When Secularism Becomes the Church: Dr. John West on Stockholm Syndrome Christianity

What happens when the church adopts the worldview of its cultural critics?

According to recent data, nearly 60% of American Christians now say it's more important to be “kind” than to uphold biblical truth. But what if that kindness is shaped by a secularism that quietly undermines Christian convictions? In this episode of Faithful Politics, we sit down with Dr. John West—author of Stockholm Syndrome Christianity and VP of the Discovery Institute—to explore how secular assumptions have infiltrated the church from within. West, a longtime scholar of politics, religion, and science, argues that many church leaders have internalized a materialist worldview that strips faith of its power to transform.

We talk homelessness, public policy, marriage, religious liberty, and why Christians need to recover a holistic view of human dignity—not just “throw money at problems.” It’s a thought-provoking dialogue on the tensions between compassion, conviction, and cultural conformity.

👤 Guest Bio
Dr. John West is Vice President of the Discovery Institute and co-founder of its Center for Science and Culture. Formerly chair of political science at Seattle Pacific University, West holds a PhD in government from Claremont Graduate University. He is the author or editor of 13 books and has directed 12 documentaries on faith, politics, and culture. His latest book, Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, explores how secular worldviews have reshaped the American church.

Transcript

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Hey there Faithful Politics listeners and viewers if you're joining us on our YouTube channel guys thanks for coming around. Again make sure you like, subscribe, do that stuff that hacks the algorithm so we can get this great content out to you and more and more people. I'm of course Josh Bertram. I am your Faithful Host and we have as always our political host Will. Hey Will it's good to see you. It's good to be seen. Thanks, Josh. Absolutely. And today I'm really excited to have on our show Dr. John West. He serves as the vice president of Discovery Institute and co-founded its influential center for the science and culture. Formerly he was the chair of political science at Seattle Pacific University. He holds a PhD in government from Claremont Graduate University. He's an award-winning author and filmmaker. He's penned or edited 13 books, directed 12 documentaries, examining faith, culture, and public policy. His newest release, Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, explores how unnoticed secular assumptions have shaped the church and what believers can do about it. And that's what we're going to talk to him about today, among other things, wherever the conversation leads. John, thank you so much for joining. Can I call you John? Thank you. Well, thank you so much for joining us today on Faithful Politics. Josh and Will, thank you for having me. Yeah, hey, just just real fast. I noticed. are you living in Seattle currently? I live in the Seattle area and go downtown about twice a week and then work out of my home outside. So living a little bit south of Seattle, but yes, Seattle area. So like Tacoma or Lakewood or. Better way. OK, cool. I know I know it very well. Yeah, I proposed to my wife in Seattle at a little restaurant underneath the fish market called Il Bistro. And yeah, I lived there for like 15 years. I love the area. Well, you know, my colleague at Discovery who founded it, Bruce Chapman, was on the Seattle City Council in early 70s when they saved the Pike Place Market. Because he was a really big believer in historic preservation. And so he and a couple of others uh championed the saving of that route because they wanted to raise it to the ground. Amazing. that's so awesome. Well, you know, John, I just appreciate you coming on and I would love for you to kind of talk about just to give our audience a sense of you if there's anything I missed and also what's it like being a conservative Bible believing, you know, uh person up in that devil city of Seattle with all their liberal craziness. You know, I'm supposed to be the conservative guy. So All those leftist crazies. What's it like up there? Well, know, people in the Northwest are pretty nice people on all sides. And so it's been fine. I would say where it gets challenging is that, at least in Seattle proper, I would say the left has gone off so on the deep end that even against what traditional liberals would have believed, that it's just tragic. mean, in Seattle, the change over the last 10 years. I where our offices are, we will not go a day without oh hearing mentally ill people screaming, walking by people who are doing fentanyl. And so this is not, this is tragic. I mean, in my view, it's liberalism run amok. mean, liberalism used to be, and progressive used to be, caring for the poor and disenfranchised. And here we're just, the streets are filled with broken people who we're not really trying to help. Even though we're spending... hundreds of billions of dollars in Washington state on this, we're not really helping. So that's what I think is really tragic and it hurts everyone. uh But other than that, I guess maybe I shouldn't say Seattle nice because it used to say Canadian nice. And then I think after during COVID and stuff, we got a view that it's not all Canadian nice, but in the Northwest actually. Most people do get along, but we have a serious issue with breakdown, social breakdown, especially with homelessness of people who are have long-term addictive and other behaviors that we're not actually trying to help. um And that's, I think, tragic for anyone, whether you're a Christian, uh liberal or conservative, but we haven't really gotten grips on that. Yeah, you know, so before I was a Christian, I was in the service and me getting out of the service wasn't the reason I became a Christian. But like, I was in the service before I was a Christian, stationed there at the time, just Fort Lewis, not JBLM, and used to go down on the weekends, sometimes midweek to go clubbing down in Pioneer Square. the amount of like unhoused homeless people down there. mean, it's tragic. And I remember feeling so convicted. the reason it's important that I say before I was a Christian, just to prove that you don't need to be a Christian, do nice things was like uh I took a flyer that I made that had a whole bunch of resources of like, know, pro bono legal work, food shelters, stuff like that. So when I would go down there, Instead of giving them money, I would give them like this, this like info sheet, you know, because I because I felt so bad. And that was like, I mean, like your point, like 10, 15 years ago, I couldn't even imagine what it's what it's like now. Now our offices are a couple blocks north of Pioneer Square. it is, the days you're talking about, things were pristine and people were helped. And again, it really is tragic. I mean, I remember walking some months ago up to Capitol Hill to visit someone and encountering really scary people screaming. at no one in particular. mean, it's really tragic. And the fentanyl crisis, it's just the number of people who are being hurt. And I will say, there's one chapter in my book that deals with poverty, race, ethnicity, various issues on that. And one of my critiques of my fellow Christians, and this doesn't just apply to conservative Christians, is that say homelessness. I actually believe, I'm not against government-supported housing and certainly government-supported programs. My trouble and actually some of my colleagues at Discovery Institute, the critique of the Housing First program approach is that they think that that is a material fix. You just give them housing and then everything's solved. Well, no. In fact, uh you end up in housing, you put people who are really on the road to recovery with people who aren't and it's hell for them to live there. So, but I remember when I taught state and local politics and we did a unit on social welfare issues and on homelessness, I'd bring in people from the community and we had someone who wore their clerical collar very prominently. And in fact, at the church that we were going at the time, that's how I knew about him, you go to raise money there and it would be presented as, well, this is this Christian ministry. Well, but if you actually asked at what he was doing, um All they were doing, and I don't want to say all because this isn't unimportant, going and trying to find shelter or give them a blanket. Yes, we're called to do that. I get that. But when students began to ask, well, do you offer suggestions for drug rehab or even spiritual counsel? And I'm not talking about, I know there were old line gospel missions where in order to eat you had to attend the sermon. Not talking about that, do you even offer? you know, a Bible study or counseling or the other thing, is, well, no, that's not what we do. And I mean, do you try to find out why they're, no, that's not what we do. And I thought, how tragic, and I think this is emblematic of how some Christians adopt this really materialistic worldview that they think that the most important thing is that if you just throw money at it or physical resources, that solves all your problems. And I say, Christians, whether they're from the right or left, I think should know that that's not the case. we're spiritual as well as physical. So the physical is important, I don't discount that. But that's, especially with people in deep distress, it seems to me that that, I had to get my head around, well, why are Christians gravitating toward that some? I mean, not all, but why was this featured ministry in our city marketing itself as a Christian ministry, but there was nothing even particularly Christian, let alone holistic about it? so that... That is one of the things I'm trying to approach in the book because I think the secularist materialist mindset treats people as these cogs and machine and that you just give material resources to them and then that solves everything. And I don't think that is certainly the historic Christian view. And so I'm concerned about Christians, Christian leaders who buy into that rather than a more holistic view, at least when it comes to social welfare. That's just one part of my book, but that is something that I do address. Sorry about that. That was, think, they call in the industry a pregnant pause. ah But uh I do want to ask, uh so the title of your book, Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, number one, love the title. ah But why did you write the book? Sure. I identify as a more theologically conservative Christian, which doesn't necessarily translate to politically conservative in all respects, although I do end up being largely that, but with some differences among some. But what I was seeing is that those of us who are theologically conservative Christians were often blaming, oh, everything's going to rack and ruin because of the evil atheists or the evil agnostics or all the evil progressives. know, throwing our uh society into hell. And I don't discount that because I think a lot of things are bad. But what I came to see is that a lot of my fellow self-identified Christians, especially I would identify as an evangelical Christian, that many of our leaders, our pastors, my fellow academics, was a, for 12 years, I was a professor at a historically evangelical Christian university in Seattle. And... I actually saw them promoting the same exact things. And so I sort of thought, well, before we start criticizing everyone else, we better get our own house in order. And so I think this book really, I mean, I do have my own political views and stuff, but I will say if people come to my book, it is not a either a pro or anti-Trump. won't really find, I mean, maybe Trump is mentioned once in an aside or something, but it's not, this is not about. Trumpianism, it's not about primarily even politics. Even when I get to things like sexuality, I'm not, you know, I do discuss a little bit about the gay marriage debates, but my primary thing is, well, how are you teaching your own people? How are you talking to your family? What are we doing? And, you know, in the area of sexuality, if you're concerned about same-sex marriage, well, what about rampant divorce among Christians? And I believe everything can be forgiven by Jesus, but nonetheless, it should be grieving to us. I tell about when I was an elder at a particular church and we had rampant divorce among our leadership and it was grieving. trying to get the focus on, well, how are we mentoring? How are we equipping? How are we helping? Yes, after people go through divorce, also ministering to them. But how do we, if we really believe that marriage, that our goal should be as much as possible, a flourishing lifelong marriage, what are we doing to actually do that? And I found... it very hard to get anyone interested in doing that. And so I think the passion for this book is speaking to my fellow evangelical Christians of let's get our own house in order. I really appreciate that and I love that. I think you're right. You're hitting the nail on the head. It's like we get so judgmental. I'm speaking of we evangelical, white evangelical Christianity. That's what I'm a part of, right? That's what I grew up in. And we have not gotten our house in order. There are many things that we're doing that it seems um hypocritical in many ways. And I think a lot of people are looking at the church and they're thinking, a second, you're supposed to be representing this guy, Jesus. And yet it seems like you're not really doing what Jesus said. You're not really following Jesus and what he taught. And you talk about secularism as a, I mean, the Stockholm syndrome, right? Which I guess there's two things to this. One is for those who don't know what is Stockholm syndrome and, and, and then juxtaposing that to what is secularism? Like what are we really, what is this captor that we're becoming now captivated to? What is that? I would love if you give us some anchors to hold onto and to have while we're navigating through this conversation. Yeah, no, thank you. So Stockholm Syndrome, and I wanna make clear, in psychology it's quite controversial, and so I hit on it because I think it described what I was trying to talk about, but I'm not really passing judgment one way or another about whether this is a deep psychological concept or whether it's valid in all cases. But it goes back to a uh classic bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, hence Stockholm Syndrome, uh where two bank robbers, held people hostage for several days and then something strange seemed to happen. By the end of their time together, many of the hostages seemed to identify, they had a real close bond with their captors and seemed to identify with their captors as fine young men and one talked about being grateful that they were just thinking of shooting them in the leg rather than the head and now in one sense, I would be grateful for that too. But still, it's a little bit strange if you're beginning to feel warm feelings with people who have actually done violence to you. And so the idea of the Stockholm Syndrome is that sometimes if people are in captive situations or abusive situations, they can end up adopting with the abuser or the captor. And so I thought when I was thinking about what I was seeing among some of my friends and colleagues who... personally I think were very sincere Christians and are. So it wasn't just that they're sellouts or something, that's easier to know, they're just sellouts. Well no, they were personally, they attended church, read the Bible, thought Jesus was their savior, but they ended up mimicking the talking points, and we'll get to the secularism of the surrounding culture, and I think well, if you're a historically Orthodox Christian, traditional Christian in our society, chance and you go into a culture forming discipline like whether it be pastor or uh entertainment industry or journalism or government uh you or science you've either gone through graduate school or in your professional life surrounded by a lot of people who don't actually share your underlying assumptions of your faith and they may not be personally hostile to you but I would say their worldview is pretty much is hostile or antagonistic to your Christian worldview and out of that One thing that could happen is you end up identifying more with that and their assumptions than with your stated faith beliefs. And so that's what I was talking about. Now, when I'm about secularism, I mean, I want to be clear, and we could talk about my differences among some on the Christian right, and especially the people who are propounding what they call Christian nationalism, which I think is toxic, and in fact was on Twitter today uh criticizing someone on it who is calling for what we need as a Caesar in America. No, we don't. This is awful. Anyway, but I'm not talking about, I don't think secular is bad. I actually, I happen to believe the American founders created a situation where we have common ground based on being created in image of God and that the primary goal of government should be limited, but it should be limited to those areas where we have common ground. And so I don't believe it all in the state church or in things like that. But when I'm talking about secularism, I'm really talking about a mindset that grew up especially in, I'd say the, maybe another term would be scientific materialism, the mindset that came up particularly in the 19th century that basically uh discounts any idea that there's supernatural guidance from a god or a god who creates us and who loves us and gives us purpose in our lives. And so that's sort of like a fairy story. You can believe it. But it's just, at best, it's a fairy story. There's nothing objective there. And so they discount all of that. And so they base their views on stuff that has to go apart from that. Now, as a Christian, I actually think there is common ground, what C.S. Lewis and Thomas Aquinas, something we call natural moral law written on our hearts. So I actually think there is, there are grounds to argue for moral things apart from the Bible. But in this, secularist materialist mindset, everything goes back to blind matter and motion. mean, mean, Charles Darwin, and I don't have a problem with things happening over a great number of time, I actually think the universe is billions of years old, but Darwin's most important contribution, if you will, was the idea that evolution, in his view, was an unguided process. I mean, he makes that very clear. That was what was unique. There were other people who proposed things like evolution before him, but that he thought that it... that this blind process that doesn't have a goal in mind can mimic the actions of a designer. And when you fuse that with some of Marx's insights and with people like Freud, it was a very deconstructionist view of the human beings that everything goes back to blind matter and motion. And that means morality. There is no, where the American founders thought that there were laws of nature and nature's God that actually there were some moral laws always and everywhere. Not that they always followed them, they didn't. But that this mindset is that morality is forever evolving and that there is no moral law, moral standard that makes actually the actions of people like Martin Luther King make nonsense. I mean, if that's really the case. And so I think that mindset where the spiritual really is meaningless and that everything, morality is relative, everything goes back to blind matter and motion, that's what I'm saying is a lot of our elites tend to gravitate toward that at various levels or post late 19th century. And so when I'm talking about secularism, that's what I'm talking about. Got it. So just to kind of make sure I understand your book, em are you arguing that evangelicalism and secularism are in tension or in conflict with one another or that secularism is really infiltrating our churches? Yeah, probably more the latter. think it's not as intention as it ought to be. I also deal with Catholics, although I'm not Catholic. I would say it's not. And there are the definition of evangelicals all over the map. often it's mean to mean a certain sort of Baptist. I'm not a Baptist. mean, nothing against Baptists. So I define evangelical based on, say, the historic Nicene Creed, a belief that the Bible is absolutely true. teachers, personal relationship with Jesus. And so I think you can be a mainline Protestant and believe those things too. I think that's getting harder in recent years in many of the mainline Protestant denominations. oh So yeah, no, think that the problem is that particularly the leadership classes of traditional Protestant and even Catholic Christianity, that the leadership classes of people who identify with that either as pastors, professors, in the media, in government, in science, has largely been adopted. They've become Stockholm Syndrome Christians. basically, they may be personally devout, but they're really identifying more and more with the viewpoints of their cultural captors, if you Interesting. So, like, are you seeing kind of this secular infiltration of churches, like, affect just congregants or, like, the messages that pastors preach? Meaning, like, in kind of, like, my understanding of Christian, and I spent more of my life as an atheist, I came to the faith back in 2008. um You know that the pastor's preaching message, the congregants get touched and they get filled with the Spirit. They go out into the world, you know, and make it a better place kind of thing. em But based on what you're saying, it sounds like the secularists, you know, grab hold of them, grab hold of the congregants. And I'm not disputing what you're saying is true. I'm just trying to reframe your statement. So, secularists get a hold of... Bunch of evangelicals, evangelicals going to churches, then pastors recognize that what comes out of their mouth is tied to sort of tides. then maybe they change their messages or something. I think it can be both, but I'm mostly focusing in this book on people who I'd say leadership classes. So pastors, but not just pastors, politicians, uh scientists, journalists, people in the media. uh And I could talk about some specifics that might sort of clarify things. So. uh Please do. Yes, so again, I think many especially out of the evangelical sphere there was a thought in the 1990s we just place more evangelical Christians in places of power then suddenly everything gets done fine. Well First of all, I think that's wrong in many levels because I don't think that the places of power I think a lot of things are from the grassroots up but But insofar as that is true if the people that you're training really uh or what I'd call Stockholm Syndrome Christians, they're not going to be identifiably different. So let's talk about Francis Collins, who I think is very sincere Christian, as in, you know, believes Jesus is his savior. And I knew a lot of fellow evangelicals who were just saying, oh, this is so great. He's the most powerful scientist in America, which he was for 12 years as the head of the NIH. But if you actually look at what he did, I would say it was, in fact, one of the saddest epitaphs on his public career. I think was, it was either in Slate or magazine like that where they said, you know, we were concerned about when he was hired because he was a Christian, but we shouldn't have been because basically he said he did everything we would have wanted. And that was basically what they said. said, if I were Francis Collins, I would be mortified by that. for example, he spent millions of tax dollars to have a tissue bank of body parts harvested from aborted babies up to 42 weeks. Now we're not just talking about five weeks, we're talking about, 42 weeks, that's pretty much infanticide. Our tax dollars at work. This was from the nation's most identified evangelical Christian scientists in America. oh He also, and I know this is another hot, controversial topic, but we spent probably nine, 10, 12 million dollars more supporting doctors and hospitals that were doing gender reassignment surgeries on kids and puberty blockers on kids. Well. And I think, I actually think this is an area where I'm happy to see that I think it's opened up. Whatever you say about adults doing what they want to do, having a kid under 18 year old making a decision that they can't go back on. And now that we know research from the Netherlands and elsewhere, around the world they've already realized that it's so changeable. Many of the people who have gender confusion in their teens within 10 years don't have it anymore. So to lock them in, yet, This was being led by our most noted evangelical Christian scientists in America. I'm saying, it's not enough to recruit people who are personally faithful. If their worldview is exactly the same as the rest of the elites, you're going to get the same. But then let's talk about, now that actually is something that involves government, but let's talk about, yeah. But let's talk about things on sexuality. And again, I'm. I'm very clear. don't actually think same-sex marriage is good. don't think that, but so many churches that are concerned about the moral breakdown of sexuality, what are they actually teaching about the covenant of marriage? What are they actually training kids to and adults to be faithful in that? And I think this is an example. talked in my book in sort of pre-COVID in 2019, the Bachelorette series, which I don't watch, but I... I forced myself to follow this because it was interesting. They had these Luke and, oh, I'm now forgetting the gal's name who I actually write about, uh Yeah, Hannah. oh Anyway, I'm spacing honor, who were uh identified as evangelical Christians. Well, in the midst of it, it came out that the female contestant who I'm spacing out of on her name at the moment, she boasted about having a one-night stand with one of the other contestants. And she said, you know, and when people criticize her on that, you know, you're just being condemning and, Jesus loves me no matter what I do, which I do think is true, Jesus loves us, but she was like boasting in just having one night stand. I mean, not even having a committed relationship outside. And yet this person, where was she from? She wasn't from Seattle or San Francisco. She was born and raised in the Bible Belt in Alabama. And so think Houston, we have a problem. If our Christian celebrities who identify proudly as an evangelical Christian are then boasting about doing something like this as if it's good, and they're born and bred in Alabama, I mean, we have some serious teaching to do in our own churches. Yeah, I really appreciate your points there because it feels like we're supposed to be this distinguished, not distinguished like as like I'm distinguished, but like we're distinguished from other, from the world, from the world culture. We're supposed to be an alternative community, right? From the beginning, Christianity was this alternative community until, of course, it gained power and then it didn't. become an alternative community. It was kind of the community that people then became institutionalized and all that. And I really appreciate what you're saying because it at least just start to get us thinking about this. You know, I had we had a historian and New Testament scholar, Allison Davies. No, Dave. Man, I'm forgetting. But anyway, now I'm forgetting. he, great, great historian, really awesome guy to interview. And one of the things he talked about is like, you know, if I'm going to be engaging with people who are Muslim and Jewish and atheist and all these things, and I'm a historian and I want to be able to engage with them on historical issues, then I have to find this common ground, essentially, where it's publicly accessible, where it doesn't require faith commitment or whatever in terms of my conclusions. And the basic idea was, this is the system I have to operate in. And it almost sounds like it's like we are giving into this system that we have to operate in. And if we imagine culture as this ecosystem, right, that all of us are operating in. Like, uh how do we move to a place where we can engage with the broader audience and maintain our Christian convictions? Like, is it that we are separating certain things, natural law versus, or like general revelation versus special revelation? um natural law arguments versus scriptural arguments and then are we making clean cuts in between those or is scripture kind of all encompassing on every area of life? what I guess I'm maybe bringing out the tension in there about like how do we operate because you know I'm going into a if I'm getting into an environment said my wife is a public school teacher right and within that she's constrained. Mm-hmm. she actually has to teach evolution. She doesn't have a choice, right? So whether or not she believes it, she's got to teach it and she has to teach it according to certain standards or she loses her job. And so I guess like, what do we do with that tension? What do you think about? So that I know is a question for a lot of people, and I will address it. I will say the book that I just wrote is focused, first off, think, before you think about how to interact with others on common ground, you need to be clear about what you yourself believe, and what you yourself are going to raise your kids to believe, and what you as your church and fellow Christians believe. And so my plea on this is if you're not clear on that, nothing else is know downstream of that is going to be great but then there is a question of prudent and that doesn't mean just even though I'm a very doctrinally conservative Christian being clear on that does not necessarily decide on what how what issues you choose to approach and how you choose to approach things in the rest of culture where you are meeting on common ground with people. so I would say that I actually think that my first love as a political scientist was uh sort of American constitutionalism. And that was one of the areas that I taught. That was one of the areas out of which my doctoral research was on. And I think that the American founders were not perfect, especially on issues like slavery, but I think that they hit upon a system that I think is the best we can expect in this fallen world, which is that you have a limited government for, they recognized, and a lot of people fled to the United States because in their various religious traditions, they were persecuted, often by fellow Christians. And so for, uh freedom of religion. And what the founders recognized was that, as in the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty, James Madison put it, that we are, and Thomas Jefferson, that we are uh first ah governed by, we're citizens of the universe, and so really if you're believing in God, you're first subject to God. That's true. So the problem with Politics is to try to make sure that you have a government that insofar as possible Doesn't force you to have to choose and I'd say the founders solution to that was to limit government To the area where there is a moral common ground and insofar as Whatever is possible to that that should be the role of government and then things about our ultimate destiny your power saved What forms of communion or Eucharist or you these other issues? that we leave that to the rights of conscience where the government doesn't get involved. And I think that has really stood us well. It's not perfect. They give all sorts of examples where there's still tension. It doesn't solve everything. But so I'm a great believer in that. And I'm a great believer that there is a moral law written on our hearts. St. Paul talks about that in Romans. C.S. Lewis wrote whole books on that, like The Abolition of Man. And I think that a lot of the differences even today, I think some of this is frayed. But there's still, very few people are proud of cheating on their spouse. Very few people are proud of engaging in theft or think that that's right. I still think there are some moral common ground that people, that you can appeal to. And I do think that, so I don't think that when Christians go into public life, all they can do is say the Bible says, therefore we must do. Now. The Founder's generation, whether they were Christian or not, and there many who were Unitarians, not Orthodox Christians, they would always speak of reason and revelation speaking with the same voice when it came to certain moral propositions. And so I think that that's true. so I think that the biblical teachings about justice and being created in the image of God goes along with what we can know, what's written on our hearts, and what we can argue through human reason. And so... So I don't think it's always wrong to cite the Bible or biblical precepts in politics. mean, Martin Luther King didn't either. uh But I do think that if you're engaging in era of politics, you have an obligation to uh articulate things. Even if you're citing the Bible, you articulate the common ground as to why that actually applies to everyone, whether you agree with the Bible or not. For example, I mean, this is. things people don't think about. one reason why we have checks and balances in our system is that the founders, whether they were Christian or not, thought that human beings were foulable. And I know there was a famous theologian, hundreds of years ago, who that human depravity is one of the things that you don't need to read in the Bible. You can just look around, and that's true. And so I think, again, I think there's more common ground. And when you see, say, Muslim parents who go before a school board who are concerned about books that are not age appropriate for their kids. ah There's a lot of common ground there with Christian parents or Jewish parents or Hindu parents who are concerned about their kids. And forming those coalitions and making that common ground doesn't mean, and this is where I think some evangelical Christians get off, doesn't mean that you're embracing that there are other ways to God or that Jesus isn't the only way to the Father. No, but God created the world, he created the universe. Why Christians, in my view, should not seed the common ground. And I would argue that the precepts that found in the Bible are actually, are the principles of the natural law. And that was the historic Christian teaching of both Catholics and Protestants, of both Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin and Luther. They talked about the Ten Commandments being the same as the law written on our hearts. So I think that it's part of our posture in politics, one, should not be trying to, not be talking about, like some of the Christian nationalists are talking about, shutting down synagogues or mosques or that you have a Christian prince or a Christian Caesar. That's just like, yuck. I mean, that has nothing to do with legitimate Christianity. Not that there haven't been Christians in the past who have gravitated toward that, but we've seen where that's led. I think later Christians realize that. But we have some people who just don't get the message. They're oblivious to... the teachings of history and what we've learned. So you have to make distinctions that some things you shouldn't be trying to do for the force of law. And then when you are making arguments, whether it be about abortion or same-sex marriage or transgender or anything or what the appropriate approach to education should be or homelessness, you are obliged to make common ground arguments. And that can include citing biblical injunctions, but that's not the be... It doesn't end there. I really appreciate everything you said and it got me thinking, ah you know, so I'm a progressive, I'm also a Christian, so like I probably get a lot more slack because people already naturally think I'm going to hell or something like that. I say that tongue in cheek, there is some truth in that. know, I'm curious, like how does a Christian, depending on sort of their doctrinal like teachings or the things that they believe, like, can a Christian really survive in like culture, given that culture is not necessarily set up, you know, for a an evangelical Christian to thrive? So, you know, like I'm thinking specifically like, and I can't remember the state, it was like Alabama, maybe Georgia, of the clerk attendant that didn't want to like sign the same sex. yeah. Or Kentucky. Or maybe Kentucky, actually. Yeah, but one of those states. Yeah. listed four states, so it's got to be at least one of those. But I'm just like, you know, I'm sure this lady and I don't I don't know her personally, but didn't apply for this job thinking that she would be in a position where she'd have to make this decision. And mind you, like I say that as someone that's very um like sympathetic to LGBTQ issues. So like so how does a Christian like actually manage to live in this in this culture? Well, if we don't believe in religious liberty, they're not going to be able to, and I do have a whole chapter on that, and that is an interesting example because at the time, read a lot of the actual, you know, there's the news stories, but I actually read some of the litigation, and the sad thing about that situation is that it could have been easily solved. She didn't, there were other things she didn't object to, so she didn't want to sign her name on it. there were a lot of other ways that people could have got, mean, that the government could have easily accommodated it where people could have gotten their marriage license and she didn't have to participate in it. And so I think, but it became part of the culture wars and they wanted to demonize her. again, I'm not justifying everything in her approach, although I don't actually think that same-sex marriage is good. And so I would side with her on that. But my point is, you're right. If we don't have um vigorous defense of religious liberty, then it becomes impossible. And that's on both sides. And I will say that for my pleaded progressives who have really come down, let's talk about same sex marriage where, okay, so it's legal. Is it really the case that in my state, I talk about this, we had a grandmother, Baranelle Stutzman, who was a florist. She's not a florist anymore. She was driven out of business. Actually, by a self-identified Catholic attorney general at the time, who's now our governor, who said that this was part of his religious mission, his faith mission, to basically not allow her to do what? Well... she didn't want to create specific floral arrangements honoring a gay wedding. They could come and buy flowers for anything, and she'd do special arrangements for anything except for gay marriage. This was not, and in Washington state, let me just be clear, this was not preventing anyone from getting even specialized floral arrangements. So I mean, this was the idea of grinding someone to the ground because they wouldn't be conscripted to honor beliefs that they found. objectionable. it was actually a fellow self-described Christian, progressive Christian, who was driving her out of business. But here's the danger. What the progressives don't realize is that if you're not willing to have uh religious liberty for people like Baronel Stussman, The rise of the people that I really disagree with, the so-called Christian nationalists, who actually are advocating for an abolition of religious liberty and other things, it's like a reaction. If the only alternative you have is, I meet people, actually, fellow Christians who are even people of good conscience who are listening to people who I think are spiritually and politically toxic. Why? Because they see on this side that people like Baron L. Stutzman in our state, there's no tolerance at all. So they think the only, they think the left is right, the hardcore secular left is right, that the only alternative is that you just need to be in power and crush your opponents just like the other side. And if that's your view, that's your two alternatives. I think both are equally toxic. And so I talk about, I mean, there've been lots of cases, whether it be the community college instructor who, told kids to write Jesus on a piece of paper and then stomp on it. And then when the person who didn't want to do it, he was the one who was penalized. I mean, and you know, there was such an uproar eventually that, you know, something else happened. But it just like, give me a break. And on same-sex weddings, the things that have, now the Supreme Court now has ruled, and I think rightly, that if you're a photographer or creative artist, you know, it's different. I mean, if someone's going in your store to buy just some food or something and say that you can't do it because you're back or whatever, yeah, I'm completely against that. I mean, you serve people. But if you're actually trying to conscript someone to support your viewpoint, that, whether it is a, say someone who is coming to a Jewish printer who wants to exterminate Jews or vice versa, I mean, that's not... your conscience right should be protected. what the left, don't think, has realized in America is by bailing on that, that they have created a reaction on the right that, you know, it was there at certain times in the past, but at least in my growing up in the past, I'm now 60, I think had largely uh gone away. It's now, I see it resurrecting because that's, they only see the one alternative. So I do think it is hard, your original question is, how do you survive or thrive ah if you don't have, well, think everyone, we need to get back to the point where both people on the left and right are actually valuing religious liberty. And now that doesn't mean, again, that doesn't mean you can do absolutely anything and people will bring up, well, does that mean that if you don't believe in medical care, you don't have to give your kids medical care? No, those cases have always been existed and there are ways of dealing with that. actually good judicial doctrines of how to weigh some of that. But no, in the last, I'd say, 10 years, we're not talking about that. Baronel Stutzman did not harm anyone by the fact that the couple that came in, who were supposedly her friends and that she sold things to them and would continue to do that, but that she just wouldn't create a special floral arrangement for their gay wedding. When they were like umpteen other places, I will tell you, in Washington state, a block down that would do it. They weren't being really harmed by that. But that, we've got to get back to where both sides actually value free speech and religious liberty. Quick comment real fast. um If there's one thing Seattle has a lot of, it's a lot of LGBTQ businesses and weed. Yeah. Yes, all of those things, absolutely. You know, it's interesting because I do really think you're on to something and the point that you made like, would we be offended, say, if a Jewish baker was required to create a swastika and Nazi emblem on a cake and they refuse to do so, would we feel like they were in their rights to refuse that? And I think now, and I'm not saying that's completely analogous to a same sex marriage and things like that, but the idea of this ideological thing. and beliefs, this intersection with beliefs and deeply held beliefs, then the requirement that they would have to do something. I I would never expect that a Jewish baker would be required by law. or could be sued and lose their business having to do something extremely offensive to them or create any number of you know you can think of any number of offensive things that someone could ask someone to put on to either a floor arrangement or a cake or whatever it is and you would want some kind of protection that balance between freedom and protection and serving everyone with equality and also protecting religious conscience which It's a really tough thing. And I agree with you. I tend to fall where you, in your thinking, and I saw you had something that you were going to say. Go ahead and respond. I would say I don't think it's a really tough thing. think that we have uh learned to live with each other compared to most nations of the world, people who have very different backgrounds. And again, nothing's perfect. I'm not trying to give a golden age that never existed. So I don't think it's that hard to actually say that a baker doesn't have to create a special creation. It really doesn't harm anyone. This was, in a way, performance, theater, but real people were being hurt. then you create the reaction on the other side where you now have two sides pushing to eliminate religious liberty and I think that is unsustainable. Yes, I agree. No, I I absolutely agree. And I think there is a reaction right now. And there is like this strong reaction and this resentment that Trump has dialed into that is very concerning to me, very concerning. And I think people on the left and right should be concerned. Go ahead. think it's right to be concerned, but I'll say this, and I'm not, you know, I have my criticism of Trump and I also think many of the things he's doing is right, I'll be honest, but I'm not, I wouldn't consider myself a Trump partisan and in all the elections, I won't give who I voted for in each election, but let's just say I did not vote for him in all of those elections. I did in some and not in one. So I'm not, I, But having said that, I think people need to look at, what is he tapping into? I think a lot of people, they look at Trump and they don't like some of the things he's doing and they think he's the problem. Well, I'd say nature and politics abhor a vacuum. The reason he rose is because he was speaking to, I think, some legitimate issues that people were concerned about. so the antidote to Trump, if you don't like what he's doing, is to do it better and to address those real issues. And then people see that. The antidote is not pretending that those issues don't exist and simply blaming people for feeling the way they do. And I think that this is... uh Yeah, I do think so. You know, one other hot button issue now is education. And this is where this is played out as the public education system, certainly in places like Seattle, but in many places has gotten more polarized in, I would say indoctrinating kids and things that a lot of Christian parents find really troubling. Whether it be moral relativism. I mean, I remember, and this was decades ago when I was in high school and our family planning or our sex education course, they brought in someone from Planned Parenthood to and no one on the other side. They uh basically, I mean, it gave us values clarification exercises that were designed to basically show you that what I would consider immoral behavior was you had to do it because you'd be forced to do it. They'd set up these false uh sort of scenarios that would sort of force you to make an immoral choice to show you that values are relative. I think one of the best things to happen in the last 10 to 15 years is the rise of school choice. And I'm not saying that there aren't bad examples or that there can't be bad parents with homeschooling. But of course, there are also bad public schools. that's kind of my way. think that's a false way of framing it. But I think that school choice and also the rise of homeschooling in addition is a way that many, not just Christians, but Muslims, others can. find a way to protect and raise their kids to be um here without feeling that the government is using their tax dollars to conscript them to do things against their will. Now, I fully admit that then there are some legitimate questions as if everyone's just homeschooled or private, Christian-schooled, um where do we meet together as equal citizens? so I don't discount that. I will say though that a lot of people who end up being less insecure about their faith and stuff, say if you're a kid. If you're a kid and you know, I I was bullied when I I went through public schools and I was bullied throughout in my, in my junior high and let's not say high school, guess in junior high and part of it was for my Christian faith, part was for other things. It was not, we sent our kids partly to public schools and then we decided to homeschool because the choice is in our public schools. after the first several years got increasingly bleak. um And in fact, we were warned by other neighbors about the bullying and stuff. And so we made a decision not to do that. um But I just think that kids who are given a safe, warm, affirming environment, I think, tend to become less insecure. A lot of some of the really toxic stuff on the right and probably on the left, I think, comes from people who are broken by various things. who have not had loving parents or have not been or had to go through really difficult circumstances before they were fully formed. And yes, every kid, you can't shelter them from everything. I'm not saying that. Nonetheless, you don't just throw someone who can't swim into a river and say, oh, learn to swim. And so I do think that the more nurturing that goes on in the family, protected from some of these outside forces, I think can tend to lead to more confident people who aren't so insecure. Because when you get insecure, that's, think, a lot of the tax, know, whites who are insecure about blacks or anyone, I mean, that fuels racism. Men who are really insecure about women fuels toxic, you know, there's some Christians arguing that women shouldn't vote. Okay, well, that's a height of insecurity. In fact, on Twitter, last couple of weeks, there was some guy who suggesting that it was sinful if a... If you were a man and was married and that a woman, that your wife would drive you anywhere. I I have to say that my fellow Christians, conservative Christians, who say things like that, I think are really insecure. And out of that insecurity comes just officer. I think that's similarly on the left. And so I think that the rise of homeschooling and private Christian schooling and school choice is actually going to be a benefit. For every benefit, there are always drawbacks. I think that that is something that will allow, getting back to Will's question, well, how do you thrive in an environment where a lot of the culture is different or you perceive as hostile? But I think if you come out to, I'm not against, I should say one thing. I don't think. Multiculturalism, for the sake of multiculturalism, diversity is the be-all end-all. I actually think to have any sort of community, you have to have common ground. But I think the common ground does not come by force. The common ground comes through persuasion. It comes through personal connections. It comes through mediating institutions. And then there is a certain amount of common ground from the government about, I think, all Human beings are created equal, that we're endowed by a creative certain inalienable right. So I think there is some of that. But I think a lot of the cultural uh unity should come about by the ebb and flow of people persuading their neighbors and friends and other people. So I'm not, even though I could. believe very much in religious liberty and things, I'm not, that doesn't mean to say that I think that the best society is where everyone believes everything different. That's not a culture as historically understood. But I don't think, I agree with the fact, it can't be done through force. And shouldn't be done through force. John, I have to say, I really enjoyed talking to you. Like, you and I disagree on probably a lot of different things, to be honest. um But we're united by faith. um And I just really just appreciate it. Because as you're talking, like I'm thinking to myself, like... Like I tend to live in the gray when it comes to politics. Like I'm a progressive. I mean, I tend to vote Democrat, but like conceptually, I'm probably more libertarian because I like guns. And I've got views about immigration and stuff like that. But um when you're talking about homeschooling and school choice, like because we do a lot of interviews and we talked to lot of people that that really. study this Christian nationalism space. So when he talked about school choice, most of our audience may think, OK, well, it's like a Brown v. Board education thing, and the whole sort of history to that. But when we talked to Kevin Roberts, he actually made a pretty good argument for school choice. I'm going to get attacked by those on the left for saying that. But it caused me to really think more about it, do little more research. And actually like, you know, try to find the upsides to it. Because we did homeschool like for a number of years. Like we homeschooled because my oldest had a series of medical issues and we just couldn't do the public school thing. So, and one of the things when we were homeschooling, I kept thinking like, man, I really wish there was like resources for. homeschool parents. We're paying hundreds of dollars for all this stuff, just so that way our kid can pass the test and move on to the next grade. So I just really appreciate you saying that. Well, thank you for sharing that. I would say, well, you may classify yourself as a progressive, but there's always uh people always free to change. well, look, I think that there are a lot of reasons people adopt various things. just say, and then a lot of people are. have diverse views on things that they're not as easily pegged as people would want and so I just Like I said, I actually think in Homelessness is a great example that I've seen you know the work that we've done at discovery some of the biggest that have been involved some documentaries about fentanyl abuse and stuff and they brought some people from Hollywood and others who are politically liberal, but um You know everyone ought to recognize This is not a great where even if the economy is going well, where we're having even more homelessness because people are addicted and they need help. And this is not social darwinism. You don't cut out the help, but you have to actually make sure that the money that you're spending, try to help people so that they can become whole people. And so I think that's a good area. And I think school choice is another one where there are common grounds. So people... pretend that now things are so polarized there's no common ground. I don't think that's the case. And I think even on immigration, I have to admit, I'll just be honest that pre-Trump, was very much, immigration restrictions was like, mean, go back to 1920s. I my grandparents on one side came from Ukraine pre-World War I, and they wouldn't have been allowed here because at the time, Slavs were regarded as lower on the evolutionary scale, uh just like many non-white races, but there was also a hierarchy among whites and they weren't on it. But I have to say, uh Trump has moved me partly because of also the reaction against Trump. I would have thought that we could at least agree with that if people are not just illegal because they're coming over the border, but they actually commit crimes and stuff. I mean, can't we at least agree that they should be deported? And I think actually, again, if you look at most people, however they describe themselves, I actually think there is a lot of common ground, but among the elites, it's like they're trying to uh fight as if there's no common ground, and I think that's bad news. It is. well, thank you so much, John, for coming on the show. What are you working on next and where can people find you? So, you know, they could, I have a website, johnjwess.com, so you could find uh things there. There's obviously a website for this book, Stockholm Syndrome Christianity.com. um Yeah, well, I don't think I'll completely say what I'm working on, but let's say I am, my first love was American constitutionalism, and next year is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And I think it's a strategic time to engage in some, questions of common ground uh that uh So I am working on a project relating to that I'll just say that Got it, you've said too much. Well, thanks again and then thanks to our audience for tuning in. Really appreciate you guys coming by. Make sure you like, subscribe, do all that fancy stuff. My kids will be glad that I reminded you to do. um And as always, make sure you keep your conversations not right or left, but up and we'll see you next time. Take care, see ya.