Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Joy Pullman,
the executive editor over here at the Federalist, joining me today.
It's a pleasure to welcome one of our long time
senior contributors to The Federalist, Nathaniel Blake. He is not
only a senior contributor with us for some time, but
he's also a fellow at the Wonderful Ethics and Policy Center,
and the occasion for this podcast, the author of the
book Victims of the Revolution, How Sexual Liberation Hurts Us All. Nathaniel, Welcome,
Thank you very much for having me. Thank you for
joining me. It's a pleasure to kind of have I mean,
we've had all these you know, email chats over the years,
but it's such always different and even better to be
kind of in real time in person with such a
long time correspondent. Would you I thought it would be
helpful to our audience to ask you to start by
defining the sexual revolution. I think, you know, there's so
many ways that people take in and apply it, you know,
So what kind of is your understanding and definition for uh?
And then on the basis you know, in which you
go on to make your arguments.
Speaker 2: Boy, You're right, it does tend to be a little
bit a MorphOS But I would say sexual revolution, as
best as I would define it, is the idea and
then the events flowing from that idea that human beings
will be more fulfilled, more authentic, more happier really if
we are freed from the constraints and sexual taboos and
the relationships of the past, so we can hop in
and out of beds, in and out of relationships, even
in that out of genders as we feel, in order
to pursue our desires, and that that is the key
to human well being. And I think the sexual revolution
then is that being put into practice.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's kind of core to that concept. Would
you say, would be kind of the interchangeability of the sexes?
Is that a core concept? Because I yeah, I'll start there,
and then I have another question that's related.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, I think that was an important part of
the sexual revolution, is the idea that men and women
basically want more or less the same things to be free,
to be accomplished, to have, you know, relational freedom, economic freedom,
and so on. And that overlooks the fact that human
reproduction is not symmetrical. It puts more burdens and also
perhaps rewards from those burdens on women that it does
on men. And this is why we have long seen
dedicated in social science the truth of all these old adages.
Women really do want more commitment than men. There are
good reasons for that, which is that for nearly all
of human history, for a woman not to get commitment
from man before having sex from him was very dangerous.
It was selected against, if you want to put it
in those terms.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like you're also including, you know, the
untethering of sex from marriage, right, So the disentanglement meant
so both the kind of gender bending, but also the
separation of sex from not just marriage, but even procreation itself.
So all of that is involved as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, and this was made possible both because of ideological
developments but also technological changes, insofar as without the pill,
without penicillin, it then sex was more dangerous. But we thought,
as a culture, well, we can separate sex and babies,
We can separate sex from the committed relationships that were
protection against disease and so on, because those diseases were
seen as treatable, as conquerable.
Speaker 1: So and then another question that I had kind of
before we dive into the content is I think, you know,
in uh maybe the introduction and you know, in some
parts of the book sprinkled throughout there, you have it
implicitly put in there, but I wanted to hear it
from you explicitly. Why did you really think that this
book needed to be written? You know, there's a you know,
people critiquing, as you point out in the book, and
you engage with a number of people, you know who
are critiquing the sexual revolution from different angles, Mary Harrington,
you know, Christine Emba to two folks that you engage with.
But so, why did you just really feel like you
had to also have put your or in and you know, produce.
Speaker 2: This book well, as you know at the Federal se
I've written on these sorts of issues for a while,
the Federals and elsewhere, so I had a lot of
materials drawn. But the reason for this book in particular
was that a lot of the books being written now
from a more secular perspective. As grateful as I am
for the points they make and for reaching the audience
they do, they're not nearly radical enough. They don't go
all the way and critiquing the sexual Revolution, they ignore
aspects of it, and they also don't have a foundation
for how to build and live something better. So Harrington
and Louise Perry, for instance, both have some very good observations,
but at the end they can't say, and here's the alternative,
is living a Christian out a Christian sexual ethics, And
it turns out that's a better way to live. So
that's part of it. And the other part is that
I think a lot of the critiques of the sexual
Revolution that you get from Christians, so Mary Eberstadt, for.
Speaker 1: Instance, she's wonderful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say they're a bit older, like both
both the authors and just their perspective. For them, people
who came of age in the sixties or the seventies,
they saw it from the beginning, perhaps or at least
closer to the beginning. But at the same time they
it's a different perspective than someone who grew up in
the nineties in early two thousands and then has sort
of seen that. And I feel like there was a
gap there both of something that's a little more younger,
more contemporary, perhaps, but also grerounded and rooted in a
way that some of these secular.
Speaker 1: Critiques were not, and I would say, you know, kind
of riff. I absolutely did kind of get that feel
from reading the book, and now that you're saying that
more explicitly, it makes me kind of wonder if you know,
so you are a Protestant as am I. It's even
reads to me a little bit like you're providing a
little bit of the robustness that Catholics draw from, you know,
their theology of the body, you know, sort of background
that is missing a lot in the sort of you know,
the United States is largely a Protestant nation, but those
Protestant are the people who make up that majority of
the American ethos, really don't have a theological body of
work that they draw into a unified way. And I
think some of your work also offers a lot of
that too, a kind of Christian audience that is more
religiously fragmented.
Speaker 2: I think that's fair. Certainly it's from a Catholic press,
so they're obviously in agreement with it, and I do
draw on Catholic thinkers and writers in this, and there's
a lot of richness there that I think Protestants should
pay attention to. And I think somewhere in there, I
quote somebody who wrote for World Magazine, Protestants need to
develop their own version of theology of the body related
to the Catholic version. So I agree, and I also
think that that has unfortunately been something of a weakness
of American evangelicalism. It has a lot of strengths, especially
in terms of out each end community buildings.
Speaker 1: Just being based on the Bible.
Speaker 2: But it can really be lacking in the richness of
the Christian tradition. And I think for some of us,
in perhaps the Reformed tradition, we may sympathize a bit
more with the need for that because it you know,
so the PCA Presbyterians are more self conscious about trying
to draw on the full Christian tradition.
Speaker 1: Those are Lutherans, which is my tradition, you know as well.
There there, you know, there's yeah, there's a couple of
larger denominations that are Protestant and rooted in historicity a
lot better than you know, the sort of evangelical non
denominationalism that I grew up in, which is actually, you know,
we don't need to get into that, but that is
you know, part of why I left. It was you know,
I remember, you know, being a young person, we were
just told. You know, if I think if a young
person was able to read a book like years, it
would really help set them up or a way better
understanding of how to proceed in the chaos that we
all live in, you know, as opposed to just being told,
you know, a few kind of basic things. Okay, don't
have premarital sex. Okay, I get that that's the role,
but also you expect me to do that, you know,
and have no children till I'm thirty, you know, et cetera,
et cetera, which is something that you know, you also
kind of mentioned that in the book as well. So
let's get into kind of more of the arguments that
you're making, the treatment that you give this important subject.
And I think you would agree with me, and it's
pretty safe for I think most pretty much everyone in
our audience would probably agree that, you know, every American
is damaged by the sexual revolution at this point, Like
you point out, you know, in earlier generations, damage wasn't
as widespread, but at this point, I think it touches everybody.
You know, So you know, each of us personally, either
ourselves or our close relationships. We have all experienced divorce, abortion, promiscuity,
you know, gender confusion, confusion and just basic male female interactions,
not knowing is there a role? What should I take?
Does this other person expect that there's a role for either?
You know? Of us? What do I do? Confused out
how to form families? All of these things are related here.
So given that you know all basically Westerners are very
visibly damaged and affected by the sexual revolution, why is
it do you think that large numbers of people are still,
you know, either directly or indirectly committed to it.
Speaker 2: Well, I think there are a few reasons for that.
I would say one is that repentance is hard. So
even if you know it's wrong, or you start to
realize it's wrong, it's hard to admit your sin.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But I would also say that for a lot of people,
they have not known anything else, And it's not quite
right to say they don't know better, because we all
still have that voice of conscience and the influence of
the natural law. But our culture, for many people, has
effaced what a healthy relationship should look like, what healthy
sexual as, what God's design for sexuality should look like.
So I think those are both factors. And then I
would add to that there are a lot of people
who are profiting off of this from I mean obviously
the pornography industry in a very direct way, but how
much of our cultural product in general relies on people
being in unstable relationships, from our educational system to our
housing system. A lot of it is increasingly designed around
atomized individuals rather than stable families.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's there's something of a cannibalism, right that there's
very obvious in many aspects of our you know, a
predatory sort of nature where you're kind of eating the
seed corn in every aspect of life possible. And I
think that is absolutely you know, because when you're saying,
you know, a lot of people profit and they do
write Planned parenthood, and he has moved, you know, has
added a huge profit center to which abortion you know,
mills with the whole gender transitions. It's now the number
one you know, profiter from mutilating children in a different way,
and you know, so obviously there's a lot of money
to be made there. But at the same time, you know,
if they continued then their preditations, at some point there's
not going to be people available to you know, be
profiting off of the destruction of do you you know?
And I think we're getting closer to kind of to
that point where you know, the predatory nature of it
is becoming self consuming. But do you think you know that?
Obviously that kind of has effects on people's ability to
even notice what's happening, right, because children who grew up
in a stable home with loving parents are much more
likely to be critical thinkers, to be reflective and not reactive,
et cetera, et cetera. So children, you know, who are rare.
If we have more children raced and homes where they're
not learning to think clearly and and think before they
act and have self restraint, you know, they're they're kind
of deprived of the ability to understand even what's happening
to them. So we have a very large amount of
our culture where just the effects of the family disintegration
are such that it makes it even harder for people
to notice what they've even lost, so that they can say, hey,
I should have that, we should try to work on
getting that back.
Speaker 2: I think that's true, and I think things have to
get pretty bad at times for people to realize there's
a problem. And I think we are hitting that because
the relational and dating market is getting so bad for
younger people that suddenly more radical critiques that wouldn't have
been accepted back when I was an undergraduate, for instance,
make a lot more sense to people because the social
capital has been eaten away. But at the same time,
for people who are not yet at that point, it
really does become harder to see. That's part of what
I want to do in this book is to readers
who who either might be in these situations, or to
readers who are able to influence and instruct those in
these situations, present the basis for something better, and encourage churches,
youth leaders and so on to really try to present
a case for we're right. You talked about evangelicals saying, well,
don't have sex before you're married. That's true, but there's
a reason for that is because there's a way we
are meant to live, and that will be more likely
to lead us to flourishing if we follow the way
we are meant to live designed by God for us.
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Speaker 1: Right, So, I mean, and it's not that, not just
saying to someone, oh, you're bad for not doing it
this way, which is often what I think kind of
media is pushes. Like when it presents a version of Christianity,
it presents that don't do this, you're bad, your shame,
but it doesn't present, as you do, the flip side
of here, all the great things that are waiting and
available to you and that are protected by those prohibitions
and those ordering of the arrangements of people's lives.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know, when I was, as I said, when
I was an undergrad, Christians were the killed choice, right,
and then as I got older, Christians were also the bigots.
But now We're starting to see the reality that Christian
sexual ethics were protecting something important, They were preserving things,
They were creating space to nerd sure people in a
way that will not happen in a world of adult selfishness.
And what I would say to people on the left
is you will never have your dreams of social justice
without accepting the necessity of sexual righteousness. Because nothing destroys
prosperity and peace more than the breakdown of the family
and dysfunction in the family. Nothing ruins social cohesion more
than the atomism of sexual breakdown. And nothing sets men
and women against each other more than pretending that they
can just have this anarchic sexual and marketplace competing with
each other, competing against each other, and it's a conflict. Now,
if you want social solidarity, it has to start with
solidarity between men and women and their children. And the
only way to do that is to have committed, loving
family relationships.
Speaker 1: Well, and so that kind of brings up something that
I had wanted to ask you about as well, So
you're right there touching on you know, the problems with
feminism is that it pits men and women against each other,
and I think women against their own bodies. But in
the book, you really don't treat feminism as such a
lot by name, So you know, you are engaging some
of the thinkers who would call themselves feminists, but you
don't really kind of go after feminism by name directly
very much. Is that on purpose or is it what's
kind of your the reason behind that?
Speaker 2: I think it was more just how the book was
written than a deliberate choice, in that I don't necessarily
want to get into the debates over what is feminism,
what are the different waves of feminism, Not that those
aren't important, but they were kind of beside the point
for me. My main point was simply men and women
are different, and in order for men and women to flourish,
we need to both come together in solidarity, as I
just said, But we need to do that recognizing our
difference is that we are dependent upon each other in
different ways, and when it comes to sex in particular,
we need to recognize both that we are different, which
we're not supposed to in our culture, but we are,
and also when it comes to children, who are the
natural result of sex, that there is an asymmetry to
human reproduction, and that we need to have women flourish
as women, we have to recognize it. So instead of
telling women basically, go be slightly defective men because you're
fertility and a problem in the workplace, we need.
Speaker 1: To object to a slightly defective part. I'm just teasing,
go ahead.
Speaker 2: But that is the cultural message is women need to
be like men. But that's your bodies are a problem,
so you've got to suppress those. That's that's the cultural message.
And instead of telling women that, we should be instead
working with them recognizing that, yes, this is a nature
of what it is to be a woman, and there
are drawbacks and there are blessings to that, and we
need to recognize that what it means for women to
be loved and cared for and nurtured is not going
to be the same as it is for men, and
that therefore we need to build our relationships differently and
our expectations around this. I mean, one of the cruelest
things that I think we've seen is the extent to
which we do not tell young women about the realities
of their fertility and that if they want a family,
they are going to need to look at that as
a priority earlier in life.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting did you go about to finish? Oh,
I was just going to say, it's interesting that you
describe that as cruel. Well, that is really kind of
one of the wonderful things about your book is thinking
about how do you say, there's so many kind of
consequences of the sexual revolution, that we have all of
these patches and you know, papering over and hiding and
you know, ways of ameliorating that they're kind of you know,
the band aid down the cancer wound sort of thing,
or on a gunshot wound. And one of them, you know,
is that right where I think you know, for example
in feature fertilization is one of those, right. But if
you don't talk to the young women or women don't
understand or hear from anyone who ought to be educating
and helping raise them or become mature that hey, it'll
be easier to have a baby in your twenties than
in your mid late thirties, basic biological fact. You know,
then by the time they get to their thirties and
it's very, very hard to have a baby and they
see that fertility window closing, that looks like they're only option.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I think was it ev magazine or recently
had a piece about how they take away our fertility
and then they sell it back to us in p percent. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great angle. And so but would you
talk a little bit more about because I think reading
this book, I could hear so much which I loved
as well, if we're going to speak about this as
a woman, you know, speaking to a man. I just
loved hearing the compassion that you have, you know, and
the goal, it seems to me and your writing was
also to act on behalf of the vulnerable and to
protect women and children with your arguments in the public square.
And so, I mean you didn't say that explicitly. I
don't even know if you think it explicitly, but I
could hear that, you know, as a woman reading your writing.
And so can you kind of talk about the motivations
that you have because a lot of your writing for
us and in this book really thinks about the victims, right,
rather than looking at the alleged the soul advantages to people,
the pr and the marketing. Your concern really is, hey,
look you know it isn't all great. In fact, the
majority of this really is damaging, especially vulnerable people.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, I mean so, I think that part of
it is that, as you say, the marketing, the sexual
revolution has a pr arm, like most revolutions do, They've
got a propaganda arm, and it's the it's not just
planned parenthoods marketing, it's the entertainment industry as a whole, Hollywood,
what's left of the music industry, and the streaming era
and so on, and they're all telling everyone this is
great and wonderful and it will make you happy. But
it doesn't. And there are so many examples of how
it doesn't, and it's because it's not fitting into what
we are meant for. We are meant not to maximize
our physical pleasures. We are meant for love. And if
we are seeking to selfishly maximize pleasures, we a miss
out on that, but be we're going to hurt a
lot of people. And you can see that play out
for men, for instance, the pursuit of maximal sexual pleasure
tends to be self defeating because it leads to up
one night stands or relationships that don't last. It leads
to a lot of pornography usage, and then those in
turn end up actually leaving men alone. It leaves them
in many cases sexually dysfunctional, whereas actually, if you just
get married and are faithful, you will statistically have a
better sex life than if you are trying to play
the field, especially as you get older. I mean, it's
very easy in your twenties as a man to think, Okay,
well I'm going to play the field. It's a lot
harder once you're in your forties and you realize that.
But at that point it's too late for a lot
of men. At the same time, then that behavior really
does hurt women, and this is where we're seeing some
of these critiques come from that we mentioned before, like
Louise Perry or Christine Emba, who are highlighting just how
bad this pornified, short term culture of sex and relationships
is for women. Leaves them unsatisfied. It can you even
leave them injured. And of course if there's a pregnancy,
it leaves them either on their own raising a baby,
or it leaves them to kill their child.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean then you could go right into the children, right,
you know, speaking you know, as a child of divorce. Right.
The consequence of that on people are life long and
they always hurt in it never really stops hurting, right,
even though you can kind of you know, there's there's
patching and coping, and there's of course grace and Christian
community and all the rest, but you know that it
is always better as if, you know, if that hadn't happened,
you know, and everybody can feel that, you know, the children,
And then just think about, like you said, not only
are children mass murdered for the sake of people having
sex without being married or in a position to provide
and care for the child we're willing to sometimes of
course they're able, but not willing, you know. But then
you also have children growing up, of course in homes
where they're far more likely to be you know, abused
in various ways, or just not take care of because
there's only one person there on the hook, you know,
usually the mother for them and their father isn't attached
to their life. And then we haven't even gotten to
the psychological wounds. How can we help this well, how
can the suffering be so great and the recognition be
so small? That's something that I keep coming back to.
Speaker 2: Well, I think one, for a long time, there's a
lot of denial about this. Two we still want as
a culture to get away with it. And three changing
it is going to require radical changes to our culture,
and a lot of people are not willing to undertake that,
especially because once they have committed to this again, it's
hard to admit you are wrong. It's hard to repent.
There is some good news insofar as it does seem
like the rate of children born out of weblock has
leveled off and is so there is a realization of that. Unfortunately,
a lot of that seems to be simply people deciding
not to have children at all. So it's not it's
not that more people are getting married and having children
in web block. It's simply that a lot of people
are on their own and just not having children at all.
And now we're finally starting to see places like the
New York Times start to worry about, Oh, our population
is going to collapse and there will be problems from
that when some people some people have known that for
a while.
Speaker 1: But right, Oh, the thing that I was trying to recall,
I had a thought in my head to sometimes my
brain just has gaps, and speaking of this topic, I
just blame the children. But that's an easy thing to have.
If you have children, they're a very convenient scapegoat for
all manner of things, including brain gaps. But I had
wanted to respond to that by asking the part that
you say, where people are in denial and we would
have to change our culture in massive ways. Can you
talk about I mean, every writer has the obligatory chapter
like solution chapter, and I love that you really focus
that on the church because I think, you know, it
makes sense that that is probably the only that's as
you explain in the book, that's the only place that
has the resources to kind of address this major, major problem.
But can you kind of talk about what you see
as things that churches, families, individuals would need to be
doing and responding, you know, to these cultural scripts and
these major needs for changes that you know, I just
don't see happening outside of being motivated by Christian charity largely.
Speaker 2: So I have a lot of ideas, but I'm not
a policy guy, so some of them may be half baked.
But I would say one thing that churches and individual
Christian families should do is not pressure their children to
spend as long as possible school because one of one
of the things I focus on is if you were
trying to sell your children on Christian chastity, which you
should be, and you need to make it plausible that
they can get married have a family at a younger age.
So be more cautious about pushing every child to go
get a four year degree, whether it's good right for
them or not. For some people it is. I've spent many,
many years in school and don't really regret it. But
a lot of people just get pushed in and then other.
Speaker 1: And everyone's not pointy headed like you are. You know
that you enjoy reading philosophy, and that is not the
average normal person. No offense, No.
Speaker 2: I'm not a normal person. I you know, create a
Plato for fun. Sometimes it's not that's right anyway, but no,
my wife says it's so vague I can hardly understand it.
But so that's one example is careerism and an emphasis
on education credentially over actual learning.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying Christians don't learn. I'm saying Christians think
of ways to work around an education system that says
go to school and take then take time to start
your career, and you're not ready to settle down until
you're thirty. That's a problem from a Christian perspective because kids,
and then young adults are unlikely to practice chastity if
that's what you're selling them.
Speaker 1: For twenty years, you know, twenty five years, that's just unrealistic.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another thing that I think would really help is
would be if churches realize that they are one of
the few remaining places where relationships can be formed in
a way where there is accountability for the men and women.
So right, that's a huge problem with dating apps is
who is this person and if they treat me poorly,
not criminally, but if just poorly, what what are the
repercussions for them? The answer, of course, is usually none.
If a man is simply a cad to use an
older word that should be brought back, then there's very
little penalty socially for being that way, as long as
the women mistreating are not part of his own social circle.
And of course, the whole point of dating apps is
to expand the dating pool. On the other hand, if
you're dating someone in your church and you're a young man,
if that church is any good at being a church,
you will, whether or not you end up wanting to
marry her, you will want to treat her respectfully, because otherwise,
if it's a good church, the elders and the pastor
might be paying you a visit and talking about church discipline.
So that's one example of use that accountability. You have
to encourage people to treat each other with respect. And
then a painful one for a lot of churches is
for couples who get divorced without a biblical warrant, you know,
as a protest And I would say, there are very
limited circumstances where you can get a divorce, that's my
reading of Matthew nineteen. Catholics would say, well, no, but
maybe you can get annulment where it was never a
real marriage in the first place.
Speaker 1: Not try, and if there are children.
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to debate those things right now. I'm
just say saying, yeah, I've seen far too many evangelical
churches let people off the hook for divorce and remarriage
that are clearly not Christian. And Jesus was very specific
he says that's adultery, and yet churches just brush it off.
And by doing so they injure of course see children
in those families, if any, But they also impairl the
souls of the people involved, and they set a terrible
example for the rest of the congregation and the culture.
Christians and pastors need to take divorce seriously. So those
are just a few exams samples. Another one churches welcome
should welcome babies right. Do not be the kind of
church where if a baby squalks a bit during the service,
everyone turns and glares at the mother, because, as the
saying has it, if there's no crying, your church is dying.
Speaker 1: Well I happen to go to a church where there's
so much crying I can hardly hear the sermon.
Speaker 2: So you know, you can have a room, you know,
a little area in the back. Right, Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: No, I see what you're saying. Yeah, absolutely right. Be
family friendly and that I mean I think I think
you know, you're kind of starting the ball rolling on
a lot of things that you know churches can do
something that you're so one thing, because I am a
policy person, I think that was as really great as
you know, the governor of Indiana and had an executive
order that erased the requirement for a college degree for
jobs that don't actually need it in state government. Because
you know, I think you're totally right about the over
credentialing thing. But I have seen people who literally you know,
come out of the military know three different language where
a Navy naval intelligence officer didn't technically have a degree
couldn't get hired anywhere for a year and a half
because of it. Right where, I'm thinking as someone who
employs people, obviously this is a motivated, intelligent person easily
you know, should be hired just given as background. So
I think even some parents who are aware of the
you know, delaying educate your delaying marriage and family and
your life until you're thirty issue with all the credentialing,
you know, if the market, if the job market, the businesses,
the employment locks you into that by not even looking
at you if you don't have that stupid degree, you know,
that does create a problem providing for the family, putting
food on the table, you know. So so I mean
those are but those are also things that people you
know in churches can advocate for and think about and
hear from their members and filter up, you know, to
their representatives as hey, you know, I saw this issue
needs to be addressed. It is hurting you know, people's
family formation. And I thinks such as you mentioned about
the treating of divorce. The when I was listening to
you speak about that, I think the orientation we maybe
you want to speak a little bit, or maybe you
don't about the kind of culture of cowardice within the
American church because the imposition of church discipline is a
very rare thing. But there's another problem with that, which
is the consumerism, right, which is, you know, if a
church decides to say, hey, young man, you know you
didn't treat that woman right, or look at you. You
cheated on your wife and you know, left her for
another woman like you don't, you know, that person can
just go to another church where no one knows him,
no one knows her, you know, they can just kind
of start a new life, you know, and it doesn't
follow them, which is another kind of kind of consequence
of the breakdown of the family and the community enforcement
that we used to have that is no longer available
because of our atomization.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm just going to take a few points
here with regard to the question of education. I think
that is a problem that can be addressed policy level.
I think a way that Christian educators and churches can
help is to the extent you've got Christian schools or
homeschooling groups help people get college credits before they're out
of high school. If it all possible. If you've got
a bright sixteen year old, we'll get them taking those
ap courses or whatever that will give them a leg
up so they can finish a year or two early.
A couple additional points here is that with regard to
the question of divorce and evangelical cowardice, that is a
real issue, and it's an issue on a lot of things.
And you're absolutely right about how the consumerism within churches
makes it hard to enforce the church. Just nonetheless, I
would say that at the very least, it provides a
strong example for the people who are still part of
that church, right I look at the people who it
doesn't happen often, but it doesn't happen if someone gets excommunicated
to my church. That does send a message to me.
Take things seriously, deal with them in your life, get
help from your spiritual leaders before you get in trouble.
And it would also help as a witness to the
world that if you break your marriage vows and you
are unrepentant about it, what you are going to have
to reinvent that part of your life because and I
have seen people do that, where they walk away from
their marriages, they walk away from their kids, and then
they find a new church. They spend a story about
how they were somehow the wronged one, and they get
away with it. But at the very least they shouldn't
be able to go back to that same church, in
same social circle and be unrepentant about, yes, I broke
my vows, I abandon my kids.
Speaker 1: Well, yeay, that's a great point and related to that,
I mean, so you do some very interesting comparisons in
the book about kind of talking about the early Christian Church,
you know, its response to a pagan world that was
also very hostile to life and treated sex in a
completely Unchristian way. So do you in your mind kind
of see, you know, do you believe that we're kind
of living in a situation somewhat I mean, I know,
it's never you know, exactly parallel, but somewhat analogous or
parallel to the you know, ancient pagan societies where you know,
the people who were real committed Christians were a small
you know, were a minority group, and you know that
their kind of task was to be a witness and
to live out their faith is whatever ways they could
in their own lives, regardless of whether the governing authorities
respected reflected that. You know, so Christians would pick the
babies up out of the gut or that were, you know,
abandoned and left to the wolves. You know, they treated
slaves well like human beings that set up They said, yeah, no,
you can't, you know, rape your slaves or whatever else
under your care. And so do you What can we
kind of learn from that Christian history for our somewhat similar,
often quite different society today.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that we should have more confidence than this.
It returns us to the previous point too, is that
I feel like Christians, be even ones who held fast
to a lot of these truths about that Scripture teaches
about marriage and sexuality and stuff, became very defensive and
almost apologetic about it. I've seen pastors talk about, well, yes,
you should not be in the same sex relationship in
a way that they're apologizing for this Christian teaching that
they have to say because it's in the Bible, but
they kind of feel bad and guilty about it. And
I agree that's an unpopular teaching, but Christians should be
much more confident saying no, this is a better way
to live. The way of the world leads to death.
It leads to suffering and misery, even for those who
are often seemingly enjoying themselves. One of the things that
always that struck me that I put in the book
is how many people who seemed like they were just
enjoying the party in celebrity sexual culture were miserable about it,
and eventually that comes out and again they're the winners,
They're the ones on top. And you have so many
people who are unhappy and broken in our sexual culture.
And Christians should be willing to say, actually, we have
a better way to live. We're not the killed joys,
We're not the biggest We're the ones that understand better
how we are meant to live, how God made us
to live, what God made us for in terms of
a relationship of love between a man and a woman
and then any children they are blessed with, and that
relationship is is one one of the greatest blessings we
can have in this life, and it also points us
towards the next life. Right. The scripture is very clear
about the Church is the bride of Christ, and it's not.
There is a reason for that. This queatological union of
Christ and believers is prefigured by the union of husband
and wife and then their love for their children. And
it's deep and it's profound. It's both the foundation of civilization.
It's very fundamental. The family is a bedrock of civilization,
and yet at the same time it's also some of
the highest things in this life. It's both, it's a
foundation and it's a pinnacle.
Speaker 1: A lot of times I think that people kind of
seek satisfaction, you know, in sex because they you know,
or yeah, just sex as opposed to within marriage, because
they don't have, you know, kind of that deeper satisfaction
that you're commenting on somewhere else in their life. Some
people are just being fools and running away, you know,
from a good situation for temporary pleasure. But I think
increasingly nowadays people don't even they don't have as much
experience with those deeper satisfactions of having a family that
is created by the union of a husband and a wife,
and so they don't even know kind of what's available
as the alternative to them. It's kind of like people
who have only been raised on Eminem's and Snickers bars,
you know, getting encounter with a steak and potatoes, you know,
meal from a five star restaurant, right, Like, what is
this food? And I'm not really sure if I like?
It doesn't taste that good. I'm not used to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, a couple points on that. One is that
you're kind of right, it is junk food. And again
the data Brad Wilcox University, Virgina has done a lot
of great work here. So my data from but shows
that married couples tend to have more sex and to
be more satisfied with it. And if you think about it,
that makes because you have a regular sexual partner, you
know them, you love them. But also there is the
fact that on the flip side, Americans are increasingly lonely.
I honestly think that a lot of young women basically
hook up with people just because they need a hug.
Speaker 1: Totally. I think that's I think I think even some
men do that too, because I mean, yeah, yeah, I
think plenty of I think plenty of wom men and
women do that. And it's that's really terribly said. It
is they should have someone to give them a hug
in their lives, so you come on, yeah, but not.
Speaker 2: I mean, people live away from their families and they're
on their own, and I think that sense of physical contact,
you know, or intimacy is allureing to them, but it's
meant to be part of a relationship that is enduring
and committed, and there really is something deeper there. And
I think that one of the points that Christians should
be confident in is if you're a Christian, you and
you're married, you know what.
Speaker 1: Sex is like.
Speaker 2: Whereas the single person, the non Christian, or the person
who's fallen away or whatever, who's living a more hedonistic life,
they know what sex is like, but they don't know
what marriage is like. They don't know what having a
family is like, so they can't understand fully those satisfactions
a bit especially, you can use your imagination as such.
But it is remarkable just how delightful it can be
to just be sitting there having your morning coffee and
one of your kids comes up and snuggles with you.
And that's a pleasure that you do not think about.
You don't have a much of a frame of reference
for it as a single adult. I mean, the closest
you could come when maybe be well, your dog comes up,
and dog are great, but they aren't kids.
Speaker 1: Just that they can't talk to you, they can't share
that deeper level of being a human than a dog,
you know, because they're a doug.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's just one example of Christians again should
be confident. No, this is a better way to live
because these satisfactions are for more of who we are
as people. They're not just for our most simple I
want a dopamine hit, you know, physical pleasure level. They
are instead for our relational levels. People are what we
are made for. Relationships are what we are meant for
and ultimately with God. But in this life and in
the life to come, we are still meant for communion
with other people because every other pleasure exhausts itself, but
people don't. Persons are inexhaustible.
Speaker 1: And the thing that I'm thinking about that is that
people who don't have as much experience getting satisfaction and love,
you know, from a closer relationships because they have a
broken family, broken ecosystem, community and all the rest. There's
sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith,
right and say, well, what I have is clearly not great.
So maybe I'd be willing to try, you know, and
believe these people who are telling me that it'd be
more satisfactory, you know, you know, to live in a
way that has more integrity and treats people as human
beings rather than objects. And I think the kind of
that leap of faith is something that your book, it
does a really really good job of substantiating that it
doesn't have to be a blind leap of faith. There's
a lot of really good evidence that it was going
to it's going to probably pan out really well for
you if you take, you know, the path that you're encouraging,
as opposed to the one that the world sells that
is obviously having, you know, being more obvious in our
culture about how how badly it turns out.
Speaker 2: I think so, And I do try to strike a
balance because on the one hand, it is abundantly clear
from experience, from observation, and from social science research that
the path, the way of life that Christianity urges upon
us is more likely to result in happiness, it is
more likely to lead to fillment, and all of these things.
At the same time, I'm not selling an emotional and
relational prosperity gospel of you will definitely be happy with this.
God will bless you with a great marriage, with a
great sex life, and you know precisely the number of
children you want. But I don't.
Speaker 3: We have to be.
Speaker 2: Careful because we're not selling that. But we are saying
if you follow God's design for life, you will probably
be happier. You certainly won't be inflicting all the wounds
upon yourself that you would if you are following the
world's way. But the other point I would make is
even if things go wrong and they can't, I mean
the Christian as you say, it's weep of faith. It's
not a blind one, but it is. The Christian marriage
of ows are incredibly romantic in a sense. They're like
something a Storytelle Night would say. I am giving myself
to you for better, for worse, for rich or for poor.
This is an incredible commitment, regardless of what the world
may do to you. It is binding yourself to someone
else and telling the world to go to hell because
I am promising this. And the thing is, you are
making yourself incredibly vulnerable when you do that, because the
other person could betray you. It's less likely. It's a
lot less likely in a Christian marriage, but it does happen.
And even if the other person does not betray you,
eventually you will be standing well either you'll be standing
by your spouse's graver, they'll be standing yours. Right. That
is the tell death to us part bit. There is
heartbreak built in to Christian marriage, but it is a
heartbreak that is redeemed because Christianity redeems and sanctifies our
sorrows and sufferings in a way that the world never
can and never will. It says they are to be
avoided or endured, but it cannot say. And in this
you participate in the divine suffering of God who came
and suffered on our behalf to redeem the world. In
this your suffering has a purpose that is beyond just
this life. So that is the other message I would
say is yes, Christianity, if followed, will not inflict all
these wounds on yourself. But there will still be suffering.
There will be troubles in this world, but there will
be fulfillment, and there will be a hope and a
redemption and a renewal beyond these sufferings.
Speaker 1: Nathaniel Blake is a longtime senior contributor to The Federalist,
a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and
the author of the new book Victims of the Revolution,
How Sexual Liberation Hurts Us All. Nathaniel, thank you for
your time today and for joining the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for having me enjoy
Speaker 1: And to everyone else, be lovers of freedom and anxious
for the fray.