Podcasts about jerry falwell

Decades after Georgia Tann's black market adoption ring was exposed, similar patterns of coercion and control are still unfolding across the U.S. At the Liberty Godparent Home in Lynchburg, Virginia, young pregnant women are isolated, shamed, and pressured into giving up their babies—often in exchange for promises like college scholarships. The home, founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell, reflects a troubling intersection of faith, politics, and profit. Journalist T.J. Raphael joins Lindsay to discuss the Godparent Home and her new podcast, Liberty Lost, which shares the stories of girls and young women who experienced it.Be the first to know about Wondery's newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterListen to American Scandal on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season. Unlock exclusive early access by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today by visiting wondery.com/links/american-scandal/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Give to help Chris make Truce. A little goes a long way! In November of 1965, a young lawyer published a book called Unsafe at Any Speed about the dangers of driving a Chevy Corvair. The car could become unstable and possibly flip if driven in poor conditions or without proper training. The lawyer? Ralph Nader. It took a while for the book to find its audience, but soon it was on bookshelves across the US and made a celebrity our of Nader. Soon he and his "Nader's Raiders" were on a spree, advocating for consumer safety. This movement was met with skepticism and fear in the industrial community. Who did this guy think he was? Americans didn't need "big government" looking over their shoulders! Well, that's what big corporate leaders thought. They set out to dismantle the consumer safety movement and to convince conservative religious people that safety was actually creeping government interference. My special guest for this episode is Rick Perlstein, author of The Invisible Bridge and Reaganland. Sources: Chevy Corvair ad Reaganland by Rick Perlstein Road and Track article about the Corvair Washington Post article about the UAW strike One Nation Under God by Kevin Kruse Article with fun pictures from the Ad Council campaigns Christian Reconstruction by Michael McVicar Reagan's "I'm From the Government and I'm Here to Help" Listen, America! by Jerry Falwell p73, paperback, Bantam edition, August 1980 Discussion Questions: What do you think about the government involvement in the Chevy Corvair? How has product safety impacted your life? Is the government small, big, or somewhere in between? Do you remember Ralph Nader? Is it okay for big business to use advertising to change American minds about the government and economics? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Send us a textKen welcomes Washington political commentator, speechwriter, and author Peter Wehner. Pete is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum. He is well known for his prolific contribution to the intersection of politics, public policy, and faith. Early on, he identified as a conservative, a Republican, and an Evangelical. From 2011, when Donald Trump campaigned to challenge the legitimacy of the Obama Presidency, suggesting that he was born in Kenya and not the U.S.A., Wehner has called out the danger of a Trump presidency. Pete has been a stalwart in opposing Donald Trump and in the process, he no longer identifies as a Republican or an Evangelical. He remains a traditional conservative. However, he has offered a powerful and sustained critique of evangelical support for Donald Trump and a Republican Party that has become subservient to the newly elected President. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson played a key role in that transition. Ken and Pete have a lively discussion over his early years as a new Christian, his college career, the influence of his scientist father, his move to Washington, Reagan's speech after the Challenger disaster, George Bush's 9/11 speech (Pete was in the White House that fateful day), and finally Donald Trump's complete take-over of the Republican Party and his return to the White House for a second term. SHOW NOTESBecome a Patron | Ken's Substack PageSupport the showBecome a Patron - Click on the link to learn how you can become a Patron of the show. Thank you! Ken's Substack Page The Podcast Official Site: TheBeachedWhiteMale.com

Give to help Chris continue to make Truce Milton Friedman is one of the most important economists of the last hundred years. His ideas were quoted by many evangelical writers in the 1970s and 80s, despite his not being a Christian and few of his ideas being in the Bible. Figures like Jerry Falwell loved the guy. Ronald Reagan adopted many of his ideas, though they disagreed on things like the increasing national debt. Friedman played a major role in the popularization of the school voucher concept. Essentially, some people want to allow parents to have a say in which school their children attend. If they want to take the children to a private school, they believe that the government should give them a certain amount of money that would have gone to the public school and give it to the private one. Those who disagree say that this would defund already underfunded schools. Friedman also believed that teachers should not necessarily be certified and that the free market would weed out the bad ones. Stanford professor Jennifer Burns (author of Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative) returns to help Chris explore this complicated subject. Sources: Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative by Jennifer Burns Reaganland by Rick Perlstein Free to Choose A helpful Britannica article on Friedman Listen, America! by Jerry Falwell. Paperback, August 1980 reprint version Bantam edition Divided We Stand by Marjorie Spruill Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman Discussion Questions: Had you heard of Friedman before this episode? What are school vouchers? How could school vouchers be seen by some as a tool of segregation? What would it mean if parents had to keep track of every teacher their children learned under? How are schools currently funded in the US? Why does that matter? How are some schools wealthy while others are poor? What should be the role of wealthy people when it comes to education? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you asked most people what is the Lord's prayer and whereyou can find it in the Bible, they would probably recite the above prayer and pointyou to Matthew 6:9-13 or to this passage in Luke 11:2-4. And in a sense, theywould be right. But if you asked someone else the same question, they might correctlyanswer and say it is found in John 17, where the entire chapter is the Lord's HighPriestly prayer just before His crucifixion. We call this "The Lord's Prayer," not becauseJesus prayed it, because He never had to ask for forgiveness, but because Jesustaught it. There is nothing wrong with praying this prayer personally or aspart of a congregation, so long as we do it from a believing heart that issincere and submitted. How easy it is to "recite" these words and notreally mean them, but that can happen even when we sing and preach! The faultlies with us, not with this prayer. Over 25 years ago I read Dr. Elmer Towns' book, “Prayingthe Lord's Prayer for Spiritual Breakthrough”, and in it I read the story ofDr. Yonggi Cho, who at that time pastored the largest church in the world inSouth Korea with an attendance of 750,000. He attributed the success and fruitfulnessof his ministry and life to reciting the Lord's Prayer first thing in themorning and repeating it throughout the day and using it as a pattern for his dailyprayer time. After reading this, I was inspired to begin doing the same andhave followed this discipline everyday since that time. I also remember that the very first book I read on prayerright after I receive Christ as my Lord and Savior on February 21,1971, 54years ago, was “Asking and Receiving”, by Evangelist John R. Rice. My dad, J.O.Grooms, along with my mother, Albertina Grooms, were both very faithful and powerfulprayer warriors. I am so thankful for their influence and for the example of mypastor, Dr. Jerry Falwell, concerning prayer during my Bible College years inLynchburg. Another dear and close friend during those years at ThomasRoad Baptist Church was R.C. Worley, who also was a great prayer warrior that Iwas privileged to pray with on a weekly basis. Today the Worley Prayer Chapelis one of the oldest and most treasured buildings on the Liberty University campus.It is still open daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. for prayer. The prayer that Jesus taught His disciple to pray here inLuke 11 is a “pattern prayer”. This is given to guide us in our own praying. Thefirst thing it teaches us is that true prayer depends on a spiritualrelationship with God that enables us to call Him "Father," and thiscan come only through faith in Jesus Christ (Romans 8:14-17; Galatians 4:1-7).We are told in John 1:12,“But as many as received Him, to them He gave theright to become children of God, to those who believe in His name”.God isour “dear” Father that delights for us to boldly come into His presence throughthe blood of His Son Jesus and spend time with Him (Hebrews10:19). Secondly, we are taught to recognize and acknowledge theholiness of our Father's name. When we enter into the presence of the CreatorGod of the universe, we enter to worship! We should take the time to rememberthe attributes and character of God by His many names in the Bible! Space andtime will not allow me to write about this but is my prayer that you will takethe time to meditate on God's holiness, His righteousness, His faithfulness,His mercy, His grace, His love, His truth, His sovereignty, His omniscience,omnipresence, omnipotence and His justice. And the list goes on and on! Prayer should not be just repeating the same words over andover again each day. But it should be from our hearts of worship, praise, andthanksgiving! I find reading five Psalms every day allows me to do all of thesewith God's own Word! There is nothing more important that you can do today thanpray! God bless!

Aaron Renn ( @TheAaronRennShow  ) in the host of the Aaron Renn show. We mention Dan Wagenmaker, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Donald Trump, Stephen Wolfe, James Davison Hunter, Jerry Falwell, Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Pageau, JD Vance, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Chris Jones, Rod Dreher, Eric Kaufmann, and more. Aaron Renn's blog - https://www.aaronrenn.com/Life in the Negative World - https://www.amazon.com/stores/Aaron-M.-Renn/author/B00T9WEPBK?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=trueMidwestuary Conference - https://www.midwestuary.com/

“He who walks with wise men will be wise, But the companionof fools will be destroyed.” Today we are in between the chapters of Luke 10 and Luke11. I felt very impressed to take the time to tie them together with a personalspiritual discipline that has really helped me to take time to “sit at the feetof Jesus” on a daily basis over the many years of our ministry. In my very first year as a follower of Jesus, I wasprivileged to attend Lynchburg Baptist College, a brand-new Christian BibleCollege in Lynchburg Virginia that was co-founded by Dr. Jerry Falwell and Dr. ElmerTowns. It was there that I was introduced to Christian Devotional Books that wouldgreatly influence my life and ministry and give me a firm foundation to standon over the years. As a young believer I committed to reading five Psalms aday and one Proverbs that would take me through both books each month. InProverbs 13:20, I saw the great truth of “walking with wise men” that wouldkeep me from being destroyed by the devil and his fools. I asked the question, “Howcan I walk with wise men when they don't have the time to spend with a collegestudent or young pastor?” Of course, in those early years at LibertyUniversity, because there was only a handful of students, I was privileged toget to know wise men like Dr. Falwell, Dr. Towns, Dr. Hindson, Dr. Wilmington,Dr. Chapman, Dr. Dobson and many other wonderful professors on a personal andfirst name basis, but that didn't mean they had time to “walk with me” everyday and impart their wisdom into my life. But it was there that I'll never forget Dr. Falwell, inthose very first days of the college in chapel services, introducing us toChristian leaders and writer from the past. The first one I remember himmentioning was Watchman Nee and his book called “The Normal Christian Life”. Hetold how much it had influenced his life. The next one was Andrew Murray andhis book, “With Christ in the School of Prayer”.  Another author and great pastor from the pastthat He often mentioned was Charles Spurgeon. One of my professors actuallystarted each class session by reading the day's devotion from “My Utmost forHis Highest” by Oswald Chambers. It was then that I realized that these great Christian leadersand authors from the past left their wisdom and their lives in their writings.So I began the daily discipline, of not only reading the Psalms and Proverbs,memorizing verses that spoke to my heart, and reading systematically throughthe entire Bible, but also spending time with these “wise men” of pastcenturies. So today, I want to list some of the “wise men” and their dailydevotional books that you can easily find somewhere on sale on the internet.These are books that I really believe have imparted to me a greater love and knowledgeof our great God and Redeemer Jesus Christ and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Watchman Nee –  Book:“The Normal Christian Life”; Devotionals: “The Joyful Heart” and “Table in theWilderness”.Charles Spurgeon – Devotionals: “Morning and Evening” and “Faith'sCheck Book”Andrew Murray – Books: “With Christ in the School of Prayer”and “Absolute Surrender”; “Humility”Devotionals: “Daily Thoughts on Holiness” and “God's BestSecrets”Oswald Chambers – Devotionals: “My Utmost for His Highest”and “Daily Thoughts for Disciples”Henry Blackaby – Devotional: “Experiencing God Day by Day”E. M. Bounds – One Minute Devotional: “The Power of Prayer”Elmer Towns – Devotional: “365 Ways to Know God”A. W. Tozer – Devotional: “Renewed Day by Day”Of course, this is not a complete list, but I trust it willencourage you to spend time with some “wise men” too. If we are not careful with all the television media and socialmedia that we are exposed to everyday, we can end up “becoming a companion offools” and it is no wonder that so many lives are being destroyed. God bless!

Ken welcomes Washington political commentator, speechwriter, and author Peter Wehner. Pete is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum. He is well known for his prolific contribution to the intersection of politics, public policy, and faith. Early on, he identified as a conservative, a Republican, and an Evangelical. From 2011, when Donald Trump campaigned to challenge the legitimacy of the Obama Presidency, suggesting that he was born in Kenya and not the U.S.A., Wehner has called out the danger of a Trump presidency. Pete has been a stalwart in opposing Donald Trump and in the process, he no longer identifies as a Republican or an Evangelical. He remains a traditional conservative. However, he has offered a powerful and sustained critique of evangelical support for Donald Trump and a Republican Party that has become subservient to the newly elected President. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson played a key role in that transition. Ken and Pete have a lively discussion over his early years as a new Christian, his college career, the influence of his scientist father, his move to Washington, Reagan's speech after the Challenger disaster, George Bush's 9/11 speech (Pete was in the White House that fateful day), and finally Donald Trump's complete take-over of the Republican Party and his return to the White House for a second term. SHOW NOTESBecome a Patron | Ken's Substack PageEpisode #398Support the show

In memory of President Jimmie Carter, Ken has invited three quests to share their personal reflections on a 100 year long life well lived: historian, professor and prolific author, Dr. Randall Balmer; retired Biola University political science professor, Dr. Dave Peters; and his Beach Talk friend, Betsey Newenhuyse (See Part I). Here In Part Two, Dr. Balmer continues to share his thoughts from his recent article (Published in the L.A. Times, Religious News Service (RNS) and others) entitled, Jimmy Carter rid the presidency of lies. His fellow evangelicals? Not so much. Then, Dr. Dave Peters, a retired professor of Political Science at Biola University, shares his personal meeting with his inspiration, Jimmy Carter first at the Carter Center and also in Plaines, Georgia. Carter was a political model for Peters, a Democrat, who served on the City Council of LaMirada and was elected Mayor of that city for six terms.SHOW NOTESSpecial Guests in Part I: Randall Balmer, Ph.D. and Betsey NewenhuyseRedeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter (Second Edition) by Randall Balmer, Ph.D.Ken's Substack: Jimmy Carter R.I.P. | Become a PatronSupport the show

Special Guests in Part I: Randall Balmer, Ph.D. and Betsey NewenhuyseIn memory of President Jimmie Carter, Ken invites three quests to share their personal reflections on a 100 year long life well lived: historian, professor and prolific author, Dr. Randall Balmer; retired Biola University political science professor, Dr. Dave Peters; and his Beach Talk friend, Betsey Newenhuyse. In Part One, Dr. Balmer shares his thoughts from his recent article (Published in the L.A. Times, Religious News Service (RNS) and others) entitled, Jimmy Carter rid the presidency of lies. His fellow evangelicals? Not so much. He explains how evangelical enthusiasm for the peanut farmer's victory soured over this four year - and then the powerful legacy he leaves, especially for his exemplary service in his post-presidency years. Betsey shares her life in the 70s as Nixon resigned and Carter beat Gerald Ford in 1976. SHOW NOTESPart II: With Dr. Balmer and Dr. Peters to be released January 9, 2025 Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter (Second Edition) by Randall Balmer, Ph.D.Ken's Substack: Jimmy Carter R.I.P. | Become a PatronSupport the show

Deep Dive is on vacation this week, so we are re-running our most listened to After America episode. We'll be back next week with an all new holiday episode of Deep Dive.----Can Christian nationalism coexist with American democracy, or is it a threat to the very foundation of our nation? This episode kicks off with an in-depth analysis of Mike Johnson's rise to Speaker of the House and how his Christian nationalist views are shaping the legislative landscape. We discuss the erosion of the separation of church and state, exploring how Johnson's leadership might be steering the country towards authoritarianism.We examine the historical intertwining of evangelicalism and conservative politics. From the televangelism boom driven by figures like Pat Robertson and James Dobson to the influential Moral Majority founded by Jerry Falwell, we trace the path that has aligned evangelical Christians with the Republican Party. We delve into the consequences of this alliance, from Reagan's judicial appointments to the overwhelming support for Donald Trump, illustrating how a desire for traditional values has paved the way for more authoritarian leadership.Finally, we discuss the rise of militant Christian nationalism and its alarming impact on American society. We dissect the process of online radicalization, the normalization of extremist rhetoric, and the unsettling intersection of Christianity and right-wing extremism. We also examine the broader implications, including mass deportations and the undermining of democratic institutions. Guests: Dr. Bernard Schlager, Dr. David Gushee, Dr. Tara Grove, Dr. Alice Marwick, Dr. Shalu Nigam Credits:Infados - Kevin MacLeodDark Tales: Music by Rahul Bhardwaj from PixabayRelated:Counterpoint PodcastCounterpoint Podcast-------------------------Follow Deep Dive:InstagramYouTube Email: deepdivewithshawn@gmail.com Music: Majestic Earth - Joystock

Cuddly as a cactus and charming as an eel, Whoville's favorite talk show host is back on the mic! The Grinch may hate the holidays, but he loves his new celebrity status as a chart-topping podcaster. With Cindy Lou and Max by his side, join The Grinch each week as he stubbornly refuses the joys of the season, cozies up to his celebrity guests — and investigates a brand-new mystery that puts him right at the center of another dastardly Christmas caper. All the children of Whoville's letters to Santa have gone missing, and Grinch is Suspect No. 1. Follow along at the end of each episode to help Grinch and his crew solve this WHO-dunnit in time for Christmas! Plus, tune into Wondery+ as Cindy Lou and Max take the case into their own hands! Starring SNL's James Austin Johnson as the iconic green grump, and featuring famous faces the whole family will love, 'Tis The Grinch Holiday Podcast might just grow your heart three sizes this winter season.For even more cheer, subscribe to Wondery+ to join Cindy Lou and Max the Dog as they take the case of the missing letters into their own hands!Follow 'Tis The Grinch Holiday Podcast on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Unlock Cindy Lou and Max's exclusive Christmas mystery investigation and listen to every episode ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or by visiting Wondery.fm/Grinch.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You got a problem with me, guy? What about The Beatles, you don't got a problem with them, right? Because some of their songs, depending who you ask, are pretty darn problematic. Where's Jerry Falwell when you need him? Oh, yeah, dead! He Gone!!!

In this episode, Lesley and Brad recapped their conversation with Tia Levings, the New York Times bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife. They explored Tia's experiences escaping religious fundamentalism, the challenges of reclaiming her identity, and her commitment to raising awareness about Christian Nationalism's impact. Tune in for a powerful conversation about perseverance, healing, voting rights, and moving forward.If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co .And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.In this episode you will learn about:Tia's story of breaking free from religious fundamentalism and reclaiming her identity.The dangers of coercive control within certain religious communities.Insights into the struggle and process of escaping controlling ideologies.The importance of protecting individual rights and supporting policies of progress.How intentional change and envisioning a new future play a role in healing.Practical advice on how to vote mindfully and choose candidates based on core values.Episode References/Links:Cambodia February 2025 Retreat - https://crowsnestretreats.comFlashcards Waitlist - opc.me/flashcardwaitlist Pilates Studio Growth Accelerator - https://prfit.biz/acceleratorOPC Winter Tour - https://opc.me/tourTia Levings Website - https://tialevings.comTia Levings Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tialevingswriterA Well-Trained Wife! Pre-order Link - https://beitpod.com/preorderbookReligious Trauma Resources - https://beitpod.com/resourcesBooks For Treats - https://booksfortreats.org/Little Readers Big Change - https://www.littlereadersbigchange.com/Rising Strong by Brene Brown - https://a.co/d/gE7Hm45Vote Save America - https://votesaveamerica.com/Project 2025 - https://www.project2025.org/If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co. And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.  If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. DEALS! DEALS! DEALS! DEALS!Check out all our Preferred Vendors & Special Deals from Clair Sparrow, Sensate, Lyfefuel BeeKeeper's Naturals, Sauna Space, HigherDose, AG1 and ToeSox Be in the know with all the workshops at OPCBe It Till You See It Podcast Survey Be a part of Lesley's Pilates MentorshipFREE Ditching Busy Webinarhttps://  Resources:Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube!Lesley Logan websiteBe It Till You See It PodcastOnline Pilates Classes by Lesley LoganOnline Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTubeProfitable Pilates Follow Us on Social Media:InstagramThe Be It Till You See It Podcast YouTube channelFacebookLinkedInThe OPC YouTube Channel Episode Transcript:Lesley Logan 0:00  So she was not going to let them get her present or her future, because that was the only thing she had control over. And I find that so cool. Lesley Logan 0:10  Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started. Lesley Logan 0:52  Welcome back to the be it till you see it. Interview recap where my co host in life, Brad and I are going to dig into the revelatory convo I have with Tia Levings in our last episode. If you haven't listened to that one, you have missed the fuck out. It's so good. I clearly can be. It's pretty clear and you can tell when I loved an episode. I love this guest so fucking much. I don't want to scare her off, because I want to be her best friend, but in a non-culty way, Tia. But you should listen to it. And you can listen this one first and then listen that one. But it's really great. We do get into politics and you want to know what? I don't care. If you're mad at me for talking about how to save your right to be a human in this country, then I have no apologies, because it is near and dear to my heart that we protect people's rights. I have been to countries where you do not have rights and you have no idea what that looks like and how scary that is. And so, no.Brad Crowell 1:45  Yeah, no, it's been pretty crazy. So yeah, we are going to get into that a little bit. But before we do. Lesley Logan 1:50  We're not telling you how to vote, by the way. We're just telling you the facts that are laid out before you. But Brad's smirking. You're not going to say, you're not going to, you're not going to say anything? Brad Crowell 1:58  No, we're gonna get into it later. So. Lesley Logan 2:00  All right, well, first, it is, today is October 31st 2024, it is Halloween. You are probably familiar with it, but there are some interesting history behind I'm sure there's some really good history. Brad Crowell 2:11  Pagan and then Catholics were like, we hate pagan. So we're gonna make a (inaudible)Lesley Logan 2:16  Like, how did we get her recap on Halloween? It's a (inaudible) culture and anyways, anyways, I swear, I swear to you, when I was like, team, I want this out before the election. This was the only day. But we thought we'd share something actually really cool for you, and hope this doesn't get you teepeed or is that what you call it when they throw toilet paper on your house? Brad Crowell 2:36  Yeah, that's what they call. That's what they say. Lesley Logan 2:39  That's what they call. I'm sure they call it something else now. I'm sure it's called like, skippity or something. We thought we'd share about a really fun alternative to giving candy to kids called books for treats. So today is Books For Treats Day. Books For Treats Day was born from the belief that books are more valuable treat than candy on Halloween. Books are more beneficial to children than candies because they nourish the mind and equip the child to understand life better. Some naysayers tell Rebecca that she is stealing the fun of Halloween and ruining kids' Halloween. Rebecca clearly created. Brad Crowell 3:06  She created this day. I forgot to say that part. Lesley Logan 3:08  Yeah. We're gonna get to her in a second. In fact, the contrary is true. Kids love books. Since they get to choose their book from the age appropriate box, they're excited to have a treat that lasts more than a few seconds. I commonly hear we made sure to come to the book lady's house. Rebecca Morgan is the author of 25 books, two of which have sold over 200,000 each. She's appeared on Oprah, 60 Minutes, NPR, USA Today and international media. She's a speaker and management consultant and runs three businesses and this nonprofit. Learn more about Books For Treats at booksfortreats.org. We should just have her on the show. And also, I forget, but it's, sometime in this month, it might have been last Friday, we're recording this in the past for the future, but it is like National Reading Day or something like that. And we were going, we actually, from a different Rebecca as a guest, started donating to the Little Readers Big Change organization to help get books into K through 12 schools that have low funding. And so I'm all about this. If you get teepeed, I'm sorry. But also, like, put some (inaudible). Brad Crowell 4:09  I mean, you will, you'll get teepeed by, like, the 13-year-olds who are like, ew books. Lesley Logan 4:14  But you want to know something? You might, oh, my God, that you might live in a state where some of those books have been not accessible at their school and you could be that book lady. We're going to that book lady's house. We'll get the other books. Anyways, we just got back from Cambodia retreat. Brad Crowell 4:28  We did. We just spent 10 days in Cambodia with the largest group we've ever taken. It was amazing. Lesley Logan 4:34  The retreats only, like six days, guys. We just were there for. Brad Crowell 4:37  Yeah, we get there early so that we could prep everything and make sure everything is going to go smoothly. And then after that, we took a little breather. We actually went to Thailand. And we explored parts of Thailand that we'd never been to. Lesley Logan 4:48  We went to Northern, I know it sounds like, oh, a beach. And I was like, opposite. Brad Crowell 4:52  Jungle. Lesley Logan 4:52  Lots of jungle, lots of really cool temples. Just, so cool.  Brad Crowell 4:56  Yeah. If you want to see something that is mind blowingly cool, go onto Google and search for northern Thailand, the White Temple. Lesley Logan 5:05  It looks like it should have a movie around it with magic. Brad Crowell 5:09  They have a White Temple, a Black Temple, Blue Temple, and I think there's a Red Temple, too. Anyway, it really is unbelievable. It's like this massive art piece. It's incredible. Like, jaw-droppingly cool. It's like, when I heard about it and I saw the photos, was like, we gotta go. Lesley Logan 5:24  I understand that we are talking about a temple on this episode, but it's a different kind of temple. And we, like you said, look at it for the art in it and the history of it, and it's mind blowing. Brad Crowell 5:34  Well, it was created by an artist. Lesley Logan 5:35  Yeah, it's beautiful. So come to February's retreat, you won't see the White Temple, Black Temple or Blue Temple, but you will see the eighth wonder of the world. Brad Crowell 5:42  You will see the eighth wonder of the world, which is another temple. It's actually the largest religious structure in the entire planet. How about that? Lesley Logan 5:51  You wanna know why you shouldn't say no to Cambodia? Because when you come to Cambodia, you will learn about the temples, and you'll see some were Hindu, and then some were Buddhist, and then some were Hindu and some were Buddhist. Now they just celebrate all of it. So they have a lot of fucking holidays. Brad Crowell 6:03  Yeah, that's a lot of holidays. Lesley Logan 6:03  But talk about this compromise. They didn't go, oh, you all have to be Buddhist now. They are a Buddhist, Hindu. Brad Crowell 6:08  Well, they did that a bunch of times. Yeah, they did that. They did war back and forth. And, different kings would change different things. Lesley Logan 6:14  And then they just combined them all. Brad Crowell 6:15  Yes. It's kind of a mash up now. Lesley Logan 6:16  Yeah, okay, I am going to be. Brad Crowell 6:18  Oh, go to crowsnestretreats.com to join us, crowsnestretreats.com. And then, now that we're back. Lesley Logan 6:24  We're really diving in. My team is making sure I stay on the fucking track with this last deck. Brad Crowell 6:32  We are.Lesley Logan 6:32  We are making sure that I do not go two months past schedule for the fifth time I'm doing it already. Right now, on this moment, I should have already written 50 cards and 50 blogs. Brad Crowell 6:43  Great. Lesley Logan 6:43  That's the goal. By this, by the time this drops, maybe more. And there's 83 to go. 83 total. So the accessories deck is going to have the two by four, sandbag, toe corrector. Brad Crowell 6:55  If you're wondering what an accessories deck is, this is Pilates flash cards we've been doing. Lesley Logan 6:59  Yeah. Thanks for making it, you know, specific. Brad Crowell 7:01  Yeah, we got the sixth deck in the series, the accessories deck. So it's all the other things. And here's the thing, I get so many questions about, should I, which Reformer should I buy that could fit under a couch? You guys, there are so many pieces of Pilates, apparati, apparatus, apparatuses that you that don't take much space and you can make it home. And I bet you can say all three of those, because I just watched a whole reel about a guy talking about how platypus has four different plurals. I'm pretty sure it's just apparatuses. (inaudible) A plural of the word apparatus can either be apparatus or apparatuses. Lesley Logan 7:37  So it has two, I think apparatus. Anyways. Brad Crowell 7:40  I liked apparati, though. Lesley Logan 7:41  I know apparati, it's like a, I don't know it's a cacti, at any rate, you guys, my goal is that more than half of this deck is hand-makeable. Brad Crowell 7:50  Hand-makeable. You mean the the equipment being used in the deck? Yep. Lesley Logan 7:56  Thank you again. He's just coming in here to translate what I'm saying, guys. We were on vacation and so I'm clearly already there the time that we're recording this. Okay, Brad, do you have any Accelerators left of this year? Brad Crowell 8:10  Yes, yes. Actually, if you are a fitness business owner and you are stuck with money income, you keep hitting the same marks every year. You're not growing the way that you need to grow to be able to actually pay yourself the money that you want to make, or put money aside because you want to retire one day, then you should come join me on this free webinar. It's called the Pilates Studio Growth Accelerator, and in there, Lesley and I have been coaching for years and years and years, and I'm going to be covering the three biggest secrets that we have learned, we have gleaned, we have come alongside these businesses to go through the trenches of, how do we make adjustments with them? Create that plan with them that they can go change their lives. And we're going to share those. I am going to share those three big secrets with you on this webinar. It is totally free, so you should absolutely join me. Go to prfit.biz/accelerator. That's profit without the O dot biz slash accelerator. And sign up. Lesley Logan 9:07  And finally, we are, as you can hear, are clearly not staying in Vegas for very long. Because not only am I going to LA but then we're gonna come back and a few days later, after Thanksgiving, specifically, which my dad is now trying to get us snow camping on so we gotta figure that out. Brad Crowell 9:20  We'll see. Lesley Logan 9:21  He (inaudible) guys. So we can talk about it there. But we are going on tour, and you can buy tickets already. So. Brad Crowell 9:26  Yeah, we're hitting the road again, y'all.Lesley Logan 9:27  I'm being it till you see it on these tour tickets. They are out now. Brad Crowell 9:30  I'm so excited. Oh yeah, we, the tickets opened up in beginning of October. So, you know, things have been, uh, cruising here, but we are coming to 23 different cities. We're going to be doing the South, I guess southern central I don't know we're going to take Route 40 across. So if you're anywhere near Route 40, when we hit Greensboro, North Carolina, we're to go all the way up to Maine and then down to Miami, and then back through Texas, hitting Phoenix, all the way back home. So if any of that sounds anywhere remotely close to where you're going to be for the holidays, or any time of December, or if you live near there, come hang out with us. Lesley Logan 10:00  It is so much fun. Brad Crowell 10:01  It's a blast. It's amazing.Lesley Logan 10:03  It's so much fun. Balanced Body is sponsoring us again. We'll have Contrology equipment for you to try. There's prizes, lots of prizes. So it's gonna be really, really grand. Brad Crowell 10:12  Lots of swag. Plus, if you're a teacher, you can get CECs on the workshops. So, anyways. Lesley Logan 10:12  And the workshops are for every level. You don't have to be a teacher. Brad Crowell 10:14  You don't have to be a teacher but if you need that stuff we're working that it in. Lesley Logan 10:22  I've just created a new workshop, I've created a new workshop for this tour. And the working title is rolling with the mat homies. So mat is in parentheses because it's all about the transitions, and I think it might be too cute, and so I told Meredith to fix it. (inaudible) Well, I really like it. It's a working title.Brad Crowell 10:39  It is a working title. Well anyway, go to opc.me/tour opc.me/tour and join us while we are on the road. We really do want to hang and also introduce our pups to you. They love meeting you, too. So before we actually dive in here, I swear we are going to talk about Tia Levings and we are going to talk about.Lesley Logan 11:00  (inaudible) But we have a question. Brad Crowell 11:01  Well, she said a, she said a word that I thought was really intriguing. She said she escaped. Okay, so if that is something that is intriguing to you, stick around. We're going to talk about her. But first we got this audience question. So Donna Lombardo on IG asked, Hey, I just ordered a workshop from OPC, which is onlinepilatesclasses.com and I would like to do the teaser, but I'm having a hard time finding this the correct place on my sitz bones to do the teaser. Where should I start?Lesley Logan 11:28  Yeah, so, Donna, you should really focus on your rolling like a ball, because the teaser is the same position on the sitz bones. It's actually behind the sitz bones as you're rolling like a ball. And in fact, you can roll like a ball and land in a teaser. And if you can't, if you lose your legs, or you fall back, or it just looks like (inaudible), is what Jake Bryant would say, (inaudible). So it looks like that. Brad Crowell 11:51  It is what he used to say. Lesley Logan 11:51  He used to say that a lot of times to me. Then you're in the wrong spot, and also you're not ready for it yet. So rolling like a ball is your friend. Double Leg Stretch is your friend because it's going to help you learn how to reach your arms and legs away from your center. And I also would recommend your single leg kick and double leg kick on the mat, because it's going to stretch your hip flexors out and create more strength in your hamstrings and your butt. Basically, the rest of the mat is going to be your friend. And anything that seems harder than teaser, or as hard as teaser, you're just going to pull out, so if you have the flashcard deck, you'll just pull out all the ones that look like a teaser and are towards the end. Pull them out you're not ready for them yet. And then also, you better love your roll up. And if your legs are coming up in your roll up or you come up like a vampire. Brad Crowell 12:36  Your roll up is critical. Lesley Logan 12:38  And if you're an OPC member, then you can actually show me what your version of the teaser is, and I can and the other teachers can provide some support around how close you are, how far away you are. Sometimes we're just talking about different exercises altogether. So maybe this is not even what you're asking for. It's the best way for us to give personalized and tailored feedback, because I can't give you more than this without seeing you, and so it's general, but if I saw you and I could see, oh, the reason why you can't find this by your sitz bones is because your lower back is tight. That's a whole different thing, versus oh, your core is weak, right? Or it's both. Anyways, so go to (inaudible) opc.me/40, opc.me/40 will get you 40 days of OPC for $40 and during that time, you can submit a video of you doing the teaser. Brad Crowell 13:24  Yeah, come join us. Lesley Logan 13:25  Send your questions in I love answering them. We want, doesn't have to be Pilates questions or business questions. They can be life questions (inaudible and I have great advice. Brad Crowell 13:34  Yeah, we do. That's true. Just text us at 310-905-5534, or hit us up on the Instagram or leave a YouTube comment or whatever. You know, just reach out. We will pretty much get it all. Yeah. So great question. Donna, thanks for asking that. Stick around. We are gonna dig into Tia Levings and how she escaped from Christian fundamentalism when we get back. Brad Crowell 13:58  Okay, welcome back. Now, let's talk about Tia Levings. Tia Levings is a New York Times bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife. It is her memoir of escaping from Christian patriarchy and fundamentalism. TiA is dedicated to shedding light on the impacts of religious fundamentalism and helping others break free from it and its political agenda through her social media platform and her books, she's actually writing another book right now on how she, once she escaped, how did she change? Because it took her 10 years.Lesley Logan 14:30  I know, and I think it's so good for the people who've like, it's a special book for people who've gone through that. Brad Crowell 14:36  Yeah, it took her 10 years to be able to even share her story. Like, it was fascinating. She said that she.Lesley Logan 14:41  Tried to write it in different ways. Brad Crowell 14:42  Yeah, she wrote it as a novel first, and then she wrote it under a different name, and she said it was all wrong. And then finally, through many years of therapy and life and raising kids and stuff, she was like, I gotta tell it as me. Lesley Logan 14:53  I don't remember if it was in our interview, but I listened to her on an interview where she said she has healed so much from it. When she did her audio of her own book, she was able to do it. It did not affect her in that way. But the people in the sound booth were hearing it for the first time, and they were in tears, because they, it's it's dark, it's really intense, you guys.Brad Crowell 15:14  I mean, why don't you give us just a little bit of a synopsis of what this book is, A Well-Trained Wife and like, what her background is here, because I think that will be impactful. Lesley Logan 15:23  Her parents were not super religious. And I wanted to say it before I get into this, somebody is gonna say not all Christians, just like someone post something like, not all men, guess what? Then stand the fuck up and say, hey, I'm not like that, and that's wrong. You gotta call this stuff out, otherwise you get lumped into it. So I'm just going to say that, because you're correct. It's not all Christians. This is a special type of it. However. Brad Crowell 15:45  She mentioned that, in fact, on the interview, and she said, yeah, story of my life, that it's not all Christians, but somehow I was involved in this (inaudible) fundamentals.Lesley Logan 15:55  She was also involved in multiple churches. So here's the other thing. So she wasn't raised in a church in her early childhood. But they moved to Florida, and her parents joined a church, and one of those big mega churches, because it was like something to make friends. I know a lot of my friends were like, oh, I think I'm gonna go to church. My kids have this moral upbringing. The problem is, when she went there, the way that she interpreted the rapture is like she was going to be left behind. And so she had this, we talked about this with her sister, where she was in her life, and the way that she was born into this world, she took it as truly real, and she had this such a fear that she was going to be left behind and someone was going to die, and all these things. And so she was having stomach ache, but she just kept forcing herself to go. And then also all of her friends were like, oh, you shouldn't date. It's such, it's gonna break your heart. And by the way, my parents were never this strict, but they definitely dabbled in like, oh, there's some, really, some Christian churches. They pick the husbands for them. And I'm like, that's an arranged marriage. That's not okay with me. But this happens more than you think. So anyways, she marries a man who is not awesome and but she is marrying a Christian man, and she's doing the thing that she's supposed to do because a church told her to her job is to make babies.Brad Crowell 17:09  And he's very controlling. Lesley Logan 17:10  And he's very controlling, and he's very abusive. And when she talks about the abuse she has, it is when they go from different church to different church that abuse turns into wife spanking. They literally call it that. It is, so it's basically a different word for abuse. You're abusing your wife. And as they switch from church to church, they go into a Calvinist Church, which is super dark, and they believe the kids are born with sin. And so anyways, there is a time when another wife, kind of like, breaks the fourth wall and is like, do not go off the grid because they were about to switch churches and go or move towns, which would mean they would go to a different church with the same (inaudible).Brad Crowell 17:45  This is after she was married, right? So she's married, she's in this really bad relationship, and the guys like, we're moving off the grid. We're getting out of here.Lesley Logan 17:52  Yeah. So so it slowly went that way after one church, the next church, and the more controlling the churches were, the more he actually did well. But she obviously was bearing the brunt of it. Her kids were bearing the brunt of it. There was abuse in the household, and you'll have to read the book to hear kind of why she left, and how she left, but she, but it is, I hope they make a movie about it, because it is truly empowering for those women that you know who are what people don't understand is coercive control and being abused doesn't happen overnight. It happens slowly, and there's a lot to lose because you're isolated, and the more isolated you are, the harder it is. And the other thing is, is that you start to then feel embarrassed, because multiple times, her parents are like, are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure you want to do this? And like, soBrad Crowell 18:39  Then you can't go back or you feel like you can't go back. And like. Lesley Logan 18:42  Yes, and she was afraid she'd lose her kids because she has no job, because the women in these religions do not have jobs, so they have no money, so they can't. Brad Crowell 18:51  They have no agency. Lesley Logan 18:52  They have no agency. You are correct. Brad Crowell 18:53  They're like, often not educated intentionally. They are just taught to conform and control. Lesley Logan 18:59  Yes and she went for help multiple times, and the church, the different churches that she went to, didn't help her, didn't help her. So I think if you are listeners, and you're having a hard time that we are using the word Christian, and you're like, that's not my, that's not what I know. Brad Crowell 19:15  That's not what I know.Lesley Logan 19:15  That's not what he knew.Brad Crowell 19:17  I mean, I grew up, I grew up in a church, and my church was pretty conservative. It was like a very intellectual style church, and then I ended up going to a very, very conservative 1950-style Bible college, you know where you weren't allowed to hold hand on campus unless you were engaged. You know, it was some, it was some really, really crazy rules that didn't make any sense. Lesley Logan 19:37  And that, that school is producing a lot of this, and.Brad Crowell 19:43  I mean, especially, like a Trad wife thing, or you know, they used to jokingly call my school, the letters are LBC, like, like, Bible the bridal college. It was Bible college, but they used to call bridal college.Lesley Logan 19:53  I went to a Christian university, and everyone said, my dad said do not go here for your MRS degree It's too expensive. Brad Crowell 19:59  That's right. Lesley Logan 19:59  That's what my dad said to me. So I was intentional and not dating and not getting married, but so many of my friends that was what they wanted, because that's what they had been raised with, and that's what they thought. And here's the thing, if that's what you want, there is nothing wrong with that. But where things get wrong is and what what she experiences when there's abuse, when you are affecting children negatively when you are in this control place and and then you are trying to then control those lives around you who do not live this way. That's where it goes wrong. Yeah? It's not like they're just on their plot of land living their purity life.Brad Crowell 20:34  Yeah, I think that's actually the thing that's kind of insane. Is like Christianity, the way I experienced it, and the way that I grew up, it was like, of course, there's missionaries and we're spreading the Good News and all that kind of a thing. That's not what this you know, that's still part of it. But this is about control. I also about taking over. Lesley Logan 20:51  I think Tia and I also talked about this. When I went to church, you didn't know how people voted in your church. No one talked about that. My high school church was pretty conservative. They didn't preach from the pulpit. It was very, obviously, there were certain topics that people knew how people were voting. But Brene Brown said in one of her books, might have been Rising Strong or something about leaders. She said in the 70s, 70% of people lived in a community that voted differently than them. And today, well today, 10 years ago, 10 years ago, 70% of people lived where they voted the same. And so now the problem is, is that now, because you live in an environment where everyone's voting, similarly, it's also very visible because of the internet, yes, your fear of being kicked out of the community is so real because you want to belong. Brad Crowell 21:39  That's right. Lesley Logan 21:39  And so that is kind of what (inaudible).Brad Crowell 21:29  I mean we're a tribal, we're tribal species. Lesley Logan 21:38  Of course. That's how being able to tell stories and work together is kind of why we got here. We probably should talk about her talking points. Brad Crowell 21:49  I know. We've, we definitely went down a tangent there. I appreciate you. Lesley Logan 21:53  I really hope you all read her book and if you want to listen to it on tape. It is a great listen. It is hard. I strongly encourage you if you are like this is not how I know church to be, then I also encourage you, because it's important to know what other people are going through, because you also need to understand, why are they voting that way? Yeah, why are they not scared about these things? Because that's how they're living, and they want us all to live like it. So I was, I think I asked her a question, and her response was, that's faith. And I was like, oh my God, so be it till you see it is faith, guys. And one of the things that like blew my mind when I read her book is that you could be it till you see it in a way that affects you. But I had this in relation today.Brad Crowell 22:31  I need you to expound on that. Be it till you see it in a way that.Lesley Logan 22:34  Is affecting you.Brad Crowell 22:35  Negatively affects you. So, it is possible to do that be it till you see it in a way that negative (inaudible).Lesley Logan 22:40  And here's, here's what I have percolated on census interview, and she said you're supposed to become what they want you to be. So it's not being until you see it. It's being it till they see it in you, until you're doing what they want. So it's really not, it's still not a true be it because you are conforming to what they want and you're being it till they see it. That's what it really is. You're doing all the things to get their approval, to stay in the community, or to not get beat by the husband, or be terrible to get kicked out. She even talks about this time when she found this internet group, and then she almost got kicked out of that internet group because they were kind of like talking about things that were like, not super purity, whatever their religion was at the time. So anyways, faith is how these things happen. You're having faith. Brad Crowell 23:25  And I think we need to clarify that. Lesley Logan 23:27  Well, why don't you? Brad Crowell 23:28  Okay, so faith is the idea that you can become this thing, right? That this thing can happen for you down the road. What she's talking about there is that when you have a religious formula that promises rewards, like prosperity or love or blessings or happiness, if you do x, y and z, then why would you not want to do x, y and z? Because you want to stay in the community. Your family is there, your friends are there. And so of course, that's the entire goal is then okay, if I do this, then these other things will happen, and that will be this high level reward of prosperity and love. I mean, there's a whole new offshoot of Christianity that is literally, like, all they talk about is making money. Lesley Logan 24:12  Oh yeah.Brad Crowell 24:12  Yeah. It's crazy. Minion Jesus. It's like a whole fucking thing. It's fascinating. Lesley Logan 24:16  It's very, I know it's a bit much, it's a derogatory name, so please don't get mad at me. But the Moonies have broken up, and the second son of the Moonies guy, their whole Christianity is built on guns and the Second Amendment, and so he's the Third Coming of Christ, or something like that. There is a lot of different ones out there guys. But she said fear of rejection and punishment drove her to fake it till I make it, to avoid hell, to void rejection and unhappiness, because that's what they promised her. They promised her, if you follow all these things, you will feel this way.Brad Crowell 24:46  Yeah, no, well, not that you'll feel this way, but that you will avoid these things. Yeah. Lesley Logan 24:50  Some of us can think back into our youth to kind of go, oh man. When I was in my 20s, I was such a free spirit. I was such these things to, like, kind of find themselves again, right? She can't do that. She can't look at her 20-something self or her 30-something (inaudible) right because they, she actually had to grieve those parts of her past that is gone. She doesn't get those back. She doesn't get those years back. She can't change that. So she had to have a new vision for what is, who's Tia at 50? And that you guys, is being until you see it. So if you are someone like Tia who has just such a childhood or such an event in your early youth, like adulthood, that you can't really use that time to figure out what did make me happy? Like, I hate the question, like, oh, were you super like this when you were a kid and that's why you're a Pilates instructor? No, I wasn't. She can't, being it until you see it is like, what, who do I want to be? What could I be? And you have to see some of those things to believe those things. So she was not going to let them get her present or her future, because that was the only thing she had control over. And I find that so cool, whether or not you had her life experience right now, you guys, you have the control over the present and the future, like the choices you're gonna make. Obviously don't have control of, like, what could happen in those things. But like, what time you want to wake up? Where do you want to go? What do you want to wear? What do you want to listen to? What are you putting in your ears? You have control of those things. So that is part of being it, till you see it. Brad Crowell 26:10  Here's what I really loved, and this is where I'm going to go a little bit into politics y'all, which we don't do very often here on this pod. I'm sure you understand. If you're a longtime listener. You know us. You know where we stand. I want to talk about this here because this is a very scary concept. Okay, what you two were talking about was, what if our convicted felon of a candidate for the Republican Party, what if he gets into office? That's going to be really scary. But what if he doesn't get into office? What is actually going to happen? It's not like this movement is just gonna go away. So how are they doing that? And what she did is she broke down how there's a bunch of conservative organizations who effectively banded together. There's over 100 of them, right? And they created this program called Project 2025, and before that, they were very connected to Jerry Falwell. And before Jerry Falwell came out and said, hey, we should be supporting Trump. The Republican Party was not interested in supporting Trump. They were like, we're not with this guy. He's a crazy person. But because of the religious fundamental movements that are really underpinning a lot of the decision making now in the Republican Party, they said, no, no, we got to get behind Trump. And what they did is they basically created someone who could be swapped out. So if it's not Trump, it could be somebody else. It doesn't matter.Lesley Logan 27:28  Oh, (inaudible) and I got to show you a reel I just saw. I'll show it to you later. Brad Crowell 27:31  Yeah. So the point is that if he fails to be elected president, it doesn't mean that this movement goes away, okay, and so you two were then talking about, what do we do, and how do you move forward with this? And Tia said she chooses light, she chooses life, she chooses energy, she chooses progress. So she was specifically talking about voting, and she said the most important thing is that we have the right to vote and we can cast the vote. She was not in a place where she could vote. Lesley Logan 27:59  No. She was in this country and was not allowed to vote. Brad Crowell 28:01  She was not allowed to vote. Okay? And so I'm today, right now, I'm wearing a hat that's, it says VSA on it, VSA, which stands for Vote Save America, and it's an organization that we would encourage you to go check out. They help you volunteer, donate, or even run for office, or just understand, are you even a registered voter? They can help you through all those things, and they're an amazing organization. Vote save America. Go check that out. But she said, if there's someone who is going to be putting policy in place that could restrict my vote, I'm voting for the other guy because the other guy is going to be helping me be able to vote. Lesley Logan 28:34  And I think that's really important, no matter how you label yourself in politics in this particular upcoming election, and maybe the next one too. We need to be voting for the people who have the love and the light and the energy to provide more rights for people, not take them away. That's the easiest way to distill who am I voting for in every single whether it's a judge or a local school board or whatever it's like, who is wanting to support as many lives as possible, and who wants to support less people? Brad Crowell 29:05  She said something else, which I thought was really interesting. She's like we as a society have moved through and past puritanical times, but that's what she was basically living under, right? Here in the United States today, right now. And the point is, this is still there, and the Christian Nationalist Movement that is, the fundamentalist movements that she was part of, could be lumped under that movement. They're still making decisions, and they're still trying to expand and control, right? So when we are voting, we need to be voting people into power who are going to be protecting people, right? Not people into power who are going to be taking rights away for people. Lesley Logan 29:43  And voting for people who we might not agree with on everything but we can argue with because we have the right to that is a right that is not shared in most countries, to be able to yell at your politician and go, you're not doing what I want. That is a very special thing we have here. So Jane Bona says you vote for the person you can argue with. Brad Crowell 29:59  I was just thinking about her. Lesley Logan 30:00  Yeah. So in Shakespearean times, when they wrote those plays, the Puritans were really big in power, and they would control a theater, and certain plays would not be allowed on the stage, and no woman could write and no woman could act in them even though the characters were women, they had the men dressed as women, because it would have been too ridiculous outside of their religion. That's what it is. That's what's going on. You won't even have art. It doesn't exist. Anyways, we've got to get to the Be It Action Items.Brad Crowell 30:27  Yeah. So she said I choose to go forward. And she expressed support for political ideologies and groups that protect progress, even if she doesn't agree with them entirely. Okay? So you know that is what we would put this in front of you and argue the same thing. I don't remember why or when it became this idea that we have to agree with our political candidates 100% of the time for us to vote for them? That is, that is like only a new thing. That was never the case, even 10 years ago.Lesley Logan 30:57  My parents always bitched about whatever President was in office and they voted for him. Brad Crowell 31:01  Right. Yeah, exactly. And somehow we have this idea that, like, oh, there's this one thing I don't agree with. Well, what about the other 99 things? Do you agree with those? So anyway, yeah, all right. Lesley Logan 31:13  We'll, beat this in. Brad Crowell 31:14  Yeah. Lesley Logan 31:15  We're linking to everything. I'm sure we did it on the other episode on Project 2025, if you come at me and say he said he's not with that, I'm gonna tell you right now, he flew on the plane with him after he said that. He hung out with him after he said that, do not come at me with that, because it's called logic. And 200 people who were part of his office before were part of writing that. Brad Crowell 31:34  So yeah, I mean, like a large part of his staff were the people who then went on to write project 2025 so of course, he's aware. Lesley Logan 31:41  Let's get to some positive Brad Crowell 31:42  All right. Let's move on. Let's move on. Stick around. We'll be right back. We're actually gonna dig into the Be It Action Items that we took away from Tia, where she had some incredible insight that's for each and every one of us. So we'll be right back. Brad Crowell 31:54  All right. Welcome back. Finally. Let's talk about those, Be It Action Items. I'll get myself off my high horse here, and we'll talk about Tia Levings and the action items that she said during the interview last week or earliest week, what bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted action items can we take away from your convo with Tia Levings? She sai hey, spend time with yo self.Lesley Logan 32:18  She went on a freaking slow cruise to Europe. Brad Crowell 32:21  By herself. Lesley Logan 32:22  Yeah, it takes like, six or eight weeks.Brad Crowell 32:24  That's pretty crazy. I know that's kind of amazing.Lesley Logan 32:27  I want to, do I want to do that? I don't. I love being by myself. Do I want to be by myself that much? I don't know, but I agree with this. I love when you go out. I'm like, I have all (inaudible). What am I gonna do? It's such a good way to, kind of, like, understand what you need and what's going on. I love it. Brad Crowell 32:41  Yeah, she talked about just tuning out the noise, learning to sit in silence. I can tell you, I always find myself walking around listening to something. I'm always listening to something. It's very rare that I actually have just chill time. I'm always entertaining myself in some way. She pays attention to her nerves and bodily sensations, honoring them, even if she can't fully understand them or express them yet. So when you have a little bit of quiet time, that can be really powerful.Lesley Logan 33:09  Yeah, I agree. And it's also kind of the only way to hear it, you gotta hear it, you know? All right, my biggest takeaway is kind of, I mean, like she'd spend time with yourself, and then she said, spend a lot of time envisioning. She doesn't believe you can become something without intention unless you can see it. For her, she needs to be able to see it using practice like vision boarding and journaling to the person she wants to become. So she's big on vision boarding. And she also has a win board, and I love that. You guys have to have two boards because you can put it over here. I'm like, oh, that is way too much fun. I think it's so cool. Brad Crowell 33:41  I love the wins board because it allows you to remember, if you're in the moment of beating yourself up, which we all go through, you know, being able to turn around and see the wins board and be like, oh, yeah. But I, I did do that. And that happened, and this happened. Lesley Logan 33:55  I mean, you guys, she practiced many times in the mirror being able to speak or smile like a normal person would, because she didn't spend a lot of time with people outside of her church. There's just different nuances to how life is. Brad Crowell 34:09  She said she couldn't even be on the phone without stuttering the whole time. And she said being able to even do the interview that you two had is like a dramatic difference from where she was.Lesley Logan 34:20  Yeah. And she's doing some great things. She's really worth following on Instagram. I highly recommend it. I really recommend this book. I recommend anyone who is doubtful that this stuff really exists, it's, it does, and so reading other people's stories kind of, to me, though, it's why I like books and I like travel. It allows you to see how other people are living, and one, recognize how much you do have. Two, you can learn a lot about what you want and don't want, and that is important. You know, we take things for granted.Brad Crowell 34:48  I was literally just gonna say, I want you to know how much we appreciate you, yeah, being here with us on this pod, and we genuinely care about you, your well being and your future. We care about all of our future.Lesley Logan 35:01  So if you disagree, if you disagree with some of us on some of these points, that's okay, because we still love you, because just like we don't have to agree with every 100% of the people we're voting for, we don't have to agree with everything that you are or say to still love you and still want to support you and your journey. Trust us. We've got family members who I'm a little bit like, hmm, we don't agree on these things, but I still love you and I still want the best for you, and we will constantly put out content here to support you and everything you want to be it until you see it. Thank you so much. Brad Crowell 35:29  Bye for now.Lesley Logan 35:31  That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod. Brad Crowell 36:14  It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell. Lesley Logan 36:19  It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co. Brad Crowell 36:23  Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi. Lesley Logan 36:30  Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals. Brad Crowell 36:34  Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/be-it-till-you-see-it/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

00:00 Introductions 01:21 Zachary Radcliff 09:21 Tim Ballard 13:49 Mike Jeffries 20:22 Roadhouse 22:00 Grant Beth & Luke Polaske 24:42 Viewer Comments 26:42 Deadly Hammocks 34:25 Lily Allen —Zachary Radcliff is a proud, flag-waving MAGA white boy. He's also been arrested for being waaaaay too into kids. Like, Michael Jackson into kids. Funny, that. (Not funny that anyone is into kids, but the irony of a party that screams about gays/lgbtq/drag queens and the like always having members getting busted for really criminal things is hilarious.) Even better, he's a youth pastor, a graduate of Liberty University (the Jerry Falwell institution that substitutes reality and facts for Jesus), and performed at CPAC, the annual gathering of the worst people on the planet.  Which means he fit right in. —Speaking of hypocrites…  Tim Ballard, founder of Operation Underground Railroad and the lionized (fake) hero of the hit Jim Caviezel movie, “Sound of Freedom,” has six lawsuits against him for human trafficking.  That's right, he wants to protect young girls, but once they hit eighteen, they're fair game for everything! (He's like the anti-Matt Gaetz that way; Matt is disinterested once they turn eighteen.) Again, it's (sad) funny how those that scream “VIRTUE!” are the least virtuous among us. —I don't think we set out to do an episode centered around awful humans, but that's how it turned out. Mike Jeffries is the former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, and he has been indicted on 16 federal counts of sex trafficking and international prostitution. But there's a twist! He was trafficking… men! Who saw that coming?  Apparently not those men. —As an aside, we discuss Kelly Lynch, Bill Murray, and her steamy scene with Patrick Swayze in the classic film, Roadhouse. —Grant Beth and Luke Polaske have bad parents. How do I know this? Because they raised garbage kids who act the victim when they're in the wrong. Those two d-bags went to heckle at a Kamala Harris campaign, and are now crying their hurt feelings regarding being thrown out. Losers. —We take a moment to duck into the live chat and respond to a few folk. —Erin Field is a wonderful woman who suffered a tragic accident. We use it as a jumping off point to make fun of big chimney, an evil industry too often ignored. —British pop star Lily Allen is on Only Fans… But her material isn't erotic, or naughty. Well, I take that back. Erotic is in the eyes of the beholder, I suppose. Feet. Lily Allen takes pictures of her feet… and earns more doing that than she does as a—as stated a moment ago—British pop star. Because Spotify doesn't pay. Idiots on Parade: we mock the news, so you don't have to. Tune in and get your giggle on. Find Jake at @jakevevera Find nathan at nathantimmel.com

Scamfluencers is a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away.Scamfluencers recently dove into the story of Richard Bandler, the godfather of modern mental manipulation. He revolutionized the world of self-help, all thanks to an approach he developed called Neuro-Linguistic Programming. But, NLP methods have been criticized for being dangerous in the wrong hands and inspiring some of the most toxic and criminal self-help movements of the last two decades. Throw in Richard's dark past as a cocaine addict and murder suspect, and you can't help but wonder what his true intentions were.This is just a preview of Scamfluencers. You can listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts, or at Wondery.fm/SCAM.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 600-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ In episode one of Spirit & Power, Dr. Leah Payne speaks with Sam Kestenbaum - an award-winning journalist covering religion in America who writes widely for national magazines and newspapers, including Harper Magazine's, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Rolling Stone. Leah and Sam discuss some of the influential conservative charismatic media makers who are energizing the religious right: pastor Greg Locke, rabbi Jonathan Cahn, entrepreneur Clay Clark, worship leader Sean Feucht, and head of Charisma News, Stephen Strang.  Resources & Links: Pentecostals in America by Arlene Sanchez WalshPew Research Center's 2006 study: Spirit and Power – A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals“The Future of “Born-Again Evangelicalism” Is Charismatic and Pentecostal,” PRRI by Fanhao Nie, Ph.D., Flavio Rogerio Hickel Jr., Leah Payne, Tarah Williams, Ph.D.Jerry Falwell's “I love America” rallyEvangelical Leader Lance Wallnau pitches Trump to followers as divinely chosen for presidencyPRRI Data on Gen ZPew Data on Pentecostals and charismatics v. evangelicals Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163 Check out BetterHelp and use my code SWA for a great deal: www.betterhelp.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, we're talking all about the recently-released Confession of Evangelical Conviction:-        What the confession is and what it says-        Why we signed it and got involved promoting it-        How the American church got to the point where a confession of very basic political theology like this is necessary-        And after that conversation, we talk the many layers of Christian nationalism involved in the debacle at Trump's recent trip to Arlington National CemeteryMentioned on the episode:-        The Confession of Evangelical Conviction, and the associated resources-        The video we produced to promote the confessionCredits-            Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our bonus episodes and other benefits at KTFPress.com.-        Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads.-        Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon.-        Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.-        Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.-        Editing by Multitude Productions-        Transcripts by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.-        Production by Sy Hoekstra and our incredible subscribersTranscriptIntroduction[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes in a major scale, the first three ascending and the last three descending, with a keyboard pad playing the tonic in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]Sy Hoekstra: When we first started doing this work and we published our anthology, we went on a couple of podcasts about it. A common thing that people asked of us at the time was, where do you think the White American church, where do you think the like 81 percent of the church, the White evangelical church that voted for Trump is going? And the first time I said it, I sort of surprised myself and I was like, look, it's being cut off the vine for not bearing good fruit and thrown in the fire. There's been a long time coming of a divorce, like a complete split between White evangelicals in America and followers of Jesus.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus, confronting injustice. I'm Sy Hoekstra.Jonathan Walton: And I'm Jonathan Walton.Sy Hoekstra: We have a great show for you today. We're doing something a little bit different. We are talking about a bit of a movement, a little, a confession that we have signed onto that we're a part of that we're producing some media around that you may have seen by the time this episode comes out. And it's a confession of sort of evangelical faithfulness to Jesus in a political context. And it is probably a little bit off the beaten path of kind of some of the political commentary that we normally engage in. And we wanted to talk to you about why we think it is a good and strategic thing for us to do during this season, give you some of our thinking behind how we kind of strategize politically and think about ourselves as part of a larger theological and political movement.So I think this will be a really good conversation. We're also gonna get into our Which Tab Is Still Open and talk to you about Christian nationalism and whiteness through the lens of Donald Trump doing absurd things at Arlington National Cemetery [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: But we will get into all of that in a moment. Before we do, Jonathan Walton.Jonathan Walton: Hey, remember, if you like what you hear and read from us at KTF Press and would like for it to continue beyond the election season, I need you to do two things. Go to KTFPress.com and become a paid subscriber. Now, you could also tell other people to do that as well if you've already done that. We've got a ways to go if we're going to have enough people to sustain the work, but we think it's valuable, and I hope you do too. So go to KTFPress.com, sign up, and that gets you all of the bonus episodes of this show, access to our monthly Zoom calls with the two of us and more. So again, KTFPress.com. Become a paid subscriber.What is the Evangelical Confession of Conviction, and Why Is KTF Involved?Sy Hoekstra: All right, Jonathan, let's get started in our conversation. We've signed onto this document called The Confession of Evangelical Conviction. We've produced some media around it. First of all, what is it and what does it say?Some Basic Political Theology That We Need to Restate at This Cultural Moment with UnityJonathan Walton: [laughs] Well, I think the question of what it is, it's words [Sy laughs]. Like there's these things that we put together, it's words. And I think the reason that it's powerful is because of when and how it's said. And so these are basic confessions that every Christian should believe, but it seems like the reason that we're doing it right now and that I've signed onto is because there are seasons when the discipleship and formation of the church needs to be plain and centered. And so being able to say, “I give allegiance to Christ alone,” and then have that be reverberated across denominations, across movements of quote- unquote, Christians around the country that are usually so disparate, they usually don't communicate, they usually disagree with each other in very public ways, to say, “Hey, hey, hey.”We need people to understand who don't follow Jesus, that when Gandhi said, “I like Christ, I don't like Christians,” that's part of the problem. We are part of that problem. Where we don't articulate what we know, what we believe, what we know to be true. I think this is an articulation of that, speaking particularly to a cultural and political and social moment that needs the clarity that Jesus can bring.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So this is just to get into the weeds of it. It's a confession signed by I would say, the sort of extreme ends, at least to the people that we know about right now, I don't know who's gonna sign it in future, but center-right to more progressive left. And the basic confessions, like the seven statements of the confession are, “We give our allegiance to Jesus Christ alone. We will lead with love, not fear. We submit to the truth of Scripture. We believe the Gospel heals every worldly division. We are committed to the prophetic mission of the Church. We value every person as created in God's image.” And “We recognize godly leaders by their character.” So this is very basic theology [laughs] like you said. And you got a little bit at why it matters to put this out there, why we are involved. I agree with you. I think it's more about the context and it's also about who is saying it more than it is about the content.Because, and by the way, we should say we are giving you our reasons for signing this and why we think it's important. This is not… like there's a group of people that were involved in writing it, so there's lots of people involved who we don't know precisely why they signed [laughs] or precisely why the people who wrote it decided it was necessary. We're talking to you about our opinions. So to me, if you have something that says we pledge our allegiance to Christ alone, that's a rebuke of Christian nationalism to me.We judge godly leaders by their character, that's a rebuke of people who argue that Trump is a godly leader or a leader who has been appointed by God in some way or another. So those are important things to say. And it's with people across a pretty big spectrum of, as I said, the political range. Would Jonathan and I go a lot further than this if we said what we thought is important for political discipleship? Yes, we would, and you know that, because you've heard our other episodes. Or if you haven't, go listen to our other episodes [laughs]. We would go a lot further than that, yes. But we think, I think it's good to work with a broad range of people during a political campaign.Reaching a Broad Audience and Pushing the American Church to ChangeSy Hoekstra: Like I think when you're talking about discipleship at a moment when tensions are extremely high around theology and politics, it is good to do these kinds of things where you are trying to scale your efforts.Where you're trying to reach as many people as possible in the hopes that you will change some minds, both so that they will more faithfully follow Jesus, and in this specific context, so they won't vote for Donald Trump. That's one of my personal reasons for being involved in this [laughs]. And that's how you do campaigns in general. That's how campaigns operate. You try and call as many people as you can. You try and put commercials out there as widely as you can toward your targeted audience, whatever. Not in the hopes that the vast majority of the people who see it are going to suddenly be like, “Oh my goodness, I agree with everything you say,” but in the hopes that you'll reach enough of the people whose minds you can change to make a difference in their decision when it comes to November.You will reach them and you will start to be one of the people who affects their choices, is what I'm trying to say. So I don't know, that's kind of the strategy of it from my point of view. It is a similar way of thinking to me from the anthology. When we published the anthology four years ago, it was different because we were letting people say their own beliefs. And it was people from all over the spectrum kind of saying why they weren't voting for Trump in whatever way they saw fit [laughs], on whatever topic they saw fit. That was our approach. But this is the way some other people are going to do it, and we're gonna be happy to work with them in that way.Jonathan Walton: I think for me, I see the political strategy of it. I see the strategery that's happening, to use a word from SNL. My hope is that…Sy Hoekstra: From SNL 25 years ago [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. My hope… [laughs]. It was such a great sketch. “Strategery,” it was so good. “I'm the decider” [Sy laughs]. So I think one of the things that stands out to me, particularly in reviewing it more and assign it and then come on board, is, I hope that this is a Belhar Confession type moment for the United States and followers of Jesus. Particularly, because when we look at the Dutch Reformed Church, the Dutch Reformed Church was the theological backbone and framework for apartheid in South Africa. They gave the covering for those things to happen. It gave theological and moral legitimacy to a movement that was oppressive, violent, exploitative, and un-Christian at every level. Because there are Christian leaders who are willing to say, “You know what? This is really good. This is actually right. This is good and just, and God intended this.” And we have the exact same type of nonsense happening in the United States.There are quote- unquote, prophets and apostles and preachers and teachers and publishing houses and Amazon independent book publishers rolling out materials that say, “America first.” America is the kingdom of God. America is the kingdom of heaven. America is this baptized land on the earth, as opposed to being a land that is rooted in land theft, genocide, violence, patriarchy, greed and exploitation. Which it is that. It's actually not the kingdom of God at all. And so I hope that this creates a groundswell that goes beyond November 5th and beyond January 20th. And could this be a pivot point of orientation for people who followed Jesus to say, “You know what? Actually Jesus didn't say any of that.” If all of these people, right, left, middle, above, otherwise are saying this, maybe I should consider. “Oh, Randall Balmer said that, and Mercy Aiken” [Sy laughs]? “Shane was there too? Alright. Shane is on the same page as Curtis Chang and Sandra Van Opstal? Alright, let me jump in and get on this.” That's what I hope happens, is that it becomes impossible to avoid the question of allegiance to Jesus, or allegiance to the United States. Just like in South Africa the question was, are you pledging allegiance to apartheid or are you gonna follow Jesus?Sy Hoekstra: I totally agree with that. And I would say that it is 100 percent in line with the sort of premise of this podcast, which is helping people shake the dust and walk away [laughs] from the places where the word of God is not accepted as Jesus put it. And you let your peace return to you and you move along on your way.Jonathan Walton: Yes.How Did We Get to the Point Where This Confession Is Necessary?Sy Hoekstra: So let's actually talk about that thing that you were just saying. The thing where all these people from these different walks of life are coming together to make this specific statement at this time. How did we get here, aside from the obvious thing that Donald Trump is very good at uniting people who oppose him [laughter]. How did we get to this point in the church in America?Jonathan Walton: I think we need to narrow the scope a little bit.Sy Hoekstra: Okay.Jonathan Walton: Of how we got to this point, I think I would start at Acts 2 [laughter]. But, and then the church and then the alliance with the empire to escape persecution. Constantinople like Nicea, I mean…Sy Hoekstra: Let's focus on America.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, let's focus on the United States.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] Zoom in a little bit.The Moral Majority Took Us Very Far down a Path Away from JesusJonathan Walton: I think that one of the pivot points in the United States is 2008 in the ascendance of Barack Obama. With Barack Obama, you have what was roiling and starting with Al Gore, but like can Christians vote for Democrats and still be Christians? Because with the ascendance of the moral majority, with what Randall Balmer talks about this coalescing around abortion as a position, and then the policies laid out by Jerry Falwell. And there was a conference in 1979 in Houston. Lots of organizations came out of that gathering. And so when those types of things occur, I think we are living in the wake of that wave, but that wave wasn't really challenged until 2008 when many, many, many, many people said, “Oh, I wanna vote for Barack Obama.”And so with the ascendance of Obama, then the question particularly among the Black community from evangelical Christians is like, can you be a Christian and vote for Obama? And that was talked about extensively in Tamice's book, Faith Unleavened, which is amazing. And that scene that she describes of the dissonance between the White evangelical church that she was sitting in, and the conversation she was having with her grandma on the phone, who she called Momma.Sy Hoekstra: Where her family was having a party because Obama had been elected and her White church was having a mournful prayer service.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I think a lament session basically, for the United States being now overtaken by a demonic force. And so I think if we start there and move forward, like if this was a ray coming from a point, then the line actually starts to diverge from there, from the center point. And now we are actually so far apart that it's very, very difficult to justify what's happening. So if we're at our end points right now, we have followers of Jesus legitimizing sexual violence by saying Trump is fine. You have followers of Jesus legitimizing fraud, saying that that's fine. You have followers of Jesus legitimizing insurrection, saying that's fine. We are way, way down the road and very far apart from these basic confessions.And so I think people that are co-opted and indoctrinated by Fox News and the conservative White evangelical and conservative Catholic and conservative… because there's a smattering of Christian movements that have so aligned themselves with political power that it is very apparent even to non-Christians, that this is not Christ-like. And so I think for us, similar to the church in South Africa, to say, “Hey, we need to just make very plain every person is made in the image of God, and you shouldn't enslave, violate and steal from people.”If we could articulate that and do that, and have a movement around that, then I think that is how we got here, is that basic tenets of following Jesus have stayed the same, but forces, institutional, the powers, the principalities, and also people who chose to align themselves with that have taken the ball and run so far down the road that even people who don't follow Jesus and folks who just have basic biblical engagement are seeing that this is just not the way. And so I think followers of Jesus across the spectrum are starting to say, “You know what? This is a moment that we can actually speak into.”The White Evangelical ChurchA Divorce between White Evangelicals and Followers of JesusSy Hoekstra: Yeah, I agree with all that. I think, I mean, look, when we first started doing this work and we published our anthology, we went on a couple of podcasts about it. A common thing that people asked of us at the time was, where do you think the American church, where do you think the like 81 percent of the church, the White evangelical church that voted for Trump is going?” And the first time I said it, I sort of surprised myself, but I was like, “Look, it's being cut off the vine for not bearing good fruit and thrown in the fire.” That's it. There's been a long time coming of a divorce, like a complete split, I think, between White evangelicals in America and followers of Jesus.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: White evangelicals have had a whole long history of being involved in, as you said, in the exact same way that the Dutch Reformed Church was involved in apartheid, just being involved in everything. Every [laughs] terrible thing America's ever done, we've been there cheering it on and supporting it in all kinds of ways. And I think a lot of what Trump in particular, and it's sometimes a little bit hard to put my finger on why it was him, but Trump in particular, I think highlighted to a lot of Christians who viewed themselves as kind of like just nice, gentle, center right Christians who were a part of a larger movement where maybe there were some people who were a little bit off the deep end, but overall, these institutions and these people are trying to accomplish good things in the world and follow Jesus faithfully, realized that that wasn't the case.I think there are a lot of people who realized that they actually had opinions about what it meant to follow Jesus that were dramatically different than the average person in their institutions, or the average evangelical Republican.Policy Debates for White Evangelicals Have Been a Cover for Power HungerSy Hoekstra: Peter Wehner, I think would be one of these people, who writes for the New York Times. He was a George W. Bush speech writer. He recently wrote an article saying, “Look, Donald Trump has explicitly said that if you took one of these super restrictive state abortion bans and you passed it in Congress and you put it on my desk, I would veto it. I would not pass a national abortion ban.”Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: Which for the pro-life movement, that's the end goal. That would be [laughs], that would be the thing they've been fighting for for decades [Jonathan laughs]. And he has said, “I will not sign this.” And do you hear anything about that from Franklin Graham [laughs]?Jonathan Walton: So Al Mohler was on the Run-Up of the New York Times this week, when you listen to this probably like two weeks ago, talking about how, “Hey, Donald Trump just said he's not gonna sign a national abortion ban. What's your position on that?” And his position hasn't changed, because again, it is framed as you all are the radical people, not us. We are the victims, not you. There's a constant revision of reality that they are gonna continue to turn out and communicate that is rooted in fear and a lust for power and control and dominance. And that is toxic as all get-out, and obviously un-Christian.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, that was the end of my point, was that a thing that people have been arguing for a long time, which is that, this focus on abortion, this focus on prayer in school, or this focus on whatever the evangelical issue of the day is, has in fact been about power from the perspective of the leaders.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: Maybe not the rank -in-file people like marching and the March for Life or whatever.Jonathan Walton: Exactly.Sy Hoekstra: But the leaders are after power, and they always have been. That's what, if you go back a couple years to our episode with Mako Nagasawa, the first episode of season two where we talked about abortion. That's what his whole book is about, is the history of abortion policy and how it's almost never been about abortion. It's almost always been about something else like anti-immigrant sentiment or professionalizing the medical profession or whatever. It's always been about some other issue of people trying to establish themselves and gain power over somebody else. That's what I think a lot of people are realizing, and so a lot of people who are, I think more to the right in the group of people who have signed this document that we have are on that journey, like are in the middle of it.Or not in the middle of it, but they've been going on it for a few years and they've been rejected by who they thought were their people for saying things like, “Hey, should we maybe adhere a little more closely to the teachings of Jesus?” [laughs] And now they're saying, okay, they've gotten to a point where they're like, “I need to draw a line in the sand. I need to make something clear here.” And that I think is different. That is genuinely different than eight years ago when everybody was, a lot of people in the middle were just kind of waffling.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Yeah, right.Sy Hoekstra: Were not really sure what to do yet. And they still viewed the people on the far right who were all in for Trump as possibly a minority on their side, or possibly just something like a phase people were going through. Something that would flare up and then die, and it just didn't turn out that way. I think that's kind of how I view a lot of how we got to the place that we are now.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: Again, zoomed in on America and not looking at the entirety of church history, which is where you wanted to go [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And I mean, and I'll name some of the people that are key to that. So, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, like her book Jesus and John Wayne, Jemar Tisby's book, The Color of Compromise. And we could also throw in some Christianity adjacent, but loved by them books as well. So like all of the quote- unquote, anti-racist books, where people who are trying to leave the race-based, class-based, gender-based environmental hierarchy that White evangelicalism enforces, like I wrote about that in Twelve Lies as an explicit book. But you could say that Ibram X. Kendi's book is trying to get away from that. That White Fragility is trying to get away from that. That all of these books pushing back against [laughs], what now is called like Trad Wife and all these different things, it's trying to push back against these things. They're trying to call people to another reality because the one that some people have found themselves in is deeply unhelpful and not Christian.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I feel like that's been like you're refrain of this podcast. “And also, not Christian” [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Not Christian. Right.Sy Hoekstra: And not Jesus.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: Do we have any other thoughts on this subject, or do we want to jump into our segment?Jonathan Walton: I just think people should go sign it.Sy Hoekstra: Oh, yeah.Jonathan Walton: And there's a fun bible study there that [laughs] we talked about two weeks ago on the podcast and spread the word about it. I think it's gonna be a good thing.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, the link to the website, the people who organized it, Jonathan said, “Hey, you can put the Bible study that we talked about in our last episode up, if you want a place for people to go to scripture on these subjects.” And they did.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: So that's cool. We will have the link to the confession in the show notes, as well as the link to the video that we created, which has a bunch of the signers of the confession reading parts of it, which we would love it if you would all share as widely as possible on your social media, and share the confession as well. We hope that this, as I said, changes somebody's hearts and minds, has some good effect on some people both in their discipleship and in their politics, which is what we're all about.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Amen. There's actually a worship album that came out too. So along with Phil Vischer's cartoons for kids that can be shown in churches, there's a Return to Love album by a bunch of folks that you all may know like Will Matthews, Crystal Lewis, Ryan Edgar. These are folks that have led worship in great places that the evangelical world has followed for a long time. And so having worship leaders willing to call us out as well is pretty great. Along with Phil Vischer, because these videos will definitely be great for kids.Sy Hoekstra: Is that worship album already out?Jonathan Walton: Yeah, it's out right now [laughs]. You could click on it.Sy Hoekstra: I don't know how they did that that fast. That's incredible [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Hey man, listen. There's a thing called the Holy Spirit.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: And I think we all know that when Jesus moves, Jesus can do some things.Which Tab Is Still Open?: Trump at ArlingtonJonathan Walton: And so let's get into our segment, Which Tab Is Still Open?, where we dive a little deeper into one of our recommendations from the newsletter. And remember, you can get our newsletter for free by signing up for the mailing list at KTFPress.com. You'll get recommendations on articles, podcasts, and other media from both of us on things that will help you in your political education and discipleship. Plus, you'll get reflections to keep you grounded and hopeful as we engage in this challenging work together. News about KTF and what's going on, and a lot more. So go get that free subscription and a paid one too. Alright. So this is your recommendation, so let's jump into it.Sy Hoekstra: This actually has a lot to do with what we were just talking about.Jonathan Walton: Yes, it does.Sy Hoekstra: This is all about Christian Nationalism [laughter]. And Trump kind of stepping in it when it comes to dealing with his Christian Nationalist followers. So here's the story, and the article that I recommended in the newsletter was actually, it both gave the details of the story, but it was actually for me, an example of kind of the thing that I was critiquing [laughs]. It was an Atlantic article, and basically the facts of what happened are as follows. Trump went to Arlington National Cemetery, which if you don't know, is I just learned the second, not actually the largest, the second largest national cemetery in the country.Jonathan Walton: Oh. Huh.Sy Hoekstra: The largest one's on Long Island, Jonathan, I had no idea.Jonathan Walton: What!Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] Yeah.Jonathan Walton: [laughs] I did not know that.Sy Hoekstra: So the people who are buried in Arlington are soldiers who served in active duty. Some of them died, some of them were retired and passed away later. And then like very high ranking government officials, like Supreme Court justices or presidents or whatever. So Trump went and visited a specific spot that had I think 13 soldiers who died during the evacuation of Afghanistan when there was a suicide bomb attack from the Taliban.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: And he did this basically to highlight Biden administration screw ups. You didn't handle this evacuation well. And so because Harris is part of the administration, he's criticizing his opponent. And he went and took some pictures, which is fine, but he then was like specifically taking pictures in this area and like narrating a video talking about Biden screw ups and everything. And an employee of the cemetery pointed out correctly that campaign activities are illegal under federal law [laughs] at Arlington National Cemetery. And they kept going anyways. And they got in a little bit of an argument with her, and then later to the press said that she is mentally ill and was having a mental health crisis in that moment, and that she needed to be fired.And, fortunately the cemeteries said, “No, that's all a lie, and she was correctly telling you that you shouldn't have been doing what you were doing and et cetera.”Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: But there were a number of people, and I don't know if this is a majority or anything like that, but there were actually some Trump supporters who viewed this as a violation, like something that Trump really shouldn't have done. He was being disrespectful to the dead, the troops who were there, by doing partisan stuff at the National cemetery. It was not necessarily about the things that he was saying, but just by conducting yourself in a way that you're not supposed to conduct yourself at a national cemetery.Sy's Experience with Arlington and it's Strong Christian NationalismSo here's my in for this. I have a very long history of military [laughs] service in my family. Somebody in my family went on Ancestry.com one time, and I have a direct ancestor who was a drummer boy in the Continental Army with George Washington [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Oh, wow.Sy Hoekstra: And somebody who enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War. And my great-grandfather was in World War II in Korea, grandfather was in Vietnam. And my grandfather who was in Vietnam, he died when I was about 10. My grandmother remarried a very highly decorated army colonel also from Vietnam, who he passed away and we had a funeral for him at Arlington. And Arlington does like 20, 30 funerals a day. So if you're a rank-in-file soldier, it's like a very, it's an in and out thing [laughs]. But because of either his rank or his awards or both [laughs], it was an event, Jonathan. It was like, we had the bigger, more beautiful chapel, and then we had a procession, because I can't see, I can't tell you how many it was, but at the very least, dozens of soldiers with a commanding officer taking his casket from the church to the burial site, there was a 21-gun salute. There was the presentation of the flag with the shell cases from the 21-gun salute to my grandmother. It was a big thing.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: And if you've been to Arlington, you know that one of the key messages there is that the people who served America and the army served the kingdom of God, served Jesus. That is what they did. They served, and they may have died serving heaven [laughs] effectively. And so what that means is this is one of the holiest sites for Christian nationalism. This is one of the places where you go to be reassured with some of the highest level, like some of the world's greatest pomp and circumstance. The world's most convincing showing of pageantry and religious activity that the United States Army and the people who died serving it are also serving God, which is, you can't get more Christian nationalist than that.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: Which is also why we have talked about Christian nationalism, actually far more common than people think it is [laughs]. It is absolutely normal in how we talk about the military. So what I think happened here with Trump is that because what I believe about Trump is that he's a conman to the core. He is pure... he's like self-interest incarnate [laughs]. He is out to promote Donald Trump and nothing more, and nobody more than that.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: I think he forgot that his self-interest can actually diverge from Christian nationalism [laughs]. I think that he forgot that he can step on his people's toes in a way that he doesn't want to. And he's basically going to look out for where those things diverge in future in order to not have this happen again. Because he's just there doing what he does, which is promoting himself anytime, anywhere at all costs. And he forgot that one of the things that he harnesses, which is Christian nationalism, is not actually something that he believes in, and so he can misfire [laughs]. The irony to me is that I want to gain enough power to do anything and not be held accountable for it to better myself in my own position, is a pretty good summary of how kind of the operating principle of the US military in our foreign policy has been for so long.So it's actually, it's like [laughs], it's two entities, a former president and the US military kind of clashing in their basically excuse making for their own unaccountability and their own sin. Which is how I view the Christian nationalism of a place like Arlington. What I just said Jonathan, is [laughs] blasphemy to a [laughs] lot of the people that I probably, to some people that I know personally. So I will just acknowledge that. But that is what I believe, and I think is true to the Bible. So hopefully you can at least give me that credit [Jonathan laughs]. Jonathan, boy, did I just talk for a long time. I'm sorry. I actually had in the outline that I wanted to ask you first what your thoughts were before I went on my rant, and I just couldn't help myself. So, [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Well, Sy, I mean…Sy Hoekstra: Jonathan, what are your thoughts?Jonathan Walton: I think one, I just appreciated the explanation of the closeness, why it's still open for you. Because I think when I was writing Twelve Lies, I wrote about the military, and I wanted to say, “Oh, they're only going to these types of communities to get people.” That would've been my hypothesis or was my hypothesis, but the research proved different.Sy Hoekstra: And when you say that, you specifically mean exploiting like poor Black and Brown neighborhoods?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: You're saying like, “We'll get you into college, we'll give you benefits, et cetera, if you come fight and die for us.”Jonathan Walton: Exactly. And so…Sy Hoekstra: Potentially die for us.Jonathan Walton: Right, there's this exchange that's gonna happen for your body. Whether alive or dead, there will be benefits and resources for you or your loved ones. And so I went in with that lens, but what my research showed me was that the majority of people who serve in the military are family. Their parents were in it, their grandparents were in it, their cousin was in it. It's actually like only about two percent of the United States population is affiliated with the military. We're recruiting from the same groups of people. And this would also be true for law enforcement. People who were in it essentially raise their children and bless and send them into it as well as most often. It's not actually about income.The income, if I remember correctly, was between 50 to 70 thousand dollars a year in a household, which in a rural area is at the time, 10 years ago, felt like a living wage. And so that reality was also something that's interesting for me. So when Trump came out against Mark Milley, when Mark Milley challenged him to say, “Hey, you will not use me, quote- unquote, the military, as a prop in your racism, standing in front of St. John's church holding that Bible up,” which was literally the distorted cover of our book, our anthology, because these things were happening. When he insulted John McCain, that was a moment where the military and I think those who are beholden to Christian nationalism tried to speak up. Tried to say, “Hey, we won't do this.” But then the ball continued down the road.I don't know what the fallout of the Arlington stuff will be, but I do know based on Up First the NPR podcast this morning in the morning that we're recording September the seventh, they said the military and the employees actually let this go. But the reason they brought it back up was because Trump got on Truth Social , used platform and stature to say, “This did not happen. There was no altercation. This person had a mental health episode.” And when you go into that, that's where I think the, “We will not be disrespected” thing kind of came up. Like what do you mean? No, we're gonna talk about this and we're gonna name that. You will not desecrate this holy site. Holy in holy site of Christian nationalism, as you were saying.So I hope that there are more people that are offended, because I think that if we allow ourselves to be offended, to be bothered, to be uncomfortable, then maybe there will be some movement. Because I think you're absolutely right. He is, you said self-interest incarnate. I think that is a great quote [laughs].Trump Cheapened the Spiritual Cost People Pay to Be in the MilitaryJonathan Walton: What's painful to me, so I too have, my father was in Vietnam. My brother was in the Navy, my uncle was in the Army. My other uncles were in Vietnam. And Brodnax, the town where I'm from, has many gravestones from Vietnam and Korea. And so what is fascinating to me is the level of belief that you have to have to commit acts of atrocity or commit acts of violence. Like Shane Claiborne would say, we were not made to kill people, you have to be taught to do that.And I am in no way condemning a soldier or a person who's in military service, who's listening. That's not what I'm saying. I'm observing, it costs us something to do these things. And I think the thing that Trump did was cheapen the cost that many, many, many thousands of people have paid for something that they thought was a collective interest blessed by God when Trump said, “No, you are a pawn in my game. And I will use you for my benefit.” Now you again, you will have people that say that's what's happening anyway. Trump is just doing in like what everybody else does behind closed doors. But I think that tension that he articulates or brings up for us, I hope it's allowed to rise to the surface, and then we can have a conversation about the cost.Like the silent war in the military right now is that even soldiers who have not seen active duty are committing suicide. I hope it brings to the surface the, like my dad, Agent Orange ruined some of his life. They're still figuring out what the effects of that were. You have people who are saying they support troops in one hand, but then voting against resources and benefits for them in the other hand, when the legislation comes up. Lauren Boebert did that yesterday. I hope that the perceived belovedness of our veterans and military versus the reality of how they're exploited and taken advantage of and dismissed and cast aside, we would actually acknowledge that and then do real work to ensure that they don't end up on the street.They don't end up stuck on painkillers. They do get the medical resources they need. They do get the mental health support that they need. Their families do get the resources that they need on and off-base and not just a discount at the PX. If that could be the conversation because of this, then I'd be very glad.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Just one more thing you said there. You said lots of people use the military as pawns and it's true. Or like props for their campaigns. It is just another one of those things about Trump where he will just do what everybody else did, but he'll turn it up to 11 [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah, no, yeah. It's true.Sy Hoekstra: Everybody else, every politician, if they have a military background, if their family does, if they can visit a military site or whatever, they do it all the time. And even if their love for the military or for America is real, it is also true that they use them for their campaigns [laughs]. Use them to prop up. That has been… since we elected George Washington, the general of the Continental Army, has been true [laughter]. Right?Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: So Trump is just the one who says, “Whatever your rules of decorum are, I'm going to break them.” And in most cases, that is actually his appeal. “Yes. I break rules of decorum and there's no consequences. And that's because these elitist can't tell me what to do and we need to take back power.Jonathan Walton: Oh Lord have mercy, Jesus [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: You need someone like me who can just break through all this nonsense.” You know what I mean?Jonathan Walton: Right. Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: That's usually his appeal. And in this case, it just happened to be that he crossed the wrong line for some people. I'm sure there's a lot of people who probably don't care [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Right. It may not wrangle a lot of people, but I hope it wrangles the right people.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And him stretching out this poop that he stepped on and not wiping it off his foot and continue his campaign, I hope that roils people. He is a disrespectful person.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And for Christians, literally James chapter four, it's that God opposes the proud. We are called to be humble people, and so I pray for Trump. I pray for his family. Not that he would win an election and all those things, but literally that they would come to know Jesus. Literally that they would know the freedom in him. Literally, that they would be able to experience the freedom that money cannot purchase and privilege cannot provide for you. And so I say all these things in hopes that everyone who is watching what happens is disquieted because we should not be comfortable with what's happening. Especially as followers of Jesus [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Amen to that Jonathan. Amen.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: I think we'll wrap it up there. Just as a reminder, as we finish, please again, go to KTFPress.com, get that newsletter and sign up as a paid subscriber to support everything that we do. We're centering and elevating marginalized voices. We're helping people seek Jesus in their discipleship and in their politics. We really do need some more support than we have right now if we're gonna make this sustainable kind of past this election season. So please do come and sign up as a paid subscriber at KTFPress.com. Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast Art is by Robyn Burgess, transcripts by Joyce Ambale, editing by Multitude Productions. I am the producer along with our lovely paid subscribers. Thank you so much for joining us, and we will see you in two weeks.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Jonathan Walton: Give me one second. One moment. I'm gonna get the name right so that you don't have to go edit this later [Sy laughs]. … So yes, we… Robert Mohler. The—Richard Mohler. Al Mohler. That's his name [Sy laughs]. Al Mohler [laughs]. It says R dot Albert Mohler. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ktfpress.com/subscribe

He's a smut peddler. She's a drug-addled stripper. And they are…in love? That aside, the most shocking thing in this pic is being reminded that the Supreme Court wasn't always a rubber stamp for right wing BS. Join the boys as they discuss that and anything else that pops into their heads.  Links You can rate and review us in these places (and more, probably) Does This Still Work? - TV Podcast https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/does-this-still-work-1088105 ‎Does This Still Work? on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/does-this-still-work/id1492570867 Porn Ban https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-winchester-sun/154301004/ Cable Ban https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-cincinnati-post/154303560/ Making Porn Play https://www.newspapers.com/article/la-weekly/154324511/ Susan Faludi article https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/10/30/the-money-shot Jerry Falwell, Hustler Capri Ad https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/asayq/hustler_magazine_vs_jerry_falwellthe_pic_that/#lightbox Patron Script Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dD6g0LjqC_U0Gfyxo53r4H6nYSI9xnUNyzMLQI2kztI/edit?usp=sharing  

Savage shares personal experiences and philosophical reflections in this extraordinary treatise on the divine. He begins by recalling his college days at City University of New York and the profound impact of Martin Buber's "I and Thou," which discusses the idea that humans need God to exist, and God needs humans for a purpose. Savage then shifts the focus to the topic of owls, discussing their significance as omens of death or wisdom in various religions and cultures. He shares a personal encounter with an owl and ponders its symbolism. He explores the biblical prohibition against seeking omens and consulting spirits, expressing his belief in intuition and the power of the unknown. The conversation touches on the historical significance of owls in religious beliefs and the ongoing conflicts between different faiths and economic belief systems. Savage also reveals his plans to create the Healing Wheel Society, an organization that aims to bring people together through various spiritual and religious means. He hopes to bring unity and sanity to those who listen and share his belief that all religions are equal. He recalls an interview he had with Jerry Falwell, where he first expressed this view, and how this idea came to him after their conversation. He sees all the world's religions as spokes in the wheel of man, with God at the center, and believes that each religion or belief system holds equal value. Savage encourages open-mindedness towards different belief systems and emphasizes the importance of the search for meaning and connection with the divine.

Are you feeling the weight of expectations and the stress of college? Let Dr. Jason Leverett guide you through the maze of academic pressures in the latest episode of the Faith First podcast. As we explore Dr. Leverett's experiences, from his time before the rise of social media to the present-day challenges facing students, you'll discover the importance of margin, intentionality, and the peace that comes from trusting in God's will.References:Boyce Collegehttps://www.boycecollege.com/Southern Seminaryhttps://www.sbts.edu/Thomas Road Baptist Churchhttps://www.trbc.org/Jerry Falwell, Sr.https://www.liberty.edu/aboutliberty/?PID=6921Elizabeth Dixonhttps://elizabethdixon.com/Liberty Universityhttps://www.liberty.edu/Philippians 4 (Bible passage)https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians+4&version=NASBEd Welchhttps://www.ccef.org/people/edward-t-welch/The Faith First Podcast Music was created and produced by Samuel Silhavy, B.S. Worship and Pastoral Studies, Boyce College class of 2019.

In THE LONGEST CON, Conason takes us back to the origins of the brazen and self-serving deceptions that have duped and damaged Americans, beginning with Roy Cohn's rebaiting swindles in the Fifties and leading to the ascent, decades later, of his most famous client, Donald J. Trump. On that journey, the author rips away patriotic and pious rhetoric to expose venality and scamming, from the Nixon and Reagan administrations to the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and the Tea Party, which eventually gave rise to the MAGA movement - and doesn't hesitate to identify the most dubious characters, including Roger Stone; Jerry Falwell, senior and junior; as well as Paul Manafort, Richard Viguerie, Terry Dolan, and a list long enough to fill a small city's phone book.Conason weaves a fascinating story of these partisan con artists who ply their seamy trade while stoking political animosity and even hatred, all for personal profit. The epitome and master of this phenomenon is Trump himself, whose rise to power - along with his allies and family - represents a celebration of trickery. The foundation of his political career was itself an enormous deception, relying on the creation of his public image as a bold and brilliant tycoon when he was, in reality, a bankrupt casino owner and real estate failure who hosted a faked "reality" TV show. What his followers never realized is how he swindled them with every variety of modern scam, from multi-level marketing and bogus real estate seminars to "Trump University" and the Big Election Lie of 2020.Conason clearly lays out the downward spiral that stole conservatism decades ago, ultimately leading to the rise of Trumpism and the dangerous divide in the U.S.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.

Right-wing politicians and pundits scream, but most students, faculty and staff believe that college and university diversity, equity and inclusion programs create an environment that's welcoming for everyone. Assistant vice president Renee Wells of Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina sees how DEI improves all of campus life. (David Hunt reports) And in NewsWrap: U.K.'s ban on puberty blockers for pediatric gender-affirming healthcare passes legal muster according to a High Court judge, London Trans+ Pride breaks records with its sixth annual procession, a Nepali law student and human rights activist can change her legal gender to “female” without having to undergo gender-affirming surgery, protections for LGBTQ students in the U.S. are affirmed one day and stripped the next, Nebraska's Supreme Court allows the ban on trans patients under the age of 19 from getting gender-affirming healthcare, transgender Christian IT specialist Ellenor Zinski is suing Jerry Falwell's infamous Liberty University for discrimination, and more international LGBTQ news reported this week by Joe Boehnlein and Melanie Keller (produced by Brian DeShazor).  All this on the August 5, 2024 edition of This Way Out! Join our family of listener-donors today at http://thiswayout.org/donate/

This lurid and captivating film about a family besieged by demons after attempting to contact their deceased loved one via an occultist could only have been produced from the singular vision of the Ormonds. To us at Boys' Bible Study, writer/director Ron Ormond, his wife June and their son Tim are the “first family” of Christian movies. Some of the Ormonds' most famous films, such as IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971) and THE BURNING HELL (1974) are still considered Christian genre classics decades later, known for their gripping exploitation-style treatment of Christian messaging that likely emerged from the family's shared background in vaudeville performance. This same showbiz charisma could also explain why the Ormonds' films were financially successful, widely distributed through church tours that were sometimes accompanied by a live presentation by Tim Ormond saving the souls in the audience who had just been moved by a shocking film experience. THE GRIM REAPER is plenty shocking; the Ormonds are skilled at DIY costuming and special effects to depict the supernatural horror of the world of demons, making Satan come to life for viewers to effectively demonstrate why tampering in the occult could doom their souls forever. Celebrity guest preachers Jerry Falwell (!) and Jack Van Impe (!!) also stop by the Ormonds' set to deliver sermons addressed directly to the camera, hammering down the central theme of THE GRIM REAPER: hell, Satan, and his demons are very real. If you don't believe in demons, you may as well not be a Christian. View our full episode list and subscribe to any of our public feeds: http://boysbiblestudy.com Unlock 2+ bonus episodes per month: http://patreon.com/boysbiblestudy Subscribe to our Twitch for livestreams: http://twitch.tv/boysbiblestudy Follow us on Instagram: http://instagram.com/boysbiblestudy Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/boysbiblestudy

With an extraordinarily high stakes election looming in November, it is imperative for Americans to understand the real - and often very dark - motive's behind the messages they hear. From the earliest days of the American republic, frauds and crooks of all varieties have haunted our democratic system. Yet while con artists can be found on both sides of the aisle, the hard truth is that one side is far more badly infested than the other. Joe Conason, the acclaimed investigative journalist and political commentator, has spent years pursuing the cheaters, grifters, and phonies - and he reports on his extensive and often comical discoveries in his new book, THE LONGEST CON: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism In THE LONGEST CON, Conason takes us back to the origins of the brazen and self-serving deceptions that have duped and damaged Americans, beginning with Roy Cohn's rebaiting swindles in the Fifties and leading to the ascent, decades later, of his most famous client, Donald J. Trump. On that journey, the author rips away patriotic and pious rhetoric to expose venality and scamming, from the Nixon and Reagan administrations to the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and the Tea Party, which eventually gave rise to the MAGA movement - and doesn't hesitate to identify the most dubious characters, including Roger Stone; Jerry Falwell, senior and junior; as well as Paul Manafort, Richard Viguerie, Terry Dolan, and a list long enough to fill a small city's phone book.Conason weaves a fascinating story of these partisan con artists who ply their seamy trade while stoking political animosity and even hatred, all for personal profit. The epitome and master of this phenomenon is Trump himself, whose rise to power - along with his allies and family - represents a celebration of trickery. The foundation of his political career was itself an enormous deception, relying on the creation of his public image as a bold and brilliant tycoon when he was, in reality, a bankrupt casino owner and real estate failure who hosted a faked "reality" TV show. What his followers never realized is how he swindled them with every variety of modern scam, from multi-level marketing and bogus real estate seminars to "Trump University" and the Big Election Lie of 2020.Conason clearly lays out the downward spiral that stole conservatism decades ago, ultimately leading to the rise of Trumpism and the dangerous divide in the U.S.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Brad interviews Anne Nelson, author of the Shadow Network, about the modern intersection of religious movements and political campaigns in the U.S. They discuss the 'Courage Tour,' led by Lance Wallnau and Charlie Kirk, which aims to mobilize votes for Donald Trump through religious fervor and political organizing. The conversation traces the historical roots of such campaigns back to Jerry Falwell's I Love America rallies in the 1970s and explores the sophisticated strategies and technologies now employed. Anne also highlights the role of the Council for National Policy and the targeting of swing states and diverse demographics to influence the 2024 election. Read Anne Nelson: https://washingtonspectator.org/michigan/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163 00:00 The Rise of Jerry Falwell and the Religious Right 00:51 The Courage Tour: A Modern Political-Religious Movement 01:19 Interview with Anne Nelson: Insights on the Courage Tour 02:51 The Mechanics of the Courage Tour 08:09 The Role of Pentecostalism and Political Strategy 13:15 Council for National Policy: Historical Context and Influence 21:14 Targeting New Demographics: Black Voters and Suburban Women 26:14 Digital Campaign Tools and the As One App 28:38 Conclusion and Reflections Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1997, when Philip Yancey submitted his manuscript to his publisher, he had serious doubts that his new offering (which followed his popular book, The Jesus I Never Knew) would find an audience. He knew his evangelical readers. In Yancey's mind, the chapters on a Democrat President (Bill Clinton) and a fellow author who “came out” as gay (Mel White), would not set well - especially when he called for “grace.” To his surprise, What's So Amazing About Grace became his best-seller. Today, 25 years later, Philip and his publishers agree. The need to apprehend and exhibit grace is greater today than ever in our polarized world. After making some revisions - mainly updates - the book has been released. Ken welcomes back one of his favorite guests. After reminiscing over some good times together, they talk about the book. Better - they talk about grace. Amazing grace. Yancey shares his growing-up years -  the racism that dominated his church, his neighborhood, and his Southern state (Georgia). They talk about his friendship with Bill Clinton, who read his books and regularly met with Philip's friends, Tony Campolo and Gordon McDonald. They explore his friendship with Mel White, who for years was the ghostwriter for high-profile evangelical leaders: Francis Schaeffer, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Oliver North, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, W.A. Criswell and Jerry Falwell and more. After years of depression, hiding, reparative therapy, and self-loathing, Mel came to terms with his identity. Philip was there; dispensing grace.Back in the 90's, PBS's Bill Moyers produced a documentary - Amazing Grace - that beloved hymn. Yancey was moved by that hour long exploration of the hymn's universal appeal. Moyers tells the story of the writer, John Newton, a brutal slave trader, who wrote the words: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” Yancey agrees, Newton was indeed a wretch. By grace, he ultimately became a fervent abolitionist. That's what grace can do.What's So Amazing About Grace? (Revised and Updated) On AmazonSHOW NOTES | Become a Patron | Ken's SubstackSupport the Show.

5 And Joshua said to the people, "Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders among you.".   If the Book of Joshua teaches us one thing, it is that we must learn to live by faith everyday if we are to live victorious and exciting Christian lives! I will never forget arriving at Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971, shortly after my salvation experience, and attending Thomas Road Baptist Church. Dr. Jerry Falwell had a daily radio broadcast and weekly television program called “The Old Time Gospel Hour”. Everyday the program began with Doug Oldham singing, “We've Come This Far by Faith”! Honestly those four years of college were some of the most exciting years of my life as I observed Dr. Falwell teach us by his example what it means to trust and obey the Lord and to live by faith!   Unbelief says, "Let's go back to where it's safe"; but faith says, "Let's go forward to where God is working" (see Num. 14:1-4). Forty years before, Joshua and Caleb had assured the Jews, "Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it." That's faith! But the people said, "We are not able!" That's unbelief, and it cost the nation forty years of discipline in the wilderness (see Num. 13:26-33). "And this is the victory that has overcome the world—your faith" (1 John 5:4).   One of the joys of my Christian life has been the study of Christian biography, the lives of the men and women whom God has used, and is using, to challenge the church and change the world. The Christians I've read about were all different in their backgrounds, their training, their personalities, and their ways of serving God; but they had one thing in common: They all believed God's promises and did what He told them to do. They were men and women of faith, and God honored them because they believed His Word.   God hasn't changed, and the principle of faith hasn't changed. What seems to have changed is the attitude of God's people: We no longer believe God and act by faith in His promises. His promises never fail (Josh. 21:45; 23:14; 1 Kings 8:56), but we can fail to live by the grace of God and not enter into all that He has promised for us (Heb. 3:7-19; 12:15). God has "brought us out that He might bring us in," but too often we fail to "enter in because of unbelief" (Heb. 3:19). In Joshua 3 and 4, God illustrates for us three essentials for moving ahead by faith and claiming all that He has for us: the Word of faith, the walk of faith, and the witness of faith.   First, we find that God has given us the Word of faith (Josh. 3:1-13). As the nation waited by the Jordan River, the people must have wondered what Joshua planned to do. He certainly wouldn't ask them to swim the river or ford it, because the river was at flood stage (3:15). They couldn't construct enough boats or rafts to transport more than a million people over the water to the other side. Besides, that approach would make them perfect targets for their enemies. What would their new leader do?   Like Moses before him, Joshua received his orders from the Lord, and he obeyed them by faith. "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Rom. 10:17). It has been well said that faith is not believing in spite of evidence but obeying in spite of consequence. When you read Hebrews 11, the great "faith chapter" of Scripture, you discover that the people mentioned there all did something because they believed God. Their faith wasn't a passive feeling; it was an active force. Because Abraham believed God, he left Ur and headed for Canaan. Because Moses believed God, he defied the gods of Egypt and led the Jews to freedom. Because Gideon believed God, he led a small band of Jews to defeat the huge Midianite army. Living faith always leads to action. "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also" (James 2:26).   What step of faith is the Lord leading you to take today?   God bless!

For the past several days we have been looking at how God encouraged His servant Joshua to lead the people of Israel to cross the Jordan River and conquer the Promise Land. In verses 1-9, God gave Joshua a commission, gave him His promises, gave him His Word, and gave him His command to go! Every day in our spiritual journey we face new challenges, problems, and issues and we need to be encouraged too!   I will never forget in my four years at Lynchburg Baptist College (1971-1975), now Liberty University, how often that Dr. Jerry Falwell spoke on the subject of discouragement. He knew this new generation of church leaders that he was mentoring and preparing for ministry would be tempted to quit as they faced the hardships of ministry. Dr. Falwell would often say that the devil's best tool to keep a Christian from serving is discouragement. He would go on to say, “God can't use a discouraged Christian”. The quote I really remember was: "A man's greatness is measured not by his talent or his wealth, but by what it takes to discourage him."   It is amazing that fifty years later America is facing a similar crisis to what we were facing in the late 60's and early 70's. And if there was ever a time in our history that believers need to rise up, speak up, and deal will the terrible evils that are destroying our great nation, it is today! We need to be encouraged to remember that “The Battle is the LORD's”, and He will enable us and empower us to be victorious over all our enemies!   Joshua had been encouraged by the LORD and now he sought to encourage his leaders (vv. 10-15). The nation of Israel was so organized that Moses could quickly communicate with the people through his officers who formed a chain of command (Deut. 1:15). Moses didn't assemble the leaders to ask for their advice but to give them God's orders. There are times when leaders must consult with their officers, but this was not one of them. God had spoken, His will was clear, and the nation had to be ready to obey.   Forty years before, at Kadesh Barnea, the nation had known the will of God but refused to obey it (Num. 13). Why? Because they believed the report of the ten spies instead of believing the commandment of God and obeying by faith. Had they listened to Caleb and Joshua—the minority report—they would have spared themselves those difficult years of wandering in the wilderness. There is a place in Christian service for godly counsel, but a committee report is no substitute for the clear commandment of God.   Instead of the command to prepare food, you would have expected Joshua to say, "Prepare boats or start building a bridge, so we can cross the Jordan River." Joshua didn't try to second-guess God and work things out for himself. He knew that the God who opened the Red Sea could also open the Jordan River. He and Caleb had been present when God delivered the nation from Egypt, and they had confidence that God would work on their behalf again.   Though he trusted God for a miracle, Joshua still had to prepare for the everyday necessities of life. Each family and clan had to provide its own food. It was important that the people stayed strong because they were about to begin a series of battles for possession of their Promised Land.   Note that Joshua's words to his leaders were words of faith and encouragement. "You shall pass over! You shall possess the land! The Lord will give it to you!" Joshua had made a similar speech forty years before, but that generation of leaders wouldn't listen. Now that generation was dead, and the new generation was ready to believe God and conquer the land.   Caleb and Joshua were the oldest men in the camp, between 60 and 70 years of age, and yet they were enthusiastic about trusting God and entering the land. It isn't a matter of age; it's a matter of faith; and faith comes from meditating on the Word of God (Joshua 1:8; Romans 10:17).   Look up!!!!! God is still on His throne and be encouraged today!   God bless!

When Frank Farian first laid eyes on Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan, he saw everything he wasn't. They were handsome, young, and Black. But Frank had something they didn't. He had power.So, Frank offered them a devil's bargain. Almost overnight, Milli Vanilli's debut album went five times platinum and scored a Grammy nomination. But when the lie at the center of their success started to unravel, Rob and Fab would discover the hard way the difference between star power and real power.From Wondery, Blame It on the Fame is a story about the lie that shot to #1 and what it cost to tell the truth. Hosted by Amanda Seales.Listen early and ad-free exclusively on Wondery+: Wondery.fm/BIOTF_MVSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jim Bakker, and his wife, Tammy Faye, revolutionized tele-evangelism in the 1970s and 1980s. Their PTL Club, was, at it's height, pulling in millions a WEEK in donations to support their cause. But their cause was a lie. Jim was not who he claimed to be, and financial and sexual improprieties would send him to prison... before he got out and started running his scam all over again. Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/VhHZaIOtbm8Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious Private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. And you get the download link for my secret standup album, Feel the Heat.

To anyone who grew up in the 2000s, Martha Stewart is probably more famous for going to jail than for her pumpkin pie. But there's so much more to her story. And her saga lets us crack into the value of women's work, the shifting nature of celebrity over the 2000s, and the most American scam of all: obscene wealth. Scamfluencers is a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away.You're about to hear a preview of Scamfluencers. Follow Scamfluencers wherever you get your podcasts, or at wondery.fm/scamfluencers-marthastewart.For more deep dive and daily business content listen to Wondery– the destination for business podcasts. With shows like How I Built This, Business Wars, The Best One Yet, Business Movers and many more, Wondery Means Business.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

To hear the entirety of "Cork Board Church of the Paranoiacost" Sermons 2.A & 2.B, subscribe to the PPM Patreon: patreon.com/ParaPowerMapping “When my steps were washed with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil!” —JOB 29:6 Brothers, sisters, nonbinary siblings... Welcome back to the Cork Board Church of the Paranoaicost. We resume our series of anti-Prosperity Gospel, anti-Z*onist sermons today, this time using scriptural commentary on the Book of Job as a launchpad for resuming our investigation into the tragic, deep event we have dubbed the Lakewood False Flag. Over Sermons 2.A & 2.B, we zero in on a heretofore unrecognized angle for decrypting the shooting at Joel Osteen's refurbished auditorium—namely the influence that the Houston oil industry & Wildcat Christianity have exerted on the Osteen dynasty, and the distinct possibility that Houston evangelical wildcatters who use scripture in this bibliomantic fashion to try & divine fossil fuels in the Holy Land may serve as an integral link b/w the Osteen's & the Z***ist political elite. In this episode, we begin w/ our exegesis of the Book of Job, unpacking its anti-Prosperity Gospel themes of theodicy and laying out the pervasive mining, mineral, & oil (yes, oil) language that litters its pages. The Book of Job as cyclical, boom bust cycle. We talk the downfalls of televangelists Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, & televangelist spawn Jerry Falwell, Jr thru cuckolding & prostitution scandals. We take a stab at how Joel & John Osteen might try to spin the Book of Job (I've since confirmed, and I was right on the money). We touch on Jerry Falwell's tight relationship w/ Menachem Begin. We lay out some of the central themes of this two parter, including sentient oil & the organizing principle of the coming inquiry, namely the wonderment—Is the history of the Houston oil industry simply the economic & place-based backdrop to the Lakewood False Flag... Or is it possible that Texan oil concerns & various multinat'l oil production companies & Houston based exploration outfits could have had more of a direct hand in the tragic event, or at the least benefited in some way? We introduce a Houston oilman dynasty, the scion of which linked John Osteen up w/ Demos Shakarian & the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship Int'l... And we began to assemble some primary & secondary evidence about said scion Andy SoRelle's scripturally-inspired prospecting in the Promised Land. From there, we break down further evidence regarding the susness of purported Lakewood "shooter" Genesse Moreno's background, including new revelations: the fact her MIL Rabbi claims she was born in Qatar & was a practicing Muslim at the time of her marriage (which is highly convenient for the Z**nist, "anti-terrorist" narratives that this event is being used to reinforce); how this doesn't seem to gel w/ her membership at Lakewood Church, which we finally confirm in this part; her immigration from El Salvador to the US; her arrest history; affidavits from the divorce & custody disputes b/w her & her pedophile husband (including accusations of abuse from both sides); her pathological use of pseudonyms, fake names, & forging of documents (which could simply be proof she was trying to avoid deportation or could hint at something more... along espionage or organized crime lines); the fact that she was apparently involuntarily hospitalized FOUR TIMES under a fake name, per her MIL (which could be evidence that she was programmed); her history of substance abuse, & much more... All the while, illustrating how Genesse seems to have never received a fair shake in life, how her life was a string of tragedies, tumbling down into increasingly deeper rock bottoms, & how her hardship arguably outweighs Job's momentary trial by fire, whom God ultimately granted a reprieve. Songs: | Jerry Reed - "The Crude Oil Blues" | | Freddie King - "Texas Oil" | | Jerry McKinney on the Hammond | | Johnny Cash - "Roughneck" |

This week on The Hamilton Review Podcast, we are honored to welcome author and businessman Mark DeMoss BACK to the show for the second conversation in a two part series. In this conversation, we continue to dig deep into "The Little Red Book of Wisdom." Mark DeMoss has been a public relations executive for four decades. He founded DeMoss in 1991, an Atlanta-based public relations firm, which he led for 28 years before closing it in 2019. DeMoss was the largest public relations firm in the country representing faith-based organizations and causes exclusively. Prior to starting his firm, DeMoss spent eight years as public relations chief and spokesperson for Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr. Serving mostly non-profit organizations with combined annual revenues approaching $2 billion—and several Christian-owned for-profit companies with revenues in excess of $15 billion, DeMoss provided a range of public relations services including strategic counsel, media relations, advocacy, crisis management/communications, branding, marketing, and advertising to some 200 organizations around the world. Since closing his firm, Mark is providing strategic counsel in the areas of issues management, crisis management and communications, reputation management and public relations. Mark's book, The Little Red Book of Wisdom, was published by Thomas Nelson in 2007 and re-released in 2011. Having sold more than 100,000 copies, an updated and expanded edition was published in 2023. In 2009 he founded The Civility Project, a bi-partisan effort promoting civility in the public square, which he operated for two years before dissolving it. He also served as a senior advisor to Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012. Mark is one of seven children and was born and raised outside Philadelphia, Pa. He graduated from Liberty University with a degree in Political Science. He and his wife April have three married children and are expecting their sixth grandchild. Mark and April attend Passion City Church in Atlanta. How to contact Mark DeMoss: Mark DeMoss website How to contact Dr. Bob: Dr. Bob on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChztMVtPCLJkiXvv7H5tpDQ Dr. Bob on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drroberthamilton/ Dr. Bob on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bob.hamilton.1656 Dr. Bob's Seven Secrets Of The Newborn website: https://7secretsofthenewborn.com/ Dr. Bob's website: https://roberthamiltonmd.com/ Pacific Ocean Pediatrics: http://www.pacificoceanpediatrics.com/

This week on The Hamilton Review Podcast, we are honored to welcome Mark DeMoss to the show. In the first of a two part series, Mark shares with us the details of his long time career as the founder of America's largest Christian public relations firm, his personal life as a husband, father and grandfather and the genesis of his book, "The Little Red Book of Wisdom." A must listen conversation friends! So compelling, that Mark will be back on the show next week for part two of the discussion. Mark DeMoss has been a public relations executive for four decades. He founded DeMoss in 1991, an Atlanta-based public relations firm, which he led for 28 years before closing it in 2019. DeMoss was the largest public relations firm in the country representing faith-based organizations and causes exclusively. Prior to starting his firm, DeMoss spent eight years as public relations chief and spokesperson for Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr. Serving mostly non-profit organizations with combined annual revenues approaching $2 billion—and several Christian-owned for-profit companies with revenues in excess of $15 billion, DeMoss provided a range of public relations services including strategic counsel, media relations, advocacy, crisis management/communications, branding, marketing, and advertising to some 200 organizations around the world. Since closing his firm, Mark is providing strategic counsel in the areas of issues management, crisis management and communications, reputation management and public relations. Mark's book, The Little Red Book of Wisdom, was published by Thomas Nelson in 2007 and re-released in 2011. Having sold more than 100,000 copies, an updated and expanded edition was published in 2023. In 2009 he founded The Civility Project, a bi-partisan effort promoting civility in the public square, which he operated for two years before dissolving it. He also served as a senior advisor to Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012. Mark is one of seven children and was born and raised outside Philadelphia, Pa. He graduated from Liberty University with a degree in Political Science. He and his wife April have three married children and are expecting their sixth grandchild. Mark and April attend Passion City Church in Atlanta. How to contact Mark DeMoss: Mark DeMoss website How to contact Dr. Bob: Dr. Bob on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChztMVtPCLJkiXvv7H5tpDQ Dr. Bob on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drroberthamilton/ Dr. Bob on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bob.hamilton.1656 Dr. Bob's Seven Secrets Of The Newborn website: https://7secretsofthenewborn.com/ Dr. Bob's website: https://roberthamiltonmd.com/ Pacific Ocean Pediatrics: http://www.pacificoceanpediatrics.com/

In the US, hip hop reigns as the genre that influences every aspect of our culture. From fashion to film, the dominance of this prolific sound can be traced back to one year - 1988.From Public Enemy to The Fresh Prince, these twelve months gave rise to the superstars and styles that still resonate in songs released today. Through the unique perspective and personal experiences of Will Smith, Class of '88 reveals the milestone moments, albums and artists that inspired a sonic evolution and secured 1988 as hip hop's most important year. Rich with archival material, new interviews with hip hop's biggest stars, and personal recollections from Will himself, Class of '88 delivers fresh untold stories from the year that hip hop overcame the forces that were hell bent on blocking its rise.This series features interviews and stories from the revolutionary Artists that impacted that year and many more afterwards, including: Queen Latifah, Jazzy Jeff, DMC, Salt-N-Pepa, Chuck D, Fab Five Freddy, Rakim, Slick Rick, DJ Red Alert, and Rick Rubin.Listen to Class of '88 wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge the entire series early and ad-free with Wondery+.Listen to Class of ‘88: Wondery.fm/Class88See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For real life royals, the crown jewels can be more like shiny handcuffs. There are expectations and rules – and if you break them, the consequences are big, and very public. And no, we're not just talking about Harry and Meghan. There are royal families and wild royal tales from around the world and throughout history that you have never heard before.From Wondery comes the latest from your In God We Lust co-hosts Brooke and Aricia, EVEN THE ROYALS. We'll you inside the cloistered world of royal families, past and present, where wealth and status often come at the expense of your freedom – and maybe even your life. In these stories, very human emotions, like jealousy, love, disgust, have the power to reshape the world. This is just a preview of Even the Royals. Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts, or at wondery.fm/eventheroyals.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Guest Bios Show Transcript How did loving your enemies—a command of Jesus—suddenly become a sign that you're “woke”? And why is “owning the libs” now the answer to “What would Jesus do?”  On this edition of The Roys Report, bestselling author and journalist Tim Alberta joins host Julie Roys to explore a disturbing phenomenon in American evangelicalism. Though once evangelicals understood that the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man were separate, now the two are being combined into an unholy mix. And sadly, for millions of conservative Christians, America is their kingdom—and proper adherence to their political ideology is their litmus test for Christian orthodoxy! On this podcast, you'll hear Julie's compelling conversation with Tim, exploring how evangelicals got into this mess—and if, and how, we can get ourselves out. Yet Tim doesn't speak as an outside critic passing judgment, but as a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor.  Tim spent years sifting through the wreckage of American evangelicalism, interviewing pastors, evangelical/political activists, congregants, and scholars. The result is his new book, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory, which tells story after illuminating story of major players and institutions within the evangelical movement that have succumbed to political idolatry.  One example is Liberty University, founded in 1971 by Jerry Falwell Sr. Recent headlines have exposed how Senior's now-disgraced son, Jerry Falwell, Jr., made Liberty into a far-right, culture warring, money-making powerhouse. But is this mixing of the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man a corruption of Senior's vision—or, is it the culmination of it? And what does it say that everyone—the administration, board, and Liberty supporters—were all fine with it, as long as the money was coming in?  Tim also shares stunning admissions he got during one-on-one interviews with major evangelical/political figures, like Robert Jeffress and Ralph Reed. In private, these men confessed that they know mixing political advocacy with the gospel is misleading and wrong. Yet, as Tim documents, these men keep doing it! Yet Tim also offers stories of hope—like his chapter on Rev. Dr. John Dickson, who teaches at the flagship evangelical school, Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. In it, Tim explains why Dickson has become a missionary to America—and how Christians can lose the culture wars yet live joyfully and winsomely among unbelievers. Tim's book also includes a chapter on exposing abuse and corruption, featuring Rachel Denhollander's work and our work at The Roys Report. On the podcast, we discuss why our reporting is so important and why this chapter is Tim's mother's favorite! This is such an important podcast for Christians wanting to remain true to their calling to worship God first and foremost, rather than succumb to political idolatry.  Guests Tim Alberta Tim Alberta is a staff writer for The Atlantic and has written for dozens of other publications, including the Wall Street Journal and National Review. He is the author of The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism and the New York Times bestseller American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump. He lives in southeast Michigan with his wife and three sons. Show Transcript SPEAKERS TIM ALBERTA, Julie Roys Julie Roys  00:04 How did loving your enemies, a command of Jesus, suddenly become a sign that you're woke? And why is owning the libs now the answer to what would Jesus do? Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I'm Julie Roys and joining me on this podcast is New York Times bestselling author Tim Alberta, whose latest book explores what happened to American evangelicalism. Decades ago, Americans viewed evangelicalism favorably. In 1976, author and historian Gary Wills called evangelicalism, the major religious force in America, both in numbers and an impact. And leading evangelical thinkers claimed that evangelicalism could no longer be regarded as reactionary but was vigorously and sometimes creatively speaking to the needs of the contemporary world. Fast forward to today and evangelicalism has become synonymous with Donald Trump, a thrice married vulgar opportunist who said he doesn't need to repent or ask for forgiveness. A recent poll by Pew Research found that the only religious group that views evangelicals favorably are evangelicals. And as Tim Alberta notes in his book in 1991 90% of Americans identified as Christians, but today, only 63% do. What happened to this once vibrant movement? And can it be saved, or has it passed beyond the point of no return? Un his new book, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory. Tim Alberta does a masterful job of exploring these questions, but he doesn't do it as an outside critic passing judgment. But as a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor. I found Tim's book eye opening on many levels, and I'm so excited to share this interview with you. Julie Roys  01:47 But before I do, I want to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you're looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience, Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities, and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you're looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That's because the owners there Dan and Kurt Marquardt, are men of integrity, to check them out, just go to BUYACAR123.COM. Julie Roys  02:51 Well, again, joining me is Tim Alberta, a staff writer for The Atlantic and the former chief political correspondent for Politico. Tim also is the author of The New York Times best seller American Carnage on the Frontlines of the Republican Civil War, and the Rise of President Trump. And his latest book, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory, explores American evangelicals in an age of extremism. So, Tim, welcome. It is just such a pleasure to be with you again. TIM ALBERTA  03:16 Yes, Julie, it is. It's great to catch up with you and come sort of full circle from where we were a couple of years ago talking about all of this. Julie Roys  03:24 That's right. We spent a couple of well, more than a couple of hours. I think it was supposed to be like maybe an hour and a half, and we got so into our discussion. I think we closed down one coffee shop and went to another. TIM ALBERTA  03:35 We did. I hijacked your whole day. Julie Roys  03:38 Oh, it was fantastic. And so, encouraging to me, but always fun to talk to a fellow journalist with similar convictions. And I was excited about this book when we had our discussion. I'm so honored, I have to say, you know, to get the galley of the book, and I figured because we spent so much time that I'd be in it, but you know, just what you wrote, and the way that you captured some things just so honored to be featured in a chapter with Rachel den Hollander. So, thank you so much for that. I just really appreciate it. TIM ALBERTA  04:07 I should tell you that is my mother's favorite chapter of the book. Oh, for what it's worth, because she's big into strong feminine Christian leadership. And so, she was particularly smitten with you and with Rachel. So, I thought you should know that. Julie Roys  04:21 Oh, wow. Well, I'm honored. I really am. And I should mention that we are offering your book as a premium to anybody who gives $50 or more to The Roys Report in this month. Again, this is just a way that you're able to support the work that we do, but also get this fantastic book. Just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE if you're able to help us out and continue the work that we do, and also get what could be a great Christmas present for somebody or for yourself. So anyway, encourage you to do that. Well, Tim, as I mentioned in the open, you're not writing this book as sort of an outsider critiquing evangelicalism. You grew up evangelical, your dad was an evangelical pastor. And oddly enough, it was at your dad's funeral in 2019, that something sort of awakened you to the severity of what's happening right now within evangelicalism. Tell us a bit about that story. TIM ALBERTA  05:17 Yeah, so my dad, Reverend Richard Alberta, was an amazing, amazing guy. We were very close. And he had a pretty crazy come to Jesus story himself where he was actually kind of a hotshot New York finance guy. And my mom was kind of a hotshot, young journalist with ABC Radio. They lived in New York and my dad, despite having all of this worldly material success, just felt this emptiness. And he was an atheist. He grew up in an unbelieving home. And he, one day stumbled into this church in the Hudson Valley, and heard the gospel and he gave his life to Christ. And it was already a pretty dramatic conversion because he became completely unrecognizable to people around him, including my mom, who was not yet a Christian. Everybody who knew him just thought he was sort of losing it. Suddenly, he's waking up at four in the morning to read his Bible and meditate in prayer for hours. And they're all like, what is this guy doing? And then pretty soon after that, he feels the Lord calling him to ministry. And now they all think he's like certifiable, right? You know, but he follows the Lord's calling. And, you know, he and my mom who became a Christian, they sell all the possessions so he can go to seminary, and they basically they give up this pretty lavish lifestyle they'd had. And for the next like, 20 years, they just work in small churches and live on food stamps and serve the Lord that way. And then when I come along, some years later, we eventually settle in Brighton, which is a suburb of Detroit. And my dad builds this kind of small startup church there into kind of a mega church. And that was my home. It was my community. It was my whole life, really. My mom was on the staff there at the church as well. It was called Cornerstone Evangelical Presbyterian Church. I was raised physically, literally, inside of that church. TIM ALBERTA  07:11 And so, my dad dies a few years back. And when I came back to the church for the funeral, because of the work I've done in politics, and because I had just recently written this book about Trumpism and his takeover of the Republican Party, I was kind of in the crosshairs of right-wing media at that time, because of the book. And so, at the funeral or at the wake during the visitation, I had a bunch of people at the church kind of confronting me and wanting to argue about politics and about Trump and asking me if I was still a Christian and how I could be criticizing him this way. And it was pretty ugly. And as you said, sort of a wakeup call. Julie Roys  07:52 Yeah. And it is something isn't it when you don't support these people that certain evangelicalism believe you have to your, you know, I've got people praying for my salvation, because I've taken on John MacArthur, you know, It's craziness. But there is this tribalism now, within evangelicalism, and it's probably at its very worst when it comes to former President Trump and what he typified. It's interesting to me, you know, as I look at the evangelical movement, you know, I was a card-carrying conservative right? Before Trump came along, and then something really happened. And I feel like I was going back and reading a little bit of Chuck Colson's, Kingdoms in Conflict. Do you remember that book? TIM ALBERTA  08:34 I do. Yeah. Julie Roys  08:35 I mean, he was pretty even handed. I mean, he's very clear in there that being in the kingdom of heaven means it's not about ruling others, it's about being under God's rule. And yet something has tripped, where we're not saying that anymore. We're really become about this whole Dominionism. And he talks about the cultural mandate and things like that, but it's from a very, very different perspective. So here we are dealing with all of this Christian nationalism, and according to your book, a lot of this began, and it's funny because now, Lynchburg Virginia has become synonymous with the Falwell's and with Liberty University. But I've got to say, growing up in the 80s, you know, I knew about the Moral Majority, and some of that, but it just wasn't that big to me. And yet it has grown and grown, and I guess I wasn't even aware of the influence it had. But talk about how a lot of this has its roots really there, in Lynchburg, Virginia, and with what Jerry Falwell Senior. started in, like the late 70s, early 80s. TIM ALBERTA  09:42 Sure, in the context of the American church experience, it is Lynchburg, Virginia. It is the mid-1970s. And it is Jerry Falwell Senior who was a brilliant businessman who, you know, this guy could sell anyone on anything, and he was kind of a master entrepreneur, also a master manipulator. And what Falwell Senior. effectively did, he had already built out Thomas Road Baptist Church into a massive congregation. And then he had tapped into the relatively new medium of television to broadcast his sermons around the country. At one point, he became the single most telecasted program in the entire country. And so, he's reaching millions of people and he's raising a lot of money. This is pretty cutting-edge stuff at the time, but he's building out a mailing list with like more than 10 million names on it, and they are raking in money. So, then he already has his church. But Falwell, Senior is really almost the early archetype of the Christian nationalist. He believes that sort of fighting for God and fighting for America is one in the same and that if America falls, then almost God's kingdom on earth will fall. And so he recognizes that he needs something more than a church; that he needs kind of a cultural stronghold. So, he does two things. First, he takes this little Baptist College Lynchburg Baptist College, and at the time of the bicentennial in 1976, he rebrands it to Liberty University, and he changes the colors from green and gold to red, white, and blue. And basically, they do this whole patriotic rebranding exercise, which is aimed at tapping into not only patriotism in the church, but also tapping into the percolating low simmering at the time, fear in the church and grievance in the church. This sense that, you know, abortion is now legal. Pornography is prevalent, the drug culture is out of control. Prayer is banned in public schools. Secularism is on the march and they're coming for us like they are coming for Christianity in America. And so, Jerry Falwell turns Liberty University into this cause, and then piggybacks onto that with this new organization, The Moral Majority. So suddenly, he's got these three cogs. And he builds out this machine, Falwell Senior does, and it is incredibly effective. They mobilize 10s of millions of voters and sort of bring them under this banner of not just, you know, Christianity, not just following Jesus, but a very particular type of Christianity, a sort of subculture of a subculture. And in many ways, those seeds planted by Falwell 50 years ago, we are harvesting them now. And what we are dealing with, you know, the fracturing of the modern evangelical movement, I think you can trace it directly back to that period. Julie Roys  12:36 It's so interesting, because I think when you talk about Jerry Falwell Senior, and I've talked to a lot of people from Liberty, I've done a lot of reporting about Liberty. And a lot of folks look very wistfully back to the early days, and these are good people, you know, I've talked extensively to them. They're really good people, sincere believers. They look at what's happened to Liberty, and they're like, this isn't Senior. Like Senior loved the Lord and he really was sincere in his walk with the Lord and Junior just was like, we don't know how Junior happened, right? I mean, that's how they often talk about it. I'm going to have you come back to that, because I think what you present is a very, very different picture and honestly, one that I've begun to suspect myself. But let's talk about what happens with you know, Senior dies pretty abruptly right of a heart attack. And then Jerry Falwell, Junior, who is the lawyer, right? He takes over not Jonathan Falwell, who's the pastor, much more of the spiritual leader, but Jerry Falwell, Junior takes over. Very clearly, I'm not a spiritual leader. I mean, he really assued that whole entire title. But when he takes over, despite all the success that his dad had, the school was on the brink of bankruptcy at this point, right? And he kind of turns it around. 13:57 So, Falwell, Junior. is the yes, the UVA trained lawyer, businessman, real estate developer, who is a smart guy. He knows business. And he had really kept the church and organized religion at arm's length. His younger brother Jonathan was the preacher in the family. But Jerry Junior, he'd gone to Liberty for his undergraduate studies. And he says that, you know, he believes in the teachings of Jesus but rejects a lot of the other stuff that comes with it, including Liberty itself. Jerry Junior never wanted to really be a part of Liberty. And suddenly as he's working in the private sector, the school is about to go under. Jerry Senior has really badly mismanaged the finances and he tells his son that basically the school is on the brink of insolvency. And so, Jerry Junior kind of reluctantly comes aboard and he helps to stabilize everything, and he makes a lot of drastic cuts to the different programs and kind of rejiggers the whole balance sheet operation. And he saves Liberty in a lot of ways that, you know, his father gave him credit for that. And it's interesting though, Julie, that when Jerry Falwell senior dies, it's not an accident that Jerry Junior. takes over. That was the plan of succession. It's notable that here is Jerry Falwell senior, who is both businessman and culture warrior, but also a preacher. And he's got these two sons that exemplify one of each, right? He's got the son who's a preacher. And he's got the other son who's the kind of culture warrior businessman. And he appoints the latter to take over Liberty after he's gone. And that in and of itself, I think, speaks volumes. And then more to the point, Jerry Junior, as you said, he comes in and he tells anybody who will listen, look, I'm not a religious leader, I'm not here charged with the spiritual well-being of this school. I'm here to turn us into a powerhouse, I'm here to turn us into a highly profitable, highly influential organization that can sort of, you know, push back against the forces of secularism in the left in this country. But he doesn't, to his credit, I suppose. Falwell Junior, he doesn't pretend that he's something that he's not. And the irony of it all, Julie is that everybody was fine with it. They were fine with it. Right? They were, as you know, when the money was coming in, and the buildings were going up at a rapid clip, and the endowment was bulging, everybody was fine with it. Because he's Jerry Senior's namesake, and he's a Falwell, and the school is doing great. Clearly God is blessing this project. So, what's not to like? Julie Roys  16:47 Well, and you say everyone was fine with it. And it's true on a public face, everyone was fine with it. I will say I started hearing from a lot of people who weren't fine with it from I mean, obviously the Jane DOE's and now we know about who were victims of sexual assault, and their cases got just horribly mismanaged. In fact, not even reported. And you know, now we have the Department of Education looking into how badly Liberty bungled these cases and violated Title Nine mandates, and they could face like a 30 some million dollar fine, which could be one of the largest ever. So, this was percolating under the surface, but nobody knew about it at the time. And I also talked to a lot of professors who were like, the way this place is being run is abysmal. There's nothing Christian about it. The way the administration handles things, there's nothing Christian about it. And we know too, from some of the people you interviewed, it was less like a religious institution and more like a mafia like a mob boss. Like Jerry turned into I think Jerry is very, he's very likable when you meet him. I mean, obviously very socially gifted, even though he's an introvert. He seems like this kind of your good old boy that, you know, everybody likes. But he began to become very controlling, and lock that place down where Jerry ruled with really an iron fist. And by the time some of the stuff started coming out about him, that place I mean, am I right, that it was a lot less like a Christian institution a lot more like the organized crime syndicate? TIM ALBERTA  18:24 Yeah, well, and listen like this is so Julie. It's funny, because obviously, you and I are in the same line of work. We're coming at this from pretty similar worldviews, and we're having similar conversations, with some of the same people. And you're exactly right when they're using the term family business. You know, Liberty is a family business. They're not just talking about like the Falwell family. There's, you know, the implication there is like very clearly that there is almost a mafioso-esque quality to, you don't cross the Falwell's, the power is concentrated in a few hands here. If you get a seat at the table, you are just lucky to be there and you nod and you know, at one point, I think I make sort of an offhand smart aleck comparison to like the North Korean military where, you know, you stand and salute the dear leader and don't dare step out of line. And of course, that's tragic on a number of levels, one of them being that Liberty has been filled over the years with really good and godly students and good and godly professors who are there for the right reasons. Some of these professors who started to really see the rot from the inside., they chose to stick around because on the one hand, they could see the success around them. The kind of observable material success that you know that the campus is absolutely stunning. Maybe God is doing something really marvelous here and I just have to kind of see my way through this part of it. But I also think that there's a level of devotion, and a feeling for some of these people that they wanted to help right the ship, that they wanted to be a part of the solution. And obviously, those are some of the characters I talk to in the book who now have finally gotten to a breaking point where they say, you know what? I just can't do it anymore. And not only can I not do it anymore, but the world needs to know, the whistle needs to be blown here that like this is not okay. Julie Roys  20:21 What does it say about evangelicalism, Tim, that when the money was coming in, and the money still is coming in, that everybody was okay with how godless this place was? And anybody that was in administration knew and saw it. The Board, who it's astounding to me that when Jerry Falwell Junior, got embroiled in this big sex scandal, and he gets fired, that Jerry Prevo takes over. And we think that that is a change of the guard. This was the man who was the chairman of the board the whole time that Jerry was doing all of this stuff. It's shocking to me, but yet I see it so much in so many different Christian organizations. And so, what is it about us that we're okay with these things, with really what is just absolute rampant hypocrisy? TIM ALBERTA  21:15 I'm afraid that in many ways, we're actually worse than some of those secular institutions. Because of this idea of the prosperity gospel, it's almost become like this proper noun. And so, people feel like well, those are those people are crazy. I'm not one of them, I'm not a part of that, right? But the idea inherent to the prosperity gospel, right is that, well, if you give to the Lord, and if you serve the Lord, if you follow the Lord, then you will be blessed. But that is so conveniently and so easily reverse engineered by a lot of Christians, either at a conscious or at a subconscious level, where when you see any sort of material success around you, you then say, well, clearly, I'm blessed. Clearly, the Lord is blessing this project. And that creates a kind of a permission structure, I think, for a lot of us to then turn a blind eye to things that are very obviously wrong, or kind of downplay things that you otherwise would never downplay. And whether that's an individual church congregation, whether that's a big college campus, whether it's the President of the United States, this can manifest in a lot of different ways. It's so much based on that kind of material thinking that I think we are particularly vulnerable, particularly susceptible to it here in the American church. I think the saddest part about it is that many of us just don't see it, or maybe don't want to see it. I don't know. Julie Roys  22:44 Your book has a stunning quote, stunning quote by a former professor, Dr. Aaron Warner. And he says, and I quote, Jerry, Senior, was always a bit of a scoundrel, and Jerry Junior, perfected the art of using fear and hatred as a growth strategy. Christianity happens to be the thing that they used to build a multibillion-dollar institution. It could have been anything else. It could have been moonshine, but they chose Christianity. And it's gained them a lot of power and a lot of money; the two things these people truly worship. You talked to a lot of people, interviewed a lot of people at Liberty. Is that characterization fair? Or do you think it's a little too harsh? TIM ALBERTA  23:23 It's harsh, that's for sure. It might contain some traces of hyperbole. But I will say this, Aaron Werner is another guy who knows that institution very well. Went there as an undergraduate, has deep longstanding ties to Liberty And the stories he tells from the inside are stunning. One of the other quotes, actually, I thought it might be the one that you're going to read because it kind of runs right along in parallel to that one is from a current professor. Now, at the time of this recording, he's a current professor. My sense is that when the book releases and when this gets back to the administration that he could be dismissed and he's expecting that that will happen. But his name is Nick Olsen, and he's an English professor, very popular English professor there. Brilliant, godly young guy. And he's a legacy at Liberty. His dad was one of the first students at Liberty and a contemporary of Falwell Senior. And Nick has sort of agonized in recent years with this inheritance at Liberty and everything that he's seen and struggled with there. And he says to me, this is not quite verbatim, but he says this to me in the final chapter of the book, he says, Jerry Junior, thought that he was fulfilling his father's vision by assuing spiritual stuff and by building out this massive multibillion dollar like culture warring Republican institution. And he says, and it is heartbreaking, because that's exactly what he's done, and he did fulfill Jerry Senior's vision. And I think that piece of it, Julie is not hyperbole. I think that when you spend enough time digging through the archives and talking to people who were there in the room where it happened, so to speak, it becomes pretty self-evident. And by the way, you know, you mentioned earlier that there are people who will say, Yeah, but you know, Jerry Senior, he really loved the Lord. Yeah, well, these things aren't mutually exclusive. I mean, I'm not suggesting that he didn't love the Lord. But I'm suggesting that like many people who love the Lord, he got his priorities out of whack. And by the way, we are all susceptible to this. But it's very hard to evaluate the history of Liberty University, the decisions made there, the structure of the place and the personnel and how they've treated people and what the benchmarks have been. It's very hard to assess all of that and reach any other conclusion than the one that Nick Olsen reaches at the end of the book. Julie Roys  25:41 And yet Liberty continues to be the largest Christian university in the country. It still has this dominance, there's still a lot of people that I know sending their kids there. And it's heartbreaking to me. I mean, I just wonder at what point do we say enough, and we stand up to this? And I'm glad that people are starting to speak out. But sometimes I wonder if it's too little too late, when we have just these juggernaut organizations and it really has been a marrying of two kingdoms that should be in conflict, and we're trying to say that they can be married together the kingdom of this world, the kingdom, the political realm, and the kingdom of Christ. And Jesus never became a political leader. It's stunning to me some of these quotes that are in your book, that are just like you expect a lightning to fall out of the sky, the way that scripture and Jesus are being misrepresented. It's just so awful. Julie Roys  26:37 In your first section, though, I have to say there's always some redeeming thing in each section, which I'm like, Thank You, Lord. It's like a palate cleanser in a lot of just awful stuff. But you have this beautiful chapter. And it's on a guy, John Dixon, who I actually got to know in my reporting on Ravi Zacharias, because John used to be a speaker for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. And he was one of those who, you know, pretty early in the game as things were starting to come out, recognized that there were some lies being told by the institution he had been a part of, and he quickly made a break, and he boldly took a stand. I mean, I really respected him for that, that he didn't seem to have this Oh, fear of, if I say something, what's going to happen to me? I mean, he just said what was right, and what was what was true. And now he's at Wheaton College, which is right in my backyard. And what I love is that he's so joyfully on the losing team. You know, we've got all of these people, all these Christians out there telling us we have to be on the winning team, we got to take America back. And here's John Dixon saying, No, we're on the losing team right now. I mean, eventually, when Christ comes back, we'll be you know, he will set things right, and we'll be on the winning team. But for now, we're kind of on the losing team. And it's okay, people. So, talk about John and what we can learn from him and his example, because again, he's from Australia, which is probably about 10 or 15 years ahead of us in sort of this post Christian era that, you know, is beginning to happen here as well. Julie Roys  28:16 And that is so tough for us. I mean, it's not tough for Chinese Christians to get this, right? I mean they get it right away. Because to be a believer means you have to get rid of everything, you can't hold on to anything, you're gonna lose all your power, all your position. But I think we've been, actually it's the curse of being prosperous. And being in a country where Christians have had the majority and where it actually was a plus, probably for my parents to be believers. I think it won't be for my children. But maybe that'll be a good thing. And maybe that's precisely what the church needs. We already think we're being persecuted, which is funny. We really aren't. But we may see it. And right now, I think most of the persecution we're getting is because of what you said that we're not because we're so holy, but because we're actually worse than the world in so many different ways. And we deserve it. TIM ALBERTA  28:16 John is really one of my favorite people I've met in all of the journeys that I was on, and one of my favorite characters in the book for exactly the reasons that you mentioned there. And the fact that he is not an American is, I think, a big part of his perspective, right? But I think also, there's something deeper embedded in the American psyche, about winning, about the need to dominate. I have a funny quote somewhere else in the book from somebody who had spent years living and studying and teaching in Canada, who talks about how Canadians just want fourth place, and then when they get the bronze, they're thrilled. And in America, if you don't get the gold, you're a total loser, right? And so, there's something, you know, about the American Christian experience that's so different. And so, John, one of my favorite scenes in all of this reporting that I did was, we're sitting in the cafeteria there at Wheaton College, surrounded by the flags of the world all around us in the cafeteria. And I say, Why did you come here? Like, really? Why did you come here? And he says, like, this is my mission field now, like the US is my mission field because of this, this stuff. Everything you and I are discussing right now. He said this stuff is like so toxic and so unhealthy. And the church is caught in this terrible pattern. That, by the way, is not new. Right? You go back to Constantine, there has been this obsession with worldly power this inclination to merge two kingdoms into one. So, what we're living through here is not new, in a lot of ways. And I think John is so brilliant in kind of illuminating the appropriate Christian perspective here, which is to say that if you care so much about winning and losing, then the good news is you've already won, right? The tomb is empty, Jesus conquered death, and you believe in him. So therefore, you're already a part of the kingdom. But this place, which is meant to be ephemeral, and unimportant ultimately, and just, you know, a step among the stairs, that if your identity here is wrapped up in winning and losing, then you can't really have your identity there. And he says, ultimately, you know, we're the death and resurrection people. Like losing, and losing well, is a part of the Christian experience. TIM ALBERTA  31:24 John Dixon talks about how there's sort of this inverse relationship historically, between the amount of cultural and social and political power held by Christians in a society and the health of Christianity in that society, right? In other words, when you hold the commanding heights, the Christian influence it actually tends to be pretty weak and pretty corrupted and pretty compromised. When you are at the margins and when you are truly countercultural, the witness thrives. And we've seen that throughout history. Another favorite character of mine in the book, Brian Zahnd, who's the pastor of a church out in Missouri, he talks about how difficult it is for American Christians to really appreciate how the Bible is written from the perspective of the underdog, right? The Hebrew slaves fleeing Egypt, and the first century Christians living under a brutal Roman occupation. Like they had no power, they had no influence. And yet they were so joyful, and they were so content because they had their kingdom, right? And it does give me unease even in my own personal life, just the things I enjoy the materials, the prosperity, the comforts; can I fully appreciate the baby born in a manger? can I fully identify with the vagrant preacher from the ghettos of Nazareth? You know, it's a hard thing. Julie Roys  32:42 And here's the reality; that message, which is Christ's message really doesn't sell well in America. Having your best life now sells in America. And what we're seeing right now, and this, you know, brings me to the second section in your book dealing with power, which again, we've got to take back, America, has become sort of the mantra that we're hearing from so many of these, you know, political rights. And it has just morphed into something where, and again, I said at the outset, I used to be very much politically engaged with the conservative movement. I am not anymore because I can't stomach it and what it's become. I felt like we were being salt. But now it's about dominating and doing it by any means possible, where we just get rid of our morality. And I was always brought up to believe and I think this is what Scripture teaches, that the means is as important as the end. And so, if we achieve a righteous end through an unrighteous means, then we've lost. We've completely lost because we have given up what makes us unique, and what makes us God honoring for something that we're saying is a God honoring, you know end. But again, this is what has happened in our country. And, and what's interesting in this section that just captured my imagination. I mean, I've wondered this, like, you take a Robert Jeffress, right? This guy's not dumb. He's a smart Southern Baptist preacher, clearly a savvy guy. He has built this mega church, but the things that came out of his mouth, especially when Trump was in power, but it's still there. The things that come out of his mouth, and I think, he's got to know that this is not in line with the Gospels. He's got to see this. And yet, publicly, you wouldn't hear that. But when you met with him privately, you began to hear some doubt in there and allowing you to see a little bit of vulnerability, although it didn't seem to last all that long. But talk about that, because I'm not sensing much doubt in the masses that follow these men. But when you get them one on one, tell me what you see. TIM ALBERTA  34:50 And it's not just Robert Jeffress, Greg Locke, Greg Locke, Ralph Reed. Yeah, yeah, a lot of these guys. It's the pastor who in my hometown, grew his church tenfold by basically turning Sunday morning worship services into Fox news segments. And giving a Nazi salute to Gretchen Whitmer from his pulpit. I mean, but then you get them one on one. And you press them a little bit. I mean, you know, politely, respectfully, but you press them. Suddenly, they not only back off a little bit, but they do a little bit of like winking and nodding at you to basically say, like, you're right, I'm definitely putting on a bit of a song and dance here for the masses. But I think that they will ultimately justify it by saying, Well, yeah, but look at all these people who are coming in and look at the opportunity, we have to reach them now with the gospel? So, you know, those ends really do justify the means. I think the problem with that, as you hinted it, is but look, I mean, there's a lot of problems with it. You know, Mark 8:36 is not a rhetorical question, right? Like, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul? But I think for some of these people, some of these leaders, the thing that really grates at me and I know it grates at you, Julie, is like, they're the shepherds, they're the ones who are supposed to know better, because a lot of their flock, you know, and I'm not being condescending or patronizing when I say this, they don't necessarily know better, they are the sheep, right? They need to be shepherded. And instead of shepherding, a lot of these people have just themselves become wolves. And they become wolves for what? So that you can have a seat at the table? So that you can get on Fox News? So that you can raise some money? So that for what ultimately? You're so right, when you press them on it almost to a person, they will acknowledge at some level that what they're doing is kind of gross, and kind of anti-biblical, and then they just keep on doing it. Julie Roys  36:46 So, speak to the person who is listening. And we probably don't have a ton of these. But there may be some who are listening, who have bought this hook, line, and sinker that we do need to take America back. And Franklin Graham told us it's all for the Supreme Court justices, and we got the Supreme Court justices and Roe v. Wade was just overturned and, you know, look at what was accomplished. So, you know, politics is a dirty business, Tim. I mean, come on, if we're gonna win in politics, which, you know, we're talking about babies here, babies are being slaughtered left and right. And then, you know, some of these people would allow a baby to be born alive and kill it. You know, that's who these people are. So, I mean, come on. This is the world we live in, and we've got to fight the way that the world fights. What do you say? TIM ALBERTA  37:35 I'd say a couple of things. I think you can go round and round about Roe v. Wade, and about Trump and about Supreme Court justices. But be careful what you wish for in this space. Because the fact of the matter is that Roe v Wade fell, and the total number of abortions in this country went up. I live in Michigan, where prior to Roe v Wade falling, there were pretty tight abortion restrictions in Michigan. Now, it is the wild west. It is some of the most liberalized abortion laws in the country. And that is true in seven or eight other states that have had ballot initiatives passed since Roe v. Wade, dramatically liberalizing abortion laws, and it's going to happen in a number of other states next year. So, let's be really clear eyed and fact based when we talk about what our political involvement does and what it doesn't do. At the end of the day, if you want to win hearts and minds to stop the scourge of abortion, if you are a Christian, and you view this as your great crusade, then is voting for a candidate or putting a bumper sticker on your car, is that the way to win those hearts and minds? Because the fact is, if American evangelicals had put a fraction of the energy into the social side of abortion, of doing the hard work in the clinics, and helping the single mothers and doing the foster care that is needed to address this at its root, if they had been willing to do that over the last 50 years, my guess is that public opinion would be dramatically different as it pertains to abortion. And we wouldn't even be talking about Roe v. Wade, because the number of abortions would be so low in this country that it wouldn't even register. But we've sort of self-selected into this alternate universe where politicians are our savior, and that politics is the mechanism by which we right the wrongs in this country. And I'm sorry, but if you are citizens of another kingdom?, then you can't possibly believe that. You can't possibly believe that Donald Trump or that any other politician is the person who's going to ultimately right these great moral wrongs. But unfortunately, I think that's the trap we've fallen into. Julie Roys  39:51 You know, I used to be very involved in the prolife movement. I will say, almost all of the people that I knew when I was involved in the pro-life movement, were actually involved in reaching out to single moms and caring for them and caring for their unborn children. But I think what we've forgotten so much is that politics is downstream of culture. So, if you're losing the culture, which we clearly are to change the politics, if you've got a kid that's rebellious, a teenager who's rebellious in your home, locking down all the windows and the doors in your house, that's not going to keep your kid from sinning. What's going to keep your kid from sinning, is if you can winsomely love your child into relationship with Jesus Christ and to want to be like you and to want to adopt your values. But we've forgotten about that, we've become this, you know, Midas right. And I remember in 2016, writing a commentary, The Rise of Trump, The Fall of Evangelicalism, and I said, we may win this one, but we will lose in the long run, if we throw our convictions out the window, and we alienate everyone around us, by our you know, the way that we talk and the way that we relate to people. This is not how you win people to the Lord. That fell on, you know, really deaf ears. It actually lost me some key supporters too. But I just was stunned because I did not know who these people were that I thought believed the same way that I did and had the same values. And then I went, Wow, we are just on different planets, we really don't have that. Julie Roys  41:29 I want to look at one person, again, you have these palate cleansers within all of these sections. And one of them to me is Cal Thomas, who was very much a part of the right and so I can relate to that, because that was I mean, I used to be emceeing the banquet to raise money for you know, the political cause, or whatever it was. I don't do that anymore. Cal Thomas doesn't do that anymore. What changed Cal? TIM ALBERTA  41:58 It's so funny, Julie, because just a minute ago, when you were talking about what are the weapons of our warfare? I was thinking about Cal., because Cal for those who don't know his story, you know, he was Jerry Falwell Senior's lieutenant in the Moral Majority. And he was their spokesman for the Moral Majority. And the vice president of that organization, and, you know, was really heavily involved in the kind of crusading era of the Religious Right, he was a central figure. And then Cal really started to feel uneasy with what he was seeing around him. And he doesn't even sugarcoat it. We have this very raw conversation in the book where he talks about, you know, the corruption and the greed and the grift. And how he just couldn't justify it. He justified it for a while by saying, Well, look how many people we're reaching, and look at all this money coming in. So clearly, you know, God must be doing something here. And then he eventually just gets to a point where he says, No, this is a scam. It's just immoral. And he finally walks away. And then years later, he writes this book called Blinded by Might, where he kind of tries to atone. And he just says, Listen, I was a total believer in winning the culture war to protect Christian America, as you know, part of our duty, you know, to God's kingdom. And in fact, not only has it failed, but it has backfired spectacularly, that we have driven away so many people who need Jesus, but who won't have anything to do with us anymore, They won't even let us in the door to have a conversation because of the way we've treated them because of the way we've treated the culture. So, to your point about locking down the teenager in the house, right? Cal really eloquently and powerfully was giving voice to this when he wrote that book. And then, you know, in our interviews for this book, he's an older guy now he's 80. And he's looking back with such regret on those years and thinking about how did he in some way contribute to laying the groundwork for Trump ism as this kind of sub cult in the evangelical world. And what's most interesting to me from that whole conversation, and I said this to him, is that the more things have changed, the more they've stayed the exact same. I mean, this break that he's describing in the 1980s. And this kind of crisis of conscience that he's feeling is exactly what we're trying to address today. What I'm trying to address in the book now, which is that, listen, it doesn't have to be this way. You have a choice, right? We all have a choice. It was so incredibly unpleasant for me to write this book in a lot of ways, Julie. If I'm being totally honest, I probably couldn't have written it while my dad was still alive. It would have been too hard. Like I've had some people writing me emails this past week saying, oh, like thank you for your courage. Thank you for your brave, I don't feel courageous. I don't feel brave. I feel like a coward in a lot of ways that it took me so long and that a lot of ways took my dad dying and having those experiences at his funeral to finally be willing to acknowledge and use my platform, my relatively high profile journalistically speaking to address this thing that has been so clearly wrong for such a long time. And so, for anybody listening, whether it's in your individual congregation, your faith community, your family, whatever it is like, it doesn't have to be this way. And it takes people like Cal Thomas, kind of blowing up his own life, blowing up his tribal affiliations and walking away. It takes Pastor Brian Zahnd, who I write about in Chapter 15, who had a mega church of 5000 people, and they were making money hand over fist. And then he just woke up one day and had this like epiphany from the Lord that it was all wrong, and that it was so shallow, and it was doing such a disservice to the Gospel. And he blew up his mega church. He's got like 150 people who come every Sunday now and the sanctuary seats like 2000. And he made a choice, right? Cal Thomas made a choice. You've made a choice, Julie. And I just think like, at the end of the day, the people who make that choice and who decide to reckon with what this has become? I don't think they're going to regret it. I really don't. Julie Roys  46:05 I have not regretted it once being free of the whole evangelical industrial complex as it's called, and just being free to follow your conscience without thinking, what are the consequences if I speak the truth publicly? Like what's going to happen to me? Like I see so many Christians just living in fear that if they speak out, or they tell the truth that they know that something, you know, there will be bad consequences for me, and it just makes me wonder, do we believe the gospel, like do we believe the gospel? What gospel are we living on day-to-day basis? And I love Pastor Zahnd's story that was like one of my favorite stories. And it reminded me of the book because I just interviewed Scott McKnight and Laura Behringer and their book pivot, which talks about similar things, other churches that realized church is toxic. It's huge, it's successful, but I feel empty inside, you know, and I feel thin, and they made that pivot. And it may be to smaller church, it may be and it's interesting, though, you were saying how Zahnd's church is now starting to maybe even start to grow and become a little bit healthier. And so, when I hear that I say, it's going to take a while. But in this, you know, these ashes, do you see something growing that's beautiful there that can replace this ugliness that quite frankly, I think I just think it's doomed. I think it's coming down. I don't know that it will come down quickly. This complex that we've built, but I think it will come down eventually. It may take decades. But I think there will be a Christianity I hope this was my prayer that replaces it. And it's more organic and more Grassroots less big leadership and more the Body of Christ. TIM ALBERTA  47:48 Yes,  I do see something rising from the ashes. I can sense it, particularly among the younger generation. One of the things that consistently surprised me in all of my reporting, and it was a pleasant surprise, to be clear, was spending time with younger believers. They ideologically, culturally, politically, like they're really no different from their parents, like they check those boxes on paper. But then you kind of get into some of this with them. And they want nothing to do with Trumpism. They want nothing to do with Charlie Kirk, and I'm talking about like the serious believers. I'm not talking about like the very casual kids who identify as Christian, but then go to a Turning Point USA event. I mean, like, you spend time around Liberty, and like, yes, there are some MAGA kids at Liberty. But most of the kids you spend time with  at Liberty, including those who would self-identify as like, sure I guess on paper, I would be a Republican, because of abortion because of other issues, they will really eloquently and gracefully speak to these schisms. And they're so perceptive. I think that's the big thing, Julie, is that they can see it. Right? My generation, I kind of think of us as like the children of the Moral Majority. And we can now very clearly diagnose this in a way that my dad's generation probably couldn't, they were too close to it. They were too wrapped up in it. And I think, you know, in some ways, they almost I kind of tend to maybe just give them a little bit of a pass for that because they didn't have the appropriate distance to really assess it and analyze it in the way that I think I'm able to, and certainly in the way that the generations behind me are able to. They see what this is doing to the church, and they are saying no, thank you. Even at my home church, the guy who took over for my dad, almost run out of the place. He came very close to just quitting because it got so bad for him because he hears this young guy taking over this, this mega church congregation in a very conservative Republican community. And he's not particularly a conservative Republican. He's not like some big Democrat either. He's just a guy who like loves Jesus and who processes news events through the eyes of like the gospel, right? What's so interesting is that he lost a ton of his congregation. And then this past summer, I went back for the first time since my dad's funeral, and the place was packed, and I didn't recognize anybody there. And he comes out and gives this sort of fire and brimstone sermon, challenging them on the culture wars, challenging them on like, where are your priorities, really? What kingdom do you really belong to? And so that actually, I didn't aim to end the book on that optimistic note, but I was so encouraged by it, because it makes me think that in this market of supply and demand that you and I have talked about, and mostly we focused on the perverted nature of the supply and demand, that there is also maybe more demand out there than we realize for that true, pure form of the gospel. And so that is my hope, moving forward, and particularly with these younger Christians, who will demand something better than what we've seen so far. Julie Roys  50:53 I loved that I don't often read the epilogue, but in your book I did. And that was beautiful to read about Pastor Winans and the way that, you know, you kind of left them in the early chapters really disillusioned and discouraged. And then he comes back invigorated for the gospel, and preaching it so boldly and that really, pastors like that give me hope. And I know that there's probably a lot more of them than I encounter in you know, the line of work that I do, which usually means I hear about the worst of the worst all the time. Julie Roys  51:28 Let me just ask you about this most of your chapters are about political power and about the way that these kingdoms  and the power has sort of become an idolatrous thing. And then you turn your eye to corruption going on in the church and the abuse, the abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention, how that's been addressed recently, how Rachel den Hollander stood up to it and she went, you know, most people I'm sure listening know Rachel's story. But you know, one of the first gymnasts who came forward and told her story about Larry Nasser, and how he had abused so much of the, you know, US Olympic gymnasts team. And she went from being just Joan of Arc, I think you call it to being Jezebel, right? Or from Esther to Jezebel, because she spoke out about the evil in the church. And that's what I found. When I was at Moody Radio I was allowed to speak about Joel Osteen, right? Or I was allowed to speak about the liberals in politics. But when I turned my critique on our own tribe, man, I would get shut down, you know. That's one of the reasons I left Moody besides the others that I talked about. I couldn't speak out about the evil in our own house. And I feel that at this point, we have no moral platform as Christians to be speaking about the evil out in the world anymore, until we deal with the evil in our own house and the way that it's crept in. You know, judgment begins with the house of God. He doesn't expect, you know, the people who don't know him, to act any differently than they're acting, but He expects us to, and we're not. So, I appreciated that you put this chapter in the book, dealing with some of the abuse and the corruption within the church. But you could have easily left it out and just talked about the way that politics has, you know, really usurped the gospel. Why did you put this chapter in? TIM ALBERTA  53:28 One of the things that really bugs me, is how the New Testament model here and you were just alluding to this a moment ago. The New Testament model is not ambiguous. We are to treat outsiders with unlimited grace and kindness and compassion and forgiveness, because they don't know God, and they don't know any better. That is clear. And what is also clear is that we are to treat the insiders with the utmost accountability, and they are to be held to the highest standard because they do know God, and they do know better. That is the New Testament model. And we in the American church have completely flipped it. We have nothing but hostility, and animus and enmity towards the outside world. And we practice nothing but grace and forgiveness and cheap grace and cheap forgiveness inside the church. Right? And it drives me a little bit nuts. Because if you are the person out there in the world, who is sort of curious about Jesus, and you feel something missing in your life, what are the odds today that you're going to go to a local church and try to learn a little bit more? I mean, you know, you might say, Well, some people will, some people do Sure. But the statistics here don't lie, Julie. Like when you look back 30 or 40 years, the perception of the church among unbelievers in this country was incredibly positive. People who did not know Jesus looked at the church as a beacon of moral rectitude, of compassion, of social good. Even if they were never going to sit in the pews with us, even if they didn't believe any of the doctrine, they respected the church and they admire the church. And that has completely changed. It's just completely fallen apart. There are some people who will tell you like Robert Jeffers and I go back and forth on this in the book, he said, Well, that it doesn't matter, right? Those people aren't looking for the Lord. I completely disagree. I think the credibility of the church matters enormously. TIM ALBERTA  55:37 To your question of why did I feel compelled to include that chapter? Well, who's going to hold the church accountable? Is the church going to hold itself accountable? No, I mean, typically, institutions are not very good at self-policing. We know that from working in journalism, right? By the way, the media is not very good at self-policing. Actually, I could argue the media is terrible at self-policing. I mean, any big institution, it can't be expected to hold itself accountable. Okay, so what are the mechanisms for accountability here? If we care about the Bride of Christ, if we care about the credibility of the church, if we care about how the outside world perceives the church, which I think matters enormously, then what do we do to ensure that the church is on the up and up and is doing its duty before God and it's carrying out its purpose and its mission? You know, journalism has to play a role in that. I think, you know, the law has to play a role in that. I think that there are external forces, even, you know, gasp secular forces that have to play a role in that, because otherwise, we just leave these churches, these pastors to their own devices. And I'm sorry, but you don't need to read any other source then the Bible itself. You pick up the Bible itself, read from Old Testament to new and see how well that works out. We see it time and again. I there are not accountability structures in place, then things go very badly, very quickly. And so that's a long answer to your question. Julie Roys  57:06 Hmm. Well, I appreciate that. And I appreciate your book. And I know you're getting interviews all over the country. I saw you on CBS, Good Morning America; that was so exciting to see but really wonderful that you've gotten this platform to winsomely speak to the rest of society who I remember a couple of times, I got to be on NPR. They would ask me about evangelicalism, and they are always amazed, I think that I could even string two sentences together. And I was actually an evangelical right? But I am so thrilled that you are representing evangelicals because you're a face that and I don't know, do you still identify as Evangelical? TIM ALBERTA  57:49 not really, I don't fight the label, but I would not volunteer it for myself just because of exactly what we just described, you know. Somebody outside the church hears it, and they quickly shut down the conversation, because they don't really want anything to do with you. Julie Roys  58:01 I don't know if I would take that term, either. I'm kind of where you are, as well. But you're a Christian, and you love Jesus. And even when I heard you in that one interview recently said, How's your faith? and you're like, it's as strong as it's ever been. I thank you for that and for your witness, and for this book, and for giving me so much of your time. I really appreciate it. So, thank you, TIM ALBERTA  58:21 Thank you for all that you're doing. And thank you for saying that. It's very kind of you. We're ultimately playing some small part here in trying to get this thing back on track and doing it as humbly as possible. I hope that we can make a difference. Thank you for having me on. And I know that we'll continue to talk. Julie Roys  58:39 Absolutely. And thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I'm Julie Roys. And just a quick reminder, if you'd like a copy of Tim Alberta's book, The Kingdome, The Power, and The Glory, we'd be happy to send you one for a gift of $50 or more to The Roys Report this month. Again, we don't have any large donors or advertising, we simply have you, the people who care about exposing evil and restoring the church. So, if you'd like to support our work and get Tim's book, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, I want to let you know that next week, I'll be releasing another talk from the RESTORE conference. This one is by veteran church planter Lance Ford, who gave an amazing talk on the Christian addiction to leadership and why it's so toxic. I love this talk and I think you will too. So be watching for that. We'll release the talk as both an audio podcast and as a video at my YouTube channel. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you'll never miss an episode. And while you're at it, I'd really appreciate it if you'd help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media. So, more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today hope you are blessed and encouraged. Read more

Is the Almighty, who made heaven and earth, also biting his nails over next year's election? Tim Alberta joins Charlie Sykes to discuss the evangelicals who worship America, a 500-year moment for Christianity, and the organized crime syndicate Jerry Falwell built. Christmas comes early on the weekend pod. show notes: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-kingdom-the-power-and-the-glory-tim-alberta?variant=41012408516642

In this week's episode, we'll report on our second favorite kind of nun fight, Swifties get accused of being occult, and Jerry Falwell, Jr will hold Moms for Liberty's beer. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click here: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ If you see a news story you think we might be interested in, you can send it here: scathingnews@gmail.com To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show's hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show's sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --- Guest Links: Check out more from Marsh on Be Reasonable and Skeptics with a K --- Headlines: A Florida GOP Leader, a Moms for Liberty Founder, and Allegations of Group Sex and Assault: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/a-florida-gop-leader-a-moms-for-liberty-founder-and-allegations-of-group-sex-and-rape/ DeSantis calls on Florida GOP chair Ziegler to resign in wake of battery allegations: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2023/12/01/desantis-calls-on-florida-gop-chair-ziegler-to-resign-in-wake-of-battery-allegations/ Londoners can't use the Tube because of their religion: https://metro.co.uk/2023/11/27/londoners-cant-use-tube-religion-19888946/  Louisiana Christian homeschool group straight up selling diplomas: https://apnews.com/article/homeschool-diploma-louisiana-nonpublic-school-a37a44dab69f11e2c37132549f9cd450 Petition to urge Taylor Swift to stop promoting witchcraft amid exorcist's warning: https://lifepetitions.com/petition/taylorswift She's also a demon because Christ the Redeemer in Rio welcomed her with a shirt: https://apnews.com/article/taylor-swift-brazil-christ-redeemer-statue-097dcffa307e7b80bda2c522a52d4337 --- This Week in Misogyny: Oklahoma Senate Candidate says IVF is “an assault against god”: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/oklahoma-senate-candidate-parents Christian freakout over all female Catholic college accepting trans women: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/an-all-female-catholic-college-will Christians freak out over Sabrina Carpenter video: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/anger-over-sabrina-carpenters-music

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/CaDhqixI0jsExposing abuse and corruption can be a thankless job. Powerful figures doing wrong often deny and attack those exposing them. And their supporters often join suit—attacking the messenger, rather than holding their leader accountable. This edition of The Roys Report features a very personal talk from Restore Conference founder and journalist, Julie Roys, delivered at the recent event this past October. It's centered on one question: why continue reporting, advocating, and shining a light when doing so comes at such a high personal cost? Journalists like Julie often ask this question—and so do many abuse survivor advocates, whistleblowers, and allies. The work can be grueling, and the pay off at times seems minimal. But in this talk, Julie shares not just her own struggles, but also the convictions she's gained over years of exposing abuse and corruption. If you're struggling to keep fighting for truth and justice, this talk will not just encourage, but inspire you to keep going. Guests Julie Roys Julie Roys is a veteran investigative reporter and founder of The Roys Report. Julie previously hosted a national talk show on the Moody Radio Network, called Up for Debate. She also has worked as a TV reporter for a CBS affiliate in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and as a newswriter for WGN-TV and Fox 32 Chicago. Julie's work has also appeared in Christianity Today, Religion News Service, The Federalist, and The Christian Post. She and her husband, Neal, live in the Chicago area and have three children and two grandchildren.  Show Transcript SPEAKERSJulie Roys Julie Roys  00:04Exposing abuse and corruption can be a thankless job. Those doing wrong often deny and attack those exposing them. And their supporters often join suit, attacking the messenger rather than holding their leader accountable. So why continue reporting and advocating and shining a light? Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And the question of why not quit is one of those questions I’ve asked myself repeatedly over the years. And I know it’s not one that just journalists ask; many abuse survivor advocates, whistleblowers and allies do too. The work can be grueling and the payoff at times can seem minimal, so why not quit? Why keep fighting Goliath when the odds continually seem stacked in our opponent’s favor?   Julie Roys  00:52 What you’re about to hear is a very personal talk I gave at the 2023 RESTORE conference. The past 18 months have been especially hard for me. And there have been times when I’ve struggled profoundly with whether I can stay in this work without it deforming my soul. If you’re a survivor, or whistleblower or an ally, or maybe all of the above, you’ve probably experienced some of the same struggles. You may be struggling today. In this talk. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I’m still processing a lot of this stuff myself. But what I do is share my journey and why ,despite the difficulties, which are many and real, I’m not quitting. You’ll hear my talk in just a minute.   Julie Roys  00:52 But first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you’re looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience. Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres, just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there Dan and Curt Marquardt, are men of integrity. To check them out, just go to BUYACAR123.COM.   Julie Roys  02:37 Well, again, here’s the talk I gave a RESTORE 2023 on why not quit? Well, at the first RESTORE conference in 2019, I announced from this stage that we were experiencing an unmistakable move of God to purify his church. James MacDonald had just been exposed as the bully and hypocrite that he was and removed from Harvest Bible Chapel. Bill Hybels was exposed as a sexual predator, and people were finally believing the women, and revelations about Jerry Falwell, Jr. were just beginning to come out. And then donors alleging fraud won a massive $37 million dollar settlement from Gospel for Asia. Clearly God was cleaning house right? And over the next few years, the revelations just kept coming. Jerry Falwell, Jr, resigned from Liberty University amid shocking allegations of sexual and financial misconduct. Ravi Zacharias was shown to be a serial sexual predator, and RZIM was shut down. Hillsong began to implode beginning with Carl Lentz and his sexual misconduct going all the way to Brian Houston, and his sexual misconduct. And then I reported probably the biggest investigation I’ve ever done. I reported on John MacArthur, the supposed greatest expositor of the 20th century, that he had a pattern of shaming abuse victims and protecting their abusers. With story after story after story, the evil infecting the evangelical industrial complex, was being exposed and routed out. And probably more than any other time in my life, I felt like I was right in the middle of this remarkable thing that God was doing. Well, then I experience the most virulent backlash I have ever experienced. An army of YouTubers loyal to John MacArthur just kept hitting. They couldn’t go after the facts of my stories, so they went after me. And I became the poster child of the angry feminist proponent of CRT, wokism –  it didn’t matter whether I adhere to any of these things. They republished it anyway. And John MacArthur, despite everything I’d reported on him, he didn’t get canceled. He went and spoke at the Getty’s Sing conference. At the G3 conference, the Puritans conference. Sure, his reputation has been tarnished a bit. But those loyal dug in.   Well, then some anonymous Twitter accounts loyal to John MacArthur found some objectionable content in a book that I wrote in 2017. And soon I wasn’t just facing backlash from John MacArthur and those loyal to him, but from my own tribe, and from the survivor community. And people were hurt, and they were confused. And like I said, yesterday, some of that criticism was valid and deserved, and I didn’t get the power differential and someone a relationship with somebody that had been in a ministry that I had led, and that was my own responsibility. And I had assigned fault where it didn’t belong, where I should have taken responsibility. But some of the criticism was cruel. And it was patently false. And it was shockingly personal. And if you’ve never been in the midst of a public controversy like that, it’s kind of hard to explain. But it is a unique kind of awful. At least when you’re a private person and people talk about you, they have the decency to do it behind your back. But when you’re a public person, they do it in front of your family and your children and your friends and thousands and thousands of other people. And it was traumatic for me, I know it was even traumatic for some of you. And then perhaps smelling blood in the water, Protestia, a so-called discernment blog, lacking hardly any journalistic integrity, announced that they had a story that was going to expose me as a fraud. And on a Friday, they tweeted, were blocked but someone tag at reached Julie Roys, and give her a heads up in our next article about her revealing some of her shenanigans is really, really gonna sting. And then they published this video:   07:05 I said at the very at the very beginning, that we have some more information coming out about Julie Roys that I’m hoping to have out to you by Monday but suffice it to say it’s going to blow up the facade of Julie Roys as an ethical investigative journalist. We have some information about some very unethical, I would say immoral, but certainly unethical., things that Julie Roys has been caught saying and doing and promoting that we’re going to be releasing this information, hopefully by Monday. So, stay tuned to Protestia.com for that information. I want to thank you all again for joining me tonight on this live stream.   Julie Roys  08:06 So that came out on a Friday, so I had the whole weekend. I’m on pins and needles a whole weekend and I’m like what awful thing did I just do? I have no idea what I just did. So, I’m waiting for this to come out and on Monday Protestia published this menacing tweet. Apparently the story had been delayed a day. But will come out the next morning. Yet on Tuesday instead of publishing their big expose on me Protestia had to publish a retraction saying they almost got conned by an abuse survivor. Of course, they’ve got conned because they went forward with all of these allegations on Friday. Apparently a woman had fabricated some emails that she said were from me. And in these emails, I allegedly said that she should go forward with 300 allegations against a well-known Christian figure whether they were true or false. And sadly, Protestia didn’t do the very basics, the number one thing that you do when someone’s accused, is you go to the accused, and you ask for their side of the story. They didn’t do that until Tuesday, when they started to recognize some things might be going wrong. And they had accepted these fabricated emails as fact for about three days and went forward with those, again, libelous, and slanderous allegations,. The experience was unnerving, especially in the middle of what I was dealing with. But it wasn’t the last hoax I faced either. Someone close to James McDonald came after me with wild allegations that I covered up a child sex abuse scandal at Harvest Bible Chapel when I was investigating it. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Yet, some survivor advocates picked up that story as well and they began tweeting and retweeting it. And I had to track down a story that was three years old and find the emails and the texts and go back to the primary sources and publish my own story, showing that these allegations were false. And whatever momentum that I had going into all of this was completely eradicated. I was just trying to keep my head above water. Emotionally, I was spinning. It was so, so tough.   Julie Roys  10:21 And then people started talking about whether or not I was going to quit. In fact, I got a call from a colleague of mine, and was actually the only journalist who called me in the midst of this. And he said, Julie, I am watching what’s going on online. And he’s like, are you all right? And it was really sweet. And I don’t even know what I said. I was playing blubbering something. But it was a sweet call. But at the end of the call, he’s like, hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but if you do resign, can I have the interview? I was a little taken aback, but then I got a call from a former blogger, who I got to know really well through an investigation. And he gave me permission to share what I’m going to share with you. But he just asked that I call him by his first name, his first name, Scott. And so, he said something very similar. He said, Julie, I’m watching what’s happening to you on Twitter right now. And I just have to tell you as your friend, like, this is painful. He’s like, You don’t owe me an explanation. I know you. I know your character. But don’t take this the wrong way. But have you thought about quitting? And he’s like, I love you and I care about you, and I’ve actually jotted down some reasons that I think you should consider. And would you be willing to just hear me out on this? And I love Scott. I respect Scott. And I knew the heart that he was saying this was, so I said, Sure. Scott, go ahead. Tell me what you think. And he said, one, I noticed that you’re taking all this friendly fire. See, usually, my accusers are the defenders of whatever church leader it is, that’s  caught in the crosshairs of some investigation. But now, my accusers were my own tribe. It was people, some people from the survivor community. And let me just preface what Scott said, by saying, I have found that the survivor community and the people in this room, that some of you have been some of the most gracious people that I know. And the love that I was shown from some of you was so touching. And I have so much respect for survivors. Because survivors have been through hell, and they’ve come out with this beauty. So many of you. And so, it really was a small segment of the survivor community that was really being nasty. But he said, Julie, given the way that you’ve been treated by your own tribe, why would you keep reporting their stories? And I know some of you know what that feels like. Because you’ve tried to help with something. And you stepped out and you’ve messed up in some way and the backlash, and what happened to you when you did that, made you feel like I don’t even want to do that again. Like why try? And that’s how I felt a little bit at that point.   Julie Roys  13:22 But then he said, secondly, maybe your work to expose abuse and corruption is done. And by this, he didn’t mean there weren’t any more abusers out there or anymore corruption. What he was saying is that there’s a pattern. In fact, there’s so much of a pattern, you just see it playing out again and again, and again. It’s like Wade Mullens said in his book, something’s not right. They’re all using the same playbook. They all use the same tactics. He’s like, have you thought that maybe, just maybe, those who have ears to hear have heard and the rest won’t ever listen to it anyway. But lastly, and this is the one that really kind of hit home. And he said, Julie, do you ever wonder in what ways reporting on all of these vile things in the church and living in this constant pressure cooker is molding you and forming you into someone that you don’t want to be? And then he quoted Friedrich Nietzsche, who said, Whoever battles monsters should see to it in the process, that he does not become a monster himself. And when you look long into the abyss, the Abyss also looks back at you. And then Scott recalled ways that when he was blogging, that he’d start to see how this was affecting him negatively. That’s part of the reason he stopped doing it. And he said, Julie,  don’t take this as a confrontation. I’m not saying that I see this in you yet. But when I read some of the comments sometimes at your website, that’s when I begin to see it. He’s like, It’s like Grace is disappearing. And friend, you know the verse in the passage in Corinthians, If I speak with the tongues of angels, but have not love, I am nothing but a resounding gong and a clanging cymbal or in my situation, if I expose every predator pastor and defend every vulnerable victim, but have not love, I am nothing. And I know again, my experience is unique in some ways, but it’s not. Also, some of you have been reporting, maybe not as a journalist, but in other ways have been trying to expose abuse and corruption in the church for far longer than I have. Some of you that have spoken at this conference have suffered far worse than I could even imagine,  for standing up for the truth. And you may not be journalists, although there’s some in this room. But you’re bloggers and podcasters and whistleblowers, lawyers, pastors, allies, advocates. And you may today profoundly feel betrayed by those that you expected to support you. A sense of futility about the work that you’re doing. And there are moments when you feel like your work, or advocacy is molding you into someone that you don’t want to be. And you may be wondering, is it worth it? Should I just get out of the trenches? Should I stop doing this and maybe just go to Colorado and hike mountains every day?   Julie Roys  16:39 I have wrestled with all these things profoundly. And I don’t speak today as someone who has all the answers. I am in process like a lot of you. But I do feel like God has spoken to me with some resolution on some of these things. And I just want to share with you kind of what God’s been saying to me, in the hopes that it’ll help you as you wrestle through some of these things as well.   Julie Roys  17:05 So let me talk about the first issue that Scott raised, and that’s betrayal. I mean, why report or advocate or serve or pastor on people who may at any point turn on you? First, let me say, it goes both ways. I’ve been hurt by some survivor advocates, some of them innocently, some of them maliciously. But I’ve hurt some people in this room. I’ve had to ask forgiveness for some people in this room. And they’ve had to show me grace. And so, in some ways, there’s really nothing unique about this. If you’re working with people, we’re going to disappoint each other, right? We’re going to let each other down, we’re going to have to ask for forgiveness, we’re going to have to extend grace. But this is I think the question itself had an assumption in it, and that is that I’m doing what I’m doing for survivors. And I love survivors. I love you guys, and I consider myself now after some of the stuff I’ve been through, one of them too; absolutely love you guys.   Julie Roys  18:20 But this is what I told Scott, or at least what I was thinking at the time, I can’t remember if I told him. But I’m not doing this for survivors. Maybe as a secondary reason, yes. But I don’t think any of us can stay in the work that we’re doing long term if we’re primarily doing it for people. Because when you’re doing it for people, your eyes are always on the worthiness of a person. And we’re pretty darn fallible. In the long term, if that’s what we do, we’re gonna end up very bitter and angry and burned out. The primary reason I’m doing what I’m doing, and I would suggest that all of us should be doing whatever work it is, as an act of worship to God. We’re serving God. And you’ve probably heard the story of Mother Teresa, where she was with a journalist in Calcutta. And he saw her cleaning out this infected wound that was this maggot infested. And he said, “I wouldn't do what you’re doing for a million dollars. And she shot right back, I wouldn’t either. She got that when she served the person on the street, she was serving Jesus. And so, whenever we’re serving whatever capacity it is, we are serving Jesus. I would also say that I do believe God called me to this work.   Julie Roys  19:45 I never would have imagined five years ago that I would be doing what I’m doing today. It was the furthest thing from my imagination. And I bet for some of you in this room 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you never would have imagined you would be here either, or you never would have imagined the set of circumstances that put you in this room right now. And I’m guessing that if you look back over the ,5, 10, 15, however many years it’s been, if you look carefully, you can see the hand of God in your life, putting you where you are right now. It is not the road you would have chosen, but it’s the road that God worked redemptively in.   Julie Roys  20:31 Five years ago, I was a radio host on the Moody Bible Institute, Moody Radio Network. I’d just written a book, I was getting booked at these women’s conferences, ironically, one at Harvest Bible Chapel. I was getting booked on all these radio programs, I was on my way to becoming, God forbid, a Christian celebrity. But then I learned about corruption and abuse at the Moody Bible Institute. And I was the one person who not only had the inside information, but I also had the training and the skills to know what to do with that to expose it. And so, it didn’t take too long before it became a matter of conscience where I felt like if I didn’t say something, that I would be disobeying God. And some of you know exactly what I’m talking about, because you’ve sat in that situation before, where you’ve known that to stay quiet is to disobey God. But you have absolutely no guarantee that if you speak out, that it’s going to go well for you. In fact, you’re pretty darn sure that if you do speak out, it’s gonna go a lot worse. And that’s what happened for me. I got fired from Moody Bible Institute. Ironically, they also pressured the top three executives to resign that I had reported on. But I had broken the silent rule, which is, you never speak about these things publicly. I was actually told by a board member on the phone, that the reason they fired me is because the interim president told them that I had signed an NDA. And I will never forget the shock in his voice  when I told him that several years before when they had moved me from full time to part time that they had given me an NDA, and I fought it with everything I was worth. There was absolutely no way that as a journalist, I would sign something that resigned me to silence, absolutely no way. And he immediately said, Oh, I gotta go and hung up. And despite the fact that they had absolutely no grounds for firing me, I was completely blacklisted in the evangelical industrial complex. And many of you know what that is like too. I knew it would happen, just wasn’t, I had been in it for about 10 years. So, I knew how the game worked.   Julie Roys  23:02 And I thought when I got fired, this would be a great thing. I’ll have more time with my kids, and now my grandkids. But then survivors from Harvest Bible Chapel came to me begging me to hear their stories and do what I had done at Moody for Harvest. And then survivors from Mark Driscoll’s church came and said, “Would you please listen to us and report on what’s happening here? And then Steve Baughman gave me a copy of his book, Cover Up in the Kingdom. And he said, Julie, I’ve been reporting for years about how Ravi Zacharias is a fraud, but nobody will listen to me because I’m an atheist, but they’ll listen to you because you’re one of them. And God brought me story after story after story. And every single time I didn’t hear like the audible voice of God, but I felt very much that he was saying, keep reporting. And so that’s what I’ve tried to do. And ironically, God took the one thing that I thought would end my career, blowing the whistle on the Moody Bible Institute, and he used it to launch The Roys Report. And he used hurting people that I got to know in my reporting on Harvest and Willow Creek to start this conference. And I just see his hand working redemptively in all things. And I bet some of you like I said, if you look back over your life, and even this chapter, you might be able to see God’s hand working redemptively. Maybe not yet. Some of you I know, because I’ve talked to you and it’s like, you’re hanging by a thread right now. And you can’t even believe that the things that have happened to you at the hands of people you loved, and you trusted, and you thought were members of the kingdom and you were all working on the same team, did you what they did. And I would just encourage you for whatever mustard seed of faith that you have, hang on to Jesus. Just hang on. Because I also know that there’s others of you today that you never would have believed, you never would have believed 10 years ago that you would be where you are today. You never would have believed you’d be able to heal. You never would have believed with what you went through, that you would have the confidence and the courage that you have today that you will be as healed as you are. And I just want to remind you, that’s not just because you’re amazing. A lot of you are amazing. And you’re an incredible inspiration to me, and you have been through far more than I ever will go through and ever dream of going through, I would just encourage you to see the way that God has been working in your life doing what he said he would do, that he began a good work in you will carry it on to completion to the day of Christ Jesus.   Julie Roys  25:57 I don’t think it’s trite, that what God did in the Old Testament with Joseph that he still does today. That he takes the evil that was done against us, and he works it for good. And if he’s calling you to a certain work, I would just encourage you to do it with all your might, as unto the Lord. And I’m not going to quit because of the pushback. I think it comes with the territory. In fact, I had an editor once who said Julia, if you’re not getting any hate mail, then you’re probably just not saying anything.   Julie Roys  26:38 But what about the second reason that Scott mentioned? The seeming futility of fighting this evil that seems to have worked itself through the entire dough of evangelicalism and within the church, and you seem to be fighting this giant that is so incredibly massive, and all the people with power are propping it up. And quite frankly, we don’t have very much. In fact, in comparison, we’re just gnats; we’re like so small. You know, last night we heard from Jason and Lorie Adams Brown. And if you know their story, you know that they blew the whistle on Andy Wood, who had been at Echo church because of the spiritual abuse that they received at his hands. Despite the fact that they blew the whistle on him, and I had the privilege of reporting their story, Saddleback Church went ahead and hired him, and he is now the successor for Rick Warren at Saddleback Church.   Julie Roys  27:42 But it was so encouraging to hear from them how their courage and their speaking out, cause other people who had been similarly abused by some of the same people to come to them, and talk to them about the abuse. And for them to say how they got their voice back because that’s what abusers do. They take away your voice. And to reclaim your voice is a very important thing. It is empowering. And then they talked about how another story that came to me because I published that first story was stories about how Andy Wood and Echo Church had stolen these vulnerable congregations that own these multimillion-dollar buildings and had tried to steal those buildings. And a major Baptist leader went on the record with me talking about his experience of Andy Wood trying to steal numerous churches. And that never would have come out had they not spoken.   Julie Roys  28:42 I also recently produced a podcast with Emily Hyland, who’s at this conference. And Emily was a victim of abuse by Dane Ortlund, who’s a pastor in this area. And Emily told me that after we published the podcast, now she’s beginning to hear from other people who have similarly been abused by Dane Ortlund, and now they’re beginning to get their voice and they’re thinking of going on the record. And just a little bit ago, I published the story about Churchome. This is this West Coast church pastored by celebrity pastor Judah Smith, and the first piece that I did on Churchome was about this woman who had been raped by one of their pastors. And they even did an independent investigation and found out that there’s credible evidence, in fact beyond a reasonable doubt that her allegation was true. So, they pressured him, and he resigned from the church and three years later, they hired him back over her objections. And literally the same day, I started getting emails and texts and different things from women who had similarly been abused at that church and wanted to go forward with their story and I was able to do a three-part series on what Churchome had done. And right now, I can’t tell you what the story is because I haven’t published it yet. But I have a big one. And it’s due to another person at Churchome, seeing what we just reported. And now that person came forward and gave me a bunch of information. And that’s how it happens. Every single time with story after story after story. It’s like this little fire starts here, and then it spreads here, and then here, here, and soon the whole hillside is ablaze. And friends, that’s how movements happen. That’s how they grow. But it takes time, and it takes perseverance.   Julie Roys  30:34 At the first RESTORE, I said that this unmistakable move of God that it was not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Now, at that point, I thought we were in like mile 9 or 10. The more I’ve done this now I’m thinking we’re on four or five, we may be on two or three. And I hate to break that news to you. But I really do. People have compared this current state of the church to the Catholic church before the Reformation. I actually think that’s a fair comparison. It is that corrupt. It is that widespread. Do you know how long the Reformation took? Historians date it from 1517 to 1648. Friends that is 131 years. How about slavery? Let’s just look at England. It took William Wilberforce fighting passionately, so much so that his own health suffered greatly for two decades to abolish slavery in England, because friends, that’s how institutionalized evil and that is what we are dealing with institutionalized evil. That’s how it’s dismantled. So, do I get discouraged? 100%. I’m human. Are there days when it’s hard to persevere? But I believe the corruption in the church is the most serious threat to this country. And most Christians don’t even know it. That’s the shocking thing. Most Christians aren’t even aware of it. And you say, Well, how can I say that? How many times have we heard the hope of the world is Jesus and his means of rescuing the world is thank you, the church. And we’re supposed to be the salt of the earth. We’re supposed to be a light on the hill, and we are Sodom and Gomorrah. And yet, what are most all the Christian leaders doing right now? What are they talking about? They’re talking about all the sin out there. Right? They’re talking about everything that’s bad out there in the world. Like they have a moral platform to stand on. And they’re not talking about the sin in their own house, none of them. And unless we deal with the sin in our own house, there’s no way, there’s no way that we’re going to reform this country. And it certainly isn’t by electing some politician.   Julie Roys  33:21 But I would encourage you, and this is what I see happen a lot, is that people get really excited about a story that touches them personally. And thank God because every time I report a new story, there are people who are totally unaware that this is going on, and they become aware. But then what happens is they move on with their life. And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t move on with your life. Dear Lord, if all of us lived in, I’ve got a weird call. I get that. I got a weird personality too. I make mugs. Actually. I have people make them for me, but the biggest insults I get I actually enjoy that at times. I’m just kind of weird that way. But I’m just there is an element to which we can’t all live in that intensity, and I get that. But what I’m saying is, don’t just move on and forget there’s other people stuck. Don’t just move on. Keep your love for the church and for the mission and for the restoration of this thing that Jesus died for and that he loves. And don’t forget that if not you, who? So, am I going to quit because the progress is slow and hard? No. I’m going to keep in mind one of my favorite verses First Corinthians 15:58. Therefore my dear brothers and sisters, do not lose heart. Stand firm. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.   Julie Roys  35:07 And now I’m going to address the most concerning issue that Scott raised. And that is what if in the process of fighting the monster, you become the monster? Last year Christian therapist and trauma expert Dr. Diane Langberg, said from the stage that the way that you recognize a wolf is you don’t become one. Some people took offense at that, because they said, listen, we’re not all going to become pedophiles. We’re not all rapists, we’re not like on that level. And they’re right. It takes a certain level of pathology to do something like that. And most people, quite frankly, aren’t there, thank God. That said, that’s not what Diane was saying. What Diane was saying is that every single one of us, every single one of us has a sin nature. And if we don’t keep that in check, we can succumb to a lot of the same things as the people I report on. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t have some of the vices of the people I report on because I do. I struggle with anger, bitterness, contempt, self-pity, that’s a big one, pride. And the more I uncover and the more that I see innocent people abused by these people, the more difficult it becomes to deal with some of those vices. It can become a death spiral. And the spiritual death that we see in other people can become our spiritual death. Dr. Lambert writes about this in her devotional book called In Our Lives First. And this is a book that I’ve read twice, devotionally over the past 18 months. I’ll probably read it again over the next year because this is something that I constantly need to be reminded of. And she writes, those of us who work with such deaths must be extremely careful not to catch the diseases that surround us. We must be careful not to assume that catching such diseases is hard to do. Working with sin, suffering and evil can easily numb the heart. Numbness leads to death, if left alone. She also writes, counselors, though this is true of investigative reporters, it’s true of pastors, it’s true of Survivor advocates, many others. We are handling toxic things, and we have toxins in our own hearts, and it is not hard to either be destroyed by the work or to destroy those who come to us for help. So, what do we do? Do we quit working in the trenches? Lori Anne suggested that some people should quit. I’m not going to argue with Lori Anne. Maybe I tweak it a little bit. Let me just speak to those of you who like me grew up in a home where personal responsibility and duty was a big thing. Any of you? okay. And so sometimes those of us who grew up in these homes tend to do things because we feel like we have to, and we have a sense of responsibility and duty. And we can be destroying ourselves and destroying the relationships with those we love the most. Yet we keep doing it because we think we have to. Am I right? Can I get an Amen? Now, right? I don’t think God is honored when we destroy ourselves. And I tell you what, he’s certainly not honored, when eventually that turns into harm for others, because eventually that’s what happens. So, if that’s you, and that’s happening, you know, maybe you don’t need to have a frontline role. Maybe you can just step back for a season. Maybe you can support some people that are out there. You know, maybe you can adjust your role or maybe you do take a little bit of a break. Or maybe you do go to Colorado for three weeks and hike mountains. But is there a way? Is there a way to remain in work that exposes us to the vilest, the vilest things that happen in this world, yet instead of destroying us, it actually aids in our own sanctification? Sanctification, just a theological word for the process of becoming like Jesus.   Julie Roys  39:53 I grew up in the holiness movement. You may not know what that means. That’s okay. But in the holiness movement, we talked a lot about sanctification. And we talked a lot about a second work of the Holy Spirit, kind of like charismatics talk about a baptism of the Holy Spirit, except the manifestation within the holiness movement isn’t tongues, the manifestation is power over sin in your life. And we weren’t against tongues. Speak in tongues? Absolutely. Just like Paul said, I wish you all were like me. Just if it doesn’t lead to your sanctification, what good is it? That’s the point is that we become like Jesus, right? Diane Langberg writes a lot about sanctification. She doesn’t urge counselors to quit their work. Instead, she implores them to pursue Jesus. She writes, we have not heard God clearly if we fail to understand that one of the requirements for our work is that God’s sanctifying work must go on continually in us as well. If it does not, while we may appear for a time to be doing his work, eventually what is true will be made manifest. That we have not for the sake of others, meant to the sanctification process ourselves, we will damage his world, His people and His name, may it never be so.   Julie Roys  41:17 One of the great tragedies of the epidemic of abuse and corruption in the evangelic church is that it is pushing people away from Jesus. And many because of the hurt that they’ve experienced are beginning to deconstruct their faith. And I’m not dissing deconstruction. Many of us need to go back and reevaluate a lot of the beliefs that we took in and begin to think about those and we need a safe place to do that in. We need people who are safe people to do that with, we need safe people. We need to be safe people. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that what I have been exposed to hasn’t caused me to doubt my faith. In fact, the hardest question for me has been does Christianity, does it make people worse? Or does it make people better? Because I’ve seen some really devout Christians who have incredible grip of Scripture, incredible grip of theology much better than I do. And yet they are some of the most wicked people I have ever known in my life. And I tell you what I’ve become convinced of, I’ve concluded that Christianity, divorce from a vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ and reduced to a theological system, a moralistic system, or God forbid, a political one is absolutely heinous. And it does make people into monsters.   Julie Roys  43:06 But I believe a vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ is not only helpful in helping us deal with the vilest thing of this world, it is 100% essential. I know my relationship with Jesus has sustained me over the past 18 months. I remember several weeks before last year’s RESTORE conference, and I was a mess, and Dr. Diane Langberg got on a zoom call with me for about 90 minutes. And she was so loving, and so gracious, which I’m sure is not hard for you to imagine. And she was Jesus to me. And I remember saying to her, Diane, the hardest part about this whole thing to me is that I’ve been accused of these awful things, and I can’t say anything. I remember having a very close friend who said, Julie, if you step down from that conference, everybody’s going to assume that everything that was said about you is true. And Diane said to me, she said, Julie, this is an opportunity for you to enter into Christ’s sufferings. And initially, I thought about that very much in a martyr sort of way. Because if you’ve been wronged in some way, it’s really really easy to get a martyr complex. Super easy. But it hasn’t been like that.   Julie Roys  44:43 So, I had a very profound experience with a spiritual coach mentor about, I don’t know, seven or eight months ago where we were just doing some breathing exercises because I was kind of worked up. It’s hard to imagine I know. And while we’re in the process of this, she said, just experience the Lord’s compassion. And that morning, I had read about Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. And I began imagining being in the garden of Gethsemane with Jesus. I have a pretty vivid imagination. So, I’m there and I’m looking at his face and I see just incredible pain on his face. And it strikes me he’s just been betrayed by one of his 12 closest companions. And one of his three closest friends is going to deny him three times. And I felt betrayed by people who are frankly kind to strangers. I don’t really even know any more. And then Jesus is literally sweating, beads of blood. I had gone through some emotional trauma; I’ve never done that. And then Jesus is thinking about this in the night before he’s going on the cross. I began thinking of this, he’s going to be tortured to death the next day. I have never in my life been tortured for my faith. I read Miriam’s book, and I was devastated. What that woman has gone through, and she has overcome. I am in awe of her. Jesus suffered. The immensity of His suffering began to hit me. And I in that moment, finally didn’t feel sorry for myself. And somehow, in that whole process, I felt more unified with Jesus than I’d ever felt before. And there was this oneness, and somehow now what I had gone through had meaning and that made all the difference in the world. I’ve also been thinking about the fact that Jesus died for his enemies. I have enemies now. I don’t think I had enemies before I started reporting. Like I people didn’t like me. But enemies. I mean, somebody really bent on your destruction like that, actually schemes about it. I have those now. Some of you have those now. I’m having a tough enough time forgiving them. Dying for them? Man. And here’s where it gets tough because Jesus says we’re supposed to have the same attitude that he had.   Julie Roys  47:29 I was challenged by a friend several years ago, to just read through the Old Testament, and read about every single time that a prophet brings a word of judgment to people. It took me several months, but I went ahead and did it. And something dawned on me. Every time that God gave a prophet a harsh word to say to his people, it was never because he wanted to destroy them. We see this in the story of Jonah, right? You all know the story. Jonah is told to go to the Ninevites. Nineveh is the capital of the Assyrian bloodthirsty, hostile people, the enemies of the Israelites. And what does he do? He goes to Tarsus gets on a ship and they go out to the Mediterranean. The big storm comes they throw him overboard, fish swallow them, he’s in the fish three days, vomited up on dry land, and he says, Okay, fine, I’ll go to Nineveh, goes to Nineveh for three days. He tells the Ninevites that in 40 days, God’s going to destroy you. And then the Ninevites do a most remarkable thing. They actually repent and God has mercy on them. But Jonah, what does he do? He becomes despondent. He says to the Lord, oh, Lord, is this not what I said when I was in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarsus, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love unrelenting from disaster. Therefore,  oh Lord, please take my life for me. For it is better for me to die than to live. Jonah had become every bit as hard-hearted as the people that he hated. And if that can happen to a prophet of God, it can happen to me, can happen to any one of us.   Julie Roys  49:29 So, this is kind of a heart check for us. This heart check for me, I began to think about this. Like what if John MacArthur repented? It’s hard to imagine. The man’s never apologized that I know of. That’s what I’m told from everybody near him. But let’s imagine he did. What if John MacArthur went to Eileen Gray, and he said, Eileen, I’m so sorry. When your husband tried to suffocate your daughter and the abuse was so brutal in your home that you came to the church, you came to us for help. And instead of helping you, we told you to drop that protective order that you would have gotten against him to protect, not you, but your children. And in front of the entire church, I, the shepherd shamed and excommunicated you simply for trying to protect your children. And years later, years later when it came out that he had sexually abused your children and was convicted by court, and you know how hard it is to be convicted in California of child abuse? And they sent him to prison? I still maligned you, and I protected your abuser. Oh, Eileen, I am so sorry. I have sinned against you. I’ve sinned against my church; will you forgive me? Or what if he went to Wendy Gray and, Wendy, when you came to me, or when your father came to me when you were just a teenager, and he confessed to my face, that he had sexually molested you, and I kept him on staff another three years and I wrote you that handwritten note telling you to forgive your father? That was wrong, that was a sin against you. And years later, decades later, when that action of mine had devastated your life, and you simply came to me because you wanted support going to the elders of the church, where your father was still pastoring. And at this point, you knew that he was a serial abuser, he was abusing many people because that’s what pedophiles do. Instead of coming with you instead of supporting you, instead of repenting for what I did, I said in an email to you, why has this become such an obsession for you? That devastated you. That was my fault. I am so sorry. Will you forgive me for that? Do I want John MacArthur to receive grace? Do I want him to repent? or would I rather him see his maker and try and make that excuse to him? Honestly? It’s a little bit of a struggle. But I thought about that. Imagine if John MacArthur repented? I mean, really repented? Can you imagine the ripple effect that would have? How many pastors that would affect in this church? Can you imagine what that would do? Unbelievable what would happen if John MacArthur repented. Would I rejoice at that? You bet I’d rejoice at that. That could be the start of revival in this church. That’s what we need to see – is pastors repenting.   Julie Roys  53:09 But I tell you what, that is not natural for me. I tell you what’s natural for me. When somebody hurts me, I want them to hurt in the same way that they hurt me. Can I get an amen? That’s human nature, isn’t it? The only reason that I have any grace in my heart is because of Jesus Christ. Because I wouldn’t have it without him. And without him, I would become a monster, I am convinced of it. And that’s why one of many reasons why I need Jesus. But now I’m going to say something a little bit controversial. I’ve also found that I need Christian community. And I know some of you have been so burned by your Christian community, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to darken the doors of the church. Three and a half years ago, we lost a church, or we left the church that I thought we would be in the rest of our lives. I thought it was different. I loved that church dearly. I loved the people in it. But the last straw for us was when they covered up sex abuse. And at that point, we just couldn’t trust the leadership anymore. And for two years, we went from church to church to church to church, and it was unbelievably depressing. And I won’t go into all the reasons it was depressing. I think you all know. But two weeks before everything blew up in my life when this whole controversy hit last year. Two weeks before that a professional colleague invited me to his house church. And here’s what’s kind of ironic, that professional call I happen to be the CEO of Christianity Today. Now, if you know anything about my past, which you may not, I have not had a great relationship with Christianity Today. That CEO, though, has since publicly apologized for some of the stuff that CT did to me under his predecessor. But two weeks before this happened, I was like, Great, yeah, I’ll try anything at this point. So, my husband and I went to the church, the house church. And it was great, we loved it. I was like, this is really super. Between week one and week two, everything in my world blew up, and I had to resign from the conference. And I remember walking into that house church with people I knew two weeks. And I wasn’t really planning on sharing this. But somebody noticed something I had said, and then when we were in small groups, they said something, and I just, and I’m bawling in front of people I don’t even know, hardly. But over the past 18 months, that’s become my Christian community. And I was invited into a women’s cohort. And that became a support for me. And the leader of the women’s cohort said, “Julie, do you have a prayer team? And I said, Well, I used to have a prayer team, but it’s kind of fizzled. And I don’t honestly even have the strength to put one together. And she says, I’ll do it for you. And so, once a month, we have this really sweet prayer time with a small group of people. And they’ve been some of the best times for me, and I honestly shudder to think of where I would be right now, if for the past 18 months, I had done that in isolation. And so, I’m so grateful for Christians in my life, who have been the hands and the feet of Jesus to me and who have loved me. And I don’t know. I can’t speak to your situation. I know some of you feel like you’re in a wasteland. And I know you feel like all the churches in your area are bad. And I don’t, I’m not even going to argue with you. I would just encourage you to not give up, to not give up. And to keep hoping, keep pressing into Jesus keep looking for Christian community. And I don’t know how God will meet that in your life. But I just trust he will because that’s just God’s nature. And I don’t know how long the wasteland will be, but it won’t last forever.   Julie Roys  57:40 So, we’re going to close this conference the way we close every single RESTORE conference, and that’s with communion. And Paul Lundquist, who is a local pastor who has been a dear friend of this ministry, and so supportive of what we’re doing is going to come and lead us in communion where we celebrate not just our oneness with Christ, but our oneness together as his body. So, Paul, would you come?   Julie Roys  58:05 Well, I hope you’ve been encouraged by what you just heard. And I wish you could have been there to experience communion together with those dear and beautiful souls at the RESTORE conference. That is a memory I will not soon forget. And I hope you’ll make it a point to join us at the next RESTORE conference, which we’ll be announcing soon. Also, I want to mention that the videos of these talks are all available at my YouTube channel. And we’re not charging anything for those. We just really want as many people as possible to benefit from these RESTORE conference talks. But friends, I’m sure you’re aware that producing these podcasts and videos is not cheap. So, if you appreciate this content and you’re able to help, would you please consider donating to The Roys Report, especially as you’re considering your end of the year donations, please remember us and the work that we do. We’re running a bit in the red this year so your gifts are especially critical, so we can continue podcasting and reporting at the same level. To donate just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. That way you’ll never miss an episode. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged. Read more

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