1
00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:02,640
Speaker 1: What he says is that Americans, this is a direct quote,

2
00:00:02,640 --> 00:00:06,280
Americans who think they are Christians truly are something else,

3
00:00:06,759 --> 00:00:12,240
intensely religious, but devout in the American religion. And so

4
00:00:12,279 --> 00:00:14,679
what is the American religion? He says that the American

5
00:00:14,720 --> 00:00:19,120
religion centers on the solitary self's direct encounter with God.

6
00:00:19,239 --> 00:00:22,600
It's the believer's conviction of possessing an inner divine spark,

7
00:00:22,960 --> 00:00:27,760
a sense of freedom that expresses itself in total spiritual solitude.

8
00:00:28,320 --> 00:00:31,359
So God is alone, and I am alone, and I

9
00:00:31,359 --> 00:00:33,840
can have a relationship with God, and that relationship is

10
00:00:33,880 --> 00:00:37,679
in total solitude to anything else that is happening in

11
00:00:37,719 --> 00:00:40,799
the world around me. And this to me, if I

12
00:00:40,840 --> 00:00:43,840
were going to put a finger on Okay, what's the

13
00:00:43,920 --> 00:00:47,759
number one defining feature of American religion is that there

14
00:00:47,840 --> 00:00:51,039
has to be this experiential conversion. Every single one of

15
00:00:51,039 --> 00:00:53,520
these things we're going to talk about is not bad

16
00:00:53,719 --> 00:00:56,719
in and of itself. Like obviously, lots of famous people

17
00:00:56,880 --> 00:01:01,000
within the Orthodox Church, beginning with Saint Paul, had radical

18
00:01:01,079 --> 00:01:04,359
encounters with Jesus Christ which totally transformed their lives and

19
00:01:04,359 --> 00:01:07,159
they give up everything to follow him. Obviously, there's nothing

20
00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:10,040
wrong with that it's just not normative for everyone, right,

21
00:01:10,079 --> 00:01:13,280
it's just not the experience that everybody has. Not everybody

22
00:01:13,280 --> 00:01:17,239
has a road to Damascus moment. Well, in American Christianity,

23
00:01:17,280 --> 00:01:20,439
everybody is supposed to have a road to Damascus moment.

24
00:01:32,079 --> 00:01:35,599
Speaker 2: This is Jonathan Pejol Welcome to the Symbolic World.

25
00:01:46,879 --> 00:01:51,519
Speaker 3: Hello everyone, We are back with Deacon Seraphim Roland. We

26
00:01:52,159 --> 00:01:56,519
had our last episode talking about folk magic and fairies

27
00:01:56,879 --> 00:02:04,079
and America, and we ended hint at the great American

28
00:02:04,200 --> 00:02:08,360
experiment in religion, and so I'm very curious to see

29
00:02:08,400 --> 00:02:10,280
where Diggin Serafin wants to take us today.

30
00:02:10,319 --> 00:02:12,159
Speaker 2: Please let us know where we're going.

31
00:02:12,680 --> 00:02:15,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's been a little while since we've recorded

32
00:02:15,280 --> 00:02:18,520
that episode, and since then, I've had so many people

33
00:02:18,560 --> 00:02:22,360
reach out to me very excited that we had teased

34
00:02:22,479 --> 00:02:25,439
talking about Mormonism. So I thought, just to heighten your excitement,

35
00:02:25,759 --> 00:02:28,919
I would tease you a little more and maybe maybe

36
00:02:28,919 --> 00:02:31,199
not actually get into Mormonism today. We'll see how far

37
00:02:31,319 --> 00:02:33,400
we get. But I just want to say that you

38
00:02:33,439 --> 00:02:36,199
guys asked for this. You have been begging for universal

39
00:02:36,240 --> 00:02:38,919
history of America in the comments of literally every video

40
00:02:38,919 --> 00:02:41,759
since we started the series, Like four years ago, and

41
00:02:42,319 --> 00:02:44,919
so you're going to get it right. You're going to

42
00:02:45,080 --> 00:02:47,199
just like it's like, Okay, you guys really want this,

43
00:02:47,439 --> 00:02:51,199
We're gonna have to. Because the thing is that it's

44
00:02:51,360 --> 00:02:53,319
things that are really distant from us. It's easy to

45
00:02:53,360 --> 00:02:56,159
talk about kind of in a more abstract way, and

46
00:02:56,240 --> 00:02:59,520
the closer you get to in this case, my personal

47
00:02:59,719 --> 00:03:02,960
living experience, and to some extend Jonathan's as well, because

48
00:03:03,000 --> 00:03:06,879
although you're not American, you did grow up in a

49
00:03:06,960 --> 00:03:12,840
kind of evangelical Meulu, which ultimately comes from America, and

50
00:03:12,879 --> 00:03:15,919
so when we start talking about American religion, it is

51
00:03:16,039 --> 00:03:18,400
kind of relevant to your experience as well in certain ways.

52
00:03:19,080 --> 00:03:19,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.

53
00:03:19,680 --> 00:03:22,639
Speaker 3: And I mean I think that the crossing over even

54
00:03:22,719 --> 00:03:25,599
in the United States, the crossing over of the French

55
00:03:25,639 --> 00:03:28,680
and the English, the relationship between the French Protestants and

56
00:03:28,719 --> 00:03:30,960
the English Protestants and the French Catholics, all of these

57
00:03:30,960 --> 00:03:34,639
things are part of both the Canadian.

58
00:03:34,280 --> 00:03:36,479
Speaker 2: History and the US history as well.

59
00:03:36,560 --> 00:03:38,120
Speaker 4: So that's right, all right.

60
00:03:38,199 --> 00:03:40,919
Speaker 1: So what I want to do today is to kind

61
00:03:40,960 --> 00:03:44,520
of pick up not exactly where we left off last time,

62
00:03:44,520 --> 00:03:48,400
but to pick up on this theme of folk magic

63
00:03:48,960 --> 00:03:51,800
and talk about how.

64
00:03:52,080 --> 00:03:54,199
Speaker 4: This experience.

65
00:03:54,879 --> 00:03:58,400
Speaker 1: Worked itself out more in the kind of institutions of

66
00:03:58,479 --> 00:04:02,960
the churches in New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Now,

67
00:04:02,960 --> 00:04:05,599
this will actually give us our setup for talking about

68
00:04:05,639 --> 00:04:10,520
Mormonism and other revivalists sects which come out of New

69
00:04:10,599 --> 00:04:14,560
York and New England in the nineteenth century.

70
00:04:14,680 --> 00:04:16,199
Speaker 2: Because what I want to know is, then you have

71
00:04:16,279 --> 00:04:18,680
Christian science and all Christian.

72
00:04:18,319 --> 00:04:22,240
Speaker 1: Science, so you have Adventism. You have all these different things,

73
00:04:22,639 --> 00:04:24,519
and they all pop up. A lot of those pop

74
00:04:24,639 --> 00:04:26,639
up within a decade of each other, like a few

75
00:04:26,639 --> 00:04:30,279
miles of each other. Makes sense, something weird is happening there.

76
00:04:31,079 --> 00:04:34,639
But to explain what that thing is, what I want

77
00:04:34,680 --> 00:04:36,759
to do is talk a little bit, go back to

78
00:04:36,800 --> 00:04:39,079
the seventeenth century, so this would be the sixteen hundreds,

79
00:04:39,160 --> 00:04:45,120
and talk about the First Great Awakening. So everything, and

80
00:04:45,120 --> 00:04:47,160
by the way, I'm going to be referencing a lot

81
00:04:47,199 --> 00:04:49,160
of stuff today from this book.

82
00:04:49,279 --> 00:04:49,720
Speaker 4: Right here.

83
00:04:50,199 --> 00:04:51,839
Speaker 1: I even brought it to show to the class. This

84
00:04:51,920 --> 00:04:53,839
is called Coppola and the Founding of America.

85
00:04:53,879 --> 00:04:58,199
Speaker 3: It's the early influence, the Foundation of America, Founding of America.

86
00:04:58,639 --> 00:05:00,319
Speaker 1: It's a super good book. By the way, It's not

87
00:05:01,560 --> 00:05:05,079
like gotcha's weird. Anyway, It's really good. It's by Brian Ogrin,

88
00:05:05,600 --> 00:05:10,439
and he makes a really convincing case, I think, and

89
00:05:10,480 --> 00:05:12,639
I'm not going to talk about that immediately, but a

90
00:05:12,639 --> 00:05:15,279
lot of the threads that I'm connecting come from him

91
00:05:15,279 --> 00:05:17,279
and come from some other authors who are all writing

92
00:05:17,360 --> 00:05:20,839
about this one hundred year period that is really formative

93
00:05:20,920 --> 00:05:22,720
for American religion in a lot of ways.

94
00:05:23,399 --> 00:05:23,959
Speaker 4: Okay, so.

95
00:05:25,399 --> 00:05:29,759
Speaker 1: You say the fundamental problem that American religion is trying

96
00:05:29,839 --> 00:05:34,120
to solve, and I'll use here that this term American religion.

97
00:05:34,120 --> 00:05:37,040
This comes from Harold Bloom, who wrote his book on

98
00:05:37,160 --> 00:05:41,000
American Religion, which we'll talk about later, And basically what

99
00:05:41,079 --> 00:05:43,639
he says is there is a thing called American religion,

100
00:05:44,160 --> 00:05:48,879
which is what almost all Americans have. Like that's that's

101
00:05:48,920 --> 00:05:51,600
their actual religion, regardless of whether they are Mormon or

102
00:05:51,680 --> 00:05:55,199
Baptist or Methodist or Pentecostal or what have you. The

103
00:05:55,279 --> 00:05:57,759
thing that they are actually are is American. And that

104
00:05:57,839 --> 00:06:03,600
there is a particular spiritual quality to American religion, which

105
00:06:04,160 --> 00:06:06,360
Bloom defines as being fundamentally gnaustic.

106
00:06:06,399 --> 00:06:08,199
Speaker 4: Now what he means by gnostic.

107
00:06:09,279 --> 00:06:11,920
Speaker 1: Will it will be something we talk about but I

108
00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:14,360
just want to, like just to get people riled up

109
00:06:14,720 --> 00:06:17,600
before we go too much further. I'll just mention that

110
00:06:18,120 --> 00:06:21,720
Bloom thinks that that's true whether you're a Southern Baptist

111
00:06:21,839 --> 00:06:23,839
or a Mormon, and that both of those are forms

112
00:06:23,879 --> 00:06:27,279
of the American religion. So let's get into it. So,

113
00:06:27,720 --> 00:06:31,879
starting around the seventeenth century, Puritans in New England find

114
00:06:31,920 --> 00:06:36,319
themselves wrestling with the central problem of early American Christianity,

115
00:06:36,360 --> 00:06:41,000
which is, on the one hand, everybody in America. You know,

116
00:06:42,040 --> 00:06:45,199
when the Puritans come to America, you know, you have

117
00:06:45,279 --> 00:06:47,240
people talking about, you know, America is going to be

118
00:06:47,279 --> 00:06:50,319
this shining city set on a hill, all these different things,

119
00:06:50,439 --> 00:06:53,839
and what you have is these different foundations of in

120
00:06:53,920 --> 00:06:57,800
the early colonies, not just of Christian societies, which would

121
00:06:57,800 --> 00:06:59,759
be something that they made a big deal about in

122
00:06:59,800 --> 00:07:02,759
the the circles that I grew up in, but in

123
00:07:03,279 --> 00:07:08,519
actually kind of utopianist Christian societies. Basically saying, real Christianity

124
00:07:08,839 --> 00:07:12,160
has never been tried, so we're going to be the

125
00:07:12,160 --> 00:07:16,279
ones who do it and who show what real Christianity

126
00:07:16,279 --> 00:07:18,839
looks like. Nobody's ever seen it before. We're going to

127
00:07:18,879 --> 00:07:20,560
be the first ones to do it. And so we're

128
00:07:20,560 --> 00:07:23,199
going to establish these covenant societies, and this is what

129
00:07:23,240 --> 00:07:25,519
the early colonies are for the most part. We're going

130
00:07:25,560 --> 00:07:30,360
to establish these covenant societies in which not only is

131
00:07:30,800 --> 00:07:33,560
the civil society and all of its members bound to

132
00:07:33,639 --> 00:07:37,040
obedience to Christ and the scriptures via the covenant, but

133
00:07:37,959 --> 00:07:43,480
also everyone in the society is a genuine saint, everyone

134
00:07:43,480 --> 00:07:47,600
in the society is regenerate, everyone in the society has

135
00:07:47,360 --> 00:07:52,160
a strong personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

136
00:07:52,160 --> 00:07:53,199
Speaker 4: To put it in those terms.

137
00:07:53,360 --> 00:07:57,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, so not just people who are living virtuous lives

138
00:07:57,399 --> 00:08:01,120
or following the laws, but people have gone some kind

139
00:08:01,120 --> 00:08:05,399
of dramatic conversion experience which confirms their membership as one

140
00:08:05,439 --> 00:08:07,720
of the elect. So on the one hand, you have

141
00:08:07,879 --> 00:08:11,120
a societal christendom like you would have had in Europe

142
00:08:11,160 --> 00:08:14,399
before the Reformation or even after the Reformation. But on

143
00:08:14,439 --> 00:08:18,759
the other hand you have this everybody has to have

144
00:08:18,800 --> 00:08:24,839
this authentic conversion experience. So basically, the way it would

145
00:08:24,839 --> 00:08:27,399
work is that a new convert, that is, somebody who's

146
00:08:27,439 --> 00:08:31,120
had this conversion experience, would share the conversion experience with

147
00:08:31,199 --> 00:08:34,679
the congregation, and if the congregation believed that the experience

148
00:08:34,759 --> 00:08:38,080
was genuine, they would be allowed to join, which would

149
00:08:38,120 --> 00:08:40,639
allow them to partake in the Lord's Supper, but it

150
00:08:40,639 --> 00:08:43,559
would also give them the civil privileges that came with

151
00:08:43,639 --> 00:08:48,840
church membership, in particular the right to vote. So in

152
00:08:49,039 --> 00:08:51,639
Puritan New England, you could only vote if you were

153
00:08:51,679 --> 00:08:56,720
also a full member of a church. And then what

154
00:08:56,759 --> 00:08:59,279
that would allow also is that your children could then

155
00:08:59,360 --> 00:09:02,720
be baptized into the church, which would bring them into

156
00:09:02,759 --> 00:09:05,440
the covenant community, but they would not be allowed the

157
00:09:05,519 --> 00:09:09,759
full benefits of church membership, which would include communion and

158
00:09:09,799 --> 00:09:14,240
being able to vote, until as adults they underwent their

159
00:09:14,279 --> 00:09:18,039
own dramatic conversion experience, at which time their kids could

160
00:09:18,080 --> 00:09:22,399
be baptized. So you see already I.

161
00:09:22,559 --> 00:09:25,399
Speaker 3: Hear things that I grew up with so much, but

162
00:09:25,600 --> 00:09:29,440
not necessarily the civil part, but like the vision of

163
00:09:29,559 --> 00:09:31,519
how it is that you're a Christian. You know, like

164
00:09:32,320 --> 00:09:36,000
everybody had their story and everybody had to have their

165
00:09:36,039 --> 00:09:37,879
testimony that they tell, and it was always kind of

166
00:09:37,879 --> 00:09:40,120
the same, how you know they grew up in a

167
00:09:40,200 --> 00:09:42,799
Christian family but then fell away sometime and then had

168
00:09:42,799 --> 00:09:43,759
this conversion experience.

169
00:09:43,879 --> 00:09:45,919
Speaker 2: It was like this universal story that everybody again had

170
00:09:45,960 --> 00:09:46,320
to tell.

171
00:09:46,440 --> 00:09:49,120
Speaker 4: Did you ever like make up sins? To make your

172
00:09:49,159 --> 00:09:50,200
testimony like better.

173
00:09:53,240 --> 00:09:58,000
Speaker 3: All I remember from those times is telling the story

174
00:09:58,720 --> 00:10:03,639
and having a kind of contempt from myself because I

175
00:10:03,720 --> 00:10:05,919
knew that it wasn't that I was lying, but I

176
00:10:06,000 --> 00:10:07,960
knew that I was basically.

177
00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:15,960
Speaker 1: Performing yeahs performative, yeah yeah yeah. So the problem was

178
00:10:16,000 --> 00:10:21,960
that by the eighteenth century, these big individual personal conversion

179
00:10:21,960 --> 00:10:28,080
experiences have become incredibly rare among second and third and

180
00:10:28,159 --> 00:10:32,720
fourth generation colonists, and this means that the churches of

181
00:10:32,759 --> 00:10:36,919
this period are full of people who were baptized as infants,

182
00:10:37,039 --> 00:10:40,720
but whose own children had not been and as a result,

183
00:10:41,840 --> 00:10:44,720
now they're neither part of the civil Covenant, nor are

184
00:10:44,720 --> 00:10:49,759
they participating members of the congregation. And so suddenly, not

185
00:10:49,840 --> 00:10:52,039
only do you not have you know, everyone's still going

186
00:10:52,039 --> 00:10:55,559
to church on Sunday, Well, I say everyone. Probably at

187
00:10:55,559 --> 00:10:57,679
this point in history only about fifteen percent of Americans

188
00:10:57,720 --> 00:11:01,399
are actually attending church on Sunday. That everybody's at least

189
00:11:01,399 --> 00:11:05,639
nominally religious, But because they haven't had this dramatic conversion experience,

190
00:11:05,720 --> 00:11:09,240
their own children haven't been baptized, they're not commuting members

191
00:11:09,240 --> 00:11:11,960
of the local congregation, and therefore also they are not

192
00:11:12,120 --> 00:11:14,279
voting members of the civil polity.

193
00:11:14,960 --> 00:11:17,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's interesting. I just want to say one

194
00:11:17,320 --> 00:11:17,799
thing about that.

195
00:11:17,840 --> 00:11:22,279
Speaker 3: What's interesting is that you actually realize that although conversion

196
00:11:22,360 --> 00:11:24,240
is an important part of the Christian story, you see

197
00:11:24,240 --> 00:11:26,200
it in Saint Paul and you see it in several characters,

198
00:11:26,519 --> 00:11:29,759
conversion is always an experience of contrast. And so in

199
00:11:29,879 --> 00:11:32,879
order to have a very strong conversion experience, you and

200
00:11:32,960 --> 00:11:35,679
someways have to be far away and then have this

201
00:11:35,799 --> 00:11:38,519
metanoia and then it like credit, it's like it's this

202
00:11:38,600 --> 00:11:41,399
awakening moment that brings you in. But then if you

203
00:11:41,480 --> 00:11:45,000
create a Christian society that is following all Christian values

204
00:11:45,000 --> 00:11:47,679
and you grew up completely in those values, it becomes

205
00:11:47,759 --> 00:11:51,320
harder and harder to have that that like strong conversion

206
00:11:51,320 --> 00:11:54,879
experience because you're you're not like tempted by the prostitute,

207
00:11:54,919 --> 00:11:57,519
you know, or whatever whatever you're dented by, because she's

208
00:11:57,559 --> 00:12:01,039
not there, Like the sins aren't there, aren't as available,

209
00:12:01,080 --> 00:12:03,679
and so the conversion experience must be a lot harder.

210
00:12:03,720 --> 00:12:06,519
It's just super interesting to realize that, Yeah, it causes

211
00:12:06,559 --> 00:12:07,240
this problem.

212
00:12:07,720 --> 00:12:09,519
Speaker 1: And I'll here, let me talk to my own team

213
00:12:09,559 --> 00:12:14,320
for a second. Those of us who are converts to Orthodoxy.

214
00:12:14,480 --> 00:12:18,559
One of the big challenges is how do we kind

215
00:12:18,559 --> 00:12:22,080
of get over this because if we're going to raise

216
00:12:22,159 --> 00:12:26,399
children and I have you know, six cradle Orthodox Christians

217
00:12:26,440 --> 00:12:28,840
living in my house, right you know. You know, my

218
00:12:28,879 --> 00:12:30,679
kids have grown up in the Orthodox Church as far

219
00:12:30,720 --> 00:12:32,559
as they know this, you know. And the thing is,

220
00:12:32,559 --> 00:12:37,039
like they they they encounter other forms of Christianity all

221
00:12:37,080 --> 00:12:38,960
the time because we have a lot of non Orthodox

222
00:12:39,080 --> 00:12:42,279
family members, and so we constantly have discussions about these things.

223
00:12:42,720 --> 00:12:45,559
But none of them have ever had that big you know,

224
00:12:45,600 --> 00:12:48,559
I mean, partly just because they're all young. But but

225
00:12:48,600 --> 00:12:51,679
the thing is that the big conversion experience, you know,

226
00:12:52,840 --> 00:12:55,240
that being being young was not a bar to that.

227
00:12:55,279 --> 00:12:57,759
Like you could have somebody who is you know, becomes

228
00:12:57,759 --> 00:12:59,919
born again when they're three years old like I did,

229
00:13:00,879 --> 00:13:05,639
so you can have Yeah. So anyway, it's the thing

230
00:13:05,639 --> 00:13:09,120
I'm trying to say is that you're right, conversion itself

231
00:13:09,200 --> 00:13:12,279
is a kind of lateral movement, and the thing that

232
00:13:12,320 --> 00:13:14,720
we've got to figure out how to do as Orthodox

233
00:13:14,799 --> 00:13:17,799
Christians converts or you know, even if you're converting to

234
00:13:18,240 --> 00:13:21,000
you know, some other more older, more traditional form of

235
00:13:21,080 --> 00:13:24,440
Christianity is actually kind of moved beyond the conversion story

236
00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:27,320
and figure out, now, what is it actually? How do

237
00:13:27,399 --> 00:13:29,879
I change that lateral movement to horizontal movement, start moving

238
00:13:29,919 --> 00:13:32,320
deeper and deeper or farther up the mountain, whichever way

239
00:13:32,360 --> 00:13:34,720
you want to talk about it, And do I start

240
00:13:34,720 --> 00:13:37,240
moving deeper into this faith and kind of show what

241
00:13:37,240 --> 00:13:40,000
that looks like. You know, you can always keep converting,

242
00:13:40,720 --> 00:13:43,080
but that conversion has to at some point, it has

243
00:13:43,120 --> 00:13:45,360
to stop being out of something into something else and

244
00:13:45,519 --> 00:13:49,759
just converting deeper and deeper and actually finding a deeper

245
00:13:49,759 --> 00:13:51,320
than surface level repentance.

246
00:13:51,399 --> 00:13:53,519
Speaker 4: You could say, so, all.

247
00:13:53,559 --> 00:13:56,440
Speaker 1: Right, so we have this problem. Lots of people can't

248
00:13:57,120 --> 00:13:59,320
aren't full members of the church, and therefore they also

249
00:13:59,480 --> 00:14:01,799
can't participate in a lot of the aspects of the

250
00:14:01,799 --> 00:14:04,399
Civil Covenant. So there are basically two schools I've thought

251
00:14:04,399 --> 00:14:07,679
about how to address this. The more liberal side, which

252
00:14:07,799 --> 00:14:13,080
eventually becomes Unitarian. Congregationalism pushed for something by its detractors

253
00:14:13,279 --> 00:14:16,799
that was called by its detractors called the halfway Covenant.

254
00:14:17,399 --> 00:14:19,519
And the halfway Covenant was this idea that we can

255
00:14:21,639 --> 00:14:26,840
that baptized but unconverted members could have their children baptized,

256
00:14:26,879 --> 00:14:29,039
and therefore they would have some of the civil privileges

257
00:14:29,080 --> 00:14:32,879
of church membership, but not its full benefits. And there

258
00:14:32,879 --> 00:14:38,480
were several crises in the Massachusetts Colony, several which culminated

259
00:14:38,519 --> 00:14:41,639
in the Salem witch trials, And that's all related to

260
00:14:41,799 --> 00:14:42,320
this stuff.

261
00:14:43,799 --> 00:14:44,960
Speaker 4: I'm just going to keep teasing this.

262
00:14:46,159 --> 00:14:49,480
Speaker 1: Several crises in the Massachusetts Colony caused a lot of

263
00:14:49,519 --> 00:14:53,000
people to believe that actually God was punishing them for

264
00:14:53,200 --> 00:14:57,600
failing to bring society into the Covenant. And so as

265
00:14:57,600 --> 00:15:01,080
a result, about four out of five New England churches

266
00:15:01,279 --> 00:15:06,799
adopt the Halfway Covenant. Now, the most ardent opponent of

267
00:15:06,840 --> 00:15:10,159
the Halfway Covenant is a guy named Jonathan Edwards of

268
00:15:10,360 --> 00:15:14,320
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, fame that name, Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

269
00:15:15,039 --> 00:15:17,799
In the circles I grew up in, he's like, he's

270
00:15:17,799 --> 00:15:19,240
a big guy. He's the guy.

271
00:15:19,279 --> 00:15:19,879
Speaker 4: He's a big deal.

272
00:15:20,480 --> 00:15:24,000
Speaker 1: So he's a very ardent opponent of the idea of

273
00:15:24,039 --> 00:15:27,080
the Halfway Covenant. He's a he's a hardliner. He's the

274
00:15:27,559 --> 00:15:31,240
he's the leading the kind of the leading light, if

275
00:15:31,279 --> 00:15:34,799
you will. In a revivalist flavor of Calvinism, that's often

276
00:15:34,840 --> 00:15:39,519
referred to as the New Light, which stresses the necessity

277
00:15:39,679 --> 00:15:43,440
of a dramatic and physically intense like you have to

278
00:15:43,480 --> 00:15:45,840
be like feeling something physical.

279
00:15:45,919 --> 00:15:49,240
Speaker 4: To yeah, yeah, like cry vomit.

280
00:15:50,159 --> 00:15:54,000
Speaker 1: Sometimes also like have like crazy physical like what we

281
00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:56,360
would call nowadays like being slain in the spirit, those

282
00:15:56,440 --> 00:15:58,840
kinds of things. You have to have this physically intense

283
00:15:58,879 --> 00:16:01,279
conversion experience in order to know that you are one

284
00:16:01,360 --> 00:16:02,120
of the elect.

285
00:16:02,639 --> 00:16:03,519
Speaker 4: Now, the New Light.

286
00:16:05,440 --> 00:16:10,840
Speaker 1: Basically emphasizes this personal conversion experience as being more important

287
00:16:10,919 --> 00:16:13,240
than the Old Light, so that obviously, if there's new light,

288
00:16:13,240 --> 00:16:15,120
there's an old light. The old light is the is

289
00:16:15,159 --> 00:16:18,159
that idea of the Theocratic Covenant community, which is already

290
00:16:18,200 --> 00:16:22,360
kind of not working right. So, as I mentioned Edwards,

291
00:16:22,480 --> 00:16:24,960
he's the leading voice in the New Light, or one

292
00:16:25,000 --> 00:16:29,720
of them, And this is how we should understand the context,

293
00:16:29,759 --> 00:16:32,759
for instance, of the text of the sermon Sinners in

294
00:16:32,799 --> 00:16:36,200
the Hands of an Angry God. And also what most

295
00:16:36,240 --> 00:16:38,960
people don't know is the occasion on which he preached this.

296
00:16:39,159 --> 00:16:44,480
So basically what was going on was we have all

297
00:16:44,519 --> 00:16:49,799
these congregations that have basically resisted conversion, like full conversion,

298
00:16:49,919 --> 00:16:53,559
like you know, So what we need to do is

299
00:16:53,720 --> 00:16:56,159
send kind of like a specialist in you know, like

300
00:16:56,240 --> 00:16:58,480
I know a guy, you know, a man with a

301
00:16:58,600 --> 00:17:00,879
very special set of skills who can win people into

302
00:17:00,879 --> 00:17:05,359
a frenzy basically and help them, help them kind of

303
00:17:05,799 --> 00:17:11,039
kind of uh uh convert. And And the thing is

304
00:17:11,079 --> 00:17:14,759
that when we one of the one of the odd

305
00:17:14,839 --> 00:17:20,119
things about this kind of revivalist focus in American American Christianity,

306
00:17:20,119 --> 00:17:21,880
which is still very much what I grew up with,

307
00:17:22,920 --> 00:17:26,680
is that you're already you're always preaching to people who

308
00:17:26,680 --> 00:17:29,880
are already Christians. Yeah, like you're you're you're going to

309
00:17:29,920 --> 00:17:32,519
the church, You're you're preaching to people who are in

310
00:17:32,559 --> 00:17:34,279
the pews every Sunday, and what you're trying to do

311
00:17:34,359 --> 00:17:38,039
is kind of like warm them up again, right. So, uh,

312
00:17:38,079 --> 00:17:40,200
he'd been asked to come and preach to this particular

313
00:17:40,240 --> 00:17:44,319
congregation where almost everybody was baptized because.

314
00:17:45,079 --> 00:17:48,359
Speaker 2: Christian, though, like are they you know, are they really?

315
00:17:48,799 --> 00:17:52,039
Speaker 4: I mean, like that's the thing, is like are you really?

316
00:17:52,160 --> 00:17:53,119
Speaker 3: Like are you really?

317
00:17:53,160 --> 00:17:55,039
Speaker 2: And so I keep that to preaching because I don't

318
00:17:55,200 --> 00:17:55,599
I don't know.

319
00:17:55,640 --> 00:17:58,160
Speaker 3: Maybe there's one of you that hasn't you know, really

320
00:17:58,799 --> 00:17:59,960
isn't really a Christian.

321
00:18:01,039 --> 00:18:04,400
Speaker 1: There's someone here who's never put a stake in the ground,

322
00:18:04,440 --> 00:18:07,119
and said Lord, I give my life to you on

323
00:18:07,160 --> 00:18:09,200
this stage, or who haven't done that? Listen, if you

324
00:18:09,200 --> 00:18:12,200
want to play this game, Jonathan, I can. I still

325
00:18:12,240 --> 00:18:13,480
I still remember the lingo.

326
00:18:16,359 --> 00:18:17,599
Speaker 4: So oh man.

327
00:18:18,480 --> 00:18:20,759
Speaker 1: So he's asked to come and preach this congregation where

328
00:18:20,799 --> 00:18:24,279
almost everybody's baptized because they have a very low number

329
00:18:24,279 --> 00:18:26,119
of full members, that is, people who have undergone this

330
00:18:26,279 --> 00:18:28,640
dramatic experience. And they'd already sent two or three other

331
00:18:28,680 --> 00:18:30,960
preachers there and they couldn't get the job done. So

332
00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:32,400
now they're like, all right, it's time to bring the

333
00:18:32,400 --> 00:18:36,759
big guns and Jonathan Edward's job. And by the way,

334
00:18:36,799 --> 00:18:40,119
I have to say, I still like Jonathan Edwards, like

335
00:18:40,240 --> 00:18:42,319
when I'm when I'm talking about people like him or

336
00:18:42,400 --> 00:18:44,279
David Brainer, who I might talk about a little bit later.

337
00:18:45,079 --> 00:18:47,440
I still really have a lot of affection for these men.

338
00:18:47,480 --> 00:18:48,880
I mean I read a lot of their writings as

339
00:18:48,920 --> 00:18:52,079
a young man. I read their biographies, and Edwards had

340
00:18:52,119 --> 00:18:55,480
a really strong mystical side. He believed in something kind

341
00:18:55,480 --> 00:18:58,960
of like theosis. And so he's not he's not really

342
00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:01,960
actually Sue a super fire and brimstone guy, except you know,

343
00:19:02,079 --> 00:19:03,880
like it's one of the tools in his toolbox. Anyway,

344
00:19:04,400 --> 00:19:06,079
I just want to say, like, I'm not an Edwards

345
00:19:06,079 --> 00:19:09,240
hater for you know, I still kind of have a

346
00:19:09,279 --> 00:19:13,039
sort of affection for this guy. But the whole point

347
00:19:13,039 --> 00:19:15,319
of the sermon that he's preaching is literally to scare

348
00:19:15,359 --> 00:19:19,000
the hell out of these I mean that literally as

349
00:19:19,519 --> 00:19:23,839
out of all these baptized but unconverted people, to give

350
00:19:23,880 --> 00:19:27,640
them the conversion experience necessary to become real Christians.

351
00:19:28,720 --> 00:19:30,359
Speaker 4: And that's the context is also.

352
00:19:30,319 --> 00:19:33,920
Speaker 3: All bound up in the civil participations, That's right.

353
00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:37,039
Speaker 1: So that's the thing that we cannot forget here is

354
00:19:37,079 --> 00:19:40,759
that part of the reason it is a societal problem

355
00:19:41,519 --> 00:19:43,799
is because a lot of things are going wrong in

356
00:19:43,799 --> 00:19:47,039
New England. I mentioned the Salem witch trials, right, Well,

357
00:19:49,799 --> 00:19:52,599
there's been this practice of folk magic. There's been this

358
00:19:52,720 --> 00:19:56,279
practice of various kinds of magic, some of them practiced

359
00:19:56,319 --> 00:19:59,279
by everybody, including the people conducting the same witch trials,

360
00:19:59,640 --> 00:20:03,200
and some of them like much much more sinister. Like

361
00:20:03,279 --> 00:20:06,240
I don't believe everybody in the Sanling witch trials was

362
00:20:06,279 --> 00:20:10,039
necessarily falsely accused. You know, it's a it's a really

363
00:20:10,039 --> 00:20:13,039
interesting period. That's a whole video by itself, maybe, But

364
00:20:14,920 --> 00:20:16,920
the point is that you know, things, things have been

365
00:20:16,960 --> 00:20:21,200
going wrong. There's this kind of weird underbelly within the

366
00:20:21,720 --> 00:20:25,119
world of the Puritans where it's very clear that the

367
00:20:25,160 --> 00:20:27,440
thing that they set out to do, which is to

368
00:20:27,440 --> 00:20:30,119
to have this totally theocratic society in which everybody is

369
00:20:30,319 --> 00:20:33,519
genuinely converted, just hasn't worked. There was you know, you

370
00:20:33,559 --> 00:20:35,160
have the same the witch trials. But also you just

371
00:20:35,200 --> 00:20:37,880
have the fact that now by the time of the

372
00:20:37,880 --> 00:20:40,319
Great Awakening, only about fifteen percent of people go to

373
00:20:40,400 --> 00:20:43,039
church on Sunday. You have the you know, the fact

374
00:20:43,039 --> 00:20:44,680
that you have these churches that are full of people

375
00:20:44,680 --> 00:20:47,440
who are who are baptized but not converted, and therefore

376
00:20:47,480 --> 00:20:50,799
their kids also are unbaptized, and you know, just all

377
00:20:50,799 --> 00:20:53,720
these all these different issues, right, So this is the

378
00:20:53,759 --> 00:20:58,240
context for this is the context for this the sermon

379
00:20:58,279 --> 00:21:00,799
Sinners in the Hands of the Angry God is we've

380
00:21:00,799 --> 00:21:07,039
got to kind of get people, get people, uh through

381
00:21:07,079 --> 00:21:10,400
this this idea of having this uh they have to

382
00:21:10,440 --> 00:21:14,920
have this dramatic conversion experience. And this to me, if

383
00:21:14,920 --> 00:21:17,920
I were going to put a finger on, Okay, what's

384
00:21:17,960 --> 00:21:19,799
the number one defining.

385
00:21:19,319 --> 00:21:21,079
Speaker 4: Feature of American religion?

386
00:21:22,160 --> 00:21:23,880
Speaker 1: And this is you know, this is also what Harold

387
00:21:23,880 --> 00:21:26,759
Bluem would say, is this is that there has to

388
00:21:26,799 --> 00:21:33,000
be this experiential experience, experiential conversion right now, every single

389
00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:34,720
one of these things we're going to talk about is

390
00:21:34,759 --> 00:21:38,200
not bad in and of itself. Like obviously, lots of

391
00:21:38,200 --> 00:21:42,039
famous people within the Orthodox Church, beginning with Saint Paul

392
00:21:42,359 --> 00:21:46,200
and the other apostles, had radical encounters with Jesus Christ

393
00:21:46,240 --> 00:21:49,279
which totally transformed their lives and they give up everything

394
00:21:49,480 --> 00:21:53,880
to follow him. So there's not obviously there's nothing wrong

395
00:21:53,920 --> 00:21:59,119
with that. But what is the The thing is that

396
00:21:59,200 --> 00:22:02,359
it's not it's just not normative for everyone, right, It's not.

397
00:22:02,480 --> 00:22:05,279
It's just not the experience that everybody has. Not everybody

398
00:22:05,279 --> 00:22:09,200
has a road to Damascus moment. Well, in American Christianity,

399
00:22:09,279 --> 00:22:12,480
everybody is supposed to have a road to Damascus moment,

400
00:22:13,400 --> 00:22:16,720
And uh, you know, it's hard. I always felt a little,

401
00:22:19,799 --> 00:22:22,480
you know, as somebody who converted, you know, when I

402
00:22:22,519 --> 00:22:24,599
when I was quite young, you know, as you know,

403
00:22:24,880 --> 00:22:26,480
I was three years old, when I said the prayer

404
00:22:26,480 --> 00:22:30,799
and asked Jesus into my heart all those things. It

405
00:22:31,079 --> 00:22:33,000
was always hard because I felt like, oh, I didn't

406
00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:35,039
have any big sins that I kind of converted from

407
00:22:35,039 --> 00:22:37,440
and so then what you do is you you you

408
00:22:37,480 --> 00:22:40,480
start rededicating your life, you know. Or I had friends

409
00:22:40,519 --> 00:22:42,920
who just decided in their teens, Oh I wasn't really saved,

410
00:22:42,920 --> 00:22:45,000
but now I'm saved, you know. And and just like

411
00:22:45,079 --> 00:22:47,279
you need the you kind of need that big moment,

412
00:22:47,359 --> 00:22:48,960
You need that big thing that you could kind of

413
00:22:48,960 --> 00:22:52,039
look back to and say, hey, this is this is

414
00:22:52,079 --> 00:22:55,480
the big moment where where I where I converted. So

415
00:22:55,599 --> 00:23:02,119
this constant push for uh, these big conversion experiences in

416
00:23:02,279 --> 00:23:08,880
New England and in in New England and in New York,

417
00:23:09,160 --> 00:23:12,400
especially in the what is what is sometimes called the

418
00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:14,319
burned Over District, which is what I'm going to talk

419
00:23:14,319 --> 00:23:20,039
about next. This this push is related to all the

420
00:23:20,039 --> 00:23:21,400
stuff that we were talking about last time.

421
00:23:21,440 --> 00:23:22,680
Speaker 4: It's related to folk magic.

422
00:23:23,039 --> 00:23:26,000
Speaker 1: One of the big ideas that you find in the

423
00:23:26,039 --> 00:23:30,000
second generation of the Magisterial Reformation is this this interest

424
00:23:30,000 --> 00:23:33,839
in alchemy and the idea of alchemy as the conversion

425
00:23:33,880 --> 00:23:36,799
of the soul. Now that we've moved away mostly from

426
00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:41,160
a more sacramental approach to salvation, alchemy becomes this kind

427
00:23:41,200 --> 00:23:44,519
of metaphorical all right, we're not changing you know, base

428
00:23:44,599 --> 00:23:46,960
matter into gold, but you can change the base matter

429
00:23:47,039 --> 00:23:49,119
of your heart into gold like it. And so this

430
00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:52,079
idea of like the total conversion of the soul and

431
00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:55,319
all of that stuff is just kind of bubbling up.

432
00:23:55,519 --> 00:23:57,480
There's lots and lots of examples that we talked about

433
00:23:57,559 --> 00:23:59,160
last time. All this stuff is kind of bubbling up

434
00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:01,440
in Puritan New England, and it's bubbling up in upstate

435
00:24:01,480 --> 00:24:01,880
New York.

436
00:24:03,559 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 3: And in.

437
00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:10,119
Speaker 1: The early nineteenth century this leads to something called the

438
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:13,960
burnt Over District in western and central New York State

439
00:24:14,440 --> 00:24:17,799
that becomes This is really where all of these big

440
00:24:17,920 --> 00:24:20,640
movements come out of. So there's several things that are

441
00:24:20,640 --> 00:24:23,160
going on here. One is the survival of all these

442
00:24:23,200 --> 00:24:25,599
different forms of folk magic and folk religion, a big

443
00:24:25,640 --> 00:24:28,640
part of which is the idea of seers, the idea

444
00:24:28,720 --> 00:24:32,359
of visionaries, the idea of you could be someone who

445
00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:35,920
has these kind of visionary experiences and becomes the portal

446
00:24:35,920 --> 00:24:39,240
of wisdom to your community. And again that is a

447
00:24:39,279 --> 00:24:43,680
real thing, but it is also, at least in our tradition,

448
00:24:43,799 --> 00:24:47,359
there's a tremendous amount of sobriety around these kinds of

449
00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:51,680
experiences because it is so easy without discernment, so easy

450
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:52,519
to be led astray.

451
00:24:53,599 --> 00:24:55,400
Speaker 2: This is something people struggle to understand.

452
00:24:55,559 --> 00:24:58,400
Speaker 3: I want to say just one thing about this is

453
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:04,839
that people in the Orthodox tradition there is an attitude

454
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:07,880
of suspicion towards all of these things, like all of

455
00:25:07,880 --> 00:25:11,039
these experiences of the visions, of the miracles and all

456
00:25:11,079 --> 00:25:14,160
of that, and people think that it's in some ways.

457
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:16,160
I've heard people say, well, you're kind of dampening the

458
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:18,440
spirit or whatever that kind of language.

459
00:25:18,519 --> 00:25:20,839
Speaker 2: But in fact, our tradition is full of them.

460
00:25:20,920 --> 00:25:21,079
Speaker 4: Though.

461
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:24,880
Speaker 3: Our tradition is full of people who have foresighted, people

462
00:25:24,920 --> 00:25:25,720
who do miracles.

463
00:25:25,799 --> 00:25:26,680
Speaker 2: It's full of it.

464
00:25:26,680 --> 00:25:30,680
Speaker 3: It's just that it's there's also a critical apparatus which

465
00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:34,119
is there to prevent the kind of accesses and the

466
00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:38,880
kind of charlatanry or just emotional or you know, kind

467
00:25:38,880 --> 00:25:42,079
of people who just get caught up in their own experiences.

468
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:44,759
And so it's not it's a funny contradict. It's a

469
00:25:44,759 --> 00:25:46,680
funny paradox when people look at it. On the one end,

470
00:25:46,799 --> 00:25:48,559
there's a suspicion to it, and on the other hand,

471
00:25:48,559 --> 00:25:51,319
the tradition is full of these these kinds of reality.

472
00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:55,599
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, so the common advice, the common

473
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:58,160
advice is you know, if you're you know, you're praying

474
00:25:58,200 --> 00:25:59,799
to Jesus, prayer or something like that, and you have

475
00:25:59,839 --> 00:26:04,799
some kind of a vision or visionary ecstatic experience, is

476
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:08,359
just to ignore it, act like nothing happened until it

477
00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:10,880
happens three times. If it happens three times, then you

478
00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:13,000
go and talk to your spiritual father. And by the way,

479
00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:16,559
the you know, the thing that's implied by this advice

480
00:26:16,640 --> 00:26:19,599
is that you have a spiritual father, somebody who cares

481
00:26:19,599 --> 00:26:22,079
for you, cares about your soul, is themselves much more

482
00:26:22,079 --> 00:26:25,759
spiritually experienced than you are, and also has the authority

483
00:26:25,839 --> 00:26:28,599
to tell you, yes, stop messing around with that stuff,

484
00:26:28,759 --> 00:26:30,119
or no, this is really from God.

485
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:31,160
Speaker 4: You should follow this up.

486
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:37,359
Speaker 1: And that aspect of obedience is one of the things

487
00:26:37,400 --> 00:26:42,319
that is intentionally missing, intentionally missing from the American religion.

488
00:26:42,799 --> 00:26:44,240
We'll talk about this a little bit more when we

489
00:26:44,279 --> 00:26:47,799
talk about bloom in a second. So is the burned

490
00:26:47,839 --> 00:26:52,160
over District and the burned over District. By the way,

491
00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:58,200
this title was popularized by Charles Finney. I don't know

492
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:02,920
if you know that name, Big Big, another big person

493
00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:06,920
in my background. Charles Finny in eighteen seventy six, he

494
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:12,000
writes his biography. Autobiography is published after his death. Finny

495
00:27:12,119 --> 00:27:15,519
was the most famous revivalist preacher from the era. He

496
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:21,160
was a former lawyer who approached By the way, it's

497
00:27:21,200 --> 00:27:23,480
just always sort of bad news whenever a lawyer starts

498
00:27:23,519 --> 00:27:26,319
doing theology, like historically speaking, it has not been good.

499
00:27:28,519 --> 00:27:29,839
Speaker 4: But yeah, in his.

500
00:27:31,759 --> 00:27:36,079
Speaker 1: He's a former lawyer, and his approach to preaching was

501
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:38,880
to approach his congregation as he would a jury. So

502
00:27:38,920 --> 00:27:41,319
what he was trying to do was to get you

503
00:27:41,359 --> 00:27:45,880
to come to a certain verdict, right, and so he

504
00:27:46,359 --> 00:27:51,039
would preach these very emotional, direct sermons that would urge

505
00:27:51,039 --> 00:27:53,799
like these immediate decisions for Christ. This is the guy

506
00:27:53,799 --> 00:27:58,079
who literally invented the altar call yeah wow yeah. So

507
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:04,160
by the time he wrote his memoirs, he said that

508
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:07,319
the region, this region had been so thoroughly and so

509
00:28:07,440 --> 00:28:12,079
repeatedly evangelized that there was no spiritual fuel left. That was,

510
00:28:12,119 --> 00:28:17,720
there was no unconverted population left to be converted, right,

511
00:28:17,799 --> 00:28:20,440
so no fuel left to burn the burned over district. Right,

512
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:25,759
that's the idea, because they'd had these waves after waves

513
00:28:25,799 --> 00:28:28,960
after waves after waves of religious enthusiasm. By the way,

514
00:28:28,960 --> 00:28:34,400
this is still a really weird region in the present

515
00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:39,480
times religiously speaking, but there were these waves after waves

516
00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:42,240
of religious enthusiasm, you had revivals, but you also had

517
00:28:42,279 --> 00:28:46,519
new religions, new colts, new sects, new spreading, and also spiritualism.

518
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:52,079
And there were more towns experiencing these kind of big

519
00:28:52,119 --> 00:28:56,480
revivals between eighteen sixteen and eighteen twenty one than in any.

520
00:28:56,400 --> 00:28:58,480
Speaker 4: Previous period of New York history.

521
00:28:58,519 --> 00:29:01,319
Speaker 1: And the big kind of climate is between eighteen twenty

522
00:29:01,319 --> 00:29:03,440
five and eighteen thirty seven. So those are the days

523
00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:05,079
that we're looking at. And of course that's right when

524
00:29:05,599 --> 00:29:08,119
Mormonism pops up. That's also right when of a lot

525
00:29:08,119 --> 00:29:10,680
of these other movements pop up. Now the other big

526
00:29:10,680 --> 00:29:13,480
thing that's going on in the area right now, because

527
00:29:13,519 --> 00:29:15,559
these things never happened in vacuums. Of course, the opening

528
00:29:15,599 --> 00:29:20,920
of the Erie Canal in eighteen twenty five, which hugely

529
00:29:20,960 --> 00:29:23,440
transforms the region overnight, right it goes from being kind

530
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:26,240
of like an isolated frontier to becoming, you know, this

531
00:29:26,359 --> 00:29:30,200
huge corridor of commerce and migration. It's bringing in rapid growth,

532
00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:32,720
it's bringing lots of new money. It's also bringing in

533
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:36,759
all the stresses that come with that social dislocation. A

534
00:29:36,799 --> 00:29:40,200
constant flow of new ideas and new people, and so

535
00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:42,920
it goes from being kind of the edge to being

536
00:29:43,119 --> 00:29:46,240
actually just this threshold space, this liminal space. It's not

537
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:48,920
the settled world of like colonial New England. It's not

538
00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:53,599
the wild frontier. And in this place we have several

539
00:29:53,640 --> 00:29:57,039
movements that are all popping up at once, and they

540
00:29:57,079 --> 00:30:01,000
all basically have have in common a heavy focus on

541
00:30:01,039 --> 00:30:07,279
a conversion experience, on some integration of folk magic or spiritualism,

542
00:30:07,920 --> 00:30:14,160
and also the usually this idea that what we need

543
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:21,079
to do is to found certain utopian certain utopian societies

544
00:30:21,119 --> 00:30:23,680
to either bring about or to wait for the Second Coming.

545
00:30:24,079 --> 00:30:29,880
So Mormonism in eighteen thirty, Millerism in the eighteen forties.

546
00:30:30,039 --> 00:30:35,640
So this is William Miller's revival preaching of the imminent

547
00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:37,279
second Coming, and this is going to be the thing

548
00:30:37,319 --> 00:30:41,839
that eventually Advotism will develop out of. In eighteen forty eight,

549
00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:44,200
this is when you have the big spiritualist movement pop

550
00:30:44,319 --> 00:30:47,680
up in the same part in Hydesville, Hydesville, New York.

551
00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:49,680
You have the Fox Sisters and they're the ones that

552
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:52,680
start doing the seances with the table tapping and all

553
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:57,440
this stuff. You have the Shakers who establish a commune,

554
00:30:57,480 --> 00:30:59,799
a commune in central New York in eighteen twenty six

555
00:31:00,119 --> 00:31:03,440
is a big Shaker revival. In eighteen thirty seven, you

556
00:31:03,480 --> 00:31:07,640
have the Anita Community with John Hemphrey Noyes who tries

557
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:15,839
to establish like a a just like a utopius utopianist

558
00:31:15,920 --> 00:31:18,799
commune there. And then of course you also have lots

559
00:31:18,799 --> 00:31:20,839
of stuff going on with the Masons, a lot of

560
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:24,839
pro Mason stuff, also a lot of anti Mason stuff. Right,

561
00:31:25,039 --> 00:31:26,599
There's a lot of stuff going on with the Masons

562
00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:28,759
during all of this period, and a lot of the

563
00:31:28,799 --> 00:31:33,240
times when certain groups obviously Joseph Smith, I think this

564
00:31:33,279 --> 00:31:36,559
is pretty well documented, but when certain groups would bring

565
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:40,119
ritual components into the things that they were doing, they

566
00:31:40,119 --> 00:31:46,039
would often kind of ape the rituals of the Masonic Temple. So, yeah,

567
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:47,599
let me just talk a little bit about a couple

568
00:31:47,599 --> 00:31:51,799
of these movements. So there's the Millerite movement and something

569
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:58,319
called famously the Great Disappointment. So this is a second

570
00:31:58,319 --> 00:32:01,960
coming prophecy. They yeah, it's the first big famous one. Obviously,

571
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,160
we have a bunch of them. There was one just

572
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:07,039
the other day. It's just a few just the other day.

573
00:32:07,160 --> 00:32:09,160
Like I was, I was getting on an airplane and

574
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:11,000
somebody was like, oh, at least you'll be a little

575
00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:13,759
closer to the sky when you know, the rapture happens.

576
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:16,039
And I said, yeah, but I'm Orthodox, so I'll just

577
00:32:16,079 --> 00:32:19,720
get stuck in a toll house. But anyway, probably the

578
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,480
toll house of making jokes about toll houses, but anyway.

579
00:32:23,119 --> 00:32:23,400
Speaker 4: Yeah.

580
00:32:23,480 --> 00:32:29,440
Speaker 1: So there's a guy named William Miller, and he is

581
00:32:29,759 --> 00:32:31,839
he's like this millennialist in this in the in the

582
00:32:31,839 --> 00:32:33,920
old sense, like Achilles, in the sense that you know,

583
00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:35,720
he's trying to bring about the Second Coming or the

584
00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:38,599
second Coming is definitely going to happen really really soon.

585
00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:42,119
And so he reads Daniel chapter eight to eight and

586
00:32:42,759 --> 00:32:46,640
begins this. It's not really original to him, but he's

587
00:32:46,680 --> 00:32:49,400
the first American to really do this thing of reading

588
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:51,200
the Bible and reading the Book of Daniel closely and

589
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:53,200
reading the Book of Revelation closely, very much like the

590
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:55,400
people that I grew up with, and trying to like

591
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:58,240
work out the exact day, map it out, map it out,

592
00:32:58,319 --> 00:33:01,960
map it out, and in his case, in his case,

593
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:06,039
he puts this mathematical calculation together to say that the

594
00:33:06,039 --> 00:33:09,039
Second Coming of Christ is going to happen in January

595
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:12,880
eighteen forty three, and then March twenty first, and then

596
00:33:13,279 --> 00:33:17,079
March twenty first, eighteen forty four, and when that date

597
00:33:17,119 --> 00:33:23,400
passes with that incident, we have the great disappointment, and

598
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:26,400
all of this leads to kind of they start to

599
00:33:26,480 --> 00:33:29,440
try to figure all of this stuff out. And I've

600
00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:31,839
got a buddy who's definitely going to watch this, who

601
00:33:32,079 --> 00:33:34,000
knows a lot more about the history of Adventism than

602
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:38,039
I do, so he's been helping me figure some of

603
00:33:38,039 --> 00:33:41,240
this out. But there's this there's this idea that there's

604
00:33:41,319 --> 00:33:48,759
this a special kind of judgment. I can't even I

605
00:33:48,759 --> 00:33:51,119
suddenly blinked out. I had a term in my head

606
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:52,759
a moment ago, and I suddenly blinked out on it.

607
00:33:54,200 --> 00:33:58,000
But the thing that was actually prophesied is that is

608
00:33:57,519 --> 00:34:02,359
that on this stage yeary judgment. Yeah, that's like, yeah,

609
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:04,559
it's but it's like God has entered, you know, Christ

610
00:34:04,559 --> 00:34:07,640
has entered into the Holy Place and now he's he's

611
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:12,400
he's beginning the final judgment there, and that's actually the thing.

612
00:34:12,519 --> 00:34:15,519
And so that's that's what Adventism, Seventh day Adventism kind

613
00:34:15,559 --> 00:34:19,760
of comes out of. Now there's also there's also, uh yeah,

614
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:21,599
so that the thing that you're being judged on is

615
00:34:21,599 --> 00:34:23,440
Sabbath keeping. The thing you're being judged on is like

616
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:26,440
the other things that are kind of important in Adventism.

617
00:34:26,719 --> 00:34:26,880
Speaker 4: Right.

618
00:34:26,920 --> 00:34:27,960
Speaker 2: I thought, I'm sure.

619
00:34:27,800 --> 00:34:31,800
Speaker 3: Somebody mostly a kind of judaizing of Christianity, but I

620
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:34,159
didn't know it comes out of that.

621
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:36,039
Speaker 1: It does come out of that. I mean there were

622
00:34:36,599 --> 00:34:39,599
there was a Sabbatarian Baptists, there were other Sabbatarian groups

623
00:34:40,360 --> 00:34:45,400
before this. I mean that that judaizing thing. Oh, I

624
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:47,440
keep teasing the Kabola thing, and I think we're gonna

625
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:47,920
run out of time.

626
00:34:48,159 --> 00:34:50,199
Speaker 3: No, you showed the cover of a book with the

627
00:34:50,199 --> 00:34:52,079
word Kabla on it, and now we haven't talked about

628
00:34:52,119 --> 00:34:52,800
kabola at all.

629
00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:56,199
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, Okay, Well so maybe maybe maybe it

630
00:34:56,280 --> 00:34:57,760
would be a good time to kind of address this

631
00:34:57,800 --> 00:35:01,440
a little bit. So I'm not going to do a

632
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:05,559
whole like what even is kabola video because I just

633
00:35:05,599 --> 00:35:07,239
think that would not be helpful for a lot of people.

634
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:09,920
But I mean, also, like all the stuff is on

635
00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:11,960
the internet now, like it's you can just look this

636
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:14,320
stuff up. But the thing that I'm particularly interested in

637
00:35:14,559 --> 00:35:18,760
is the ways that the Puritans were were interested in

638
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:22,480
it So, for instance, Cotton Mather and his father, Increased Mather,

639
00:35:22,519 --> 00:35:26,639
who are like the big Puritans, like big Puritans, connected

640
00:35:26,639 --> 00:35:29,480
to the sale Land witch trials, connected to like a

641
00:35:29,519 --> 00:35:33,559
ton of the the major like puritanical you know, Christian writings,

642
00:35:33,599 --> 00:35:36,400
mystical writings, and things like that. When you think of

643
00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:42,440
Puritans as being like austere biblical literagy, biblical literists, literalists

644
00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:47,239
who are like super hostile to mysticism and esoteric speculation,

645
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:51,719
that's just simply not the case. The Mathers were hugely

646
00:35:51,760 --> 00:35:57,119
interested and very i think deeply influenced by Jewish mysticism

647
00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:00,320
Kabbo law. And this is not just a peripheral interest

648
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:05,039
for them. It shapes their understanding of America's providential role

649
00:36:05,159 --> 00:36:08,920
and also their approach to two very important things. One

650
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:12,199
is eschatology and the other is the conversion of the Jews.

651
00:36:13,039 --> 00:36:17,679
So around the late sixteen eighties, this is according to

652
00:36:17,679 --> 00:36:23,719
Ogrin's book, Puritan leaders began developing a Messianic theology that

653
00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:28,639
is based largely on the conversion of the Jews. And

654
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:34,039
there's actually a Jewish convert who's part of all of this,

655
00:36:34,159 --> 00:36:37,719
the first Jewish convert in America. And when he converts

656
00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:41,360
to Christianity, he brings Kabalah with him and introduces all

657
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:45,000
of these major players, introduces them to Jewish mysticism. And

658
00:36:45,039 --> 00:36:48,679
so there's this belief, there's this belief and this maybe

659
00:36:48,840 --> 00:36:51,039
this will kind of just tease our next video a

660
00:36:51,039 --> 00:36:51,440
little bit.

661
00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:58,599
Speaker 4: There's this belief that Jewish mystical wisdom, properly understood through

662
00:36:59,159 --> 00:37:04,239
Puritan Christian eyes, is going to play a role in

663
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:07,960
the end times and in the establishment of God's kingdom

664
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:12,440
on the earth. And so there's a cabalistic manuscript that

665
00:37:12,519 --> 00:37:15,360
is attributed to George Keith. He was a Quaker who

666
00:37:15,599 --> 00:37:18,960
was really into Kabola. It makes its way from Pennsylvania

667
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:23,920
to the Mather Family Library in Massachusetts, and Cotton Mather

668
00:37:24,679 --> 00:37:30,480
engaged in an extended correspondence with Keith and kind of

669
00:37:30,880 --> 00:37:34,480
trying to and starts sort of creating the synthesis of

670
00:37:34,840 --> 00:37:41,840
Puritan Congregationalism and Quakerism and Kabbalah. And this the thing

671
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:43,800
that they're looking for, the thing that they're sort of

672
00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:44,639
pushing for.

673
00:37:44,800 --> 00:37:51,559
Speaker 1: Is a like a mystical a series of mystical principles

674
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:54,559
which will ultimately lead to the founding of a fully

675
00:37:54,639 --> 00:37:57,880
Christian nation. That will then usher in the Kingdom of God.

676
00:37:58,559 --> 00:38:01,639
And so this for the pure tens, this is a

677
00:38:01,679 --> 00:38:04,440
big part. And of course, like along with this, there's

678
00:38:04,519 --> 00:38:07,639
like there's these weird like folk magic and ritual aspects too,

679
00:38:08,159 --> 00:38:11,559
and some of that has a weird some of that,

680
00:38:11,639 --> 00:38:15,199
you know, all of the stuff bubbles up in weird places.

681
00:38:15,880 --> 00:38:18,239
The thing about folk magic, the thing about like any

682
00:38:18,280 --> 00:38:22,400
kind of illicit you're like, you know, sub rosa, let's say,

683
00:38:23,119 --> 00:38:28,440
ritual aspects, whether it's sacabolo or masonism or just something else,

684
00:38:28,920 --> 00:38:32,599
is that they they tend to they bleed together so

685
00:38:32,679 --> 00:38:35,280
much sometimes it's hard to like pick a piece out

686
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:38,000
and say where this piece came from, because because they

687
00:38:38,079 --> 00:38:40,199
just sort of like there's this constant kind of exchange

688
00:38:40,239 --> 00:38:40,840
that's happening.

689
00:38:41,599 --> 00:38:43,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think that that's if you look at

690
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:46,559
things like if you look at things like voodoo, or

691
00:38:47,159 --> 00:38:49,199
if you look at yeah, yeah, I mean a lot

692
00:38:49,199 --> 00:38:53,679
of this stuff practices, they're they're extremely confused. Like it's

693
00:38:53,719 --> 00:38:56,400
basically like mixture and they just pick and they just

694
00:38:56,440 --> 00:38:58,199
pick things and throw them in and they have these

695
00:38:58,280 --> 00:39:01,519
ritual practices that that that are not pure in any way.

696
00:39:01,559 --> 00:39:04,039
They're basically it's like, it's a bunch of it looks

697
00:39:04,079 --> 00:39:05,760
like some of it is Christians and it is Jewish,

698
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:08,000
some of it is who knows, Indian, who knows where

699
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:08,480
it comes from.

700
00:39:08,480 --> 00:39:12,639
Speaker 1: It's we talked about Appalachian Appalachian granny magic last time,

701
00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:14,599
and one of the things that's actually really big in

702
00:39:14,639 --> 00:39:18,400
that context is statues of the Virgin Mary, which are

703
00:39:18,519 --> 00:39:20,519
used in ritual ways for lots of things, even those

704
00:39:20,599 --> 00:39:22,679
people are not Catholics.

705
00:39:22,760 --> 00:39:24,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, so so so interesting.

706
00:39:26,599 --> 00:39:28,639
Speaker 4: So there.

707
00:39:28,719 --> 00:39:31,159
Speaker 1: So there's there's that kind of lower aspect of it,

708
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:34,119
and then there's also the higher, more philosophical aspect, which

709
00:39:34,159 --> 00:39:36,599
is focused on this idea that.

710
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:39,000
Speaker 4: America.

711
00:39:39,559 --> 00:39:41,800
Speaker 1: Lets let's say that there is a that America is

712
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:48,320
supposed to have a Messianic role in the end times,

713
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:50,840
in the bringing about of the Kingdom of God on earth,

714
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:57,000
and that this this this is involved within Jewish mysticism

715
00:39:57,039 --> 00:40:00,599
to some extent. And I know we've talking a lot,

716
00:40:00,639 --> 00:40:04,480
you've been talking a lot about the the post World

717
00:40:04,519 --> 00:40:09,239
War two consensus, the post World War two consensus that

718
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:13,800
was established, you know, after the Second World War, and all.

719
00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:14,480
Speaker 4: The things that come with.

720
00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:19,280
Speaker 1: It, is, among other things, it's more complicated than this,

721
00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:20,800
but one of the main things it is. I mean,

722
00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:22,159
if you if you just think about the fact that

723
00:40:22,159 --> 00:40:24,800
the post World War two consensus is only possible and

724
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:28,280
has only been possible because of American military power in

725
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:32,639
the world, American industry. That's that's been aimed at maintaining

726
00:40:32,679 --> 00:40:36,599
that consensus the America, that the post World War two

727
00:40:36,599 --> 00:40:40,039
consensus is aimed at this idea that that America has

728
00:40:40,159 --> 00:40:45,800
a an eschatological role in the in the world right

729
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:49,360
and therefore what happens in other parts of the world

730
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:50,800
ultimately is our business.

731
00:40:51,039 --> 00:40:52,159
Speaker 4: We're a force for good.

732
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:54,159
Speaker 1: And this is not just the Magot people, and this

733
00:40:54,239 --> 00:40:56,880
is not just you know, like crazy religious people who

734
00:40:56,880 --> 00:41:00,599
believe this. I have friends who are who are liberals.

735
00:41:00,639 --> 00:41:03,599
I have friends who are self identifying neo kons who

736
00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:06,039
don't want anything to do with all of that. But basically,

737
00:41:06,679 --> 00:41:10,480
this idea of America as the predominant force for good

738
00:41:10,519 --> 00:41:14,800
in history is something that they would unshamedly say, Yeah,

739
00:41:14,840 --> 00:41:15,920
that's absolutely what they believe.

740
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:19,519
Speaker 3: Well, let's get the devil it's due, Like, yeah, for sure,

741
00:41:19,559 --> 00:41:24,119
we're doing the we're doing the comedia now, or like

742
00:41:24,119 --> 00:41:28,000
we're finishing up with Paradiso and Dante amongst other people,

743
00:41:28,119 --> 00:41:34,480
had this idea of the Western movement of authority and power,

744
00:41:34,519 --> 00:41:38,119
basically that in some ways that authority and power moved

745
00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:41,679
like the heavens moved from the east to the west,

746
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:46,800
and that in some ways Rome was this kind of

747
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:50,639
image of this movement from Babylon and you know, Babylon

748
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:53,280
to the Greeks all to the Romans. And he even

749
00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:58,320
complained because of Constantine's changing of the capital to Constantinople,

750
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:00,960
because he was saying it was actually going against nature,

751
00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:01,480
because the.

752
00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:04,719
Speaker 2: Movement is supposed to move from east to west right.

753
00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:08,760
Speaker 3: And so there's like there's like an intuitive thing that

754
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:13,039
would happen if imagine the Western people discovered this massive

755
00:42:13,559 --> 00:42:17,360
land to the west of them that they began to

756
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:20,639
inhabit and to colonize and to create in their image,

757
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:23,360
that there would almost be like a thrust to believe

758
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:27,360
that this is some kind of eschatological happening, that that

759
00:42:27,440 --> 00:42:30,840
we're creating a kind of kingdom that will be related

760
00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:32,239
to the end of the day, to the end of

761
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:34,239
the world, to the you know, to the to the

762
00:42:34,239 --> 00:42:37,880
western end of this cycle something like that.

763
00:42:38,440 --> 00:42:42,320
Speaker 1: So I'll do you one more, do more, because because

764
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:44,519
I've been I've been thinking about exactly this thing is,

765
00:42:44,559 --> 00:42:47,000
like we're teaching through Dante, you know, fishing on our series,

766
00:42:47,039 --> 00:42:49,360
and obviously I love Dante, I also love American history.

767
00:42:49,480 --> 00:42:52,440
Like I wanted to be clear that when I'm talking

768
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:55,519
about these things, I'm just talking about connections that I see.

769
00:42:55,559 --> 00:42:59,159
I'm talking about stuff that's interesting to me. This is

770
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:00,760
just this is the kindry that I live in. You

771
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:03,719
just got to sort of you just got to see

772
00:43:03,760 --> 00:43:10,079
it for what it is, you know. But all of

773
00:43:10,079 --> 00:43:14,559
these people, you know, you're you're you're all of your

774
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:17,599
all of your Puritans, all of your revivalists, your nineteenth

775
00:43:17,599 --> 00:43:20,679
century revivalists. You're Joseph Smith's and you're Charles Finney's and

776
00:43:21,159 --> 00:43:27,039
all these guys they would have been Franciscans in Dante's time,

777
00:43:28,519 --> 00:43:31,320
like they would have Like like if you if you

778
00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:36,840
just look at the the there's this weird you know. Okay,

779
00:43:36,880 --> 00:43:39,480
So for people who have not been following along with

780
00:43:39,519 --> 00:43:42,079
the Dante coverage here on the Symbolic World, where we

781
00:43:42,159 --> 00:43:46,199
accurately cover events that happened a thousand years ago, it's

782
00:43:46,239 --> 00:43:48,039
the only way you can be sure it's not fake

783
00:43:48,119 --> 00:43:50,800
news is we've really had time to vet things. But anyway,

784
00:43:52,119 --> 00:43:54,519
if you've not been following along with the Dante coverage, right,

785
00:43:54,639 --> 00:43:58,079
so in the background of the Divine Comedy, and then

786
00:43:58,079 --> 00:44:00,400
also by the way, in the background of Umberto Echoes

787
00:44:00,519 --> 00:44:02,519
Name of the Rose, which we ended up talking about

788
00:44:02,519 --> 00:44:06,400
a little bit last class. There are these movements, these

789
00:44:06,440 --> 00:44:10,239
revivalistic movements, which will eventually kind of result in the

790
00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:14,400
Reformation and in the more especially the more radical strains

791
00:44:14,440 --> 00:44:16,840
of the Reformation, but one hundreds of years before that,

792
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:21,480
they are resulting in both groups like the alpagen Scenes,

793
00:44:22,119 --> 00:44:24,039
you know, these heretical groups, but also groups within the

794
00:44:24,119 --> 00:44:28,079
Roman Catholic Church, like the Franciscans, and especially like the

795
00:44:28,079 --> 00:44:31,679
Spiritual Franciscans and the you know. Anyway, all these different

796
00:44:31,679 --> 00:44:35,159
groups and what they're defined by is a strong sense

797
00:44:35,199 --> 00:44:38,480
of apocalypticism, a strong sense that we need to establish

798
00:44:38,559 --> 00:44:42,039
the Kingdom of God now because Christ is returning soon.

799
00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:45,000
So the more heretical groups they're going off and living

800
00:44:45,039 --> 00:44:47,079
in communes. I mean, it's not at all hard to

801
00:44:47,119 --> 00:44:50,360
imagine them doing this in New England, where they're going

802
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:52,280
off and they're living in these communes and they're having

803
00:44:52,320 --> 00:44:55,400
these ecstatic religious experiences and they're waiting for the second

804
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:58,920
Coming within the church though also there's this idea that

805
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:02,039
while we had Kingdom of God and it was the empire,

806
00:45:02,079 --> 00:45:04,039
but now it's falling apart, and so we have to

807
00:45:04,119 --> 00:45:06,199
re establish it. And the way for us to re

808
00:45:06,360 --> 00:45:08,719
establish it, and Dante is definitely kind of of this party,

809
00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:12,079
is for the church to is for the Roman Catholic

810
00:45:12,159 --> 00:45:16,239
Church to actually embrace poverty, to abandon all of the

811
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:20,840
like the pomp and the the you know, the flavor

812
00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:24,679
of civil power that the Western Church had accrued to

813
00:45:24,719 --> 00:45:28,400
itself throughout the late Middle Ages, and instead, you know,

814
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:31,559
bring in a strong emperor who, for Dante is this

815
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:34,480
messianic figure who's going to come in and kind of

816
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:37,159
re establish, you know, settle all the squabbles in Italy

817
00:45:37,400 --> 00:45:41,760
and re establish the Kingdom of God in Europe. So

818
00:45:43,639 --> 00:45:46,840
these patterns repeat, and the thing that's interesting to me

819
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:51,159
is the way that they I think that they do

820
00:45:51,239 --> 00:45:53,960
herald and by the way, like you know, you'll find

821
00:45:53,960 --> 00:45:57,280
this pattern everywhere. You'll find it in late medieval Russia,

822
00:45:57,760 --> 00:46:00,760
you'll find it in the Far East, You'll find it everywhere,

823
00:46:01,199 --> 00:46:04,599
because this is what it looks like when an age

824
00:46:04,599 --> 00:46:07,920
is coming to an end is that you have these

825
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:11,840
these things that pop up and there's these weird revivalist movements.

826
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:16,639
What's the unique you could say about America is that

827
00:46:17,519 --> 00:46:21,199
they have been so successful. Typically speaking, they are not

828
00:46:21,800 --> 00:46:23,440
because typically speaking.

829
00:46:23,119 --> 00:46:27,079
Speaker 3: They peter like they just fizzle out, the crush or whatever.

830
00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:30,440
Speaker 1: They fizzle out for the very simple reason that they

831
00:46:30,559 --> 00:46:34,159
that they by nature, they do not have the institutional

832
00:46:34,199 --> 00:46:39,039
framework to last. So what's weird and interesting to me

833
00:46:39,119 --> 00:46:41,760
about these American religious movements which have all of these

834
00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:45,599
apocalyptic flavors to them, and they have all of these

835
00:46:45,719 --> 00:46:47,599
all the same kind of things that you would find

836
00:46:48,159 --> 00:46:51,719
in the late Middle Ages in these little you know,

837
00:46:51,760 --> 00:46:54,920
these sexs of these groups on the fringe, is that

838
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:58,440
so many of them have continued to be successful. I mean, ultimately,

839
00:46:58,559 --> 00:47:03,360
the charismatic movement Pentecostal also comes from this region. You know, Mormonism,

840
00:47:03,559 --> 00:47:06,360
Jovah's Witnesses are a little later, right, but yeah, it

841
00:47:06,519 --> 00:47:07,159
was a different thing.

842
00:47:07,199 --> 00:47:08,920
Speaker 4: They're a little bit later. Yeah. Yeah.

843
00:47:09,199 --> 00:47:13,440
Speaker 1: But and this is what this is the thing that

844
00:47:14,360 --> 00:47:19,679
Harold Bloom is really interested in in. This is the

845
00:47:19,679 --> 00:47:22,840
thing he's really interested in his work on American religion.

846
00:47:23,679 --> 00:47:27,519
So what he says, now, this is Harold Bloom. It's

847
00:47:27,559 --> 00:47:30,360
not deconcera from necessarily saying this, this is Harold Bloom.

848
00:47:30,719 --> 00:47:33,960
But he says that who, by the way, Harold Bloom

849
00:47:34,039 --> 00:47:38,480
is a is a non practicing Jew. So he's not

850
00:47:39,559 --> 00:47:43,239
himself religious, he's just he's Jewish, he's secular. Although he

851
00:47:43,280 --> 00:47:45,280
said that if he'd been born in the eighteen thirties

852
00:47:45,320 --> 00:47:47,519
and if he was not Jewish, he would have become

853
00:47:47,559 --> 00:47:50,800
Mormon because he thought Mormon, what he thought Mormonism was

854
00:47:50,800 --> 00:47:54,440
the most perfect American religion. And so when he describes

855
00:47:54,480 --> 00:47:56,960
these things to Bloom, these are all good things. Bloom

856
00:47:57,239 --> 00:48:01,360
likes American religion. This is not it's not he's not criticizing. Yeah,

857
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:03,400
he's not criticized. Or if he's doing critique, he's doing

858
00:48:03,440 --> 00:48:05,480
it like in an academic sense. He's not doing it

859
00:48:05,480 --> 00:48:09,159
in a way to like cast dispersions. So what he

860
00:48:09,239 --> 00:48:11,840
says is that Americans, this is a direct quote, Americans

861
00:48:11,840 --> 00:48:16,800
who think they are Christians truly are something else, intensely religious,

862
00:48:17,199 --> 00:48:21,320
but devout in the American religion. And so what is

863
00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:26,920
the American religion? He says that the American religion centers

864
00:48:26,960 --> 00:48:32,000
on the solitary selfs direct encounter with God. It's the

865
00:48:32,079 --> 00:48:35,840
believer's conviction of possessing an inner divine spark, a sense

866
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:38,039
of freedom that expresses itself in.

867
00:48:38,039 --> 00:48:40,199
Speaker 4: Total spiritual solitude.

868
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:43,800
Speaker 1: So God is alone, and I am alone, and I

869
00:48:43,840 --> 00:48:46,280
can have a relationship with God, and that relationship is

870
00:48:46,320 --> 00:48:50,119
in total solitude to anything else that is happening in

871
00:48:50,159 --> 00:48:54,440
the world around me. It is not a it's not

872
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:57,920
a So obviously there's a communal or covenantal aspect to

873
00:48:58,000 --> 00:49:03,440
Christianity that obviously the Puritans believed in. But as the

874
00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:07,079
as that starts to fall apart and they realize that

875
00:49:07,199 --> 00:49:09,199
just the conninental aspect is not enough to kind of

876
00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:12,639
keep things together, there's this shift that happens. That's why

877
00:49:12,679 --> 00:49:14,559
I started this video where I did. There's the shift

878
00:49:14,559 --> 00:49:18,800
that happens towards towards this this more like experiential you

879
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:27,480
need this big physical conversion experience. And so it's fundamentally gnostic.

880
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:31,440
What does he mean by this, Well, when Bloom says

881
00:49:31,440 --> 00:49:34,440
it's fundamentally gnostic, what he means is he's he's not

882
00:49:34,480 --> 00:49:39,199
necessarily talking about like ancient Valentinian or Seth Sethi, a gnosissism,

883
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:43,119
but rather what he's he sees these structural and theological

884
00:49:43,159 --> 00:49:47,119
parallels between them. So, first of all, this idea that

885
00:49:47,119 --> 00:49:51,400
that you that we contain a divine spark. Obviously there's

886
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:54,239
something like this in Christianity, but that it can only

887
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:57,920
be actualized in the solitary solitary and transcend itself if

888
00:49:57,960 --> 00:50:02,519
you think of somebody like Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James

889
00:50:02,559 --> 00:50:07,559
Walt Whitman. Right, this idea of self reliance, right, which

890
00:50:07,639 --> 00:50:10,920
is the great American virtue, right, the fact that I

891
00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:12,920
can just kind of figure this out on myself. And listen,

892
00:50:13,039 --> 00:50:15,679
Americans have gotten a lot done. Like you know, at

893
00:50:15,760 --> 00:50:18,239
least in a pragmatic standpoint, some of the stuff really works.

894
00:50:18,880 --> 00:50:25,480
But so self reliance the belief that my soul stands

895
00:50:25,480 --> 00:50:28,880
apart from the world, right, that there's something like the

896
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:32,519
real me that can be actualized and can be known.

897
00:50:33,079 --> 00:50:37,079
And if I can actualize the real me, then I

898
00:50:37,119 --> 00:50:42,440
can truly be free. And so the American Bloom says,

899
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:45,360
finds God in herself or himself only after finding the

900
00:50:45,360 --> 00:50:49,320
freedom to know God by experiencing a total inward solitude.

901
00:50:49,880 --> 00:50:53,440
So you can only know God basically on your own terms.

902
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:59,679
The experience cannot ultimately be mediated through anyone else. A freedom,

903
00:51:00,119 --> 00:51:03,119
he describes it as a wildness. It's being liberated from

904
00:51:03,159 --> 00:51:06,599
other selves. It's also being liberated from the created world.

905
00:51:07,079 --> 00:51:10,360
This idea that you know, obviously Morbonism has something in

906
00:51:10,400 --> 00:51:13,159
it kind of like the pre existence of souls in

907
00:51:13,199 --> 00:51:15,800
which you're not even actually sort of part of the creation,

908
00:51:16,119 --> 00:51:17,519
like you came from somewhere else.

909
00:51:18,440 --> 00:51:20,199
Speaker 4: And that one of the things.

910
00:51:20,000 --> 00:51:22,880
Speaker 1: That allows us to do, just to tick off the

911
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:24,719
other half of the people who are watching this video

912
00:51:25,360 --> 00:51:27,360
is is it allows us to look at the created

913
00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:31,519
world around us in a very instrumental or mechanistic way

914
00:51:32,039 --> 00:51:34,239
and to basically say, all of this is for me

915
00:51:34,320 --> 00:51:38,119
to use for things. It's why, it's why the idea

916
00:51:38,159 --> 00:51:41,800
of even like a kind of environmental conservatism is very hard,

917
00:51:42,119 --> 00:51:45,719
very hard sell for Americans, because ultimately these things are

918
00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:50,000
what natural resources, they're resources, and we can only think

919
00:51:50,000 --> 00:51:52,639
of about them in terms of being resources, not in

920
00:51:52,719 --> 00:51:59,239
some other terms. So Bluem says a lot more about this,

921
00:52:00,079 --> 00:52:01,960
but we're coming up on a hard stop here, and

922
00:52:01,960 --> 00:52:05,599
I wanted the kind of so that's the teaser I

923
00:52:05,639 --> 00:52:08,920
promised to actually talk about Joseph Smith. Next time. I

924
00:52:08,920 --> 00:52:11,199
promised to actually talk some more about also the sacred

925
00:52:11,239 --> 00:52:14,960
geography of the American landscape next time, because America has

926
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:20,000
its own actual sacred geography as well that plays into

927
00:52:20,239 --> 00:52:23,079
all these movements and how they move west over the

928
00:52:23,119 --> 00:52:23,840
nineteenth century.

929
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:28,199
Speaker 3: But do you have anything you talk about the way

930
00:52:28,239 --> 00:52:31,400
you do to talk about freemasonry, Because you know the

931
00:52:31,519 --> 00:52:36,840
question of how Kabbala reaches the Puritans and reaches these

932
00:52:36,880 --> 00:52:41,239
Protestant sex My intuition has always been that it has

933
00:52:41,440 --> 00:52:46,159
it has been through freemasonry, because freemasonry was ah even

934
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:50,760
in England, it was a non Christian let's say community,

935
00:52:50,960 --> 00:52:55,280
the spiritual community, and therefore Jews were allowed in freemasonry

936
00:52:55,320 --> 00:52:56,840
and were quite prominent in.

937
00:52:56,920 --> 00:52:58,800
Speaker 2: The in the in the early.

938
00:53:00,079 --> 00:53:02,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, in the early lodges, And so I mean, I

939
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:04,280
think that that's I mean, as the question is like,

940
00:53:04,320 --> 00:53:08,199
how did how did people even access these talks? Like

941
00:53:08,320 --> 00:53:11,920
you know, the Zohar is impenetrable, right, Louria is hard

942
00:53:11,920 --> 00:53:15,719
to read. All of these these things are difficult to access.

943
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:17,880
Speaker 1: In the in the case of the like the Mathers, right,

944
00:53:17,920 --> 00:53:20,519
they got it. They actually got these texts from people

945
00:53:20,519 --> 00:53:23,280
who like there was, there's a chain of transmission. And

946
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:25,280
we know this because like the books were in their libraries.

947
00:53:25,320 --> 00:53:26,960
You know, It's it's easy to go and take a

948
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:29,559
look at this. But as far as as far as

949
00:53:29,599 --> 00:53:31,719
like how the stuff, you know, how does it make

950
00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:33,639
the time skip, you know, two hundred years later to

951
00:53:33,760 --> 00:53:35,920
somebody like Joseph Smith, I think the Masons are a

952
00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:39,440
big part of that. And I also think that the

953
00:53:39,800 --> 00:53:42,320
folk magic aspect of it is also a way a

954
00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:44,679
lot of this has passed down. I'm not saying I'm

955
00:53:44,679 --> 00:53:47,639
not proposing, for instance, that one of the you know,

956
00:53:47,719 --> 00:53:50,679
somebody during you know, the eighteen thirties who is part

957
00:53:50,719 --> 00:53:54,559
of one of these big, you know, mystical revivalistic sects.

958
00:53:55,880 --> 00:53:58,360
I'm not proposing that all of them had like direct

959
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:00,679
access to Cabbola or could have blaned all of the

960
00:54:00,719 --> 00:54:04,840
major tenets of it, you know. But it's it's more

961
00:54:04,920 --> 00:54:06,679
the idea that these things are just kind of in

962
00:54:06,719 --> 00:54:08,599
the air, they're in the water, they're surviving, and these

963
00:54:08,639 --> 00:54:10,599
various we talked a lot a last time, a lot

964
00:54:10,679 --> 00:54:13,639
last time about various kinds of folk magic and things

965
00:54:13,639 --> 00:54:16,039
that people practice, and a lot of those have these

966
00:54:16,079 --> 00:54:19,519
little ritual elements that are basically broken references to things

967
00:54:19,519 --> 00:54:22,320
in kabal la or things in medieval alchemy or things

968
00:54:22,360 --> 00:54:26,440
and you know, other systems things like who do and

969
00:54:26,480 --> 00:54:27,079
stuff like that.

970
00:54:27,159 --> 00:54:29,000
Speaker 3: So yeah, because there's all I mean, there's also a

971
00:54:29,039 --> 00:54:32,000
way out from Spain, like in the sense that the

972
00:54:32,960 --> 00:54:36,400
especially when it becomes mixed with things like alchemy and

973
00:54:36,599 --> 00:54:39,639
kaba la, you know, then then for sure there must

974
00:54:39,679 --> 00:54:41,639
have been in contact with some of the spec of

975
00:54:41,679 --> 00:54:44,360
the conversos, the people that left Spain, some went to England.

976
00:54:44,400 --> 00:54:45,719
Speaker 2: Like there's all of these connections.

977
00:54:46,039 --> 00:54:46,360
Speaker 3: All of this.

978
00:54:46,400 --> 00:54:49,639
Speaker 1: Stuff is is very like it's so hard to talk

979
00:54:49,679 --> 00:54:52,320
about one thing individually, Like you you really have to

980
00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:55,880
always be like talking about a soup that has like

981
00:54:56,280 --> 00:54:59,639
thick bits and thin bits, you know, and like that

982
00:54:59,679 --> 00:55:03,159
you're you're, you're. The thin parts are like the philosophy,

983
00:55:03,760 --> 00:55:06,320
you know, which can which can influence things in one way.

984
00:55:06,599 --> 00:55:08,800
But then there's also like the chunks of ritual that

985
00:55:08,840 --> 00:55:10,119
are just kind of floating around, the.

986
00:55:10,079 --> 00:55:14,039
Speaker 3: Super magic, the actual charms and you know, dallastments and.

987
00:55:14,000 --> 00:55:16,679
Speaker 4: All the minology and talismans on all this stuff. Yeah, yeah,

988
00:55:16,719 --> 00:55:17,119
and all that.

989
00:55:17,039 --> 00:55:20,400
Speaker 3: Stuff gets absorbed at the bottom, like it it gets absorbed

990
00:55:20,400 --> 00:55:23,079
by the old old ladies and and like you know,

991
00:55:23,159 --> 00:55:25,400
the the healers and the villages and all this stuff.

992
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:28,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, we've got a lot more

993
00:55:28,280 --> 00:55:30,119
to talk about. Unfortunately we have a hard stop today.

994
00:55:30,119 --> 00:55:31,960
I really am sorry. I guess I'm not just trying

995
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:35,480
to like tease you guys. Actually, but we'll we'll, we'll

996
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:37,639
look for it in our next video to digging a

997
00:55:37,679 --> 00:55:39,559
little bit more into some of this stuff. And the

998
00:55:39,599 --> 00:55:41,280
other thing that I want to say is is just

999
00:55:41,360 --> 00:55:45,039
acknowledge that we're really just looking at one particular strain

1000
00:55:45,079 --> 00:55:48,000
of the American religion right now. I know, like living

1001
00:55:48,079 --> 00:55:51,960
in the Southwest, I'm quite aware that there are there's

1002
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:57,480
also a another kind of enchanted America that has to

1003
00:55:57,519 --> 00:56:00,480
do with the fact, you know, the Spanish Mission and

1004
00:56:01,480 --> 00:56:04,559
you know, our Lady of Guadaloupe all these things. And

1005
00:56:05,000 --> 00:56:06,440
I know this because I live around it. I live

1006
00:56:06,440 --> 00:56:08,280
across the street from it. In many cases. You know,

1007
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:10,880
I've got neighbors that have, you know, our Lady of

1008
00:56:10,880 --> 00:56:13,280
Guadaloupe shrines out in their yards, which I'm not mad about.

1009
00:56:13,320 --> 00:56:18,239
It's wonderful, you know, So all of the stuff, you know,

1010
00:56:18,320 --> 00:56:22,320
but what I'm trying to do is when we I think,

1011
00:56:22,440 --> 00:56:25,159
you know, most of the time when people think American,

1012
00:56:25,559 --> 00:56:28,920
they think kind of wasp, you know, white Anglo Saxon Protestants.

1013
00:56:29,159 --> 00:56:31,679
And most of the time when people think and talk American,

1014
00:56:32,079 --> 00:56:35,760
they have something, you know, they have in mind that

1015
00:56:35,880 --> 00:56:38,960
it is and I've been personally guilty of this. They

1016
00:56:38,960 --> 00:56:40,480
have in mind that there is kind of this like

1017
00:56:40,519 --> 00:56:43,440
totally just disenchanted reality.

1018
00:56:43,559 --> 00:56:45,760
Speaker 4: And I think the thing that I would like people

1019
00:56:45,760 --> 00:56:46,800
to come away with.

1020
00:56:47,360 --> 00:56:53,719
Speaker 1: Is this understanding that actually that version of like I

1021
00:56:53,719 --> 00:56:59,079
don't know, seminary Protestantism has never really existed on the ground,

1022
00:56:59,599 --> 00:57:02,039
that what actually exists on the ground in people's homes,

1023
00:57:02,079 --> 00:57:05,119
in people's houses, especially in those first few hundred years

1024
00:57:05,519 --> 00:57:08,800
of the colonies, the American Revolution, the Civil War, all

1025
00:57:08,800 --> 00:57:11,880
that stuff, the First and second Great Awakenings, that there

1026
00:57:11,920 --> 00:57:13,920
is there is an enchanted aspect to all of that,

1027
00:57:14,119 --> 00:57:19,159
and it has certain things which are impossible for us

1028
00:57:19,199 --> 00:57:22,880
to get away from as Americans now. But also with

1029
00:57:22,960 --> 00:57:25,239
that there comes certain dangers. And one of the dangers

1030
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:29,800
is this this constant need to always be converting, it,

1031
00:57:29,840 --> 00:57:32,360
to have a conversion story so that even people who

1032
00:57:32,400 --> 00:57:37,320
are now deconstructing. You know, they're deconstructing their evangelical conversion experience.

1033
00:57:37,320 --> 00:57:39,639
It's just another conversion experience. And the question is, well,

1034
00:57:39,639 --> 00:57:42,840
now that you've deconstructed, what's your next conversion story going

1035
00:57:42,880 --> 00:57:44,599
to be? And it always ends up being, you know,

1036
00:57:45,280 --> 00:57:49,239
they either come back to Christianity or they get into

1037
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:52,000
like I don't know, Buddhism or some other kind of thing.

1038
00:57:52,079 --> 00:57:56,360
Like they're just like this idea that you have a

1039
00:57:56,440 --> 00:58:01,000
personal spiritual narrative, you have a personal spiritual story that

1040
00:58:01,119 --> 00:58:03,400
you need to tell, and that if you don't have that,

1041
00:58:03,440 --> 00:58:05,639
you don't actually really know who you are as a

1042
00:58:05,639 --> 00:58:07,320
as a Christian, or you don't really know who you

1043
00:58:07,320 --> 00:58:09,639
are as an American. I think it's something we need

1044
00:58:09,679 --> 00:58:11,440
to be a little careful of. And and here again

1045
00:58:11,599 --> 00:58:13,400
like to talk to my own team, those of us

1046
00:58:13,440 --> 00:58:16,239
who are converts, we should be careful about this.

1047
00:58:17,280 --> 00:58:21,880
Speaker 4: You know, you're you know, people ask me for my

1048
00:58:21,880 --> 00:58:22,920
conversion story a.

1049
00:58:22,840 --> 00:58:24,760
Speaker 1: Lot, and I try to usually just give them the

1050
00:58:24,800 --> 00:58:27,679
highlights and everything, but like, you're, you better, you better

1051
00:58:27,719 --> 00:58:29,760
be more than just that conversion story. You know, at

1052
00:58:29,760 --> 00:58:31,760
some point, at some point, the rubber has to has

1053
00:58:31,800 --> 00:58:33,199
to meet hit the road and we've got to figure

1054
00:58:33,199 --> 00:58:35,719
out how to actually go deeper into our faith in

1055
00:58:36,119 --> 00:58:36,840
Jesus Christ.

1056
00:58:37,039 --> 00:58:41,440
Speaker 3: So all right, the Conservant, thank you. Next one, we're

1057
00:58:41,440 --> 00:58:44,400
gonna keep going and I get time, we'll get into

1058
00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:47,159
the weirder and getting weirder. So let's see how weird.

1059
00:58:46,960 --> 00:58:47,559
Speaker 4: We can get.

1060
00:58:47,880 --> 00:58:50,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, thanks everyone.

1061
00:58:50,000 --> 00:58:51,320
Speaker 4: Bye everyone. All right.

1062
00:58:51,599 --> 00:58:54,480
Speaker 3: If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to

1063
00:58:54,519 --> 00:58:57,239
the Symbolic World dot com website and see how you

1064
00:58:57,239 --> 00:59:00,239
can support what we're doing. There are multiple subscribers here

1065
00:59:00,320 --> 00:59:02,920
is with perks. There are apparel in books to purchase.

1066
00:59:03,199 --> 00:59:05,360
So go to the Symbolic World dot com and thank

1067
00:59:05,400 --> 00:59:06,599
you for your support