A Wide-Ranging and Long-Awaited Interview

We have no intention of revealing how this interview came to be in our possession. To do so would give too much away about our sources and methods. At the same time, we can fully vouch for the soundness of all of the content, with the exception of the jokes. The interview concerns the recent Antioch Declaration, and the various issues that made such a Declaration necessary.

Thank you for agreeing to sit down with us.

You are most welcome. Anytime.

And thank you also for agreeing to our request beforehand that no question be put off limits. We really appreciate that. That is still the case, correct?

That is correct. But remember the condition attached to that. No answer is off limits either. If you ask, and I answer, then you publish.

Um . . . okay. Shall we jump right in?

[Nods]

Let’s begin with the event that kicked off the controversy—the clash between Pastor Tobias and Pastor Joel Webbon. What would you want to say about that?

I would say that it is a very important issue in its own right, but one that needs to be kept distinct from the other issue that is affecting many churches, the issue that the Declaration addresses. My hope is that Pastor Tobias Riemenschneider will be able to make his public statement about the whole thing very soon, and that the dispute can then be taken offline. My hope is that some form of biblical mediation can be arranged, and that this aspect of the controversy will be resolved in a way that honors God. In the meantime, I will also say that public vilification of anyone, coming from people who only have a fraction of the information, is the very opposite of helpful.

On to the Declaration then. First things first. How would you reply to the charge that The Antioch Declaration was a lame and painful boomercon move? You know, the “lame and gay” charge?

Dang. We were trying to hide that. What gave it away? Was it the complete sentences?

[Laughter]

But the Declaration really did come off to many as trying to be portentous and too self-serious. Do you take yourself too seriously?

Remember that in recent memory we did that whole Mr. Rogers gag, sweater and all. Did it not work? So no, I don’t think self-importance is a charge that sticks. If I were assigned the task of attacking us, that is not the line I would recommend taking.

Seriously though . . . please address the boomer thing.

All right. Seriously, generational differences are a big player in all of this. Not only in how the Declaration was written, but also—please remember—in how it is read and misread. Immediately after the Fall, God established the antithesis between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. The tendency of the Left attempts to deny the antithesis, which (because the antithesis cannot be denied) results in weird and arbitrary placements of the antithesis, such as what we see in critical theory—oppressor/oppressed, and so forth. But the Right can do the same thing too, with tribal or nationalist or partisan allegiances. And this is what is happening with the boomer-bigotry thing. For Christians who understand the antithesis biblically, wise boomers and wise millennials are on one side, and foolish boomers and foolish Gen Xers are on the other. Jeremiah, advocate of surrender, and David, advocate of putting enemy armies to flight, were on the same side of the antithesis. Rahab, who betrayed her people, and Ruth, who abandoned her people, and Mary, who was a faithful daughter of her people, were all on the same side of the antithesis. Never misplace the antithesis.

So are you saying that the boomer generation did not sin against the subsequent generations?

No, they sinned grievously. One generation can sin against another one, and entitled boomers did in fact sin in this way. But if we understand the antithesis, we remember that Joshua and Caleb stood against the ten spies who consigned Israel to forty years in the wilderness. What these anons are doing, seething in their resentments over what the ten spies did, are going over to the tents of Joshua and Caleb in order to vilify them. In behaving this way, they are not putting anything right upstream, but are sinning downstream grievously themselves.

So you are Joshua and Caleb in this metaphor?

That kind of statement is easy to mock as self-congratulatory, but I will take the risk. As Paul would say, they have forced me to it. Here in Moscow, we have done what many faithful boomers have done around the country, which is to build and provide for the subsequent generations. Right now the number of our students receiving a classical and Christian education is pushing one thousand. We even have them read Aristotle. And do you know what? None of these students are boomers. So yes. We are not among the ten spies. And those who are taunting Joshua and Caleb are numbered among their generation’s ten spies.

To highlight this generational challenge, what do you say to younger leaders who are with you on the central point, in that they think Jew-hate is a real problem which they do reject, but that they also feel that they couldn’t sign the statement because of that jab at Aristotle, say, or because of the implied interpretation of Romans 11?

I would say, “God bless you.” Carry on.

So you would agree that men of good conscience might not be able to sign it?

Sure. That is entirely up to them, and between them and God. Not my business. But if they were to ask me for any pastoral cautions, I would also urge them to be careful with themselves. Consciences can be slippery things.

What do you mean?

I mean that it is possible for a man to think that he is obeying his conscience when he is actually only allaying it. What this entire situation has made manifestly clear is that the dank right has a robust cool shame operation going, and one that works very effectively. People who sign this document, particularly those who inhabit the online conservative world, will in fact get The Treatment. So they should think of that Aristotle reference as our little gift to them. That way they can be with us in spirit, but not with us in the fray.

What do you mean by the dank right?

Other terms like dissident right or alt right are not specific enough. They cover too many variations. For example, I think it would be fair to categorize me as part of the Burkean dissident right. By dank right I mean those agitators who are already in a dark place and are grabbing at our ankles while they circle the drain.

How do you handle the cool shaming?

By not caring. Not even a little bit. This was the right thing to do.

How would you reply to someone who really ought to be in your corner, and is really grateful for your early family stuff, or education books, but has soured on you in recent years? They say that it seems to them that you are always dumping on white men or trashing your own tribe.

I would say that when the boat is pulling out of the slip it looks like the dock and the lake house are sailing away. But it is the boat that is moving. On these issues, I haven’t moved at all. I am sitting on the lake house deck. One of my first online battles was with the kinists at Little Geneva decades ago. I am right where I have always been. What has changed is that the outrageous behavior that was tolerated only among the kinists is now acceptable in far more places than it ought to be. And I attack it whenever I see it. But I love my mostly Scottish heritage as much as I ever did. I am grateful for my heritage, and embarrassed by those bigots who twist and distort it.

So we agreed that no question is off-limits, and that I would bring up the sorts of issues and comments we are seeing online. So are your arguments discredited because you are . . . I don’t want to be insulting . . . because you are . . . ?

I believe the phrase you are looking for is “not svelte.”

[Laughter]

Okay. Are your arguments discredited because you are not svelte?

Actually, no. I appeal to Scripture and not to how much I weigh. But on the other side of this very peculiar line of reasoning, I have seen a lot of people appealing, not to Scripture, but to how little they weigh and how much they can lift. Does having a good leg day bring an additional level of credence to an argument? If I were to lose twenty pounds, I wouldn’t have to go back to edit any of my arguments. But if they were to gain twenty pounds, they would need to do quite a bit of editing and scrubbing. This indicates some weird elements in their premises. And if I were to lose twenty pounds, how many of them would sign the Declaration then? Ad hom attacks like this are an informal fallacy, but fairly irresistible to the conceited.

But doesn’t the Bible condemn gluttony as a very serious sin?

It most certainly does. But in Scripture, gluttony does not refer to a second helping of mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. It refers to riotous eating, orgiastic eating, in company with drunkenness. It was the kind of thing that the prodigal son was pursuing with his riotous living in the far country (Luke 15:13). See Prov. 23:19-21 and Prov. 28:7. I go into this in detail in my chapter on gluttony in the book The Seven Deadlies. The bottom line is that if I believed I was not scripturally qualified to be doing what I am doing, I wouldn’t be doing it.

What if someone said you shouldn’t even be accused of being a glutton?

Jesus was accused of being a glutton (Matt. 11:19; Luke 7:34)

Thanks for not getting mad. Anything else to add about fitness and weight lifting?

Sure. These gym bros need to realize that for some of them, for a certain kind of weight lifter, years of weight lifting plus twenty years is going to turn them into a weather balloon. I have spent many years in the gym and know whereof I speak.

Did you lift? I am just getting started on it. Just this morning I managed to bench 175 lb. What was your PR?

Yes, I lifted for a long time. And I can say that according to the common metric, I was “advanced.” Can you feel my arguments getting any stronger? I won’t tell you my PR because that would be to play the silly game. What would I have needed to bench before any of them would sign the Declaration? What is the correlation between whatever upper body strength I might have and God’s requirement to not hate people?

But they would say that they don’t hate people, that they don’t hate . . .

They mostly certainly do hate. Over the last month I have seen enough disdain, contempt, malice, envy, spite, biting and devouring to last me a lifetime.

Okay, okay. What do you have against Aristotle?

That his followers are humorless and can’t take a joke—and that was a joke, by the way. Seriously, he was a very great man who made some invaluable contributions. One example of that would be his “laws of thought,” which I reframe in biblical categories in Introductory Logic. At the same time, the fact that he was a brilliant pagan doesn’t prevent certain destructive pagan assumptions from creeping in. “Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a part of the state” (Politics, VIII. 1). One of my goals for classical Christian education is to teach our students how to read people like Aristotle, keeping the meat and tossing the bones. I have no problem pillaging gold from the Egyptians. I do have a problem when our people dumpster dive in Egypt, and try to take empty Kleenex boxes and used grapefruit rinds with us to the promised land.

How would you answer those who say that you are trying to make a particular view of a particular historical event a matter of orthodoxy?

The basic thing I would say is that the Declaration explicitly rejects that idea. Did FDR know about Pearl Harbor in advance? Debate it. Was Churchill wrong to support the firebombing of Dresden? Debate it. Was the use of the Bomb at the end of the war justified? Go ahead and debate it.

Is there any part of the “post war consensus” that you would think is a legitimate take?That would be wrong-headed to debate?

Certainly. That the Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany after WW1 was an example of Western hubris, and was one of the central causes of WW2. We created Hitler, in other words. I believe this is incontrovertible, and is one of the reasons why I believe that Woodrow Wilson needs to be reckoned among the worst of presidents.

So isn’t a particular view of the historical events surrounding WW2 assumed in what you wrote?

That is also true . . . but that part is inescapable. It is true of everyone. If anyone references the war at all, then they must be assuming that certain aspects of it are praiseworthy, adiaphora, or blameworthy. And the Samuel Holden’s WBS video was laudatory of certain things that godly Christians should despise. As I do. But he was the one who put that ball into play, not us. He is the one who intruded a spurious historical claim into the conversation.

But shouldn’t elders and pastors of churches stay out of things like this? I mean completely out? After all, their training is in theology . . .

Yes, I know that Herman keeps bringing up his flat earth views in conversations with other members of the church, but the elders aren’t going to do anything about it because it is an issue of geography, and not a gospel issue. Yes, we know that Murgatroyd won’t shut up about his geo-centrism, but the plain fact is that not one of the elders has any training in astronomy. Yes, we understand that Uwimana is disrupting the ladies fellowship by telling her friends that the Rwandan genocide was greatly exaggerated by globalists at the UN, and that besides, many among the Tutsi had really been unduly provocative. Unfortunately, this is a geopolitical claim, and not a gospel issue. It is not possible to be an effective shepherd unless you are a generalist.

How do you answer those who say that you are trying to shut down any and all questions about the “consensus” concerning the War?

This is false. I deny it. There are many points yet to be settled, and it is right and proper to debate them. They need to be discussed. But the War was a global conflagration, and over 50 million people died in it. Something like that has, you know, a lot of things going on. Some of them are settled and some are not. You can’t just pick up some off-the-wall view and say that the Nazis never actually captured Paris, and then when I challenge that, say that I am just defending the general consensus. About that part of the consensus, sure.

What about those who say that your stridency on this issue means that some people with honest and reasonable questions are going to be afraid to talk about them because they think you would excommunicate them?

I would encourage anyone with reasonable questions to go ahead and ask them. But this is why I have compared this whole thing to Revoice for Nazis. “If you preach against sodomy strongly, then some men with questions about their sexuality will be afraid to bring them up.” Such is the concern. But what I should preach is determined by the text and not by anyone’s potential hurt feelings. So these situations are exactly parallel. But any and all honest questions should be asked and answered honestly.

What would be your response to those who say that Hitler did some good things?

I would say that people who talk that way have completely lost their sense of proportion. They are like those who would say, “Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”

How would you answer the charge that, as a boomer, you are too close to that war to be objective about it?

It is true enough that WW2 was not ancient history for me. During the war, one of my uncles died fighting in Sicily. Another uncle died while flying in a training exercise. My father-in-law was severely wounded at the Battle of Guadalcanal. Another uncle survived the sinking of his destroyer. My father came of age and enlisted just weeks before the war ended. One of my father’s friends, Louis Zamperini, participated in the 1936 Olympics as a teenager, and met Hitler. Another family friend was Corrie ten Boom, who I remember giving me a wiffle ball when I was a kid. So some could say that I am too close to be objective. Sure. But it is also possible that I am close enough to see.

But haven’t you conducted your own “post-war” revisionism, only with a different war?

I assume you mean my various writings on the Civil War, correct? The last verified veteran from the Civil War was Albert Henry Woolson, who died in 1956, when I was three years old. My father-in-law remembered that when he was a kid, the old guys in his town were the veterans of that War—much as the veterans of World War 2 are the generation that is currently dying off. So now that we have a similar sort of historical distance, then why shouldn’t young people today be allowed to revisit their receding war just as I revisited mine?

Exactly. That is the question, yes.

The key to understanding my attitude toward both wars and the aftermath of both wars is to realize that I am a Bible guy. What does the Bible say? What does the Bible teach? And whatever it is that the Bible tells us, we need to be good with it. No nervous throat clearing. No digging a hole in the carpet with your toe. Once the exegesis is done, no problem passages. And this posture means that sometimes you will collide with the Pharisees. Other times you will get challenged by the Sadducees. And then a handful of other times the Herodians will get into the act. So that said, murdering Jews is a crime against God, and owning a slave isn’t. How do I know this? How can we know the mind of God on such things? Well—and please follow me closely here—He wrote a Book. If asked to preach a sermon on how there were certain times in history when slavery was not a necessarily a sin for the master, I would have the choice of many texts—Ephesians, Genesis, Colossians, 1 Timothy, Exodus 20, Philemon, and many others. If asked to preach a sermon justifying the level of discourse I have seen from Reformed Christians online over the last month—discourse that closely resembles the concrete floor of the monkey house at the zoo—I confess that I would be entirely at a nonplus. I would have no texts, and I have no words.

Don’t you want to qualify that statement about slavery?

Not really . . . it is still November, and so I qualify nothing. I soften nothing. If you want broader context or qualifications, you will have to go read what I have written a hundred times elsewhere. Not today, Satan.

[Laughter]

Why is all this important to you? Are you really all that worried about a neo-Nazi takeover in the United States?

I am not worried at all about a neo-Nazi takeover here. Or anywhere. Worries in that vein are chimerical nonsense. Leftists worry about that kind of thing. I don’t at all.

So why was this Declaration needed then?

Great question. Allow me to explain the strategic lay of the land. Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate, really terrible . . . and yet she got 74 million votes. Just imagine what might happen if the commies have four years to rummage around for a candidate who is not a charisma hole. Anybody who thinks that the Republican candidate of 2028 has the election in the bag is someone who is clearly experimenting with mushrooms. And as a corollary, anyone who thinks that neo-Nazis present any kind of real electoral threat is probably doing the same.

So why is this a big deal to you then?

Do not think I am putting any ideas in the heads of the leftists here, because anybody who has thought about this for more than five minutes will already have thought of it. Let me give you the most obvious example, but there will be others also. Pete Hegseth has been nominated to be the next Secretary of Defense, a wonderful pick. He is an advocate of classical Christian education, an opponent of women in combat roles, and to top it all off he is a member of one of our CREC churches. He was already going to be attacked as a white nationalist, far right extremist, a theo-fascist, and all the rest of their tired drill. That was already going to happen. He is already being attacked as being part of our circles, and as someone who has been influenced by little old me.

And so then, like there was a signal given or something, a bunch of guys, non-astute, let us call them—Nazis, Nazi adjacent types, and aficionados of Nazi iconography—pop up in CREC circles, and we have ourselves our controversy. This means that the commies, during Hegeth’s confirmation hearing, will attempt to slander him with this kind of stuff, AND THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE TO MAKE UP ANY OF THE RAW MATERIAL FOR THEIR SLANDER. That service has already been provided by their crowd sourcing brigade of volunteers—who in their own imaginations think they are resisting the commies. Actually they are just doing for free what FBI imposters have to be paid to do.

I wonder if any of those really dank memes—you know, the dark and zingy ones—might show up at his confirmation hearing. “And this one, Mr. Chairman, from the @LaserEyedSonofDabney, a deacon in his church, reveals for us the cesspool in which our nominee has been swimming.”

So what good does the Declaration do?

If this issue comes up during his confirmation hearing now, as it almost certainly will, he can just point to the Declaration. He can note that it was signed by Uri Brito, the presiding minister of our denomination. I signed it, and a number of leading men from our churches signed it. If he has his wits about him, he will have signed it also. He can also point to the proposed memorial from Hus Presbytery that the CREC has accepted as a first reading.

He can also point to the statements adopted by Knox Presbytery (CREC) two years ago.

If Hegseth is confirmed, then thank the Lord. He will have turned his head at the last minute, like Trump did at Butler. In short, he can point to all the work we have done, the kind of work which at the time was hooted at as unnecessary posturing. We saw the need for this kind of thing years ago, and it is even more necessary now. Hence the Declaration.

If Hegseth is not confirmed, and this nonsense is any part of the controversy, I would say that all the revisionist chumps should go find a mirror, and thank themselves. And then step back about five paces, and take a bow.

Wait a minute. Don’t you take any responsibility for all this? You all published Stephen Wolfe’s book. You blurbed the Torba/Isker book, right? So what about that?

Stephen Wolfe is a Canon author, true enough, and he has not yet violated any of the terms of his contract. In his Twitter exchanges online, he can really be rude and ungracious, but he is right 80% of the time—he is smarter and cagier than some of the guys who take inspiration from him. The other 20% of the time it certainly appears that he is walking a fine line, and it is possible that he has been lying to us about his convictions. If that becomes apparent, it will be dealt with appropriately. Stephen has assured us that he is no kinist, and we wouldn’t have published him without that assurance. But time has revealed that he does have that Revoice impulse going big time.

Canon has some other irons in the fire on this subject as well, and it is my conviction that Canon is the place where this conversation should be worked out.

In the pre-Elon days of suffocating censorship at Twitter, I pushed Gab hard, for free speech reasons, and went over there myself. But I couldn’t figure out any way to keep nefarious Jews from popping up in my feed constantly, and so I left. When I blurbed their book, the worrisome trajectory was not as obvious as it is now.

Yes, but even if you didn’t see it, there were critics who did see these things coming, and who tried to warn you . . .

There were a bunch of people who tried to warn me about them, but they were the same kind of people who were busy warning other people about me. I knew that they were making stuff up about me, and so had no reason to take their warnings about anybody else seriously. And so I didn’t. But our line has always been very clear.

On a submarine, if the collision alarm sounds, you immediately shut the nearest watertight door, and cinch it tight. There is a line that we have that is the equivalent of that collision alarm. If people we used to be associated with cross that line, then we will simply do our duty—we will shut the hatch and ignore the yelling. That’s not cancel culture, and not a struggle session. That is how you keep the whole submarine from going down.

Thanks very much.

You are most welcome.

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