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Category: Religious and Political Commentary
Tags: Christian NationalismControversial OpinionsGender RolesReligious CommunityTraditional Values
Entities: Apostle PaulGary NorthKing AsaKing JehoshaphatMoscowR.J. RushdoonyThomas Jefferson
00:00
What makes this community here in Moscow so unique? You can't make good omelets with rotten eggs.
It doesn't matter how good the recipe is. It doesn't matter how good the kitchen is.
It doesn't matter how good the cook is. If people aren't walking with God, then it's going to come out bad.
00:16
What would have happened if your kids didn't want to follow you? So this was something, again, that my dad learned from the Apostle Paul.
But there were four of us growing up in my dad's household, and we all knew that if we, if any one of us walked away from the faith,
00:31
my dad would step down from ministry. So you just living as a practicing Christian isn't enough for you?
None of us know. What does that look like, though?
In America, ruled by Christ. Which is what you want?
Yeah. Well, the the most noticeable things
00:48
read out of the gate would be things that aren't going on anymore. we wouldn't have clown World.
We wouldn't have dragged Queen story hours. We wouldn't have pride parades.
We wouldn't have, abortion on demand.
01:04
You know, we those things would be gone. and that would be why this is different.
So the thing that a lot of the people in the middle, let's call them normies, people who are not, they're not, particularly theological.
01:20
And they're not hard left either. They're just, you know, I just want to live a normal life, and that's so wrong.
the last five years has really unsettled them a great deal, because clown world is not a livable place to bring up kids.
01:36
It's just not. And a lot of the recoil or the reaction that has happened, and a lot of the reason we're getting the attention we're getting is people are hungry for, answers that don't, just whitewash it, don't sugarcoat it.
01:53
and as I'm fond of saying, it's Christ or chaos. And people say, yeah, look, looking around, that seems to be the case.
And you're seeing a big expansion of membership in these last few years really since Covid, right? Yes.
Since 2019, our church community here has
02:09
doubled in size. and during the height of Covid, it was like the like a refugee column.
People moving here, chased here by blue state governors, chased here by Covid restrictions, chased here by,
02:25
pastors and elders who flaked on them, who closed their close their church down and, and people, a lot of Christians were discovering that they did not have the Christian leadership that they thought they had. They thought shepherds
02:40
were supposed to protect the sheep. And when the pressure came, that didn't happen.
Would you define yourself as a Christian nationalist? Yes.
Define that. Well, mostly because I much prefer it to the names I usually get called.
02:56
How do you define that? Is it you are a Christian and you want this nation to be a Christian nation?
I'm a Christian and I'm an American who loves this country. Put those two things together.
And and since I believe that my Christianity is not something that it's to be
03:12
can, believe by me, behind my eyes and between my ears. It's a public truth.
What do you say to people of different faiths all over the world? Who?
Well, I believe that. And have a different God, a different understanding of of life and how we all came here.
03:29
Yeah, I would say let's have it. Let's have a Bible study.
Let's talk about it. Depending on what they've heard.
I would want to assure them that, the fact that we differ over who God is or differ over ultimate reality does not give me warrant to persecute you.
03:45
So, we're going to talk about this because the Christian faith does not advance by the sword. The Christian faith advances by preaching the sword of the spirit, planting churches, preaching, declaring it, etc..
So I'd want to visit with them.
04:01
I'd want to imitate what the Apostle Paul did all through the book of acts. He comes to Athens and he preaches Christ and the resurrection to, a city full of idolaters.
But he doesn't mount a military campaign.
04:17
Yeah. What would you say to historic scholars who say America was not founded as a Christian nation?
I would have fun with them. Don't you think if the framers had the same vision as you, that this is a Christian nation, that they would have made that explicit in the Constitution
04:34
and not have put in the Establishment Clause and the prohibition of religious test for office holders, that they would have made it explicit. Yeah, it was documents the federal government, the federal government may not have a church of the United States like the Church of England.
The Church of
04:49
Denmark is the Lutheran church. they have flat prohibited a church of the United States, and they flat prohibited religious tests for office at the federal level.
Thomas Jefferson, for his part, was a big proponent of religious liberty. It was one of his big accomplishments.
05:06
It's on his gravestone that he had this religious liberty law passed in Virginia. Yeah.
So what would you say to historic scholars who would point to that and say the framers of this country did not mean for this to be a Christian nation? They meant for it to be a nation
05:22
where people can exercise their religion freely, no matter what that religion is. First, I would invite these historic scholars in the most friendly way possible to have a public debate.
on the subject, I think I'd be, I don't want to,
05:39
King Ahab in the Old Testament says, let not him who puts on his armor bows like him and takes it off. But I think I would do okay, and I think I would do okay, because I'd be able to point to the primary documents as well.
How would a muslim, or a mormon,
05:54
or even a Catholic fit into your version of a Christian nation? Yeah.
So one of the reasons we have such, problems with assimilating Muslims and all these different, Hindus is that there are so many of them.
06:11
Right? So if we had a Christian republic and, and a muslim came to Disneyland with his family, we have no problem. We have no problems.
But when they when they fill up Dearborn, Michigan, that's just not, you can says in Amos three
06:28
three can two walk together? Except they be agreed.
You you cannot, put alien worldviews together cheek by jowl and have peace. Right?
So basically, I think a lot of the religious turmoil
06:43
that we have, the clashes that we would have, could be addressed by a saying immigration policy, not a policy that tries to regulate what people can say or do in their religious convictions. Well, here.
So the foundation for you
06:58
is you believe this is a Christian nation, despite the debate from historic scholars. Exactly.
But notice that when when the Muslim says to me, who are you to say? I can say, all right, we have to live together.
Who are you to say which way it should go? And then the secularist comes in and says, let's do it this way.
07:14
And I and Muslim and I would both turn to him and say, and who are you to say? So you feel like we can't have a functioning society?
Yeah, we can't without. And look at, look at our society currently not functioning.
Do you believe that secular society is basically a religion of its own?
07:31
That is the antithesis of your Christian sector? Is secularism?
Is a religious faith religious commitment? Remember what I said about if there is no God above the state?
The state is God. Well, if that's the case for the secularist, and I believe it is,
07:46
and it's a religious level commitment, then who's in charge of the current secular God? And how much is your post millennial ism belief driving all of this?
great deal of it, yes.
08:01
Tell our viewers about that. What that is.
Most American evangelicals are pre millennial, meaning that they believe everything's falling apart. And when things get really bad, the Antichrist is going to take over and then Jesus will come again
08:17
and save us from all that. But it's a pretty grim view of human history between now and the end.
so, that's the pre millennial understanding. A post millennial list is someone who believes that the gospel
08:33
is going to be victorious in the world. The nations will in fact be discipled.
And you have said, I don't have a direct pipeline to Pete headset. Right.
But don't you think your influence is having an impact? Right?
I hope so, I, I write books and I don't write.
08:48
I don't write and publish books to launch them into the void. I want people to read them and be influenced by them.
And when people read them and are influenced by them, and they're in a position to actually do something, that's very gratifying, I'm yes, I'm happy about that,
09:05
because for many years, decades, frankly, your views were really seen as fringe. Yes.
Now, do you not by me, not by my wife, not by you or your wife or your community. But but yes, they were.
They were seen as fringe. Do you now see them becoming more mainstream?
Yes, I do, they have become very
09:24
my views on a number of things have become steadily more mainstream and have done that without me moving at all. Do you think people have come to you?
They've. Yeah, people.
so basically, what has happened as, as the whole, the Zeit geist of the official Zeit
09:41
Geist has moved steadily, left into more and more woke territory. a number of normies, as I called them earlier, looked at where that was going and said, I don't want to go there.
And so they maybe we ought to give
09:57
that Wilson character a second look. he was sounded pretty crazy 20 years ago, but I'm rethinking that.
And what are you seeing happen in the Trump administration right now that reflects your Christian values?
10:12
The series of appointments in the federal judgeships that led to the overturning of Ro would be the, the central thing, if, our church doesn't have a spire with a bell on it yet. But if we had the bell, that would have been
10:27
when Dobbs came down. We would have been ringing it all day.
But when you want to see Obergefell, I want to see Obergefell go the same direction. I am very pleased with the, the naming of, the the just the fraudulent
10:45
behavior that has, has overseeing the squandering of trillions of dollars. one of my old jokes was that, I'm opposed to chaplains praying at Congress because the Bible says
11:01
not to turn a den of thieves into a house of prayer. And, it's just the pillage that is going on there.
It's been remarkable. And I'm just very gratified at the efforts of Doge and other things like that to put a spotlight on those sorts of things.
11:17
And what about banning transgender military members? Oh, that's great, that's great.
That's absolutely great. And gender gender issues.
as I mentioned before the interview, I, I was in the submarine service,
11:32
for example, and whatever idiot thought of putting women on submarines, just what would you say to a female submarine? who's been doing the job and kicking butt doing it?
I'd say. Yeah.
We don't want you down here kicking butt.
11:49
Why? Because, we I went to see a couple of times.
We were submerged for two and a half months. All right, two and a half months.
100, let's say 130 guys in a submarine with three women on it.
12:05
Okay, so let's put 130 horny sailors and three women and submerge them out in the middle of the Atlantic for two and a half months. What could go wrong?
So I'd say, come on, you have a patriarchal
12:21
view of how society should be. Sure.
Yeah, yeah, there's certain there's certain places that ought to be male only spaces and combat is one of them. And, being closed up in a submarine is and is another one.
And, you know, I've
12:40
so what it boils down to is that sort of thing. Egalitarianism has been the, the basic platform, and feminism is a subset of egalitarianism, and you can't split the difference on this sort of thing.
So if you're going to have a submarine,
12:56
you have to make a decision who's going to be on it. Right.
And either the egalitarian, secular, egalitarian worldview will prevail or a patriarchal Christian worldview will prevail, or a patriarchal Muslim view, you know, you're
13:11
somebody is going to have to decide the bottom line. Do you believe men and women are equal in society?
well, they are in our society, but they're not equal in the world. What do you mean by that?
Because men and women are different
13:28
person. They're just different.
so when I said I don't want women in combat, it's not an arbitrary rule. It's not like we want the women to stand on the side of the room and the men who stand on that side.
There's certain things that men do better than women do. There's certain things that women
13:44
do better than the men do. And I think we should let Scripture and natural revelation tell us which is which.
Men are good at smashing and breaking things, they're good at fighting. And when you have this egalitarian,
14:00
dogma that women and men are have to be the same, what happens? It's like saying everybody has to be able to dump the basketball.
But if you've got an egalitarian dogma that says everyone has to be able to dunk, the only thing you're going to wind up doing is lowering the net.
14:16
And and so consequently, you've got firemen. You know what?
One of the things that Pete Hegseth has done is instead of, making a regulation concerning the women, he just said, we're back to a uniform standard of fitness for,
14:34
going into certain, avenue, certain places. And that defacto is going to exclude many of the women.
Right. But do you think the underlying premise was what you're saying?
Women shouldn't be in combat, correct. Our viewers might hear that
14:49
and think he wants to turn this into a totalitarian, patriarchal society. He wants to turn America into Gilead with handmaids.
Right. What do you say to that?
What I want to do is keep women out of submarines, which is not to tell ism. That's one example.
15:05
Right? As well.
It's it's you've got to decide which way you're going to go. So for example, when when you send Bruno into shower with the junior high girls and you force that on them and you arrest parents who protest
15:22
at the school board meeting, I would call that totalitarian. And what I'm trying to is it's, I'm not fond of quoting Vladimir Lenin positively, but he once said, who, whom, who, whom, who's doing what to whom.
15:38
So, when someone says, oh, you're imposing on the woman who wants to be a fighter pilot, who wants to be a submarine, you know, submarine, or you're imposing on her? I say, yes, but what you're doing is imposing on other people.
You're imposing your worldview
15:54
on other people. There's no way to see it.
They can't coexist. There's no way that antithetical worldviews can exist without one imposing on the other.
The why. Isn't it enough to have this community here in Moscow?
You've built this Christian community.
16:10
Why is it enough to just live that way and let everyone else live the way they want in America? Oh, we're happy to live that way as long as they lead us.
Right. And but it's not going to it's not going to shake out that way.
It's what it's got to give at some, at some point. Right.
So,
16:29
here's here's an example. The logic of egalitarianism means that daughters are our daughters are going to be drafted at some point to go fight in some stupid forum.
So you see the slippery slope. Oh, absolutely.
16:46
Yeah. It's a I've lived on the slippery slope my entire life, but other people might say, well, there's a slippery slope with your view that women's rights are just gradually taken away, for example, right? Sure.
But the slippery slope that I'm talking about is the one that we're actually sliding down, right?
17:02
So the thing you don't think they're sliding down your slippery slope? No, I don't know.
I think I do. Let's put it this way.
I do believe that there have been instantiations of Christianity in politics that have gone very badly, you know, like what
17:18
Spanish Inquisition or, you know, say there are things like that that I think, okay, that's, that's no good. And we should never do that again.
I'm an advocate of Christendom, but the first Christendom had some words that had some things that we don't ever want to do again.
17:33
So there are slippery slopes on the Christian side of things, and I think we should guard against those things. But right now, that's not anywhere close to being our central problem.
You basically think you're David and David and Goliath. Yeah.
17:48
So over my shoulder right here, there is a poster of the cover of a book and it says, it's good to be a man, right? What does that mean?
It means that this is a that book is an argument. That is a defensive reaction,
18:05
defending young men who don't know who they are because they have been taught their entire life that white heterosexual males are cancerous. But so masculinity is tagged as
18:20
toxic masculinity. if you if a boy acts like a boy in school, we hit him on the head with a chemical rock.
We don't because we we don't know how to discipline them. We don't know how to make boys stand up straight.
We don't know how to make them work hard. We don't know how to train
18:36
boys as boys who are going to become men. One of the books that I wrote was called Future Men because boys become boyhood should be, aimed at manhood and it's.
And boys and girls are not the same.
18:52
And so you have to train them. You have to train girls to be women.
You have to train boys to be men. And if you don't do that and you spend your time attacking boys for masculine traits, they're going to
19:07
they're going to grow up to be pretty screwed up. And right now, a lot of people believe that there's a masculinity crisis in the United States.
Just when you look at the data of, you know, school, test scores, graduation rates, that kind of thing, are you seeing
19:23
absolutely more men be drawn to your church? Yes.
Right now? Yes.
The one of the one of the things that is attractive to many of the people who have come here is that we're not apologetic about the masculinity
19:38
that is present here. Now, we're neither are we apologetic for the femininity.
but then as soon as you say masculinity, femininity, people say you're stereotyping, you're stereotyping, you're saying men are like this and women are like that. And I say, yeah, we're stereotyping.
19:54
Guilty. So what does that mean?
What role do you think women play in society? Women are the kind of people that people come out of.
So you just think they're meant to have babies? Well, they're just a vessel.
No, it doesn't take any talent to simply reproduce biologically.
20:11
The wife and mother who is the chief executive of the home, is entrusted with three or 4 or 5 eternal souls. I'm here as a working journalist, and I'm a mom of three.
Good for you. It's not an issue.
No, no, it's not automatically an issue.
20:26
So like in your view of a Christian nation, a Christian America, would this be acceptable that I'm here as a working mom in Idaho? Sure.
Wouldn't it? sure.
Here's the this is the thing.
20:42
there's there are there's a difference between what you, what's a sin and a crime? Okay, so in a, in a in every society, there are certain things that are just.
You don't let people do it, all right? It's a crime.
It's against the law.
20:57
Then there are things that I would advise people not to do. pastorally, it'd be it pastoral advice.
It wouldn't be a law, wouldn't be a rule. So, for example, if, if you have, women who are,
21:14
domestic, talented, educated and high powered and I'm related to a number of those, right? So my wife has written 8 or 9 books and my daughters have written books.
Both of my daughters have written books. One daughter has edited
21:30
an English curriculum, English Lit curriculum. And they are a mother of five and a mother of eight.
And, you know, they're they are fully full tilt domestic and they are high energy, talented people. I would say go, team, go
21:45
that that that's wonderful. at the same time, I don't want to disparage women who want to spend their time in the home just focusing on focusing.
I don't want to backhand it or disparage it at all. I want to honor that and honor that.
22:01
I want to, You're comfortable with a working mom leaving the home and. Sure.
Okay, so I'm a woman sitting across from you. Do you view me as an equal?
equal what? Equal person?
As an equal person with equal rights. Equal.
Equal person and so equal person.
22:18
equal equality of citizenship, I would say. Well, if you're a citizen that there would be equality.
But yes. God has created in the first chapter of Genesis, male and female, created he them in the image of God.
He created them.
22:33
So man and woman compliment one another and together represent the image of God. So. And that's And you don't believe husband and wife are equals?
Well, I don't think they have equal roles, so,
22:50
but it's like asking which which is, which is more equal, the the violin or the bow? I say the violin or the bow.
They're they're one instrument. The violin bows.
One instrument. Right.
But from what I've read about you and your interviews,
23:06
you have said that you believe the wife should be submissive to the husband, and therefore that would be equal. If the wife is submissive to the husband, well, it wouldn't be, yeah.
For for example, if you at CNN, you've got bosses all the way up,
23:24
and you make a distinction as you ought to, between your equality with them as a human being and the fact that they happen to have authority over you in this job. Okay.
So a person can say, my boss is my equal.
23:39
As human beings are concerned, we should both have a right to a fair trial. We should both have the right to keep and bear arms.
We should both have the right to free speech. But when I go into work, he has the right to tell me what to do.
And I don't have the right to tell him what to do. So that's the dynamic
23:55
you see in marriage. yeah.
Within that, within the confines of marriage, the husband is the head, the wife is submissive. His help me.
And when you enter into this, it's a believing Christian man and a believing Christian woman,
24:11
both of whom want that arrangement. Is the wife the property of the husband, his employee?
No no no no no. Okay.
No. the the wife is, as Paul says in Galatians 328, In Christ there's neither junior Greek
24:27
slave or free, male or female. So in Christ before God worshiping God, there's absolute equality between men and women.
But your view is in the household. The dynamic between a husband and wife
24:42
is one of where the wife is submissive to the husband. And what does that look like in practice?
Can the wife say no to the husband under certain circumstances? She must say no to her husband.
So what? So, as I'm fond of telling our people, no human authority on earth is absolute.
25:00
The civil authorities is not absolute. It's a true authority.
But it's not absolute. There are times when you disobey the magistrate.
The the authority of the church, pastors and elders is true human authority, but it's not absolute. There are times when you should leave a church.
25:16
the has the authority of husband is a true authority. There are times when a wife should tell him, respectfully to pound sand.
Did you all know there have been claims? Oh, I know that you have minimized or sort of brushed under the rug sexual abuse and violence.
25:32
Yes. There have been claims, of that nature, and I say, look at them go let them say what they say. It's simply false.
So we helped a pedophile. Yeah.
yeah. Well, I, I conducted the marriage ceremony, but I,
25:49
I did do that, so. But I didn't set them up.
I didn't arrange it for it. I didn't, all the things you hear online that I did in that situation.
So why would you marry off a pedophile? because it was legal.
26:04
He is a professing Christian. the woman he married understood his background, you know, understood what she was getting into.
I didn't arrange it. It was not an arranged marriage.
It was not pressured. It was nothing like that.
But,
26:20
basically when someone, one of the things that people don't realize is what what pastors actually have to deal with, pastors are helping people and homosexuality. I mean, the Bible talked about stoning as punishment,
26:36
right? Would you endorse punishing someone who is gay in the in the America you want to be living in?
This brings up another old controversy. King Asa in Israel and King Jehoshaphat, both in modern parlance.
26:52
They both closed the bathhouses, they, shut it down, and they exiled. They said, all done with that and exiling homosexuals.
and the Scripture praises both men for doing that, which means that the requirement
27:09
for the death penalty that does exist, in Leviticus, that requirement was not a minimum penalty, but was a maximum penalty because Scripture praises the kings who didn't execute the homosexuals, they just shut the orgy down.
27:25
They just shut the party down. So, there is, latitude in the application of biblical law.
There is, latitude in how it's applied from Scripture itself. So but bottom line, do you see any America in America
27:41
you want to be living in where homosexuals are punished? I yeah, I think because just because they're, they've decided that they're, you know, they want to live freely as a gay person.
Yeah. I would say, yeah. But that punished how
27:57
when I first began ministering. But just it's just the.
You understand how the Overton Window has moved? When I first began ministering as a Christian minister, I was grown an adult and preaching the gospel.
sodomy was a
28:12
felony in all 50 states, all 50 now. And I didn't begin.
And the Supreme Court I know stepped in and overturned that. But you know my point.
Yeah, there was the Lawrence ruling. Correct.
And the Supreme Court said that that.
28:28
Yeah. The only thing, where we are, where we are now, my point is that when I began, ministering in 1977, in the late 70s and early 80s, and sodomy was a felony in all 50 states,
28:45
that America of that day was not a totalitarian hellhole. So you you would like America to go back to that?
Yep. And someone watch and be like, you want to control behavior in the bedroom?
Well, yeah. Well,
29:00
I have the advantage of having built my own house. And people like to say that liberals don't care what you do in your bedroom, but the state had opinions about how thick the sheetrock had to be in the bedroom, how far apart the sheetrock screws had to be, how big the window had to be for egress,
29:17
and whether or not I could take the mattress off the tag. What do you.
What do you mean? The government doesn't care what happens in the bedroom.
They regulate that. And that goes to your sort of libertarian.
That's exactly your libertarian tendencies. but it sounds like I mean, what your vision is
29:33
from the writings of R.J. Roach.
Dooney. You know, who is a Christian reconstructionist?
Would you call yourself a Christian reconstructionist? Maybe smaller?
Reconstruct. I was never a card carrying member of that, but I read Rushton and I read Gary North and I read read bonds and, and learned an awful lot from them.
29:49
But I never signed off on the entire project. But what what part did you not sign off on?
Oh, they were they were kind of an armory lot and fighting with each other a lot. And I, I, I think some of the applications of Old Testament law were too wooden.
30:06
Yeah. So I think that you have to budget for the fact that Christ came and transformed the world.
So when Christ died, the Old Testament law was crucified with him, and the Old Testament law rose again from the dead with him,
30:21
but rose again transformed. And the the family, the church and the civil government buckets.
Where does the poor fit in and helping the poor and the needy and the most vulnerable? Would that be up to the church or the civil government?
it'd be up to families and the church. And I would say
30:37
as a final safety net for civil government, okay. Because I know RJ rush duty.
And in many ways, he thought the church should take over. Yes. But for example, in the Old Testament, the civil government, the, the gleaning laws, for example,
30:52
where you left part of your field, for the poor to, to glean and and get sustenance. That's the sort of thing that the civil government could say, we want you to do that.
And you basically say, I think the civil government should stay out of the business
31:07
of the family units that you see as its own sort of the enterprise. The family is the Ministry of Health, Education and Welfare.
The church is the Ministry of Grace and peace or the Ministry of Word and Sacrament, and the civil government is the Ministry of Justice. Do you still believe what you said
31:24
back in the 90s, that there's a mutual affection between master and slave? yeah.
Well, yes, it depends on the, Which master? Which slave you're talking about.
Slavery was overseen and conducted by fallen human beings,
31:39
and there were horrendous abuses. And there were also people who owned slaves who were decent human beings and didn't mistreat them.
But do you think by even saying that that's minimizing the just sheer, sheer barbarity and brutality
31:55
of using human beings based on the color of their skin as property? Yeah, I think I think that system of chattel slavery was an unbiblical system, and I'm grateful it's gone.