The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1057: Is There a Future for Right-Wing Christianity? w/ Ryan Turnipseed

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

70 MinutesSFWRyan is a student of Economics and Entrepreneurship at Oklahoma State University. He has a YouTube channel and is a member of "The Old Glory Club"Ryan joins Pete to talk about the path that recently led him to be excommunicated by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. He and Pete talk about how modernity has captured many churches and has caused them to become more like the regime they should be resisting.Ryan's Find My Frens Page VIP Summit 3-Truth To Freedom - Autonomy w/ Richard GroveSupport Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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early and ad-free, and you'll get an invite into the telegram group. So I really appreciate all of the support everyone's giving me, and I hope to expand the show even more than it already has. Thank you so much. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingiano show, returning. Ryan Turnipseed. Are you doing, Ron? I'm doing very well.

How are you doing? I'm doing great, doing great. You've been on the show many times. their introductions aren't needed, fellow Old Glory Club charter member and all that. The reason I asked you to come on today is because, you know, you've been going through some trials and tribulations as far as your church going and your faith in the last couple years. That seems to be no fault of your own.

So I wanted you to tell your story, and then, you know, I have questions from there, and we can jump off and, you know, talk about things like, you know, the general state of the church, the Christian church today and go from there. So why don't you tell everybody a little bit about what's been happening to you? Yeah, sure. And thank you for having me on. So last January, near the end of the month, this would have been 2003, just coming out of 2022. The Lutheran Church, Missouri Senate at the time had a reputation for being one of the most conservative. Protestant denominations in the country, if not Christian denominations. Their publishing house, tasked with putting out pure doctrine for the Lutheran Church,

put out a new, it was a catechism, is Luther's large catechism, bound with dozens and dozens of essays and applications, contemporary commentaries, and whatnot else. Catechisms, for those unfamiliar, maybe atheists, low church, Protestants, or anyone else of the sort, catechisms are meant to instruct people in the Christian faith, basically from the ground up, everything that you would need to know about Christianity if you are going to be one. That is what's included in a catechism. So they're a pretty big deal. It's very fundamental to faith, and especially if you're going more on the academic side of things,

like this volume was intended to be this new publication from the publishing house. It's intended for pastoral instruction in particular. It's a theological work, very, very foundational to the faith. And these essays that were included in this volume, this catechetical volume, were subversive left wing, some of them softer than others, some of them harsher than others. There were essays talking about incorporating social justice into Lutheran theology very explicitly. There were other ones that had really egregious statements, even though they did not outwardly appear to be very subversive, the most infamous of which equated pedophilia to every other sexual sin, and topped it off by saying that if someone else does it, it is not as bad as your own sin.

So basically horribly abusing Christ's words that says that one should focus on the log in your own eye rather than the speck in your neighbors, which traditionally is meant to imply that you should focus on your own sins of the same kind before you instruct others on that topic. So a horrible abuse of that term, sort of a soft pedaling acceptance of paedophilia. And then the charges go on and on. There were even such subtleties capitalizing black and not white. which was a more conservative controversy a while ago, but nonetheless notable for this supposedly conservative nomination.

So this book was put out, and it was meant to sort of fly under the radar, be using the seminaries to instruct new pastors, maybe for the more theologically inclined, but otherwise it wasn't meant to be this big flagship book. And a few other people start pointing out issues with it. I received a digital copy so that I could look through the essays. And I took Twitter on my much smaller account then, certainly, than I have now. I think I had about 4,000, maybe 5,000 followers at the time,

and put out a long Twitter thread going through a bunch of the essays saying that this is garbage, basically. I was not being soft with my words. I would point out that certain things were subversive, certain things were obscene, like the pedophilia quote. You can go and look at it in context on my Twitter account. I screen capped paragraphs whenever I went through this, just so that people could see what was leading up to the statements I had an issue with and what was being done with them afterwards. So this Twitter thread got traction, thanks entirely to the people in our sphere. You are on McIntyre, a bunch of other big names got this rolling, and it caused such a public

outcry within a couple of days, which is lightning fast for a bureaucratic machine like a denominational synod. Within a couple of days, it was pulled from publication, and the president of the LCMS, the current one that just got re-elected last August, has a reputation for being a big conservative, came right after a very liberal leader of the denomination. He pulled it and said that there were a bunch of issues that he couldn't tolerate. And then a few weeks later, after receiving heavy internal pressure is what I gather. Certainly the more liberal conservatives within the Senate were bragging about applying that internal pressure. That Senate President, Matthew Harrison,

re-released the issue, or re-released the catechism, and basically just said that the issues were overblown. There were some things that could be reworded, which to most normal people would be reasoned enough to pull a catechism from distribution, but not in this case. It was a political issue now. He put it back out there, said some things could be reworded, but it was overall a great volume, and he re-endorsed the whole thing. So after that, at the end of February, 2003, he put out another statement on his own, where he decried

so-called alt-right influences within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. This is in 2003, not 2013. He basically exhumed this word from the recesses of the 2016 election, and he branded... Well, doesn't that just go to show how out of touch, people are and when they try to basically be relevant, they show their irrelevance by bringing up terms that people haven't really used in seven, eight years? Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what this is. And that was a big thing that I and everyone else was harping on was who even calls themselves

all right anymore, let alone uses it as an insult against people. It hasn't really been used since then. I think they realized their error and they sort of just quietly swept it under the rug. I haven't been accused of being all right since that letter, and even then he only obliquely accused me and other people. The impetus for him putting out that condemnation was he said that the figures at the epicenter of this large catechism controversies he started to call it were alt-right racists, misogynists, they supported enslaving people and all this other stuff. Very unbearable things, certainly if you're conservative, not concerned with any

theological matters because then you might have to get into more nuanced stancers that isn't just condemning everything that the world wants you to condemn in black and white terms. So he was being very liberal with his accusations, very absolutist with them in ways that contradicted scripture. He said he basically gave a categorical condemnation of all those things plus genocide and a bunch of other things. It doesn't take more than five seconds to realize that a categorical condemnation of genocide of sin would condemn God, certainly, multiple times over. He omnisited the world in Genesis,

directly commanded the genocide of multiple nations. So the theological review for this condemnation coming from the top down, which is itself something to note for this more congregationalist polity, the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. So this statement from the top down certainly didn't pass much theological review or consideration. It was a feel-good letter. I don't actually know if anyone signed onto it. It kind of sounded like the Senate President, Matthew Harrison, when he put this out, just assumed he was speaking on behalf of everyone, and so signed their stations onto it, because at the start of this condemnation, it mentions that all the vice presidents and congregations categorically condemn these views, and that's clearly not

the case, at the very least from my own experience. I can find people in those capacities that disagree with these things far away from me, across the country. So this is very much a centralizing move, sort of centralizing the polity of the church. And then after that, at the end of his letter, he called outside of his authority entirely for the excommunication of anyone found to hold these views. So the way that we're organized is that the Senate is purely just to facilitate good order between Lutheran congregations. and to sort of, not to clarify doctrine as if the doctrine comes from the Senate, but to certainly make sure that the doctrine held among the congregations is homogenous. It is not a disciplinary authority.

The Senate president has no oversight in any congregation other than his own if he does pastor a congregation at all. So this itself was a massive overreach. It was a very centralizing move on top of what they were deeming an emergency. If you can think of any historical examples like that, I'm sure bells are ringing right now. And soon after this letter was published, a series of laymen were disciplined. The most famous and most hard to defend, at least if you're, especially in the mainstream,

Corey Mahler was excommunicated very improperly by his congregation. All the rules were thrown out the window. He wasn't there for the excommunication. Police barred him from attending the property. no serious person, and this is becoming more of an acceptable view now, no serious person holds that he was excommunicated properly. Even the people in support of it acknowledge that they broke rules to sort of excommunicate a Nazi, basically. That's the impetus. So the pretense that this was done in any acceptable or Christian manner has gone out the window on both sides now,

which is a good development overall, if we can agree. acknowledge a sinful problem where there is one. His friend in the congregation was sort of pressured out of it so that he wouldn't vote against the excommunication. That's on the same level as apostasizing, kicking someone out of a congregation for things that they shouldn't be kicked out for. After that, there was an elder in the Oklahoma District, which is where I reside, and one of the congregations in the Oklahoma District, I should say. He was a... he was subjected to a meeting with all of the elders of his congregation and the pastor, and I believe he was only informed of the attendance, of that, the attendees of that meeting

very quickly before time. So he didn't, I don't think he got very much forewarning. I could be wrong on that detail. But the important part here is that this elder was pressured to resign his eldership, and he found out that the meeting was being recorded, asked for a copy, of the recording, and the pastor denied him the copy. And then finally, at the start of March, the Senate structure came for me, not directly, because they didn't do that in any of these. It was all done through local, if you wanted to be charitable, you could say puppets. If you wanted to assume the worst, you could say true believers. I was told that I was going to have to go under some sort of examination for my beliefs, and I asked the sort of like little,

the geographic overseer of my little area, the pastor in charge of overseeing the other like four pastors or whatever in this small geographic circuit. I just asked him for details, is this politically motivated and all this other stuff? The first meeting went fine. He was on side. He didn't like the catechism, and he thought that no one else really liked it either. I met with him again as more information about my hearings came out to me, just because, some of these communications were done in secret, and thankfully some of the recipients informed my father and I, my father being an elder at our church at the time. So I met again with that

circuit pastor, the circuit visitor, is what they're technically called, this overseer. And the tone had completely changed. He was very clearly not in favor of anything I was doing anymore. And I asked him about that aforementioned elder, who was recorded one-sidedly and and denied the recording. And my college pastor, that's who this overseer was, basically just said, why didn't he make his own recording? So from then on out, I record all of my meetings. I wasn't going to trust them, especially because that earlier incident,

as I mentioned, happened in the same district. It was in Oklahoma as well. Same ecclesiastical oversight and authority. I was told, why didn't he make his own recording? So I was going to make mine as well. And from here on out, that's why all of my meetings were recorded. Later down the line, I was called into a meeting probably about a week after that previously mentioned discussion. And I had a bunch of, frankly, absurd charges thrown at me, things that didn't make grammatical sense, let alone theological sense or anything else, like disavowing whole persons, whatever that was supposed to mean.

That was demanded of me to disavow the whole persons of these scary, racist, and non-revelling. Nazis at the far right. And I was told a bunch of other things. The recordings of these can be found on my Twitter. There's a lot to go through in there. It's easily a 40-minute read and watch, if not longer, if you want to dig farther into it. But that was the absurd charges put forward to me. Nothing of my own words was put in front of me. None of my own posts or writings or whatever else. It was purely association. You have platformed or associated with these people, and that means you support them, therefore we need you to condemn everything about them.

That was the logic used against me, and I refused to concede that. That's not how Christianity operates, let alone any sort of practical, political issues here. Like, even if that was how Christianity operates, this is very clearly a political hit, something meant to make the denomination shift leftward, silence the right wing, and all this other stuff. I made it clear to them I didn't trust the process. From before this meeting started, they gave me zero reasons to trust it during a meeting. I wasn't going to submit to this. So fast forward, they come up with this idea, and this is their word, not mine, to put me through a tribunal. A very heightened sense of self-importance on their part. Definitely, they're not

supposed to make this sound punitive. This is another point of breaking doctrine. The Lutheran understanding of church discipline is one that's supposed to help the other person. So if someone vehemently denies that they are not committing a sin, say like adultery or alcoholism or cohabitation or something, you're supposed to put them under church discipline because that's supposed to make it clear to them that at the very least everyone else sees this as an egregious sin. So far, I'm not under any official church discipline after that last meeting, but they're coming up with punitive terms like putting me through tribunal, and I tell them my terms to to have this, that's in the same

Twitter thread that I mentioned earlier. Things that I, basically just to make me trust it. So like, I can have my own recording of the thing. I'm not going to be asked to give up social media stuff and all these other things that they were previously requesting me. What not else.

Basic things to show me that this is they're at least willing to put on a facade of trust. They denied every single one of them, so I denied to meet with them. A few weeks later, I released all this information public, and then the next Sunday I was put under what is called the minor ban in the Lutheran Church or the L-CMS, which is supposed to be a local sort of stopgap measure.

So say a pastor finds out that a couple in his congregation is cohabitating before marriage. You don't need to have this huge public issue over their cohabitation if you can just say, well, I'm not going to commune until you fix us, either get married or move out. That's what the minor ban is really supposed to be for. supposed to be for. It's supposed to be like a, it's a step before excommunication, because if they don't comply with that, then the next step is to make it public and excommunicate the couple. But if you can fix the issue, they'll remain under the minor ban until that's fixed, and then everything's back to normal. That's not what was going on here. I just put under the minor ban for, they gave me five

charges, which are identical to something that's going to come up quickly here. The first charge was that I disrespected their supposedly God established authority, as if God himself established a board of elders in the Lutheran Church and all this other stuff, authority that... I thought the Lutheran Church broke from Catholicism. Yeah, yeah, well, I did too. So that is, you're not the only one to make that connection. A lot of very, very good pastors have noted that this is papal or papist reasoning, as if God himself establish your church.

Be careful with the insults, sir. Well, I'm not saying it. I'm saying this is what other people have said. We can get into that later if you want to. So that was the first charge. The next two charges, and I am not in any way exaggerating, we can read them out later if we need to. I made these charges public for the minor ban,

and they're identical to what we will be talking about in short order. The next two charges were that I had associated with people too far to the right. And they have this and that terrible view, and I must therefore repent of having ever associated with them, because in their mind, my associations with them means that I agree with them on these things, which is irrelevant to the point of whether or not I do agree. That's a wrong leap of logic. That's not how you prove someone's beliefs is who they associate with. Certainly, we don't do that to Christ himself, associating with all manner of a sinful people. So that was their next two charges and the final two charges, if tying this back into

the original issue, or that I had unfairly and harshly criticized their catechism instead of going through the official processes, which I don't know what that is. They don't know what that is. There are no official processes. They're just really mad. Is that in the catechism? You're not allowed to criticize the essays attached to the catechism? I mean, that's how it's going to be used. So I'm kind of shocked they didn't quote from it themselves. But so that was the last two charges was that I had unfairly and publicly criticized their catechism in a way that they didn't like. That especially those last two charges were are notable because the entire time throughout this process leading up to this point that I was being questioned, I was assured.

the whole time that this had nothing to do with my criticisms of the catechism. It only had to do with my scary associations with far-right people online. That was their line that they were taking, and then suddenly I'm being barred from communing, because two-fifths of the charges are because I criticized the catechism in a way they didn't like. So that was the minor ban that would have been at the end of May last year, So probably a year ago this Sunday, if not plus or minus a few days. And I sort of let things lie for a while and just tried to see if they'd make another move beyond that.

Because there's no real official channel of recourse for layman in this synod. Mostly just because church discipline is a very rare thing in the LCMS. Usually the person that needs disciplining believer, self-exclude. they'll just leave the church as a result of whatever they're doing, or it'll be sorted out without resorting to this nuclear option. So there's no appeals process saying that I'm being unfairly barred from communing at this church, or certainly not one that I or anyone else I've talked to knows of. If it exists, it's this cobweb-infested artifact from decades and decades ago.

That hasn't been used in any order, really, for a long while. So I sort of let things lie for a few months. And then at the end of 2003 come December, and then into January of this year, 2024, I was advised by a few pastors from across the country to just reach out to the pastor that put me under the minor ban. This would be Joseph Pyley at First Luther Church in Ponca City. That information was made public by Antifa first,

if anyone is annoyed at me for mentioning names and places here. Antifa was involved in this. You can see more of that in the Twitter thread. It's just adding to the litany of charges against anything that's happened to me was that they were using Antifa information against me in my own hearings, basically. So, anyways, back to the story starting this year. I reached out at the behest of these pastors from across the country to Joseph Highley. trying to organize a meeting.

And the same purpose was to achieve peace and reconciliation, whatever form that may take, at least to discuss the prospect. And nothing really went moving. I got a customary email back about a day or two later saying, oh, it's great to hear from you, finally. Sure, we'll start planning a meeting. And then a couple of months went by.

So at the end of February, I basically just sent an email saying, you know, I'm kind of getting a little bit dismayed that nothing's being done. I recognize that we're in the season of Lent, but is this really the least important thing that you have to do, church discipline? Like, that's a pretty weighty matter. And that sort of lit a fire under things. And at this point in time, I got a message back from Hiley in email,

basically where we were starting to hammer out the terms of this meeting. And for this meeting, I wanted a silent witness there. so I didn't have to record it. Just someone else present beside me who didn't have to say anything so they could witness it so it wouldn't be hearsay after this meeting. And then beyond that, I wanted

a list of charges against me that are more refined because the ones given to me for being put under the minor ban were shoddy. At the very least, grammatically, there are grammatical errors in these charges, which is indicative that maybe they were hastily contrived at the last second

because of a public outcry against what was happening to me. So I've on a detailed list of charges, perhaps more refined, a silent witness, and the understanding that there would be a meeting after this one so that we could discuss the charges instead of just having received them. And every single one of these points was denied to me. I was told I could not have a witness because there is no, and this is his line, Reverend Highley's line, was that there's no fight going on here. There's no split. There's no two sides of which we would need a witness present. There's just

me and him, which is this very... Orn's trying to a minor ban? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's very... The audacity here was awe-inspiring to claim after this whole time that there is no split, so I don't need a silent witness. And then I received an updated list of charges by email. The only thing that changed, and this is not an exaggeration, was that two more scripture

references were added in the original list of charges. The only scripture referenced was just like the name of a verse, not the verse itself, not the quote, not an explanation of how it applied. It was just sort of thrown in there like a citation that was supposed to carry some sort of weight. This updated list of charges, if I remember correctly, had one or two more citations. No drawing into the topic or explanation or tying it to any specific thing I had done. These things were just pure assertions. that was the first change. And the second change was that they included in the first charge that I had disrespected their authority, that I had publicized everything, and that was egregiously sinful.

So that was their, that was their refinement of the charges upon getting their chance to sort of at least make things to look more official. That's what they did with that opportunity. And as I mentioned earlier, I was denied a silent witness. That's blatantly un-Christian, even going back to the book of Deuteronomy, that's not how Christian justice. is meted. That's egregious, obscene. So basically I sent back an email saying, all right, fine, we can do this, but I'm going to record the meeting then if I can't have a witness. I need my own copy of a recording of something. And I received an email back from Hiley that was using a completely different tone, completely different font, different font size,

different sign-off, but how does name sign to the bottom? So very sort of a weird email to receive from him. And I was basically just told, nope, we're going to take minutes. That's going to be it. And the purpose of this meeting is for you to repent. So the purpose of the meeting had changed. His demeanor, maybe someone else wrote this email for him. That whole part changed. And I was being told that if I wanted to meet with him, I'd have to go by their official story of the events. And that would be it. That would be the accepted story. So at this point... This meeting, is there any justification for it, either within the catechism or within the tradition that you know of?

Well, I didn't go through the meeting. This was, there was no... I mean, in the sense that you can say Christians are to seek good order. That's why I was advised to reach out to Hiley. But this meeting never happened, because after getting that list of demands back, I just said, no, I'm not going. Like, I'm not going to go without a witness without my own record. That's dumb. Beyond just the moral implications or the spiritual implications here, that would be dumb.

We wouldn't expect that even in a secular matter. So this meeting never happened on April 8th. That's how far this had stretched out for, so months now, for the supposedly weighty and pressing topic. April 8th, I delivered a letter to the congregation of First Lutheran. The church secretary accepted it, where I just recently. any spiritual ties in membership that I had with the congregation. So basically that's me saying I quit this congregation. And just as a point of information here, the way that the LCMS works,

laymen are not members of the LCMS. They are members of their congregation, which is in the LCMS. So the only members of the LCMS are clergy and congregations, not individual laymen. So at this point, most congregations would accept that you don't need to accept the quitting letter for it to be an official rescission of membership and spiritual ties. That's how any normal person would perceive this, and certainly anyone that just wanted peace and good order would basically just say that this is out of their hands now. You know, there's obviously, there's not much that can be done. I've self-excluded myself. That's redundant, but that's what it was.

So at this point in time, let me see if I can get the dates pulled up really quickly here. So that was April 8th in the morning. April 24th at 9 o'clock a.m., I receive an email from Reverend Highley, and this is a very short email. I'll read this out quickly. It says, Ryan,

in light of your continued impenitence and your refusal to submit to church, Discipline, Pastor Hiley and the Board of Elders will present the case for your excommunication to the congregation on Sunday, May 5, 2004, immediately after the conclusion of the divine service. You are invited to be present for the proceedings. The Lord desires your repentance and reconciliation with the Church, 2. Peter 3.9. We pray that you will see the destructiveness of your sin and turn to the light of God's truth. May the Lord have mercy on you, Pastor Joseph Highley and the Board of Elders of First Luther Church, Ponga City. So I received that email weeks after I had turned in my recension of membership and spiritual authority.

Just for clarification, and I think I know the answer to this, they, because you're not a member of the LCMS, you are just being excommunicated from that congregation. Is that correct? Okay. Let me explain this very quickly, because this is a quirk that I've only found in America. Lutheranism. So this is a capital E X communication that basically just says you are not allowed at any Lutheran altar for communion. However, this is carried out on the local level. So you have this weird sort of blending of an episcopate and a congregationalist polity. So the local congregation, the way that it's worded in our theology, our official theology, is that by unanimous vote, the congregation can capital E. X communicate you. and that should bargue you from every other Lutheran church that's in fellowship with this congregation.

So the L-CMS in our example. It's a local action that is applied nationally or internationally, depending on the size of the church body. It's a weird quirk. That's how it works. The only way this has been disputed or repealed or anything else is just if other pastors don't accept it, if they continue to commune you. So that's what they're talking about here. So the minor ban, purely local. If I, say if I went to another congregation, they are not obligated to withhold communion from me.

They would have to consider that I'm under the minor ban and the way the issues maybe talk to the pastor that put me under that minor ban. But there's no doctrinal matter that says the minor ban is universal. So obviously you probably get a few mean looks and a mean letter if you did start communing someone that was under the minor ban. but capital of excommunication, this is suddenly a doctrinal issue if you do that. You're disputing the judgment of that congregation, and since excommunication is black and white, there's no partially excommunicated or half excommunication. If you commune an excommunicant, you're saying that the people at level judgment upon this person are wrong. And this wrongness would be sinful, because you're wrongfully excluding someone from a thing that they should have a sacrament.

So that's excommunication in the LCMS, rarely if ever happens. And I received this email weeks after I handed in my recension letter saying they were going to vote to excommunicate me. So that's a weird thing number one. How can this happen? I'm not in that congregation anymore. The local scope of action no longer applies. So that's the question I have, and I'll be answered here pretty quickly. How did they resolve that?

But beyond that, let's just look back here very quickly. They're doing it on Sunday, May the 5th, after the conclusion of their church service, so in the afternoon, late morning afternoon. I had a pre-existing obligation that I had to go to that day. It was in Tulsa. So I was out of town that day, whether I wanted to be or not. And then how do they handle this eventuality that I can't attend? Oh, they say you are invited to be present for the proceedings.

That's not how it works. You're supposed to be there. You can't have judgment passed upon yourself in Eustentia. This is already we've broken basic theology. This isn't just bureaucratic bylaws and all this other stuff. This is in our theology. You can't be judged when you aren't there. That's not how judgment works.

So to say that you're invited to your own vote is a, That's a slight, if anything else. If you wanted to be uncharitable, if you wanted to be charitable, they have no clue what they're doing. They don't know that I'm supposed to be there. If you want to be uncharitable, maybe that's the point. So that's what I receive April 24th, 9 a.m. And April 5th rolls around eventually.

My stepmother was present at the proceedings. I wasn't because I was... You met May 5th, right? Sorry, yeah, May 5th. Sorry. Matha thrills around. My set mother is present at the proceedings. I'm in Tulsa outside the city by an hour and more.

And that's, they do hold the proceedings, and they do it in a very strange way that they shouldn't have. So first, they had everyone sign a paper saying that they would not take their own record of this event, that the minutes that were kept would be the only official telling of the events. there's no precedent for that. There's no Christian foundation for that. They very clearly do not want this to be another incident because they can't do things properly,

and people have once recorded them screwing things up for months and months at a time. They don't want this to happen for an excommunication, so they have people sign a sheet saying they won't do that. And then beyond that, they acknowledged that they were just ad hoc changing their rules as to how this excommunication would be done. The church constitution that they would normally operate under would say that a two-thirds vote is needed and abstaining from the vote counts as a yes.

So that doesn't count towards the two-thirds of someone abstains. It doesn't shrink the overall vote. You would still need to have two-thirds in the affirmative. So first off, that shouldn't be how it works. It should be unanimous. That's in our theology very explicitly, drawing from scripture, drawing from the church fathers, drawing from the earliest. Lutheran settlers here in the United States. So that's something that pre-exist. So they are not responsible for having that in there, but they still followed it. The thing they did do was that

they changed their rules to where abstaining from the vote, it was basically just disregarded. So if you abstained, they weren't going to count it either way. They were just going to shrink the total number of votes cast so that they could get their two-thirds or their unanimity. So they hold their vote after presenting their so-called evidence. If you're wondering what the evidence is, what specifically have I done wrong? The only thing from me that they showed the congregation the whole time was that I had recommended the podcast Stone Choir, which I believe have been on the show once or twice before.

That's the only thing that came from me that was proof that I was not Christian, certainly not a believing Christian that could receive the sacraments at the altar. So one piece of evidence was shown against me for all five of these charges, and it was that I had shared a podcast, and quite frankly, I don't remember what the subject was. So that's not because I dislike Stone Choir, or that I really love Stone Choir. I just don't remember what the thing was. So that's their core piece of evidence for excommunicating me. Everything else after that was things that came from other people and them saying, I support this. So that was their evidence.

Eventually they hold their vote. They announced before the congregation that it's a unanimous excommunication, and one of the congregants raised their hands, and they basically say, well, I didn't vote, I abstained. Why is this unanimous? And they talk among themselves at the front of the sanctuary, and they say, well, we're not counting that. So they've changed the rules.

And I should say, before they took the vote, now that we know the outcome, one of the congregants specifically asked, you know, Turnip Seed rescinded his membership. He handed us the letter. It's addressed to the congregation, to the pastor, to the Board of Elders. How can we do this? Like, what's the jurisdiction that we have over him if he's not a member? And Reverend Highley, or maybe one of the elders speaking on behalf of him, I wasn't there.

I'm recounting this as a secondary source now, though one very closely can. connected to the person who accounted it to me. The church leadership basically said, well, we didn't accept his recension. So we can still pass judgment on him as much as we want to. Plus, and this is their reasoning for doing this, because the congregant, I believe, that impressed them, why don't we just accept the recension and be done with this? The pastor and the elders responded to that by saying that this was a punitive measure, that if a child is doing something wrong and then suddenly decides to stop afterwards so

is to avoid punishment, this is their words, you wouldn't then not administer the punishment. So we've already turned the process of church discipline from something that's supposed to help the person being disciplined into a punitive measure by their own admission during the proceedings for which I was voted to be excommunicated. So they've changed the rules. They have this weird draconian system where only their rules is signed by the people that signed the paper, are accepted as the official testimony of what happened. We still don't really have the minutes as far as I'm aware. And also, they're not accepting my recension of

membership because they need to punish me, is their idea. That's their stated, that's their stated philosophy behind this. So I was told verbally that they had excommunicated me. I still haven't received a, or well, rather, I received a letter after this that said the ride of excommunication was going to be performed on the service of Sunday, May the 12th, just a few days ago, 10 days ago, as of the time of this recording. And that's the last I've heard from them, was that that was going to have in May the 12th. The ride of excommunication would be the actual capital E excommunication. Everything up and to this point was just giving a cent for me to be excommunicated in the service. Sunday rolls around, and if I remember correctly, they start streaming like the first 30 seconds

of the prelude of the service, so while people are still walking in before time. And then the recording shuts off, the streaming shuts off. So that's a bit strange. That's what people were telling me. I wasn't there. I wasn't looking for their recording or anything like that. I just got asked if I knew what was going on, and the answer is no. I didn't.

So a few days later, May the 15th, one of my good friends here in Oklahoma of Lutheran tells me, hey, First Lutheran Church in Ponca City just put out their video and your excommunicated and it was his wife that found the video first. It was on Facebook. And sure enough, under First Lutheran Church, Ponca City's Facebook, there's a video there. They're saying they had Wi-Fi connection issues on the Sunday that this was performed. So now they're re-uploading the recording. you click on it. It's public for everyone. It's a public Facebook page. You can go and look at it. I haven't checked this very recently, but certainly May the 15th I did in the day that it was up beforehand, because we caught this a day after they put it back up. You can watch it, and in the first five minutes or so,

the right of excommunication against me is performed. So they made it very public. They broadcast it online. It's on YouTube and Facebook. So on May the 15th and the afternoon, it would have been last Wednesday, I basically just took the clip of him, Reverend Joseph Highley of First Lutheran Church, Pankas City, excommunicating me. I had a very goofy paramed in the background that a bunch of people have been commenting on, so it's a very distinct video if you want to come and see it. I took the clip up, basically just said, I've been excommunicated. The reasons that they excommunicated me for were the exact same ones that I was presented by email, the ones that were presented to me for putting me under the minor ban. the five that we went through earlier a few minutes ago.

So that was the reasons for which I was excommunicated, though he did not read those out in public as to why I was excommunicated. So if anyone had been relying on them and they're right for the excommunication and no other sources, we would not know why I was excommunicated just that I was. So that's the story up into here. And just as an addendum to the story, I know for a fact, that there are a great deal of pastors and laymen who find this to be intolerable. They see that this breaks the theology, the structure of the church body,

that this is an anti-Christian act, a deeply immoral act, and so on, so on, something that affects them. The thing about excommunications is it's supposed to be universal. So it affects them. This is no longer just a local matter that can hide behind secrecy to protect private individuals. as this is a very local matter. The judgment of a congregation is now being weighed down, way to, sorry,

the judgment of a congregation is now being wielded against someone to basically condemn them, to bar them from any other church across the country. And other pastors realize that this is something that concerns them, because now they're being expected to abide by this decision and just assume that it's correct. So there's a great deal many of pastors, of laymen, and of people outside the Elton,

CMS as well that find this to be absolutely intolerable and contrary to Christianity as can be. And I have a pretty good feeling that something's going to be done about this. I know that there are a great many groups working against this currently that refuse to recognize this. So how that's going to come about, I'm sure we'll find out later. I know for a fact that this won't, at the very least, it's not going to just be let go. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th

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Keep it to yourself. All right, let's go back to what may have caused all of this from the beginning. How much do you think this has to do with this vetching that we see mainline? Protestantism having over Christian, the rise of Christian nationalism and a conversation about Christian nationalism. Here, I think my connection is kind of a shoddy here. So you say how much of this has to do with Christian nationalism and the response to it? Is that what the question was?

Yeah, it's, you know, you see mainline Protestantism and then other groups now talking about I mean, they're fearful of Christian nationalism. Right. And you see more and more people, I will not say this woman's name because I will not give her any, shine any light on her. But just this morning, someone, you know, trying to talk about Christian nationalism and using the term woke right, a term that was literally created like three weeks ago. And she's, you know, she's like writing these articles so that she can get credibility.

Right. Because, and she's just basically everything she's saying is stuff Owen Strand, Owen Strand was saying like a year ago. So how much does this have to do with the rise of what people are, you know, what's being term Christian nationalism? Oh, it's entirely interlinked to it. And that's some of the first charges against me and anyone else speaking against the catechism last January. It wasn't that we were alt-rightist because no one with a straight face and dignity would use that term in the year 2023.

as if it was somehow still relevant. It was a bunch of far-right Christian nationalists that were trying to take over the Missouri Senate as if getting traction online equates to achieving real political leadership. So that was on the first charges against me, not official, but just from people that supported the catechism, pastors, theologians officially in the Senate, on theological review boards and all this other stuff. and alongside Christian nationalism was all the other epithets that get lumped in with that,

that to the people that use it as a derogatory term mean the same thing. It's Christian nationalism, Nazism, fascism, whatever you want to use that's punchy right now. Like that's what these people view it as. And certainly the reprisal against me and the other layman, the Stone Choir podcasters have either been wrongly kicked out or falsely excommunicated from their churches. There was this elder who was in the Oklahoma District, who was wrongly forced out. Each one of these guys, including me, have been maligned as this, because the people in charge of the center right now, the conservative leadership, mind you, none of these people

doing this are liberals. They would not call themselves liberals. They're not theologically liberal, unless implicitly, certainly not explicitly. They view themselves as the right wing of of this church body. And as with every sort of conservative movement, as soon as it starts to get outflanked from the right by people more traditional, more right wing, more consistent than them, they are going to come up with epithets and other movements to tie you to and an attempt to purge you, as they do purge you. So that's what's happened here.

This was absolutely sort of a symbolic banquishing of a Christian nationalism, of far-right influences in the Senate. to keep it conservative and moderate and principled and grounded on consensus truth, basically. That's all this boils down to is that the leadership has atrophied, really, in the last few decades. In the last century, there is a major battle for the Missouri Senate by people that could have actually taken it over from the left. And they lost the battle. They left the Senate. And they went on to form the ELCA, which is the main liberal Lutheran denomination that's neither Christian nor Lutheran. But that's neither here nor there.

The liberals lost here in the last century. And so since then, it's the conservative Lutheran denomination. Everyone that's in it is the conservative Lutheran. Everyone in it who acts, their actions are therefore conservative, definitionally. So this has led to sort of sliding to the left while they still maintain this mask of conservatism. It's not that they are sliding to the left when they condemn Christian nationalism, the alt-right, traditional biblical views on marriage or contraception or whatever else. It's that the right has gone woke.

The right has become the left. That's their charge. So they are really, by their view, the true right-wingers, the true conservatives. They support Reagan and Thatcher and all these other great influences of the last century. So that's a long-winded explanation, but that's a long-winded explanation, but that's a, That's sort of the philosophy. Maybe I went to psychologizing there, but that's certainly the effect that's being seen, is that this is absolutely a reprisal against people that they view to their right, which includes Christian nationalism. And it's because they think that they think

that they are the conservatives definitionally, as if it's something inherent to them and not just an ideology or a belief set. A conversation that I've been having with my wife lately, we were listening to John Harris's podcast talking about the Southern Baptist Convention. And as somebody who was employed by the Southern Baptist Convention a long time ago, I know that they used to be conservative and we saw what happened. Now, you and I have talked about on my show before managerialism, the managerial revolution, and the populist delusion.

And when I look at the Southern Baptist Convention, all I see is that managerialism took over. is now it's a business. The managers will always win out over the ideology. And one of the biggest problems that comes along with managerialism is when you're trying to run a business, optics become very, very important. And when you are judging optics, unfortunately, what the managers have a habit of doing is judging it by the morality of the day. And the morality of the day says you don't say anything bad about transgender people, gay people, what have you.

You definitely do not talk about loving your own people and things like that. So do you see that even though they would consider themselves to be decentralized, where the synod has, there's no synod, you know, oversight committee that can kick out one person. The church has to do that. But do you see them succumbing to managerialism as you've seen the PCA? I mean, I used to go to a PCA seminary. The PCA has become the same way.

Catholic Church centuries ago fell to managerialism. Do you see that happening as well? Yes, that's absolutely what is happening here. And I remember when this first, whenever I had to publish everything, I think I specifically called this managerialism on John Harris's show. And it's even, it's been revealed to be even more so now. Because you have to understand is that the whole purpose of categorizing something as managerialism is because it is not dejure what we call it.

It is something that emerges out of a set of. of circumstances that is not the same on paper as what is actually happening in reality. So the managerialists derive their legitimacy from other things than like legal ownership or legal, deser oversight. This is true in business with James Burnham's famous managerial revolution, managers taking over entrepreneurial enterprises. It's the exact same in Christianity, where managerial functions take over theological, the theology work or take over a denominational polity organization.

So I mentioned earlier that the denomination has been thoroughly centralized de facto by this whole thing, with the Senate President calling for an excommunication where he has no right to, congregations going along with it, and then the whole way this catechism at the very start of us being published by a managerial board is literally what it is. The theology review board, that's not a very important. the official name of it, that's practically what it is. It's called the Committee for Theology and Church Relations. It is a managerial board. There are positions that are elected, they have regular meetings and minutes and all these other things, and they try to come out with things that

sound like that they are orthodox, theologically. But also, they need to find a way that doesn't get the Senate into hot water with the culture. So, you know, if something's coming out that can be safely opposed like abortion or gay marriage or something where the majority of fundamentalist Christians are on side, they can give a light condemnation and not really do anything about it with this theology review board. If people from the far right are starting to do things in the Senate, then as happened with me and a bunch of other people in this whole thing, the theology review board and every other managerial arm at the LCMS will get together and start coming up with ways that this is it's theologically wrong. They'll start recommending direct action and all this other stuff,

implicitly. They will change, they will start to interpret doctrine. Yes. In a way that goes, that any doctrine that would seem to be too far right, they will start interpreting it into a more leftist fashion. Right, exactly. And that's just because that, like I said, this is the conservative of a denomination. If you say this thing is right wing, then you're at risk of losing your legitimacy for being the conservative vanguard. You have to say that leftists have taken over the Senate, and these leftists believe in traditional marriage, traditional views on contraception, traditionalist views on community, on racial relations, and whatever else. They have to rebrand that as leftism, because their legitimacy, once again, does not come from any de jour

jurisdiction or oversight. It comes from the perception that they are supposed to be doing what they are doing. So that Theology Review Board, like I mentioned earlier, they're the ones that pressured the president of the Synod to go beyond his bounds and condemn the alt-right. They're the ones that fed him that term. The guy, Jack Kilcrees, one of the guys on this board, was bragging about how he got the Senate president really scared about this on Facebook. Very, very big blunder on his part, because now we know that that's where this came from and what the inner workings are. And then the Senate president steps outside of his jurisdiction and maintains this power because he's condemning something that the managerial class in the Senate has determined is unacceptable.

And now these congregations don't want to go up against the whole Senate hierarchy, so they're going to go along with this at-root managerial structure and just follow along. We've gone from, over the course of this whole thing, starting last January, we've gone from our blended church polity, the mix between congregations, and Episcopal church organization, to a church board can now print your doctrine, face down sort of a public backlash against it, reiterate everything, have the Senate president take their side, and then have the Senate president excommunicate or call for and pressure the excommunication of the critics. This is at root a very managerial phenomenon.

And this is just this one thing. There's other things going on in the LCMS that indicate. it's managerial shift. The seminaries now train deaconesses as a seminary trained role for women. They're not being ordained as pastors yet. I get told I break the Eighth Commandment by saying that's what's going to happen, but this is the classic slippery slope. We're not ordaining the women. We're just training them in the same places and 90% of the same way the pastors get trained. So, yeah, a bunch of people are rightly concerned about that. And what do these deaconesses do? Well, they get a paid position at a congregation.

Most of them are downsizing and struggling because the LCMS is not demographically strong. They get an extra paid position alongside usually their husband, who's a pastor at that congregation. So it stipends more money out of the congregation. The seminaries get more money. And you now have a professional class of pastor's wives, basically. And this isn't a blanket condemnation of deaconesses, because the, on paper, on paper they should be fine. It's just that, you know, the thing, the way that we've gone about it and all this other stuff is absolutely not fine,

training them in seminaries and having them learn all these pastoral roles that were traditionally for men, not fine. On paper, all they're supposed to do is provide care for communities, like nursing and all this other stuff, which I don't even, I don't even think they learn that anymore. So, but anyways, all this turns out being as a managerial slide, into providing more cash flows to this new managerial class from local congregations. The seminaries get more money because these degrees have to be paid for. The time at these seminaries have to be paid for. So basically, we have this managerial class, and it directs cash flows from local congregations,

which tend to be more traditional, the guys in the pews, upwards to the Senate itself, which is a bureaucratic entity at heart. So, yeah, this is a, we've seen an amazing managerial transformation. in the last couple of decades, especially in the last few years. And not to mention you've gone from a unanimous vote, which is familial, which is, you know, one body to a two-thirds vote, which just makes it democratic and makes it more like the world at this point. Now, you're more of the world is coming in.

And not to mention that also this probably will not exist, could be adopted by other congregations, but it just looks like something that was injected in specifically just for you. Well, perhaps I should make this clear. The two-thirds vote was on the books before any of this happened, but they still went with it. They didn't correct that when they were suddenly reviewing the rare need to discipline someone. So they didn't fix it.

That's on them. But they didn't necessarily institute it themselves. But yeah, that's right. It's a democratic degeneration of congregationalism, if you want to use that side of polity. The whole idea of a unanimous congregational oversight over church matters like discipline, like the state of Christianity within their own pews, that's not democratic. That's Christian. The congregation as a whole, as a collective, is in charge of making sure that Christianity is flourishing

within its community, within its walls and outside of its walls at the homes of each Christian in that congregation. When it's just two-thirds vote of a congregation that can excommunicate someone from every Lutheran congregation, that's not only is that democratic, it's not even fully democratic, because it's democratic in such a way that allows very harsh reprisals against people that need to be purged by the managerial class. Yeah, I think the thing that is most evident here is that the church has in the world, but not of the world, the church is now adopting the world's morality to judge people. And one of the things I was saying, I was talking my wife today about, is like the Southern Baptist Convention has been political for a long time.

The problem with becoming a convention, which is basically just a corporation, becoming political, is that however you become political, it's going to filter down into the congregations. So if the world is becoming more liberal and this managerialism is picked up by the Southern Baptist Convention, then, well, if you want to do stuff politically, if you want to try to move the needle politically, you are, the managers are going to bring their, what they demand of their own people and what they, their political demands,

they're going to temper them to be more in line with the world. I mean, if you're going to be political, you're not going to go out there. you're not going to move the needle by going in and saying, we have to condemn transgenderism now. You could do it, but then you're seen as the Westboro Baptist Church, or something like that. So if you want to have, if you're going to adopt managerialism

and you want to be taken serious politically, you're going to become more like the world than the world is going to become like you. Right. And that's evidence not only in the fact that all the charges against me and anyone else currently being disciplined in these series of purges. This is evidence not only in the fact that the charges are completely worldly, they aren't Christian, misogyny, or denigrating women is not a Christian charge. Or kinism.

Yeah, yeah, that wasn't explicitly used against me and my charges, but I haven't been accused of that by pastors as if that's a number one, like a coherent ideology. like I read the book of kinism and then accepted it. And number two is if that is wrong, then therefore. So I have had that used against me. I've had pastors and laity labeled theological charges against me because they've misread something, but even accepting that I believe what they say, which once again isn't the truth,

the charge against me is that I believe that blacks can't be citizens of the United States. It's a misreading of a point I was making about Lizzo when that was the big controversy. I basically gave an ethno-nationalist and a civic nationalist reason for why Lizzo is not an American. Like, certainly my grandparents wouldn't accept her as such, not because they're just evil racist, but because Americans don't dress in the obscene outfits that Lizzo does and then go on national television and desecrate Madison's flute, for instance. Yeah, that's a civic nationalist reason for why Lizzo wouldn't be considered an American, or at least not a real one.

Pastors and laity have taken this to mean that I am sinful, because I believe that in the United States, blacks can't be citizens. They've misread that, and now they've applied a theological position, a sin, of a country's immigration or citizenship laws. That's not how moral charges works, but if you're a managerial system, it's absolutely how it works. It's how you square that circle. It's how they square the circle. The church is a social entity, first and foremost. It has to condemn people for not following with moderate positions or commonly accepted political

positions. So in the charges, you can see this. Beyond the charges, as to the church becoming more like the world, and tying this into the condemnations of Christian nationalism, or far-right Christianity, wading into politics and politicizing the church, as if the far right is the ones that have politicized the church and not the incessant slide leftward, the response to this, especially by the conservative establishment and every conservative denomination, has not been to accept Christian nationalism, it's been to condemn it on the grounds that Christians cannot make politics Christian-like. They have to be secular in their politics. And this is not actually, I believe it was Andrew Isker that pointed this out. That's not a separation

of church and state like they think they're doing, is that that itself is a Christian doctrine. Once again, a managerial creeping into the church. That's not a Christian doctrine separating church and state, unless you're a Baptist maybe. That's a politically popular thing that you have to do to maintain a managerial legitimacy. But when they reject Christian nationalism on this grounds, the church and state are remained separate, and that means that you can't have Christianity in your politics. What they're doing is they're injecting Christianity into politics just in the negative direction. Because of your Christianity, you cannot enter politics. They're making a political statement and using Christianity to back that up while making a moral charge against

someone. That is intertwining Christianity into politics. And that's what, All of these managerial denominations have done. I've seen it in the PCA, the Southern Baptists, the Lutheran Church, Missouri Senate. It's been used against me. One of my charges is that I've been tying politics into theology, and that's why I spoke out against the catechism. Isn't that what they did when you made the comment about Lizzo from a civic nationalist? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely what they've done. My charges are them combining politics with Christianity. I am not being assessed in my excommunication charges or my transnational. charges that originally put me under the minor ban, based off of Christian theology. I'm being assessed based off of political niceties. And the two points about my associations being sent against me, they themselves are a political charge, the guilt by association thing. That's not how Christians assess someone's spiritual well-being. But beyond that, the things that they are condemning those

that I'm associating with for are not on Christian grounds. And I can cite them very, very quickly without reading them out. The charge of me associating with them the one of the first ones is that they divide individuals on the basis of race, and God does not like people being divided on the basis of race. Well, is that true? Where's the Bible verse for that? It seems to me like if there are different races, if that is accepted, you know, I didn't make them that way. Stone Choir did not make people of different races. God did. So if people are divided because race exists,

then that seems to me like that's a natural order thing, not something that we have done. We're doing a political game here where you're not allowed to acknowledge that and acknowledging it is sinful, because that goes against this MLK very selective interpretation of civil rights, liberalism, because you're not allowed to acknowledge race

unless it's in the left-wing direction. And history shows us to people's self-suffer. segregate. I mean, if I see a missionary Baptist church, I assume there's no white people in the congregation. And I'm not mad that black people are, are worshipping together. Right, exactly. And this is, the L CMS has basically black only churches. That's not the rules, because they're not allowed to explicitly do that. But there are like 99, 95% black churches in the L CMS. No one cares. I don't care. I'm not going to make that a point of issue because I don't have an issue. with it. If there is a black community that is 90 to 95% or 99% black, and they want their own

church just for that community, great. That's how communities form. This is only an issue, apparently, whenever it's a majority white church. As you hear from all these managerial denominations that the churches are too white, that's what their academics are talking about, what their missionaries are talking about. The churches are too white, and we would have more people sitting in the pews if we tried to forcibly integrate the churches. That's something that I myself have heard in the LCMS. I'm sure I am certain it's in the Presbyterian Church, the Baptist churches, and the various Roman Catholic congregations. I'm sure that it's in there somewhere.

These are not Christian conceptions or a Christian worldview. This is not a Christian lens. This is a managerial or civil rights lens that has crept its way in here. And they do this and then throw charges at us ostensibly because we intertwined politics with theology. It doesn't make any sense that you would have a, that you would judge somebody based upon their politics, unless their politics is explicitly anti-scriptural. And I don't know, I mean, short of, you know, our politics is just killing everyone, then it's not, I don't see an antiscriptural basis for pretty much any political. position that was held by, I mean, the founders. I mean, the founders believes in slavery.

Show me where it says slavery is wrong in the Bible. It doesn't. Anywhere. At all. Right. There's several books in the Bible, a couple of which are caused by St. Paul sending a slave back to a slave master. If this was sinful and you have Holy Writ being divinely inspired by God

himself come down to us to give us and interpret our doctrine, then if we hold that slavery is sinful, and this is going back to the alt-right excommunication letter from the Senate of President last February, if we hold that slavery is fully sinful, then we have to hold that scripture itself is sinful. There are times where God allows, say, the Israelites in the Old Testaments to take slaves, the Church of the Old Testament. They're allowed to keep slaves in their society. They are specific rules on how to treat slaves. They have to be obtained somehow, and the rules, the laws handed down by God assume slavery. In the New Testament, Paul sends a slave back to a slave owner, and it provides instruction for both the slave and the slave owner of how to treat one another.

Nowhere is slavery condemned. So to condemn slavery on these grounds condemns Christian theology. condemns God, it condemns his prophets, apostles, the Holy Spirit, the divinely inspired, Holy writ. But these managerialists aren't going to consider that because they're not allowed to. They never get this far even thinking, or at least the vast majority of them, don't, because this is already a non-starter. This really unpopular, far-right position can't possibly be true because it's unpopular and far-right. That's the starting point for them. So then, therefore, when they interpret and read everything,

they have to come up with reasons why these things are not the way they are. Why is slavery condemned in Scripture, not is it? So this is a, that's a major issue. This is just more of the, what happened during World War II and what some term as the Nuremberg regime, some term as the New Deal regime, just basically progressivism slipping into the churches. and you see it. I have some friends that go to like great Orthodox, you know, Eastern Orthodox churches,

but there were Greek Orthodox churches that were, you know, promoting the jab. So it's hit everyone. At this point, you know, as I was telling, again, talking about, when I told them what we were going to talk about today, we had a long conversation. And I was like, you know,

you can find yourself that one church that one church that's going to fight all of this. And that's probably a really good thing to do. You know, I mentioned like you can find an independent Baptist church that can fight all of this. And if really what you care about, of all you care about is your soul and nurturing your soul and worshiping God properly, that's really good. But all of this is still going to come for you at some point. It's like local politics. I preach local politics, but there could also be a time when people, when they're going to come for you.

And at some point, people are just going to have to put aside their differences, realize that, you know, there are strength in numbers, and this needs to be fixed. It all needs to be fixed. And, you know, who's going to step forward to do it? Because the people who are in charge right now, they're not going to do it. I mean, they're obvious that they're the ones who are complicit in all of it. Right. And I get asked pretty often, you know, why do you keep going? What's your motivation?

Because some people accuse me of just intentionally wanting to divide everyone and cause a big public spectacle, which is not my motivation. My motivation is that I'm going to have a family in my lifetime. My children are going to have a family and so on down the generations, like every other person that came before me that led to me existing. as with all human societies. Multi-generational, is there going to be a church for my descendants? And that's a question that's being decided here and now.

If things just continue sliding leftward, there's not going to be a recognizable church in a couple of generations. Christianity will still exist. The word of God is not going to perish from the earth. There will still be Christians. But actually having a church in my local vicinity that follows Christian doctrine and won't give into the world, that's not guaranteed by Scripture.

Whenever we're told the gates of hell won't prevail, that's not saying my local church and community are going to stand forever. That's saying Christianity will stand forever. So when I get asked why I'm fighting all of this, that's the reason is because I want to make sure that there is something that my descendants can call their home church. And right now that's in peril. The statements and the essays and the small catechism,

the letters put out by the ascended hierarchy, these things are actively sliding the church leftward into the world and openly embracing the world with open arms. This is not something that I want to see. I want to make sure, even if I find the really good local church that I can go to right now, there is a question in the back of my mind of what comes after this pastor or what comes after this generation.

At the very least, with Lutheran understanding, we're going to get a seminarian from the seminaries. then that leaves me to have a direct interest in what the seminaries are teaching. What are the seminaries doing? If they're openly embracing the world, sliding into it to the left, then that's a pretty big issue. I only have a secure church then for one generation, maybe two, depending on how old the pastor is. I need something more than that. I need to make sure that we have Christian institutions that allow these churches to continue persisting,

just so that my descendants can have Christian churches to go to. So that's the main reason of why I'm fighting any of this. It has nothing to do with my account, my social media following, causing a huge public spectacle. If there is a way to go about any of this without causing some big public spat, that would have been what would have happened. But as it stood, no one was fighting it. No one was fighting it in private.

This was allowed to stand for, it still is allowed. understand. The catechism is still being published. The seminaries are requiring it in certain classes. So there are seminarians that are using this material, at least officially. That's a major issue. I don't want that to happen. I want to have a Christian church that will persist in the United States, because that's where I was born. That's where my family has been for many generations dating back to way before the revolution. I want to make sure that this persists. So that's why I am fighting this. And as for people outside of the Lutheran Church, and this is a very big issue, for people outside the Lutheran Church, this was the conservative denomination in Lutheranism

that's doing all of this. This is the one that had the reputation for being faithful, steadfast, conservative, not willing to give into the world. And this is, the thing that they're giving into is not particular to Lutheranism. Everything that's happened right now could have happened in any other Protestant church, and with just a few words changed in the Catholic Church or any other one as well, to purge people too far to the right. None of this is distinctly Lutheran in issue. None of my charges are distinctly Lutheran. That's been a big criticism from a good chunk of the Senate.

This doesn't follow Lutheran doctrine, let alone Christian doctrine. If this is happening to me in this very conservative church, it can and will happen to others. This leftism, this managerialism that's pervading it is not something that's only going after the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, is that that's the sights of the left or of the Angerial class. They have their sights set on far more. So this will reach everyone else, and I hope that at least the people watching this, if not everyone, anyone that they know as well, I hope that they are concerned, as I am, about the multi-generational aspect of this. I hope that everyone listening also wants their children to have a Christian church,

or if we can dream big enough, a Christian society again. So that's, I figured I might be good to say that here. That's my motivation for all of this. Let's end it right there. You want to send anybody anywhere, anything to plug? What do you got? So I mentioned my Twitter account a few times on this already. It's at Turnip Merchant, all one word. Or Ryan Turnip seed is the, not the tag, but the username that shows up.

So you can find me there. You can find all the published material that's public on there as well. and then my YouTube channel is Ryan Turnip Seed, where I don't just talk about religious things on Twitter or YouTube, but on the YouTube I go more in depth into things. Most recently it was a short series on the neoconservative movement and what they wrote to sort of clarify why specifically they were bad because they're really much more insidious

than even the accusation of neocon lets on. They're far more destructive than that. So that's my YouTube channel, Brian Turnip Seed, Twitter account at Turnip Merchant, so go check me out there. And if you need to reach out to me, you can probably find my email or DM me on one of those two platforms. All right, Brian. Thank you very much.

I appreciate it. And thank you for having me.