DR. JOHN WEST - The Evangelical Betrayal: How Christian Leaders Developed Stockholm Syndrome - The Will Spencer Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Foreign.

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Hello and welcome to the WillSpencer Podcast.
This is a weekly interviewshow where I talk with authors, thought
leaders and influencers whohelp us understand our changing world.
New episodes release every Friday.
My guest this week is Dr. John West.
Dr. West is the Vice Presidentand a Senior Fellow at the Seattle
based Discovery Institute,where he also serves as the Managing
Director of the Institute'scenter for Science and Culture, which

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he co founded with philosopherof science Stephen Meyer in 1996.
Dr. West was previously anAssociate professor of Political
Science at Seattle PacificUniversity, where he chaired the
Department of Politicalscience and geography.
Dr. West has written anddirected several documentaries, including
the award Biology of theSecond Reich.
He holds a PhD in governmentfrom Claremont Graduate University

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and is a recipient of severalacademic fellowships.
Finally, Dr. West has writtenor edited 13 books, including his
most recent, StockholmSyndrome, why Christian Leaders Are
Failing, and what We can doabout it.
Dr. West, welcome to the WillSpencer Podcast.
Will thank you for having me.
I've got your book here,Stockholm Syndrome, Christianity.

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I really enjoyed this book.
I thought it was very bold.
I thought it was veryforthright and courageous and its
approach to a topic that's oneveryone's mind these days.
It was also written with agood bit of Christian love for its
audience and the subjects thatit covers.
And so I wanted to thank youfor this book.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate was a longjourney to write it and I really

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did try to struggle to be ascharitable as I could, really mentored
by through reading of someonenamed Francis Schaeffer, who many
people may not know nowbecause he's been passed on for a
number of years.
But he wrote a little bookcalled the Mark of a Christian which
I highlight there.
And I so appreciate himstanding for truth, but in a genuinely

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loving, gracious manner.
And I don't think I'm quite asloving as he was, but I did my best.
So let's start then with a bitof background on how the book came
together.
It seems like it's been a 30year journey to write this book,
sort of.
You've watched a number oftrends and shifts in evangelical
and Christian culture in America.
And so it goes back to yourtime at Seattle Pacific University

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and in many ways really before.
Yeah, I think things coalescetwo or three years ago when I came
to the conclusion that I wouldcount myself as a theologically conservative
Christian.
And we often who aretheologically conservative Christians

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like to blame the atheists andthe agnostics for everything.
And I certainly agree with that.
I certainly think that a lotof them and the progressives and
the woke Christians, allthat's true.
But after a career of seeingself identified evangelical Christians

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who themselves were actuallypushing many of the same talking
points and actuallyfacilitating things and actually
looking so much more like thesecularists around them than they
were their historic faith, Isort of came to the conclusion that
this is a systemic problemthat before the church, and in a
way I don't mean before, Ithink the church needs to do both.
But rather than just lookingat forces outside the church, we

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actually need to get our ownhouses in order.
I mean, if we're really hopingto model, say, biblical marriage,
biblical sexuality, a view ofscience, a view of race relations
and biblical equality, beforewe expect everyone else to follow
along with what the Bibleteaches, we better make sure that

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that's what we're teaching toour kids, the people in our churches,
and being consistent on that.
And if we're mimicking whatthe world is saying, then Houston,
we have a problem.
And so that was sort of thething that sort of drove me to, I
think, wanted to write this.
I've done a number of otherthings I've done are focused more
outward focus on what I callcommon ground books on people who

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may not be Christians.
This is sort of my letter tomy fellow Christians of, you know,
we need to get our own houseand our own families in order if
we want sort of a betterresult out in culture.
And what I thought wasinteresting about this book is that
it takes more of a scientifickind of direction.
It focuses on particularly theways that evangelical Christianity

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has capitulated to a lot of, alot of modern science or scientism.
And of course your positionwith discovery science makes a big
impact on that.
So maybe you can talk a littlebit about what discovery science
is and talk about how you'veseen evangelical Christians give
in to contemporary trends inscience as well.
Sure.
You know, as long as I canremember, even when I was in middle

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school, I was fascinated bythe impact of science on culture,
both for good and for ill.
Unfortunately, we've seen alot of people speak in the name of
science and do some verygruesome things, going back all the
way to things like eugenicsand things.
And so one of my favoriteauthors growing up and still today
is CS Lewis.
And he was, I think, aprophetic critic of what is often

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called scientism, or at leastonce he called scientocracy, which
I actually like that namebecause it's ruled by people in the
name of science, which oftenis ruled by bureaucrats who really
don't even know what they'retalking about, but they just claim
the section of science.
And so I've been interested inthat in a long time.
And so then in the 1990s whenI met Steve Meyer for the first time,
who many people might know, hebig in the intelligent design movement,

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author of many books,including a New York Times bestseller
that argues that there'sevidence in nature of design and
purpose, not just that we'renot just the product of random or
unguided processes.
So when we first met, we sortof sparked in a good way, because
he was talking about all thesethings that were happening in science

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that actually pointed towardspurpose and a creator and that we
were more than our material subparts.
And then for myself, from thestandpoint of the social sciences
and the impact of science onculture, you know, I saw the really
deleterious impact of all that.
And what Steve seemed to besaying was, well, actually the best
recent science is actuallypointing in a direction away from

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that 19th century, Darwinian,Freudian, Nietzschean science that
devalues us as spiritualcreatures, that devalues the truth
claims of the biblical tradition.
And that actually science waspointing in a different direction.
I thought, wow, that if that'strue, we should found a program on

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that.
And so Steve and I togethercame up with this idea of center
for science and culture thatlooks first making what are the scientific
arguments that actually showthat we are more than just matter,
that we are the product of acreator, and that we're not just
the product of a blind,purposeless process.
So unlike arch atheist RichardDawkins, at least before him, saying

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that he's a cultural Christian now.
I guess so, I guess.
But he used to be claimingabout how atheism, scientific atheism,
Darwinian atheism, helped youbecome a fulfilled atheist in believing
in Darwinism.
So we were pushing back at that.
And I think we've had some success.
I mean, the debate since webegan about 30 years ago has dramatically

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changed.
And in fact, you could numberon your fingers the number of serious
scientific defenders ofDarwinian materialism.
Now there are a lot ofInternet trolls, like, I like to
call him non Professor Dave,he calls himself Professor Dave,
but he's not a professor, notreally a scientist, doesn't have
a PhD in anything.
And he.
So he racks up these hugenumbers with these attack videos,

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but that's a far cry.
I mean, Richard Dawkins wasactually a professor at Oxford.
He actually had some basicknowledge of science and offered
some sort of sophisticated arguments.
You can't find people likethat of the new generation who are
making serious arguments forDarwinian materialism.
And so now the big questionis, so if Darwinian materialism is

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false, then what is true?
And I think that is going tobe played out as to whether we go
to something that is moreholistic and traditional, that I
would call the biblicaltradition, the Judeo Christian tradition,
or do we go in a differentdirection, because not all spiritual
things, I think, are good.

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So we'll see.
So at Discovery Institute,we're sort of most known for.
We do have other programs, butprobably most notorious for being
sort of an intellectual homefor people like, you know, Steve
Meyer, Michael Behe, manyothers who argue that there's empirical
evidence of design in nature.
So that's what I.
That's my day job.
I help direct that programmore on the.

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On the cultural side than onthe science side, because, as you
point out, I used to be aprofessor of political science, which
is more an art than a science,But I've been involved in it since
the very beginning.
So you actually see up closethe impact that these scientific
beliefs, scientocraticbeliefs, I love that have on both

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politics and on culture andthe church.
Yeah.
And in fact.
So that is why it is a themethroughout my book, Because I don't
think people realize quite howmuch these.
What I said are.
These bad, bogus beliefs inthe name of science out of the 19th
century have impacted ourbeliefs about moral relativism, about

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sexuality, about life issueslike abortion, about even actually
economics.
And as I'm talking, I'm herein Seattle, which is one of the saddest.
I mean, it used to be abeautiful city, and it's not anymore.
And it's a really sad situation.
And I would tie part of thatto our homelessness crisis.

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And part of that is the ideathat, well, how do you solve homelessness?
Well, you just throw materialthings at people, you give them housing
and shelter, but you don'tcare about anything else about them.
And that's a really amaterialistic approach coming out
of the 19th century that we'rejust blind matter in motion.
And so our welfare programs,our social programs should just be

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about changing material input.
Well, as I talk in my book,we've transferred trillions of dollars
of resources to try to solvethe problem of poverty, and we haven't.
And so I think that thisscientistic mindset, in a way, I
don't even like to call it ascience mindset because I think science

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is a Good thing.
And I don't want to sound antiscience, because I'm not.
But it's dressed up and soldto people as science.
And that has been one of the.
In the Middle Ages, peoplesay, thus saith God and I'm God's
spokesperson.
And then here you have.
Well, thus says science.
And as long as I'm science'sspokesperson, you just have to do

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what I say.
I can hear in the background,I can actually hear the sirens that
you had mentioned earlierbefore we started recording.
Maybe just let people know.
I don't know if it'll show up.
People will be able to hear itultimately when the final product
comes out, but let people knowwhat's kind of what's going on.
Just down the block from whereyou are today.
Yeah, so we're about a blockfrom the Federal Building in Seattle

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and last night there waspretty much riotous behavior with
tear grass and a lot of other things.
And there was an antifa.
Attempted blockade because ofcourse they don't want illegal immigrants
to be detained or deported.
And so they were trying toblock the exits and actually stealing

(12:23):
properties.
We have scooters here thatyou're supposed to rent in Seattle.
So stealing property toactually create a barricade.
And they stole the Americanflag to burn it.
It wasn't their American flagto burn, but they did it.
And really I don't think thereweren't mass arrests.
And so today that's continuing.
And so we have heard some things.

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But there's going to be a moremega march tonight in a different
place of Seattle thatunfortunately might get like la.
But yeah, the Federal Buildingis not the safest place to be right
now, unfortunately.
So what's interesting aboutall this is that.
So we're talking about yourbook Stockholm Syndrome, Christianity
and again, Stockholm Syndromesort of being a reference, actually.

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I'll let you talk about whatStockholm Syndrome is and then I'll
sort of connect some of thepieces we've been talking about.
Yeah, so Stockholm Syndromegoes back to an sort of infamous
bank robbery in the 1970s inStockholm, Sweden, which is why it's
called Stockholm Syndrome.
And where bank robbers heldseveral people hostages.
But then something strangehappened by after that, you know,

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several days into it, thehostages started to really identify
and feel grateful to theirhostage takers.
And so this.
Some psychologists, and I wantto admit psychologists are.
This is very controversial nowas a actual diagnosis, so I'm not
actually using as that, but Ido think there's an insight here

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where people who have beenheld captive or who have been abused
or in abusive situations wherethey've been really controlled sometimes,
rather than just rejectingthat, they can end up identifying
with their captors.
And I think that's the reasonI gravitate on that was it seemed
to explain what I had seenamong many of my fellow faculty members

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when I was a Christian collegeprofessor in my work at Discovery
Institute with faith leadersand things where they, many of these
Christians, especially if theygo into their pastors or go into
the government or go into theentertainment industry or the news
industry, these cultureforming industries, well, many of

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them end up looking more likethe secularists around them and they
end up identifying more withthe operating assumptions of the
secularist non Christiansaround them than they do with their
historic faith.
So they may be personally sayJesus is my Savior and maybe personally
devout and sincere in that,but when it comes to public discussions,

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their public views of whatthey're actually promoting, they
sound a whole lot like what Iwould say their cultural captors
are.
Because if you go into theseculture forming industries, you've
either gone through graduateschool or you have a lot of fellow
of your peers around you whoare hostile to a Christian worldview.

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And so you're surrounded bythose people.
And so they may be personallynice people, but their worldviews
are really diametricallyopposed to yours.
Well, after being inculcatedby that and spending years in it,
you could end up adoptingtheir views sometimes unconsciously,
sometimes not so unconsciously.
Yeah.
And at a certain point it mustbecome conscious, right?

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Maybe initially, like, ah,it's fine, I'm not influenced, but
over time.
Please go ahead.
Yeah, no, I do think I try asmuch as possible not to judge the
state of someone's heart.
I think that's God's responsibility.
But I do think at a certainpoint if you are so pushing against
what the traditional Christianview is and you're so mouthing the

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words in every possiblesituation, at a certain point you
are completely culpable for that.
And so at what point that is,I think God will know.
And so I tried to deal withthe outward manifestations because
I think regardless, regardlessof what's happening in their heart,
if what they're doing isdestructive and untrue, that needs
to be called out.
And this is sometimes a lot ofChristians have this mistake that,

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well, if someone is being wellmeaning that that means that they
get a pass, that we don'tcriticize or that we don't raise,
that what they're pointing usto doing is bad, but that's just
insane.
And people in their privatelife know this.
If they have a family memberwho's well meaning but is a fentanyl
addiction, I mean, it reallydoesn't help them to say, oh, well,

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you're well meaning.
So if that gives you pleasure,you do that.
No, you try to rescue themfrom that, even if they think you're
not being nice by telling them that.
And so people really, if theyreally think about it just for like
30 seconds, they wouldunderstand that this idea that if
someone is well meaning, thatthat means it's not important to
call them out or to uphold the truth.

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I would argue it's actuallyeven more important because it's
the people who are wellmeaning who may do the most damage.
And I saw this actually atChristian college where you had theology
professors who were basicallybashing the accuracy or truth of
the Bible, but they were doingit as committed Christians.
And so they were much morelikely than if we had students confront

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an atheist in their classroom,they'd be much more likely to say,
oh yeah, that guy doesn't knowwhat he's talking about.
But if they have someone whopurports to be a faithful Christian
who's telling them, oh, whyare you believing that you think
that's accurate then?
I saw this with students.
They're more likely to betaken in by that and that leads to

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destruction for them and a lotof hurt.
And so it's not.
Yes, kind and compassionate.
And I think we need to becareful not to demonize other people.
And also, I firmly believe Godis the ultimate judge, not us.
But that does not mean that wecannot or should not be calling out
error.
And Paul is very clear on this.

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Peter is very clear on this inthe New Testament.
But I think a lot ofChristians think, oh, well, that's
not being nice or I'm notbeing loving by telling the truth.
That's not a biblical view of love.
And this conversation mattersa whole lot for a number of reasons.
One is because of course, wehave the phenomenon or the epidemic

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or the tragedy of abortion, 60million and counting, something like
that.
But then you have fires andriots out at the Federal Building
and we've seen a widespreaddecay of American culture, which
I always have felt thatChristians are supposed to be a backstop
against that perhaps I haven'talways felt that way, but certainly
I feel it quite strongly now.

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And as I read through yourbook and you're describing all the
different ways that biblicaltruth has been shaved off in these
little bits of culture andPolitics and influence, people attempting
to ingratiate themselves tothe inner ring, which you've talked
about, C.S.
lewis, his term the inner ring.
And you sort of see that overtime, maybe initially these small

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little bits of compromisedon't seem like a big deal.
But you run it for 50, 60 or70 years and then you see where it
gets us, which is where we'reat today.
Now that's true.
I really saw that in my 12years at Seattle Pacific University,
which was a historicallyevangelical university.
And you know the backstory tothis, many people even don't know

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today, many Christians don'tknow that all the top colleges and
universities like Harvard,Princeton, Yale, Columbia, were all
started as devoutly,explicitly Christian institutions.
No one would make that claimthat they are today.
Well, what happened?
Well, by the 19th century,many of them really had fallen away
from that.

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And so then evangelicalChristians in America, to their credit,
started a whole slew of otherinstitutions like Wheaton here in
Seattle, Seattle PacificUniversity that was founded by free
Methodists in the latter partof the 19th century to say what we
lost we can't recaptureunfortunately right now, but we're
going to at least start anewto make sure that we are intentional

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about transmitting truth tothe next generation.
But what we've seen that manyof these institutions that were founded
at that now they themselvesare going in the same direction as
places like Harvard,Princeton, Yale, in fact looking
to those places as theirmodels for what they should be to
be excellent.
Let's be like Harvard.
Well, no, if you want to beexcellent, you don't want to be anything

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like Harvard.
I mean really.
But that Harvard envy.
And I saw that when I was afaculty member, there was a book
that came out called theScandal of the Evangelical Mind by
Mark Noll that on the surfacewas, you know, it made a good point,
which is that evangelicalsshould be for first rate scholarship.
I agree with that.
But then you dig into, well,what does he mean by first rate scholarship?

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And really certainly how hisbook was taken.
And I think there were thingslike this in his book, even though
he disclaimed some of it.
It was being loved by the world.
You know, if Harvard publishesyou or praises you, that means we've
arrived.
Well, this is such.
I mean, it actually comes outof insecurity, not confidence.

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I mean, and the goal of truescholarship historically was truth.

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You know, how much do youactually explicit the truth?
And the reason you haduniversities was to hand down the
truth to the next generation.
And so this boulderizedversion of great evangelical Scholarship
basically became a mandate.
I saw this at my ownuniversity and at other Christian
universities to basically apethe world and get endorsed by the

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world.
And that doesn't end well.
And so where I was at when Ijoined, it was fairly theologically
orthodox.
In fact, the year I joined ora year before I joined, the board
of trustees actually deniedtenure to someone who was out there
theologically.

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And so they were doing their job.
I was actually warned byfellow faculty members, oh, we have
a very theologicallyconservative board of trustees.
And little did they know that.
When I heard that, I wassaying privately, great.
You know what I mean?
They're actually doing whatthey're supposed to be doing.
Fast forward to 12 years fromthen when I ended up deciding to
leave.
One of the last things I didat Seattle Pacific was try to help,

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unsuccessfully, unfortunately,the tenure battle.
And tenure, for those whodon't know, it's sort of lifetime
appointment.
I mean, it's not quite thatthere are ways they can get rid of
you, but, you know, it'sdesigned to promote academic freedom
and other things.
And we can debate whetherthat's a good thing.
But that's, you know, and ifyou don't get tenure, then you have
to leave.
So it's not like if you haveturned down for tenure, you can just

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stay.
So we had someone up who Ithink was one of the most dynamic,
biblically dynamic persons andgreat scholar that we had hired in
the years that I was there.
And he was turned down fortenure by the faculty and the board
basically rubber stamped it.
And as near as I can tell, hewas turned down because he was too

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biblically faithful.
And he was also politicallyconservative, which you weren't really
allowed to be.
He made the mistake.
I write in the book of this isduring the time of George W. Bush,
where a fellow faculty memberwho had tenure was attacking Bush
as Hitler.
You know, people today hear,oh, Trump is Hitler, whatever this

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Hitler, Everyone's Hitleraccording to the left.
I mean, George W. Bush, peopleforget, was described as Hitler.
And so we had a faculty memberwho was saying that, and this faculty
member who didn't have tenurehad the courage to say, I think that's
not right.
And so that rubbed people thewrong way.
And so I think that that's howyou lose institutions.
And then so much so just twoor three years ago, they had so things.

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When I was there, there was abattle over was the Bible actually
completely authoritative andshould we have to have faculty members
who believe that?
Our sponsoring denominationssaid that that was a view.
But they said, well, no,that's not a heal that we're going
to die on at Seattle Pacific.
Well, fast forward to just acouple of years ago where then the
gay marriage thing blows up.
At this self identifiedevangelical Christian School, over

(28:06):
70% of the faculty votebasically against the biblical view
of marriage.
So I've often asked, when I'vetalked about this publicly, how do
you have an evangelicalChristian university where it was
actually over 70% of thefaculty vote against basic biblical
marriage between a man and awoman permanent, and that that's

(28:27):
where sexuality should take place?
Well, the answer is you don't.
I mean, you no longer reallyhave a Christian institution.
And now since that time, somenew board members have tried to make
some amendments, and I thinkthere have been some improvements,
but I don't really think theyunderstand how deep the surgery needs
to be.
And here's an example.
I actually write about one ofthis in my book, but then now it's

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happened again.
So this new board, or revisedboard that's trying to be more faithful
has endorsed an LGBTQ festivalon their campus using campus facilities.
And they did that last yearand they've now done it again this
year.
And so I think we're back to aboard that is, as near as I can tell,

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that is, again, personallymore biblically faithful than maybe
some of the people three orfour years ago who have now left,
but they don't seem to havethe stomach or the spine for doing
what would need to do to getan institution like that back to
its foundations.
And that was one of thestriking things about the book as
well, was that you spend thefirst, you know, the first 10 or

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so chapters describing thiskind of cultural, theological, political
drift that you observe in theworld and that we all see now.
And then you crystallize itwith, this was your exact experience
at Seattle Pacific University.
University that began withcertain, certain certain biblical
orthodox convictions, and thatover the time that you were there,
slowly drifted further andfurther away and you actually articulated

(29:55):
the process by which that happened.
And I think anyone listeningwould read that chapter and be like,
yep, I recognize that in my institution.
I recognize that in my culture.
I recognize that even in my church.
And.
And I thought that was just areally striking, like, no, this was
real.
The stakes of this are real.
I watched this up close.
You provide some instructionsfor what people can do about it.
I just thought that the totalpicture of that was very powerful.

(30:19):
So I want to take a couplesteps back to the beginning parts
of the book and maybe Talkthrough some of the ways that you've
seen the biblically orthodoxfaith be impacted in a university
context and in a political anda cultural context as well.
Sure.
Well, I start the book, as Isaid, I am pretty politically conservative,

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but this book is not largelyabout politics.
I think it's about culturalissues that Christians, regardless
of, say, what they think aboutTrump, should be able to agree on.
I'm not saying they do.
And so that's why I startactually with a chapter on is the
Bible true and historically?
One of the foundationalbeliefs of actually Catholics, Protestants

(31:03):
and Eastern OrthodoxChristians is that the Bible is absolutely
true and authoritative andcertainly for evangelicals, and that
is not the case anymore.
And so I talk about, say,megachurch pastor Andy Stanley, who
wrote a whole book basicallysaying we should unhitch ourselves
from the Old Testament andactually calling the Old Testament
the obsolete Testament, and weshould even reorganize our Bibles

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to move it to the back of ourBible and talking about the Bible
in a way that I'd say ahistorically faithful Christian would
not talk about the Bible.
Then among a self identifiedevangelical, Mike Lacona, who actually
I learned today, just came outwith a two hour podcast blasting
me.
And I think he's a personallysincere Christian, but he has a view

(31:51):
of the New Testament where heargues that the New Testament Gospels
are like Hollywood movies thatwere inspired by true events, but,
you know, they're inspired bytrue events.
And so lots of things can be changed.
And we're not talking about here.
And I want to make clear,because sometimes he confuses things.
And in his response that I sawtoday, he said, well, you know, these

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aren't the literal words of Jesus.
Okay, no one's saying that.
In fact, I make very clear inmy book that no one's saying that.
There was a verbatimtranscript of everything that Jesus
said.
I mean, that's just a straw man.
The church's historic positionof Christians has been.
But it's accurate to what heactually objectively said.

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So it could be a paraphrase,but there's some limits there.
And if you look at his exactexamples, and one which I think really
crystallizes it is in thesynoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark,
Luke, you have Jesus on thecross saying, my God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?
In John, he supplements with alot of different things, he's adding

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different things that aren'tin the other gospels.
So when Jesus is on the cross,he writes about him saying, I thirst.
And according to Mike Lacona,Well, I thirst is John's rewritten
version of My God, my God, whyhave you forsaken me?
What?
Exactly.
That's not a paraphrase.
I mean, that obliterates.

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I mean, this is like theliberal meaning of the Constitution,
of the evolving Constitution,where you redefine the Constitution
to say there's a right ofabortion in the Constitution or right
of gay marriage in the Constitution.
No, there's not.
I mean, let's be honest.
Whatever you think of thosethings, that's not true.
And to call something like achange between my God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?

(33:40):
To I thirst as a paraphrase ofthe same comment is just ridiculous.
And you don't need to be a scholar.
And he points out, you know,I'm not an expert in biblical scholarship.
No, I'm not.
But it doesn't actually takean expert to understand that that's
a dramatically different thingthan what Christians, especially
evangelical Christians, havebelieved when they say they think
the Bible is an authoritativeexposition of what Jesus said and

(34:04):
what God teaches.
But the reason I bring up MikeLacona is he's beloved among most
of the evangelical elites,even those who are otherwise theologically
conservative.
And I say that's a problem,and it's a problem that keeps giving.
He is actually prettyconservative in his other theological

(34:25):
beliefs, I think, even maybein his political beliefs.
But once you adopt the ideathat the Bible really isn't authoritative
or accurate in the way thathistorically Christians have believed,
I think it leads to all sortsof other things.
And that's what the rest ofthe book talks about.
So, I mean, I could stop hereor go on to talk about science and

(34:46):
race and some of these other issues.
I would actually like you totalk about those.
But I just want to point outthat it's that really subtle.
Well, sometimes it's subtleand sometimes it's not so subtle.
Ways of kind of shaving off,like, oh, that's not an accurate.
That's not accurate.
That's not what the Bibleactually said.
It's a myth to unhitch all thedifferent creative ways people try
to undermine biblical inerrancy.

(35:08):
And that's an example of aslippery slope.
It's a very slippery slope.
Once you start saying, oh,yeah, we can't actually say that
these words are accurate, thenit all falls off from there.
And please, I would like totalk about the ways in which it shows
up across race and sexuality,et cetera.
Yeah, let me get to that.
But let me get one more comment.
About Mike Lacona, I want tosay I think he's very personally

(35:29):
sincere Christian, but one ofthe things, the reason why I find
it so troubling is that hewill actually say, I mean that, well,
he believes in biblicalauthority and that the Bible is accurate,
but he redefines accuracy.
The reason I gave the examplethat I just gave, which he does not

(35:50):
dispute, is that in his view,John rewriting My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me as I thirst?
Well, that's accurate.
What?
So the reason why I like to,in a way, I guess I'm like the character
Puddleglum, for those of youwho read C.S.

(36:11):
lewis, is that oneinconvenient fact can cut through
a lot of bluster.
And I trust that Mike Laconissincerely believes that what he's
saying is that the Bible isaccurate, but objectively, with examples
of what he's actually saying,it doesn't match with that.

(36:31):
And I think most Christians,most evangelical Christians would
understand that, that in a view.
That said, and let's just beclear, in this case, there's no contradiction
here.
There's nothing to solve.
Jesus said both.
I mean, so there's absolutelyno contradiction between him saying
both.
So it's actually creating asolution to a problem that doesn't
exist.
But it's also a dramatic thing.
If you can't be sure anytimeyou read the words of Jesus that

(36:55):
the so called paraphrase and Isaid this is not a paraphrase, but
that the gospel writers wereso loose that you can't know whether
Jesus said my God, my God, whyhave I you forsaken me?
Or I thirst.
That's a problem.
And he has all sorts of explanations.
Well, I thirst in the Biblemeans that you're thirsting for God

(37:15):
and you can come up with allsorts of post hoc explanations that,
that no one ever came up withbefore except for modern scholars
who are imbibing and I'd saymodern evangelical scholars who have
imbibed this higher criticalview of the Bible coming out of the
19th century.
And so I call what Mike Laconais doing is Jesus seminar light.

(37:35):
And he doesn't like that term.
But in his response, I reallydon't see a difference.
The Jesus seminar was theseliberal theologians who would then
sort of vote on whether theythought a saying of Jesus was accurate
or not.
And if they didn't vote thatit wasn't, then, well, that wasn't
accurate.
Well, I think really whatLacona is doing is Jesus seminar
light.
He's glossing it up with nicerterms, but that's really what he's

(37:58):
doing anyway.
But going on, that was a longwinded coda.
So science.
Sometimes Christians arguethat if we just get more Christians
into politics or intoentertainment, that our culture is
going to be great.
That was really coming in the 1990s.
I saw a lot of that argumenteven more recently.

(38:20):
People like Aaron Rand, and Irespect Aaron Rand, but his book
basically about that we're inthe negative world, which I actually
think is insightful.
But if you look at thesolution, too much of it is, well,
we don't have enough people inthe elites.
Well, we actually have quite afew evangelical Christian elites.

(38:41):
The problem is they look morelike the world.
So let's talk about in thearea of science.
Hands down, the most powerfulscientist in America for more than
a decade was a man namedFrancis Collins, head of the nih.
Dispersed billions of dollarsof our tax dollars that really helped

(39:02):
set the course or misdirectthe course of science research in
America.
The most powerful scientistsin America.
Evangelical Christian.
He was celebrated on Time magazine.
Evangelical Christian.
But what did he actually do?
And again, I can't read his heart.
I think he sincerely thinksJesus is a savior.
But here's the stuff he did.

(39:24):
He spent millions of taxdollars to create a nationwide tissue
bank out of a university inPennsylvania to harvest the body
parts of aborted babies fromsomething like eight weeks to 42
weeks.
I mean, 42 weeks, you'retalking about infanticides with our
tax dollars.
And he must have been somewhatembarrassed by it because when Judicial

(39:44):
Watch, which is the group thatexposed this, tried to, through a
Freedom of Information actrequest, tried to get the data on
it, the NIH under FrancisCollins refused.
They had to go to court toforce Francis Collins NIH to disgorge
this document.
So this is not a conspiracy theory.
This is like hard facts.

(40:05):
But the only reason we knowabout it is because someone sued
and forced Francis Collins todivul budget millions of tax dollars
to harvest aborted baby parties.
And what was some of theresearch they funded with this?
Well, taking scalps fromaborted babies and grafting them
into mice.
I mean, so and then.
But that's not all.

(40:25):
He spent millions more.
Francis Collins toutedhimself, his own words, as an ally
and advocate of the lgbtqia.
And I'm probably missing someof the, the consonants there, but
he called himself an ally and advocate.
And he spent millions ofdollars to fund doctors like in LA

(40:51):
and a children's hospital inBoston that were doing surgeries.
To, you know, I call genderdeconstructive surgeries.
They're cutting off body partsfrom young women and young men and
giving them puberty blockers,filling them filled with chemicals.
We spent millions of dollars.
Francis Collins, devoutevangelical Christian, spent millions

(41:12):
of dollars promoting that now.
So you can have as many.
You can duplicate FrancisCollins until the cows come home.
But if you have that sort ofStockholm syndrome Christian in leadership,
it doesn't matter how manyChristians you have in government,
if they're like FrancisCollins, you're going to get the
same exact stuff.

(41:33):
And in fact, the saddestepitaph on Francis Collins career,
I mean, he's still alive, butthe epitaph on his government career
he's now out of the nih was itwas either Slate or it was one of
the liberal publications,progressive secular publications,
that basically said somethinglike this.
You know, we were fearful whenhe came in because he was this devout

(41:54):
evangelical Christian.
And so, you know, we didn'tlike that.
But we shouldn't have beenworried because basically on every
issue that they were concernedabout, about embryonic stem cell
research or at all, you know,they basically got what they wanted.
He was a distinction without a difference.
And that's really sad.
And so in science, I think,you know, I delve deeply and, you

(42:16):
know, some other people noware criticizing Francis Collins.
But I will tell you, those ofus at Discovery Institute, because
of his view on unguidedevolution and junk DNA and stuff,
we've been talking about himsince the, you know, mid-2000s, and
no one would listen.
And then with some of thisCovid stuff that we could get into,
I was one of the first personsin 2021 to really go after him on

(42:39):
that and got a lot of flack onit, even from people today who are
critical of him, who theyweren't critical then, even though
the evidence came out.
And so he was.
In some respects, what'sinteresting about Francis Collins
is not just him.
It's the superstructure ofother evangelical leaders who enabled

(43:00):
him and platformed him.
Francis Collins became thebeloved figure that he did and the
wise figure that we should alllisten to because he was platformed
and enabled by a lot of otherChristian leaders, some of whom actually,
like Tim Keller, who did this,would have said that they didn't
really agree with him, butthey platformed him and they wouldn't.

(43:23):
As I write in my book, TimKeller platformed Francis Collins
even though he claimed todisagree with him.
But he wouldn't do similarthings for people who are on the
other Side.
So this culture, it's not just.
You can't just look at theindividuals who are going away.
You have to look at the peoplearound them who are actually enabling
them.

(43:43):
So that's science.
We can go on to sex or race or whatever.
Yeah, no, I'm glad that youmentioned Francis Collins because
he is a subject that comes uprepeatedly in the book and with every
time he comes up a differentshade of the Stockholm syndrome Christianity
shows up like a different waythat a particular individual has

(44:05):
capitulated to the culture andthe consequences of that downstream
for our entire nation.
And I like how you.
I think this makes it moreconcrete for people to understand.
Yes, we can see Stockholmsyndrome Christianity all around
us, but here is how.
Just placing someone whoidentifies as a Christian in a position
of cultural or political orsocial power isn't enough.

(44:28):
They need to have.
Have commitments to thebiblical faith as opposed to just
sort of like slapping a labelon them.
Yeah.
And I think you really seethat when it comes to, say, sexuality.
And I will say one thing insexuality, I start my book chapter
on that, dealing withheterosexual issues, because I do
have a strong biblical view onsame sex marriage.

(44:50):
But I do think that it startedwhen churches ceded and stopped talking
about heterosexual monogamy,the importance of marriages that
are lifelong, trying tosupport people so that they don't
get divorced.
And once you see that, it wentfrom bad to worse.
And so I give an example of.

(45:12):
I mean, what does it say again?
People say, well, we need moreChristian celebrities.
Well, in 2019, the showBachelorette featured two evangelical
Christians, Luke and, I think Hannah.
And they publicly witnessedabout their faith, how devout they

(45:32):
were for Jesus.
Well, there ends up being adifference because Luke admitted
that he had sex outside ofmarriage before, but he was now trying
to be abstinent until marriage.
He was trying to honor that.
Hannah.
Oh, that's shaming me.
And she actually boasted thatshe had sex four times with one of
the other contestants in a onenight stand.

(45:53):
And anyone who criticized herwas, well, Jesus still loves me.
No one can condemn me becauseJesus loves me.
It's just like treating Jesusforgiveness like dirt.
But Hannah, where did she growup in.
It wasn't Seattle, it wasn't la.
She grew up in the Bible Beltin Alabama.
Again, Houston, we have a problem.

(46:14):
If you have Christiancelebrities who are grown up in the
Bible Belt who now boast aboutbehaviors that at least they should
be mortified about, but boastas good.
What's happening?
What sort of teaching did she get?
I don't know, but it raisesquestions and on and on.

(46:35):
And so I think the number onething is that churches need to be
much more intentional, evenabout heterosexual sexual standards
and marital covenant.
And I recount how when I wasan elder at a particular church where
we had a number of leaders gothrough unbiblical divorces.
And I want to be clear, Godcan forgive everything.

(46:56):
And so there's healing.
No matter what you've gonethrough, even if you went through
an unbiblical divorce, I'm notabout that.
On the other hand, if youdon't teach on something and you
don't empower them, you'regoing to get more of what you're
not teaching about.
And so in our church we triedto get interest in, well, this is
a tragedy.

(47:16):
So how do we help prevent thisfrom happening?
How can we have good teaching?
How can we have mentor couplesand do other things?
And there seem to be apervasive lack of interest to do
that.
So I think that it's good forChristians to talk about same sex
and transgender issues, butthey also need to realize that probably
the most important thing theyneed to be doing is modeling heterosexual

(47:38):
faithfulness because that,that is so critically important.
But many of the Christians aren't.
But let's talk about same sex marriage.
This is not something foistedon us just by the gay groups, for
example.
And I talk about this.
So the Supreme Court ruling onthis, it was decided by one vote.

(48:01):
The person who decided it wasnot even appointed by a Democrat.
He was not an atheist.
He was unagnostic.
Anthony Kennedy was known as adevout, in fact he was called, prior
to being appointed a goodygoody Roman Catholic who attended
mass each week.
We have the false creation ofsame sex marriage as a constitutional

(48:22):
right, which again, it wasnever in the Constitution.
That's an invention.
Not because of a Democraticappointed judge, not because of an
atheist, not because of a gayperson, because of a serious Roman
Catholic goody goody.
And similarly in my own state,we had many people who were persecuted

(48:46):
because they didn't want toparticipate in same sex marriages.
So we had a grandmother,Baronell Stutzman, who had a flower
shop and she would serveeveryone, but when it came to, she
wouldn't serve every event andshe didn't want to create special
arrangements honoring gayweddings because she didn't think
same sex marriage is real marriage.
Who was her chief persecutor,wasn't an atheist.

(49:09):
It was our then Catholicattorney General.
Now unfortunately, in my view,our governor.
So I guess I am getting political.
Bob Ferguson, who when he runsfor election, touts that he's a member
of this Catholic congregation.
He was repersecured.
She's no longer has her flowerbusiness anymore.
She was driven out of businessbecause of what Bob Ferguson did.

(49:31):
And not only that, actually,after writing the book, I found out
that Bob Ferguson wrote anessay invoking his faith as the reason
he was persecuting her.
What?
What?
What?
Well, because, you know,you're defending the humanity of
everyone, not her.
But I mean, so, you know, itcame out of his faith commitment.

(49:52):
So my point is, again,Houston, we have a problem that I'm
all for cultural engagementand we need to do that.
But if you not equipping thepeople who are in your pews, or if
you don't have pews, you know,just seats, if you're not doing that,
then how can you expect anydifferent results in the culture?

(50:16):
First of all, I am so enjoyingthe enthusiasm and passion for this
because again, this stuff, itmatters so much.
And the sign that this bookwas going to be.
Was going to be hard nosed inits approach and uncompromising in
the right ways, was that youwere willing to address heterosexual
sexuality first.
There are so many Christiansthat are.

(50:37):
That it will go against lgbt,same sex, all of that, but sort of
like shy away from the notionof heterosexual sexual relationships
going all the way back to thesexual revolution.
We don't want to talk about that.
But the way that you leanedinto that subject specifically, and
that was very early on in thebook, was a sign for me that, like,
no, we're going to talk aboutthese things head on in ways that

(50:59):
might make peopleuncomfortable because they're not
used to having the spotlighton them, particularly with the Bachelorette
example.
But again, we're seeing in allthis that sort of weakness that exists
in churches and pastors andelders that allows in just a little
bit of sin, but that opens thedoor for so much more to come flooding
in at the highest levels allthe way up to the Supreme Court,

(51:19):
as you mentioned.
Yeah.
And local courts.
I mean, in Pennsylvania, theygot constitutional gay marriage under
their constitution by aLutheran judge.
Lutheran judge who createdthat right even before the Supreme
Court.
But you know, one other area,and I know this is of interest to
you because you've justwritten on some of the things here.

(51:39):
I want to point out, becausethis is another uncomfortable topic
that I'd say a lot of moreconservative evangelicals don't want
to face.
They want to face part of it,but not all of it, it so is the race
issue.
And I think there is, I fullyagree that the critical race theorists
and the white fragility peoplethat's all out to lunch and pernicious

(52:01):
and too many churches.
I actually talk about a churchwhere I was an elder that ended up
leaving established a racialjustice committee to go into things
and it's all one sided and itdemonizes one race over another.
And there's never any abilityfor redemption because in the woke

(52:21):
or perhaps progressivemindset, if you're white, you're
always tainted by the original sin.
You can never redeem yourselfno matter what you do.
And this is this elevating ofraces over others and creating this
racial animus.
And then also the denial ofsome of the social problems we're
facing with the breakdown ofthe family because they don't want

(52:41):
to touch it because they fearthat it may impact disproportionately
people in different communities.
So I get the conservatives areright on that.
Where I am concerned is thatthat's all they talk about and they
don't realize that in fact ournation does have a tragic history
when it comes to race.

(53:03):
Especially I'd say afterDarwinian racism, sort of Darwinism
of the 19th century reallyargued a very harsh form of that
certain races were moreevolved than others and that was
the white race.
And it was just a veryunbiblical, very unchristian.
And many Christians,Christians did horrific things, especially
in the south with lynchingsand things.

(53:25):
I write about some of them inthe book.
That's going to be veryuncomfortable for people to read.
But we're not in the samesituation today and things have changed.
But by not at leastacknowledging that you're playing
into a lot of the caricatures.
And then for the Christianswho just arm themselves with, with

(53:46):
the woke and white fragilityand these ideas that are completely
anti Christian, you're leavingthe people in the pews with what
choice?
You're basically saying wellthe Christian view is white fragility,
which is not and there is noother option.
I mean I talk about in mychurch where I actually tried to
get the committee to readother things like by Thomas Sowell

(54:07):
or Vodi Bakam or others andthey didn't want to for them that's
not really talking about race issues.
So it had to be the stuff thatI was would think in my sense is
really anti Christian in many sense.
But if you aren't willing totalk about the biblical view of equality

(54:29):
then you create this vacuumand you have I think especially a
lot of young men now who,because the woke stuff is so bad,
admittedly so, and they don'tsee any solid biblical teaching of
what biblical equality ofbeing created in the image of God
means, they gravitate to.
I'd say some bad actors whoare just as bad, in fact in some

(54:54):
sense are worse because theyare wearing Christianity on their
sleeve when it's anything but,who are calling Hitler their hero
or arguing that blacks aregenetically inferior to whites or
who are just doing really vile things.
And some people are beingdrawn into that unawares.

(55:17):
But here's where my critiqueof the sort of the WOKE evangelicals,
if you will, they'll say thatand they'll denounce that, but they
won't understand that theyhelped create that.
Because again, there's a vacuum.
If you're not standing up forwhat the Bible really says about,
I'd say human equality andhuman dignity and you get the bastardized

(55:40):
version, excuse my language,that the secular left offers, then
you're really creating thisvacuum that's opening people up to
hearing these bad actors onthe right.
That's such a greatobservation, is you create the conditions
that unfortunately men react to.

(56:02):
Now, we should be responding,we should be responding biblically
with the word of God as ourfoundations instead of reacting emotionally.
And you can also set the stagefor that reaction or that overreaction
that then you have to attemptto correct back in the other direction,
which then gets cries of, oh,you're just a leftist.
And so we swerve back andforth across the road.

(56:23):
It's like, it's not supposedto be this way.
But again, the capitulationover many decades has led to this
overcompensation, overreactionnow in the opposite direction.
Yeah.
And that's what they don't see.
Similarly, you know, many ofthe people who say, well, we shouldn't
be focusing on biblicalteaching on sex because the Bible

(56:44):
speaks a lot more aboutpoverty and so we should do and social
justice.
But they ignore the fact thatat least in America and around the
world there are differentcauses of poverty.
But at least in America, thebiggest predictor of long term intractable
intergenerational poverty isif you have a broken family.
That's right.

(57:04):
So what happens in the bedroomdoesn't stay in the bedroom.
And so I find it.
And actually this clarifiedfor me, I sort of understood it before
I wrote the book, but itreally clarified for me that all
these people talk about, well,we need to spend more time on social
justice and poverty were thesame people who are stating biblical
sexuality, and they didn't seethat in fact, they, again, were creating

(57:25):
the conditions.
I mean, if you want to createthe conditions for more permanent,
intractable, terrible poverty.
Ignore biblical teachings of sexuality.
Yep.
I mean, and so they're actually.
They're actually creating, inpart or fueling the problem that
they say that they're soimpassioned about.
And I think, you know, it'ssomething they probably are impassioned

(57:47):
about, but they're notrecognizing that their seeding of
these other biblical teachingsis actually helping to create the
very problem that they saythey're concerned about.
That's right.
That's right.
And when you give up, when youlet the guard down, when you let
the boundaries down, when youlet the barriers down, you start
saying, well, maybe the Bibleis true, but maybe it's not accurate,

(58:07):
or maybe those aren't theexact words or the exact teachings,
and you start shaving offlittle bits.
It's really not that longuntil everything that the Bible teaches
about how to be a moral andjust nation, or how to be a moral
and just family, or a moraland just individual, it all comes
collapsing afterwards.
And then you end up in asituation like where Seattle Pacific

(58:27):
University eventually got to,where it's like, what makes this.
Or many other institutions aswell, what makes this an identifiably
Christian university orinstitution or, you know, leader
of the nih, Besides the factthat you just say you are.
Yeah, it actually, it becomes a.
A label that.
That is in some sense acultural identifier but has very

(58:50):
little content.
And that's.
You know, I know peopledismiss the slippery slope argument.
And, you know, logically, notall things progress to various areas.
But I do think, and I write inthe book, that if you're taking your
cues from the rest of culture,then you're guaranteeing a slippery

(59:14):
slope because there's no.
You're not standing onanything principled.
And I actually think one reason.
Look at someone like TimKeller, who I actually view as a
Presbyterian pastor, if peoplewho are listening don't know, who's
now deceased, but was belovedby many, he came out of the evangelical
and I think doctrinallyorthodox part of Christianity.

(59:35):
But if you look at Tim Keller15 years before he died, you'd find
lots of solid teaching.
You'd find him several yearsbefore he died signing statements
about biblical marriage.
But if you looked at him inthe last segment of his life, he
was getting increasingly.
He didn't disown that, but hewould downplay and he'd be focusing

(59:59):
his attacks on fellowtheologically conservative evangelicals.
And, well, what changed?
Well, the culture changed.
And he had this largecongregation that I've actually worshiped
at great ministry, originallyin Manhattan, in secular Manhattan.
But, you know, 20 years ago,15 years ago, you could make a biblical

(01:00:22):
argument or an argument forbiblical marriage that was more acceptable.
Most Americans actuallyaccepted that to some degree.
But then that changed.
And so the point is, with theStockholm syndrome, Christian is
as the culture changes, youchange along with it.
And so there is no solid ground.
And even if you have somesolid ground, if you're so wedded

(01:00:43):
to what the culture'sunderstanding and the cultural elites
standing are, as the culturalelites become more depraved, you're
going to be pulled right alongwith them.
That's right.
You're going to be just goingto be dragged right off the edge
of the cliff.
And it becomes increasinglydifficult for someone who's on that
road to say no.
Here is where I'm going totake a stand.

(01:01:05):
I've talked to so manyChristians who are like, well, I'm
going to keep their contentcreators, I'm going to keep my beliefs
under wraps.
And then when I get to the bigstage, that's when I'm going to let
everyone know.
It's like, no, that's probablynot how that's going to go at all.
You have to take a standimmediately or as soon as possible,
as soon as you realize what'sgoing on.
Otherwise, the likelihood thatyou're just going to end up going
with that flow and then wakeup or say, now we've gone too far

(01:01:30):
is far too high.
And by that point, it'salready too late.
I mean, it depends.
I think you're right in a lotof cases, but I think depending on
what sort of profession you'rein, and if your views are really
countercultural, you may haveto go deep six those views for a
while before you can reallyarticulate them.

(01:01:51):
And so I am sympathetic to that.
But a lot of the people whosay they have to do that, they're
really doing it because thoseviews aren't really fundamentally
their views.
And so I think you're right tocall that out.
But I would say that I haveseen other cases of people who do
are careful and keep theirhead down.
And in fact, I would advisestudents, say, if you're.

(01:02:11):
You were a science student whosay, doubts Darwinian evolution,
trying to get your PhD, youdon't want to broadcast that fact.
And I remember actuallycounseling Giving advice to someone
who was actually invited andgot into a good graduate program
and a good lab and theyweren't asked about it.

(01:02:34):
I don't think people shouldlie, but they weren't pressed on
their views on it, but theyfelt, felt just obliged that they
needed to spill their guts totheir secularist lab manager.
And of course, once they did,they weren't going to graduate school
anymore.
And so I think that whenyou're in a hostile culture, there

(01:02:54):
are various ways to surviveand then thrive and hopefully to
change the culture.
But one of them is, I think itis actually important to have people
in, in the elites, but it'simportant to have good people in
the elites.
And there are some strategiesto do that.
I think in many cases, many ofthe weakest, most wimpy, if you will,

(01:03:20):
Christians among the elites,their problem started a lot earlier
with they were never reallydiscipled or trained in a way of
what does it mean to bethey're really given an easy Christianity
that as long as you say Jesusis your savior, it doesn't matter
what you believe on anything,anything else.
And that's never true.
That's just not true.

(01:03:41):
But if that's your mode ofdiscipleship, then you get people
like the ones we get.
And so, yeah, yeah, I mean, inthis situation where a student is
applying for a graduateprogram, you're probably not going
to change the posture of thisinstitution through your application.
That's probably not the right,that's probably not the right place

(01:04:02):
to do it.
So you're right, there areexceptions and there are ways where
it's like, well, maybe thereis a strategic, wisest serpents,
harmless as doves kind ofposture to it.
But in general, I would alsosay that it's necessary for more
people than currently are tobe upfront about their beliefs and
take a bold stand.
I think you can.
I completely agree with that.

(01:04:24):
And in fact, it's thosetrailblazers that then allow the
people who don't feel thatthey can speak up either for good
reasons or not so good reasonsbecause they're just, just don't
have the courage to speak upto then be able to weigh in.
And we've seen that actuallyin the argument over intelligent
design versus sort of unguided evolution.

(01:04:45):
A lot of our early fellowslike Mike Behe and many others got
a lot of persecution and weretried to be silenced in a lot of
different ways.
And they took a lot of flack.
But I would say because theydid that for say, 20 years, things
began to open up and some oftheir things arguments are now much

(01:05:08):
more in the mainstream.
Similarly, what we've seenthis just flip over the last couple
of years is in transgenderismand kids where you would be canceled
or fired if even two or threeyears ago you raised a critique of
that.
You might still be today insome parts of America, but there's
been a dramatic seismic shift.

(01:05:29):
And that was not because thepeople who weren't willing to speak
out were secretly not agreeingwith it.
No, it's because there weresome trailblazers who were willing
to take a lot of flak and gethurt by articulating the truth.
And so the reason that the socalled Overton window shifted on

(01:05:51):
that was not because all thepeople who are silent it.
And so you're exactly right.
If you're really wanting toget to a more healthful culture,
it is certainly true.
You need a brigade of peoplewho are fearless and willing to speak
the truth even when it's unpopular.
And then my plea to otherChristians, first of all is you need

(01:06:13):
to know what's right.
Because then you could arguewhat's prudential and what you should
do, but if you aren't reallyclear on what your faith really teaches,
then you can't even get tothat other thing.
But then I say if you feel youcan't speak out, there are often
many ways that you can, thingsthat you can do to help facilitate
things even behind the scenes.

(01:06:34):
Where it might be shepherdingin academia, you might be able to
be shepherding like mindedstudents and protect them so that
they do get their PhDs.
And I've seen that with someprofessors in other organizations
you might be able to be say,even if you don't want to identify
with someone's views in theorganization, if you see them being
personalized, you might beable to raise things like, well,

(01:06:54):
the civil rights laws don'tallow us to do this.
You might be able to raisethings in a more moderate way that
would still defend those people.
So I do think that this is Ifully agree.
Christians need to be moreengaged and really need to prayerfully
ask what can I do and whatdoes God expect me to do?
But I do think that people arein different situations.

(01:07:15):
It's not one size fits all.
But if you're simply usingexcuses, it's too costly for me to
do anything that likely is not right.
I mean there likely issomething that you can do and that
God is calling you to do andyou need to think that through.
Yeah, I think discoveryscience is a great example of that.
It's like this is, you know, Ithink you quote the quote that Francis

(01:07:37):
Schaeffer uses that he hasbeen attributed to Luther, but that
is not Luther about.
Maybe you can speak a littlebit about that because that seems
to be the sore spot that needsto get pushed on.
Yeah, this is really.
I mean, I sort of wish Lutherhad said it, but it doesn't.
It's a great statement, regardless.
It's basically this idea if you.
You're a Christian and you'repreaching on everything that God
teaches, except those areasthat are at the front lines that

(01:08:02):
the enemy is actually attacking.
So I'm teaching Jesus as asavior, but I'm not willing to teach
about that there are only twobiological sexes, and that means
there are only two gendersbecause there are two sexes and that
you're never born in the wrongbody, then you're not really fully
preaching the gospel.
Gospel.
Because if the gospel is underattack in this one area, and that's

(01:08:25):
the one area that you're notwilling to defend on, you're basically
opening up a breach to take itall down.
And so, you know Christianswho pat themselves on the back, well,
you know, I'm faithful in thisarea, so I don't need to be faithful
over there.
Are deluding themselves at best.
And that we're called, andespecially I'd say pastors and those

(01:08:45):
who are equipping pastors,elders, Christian teachers, those
who are equipping the nextgeneration and the current generation
of Christians who are goinginto the professions, going into
the arts, going into everypart of America.
They need to be equipped orelse we get more Francis Collins.

(01:09:06):
I mean, that really is the.
It's great to send Christiansout into culture, but only if you've
equipped them to actually act like.
Like Christians.
Maybe you can talk a littlebit, just briefly, about the resources
that are associated with the book.
I think that the book has awebsite attached to it.
So.
Yeah.
So StockHolmsyndroMechriChristianity.com and StockHolmsyndroMechi

(01:09:28):
Christianity.com you can findlots of free resources like, are
you considering a Christiancollege for your kids?
There's an essay there where Igo through 10 questions you should
ask your Christian college.
That will help because I knowa lot of parents are concerned about
that.
And more broadly, I think.
I think earlier in ourconversation, you pointed out that
my book doesn't just.

(01:09:48):
Even though we spent most ofthe time talking about the problems,
the book is in three sections.
There's the problems.
It's the roots of theproblems, which are actually part
of the way that you canaddress it and then it's solutions.
And where in one of thechapters I give like 21 things people
could do.
If you're a church boardmember, if you are an elder or a
deacon, if you're a teacher,if you're a parent, or even if you're
just a grandparent, there arethings that everyone can do do to

(01:10:14):
be faithful.
So what are just some examplesfor those who might be listening?
Sure.
So one that may seem, well,this doesn't seem important, but
what I say is do no harm.
And what do I mean by that?
Well, I think we're eachcalled to give an inventory or think

(01:10:35):
prayerfully with God about howam I stewarding my time, talent and
trust treasure.
What sort of church are yougoing to?
Are you going to a church thatis biblical and equipping people
or one that has gone off the rails?
Because if you're supportingthat church with your body, with
your money, with yourvolunteer time, and you know that

(01:10:57):
what it's doing is not rightin many respects, I said you're worse
than say the pastor who may beoff the rails because you know that
what he's doing is not right,but you're actually helping to facilitate
it even though you know whatis going on is not right.
Similarly, if you graduatedfrom a Christian university 20 years
ago that was a great Christianuniversity, but you know now that

(01:11:18):
it's sort of gone off the rails.
But every year out of thismisplaced sense of devotion, you
write a check to them.
Again, you're worse than theout of control faculty there because
in some sense they thinkthey're doing right even though they're
not, but you know what they'redoing is wrong and you're, you're
writing a check.
And you know, this may seemsimple, but I'll have to tell you

(01:11:38):
the number of I'm not going toname names here, but philanthropists
of Christians who are heavyhitters in various ways, who themselves
are personally orthodox, butwho are bankrolling bad things out
of misplaced senses ofemotion, or who are active in churches
that they know aren't reallythat they themselves are convicted

(01:12:01):
of.
If Christians alone, if everyChristian took seriously for them
to do no harm, for them tomake sure that even if they weren't
going to be supporting goodthings, I think we should be.
Even if you're not going towrite checks to discovery institutions,
if you're just making sureyou're not writing checks to the
Bad guys.
If you're not actually lendingyour volunteer time to a group that

(01:12:24):
is actually doing bad things,we'd be in a much better situation
now.
So that's one thing.
One other thing is if you're aparent who's really raising your
kids, and I know in generalChristians will say, oh, of course
I'm raising my kids, but isthat really true?
Or is TikTok raising your kids?
Or are the public schoolsraising your kids?

(01:12:45):
Or you could go on and onabout the other influences.
And whether you send your kidsto public school, I think increasingly
that is not a great option, ora private school, or you homeschool.
Ultimately, if you're aChristian parent, you're responsible
for the, in God's eyes, forthe shaping of your kids and the

(01:13:08):
mentoring of your kids.
And so what are you doing toactually be in control of that, other
than TikTok or other social media?
And so I think that's anotherthing I would say if anyone's listening
who is a board member orinvolved in leadership, please do
get my book, because youalluded to this.

(01:13:29):
But when Seattle Pacific, sortof the watershed moment, in my view
of when it went off the rails,it wasn't because of the president
at the time, who I think waspushing it in a bad direction, or
the woke faculty.
They certainly were there.
It was actually because, andthis is still hard for me to deal
with, we had a personallyorthodox, even personally theologically

(01:13:52):
conservative board oftrustees, but they didn't really
have the courage of their convictions.
So the people pushing in theother direction had the courage of
their convictions.
But the really deciding pointat how SPU was lost, in my view,
wasn't because of theprogressive faculty or the heterodox
faculty.
It was because thetheologically conservative board

(01:14:15):
of trustees, when push came toshove, was not willing to uphold
the standards that they saidthat their institution was for.
And I've seen time and againin Christian institutions where the
real fundamental failure, ifyou're called to be on a board, your
number one thing is notraising money.

(01:14:36):
You may be told otherwise.
We're on it because we wantyou to help us raise money.
No.
At a Christian institution,whether it be a church, a Christian
school, a Christianuniversity, Christian parachurch
group, your number oneresponsibility is staying faithful
to the mission.
And there are all sorts ofways that you can do that.
And I talk about one like thepower of no and how on boards they

(01:14:56):
govern by consensus, thingsthat you can where you can really
force a discussion and thatcan change things.
And you can find allies on the boards.
The reason I hit that isbecause I actually do think I see
a lot of articles from Christians.
Oh, woe is me.
Why did Wheaton go this way?
Or why is Fuller TheologicalSeminar going this way?

(01:15:19):
And they focus on the symptomsof some of the faculty and they don't
focus enough on the boardsbecause the boards have a lot of
culpability.
And unless Christians getserious about their leadership entities,

(01:15:40):
including boards of groups,you're going to get what we've been
getting.
Again, I mentioned it earlier,but I love the passion, I love the
enthusiasm.
And that really shows throughin reading the book.
I mean, you can really feelthat this is a personal issue.
It's something that you feelvery passionate about, have thought
very deeply about, haveexperienced firsthand.

(01:16:01):
And that's why reading thebook felt so much like a.
It feels like a warning, likea clarion call, but also with a call
to arms, a call to action,where you make very concrete for
the different audiences whomay be reading.
These are the things that weare called to do.
These are the things we must do.
These are the things we can doto really help push back on this
trend.
Yeah.
Well, thank you.

(01:16:21):
I, I sort of felt driven towrite it and it was a blessing to
be able to get it done.
And I hope it will be helpfulto people.
And yeah, I'll definitelyencourage people to read it.
The book again, is StockholmSyndrome Christianity.
Thank you so much, Dr. West,for authoring this book.
Where would you like to sendpeople to find out more about you

(01:16:42):
and what you do?
Yeah, so again, I think theeasiest place is go to Stockholm
syndromechristianity.com Butif you're interested in me more generally,
I do have a website, John G.West.com that has my interest in
everything from C.S.
lewis to Walt Disney toAmerican constitutionalism and religious
liberty.
So if you want to find outmore about me personally, John G.
West.com great.

(01:17:03):
And that'll be linked in theshow notes.
Thank you so much, Dr. West.
Thanks, Will.
Sam sat.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}DR. JOHN WEST - The Evangelical Betrayal: How Christian Leaders Developed Stockholm Syndrome