Speaker 1: Meaning a light man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: and wing big down in a force, man and go
Speaker 1: cause the tree.
Speaker 2: Fall, letting five thousand miles away. Man, Nobody see it.
Speaker 3: Nobody else.
Speaker 2: See. You don't need no Manila.
Speaker 3: You followed hitherto and you got back to that. That's
Speaker 3: the way, man go Blackly Dan on the Panama Man.
Speaker 3: You don't matter man anyway.
Speaker 2: All right, Father Emmanuel Levinson, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Great to join you, Jay, Thank you so much for
Speaker 3: the invitation. I was really looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. One of your
Speaker 2: assistants reached out to me and I was aware of
Speaker 2: your work distantly, but he sent me some some video
Speaker 2: y'all had done on Christian Zionism and it was instantly
Speaker 2: fast and so I'm very glad to have you on.
Speaker 2: So before we dig into that, if we could just
Speaker 2: a little bit of background on you, Well, who are
Speaker 2: you and how do you end up here?
Speaker 3: Sure? So, my name is Father Emmanuel Lemmeilson. I'm a
Speaker 3: Greek Orthodox priest. I was born in the US, but
Speaker 3: spent some part of my life in Greece growing up.
Speaker 3: I currently live in Europe, in Central Europe, and I've
Speaker 3: served parishes. I guess this July will have been a
Speaker 3: priest for fifteen years. I've served parishes in New England, Massachusetts,
Speaker 3: from mont Hahampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and also in Europe, Turkey, Greece, Italy,
Speaker 3: Switzerland and so forth. So I've had a chance to
Speaker 3: see Orthodoxy around the world. It's been a real privilege.
Speaker 3: I'm a married priest. Most of our clergy and the
Speaker 3: Northox Church are married. I have a wonderful wife we
Speaker 3: say petes viteta in Greek, which is the wife of
Speaker 3: a priest, and I have four beautiful children.
Speaker 2: So I'm curious how did you come to be interested
Speaker 2: in Christian Zionism, Because for me, as an American Southerner,
Speaker 2: it's the water I swim in. I can't go anywhere
Speaker 2: without seeing it. You know, when I drive to, you know,
Speaker 2: my farmer's place to pick up my milk and my meat,
Speaker 2: I see a big, a big sign not at his farm,
Speaker 2: and another one that says please pray for Israel, with
Speaker 2: sort of a combination of, you know, the cross and
Speaker 2: the Star of David. So you could understand why someone
Speaker 2: like me would start to notice. But for you in
Speaker 2: New England, which you know I've spent a good amount
Speaker 2: of time, there seems to be less of a cultural feature.
Speaker 2: How did you become interested in it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, to the extent it is less of a cultural
Speaker 3: feature in New England. That would be a bit of
Speaker 3: an irony because Zionism as it were actually began with
Speaker 3: Puritans in the sixteenth century, the same cohort, which would
Speaker 3: of course eventually populate New England. So people often think
Speaker 3: it's a Jewish concept or idea, but it was really
Speaker 3: co opted by the Jewish community in England from the
Speaker 3: Puritan community. But how I became interested in it? And
Speaker 3: by the way, when you talk about your roots in
Speaker 3: the South, for some reason, I think of the great
Speaker 3: movie Oh Brother, Where art thou with George Clooney. Are
Speaker 3: you familiar with it? You get this, you know, the
Speaker 3: Bible salesman and the John Goodman. I guess it always
Speaker 3: comes to mind as a sort of image of you know,
Speaker 3: Christian Zionism, Christian nationalism in that epoch in America, which
Speaker 3: is still I guess there's still vermicial culturally alive in
Speaker 3: the South. But I think what sort of brought my
Speaker 3: attention back to it a couple of years ago, was
Speaker 3: the onset of the hostilities in Gaza and just seeing
Speaker 3: the whole cell liquidation of a people and our most
Speaker 3: contemporary and vivid and high definition version of genocide in
Speaker 3: our modern world. It's the stain on our society. It's
Speaker 3: it's the shame for all of us in humanity that
Speaker 3: had happened. It's not I'm not justifying the poor innocent
Speaker 3: people lost their lives in Israel on that fateful day
Speaker 3: when they were attacked, but there is no justification for
Speaker 3: what happened in Gaza, and now with generally what's happening
Speaker 3: in the former Palestinian territories and now we see happening
Speaker 3: in Lebanon. So a couple of years ago we decided
Speaker 3: to address it in an early podcast that was I
Speaker 3: think it was our episode eleven. It was right when
Speaker 3: we got started with our podcast, so if you were
Speaker 3: to go back and watch it, you'd have to forgive
Speaker 3: the production quality a little. But I was entitled the
Speaker 3: Criminalization of Christianity, which at first you would think, well,
Speaker 3: what has happened with Christian Zionism, But as we work
Speaker 3: through it and then we'd later did an episode on
Speaker 3: the atrocities in Gaza. You know, it was pretty evident
Speaker 3: to us that the political form of I guess they
Speaker 3: call it Christianity, Christianity is ju dais and two Days
Speaker 3: was going to be incredibly not only incredibly politicized, but
Speaker 3: incredibly destructive and violent and lead to a lot of bloodshed.
Speaker 3: And I just saw the writing on the wall maybe
Speaker 3: two and a half years ago, and so we started
Speaker 3: producing these podcasts. So now we did those two elipisodes,
Speaker 3: one on the Conversation in Christianity, which talked about Jewish
Speaker 3: lobby during the Palestinian protests and college campuses back in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, which you might recall, and the repeated
Speaker 3: efforts to institute new legislation that would essentially make certain
Speaker 3: passages in Holy Scripture legal, and looking at where that
Speaker 3: was going and sort of the connections with what's happening
Speaker 3: in Israel and what really is a lobbying arm for
Speaker 3: the state of Israel as far as I'm concerned to
Speaker 3: the United States, and then just seeing that the loss
Speaker 3: of innocent life. The numbers are even if you want
Speaker 3: on the conservative side, to the numbers of what happened
Speaker 3: in Gaza, the loss of life to women and children,
Speaker 3: which we've been conditioned to normalize. I guess now the
Speaker 3: leadership in Israel, you know, it's sort of friendly refers to,
Speaker 3: you know, the Gaza strategy in Lebanon, Now, these are
Speaker 3: Christian lands, formerly Christian landesmic Arabs and Christians both occupy
Speaker 3: these areas, and so we see the destruction of historically
Speaker 3: important and incredibly important sites in Syria, Palestine and now Lebanon.
Speaker 3: It's really the extinction of Christianity in that region. And
Speaker 3: ironically via the conduit, the political conduit for that is
Speaker 3: very often the Christian Zionists in America, which are really
Speaker 3: leading to the spilling of that blood.
Speaker 2: There are several things there. To me, it's been very
Speaker 2: interesting to watch as someone who's been kind of fascinated
Speaker 2: by America's foreign wars in the theology that justifies them.
Speaker 2: For a long time, that was a minority pursuit. That
Speaker 2: was something for the kind of nerds to be blunt
Speaker 2: about it, who cared about history and philosophy. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: it's been dramatically mainstreamed, and I think about the sort
Speaker 2: of anti war movement of the Bush era which was
Speaker 2: sort of this wide coalition. Sure there were a lot
Speaker 2: of kind of you know, crazy lefty types, but also
Speaker 2: the kind of more traditional what we would call either
Speaker 2: paleo conservatives, the tea party crowd, right, the good normal
Speaker 2: Americans who basically said, look, I want to be a
Speaker 2: country again. And you know, just due to changes in
Speaker 2: the news cycle or whatever, that sort of died out
Speaker 2: for ten years plus or minus. War wasn't big in
Speaker 2: the news. But the combination of and I don't mean
Speaker 2: to get into a detailed discussion of every one of these,
Speaker 2: but you know, sort of one scandal after another. You know,
Speaker 2: the Epstein scandal, which has a, to put it mildly,
Speaker 2: a heavily ethnic component to it, the situation in Gaza
Speaker 2: and the dramatic reaction in the US, which is certainly
Speaker 2: something to mention. And then this absolutely disastrous war in Iran.
Speaker 2: It's become almost impossible to hide from it. And you
Speaker 2: see topics that were ten to fifteen years ago completely
Speaker 2: and totally vote the sort of thing that you know,
Speaker 2: if you muttered them in a bar, you'd get beat
Speaker 2: up and thrown out. Now I have friends over who
Speaker 2: are not particularly political, who go to church have wives
Speaker 2: and kids and don't care about this sort of in
Speaker 2: depth things that people who listen to this podcast do
Speaker 2: are saying things casually that even now, you know, as
Speaker 2: someone who's been on the internet forever, I still have
Speaker 2: a hard time wrapping my head around this being normal conversation.
Speaker 2: And I say that not to you know, inject a
Speaker 2: personal anecdote, but to say it has become undeniable that
Speaker 2: the Israel lobby effectively seems to control a large part
Speaker 2: of allegedly the most powerful nation in the world. And
Speaker 2: so you look at this and you say, well, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, I was naive enough to assume that America
Speaker 2: was country run by and for Americans. And I say
Speaker 2: that not to you know, make some nativist point, not
Speaker 2: to beat my chest and say, you know, immigrants go
Speaker 2: home or anything, but to say, at a very fundamental level,
Speaker 2: I think that a lot of people are disgusted by
Speaker 2: this because you mentioned the genocide and Gaza, and I
Speaker 2: think for a lot of people, if this were simply
Speaker 2: a tragedy happening somewhere that we were in no way
Speaker 2: involved in, it would be regrettable. But what can you do?
Speaker 2: But I think what rankles many people myself included is
Speaker 2: that it's my money. I am required to fund this,
Speaker 2: and I am required to fund the extermination of Christians,
Speaker 2: and if I object to that, as you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: in states like Florida or others, may well be thrown
Speaker 2: in jail. And I think that the theological issues are
Speaker 2: very real. We will get into it, but this ground,
Speaker 2: the sort of upswelling of objection, I think is on
Speaker 2: a much much more basic level of I'm getting shaken
Speaker 2: down so that people like me that I have something
Speaker 2: in common with can be exterminated. And it's no shock
Speaker 2: that people are upset by this. But Father, I want
Speaker 2: to get into the roots of American Zionists. You mentioned
Speaker 2: the Puritans and my friend Bagbee, who I mentioned to
Speaker 2: you earlier, and I have done a number of episodes
Speaker 2: sort of chronicling the different groups which made up early America,
Speaker 2: including the Puritans, and one of the most interesting conclusions
Speaker 2: of that is that the Puritans burned through religion. They
Speaker 2: didn't necessarily keep their faith in the Triune God, but
Speaker 2: many of their instincts towards these kind of utopian social plans.
Speaker 2: Those state that culture is still alive even if it
Speaker 2: is not necessarily interested in God per se. But I'll
Speaker 2: throw it back to you after this rant on what's
Speaker 2: supposed to be an interview show. Can you trace that
Speaker 2: line of American Zionism from the Puritans?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: How did they see it? And where does it go
Speaker 2: from there?
Speaker 3: Sure you know it's Sir Arthur Cronan Doyle had a
Speaker 3: wonderful saying that there's nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
Speaker 3: And if you think about that, he was the great
Speaker 3: British author. And if you really think about it, you
Speaker 3: have the Protestant Reformation right in the sixteenth century, and
Speaker 3: they're really miffed at abuses in the Catholic Church, and
Speaker 3: they eventually come to this concept of solo scriptura, right,
Speaker 3: which everyone knows and they associate with the Protestants, But
Speaker 3: it really goes back to solo scriptura, the idea that
Speaker 3: sort of the Word of God, the literal interpretation of
Speaker 3: the Holy Scriptures is everything. It's the alpha and the omega. Well,
Speaker 3: by that understanding of scripture, and if you don't have
Speaker 3: a concept of an old and a new Testament is
Speaker 3: being delineated the sort of as Christ would say, you
Speaker 3: can't put new wine and old Wineskins, as these prestants
Speaker 3: had presence, did not understand and not conceive of that.
Speaker 3: Then for them this idea began to emerge, and without
Speaker 3: the benefit of a hierarchy and authority of tradition in
Speaker 3: the Church, that you had to have a restoration of
Speaker 3: Israel and the Jewish people to the Holy Lands for
Speaker 3: the second Coming of Christ. It's that simple. It actually
Speaker 3: goes right back to sol Scripture, and a lot of
Speaker 3: people don't think about that, but that is actually the
Speaker 3: genesis of it. So if you look at early figures
Speaker 3: like Thomas Brightman or Francis Katt, and this was I
Speaker 3: think in the fifteen eighties, I want to say, you know,
Speaker 3: that's really where it began. And Kat at least for
Speaker 3: his part, was ultimately I think he was burned at
Speaker 3: the steak, I want to say. I mean, he was
Speaker 3: definitely put to death. So you know, the Church at
Speaker 3: that time understood the seriousness of this jew days and carriers.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that they should have put them to death.
Speaker 3: That shouldn't be the penishment bunch friends, shouldn't be the
Speaker 3: consequence of by any means. But that is the genesis
Speaker 3: of it though, and that gets right to the heart
Speaker 3: of it. And then once this became mainstream, and then
Speaker 3: you had these early sort of Jewish thinkers who were
Speaker 3: you know, the roots of Zionism began as a political
Speaker 3: movement in the early nineteenth century. You know they It's
Speaker 3: kind of ironic that it was really these this Christian
Speaker 3: we call it a cult almost the Puritans, that gave
Speaker 3: them the fodder, that gave them the tools to take
Speaker 3: what originally was thought of as a religious idea or concept,
Speaker 3: idea of a promised land, and turned into a secular
Speaker 3: political movement, which is Zionism. So it's sort of ironic.
Speaker 3: And then of course with the Protestant information itself being
Speaker 3: blowback from the corruption of Rome and its own its
Speaker 3: own we can say theological errors, ecclesiogological errors that put
Speaker 3: this emphasis on worldly power and authority, which is a
Speaker 3: sort of Pelagianism. You could say even that is ironic,
Speaker 3: because then ultimately, even in later centuries, the Catholic Church
Speaker 3: itself would be infiltrated by Zionists, and it is to
Speaker 3: this day a lot of Catholics don't realize that. So
Speaker 3: you have this pervasive novel theology in Christian Zionism, and
Speaker 3: you've got this underlying sort of ethnophilitism and Zionism that
Speaker 3: has really just become a secular political movement for the
Speaker 3: re establishment of Israel and of course not a Greater
Speaker 3: Israel project. And ironically it is infected. It's very core
Speaker 3: and roots. So it's become, like I say, almost a
Speaker 3: political conduit. It's become and it is even now. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think secular Israel, the secular Israeli leadership in the
Speaker 3: Kinesset must be laughing this whole time that you have
Speaker 3: these cohortive Americans funding with very large dollar amounts this
Speaker 3: political ambitions of another kind of and then you have
Speaker 3: very zealous Catholics who are very vocal and well organized administratively,
Speaker 3: who are completely blind to the fact that their own
Speaker 3: organization is completely zion not completely, but a large part
Speaker 3: infiltrated by Zionism as well. So it's it's a total mess.
Speaker 2: You could say, are you familiar with a book? Not
Speaker 2: remember the writer? I was looking for it and spelled
Speaker 2: it too poorly to find it. It's called The Incredible
Speaker 2: Incredible Scofield in his book.
Speaker 3: I've heard of it, I haven't read it.
Speaker 2: It's it's fascinating. Uh, I would recommend it. It's a
Speaker 2: little dry, but you know, it's a reference book. What
Speaker 2: are you going to do?
Speaker 3: Or they love references?
Speaker 2: Fair what he does is the author, I say he,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if it was multiple people whatever. This
Speaker 2: book goes through the proliferation of the Schofield Reference Bible,
Speaker 2: which happened at a very interesting time in American Christianity
Speaker 2: after what they call the Modernist Crisis. Basically, what happened
Speaker 2: is that more than about one hundred and twenty years
Speaker 2: ago rough dates here, that there was sort of an
Speaker 2: unbroken chain of American institutions, from local churches to at
Speaker 2: the top end things like the Ivy's right, Harvard produced ministers.
Speaker 2: They would go down and sort of form an American
Speaker 2: clergy class. And what had happened in kind of the
Speaker 2: early twentieth century, late nineteenth is that Modernism is sort
Speaker 2: of run them up through these institutions. You would see
Speaker 2: the sort of outgrowth of this in the so called
Speaker 2: like Scopes Monkey Trial, but basically those institutions had completely
Speaker 2: and totally secularized. There's a bunch of great cartoons from
Speaker 2: the time right where it's like walking down the steps,
Speaker 2: and the steps are, you know, denying the Trinity, and
Speaker 2: then you go all the way down to the bottom
Speaker 2: and it's Sodom and Gomora and you're like, all right, okay,
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.
Speaker 2: But point is, this created a break between the sort
Speaker 2: of traditional chain that defined American church life. And so
Speaker 2: so you had a number of a large number of
Speaker 2: small town churches that had been used to receiving their priests,
Speaker 2: their preachers whatever they called them, from institutions like Harvard,
Speaker 2: any university you can name, and all of a sudden
Speaker 2: they're coming back and they're saying, oh, you know, the
Speaker 2: virgin Birth didn't happen. Christ didn't really rise from the dead.
Speaker 2: And so they're like, well, we're not taking pastors from
Speaker 2: you anymore. You don't believe anything. And so this is
Speaker 2: where we see the birth of the Bible College. Right,
Speaker 2: these sort of low church institutions predominantly in the American South,
Speaker 2: where you are training lay people to preach. And roughly
Speaker 2: the same time we see the proliferation of the Schofield
Speaker 2: reference Bible. And the Schofield Reference Bible was unique in
Speaker 2: the sense that it was a commentary and the King
Speaker 2: James Bible one next to the other, and also had
Speaker 2: basically pre made servants. So if you were a guy
Speaker 2: who was not all trained and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: we need a new preacher, well, this book is ready
Speaker 2: made for you. Schofield is an interesting character in his
Speaker 2: own right. He was disbarred, he was sort of a
Speaker 2: known con man. But the really interesting thing is this
Speaker 2: is really where we see explicit American Zionism become very
Speaker 2: very popular in Low Church Protestantism. It was one of
Speaker 2: those things that it was an academic belief but just
Speaker 2: not spoken about much, because if you live in Tupelo, Mississippi,
Speaker 2: what do you care, right, it is not relevant to
Speaker 2: you at all, until all of a sudden, this ready
Speaker 2: made sort of preacher in a box kit comes with
Speaker 2: extremely explicit support for the re establishment of the of
Speaker 2: a Jewish state in Israel, this kind of John Hagy
Speaker 2: esque view of the end times, right, that there needs
Speaker 2: to be re establishment of a Jewish state so that
Speaker 2: the Battle of Armageddon can have and all that kind
Speaker 2: of crazy stuff. And basically that is where it becomes.
Speaker 2: It starts spreading like a wildfire. If you are conspiratorially minded.
Speaker 2: You can read that book. Found out where he got
Speaker 2: the idea or the money to publish such a thing.
Speaker 2: His members got to come, yeah, you don't have to
Speaker 2: be I I didn't mention.
Speaker 3: I didn't mention. Our later three episodes, I think it's
Speaker 3: episode forty one, forty two, and maybe forty five, we
Speaker 3: did a three part series on Christian nationalism. We just
Speaker 3: talked especially specifically about Cyrus Scawfield and the Scawfield Reference Bible,
Speaker 3: and that episode that's the one that actually got the
Speaker 3: Cape million views. But yeah, it's like the making of
Speaker 3: an American snake oil salesman, you know, like you said
Speaker 3: by the loan of box rated go, you know, no
Speaker 3: real academic training or formation in a seminary, no involvement
Speaker 3: with spiritual father, none of the traditional formative process. They
Speaker 3: go into the making of a real elder of the church,
Speaker 3: not presbyter of a priest. You know, these are cheap imitations.
Speaker 3: They're pastors. And you know, if you want I'm sorry
Speaker 3: ex me no, no.
Speaker 2: And I was going to say, and on that point,
Speaker 2: if you believe Whitney Webb, who I happen to, you know,
Speaker 2: she has her foibles, but she's an interesting journalist. She's
Speaker 2: tracked the amount of money that specifically comes from Lacouth
Speaker 2: massive into these sort of megachurches. Jerry Folwell Senior, who
Speaker 2: according to people I know who've met him, was personally
Speaker 2: a good guy. I'll set that aside. He was getting
Speaker 2: massive amounts of money from Monacam Bacon. They bailed out
Speaker 2: his university. They gave him a personal private jet, and
Speaker 2: d Netanyahu would come visit him before the President. He'd
Speaker 2: fly into this tiny, little regional airport, then drive up
Speaker 2: to DC. So the reason I bring that up Friars
Speaker 2: is not to you know this, but just for context
Speaker 2: for the audience. Of course, this is not simply I mean,
Speaker 2: there is theology to it, right, We're not going to
Speaker 2: deny that, but to say there's a deliberate operation to
Speaker 2: sort of recruit these people as part of a foreign
Speaker 2: influence campaign. Sorry, I'll kick it back to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's true, and just a minor crestia. So
Speaker 3: Friars are a Catholic order of monks, but Orthodox we
Speaker 3: just say father for a priest. Oh I'm sorry, No, No,
Speaker 3: it's okay. I wouldn't want to be a mistaken as Catholic.
Speaker 3: You're right though, but it's a round trip transaction. We
Speaker 3: say in Wall Street, I have a levocation of finance.
Speaker 3: So the money comes in from Israel and it's expanded,
Speaker 3: Let's say in the balance sheet of these makeup church pastors,
Speaker 3: all of whom are as far as I'm concerned, judas
Speaker 3: like figures because they have their hand on the treasury.
Speaker 3: They're quite wealthy, many of them. They have their mansions
Speaker 3: and so forth. And I'm not criticizing the wealthy. I'm
Speaker 3: only criticizing the wealthy when their wealth comes from selling
Speaker 3: christ that I don't agree with. But if you look
Speaker 3: at John Hagy's operation, for example, just Christian United for
Speaker 3: Israel CUFI, it's the largest organization. I want to say,
Speaker 3: it's in the millions of members, and I think they
Speaker 3: have sent over one hundred million back to Israel, so
Speaker 3: they may be receiving it. We could say sort of
Speaker 3: an initial investment coming from those sources, and then the
Speaker 3: investee is these you know, Christian nationalists and Christian Zionist
Speaker 3: groups who then expanded greatly and the money goes right back.
Speaker 3: So it's a when we call it around ship transaction.
Speaker 3: So it's it's a it's a good return on investment
Speaker 3: for Israel. And these are there, they're spokesperson these are
Speaker 3: their their marketers, their market makers, let's say, in the
Speaker 3: language of finance.
Speaker 2: So when we're talking about when we are talking about
Speaker 2: the Christian Zionists and their relationship to Israel, this is
Speaker 2: all tied up in eschatology, Great end Times prophecy. So,
Speaker 2: as difficult as it may be, could you give us
Speaker 2: a sort of best best faith summary of what these
Speaker 2: people hold. We can we can analyze it later it apart.
Speaker 2: But what would David hay what would Hayy? What would
Speaker 2: any one of these people say happens at the end
Speaker 2: of the world.
Speaker 3: Well, you've got to go to the original heresy. So
Speaker 3: you know, as we learned from Holy Schrucier, there's nothing
Speaker 3: new under the sun. So if we look at these
Speaker 3: three distinct categories, we've got Zionism, we've got Christian Zionism,
Speaker 3: and we've got Christian nationalists. And we're discussing today, right,
Speaker 3: So if you were to look at Zionism, for example,
Speaker 3: we could say that's a form of ethnophilitism where you
Speaker 3: put the ethnicity of the group, like you mentioned earlier
Speaker 3: as a sort of chosen people. Right. That's and philotism
Speaker 3: just means the love of like philosophia is the same
Speaker 3: word as the etymological root in Greek. So ethnophilitism is
Speaker 3: condemned as a heresy in the Church, first in the
Speaker 3: Council of Constantinople, which I think was eighteen seventy two,
Speaker 3: and then more recently in the Pan Orthodox Synod in Crete.
Speaker 3: So we could just say that Zionism is a form
Speaker 3: of ethnophilitism, that this idea that the Kingdom of God
Speaker 3: believed belongs to an ethnic group. It's not universal, right,
Speaker 3: which we understand Christ's reign to be universal. It's the
Speaker 3: city of God, not a city on earth, although don't
Speaker 3: tell Rome that. And then you could look at Christian Zionism,
Speaker 3: which is sort of its natural outgrowth is where it
Speaker 3: comes back and manifests of Christians, and it's sort of
Speaker 3: a reincarnation of the heresy of Helianism, which the automological
Speaker 3: root in Greek Helia just means a thousand. So many
Speaker 3: in the early Church believe that Christ would reign only
Speaker 3: for a thousand years, that the period of the epoch
Speaker 3: of the Church would be temporal, and it'd be a
Speaker 3: restoration of the Jewish people and their God's promises through
Speaker 3: the Prophet to the Jewish people that Christ and his
Speaker 3: Church were not the new Israel. And so that was
Speaker 3: condemned quite early in the history of the Church in
Speaker 3: three eighty one AD. And so we see this in
Speaker 3: Christian nationalism because they have an idea that if only
Speaker 3: they can restore Israel, they'll be the rapture and that's
Speaker 3: sort of their eschatology, and they will be secretly taken
Speaker 3: up it's almost neo Gnostic, into the sky and reunited
Speaker 3: with Christ and that will then usher in finally this
Speaker 3: new era, the restoration of Israel. So it's really Helioonism,
Speaker 3: it's not new. And then finally, if we look at
Speaker 3: Christian nationalism, it's really Palagianism, which I mentioned earlier, which
Speaker 3: is this idea that through our will we can bring
Speaker 3: out about a perfect world on earth. It's not through
Speaker 3: God's grace or through the really putting down our own
Speaker 3: ego and our own will in favor of Gods, but
Speaker 3: through our own will to power, if you will. And
Speaker 3: that idea of Plagianism was condemned also fairly early in
Speaker 3: the Church's history and the Council of Carthage in forty one.
Speaker 3: So if you look at what's going on today, you
Speaker 3: see the Christian nationalists or so the neoplagonists. You see
Speaker 3: that the Christian Zionists are really the modern day neo Helianism,
Speaker 3: and if you look at Zionism, it's just another form
Speaker 3: of Ethnophelitism. And interestingly enough, each of these groups, to
Speaker 3: the extent, well not Zionists, but Christian Zionist and Christian
Speaker 3: Nationalists see themselves as needing to bring about this s
Speaker 3: catological event, which is the restoration at Israel. You really
Speaker 3: can't call them Christian at all. I mean, they're just
Speaker 3: Judaizers actually. So it's a curious thing that they've co
Speaker 3: opted the language. I suppose, like any political movement that
Speaker 3: seeks to impose an agenda, the first thing they do
Speaker 3: is they hijack the language. So it's really a thin
Speaker 3: veneer of Noba glintur using the word Christian, but it
Speaker 3: has nothing to do with Christianity, the early Church, or
Speaker 3: its history. It's actually heresy through and through from beginning
Speaker 3: to end, and it's all been seen before. But the
Speaker 3: average commentaty. We began this conversation with you pointing out
Speaker 3: that so many people are interested in these things now,
Speaker 3: and honestly, I never thought of my LIFETI might see
Speaker 3: it raging debates online, people discussing heresy, but unfortunately most
Speaker 3: people just don't have the words to explain it clearly,
Speaker 3: or the education or the knowledge in the background. And
Speaker 3: so we're the very few people over the last twenty
Speaker 3: or thirty years went to a university and you know,
Speaker 3: got a degree in theology. It was almost university, the
Speaker 3: smallest school in every university campus. But now we have
Speaker 3: a sort of almost global interest in it, and it's
Speaker 3: really good. Actually, it's a good thing that people asking
Speaker 3: questions and talking about it as we are today. But
Speaker 3: there's really nothing new under the sun. All of this
Speaker 3: has been seen before in the early Church, and the
Speaker 3: role of the early Church and it's Creedle statements which
Speaker 3: came out of the early ecumenical Synods, was to combat heresy.
Speaker 3: And what we must do today is we must combat
Speaker 3: these heresies and call them what they are. You know,
Speaker 3: John Hagy, you mentioned his name is Christians United for Israel.
Speaker 3: It should just be called snake oil salesman United for Israel.
Speaker 3: It's a big operation, it's a business, and it's a heresy,
Speaker 3: plain and simple, and it's leading to the loss of life,
Speaker 3: the identification for all of these elderly Americans who have
Speaker 3: this American brand of Christianity completely bifurcated from traditional Christianity.
Speaker 3: We're raking in millions and tens of millions of dollars
Speaker 3: while calling for war, even nuclear war against I ran
Speaker 3: associated with Magog. It's not Christian at all. It's nothing
Speaker 3: to do with Christianity zero. And there people, you have
Speaker 3: to understand, Jay, people are were wired for religion, so
Speaker 3: people want religion. They and after what we've been through
Speaker 3: in our country in the last three or four days
Speaker 3: of I'm sorry, three or four decades, not days, decades
Speaker 3: of cultural erosion and societal erosion, people are starving for Christ.
Speaker 3: They're starving for a spiritual life. And these guys have
Speaker 3: large platforms. Hagy has over ten million followers. And you
Speaker 3: know the the as you pointed out, the APAC, the
Speaker 3: Jewish lobby is really entrenched in DC. So you have
Speaker 3: all these Americans who have sort of almost like a
Speaker 3: latent memory of having a Christian identity, but they have
Speaker 3: no real connection to any sort of traditional Christianity, which
Speaker 3: is correct, and its teaching then falls for these as
Speaker 3: I say, Snake Oil sales Paulo Whites another one of them.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned this term Christian nationalism, and I'm curious
Speaker 2: to get exactly what you mean by that, because there
Speaker 2: is a group of people I do not count myself
Speaker 2: among their number, but I am friends with a great
Speaker 2: many of them who currently call themselves Christian nationalists. I
Speaker 2: think of the Wolf Brothers, my friend and Risker, And
Speaker 2: so I'm curious, is that what you mean when you
Speaker 2: use that term? Are we talking about someone different?
Speaker 3: Well, the most the most visible one is Hexseth, Secretary
Speaker 3: of Defense Ptexseth, and his guru, we can say, is
Speaker 3: Doug Wilson, a very public Christian nationalist and again total
Speaker 3: Snaco of salesman. So again it's conflating a life in
Speaker 3: Christ with a national identity, and it becomes quite dangerous
Speaker 3: when you do that, because then becomes a justification for war.
Speaker 3: Now you've got not only a justification for adjust war
Speaker 3: as Rome has expounded, which is completely wrong, but now
Speaker 3: you got even the justification for a holy war. So
Speaker 3: it's ironic, you know, we say of the current regime
Speaker 3: and it ran that the religious zealots, and but look
Speaker 3: at how they're acting in DC. I wonder sometimes if
Speaker 3: the Muslims and I ran in Tehran are sitting back
Speaker 3: watching TV and laughing, you know, laughing at the folks
Speaker 3: in DC saying, look of that religious elots leading the
Speaker 3: world into a holy war. But none of that has
Speaker 3: anything to do with Christ's message. So Doug Wilson's of
Speaker 3: the world and the Pete hegseeths, it turns into the
Speaker 3: beating of the drums for war. And then once you
Speaker 3: have a holy war on your hand, it's like, if
Speaker 3: you think that this is going to bring about the
Speaker 3: second Coming of Christ, Genocide's okay, right, You wipe out
Speaker 3: a girls' school with a cruise missile and a few
Speaker 3: hundred young girls die, Well, it's just collateral damage.
Speaker 2: So I want to speak about the Jewish side of this,
Speaker 2: something will have to be delicate about for all the
Speaker 2: obvious reasons. But like many people, I was disturbed by
Speaker 2: a lot of the footage and targeting we've seen out
Speaker 2: of this most recent war, particularly as regards Lebanon and
Speaker 2: I don't know why. I'm surprised. I shouldn't be. I'm
Speaker 2: aware of these people's lack of regard for the Christian faithful, but.
Speaker 3: Can you lack of regard for life, any life?
Speaker 2: Fair enough? That's yes. So I'm curious if you could
Speaker 2: explain the motivation for this. Is this simply you know,
Speaker 2: we wanted to, you know, conquer this city block. There
Speaker 2: was a church deeple in our way. We blew it up.
Speaker 2: Maybe sometimes I can see that, but it seems as
Speaker 2: if there's a more deliberate desire to destroy.
Speaker 3: The church there certainly is. I mean, I think you
Speaker 3: probably know, especially amongst the mooted Jewish crowd, there's a
Speaker 3: real just horrible sense of Christ that he's not just
Speaker 3: that he was a political dissident and he's you know,
Speaker 3: boiling excrement and that sort of thing. So yeah, they
Speaker 3: of course they want to destroy Christianity. It's been going
Speaker 3: on for a long time. Maybe awareness in America is
Speaker 3: growing of it, but Orthodox Jews and Jerusalem have been
Speaker 3: spitting on clergy and nuns and churches for a long time.
Speaker 3: You know, you see these images and videos on social
Speaker 3: media emerging of an IDF soldier, You know, hammering a
Speaker 3: statue of Christ and everyone gets shocked and eventually now
Speaker 3: comes out and mix the statements as not that's that's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: They've been trying to make it illegal. I think it
Speaker 3: actually is already illegal in Israel to do any sort
Speaker 3: of prosalization or to speak to people about the Holy Gospel.
Speaker 3: It's very naive for Americans to think that Israel is
Speaker 3: a country religious freedom. They say that sort of on
Speaker 3: the surface because they unders and the sensitivity politically on
Speaker 3: global level. But it has long been a country that
Speaker 3: aimed to eliminate not just the Arab and Muslim contingent,
Speaker 3: but the Christian contingent as well. And we see that
Speaker 3: in the shrinking over the last what has it been about,
Speaker 3: maybe I think for the last seventy five years or something,
Speaker 3: that's declined from ten percent to just under two percent
Speaker 3: the Christian population. So I find it hard to believe,
Speaker 3: with today's technology that these shells from tanks and so
Speaker 3: or they're just errant and just happen to keep hitting churches.
Speaker 3: I find that very hard to believe. If you look
Speaker 3: what the settlers are doing, and you can see these
Speaker 3: videos that make their way online of idea of soldiers
Speaker 3: in Orthodox churches mocking the Holy services, mocking the icons
Speaker 3: and so forth. And the leadership in Israel has consistently
Speaker 3: said that Israel is a country for the Jews and
Speaker 3: the Jews only. They're very open about that. I think
Speaker 3: it's naive for people to think that, oh, it's multicultural
Speaker 3: and religiously diverse and respects als. That's just projecting American
Speaker 3: political propaganda and hopes and beliefs onto a country that
Speaker 3: doesn't believe that. So would they be content if all
Speaker 3: the Christians and Muslims were extinguished from the hilly lines,
Speaker 3: of course?
Speaker 2: Well, and I think that the process many people are
Speaker 2: going through is that I think if it were one
Speaker 2: isolated incident, you could perhaps give the country the benefit
Speaker 2: of the doubt. You know, I understand an urban war
Speaker 2: is chaotic, that happened once, it's a tragedy, but all right,
Speaker 2: this is anything but an isolated incident. This is decades
Speaker 2: or decades of what seems to be deliberate targeting, and
Speaker 2: so at a certain point, to quote George Bush, you know,
Speaker 2: fool me once, but once we've gotten to know four
Speaker 2: decades of this, at a certain point, it's like well,
Speaker 2: I'm the idiot for taking the other side of that bark,
Speaker 2: for saying, yes, I believe you that this was an
Speaker 2: isolated incident, that just one soldier who went crazy. You
Speaker 2: mentioned the attacks on clergy, and it wasn't too long
Speaker 2: ago that I believe a Catholic nun was pretty savagely
Speaker 2: beaten by a reservist as far as I understand. And
Speaker 2: the thing that makes this so monstrous is that the
Speaker 2: most explicit supporters of this regime in America are not Jewish.
Speaker 2: I mean, there certainly are. You can look at you know,
Speaker 2: Dershowitz and Randy Fines, and that is wrong but at
Speaker 2: least explainable, right, you can imagine why a Jewish person
Speaker 2: would root for the Jewish homeland. But when it is
Speaker 2: you know, a white, middle class American, a nominal Christian, right,
Speaker 2: someone who is has really no genetic or cultural tie
Speaker 2: to the current modern nation state of Israel whatsoever. It's
Speaker 2: without this kind of nexus of money and theology almost inexplicable.
Speaker 2: And it goes to show that, you know, look, theology
Speaker 2: can be seen as this sort of airy person suit
Speaker 2: of academics, but it does matter. And you mentioned earlier
Speaker 2: worship religion, faith, whatever term you want to use, is
Speaker 2: core to the human experience. We do it one way
Speaker 2: or another. We may delude ourselves, we may say, well,
Speaker 2: it's not explicitly theistic, but it is the way in
Speaker 2: which we interact with the world, and what values occupy
Speaker 2: that space, what icons I might say, produces radically different results.
Speaker 2: And his idolatry of the nation of Israel has produced
Speaker 2: one of the nastiest conflicts in human memory. Right, this
Speaker 2: kind of like horrible genocide funded with money from my
Speaker 2: pocket anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. Well, you know, it's the worst of
Speaker 3: organized religion, is what it is. It's the worst of
Speaker 3: spiritual abuse. We're spiritual creatures. We're designed in the imagion
Speaker 3: likeness of God to become like God, and when that's
Speaker 3: polluted with false teachings, that's the outcome is nothing less
Speaker 3: than bloodshed. You know, the word orthodox means the Greek
Speaker 3: word means correct teachings or correct glorification like ortho like
Speaker 3: you might hear what orthodonic? Orthopedics just means correct And
Speaker 3: if there's any doubt on the importance of correct teachings,
Speaker 3: this must be it. Because when you get Charlatan's like
Speaker 3: Doug Wilson or John Hagey or Paula White, exploiting the
Speaker 3: naivete of the people for profit, for political ends, for
Speaker 3: worldly power. This is what happens. And the closer a
Speaker 3: I don't want to call them churches, but we can
Speaker 3: say a church comes to political power, the more corrupt
Speaker 3: it becomes. The church should never be corrupt by worldly
Speaker 3: political power. And so yeah, that's what you get. You
Speaker 3: get a large number of people who have no clue
Speaker 3: what they're doing. I have a friend, an old friend,
Speaker 3: and he's Greek Orthodox and at the bottom of his
Speaker 3: emails he's have Greek half American and he doesn't have
Speaker 3: a Greek flag or an American flag. Isn't as really
Speaker 3: flag at the bottom of his emails. And I never
Speaker 3: really confront him on it because he's an older guy.
Speaker 3: I don't want to make him feel bad or anything.
Speaker 3: But the fact I used Raeli. You know, why do
Speaker 3: you have an Israeli flag there? They've been conditioned for decades.
Speaker 3: It's it's a type of social control and conditioning, you know.
Speaker 3: I had another acquaintance where I was I tell this
Speaker 3: story sometime I was sitting in this cafe one time
Speaker 3: and in Legano, Switzerland, and our kids went to school together,
Speaker 3: and we're watching the TV screen the first drone footage
Speaker 3: coming out of Gaza on. It just looks dystopian, right,
Speaker 3: So something only George Orwell could think of. I looked
Speaker 3: at TV. I said, look at that. That's incredible. I've
Speaker 3: never seen thing like that in my life. And this
Speaker 3: nice woman, she's a mother, she's a wife, she's a
Speaker 3: Christian from the South, probably a Christian Zionis, and she
Speaker 3: goes good. You know, that's what they deserve. And I
Speaker 3: just thought, how many women and children died there? Do
Speaker 3: you think? And I thought, what would make a mother
Speaker 3: or and a wife speak that way about the destruction
Speaker 3: and loss of life. I don't care if they're a
Speaker 3: Muslim or Jewish or Chinese. It's wrong, the loss of life,
Speaker 3: innocent life. And so you look at that, and these
Speaker 3: are people who can tell you the most basic tenets.
Speaker 3: If you asked one of these Christian Zionists, I would
Speaker 3: guess ninety nine point nine night percent the time, what
Speaker 3: is it required to be called a Christian? What is
Speaker 3: a Christian? They couldn't answer that question. So they're highly,
Speaker 3: highly manipulated with like almost like KGB type tactics. You know,
Speaker 3: we'll call most SAD tactics better yet, and you know,
Speaker 3: by the nineteenth century, the Zionist movement had figured out
Speaker 3: that they could co opt this this puritan heresy and
Speaker 3: use it for political means and secular means, and they've
Speaker 3: done it really quite effectively. If the leadership in Israel
Speaker 3: deserves credit for anything, it's got to be that that
Speaker 3: they turned America into a vassal state while most Americans
Speaker 3: believed that Israel was the vassal state. That's quite an accomplishment.
Speaker 3: And you know, religion is one of the ways you
Speaker 3: can really manipulate people. It's so so incredibly important to
Speaker 3: get those teachings right. I mean, I often been very
Speaker 3: hard on the Catholic Church, for example, as one of
Speaker 3: the largest in doctrinators of people. I mean, their propaganda
Speaker 3: and their ideological indoctrination is intense to the point where
Speaker 3: they're faithful or like horses with blinders on, they literally
Speaker 3: cannot see left or right. And you point out things like,
Speaker 3: for example, clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church four
Speaker 3: hundred thousand victims in fifty years, sixty years, and like
Speaker 3: they'll they'll just won't even talk about it, won't even
Speaker 3: acknowledge it. They'll talk about Epstein all day long. A
Speaker 3: thousand victims. You say, well, your own institution had four
Speaker 3: hundred times as many victims. You know, there's only four
Speaker 3: hundred thousand clergy of a clergy to sex abuse victim
Speaker 3: ratio of one to one, and they just blank it
Speaker 3: out like it doesn't even exist. You know, the orthodox
Speaker 3: et cetera. Really sets it apart is the fidelity in
Speaker 3: the adherence to correct teachings of the one undivided Church.
Speaker 3: That's where it really sets wholly Orthodoxic a part. And
Speaker 3: you see it in the fruit that the tree bears,
Speaker 3: because like we have almost no sex abuse gout. We
Speaker 3: have some scandals here and there, but in the same
Speaker 3: period of time. We just recently did a study on this,
Speaker 3: since nineteen fifty the total number of documented sex abuse
Speaker 3: cases and the authors eight hundred. The Catholic Church is
Speaker 3: four hundred thousand, and we don't have Zionist I never
Speaker 3: met anyone who had a Zionist idea in the author Church.
Speaker 3: Maybe they exist, I certainly never met them in my
Speaker 3: entire life in the church. But we see that the
Speaker 3: Vatican councils themselves were authored like Vatican two, so it's
Speaker 3: key authors. We're actually you know, gay Jewish men, like
Speaker 3: no Strata Tata for example. So it's kind of funny
Speaker 3: because you see these prominent neo Catholic commentators online, like
Speaker 3: a Canvas Owens. I don't mean to judge her by
Speaker 3: the way, or a Carrie Pergene Bowler also I don't
Speaker 3: need to judge either. I think they're both, you know,
Speaker 3: probably very fine women and so forth. But they're very
Speaker 3: loud and vocal and really against Zionism. But their own
Speaker 3: institution is pretty much show a Zionist institution and its
Speaker 3: core beliefs. So it's you know, it's really like the
Speaker 3: madness of crowds. You see, this is the total insanity.
Speaker 3: And I say it's a mess. It's a real mess.
Speaker 3: But I've consistently maintained and we've tried to communicate this
Speaker 3: on our podcast that try to find those errors in
Speaker 3: Holy Orthodoxy. The Undivided Church, the unchanged Church for two
Speaker 3: thousand years, which is held steadfast to the early ecumenical
Speaker 3: councils and teachings of the Church which were designed to
Speaker 3: prevent people falling victim to these heresies and the fallout
Speaker 3: from it. So by maintaining that fidelity to the early
Speaker 3: seven Ecumenical Councils and making sure that the faith and
Speaker 3: its holy traditions remained unchanged, the faithful we don't fall
Speaker 3: into those area. I don't see anyone in North Arch
Speaker 3: churches running to fund death and destruction and war in
Speaker 3: Israel and the orth Arch Church. And for a reason,
Speaker 3: because they're not falling prey. They're faithful. The flock is protected,
Speaker 3: the sheep are protected by their shepherds. These are false shepherds.
Speaker 3: The other ones, these Christian nationalists, Doug Wilson's and John
Speaker 3: Hagees and Paulo Whites like I say, there's snake oil salesmen.
Speaker 3: But the average American just doesn't know the difference. Fortunately,
Speaker 3: what used to be the center of Christian education the
Speaker 3: university system, like if you go to most like you
Speaker 3: mentioned Harvard earlier, if you go to any of the
Speaker 3: original institutions of higher learning New England, the center of
Speaker 3: those insuans was always a church, and they are very
Speaker 3: often were set up to educate clergy. You're right, but
Speaker 3: by the time I was at least going to the university,
Speaker 3: nobody studied theology. In fact, it was the major that
Speaker 3: would earn you the lowest salary. And being a capitalist society,
Speaker 3: most young people were basically led to believe that when
Speaker 3: they went to the university, they should choose a field
Speaker 3: of study which would earn them the most money, which
Speaker 3: resulted in no real education at all. It resulted just
Speaker 3: in technicians, which of course is what Plato had declaimed
Speaker 3: against in his academy. So we produced generations of technicians,
Speaker 3: people who could tell you, you know, quadratic formula, or
Speaker 3: you know, talk to you about molectua structure biology, which
Speaker 3: is good to know, but it doesn't lead to wisdom.
Speaker 3: A real education is knowing and loving God. And as
Speaker 3: Western Christian European people, we under stood that for two millennia,
Speaker 3: except in the last one hundred years it really got bad,
Speaker 3: maybe we say the post Enlightenment era. We started to
Speaker 3: create technicians, and they know all the knowledge in the world,
Speaker 3: and they have precisely zero wisdom. And that is room
Speaker 3: for anyone, any Charlatan, to exploit that. They don't say,
Speaker 3: they simply don't have the categories. They have the desire.
Speaker 3: It's written on their heart for God, for life in Christ.
Speaker 3: But they fall prey to and they succumb to, you know,
Speaker 3: blind guides. Let's say.
Speaker 2: There's a lot there. I mean, even when we go
Speaker 2: into that the origin of that term, right professor, the
Speaker 2: professor of the faith. The idea is that theology is
Speaker 2: they would use the analogy of like the mother of
Speaker 2: all disciplines. And so in the original university setting, you
Speaker 2: would get a degree, but there wouldn't necessarily be a
Speaker 2: degree in economics or history. You were supposed to be
Speaker 2: well rounded liberal.
Speaker 3: It was a degree. It was a degree in the humanities.
Speaker 3: It was theology, philosophy, literature, and so forth. And then
Speaker 3: the handmaidens of that, well, philosophy really the handmade of theology,
Speaker 3: but every other discipline was in service to that. There
Speaker 3: was a hierarchy that it led to glorifying God. And
Speaker 3: there was a risk though too. But I mean, once
Speaker 3: you hit the sixteenth century with the era of Thomas
Speaker 3: Aquinas just on the you know, on the cusp of
Speaker 3: the protest Reformation, this idea that faith becomes intellectualized or
Speaker 3: purely scholastic, open up a whole other back of worms,
Speaker 3: because then a life in Christ could have been purely
Speaker 3: an intellectual or academic pursuit which led to a whole
Speaker 3: other side of problems. Wouldn't have to necessarily get into.
Speaker 3: But the idea that you know, we are faithful Christians,
Speaker 3: that our life is oriented towards God, was removed very
Speaker 3: much so from the idea of learning well.
Speaker 2: And I think that it's an interesting trend right in
Speaker 2: that last five hundred years of privileged overprivileging reason. And look,
Speaker 2: we understand reason is quite important. You know, it's a
Speaker 2: useful tool to put it mildly, but it misses something
Speaker 2: about the human animal. And to return to the concept
Speaker 2: of Christian Zionism, you mentioned that interaction with that woman,
Speaker 2: her attachment to the state of Israel is not reasonable.
Speaker 2: There's no chart or graph she can point to is
Speaker 2: deeper than that. And I think that in many people
Speaker 2: it has become sort of the core tenet of faith,
Speaker 2: not necessarily well expressed or well, you know, laid out,
Speaker 2: but that is simply what you do. If you are
Speaker 2: a conservative Christian, you must also then support Israel.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's sort of one of these kind of bullet.
Speaker 1: Points, and it's really conflating the traditional Republican politics and
Speaker 1: conservatism with a Christian identity, a national Christian identity, which they,
Speaker 1: by the way, then introduce by the Post worlder two
Speaker 1: year This idea of Judeo christian is you know, call
Speaker 1: it etymological spaghetti, which is ridiculous.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm sorry, didn't mean to interrupt you.
Speaker 2: No, no, not at all. And again it is interesting
Speaker 2: as a student of you know, American political history. It
Speaker 2: is basically a conflation of Christianity and the political platform
Speaker 2: of Ronald Reagan, you know, a man who is president,
Speaker 2: you know, twenty years before I was born.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The idea is that that is synonymous with what it
Speaker 2: means to be a Christian. And sure, you know, we
Speaker 2: can agree or disagree with you know, Reagan on any
Speaker 2: number of policy positions, not particularly useful discussion at this point,
Speaker 2: but it is a profound limiting of what it means
Speaker 2: to be Christian, and I think that's very deliberate. It
Speaker 2: is basically a sort of Christian plantation, if you will,
Speaker 2: where you were allowed to hold to this, this, and this,
Speaker 2: but if you speak too dramatically or too vociferously on
Speaker 2: any one subject, well you're off the plantation. And we
Speaker 2: this is a area where I am not an expert,
Speaker 2: but the use of you know, tax exempt status for
Speaker 2: churches is very much weaponized in America. For instance, in
Speaker 2: the US context, you know, there's this idea that you're
Speaker 2: not allowed to preach politics from the pulpit. That standard
Speaker 2: is not fairly applied. To put it mild laser. I
Speaker 2: think that was repealed though, wasn't it all right? It
Speaker 2: may well have been, But I'm speaking about the last
Speaker 2: several decades right where you have had this sort of standard,
Speaker 2: And yes, you're right it has. It was what a
Speaker 2: year and a half, two years ago. The point is
Speaker 2: this immense pressure from both the legal apparatus as well
Speaker 2: as the kind of cultural apparatus to keep American Christianity
Speaker 2: very narrowly focused on certain issues and not others.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, absolutely.
Speaker 2: So, father. We are fast approaching time. This has been
Speaker 2: an interesting interview. I'll be sure to link to your
Speaker 2: series on Christian Zionism up Where can people find you
Speaker 2: and more of your work?
Speaker 3: Well, thank you for that. First of all, Jay, So
Speaker 3: our handle on YouTube is at Lemelson. Our episodes are
Speaker 3: pretty visual. They're probably better watched than listen to on
Speaker 3: X We're at Lemelson We're pretty active there on Facebook.
Speaker 3: Same thing at Lemolson substack It's Lemmelson dot substack dot com.
Speaker 3: We published quite a few articles on issues of geopolitics
Speaker 3: and religion, Capital markets cover a lot of areas run
Speaker 3: Apple podcasts. Anywhere you get your podcast, you can find us,
Speaker 3: but better to watch it visually. I think we're also
Speaker 3: on Rumble, but probably YouTube. If you really want to
Speaker 3: watch these episodes, we can send you that three part
Speaker 3: series and so for the me some of the earlier episodes.
Speaker 3: If you're at audience is interested, and definitely follow us
Speaker 3: on substack because you'll hear from us, you know, usually
Speaker 3: weekly we'll have something out talking about these sorts of things.
Speaker 3: And you know, it was really really great joining your
Speaker 3: show today. Really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Definitely, I appreciate it, and everyone at home, keep your
Speaker 2: head up. Good night. What what what what? What?
Speaker 3: What's what? Gary, Gary,