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Notes -
What happens when Groypers start attending your church?
I've seen (in real life even!) blue-tribe immersed evangelical leaders bemoan the lack of religious interest in the side of America they see. Our churches have largely pandered to the "wider culture" (typically center-left leaning) without realizing that there is a burgeoning counter-culture that signals great interest in traditional religion. When they do realize there is such a counter-culture, they condemn it.
The most recent example is the the much-ballyhooed Fuentes-Carlson interview. The David Frenchs of the world signaled their great distaste. The very-online dissident right was mostly pleased. As I have never heard Fuentes speak before, I decided to listen to the entire interview. What surprised me most was how much both Carlson and Fuentes talked about Christianity. I had not known Fuentes claimed to be religious. (As an aside, the interview did nothing to convince me that Fuentes holds any deep convictions, much less genuine Christian faith). (As another aside, it turns out I am more "extreme" in my religious views than Fuentes: conditioned on him being religious I would have expected him to be to my right [insert "that awkward moment" meme]). If Fuentes continues to treat Christianity as a key part of his identity, his followers will start showing interest in the Church.
I'm not the only one who has noticed. There are other (near-dissident) leaders in the evangelical world who are looking to engage with the wayward, but seeking, young right. The pastor Michael Clary has written several posts either arguing for reaching the right or directly appealing to the dissident right. While less than eloquent (and with some boomer-like mannerisms), Mark Marshall explicitly recommends engaging with Groypers. Even conservative stalwart Kevin DeYoung has started to use language that appeals to the dissident right without outright condemning it (though he has engaged with dissident right ideas in the past).
But, by and large, our churches have been conditioned to be "salt and light" to a left-leaning world. We know how to deal with a blue-haired lesbian. Even conservative/orthodox churches can show the love of Christ to the wayward left. Be winsome, win them for Christ, and let sanctification come later (if it happens at all!). But our churches are not at all prepared for a young, irreverent to cultural norms, Christian Nationalist man who is interested in tradition and yearning for something more meaningful than a Ted-talk and a rock-concert on a Sunday.
And come they will, especially if the church is little-o orthodox, especially if it is traditional, and especially if proscribes female leadership. We shall soon see how tolerant our churches actually are. We are told we must show love to the sinners to our left. Let us see whether we show the same love to sinners on our right.
From what I can tell, the dissident right’s interest in Christianity seems entirely based on the vibes of it being “based and trad” rather than actually being interested in the teachings of Christ. What Christian values do they actual have? The movement is centred on vice signaling, aka the “based ritual”, displaying abhorrent opinions, possibly ironically, to shock and troll the libs, their few female members are highly sexualised (see their embrace of Sydney Sweeney), and they are certainly more concerned with a white identity than a Christian one.
I was going to say this as well, for the most part.
Nick is more the trendy influencer type conservative who’s great for the outrage machine of social media. I don’t follow him in particular unless he’s made a splash large enough like on Tucker that I have to watch him. But I’ve seen him in other venues before. I’ve never found him informative at all. And he has been clearly misinformed on various topics.
Take one particular example of this. When Halsey English debated Nick back when Warski Live was still a thing. Nick’s a young and good looking guy who was dressed up for the discussion. Most people watching this would’ve said Nick won. And if you asked me on the optics and performative antics of how debates go, he did. But as a person that’s read extensively and pretty deeply across various topics they touched, Halsey actually had the argument correct by a good shot.
Take Nick’s remarks about the Talmud (or Dan Bilzerian’s if you want to). He’s repeating a lot of the classic tropes and accusations about anti-Christian and anti-Jesus remarks that have been around for centuries. Not knowing some of these are outright fabrications (they don’t exist), are a collection of scandals where Rabbi’s give different views about hypothetical arguments among classroom discussions, or are often refuting various claims. The Talmud is a massive religious collection of “case law” more or less. It’s not a single unified composition of discrete writings that says shit like “you can murder gentiles.”
I personally own a complete collection of the Babylonian Talmud and Christ is it a pain in the ass to read and make sense of. But if you actually read it, it fully conforms to the explanations the Rabbi’s give. Nick either doesn’t know this or knows and is lying about it. I think the former is probably true in his case.
Nick is mostly popular IMO not because he’s some kind of scholar or intellectual heavyweight making waves. He says things that are outrageous for the times that are funny and inflammatory and progressive ideology is falling more out of favor with conservatism again becoming in vogue. He’s caught a high point in the wave of things and is riding it very effectively. The real testament to how bright or successful he is, is what he ultimately does with the victories he’s stacked and the popularity he’s accumulated.
The Talmud includes many thousands of prescriptive and proscriptive rules. It also includes other stuff. But if you’re a kosher-keeping Jew, the rules from a book like mishnah chullin are absolutely binding, though modified according to sect / kosher process. It’s not accurate to say that the Talmud is only a collection of opinions and debates. If you walk through Williamsburg or imagine Ben Shapiro’s daily life, these are the most rule-following people in the world, and all of the rules are in the Talmud and accompanying literature. And you can’t just not follow them, as that would get you ostracized and banned.
The criticism against the Talmud is as follows: among the very many authoritative rules which religious Jews follow with extreme care, are also rules that appear evil. The evil rules are not currently followed, but for what reason? Is it only because they can’t get away with it? Are they just biding their time until they can? For instance, if you read chapter 10 of Maimonides’ Avodat Kochavim in the Mishneh Torah, which is a Talmud redaction (highly authoritative and taught at most Yeshiva), you’re going to find rules about being merciless to outsiders:
Jews, Christians, and Muslims all conveniently ignore some of the uglier stuff in their holy books that if taken literally would oblige and/or excuse them from behavior considered repellent in the modern age. And all three love to point at the ugly stuff in the other religions' scriptures as some kind of gotcha: either they are not "really" following their own religion, or they secretly practice and defend this stuff and hide it from outsiders.
I don't have time (or maybe inclination) to dispute this but for calibration purposes could you offer some examples? Or don't, if that seems too onerous a request.
The Jewish examples from the Talmud have been given above - lots of rules about how you can treat gentiles (badly). The Bible has Leviticus and Deuteronomy, with the various laws about what you can and cannot eat, and also that you should put to death adulterers or disobedient children, and exhortations to slaughter enemy tribes. There are also some ugly stories in Judges. The Quran and the hadiths, likewise have verses about taking women as sex slaves, slaughtering the Jews, and everyone's favorite story about Mohammad and Aisha.
All three religions have a large body of jurisprudence explaining how these laws or parables were very specific and contextual, or were superseded by later precedents, or by the New Testament, and so on. So no, you don't need to explain to me that the Bible does not actually require you to stone your disobedient son or prohibit you from eating shrimp. I know that. But all these apologetics require accepting that these prescriptions were, in fact, contextual and open to interpretation, and just taking one snippet all by itself and its literal meaning is basically scriptural nutpicking.
People like @coffee_enjoyer who enjoy those long lists of horrible Talmudic prescriptions as evidence of all the secret evil things Jews believe are doing exactly this (and will likewise happily take at face value the less savory Quranic verses and hadiths). But of course Deuteronomy 21 and Leviticus 20 and all the stories in Judges about enslavement, rape, and genocide, those are nuanced.
The nuance is that for Christians, what Jesus says on a topic supercedes everything to the contrary in the Old Testament. The “law” of the Old Testament is very specifically abrogated (though the word “fulfilled” is insisted). For instance,
This supersedes Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:19-20, Deuteronomy 19:21. The abrogated / fulfilled Old Testament Law is kept by Christians for reasons of historical and symbolic reference, because Christ is held to have satisfied and completed the Law. This is an important nuance to make and not at all an evasion; the “1st primary” text of Christianity is the New Testament, which specifies how parts of the Old Testament have been deprecated; the “2nd primary” text is the OT, understood only in relation to the 1st. But what Christianity lacks is the rich orthopraxic secondary literature like you find in Judaism and Islam. I say “secondary”, but really these works are orthopraxically primary.
If an Islamic “Sahih Hadith” in a given jurisprudential tradition specifies something, then it simply must be held by all adherents of that school of jurisprudence. It’s just how Islam works; the “sunnah” as clarified by the authentic transmissions of secondary literature have authority. It’s what Muslims spend most of their time reading. The Muslims who do not believe in the secondary literature are called Quranists and they are as insignificant as the “Kairites” of Judaism who only believe in the Old Testament. The only real case of orthopraxic literature in Christianity akin to Hadith or the Talmud is if you’re a priest engaging in a mass, or if you’re being advised on when to do something at a mass or which sins must be confessed.
Yes, buddy, I know about the New Covenant. And I'm also quite familiar with Islamic jurisprudence and interpretation (and disputes) over hadiths.
The problem is, the vast majority of religious practitioners of all faiths are not theologians or lawyers. This is why some Christians actually quote those Old Testament verses when it's convenient, and then fall back on "But Jesus" when the ones they'd rather not follow are quoted back at them. I don't think Christians are particularly hypocritical or unlearned about this, relative to anyone else. But by the same token, some Muslims and Jews are aware of the bad stuff in their holy books and handwave it away, and some don't. Most Muslims don't approve of marrying 9-year-olds, most Jews don't approve of taking gentile slave girls, most Christians don't approve of stoning children to death.
There is no difference, except the artificial one you create in an attempt to gotcha Jews.
Now, you can claim that means most Muslims and Jews aren't really following their orthodox doctrines (though I don't know why we should consider a hostile outsider more qualified to interpret their scriptural fidelity). Maybe you can even make a theological argument that under the letter of their respective laws, Christians are correct to ignore their bronze age genocidal covenants while Muslims and Jews are incorrect to ignore their bronze age genocidal covenants. But that would presumably be between them and their gods. If you want to convince us that Jews don't really follow the Talmud, go argue with a rabbi. If you want to convince us that Jews are actually that evil and slimy because they secretly follow all your uncharitable Talmudic interpretations, your case is entirely scriptural nutpicking, and it's fair to ask if you've stoned any children or damned yourself with polyester lately.
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