The Eric Metaxas Show - #207 - John West

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

John West joins Eric to discuss Cornerstone University’s new core curriculum and why he believes Christian higher education needs to recover a serious understanding of the Bible, Western civilization, and the American founding.West explains why Cornerstone students will study primary sources including the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, Christian sermons, Frederick Douglass, Marx, and other influential thinkers. Eric and John also discuss the Plymouth Colony, property rights, natural law, Christianity’s influence on American ideas of human dignity and liberty, and a recent survey showing widespread disagreement over where Americans’ rights come from.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:🪙 Grace Precious Metals: https://www.metaxasmetals.com/🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/0:00 John West Joins0:42 Cornerstone University’s New Core Curriculum3:01 The “Wisdom Of The American Experience”4:17 Why Students Will Read Marx5:47 Christianity And God-Given Rights7:04 Why Christian Colleges Drift11:01 Plymouth Colony’s Property Experiment14:03 How Cornerstone Changed Direction19:09 Two Attacks On America’s Founding21:18 Only 38% Say Rights Come From God24:01 Blackstone, Locke And Natural Law28:31 Christianity, Equality And Racism31:15 Why Every Student Has To Learn This35:46 Why Faith Must Lead To Action40:08 What Christian Higher Education Is For- - -LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ericmetaxas#EricMetaxas #TheEricMetaxasShow #News #PoliticsChapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.

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Great news. The federal EV rebate is back. Eligible customers get up to $5,000 with the federal EVAP rebate on select 2027 volt and 2026 Equinox EV models. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more details. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program. I am speaking with my friend John West. I think of him as John West of the Discovery Institute. John West, the author of many important books, many of which we've discussed on this program and at Socrates in the city. But now I think of him as John West, who as I am affiliated with Cornerstone University, he is affiliated with Cornerstone University. John West, welcome back. Eric, it's great to be here.

Well, listen, Cornerstone University, I get excited because, you know, people often say to me, are there any good colleges out there? And the short answer is no. but there are a few, actually. A tiny handful of colleges that have not bowed the need to bail. And one of them is Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I was just there recently.

I will be there again, I guess, next week. They have an event. They call it the wisdom conversations. That's kind of how I knew got to meet them about two years ago. And this one is focused. on, you know, kind of what's wrong with communism. Oh, yeah, communism bad.

That's a brave thing. We're living at a point in American culture where it's a brave thing for university to come out against communism. And they've got an amazing lineup. I will be involved, but they have Yomi Park who defected from North Korea. An absolutely astonishing story.

I interviewed her at Socrates in the city a couple of years ago. Seth Dillon, behind the Babylon B. He will be there. And Xi Van Fleet, who experienced the horrors of communist China. So there's a lot of great stuff going on at Cornerstone University. And I want to talk to you about some of it. But the core curriculum, this is something that on my recent trip there, they were explaining to me, it's just spectacular, this core curriculum that you are heavily involved in. So I said, I want to get you on to talk about that. So say what you can about it.

Yeah, well, you know, we both know how bad higher education is overall. And as some people may know, I wrote a book called Stockholm Syndrome Christianity that was partly about my experience as a former professor at a Christian university that sort of went south. The good news is God is raising up, I think, a new generation of institutions a handful right now that are really trying to go back to the basis and go back to the roots of what Christian higher education should be, a university, giving you a Christian worldview. And one of them is Cornerstone. And this core curriculum, one of the things that's really unique about Cornerstone, as opposed to any other Christian university, is the focus on America.

So it's not just the great books. It's not just Western civilization, which all of that is good, but it's the crowning achievement in many ways. ways of Western civilization. It's the American experience. And so as part of their, you know, 30-some credit, you know, core sequence, they're going to have apologetics. They're going to have the Bible. They're going to have, you know, a lot of good things. But then they're going to have a three core sequence, and that's what I'm helping to design, on the wisdom of the American experience. The first one goes deep into the foundations of America. And students will be reading the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the sermons by by, by,

many Christian pastors at the time and digging deep into the meaning of like the Declaration of Independence when it says the laws of nature and nature's God, what does it mean? Well, there's a whole history going back to the Bible, going back to Aquinas, going back to CS Lewis, actually later, about the Christian natural law tradition. So when it says consent of the governed, what does that mean? You know, when we're coming off of the last several years of the COVID tyranny, where the whole idea was, let's be governed by unelected experts. Well, the founders completely disagreed with that. And so the first course digs deep into the roots of the American founding and what it meant, what it meant for things like property rights. You know, you talked about communism. One of the

themes of this course is how America was founded on really the opposite of communism. And then in the second course of these three courses, it talks about the challenges we faced as a nation, particularly the challenge over slavery, but also the challenge of the rise of these ideas, these toxic ideas from Europe, like communism. So students will be reading the Communist Manifesto and seeing, you know, some Christians somehow, I was reading the other day where people say, well, if you read the Communist Manifesto, you know, the ideas aren't wrong. They were talking about loving your neighbor.

Actually, there's nothing about loving your neighbor in the Communist Manifesto. There is stuff about abolishing private property, abolishing marriage, and also giving all communications of things into the hands of the state. The Communist Manifesto, Communism isn't just that people didn't really significantly try it, and so it hasn't really been tried. No, they implemented it, and it was awful. And so students at Cornerstone in the core program are going to get to read Marx for themselves and then see the bitter fruit of Marxism as we get to the third course,

which is really the rise of totalitarianism. like Hitler and Stalin and how America again really shined in trying to uphold human rights and democracy in the world. And what is the basis of that? Things like that God created us, God created us in his image, created us equally in his image, and that our rights come not from the state, but from God. So cornerstone, as far as I know, is really the first confessional Christian university in the United States that is going to have a detailed sequence that every student has to take of three courses of the wisdom of the American experience. And it's not just reading other people.

They're going to be reading the primary sources. Like I said, the Federalist Papers, the writings of great Christian black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. And they're also going to be reading some of the bad guys, the rise of the progressive error. You want to know where the problems came from today? Look at some of the writings of people like Woodrow Wilson and who talks about that the Constitution was developed back in a time where they thought things were static

and that, you know, there were universal truths. But now we know things, everything evolves. And so the Constitution needs to evolve. That was actually one of the campaign speeches of Woodrow Wilson. And so the students are going to get a deep dive into so they understand what's happening today and the positive alternative that America supplies to that. There's so much here. First of all, I want to praise God. for the president of Cornerstone University, Gerson, Riano, Moreno. It's always hard to say his name,

Gerson, G-E-R-S-O-N, Rianio with Attilde Moreno. He is a hero because he took on the leadership of Cornerstone. And I have to say, I'm not going to mention the name of who was there before, but it's somebody that I have known for years. These are not bad people, folks, but there are a lot of Christian leaders that they just don't seem to understand what's at stake and where we are. And so they pretty much, they don't do the hard things. And Gerson has been so brave in taking this on because so many Christian colleges, they kind of waffle or they wobble or they have this idea that, well, we don't want to be mean and we want to be open to different ideas.

And, I mean, Baylor University, I just read this. I think yesterday. Baylor University, which used to be a Christian university or used to be excited about becoming even more Christian, they are now instituting halal food for Muslim students. They're, they're, you know, and you say, was that the worst thing in the world? It's not the worst thing of the world, but it's pretty darn bad. And they're doing that. And that's kind of a mild example. But they're just a host of formerly Christian. colleges or colleges that people would say, well, that's a Christian college, that have gone wobbly in all kinds of directions, usually with curriculum, usually with statements of faith or what they're actually believing or whatever. Cornerstone, I've just been honestly thrilled that they're just being brave and taking this stuff on. They're daring to be associated with divisive monsters like John West and Eric Mattaxes. That's very, very brave of them. But it is kind of interesting and I have to say, John, you know, when you talk about America in writing my recent

book Revolution, I have been, and I've said this many times, just astonished at what a happy story it is. It's such, it's, it is as you just said, it's the crown of the West. I mean, the West, the development of Western civilization culminates in the birth of the United States of America. People need to know that story and people need to know, I mean, I'm not saying, that's just that they'll read my book, but they need to know the larger story that you need the reformation leads to these ideas, leads to people in Europe saying we don't want to be here in Europe under these oppressive hierarchical establishment churches. We want to escape. Where can we go? Oh, there's a continent that we just found. We didn't know about that. We can go there and we can

start a new world, a new way of life. And that culminates in the birth of the United States of America. We need to know that story and celebrate that story and teach that story to our kids because a big part of the reason I wrote the book is that we have been forgetting this. If you go around and talk to people, adults, much less college students, they've sort of forgotten about this stuff. And we cannot forget this. We cannot be a free people unless we know our story. We have a due. to know our story and to teach that story. And that's part of what's going on at Cornerstone, as you described with this core curriculum. You're saying to these students, hey, we're going to actually read the Federalist papers. We're going to read. If you read all that stuff, you're done. There's no way

you're going to be open to the idea that maybe communism is good or it hasn't been tried in the right way yet. And I think that it is absolutely key that young people especially get the, get deep into this stuff and actually read this stuff for themselves. So it's not just something they heard. And here's, which is one little interesting, which I know you'll already know about. But so in the history of America about, you know, why are private property rights important? Well, in the early founding of the colonies where, and I know, I'm sure you know the story, that when the Plymouth colony was founded, they had their own little experiment with communism of having, well, let's all have the land together and farm it together and we'll share.

And the result of that with the Plymouth Colony was starvation. Because, of course, some people wanted to work. Others wanted a loaf off of others. And so they were starving. And so they changed. They abolished. They actually said, well, no, you get to harvest your own things. And then they had plenty.

Here's the interesting thing. That was in the 1600s. The American founders found that very instructive. So James Wilson, who drafted both, was a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, later a Supreme Court justice, in his law lectures where he's giving a whole new generation of America, as this is early 1800s, late 1790s, of what they need to know. When he's covering property rights, he retells that story of Plymouth Colony

as an example of why property rights are important. And a few years later, John Quincy Adams, the son of John Adams, when he's commemorating the Declaration of Independence, or actually commemorating the Plymouth Rock, the landing on Plymouth Rock, I think it may have been in 1820. He retells that story. So the founding generation actually that was deep etched into them about the benefits of property rights. That's just one of many things, the wisdom of our founders. And I will say, you may not know this, Eric, but you're in our curriculum because you've taped various interviews and questions and speaking about George Washington and some of the insights from your great book.

on the American Revolution. And if you come to Cornerstone, if your kids come to Cornerstone, you're going to learn from Eric Metaxus too. When we look at the headlines coming out of Iran and Israel right now, the fog of war is real. It's hard to know whom to trust. That same feeling of confusion often hits home when you're trying to navigate Medicare. There are so many bad actors in this space looking to capitalize on confusion rather than provide clarity. That's exactly why I am proud to partner with Chapter. Chapter acts as a trusted advocate helping you cut through the noise to understand your Medicare options. Unlike most agents who only show you a few plans, Chapter looks at every plan nationwide. They're completely unbiased and focus on what's best for you, not the insurance

companies. If you're turning 65 or just have questions about your current coverage, give them a call at 571, 421, 1,253. That's 571, 421, 1,253. It's free, it's quick, and it's the kind of honest guidance we need more of today. Call chapter and get the peace of mind you need. Yeah, I feel privileged to be involved in that. And again, it's just people need to know there are good things happening out there. I mean, the fact that Cornerstone University, which is not a huge university, in Grand Rapids, is taking this brave,

stand. I mean, even a few years ago, I hadn't heard of Cornerstone. This is good news, folks, and you need to know about it. It's an amazing story. Just to piggyback a little bit on what you said earlier, so many, as we both know, Christian colleges have gone down into the sewer, either by intention or by inattention. And Cornerstone was going down that path. And when I wrote my book Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, it was so, in a way, discouraging. And actually, while I was writing it, someone asked me, well, do you have any good examples to share of where things have gone back the other way? I said, well, maybe there are a couple, but not really. And then after I wrote the book, when I learned about Cornerstone and was invited out by the president to speak,

and learning just how they were turning things around, that is amazing. This is an amazing thing that's happening in Grand Rapids. And if you are very interested in what your kids are going to be learning and you should be, you really do need to look at Cornerstone because it's not happening anywhere else. And a lot of other places, I was into Christian school where the further away it went from Christianity, the more the marketing became Christian. The great thing about Cornerstone is what their marketing is actually what's happening in the classroom. It's not just fake marketing. Well, again, I have to say that, you know, I always say, what colleges are daring to invite me to speak, right?

You know, there are very, very few, folks. I'm still waiting for my invitation from Biola or Wheaton. They really are not, they're very, very wobbly. They've taken that, you know, the position that you write about in your book, John Stockholm Syndrome, Christianity. They've adopted the thinking of the world in many, many ways. And, you know, like Woodrow Wilson, they want to put a Christian label on it. not Christian, but they think, well, it's more Christian. It's deeply Christian. It's not, it's not Christian. But, but they've gone wobbly. And so, you know, I'm invited to speak

regularly at Cornerstone. I'll be at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia in a couple of weeks. But there are many supposedly Christian colleges out there that are very, very wobbly theologically, and it breaks my heart because I've known the leaders of some of these places, but they just don't seem to have what it takes to stand up. They think it's the safer route. But again, that's what led to what John in his book called Stockholm Syndrome Christianity. They have really, they've become like the world. They've changed their values, and they're not doing anybody any favors. I want to remind people that there's this thing happening. I guess it's October 1st, which suddenly is just around the corner. It is a wisdom conversation at Cornerstone,

and I will be there speaking. Seth Dillon will be speaking Shee Van Fleet, who survived the horrors of communist China. She's written books about it. I've had her on this program. And Yomi Park, who has written two books about what she's experienced. escaping North Korea. It's almost unbelievable. It's horrifying stuff. But Cornerstone is really brave, you know, in talking about this. And I think, you know, if you're too old to go back to college, you know, you can read books like you can read John's book, books and my books. But it's important that we understand this stuff because we've drifted so far. I've been amazed, John, in the research from my book Revolution, how much of the nonsense I had swallowed over the

that even I really had not seen so much of the stuff that in doing the research for my book, I thought, my goodness, the Christian roots of this nation are utterly undeniable. I mean, there's just no way even to think of America coming into being unless you understand that this is Reformation theology. This is Puritan theology. They were the ones that led. It was Massachusetts Bay Colony leaders, John Adams, Samuel Adams. They led the whole thing.

You know, South Carolina didn't lead. Georgia didn't lead. They eventually came along, thank God. But it really is fascinating to me, how it's just inextricably intertwined with the Christian faith. Most Christians don't know that, much less Americans. And we've just got to get the word out that this is really true. It's something that, you know, again, the core curriculum at Cornerstone, you're going to be teaching the kids this so that they get this. But everybody in the country needs to know it. And I mean, it gives me hope. that we're beginning to get the word out. You are so right, and I want to just reemphasize that it's not just the non-Christians who need to know this, it's the Christians. Right now, we have two big attacks on the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. One is that I think many of your listeners are quite familiar with, and that's the left, the woke left, who trashes the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and thinks that it was just, you know,

warmed over racism and that they you know a bunch of white guys who are wanting to repress people and that's completely ridiculous and in fact the founders themselves were troubled by slavery and set it up so that we could address it so that um we ultimately did abolish it but then you have this in the last few years this and i know we both we've talked about this before even you know together whether you call it the woke right or the fascist right or whatever of a of a fortunately i still think their minority, but of voices who actually on the right hate the Constitution. They hate the Christian idea of religious liberty, which is not the secular ACLU idea of religious liberty, but it is genuine.

They are, and one reason they're doing that is they think the only alternative. They think the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence failed because they think the last 20 or 30 years was somehow following that. No, it wasn't. It was a betrayal of that. And rather than going back to the roots, the Christian roots of the American founding, they just want to junk it for something else. And it's imperative that Christian parents make sure that they're Christian,

especially a lot of young men are attracted to this, but both young men and women understand the goodness and the wisdom of the American founding. It was not anti-Christian. It was actually built on fundamental truths of Christian truth about objective morale, of objective justice about God-given rights. The rights don't come from the state, and they can't just be taken away by the state because they're given by God.

But, you know, I think you may know, earlier this year I conducted for Discovery Institute a survey of 2,500 Americans, and one of the things we asked was, well, where do our rights come from? Only 38% of Americans said that our rights come from God. And that included even a lot of Christians weren't willing to say that our rights,

come from God. It came from, you know, maybe tradition. It came from government was the next No, they don't. If government grants your rights, government can take them away. Right. I mean, this is the thing is that when I, with my book, I was around a secular group recently. They did a, they read my book in a, in a book group. And you could see that some of them were troubled that I'm talking about, our rights coming from God or that our nation being born 250 years ago out of Christian faith. They said, well, no, it's the British common law tradition. It's the enlightenment. And you think, listen, it's not complicated. You are created by God in his image. Therefore, you are sacred. God says, I made you. No one can touch you. You are free. You belong to me.

That idea means that government has no right to touch you, to do anything. It's an amazing concept that we're created in God's image. So we are sacred. You don't have a high enough view of human beings that God didn't create anything else in his image. We are created in his image. It's a sacred, radical idea. And when you realize, wow, God created me in his image. That makes me think more of myself. I should treat myself with the dignity of an image bearer of God. And that means that everyone else has to treat everyone else with that dignity. And so government has no right to treat us, you know, as though were anything less than image bearers of God. That is enshrined in our founding documents.

Where did it come from? No, it didn't come from that place. It comes from the Bible. It's the God of the Bible who is single-handedly responsible for this concept, for introducing us to this concept. And every American used to know that, I think, but we are obliged to know this because we have so many voices telling us

the opposite are confusing us, and so that so many people, as you just said, and I've said, so many Christians confused by this, that is, that, that sums it up. God made you in his image. Now, when you really take that seriously, holy cow, what follows from that, everything, and ultimately the United States of America, we need to understand that. And I know most Christians don't, and certainly most Americans don't. That's a startling thing, you said, that 38% people. I mean, there was a time, I think, when most, most, Americans understood this stuff. They did understand that.

And the great thing about the curriculum we're doing is, you know, you mentioned people saying, oh, well, this came from British common law. That shows how, I guess I shouldn't say stupid, how ignorant people are. Because if you know anything about the British common law, for example, if you read William Christian, William Blackstone's great commentaries on the laws of England, you know where does he base the rights of Englishmen on? Well, it's actually God's universal moral law that applies to everyone, and he's very explicit about that. So, yes, some of the influences on the American family included the British Enlightenment, the Scottish Enlightenment.

But if you read those thinkers, biblical ideas were, we're talking about the laws of nature and nature's God. Some people say, well, John Locke said that. Yeah, and where did John Locke get that from? He got it from Christian theologian Richard Hooker, who got it from Thomas Aquinas, who got it from really, the understanding of the biblical tradition where Paul talks about that there's a law written on our heart. So God gave his law in the Bible and things like the Ten Commandments, and he also wrote it in our consciences, and God gave us law in two ways. And that's been standard Christian teaching 101 since St. Paul.

And so, you know, some of these people who cite these other influences, they don't realize that they're citing a secondary or tertiary influence that itself was influenced by the biblical tradition. It's a shell game. Like they say, no, no, no, it's British common law. And you're like, okay, pick up that shell. What's under that shell? Where did British common law get it from? You know, all of this stuff, it can only come from one place.

And ladies and gentlemen, it ain't the Quran. It is not, you know, the Marquis de Saad. It is not Voltaire. Where did these kooky, radical ideas come from? They all come from the Bible. Period. Case closed. So somebody catches it and carries it along.

and we say, oh, that's the, that's British common law. Well, yes, it came through British common law, but where did they get it from? Where did John Locke get it from? And on and on and on. There's only one world, you know, where this stuff, I mean, there's only one place where this stuff comes from, period. And I think we have to be honest about that.

And I really think that sometimes experts, and you know this, John, experts confuse things. They use a lot of terms. And he's like, when you're talking about the French Enlightenment or the Enlightenment, They don't, you know, you want to say, excuse me, where did they get it from? Which enlightenment? The French Enlightenment, is that the same? Is the Scottish, it's not.

So why are you just saying the Enlightenment? Where did those ideas come from in the Enlightenment? It all is traced to the Hebrew Bible, period, folks. There's no other place that these ideas come from. And I think I've gotten, you know, kind of strident about it because I'm amazed at how people obfuscate. and they, you know, pretend that you can sort of get it without the God of the Bible, without the Bible. And I think, can you show me where?

Please show me where else these ideas come from. You're kidding yourself. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, as a scholar, I'm all for nuance. I want to be accurate. I know you want to be accurate. But scholars do, there is this tendency of to nuance thing to death so that you actually avoid the main points. and if you can't give the main points, that's a problem.

And you're exactly right. If students, if our next generation, if our current generation doesn't understand the big truths that came from the Christian tradition, going back to the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible, they don't understand what's going on. And that includes, again, sadly, many Christians. And it includes, unfortunately, some of the Christian. some Christians on the minority on the right who will say that, well, you know, human rights, no, it's just the rights because if we're, rights of Englishmen means if you're a white

Englishman, that's what they were defending. Well, again, if they wait back to Blackstone when he talks about, well, what were the rights of Englishmen, they were rights commanded by God and nature. So that by me, by, that means they apply to everyone who's created by God. And I'm, you know, everyone is created by God, whether you're black, white, red, anything else. And so these are human rights attached to us, as you point out, because we're created in the image of God. Well, anybody who is even slightly racist, folks, you need to understand where that comes from. That comes from the pit of hell.

That is Satan's idea. God's idea is that we are all equal, made in his image, sacred. And a lot of that racism has crept in to some bizarre fringes. of the right. We need to be real clear about this stuff. We need to be extra clear about this stuff. It's very important that we understand what it is we're talking about.

And as you say, nuance is important, but it can be used to obfuscate. And I think, let's be clear, a lot of scholars, they're secularists, they hate the idea of talking about God. It makes them uncomfortable. And so if they can use some other term and kind of dazzle you a little bit

with some terminology to get you off the subject, they'll do that. And I think that we have a responsibility to be intellectually honest and say no. These ideas don't, you know, because people say, well, I love liberty. And I say, well, that's good, good. I'm glad you love liberty

and that you're against tyranny. But you kind of need to know why liberty is good and where that idea comes from. Because there's some people that they're merely practical. They say, well, I grew up in, I interviewed somebody recently who grew up in Cuba. and he just knew how horrible that was. But he doesn't understand it's the ideas that lead to the ideas behind Marxism in Cuba.

It's not just that, yes, liberty is good, but you have to understand the people who fight for liberty ultimately get that idea from the God of the Bible. We need to be clear about this. And I just think there are a lot of people that they want, you know, it's kind of like wanting the resurrection without the cross. you've got to understand how this works, folks. You've got to understand that you can't get liberty and all the blessings of America without the God of the Bible being behind it. That's where those ideas come from.

You might not like it, but you have to be intellectually honest. And that's why John West and I are here to scold you right now if you got this stuff wrong. No, it's really, it's joyful. It is. I keep saying that with my Revolution book, I say, folks, this is a,

happy story. The good guys win against all odds. And it seems to be because God is with them, that these ideas are God's ideas in human history. And it's, it's an extraordinary story. It's a true story. We need to know these true stories. And again, I think that the left or a lot of times people, they just want to nuance this stuff to death and they don't like things in black and white, good guys and bad guys. But, you know, that's really not right. There are, there are, good guys and bad guys. It doesn't mean that we aren't all sinners. It doesn't mean, you know, we always have to qualify, qualify. But it is important. And again, to get back to where we started, that Cornerstone University now has instituted this core curriculum. So you cannot go there and miss

this stuff because there's a lot of colleges where theoretically, you know, you can find some good courses. But at Cornerstone, they're not going to let you graduate unless you get the basics that we're talking about. And I love it how you put it. It is a joyful thing to study. And so the three core courses I was talking about, we don't avoid the tough issues, the discussion over slavery or the bad working conditions and some of the downsides of certain forms of corporate capitalism. We grapple with those. But the joyous thing is that God raised up faithful people throughout American history. You talk about it in your book on the American revolution, but into the 1800s in the battle against slavery, in the battle for worker dignity,

in the battle for human rights, in the battle against communism and for human freedom, God raised up faithful Christians throughout American history. And so you're not just going to study, if you come to cornerstone, you're not just going to study the bad things that America grappled with. America is sinful. We're all sinful. The joyous thing, though, is that so many people suffered and suffered and satisfied. sacrificed in order to defend God's moral laws, to defend mercy, to offer, to help the poor, for

example. I mean, the greatest engine of human economic progress or for the poor has been Christianity. And, you know, I think capitalism helps. But Christianity has had a great message there. And so if you come to Cornerstone, you won't, you'll face, your students will get the heart. topics, but not in a way that tears things down. They're going to hear from the people who struggle with it and who stood up for the right. Well, that's the other thing is that, you know, it is a struggle. This is something I've talked about a lot that, you know, just because we win doesn't mean it's easy. You have to fight. You have to care enough to fight and pray and get in it. And that is the story of the birth of the United States. It's the story of the birth. It's the story of the birth

It's the story of the United States for 250 years that, you know, we had this thing called a civil war. There has been a lot of struggle. And I think that we're, I keep saying we're in the third existential crisis of our history right now. It's for all the marbles. They're people that have a fundamentally anti-biblical worldview, which is an anti-American view, that are trying to take over the country.

They are, you know, some of them are globalists, some of them are communists, some of them Islamofascists, they're kind of banding together because they have a common enemy. And it's the God of the Bible. And it's the fruit of thinking about the God of the Bible, which is to say a free country called the United States of America. So that's one reason we need to know what we're dealing with. We need to, first of all, understand what America is. Otherwise, we can't fight the false versions of it.

Or we have to understand what the Bible says. or we won't be able to answer people who claim that it says things that it actually doesn't say. And the point here is to move exactly right, from understanding to application. And so I want my prayer for every student who goes through this course sequence that I'm designing, and I'm sure the prayer for the president of Cornerstone overall, is that students at the end of it will say, well, how does this apply to me? How can I stand for truth now? And the reason to go through this history is not just some dry history.

It's actually very active and exciting, but it's also then to ask the question, well, how does that apply to me? How can I be a William Wilberforce today? How could I be a George Washington? How could I be an Abraham Lincoln, a Frederick Douglass? What can I do today? What is God calling me to do to stand for truth and today in America? And I hope every student, by the end of getting graduate, graduating from Cornerstone will have that clearly in view. How God wants, what does God want them to do

to be salt and light in our culture? Well, it is interesting. This has been a big subject for me the last few years. When I wrote my book, a letter to the American church, I realized that this lie has crept into the American church that I don't need to do anything. That works don't matter. Well, you may not be saved by works, but works matter. You are saved for works, right? You're saved so that, that when you know what's what, you say, okay, what did God make me to do? He made me to do things. In the case of Wilberforce, it's to lead, among other things, to lead the political battle against the slave trade in the British Empire. He created each one of us to do things. And that lie, that heresy, that I don't need to do anything. Well, you know, we're all called to do different things. But we're all called to do things.

or most of us called to do things. You know, you have to say, if you're in a coma, you have the same value as somebody who's doing a lot of things. So we're not talking about that. But this idea that, you know, I'm just here and I believe, and that's enough, you're really missing it. And so understanding, studying the lives of people like Wilberforce or Bonhoeffer or so many others who lived out their faith,

I think of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. and Samuel Adams, that they really lived out their faith in what they were doing. And I think that that's often missed, John, you know, that we kind of think, well, that's a separate thing. Faith is just, you know, what you believe. But that's the whole idea. What you believe is supposed to translate into how you live your life. That's exactly right. I think of one of my favorite verses in Ephesians where it talks about God, creating beforehand good works for us to walk into. So in other words, he has plans for us, but we need to walk. walk into them. And we are also, all of, you know, Jesus' teachings about, you know, the gifting

of the talents. We're responsible stewards. God has made us stewards of his great riches. And so, and Christians, thankfully, many Christians have been faithful through American history. And that's one reason our nation has survived. And a question about whether we're going to survive for another hundred years, probably may be decided by how faithful are Christians in America going to be in the next five to ten years? Oh, I don't think there's any doubt about that. That's why I keep saying we're in the third existential crisis of our history. This is it, folks. This is it. And again, it's part of why I wrote my revolution book is like, we need to go back to the beginning and understand who are we, what is required of us, what is right, what is

wrong. We've got to get this right. And many people, including many Christians, are still not getting this. And it's very, very important because I don't think if we don't get through this, and I think we will, because I think enough people are getting it, but if we don't get through what we're doing right now, I mean, if the left wins, if Kamala Harris, God forbid, had won the election a few years ago, or if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, it's over. You can't recover. There's certain things you can't recover from. Germany still hasn't recovered from what happened when the church allowed Adolf Hitler to rise. It's not like, oh, well, another four years we'll elect somebody else. No, that can destroy a nation for 100 years. And in the case of Germany, basically, they've never recovered. Maybe they've

covered economically. That's not the same thing. So I think that we are in an existential crisis. I think this election that's coming up is a big part of that. I hope Christians will fast and pray for the nation and for this election because I don't think that, you know, we're not out of the woods yet. I feel like, you know, it's 1776 or 1777. We're still fighting. We haven't been wiped out. But it's not over yet. At least that's how I see it.

Yeah, I think elections are very important. And I think this next election is very important. but I want to say, you know, God is sovereign, but that's not, that doesn't mean that we're not responsible because God's sovereignty also includes whether we're being faithful or not. And if we're not faithful, God's sovereignty can include, well, your nation is going to go down. And so I think, you know, more than just any one election, we need to be faithful stewards. And really, that is, the whole reason Christian higher education in America was started in the mid-1800s after the first wave of Christian schools like Harvard and Dartmouth and others actually bought into deism and went against biblical Christianity. So a whole other wave of Christian schools were started by mid-19th century.

They were started to raise up faithful Christians who could be salt and light and who were biblically faithful. and sadly, you know, a number of Christian institutions they have fallen down on that job. But God is raising up and elevating some Christian institutions who are trying to be faithful. And that is really positive. God is working. And we need to, you know, follow his call.

And, you know, part of, I don't say this that much, but one of the things that I learned in the course of writing my book, was how the Reformation led to this idea that we have to study and read. In other words, we can't just say ignorance is fine and just tell me what to do. And so when in 1630, when the Arbella comes to start with John Winthrop's to start Massachusetts Bay Colony, you know, these are Puritans. and the first thing they do, six years after they land that ship, they start Harvard College for the very purpose of raising up people, ministers of the gospel, people who can think and read

the Bible in the original languages and how learning is so important. Because people often say, like, well, that's the Enlightenment. No, no, no, no, no. That's the Reformation. That is the Bible where we get these ideas from, that we have an obligation to understand how to think what the Bible says, that we've all got to take our own. role in that. So studying, reading the right books, caring about these things, I don't see that as extra credit. I see that as if you're some kind of a Christian, you've got to understand that that's

part of your duty to love God with your mind. It's why I produce a lot of the stuff that I do, Socrates and the City and why John and the Discovery Institute are doing what they do. This really matters. This is central to the faith. John, we've just got about a minute left. Any final thoughts? Well, I think if you're a Christian who's discouraged, don't be because God is moving. Preferfully think, whether it be if you have kids about where you should send them to college or what you in your own life with your own family can do because God is calling you to faithfulness and he will honor that. Now, if you're a Christian who's self-satisfied who thinks that, well, it doesn't really matter,

then get off your rear end and then I hope you feel uncomfortable because God needs to work on your heart to do that. But you're exactly right. Reading the Bible, reading the tradition in America, of the Christian tradition in America, is not extra assignment. It is equipping yourself for service today. And actually, you know, for people for whom this is difficult, most books are available on audiobook.

I know my books are available on audiobook. And John, I assume some of your books are available on audiobook. book. And I want to say, folks, there's no harm. People say, well, I didn't read your book. I listened to it. It's like, it's the same thing. Listen to great works. There's, there's, there's, you, you, you don't get more credit for running your eyes across the page. You can let somebody else do that. But, but, but in your spare time, listen to great audio books, you know, learn, learn in that way. And I should get a plug in Socrates and city. We've started book clubs, uh, which is a one. wonderful way to read a book with a group of people.

Go to Socratesinthe city.com. We're starting. I think we've got about 50 of them online right now. It's kind of amazing, and you can do it in your, I mean, it happens in person, not online, but they're wonderful. Go to Socratesin the city.com if you want to start a Socrates and the city book club, but they're just spectacular. We've got a grant.

We'll send you the books for free. It's kind of a great deal. Well, John West, thanks for being my guest, folks. just to remind you that we've been talking mostly today about Cornerstone University. You need to know about them October 1st. They've got this great wisdom conversation happening. I'll be involved with that in any case. John West, thank you so much for being my guest.

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