Christian Nationalism vs. Christian Identity: What’s the Difference?

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Bob Scott, former co-founder of the Kansas City Fellowship, and the author of three books, the latest is some said they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Pickle, the Kansas City Profits, and the International House of Prayer.

Bob, it's good to be back and to talk about Christian nationalism. This is one of the most important subjects of today. If you read through the news, you're going to find newspaper articles about Christian nationalism, you're going to see figure heads of the New Apostolic Reformation behind political figures who are involved with Christian nationalism.

And at the same time, there's this confusion as to what it is, exactly. Is it good? Is it bad? What is this thing that we're talking about? And to some extent, we've actually talked through this because the Christian nationalism and Christian identity fit together like a zipper.

They're two separate things, which we'll talk about later in the podcast, but they merge very significantly, especially whenever you get into the forties and fifties and beyond. It becomes very hard to separate the two, and in many ways the two kind of feed on each other.

So, very glad to talk this through with you. Thank you for coming on and talking about it. Well, it's deeply personal for me, and two regards. One, obviously, we all have lots of friends, and what's become difficult in the social media world is buzzwords.

It's like buzzwords, that's a marketing term. It's just the problem because everything now is all about marketing, right? And so we try to find words, right, that, you know, that whatever. And so Christian nationalism right now is one of those lightning rod buzzwords.

And depending on where you're standing in the spectrum of politics, it means two completely different things. But I would venture to say, based on my conversations, most people are absolutely confused. It was what it actually does mean because there's so many different people using the term.

And as you're listening to them talk based on their perspective, you go, well, you're using it in a way that's different than I thought that's what it meant, right? So I think there's a lot of confusion out there.

as I was telling you earlier, I see two reactions. One, you hear the word Christian nationalism and people start instantly going into anxiety mode, right? It's like, oh my God, don't say that word.

It's a lightning rod. It conflict is pending right now. The minute you bring that word up, I don't want to get into a conflict until people just start spasming out. No, no, no, don't say that.

Don't say that word, right? And then the other half are kind of just go glazed over meaning, I have no idea what you're talking about. I hear the term all the time, what does it mean?

So, let me, for the sake of our listeners, let me explain why this is very, very personal to me. It's not a political thing. It's a family history thing. When I was a little guy growing up, my dad said to me one day, do you know you're a descendant of Dr. Benjamin Rush?

What does that mean, right? And even no idea who that was, right? Well, it turns out that my dad's mom, who's maiden name was Brewer. She was Irene Brewer. Well, the Brewer's are Dutch.

When they originally came over, they were Browers. So sometimes it spelled B-O-W-E-R. A lot of times it was spelled B-R-U-E-E-R, right? But the Dutch all settled in New York and then across the Hudson in New Jersey, right?

That was their big settlement. So that's my grandmother's roots. And he said, but your grandmother's grandmother's name was Nancy Jane Haines Brewer. So anyways, I got to told these stories and then probably 10 years ago, I actually went in and dug into this to find out if this was actually true, right?

There's lore, you know, family stories, and then there's, well, what are the facts bear out? So anyways, I discover that my grandmother, and the reason why I was kind of aware of a little bit is my grandmother always used to go to Des Moines.

My grandmother grew up, sorry, my grandmother lived in the grain, Chicago, but she would go to Des Moines all the time. Well, it turns out that that's until Nancy Jane Haines Brewer got older, she lived in Des Moines.

In fact, her husband, William Brewer, has buried there in Altoona. I've actually been to his graveside. It's just as you're coming in to Des Moines. Anyways, long story short, Nancy Jane Haines was born on the frontier in Ohio in like 1816 or something like that.

And it's very funny because for people that may not be aware of this, after the Revolutionary War, people that fought in the war didn't, there was no money to pay a lot of guys, right?

They basically got food and clothing, if that. And then what they got was land grants. So after the Revolutionary War, there was no trains yet, so people came down the Ohio River from the east.

And so the brewers got land in Skiado County, which is the very southern county in Ohio, and the Hanes got land across the river in Lewis County, Kentucky, which is the northern part of Kentucky, right?

So somehow across this river, probably at some shindig, right, where they're playing the fiddles and getting together whatever, Nancy, Jane, Hanes meets William Brewer. William Brewer was from New Jersey, and his father, or sorry, he was from Ohio, or from that whole area, but his grandfather, John Brewer, fought with Washington in New Jersey.

In fact, Nancy, when she reaches 100 years old, and she's living in Springfield, Missouri, and they do a big interview celebrating her 100th birthday. And she talks about how John Brewer and his wife were really good friends with Martha and George.

They were together there in New Jersey, when Washington was, you know, I think it is when a residence or something there. And then she talks about, but my great uncle was Dr. Benjamin Rush.

I'm like, wow, okay, so this is really fascinating, right? Well, who's Dr. Rush, right? Who's Dr. Benjamin Rush? He's one of these guys that most people never heard of. You know, everybody knows Jefferson, and Adams, and Washington, and these names, even maybe, you know, Matt, John Madison, right?

Those were kind of the guys, but Dr. Rush is not really considered, you know, one of the more well known guys. Fascinating, though. He was incredibly influential, and here's why. He was from Philadelphia, and in fact, I bent to his grave site.

If you go to Philadelphia, you'll see the Liberty Bell. It's in a little glass thin area, right behind that is Constitutional Hall, where they side the Declaration of Independence. And just across in the Liberty Bell has Ben Franklin and Dr. Rush's grave sites, right?

So, I mean, again, this is a small little city, you know, early America. And Dr. Rush is an academic, but he's totally into medicine. So, he is considered by most people the father of American medicine.

He was the guy that saved most of the founding fathers when there was a giant yellow fever ache outbreak in Philadelphia. And then it got into New York and different places. And Dr. Rush, if you've ever watched John Adams where they were figuring out how to give people diseases to build up immunities, that was Dr. Rush.

He was the guy. They had figured a lot of that out, right? He was also the guy. I don't know if you for those of you that But like history There is a pamphlet that most people consider the Catalyst for the American Revolution and it's written by a guy named Thomas Payne and it's called Common Sense and it's basically his argument as to why these Collinists should leave The tyranny of the English monarchy Dr. Rush was the editor. He was very good friends with Thomas Payne And so he edited the whole thing and got it ready for public

Consumption, right? But he was really close friends with Jefferson and Adams, right? And one of the most endearing stories is is if you know what ends up happening is Jefferson and Adams had two very different ideas as to what the federal government should look like, right?

You know, and this is where we still have these debates 250 years later between States dominating or the federal Federalist dominating, right? It's this thing. Do we centralize it? Are we you know? Do we ever anyways long story short Jefferson and And Adams got into some real conflict because they were both running for the presidency and things got really nasty and they quit talking to each other for two decades Adams went back to Massachusetts Jefferson ends up going back to Virginia And what ends up happening is Dr. Rush goes hey, you guys are my buddies

Of both of you and the truth of it remember when we were young And we were all in this together and he ends up Reconciling the two of them and they spend the last 20 years of their life writing These wonderfully kind letters to each other and if anybody's ever had a chance to read them It's really fascinating, right? These two old guys looking back on what they did Crazy story they end up dying on July 4th together Within hours of each other. I mean you talk about one of those kind of wild historical Spiritual if you want to you know, it's just like what's that all about right?

It's like how do you guys both die on July 4th on the same day, right? It's just crazy story But here's where this gets really interesting for me is because delving in to Dr. Rush's life you begin to realize this guy Is not just sort of a couch potato Christian He sees Christianity as absolutely fundamental to everything they're doing Like like this doesn't happen without the Bible and and God and all this right? So the reason why this is was is so fascinating for me is here I am reading the letters I have friends who actually have some of

his private correspondence they've purchased it so I've got to actually hold in my hands letters written by him and you read these you know you read his perspective and then you get on television and you listen to people who say there was no influence right this net right it was like this whole thing happened you know outside of the church and blah blah blah and you're just going wait a minute have you not read these letters right this is where I get I got it you know confession this is where the word pundit kind of gets under my skin because I listen to some of these guys on

television and they're promoted as pundits and yet when you're somebody that's actually done your homework and actually drilled down and read some of this stuff and then the pundits say that what you know what you've held in your hands and read with your own eyes right doesn't exist you're kind of going huh so that ends up creating a really interesting question so how do these two worlds actually how are they supposed to relate right how does government relate with the spiritual world because it hasn't really gone very well and sorry for the long introduction but I you know

a lot of you like to hear some of our personal stories so I want to you know I wanted to share you with you why these questions are pertinent to me because it's personal right this is family right this is my heritage in a way and it's like okay you know this is what I know and so and yet historically when the two worlds come together they don't do very well and so my question is always been why so let me read something to you that's kind of interesting when George Washington was saying goodbye after a second term in a speech he said this have all the dispositions and habits

which lead to political prosperity religion and morality are indispensable supports so here's Washington right considered the father of the nation basically saying that this doesn't work without morality and religion so why I mean this is 180 degree different from a lot of what I'm hearing these days from certain sectors of our culture he's basically this is what he spoke to everybody in 1717 96 when he was saying goodbye and his mind he had the same worldview as Dr.

Rush you can't separate these two things and be successful. There's so much to untangle here. I, you know, when I began my research, I thought that Christian nationalism and Christian identity were one and the same. Because if you look through history and you look at some of the major milestones or events in history, you find that the people who are in one side or the other are sharing the same events, the same propaganda, the same sounds like the same ideology, holding the same picket signs and the riots, etc. And it's because the two, they fit together like a zipper because the cross pollinating. I don't believe that you could have

Christian nationalism and Christian identity in its current form without both sides of the equation. They, they've cross pollinated and they've kind of blended together where it's very difficult, difficult to distinguish the two. I, as I was beginning to research Christian identity from my latest book. I was going through some of the history, learning that Christian identity means that we identify as Christian, but more than that, Christianity is, is identified in our DNA.

We're part of a bloodline that became Christian. We're part of the lost 10 tribes of Israel, is, is the ideology. That ideology is quite different at its core. And so I wanted to know the difference. I started to study on the opposite end what is Christian nationalism and how did it develop?

And I had the mindset from growing up and being taught this way. We are a Christian nation. We've always been a Christian nation. The constitution is a Christian constitution and anybody who tries to say otherwise is wrong. That's, that's how my mind was wired from growing up in this thing that we did. But that's not quite true. They're, it's partially true, which I'll get into. But there are a lot of gray areas between that black and white. So I began studying the early founding fathers of the nation. And one of the events which they don't talk about in high school or grade school is an

event with involving Thomas Payne, the man who wrote the pamphlet that was sent out that started the Boston Tea Party. He became an ambassador. I think it was an ambassador to France, if I remember correctly. He got into a little bit of trouble, got thrown into prison. And he contacted back to the United States. Please help me get out of prison. And he didn't, he didn't get his way. And so what happened was he became angry in prison. And he started to attempt to create a Boston Tea Party of sorts against Christianity. And he wrote, I think it was two different pamphlets or books

attacking the Christian Bible. And that was shocking to I had no idea that history existed, so I started reading through, you can read through his books online, but more importantly, you can read through the responses that were sent to him.

And there's so many different unusual things in the responses, the biggest of which I found it a little bit shocking and quite frankly a little bit appalling that some of the founding fathers attacked his character rather than the content he published, attacking the Bible.

They could have gone further and said, hey, you're wrong in this, that and the other, but instead, some of them just simply attacked his character. But others, you could tell clearly in the responses which ones were Christian, which ones were greatly offended by what he published, and which ones, they may not have been Christian.

Benjamin Franklin, for example, his response was very blunt to the point, and I'm paraphrasing greatly. You have to go look this up if you're interested, but he said something to the effect, yes, what you say might be true, but how will we govern the people if we don't have a moral code such as Christianity, it would turn into complete chaos, essentially, is what I'm paraphrasing him to say.

There were people who responded like that, and there were others who responded using Christian terminology that would have existed back in the day. You could tell clearly that among the founding fathers, there was a variety of views and different ideologies, different mindsets.

As I'm studying that, I'm piecing together the fact that maybe I'm not thinking clearly, or maybe my thinking has been altered to believe something that we believe to be as a Christian nation, the Constitution written in a Christian format, et cetera, maybe that's not quite true.

So I started reading through some of the laws, the articles that are written in the Constitution, and the word Christianity just simply isn't there. It does talk about religion, and it talks about a freedom to worship as you please, but it doesn't outright say Christianity, opening the door for other religions and other belief sets, which would have likely been a result of those who were deist in the deist camp.

So I'm beginning to understand that it is a little bit confusing to go through because at the same time, the Constitution is written in a way that is very tailored for a Christian belief set of that era, which means that there were Christian ideas getting into the Constitution while also leaving the door for the freedom of worshipping as you please under whichever religion or not as you please.

So I think the best way to start this out is to let... Let's first define what is Christian nationalism. And this is just one of the definitions that I got online. Christian nationalism is the belief that a nation has a special Christian identity and that its laws, institution, leadership, and public culture should preserve that identity.

In other words, we're a Christian nation and we must preserve our Christian values. And in its simplest form, that's what the early church fathers believed. Do you think our founding fathers believe the same thing?

I said founding church fathers, but I meant founding fathers of the nation. This is in a realm that I don't usually talk through. So if what I read and the way I understood it of the responses in the letters to Thomas Paine who had written this attack against the Bible, if that was true, it looks like some of them, there's at least an open question as to where they were.

Benjamin Franklin, for example, he, his response, it wasn't really attacking the fact that he had just attacked Christianity, it was more to the fact that, how will we lead the chaos if we don't have a rule set?

Well, Thomas Jefferson, right? He cut out a bunch of stuff, right? He was like, okay, I don't like this, but he had a Bible, which is interesting, but it was the stuff he agreed with.

Exactly. So I think the people who are commenting are really trying to understand what is the difference? How does Christian identity differ from Christian nationalism? And so let's take Christian identity. Again, it is the idea that we are the, as the United States and Canada, we are the descendants of the lost 10 tribes of Israel.

And that's because it was built upon British Israelism, which had that ideology, but Christian identity mixed some of the more racist and anti-Semitic elements into it. Whenever they, when the learn, the protocols of the learned elders of Zion was published and distributed, Henry Ford and the Dearborn Independent were largely a part of that.

We've got some of the history written on the website. When anti-Semitism and racism combined with British Israelism to form Christian identity, now it became a DNA issue. The identity was a bloodline. And because that bloodline developed in this nation, we need to keep the bloodline pure.

And don't let all of the other bloodlines come in and flood our gates. I mean, there's some weird stuff in there. They were especially adamant that the Jews not come into America because they were identified as false Jews.

So in other words, Christian identity means I identify because my bloodline declares me to be Christian and this ground that we're on, this Christian nation is a ground of Christian. Identity because we descended from that bloodline. So it's a blood issue.

Christian nationalism, on the other hand, means we came to this nation to be Christian, to worship in our Christian belief sets, to establish laws that allowed us to worship our Christian belief sets in freedom.

But from its inception, we also will allow other religions, other faiths to come in, as long as they don't impede our Constitution. So Christian nationalism, when it began, was the idea that we want a Christian nation, but we want to welcome other people to our Christian nation.

So we're direct descendants of the Hebrew Israelites, and therefore we're chosen. So that's Christian identity. So Christian identity says we're chosen. We're special. Got it. Okay, that's a good way of separating that in my mind.

Exactly. So now fast forward in time in history, to the point where Franklin Delano Roosevelt becomes president, and he's been president for a few years, and then suddenly the Christian identity people start to say that his policies are now too supportive of the Catholics and the Jews.

And they start to say that because this, he's opening the floodgates, the false Jews are going to come in. The nation that we have now will no longer be the pure bloodline. It's going to be impure. The policy makers will be affected by this.

In other words, we're going to lose control of our Christian nation. That's what the Christian identity folk were saying. And it was spread and being popularized, especially by, you know, the Dearborn Independent was one of the big movers of this.

We've also talked about Gordon Winrod. His father Gerald Winrod was publishing and distributing all throughout the fundamentalist sects. He had the defenders of the Christian faith that worked with Charles Fuller. He was working very closely with Amy Simple McPherson, except we talked about that history and I won't go deep into it.

But needless to say, it began to spread throughout the nation that we're about to lose our Christian nation. So this would alarm the Christian nationalists, obviously. So the Christian nationalists began to join forces with Christian identity, even though they probably were a little bit already merging together. But now they had a common enemy.

Let's attack Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And so interesting, one of the leaders behind that attack was Gerald LK Smith, who I've mentioned a few times in different podcasts. He was the one who started the Christian nationalist crusades and the American first party.

So when you hear America first today, this is nothing new. It can be... dated back to this time period. But what happened was, because of this, Christian nationalist people started to adopt many of the ideologies of the Christian identity framework, but not always with all of the racist elements. So you can say that culturally we're a Christian nation, and we must recover our Christian heritage. So as the Christian nationalism began to gain power, over certain Christian beliefs and institutions, it began to change the way that it was developing into the United States as a mindset. You no longer had the mindset

where everybody, like the founding fathers, everybody's welcome to come to our nation and be free to, you know, practice their belief sets as they please, as long as they don't impede ours. Now you have things in today's, in today's version of these two, we must keep the Muslims out because we're not a Muslim nation. That's really how it has changed and morphed. So it's quite a lot to take in, but in the end, what it is for me is this, they both share a similar platform from their, from both of their roots, they both probably were out to do

good, had a good idea, but they mixed in some very, very wrong, very bad ideologies into their movements. And what, where it gets really problematic for me is both of those very bad ideologies and some of some what dangerous extremist ideologies, they found that religion was one of the strongest platforms to move their ideologies forward. And so as a result, you have many of these ideologies now starting to come into Christian doctrine in the United States. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transition through the latter reign

charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're

listening to or watching. On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. Based on what I read from Dr. Rush, Franklin, and Washington, a lot of these guys, what they seem to understand was the political the system of democracy is only as good as the people in it, right?

In other words, if, and the reason is, is because the way democracy is different, right? From what preceded it was you used to have topped out, right? You had monarchs and dictators and tribal chiefs, right?

Who are dictating to everyone else how things were gonna, gonna go and whatever their moral code was was what that tribe or that area or that nation got ruled by. Democracy is supposed to be from the bottom up, right?

It's supposed to be about the citizens, right? And it's about, and so what the founding fathers believed in order for democracy to work, we have to have citizens that have a moral, ethical code that we all agree on, right?

You know, therefore, if you kill someone, that's murder, you go to prison, right? That's a moral code. Well, that moral code was all based on the Bible, right? That was the root of it, right?

That's why if you go to Washington DC, you see the Ten Commandments, you see biblical stuff everywhere, because the whole basis of our morality and ethics is in their mind, biblically based. But it wasn't about, it wasn't about Christianity, ruling the government, it was about Christianity, transforming the souls of the democratic, the people, the citizens, right?

We need to have morally good citizens who will elect morally and ethically driven people to represent of them because we're not totally a democracy. Democracy would mean that we would all vote like the early Greeks did on every issue.

In our case, we're a republic. We elect people to vote for us on all these issues. But the key to it is, is in their mind, if you take the Bible or got out of the equation, right?

We will descend into moral and ethical bankruptcy. We will become perverted in their mind. We will depart. And I think it was to Tokleville or whatever who wrote a book and he realized that one of the great weaknesses in democracy said when people start figuring out that they can elect people that give them stuff, right?

This whole thing's gonna go off the rails, right? Because they're gonna start electing people who keep giving them stuff, right? And so the Foddy Fathers realized there was some inherent weaknesses, right? In human nature, right?

And what did they wreck? And this is something that I find interesting because this never really comes up. In any of the discussions because people don't like to get into this world But it's when you read what the founder fathers Understood is they understood that humans by nature are driven by selfish ambition and greed Right, and so how do we set up a system?

That mitigates selfish ambition and greed while we have these three power Structures right we have legislative judicial and executive well Let's put them in their own little silos and and make sure that they are all independent from each other So they'll balance each other right because we if we we don't want to let any Somebody gets morally bankrupt or ethically bankrupt. We have two other branches that can hold them in check So that was their checks and balances them because they understood human nature Which is something I don't hear much discussed You know, in fact one of the things I find interesting is is that a lot of stuff

That I hear is this sort of default setting from you know A lot of people that they just think humans are good like we're by default good And so let's believe the best in arts in each other right let's you know There's almost this naive it. Hey like we're good people really, you know We just got a focus on the good side and the evil people look at that and go oh my god This is our opportunity right these people are so naive Right, and you just see this constant tension all the time because the people that believe that everybody's good

The evil people look at that and go you're so gullible and naive and we're gonna take advantage of you in fact This is a little sidebar here For people like me that travel the world and get to talk to a lot of foreigners What you're seeing in Minnesota with the whole Somali fraud thing?

I saw 30 years ago in Africa listening to him talking and going oh, we can't wait to get to America You guys are so trusting. That's what they would all say. You're so trusting your system is just so ripe for Abuse because you just believe the best in everyone It's like people from around the world looked at our system going. Oh my god This is like an orchard or a field with no guard, right?

It's like they just believe everything's trust this trust that right. Well guess what we figured out People actually can't be trusted right and I think our founding fathers Recognize that you know what not everybody can be trusted therefore Let's put some of these guardrails in and oh by the way Religion and morality and ethics are fundamental to our whole civilization lasting if this thing goes south and people get driven by Selfish ambition and greed what James says in 316 in the Bible is you're gonna end up having chaos and evil and they seem to recognize that right and why

because and and this is something I think people forget how did we even come to be right who were the very first people that came here and why right and it was the pilgrims well who were they right a lot of people always think Thanksgiving right pilgrims you know they were those funny hats eight turkey but the pilgrims were actually religious refugees weren't they and they didn't come from England even though they were English they came from where they came from the Netherlands they came from the Dutch and why were they living there because there was no freedom to express

their religion in England so they had to flee and go to them and in fact you know the Dutch had more religious freedom than the English and finally there was this opportunity and they came here but they came here for one reason primarily so we could just be free to be us right to worship God the way we wanted to this is what's so crazy to me when people go there was you know that that Christianity had no you know no influence or it wasn't a part of the guy I'm like wait a minute what do you think the 13 colonies were these were each you know what was Rhode Island it was the

Center for Catholics what was Pennsylvania oh it's the Center for the Quakers right it's William Pitt the whole thing what's down in Georgia oh it's the Baptist that's why John Whitfield went there in priests had big religious meetings and you know why did you know Wesley and all these guys right why did they all come to America and where did they go they went to the colonies because that's what people wanted they wanted religious leaders because each one of the colonies had its own religious bent right they were pretty much a denomination dominant they denominated that area

that's why it made it so difficult when they decided to like how are we going to bring these 13 different religious you know worldviews or you know denomination how are we going to bring on altogether everybody thinks it's just about the colonies it was more than that it was the colonies it was about slavery and oh my god what are we going to do we have 13 different well not 13 because there wasn't that many but I'm just saying we had we have a variety of of expressions here and what did they all know they all came from a place where diversity of religious worldviews

was not appreciated in fact it would get you killed right people died having a different worldview and so the whole thing for people to say that our nation was it founded you know on Christianity it's all almost mind-boggling to me. It's like, have you do not understand who these people were, why they came here, what they set up, right? So you still have 150 years before we ever become a nation, right? But even in that, what were the founding fathers afraid of?

The problem they had in England, which was there was a state church. So the whole idea of separation of church and state has nothing to do with keeping the morals, values, and ethics of Christian and Annie out of government. Absolutely nothing. There was nobody in the early colonies that were writing the Declaration or writing the Constitution, writing any of that who was looking at it and go, we got to keep God out of this. In fact, it was exactly the opposite, right? What they were saying was where the government should not be a religious institution. The president of the United

States should not be the head of the church as it was in England, right? Or in Italy, you know, where he had the popes and the Holy Roman emperors, right? We're like, we're not doing that.

This doesn't end well, right? So yes, we want Christianity to influence everything we're doing, but no, we don't want an institution called the National Church run by the politicians. And that's the separation of church and state, not keeping moral ethics and values out. And so that's to me, I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible, but this whole confusion that academics have brought into this is just mind boggling to me. And part of the reason I discovered after kind of having off the record conversations is most of these people that are making these statements

have never read the actual private letters of these guys, where it all is laid out, right? That if you really want to know what somebody's worldview is, right? Read their stuff. And it's all in there.

It's just, it's not even hidden. So that's where this, you know, I get a little frustrated because it's like, wait a minute here. You know, it's like, what's really going on right now in our country, right? Because it's like, I'm sorry, but when you say Christian and he has no part in this, I have a problem with that, right? At the same time, I have a problem when political parties claim to represent the church, right? Or God, right? You know, there was a bit of my frustration with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson with the moral majority, right? I was like, you guys are walking

on a very, very dangerous place right now, right? It's like, you know, you're trying to turn something into a religious revival here, right? I have no problem if you want to run for president and say, hey, my Judeo beliefs are Christian, but don't be president in the United States and think you're the head of the church.

You're not the Pope. He runs civic affairs. So anyways, this is just me kind of sharing my perspective. And of course other people will have different ones, but it's personal to me because I've read all this and read these guys letters and I'm just fascinated like, how can you even think that Christianity had no influence in the founding of our country? One, it's absolutely paramount. Like, it's the foundation for everything. So let's add some history to this that add some complexity to what you just said and totally confuse everybody.

Because this is really important, I think, whenever you consider how these ideologies have mixed into the New Apostolic Reformation. So as I mentioned, most of the early founding fathers of the nation, not all, but most were devout Christians. Some were deists and Thomas Payne was helping fuel a growing deist movement, apparently. And so you had a wide variety of people with diverse belief sets, but they created the establishment clause in the Constitution that says basically the government cannot dictate or establish any religion. And again, they did not use the word Christianity anywhere in the law. So you free to establish a religion, you free to establish any

religion, but you must obey our moral code, which comes from our Christian views. Then maybe in the same sentence or the next, there's a free exercise clause, which says basically, you have the right to practice your religion in any way that you want or not practice it in any way that you don't want, but you must obey our moral code, which we got mainly from our Christian values. So the early founding fathers of the United States were basically allowing diversity granted anyone who came into the United States of a different religion. They might not see things eye to eye. And that's

where it gets a little bit sketchy, because we, let's say it like this, we in the United States are Christian. You can come here. If you're not Christian, you're going to obey our rules, which were established based off the moral code that were Christian. So yes, it was technically a Christian constitution, though the word is not in there, but we're going to allow you, if you're Hindu, Islam, Buddhist, et cetera. And that's where it gets a little bit sketchy, because what happens whenever somebody comes into the United States and their moral code does not jive with our moral

code. That's really the problem that we're starting to see today. You have people who are in the Christian Nationalist camp, Christian Identity camp saying, well, they must identify as Christian if they want to come here.

But that's not really what the Constitution says and take a step further in the way that the religious mindset has developed off of these things. They start to say, well, this is the development of the Kingdom of God.

You're not welcome here. You can't come here. So you have people who are trying to reject the Islam, anybody who says Islamic, for example. So it gets really, really murky. How you view this is basically through the restorationist history.

If you study how all of the doctrinal frameworks developed at the same time, these ideological frameworks developed, you see in the picture this restoration element, Latterin had it. We're coming to restore the church.

The new apostolic reformation builds upon that idea. We're coming to restore the apostles, the prophets, the pastors, the fivefold ministry. And that structure is going to be bound to our government. So that's why when you look at the news, you see NAR leaders trying to get very, very, very close to people who are in politics governing bodies because they want to reestablish the Kingdom.

And part of that reestablishment is to take this old covenant system, the old covenant systems and the Old Testament and establish those and create not quite a monarchy, but essentially the same thing that the Catholic church did where we have a Pope-type figure.

The leader of the United States needs to be a Christian leader who is closely tied to the church, essentially. So it gets really, really murky when you try to take all these ideologies, combine them with today's laws, and then add to it all the complexity of everything that we see with the people who are coming into the United States.

It's almost like a no-win scenario. Well, here, so one of the things that's interesting, so not only do we see the fact that the Christians go through hundreds of years of persecution, and then all of a sudden everything flips around 380, and when we see something really interesting happen, it flips at the time of Constantine over the next three administrations, to the point where the third guy, the Adosis or whatever his name is, ends up making it the state religion.

Now, this is where everything gets complicated, because, and this is where I think things really go haywire, and it gets back to what I talk about in my book, Money, Wealth, because I said in my book, if you really want to solve all of these problems in the American church or the global church, get rid of the money.

Because, and why do I say that? Because before money and power became a thing in the Christian church world, it was about relationships and community and people surviving together through rough times. What happened was, is that when the Romans decided to make Christianity the state religion, what did they do with all the real estate, that belonged to the other religions.

It all got turned over to the Christians. And many pagan temples became churches. Well, suddenly now the church had what? Real estate. And wealth, right? Well, then what happened? The church keeps accumulating, the Roman church, right?

Keeps accumulating, more wealth, more wealth, more wealth. Well, what happens when you get a lot of wealth? Well, to other people want to do with your wealth. They want to take it away from you, except for here's the problem.

You're a religion. You don't have an army. They have no military. You have no police force. You have nothing to defend yourself against all the people that want to take your stuff away. So what did they come up with?

What's their brilliant solution to this problem? Well, we need to create an alliance with a civil government that has an army that can defend our wealth. And they come up with the concept of the Holy Roman Emperor, right?

Which ended up being Charlemagne, the French king, the Frankish king at first. But then you have this whole series of governments now protecting the Vatican. And that dance has been going on for centuries, right?

But it's the same problem. It's like whenever the church gets into trouble and it's threatened, it's wealth, and it's accumulation of stuff gets threatened. They always go straight to the civil leaders and go, hey, protect us, they're taking our stuff away, right?

Well, what if we got rid of the stuff? What if you didn't have any, like, let's go back to Jesus, right? Like Jesus didn't have any stuff, you know, how much real estate did Jesus own?

Like how much stuff did the disciples own, right? That was the whole idea. Get rid of the stuff. If you get rid of the stuff, you have nothing weighing you down. You're not beholden to anyone.

And in my mind, and again, I'm being very philosophical here. But I think that's where things always go wonky, where things end up falling off the rails as it were. And whenever the issue becomes around preserved.

serving the wealth, right? And I think in our situation here in the States, the government's been trying to figure out that equation for a long time, right? It's like, well, what do we do here, right?

For a long time, the church didn't have a lot of wealth. But then we got into the prosperity gospel and then we guys driving around in lear jets, right? And guys having mansions and all this kind of stuff.

And so now what are people saying? Hey, where's the government? You see what I mean? It's just weird tension going on here. It's like, they were, I mean, I know Bill Cosby is kind of a lightning right thing, but he used to have this whole stick with Adam and Eve.

Come here, come here, come here. Get away, get away, get away. Come here, come here, get away, get away, get away. And it feels like to me that the church world has that sort of dynamic with the civil government.

Come here, come here, come here. Wait, help us, you know, preserve our stuff. Get away, get away. Don't tell us what to do, right? I mean, I ended up, this is a crazy story, but you know, I have a not for profit called Compassion and Justice International.

It took me two years to get this not for profit and just so people know it should have taken three months. Well, why? I happened to try to get a license for this thing or get it approved during, when Barack Obama was president.

And there was this whole backlash during that period against religious organizations that had not for profit status. Well, it just so happened in my bylaws. I had made the comment, you know, I wanted the organization to run on Judeo Christian values.

Well, I got flanked. So I ended up, I mean, again, I got to be careful here, but the lady that had my file was a black woman, right? And she would not approve of this because of the fact that I had that in there.

And I had to argue with her, if I had to get a lawyer involved, and so my argument to her was, ma'am, do you go to a black church?

I said, do you, where is the separation between church and state and your church, right? And in other words, so there's this whole concept about separation of church and state and this, that and everything else.

I don't, you know, it's like all my black friends that are pastors are like, wait a minute, you cannot be not political and be a pastor in the black church, right? Those two things go hand in hand.

You have to be involved in politics or you can't be a pastor there, right? So again, these are, this is where this, as you were saying, it gets murky, right? It's like, well, wait, this group over here, they can't have this, but this group over here, you know, they can have it.

And it's like, there's no consistency, right? And so I think that's what's also caused confusion, right? It's like, well, how come the black church in America? Has political rallies and you know, I mean I just you see it right now right these political figures are all showing up But the black churches with the black pastors all supporting them right, but you try to do that over here And you're like wait a minute. We're gonna take your taxes them status away from you So that I mean I've had to deal with this in the in the real world, right? It gets confusing to people

Yeah, the Camille Camille get away get away, right? Well, I can explain to some extent the come here come here get away get away and that's through the Cyrus argument So if you remember King Cyrus in the Bible he was not a he was not of the children of Israel he was very tolerance of other religions and cultures, but he was used by God to further the kingdom of the Kingdom of the Jews So what happens in today's world you have these Ideologies some of them extremist or tied to extremist backgrounds Trying to make the Constitution say things that it doesn't really say to

Support the ideology that the Constitution doesn't really support Which in fact in some cases is polar opposite from what the founding fathers were intending to create The only way that you can do this is you need to have politicians in your pocket who will write new laws and amendments and produce Code that will enable you to continue with your extremist agendas That's probably the simplest simplest most confusing way I could put it But essentially you're trying to do things that it was never intended to do. I'll say it like that And so what you do is you get somebody who's on the other side you get a King Cyrus

You get somebody who is going to be very tolerant of us in our very weird extremist views Because we're Christian or we're using the word Christian in our New Apostolic Reformation Kira's Mania et cetera because that word is used They will somewhat tailor to our beliefs, but we slide in our ideologies Hoping that the King Cyrus will move things forward But what happens whenever the King Cyrus draws a line in the sand and says you know I'm gonna help you on the things that the Constitution can't support But I'm not gonna go beyond this and so what happens is while they're being supported?

Yes, they're all in but the moment whenever that changes they kind of back off and say that that guy's of the devil From my sociology background one of the things that I realized is that politics actually is predetermined Meaning that we tend to flock to what's familiar well our World views we congregate in sub-cultures, right? And so there's a particular sub-culture that sees themselves as victims about everything, right? And if you study Cartman's triangle relational triangle. Let's is very interesting he talks about victims, persecutors, and rescuers, right?

You can see this whole thing play out in our culture, right? There's victims, rescuers, and persecutors, you know, people that, you know, attack other people, like, you're not doing, you know, you're not living up to your share, you know, they're pointing out what's wrong.

There's other people going, whoa, it's me, everybody's stronger than me, right? And I need somebody to defend me, right? Well, anyways, you see this play out in politics. You see it play out in the church role.

So a lot of times people are attracted to a particular group of people because of their nature, right? And so these things will never change because we're just all different, right? And we're going to see things differently.

And so I think we just have to be, you know, very sort of tolerant to a certain point and realize that in some situations, it's just the nature of things, right? It's, you know, we can have all these things on paper and we can draw them on whiteboards and we can throw all this, but it's human nature's what's going to drive us forward.

And I think that's where, you know, if we circle back and try to pull this back together where we started in this, I think that's where the guys that started this whole thing, which was an experiment.

And that's what I was trying to say at the beginning of this is all the people that want to be fault finders, I get it. We got a whole history of things we did terrible, right?

But I'm also in the business world, right? I mean, the church world, I'm in all these other worlds and in every other sector, guess what we have? Two steps forward, one step back. Two steps forward, one step back.

We have humiliating defeats and glorious victories. It's been the story of human history from the beginning of time. So when I get all these people that start pointing out all the negative things about the country, I kind of go, okay, why is that news?

Like, welcome to life, welcome to history. Like, do we want to stop for a second and let's not unpack the last 250 years, let's unpack the last 10,000 years. And guess what you're going to find?

The same pattern over and over and over again. The thing is, is here's the key in my mind to this whole thing. Whenever we think we've arrived and we think we're there and we start getting self-righteous about ourselves, that's when we're in trouble.

But if we pursue this thing going, you know what, we're not perfect and we can do better and we can keep pursuing things. And guess what? Judeo-Christian values are absolutely critical to our unity as a country and our ability to treat one another with honor and respect, right?

and not steal from one another and not put each other down and all these kind of things that are so intrinsic to Jesus worldview Then we're gonna be better, right? See You know, one of the things that And I and again, I'll just gonna go there contrary to where a lot of academia is I I believe that Jesus and his teachings are the cure I think he's the solution and when I mean by that is when you go back and you look at Jesus teachings What really do they center on they center on the fact that we are all by nature self-centered and selfish

and therefore If you want to be like Jesus Learn to love and what does that mean love means caring about others more than yourself Sacrificing for others caring about others, right? I mean you go back to the early church That's how deacons came to be, right? How do we take care of poor widows?

How do we care for the sick? They're like that was that was the church That's what they spent most of their money and their time doing helping the disadvantage, right? Helping that's what love was about so to me Jesus is like when people try to erase him out of the national dialogue. I'm looking at it going I don't think you understand. He's the key. He's the antibiotic He's the he's the thing that solves our default setting to being selfish and driven by selfish ambition and greed Which are the things that destroy civilization?

So this is where again and you guys will have to all be gracious with me I I'm I'm all about Jesus being more involved not less involved like his worldviews his teachings, right? Not institutional religion. I'm not talking about The nominations or even any of these ministries. I'm not talking about that. I am talking about his worldview I don't I don't think we survive without it and that's my humble opinion

Well, thank you again so much for doing this Okay Well, hopefully we haven't upset too many people, but again, we're just two guys on a journey Trying to figure this out as we go both of us kind of you know We're citizens of this country and we're sitting there sometimes and it feels like we're watching a tennis match, right?

It's like I watch people That's like I want you know I think you can turn on the news right if I wanted to play political tennis Depending on I could turn on Fox News and turn on CNN and I'm like this It's just like a tennis match right our heads on a swivel and we're all here trying to survive right?

We're just trying to raise our kids and try the decent husband and try to be a good citizen and it's just like oh this just gets too much. Yeah, sometimes it does. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-Branum.org. From more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. And from more about Mike Bickle and IHOPKC, you can read some said they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Bickle,

the Kansas City Profits and the International House of Prayer.