The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 3 - College gives seminar on "Christian privilege." Here's why that's insane

Episode Date: April 4, 2018

George Washington University is hosting a seminar on 'Christian Privilege.' Meanwhile, Christians are the most persecuted people in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the show, everybody. Thanks for watching. And before we get going, I wanted to just answer one question because a lot of people have asked me, they've said, you know, Matt, you have your own official podcast now with the Daily Wire. You're moving up in the world. Does that mean you'll stop doing your videos in the car now? Because, you know, all the other guys, they've got the fancy studio, and they've got the desk, and they've got a building, and they've got electricity, and they've got, you know, special effects. stuff. But here you are screaming into a webcam in your car like the disappointing stepchild of the Daily Wire. Will you stop doing that now? And the answer is no, as you can clearly see,

I'm in my car right now. I won't stop doing them in my car. Why do I do them in my car? That's the other big question. And to be honest with you, it's because I live in my car. I'm a nomad. I just wander the earth in my car doing Facebook videos. And the Daily Wire pays me in bottles of whiskey and cans of beans. And so that's why I'm in my car. You can stop asking now because, honestly, I feel a little judged, to be honest. All right. Let's talk about privilege.

I think that's a good, there's a good segue here. I'm a white Christian, heterosexual, cisgendered human male, which means that I've got a ton of privilege. I mean, I've got privilege stacked on top of privilege, stacked on top of privilege, even though I'm doing videos in my car. I don't have as much privilege as, say, Michael Knowles,

but I have a lot of privilege. So I know a little bit, I know a little bit about it. I have a firsthand experience with privilege. But there's one particular aspect of that privilege that the left is starting to focus on more now, and that is Christian. We know about white male privilege. We know about heterosexual privilege. But let's talk about Christian privilege.

George Washington University is hosting a training session this week, I believe, on Thursday. So just a few days after Easter, they figured this is a good day for this training session. They're doing a training session on Christian privilege. And I want to read just a little bit about this training session, the Christian Post. the privilege post, I should say, had an article about it. So a description of the training session asks, how do Christians in the USA experience life in an easier way than non-Christians? Even with the separation of church and state,

are there places where Christians have built in advantages over non-Christians? I haven't been to the training session yet, but I'm going to bet that the answer to that question is yes. How do we have it easier? Because this is what the left's all about now these days. It's about kind of keeping score and keeping track and figuring out who has it easier than who. So we're figuring out who has more of a right to complain. And so there's this constant competition. I talk about sometimes the left has a victim hierarchy or a victim pyramid, if you will. And there's this constant jockeying for position among the different groups and demographics on the left, wanting to be at the top of the period, wanting to be the most victimized victims of all, because that's power on the left. That's currency.

But if you're a Christian and you're not familiar with how things work on the left and you hear this, you'll say, what are you talking about? what privilege do I have? And I sometimes will ask that question about myself, even about, even about white male privilege, which is the most privileged privilege of all. And I think, where is that privilege? What can I do with it? I mean, can I cash it in somewhere? Is there a privilege exchange where you cash it in for dollar bills? Is it like with a visa credit card points, you know, where you accrue points and then you can cash it in for airline tickets or a discount on a hotel or something. How does it work? Well, fortunately, one of my favorite websites, Everydayfeminism.com, and I visit it every day because it's everyday feminism, folks,

not every week, not annual feminism, everyday feminism. They did an article a couple years ago titled, Don't Believe in Christian Privilege. These 15 examples will leave no doubt. So I thought, because I imagine that the George Washington University, these are probably the things they're going to talk about. So let's go through. I didn't even really look at this before I started doing the video. But let's go through a few. We won't do all 15, but here are a few of the examples that everyday feminism gives to prove that if you're a Christian, you have privilege. All right, right off the bat, number one, you get time off for your major religious holidays. See, this is a fascinating one to me because everybody gets off for Christian holidays. Everybody gets off for Christmas, for Easter.

And I would think that if you get to take off for somebody else's religious holiday, then that's privilege, isn't it? I mean, that's appropriation. Isn't that what appropriation is? Everybody's appropriating Christmas. You're taking off. You're taking a Christmas vacation. Or you're taking a winter vacation, which coincidentally happens right around Christmas.

So aren't you the one with privilege? If you get to enjoy the benefits of my religion and you're not even a part of it, I would think that's how it works. If somebody came to me, if the Daily Wire came to me and said, Matt, we want to give you a month off paid vacation because it's, Ramadan. And I doubt they would ever say that. But if they did, I would say, wow, thank you. I'm not Muslim, but I will take the time off. I'll take the vacation if you're going to give it to me. Great. And so now that's when I would be privileged. I get to enjoy this time off even though I'm not Muslim. So that doesn't make any sense to me. What are some other examples? You can wear symbols of your religion without being stereotyped as dangerous, I guess, but everybody in America

can wear symbols of their religion, so I don't think that's anything special. Politicians who create and uphold laws are likely to share your faith. Well, except for the whole other major political party, the Democrat Party, which famously booed God at their convention and kicked God off their platform. The Democrat Party, one of their great projects is the destruction and suppression of Christianity and Christian morals in American society. So, yeah, except for them, except for the most anti-Christian political party in American history, except for those guys, yeah, the ones that were in charge for the last eight years. Yeah, except for them, I guess that's totally correct. politicians who share your faith can base decisions on their religion, I guess, just like secular politicians can base their decisions on their secularism, atheist politicians on their atheism.

That's the thing is everybody makes decisions based on their convictions. That's why it's so stupid when people say, oh, you're just saying that or doing that because that's part of your religion. Okay, yeah, these are my convictions. You also have, that's like saying, well, you're just doing that because those are your convictions. Yes, that's what it means to be a person with intellectual integrity. What else do we have here? Your community can build and attend a place of worship without being targeted for violence. Well, of course, you've got to tell that to the church down in Texas.

where over 20 of them were slaughtered while they were in church. In fact, there have been several church attacks in this country just over the last couple of years. People of your faith who commit acts of violence aren't said to represent your entire faith. Yeah, well, that's... First of all, that's not true. If anyone ever does commit violence in the name of Jesus Christ, you can bet that that will certainly be taken and placed at the feet of all Christians. Okay, the anti-Christian people in this country love, if they can, to blame violence on Christians, and they always try to.

But do you know why it's usually unsuccessful? Do you know why it usually doesn't work? Do you know why Christians usually aren't blamed for these acts of violence? Do you know why? Because Christians aren't the ones committing acts of violence in the name of their religion. Christians aren't the ones committing terrorist acts. That's why we don't get blamed for terrorism as much because we aren't doing it. So if you want to call that privilege, then, yeah, sure.

We are a religion that doesn't have the same propensity to create terrorists. You can expect your children to have many teachers who share your faith. Yes, of course, public school is this bastion of Christianity. We all know that, of course. You're not pressured to celebrate another religion's holidays. We'll just leave it there. Let me just clarify that for anyone who maybe feels pressured to celebrate Christian holidays. You are not pressured.

We are not pressuring you. In fact, our complaint goes the other way. We don't like how Christmas has been taken and secularized and taken by secular people and just turned into this non-religious holiday. We aren't pressuring you to celebrate Christmas at all. If you're not Christian, we're totally fine if you don't celebrate Christmas. I have never heard any Christian person complain that there aren't enough non-Christians celebrating Christmas. So you're totally cool not to celebrate it.

This is the interesting thing about privilege. Because it seems to me that Christians, Christians are the ones who live in a culture that is basically against them. Christians are the ones who don't have the right to run their business as they see fit in this country.

Christians can be forced to make a product or perform a service for something that they find morally objectionable. Only Christians are targeted for that. It doesn't happen to anybody else. It's not happening to atheists. It's not happening to Muslims. very conspicuously, even though they have the same beliefs when it comes to homosexuality,

Muslim businesses aren't being targeted. This is Christian businesses. So, no, it's only Christians being targeted in that way. And then all these other examples of privilege are just fantasies. They're just delusions. But do I believe that Christians have privilege in America? and the answer to that is yes, absolutely. Sure, we're privileged. American Christians are privileged because everybody in America is privileged.

We all have privileges in America. We are privileged to live here. And that's the problem with privilege is that invariably it's a college-educated upper-middle-class brat who's lecturing us about privilege failing to see that in America, we all are privileged compared to the rest of the world, especially if you're in college. I mean, this is how it always goes. Usually, it's not someone in Ethiopia lecturing Americans, Americans about privilege.

Usually it's some, it's a college student who's never worked a day in their life. And now they're taking a four-year vacation at this college where they're partying every night. They're not even paying for it. And they're the ones turning around and lecturing us about privilege. And then we have to listen to the lecture and say, okay, fine. Yeah, go back to your dorm room and let me get back to work. Let me go home to my kids who I take care of. You know, let me go back to the house that I'm paying for.

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We all should feel privileged to live in America as opposed to Zimbabwe or something like that. In fact, I don't feel ashamed of our privilege because our privilege, from the fact that we have, you know, relatively, we are a relatively free and prosperous country. My shame, I don't feel a shame to that. My shame comes from the fact that we are less free and less prosperous and therefore we have less privilege today than we did in the past. Because these are privileges that were fought for and won and earned by our ancestors and handed to us. And we've been in the process of squandering them. So don't be ashamed of your privilege. The privilege that was given to you by your ancestors and the people who founded this country, be ashamed of the fact that you have less

of it now than you should because you squandered it. And it's not just us. I also go back to the baby boomers. I mean, this has been a process of squandering our privilege that's been going on for a couple of generations now. So we all have privilege. But if you want to single out Christians and use this term Christian privilege. Well, that's a problem because across the world, across time, across history, Christians are among the least privileged people. Even now today, Christians are easily among the least privilege and most persecuted group in the world. There was a report recently that revealed that Christian persecution and genocide

is worse now than it's ever been in history. If Christians in Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Egypt, many other countries are regularly imprisoned, tortured, beaten, raped, martyred, their churches are destroyed, their houses are burned. They have to meet and worship in secret underground. You know, we're back in the catacombs in Rome and many parts of the world. They live their lives in constant danger just because they're Christian. So tell them about Christian privilege, okay?

There's about 215 million Christians in the world who face what is referred to as extreme persecution. So that's persecution. That is violent, oppressive persecution. And it's estimated that around a million Christians have been slaughtered since 2005. There's no way to know exactly how many because the countries that do this don't exactly keep records. But we do know and we can kind of come to estimates based on the fact that Christianity has been drastically dramatically reduced in parts of the world where it's existed for nearly 2,000 years. Just look at Egypt. St. Mark, tradition tells us that St. Mark brought Christianity to Egypt in the early part of the first century.

and now that seed that he's planted and that's been there and growing for 2,000 years has been almost entirely ripped up. And every month you hear about another massacre that's happening in Egypt. The Coptic Christians have been almost completely driven out of that country. So all across the world, believers are being blown up, incinerated, shot, beheaded,

and not just in Muslim countries, although largely in Muslim countries, but the worst Christian persecutor in the world is North Korea. In North Korea, if you're a Christian, they'll ship you off to the gulag, to the concentration camp, and you're not coming out. In China, Christianity is still criminalized. So again, tell them about Christian privilege. Maybe invite them, invite some of them to your seminar on Christian privilege, because they'll be fascinated to learn about it. it will be news to them.

I'll tell you that. Now, there are many examples of this persecution of Christians across the world. I wanted to point to just one while we're on the subject, because I think this is a particularly powerful and tragic, but also quite common example of persecution they face. This was a year or two ago in Egypt. There were a group of Coptic Christians. They were on buses headed to a monastery in the desert to pray.

They were on a pilgrimage. And this is a dangerous thing to do in Egypt. Whereas in this country, yeah, Christian can get in his car, drive the church on Sunday, 10 minutes down the road. and there's not going to be any Islamic militants patrolling the area ready to put a bullet in their heads and make slaves of their children. That's the case in Egypt. And yet, Christians in this country still can't be bothered

to get up and go to church, even though there's nothing at all stopping them. So they are privileged in that way and the way that we all are privileged in America. But these Christians, they knew the risks and they did it because they felt compelled spiritually. And the buses were stopped by, these Muslim militants, and they boarded the buses,

but they didn't just shoot indiscriminately and kill everybody on the bus. Instead, they pulled the people out of the bus, and they interrogated them, and they asked them first, are you Christian? And then they asked them, or demanded, rather, that they renounce Christianity and convert to Islam. So basically, these martyrs and all the ones that die, they all were martyred, including the children.

these martyrs had to choose martyrdom twice. Just imagine, they've got the gun to their head, and they're asked the first question, are you a Christian? They have to summon all this courage to say yes. And they probably imagine that they'll be killed right there, that as soon as they say yes, that's it. But then they're told, okay, convert to Islam.

And now they have another chance to kind of back away and save their lives and take the cowardly way out. And they have to summon all that courage once again and look these people in the eye, holding guns to their heads and say no. And I think it's pretty powerful that in this permissive age that we live in and this permissive culture, in a culture where Christians are, in our culture anyway,

are terrified of saying no to anyone about anything. say no to anything. I mean, this is the age of tolerance and acceptance and welcoming and permitting. So how powerful is it that the word that made these Christians into martyrs was no? I think there's a lesson we could take from that. And then they were killed and left there in the desert to rot. So I don't know if George Washington University, I don't know if they're going to cover that story. I don't know if they'll mention that. But if you're trying to create this image of a privileged Christianity, of a Christianity that has power and wealth and an oppressive Christianity,

a Christianity that's out there oppressing the world, if you want to believe that, it requires you to never look beyond your own borders. all these people in college are pretend to be so worldly, hey, let's learn about other cultures. They know nothing about the world. They know nothing about other cultures. Because when you go into that pursuit, when you pursue knowledge about the world, yet you're hampered by your bigotries, by your anti-Christian bigotry, and you have this narrative that you're trying desperately to protect this narrative of the of the privileged Christian of the oppressive Christian well when you have that there and that's the blinder and then you go out and you try to learn about the world you can't learn anything because everywhere you turn once you leave the borders of this country everywhere you turn you find evidence to the contrary you find that Christians are being killed and slaughtered and martyed and also by the way Christians are in every nook and cranny and crevice of this kind of this world helping people ministering to them feeding the poor a treating the sick it's christians

doing that it's not atheists okay there aren't millions of american atheists all across the world in all of the in all of these godforsaken impoverished dangerous places um you know setting up hospitals and missions and helping people and feeding them it's not atheists doing that it's christians all across the world but if you want to believe in the privileged Christian, you also have to ignore that fact as well. All right, thanks for watching everybody, and thanks for joining the discussion. I'll talk to you tomorrow.