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Hello and welcome back to The Bodies Behind the Bus Podcast.

We are here today with two people that we deeply love, who you have met before.

If you've been listening for any amount of time, David and Margaret Bronson, you can hear their story in our back catalog.

I'll post the links to that in the show notes.

But also, Margaret was recently on an episode with Eric and I and at the bus stop where we talked about, um, like the Fundy, Christian Cultiness that's happening, um, that's spreading into just like mainstream America and where we feel like bodies behind the bus fits into that narrative, but also.

Where the work that Margaret and David are doing at Deconstruction Doula is kind of working to triage and come alongside survivors that are coming out of these fundee spaces.

And Fundee feels like too light a word.

So I am going to pass this over to Margaret right now.

Go give her a follow on at deconstruction doulas, um, on Instagram.

But I, I guess I think where we should start is you kind of telling us what you're doing.

Okay.

Okay over there.

Um, yeah, so Deconstruction, doulas, um, kind of came about organically as a result of my own attempts to figure out what just happened to me coming out of a particular brand of high control religion.

And it didn't quite, it was like similar to the Southern Baptist Church that I was in, but different and similar to the fundamentalists, but different.

And anyway, so I, um, started talking online and then eventually my dms were so filled with survivors that I wanted to create a space for it.

Um, so I started some peer led support groups through trying to just figure out like, what's true, what's real.

That's kind of how deconstruction doulas was, was originally formed.

But it has really become a place for people who are, um.

Coming out of really three different groups, primarily evangelicalism, fundamentalism, and then Theon, which is what we're gonna be talking about a lot today.

They all have a lot of overlap, which makes it confusing and a lot of really big similarities.

Um, but what's really interesting is in the work that I do, you can, like, I can almost tell, um, within a few seconds of a intake call, which of those three groups, uh, survivors coming from because they just have like a very specific thumbprint almost of symptoms, um, that show up in people's nervous systems and physical appearance as they come out of these things.

Um, so yeah, deconstruction, doulas helps people physically escape when it's really bad.

Um, but also just like in hearts, minds, bodies begin to deprogram from these high control religious spaces.

Well, we have you here today.

Um, because one of the main leaders, if not the main leader in that movement in America right now, Doug Wilson had a CNN interview.

And I think a lot of people who don't really pay attention to the movers in the shakers and western evangelical spaces are really aware of him or weren't really aware of him.

Um, weren't really aware of like the survivors coming out of that space weren't aware of the theology that was being kind of brought into the mainstream, that he holds tight to as a leader.

And I was watching this conversation happening online and, you know, whenever there's a big scandal with a new pastor, preacher, whatever we wanna say, I.

Faith leader, you name it, we like, tend to like hashtag this, which like is helpful in some ways, like hashtag Doug Wilson, whatever.

Now you can find information about this.

But also a big thing that we've just noticed over the past few years is this way that we center the big bad guys.

You know, the, the, the, the people that are doing the harm and a lot of times even we'll center like.

Historians or people talking about the, the different, um, layers that are involved here, but rarely are survivor centered.

And so often what I see is these conversations kind of have this split.

Like there's this giant, everybody wake up, there's something really bad that we just realized is happening.

Um, and then there's a split almost immediately into like.

Intellectualizing the conversation.

And it's not rooted in any relational, um, communication.

And so survivors often, um, are belittled, are not listened to or are not even centered when it comes to, um, like why these conversations matter.

And so I really wanted to have Margaret and David here today so that we could kind of recenter the conversation as bodies behind the bus as a platform and remind people of the human cost that's involved when we have these conversations and remind people that like, while it might feel buzzy to talk about Doug Wilson right now, um, there's like a whole bunch of people who when they hear that name or they hear these teachings, it has like a very physical trauma response for them.

And that's not exaggerating.

The reasons are because of the things we're going to be talking about today.

So that's why I have you here today.

But I don't think we can fully get there without telling the truth about where we've been.

And that looks like telling the truth about how this movement has kind of a gained footing and what this movement is really teaching.

So I'd love for you guys to take a minute.

I think the omy would be a new word to many of our listeners.

Can you guys break that down a little bit?

And also maybe talk about some of like the core beliefs or teachings in that space.

Yeah.

So the Omy is just a port bento of two words.

Theos meaning God and anos meaning law, right?

So God's law, that's the Otomy.

This is a school of theology that formulated, I guess we could say in the sixties, around a guy named rj Rush Dunney.

Um, he literally wrote the book on this ins, um, institutes the Christian religion that came out of his little self-publishing firm, the Chaan Foundation, in 1973, if I remember correctly.

Now, the thing here is that Theon enemy's a word most people don't know because the guy who started at this Rush Uni fellow, he also founded a movement simultaneously known as Christian Reconstructionism.

So Theon enemy was the set of doctrines that drove the Christian Reconstructionism machine.

And the thing about, like the dude we're talking about here, he shall he, he who shall not be named, whatever we wanna call him, that guy, right?

Is a Christian reconstructionist.

So he is motivated, driven by everything about what he does.

Theon enemy is central to it, and Theon enemy is at the bottom.

The belief that Old Testament law must be like it is biblically mandated, like God ordained, that Old Testament law should be the law by which all nations of the earth run.

And that includes the United States of America.

And wrapped up in this notion of the, is the idea that, well, you know, the saying, all's fair and love and war, the theists believe that everything is war.

Um, they believe that every single act that any Christian undertakes is an act of warfare against the non-Christian world.

So every piece of art, every time you make a meal, every time you have a child, every single action is supposed to be militarized in favor of instituting Old Testament law as the law of the land.

So that's the on.

When you say Old Testament law, like are they sticking to everything or are they picking and choosing the parts of the Old Testament law that they follow?

Excellent question.

So Christian Reconstructionists come in a couple of different varieties themselves, but by and large they're what we would call kind of purists, right?

They would say Old Testament law.

Yes.

Um, now Wilson, this guy, this, this cat, I'm gonna call him Disco Doug, does that work?

Can we just call him Disco Doug?

Okay.

So disco, although I think you're giving him a little bit more glitz and glam than he deserve.

It is fair.

I'll come up with something better at some point and I'll just switch to it without warning anyone.

Point is that, uh, homeboy is, uh, he, he calls himself a general equity theist.

All this means is that he thinks that, well, you know, if we outlaw the LGBT, we don't have to stone them on the first offense.

Uh, we can just fine them the first time and imprison them the second time, and then we can get to the executions around like the fourth or fifth or sixth offense, right?

Like that's how he thinks about it.

So there are those folks, but there are like hardcore like Rush Doy style down the wire.

People who would say no word for word.

We just impose this as the law of the land.

And then all we've gotta figure out how to do is interpret it in our modern context.

Um, for perspective, I had a conversation once years ago with a theist who was talking about this, and I just pointed out that like some Old Testament laws require that homes have flat roofs.

Like, how are you gonna impose this on the us?

And he goes, well, we're gonna have to mandate that everyone have a flat roof.

Like that's how deep this goes for some of them.

But you also have the Pentecostal variety, which I personally find scarier.

Um, because they're not hardliners, they don't have any standards to them.

It's just gotta have Old Testament law vibes.

Like they run the on vibes, nothing more, nothing less.

So like if Dave Ramsey says that like, it's against God's law to go into debt, they'll outlaw that.

Like they will absolutely do that.

They'll, they'll ban that.

And I'm being facetious, of course.

That's an absolutely absurd example, but I mean, that's how they function.

They don't like.

They're not looking to scholarship or to history the way that someone like Wilson might be.

He's gonna try to justify his stuff somewhere back in the Protestant Reformation or in the church fathers.

He's gonna cherry pick whatever he has to, to support his bizarre takes on everything, right?

But the Seven Mountains mandate, variety, the Pentecostal variety, they're like getting visions.

They're like going to ayahuasca rituals and getting like, I don't know, special revelation from God that says that like, we gotta go all kinds of crazy stuff.

Like we gotta colonize Mars, like bonkers, truly bonkers things.

And they are also theists in that sense.

How do they rationalize then the New Testament when Christ mentions he's the fulfillment of the law?

Like how do they, so, such a good question.

My gosh, Jay.

Um, this is where Calvinism comes in.

Calvinism is a necessary bedrock for the Omy as its set of doctrines to work.

And the thing about Calvinism is that insofar as its fifth point, this whole perseverance of the saints things right, is theoretically supposed to be why Christians, or supposed to be kind of an emotional underpinning for why Christians can sin in the Calvinist understanding of things without being immediately condemned to hell.

Right?

The idea is that like, okay, Jesus will keep you in this condition of grace in Calvinism, even though you continue to violate, well, violate what?

Well, God's law in the Calvinist understanding of things to the Calvinist, this is, this is a subtle distinction, but it is important to the Calvinist sin is very rapidly transferred from being this thing about, you know, violating boundaries, relational boundaries with God, so to speak, and very rapidly becomes just about legal jurisprudence.

You know, it becomes very much a letter of the law kind of stuff.

And so it underlies the otomy in the sense that.

The enemy believes that Old Testament law basically is the gospel that like, if you've believed the gospel, you're going to keep Old Testament law.

'cause it's part of the Bible.

They say that when you go to Hebrews and you've got the author of Hebrews saying things like, oh well I'll inscribe my law on their hearts.

The theists are saying, oh yeah, that's because the gospel.

You repent and believe.

And then like if you really are a believer, you're gonna go right back to a obeying Old Testament law.

And they say, of course, like, well, we're getting rid of the ceremonial components.

So it's not full blown like law keeping Right.

Though, I will say there are some of them that say we should return to those festivals too.

We'll leave that be The point is that like most theists are gonna say like, well, we're keeping Old Testament law in light of the gospel.

But the reality is that in practice, if you don't align with their interpretations of what all this means, if you're like going further than they are, they don't have a standard for too far on this, you see.

So they'll just say like, whatever their individual person's basic standard for OT law is, they'll say That's good enough.

And I'm doing that in light of the gospel, right?

I'm doing this because I'm following Jesus, which we all know is an abstraction and absurdity, but it's beside the point.

That's that's their justification and it's very squishy when you really get right down to it.

So I think that's a good kind of like segue too.

That's really helpful.

Thank you David, into like this.

Movement is kind like, I guess the only way I can equate it is kind of like when you're at a church and you don't know you're at a Southern Baptist church.

Mm-hmm.

You know, it's like, oh wait, they give to SBC seminaries.

They are technically an SBC church, but they're not in the directory.

Like they're not going to the annual meeting maybe, but you're at a, a church that is at minimum giving a little bit to some SBC entity and getting influenced by the way that they move about in evangelical spaces.

Got it.

That is the best way that I can segue us, I guess, into when we c when we are talking about someone like Doug Wilson or the bro.

The, the bros.

Yeah.

Instead of Theo Bros, we'll say Theon Bros.

They get an on too.

Um.

It is far reaching.

It has tentacles all around and it's really hard to know if you are in a church that is being heavily influenced by this.

So can you give us an example of a church that's being influenced by this, but maybe like, maybe you don't know for sure how deep that is.

And then I'd also like the end of the spectrum from kind of where you're coming from, Margaret, like where you grew up, that's like he's teaching one thing and they're taking it all to the most serious degree that you can.

Like it's the actual, uh, they're taking those teachings and taking them to their end.

Like they're living it out.

They actually believe it, so they're doing it.

Can you kind of give us maybe two examples like that?

Like here's where, how it would flesh out maybe in this setting, here's how it's fleshing out practically in smaller churches that are.

Mostly rural and don't have touchpoints into healthy community.

Yeah, that's, this is a subtle process.

Uh, go for it.

Okay, so I'll take a stab at the first one.

I'll just give like a personal anecdote.

We were, uh, back in the Philadelphia area looking for a church to belong to and, um, try to PCA church out of Westminster Seminary, which is like about as PCA, as it gets about as straight.

This is what the denomination is.

And the important note here is for what she's about to say is that the PCA has examined Doug Wilson and his theology, found him aberrant and declared his stuff out of bounds.

So it's this important to note for this story, and that was what the eighties.

No, no, that was actually fairly recently.

Okay.

That was in the two thousands.

Okay.

So, um, being a little bit religiously traumatized as I am, I met with the pastor before ever attending a service and I had a few questions and one of those questions was, what do you think of Joe Wilson and the particular pastor that we met with Baby Barfs?

He's just like, like, no, absolutely.

That man is never like, no.

And I was like, okay, well, um, I've been down this road before, so what would happen if one of the men in your church were to come to you and be like, I love this book.

It's written by Doug Wilson.

I think we should do it as like a men's book, stu book study.

And he was like, there, we would never, ever allow that to happen.

Okay, cool.

So start showing up on a few Sunday mornings and about the sixth Sunday morning, a different pastor gets up and he's preaching and.

There's red flags happening, and then he says, um, now I have wanna read this quote to you from this guy.

You might never, you might not have ever heard of him.

His name's Doug Wilson.

You should all read him.

He has a really fun, he's so great and he has such a funny way of putting everything.

Um, we.

And I feel like that is, I've seen this similar scenario play out over and over and over again, which is that on one hand you have people who are like, obviously we would never do that.

Like they must underestimate the threat and they're not even gonna really take it all that seriously.

And then you have people who, the moment they hear of him, they are enamored.

They are like, not only do I love this guy, everyone I know has to make this their personality.

They become so indoctrinated so quickly, it has become their entire personality.

And what I have seen is that the people who are on the, obviously we're not gonna, you know, give him the time of day side of things.

Show no resistance.

They're almost like overwhelmed and shocked and shamed.

Like, I guess I'm not taking my faith seriously enough because I can't go where these guys are going because I do agree with their premises.

I'm just not consistent enough to follow through with them.

And so it's almost like they're shamed into silence or into joining.

The second one would be everybody's signing up for this, knowing what we're getting.

Like, Hey, we want to be in a church that believes these things and is consistent in these beliefs.

So yeah, no, go for it.

Um, put me in coach.

Um, so the very common story for something like this is, um, people move across the country to find a church they can attend that follows.

Wilson's teachings.

So whether that is one of Wilson's denomination itself, A-C-R-E-C church, or there are PCA churches, OPC churches, Southern Baptist churches, um, all over the country that people, I mean, I have survivors who tell stories.

They move their whole life to be near this cold.

I can say cold.

Okay.

Yes, it's a cold.

Because, because here's the thing, one of the first tactics of a cult is to isolate you.

And so the fact that you moved to go to this church isn't always, I would say it's a yellow flag.

Why did you have to go drive through so many states to get to people who believe in God in a similar enough way to you?

Why are there so few people?

Like, is it should, it should, should the ability to commune with the divine be so rare that you have to drive through eight states to get there?

Calvinism would say yes.

And was, this is why.

Well, we all, how we feel about Calvinism, but Jay has no short ec clips of him talking about Calvinism.

Yeah.

I'm not gonna, I I've gotten in trouble for You're gonna hold it in hold in your Calvinism.

Hold it about Calvinism.

Although I do though that Calvinism grooms you for the Yes.

I think that Calvinism teaches you.

Like, can you tell, tell us why, why do you think that?

Yeah, that would be helpful.

Okay.

Let's start with the T in Tulip.

No, like at first it teaches you that, um, God doesn't love everybody.

And so if God doesn't love everybody, then you don't have to love everybody.

And also, like they're not really completely human, honestly.

Like if God doesn't love them, if he hasn't given them the breath of life, they're not really his children.

They're at best bad image bearers of God.

Not accurate image bearers of God.

You know what I mean?

And so, um, it just like slowly grooms you to not see other humans, humanity.

Then let's take the you, the unconditional election component means that, um, you're just such a special snowflake.

God picked you.

Nobody knows why.

And God's not telling, you know, like that's, it's just this, this perfect black box that you get to look into and see whatever you want to see.

Unconditional election.

I like to, I mean it's, it's the mirror of era said from Harry Potter.

You look into that one and you just get to kinda like land wherever you want to emotionally.

And the thing about it is that people tend to land at one of two places, either, wow, I'm this vile piece of garbage.

How could God ever love me?

And that grooms you for theon because the theists are gonna tell you that.

Yeah, you are a vile piece of garbage lick my boot.

Or it fills you with this sense of like, oh, chosen by God, kind of this like noble swelling organ cord thing that they'd never call pride, but categorically is uh, because it functionally is okay, because I am chosen, I am special.

They'll say, oh, I wasn't chosen for any particular reason.

Okay, cool bro.

But like now you are.

So what does that mean?

And for those who engage with it also uncritically, or at least in a way that is unselfaware, they're groomed for Theon enemy because the otomy says to a certain class of person, that is to say white straight males, that they are destined for power and glory.

And so if you take the pride angle, you're gonna go that way.

And even if you're not one of those straight white males, as long as you can hit yourself to one of their wagons, you'll get some of that power and glory too.

So you either become a boot liquor or the boot that's being licked.

Exactly.

But either way, you're ending up in that system.

Yes.

And I think another big piece that a lot of.

This cluster, um, loves is covenantal theology.

Yeah.

And this is the idea that if you are chosen by God, most likely your children are also chosen by God.

So you like the babies are baptized and brought into, I mean, Doug Wilson, it would be he baptizes the babies and also offers them pedo communion.

So if that babies get communion, they're like grabbing the chalice and chugging.

Okay.

Crazy.

I don't dunno if got an cat, it's crazy to watch.

That's probably horrifying to hear.

But the covenantal theology grooms you for the, because it, it puts this like, um, wall between you and the consequences of election as a parent.

Yeah.

Right.

You never have to contend with what it would mean if your child isn't chosen.

Basically, you get to think that God only loves some people and is only, and has just has created some people for wrath.

But none of those people are the people you love.

And as a matter of fact, you're so you don't have to worry about it.

Yeah.

And you're at war with all the people who aren't.

Exactly.

And a very specific to Theo belief is that they take that verse in Romans that says that, um, everyone is without excuse to the furthest extreme and say that lost people, those who don't believe in Jesus, aren't lost.

They are an active defiance against God.

It's not just that they need to hear the truth, um, and be given a chance to believe.

It's that everyone has already been given a chance to believe.

There is no reason for anyone to not believe in God.

And so if they do not believe in God, it is because they are an active rebellion, hatred against God.

I have, so What's that?

Hold on.

Yeah, go ahead.

Really fast.

Did you have a question about that specifically, Jay?

No, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Because I wanna know what that looks like practically.

Like you walk into a church, right?

What does that feel like?

Like what's it like to be a part of that community?

And also, do you have any understanding of like how widespread those communities are in the us One of the primary leaders of the Christian reconstructionist movement is Greg Boson, and he was the apologist side of things.

Um, so he's the one that, uh, kind of codified how theists were gonna do apologetics, which is not the Josh McDowell evidential apologetics.

They do not like that.

They think that that's for weenies.

Um, they, their whole thing is you don't, and you'll see Doug.

Follows this very well.

Um, they don't engage with people who aren't them.

They do not dignify people who don't think like them with the time of day in to argue or try and like change, like for example, our minds or whatever would be to dignify us and would be sinful.

Yeah, bons literally taught that it was sinful to try to engage a nonbeliever with logic.

Um, because an nonbeliever is incapable of logic.

He, he taught that if you weren't a Christian, you were incapable of the free exercise of reason.

Um, only Christians could think reasonable thoughts.

And then once you dig into him, you start to realize that actually he doesn't even really mean all Christians.

He just means all Christians who are Calvinists.

And if you dig even further into that, especially this lovely little 250 page hand typed screet I happen to have from him, um, it is clear that he doesn't even mean all Calvinists.

He just means theon, period.

Nobody else is capable of the exercise of reason.

What the hell is the point of life then?

I mean, I'm just being honest because if, if I'm, I mean, in their book, I'm condemned.

So my family's condemned.

I'm condemned.

Why?

Why?

Like what's the point of where do I fit in, into their.

Their world.

'cause I'm not a elect or names withheld to protect the guilty because this is a private individual.

I asked a guy that question one time and he said, quote, the best thing you can do for the glory of Christ is to kill yourself and your children.

And see, the thing is though, like when I hear that, that doesn't surprise me because that's just consistency.

Oh yeah.

Like if you believe these things, then that's the, the like consistent next step in that.

If I don't believe in that line of thinking, but like that's horrific.

And so, and also why no one is resisting all of the death and suffering that we're seeing.

Yeah.

All around us because it's consistent with what they believe and what's the point of life.

If there's all of this sovereignty for them, the only point of their life is to bring about the millennial kingdom.

So everything they do, whether it's who they marry, having children, how they raise those children, the education of those children, their friendships, their meals, their homes, like everything is chosen and intentional to bring about theocracy, a theist led government, um, old Testament law ruling America, and eventually the whole world is their, is their goal.

And they have been working towards this goal tirelessly and patiently and strategically for 50 years.

I.

So I got a triple dose of Wilson growing up in the late nineties, early two thousands.

So I went to a, there weren't, his denomination didn't have any churches near us.

Um, and so we went to a reformed Baptist church that was styling itself.

They were particular Baptists, so they weren't like all the rest of the Baptists.

They were 1689 Baptists.

Um, that's a red flag.

If your church is a 1689 Baptist, that generally means they are reformed Baptist following the Omy anymore.

Yeah, fair That since 2016.

Yeah.

Since the young restless reform movement.

Yes.

We went to this church, but then I also was not just homeschooled, but my curriculum was Doug Wilson's Classical Education Omnibus, which is in multiple public schools around the country.

Say what it's called again?

Omnibus.

Omnibus.

Mm-hmm.

From Cbus from Canon Press.

What from Canon Press in Public Schools.

Give me just some highlights of things that we should be concerned about in the Omnibus curriculum.

So for one thing, it romanticizes slavery, like chattel slavery in America.

Um, it says that it is like this beautiful picture of interracial relationships and that the slave owners were giving the enslaved people such a great gift because they were saving them from African religions and giving them a chance to know Jesus despite the fact that they were only getting like whatever it was, 20% of the Bible.

You know, it also deeply IGRAs manifest destiny Oh yeah.

Into all of the, um, students saying that.

So for listeners that don't know what Manifest destiny is, can you tell us what that means?

Mm-hmm.

This is the idea.

Actually, why don't you take this one?

Uh, the shortest possible way to explain it would just be that, um, it's the idea that America was really chosen by God.

Like this nation was chosen by God to conquer the continent.

Uh, that's bottom line.

And I mean, the way that they would put it is that, uh.

The, that the Hebrews that Israel had, um, essentially failed to be the people of God.

And so he passed on his Israel to the church.

The church is western civilization is, you know, this lineage that comes through the, um, the puritans and then the pilgrims.

Well, but not just that, like the Reformation.

Yeah, but also the church councils.

Right?

So church councils, reformation, puritans, pilgrims, and, and then.

Um, the South, the Confederacy, so to like, I think people will think that's bonkers.

But let me like center this a second here.

What you're watching in our government right now is the fruit of that belief.

So if you hear something like, we are God's chosen people, it's because of this belief that when the Bible is talking about Israel or God's chosen people, it's actually talking to us here in America today.

Yes.

Yeah.

All of the the, they literally say that the promises God made to Israel has been passed to.

The church, but specifically the American church because other places around the world have too much syncretism and don't follow God.

Right.

And then specifically theists, if you get down far enough.

Mm-hmm.

How is that tied again?

You, you, you said the Confederacy.

How is that all tied to the Confederacy?

Because I have read things on this and I just want you to say it if you can.

Okay.

I'm gonna back up one step because it's really important to follow this entirely.

So, so we talked about Greg Boson, we talked about RJ Uni.

There's a third main leader in the Christian reconstructionist movement, and that is Gary North.

And he wrote a little book called Conspiracy in Philadelphia that says that the constitutional convention was a conspiracy.

Okay.

To steal the original Q anon.

The original Q anon.

Okay.

To steal authority to our, uh.

So the Articles of Confederation specifically give God the authority for law.

That's where we, that's where the Articles of Confederation says we essentially, it's, yeah, spec the quote is important.

'cause North Key's on this a bunch, the articles of Confederacy begins with this line about how, you know, believing that, you know, laws derived from, you know, the divine, like this kind of thing.

So you can understand why Theists would like that line.

They're, yeah, this is a theocracy is what they say.

It was a theocracy at that point.

Um, it was a government under that saw itself as itself as answering to God.

And so I.

The Constitution starts by giving authority to we the people.

It's a democracy.

They are as anti-democracy as you can get, and they mean it.

They think it is sinful.

They think that they think that to put humans in charge of government at all is sinful and is stealing what belongs to God.

It's usurping his authority.

And so this book talks about how it is every Christian's duty to destroy democracy.

I, I wonder how that fits into the big, beautiful picture of America right now.

Indeed.

So all of these conservatives who are like, I don't understand why they don't care about the Constitution.

They literally hate the Constitution and they've been trying to destroy it for like 200 years.

Just listen to them and believe what they say.

Yeah.

Rj Rush Dunney, and I'm quoting quote, democracy is heresy, period.

Another quote from rj, rush Kennedy quote, democracy and Christianity are incompatible, period.

So it makes, but to the Confederacy point.

So that's, yeah.

Sorry.

So that's a little backdrop.

They do the same thing with the confederacy.

They believe that the union stole the country from the true owners of like American culture and heart.

Yeah.

Um, which was the enslavers, um, which is a take.

So it's all about this like lost cause narrative.

You can Google that.

There's a lot there.

Yeah.

They would say that the Confederacy was itself a theocracy or that it was headed in that direction depending on who you ask.

So if, like, if you, for instance, if you ask old Dougie disco about his opinion about this, he would say that he would've been a quote southern abolitionist, which is like.

Just delicious.

He, yeah.

He says, what's that mean?

What's that mean?

What, what does that mean, Dougie?

Mm-hmm.

My, my guy.

Mm-hmm.

Well, if you, if you don't think any, like, if you're like, I don't believe any of this, you should read the Cornerstone speech by the vice president.

He was the vice president of the Confederacy.

His name's Alexander H.

Stevens.

And I mean, I've, I've read it and like literally it lays out exactly what you're talking about.

Like the confe, how the Confederacy formed and what they believed.

And a lot of what you're saying, because I don't really know a lot about, I mean, I know stuff about this movement, but I don't know like the details, but literally what you're saying reminds me of that speech.

I'm like, oh, it's just the speech from 1861.

Okay?

Mm-hmm.

And it's full of hate racism, but it also puts like the confederacy at the top of like this, God.

God given God enabled country that will be doing something unique for the first time and the world will follow them.

And the thing that they're doing that's unique is enslaving people.

Yeah.

And, and using that as a way of saying, this is justified by God.

We are better than these, the people that were enslaving and the, the enslaved people are actually better for it.

Yep.

It's absolute lunacy.

Hate ridiculous.

But what you're describing, it's like literally, I'm like, I've read the speech so many times.

I'm like, it's like the speech.

It's like they never left 1861.

You know who, speaking of that idea, you know, they never left 1861.

Do you know Gary North dedicates this book to Conspiracy in Philadelphia.

He dedicates it to a specific congregation that is still in the northeast that has been holding the torch on this.

For like almost 250 years at this point.

So like, you gotta understand these people, like they stick, like when they get on these things, they remain stuck on them.

We're talking about like, he dedicated this to a church that's been fighting this fight for like, here's a way to think about it.

For like eight moms.

Like eight moms ago, they were fighting this fight.

You see what I mean?

Like that's a long time ago.

Yeah, he, I mean, he goes as far as this guy, Stevens goes as far as say that like slavery is, uh, like morally a right?

Like it's justified by God and it's morally correct.

It's like sickening.

I have, so, okay, so all right, so if you pivot out of that, right, and they, they view, all right, so they, I guess that helps to understand the backbone.

Like how do they then, like how do they exist in this world to where like if I was a literalist on the, on the Old Testament, and that's how I take it.

Like I think about like passages where like you can murder people for having adultery.

You can and basically sell your daughters off to basically be concubines if you want to like, and, and, and it talks a lot worse.

More thing, those things are horrible and it continues to grow.

How do they take those verses today?

Like what do they, I mean, do they believe that this is where we need to go?

Margaret keeps pointing at me because I think she just doesn't want to have to say these things.

And I don't blame her.

Jay, they just take 'em like the, the, so for instance, her pastor, right?

He, he's a, he's a Wilson Knight, and he wrote this great thing on, I say great in the biggest of air quotes on, um, how, on how, what it would look like to bring back stoning children from Old Testament jurisprudence.

As a matter of fact, he lobbied the Pennsylvania State House for this, right.

Um, like lobbied, like, think about that.

This man, like went to the State House and with his whole chest, said he thought that children should be stoned and, and he would talk about it Yeah.

On a Sunday morning with his 10 kids in the service.

So these people don't balk at anything stone and adulterer.

They'll say, yes, thank you for your terms, but also whatever trades you wanna make for that.

Right.

But only women, right?

Well, yeah, I was gonna say, hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I guess that's where I'm getting at.

Like, 'cause like, I mean, I, I think like everybody should read the Stevens speech.

We should post it in the show notes because it shows how hateful and like, like, like insidious this, this, this time in our history that we've never really owned and repent because I've found pastors defending, um, defending, defending this type of call.

I've looked up, not, I've gone as far as like actually searched, uh, like our, our government records to find pastor's sermons, defending, uh, uh, slavery and calling it morally okay.

And like, it's sickening.

It's disgusting and we've never repented of it.

We've never owned it.

And we've, we just continue to think that we can't, you know, we're, hey, everything's okay when it's not.

But I think that well, not only have we not repented of it, but there's this whole group of people that David and Margaret are talking about right now who still believe it.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say.

It's not even something to repent about.

It's something they believe and want.

Yeah.

That's what I say, like we haven't even gone to like reparations or things that we should be doing, not only for people that were enslaved, uh, or for families that were enslaved, right.

For, for, uh, the legacy and their ancestors, but also like indigenous cultures that we basically just destroyed.

Um, but that's the point I was trying to make is like.

I, I get this and I go, this shit's really scary.

Because if they really believe this, then they want to go to that other end, which is, and that's the point I was trying to ask is like, like for them is, is it not so much that Christ returns as much as it's like we're gonna do everything we need to for Christ to return.

And that's what scares me is like the everything we need to, they believe Christ literally cannot return until they do their job to make Old Testament law the thing.

And so you so important Disco Dougie.

Oh my gosh.

Right.

You're so, so important.

That's why you have, what did Owen STR say?

Oh, God has staked the gospel on men.

Okay, Owen.

Gosh, I'm sorry.

I cannot even like, contain how ridiculous that sounds.

I feel like I'm sitting in an like extremely, um, extremely entitled, emotionally stunted second grade classroom with a bunch of bully little boy kids.

Oh yeah.

When I hear something like that, yes, Margaret, that was your whole life.

Well, okay, but here's the thing.

Mm-hmm.

They create those boys.

So a fundamental part.

Literally the books that have come outta the Christian Reconstructionism Un parenting, why is parenting so important to them?

Because they've been passing this down for generations to get this plan enacted.

So you have to make sure your kids are full believers in this stuff, that they're gonna continue the mission.

Right.

So, so they, they have to get the parenting and education part, right?

So you got the, they they are crazy about education, classical education.

We can have a whole separate conversation about that at some point, maybe.

But the parenting piece, they take spanking to a whole other level.

Um, it's not just a tool in the tool belt.

It is the.

Mode of correction for everything.

You have to start really young.

They want you to start by six months old, um, because you need to break the will before it gets too strong.

If their will gets too strong, you lose your child and they'll never submit to God.

And so they begin physical, um, corporal punishment as young as six months old.

They call babies vipers and diapers.

They immediately put parent and child at odds with each other.

They say every cry from your baby.

Every cry is your child trying to manipulate you and take power from you and, um, steal your wife from the husband.

All this, all this weird like power struggle dynamics with a literal infant, um, newborn.

And they, they tell parents not to respond to the child's cries.

To not coddle their babies, to not hold their babies, to not comfort their babies.

Um, and so obviously that's horrific, and obviously that damages the child, but what it creates in a child is they're not thinking with their brain.

They are, they are with their like nervous system and psyche and everything, searching for security every second of the day, all the time they are trying to feel safe because they don't have safety.

The only time they are given affection, acceptance, approval, attention is when they over perform to cult standards.

Not just don't do wrong things, but go above and beyond and perform.

And so you create a generation after generation after generation of kids coming out of this whose entire lives are performance because it's the only way they exist and are real and are safe.

So when you see this ridiculous grandstanding, that's the fruit of this.

Yeah.

What does it look like in the actual communities themselves, like as a kid?

Like what do kids, what are kids experiencing?

What is it like to be a kid there?

I mean, you gonna have to break it down into very gendered things because of the experience.

What's it like for a little boy in that setting that maybe doesn't fit that mold?

Ooh.

That doesn't fit that mold.

Yeah, that little boy is cooked, um, in one of two ways.

He is either never going to fit like the mold and expectation and just for whatever reason, can't, maybe he's disabled, maybe he's, I mean, like there's a whole lot of possibilities.

There are a lot of reasons he might not.

But given what their standards for men are, there really only two paths.

You can be like kind of a physically dominant person or you can be an intellectually dominant person.

So if you, if you can't match up physically, then a lot of these, these, these guys kind of go the scholarly route.

And quite frankly, they become some of the worst of the bunch because they become the pastors that promote this stuff.

They become the writers that intellectualize it.

Um, they become the lobbyists and, and it's, and sometimes the policy writers that generate this stuff.

So that's one angle.

But the other angle is of course, just complete failure to live up to the standard at all.

And to these boys, oh man.

Um.

They get victimized in every possible way that you can imagine.

And inevitably they flame out.

Um, sometimes, well, not to get too grim about it, but quite frankly, a lot of them take their own lives, uh, before they even reach adulthood.

Um, some of them do.

So shortly after reaching adulthood and getting enough freedom to kind of get a clear head and realize everything that happened to them, um, I, I work with not a, not a huge number, but some percentage of our community are, are guys who were in exactly that scenario.

And the damage is profound.

And these men are very often not even really able to begin to confront what happens to them until they're well into their thirties.

Um, so it steals whole decades of their lives just to get out and get to a point where they can begin to figure out, okay, who and what even am I, you know?

And how early on do those distinctions start happening in like a, a church setting when it comes to little boys?

And then I wanna talk about girls.

Oh, it's immediate.

Um, and maybe there's even data out here on this.

There's, there's research that's been done, not on the CREC specifically, but just on American culture in general in terms of sort of the gendered way we handle children that.

Um, boys, um, tend to, um, get, have their cries ignored more frequently than girls 'cause they cry, tend to cry louder and longer.

And the stats show, and that whole absolutely holds true in series C churches.

And that continues male expressions of pain.

Like begin to kind of show these little boys like, okay, here's the line between male and female, and do you fall on the correct side of that line?

If you read Wilson's delightful little book, um, on bringing up boys raising men, racing racing men, um, he's got these, you know, these great sections all about, you know, male toughness and cultivating that kind of, you know, masculine attitude in your boys.

Um, but it starts instantly, instantly.

Two things I want to add to that.

Um, one is all of the survivors I have talked to all agree that while us girls had probably overall the most abuse.

The boys had the most physical abuse.

The way you get a boy to be where he's supposed to be in the male hierarchy is you physically put him in his place and he beat the brakes off him.

And I mean, I'll just speak for myself.

I grew up listening to hour and a half sermons where 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13-year-old boys were screaming in the parking lot because they were being disciplined, um, for not paying enough attention during an hour and a half sermon.

Um, so these boys, I just really want people to understand like, these boys are sleepwalking through life.

Yeah.

It's not them.

They have, they're, they're so mind controlled and if we ever want to get them.

Out and healthy and safe and maybe not, you know, dragging us all down with them.

Um, the thing that they need is validation for their pain.

That's the one thing they've never gotten in their whole life.

Not for real.

And that's why like the incel thing works, is because validation works.

They're starved for validation.

Yeah.

They're starved for affection.

Yeah.

They're starved for someone to understand them and to help them understand themselves and to be told that it's not their fault.

That they're not awful, horrible people to be given an opportunity to see themselves as what they feel that they are like in pain, you know, and like have language for that pain.

Yes.

These boys are abusers.

Yes.

They're predators.

They are also abused and have been predated upon since birth.

And what's that dynamic like?

Amongst children.

Hmm.

Um, loads and loads and loads of sibling on sibling sexual abuse.

Mm-hmm.

You, you have 10 children in a house, all deeply traumatized.

Mom and dad are cold, distant, punitive.

Um, so they kind of become lord of the flies and deal with things themselves.

And they don't have places they can go with questions or mistakes or frustrations and anger.

They take it out on each other.

I mean, it's, it's awful.

Yeah.

And how does this, so you have the little boys experiencing this.

What are little girls experiencing in this space and how does that shape up?

Yeah.

As they grow.

Yeah.

Um, I do think there's one more thing to say about boys that's really important.

So Doug Wilson, in his book Raising Men says that mothers need to basically check out of their son's lives when their sons turn 13, or they will emasculate them.

So by the age of 13, if your boy is homeschool, like he doesn't, he actually is anti homeschooling for boys past the age of 13 because they would be stuck with a woman.

He wants them to go to his Christian education schools where they can be taught by men and raised to be men.

And so you have a cast system within these groups that literally has 13-year-old sons on a higher rank than their mothers.

Yeah.

And so from 13 years old, they are given keys to the kingdom.

They are the authority.

They get to call the shots while dad's at work and they get to tell their mom and put her in her place.

And they get away with it because that's how the hierarchy actually works.

So again, that just like speaks to the mindset that these boys are raised in girls from probably like three, four years old on.

You're gonna see a massive difference in access to leisure, time to play.

Girls are gonna have way more chores, way more responsibility than the boys.

You have eight, nine, 10-year-old little girls sleeping with baby toddler siblings because mom has another baby that she's taking care of, doing middle of the night feedings, diaper changes, responding to cries and nightmares, comforting, all of that stuff.

Um, responsible for feeding the family of 10 or 12 people by age 11 or 12 years old.

Exclusively what women exist for is for keeping the home and raising children.

And so anything that exists outside of those goals, um, is seen as a distraction.

My pastor, um, who was definitely a theist, um, said that educating girls past eighth grade was a complete waste of time and was actually going to lead them to sin down the road because they would be discontent.

To educate them beyond eighth grade was to be instilling them with discontent for God's call on their life.

Um, to be a wife and mother, you'd basically be telling them by educating them for something beyond that, that they existed for something beyond that.

So they would never be content with God's will for their life.

And so the educational neglect of girls in this system, very few of them, like once you can, once you have enough math that you can, like triple a recipe was the joke.

You're good.

Yeah.

All of this is horrific.

And I mean, also women do not have, so obviously like the fruit of a woman who has to listen to a 13-year-old boy, uh, like there is no autonomy for a woman in this space.

You cannot say no to anything.

You cannot have a voice, you cannot have an opinion like it all has to fall onto boys and men in this space.

Am I hearing that correctly?

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Um, and I wanna talk about the sexual side of things.

The grooming starts really, really young.

They literally resurrected a book from the Dead, or a book series from the Dead called the lc Densmore series, written by Martha Finley Finley.

Um.

And it is the story of a little girl growing up in, um, an enslavers home as like a niece of the enslavers, um, being raised by a enslaved woman.

Um, and she's this like perfect angelic, always follows all the rules, super conscientious, whatever.

These books are the most vile grooming books.

And they were some of the only books we were allowed to read.

And it's like there's scenes where she gets in trouble for it's, it's the Civil War.

Okay?

She like cuts off a piece of her curl to give to a friend and her father freaks out at her.

And the book also says he was right to do so, um, because that was his curl.

Her body belongs to him.

And she can't like, do anything with her body without his permission, and she needed to literally pay him back for that curl.

She marries her father's best friend, who's 10 years older than her father who told her that she, he loved her from when she was like seven, the first time he met her.

Um, this is depicted as very romantic.

To be clear, this is like the ideal.

This is what I read at eight nine.

This was the first romance I ever read, and it goes on and on and on.

So much like weird touching from older men to younger girls.

And it's like made to be this like, oh, isn't it so sweet?

And wouldn't you be so like godly?

Because it's like if you're a godly girl, you're gonna get older men.

Like being affectionate with you is essentially what these books convey.

But not only that, you are surrounded by a community.

And where you're constantly hearing sermons about how there is no such thing as marital rape, where you are aware that some women have been, um, and maybe you're seeing it in your own home.

So imagine if like a wife, if the husband felt like the wife talked back to him, okay.

He could then go to his elders and say, my wife is, is like not submitting to my authority.

And the thing that a lot of those elders prescribe in those situations is spousal spanking.

And if the offense was done in front of the children, then the spousal spanking will happen in front of the children to show the children that even the mother is not above the father's authority and not above God's authority.

So you're watching this as you're growing up.

You are also hearing stories about women who went crazy and, you know, no one talks to them anymore and they've been shunned and they, um, you know, did all these outlandish things.

You're just the grooming.

You're constantly watching girls marry men twice their age.

You're constantly knowing that people were sexually abused.

And then, um, my children, little girls were sexually abused.

And then seeing that nothing bad happens to the man who did it to them, and that the little girl got in trouble and you know, she's the one that made the mistake.

And all the things, the lack of understanding of what love is, what romance is, what marriage should be, what partnerships should be, um, what like, you know, across.

Sexes relationships and platonic friendships should look like everything is completely broken.

Mm.

And you don't know people outside of your cult and you don't watch movies outside of this world.

You don't read books, you don't have any depictions of anything else.

So this seems normal to you.

And I think that's a good thing to notice this seeming normal to you because I think a lot of people in just like mainstream world are like, this is wild, or that's very small.

It's not actually like deeply influencing, uh, the rest of our culture right now.

Well, one, you are wrong.

And I will tell you why in a second.

But two, I've been thinking the whole time you've been talking, I, I don't know if it was like the episode we did with Wendy and Sheila Jay, or if this was just a Sheila Reis thing.

Um, specifically talking about like egalitarianism is really the reality of most marriages, but yet we're teaching complementarianism in so many of these churches when the people teaching it aren't actually practicing it.

Now, I don't know that that's necessarily the case with someone like Doug Wilson, like I'm sure he probably practices what he preaches.

Also, I don't know that he does like, the thing is, is when we have these teachers saying this outlandish stuff, and then we have people like John Piper who are like, Hey, well like, yeah, that's a little bonkers, but this thing over here, this is, okay, so we can just sift through.

You don't understand that the worst, most malformed people are who are hearing these things and then being consistent.

So the issues I have is like, it's not actually like.

To me, Doug Wilson is a fruit of the same systems that we are exposing every single week on bodies behind the bus.

Like we systemically have an issue with fear, shame, and our solution to that is to grab for as much power as possible.

And Doug Wilson is an, and his beliefs is an expression of that.

Um, so when you hear these things and you think this seems a little bit extreme, or this isn't actually happening, well, you know what?

There are people that are taking it serious and it is actually happening.

And are governments actively trying to pass some of these stuff?

'cause those people have gotten up the hierarchy of our government.

Yeah.

This is, there's an important thing that has to be said about Doug and in particular about his little enclave in Moscow, Idaho, um, that.

That's kind of their model city, if you wanna think of it that way.

So what has to be understood is that when you're looking at the CREC, if you wanna find where the bodies are buried, Moscow isn't actually the place.

There are some bodies buried there.

There are definitely some bodies buried there.

You can Google a couple of names if you want.

Stephen Sitler would be one of them.

Um, and that is not to say that there's not stuff happening below the fold, so to speak in Moscow that we can't see.

I'm sure that when the lid inevitably comes off, an absolute nest of maggots is gonna crawl outta that thing.

But the point is they keep that very buttoned up from the outside looking in.

The cup and dish are clean.

What you gotta do is you gotta go out to where Doug Wilson's teachings are being deployed by like average preachers and that's where you actually see the fruit of the tree.

So John Piper can sit in his ivory tower in Bethlehem and he can decide that because Wilson agrees with his bizarre take on justification.

He can overlook the rest of it.

Which like as an aside, if y'all ain't been tracking John Piper's slow evolution from like a gospel centrality guy to a, well maybe obedience is actually the thing guy.

It has been truly bonkers.

But like because we journey, yeah, we've all been on and seashells included, just wild.

So like the fact that Wilson agrees with him about this truly aberrant take gives Piper cover in a way with evangelicals, he can hold onto this take.

'cause there's this other guy over here who also holds onto it.

But also like Piper's, like the softer version.

And the thing about Doug Wilson that people need to realize is you watch that CNN uh, interview and you see, I was like, I was talking to a friend who studies Christian nationalism, actually it's Caleb Campbell, who Doug is writing blogs about currently.

Um, and I was saying to him like, he, why does he come across so likable?

Like he actually presents so likable and that, but he's saying horrific stuff.

John Piper is the same way.

Oh yeah.

Dude sat there and was like, maybe endure getting slapped around a little bit for the sake of the gospel.

That is the same thing.

There are through lines here.

The difference is, and why you heard our board.

Just like grieving after the election.

Mm-hmm.

And why you have seen an uptake from bodies behind the bus since basically the, the like campaign trail is because these things are now being brought into the way that we govern our full country.

Yes.

And people claiming the name of Jesus are the ones doing it, and it is so much more powerful than.

People understand.

I guess my, my big thing too is like the fanatical nature of it and the violence behind it.

Like, I think like when CNN does a, like a, like let's say, I hate using the word secular, but we'll say secular, an institution that looks into this and says, oh, let's, let's do an expose on whatever Doug Wilson or whoever, they're scratching the surface.

Because the reality is, is the one thing that worries me is that the fact that if they believe that they are elect, that they are chosen and that this is God directive, a God directive for them, and that violence is on the table to take that at any cost and it's life or death for them and their families and their religion, that shit is historically horrible for society in a way that we can't even begin to understand.

So the part I worry about, David, is when you say.

It's being, where it's being preached in the small towns or the towns or the other towns where we're not seeing that.

I get fearful about what is spreading out there.

I mean, I, I see enough online to where I'm like, what is really spreading amongst these places?

And are we at a place of no return?

Because, you know, we just feel like this is our, our chance.

Like we've gotta, we've gotta bring in the millennium or, uh, whatever they Seinfeld called it the cranium, which is probably better.

Yeah.

But, but, but I, I mean, I think that's the part that scares me.

And I don't think that, that, that institutions and news organizations are really doing a justice to say, like, I think you both have done to really kind of break down the theology and the history of it.

We're not doing enough digging to say, Hey, you know what?

This sounds a lot like 1861, where we basically had a whole bunch of men who decided, you know what, uh, yeah, screw you.

We wanna enslave people, so we're gonna start killing our neighbors.

Um, like, yeah, like, I'm just being honest, like that's, we're not talking about this in a way that I think is, is appropriate enough about the intensity and the uh, uh.

Where we are in this whole thing.

Yes.

Co-sign.

Agree.

And I will take this a step further, which everyone on this call has had to hear me rant about.

I am extremely frustrated at the ex evangelical deconstruction movement, who has the experience, the life experience, to know the fruit of these types of, um, theologies, these types of beliefs, this type of system.

And yet the response is, because I got out two years ago, now I can dehumanize and belittle the people that are in it still.

And so the very people who know the language can reach their families, the, the people in their life that they have relationship with, the bridges that can be built in ways that someone on CNN or M-S-N-B-C doesn't have that, they don't have that input are burning.

Burning every opportunity and inroad into these spaces.

Where the reality is, is people like David and Margaret, Margaret, the work you're doing with these women, getting them into a space where they can be heard in a safe space and then make a plan to get out.

Like there are not enough people doing that.

And for those of us that are, have walked away from unhealthy churches, we really need to consider the way that we engage this conversation.

I've heard some language about bullying lately.

Like we just bully them.

Like, no, we can tell the truth.

Like we're ne, none of us on this episode are gonna shy away from telling the truth about who Doug Wilson is.

Or the fruit of Doug Wilson's teachings.

Yeah.

But what we're not gonna do is spend three hours making fun of the people who believe his teaching, making fun of him.

Even like, no, you're not worth the making fun of time that we're going to spend.

Like, we're gonna call you a wolf and we're gonna move on, and we're gonna start triaging the sheep that you've been devouring.

And so, I guess maybe this is my little grandstand, if you're hearing this and your gut is to be snarky about Christian nationalists, you need to understand that the root of Christian nationalists.

Is a lot of this.

And like David and Margaret said, these are people who are, they are brainwashed.

And that's not an excuse for grown adults doing horrific things, but it is a reality that we're working with.

And if you wanna be like actually contributing to any health going forward in the United States of America, or the world at large, which is also being radicalized into this outside of America right now, then you have to start, uh, caring about the fruit of the spirit in your relationships.

There it is.

All right.

Sorry guys.

That was a big, that's on point.

And I think, okay, so, you know, we have this whole movement that's happening in America and it's running the show right now.

If you attack it exclusively from a political standpoint, you're never gonna get anywhere.

If you attack it exclusively from a religious standpoint, you're never gonna get anywhere.

You have to look at the entire system.

So I've shared about how, you know, people growing up in the.

And to a certain extent, evangelicalism is just like a watered down version of it.

Okay.

Are groomed for this stuff.

But let's take a step back.

Have you ever driven through southwest Missouri?

Have you seen how dead-end it is there?

Children born into no opportunities, no educational resources, uneducated, all of the houses are falling down.

There's meth everywhere.

People are stoned out of their minds.

Their whole family's either high dead or drunk.

Um, and everyone's beating everyone.

And like, it's just, it's so traumatic.

Okay.

Like order is better than chaos.

Something to hope in, somewhere to belong.

People who, whether or not, I mean, they, it gets very complicated because they, so for example, we had, um, a lot of farmers right after.

Different bills were passed regretting voting for Trump, and it was horrifying to see the left's response to that.

You got what you voted for.

Who?

Who was, was even claiming to stand up for the farmers.

Who was even noticing rural America.

It was the right.

The right was at least saying, we see you.

It was a trap, right?

It was a lie, but they did appeal to them.

They made them feel seen and loved.

They made promises to them.

These were people who were betrayed, who were lied to, used and betrayed.

They are victims.

They also gave power to a horrible abuser.

Both things can be true.

And if we respond without holding both things, we're never gonna get anywhere.

Okay?

Maybe you'll get to express some anger that you have that is justified.

But if what you want is change, if what you want is this timeline to come to a nice, cute little end, um, then you have to get people to start to see that they are part of a system that doesn't care about them at all.

And you were part of that system.

You, us everyone on this call, we all believed this.

At one point we believed some version of these things.

And the reality is, is like the theists, they're actually consistent.

Yes.

The evangelicals aren't.

Yes.

Like, and they're all kind of, like we said, there's like through lines and crisscrossing happening, but like.

The reason why it matters to tell the story in the soft complementarian church of like the female worship leader who, you know, experienced abuse on staff because that is like the consistency of complementarianism.

It matters to tell those stories because the actual like finished down the line consistency would be what you guys grew up in, what you grew up in Margaret, like that's actually like living their faith, you know?

Yeah.

It's probably worth saying like, I didn't even grow up in this world, right?

Like I grew up in a pretty bogged standard Southern Baptist church.

Um, like I had a good dad and he loved me and my parents like, took care of me and did their best to kind of like, you know, keep the bad stuff away and let the good stuff in.

And I still got like two to the chest, one to the head.

In terms of Christian nationalism, I mean like it was lights out and all of it was downstream from theist.

If you haven't noticed, we feel really strongly that it's important for anyone claiming Christ, but really anybody in the United States right now to be educated about these things.

I'm so grateful for the work that you guys are doing.

Uh, I wanna give you all the flowers for how hard it's been and how much you have just been like grounding the pavement, working to educate people.

If you want to learn more, go to their Instagram.

I have Margaret's Instagram linked in our show notes.

She has a ton of like reels that she's like highlighted at the top where she talks about a lot of these things.

I remember you having like a Elsie Dinsmore real compilation.

You have Rush Doy, you're like doing the things.

So if you wanna deep dive, and it's helpful to do that, like watching a face on a screen.

That's a great place to go.

You can also donate to the work they're doing.

They have a 5 0 1 C3, so like if you want to empower people to continue to do this work, then we have to fund this work.

So if you're looking for a place to give, go, give to them.

Help them to be able to continue doing this and reaching these survivors and helping survivors out of the muck and the abuse and the systems that they are literally stuck in.

That is not an exaggeration.

Yeah.

And be educated so that you can effectively advocate in the moment we are in as a church and as a country.

It's your duty as a citizen, and it is your duty as a Christian to educate yourself about these things and to advocate for the marginalized and for the vulner, the vulnerable who are being harmed, profoundly harmed in these systems.

And it is much more widespread than you think.

The thing about this is, it's also worth saying, Jay, you had mentioned that you were like afraid about all this stuff.

You find this frightening and with good reason.

Um, so I'm not gonna tell you like that.

There's nothing to be scared of because like the truth is you're asking where is the spreading, it's a lot of places, but we're documenting a lot of that on Patreon as well.

So like if you're, if you're concerned about this stuff and you're wanting to know more and find about connections, we're putting a lot of that stuff on Patreon.

Wilson's a shockingly popular in Silicon Valley, actually.

It's gotten sense.

Big fans.

Um, among the billionaires over there, um, the founder of Gab wrote a book on general equity, the economy for crying out loud.

So like, if you want get into that, we're doing that too.

It's happening slowly, but we're trying to piece the whole thing going all the way back to Rush Dunney in the sixties and just making sure every data point is in there.

Mm-hmm.

Well, thank you for that work and I'm sure we will have you back to help us put together some of these dots over here on bodies behind the Bus.

But thanks for giving us your time and thanks for the work you're doing.

And if you are someone who wants to connect with Margaret and David after you've heard this and you are a survivor out of this space, reach out to them and hopefully.

You guys are able to connect and find ways to get resourced to get the help you need to thrive.