Tucker on the New Religion of Trump’s America and His Mockery of Jesus Christ

0:01Donald Trump is a famously irreligious man, just not that interested, basically secular, a product of his time and place.

0:09If you doubt that, some of the funniest clips ever of Donald Trump, and this is not a criticism, they're legit funny, are him being interviewed during the 2016 campaign and asked basic questions like, "What's your favorite book of the Bible?" To which he says, with some confusion, "Well, the Bible." Maybe unaware there are component books to it.

0:28So, Donald Trump is not someone who traditionally, or ever, really, has weighed in on questions of faith or theology. Kind of gives it a pass, or smiles.

0:39"Yeah, I'm for it. I'm for it. The Bible."

0:43But, in the space of one week, Donald Trump, the same famously irreligious Donald Trump, has weighed in in pretty specific ways on matters of faith and theology and religion, publicly.

0:57In ways that are disruptive and sort of hard to understand, but worth trying to understand. So, all this began about 10 days ago on Easter Sunday, early on Easter Sunday, before 9:00 a.m. on Easter Sunday, when Trump tweeted that he was planning on destroying civilian infrastructure in Iran. It was going to be bridge and power plant day, basically promising war crimes, crimes against civilians, against the population of the country.

1:21And then, in that same tweet, or truth, he used the F-word on Easter Sunday. And then, he seemed to make fun of Islam. "Praise Allah," he said. So, in one short statement of about 110 words, he seemed to give the finger to the world's two largest religions, Christianity and Islam. Hmm.

1:44That was Sunday.

1:46And then, exactly one week later, also on Sunday, the Christian holy day, he attacked the Pope, the leader of the world's largest religion and largest Christian denomination.

1:58And attacked him personally and said basically he's only Pope because of me.

2:03He's bad. The Pope is bad.

2:06And then later that day maybe most interestingly, bafflingly of all he sent out this, this meme.

2:16Take a look at this.

2:18Now, there are two on the screen. The one on the right is the one that he sent out and it's himself, it's Donald Trump, President of the United States dressed as Jesus healing a man. You can see the healing power coming off of his right hand.

2:34Now, the image on the left of your screen is the original image and it was floating around the internet, who knows exactly where it came from. Uh but it's been there for quite some time. The one on the right is the one the president sent out.

2:46White House communications office or whoever does this sent out and you'll notice that it's been changed and the American soldier over the president's head, the president as Jesus' head has been changed and is now, if you look very carefully, a demon, some kind of winged creature of hell.

3:06So, it goes from an image that suggests, you know, healing and light to an image that suggests, I don't know, a scene from Revelation, John's vision on the Isle of Patmos, the end times, the apocalypse, who knows, nothing good.

3:20It suggests demonic power because there is a demon in it.

3:24So, he sent that out.

3:25And then withdrew it.

3:28Deleted the tweet from the internet after an outcry, but was asked about it and he said, "Yeah, I sent that."

3:35Um didn't explain how the demon got in there, someone at the White House put it in.

3:41Didn't explain why.

3:42And he said, "I sent it out, but it wasn't me as Jesus." The obviously it is. It was me as a doctor because I heal people.

3:51Jesus, of course, basically described himself as a doctor, someone who came for the sick to heal them, which he did.

3:56So, maybe distinction without a difference, but still kind of confusing.

4:00And then today, a day later, was asked about it again, and he said, "No, no, no, I didn't. I didn't have anything to do with that. I didn't send it out."

4:09Which wasn't exactly an answer to the question.

4:13Even more confusing, what was that? And then, to make it even further mysterious, sent out this meme on Truth Social, retweeting somebody else, and it's him, Donald Trump, being, I don't know, how would you describe that? Caressed by healed by maybe endorsed by Jesus. That's unmistakably Jesus, the Christian Messiah, the man-god at the center of Christianity, with his arm around Donald Trump, basically saying, "You go, Trump. I'm on your side."

4:54So, all of that in a little over a week.

4:58What does it mean? Because it certainly means something.

5:03This isn't so much a couple of memes, these are These are icons. This is iconography.

5:10These are attempts to send a statement about faith.

5:14What statement is the president sending?

5:17Well, not a coherent one.

5:19Doesn't actually add up to a theology.

5:24It's mockery.

5:25He's mocking Jesus. He's making fun of Christianity.

5:29The central figure of the religion is being held up for mockery.

5:34Of course. And his description of how this got out is itself mockery, mockery of the idea of truth. One day he says, "Yeah, I did it." Next day he says, "No, I didn't do it."

5:44Both are on video.

5:45That's not really a lie. It's more than a lie. It's bigger than a lie.

5:49It's an attack not just on a specific set of facts. It's an attack on the idea that there are facts.

5:55It's an attack on truth.

5:58Openly.

5:59No one's hiding this.

6:02So, this was kind of dismissed after a online kerfuffle for a few hours and people were outraged and then they weren't and we've got other things to worry about they moved on.

6:14But, for sincere religious people, for Christians who care about Jesus and what's true and what's not, a lot of them went to their Bibles to try and figure out what are we watching here? And a lot of them came up with >> [snorts] >> a couple of verses that seem to fit what we're watching.

6:33And if you are a sincere Christian or know some, maybe you got these texted to you, but we'll read them just so you know how a lot of people of faith were interpreting this.

6:44The first is from Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians, the church of Thessalonica.

6:50Um chapter 2, very well-known verse in which he's describing what's going to happen when Jesus comes back and he says, "You're going to hear that Jesus is coming back. Don't believe what you hear.

7:03A bunch of things have to happen before he returns to Earth, redeems the world, history ends.

7:09Um and you'll know that he's coming by these events and among them will be the rise of a figure he describes as the man of lawlessness, sometimes describes as the Antichrist, but the man of lawlessness is the phrase from his second letter to the Thessalonians and he says this, "There will be a great rebellion against God led by that man of lawlessness. This man, {quote} will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped so that he sets himself up in God's temple proclaiming himself to be God.

7:44He will pose as God.

7:46He will mock other gods and put himself in their place.

7:52That's from the second letter to the Thessalonians, but it that's not the first place in the Bible, Old and New Testaments, where something like this is described. Variations of this are in a number of prophecies in what Christians call the Old Testament, including those contained in the book of Daniel.

8:07The prophet Daniel describes something very much like this at the end of history, and he's describing this period, really as it's so often described in the prophets, as punishment.

8:18Punishment for faithlessness and sin.

8:20God's people are being punished for not following God.

8:23And that punishment describes in part in chapter 11 from the book of Daniel, predicts the coming of a king, and we're quoting now, a king who will do as he pleases. He will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will say unheard of things against the God of gods.

8:42He will be success successful until the time of wrath is completed.

8:46For what has been determined must take place. It's all ordained, in other words, preordained. He will show no regard for the gods of his ancestors, nor will he regard any god, but will exalt himself above them all.

9:00So, to a lot of Christians or people who know the Bible well and believe in it, these predictions in both the Old and the New Testament, and there are others, seem to fit what we were watching.

9:12Here's a leader who's mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the God of gods, and exalting himself above them.

9:21Could this be the Antichrist?

9:24Well, who knows?

9:26At least that's my conclusion. Who knows? We're also told repeatedly in the New Testament that you're not going to know.

9:33That Jesus will return like a thief in the night, and and you better be ready because you can't predict it.

9:38But we're also told there are signs and is this one of them? Well, again, unclear.

9:44This, by the way, fits the behavior of other leaders throughout history who saw themselves in a kind of rivalry with the gods of their people and so thought to sought to put themselves over those gods, exalt themselves above God.

10:01That's actually pretty common.

10:03That is really the definition of megalomania.

10:07And it's happened before and will doubtless happen again. But that's clearly what this is. This is mockery of God by a temporal leader, by a man.

10:20This is the leader of our country saying, "I will take no instruction from God because, as he showed in the first meme, I am God."

10:28Okay.

10:30So, that kind of raises the question, is that okay?

10:34Seems to be okay. There were no massive protests in front of the White House.

10:38There was no attempt really to do anything about this. In fact, many Republican leaders shrugged it off.

10:44Self-professed Christians shrugged it off. No big deal.

10:48You know, he's just just true socialing.

10:50Don't pay attention. It's just a joke.

10:52It's just a joke. What, you have no sense of humor? Mocking Jesus?

10:56Giving the finger to God?

10:58You're so uptight.

11:01And as for his attacks on the Pope, Republican leader after Republican leader, including just hours ago, the Speaker of the House, the self-described Christian, fervent Christian, Bible scholar, joined in attacking the Pope.

11:17So, you going to have to wonder, is this the behavior of a Christian nation? Is the United States a Christian nation?

11:24Well, that depends how you look at it.

11:25The United States is the nation with the most Christians, over 200 million. There are more Christians in the United States than in any other country on planet Earth.

11:33So, it is by that definition a Christian nation. Of course, it's not officially Christian.

11:38Our Constitution forbids the US government from creating a state religion in the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

11:47So, no, it's not officially Christian, but it is fundamentally, materially Christian because it's majority Christian still.

11:56And once again, it's the country with the most Christians, but it's not a Christian country. And in fact, if you take three steps back, it's a nation, or it's a government anyway, that has for a long time really acted in opposition, explicit opposition to the interests of Christians, not just the United States, but around the world. Our foreign policy, for example, seems to target Christians.

12:18And this has happened consistently enough that it's probably not an accidental byproduct of the policy. It may be the point of the policy. Who knows what the intent is? But certainly a fact of every foreign policy adventure, at least since Vietnam, which in the end, and this is often forgotten, left the Catholics, and there were many of them in Vietnam, in concentration camps. Didn't help the Catholics at all.

12:45Vietnam went from a Catholic country to a communist country.

12:50And that's not entirely our fault, but that is that was the effect. That happened.

12:55The Iraq War.

12:56There were millions of Christians in Iraq when it started. There aren't now.

13:00A lot of them are dead. Our policies in Syria, today in Lebanon, the only country in the Middle East with a Christian president, a Christian head of the military, being bombed with our bombs, dropped from our airplanes. Our munitions are being used to kill Christians.

13:16Our government is effectively sanctioning the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon, including Christian villages, ancient Christian villages.

13:25So, our foreign policy abets the murder Christians. And not just our foreign policy, all of our policies.

13:33Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, our country as well, have all changed substantially demographically and become much less Christian because of immigration.

13:46So, you often hear people complain, "Oh, Europe's becoming Muslim."

13:50Yeah.

13:51Why is that? Well, because of mass migration.

13:56We've abetted it. The neocons certainly have abetted it. They've been in favor of it. They've attacked anyone who's opposed to it. Victor Orbán in Hungary just lost the other day. The Prime Minister of Hungary was hated by neoconservatives in Washington. Why is that?

14:11Cuz he pushed back against mass mass migration into Hungary. And he said, "Hungary is part of Christian Europe. It's a Christian country. It's one of the main reasons I don't want mass migration." Well, the entire foreign policy establishment in the United States decided he was an enemy for saying that.

14:29So, it's not simply that they haven't stopped the destruction of Christian Europe. They've been fully in favor of it. They're fully in favor of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Net effect, millions of dead Christian men.

14:41That's not just a again an accidental byproduct. That may be the whole point.

14:47So, the United States government, as distinct from the people of the United States who are still majority Christian, United States government has been pretty aggressively anti-Christian for a very long time.

14:59Donald Trump is not the first president to give the finger to Jesus. Hardly.

15:04But, he is the first president to do it in public.

15:11And this has been going on long enough and it's reaching a kind of boiling point right now that we can begin to see the outlines of what the actual religion of the United States government is.

15:20Certainly this administration.

15:22Because there always is one. There's no secular government, never has been one, never will be one. A truly secular government would have no purpose. Its leaders would have no destiny. There'd be no real reason to continue on. It certainly wouldn't have any evangelical zeal.

15:41And our government does have evangelical zeal. We're spreading democracy and free market principles around the world, freedom or whatever.

15:47So every government is motivated by religious impulse, whether the government admits it or not.

15:53And ours certainly is. So what is the civic religion of the United States?

15:58What's the religion of the US government? What's the religion, honestly, of Donald Trump?

16:04It's not Christianity, clearly.

16:07It's Israelism.

16:09It's the defense of Israel. Now, how do you know that? Well, because the United States has set up as its chief foreign policy in the defense of Israel. That's one clue.

16:18There's that.

16:19But it's much deeper than that.

16:21Who are the main enemies, as identified by the President of the United States, of his government domestically? Who are his enemies? Who does he dislike? Who does he attack? Who does he go out of his way to undermine?

16:36Well, it's people who doubt Israel.

16:40People who stand in the way of the aims of the secular government of Israel.

16:46And that would include Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, and the Pope.

16:53Now, how do you know that's what it is?

16:55Well, because that's the only thing they have in common.

16:58The Pope, the American Pope, first American Pope, Pope Leo, is in American political terms a liberal. He is, by the way, for mass migration.

17:07Shamefully so, I would say, as a non-Catholic.

17:12But while not anti-Israel, he's not a Zionist because Catholicism doesn't recognize Zionism as part of its catechism. You can there are plenty of Catholics who love Israel and there are some who don't love Israel, maybe some who hate Israel, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the core tenants of Catholicism. And unlike so many other newer versions of Christianity, Catholicism has been around for thousands of years and has a very clearly articulated catechism. You know what Catholics believe or what the church believes. And what it tells its members, its parishioners, its Catholics, communicants to believe. It's all

17:49written down.

17:51And unwavering support for the state of Israel is just not on the list at all.

17:58At best, it's a faith that's agnostic toward the political fortunes of the Netanyahu government.

18:04And that's not going to change because again, there's a structure and there is a list of beliefs, a creed written down. So, it's pretty hard to force a church like that to change its views because those views are effectively set in stone and have been for a very long time.

18:27So, the president's problem with Pope Leo probably has nothing to do with Pope Leo's views on crime, which may be annoying, by the way.

18:36His views on mass migration are very hard to defend and very destructive, but that's not really the problem here.

18:44The problem is that Pope Leo criticized this war with Iran, which was waged in partnership with Israel on behalf of Israel at the instigation of Israel. And he criticized that. That's his problem.

18:58So did Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie. Thomas Massie made the mistake of criticizing Israel's lobby in the United States, AIPAC. That was his sin.

19:07Marjorie Taylor Greene didn't say a lot about AIPAC, but wasn't enthusiastic about waging wars on Israel.

19:12She got attacked, too.

19:14That's the only thing all three of them have in common.

19:17Thomas Massie is a pretty strict libertarian. Marjorie Taylor Greene is what we used to call a MAGA conservative. She believed the Trump program from 2016.

19:26Hardly a liberal, totally opposed to mass migration, tough on crime as they used to say, has basically every single belief in common with the Donald Trump who ran for office in 2016, 2020, and 2024. There's no daylight between them. She ran for Congress because she was inspired by Donald Trump.

19:46She was the number one Trump acolyte in the Congress. Why did they break? Over Israel.

19:53Over Israel's connection to Jeffrey Epstein and over Israel's push for the United States to join all kinds of foreign wars, particularly a war with Iran. That's why they broke. That's the thing that split their relationship and got the president attacking her and Thomas Massie and the Pope. So, what does that tell you?

20:11It tells you what the religion is. The religion is Israelism. It's the support of Israel.

20:19That's why the president is totally comfortable surrounding himself with evangelical preachers, every one of whom has one thing in common, whether they're word of faith preachers or charismatic preachers or not. That's a huge split among evangelicals. Are you charismatic or not?

20:35Do you believe that glossolalia, tongues, prophecy, seeing has a role in contemporary Christian worship, church services? You know, they're mad at each other about that.

20:45Trump probably isn't even aware of that distinction. All of them are welcome as long as their faith includes unwavering support for Israel. That's the common denominator. That's the only thing that matters.

20:58And because that's the only thing that matters, the coalition, the ever shrinking, day by day shrinking coalition that supports this president is now out in force explaining that actually the Pope and Catholics, the Catholic Church itself which about 20 minutes ago most people thought was conservative and that it's pro-life for example, that used to be a tenant of conservatism before this president it wasn't for abortion that the Catholic Church is somehow liberal and not just liberal anti-Semitic.

21:35It's evil. It hates Jews.

21:38It's actually pro-Nazi.

21:40Watch Lindsey Graham make this case.

21:43They're religious Nazis in the Catholic Church. God bless the Catholic Church.

21:47And the third is you didn't really get Hitler to the Pope. You really don't get this religious Nazi regime, the Ayatollah and his henchmen. They are evil. They will kill all the Jews if we let them and the Jewish people one Holocaust is enough.

22:04Oh, see the Pope doesn't really get that Nazism is evil. Catholics just somehow missed that memo. Hitler bad. They just didn't It's been 80 years, but they just they never really bought into the proposition that the Holocaust was bad, that murdering Jews was bad. They're probably kind of for it actually.

22:25Now, it's interesting because a year ago no Republican member of Congress would have dared say anything like that. First of all, that's insane. It's a slander against Catholics saying this is a birthright lifelong Protestant, but it's just not true.

22:41It's a horrible thing to say about anybody.

22:44But as a political matter, it would have been crazy to say that because Catholics sincere church-going Catholics vote Republican.

22:55In fact, the more often you go to mass, the more likely you are to vote Republican at that's true across races by the way.

23:03So, you see all these, you know, Hispanics are voting for Trump.

23:06And he got more Hispanics to vote for him, it is true, in 2024 than any Republican maybe ever.

23:13More than Jeb Bush speaking Spanish, married to a Mexican lady.

23:18And well, how did he do that? Well, one of the reasons he did that is because a lot of Hispanics are very Catholic.

23:24They're Christian. They're religious.

23:25They go to mass a lot.

23:28And because they do, because their faith for some of them, their faith is at the center of their lives, they voted for the candidate who seemed most predisposed to their religious views.

23:44Maybe he's not a Christian or a fervent Christian, but he seemed like a man who would protect Christians, Catholic Christians included. And so, they voted for him.

23:52So, a year ago, no and every Republican knows this cuz there's lots of polling on it. Because politicians think in terms of coalitions and who's going to vote for me and why and they know this very well.

24:02So, a year ago, no Republican would ever get up on TV and say, you know, think about Catholics is they're kind of Nazis.

24:10But there's Lindsey Graham doing it right there.

24:13This is a profound break.

24:15And it's a it's a very clear window into what the actual faith is.

24:20Israel is the deal killer.

24:23Anyone who doesn't support the military aims of the modern Israeli government cannot be part of the mega coalition.

24:32And Lindsey Graham has just told us can't be a Christian.

24:37It's amazing.

24:38But it's not just Lindsey Graham. This is everywhere today, in case you haven't seen it.

24:42Here's Patrick Bet-David on his podcast a day or two ago. Watch this. I don't know why Catholics uh you know, have this issue with Jews. I don't know what it is.

24:54They have this this this you know, it's I I don't Listen, I get the Jews have issues with Christians and they'll make fun and they'll say stuff like, "Oh, your Jesus is going to do you know, they'll say well, he was a Jew anyways, right?"

25:07But then Catholics have that issue with Jews. And they they act like, you know, they're all innocent and everything. And then when you look at Catholics, the amount of centralized power they have.

25:19Centralized. If you you know what the total Catholic population is worldwide?

25:23It's like 1 2 1 3 billion. Jews are 15 million.

25:28>> 15 million.

25:28>> But Jews are decentralized, meaning Catholic Jews don't have somebody they listen to that says, "Hey, you better do this."

25:37Catholics, God forbid you say something about the Pope. They're like, "Hey man, listen." Who is that Pope figure in the Christian community? We don't have one.

25:44No. If I ask you right now, who's the Pope in the Christian community? You don't have somebody to look at. Who is it? Which pastor? Yeah, exactly. No, they don't We don't have one. It's an independent network.

25:54So, if you look at Only Catholics and Muslims have somebody that they look at as their supreme leader, like, you know, you got to go to somebody. But even more, it's Catholic.

26:05>> Well, there's only two theocracies in the world.

26:08Catholicism and Islam. I'm sorry, the the the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yep.

26:14And the Vatican. Yeah. Those are the two major theocracies.

26:18>> [laughter] >> So, [snorts] actually, the Vatican is very much like the Nazi Iranian government, the theocratic government, the mullahs, it's all basically the same. They've got the complicated dress, they hate the Jews, as Patrick Bet-David just said. There's Catholics have a problem with the Jews.

26:36A problem with the Jews.

26:40It's slander.

26:44It's an attack on the world's largest and oldest Christian denomination and it's taking place openly.

26:54And it's all coming from the same source.

26:59Which is Israel. The issue is Israel. Anyone who supports the Netanyahu government, not Israel as a concept, not all Jews, no.

27:08The Netanyahu government, anyone who ratifies every decision, no matter how violent or grotesque or genocidal of the Netanyahu government, those are the good people.

27:20And anyone who doesn't is a Nazi. And by the way, their religion itself is a Nazi religion. It's an inherently anti-Semitic religion. That's what they're telling you, out in the open.

27:32And the kind of casual dismissal, the mockery, the loathing of the oldest and largest Christian church is just remarkable.

27:44Now, again, Trump is someone who, you know, has a lot of problems showing respect to other powerful figures. And this is it's not just Trump.

27:56Most men like Trump are that way. They get along well with women because they're not threatened by women.

28:03Woman's probably not trying to like kill you and become king.

28:07They're kind of loyal and but other men, every other man to a certain male personality type is a potential threat. That's why kings kill their sons.

28:16Every man is a potential threat.

28:19It's a Trump who is not on a gut level, instinctively respectful of anything or anybody. And that's one of the reasons he was a much-needed transformative political figure for so long in the United States because he was willing to ask questions that most people in Washington had never even thought of out of deference to the existing system. Like, why do we have NATO?

28:43Is it really good idea to offshore manufacturing? Is our immigration actually our system helping the United States or hurting, etc., etc., etc. All famously the questions that Trump asked about the way we were doing things were made possible. He was able to ask those things because he doesn't have reflective respect for anybody.

29:00Got it.

29:03And so when Trump mocks Jesus and the Pope and Christians and tweets out the F-word on Easter morning, kind of like, well, this is awful, but it's also kind of consistent with the Trump we know. This is just Trump turned up to 11.

29:22But what's interesting is there are certain circumstances where Trump shows sincere reverence.

29:29There are the outlines of an actual religious faith here.

29:34And they're not what you would expect. So here, for example, is Donald Trump, the month before the last election, this is October 2020, for visiting the grave of a man called Rebbe Schneerson, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, who is uh was, he's since passed away, the leader of a large Orthodox sect.

30:00He's Eastern European by birth, came with many of his followers to New York, to Brooklyn, and built a very successful, though relatively speaking very small, uh center of religious thought and political power, actually.

30:15He died some years ago. There's the now president standing there.

30:19Um Looks like maybe Ben Shapiro there, Howard Lutnick, wearing a kippah on his head.

30:27As you look at that, ask, is it possible to imagine Donald Trump ever mocking Rebbe Schneerson, who by the way, and this is kind of the point, is considered by some of his followers to be the Messiah.

30:42And to be completely clear, every American is allowed to decide for himself who the Messiah is, so that is not mockery of that belief.

30:50I don't personally believe it, but one of the reasons we've been able to live with people of different faiths in this country for 250 years is we don't mock other people's religious faith unless we're absolutely forced to, unless you're trying to make me attend your religious rituals or bow down before a god I don't consider god.

31:12Unless it comes to that, we kind of let each other have our own religious views.

31:16And that has worked. That's changing very, very fast, however.

31:20But ask yourself, can you imagine Donald Trump sending out a meme mocking Rebbe Schneerson?

31:27And of course under no circumstances could you imagine that because under no circumstances would that ever happen.

31:32Trump would not be allowed to do that, and Trump would never even consider doing it.

31:36But sending out multiple images mocking Jesus?

31:40No problem at all.

31:42So that gives you a more precise sense of what our civic religion actually is.

31:50A civic religion, by the way, is not a conventional religion. Civic religion is a series of customs, some enshrined in law, not all, that a society, civilization, and its government observe.

32:02And it doesn't necessarily mean there's a god at the center of it. That's why it's a civic religion rather than a conventional religion.

32:08But our civic religion is, if you again take three steps back and just assess the country with the eyes of a visitor, a modern Tocqueville, you can see it really clearly.

32:19What are the events? Who are the people who we treat with reverence?

32:25What are you actually not allowed to make fun of?

32:30What is blasphemy in modern America?

32:35Those are the questions you ask if you are trying to understand what our operative religion is. What's the religion of our leaders? Again, it's not a conventional religion necessarily.

32:44It's not Torah Judaism or Rabbinic Judaism or Evangelical Christianity or Catholic Christianity.

32:52It's the actual religion, the real religion.

32:57The set of beliefs that we treat with reverence.

33:02Well, it just so happens there was a religious ceremony ongoing today in the United States Capitol complete with very recognizable religious iconography, symbolism.

33:16You may not even have known this was happening, but it was happening today as part of an 8-day celebration of remembrance of the Holocaust.

33:26The period in the 1930s and 40s where the German government, the Nazi government, murdered in addition to a lot of other people, a whole bunch of Jews.

33:36And that ended in part because the United States sent troops to Europe, millions of troops to Europe to defeat the German government. And with the help of the Soviets, our allies at the time, we did that. And in the process of doing that, over a quarter million Americans, American men, were killed trying to stop the Nazi government from doing the evil things that it was doing.

34:03A quarter million, more than, American men died fighting the Nazis.

34:09But in today's ceremony in the Congress, there was no mention of them.

34:15There was instead this. Watch. Ladies and gentlemen, a museum leadership program has included more than 72,000 US military members.

34:27Through examination of the Holocaust, they gain insight into their own professional and individual responsibilities.

34:36The candle lighters are members of the United States Army, third infantry regiment, the Old Guard.

34:49>> [applause] >> I am Sergeant Ethan Autry.

34:57I remember That is a current uniformed US military member from the Old Guard, the third infantry regiment, which is, you know, ever-present at our public events in Washington, saying lighting a candle at the menorah and saying I remember. No explanation of I remember I remember what? What do we What are we remembering here?

35:40And we do have a sense that it's we're not remembering the American soldiers who liberated Dachau, for example.

35:48We're not remembering the quarter million American men who joined a war they had nothing to do with inherently.

35:54It wasn't taking place in North America, it was taking place in Europe. And the dispute was over Poland and Czechoslovakia.

36:00And they sacrificed their lives to defeat the Nazi government that was murdering Jews and a lot of other people, Poles and Russians and Gypsies and Czechs and lots lots of people, but a lot of Jews as well.

36:12But they gave their lives to stop that, but we're not remembering them, we're remembering only the victims of one specific ethnicity during these eight days of remembrance, as distinct from the day of remembrance that we also have, that's also enshrined in American law, in January.

36:28So, there's a total of nine days of remembrance of one group of victims in a war that killed tens of millions of people globally, tens and tens and tens of millions, the numbers are actually not even clear. So many people died, we're not exactly sure how many died, but many tens of millions died.

36:45Including close to a half million Americans, over a quarter million in Europe fighting this Nazi regime, not remembered.

36:53So, that is not to disrespect the Jewish victims of the Holocaust or the Second World War, of course not. Merely to note that in this country only one group gets to be remembered.

37:07And remembered with grave solemnity by uniformed members of our military who take no credit for ending this Holocaust.

37:18So, it that doesn't make any sense. I mean, if if you didn't know the backstory in any of this and someone wrote that down and told you, you'd be like, "What did That doesn't What?"

37:27And it almost seems like there's a kind of guilt implied in this, which is a little weird. There are countries where, you know, that might be appropriate. This is not one of them, because again, this was the country that helped liberate people from those camps.

37:42And fought the government that built those camps. We're the good guys.

37:47What is this? It doesn't make any sense except when you see it in the only terms in which it makes sense, which is as a civic religion.

37:58Which is what it is, and it comes complete with blasphemy laws.

38:04Once again, if you want to know what religion matters, it's the religion that can't be mocked. So, clearly that's not Christianity.

38:13I'm Jesus today. No, I didn't do that.

38:16Oh, he He's your god. Okay, I'll send a meme out with me posing as your god with a demon over my shoulder. Nothing you can do about it. I'm not even going to explain what that was. I don't need to because I don't care about your faith at all.

38:32But there are certain things that are blasphemy.

38:36And at the very top of that list is something called anti-Semitism.

38:41Now, what exactly is anti-Semitism?

38:44It's one of those crimes that's a it's a true crime in the United States and actual anti-Semitism, hating people because of their blood is a crime, certainly.

38:54In Christianity, that is a crime. That is wrong. You're not allowed to do that.

38:57And but that is a universal crime. It applies to all people.

39:01Whites, blacks, Asians, Jews, everybody has a right to be treated as an individual because everyone was created by God as an individual. That's the Christian understanding. It's a universalist understanding of rights.

39:14And that's the old civic religion we had.

39:18The civic religion of civil rights.

39:21Now, there was a civil rights movement, which was, you know, fraudulent. Maybe at its core, maybe its aims were not advertised honestly. Maybe there was another point to that.

39:30Just possible.

39:32But conceptually, it's kind of hard to argue with the fact that the assumptions behind civil rights are Christian assumptions. They're Western assumptions. They're the assumptions upon which our whole civilization is built. And the core assumption is that standards, rules apply to everyone because every human being possesses a soul given to him by God at creation.

39:58Which is not an act that men brought about, but that only God can bring about. God creates life. He endows each human being with a soul. That soul is eternal. Therefore, each individual possesses rights granted him by God, not government.

40:12And a good government protects those rights. And in so doing, upholds God's law.

40:18That's Western civilization right there.

40:21And in a kind of diluted, silly way, the civil rights movement was upholding those ideas.

40:28The term civil rights, the term human rights, reflect that understanding. The rights apply to you because you're a human, as they do all human beings.

40:37But that's over. That civic religion has died, and we know that. It's probably been dying for a long time. Identity politics is a refutation of that. The idea that some groups have more rights than others, that's the opposite of civil rights. That's the opposite of human rights. Those aren't human rights, those are group rights.

40:55They apply to certain groups. One bloodline is superior to another bloodline. Well, that's not what we thought we were for. That's the opposite of what we thought we were for.

41:04All of a sudden, you wake up and you realize not only were we for it, the government's for it.

41:08And that's why they're able to arrest people not who commit genocide, but people who complain about genocide.

41:15Some of us thought, stupidly, with the cattle we are, that the real lessons of World War II were every person has inalienable rights. That's what we were taught. That was a pretty common understanding, I'd say, in the 1970s and '80s. Nazis are bad because they redlined one group and said these people don't have the same rights as everyone else by virtue of their blood.

41:37And they were really interested in eugenics.

41:41They were interested in people's bloodline. Who are you related to? We're going to find out if you're a secret Jew.

41:47Well, that's disgusting. That's We used to say that's Nazi behavior.

41:52And then the next thing you know, every other federal form you get asks you what your race is. And you're thinking, well, why does that matter?

41:59I thought you told me it didn't matter.

42:00I thought you told me it was evil to care about that.

42:06But you wake up in 2026 and our closest ally is using our weapons to kill and displace people because of how they were born, and not only is that okay, the only real crime is complaining about it. Well, that tells you Well, it tells you a lot of things, but it tells you we've got a whole new set of rules. We have a whole new civic religion.

42:32And that civic religion, once again, is called Israelism, and it means that any criticism of Israel is by definition bad, and any praise of Israel is by definition virtuous because the only truly good thing is Israel.

42:46And we know that by the actual definition, and there is one, of anti-Semitism. So, what is anti-Semitism? And if you've been called it, or if someone's ever implied it, you you have a problem with the Jews. You're kind of obsessed with the Jews.

43:00Say people who are completely obsessed with the Jews.

43:03You probably wonder like, what are they accusing me of? Well, here it is. This is the I H R A, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, IHRA. You may hear this. The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. Do you know what it is?

43:17It's on their website. It's worth looking at. Spent the morning reading it. Fascinating. So, here's the actual definition of anti-Semitism. And by the way, this is a now globally recognized definition enshrined in law around the world in more than 40 countries. This is the definition, and I'm quoting.

43:35Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Huh?

43:44So, anti-Semitism is a perception. It's a feeling.

43:48Okay.

43:49I thought you were allowed to have any feeling or perception you wanted. You could look at facts and come to any conclusion you wanted. No. No, no, no.

43:56Certain perceptions are inherently immoral. They're, quote, anti-Semitic, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews.

44:05Oh, so you don't have to hate the Jews to be anti-Semitic? No.

44:08Well, that answers the question for those of us who don't hate Jews at all.

44:14How could you be anti-Semitic if you don't hate Jews? Well, you can be according to the official definition of it.

44:19Continuing the quote, "Rhetorical Rhetorical meaning talking, words, speech formally protected no longer, rhetorical and physical manifest- festations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."

44:39Wait a second.

44:40So, anti-Semitism is not necessarily hatred of Jews and it can be expressed toward non-Jews.

44:46So, you don't have to hate Jews and you don't have to express or have these perceptions, these feelings toward Jews.

44:53You can be non-Jews, too.

44:56What is this? Well, the people who wrote it at the IHRA probably anticipated this would be confusing to you.

45:05So, they gave 11 examples of what anti-Semitism is, just so you know.

45:10Like, how do I know if I'm being anti-Semitic? Well, here are 11 examples.

45:13Of those 11 examples, and we did the math, 2/3 are criticism of Israel, the state of Israel, the nation with the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bibi.

45:28Criticism of Israel in 2/3 of the examples that the IHRA gave, that's anti-Semitism. Including, here we go. Draw quote, "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis."

45:45Oh. In other words, if you think what's happening in Gaza is genocide, well, Nazis committed genocide.

45:51Now, the state of Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, meaning they're trying to eliminate people on the basis of their blood, you're an anti-Semite. Okay. You're an anti-Semite if you think that.

46:04It also tells us that the suggestion that Jews killed Jesus is {quote} classic anti-Semitism.

46:12Classic anti-Semitism. So, there goes the New Testament. The whole New Testament is anti-Semitic, too. Read read read the Gospels and see if they they fall under that definition.

46:22They do.

46:25Why does this matter?

46:26Well, because about 40 US states and the District of Columbia and our biggest cities, Miami, Los Angeles, have adopted this. This is their standard that they voted on and adopted.

46:38It's in the law.

46:39This standard.

46:42The one that tells you that criticism of the secular state of Israel or portions of the New Testament are {quote} anti-Semitism.

46:50The government of almost 40 states in the United States, I think 39 states, 40 countries around the world, but not just countries, NGOs, sports teams.

46:59The British soccer league.

47:02Chelsea United.

47:04All of them have adopted this standard.

47:05Now, why would a sports team adopt this standard? Well, who knows why?

47:10Think about it for a minute.

47:12Why?

47:13Why would you declare something illegal?

47:15Oh, because you want to punish people who violate it. That's why.

47:20This happened today. Ukraine, that beacon of democracy and freedom that we sent hundreds of billions of dollars to, just made it law today that anti-Semitism, in other words, criticism of Israel is a felony punishable by up to 8 years in prison.

47:358 years in prison.

47:39How could a rational person understand that? Well, a rational person could not understand that. Why would a citizen citizen of one country be sent to prison for criticizing the leadership of another country, a country not his own?

47:53Why would a citizen of one country be sent to prison for having opinions about historical events that he did not participate in and that were almost a century ago.

48:04Does that make any sense?

48:07No, except in religious terms. Those are blasphemy laws, same as the old blasphemy laws. And for all the talk of how the mullahs are bad, the mullahs are bad. Well, the mullahs probably are bad.

48:19Not defending the mullahs, but why are we told the mullahs are bad? The mullahs are bad because they're religious extremists.

48:24They have blasphemy laws. They'll hurt you if you say certain things.

48:30Okay.

48:33Well, that looks a lot like what we're seeing here.

48:36Almost 40 states.

48:38Now, it's interesting, the president has been All of a sudden, it makes sense. This may This may be the Rosetta Stone that helps us interpret events we're watching now that are very confusing. And those would include the president advocating for re-upping FISA.

48:57Now, FISA, without getting too boring about it, is the law, which has to be voted on periodically by Congress, that allows the US government to spy on Americans.

49:09To spy on them. Now, the whole point of it is supposed to be to spy on foreigners who are threatening us, but the nature of the technology being what it is, there are cases where we pick up communications from Americans, and in order to make that legal, we need this thing called FISA.

49:24Now, what's interesting is that the president himself was a victim of the misuse of these laws in his first term.

49:31They were used against him in what became kind of bureaucratic attempted coup against him that we call Russiagate.

49:40And so, the president was personally very sensitive on this question. He'd been the victim of the misuse of these laws.

49:47And so, he said many times, "I'm not for that. I don't think Americans should be spied on by their own government. I don't think you pay your taxes today is tax day by the way in order to be spied on by your government when you've done nothing wrong.

49:57But we are, everyone knows that and this allows it to be legal.

50:03All of the sudden the president is advocating for this new law. He wants the Congress to allow the US government to spy on Americans. Why could that possibly be?

50:16Well, there are a couple of clues.

50:19One comes from the documents unearthed and made public, God bless him, by Ed Snowden some years ago that showed that NSA, the National Security Agency, the largest of all of our spy agencies, turned over raw data to, can you guess? Oh, the Israeli government that included private information about Americans. So, they sweep up all this information, the coms the communications of American citizens and they just turn it all over without taking private information about Americans, our citizens, they just turn it all over to a foreign government and it's intel service to be used God knows how.

50:54That's one.

50:56Two is a very revealing moment in the Congress two and a half years ago with a man, a congressman from Ohio called Mike Turner, who at the time was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. And he was arguing as chairman of the House Intel Committee always do for more spying on Americans. So, the House and Senate Intel Committee is supposed to provide oversight of the intelligence agencies because you don't really know what they're doing, you don't know what their budget is, the whole thing is secret, you can't know.

51:25So, your representatives on these committees oversee just to make sure that they're not violating the US Constitution or your human rights given to you by God and protected by the US government. That's the whole point.

51:35But for my lifetime, those committees have worked in concert with the intel agencies to violate the civil rights of Americans and they've almost always been run by some of the most dishonest and personally screwed up people in the entire Congress. So, maybe it's not always true, but certainly in the case of Mike Turner, it is true.

51:57You know, the guy publicly accused of corruption with a chaotic personal life, that guy winds up as the chairman of an Intel Committee. Hmm, I wonder why?

52:07Someone who's vulnerable to control winds up in charge of oversight of the Intel agencies. Okay, that's definitely Mike Turner. So, anyway, Mike Turner's running this and he's making the case to about 200 staffers on the hill and he said, "We got to do this. We got to do this." And he has a bunch of slides behind him.

52:21And one of the slides he puts up shows people protesting the murder of civilians by the Israeli government in Gaza.

52:29Those Gaza protests.

52:32And he says, "We need this because these people clearly taking orders from Hamas."

52:38These are like college kids who were mad about babies being murdered by the IDF.

52:44But because Mike Turner and a lot of people like Mike Turner cuz look at them and say, "You've got foreign connections. You can't have come to this conclusion on your own.

52:53You didn't just choose apostasy. You clearly were corrupted by some outside force, some foreign power.

53:00We get to spy on you." He made that case in the Congress.

53:05So, how does this connect to blasphemy laws as outlined and adopted by almost 40 states by IHRA? Really simple.

53:12If having these quote perceptions is a crime, then that gives the US government pretext to spy on you and then punish you.

53:23Another way of thinking about it is almost no human action or now perception, thought crime, is ever encoded by any legislative body without an eye toward punishing people who violate it. Why would you Why would you vote on it if you didn't intend to punish people who go against the standard you set, well, you wouldn't.

53:45And so, the point is this new civic religion is very much the opposite of the old civic religion in that it doesn't protect civil rights, human inherent rights. It is the enemy of those rights. It is the enemy of universalism, the belief that all of us were created by God and have equal moral worth. It is the enemy of that. And it's the enemy of the understanding of people that led to the Bill of Rights, which is we have these rights given to us by God. It does not believe that, and you know that because its first command is that you shut up, and not just shut up, but change your quote perceptions, change

54:25the thoughts in your head.

54:27Change your feelings, your perceptions, your conclusions.

54:31You must change those. It is a totalitarian worldview.

54:37It is a totalitarian worldview in that it seeks to control the totality of a person, not just your actions. You can't punch someone in the face cuz you don't like his ethnicity. Fair. Fair.

54:48Everyone's for for upholding that law.

54:51You can't have a certain perception of another person.

54:56If there's a better definition of a totalitarian aim, hard to think of what it might be.

55:02So, that's our new religion. That's where Israelism gets us.

55:09Want to end with probably the most mocked and yet clearest evangelist of this new faith, this Israelism.

55:20You could say it's Christianity without the New Testament.

55:24And that would be someone again who's often made fun of for being dumb or he doesn't know what he's talking about.

55:31But it's sometimes people like that that give you the clearest picture of what the people in power really are talking about.

55:38And that person would be Sean Hannity uh over Fox News. Not a bad guy, not a mean guy, lifelong Catholic. If you asked him, "Are you Catholic?"

55:46Absolutely. "Yeah, I'm a Catholic." And and he and he think he is.

55:50It's not an attack or he even a claim to understand his personal religious faith.

55:57But watch Sean Hannity, cradle Catholic, describe the Pope. This is his reaction to the President of the United States attacking the Pope and the Catholic Church.

56:11And here's Sean Hannity's response as a Catholic to that. Watch. He doesn't want any conflict anywhere. And he was talking about violence. And I'm like, have you even read the Bible? Have you read the conflicts, the wars that were that the Israeli people that were they were empowered by God to defeat their enemies?

56:32Uh did you never did you ever hear the story about David slaying Goliath uh through the power of God with a slingshot against this massive giant? Or the conflicts and the wars of King Saul and and so on and so forth. And and frankly all throughout Israel's history, they've been, you know, surrounded by enemies. But as God's chosen people, they they against all odds keep winning.

56:56Pretty amazing.

56:59So it does take a kind of cable news mentality to say of the Pope, "Hey, you ever read the Bible?"

57:07>> [laughter] >> It's hilarious. I don't know what's Hey, think about the Pope. This guy's never read the Bible. He's just the Pope.

57:14So there's that. Okay, it's funny.

57:17But listen to the content, which is actually more interesting and less funny and and little meteor than it seems at first. So the Pope is saying, "Look, I'm a Christian leader, the Christian gospel, which I represent, however imperfectly this Pope may represent it, from my perspective imperfectly, but whatever.

57:35All Christian leaders have a duty to consult the gospel as they think about their positions on things. That's the whole point is the gospel.

57:44And as a Christian leader, the leader of the biggest Christian denomination, like I'm I'm not for war.

57:50And maybe some wars are possibly defensible under just war theory, which no one ever really explains.

57:57But you can imagine a war of self-defense that most Christians would feel comfortable with. Being a Christian probably doesn't necessarily mean you oppose all violence in all circumstances.

58:08Maybe it should.

58:10But in practice it doesn't.

58:13But this Pope is just saying something pretty conventional like that. Nothing crazy, actually. No name-calling.

58:19No great departure from Christian theology or ethics as as people have understood it for thousands of years.

58:26And the response is, "Hey, YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BIBLE. THERE'S A TON OF killing in the Bible."

58:33Israel's constantly under attack by its neighbors, the Amalekites, the Philistines, you name it, and they fight back with God's blessing, and they kill, and that's what they're supposed to be doing.

58:44Which is true, by the way. It is all in there.

58:49But it's not in the New Testament.

58:51And for Christians, that's the difference.

58:54It's not a matter of the Old Testament being irrelevant, it's certainly not.

58:57And Christians understand it as one long story.

59:01And as Jesus famously said, "I came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, to bring it to its intended conclusion.

59:09I'm here so the law will have its desired effect on you."

59:15But Jesus never offers a single order to kill or hurt anybody.

59:22And there's no place in the entire New Testament, the four gospels, the letters that follow, mostly from Paul, and the vision at the end by St. John called Revelation, there's not one page or sentence in the entire New Testament in which Jesus is recorded saying, "They're very annoying, or they're a threat, or they disagree with us, or they're of another faith, kill them."

59:44Not once.

59:46In fact, it's the opposite of that.

59:48In fact, it's so clearly the opposite of that, that you have to wonder who's reading the Bible and who isn't.

59:55In Jesus's very first sermon in the very first gospel, Matthew, Matthew 5, the famous Sermon on the Mount, he addresses this really clearly.

60:08And I think anybody reading it for the first or hundredth time comes away thinking, well, a lot of things, but among them would be Jesus is really down on violence, and he's really down on greed.

60:19Very much opposed to both, cuz he says it really, really clearly.

60:23And not just down on violence and greed, but taking the prescriptions against those things in the Old Testament and accelerating them to a point that shocking, really, to modern ears, to ancient ears, to to any human being. The demands that Jesus makes on people are shocking. He says, for example, all in Matthew 5, worth reading, amazing, really, radical, not really of this world at all, which is kind of the whole point.

60:53He says, "You've been told not to kill, don't commit murder. Moses told you that.

60:58I'm telling you, don't be angry.

61:02If you curse somebody, you risk going to hell."

61:07That's what he says.

61:11So, you can debate what that means. Is it possible to apply that standard? Can you actually live up to that? Pretty hard.

61:18But what you can't conclude is that Jesus is favor of dropping bombs on kids.

61:26Blowing up entire apartment buildings, raping people in prisons.

61:31You can't conclude that cuz it's the opposite of that.

61:36And so if you have concluded that by reference to Old Testament texts the book of Ruth you're espousing the tenets of religion.

61:48But it's not Christianity.

61:50It's our new religion, Israelism.

61:53That's just what it is.

61:55Call it that.

61:57Call it that. Just be honest about what you're saying.

62:00Outline it for us.

62:01Give us the creed. Think of a new name for it. Give us 10 points. We can all recite them.

62:05People who don't can be punished.

62:08But tell us what the religion is. Be straightforward with us.

62:13Stop playing this head trip on us and telling us that something that's clearly anti-Christian is in fact the real Christianity cuz that's just not true.

62:20And this kind of deception is making everybody crazy.

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63:24So, with that in mind, it seemed like a really good time to get a little grounding on what Christian should be thinking right now as the president of the United States is weighing on theological matters and the world seems to be moving towards some great unknown and everybody feels within him the weight of this period in history. Everyone feels it.

63:47>> [sighs] >> Father Josiah Trenham is an Orthodox priest and a pastor in Southern California who we've spoken to before, who though we're not Orthodox seems like a really clear voice on matters of Christian faith and what the Gospels actually say. And so, we're really happy to have him back. Father, thank you very much for joining us.

64:08So, You know, Tucker, I'm uh I'm a puddle on the ground having listened to you for the last 45 minutes.

64:16I just am a puddle on the ground.

64:18I have behind me an icon that I keep.

64:24It's an icon of Jesus our savior after the resurrection from the dead and he's gathered his disciples. It's called the Great Commission icon. This is when he gathered his disciples and gave them the charge to go into all the world and to preach the good news to the whole creation, baptizing everyone in the name of the Father, the Son, and Spirit and promising to be with them, teaching, asking the disciples to teach the whole world his sacred commandments, and promising his presence.

64:56I think anyone listening to you right now is going to be massively uh tempted to great discouragement by the truth that you the many truths you just articulated. I'm just saying this, it's Easter right now.

65:11Christ is risen. Yes.

65:13We we celebrate this and the conquering of death.

65:18Jesus is not just a great teacher.

65:22Jesus is the son of God who became a man in order to face our greatest enemies.

65:32Sin, death, Satan, and to defeat them, not just a little bit, literally to crush them.

65:41And to offer us a life without fear.

65:45A life rooted in his presence now and with a great hope that we say in the creed we're looking for we're looking for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

65:58This is why we can be happy even in a complete mess, national mess that we're in. Is that Christ is with us, Christ is calling us, he's awakening so many people across our land. I've been a priest for 33 years. I've never seen what's going on right now in America.

66:19The number of people sincerely engaging Jesus and his teaching and his life and choosing to make radical alterations in their life and to put God where he belong where he belongs in their life which is number one.

66:36Number one, not loyalty to the nation.

66:38Loyalty to the nation is a Christian virtue in its proper place.

66:42But the loyalty that Christ asks is loyalty to the kingdom of God. To seek that first above everything else and to receive our life from him. He's alive now at the right hand of God the Father governing the whole world into all his enemies. All the demons are made a footstool for his feet. And then the end will come, St. Paul says. So attaching yourself to him by faith, becoming his, making his kingdom your chief ambition.

67:08This is the way to peace. This is the way not to be destroyed when you see a country that you love in such chaos as we have now.

67:18We can we can look at what's going on honestly and even though it's so sorrowful, we can still be confident in his presence and try to serve him and do good to our land >> [clears throat] >> and to benefit our land. And we don't know the future. Who knows what's going to happen?

67:37We've had 3 years of unbelievable renewal, Christian renewal in this land that has blown away every other movement of faith in my lifetime. I was born in 1967. I think about 3 or 4 years before you.

67:53I've never seen anything like this.

67:54So, I'm just I want to lob a bomb a bomb of hope a hope bomb after listening to uh your powerful but very very discouraging words.

68:04>> [laughter] >> Sorry. It's my dark Scandinavian soul raising its ugly head once again. I am prone to that and I I love your response to it.

68:13So, can you just um can you give me an outline? You say this is in 33 years of ministry, this is the most powerful moment for God among people you've seen.

68:25This is a it seems like a revival.

68:27What are you seeing that leads you to that?

68:33It has always been I've always as a priest been very interested in people who are outside my parish. In my local community, we priests and pastors are always trying to build connections in our where we are in the dirt that God gave us to make his.

68:50And the a normal year to have maybe 25 people who were signing up for a year-long catechism in to prepare themselves for baptism. That was a good year for much of my priesthood.

69:06Um this year I catechized 350 people. Wow.

69:13And I just uh it's it's actually such a fantastic problem because our parish is large. We have maybe about 1,300 active parishioners and I can't fit them all in the church.

69:28We we have we've had to really suck in and I just baptized 115 people.

69:36Orthodox Easter was this last Sunday and I'm used to baptizing, you know, 20, 25, something like that. So, we're talking a five fold increase in those that I received by baptism this year and the numbers that are lining up for next year are more than double that.

69:54And you know, I can't project that everywhere and say that's happening everywhere, but I've been looking at stats, you know, the I've been looking at stats coming not just from America, but even from Western Europe.

70:04Uh which I previous to this had pretty much completely written off Western Europe. It's just been dying, spiritually dying for a long time. I'm a fourth generation Southern Californian, but my family's heritage is England. I was educated there and I've gone back to England every year for the last 30 years and always it's been well, religiously discouraging.

70:29Spiritually discouraging. Uh but this last few years, even in places in Western Europe that um were not doing well and have not been doing well for decades, really, post World War and on.

70:42There are massive numbers massive numbers of people being baptized and entering into catechism. It's uh it can't be denied.

70:52That's That's just wonderful to hear and really the only answer. So, you must get people who come to you as a priest and say, "I'm looking at everything around me and I see the beginning of the end of history and the return of Jesus, the end times."

71:07And as noted, I mean, the those famous verses from Daniel and second letter of Thessalonians, etc., etc. There's a lot more.

71:15It's It's you could certainly fit events into those structures.

71:21What do you think of that?

71:22>> have for the last 20 centuries.

71:25So, if you read the church fathers, we we have been trying to read our history through that eschatological lens for a very long time. That should give us some measure of discretion not to make a one-to-one too too too closely, too intimately.

71:44You know, Tucker, the New Testament, the apostles are very clear that the end of the world happened already.

71:49The end times started as soon as Jesus dethroned the devil. Yep. As soon as As soon as he conquered death and plundered hell and opened He gutted He was crucified on Holy Friday atoning for the sins of the whole world.

72:07He descended into hell on Holy Saturday.

72:10And when he went there, he had already really shaken hell.

72:14Uh because just, you know, a week or so previously, he had raised his good friend Lazarus from the dead.

72:21Lazarus had been dead for 4 days.

72:24His sister said he already smelled.

72:27And Jesus intentionally took his time to come back to Bethany and then to gather the Mary and Martha and the large community there around Lazarus's tomb.

72:39And then he spoke.

72:41And he said, "Lazarus, come forth."

72:45And his words went through his mouth, through the earth, into the heart of hell and empowered Lazarus and crushed Satan and the devils. They couldn't hold his soul anymore. And his soul came back into his body.

73:03He was vivified. And the Lord asked him to come out. The Lord didn't run in there and undo his grave clothes himself. He wanted it to be seen by everyone. So, he said, "Lazarus, come out." And Lazarus came walking out.

73:18And everyone recognized right then the ultimate power change, the ultimate structural revolution had taken place.

73:27Death no longer was in in charge.

73:32Before that, every single person, no matter how great they were, Moses, Abraham, the Buddha, Confucius, everyone that got into the ring with death was KO'd.

73:48Every single one. Didn't matter how much they how wise they were, how righteous they were, everyone was slaughtered.

73:56When Jesus came and started raising the dead, and especially when he did Lazarus, no one had ever raised a man four days dead.

74:06And then when he himself voluntarily submitted to death, and he was clear that death had no power over him. He said, "I have power to lay my life down, and I have power to take my life up again."

74:19He went knowingly into death, offered himself.

74:23Uh our liturgical hymns in the Orthodox Church for for Holy Friday say that death and Satan ate Christ because they thought that they had in their jaws a man, and they found themselves face to face with God. You called him the man God, right? That is the actual theological terms that we use in the church. In Greek, it's called theanthropos. Theos meaning God, anthropos meaning man. The church fathers put those together to describe Christ. He is the God-man.

74:53He became what he was not, a human being, without ceasing to be what he was, the co-eternal Son of God. And he exists since then and forever as the God-man. And when they when death ate Christ, Christ ate death.

75:08And he crushed it. And he rose again on the third day and he asked that that message be proclaimed by his disciples uh all over the world. And people who are being responding to this good news and are coming into the church, uh this is the ultimate solution uh for their their terror. It's a legitimate terror. When you look around and you see so much darkness and killing, violence, it's it's terrifying. People are terrified. And to have Christ uh offered to come and be with you, to live in you and you to live in him, and to share his life, uh which is sustained in Christian people by receiving Holy Communion. This

75:53is what receiving Holy Communion is.

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77:14What What do you make of self-described Christian leaders glorifying the violence around us, endorsing the violence, saying that God wants this violence? How should we feel about that?

77:28You were very articulate, brother.

77:30You were very articulate.

77:32But let me give it a little larger theological context. Thank you.

77:39When violence began not on earth, it began in the heavens amongst the angelic orders.

77:48The first act of violence and rebellion was Satan's himself.

77:53And he was cast out together with all those angels that were in league with him and they became what we know as demons.

78:02And then they took their uh scheme of rebellion to the first human beings, right? This is described in the early chapters of Genesis in our patriarchal histories.

78:14They uh this the Satan the great Satan approached Adam and Eve and tempted them uh viciously and they fell. And they it made immediately became estranged not just from God, but from each other.

78:29The seeds of uh violence erupted and they began to blame one another. Well, the woman you gave me, Adam says.

78:39Then they have their children, Cain and Abel, and the first act of fratricide takes place. Cain is shamed by his brother's devotion to God and his beautiful sacrifice. Cain's sacrifice to God is very cheap.

78:56The Lord tried to correct Cain. Cain was hard-hearted and uncorrectable and killed his brother. This is the first act of violence and the scripture says that God approached Cain graciously trying to help Cain to repent and asked him what he did and God said, "Your brother's blood is crying out to heaven."

79:21Talk about that's one innocent person's blood.

79:26Can you imagine what tens of thousands of innocent blood, what kind of thunderous noise that makes in paradise?

79:37The scriptures then go and describe the development of Cain's line.

79:43Cain's line produces all the the leaders of earthly technologies.

79:50Abel's dead. They have another child Adam and Eve have another child Seth and Seth Seth's line is also described by Moses and Seth's line is all about virtue and spiritual technology I would describe. How to have a relationship with God in the world that's correct.

80:07And the line of Cain is all about power. So for instance, one of Cain's descendants, Tubal-cain is his name. He was a great master of all uh metalwork and metallurgy from which come all of the weapons and earthly technology especially for the development of weapons has driven technology throughout the entire history of the human race. Look at our budget. President Trump uh wants a larger and larger budget so that we can develop more and more vicious weapons to dominate our enemies.

80:48We've done this with nuclear weaponry.

80:52In in the World Wars, we were developing more and more dangerous gases to kill the largest amount of people possible.

81:00Uh this is technology. This is that kind of technology.

81:05And then the next thing that Moses describes in Genesis is the flood. God just can't take it anymore.

81:10It's enough. And he decides that he's going to start over and he makes Noah a righteous man of faith into a new Adam.

81:20And the thing that he said to Adam at the very beginning, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, rule it, and subdue it. He said the exact same thing to Noah after the flood.

81:29To make him the beginning of the human race. And Moses Moses in writing this says there's one reason God flooded the earth. I often have asked people this if they could guess.

81:38>> [clears throat] >> What was the one, the singular sin mentioned by Moses that caused the Lord to literally flood the earth and to restart the human race? I know.

81:51Murder.

81:52Violence.

81:55Violence.

81:57It's unique amongst evils.

82:02So, how could a Christian pastor glorify it?

82:15You know, uh Tucker uh that there are many uh who say one thing and do another, right? This is a disease that we all have. Yes, it's true.

82:28>> It is a terrible disease.

82:30And I always tell people, look, never never say that you don't want to go to church because you don't there's a lot of hypocrites there.

82:40I said [laughter] that's true though.

82:41It's absolutely true.

82:43I mean, if there are if there are people there, then you have hypocrites.

82:48>> [laughter] >> And forgive me, every single one of us is. Yeah. Every single The only The only division is not between the hypocrites and the non-hypocrites. The division is between those who know they're hypocrites and that it's a terrible sin and disease and they go to church to work against their hypocrisy so that they can become people of integrity and live before the face of God and other people in love.

83:10And then there are people who have no hope and are just resigned to it and are very happy to talk about other people's sins, but don't want to look at themselves. That's a very dangerous place to be.

83:22So, uh hypocrisy is certainly uh a chief cause uh to in answer to your question. So is false teaching.

83:30So is false teaching. There is a lot of made-up theology began in the middle of the 19th century.

83:38It got really going uh in the beginning of the 20th century, particularly in America, that has created this very strange um theology of uh what unbelieving Jewish people are, non-Christian Jewish people.

83:54Uh and their special relationship with God. It's very strange. Uh it's uh uh Zionism is has no history uh in the Christian faith. It's not as though that there are It's just a matter of denominational preference. No, you will seek for in vain for 18 and 1/2 centuries to ever hear of such things. They It doesn't exist.

84:17The church is very conscious of being the fulfillment of everything that took place in the Old Testament.

84:22The church is the people of God. Paul calls the church directly the new Israel. That's who we are. We are God's people and we're made up both of Jewish people and Gentile people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. It's not about ethnicity at all. We don't care. If you came to my parish on a typical Sunday morning, I mean, you would need a big piece of paper just to write the number of ethnicities that are there.

84:46I always tell I've always told our people, look, our goal should be that the ethnic distribution of our county, we are in Riverside County, about 3 million people.

84:55I said the ethnic diversity there should be exactly represented in our parish.

85:01If the church is for everyone and we want everyone, which means in my county, that's 57% Hispanic, 11% 11% African-American, about 30% Anglo. I said that's what it should be if if a church has been there and has been successful in preaching the gospel and helping people to love God. That's what it should look like.

85:20This is normal. This is our our way of looking at at things. We don't think that somehow the Old Testament is continuing and never came to fruition.

85:30And that somehow a temple has to be rebuilt or the Old Testament sacrifices have to begin again, which is impossible, or the ironic priests have to come back, or we're going to start slaying animals. Um all of that was a picture of Jesus himself. He says it himself. He told the Pharisees, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have life. It's these that bear witness to me.

85:55Everything in the Old Testament is a type of Christ. It's all about him.

86:00And if you don't see that, if you think it's a stand-alone thing, then you're still living in types and shadows instead of fulfillment. And we care about supporting companies whose values align with ours. We do not want to shill for sleazy companies. It is better to give business to like-minded Americans than people who hate us. That's our rule.

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87:03How does the Well, I'll just say one of the most challenging themes in the Gospels for me as an American um are Jesus's prescriptions against greed.

87:16Because I I think that's that's the one thing American Christians never face like like money is not inherently bad, but the love of it is bad.

87:26Famously the root of all evil. What does the gospel tell us about greed and how does that How is that reflected in the preaching you hear uh from the pulpit?

87:37You know, one of the most beautiful things that Jesus accomplished when he conquered death was that he replanted uh on the earth the original relationship of man and woman to God uh that had disappeared at the fall.

87:52And that that was a a life of complete consecration where uh the happiness of Adam and Eve was to be called God's friend. That was their greatest honor, the church father says, to be called God's friend. And I I just note that Jesus said that to his disciples at the end of his ministry.

88:10He said, I no longer call you my disciples.

88:13You're my friends." That was an incredible honor. Abraham, the great patriarch, was called the friend of God.

88:20In the In the New Testament, as soon as Jesus sent the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, remember, he was crucified, he plundered hell, he rose again on the third day, he spent 40 days teaching us how to live in the new resurrection life, and how to love people and evangelize the world, and then he ascended to heaven, right? From the Mount of Olives. I stood on the spot uh in the Holy Land.

88:43And in front of his eyes the eyes of his disciples, and he sat down at the right hand of God. And then, as a coronation gift of his enthronement, he sent forth the Holy Spirit 10 days later on the day of Pentecost. And the whole community of Christians, 120 at that time in the upper room, were became spirit bearers, something that in the Old Testament only and kings were. Now, this is the common patrimony of all believers is to be able to be indwelt by uh the third person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit. To have the spirit of God guiding you. Such that we don't as Christians look for God out there, we experience God in here. He

89:22takes up his residence in baptism in the deep heart. St. Paul even says that the Holy Spirit is in us following baptism, and that he helps us to pray to God from the inside with groans that surpass words. Trying to help us really relate to God uh as a father.

89:43This is This is our life.

89:45Uh and it was only seen uh in the Old Testament in in little glimpses.

89:51This was so radical for for people that some people gave, and not not a few, by the way. Some people decided that their chief ambition was going to be to serve God 100%. Not not on not on Sundays only, right? But completely. St. Paul describes this in his uh Epistle to the first to Corinthians, chapter 7. He says that there's two kinds of life. He says, "I wish everyone was even as I myself am, unmarried and completely devoted to God."

90:22He said, "Nevertheless, every person has his own calling from God. One in this manner and another in that." And then he goes on to describe marriage and monastic life. These are the two ways of life for Christians since Jesus conquered our enemies and gave us the Holy Spirit.

90:38That life of complete consecration for monks and nuns was so popular in the early centuries. But, by the time of St.

90:45Athanasius the Great, this is 350 or so, right? This is one of the greatest theologians in the history of the church. His life is just absolutely you read it and and weep for its beauty.

90:59He said at that time, he was the spiritual son of the father of the desert, St. Anthony the Great. And he said that at his time, he was also the patriarch of Alexandria.

91:08He said at his time, half of all Christians lived in the deserts.

91:13And so that they could pray 8 hours a day, serve people, host people who are coming to see the people who constantly leave the cities and go see the monks and the nuns for spiritual encouragement, for prayer, etc. That's how powerful that life is. And that life, the church fathers say, that life of complete consecration, which of course is just an exact imitation of Jesus' life.

91:37This is how our Lord Jesus lived, right?

91:39He didn't get married physically, he got married spiritually to the church. He's the bridegroom of the church and we're all his beloved.

91:47And we live in that union, right? It especially guides Christian marriage, right? The husband tries to love his wife as Christ loves the church, the wife tries to respect her husband as the church respects Christ, etc. But, you see this this enthroned at the heart of the church, a certain contempt for earthly wealth.

92:05If the models are if the models are completely dispossessed for the sake of the kingdom of God, which is a wealth that can't be taken away.

92:13Modeled by the Lord Jesus himself, who owned nothing at the time of his crucifixion. Except his garment. That's it.

92:20And the monks and nuns have have imitated him to this day. Where I live in Southern California, we have a number of monasteries around us and our people go constantly.

92:31They go in groups, they they visit just for like a what can I say? A little boost. A little boost. And they there's a beautiful symbiosis between the Christian family that are represented in the parishes all over the world and churches all over the world. And then our monks and nuns who have given themselves sometimes in the cities. I mean, all the great cities of the Roman Empire for the first thousand years were packed with monasteries. Sometimes people think monasteries and they think, oh only in the desert. Well, I mean, there are a lot of monasteries in the desert. And I was just quoting St.

93:00Athanasius about the Egyptian which was kind of a spiritual guide for the whole Christian world in the fourth century.

93:05But there are also lots of monasteries in cities.

93:09To this day. If you go to any traditionally Christian city in Europe, you're going to find maybe they aren't occupied anymore, especially in the West. But in Central Europe and in Eastern Europe, still packed with monks and nuns. This tells you our attitude towards money.

93:23Greed is a tremendous temptation.

93:26The model for us is dispossession. St.

93:28John Chrysostom, one of the great church fathers, says for married people, possessions are justified by use.

93:36He says, if you want to be a good Christian with regards to money and greed, then make sure that you're using your money in a in a beneficial way, such that it's not he says, if you own a home, make it fit your life like a good shoe.

93:53And you don't want your shoe to be too tight, too small, lest it crush your toes, or too big so that you're always tripping on it and falling down, right?

94:01Possessions are justified by use. Now, forgive me, and that's not much of an popular message in America. You know, we have been famous We have been famous for at least since the middle of the 19th century when Alexis de Tocqueville came here and he said he had never seen a people in the history of his travels so obsessed with money as Americans.

94:28There are, of course, some virtues to that if we use our money to advance the cause of beauty and to help people who are in need. But, money not justified by usage will be a testimony against us on the day of judgment.

94:43I agree with that. I agree with that completely.

94:46Um Just a quick side mark cuz I can't control myself. St. John Chrysostom, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. It's Chrysostom. In Greek, it's Chrysostomos.

94:56Chrysos means gold and stoma means mouth. So, it's actually not his surname. People think that that's his surname, but it just it was a appellation that was given to him by Pope Vigilius in 553. Chrysostom died in 407. Patriarch of Constantinople driven into exile by by conflict with the emperor.

95:16You know, here it is again, right?

95:18Religious conflict. And I hope in a second that we could talk a little bit about the important connection between prophets and political power because those two in the scriptures always have to go together if you're going to succeed. And we terribly need that right now.

95:31But, go ahead with with your question.

95:33>> my I just read Someone sent me a collection of his sermons and I know nothing about Orthodoxy. I knew nothing about him and I was just so shocked by how good they were and how resonant to the modern ear they were. I mean, I just could hardly believe it.

95:50Can you, for anyone who's made it this far, can you recommend a collection of his sermons or a an introduction to him?

95:58Cuz what a talented preacher.

96:01Yes, he's not just a talented preacher.

96:03He's the most famous preacher in the history of the church, 2,000 years. No one is more famous than him. His collection of sermons in the Greek language is the largest in Christian history, comparable only to St.

96:15Augustine in Latin. So these are the predominant influences east and west. I in fact did my PhD on St. John Chrysostom at the University of Durham in northern England. I finished it in 2003 and I did my my work and published a text called Marriage and Virginity according to St. John Chrysostom. That was my focus. There are many excellent books.

96:36In almost all of his works are translated into English.

96:40For someone who's just approaching him, I would say to read his most famous book which is called On the Priesthood and it's basically his description of what Christian worship is, what a priest is, what a pastor is. It's absolutely magnificent. He wrote it when he was a young man trying to escape ordination.

97:02He didn't want to be ordained because he had such respect for being ordained and he's like he literally duped one of his good friends named Basil who was also being courted by the local bishop to be ordained. So he said, "No, you're totally worthy and I'll do it after you, but you go first."

97:18So his friend got ordained and then John disappeared, literally disappeared.

97:23He ended up going he lived in ancient Antioch, right, which is the primary city of the Roman Empire in the East.

97:30All the emperors would launch their campaigns against the Persians from there. That's kind of relevant today, isn't it? Um and he just outside of the city, I visited it in 2010. It's in Turkey, southern Turkey now. Yep.

97:44It was destroyed Uh that the city was very damaged by the terrible earthquake 3 years ago. Just horrible. Uh but there's a mountain there's a mountain uh about a mile outside of town. Very walkable for people like John who lived in the city. And it's called Mount Casius. And during his lifetime about 300 monks lived in holes and caves on that mountain. And that's where he did after he escaped ordination, he went and lived there for 6 years.

98:12And he spent he describes later in his famous book on the priesthood that how he spent his time there. He said, "When the sun was out he studied the scriptures and he memorized them." There's something like 11,000 direct quotations in his sermons from the New Testament and something like 6,000 from the Old Testament, all from memory.

98:30He didn't preach with notes. And his sermons were usually between 30 minutes and an hour, which is very long traditionally for a for a priest in the church to be preaching.

98:39Uh and when he would conclude, the people would boo.

98:43And yeah.

98:45Please don't stop. Please don't stop.

98:46That's That's how great a preacher uh he was. But he spent the day studying scripture and memorizing it and he kept vigil at night. He never laid down for 6 years. He tied a rope around his waist to a hook in the wall.

98:58And so that he could try to keep praying at night and take the the minimum sleep he he needed. Well, you know, sometimes youthful enthusiasm goes a little too far. He broke his stomach basically and his buddy who would come once a week and leave bread and water at his door up on the mountain found him completely ill, picked him up, took him back to the city in Antioch, and the bishop grabbed him and never let him go.

99:22Ordained him. He ended up becoming the cathedral preacher for 12 years in Antioch. And then they kidnapped him and went to the capital of the Roman Empire in 397 and made him patriarch of Constantinople. And he engaged in the most incredible revival there. He He converted The The Easter in which he was sent into exile, he was uh preparing 3,000 people for baptism.

99:46Yeah, so that makes my 350, you know, that's nothing. It's nothing. Compared to what you were doing. He So, he he is uh you can read his you can hear his life uh his life we know in great detail. He's been a cherished saint of the church for a very long time.

100:03Uh we have an app. It's called the Patristic Nectar app. It's on the App Store. And in there are the lives of the saints and you can go there and listen for free to about an hour recording of his life.

100:16Uh you'll just be absolutely amazed by this man.

100:20Well, thank you for telling me that. So, what what is the connection? You said you wanted to explain the connection between prophets and political figures.

100:29You know, in in the scriptures the God would send the prophets to the kings.

100:34And the kings' futures, the success of a reign depended upon whether the king would listen to the prophets or not.

100:42David had his Nathan.

100:45Uh my patron saint, the great King Josiah of Israel, uh had the prophet Jeremiah and the prophetess Holda. And they would consult good kings would consult. So, there was a a shackling of power which we know is exceedingly dangerous. Power is exceedingly dangerous. I feel very sympathetic listening to you describe these these trials that our nation is facing and our leaders, including our president, is suffering so badly and we're also suffering so badly.

101:15Power is extremely dangerous and Christians learn from the prophetic influence to use it, but kind of like this.

101:23You've got one hand on power, but you're being very careful uh because it can do terrible things to you. Uh if you don't have someone helping you remind you who you are to keep your feet on the ground, that you're humble. When everybody around you is saying, "Yes, sir. Yes, sir. What do you want to do, sir? You're the greatest thing that's ever happened to America." That's poison of the highest level. In our tradition, uh priests and bishops who are who are praised by the people we consider it hatred.

101:51>> [laughter] >> Good for you. I love that.

101:54>> We consider it hatred. That doesn't mean we always succeed in hating it. And the people mean well. Most of the time they mean well, but we don't accept it as something nice. We consider it a temptation. It's a temptation. No one is great. Everyone is a sinner. Only Christ is our salvation. The best of people only live by grace and by the love of God and forgiveness. That's it. So, to start thinking ideas because you're really successful or because you have 6 million followers or I have a big church, come on.

102:22Come on. We're Yeah. We're nothing.

102:24We're nothing.

102:26So, to have a prophet in your life is exceedingly important and to obey that prophet. You know, I was very hopeful uh when when President Trump established he took the Department of Faith, which I think used to be under the Vice President's office. And it had a relatively small budget. And then he made it an executive office, right? He put it on directly under him and I think he increased the the budget massively.

102:49And uh I I have a few friends who work on different committees for him uh like Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who's the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco and is a dear friend of mine and an incredible person who I deeply respect.

103:02I I I've been I've taken heart from that. I'm hoping that that paradigm can serve our country and that that Department of Faith can not just be a genesis for ideas, but our our presidents and our vice presidents and forgive me, our Congress, they need their pastors in their life.

103:20They need their pastors in life. And when we have a chaplain of the Senate, right? We have a chaplain, but that's that's not sufficient. I mean, he can't take care of everybody. You You need someone who can tell you the truth. And your priest is the one who's going to tell you the truth. You need a priest.

103:36This is my prayer really. I make my cross asking God to please help our president and our vice president and all of those in power to recognize what a dangerous position they're in to have so much power.

103:48You know, America used to be very humble about our influence and our founding fathers considered virtue to be absolutely essential to political leadership. And we got this of course from George Washington who was such an exceedingly excellent example of this himself.

104:05The idea though that we are now the empire of the world and we police people and we engage in conflicts all over the world and we have 200 military bases.

104:13Forgive me Tucker, this is so pompous.

104:15Yes, I agree. So pompous and it's so unfortunate and there's every excuse in the world to to justify it. But there's nothing humble and to to I'm I'm often called an isolationist because I say this opinion.

104:30I'm an American and our founding fathers believed this. This is how they looked at the world. They did not think America was responsible for the world.

104:40That is so arrogant. I can't tell you.

104:44How [snorts] is arrogance treated in the Bible?

104:47And what's the result of it?

104:54You know, this lesson the lesson for political leaders to to learn this. It's very hard for them.

104:59It's something else for me to learn.

105:00It's something else for you to learn but for these people who are in this kind of position to learn it. This is much harder. Let me let me give you some examples. We have a certain type of saint in the history of the church that are called righteous kings, righteous kings and queens. So they're they're saintly political rulers. Now, let me say just out of the gate that almost all of the political rulers in the history of Christianity were awful.

105:29>> [laughter] >> I'm sorry. I just >> No, I I believe you.

105:33I believe you.

105:34>> all were awful.

105:36Um and so when I say when I'm going to list I'm I'll list some saints now. Uh and then let me qualify it. So, Emperor Constantine is a saint of the church.

105:45Emperor Theodosius the Great, this is 379 or so. He actually formally Constantine legalized Christianity.

105:53Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the empire. He's called the Great. He was a spiritual son of St. Ambrose of Milan, the famous story where power met priesthood when he had ordered the slaughter of 7,000 citizens in anger in Thessaloniki, Greece, and Ambrose put him out of communion.

106:15And he was angry and he went to the church and Ambrose met him at the door and wouldn't let him in the church. That was a definitive moment in Christian history because up to that time no priest could do that to an emperor.

106:28He was considered all powerful and but he didn't. He actually did penance.

106:34He accepted not entering the church, being put out of communion, and he did penance. And that established a new relationship between the clergy in Christian history and the the power structure and the politicians. That is a very important power structure. The the clergy govern eternal life, right? This is a matter of the sacraments and we don't give sacraments to people who are disrespectful of and and doing great sins. It would be a terrible thing to do. And St. Ambrose stopped him. Uh there's St.

107:07the incredible Justinian the Great. This is he ruled from 527 to 565. An incredible man, incredibly talented. He actually wrote parts of the Eastern liturgy, parts of the Orthodox liturgy, which we still sing, come from his pen.

107:20Uh Uh St. Boris of Bulgaria, this is 800s, early 800s. Uh St. Vladimir uh of the Slavic lands. Uh St. Stephen of Hungary. St. Alfred the Great, who, forgive me, as an Englishman, he's the best. He is absolutely the best.

107:36You know, Winston Churchill was once asked was called he he was called the greatest Englishman. And Churchill stopped him, he said, "No, no, no.

107:43Alfred is the greatest Englishman who has ever lived." And I say, 100% yes.

107:49Um St. Edward the Confessor, right? This is he died in 1066. These are all incredible saints who were in positions of power, and there's a commonality between them all. All of them submitted their agendas, their policies to their spiritual fathers. They they respected the guidance of the church.

108:10They respected the word of God. And the priests and the bishops are responsible for preaching the word of God.

108:16And it's very important to believe to believe that. That is your safety net when you're exercising power. You need that blessing to be able not be destroyed by it.

108:26Yes. As as most people were. And and so to have that kind of relationship is important. And I would say, if I could just move it from the power that the executive holds to the power of the military, because those two are very combined right now in our country.

108:42Uh and are the are each other's biggest fans.

108:47Um we have also in the history of the church a type of saint that are called military saints. These are men who were The church is not pacifist.

108:59The church has never been pacifist.

109:01We set standards for the proper use of force.

109:05It has to be a moral use of force. And we had we have incredible saints like St. George, St. Theodore. These are incredible warriors. We have whole lists of them. I mean, there's hundreds of military saints. What they have in common is that they conducted themselves in a military capacity, not just with skill, uh but with morality, with virtue.

109:27And that kind of uh example is very, very important for America, both in the executive, in the role of president or king, and in the role of uh exerciser of power, which is what our military is. And wow, do we need it more than ever right now.

109:45Can you just uh end by you often hear the the phrase just just war doctrine, um without and I without getting in maybe the specifics of that, but in more broadly, what does it mean to act as a Christian in war?

110:07This is a very important subject.

110:10And the church has articulated, we did this within the first five centuries in a very complex way, uh standards uh for blessing. This means if the military does not pursue their objectives in a way that's respectable to the eyes of the church, to the respectable in Jesus' eyes, uh they don't get blessed.

110:35Uh and this has become what we call the justifiable war dogma. Uh so, we we have important precedences. One, it can't be an offensive war.

110:44It has to be a matter of defense. Number two, it can't uh involve civilians. You cannot fail to make a distinction. I find this extremely relevant today. You cannot make a distinct You cannot fail to make a distinction between combatants and civilians. Now, we know this, and the whole decimation of Gaza, uh which has completely violated these norms, by the way, top to bottom, completely violated them. But but always they try to find a way, the justifiers of that slaughter, try to find a way to say somehow that it wasn't a violation of the principles of justifiable warfare because uh they were mili- they were really

111:22militants after all.

111:24They're they're giving shelter uh to the militants, to the terrorists. I mean, certainly some were giving uh shelter to terrorists, no doubt, but that does not justify the raising of Gaza to the ground and treating everyone as though they are a combatant. That's just completely unheard of in the history of Christianity.

111:44Now, you know, there's an incredible book and I'd love to recommend it to you. It's by one of the greatest saints of the 20th century, a man who lived through both World War I and World War II, actually got sent to Dachau.

112:00His name is Saint Nikolai Velimirović.

112:03He was a Serbian bishop, monk, and an incredible scholar. He had two PhDs, an Oxford PhD, a PhD from Bern. He preached uh in World War I and then again in between the wars at peace conferences and then through World War II, uh he preached in all of the cathedrals of Europe and America. He was a very well-known, one of the most famous clerics alive.

112:27He spent his last 10 years, unfortunately because of the creation of Yugoslavia post-World War II and the communists, he couldn't return to his home country. So, we, as we often do in America, welcomed him here and he loved us and he spent his last 10 years in Pennsylvania, uh traveling around preaching. He preached in Harlem, he preached Saint John Cathedral in New York. He preached everywhere in America.

112:48He's an unbelievable person.

112:50He wrote a book called War and the Bible. I find it particularly excellent, not just because he's an incredible incredibly saintly man and an incredible scholar, but he also was a person who lived through World War I and II and is able to speak. He basically said that the 20th century was the triumph of Satan in the Christian West. And that Jesus was asked by us to leave by our behavior and that he did.

113:26And I think a lot of what we can see since 1950 the late 1950s is the manifestation of that departure. I think he's right. Uh I'm hoping what's going on right now is our asking Jesus to come back.

113:41I want him to come back.

113:43And I want him to forgive us uh for what we've done. Christians killing Christians World War I and II. The 20th century was the greatest slaughter of people in the history of the human race and it was done mostly by Christians on other Christians.

113:57And I think the Lord left and I think St. Nicholas is right and he will come back cuz he loves all men and he's trying to redeem and save every one of us.

114:07Well, let's ask him to come back.

114:10Let's ask him to come back and ask for some rebuilding. We have to dig the wells like Abraham did in the past.

114:19He dug all these incredible wells and then they got taken over by enemies and filled up and then his sons had to go back and redig them. And we need to redig the wells of a more glorious history in the United States of America where we were more humble more reasonable and more Christian. You know, listening to your your monologue earlier about the inescapability of religion uh in any culture, our our nation was very comfortable Tucker for the first 150 years of our our nationhood calling ourself a Christian nation.

114:52Official people, presidents, Supreme Court justices, we referenced the New Testament in our Supreme Court documents for a very long time.

115:02So, this idea that somehow this secular monster that has eaten us alive and has decimated our children through the horror of abortion, destroyed our families by no-fault divorce, and has left our people addicted to technology and sad and grieved, that somehow this is America, I don't accept that at all. I agree.

115:25I I want the Lord to come back. I want us to hold on to love each other again and to become a more humble traditional America.

115:34Amen. Well, that is definitely my most fervent prayer at this point. Father Trump, thank you so much for spending all this time and for your wisdom.

115:41Appreciate it.

115:43God be with you, brother.

115:44Amen.

115:46And thank you for joining us.

115:48We'll be back next Wednesday. See you then.