Unashamed with the Robertson Family - Ep 1314 | The Dangerous Pattern Behind Every Culture in Crisis

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Al, Zach, John Luke, and Christian kick off with a generational clash as Gen Z slang completely derails a conversation. The guys dive into early Christianity’s clash with the Roman Empire, where believers faced intense persecution and were often used as scapegoats during times of cultural and political chaos. They highlight how Christianity challenged broken systems, elevated the value of women in a degrading culture, and continues to call believers to live out their faith boldly wherever they are. In this episode: Luke 2, verses 1–7; John 18, verse 36; Acts 2, verses 1–47 Today’s conversation is about Lesson 7 of Ancient Christianity taught by visiting Hillsdale Professor of History Kenneth Calvert. Take the course with us at no cost to you! Sign up at http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/. More about Ancient Christianity: Christ entered the world during the reign of Caesar Augustus. The tensions between Christianity and the Roman Empire shaped the daily practice of the Christian faith and led many Romans to distrust and persecute the early Christians. But Christianity also benefitted from the Roman world. And when Rome collapsed in the West, Christianity provided the hope for preserving civilization. In this free, eleven-lecture course, Professor Kenneth Calvert will explore: How the Jewish, Greek, and Roman cultures all contributed to preparing the world to hear the Gospel. Why many Romans distrusted and persecuted the early Christians. The inspiring stories of Christ, His apostles, and faithful ones throughout the first four centuries of Christianity. The arguments of key early Christian apologists—Ignatius, Irenaeus, Justin, Athanasius, and more—who defended and defined the Christian faith amidst the animosity of the Roman world. The conversion of Constantine and how he brought stability to Rome, and how the rivalry between his sons almost returned Rome to paganism. How Augustine’s writings helped preserve the message of Christianity during the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. You will discover the uncertainties, trials, and triumphs of the earliest Christians as they confronted controversies within the faith and persecutions from outside it. Join us today to discover the improbable and miraculous story of Christianity. Sign up at ⁠http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/ Check out At Home with Phil Robertson, nearly 800 episodes of Phil's unfiltered wisdom, humor, and biblical truth, available for free for the first time! Get it on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and anywhere you listen to podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/at-home-with-phil-robertson/id1835224621 Listen to Not Yet Now with Zach Dasher on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or anywhere you get podcasts. Chapters 00:00 AI Roasts & Gen Z Slang Confusion 09:05 Why Early Christians Chose Death Over Fighting 15:30 Rome’s Chaos & the Rise of a Scapegoat 21:45 The Church’s Bold Stand Against Power 28:10 How Christianity Elevated Women in a Broken Culture 34:40 Your Job Is Your Mission Field 41:20 Faith Under Pressure & the Cost of Following Jesus — Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am unashamed. What about you? Welcome back to Unashamed for Hillsdale. This is our Friday episode. You guys can take the course with us. What are we in right now? Do you all remember? Ancient Christianity. Ancient Christianity. Your intro sounded AI. Yeah. That was so monotone. Welcome back to Unashamed for Hillsdale. Well, speaking of AI, your response, well, we'll get there in a second. Let me get a little housekeeping items first. You guys can take this course with us for free at Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. And we know we're having the contest. So we're going to pick one listener to the show.

And they'll come down to West Monroe and you'll get to watch a live recording. We're going to pay for your travel and a guest up to $1,000 each. All you have to do is take the ancient Christianity course with us, finish all the quizzes and send us your certificate of completion. You can upload those at watchunashame.com, and you'll be entered into the drawing. We'll put that in the show notes, and then we'll pick a winner sometime in June. And also starting next week, which will be April the 24th, we're going to take six weeks off from this course. We're going to take a little detour because we're going to take a short documentary course on colonial America.

So if you want to know about the history of America, we're going to do that. And we're going to do another giveaway trip to visit us in our studio in Westburn, right? So I really encourage you to take the colonial America course with us at Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. We're going to talk about the founding of America, religious liberties, natural rights. And the stories of the first 150 years that shape the American spirit. It's 250. You know, America is 250 years old. America.

This is like the year. Yeah, this year. America. This year, 250 years old. So you guys are going to love this one. So join us every Friday right here on the shame. So back to the AI. Yeah, you, Christian, were the one that was actually used in the AI, not me.

Well, we all, we all could have benefited from it because John Luke's quote that really spoke to him, it did not speak to me. Not because it was unimpactful, but because I understood the first sentence or the first word of what he said. But that was about it. I had no idea what he was referring to. It confused me. And I think it even confused chat GPT for a little bit, which that says. You said it hit hard or something? What did you say?

I said, okay, I said the quote, which we're going to talk about in the lesson, so stay tuned until we get to the quote because from the new Eusebis. And so I said the quote and I said, this goes incredibly hard. No, read the quote because no one listening is going to understand. Okay. Well, that's what I'm saying. They have to take the course to understand. Yeah, but this was not on the course.

This was extra reading. If you'd done the extra reading, you would have understood the quote. I didn't do the extra reading. I was like, I was like, oh, what? I felt like I'm in between two colleges. I was like, what lecture was at? I was like, oh, that's in the extra reading. I was like, who's doing the extra reading?

Okay. Here's the quote. Here's a quote. This is from Tutuilian, okay, is apology. 37.4.308. For what war should we not have been fit and ready for even if, wait, for what, I can't even even read it right? For what war should we not have been fit and ready, even if an unequal force?

This is talking about Christian. we who are so glad to be butchered were not of course that in our doctrine we are given ampler opportunity to be killed rather than to kill which I was like

that goes so hard he's saying like us as Christians are we could win the world war this is in 197 AD we could win the world war if our doctrine

was that we could kill everyone instead of we're called to be killed it makes sense but on face value, it made no sense. I just thought you'd take it the course. So I put it in Jad, TBT, TBT, I said,

write a response to my smart friend who said, and then I put the quote, and I said, who said this quote unquote goes hard? And then it provided me with my response. The quote doesn't even matter, but from my, I mean, what he said doesn't really matter yet, but from what my perspective, I sent that message.

And then like, eight hours later, I get Christians' response. And I read it Would you love the eight-hour response anyway, right? Yeah, because that's like... No one response. Yeah, exactly. Well, I had so many...

I had so much travel issues. Yeah. So I was in the car. Well, that was kind of, that made me... I can relate to that. That was getting me back for how I didn't respond to Zach's message, so I felt...

That's true. Yeah, we were getting you back on that. Well, I didn't respond for that reason. That was vengeance. And then he responds with a clearly something that he didn't... So I read and I was like, wow, Christian, that was so, like, insightful and thoughtful.

And then I was like, there's way too many... dashes in this. There's like five m dashes, like four bullet points. At one point it says, and that flips everything. Well, I told you, John, look, did you ever hear Christa saying that? I was like, there's way too much grammar in this. Modern day CS Lewis. No, but one of the words was italicized, and I was like, oh, that's definitely a clear giveaway. So I changed that back to just normal text. But the funniest part to me was that I, so the, the, the, the, the, the Quote ended with saying,

um, low key, uh, where's it? It says, Loki, modern, or Loki makes modern toughness look kind of shallow. And then Zach said modern toughness is chopped. So John was saying,

I think, I think Zach put your thing in a Chadji Me Tea. And then it gave that back to you. No, no, no, no. That was not. I have kids that or whatever that generation is that uses all that language. Like I, uh, any time I hear like somebody's, do you know what that mean?

Oh, yeah. What does it mean? Because I have no idea. When I, I chop stuff all the time, but it's usually with a cutting board, it's, you know, onions and bell pepper and such. Yeah. So when I say, well, my kids say I don't know what it means.

You're not using this right context. I'm like, that's kind of the point. Like, I'm like making fun of you. Because we should. We're old bad, Zach. We should like make it sound stupid. Right, because that's our role. The three Gen Z terms that I know and can use,

and I know it's cringy when I do it. That's why I do it. Yeah. Is that's chopped. Whatever it is, you said, it's chopped. And I think that means that's like no good. Like that's like, that's not, that's, that's not any good. Is that right?

And then low key. Maddie didn't even know. Is it low key? Mattie says, so low key is like, low key kind of means like the way they use it. It sounds like they're saying like, you know, for real, this is like for real like. So I would say like, like you low key look good today in those glasses. Yeah, what does the low-key mean?

Like emphasis? It means like... It means like... Like nonchalant. Yeah. It means like you're not trying to look good, but you look really good. Yeah. So you look, you look good.

Yeah. And then there's another one where they say no cap. And that... No cap or low cap? I would say like low-key, like you low-key, no-cap look good today. Yeah. And I would say... What does the no-cap mean?

It means like for real. Yeah. For real. Yeah. You would say you look... You low-key. look kind of chopped in those classes. I would say you high key look chopped in the

glasses. Yeah. And then you would say cap. I find it very annoying when people use that language. My kids do it sometimes and I'm like, like that's not real though. Like let's not do that. And so I'll like go overboard to expose it, to marginalize them to make them feel insecure. Like I want to like just like, no, we're not doing that.

That was my my response was really chastising, but I didn't know that you had A-I'd it, so I didn't pick up on that. So that was the irony. That was the irony, the irony was, I wasn't sure of Christian A-I'd it. Then when you said modern toughness is chopped,

you used it in the right way, and I didn't want to laugh at your message, like, making fun, because I was like, is he being serious? And I was like, are they making fun of me? I don't know who is, I don't even know who's being made fun of here. The main talking point is that,

it shows how much growth I've had since starting this podcast that y'all thought that response was truthfully from me and for that I am very great well I didn't know man I thought yeah but I mean it did go down hard or whatever John Luke said it was a great point so to our audience you'll see the one person that never weighed in was me because I took one look at it and thought I have no idea what they're talking so did you understand did you understand I do get the point I got his original point where he explained it or before you know I knew before I got what he was saying And I thought it was a strong point, not necessarily from John Luke, but from Tutuio. Yes.

That the strong point was if we chose to do battle as the world does battle, which Jesus said this first, by the way, because he said, if my kingdom, if we wanted to, if I wanted to rule this world, the way you rule this world, and I'm paraphrasing what he told power in John 18, then my servants would rise up and fight and we would win this battle, you know, and we would do it with divine power. So what he's saying is, we're going at this a different way. And that's why he said, you know, my kingdom is not from this world. It is of this world, but it's not from this world. Something greater or something better. So I just think it's a second century continuation of what Jesus established, the idea that surrender and death are actually going to create

victory for eternity. So it is, I got it. I got the original quote, which I thought was really good. Yeah, I mean, you know what's interesting though? Like, you read that quote, and we're in lecture seven on this episode. What I found to be very encouraging and a little bit shocking when you think about how in the world do Christianity survive the third century? I mean, like, it was such a, I mean, it was just one after another of different emperors who really were just hell bent on. eradicating the world of Christianity. And it just didn't happen. So it's interesting to quote there because he's essentially saying,

if we had the way of the world, we'd win the world. But you look at the results in the end, I mean, the Roman Empire, now versus what it was during the third century, beginning of the third century, it's not even, I mean, it doesn't even compare. And look at Christianity today and how, since this time, since this time period, what has been the impact of Christianity on the world? What has been the result of the church in the world?

How does the church look now? Has it had any global influence? And you're like, it looks like the church has done fairly well. And looks like the Roman Empire has not done very well. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's what we're talking about in this lesson. And I guess we're just getting into it. the further point of this quote, which is on page 181 of this,

is he talks about that. The first part of the quote, he says, we are but yesterday, meaning like Christianity, Christians are new, like within the last 100 years. But we have filled everything you have. Cities, tenements, forts, towns, exchanges,

yes, camps, tribes, palaces, synets, form. All that we've left you is the temples, which I thought that's so, like, And then he goes on to say, like, we're in every, Christians are in, despite all the persecution that you've made us enemies of you, Romans. Yeah. We are in every aspect of the world while those persecutions continuing to happen. No, it's really good. We want you to sign up and take the course with us for free at unashamed at Unashamed for Hillsdale.com.

This lecture in particular, the whole course, but especially these two lectures, sort of have filled in. a bit of a hole for me and my education about early Christianity because we spend so much time, obviously, in the scriptures dealing with the first century issues. And they were huge. And there were certainly, from the book of acts, a lot of persecution. But, Zach, your point is so well made. I mean, the third century persecution makes the first century almost look like child's play. And it was bad because, I mean, you know, most of the apostles were murdered. And so we always look at that as like the worst period. But it's really this part, because this, any movement, you know, once you get into the second and third generation is where the real

challenges come in, because are they going to be able to continue on what was started, both to keep, you know, the mission going, but then also when you face Rome is now, you know, as sort of reestablishing herself during this era as being the power again. And when you're on the downside of that, I mean, there's just so many more bad things they can do to you. I mean, even the Jewish, we knew they were limited because, they were an oppression to the Romans. So, you know, they had to even get permission for what they did to Jesus. And so now you're just seeing unbridled, unchecked, terrible things that are happening

to these people. And the fact that you're right, the spread is just like it was in the first century, the spread continues to go out of the difficulty. And I do think it says something to us about even, and I love where we're going next with this new course about early American, because when you look at the first, you know, in our case, probably 50 years of a country. especially even before we declared independence, you see this idea that we were breaking free

and doing something nobody had ever done in this experiment. And so the trials to that are tremendous. And so the Brits are like cracking down and other people wanting to start wars. And so I just think this period of time, which I didn't know a lot about until I took this course, really has given me a lot of faith in the idea that endurance is here for, if we can live through that period, we can live through any period.

no matter what it is. That's good. You know, not only did persecution arise, but it also, he talks about how Rome, you know, fell into this period of chaos. And I was thinking about that, too. So I would like y'all's advice on it. So we talked about, you know, the third century.

And then in 238, there were six different emperors held, or six different people held the position of emperor, just because of all the assassinations that kept happening and attempts and things. Like, were, was that a thing even in the first century? Like, when Jesus was here, like, people were trying to assassinate the emperor? Or was that something that went on as time you know kind of internally in Rome?

Things like that started happening which eventually kind of led to the intrigue has always been there probably ever since they killed Caesar. I want to say like I just saw this chart like last month it was something like out of the 76 emperors like 74 of them were assassinated. Like something like that. That's not the right number but it's most of them were. But there was a bit there was interestingly enough. Of course, Pontius Piper.

You know, we studied him quite a bit back when we were at the end of John on regular and ashamed. And his, you know, he was very tenuous because he had backed someone who tried to assassinate. Was it Tiberias, Zach, I think, if my memory serves, even in that first century. And then that fell through and that guy got killed because it didn't work. And so now all of a sudden this guy, Pontius Pilate was one of his guys. And so he wasn't sure if he would be able to stay in power, but he did. And so even that little foray into his background showed. you the intrigue that was going on even behind the scenes in Rome. But there was actually a pretty

good stability during that era. Yeah, during the first century. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't nearly as volatile as he got here. Well, they had six. I mean, there are six different men held positions of emperor in a 238. And so you think about like how this is, this is coming into a time where there's a lot of volatility in the political sphere of the Roman Empire. And so what happened is, and this is all in this lecture and also in the study notes, is that the last emperor of those six was Gordian III. He was assassinated on his way to fight the Parthians. Then I love this part.

This is such an, this is encouraging too. When Philip the Arab who seceded Gordian, he wanted to take the Eucharist in Antioch, but the bishop denies him. I mean, think about that. Like, this guy comes in, he's in charge now. He's thinking, you know, to me, I was like, these early Christians, man, they were, I mean, they had a lot of gumption. They had a lot of conviction, and they were willing to stand for what was true.

So they denied him the Eucharist. And then he gets defeated by D.C.S. And then this is when the world, the kind of the empire-wide persecution of the Christians came. And one of the things that Dr. Calvert points out that this is the first time in Roman history that this, like this full all-out assault on the church came under the empire. And the reason why, I think you have to see this in the political sphere of the turmoil and the volatility that was happening. And the Christians were, in all essence, they were just really the scapegoat. And so this is like a way to unify the empire around the common enemy. There's a philosopher named René Gerard, who's written a lot about this kind of what they call the scapegoat mechanism.

And what you can see throughout all of history, but this is a classic case of empires in trouble. We got to find something to unify around, and we need a villain. And so for Odysseus, that was the Christians. that's when the real persecution of the church broke out, which is apparently pretty brutal. In the middle centuries, all the way up into really the 20th century, the Jews kind of have taken on that role as scapegoats for most like of the more modern empires. You've seen the same thing over and over again with the Jews, even to this day. I mean, there's all these people lined up against them.

So it is this kind of interesting that it still goes back to our roots in the sense of Judeo-Christian that we've always been a part of the scapegoat mentality, and they're still doing it, you know, to this day. In Europe is still very, very, anti-Semitism is super strong. It's not even pro-Christianity as it was at one point, or a lot of it is pro-Islam, but the idea is that they're the fault of whatever it is. Yeah. I mean, it's just the seem to be the whipping boys.

I want to make this point, and I hadn't thought about it till Christian asked that question about the Roman rule in the first century, but it is interesting. that it was a Roman edict, because in Luke chapter 2, in those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. So that's across the entire empire. This was the first census that took place while Corinius was governor of Syria, and everyone went to register in his own hometown, which led, of course, Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem, because that was, which was unknown. They weren't there, and all of a sudden they go back there.

But what nobody realizes under Roman rule, that this was, which Zach, you've mentioned this in past podcast, that this again shows you the truth of Christianity. These are historical facts that he called this census because he wouldn't know how many people he had in the empire. And as part of that, it fulfilled prophecy to put Mary and Bethlehem to have this child in the city of David, who was the son of David, who would wind up being the very thing that would rule over Rome and everybody else. And again, in these little moments of living and what's happening, you don't realize that and all these political struggles going back and forth,

but God was working through that whole process the entire time, which is really interesting. I love it when you get those little clues along the way. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think that one of the people that's been helpful for me in understanding kind of what's happening more on a meta-global scale throughout history is he's passed away now again, Michael Heiser wrote a book called The Unseen Realm. John Nick, I think you've read that as well. And he talks about these principalities that really governs certain regions and real spiritual warfare. And I think he makes a very compelling case.

And I think that Christianity is a threat to global powers. It's a threat to the, I think Christianity was had a, was uniquely a position to threaten the power of the Roman Empire in a very peculiar way, not in the way that, like we mentioned earlier, it wasn't in a way that was going to come in with military might to take something down. But, for example, Judaism in this time period, one of the things that he mentions in the lecture is that the Jews didn't suffer the same persecution because the Romans had a respect for their choice. tradition. But also you think about embedded in Christianity is a embedded in the very DNA of the faith is a deconsolidation of power. It really is. I mean, you think about the priesthood of believers. Think about that, just that alone, that in Christ, Christ becomes the high priest. You can read the book of Hebrews. And then we become little priest. Christ becomes the cornerstone of the temple. We become little temples. Christ becomes the ultimate sacrifice. We become little

sacrifices. And so it's all about the deconsolidation of power. You see that in the very DNA of who Christ is. Christ, who had all power. You know, he suffered on a Roman cross and was vindicated by the resurrection. So in the DNA of this is the fact that it will threaten power structures if it takes hold, because what it essentially does is it elevates all humanity to equality. So I think that when they asked, what was it they asked them to do to like prove their loyalty, like pour their wine in the fire? Yeah, in front of a statue or of the Caesar or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, it said a cup of wine into a fire before a statue of the emperor. Yeah, so this is like your way of like, we're acknowledging our allegiance to you as some form of deity. And the Christians

are like, you know, some of them did, I mean, fall and say, yeah, I can't stand up at this persecution and they gave in, which comes up later when they try to come back into the church. Yeah, this is kind of funny because you just brought up the Jews today. On the study guide, the next thing after it talks about the cup being poured in front of the statue says the Jews did not suffer the same persecution as the Christians because the Romans respected their ancient tradition. Yeah, exactly, which I thought was interesting, Zai, because you remember whenever you go back and read in the Daniel era, which was when they were in Babylonian, Catalanian,

they were asked to do similar things in Babylon because, you know, they've taken the best and brightest out of Israel. They're in Babylon and Daniel being the chief one, but then you had, you know, Shadrach, Misha, Khammedigo, and many others. And the whole phariseedical movement, the Pharisees came out of that movement of people that would not bow the knee. In other words, we're not going to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar. We're not going to bow down to Babylonian gods.

We're not going to do it. And so even way back then, the thought was, oh, you're not going to be able to. will. We'll put you in the lines den. We'll put you in the fire. We'll do this. But God miraculously, in this case, wanted to show his people that, look, you stick with me. And what was the guy saw, the mercy me guy? You know, I'm there in the fire. The idea is, you trust in me. I'm greater than whatever this is they're trying to get you to the bow the need to, which is one things I loved about Tortuille. I was so glad you brought him up, John Luke, because he really, out of all the early church leaders

really spoke to me because he was dealing with a lot of the same issues that we are in the 21st century. It just struck me when we read that about what he was dealing with with the sex trafficking and abortion. And it's amazing to me

after 2,000 years I were still dealing with the same stuff. Yeah. Right? I mean, like, in our own culture. I never heard that abortion stuff. I had not either. That's crazy.

And I thought that was super powerful. And so it just really spoke to me in the sense that, And look, he was a lawyer, remember, a Roman lawyer. And it helped me because, you know, a lot of times we think about courses like this, or we think about what we're doing, even in studying a lot of these early apologists. And you get to thinking, well, you know, we just got to keep it simple and not really deal in this realm of intellectualism or apologetics.

But that's the wrong approach. Because I think Tritian shows you this. He was trained as an attorney under Roman law. he understood it well. He was like Paul was on the whole Jewish thing. He was trained explicitly. And then out of that training, once he knew Christ, he's able to deal with these cultural issues in a way that the normal, or I guess you'd say, the most of the masses could not do. And so that's why he became an early leader. And so I think that's very important. We got that in our culture today. The people I meet, when I go to, I went to a conference with a group called ADF, which is the lines defending freedom. And it was like 2000. attorneys. And their whole role is to, I mean, they're working as attorneys, you know, they're making money for their family. But then they're here because they're donating their expertise, their time in fighting for religious liberty in the United States of America. And their whole deal is they realize that all of a sudden a lot of the fight has shifted to courts in the

legal system. Well, we have to have believers there to fight for us. If you don't, you lose all those battles. And we're right here. We're right here in this situation again. So for those, of you out there that think, well, you know, I need to leave my job as an attorney or something else so that I can go do mission work. Your mission work is there. The mission work you need to do is what you were trained to do. You're a believer in part of the mission. And sometimes the best way to do cultural battle is being on the front line of the cultural battle. And so when I, when I studied this and read this about Tritulia, and it inspired me because I just thought, man, I got to encourage me. But I had a woman come up to him at the airport this last week on my

trip and she's an ER nurse and she was here for a mentoring thing that Missy's doing and she said I just want to ask your opinion about something she said I've been I've really been pulled to full-time ministry but I'm an ER nurse and I'm trained in that and you know I really like what I do and I help people and I was like we don't have to leave one to do the other you can do both you know because what you're doing in that ER is your God's woman there in the moment now if you want to go to work for Samaritan's purse or you know one of these these international ministries where you're actually working under that umbrella as you're doing what God's got to do? Great. Look into that. But don't leave what you're trained to do

to somehow think you're going to do something differently just because you're doing it in a church setting or a Bible setting. Look, you're doing it anyway. That's what we're called to do. And so when I read about these persecutions, that's how you get everywhere, like the quote you had a minute ago. That's how you spread it out. And that's how you impact. And it never stops. Because you don't have to wait to get to a church building. We're doing it wherever we're. we are. And so I just, it really inspired me the idea that this is what Christianity does. It moves outward into every aspect of the culture, which I thought was powerful. We want you to sign up, take the course with us for free at unashamed for Hillsdale.com. Yeah, when you think about the

assault that was coming from Rome on the church, I mean, it's just emperor after emperor who was attempting to destroy the church. And then the Holy Spirit then provides these guys like, you Cyprian and Tortulian and the different characters that come along the way in the church that acted as kind of the apologist of the day. And the apologist doesn't mean apologizing when you read that earlier as an apology. It wasn't apologizing. This was a defense of the Christian faith. These guys preserved the church not by folding to the pressure, but to actually stand in the gap like the prophets did.

You know, like you think about the fact that they denied the most powerful man in the world communion. They said, no, you're not, you're not going to come in here on a political move and partake in the body of Christ and the flesh and the blood of Christ. You're not one of us. And those were bold stands. And even when you think about Tortulian, the three things that he essentially hit on that are still relevant today, as you mentioned. One was how women were objectified. You know, he really went to bat for these women who were being sex trafficked and and traded in the streets and being pimped out. I mean, you think about women's rights.

You know, you want to talk about real women's rights or real women's liberation movement. Yeah, he was on the front line of that, looking at the Roman culture saying that you can't degrade women in this way. Abortion, he was directly addressing when life begins. And I did find that interesting that the early church agreed with what we would say today, that the life does begin at conception. and a society that would seek to destroy human life in the womb is a society that can't last.

And then third, he was just making the case that actually Christianity does provide a better society for human flourishing. And it's so funny because those are the same exact discussions we're having today. I'm actually shocked at how many people inside the church want to get away from the Christian influence in society. I'm like, why would we want that?

And I understand there's a whole debate around Christian nationalism and what, depending on what you mean by that, we could have a discussion on. But I want our society to be heavily influenced by Christ and under his rule and reign because I do believe that Christ's kingdom, the more that that permeates the kingdom of earth and spreads across the kingdom of earth, then the better it will be for human flourishing. and that was one of the main cases that Tertullian made. And then you get this next guy that comes in, Cyprian, who was the Bishop of Carthage. And he had quite the influence as well, you know, as kind of a counterbalance to the threats that were coming against the church, you know, for Rome. Well, I do want to say one more things, Zach, about the abortion issue, which I didn't, I never knew until I took this course, this class in particular, is that it was. aimed at women, you know, because the idea was men are strong. Now, they, they wouldn't even know. They didn't have sonograms. They didn't have, you know, ways to be able to figure out the

sex of the child inside, but somehow they thought they knew, maybe from how a woman carried the child. I don't know. He didn't go into it. But the deal was, if it's a woman, we don't need her. You know, because I guess men serve in the army. They make might. And so the idea was they were boarded for this. And I thought, isn't that amazing, the evil one, who's behind him, anytime you're killing anyone, but especially innocent life. The evil one is behind it. But it's still the same mindset today. Because you hear all the words that are used by the current pro-abortion movement.

And the words are women's health, women's reproductive rights. You know, they come up with those phrases. But it's not caring about women because half the people aborted are women. So it's like Reagan said, you can be pro-abortion if you want to be, but you can got to be born to have the opinion, which is a strong point. The idea is that if you were really for women's health, you wouldn't want to kill half the women before they got here. That's the ultimate non-health care issue. Yeah. Well, and the way he was explaining how they did it was just awful. Oh, it's terrible. But it's now that we know what they do,

it's just as matter what they did today. Yeah. They just a member of a baby. Basically the same. One line I thought, this was, I mean, kind of the same point, but a little humorous turn. One line he said that, I thought was really funny as he said that. He said, there's too many women in the church, and we don't have as many men to marry them. And because the church was like a haven for women, and they were taking the men and saving them and raising up the orphaned, the abandoned girls who were put out because they were born girls. So the church is taking all these girls in, and then they get to a point where there's so many women in the church,

there's not enough men. And I thought, that's exactly where we are today. The church is such a haven and such a proponent of women. There's so many women in the church and not enough men in the church. It's so funny, you're so right. So the first time when I was an intern here at WFR, you know, you had to get out and make a little extra money because you wouldn't get paid much.

And so they would allow us to go out on Sundays and preach at these little churches. And so I went about an hour south of here. and I walk in the first Sunday, you know, this is now the church I'm going to try to minister to. And I'm greener than grass, you know, I don't know anything. But I walk in and there were 30 women and one man. And the one man was not quite right, you know, something was going on with him. And so he didn't have much ability to help me. So it was basically a one-man show every Sunday, you know, and I'm up front.

I'm Lord's Supper and preaching and teaching and leading, singing and doing stuff. I had no business doing it. But it was the same problem. Yeah. It was like 30 women and not a single man in the congregation. By the time we left there, we had a few men. Yeah. I took that as a positive.

I went to say, though, that this issue, I think with the church, the issue isn't that there's too many women. The issue is that men aren't stepping up and that we as men, or the older generation, have not been, we're not as teaching men in a way that I think, made the church apropical and respectful for them. But this is getting better. Like I as a camp director, I hired my camp staff this year. And we have about 30 girls and 20 guys who I hired, like college-age staff who I hired,

which is more women because we have more girl campers, because more women and moms are wanting to send their daughters to camping. there are young men. But even 10 years ago, it was way harder to find good, solid guy counselors. A lot of the guys who were, you know, 15 to 25, and that's just kind of a, like that young, like 18 to 25 range, were either doing sports or trying to internships or jobs and cultural was really pushing them out of the church into, I think, kind of like the, like focusing on money, focus on sports, focus on your prestige or whatever, and not like bringing him into the church in a way that could serve. But I found over the past 10 years,

it's gotten, every year it's gotten easier and more good, solid Christian guys have been applying, wanting to do more mission work, not even like go into mission work, but wanting to serve in the church more than they were 10 years ago. I worked at camp for a decade as a spiritual director, where John Luke is now. and I have to say the watching the relationship, mental relationship from children and teens to college-age young men on the guy side, and same with the girls, was such a strong bond.

The reason it works so well is because there's a link there that the kids relate better, they listen, they have this bond that occurs. And the idea is that it puts mentorship and discipleship into the hearts of men and women at an early age. that this is, I should spend the rest of my life doing this and have people that mentor me as I mentor others. And so I think that's why camps are so affected still to this day and both setting in relationship with Christ, but then also continuing as you go forward and you marry and you have your families. Yeah. I mean, I saw many generations come through and the ones that have flourished, Zach included, because I can remember when Zach was a staff member when I was there as a camp director and you look at him now in the work he's doing. And Zach, I think a lot of that was

you in your early walk as a Christian as a prodigal like me coming back, that became part of your experience to both be disciples and disciple others. Would you not say that's true? No, it's a huge part of it. Yeah, I was thinking on the women front, I'm trying to think, you know, when I was out at camp, what it was like. I'll say this, I went, I went to a, you remember in the lecture when he talked about, Tertullian was addressing that these women, they were exposed out in the streets and they were essentially like you could just imagine them like they're living on the streets and they're just being traded

like property or just like not even not even property they're just utility you know for sexual gratification yesterday I went and had the opportunity to meet with a ministry in downtown Asheville and if you know a lot about Asheville it's there's a lot of homeless of very large homeless population in Asheville a lot of it's a result of kind of the opioid epidemic, but I don't know why. It's like towns like Asheville and Portland and different areas of the country just to track that.

And so there's a ministry down there. It's a Christian ran ministry. And we were able to tour their facility yesterday. I'm absolutely doing an incredible job there. And one of the things that the director told us was that he surveyed the women who come through the ministry. and they asked the question, how have you been sexually abused on the streets? Basically, your time, while you were homeless,

they come into the shelter or they come into the program, have you been sexually assaulted while you were homeless living on the street? And 98% of them said they had been. I mean, that's staggering. I mean, that's insane. And so you think about like the issues, that Rome was facing at the time, and you think about the degradation of a culture, you think about how a culture can just collapse in on itself, and you see this with how

women are treated in those cultures. And so we can say that we're a sophisticated society in the United States right now, and that we've, we're more civilized, we've, we've evolved past this, but the truth is we haven't. And it's the same ministries, downtown Asheville, it's the Church of Christ that is going in. and rescuing these women and giving them a way out. I just found this to be like it's like everything that he was fighting against is the same thing that we're fighting against today, which tells me this, this is more of a cosmic battle that I think we're going to be

into the end of our time. And the way out of it is what you just said, Al, it's discipleship and moving out of that. And it's been the standard bear, right? I mean, like, in other words, you have to have somebody that's still relating a better way. And that's what we say consistently. We know we're following a better way. And every one of these I would read,

because you know, you get into the next one is Clement and origin and all these different people. And no matter where it moves around the world, and no matter where the next group came from in the ancient world, it's the same as today. The standard bearer is still the same. Now, sometimes we get off a little bit. I was saying about this guy, origin,

because you get into this aestheticism and you do the same thing today we get so inward sometimes on ourselves that it becomes like we're so strict about it that then we're not really interested

in impact and culture anymore we just want to line everybody up in our own little pen well that's too far the other way I mean not that we don't want to try to encourage each other but the idea is what impact are we making in culture that's where the standard

barrier has to be seen so you don't want to miss that I've quoted origin many times and sermons and stuff. I didn't realize he castrated himself. That kind of made me, I was like, whoa, this guy was a little too far. He went too far with it. I didn't realize he castrated himself.

Yeah, exactly. That's basically taking it. He's just reading Matthews, literally. He was just trying to take Jesus' words to art. He did. I'm surprised he's two eyes and a hand. I know. So we want you to sign up and take the course with us for free

at unashamederhillsdale.com. Cyprian is another interesting character, though, because he, whenever, you know, when you think about that under this persecution, think about, we've gone through it, not in the same way as what they went through, but like, you know, we have the cultural pressures that come at the church, and a lot of people can't survive, like they leave the faith in those moments. I think we just came out of like an era of time in the church where we had a lot of people deconstruct and leave the faith.

a lot of those people have come back now are coming back and so these guys they left because I mean I can't even imagine being in the setting where they're like okay pour the glass of wine and the fire or we're going to chop your head off that's a different level of kind of like testing right

and some people could this they just couldn't stand up to that and so then whenever the church got in a better posture where they weren't being persecuted then a whole new like discussion like pops up now and controversy inside the church. Like, okay, should we let these people, these apostates who left us during the persecution, should we allow them back in?

And a lot of people are like, no, we shouldn't. But then you have characters like Cyprian who are like, no, if they're repentant and they're willing to pay their penance or whatever, we should allow them back in the church. So you constantly see like the posture of Christ in his people. No, even them. Bring them back in.

bring it back in that level of forgiveness that Christ displayed on the cross. And I think it was those like individuals that Christ used throughout history. And it continues to, those are like the seamless threat throughout all of history of just kind of the vein of Christ through the whole thing. And even into the ones who had broken theology like origin. I mean, he did have some beliefs that I think that, as you mentioned, you know, were, or, you know, he didn't believe, he argued that God is transcendent, but he can't be imminent. I mean, even that, think about that is a,

there's major implications to a God who's not imminent. I mean, that kind of destroys the whole gospel. Yeah, he kind of missed the whole point. Yeah, he kind of missed the whole point. Yeah, well, that was Clement. Well, yeah. I mean, I think that's with any, like, everybody, us at this table and online, have things that we believe that are right,

and we have things we believe that are wrong. we just don't know they're wrong. You know, like everyone, you can be right about things and still be wrong about things. Origin was the opposite of Cyprian because he he critiqued the bishops for being too, like it says to lax with the elite. So I think, I think origin was the opposite of Cyprian because Cyprian was, yeah, you know, let them pay their pen as they can come back. And origin was kind of like, no, like they're not.

Like he was a little more, a little more straight than harsh. He was hardcore. Yeah, it's the same thing. And we always struggle with grace versus discipline and all the different things we talk about. But no, you're right, Zach. It's fair to say that as we look at our role, we have to be willing to be out there with people and then make the difference. But I tell you what, to be honest, I've thought more in the last couple of years.

just because of the pockets I see in our own culture where there are some violent people that disagree with us now. And so you'll see these things pop up from time to time. I thought about the church up in Minnesota, the church building, where the folks just broke into an assembly there, and they're just worship them, and they're doing what we would do any place we go. And then all of a sudden people are yelling and screaming in your face

and menacing your children, and the children are crying because, I mean, it's just things we haven't seen before. And I think we're seeing them more. And, of course, Charlie Kirk's death had a huge impact on believers because, you know, there's some complicated issues with that on the political side. But it's not just that. I mean, he was a very outspoken believer.

And the very thing that really got him killed was how he felt about how God made us. And that was the strongest point. And this guy disagreed. And so he killed him. And he killed him in front of everybody. So, I mean, I got to say, I go speak almost a lot of. every week someplace and for several weeks I thought about it. Every time I got out of my car, you know, rental car or whatever, I was thinking, is this the one? Is this the place I'd go where

there's somebody that disagrees with me, knows about our family? And so the fact is, but did it change what I went in and said and did? And the answer is no. Because what I'm saying and doing is right. And the truth is still the truth. And so if someone comes and shoots me or stabs me or whatever, and that's what happens, then that's what happens. I mean, I'll die a martyr doing exactly what God called me to do. So when I look at this era of our history as Christians, and it's good because there's a lot of stuff I didn't know,

I see those kind of people and they're willing to fight the fight, and that made me and get them up my life. I've had people ask me for, why would you go overseas to Africa? You know, there's people to speak to here. You know, what if you die? What if you got in a bad situation? I would say, then I would die doing what I love to do.

Yeah. You know, being called to go there because I felt like that's where God wanted me to go on this trip. So I think that's got to be the overriding mindset, even as we study this. Because obviously it's about to get a little bit better as we move on through the ancient Christian, you know, past. But this was a rough time. And, Zach, you started by saying that. It's incredible that we survived this time. Except it's not really a surprise because, you know, the church is going to be here when the Lord comes back.

Well, I think it's, you know, Tortolian's quote about, you know, we want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after receiving the gospel. When we believe, we desire no further belief. But this is our first article of faith that there is nothing which we are to believe besides. And so I think that what you see kind of in that, and I love that quote because we talk about this a lot on the podcast. Yeah, it wasn't that he was anti-intellectual or anything like that because he was certainly a very intellectual person, but to simplify the truth of the Christian faith into just

who is Jesus. I mean, this is the center of the whole thing. And I think that thread, that's the thread that goes throughout all of history is, actually the thread is a person. It is Christ in us. It's what Paul calls the mystery of the gospel, that Christ in us. You know, that is the mystery that he lives in the bodies of believers through the Holy Spirit. And that is what we've been invited into. So when we think about it in that context, we really shouldn't be surprised, although we are, we shouldn't be surprised that the church has been able to not just survive the onslaught of the Roman Empire. But the church actually has been thriving ever since Pentecost in Acts Chapter 2.

The church has just continues to grow and explode. So again, thank you all for being with us. If you guys want to take the course with us, we want you to, it's Anisham for Hills. Dillsdale.com. That's free. We're going to take a six-week break, not from Hillsdale, but from this course. We're going to move into the Colonial America course. We'll put that link also in the show notes so that you guys can take that with us. Join us every Friday for Unashamed Academy Powered by Hillsdale College. Make sure to go to Unashamed for Hillsdale.com and sign up. It's no calls to you. That's Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. And don't miss an episode of the Unashamed

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