The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Tuesday, September 23, 2025

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.On today’s edition of The Briefing, Dr. Mohler discusses Vladimir Putin’s increased aggression towards NATO, the Left’s hatred of complementarianism, the need for Protestant Evangelicals to raise stronger families, and ‘performative men.’Part I (00:14 – 11:14)Putin’s New Aggression: Russia’s President is Pushing the Boundaries with NATOThe Kremlin’s plot to kill NATO’s credibility by The EconomistPart II (11:14 – 17:00)So Complementarianism is Harsh Now? Our Culture is Taking Aim at 2,000 Years of Biblical ConvictionHow segments of Christianity overlap with the manosphere and what it means for women by USA Today (Marc Ramirez)Part III (17:00 – 24:41)A Call to Raise Faithful Families: Protestant Evangelicals Need Stronger and Bigger FamiliesPart IV (24:41 – 26:32)The Rise and Impending Fall of ‘Performative Men’: Men, Don’t Stoop to Impress the Women Who Don’t Want to Get MarriedThey drink matcha, dabble in photography and love Joan Didion. Meet the ‘performative men’ by USA Today (Charles Trepany)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Sometimes warfare and tactics and strategy develop over a long period of time. Sometimes a major shift in warfare takes place in just an instant. You can look at one particular development, a very short amount of time. Everything seems to be changed. I'll just give you one date. That date, December the 10th, 1941. Now, many of you are thinking, well, Pearl Harbor was three days earlier, December the 7th, 1941. President Roosevelt said that was a date that would live in infamy. And of course, it did, marking America's formal entree into World War II. But you also have to note that just three days later, in the Pacific Theater, in what became known as the Naval Battle of Malay, two British

battleships were sunk, the HMS Prince of Wales and the HMS repulse. That was the day those two massive battleships, which were such symbolic representations of British naval power. That's when they were sunk in one day. And the big issue was not that they were sunk, but how they were sunk. They were sunk as a result of aerial bombardment from aircraft deployed by Imperial Japan. So Japanese bombers sank two British battleships and just a short amount of time in one place and one battle. And that changed warfare as we know it.

Why? it is because British naval strategy was centered on the power of those giant battleships, and the naval doctrine said that only a massive opposing naval force could eventually knock out those battleships. It was not considered possible that the battleships were vulnerable to aerial bombardment until all of a sudden they were. And from that point onward, they were largely neutralized, at least in terms of the developments of naval history. Once you had aerial bombardments and the ability from the air to destroy those massive battleships. Warfare, as we know it, was changed.

It was redefined. It would take some time for all of the realignment to take place. But let's just say that at that point, basically no one's saying what we need to do is build more battleships. Instead, and you've probably figured this out, the strategy went towards we need to build more bombers, particularly die bombers that can take out those naval vessels. Well, just recently we have had a similar development,

and you probably have heard of it, but upon reflection and worldview analysis, we need to think about this development a bit further. But we also have to talk about something else, and that is asymmetrical warfare. Asymmetrical warfare is a term that many Americans learned in the course of the first Gulf War, and that's because asymmetrical warfare has to do with, for instance, the fact that an opposing force that isn't a major nation doesn't have a major air force, but does have a terrorist strike force, it can inflict very deadly damage on a massive international superpower like the United States. The United States has been vulnerable to asymmetric warfare

for the better part of the last several decades. And a lot of American military strategy has been directed towards how to prevent the success of asymmetrical threats. So let's just put it this way. These terrorist groups do not have nuclear weapons. They're not classic opponents. They're not classic opponents in that sense. There's no symmetry. Instead, what they had was, well, just consider September 11, 2001. What they had was hijacked airliners that they flew into skyscrapers. That hadn't happened before, but once it's happened, you've got to realize the waging of war has just been redefined. More recently, that has taken place with the use of aerial drones, in particular by Ukraine pressing back against Russia's aggressive invasion, but more recently, by

Russia, and that's getting really complicated. Some of the most recent headlines that indicate the change in warfare taking place right before our eyes have to do not so much with the massive drone attacks by Russia in Ukraine, nor even the very strategic attacks by Ukraine in Russia. Now, the big story is the incursion of Russian drones and now Russian aircraft into Allied territory. That is to say, the territory of American allies, and in particular NATO allies. you've had incursions into the airspace of nations, including Romania and Poland, and now you have virtually all along Russia's western border, you have a very clear pattern of incursions. Now, why is this taking place?

Was Russia invading Poland? No. Was Russia invading Romania? No. What were they doing? Well, I think the military analysts that the economist in London have it just about absolutely right. They were testing Western defenses, and they were.

they were testing Western determination. So, let's just put it bluntly. There is no evidence that Russia has current plans to invade Poland, Romania, any other European nation, much less to launch any attack or military advance against the United States. It is clear that Russia is testing Western determination. And this just feeds into the understanding of what is really going on in Russia under Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin clearly is recasting himself as something of a very important.

a Russian Tsar, a Russian emperor, and he clearly wants to reassert Russian aggressiveness. Now, here's something just to note in an historical frame. Russia has almost always, along these borderlands, been, to one degree or another, aggressive. And that is because Russia, by its own national understanding and its own military doctrine, sees itself as incredibly vulnerable on its western flank. One of the reasons is that there's a vast plane. You could basically call that Ukraine, and there's very little that separates Europe from Russia. That was one of the major military stories of the 18th, 19th, and of course 20th centuries. But it is also clear that Vladimir Putin is doing something else that Russian czars often did. They tested to see how far they could push, how far they could go. Now, let's just state the facts. Let's state the rules. The rules are, that there was no legal authority for those Russian aircraft manned or unmanned to come into Polish or Romanian territory. You could just say NATO territory. Not only was there no permission,

it is in itself a provocative act that can constitute a precipitation for war. Now, it's almost assured that Vladimir Putin doesn't want to go to war with Poland or Romania, and much less with NATO and the entire complex now. but he is clearly signaling a new aggression. Let's just state the matters bluntly. There is no way that these incursions were accidental. Very quickly, at least some NATO and other military authorities, when this was a fast-breaking story, said, perhaps this is an accident. But we're not now talking about an accident. Russia, in this case, is not incompetent. It knows exactly what it's doing. And as the economist pointed out, military authorities on both sides of the Russian border are

likely to see the Western response as a, well, not so much strong but weak, showing a vulnerability on the part of Western nations. Now, to be sure, American military doctrine has been incorporating unmanned, that is to say, drone aircraft and other forms of new technologies. But what we're looking at right now, and this is what's really, really interesting when you think about asymmetry, the Americans have been working on very expensive high-tech drones. They may turn out to be very important in warfare. But it's also true that rather inexpensive drones, that some teenager might be able to arrange or jerry-rig out of some kind of radio kit, it turns out that they can be very deadly as well.

That has really been to the assistance of Ukraine. Ukraine has been able to use rather low-tech drones in massive numbers very skillfully deployed against Russian assets. They've also been able to use some more powerful long-range drones. to some significant strategic effect. More recently, the advantage seems to be going to Russia. That, again, is a pattern we need to recognize. Russia is so much larger, so much more powerful.

Its army is vastly greater than that of Ukraine, as is its economic and military power. And thus, Russia has the ability over a period of time to build up the economic superstructure and the technology to produce armies of drones. Now, there are American military authorities who've been looking at this in recent days and weeks and saying, you know, this really is a change. It almost is like one of those days when warfare is redefined. And for one thing, you now have American military authorities speaking openly of the fact

that there's going to have to be an increased American use of and then defense against this kind of drone attack. Furthermore, it really lowers the cost of entry into warfare. This is something that Western nations have been counting on. Indeed, you could say most of the major powers have been counting on during the second half of the 20th century. Nuclear weapons, extremely expensive. The nuclear club still rather restricted. The drone club, well, again, high school student down the street might be able to come up with one, make it fly right over your house. And, well, just honestly, that means someone else could make such a drone and fly it into your house. In national terms, international frame, that's what we're looking at here. Some of those looking at the recent Russian

aggression have said, you know, Western nations have learned a lot from this. Well, that's true, but the danger is that Russia learned a lot more. As the economist declared, quote, if Russia was probing NATO's air defenses, then the results are mixed. NATO, said the economist, quote, has a formidable network of sensors and interceptors that operate across the air, land, and sea. these would have seen the drones crossing the border. Poland claims that it shot down only some because it could see that most, if not all, were decoys. The author then goes and say, quote, I am not convinced that this is true, but the bigger problem

is that NATO air defenses are not really configured for low-level drone incursions in peacetime, end quote. In other words, we're not really prepared for what Russia is now really doing. And by the way, others can watch this and learn very quickly. What Russia is just learning right now, other are. aggressive nations are quickly taken to school. To put it bluntly, the authority, the economist said, quote, if Russia was testing NATO, then I'm not convinced the alliance passed, end quote. In worldview terms, it is also a reminder, a wake up call to Americans and others, that we do

live in a dangerous world. It's an illusion, a dangerous illusion, to believe otherwise. Vladimir Putin is making that point, and he's making it with emphatic clarity, only insanity. would fail to see it. All right, now let's shift back to the United States and think about some very important domestic issues and there is no more important issue on the domestic scene than asking basic questions about the role of men and women in the home in society and pointing to the crisis right now amongst boys and men. But in the midst of this, it's also interesting to see the response particularly of the secular left, even what might be called the center left on the political spectrum to this kind of issue. So, for example, USA Today, I often remark it is a

fascinating cultural barometer. Its coverage is not very deep, but it often is very interesting just in terms of what that newspaper focuses on. So in recent days, indeed now in the last couple of weeks, there have been some very interesting articles. One of them ran just recently, the headline, and in this case, I'm using the version that came out in the Nashville, Tennessee, and that's the major newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee. It appeared just in yesterday's edition. It's a part of the Gannett Network USA Today. Here's the headline, Manosphere, that's put in quotation marks, is a term of art.

Manosphere affects some corners of, hold it, Christianity. Mark Ramirez is the reporter on the article, and he begins in Moscow, Idaho, with evangelical pastor Doug Wilson, and, of course, the connections between Doug Wilson and Secretary of Defense, now Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, and recent media attention. And the bottom line is that what you see is USA Today trying to explain to its own readership what this could possibly mean. And what it tries to do is to take the teaching of a Christian pastor in this case, Doug Wilson, and try to present it as something, well, so bizarre that it deserves a place on the front page of USA Today. Now, looking at the actual article,

it's clear that that's what's intended. It's also clear that when you have men in this article described, they're described as kind of a subspecies of what you might call the male gender in the United States, a subspecies that, for instance, is recognizably male from a distance, a subset that is biblically and ideologically committed, and a subset in which the role of a man, evidently, is rather determinative and important in society in the culture and most particularly in the home. So what you have right here is basically a media alarm being set off. There's some very dangerous people in our midst. These very dangerous people are Christians, and they are teaching a very dangerous doctrine that has to do with differences, say, between men and women, the authority of men in the home and the responsibility

of men to take up this kind of responsibility. And by the way, to show up visibly different than females in such a way that, for instance, with the beards and haircuts, well, just let's say the total package, as you find, by the way, in, for instance, Paul's letter to the Corinthians, First Corinthians, men should look like men and women should look like women. And if you believe such a thing, then you're all of a sudden some kind of dangerous evangelical subculture that will end up on the front page of USA today. Now, I think it's fair to say that Doug Wilson doesn't fear being provocative. But the weird thing is that what he is saying, what he is teaching, that now is considered to be so provocative would have been unremarkable throughout

virtually all the previous centuries of Christianity. Certainly put in a cultural context, more importantly in a biblical and theological context, much of what is now so fascinating to USA today, such that it puts it on the front page of the paper, is just normal, normative Christianity. And furthermore, to a degree that many people perhaps have not noticed, it's basically the future of conservative Christianity in the United States. And by that, I mean, we're all going to be considered a subculture, a threatening subculture of one form or another. USA today, well, it's just a matter of time before all of us and all of our churches end up at least as potential subject matter for a front page expose. And it is because, given the radical

secularization of the culture around us, the radical liberalization of that culture, the deliberate and now such widespread gender confusion, confusion over sexuality, what it means to be male and female, whether a boy's a boy and a girl's a girl, let's just say that in this kind of context, if you're really clear about that, then you're the exception. And given the stance of a newspaper like USA Today, you just, well, you're probably dangerous. As I often underline, the more interesting thing in this kind of media coverage is not what they focus on as the issue, but how they try to explain it and the kind of people they bring in to do the explaining. So pretty predictable cast of characters here. Along comes an academic, Julie Ingersoll,

identified as Professor of Religious Studies, the University of North Florida, and she said, quote, there's a version of men in charge, women in submission, that goes back as far as I can think of. Now, let me just say that this can be misused, it can be crude, it can be misrepresentative, but let's just say, yeah, it goes back as far as, well, let's just say the Garden of Eden. It goes back further, I think, than this academic is meaning to indicate. USA Today continues, quoting Julie Ingersoll, quote, in other words, she said, most of those congregations would agree that while married couples more or less decide things together, the man has the ultimate say, end quote. Now, that's reductionistic. It's not, I think, the way most

conservative biblical evangelicals who are committed to a biblical understanding of what we now call complementarianism. I don't think that's the quickest way we would say that, but it's not wrong, notice that what she says is that men and women married couples, quote, more or less decide things together and then says the man has the ultimate say, you know, I'll just say right out loud, I can't imagine in many previous centuries or even decades of conservative Christian experience, where that would be controversial in the least. And yet I do appreciate the fact she put both of those things in one sentence, more or less decide things together, the man has the ultimate say. Quote, but over the last decade, Ingersoll said, the soft patriarchalism,

sometimes called complementarianism, the idea that men and women have distinct but complementary roles has yielded to a more transgressive, hierarchical version or versions. Quote, complementarianism, she said, now, is not like it was in the 1980s. She says, it's harsh, end quote. Now, you know, I'm just going to point to the obvious biblical teaching hasn't changed. It is true that as time has passed, I think the issues have been tremendously clarified. But I want to make the point that I just have to make over and over again, and that is that conservatives don't have to change in order for biblical conservatives to be considered ever more radical. It is because the culture is doing the changing and the culture is moving

in a leftward progressivist direction, and thus they look at conservative Christians who really haven't changed in terms of these biblical convictions, or even, I think, basically haven't changed in the pattern of how we think about these things in most of our churches. But the cultures move so far that we keep looking further and further right when, to be honest, we haven't moved. We could use the same books written by people back in the 19th century. We could look to the Puritans writing about these things, the magisterial reformers in the 16th century speaking about these things, virtually any point in church history. This would be quite natural territory. but you look at a secularizing culture, and let's just be honest,

conservative Christians just look increasingly strange across the board, certainly in terms of marriage and gender relations, and the order in the church. Another fascinating argument, and predictably, it shows up in this USA Today piece. Matthew Taylor's identified as, quote, an expert on religious extremism at the Institute for Islamic Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore. And Professor Taylor explains, as you, USA Today summarizes, quote, recent decades have seen advancements for women in the LGBTQ plus community, eroding conservative Christian views of U.S. identity. Dr. Taylor said, quote, what we're experiencing

now is the backlash to that very rapid cultural change we've undergone, end quote. So now backlash is the category. And once again, I'm just going to argue that there have been clarifications on the conservative side. There's been some necessary tightening of definitions on the conservative side. There has been a very clear understanding of the necessary visibility of our affirmation of biblical Christianity. But it's still true that the Bible hasn't changed. The basic Christian approach to these things is held by those who are continuing in the classical biblical Christian tradition. It hasn't really changed. What has changed is the cultural context. And so it is true. You've got a lot more young Christian men who have beards.

And if you find that theologically threatening, you're probably in big trouble. I think it's because in an age of gender confusion, young men in particular decide to make abundantly clear that they are men, and that's one of the fastest ways to do it. It differentiates between men and women in a very clear way, and in a time of confusion, let's just say, beards clarify. But Matthew Taylor is cited again later in the article. According to USA Today, he says there are basically two different. different forms of the manosphere, as he describes it, conservative Christian masculine development. The first of them is, quote, traditionalist Catholics, and the second are reformed reconstructionist

Christians. Well, let's just say it says, quote, which he defines as basically Calvinist, largely evangelical world of pastors and preachers, many of them young men with well-groomed beards, the so-called Theobros, end quote. Now, I'm going to suggest the word reconstructionist is not particularly helpful. there, but it is true that they are increasingly understood to be reformed in some sense, basically Calvinist. And I think the reason for that is really clear in a secularizing age, guess what? Those who actually hold to a very clear religious theological identity,

they're going to have to figure out exactly what that identity is, and it needs to be comprehensive. There are very few comprehensive alternatives. And this is where, for example, conservative Catholicism, I think more accurately described internally as traditionalist Catholicism. It's a comprehensive worldview. It is abundantly clear how comprehensive it is. Similarly, among Protestants, it's the more magisterial Protestants, the thicker Protestant cultures that have the more comprehensive approach. And yet all evangelicals are going to have to quickly develop a comprehensive approach, or all is going to be lost in a secularizing age with all of its perils and all of its pressures. And unabashedly, I'll just simply say that that reformed world is, I think, far more likely to be the lasting world.

And I identify in it without hesitation myself. To put it another way, in a time of this kind of peril, this kind of secularizing pressure, it's really, really clear. In the age of temptations in which we live, you're going to have to have a very substantial Christianity that's not only theologically and doctrinally substantial and cohesive, And let me just say, true, you're also going to have to have a way of life and an understanding of the application of that Christianity that does apply to every area of life. And yes, to the shock and consternation of USA Today, it's going to begin with marriage and to the home. And that takes us back to some of the most interesting recent headlines having to do with the fact that even when the media tries to define someone like Charlie Kirk, it finds perhaps most remarkable, nothing politically that he said, but perhaps most remarkable the fact that, that he said to young men, you need to grow up, you need to get a job, you need to get married, and you need to have children. Let me just say, we're about to find out which religious bodies on

planet Earth have the conviction and the courage, the thick culture to say that and make it stick. And I think Orthodox Judaism is a clear example of one of those theological systems and cultures that has made it thick. I think traditionalist Catholicism has also made it thick. I think most of evangelicalism isn't even close to. to being up to the task. It's just some kind of theological, cultural goo. Let's be clear, that's not going to work. It's going to take something very thick and very substantial, which is why I think it is the thickest forms of deep Protestant evangelical theology, doctrine, and yes, cultural engagement, and yes, living it out in the lifeways of the home and the church and marriage and the family.

That's going to show where the Christians actually are, the Christians defined by let's just say, historic Christianity. And not only in church, that's where it starts, but also in the family and in the world. Before I leave this, I just have to point to another front-page news story in USA Today, again, about men, but this time it's about, quote, performative men, end quote. And these are men at the other extreme, you might say, who are trying to, well, live performative lives. That's a very interesting social construction word that basically means. they're acting out in order to impress someone. And in this case, they're trying to impress more

feminist women with their own more feminist ways, right down to carrying books by feminist-approved authors. And even USA Today seems to understand that's not going to work. Or here's what's really interesting. It turns out that if you're one of these more, let's just say, liberal, progressive, performative males, the people you're going to impress, most importantly, the women you're going to impress are the women who probably aren't going to be impressed into marriage. At the end of the day, it's probably for these performative males just themselves and their books. This is where I think the alternative, the contrast here, made perhaps accidentally, almost assuredly, by accident at USA Today, really goes a long way to prove the point.

For today, we'll just leave it at that. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmohler.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsklee.org. For informational voice college, just go to voicecollege.com. I'm speaking to you from Nashville, Tennessee. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.