Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 430 | Is 'Christian Nationalism' a Threat to Evangelicalism? | Guest: Nathan Finochio

Episode Date: June 1, 2021

Today, we're talking to Nathan Finochio, founder of TheosU online seminary. What is "Christian nationalism" exactly? Are "Christian nationalists" really as widespread among evangelicals as the Left thinks? We also talk about the idea of American imperialism and whether deconstructionism coming from progressive Christians is more dangerous than the perceived Christian nationalism coming from the Right. --- Today's Sponsor: Annie's Kit Clubs helps you make a picture-perfect crafting project you'll be proud to display - no matter your crafting experience! Go to AnniesKitClubs.com/ALLIE & save 50% off your first kit! --- 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. Today I am talking to Nathan Finocchio. You guys probably, I know a lot of you do. You follow him on Instagram and you know of him. You know of Theos University, the online seminary that he is a part of. Today, we are going to talk about a whole host of things. It's really a wide-ranging conversation that I know that you guys are going to like because he's super interesting. We are going to talk about deconstructionism. He's a charismatic. And so he's going to talk about some of the issues. that he sees in kind of his part of the Christian evangelical world. And then we are going to have a conversation about Christian nationalism, nationalism, imperialism. He's got some really interesting perspectives on that. And he has a lot to say that honestly, I don't think that we talk about in a very serious way very much in the Christian evangelical world. And so we're going to have that conversation because progressives are having that conversation. So that means that we need to understand what's going on. So I'm really excited for you to listen to this. So without further ado,

here is Nathan Finocchio. Nathan, thank you so much for joining us. Can you first tell everyone who you are and what you do? Yeah. So my name is Nathan Finocchio and I am the founder of Theosu and Theos Seminary. Theosu is a subscription-based theological education site. Basically, we condense kind of full-length Bible college courses from, let's say, the Book of Romans from like 36 hours to about six or eight hours, have a wide ecumenical range of teachers at theosu and people pay you know 14 bucks a month and they subscribe i'm a i'm a charismatic um evangelical political conservative uh guy and so that's kind of the space that i live in

and uh we have about just over 4 000 subscribers kind of worldwide about a quarter of them are pastors of charismatic evangelical churches. So that's kind of what I do. Yeah, that's awesome. Tell me why you guys started Thaiso. We started Thaisiou because we feel like a couple things. Firstly, we believe that the average person sitting in the pew on a Sunday morning in an evangelical charismatic church, their desire for theological depth is dramatically underestimated.

Number one, number two, we feel like the charismatic evangelical world is sort of the Wild Wild West theologically, and many schools are slipping into sort of a progressive liberalism Theologically. And so we just wanted to do something about that. We wanted to be a part of the solution for what feels like an unraveling of the evangelical charismatic movement, which has been conservative for decades, but has now kind of become kind of a swing, you know, swing state, so to speak. Yeah, and it's not just the charismatic world. It's not just the evangelical charismatic world. Obviously, that's not the world that I occupy, but I see that kind of liberalism, deconstructionism, postmodernism, infiltrating, you know, the Southern Baptist Convention, which certainly has been seen as some kind of pillar of conservatism for a long time.

Why do you think that's happening? Why do you think this kind of postmodern liberalism is infiltrating so many parts of the church that used to be seen as staunchly conservative? Yeah. A couple of reasons. I think that there's a crisis of authority. So firstly, I'd say it's epistemological. I think that kids, the younger generation, has learned an epistemology that lends itself to deconstruction that lends itself to progressive theology. And that epistemology is that I can't trust

traditional forms of authority. I can't trust the church. I can't trust my own history. So, you know, America, they're taught America's bad. They're taught the church is bad. They're taught. The Bible hurts people. And that love is the most important thing and self is the most important thing. And so to me, it's a crisis of authority. It's a crisis of, and there's just an immense, multiplied pressure on these young people to make moral choices and not be moral monsters like America, like the church. So that to me, it's like it's sort of like a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, man, like America's bad, the church is bad. I don't want to be bad, so I need to sort of... But I think that God is right and God is good, so I don't want to throw God out.

I don't want to throw Jesus out entirely. It's interesting, Ellie. Like, nobody's really throwing Jesus out. They're just giving Jesus a new accent and putting new clothes on him. Yeah. And that's kind of what, you know, that's obviously that's deconstruction. That's the most frustrating thing. So it's like, you know, they want their key...

their cake and they want to eat it too. So that's kind of my little minute spin. Yeah. I mean, there's so many different factors, I think, that have gone into why we're in the place that we're in in in evangelicalism. Can you talk a little bit more about deconstruction? There are some people that they don't know what it is. And we're also told by people that almost, like you said, like almost sound biblical.

Like they sound like they really love Jesus saying that deconstruction is actually a key part of sanctification, that Job deconstructed his faith. And so there might be some people listening who think, you know, deconstruction is awesome and wonderful. And it's something that we all have to do. Can you kind of just break that down for us? Yeah, sure. I mean, I think you do a wonderful job yourself. But just a couple of thoughts. I think that we all sort of.

So deconstruction, I think, is misunderstood to be education, right? So, you know, for example, I grew up in a charismatic community, and there were things in the charismatic community that I didn't necessarily like. And so I sort of, you know, went out exploring, and I decided that there were probably some excesses. There were some weird teachings on faith. There's some, you know, so, but that's, that's just, I mean, that's what you do, as you grow up, you start to, you know, read, you start to read the reformers, or you read, you know,

the patristics or whatever, and you just add knowledge to your faith, which is what you're supposed to do as a Christian. Deconstruction is questioning the meta-narratives. So it's kind of like, you know, is the Bible even true? What parts are even true? So it's, it's, it's, I mean, Eve was the first person to deconstruct, right? God told her thing, and she decided to question God's word, you know, who God is, which is an extension of who God is. And that's what deconstruction is. Deconstruction is basically going, you know what, I'm willing to turn this whole thing upside down because ultimately I don't trust anybody, including God. Myself is the locus of authority.

And I only trust myself and my experiences. And once again, getting back to the epistemological factor there. So that's what deconstruction is. And very few people come back from it. Very few people return to Orthodox, to historic Orthodox Christianity. So it's because it's, you know, once you start going down that path of, you're tugging, you know, deconstruction has its whole community. It's kind of like if you start, you know, obsessing over. you know, I don't know, fitness. You know, fitness has its, it's a whole community. You know,

you start wearing fitness fit fash and you, you know, and you start working up in garages, you know, like, so deconstruction has a whole thing to it. And people get into that and then they start following all these accounts and they just start literally talking babble, nonsense. Yeah. Right. And that actually is a, a perfect point that leads to the question that I was about to ask is that we're talking about epistemology and how they view, you know, truth through the prism of themselves. The only thing, like you said, that they contrasts themselves, their feelings, their lived experiences. I actually saw a post the other day that said, like, your, your marginalized status and your lived experiences are holier than the Bible. So that, I think,

is a good summation of what deconstructionists think. But at the same time, even though in that like hyper individualistic personal subjective way of obtaining knowledge, they all end up saying the same thing. So really, they just replace what they see as religious dogma, an orthodox Christianity for other kinds of religious dogma. They say that it's just through them that they're finding truth, but they all have the same talking points. And so it's, seems like they're just adopting, they're adopting a new doctrine and they are still believing in some kind of absolute truth. Because surely, if you just trusted yourself, you would all be kind of coming up with different ideas of what faith and what Jesus and what God looks like.

But they all think that Jesus was a transgender communist. So like, where does that happen? Like, where are these people going to get this information, to get their new dogmas and to get their new faith? It's not just their lived experiences. They might. must have some kind of source. Yeah, I reckon that there's definitely, you know, there's, there's unity among the orthodox, and then there's unity among the periphery. And there are some key players in the peripheral, the peripheral world of Christianity. I would say, like Richard Rohr would be one of them.

Brian Zahn would be one of them. These are some, you know, some, some, some authors that they, that people, you know, eventually gravitate to. And so, you know, they, they, they, they, they, like you said, they have a dogma. They have, there is a, there is some sort of fellowship, some sort of a common held system of belief. But I think that at the end of the day, it's probably motivated by, once again, lots of motivations, perhaps. one of the motivations is that they, you know, they have a misguided sense of love. And and to me, that's, that's, that's one of the earmarks or the watermark of Richard Roar and Brian Zond is that, you know, God has never retributed business in his justice. Everybody gets to go to

heaven, you know, Rob Bell. So it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a Christian heresy. All their heresies are Christian, which is hilarious. And you're right. You know, that nobody's deconstructing to become, you know, to worship the Norse gods, right? Like, the Norse gods are cruel. The Norse gods are horrible. Nobody's deconstructing to become a pagan. All of the, all of the deconstructionists are just Christian heresies. So that's kind of cute.

Yeah, that's interesting. And why is it? You mentioned this before. Like, why is it that they try to not just retain Jesus, but like you said, give him new clothes, characterize him and then really like detach him from the Trinity I've noticed because they don't want to think that he has anything to do with the God of the Old Testament even if that even existed they would probably say like how do they how do they get that like why do they hold on to Jesus so tightly and yet the Jesus they hold onto is not even the Jesus we see depicted in the Gospels

why not just let go of Jesus altogether because because I think that they're nervous I think they're scared. I honestly think that they believe that there's an afterlife. It's a, it's really hard to, like, the last thing that a deconstructionist has to do is scrub their conscience to basically sear their conscience of this, of the idea that there is an afterlife. Because I do think that that we all do have some sense of justice. Like surely the world is broken and needs to be put to right. And I think that most of them are going, okay, I don't like Orthodox Christian. I don't like organized religion, but I'm going to hold on to Jesus because then I think that I still squeeze in somehow. So I think it's sort of their fire insurance.

And, you know, you don't get rid of, you know, even, you know, the psyche. I mean, it's burned into you the reality of hell, right? like the and that there's surely there'd be a justice. So I think I think that's exactly it that the heresies are Christian because they're scared to just let go. To totally let go. Yeah. I also think that if you can cast Jesus into whatever image you want, it's kind of like what

C.S. Lewis talks about in screw tape letters about social justice, Christianity using Jesus or using Christianity as a means to their ends. I think Jesus is a really nice mascot because like you said, you can kind of retain your Christianity, but you can, you know, believe whatever you want to believe. And Jesus just comes along for the ride. He can make you feel good about your political activism if you believe that he was a Palestinian, you know, freedom fighter who just, you know, advocates for all the things that you advocate for. So I think it's also like a righteous sounding way to be, to be liberal and to be a secular leftist, that Jesus is kind of just coming along for the ride of your ideological journey. Yeah,

I think it's, that's similar to what you said, though, that having Jesus still at least pat you on the back and still be your cheerleader, that makes you feel like you're on the right path, even if you've abandoned all idea of Christian morality. Yeah, that's absolutely it. Yeah, shaking Jesus is going to make you really nervous because, you know, it's interesting. Well, you quoted C.S. Lewis. And isn't it funny kind of an aside here that C.S. Lewis is now like a right-wing talking point? I think I saw you say that on Instagram.

I would love for you to give me an example of that. So people are saying like if you quote C.S. Lewis, then you're what? Like you're a bigot or you're on the right or what is it? Well, for example, like C.S. Lewis writes an essay on capital punishment. He writes an essay on, you know, and the same one is it writes about retributive justice on just deserts. he writes in the abolition of man he absolutely slams socialism

yeah he writes on patriotism like quite quite profusely and he and patriotism and kind of nationalism are somewhat synonymous in terms of his descriptions as descriptors

you know Lewis's for all intents and purposes is orthodox mere Christianity is just cat it's just high Anglican Catechism. And so all that to say, you know, C.S. Lewis was sort of like, he was like in my world, particularly when I grew up, he was like sort of like left of center. And like all of my social justice friends would like quote C.S. Lewis.

And now like none of them quote C.S. Lewis. Which I think is absolutely hilarious. Oh, in the screw tape letters, you know, C.S. Lewis talks about how Christians are Christians will will use social justice, you know, to get their means that, that, you know, that, that, like, social justice is essentially, um, a ploy of the enemy, you know, to, to kind of socialize Christianity and make it palatable, but really they're, you know, they'll have other, um, ends. So it's just, it's hilarious. Yeah. Um, you know, as you see as soon as you start to realize that shift. Yeah, 100%. You talked about, you mentioned their nationalism and patriotism.

That is also like a flashpoint in Christian conversations right now that a lot of the people, I would say not even just totally progressive Christians, but like people maybe center, laughter in the center, they're really afraid to say anything about American exceptionalism or that America is a great country. there's even been this like, ugh towards the 4th of July. And then we hear all this stuff about Christian nationalism being the biggest threat to Christianity.

People like Beth Moore have said things like that. And you've really pushed back against that in a way that I haven't seen anyone else do. Because I've kind of been like, well, no, I don't think Christian nationalism is a big threat. And you have kind of said, what's wrong with Christian nationalism? So I kind of just want to hear your perspective on all of that.

Yeah. So I think that Christian nationalism, Okay, so I'll try to lay this out as best I can. So firstly, we all have a nationalistic picture, right? Like, would you not agree that everybody has a nationalistic idea? Like, as in, I want, the country should be like this. The country should be less Christian or more secular or more, like, like, doesn't, wouldn't you agree that everybody has a nationalistic ideal?

Yeah, like you're saying everyone has an idea of what they think the country should be like. Correct. Yeah, exactly. So Christians are just honest about how they want the country to be. Yeah, we want, we want our legislation to be informed by Judeo-Christian principles. We, right, all legislation is moral. And so we, that's, we're just, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're We're honest. This is what we believe. People who are secularists, you know, draw from this, that everybody draws from some sort of moral pool, right? So my first contention is that we all have a nationalistic ideal. This is what the country should be like. We all vote. We all engage politically. All of our justice initiatives. They all come from some sort of moral pool. So when you say Christian nationalists, I think, to myself, if Jesus was building a country, like, wouldn't that be cool? You know, like, what if we followed Jesus' ideals of, you know, loving people and defending people? And so,

so, you know, at first glance, you know, just on face value, Christian nationalist seems like, actually, that's a great idea, you know, to have a country, you know, I wish all of God's people were, you know, were prophets. Like, wouldn't, wouldn't that be great? So number one. Number two, though, I found, I've come to learn. There was a book written recently about Christian nationalism. The title escapes me at the moment. But basically, is it the winning back America for God one?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's from like the progressive perspective, right? Correct. Yeah. And basically what it does is it just characters. It basically takes the name Christian. nationalist and then caricatures this concept so instead of it meaning like christian and nationalist which we should talk about what nationalist means it puts these two together and it's like

christian nationalists you know hate immigration christian you know like and just it's a litany of a ridiculous caricatial interracial marriage they said that um which i don't know where they get this information, I think they based it off of like one misguided poll or something like that. And they decided they, everything that is bad about anyone, they decided, okay, like, let's make a list of that. And then let's say that people who are Christian nationalists, according to our definition, like hold on to those character qualities, like not liking a black and a white person getting married.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's just all ridiculous. So, so that is kind of a working definition. And I was seeing Christian nationalists pop up everywhere. on Instagram, you know, people going, you know, we need to repent of Christian nationalism. And I'm going, what are you talking about? Like what, you know, and I kept on asking people

to define what it was. Like, in, Christian nationalism, total sincerity. You know, like, would you please tell me what? And nobody would respond to me. Absolutely, nobody would respond to me. Finally, I got a PDF, which was basically a, um, sort of a, a skeleton or a skeleton, or a of what that book was. And then I began, okay, got you. Okay, so it is a pejorative term. And these are, these are the descriptors, et cetera.

So, and I kind of worked my way through it and kind of responded to it. It's just a lot of nonsense. But nationalism, so one of my favorite authors, G.K. Chesterton, who was a mentor of C.S. Louis. C.S. Louis instead of Chesterton, I only ever added water to his wine.

So a lot of Lewis's views are in Chesterton. And Chesterton was a, he's self-defined as an English nationalist. And when he talked about nationalism, he didn't talk about, he didn't mean it as imperialism. So this is one of the issues that people don't understand about nationalism. Nationalism is not imperialism. So imperialism is when you, violate the sovereignty of another country? Like, for example, you know, Hitler. Was Hitler a nationalist? Yeah, in some ways he was a nationalist, but it wasn't his nationalism that got him in trouble.

It was his imperialism that got him in trouble, right? He wanted the whole world to be the Third Reich. So nationalism is a passion for your own country, and it's a passion for the sovereignty of your own nation. In this way, Chesterton thought that it was the opposite of, it was the opposite of selfish because you're championing other people, not yourself, which I thought was pretty cool. And when Chesterton talked about nationalism, he loved it because he wanted the French to be French, and he wanted the English to be English. And when he visited France, he's like, man, I don't want to hear English spoken. I want to hear French spoken. And I want to eat French foods. and I want to be totally immersed in the culture.

But when I return to England, I want it to be English. And so, for example, Chesterton was a stout defender, believe it or not, at the time that he was really writing in the early 20th century. A staunch defender of Indian nationalism, like, you know, for example, like, you know, Gandhi and that whole movement, like, hey, you know, like, we want the right of self-determination. That's ultimately what nationalism is. It's the right of self-determination. We want to determine as a country who we are and what we want to be, and we don't want the British to tell us who we are and what we want to be. He was a staunch defender of Irish nationalism.

You know, let the Irish be Irish, let them be self-determining, let them be their own country. That's pretty cool stuff. Nobody would say today, you know, that Indian nationalism sucks and that it's evil, or that Irish nationalism sucks or even, you know, for that matter, Scottish nationalism. I mean, we all, everybody watches that movie Braveheart and we all cry and we all hate long shanks and we all, you know, freedom and we paint our faces blue and we're obsessed with Scottish nationalism. But for some reason, there's a disconnect when we talk about American nationalism and Scottish nationalism. And that right there is the problem.

So American nationalism is a desire for self-determination. Now, the problem with American nationalism is there's kind of two views. So in my estimation, Trump was an American nationalist. He was not an imperialist for the most part. An imperialist is somebody who, so for example, I mean, let's just take the EU and the UN for an example. Those are imperial structures. So the Assyrian Empire, the Egyptian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, those were. were imperial empires, right?

They conquered, and then they imported their culture and their ideas, et cetera. And imperialism, American imperialism, for example, looks like a Starbucks on every corner. You know, you're in Germany, and there's a Starbucks. You know, you're in Japan. There's a Starbucks. It's horrible. And then, more importantly, the EU, right? Like, or the UN, for example, those nations regularly violate the self-determination and sovereignty of other nations, and they do it by force, right?

Yeah. And they're unelected bodies who are pushing other elected bodies around, and they do it with the force of the American military machine. And so there's two types of Americanism at the moment. There's this imperial Americanism. And then there's an, there's an, there's an American nationalist ideal. And the American nationalist ideal is, hey, we want the right to self-determination. And so if you add Christian nationalism, that is just simply, we, we want our country, we want to vote Christian, we want to be Christian, we want to invite everybody to be Christian. Hey, if you want to vote secular, if you want it, whatever, but we think that our ideals are going to be better ideals. And we're going to vote that way. And we're going to, of course going to be tolerant, but we're not going to be imperial. So that's kind of how, now, the reason why nationalism got such a dirty name, because before World War II, everybody was a nationalist.

Like, everybody was talking about, man, you know, like, you know, Germany needs to be German, and Belgium needs to be Belgian, and, you know, France needs to be French, and everybody should be what they are, et cetera. But after World War II, people falsely diagnosed the German problem with misplaced nationalism, which, A, the reason why Germany was defeated because other nationalists defeated him. B, once again, Hitler was an imperialist. He was trying to, you know, I mean, obviously he had other problems, like, you know, killing Jews, for example.

But he wanted everybody to kill Jews. That's imperialism, right? Like he wanted the Polish to treat the Jews in such and such a way. And then, you know, so what happens is after the war, everybody begins to go on a tirade and begins to blame, you know, nationalism. Well, nationalism is why this happened. Well, no. Hitler was the scorpion's tale of 150 years of Frederickan exceptionalism. like that that was the issue the issue is that you guys thought that you were you know the cats meow

and you'd been telling you know that you were you know superior even in your race to everybody else and then you know you wanted to you wanted to create an empire you were imperialists you weren't just you weren't just naturalist desiring the right of self-determination you were imperialists you thought you were better and you wanted to conquer everybody so um right So people were unable to properly diagnose nationalism at the end of World War II. And they just went along with this thing. And we're like, yeah, nationalism is bad. And then that was adopted in the academy, right?

Oh, yeah, nationalists. So, you know, in the 1950s and 1960, all of a sudden we start to see this whole kickback against nationalism. And now nationalism is a dirty word. And now it's becoming a pejorative word. And let's say patriot, not nationalist. And the issue is now, Yoramazone has a book called The Virtue of Nationalism. which I highly, highly, highly recommend. He's actually, he's a Jew, he's an Old Testament scholar, which is kind of fun,

and he is a, he's an Israeli nationalist, and he talks about, there's just, I could go on and on about nationalism and about the book and about his views, but Chesterton does the same thing. Chesterton talks about how a nation is less like a business and more like a family. A nation is less a group of individuals. and more a family, like in a marriage, you know, you get into a marriage, you marry a woman, two individuals kind of coming together, and it's sort of like a business contract. But then after a while, you start having kids, everything changes.

I mean, those kids aren't in the relationship with you because it's a business, right? There are other loyalties. And so his idea here is that nationalism understands that nations are more than individuals, and there are other loyalties. And when you don't, when you disregard those nuances of those extended and complex loyalties, that's when you start to get into political trouble. So all that to say, that's sort of my two sense on Christian nationalism. I think it's a great idea. I think that it's a good idea. I think it's a God idea. I think that nations are a God idea. you know, the scriptures, the book of Revelation, for example, talks about the nations bringing

their wealth. So that's my two cents. I have a lot of thoughts and a lot of questions. So I think that there are, like your definition of nationalism, which I would agree, is simply saying that we need to put the needs of our country before the needs of another country if you are the leader of that country. And you would say that that's a good thing. that in the same way that a family would, also in the same way that like a mayor would or a governor would, it's funny how people say that putting America first, like that was Trump's line, America first. Oh, that's bigoted. That's so wrong. That seems to be what a lot of left-leading

Christians had a hard time with. Like, that's prideful. That's what we need to repent of. Jesus doesn't care about America, all that kind of stuff. But you would never blame the mayor of Tulsa for saying, hey, Tulsa's the best city in the country. I love the people of Tulsa. and I don't care. I mean, I'm sorry, but I don't care about what Baltimore needs or whatever it is. My priority is Tulsa. And I'm going to put the needs of the people of Tulsa before the needs of the people of Sacramento or whatever. No one would fault someone for that.

And actually, you would probably think it was really weird if the mayor of Tulsa was like, you know, I really actually care just as much about Dallas as I do about Tulsa. You'd be like, no, you're a horrible leader. But for whatever reason, when it comes, to national leadership. And like you said, not of any other country, but of America, people think that's prideful. If the leader of Kenya said, I love Kenya. I love Kenyans. I love Kenyan values. And I want to put Kenya first. There's not a leftist in America who would think that that's bigoted or wrong or supremacist. But because I think like you said, I guess after World War II,

and I hadn't thought about that, the West started, I guess, you know, thinking that, oh, nationalism is bad, exceptionalism is bad, which I don't think exceptionalism is bad. I think it's totally fine if someone from Australia thinks Australia

is the best country in the world. Like I want their leaders to think that. I want them to like Australia. I want them to be patriotic. And people also, I think that they get confused between that mentality,

which like you said, I think is good. And then thinking that, like, that by saying that, you're saying that God thinks that Americans are superior to other Christian or like other people in the world. And I think that's where when people say you need to repent of Christian nationalism, that's what they are assuming that patriotic Americans think,

that I think that God loves us better than they love someone from South America or that we are God's chosen nation like Israel in the Old Testament. And America, not Christians, but America is the city on a hill. and people from Brazil don't matter. I think that is what they think they are critiquing when they critique Christian nationalism. Do you agree with that? 100%.

They think that there's this hilarious idea that Americans, it's a caricature, that conservative Americans don't care about the world, don't care about other people, think that, you know, that Jesus is,

American, the Jesus is white. It's, it's so stupid. It's such a stupid caricature. Meanwhile, evangelicals, you know, feeding the world, we adopt more kids from third world countries, you know, by ratio. We give, we started all of the, you know, like world vision and compassion, et cetera. We, you know, we go on, everybody goes on mission strips. I mean, I remember being dragged to Haiti a couple of times by my dad. You know, that's what we do as conservative Christians. That's what you do. You get involved.

You go to the soup kitchen, you know, like you, that's what we. So it's just utter and total nonsense. It's, it's a caricature and it doesn't hold up. But it's convenient, right? And it's a great way to bludgeon conservatives. for going, yeah, I believe in, you know, for example, I'm a Canadian, and I live in the United States, you know, on a visa, and I've been here for 10 years, and, you know, I have to, by all means, for all intents of purposes, I'm an immigrant. And I believe in the process of immigration,

you've got to know who's coming into your country. But if you're conservative, and you say that, particularly if you're a white evangelical, right? Automatically, you don't care about people. You hate people and conservatives hate people and you're a Christian nationalist. You don't want anybody who's not white or Christian to come into the country. No, literally never said that. Although, hey, would it be a bad thing if we had,

if people that came to America who wanted to be American? You know, like, and they held some of the American philosophy. Well, there is no American philosophy. Actually, there is, there actually is American philosophy. So, you know, and that's a whole other conversation. Yeah. Do you think, this is my other question that I thought about when you were talking, do you think that imperialism, how you defined and described it, is always wrong?

Because you kind of described it as trying to, like, import or export, I guess, ideas into another country. You also kind of talked about like the exporting of power and influence in other countries, but you also talked about like exporting businesses like Starbucks into other countries. Like those are all different forms of maybe a kind of imperialism. Do you always think it's wrong? Because you kind of contrasted it to nationalism, which you think is good, but it sounds like you think imperialism is always wrong. Is it always wrong in your opinion? No, no, no. So for example, I'm not saying, that, you know, for like

Thaus you, I mean, my business is in like, you know, 60 countries or something. So I don't think that doing trade and doing business, et cetera, is, is wrong. Imperialism

is, it is, no, so for example, like, Yoram has, Yoram has only calls the EU, the Fourth Reich, which I think is hilarious. And he just basically says, like, Germany's still the one that is setting all of the pace.

They're the ones that are making all the decisions for everybody else in the EU. So it's still German rule, but it's economic. So can there be kind of, you know, economic, you know, warfare? Yeah, absolutely. am I saying that I'm not I'm not comparing that to trade I'm just saying you know if you don't do this well then we won't lend you this you know

so you know you have to fall in line and you're violating somebody else's sovereignty you know like what if what if Greece doesn't want to let in any more refugees or immigrants they're like literally hey guys we have no money we haven't had any money for 20 years right but the EU

goes well if you're going to be a part of the EU and you're going to get bank loans from us then you have to Got to be open doors. Bring the cages down. Bring the fences down. Right. That is, that's the Fourth Reich. As unpopular as it may sound.

So that's sort of what I mean more by imperialism. But for example, I like the world the way it is. And so that doesn't mean that a Japanese person, you know, can't open up a chick-fil-A. You know, I mean, like, bring chick-fil-a to Japan, by all means. But I like Japan because it's Japanese and that it's not American. And that's, I think, one of the, I think, the fundamental understandings of nationalism is that nationalism is just about nations keeping their cultures and being the way they are and thinking the way they think and allowing them to be that way and not economically muscling them into this, that of the other thing. Yeah. I think also it can't just be defined as like any other culture trying to influence another culture because like you talked about, okay, well, we defeated the Germans in World War II because of not just German imperialism, but bad German imperialism based on bad ideas. And we decided like, no, I'm sorry, Germany. Like you're not going to do that. And we're going to put. back on you. So I guess you could argue that that was a form of imperialism from the allied forces

saying, I'm sorry, Germany. Like, you don't have a right to do that. And I think that, I think that we have to make a distinction there because we don't want to be morally relativistic. Because right is right and wrong is wrong. And the problem with the Third Reich was not just imperialism, was not just nationalism, it was a bad idea. It was a bad idea. Like, objectively, it was a bad idea. And so when you have good ideas, like, we actually want that to influence. Like I do think American foreign policy has been misguided in some ways. Like we thought that importing capitalism into China was going to make them be this free democracy.

Like that didn't turn out well. It just gave them more power to be to be communist. But then you look at like, you know, the British colony of Hong Kong. Like importing Western values into Hong Kong was really good for Hong Kong. Like they wanted those Western values. Like they wanted that Western. rule of law. And now that they're under the rule of China, like they have no autonomy or no freedom. So I think it's also important to distinguish between like trying to influence people

with good ideas is good. Influencing people with bad ideas is bad. And I'm not sure. Like I don't know if we can necessarily say that that's imperialism. But I also think it's important to just be objective morally that yeah, some ideas are really bad to import and some ideas are good. Yeah, exactly. So I totally agree. Like I don't think imperialism is influencing people of good ideas. I think imperialism is musseling people, right? So, yes, I agree. The American reaction, for example, you know, England was being bombed.

Holland had been invaded. Poland had been invaded. So Germany had violated the self-determination of other countries. And so when we declared war on Germany, we weren't fighting in Germany first. We were fighting in places where they had, muscled in and shown imperial strength that that makes sense. So, you know, an imperialistic war is a war where you violate the sovereignty of somebody else. For, you know, for, for, for, for, for, so for example, you know, Augustine, as a Christian, you know, I'm an Augustinian in terms of, you know, my philosophy on war.

And Augustine believes that defensive war is the only just war. So, for example, the Americans coming to the aid of the South Vietnamese. that would that's a as far as I'm concerned that's a just war if your allies going hey we're being killed right now and we need help that that's a just war that might be the most you know controversial thing I'll ever say but that's what I believe so but that's not a but the war in Vietnam was not imperialistic in the sense that America came uninvited into the war no America came invited invited into the war by their South Vietnamese allies who were perishing. Yeah, that is, that's controversial because now we look at American history through the lens of American strength is always bad. It's always been the source of oppression and repression. And it's also interesting how if you, like, that kind of worldview, if you point out to

someone who believes that, like, well, look at all these other countries that are still oppressing their people that are corrupt, that have nothing to. do with America. Still, somehow conveniently, it always falls back on American imperialism. It always falls back that it's actually America's fault that Africa is poor and not the fact that China is actually colonizing and imperialistically invading those countries as we speak right now and exploiting them. That's a great example, I think, of what you're talking about. If you're overweight and you're black, it's white supremacy. Yeah. That's the critical race theory worldview. Everything has to fit into America bad, white bad, evangelical bad. Now evangelical has been kind of like put into that. I saw

an article in the New York Times the other day how white evangelicals are going to like stop the vaccination effort and basically arguing, okay, white evangelicals are killing people because of this. And then they linked to the study that shows what white evangelicals think about the vaccines. Well, the majority, 55% of white evangelicals plan to get the vaccine. So that, they buried that lead, that the majority of white evangelicals plan to get the vaccine, and they simply talked about, well, there's still a large percentage that don't. And because of that, they're preventing people from giving the vaccine when actually the largest populations of people who are skeptical about the vaccines are not white.

And so, yeah, it's become like the same people who are saying that, you know, Christian nationalists are everywhere and that we're the source of the problem, they're the ones that have created this boogeyman. They've created this bogeyman that has been, I don't know, it's just been seeping into American culture, I guess, for a very long time. Yeah. Okay, let's finish by, oh, go ahead, go ahead.

It just delayed for a second. Nothing. I have nothing. Nothing. Okay, let's finish by quickly talking about your book and telling people where, they can find your book, why you wrote this book Hearing God and what it's about? Yeah, I wrote the book Hearing God because I wanted to hear God. I wrote it because I was,

my background is growing up charismatic and as I began to sort of study, you know, the scriptures and ask more questions about my, you know, I'm still charismatic. I still identify as charismatic. I still believe that God talks to people. But I just felt like maybe my people, the charismatic evangelicals needed just a guide on how to hear God, and specifically that God speaks very practically and that the supernatural isn't always spectacular. Sometimes it's super ordinary. And so, like, for example, like reading the Bible. Well, the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is never going to say something that contradicts the Bible, because those are his words.

So just stuff like that. It's sort of like a, it's somewhat of a memoir of growing up charismatic meets laying out foundationally how God speaks. God speaks through parents. He speaks through mentors. primarily, I mean, first and foremost, he speaks through his word, right? But I kind of outline it. And then I sort of deal with some charismatic myths. It's a bit of a myth-busting book.

So, you know, does God speak through, you know, if I just flip the, you know, the Bible and I just put my finger down, is that how the Bible works? Is that how, is it like a Harry Potter map or something? So that's kind of the, that's the long and short of it. Yeah, and where can they find that? Anywhere they want to buy their books? Yeah, Amazon, Barnes & Nobles. Yeah, and you're on Instagram.

That's where I enjoy following both you and your brother. You do a lot of myth busting as well on Instagram. You take posts and kind of break them down. A lot of people who listen to this podcast and follow me, follow you. And they send me you and your brother's post because you guys with a lot of good humor and also in good faith. a lot of the craziness and the chaos that we're seeing with God's word. I really appreciate that.

I appreciate Theos You. I appreciate all the resources that you are putting into the hands of people. They're hungry for truth. And the only place where they're finding something masquerading is truth is these progressive deconstructionist Instagram account. So thank you for offering alternatives to that and always offering interesting perspectives. I really appreciate it. Yeah, well, the feeling's mutual.

I love your Instagram account. You, your stories, they do get a little bit long at times. I will say there's a lot of text and it's very small. So could you help a brother out? Oh, make it a little bigger. Do you have readers? What's readers? Do you have like eyeglasses?

Oh, eyeglasses that you can. Yeah, you might need it. No, I know. That's true. Sometimes I have a lot. It's typically when I'm copy and pasting like a big chunk of scripture. But you're right. Okay, I'll start to break them up.

I'll start to break them up. so the old, like you can read them. No, but you can't because you can't fit it all on there. And sometimes, like, I need to reference, I need to reference, like, this stupid post. And so it has to be seen. I can't make the fonts bigger. I'm not purposely making them small. It's just like, this is what can fit.

But I hear you. I take your feedback. I'll apply it. No, I appreciate how thorough you are. I like, like, I know that if I'm going to read your stories and when I'm reading through them, like, I appreciate how thorough you are. So like, you know, like you put in your resources. So this is the link, you know, like you're really good for that.

I need to be better at that. Well, that's because I've just noticed that, you know, people, a lot of people, you probably get this too, but I'll have talked about something one million times. And people, I'll get messages being like, why don't you ever talk about this? Or why have you never defined CRT? And I'm like, oh my gosh, if I define this one more time, I think the people who do follow me are going to freak out because I've talked about it so much. And so there's just like, I realize that there's so many people that miss contacts and need contacts and also who have no idea what you and I are

talking about. Like, there are just people that are coming in and they need a lot of information. And so I do try to provide some context. You do. So anyway, thank you so much. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us. I really, really appreciate it. And we'll put the links to Thias, you as well and anything else. maybe your book as well in the description to this podcast. Cool. Thank you.