Latest / Before You Speak / Before You Speak | Episode 27 | Christian Nationalism

Transcript

Before You Speak | Episode 27 | Christian Nationalism · Before You Speak

• Derek Peterson: ⁓ What's up y'all? Welcome back to the Before You Speak podcast. I am your host, Derek Peterson. Just processing the fire hose of my with this guy over here, which last time I pointed the wrong direction. So we'll see if works again this Elwyn: Hey everybody, I Elwin. I don't actually know what side I am on because I listened to this on Apple podcasts. ⁓ And the fire hose of my newsfeed... I'm depressed, man. It's really... It's not good. It's really feeling overwhelming and not good. And this morning I was like, fuck man. Like, this is really... This is really not great. But you, by the way, you look great. Look at the shirt, the haircut, man. You are looking sharp. Derek Peterson: other We're starting to see. Thank you. ⁓ This is what happens when I close a few transactions and I can get back to like paying for normal like hygienic type things again. You know, like taking showers, shaving, cleaning up my hair a little bit. Yeah, it happens. no spring real estate season is a real thing and it's been busy, but yeah. Elwyn: taking showers. Derek Peterson: Let's jump into the news today. I think we should start with what's going on in Virginia right now as the FBI is searching Virginia Senate leaders office. It's a it's a corruption probe, which is I put those in quotations because it's ⁓ honestly some horse shit because Luis Lucas, ⁓ this ⁓ this Senate ⁓ leader is the one was one that was really vocal about, you know, gerrymandering their maps as a result of what's been going on across the country specifically in, I also saw a clip of JD Vance talking and basically using the left's talking point of like, well, you know, if the Democrats are just gonna do it in all these blue cities, then we've got to do the same thing. And I'm like, God, dude, this is going to get out of hand. This is gonna get insane. And not only that, like they're using now. their power, they're using the FBI as a clearly political targets. at least prior to this, at least we kind of tried to hide it a little bit. And now they're not even trying to hide it. Like this is, I mean, this is awful. This is literally a threat to democracy. So. Elwyn: Yeah, I don't see much of a way to separate, to distinguish what they're doing in Virginia now to what, you know, fucking Putin does to some of his political opponents. She was very, she's the one who was on record saying, you started it, we're gonna fucking finish it. That's her quote and the cuss word is in it. You know, she was, you know, very, very forward about what the Democrats in Virginia should do. in response to what the Texas Republicans did. ⁓ And as a result now, she's got the full weight of the FBI and the federal government going through her stuff. you know, nobody heard of any corruption allegations beforehand. It's almost impossible to not see this as just completely made up stuff, right? And it is lawfare, it is fascism like I don't you know look I have my thoughts about that we're going in a fascist direction but it's like this is an instance where it's like bro you have to call this what it is you know it's so yeah this Derek Peterson: Yeah, well the thing that gets me about all this stuff is just that, dude, if you look at anybody hard enough, right? Like if you look at any business, you look at ⁓ any person's life down to the detail and you just start to probe, you're gonna find stuff that they do wrong. You're gonna find areas where it's human nature where people cut corners, where, you know, like my wife just got her second free Starbucks birthday. drink because you know the app didn't cancel out her Starbucks thing and we spend a god knows how much money at Starbucks every year so she was like hey the the the app still gave me a free one for my birthday and I was like whatever we pay them but but I'm like dude I'm this is life like sometimes we do shit that it's like yeah is it the right thing no but like it happened and like if you get probed like yeah and I think you see you if you're retroactively just like going after people, you're probably going to be able to find some shit on them. You're probably going to be fine. Yeah. Elwyn: But that's not even the point. That's not even the point of it, right? The point of it is the lawfare, is the use of the federal government, is the use of the FBI to simply intimidate and overrun political opponents. That's all this is. Whether they find a free drink from Starbucks or something ex post facto that she did wrong is not the point. The point is they don't like what she pulled. Derek Peterson: The fear tactic. Elwyn: So they are now unleashing federal law enforcement upon her. And that, in and of itself, it doesn't matter what they find. Look, we haven't heard boo from the Fulton County elections commission, right? Comey was indicted and it was dismissed once, he's been indicted again. Letitia James, the case was dismissed. The sandwich thrower thing in DC, the case was dismissed. All these cases are getting dismissed, they're all bullshit. It's not the point of these cases is not do they have merit even on even the seed of merit. The point is that it is intimidation. It is a throttling of a democratic system. That's what's going on here. Derek Peterson: Yeah. And it sets the precedent for the future. know, like, even if the pendulum swings in and we even if we do get elections and things change in the next few years, you know, we're setting a precedent now for, you know, all of the the political, you know, corruption and the use of ⁓ government agencies to go after your political appointments, you know, like This is stuff that dictator, you know, this is stuff that Russia, Putin and China do. Like this wasn't the US and it's creeping in slowly enough that, mean, and I'm not saying that this wasn't like we're innocent and all of this. I'm saying relative to the size of our country and how insane of an operation it is to run the United States of America. We've actually done a pretty good job with it over the last 50, I mean, since I've been alive. ⁓ This is the most terrifying moment, I think, in all of that. And it's an interesting time because I'm an adult. This stuff matters to me now. And it matters to me because I have kids that I want to see. I have kids that I dream about the American dream for them. I didn't make it as far. I made it think farther along than my parents did and my hope and prayer for my kids is that they make it that their life is a little bit better than mine. You know and like that's the hope right and it kind of feels like there that opportunity is not going to be there for them at the moment. Elwyn: Yeah, it's getting harder and harder to see a clean way out of this. And, you know, that's what's troubling. I know that what the right says is like, well, you did this to Trump. You started this. No. Fuck off with that, please. Because Trump has boxes and boxes and boxes of classified documents out in the open at Mar-a-Lago, right? Trump is on tape. in a phone call saying, find me 11,781 votes. Trump was found guilty by a jury. Doesn't matter if it's New York, doesn't matter where he was found guilty by a jury of 34 different felonies, right? A judge said this was sex, Trump has sexually assaulted someone. All this shit, like you can tie, hey, Trump, have him doing this. Of course we should go after him. We don't have anything on this woman. There's no reason to go after her except for politics. And this ties back into the gerrymandering stuff which we talked about last week. that, we have to tap on that decision again because I don't think that I fully appreciated just how awful the response to this decision would be. The hoods are off in Republican state legislatures. They are no longer hiding at all. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: that what they are doing is, in the case of Louisiana, stopping an election that's already in progress. 42,000 people have already voted in that primary election. They are stopping that election in order to draw out away any district that is represented by a minority. Tennessee, Alabama, in Indiana, five of the seven state senators that voted against redistricting were voted out or lost their primaries last night. The hoods are off. There is no pretense. at all anymore in these Republican states that what they are doing is not partisan gerrymandering. They're not even saying it. They're saying we are districting away VRA, Voting Rights Act districts, districts that were created in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act because there was racially gerrymandering minorities out. They're saying we're getting rid of these districts. We want all white districts all the time. And it's at least a decade before you can come back from that and set the ship right. Because you have to have the Democrats take over in 2026. You have to have them put forth legislation, which is going to get vetoed by Donald Trump. So you have to have them take the White House and hold the House and hold the Senate in 2028. Then you can sign legislation. Then that'll get challenged in like the Fifth Circuit of Texas, where they'll overturn the legislation. It'll take four years. to work its way up to the Supreme Court, unless of course all the nut jobs are still on the Supreme Court, in which case it'll take four fucking days to get to the Supreme Court so they can overturn that legislation. All in the meantime, and I'm cooking right now because it's so much stuff, all in the meantime, Democrats have to start taking over state legislatures so that they can redraw maps in a manner that fairly represents the population of the state, which includes representation for people of color. That's not an anti-democratic statement to make that there should be representation for people of color. And this fucking court decision from last week just completely eviscerates any protection for that. That would ensure that. Derek Peterson: Because racism's dead, bro. It doesn't exist anymore. Elwyn: Yeah, you know, saw a thing. I've always been sort of impressed that for racism to exist nowadays, you basically have to drop the N-word. Short of that, it's not racist. That's where the pendulum has swung. But you know, remember Hillary Clinton said in the 2016 election, she's like, know, 47 % of this people votes for Trump, and some of them I just put in the basket of deplorables. Derek Peterson: You Elwyn: You know, everybody freaked out and very quickly it became like an opportunity to show just how deplorable you are. You know, it became, she gave them, who could have thought, you know, I wouldn't have predicted this. Who would think that that statement gave them license to be like, ⁓ she already thinks I'm deplorable, so I'm just gonna be a full on racist asshole. because she already called me out on it. So hey, okay, cool. Like I said at beginning, hoods are off and it's fucking scary and I don't see a way out of it for years and years and years. Derek Peterson: Yeah, it is terrifying. It sucks. I, I would agree with you. ⁓ I guess I'm still hoping for I'm still hoping for some decency. And the hardest part about this is this so many like, there's so much ignorance in this process, because information is just spread out and people's algorithms and silos are so different from one another. And it sucks because like I don't know how you could be a minority in a minority group and and be okay with any of this. Like I don't know how but yet you still see it. You still see you know black and brown people advocating for this stuff. And I'm like you're advocating your own rights away. Like the shittiest part about all of this is that you know like for guys like me and you and you less than me because you know you're Jewish. I'm just a run of the mill white guy that claims to be a Christian, which we'll get into later. But like, yeah, like this stuff is kind of built for me and guys like me. And, you know, it fucking sucks. It fucking sucks to see that, you know, what is so plainly clearly happening that people have found a way to make the narrative even something slightly different and people will still believe it. And I'm like, man, this is it's just insane to me. But ⁓ Yeah, I think you're you're the feeling of hopelessness is It's it's getting hard to be honest. It's even getting harder to look at my newsfeed You know, I go through seasons of this but yeah last two days. It's been really tough to even pull up social media apps and and try to read through them because I'll notice myself literally getting anxiety and getting angry as I'm going through my newsfeed and I'm like man I just this is ruining my evening. Like I need to stop Elwyn: Yeah. And there's another point to this that I probably should have brought up last week, but it's important because we don't hate the Supreme Court enough, so we should fucking talk about hating the Supreme Court more. It is the worst, right? And so there's this principle in election kind of Supreme Court discourse called the Purcell Principle. Purcell is name of the case that says that ⁓ the Supreme Court Derek Peterson: That is the worst. Elwyn: basically will say, we're invoking the Purcell principle and we're not going to mess with ⁓ election districts in this case when it's too close to an election. That's gonna cause too much upheaval, we're gonna table this until later. So because of Purcell says we should allow these elections to happen without interfering and it's too close, ⁓ it's a brake pedal, the Purcell principle. So in December, when they overturned the Texas court and you had Texas primaries three months away, they said the Purcell principle doesn't apply. There's enough time. We don't care. ⁓ Three months is plenty of time. And that was in opposition to what stuff they had said before. Well, yesterday, on Tuesday, they finalized the ruling that they made last week. Now normally that doesn't happen for 32 days. It's just kind of procedural rule. A Supreme Court case isn't finalized for 32 days because parties might want to make a brief to make a change. It never is effective. It doesn't matter. But, you know, they came out and they said, nope, this decision, we're finalizing this decision now, six days after it was made, which like, the elections are that day. Wouldn't the Purcell principle? dictate that you, you know, say, no, no, no, we're not finalizing these maps, Louisiana, you, sorry that those 32 days put it after the primary, but it's just such rank partisanship and Justice Jackson called out Alito. It was an unsigned decision. She wrote a dissent, which sometimes happens, and she just blasted them for just rank partisan hackery. So Alito got his panties all up in a twist and wrote a concurrence. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: to respond to her dissent where he basically was like he didn't defend at all what he did he just said her diss Derek Peterson: that which is par for the course with every Republican now like you it's indefensible so now just rather than try to like rebut or say anything now you just attack them right. Elwyn: Right. Right, and that's what he did. He's like, this descent by her is too much and it's a bridge too far and it's not nice. She was mean and I really am upset that she was mean. The whole system has been captured, right? And we've talked about stealing elections and shit like this and I was like, I don't think it's gonna happen through the mail or through changing it. This is how the system gets stolen, right? And it starts with Supreme Court. Derek Peterson: Fucking asshole. Elwyn: And fuck man, everybody that in 2016, Hillary included, who was saying, hey Trump's gonna have an opportunity to elect to appoint a bunch of justices because there was a seat open at the time. Yeah, people who, the Bernie bros, who were mad at Hillary, man, you should have fucking listened. Derek Peterson: Yeah, yeah. And the people that this impacts the most are the people that are, I don't know, the most, ⁓ to be honest, that are getting the most misinformation about all of this. It's like keeping the keeping people dumb and ignorant about certain things, because, you know, like I didn't know much about the Supreme Court until I, to be honest, until we started doing this podcast, I listened to strict scrutiny from time to time, Leah Lippman's podcast, because it was part of the podcast network that I enjoy listening to, but ⁓ not enough to really fully understand what was going on just to get some decent understanding of processing Supreme Court decisions and what was going on. yeah, dude, this stuff is complicated. And it's so complicated that it's really hard to track and follow unless you're as smart as you are. And most people aren't. And so we're stuck in this place where we're like, wait, who's saying what and what's true? And should I be paying attention to this? Does this matter? How is this going to impact me? How is this going to impact my kids? Like all this stuff. And it's really hard to to put your finger on that pulse at all if if you aren't really engaged in the understanding of how all this stuff works. So, yeah, this is a shitty situation and it's. We're living in some scary times. So, well, you wanna jump into our topic for the day? Elwyn: It's not gonna be less scary, but sure. Derek Peterson: It's not it is absolutely not I Mean we can make it that if you want I mean Doug Wilson is kind of a comedy but actually that interview with him and Sam Harris was if for anybody listening to this that podcast was actually relatively educational, but probably a little more friendly to Doug Wilson than he deserves and we'll talk a little bit about that, but Elwyn: Not turning to a comedy. Derek Peterson: Today we're going to talk about Christian nationalism. at a basic level, Christian nationalism is the belief that a nation, specifically the United States, should be defined by Christianity and through its laws, culture, identity, they should all basically reflect Christian values. for me, part of the thought of Christian nationalism, if you would have talked to me in my 20s, I probably would have been all in on this because I was a I was a Christian, I was very idealistic. ⁓ I came to Christianity kind of on my own senses. And I'm going to ⁓ talk a little bit about this because I think it's important. ⁓ First, there's a reason why there's thousands of different Christian denominations. It's because nobody can agree on just about anything that is going on in the Bible. ⁓ The Bible is interpreted so many different ways by so many different people. that there is not an agreeance on any of it. so, you know, not only are there different sex ⁓ sections of, you know, and denominations of Christianity, you know, like a lot of cults and different things are born out of all of this as well. So that's one part of the context that I think is really important because you can two people can say they are Christians and believe very, very different things about how life should be lived and what that actually means. And so I think for this conversation, it's important for people to understand where I sit on the Christianity spectrum because I disagree with most of what's going on, especially in politics and how people use Christianity for their own benefit. So, you know, I came to Christianity when I was a kid. I grew up in Utah. It was a Mormon state. We had a little Southern Baptist Church that I grew up in which I hated equally as much because you know I went to church and it was Baptists all talking about how terrible the Mormons were and then I would go to school and the Mormons were all telling me like yeah, you're not gonna get to the celestial kingdom or whatever they believe in because you're you know, you're not Mormon and so it basically Everybody's going to hell according to everybody else. So I had a friend in seventh grade ask me if I was a Christian. I was like, no, I hate going to church. And he was like, church, church has nothing to do with you being a Christian. Like it has everything to do with you believing in God. And I was like, ⁓ that's interesting. So I started to actually read the Bible myself and start to figure some of this stuff out. Cause I was like, I'm genuinely curious. So as it during this journey, I started to actually read through the Bible and it's. One point I started to actually tear through it. started I wanted to read it cover to cover. So I did that once or twice. I read the New Testament in a bunch of different settings. Old Testament is much harder to get through. But I've read it a number of times and I know that's yours. is so and here's what I here's what I where I landed on. this this is why I will still claim to be a Christian today. You know. Elwyn: That's my book, Derek Peterson: Christianity in a nutshell is the belief that Jesus was the prophet that fulfilled the Old Testament. So like the Old Testament is this cycle of the Israelites, know, fucking things up, you know, going to God, God giving them a set of rules, then them not being able to live by them rule, those rules, them getting punished. And then the cycle starts again, right? It's actually a really beautiful picture of human nature, which is what I was drawn. why I was drawn to it. was like, man, yeah, like I totally get that. And then, you know, Jesus comes along and Jesus is like, actually, there's only two things that are important, like loving God and loving your neighbor. And there's nothing you can do to actually earn heaven. Heaven is a gift. It's it's grace. It's given to you ⁓ because of the belief, your belief in your connection with God. This to me was like life changing because I was like, man, that That is beautiful. But in that exact thing creates the Old Testament conundrum ⁓ again. Whereas if so there's this really weird thing with Christianity in that if you are a real Christian and you have a relationship with God and you believe it, your life will be transformed. You and the people that I know that are actually real Christians. are some of the most genuine genuinely kind, polite, caring people. These are the people that will give and you'll never know about it. These are the people that will, you go to great lengths to do amazing things, to help other people, other cultures, everything. And I know that there's people that do this without Christianity. I'm talking specifically with inside Christianity, which is what I was drawn towards. But there's there a world where people see that happening and they they replicate the behavior without the relationship. And this is where Christianity gets off because if your life is transformed because of a relationship with God and you're doing amazing things as a result of that, that's Christianity lived out. If you're doing amazing things in the world to gain favor with God in hopes to get to heaven, that's the opposite of what Jesus was about. Jesus was about inclusion, about ⁓ equality. Like it's all through the New Testament. ⁓ And so that's what drew me into Christianity. When I read Christianity, it spoke directly to my heart because I felt like an outcast growing up in Utah. And I was like, man, like this guy, this is what I believe. believe that, man, like anybody, anybody, you know, like the guy hanging on the cross next to Jesus. Repents right before he dies and Jesus like hey, you're gonna be with me and eternity like like all you have to do is believe There's something so beautiful to me about that story and the final caveat in that is is just Anyone that says they know for sure what's going on? ⁓ In the spiritual realm is a fucking liar Like I think we all just need to like put that on the table like anybody that says their religion is true or they're like like There is no way to prove that. like let's just put that like we're all living by faith to some degree like unless you've died and come back there is an element of your faith and even if you're an atheist or an agnostic that takes equal amount to believe that when you die you just close your eyes and everything goes black that it takes an equal amount of faith to believe that as it does for me to believe that when I die something else happens right because neither of us know. Neither of us know that what actually is going to go on when we die. But adversely, what we believe happens when we die can actually change our behavior in life. And I think that that's where this conversation becomes really important. And so there is not a consensus on what Christianity actually is and what it looks like. ⁓ And so. When we talk about the term Christian nationalism, think we need to be careful because there are really beautiful ⁓ faith driven sections of Christianity that I think are doing amazing things throughout the world that most people will probably never hear about. And then there's the most vocal people that are using Christianity ⁓ as a tool, as a hammer to instate whatever they believe is their justice on the world. And I think that that's what we're seeing in our political world. I guess, okay, so that out of the way, I'm curious what your thoughts are as far as like, how do you experience Christian nationalism and what's your take on it being Jewish? Elwyn: Yeah, I mean, think that was really well said and a nice, ⁓ a really great insight into someone who grew up in the environment that you did exposed to a lot of different religions in different ⁓ extremes, in a sense. So as a Jewish person, the idea of Christian nationalism scares the shit out of me. ⁓ The idea of any like ardently theocratic government frankly scares the shit out of me, but you know, Christian nationalism, any religion, any government that is based openly and fully on the dictates of a particular religion is not going to be welcoming of other religions. And the story of Jews throughout history is the story of people who stay firm to their beliefs while being the minority population ⁓ under governments that want them to convert and get really really mad when they don't convert and fucking kill them and then add in some conspiracy, you know, or kick them out and add some conspiracy theories into it and you have kind of two things that explain a lot of the history of Jews over the last two thousand years, let's say. ⁓ So... As a Jew, I hear Christian nationalism and I have an immediate allergic reaction to it. As an individual who, look, I think that the United States of America is the best country in the world. And I think that we have, for 250 years now, made work a system of democracy that has worked probably better than any other in the world. If for no other reason than for the last hundred years of it, we have agreed, or 150 years of it, we have agreed that slavery is bad and almost every other society before then didn't feel that way. So if for no other reason than that, we have ⁓ tried to create a system that recognizes people of all stripes, of all colors, of all faiths. And when you start to term our system as one that is Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: a Christian nationalist system, you are taking that out. You're taking all of that out, whether it's right away or down the road. Now, so you mentioned that podcast Sam Harris did with Doug Wilson. Doug Wilson is an important guy here because he is Derek Peterson: Yeah, we need to talk about him a lot because he's, he's kind of the driving force behind a lot of what's going on right now. Elwyn: Yeah, he is the head of probably the largest ⁓ self-avowed Christian nationalist church there is. I don't know what he calls it, but they have, I think, 100 or so different ⁓ individual congregations, if that's the right word. ⁓ And critically, Pete Hegseth is a member of one of them. And Pete Hegseth has had Doug Wilson hang out at the Pentagon. Pete Hegseth is very, very open about his Christian nationalism and you have JD Vance who I don't think is a Christian nationalist but he's probably pretty darn close and he I certainly believe would have no problem ⁓ adopting a form of Christian nationalism if it helped him. You have Mike Huckabee who is a Christian dispensationalist who which is you know sort of cousins to Christian nationalism. You have all these people at the highest levels of our government who are self-avowed Christian nationalists or something very very close to it. And Doug Wilson is their Pied Piper. He's kind of the guy that's laying out the rules for them to follow. So to hear him talk, you know, I think both of us are going to reference a lot this interview we did back in November with Sam Harris, you know, where he talks quite openly. You Sam Harris, really good interviewer, and he gives him the space to describe what Christian nationalism is and what he believes and how this would work. You know, so at least for me, I thought that was a really, really instructive interview and Doug Wilson is certainly the guy that we need to be talking about if there's any guy that we need to be talking about. Derek Peterson: Yeah. And I think it's important to say, ⁓ first Doug Wilson is an incredibly knowledgeable guy. Like, I mean, the dude knows his Bible. like, ⁓ there's no, there's no question about that. Like the, studies reads, ⁓ so this isn't somebody that just takes something out of context. This is somebody that understands the whole landscape of the Bible, ⁓ incredibly well. And, ⁓ very much has. picked what he thinks is the most critical aspects. a couple of things that came up that ⁓ I think are important for us to understand is one, ⁓ Doug Wilson does not believe ⁓ that there should be ⁓ anybody that has any same sex interactions, anything, so any LGBTQ rights, like ⁓ just anything involving it. that sodomy should be punishable by law. This is a very Christian nationalism point of view. ⁓ This is not what I believe to be a Christian point of view, but it's a Christian nationalism point of view. It's also a Christian national point of view that ⁓ women that the he said it this way. There's he doesn't believe in repress suppressing female votes, but he believes every vote should be held as a household. So like, which is just another form of suppression, which is ⁓ interesting. the, so in that, you know, Elwyn: Also explicitly with the male's voice being kind of the tiebreaker. Derek Peterson: Correct. Meaning like so the only incident where he believes that a woman should vote is an instance where she has been widowed or she's living on her own and doesn't have ⁓ a male counterpart yet. And again he doesn't believe that lesbians should exist. So like you're not going to if there's a household with two women. Yeah. You wouldn't be. Yes they would. They would. They would be ⁓ outcasts. ⁓ Elwyn: They're not a member of his society. Derek Peterson: And so it intermingled in all of this. ⁓ This is there's some serious policy ramifications. And one of the things he brought up to is they don't believe in public schooling. They don't believe that ⁓ school, which this ties into our conversation from last weekend. Ultimately, the driving force ⁓ behind the school voucher program is these Christian nationalist billionaire donors that are running these mega churches and They will happily tank the public schooling system to force a Christian schooling setup on the state of Texas at some point. So the first step is to do your best to ⁓ eliminate public schools as much as possible. And they've effectively done that. The voucher program is gutting budgets. AISD was 180 million short. And dude, honestly reading these emails of them trying to overcome these shortfalls is heartbreaking. It's really awful. We were at a football fundraiser for Bowie High School yesterday and they were basically like, yeah, we're gonna need a lot of help because our funding is getting cut significantly. We need help to feed the kids. We're gonna need help with equipment. We need help with like, and it's just insane, man. It's insane that. kind of idealism and ⁓ kind of ⁓ Christian nationalism in this form ⁓ not what actual Christianity is about, in my opinion. We've actually talked about this in terms of Republicans and Democrats right now, but I think ⁓ of the reasons I probably am more attracted to progressive views ⁓ the moment is because my view of Christianity was that when Jesus was hanging on the cross and he looked out and he was like, God, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. He was talking about everybody that ⁓ everybody is equal and has equal rights. And it doesn't matter. He wasn't. He didn't say like, God, forgive all of the people that believe the same thing or forgive all the white people or forgive all that. Like it was everybody. And Christianity was meant to be inclusive on the the bounds of love and care for one another. And so in this system, if you're claiming it to be a Christian system, it should be more inclusive. It should be more loving towards the people in poverty. It should be more caring towards offering free meals for kids that need it. Like if this was actually what Christianity, if Christian nationalism was actually Christian, it would look far more progressive than it does Democrat right now, or than it does Republican right now in our system. Elwyn: Yeah, I mean, I think what's important is, and you referenced this earlier, is like there are a thousand different ways to interpret the Bible. There's a whole second ⁓ liturgy in Judaism, the Talmud, which is basically people trying to figure out how to interpret the Torah, how to answer the questions posed in the Torah. And these things change over time. And it doesn't take much to see that I don't know, I think you would agree. They have to change over time, right? You can't live in 2026 under a set of laws handed down through a covenant on Mount Sinai 4,000 years ago or whatever thousand years ago. Derek Peterson: ⁓ absolutely. All of this stuff should actually progress towards the time, which is I think it was actually I think the book was written for the I think the Bible was actually written for that. But continue because I'll I'll jump on that at the end or after you're done talking. Elwyn: Yeah, so I mean the thing about Christian nationalism is it doesn't the debate about what does Christianity actually mean actually say is I secondary or if it's not secondary it is certainly the cover for Christian nationalists to start you know and when we were when I was preparing for this I listened to that interview and it was the second time I listened to it because when it came out I was like oh I want to hear this I know who this guy is he's a fucking nut job. ⁓ And the second time through, I found it very, very interesting to sort of hear how he begins, the point at which Doug Wilson begins to justify Christian nationalism. I thought it was interesting because we alluded to this last week and with voter ID, like what's the common point? What's the point of commonality that probably we could all agree on that he will then take and incrementally get lead people to a place that doesn't seem obvious from that point of commonality. And that point of commonality where he begins, and which I agree, is that we all, all entities, legal and human, have some moral agency. You and I have moral agency in our daily lives. my company, your business is a realtor, your brokerage, they have moral agency in what they do. Our governments have moral agency at the federal, state, and local level. We are all responsible for what we do, right? The question then, so we can all, I feel like we could all agree on that. That doesn't seem too controversial. So the question is, okay, where do you derive those morals? Where do you get that from? It's like, okay, well, you can get them from your parents, you can get them from a lot of places, and you can absolutely get them from religious text. as a race of humans, as a species, we have derived moral guidance from religious texts for thousands of years. This is not anything new and probably it's a net good. So you can say, okay, well, we're going to look heavily on religious texts. And then you start to, he's like, okay, we're not that far apart, me and Doug Wilson up to there. And then he's like, okay, well, if we look heavily, well, here's the text that I use. here and then you start to see the progression, right? And the slight explanation away where, you know, in cases of homosexual, of same-sex marriage, of same-sex relationships and of sodomy, right, the punishment in the Bible is stoning by death, adultery as well. The punishment is death by stoning, right? And so he says, well, you know, that's a maximalist ⁓ position. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: I'm not gonna get right there. You know, we're not gonna go right there There's a whole other set of wrongs that exist in this world that exist way before we get there, you know, we did there's Furries he does good Derek Peterson: Yeah, you, yeah, this part of the conversation was super interesting to me because this is the shit that I've dealt with growing up in Utah and Mormon culture my whole life. And it drove me crazy because when he started talking about polygamy, he started talking about sodomy and sodomy being oral or anal, like all of these things. And he was talking about how like in the secular world or like in, you know, unmarried relationships, all of these are bad. But then he asked him, well, inside of marriage, this is bad too. But he he immediately got on his heels when you talked about inside of a marriage bond between a man and a woman. How are these? He's like, well, well, you know, we wouldn't necessarily be like as like this is not something we're going to go hunt people down to like find out if they're doing. And I was like, there it is there. This is This is what their problem is. These are men that want to play pretend with values that they supposedly have and instate those values on people that they potentially don't like. But inside of their own home, they want to be able to do those things. So all of those men want to be able to have anal and oral and do all the things that they want to do in the bedroom ⁓ guilt free. But what they don't want to do is they don't want to just openly allow anybody else to do it, or they want to use it as a means of hate against somebody that they don't like. And that was evidently clear in that interview. this is the hypocrisy of Christian nationalism. Elwyn: See, I came across, I went across that one a little differently. I don't think you're wrong. To me, that was the pitch. That was the give. Right? That was the acknowledgement that, yeah, no, of course we're not gonna, death by stoning, we're not gonna get there right away. You know? like, right? He's like, no, you know? because what he says is he doesn't say it's okay in the house. He says I'm not really worried about it in the house. Derek Peterson: Kind of like a hundred years until we'll start stoning people again. Elwyn: I'm worried about all these other major things, right? And he goes back and he's like, for the last 20 years we've had this explosion of acceptance of same-sex couples and he refers to furries and all these things where he's like, we've gone so far away from any sort of ⁓ thing that's discussed in the Bible that talking about the actual punishment, what the Bible actually says, it's like, Yeah, no, we'll get there. We'll get there in 10 years. We'll get there in 20 years. But in the first 10 years, the first thing we're going to do is abolish same-sex marriage, right? That's a legal construct that we can simply abolish. And we're going to abolish public schools. We're going to have private schools teaching this stuff. And if your kid wants to talk back to the mom, a little bit of talking back is not punishable by death. the thing is, he always gets there. They're always going to get there. Right? Like, and Sam Harris was pretty good at drawing that out. He was like, yeah, but at some point, you know, if your kid is, you know, out there practicing, you know, as an atheist and practicing yoga and gay and doing all these things and talking back to the parents, like, eventually, you, Doug Wilson, you're not arguing with the fact that that punishment exists and is an option. And Doug Wilson was like, no, I'm not arguing with that. So, Like, it's all these incremental steps where each one can sound reasonable depending on where you fall on the spectrum and how closely you read, in this case, the Bible. And by the time you get close to the worst part, you're already so far down the line that the worst part starts to seem more reasonable. Right? That's how these things work. It's a pitch. It's a sales pitch. If you're selling a house, Derek Peterson: Yes. Elwyn: Right, or when I was selling legal subscriptions, find something that everybody can agree is a problem. Your house is too small, you had two kids, you now you have three kids, you used to have one, you need an extra bedroom, you need more square footage, you want to move to a better school, my legal research product is better, blah, blah, blah, you're still using books, it's too slow. You find a common problem and you tailor your solution, your explanation of the solution to solve that problem and that's all he's doing. Right, and that, and That's what terrifies me about it. Because the solution, if you just stop listening and go back to your first instinct, or for me, if I go back to my first instinct that this is bad, this cannot be good, right, these things always end poorly for people who are not true believers, eventually you get there. know, and Doug Wilson will say it'll take 100, 150 years to get there. He'll say it's very incremental, we're not gonna get there right away. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: And he might not say we're gonna get there, but when asked are we gonna get there, he's not gonna deny it. Right, he's not gonna deny that adulterers can be stoned to death, and he's not gonna deny that same sex couples, first they're gonna be outcast, awful to begin with, then next they're gonna be stoned. So it's all just cover when he talks. Derek Peterson: Well, and they're exactly and they're like the the part about slavery was interesting to me, too, because he was talking about, you know, he doesn't condone kidnapping or killing. a lot of the American slave trade, you know, he was like, I can honestly, you know, say that that was egregious and a terrible offense and, would have no part in. But, you know, being a slave owner, there's parts of the Bible that talk about being a slave owner. and how you're supposed to treat your slave and how a slave should treat his master. And it's interesting because explicitly approved by the Bible and to me like this conversation always needs context too because, okay, so one, at the time Rome was a completely different culture. Slavery was rampant and just about everybody ⁓ with any kind of wealth had slaves. ⁓ Elwyn: explicitly approved by the Bible. Derek Peterson: There was also a world in this culture, too, where people would sell themselves into slavery. So at the time, culturally, people that were very poor or had come on hard times, they would sell themselves to ⁓ into slavery, which was basically like, hey, I'm going to work for this job. But it usually had a start and an end. Right. Like it would be like a 15 year period where you were considered a slave. You worked on a property and, you know, on a farm, wine field, something like that, but there was conditions for it, right? There was ⁓ oftentimes like there was an out at the end. So the context within the Bible when it came to slavery was was not one as as I've read it, not one where I was like that it was like, man, we condone this or this was something that should be propped up as ⁓ as a as something that should be useful in life. It was. speaking to the conditions that were already currently happening and basically saying, look, if you subscribe to Christianity, like if and you have slaves, you treat your slaves this way. Like you treat them with humanity. Like there is it was at the time still something very radical, but not something that was culturally going to shift anything because slavery didn't end for ⁓ thousands of years later. I mean, even if you consider it ended today. So But all that to be said is everything that he talks about, if you talk about it in like a general sense where everybody's on the same page and it's all happening in a lovingly way, it's not, it doesn't sound that egregious. If you talk about any of these things in a way where we go back to that conversation I had at the start of this where the Christian is not somebody that actually has a relationship with God and love flowing out of them. The Christian that in the subject Christian is somebody that's performative, that is just living a Christian life ⁓ by the rule book, but actually has no relationship with God. This is where these kind of policies become tyrannical and hateful because these are the people that take slaves, treat them poorly, oppress women, oppress minorities, and you do it all in the name of Christ because. They they're terrible fucking humans and they're missing the most important part, which is love. so there is ⁓ Christian nationalism does not work in this context. Like if you take you cannot live the like the and it was never meant to be either. Like the Bible was not meant to be a diagram for government. It was meant to be a diagram for individual values. That's that's really what it was. Elwyn: Yeah, but I think that you're overthinking what Christian nationalism purports to be. He says, I love the separation of church and state. I love the First Amendment. I don't think that the government should be involved that much in matters of religion. He basically thinks that they should be offloading that stuff to churches, I suppose. He said, I would have a vice squad going around. searching for that stuff. know, the slavery, and I don't, I think where I disagree with you is I don't think Christian nationalists ask the question, is this right or just, because it is right and just because it was said by Jesus, and Jesus is the son of God. That makes it right and just, period. There is no additional layer of analysis that goes onto it, and that slavery conversation he had to me was fascinating. Because it was the one place where Doug Wilson really had to work, right? He really had to work to find a way to say that no, slavery would not be okay under my Christian nationalist system. He's like, well, if you look at what Mark said, you know, he does a bunch of what you just referred to, which is like, those were just the times. He's like, there's this letter to a theist or whatever, some Philamenist, whatever, I never fucking heard of it. He talks about it for 10 minutes, right? But he, man, he is really, really working to piece together a little bit from here, and a little bit from there, and another little bit from another place, to put it all together to make the case that this system which was in place and explicitly approved in the Bible, you know, because it was a product of the times, yes, but still, explicitly approved in the Bible would not be explicitly approved. And the reason he has to do that is because he knows there's no moral quarter. You can't go in and say like, yeah, no, the Bible, they had slaves. And yes, they had rules for how to work with those slaves and how to treat them justly, but they had slaves. And if they had slaves in 2026, we can have slaves under a Christian nationalist government. He knows he can't say that. It was the one place where he was really scrambling, right? Where I was listening, I'm like, ⁓ man, this guy, he has really put in some time to craft an argument. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: within his reading of the Bible that would say what he wants it to say because to me he knows that there's plenty of people who don't agree with same-sex marriage, right? There's plenty of people who agree with, you know, a ⁓ strong nuclear family and there's probably plenty of people who agree with household voting and all this other shit but man, start saying slavery's okay and you're gonna lose a lot of people. gonna be no it's not, what are you fucking crazy? ⁓ You know, so. Derek Peterson: Well. Elwyn: To me, that's the crux of the Christian Nationalists, right? They are looking back at what the Bible says and they're saying this is how society should be run. This is the moral code. This is where we derive our moral agency and we cannot, we are not allowed to deviate from it because how can you deviate from the word of Christ? How can you layer the experiences of other cultures and other people and thousands of years onto the word of the word of Christ is inviolate. And that's what's so scary to me because that is the same shit that the crazy ass regimes in Iran and Syria do just on top of a different religion. We know how this ends. Derek Peterson: Yep. Yeah. Well, and I'll land the ship here because I think this is a ⁓ important aspect of it. So the if if if I had coined the phrase Christian nationalism, what that would mean would be the utter acceptance of minorities, women, that everybody had equal rights. It would mean that ⁓ we tax the rich, that we give to the poor, that we set up. if I had coined the phrase Christian nationalism, what that would mean would be the utter acceptance ⁓ of minorities, ⁓ that had equal rights. It would mean that ⁓ we tax the rich, ⁓ that we give to the poor, we set ⁓ that nobody goes hungry, ⁓ public education and healthcare, that everybody has a right to these things. This is what real Christianity to me looks like. ⁓ that nobody goes hungry, ⁓ public education and healthcare, that everybody has a right to these things. This is what real Christianity to me looks like. This ⁓ was the person that Jesus is. Jesus, ⁓ if you actually read the Bible and you it in context with what was going on, ⁓ what was saying was radical in the sense what he was actually challenging people ⁓ most of the time to do ⁓ was to step ⁓ their construct ⁓ of what their life currently looked like and loved people that didn't look and sound and and were like them. They had different skin colors, that had different backgrounds. What he was saying is it doesn't they had different income levels and honestly the income level is one of the biggest fights. You know when people came to Jesus and was like what do I have to do to get to heaven? He was like sell everything. It wasn't 10 % tithe. It was sell it all. Sell it all and give it away because I can see what's in your heart and what's in your heart is greed. And if you're struggling with greed and you're asking me that question, the only way to actually to pluck that greed out of your heart is to sell it all. Like one person could give 10 percent, but you motherfucker have to give it all away or that greed is going to run you into the ground and put you in hell. And that's that that to me is is what Christian nationalism, if it was actually Christian, would look like. But anybody that's coining ⁓ the word Christian. Into a phrase and they're using that to hate Jewish people to hate minorities to oppress women to hate LGBTQ ⁓ people to ⁓ Launder money to the wealthy then what I will tell you is that these are the people that Jesus would be flipping tables over and and and be screaming at and being like guess what? You're missing it because that's not what we're here for ⁓ and so all that to be said is You know, I hate that the term Christianity gets lumped in with these people because I don't believe that it's at the heart of what real Christianity is. So, you know, all these people that claim Christian nationalism and hate Jewish people, hate minorities and want to force their beliefs on other people. You're not a fucking Christian and stop claiming it because I want no part of it. So. Elwyn: Yeah, and I'll tell you the... Derek Peterson: And if I have to call my something else, I will. Elwyn: I'll tell you, the thing that scares me as a Jew is not that they hate Jews. It's that Jews don't have a place in their end times. Jews don't have a place in their world. It doesn't, at some point, it comes down to a question of you're a true believer or you're not. And if I'm a Jew, I'm not a true believer. And that's not hatred. That is cold calculus. And that's even worse. Derek Peterson: Agreed. But what I do think that these that the that the I do think that love justice. have to believe that the actual values of the Bible inclusion love carrying ⁓ equality that ultimately that those things are worth fighting for and that the people that are fighting for those things have a reason to fight. But if you're fighting to just oppress people if you're fighting over hate. your reason to fight is not nearly as strong and ultimately you end up losing. And I think that the reason we're at where we're at is that these values are actually worth living and fighting for. And I hope that the future of our country gets back to that to some degree. So. Elwyn: Yeah, it's really, it's a really interesting endpoint because it's not hate. I don't think this is a movement of hate. I don't think Christian nationalism is a movement of hate and that's what worries me. I think it's a movement of strict biblical interpretation that allows for no quarter and I would be in that part that's not allowed and it's not, you can argue with hate but you can argue even less with someone who's a true believer who says you don't belong in my belief system. You have to get out, period. Like there's no emotion, it's just fact and that, that's terrifying to me. Derek Peterson: Yeah, well, hopefully you understand that this is a very small section of what Christianity actually is, that there is a lot more Christians in the world that believe, I think, more the way I look at things than I would think. I would think anybody that actually read the life of Jesus and Paul and what their stories actually looked like and who they were talking to would hopefully decipher or take away from that. the values that I hold from my Christianity and not the hold what they hold of them. think Jesus was actually doing exactly what we talk about often which was expanding rights of people, caring and loving for people, including more and more people, not excluding. ⁓ if, so, well, who we telling to shut the fuck up today, Owen? Elwyn: I do feel that way. You, you, Derek Peterson, shut the fuck up! Fucking Derek Peterson went to the University of Michigan this weekend, got up and gave a speech where he said in the Middle Eastern conflict there is only one party that is just and historically justified and it's the Palestinians and I can't fucking believe that you Derek, wait. ⁓ it wasn't you. ⁓ it was another Derek Peterson. It was Dean of. Derek Peterson: I've not been in Michigan for a while. Elwyn: It was Dean of Faculty at University of Michigan, Derek Peterson. Shit, sorry, they spell their names the same way as you. Derek Peterson: No, they spell their names the exact same way. So yes, this is not great for me at the moment. Elwyn: Anyway, that Derek Peterson can shut the fuck up because no, you do not get to stand up in front of 70,000 people and say this debate that has not been settled for thousands of years has now been settled because you feel like that and that there is no discussion to be had, which is basically what he said. Like, get the fuck out of here with all of that. You're the faculty dean at a university, at one of the top universities. discussion and debate and dialogue and discourse is your job. Fostering that is your job. Hiring people across the ideological spectrum is your job. To say that there is only one right answer is anathema to the thing that you're probably paid an awful lot of money and hold an awful lot of power to do. So you should shut the fuck up, not before you speak, Derek Peterson, but University of Michigan, Derek Peterson. And change your name to the bad Derek Peterson while you're at it, you Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: of ship. Derek Peterson: Yeah, yeah, change it to dare Rick D R R I C K asshole. I don't want to get better. So dickhead. No, I logged into I figured I learned about this whole thing because people were tagging me in Facebook comments as they were yelling about it. I was like, hey, how did I get how did I catch a stray for this? But turns out it was just another Derek Peterson that spells his name the exact same way that I do. So well, yeah. So fuck that guy. Elwyn: Yeah, I've Peterson with a D. problem I don't have to worry about in all likelihood. Derek Peterson: Yes, if I ever meet another Elwynn Hunter, I will be floored and will immediately call you. So, well, what are we talking about next week? Elwyn: You Yeah. Did we have something? feel like there was something in the offing. Derek Peterson: Is there a Jewish nationalism conversation we need to have? ⁓ Elwyn: there is but i don't think we need to have it let's see what what's in the notes yeah kind of a little bit there is ⁓ but ⁓ check in the notes check in the notes check in the notes ⁓ Derek Peterson: I think maybe, you know, there's a couple things I would like to discuss. ⁓ It's going to require a little more research on our part. We can discuss a little bit further offline, but I would love to have a conversation, ⁓ a few conversations about our military. ⁓ One about what it actually looks like to be in the military nowadays. But two, I think probably the conversation that we would be more equipped to have. is ⁓ where the military gets its money, how much it actually costs to run the military, and what that looks like for us as taxpayers, and ⁓ how we can and if we choose not to try not to support certain things. So that could be an interesting conversation or some form of that. Elwyn: Let's do it. Let's do it. Derek Peterson: Interesting because we ⁓ we may be running up against some of this stuff ⁓ This Iran war may end up going on for another 30 years ⁓ Elwyn: Gas will be $7 a gallon by the time we do this at that next episode Derek Peterson: it might be. God dude my car is so bad too. It cost me like $90 a week right now to fill up my my car and I drive so much and I hate it. So one day I'll get a Rivian we'll see. But alright yeah see y'all next week. Elwyn: That's right. Get a Rivian. Alright.