roman Empire that pushes away an opposing religious view and now you start to see anti-Semitism taking place. That's really sacralist, isn't it?

Speaker 2:
[81:11] Define that for us, sacralism.

Speaker 1:
[81:13] The integration of the church and the state, in which the state will punish the dissenting religion. You start to see these things coming about and yes, classic covenant theology in which the church is the replacement of the nation of Israel, God would have to be done with it. But if you have a distinction between Israel and the church in this regard and we recognize that in one sense, there are promises given to both Israel and the church, but there are promises that are given to Israel, a particular land, a particular people, to a particular ruling messiah, then that does shape things. A lot of the people in these movements, they put all of their Twitter, I'm Post Mill. And I'm Theonomy and I'm all these things. But what's ultimately driving a lot of this is a form of replacement theology. Here's an interesting little tidbit on this on the eschatology side of it. Many Christian nationalists see, I mean, many post-trib guys, sorry, I'm confusing myself, post-millennial guys, there's too many, that's why we have parts so that we don't misspeak. The post-millennial guys, they just see this as the ushering in of the kingdom in that regard, the ushering in of the Christian view of how the state must relate with one another. I have significant theological differences with post-millennialism. I'm a very confessed pre-millennialist in this regard. I don't think that we are ushering in a kingdom. I actually think things are going to get worse until they get better. Then when Jesus returns, and some of the reasons for this, just like in a really practical sense, you read the, it's not just getting to Revelation 20 in this. You'd like read the Book of Daniel. What you find is that each kingdom that was brought about, the kingdom was brought, something initially started it, and then the kingdom came about. Another kingdom was started, and it came about. Then you get to the final kingdom of it, it was started, and it brought about. It wasn't ushered in over a long period of time, it was instantiated, and then brought about. That's a very practical thing, and I'm not the only one who believes this. John MacArthur very clearly said before he died, there's no such thing as Christian nationalism because the future doesn't talk about things getting better. Things are going to get worse in that regard. The point of this is that Christian nationalism is a little bit of eschatology, it's a little bit of replacement theology, it's some post-liberalism that's brought in, it's a lot of odd understandings of church-state relationships, and all of these things thrown together. What they do is they pick which one that's going to drum up the debate at that particular time, and they pound that proverbial drum going forward with it. That's what makes it so difficult. That's one of the other aspects that makes it mirror, is it like with critical race theories, is it this, is it this, is it this? Man, I can't keep up with which one it is this day.

Speaker 2:
[84:08] Yeah, I appreciate you kind of making those distinctions because I know some wonderful, faithful brothers and sisters in Christ who are post-millennial or who are covenant theology, and in fact I even will joke with one of my post-mill friends like, it's not looking so good for you this week, and they'll say, well, it's not looking good for you this next week. You know, it's kind of an in-house thing. But to your point, it's pulling different things together, and obviously not every post-mill is a Christian nationalist, but it seems like most of the Christian nationalists are… Yeah, right, exactly, exactly. So all right, well, let's land the plane here. For Christians who want to be faithful, it's so hard, because if you have conservative opinions, you get called a Christian nationalist from people who aren't, I don't think, really thinking about what that phrase actually means. If you want to be a biblical Christian, the tendency can even be to so push back against that, that you don't want to be political at all, and you don't want to get involved with politics. So what would your pastoral advice be for Christians who are trying to navigate this in a biblically faithful way?

Speaker 1:
[85:20] I think the first thing is this, is that when we look at any history of any particular debate, it does not matter what it is. Any heresy, anything like this throughout church history, the old adage, the first battle is the battle for the dictionary. There are so many people that have conceded the battle because they conceded the dictionary. It is worth taking the time specifically in this day and age to fight for what you should actually be defined as. Are you a Christian nationalist? Are you not a Christian nationalist? Why? Because it really does come with significant implications for the label you accept for yourself. Real insignificant implications. I mean, I know this particular local, I call her an agitator. She blows up things all over social media, and every five minutes, it's Christian nationalist this and Christian nationalist that. And if you say anything conservative in the public arena where I live, she blows you all up. She's one of these people that has a really huge social media following. So one little thing, it can really affect you day to day. So is that worth battling? You better believe it. You're like, that's going to be real tangible things. Now, the other side of it is, is that we're not arguing that Christians should refrain from engaging in the public sphere. We want Christians who recognize it can be a calling before the Lord to go into politics, to be a judge, to be a representative, to maybe even become elected president, if you could pull that off. It is a God-given sphere of authority, and Christians should rightfully engage this, and they should go in there bringing all of the ethics of the Christian faith to the table. We are not saying somehow this idea that Christians shouldn't engage with morality and topics, because we rightly stand with the book that was put out by Frank Chirick and Norm Geisel a number of years ago, Legislating Morality. You want to know my view on the topic? It's that. That's the idea. All laws do legislate morality in that sense. But then there's another flip side of it. How do we deal with this in the church? One, there are several denominations that are actually having to deal with this. For example, the PCA. They're having an entire study committee right now that's taking place, of which they're going to bring forth, looking at the concept of Christian nationalism. Because people following the Westminster Confession, they do have to reconcile with the fact that if you're following the original version, you have the suppression of heresy clause. You've got to deal with that. If you're going to be a subscriptionist, what is that going to look like in the American context in this particular day and age? So I would say people need to, as local churches or as denominations, they don't need to just become lightly acquainted with it. You need to realize that as this movement comes in, you're going to find a lot of young men who are going to embrace this because they see it as the masculine strong form of Christianity. But it also brings in all of the baggage with it. So as the old sentiment goes, the woke left, it kind of preyed upon the natural intuitions of most women, compassion and grace, and how can we do these kinds of things. This movement, the woke right, is doing the same thing off of natural male intuitions. We want a strong society. We want all these things. But we recognize we can fall off the rails on both sides. So pastors need to be aware of it, and they need to have these conversations specifically in their church, with their congregations, and in particular, with discipleship groups, with the group, like the young men in particular. Here's my final thought on this for landing the plane. So it's not just education, it's not just the right kinds of people. We also, on the flip side of it, we need to push back against this idea that Christians act one way in this kingdom, and they act this way in another kingdom. So for example, I as Bill the Citizen should do X, Y, and Z. But I as Bill in the church, well, I can't tell people to do X, Y, and Z. Well, you're falling off the rails in another direction if you're doing that. Pastors have the moral obligation to train their congregants on what it means to be Christians in society. And we find Christians in acting in society. We've seen historically what that looks like. But for us to just say, well, you know, there's just two different kingdoms here, and they never really come together, that's falling off in a different direction. We realize that the Lord of one kingdom is the Lord of the other kingdom. And as pastors, we want to disciple them on, okay, let's look at two big issues that are going to have a big implication, marriage and life. And we recognize there has been a whole huge issue on how should Christians look at the redefinition of marriage in society. Pastors got to realize this is not just a political issue, it's a deeply, deeply theological issue. What is marriage is a theological issue. Who can be married is a theological issue. Which kind of ceremony you attend is a deeply theological issue. And pastors have the moral responsibility before the Lord to engage those kinds of things. Similarly, as it relates to life issues, whether it's going to be defending the unborn from abortion, defending people from some kind of crazy treatments that are going on, or people at the end of life. These are all life issues, and we as Christians have the moral responsibility. But here's the play at hand. You know how CS. Lewis wrote the Screwtape Letters? And in the Screwtape Letters, we find that Screwtape is enacting these things where, you know, if we can get people to do this, we can distract them from that. And this is exactly what's going on today. If you can label something as political, people go, oh, that's political, we can't touch that, we got to refrain from it. And what's happened is, is that we've turned every moral issue that the church seems to stand on as a political issue, and hence, we can't go there. And what I want to say is, don't take the bait. Realize, yes, some people can turn churches into just political hubs, we're not talking about that. We're talking about real, central issues of the Christian faith. Is attending a same-sex marriage political? Yeah, it's political, but it's deeply theological also. Jesus would have rightly dealt with it, and the fact that he dealt with what a marriage is in the New Testament in that regard. So, my point is this, if you're a pastor, recognize the old adage, the saying doesn't come from me, the idea, I know what I'm talking about, I know what I see, I know that manipulation, it does not work on me. Don't fall for the manipulation that it's just political to somehow not call your congregation to fidelity in the public sphere, period.

Speaker 2:
[92:32] Oh, good. Very good. Well, lots to think about, and I want to thank my guest, Dr. Bill Roach, for joining me for this in-depth conversation on Christian nationalism. I want to encourage everybody to follow him on social media. He's got a lot of great thoughts that go even more deeply into all of this. And so let's remember as we pursue Christ to keep a sharp mind, a soft heart, and a thick skin. We'll see you next time.