So if you're Joe Biden standing for reelection at the age of 81, the obvious question is what exactly are you going to run on? You're not going to run on the state of the economy. You're not going to run on the state of the world, which is increasingly chaotic. You're not going to run on lengthening life expectancy because actually life expectancy is declining in the United States under his watch. So what are you going to run on? Well, you're going to run against, and the main thing Biden is going to run against is Christianity. Running against Christianity. He's already put people in prison for praying, so it's not a stretch. But of course you're not going to say, I'm running against Christianity, the world's largest religion. You're going to say I'm running against something called christian nationalism, which was a way of making traditional Christianity seem like a threat to the country rather than the principle upon which it was founded. So that is their plan. They can run against something called christian nationalism. And in this, they have the full cooperation of Hollywood and the media outlets, which are whipping up the population to a frenzy over this threat called christian nationalism.

Well, most of us, even those of us who pay some attention, aren't really sure what christian nationalism is. Is it a product of what it sounds like, which is some branding meeting in the basement of the DNC designed to make christians seem really scary if they believe in God? Maybe. We decided we would ask the person most closely identified with that phrase, christian nationalism. He's one of the rare american christian pastors who is willing to engage on questions of culture and politics. And for that, he has taken a lot of grief. But we are honored to have him. His name is Doug Wilson. He's the pastor at Christchurch in Moscow, Idaho. He's the author of several books, including a book called Mere Christendom, the Case for bringing Christianity back into modern culture. And Pastor Wilson joins us now. Pastor, thank you very much.

Pastor, it's an honor to be here. Thank you.

Thank you. So I'm sincere. I was not opposed. I'm sincerely confused by the phrase christian nationalism, which seems like an attack on Christianity to me. What is it to the extent you understand it? And are you a christian nationalist?

So I'm willing to be a christian nationalist because. Because I prefer that phrase to the phrase I usually get called. So what do you get?

What do you usually get?

White supremacist, white supremacist, slave advocate, racist, all the Theo fascist Christopher. So the left really does hate Christianity and with the phrase christian nationalism, even the part of it that's coming from the left, trying to wrap that around our necks, that's something I think I can explain. I can say, yeah, yes, but. And then explain inside of two minutes.

May I ask before you, and thank you for doing that. And I will listen raptly, because I really want to know. But just to clarify the terms, is that a phrase that you or people with your beliefs came up with, or was that a phrase that was leveled against you?

Well, both. Canon Press, located in Moscow, Idaho, has a streaming service called Canon Plus. Canon Press published the case for christian nationalism by Stephen Wolf. So that was our embrace of the term. Okay. And Stephen Wolf wrote a defense, a scholarly defense of the whole thing, the history of the whole thing. So we embraced it to that extent. But then on MSNBC just a few weeks ago, there was one of the talking heads there that said anybody who believes that rights come from God and not from Congress and not from the Supreme Court is a christian nationalist right. So anybody who, you know, making Thomas Jefferson a christian nationalist, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. So anybody who believes that on the according to the left is a christian nationalist. And there is a developed set of arguments in defense of that phrase that can be, I think, pointed out in short order. You can't, there's no. You trying to defend other things they call you is like putting lipstick on a pig. It's just you're not. It's not going to be any good.

No.

Right. But this is something that people can say, oh, I love my nation and I'm a Christian. Why can't these?

Well, that's how I feel about it. I don't know what it is. So how would you define it?

So it's, I think, very simple. If there is no God above the society, if there is no God above the state, take God away.

Yes.

The state is God.

Yes.

Okay. If there is no God above the state, the state is God. The state becomes God, and it assumes the prerogatives of deity. Cameras at every intersection, aping omniscience, omnipresence, big brothers watching you. Control of your mind, control of your mind. They want to control absolutely everything, every keystroke. They want to control everything because they're aspiring to deity. The reason they're aspiring to deity is because they don't recognize any God above them. Okay, now this is where everybody, I think I'd be with most people would be with me up to that point, all conservative, believing christians.

The state is not God.

The state is not God.

Yes.

Okay. And the early christians were persecuted not because they worshiped Jesus, but because they would not worship Caesar. All right? The whole issue of christians being thrown to the lions had to do with who they wouldn't worship. Not who they would, right? Okay. The Romans were more than happy to add Jesus to the pantheon.

Yes, exactly.

Okay. But the claims of Christ are exclusive, and christians would not recognize Caesar as lord. Jesus is Lord is the fundamental christian confession. So most christians are with me right up to that point. But then the immediate comeback question from our antagonists would be, okay, if you want to have a God above the state, smart alec, which God? Okay. And that lands you right in the middle of theological debate, which is the last place in the world a lot of people want to be, for sure. Okay, is it Allah? Is it Shiva, the God of destruction? Is it the unitarian God? Is it the christian God? What do you. You know what God is it?

Is it the satan of the church? Of Satan.

Right. And incidentally, if I could put here, our current rulers don't believe in God, but they do believe in the devil. And their belief in the devil is why they want to ascend the sides of the north. They want to be as the most high. That was the initial temptation in the garden. You shall be as God.

Yes.

Okay. So our current rulers are very ambitious, and they want to aspire to that height. We don't want to resist them in the name of Christ because we don't want to launch another series of interminable religious wars. Right. Okay. Because we don't want the Muslims fighting with the Jews fighting with the Christians fighting with, you know, all of that. All right? So that's, that's the most reasonable question when they say which God the Christian. And here's the answer to your question. The christian nationalist is the one who's willing to answer that question and speaking into the microphone, the true God, the living God, the one who exists.

Yes.

Not the one. Not the God on our money. You know, now there's a corrective there. The God on our money used to be the christian God because that was put there when there was a robust christian consensus in this country. All right? So we had an informal establishment at the founding of the United States where the religious differences that we were willing to acknowledge and work with were the differences between Baptists and Presbyterians and Anglicans. It was not the difference between Muslims and Hindus, and it wasn't the whole entire landscape, because all law, this is the next principle. All law is imposed morality by definition. By definition. It's not whether, but which. It's not whether you're imposing morality, it's which morality you're imposing. Okay? And if someone says, well, you're going to wind up imposing morality, I say, well, yeah, that's what law is. Right? You can't have a structured, ordered society without the imposition of morality.

Law is judgment.

Right? But then that leads to the question, which morality? Every, every moral system arises out of the worship of a God. All right? So in Saudi Arabia, you're going to get a moral system that is distinctly different than a moral system that arose out of a country with a christian history. Yeah, senses, all right, so the, the God you worship, this is a principle you see all through the, through the entire Bible, and that is you become like what you worship. People begin to be conformed to the image of what they consider to be the highest good. You become like what you worship. In psalm 115, it says they make idols, they that have eyes and see not ears, but they hear not noses, but they smell not. And then it says, those that make them are like unto them. You become like what you worship. All right, so if you, if you worship a God who is Allah, does not reveal himself, he reveals his will. He's a God of power, coercion, force, right? That's why muslim societies are the way they are, because you become like what you worship. The christian heritage has, unlike anything else in human history, has a balance of form and freedom, structure and liberty together.

Okay? That, I believe, is the unique contribution of christian theology. We worship God who is one God. Christians are monotheists, who is triune, Father, son and Holy Spirit. And so when you're tackling the ancient philosophical problem of the one and the many, what is ultimate diversity? Like Heraclitus taught, you can't step into the same river twice. History is just ten tons of confetti dumped into a tornado. That's chaos, that's Heraclitus. Then there's parmenides. Everything's frozen. Everything's a big unit, right? Monism or chaos, whirl is king. If you're Heraclitus and Parmenides, everything's frozen and stuck. And they wrestled with this for centuries. And then the Christians came along in the history of ideas. And you Christians, what is ultimate, the one or the many? And the Christians said, yes, yes. And christians have room, have mental space, have theological space for ultimate unity and ultimate division, the fellowship between the three persons of the Trinity. And we become like what we worship. And so consequently, Christians are the ones who can respect order and form and structure. We like order, and we love liberty. Well, where does that come from? Right? There's. There's a certain kind of person who loves liberty, and they just want to do whatever they want to do, and no one can tell me what to do about anything.

Libertine.

Libertine. And then there's the person who wants structure. They want to live in a tyrannical North Korea type of thing where every move is dictated. They want structure. Structure, structure. The christian faith provides the balance between form and freedom. And this is something that has been discussed for decades in the modern setting. Francis Schaeffer. The late Francis Schaeffer was really good at spelling this out. We want form and freedom together. When we say christian nationalism, there are only three ways of basic ways of organizing human society. There's tribalism. There's nationalism, and then there's globalism. I don't want globalism. I don't want to eat bugs, okay? I don't want tribalism, because nobody wants to live in a failed state Somalia with warlords. Nobody wants to live in thunderdome, okay? So I don't want tribalism and I don't want globalism. And we have a national structure now, okay? So as a christian, I would like that national structure to conform to the things that God wants and not the things that man wants. That's christian nationalism.

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But may I ask, of course, I agree vehemently with everything you've said. Let me pose the maybe two problems that people might have hearing the phrase christian nationalism. The first and most obvious is, well, what if I'm not christian?

Right?

How do I fit into that?

All right. You would fit in better than you're fitting in now. Okay. One of the things that a non believer, basically, I trust the Christians. This I'm speaking historically, I trust the christians to take better care of a secularist's liberty than I trust the secularists to take care of mine.

Nicely put.

Okay. I think we're, I think we're, you.

Have the last 2000 years to back you up on that.

Correct. And that's not to say that there weren't warts and sins and blemishes in christian history. There really, there really were. But you take the worst, you know, take the worst of the worst in christian history. Something like the spanish inquisition.

Right?

Okay. Some terrible, terrible thing, which I'm not carrying water for at all. Terrible thing. But the spanish inquisition killed a few thousand people over a few centuries. That was Stalin on a slow afternoon.

Yes.

Okay. The commies have killed 100 million people in the last century or so, all right? Tens of millions of people. And yet they go on serenely as though their copybook is not blotted and ours is. How long have they been dining out on the Salem witch trials or on the spanish inquisition or the fourth crusade or different things like that? Yeah, those were horrific, evil, bad things. But the christian theologian, the christian preacher has a book of God's revelation with which to condemn these things we can say that's inconsistent, that's not what God wants and we should conform to what God wants. That's christian nationalism. Christian nationalism doesn't mean disobeying God's will in the name of Jesus. Christian nationalism means conforming what we're doing to God's revealed will in the name of Jesus. It means obeying him, not disobeying him.

So christian nationalism does not imply forced conversion?

It does not.

Or a reduction in the rights of non Christians?

No, it's an expansion of the rights of non Christians. I believe an average, my standard joke picked up somewhere is if I were president and what a glorious three days that would be, we would get a lot done in those streets. But if I were in control of this, I believe the average non believer would not know what to do with all the additional liberty he would have.

Yes.

Okay. I believe.

Can you give me an example of the liberties non Christians would gain under such a structure?

How many of our chains have we gotten used to right? Too many. Too many. So one of the common things that the people who are trying to scare people with christian nationalism, like we're going to go back to the handmaid's tale type of thing, are trying to spook us with that sort of thing. And they say we need to keep the government out of our bedrooms. Keep the government out of the bedroom. Well, I had the privilege a number of years ago building my own house, and I know exactly how many screws the government required to be in the sheetrock in my bedroom, how big the windows had to be for egress in my bedroom, how thick the sheetrock had to be in my bedroom. What do you mean keep the government out of my bedroom? I can't remove the mattress tag from the mattress because the government is in my bedroom, literally. So one of the things that would happen is that you would have a great deal more practical liberty as opposed to the kind of liberty that the leftists want you to have. The kind of liberties that you can exercise in a six by eight prison cell.

You can read porn in a prison cell. Right? You can have dope smuggled into you in a prison cell. You can get high in a prison cell. You could, you can be a more.

But may I ask though, I mean, there's no question that the right, as a general, broadly speaking, offers a vision of greater personal liberty than the left, which is totalitarian. I think that's pretty clear. But why? What about Christianity would inspire you to offer more liberty as opposed to, like, your dedication to Hayek, but why Christianity?

I'm a biblical absolutist. Some people would call me a fundamentalist, like, I take everything in the Bible literally, which when Jesus says I'm the door. You don't look for a doorknob. You don't have to go lie down in a green pasture to be a good christian. So I don't take the Bible literally. I take the Bible naturally, the way it presents itself to be taken. Poetry is poetry. Vision is vision. History is history. But I'm a biblical absolutist. So what the Bible says I just take to the bank, and I have a very dim view of human wisdom. We are a piece of work. The human race is messed up, all right? And so consequently, I only want to allow coercion, which is what the magistrate does. I only want to allow coercion if there is black letter biblical justification for it. Okay? It's sort of like a. I don't have a problem prosecuting rapists because I can show you in the Bible where that should be done. I don't have a problem prosecuting murderers because I can show you in the Bible that this is something that God entrusted to the magistrate to do to keep order by punishing rape and murder and theft.

Yes.

And so on. I can't find anything in the Bible that allows the government to dictate the temperature of the water that comes out of showerhead in my bathroom. Consequently, the government has no business doing that. It's none of their business. They have no authorization. Right. So we have gotten you. William F. Buckley once joked that a liberal is someone who reaches into your shower and adjusts the temperature for you. They know better. Thomas Sowell's great book, the Vision of the Anointed, is. I think the subtitle is something like self congratulation as the basis of public policy. And that's the way it goes. They feel serenely above it all, and they want to boss everybody around. I don't want to boss anybody around unless I have authorization. In the book from the Lord. And you look at the ten Commandments, you could fit the ten Commandments on a postcard, and then you could fit the old Testament in one volume on the shelf. Go to the local library and ask to look at the code for your state. Shelf after shelf. Right. The federal register of laws. Shelf after shelf after shelf. All right? That kind of tyranny.

Somebody has a website, I think, called three felonies a day. The average American is guilty of trespassing. They can always get used for something, of course, right? Because they've got so many rules that you're always transgressing. And then when they decide to pull the switch, they can just come scoop you up and take you off, right? And make it happen. In a. In a biblical law order, you have ten commandments, and then you have the commentary on those ten Commandments, which would be the rest of the Old Testament and the New Testament. And if it's not there, right? If. If someone says, we need to prosecute this guy for hate crimes, right? As I say. Oh, as opposed to the nordinary love crimes. What are you talking about? Why are you punishing him for an attitude, right? You have no authorization for. You can hit it get. You can get him for taking the guy's bicycle or smashing in his windows. You've got authorization, biblically to punish the wrongdoer. That's romans 13, that God gives the sword to the magistrate to reward the righteous and punish the wrongdoer. But then the Bible defines what is that wrongdoing?

And certain things are. People think that if it's in the Bible, we can enforce it. Well, no, in the Bible, there's a difference between sins and crimes. A crime is something that the Bible identifies as evil, and there's a civil penalty attached. But in the ten Commandments, the 10th commandment, covetousness. There's no penalty attached. I don't want covetousness. Police. I don't want lust police. I don't want. There's no penalty attached. I have no authorization to arrest someone for looking longingly through a catalog too long. That's beyond our capacity. So we should have nothing to do with that. And you find that if you were strict with this, you're going to find. There's a wonderful title of a book, the emergence of liberty in the modern world. And it's a history of the Protestant Reformation and how a lot of our practical, substantive liberties grew out of certain theological assumptions that were established and reaffirmed, some inherited from the Middle Ages and some established anew, some established at that time. So people think that Christians are going to bring in this handmaid's tale, hellhole sort of thing. But there was, in 1892, there was a supreme court decision, and it was exquisitely named Holy Trinity versus the United States of America.

And it was Holy Trinity was the name of a church. And Congress had passed a law forbidding merchants, contractors to import a bunch of foreign labor, pay for their passage, and then release them into the country. So there was a law against paying for the passage of a foreign laborer, and that was meant for these big construction projects. Well, a church, I think, in New York named Holy Trinity called a british minister to be their new pastor, and they paid for his passage over. And so, of course, some zealous prosecutor charged, you know, went after them over this affront to the laws of the United States. And the case went all the way up to the supreme Court, and it was holy Trinity versus the United States of America. The chief justice was a man named Brewer at the time. This was 1892. And in 1892, they handled the case itself in a common sense way, deciding for the church. Look, the law wasn't talking about that. They did. And then Brewer said, and while we're on the subject, let's take this opportunity to remind everybody that the United States is a christian country. Okay?

And then he went through the history of the United States, the fundamental orders of Connecticut, the founding documents, just walk through. He was historically literate. And he said definitively in this supreme Court decision, the United States is a christian country. Now, the thing I want is to be living in 1893. That's what I want in terms of the judicial setup. I don't want to capture this, the bad guys, orwellian apparatus that they're setting up and then turn it to christian ends. I don't want to butt into their lives the way they want to butt into everybody's life.

Well, that's for sure. And what you're describing is a country that, as it has become less christian, has become more authoritarian.

Correct.

Right. And that's obvious and demonstrable.

But.

But for saying what you just said, you will be and have already been, by Russell Moore, most recently in Christianity today, described as a theocrat. And what you just described will be called theocracy.

Right.

How is what you just described different from theocracy?

Okay. What. What people. When people say, Russell Moore said, aspiring theocrat, he didn't think I'd made it yet, but he. He said that I wanted to, deep in the dark recesses of my heart, I wanted to be a theocrat. The. Here's the difference between. This is what they're. They're thinking of when they think of theocracy. They're thinking of ecclesiacracy. Right. They're ruled by priests, ruled by clerics, ruled by priests. Okay. And they're thinking of something like Iran, right. With a bunch of reformed weird beards issuing dicts, you know?

Yes.

They're doing their thing. They're thinking of a cabal of clerics and holy men and shamans and whatever, um, issuing decrees on the basis of a religion that the populace doesn't accept, and then we just jam it down their throats. Well, we don't jam things down people's throats. That's what they do. That's what they're doing now. Okay? That what they, uh. When. When Roe was first established, there were. Most of the states had laws restricting abortion. They jammed their, uh, ungodly dictate down everybody's throat. They, uh. When in the obergefell decision, uh. What they did is they jammed it down everybody's throat. They said, this is what we must. Progress waits for no man. We're going to do it now. Sure.

California passed a referendum restricting marriage to a man and a woman, and it was overturned. So much for democracy, right?

So we are not wanting to, on the basis of some clerical decision, have the clerics rule and decide, like in Iran, only a Christian. We don't want the christian ayatollahs doing that sort of thing. That's what most people think. What most people call a theocracy is actually an ecclesiacracy. Okay, Christian. The historic christian doctrine is when people say, well, Pastor Wilson, you need to affirm the separation church and state. This is the sort of thing that makes me want to dance in place, because christians invented the doctrine of separation of church and state. That's our doctrine. That is something that came from us. We're the ones who developed it. And separation of church and state is crucial because there are two governing institutions. The church governs men in a certain sphere, and the state governs men in a certain sphere because they're both forms of government. You can keep them separate, you can keep the apples and oranges separate in two bowls on the counter, because they're both fruit. Right? But when people say separation of church and state, and they mean separation of God and state, separation of morality and state, separation of ultimate truth claims and state, I would say, stop.

Wait, wait just a minute. Are you really telling me that you want to live in a state that is utterly disconnected from morality? Is that what you want? Where the. You protest and your protest is a moral one? And they say, well, we believe in the separation of morality and state, but.

As you noted at the outset, that's a nonsensical proposition that has never existed and can't exist.

I know, because all moralities arise out of a moral consensus, of course, okay. Which is overwhelmingly religious. So consequently, you can separate church and state, but you can't separate ultimate truth claims and state. It cannot be done. Every people needs to know who they are. They need to know what they are. They need to know where they came from. They need to know how we're supposed to behave on the way.

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I don't think any honest, rational person would disagree with what you just said, that all laws are judgments about how people should live in their moral judgments, and that there's going to be a system for deciding what's right and wrong, because there always is. And it's going to be, if it's marxism or christianity, one's clearly superior. I guess the question though is how do you affect or bring back such a system in a country that has no working majority of anything.

Yeah. So when you have a cacophony of laws, it reflects the cacophony of, cacophony of opinions among the people. And this is where unbridled immigration comes into the picture. You can't just import floods and floods of people with different assumptions about everything into one spot and say, play nice, children. Societies have to function on the basis of a shared moral consensus.

Exactly.

Okay. If there isn't a shared moral consensus, then what you're going to get is anarchy and disruption and conflict.

Wait a second. I have read many episcopal bishops and Russell Moore, not to beat upon poor Russell Moore, who's living in agony already, but say, make the claim that it is anti christian if you don't let anyone who wants to move to your society move here.

Right. That's like saying to a godly, sweet christian couple who has three foster children and they're taking good care. They have four kids of their own. They've taken in three foster children and they're taking good care of them. And then you show up one day with a short bus with 28 new foster children and you say, we're depositing them here and we wait, wait. The couple says, we didn't sign up for that many. What kind of a non christian attitude is that, refusing to take these 28 new foster children? Well, the, the dad who was taking care of good care of three foster children is, should be able to say, look, I'm taking care of three and I think I'm doing a good job taking care of three. But if you drop off 28 more, I'm not going to be taking good care of anybody. It's going to swamp the system. Right. You, you can't say, uh, we need to kick the doors open wide in the name of hospitality without the capacity to process them. You have to assimilate them. Right. And it's got to be orderly. So if people say, do I object to immigration?

Of course not. I object to anarchy. I object to chaos. So I object to the lawlessness that's operating on the southern border. Orderly immigration, all about that. And that would be wonderful.

So I'm sorry I've sidetracked you. I had to ask you that. But, but you were in the process, before I interrupted you, of answering the question, how do you go back to a system based on christian assumptions in a country that's no longer christian?

What you do, and this is, this is, you invite a preacher under your show, you're going to get some preaching.

Hope so.

All right. So there's no way there's no way to do it outside of God raising up preachers who preach a hot gospel and church planting. There's no way to do this politically.

You got to make the country christian again.

That's right. Basically, we're in such a mess that there is no political solution. All right? We're, we're beyond hope. There is no political solution. The next election, however happy it might make us for ten minutes, is not going to fix everything.

That's right.

Okay. Our disease is radical and it's spiritual. We've got a, we've got a radical leprosy, and the United States needs to repent of its sin, to use an old fashioned term. We need to repent of our sins, our arrogance, and turn back to God. That's what is necessary. And we need preachers who are willing to tell them to do that, to proclaim that this is what you must do, and they must not do it in terms of law. Like thou shalt, thou shalt, thou shalt. The law condemns, but the gospel liberates. So the law brings in judgment. The law, well, the law makes us aware. The rich young ruler is made aware of his lack. He's made aware of his sinfulness by the law. And then you turn to Christ, and what Christ offers is full, free forgiveness, but forgiveness with him now in charge. So forgiveness is not what Bonhoeffer would call cheap grace. It is a radical death, burial, and resurrection. All right, so this is what the Easter season is all about, death, burial, and resurrection. And the Bible tells us that when we look to Christ, we are crucified with, in faith, we're crucified with him, we're buried with him, and we rise again from the dead with him, and we ascend into the heavenly places with him that we, we are, we are made participants of the virtue of Christ by, by virtue of his death, burial and resurrection.

So America needs Jesus. America doesn't need to turn over a new leaf. America needs a new life. And new life is only given on God's terms as the sheer grace of God. That's how it's got to be. And so what we need is preachers, christian preachers, who will stop being ashamed of the name of Jesus and preach the gospel, and preach the gospel as though it's supposed to spread out into the streets after the service. So too many churches are Jesus boxes, where you go in, you have your meeting with the, with Jesus in your box, and then you go out and live pretty much like everybody else.

That's right.

You try to keep your nose a little bit cleaner than the average guy, but you still fit right in out there. But the claims of Christ are total. And the things that. The thing that we try to emphasize in our ministry is all of Christ for all of life. I'm fond of saying, theology needs to come out your fingertips. Whatever it is you take in theologically needs to be enacted and done. And if theology comes at your fingertips, and if preachers are preaching the gospel and there's a great religious reformation and revival, then, and I'm seeing some stirrings.

Of this, I am, too.

Okay, so I'm not beyond hope, but I'm beyond political hope. There is no political solution, no political hope, but that doesn't mean that there's no hope. So in the. I can point to two great. The Reformation. The great Protestant Reformation would be one, and then the evangelical awakening in the 18th century in England was another one. According to, I think, prudent observers, England was headed for their own version of the French Revolution. Things were awful in. The spiritual condition of the country was in tatters and in ruins. We sometimes think of the Victorians, 19th century englishman, as the. As the buttoned up tight. But the previous century, they were anything but buttoned up tight. They were lewd, lascivious, immoral, oppressive, and the. They were. They were headed for a revolution. The working man there was downtrodden and oppressed, and it was really, really bad. And the Wesleys and George Whitefield revival preachers, I think, were the God's instrument for saving England from their french revolution. That's the kind of thing we need. We need God.

Do you think we're headed towards something. I'm not saying french revolution, but do you think we're headed towards some sort of catastrophe?

Yes, I believe. Yes, I believe that apart from repentance, deep repentance, I believe that we're headed for real chaos. I think that the future is not going to be evenly catastrophic all over, but I believe it's going to be bumpy and chaotic in places and violent and bloody in places. And I believe that the only thing that's going to head that off is preachers who stop being ashamed of their religion.

But there are only, like, three of them in the whole country. Like, how can that happen?

Yeah, there are maybe five.

Why are there so few?

Well, there are so few. There's two things. Elijah, in a moment of despondency, said, I'm the only one left, and they're trying to kill me. And God says, well, no, I've reserved 7000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So I believe that there are thousands of faithful preachers. One of the things that happens is that the media, which is in the tank for the devil, doesn't cover that sort of thing. There could be lots of faithful ministries. I believe there are thousands of them, but they don't get coverage and they don't get highlighted. They don't get reported. You remember the Tiananmen square protest? Of course.

Tank man.

Tank man, right. But do you remember all the reporting on how many thousands of baptisms happened in the square?

No.

Thousands of baptism, christian baptisms. Christian baptisms in the square, Tiananmen Square. Our media turned it into a great high five moment for jeffersonian democracy. And that element was there, okay, but there was a hard christian element right at the center of that.

I've never heard that in my life.

Okay, thousands of baptisms in the square, in Tiananmen Square. Now the thing that, and it's that sort of thing that you could have something similar happen here. And is MSNBC gonna report on, is CB's gonna report on it? No, they are, they are combatants. They are referees in the basketball game who are dribbling and shooting with the other team.

May I ask, I have so many questions, a couple quick ones. Throughout the Old Testament, maybe even in the new, nations are punished for their sins, not just individuals but nations. Corporate right. The nation, does that still happen? Do you believe? And second, you've made reference a couple of times to America's America, not just America, but America as a nation. Its need to repent of its sins. What sins?

Okay, so yes, God still judges nations. Nations, God still judges. God is the sovereign of all the earth. He still does. Right. Wickedness still offends him, of course.

But maybe a lot of Protestants or maybe just me, think of that as taking place just on an individual level.

I think that theres a good book called the Civil War is theological crisis by Mark Noel, who said that the idea that God judges corporately is an idea that for Americans died with the american civil War because both sides were christian, professed faith in the christian God, both sides were praying for victory, and both sides concluded after the war. Well that did a lot of good. What was the meaning of that? Right. So we became after, in the aftermath of the war between the states, we became sort of agnostic on whether God ever takes sides or intervenes on behalf of righteousness or unrighteousness in a particular nation. But I believe he does. So I believe that if our nation were destroyed for our arrogance, and conceit by fireballs from heaven. If God were to do that, it would be not unjust. It would be a just judgment. We, we have been arrogant in the extreme. And I would say the central arrogance, there's, there's fruits of this arrogance downstream. The 60 million children who were aborted, the, the various things that we do, the going around the world preaching at people, how to get their life together, threatening them, killing them when we don't know how to live our lives, all of that.

That's the fruit of the central sin. The central sin is secularism. The secularism is that we can live decent, orderly lives without Christ. We don't need God in order. We don't need God in order to live placidly the way we did in the Eisenhower years with black and white sitcoms where Father knows best. And we can do that. And I'd say, yeah, okay, how's it going? We, the grand secular experiment is now at a point where they don't know what a girl is. That's because secularism is not a biologist. Right. They can't tell you what a girl is. They can't tell you what a human being is. And if you, if they can't tell you what a human being is, how can they tell you what human rights are? Well, they, they can't. And they, and more, more than that, they don't want to because, because they want to move us around as though we are just pieces on the board that they, you know, to gratify their whims and their theories. So secularism is the idea that we can establish agnosticism or atheism as the official faith of the country and govern ourselves decently without reference to God.

That is radically false. We can't do it.

Has it ever been achieved anywhere in.

History that you're aware of? No. And here's another mistake. That, and you alluded to this, the crossover between individuals and countries. So we all know atheists. You know, there's an atheist friend or an atheist neighbor who is a sweet guy, and you wouldn't mind him taking in your mail when you go on vacation, and you don't think his atheism is going to make him run over and burn down your house as soon as you're around the corner. Right? Because he's a nice guy. There are nice guy atheists here and there throughout believing countries, but there has never been an atheist country that wasn't a hellhole, okay? That's because man is collectively consistent. Individually, we have the capacity to be inconsistent?

Yes.

Okay. Individually, someone might have been brought up, gone to Sunday school, been taught not to steal and not to. But then he loses his faith in college. But he keeps all the apparatus of his upbringing. Right? He still wants to be a good citizen. He drives on the right side of the road. He does all those things because individuals have the ability to be inconsistent. But when godless types are running the show and they are making all the decisions and they don't answer to God at all, the countries that they rule are always hell holes. Always.

So secularism is the sin, and that gives rise. You've used the word arrogance two or three times, right? Will you describe what that you think that arrogance is?

Yeah, the arrogance is things that, like, we can come in and take your children away. You didn't use the right pronoun.

But let me be more precise. Why does secular secularism, do you believe, lead to arrogance?

Does it? Yeah. Because if I'm a charge of everybody and I believe I answer to no one. There is no judgment there. You know, just imagine there's no heaven, no hell below us, above us, only sky. Just imagine that. And above Buchenwald, only sky. Above Auschwitz, only sky. The universe doesn't care, okay? The universe doesn't care if I'm in charge, if I have political power, if I'm mao, and I know that power grows out of the barrel of a gun, and there's no one above me that I'm ever going to answer to, if that's my framework, I have absolutely no reason not to do whatever I please. There's no accountability. And that's what secularism leads to. It leads of necessity. And this is why, in the old order, in the christian order, it used to be laws against taking testimony in court from people who wouldn't take an oath in name of God. You couldn't testify in court if you didn't believe in a final judgment because.

There'D be no constraint on your lying.

Yeah, no reason to not lie.

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Sue, you know, possible that you've got very far out threatening views but that you haven't expressed yet, but, and I'll ask you if you do, but oh.

No, everything's, I'm in the middle of the road. Extremists are to my right and left.

Well, you are kind of in the middle of the road, at least in what you've said so far. From a christian perspective, you're not, you don't want to convert anyone by force. You want people to have more freedom to make their own decisions about what they believe and how they want to live. You're against arrogance and hurting people. I mean, these are not crazy views. So why are you so hated by, so obviously by the left but also by a lot of christian leaders don't like you and are always attacking you. What is that?

Well, some, the left hates what I'm talking about. I think because I'm about to touch the thing with a needle, I'm about to, I'm going for the sore spot. The sore spot is this sec, this radical disease of secularism. They want to continue to govern their affairs without any kind of accountability.

Yes.

Okay. They want, they want to be left alone as they are running the show, and they will give the treatment to anybody who crosses them. All right. You've gotten the treatment before I get the treatment. They know how to rough somebody up. Okay. And there are christians who distance themselves from me because they see that.

Right. But if they're self described christians, again, I don't want to use his name once again, but the guy who edits Christianity today is fixated on you. David French is a New York Times columnist who calls himself a Christian. And they really go out of their way to attack you. Why, your theology doesn't sound so different from kind of conventional christian theology as I understand it.

Right. Here's the, this is the, I think the distinction, I mean it.

Okay. There's that.

Okay. We ought to acknowledge God and I mean that. We really should. Right. So there's a difference between that and wanting a place at the table.

Yeah.

So David French and Russell Moore and people like that, what they want to do is they want to operate in a secular republic and they want a place at the table. Okay. They want a place at the table. They want to be treated with respect. And in return, they say, we will treat all your opposing views with respect. And what we ask is you treat us with respect and we would like a place at the table, please. Now, I don't, I don't have any illusions about this. When we're all rounded up and taken off in cattle cars to the camps. David French and Russell Moore are going to be in the next car over. Right?

Actually, I think they'll be guarding you well.

I think the left hates its tools.

Yes. Well, that is true.

Okay. And I believe that, let's say David French and Russell Moore are to take the most charitable take on it. They would be tools.

Definitely tools. Yeah.

Okay. And the tools, the left breaks them and throws them away when they're done with them. And right now. But what is the use of the tool? The tool is to say, hey, we will give you respect. You're the kind of Christian who could write, get an article accepted by the Atlantic. You're the kind of Christian who could write for the New York Times. You're the kind of Christian who does that as opposed to these extreme guys out here. But the extreme guys are saying things like, well, let's love God and love our neighbor and build a christian community and worship God faithfully. And what's radical about this well, we actually believe all of it. We believe that Christ really is Lord of everything, and we should live and pray and love as though we actually believe that. And that takes us back to the earlier point. To confess that Jesus is Lord is to confess that Caesar isn't, right. That's the issue. Going back to the early christians would not worship Caesar, and I'm not going to worship the state. Right. If the. If there is no God over the state, the state becomes God, and they proclaim themselves God.

I'm going to be like Nebuchadnezzar, like Daniel's three friends who refuse to baptize Shadrach. I've got a grandson named Shadrach. Wow. Yeah. So we want to pass that legacy on, refusing to bow down. And Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego said to the king, our God is able to deliver us, but whether he does or not, we fear him and not you. And that's the thing. That's the challenge that the secular state cannot abide. Another great Thomas Sowell quote, I'll paraphrase it. He said, it's amazing how much panic can be thrown among people by the behavior of one honest man.

That's true.

Right? One honest man can throw people into a state of consternation and panic because you're willing to say, look, this is the way it is. We need to love God, hate sin.

That's. Boy, that is the truest thing. So let me give you the sincerity test, or the ultimate test, and I'm asking this on the basis of the following assumption, that people, particularly preachers, ought to have lives that reflect what they preach. You can judge the tree by the fruits. So how many children do you have?

I've got three children.

How many grandchildren do you have?

18 grandchildren and two great grandchildren just lately arrived.

So 23 descendants, plus your wife, right? How many of those 23 are christians?

All of them.

All of them.

All of them.

How often do you see them?

On average, weekly, if not more. They all live in Moscow. Some of my grandkids are studying out of Moscow.

They all live near you?

They all live in Moscow. They're all centered out of Moscow. And the ones who are studying away are likely to wind up back in Moscow. We have a Sabbath dinner every Saturday night to kick off the Lord's day, to prepare for worship in the morning. Your family does, our family does, the extended family. So all, all of us gather for a Sabbath dinner, and then extended family, some suretail relatives, and any company that is in town. So on a weekly basis, there's like 50 or 50 or so at dinner. At dinner. And so we have this Sabbath dinner and we begin with prayer, I ask some catechism questions of the grandkids, we sing and then we have a meal together. So how did you do, how did.

You pull that off?

Well, we didn't, the Lord has been very, very kind to us. But the, in one Timothy three and in Titus one, Paul says if a man doesn't manage his family well, how can he manage the household of God? How can he work in the household of God if his own family's not in order?

So that is the mo, I mean you just cited the verses, it's obviously part of christian teaching. Theology. Right, teaching, but it also comports with common sense. It's obvious why do, but that is not the rule in christian churches. Preacher's kid is an epithet for a reason, right?

Pks for a reason, and MK's missionary kids the same.

So. But why isn't that, I don't know if enforced is the word, but even acknowledged as a really important principle. If I'm going to follow you, I have to see as the leader of my congregation or my spiritual guide, then I have to see that the people in your care, your family, have respect for you and love for you and are listening to you. Like what? That seems so obvious to me.

Do your children love God like you do? Yeah. Right. And one of the reasons.

When did we give up on that standard?

Well, I think it's always been a challenging one and I, but I suspect that one of the reasons why congregations give ministers a pass on on this is it helps them to feel better about how their kids are doing.

Your kids are screwed up too.

Yeah. Our Johnny is not, not the top of the line, but at least he's better than the preacher's kid or he's in the same league as the preacher's kid. So some, there's a difference between christian forgiveness and cutting slack. Right, right. So we have confused the one with the other and began cutting slack where we ought to have been forgiving. So we have, we're Presbyterian where our church is Presbyterian. We're not, not lesbitarian, we're Presbyterian. We're the kind of Presbyterians who believe the Bible. And there are two branches of church, correct? Yeah. So they're, yes, and we're in another denomination, crac. And we are, that means, the greek word for elder is presbyteros. That's where Presbyterian comes from. And we have a body of elders that govern our local church and we have this standard of family and order for the elders of the church. And one of the things we ask an elder who's coming on to serve is if one of your kids, if there's a wobble develops, will you bring it up to us so that we don't have to chase you? We have given leaves of absence to an elder. Why don't you take a leave of absence from eldering duties for six months so you can pay attention to your kids, so you can shepherd your family first?

Yes. All right. So shepherd your family first and by God's grace, that's a standard that we have been pursuing for years now. Does it work? Yes. We have a body of elders whose kids walk with God, whose kids love God. And if, and if a child rebelled and walked away, that elder would resign from the elder board because we hold. That's the teaching of the.

Yeah. If your own kids don't believe you, why should I?

Now, at the same time, I don't want to water this down. I want to say we believe that we're evaluating character, not counting rocks. Right? So let's say you had an elder who had four kids of his own and they're all walking with God. And then his brother, who was an atheist, got killed in a car wreck and they adopted a twelve year old girl. I get it.

You say, okay, trying to assess it on the marriage.

You assess it on a case by case basis. But as a general pattern and a general rule, the quality, I wrote a book on this called the neglected qualification.

Really?

Yeah.

I didn't even know that when I asked you.

Oh. So, yes, I think that this matters. And I believe that it's Christianity. When I said, theology flows at your fingertips. It's supposed to flow out first to the people who know you best, people in your household, the people in your family.

I just can't tell you how much I agree with that more than anything. Thank you for saying it. So I just want to end with your vision of where we're going. And I think you have probably disarmed your critics by saying, as you did very clearly, I'm not calling for a political solution to this. The country itself has to change and be worthy of living the way that you hope that it does. What are the, and then you said, well, but I see signs of that happening. What are they?

Right. So I've been talking about these things in varying, to varying degrees for 30 to 40 years. And I can see the difference between how this message resonates now versus how it resonated with christians 30 years ago. Okay, so there are a lot of hungry christians who were awakened, not woke, but awakened by the COVID fiasco and their pastors flaked in such a disgraceful way. And the state said, your services are not essential. Pot shops are, and abortion clinics are, and pornography shops are. But church is not a sense.

Or christian leaders who were afraid to die themselves. What was that? If you're a christian leader and you're afraid to die, maybe you're not telling the truth about what you believe. Right? Isn't there a whole religion about this?

Right. It was a. God says. It says in Hebrews that God shakes down. God sends an earthquake. He shakes things so that that which cannot be shaken may remain. So there's a pressure test, or there was a crisis that happened a couple years ago and two or three years ago now. And in that crisis, it revealed the instability and the frailty of a lot of evangelical christian leadership, and it awakened in a bunch of christians a hunger for the kind of leadership that was now apparent they didn't have. Right. And so we have seen our influence grow and explode. There's been a refugee column of sorts, a massive influx of people moving to Moscow, Idaho, for the last couple of years. And we've. It's hard to keep up with every. There was a long stretch where every week at church I'd meet somebody new, and they say, well, we're here now, and people are hungry, hungry, hungry for someone to speak the word of God. This is what God would have us do. So the people are hungry for it in a way that I've never seen before. And I hear from friends around the country similar sorts of stories.

And there were a number of men who didn't fold, John MacArthur in California being the most notable of them. And those pastors who didn't capitulate, who didn't bend, have seen explosive growth, and. And growth is not its own justification.

Right?

Cancer grows. Morning glory grows. But in this setting, people who love Jesus, being attracted to people who are willing to proclaim the name of Jesus, whatever the state says about it is, I think, nothing but a good sign.

So it sounds like you feel hopeful, or. I don't want to put words in your mouth.

No, very. I'm very hopeful.

What do you think? And this is my last question, like, what is going on in the world? And I know that everybody famously feels like they're in the middle of some historical reset, and it's the fall of Rome or the end of times or whatever, but this doesn't feel like a normal moment.

No, it's not a normal moment. One of the reasons this is a sort of a practical, pragmatic, almost carnal observation. But I'm hopeful because in the long run, stupidity never works. You can proclaim all you want, but you can't make the world be a different. You have to live in the world God actually made. You don't get to live in the world of your own imagining. You have to live in the world that God made, not the world that you want to make, and consequently, you have to obey its rules.

Yes, natural law.

Yeah, I saw a great t shirt once. Gravity. It's not just a good idea, it's the law. So with all this, I'm hopeful because I believe the promises of psalms, the promises of Isaiah, the promises of given to Abraham, through you, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. I believe that God's plans for this world are for good, not evil. I believe that God sent his son to be the savior of the world, not to attempt to save the world. Jesus didn't come to give saving the world the old college try. The most famous verse in the Bible, John 316, is followed by, God did not. 317. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. So Jesus is not only the offered answer that will be rejected, Jesus is the answer that will be accepted. So consequently, this is another rabbit trail. But our eschatology, our view of the final things, is what's called post millennial, which is we have a very optimistic view of the future. We believe that the gospel is going to continue to grow and expand.

The church is going to be victorious, the great commission is going to be fulfilled, and we win. We win, and then the Lord comes back. So. And that doesn't mean we win the game. It's got four quarters, and we're ten minutes into the first quarter. The first quarter can go badly. While we're learning, learning how to play the game, learning what to do and not to, but, you know, it's you. You can't take the microcosm and expand out from that. You might have a soldier pinned down by enemy fire on Normandy beach, and he knows his mission is to get to the top of the next ridge, and he can't even get out from behind a sand dune. He could be mightily discouraged because of his position, while at the same moment, General Eisenhower is looking at the map with satisfaction. Right?

Yes.

So zoom out. Take the long view. What's human history. Like, how long do we have left? I don't believe the world is going to end in the next generation. I believe that the christian church is going to. The prophet Habakkuk says, the earth will be full of the glory, the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. So we have great hope that the gospel in its potency is going to be proclaimed and is going to take root and flourish. So we might lose our lives? You can lose your life in a winning battle. A soldier on the winning side can lose in his little segment. But that's all right because Christ is Lord.

Are you afraid of anything?

I'm afraid of me.

That is the best place to start. I always say to my wife, the one person I really don't trust is me.

So basically, one of the, one of my prayers is, don't screw up. No, don't screw up. Because basically there's a great story where Chesterton was asked, along with a bunch of other men to submit an essay on what's wrong with the world. You know, they were running a series in the newspaper, what's wrong with the world? And Chesterton wrote a two word essay. It was I am. That's what that is.

Wisdom. How do, how does one get an invite to your 50 man Sabbath dinner?

One chats with me after the show. You'd be most, you'd be most welcome anytime.

I'm definitely going to do that. Pastor Doug Wilson, thank you so much for spending all this time.

Oh, happy to do it. Thank you.

Appreciate it. Thank you.