Church & State 250: Christian Supremacy and the Fight for American Power

What happens when Christians begin to believe they are entitled to rule over everyone else? 

Matthew D. Taylor, a scholar of religion and politics and visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice, joins Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram to explain how Christian nationalism fits inside a much older story of Christian supremacy, empire, and political power. Taylor traces the pattern back to Constantine, Christendom, and the long history of Christians using Jesus to justify conquest, coercion, and rule. 

He then brings the story into the present through MAGA Christianity, the New Apostolic Reformation, the Seven Mountain Mandate, prophecy around Donald Trump, Paula White-Cain, Lance Wallnau, spiritual warfare, and January 6. The conversation helps listeners understand why Christian nationalism is not one movement, but a spectrum of beliefs and networks competing for power. It is also a warning about what America’s 250th means if Christians try to restore the divine right of kings.

Guest Bio
Matthew D. Taylor, PhD, is a scholar of religion and politics and a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice. His work focuses on Christian nationalism, religious extremism, Christian supremacy, American Islam, and the role of religious pluralism in defending democracy. He is the author of Scripture People, The Violent Take It by Force, and the forthcoming Defying Tyrants: Following Jesus in a World of Christian Antichrists. He also created Charismatic Revival Fury, an audio documentary series on the New Apostolic Reformation and the Christian leaders and ideas that helped fuel January 6. His research connects directly to this episode’s focus on Christian imperialism, MAGA Christianity, prophecy, spiritual warfare, and the fight over America’s democratic future.

Book Mentioned
The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy by Matthew D. Taylor
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9781506497785

Defying Tyrants: Following Jesus in a World of Christian Antichrists by Matthew D. Taylor
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798341900370

Relevant Links & Resources
Matthew D. Taylor Official Website
URL: https://www.drmatthewdtaylor.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:16

On the 250th anniversary of the American founding of the Declaration of Independence, we are watching as a segment of American Christians are trying to reinshrine the divine right of kings. They're trying to reverse the polarity of the Declaration of Independence and put a new king on the throne of America and claim God has made this king for us and we all need to get in line. And that's what like to me the the the the the irony of that the the the absurdity of that is is so disturbing right that that that that what they want to do and and let let's not be American-centric. Let's look back through history. What happens when Christians claim that their king or their their Caesar or their ruler is anointed by God and is put on the throne? Tyranny, dictatorship, epigroms, crusades, inquisitions, enslavement. I mean, the history of Christian imperialism is a history of horrors.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Hey, welcome back, faithful politics listeners and watchers, and welcome back to the Church and State 250 Plus series, which is a special series on faithful politics. We are examining how faith has shaped America from the founding to today. I'm your political host, Will Wright, and I'm joined by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. And if you've been following the series, you've probably heard us talk a lot about, you know, tracing the roots of religion from the doctrine of discovery to the constitution to Jim Crow to civil rights to Christian nationalism. And today, we're bringing that story into the present. And we're doing that with our guest today, Matthew Taylor, who is a scholar and religion and is a scholar of religion and politics and a visiting scholar at Georgetown University's Center on Faith and Justice. He studies Christian nationalism, extremism, American Islam, and the ways that religious movements shape public life. He's the author of several books, The Violent Taken by Force, and his forthcoming book, Defying Tyrants, which will be out in October, and is the creator of the audio documentary series Charismatic Revival Fury. So we are just so glad to have Matthew back with us to talk to us about what the heck is happening with religion in today's American context. So welcome back to the show, Matthew.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Thanks, guys. Always a always a pleasure to be with you to talk about awful things. Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_05 2:42

Yes, and we and we have and we're supposed to be getting like a robe, like a faithful politics, like kind of like bathrobe, like king style for people who have been on this main form of impedance. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So Will Wright is taking care of that so ask him for me.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

I am. I'm I'm in the what the VIP sort of like department of this church. But anyways, so throughout this series, Matt, we we've been looking at a lot of different like religious movements. I mentioned some of them, the Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny, in ways that they are, you know, changing kind of how America looks. And there does seem to be a pattern with a lot of these different types of movement. So I'd love I'd love to just kind of start, you know, when you look at the religious movements today, like what similar patterns, you know, are you seeing kind of emerge with regards to things like, you know, divine authority, chosen people, sacred land, and all the other stuff?

SPEAKER_02 3:34

You know, a lot of people, when they do this kind of analysis, they either want to start in the Bible and and then kind of work forward, or they want to start with like the American founding or colonial America and then work to the present. I want to start in the fourth century. So I because I think that's really where so much of what we're dealing with begins and with the conversion of the emperor Constantine in the year 312. Because Constantine is right, he's he's trying to become the Caesar, he's trying to become the the the Roman emperor. And he claims on the eve of battle that that he has a vision where Jesus reveals to him the sign of the cross, maybe the Cairo. It's it's a little bit ambiguous in the sources which Christian symbol he sees. But then Jesus tells him, by this sign, you will conquer in battle. And the next day he goes into battle and wins the battle. Sounds like Jesus, right? Like, let's use another Christian symbol as a means for slaughtering people. But that is the beginning of Christian imperialism. That is the beginning of this merger of the religion of the emperor and then the religion of Christianity and the appropriation of Christianity. One way to think about it is Jesus as as a human being who lived on the earth was colonized by the Roman Empire. Jesus as a spiritual being was colonized by the Roman Empire 300 years later. And this is the beginning of this Christian imperialism, this merging of church and state. And it's a couple generations later that Christianity becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire. And this is where you start to get these narratives, Christian narratives now, right? Not just kind of Hebrew Bible narratives about Israel and the special relationship of Israel with God, but now Christian states, Christian empires, Christian borders and boundaries. And one of the ideas that comes out of that merger is the idea of Christendom. Christendom is not the same as Christianity. Christendom is the physical boundaries and the people who are ruled over by Christian rulers, by Christian tyrants. And there are all these Christians today who are talking about wanting to bring Christendom back. And in many ways, that is the project of Christian nationalism. It's just kind of a kind of dialed-in, warmed-up leftovers of Christian imperialism because for hundreds of years, Christians got the impression, were preached at from the pulpits, were taught in their seminaries, that Christians had an entitlement to rule over other people, that Christians were better than other people, that Christians were superior, and this leads into racial superiority theories, this leads into cultural superiority theories. But all of this goes back in so many ways to a figure like Constantine, to this blending of church and empire, to the weaponization of Christianity, the recolonization of Jesus to turn him into a tool of empire. And I would argue that everything that MAGA Christian nationalists are doing today is just downstream of these earlier versions of Christian supremacy and Christian hegemony.

SPEAKER_05 6:33

Yeah, that's a really compelling narrative. And I want to, I wanna, I wanna push into that a little bit more here. And so, you know, we have these, we're seeing these recurring, what I'm hearing you say is we're seeing these recurring assumptions about America's identity right now. They're really tied substantially to a view and really a way of doing Christianity that's using it as essentially a power tool, a tool to coerce and gain influence and power. And we're seeing these assumptions like maybe chosenness, right? Divine destiny, spiritual warfare, right? We have authority, God's authority, the Bible's authority, a mission, not just for the person, for the church, but for the nation. Now, you're arguing, and I just want to make sure that's clear for everyone, and even like when it's coming to today, right? Because that's what we're we're dealing with, not only this past, but how it's affecting us now. Because the past is great, but the past is only good, good in my as I see it, insofar as it helps us today to figure out what we're doing right now, because they're all dead and gone, right? They don't need this anymore. We do need this right now. So so are these ideas, would you say they're political in nature, or do they do they do they emerge theologically first and spiritually first and then become political? Or is that too much of a is that is that too is that too simplistic of a model? Is there something more here?

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Yeah, I I mean I would question how much we can really draw a firm line between politics and theology. Right. I mean, politics is about right i in the most abstract sense, right, is about how human beings relate to each other around questions of power and how we work through questions of power in society. Theology is at its most basic, right, is about how humans think about God and the cosmos and how they make sense of the world. Though those overlap to a great degree, right? Because you can't make sense of the world without thinking about power and and and how human beings relate to each other. And you can't think about kind of how God works and the world kind of operates and operate in society without having a bigger kind of picture, right? In your mind of what you're working with and thinking about. So no, I think they're deeply interrelated. And part of what I'm trying to argue here is we we in the United States tend to be very myopic and America-centric. And even in our castigations of American Christianity, we tend to also be very Americascentric and think, well, the all all of this started in like the colonial period when we talked about a city on a hill or all of this.

SPEAKER_05 9:21

When we made that covenant with God in America, and then we got American.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

The idea of a new covenant nation. Oh, well, that that's an American. No, that's not an American idea. That idea goes back a long way, right? That idea goes back. I mean, that the these same tropes that we are seeing in American Christian nationalism, you can find these things in the fourth century. You can find these things in the fifth and the sixth and the seventh century. So there's already built into many of the structures of Christian theology these sorts of justifications for the coercive use of power in the name of Jesus. And the weaponization of Jesus, turning Jesus into the token that turning Jesus into the justification for imperialism and slaughter. That's the crusades, right? That's the that's the Inquisition. That's European colonialism is framed around these chosen nations who claim that God is empowering them to go and take over the rest of the world and colonize and enslave people, right? I mean, there's a long, long history here. And our American story fits within that bigger story, but it is not exceptional. It it is in many ways actually part of a reckoning that we need to have with broader Christianity and this pattern of Christians abusing power in the name of Jesus and claiming that it's the gospel. And so I want to say, yeah, we we do need to pay attention to what's happening in the US and some of the patterns and the habits of mind that are taking root now. But if we're going to uproot those patterns, we have to go back a lot further. It's not just the 15th, 16th, 17th century. It goes back very deep in our history and in our theology to these ideas of the idea of a Christian king. Where did that come from? Right? All these people now want to turn Donald Trump into a king. Well, what kind of king do they want to make him into? They want to make him into a new Constantine. They want to make him into a new Julius Caesar. They want to make him a figure who has this kind of divine right on him. That's Henry VIII, right? Like, I mean, you can go back in history and see all these ways that Christians have found of justifying their own superiority in history and then inflicting that those claims of superiority on other people unwillingly, right? That's coercive power. Jesus taught us not to do that. And yet we have perpetually done that over and over and over again. So I think that, yes, there are certain kind of distinctly American things about how we have we have come into this, right? And there's particular American symbols, there's particular American movements of Christian nationalism, and we can get into those nuances. I think they're important. But I at the biggest frame, I think what we're seeing here is part of a very, very old habit of mind of Christians, of thinking that Christians are entitled to rule over other people. And that that philosophy, that that concept, that idea is what I call Christian supremacy. The idea that Christians are better than other people are entitled to rule over them. That's Christian supremacy.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

You know, when we uh when we spoke with Whitehead and Perry about Christian nationalism, they they did a really great job explaining kind of the methodology and how they kind of landed on the definition of of what Christian nationalism is. So I'm curious on on how does your work specifically kind of fit into the cultural framework, if it does. And and and maybe as a as a follow-up question, like what are like the different permutations of Christian nationalism? I.e., you know, is it, is it a spectrum? Is it just like, you know, once you've seen one Christian nationalist, you've seen them all kind of thing? Like, like help help us better understand like who are Christian nationalists and why are they important?

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Yeah, if if you want to get real nerdy here, right? So the the Whitehead and Perry and Robbie Jones and a lot of the people who've done really important and good work on Christian nationalism are often trained as sociologists, right? They're numbers scholars who are who are working with statistics and surveys and that sort of thing. That's not me. I'm I'm not I'm not a numbers person. I I'm I'm a humanities person, right? I I do history, I study leaders, I study movements, but I'm doing it from kind of the the sources and texts and people kind of approach to things. And so part of what I'm trying to bring into the conversation is to say, yes, Christian nationalism is a real thing. It didn't start in 1980. It didn't start in 2015. It didn't start with the United States either. In fact, there's all kinds of Christian nationalism around the world. Right now, in Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church is claiming that the war in Ukraine is a holy war, sanctioned by God, that Vladimir Putin is God's anointed leader over Russia, and that Russia has an entitlement to go and conquer Ukraine because it's their sacred territory and that Russian soldiers who die fighting against Ukraine will experience God's salvation. Right? That's Christian nationalism. It's just it looks very different than our Christian nationalism.

SPEAKER_05 14:21

Wait, Pete that's Pete Heggseth said that, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:24

I mean Pete Hegzeth is doing a version of the Russia.

unknown 14:27

Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Right. No, this this is this is the thing. I mean, Pete Hegseth wants to build a new Kremlin across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., right? This is this is the philosophy behind this stuff. Again, very, very deep roots to a lot of this stuff. And it's not uniquely American either. I mean, you have Christian nationalists in Brazil who attempted an overthrow of their government a couple years after January 6th, on January 8th, right? We have Christian nationalists around the world who were marching when Charlie Kirk was assassinated. So it's this is not a uniquely American situation or problem. But here within the US, yeah, I think that a lot of what Whitehead and Perry and these other sociologists have done is very, very useful because I think it does help us see that A, Christian nationalism is very widespread, but it's a spectrum. It's not a monolith, it's not a simple or singular thing. It's not even a movement, I would say. I I get worried when people start talking about the Christian nationalism movement because it's not a movement. People are not unified and marching all together. It's it's a habit of mind. It's it's it's it's it's a tendency in in American history. That's really good, bro. That's really good, Matt. And that tendency has been with us since the founding. And in fact, that tendency goes back before the founding. And and even in the era of the founding, there were there were people like Thomas Paine who were open to these ideas of Christian nationalism. And and and there were members among the founders who had some of these sympathies with what we would today call Christian nationalism. And it was a it was a genuine debate among the founders about whether there could be an official church. And they ultimately ruled against that. But yeah, that there's there's a spectrum, even today, of extremism. And that will all the you see this in all the surveys that have been done, the PRRI surveys, Whitehead and Perry surveys, PU surveys. There's always a spectrum. And I would say that the two ends of that spectrum, it's a spectrum of not of whether people are Christian nationalists, but what kind of Christian nationalists they are. And I would put it one end of the spectrum, kind of the softer, more moderate end of that spectrum, what I call God bless America Christian nationalism, right? Kind of a sentimental, nostalgic, hearkening back to probably mythical era in the mid-8000s.

SPEAKER_05 16:41

They got a Christian flag, they got American flag.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Yeah, yeah. And having a Christian flag, having an American flag. I mean, I grew up in churches like this, right? Where we would have a Christian flag in the chancel and an American flag in the chancel. And I had to pledge to the Christian flag. I did. I I grew up going to private Christian school. I pledged allegiance to the Christian flag. My high school mascot was a crusader, right? This stuff has been around for a very, very long time. But that that's the uh to me, when I look at that kind of God bless America-style Christian nationalism, it's kind of an aesthetic, right? It's kind of a choice about kind of the symbols and the the way you inhabit American identity that actually does overlap with patriotism. Uh it's not my cup of tea. I I don't really like blending of religion and politics, but is not a grave threat to American democracy either. It's been around for a very, very long time, has has and I would argue has always been a lot of people.

SPEAKER_05 17:30

And it might be kind of glued, right? It might be a little bit of a glue in some ways, in some ways, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

I mean, this is often what gets talked about as more like civic religion, right? That the there it's part of the kind of fabric of American politics and American history, is this blending, this infusing of God into and and appeals to the Bible, appeals to kind of Christianity in within kind of American politics. We don't have a separation of church and politics in the United States. We have a separation of church and state. And that's an important distinction. In France, they have a separation of church and politics. And so they are trying to discourage religious ideas and religious messaging in the public square. They want that, they want religion to be a purely private thing. We have a separation of church and state. There cannot be an official religion of the United States. That's in the First Amendment. But there's a lot of room for religion in politics. And and we again, we've always had politicians who appeal to their own religious faith, not just Christian faith. I mean, we have Jewish politicians who appeal to their Jewish faith. We have Muslim politicians who appeal to their Muslim faith. This is this is a part of what it means to have kind of a pluralistic society. It's it's I I think that it it would for so not all blending of Christianity with politics is is bad or outside the bounds of democracy, right? At the other end of the spectrum is where we should be getting really, really concerned. Because that's where we find these movements of Christian supremacy, these ideologies of Christian supremacy, where, and and you can see this in all the surveys, right? Maybe my my favorite that I think illustrates this really well was but from Pew in 2022, where Pew Research Center does this survey and they're asking this sample of Americans, do you think America should be a Christian nation? 45% of the country says yes to that question, right? And so you have all these hair-on-fire headlines the next day, right? 45% of Americans are Christian nationalists, right? If you keep reading the survey, they keep asking more questions beyond that. Okay, so yes, you think that America should be a Christian nation. So do you think that the Congress should use the Bible and Christian morality and how it makes legislation? No, no, no, no. Only 10 to 15% say yes to that. Do you think the Supreme Court should use their own religious values and reasoning within their Supreme Court decisions? Only 10 to 15% say yes to that, right? Or do you think that we should overturn the First Amendment and declare the US a Christian nation? Only 10 to 15% say yes to that. So there's this delta between the 45% who have some sympathy with these ideas, that have some attachment to these notions of a Christian nation, versus this 10 to 15% that's kind of hardened core that actually does want to implement these things, that has an agenda, has a theology of the nation that says we have to do these things. We have to make this stuff happen. That's what I call Christian supremacy. And that's the world of the new Ops Alc Reformation that I study. There are a number of these Christian supremacist movements and ideologies, all kind of angling for power within the Trump administration today, that are really and truly dangerous. I mean, when I say 10-15% of the population, that's part that that is like the molten core of the MAGA base. We're not talking about a fringe kind of idea that has no political representation. That is that those are the folks who are driving the agenda within the second Trump administration. They are often the people staffing the second Trump administration, part of the cabinet of the second Trump administration. So they're very, very influential, but they they are a small group demographically within the whole spectrum of American politics.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

You know, just uh one one more question kind of on in this vein, maybe to kind of help better better visualize like the differences between these factions. Because, you know, whenever I read something about Christian nationalism, there are like, you know, one of several names that always seem to pop up. You know, it's either like Doug Wilson or it's like TP USA or Robert Jeffries or Josh Hawley, you know, or Paula White, you know. Joe Webbin. Yeah, Joe Webbin.

SPEAKER_03 21:29

Is that crazy? Yank Lance Wallnell. Yeah, Lance Walnell.

unknown 21:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

All of these people seem to kind of be like in different like bubbles, you know, at least when you kind of watch who they interact with and sort of like the Christian Nashless, you know, cinematic universe, like they all seem to be part of like a different TV series. So like it is that kind of what you're getting at? Like all of them have this like feeling or this tendency to want to Christianize America, but they operate out of different, I don't know, like base camps. I don't know if that's the right way to explain it.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Yeah, I would think of it, uh I would say that there are three major religious ideologies that are all angling to say what Christian MAGA is today. And and and they so that they're more like affinity groups. So they're not they're not strictly kind of like uh it's not necessarily a denomination or something like that. Like it's not it's not as simple as that. But I would say so. There's one is this kind of independent charismatic style of Christian nationalism, this kind of non-denominational Pentecostal style of Christian nationalism, tons of spiritual warfare talk, uh, all the language of demons and and talk about apostles and prophets, about modern prophecy. That's the world of Paula White, of the White House faith office that she runs, of the National Faith Advisory Board, this kind of circle of advice evangelical advisors around Donald Trump. That's the world of Sean Floyd and the New Apostolic Reformation. You've also got this kind of Calvinist version of Christian supremacy in the United States. That's the Doug Wilson kind of Pete Hagseth world, very rooted in systematic Calvinist theology, very attached to ideas like theonomy, so theo, God, gnomos, law, the application of biblical law to modern societies. That is the ideology behind somebody like Pete Hagseth. And they they're also very patriarchal, tend to be pretty racist, sometimes anti-Semitic, right? So that's a there are these two different kinds of Protestant versions of Christian supremacy, both kind of angling for influence within the White House. And then the third is actually Catholic. And there's, I mean, about 20% roughly of Americans are Catholic. And there's a reactionary element within global Catholicism that also finds expression here in the US. This is movements like Opus Day, a lot of the kind of uh activists around the Supreme Court, the Heritage Foundation, and J.D. Vance is the kind of avatar of that movement within the administration. And they, the, but a lot of their efforts are actually more focused around the Supreme Court historically. I mean, it's not an accident that five and a half out of six of our conservative Supreme Court justices are Catholic. I'm giving Neil Gorsuch half credit because he was raised Catholic and now is an Episcopalian. But like that, that's not an accident, right? That there's there's been decades of investment by kind of right-wing Catholic organizations and networks to train up those kind of people, to then kind of get them into positions where they could take over the Supreme Court. But now they also have an angle within the administration through a figure like J.D. Vance. But all of those things, that all those movements, they have different theologies, they're kind of competing with each other. They all have their different kinds of figures within the administration that they're trying to use to get access to Trump. All of those, though, I would argue, are still just downstream of Christian supremacy and Christian imperialism, right? There are the different religious traditions, they're there, they're different expressions of Christianity, but they're all doing this Constantinian thing of saying we need to baptize the nation, baptize the empire, and claim that we are entitled to power over the empire because we're Christians, and then we will be able to enact the kingdom of God as we understand it, right? And so Lord help us if they actually come to power, because these folks don't really disagree. And right now they're they're fighting over a lot of things. I mean, they don't agree about the war in Iran, they don't agree about US policy towards Israel. So the the MAGA is this amalgam of a lot of different interests and a lot of different groups kind of converging around and interested in some of the same questions of power, but they they don't all agree about how to get there. And philosophically and theologically, underneath the hood, they're actually quite different.

SPEAKER_05 25:48

Yeah, and I think history tells us that uh just because you're Christian doesn't mean you're not going to fight and kill each other. So I think that we should probably pay attention to that because Catholics and Protestants have spilled much blood over disagreements in theology as Christians, slaughtering Christian brothers and sisters, um in cold blood and doing some of the most horrific things you can imagine.

unknown 26:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 26:11

Uh people and their families.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

And that's that's a phenomenal point, Josh. I mean, I actually some of the worst persecutors of Christians in history are Christians.

SPEAKER_05 26:20

Absolutely, without a doubt.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

And and and part of the pattern of Christian imperialism is the right, Constantine has to choose one version of Christianity to become his religion, that then becomes the religion of the empire, ultimately, right? And so there's a way that there's a logic of Christian nationalism and Christian imperialism that wants to say one of these movements has to triumph in the end for them to accomplish their goals. And this is why the US founders are looking around. I mean, they're they're very conscious of the religious wars in Europe after the Protestant Reformation. They're very conscious of how these different state churches in Europe are persecuting all the other, right? How the Catholics are persecuting Protestants, how the Protestants are persecuting other Protestants, right? And even this phrase, the separation of church and state, comes from a letter from Jefferson to a group of Baptist ministers where he's reassuring them and saying, Look, I know you're worried about the Episcopalians taking over. I know you're worried about the Presbyterians taking over and you being on the downside. We are going to separate these things. We're gonna, we're gonna have this principled separation so that you can flourish, so that religion can flourish, so that all these different forms of Christianity can flourish in early America. It was a it was an experiment that worked out phenomenally, and now we're going backtracking on it.

SPEAKER_05 27:38

Yeah, and it's like it's like my friend, one of my good friends said to me, a good pastor friend, people are just peopling all over the place. They just are acting like people and doing crazy stuff. And that's just what we do. So many of us don't actually follow Jesus and his example. And oftentimes I'm I'm I'm the same here, right? But I I do want to think about this idea of the charismatic movement. So, because I grew up Pentecostal, you know, as someone's a God, and I guess you could call me an independent charismatic at some level because I have a non-denominational church. Yep. I am charismatic in my theology in the sense that I believe in the spiritual gifts and things like that, because I just don't see why they're gone in the from the scriptures. So I guess you could put me in that group, and yet I'm I'm not MAG. I don't want to take over the country and make people become Christians through law and uh have public executions and all the wonderful things, you know. Roll back on the 19th Amendment. I'm a fan of the 19th Amendment. I want my wife to be able to vote. You know, I I I don't I don't understand some of this, some of this ideology. And that's kind of where I'm getting to my question with you is like, I grew up Pentecostal and now we have these things, this charismatic Christianity, this new apostolic reformation. And I just would love for you to explain to our listeners who are unfamiliar what what are these movements and why are they important? Why should we normally we think about charismatics or Pentecostals? They speak in tongues. They're they're they're kind of the crazy, you know, red-headed stepchild of the no offense, Matt. A red-headed stepchild of the, you know, of the Christianity. What what's going on with this rise to power and why are they at the center of this?

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Just just real fast before you answer that, Matt. I should know we don't normally make it a habit to insult our guest.

SPEAKER_05 29:33

We don't. We don't. But you know, uh, you know, Matt, two of my brothers are redheaded. And so I feel real affinity to you. Two, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

To my knowledge, I I am not a stepchild. I'm I'm the middle child, so I'm the red-headed middle child. I have a red-headed middle child brother, dude. You guys would get along. So no, I I think it's a very good point that you make, Josh, right? Even in the same way that I would not say all Calvinists are followers of Doug Wilson, or all Catholics are like J.D. Vance. Not all independent charismatics are into Christian nationalism and Christian supremacy, right? These are vast movements. I mean, in globally, independent charismatics, where you have this juncture of non-denominational governance, right? The non-denominational churches, non-denominational movements with charismatic spirituality, that's the fastest growing sector of global Christianity. It's also the fastest growing sector of American Christianity. And so, right, it's it it it's it's not to say that, oh, anyone who exists in that kind of independent charismatic space is into MAGA or is into these things, right? There's a massive black independent charismatic movement in the US that has largely resisted Donald Trump and Trumpism, right? So it's not that the you give those that that descriptor and suddenly we're only talking about Christian nationalism, but within that world is one of the most active segments of American Christian nationalism. And so again, just biggest picture when we talk about Pentecostal charismatic Christianity, we can roughly break that globally into three buckets. And we're talking about hundreds of millions of people here, right? This is a very, very sizable movement. If you put all those movements together, all the Pentecostal charismatic movements, you have a sector of Christianity that's actually getting pretty close to the size of global Catholicism, right? The largest expression of Christianity in the world. So and I think by the end of the century, it might, the Pentecostal charismatic movements might outpace global Catholicism. Now, actually, those things overlap, though, because so you have classical Pentecostalism, right? The Pentecostal denominations, the Assemblies of God, Church of God in Christ, these kind of more the denominations that came out of the early 20th century. That's one of these buckets. The second will be kind of the charismatic renewal that has occurred within more traditional kind of forms of Christianity, like Catholicism. So there's a huge movement, a burgeoning movement of charismatic Catholics around the world today that, like Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court Justice, came out of a charismatic Catholic community. And especially overseas, kind of in South America, and in Africa, in the subcontinent, these kind of charismatic Catholics are growing gangbusters all over the world. And then the independent charismatics is the third bucket. It's kind of the catch-all of like that, right? Because the other two forms are existing within more structured church organizational forms. This is this kind of more amorphous non-denominational charismatic space. And it tends to be kind of the wild west of global Christianity. Lots of innovation, lots of excitement. The most entrepreneurial lead Christian leaders in the world migrate towards this independent charismatic space because it's the exciting kind of space. I think of it as kind of the Silicon Valley of the global church. Very tech-savvy, very innovative, very entrepreneurial, fast moving. They move fast and break things, right? Not a lot of regulation, not a lot of oversight, oftentimes not a lot of wisdom, right? In some ways, to name yourself non-denominational is to say, I don't have a tradition. I kind of exist in this eternal present. And that's part of the problem here, is that they aren't anchoring themselves in deeper traditions. And so they kind of move in every direction at once. So when we're talking about the independent charismatics, though, I mean, maybe the best way to think about how this stuff interfaces with MAGA, if you've seen these photos of Donald Trump with religious leaders praying over him or religious leaders surrounding him, say in the Oval Office or kind of all laying hands on him, those are probably independent charismatics. These are the people who tend to populate the advisory circles around Donald Trump. And the the pivotal figure here is this woman, Paula Whiteka, who has been an advisor to Donald Trump, has been kind of a spiritual advisor to him for at least 20 years now. I mean, she they they met around 2001, 2002, and she is a televangelist, independent charismatic, megachurch pastor, has called herself an apostle before, and she's a prosperity gospel preacher. And so she has been kind of the linchpin, the fulcrum around which this shift has happened, allowing these independent charismatics much more access and entree within American politics. And it is somewhat coincidental. I mean, she she was close to Trump. And when Trump enters politics in 2015 to run for president, he turns to Paula White Kane and says, I want you to be my liaison to the evangelicals. And so she brought her kind of evangelicals into the inner circle. These were the first Christian leaders to meet with Trump, the first Christian leaders to pray over him. In fact, the the genre of these photos of Christian leaders praying for Trump actually goes back all the way to the fall of 2015 when this one of the first meetings that Trump has with independent charismatic leaders, where they start praying over him, they start prophesying over him, they start laying hands on him. And that becomes then this whole genre of photos that we probably have hundreds of examples of now. And and so they were they as you say, right? Those people were seen as pretty fringy in 2015. They were seen as kind of the people on the margins of American evangelicalism, but now they're at the center of the action because they are the people who surround Trump. And Paula White Kane is the gatekeeper today for all religious leaders access to Trump.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

Earlier you you made a comment about people. I don't I don't want to like put words in your mouth, but but it seemed as if like people have been deifying Trump to some degree, holding up, you know, as some sort of person that's that's holier than thou, can do no wrong. I've heard people make references to him as like a King Cyrus. I'd love for you just to kind of, you know, make make your comment a little bit more real. Like how how can you say that, you know, people are sort of elevating Trump to this sort of like spiritual level, you know, so so people don't think that you're crazy.

SPEAKER_02 35:49

Yeah, I mean, part of the one of the contributions these independent charismatic Christian supremacists around Trump have made to the MAGA movement is they've kind of supplied the spirituality of MAGA up to this point. They've been kind of the driving force of kind of sacrilizing Trump, of making him holy, of propagandizing Trump to Christians. And a lot of that has happened through the way that they read the Bible and through modern prophecy. So let me talk about both of those in turn. When we talk about evangelicals, right? Evangelicals are Bible Christians. Well, great, but there's all kinds of diversity within evangelicalism. Doug Wilson has a very different way of reading the Bible than Paula White Kane does. In fact, he mocks Paula White Kane. He thinks that she's a heretic, right? So that and that and those are people who are like all within Trump's camp, right? But they're warring with each other over theology. So the independent charismatics, they, their approach to the Bible, they they tend to kind of live in the imagination of the Old Testament, right? The stories of the Old Testament, the images of the Old Testament kind of populate their imaginations in a very powerful, powerful way. And so they keep comparing Trump to all these figures from the Old Testament, from the Hebrew Bible. So it really starts in some of those meetings in the fall of 2015 when this guy Lance Walnell, who comes out of the new Apostolic Reformation movement, considers himself a prophet. He claims that he has a prophecy about Donald Trump, that Donald Trump is a modern-day Cyrus. And if you know your Hebrew Bible, right? Cyrus is the emperor of the Persian Empire who sends the Jewish people back from their exile in Babylon to go and rebuild Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. And in Isaiah chapter 45, he's this sirens is called a Mashiach, an anointed one. And this word Mashiach, this is where we get the term Messiah, right? So he is a Messiah of the Jewish people. He's not the Messiah, he's Messiah. He is somebody who plays this role in history of saving the Jewish people from this exile. And in Isaiah 45, the the the notion is: well, God was the one who put Cyrus in that position to do it. And so what Wallnow is trying to say is Donald Trump is that kind of a figure. He's not a good man, but he's God's man for this moment. And he can save conservative Christians in America from cultural exile. Okay, I mean, that's an idea. And that idea becomes very, very powerful in the first campaign, in the 2016 campaign, because one of the primary rationales that evangelicals give for why they support Donald Trump, that he's a Cyrus. But that's that's just one of hundreds of these prophecies that start to populate this world. And they keep comparing Trump to other figures, especially from the Hebrew Bible. He's an Esther. He's a David. David had his flaws, but he was God's friend and he was God's king, right? Oh, Donald Trump is like Job. He suffers uh the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and is put on trial by his enemies, but he is persevering through his suffering, right? He he is a Jehu, this kind of warrior king in the history of ancient Israel, right? They're using all these images, but they're always claiming that these are attached to prophecy. That it's not merely, oh, we happen to stumble across a passage in the Old Testament that reminded us of Trump. They are saying this has been revealed to them as prophecy, that these are the ways we need to understand Trump, that he's a figure of destiny, that he fits these kind of biblical templates, that if we can kind of put all the pieces together, we can see God's divine plan being enacted through a figure like Donald Trump. And if you notice, a lot of those people are royalty in the Hebrew Bible, right? And so this is where this kind of idea of Donald Trump as a king, Donald Trump as a sort of a secular messiah, Donald Trump as as a providential destined person by God. And and and I'll just note this is the kind of propaganda they've used. They believe it. They believe these things about Trump. And they've been saying these things to him for more than a decade. Where did Donald Trump get the idea after his assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania in the summer of 2024, that God saved him in order to save America? That's messianic language. Where did he get that idea? Well, these people have been whispering it in his ear for a decade by that point, right? Where did Donald Trump get the idea that he could post an image of himself as Jesus? And people would be like, oh, cool. What like he was it was a miscalculation on his part. But he those those that that that mindset, that megalomania, the kind of mess messiah complex that he has, that has been cultivated for over a decade by these advisors around him who are often prophesying directly to him.

SPEAKER_05 40:30

That's so that's so scary.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

And it's so sobering. I mean, like, even so so like we we we just as we I know you've said this before.

SPEAKER_05 40:40

Every time you say it, Matt, I'm like, is he serious? Is it real? I mean, since 2001, Paula has known. I'm like, holy smokes, this has been like so that we think this is out of nowhere. It's not.

SPEAKER_02 40:52

Sorry, no, no, it's not, it's not out of nowhere. But the even as we're speaking, right, that they've just unveiled this golden statue of Donald Trump and his Durell Golden.

SPEAKER_05 41:04

They told me they they they accused me of causing division, of trying to, you know, cause division in the church, because I I I literally posted that said, if Obama or Biden had done anything close to this, there would be a massive reaction. And then they were like, How do you know? How do you all this stuff? I'm like, I can't believe I'm even hearing this. Now I love these guys. Like, I'm not trying to, but it's like, holy smokes. And you're telling me if Obama put a golden statue of himself and put asked people to come and it was patriotic, and said the person who put it up is a real patriot, and they really know. Dude, I'm like, and they're like, oh, we they have, oh, but I'm sure Obama has done that, and there's been no reaction.

SPEAKER_01 41:52

I'm like, and it's just it's it's mind-blowing. Well, but this is the thing. Trump doesn't want to be a president.

SPEAKER_02 42:00

He wants to be a king. He wants to be a Caesar, and the Caesars claimed to be gods. I mean, a lot of kings in history have claimed to be gods. I mean, this this this was the context in which Christianity emerged, right? What the the the reason that early Christianity was persecuted. In fact, I would argue the reason that Jesus was executed the way that he was was that in the Pax Romana, in in the Peace of Rome, the era that Jesus lives, the Caesars claimed to be gods.

SPEAKER_05 42:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

This is called the imperial cult. And they claimed that they were set from on high, from the heavens to to rule on earth. And and and they used even the even the word that we have in our Christian vocabulary, the word gospel, evangelion. That's not originally a Christian word. That was Caesar's word. That was a word used as part of the imperial cult, the propaganda of Caesar, especially Augustus, who who was kind of the Caesar during Jesus' parents and grandparents' time, who who claimed that he was a divine God, sent from on high by providence to rule over the Roman Empire.

SPEAKER_05 43:04

Augustus means, right? Kind of like divine, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 43:08

That was the title that he adopted. He it would to say, I am, I am the honored and sacred one, right? And and and this is why the early Christians are persecuted, is they refuse to bow to Caesar.

SPEAKER_05 43:18

And yet Jesus is Lord, right? And not Caesar.

SPEAKER_02 43:22

And yet here we have an independent charismatic pastor, Mark Burns, leading a ceremony of blessing.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

It's paganism. It's straight paganism. It's Caesarian religion warmed up as Christianity.

SPEAKER_05 43:39

Bro, it's and it's so so okay. This is a good one because there's a few things that are connected here, right? So maybe you can make the connections because we're trying to kind of we're trying to bring a narrative in these questions, right? To kind of like get all things, and we've been talking about this prophecy, this religion that has to do with Trump, right? And and this this the idea of spiritual warfare denying defined divine rather destiny surrounding Trump. And and I would just love for you to go into more depth on that. Like you you've done a good job of thinking about. About like Paula White and all of that. But even like, I would love for you to go to more depth on this prophetic, this prophetic movement around Trump that is proclaiming him to be God's man for the time and connect that with January 6th for us.

SPEAKER_04 44:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:35

And then how that's kind of continued since this. We want to, we want to make these connections because I'll tell I'll just give you a little setup on this. I was talking to someone there say, what time have Christians ever, you know, done anything that was like violent to, you know, well just give me a minute. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 44:59

Anywhere in the world. But he was saying the Christians have been violent. Huh.

SPEAKER_05 45:03

I mean he was trying to make a very specific claim about in our modern time here, I guess. I don't know. Even in then we could, I know we can make claims about it. But he was saying, like, you know, he was hearing all this stuff about, you know, the the left and their their their assassination attempts and they're trying like violence is up on the left. And there is, I think there is some legitimacy legitimacy in the sense that like there have been surveys that have talked about, well, really on both sides, political violence being acceptable, right? More acceptable among certain people on both sides of this. So it's very concerning all around. I don't want to get sidetracked on that. My point is that when we're to give you context, when I said, hey, January 6th would be a very clear, you know, example of a riot on on the right that was very religious. It was clearly there's all sorts of religious symbolism, and I just got lambasted because I said that, right? So, and I don't care, whatever. I already expect that that's going to happen. But I would love for you to kind of help us again draw the line from this prophecy January 6th, so we can move into this conversation and kind of, because this is really helping us understand how it's affecting us right now.

SPEAKER_02 46:19

Yeah. So let me let me start with the the or prophecy behind January 6th, and then we'll build up to the the the more immediate prophecy. So the the or prophecy that I think really shapes January 6th actually comes out more around the turn of the millennium, and it's called the Seven Mountain Mandate. And this is an idea, some of it's actually drawing from kind of Calvinist theology, but it's a charismatic prophecy put forward by this guy, Lance Wall now, from the New Apostolic Reformation. And the idea is that of the prophecies that there are these seven mountains in every society. And you can think of these as kind of the arenas of authority in society. If you took up society and just in your mind divide it up into seven different sectors, you'd probably come up with more or less this schema, right? And it's religion, it's government, it's family, it's education, it's arts and entertainment, it's media, it's business and commerce, right? That these are all the parts of society. And they imagine every one of those as a mountain. And they say the tops of those mountains, the positions of power in every society, are either controlled by Satan and the demons or by God and the Christians. And there's no one between. And so the mandate, right, because it's the Seven Mountain mandate, that the commandment of God in this prophecy is for Christians to take over the seven mountains in every society. That Christians are supposed to take positions of power and influence over society, to rise to levels of prominence or to make alliances with the leaders at the tops of these mountains, the leaders in education, the leaders in Hollywood, the leaders in government. And that through kind of the this kind of manipulation of power at the top, then Christian influence will flow down into society. And this is very, very important for these independent charismatics around Trump, because they saw him as a pathway, as a figure who could conquer the government mountain for them. And that's in their strategy, that's the most important mountain, because it's the mountain that regulates all the other mountains, right? If they can hold the government, especially the executive branch of the government, then they can shape the rest of American culture. And so that this is part of the philosophy for why these people attach themselves to Trump. They see him as a vehicle for enacting their agenda of what they call dominion, of Christian power in society. And then the Cyrus anointing idea that Wall now puts forward when he meets Trump in 2015 is just another one of these prophecies. Again, this idea, he can take the government mountain for us. He can be this anointed figure. And then they manipulate and create all these kind of paradigms of spiritual warfare around Trump. Throughout the first Trump administration, the message from these new Epistolic Conformation and other independent charismatic folks is Donald Trump is doing the work of God. And we need to support him because he's doing the work of God. His agenda is God's agenda. And there's this mass conspiracy against him of demonic forces in Satan, and the aligned forces of Satan want to stop Donald Trump from doing God's agenda. Now let's just observe what's going on here, right? They're taking a human leader with all of his flaws and saying he's doing the work of the angels. And anyone who opposes him is on the side of the demons. That they're sacrilizing him and sacralizing the cause of MAGA and saying, this is the cause of God on the earth. The building, the agenda of building the kingdom of God is being put forward through Donald Trump. In fact, one of these NAR prophets, a guy named Johnny Enlo, sometimes says, Donald Trump is God's number one kingdom asset on the earth. Donald Trump is the number one instrument that God has on the earth for building the kingdom of God. Right? That's the kind of narrative that was being put forward to justify Trump. By the time of the 2020 election, there were hundreds of charismatic prophecies, all saying in unison that Donald Trump is anointed to win the 2020 election. It is God's will for Trump to win the 2020 election. And when he loses the election and refuses to concede, all these prophets start saying in chorus, hey, look, we're not recanting our prophecies. God's will is clear here. We need to do spiritual warfare. We need to fight to and battle against these demonic forces in order to make Trump the president again. And that is the context. That's the theology behind January 6th. And I have tracked more than 60 independent charismatic leaders who showed up in Washington, D.C. for January 6th. And one of the other narratives, the other symbols they've really attached to is this appeal to heaven flag. And so it's a white flag with a green pine tree at the center and the phrase an appeal to heaven across the top of the flag. You might have seen it. And this is, I mean, this flag, it comes from American history, right? It's one of it's an American symbol. It's part of Americana. It comes from the American Revolution. It was a flag commissioned by George Washington to fly over the Massachusetts Navy, right? It's a piece of American history. But starting in 2015, it goes back to actually 2013, but really in earnest, starting in 2015, these NAR leaders, especially a guy named Dutch Sheets, have been branding that flag as a prophecy and saying this is a prophecy about the need for a spiritual revolution, like the American Revolution, to overthrow democratic tyranny, overthrow the tyranny of Barack Obama. And we need to have a righteous government put in place. That's what this appeal to heaven flag means. We need to do spiritual warfare to fulfill the prophecy of a re-Christianized America. And that flag, I mean, you see it all over the place on January 6th, because the leaders who are pushing Christians to participate in January 6th are all pushing using these kind of symbols. And if you watch on January 6th, the stuff is everywhere. The spirituality of January 6th is structured around these kind of independent charismatic ideas of spiritual warfare, of prophecy, of fighting the demons that are trying to steal this election. And many, many, many of the Christians who show up around the Capitol that day, who participate in the Capitol riot, are steeped in these ideas of demonic conspiracy. Donald Trump is the prophesied president. We know God's will. And if an election gets in the way of God's will, we have to overturn that election.

SPEAKER_00 52:34

Matt, this is my my last and final question. I've been asking every guest in the series some variation of this question. And it's it's really just a question focused on reflecting on America's 250. I mean, you've spent most of your life kind of studying these religious movements. You're probably not a lot of fun at parties. I'm not.

SPEAKER_03 52:57

I don't get invited to a lot of them. I think you put your finger on exactly why.

SPEAKER_05 53:03

You know, it's funny. We've had more than one guest on this show say that.

SPEAKER_03 53:08

It's so weird. And you know, I've just thought about it. Well, when's the last time I got invited to a party? I mean, go back in Greek mythology. How popular was Cassandra, right? Like, come on. I'm either Chicken Little or Cassandra, and I feel like a little more of a Cassandra.

SPEAKER_02 53:23

I can't the the predictions, the doom saying I I do see keeps coming true for some reason.

SPEAKER_00 53:28

Yeah, yeah. I I mean, maybe you're the prophetic one. Just think about it.

SPEAKER_03 53:33

Mind blown, Will.

SPEAKER_00 53:36

You're the prophet. Yeah, but but but you know, I mean, America has a 250 anniversary. I mean, by the time this airs, 4th of July would have been, you know, a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. But I I'm I'm just curious, like, how does how does a person like you, you know, look at the the movements that you look at, you know, realize that, you know, America had a birthday 250 years old. And we've come, we've come a long ways. And some of it's good, some of it's bad. You know, so I just how how does Matthew Taylor reconcile with where we are as a country today?

SPEAKER_02 54:08

You know, when I read the Declaration of Independence, uh, if you want to boil down what the American founders are saying in that document, I think it really hinges on the divine right of kings. They're saying King George III claims that God has put him in office and claims that he is therefore entitled to be a tyrant. And we have a different understanding of God. Actually, God created all of us, and God created all of us with certain rights and certain dignity, and that dignity needs to find expression in society. And that's what they're talking about. These inalienable rights that we have are given to every individual human being who's created in the image of God, and that therefore we don't have to bow before tyrants. There is no divine right of kings, and we are willing to fight over this idea. We're willing to push back and even go to war because we believe that God has given us the right to be independent and to structure society in a way that benefits all of us. On the 250th anniversary of the American founding of the Declaration of Independence, we are watching as a segment of American Christians are trying to re-enshrine the divine right of kings. They're trying to reverse the polarity of the Declaration of Independence and put a new king on the throne of America and claim God has made this king for us and we all need to get in line. And that's what like to me the the the the irony of that, the the the absurdity of that is is so disturbing, right? That what they want to do, and and let let's not be American-centric. Let's look back through history. What happens when Christians claim that their king or their their Caesar or their ruler is anointed by God and is put on the throne? Tyranny, dictatorship, pogroms, crusades, inquisitions, enslavement. I mean, the history of Christian imperialism is a history of horrors. That's what they're trying to bring back. The history of Christendom is a history of horrors. That's what they're trying to bring back. And when I think about the American founders, the American founders uh they were not perfect people, but they were smart. And they looked at the world around them and they said, actually, this system doesn't work very well. This system has problems. We have better ideas. And they were steeped in Enlightenment liberalism. Not liberalism as we talk about it today, of liberal versus conservative, but liberalism in the sense that they cared about liberty. They cared about individual rights, they cared about the separation of powers within society, then checks and balances that we talked about. The very things that they cared about are what are right now being stripped out of our society by the Trump administration. The rule of law, the idea that law should be neutrally administered. That is being torn out of our system as the Department of Justice becomes itself a part of Trump's tyranny. They believed in the separation of powers, that the different branches of government would use their own powers to check each other, to challenge each other. We're watching our Congress lie supine before this wannabe tyrant, as the MAGA Republicans all bow before Trump and say, whatever you want, we'll do. We're watching a Supreme Court that just keeps handing Trump more and more power in violation of the very principles of the Constitution. Right? So we're watching as the dream that the American founders had that has proven to be one of the most successful and beautiful experiments in modern history. A vision that nation after nation has modeled themselves off of and innovated on and found other ways of building modern democracies. I mean, America's one of the first of these modern democracies, and it's become a model that others have found ways to use and to utilize. We are watching the collapse of that model right now in the second Trump administration. And I find it to be something that that actually terrifies me as an American, as a Christian, as somebody who cares about the good of humanity, right? That that because part of the challenge right now is we are also living in this kind of Pax Americana era, this era after the the World War II, where for the first time in global history, you have had a liberal democracy at the top of the global order. And building systems like the UN and NATO and these other kind of alliances and humanitarian programs like USAID that have actually brought an era of peace to the world. We've had a democracy at the top of the global order, and that has been a profound experiment in empowerment of people, in the enrichment of people, in the lifting people out of poverty around the world. And when the United States collapses into tyranny, it doesn't just take down the United States. It takes down that global order. And we're watching as more and more of these other powers are emerging, more and more of these authoritarian figures are coming out of the woodwork, taking over their nations as well. And Trump is kind of the apex predator in a breed of new tyrants, many of them Christian, many of them claiming this kind of divine right, and all kind of working together to topple these systems of liberalism, of equality, of dignity, of rights. And so I'm really gravely concerned. I think this is a moment in which we need to get mad. This is a moment in which we need to be activated and recognize that this stuff doesn't just slip away. It's being actively taken from us. And if we don't stand up nonviolently and protest, if we don't stand up and vote, if we don't stand up and challenge these things, our society will degrade, our our freedoms will be taken away. And realistically, the world will suffer because of that. Not because America is so great and we need to rule over the world, but because the the systems of democracy around the world, the global infrastructure of democracy itself is taking body blow after body blow from Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. And it's falling apart right now. And I think that the number, the millions of people who will suffer and die from tyranny and from oppression that that could come downstream of these choices that we make as Americans, I carry the weight of that responsibility. And I'm trying to warn my fellow Americans that this is a moment in which we need to think very gravely about what we want to be in the future, about how to hold on to the good elements of that past, and about how to stop this authoritarian slide that we are in. Because if we don't, uh the the consequences are going to be disastrous.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:18

Well, thank you for sharing that. Uh I'm going to your next party, right? You absolutely are invited, dude. You're the next speaker. I I forgot to tell you. You know, honestly, I appreciate every single one of those words, and there was no sarcasm in that. I'm uh I'm thinking about myself and what I need to do and what I am doing, and I'm trying to do my part and even what what what's that gonna mean in the future? And I want to continue to do my part and take some of the hits because you're gonna take hits when you're when you're you know speaking out against this. And people when you when you challenge their idols, they they respond violently. So I just I think yeah, I'm I'm just I'm just falling on God's mercy and asking for his grace right now and his mercy to help the remnant, who are the the the people that really believe in in the free exchange of ideas, believe that that the real gospel is compelling enough that it doesn't need to be forced on people. Yeah and it doesn't people don't need to be coerced into believing it, that it's compelling enough, that I don't need to force you to do it and then tell you why you like it. It's i i I don't think that's the gospel. And it breaks my heart that we're in this place right now. It's yeah, it's it's tough. But I just really appreciate guys like you, Matt, out there writing, putting your name out there. We're gonna keep supporting you. Thank you for being on here, being a part of this uh program with us, being a part of this series. We're hoping to our listeners and watchers that this is really informing you. We are we love this country. That's why we're doing this. We love this country and we want the best vision of this country that we can have, and really it's in our power to do it. And so we're hoping that we'll take this information and we'll use it going into this midterms, going into the next all the political seasons coming up. Take this, use this information, share it with people who need to hear it. And guys, until next time, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. Thanks.