Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Biblical Anarchy Podcast, project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and part of our Christians for Liberty Network. I’m your host, Jacob Winograd. Glad to be with you all here in the new year. And I have so much going on and I’m hitting the ground running in the new year. I wish that I could have had a better first episode, but this is going to be kind of a generic looking back and looking forward episode, which I hope you guys enjoy anyway. I just have so many irons in the fire and projects that I’m working on, which I feel like I’ve been saying since the end of last year. And what can I say? I just am an individual who likes to bite off more than he can chew, apparently. But… I hope that you guys appreciate that about me. I hope that you have enjoyed the things that I have been doing. I guess I can talk a little bit about that. So most recently, I have been lost in the void that is this book. I’m sorry, Chris, I’m giving you much more work to do, bumping my mic there. provoked how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. And I’ve been doing a book club with that as well. So you guys probably saw that December was a little bit light on the regular episodes. And so I did a bonus episode where it was my green room interview with Scott Horton, the author of this book. And so I got to talk to him about that. I really recommend going and listening to that conversation. If you haven’t already, it was really like I’ve, I’ve had Scott on three times now. And that conversation was especially good. Because at the end, we got really to a point where like, we were kind of both, even though Scott’s not a Christian, we were both kind of like, humming the same tune, so to speak, where he was like, you know, he’s like, I’m not a Christian, but like, from what I understand about Christianity, you know, all of this flies on the face of it. And then I kind of said, I got something for that and quoted scripture to him and he really liked it. And just really, just a really great conversation. Go listen to that if you haven’t. um but that’s what I’ve been spending a lot of my time doing is reading this book and it is a doozy I am about halfway through it right now I think and man like so if you are a libertarian and you read this, you just double down, triple down on your conviction that man, the state, the government, that central planning and empire building, you know, being the world’s police, foreign interventionism as a foreign policy, just how bad it is, just how doomed and flawed it is, how just utterly in like simultaneously. It’s funny, like within the libertarian world, there’s often this like, you know, I think it kind of stems from that saying never attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence. And so libertarians are often kind of like having an internal debate. We’re like, well, is the state evil or is it just that, you know, maybe these aren’t great people, maybe they’re not saints, but more or less what they’re doing is just acting out bad incentives and they’re just generally incompetent because central planning is a bad way to run society and all of that. Whereas other libertarians are like, no, these people are evil. They’re like Epstein Island type pedophiles who, you know, are basically Satanists or one step removed from Satanists and not in the ironic edgy atheist sense, but like, you know, actual members of like a death cult. Right. You got both both sides of that spectrum within libertarianism. And you read a book like this and you go like, hey, hey, listen now. It can be both. Right. Like these people can be simultaneously incredibly evil and corrupt and also incompetent and foolish, which I mean. That’s what the Bible says, right? I can’t remember the name of the Psalm. See if I can look it up here quick. I think it’s Psalm two. And I should know this because I’ve, I’ve read Psalm two a lot lately. I’ve been actually getting into the Psalms, which is going to be a little bit of a Preview into something I’m going to talk about here in a bit. But yeah, Psalm two, the reign of the Lord’s anointed is what the ESV calls it. Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in heaven laughs and the Lord holds them in derision. So there’s a lot to that passage, I won’t read the whole thing. But that that beginning thing there just about the foolishness of the kingdoms of man and how they conspire against each other against what is good against God and his rule, and how it’s in vain, and God holds them in derision. Oh, man, that’s so true. It was true then and it’s true now, right? So with LCI, I’ve been doing a book club and I’ve been doing weekly live streams with some new friends of mine. It’s with Mark Pulse of the Knocked Conscious podcast and with Sean Collins of the Buds in Reality podcast. And that’s been a lot of fun because not only are we diving into this book from a common political framework, we have different worldviews and different lived experiences that are coming to how we’re talking about this. Like for me, I’m learning about a lot of the stuff that I kind of knew about, but not firsthand. Whereas like Sean and Mark are older than me by like ten to fifteen years. So for them, it’s kind of like they can I can talk about it from my perspective on where either things happened before I was born or I was a kid. when it happened and for them a different. Yeah, some of the stuff happened when they were maybe kids, but for them it’s more like, oh, this happened while they were teenagers and then adults, right? Younger adults. And so that’s been a lot of fun. And then the other cool thing about it is that so Sean is a fellow believer, but Mark isn’t. He’s more of an atheist or agnostic type. And that’s fun because I always enjoy finding areas of commonality with atheists. And I used to do a show, which you could probably go back and still find on his channel, because I don’t think he took it down. But read Coverdale of the Naturalist Capitalist show. He’s since quit podcasting. but we used to do a show together with me him liam mccollum and will bell it was called the capitalist communion it was two christians me and liam and then reed and will two atheists and we would just sit and talk about current events and libertarian stuff libertarian drama uh the libertarian party and politics philosophy religion everything And do it from like, even when we were disagreeing, it was like we were just friends having fun, having good conversations with one another. And showing that, you know, obviously, like, as a Christian, I want people like Reed and Will to come to faith. But I mean, we can also just have a relationship and we can get along and we don’t have to promote or lean into the sort of tropes in their culture where that kind of pits secular people against religious people and how libertarianism, one of its strengths is that it showcases the ability of of a. or the showcases the quality of pluralism, and the ability to have a true diversity in society that’s not based just solely on skin color but of ideas of background, stuff like that so. Anyway, that’s kind of been fun. This has been sort of a, it’s not quite the same because of how focused and narrow the scope of our conversations are, because it’s about the book, but the dynamic is very similar. And so that’s been a lot of fun to kind of like revisit that dynamic. So those weekly live streams are available on the YouTube channel as well as the the LCI green room feed. So definitely check those out if you haven’t already. So yeah, I’m going to keep going back in time here. That’s what I’ve been doing the most recently. I’ve also had recently Bob Murphy on. We had a conversation about the Federal Reserve, which I also think I published as a bonus episode. So definitely check that out. I know you guys who are the audio listeners might like You probably missed the interviews. They still happen. Just go subscribe to the Green Room feed or watch them on YouTube. I’m not always going to post them as bonus episodes. I do sometimes do the clips and whatnot, but I’m probably going to try to do that a little bit less. This feed, as far as if you’re listening on YouTube, then you’re just like, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jacob, but if you’re listening on the Biblical Anarchy Podcast podcast, uh audio feed then this is probably going to be mostly solo content going forward but I hope you still enjoy that I I see plenty you do because I still my numbers didn’t dip uh but they definitely like I have like my normal viewership but then like if you have a guest on of course people who like that guest and are new you get more people watching those as well so But different avenues for different things, right? Like I want this feed to be a certain thing. I want biblical anarchy to be a certain thing. And the green room is now more where I do my interviews. So it’s just better branding better. You know that that way people can kind of have consistency in terms of like, this is always going to be one thing and the green room is always going to be one thing. If that makes sense. Also, let me just take a moment just to ask you guys to, if you’re watching us on YouTube, like this, subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already. If you’re watching on YouTube or Rumble or X, and I was just talking about my conversations, my interviews and live streams, those all happen on where you’re watching. So make sure you subscribe and give these videos a thumbs up so more people can see them. And if you’re listening on the audio feeds, I’ve seen a lot of you answer my call to action to leave five star reviews. I really appreciate that, you know, the reviews have definitely increased. And I’d ask you guys to continue doing that. And especially on Apple, if you guys could do some more written reviews. This is maybe a little bit of my vanity, but I only have two written reviews. and the two written reviews one’s a five star and one’s a one star and the one star review man every time I go and check it gets me all triggered and annoyed because the person is just like uh saying things that get me riled up which I uh maybe I’ll come back to that at the end maybe that’ll be kind of a good way to close uh I’ll bring that up and and respond to my critic said very unfair things about me, got me all lustered and annoyed. So… But yeah, if you guys could leave five star reviews and written reviews, especially if you listen on Apple, that helps out a lot as well. Also, let me for those of you who are on Spotify, I mean, shoot me an email. Jacob at LibertarianChristians.com or on X at Biblical Anarchy. I know Spotify has a video option. If you guys on Spotify want video, let me know. I’ll make it happen. If you guys just listen to it. I don’t I don’t watch videos on Spotify. I just listen. But if you guys want video on Spotify, if I get feedback, I will make it happen. I will Captain Picard that. I will make it so. Okay? So I just added myself as a Trekkie. Don’t worry. I also like Star Wars. So anything with star in it, typically. So, all right. By the way, I’m probably going to do some kind of like Star Trek Star Wars roundtables on the green room feed soon. So stay tuned for that. Yeah, other than that, just basic housekeeping will let you guys know we hit our fundraising goal for the end of twenty twenty four. We had a matching fifteen thousand dollar challenge grant, which we beat. We actually exceeded it. So we are well funded for twenty twenty five. We got a lot of stuff that we’re excited to do. Books that are in the works that are going to be published, more video content, more live streams, more interactive events. So if you guys want to be part of that, want to get more of an inside behind the scenes scoop, go to LibertarianChristians.com slash donate or BiblicalAnarchyPodcast.com. And you’ll get the donate tab will pop up. Sign up for ten dollars or more a month. Become an LCI insider and you will get all sorts of perks. You’ll get the books that we already have out. You’ll get a lot of them for free e-versions as well as some physical copies. discounts on merchandise, as well as being able to attend insider meetings. And we’re rolling out a whole lot more for insiders this year. So be there first, get in on the new stuff before everyone else does. I think I’m all done with my housekeeping. So, all right. So I’m going to do a little bit of a looking back and then looking forward, right? And by the way, next week’s episode is going to be a bit of a both, a both and as well. Just to give you guys a preview, I’m going to do a, like a sort of, what’s the right word for this? I’m going to Hmm. Man, I’m really struggling for a good word for this. I’m going to basically do a, like a, I want to say like a revamped, I guess. Not the right word. Doesn’t seem to hit hard enough or quite imbue the meaning I want. Very frustrating as a podcaster, by the way, when you’re, you pride yourself on talking and being a wordsmith. And then there’s just one word that evades you and you got to sit there and you got to, You got to filibuster. You got to fill the space. You got to find a way to not just sit there and stammer, right? So what I’m going to do is I am going to, I was really hoping I’d get the word there. I didn’t. What I’m going to do is I’m going to go back to episode one. And I’m going to do it again. But I’m going to do it better. I’m going to add to it. That was just recorded audio. I’m going to record video. And I’m going to do something with that. I have something in the works. It’s almost done. But I’m going to sort of restake my claim, right? I’m going to refocus, recenter going into the new year. And I’m going to remind everyone, like, hey, here’s how we started. Episode one. We’re up to episode eighty-five. Let’s go back and look at episode one. What is biblical anarchy? So we’re two years into this now. Actually, yeah, two years. So we started November twenty two was when the podcast started. So we’re a little over two years into it. And I want to go back and revisit that first episode, which I went back and listened to recently, and I still agree with everything I ever said. I got it perfectly right. And but you know what? In all seriousness. There’s some things that, you know, as I’ve, you know, two years is a lot of time. And I think I can make the argument even better than I did back then. Articulate some things better. Refine my points and my arguments. I’ve had a lot of debates over anarchy, libertarianism, foreign policy, Christian theology. I’ve really, I think, grown a lot in my understanding of… Not that… I obviously think I know a lot about theology enough to talk about it, but I just continue. You’re always learning and growing, right? If you can’t look back at something you created two years ago and think, oh, I could do better now, you’re not growing, right? So I want to do that. I want to go back and be like, let’s take this and do it again, but better. It’s going to be two point oh, right? So that’s looking really far back. Let’s look at more recent. I had, by the way, I’ve had a couple articles come out. And I think I’ve talked about that a little bit. I’ve done a couple podcasts talking about those articles. That was episodes eighty four and eighty one. And those were one article that I published for my church and then republished on LCI’s website. And then another one. that I published on X and then republished on LCI’s website. One is about a Christian perspective on political, sorry, it’s not episode eighty-one, it’s episode eighty. So one is about navigating our loyalty and allegiances in a secular world and how we live as Christ as King in a democratic system, what that means for Christians to interact with politics, right? And then another one more about pursuing coalitions and how do we avoid being unequally yoked while also avoiding being isolated? So how do we pursue coalitions and Christian values while engaging in a secular society? So those are articles that have come out as well. And I’ll have those linked in the show notes so you guys can check those out. So, and I’ve done episodes on them as well. So that’s episodes, uh, seventy, sorry, episodes eighty and episode eighty-four. Last episode, so not that old. But, you know, I’ve, and this is good, right? So I feel like… I did my eschatology series, which I know I haven’t even finished right. My over two year long eschatology series I keep coming back to revisiting and then I take a break and come back. I’m pretty much done with it. I just didn’t tie it up into a neat little bow. which I like doing that right so I’m going to do that at some point I’m going to kind of do a I think I’m going to do like a retrospective and then I’m going to do some other stuff maybe some compilations of my eschatology content but after I finished eschatology because it was election season I was like really doing a lot of content focusing on this sort of tension between having christian and libertarian anarchist principles and what that means for how we engage in the world and you know I have a fear of like sort of like a purity spiral where you become so possessed by your principles that you’re unable to act in the world or be effective and while certainly one can kind of there’s extremes on both ends right so it’s like well how do we find a balance where we’re principled but we can still pursue advancing things in the world and not be so against like we don’t want to be so pragmatic that we uh forsake the truth but we we don’t want to be like you can kind of create a paralysis of fear or of like like you know purity where like you’re It’s almost kind of what the Pharisees did, where it’s like, you know, Jesus associates with sinners, right? It’s like you don’t want to go that far in your quest for purity. So what does that look like for Christians and for libertarians? I’ve been exploring that a lot lately. So I think it’s going to be important to listen, it’s important to find ways to be effective in the world. But it’s also important to continue to revisit to re steep yourself to re ground yourself in what is true and what our principles are, right? It’s, it’s not all one or all the other. We have to continually this is what’s talked about, like in john, We have to abide in Christ so that we can bear fruit. But the fruit we bear is for the kingdom. And that is a outward thing, that the fruit is then what helps us to be a witness for the gospel to the world. And, you know, it’s the good works, our testimonies and whatnot, which… grow the kingdom, which spread kingdom values, which impact the lives of those around us. And so in the same way we have to abide in Christ so that we can be grounded, so that we can be filled with the Spirit, so that we can be filled with His Word and filled with truth, so that we can bear fruit, You know, libertarians like we always need to be grounded in what the truth is, what the truth is of politics and economics and governance and authority, you know, philosophy like that’s good. We need to have that grounding, but we should do that for the sake of bearing fruit to make the world freer and to. bring the you know, it’s all connected, right to bring the world into greater harmony with that which is true, which includes that which is true for the kingdom of God and for human society. So I try to do both, and I’m going to continue to try to do both. And I can see, looking back over the last year, I’ve done a lot of that. I have a dichotomy of episodes that are really deep into theology and philosophy, and those that are really focused on how do we take this and live it out in the real world? How do we bear fruit for the kingdom of God? And how do we bear fruit and increase liberty? And those are not mutually exclusive goals, which should be, you know, if a libertarian Christian institute of biblical anarchy didn’t make that obvious, you know, I can continue to, you know, beat that dead horse and you know just listen the kingdom of god means that we are born again to a living hope and we live as free men for him and so the the message of liberty is the message of salvation is the message of the gospel is the message of human flourishing it’s all it’s all circular it’s all tall one just two sides of the same coin and I can keep on coming up with cliches or I can Let’s look further back. Right. What did I do last year? I don’t remember what I did last year, folks. OK. Beginning of the year, I started out with me. I got and I’m going to be having Dave back on soon. I love Dave. Dave Smith was one of my introductions to libertarianism. Dave and I are friends. Dave has had a prolific year and I got to play a small role in that at several points. I got to participate in some X spaces with him as a co-host, which those were contentious, but also a lot of fun. Dave is not afraid to get his hands dirty and get into the weeds and duke it out with his critics and with other libertarians. And I had a one for episode. Well, so I shared a clip of it episode fifty five, but he was like episode two of the green room and we tackled again this like we’re and caps. We believe in God. We have our principles, but then there’s the. there’s the issue of immigration, the issue of the debate over open borders and closed borders. As Christians, this is really tough because we have a duty to protect our communities and our families, but we also have to treat the foreigner and the sojourner with a certain dignity and respect and care, and we’re called to care for the least of these. Libertarians and Christians are incredibly divided on the topic of immigration and borders. And Man, it’s a tough topic, because I kind of see both sides, even though I kind of land on the side of going, you know what? I do understand there’s negative outcomes to it, but I don’t know that I want to give the state more power to restrict movement. That doesn’t mean that what the state does… Because there’s two sides to this, right? I don’t want the state to restrict movement. That doesn’t mean I want the state to create all sorts of distortions with the war on drugs or their foreign policy or the enabling of corporations and NGOs to just kind of like artificially create influxes of people from different parts of the world in ways that don’t really, it’s not like a natural free movement of people. It’s an unnatural movement of people created by state distortions. That doesn’t mean I think the solution is to punish the people who are, unless they’re committing acts of aggression. If you’re a human trafficker or committing some kind of criminal activity, then that’s a different discussion. But if you’re just like a victim to one degree or another, I don’t want to… call for state violence against you. But I understand that like there’s there’s good faith arguments from Christians and libertarians who go like, Well, I don’t know that we should cheer on the state doing that. I don’t cheer on the state doing that. We shouldn’t you know, the I mean, listen, as an ANCAP, I think the state ceased to exist. But while it exists, while this is the form of governance, we live in a world of nation states. And while we live in this sort of legal order, I want to pursue an immigration policy that respects the dignity of all people. While also does not promote chaos and does not promote violence that does not enable nefarious actors to sort of, you know, weaponize the movement of people in the pursuit of their various goals. I mean, we. a good article for this, which actually this, this should be an episode I do. I should do an episode where I kind of like read through some excerpts or maybe the whole thing of, uh, a really good Rothbard, uh, piece called nations by consent, which kind of really does a good, like, listen, Rothbard’s as libertarian, you know, hardcore and cap as they come. But he came to understand that the immigration topic was, was very, uh, you know, convoluted and difficult. So that’s probably something that I should talk about a bit more. Let’s see, what’s a good thing to end on? Christian nationalism. I had debates with Andrew Wilson. I had conversations with Stephen Wolfe and C.J. Engel. That’s coming up, by the way, guys. I’m going to be on the YouTube channel, Eschatology Matters. And I’m going to be, it’s not a debate. They’re having me on for like an interview where I offer a critique of Christian nationalism. So that’s coming up. The interview is in a couple weeks. I don’t know when it’ll air, probably sometime after that. But I’m excited for that to come out. And yeah, so that’s a little bit of a look back and a little bit of a look forward. A lot of things going on this new year, and I’m so excited to be part of this team. I’ll end on this. I’m going to be having on Cody Cook soon. Cody and I, it’s funny, we had a rough start because we used to argue on Twitter a lot, and now we just argue on Signal a lot. But we’ve become pretty good friends. Cody’s more of an Anabaptist pacifist. I did a debate with him. You guys should go watch on Christian pacifism. And Cody’s, what’s funny is that we have different approaches to Christian libertarianism, different theologies, obviously not totally at odds, but different emphasis or emphases. And But we have a very similar temperament and personality type. So we’re both very snarky and talkative and argumentative. I like to give Cody grief and say he’s a very he’s the most he’s what I say he’s he’s violently pacifistic. So but Cody has joined the LCI team. He’s going to be now sort of like sharing coaching duties of the Libertarian Christians podcast with Doug. And so Well, we have a conversation with Cody at some point in the green room, and I’m happy for him to be in addition to this team. I love this team. We are always iron sharpening iron because we agree on so much, but we also have such different, again, lived experiences, worldviews, perspectives, and we’re always… iron sharpening iron, but at the end of the day, we are Christians united at delivering the message of the gospel of freedom in Christ and the human flourishing that comes from living as free men, of embracing the biblical teaching of governance and liberty and how humans should live with one another. And I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. This team that that is, you know, spontaneously, you know, built up over the last several years at LCI. I’m really excited for what we’re going to be doing this year. We have so many projects in the works. It’s a lot. You guys have shown your faith in us, your confidence in us by investing in us. And so Yeah, come with me into this new year. Let’s see what it has for us. Let’s see what God’s plans are. And let’s rejoice that we can participate in that. God is so good that we can participate in his redemptive plan for mankind and to preach the truth to the lost and to the nations. So that is what I will end on. Thank you everyone for listening and look forward to all that comes in this year. As I always say, live at peace, live for Christ. Take care.
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