The Eric Metaxas Show - Religionless Christianity Q&A

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

The tables are turned and Eric is interviewed by Albin Sadar about his upcoming book "Religionless Christianity" 

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis 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. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. Do you like your gravy thick and rich and loaded with creamy mushrooms? If no one was looking, would you chug the whole gravy boat? Chug, chug, chug, chug. Stay tuned.

Here comes Mr. Chug-a-lug-lug-lug. himself, Eric Ma, Texas. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program. I am sitting with Albin Seder. What? Yes. Not only are you here, but you're there also.

I'm here and there. No, you've written an article. Everywhere. I wanted to ask you about it. Oh, yeah. You've written an article at the American Thinker. It is called the Fundamental Unraveling of America. This is something you and I have talked about a lot.

I'm glad you wrote about it in an article. But what's the gist? Well, the whole gist is, you know, when Barack Obama came on the scene and he said it's going to be a fundamental transformation of America, people were like, oh, great, we're going to think. In a sense, they were thinking, oh, he's going to make America great again. Think how, but I'm saying you picked up on this. Yeah. When Obama said that, it's an extraordinary thing, a fundamental transformation of America. You think what we should have said was, wait a minute, why would you want to want to find a moment, why would you want to be? fundamental transformation of America? How bad is America that you would say such a thing? Well, I say

in this article, because he's running for election to be a president of the country. It's almost like, I want to marry this country. I have an example in this article, the fundamental unraveling of America, where it's like you marry somebody and say, I love you, I love you. You get married and say, okay, now, honey, I want you to be a different person. You know, I don't really love you, per se, but I love what you can become, what I can mold you into. I'm going to change you. foundationally. And when you change a foundation in this country, you're changing the constitution. You're changing, you're making it a different country. It might be in the same location, but it's a different building that you're putting up there, folks. And he, he lay the groundwork

for what is happening today. That's right. And Hillary was supposed to follow him, but a wrecking ball named Donald J. Trump came in and boom. And then after those four years, they said, no, no, no, no, no, we got to keep it going. Actually, before you, before you, before you, even get to that. We need to be clear, from day one of Trump's administration, we now know, right, that Hillary Clinton and others created this fiction, these lies of this Russian dossier and Russian collusion. And they did this to hamstring his presidency for four years. And we've never seen anything like it. And now that we know what happened, I mean, we could see what was happening is going on, but a lot of people didn't believe it. They took it seriously, this Russian

collusion, whatever. So you have the Mueller report. It goes on and on and on and on. They were at war with the American people's choice back then. So you have eight years of Obama. Then you have Trump gets in, and he and Hillary Clinton and others went to war with him during his administration. And then, of course, in 2020, stole the election. Folks, if you don't know the election was stolen, I'm sorry to say it was. And the facts are coming out every day.

obvious, and in my book obvious, I spend the whole fourth part of the book, like 12 chapters, short chapters, four pages each, about the obvious factor of the election being stolen. So pick up obvious if you get a chance. But in this article, I also talk about the Jesse Smollett playbook. And in the Jesse Smollett playbook, and just in case you're not familiar, that means if you can't find a crime, you've got to make one up. Right now today, even in the courthouse, with Donald Trump and many courthouses, either in D.C. or New York, basically Donald Trump is on trial for made-up crimes

because they couldn't find an actual crime. You know something like if your heart doesn't break over this, folks, that this country that we've come to this place, we have to fight to take our country back, to bring real justice so that when you go into a court of law, you don't say this is a game. You believe in the idea of justice, these noble ideas. And that's, this is ultimately what happened in the presidency of Barack Obama,

in the deep state attacking Donald Trump and then during this nightmare of the last four years under the so-called Biden administration. Yeah, and my twin brother was recently in a cemetery and he was looking at a lot of cemeteries have this rows and rows of white crosses of men and women, young men and women, who put their very lives on the line to die for this country so that they can prevent tyranny

over across the seas. And now we have tyranny right here in this country, and you can imagine if those, Those men and women were alive today to look at it and say, what, kindergarten kids getting sex books, guys transforming into men, into women, you know, wide open borders, letting people just pour across. And election day is now election season where we'll keep counting those ballots until we get the result we won. Do you think that's why people died, these young men and women? Well, this is your point I know, is that we owe those people everything that we know that we need. need to get in the fight. They literally gave their lives so that we could have freedom so that

we could advocate for what's right and good and true. And if you're not advocating for those things, if you're not active, if you're not voting, it's a shameful thing. But there are many. I keep saying this in my book's letter to the American Church and new book is that there are many people that think they have some religious exemption. And when you see injustice, I mean, And if anybody reads in your book obvious how the election was stolen, folks, you're going to be responsible. This is on the test. The election actually was stolen. It's a nightmare that that could happen in America, but it happened.

But what makes it even worse is how many people said, nah, there's no evidence shut up. Let's just accept it. And I think to myself, wow, how could you accept the theft of the voice of the American people? How can you accept that? People died so that we could have a free country, and we can't allow this to happen. Yeah, I know. You know, there's still people out there thinking like, well, Trump is still on the scene. Once Trump's off the scene, whatever happens in 2024, we'll get him in 2028.

And then in 2020, we'll get them in 2022. We're not going to get them, folks. This is it. You've got to put it all on the line. Well, there are people who don't believe that. I was just talking to one of them this morning who was interviewing me about my new book, and he simply doesn't believe this is it. And that's the point is like one of us is right and one of us is wrong.

And I wish I were wrong. Oh, I wish I were wrong. But I don't believe that that's right. There's a kind of a cynicism where people kind of, again, it's the same thing happened in Germany. They were convinced in 1934. You know what? Don't kill yourself. Just let go.

Flash in a pan. Do church. Don't argue. And we'll guess what, folks. That's what led to the death. camps. And they're, unfortunately, I have friends that say, look, I'm here to preach the gospel. That's what I do. And I'll tell you something, the far, far left, they want you to sit there and just preach the gospel, preach your little gospel. That's okay. Just don't interfere with what we're doing here, folks. That's what you have to understand. They are all, they're on top of this. And if you think they didn't steal the 2020 election, every single day they've been in office, they've done stuff that you say like, well, I can't believe they've done that. I can't believe they've done that. I can't believe they've done that. But I know, The one thing they didn't do was steal the election so that they can do this. Come on, folks, this is what fascists do.

I guess that's the point is that we've been so spoiled in America. But this was the same in Germany. They had had things pretty good, so they could not imagine the evilness of evil. They couldn't imagine. And so they didn't do anything. And by not doing anything, I mean, I actually talk about Martin Niemmuller. Yes. I think I write about it in religionless Christianity.

There's a chapter where he's. He was convinced that Hitler could be reasoned with. And he goes in, finally gets a meeting with Hitler. And Hitler, he sees the true face of Adolf Hitler. And Hitler basically says to him, you just worry about your sermons. I'll worry about the Third Reich. That's what you just said. And that's it.

You preach your useless little sermons. Because we're in charge of all of reality. So you go into that building and do what you like. But we will determine the details of the details of. how the nation is governed. And this was where suddenly you have Martin Nemo are thinking, oh, now I get it. He doesn't want the church to actually be the church. He wants

the church to play church so he can be God and rule the nation. He had this Luke 15-17 moment. When he came to his senses, that's when he came to when Paul fell off his horse, he came to his senses. And Jesus said when he looked over all of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if you only knew where your salvation was coming from. When will you come to your senses? And that's what we're saying to Christians out there.

When will you come to your senses? Well, if you come to your senses, or to help you come to your senses, you might want to get a copy of Obvious by Albin Seder. Thank you. And, well, I mean, honestly, you spell stuff, but you spell stuff out in that book. Yes. That it's so bite-sized, it's very simple, and it's wonderful. And there's jokes and there's cartoons and memes and all. No, it's fun. They're short chapters. It's actually fun. And Eric wrote the forward. And I wrote the foreword. And if people want to read your article, they can find it at American Thinker, the fundamental unraveling of America. We'll be right back. For 10 years, Patriot Mobile has been America's only Christian conservative wireless provider.

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Check it out. Hey there, folks. Welcome back. I can't believe it, but I'm sitting here in the studio with Albin. Is it Sadar? It's, yeah, sadar like radar. What kind of a name is that, Sadar? It's a Slovenian.

Slovenian? I've got an even more important question. What kind of a name is Albin? Oh, it's also Slovenian. My mother's name was Albinah. And, of course, I have a twin brother named Anthony after my father. Albin after my mother. Albina, there you go.

Thank you, folks. Albin sounds like Alvin, but it's not. Oh, I got that as a kid all the time. Of course. Hey, Alvin in the chipmucks. I'm like, no, it's Albin. Nobody cares. Is your brother's name Theodore?

No. Well, your name, your name, your name, we've settled it, it's Albin Seder. So that was my question for you. But the reason you're here, by the way. I know, I know. I feel like we've met. We, we, we, you, you wanted to ask me questions about my new book, Religionless Christianity. Or people have submitted questions. And you've been elected to read the questions to me? I have. Yes, I have. Okay, I'm nervous, but let's get, let's do it. Well, here we go. You think you're nervous. This is a great book, by the way, religionless Christianity, God's answer to evil.

And there's another part of the front of the book that I think is absolutely spot on. It says there is only one hope left to save America and the world, active, robust, and public faith in God. And I think most people out there that listen to the show and other shows like it will have to agree

because things have gotten so far off the rails that, you know, we're now in the ocean somewhere. Well, not everybody would agree, and that's why I wrote a letter to the American Church and why I wrote this book. I'm trying to make the biblical case so that people would consider it because not every people are on this page.

But anyway, so somebody, who has submitted these questions? You're going to ask me? They're just from all over. So general questions, a lot of them come in, like, you know, people ask the same questions over and over again. So I can say like, Bob, Mary, Jane, and Bill, they all ask this question.

In fact, let me start with the first question. And this is general one to all authors, but what sparked you and your interest in writing this book? I needed the bread, man, you know, the rents do, and I had to come up with something. It's all about this, money. Yeah, well, no, clearly, we hope that's not the case. We hope that I wrote it because God put it on my heart,

which, you know what it is? Actually, Letter of the American Church, that book, I know God called me to write that in a way that I had never experienced anything before. Like I knew I had to write that book. And the response to it has been so extraordinary, frankly, very surprising to me, that, you know, the publisher was saying, well, do you have more you want to say on this? And I thought, well, yes, actually quite a bit.

And so The Letter of the American Church is my shortest book. This is almost as short. But there's some very important things in terms of, you know, when people say, okay, so I'm supposed to live out. I mean, if you agree with the premise of letter to the American Church, I'm supposed to live out my faith. I'm not supposed to be merely religious as a Christian. What does that look like? Well, religiousness Christianity means to be the answer to that question. What does it look like to live, to actually live out your faith in a way that's not merely religious in the negative sense of religion? And I don't know, should I answer the question about the title now,

or is that one of the questions? Well, that's the next question from Mary, Bill, Jill, and Peter, can you define religious-less Christianity? Why is it God's answer to evil? Well, obviously, I write it. I shouldn't say obviously, but I'm happy to say that I do write about all of this in the book, about the title, the meaning of the phrase. Religionless Christianity is a Bonhofer phrase. Bonhofer was writing to his best friend, Abraham Baitka.

I met Abraham Bakedka's widow in Germany in 2008. Abraham Hart Baker was Bonhofer's closest friend, and he was intellectually brilliant as Bonhofer was brilliant. And in a letter right at the end of his life, Bonhofer is in prison. I believe he was in the Gestapo prison, which was a dark place figuratively and literally. And he wrote a letter to his best friend in which he was asking now in 1944, how did we get where we are that we've sort of lost the battle? the church did not live out its faith. And he says, if only we had had a religion-less Christianity. And he's using religion in the pejorative term that Carl Bart would have used it.

Religion has just dead religiosity, just playing church. And Bonhofer says what we ought to have had was a religionless Christianity. In other words, instead of going through the motions, you know, the Pharisees went through the motions in the temple. A lot of Christians go through the motions on Sunday morning. he was saying instead of just doing that, what if we had actually lived out our faith in a heroic way as though we actually believed it? We would have stood against the evil, but the German church didn't do that. And I thought, I need to explain what is religion apart from real faith? What does that look like?

What are some religious idols that Christians worship, thinking that they are being Christians. but actually these are just religious idols. And in the book I lay out some of these religious idols where you, they really substitutes for actually worshiping Jesus with our whole being. And so I kind of lay that out. And because it's an example of how Christians have been fooled in the past and the story of Bonhofer, it's the classic case of he was trying to wake up Christians to stop being merely religious and to be actually faith,

in every sphere, willing to stand bravely against the Nazis. And they were thinking, no, no, no, we just want to do church. We just want to have our little religious services. We don't believe it's our job to get into that. So in the book, I kind of, I try to unpack what these religious idols are and how we might be guilty of worshipping them rather than worshipping Jesus. Yeah, because it seems like a lot of churches now have leaned toward becoming more like social clubs. Come on in, we're going to celebrate this activity and that activity,

and we're going to have a bake sale, and we're going to, you know, And then they have their flags out there that don't say, you know, we believe in Jesus. It's like we believe in what the culture is doing. We're going to follow that. And so where did the religion go? Well, there's a lot of that. I mean, that's really the darkest side. But to me, it's even churches that wouldn't go there, but neither are there being heroic in the battle for God's purposes.

Well, you know, that leads me back to one of the most dramatic examples you put in letter to the American Church about that, what was it, 18,000 churches? Yeah. Yes, that could you explain that again? Because that is really powerful. I don't know if you redo it here. No, I don't, but it's in the letter of the American church. And in a sense, the letter of the American church, you need to read that first, I would say,

because it kind of tease up what I'd say in this book. But the bottom line was that in Germany, in the early 30s, there were about 18,000 Lutheran pastors in Germany. By 1935, two years into the Hitler regime, only 3,000 of the 8,000 of the 8,000. We're standing heroically, willing to go to concentration camps, really living out their faith. On the other end of the spectrum, you've got about 3,000 that are 100% in for Hitler. But the key is in the middle. You got 12,000 basically saying, you know what, we don't need to choose.

We're going to stay right here in the safe religious middle. Except the safe religious middle, that sitting on the fence thinking you're being neutral, I always say over and over, the devil owns the fence. They believed that they had this kind of religious, you know, carve out, that we could do nothing, that we could be neutral. We're not going to stand heroically against the Nazis the way Bonhofer and others do. We're just going to stay here. You know, it's kind of like somebody saying, I'm not going to vote. Well, you're helping evil to win.

And I try to make the case in letter to the American Church that if you think you can avoid making a choice, you have made a choice. You have chosen to allow evil to have its way. but you're pretending you've got this religious objection and you can just be somehow neutral. And that to me is where many in the American church are today. And I'll say it is where there are many people who go to churches like that, where you're just effectively playing church on Sunday morning rather than saying, this is not the church. We are the church.

And we meet on Sunday morning, but then we go out. The church goes out of the building and affects the culture and fights for God's purposes in every sphere, including politically, just as we did when we fought the slave trade, just as we did when we fought for the abolition of slavery in this country, just as when we fought politically to end Roe v. Wade, that's part of the church's calling. And so in both books, I try to make that clear. Yeah, very good. Thank you. Let's go on to what does it mean to, and I think you covered a lot of this, but what does it mean to live out your faith actively? Yeah. Well, again, this gets to the the core of what I'm calling sort of the American heresy is this idea that we don't need to

live our faith out in all spheres. We can talk about it, but the reality is it's like a hobby. It's something I do in the basement. It has no bearing on what I do when I leave the basement. That's the opposite of what our faith is supposed to be. Our faith is supposed to be lived out in every single sphere. And I think that we kind of make faith, as I say, it's like this part-time thing, but it's supposed to inform everything that we do. My faith is supposed to inform my relationships. It's supposed to inform what I would do with my life professionally. Everything is supposed to be informed by my faith. And I think that in America, we've been so blessed that we've gotten spoiled and complacent, and we kind of act like, well, it's this private thing.

And we're supposed to bring God's view of things, the biblical view of things, into every single sphere. And a big part of the way we can do that is politics. We have the gift. of self-government where we can advocate for the right kind of, for people who are advocating God's policies or we can ourselves run for office. So there are many things. We'll continue that. I know we're going to a break. We'll be right back. Hey, this is Eric Mettaxas. For years, I've told you about Nutrametics, a professional supplement brand trusted by doctors since 1993. Neutrametics offers a variety of health bundles. Whether you want to support your immune system, improve your sleep, promote joint comfort or detoxification support, Neutrametics has a health

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Hey, folks. Welcome back. We're talking about my brand new book, Religionless Christianity. That's a Bonhofer phrase, which I hope I explained sufficiently a few minutes ago. So, Albin, you're asking questions that the people who feel. follow this program on YouTube, they have submitted. So there's a couple more questions, I think, we have. Oh, yeah.

We've got a couple more. And speaking of Bonhofer, this next one kind of, I think a lot of people will think about this one. If Dietrich Bonhofer were alive today in 2024, what do you think he would say about the state of America? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's fair to say that, well, I say this, I think literally in the first page

of this new book. that we're in a spiritual war and that we are in the third existential crisis of our history. The first was the revolution. The second was the civil war. And the third is where we are now. And what we're fighting now is the forces of real wickedness. In other words, forces that are deeply hostile to Christian faith. In other words, it's not like in the old days where, you know, Tip O'Neill is the face of the Democrat.

and we've got some differences on taxes and this and that. No, no, no, no, no. We are now dealing with evil. I mean, we had the president of the United States, who is dramatically pro-abortion, who is dramatically pro-transgender. I mean, really sick stuff. He declared Resurrection Sunday, Easter Sunday,

as some trans day of visibility. I thought to myself, I've never in my life seen such an open hostility to Christians. I've never seen it before. And I think if you're a Christian, you need to understand that's what's happening right now and you need to be awake to it. And Bonhofer was awake to it in Germany.

He said that what's happening now in Germany, we need to fight. And many, many, many Christians said, no, no, no, no, no, we think you're just being a hot head and take it easy and, you know, Hitler, he'll be around, but he'll leave and we'll move on. And no, Bonhofer could see that the Nazis were playing for keeps. They wanted to fundamentally transform Germany. Yeah. Just as the atheist, Marxist,

globalist forces in the world and inside America. Now, they want to fundamentally transform America, and they're doing it to make us no longer the nation that our founders brought into being with with the Lord's help, to put it mildly, the Lord brought it into being. And, it was once meant to be a city, a shining city on a hill in the words of John Winthrop, and that it was supposed to be a beacon of liberty and a beacon, frankly, of Christian faith, so that people would look at this country and go, what do they have that we don't have? What are they doing that makes them flourish? Why is God blessing them?

Well, how come they can govern themselves? That's so beautiful. What is going on over there? I mean, Tocqueville came over here in the 1820s to investigate, because this didn't go that way in France. The French Revolution was a bloody, atheistic, to some extent, demonic revolution. It did not go well. It was a bloodbath. So Tocqueville comes over here to say, what do they have? What is his conclusion? The church's vibrant Christian faith,

it was at the very heart of America. Now, we weren't officially Christian because why would we need to be officially Christian? We would just need to be actually Christian. We don't need to be officially Christian. But it was kind of assumed by all the founders that were going to be essentially Christian. And we have drifted so far away from that. And we are now being attacked by people that are not just on board, but they are openly hostile to God's values, to God's principles, to biblical values, and to Christians. And so you have things that we never dreamt of in our lifetime, the FBI being weaponized against pro-life people. You have children being taken away from their mother and father, because the mother and father have a biblical view of sexuality,

of the human person, and they don't want to use their kids quote-unquote pronouns. And in Indiana, other places, the kids are being taken away by the state. This is a level of wickedness, a level of evil we've never seen. And if the church doesn't recognize and say, it is our job. God has called us to stand against this. God has called us to get in the fight, then it's over. And so I'm afraid that that's where we are in America. I see a simple example of that is a guy wearing a dress and he's got a beard.

And he says, my name's Michelle, and I want you to call me Michelle. And if you call him Michelle and treat him as a woman, not only does he have a problem, you have a problem. And then, of course, the nation has a problem. You've been forced to lie. Exactly. We are self-censoring. We're afraid. You know, I think if somebody said that to me and I went like this,

it would go to the Supreme Court. You're not allowed to do that because that's hate speech. That's a hate smirk. But I mean, honestly, that's where we are. But the thing is, and again, the reason I wrote both of these books, but specifically this religionless Christianity, is because there are many Christians who feel like they can opt out. They can avoid this.

Like, it's not going to come for them. One of the chapters of the book I talk about, the spirit of cancel culture. Yeah. It is a wicked Marxist spirit and it's coming for you. And so you need to stand against it when it comes for anybody, not just when it comes for you. We'll talk about that later.

But in the book I talk about Bonhofer. I talk about Martin Neumler. There's a lot of Bonhofer in this book. Yeah. Well, he's, of course, all through it because he gave you the title. He was like, what title can I give Eric? 60, 70 years from now. Exactly.

But when we come back, a very powerful question about, Are you optimistic about the future of America and the world? I can answer that question. It's funny because I say that we're in the third existential crisis of our history. We have survived the last two, but it's a war. You have to fight in a war. And I don't mean just fight with rifles or what I mean. You have to understand what is at stake.

And if you don't, if you don't fight through prayer, through action, you definitely lose. And so when we come back, I'll answer that. And other questions, the new book is Religinalist Christianity. You can get copies at Ericmetaxis.com. I hope you will get a copy there. We'll be right back. And this world. I like knowing exactly where my meat comes from.

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It's kind of weird, Albert. Yeah. By the way, you're... Turn the tables on me. Your Spanish is excellent today. Would you call it Bastante bien? Oh, there you go. Let me just say that you're interviewing me on my new book, Religinalist Christianity.

Thank you for doing that. These questions have been submitted to our YouTube page. TBN and this program has a YouTube page. So what was the question? Oh, yeah. This was a big one. We ran out of time in the last segment, but here it is. Are you optimistic about the future of America?

And there's a part two, what should the church be doing right now? But let's go with part one. The church should stop playing church and get in the game. Stop being religious. Stop being religious. Yeah, and be religious. Yeah. And being merely religious. Okay.

Well, am I optimistic about America? It's hard to call that optimism. I am hopeful. I am, I am, at the end of the book, I say that, well, at the beginning of the book, I say we're in a third existential crisis. So I think of George Washington. I think of Lincoln. if you had gone to Washington or to Lincoln in the depths of the Civil War and the Revolutionary War and said, how are you doing?

Yeah. They would have said, we are doing very, very poorly. This is a horrible, horrible war we are in. And it doesn't look good. Yeah. If you had asked George Washington in 1776, how's it going? He would have said it's going very, very poorly. It was going very poorly.

It was, they were in a war. But he also would have said, I think, we're in a war and it's going poorly. But if God be with us in this cause of liberty, we can prevail. Our job is to lean on the Lord as we fight on. We don't stop fighting until the Lord says it's over. And there many people would have said it's looking pretty bad, George. Why don't you just throw in the towel? and he thought, I can't do that.

I need to fight on. I need, this is, I've been called to bring a nation into being that where we will govern ourselves. It's an extraordinary concept. It's a beautiful concept. It's God's concept. And if the Lord wants to give us the victory, he can get us, he can give us the victory and pull us out of this difficult spot.

So if you said him, how you're doing in 1776, he would have said badly, but we fight on and we fight on and we pray on and we pray on. If you don't fight because things look bad, you're guaranteed to lose, guaranteed. And that's exactly where I think we are today. We're in a battle. It looks bad. But if the Lord be with us, then we can win.

And people who say no, that's the voice of the devil telling you to just throw in the towel. Don't fight. I like the joke about the guy goes to the doctor. The doctor says, you're in really bad shape. you've got to take these pills and he says doctor i'm a christian i believe that god is in charge and predestination all that so don't worry about me i'm not taking any pills and the doctor says i'm also a christian and i believe that god's in charge and here's the predestination part if you take the pills you're predestined to live if you don't take the pills you're predestined to die well listen folks

if you don't fight at all you're going to die we're going to die and which side do you want to be on at the end do you want to be on the side like the guys in the alamo you know that fought on and fought on, but the victory was ultimately theirs because at some point, you know, God comes in and says, this is what we're going to, this is what's going to happen. You know what? That's exactly right. Would you rather be Bonhofer or would you be rather one of those people who through fear or some misunderstanding of the scripture sat and did nothing and really brought about the death of Bonhofer? Yeah. That's what happens, right? If you don't fight with him, you're responsible for enabling his enemy.

to kill him and you're responsible for the enemies of Germany to destroy Germany, which they did. And I'll tell you, one of the most beautiful scenes in your book, Bonhoffer, is when he is going to his death. I had tears in my eyes, and he was going, he was like boldly going to his death because he knew he was going to

a better life. He knew he stood against the evil of his day. And yeah, he would have, oh, my goodness, he would have loved to have lived. He would love to have gotten married. He would love to have a family and have a grandfather and a great grandfather. But he took a stand for future generations and for the generations in Germany that would hang their head in shame because they did not

take a stand. See, that's exactly. That's it right there. Do you want to be like Bonhofer? Then you, you fight for what is right and true. And you allow the Lord to be the one who determines the outcome. But your job is to fight. Your job is to stand for truth to speak against evil, not to be silent in the face of evil. That's ultimately what I hope to deal with in this book. Yeah, and here's a great chapter in this I want to get to and get your thoughts on this because, you know, we started out with politically correct. It was kind of like funny. You're not politically correct. And then it became woke.

And then it becomes cancel culture where now it has a serious, serious charge to it. So what are your further thoughts? And it's from the book. Yeah. There are two chapters in the book on cancel culture. And it's another one of the reasons I hope people will read the book, Religinalist Christianity, because you need to understand what is happening. What is cancel culture?

It's not just something. What is it? There's a spirit behind it. It's the same spirit, which is evil that was happening during the French Revolution. It happened during the Bolshevik revolution. It happened in the Nazi takeover of Germany. It happened in Mao's Cultural Revolution in China in the 60s. It is demonic. And it wants power. And it is bloodthirsty. And it's willing to pick off people. That's part of it. It has no actual standards. what it does, it pretends to care about the poor, pretends to care about racial equality, it pretends to get, it doesn't care about any of these things.

All it's doing is using these things as a way to pick people off. And in the book, I talk about my friend Kirk Cameron, he was on Pierce Morgan. I tell the whole story in the book. And he was asked by Pierce Morgan, you know, if he was in favor of same-sex marriage. And he said in the most kind way possible that he had a biblical view of marriage. he was attacked, attacked, attacked, attacked, like he was the devil.

And I thought, where were all the leading Christian voices to stand with him to fight back against these evil forces that had come? They wanted, you know, Kirk Cameron's head on a platter. It was not about Kirk Cameron. It's about when you put up a biblical standard, people are going to come after you. They did not stand with him. And the spirit of cancel culture wants to pick people off, one, at a time. I know we're going to a break here, but I just want to say that that is where it starts. So whenever somebody comes after anybody, you don't need to agree with the person on everything.

It's the principle. You need to stand against the spirit of cancel culture, which is demonic. You can call it what you want. We're going to a break. Okay, so the book is religious and Christianity. Folks, you can get it at Eric Mataxis.com. We'll be right back. Hey there, folks. Welcome back. I have a new book out, and Albin has asked to interview me on it. So we have just one segment left today. We'll make it quick, but we'll do more later. I want to ask you about chapter 9, but before we get there, we were talking about Kirk Cameron and speaking the truth and love. In Ephesians, that's where you're going to find that phrase, speak the truth and love. But the verse right

before it says something about there will be a day when there's all kind of deceptive truth out there, and you've got to be smart and you've got to be wise about confronting it. So it's so funny. It sounds like it was written about today. A lot of deceptive truth, but you have to confront it and speak the truth in love. Now, getting back to this, chapter nine in your book, this is very mysterious, this title, Bonhofer burns his boats. B, B, B, B. That's a, that's a principle. It happened in Alexander the Great when he was attacking Persia, the Empire. He did this radical thing. Cortez also did this. in the early 16th century where you say we're going to cut off our own escape route

because we are going to fight to the death. In other words, we're not going to allow ourselves a way out. We're going to force ourselves to fight with everything we have. And I think a lot of times that's what the church doesn't do. Like we kind of, we fight a little bit, but then it gets hot and we go, eh, we'll back off. You have to have the discernment to say, no, I'm going to go all in. and I'm going to lean on God.

Without God, I lose. I need to lean on the Lord. I'm going to burn my boats so that I don't have an escape route. And Bonhofer does that a couple of times, but he does that most specifically in 1939. When he comes back to Germany, he was in America. And he says, you know, I'm going to do, I'm going to go back. And I'm just going to be there for God's purposes.

I'm not going to, I have an escape route. I'm in America, but I'm not going to take it. I'm going to go there. and I'm going to lean on God. And it's an amazing thing, but it's a principle. Yeah. And so I write about it in the book that we need to understand what it means when God wants us all in. Yeah.

Not just a little bit, but like this is, it's kind of like saying like, okay, folks, this is it. There's no tomorrow. This is it. We have to fight with everything we have now. I think we're at that point in America now. That's why I say it's an existential crisis. If we don't use everything we have now, we're guaranteed to lose.

We need to be, we need to use everything we have and we need every Christian. And I say this, you know, if the church is those of us who call in the name of Jesus, it's not the building that I go to, it's not the denomination. It's those of us who say we're Christians, we're the church. Well, you, Mr. or Mrs. Christian, you might be the tipping point. In other words, you might be the one. If you go all in, that might be the tipping. point into we will save the nation for God's purposes as a platform for the faith in the world,

as a platform for freedom. It might be literally up to you. And when we say, what is the church, you're the church. Yeah. And the truth is we were all born for such a time as this. So you've got to step up, folks. You're either going to sit on the couch. I was watching a Yankee game the other day.

I only watched a couple winnings. And I said, I can't believe this. This is the way America used to be. You used to watch a baseball game, sit back, relax, enjoy yourself and say, always right with the world. And I thought to myself, but things are not all right with the world. It's okay. You need some refreshment, but you've got to get back into the fight. And by the way, if Sam Houston had come to the Alamo with reinforcements that they were hoping for,

that would have been a different battle. And so we who are in the Alamo now are looking for reinforcements so we can. That's a beautiful way of putting it. I don't say it in the book. Now I wish I had. That's beautiful. We need to fight on and fight. on. And I just, again, I explain it in the books, a letter of the American Church, a religionist

Christianity. I recommend you get them at Eric Metaxus.com. Albin, I know we want to continue this conversation. We'll do it another time. But in the meantime, thank you so much for being willing to do this. Thank you, Eric.