Shaun Newman Podcast - #1082 - David Millard Haskell

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

David Millard Haskell is a Canadian social scientist, author, and cultural commentator who serves as an Associate Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, cross-appointed in Digital Media and Journalism as well as Religion and Culture. A former TV journalist and newspaper columnist, he earned his PhD and has focused his academic research on Christianity in modern society—including church growth and decline, Evangelical portrayals in media, and the societal impacts of secularism and DEI initiatives—while authoring books such as Through a Lens Darkly and Christ or Collapse: The Case Against Godless Government. An ordained pastor, public speaker, president of Haskell Strategic Communications, and senior fellow at the Aristotle Foundation, Haskell advocates for conservative values, academic freedom, and the importance of Christian principles in sustaining Western civilization.Cornerstone Forum 26’https://shaunnewmanpodcast.substack.com/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

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make sure to subscribe, make sure to leave a review. If you enjoy the show, share with a friend. And I'm going to keep plugging Substack. It's free to subscribe to. When I get going on the road, that's where I'm going to be tossing some of the behind-the-scenes, that type of thing. It's the one place you can support the show, too. You can get a subscription, get all the behind-the-scenes action as we go along.

And, yeah, I'm going to be trying to hopefully post a bit more there as we get going. I know lots of people wondering whereabouts we're going to be, the timeline, everything else, working on getting the timeline out so you can see exactly where we're going to be roughly in the days and weeks ahead. So head over to Substack. That's where it's all going to be. All right. Let's get on to that tale of the tape. Today's guest is a Canadian social scientist, author, cultural commentator, an associate professor at Wilford Laurier University. I'm talking about David Millard Haskell.

So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today, I'm joined by David Miller Haskell. Sir, thanks for hopping on. It's my pleasure. Now, first time on the podcast, you got to tell us a little bit about yourself. I was doing my own deep dive India and watched a bit about your new book and different things,

but it's always better when the guest tells us a little bit about themselves. So walk us through who David is. Sure. Well, I think I'm most well known as a professor and social scientist. I've been at a public university in Canada for 20 years. And I research in the area of mostly Christianity and culture. And my studies that have cut a lot of attention have been related to some unconventional findings. So, for example, about 10 years ago, I did a massive study across Canada looking at what causes churches to grow or decline.

And everybody knows that churches are declining. and I wanted to look and see if I could find some that were growing and then find the recipe for growth. And lo and behold, it turned out to be traditional Christian theology that was the key driver. And that was really countercultural because everybody in the news and everybody in pop culture was saying churches that accommodate the culture are more apt to grow. And it wasn't the case. So that was one that caught some media attention. And then a couple of years ago, 2024, I wanted to look into diversity, equity, and inclusion because our government tells us that it's going to bring unity.

Our businesses tell us it will bring more profitability. And so I said, okay, let's see what the research, the good research, the best research, the most quantitative research can tell me. And it was exactly the opposite. It turns out that diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, first of all, have no academic standing. It's basically junk science. And secondly, the best research shows that it does harm. So I put out that research study. It really got some good attention. It was quoted in Forbes magazine. It was in the National Post and a bunch of other post media. And so I like looking

at ideas that are claimed to be true. And then I like to dig into them. And that, That's where we come to my book. My book is called Christor Collapse, and I wanted to really do a deep dive into the claims that the progressives are making, secularists are making, that they're telling us what's supposed to make our society better and stronger. And in many ways, I debunk everything they say. And what I come to,

and this is probably going to be a large part of our conversation today, the norms and values of Christianity are unequaled in their ability to bring individual and national flourishing. So that's my book in a nutshell. And I'm proff and that's what I do. I look at these kind of things. Well, let's go back to traditional Christian philosophy and the thriving of a church. Because I think that's a nice, interesting place to start, right? Everybody's looking at.

Why are the churches not thriving? And you go, well, if you're teaching Jesus, and then you have drag queen's story hour come in for a bit or fly the rainbow flag or whatever else, you know, you go down the progressive world that Canada is today, you go, well, I can kind of understand that. But I mean, back then 10 years ago, so we're 2016, the first year of Mr. Trudeau being elected,

I assume that's roughly the time frame. Yeah, absolutely. Back then that wouldn't have been, well, there was certainly people saying that, but I would assume it would be very few that were like, oh, yeah, this is going to be what it is. So were you, you know, like did you have that in mind when you were searching this out or is that something that kind of surprised you when you started going into it? Well, you know, as a social scientist, you look at what everybody else is saying.

And there was this massive study out of the United States. It was called the facts study. It was the faith communities today. Faith communities today study. And it said that theology didn't matter. And it had done the largest sampling in the United States. So I thought, okay, theology doesn't matter. Then I looked out of the UK.

They had a major study out of there. Again, they said that theology didn't matter. And so I thought that I would find that the less theology you had, the better your church would do, or something like that. But then when I dug into those studies, first of all, I saw that they really didn't even ask about theology. I mean, they didn't probe it.

They didn't see what was being preached. They didn't see what was being talked about among the congregants. And then when I looked at it, I saw that theology was incredibly important. And to your point, Sean, you're saying, when somebody cares about this stuff, when they take it seriously, they're more apt to go and be diligent about it,

to tell others about it, to use the word from the church, it's to evangelize. If you really think this stuff is important and true, then you're going to go and tell other people about it. And it's sort of like with anything. The people who believe in the product are the best salespeople. So you saw that, and I saw that in my study of church growth. But it was not 10 years ago, the currency of the realm to say that traditional Christian belief was going to lead to flourishing. And the thing that ties in with my book is the fact that it's not just church growth. It's not just with churches. If you look at Christian norms and values applied to society more generally, you're going to see all the things that we say are needed for the betterment of humanity.

That's what you see. Now, when you apply it to humanity or society, my brain just goes to the simplest thing possible, which is not simple. It's actually, it's just very important, which is strong families, which is a man, a wife, children, right? We've strayed away from that, you know, over the course of my lifetime for sure. And you go, I don't know if that really shocks me. Does that shock anyone listens?

I'd be curious. people can text in. But I'm like, that's a building block of society. Absolutely. Now, our governments tell us something different. Our elected officials tell us something different. Pop culture tells us something different. All these people tell us something different.

But it's just propaganda at this point, isn't it, David? Like, I mean, that doesn't shock me. It's funny because I don't want people to think I'm giving my opinion. So this book has almost 600 pages and over 1,000 citations, scholarly citations. And on the spot where I'm talking about just the building blocks of society, as you've already pointed out, families really are the key to a society. Society is just a collection of individuals. When individuals form into groups, that's how you get a solid society.

and the more healthy those groups are, the more healthier society will be. So I'm telling you that on every measure, those people and groups that embrace Christian norms and values, they are unmatched in the benefits they experience. So let's talk about Christian families. So I show on my book in study after study that for pro-social behaviors of children, that's a sociological term that means they're not drinking, but they're engaging in voluntary, They're engaging in behaviors that we'd say build society. You want to find where you have the most pro-social behaviors among kids?

It's in Christian families. If you want to look at marriages. So when we measure marriage, sociologically we talk about really two important factors. Stability and satisfaction. Stability means that the marriage isn't going to break up. And satisfaction means that they actually like each other. Well, the highest levels of stability and satisfaction, and satisfaction are found in Christian couples.

This is across the West. And these are Christian couples who actually participate in their faith. They're praying together, they're going to church together, and reading their Bible. And so on these kind of measures, we're saying that if you want strong families and you want to see who the paragon

of these strong families are, whether it's the pro-social behaviors or the kids or the satisfaction in the marriage of the parents, Christianity wins. So even at the level of building blocks, government should be acknowledging that. I live in Ontario, and we had this very progressive premier. Her name was Kathleen Wynn. She was a liberal, and she put out a bill called All Families Are Equal.

And it was specifically geared toward LGBT families because they wanted to recognize them more law. And, you know, that's a nice title, but it is not supported by the evidence. The truth is the gold standard for healthy children moving out to a healthy society is a man and a woman, and particularly a man and a woman who are engaged in the Christian faith. Curious, David, when you first started digging into this, were you a Christian at the start? So this is, I think, what makes my account of all this a little bit more believable, because I would have considered myself a liberal Christian about 10 years ago. So I thought that Christianity had really good values.

I went to church as a kid, and I thought the people in that church were nice people, good people. But I went to university and I went for graduate degrees. and I was told by my professors that mostly this stuff was myth and nonsense. And I believe them because whenever you're told by an authority figure that something is the way it is, you take it for granted. They know more than you. So I really rejected the conservative bits of the traditional Christian faith. And especially the stuff surrounding sexual ethics.

I actually had debates, Sean. This is 10 years ago. maybe a little bit more because 10 years ago I was beginning to turn but let's say 2010 I was having debates with seminary professors from conservative Christian seminaries at my own university and I'd bring them in and we were debating same-sex marriage for example and I was on the pro same-sex marriage side in my first book the very first pages of my book are me telling people why Christianity, conservative Christianity is wrong. I mean, I have that record. So I am someone who has had of a sort a conversion experience. Now it wasn't like the Apostle Paul on the road

to Damascus, if your listeners are familiar with that. It was gradual. And what caused it was I looked at the evidence. I think that a rational person is something, someone who will change their mind at the introduction of new evidence. And as a sociologist, I kept looking at who was the greatest performer in society, who had the greatest life satisfaction, greatest happiness, strongest marriages, even at the level of nations, which nations had the greatest levels of freedom, had the greatest levels of economic prosperity, civic trust? And the winner was Christianity.

Insofar as Christian norms and values were worked into the laws of the land, it seemed to do magic. So I had to begin taking it a little bit more seriously. And in particular, even the parts that made me uncomfortable at dinner parties, right? You start talking conservative Christian ethics and sexual ethics at a dinner party. Man, you're not going to be welcome anymore. You talk sanctity of life, pro-life stuff. You talk stuff about traditional marriage. you're sitting in the corner by yourself eating some cold potato salad.

So anyway, but I had to go where the evidence led. And that's in fact what I tried to do in my book. And by the way, in my book, I'm not trying to convince people to accept the metaphysical beliefs of Christianity. I have now. And it was sort of a reversed engineered thing where I said, if the sociology is all bang on, maybe I should consider the metaphysical claims. But I'm not asking people to accept the metaphysical claims. I'm asking them to look at the empirical evidence as I set it out in the book.

Yeah, well, the Lord works in mysterious ways, right? So he found a way to just get you working so that you can figure out for yourself. I find that very curious or interesting or both. Maybe they're the same thing. Yeah. That at one point, you're debating other professors for same-sex marriage. So now you're completely, you would completely flip that around now. Yeah.

And I know that I'm going to get in trouble for it. You know, now in, for listeners who are outside of Canada, we just had a law passed here, Bill C9, the Combating Hate Act. Yesterday, it just got all the way through Parliament. It's just going to get Royal Ascent, which is like a rubber stamp. And C9 essentially takes away the final protections that Christians had in order to make an argument from Scripture. So my book, it does rely on Christian doctrine because I'm saying, here's what Christian doctrine says about things like same-sex marriage and sanctity of life, even about other faiths, about the truth of Christianity. And I quote scripture. Well,

I don't have a defense in that anymore. People could come at me and say, you're not allowed to do that anymore making an argument from scripture because the last defense has been removed from our criminal code thanks to this new law so uh you know it's a brave new world for christians who are willing to speak boldly about these issues well from one Canadian to another if you're not in Canada you're playing what what are you guys talking about i'm like yeah i mean this is this is kind of been the trajectory of the last five years since i've been paying attention and certainly i remember Jordan Peterson, that that's the one that, you know, I think back on. And I'm like, I just didn't get what he was talking about. Now I'm like, oh, I get what he's talking about. Oh, crap. You know,

no, no, C-16. It was when, it was when, so Justin Trudeau comes in as prime minister. And he says, we're going to change the criminal code again. We're going to add gender identity as a protected group. And at the time, again, conservative Christian said, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Because I believe a man is a man, and as a woman as a woman, and just because you feel feminine doesn't automatically make you turn into a woman. And that's what the law said. The law said, if you identify as a woman, if you've got female feelings, you suddenly are a woman. So Christians were concerned. At the time, the justice minister was Jody Raybold. And she made public statement saying, no, no, no, if you don't accept this, you know, you won't be discriminated against. Nothing will happen. That was the liberal promise.

well, just in February of this year, there was a trustee in BC, a school board trustee, Barry Newfield. Yeah, he was charged $750,000 for holding the Christian view that there are only men and women. So he's been fined into bankruptcy. So anytime I hear the liberals, which is our governing party for the last, you know, since 2015, whenever I hear them make a promise that their next bill, oh, don't worry, Christians won't be discriminated against. It's never been true. Every time they make that claim, every time they make that claim, they are, they lie.

So I don't know what we can look forward to with this new bill, C-9. Well, more of the same, right? Yeah, right, sure. It's, it's, I remember on my end, right, because I obviously. didn't get to Christianity the way you got to Christianity. We share similar stories, right? But I'm not the, let's go look at the empirical evidence and to do something and put it in a book.

I interviewed a thousand people and I started to be like, something is going on here. I still remember it. I can't remember the interview, but I was sitting there and I'm like, oh my God, am I becoming traditional? What has happened to me? I think I've blurted it out on air because I was just like so shocked because I think I just thought of myself is a pretty progressive person. Like, that's a good thing. Right.

We're told that's, you're so progressive. You're such a, you're so forward. Even the word. Even the word, right? They're great. You're great. Who doesn't want to progress? Right. Well, it's funny. Now it's like everything you're talking about. So like somebody out there needs to read the book, right? Because somebody's brain thinks like you. Oh, wait. You're saying that a nation is more successful if it has Christianity built into its framework. I go, that makes complete sense. I just, like, I'm like, yes. I want to bring the receipts, though, right? I'm not. A hundred percent, yes. So there are a lot of books out there that are making theological arguments. And while I do show, here's where it's rooted in

Christianity. Christianity got it right. I then say, but now let's take a look at the evidence. And so I want people to say, because a lot of people, they weren't raised in Christianity anymore. And I want them to be able to take a good faith look at this, starting where they're already comfortable, which often is, what does the social science say? What does the historical data say? And so I'm happy for them to start there. You know what I think? I think a lot of people were raised in Christian households. And we all revolted from it.

That's what I think in Canada. So many of us revolted, like, hard from it. Well, I did. I did. Yeah. I know like 50 others that did, right? Because you're like, this sucks. This makes no sense.

We're progressing. Yeah, I mean, it felt like you were getting rules and very little satisfaction from those rules, right? At least for me, and very few answers. And I felt like I had to park my brain at the door. So part of this exercise with the book, Christ or Collapse, I'm saying you don't have to park your brain at the door. I'm almost envious, Sean, of the guys and women who just embraced the faith without all the evidence. I think that that's a really healthy way to be. I don't disparage them.

But if you can't get there like that, and for me it was tough, and it sounds like for you, it was tough, it's nice to know that you don't have to check your brain at the door. I mean, you really are backed by significant evidence. And here's, sorry, I kind of cut you off there, but this notion that, this notion that like you and like me, I thought it just seems like it's Grandpa No Fun. You know, Grandpa No, God was Grandpa No Fun who passed down these rules. But in the short time that progressivism has really taken hold. in Canada. And as it's taken hold in the blue states, that itself is the kind of evidence that people have to find undeniable. Like in the short span of a decade, we've gotten to a place

where Supreme Court judges in the United States can't even define what a woman is. Like what kind of mental degeneration has taken place because we embraced a philosophy that had rejected Christian norms and values. That in and of itself is prima facie evidence that things go seriously wrong to the extent that we reject these values that actually established our nations. Well, I think of like the traditionals, like the traditions in Christianity. and just, you know, like, I think of like the discipline to even just read the book every day, right? Or to pray every day. I go, it's those same disciplines that have turned me into a podcaster because if I didn't show up every day

and flick on the mic and this and interview people and on and on and you're like, I don't, I actually don't know why I ran so hard from it. I think it was drilled into my head, but I don't know why. I'm like, I don't know. Oh, I do. Oh, you do? Oh, yeah, yeah. I wanted to have a lot more sex. I mean, I remember, I remember being in university. And I wanted to live my life the way, like, right? And I thought, these rules don't make any sense. These rules seem to constrain without any benefit. But again, in my book, Chapter 3, I go through all of the ideas that are put forward by pop culture. One of them is you need to have more sex in order to find the right partner.

Well, I show really conclusive studies that the people who follow the traditional Christian value of waiting until their marriage without having sex, they actually have the lowest rates of divorce and the highest rates of satisfaction and stability. I mean, it's completely the opposite story to what you see on Netflix. and their level of commitment to each other is stronger. So I wish that somebody had said, listen, you're actually not denying yourself. The ideas that are put forward biblically actually lead to the greatest flourishing. You might not be able to recognize it at the time, but it holds for individuals and it holds for nations.

So what do you think, though, sorry, David, now I'm interrupting. No, no, no, carry on. I love it. You say, I just want to have more sex. I'm like, man, that wasn't, that wasn't, I remember, so I was born in 86. So I remember Y2K. Yeah. Armageddon's coming and they just, they just, oh man, I just have such visceral reactions to Y2K being in a church and them talking about the end of the world. Yeah, it was, it was terrifying for a young kid to be like, what, right? and for it not to be explained other than if you believe in Jesus, don't worry about it.

But even that wasn't really explained, you know? And I'm like, I think when Y2K didn't go the way that I thought it was going to go, we're all going to die and I don't know, whatever. Right. I just went, this is a load of malarkey. I want nothing to do with it anymore. I don't think it had anything to do with drinking, sex, rock and roll, living the way I wanted to live. I think I firmly went, it doesn't know what it's talking about and it's outdated and I'm done with it. Yeah.

And then it was the insanity of COVID of just like full on totalitarian ideas play out. And it wasn't, you know what, I think about a lot. When I falled the freedom convoy out to Ottawa, it wasn't Christian led. It wasn't like this big Christian revival. But it's funny as the freedom community got together and lots of things started to happen here and there, it started to present itself over and over and over. over to the point where it became self-evident, to me at least, that Christianity was like, oh, they're, oh, yeah, yeah, I like this.

This makes complete sense. Yeah. Okay, when you were, when you were at the Freedom Convoy, you didn't see it as a Christian movement in the beginning, but then did you begin to see that many of the movers and shakers, many of the boldest voices were people of faith, or did you notice that? What I noticed was, so sitting here, here five years or sorry four years later i have like it's kind of like monday morning quarterback right i can sit here and go oh yeah now i kind of get it at the time i had no idea what the hell is going on

there were strange stuff going on all the time and then people started praying because they're like we got to start praying and i was i came from christian oswald i'm like i i don't know there's strange stuff going on so sure but i still didn't fully i was naive i didn't fully get what was going on When I look back at it, I firmly plant myself in the camp. There was spiritual warfare going on. There was bold voices that were Christians. But there was a lot of different people from a lot of different walks of life. And the fact that they held it together with the peaceful existence and no major anything,

I think is just, it's almost, it's almost hard to fathom. And I know the power of prayer because now I've implemented it in my life every single day. I hope people pray for me. I love it when they do. And I certainly love it when they tell me about it praying for me because it means a lot to me because now I understand the power of it. But back then I was naive. So were there Christians there? This is a long way of answering this, David.

My apologies. Yes. But it wasn't like the 50 people in the main room of where the convoy was being discussed. We're all Christians. That's not true. They just weren't. Yeah, no. Well, because I had an experience at Jordan Peterson held this thing. It was called Arc, the Alliance of Responsibility. Oh, yeah, in the UK. And so I went to the first one. And it was the last day. And his buddy, Jonathan Pajot, comes up to the front. He's on the stage. And he said, I just want to talk about the elephant in the room. I want to know of the people here in attendance, who,

is really a devout person of faith. So like 85, probably 85, almost 90% of the hands go up. And apart from a smattering of conservative Jews, it's almost all conservative Christians. So I'm looking out at this audience. These are the people that actually had gotten the invitation from Ark to come. and they've been identified as the cultural movers and shapers, or shakers, the warriors, cultural warriors. And these people, like to the 90 percentile, 85 percentile, were all strong people of faith and mostly conservative Christians. And I thought to myself, man, for all of the Christian support here at Ark, they really did their best to avoid tying their wagon or linking their wagon to a Christian. Right? And I think that this is what we do in society. I talk about it in my book in chapter six. I talk about how for some reason, the conservative movement wants its face to be libertarian or classical liberal, but doesn't want it to be Christian. And they think that it's more palatable. And I guess it is, especially when you're dealing with people who aren't Christian. But it's to the detriment of the movement. Because Christianity, in its norms and values, it brings moral absolutes.

And unless you have moral absolutes, your country is going to drift off into chaos. And this is a good point for me to say, Sean, my book, I keep talking about bringing the norms and values of Christianity to governance, to public policy. This is not advocating a theocracy. I'm not advocating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just, I'm saying, I don't think you need to explain that. For me, you don't need to explain that.

Somebody's going to accuse me of that, and I go to great lengths to avoid it because the way that I frame it in the book, I say, listen, what I want to see is the restoration of traditional conservatism. And so traditional conservatism is simply the idea, and it was really the dominant model of governance across the West, is that Christian norms and values would influence the public sphere. And this was just taken for granted. Like you read the legislation, you read the speeches of politicians, and I quote them. In chapter two, I quote them. I say, look, nobody was trying to hide this. They were absolutely saying that the norms and values of Christianity must influence our laws. But that doesn't mean that we will compel belief. They're saying that the moral framework of Christianity informs the laws, which only stands to reason given that every law takes a moral position. And people up to the 1960s, our statesmen, our politicians were saying, let's use the moral foundation that has been proven to work. And then everything went a little bit crazy in the 1960s. And the argument began to be, oh, we've got to get Christianity out of the laws. We'll make our laws morally neutral, which is absolutely bananas. And it's a false statement because no law is morally neutral.

Progressivism is as much of a religion as Christianity has. ever was. I bet you've become a real treat at the old barbecue, eh? Oh, man. You know, I've got people in my family who don't even want to see me at Christmas. So it's, it's, I'm just, I'm getting to the point where I am not going to tell a lie anymore. And I've seen the evidence. And so I'm just going to be truthful about it. And I think that our whole problem, so I've got a, I've gotten acquaintance, Gadsad. I mean, we know each other because we're both kind of on the same team. We've been at different functions together.

We've had dinner together. Not close friends, but I really respect all that he does. And right now he's got a book out, and it's called suicidal empathy. And really, it's, it nails it, right? I love that he coined that phrase, suicidal empathy. It is this idea that we are dying to be nice. and I agree with him. We've got to start being truthful.

You know, there are the Ten Commandments. I often say there's the Ten Commandments, and there's not an 11th that says, thou shalt be nice. But we are called to be truthful, and Christians in particular, and we've given up truth. And part of being truthful is telling people when they're wrong.

You mentioned earlier this idea about how we all want to be progressive, and I do want to be progressive. Let me quote C.S. Lewis for a minute. In his book, Mere Christianity, he says that when society is on the wrong path, the most progressive person is the person who turns around first to progress back to the right path. I think we're at that situation. Well, you're speaking my language because once I started down this path, C.S. Lewis came up an awful lot. Mere Christianity. If you're on the fence or you're, you're, you're speaking my language. because once I started down this path, C.S. Lewis came up an awful lot. Mere Christianity. If you're on the fence or you're like,

I don't know, you should just go read that book. It's a fantastic book. Yeah. You know, like it's just a wonderfully articulated. Now, did you find the wording? And I mean, I don't want to go into the weeds on this, but did you find the wording just a little bit dated, though? Well, certainly how many years ago now is that?

1940s. Yeah, so 80 years ago. So it certainly a little bit. But the arguments and some of the things going on, I'm like, man, they were wrestling with this back then. What a wild. This is what I liked about Peterson. Peterson really, I don't know why, but maybe this is a fault of any generation. You look back that previous generation.

You think you're so much smarter. You just think, like, we got all these gadgets, these widgets. We're so smart. And then you realize they've been arguing about the same stuff we've been arguing about for a long time. And so although mere Christianity certainly has some things, I mean, it's 80 years ago. And overall, you get me wrong. I love it. I'm just saying that even I'm an academic.

And sometimes I found it was difficult, just a little bit difficult sledding. I want you, Sean, to rewrite it in the vernacular of contemporary English, but carry on. You want, Sean, the blue collar podcaster from Lloyd Minster to rewrite Mir Christianity. Andy, wouldn't that be something, folks? Wow. I mean, the thing is, is like, right now, I say being a comedian has never been easier. Like, I mean, I'm not that funny yet. If I just read the headlines and what's going on and you listen to this conversation,

you're sitting in a different country, you're like, the heck is Canada doing it. I'm like, I know. It's like a little skit. And I might argue that being a Christian has never been, you might say harder because of, you know, you brought a Bill C9 or easier because of it. are just making it so black and white. It's like, do you want that? Nope. Well, then you're over in this camp. And you might just come over in this camp because the sooner we all get over here, the sooner we can turn this ship around and just figure this out and just move on because these,

I don't know, the liberal government has gone full on crazy. And I think that this is a point that cannot be underscored enough. And we've been hinting at it in our conversation already, people are turning to Christianity. Yes, they are. Because the contrast with the craziness is just so... Well, we can't define what a woman is. I come from the farm, David. Yeah.

If you take a farmer out and say, can I, can a bull become, you know, and then they're like, what? What are you talking about? Now we're going to put that in society. And then we're going to watch it play out in women's sports and everything else. And you're going to see people lose their mind. And you're just like, we are in a troubled place. you know and how do you get out of that well you turn to something that makes sense right right and and

to to make it make sense uh for people starting out just empirically that's that's something i wanted wanted to be able to do this book it actually in canada it was doing pretty well this book um it came out at the end of may and uh it hit number one on amazon with almost like no well there's a bit of word of mouth. But it hit number one on Amazon categories like compared to government, church and state, philosophy and religion. And I don't mention that to say, yeah, yeah, me. I'm saying there's a hunger for this. This is back to our point that Christianity's never been easier to sell. And I don't mean sell in a crassway, but just like, you look at the alternatives. You look at people like Russell Brand, for example,

or Ian Herssey-Le, and these were people who were committed atheists, and they're like, listen, things are wacky. I got to find some kind of foundation. You don't have to feel bad about explaining your book. I mean, I should have brought it up. Where can people buy it? Obviously, Amazon, nice and easy. Type in the title, Christ or Collapse, and Off to the Race is correct? Yeah, yeah. And if they want the audiobook, It's there's it's on Spotify, but they could also, I think you can get it a, if you don't have a Spotify account, and I don't even know how all that works. But the publisher college press, they have it on their site and you might be able to get a break on it as well.

And it's instantaneous if you want to listen to 20 hours of my voice, my dulcet tones. But, uh, on a side note, how is reading a book like that? Is that like a ton of work? It is, it's massive. it so you you think that it's going to be easy because you know it but you're going to be your worst critic you're going to hear it and you think oh i sound like a dufus i can't believe i got to do another take so there's a lot of that and then ultimately for the last bit i actually resorted to i know i know the dreaded ai but what you can do is you can voice model and so i took out like literally four hours of my voice and I fed it into the AI system.

There's this particular one that audiobooks use and then it creates a model of your voice and it will read it for you. But even then, even then you still have to monitor every line because you don't want it to say something that is said in the wrong syntax, said in the wrong pronunciation, because it's still a computer. But that did speed things up a little bit because then I could just listen until there was an error and then you kind of get into it and you correct it. So full disclosure, some of the end chapters, still my voice, but it's AI using my voice. It sounds like my head's off to anyone who writes a book, right?

I've had lots of authors on here. And I'm like, I don't know if I got a profound enough thought to extrapolate it out into. You just have to get angry enough. Really? Fair enough. You know, but then the, then the frustrating thing that comes after that is that, you know, you look at the people who would really benefit from the book. For me, for example, I think that anybody who is in the conservative political space

and they are looking for arguments to justify their policies or positions, you'd think that they would be running to something like this. And the publisher, great, great publisher out of the U.S. forming, you know, they're reaching out to these guys. And for every 10 emails, they might get one response back. And basically we're saying, hey, can we offer you some free stuff? See if this is something that you can find useful. It's like leading a horse to water. You just can't get them to drink.

It really is. That is probably the most frustrating thing about writing a book. The people that would benefit from it, for whatever reason, they're so in their lane that they don't break time to take a look at it. Yeah. When you talk about the conservative movement, I remember being at the UCP AGM, I want to say it was a year ago, but forgive me, folks, it might have been two years ago. It might have been two years ago.

And there was a question period, and somebody was talking about Jesus. and one of the guys on stage finally cut him off, like shut the mic down, if memory serves me correct, and just said, I've had enough of your Jesus, doc.

And I thought, of all the places for that to happen, this is probably not the right place to put forth that thought because I'm like, if you don't realize it, there's a huge movement back to Christianity. People are open to it more now than ever.

And, you know, in middle of COVID, David, I was looking for, I wasn't a political nerd. Some may call me that now. fairness maybe i'm turning into it i don't know um regardless i was looking for an upstart party that in their first election won the election and none of these political nerds could tell me and then by accident i stumbled into it and it was bible bill of alberta in the 1930s

neighbor heart with the so creds yes did he and then and then they went on like a 40-year tear where they were the the party and what what do you go around well i mean they call them bible bill for a reason And was he perfect? I for sure know he wasn't. But like, it was a time where Christianity, tradition, like all the things, when times got tough, people turned back to it. And you go, what's happening in society right now? We're going through a very difficult time. And is it over?

Certainly not. Because there's woke ideology. It's the DEI. It's the made. It's the two-tier justice system. It just goes on and on and on. It's just laid out in front of us. And we're not turning away from it.

heck lots of times we're just doubling down on some of our silly ideas you go it's only getting a worse which means at some point we're going to have a turnaround i think we we will because ultimately when people are brought to their knees you know they begin looking up i mean that's kind of the metaphor people people who pray for um you know i even as a kid uh i remember going to church and they were trying to pray for revival you know before i rejected that christianity but the thing about revival it tends not to come, and this is the biblical model, until people don't have anywhere else to turn. It's like when you pray for a revival, you're actually praying for the decimation of society, because then people actually say, okay, now I've got to go with the creator of the universe.

I've got to get back to what would really be the foundation of our society. You mentioned COVID, and I just wanted to throw this out. Do you know that during COVID, Gallup did a poll and asked people about their mental health? This was in the U.S. And the only people who actually had better mental health. With Christians? Yeah. And in particular Christians who continued to meet in person.

I could see that. You know, like sitting here. And what I do and talking to all the people I do, there's a lot of dark stuff we talk about. They're just like, oh, you know, I'd be better served to go to the park with the kids and watch them around and play, whatever. You get the point and act like this doesn't exist. But it's funny when I get pushed on, you know, like what's some of the problems you have in life? I'm like, problems. I mean, society's messed up, but like problems.

No, life's pretty good. And so I actually, that actually makes a ton of sense to me. Once again, more data showing that if you have your faith, you know, and you put it into your life, you live your faith, specifically Christianity, because that's what you're talking about. I assume you've looked at, I should have asked to this early on. In your book, do you look into the different face? You're pointing to Christ or collapse. Do you look at like, could you be a Muslim country?

Because we got a lot of Muslims coming in. Or it doesn't even have to be Muslims. It could be Hindus or atheists, et cetera, you know, all these different, worldviews. Yeah. It is, and this is probably the most important question that we're going to be discussing today, because I'm making the claim of the uniqueness of Christianity, and I'm saying that when Christian norms and values are embraced at the level of governance and inform public policy, that makes the difference. And it does. And the only way that I can prove that conclusively, if I show what doesn't work.

And I do that in my book and I gather the studies. So, for example, you want to live in a society where people are generous, they give to charity, and they volunteer, for example. So I go into the studies on charitable giving. And I show that Christians, because of their doctrine, are unique in the fact that they will give to anyone outside their group. See, Christianity in its doctrine, has these parables, the Good Samaritan where somebody comes to Jesus and says, hey, Jesus, who should we help?

Who's my neighbor? And he says, anybody who needs it? Anybody who needs it who is suffering through no fault of their own. Remember, the Good Samaritan, by the way, was beaten up through no fault of his own. So there's an implicit idea that we're helping those who are suffering through no fault of their own. So we see that. Then in the sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, you've heard it said to give to those people who are kind to you. I'm telling you to give to those who are your enemies, love your enemies. So this is really unique to Christianity. And I cite study after study and I show that it's only Christians that do this. I say one study off the top of my head, the International Red Cross has a journal. And they put out one of their research reports saying

across the developing world. It's Christians alone who will give aid to those people who are non-Christian. You don't find it in the Jewish community, the Muslim community, the Hindu community. I look at other studies about giving, charitable giving. Well, in Islam, they do charitable giving of 2.5 percent. It's called the Zakat. It's actually a mandate, one of the pillars of Islam. But the five Sunni schools of scholarship that really dictate how this is to be followed, they all say, yeah, but you give it to Muslims. You don't give it outside the Muslim faith. So the scholarship shows they don't. As far as Hindus go, their doctrine, one of the dominating doctrines is the doctrine of karma.

Karma says that something you did in a past life affects you in this life. So in the Hindu faith, when they see somebody who's suffering, they think to themselves, well, they're suffering for something they did. I don't want to mess with that. And in fact, I quote study after study showing that in the Hindu faith, charity doesn't actually make sense. And then I go further and I say, you want to know who gives the most of charity in India? Christians. And in fact, it became such a problem that Christians were doing so much good. work in India that the Modi government still in power right now they actually had to institute a law

where they they took away the right of Christian aid organizations in India to be able to offer their services 10,000 at last count 10,000 Christian aid organizations had their right to provide aid in India removed because the Modi government saw that it was leading to conversions and so we can't expect non-Christians to behave like Christians. And I'm not trying to put them down, but I'm saying you have to eventually figure out what kind of society you're going to live in. And in the West, we decided that we wanted the highest levels of social trust. We wanted the highest levels of charity and civic goodness. And it only came about because of the Christian norms that were at the foundation of our laws. Laws themselves are moral signalers.

They point in the direction that you should go. You talked about maid, Sean. If you look at Canada before our first maid legislation came in, what was that 10 years ago? Again, it all begins with Justin Trudeau around 2015-16. But if you look at surveys of Canadians, they said, you know, I'm not thinking that this is a good idea that people should just be able to kill themselves. and they certainly were against people with mental anxiety killing themselves. But then in the short time that Maid has been in force, because the law has said this is a good thing,

people's ideas have changed dramatically. And now we see people actually accepting the idea that even if you don't have a permanent disability related to your mental anxiety, you still should be able to kill yourself. We're embracing this culture of death because the government said, It's a good thing. Yeah, it's, I watched Andrew Lott and get a question about, you know, people who are hoping to basically kill themselves in a year who are depressed. And what his thoughts are on that?

And I mean, you can almost just see the disbelief in his eyes when he gets asked question. I think we should care for him. Yeah. Like, what a wild idea. It's, once again, it almost writes itself here in Canada, you know, if you want to be a community. because it's it's it's pretty wild as far as the other religions go it's just you know like if you want to go live in a Muslim or Hindu or on and on and on they're out there yeah but you look at what nobody's rushing to those places no there's something special about where we're at and you go back

to when you had the 10 commandments and you're like and there is an 11th that says be nice it's like we need to find our backbone and be like, yeah, no more. We don't, no, it's okay. If the trucker convoy and all those wonderful people taught me, uh, one thing, and they taught me more than just one thing, folks, but like just mass noncompliance, like, no, I'm not interested in that anymore. Nope, we're not doing that. We're not having boys compete against girls, you know, we're not, we're not,

like we don't need all the stuff in schools. We don't need to, to just like do such silly things. And as individuals, especially, when you go back to how you started out with society and how you clump together and you get strong groups together, you might be impressed or surprised by how quickly you can change things if you just stand together and say no more. We're just not interested. It's tough though, Sean, in Canada, because if you were making that argument in the U.S., I'd say 100%. But in Canada, much to my sadness, our Constitution, as of 1982, was rewritten so that conservatives, and in particular, Christian

conservatives just don't have a legal leg to stand on. And so I'll give you the example. We have, as part of our Constitution, it's a two-part thing. The charter is embedded in our Constitution. and our charter is where our rights and freedoms are found. So in Section 2, Section 2B of the charter, it says you have the right to religion, religious belief. You have the right to freedom of expression. But then you go to Section 15. And Section 15B of our charter says that the rights of the majority can be or sort of the rights

of the historic majority, which are white Christian people of European descent, says at Section 15B that they can be legally discriminated against if the discrimination is meant to ameliorate past harms. And there's no statute of limitations on that. That can go on forever. So things like making sure that a white person can't be hired or a Christian can be discriminated against because they want to exercise their beliefs. That's all made legal by Section 15B. And then it's insured by the first section of the charter. And then I'll stop with my lecture on the charter. But the first section of the charter says that any of the rights found in Section 2B can be revoked by the government or courts if it is found to be necessary for the good functioning

of society and democracy. Well, it seems that any time the rights of Christians are put against, for example, LGBT groups, for the functioning, good functioning of society and democracy, it's the Christians who must have their rights removed. Every court case in the last 10 years has found that. So back to your point. Can you just stand against this and see change? Not in Canada, because legally you will lose. every court case so eventually you'll be fined into bankruptcy or you'll be put in jail because the

courts will just say section 15b says we can do this i guess after you've uh talked about it i'm like i should have then said but in canada when i look at this right that cautionary tale yeah when i look at this and you want to stand up for what you believe in, which in lots of other parts of the world is not insane ideas. Right. You will face fines or bankruptcy, if that doesn't stop you, jail. And there's a possibility of a third one,

which only wants to talk about because it'd be pretty morbid, but death. And you have to decide, like, is it worth that? Is that where we're at? And when I say if you were to band together, you go to where your community is, you know I'm not here to decide for anyone else but what happens when the pressures get pushed

so hard on a group is eventually you have the Streisand effect where it pushes back that's the trucker's convoy right and who took the brunt of that Tamara Leach Chris Barber Pat King I'm probably missing you know the Coots Boys there's a whole bunch of others that

are unknowns almost to the Canadian realm of being harassed by the courts and everything but that's what happened of a group of people together said no more we're done with this we are absolutely done with us you want to stamp on us with horses you want to bring in the everything you want to pull us out of the trucks okay show us how bad you are and then it's been through the courts and it's been dragged out and everything else full stop if you're going to like that's what i mean you have to go in it with eyes wide open and here in canada you're you're absolutely correct like they're going to

throw the entire machine at you i mean alberton's are seeing it right now with independence right Like the amount of times that premiers or other elected officials have called those people, traitors, I'm just like, that is a crazy thing to jump to. And they're unhappy about the people in Quebec, right? It's never said about the people in Quebec. Ever. In fact, they are given more every time they complain. They now can control their own immigration.

They now can control their own pension system. They are unique in that in all of Canada. They get more money for immigration than any other province, despite the fact that they take in the fewest. So it's like we have this complete asymmetrical system. And back to the Alberta question, I'm in Ontario, but I can't figure out why anybody in Alberta would not jump at the chance to get out of this hot mess we know is Canada. Because constitutionally, you stay in this? I just don't see a way out.

And they can keep controlling immigration until it's at a point where the people who are native to Alberta will no longer have the voting power to do anything. I mean, it's only a matter of time. Already 25% of your cities in Alberta are already majority immigrant. No disrespect to them, but they do vote as a block. And the statistical evidence shows that. I showed in my book in chapter 7 and 8 that voting as a block is incredibly powerful. And when you have 25% of the people voting as a block, they can basically get what they want.

It's happening in the urban centers already. And it's only a matter of time with our current immigration policies that Alberta will have no choice. I tell you what, David, longer you talk about all the different chapters in your book, I'm like, well, that sounds interesting. Grace, I'm like, I don't need that right now. But you talk about a whole bunch of other things. I'm like, David, that sounds fascinating. I might just Amazon to pick it up, Christ or collapse. Yeah, any final thoughts before I let you out of here?

No, I'm really glad we had the chance to talk. This has been what I don't want to say my favorite, although it's been one of my favorites. It's just been, it's been really casual. I've enjoyed my conversation with you. I think it's probably I put less pressure on myself because I'd watched your stuff previously. I saw your relaxed way of being. And I've had some really great conversations along the way. Don't get me wrong.

But this was nice because it felt like we were just two guys sitting over a beer or something. Well, that's what we do on this side. Minus the beers, I guess, anymore. I don't really drink that much. Me neither. Okay. So sitting over coffee. Sitting over a coffee, that's right.

Well, David, thanks for doing this. And, well, I tell you what, I hope some of the audience picks up a copy of your book. You've definitely intrigued me as you keep talking about it. That sounds interesting. Either way. Thanks for coming on. It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me.