 I'm Michael Foster coming to you from Orlando, Florida at the 21 Summit. This is the Manusphere and Religion Panel. With me, I have Richard Granin. I got Elliot Hulse, Jeff Younger, and Brian Sauve. All right, guys. Let's start this way. Let's nail our flags to the math. What's your religion, Richard? I wouldn't say that I have one. I was the child of lapsed Catholics from both sides of the family. I was raised in religious institutions educationally. But I typically would say I'm not a religious person. I don't follow a particular religious dogma. And yet, in the last three years, I find myself arguing more and more for the necessity of religion and for the necessity of God, which is tricky when you're not following it yourself. So people say, well, how do you how do you do that? And yeah, that's that's basically my position. I believe it's an intrinsic human need from a psychological point of view. Society, culture and individuals work better with God and without God, they suffer. Elliot. I am a Roman Catholic. I was baptized as a child, trained in the faith and then fell away as a youth, dabbled in all forms of Eastern religion and new age found my way back to the Abrahamic faith through the Bahá'í faith and then returned to Christ through a calling of the Holy Spirit in my 40th year. Well, how long was that? About three years ago. Okay. Jeff. I'm an Orthodox Christian. I belong in the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the church that Peter found in the Book of Acts and Antioch. That's that's the church I belong to. I've been a member of the Orthodox Church for 10 years. Before that, I was a lifelong atheist. I lost my skepticism to the existence of spirits through a personal experience and became Christian. Brian. I am a Presbyterian Christian and I confess the Westminster Confession of Faith with few exceptions. That's about it. And I'm also a pastor in a Presbyterian church. Brian, I very similar. I'm a Protestant Presbyterian. I grew up as just agnostic and that turned into a more aggressive agnostic atheism for a time. And then through hearing someone preach the gospel, I was convicted of my sin, repented, trusted in Jesus Christ as both my Lord and Savior. And that was 25 years ago. So I've been walking with them ever since God is good and I'm glad to be up here with you men talking about this. What is here's the first question. What is man's spiritual dilemma? What is man's spiritual problem? Well, I think in modern man's spiritual problem is that we've been offered the idea that spirit doesn't exist. I think that's a new fangled idea that has caused a rot in our culture. We are so smart that amongst all recorded civilization or just spiritual people of traditional, how you would just say, pagan societies, there was always this sense that there was a God, that there was a spirit realm, that there was something above us. But today we put ourselves at the top and the dilemma is then where are our boundaries? And so we find ourselves in the degenerate world that we're in. Jeff, you said that you had part of your conversion was realizing there are such things as spirits. Can you kind of speak to what Ellen is saying because I see a connection. Yeah, I view man's dilemma as alienation and disunion with God. And man, unfortunately in this fallen world is born with a sickness which tends to push him away from God. And so man's dilemma is to heal himself from the sickness. And in order to do that, he has to understand that there's an afterlife in which his spirit, his soul will continue to exist. And it will continue to exist either in union with God in which the energies of God in the afterlife are pleasant and something that he seeks ever more of or the energies of God will be experienced as pain and conviction and destroying his conscience and destroying his self identity and that's what's called hell. So man's fundamental predicament is that he has to make a choice in the creative world about what his life will be like in the afterlife. Brian, how would you answer the question is what is man's spiritual problem? Man's spiritual problem is that he loves what is unlovely and he hates what is good because he's inclined towards sin in his nature from birth. And I would orient this and land the origins of this in the fall of man in Genesis three in man's rejection of God as father man's rejection of God as the ultimate source of his life and identity and joy. And so because of this man goes out and he hates that which is best for him and he loves that which destroys him. His the order of his loves are disordered. And so salvation is the reordering of his loves through the regenerating power of God's spirit and giving him a new heart in Ezekiel it says that he'll remove their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh and put his spirit in them and cause him to walk in his ways. And that you know that's perfectly in line with what the psalmist says to delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart meaning that fundamentally salvation is a matter of not just mental ascent to a series of facts but it's actually a transformation of your being by reunification with God through Christ. Peter says that Christ died the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God. And so we were severed from God through sin need to be reunified to him and the implications of that means that we will seek our own destruction but for God's grace. Richard you argue or stated that society works better without with God with some view of God. What why do you think the the opposite is true like that society when it rejects religion wholesale at least a religion with a personal God. Why does it fall apart? Why is that problematic? Because as Elliot alluded to before if God is not at the top of everything we're still going to have a map of reality that we use to navigate the world. Who is at the top if it is not God which means it encapsulates a lot of things but it embraces mystery embraces that I did not create myself I did not create you I did not create this world which keeps me humble if that's not there automatically in a neutral space as a human being I'm fallible I'll put myself there or I'll put you there or humanity there and then we start to stray into very very strange areas and really warped world views where we act as though we already know everything that everything is written that everything is understood when it isn't and even if even just believing that creates a sickness in us and it leads to materialism and I really think now in the last few years I really really am very very worried about materialism and the deleterious effect it has on human psychology it's not we suffer when we believe we're just flesh suits slowly rotting in a flesh world it's really not good it's depressing its anxiety inducing and then people fall into you guys know more about this to me the seven deadly sins because why not why not be full of lust and rage and envy why not consume as much as you can you're just a little flesh suit it's going to disappear into nothingness anyway and from that point of view I find it easier to forgive people for being you know as mean spirited as they are because they're what did you say alienated and lost their union from God this is a great way of putting it this is the sufferer this is the suffering of alienation we feel alienated yes you and me baby ain't nothing but mammals yeah right legitimately that is the fundamental guiding belief of much of our culture I mean I talked about this in the 22 convention this week but from from the public school to the public university to the media on TV and music and in movies and film the message is you are the product of meaningless unguided movement of particles you are just a certain arrangement of particles that happens to think about itself for some reason and so if you believe that what kind of world will that make what kind of people what kind of men will that make what kind of women will that make well when when you're when you're rooster goes into the hen coop enforceably breeds 30 hens we don't put him in jail well why would we put an advanced primate who's particularly hairless in jail for the same kind of thing why is rape bad why is murder bad what is meaning I mean these sorts of you have to follow the you have to follow the principle to its objective landing point in application and I think that that's what you see in an overriding way in our society I think it's interesting how 21's backed into this but it makes sense if you think about it because you know early on this a lot of it focused on being a pickup artist but it quickly started to evolve into different directions and I think it's because you have to ask why do I want sex right and what what makes me a man what and then it basically anthropological questions were asked and the last the first year I came here someone asked me what my takeaway was my takeaway was that materialism is dying materialism and enlightenment has failed us ultimately because it's made man into something you never could be right which is the the decider of his own meaning right how you guys see materialism be being rejected in the guys that you talk with and how are they how are they moving away from that in your experience oh you talk to so many guys you got I know you got thoughts on this I love to hear them mm-hmm if I had to pinpoint why I see this movement towards ethos towards spirit towards God towards organized religion which has gotten such a bad rap and there's such a bad taste a lot better than disorganized religion exactly and this whole chaos this whole idea of chaos and we're experiencing that chaos men are first of all beginning to well wake up to feminism and the chaos that it's wrought but then seeking the roots of that chaos and it has to lead you back to as you mentioned enlightenment ideals and the destruction of patriarchy and the removal of order in our world and so from a practical standpoint I think a lot of men in that craving for order are beginning to realize that their mission and purpose in life has to be tied to a transcendent other a divine order and that order has been given to us in revelation through the Bible and through Jesus Christ and the saints and so forth so if they're going to look for a map of reality that is antithesis to the garbage that we've got what's happening is a evolution that's actually a retrograde movement back to the tradition of the West at least Yeah, that's great Jeff, thoughts on that stuff? Yeah, this is an interesting question because I've thought a lot about it I've written a lot about it the I'm going to speak from a purely secular point of view from the materialist point of view the problem they have is that they can't avoid transcendental arguments no matter how hard they try so they have to ask themselves what are the necessary preconditions for the metaphysics that I hold true and as they descend or pre-send depending on how you look at it I would say it pre-sends as they pre-send with these I don't think I've ever heard that word before pre-send, is that a real word? Yeah and we're better for now hearing it Yes Go on, sorry guys there'll be a book there'll be a glossary passed out after this but the idea is that you know, you ask what are the necessary preconditions for this materialist world for example and these materialist assumptions the materialist world that physics provides cannot explain the human experience of the world and so you're going to need like a new kind of physics I mean people are openly talking about this in physics the anthropomorphic principle is just one example of it there's a really good book by a secular philosopher called Mind in Cosmos why the materialist conception of the world is almost certainly wrong and what he points out is that the materialist world that we get from science can't explain us it can explain it can definitely explain measurements in the world but it can explain how beings came to be that could measure and we're going to need a new kind of science to explain that and as they begin to explore the necessary preconditions for the existence of man they're inevitably led to things that make them very uncomfortable for example there must be an uncreated world from which the created world arose and in this uncreated world time can't operate if time operated there couldn't be a created world in which time does and they begin to really stress out over this stuff so from a purely logical perspective the rationalist materialist perspective they realize that they simply can't justify the materialist perspective alone and something has to replace it many of them turn to religion I think because they actually still hold to ethical goals which were bequeathed to them by Christianity they don't admit it but when they say well I want to do good I'm against religion and Christianity but I want to do good well why isn't it good to eat people? Durgle's good Jeffrey Dahmer yeah enjoyed it you know that it's not good because God and the church bequeathed these notions to you so they already presume on ethics that was already given to them by Christianity and then when they start exploring the ethical preconditions for human society they immediately become drawn into religion Brian I think what's interesting as well by that Jeff that was fascinating what's interesting about that as well is that you know if you just act like a stubborn three-year-old you'll eventually come to the bankruptcy of a materialist worldview and just keep asking why because if we say okay well you know we're going to rescue some kind of objective morality based on the you know that which is good for the maximal number of people and you say well why is that good what about we create an ethic based on what is maximally good for the maximum number of chickens why people why not chickens okay well we'll stop eating meat because apparently you know maybe we'll say sentient beings well what about plant life vegans are committing plant holocaust day after day the broccoli cries out it says please leave us alone please we're just trying to live our lives we Christians say amen and we say amen leave the love you love me thank you for not following that you grew food loss and we can eat yes we eat whatever is in the meat market without question of conscience so you know I think when you when you start to ask these questions what are the necessary preconditions for intelligibility things like assuming the reliability of human senses assuming that the past will be like the future assuming the uniformity of the laws of physics and nature that you know and think of how much of this we've sampled in our supposedly scientific world view which is built on sampling data and observable phenomena repeatable way well okay how much of the physical world have we sampled with our instruments you couldn't even put the percentage down on paper you would need too many papers went zero zero zero zero zero you know be there for a couple years and then you get to the one somewhere at the end there we live all we all live on faith in some sort of principle and I think what you find is that there's a bankruptcy of what looks very solid in a materialist world view and it has left people empty and asking questions that have ultimately driven them you know like the old trope that the scientists get to the top of the mountain and then they find the the theologians already there i think that's often what you've seen happen in the manasphere yeah Richard you're interesting to me because you said three years ago you started having these thoughts or started moving this direction, what puts you on that journey? Because that's what we're talking about, kind of talking about you in some ways. So what were the steps you took to move this direction? What woke you up to get the idea? When you said that the manosphere has moved from being like pickup artistry to a situation where when Anthony was talking about the different vectors of the manosphere, yesterday I was thinking one of them is gonna have to be religion, another one's gonna have to be philosophy. So in a sense, the fastest way to bring people to religion is through pushing into the material world. So if you push through pickup artistry, for example, and you're successful, and you fulfill every weird niche sexual fantasy with different shaped women from this place, that place, and the other, and you actually win that game, you then find yourself in a place of despair. And then you despair and you go, well, I won. What did I win? I won a series of strange, belittling, humiliating, and alienating experiences that left me feeling horrified, really. It's hellish as distracting and as pleasurable as it might be in the moment. It's awful afterwards. So that really, the despair was what brought me to thinking like this is, when do, so I reversed it, I would say, because my background is psychology, well, when do you feel good? When I'm in nature, when I'm reading a book, when I'm talking to my friends, when I'm, and I was like, well, what's the super experience? And I'm like, I think it's called connection. I think it's called reverence for being. You know, I look at the stars, I look at the trees, and my body, my physiology, my mind goes into a different state. And I'm like, what is this? This is maybe like a sort of a religious experience. If I stayed in that space, I felt good. If I went into the other space, I felt bad. And that was it. I kept it simple. Yeah, but what's interesting about why I think 21 is becoming this forum that it is, is women don't deal with conflict the way we do, right? Men love to talk about politics for a reason. Because we like to talk about ultimate things. We're concerned in rule and order and all that stuff. But we can argue intensely, right? Even scream sometimes. And then afterwards feel closer. And that's not how it works with a woman. They'll feel alienated for a long time. But it's actually a place where since we all want to be masculine, we don't wanna be effeminate, we can have these hard conversations about different forms of government and about religion. And so it makes sense to me that that shows that 21 is maturing into manhood in a sense. Part of manhood is being able to have hard conversations and go at each other. And then afterwards have a drink, right? And that's exactly what happens here. I do have a question though, and I'll go back to you actually. Give a honest assessment. So we have every part of the church here, right? We have the Romans, we've got the Orthodox and the Protestants. Those are the three major wings of Christian, but we're all Christians this year, right? Up here, except for you. And the best Protestants too. What's that? The Presbyterians. The real deal. These are such things. The Protesters, that's good. I'm sorry, guys, I'm sorry. Depends what you're protesting. But anyway, salvation by works. Yeah. Anyway, I'm married. I don't get it. But look. Christianity is dominated by women. 60% is in most churches of the membership of women. It goes much higher. People will say that, well, that's because religion is, men aren't religious. And that's just complete nonsense, right? Islam is very masculine. And it's at least, it's the people that subscribe to it Orthodox Jews. But Christianity is dominated by the feminine in a lot of ways. As someone who is not in a Christian church, right? Why do you think it is? What's your honest assessment of it culturally? Why do men not like Christianity right now? I will, I'll do my best. Okay. And bearing in mind I'm nowhere near as educated as the metal in this panel. What it seems to me is that the way that Christianity is presented, unlike Orthodox Judaism or Islam, is you kind of have a freedom of how you interpret it way more than other religions. And if it's very easy to take certain gospels that are very appealing to feminine coordinates like agreeability, agreeableness, sorry, cooperation going along to get along, feeding the poor. And then everything sort of leans yin versus yang, the feminine principle. It becomes very about equality and socialism. And then when I've looked at it, so there's a sort of a flavor of Christianity that you can have. And then I look again and I go, but I've seen other flavors. I was raised in a different way. And the interpretations that I was given in other places, for example, I used to train martial arts with Russians and they were extraordinarily religion. Their religion was part of the mystical process of learning the martial art. And they weren't feminine. There was nothing feminine about what they were doing. And so I realized, it seems to be open to interpretation. It can be hijacked and it can be used to fulfill an ideological agenda. And I don't mean that in some grand conspiracy. Your ideological agenda might be, I feel better when everybody gets along and doesn't argue. So I'm gonna present this as a religion of not arguing. But as you just said, that isn't what the religion is. So guys, what would you say? We're here at an event like this. Clearly we care about masculinity and femininity. And we want men in our church. Why aren't they in our church? So at least not in the numbers they should be. I mean, it was basically breaks down 50-50 in terms of male female in the higher population. So nine to 10, 15, 20% skewed one way or the other says something. What do you think is going on? Why do men reject Christianity? I do think that one reason, and I really like if you want a book-length treatment of this, I think Leon Podols, that's how you pronounce it, he wrote The Church Impotent, I think is the title. And he talks quite a bit about more historical roots and goes pretty deep in some of the movements. And this is not just true today. This has been true for some time and there are historic reasons why as well. I think a lot of the issue though is that when you filter Christian theology or a vision of Christ through a modern lens, particularly in our culture, you end up filtering out all of the parts of Christ that are absolutely present in the gospels where he is being typically masculine. I mean, where he is cleansing the temple, where he is absolutely scorched earth rebuking the false shepherds of Israel as whited tombs full of dead men's bones as hypocrites who heap heavy burdens on widows and orphans and don't lift them with their little finger. I mean, Jesus is a prophet. Jesus is a king. Jesus is a true priest, meaning he does the work of working and keeping and protecting. He kills the serpent. Jesus is the omnimascular man. He is David, he's David's son. He is the Goliath Slayer. He hooks Leviathan through the nose, Job 41. I mean, you just go through and you look at this picture of Yahweh incarnate in Christ. And what you find is this astonishingly masculine figure. But then when you have an oversimplified version, a plastic version of masculinity and femininity, that reduces each sex to their just polarities, you have a vision of masculinity and femininity that's one dimensional. And then you end up just completely overemphasizing one of those poles. So Jesus, of course, is meek. He's meek. He says the meek will inherit the earth. And men look at that without understanding meekness holistically as strength under control and channeled towards the end of the good and the true and the beautiful. And they think that meekness means that you are effeminate. And then if that culturally has lived out in the church, it creates an environment where churches then select as their ideal man, pastors are supposed to be an ideal man in the congregation and they select men who are ruled by women. They select men who are absolutely in the pocket of women. And so you end up with a lot of churches that are run by functional matriarchies that then creates a culture that men are uncomfortable in, especially blue collar men who are, and then you add to that an academic culture in the training of pastors, in masters and postgraduate level degrees, where they're doing a lot of academic work, which absolutely ought to be masculine, but can tend towards the effeminate, where you're rejecting practice for mere theory and they become theoreticians. So I think there are lots of different vectors that explain it, but that's kind of, I think, where I would start. Elliot. I think a part of the reason why is because religion in its truest sense is hard. To give up pleasure, to give up fornication, to give up sin, even to give up thoughts of sin requires discipline. It requires a commitment and it requires mortification. I also think that the open interpretation, as we've described with regard to the Bible, has also let a feminacy creep in. So for example, the idea of once saved, always saved, or faith only allows you to kind of get away with, well, then I don't have to do anything. And anything that sounds like discipline or doing gets interpreted as trying to save yourself my works. For whatever it's worth, men want to work. Muslims are obligated to pray five times a day. Christians can pretty much make up whatever they want. Men flourish in environments of rigor and discipline. Tell me what to do in a militant way and I will save the day. Give me room for interpretation and a feel-good mantra that all I gotta do is think good thoughts and say Jesus is my friend and then we find every way to escape the rig, the hardness of being a real man, a real religious man. My favorite papers, besides you, is G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton said Christianity hasn't been tried and found wanting, it's been tried and found hard. Is that him or is that Tozer? It might be Tozer. We're gonna give it to Chesterton today though. Let's give it to Chesterton. Yeah, is it? Okay, good, good. Sounds like Chesterton. If you haven't read G.K. Chesterton. He's the most. Yeah, orthodoxy and he's a very smart guy. Anyhow, it's funny, Brian and I run in circles where we get accused of bringing Romanism into Protestants and it's because, I can see that. And the reason they think that is that, so we would say justification, you're legal standing, that's by faith, but the works are part of salvation. Salvation is an entire order of things. There's a lot of things that happen and we'd say the works, the good works are necessary but they come from being born again, being regenerated. If you don't have works, then what, the blood of Christ isn't powerful, right? The water of baptism doesn't, in some way, identify you with the body. And I would agree that one of the unnecessary, I don't think it's necessitated by being a Protestant, but there's a misunderstanding of salvation that encourages people to be passive. Men are passive. They're not, we can't stand, I remember when I first became a Christian, I read the book of James. I was like, finally. Someone just tell me what to do. Tell me what to do and I'll do it. Am I supposed to wake up early and pray? Am I supposed to go church every week? Does someone give me instructions? And men want ritual. We love ritual. I remember when I was first learning the box, one of the biggest rituals of boxing is wrapping those hands. As you wrap your hands, you're getting there mentally. By the time it's done, you're just, you know. You're ready for business. There's men want ritual. And they're gonna find it somewhere and they've been looking for it, but a lot of it's just kind of like in a choose your own adventure, PS. And I think a lot of the problem with evangelicalism, just to explain what that is, is it was a movement that arise in the 20s and 30s out of a very particular form of Christianity that overemphasize personal relationship to Jesus, not religion. If you're against religion, it's just foolish guys. Religion is the duties and practices associated with the worship of the God, right? Religion is good. I, yeah, I have a relationship with Jesus, but I am a religious person. Not ashamed of it at all. My life has order because of Christ. But evangelicalism put the individual on the throne all the more and it was all about your personal experience with Jesus and I can't challenge that supposedly, right? But I can. I can say you don't look like you follow Jesus. And if you, and he doesn't want you as his PR person. And evangelicalism has led- Rebuke centers is a good work. Yes. It's love. 100%. So things that are sinful aren't just false, but they're bad, right? So in other words, it's not logically coherent, rational, but it also leads to bad things in your life. And that's what I think people are backing in this way. Here's the big question. May I ask a question? Because I would approach it in three ways. One theologically, one ecclesiologically and one from practices. I think that there is an issue with interpretation that has caused a rise of an effeminate movement in the church. And I dare say with the pink mafia and the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church it's gotten there too. And I will tell you the Greek Church, the Greek Orthodox Church has started to go this way too. In fact, there are many patriarchs that aren't commemorating the Greek patriarch in their liturgies anymore because of this, right? And it has to do with interpretation. The way Orthodox understand the Bible is quite different. First of all, it's purpose. It is not a personal love letter from Jesus Christ to you. Rather, it's a liturgical text. It was a text created specifically for the church, what you're calling rituals. The reason that we resist the word ritual is that our liturgy is the worship service that John the theologian saw in the heavens. And it is the book of Revelation. It is a worship service in heaven. And that's why we don't read Revelation in our liturgies because we're already doing it every time, right? So we are participating in the eternal worship service that's in the book of Revelation which is the only worship service anywhere in the Bible. And the books in the Bible were selected by the church precisely to support the liturgical practices of that worship that's going on in heaven. So there's a difference in what the purpose of the Bible is. Now, if we accept that it's liturgical, then the question is, how would one interpret it? Well, that's what we call holy tradition. Holy tradition is the interpretive apparatus for the Bible which prevents Aaron's interpretation. Holy tradition is the main defense against heresy. For example, in the Orthodox understanding of the word God, theos, in the Septuagint and in the New Testament, Greek texts, this does not refer to the essence of God. This refers to God's energies rather than not his essence. And in fact, theos, if you look at it, actually means burning or bright like the burning bush refers to the energies of God in the world, not his essence. That will lead you to a completely different interpretation of many parts of the Bible. So there's this issue of constraining interpretation means that you can't start saying women can be deacons. You can't do these things because holy tradition has constrained you from that. Theologically constrained you from it. Now ecclesiologically, there are other issues. I think that if you look at any democratic institution, whether it's professional bodies to United States of America, the great state of Texas, any democratic body becomes effeminate over time if it's democratic. And the reason is that democracy is inherently effeminate in the way it deals with things, right? It deals mainly in false images. It's a social way of coming to a consensus and it's effeminate. Monarchy is masculine. So an ecclesiology that's based on electing elders. No offense to my brothers here, I'm just telling you. Hey, choose among yourself men for deacons, but I guess that's fine. Yeah, yeah, and we do elect deacons for sure. But elders are not chosen democratically. You can't just start a church and call yourself an elder, right? You have to be chosen by other elders and seen worthy by other elders before you can become one. And that's totally in the control of men because only men are elders. So I think there's an ecclesiological issue that has led to the feminization of the church. And then there are practices. I mean, if you attend some of these worship shows, I went to South Carolina to an evangelical church. And I mean, basically they had me singing love songs to Jesus. Like love songs that I'm out here on the radio, like Beyonce love song type thing. And I'm like, I'm feeling very uncomfortable with this gay hymn, you know? I mean, Jesus is a living man. I'm not gonna talk to him about him like this. Now, what was the hymn that you? Oh man, saying this on a recording. But there was this song that they said, Jesus come inside of me. And I was like, that's offensive and uncomfortable. But another one of the really famous, it has a line, hold me close to you, never let me go, right? Why aren't we singing? Why do the heathen nations vainly rage? What prideful schemes are they in vain devising? Song two, I mean, more hymns. So the practices of many churches have been so adapted to female sensibilities that you have to be a woman to even sing the hymns, you know? And just to give you a kind of a contrast in orthodoxy, the hymns have to be vetted for, most of them have been vetted for at least 500 years before we even let them be said in the church, right? So they have to be theologically sound. And so there's a different set of practices in the worship that have made it vulnerable to take over by women. Brian, Jeff said a lot of things that you and I disagree with. Yeah. And some that I agree with. Oh yeah, a lot that I agree with to be clear too. And you know, one guy said what he doesn't like about the panels I talked to someone here is just there's not enough disagreement, right? Yeah, exactly why I did it. Yeah. Yeah. We're not ecumenical in an ultimate sense. Whether they're very significant differences between us, I don't view you guys the same way I would view Mormons, right? I would say Mormons is a heretical cult. It's a different, entirely different view. It's a higher three different gods. Yeah, we are tritarians. Yes. We all are here. We're Christian brothers in loving dialogue. That's what we are. Yeah. And I want to ask what's, how would you describe our different view of scripture, of a scripture than they have Jeff and I know Elliot, I've heard Elliot was critiquing it earlier implicitly. Just the individual choose your own adventure, approach the scripture, whatever. What's the Protestant view of the word of God? Right, so the Protestant view of the word of God is often referred to with the term sola scriptura, which means by scripture alone. And by that, we mean that the only infallible rule for life and doctrine are the scriptures. And what that often is reduced to is that the only rule for life and doctrine is the scriptures, which we would reject. We would reject that and say that we also would claim the traditions of the church. We also claim the fathers. You have this error where in the church reinvents itself theologically every 15 minutes in accordance with the modern zeitgeist through personal and private interpretation. Well, everybody is going inescapably going to interpret the scriptures, but you don't have the right to private wrong interpretation. You don't have any right, nobody has the right to wrongly interpret the scriptures. That's right. So where we would differ is in the mechanisms for interpreting the scripture, how we relate to the tradition. I would say, for example, the Roman Catholic Magisterium, the tradition, one of the legs of the stool in the Roman Catholic view of authority. And Elliot, feel free to correct me if I misrepresent you in any way. I would disagree that it's unified even. I think it also represents the project of human beings wrestling with the text of the scriptures and having thesis antithesis and doing that process of doctrinal interpretation. I think this is an inescapable concept. I would also disagree with an orthodox view of the liturgy. I don't think that the orthodox liturgy, I think the liturgy that my church practices is much closer to the worship of the early church. What's your evidence for that? And I was going to say, at the end of that sentence, and I'm not a historian, nor the person that I would put on the debate stage to support that. So you have any, but you believe it? But you have no evidence. So for example, I don't think that as an example, I don't think that the apostles were venerating icons. And I just, I would disagree with that. But again, I would also say- Despite the fact that the oldest house church ever excavated around the year 200 is full of icons, the same ones in my church that are stylistically exactly the same as the ones in my church. Let's talk about areas though, right there. That beggars belief, I'm afraid. Well, there's also Gnostic gospels that there's a lot of practices already in the church very on from Iranians or whoever. So the presence of some practice in the early church isn't defining evidence that it's true and was adopted. But an unbroken practice from Jewish iconography to Christian iconography all the way through the present day is different than some random practice. So- I'm sorry, but that's just- Well. All right, keep going. All right. I'll come back to this in a second, keep going. We're gonna start talking about the second commandant here in a moment, but- What's that? Dave, keep going. Oh yeah, and again, I wouldn't locate myself as an expert on this subject, nor would I attempt to pretend to be. I think that's the behavior of a fraud. So I'm not gonna attempt from the stage here to present myself as an expert in historical theology or the historical theology of Christian literature. And Jeff may very well be able to trounce me in a debate right now on the subject very well. I don't think so. And that wouldn't mean that it's true. It would mean that he's better than me on the subject, but- I can actually argue your position. There's some good arguments for your position. Let me ask real quick. You should be able to steal. So in our liturgy, we're gonna have an invocation, right? So it actually, it's a service where we are worshiping God, and God is also bringing us to his table. Calling us to worship. And so it's not just like a concert, feel good, sort of nonsense. There's actually, we have a prayer of invocation. We're gonna have a prayer of confession, assurance of part. We're gonna then have a prayer of illumination. We're gonna have the reading of the Old and New Testament. And then we're going to have a sermon, a sermon generally followed by a pastoral prayer, that pastoral prayer that followed by the Lord's Supper, right? And then we're going to, between that, there's worship happening. And then we're gonna have a benediction by which we send people back out in the world. And we're following the ordering. The continuity that we would find there is the continuity between the Lord's service and for example, Leviticus one in the call to worship, confession of sin and association with the animal sacrifice, our consecration by the priestly sort of the word in which we're cut up, identified with the sacrifice, rising to heaven in a pleasing offering by which we eat with God then at the communion table as we become one and strengthened by the same food and then charged and blessed by our God to go out and do the work of the kingdom now in fellowship with him. So I would locate that continuity covenantally between the Old and New Testaments. But sorry, interrupted you. Oh, I wanna get to the side of the table. Yeah. I know things are going on in your mind as we're talking. What comments do you have on that? Well, as I've matured, I've discovered the power of authority and respect for authority and that we can't live egalitarian and democracy is a form of pretension to feminism and it opens up the gate for all types of interpretation and personal authority. And so in a world where chaos reigns, it is my position that we look for the most stable, long lasting God ordained authority that has literally built Western civilization. And so in response to talk of the Magisterium, it's not perfect, absolutely not, just like no government really is, but it is God's government installed in the world and by fact, by the fact that it was carried by Rome West and lit up all of Western civilization such that we call it Christendom, gives me ample confidence that submitting my will to that earthly authority ordained by God is the most stable decision in a chaotic world. What people don't realize is that guys like Brian and I are nothing like most modern Protestants for evangelicals. We love the church fathers. I have a son named Athanasius. The first book I ever read was Augustine's Confession. We like to recite things in art. We like to do the mic check. You're doing a creed, right? We like to say creeds in our church. We have a deep connection. I think the Bible teaches us that God has given us pastors, elders, authority to teach us and lead us into truth, to be an individualist with just you and your Bible and the squirrels out in the woods is have nothing to do with the Bible that's with you. The Bible gives us leaders who lead us into truth. The rejection of human authority because I just have a relationship with God is a rejection of God. Because God himself has placed human authorities. He could have done angels, but in part he does leads us through men because it keeps us humble. And so a lot of it's a Calvin book for the institutes. That's where I got that from. But it's a Christian religion by John Calvin. Everyone should read the book. Yeah. And you see where we differ because I would consider myself a Catholic. It's not a Roman Catholic. I would say as Protestants, we wanted to preserve the church. And this is a lot of, man, there's so much good stuff. I'm so glad we're having this conversation here. But what I want to do though is I want to open it up to questions for the last few minutes to the audience. So if you, again, my rule always is don't give us statements, give us questions. So you come up to that microphone and ask your question. And if it's for the panel, it's for an individual, please address it to them. Good morning, gentlemen. So first off, fantastic discussion and taking plenty of notes. I want to bring it a little bit back to the manosphere and religion. In the gospel, when asked, Jesus says at the end of days, it will be the time of Noah. Which for, you know, if anyone doesn't know the story, basically God killed everyone for being so evil except for Noah and his family. So that said, as the world goes darker and darker before Christ comes back, how would you give advice to men as men to weather that storm? Brian, so he's talking about Matthew chapter 24. So there's actually two points to this question, actually. I think we would have, I don't know what your guys' interpretation of that is. You and I have probably one that differs though. Right, if you want to start. Sure. Yeah, so I would, I hold to what's called a partial preterist view. So I believe that Jesus in the Olivet discourse of Matthew 24 is primarily describing the end of the Judaic aeon with the judgment of Israel as a post-state nation and a covenant-breaking nation. So God within a generation as prophesied by Christ threw down the Roman or the Jewish temple by means of the armies under Titus. And so I actually hold to what's called a post-millennial view where I believe that the Christian gospel, the kingdom of God will progressively like leaven, leaven the entire world and conquer the world and colonize the entire world and that Christ will return to a world that is more Christian than not. It will be a wheat field in which there are tares, but it will be a wheat field, not a tear field with a few straggling strands of wheat. But the question still remains, how do you live in a world that's difficult? Because this is, I mean, I believe in a very long view of history. So there could be 40,000 more years plus. And I would say that you should hold fast to the faith, fight like men, and that you should do all of the normal mundane things that will lead you to glory and glorification in Christ. Just simple, plotting obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ day after day, not seeking for big, fast, famous and flashy, but just simply obeying the Lord Jesus Christ. Tell your heart, say Christ is Lord every day. Next, please. Sure, so a lot of churches practice like celibacy and a lot of the speeches today were on the importance of sexual discipline. Can you share some advice on how to practice that a little bit more? I'm terrible at it. Okay, because like a lot of, most religions would consider like pornography and like all those to be like really big sins. And I mean, we've seen- I heard Elliot talk about this. Elliot, wanna address the issue? I think he's asking, so celibacy is a little different. You're talking about two things. There's celibacy, which is lifelong commitment to not engaging in sex or sexual activity. You're, I think you're talking about chastity as well, how to stay chaste, how to properly control your sex drive. And I think I've heard Elliot say some very helpful things on that. If the question is about how to be a lifelong celibate, there are people who are called to that by the grace of God. And I do believe that God calls certain people to that way of life in order to carry a light that many of us who disperse it through our family and the love thereof are just unable to do. And I see it as a high calling that unfortunately gets blurred out because of the confusion of the world. I think there will be more holy virgins and celibate men and women that would be people of the cloth or in monasteries praying and giving their life in order to bring that God's blessings forth through their more efficacious prayers, potentially. And so I do have this sense that as we edge towards a greater expression of God's kingdom on this planet that there will be those who are called to that and they know it. And because of things like no faff in such the idea that pornography is bad is coming around, they'll be more receptive to that idea. Richard, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Don't ask the degenerate. Well, that's, you're at the wrong table for me. I'm too late. What do you think about this? I mean, I think, I tell people when I come here, a lot of the guys that meet that aren't Christians actually are pretty strongly against pornography. That's a really common and you care about the psychology of men and you care about their mental health. So I'm curious to hear what you have to say on it. Yeah, I think, well, first of all, sitting at the table and listening has been educational for me and it's sort of making me rearrange things inside of my mind a little bit. The necessity for a discipline and orthodoxy and even a dogmatic adherence to orthodoxy I never really thought of as useful before I sat here today. Oh, that's good. And so I'm shifting as I'm talking. I would say that if I reverse the question, what I can tell you is not having discipline around these issues and having promiscuous sex is, it induces suffering. If you're a young man who's not had that experience and you're outside the cake shop looking in through the window, it's going to be effing great in there. It is, but then you eat too much and your mouth is full of like that horrible rot flavor you get when you've had too much sugar. You don't feel good. You don't want it anymore, but you're in there. So you keep going. It's hell. It's hell. It's really very unpleasant. And the most unpleasant thing is your brain is telling you, I've won. I'm at the pinnacle of everything and this sucks. So there's nowhere else to go. So I would say perhaps advising you not from a position of authority, but from somebody who's borderline an addict. If you're attached to this stuff, you will suffer a lot and it can ruin your whole life. Just sex, just an over attachment to sex can ruin your spiritual development, your psychological growth, your finances, everything. It's a very, very serious issue. So to finish the point, generally speaking in this culture, we talk about sex like kids, we giggle. We go, ooh, sex, bit of porn, bit of, you know, just a quick hookup, it's fine. It's dangerous. It's dangerous. These are powerful energies. You're bonding with people. You separate from them and it can pull you inside out. Don't play with this stuff. The different type of degenerate here at 21. Next question. I'll speak to it quickly. Really quickly, you know, to me the question before you and this question are pretty much the same, right? These are just different kinds of apocalypses. And I think the Christian answer to these are always the same, right? It's pray, fast and do good works. And you reform yourself and you reform your desires. A theologian is just one who prays, right? If you wanna understand theology, pray, pray, pray. And I guarantee you, if you think you're praying enough, you're not praying enough. You are not praying enough. You must pray all the time. You must fast. Sexual abstinence, not having sex before marriage is just a form of fasting. And it's designed to stop your attachment to things in a disordered way, right? Same way you can have a disordered attachment to food. But you know, the origin of food fasting was that you would not eat so that you could give your food away to the poor. So I would suggest that you think of sexual fasting in a similar way. Instead of all this time you're gonna spend chasing tail, why don't you go out and try to actually help people and do some good things for people and reform your spirit and you won't have the disordered desire to begin with. But we save your follow-up questions for afterwards if you don't mind. I'd like to get to some more people. There's a question about what you think the future of it's religion in the Manisphere or more broadly, religion where I guess Christianity and politics is, like there's a lot of diverse, I don't like to use that word, but viewpoints here, do you think there's kind of a long-term alliance or people will convert to Christianity or there'll be eventually kind of like a battle between the different views? Brian? Well, my view, my aim, and I think we all agree on this, is I would love to see the reunification of the Christian church. I would love to see the Eastern Orthodox Orthodox Roman Catholic Protestant reunify and I actually expect that as a post-millennialist. I expect that a feature of the kingdom of God advancing will be the unity of the brethren in Christ. And so, but again, when I say that, people sometimes think I'm saying in 40 years, I mean, God said that he'd show his faithfulness to the thousands generation of those who love him. That's 40 times a thousand, it's 40,000 years. We're about 3000 plus years removed from that. So, I think history is long and Christ wins. And the unity that we'll have will be in the truth, not at the expense of truth. Correct. It won't be a thin new. And these sort of conversations have to happen. I do think that the ministry is gonna continue to get more and more religious for many of the reasons that have been set up here. And I think as Christianity, as we move past this sort of pop, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, weak, you know, a feet Christianity that we see right now, as we are more connected to the work that God's been doing throughout history in the church and through the church, that it's gonna dominate again in the West, but we're going through a massive correction right now where we have to expel heretics and false teaching. So I think it's inevitable. The alliance we have, 21 has two things that's united principle as far as I see. No one's told me this, this is my own observation. Number one, it has a positive view of masculinity. We don't hate masculinity here. Number two, we reject a feminist view of sexuality. Those are the two things. And if you're a biblical Christian, you have the same view. Very easy to accept that. And so that's like what we have. It's like a Euler diagram, not a Venn diagram, but it's what we have in common. That's what I think everyone in these panels have in common, but we differ. It's just a place where there's a form where we can actually disagree. So thank you. Earlier in the discussion, Elliot was saying something about organized religion, and then Michael responded, which is a lot better than disorganized religion. And I agree with that statement, but it got me thinking. Chaos is often a transitory phase, right? It never lasts forever. Whenever there's a period of chaos, there's this new order that springs up. And along that line, a speech by Michael a couple of days ago said that Satan used a similar sort of tactic in furthering his interests among men. With that in mind, the whole idea of Satan's use of chaos as a Trojan horse for his new order, in which he is the new God, what is your definition of spiritual warfare? And this is a question for each and every man on the panel. What is your definition of spiritual warfare? And what would you say is the best way to win that war? Elliot? It's a war for authority. And that's really what it is. The spiritual world is structured as opposed to what most people think. It's not just this flowing around, floating, airy, angelic stuff. There is order in God's kingdom. And it is always based on authority. If you're not under authority, you're subject to all kinds of bad stuff. And even the demons in this realm understand authority both heavenly and on earth. And so for us to put ourselves in a place to succeed in spiritual warfare, it's critical that number one, we recognize earthly authority. And number two, uphold our earthly authorities. And the most obvious place that this can be seen and worked out is in the family. A family that's not well-ordered, meaning husband, well, God in Christ, Christ over man, man over woman, women over children, is completely wide open for attack. If we wanna win that, we have to bring back God's order into the home first. And it begins with men, fathers, husbands, taking their rightful order as head of the family. What's an elevator answer that you can add to that? But yeah, yeah, just like a minute. Save yourself to save others. Sanctify yourself, become holy, become a saint, and miraculously save others. But save yourself first and focus on holiness. Brian. Yeah, we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with the powers and principalities and the heavenly places. However, God has triumphed over them in Christ and put them to open shame. He's crushed the head of the serpent. And that final principle, the principle of victory will be worked out in history as God's kingdom triumphs through Christ. And so we wrestle through prayer and the sword of the spirit, wielding the word of God in prayer. We wrestle with the powers and principalities when we crucify our own flesh and when we seek to love our neighbor as ourself. And so I would say everything that we do is either contributing to, we're playing for one team or the other. And everything is spiritual at the end of the day. We're not just stuff. For the sake of time, I'm just gonna go to the next person that has a question. I am blessed that I have been led by a strong man, my whole married life. And we're currently looking for a new church. It's been our, what we've listened for is are the women preached to? And we have found that ministers are not showing women what they are doing wrong. That was my dog, I'm sorry. And do your religions, preach to women to show them what their sin is because without a preacher, you don't hear. Jeff? All right. Yeah, one of the reasons that we don't give priests or bishops the ability to preach from any verse that they want is they have to read the whole Bible to everybody every year. So there's a liturgical year, the entire Bible's read every year and they don't get a choice. They have to preach the teachings of the church and all the stuff that nobody ever wants to talk about. And one of the big things is, for example, the duties of men in marriage and the duty to obedience of women in marriage. And that has to be proclaimed. In orthodoxy, we won't even marry any woman who won't take the obedience vows and we won't marry any man who won't take headship over his family. And that's a mandatory preaching that's preached every year and it's usually done on the feast of the parents of the Holy Theotokos Mary because they raised her very well, very holy. They had one of the more ideal marriages. And so it's on that feast day that those teachings are done. And it's taken extremely seriously by the church to the point where it's okay in an orthodox church to review command for failing to adequately support his family and not working hard enough to support his family. And we even require women to cover their heads in services as is commanded by the apostles and women who don't bring scarves, well, we have scarves out in the Northex that they can put on their heads. And it's a symbol of obedience to the church and to their husbands. Brian. Yes, we, in fact, this is probably one of those areas where you find the blasphemy laws more powerfully represented in any other place culturally. But yes, we do apply the text. I'm seeking always as a pastor in administering the word to apply the text, not just when it's, you know, Ephesians six household codes, speaking to men and women as men and women, but also every text I'm thinking in my head, okay, I have grandmothers, mothers, daughters, sons, fathers, patriarchs, non-Christians here before me. What does each one of them need to hear how to obey God particularly as they are? So we regularly, you know, week after week do you apply the text to women and call them to obey the Lord? I believe that one of the failures of Protestantism has been the rejection of veneration towards the mother of God, Mary. And I believe that that was probably one of the very first open doors that led us to feminism. Without Mary, veneration towards Mary, recognition of her high place in the heavens as spouse of the Holy Spirit, daughter of the father and mother of our Lord, there's no example for women to follow. If we want women to be what Mary is or represents in her holiness, then we have to bring Mary back into our churches. One of the failures of Roman Catholicism is the veneration of Mary. And it's feminine centric, but also Bernard of Clairvaux's bridal mysticism, but what most evangelicals don't know, if you go back and read early Protestants, some early Protestants actually believe that in the perpetual virginity of Mary. Yeah, John Luther had a strong devotion to our Lady. And really, she is lauded in, there's the Magnificant, right? Her song, so I do think we don't hold up, we need to talk about the whore in Proverbs. You could do, you talked about that to our women, but we also need to say, Mary is an example of holiness. And that's something we all can agree upon. And I have a hard time, I hate having to agree with you guys so much. I'm sorry, this is causing psychological trauma. I'm gonna have to talk to Richard afterwards. But look, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna pray for you. And that's how we're gonna close. I'm gonna pray that God would lead you into truth. So let's pray right now, even if you don't agree, just out of respect, would you bow your head? Father God, I ask that you would lead these men and women here into truth. God, I thank you that they care about veritas. I thank you that they are willing to engage in conflict, willing to tear down false ideas, Lord, but I pray that it wouldn't just be the hatred of what's false and bad, but the love of what is good and true. God, lead them into your ways. Your name, I pray, amen. Thank you, can we give these guys some applause? This is hard. Well, again, thank you for your time. Thank you for listening to the Manisphere and Religion. Be sure to like, subscribe, and send this to your feminist friends. Yeah.