Shownotes
The latest episode of the Renaissance of Men podcast, hosted by Will Spencer, features an engaging conversation with Jon Harris, director of the documentary film "The 1607 Project" and host of the "Conversations that Matter" podcast.
The episode delves into the pervasive influence of social justice within the American evangelical church, tracing its origins and growth, particularly during Jon's seminary years. Jon shares his journey of exposing these ideologies in academia and the broader church community, highlighting the challenges and support he encountered.
The discussion also explores the historical and cultural significance of Virginia in shaping America, emphasizing the state's unique contributions to leadership and societal values. Through personal anecdotes and historical insights, the episode offers a critical look at the intersection of faith, culture, and politics in shaping contemporary Christianity.
Takeaways:
- The Renaissance of Men podcast is exploring the influence of social justice on the church.
- Host Will Spencer discusses how wokeness infiltrated the evangelical church and its impacts.
- Jon Harris highlights the significant influence of Virginia in America's early history and culture.
- The podcast underscores the importance of adhering to biblical principles amid social pressures.
- Listeners are encouraged to support the podcast with ratings and potential sponsorships.
- Will Spencer emphasizes the global reach and growth of his podcast, aiming for further expansion.
- Jon Harris shares insights on the challenges of maintaining Christian orthodoxy in modern times.
- The discussion touches upon the generational shift needed to address current church leadership dynamics.
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Transcripts
My name is Will Spencer and you're listening to one of the last episodes of the Renaissance of Men podcast.
Will Spencer:The shift is coming up quick.
Will Spencer:I have an official release date and I'm thrilled to share with you the results at last.
Will Spencer: r of the documentary film the: Will Spencer:Please welcome John Harris.
Will Spencer:You are the Renaissance.
Will Spencer:I gotta tell you guys, it has been a trip watching the american evangelical church wake up to Wokeness.
Will Spencer:Because before becoming a Christian, I'd been living in wokeness for decades.
Will Spencer:Even as far back as my senior year in high school, my classmates and I were joking that there was no way a white guy from Phoenix would get into Stanford, which is one of the reasons it surprised me most of all when I did my freshman year.
Will Spencer:Everyone then began separating themselves into their various ethnic groups, which is how I ended up as the social chair of the Jewish Students Association.
Will Spencer:I had never thought much about my family's religion, but everyone had to identify with something, right?
Will Spencer:I didn't want to be left out.
Will Spencer:As many of you know, I also lived in Stanford's african american theme dorm, ujima, for two years.
Will Spencer:The african american, asian american, native american, and latino american theme dorms were all a product of the same critical racial consciousness we see around us everywhere today, being beta tested on a university campus in the nineties.
Will Spencer: Fast forward to: Will Spencer:The words felt like a whip crack.
Will Spencer:I had no idea what they meant, just that they were supposed to hurt me somehow.
Will Spencer:They didnt.
Will Spencer:But they did stick with me as a moment when a man was attempting to use a very specific linguistic device to control me.
Will Spencer:It wasn't about the meaning of the words, but the feeling they were supposed to impart.
Will Spencer:He clearly expected my response to be an apology, perhaps because he'd tried that strategy before with success.
Will Spencer:And I believe that around that time is when what we call wokeness fully began to enter public consciousness, though no one called it that.
Will Spencer:All of this is also what I had to deprogram myself from while traveling overseas.
Will Spencer:Nothing will scourge feminist beliefs from you faster than traveling to a latin american nation like Colombia, where traditional sex roles between men and women are as fundamental as gravity and just as widespread, not to mention celebrated on salsa dance floors.
Will Spencer: identifying it formally until: Will Spencer:How could a faith that is so clear about the nature of men and women, guilt and shame, sin, salvation, justice, mercy, grace, confession, and redemption, fall prey to such an obviously counterfeit version of those transcendent principles?
Will Spencer:Many are trying to unpack that fall even today.
Will Spencer:But for those who have been in the church for a long time, there have certainly been signs.
Will Spencer:Which brings me to my guest this week.
Will Spencer:His name is John Harris, and you may know him best from the conversations that matter podcast, where he hosts daily livestreams and interviews with christian leaders, influencers, and newsmakers about the headlines of the day.
Will Spencer: cently produced the excellent: Will Spencer: fore the arrival of slaves in: Will Spencer: So think of the: Will Spencer:John is also an author, having penned two books on the influence of social justice on the christian church.
Will Spencer:These followed his experience in seminary, where he witnessed the slide of wokeness firsthand, his testimony of which literally catapulted him into the public eye.
Will Spencer:Put all of this together, and it becomes clear why John is the influential voice he is having amassed almost 50,000 subscribers on YouTube alone, which is no small feat, especially for a podcast that describes itself exclusively with three small christian traditional, masculine a much needed voice.
Will Spencer:Which is why I'm grateful to have had John on the show.
Will Spencer:In our conversation, he and I discussed the origins of conversations that matter, how he caught wokeness infiltrating his seminary, how social justice spread through the church, why architecture wont give you orthodoxy revealing the fall of christendom, why feminism is the church, and finally getting the baby boomers to let go.
Will Spencer:If you enjoy this podcast, thank you.
Will Spencer:Please leave us a five star rating on Spotify and a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts.
Will Spencer:If this is your first time here, welcome.
Will Spencer:I release new episodes about the christian counterculture, masculine virtue, and the family every week.
Will Spencer:Just a quick note, this podcast is available for advertising and sponsorship, so if you're an advertiser with a high integrity product or service looking to reach thousands of christian men, women, and families every month, please email infoenofmen.com for more information.
Will Spencer:I'm thrilled at this podcast growth year over year and to find that people are listening literally around the world.
Will Spencer:And with the rebrand coming up, plans are in motion to expand the show's reach dramatically without compromising the quality that makes the show unique in the podcasting world.
Will Spencer:And to my listeners, I'm honored by your time and attention.
Will Spencer:Thank you so much.
Will Spencer:You're also going to start hearing more ads on the show, so if you, like me, prefer an ad free experience, check out my substack at will spencerpod dot substack.com and become a paid subscriber to to enjoy advertising free content in both audio and video every week.
Will Spencer: podcast, the director of the: Will Spencer:John, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today.
John Harris:I do appreciate it.
John Harris:I'm looking forward to it.
Will Spencer:I've really been enjoying a lot of the stuff you've been putting out.
Will Spencer: I watched the: Will Spencer:And so I've been just looking forward to this conversation to find out more about your story and some of the things you've got going on.
Will Spencer:So thanks for jumping on.
John Harris:Yeah, thanks, Will.
John Harris:Yeah, I've appreciated you.
John Harris:I mean, I haven't known about your work for, I guess, that long.
John Harris:I think the first time I talked to you was when we did our interview, which was maybe a year ago now.
John Harris:Was it?
Will Spencer:Was it?
John Harris:Was it really a year ago?
John Harris:No, it wasn't that long.
Will Spencer:Yeah.
John Harris:Okay.
John Harris:So six months, whatever it was.
John Harris:And you are really knowledgeable on some of these things that I'm not as knowledgeable on some of these cults, and just there's a lot of, in my area, especially a lot of spiritism and stuff.
John Harris:And I just felt you were such a good resource, and I appreciate your humility and your love for the Lord.
John Harris:And so I'm looking forward to talking about, I guess, what I got going on.
Will Spencer:Yes.
Will Spencer:Well, I first heard about your show because you had my friend David Edgington on, and so that was really cool.
Will Spencer:I've just found my way into the reform world, and I found that there are people that have been exploring these topics for such a long time, and it's been such a wealth of information for me to dive into your channel and see the things that you've been talking about for a number of years and to have learned so much because I'm trying to figure out the reform world kind of is where it is today and how did it get here?
Will Spencer:And so there's a lot happening now politically, there's a lot happening socially, and you've been tracking it for a long time.
Will Spencer:So that's been like, oh, okay.
Will Spencer:These are the steps that have been taken along the way.
Will Spencer:So I guess my first question would be, just for my own edification, what led you to start conversations that matter?
Will Spencer:What was the inspiration behind it?
Will Spencer:And kind of what has been the growth path that you've been on since you started the channel or the podcast?
John Harris:Yeah.
John Harris:Personal growth, I'm guessing.
John Harris:Yeah.
Will Spencer:Or the growth of the.
John Harris:The numbers and everything.
John Harris: January of: John Harris:And the reason I started the podcast was because I needed an outlet.
John Harris:And I was in grad school at the time.
John Harris:I had been, at certain times in my life, writing blogs here or there.
John Harris:And for me, writing blogs was more of a process that I underwent to understand something.
John Harris:I don't know if you have that, but I don't always understand or grasp something by reading something, including in scripture.
John Harris:I don't always understand directly by reading a passage.
John Harris:But as I mull it over and I try to figure out what those words mean practically, I gain a greater understanding.
John Harris:And that's how my mind works.
John Harris:And so I didn't have time in grad school to write blogs anymore because I was writing all these term papers and things, and I thought, there's a lot of things I want to talk about, things in politics, especially things socially, that I can't really talk about it anywhere else.
John Harris:So why don't I just start a podcast?
John Harris:That'll save me time.
John Harris:Talking is easier than writing, and I can have a library of my thoughts on these things.
John Harris:And it was, I assumed, going to be more private because my blog didn't get a lot of hits.
John Harris:I think there was a few posts I made that might have gone semi viral, but to me, if I got 100 and people going to the webpage, I thought that was great, you know, so if I had a thousand, that was really big.
John Harris:Well, what happened was I did a podcast on my seminary experience, especially related to wokeness, social justice.
John Harris:I didn't know those terms and how they related quite at that point.
John Harris:I knew social justice was part of it, I suppose, but I didn't realize the full extent of what I had just underwent.
John Harris:I knew when I was there that it seemed marxist to me at some point level, but I just thought that the seminary was being disingenuous with students who would go there thinking southeastern.
John Harris:Where I went was the great missions school, when in reality, when they get there, a lot of what they're going to be hearing in chapel, reading on the seminary blog at the time, even in some of the classes, is going to be focused on political or social activism.
John Harris:And I felt that people needed to know about this, and I thought that I had gone through the right channels while at the school to try to address those things and didn't really get anywhere.
John Harris:After some talking with some wiser men, I decided that this was the right thing to do.
John Harris:I put out an hour and a half podcast of me just relaying my experience, and it went semi viral, and it got picked up all around the Southern Baptist convention.
John Harris:Within, I think, two days, I was at the g three conference, which I had not planned to go to at all.
John Harris:But there was a filmmaker there who was doing a documentary called enemies within the church, and he called me up, wanted me to come.
John Harris:So I went, and I was filmed for an interview with them.
John Harris:And then they said, would you mind going to different events across the country to promote this film?
John Harris:I said, sure, if my story helps.
John Harris:And so I started going across the country with them and supporting the film.
John Harris:And, of course, that made more connections.
John Harris:And I started talking more on my podcast about social justice, which it's funny, because I think the podcast before social justice was on hiking, you know, so it was supposed to be a very broad podcast about things I was interested in.
John Harris:And it became focused singularly on social justice and Christianity for about at least the next two or three years.
John Harris: And then: John Harris:And so my podcast gained a lot of traction at that point.
John Harris:I wrote a book that year I actually changed.
John Harris:I was going to write about the dutch history of New York, especially as the Dutch interacted with the Puritans, because a lot of people don't know this, but the Dutch didn't really care for the Puritans at first, and I wanted to write about that history, but I decided to change that all around and do one a thesis on social justice and Christianity in the sixties, seventies, and eighties.
John Harris:And that became eventually, I added some more things to it.
John Harris:But my book, social justice goes to church, and I wrote the next year, I came out with Christianity and social justice, religions and conflict, two books on social justice and Christianity.
John Harris:And so that kind of pigeonholed me into like, this is what I do, this is what I talk about.
John Harris:These are the kinds of things that you'll hear if you come to see me at an event and I had churches reaching out and conferences and that kind of thing for me to come and speak.
John Harris:So that's how it's grown.
John Harris:I suppose I could tag on that.
John Harris:I did do some documentary film work as a result of this and I've continued some of that and a lot of talking behind the scenes with people, some people that are somewhat influential in various organizations and how dressing and advising and informing on how to approach this matter of social justice.
John Harris:And so it's taken me places I never thought I would go.
John Harris:And on a personal level, I'll just end with this.
John Harris:The Lord, I think, has been behind all of this and he has allowed me to be in a position that I never would have been in had I not opened my mouth online.
John Harris:And if I had seen everything that would transpire, maybe I wouldn't have done it.
John Harris:I don't know, looking back, seeing cost benefit.
John Harris:But I think that initially, not knowing what I was going to get into, the Lord knew and he had me at the right place and the right time for such a time as this.
John Harris:And people always say, ask me, how do you grow a podcast?
John Harris:They say, I don't know.
John Harris:I just kind of fell into it.
John Harris:And I think the Lord was the one that put me in the place that I was.
John Harris:So that's what I've been focusing on.
John Harris:I think more recently I've started to focus more on liberalism and other matters.
John Harris:But typically what people think of when they think of me is social justice concerns in Christianity.
John Harris:Hmm.
Will Spencer:I mean, thank you for that background.
Will Spencer:I have a couple different thoughts about that.
Will Spencer:I think the first one that comes to mind is, so you just put out this podcast and then a couple days later you're at g three and then you're in a documentary film and then you're touring around the country.
Will Spencer:What was that like you said, if you only had opened your mouth.
Will Spencer:Well, you did.
Will Spencer:And it's like you just got whisked away on this magical mystery tour very quickly.
Will Spencer:What was that moment like?
John Harris:It was weird.
John Harris:I was starting class, I think for, because it was January and the semester was starting like the next day or two.
John Harris:It was an overlap.
John Harris:I'm trying to think.
John Harris:It was like the first week of school that they had g three.
John Harris:And I talked to one of my professors.
John Harris:I think I missed a class, if I'm not mistaken.
John Harris:But I said, I'm going down to g three.
John Harris:And at the time, I actually didn't even know it was g three.
John Harris:It was a pre conference called, I think, social justice and the gospel, something like that.
John Harris:And it was the Dallas statement signers that were primarily speaking.
John Harris:And so that's what I was asked to go to.
John Harris:I was only there one day, but when I walked in, I remember James White was there, Vodi Baucom was there, and all sorts of other guys, some of them whom I did not know.
John Harris:I didn't know who Tom askel was at the time, as I remember.
John Harris:I didn't know.
John Harris:I certainly didn't know who Tom Buck was.
John Harris:Some of the other signers, I didn't know who they were.
John Harris:I knew who those James White and Vodi Baucom were.
John Harris:But the weird thing to me was they all seemed to know me.
John Harris:And I remember James White was the first one who saw me.
John Harris:And he just stared at me and he said, I know you.
John Harris:I don't know.
John Harris:And I listened to James White.
John Harris:I didn't miss an episode for probably, like 15 years of the dividing line.
John Harris:And I just.
John Harris:It was surreal.
John Harris:I thought, you know me, you know?
John Harris:And he's like, yeah.
John Harris:And I said, did you watch my video on Southeastern?
John Harris:He goes, yes.
John Harris:And he told me he just lit up.
John Harris:And then he grabbed Bodie Baucom and introduced Bodhi Bakum to me.
John Harris:And I'm just kind of like, what is this?
John Harris:I don't understand.
John Harris:Like, I'm gonna pinch myself.
John Harris:This isn't reality.
John Harris:To go from kind of where I was to these guys know my name and know kind of what I said.
John Harris:So.
John Harris:So, yeah, it was interesting.
John Harris:And then to support the film, I just counted it a privilege.
John Harris:I wanted someone to take a whack at this.
John Harris:I had been in seminary for years watching this develop, and it seemed like no one cared in my mind.
John Harris:No one was talking about it.
John Harris:If it was brought up, people denied it was happening.
John Harris:And finally, there was a group of people, enemies within the church.
John Harris:Carrie Gordon, Judd, Saul, Trevor Loudon was one of the guys involved in that who were going to expose it.
John Harris:And I said, you have my sword.
John Harris:I'll do whatever I can.
John Harris:I'm just a little guy.
John Harris:I don't have resources.
John Harris:But if my story's compelling, then it's yours.
John Harris:And that's how that all came to be.
Will Spencer:So it's kind of like you walked into the Jedi council meeting and they're like, oh, wait, come here.
John Harris:Yeah.
John Harris:Well, a little bit, I guess.
John Harris:Yeah.
Will Spencer:So what was it?
Will Spencer:So all this context is very, very helpful.
Will Spencer:I came from the secular world, and wokeness doesn't even really have a name.
Will Spencer:It's just how the world works in that.
Will Spencer:And so coming into the faith and finding it in the faith, it's like, oh, wow.
Will Spencer:And so you kind of marinated in it in seminary, it sounds like, and you had the courage to speak up, like, hey, this is unbiblical.
Will Spencer:It's anti biblical, maybe even heretical in some cases.
Will Spencer:Is that kind of some of the things that you were experiencing, like, what stands out from your time in seminary that you're like, that's really bad?
John Harris:Well, I.
John Harris: In: John Harris:And it surprised me.
John Harris:Cause I thought this was a school that was big on expository preaching and oftentimes not even being affiliated directly with the Southern Baptists, which I also thought was odd, but they would be talking about racial justice.
John Harris:I think that was the first thing to get its foot in the door.
John Harris:It wasn't the homosexual stuff or the feminist stuff as much.
John Harris:Although now, looking back, I realize there was a default kind of complementarian, weak complementarian idea there.
John Harris:But what we think of as associated with the hash metoo movement and Black Lives Matter and the modern lgbt stuff, that wasn't really present.
John Harris:Well, I should say that wasn't present, with the exception of some of the BLM narrative.
John Harris: ter on about my experience in: John Harris:And I think I just called it the gospel of racial reconciliation, because that was the term they often used.
John Harris:But I realized that what they were doing was they were ascribing all this guilt to people who weren't really guilty, and then saying the way to rectify this and even using the term gospel to headline what this rectification would look like.
John Harris:But the way to rectify it was to diversify your churches and your theological books that you read and the speakers you listen to and the leadership.
John Harris:And in doing so, you would be fulfilling not only what revelation says about every tribe, tongue, and nation around the throne of God, but you would be fulfilling the reconciliation that Jews and Gentiles are to have in Christ.
John Harris:And it just struck me that that was so wrong.
John Harris:It just hit me.
John Harris:I knew at the time, hearing that kind of stuff, that that was just wrong.
John Harris:No one had to really tell me, but it wasn't a huge, huge deal because it was mostly in chapel.
John Harris:It wasn't in my classes that I was taking at that time as much.
John Harris:And I ended up.
John Harris:My seminary story's a little bit non traditional.
John Harris:I ended up leaving seminary.
John Harris:I got married.
John Harris: I came back in: John Harris:When I came back, it was like everything had changed for the worse.
John Harris: I remember in the fall of: John Harris:And, you know, the thing that bothered me was that I couldn't locate in the previous eight years of Obama one statement that they had been as enthusiastic about.
John Harris:And I remember the whole Paige Patterson thing that was not too long after that, where you might not know what this is, and it's a little too complicated to probably get into all the details, but they.
John Harris:Me too.
John Harris:Basically a conservative guy in the convention, and they set up a safe space thing at the school.
John Harris:I remember those pamphlets for safe spaces, and I saw the me too stuff now getting in, and there started to be a heavier concentration on abuse.
John Harris:So not only was there, I would say, a heavy CRT adjacent focus, and I could get into some details on that if you want.
John Harris:There's a lot of examples to pull from, please.
John Harris:But there was also a me too stuff coming in and a hint of some of the soft pedaling of LG, or I should say homosexual orientation and that kind of stuff.
John Harris:So the train was starting to make its way in, and I didn't see anyone.
John Harris:I'll just say this one thing.
John Harris:I talked to a few professors, and I couldn't really get anywhere with anyone completely, but the one professor who was actually sympathetic to, and he saw what was going on.
John Harris:I remember he wanted me to close the door, and he kind of whispered at me.
John Harris:You know, it was kind of like the Gestapo might hear us or something, or the stasi.
John Harris:And he was just kind of like, what's going on is a travesty.
John Harris:Like, he was so against what was happening, but he's like, if I say anything, I'm going to lose my job.
John Harris:And this is a guy who had been there forever, and I just.
John Harris:It shocked me.
John Harris:And he was basically like, keep your head down.
John Harris:Don't say anything.
John Harris:That was his advice, and that was very hard for me.
John Harris:This is wrong.
John Harris:But I tried to follow that to some extent.
John Harris:When I left, though, I'm not a student anymore.
John Harris:And I thought, well, if no one's gonna say anything, if the faculty is not gonna say anything.
John Harris:And I know about faculty members who tried to do something kind of, but no one was willing to go to public opinion or to talk to the people actually funding the school who are the Southern Baptist convention members.
John Harris:No one was willing to inform them about what was happening at their institution.
John Harris:And so I said, you know what?
John Harris:I'm gonna do it.
John Harris:And that went viral, and that also got me a lot of hate.
John Harris:I even remember not long after I came out and started talking about what was happening, I remember a death threat, and I remember thinking, I never gotten one.
John Harris:So I remember, like, it was in my inbox, and I'm looking at it, and I'm like, so do you call the police?
John Harris:Like, what do you do?
John Harris:Someone's saying, he's gonna kill me.
John Harris:But I didn't know who it was.
John Harris:It was anonymous.
John Harris:And now I'm realizing that's not a very uncommon occurrence with public figures.
John Harris:But at the time, I wasn't a public figure.
John Harris:So I thought, what do you do with this?
John Harris:And that was in the christian community.
John Harris:I can't imagine.
John Harris:Like, what?
John Harris:Like, who's saying this?
John Harris:Someone's very concerned about christian institutions.
John Harris:Really?
John Harris:Weird.
John Harris:Yeah.
John Harris:So that was kind of my thinking.
John Harris:Someone needed to say something.
John Harris:No one was doing it, so I'll do it.
Will Spencer:Well, I'm glad you did, because more needs to be said.
Will Spencer:Of course.
Will Spencer:I'm reading Meg Basham's book right now, and it just seems like a very long, slow slide.
Will Spencer:And I wish I could say that the way that you describe it and shepherds for sale describes it, I wish I could say that it sounds like a slow frog boil, but it kind of doesn't in some ways.
Will Spencer:It sounds like it just kind of started happening overnight, and everyone just kind of just went along with it.
Will Spencer:Like, okay, well, this sounds about right.
Will Spencer:And that's the part that doesn't make any sense.
Will Spencer:I mean, I guess in some sense it does, right?
Will Spencer:Because people don't like to pop their heads up, and that's not uncommon.
Will Spencer:But it just seems like everyone.
Will Spencer:It was just pushed on everyone all at once, and everyone's like, well, okay, I guess it sounds like the gospel.
Will Spencer:I mean, was that kind of your experience?
Will Spencer: uite quickly somewhere in the: John Harris:Yeah.
John Harris:Then it's a complicated question.
John Harris:I've thought about this a lot, and.
John Harris:Cool.
John Harris:I think you are onto something.
John Harris: they were hit by a truck, and: John Harris:Of course, for me, it happened years before that in seminary.
John Harris:But when it finally filtered down into the promotional pamphlets and policies of various organizations like Crew or Samaritan's purse or World vision or these big christian organizations, I think that's when people finally realized there's a problem.
John Harris:What they're saying sounds exactly like what the Democrat party is saying.
John Harris:But this had been going on behind the scenes before that, and that's important to point out.
John Harris:It was a more gradual thing, I think, in the halls of power than it was with the populations that actually funded these halls of power.
John Harris:So there's a populism that reacted against this.
John Harris:And we're seeing that in places like, well, Megan Basham's audience, I would say, like, it's composed of a lot of people on even x.
John Harris:If you're following that, when Megan Basham has someone oppose her, she ratios them something bad, you know, the people are with her.
John Harris:Well, that's not something that was present at all in 20 19, 20, 20, 20 21 even, really.
John Harris:And some of that could have been Twitter controls and all of that.
John Harris:But I know of a bunch of people that I can think of off the top of my head who at that point were buying into some of the woke garbage, and now they've rejected it.
John Harris:And so I think the train had to hit them.
John Harris:The train, it had to get personal, possibly.
John Harris:It had to affect their local church.
John Harris:Those are the people that I see as most ardently against it are the ones where it affected their business or their church directly.
John Harris:And they saw it rip everything apart like a tornado coming through.
John Harris:But yes, it is important to know that this was going on in the background for a long time.
John Harris:And one of the things I write about in social justice goes to church.
John Harris:Actually, I didn't realize.
John Harris:I have a copy of that right here.
John Harris:I write about it in this book.
John Harris:Is that in the seventies there were a lot of people who thought, well, observers, I should say, who paid attention to these kinds of things, who thought evangelicals would wind up on the left.
John Harris:If you remember, Jimmy Carter was promoted as an evangelical.
John Harris: ed the Chicago Declaration in: John Harris:And it was a social justice declaration.
John Harris:You can look at it.
John Harris: sounds like it was written in: John Harris:There was before Jimmy Carter, there was an evangelicals from a governed group.
John Harris:And it seemed like the evangelicals could be open to Democrat party politics.
John Harris:But it wasn't a broad thing.
John Harris:It wasn't like the evangelicals were lining up for this.
John Harris:It was more academic types and people who would later become the founders of organizations and people teaching at schools, more elite types that were attracted to the leftism.
John Harris:One of the things that I try to point out, and maybe you could even say it's the thesis of the book in some way, is that these figures, and I'm talking about people like Ron Sider, people like Jim Wallace, Tim Keller.
John Harris:I have a whole section on Tim Keller.
John Harris:People like Richard Mao.
John Harris:I mean, there's a lot of figures I talk about.
John Harris:These guys ended up gaining influence kind of behind the scenes.
John Harris:And as the religious right, which was a populist movement, gained traction in the eighties, these guys didn't go away.
John Harris:They were still in the backgrounds.
John Harris:They were still.
John Harris:And they had people who followed them who were gaining positions in influential places.
John Harris:And Russell Fuller will tell you, who's a former Hebrew professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, that there were a lot of liberals that he even worked with and knew were liberal.
John Harris:They did not have orthodox theology that ended up at conservative places because they needed a job.
John Harris:And so the southern Baptists like to talk about how they purged in the eighties and early nineties, they purged themselves of liberals at these schools.
John Harris:But Russell Fuller will tell you that's not entirely accurate, that a lot of these people ended up staying, and they ended up people who were influenced by that first crop of social justice activists and evangelicalism.
John Harris:They ended up gaining more influence.
John Harris: I think what happened in the: John Harris:We like to use them as, like, the focal point.
John Harris:But Christianity today, I would say, had been on this train even before that.
John Harris:They ended up with these popular leaders who used mass media, who used the Internet to get their message out.
John Harris:But these guys had already been somewhat influenced.
John Harris:And I'm talking about guys like David Platt.
John Harris:I talk about him in that book.
John Harris:There's a picture of David Platt and Russell Moore, and Ron Sider is in between them, and it's on Instagram.
John Harris: ers, two popular audiences in: John Harris:So it escaped the LAPD.
John Harris: to the popular circles in the: John Harris: n the seminaries, and then in: John Harris:That's one of the things.
John Harris: I probably said it in: John Harris:That is exactly what's happened.
John Harris:They have gone into these churches, and they have split them up, and it's terrible to see what's happened.
Will Spencer:That makes a lot of sense.
Will Spencer:That makes a lot of sense to see the way the seminaries and the institutions were infiltrated at the highest level.
Will Spencer:The men went underground.
Will Spencer:They had some rising popularity, but then through the eighties, they went underground.
Will Spencer:They trained the next generation of pastors who emerged into the public, and then they started bringing it to the congregations.
Will Spencer: hen it all kind of happens in: Will Spencer:That's when it finally surfaced to the everyday average.
Will Spencer:Okay, that makes sense.
John Harris:I think that's exactly right.
John Harris:Yeah.
Will Spencer:Okay.
John Harris:And I don't know where all the lines are.
John Harris:I mean, sometimes you see evidence of lines.
John Harris:You know they're there, but it's more private.
John Harris:But I do trace a number of lines in that book, and I.
John Harris:I talk about a lot of modern examples of pastors and influential christians who will say things in their own writings or their own speeches commending the work of the guys that I told you about.
John Harris:I guess you could call them the new left evangelicals from the seventies.
John Harris:They had a profound influence that we're feeling now.
John Harris:It was a delayed impact, though, so we don't know where it came from.
John Harris:That's one of the ways to look at it.
Will Spencer:So are those people still influential?
Will Spencer:Are they still.
Will Spencer:Okay, great.
Will Spencer:Okay, well, not great, but what do we do to dislodge them?
John Harris:Tim Keller's the most.
John Harris:He's not with us anymore, but he is the most popular name that he truly is from that group of evangelicals.
John Harris:He didn't have the prominence of Iran Sideror Richard Mao, although he was influenced by Richard Mao, but he was there.
John Harris: an example, he talks about in: John Harris:And in that keynote, Tom Skinner gives a plea, he gives a call for activism, social activism.
John Harris:And he says that the social gospel guys from the early 20th century, they had a social gospel, but it was incomplete because they didn't have the personal gospel.
John Harris:He talks about the fundamentalists then, and he says, well, the fundamentalists, they didn't have the whole gospel either because they just had the personal gospel without the social gospel.
John Harris:So he says, what we ought to do is we need the whole gospel.
John Harris:We need to combine these things.
John Harris:So you have the social gospel, you have the personal individual gospel, and only then will evangelicals regain their witness and be the light of the world and all these kinds of things.
John Harris:They'll be successful and they'll obey Christ's commands.
John Harris:Tim Keller says that he listened to that speech, I think he says three times because it had such a profound impact.
John Harris:And he was a mandehead that was, you know, basically he was on the hippie train and he was on the left on issues like, you know, racial justice, the Vietnam war.
John Harris:I think those were the two main things.
John Harris:But, you know, I think even if I remember correctly, even like some of the patriarchal stuff.
John Harris:And he just didn't like that.
John Harris:Christianity wasn't saying anything about this.
John Harris:The more conservative, you know, Christianity wasn't saying anything.
John Harris:They weren't opposing Vietnam and out there in the streets protesting, where are they?
John Harris:Once he listened to that speech, it changed him.
John Harris:And he got involved with inter varsity.
John Harris:And then.
John Harris:And I go through.
John Harris:I have a whole biopic basically of him, of showing how he went from where he was to where he eventually was when he passed away, of getting influenced more and more by guys who were on the left.
John Harris:And in Christianity, part of that new left crew, you know, Tom Skinner was one of them.
John Harris:But also Harvey Khandhe played a big.
John Harris:Had a big influence on him at Westminster.
John Harris:Gave him a hermeneutic that I would say is pretty similar to a liberation.
John Harris:The.
John Harris:In fact, it might even be the same really of a liberation theology hermeneutic as a way of reading scripture.
John Harris:It's very similar, like an evangelical version of it.
John Harris:He talks about Carl Ellis and Carl Ellis really allowing him and his wife to see that they had white privilege.
John Harris:He doesn't use the term because the term hasn't come around yet, but that's the concept he's talking about.
John Harris:He didn't think he was racist, but then Carl Ellis, or I think it's actually Elwood Ellis.
John Harris:There's Carl Ellis and there's Elwood Ellis.
John Harris:But he shows him that, no, you actually are racist because you have this privilege.
John Harris:And through no choice of your own, the world just bends to you.
John Harris:I go through all of that stuff and show Tim Keller was influenced by these guys.
John Harris:Then he becomes a popular author and pastor.
John Harris:And now who has he had a profound impact on?
John Harris:Everyone.
John Harris:Most of my seminary classmates, I would say, respected Tim Keller on some level.
John Harris:So he was the one who carried the water for people who, they're names you never would have heard of unless you probably read my book or studied the issue more.
Will Spencer:I think the thing that surprises me to hear about this, while it makes sense and there's something very human about it, I spent a long time living in a world with no objective standards.
Will Spencer:I didn't have the word of God.
Will Spencer:One of the things that surprised me is to see the deference paid to people who are sliding off of God's word into directions that seem to want to appeal more to the mainstream.
Will Spencer:That particular phenomenon and how much resistance there is to call that out.
Will Spencer:I get it.
Will Spencer:It's a very human instinct.
Will Spencer:And coming from the secular world where no one has any basis to do that, well, I guess that's just their path.
Will Spencer:It's like, well, no, there's the standard here that we're supposed to be listening to.
Will Spencer:And so to have seen the same pattern take place within evangelicalism makes me even happier to know that people have been calling it out because it should be called out.
Will Spencer:It must be called out.
Will Spencer: on board the train now, post: Will Spencer: But to have made the call pre: John Harris:Yeah, somewhat.
John Harris:Yeah.
John Harris:It was not something that my, let's just say it probably caused my wife some stress to see her husband taking these very controversial stands very publicly.
Will Spencer:What?
Will Spencer:No.
John Harris:And I had to think through things.
John Harris:Do I really want to say this?
John Harris:Do I really want to do this?
John Harris:But like I said before, it came down to the fact that no one else was going to do it.
John Harris:Praise God.
John Harris:There were a few people.
John Harris:I remember.
John Harris:James White and then John MacArthur were some prominent, more prominent names that started to tackle some of these things.
John Harris:But even when James White was talking about my seminary, he was talking about a guy named Walter Strickland who teaches there, and liberation theology that was present there.
John Harris:I remember listening to him saying, yes, someone saying something, but I remember also thinking, like, he doesn't know 95% of it.
John Harris:You know, he's.
John Harris:He's seeing some of these things that are happening, but it's just so much worse.
John Harris:It is so much worse.
John Harris:And, you know, it is.
John Harris:It's crazy.
John Harris:I didn't even realize until I came out.
John Harris:So maybe there was some ignorance there.
John Harris:I didn't know the risk I was taking fully that this was all over evangelicalism.
John Harris:I thought it was mostly my seminary.
John Harris:At first I thought I got a weird seminary, and the other seminaries are probably not like this.
John Harris:And then when I started getting people from all over the country saying, keep going.
John Harris:Keep saying what you're saying.
John Harris:If I were to say it, I'd lose my job.
John Harris:But my seminary is the same way, in prominent names.
John Harris:I mean, I can't betray secrecy, confidentiality, but I had some prominent people reach out to me and encourage me, people that, because of their position there, and they can't say anything because it's all about relationships.
John Harris:And I get that.
John Harris:I just thought, someone's got to say something that poor people funding these institutions don't know.
Will Spencer:It must have been quite a thing to say that.
Will Spencer:And then you have a whole bunch of people come to your side, and you're kind of brand new in this world.
Will Spencer:You've just graduated, and so you have James White and Vody Baucom.
Will Spencer:Excited to meet you.
Will Spencer:There must have been a large number of people who, I mean, you mentioned you got death threats.
Will Spencer:There must have been a large number of people that you felt that as a young man just graduated, suddenly you've got a big target on you and.
Will Spencer:Yeah, I can imagine that's.
Will Spencer:I mean, it's pretty frightening.
Will Spencer:There's really no other word I can think of.
Will Spencer:It must be scary.
Will Spencer:You didn't think this was on your first day of seminary.
Will Spencer:Yay.
Will Spencer:First day of seminary.
Will Spencer:And then, like, you graduate, and then you're immediately.
Will Spencer:Immediately targeted in some ways.
John Harris:Well, you're a millennial.
John Harris:I think I'm a millennial.
John Harris:Right.
Will Spencer:So Gen X.
John Harris:Are you Gen X?
Will Spencer:Mm hmm.
John Harris:Okay.
John Harris:All right.
John Harris:You must be barely Gen X then.
John Harris:So.
John Harris:Because you look young.
John Harris:So I think this goes maybe for Gen X too, though.
John Harris:But as a millennial, the Internet wasn't real, right?
John Harris:We could say stuff online, and it didn't seem to.
John Harris:That wasn't real life until it was.
John Harris:And I think that I was on that.
John Harris: tion kind of happened because: John Harris:Before that, it seemed like you kind of could.
John Harris:There were some examples of people who got in trouble, but it wasn't, like, a big thing.
John Harris:And so I probably didn't fully know all the risks I was taking, but I found out pretty quickly, and that made me all the more motivated to do what I was doing because I realized that this was a need that people.
John Harris:People really did need to see what was happening.
John Harris:It needed to be exposed and explained and, yeah, so I'm grateful again.
John Harris:God is the one behind all this, in my opinion.
John Harris:He's the one.
John Harris:And he chooses the weak things to shame the strong.
John Harris:That's one of the things that God does.
John Harris:He also will give grace to the humble.
John Harris:And I think, you know, not to toot my own horn, that as soon as you start saying you're humble, you're not, right.
John Harris:I have my own pride.
Will Spencer:I am so humble.
John Harris:I'm so humble.
John Harris:I'm so humble.
John Harris:I really was, though, someone without a lot of, like, ambition in Christian, in Big Eva.
John Harris:At one point, I wanted to be big in the Southern Baptist convention, and I realized after going to seminary, I do not want to even be in this denomination, I don't think.
John Harris:And so there wasn't any, like, ambition there for gaining a place, a seat at the table.
John Harris:There wasn't.
John Harris:And I was weak.
John Harris:I was.
John Harris:I was a small potato.
John Harris:Like, no one knew who I was.
John Harris:You could have squashed me like a bug at first, I think, like, I just didn't have any platform, any defense.
John Harris:I had nothing.
John Harris:Now I have more.
John Harris:But there were no resources.
John Harris:And so for me to just turn on a webcam, it wasn't even a webcam.
John Harris:It was my cell phone.
John Harris:I think I just held my cell phone, you know, to turn on my cell phone and just start talking to it about this, these issues that was.
John Harris:I think the Lord is the one that had to take that and make it something powerful and big and meaningful in people's lives.
John Harris:And it really has been, I know for a fact, based on private correspondence and even just some public things, things would not look the way they do now if it wasn't for the fact that I spoke out.
John Harris:And I'm not taking credit for everything at all.
John Harris:This was a team effort.
John Harris:But there's a reason Megan mentioned me in the book.
John Harris:And it's not because she needed me for her research.
John Harris:It's just because I knew where a lot of the skeletons were buried, and I was able to give her information if she asked for it and help her to see.
John Harris:See things that were harder to see if you hadn't been paying attention.
John Harris:And, yeah, I mean, like, one of the examples, there's so many I could think of, but one of them that I'm really proud of, I guess, is we did a documentary called paint the wall black of a guy named Juan Riesco who was canceled.
John Harris:He was a christian business owner.
John Harris:Canceled.
John Harris: ber one restaurant on Yelp in: John Harris:And overnight, they.
John Harris:Thousands of people showed up to protest him because he wouldn't post a black square because he didn't agree with BLM.
John Harris:And it seemed like Christians didn't even want to tell his story.
John Harris:I found out from a blog, and then I think TbN had done a little piece with him or something.
John Harris:But I talked to him on the phone, and he actually, I mentioned him on podcast.
John Harris:He reached out.
John Harris:I talked to him on the phone, and I said, where are the teams of filmmakers that are lining up?
John Harris:You have such a compelling story.
John Harris:Juan, what happened to you is incredible.
John Harris:You former homosexual children of immigrants, you know, he just.
John Harris:He fit the woke kind of social justice, like what they're looking for, the intersectionality, you know, bent.
John Harris:It was in his favor, and I.
John Harris:And he was hated, and he was canceled.
John Harris:His business basically destroyed.
John Harris:And so we told his story.
John Harris:I never made a documentary film before.
John Harris:We made paint the wall black.
John Harris:I went out to Chicago, someone I had never worked with before, another Christian who supported the podcast, said, you do some film work.
John Harris:What can we do here?
John Harris:And it really got his story out there far and wide.
John Harris:And it exposed BLM, in my opinion.
John Harris:It also exposed christians who don't seem to, who seem to shy away from him.
John Harris:I mean, he talks about this.
John Harris:He talks about people from, I think it was moody Moody Bible institute out there in Chicago, people showing up who had been, you know, moody students to protest him during BLM.
John Harris:I mean, it's just.
John Harris:It's surreal.
John Harris:But he's a cheerful guy.
John Harris:He's a happy guy.
John Harris:And for him, who cares about the business?
John Harris:I've been saved by Jesus Christ.
John Harris:That's what really matters.
John Harris:God loves me.
John Harris:He's going to protect me.
John Harris:Story of faith.
John Harris:And I'm just glad I could have never made that documentary.
John Harris: I could have never made the: John Harris:So I see all these blessings coming from that initial step.
Will Spencer:Mm hmm.
Will Spencer:Yeah, praise God.
Will Spencer:Very much so.
Will Spencer:And you're right.
Will Spencer:Like, God is behind all of it.
Will Spencer:You couldn't.
Will Spencer:You couldn't if you had gotten on your phone.
Will Spencer:Like, I'm gonna say something that's gonna go viral.
Will Spencer:Like, it doesn't work that way.
Will Spencer:You know what I mean?
Will Spencer:It just.
Will Spencer:It's impossible.
Will Spencer:It's a gift and a blessing.
Will Spencer:And if you.
Will Spencer:I believe if you act in integrity, you speak truth.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:The consequences that come from that are also him.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:And so you're just.
Will Spencer:You're offered an opportunity, a path to walk, and you could walk it.
Will Spencer:It was lawful to walk it, and you chose to walk it.
Will Spencer:And I think the impacts are speaking for themselves.
John Harris:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.
Will Spencer:So just a quick question then.
Will Spencer:So I'm hearing about these pastors and seminary professors and even the everyday believers who take these ideas in.
Will Spencer:Now, again, my journey was the other way.
Will Spencer:I just lived in these ideas and using Christianity.
Will Spencer:And in part because of encountering Christianity, I was able to unwind them from myself.
Will Spencer:In fact, the black squares thing actually played a role in my conversion to Christianity, at least from my subjective experience, where I could feel the weight of shame.
Will Spencer:Because I had traveled for a while, I had instagram with all my travel photography, and everyone wanted to take this travel photography page, which I had curated, and just dump a black square on there.
Will Spencer:I'm like, no, I'm not going to put a black square on this.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:With this thing that I try to curate and take good care of.
Will Spencer:And I could feel the weight of shame and exclusion and being cast out of the tribe and understanding the kind of grip that it was trying to get on me.
Will Spencer:Once I encountered christianity and started understanding the notions of original sin and redemption, I was like, oh, this is playing on some of the same themes.
Will Spencer:So Christianity wipes all this away.
Will Spencer:And so it was through that experience, in part, that I was able to understand some very deep things about Christianity.
Will Spencer:But to see people within the faith who travel the opposite direction, they grow up in the faith, and then these very seductive ideas begin wrapping themselves around the axle of people's identity.
Will Spencer:I don't exactly understand how that happens.
Will Spencer:That's not to say there isn't a good reason for it.
Will Spencer:And I know that some percentage of them are just going along with it.
Will Spencer:They're keeping their head down, or they don't have the courage to speak up.
Will Spencer:All those things are true, but it seems like it starts to wrap itself around people and they become true believers.
Will Spencer:How does that happen?
Will Spencer:And does that happen because of social pressure?
Will Spencer:Well, my pastor, he believes it, so therefore I should.
Will Spencer:Or do people actually believe the scriptural arguments that are made in favor of this, or maybe all of the above?
John Harris:Yeah, I think there's a lot that goes into that.
John Harris:We have a basically watered down kind of Christianity anyway.
John Harris:That's the default Christianity in America.
John Harris:We don't have to talk about the social justice thing.
John Harris:I think to totally understand this, you can look at the.
John Harris:I'm just saying, before social justice stuff, you can look at the kinds of things churches were doing.
John Harris:So I went to southeastern.
John Harris:Obviously, Southeastern is considered a conservative, biblical, some would even say fundamentalist kind of school.
John Harris:It's not Princeton seminary, it's a Southern Baptist school.
John Harris:And the church plants that are like the people who graduate and then want to go on and plant a church.
John Harris:And the way you're even encouraged, I think, to think about church is to look at it as a social organization that obviously has an important role to play in your spiritual life.
John Harris:But there's a lot of focus on reconciling that organization with modernity in some way.
John Harris:And so what I mean by that is, you know, and I want to phrase this the right way because I understand there are people who are in strip malls because that's where you could get a space to worship the Lord.
John Harris:And there's no shame and nothing wrong in that, let me say that.
John Harris:But the preference for strip malls, the preference for the ideal, is we should not have christian symbols.
John Harris:We should have corporate looking symbols, and we should call our buildings and our organizations something that does not sound like a church.
John Harris:It should be liquid or the river or some kind of odd name that doesn't clue you into the fact that this is actually even a religious organization.
John Harris:Steeples.
John Harris:I'm looking at architecture.
John Harris:We're not going to have graveyards.
John Harris:That's too sad.
John Harris:And you walk in your experience, oftentimes it's all about you.
John Harris:We want you to have a good experience.
John Harris:Get a free coffee if you're a visitor.
John Harris:The pastor is not very formal, and I'm not legalistic on this.
John Harris:I don't think it's a sin to be casual.
John Harris:I think, though, the motivation behind much of that was, again, a reconciliation with trying to make Christianity palatable and comfortable for people who don't like traditional church settings.
John Harris:The problem is the people who often don't like traditional church settings aren't.
John Harris:They're not as winnable as we think.
John Harris:When we do win them, oftentimes we don't win them to Christianity so much as we do.
John Harris:This is my theory, obviously.
John Harris:I think we win them to community, we win them to a show, we win them to other things.
John Harris:But I don't think we win them to true Christianity because true Christianity will always point you towards the good, and it'll point you towards God.
John Harris:It'll point you up and it's supposed to have.
John Harris:There's a loftiness to it.
John Harris:Thinking about death, thinking about eternity should be on the front of your mind as you're looking at true biblical Christianity.
John Harris:There is definitely a hierarchy involved in Christianity.
John Harris:There's definitely the exaltation of good taste and there's a formality to it in how you approach the Lord.
John Harris:I mean, I'm talking about true Christianity.
John Harris:All of those things play into how we approach the Lord.
John Harris:And they say something about who God is, I think so we've, in a large part, we've dropped a lot of these things.
John Harris:There are still obviously churches who keep some of these things and they're legalistic and you don't want to go in there and it's dead man's bones.
John Harris:And I understand that.
John Harris:That's often the retort.
John Harris:That's also true because those things in and of themselves, architecture won't give you orthodoxy in and of itself.
John Harris:I could show you a lot of beautiful buildings and nothing spiritual is going on in there.
John Harris:But my point though is that we orientated ourselves away from heaven and eternal life and towards temporal life.
John Harris:And so when you have a political movement come in like wokeness or it could have been any political movement, I think we were already weak enough to buy into it because we are in this reconciliation posture, reconciling ourselves to whatever the world is putting out there.
John Harris:And the world of course, being not just what John, obviously there is what John talks about, the lust of the eyes, lust, the fetch, boastful pride of life.
John Harris:But I'm talking about powerful institutions, I'm talking about the media, academia, Hollywood, education.
John Harris:All of these things are lined up against Christianity.
John Harris:And the way to neutralize it, the way to accommodate it, the way to try to live within it has been to not be the church anymore, not look like a church, try to be the kind of Christian that proves to everyone else that overturns the stereotypes they have of christians and proves that christians are actually good people and we have social good.
John Harris:I think I give you so many examples.
John Harris:They're just flooding into my mind of people who have done this.
John Harris:But those are the architects.
John Harris:That's at least what the architects of our current demise, I think have given that to us and that weakened us in my opinion.
Will Spencer:This is so interesting because I had never thought about this before, but it's something that I've observed the churches in the strip malls like, yes, okay, if you have to meet there, you have to meet there.
Will Spencer:But I had never thought, but I can see it now, that there's a preference for that.
Will Spencer:There's a preference for churches without christian sounding names, with very secular kind of appearing logos and all.
Will Spencer:There's nothing overtly christian about it.
Will Spencer:It seems profoundly watered down.
Will Spencer:I had never really thought about that as a strategy to reconcile with the world.
Will Spencer:I thought about non denominationalism, I thought about Baptist, Presbyterian, I thought about all that stuff.
Will Spencer:But I've seen so many of these churches and I'd never thought of it that way.
Will Spencer:It's been a big question in my mind of, like, what's.
Will Spencer:What's going on there?
Will Spencer:Like, I think I understood on the surface what it was not trying to do, but I didn't understand, like, it was trying not to be traditionalism or legalism or whatever.
Will Spencer:It's trying not to be, you know, your father's church or your grandfather's church.
Will Spencer:Like, I guess I understood that.
Will Spencer:But for the age that we're in, you know, that wants to seem modern and innovative.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:Maybe that's the way that I thought about, like, we're innovating on church, which maybe is just a euphemism for, like, we want to reconcile with the world.
Will Spencer:I never thought about that because there's lots of those in Phoenix.
John Harris:It's really.
John Harris:So, yeah, you could say reconciled to the world, reconciled to elite institutions.
John Harris:You could also say reconciled to modernity.
John Harris:Cause all those things are very modern.
John Harris:There's a practical atheism almost at play in it, where they don't want to actually think too much about eternal things.
John Harris:The only eternal things that you need are the more therapeutic things.
John Harris:So the pastor, the office, or the role of the pastor ends up being more of a life coach, a therapist, or a social activist.
John Harris:That's where.
John Harris:And of course, social activism today and the social justice movement is really just building a utopia.
John Harris:It's finding heaven on earth.
John Harris:And I think there's an attraction to that because we've gotten rid of the idea of heaven after death.
John Harris:We hardly talk about when was the last time.
John Harris:I mean, you probably go to some good churches, but maybe for people listening, when was the last time you heard your pastor talk about hell or heaven?
John Harris:They probably talk about heaven.
John Harris:More therapeutic way to comfort you, and it should be used to comfort.
John Harris:But the idea of orienting our lives, though, towards heaven, towards the eternal, towards the good, towards goddess, and looking at that realm for guidance, I don't think that's at play in most churches.
John Harris:Not prominently.
John Harris:I think there's a big focus on a personal relationship that you have with Jesus.
John Harris:And then I think when you focus on that too much, to the detriment, I should say if you focus on that to the detriment, because you can't really focus on that too much, but to the detriment of these other things.
John Harris:And it's just about you and God and not the corporate ness of the church as the bride of Christ, not the formality of who you're actually approaching, who God actually is, but it's more of a buddy casual kind of thing, then that is going to leave some things unaddressed in your human nature because we should be orienting ourselves to some kind of moral vision.
John Harris:So if you get rid of that in the church, where are you going to find it?
John Harris:You're going to find it in social activism, you're going to find it in other places, I think.
John Harris:And the social justice movement, I argue, is kind of a christianized heresy.
John Harris:It is because they do have their own holy books that you can't question, which are press perspectives.
John Harris:They do have missionaries who are essentially their professors and elites in society.
John Harris:They have at every step, I mean, they have their penance, the born again experiences, getting woke.
John Harris:I mean, it's all there.
John Harris:It's all there like the augustinian structure of wokeness and social justice.
John Harris:So if you're already hungry for that and your church doesn't really fulfill those things, then you're going to try to integrate that into the church to fulfill what's missing.
John Harris:And I think it'd be better if we just went back to the way things, the way churches used to be.
John Harris:You don't have to have like some super specific brand that you have to come up with that looks like every other brand out there to convince people that you're not a church.
John Harris:Like you can just build a building that looks like a church.
John Harris:You can sing songs that are appropriate for church dressed in a way that is suitable for a church, and act like this actually matters, and act like God's actually going to come back and judge things instead of pretending like he's just there as your life coach.
John Harris:I don't know, I guess to enrich your life a little more, he will enrich your life.
John Harris:But those other attributes of God can't be suppressed.
Will Spencer:That really lands because I'm putting myself back in the shoes of when I was still secular and I can see the churches that have that branding as something that would be more appealing to me and would feel safer.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:And that's not necessarily a good thing, but like, oh, I can step in the doors here rather than something with a scary word like orthodox, you know what I mean?
Will Spencer:Or with all the families dressed nicely, that might be too much, but I can walk into a big gray box and with sort of a modern style logo with a name that's vaguely maybe spiritual sounding and that would be safer.
Will Spencer:But it makes me wonder what low expectations a church like that would set for its believers, right?
Will Spencer:Like, if you have someone come in the door and you don't ever make any sincere effort to mature them in the faith, right?
Will Spencer:What are you expecting?
Will Spencer:Like, people are just going to stay there because it's pleasurable, but the real believers will end up leaving.
Will Spencer:Maybe they will actually get saved and they will want to grow up in the faith and they will look around and say, hey, can we start talking a little bit more about orthodoxy?
Will Spencer:Like, yeah, the pastor read this, but then I found this other passage I was reading on my own.
Will Spencer:And so it seems like a losing strategy.
Will Spencer:But I can also understand if you've lost thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Will Spencer:If you've lost a sense of a church having that mission, the social justice ideology will plug right into that spot, bringing about a utopia, a utopian vision that doesn't align at all with God's plan for the world.
Will Spencer:And so this now a lot of sense why they catch on.
John Harris:There's sacrifice, there's judgment.
John Harris:These are things that we don't like to talk about in church.
John Harris:But the social justice movement has those things.
John Harris:So if you're lacking that and, you know, I think we all know deep down inside we have sinned, we are guilty.
John Harris:And there does need to be some kind of rectification of that.
John Harris:Now, of course that's the gospel.
John Harris:But if you have a weak gospel and the social justice movement comes in and says, we're gonna punish the bad guys, there's gonna be a reckoning and we're gonna, you know, be part of the judgment with us, which is basically what they're doing.
John Harris:We're going to cast people out in the outer darkness who are bad and racist and sexist and all that.
John Harris:That's called canceling them.
John Harris:There's something about that that does resonate with human nature and it fulfills, it gives you purpose in your life.
John Harris:And for all the talk that a lot of modern settings, modern churches, they'll use words like purpose.
John Harris:I mean, it's almost like, like there's a, what do they call those focus groups, you know, that are finding out what words do people like to hear and stuff.
John Harris:I would have.
John Harris:I have no doubt that there are probably focus groups that are being used to figure out church growth strategies and all of that kind of thing.
John Harris:There's firms, I come across a few of those.
John Harris:I remember first Baptist Naples, when we did a documentary on them, because that was a whole story.
John Harris:But anyway, one of the things, the.
Will Spencer:New pastor from the SBC, was that the one in Meg bash book?
John Harris:Yep, yep, yep.
John Harris:So I was the one who was, you know, I talked to the people there and kind of set it up.
John Harris:Set.
John Harris:Set them up to have a documentary.
John Harris:I went there and I was screening everyone who was going on camera for that.
John Harris:And that one of the things that happened was they brought in a group to this megachurch to give them advice.
John Harris:And it was called Oxano.
John Harris:That was the group.
John Harris:And some of the advice that they told me this group gave was, in my opinion, just awful.
John Harris:But it was along the lines of what I'm saying, like, you need to get rid of these programs.
John Harris:You need to instead do this.
John Harris:And really with, I think underlying it, the idea of we need to diversify the church, so make it attractive to.
John Harris:It's too white, it's too old, or it's too this or that, right?
John Harris:So we need to have the United nations in the church.
John Harris:And so that means changing the way we do church to attract them.
John Harris:We need so this focus on diversity and equality and all of these kinds of things.
John Harris:And those actual ministries who are doing good, some of them, well, they're draining resources from the church.
John Harris:Well, what is the church supposed to be doing, though?
John Harris:This is one of the big questions.
John Harris:The church doesn't exist for itself as far as a local church is not an institution that exists just to perpetuate itself.
John Harris:And it doesn't care about people, it doesn't care about the church around the world.
John Harris:It's just its own church, its own institution, its own success.
John Harris:That's a really bad way of looking at church.
John Harris:But that's how a corporation would look at itself, right?
John Harris:That's how a business might look at itself.
John Harris:And so I think we've taken these principles from business and the corporate world and inserted that into church.
John Harris:And it's to our own peril, really.
John Harris:We may be able to.
John Harris:I'm open to the idea that we may be able to get more people in the door for some things, but what are we really giving them?
John Harris:Are they really growing in Christ?
John Harris:If one of the points of diversity in your church, and I can say that this is common, is that we not just.
John Harris:It's not just that we need other races, every race present, but we also need Democrats and Republicans sitting next to each other without any offense.
John Harris:And we need homosexuals there, and they shouldn't be offended.
John Harris:You know, if that's your idea of diversity, which is how it is now, uh, then you're just watering down the message more and more and more and more, which is what we have.
John Harris:We have a watered down message.
John Harris:It doesn't really help people much.
John Harris:It might give them a pep talk, but it's like, uh, hearing a TED talk every week and being part of small groups that might help you gain connections in a world that's otherwise disconnected.
John Harris:So there, you know, there's.
John Harris:There's the social purpose it serves.
John Harris:But I think as far as the things that traditionally a church is actually there for, which is to worship God in spirit and truth, to do it corporately, to really come before him and know what he requires of you, and then conform your lives to that and pledge together to be accountable, to do that with each other.
John Harris:Where is that in the modernization, most modern church settings?
John Harris:I don't see it.
John Harris:It's hyper personally focused, too.
John Harris:It's not this idea of corporately pledging to each other, confessing sins to one another.
John Harris:I don't see much of that myself.
John Harris:So I think there's been a weakness, and the malady the church is going through is not social justice related.
John Harris:And I had to come to this, by the way, over time, I did think.
John Harris:I think initially I was more thinking that social justice killed it.
John Harris:Right.
John Harris:Like, the church was going along its merry way, doing pretty well.
John Harris:And then this.
John Harris:This woke stuff came.
John Harris:And for some individual churches, that does appear or feel like the way it happened.
John Harris:And it might be.
John Harris:I think overall, though, the broad picture of this whole thing is there were some really bad things that were happening before social justice ever was popular.
John Harris: e fall of the church preceded: John Harris:2020 just revealed, I think, what was already there.
John Harris:And I think there were a lot of christians caught off guard because they thought, similar to how I thought, that things weren't actually that bad, that things were going along pretty decently, and especially in the young, restless, reformed world.
John Harris:The reformed world obviously thought, we have really good theology on soteriology, and I'm not even so sure we had good soteriology, to be quite honest.
John Harris:When everything's a gospel issue and you widen the gospel to be like, you're already playing into the whole social gospel stuff when you start doing that.
John Harris:But let's just say, hey, we got predestination right?
John Harris:We got tulip, right?
John Harris:Man.
John Harris:There's so many things beyond tulip that we need to get right, I think in order to have a good, functional church.
John Harris:And a lot of the guys who were popular because they were resurrecting tulip, they had a lot of those other things wrong.
Will Spencer:Yes.
Will Spencer:I saw a tweet about that two, three weeks ago that what the young, restless and reformed had revealed was that they brought forward some of the soteriological doctrines of the reformers and they left literally everything else.
Will Spencer:And that lack is being revealed right now, including in the reformed church.
Will Spencer:I've got Zach Garris, honor thy fathers.
Will Spencer:He's going to be coming on the show.
Will Spencer:He's talking about it.
John Harris:I love him.
Will Spencer:Yeah, I can't.
Will Spencer:His book, Masculine Christianity, that's on my recommended reading list for sure.
Will Spencer:It leaves no room for doubt.
Will Spencer:And it seems to me that that's the sort of stuff that was completely left out in the young, restless and reformed.
Will Spencer:It was almost like, and I'm sure that this much thought didn't go into it.
Will Spencer:It was almost like a movement was crafted specifically to ignore social issues.
Will Spencer:Like, we're going to focus so heavily on this, so don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
Will Spencer:Maybe that's the case.
Will Spencer:I don't think so.
Will Spencer:I think that's probably outside conspiratorial thinking, even for me.
Will Spencer:So.
Will Spencer:But it does have that effect.
Will Spencer:Like, wow, what's the stuff that we can leave out that people will really need to know?
Will Spencer:Let's leave that stuff out just real quick.
Will Spencer:There's something that I heard that's happening here in Phoenix, and I think this speaks to the phenomenon that you're describing.
Will Spencer:And now I don't know if this is happening, but someone had, someone had said they had heard about it.
Will Spencer:So take this for what it's worth, but they said that there are a lot of churches around the valley that are failing, which is not an unusual thing, and that all of those churches now are being bought up by a church conglomerate.
Will Spencer:So they're all being rolled into one mega church kind of corporation with all these different essentially franchises.
Will Spencer:And so it speaks to the corporatization of the church worship experience.
Will Spencer:And you can imagine, like, I don't even know what the name of the organization doing the buying is, but you can imagine that like something of that size and scale with that kind of economic or scale ambition anyway, is probably not going to have the healing kind of doctrines that people are going to really need in their lives.
Will Spencer:And it's really, when I heard about that, well, first of all, that makes a lot of sense because so many churches are failing.
Will Spencer:And it goes without saying that people would see that as a business opportunity in some ways.
Will Spencer:So, I mean, I don't mean to call it exclusively a business opportunity, but it's like you can kind of see that, well, what is this church doing?
Will Spencer:Are they really like, we're going to bring, you know, true, strict biblical truth, or are we going to bring some of the model that you've been describing, which is like, ted talk, social gospel, feel good, you know, easy kind of stuff?
Will Spencer:Is that what's actually going to be spreading?
Will Spencer:And it seems like logically that it would.
Will Spencer:So all these pieces really fit together and help me identify things that I've been seeing, but I haven't really been able to explain.
John Harris:Yeah, I have not heard of what you're saying.
John Harris:That's interesting.
John Harris:And the concern, without knowing anything else about it, I would have is that once you become a franchise, I guess you end up having to respond to market forces, and that's going to do.
John Harris:And it's not just market forces you're responding to.
John Harris:The bigger you get, the more you're noticed by governing authorities.
John Harris:And so you end up having to respond to pressure from governing authorities as well.
John Harris:I think this is why denominations at the highest levels, you see the most compromise, and it's your local church pastor in usually smaller churches that tend to be more solid and stable.
John Harris:And there's very few megachurches that I can say that have good pastors that seem like they have good character and they're not corrupt and they're not compromised on social justice or other issues.
John Harris:So that would make me nervous.
John Harris:Just the scale of it.
John Harris:It could be a great, I don't know what you would even call that, but it could be a great organization.
John Harris:But just the scale of something like that and having churches, then it's not a denomination.
John Harris:It sounds like that would be a major concern.
John Harris: r churches did much better in: Will Spencer:I think so.
Will Spencer:I think so.
Will Spencer:I mean, finding small, faithful churches that stayed open and that were, that had to be less aware, let's say, of market forces that had less visibility, that it's a small local, almost an underground congregation, kind of expect them to draw the ichthus fish sign to signal that they're still open.
Will Spencer:But that's the feeling.
Will Spencer:And this also helps me understand why the pushback on reformed theology specifically.
Will Spencer:Because this is a world like literally just warp speed through the faith.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:In reformed theology.
Will Spencer:Yeah, this is great.
Will Spencer:From the apology of membership class that I took, like, oh, fantastic.
Will Spencer:And so as that has been kind of spreading out into the christian culture more broadly, particularly in the past couple, few years, the pushback that's being received within Christianity around that, that hasn't made any sense to me either.
Will Spencer:And so now all these pieces are kind of clicking together like, oh, okay, this is now the larger.
Will Spencer:Of course, yes, I'm aware of the national posture towards Christianity, negative world like, I'm aware of that.
Will Spencer:But reformed theology specifically embedded in a larger church culture.
Will Spencer:The response of that larger church culture to reform Christianity has been somewhat baffling to me.
Will Spencer:I mean, I have assumed that there's old reasons for it, but now this makes a lot more sense because it's actually two different models.
Will Spencer:It's two very different models.
Will Spencer:You have something that's more responsive to the world in both economic and social and political terms versus responsive to.
Will Spencer:What does the actual book say?
Will Spencer:And so those worldviews would be very much conflict.
John Harris:Yeah, yeah.
John Harris:And I don't want to downplay the.
John Harris:I mean, it's good that reformed theology kind of made a comeback there for a little bit, I think, like at least soteriology.
John Harris:But yeah, I wish that we would have been.
John Harris:That was the emphasis.
John Harris:Right.
John Harris:And it seems to me like the solas are more what we needed.
John Harris:And perhaps even now Stephen Wolf's bringing this up quite a bit.
John Harris:But the order of loves, really understanding, hierarchy, structure, responsibility, duty before God, those are things that we didn't really have as much.
John Harris:And, you know, it's a cure.
John Harris:I don't have the answer to why.
John Harris:That kind of got popular for a while.
John Harris:The Calvinism was kind of.
John Harris:It was cool to be a Calvinist, right.
John Harris:Like, it was the thing.
John Harris:I was part of that to some extent.
John Harris:Like, I really thought if you got that right, you got everything else right.
John Harris:And now I realize, wow, okay, there's some.
John Harris:Some of the biggest, you know, calvinist churches were some of the biggest woke churches, too.
John Harris:They learned to marry those things together.
John Harris:But.
John Harris:But yeah, we have a weak church.
John Harris:And really this is the.
John Harris:So what I've done is I've tried to educate, I've tried to expose, I've tried, you know, I'm trying to, like, hold people's feet to the fire and show this is the direction I think we should go.
John Harris:And the next book, I'm finishing it up now.
John Harris:I'm giving some positive plan, both politically but also in the church, ecclesiastically, where I think we should go, but ultimately I think as christians we need to remember that in the end the church belongs to Christ and we need to be on our faces before the Lord, pleading with him that he would do something and not being passive, because I wanted to preface it the way I did.
John Harris:I'm not passive about any of this, but I'm open to the Lord using me, and you will, as the means to accomplish some of these things.
John Harris:But we need to be on our face before him to raise up godly leaders.
John Harris:We are lacking in faithful leaders with character so much in the church today, and we need that.
John Harris:And we need men who orient their lives to heaven, to the divine.
John Harris:And it sounds maybe a little mystical, and I don't mean it to sound overly mystical, but I do think there's an element to Christianity that we can't quite quantify, that there should be an element, almost mystical element, of communing with God and understanding from the word, obviously his plans, but then through circumstance and as we walk with him, the specific ways in which we fit in, how our good works that were preordained by him fit into this whole thing.
John Harris:And so I would just say to people listening out there, really pray for the church, because ultimately God has to do something.
John Harris:All our efforts at reforming and all these things, they can fail.
John Harris:And that's been the lesson of the last 15 years is these guys who thought young, restless reform guys, they were reforming the church and bringing it back to orthodoxy.
John Harris:They did some, there were some good things, but it has, the harvest has not been good, in my opinion.
John Harris:And so we need to pray to the Lord of the harvest to really reform us in the way that we actually need and not to be afraid of the world.
John Harris:I think that's going to be the number one barometer going forward that we will use to evaluate leadership in the church.
John Harris:And whether a church is compromised or not compromised is how afraid of the world and the power structures that be, that love, sin are they?
John Harris:And what do they respond to that pressure?
John Harris:Or do they say, you know what, when the world comes by and says you're a bunch of bigots because you believe a, b and c is the response, well, you don't understand, let's have a cup of coffee, come to one of our services, it's so great.
John Harris:It's not going to offend you like you think, or we're going to cushion it somehow.
John Harris:No, let's just be unapologetic about it.
John Harris:No, this is what the word of God says.
John Harris:We're not backing down from it.
John Harris:In fact, we're going to emphasize it even more because apparently you need it, you know, not, not as jerks, but we need to contrast even more so with the world.
John Harris:And that's what I want to see.
John Harris:We just got to pray that the Lord raises up people to do that.
Will Spencer:I like that answer.
Will Spencer:Can I push on it in a particular spot?
John Harris:Yeah, absolutely.
Will Spencer:Okay.
Will Spencer:So one of the things that is kind of going around today is just how many, just how left leaning young women are.
Will Spencer:I think it's 25 to 44.
Will Spencer:Is the demographic right that they are just so hard to the left and they're leaving churches as well.
Will Spencer:And so it would seem, and the opposite phenomenon is happening with young men.
Will Spencer:Young men are getting more conservative and are returning to church.
Will Spencer:So it would seem on this particular point that if we were to really lean in to being gracious but firm.
Will Spencer:Right on this is what the book says that it could and maybe even will and maybe even is drive away an entire generation of women specifically.
Will Spencer:And so what do we do about that?
Will Spencer:I mean, that's where I want to push because that seems to be something that it's not quite happening yet, but it might happen real soon.
Will Spencer:So what's the response to that?
Will Spencer:I mean, I have my response to it, but I'd like to hear what yours would be.
John Harris:Yeah.
John Harris:What were you pushing back on?
John Harris:I don't know if I disagree with the.
Will Spencer:Well, so if we're supposed to really lean in, if we're supposed to really lean into the gospel, really lean into what the word says, and that specific leaning.
John Harris:Oh, the consequence of it accelerates a.
Will Spencer:Trend of specifically women fleeing.
Will Spencer:What do we do about that?
John Harris:I mean, my answer is going to be pretty simple.
John Harris:Just do it anyway.
John Harris:I don't really.
Will Spencer:That's a good answer.
John Harris:Yeah, I don't have anything to expand on there.
John Harris:I was just preached this last Sunday on the verse that says first Thessalonians 514, that we are supposed to help the weak.
John Harris:We're supposed to be patient with all men, right?
John Harris:We're supposed to encourage the.
John Harris:Now it's kind of weird because I had this whole memorized that was like two days later, and I'm like, what did I preach on?
John Harris:Encourage the faint hearted.
John Harris:And I did this all backwards and admonish the unruly.
John Harris:It starts with, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, patient withal.
John Harris:That's how it goes.
John Harris:So I reverse engineer it there.
John Harris:But when it comes to women who are in the church, that are thinking of leaving because it doesn't match, I guess, an egalitarian standard they have or something, a feminist idea.
John Harris:Then you have to triage it and you have to, on a case by case basis, I think, look at the circumstance.
John Harris:Are these women, you never shy away from the truth.
John Harris:Are these women unruly?
John Harris:If they're unruly, then I guess you turn up the volume a little bit.
John Harris:You actually admonish you correct.
John Harris:That doesn't mean punish.
John Harris:That means you correct the thinking.
John Harris:But if they're weak, if it's a circumstance, I can think of a circumstance where it's a woman who just, maybe they're a bit deceived.
John Harris:They're open, humble, but they don't like the patriarchy stuff, and that just puts a bad taste in their mouth because of whatever reason.
John Harris:Then I think that maybe there's even a personal thing in their own lives.
John Harris:Their father was terrible.
John Harris:They had a bad boyfriend.
John Harris:Then I think if they're faint hearted, then you have to encourage them.
John Harris:You're not going to approach them in the same exact way.
John Harris:It's amazing to me how many girls, too, they're raging feminists.
John Harris:You've probably seen this phenomenon, or a girl who's more on the feminist side.
John Harris:But then they get married and it like, I think it like their worldview changes.
John Harris:If it's a good man, you know, they start seeing things differently.
John Harris:That's what we would hope would happen, you know, that some of these people who are deceived because that's what it is, would realize that they're the error of their ways.
John Harris:But how are they going to realize it unless you say something?
John Harris:Something has to be said at some point.
Will Spencer:Point, yeah, I've called it elsewhere, civilizational brinksmanship.
Will Spencer:Be nice to us, or we'll just withdraw from civilization and we'll just let it all collapse.
Will Spencer:I've seen women say that on Twitter and all of that.
Will Spencer:It's quite odd, really.
John Harris:I've never seen that.
Will Spencer:Oh, yeah, there's a whole cadre of conservative female influencers, I don't know how many other Christian, but they're saying conservatives are really mean, and if you're not nice to us, we'll just go vote Democrat.
Will Spencer:And I have seen that.
Will Spencer:And it's quite odd.
Will Spencer:It's quite odd to see.
Will Spencer:There's a spitefulness to it.
Will Spencer:It's particularly, some of it centers around the abortion issue.
Will Spencer:Some of it centers around the real questions that conservatives have over, for example, the 19th Amendment.
Will Spencer:And we don't have to unpack that right now.
Will Spencer:But my stance on that is just that when you set men and women as opposition groups in a voting bloc, you immediately cut the population in half.
Will Spencer:You're going to get chaos.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:That's how I see that.
Will Spencer:But that's a much longer discussion.
Will Spencer:So they say, well, you have to be nicer to us, and you have to essentially trying to move the goalposts on feminism.
Will Spencer:We want the conservative party to be more accommodating to feminism.
Will Spencer:And when you have men who say, no, that's wrong, and we can't do that, and we have now 60 years plus of history to say why all these things are a bad idea.
Will Spencer:The girls fold their hands and say, fine, well, we'll just go vote Democrat then.
Will Spencer:And it's like, well, yeah, exactly.
Will Spencer:But it's the, but within a church context, within a church context, it's like it shows up there as well.
Will Spencer:And so I think that's what I mean by the civilizational brinksmanship.
Will Spencer:There's a resistance to any amount of masculinity.
Will Spencer:It tries to pick away at it.
Will Spencer:It's bizarre in my mind.
Will Spencer:But when it comes to, like, if.
John Harris:You'Re in a church, you're part of a, an organization that by definition has a male hierarchy.
John Harris:And that male hierarchy does it.
John Harris:Well, biblically speaking.
John Harris:And traditionally speaking.
Will Spencer:I got a dozen lady pastors that disagree with you.
John Harris:Well, they can call that a church, but that's, you know, they're out of step.
John Harris:So they're, and that's a pretty fundamental thing.
John Harris:I would say that elders should be men.
John Harris:But you worship a God who presents himself in scripture using male pronouns.
John Harris:And there is certainly Jesus himself being masculine and his disciples all being men, all the authors of scripture being men.
John Harris:You're entering a religion that is, and I don't think I have to shy away from saying this.
John Harris:It's dominated by men, and that doesn't mean there's not a place for women in it.
John Harris:There's a very special, prominent place for women in Christianity, but it's not being in charge of where the direction of a church, not directly in charge.
John Harris:So that's the thing you have to assess, I guess.
John Harris:Do you really want to be part of a church?
John Harris:It doesn't sound to me like someone who has the attitude you're describing is really interested in being part of that organization.
John Harris:So if they're gonna go vote democrat, that sounds like a much better organization or like it's an organ, not better, but it suits their assumptions about reality.
John Harris:So the problem who I fault with a situation like that is the church.
John Harris:You know, where did the church, whether it's a local church or a denomination, where did they ever give the impression to a woman who thinks the way that you're saying that this organization is somehow accommodating to you or you would be a good fit for this like that?
John Harris:Or your ideas can be at home here?
John Harris:That's ridiculous.
John Harris:You know.
John Harris:You know, Amy Bird needs to know that the OPC is not her home.
John Harris:Like, this is not, you know, to pick, you know, I don't know enough about Amy bird.
John Harris:I'm assuming.
John Harris:I just hear people say things, so I'm assuming, and I've seen some of her quotes that seem to be go along with what you just said.
Will Spencer:Sure.
John Harris:Like, it just doesn't sound like that's the organization you're interested in, so you're gonna go find another one.
John Harris:And we can't bend over backwards to change our organization.
John Harris:Otherwise, we fundamentally change it, and it's no longer a church.
John Harris:If you really take that to its conclusion, it's no longer a church.
Will Spencer:I agree with you.
Will Spencer:I agree, and I'm glad.
Will Spencer:And I'm glad you said that, because I think that there does come a point where, again, you have to be gracious but firm and say, this is what it says, and this is not what we do around here.
Will Spencer:And if that's what you're looking for, there's a better organization for you, and I wish you blessings to go towards it.
Will Spencer:And I think that's a really important stance to take.
Will Spencer:It doesn't need to be angry.
Will Spencer:It doesn't need to be vindictive.
Will Spencer:It doesn't need to play into the victor victim kind of dynamic.
Will Spencer:But to say that, hey, the bitter fruit of feminism is we have.
Will Spencer:I mean, the numbers are there.
Will Spencer:It's generational rebellion from God, right?
Will Spencer:And this goes right along with awokeness.
Will Spencer:In fact, I see it as the root of all the wokeness.
Will Spencer:And so, like, if that means that there's going to be an entire generation that walks away from the church, that it expects to bow down to their needs, like, well, you're just going to have to walk.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:And so that's why I'm glad you said that, because I think that in many ways, that's just in the air, right?
Will Spencer:That's just in the air.
Will Spencer:In the conflict around the election, around abortion and all this different stuff.
Will Spencer:You have a specific set of the population, half of it, in some sense, that's demanding things be done on their terms.
Will Spencer:It's like, well, in the secular world, that's certainly one thing, but when it comes to the word of God, this is God's word.
Will Spencer:Not a whole lot of wiggle room in some of these things, particularly around lady pastors and stuff like that.
Will Spencer:And if you don't like it, yes, it's very good.
Will Spencer:It's great.
Will Spencer:And it's difficult.
Will Spencer:The Chesterton quote, it's been found difficult and not tried.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:And so that's why I ask, is because I think all of us, in many ways, many of my listeners, male and female, and I hear this a lot from women especially, which is why I talk about this, is women who deal with rebellious women in their own lives, say, well, the word of God says this.
Will Spencer:And so I submit to.
Will Spencer:To my husband and then the vicious attacks that they get from the women around them.
Will Spencer:So to hear you say that, there does come a point where a clear line must be laid, and if people fall on one side or the other, bless them in that.
Will Spencer:And I think that's really important, that.
John Harris:There are two groups that matter.
John Harris:I just thought of.
John Harris:There are groups because I think almost every girl who's raised in America at this point has a bit of feminism in them somewhere.
John Harris:Or at least people have tried to inject it somewhere.
John Harris:Lots of men, too.
John Harris:And men, yeah.
John Harris:Through, whether it's through media, through education, through, I don't know, like, oftentimes, parents and relatives.
John Harris:And I do think that there are women like that who have a bit of feminism.
John Harris:They're not full, you know, they're not the purple hair, you know, raging about abortion, but they are, like, they do, let's say they see marriage as a 50 50, you know, like, they're not really the helpmate of the husband.
John Harris:They think of it as a project, that they're on an equal setting in the sense of, they are equal in the sense of worth, but I'm saying equal in the sense of, like, they should be able to call the shots in the marriage 50% of the time.
John Harris:I mean, this is a very common thought, and many of these people go to churches with good, orthodox statements of faith that have, uh, pastors who are preaching the Bible.
John Harris:And, um, I think what will happen is if, when they're exposed to truth in the scripture, they will bend.
John Harris:That's really the key thing, is, like, it's not to.
John Harris:I don't want to vilify people just because they have feminist tendencies.
John Harris:Uh, I I think that I would be more concerned about someone, uh, who, let's say they're only two inches off, like, or two, two clicks off from the biblical view, but they were unwilling to bend.
John Harris:I have less hope for that person than I do the purple hair raging feminist who's willing to bend a scripture, you know?
John Harris:So I think that's the first thing.
John Harris:The second group, though, I was thinking of is there are people who, and I've met them, who legitimately, I think, probably have gone through some abuse and possibly in the church in some cases.
John Harris:The pastor was a hyper patriarchal, very assertive figure, but who was unfortunately abusive and sinful.
John Harris:And so they have an incorrect picture.
John Harris:And I think of it, I don't remember what shooting it was.
John Harris:I mean, the NRA does this a lot, but there was a shooting, and the NRA came out and basically said, the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
John Harris:And I think of the same thing in this context.
John Harris:Like, the only thing that can really stop a bad pastor from doing evil things is a good pastor.
John Harris:Like, you have to.
John Harris:Your alternative is not just get rid of pastors, just get rid of male leadership.
John Harris:Men shouldn't run anything.
John Harris:I'm going to run to a female pastor, or I'm going to do my own thing with the Lord.
John Harris:The solution to that is find a pastor who also takes initiative, but is actually good, cares about his flock, obeys those commands.
John Harris:So throwing out the baby with the bathwater is something I see.
John Harris:And I've seen this all too often with some of the people raised in the most conservative fundamentalist type churches can be the most raging social justice warriors partially because of this.
John Harris:There's another dynamic at play, too, I think, that causes this.
John Harris:But that is one of the things I think often that happens is they saw things that they think they don't like, and then they overreact to it and just say, well, I guess these pagans over here who really hate what I grew up in, they must have the truth or something.
John Harris:And some of them, they find out pretty quickly that the pagans are.
John Harris:The grass was not greener.
Will Spencer:Grass is brown.
John Harris:Yeah, interesting.
John Harris:I didn't think we were going to go down this rabbit hole, but this is interesting.
Will Spencer:Yeah.
Will Spencer:I mean, I appreciate you saying that about bending to scripture, because I think that's a really important thing, that the social justice world wants to bend you to its gospel.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:And it's very effective at doing that.
Will Spencer:And I think we've all been enculturated in that.
Will Spencer:And in the same way, like, we can hold the word and say, no, you're supposed to bend to this, and this bends the social justice gospel.
Will Spencer:This is what it's supposed to do.
Will Spencer:So I appreciate you framing it that way, because I think that's really important for both men and women, because being bent to the word of God is.
Will Spencer:I don't know how to phrase this, but it's a great privilege in a way.
Will Spencer:Maybe that's not the right word to describe it, but it's a gift, and to treasure that gift for men as well, so that you don't have to be a law unto yourself so that you can have a law to guide you.
Will Spencer:What are you as a man using to guide yourself, if not God's law?
Will Spencer:Your own.
Will Spencer:Don't do that.
Will Spencer:That's not going to work out so well.
Will Spencer:Scripture warns you about that.
Will Spencer:And the world is full of men who follow, who are a law unto themselves.
Will Spencer:And so to say that to treasure the experience of being bent to God's word I is something that a lot of young men right now are discovering, because maybe they grew up fatherless or maybe they had absent father or whatever, all kinds of different reasons why young men are finding their way into various churches, multiple different denominations, not only reform theology.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:So.
Will Spencer:But I'll take it.
John Harris:Yeah.
Will Spencer:And at the right, and at the same time, being bent to God's word is something that is documented to be very unpopular with women.
Will Spencer:And so that's why I brought it up, because this is what's in the headlines today.
Will Spencer:This is what we're looking at in November.
Will Spencer:And so I'm grateful to hear you say, like, no, we have to hold to these principles in God's word for how we shepherd our flock for who comes into our community.
Will Spencer:We can't bend our entire community to this person because this is what they're looking for.
Will Spencer:This is the book that we follow.
Will Spencer:And to give christians the courage to stand up for that, discovering what sounds like the courage to stand up for that after God's word was the one that was, so to speak, was bent.
Will Spencer:In your experience in seminary, et cetera?
John Harris:Yeah.
John Harris:That seems to be the biggest dividing line.
John Harris:Are you willing to bend to God's word, or do you bend God's word to your own thinking and your own preferences?
John Harris:So we need, obviously, men, as you said, that are convictional.
John Harris:And I think you're right.
John Harris:I think there is a stirring going on.
John Harris:I feel something gurgling up, and we just got to pray that the Lord nurtures this and that older men don't.
John Harris:One of the things I noticed about the boomer generation, they tend to hold on to their positions for a very long time.
John Harris:They don't like to, they don't like to retire as much as other generations.
John Harris:And my grandfathers, both my grandfathers, they retired, I don't know, in their maybe like when they were late seventies, 80, I don't know.
John Harris:I think seventies for one.
John Harris:But what did they do for the rest of their lives?
John Harris:They were your grandpas, like the normal grandpa.
John Harris:They weren't trying to hold on to a position in control for a long time.
John Harris:And so my hope is that these young guys you're talking about, that they are nurtured, helped along, encouraged by older men who are in churches and christian organizations, the solid ones who do existential, and that there's not a clash there that they're welcomed in, even if their ideas are a little different.
John Harris:Like that both can come around the word of God and say, what does the word say and how should we apply it?
John Harris:And I think if that's the humility and the posture, we can really get through anything.
John Harris:I mean, as far, like any serious issue at least, like, we can really come up with solutions.
John Harris:And we don't need to be shooting at each other or I crossing swords.
John Harris:Like, there's a lot of unity, I think, that we can have, and I think we're still waiting to get there.
John Harris:I don't, I mean, hopefully, and I don't think this is the case.
John Harris:X social media is not necessarily the greatest barometer for this.
John Harris:You know, if you looked at X, you would think that there's not a lot of unity right now.
John Harris:Christians are just fighting with each other all the time, sometimes solid brothers.
John Harris:But I think that, and my hope is that actually there's a stirring going on, though, beyond that.
John Harris:People who aren't even on social media and stuff are discovering what the word of God teaches about all kinds of things that conflict with our modern understandings.
John Harris:And I hope that there's older people there to nurture, to guide, and then to place them in positions of authority, because that's what we need more than anything else, is male, solid male leadership in the church.
Will Spencer:So you actually mentioned something that a friend, I said, I'm interviewing John Harris from conversations that matter.
Will Spencer:Do you guys have any questions?
Will Spencer:And someone actually did give me a very interesting question.
Will Spencer:He asked, what can we do?
Will Spencer:Because there is a generational divide between the boomers who have been holding on for a while, and this younger generation that wants to try doing things in a new way, kind of scripturally all things being equal, there seems to be a sort of power struggle where it's like, hey, grandpa, with great respect, thank you very much for your time of service.
Will Spencer:It's time to let go and let the next generation come in and take over.
Will Spencer:And it feels like in lots of different ways, all across the board, in America, perhaps even worldwide, there's a reluctance to let go and a holding on past the time.
Will Spencer:And so what my friend was asking is, what can the younger generation and the ones younger than the boomers do to maybe try to get the boomers to let go a little bit and like, hey, you gotta pass this on now.
Will Spencer:Like, we're grateful for you, and, like, you know, we need the keys.
John Harris:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John Harris:How did Kamala Harris become the nominee?
John Harris:Maybe that's what we gotta.
John Harris:What was the strategy there?
John Harris:No, I think the first thing that comes to mind for me is this is related to social media, but we can't slam each other.
John Harris:We can disagree if we want to model good christian disagreement.
John Harris:That's one thing I do see far too much slamming of, and I'm one to, I will slam people who are, in my opinion, belligerent fools, people who aren't necessarily even christians, but posing.
John Harris:I built my platform, I guess, on social media, a lot of it not knowing I was building anything.
John Harris:But that's how it got built, uh, really going after some of these social justice compromised pastors.
John Harris:Um, and, uh, and sometimes I can be pretty strong with it.
John Harris:Like, what you're doing is wrong, your ideas are evil, whatever, but.
John Harris:But I think when it comes to those who are, um, you know, they're not heretics.
John Harris:They're, um.
John Harris:Like you just said, like, maybe it's just grandpa's holding on to the keys too long and he needs to stop driving.
John Harris:Like, I don't think we slam grandpa, and I don't think grandpa should slam us.
John Harris:That's a really big turn off when grandpa starts, you know, he needs to be willing to give the keys up at some point and just enjoy his grandkids.
John Harris:I don't know.
John Harris:It's a hard thing.
John Harris:I haven't thought about it, like, too deeply.
John Harris:I do see something, though, and without naming specific organizations, I do see that there are young guys who are starting organizations, I think, part, and churches, I think, partially because those opportunities are not being open to them in places where they perhaps should be open to them.
John Harris:And it seems to me, like, in the organizations, I'm being so careful here, aren't I?
John Harris:Not to name organizations, but in the organizations, some of which I am very familiar, where it's basically an industry built around a guy, a boomer, who's had a successful ministry of some kind.
John Harris:The people who are filling those ranks tend to be, they tend to be people who follow the party line.
John Harris:They're not necessarily the guys you want in leadership.
John Harris:They are the people that you put in management positions.
John Harris:They're managerial elites, is what they are.
John Harris:They're riding the coattails of a guy who had success.
John Harris:And so there's really, when boomers end up dying and their organizations or their churches are left without them, it does leave a big hole.
John Harris:And so I'm leading up to this, but I think that if you're a boomer and you've had a successful ministry, you got a church, you got an organization.
John Harris:If you're listening to this, please be thinking about the next generation and who is going to take your place when you're gone, and then start making that transition.
John Harris:Start giving them more authority.
John Harris:Do whatever you need to do to train them.
John Harris:But they may be different than you in some ways.
John Harris:Their leadership style may be different.
John Harris:They're going to be ministering to a different kind of world in some ways.
John Harris:Obviously, the essential, the core things are still going to be there.
John Harris:But start doing that transfer and locate that person.
John Harris:Don't leave it up to people to figure out after you're dead or you have a heart attack and you didn't think you were going to die, don't.
John Harris:And don't just give it to people who are there because you're their bread and butter.
John Harris:You know what I mean?
John Harris:Like, it's hard to explain this, but the christian institutions I've been at, there are just a lot of people that I know for a fact they probably would not be that successful outside of that hierarchy.
John Harris:It's the only place that they feel they have authority and they've managed to work themselves into a position, I think, because they know what things to say to the person in charge.
John Harris:Right.
John Harris:And there's just.
John Harris:I don't know if it's a boomer thing.
John Harris:I really haven't thought about it deeply enough.
John Harris:I've wondered if it is, but when they die, it's like the organization's gonna die with them.
John Harris:Like, they just don't have great.
John Harris:They don't have someone there to take their place for a great transition.
John Harris:Oftentimes it's.
John Harris:I'm thinking of, like, either that movie the Hobbit, or, I guess there are three movies, but the one who's the guy, not wormtongue, that's from Lord of the Rings.
John Harris:But the other, like, there's the king, and then there's that guy who, like, tells the king whatever he wants to hear, and he's, like, sort of in second command.
John Harris:I can't remember the name of the Hobbit character.
John Harris:You haven't seen him?
Will Spencer:No.
John Harris:Oh, man.
John Harris:Bummer.
John Harris:Okay, so.
John Harris:But, you know, like, it's the character who's kind of like, I guess in the world they would call it a suck up.
John Harris:I hate using that term.
John Harris:But, like, someone who's a ladder climber but doesn't actually have the requisite character, virtue, ability to lead.
John Harris:When it comes to down to it, they're cushioned in a structure that allows them to operate with some authority but does not expose them to the dangers of actually being at the wheel of the ship.
John Harris:That kind of person.
John Harris:Don't let those people near the steering wheel.
John Harris:And that takes some discernment, I suppose.
John Harris:But just because someone flatters you, I mean, there's a lot of warnings in scripture about this.
John Harris:A flattering tongue.
John Harris:That's not someone you should necessarily listen to.
John Harris:You need to listen to somebody who's going to tell you the truth.
John Harris:And so choose your leaders wisely and start making that transition.
Will Spencer:Amen.
Will Spencer:So you mentioned the documentary film work you've done.
Will Spencer:And I wanted to get a chance that I know, like, we know from way downtown, so I wanted to get a chance because I watched your.
Will Spencer:We've already set up, upset a bunch of people, so let's upset a bunch more.
Will Spencer: nted to talk to you about the: Will Spencer:Like, I can already feel the impact that that is going to have on my.
Will Spencer:On my thinking about american history and all of that.
Will Spencer:So maybe we.
Will Spencer:Maybe we can talk about that for a little bit.
Will Spencer:We've let the boomers have their fun.
John Harris:Yeah.
John Harris:1607 project.com dot yeah.
John Harris:Yeah, it's fine.
John Harris:1607 is when the settlers of Jamestown came.
John Harris:First permanent english settlement in the new world.
John Harris: And this is obviously before: John Harris:And we had a lot of significant things that happen in this country.
John Harris:Churches were built, communities were established up and down the James river.
John Harris: in the house of Burgesses in: John Harris:You had the first.
John Harris: Thanksgiving was: John Harris:That's a year before the pilgrims came.
John Harris:And the pilgrims were trying to get there.
John Harris:They wanted to go to Virginia.
John Harris:Storm blew them off course.
John Harris:So we recenter Virginia in that story as the origin, as the headwaters of America, and then as the state that has probably contributed more to the american character, culture, ethos than any other state.
John Harris:And so we talk about political tradition, cuisine, music, all kinds of things, and hopefully leave people with a sense of pride, even if you're not from Virginia, a sense of, this is what America is.
John Harris:This is what.
John Harris:Even if you're someone who's immigrated to the United States, this is what I'm tapping into.
John Harris:This is the story that I'm part of.
John Harris:And we don't want to forget some of the true and valuable things that I think have been somewhat overlooked.
John Harris: So that's what the: Will Spencer:So what were some of the things, I mean, from having watched the documentary, understanding the role that Virginia played in the american founding and the specific culture of Virginia, the kind of men that it cultivated and then its encounter with, I'm guessing the north or a more northern culture was like, oh, this is very interesting because I grew up in Arizona, and so we're out here in the west, and I think in some sense, kind of a little bit disconnected from what it's like on the east coast.
Will Spencer:I probably very disconnected.
Will Spencer:But certainly I could see from my own education the way that the emphasis tends to be on more of the actors in the northern part of the story and less on the influence of the south.
Will Spencer:We don't really talk about that part.
Will Spencer:And so I found it really interesting to sort of have all the men that you interviewed lay out the case like.
Will Spencer:No, particularly virginian culture and southern culture as well, played a much bigger role in America up to a particular point than I think we realize.
John Harris:Yeah, I think it's seven of the first 13 presidents, or twelve presidents were from Virginia.
John Harris:George Washington, obviously, Virginia.
John Harris:And Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, was really behind the american education with the University of Virginia.
John Harris:He was a pioneer in that he wrote the bill of religious toleration in Virginia.
John Harris:Him and James Madison.
John Harris:James Madison, we call him the father of the Constitution.
John Harris:He's Virginian.
John Harris:Patrick Henry's Virginian.
John Harris:The Revolutionary War, the war for Independence ends in Virginia.
John Harris:And that's where Cornwallis is.
John Harris:Or now I'm free.
John Harris:Yeah, Cornwallis is defeated.
John Harris:You have even the first president of the articles under the articles of Confederation.
John Harris:Peyton Randolph is virginian, first Supreme Court justice.
John Harris:John Marshall is virginian.
John Harris:So Virginians had an outsized influence on the country's beginnings.
John Harris:And so just a few things you had asked of the important, true and valuable things that come from Virginia.
John Harris:Well, I think you have, as you rightly already said, a leadership model that comes out of Virginia that is very unique.
John Harris:You see more the management type, managerial business, modern model, I think come more out of New England, and there's more development with factories and infrastructure and those kinds of things.
John Harris:But in Virginia, you have more of an older, more medieval, I would say, type of leadership model.
John Harris:It's more cavalier.
John Harris:And the family, the family lives on the farm or the plantation.
John Harris:It's managed in connection with the family.
John Harris:And there's not a disconnection between your labor and yourself.
John Harris:You are part of the land that you're living in.
John Harris:And Virginians very much saw their political duties when they went into political office as part of their social duties and part of their family duties.
John Harris:These things were all connected.
John Harris:Of course, I'm going to serve in a political position, and I'm not going to take pay for it because this is my duty.
John Harris:And so duty was very important to people like George Washington and Robert E.
John Harris:Lee that affected the way they even did warfare, this total war stuff that you get in the civil war from General Sherman.
John Harris:Unfortunately, some of the things we even have done in World War Two.
John Harris:And since then, you don't see that in the south as much.
John Harris:There's an honor code.
John Harris:There's a hierarchy.
John Harris:There's an honor code in some ways.
John Harris:And I've said this before, I've gotten in trouble for it with people because they think, well, they had slaves, so you can't say this, but I have said they were kind of the high point of christian civilization.
John Harris:And what I mean by that is that they had in their society, it was so ingrained with biblical virtues.
John Harris:Biblical thinking doesn't mean that there weren't sins.
John Harris:It doesn't mean that there weren't.
John Harris:Sometimes they were out of step with all societies have their problems, but I think more so than other societies.
John Harris:They had reached a point of trying to honor what the Bible taught as far as the relationships between men and women, the relationships between those in authority, in labor, and those who slaves or not even slaves, just people who worked for you.
John Harris:There was a respect there for people.
John Harris:And it's people.
John Harris:They're not numbers.
John Harris:They're not machines.
John Harris:They're people.
John Harris:So I think Virginians can teach us how to live.
John Harris:I think the music, that's one of the aspects we talked about music and cuisine.
John Harris:I mean, we get barbecue from the south.
John Harris:And we had Lance Nadihara, culinary chef, talk about that in the documentary and we get really all forms of american music traced back to Jamestown in some way, according to Tom Daniel, who is a professor of music, who talked a lot about that, and I found that fascinating.
John Harris:There's more I can share on that because we obviously talked a lot that didn't, things that didn't make it into the documentary, but a lot of these things that confer identity to us, like.
John Harris:Like art, like social mores and habits and ways to interact with each other, these.
John Harris:All of these things, I think, are under attack in America.
John Harris:I was just seeing an article the other day that guys don't even know how to approach girls.
John Harris:Like, they don't even know what to say.
John Harris:They're afraid.
John Harris:You've probably covered this with your masculinity stuff.
John Harris:Well, there was a society at one point in this country we can stretch back and remember that had very firm guidelines.
John Harris:Men knew exactly what to say, exactly what to do.
John Harris:Those are the social codes, social mores, those kinds of things.
John Harris:And we see a lot of that.
John Harris:I think in Virginia, it was medieval in a way.
John Harris:There were lords and ladies, like I said before, hierarchy.
John Harris:I think the federalism, we focus on that quite a bit in their political tradition is very important.
John Harris:This idea that local communities have the right to govern themselves and decide what's best for them without the interference of those outside their communities.
John Harris:And so this really did give us the federal compact that 13 states could live separately and differently and still have a shared government and a shared I alliance on things like trade and immigration and war.
John Harris:I think that that localism that is most often associated with Thomas Jefferson still exists not just in Virginia, but across the United States, across even the Midwest and other places where small towns, they will even change their zoning laws and things to keep things the way that they are.
John Harris:A conservative posture.
John Harris:And Virginia is also more traditional.
John Harris:They're more christian than what eventually happened to the north.
John Harris:And so the south has been able, they're called the Bible belt.
John Harris:They've been able to hang on to traditional values and orthodox doctrine.
John Harris:So, I mean, I could probably go on and on, but these are all things, looking back, that we get from Virginia.
John Harris:They weren't aggressive abroad, the Virginians.
John Harris:They wished to be more or less left alone to themselves.
John Harris:I think there's just a lot of wisdom that we can glean, but we don't because we tend to center everything on New England, and that's the story of America, and that's not the story of America.
John Harris:So we wanted to kind of right the ship.
Will Spencer:In all of my travels the sense that I've gotten that the three most misunderstood parts of the world are eastern Europe, Mexico, and the american south.
Will Spencer:I think those are.
John Harris:Wow, really?
Will Spencer:Yep.
John Harris:I'm kind of curious about Eastern Europe and Mexico.
Will Spencer:Yeah, I mean, I think because Eastern Europe is kind of between two worlds, right.
Will Spencer:It's between Russia, former Soviet Union, and Western Europe and that whole region of the world.
Will Spencer:It's not really well understood, kind of who they are, what they're about.
Will Spencer:Maybe we've heard about some wars and stuff that are happening there.
Will Spencer:But what is eastern european culture?
Will Spencer:I don't think it's well understood.
Will Spencer:It's just that people don't usually go there.
Will Spencer:They're not big travel destinations.
Will Spencer:It's like this part of the world that played a really central role in some ways in the 20th century, and then everyone just kind of forgot about it.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:And Mexico, because Mexico is one of those countries that's trying to.
Will Spencer:That's trying to kind of assert itself on the world stage and is struggling with some very deeply ingrained social, political issues.
Will Spencer:For example, the drug trade, for example.
Will Spencer:That's just an example, but it's struggling with who it's trying to be.
Will Spencer:And so the worst parts of Mexico get highlighted to the world when in fact, there's lots of beauty in the country as there is in lots of Latin America.
Will Spencer:It's just that Mexico's problems have been blown out to such a large proportion, really, in terms of scale and in terms of impact.
John Harris:But real quick side note, because I was in Mexico, I went to, you know, I did the typical thing.
John Harris:I went to Cancun, right?
John Harris:But then I.
John Harris:We drove, but we did a lot of driving while we were there.
John Harris:We went to Chichen Itza and, you know, drove, drove back through some small towns and stuff.
John Harris:So I was just going to say, it's funny because I think there was like a cartel, like a shooting or something that happened that week.
John Harris:And there were people in our family who were kind of like.
John Harris:Or maybe it was their friends.
John Harris:It was friends, I guess, but they were like, oh, you're like, hey, be careful down there.
John Harris:And I'm thinking, we are so safe.
John Harris:You know what I mean?
John Harris:Like Mexico.
John Harris:You're right.
John Harris:I realized that when I was there.
John Harris:This is nowhere near or like the border towns where the violence is going on.
John Harris:So anyway, sorry, continue.
Will Spencer:No, that's exactly.
Will Spencer:It is that Mexico is such a complicated country, but its problems are magnified because of its problems being so related to America.
Will Spencer:Drug trade, mass migration, et cetera.
Will Spencer:It taps into the american media system that then broadcasts it around the world, because America exports news, we don't import it.
Will Spencer:So we're exporting all this bad news about Mexico.
Will Spencer:But I think the country is much, much more than that.
Will Spencer:But usually people don't explore it to that degree.
Will Spencer:And the third one is the American south.
Will Spencer:And I think the American south has gotten such a terrible reputation.
Will Spencer:It's been slandered, really, in the media as a result of lots of long, old hurt feelings over slavery, that people don't understand what the American south was about.
Will Spencer:They don't understand what it is about.
Will Spencer:And it's really a shame because as I've discovered for myself and as your documentary speaks to the south is an important part of american history, american independence, early american history, and that the focus of everything since the 18 hundreds has been exclusively on this one problem, taking an anachronistic viewpoint on it, holding people to a moral standard 200 years ago that they didn't hold it papers over this entire region.
Will Spencer:Not to say that it's all sunshine and rainbows there, obviously, it has its own problems.
Will Spencer:Guess what, so does the north.
Will Spencer:Guess what?
Will Spencer:So does the Midwest.
Will Spencer:Guess what, so does the Southwest.
Will Spencer:So to watch the documentary and to get that view into the American south and Virginia during these formative times was like, it was very eye opening.
John Harris:Oh, I'm so glad.
John Harris:I mean, that is one of the reasons that we made it, was to challenge people's assumptions about Virginia and the south in general.
John Harris:And you're so right.
John Harris:I remember when my wife and I moved down to North Carolina, and then we went to Virginia and lived there for a few years.
John Harris:She had been raised up in, she was in a country area, but with a very standard viewpoint that those are where all the racists live that hate black people, hate anyone different than them.
John Harris:They're bigots on everything.
John Harris:They're just bigots.
John Harris:And she thought, well, I'm going to just see a lot of that when I go down there.
John Harris:And she was just shocked.
John Harris:She was shocked that overturned all the stereotypes for her.
John Harris:And it's a very common story.
John Harris:And I remember one of my first jobs in New York was working with a bunch of older italian guys out of town.
John Harris:And I would hear a lot of language that was just racially insensitive at times.
John Harris:And I remember those same guys, though, and they would trash the south.
John Harris:You know, the south is racist.
John Harris:The south, they're lazy.
John Harris:All the, every time they were going to go on vacation, where did they all go?
John Harris:They went to South Carolina.
John Harris:They went to Georgia.
John Harris:They went to North Carolina.
John Harris:And obviously, on one level, this is propaganda that you have to repeat.
John Harris:You have to believe.
John Harris:On another level, I think that people don't really believe it.
John Harris:They know that there's something not true about that narrative.
John Harris:At least it's a cartoon.
John Harris:It's overly simplistic, I'll say.
John Harris:And so that's one of the things we were hoping to point out, was that we do talk about slavery, but we talk about some of the.
John Harris:I mean, I mentioned barbecue before.
John Harris:I mean, this is a positive contribution.
John Harris:There's a lot of things to be proud of that all Americans can take pride in musical genres like jazz and blues.
John Harris:I mean, we wouldn't have some of the stuff we have if it weren't for the interaction with peoples from Africa who came here, whether as slaves or later on, freemen who were able to gain their freedom and make contributions.
John Harris:So I dont think we need to be guilty about it.
John Harris:Virginia, in particular, was one of the first colonies trying to outlaw the slave trade, penalizing the slave trade.
John Harris:It came very close at one point to outlawing slavery, as I recall, and doing.
John Harris:We didn't.
John Harris:I don't think this part made it into the documentary because we, you know, you have to choose what you're going to keep and not.
John Harris:But it was.
John Harris:I believe it was the Nat Turner rebellion that was a big.
John Harris:It made a big impact in the legislature because it scared every.
John Harris:That was one of the things, too, in context, there's.
John Harris:During the federal period in american history, a lot of southerners were afraid that the northern abolitionists were going to cause slave insurrections and these kinds of things.
John Harris:And so they didn't want to encourage or fan the flames of that.
John Harris:But you do see the moral will in the south to end this institution on multiple levels.
John Harris:You see it in the confederate constitution.
John Harris:They outlawed the slave trade.
John Harris:In that document.
John Harris: You see it in: John Harris:And unfortunately, there wasn't enough time for that to do much for the Confederacy, unfortunately for Davis.
John Harris:But the moral will to do some of these things was there.
John Harris:There was just, I think, a sense in which this was an inherited thing, and to end it, it needed to be ended responsibly.
John Harris:And the way the abolitionists wanted to approach it was just not a responsible way to end the practice.
John Harris:And it ended up, honestly, in the worst possible scenario, with a war torn region and about a million slaves, it's estimated, starving or getting diseases and dying from it.
John Harris:And that's a sobering thing.
John Harris:I mean, every other country in the world seemed to be able to end this without a war, and the United States is the exception.
John Harris:Every other western country, at least.
John Harris:So we did focus on that somewhat.
John Harris:We focused on the christianization of the slaves.
John Harris:I mean, that's another positive thing.
John Harris:I mean, people like Samuel Davies really did a great missionary work among the slaves, teaching them Christianity, things that they did not know they would not have been exposed to in Africa.
John Harris:I mean, this is one of the greatest.
John Harris:I don't even know what you want to call it.
John Harris:It's a missionary.
John Harris:It wasn't meant to be a missionary effort, but it became a means by which the Lord gave the gospel to a people group.
John Harris:And so, if I remember correctly, I think we do talk a little bit about the slavery conditions and some of the misnomers about what slavery was like and that kind of thing, but it's not really meant to be an apologetic for Virginia's participation in slavery or anything like that.
John Harris:It's really more just to give you a sense of, like, you know, good, bad, ugly.
John Harris:This is who we are.
John Harris:And that us, that we.
John Harris:That possessive pronoun is what we want to give to people.
John Harris:That you have a story, we have a story.
John Harris:This is part of that.
John Harris:You're not told this part of it, but this is part of that story.
John Harris:It makes sense of some of the things that you're seeing today in your country.
John Harris:And because of that, because it belongs to us, we ought to preserve it.
John Harris:We ought to gain lessons from it.
John Harris:And we shouldn't be tearing down all these monuments.
John Harris:We've torn down hundreds of them in this country.
John Harris:And it's evil, it's wrong.
John Harris:And I think people hopefully walk away after seeing something like that, and they realize that people like Robert E.
John Harris:Lee, these were upstanding, good men with a lot of noble things to learn, that we could learn from them today.
Will Spencer:No, thank you for saying all that.
Will Spencer: that has been happening since: Will Spencer: Because: Will Spencer:And one of the things that hasn't been happening is people will go through and they will debunk some mainstream narratives, and then they'll think that that's the end of the process, and then they won't go any further to try and actually determine what did happen.
Will Spencer:It's like, well, that's not true.
Will Spencer:And so everything I've been told is lie.
Will Spencer:Throw it all out.
Will Spencer:It's like, well, hold on.
Will Spencer:Why don't you try taking that a few steps further?
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:And so it's possible to look at an institution like slavery and say, like, the picture was more complicated than that because the debunking would say, like, oh, no, I'm just being an apologist for it.
Will Spencer:Like, no, no, no.
Will Spencer:I'm not being an apologist for it.
Will Spencer:I'm trying to paint the picture that when you have millions of people inside the country, maybe you have to propose other ways to liberate them other than a war that devastates both the north and the south and everyone caught up in it.
Will Spencer:Maybe there was another way to handle that problem that would have had less of a devastating impact on all involved.
Will Spencer:And I think that that's a completely okay question to ask, but it makes people really upset.
John Harris:Well, I can tell you why.
John Harris:I.
John Harris:I think this is my theory.
Will Spencer:Please.
John Harris:I think, well, if you've, let's say you've devoted your life to something, right, and then you find out in the end it was all worthless, or there was a better way to go, right.
John Harris:You're going to be awfully defensive about the work you put in.
John Harris:There's six, over 600,000 men that gave their lives in that conflict, not to mention everyone who, in the south, because they're the ones left in the ruins, died, civilians who died as a result of the total war policies that strip the land of.
John Harris:I mean, it's horrible.
John Harris:Some of the things that happened strip the land of the crops and the animals, and there was nothing to eat.
John Harris:And you ever want to read books on that, read like, Karen Stokes has a book on what happened when Sherman's army got into Columbia, South Carolina.
John Harris:It's called legion of devils.
John Harris:And, I mean, ripping the earrings out of slaves, earth women's ears, raping slaves.
John Harris:I mean, there are some horrific stories about what Sherman's army did.
John Harris:And this has caused, I think, also a lot of the political problems that we have today in regards to race and so forth, because now you have a class of people who are used to relying on their masters for their economic means, and now that relationship is cut.
John Harris:It doesn't exist anymore.
John Harris:And instead, now they're relying on essentially politicians that the freedmen's bureau, the Union League.
John Harris:I mean, there was these organizations we only hear about the Klan, but you had these other organizations that existed in the south that were the Freedmen's bureau especially, that were trying.
John Harris:They presented themselves as the ones who were going to help these former slaves.
John Harris:But what ended up happening was there was a dependency created, and that dependency is with us to this day.
John Harris:We still have that dependency.
John Harris:We still have a political party, basically, and now couple it with generational welfare and everything, and how bad that's gotten.
John Harris:You're left without dignity in many of these urban communities where the men don't work and they don't know anything else, this is what they've been raised with.
John Harris:And in slavery, at least in the best case scenario, and Fogel and Ingram say 60% to 80% of the slave narratives, they say that they don't say negative things, which is kind of eye opening to people today.
John Harris:How could that happen?
John Harris:But in the best case scenarios, there was at least some dignity in work, and you don't even have that with welfare.
John Harris:And so I'm not saying that in every way, welfare is worse than slavery or anything like that, but what I'm trying to say is that we've gotten into a position where race relations were poisoned after that war and dependency was created, and we've never recovered from it.
John Harris:This has always been a sore point of contention in the country, and so I'm just pointing that out to say that I think what you said is 100% right.
John Harris:There were other ways of approaching this, and I think southerners have been blamed for every problem related to this when it's just not accurate.
John Harris:It was northeasterners who brought the slaves here.
John Harris:They were the merchants.
John Harris:This is an american problem that has been created, and a lot of, frankly, not great decisions that have brought us to this point.
John Harris:And it's not like the south should have to be the ones that are blamed for the whole entire thing.
John Harris:And Virginia stands out to me not only because of its significance, but because of its moral sense.
John Harris:It was the cavalier culture that existed there as being a particularly noble place for a long time.
John Harris:And even when it came to the civil war, Virginia, when they entered the civil war, you can read their document and their secession document, and their declaration says that they are seceding because of an invasion.
John Harris:Essentially, they're going to defend the states that are being.
John Harris:That are, well, there's a call to arms.
John Harris:Virginia said, we're not supplying troops.
John Harris:We're going to defend the lower south because we don't want to live in that.
John Harris:And so they always had, I think, a high sense of duty, a high sense of justice, and also prudence mixed in with that.
John Harris:What is possible, so what is right and what is possible.
John Harris:And this came from a very mature, I would say, class of men in the planner aristocracy.
John Harris:And we just don't even know what that looks like today.
John Harris:We don't have leaders like that today that are so concerned with the well being of their families, of their people, and including, even if they had slaves, they're slaves.
John Harris:And not just their humans, the humans that they knew in their lives, but their animals, their crops, their land.
John Harris:We need to get back to that.
John Harris:We need, I think, men who take their stewardship, the dominion mandate and stewardship very seriously.
John Harris:And that's one of the things that the documentary highlights.
John Harris:I think that I really was proud of men like I mentioned Robert E.
John Harris:Lee, but I think also men like Thomas Jefferson and very prudential man, people like Lewis and Clark, very brave in their exploration of the west.
John Harris:They're Virginians and men like George Washington, who also exercised a lot of prudence.
John Harris:So anyway, I could ramble on, but that's really the documentary.
John Harris:That's what we're trying to communicate.
John Harris:And on the subject of slavery, there's no exception there.
John Harris:The Virginians seem to have cooler heads, in my opinion, about the whole thing and hotheads around them.
John Harris:But I don't know exactly how we get back.
John Harris:But I know the first step to getting back to that leadership class is letting people know that it once existed.
Will Spencer:I think one of those steps would be like, the north has driven the agenda, and maybe now would be a good time.
Will Spencer:The north says, okay, so if I were from the north, I would say, okay, all of this noble virtue, value, stewardship is great, and they treated human beings as property.
Will Spencer:And so what they're saying is, that's hypocritical.
Will Spencer:Right?
Will Spencer:So that's hypocritical.
Will Spencer:Okay, cool.
Will Spencer:So I'll grant the point, but now why don't we take a look at the ways the north is hypocritical, which are multifarious.
Will Spencer:So if we're going to with a measure that you measure, it'll be measured back to you.
Will Spencer:And I think now, in the same collectivist, we need the big hand of government to solve all problems, which was kind of the big coming out party of the civil war, is to say, okay, so now we see this great concern and compassion and empathy for humanity, and you have homeless fentanyl zombies walking around in your streets.
Will Spencer:Right?
Will Spencer:Like, how compassionate.
Will Spencer:How compassionate is that?
Will Spencer:Right?
John Harris:I mentioned before, though, the north, the northeasterners are the ones who brought the slaves.
John Harris:And the worst conditions of all of slavery was during the middle passage on the slave boat.
John Harris:So if you want to talk about treating people like property and the conditions being horrific.
John Harris:I would say the north probably bears more blame even in that.
John Harris:And I'm not about spreading blame, but I'm just saying if you're going to make the accusation, you at least need to consider that and then also consider what some even called wage slavery, where a lot of immigrants coming into the north really were forced into conditions that would be worse than the average slave in the south.
John Harris:And there's many foreign observers that actually said as much that when they would travel north, travel south, that the slaves on average, seem to have a better life than many of the wage slaves in the north who, it's great.
John Harris:You have freedom.
John Harris:You can go anywhere you want.
John Harris:Guess what?
John Harris:There's nowhere to go.
John Harris:And the conditions that you're working in are subhuman.
John Harris:I mean, they are just monotonous, long hours, child labor.
John Harris:I think some of these notions, I understand some of these notions.
John Harris:But like, slavery, and this is not about.
John Harris:I know this whole thing's not about slavery, but I would just say this.
John Harris:Slavery has been around since, until modern times.
John Harris:Every civilization has had slavery, and every civilization, they would look at you in ancient times like you had two heads.
John Harris:If you went to them and be like, I can't believe human or humans are property.
John Harris:They'd say, our children are property.
John Harris:You know, they would like, they belong to us, not to you.
John Harris:Right?
John Harris:That's right.
John Harris:They saw the dependency was everywhere.
John Harris:In pre modern societies, we didn't have a modern state that just gave you a safety net.
John Harris:And so now what we have, just to put things in perspective, we have this modern state that gives you the safety net.
John Harris:Guess what else this modern state does, though?
John Harris:It has a prison system, which is basically slavery.
John Harris:They get work from you and they don't have to pay you.
John Harris:What would they give you?
John Harris:$1 an hour in some of the.
John Harris:But you can't go anywhere.
John Harris:You're in prison.
John Harris:Right.
John Harris:That's very.
John Harris:That's not really biblical.
John Harris:It's not a biblical model.
John Harris:And obviously the 13th amendment leaves that out because that's the kind of slavery they allow.
John Harris:You also have, obviously, sex slavery.
John Harris:There's a few films that have finally focused on this going on.
John Harris:You have the fact that when we go into Walmart's or targets, hopefully we don't go into targets, but they have the clothing and stuff we buy.
John Harris:Some of that is sweatshop labor.
John Harris:I mean, it might as well be slave labor.
John Harris:We have a welfare system that has generational dependency.
John Harris:I mean, just look around you at all the things that would be in many ways morally similar or equivalent or economically similar to slavery.
John Harris:And they're everywhere.
John Harris:We have civil slavery that we're worried about now, really.
John Harris:We have an all powerful federal government that views you as a number.
John Harris:And as they increase their power over your life and take care of your healthcare and everything else, you become a slave to them.
John Harris:I mean, that's essentially what happens.
John Harris:I mean, proverbs even says debt slavery.
John Harris:How much debt is the average American in and how much is our national debt?
John Harris:So you see what I'm saying?
John Harris:It's just to take this one thing and say, well, that's the only, as if that's the only version of slavery that exists.
John Harris:And it was unique to this one region.
John Harris:And that's why they're uniquely horrible people.
John Harris:And that's why we can just dismiss christians because that was the Bible belt.
John Harris:You have to ignore everything you're living around.
John Harris:You're living around trash world, you know?
John Harris:And so I don't have patience for that anymore.
John Harris:I get in trouble for saying these kinds of things with some people.
John Harris:But it's like the question I have at the bottom of it is like, do we actually care about people and their condition?
John Harris:Knowing we live in an imperfect world and not everyone's going to have, we're never going to reach equality in the sense of like, not everyone's going to have the same economic income or ability to get an income like that.
John Harris:We're just never going to happen.
John Harris:So, granted, we live in that world with differences between peoples and different situations that arise at different historical times.
John Harris:Do we care about people's conditions or do we care about their status?
John Harris:So it's condition versus status.
John Harris:And the Virginians, I think they uniquely cared about people's conditions.
John Harris:You see that sense even in letters that you read from any of the pick any famous Virginian and Patrick Henry and when he would travel and his concern for back home and how is everyone doing?
John Harris:How were the slaves?
John Harris:There was just such a responsibility that he took over what he believed God had given him to steward.
John Harris:So their condition meant something to him.
John Harris:Jefferson, the same thing with his slave.
John Harris:John Randolph, same thing with his slaves.
John Harris:They were very concerned about their condition, whereas I think in the north you had developing, and now we're all living in this to some extent, an obsession with status, that we can all be equally free and miserable and destitute.
John Harris:And that's just fine because at least we're all equal.
John Harris:At least we all can vote.
John Harris:At least we all have the same rights, even if it's a dismal situation, then the status seems to be more important.
John Harris:I'm hoping in the project, when people watch the documentary, they can walk away and they get a sense of what Virginia was like, what the people there valued, what their priorities were in life, that they could smell the roses, enjoy the.
John Harris:The finer things of God's gift, because they had you, their humanity.
John Harris:And it wasn't just about ideology, abstractions, nuts and bolts, and gaining a profit of some kind, a numerical value.
John Harris:It was really more just about enjoying a good life and what's the best way we can enjoy that good life in the order that God has set up for us.
John Harris:That's how I try to measure my life.
John Harris:I study these men because I want to be like them in those ways, even though they came from a very different time with different conditions.
John Harris:And I wouldn't have agreed with all the different relationships they had set up, but I want to understand a sense from them of how to live and how to manage things and how not to lose myself in a very task oriented mindset, which is, I think, what we have today a lot.
John Harris:But to really see deeply into the purpose behind things and value people for.
Will Spencer:People, it makes me think that there's something very important about the men of the south in a way that can inform american men today.
Will Spencer:Like, these men are part of who you are, too, right?
Will Spencer:This papered over part of american culture, american history.
Will Spencer:What's actually been hidden is what you just described.
Will Spencer:Who were the gentlemen of the south?
Will Spencer:All we hear is that, oh, they just own slaves, so they're absolutely moral abominations in every possible way, and don't ever go looking again.
Will Spencer:But in fact, the honor that was held in the south, I think it issues from a scotch irish kind of thing.
Will Spencer:What I've heard is that in the early american founding, there were actually old european and british social divisions that were informing a lot of that.
Will Spencer:I think Brett McKay, who runs art of manliness, that podcast and blog, he did a great book called what is honor?
Will Spencer:And there's a section in that book about where the southern sense of honor came from.
Will Spencer:And I think he said it came from the Scotch Irish.
John Harris:And like, where, yeah, cavalier.
John Harris:But the south is a mix.
John Harris:You know, in Appalachia, you have Scots Irish, and they have an honor culture, and.
John Harris:And then the cavaliers also have their own honor culture, a very high sense of hierarchy in that honor culture.
John Harris:So there was a dashingness and just, I don't know how you would describe it, but like a regal's probably too strong a word, but they had a command, you know, when they entered the room, they had a certain command to them and a sense of orderliness and decency, and they were dashing.
John Harris:I don't know how else to say it.
John Harris:Like, you don't have the same figures as much in the north, at least by the time you get to the civil war period, as much.
John Harris:And I think when we go from.
John Harris:Really, you could see this from the knight to the cavalier to the cowboy.
John Harris:That's sort of the.
John Harris:Because the cowboy, too.
John Harris:I know you're in Arizona, so you're probably more familiar in some ways.
John Harris:I don't know if there's still kind of a cowboy culture out there in Phoenix area.
John Harris:I mean, you're in an urban setting.
John Harris:But cowboys always were portrayed, at least in popular media, as having an honor code.
John Harris:And that really comes from the cavalier and then the knights before that, there's chivalry.
John Harris:Just the north didn't have it as much.
John Harris:Even the dueling culture, you know, which is often very misunderstood, too, that came from a sense of a high sense of honor and that there were some things worth fighting and dying for, you know, so it wasn't something you entered into lightly.
Will Spencer:And I thought that was one of the inspiring parts of the documentary, was to paint the picture of the average southern man.
Will Spencer:Like, cowboys were many things, but they're not usually, like, dashing.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:Cowboys are, like, strong.
John Harris:They're rugged, right?
Will Spencer:Yeah, rugged.
Will Spencer:Yeah.
Will Spencer:Like, stoic.
Will Spencer:You know, I don't know if they'd ever describe themselves that way.
Will Spencer:But the dashing southern gentlemen, like, gone with the wind rhett.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:Like something like that.
Will Spencer:That is an american, exclusively american archetype that doesn't exist in our culture anymore precisely because of the overemphasis on the historical conditions of slavery.
Will Spencer:And so Americans are cut off from their own, part of their own history before the civil war to understand this is part of who we are.
Will Spencer:And so that's what I mean when I say, like, it's just a very misunderstood part of the world.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:And maybe some of I haven't spent that much time in the south.
Will Spencer:I have been to Virginia.
Will Spencer:It's beautiful.
Will Spencer:Been to Raleigh and driven through the countryside.
Will Spencer:It's one of my favorite drives ever.
Will Spencer:Sun was setting this golden mist in the air.
John Harris:I was like, oh, where were you coming from?
John Harris:From Virginia to Raleigh.
John Harris:You were driving, so from something?
Will Spencer:Yeah, yeah, something like that.
Will Spencer:Where was I?
Will Spencer:I was visiting.
John Harris:No, I'm wondering if you were, like, on the Blue Ridge parkway or, you know, like, by the Shenandoah mountains or something.
Will Spencer:I've driven the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Will Spencer:Yes.
John Harris:Oh, that's stunning.
Will Spencer:Yeah, yeah.
Will Spencer:And so, like, it's just.
Will Spencer:It was one of my favorite parts.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:Of the country.
Will Spencer:And so.
Will Spencer:And so when I was driving through that area, working on my own documentary, actually.
John Harris:Oh, I didn't know you had one.
Will Spencer:Yeah.
Will Spencer:So the renaissance of men was originally supposed to be a multi part documentary series.
John Harris:Oh.
Will Spencer:Oh, yeah.
Will Spencer:I can send you.
Will Spencer:I did a trailer and a whole break.
Will Spencer:Yeah.
Will Spencer:I'm very proud of the work that I did there.
Will Spencer:And of all the men that I interviewed, I think interviewed.
Will Spencer: in: Will Spencer:I drove, what, 14,000 miles across the country.
Will Spencer:Yeah.
Will Spencer:And did 21 interviews, 108 days.
Will Spencer:I didn't come home for 100 days.
Will Spencer:And so.
Will Spencer:But I did all these interviews, and then one by one, all the men that I interviewed, you know, had these major personal crises, so God spared me from putting out this documentary with my name on it.
Will Spencer:Excuse me.
John Harris:Oh, my goodness.
Will Spencer:Yeah, yeah, I'll send.
Will Spencer:It's awesome.
Will Spencer:So that's pretty fun.
Will Spencer:So, anyway, so I got to drive, as I was driving through that area, and that was my experience.
Will Spencer:I'm like, that was confirmation for me that this part of the country is very misunderstood.
Will Spencer:And to bring out that cavalier spirit, to bring out that tradition, to bring out that honor, there's something in that for american men today that we're so forced with the New York mindset, the New York, DC, Boston kind of way of being.
Will Spencer:Well, what is it?
Will Spencer:In a more rural, traditional, honorable setting, like Jeff Wright from backwoods belief.
John Harris:Oh, yeah, yeah.
John Harris:Well, let me give you, like, just a real, real quick story.
John Harris:I was out in the middle of nowhere, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley, and someone asked me there.
John Harris:I was in someone's house, and they said, okay, so you're probably used to when you're somewhere in the south, generally, it's where you're from.
John Harris:In the northeast, it's, what do you do for a living?
John Harris:And in California, it's, what's your hobby?
John Harris:Right.
John Harris:Like, what do you like to do?
John Harris:These are like, I've lived in all three areas, and that's what I notice.
John Harris:And it's like, your identity is confirmed through these things.
John Harris:In California, it's hobbies.
John Harris:So, anyway, I was in this rural area in Virginia, and the guy asked me, who are your people?
John Harris:Which is a little different than where are you from?
John Harris:But it's kind of getting at the same thing.
John Harris:But he said, who are your people?
John Harris:And I turned to my friend.
John Harris:My friend had been raised in the Shenandoah Valley, and I said, well, I mean, I'm not from here.
John Harris:And I was like.
John Harris:And so after we left, I said, what did he mean by that exactly?
John Harris:And he.
John Harris:He goes, well, he's like, you know, your name is Harris, and there's probably some harrises that have settled in that area, but he wants to know, like, are you with those harrises?
John Harris:Like, there's a few different last names, and they have reputations, you know, they have.
John Harris:And so, like, I don't know.
John Harris:It just kind of threw me.
John Harris:I was like, wow, that's what a wonderful thing to.
John Harris:And what a beautiful thing to ask someone, who are your people?
John Harris:You know?
John Harris:And what a sad thing.
John Harris:Probably for some people, it'd probably be a hard thing to answer.
John Harris:Like, you start realizing.
John Harris:You start to.
John Harris:That starts merit, like, setting in.
John Harris:You're like, I don't know.
John Harris:I don't know if I actually have a people.
John Harris:But I think southerners have typically had a strong sense of that, that they do have a people that they are responsible for.
John Harris:And when it comes to manliness, I just thought of Jeb Stewart and Turner Ashby, but Jeb Stewart in particular, a cavalry officer in Robert E.
John Harris:Lee's army.
John Harris:Probably the reason that Lee, some people think, lost Gettysburg, Washington, you know, Stuart was out gallivanting around and in the cavalry, and he should have been with Lee.
John Harris:But anyway, Stuart, though, had this big, like, plume on his hat, you know, and just drinks.
John Harris:He dressed to the nines.
John Harris:You know, he was very.
John Harris:Well, he was dashing and, you know, his beard, even in the paintings, his beard is, like, curated and everything.
John Harris:And I think that for men, like, there is this also model of manliness that's, like, you can't really be to put together because that's girly and, like, having a plume in your hat, like, that's gay or something.
John Harris:I don't know.
John Harris:But.
John Harris:But, like, no, like, there are actually some men who were, like, they were very well dressed.
John Harris:They knew style.
John Harris:You know what I mean?
John Harris:Like, they knew how to put a suit on and what it would look like.
John Harris:And, like, that's something, too, that I hope we can get back to somehow is I'm probably not the greatest poster child for that at all, but I would like to dress better, and.
John Harris:And that says something about who you are.
John Harris:Virginians were very well dressed.
Will Spencer:Well, I will connect you to my friend Tanner Guzzi.
Will Spencer:And that's what he does.
Will Spencer:He does men's, men's style coaching.
Will Spencer:And he's been a big impact on my life, helping me learn how to dress better.
Will Spencer:And he talks about this, his whole line on Twitter especially.
Will Spencer:It's a joke.
Will Spencer:It's meant to be ironic.
Will Spencer:Real men don't care what they look like because that's the line that a lot of men apparently say today.
Will Spencer:And he'll post all these ornate, tribally decorated men and suits of armor and samurais and guys with plumes in their hats.
Will Spencer:Real men used to care very much what they look like, and there wasn't anything effeminate or gay about it at all.
Will Spencer:It was like, this was how men, and this was Tanner's angle on it.
Will Spencer:This is how men project power.
Will Spencer:They project power with their clothing.
Will Spencer:And now sort of adopting the Silicon Valley tech ethos, where the way that you project power is, you appear like you don't have any power at all.
Will Spencer:The Mark Zuckerberg and the hoodie and the blue jeans.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:And so Tanner's like, no, that's ridiculous.
Will Spencer:You can learn how to dress.
Will Spencer:You can learn how to dress for your tribe, for your people, for your community, for your own personal style.
Will Spencer:Matt Reynolds from barbell logic works with him a lot as well.
Will Spencer:So he's in.
John Harris:I'll have to check him out.
John Harris:I need help.
Will Spencer:Yeah, maybe he'll teach you to dress like a modern southern gentleman, a modern virginian.
John Harris:Well, I do have, I do have a seersucker, so I do have that.
John Harris:But forget about.
John Harris:I tried to tie a bowtie.
John Harris:It took me an hour, and it looked awful.
John Harris:I got so impatient with it.
Will Spencer:Right.
Will Spencer:Well, I really appreciate you highlighting the need to bring that spirit of manhood back, especially in America.
Will Spencer:It's not really a devil may care attitude because that's not it.
Will Spencer:Because I don't know that you can have a devil may care attitude and be a Christian Mandeh this idea of a swagger, a style, a groundedness in yourself, a knowledge of who your people are.
Will Spencer:And you bring that forward into the world, and you upset the people that don't want you to have it.
Will Spencer:And so there's an aspect of being a man today that's very much like, no, this is who I am, and I'm going to embody who I am, and you're not going to like it.
Will Spencer:And I really don't care.
John Harris:I think I'm inspired to go to Macy's tomorrow and start is, I don't know if maybe, maybe that's too, maybe I'm giving away that, that's too, like, low class or something.
John Harris:I don't know.
John Harris:But that's where I would go to get a nice suit or something.
Will Spencer:No, I'll connect you.
Will Spencer:You can talk with Tanner first, and.
John Harris:He'Ll talk with Tanner.
John Harris:Okay.
John Harris:Okay.
John Harris:I guess I need help.
John Harris:I guess that's brother.
Will Spencer:We all do.
Will Spencer:We all do.
Will Spencer:No learning.
Will Spencer:So the shirt that I'm wearing right now, this shirt is by a maker called batch batchmen.com.
Will Spencer:and they just make these really nice button up shirts.
Will Spencer:And Tanner introduced me to them.
Will Spencer:And so now anyone who's watched my podcast basically for.
Will Spencer:Yeah, thank you.
Will Spencer:So it basically has seen me wearing batch shirts.
John Harris:Okay, so you want to see my shirt?
John Harris:Hold on.
Will Spencer:Harris is against Harris.
John Harris:Yeah, that's my shirt right now.
Will Spencer:I don't know.
Will Spencer:I'll give you some points for that one, I think.
John Harris:Thank you.
John Harris:Thank you.
Will Spencer:That's pretty good.
Will Spencer:No relation to Kamala?
John Harris:No, no.
John Harris:She's.
John Harris:Maybe she's a crazy old aunt somewhere that I didn't know about.
Will Spencer:Pray?
Will Spencer:No.
Will Spencer:Pray?
Will Spencer:No.
John Harris:Yeah, I hope not.
Will Spencer:Well, John, this has been an outstanding conversation.
Will Spencer:I've really been grateful for the chance to get to know you and your work and all the documentary work that you've done in the podcast and the overview of the church.
Will Spencer:Like, I've gotten a lot of this conversation.
Will Spencer:Thank you so much.
John Harris:Yeah, likewise.
John Harris:I appreciate it, Will.
John Harris:And, yeah, contact me anytime.
John Harris:Hopefully we can do this again, some point.
Will Spencer:Will do.
Will Spencer:Where would you like to send people to find out more about you and what you do?
John Harris: Well, I think: Will Spencer:16 God@johnharrispodcast.com dot thank you very much and God bless you.
Will Spencer:God bless you, sir.
Will Spencer:Thank you so much for the time you spent with a.
John Harris:God bless you, too, Will.
Will Spencer:Thanks for listening to this episode of the Renaissance of Men podcast.
Will Spencer:Visit us on the web@renofmen.com or on your favorite social media platform at Ren of men.
Will Spencer:This is the renaissance of men.
Will Spencer:You are the Renaissance.