Speaker 1: Meaning a light man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: and win big down in the forest. Man, it gonna
Speaker 1: cause the tree fall, letting five thousand miles away. Many
Speaker 1: nobody see it.
Speaker 2: Nobody else might see. You don't need to know, man,
Speaker 2: like you followed another story and you got back to
Speaker 2: fact that that's still win. Man, don't black to dag
Speaker 2: on the panel.
Speaker 1: Man, Now you don't don't better, man, I.
Speaker 2: Don't pay anyway.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna be honest. Now, Normally when I
Speaker 1: record these monologues, I have some time, right, I have
Speaker 1: an idea of bouncing around in my head after the
Speaker 1: podcast record it, maybe an hour or two later, give
Speaker 1: myself some time to perkoly. That's not what I did.
Speaker 1: It's Memorial Day. It's also my birthday, so we had
Speaker 1: some people over and a lot of people over. Its
Speaker 1: now ten pm. I normally go to bed at ten pm.
Speaker 1: That kind of guy. So this isn't a normal monologue.
Speaker 1: But you know what, I'll try my best. I think
Speaker 1: I'm getting better at them at the very least. So
Speaker 1: you know what, forgive me if you will. Lack of
Speaker 1: preparation in habits. I put a lot of these out
Speaker 1: at the very least productive. That's not really what I'm
Speaker 1: here to talk about is media inside Baseball of having
Speaker 1: a podcast that sort of stuff. This is a follow
Speaker 1: up to the episode I did with Benjamin Michael a
Speaker 1: few days back talking about young men coming back to church.
Speaker 1: I like doing these sort of alternate perspectives. I did
Speaker 1: one recently on the election Thomas Massey, first with Carl
Speaker 1: Dahl than with Ronald Dobson, that many of you have
Speaker 1: expressed your opinions about, and I appreciate those opinions, but
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting to take multiple looks at the
Speaker 1: same issue, because look, I have my opinions, my guests
Speaker 1: have their opinions, and I feel like it's worth getting
Speaker 1: multiple signs. And so this is with my good buddy Kruptos,
Speaker 1: I haven't talked to in a long time about young
Speaker 1: men coming back to church, and he brought up a
Speaker 1: number of really interesting things that I hadn't even considered,
Speaker 1: things that I know, things that I talk about often,
Speaker 1: but it never brought to bear on this, particularly talking
Speaker 1: about the difference between men and women, how men and
Speaker 1: women have become two separate, antagonistic political blocks, which obviously
Speaker 1: is not a good thing, and how that's sort of
Speaker 1: affecting these weird dynamics as now there are congregations which
Speaker 1: have an increasing amount of radicalized young men in them.
Speaker 1: The genesis for this particular conversation is an article written
Speaker 1: by Rod Dreer responding to some random woman. It's not good.
Speaker 1: You actually will probably hear me get unusually heated drop
Speaker 1: some game rewards about my friend Ronathan Dreyer. And by
Speaker 1: my friend, I mean I do not like him. I
Speaker 1: think he's bad and writes bad articles, and you will
Speaker 1: hear me say that in pretty explicit detail. The point
Speaker 1: is he adopts the position that I'm seeing more and
Speaker 1: more of, which is the conservative quote unquote older man saying,
Speaker 1: oh this is horrible. These young men are so radicalized.
Speaker 1: Where'd they get these ideas? He doesn't talk like that,
Speaker 1: but in my head he does, basically saying the exact
Speaker 1: same thing the progressive elites say, like when they're talking
Speaker 1: about young white men, and it's incredibly short sighted, it's
Speaker 1: incredibly stupid, and to be honest, it's only going to
Speaker 1: serve to radicalize these guys further because the attitude I
Speaker 1: hear over and over and over again is. I want
Speaker 1: to get away from it. I want something that is
Speaker 1: untouched by it, progressivism, woke, genc, whatever term you use
Speaker 1: for it. I want to worship in a way that
Speaker 1: is removed from that. Right, I don't have to touch that
Speaker 1: sort of oil slick to get through it. And for
Speaker 1: many of these older people, they've sort of just abs absorbed.
Speaker 1: Rather those guys are bad and there's something wrong about them.
Speaker 1: They need to be pushed out. And if anything, the
Speaker 1: places where they're rough, where they say things are not
Speaker 1: really supposed to or they may take you a little
Speaker 1: too far and maybe a little bit of cervic maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit autistic, as we might say. That's a
Speaker 1: real problem. It's a very deep moral issue, especially in
Speaker 1: comparison to you know, minor things like you know, heresy,
Speaker 1: having only fans whatever. That's all minor stuff. We don't
Speaker 1: care about that, and it's never stated, well not I
Speaker 1: should say never, It rarely stated that explicitly. But really
Speaker 1: what we're seeing there is sort of cultural vestige. They've
Speaker 1: absorbed that from wider kind of mainstream culture, and they're
Speaker 1: bringing in to the church and placing it on the
Speaker 1: same level of doctrine, so to speak and it's frustrating.
Speaker 2: It's really frustrating. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the other dynamics is that typically there are
Speaker 1: more young women than young men in church, and as
Speaker 1: young men have come back, it's created this weird gender dynamic. Apparently,
Speaker 1: at least according to what you can read on the Internet.
Speaker 1: There's some women who are unhappy about this, saying things like, oh,
Speaker 1: these guys are icky and gross, and I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to date them. And there's a couple of things, which
Speaker 1: is one these articles are stupid. They're not real arguments, right,
Speaker 1: These things are sort of put out for public consumption
Speaker 1: in a way like, oh, yes, I have horrible stories.
Speaker 1: I'm just so beautiful that many men many men, and
Speaker 1: I turn them all down. That's perfect. There's some peacocking
Speaker 1: going on with this, and also it's the Internet. That narrative,
Speaker 1: of course is massively boosted. But also I think we're
Speaker 1: seeing that breakdown those two political groups classes, men and
Speaker 1: women looking for different things. Women looking for husband or
Speaker 1: at least looking for male attention, and guys who obviously
Speaker 1: want that. You know, they are traditionally minded, they want
Speaker 1: to have a family, genuinely interested in the creator or
Speaker 1: having a relationship with God connecting to something outside of themselves.
Speaker 1: So I always think we're seeing a mismatch there. It's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. And unless you ever doubt that conservatives,
Speaker 1: and I don't literally just mean political conservatives, but people
Speaker 1: of that bent sort of sociological niche are almost preternaturally
Speaker 1: gifted with the ability to distract, to snatch defeat from
Speaker 1: the jaws of victory. These people who for decades have
Speaker 1: been wishing and hoping and waiting for young people right
Speaker 1: to have our own youth movement, well, not like that.
Speaker 1: I don't want those gross, icky guys who say bad things.
Speaker 1: I don't want in cells quote unquote. And of course,
Speaker 1: what does in cell mean in a religious context, of
Speaker 1: conservative religious context, where you're not supposed to be having
Speaker 1: sex outside of a very specific context. It's almost a
Speaker 1: meaningless term. It is so clearly sort of appended on
Speaker 1: from wider culture. It's ridiculous. Especially ridiculous is that many
Speaker 1: of these conservatives have made arguments prayers one, but there
Speaker 1: are many others that these young men have listened to,
Speaker 1: and they made these young men the horribly naive conclusion
Speaker 1: that these arguments were sincere, that they meant them all
Speaker 1: the way and that's not true. They only meant them
Speaker 1: a little bit. They only meant them sixty percent of
Speaker 1: the way there. And when someone takes their idea and says, yes,
Speaker 1: that's true, let's do it, they lose it. They freak
Speaker 1: out there no, no, no, no. You weren't actually supposed
Speaker 1: to pay attention. You weren't actually supposed to read what
Speaker 1: I said and run with You were just supposed to
Speaker 1: use it as a sort of an opportunistic attack against
Speaker 1: the woke. But if you actually think that woke is
Speaker 1: enough of a problem to do something about me, And
Speaker 1: of course when I say wof, I'm using it in
Speaker 1: their terminology. I don't like that term when you're a problem,
Speaker 1: I don't think they're going to That attitude is so
Speaker 1: self defeat. It's it's so clearly and totally obviously stupid.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna go anywhere. But it is frustrating. It's
Speaker 1: frustrating to see these guys flounder to try and take
Speaker 1: cheap shots at guys who are doing what they're supposed
Speaker 1: to do, who are trying to better themselves, trying to
Speaker 1: index themselves to logos, to truth, to the fabric of reality,
Speaker 1: you're doing exactly what adamized young men should do. It's absurd,
Speaker 1: completely and totally absurd. And again, I'm not the biggest
Speaker 1: anti feminist. I'm certainly not feminist, but it's not my beat.
Speaker 1: You don't hear me talking about it a lot. But
Speaker 1: you also see the kind of slavish devotion that many
Speaker 1: American Christian leaders have towards women, like the concept of
Speaker 1: women again as a political group, where they almost view
Speaker 1: them as being like holy or sacred. And I've a
Speaker 1: very controversial view of women that I believe that they're human.
Speaker 1: You know, they do bad things, sometimes they do good things,
Speaker 1: and they're virtues and vices that the fair sex is
Speaker 1: more inclined to than my audience. I know there are women.
Speaker 1: There must be women that listen to this. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's enough of you. I joked a while back that
Speaker 1: I have no Korean listeners. Apparently I do. I have one,
Speaker 1: at least one who sent me a message. So if
Speaker 1: you're actually don't don't do that, don't do that. I
Speaker 1: don't care. But point is right, women are human is
Speaker 1: a very radical position. Apparently that women can do bad
Speaker 1: things and women can do good things. But this sort
Speaker 1: of conservative girl dad brain use all men as sort
Speaker 1: of uniquely flawed, predatory and probably I'm just ready to
Speaker 1: shoot up a school, and women as at best, at
Speaker 1: worst only mistaken. Right, Oh, you had an only fans
Speaker 1: you were deceived. Now you've repented, and I want to say,
Speaker 1: right as a Christian that repentance is very important, much
Speaker 1: in the same way that there are certainly flawed. There
Speaker 1: certainly sins. Men are more I guess you could say
Speaker 1: men are more prone to and those again require repentance.
Speaker 1: But you know, it seems only fair that you know,
Speaker 1: repentance is as repentance does that sin should be treated
Speaker 1: relatively equally. Obviously, maybe if you have Jeffrey Dahmer coming in,
Speaker 1: you might maybe take his word for it, but you know,
Speaker 1: don't give them a knife. You know, you check up
Speaker 1: on him. But when you see that double standard, when
Speaker 1: you see one group one sex being treated with kid
Speaker 1: clubs and the other one being being down, the other
Speaker 1: one being constantly criticized, viewed as uniquely morally responsible and sinister,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, that same attitude is what drove young
Speaker 1: men away from progressive politics, what drove men away from academia.
Speaker 1: The corporate world. But you're doing the same thing, You're
Speaker 1: making exactly the same mistake. And particularly for people who
Speaker 1: criticize those institutions, it's even more deeply ironic, because, according
Speaker 1: to their writings, I was sure that you were a dissident,
Speaker 1: you were willing to live not by lies, you were
Speaker 1: willing to apparently be thrown into the goolog But we
Speaker 1: had a little bit of social disapprobation, a little bit
Speaker 1: of criticism, kind of a raised eyebrow, and you melt,
Speaker 1: turn to nothing, completely and totally cock out. The question is,
Speaker 1: of course why, And that's a question that you know
Speaker 1: we've answered elsewhere, of course. But for those guys who
Speaker 1: are doing something countercultural, who are doing something difficult, who
Speaker 1: want something strenuous, who want something that requires something of them,
Speaker 1: when they see a man who and it's not just one,
Speaker 1: there are many like this. When they see men who,
Speaker 1: out of one side of their mouth talk about their deep,
Speaker 1: abiding commitment and on the other compromise under the smallest
Speaker 1: amount of pressure, they're not impressed. Far from it. They
Speaker 1: see that weakness. And I see men my own community
Speaker 1: online elsewhere, who were looking for elders to respect, who
Speaker 1: are looking for men that they can model themselves after,
Speaker 1: and they're not finding it. Certainly, there are exceptions to
Speaker 1: that rule, many on the show, many in my personal life,
Speaker 1: but I can see that frustration building and it's entirely reasonable. Look,
Speaker 1: we are called to respect our elders, respect our parents,
Speaker 1: both literal and metaphorical. But there is an incommon duty,
Speaker 1: right sort of reciprocal one on our elders to be
Speaker 1: worthy of respect. And that doesn't mean agreeing with me,
Speaker 1: Like there are a great number of people I don't
Speaker 1: agree with politically or would think that my politics are
Speaker 1: pants shittingly retarded, but I can respect them. That's a
Speaker 1: good man, the man who's lived his life well. And
Speaker 1: when you don't see that, well, those guys aren't going
Speaker 1: to stick around. They're going to go somewhere else. And
Speaker 1: I think that's what we have seen. To what we
Speaker 1: are seeing Church is a comedian metaphor. They has seen
Speaker 1: many others. So how's that for a slightly hungover, so
Speaker 1: off the cuff rant. Three days after I recorded the podcast,
Speaker 1: I don't think it was too bad. A little shorter
Speaker 1: than normal. Sorry it's past my bedtime, but let me
Speaker 1: turn you over to the interview with the cryptos. But
Speaker 1: before I do, check out our sponsors Axios Remote Fitness
Speaker 1: and Coaching. Did it work out today?
Speaker 2: From JD? It's great.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna show you what look better than I ever
Speaker 1: have a compliment from my grandma, who you know. Fair enough,
Speaker 1: you'd probably say I looked great if I didn't. But
Speaker 1: if you want compliments from your grandma, tell JD. I
Speaker 1: sent you. Oh one more thing. I had a complaint
Speaker 1: because I bumped up the price of the subscription on
Speaker 1: subset to six dollars a month from five. I didn't
Speaker 1: do that just to be money grubbing, although I am
Speaker 1: money grubbing. It's because the lowest amount I could set
Speaker 1: it to on one of the other platforms was six dollars,
Speaker 1: and it didn't seem fair to make it five on
Speaker 1: some and six on others. But it's not retroactive, so
Speaker 1: if you're already paying, it doesn't matter for you. But
Speaker 1: just going forward, it's the same everywhere now there's no gap.
Speaker 1: Just because I feel like that's fair, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it really bothers you the twelve dollars
Speaker 1: a year, if you meet me im personals, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'll buy you a beer or something. Make it up
Speaker 1: to you. I don't know, and don't let everyone do it,
Speaker 1: but I would actually I'll honor that. How's that for
Speaker 1: a sponsorship read? Probably not that good anyway, here's gryptos.
Speaker 1: All right, Cryptos, welcome back to the Jay Burden Show.
Speaker 2: How are you doing, man, I'm doing really well. Thanks
Speaker 2: for having me on. It's it's a pleasure to be back.
Speaker 2: And I've been a bit busy and we haven't been
Speaker 2: texting as much lately, so you know you are posting
Speaker 2: still continue like a lot of stuff. It's great to
Speaker 2: see you're up to. Like what episode five twenty two,
Speaker 2: it's crazy. So kudos to how your show has taken off.
Speaker 2: And if I remember correctly, this is basically now what
Speaker 2: you're doing, right, this is your full time I know
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: I am a full time I'm podcaster for good or
Speaker 1: for ill? Yeah, yeah, I mean I I put out
Speaker 1: something in the order of like eight to fifteen hours
Speaker 1: a week between my stuff and others, which is you know, look,
Speaker 1: that's not forty you know, that's not working in a
Speaker 1: coal mine.
Speaker 2: But there's all the back room that the editing, the posting,
Speaker 2: the answering, like it's all there's all of the stuff
Speaker 2: of keeping up a social media presence, right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and as someone who is, as you found out,
Speaker 1: not the best at scheduling or maintaining my own calendar,
Speaker 1: I see why guys like Scott Horton, who are you know,
Speaker 1: more established, have a secretary because I am just due
Speaker 1: to you know, lack of ability constantly.
Speaker 2: I will be honest too, I got busy with work,
Speaker 2: like actual work, and I actually missed I was supposed
Speaker 2: to go on on black Horse's channel, and I actually
Speaker 2: completely forgot about it and just completely missed the day.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh my word, I don't do like
Speaker 2: that's just something not that I don't and I had
Speaker 2: it in my book and I just got busy. And
Speaker 2: that's the kind of thing where you almost it's nice
Speaker 2: to have somebody who to say, you know, hey, hey,
Speaker 2: you're you know, you're on with pH in like an hour.
Speaker 2: Are you ready to go? And you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I forgot about that.
Speaker 1: Just so yeah, so I believe me, I've been there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Well, And strangely enough, this is the funny
Speaker 2: thing is I often end up here on the show
Speaker 2: when your your scheduling drops through, and you look for
Speaker 2: like a, hey, I need somebody to to go on
Speaker 2: as anybody available, Like you know what, Yeah, I'm fine,
Speaker 2: let's do another episode.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I'm always cautious on overleaning on people
Speaker 1: as my ringers, right, and so I have kind of
Speaker 1: a short list. I don't want to always pull on
Speaker 1: the same people to prospect their time and also just
Speaker 1: to avoid redundancy.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And I'll put it this way, guys, you can tell
Speaker 1: a bunch of things fell through this week because in
Speaker 1: sequence I have talked to Carl dol Ron Dobson and Cryptos,
Speaker 1: which is basically the top three on my everyone else
Speaker 1: is busy, And again it's because you guys are very
Speaker 1: fun to talk about and you have more open schedules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were self employed and so we can basically
Speaker 2: set our own schedules and that that helps a lot
Speaker 2: when you're everybody is that. It's a lifesaver when doing
Speaker 2: this because I can just book an appointment and they
Speaker 2: just work myself around it, right, And that's the nice thing.
Speaker 2: And I can always I don't have to generally cancel
Speaker 2: unless I have a client who has a hard scheduling thing,
Speaker 2: and then I will sometimes read book, but it's but yeah,
Speaker 2: so for the most part, that's it's nice to be
Speaker 2: able to sort of fill and do that, you know,
Speaker 2: and in turn on my show, like I kind of
Speaker 2: do the opposite. I have found myself as of late
Speaker 2: leaning on a narrow list, in part because I mine
Speaker 2: is not an interview show. I do conversations. And that
Speaker 2: was what something somebody early on. They said, you know,
Speaker 2: let the guests talk, and I'm like, well, no, I'm
Speaker 2: not there to interview the guest. I'm here to have
Speaker 2: a conversation with him, which means we should be talking
Speaker 2: about the same amount of time. And black Horse noted
Speaker 2: for he says, he says, you tend to generally tend
Speaker 2: to do interviews as to way to work out things
Speaker 2: that you want to write. And I think once that
Speaker 2: sort of clicked with me and I find myself I
Speaker 2: do do that. Where I'm looking on right now, a
Speaker 2: very big piece that's up to about nine thousand words,
Speaker 2: but I've had like three, i think three conversations sort
Speaker 2: of dance around pieces of that that allowed me to
Speaker 2: kind of talk it out out loud, both on my
Speaker 2: channel and others and that kind of helps. So that's
Speaker 2: kind of what I do, is if I have an
Speaker 2: interesting conversation that I want to have with somebody, that
Speaker 2: I have them on And oftentimes I have the same
Speaker 2: four or five people on regularly because I've been enjoying
Speaker 2: the conversations I have with them. So that's just one
Speaker 2: of the ways it works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and I technically have an interview show.
Speaker 1: It's basically a conversation show. And since I've started doing
Speaker 1: monologues more right, I've been kind of putting more myself
Speaker 1: out there. But it's an interesting thing, and we are
Speaker 1: actually here to discuss a topic not just inside baseball.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that sooner orly, sure, but it is interesting.
Speaker 1: This is something that you do kind of watching tape
Speaker 1: and watching how other people do it because there are
Speaker 1: a number of different kind of stylistic focuses people you
Speaker 1: know people do and so you know, again just as
Speaker 1: someone who does this professionally, it's kind of interesting. But Cryptos,
Speaker 1: you and I are actually here to sort of record
Speaker 1: a follow up to a discussion from I guess a
Speaker 1: year and a half ago now on your show on
Speaker 1: your sub stack, and it was titled something incredibly inflammatory
Speaker 1: like the Hitler youth are coming to church, and I like.
Speaker 2: To do that and then down and then and then
Speaker 2: oftentimes the content is very vanilla ish, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, but yeah, the shocking. I wrote an article
Speaker 2: one time, what is it the Case for concern Coercive Christianity,
Speaker 2: which really wasn't It's just basically an article, a long
Speaker 2: article explaining how generally ideas float down from the top,
Speaker 2: not from the bottom up, and that if you try
Speaker 2: to convert people one at a time, you're never going
Speaker 2: to get anywhere. And if you're if you have a
Speaker 2: group of elites who are actually devout Christians, like not
Speaker 2: just faking it because you know it's civic religion, but
Speaker 2: are actually devout Christians, that works generally far better than
Speaker 2: the other way around. And that was It's sort of
Speaker 2: an anodyne topic, felt a nice fun title like, you know,
Speaker 2: the Case for Course of Christianity, which is my best
Speaker 2: doing article because who's the gentleman from gab.
Speaker 1: Andrew Torba.
Speaker 2: Andrew Torba caught managed to read my piece, loved it
Speaker 2: and started flogging it like he was like he was
Speaker 2: texting people or tweeting people online, like, you've got to
Speaker 2: read this piece. I ignore the title, just read it.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic, and I'm like, oh, my word. Normally, like
Speaker 2: my stuff is very consistent. It's just been growing consistently
Speaker 2: over time, like I get, you know, between three and
Speaker 2: five thousand views, and I have yet to have an
Speaker 2: article eclipsed ten thousand views, which is funny. But that
Speaker 2: one got within fifty I think, I think only eight
Speaker 2: like nine, eight hundred and seventy five or something like that.
Speaker 2: I mean like one hundred and twenty hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: kind of thing close to ten thousand views, which is
Speaker 2: was quite so that's my best performing piece, largely because
Speaker 2: Andrew Torba flogged it for me. But again, shocking title,
Speaker 2: not much, but you know, the content is fairly I'm
Speaker 2: not nearly athratical, as I like to pretend I am
Speaker 2: sometimes my or that my wife thinks I am.
Speaker 1: But that podcast was sort of going over then new
Speaker 1: demographic information about the return of primarily young gen Z
Speaker 1: men to church. For the first time in recent recorded history,
Speaker 1: there were more men than women in church, which is unusual.
Speaker 1: And then also it was trending younger. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: that you know, more of gen Z in relation to
Speaker 1: previous generations is going to church, but the proportion of
Speaker 1: those that do that attend seriously and are going to
Speaker 1: traditional denominations, a term that will no doubt trigger the
Speaker 1: Catholics in the Orthodox will be nice to you. I
Speaker 1: promise is higher, right it is?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is higher now Okay, So we have to
Speaker 2: be careful here because I've had I've read some pushback
Speaker 2: on this, and this is it. It's good to to
Speaker 2: grasp sort of the full context of what has happened. So, yes,
Speaker 2: young men are returning to church, right, but we have
Speaker 2: to remember that this is in the context of a
Speaker 2: looming demographic crisis in the churches that is comparable to
Speaker 2: the looming demographic crisis in society, and a sense that
Speaker 2: the baby boomers are dying off and as they die off,
Speaker 2: you know, it's very different from the regular population, where
Speaker 2: you can invite people from say, Indian so forth, and
Speaker 2: they can come and work in in your restaurants and
Speaker 2: do all these other you know, and you have people
Speaker 2: coming from Mexico to mow your lawn and be your
Speaker 2: nanny and all these sort of things. But for the
Speaker 2: most part, many of these immigrants are not filling up churches,
Speaker 2: or at least not traditional pot Protestant churches in that regard.
Speaker 2: And even if they're doing, even if they are Catholic,
Speaker 2: they're in a separate stream from sort of what you
Speaker 2: would think of as traditional sort of Anglo Catholic churches
Speaker 2: and these sort of sort of English speaking Protestant Catholic
Speaker 2: and Orthodox churches in that regard, and so that sometimes
Speaker 2: the immigration side of it doesn't really affect the sort
Speaker 2: of the main bulk of churches in North America. So
Speaker 2: there's still a looming demographic crisis, and these young men
Speaker 2: that are coming back. The numbers are when you look
Speaker 2: at sort of church growth and percentages, like you know,
Speaker 2: the churches are still shrinking, but in these one category
Speaker 2: there is a noticeable increase. And it's happening in France,
Speaker 2: it's happening in England, and it's happening in North America
Speaker 2: that young men are returning to church. They're not returning
Speaker 2: into church in statistically significant amounts enough to sort of
Speaker 2: quote unquote save the churches from their own demographic decline,
Speaker 2: but the numbers are noticeable nonetheless, because this is the
Speaker 2: one area where actual growth is happening. Like you go
Speaker 2: into churches, and you'll often go in and you'll see
Speaker 2: like a couple buddies, young guys who will sit in turn.
Speaker 2: They're the same guys, and they're just they're just there
Speaker 2: every week. They're just young guys, and it's fun to
Speaker 2: engage with them because a lot of them are really
Speaker 2: really serious about their faith, and nobody is taking them
Speaker 2: into hands. Nobody knows what to do with them and
Speaker 2: what they're looking for. I myself have a twenty one
Speaker 2: year old son who grew up Protestant, and we we're in,
Speaker 2: you know, part because my parents were, you know, we're
Speaker 2: very much part of the sort of the church growth movement.
Speaker 2: They did a church plant when I was young, so
Speaker 2: I grew up in a church plant and and my mom,
Speaker 2: you know, blessed her soul. Did it old school like
Speaker 2: the door knocking, just basically inviting people to church thing.
Speaker 2: And if you saw my mother that you would think
Speaker 2: it was hilarious because she's like one of these quiet,
Speaker 2: saintly women. But she was good at it, she you know.
Speaker 2: And then the the when they came to be, they
Speaker 2: moved into the town, I moved away from home and
Speaker 2: then my parents moved to where I am now and
Speaker 2: they started attending a large megachurch here in town. And
Speaker 2: it was nice to go to church with my parents.
Speaker 2: So I'm now at a large megachurch even though it's
Speaker 2: not really my thing. And yeah, so it is what
Speaker 2: it is. But my son grew up in this church,
Speaker 2: and you know, it was decent for him. But being
Speaker 2: away at university, he made friends with a young man
Speaker 2: who's Catholic and serious about his faith, and so he
Speaker 2: started to attend a Catholic church and get very serious
Speaker 2: about going. He goes to like, Okay, so this is
Speaker 2: a twenty one year old young man who's away from home.
Speaker 2: Now what when for my age, you know, I'm in
Speaker 2: my fifties, and for people in their forties and some
Speaker 2: in their thirties, what did you do when you went
Speaker 2: away from home? Well, you stopped going to church oftentimes
Speaker 2: because nobody made you go. And that, like university and
Speaker 2: getting away from home was where a lot of young
Speaker 2: people wandered away from the church. You know, sometimes they
Speaker 2: got connected with a local church or youthful christ movement
Speaker 2: or you know, I think now they call it P
Speaker 2: two C. You know, power to change they got involved
Speaker 2: in some of those movements, and they hung on with
Speaker 2: the churches. Sometimes they left there, you know, the denominational
Speaker 2: church that they grew up in and went to a
Speaker 2: big megachurch because it's more fun. But for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: this college young you know, eighteen to twenty five age
Speaker 2: group was a time when many, many, many young people
Speaker 2: drifted away from church. The universities didn't help because the
Speaker 2: universities undermined all of their faith foundations, asking questions, challenging
Speaker 2: them and so forth. So many began to question the
Speaker 2: path of their parents and they drifted away. Now you
Speaker 2: get you know, young men like my son, who are exploited.
Speaker 2: So I asked him, I said, you know, because there's
Speaker 2: a really devout Baptist congregation just around the corner from
Speaker 2: where he lives. And I said, well, why not there?
Speaker 2: And his answer was he says, well, he says, the
Speaker 2: Catholic Church just seems more serious. And I'm like, that's
Speaker 2: really And I think some of it is the attraction
Speaker 2: to the old rituals. But you know, like how Catholic
Speaker 2: Church works, they have like massive every day right, So
Speaker 2: if he doesn't have something going on, like literally, this
Speaker 2: is a twenty one year old young man who goes
Speaker 2: to Mass like five times a week. I just like,
Speaker 2: I thank the Lord that is his passion for his
Speaker 2: faith is wonderful. But it's just like and I kind
Speaker 2: of get it. And like, so I'm reading a lot
Speaker 2: of this interest discourse and I'm like, yeah, I'm watching
Speaker 2: it firsthand. And my son, like this is he's explored.
Speaker 2: You know, he might have been an Ortho bro, you know,
Speaker 2: a young Ortho bro, but because he happened one of
Speaker 2: his best friends at university is a like a you know,
Speaker 2: a towny so to speak, and went to the local
Speaker 2: university and had connections with the local church that he
Speaker 2: just dragged my son out. And now he's a Catholic
Speaker 2: and in one of the oldest congregations actually in what
Speaker 2: was then Upper Canada. It's the Congrege that the church
Speaker 2: he has goes back actually to the seventeen hundreds. It's
Speaker 2: a beautiful building. But yeah, so but yeah, so he
Speaker 2: he he that's you know, and he's not alone, and
Speaker 2: so they're looking for something and nobody's ready to give
Speaker 2: to it. You know. It's it's kind of different when
Speaker 2: you're the dad, because you can't it's hard ready to
Speaker 2: disciple your own kids, you know, to give them the
Speaker 2: kind of structure. But so they're looking for some I
Speaker 2: think the young men especially are looking for someone to
Speaker 2: give them structure, to to discipline them in a sense
Speaker 2: and disciple them. But I think they're also looking for more.
Speaker 2: I think they're looking, you know, and I talk a
Speaker 2: lot about technology and you know, technique and how you
Speaker 2: know Heidegger's notion how technology inframes us in you know,
Speaker 2: that whole sort of standing ready waiting to be how
Speaker 2: can we be used and pumped into the machine? Right?
Speaker 2: So it turns everything into something that is what's the
Speaker 2: word like standing in guard or something that that that
Speaker 2: that high degree uses. And but I think there's this
Speaker 2: in framing, is that the young man, especially, I think
Speaker 2: sense that in churches that here's the people that can
Speaker 2: maybe help me connect, like break through the frame and
Speaker 2: connect me with something real with God. And I think that,
Speaker 2: you know, I think that's in some sense what my
Speaker 2: son is looking for. He's looking for the grounded nature
Speaker 2: of historic liturgy. And there is a sense of seriousness
Speaker 2: about the people that are devout Catholics. In some ways,
Speaker 2: sometimes I think there's a there's a seriousness about devout
Speaker 2: Catholics that many devout Protestants don't have. I think that's
Speaker 2: the way to put it. And so that earnestness is
Speaker 2: something that appeals to him. And then you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I think it's maybe normalacy is something else,
Speaker 2: like the structure of the normalcy. And I know that
Speaker 2: this whole thing gets dragged into, like we were talking
Speaker 2: about an article before. The thing that gets dragged into
Speaker 2: this whole the dating discourse. And I think that this
Speaker 2: is in some ways something that the dating discourse. When
Speaker 2: women look at young men coming back to church, they
Speaker 2: perceive it differently, I think than young men who come
Speaker 2: back to church. The men are not looking for the
Speaker 2: same things that women are. And women are looking for
Speaker 2: a husband, and they're looking for you know, they want
Speaker 2: marriageable men, whereas I think young guys they'd like to
Speaker 2: get married. But I think what the men are looking
Speaker 2: for is they're looking for God. They're looking for something real,
Speaker 2: and it's it's and I think, you know, like that
Speaker 2: article you sent me, you know, she's like, well, like
Speaker 2: why would they why would I marry one of these guys?
Speaker 2: You know, they're all like fat overweight, they don't seem
Speaker 2: to have any motivation, blah blah blah, not really that
Speaker 2: you know, hypergamy is a thing. And these ordinary guys
Speaker 2: are just in lieu of what their parents and grandparents have,
Speaker 2: you know, the whole dating scene, getting out, getting married,
Speaker 2: normal life, normal job. They know that life is not
Speaker 2: giving them that they don't necessarily have the language to
Speaker 2: articulate it, and if they tried to articulate it, they
Speaker 2: look like either racists or sexists or bigots or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, or ungrateful, or that they're lazy,
Speaker 2: and they you know, all of these things that they
Speaker 2: normally get the characterizations dumped on them. And I think
Speaker 2: a lot of these young men are looking for something
Speaker 2: to give them, like a place of refuge. They want
Speaker 2: to they want faith to be real because they need
Speaker 2: it to be real. If that does that make sense,
Speaker 2: That's the kind of things I'm sensing my own son,
Speaker 2: you know, and I'm looking at him and his friends,
Speaker 2: and they're all kind of the same, and and I think,
Speaker 2: you know, they're they're they don't know what they're looking for.
Speaker 2: They're looking for something real, and so we've just like
Speaker 2: my wife and I have just said, like we're we
Speaker 2: don't get it. We don't necessarily approve because you know,
Speaker 2: we're devoute Protestants, but if this is the path that
Speaker 2: God takes him on, we will support it.
Speaker 1: So a couple things there. Uh, when we're talking about
Speaker 1: this demographic trend in aggregate numbers, it is significant, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to be a sort of like national revival.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're not getting like increase in the people coming
Speaker 2: to church. You're getting like it's like like a like
Speaker 2: a tenth of one percent kind of thing movement or
Speaker 2: if it's even that much. But but it is noticeable.
Speaker 1: Yes, and that's that's really what we're talking about. So
Speaker 1: I mentioned this before on my conversation with Benjamin Michael,
Speaker 1: but chritis, you're aware of the sort of church that
Speaker 1: I go to. I won't you know, dox myself past that.
Speaker 1: But this is a you know, century and a half
Speaker 1: old Conservative Protestant church, and certainly it is you know,
Speaker 1: grown over time, very multi generational. But I was speaking
Speaker 1: to one of the pastors because my wife and I
Speaker 1: have been put in charge of this. It's not quite
Speaker 1: a program. It's more of a social group targeting exactly
Speaker 1: this demo kind of twenty two to thirty five colleged
Speaker 1: kind of kid number two, right, and we've noticed the increase.
Speaker 1: But when I was speaking to our pastors, he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: in the last five years, our number of new members, right,
Speaker 1: So the amount of people becoming new members is gone
Speaker 1: up about three times three XD and the average age
Speaker 1: of a new member has dropped by around twenty five years.
Speaker 1: So this is a pretty significant demographic change. A lot
Speaker 1: of this, you're also seeing a sorting happening within American Christianity,
Speaker 1: So fewer young people are going to the sort of
Speaker 1: like charismatic kind of megachurch style, and more of them
Speaker 1: are returning to liturgical worship. Now, obviously you know the
Speaker 1: Orthodox are exploding in relative terms. Of course, we understand
Speaker 1: that going from twenty to ninety is not in the
Speaker 1: grand scheme of things. A large number percentage wise is huge.
Speaker 1: They're just similar kind of transformation going on within the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church, be it slightly different, And I think we're
Speaker 1: seeing a couple of demographic trends hitting all at once,
Speaker 1: which is one for my generation. Even in the Bible Belt,
Speaker 1: there is absolutely no social pressure to go to church whatsoever.
Speaker 1: There's no real advancement to be had from that. So
Speaker 1: if you or your parents were just sort of going
Speaker 1: because that's what you did, well, you don't bother anymore.
Speaker 1: There's no advantage to be had in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like Aaron Wren's negative world. Right, there's
Speaker 2: not in a sense going to church is not going
Speaker 2: to advance your career, So like, why am I wasting
Speaker 2: my time? Well? Right?
Speaker 1: And also we understand that politics are extremely haritable and
Speaker 1: there is a noticeable fertility gap between people who self
Speaker 1: sort as liberal and self source ace conservative. In the US,
Speaker 1: a liberal woman I think her TFR is around one.
Speaker 1: A conservative woman is like two point two. Now, look
Speaker 1: these are not great, but that's but it's a population
Speaker 1: wise that will produce a shift. And also we understand
Speaker 1: the children of liberal Christians tend to drop Christian They
Speaker 1: tend to not even bother with the pretense of religion.
Speaker 1: This has very much happened in the Catholic Church. I
Speaker 1: am not Catholic, but if you look at the demographic
Speaker 1: or political affiliation of priests in the Catholic Church, it
Speaker 1: went from about two thirds liberal to roughly eighty percent
Speaker 1: extremely conservative in the last sixty five years plus or minus,
Speaker 1: because again, who takes this seriously? So that is a
Speaker 1: notable shift, and I think it is also highly dependent
Speaker 1: on sort of what church you find yourself in. Now,
Speaker 1: the interesting element is, look this article. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to link it because it's not a good article. It's
Speaker 1: not worth your time reading. It is basically a woman
Speaker 1: with if they checkered past, coming to church and saying
Speaker 1: the guys here are gross and icky. I don't like them.
Speaker 1: Someone needs to fix it. Not worth your time, don't bother.
Speaker 1: I got rage baited by it. I won't inflict that
Speaker 1: on anyone else. And there are a couple things there.
Speaker 1: One is this a serious critique, No, not really, but
Speaker 1: it has been amplified by the conservative quote unquote elements
Speaker 1: in American Christianity, several figures that are oftentimes referenced on
Speaker 1: this podcast. I'm trying not to do it now, but
Speaker 1: the sort of kind of squishy conservatives, the people who
Speaker 1: are very very worried about woke and they don't to
Speaker 1: talk about that, but are also extremely worried about radical
Speaker 1: young men. And you brought up the fact that there
Speaker 1: are young men genuinely seeking God, looking for something stable.
Speaker 1: I think that is why we are seeing as sorting
Speaker 1: two more traditional forms of worship, looking for something that
Speaker 1: is old, ancient and to the smallest degree possible affected
Speaker 1: by the modern world.
Speaker 2: And so in this article that you're looking for is grounded.
Speaker 2: And this is a sense of like one of the
Speaker 2: things that that the modernity does, and especially kind of
Speaker 2: hyper modernity, like the sort of Boudriardian you know, you know, similacrum,
Speaker 2: the post matrix world. When people realize that they're living
Speaker 2: within a simulation, is that everything begins to feel very ungrounded.
Speaker 2: And you don't want your church to feel unground. Like
Speaker 2: so if you're looking to be grounded, you're not going
Speaker 2: to go into a megachurch, because the megachurch just extends
Speaker 2: that hyperreality experience. You're looking for something grounded. Hence, you know,
Speaker 2: Catholic like traditional Catholic liturgy, Orthodoxy, Conservative Protestant churches, and
Speaker 2: and those are where people, these these young guys tend
Speaker 2: to be drifting because they're looking for their world to
Speaker 2: be grounded when it's not grounded.
Speaker 1: Now, I think well, and also like when in this
Speaker 1: article when she's talking about political extremism, like sure that
Speaker 1: exists but I think a large part of it, and
Speaker 1: I speak as someone who went through this is for
Speaker 1: guys who were raised went through school during the kind
Speaker 1: of excesses of the kind of twenty tens post Obama woke,
Speaker 1: especially through the pandemic, through the Summer of Love and
Speaker 1: all that, there is very much this sort of creeping
Speaker 1: realization that like, I can't live with this, this is
Speaker 1: not going to work. And I think part of the
Speaker 1: reason you see young men going to conservative churches is
Speaker 1: exactly that I want something untouched by the rot, the
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of nothing from the never ending story.
Speaker 1: And it's funny. There was an incident I've mentioned multiple times.
Speaker 1: So as I've said before, you know, I've been kind
Speaker 1: of put in a leadership role in this group of
Speaker 1: young people, and so I've met a lot of them, right,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are getting married in their
Speaker 1: early twenties, you know, taking church seriously, quite traditional and
Speaker 1: coming from these kind of older figures in the church
Speaker 1: who are unsure how to deal with this demographic change.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of confusion because the common wisdom
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, and look, most of these
Speaker 1: people are not really political, They're not thinking about issues
Speaker 1: in the same way that you or I do cryptos.
Speaker 1: The common accepted wisdom is that young people are more progressive,
Speaker 1: and so to appeal to them, we must meet them there. Right,
Speaker 1: we will compromise on, you know, certain aspects in order
Speaker 1: to reach out to that that idea that you know,
Speaker 1: a church's success is determined by, you know, the number
Speaker 1: of butts and seats. In order to do that, we
Speaker 1: must sort of tailor our message. And there's a very
Speaker 1: funny interaction between a older, more progressive I don't mean
Speaker 1: to say a progressive, but leaning in that direction. Woman
Speaker 1: had a professional career that sort of type, and one
Speaker 1: of these guys who I met through this group, who's
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know him super well, he's maybe
Speaker 1: twenty three, getting married soon, and she, of course brings
Speaker 1: out this sort of you know, mealy mouthed, watered down
Speaker 1: conservative feminist take of oh, you know, we've got to
Speaker 1: let women do X, Y or C. And she was
Speaker 1: had sort of deliberately brought together a group of young
Speaker 1: people as an audience for this. Right, you can sort
Speaker 1: of see the wheels turning of Oh, this is how
Speaker 1: I get what I want done. I'll collect the young
Speaker 1: people together because they'll be on my side. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm playing my cards close to my chest. I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to out myself, as you know, the highly prominent
Speaker 1: controversial online figure. I have been assured that I am,
Speaker 1: so you know, I'm offering a little bit of pushback.
Speaker 1: But this guy just goes hammer and tongs with her,
Speaker 1: you know, really like going to the mat. And I
Speaker 1: was surprised. She was even more so. And we had
Speaker 1: a conversation afterwards, and it was really interesting because the
Speaker 1: conclusion that I mean, it's the same thing I thought,
Speaker 1: But the conclusion I'm hearing from him, I'm hearing echoed
Speaker 1: from other people, is no, I won't let you have
Speaker 1: this too. You guys have everything else. Everything else has
Speaker 1: been poisoned in that way. I am here to avoid that.
Speaker 2: So not here.
Speaker 1: And so I think that a lot of particularly kind
Speaker 1: of older, more moderate conservatives, are struggling with this because
Speaker 1: they see a younger generation who cares a lot, like
Speaker 1: a lot more perhaps than they do, and views many
Speaker 1: of these issues, whether it's you know, homosexuality, women which
Speaker 1: leading putting those categories in the same list sounds worse
Speaker 1: that I mean it to but these kind of fracture
Speaker 1: lines within Christianity as existential issues. I happen to agree
Speaker 1: with that. I'm also in that demographic, but it's created
Speaker 1: this sort of bizarre situation where these churches are being
Speaker 1: offered the next generation, but they look at them as
Speaker 1: being kind of gross and icky, like, oh, you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to say that. Oh you're not supposed to push
Speaker 1: that hard on that issue. And it's sort of an
Speaker 1: interesting dynamic. But I've been winging on for a while. No,
Speaker 1: that's fine, back.
Speaker 2: To you, No, that's fine. Is I'm glad actually that
Speaker 2: you you you talked at length to because that that
Speaker 2: that helps clear by and I think I think what's
Speaker 2: happening is that there are multiple different streams of returning
Speaker 2: or or existing in the churches. So the first piece is,
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, this idea of being you know, relevant
Speaker 2: and making church less strange so people can come in
Speaker 2: and make it more rich.
Speaker 1: Which, okay, I'm going to just say his name. Rodreer
Speaker 1: wrote an absolute dogshit article on this, and one of
Speaker 1: my favorite quotes from Rodreer, and this is always what's
Speaker 1: so frustrating to me about him is that he is
Speaker 1: he lacks the intestinal fortitude to carry his ideas to
Speaker 1: their own logical conclusion. And in his book Live Not
Speaker 1: by Lies, which is not very good. It is classic
Speaker 1: Dreyer handbringing. He makes exactly this point. Relevance is a
Speaker 1: false god. If you become, if you chase that, you
Speaker 1: will destroy whatever institution you have. And he says that
Speaker 1: out of one side of his mouth and out of
Speaker 1: the other side of his mouth. He returns to center,
Speaker 1: which for him is limp wristed fagotry. Sorry, cryptos, carry on. Finally,
Speaker 1: my chimpal it's fine.
Speaker 2: So I was going to say that that it The
Speaker 2: idea is with a seeker, with the sort of the
Speaker 2: broadly called the church growth slash seeker movement type of
Speaker 2: church or type of approach is that you try to
Speaker 2: reduce the barriers, make it easier for people to come in,
Speaker 2: and then once they're in, then will draw them into
Speaker 2: a deeper, more serious Christian life, which if you're familiar,
Speaker 2: you know now that you know we know these kind
Speaker 2: of terms because we've been doing these sort of discourse.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a classic bait and switch. And the
Speaker 2: problem is is that the Christian life, when you read
Speaker 2: about it in the Bible, and you listen to the
Speaker 2: words of Jesus, listen to what you know, even the
Speaker 2: Old Testament, what God called his people to be relative
Speaker 2: to the nations, that it's difficult and hard. All of
Speaker 2: the things the nations pursue are all things that are
Speaker 2: corrupting and ultimately end in the demise and collapse of
Speaker 2: individuals and societies. And so there is a call within
Speaker 2: scripture to take of you know, the narrow path, and
Speaker 2: it's a narrow path is hard, you know, take up
Speaker 2: your cross and follow me. And you know, you can
Speaker 2: see in the Gospels where Jesus actually pushes people away
Speaker 2: because they're not serious. And there is an integrity with that,
Speaker 2: you know, the sense of I like I speak in
Speaker 2: parables because I don't actually want you to understand the message,
Speaker 2: which is largely what he says. And for many of
Speaker 2: us today that just like we can't compute that, like,
Speaker 2: how does that help you with growing a church? While
Speaker 2: Jesus really wasn't interested in growing churches. And that may
Speaker 2: strike you as odd, but that's not the case. And
Speaker 2: so the scriptures present it with a very there's a seriousness.
Speaker 2: It's not a dourness, but there is a it's a
Speaker 2: serious business. The faith and pursuit of God in this
Speaker 2: thing is a serious business. So if you come in
Speaker 2: and say, hey, it's fun, it's easy, get to know us.
Speaker 2: It's not that difficult, it's not that hard. What happens
Speaker 2: is is that the switch never happens because nobody if
Speaker 2: it once it's fun and easy. If you think and
Speaker 2: you try to pitch it that coming to God is
Speaker 2: fun and easy. Nobody wants it to be hard. And
Speaker 2: this is especially true with the baby boomers. And I
Speaker 2: was talking with somebody recently who's a baby boomer. He admitted,
Speaker 2: he says, you know, he says, I know, the people
Speaker 2: in my generation, we don't want it to be hard work.
Speaker 2: And we don't want the faith to be hard work.
Speaker 2: We want it to come easily. And so there is
Speaker 2: this kind of Boomer version and you know, we call it, like,
Speaker 2: you know, the Boomer truth regime. But it begins with
Speaker 2: this idea that I think, you know, it's sort of
Speaker 2: the summer of love continued all the way through life. Right,
Speaker 2: so everything is going to be free and easy and
Speaker 2: it's not going to cost anything. And this down you know,
Speaker 2: this goes down to you know, we're going to heal
Speaker 2: all the wounds in society and we're going to you know,
Speaker 2: peace and love and kumbay a. Right, it's all going
Speaker 2: to be good again. And so, you know, there's a
Speaker 2: number of political decisions downstream from that, Like one is
Speaker 2: the cruise shipification of everything. Right, you know, you hire
Speaker 2: immigrant later so you can have cheap cruises and you
Speaker 2: can enjoy your life and it's free and easy, and
Speaker 2: a lot of that gets extended through, you know, and
Speaker 2: you combine that with you know, the post war consensus
Speaker 2: of we're going to end racism and we're going to
Speaker 2: end anti Semitism and we're going to you know, create
Speaker 2: this peaceful world. And Hitler is the greatest evil of
Speaker 2: all time. And well, you know, young men who want
Speaker 2: to come to church because they read the Bible and
Speaker 2: it shows a hard life and they want somebody to
Speaker 2: walk alongside them in a hard life. And they come
Speaker 2: to a church where everything is free and easy. There's
Speaker 2: a disconnect there. And the people who are in leadership
Speaker 2: now they really have no idea how to deal with
Speaker 2: these young men because they've never done it themselves. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: and this is the hard truth. There are some men
Speaker 2: who have walked in faith. There's some men who've taken
Speaker 2: the narrow path, and some men who have you know,
Speaker 2: lived faithfully. But the bulk of people who show up
Speaker 2: in church, unfortunately, you know, bless their souls are just
Speaker 2: they're not doing the work. And as a results, when
Speaker 2: these young men show up and they want to say, hey,
Speaker 2: show me how to do the work, nobody knows what
Speaker 2: to do with them. And then you know that So
Speaker 2: that's that's one piece of it, is that sort of
Speaker 2: bait and switch that's happened, you know, over the last
Speaker 2: fifty years or so. This is large of the church
Speaker 2: that I grew up in and lived through. And then
Speaker 2: in addition, you have these other discord like you have
Speaker 2: the cracking and the breaking of the post war consensus.
Speaker 2: But then you also have this other piece of you know,
Speaker 2: the women's discourse and women complaining about why life isn't
Speaker 2: working out for them, you know, the feminist dream isn't
Speaker 2: a reality, and like why men are terrible and all
Speaker 2: these things, and there is a there's a profound disconnect.
Speaker 2: So these men are coming into church, and I think
Speaker 2: the women think these men are coming into church looking
Speaker 2: for them, and they're not. That's the funny thing I
Speaker 2: think is that these men aren't actually looking for women
Speaker 2: like again, come back to my son, like you never
Speaker 2: hear them talk about I hope to find a nice
Speaker 2: girl church dad. You know, he's looking for a serious
Speaker 2: faith life. He maybe already recognizes that, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: there that he isn't good, that that the girls are
Speaker 2: just not going to be attracted to kind of a quiet,
Speaker 2: geeky guy who's awkward and shy, and you know, he's
Speaker 2: just you know, all the things the girls complain about.
Speaker 2: My son is smart, he's intelligent, he's probably going to
Speaker 2: do very well in life, but he's deeply shy about women.
Speaker 2: He's put on a couple of pounds in university because
Speaker 2: he eats like crap, and it's it's one of these
Speaker 2: things where he, you know, like, my son is the
Speaker 2: kind of boy that these girls complain about, and yet
Speaker 2: knowing things as is sort of on this side of
Speaker 2: things as a man, he's exactly the kind of guy
Speaker 2: that you want to marry because he's going to be devoted,
Speaker 2: he's going to be committed, he's going to take care,
Speaker 2: he's going to be a good father, he's going to
Speaker 2: be a good provider. He's exactly what you're looking for.
Speaker 2: But you're not looking for him because you've been fed
Speaker 2: this discourse about what you think you want, and it's
Speaker 2: you know, it's based on mass media realities. And so
Speaker 2: women are walking around this is one discourse. Men are
Speaker 2: coming into church with this very different discourse. And then
Speaker 2: the older group have a different understanding of church, and
Speaker 2: there's a collision course coming here somewhere, and you know,
Speaker 2: like like I characterize it this way, you know, the
Speaker 2: Hitler youth come to church, not in the sense to
Speaker 2: say these young kids are Nazis, but I, frank, thankfully
Speaker 2: I have kids about the same age who are involved
Speaker 2: in the internet discourse, and so I get them showing
Speaker 2: me memes and stuff, and a lot of these kids
Speaker 2: are horribly politically incorrect behind the scenes, but they've learned,
Speaker 2: they've learned how to navigate public private conversations, you know,
Speaker 2: so they will like they will chastise you, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I touched. I shouldn't get your show banned.
Speaker 1: But.
Speaker 2: My wife was just like showed my daughter or telling
Speaker 2: you my daughter a joke about something comes up and
Speaker 2: use the N word, but with a hard R right,
Speaker 2: and my daughter says, you can't say it that way, mom,
Speaker 2: You have to drop the R. It has to have
Speaker 2: an A at the end. If you're going to use
Speaker 2: it ironically and talk about why can't we say the
Speaker 2: word blank, you have to use it without the art
Speaker 2: because if you she's trying to explain to my wife
Speaker 2: like that, the whole thing of how to property navigate,
Speaker 2: even in discussion about saying the N word, how to
Speaker 2: say the N word property so you don't get yourself
Speaker 2: into trouble, you know, these types of things, you just
Speaker 2: can't say it that way. And so it was like,
Speaker 2: you know, so these kids know exactly how to navigate
Speaker 2: all of the language, but yet behind the scenes they
Speaker 2: will talk, you know, very very frankly about things like
Speaker 2: mass immigration, about you know, future prospects for work, future
Speaker 2: prospects for buying a house, you know, the whole dating
Speaker 2: discourse and all of these types of things. And as
Speaker 2: a as a friend group, they're just they're they're conservative,
Speaker 2: but they are very politically incorrect and very much raised
Speaker 2: on internet discourse. Like it's just it just they breathe
Speaker 2: it naturally in the same way that we woke up
Speaker 2: and watched Saturday Morning cartoons. These kids are you know,
Speaker 2: living Instagram, and Instagram means you know, that's kind of
Speaker 2: the thing. And so they come into church care even
Speaker 2: if they're not, you know, reading all of the canon
Speaker 2: of right wing thought, they're coming into church having been
Speaker 2: raised on these internet memes. And as we know, and
Speaker 2: we're very aware, the memes that women view and the
Speaker 2: memes that young men and young boys view are often
Speaker 2: very very different, and they don't understand. And so the
Speaker 2: discourse for women's discourse and the discourse for men's discourse
Speaker 2: has very much sharply divided. And so now they're talking
Speaker 2: past each other, you know. You know, Dave Green, bless
Speaker 2: his soul, tries to fix this and bridge this, but yeah,
Speaker 2: like I'm not sure, like I you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: very very hard. You have to be incredibly patient with
Speaker 2: it because, as you know, people, you say something to
Speaker 2: someone and they'll agree with you, and then they'll just
Speaker 2: go back and forget about the conversation they had with you, right,
Speaker 2: And so it's it's kind of the thing where like
Speaker 2: like I said, I think there's a collision course coming
Speaker 2: at some point, but you know what will result from that,
Speaker 2: But I think that the men, the young men who
Speaker 2: are coming into church, the majority of them, are coming
Speaker 2: because they're looking for something serious that they can't find
Speaker 2: in the world, you know, the world of images, memes,
Speaker 2: all the rest of it. They want something grounded, and
Speaker 2: they want older men and women to help ground them,
Speaker 2: if that makes sense. And then the older folks are
Speaker 2: not ready, because of their own faith practice, to ground them,
Speaker 2: and they're not ready to grapple with internet discourse, like
Speaker 2: live internet discourse, not the filtered stuff they get on
Speaker 2: on Facebook.
Speaker 1: So a couple things there as regards the disagreement with
Speaker 1: h your wife and your daughter, there's a twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: hip hop classic by Leekavelli. You can find it. I
Speaker 1: can't say it here. I agree with the rapper, I'll
Speaker 1: say that. But in all seriousness, I think there's another
Speaker 1: dynamic at work, which is, and I see this pretty
Speaker 1: dramatically in my own congregation as well as others, that
Speaker 1: a lot of older people don't necessarily understand how politicized
Speaker 1: culture has become and the importance of certain phrases and topics.
Speaker 1: And so it's a pretty common experience with this group,
Speaker 1: with my circle of friends, for someone older in a
Speaker 1: well meaning way to say one of these buzzwords, right,
Speaker 1: one of these phrases, and half the room sort of
Speaker 1: picks their head up, like, wait a minute, what did
Speaker 1: you just say?
Speaker 2: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: Because that term, you know, whether it's you know, inclusive
Speaker 1: is a great example award which has a Dictionary definition,
Speaker 1: which is completely fine. But if you have grown up
Speaker 1: in the era of let's just be honest, like political
Speaker 1: social media, you know what that means.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you mean by being inclusive? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, if you're sixty, you probably mean that in the
Speaker 1: Oxford Dictionary definition, right. And I think that that is
Speaker 1: another gap as well, like why are these why are
Speaker 1: these guys so intense? Well, one of them is that
Speaker 1: they realize how many of these seemingly minute issues matter
Speaker 1: quite a bit because they've been inundated. They understand, they've
Speaker 1: been forced to understand that the slippery slope, right, that
Speaker 1: a seemingly reasonable concession on the front end over a
Speaker 1: few years leads you to insanity. I think that's a
Speaker 1: big part of it. Also, while we're talking about the
Speaker 1: kind of male female dis sports, there is also a
Speaker 1: baseline feminism in many women that is sort of When
Speaker 1: I say pre political, I mean that it is not
Speaker 1: a well formed idea. It's not something they sat down
Speaker 1: and reasoned their way through. It's just sort of osmosis.
Speaker 1: And even if they are in a community where that
Speaker 1: is not the stated goal, not the stated set of values,
Speaker 1: well guess what, six days a week, you're still getting
Speaker 1: that sort of in the air you breathe. I think
Speaker 1: that's another gap, setting aside another very basic fact, which
Speaker 1: is effectively men and women have become separate, competing political blocks,
Speaker 1: which is most definitely not a good thing. It is true,
Speaker 1: particularly in the US. You can look at the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four election, you can look at opinions on any
Speaker 1: number of issues.
Speaker 2: Although I will say.
Speaker 1: There is a minority of extremely traditional gen Z women.
Speaker 1: There was an article that came out not too long
Speaker 1: ago in The Guardian by an absolutely horrible sixty seven
Speaker 1: year old British feminist. Whatever your mental image of that
Speaker 1: is her absolutely losing it over a recent piece of
Speaker 1: polling that was basically asking a very large sample size
Speaker 1: I think it was like eight thousand different respondents across
Speaker 1: the entire age slider what their opinions on the question
Speaker 1: A woman should always obey her husband, and unsurprisingly every
Speaker 1: group majority disapproved. Right, as you can also imagine, in general,
Speaker 1: men tend to like that idea better than women. But
Speaker 1: the most interesting piece of that was for Generation Z
Speaker 1: they answered yes to that question in both men and
Speaker 1: women at the highest rate of any group since the
Speaker 1: Silent Generation. They were three x the respondents as millennials,
Speaker 1: higher than baby boomers. So again that total for women
Speaker 1: was eighteen percent. Now eighteen percent is a distinct minority,
Speaker 1: but that is a major cultural shift. Millennials were at
Speaker 1: six percent, going from six to eighteen. Again, that's a lot.
Speaker 2: That's a big jump.
Speaker 1: And look, does that mean every woman in a conservative church?
Speaker 1: Is this sort of like idealized childwife? Not at all.
Speaker 1: But we are starting to see certain demographic trends that
Speaker 1: have been identified for a long time about who is
Speaker 1: having children and who is passing their religion down. Well,
Speaker 1: those are starting to bite. And I think it's especially
Speaker 1: interesting if we look at churches where you have a
Speaker 1: minority of people who really care a lot and take
Speaker 1: things very seriously, how that population over indexes in the
Speaker 1: direction in the control of an institution over time is Look,
Speaker 1: we're all elite theorists. Here we understand the om sized
Speaker 1: impact of a highly motivated minority. Right, this is how.
Speaker 2: Politics, organized minority always defeats the disorganized mass.
Speaker 1: Right, it's a it's a it's a truism. At this
Speaker 1: point you've all internalized it. But it's internalized because it's true.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's going to prove to be
Speaker 1: a very interesting demographic trend going forward. And by frustration
Speaker 1: with these sort of you know, effeminate conservatives were very,
Speaker 1: very worried about it. It's born of two things, which
Speaker 1: is one, this is what you've been saying that you
Speaker 1: wanted the whole time. You wanted young people to return
Speaker 1: to church. You wanted quote unquote conservative young people, and
Speaker 1: now you've got them. And it's sort of the monkey's paw.
Speaker 2: Wanted them, not like that, we wanted it. Yeah, conservative,
Speaker 2: like we're conservative. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course when we're saying conservative and liberal in
Speaker 1: the most abstract view of these concepts, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It the the challenges and there there are very very
Speaker 2: few people, men or women, who are good on this issue. Actually,
Speaker 2: one of the best, believe it or not, is Mary Harrington,
Speaker 2: who still thinks of herself as a feminist, but of
Speaker 2: a certain stripe. She's like intellectually, very honest.
Speaker 1: But she also she has been blocked on Twitter. I
Speaker 1: have told you no idea why, because I have not
Speaker 1: only never interacted with her, but have never really said
Speaker 1: anything particularly mean about women on Twitter now here. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe you let a few slip.
Speaker 2: But she has responded a couple of times to things
Speaker 2: that I've said and just offered, you know, gentle critiques
Speaker 2: and fair critiques, you know, if I've over characterized something
Speaker 2: for rhetorical effect. She she's like, that's a good point.
Speaker 2: But you know, these types of things. But like I
Speaker 2: get the fact, you know, I get the sense where
Speaker 2: she follows, subscribes and interacts occasionally, But I don't think
Speaker 2: she's like my biggest fan, let's put it that way.
Speaker 2: But anyways, like I, but she is one of the
Speaker 2: few authors out there, thinkers out there who understands that
Speaker 2: in order to properly understand feminism you have to basically
Speaker 2: go back to pre industrialization the like in order to
Speaker 2: understand it meaningfully. The shortest time frame that you really
Speaker 2: need to be operating on, and you can probably extend
Speaker 2: this all the way back to the high middle ages
Speaker 2: if you really want to. But the shortest reasonable time
Speaker 2: frame has to go back to the late seventeen hundreds
Speaker 2: and early eighteen hundreds. And unless you're talking about the
Speaker 2: growth of these issues in that kind of time frame,
Speaker 2: if you're just beginning with the pale like Frank, I
Speaker 2: don't have interest in or even with like women getting
Speaker 2: the vote, I don't really have interest in talking to
Speaker 2: you because unless you understand why women were outclamoring for
Speaker 2: the vote in the first place, which is like, you know,
Speaker 2: go back another hundred years, your grasp of what's going
Speaker 2: on isn't sufficient to really talk about the issue. You know,
Speaker 2: So Dave gets it, you know, Dave Green gets it,
Speaker 2: and Mary Harrington gets it. But you've got a series
Speaker 2: of complex of So let's let's put it this way.
Speaker 2: Women have always been smart and capable, and there's nobody
Speaker 2: that wants to deny You shouldn't be denying this that
Speaker 2: women aren't smart and capable. But what industrialization did and modernity,
Speaker 2: the changes that happened with modernity, with the rise of
Speaker 2: the merchant classes and the growing middle class, and then
Speaker 2: with the social disruption caused by industrialization, that there was
Speaker 2: a shift in the role and orientation with Traditionally, the
Speaker 2: women were oriented around what would be called the household,
Speaker 2: and so it would be either small tradesmen, professionals, farmers,
Speaker 2: or whatever. But the basic social life would be the household,
Speaker 2: and you would have a patriarch a matron in the household,
Speaker 2: and you would have their own kids. Plus you would
Speaker 2: have apprentices or farm hands, and you would have like
Speaker 2: the the young ladies, I don't know, maids or maids
Speaker 2: is probably not right, but they would be taken into
Speaker 2: the family and they would become part of a larger
Speaker 2: household and a successful household. Even these are like sort
Speaker 2: of under the gentry. Like so these are sort of
Speaker 2: you're not really middle class, but they're under the gentry,
Speaker 2: and they, you know, some of these households could be
Speaker 2: between like eleven and twenty people in a successful you
Speaker 2: know farm or you know, trades practice or whatever. But
Speaker 2: this was your political social unit and that matron and patriarch.
Speaker 2: They basically when you went into service for some either
Speaker 2: as an apprentice or in the house, they took control
Speaker 2: over your life. So they would decide who and when
Speaker 2: if you were ready to be married, not your own parents.
Speaker 2: These types of things, and the role of women in
Speaker 2: that household was very full. So they were part you know, healthcare,
Speaker 2: part education, part you know, running the business. There was
Speaker 2: a political role for them in the community. There was
Speaker 2: this whole stable, rich role. When industrialization shattered this and
Speaker 2: these women had to go into the cities, you basically
Speaker 2: had a choice. You either went into the factory and worked,
Speaker 2: or you stayed at home. And largely your role at home,
Speaker 2: you know, as it emerged up to the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 2: and into the twentieth century, your role was basically a
Speaker 2: nanny and a housekeeper, a nanny and a cook, and
Speaker 2: all of the rich social roles because everything else had
Speaker 2: been passed off with healthcare, with retirement, homes, with education,
Speaker 2: all these other things. Even the political had been passed
Speaker 2: off on to these large mass organizations. And so when
Speaker 2: you look at even the word economy in the Greek
Speaker 2: we konomia means the household, like the running of the household.
Speaker 2: So what happened was is all the stuff that women
Speaker 2: did through industrialization was taken out of the household and
Speaker 2: put into the main of society, and then men build
Speaker 2: a world like the organizational world that mimiced the household.
Speaker 2: So in many ways, what managerialism does is it mimics
Speaker 2: the household. Women are really particularly well adapted for the
Speaker 2: administrative state, and so they then all the work that
Speaker 2: they used to do they're now doing outside of the home.
Speaker 2: So they're doing teacher work, they're doing administrative work, they're
Speaker 2: doing social work, psychology. All of the things that they
Speaker 2: used to do in the context of the household, women
Speaker 2: are doing now doing outside of the household, right, And
Speaker 2: so you have to understand this context is that you
Speaker 2: took everything from them to build the modern mested industrial economy,
Speaker 2: and now women are doing the jobs that you set
Speaker 2: them up to do in a sense by creating this
Speaker 2: managerial context, and this is really what they're best at doing.
Speaker 2: And so now they're out there doing it. And women
Speaker 2: are capable and smart, and so you might want them
Speaker 2: to go back to being housewives and running a household.
Speaker 2: But unless you're like I am, well, we have a
Speaker 2: family business and my wife handles the back end of
Speaker 2: my business and does all of those rich roles, Like
Speaker 2: my wife has a pretty full role around the house,
Speaker 2: you know, and doing the things here in terms of
Speaker 2: my business. You I don't get it. So far a
Speaker 2: lot of guys, you know, saying well, we're going to
Speaker 2: take away the vote, We're going to you know, they
Speaker 2: need to go back house. Okay, you could say that,
Speaker 2: but largely if you want to accomplish that, you basically
Speaker 2: have to go back to the pre industrial to Europe,
Speaker 2: to like the middle of the seventeen hundreds, you know,
Speaker 2: because because you have to give back a life, Like
Speaker 2: what are these women going to do? Are they just
Speaker 2: going to sit at home and be like nanny's and
Speaker 2: house keepers? You know, like that's you know, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of women who are capable of much more, and
Speaker 2: in an environment where there's a rich political, economic, and
Speaker 2: so forth, where the household is a center light, they
Speaker 2: can thrive in that regard and that so there's a
Speaker 2: sense of capable. Women have always been capable, but they
Speaker 2: just did it within a social context that allowed them
Speaker 2: to do that without disrupting the roles. And it was
Speaker 2: done on a scale of the village, so you didn't
Speaker 2: have the problems of hypergamy, where mass media then confronts
Speaker 2: women with the image of Prince Charming and all of
Speaker 2: the movie stars and this is the guy you should
Speaker 2: be looking and romance novel like romance literature, I mean
Speaker 2: goes back all the way to the Middle Ages, like
Speaker 2: the High Middle Ages. In the courtship type stories. You know,
Speaker 2: the woman gets married off to an older nobleman. She's
Speaker 2: unhappy in her marriage, she treats her poorly. Then she
Speaker 2: finds this young love and you know, they have the
Speaker 2: whole unrequited love thing. I mean, all these stories are very,
Speaker 2: very old, and now you see them on tea every
Speaker 2: time in the wrong com right. So you have these things,
Speaker 2: and so this is what women have the image of
Speaker 2: their mind. And so you fed this through and now
Speaker 2: they're looking all looking for prince charming, the guy they
Speaker 2: see on television, the guy they see on social media.
Speaker 2: They're not looking for that nice young man in the
Speaker 2: village that they used to be looking for and building
Speaker 2: a household. Right. So and so you place all this context. Now,
Speaker 2: the church diagram or the church discourse is in this
Speaker 2: completely socially broken world, and men are struggling to find grounding.
Speaker 2: Women are living in a fantasy world. And also in
Speaker 2: this new world where everything that women used to do
Speaker 2: in the household they now have to go out of
Speaker 2: the household to do. So they're at work, and then
Speaker 2: they want to do it in the churches as well,
Speaker 2: said well, if I can do it in the business world,
Speaker 2: why can't I do in the churches? And the old
Speaker 2: way of doing it is quite simply like, we know
Speaker 2: you're capable, but that's just not the role God gave you,
Speaker 2: you know. And it's very very hard to tell a
Speaker 2: woman that when everywhere else in life she's out doing business,
Speaker 2: out doing this because that's where the household has now
Speaker 2: been put out in public, and so now you're going
Speaker 2: to put her back in a box again, and women
Speaker 2: are naturally chafing against that. So the you're not really like,
Speaker 2: there's no real way to fix the problem unless you
Speaker 2: have total societal collapse, you know, and you go back
Speaker 2: to basically because you can unwind and you can see
Speaker 2: how the problem develops historically over two hundred three hundred years,
Speaker 2: But how do you get back to a point where like,
Speaker 2: you can't there is no fix for this problem, that's
Speaker 2: basically what it is. And so now you've got this
Speaker 2: confrontation unless you begin to and this is another reason
Speaker 2: why I'm an advocate for parallelism. Unless churches are very
Speaker 2: very serious about being separate societies in which they do
Speaker 2: things differently and in terms of and that means not
Speaker 2: just having like Bible studies. It means your church should
Speaker 2: be thinking of itself in terms of like almost like
Speaker 2: a nation a community. So that's like I'm the big
Speaker 2: piece that I'm writing now, and that means providing an
Speaker 2: economic life for for a community. So I you know,
Speaker 2: if I see it like not that I want to
Speaker 2: have a quote unquote the plan, because that's part of
Speaker 2: the problems people having plans and solutions. But if you
Speaker 2: look back to the sort of like what was life
Speaker 2: before all of the changes with modern industrial society, and
Speaker 2: you're sort of like, well, can we build a parallel
Speaker 2: community that somehow evokes some of that that allows us
Speaker 2: to reorder life? So we be we intentionally resist going
Speaker 2: off and joining the fortune five hundred company, and we
Speaker 2: stay home and we found small businesses and we have
Speaker 2: a community of households that are you know, these types
Speaker 2: of things, and you do it kind of organically, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know, I just I'm trying to
Speaker 2: paint a picture for people here. But this is really
Speaker 2: why in a part parallels and this is a sense
Speaker 2: it's funny come back to like sort of Rod Dreer,
Speaker 2: which it in his own way. Rod Dreer sometimes is
Speaker 2: accidentally right, like the Benedict option is still the right idea.
Speaker 2: It's just Dreyer just kind of put it forward in
Speaker 2: the stupid its way possible because because when I read
Speaker 2: that book, I looked at it and says, well, that's
Speaker 2: basically what my reformed community is, you know, like our
Speaker 2: our ethno nationalist kind of expat church community. You know,
Speaker 2: many of the people in our in our community are
Speaker 2: small businessmen and they're farmers. And part of it hangs
Speaker 2: together because they're small businessmen and farmers because then husband
Speaker 2: and wives are doing these roles although it is praying
Speaker 2: and it is disintegrating unfortunately in part because just the
Speaker 2: pressures of of you know, North American Western modernity just
Speaker 2: pulls people out of these you know, out of the
Speaker 2: small businesses into quote unquote careers and that's where all
Speaker 2: of the big rewards are and so forth and so forth.
Speaker 2: But you know, so yeah, this, you know it dovetails.
Speaker 2: I've been rambling on here, but this sort of dovetails
Speaker 2: back into this sort of church environment that you've got
Speaker 2: to begin thinking about church as a political community unto itself.
Speaker 2: And then how do we reorder our church life to
Speaker 2: create smaller spaces where women and men can reorder their
Speaker 2: lives and you know, break the pattern because you know,
Speaker 2: if women are involved, if they're part of the main
Speaker 2: of culture, like I don't know how you you know,
Speaker 2: they're looking for prince charming, and young men are looking
Speaker 2: to find spiritual grounding, and they're talking past each other
Speaker 2: and they're not building families and they're not finding each
Speaker 2: other because they're looking for different things. And that's and
Speaker 2: then the old folks are looking for life on a
Speaker 2: cruise ship. You know, these are all like very harsh characterizations,
Speaker 2: but they want an easy life, you know, provided for
Speaker 2: them on the cheap like so like and that the
Speaker 2: young men are looking for, like give me a hard
Speaker 2: life and disciplinely and show me how to meet God
Speaker 2: like for real, not just the similar crum of meeting
Speaker 2: God that feels good, but the actual real thing. And
Speaker 2: it's an and women like will find me a husband,
Speaker 2: but like the man from the fairy tales, and you're like,
Speaker 2: your guest is as good as mine is. How to
Speaker 2: fix that? Like Dave has certainly trying you know, tried
Speaker 2: to lay out some of it, but it's these are
Speaker 2: very and it's again it is all coming to a head.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, young men are coming back to
Speaker 2: church and they are looking for a serious faith life
Speaker 2: and bad and nobody's there to help them. I don't know,
Speaker 2: I'm not this is this. I mean, you know, I've
Speaker 2: been a kind of a dumorous mood the last couple
Speaker 2: of weeks. You're sort of catching me in one of these,
Speaker 2: you know, phases of mine.
Speaker 1: Look at it happens to all of us. It happens
Speaker 1: to all of us group, because.
Speaker 2: You look at my recent posts. It's it's it's been
Speaker 2: I've been bowdryard all the way down, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, It's.
Speaker 1: It's simulac or all the way down. This is This
Speaker 1: has been a super fun conversation. Where can people find you?
Speaker 1: Where can they find your your dumer laced post structuralless screens.
Speaker 2: Well there we go. So if if you want to
Speaker 2: find me on Twitter, it's at underscore cryptose. Former leader
Speaker 2: of the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada, Aerin O'Toole, couldn't
Speaker 2: manage that. He couldn't figure out the underscore and couldn't
Speaker 2: tag me in posts when he wanted to. So that's
Speaker 2: another whole story altogether, the dialogue with a former leader
Speaker 2: of the progressive cold. I mean imagine like the former
Speaker 2: Speaker of the House talking with the nons on Twitter
Speaker 2: and bantering with them and getting just chewed up day
Speaker 2: in and day out, trying to justify his failed record.
Speaker 2: That's what we're doing with Aeron O'Toole. But anyway, that's
Speaker 2: another side. Come join the fun if you want. And
Speaker 2: then on substack, where I do most of my serious
Speaker 2: stuff is I have my own IP or like web
Speaker 2: address which is sort of www dot seeking the Hidden
Speaker 2: Thing dot com, so seeking the Hidden Thing all one
Speaker 2: word dot com and you'll find most of my serious
Speaker 2: work there.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks cryptos, I appreciate it. It was good to catch up,
Speaker 1: and everyone always is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always his jam I sort of every time
Speaker 2: that we don't do this for a while, I'm always
Speaker 2: glad that we do have a chance to catch up up.
Speaker 1: No, definitely, It's funny. When I texted you, I realized
Speaker 1: that it's been almost five months since you and I
Speaker 1: had spoken at all, and that is far too long.
Speaker 2: It Yeah, anyone I don't be a stranger. The same
Speaker 2: thing for me. I'll try not to be a stranger too.
Speaker 1: Fair, fair, keep your head up. Good night, Yeah, all right,