Hi, everybody, Welcome to nonprofits. Today we're going to talk about interesting
and kind of scary article from newsweek. Um, so, I like any
other week in America, we have a streaming hate preacher spreading dangerous ideas.
Recently, in Tennessee, pastor Kent Christmas, Yes that seems to be his
real name. Totis told his church that the Muslim faith was becoming more successful
because they're willing to die for their beliefs. Um proceeded to ask God to
give Christian men and women this same type of passion, willing to die for
their beliefs. So inside of this vague pseudo call to action, it seems
like this is a problem for everyone else around those types of people, given
how easy everyone seems to be these days in being influenced by religion or conspiracy
theory theorists to take up different arms in their pursuit of bad ideas. Kelly,
you you have any thoughts on this? Just kick us off? Yeah?
Well, who would have guessed that another crazy pastor was coming out of
Tennessee? Right? Does anything come good come out of Tennessee? Present company
accepted, of course, friend, Yeah, so I had my first thought,
I and you knew me, and my brain always goes to silly places.
But my first thought was onward Christian bombers marching as to war with the
bombs of Jesus to kill those that will abhor. But to be fair,
he didn't come right out and say we should go strap bombs on and throw
yourselves at heathens. Um, it's he really walked around it. And I've
been talking about how they a lot of people on the extreme right have been
using laundered language. You know, it's like they take some words and clean
them up, and so they think they've made them acceptable. But we all
know what they're doing. And that's what he's done here. Like, like
I said, he didn't come right out and say it, but he came
right out and said it. Anybody with the half of brain can see it.
He didn't conceal what he was trying to say at all in any way,
shape or form. So um I was when I was whenever I see
him doing this kind of a weird message, it always comes up to me
is making them look dumber than they should look because they think we're gonna fall
for this that for this laundered, cleaned up language. Right, So Helen,
what do you think. I know you've got a lot of thoughts about
this. I always have thoughts, um, So I don't have a lot
to say about someone like this because it's always the same Christian hateful rhetoric we
hear all the time. And yeah, I he did clean up the language
which you brought up, Kelly. But it's like that possible diability thing,
you know, like, well, I'm saying horrible things, but I'm gonna
but this way, if someone calls me on my shit, I'm I can
back it up, you know, I can kind of hide under that guy's
and that's what he's doing, and it's really really dishonest. And and again,
like just because he might not strap a bottom onto his chest or get
his pressures to do it and do something terrible, doesn't mean they're not going
to do something else terrible. Like there's not like other there's not like Christian
terrorists in this country haven't done other terrible things to promote their faith, like
you know, bomb and abortion clinic. So you know, it's it is
an issue that we need to have a lot of I don't know, caution
about because like, yes, he is saying the thing that we don't want
people to do and he's doing it because of his imaginary sky daddy, and
his imaginary sky Daddy really likes it if you do violent things apparently, you
know, even though he's the guy to love in peace. So yeah,
that's that's worrying. And I really wish people wouldn't spread stuff like this,
like what happened to church, like you know, feeding the hungry and teaching
kids to do math like volunteering and stuff. What happened to that stuff?
Why we talk about this anyway? What do you think about all this?
Yeah, this is an interesting thing, and it could have something to do
with my familiarity with these types of individuals. Like again, it confuses me
sometimes when when I speak to people in other parts of the United States,
because this isn't normal for them, right, But like preachers like this in
my area of the country have definitely been around for while, although they've picked
up a lot over the last couple of years. Um. I wonder though,
and I'll throw this to you Raphael and than anybody else of course that
has thoughts on it is is us talking about this making this more problematic?
Should should we be reaching out towards more secularists, non religious and atheist folk,
or should we be reaching out more towards the liberal marginal Christians or is
that maybe a better focus for us. It depends on our goal, but
I definitely had some of these similar thoughts of like, are we platforming this
crazy person? As well as, like you said, these preachers have always
been around. There's always been doomsday or preachers. There's always been people spewing
hate everywhere you go. But if the Internet they spread, they become more
prevalent. They you know, there's a Internet. It's amazing, but it's
also dangerous. Like everything else that's amazing, it's it's letting these people reach
people everywhere, and who knows, you know, they could influence someone to
do something horrible in another country, another state. You know, it doesn't
necessarily have to be in Tennessee in his home community. So now I don't
know how big of a church this person has, but you know they have
a worldwide reach now, So any thoughts on that? Kelly Um, Yeah,
I answer your question a star. I think we need to reach out
to both, and I'll explain why. Obviously, we need to reach out
to the secular atheist community because we are that community, and we're the people
who are most concerned they hear language like that. However, there is a
whole large group of liberal moderate Christians, as you said, and they don't
like to hear this stuff either. There's a there's an organization of churches that
have gotten together to fight back against Christian nationalism as an example, and those
So we need to get a hold of those people because there are allies in
this fight, and you know, maybe we don't want them around either,
but right now, let's get them to help us get rid of the really
bad ones, right and then maybe fifty years up the road we can work
on being nice and getting rid of them too. But yeah, I think
we need to reach out to both communities, and we need to show our
community that we can ally with theists and get something done too, because there's
a lot of people on our side that probably might not be willing to do
that at first. So I think that that's important to reach out to both
sides. So, yeah, Helen, you want to you want to add
to that. Yeah, I agree with us because I have to imagine and
like you know, sometimes eight is get a bad rap and we have things
straight about us that you know, we you know, hate, I want
to kill children, and you know, we're worshiping the devil, though I
don't know how that got started, but like there's all these terrible things,
like we don't have any morals, you know, all these terrible things that
are said about us. And I'm sure the modern Christians or any religious group
that has a hate group within it's part of its community, isn't gonna be
super excited about that. And it's like, this is not the religion that
I believe in. This is not what Jesus taught, you know, our
and for me, like I would rather play ball with those people on top
of the secular humanists and be like, hey, maybe we'll have less hate
in the world, less violence, Like let's work towards that. Let's not
you know, yes you can't. You have to find a way to preach
your faith. And though I have quibbles with that and problems, I don't
think the best way is through violence to scare people to you know, doing
those things. And I understand that this preacher is coming from like a very
passionate sort of you know place where he's like, well, you know,
we have to be just as extreme as other religions, you know, And
I'm just like, yeah, but even within the Muslim religion that those people
are few, true, you know, those are those are the extremists.
So and I think he's missing the point. And it comes off to me
as a racist and uh like racist and bigoted and you know, and a
lot of problems with this. So it just it just reads very gross.
And I and I definitely know people that are religious that would not want to
be associated, you know, with this type of people. You know,
this group, and I'm sure all of you know someone as well that are
religious and we don't want to be associated with groups like this. Um,
all you think about that us are yeah, absolutely absolutely, And I think
I think you all, um, you know, really touched on something that
that I was I was hoping we would, which is the need to reach
out because there are so many you know, believers out there. Believe me,
folks, Yes, this guy is from my state, and so is
a handful of other people that I just don't want to name because I don't
want to give him anymore airtime. But there are thousands and thousands, if
not millions of believers in my state that absolutely abhor this type of this type
of rhetoric, right, and it is it's it's terrible. And I wonder
too, because there was so much of it that was I think very clearly
in a Christian nationalist lens. I mean, how many times did he mention
Donald Trump, right and explicitly saying about his you know, what his parishioners
should do in regards to that. You know, I sometimes, I know
this may be a little strange, but sometimes I just I'm not so sure
that the call to action that this preacher gave that was the violence is going
to be picked up as much as the political call to action that these preachers
man. I wonder, I wonder what what y'all think on that too?
Do you do you think just at all? I mean, look, I'm
not condoning what he's saying, of course, right, I'm not in the
slightest, But I'm asking do you think that we're more likely to see political
action associated from this in that, you know, continuing Christian nationalist thrust that
we've seen, or are we more likely to see violence associate or both?
I guess what what do you think? Raphael? So? In general,
I think, um, the way people look at bad ideas ideas. As
a spectrum, you're gonna have some most people that clearly are you going to
be influenced from like nothing from zero to one hundred, you know, your
hundreds or the people who are like, I'm gonna blow some shit up.
But I think, I hope maybe it's more maybe more appropriate that those people
are in the minority, even within the spectrum of people are going to be
influenced by this type of uh screaming in a church. So I'm thinking he's
gonna have influence for sure. I just don't know how many, or if
at all, they were going to have any type of violent influence. But
I do agree that I think he's going to have a huge influence on people's
voting habits um, because everyone who's too chicken shit to like strap a bonder
themselves, which I hopefully is everyone, Um, what else are they gonna
do. They're going to vote, They're going to protests, They're going to
show up at pizza parlors because they've read something on four Chan or whatever.
So there's like the spectrum that I see from this type of uh. You
know, you take one bad idea and you take it a lot of places.
It's kind of like you know, holy books. You read it a
lot of different ways, and in that sense, you know, it's,
um, it's kind of scary because I think he will, he does and
will continue to have some kind of influence on people at large. Kelly,
what do you what do you make any other? Yeah, you're absolutely right.
That is that is a problem and I and that's it's a big problem
with allot of the ministers today and I think I think the IRS should be
looking at him more and to be taken pulling away that nonprofit status from a
lot of churches, especially ones like this. I do want to point out
though, and because you did mention that, you know, there was a
lot of Trump in this article, and it was all it was a lot
of it was the journalist putting that Trump in there, you know. And
Trump was actually mentioned thirteen times, I think once it was in relation to
the minister, and the rest of it was, well, this guy supports
Trump, and Trump is bad and Trump is bad and Trump is bad and
Trump and I wanted more information about what was going on with the minister.
And I've mentioned before that I took I was the English major. I minored
in journalism and I was just like really mad, so mad at this article
because I wasn't getting the information I wanted, and I was getting more stuff
that I didn't want. So I thought, I thought the person writing it
definitely had an agenda. And I want to point out that in the original
quote, the guy did mention that it was young men we needed to go
out there and strap bombs. Yet young men we need to be going willing
to be go out there and kill themselves. Wasn't talking about the old man
like he was. I just wanted to mention that Helen is weird. It's
a little sexist, Kelly. He didn't call for a woman to do it
either, So true, true, we want I'm not going to say that
it was bad so hashtog equality. Yeah, yeah, I don't know so.
But besides that, yeah, I didn't notice the Trump riddick was a
little much. And yes, there are people that are part of those extreme
the extreme right that you know, are have that Christian nationalism vibe and they
like Trump and they think that somehow Trump and their religion go together like peanut
butter and jelly, you know. And that's really bothersome because you can be
a religious person and not like Trump, you know, or you can be
you can like Trump and not be religious. You know, the people come
and all, you know, colors and opinions and everything like that. So
I guess I really wish that they did he did focus more on what the
preacher was saying, because that was that was the thing that we were We
were all had a lot of concern with this, you know. Um that's
why we're talking about it. Um And yes, there has been more calls
of violence, there's been more calls for actions since um one TRUMPUS president and
since he's been out of the White House that there's been a little bit of
a law on the rhetoric. But that I think that's because consequences have happened,
you know. But that doesn't mean people aren't going on message boards and
spreading heeful things and haful ideas. So you know, I'm just I would
hope that the language like this would fell down, you know, But it
seems every single time we did this show, there's some preacher saying something really
stupid. Yeah, it feels more and more regular, unfortunately, Yeah,
it does. Yeah, for sure, M Kelly d have any final thoughts
on I wanted to go back a little to revisit it. Something I mentioned
before about the thing enough the language, because you know, he really what
he said was, and this is paraphrased, very much paraphrased. I didn't
say you should go be a suicider bomber. I simply said, Islam's growing
fast and it's doing damn good. And then Muslims they fanatically killed themselves,
and we need men, brave, young men who are willing to do that.
I never said they should do that, just that they should be willing
to do that. And I'm wondering to myself, to what end, to
what end do you need men to go kill yourself to show that Christianity is
right? Isn't that kind of against the religion going out and killing people and
blowing up yourself and other people. It just didn't make any sense to me
at all, and I had a real problem with the whole thing. I
obviously it just doesn't seem like the guy was really taking his own faith seriously.
And I just wanted to mention that at the end, and that was
it because I didn't because guy was a real minister. I don't understand how
you could be preaching this stuff. Yeah, yeah, A little strange to
me too, but thanks so much for watching everybody, and if you want
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