Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 357 | Taking Cara Babies Gets Canceled & Christian Nationalism Becomes a Scapegoat

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

Today we're tackling the topics of cancel culture and Christian nationalism. Popular Instagrammer TakingCaraBabies was attacked online for donating to the Trump campaign, with many rebuking her for "extreme" views. And the Left likes to group any Christianity they don't like into the category of "Christian nationalism." This makes no sense, since Christian nationalism has no biblical foundation and should be condemned by Christians who follow God's word. Sources: ‘Taking Cara Babies’ sleep guru faces boycott for supporting Trump https://nypost.com/2021/01/23/taking-cara-babies-sleep-guru-faces-boycott-after-supporting-trump/  How White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump Extremism https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/how-white-evangelical-christians-fused-with-trump-extremism.html Christian Nationalism Is Worse Than You Think https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/january-web-only/christian-nationalism-capitol-riots-trump-podcast.html Ep 354 | Far-Left Cabinet Picks + the Dangers of Today's 'Accountability' https://apple.co/3ok8z81 --- Today's Sponsors: Built Bar is the secret to keeping your New Year's resolution! Built Bars are low-calorie, low-sugar, high-protein, high-fiber. Visit BuiltBar.com & use promo code 'RELATABLE' to get 20% off your next order. Fundrise provides access to diversified portfolios of private real estate to ALL investors with their industry leading, easy-to-use platform. Go to Fundrise.com/RELATABLE to get started. -- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. We are talking about two things today. We are talking about cancel culture as it relates to taking care of babies, a baby sleep trainer on Instagram. And then we are also going to talk about if we have time. It depends on how long my cancel culture rant is. We're going to talk about Christian nationalism and the inauguration of President Biden that happened last week and what those two things. have to do with one another, what Christian nationalism actually is, what it isn't. We've talked about that before, but we're hopefully going to get a little bit more in-depth today. We've got a big week this week. I know I've probably said that every week for the past few weeks, all of 2021 so far, but we're going to talk about Biden's executive orders. He has signed several of them now and what they actually mean. And specifically tomorrow, we're going to talk about the executive order that has to do with sex and gender and what that means for women's sports in particular. And I will be talking to a scientist who has written about

this subject extensively. We're going to be talking about how the Biden-Harris administration has been dealing with COVID, some of the false rhetoric that they've already put out, the false promises that were made during the campaign that are not going to be. able to apparently be fulfilled according to Biden himself. And so we've got a lot, a lot, a lot to talk about this week. And as always, feel free to send me your suggestions. If there's really something that you want explained or someone that you want me to talk to about a certain subject, feel free to send me a message on Instagram and I may be able to get to that. Okay, let's first talk about cancel culture and taking care of baby. So if you're not in the kind of mom's sphere on

social media, which I would say I kind of am. My husband doesn't have an Instagram, but whenever he looks at my Instagram feed, he always says that I have the most boring Instagram feed ever because I follow very few people. A lot of the people that I follow are political or cultural commentators. And I'm not following like any, you know, gossip sites. I'm not following a whole lot of like fashion bloggers or anyone that has kind of like a lot of interesting content. But I do follow a few influencers. And I follow taking care of babies. I think that she is such a joyful and a wonderful and a helpful resource for young moms, not just when it comes to sleep training your babies. If that's something that you're doing it, if you're not a mom yet and you didn't know that was a

thing, it is a thing trying to get your baby to sleep through the night. She's also just an encouragement for a lot of moms who feel worn out or they feel overwhelmed or they feel confused. She is always a bright light on Instagram, and that just can't be said for a whole lot of people. She doesn't talk politics at all. I've never seen her say anything political. She doesn't comment on what's going on in society. She didn't have anything to say about the election. She knows her audience. She knows what the point of her business is and what she is there to do and why she is there to serve people. And that's what she stays focused on. So she sells these programs that you buy and then you watch the videos online. They come with a bunch of resources

and you sleep train your baby. There's a lot of different ways to do it. There's a lot of different people who do this, but she has gotten really, really popular over 1.3 million Instagram followers. And she is like the sleep trainer to the stars. She has a lot of celebrities, a lot of influencers that trust her to help them sleep train their baby. Well, she became the center of controversy and scandal last week when it was uncovered that she donated to the Trump campaign. Mommy, Instagram erupted in anger and confusion. A bunch of influencers said, oh, my gosh, I've got to take time to process this as if Kara had, like, killed someone. People were acting like this was an affront to decency. Like, it was something that happened to them personally. Like, they had been staffed. in the back. It was so dramatic. Instagram influencer Jamie Grayson. He calls himself a baby product expert. I don't know if he has children himself, but he calls himself a baby product expert. And he self, he self describes a very liberal homosexual. That's what he said in one of his

Instagram captions when he was talking about the horrid nature of taking care of babies, of Kara Duma Plan donating to the Trump campaign. So he posted the FEC records that are public on his Instagram showing that Kara had donated to the Trump campaign between 2016 and 2019. There were dozens of other accounts doing the same thing, baby feeding accounts, baby product accounts, OBGYN accounts, etc. Some of them with hundreds of thousands of followers posting about these donations, expressing their disgust and their confusion and their sadness and anger, big little feelings, feeding littles. I know some of you, you guys follow them. They were public about their dismay.

The first account big little feeling said that they were going to unfollow. Feeding littles just said that they had to process this because Kira is their friend, and they believe that Black Lives Matter, and so this is very difficult for them, but they still love their friend. So lots of accounts and thousands of Instagrammers and even Twitter users were calling Kara a racist, calling her a white supremacist, just because, not because of anything she's said, not because of anything she's done, not because of any account that anyone gave saying, oh, yeah, Kara was, you know, racist or rude to me. Actually, a lot of the people that were calling her out, they prefaced their call out and they prefaced their announcement of unfollowing her or. removing their support from her by saying, oh, Kara has been really nice to me. Kara has been really kind to me. She helps me with my baby or she was even a friend of mine.

But now I feel like I've been duped and I can no longer support her. Like what? Absolutely terrible friends. Like even if you are an account like one of these accounts who posted like Kara is one of our friends, I'm taking time to process this. This is really hard. By the way, we believe that black lives matter. But, you know, we, You might not unfollow her because she's my friend. That's still not being a good friend. That's not being a good friend. You're jumping on the bandwagon.

You're jumping into the mob. Even if you caveat it and say, but I still love my friend. No, you're still adding to the noise and adding to the pressure and adding to the burden of criticism on this person's shoulders. So some disgruntled person posted all of her proprietary content on Reddit for free. that person probably has a lawsuit on their hands now. Obviously, that is illegal. Now, what is worrying is that, yeah, that's illegal to do. You can't take someone's copyrighted content

and then post it for free without legal ramifications. But what's worrying is is Reddit, and I don't know, maybe it's already been taken down, but is Reddit? Or is Google going to treat care differently? Are they not going to? to respect the proprietary nature of her copyrighted content because of her politics and because of the reasons that it was posted. I mean, you know, we talked about in Big Tech, if Big Tech is discriminating against people because of their politics, if they're treating people differently, because of their politics, not on evenly and fairly applied rules that they have, then you aren't living in a totally free society, even if the government,

still honors the First Amendment if other institutions, which have arguably just as much power or a competitive level of power to the government, are restricting you, or discriminating against you, you don't really totally live in a free society. So that is another concern that we have on top of all of this. Kara made a statement on her stories after the craziness had settled and said, yeah, this is what I did. I donated to President Trump, love me or hate me. I'm here to help you get your baby to sleep no matter your beliefs, no matter your political party, no matter your background, whatever, it was a perfect response. And we'll get to more of that response in just a second. This is, this is, I just talked about this a lot on Instagram. And so those of you who follow me

and look at my stories are going to, you're going to have heard this before. I'm going to repeat a lot of what I said on my story. You know that I was getting very riled up about this. I got a ton of messages from you guys because a lot of the mommy pages that you follow were throwing her under the bus and all you were seeing was this kind of self-righteous cancellation. And there were very few people just sticking up for her and saying, this is ridiculous. Now, there were some. There were even liberal influencers, a liberal influencer that I saw with lots and lots of followers who basically said, and I just forget her name now, but she basically said,

look, I'm not going to cancel her. Some of my favorite people are Republicans, you know, just because, because she donated to the Trump campaign doesn't mean I'm going to throw her under the bus. And I say, good for you. This shouldn't be a partisan issue. A lot of people are saying, I saw some accounts saying, this is not cancel culture. This is just holding someone accountable. This is accountability. Accountability isn't cancel culture. Well, we talked about that exact offense last week. And I will link to the episode that we talked about that in the description of this podcast. We go into this phrase,

hold accountable and what it actually means. The phrase hold accountable. It denotes having some kind of authority over someone. You have to have some kind of authority to hold someone to account. The phrase denotes a hierarchy, a power structure, the authority to punish someone. Random people on the internet do not have any authority or obligation to hold a stranger, quote, accountable for their political views. That's not how accountability actually works.

publicly announcing your denunciation of a person because of their vote, the same vote that, by the way, 75 million Americans cast, calling them a racist because of it, or refusing to defend that person against allegations of racism, especially if you are that person's friend, encouraging other people to unfollow them, is not accountability. That's what bullies say to make themselves feel better about taking part in a public shaming that's meant to ruin someone's life and livelihood. Posting someone's content for free that they charge money for to support themselves and their family does not make you some anti-racist hero. It makes you a fascist bully. It makes you all of the things that you claim to hate. It reveals something miserable

and very grotesque and very troubling and disturbing about your heart. Encouraging the storming of someone's Yelp page or Google reviews with negative reviews because you don't like their politics or you don't like their religious beliefs, targeting people's advertisers because you don't like their views purposely seeking out a conservative Christian florist, for example, to service your gay wedding so you can sue them when they say, no, none of this makes anyone a hero. None of this is accountability. It makes you a sad, small person. And that example of the florist is not just a random example. It's not just a figment of my imagination that's something that has actually happened. This is exactly the kind of behavior that makes a country right for totalitarianism, whether it be

fascism or communism, as we've talked about before, those two things are not on opposite ends of the spectrum. The political ideological spectrum is a circle. It's not a line. Communism and fascism are two kinds of totalitarianism that only differ in pretense, whereas fascism, the only pretense that they have, or maybe they don't have a pretense at all, but fascists just want power. Communists say that they are taking power and centralizing power in the name of, you know, alleviating oppression. But the end result is always the same. There's very little daylight, practically, and the end result between communism and fascism. They're just two parts or two kinds of totalitarianism. The deadliest revolution of the past 100 years was the Chinese.

Chinese communist revolution under Mao, which is responsible for the murder of about 80 million Chinese people. And it wasn't just a political or economic revolution that killed landowners, landlords, political dissidents, Christians, other citizens in the name of communism. It was also a cultural revolution. So when if anyone tells you, you know, that tyranny is not coming down the pipeline. Totalitarianism isn't coming down the pipeline because we have the constitution and the government isn't doing X, Y, Z. You don't understand that totalitarianism also happens on the cultural level. It happens in the private sector level as well. The communist revolution in China was a cultural revolution that set itself against old tradition, specifically what were referred to as the four olds.

So old ideas, old culture, old habits, and old customs. The culture was changed by changing public opinion through terror, through punishment, and through shame. They had what was called a struggle sessions where they would take a person who was accused of being an anti-communist or holding on to old ideas or wrong ideas, what George Orwell would call in 1984, wrong think, placed them in publicly and physically abuse them until the person confessed the crimes and repented. And this wasn't just to punish the accused, but also to shape public opinion to change culture through shame and fear. This happened in the deadliest revolution. of the past 100 years, the Chinese communist revolution under Mao, 80 million people dead. And one of the ways the people died was through this kind of struggle session that, again, happened on the cultural level, on the interpersonal level. This wasn't the government enforcing these things in all of these cases. These were people trying to change public opinion

through public shame. Totalitarianism means literally nothing against the state or nothing outside of the state. But that's not how. it starts. Totalitarianism starts with private citizens, companies, industry, schools, institutions, refusing to allow people to hold opinions outside of mainstream thought without punishment. Leftism right now hasn't always been this way, but right now and over the past several years has come to dominate our social and cultural dialogue, Hollywood, big tech, public education, mainstream media are all increasingly dominated by leftism. That is why. people who hold to, some people, obviously not all at all, but some people who hold to leftism

feel empowered to publicly shame and punish those they disagree with. It's why they are able to convince themselves that this is okay because the people who disagree with them are on, quote, the wrong side of history. They are able to delude themselves into thinking that others vote differently, not just because they see things differently, but because they're fundamentally evil. People who engage in cancel culture, digging up old tweets, getting people fired for their political or religious views, trying to shut down people's businesses and ruining their livelihood. They fancy themselves like the Allied forces storming the beaches of Normandy to defeat Nazis when really they're just nothing more than glorified internet trolls. And really,

if you thought, if you saw yourself as someone who is defeating Nazis, through what you're doing, then you would be patting yourself on the back too. You would be, you would be going at any person who disagreed with you if you believe that those on the other side of the aisle were fundamentally evil and similar to Nazis. Of course, you would have a sense of self-righteousness. But it's really embarrassing to think about these delusions of grandeur and how they are blinded to what they actually are, which is, like I said, just glorified internet trolls with a totally unearned sense of self-righteousness. It's worse than just embarrassing, though.

It is damaging to society. We can't function like this. Whether it's people doing this on the right or the left, using all of our influence and our social capital to cancel one another, just because we disagree with each other. Is this the unity that we've been hearing so much about? Is this the decency and the normalcy that we were told that we would get if we voted for Joe Biden?

Or was it really just conformity? that people were after all along. Remember, if you're a leftist listening to this, God bless you because I know that you disagree with probably everything that I say, but I appreciate you being here. I also listen to podcasts and shows from the other side of the aisle, and I know it can be frustrating, and I know you might be yelling at your stereo sometimes when I speak, but I really do appreciate you being here. And if you're thinking, no, this is not canceled culture, this is just holding someone accountable, or maybe you're thinking, yeah, but the rights views really are damaging. They really are, harmful. They really are bad. They really are worth cancellation. It's not cancel culture. It's just making

sure that racist, fascists don't have a platform, whatever it is that you're telling yourself to justify this in your mind, to try to convince yourself that you're not the one on the bad side, that you're not the fascist, that everyone else is. Understand that I as a conservative think that you as a leftist are just as immorally, dangerously, harmfully wrong. And I'm not saying you are those things, but your ideas, I believe, are immoral, dangerous, and harmful just as much as you think that my ideas are. If your answer, again, is to all of this, well, your views are actually dangerous, though. Look, you support as a true leftist, unrestricted taxpayer-funded access to killing babies in the womb. Your views cost over a million little lives every year.

And I manage to follow all kinds of people who openly hold these views without calling for their cancellation. I am just as passionate about the wrongness of your views as you are of mine, and you don't see me trying to ruin your life or anyone's life who just doesn't agree with me. And I wouldn't do that. If your worldview justifies the cancellation of people who disagree with you because you have convinced yourself that everyone who does so is fundamentally evil, you are on the bad side. Whether you're on the left or right side of the political aisle, You have a bad tree that's bearing bad fruit and you need to get rid of it. Now, I do have some caveats to all of this because I get a lot of questions.

Well, what's really canceled culture? Can we not vote with our dollar? Can we not take our money to a place that aligns with our values? Is that cancel culture? Is boycotting certain companies like Netflix? Is that cancel culture? Like, how do I know what's cancel culture? What's not?

And I'm going to explain some caveats, at least in my opinion, to all. of this. So I do think there are some caveats, some nuance, if you will, in this conversation. So I do think that you should vote with your dollar in the sense that I think it's completely fair game to support or not support a business based on their values. If you are someone who thinks, you know what, I can't take baby sleep training classes from someone who voted for Donald Trump or donated to Donald Trump. I think that's fine. I don't think that that is cancel culture. I will say that it's a lot easier for liberals to do this, and liberals do this a lot more than conservatives do

because it's harder for conservatives to do this. I mean, we follow bloggers, influencers, authors, go to salon stores, use websites, watch shows, run by people that we know hate our values who show us that they hate our values and, you know, probably hate us in our way of life. But either way, if you're a liberal or a conservative, I do think it's fair game to not support.

someone's business whose values you don't line up with. But in my opinion, this turns into cancel culture when you start orchestrating and organizing mafia-like behavior against this person or company. So doxing, intimidation, threats, just hatefulness in messages, storming their review pages, harassment, trying to get their business closed down, targeting their advertisers, targeting their website hosts, or anything that they need to do to do their business. That's wrong. That's vengeance. Roman 1619 prohibits Christians from acts of vengeance. Remember, it is not within your or my jurisdiction to quote, hold accountable, random people on the internet whose views we don't like. We can disagree with them. I think we can call them out, even if we want to, obviously,

in a respectful way. We can refuse to support them. We can use our money as we see fit. But we shouldn't try to harass or ruin people's lives who just think differently. we do. Here's another caveat. I do think that awareness campaigns and even boycotts can be called for when there is actual illegality or immorality going on. And I know immorality, that's a subjective term to a lot of people. Some people might say, well, it's absolutely immoral to donate to the Trump campaign. This is the most egregious immoral thing that you can possibly do. But I think that to be fair and to make sure that we don't go scorched earth both sides when it comes to trying to destroy each other, that we, based on our political disagreements, we need to have a very narrow view of what that means

and what actually justifies any kind of orchestrated cancellation. So I'm not talking about canceling someone for how they vote or having an unpopular religious view. That should be off the table. People boycotting Netflix, though, for streaming cuties and using a disturbing advertisement for a movie about little girls. People refusing to buy from Nike because of their use of Chinese slave labor are trying to buy less from China because of their use of slave labor. People trying to take down porn hub for allowing them monetizing non-consensual content. content and child pornography, Harvey or boycotting Harvey Weinstein movies. I think that is all fair game. We have to be able to differentiate between taking our support and even encouraging the removal

of support from institutions like this, companies like this, and seeking to destroy someone's life just because they say something or vote in a way or donate in a way that you don't like. We have to be able to have discernment to distinguish between. those two things. I also think that it's important to distinguish between, and this is obvious, but we just need to say there's a difference between boycotting Netflix, a huge company, and people encouraging everyone to unfollow a small business owner because, you know, they believe in the Bible and they believe in biblical marriage, or because someone voted for Trump along with 75 million of their fellow Americans. Like, you know you're not going to bankrupt Netflix,

by deleting your account. There's not going to be, you know, a ton of lives ruined because you did that, but you may very well forever ruin the life of a small business owner that you bully just because they don't agree with all of your views. And remember, for Christians, it's not just the what and the how of removing our support from a person or an institution or a business. It's also the why. We do nothing, as Christians, according to God's word, out of bitterness,

or selfish ambition, as Philippians 2.3 says, we put away all bitterness and wrath and slander and anger and malice, as Ephesians 431 says. We encourage, we rebuke within the church. We seek truthful, direct, proportionate justice. That's a biblical definition of justice where appropriate. But we do not avenge. We do not cancel. Like I said, Kara handled this perfectly, I think. She didn't apologize. She didn't try to justify. She didn't try to over-explain. She didn't add any caveats or loopholes or try to pretend that her views on Trump have changed and that she regrets donating to his campaign. She said, look, he did things that I like. He did things that I didn't like. But yeah, I supported him. So I think she did a really, really great job

at handling this. And then she moved on to what she does, to what she focuses on by saying, look, no matter who you are, no matter who you voted for, no matter who your background is, I'm going to help you sleep train your baby. That's what I'm here for. And I am here to love you and to help you. So good job, Kara, from taking care of babies. So here are four lessons that I think that we need to learn from all of this and that we can take to heart as we move forward in this crazy cancel culture culture in which we live. Number one, do not engage in cancel culture. We can disagree. We can call out even. We can unfollow. We can take our money elsewhere. But unless there's criminality at work or true evil on display, as we already explained,

we don't engage in the orchestration of taking down someone's business or reputation. And even then, we are called not to slander, not to gossip, not to let our motivation be revenge or malice, but rather truth and love. So we do not, under any circumstance, join in on the cancellation of someone for having an unpopular, political, or religious opinion. We're probably all guilty of this in one way or another, whether we realized it in the moment or not. And so we just have to learn from this and move forward in a better direction. Number two, if you see someone being unjustly canceled or bullied, stand up for them, publicly stand up for them.

Say something. This is part of treating people how you want to be treated. Would you want people to stand up for you if you're being bullied? Now, this doesn't mean in every single case where you see a conservative being criticized or someone with unpopular views being criticized that you always have to say something. I mean, that would be a lot. You're not responsible to do that every single time. but if you support someone or you follow someone or you see a story going around that you think

that you think explain some kind of unjust cancellation or bullying or harassment, then stand up and say something. You would want people to stand up for you if you were being targeted and bullied for your views. You would want someone to speak on your behalf. You would want someone. I would want someone to say, look, I'm going to defend what I know about her. I'm not going to let her be canceled for either an unfair characterization, slander, gossip,

or just because she's a conservative or a Christian or whatever. And I think that you would feel the same way. I would feel more confident. You would feel more confident and assured knowing that there is an army of encouragement and support behind you. So we need to stand up for people when they are canceled unjustly. Send them a private message of support, post in their defense. Take a heat for doing it. Be ready for that.

And encourage your friends to do the same. The time has come and gone for us to just be in CYA mode. And if you don't know what that is, I'm not going to say the acronym because you probably have kids in the card. But the time has come and gone for us to just be self-interested when it comes to this kind of stuff and self-protecting. When it comes to this, we have to be on each other's team. If someone comes after a Christian or conservative for their views or anyone of

any belief just for having an opinion or supporting a certain politician, we've got to stand up in solidarity of either our beliefs or just in defense of freedom of speech and thought and be able to share some of the arrows that are coming their way. Number three, stop being ashamed of your views. If you are a conservative, remember, you are not the radical. It is not radical to believe in free speech, freedom of religion, smaller government, deregulation, lower taxes, strong borders, the right to self-defense, capitalism, the scientific definition of male and female, school choice, the protection of unborn babies, that is not

radical. There's not a single one of those views that is radical. Some of these ideas just fell out of vogue like five minutes ago. It is radical to believe in policing speech and religious belief, in unencumbered bureaucratic power, and centralized bureaucratic power, and the inability to defend yourself and your family and the freedom to kill babies in the womb. Socialism, 67 genders. These are radical, some of them novel views. They are impractical beliefs. And the people who hold to them want you to think that you are crazy for not believing them. It is not even radical for you to believe what cultures around the world for millennia have believed, that families are made up of a mom and a dad and kids. It was literally just a few years ago that people decided

that the natural nuclear family is just arbitrary. You are not crazy or radical for believing what humans have believed for millennia. And more importantly, what God says he created with purpose and care just because Twitter trolls or even people in power say that you are. Nothing within the belief system that I just described is in any way shameful. They may be arguable and they may be to a lot of people up for debate and that's great. I am willing and ready and happy to welcome debate on any. of these things, but they are not ideas that you should feel like you can't safely express

or that you have to share in whispered tones in public. Because remember, for every whisper, for every totally, perfectly legitimate opinion that you muffle or don't say for fear of being canceled, you let the totalitarians when every time that we are too scared to stand up for someone whose character that we know is arguable or who is being slandered because of their views or who has been canceled because of their values. Every time that we stay silent because we don't want to catch the heat, because we want to protect ourselves, we let the totalitarians win. We might feel like we are protecting ourselves from the harm of battle,

but we're still going to be a casualty of the ultimate war. Do not apologize for your views. Do not feel like you have to justify them. Do not be embarrassed by them. State them plainly, confidently, reasonably, logically, factually, and is kindly. and as gently as humanly possible. Number four, last tip in all of this, do not apologize.

Kind of goes with number three. If the mob is mad at you for saying something or doing something that you do not regret and is not actually wrong, don't apologize. Do not explain away, do not excuse, do not bend a knee,

your options in this particular case are to double down or ignore. Now, if there was something that you legitimately did wrong, There are things or things that I've said that were misconstrued or that I should have said better. I've apologized for those things. If that's the case with you, then sure, you apologize. If it's something that you truly regret, then sure, you apologize.

You show humility. If something actually does need to be explained, by all means, you can show humility and do that. But realize and put in your mind that your contriteness that you may be showing is motivated by the Holy Spirit and is for God, not because you're scared of the pitchforks of the mob. We shouldn't do anything motivated by the mob. So I know I should have five tips to try to make this even, but I don't. Those are my tips for cancel culture.

I think that we can also, we can take the example of Kara and how she handled the whole thing so graciously, so gently, and so kindly. We can look at some of the bullies and some of the people who claim to be her friends coming after her and we can see what we shouldn't do if we say we're someone's friend or what we shouldn't do just as human beings. But instead, we can handle all things with as much grace as possible, even while we disagree. You know, I disagree with a lot of people. I publicly disagree with a lot of people. I think that's fine. I think that's totally fair game. Again, debate, discussion, all well and good. Going scorched earth and trying to ruin the lives and the

livelihoods of people who vote differently than you, who have done. different ideas than you? Guys, it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. Remember what happened in the 20th century in China? And I mean, what's still happening in a lot of ways, but totalitarianism, it doesn't spare anyone. Even if you are on the side of the cancellers right now, you will not be spared when you, when the totalitarian state that you are setting up culturally and personally actually takes root. You won't like the worlds that you are creating by canceling people because they disagree with you. I promise you that. All right. Now we're going to talk as quickly as I can about Christian nationalism, the inauguration. All right. So we've been talking about Christian nationalism.

We talked about it a couple weeks ago because Beth Moore did a Twitter thread talking about how Christian nationalism is the biggest threat to evangelicalism. And I believe I asked her on Twitter what she means by Christian nationalism did not get a response. I have asked her a few times to define several terms. And I haven't gotten a response. That's okay. No, she's a very popular lady. She has no responsibility to answer me. But I do think it's important in these kinds of conversations, whether we're talking about critical race theory and accusations of critical race theory and Marxism or whether we're talking about Christian nationalism and accusations of being a Christian nationalist, everyone needs to be on the same page for what these terms mean, or at least

the people leveling the accusations and complaints need to be very precise about their language. They need to define their terms and give examples of this. So it's not just Beth Moore. It's also the secular world and secular media talking about the dangers of Christian nationalism, especially as it relates to Trump, and specifically as it related to the capital rights that happened a few weeks ago. Lecrae, someone sent me this, said on his Instagram story that, he is glad about racism and quote Christian nationalism being held accountable, that phrase again.

So this is, I would say, a buzz phrase. Now, a lot of people on the left would say that critical race theory and Marxism, that those are buzzwords and buzz phrases on the right. But as I've said and as I've done so many times on this podcast, I think the people who talk about critical race theory and the problems with critical race theory have done a really, really good job. But painstakingly good job in defining exactly what critical race theory is, exactly what Marxism looks like, exactly what the dangers of Marxist social justice is. I think they've done a really, really good job of saying what exactly that looks like, what the examples are, why it's incongruent with biblical Christianity. I cannot say that about a lot of the people who are

leveling accusations of Christian nationalism. So it's up to me and you to figure out what is actually meant when people like Bethmore or Lecrae or Christianity today talk about Christian nationalism and what it actually looks like. And so at the Capitol right a couple weeks ago, there was Christian imagery. There were crosses. There were Bible verses. There were pictures of Jesus. And you had a lot of evangelicals saying, oh my gosh, this is so awful that they're using Jesus in the church this way. This is Christian nationalism. And I agree. I don't want people using Christian symbolism. I don't want people using the cross or a depiction of Jesus or the Icthus or whatever it is or the Bible for the justification of any kind of wickedness. But by the way, like if you go to a pride parade,

people are also holding posters with either the depiction of Jesus with a rainbow flag or using Bible verses to justify or the name of God or the name of Jesus to kind of justify their position. So this is not something at all that is exclusive to people on the right. This also happens in progressive circles. And I think that as Christians, we need to be really consistent. We need to say, okay, we should not be using and abusing the word of God or Christianity or Christian symbolism in order to decontextualize it to try to misapply it to try to misapply it to our political or social stances. However, it seems that when the right does it, there is far more of an uproar, not just within evangelicalism, but also within the mainstream media. The New York Times wrote an article how white evangelical Christians fused with Trump extremism.

always got to get the race descriptor in there. The New York Times reporters apparently, allegedly, spoke with many people at the riots, many of whom were self-professing people of faith, who also believed the election results were fraudulent. And other reporting, like one mother of 15, highlighting her fear that Biden would ultimately make the Bible hate speech based off of posts on Facebook and Twitter, which were all, quote, false. So the New York Times claims, I love when journalists insert themselves into the story and become the arbiters of truth and even theology.

The New York Times says this. This potent mix of grievance and religious fervor has turbocharged the support of a wide swath of Trump loyalists, many of whom described themselves as participants in a kind of holy war according to interviews. So according to this definition, and they're not even saying necessarily Christian nationalism, and this is what we talked about a couple weeks ago. people who call themselves Christians who see America as the city on the hill, who see America as God's chosen country, who basically read the prophecies. And I've talked to people like this.

They tend to be Q followers, although maybe they're not all Q followers, but they believe that the prophecies of the Old Testament are actually about America, that those are the things that are happening right now and that Trump is some kind of prophet. chosen by God to try to prevent bad things from happening to America. And so they really do conflate the American experience with God's eternal plan of redemption. They really conflate biblical prophecies with what's going on today. It's a very myopic view of eternity. It's a very myopic view, really, of history just in the past 400 years.

It's a very narrow view of what's going on in the world right now. And this is something that I have warned you guys against, not making America the center of prophecy or the center of God's plan. Like we are a wonderful nation that has been, I think, specially blessed by God graciously and mercifully. But we are not modern day Israel. the church is God's chosen people. And his eternal plan of redemption is going off without a hitch no matter what happens in the United States.

That doesn't mean that he doesn't care about what's going on in the United States. But for us to think that the end times are dependent on the trials that we're facing here are dependent even more superficially on who is president and who is not or what's going on behind the political scenes in America. That's wrong. The Bible does not give us any support for that kind of thinking. And so I agree with the New York Times and other critics that say people who are trying to say that America is God's chosen country and that the biblical prophecies are pointing to America's current tribulation or the onset of tribulation for American Christians. I agree that that's wrong. That's dangerous. That is a wrong interpretation of the Bible.

That's bad hermeneutics. And I do believe that that's dangerous. It's led people into a kind of. idolatry and paranoia that is damaging people's hearts and minds and their families and relationships and how they view the world. They're not viewing the world rightly. They're not trusting God. They are looking to cure or they're looking to Trump or they're looking to internet forums to try to tell them what's really going on when really God is just as much in control as he has ever been. And God is not waiting on what America does. God's plan is it dependent on what happens in

America. Again, that doesn't mean it doesn't matter what happens here, but you know that there are Christians throughout the world who have been dealing with tribulation like suffering for years and years and years. It has nothing to do with what's happening in America. You know that there are amazing, miraculous, huge things going on in the church in Lebanon, for example, or another church in the Middle East or in Asia, wherever. Like, we are not the center of the story. America is not the center of the biblical story. That is, I think, what people who, whether they know it or not, hold to Christian nationalism, that's what you need to understand. But what progressive Christians need to understand is that progressive Christianity often makes the very same theological mistakes, the very same

biblical interpretation mistakes as Christian nationalists do. So Christian nationalists basically think that bringing God's kingdom here on earth is something that they can do by voting for the right people and making sure that Trump's in power and making sure that the right things happen and that that we are able to create basically some kind of Christian nation and some kind of theocracy here on earth even though there is no biblical precedent whatsoever older New Testament for doing that I think Christian nationalists kind of think that way but progressive Christians also think that way like they also think that manifesting God's kingdom here on earth makes means that you are voting for the right social justice policies and the right social justice

politicians to bring some kind of socialist utopia here on earth in which everyone is equal. There's no disparity of outcome. And we are in this perfect collectivist heaven-like place where there is no oppression and there's no evil and there's no racism. Christian progressives who are constantly leveling complaints against Christian nationalists have the same wrong interpretation. Their visions of the future are just different. And so as Christians who seek to have a biblical worldview,

we need to be able to stand in the middle, evenly criticize both and say both are wrong, both are bad biblical interpretations, and we shouldn't be a part of it. Both of them, both ideas, both wrong interpretations of biblical prophecy and the biblical text and our mandate as Christians center our experience and the American experience in their eschatology, in their view of God's eternal plan of redemption,

in their biblical interpretation, and both are guilty of idolatry, quite frankly, in different ways. And so that's why it's very difficult for me to hear people like in Christianity, people who write for example Christianity Today like Tish Harrison Warren, talk about the dangers of Christian nationalism, and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't hear the same kind of criticism of the idolatry of progressive Christianity, which basically has the same vision, but with a different manifestation of the end goal. Here's an article in Christianity Today. So Tish Harrison Warren says, the responsibility of yesterday's violence at the Capitol must be in part

late at the feet of those evangelical leaders who ushered in and applauded Trump's presidency. It can also sadly be laid at the feet of the white American church more broadly. The article goes on to say, and this is a different article in which that quote was, Christian nationalism is a political ideology about American identity. It is a set of policy prescriptions for what the nationalists believe the American government should do. It's actually a secular philosophy. It idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life. That is Christian nationalism.

The reason I have a problem with this definition is because I think it is purposely trying to scare conservative Christians away from having influence in the spheres in which God has placed you. And it also refuses to criticize how progressive Christianity seeks to influence all the spheres that they are in. So just saying that Christian nationalism is trying to fuse what goes on in society or what goes on in civic life with Christianity. That's way too broad. Every person of every belief system tries to influence civic life with their belief system. No one is without a worldview. No one is without a morality. No one is without a belief system.

And everyone believes that their belief system is right and it's best. And you try to influence law. You try to influence academia. You try to influence curriculum. You try to influence your workplace with the worldview that you hold. And that's what everyone does. that's what everyone should do and we should debate and allow the best ideas to win. That's what it means to live in a pluralistic society, not enforcing secularism, which is not

a neutral worldview on all of our curriculum and all of our laws. Secularism also has consequences. Secularism also has dogmas. Secularism also has a belief system. But in a pluralistic society, we have people with a lot of different worldviews. And we have to debate which worldview is best, which laws are best, which values are best, which curriculum is best. That's what it means to live in a pluralistic society. It doesn't mean trying to remove all traces of Christianity from public life. And I'm afraid that this

accusation of Christian nationalism is simply trying to do that. The problem with removing any idea of the Bible or any idea of God from our public life is then you have no basis for God given rights. You have no basis for saying that we were all created equally. by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, you don't have a basis for that anymore. You don't have a transcendent, objective basis for right and wrong, for why murder is wrong, for why theft is wrong. You don't have a great moral lawgiver anymore. You no longer have at least a deistic, theistic foundation of where our rights come from, what our laws should be, when life begins, what is a male, what is a female, everything becomes confusing.

Remember, secularism is not a neutral worldview. So yes and amen to the criticism of Christian nationalism that says that America is God's chosen land and that all the biblical prophecies point to it. Yes and amen to criticism of progressive Christianity, which basically says that we also are going to create some kind of heaven here on earth. God's kingdom come through socialism. That is also wrong. Anyone that tries to say that God's kingdom is going to be brought here on earth by the politicians that we vote for, or our political activism is wrong. And quite frankly, people on the right and the left do that.

And we should reject those. But I do not agree with condemnation of Christians trying to influence the world in which they occupy with their biblical worldview. Seculars have no problem influencing the series that they occupy with their worldview. progressives have no problem with influencing the spheres that they occupy with their world deal. And I just want to point out, and I really have to finish, but I just want to, I just want to point out also that there is hardly ever any criticism of people on the left using Christianity or fusing Christianity with civic life on their end. And I just want to play you a short little clip of Biden's inauguration last week doing just that. Seen grace, how sweet the sound.

Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under the own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid. And I promise you this, as the Bible says, weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. We will get through this together. And I'm totally fine with that. Like I'm fine with that. You know, Biden says he's a Catholic. Now, I'm not a Catholic, but I have it on good authority that from the Catholics I know that you can't actually be considered a faithful Catholic and be pro-abortion. I mean, he's pro access to abortion

through all nine months paid for by the taxpayer, the Catholic friends that I have say that it is impossible to be in good standing with the Catholic Church and to have that kind of view. People say, that he is a very devout Catholic. Again, I'm not a Catholic. And so I can't speak to that. I do know that he was denied the Eucharist. I think it was at a mass in South Carolina because of his stance on abortion. I mean, he has been very wishy-washy on all of his moral views like politicians typically are. But I don't have any problem with using Bible verses and singing Amazing Grace in the inauguration. I think that's all well and good. But if you're saying that Christian nationalism is the fusing of Christian symbolism or Christianity with American civic life or trying to influence

American civic life with Christianity, then how is this not Christian nationalism? How is AOC or someone on the left saying, oh, you know, you have to be a socialist or you have to believe in the Green New Deal because Jesus tells us to care for the poor, people who claim that Jesus is a socialist, and that's why we should have X, Y, Z legislation. How is that not Christian nationalism? Why is it only conservative Christians who want to influence the spheres in which they occupy or want to influence legislation or want to influence civic life with the Bible? Why are they only Christian nationalists?

So there's a lot of hypocrisy there. We have to have some consistency. Again, I don't have any problem with the Biden administration using this. Now, do I think it's hypocritical? In some ways, I thought that Trump using Christian symbolism was hypocritical too, because I'm not sure that he knows anything about the Bible or Christianity whatsoever. But for people who are so dogmatically and militantly, this administration is secular in their beliefs about when life begins, their beliefs about abortion, their beliefs about religious liberty,

their beliefs about men and women and biology, they are so militantly secular and leftist in those things to then use Christian symbolism. I guess that's the kind of Christian nationalism that people on the left think is fine. Like I guess that's the acceptable form of Christianity when it manifests itself in strictly leftist in secular ways. I think we've got to avoid that hypocrisy. So for everyone on the left who says Christian nationalism is going to be held to account, tell me what you mean. Tell me how it's different than what happened at the inauguration. Tell me exactly what you mean by Christian nationalism, exactly what it looks like and exactly who perpetuates it.

just be every Christian conservative. We might be able to get on the same page about what it means, and if so, we can stand up against it together. But if you're misapplying these vague definitions because you think it puts you on the right side of history, as Lucre said about himself being on the right side of history, which we could get into that whole thing, but we won't, that I think you need to take a step back and be very careful about the accusations that you're leveling against people. And if you can't define Christian nationalism, then you don't need to be engaging in any debates about it. And if you also can't define critical race theory, then you don't need to be engaging in any debates on it, whether you're being accused of it or whether you're accused in someone else of it. Let's all take as many pains as possible to define our terms and to be as specific as possible.

Okay, I got to go. I will talk to you guys tomorrow.