The Eric Metaxas Show - Abdu Murray (continued)

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

Abdu Murray continues discussing his book, "More Than a White Man's Religion: Why the Gospel Has Never Been Merely White, Male-Centered, or Just Another Religion."

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Eric McTaxis show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey there, folks. I have the honor to be sitting here with Abdou Murray, who has written many books. He's a spokesman for the Christian faith. You can find him at Embracethruth.org, and he has a brand new bookout called More Than a White Man's Religion. Provocative title.

Abdu, why did you give it that title? Well, first off is that it's the reason why this book has been written is because there's a social surge, I think that's running away from the Christian faith, because there's a narrative out there, I think, I think a false narrative that whatever societal ills we face, whether it's racism or sexism, are laid at the feet of the Christian faith. In other words, in the politicization of Christianity, in the polarization of the world right now, whether left or right are using Christianity as weapons or shields, whatever it is, there is this perception now that the Christian faith is this white Western imperialistic religion

imposed by white Western imperialists on brown people and women to control them. When the reality is the narrative is exactly the opposite, is that the Christian faith is this olive skin religion that was propagated by North Africans in order to actually effectuate change in the Roman Empire. So anything good really in the West that we can say can't really come from the Roman Empire directly. It has to have its roots in the Christian faith. My general thesis is this, is that I believe the Christian message is actually the cure for the very things it's being blamed for. So it's not just a white man's religion because it is for white men.

It's not just a male religion because it is for men, but it's more than that. It's a system of belief, I think, uniquely and I think demonstrably uniquely for all people, regardless of your male or female, and regardless of what your skin tone is or what ethnic background you come from. So I try to tackle the tough passages in the Bible, whether it's slavery passages or it's passages or it's about women or whatever it might be, and say these things properly understood actually can highlight the value the gospel message brings to all people so that we can actually have, whether it's on a systemic level, whether that exists or not, or on an individual level, the gospel message cures what ails us. Okay, I neglected to read the subtitle of the book.

It's more than a white man's religion. Why the gospel has never been merely white, male-centered, or just another religion. You have the Constitution and the patience really to debate these things. A lot of times I find myself becoming so disgusted with the lies, you know, that it's just a white man's religion. It's just a this, and I just think, look, I know that is not only wrong, but kind of offensive because the opposite is true. And I don't engage because I – and I think it is the case, and this is why you have to have wisdom. But there, you know, when Jesus talks about, cast ye not your pearls before swine, in other words, there are people with whom it's not worth debating or arguing.

And you have to have a sense of that because there are a lot of people right or wrong on any issue. They love arguing. And I think arguing is a waste of time unless God calls you to that debate. Right. And so you obviously have the ability to do that and have been doing it for decades, obviously now. But it's, it's, it is important for us to understand why what you say is true. And so tell us, let's go through some of these arguments, the classic one. I mean, the first thing that I, what I've been talking about lately, because I wrote a book called is atheism dead, it's apologetics.

And I say, listen, if you are an atheist, that's fine. But you have no logical way to say that racism is wrong. you believe in Darwinism that we are, you know, chance created all these different people, whatever, and it's perfectly logical that some are going to be better and more evolved than others. And so you don't even have a basis to say why racism is wrong, much less to accuse Christians of being racist. And so, of course, and I say the scripture is very clear that racism is wrong. It's completely antithetical to a biblical worldview.

So that's kind of like a basic way that I look at it. But you go much deeper. And that's, I spend a section in the book talking about where do we actually get this philosophical warrant to be outraged at racism? Because the good news is there's plenty of secular people who are outraged at it and thank goodness and thank God. I'm so glad. The Bible, by the way, predicts this that this kind of morality would be imprinted in your heart because you're made in God's image. There's at least some modicum of this still left in us. So I'm not saying you have to be. a Christian in order to view people as equal. And as you've pointed out in your book as well, the point is not that you have to be a Christian to hate racism. The point is you have to actually believe in God, and I think even the God of the Bible, to justify your outrage in the first place.

Well, there's just no doubt about that. That's why I find it funny that, that, you know, what you talk about in this book to some extent is that the Christian faith brought all of these good ideas, that women and men are equal in God's eyes, that every race is equal in the Bible. These ideas come from the Bible, and they've been adopted by people who are today agnostics and atheists. They just don't know where they got it from. So for them, it is tradition. In other words, they happen to be right, but they have no clue why they're right. I love that because it's like, why do you think this? And they see tradition. Well, have you thought it through? No. Yeah, and they haven't. And so we can give them a reason to say, your outrage, I'm so glad you're outraged about this,

but here's the justification for it, here's the basis for it. So I go through a couple of, you know, when you look at, for example, when you think of the classic example of an argument is, well, the Bible condone slavery. Well, it doesn't actually condone slavery. That word, my name, Abdu, in Arabic, actually literally means God's slave. So when you see the word slave, you know, language has univocal, equivocal, and analogical uses. And sometimes if I say the word foot, you don't know what I mean until I say my foot hurt. I could mean a ruler of 12 inch length. We could be talking about poetry. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a million

things we can be taught. So context is king here. So when the Bible uses the word slave, sometimes it's describing chattel slavery. Other times, but it's never prescribing it. It's never saying you should engage in it. It's talking about servitude, voluntary servitude. And it regulates a process. And when I point out in the book, is that one, it's not based on race in the slightest bit. And so when we see the word slave in the Bible, naturally because of Antibulum Southern slavery or the transatlantic slave trade, we automatically think chattel, race-based slavery. And that's not what the Bible's regulating in the slightest bit. It's not involuntary. It's not chattel, and it's not race-based anywhere at all in there. What it is doing is it's

regulating an indentured servitude based on a debt someone owes. And when you carefully look at the Bible, It's basically regulating this practice out of existence, actually, because it's trying to get rid of servitude or servitude altogether, completely. And so you don't see that. Also, it's not race-based, and here's why, when the people of Israel are used as instruments to judge other cultures, it's never because they look different, but it's based on their actions.

It's based on what they do. And how I know it's not based on their ethnicity is because Israel is judged by God using those. those other people to judge Israel when she does the same thing. And so what I try to point out in the book is this, is that what you see God doing throughout the entirety of the Bible is judging people not on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character.

And that ought to sound familiar because King didn't pull that out of the sky. Well, I guess he did pull out of the sky, sort of, because it came from essentially an inspiration from the scripture, his theological quirks notwithstanding. But the point is that the Bible is all about judging, people because of their character, not because of their skin tone. And that actually dignifies human beings because it says what you do matters. And so this is one area. There's so many more areas, but this is one area that I think is a common misconception of the Bible. Yeah, no, and this is

the other thing, too, that people who just want to win arguments, they will, you know, cherry pick verses. And it's obvious oftentimes. And this is why I was saying I often don't have the temperament or the appetite to debate with people. Because I know. I know. pretty quickly, they don't care about the truth. They care about winning. And I think if you're dealing with somebody who cares about winning, you really can't have a conversation because at some point

they're just going to, you know, even if you pin them down, they're going to wriggle away and change the subject and so on and so forth. But what you've just said is so important. Folks, I'm talking to Abdou Murray. And the book is more than a white man's religion. You can find him at

Embrace the Truth.org. Embrace the truth.org. You can find us at ericmetaxis.com. And did you know you can listen to us on an app on your phone? Yeah, look it up. Eric Mataxis show. Get the app. We'll be right back.

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support a company that does. make the switch today and get a free month of service plus free activation. Patriotmobile.com slash Eric. That's patriotmobile.com slash Eric or call 972 Patriot. Welcome back. Talking to Abdou Murray, the book is more than a white man's religion. Why the gospel has never been merely white male-centered or just another religion. It's interesting.

People often in criticizing Christianity, and again, this is where people, they're sloppy and I lose patience because they say, well, Christians have done this and you think, who cares what Christians have done? Have Christians done things that are consonant with their faith or against their faith? Because when you say that Christians were slaveholders and they advocated for slavery, Christians are today advocating for homosexual marriage, trans-jail. I know this, just because somebody says he's a Christian doesn't make what he does or advocates for a Christian. And so we have to ask ourselves, you know, who advocated hard against the transatlantic slave trade, born again on fire Christians, not milk,

not lukewarm churchgoers, but the people who were on fire for faith saw what the scripture had to say. So historically, the argument to me is very strong that when somebody says, you know, the Bible is pro-slavery, that's another example where I would just say, like, look at the, look at the history. of the abolition of slavery, the abolition of racism, that comes out of the Gospels, out of the scripture. Anyway. And, you know, I remember reading your book on Wilberforce, by the way, and the sort of the tang, as it were,

that the Bible has, the gospel has has this tang that actually changes people and gets them out of this sort of malaise of whatever. I preach the gospel to this congregation and don't effectuate the world outside of it, him in the Clapham's Act, they did that. They put feet to their faith. They put hands to their faith. They put words to their faith, and it changed the world for the better, far more for the better. You look at Frederick Douglass, and I have this, there's this wonderful quote that I found of his, and obviously he was a brilliant man, freed slave. He recognized something, and this is so important

because oftentimes, I think we engage in chronological snobbery, is that we take a look at our current social movements, and we say we need to correct a societal wrong. And, first, great. And a lot of people speak, by the way, and I think you're pointing out something really important, by the way. Let me just sidetrack for a moment, is that we can often engage in people who all they want to do is quarrel and not engage in sound argumentation. And you have to know the difference between the two. But I've also noticed that there are people who, I think, have this, their dander is up, their emotions are up because of either deep-seated hurt or they bought into a narrative that whether true or not makes them feel like less of a person or has been, you've been told,

less of a person. They buy into certain lies about this kind of thing. And so they speak from hurt. And so they're yeah but syndrome. I call this yeah but syndrome. It's like when someone says something and they're just waiting for you to stop because they want to say yeah, but, and they keep doing it. It's like a Tourette's almost. It comes from hurt as well. And then you point out something and you say, the current narrative is Christianity is this white, Western imperialistic male-dominated religion. And then you look at someone like Frederick Douglass. And he says things like between the Christianity of this land, of course, meant slaveholding Christianity of the antebellum southern, southern states.

Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ. This is Frederick Douglass. How dare we say that we somehow know better than the man who's gone through what he went through and changed things so much so that at Lincoln's second inaugural address, the first person Lincoln wanted to know, how did I do was Frederick Douglass. And Douglas says that was a noble

effort. And Lincoln says, there's no one whose opinion I value more than yours, sir. And he loves the impartial, peaceable Christianity of Christ. And for us to now say, outside of this kind of context he was living in, that we know better, I think if we look at the actual book and we look at the through the lens of the life of Christ, I think we'll have something revolutionary on our hands. Oh, there's no doubt about it. Obviously, you know, the whole civil rights movement came out of the churches. It was not a secular movement. Jackie Robinson was a serious Christian. Rosa Parks was a serious Christian, and that's just for starters. And to wipe that away, again, a lot of people are just engaged in sophistry. They just don't like something. And then they kind of ride whatever.

narrative they can ride. I mean, the critical race theory is Marxist, atheistic. Again, I don't know where, on what basis they get the idea that racism is even wrong, given their atheist roots. It's bizarre. So, in any event, well, there's so much more in the book. Okay, what about the male-centered issue? Yeah, and this comes from, obviously, there are certain patches in the Bible where Paul talks about women speaking in churches and all the things where, and, you know, the, The classic what I hear oftentimes is someone will say, well, a woman is required to marry her rapist in the Old Testament. And that seems to make her property and not only property, but she can be used and abused all they want. Now, these, of course, are divorced from the full context of what's going on here.

Because even take that, for example, that's specifically troubling in the way it's presented issue, but not when you as you look at it, is women did not have in the ancient Near East at that time the ability to really. necessarily fend for themselves in any real, really realistic way. And so what they had to do, if a woman was, in fact, abused like that, she would go and she would go back to her father or her family, and they would help to take after her. But no man was really going to marry her after that. It was over for her. And so she left to her own devices, she was probably going to starve to death. So what the Bible requires is not that she lives with this man, but this man can no longer marry another person. He's got to take care of her for the rest of her life. And he doesn't even get the privilege of living with her. She can live with her dad all. You know, so there's actually a

wonderful way in which people are taking care of and the victimizers, the victimizer is required for my defense. I mean, if I didn't believe in the Christian faith, just based on what you're saying, you go, that is amazing. This is, we're talking 3,000, more than 3,000 years ago, this level of justice, astonishing stuff. We're talking to the author of more than a white man's religion, Abdou Murray. So let's just continue along this issue of of women in the Bible. It is amazing to me, as I just said, how so many centuries ago, millennia ago you find in the Bible this incredibly high ethic

that didn't exist anywhere on the planet at that time outside of the Jews. It really is one of the most compelling arguments for the Bible as, divine. Well, you know, Leslie Newbigin has this phrase, you know, he says that the Bible is eternally contemporary. I love this phrase because it suggests that it's always relevant at all times for all people, even though it's also specifically relevant for certain people at certain times. It has this historic root, but this pan-temporal application. And Jesus, as a central figure, does this as well. So you look at the Old Testament, and you think to yourself, it's male-centered. Really? Well, you have whole books of the Bible, written, name,

after women. You have Esther. Mordecai is a hero in the book of Esther, but so is Esther. Not only is she a hero, but she's actually a hero who's willing, and you follow this to its logical conclusion, you'll see a foreshadowing here. She's willing for the sake of the life of her people to risk her life because she's got to walk into the king of Persia and basically come unannounced, which was a crime, and if he didn't raise his scepter to her, she would lose her life. She was not summoned by the king. to foil a plot to destroy the Jews, and she needs to bust into the king's chamber in order to do this unannounced. And she does it. She risks her entire life for the sake of her people. In other words, and it works out well. Esther is, in some senses, a foreshadowing of a Messiah type.

I was going to say, what an amazing thing. And a woman. That a woman in the Old Testament is doing something that's a foreshadowing. You know, if it was a male-centered religion, I'd cut that out. Yeah, absolutely. And not only would you cut that out, but then go all the way to the chief miracle of the Christian faith, which is the resurrection,

and women were the first witnesses of the resurrection. Now, if you were making this story up, if you were faking this idea that Jesus rose from the dead, the people you would label to be the first witnesses would be Peter or James or John, or even people no one talks about, like Philip or Bartholomew.

You'd have one of those guys to be the first witnesses. You certainly wouldn't have it be as women followers. unless you're recording it as it actually happened. And so God not only uses that to, that testimony to vault the credibility of the story for us as well, but he gives women the ultimate compliment of saying, you get to be the first ones to see what this was all about. And it was to women, not men.

And now men propagated it, but women were given an equal seat at the table. I mean, I've talked about this myself. It's pretty astonishing. There's evidence, you know, throughout the scriptures, but especially in the Gospels, that if someone made this up, they never would have done it this way. Because I'm a, you know, I'm a writer. I've written fiction. And you don't, you don't create trouble for yourself. You would be creating trouble for yourself. If you're making this up and you'd say, in three women showed up, why, you know, why would you do that? You just keep it simple. and there's so much of that kind of evidence,

which is one of the things that leads me to believe that, you know, if you're serious about truth, whoever you are, I dare you, to be honest, and look at what it says and reason with yourself. Does it make sense that this is made up, that this was changed? There's so many quirks and things that anybody would have, you know, I would have sanded down those edges before I put it out for publication.

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Feel the difference. We're back with Abdou Murray. The book is more than a white man's religion. And speaking as a white man, I'm offended. Okay, so people can find you at Embracethruth.org. Let's talk more about this, because you've spent decades debating people. You're a master of the field of apologetics. Why did you feel the need to make this case.

now? Well, you know, it's, I've looked at the questions as they've come to me on secular campuses in halls of business, halls of government. My big thing is I like to give, I'll give a talk, but I really like to do the Q&A. That's where I think real ministry happens where it really begins to become effective. In fact, the more personal you get, the more decisions you find made. So from a talk to a Q&A, that's one-on-one, well, in front of a crowd, to the down at the bottom of the dais where people are talking to you, to the personal phone call that follow. is you get more and more of a commitment to find out the truth. But what I've noticed is something that's really interesting is the questions have started to change.

It used to be the case. You go to a secular campus, and they'll come to the microphones and they'll say, how can I trust the Bible when Luke seems to have gotten it wrong? Was Lyssinnius really tetarach of Abilah, as he seems to suggest? You know, that kind of stuff. I love those kinds of questions. I laugh just because there's some people that are so in those, you know, details. Yeah, in the media.

And anyway, go ahead. Yeah. How about science and faith? Hasn't science obviated a need for God? What about evolution? Did Jesus really rise from the dead? Do we know King David existed? These are all propositional, truth issues, some philosophical, but some factual, historical, historical, and these are great questions. People are still asking those questions. However, what I've noticed is they're no longer the primary questions. The primary questions on secular universities and in various areas are no longer philosophical or propositional. They're moral. So people aren't asking the question primarily, is Christianity true? The primary question they're asking is, is Christianity moral? And so the need, I think, given since the death of George Floyd, and it became a global phenomenon, this is not an American issue. This is a global issue now where people are talking about race equality, the Me Too movement

and all these things. These are the primary questions. And I think when you study what the Apostle Paul says in Colossians chapter 4, when he says walk in wisdom toward outsiders making the best use of the time. Now, as a Mediterranean Jew, he's got, I share this affinity with him. We're not the most efficient conversationalists. We spend an hour and a half saying hello to people. So Paul's not saying make the best use of the time by being efficient. He's saying, answer the questions are actually asking. And then he says, let your speech be gracious, seasoned with salt, so you may know how you ought to answer each person.

He doesn't say each issue, each controversy, or each question. So I take that as a cue for me as an apologist. I'm not in the question answering business. I'm in the person answering business. Questions don't need answers. People need answers. And they use their questions to get them. So when I see the cultural shift saying that we're dealing with issues of racial equality,

we're dealing with issues of gender equality, and the Bible might be the cause for all of our issues, I'm looking at a person and saying, what is it about you that if I answered and showed through the life of Jesus as the lens through which we see the corpus of the scriptures to say this is what actually gives you value, dignity, and what has been responsible for some of the biggest and best changes in society, how can I speak through your pain to you, answer not your question, but answer you? And so the reason why I thought this book was urgent is in this cultural moment, propositional truths, I think, will bubble to the surface when we answer the moral and the heart issues as well. You are required, I think, as a Christian to answer people where they are. You remind me of my late friend John Rankin. He would do these debates, these things called Mars Hill forums.

And he really had the ability to talk to people, where they were. He was just extremely brilliant, but also had that heart. And as Christians, we realize it's not just about truth. It's about truth and love. Like, there's no way, as Christians, we can simply be about truth because the one who says, I am truth, is love. And that's a difficulty for some people, because we've all known people who, as I said earlier, they love to argue, they love to win, they love to be right. They don't seem to about the soul of the other person. They almost seem to take a delight in, ha, ha, you're wrong, you're out. And I think if that's your spirit, that's not the spirit of

Jesus. The spirit of Jesus longs to communicate this truth to someone, even at self-sacrificial price. Absolutely. You know, people often misunderstand apologetics as this, what are you being sorry? What are you saying you're sorry for? And of course, the word really means defense. but I think there's too many people who are engaged in the process of apologetics, whether it's Christian apologetics or political apologetics or whatever, and they don't make it the art and science of Christian persuasion. What they've turned it into is the art of making someone sorry they asked. That's funny. Come on. That's very funny.

So I think that that's the heart of it is that, you know, if you can speak to, And you were talking about it before about it being true and it being beautiful don't have to be exclusive things. It can be beautiful because it's true and it can be truly beautiful. And I think that, you know, Pascal said it so long ago when he said that men despise religion because they fear that it may be true. The trick is to show them that religion is worthy of respect and reverence. Next, he says, make it attractive, make good people wish it were true and then show them that it is. and I think one of the reasons why Christians tend to be a little bit behind in the culture war is because we're not making them wish it were true.

This story, this book, and so many other great books that have been written about the Christian faith, they tell a better story. And for some reason, we're losing the fact that we're just saying, here are better facts, here are true facts. That's great. But they need not only the facts, but the better narrative. This guy's singing my song. We'll be right back with the final segment with Abdu Murray.

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What you were just saying really is so close to my heart, this idea that it's not enough to be right. If we're right about something, if we're talking about truth, truth is beautiful. It is compelling. It is heartbreaking. It is filled with love. It's a different kind of truth. It's not just propositional. It's not just enlightenment rationalism.

It's a person. And so you were just saying you think the reason Christians have been behind in the culture wars has to do with that, it's what I see, that many Christians have adopted this kind of enlightenment, so it's not really fully Christian worldview with regard to truth. Yeah, I think, and the part that's really tragic is, the Bible is so dripping with these deep truths that are beautiful that we miss it. So give me a quick example of this.

It's like, you look at the Mary and Martha story, right? So typically when you see in a sermon in a church, you hear the Mary and Martha story. You know, Jesus and the boys are coming over for dinner. And like good Middle Eastern hospitality-driven people, Mary and Martha want to make sure the feast is good enough for the guys and they're taking care of. Well, Martha's busy at work.

Mary is sitting at Jesus' feet and she's learning from Jesus. And Martha, of course, gets frustrated and says, Jesus, please tell her to help. Don't you care? She'd let me do all the work. Please tell her to come help me. And, of course, Jesus says, you know, Martha, you worry about many things. One thing is better.

and she's chosen what is better and these kind of things. And the moral of the story, and this is true, is you need to stop and smell the Messiah once in a while. Don't get so busy with life that you forget to spend time with Jesus. Even Christian ministry can get busy and all that stuff. And that's wonderful and that's really true part of message of what's going on there. But then I take a look at the context of the fact that women weren't allowed in education. Even in sort of a first century rabbinic Jewish tradition,

they weren't allowed the education to sit at a rabbi's feet, which is not a pejorative, as actually was an honorific, to sit at a rabbi's feet. And Mary is sitting at the rabbi of all rabbi's feet. And Martha, this is the part that really is so beautiful to me. Martha is so acculturated. She's so used to being put in her place,

a woman's places in the kitchen or with a spindle, and that's it. She's so used to this that when she sees a woman break out of the mold and sit at a rabbi's feet, she's enraged. Because you notice the question, she says, Jesus, don't you care, tell her to come help me. You know what she didn't ask? Jesus, come help me. Because Jesus isn't not supposed to be in the kitchen. Women are in the kitchen. She's so acculturated to this. And Jesus sees, you have been so swimming now in this idea that you're not entitled to an education, that you're outraged when you see someone else who's getting an education. And he says, Martha, you're worried about many things,

but Mary has chosen what is better. Only one thing is needful. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken from her, not even by you. In other words, the culture has deprived Mary of an education, and you're so swimming in it that you're willing to do so as well. Mary, what I have is, sorry, Martha, what I have for you is better, and I'm not going to let you take it away from yourself. You know, I've never thought, maybe I've heard it and I forgot, but to think of the Mary and Martha's story as a pro-woman story, as a radical story that Jesus, Jesus, 2,000 years ago is letting a woman be part of his inner circle and hear his teaching. That's radical.

And I think, you know, part of what you're doing in your own apologetics and in the book More Than a White Men's Religion is we have to really educate people about the history and the context and say, folks, you've got to look back. Look how insane this is. There's nothing like this going on 2,000 years ago. Find me in all of ancient literature, certainly not among the Greeks. Come on, find me anything like this. There's nothing that compares to it.

Michael Kruger, historian Michael Kruger actually made the point. He said the ancients, the cultural elites, especially among the Romans and the Greeks, were making fun of Christianity in the early centuries as the religion of women and children because women were flocking to it. they were flocking not just to it, but away from something. They were flocking away from a paganistic worldview that treated women as property. If they weren't fully property of their fathers or their husbands or their brothers, they were at least semi-viewed as property of their husbands, fathers, and brothers.

And they were flocking to this man, Jesus, and then the church that he birthed after that, why would they do that if it was inherently denigrating to them? They were running to it, so much so that the pagans were saying, this religion of women and children is not going to last. And of course, the jokes on them, because not only did it outlast them, you know, I can't remember who said it, but the Bible often rises up to outlive its pallbearers, that the Roman Empire changed. Tom Holland, not the Spider-Man guy, but the historian in writing Dominion,

he set out to point out that everything good we have came from Rome, and he found out Rome was a dark, awful place until the birth of the Christian faith within Rome birthed ideas of equality. And it goes right to the heart of the message. We're all equally sinners, but we're all equally offered redemption. I always wonder, Tom Holland, who wrote the book Dominion, is he a Christian, or did he just write about Christianity from a positive position?

So I've heard different stories about this, and I think it's more on the verge of it, and he might be, I don't know, but I think he has a tremendous affinity and respect and love for the Christian faith. Well, I mean, there's so many people who are not officially Christians who do, like my friend Dennis Prager. I mean, it's just when you're honest about what happened, when you're looking at the Roman Empire. I mean, the Roman Empire was a nightmare of cruelty. It's impossible for us to comprehend how cruel the ancient world was.

And for Christianity to come out of that, and now we kind of take it for granted, like, oh, yeah, we're all nice people. Well, no, the culture has not been very nice. We're importing something. We just have less than a minute left, final points, more than a white man's, religion is the book? If we look through the life of Jesus as the lens to look at the Bible, but also all of history, and all the things that we actually cherish, equality amongst ethnicities, equality among women and men, I think that if we look to this man, I think he once again becomes the paradigm as the cure for that, which oftentimes his followers have been blamed for, but we need

to focus our lens on him. He remains our eternal contemporary. And so the things, that are plaguing us now, I think, can be fixed if we fix our eyes on the one who can fix them for us. That's a pretty good summation. Ladies and gentlemen, we've been talking to Abdou Murray. The new book, there are so many, but the new one is more than a white man's religion. You can find Abdu at Embrace the Truth.org. You can find us at ericmetaxis.com. Abdu, just a joy to be with you.

Thanks for stopping. Thanks for having you. Folks, welcome back. This is our two. It just gets better and better. I want to mention a couple of things to look forward to. SalemNow.com, as you know, at SalemNow.com. There's all kinds of good stuff to watch.

There's a TV series called The Border Battle. If you want to know why you need to care about this country and about borders and want to understand that. And every American needs to understand. Dan, what is at stake, folks? We've got to educate ourselves. We just talked to Steve Dase about that, that we can't just sit back.

We have to be involved. This is our country. You go to SalemNow.com, border battle. It's a TV series. I also want to mention no vacancies, which is a true story. Albin, it's a true story. Yes, it is a true story.

You know, I worked at St. Paul's House for years and years and years, and I volunteered there, and I did, you know, helped out in the neighborhood. Well, no vacancy is a true story about a church that got involved with the homeless, getting people set up in homes.

And it's really incredible. You have to watch it. No vacancy. Salem. Yeah, Sean Young is in it. Okay, she's in that. And, of course, Dean Tankane, who was Superman. That's great right there.

SalemNow.com is where you'll find that. I also want to tell people the Socrates in the city event on December 6th in New York City is really special. Oz Guinness, who, without Oz Guinness, there would be no Socrates in the city. And so this is a really, really special event. Christmas, of course, gets really beautiful in New York City if you're inclined to come visit or if you can drive here from wherever you live. But it's so exciting that we got Oz Gaines.

I was just hoping because he's got a couple of books out recently that I've been dying to talk to him about at a Socrates and City events. It's going to be the Union League Club. It's gorgeous. Go to Socratesin the city.com. Socrates in the city.com. December 6th, Socrates in the city.com. I also, Albin should mention, I think I mentioned at the beginning of the hour, this week,

I'm going to be at Moralago for President Trump's announcement. I think it'll be on TV. I assume it'll be televised. I will be there by God's grace alone, and I'm aware of that. I will try to report on that tomorrow. It's tricky because I'm traveling tomorrow again, going to Leesburg, Virginia, and then after that, going to Colorado for a couple of events. So it's going to be tricky.

But tonight, that's the plan. I'm supposed to be at Moralago for the president's announcement. I am, for one, tremendously excited about that. And I'm also excited about the fact that on Wednesday I will be in Leesburg, Virginia. Pastor Gary Hamrick is going to be interviewing me about the state of the country and about my book letter to the American church, which is selling unlike any book I've ever written. I never wrote a book in that right out of the gate. It was selling very well. Letter to the American Church has obviously struck a nerve. People keep saying,

can I buy several copies? I want to buy copies for pastors in the area. And I think, well, that's why I wrote it. So I'm trusting God is using the book. But so I'm going to be in Leesburg. If you go to my schedule at my website, Eric Mataxis.com, you can see everything. I'm going to be in Fort Collins, Colorado, Friday, night. That's a huge event. I want to encourage anybody in the Colorado area. I'm doing something in Englewood on Thursday night, and I'm doing something in Fort Collins on Friday night. If you know anybody in that neck of the woods, please let them know, because I just love connecting with folks who listen to this program. I will sign books until I pass out, and I never pass out.

So please go to metaxis talk.com and check that out. And if you can get there, believe me, I will be just delighted to meet you. I will be there in line, signing, books, taking pictures, whatever it is. It's just a joy for me, frankly, to meet people who care about the same things I care about. We can encourage each other. So go to ericmatexas.com. I think that's it, our two. Oh, my gosh.