Whenever something like this Meet the Press thing happens, all kinds of thoughts crowd into my head unbidden. And while one must always keep in mind that trenchant observation of Wodehouse, which is that some minds are like the soup in a bad restaurant, better left unstirred, it remains the case that other things simply must be responded to. You know?
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So consider this nothing more than a set of related but still disconnected screen shots, registered or taken over the course of a few days.
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Scott Clark tweeted that our people were whining about the biased treatment we got at the hands of NBC, and I am afraid that it was not the case that I was not nonplussed . . . so to speak. He said this because so many of our people were whooping and hollering and saying things like woot and yay, that I think that in all the excitement he must have gotten things confused and turned around in his head. His thought was that if we can’t stand a little media bigotry how are we going to stand against the likes of a Nero, hey? If you can’t run with men, how will you run with horses (Jer. 12:5)? But we did run with men, and so it remains to be seen whether we can do anything else. Coming from Scripture as it does, the structure of this argument is sound, but I am afraid his application is more or less cockeyed. It is misapplied. We were prepared for the slanted coverage, and were exultant over how the whole thing landed. Consequently, our response was what Turretin and other Reformed scholastics would have called “not whining.” But because the structure of the argument is sound, why should we not use it? One might, if one were disposed to do so, ask Clark something in return, something along the lines of “if you can’t argue your way out of a paper bag, how are you going to argue your way out of a coliseum full of lions?”
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Part of our preparation consisted of this. When a secular or hostile media outlet requests an interview, we have them fill out a form. On that form they have to agree to allow us to film the entire interview independently. For the Meet the Press gig, we had two cameras of our own running the whole time. The BBC is going to be visiting in a few weeks, and we will do the same with them. This is what you might call “hit piece” insurance.
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The entire NBC piece framed the issue in terms of “Christian nationalism,” and so okay. What this means is that they have set the stage for the following play, the play they would like to run. They want to chase reputable critics of secularism over to where some of the disreputable voices are, and then they want to accuse us of hanging out with those disreputable people. Now the reason I don’t feel at all chastened about this is, I suppose, the same reason David didn’t feel bad about hanging out with the debtors and the distressed and the discontents at the Cave of Adullam (1 Sam. 22:2 ). He was chased there.
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Once the label is successfully attached to me, so the thinking goes, and also to Al Mohler, and to Ezekiel T. Hogwallop, of the Ozark World Mission and Tire Center, this means that Al can be accused of secretly sympathizing with my views on SLAVERY, especially as they have been so cogently summarized by the hysterical people, and I can be confronted with Ezekiel’s infamous position paper, the one alleging that the entire economy of the West has been secretly given its orientation and direction by a cabal of greedy Jews.
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Speaking of all that, I do agree that Jews have had a profound impact, largely unrecognized, on the economy of the West. I mean, look at Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, F.A. Hayek . . .
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But there are obstacles for these people in this, their guilt by association plan. One of the effects of this Meet the Press segment is that it makes our ministries here in Moscow part of the national face of this rising Christian nationalism. I do not maintain that we are deserving of such treatment and recognition, only that it seems to have happened anyhow. “Christian nationalism is on the rise!”, they shout, like Paul Revere riding off into the night, and then their Exhibit A is the work God has assigned to us in our little town. Okay, so now we are part of the face of Christian nationalism. Now this is a term I would not have picked out at a store, but it is a term (for reasons explained elsewhere) I am willing to work with). Now the fly in their ointment is this. I have been publicly arguing against various forms of anti-Semitism for years now, and I have been brawling with white supremacists and kinists for decades. So as part of my acceptance speech, I am now in a position begin this way. “Thank you, thank you. This is truly a great honor. I want to begin by saying that Christian nationalism stands for the need for mankind to base all of our laws on the firm foundation of coming to God the Father through the worship of a Jew. And because of this we have good news for all mankind, for the Jew first, and then also for the Greek (Rom. 1:16; 2:9-10).
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Another takeaway from all this. There are some who might argue that someone on the editing team was a closet supporter of ours. Would it be out of line to thank that person here? Will it get them in trouble? I mean, the trenchant albeit entirely false criticism was leveled that we hold that women shouldn’t wear slacks, followed by footage of our psalm sing with women wearing . . . you guessed it, slacks. Now of course, being the powerful Kult that we are, some might retort that we obviously sent all of our disobedient slacks-wearing women to the psalm sing, thinking that they would somehow be better at, you know, disobeying.
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Someone online asked why my answer on the inequality of women seemed to grant the point that we believe in the inequality of women, and that I was seeming to say that we arrange our affairs in this way simply because God requires it. But this was the result of editing on their part. If you look at this video, you will see the full answer to that question.
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Some of our local adversaries in the segment were seeking to make the point that when it came to the Christian nationalism menu, we are kind of a nothing burger. Evidence for this was purported to be the fact that candidates from our church got whupped in the last city council elections. There are three things to say. First, there were no candidates from our church on the ballot. One of the defeated candidates was a Mormon, one attended our church years ago, and the third attends a sister church. The second point is that what we are doing is not dependent on politics. Politics is not the instrument we are seeking to use. Politics will eventually be affected, of course, but politics is not a savior. Politics will eventually be saved, but is no savior. And besides, if we ever were to acquire seats on the city council, which is not part of the current plan, we would simply want to use that influence to get the city to leave us alone. And third, these critics were on national television because of their proximity to us. So something is happening. But our critics are really conflicted, which showed up in this part of the story and also in the panel discussion afterwards. On the one hand, they need to present us as a real and present danger (“the theofascists are coming!”) as way of motivating their base, while on the other hand they want to treat us patronizingly, patting us on the head, as much as to say that we really ought to get over our Sunday School delusions. So which way should they go? I would urge them to all go back to sleep. All of this is nothing really.