Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 920 | Russell Moore, David French & the Fake Threat of Christian Nationalism | Guest: John Cooper

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

Today we're joined by frontman of the band Skillet, John Cooper, to discuss his book, "Wimpy, Weak & Woke: How Truth Can Save America from Utopian Destruction," the bogeyman of "Christian nationalism" that the Left continues to perpetuate, and how we as believers should approach the war against true Christianity and the West. We start off with a look at the Christian leaders who led people astray during COVID lockdowns and BLM and the destruction that critical theory has wrought on Christianity as a whole. We talk about the anti-Christian and anti-Western movement and discuss why progressive Christians who claim to have the right intentions but disregard outcomes aren't actually being loving at all. Then, we look at the upcoming documentary on Christian nationalism featuring Russell Moore and David French and why the implications the film seems to make about conservative Christians are not only misguided but dangerous. We also talk about how the progressive view of "Utopia" is actually the opposite of the kingdom of heaven. --- Timecodes: (01:58) Weak Christian leadership during Covid (09:10) Anti-Christian movement (13:40) Intentions vs. outcomes (18:55) Christian nationalism / David French & Russell Moore (34:40) The real threat (39:55) Defining "wimpy," "weak," and "woke" (44:09) Utopia (49:55) "Did God really say...?" (53:52) "Christian nationalism" & parental rights --- Today's Sponsors: Cozy Earth — go to CozyEarth.com and use promo code 'RELATABLE' at checkout to save 35% off your order! Naturally It's Clean — visit https://naturallyitsclean.com/allie and use promo code "ALLIE" to receive 15% off your order. If you are an Amazon shopper you can visit https://amzn.to/3IyjFUJ, but the promo code discount is only valid on their direct website at www.naturallyitsclean.com/Allie. Seven Weeks Coffee — Seven Weeks is a pro-life coffee company with a simple mission: DONATE 10% of every sale to pregnancy care centers across America. Get your organically farmed and pesticide-free coffee at sevenweekscoffee.com and let your coffee serve a greater purpose. Use the promo code 'ALLIE' to save 10% off your order. My Patriot Supply — prepare yourself for anything with long-term emergency food storage. Get $200 of survival gear when you buy a Four-Month Emergency Food Kit when you go to MyPatriotSupply.com. --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 316 | Resisting Woke-ism in the Church | Guest: John Cooper https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-316-resisting-woke-ism-in-the-church-guest-john-cooper/id1359249098?i=1000495518787 Ep 421 | When Culture's Confused, Christians Shouldn't Be | Guest: John Cooper https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-421-when-cultures-confused-christians-shouldnt-be/id1359249098?i=1000522002199 Ep 430 | Is 'Christian Nationalism' a Threat to Evangelicalism? | Guest: Nathan Finochio https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-430-is-christian-nationalism-a-threat-to/id1359249098?i=1000523771597 Ep 547 | The Christian Nationalist Bogeyman https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-547-the-christian-nationalist-bogeyman/id1359249098?i=1000547708020 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this

T-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. John Cooper of Skillet is here today to talk about his new book, Wimpy Week and Woke. And we are also going to talk about the documentary that has been circulating Twitter about the threat of Nationalism. John is going to give his reaction, his response on whether Christian nationalism is really the threat to democracy that we are hearing. It is. We're going to talk about that and a lot more. You're going to love, love, love this conversation. It's really powerful what he's got to say. And this episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use code Alley for a discount. That's good ranchers.com. Code Alley. John Cooper, thanks so much for taking the time to be here. You know I'm excited to be here. I'm pumped up. Yeah, I know.

You're always pumped up. That's what I love about you. We did talk about that. I am usually always pumped up, but I'm extra excited. As my granddad would say, I'm extra excited today. Extra excited. Well, thanks so much for bringing in the excitement and your pumped up attitude to relate to.

We need it because there's a lot going on. There's a lot to kind of make us a little sad, a little scared about the state of the world. And that's why we're going to talk about your book. We're going to talk about lots of things. Wimpy, weak, and woke, how truth can save America from utopian destruction. Whoa. That seems like exactly what we need to hear because gosh, my goodness, there's a lot of chaos waiting us down. So tell us just a little bit about this book. Why do you write it? Yeah. You know, there is a lot of chaos. I mean, I've never seen chaos like this. 20 hit and my whole world like shattered. I was like no, no, this could never happen in America.

Nobody would ever agree to lock down in your house for basically indefinite periods of time. What really shocked me was the response of Christianity and obviously that's something you, I know you talk a lot about, we agree on. I never expected Christians to just be like, yeah, that's fine. We won't go to church and forever. And then to not make it, not make noise, I remember when all this stuff started happening, they were opening strip clubs, they're opening casinos, you've got weed stores open, liquor stores.

I was just like, what? I'm going to church, you know? And I remember when I got really loud about it was because in 2020, I had a friend that had gone to church with me. She went progressive, meaning towards progressive Christianity, sort of half de-converter of faith,

but still yells at Christians about what Jesus is really like, even though she clearly doesn't know Christ. But anyway, that's beyond the point. And so she was on social media. She was yelling at people for wanting to open churches. And literally five days later on her social media, she's on at a BLM rally outside. There must have been 10,000 people, no mask. And she was like, this is what it truly means to stand up, you know, for God and to do what's right.

And I was like, I am not letting these people bully me anymore. These people are not, they're not using good faith. These are not good faith arguments. So the reason I wrote Wimpy Week and Woke is I truly believe no alarmism. I really believe we are on the precipice of the end of Western civilization. And I don't mean that. Like everybody freak out and we have no hope. People who know Jesus, we have all the hope in the world.

So I'm an optimist, but I'm also going, just being clear, we're on the precipice of the end of Western civilization. and things are going to get really, really bad if we don't begin to wake up and realize how wonderful it is to have liberty in the church. I believe that the church would just act like the church. I think this thing would turn around like that. I think it would happen so fast. But the church is going to have to wake up.

Unfortunately, a lot of the Big Eva elites, we call them Big Eva elites, or the institutional elites, the people that write for New York Times, the Christian leaders who write for New York Times or whatever, a lot of them are also, they're on the same bandwagon. They're driving the bus off the cliff towards Utopia. And they don't know that there's no such thing as Utopia. They're going to fall off the cliff. And it's not going to be good.

Yeah, you know, you're talking about Christian leaders who supported shutting down churches. I remember Andy Stanley. He gave an, of course, virtual speech for Liberty University during COVID. And he said, you know, some people are saying that Jesus calls the church to meet. No, he doesn't. And literally, he said explicitly that the church isn't necessarily called to meet physically. If anyone doubts this, they can go look it up. It's out there. The transcript, the video is all out there. So here we have a very prominent, a very influential leader within evangelical Christianity

telling Christians that you are not commanded to meet together, which of course, we are commanded to meet together. Do not neglect meeting together, as is the habit of some. is explicitly what we're told. So of course there are going to be Christians who say, well, Andy Stanley knows better than I do. These leaders know better than I do. Shouldn't I just listen to them? Shouldn't I just hole up in my house?

Isn't that the loving thing to do? So it put the church in a really tough and cowardly spot. Yeah, I think that was what was so difficult about 2020. We kind of thought that everybody agreed on all the stuff, all of us Christians. We pretty much agree on a lot of this. and all of a sudden our world got shattered. And all of a sudden, even within families, you're going, wait a minute, we don't, we don't agree on this.

Now I'm literally not being like Jesus because I want to go to a church meeting. I'm not being like Jesus because I don't support the BLM rallies because I know it's not actually about caring for black people. I know that. I've read it. It's not. So now I'm not being like Jesus. There's two different ways to go about this.

I wouldn't mind mentioning it. Let's talk to people who aren't Christians for a second. One way to talk about it is this. These Christian leaders hurt us so much. We're not even talking about the Christianity side. Everybody agrees now. Even a lot of my progressive friends agree. They wouldn't change anything, but they go, okay, the lockdowns really hurt kids. They would agree with that. It did hurt. They wouldn't change it because we were trying. We were trying to help people, you know. But what these Christian leaders did was, A, they actually hurt people. It's not good for human beings to be locked in your house for six months. It's not

actually good, and they should know that. It hurt kids. It's not good for your spiritual health or your mental health to not be around other people. So it clearly did it work on a natural level. Then when you look at the Christian side, what is really sad about it is you just have people that they have these agendas and these ideologies. This is what critical theory has done to Christianity. They have an ideological ends in their mind, and then they go back and they try to find a proof text from the Bible for that ideological ends because they go, that's what the world wants. That's what being a good witness is to them. Being a good witness for Jesus means saying, what is it that you guys want me to say? And I want you to know that I'm a good person, that I'm a

loving person. I'll say anything I need to say so that you think that. And that makes me a good witness. So it's actually the inverse of what the church is called to do. We're supposed to be a prophetic witness to speak truth to the culture. I mean, Jesus said, the world hates me because I testify that its works are evil. I think what we're witnessing here in evangelicalism is basically this. Here's the short version of it. They want to create a new kind of Christianity that makes the world not hate us so much. Period. That's it. It's pretty simple. actually. Yeah. And COVID definitely revealed that with the dividing lines there of not just, hey, I think that you're wrong scientifically for not getting the vaccine, but I think that you are not a

Christian, we were told, if you don't get the vaccine. And then that was exacerbated or maybe we were presented with new dividing lines during the summer of the riots after George Floyd. And so tell us how that then played a wrong. role into what you're talking about, the push for a new kind of neutered Christianity that just goes along with what the world calls justice and what the world calls truth and what the world calls morality. Yeah, you know, I think what's happened is this. So probably most people listening to the show are going to know a lot of this, but I think I can say it in a simple way. So the anti-Christian movement is really the same thing as the anti-Christian movement. Is the anti-Christian

Western civilization movement. So it's sort of like when October 7 of the Israel Massacre happens, you've got college kids supporting, actually cheering on Hamas. It was kind of a little shocking. But because I've been doing

so much research, I was like, that's not shocking at all. That totally makes sense because the movement to destroy America, to destroy Western civilization at its root is against Christianity. And what I think that some some people don't understand is that they're not against this because we believe that Jesus is God.

They don't really care if you believe that Jesus is God. There's a quote in my book from Nietzsche. I'm not going to say the quote word for words to paraphrase. But Nietzsche is basically like this. He basically says, we've been attacking Christianity in all the wrong ways. It doesn't matter if you believe a proposition that Jesus is God or died on the cross or rose from the dead. That doesn't matter. We have to attack Christianity at its moral foundations. It's the morality of Christianity that is ruining people's lives, according to Nietzsche, and according to the postmoderns, and according to the critical theorists and Marx.

It's the morals that you have to do. You can believe in Jesus. You can believe in little fairies. You can believe in aliens that came here and built the pyramids. We don't really care what you believe, as long as you don't step on my moral situation. going on here. And so because that has become so popular, the church is then trying to say, oh, my gosh, how are we going to synthesize this new worldview into Christianity? And that's why they took the social justice stuff. They took it in. And they feel these words are like

full of so much semantic overload. They make racism, systemic racism, the oppressed, the marginalized. And they use them in any way they need to use them to show the world we're on. your side, we love you. And what you end up doing is supporting massive amounts of injustice in the name of Christ. It's actually a really terrible thing. Then something really bad happens. Here's a good example. My friend that I told you that was doing the post that was at the BLM rally actually lives in Minneapolis and was supporting the defund the police movement in Minneapolis. I spoke out about the defund the police movement. My friend, who's now kind of a deconverted from progressive Christianity, whatever you want to call her, is telling me that I'm not

being a good witness for Jesus because I'm not standing up for the marginalized. I tell her, you're doing this defund the police saying this is going to hurt the people you say you care about. This is going to hurt poor people. It's going to hurt people in marginalized communities. It's going to hurt people of color. Here we are all these years later. And as you know, it is, it's like a 39% increase in homicides in that city since they defunded. and change policing and you have no cash bail and all these various policies. It's hurt the very people they said they wanted to help. And I tell her, you stood up for this.

You're the one that did injustice. I'm the one that stood up for justice and was called a racist for doing it. This is what the church needs to understand. The world may like you, but you're standing up for something really evil that does not make you a good Christian. Hey, this is Steve Daste. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day

and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch. this Dee Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. I think it was Thomas Sol who said and again I'm paraphrasing too that progressives are always judged by their intentions not by their outcomes and so you said that your friend or that people

who advocated for shutting down during COVID that even if they say okay the outcomes are different than what we thought yeah kids have gone back like two grade levels we've got all these mental, spiritual, physical health problems, but we had the right intentions. And even people who now see that the vaccine has had some adverse outcomes for people will say, well, I still am glad I pushed for it. I'm still glad I pushed for the mandates because my intention was good, and it doesn't matter what the outcome is. But that's not how we should think as Christians, as people who love our neighbors and have been placed in this nation providence. and truly to make it better and to make it good, safer, more beautiful for the people that we

live near. We have to care about the outcomes. We have to care about the stats of what you're talking about that even if the intentions behind defunding the police were good, which I'm not sure that they were, but even if they were, the outcomes have been devastating for image bearers. That's what Christians have to care about, right? Absolutely. You know, one of the things I wrote about in the book, say the subtitle is how truth can save America from utopian destruction. This is going to be good. I'll listen to this.

I'm ready. That so many of our Christian leaders have shown themselves to be men of utopia disguised as men of the kingdom. So what has happened is, is the world is full-on secular humanists. And so the easiest way to just say this for anybody who doesn't know, secular humanism just teaches that we can, we don't need God for. a basis for morality, for how to build a perfect society or a just society. We don't need God. We don't need all these extra human ideas like the Ten Commandments. We can do that on our own. That idea has infiltrated the Christian church at the top levels to the point that the secular humans are trying to build utopia. They're going to build the perfect world of equity,

as we all hear. Everybody has the same stuff. Equity of outcomes. And the Christian leaders, doesn't have either the stones or the maybe biblical understanding anymore. I don't know what's going on. But they don't have what it takes, let's say, a nicer way. The Cajunays. They don't have the Cajunas to say, that is absolutely not going to work. It's going to lead to destruction. You can't do it. Because then they go, well, then they'll think I'm a bad person. And we can't have them thinking I'm a bad person. So it's the fear of man coming in. So what has happened is the church is joining with the world to try to build these secular topies. It's the same reason that no matter how many times you say to somebody,

socialism doesn't work. Communism doesn't work. We're talking about 120 million deaths in the last century from Marxist enterprises. You'll never meet a leftist that will say, yeah, it's really not good. They'll all say it hasn't really been tried yet. They don't apologize. They don't repent. They don't go, all right, that was terrible.

terrible ideas. They just go, no, it just needs to be tweaked. Right. You know, it's like building the SpaceX, you know, thing that goes up and it explodes. They go, no, no, we knew it was going to explode. We got to tweak a little something. Well, these people don't mind when these things explode and death and murder and mayhem. It should be the church saying, that's because the Bible shows us a better way. One of the things that are writing the book is that I think there's a real mistake in the 90s, if I've understood when it happened in the 90s, the evangelical church just decided to stop teaching worldview. And so we just said, hey, here's the whole pie of life,

and we're going to teach a little sliver, one tiny sliver. It's that big right there. And this is Jesus, death, resurrection, ascension, which of course is the most important thing that's ever happening in history. We know this. Definitely most important thing. But there are other things that we have to deal with because we are living in a body. I am married. I need to know how to treat my wife. I need to know how to raise my kids. I need to know what kind of schools they should go to or what I should teach. There's a lot of stuff we got to do. And they said, no, no, no, not talking about anybody, any of those things. We will only talk about this. The Bible gives us these answers. And the world gives us all the other answers, all of it. And so the new Christian principle was, how do we join together

with the world because we pretty much all want the same thing and they're wrong. We really don't want the same thing. Yeah, you're right. And going back to what you said about this idea that, well, even though our ideas have led to these devastating, destructive outcomes, they just need to be tweaked. Kind of another excuse that I hear is, well, it's really because all of you Christian nationalist bigots are standing in the way. You're the reason that we don't have peace. You're the reason that utopia has not been reached, which, by the way, utopia means nowhere. And so your point is really poignant that they're pie in the sky ideas of like how we can get to if all the opposition just gets out of the way and they're able to perfectly turn the knobs to socially engineer everyone to comply with their grand cosmic vision of equal outcomes. Like it really is not only destructive, but it is completely nonsensical.

It's against human nature. That's why it doesn't work. Communism is against human nature. Progressivism is against human nature. And so I kind of lost my train of thought. But I think where I am trying to go with that is that we have been, we've created this kind of like boogeyman of Christians and Christian nationalism. And we're told that if we just stop trying to influence culture, then finally that utopia will be reached. Yes. And there's a documentary. I'm sure you've seen it. Yeah. That's out there with Russell Moore and David French. You're like your favorite people, right?

Like you're their biggest fans. Is that correct? So of these people are definitely on my chopping block. There's no question about that. Yeah. And Andrew Whitehead, who has written a lot of books or a couple books about Christian nationalism, it's a documentary about how Christian nationalism is really, really, really scary in the cause of all of our problems. So let's play the clip from the documentary and then I'll get your

reaction to it. We can talk about it. They're told over and over and over again that you're in danger. You need to fight if you don't want to lose your country. We are in a civil war between good and evil. This is not a movement about Christian values. This is about Christian power. What happens to the people who don't believe this stuff? We are on the precipice. God is on our side. We're taking making our nation back. The thing that keeps me up at night is that we lose democracy. Does that seem possible? Yes.

Okay, John. What do you think? What do you think about that? It just makes my blood boil, honestly. I saw it. I was like, yeah, we knew this was coming. They've been ramping this Christian nationalism thing up. I mean, I hate that I always have to give caveats.

I hate nuance caveats, but if you don't, that's my, look, are there, are there some people out there that are very confused? about things like Jesus is my God and Trump is his prophet. Trump is at the right hand of the father. Of course there are some people like that. I don't think there's that many. I've never met them. I've seen them on the internet.

I don't think they have much power. I don't, sure, that's not good. That's called idolatry. It's not a good thing. Yeah. Of course. But this Christian nationalism thing is just, it is so absolutely ridiculous.

So I think I just want to say it like this if I can because I'm guessing. a lot of people watching your show are just like me when I watch your show and in shows like this. I'm like, what happens when I watch this is I go, man, am I a Christian nationalist? Am I doing something wrong? Am I hurting people? Am I trying to, you start asking yourself these questions? And the answer is no. It's ridiculous. It's a complete sham. When they say Christian nationalist, speaking of semantic overload, it's a word that can mean like a billion different things. They use it any way they need to use it to win. But really what they mean is Christian conservative. That's it. But that's what they mean. If you think that abortion is wrong and you

think that abortion should be illegal, you're a Christian nationalist. There's no like other category of person. I think it should be illegal, but I'm not a Christian nationalist. They're going to call you a Christian nationalist. People also need to understand is I've read all their books, the woman that was on there, the woman that came on in senator in our democracy. She's called Anthea Butler. She has a book called White Evangelical Racism. In the book, it's really clear, it's obvious. I'm not making it up.

Actually, I quoted her in my book. Funny thing is I quoted most of those people on the trailer in my book. White evangelical racism is the same thing as Christian nationalism. White evangelical racism is the same thing as the white church. the white church they call it because it's an idea it's not just that you have white skin and you happen to be a sociological group of white people that go to church it's an idea that is of domination imperialism colonialism white supremacy is baked into the cake we have distorted christianity in her words and all the people that believe this we call it orthodox christianity but what we call

orthodox christianity they say is a bastardized version of christianity that has white supremacy injected into it. And so even Anthony Butler, even chastised, people need to understand nearly everybody on that thing that calls himself a Christian, nearly all of them, are either pro-choice. Some of them are pro-abortion. There's a difference there. Most of them are also affirming LGBT affirming as well. Anthony Butler's pro-choice, pro-affirming.

She thinks it's wrong that churches are not affirming of LGBT. She chastises she's black, what she calls the Black Church for being, let's see, for exhibiting white evangelical racism. You got to keep up with this. So the Black Church exhibits white evangelical racism because the Black Church is largely not LGBT affirming. Yeah. So all of these things are tied together. So everything she considers bad is because of white, is because of whiteness.

Yes. And that is that critical theory premise that black and brown oppressed, white oppressor. And if that's the lens that you're looking at the world, then you fit everything into that paradigm. Yes. And what it means to be Christian in her view is to be basically precisely aligned with the progressive political party. So what's really ironic is that these people are hyper political. Yeah. Calling us to political. I actually wrote this.

I took a photo of the book I gave you. Yeah. I wouldn't mind reading this from the end of my book. Yeah. I say, I'm talking about the progressives. these people, exactly these people we just watch. For them, the gospel of the kingdom demands communal political activism. This is ironic because the Christian woke call people like me a Christian nationalist, even though my message is one of limited government and a belief in individual

liberties. I am not a Christian nationalist, but they are certainly Christian statist. Yeah, totally. the irony is that people like us, we're like, I don't want to dominate anybody. Let's ask this. Did Trump crack down on free speech? Or was that Biden that cracked down on free speech? Did Trump, you know, start hurting people's religious freedoms? Or was it the Biden administration that set 25 armed swat people to a pro-life activist house?

25 full-gear tactical weapons to a pro-life. life or its house. So the things they accuse us of they are actually doing. They are actually more political than we are because your typical Christian conservative is sort of like, I don't really care about politics. I just think killing innocent children is so evil. And now the whole transgender ideology, it is just so evil. I feel like I got to stand against that. That's where your typical Christian conservative lands. And what they are trying to do is trying to guilt you into not being that person so you can be viewed as one of the good people. They're trying to conflate all conservative Christians who like you said are just,

they're just pro-life and they don't believe in defunding the police and they don't believe in, you know, that boys can become girls and vice versa. They're trying to conflate that person with everyone who stormed at the Capitol on January 6th. They're saying that is one and the same. And again, just to like offer caveats, which we shouldn't even have to at this point, of course, I don't support any violence. Or I probably don't agree with any of the people that we saw in that clip, like, theologically, the conflation of or the belief that America is God's chosen country,

that Americans are God's chosen people. And so, sure, yeah, we can denounce that or disagree with that or whatever. What I take issue with is the argument that seems to be the point of this documentary, that you are an evil Christian, nationalist, fascist, racist, racist, all of those things, if you allow your worldview to inform your vote, to inform what you think about political issues. Apparently, Christian conservatives are the only people in the country who are not allowed to bring our worldview to the voting booth. An atheist can do that. An agnostic can do that. A Muslim can do that. That's all fine. Because you have to, by the way,

everyone votes in accordance with their worldview. Everyone does. That is normal. That is right. That's our responsibility. That actually is. is what a democracy is, a representative democracy. We all take our best arguments, according to our faith and our worldview, to the voting booth. But they're saying the only way to be a good Christian is to not do that. The only way to be a good Christian is to actually vote against what you believe. So sure, you can be personally pro-life, but to be a good Christian, you'll vote for the slaughter of babies. You can be personally against transgenderism, but you have to vote for boys to be able to. You can be personally against transgenderism, but you have to vote for boys to be able to. to go into girls' bathrooms. So you cannot allow your worldview to enter the public space at all if you are a Christian or else you are a fascist. And I agree with you. We've just got to reject that.

You don't have to give into that accusation all. You know that's not true. You should show up on voting day with your full worldview influencing the decisions that you make because that's how Christians are called to live. Well, the funny thing is that they, in some cases, they sort of agree with that. They say, yeah, that's right, but you're not being a true Christian. So here's what's ironic. In other words, how come they never get called Christian nationalists?

Because they're all saying, the Bible says that this is what we're supposed to do. So how come Stacey Abrams can say, I used to be pro-life, but after becoming a Christian in reading the Bible, I became pro-choice, understanding that God wants to be. How come she can say that and not be called a Christian nationalist? Right. How come President Biden can chastise Florida for disallowing minor trans surgeries and say, this is, what is, what do you say, it's almost sinful what you're doing because all of these young people are made in the image of God. How can he say the image of God?

He's a president at church and state. There's a wall between church and state, and he's quoting the Bible. How come Pete Buttigieg can constantly quote the Bible? The only person in politics that quotes the Bible as much as Pete Buttigieg is Mike Huckabee. Yeah. Right. He quotes the Bible all the time. I've never seen anybody say separation of church and state.

So all of these people that we see on this clip are acting like in this utopian impulse that says we have to love globalism. We have to love pluralism. We have to love multiculturalism. And we're all going to live together. No one ever says anything about what. anybody else does. It was David French, who was on the documentary, of course. David French, who calls himself a Christian conservative, is the one who calls Drag Queen Story Hour a, quote, Blessing of Liberty, he calls it. Now, to be fair to David French, because I don't lie about people

like these folks on here, do, he doesn't like Drag Queen Story Hour. But if you, Allie, say, guys, I don't think in the public library, we should allow men dress up in women's lingerie, come in and read stories to our little children here in my little town of wherever you live. I think we should do something about this issue of public morality. By the way, I have lots of non-Christian friends who are against drag queen story. You don't have to be a Christian nationalist to feel that way. And our tax dollars paying for it, by the way. By the way, we're paying a lot of money.

And we're shipping it out. We're shipping it overseas as well. We're shipping the drag queen stuff, all these other countries so we can. So basically, so we can colonize them, I don't know, to use one of the left's words. That's another thing that's okay if you're a progressive. If you're a progressive, you can go tell Uganda what to do if you are telling them that they need to allow gay marriage. You just can't export Christianity. Exactly right.

And it's even better if you tell them they need gay marriage, but you're saying, say the Bible condones it, then you're like a superhero to these people. It's insane. So the point is is that David French says, Ali, if you and your friends want to boycott this drag queen story hour, you are being oppressive. You are bringing, you are dominating people. You're trying to ruin democracy. And the truth is, is that when most of these people say we're taking our country back for God, they don't even mean it in the sense of because we're the new Israel. We're now God's chosen a nation. That's not what they're saying. They're just merely saying there was a time when God was honored in this country a lot more than he is now. There was a time that men, whether they knew

Jesus Christ personally, whether they had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, that they had a sort of a fear and honor of those things that mattered. And they stood up for biblical values. Nobody can argue against that. That is the way it is. So most of the people that say those kind of things, that's really all that they mean. Yeah. Man, it's hard for me to understand, well, that's me being gracious. I think we both really understand what's going on here. But how so much attention can be placed on the problem of what I think is a tiny, tiny

minority of Christian conservatives who would say things like, oh, you know, Trump is my prophet or this is God's New Israel or whatever. versus the pervasive stronghold or the very powerful stronghold, rather, and the pervasive influence of progressivism. You've given a lot of really good examples. But when I think about the problems facing our nation, the rampant abortion, just the bloodlust that we see from the pro-abortion activists now, the butchering of children's bodies who say that they're confused about their gender, the policing of our speech when it comes to gender, being forced. to say that a man is a she and and vice versa. The problem we were talking about off camera of the rise and murders and violence in these progressive cities, just the destruction of these progressive cities because of

these policies. Like that is what is destroying the country. That is what is endangering people's lives. That is what is primarily harming the Amago Day. And it's so obvious. Like it's so painfully obvious the destructive outcomes of these progressive policies. and it's so much more rampant. It's so much more powerful and influential progressivism is. And yet we're told that the real problem, the real danger is that some random people on the

internet think that Trump is God's profit. Like, it's not even close if you're looking at the level of influence that each ideology has. Absolutely. You know, I think it would be a great time so I was looking for this Bible verse if I can find it. Do you mind if I read you a Bible verse real fast? Please. I bet you'd love it. I would love it. All right.

This is it. Ezekiel 9, verse 3 through 4. Then the glory of the God of Israel rose from above the cherub where it had been to the threshold of the temple called the man clothed in linen and carrying writing equipment. Here's what I want to read. passed throughout the city of Jerusalem, the Lord said to him, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the detestable practices committed in it. The reason I want to say that is because the thing that saddens me, this is the reason I wrote Wimpy, weak, and woke.

And I'd like to just give the definition of those words real quick. The reason I wrote, it saddens me so much what I see a lot of these Christian leaders doing, the people are watching, they are angry at people like me and you that we are sighing and groaning at the detestable wicked acts that we see. I used to feel about abortion. I used to be like, well, of course I'm pro-life, but it's not like I spend time caring. It's not like I'm that sad about it.

Again, it's a fact of life. Once you start looking into it and once you start finding out that the majority of women who have abortions already have at least one living child. which means they already know what the process is like. They already understand that this is a baby. Once you start understanding that people love, they actually love this practice, there's also about 43% of abortions in 2021 were repeat customers. These are people who have already had one abortion. So the idea that these are, people just don't understand what it is. It's just not true. There's about 3.3 million babies born in America per year.

If you have 800,000 killed, you're talking about 25% of the babies a year slaughtered. How is this different than in the Old Testament times, right? It's not different. They are upset when we sigh and groan about this evil and they want to say, Ali, calm down. Stop telling the world that it's all that bad. that bad. It is that bad. And so this is what wimpy, weak, and woke is all about. Do I have time to define what that means really quick? Yes, yes, please. Because some people went total apoplectic rage

over the name Christians. It's so mean. For one thing, I don't use the language. You are wimpy. That person's wimpy. It's an ideology. It's the zeitgeist of the 2020s. We are wimpy, weak and woke. The church has become wimpy, weak, and woke. Wimpy means this. Wimpy is when you value tone, winciveness, and empathy over truth. I'm not going to say the truth because it's going to hurt somebody's feelings. We're not going to tell people that defund the police is going to kill a bunch of people. It's going to be terrible because then we look like we don't care and at least we care. That is being wimpy.

It leads you to being weak. Actually, it's kind of a chicken or the egg. What came first thing? The weakness is that we are weak philosophically. We are weak theologically. and it leads to the biggest weakness of all, which is when Christians begin apologizing for the Bible, apologizing for the character of God.

There's a lot of Christian leaders, not ashamed to say the name of Jesus, but they are ashamed of the character of Jesus. That is the greatest weakness that we can have. We have become woke. What does woke mean? I write in the book, and I'm saying this because I've had so many people,

John, I used to listen to your music, and now I hate you because I love the poor. and if you think I'm woke because of that, then I'm not listening. I write in the book in chapter one, caring for the poor, hating racism, standing up for the oppressed and marginalized, caring about the material outcomes of the poorest among us is not being woke. That's what Christians do. That's what Christians have been doing for ever since the New Testament times.

It's what we've been known for. All that tolerance and all that equality and all that things that you, The world thinks they love. They got that from us, okay? We do care about those things. Being woke is when you trade biblical justice for secular social justice. It is a way, it's a totalizing worldview whokenesses. As you said, this sees everybody through oppress and oppressor groups. So what it does is it redefines who is the poor and oppressed. It redefines that. And so now you have to stand up for whoever is coming down the pike, whoever the next group is. And that's why you have a bunch of confused feminists, to be honest, that we're like, I've been

standing up for women. I've been standing, you know, for this and this and this. And now you have biological men playing sports on women's teams. And now we have people like J.K. Rawlings, the author of the Harry Potter series, who's just totally hated. She's like, guys, I am a feminist. I'm actually even pro-trans. I just think there should be spaces for biological women.

And she is completely annihilated for this. So now you're going to have the next group come up. Wimpy, weak, and woke is not, I'm not fighting this so that we can take back power, as they say in this documentary, so that we can have power and make people. We're fighting it because we believe it's going to lead people their souls to hell and their bodies to hell.

Like in this world, it is going to become devastating. Last thing I'll say about that. Every time there's a utopia that's tried, every book, every philosophy, it's just tyranny. So it's no wonder that they wanted tyranny during the pandemic, tyranny for the jabs, tyranny for COVID, kicking people out of the military. I've met some of these people like, I wanted to spend my entire life in military. I'm kicked out because I wouldn't get the jab. they have to impose tyranny. And that's why Thomas Moore's Utopia.

He's the one that coined the term Utopia. His utopia celebrates euthanasia because it's all about the common good. And people with an illness that's going to cost a bunch of money in a bunch of time and it's cancer. And it's going to all this money is going to have to go to you. You know what we're going to do? We're going to put you to death for the good of society. And we're going to call it virtue. that is basically the same thing as the argument being made for abortion.

We have to have abortion because without it, all these other people are going to get hurt and yada, yada, yada. So that's why I wrote the book Wimpy Week and Woke. You can only get the physical book at my website because I published it myself. John L.Cooper.com. This is the only place people can get it. Yeah. You know, you made me think of something.

I love that you're bringing utopia into this because I'm realizing that it's when you shoot for utopia. you land in dystopia. So you shoot for utopia, you land in Brave New World. You shoot for Utopia where we have this perfect world, so they think where everyone has equal outcomes and there's no religion, basically the manifestation of John Linen's imagine. You shoot for that, you land in Brave New World.

And, you know, all of the Orwellian nonsense that we see is because, as you said, they're shooting for something that doesn't exist. And it is actually a competitive. Editive eschatology, like to Christianity in that, like, okay, Christianity, we believe that one day Jesus is coming back and he will make all that is wrong right. Well, they also believe that that can be achieved, but outside of Christ, like outside of salvation, outside of repentance. Really, it's not sin that's getting in the way.

It's not Satan that's getting in the way of their, you know, new kingdom, new heaven and new earth. It's all of us. Ooh, that's good. Can I jump in on that? Sure. Yeah, please. You just touched on one of the major themes of my book, actually.

Yes. And one of the major reasons I wrote it, which I didn't mention yet, which is brilliant that you mentioned it. Because in 2020, as this stuff was happening, I remember arguing with Christians that I love brothers and sisters in Christ that we just don't agree on this. It's frustrating. They're like, John, we believe in the kingdom of God. So you see where that's going?

It's going into this. But like, like the kingdom. in the book I call it faux post-millennialism. It's a version of post-millianism that's sort of like poisoned. And it's like, well, we believe in the kingdom like righteousness, peace and joy, a land of milk and honey and nobody wants for anything and we're all full of joy. We believe in that. And that is the same thing that the progressors are doing.

They're trying to reach justice and equity. Why don't you see, John, that they're the same thing? and I remember saying something like, utopia and the kingdom of God are at odds with each other. They are the complete inverse. It's like stranger things. It's the upside down. It is not the same thing. And so I spent a lot of time in the book explaining, in fact, every chapter I have these things I call Bible binaries.

I call them Bible binaries because I got sick of people saying, John, they probably say it to you too. Ali, you're just such a binary thinker. You have to stop thinking of binaries. You've got to think of caveats. We need gray and nuance and caveats and all that stuff until basically you're just a moral relativist. You're a moral relativist. So I created something that called Bible binaries. Bible binaries is when God says, give you a choice today, life and death, choose which one you're going to serve. And the reason that these utopian things don't work, just the simplest way to say to be able, it's so very easy.

Thomas Sowell says it in a great way for people who aren't Christians. I don't know about the religious stuff. Thomas Sohl says it great. He has his constrained and unconstrained vision. And basically what he's saying is, if you believe that man has no constraints on him, he is not bad. He is not born with a tendency to do selfish things or to look out for himself. If you think man has no constraints, then you will be a progressive and you will try to go towards utopia. If you think that man does have constraints, then you are going to have tradeoffs. You're going to say, okay, we can never reach the perfect word. some things are going to, it's always going to be bad. Which bad thing do we think is the best of all the bad? The Christian version is so simple. It's basically this. We are born into sin. Every single human being is born into sin. He's going to do bad stuff. He's going to be selfish. And because of that, it is impossible to reach a quality of outcomes where everybody has the same thing. I write in the book at some point. How are you going to give everybody? How is everybody going to end in the same place. Am I going to pay, if I have two employees and one is a drunkard

and he shows up late and he barely ever shows up and he falls asleep on the job, how is he going to have the same outcomes is the guy that shows up on time and works hard? How is a kid raising a two-parent family? How is the kid from a one-parent family going to ever have the same kind of outcomes? We've all seen the statistics. It's not possible. That's why Utopia and the kingdom of God are not the same thing. I'm afraid if I bring this up, like we could talk for two more hours, but I just, I have to say it. And then I'll let you respond and then we can try to close out. But when you said this idea, the unconstrained versus the constrained, which gosh, I recommend Thomas Soul 2.

Quest for Cosmic Justice speaks to a lot of what we're talking about. And then also, well, there's several books that I could list. But I was thinking of Rousseau, who believed that man is born free, but everywhere is in chains, this idea that religion and societal expectations and all of this stuff, it's holding us back and we can finally be liberated. And he truly did believe in a utopia that if we just are finally throw off all of this stuff, that the world, that social constructs have placed on us, then we can finally be totally free and everyone have the same outcomes. Man, so this is like hundreds of years old, just repackage.

in modern form. And it's just the devil playing his same tricks. Did God really say? Boom. That's the last sentence in my book. I don't know what's happening here, Allie. You're just so dead cool. I mean, you know, what you just said is really important.

So I have 650 footnotes in this book, all right? 80 pages of footnotes. The reason being, I believe if Christians or non-Christians, I believe if they read the original words of Rousseau, of Karl Marx, of Freud, of the sexual revolution, we didn't get into Wilhelm Reich. I had to read this. I wish to God I'd never had to read it. But you have to read, he's the father of the sexual revolution.

He's the father of the 1960s free love movement that has led us to where we are today. It's the most godless stuff I've ever read in my life. It's horrible. And if people read these original words, they will go, oh my gosh, this is evil. This is wicked stuff. And that's why it is not idolatrous to say the war against America is a war against Christianity. It's not because American Christianity are synonymous. It's because what they are at war with is actually the created order.

They hate the created order. Rousseau, Marx, they're basically saying, If we can just throw down God and all of his constraints upon humanity, his laws, basically, his commands his law, if we get rid of that, then we're going to be awesome. It's going to be really great. And that's why they sexualized kids. I mean, I'm trying to be shocking, but Wilhelm Reich, one of his big things was fighting for the free sexual, he calls them genital rights of children.

And he advocated that. There's always that. That just seems to be the. Because he believes the way to reach utopia is for man to finally release the sexual constraints because we are sexual beings. And it's so horrifying and so gross. So I tell people, go get the book, Jonel Cooper.com. You'll read the footnotes and you will never again be confused. When you say to somebody, I don't like that because that's for Marx.

And they go, you don't even know what Karl Marx said. You don't even know what critical race theory is. you're a Christian nationalist, you will know the quotes from the horse's mouth, from the original people, you'll know you're being lied to, and then you'll have the confidence to argue back with the word of God. Every single chapter, I give the biblical response. This is why it doesn't work. And we know that if we argue with the word of God, that's it. That's the end of it. Did God say, yes, he has said. He gives us his word, and we can stand on his word. You can take it to the bank because his word never, ever fails. What does the Bible verse say? The flowers fade,

the grass withers, but the word of our God stands forever. Take it to the bank. Yes, and amen. I've got to say one more thing, John. I've got to say one more thing because it's such an interesting conversation. But I, okay, and then you got to end with another banger like that. But what you were talking about, Wilhelm Reich, and it just always goes back to it seems like perversion and children and all of that stuff. One thing I forgot to mention in that documentary clip that we played, one of their examples of evil Christian nationalism was actually a dad being dragged out. I mean going to say that. Yes. Dad being dragged out of a school board meeting. Well, that was the dad that was in there raising a ruckus because his daughter had been assaulted by a boy who identifies as a girl

in the bathroom. So what is the point of including that clip in this document? That's to say that parents, parents, you don't even have a right to stand up for your own children. You just have to allow progressivism to steamroll you and your family, even if it means sexual assault. That's what we are up against. And that is why your book is so important. Yes, I'm so glad you mentioned this. So I'm going to dive into this. It's going to be so good.

I'm going to make it so simple and so quick. Okay. We'll end on that. it if you want because I can go all day I know we could we could unrelatable all day I feel my daughter's going to laugh at this when she hears that sorry rewind critical theory critical theory of course does not believe in absolute truth the critical these are the neo-Marxist critical theory teaches that truth can only be found in a correct moment of practice that means we don't know what truth is there is no such thing what is a correct moment of practice they define it a correct moment

of practice is standing up for the oppressed and the marginalized. Any way you have to stand up for the marginalized is okay. You can lie. You can cheat. You can hurt people because you've got to remember Mark Hughes, repressive tolerance. He's a critical theory. This is coming from that group. You can hurt people. You can burn down buildings. You can smash windows. You can threaten people. It doesn't matter. It's not immoral because there is no absolute morality. You can only know if it's true or moral at the end of the process of the correct practice. So these people don't mind lying. They don't mind saying, do you see what they're doing? They're causing violence. Look at that dad. They throw him in there, even though any good dad would be raising nine kinds of holy heck down there. Had your daughter been sexually assaulted by some dude saying he was a girl in a bathroom. Now, we know even more since then from Daily Wire's reporting. We know even more that they covered it up. They lied about it.

And if I remember correctly, I think that boy had done this before in a different school. And they just covered up. Because he's the oppressed. That is wicked. That is evil. That is anti-feminism. That is a war against women. Why is it okay?

Because now we're speaking up for the next oppressed group that came down the tie, which is the transgender. Fender Fluid Community. It's not immoral because we won't know it's moral until we get to the end of fighting for the marginalized. That is what the Bible calls detestable. The Bible says, I detest unequal weights and measures. So once again, the Bible proves true and man's ideas prove to be idolatrous and detestable and destructive. Gosh. And if we love the people around us, if we love the country, which God has purposely placed us, we will carry these ideas into the public sphere

because they matter. You got to love people enough to be hated. You got to love them enough to say, I know you don't get, I love you so much. I'm going to do it even though you're going to hate me for it. That's the test is if you really love these people or not. Yep.

Okay, tell everyone again where they can buy your book. Go to johnL.cupert.com. Now the Kindle version is available on Amazon. I'm having issues at Amazon because I self-published it. I think it's a great book. Sometimes people say, what's the audience for this? I don't really know,

but I will say this. If you have Christian friends or even friends that just think you're being alarmist all the time, like things are so bad. And let's say that they're like these people watching the documentary that are going that are constantly telling you, oh, nothing new under the sun. It's not really that bad.

You're just making a big deal about it. And you're saying, all the country's going down. That's who needs to read this book. Because if they see the original, words of these people, they will not play around with the ideas any longer. Yes, and amen. Thank you so much, John. I really appreciate it. I loved it. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we

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