[music] Hey fellow GNT those of our spirituality with a twist. So today we're continuing on with the discussion of what historians call the protoorthodox branch of Christianity. Um, this is part of a bigger project that we've had ongoing, which is like, uh, America, what the hell? [laughter] Now, we've been trying to figure out the different reasons why our particular land is in the, uh, particular terrible shape and position it's in. And, um, rather than doing it kind of like as an issues of the week kind of a thing, though, maybe we'll do a little of that today. Uh, we've been because we're an educational spiritual kind of a podcast, we've been trying to look at it through like that lens. And uh the subject matter here is a major and probably unfortunate part of what's happening in America now is a kind of a toxic Christianity. And we've been really trying to look at not just that part of Christianity, but Christianity overall, raise some questions about it, think about it a little bit more deeply, thinks about the parts that are toxic, the parts that aren't toxic. And uh this group called the protoorthodox is really important because you know when historians look at this you have this kind of all these streams of Christianity that flow into the present and this is the one that probably is you have to say pro part of what's the most problematic group of all of this. So we're going to continue discussing that a little bit because there's a few more things to say. I'm going to share my little diagnostic model on it that I'm going to call the hype model. [laughter] And uh I'll tell you what that is in a little bit. We're trying to figure out what's wrong with this type of Christianity. But in any case, good times and we'll continue on talking about things that we think are important to help all of us hopefully understand this better. But before we get into the details of it, if they can do the thing that everyone asks you to do, which is um like and subscribe and maybe share an episode with a friend, write a review, that would be appreciated. Again, we're trying to cover the things that we think are really important and um if you can kind of share our work, we'll get more important things out to more more people. So, thanks so much for that.

And it's free.

It's also free,

right? [laughter]

Yeah. So, you'd be doing us a solid on something that's free,

right?

Um okay. Uh, you know what hit me during the week, Daniel, and the reason why I wanted to continue this a little bit more was often we find ourselves kind of on the pulse of things. I can give us credit for that. We sometimes we are right in the sweet spot, you know, and sometimes we're there even a little bit sooner, but um there was an article I came across from one of the editors of The Atlantic. He's a guy named Peter Wernner. I don't know him outside of this article, but but basically the article was mega Jesus is not the real Jesus. And I was like, "Oh my god, that's exactly what we've been trying to talk about for, you know, these few episodes that we've been working our way through this." And so again, I had this feeling, a little proud of us. We can give ourselves a little credit, that we're kind of right on the as you'd say, right on the pulse of where things are. And I felt kind of good about that. I know. What do you think about that? I think we're I think we've been really in kind of like sometimes even a little bit in advance of what people are talking about. We've been kind of getting there.

Yeah. Well, there's certain I think aspects of society that are ripe for the picking in terms of diagnostics if you're an honest actor and I don't want to say an honest actor, an unbiased actor or less biased actor. Right? So I don't we don't have any particular desires for something to be wrong or something to be right. We're not it's not like uh you know oh I'm I'm you know I'm I'm more progressive you know in my politics but I don't care to be I don't care for a certain side to be right. I don't choose um this color because I want them to be right. It doesn't really I don't really care you know. And when it comes to something like uh the fabric or the makeup of a particular society, when you want to try and see some of the reasons for which they ended up the way they ended up, you have to go back at some of the threads that make that. And without a doubt, this country was, you know, founded on the the beliefs and the efforts of pure uh pur puritans, right? Puritanical religious folks. So this thread still runs through even you know especially now and it's never gone away. So without taking that into consideration is just not being uh ideologically honest.

Yeah. And I think that whole idea of threads was really striking me too. I like that that phrasiology and that image because I think you feel like there's a thread that goes all the way back

through a system of ideas, right? Or a system of beliefs or a system of religious practice or something, you can really find the threads stretching out at the origin of things. One of the things for me with this and we've been talking about is like I my gut uh reaction to this as kind of like a Zen person and as a tantrica and so on has been like well there's no real Jesus you get to choose amongst your Jesuses right and that's what been one of the main points again with the idea that this can be kind of liberating right to be able to do that but as I was listening to different people talk about during the week and again I was listening to the guy from the Atlantic and he was talking with another guy who is they're kind of conservative Christians histo like the way it would have been historically but they're the people who kind of got off of the MAGA train and there's a group of people who are like that you know but they would consider themselves to be the real Christians too [laughter]

right

so there's still the argument of who the real Christians are and you know we're recording not too far distant from uh MLK day and I was thinking about him a lot talking with students about him a lot over the past couple of weeks too. And you know, his message seems obviously always powerful, always profound, but feels even more powerful and profound as time goes on, right? Like it doesn't at all.

And for what we were talking about, we did more on this a couple of episodes back, but we were talking about these Dulinian Christians who were sort of more the precursors of a kind of a social justice Christianity, right? Mhm. Mhm.

And so their beliefs were more on the idea of release from oppression, release from like false entrenched power, uh a new society based on equality and mutual aid and respect and shared resources and equality amongst different people and equality amongst different genders and so on. And that's kind of like the MLK Christianity. And it's been there the whole time too going back hundreds of years as we've talked. But that's the MLK one. Right.

Right.

And I was like thinking about this, you know, piece like, you know, if you want to find that, you can find that. Which got me thinking also, you know, as I was listening to different people talk about this, uh, people who were talking about comparisons to like talking about the civil rights movement in comparison to things that are going on now. So, I wanted to share like kind of interesting point. And I'll get your feedback on this, Daniel, and give us all something to think about because one of the things that happened as like a news of the week is that there was a church protest that happened in uh Minnesota, right?

And like this the journalist Don Lemon was involved in this and it's not obvious where the government's going to like try to prosecute him or not.

But one of the things I was, you know, I gonna do my research for our pod during the week and one of the things about that is that particular church is not just like any church they were in. First off, the guy who was running the church is a guy named uh David Easterwood. I'll give his name, you know, so we all can know who he is. And he's an ice field director who's the head of that church.

Correct.

So they didn't go into any old church.

On top of that, that church is part of a group of churches that would fit into our idea of like the protoodox, right?

And it's the church of Pete Hexith, our department of wardefense guy. Mhm.

And this is part of like a very reactionary Christian group which is called the Communion of Reformed Angel Evangelical Churches. And the guy who's the head of that, if you don't know these names, is a guy named Doug Wilson. And we'll have maybe more on him later, but he's the kind of guy that wants to repeal the 19th Amendment, have women not vote.

Oh.

Do all kinds of funky [...] [laughter]

So, it's not like it wasn't like a just rando thing, you know? Uh the guy who's that particular also related to that church in uh Minnesota is a guy named Joe Riggnney and he wrote this book called the sin of empathy

which is like like a a a treatise on how you have to remove empathy from Christianity and as you were talking about last episode even and Daniel you remove the empathy from Christianity really what do you have left it's the heart of the whole thing

so right

it wasn't like a random thing that these people were doing we could debate whether you should do it or not but it's an act of civil disobedience and then again researching for the pod and one of the guys I was listening to was a guy named Robert Robert P. Jones. Really interesting guy. He was like originally like a Southern Baptist.

Bobby P.

Yes. A different Bobby P. Jones. [laughter]

Yeah. The glorious uh RPJ. Um so uh so anyways, you know, he's from like Jackson, Mississippi, deep southern Baptist guy. And I don't know what happened to him. I don't know his whole story, but at some point he sort of had whatever his enlightening experiences are and he was like, you know, we got a real problem with obviously racism within Christianity and we got to like look at that in a more direct way,

right? The thing that he said was fascinating was [clears throat] that this was one of those um kind of protests that really have historical root too which go back to kind of this protests in the 1960s

where people would do actions in churches that had racist aspects.

Yes.

Right.

And I thought, well, that's a fascinating take on that. And he brought up I was just searching on the phone you know he brought up uh Megar Evers which is a kind of a name that you know a little bit you know from like your education in the you know the civil rights movements and the MLK times back in the early 60s and I think you know Robert P. Jones the guy who's you know I was listening to talk about this maybe brought him up because he happened to be killed at the age of 37 too.

Yes. the same age as we'll talk about him one Alex Prey everyone knows now this name right this poor guy who was the ICU VA nurse right who was shot

so I think he was referencing to that too but his point was this whole tradition of like doing these kinds of protests even though they might feel aggressive they're not there's a deep history of them too right

and when you think of it what it really is I think for our conversation is It's one kind of Christianity protesting against another kind of Christianity, right?

We have two streams. We have the stream that maybe MLK is representing or Mega Evers is representing, right? Which is this justiceoriented Christianity which has a root to it.

The way you were talking about threads, those threads go back.

Yeah.

Right.

And like again like the way that the people who were inquisited and killed,

this Megar Evers is killed too, right? But the threads are there. And

And he was a veteran advers.

Yeah. Yeah. He was a veteran, too.

Yeah. He served in World War II.

Yeah. Yeah. He was a veteran as well. Yeah. So, you know, the point that's being made when you trace the threads back, you're like, "Yeah, there's always been this is like Christianity on Christianity conflict, or you could say Christianity and Christianity violence." I wouldn't be shocked. I don't know anything about him, but if Alex Prey turned out being Christian, would that be surprising? No.

No. But he was following a different stream, a different thread of the Christianity. And what I didn't quite get as far as the threads go, because again, I think for this, Robert P. Jones, the guy from Jackson, Mississippi, he's now involved in doing a lot of research on toxic Christianity, the phrase that we've been using. He's been he uses just like white Christian nationalism. He puts the white in there. But the point that, you know, he's bringing up is even if you trace the roots back in the Southern Baptist Convention, which I didn't know the history of that, but that goes back before the Civil War. And the main point of that organization was to have churches that they could isolate from members that they didn't want in the church.

So, the whole idea was we're not going to allow people of color into our church. And that's the origin of that organization, right? And so, that thread is kind of there from the beginning. And so it made me really feel, you know, like think about what was happening there. It's like a I found it to be very valuable to think about, you know, that it's really a kind of Christian protest against another kind

of Christianity that they're trying to break through, right?

And that changed the meaning of it for me. And a matter of fact, you know, the guy who killed Mega Evers was just another Christian guy.

Yeah. I mean, it was a huup clan member.

Yeah. So it's a kind of like a toxic version against something that we I mean you'd say is the more MLK version that goes back

trying to fight for you know equality amongst people right under God right

in a spiritual and religious sense. So anyways I thought that was important and interesting to share [clears throat]

and the other little thing I had on news of the week which I thought was on the pulse was about the Alex Prey shooting. I [clears throat] just wanted to say, you know, that's been obviously everyone's digesting that all the time now.

Yeah.

But the one thing I wanted to point out about it is like why do they keep calling people domestic terrorists? Like what is that about? Right? And you could have multiple reasons why you'd be motivated to do that if you were trying to be in more authoritarian government, but I just wanted to point something out that maybe as an educational thing people might not be familiar with. So there's a thing called uh NSPM7.

Seven. Yeah.

National Security Presidential Memorandum 7.

Correct. I don't know what happened to the first six, but I know this one is Yeah.

Yeah. This one's jumping out now. [clears throat] And um I mean the fact that it's seven means they're pretty rare, right?

Yeah.

So you got lots of history of country and you don't do it very often. And it came out 925 2025. And basically what it did and the how I saw this back to our our subject matter is how much it kind of goes around this idea again this sort of more maybe toxic or proto orthodox Christianity because basically what it is is it's an executive order signed by the president that basically says here's the attitude we're going to take to something and in this case it was the attitude towards law enforcement and it basically is like here's the people we're going to label domestic terrorists. Mhm.

And when you really look at what it says and what I wanted to try to show, you know, for this part of the conversation is that the checklist of what's there is like strongly influenced by again what we might call the sort of more proto orthodox toxic kind of Christianity. So, I did the list of the things that they were like saying are like terrorist indicators or what makes you a terrorist. And like part of that list is you're anti-Christian, but that means anti-Christian in like a certain way.

It certainly means like you're anti-archch Christian, but the whole idea of being anti-Christian makes you a domestic terrorist. Right.

Anti-Christian is one. Anti-traditional American family values on religion, on morality, on how the family should be protoorthodox stuff, right? And that gets entwined with like anti- capitalism,

right?

And depending how we want to do this in the future, maybe we should do something on capitalist Christianity because that's a bizarre thing too, right?

We want to make that a stream of Christianity. And then if you have contrary views which they say is are extreme views but contrary views on gender or race or immigration and all that stuff can potentially make you makes you domestic terrorist. So I just wanted to point it out like when they keep saying people are domestic terrorists that's not coming out of nowhere exactly and it's not entirely just propaganda. It's referencing back to how they define this now. Right.

Right.

And I look at those lists, I'm like, well, okay, I guess I'm a domestic terrorist. [laughter] Because a lot of this stuff I'm not going to agree with them on.

Right.

So, you're redefining a whole group of people that now you can label a domestic terrorist if you feel like doing this. Right.

This is very

And you say all of that is anti-American. So, anyways, I just want to point that out if people aren't familiar. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Daniel. Sorry.

This this is, you know, very McCarthyistic, right? For those who don't know, what was he was a senator?

Yeah. Wisconsin, right?

Yeah. Yeah. In like 1950, you know, in the late 40s, early 50s. Um, you know, this was like during the kind of communist getting into the kind of just creeping into the Cold War period after the sort of uh honeymoon phase of the World War II and, you know, reconstruction and all that stuff was sort of like phasing out. you had, you know, like what they called McCarthyism, you know, which is an and which was a, you know, they called it a rooting out of people who were pro-communist, right? And so they had these like blacklists of people who were communists, which is, you know, still a stigma today, but back then it was, you know, that that was the worst thing that you could be called was a communist because at this point we were we were making the Kool-Aid, we were selling it, but then we were also drinking the Kool-Aid at the same time. So we had this Kool-Aid factory and you could just put anybody on there. anybody you didn't like, you just oh there they're comm they're reading uh you know whatever do those stoops so they're definitely a communist or whatever it is you know

and this was used very nefariously obviously highly politically motivated and lots of people were caught up in it their lives were ruined over it you know and this is much of the same thing and it's interesting because I don't think that people really have a a good grasp at the consequences of this if it sticks around and it it is, you know, fortunately unfortunately it's here. Fortunately, it's an order, you know, that can be wiped out with just tearing up the paper or somebody else comes in. But, you know, people are very quick to get behind all of the fingers that are pointing at somebody when it's somebody they don't like. And they are willing to be, you know, uh, ideologically extremely flexible almost to the point of having zero backbone and, you know, zero roots in

kind of the thing on like the gun control aspect of this. Not that we're going to go off on it, but like

Yeah. Yeah.

Control, freedom, second amendment. Second Amendment. That dude had a gun.

No.

Yeah. I mean, but it's

hypocrisy. Yeah.

That's the most recent one, but it's many things, you know, and so as time goes on, if you step back just a just a hair, you go, "Oh, well, it's only a matter of time before that gets used on you." So you know better to understand that the game to which is being played and how people are being divided and then you can find yourself on the sides of people you might not have ever thought you could because you actually have far more in common with them than you realize when you you know stop looking at each other and you look up. Look up.

Yeah. Yeah. And I was really like struck by [clears throat] when I was thinking about in the context of our episodes with this idea of like how influenced that is by like a certain kind of view of Christianity is like running through that whole thing right

and again you could look at that from different perspectives like and I was looking at from the perspective of like wow that's really protoorthodox because like top of the list is you can't be anti-Christian

right

and it doesn't say anti-religious it doesn't say that it says you can't be anti-Christian. So, you could kind of get the feeling of like what happens when you have a certain view of a certain religious ideology that like wants to seize control and all of a sudden all of their ideological features, if you don't share them, you're a domestic terrorist

and it's easy to label someone then.

And so then you listen to people talk and you're like, why is that why does that phrase flow out so easily for people? And it's partially because they've made a legal definition,

right?

They've done it. So, it sounds like it's, if you don't know this, it sounds like it's coming out of left field. Like, why are they saying that? You know, that seems like a stretch. Why are they saying that about this person? Well, the fact that he's anti-immigration or anti- something else, bang, makes you a domestic terrorist, right?

Or anti their domest their immigration policies. So, they've made sort of this template, but a lot of it has to do with again like what I guess I would call protoorthodox stuff. You have to have a certain view of like religion. You can't be anti-Christian or non-compliant to Christianity. You can't have alternative view to Christianity, orthodox Christianity, protoorthodox Christianity, what constitutes the family or morality. Like, they're just putting that out there. And I thought, well, that's a protoorthodox move,

right? That's how you exercise control when you're coming from

that ideology. So, I thought that was kind of an interesting thing to explore. So, I had a couple things for the week that I thought, "Wow, that really hits right on the pulse of what people are talking about." So, I thought, you know, we're again, to use that medical terminology, we're kind of on the pulse of it.

Right.

Yeah. I had like a couple of other deals with this and I'll get your opinion on it. I was trying to come up with a simple way. You know, as diagnosticians, sometimes what you try to do is you try to come up with like little little memory tricks or something.

Sure.

Things. And I was thinking, okay, hype model, right, of what proto orthodoxy is kind of about because we had gone through how it kind of ticks historically because we looked at a historical movement, but you can still see the same thing like you were saying the threads are going down to the present, right? So I kind of went like hype with an eye. And you know, the first of these if we trace it through would be uh the h of it I have as being uh hell, right? So these people come up with this idea that wasn't there within the pagan world, but all of a sudden you make people terrified of going to hell.

And you you keep getting that at the core of this ideology.

And you know, from when we were talking about cults back in 2025, I spent a lot of time listening to people who were in these religious movements. We had some people on who were guests, right? Mhm.

And this like thread of hell that kind of like hovers around this and that goes down to the present day where you still get this idea of like fear of hell and fear of hell kind of as like a dominant thing. And in kind of like the evangelical world, what you get a lot of people talking about is um the book of Revelation, right? and that line of Christianity that like goes down to the present day and becomes sort of their source of like fear essentially and that kind of toxic fear-based religiosity

and you know when you listen to people who are in these circles especially people who have gotten out they're like wow I was really terrified

of being left behind or tossed into hell you know the whole fire and brimstone thing and maybe it's worthwhile talking about that book not now well maybe we'll get to it at some point but even that book of revelation There's lots of people who feel like that shouldn't be in the Bible like at all because the imagery that it has in it, especially of Jesus as a figure is so extreme, right?

Talk about extreme views. I was listening to like again one of the people I trust as a historian around this stuff, Bart Erman, and he was pointing out that there's an episode in the book of Revelation. This is Jesus we're talking about as a figure who comes back as kind of like a king, a judge, and essentially kind of like a torturer. And there's like um like a a bit in it where there's a character named Jezebel who's like bad obviously, but Jesus throws her on a bed in this book and then sends men in to have sex with her. It's not obvious if like she's being raped. It's not clear in the text itself, but there's these men who are having sex with her. And as the babies are born, Jesus kills them. And like that's in that book. What book is this?

Book of Revelation.

Okay.

Apocalypse of John. And like the reaction that you have to that mine is similar. What? [laughter] That's in that book. And um again, maybe we'll do something about it at some point or another just to like

fix it.

Yeah. Maybe we'll just erase it.

Don't worry, we got this. No, it's one of those things where you're like you're like obviously people didn't like there were people who were you know obviously Christians who like we can't put that [...] book in there

that book psycho there's been resistance that thing ever since that book has been hanging around but in these circles where people are really afraid

of getting uh you know my little hype thing getting afraid of like tossed in the hell

you know this violent version of like Christianity is like right there. Yeah,

it's hard to understand. And I remember hearing one of these conservative figures talking at some point over the last 10 years or something. And he was like, "Well, we're tired of this milk cho milk toast compassion and empathy Jesus." And you're kind of like, "What are they talking about?

Isn't that supposed to be the gist of the whole thing?" Like for the pod, I actually went through and I was like, I didn't have time to read it, but I was relisting to Mark, Matthew. I'm actually relisting to those gospels and like so many passages of them have all that compassion and beauty in them. Right.

So I was doing that for the show for the le pod like thinking about those texts and uh and I remember listening again to the guy going we're tired of this weak soy boy Jesus. And I was like where is this coming from? But you realize there's this thing that they're very imprinted on the hell and then the violent imagery within these things and afraid of getting punished. So anyways, you got thoughts on that? That's the hell part to me and that's I think how you trace that that thread into the modern world. It's like it's still there. But anyways, I'll throw it to you Daniel.

Yeah, that's a that's a mechan I mean it's a mechanism of control.

Yeah.

Right. Like you can be given a reward. So people are generally trained or animals are generally trained I guess and some people look at other humans as animals. So we could say that beings are most often trained with consequence and reward. And if you continually give somebody the same reward based on our brain chemistry, dopamine in this case, you will get less and less uh positive reinforcement for that reward because it's the same thing over and over again. You become too you come to too expected. However, if the consequence is very high, you will do whatever it takes to avoid that consequence because you don't want to know what that's like. You'll work very hard to to completely avoid that consequence. Especially if you make it, you know, like uh you know, whatever for eternity, you're going to be, you know, getting cold rad over your tongue for eternity. Like that's a long time, you know, just this infinite space where that's where you're going to be after you die. You're going there, you know, and you continue to wash this idea over and over and over again. It stays in people's minds and their awareness and it starts to influence them people's decisions. But it is far easier to control people based off of fear than based off of reward. Turn on the news. what motivates people fear and you know then anger that's what motivate that's what they call a motivated uh voting block you know people who are angry and scared about [...] so um this to me is far less of like a divine influence on human psychology and far more man understanding himself and knowing what levers they need to pull to keep their sheep in time.

I'm very interested in what like I totally agree and like again I have a lot of compassion because I again I spent time over the last year since we took up this project listening to people who were parts of these groups. I mean I I was raised Catholic so I know something about this right certainly manscior ode was willing to be a little scary

for me Irish Catholicism right

but the people who were in the circles where they were really taking this part very very seriously

and you know one of the people I was listening to April Joy she wrote this book called Star Spangled Jesus and she said she kind of told this story of her girlhood that for some reason her family was out and she had slept in or something maybe she was like 11 12 years old or something like had and she went out in the house and she literally felt like she was like left behind and everybody else had been like swept up into the sky in the second coming and she was stuck on the earth to go through the trials that were going to come down and she was terrified.

Aren't there books like this?

Yeah. There's the left behind series.

Yes.

That's big in those circles, you know.

Yeah. planes falling out of the sky and like you know because the pilot disappears and like half the families are gone. I don't know if the good half and the bad half left. I'm not sure you know.

Well, I mean like you the people who are good get pulled up in the sky so they don't have to go through this book of revelation [...]

Oh, [laughter] okay. Because there's going to be Well, I guess it's not that yet, but there's going to be seven years of tribulations or something where everything's going to be a [...] show.

Okay. So anyways, I mean it was like you could feel like her fear as a girl and I was like okay like you're saying that's a powerful motivator. But the other part that fascinates me which I think is a major theme through our podcast even out of these episodes is like can you get a spirituality that isn't based around ideas of social control you know and I think when we think of the things that are influences of what we're trying to do here we were talking before we got on Mike how you love Zen that's not about social control primarily right that's about something else Daoism we're doing Buddhist tantra a lot you think about the Sufis and so on they're not they're not doing the social control version of spirituality. But it's interesting to think if you can get people to a place where you can get belief systems that aren't about social control because so many are, right?

So I see that as a major kind of motivating thing for me and what we try to do here. Yeah. Okay. So that's the H part of it. Um the I part of it is the ideological part that what they kind of created again at the root tracing the threads through is this idea that you you have to have a a core belief system like we were talking about last episode in the pagan world it was more like you can do different things and it's what you do that matters more than uh you know that you have to have this very particular belief system and you trace that through to the now again people arguing about who the real Jesus is MAGA. Jesus isn't the real Jesus. Ours is the real one. But it has a lot to do with having like an ideological commitment that was like out of like traditional like people traditional like pagans were like what are you talking about? There's all kinds of ways to get to the divine. And we talked about that. But the thing that struck me is about the now is that um it's more important what you believe than what you do. Right?

[clears throat]

So as long as I hold the right credo and kind of like have the right beliefs on some level I'm more divorced from what I actually do to other people and that strikes me as like kind of a signature of what's going in our present day now Daniel for me right that when you get to this kind of way of thinking as long as I say you know um in this case Jesus is my personal savior and uh um I have the right belief system then even if I do these you know within this narrow ideology I have the right belief. Even if I do terrible things, it doesn't really count,

right?

Because it's more important that my belief system

that I'm professing matters more than how I treat

other people around us. And that's a bizarre thing, but that seems like that's true to me. Do you agree with that, too?

Yeah. I think it takes the Yeah. I mean it takes the onus off the person which I think in some sense is supposed to uh help people with stress you know cuz I think you know the people who created this structure are social psychologists you know

are you saying like the the people who are doing this religious things originally had a social psychology piece to it?

Oh without a doubt because you're looking at you're looking at implementing something upon society. you're looking at implementing, you know, rules and regulations on top of something. And so therefore, you have to a do a couple things. You have to merge practices with already pre-accepted timelines like having Christmas at the time of winter solstice, you know, ule and where Hanukkah is. you're putting this already at these at these generally astrological uh observation periods, right? Easter being near your uh spring equinox, you know. Um so you have that as part of it, but then the other part is that you look at society as a whole and you say, okay, where do we want to direct things and how do we want to direct them? So, as they're like putting this on top of society, but then really kind of rooting it into it, they have this in mind that they're steering the ship. Then they're using this ideology to steer that ship. So, I I I think it's important to understand that like this was created by man to affect other men. That doesn't mean that it doesn't have value or that it's particularly particularly nefarious. But it does say that it is not without intention and that intention was not given by the person who you are talking about who these teachings are based around. It was given by somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody else who remembered him. that that you know what I'm saying?

And uh yeah, so you just have to take everything with a grain of salt.

I guess it depends on like I don't disagree with you obviously by the time and we'll get to it. By the time you get this being like the religion of the state,

well then you can really see that that's very clear.

Uh I don't want to go down the rabbit hole on it, but I had an interesting conversation over some stakes last week. I was talking to somebody who's from like the Soviet Union

and it was like okay we were just discussing like this kind of history stuff a little bit you know because I kind of a bounce ideas that we're talking about in the podcast off people that I know and her reaction was something like well you know it's well it was a kind of like a neo-arxist reaction which I get it was something well these are instruments of social control

you know

and I don't disagree but in a weird way I don't know what the dividing line for these people were between what they believed and what they wanted to impose upon others, especially before it became the religion of the state. But like no doubt at one point or another, and I wanted to talk about that a little bit too, it's going to become the religion of the state.

And at that point, well, then you're really talking about how do you control people? Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Well, Hi, ideology, hell ideology, P is patriarchy. And I just wanted to bring that up again as a distinct thing. We talked about it last episode. I thought was worthwhile to go on and try to see how that like even sort of tr still travels down to the now.

Yeah.

The way it seemed like it worked historically was you'd have the patriarch male figure who was the head of the clan of the family and they would

decide what was going to happen within that group especially if you're going to follow a certain religion or something.

And like one of the big ideas within this and you could still see this pushing now it's so bizarre to think about but this idea of women is property. M so I was listening to people talking about like project 2026 which is like coming off the pre presses and she was sort of warning like this idea of women as property is within this framework right it goes back to this patriarchical root and it's still getting pushed again we were mentioning like the Pete Hexith church this Doug Wilson they as part of their platform they want to take away the 19th amendment and like take away the right to vote and go back to what they're calling householder voting. It's like part of their their proto their version of proto-Christian uh ideology, right? To go back that far. We're going to go back to the head of the household. So, what'll happen is you'll have, you know, the married couple and the the family and then only the dude gets to vote [laughter] and he'll vote in like for the entire unit. And again, it sounds crazy and I hard to imagine that ever happening.

Yeah. No, you have to have

because it is the ideology, right? They want to go back to that.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you need in order to ratify the constitution one way or another, you have to have just to open up just to have the convention, you have to have approval of uh 25 states.

Yeah. So, it's not like again I'm saying that we have to sit there in danger of this happening, but it is in they're writing about it,

right? They have a desire for that.

They have a desire for that. And it's not a bunch of nobbodyies. It's like Pete Hexith and Mike Johnson and like if you don't know who he is, this other guy, Christian nationalist, total bag of dicks, Russ vote. These are like these kinds of people. That's what they're trying to push for. So on the one hand, we can say, okay, they're not going to succeed at that. But the one of the things I did want to point out as it's going down to the now, and again, kind of like we were talking about the presidential memorandum stuff, it's pretty subtle, if you're not tuned into these things, it could go past you.

One of the things that happened was they took a bunch of profession they took a bunch of professions and they cancelled them as professions.

Yes.

So, if you haven't paid too much attention to it, it resonated for us because acupuncture was one of the ones they canceled. But they basically said these are no longer professions. And when you look at it and you understand

nursing is another one, Eric,

they cut all the ones that women would be drawn to. They cut all of them. So I can give you a list, right?

And and they did that because Well, you you going to tell why? You'll say why?

Well, I'll give a theory, too. We can both I'll get the list.

So they cut nursing

is no longer a profession.

Physicians assistants no longer a profession. Physical therapists no longer a profession. Occupational therapists not a profession. Aiologists, speech pathologists, caring professions cut. Educators are no longer professionals. Teachers aren't professionals. Educated aren't professionals. Social workers aren't professionals. Public health people are not professionals. They cut them all. And what I'm trying to point out for this part, and we'll see what you think about this, Daniel, too, but the thing that's striking is those are the professions, the caring professions that are statistically more women. Mhm.

They're trying to cut them out

and they're trying to minimize them and they're trying to like make it hard to get

independence for women. That's like part of the underlying goal in that. And we can't ratify and take away your right to vote, but we can't economically try to like coers you.

And we're trying to economically coers you by like not letting you into professions that you want to go into to be able to make a career and support yourself. and that will force you economically where we want you to go. And that's my take.

Yeah. The reason the reason why it is that they um

don't have them listed as as professions is because it makes it much harder for you to get loans for school.

You can't get the money. Yeah.

That's all that it's about. Just making it harder.

Also can be harder to organize.

You're not professional, so we're not going to allow you to organize.

And that would be women organizing within their professions because that's there's something being direct. I mean, you could say men can participate in these professions, too. I'm not saying that, you know,

and they do,

but you know, like these are female dominated professions and they're going to try to wipe them out.

So, what are you trying to do? You're trying to economically control people. And it's it's sneaky and subtle, right?

We're trying to drive people out of the caring professions. And I was looking at the numbers and like they're if you go across the board, these are predominantly female dominated professions, right?

Yeah. I mean, I'm just looking right now. OT 10 to 15%.

Yeah.

Um PT 35%. Um nursing we are we know, you know, this is going to be a lower one. 12 to 13%. Uh what else was there? Um, uh, physical therapists. You already did that one.

Yeah. Yeah. About 35%

social workers.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's It's funny because these are also about 20%. So, these are women do. Yeah. Totally.

Women dominated fields. And so, you're like, well, what is that about? You know, why would you why would you do that? What do you care about in that? And what you realize is, okay, we're going to cut the money. We're going to cut the funding around it. we're going to cut the respect that the professions deserve and therefore we're going to like limit your ability to organize I mean one of the ways of like I'm one of the ways of looking at that is okay we'll force you into economic dependence we're going to try to do that

so I just wanted to share that with people if you haven't heard that there might be other things behind that too I'm not saying that's the only thing but when you get to like again like again one of the guys who's behind this Russ vote total bag of dicks and he's the financial minations guy. He's the financial makabellian person within these circles who's trying to go through and like weave a web, right, to like self-confessed Christian nationalist person. He wants to go back in the time machine or to a certain kind of protoorthodoxy and dominate people. So anyways, I wanted to share that too. And again, a couple of these things are subtle points, but if you don't if you don't know it and if you're not paying attention to stuff, you wouldn't have heard it,

right?

But if you kind of hear those things because they're doing a lot,

they are busy bees.

Busy bees.

Very nefarious busy bees and they're doing a lot of stuff, right? So, I think if you don't get that the protoodox way of thinking is women are property, you have to see that,

right?

And then you have a context. We had an episode a while ago where I was like try like I found myself connecting to like one of the one of the Buddhist goddesses like Sarasvati and she was making a big deal about that. You have to get away from this people as property, women as property thing has to go but it's like built into like you were saying it's in the threads

or it's in the web. So couple more quick things and I got a couple more minutes. Maybe I'll take another 10 and we can kind

Well, you got Yeah, you got the E still.

Yeah, I got the E. So the E I put two things together. I put evangelicalism and exclusivism. The exclusivism idea is like you can only follow our one thing. So they kind of came up with that.

And then you know the evangelical part that we're going to go out and actively convert people,

right?

Which wasn't part of the historical world. Like that just wasn't a thing in the pagan world. And as we talked about, there wasn't the two things go together because if you don't have exclusivism, you don't have any reason to evangelize,

right?

Or it's not as strong. You could say, "Hey, Apollo's really cool. You should follow him." But you're not trying to like pull someone out of everything and get them to convert in this one way into a new thing. And um I mean to me, if I trace that forward, you still have that thing going on, which is partially like we will convert you by force. We will we will force you into conversion, right? We'll try to compel it. you know, more conversion at like the tip of a sword or the barrel of a gun, you know, still that kind of vibe is there more subtly. We'll economically coersse you or we'll try to do it in other ways, right? To follow what we want you to follow. So that quality is kind of around. And then the exclusivism part is so weird because again it leads to the argument of like our Christianity is the right Christianity. So even within Christianity, it leads to this point of saying not only do you have to be Christianity, but you have to be our Christianity. And if you're not our Christianity, you're not real Christianity. And it goes on like this. It won't go away. Does that make sense what I'm saying to you?

Yeah.

Yeah. So like you can't get out of that thing. And like again, I was really struck by the thing from the Atlantic, you know, MAGA Jesus like isn't real Jesus. You're still having this argument. I was listening to Bart Airman and he had like a funny anecdote about it. He was laughing about it in the end though it's ominous in how it sounds but he said he was talking to someone. He's a former Christian B airman and the guy is a very devout Christian. And in the end of the conversation the guy was saying well only people who go to my church are the real Christians and B airman was like [clears throat]

you mean like the Southern Baptists or what are you talking about? And he said by the end he realized what the guy was saying was my church,

right? His only

mine mine in wherever it was New Haven. That's the only one. And you're like, that's just crazy. But you could see like the way that this keeps building down to this point, right?

Anyway, so that's my hype model. I got one other thing I would share real quick

and then maybe we'll bounce out of this, you know, but one of the other weird parts about it is I just want to point about the conversion of Constantine. I was thinking about that when we were doing these episodes. If you don't know the Constantine conversion story, what happens is he converts because he has a vision of a cross. He puts it on the shields of his soldiers and then they conquer these other people. And so I just wanted to bring it up because you can realize that that warlike quality that Roman warlike quality is there at the beginning too.

Yeah. Right. And so, you know, again, if you want to trace things back to their roots like you were bringing up, Daniel, that's sitting there and that kind of Christianity.

And then, of course, Constantine converts to like the protoorthodox version,

which gets you to the idea of like Christian authoritarianism or Christian state sponsored authoritarianism or if you want to go fascism, I guess you can say it, right? And I just want to share a little bit about this because um there's a scholar I listen to on this too named Mark Harrier and he's an expert in like uh ancient history right that's his PhD and he was pointing out this very stunning thing which again if you don't know much about this why would you know

so okay so what happened was before Constantine converts you have 50 years of civil war an emperor is getting murdered left and right like it's a disaster right and this empire is collapsing so you have 50 years of civil war and then you have an economic collapse and in the economic collapse the way again this Richard Kerry talks about it um is uh um the state goes kind of fascist it goes kind of authoritarian this is like a pagan authoritarianism so they're like trying to oppress all the people so things don't fall apart And this is really I guess if you look at the history of it when Christian persecutions start right more seriously. There are some before then but there's a real period where okay there's going to be some Christian persecutions on a more intense level. I guess before that you might get you know there's all these stories about all the saints being crucified under the Romans and stuff but I guess it really didn't happen that often. You know it was more rare but this was a period of like actual persecution. The people on the Christian side were like, "Freedom of religion, freedom of timeout, freedom of religion." Uh, until the empire flips and you go from being a pagan empire before to now you're a Christian empire under Constantine. And then after that, and he says it very bluntly, after that, everything flips. Now the Christian part is in charge and all that freedom of religion stuff out the window. Poof. and now we're the now we're the religion of the state. And um and then he says it really bluntly. He says, "Well, okay, maybe if this didn't happen, you wouldn't have this fascist version of Christianity, but you do, right?" Which again is not condemning about Christianities as we've been trying to say, but you get this version. And in terms of our conversation about the threads, there's a thread that goes through this in that version of it, right? That you can trace back to the very earliest history. And I was very just struck by that for what we're what we're discussing, you know, that there's that one little thread that keeps going through, right?

That has its origin story, you know, I guess like any origin story in any Marvel story, Thanos has an origin story and then the threat continues,

right? So anyways, I thought that was important to share, too, because you wonder like why would this thing go so authoritarian and you're like, well, there's a branch that's been that way the whole time, right? And so anyways, I thought that's kind of a important thing to close on the protoorthodox so we can move on to other stuff, but I wanted to share it.

Yeah, I I I deeply feel like people are unfortunately even though they have they carry the divine spark inside of them, you know, and um there's an enlightened aspect to every single being and hopefully at some point they will it will awaken. if you want to, however you want to call this. But until that time comes, the reality is that more people than not seek power and control. This has always been the case. And the people who stand in the way of their desire to seek power and control are bugs that get squashed underneath your shoe when you're just walking on a daily basis. You don't sit here and cry over all of them. You know what I mean? Or when we're driving our cars, that's probably even a better example, right? You just clean your windshield wipers off and you go, "Man, there's a lot of bugs on my windshield." You don't even think about it. They're more It's a nuisance if anything else, you know? And so in that the justification to the people who surround them who still hold a moral code and to get the population to not revolt because every leader regardless of who they are fear their population. They may not say it, but they all do because you cannot if if if a legit like 20% of the population was like, "Fuck it. We're not buying anything and we're burning it down." There's nothing you can do that you can't control that kind of chaos. So you they have to be able

That's why the Minneapolis thing is so scary, right? You know, like it's hard to control. It's like a grassroots resistance movement. It's a little freaky for people who want to uh you impose control upon others. Right. That's

correct.

Yeah.

Correct. So they're they're always conscious of this you know and in this way it's the psychology of the people I believe that twist these teachings for their own benefit for their own personal gains and aims you know and what ends up happening is that they you know in my opinion corrupt these teachings this ideology these practices to fit their mold but they're corrupting it to teach people who don't have critical thinking or don't apply it in this way to uh challenge them. And so therefore that just gets set and then once it's set that's it. Then generations moving forward they just accept this as the way to be and they don't question it. And then when they are questioned they get you know subjugated in in many different or or ostracized or you know excommunicated or how you know depending on the society you know what I'm saying and this is why you know the enlightenment was such an important time right because then you have your life liberty and the pursuit of property granted this is the the seeds of capitalism but it's also the seeds to uh reorganizing your mind around what life is you know life obviously being alive. But then liberty meaning your ability to to say what you want to practice what you want so on and so forth is a really important piece and this you know changed society in many ways and we are a a product of that and you and I are you know different backgrounds but raised relatively Catholic Christian and influence and yet we were able to voluntarily and relatively easily go study completely foreign traditions. and then bounce around in some of those and you were able to study some coalistic trai, you know, meditations and practices and and hold those in your heart. And then you went to um Tibetan Buddhism and be able to do this. Like there's many things that you were able to do that you didn't have to run around and hide and and then go to church on Sundays and do all the rituals with that just so that your family wouldn't be suspicious that you might be, you know, an outsider or have your mind corrupted. You know what I'm saying? No, not not at all. And so I always I don't always say it, but I it's been a long time actually. We, you know, we're lucky to be living in these times that we get to have this, but I firmly believe that the uh corrupted and selfish mentality of human beings that have a great capacity to harm others and society at the same time are the reasons for why these things still exist. because they mirror their own uh dark desires. Do you know what I'm saying? This is how I think that people can carry this kind of thing through and how it's still alive and very well funded today.

Yeah. It's a like such a deep subject, right? When you were talking about the divine spark and all that that has a gnostic feeling. We're going to talk about gnostics at some point, right? We do have the divine spark and it

it's inspiring but sometimes it also makes you a little sad because you know one of the things I have to be really clear about when I think of my relatives who I would say okay they're involved in what I'm calling this protoorthodox Christianity and I don't think it's

I don't think it's spiritually liberating like if I look at my grandma like I'm not mad at my grandma [laughter] you know she just was raised in a certain thing and thought a certain way

and you know maybe in the end you support things that are kind of ugly but you're kind of in a certain sense dragged into that because it's more a question of they got you when you were young and you got pulled along into this certain set of beliefs and maybe you never had the opportunity to really fully challenge that you know um

and maybe come up to a different conclusion about what it is right now

you know it's it's that funny tension if you talk about like again we can throw out names of people who are involved Russ and Doug Wilson and Pete Hexith and Mike Johnson blah blah blah we can go on you all the way up to DJT. Well, these are corrupt people,

right?

Living under a kind of a corrupt ideology. And even if you believe it and you're sincere and you're an ideologue, you're still doing something bad, right? Your ideology is is toxic,

right? That's as damaging also to you, right? If you want to get into the real spirituality of it because you're trying to impose your will on others in a way that's uh negative, right? In a way that's spiritually toxic. But at the same time, you know, I look at my family members who are in this uh you know, and I I I'm not mad at them. I understand that there's something, you know, that they were just kind of brought into this way of thinking and they've never had a chance to pop out of it. I think about that, too. Yeah.

Parallel lives, man. We're all we're all living parallel lives next to each other.

And I would say that to just to get to what you're saying, too. I have had that thought, too. I thought, wow, this is an amazing potentially an amazing time to be alive. Mhm.

Fingers crossed.

Fingers crossed

going this way. But like in my lifetime been able to like meet some cobalists and study cabala. I didn't have to travel to spot to do that, right?

You know, or I've been able to meet Tibetan Buddhists. I was able to study with Zen masters from Japan. My mentors in our Chinese medical world, our Dowist mentors, I get to meet those people.

So we I mean,

it's a blessed time and it's a complicated time, but should be grateful. Mhm.

were two Americans who were able to study Chinese medicine in Chicago

in you know what I mean? Like

Yeah. I could do all this stuff without even having to leave the country. Like a a text that you'd have to climb to the top of the [...] Himalayas.

Yeah. Even right now as as you know we're we're recording this right now. If some people are going to listen to it and you know and if people would want to they can hit us up at jynantragmail.com or certainly leave a comment. we'd like to get this or you could hit us up on the on the uh on the gram at the Jin and Tonantra podcast which people do which we appreciate you know so we're able to reach people all around the world you know what I mean obviously we'd like to be more so please like subscribe comment share do all those things but you know we get to share the things that are important to us and hopefully other people feel that you know what I'm saying

yeah I'd like to say like thanks to you Daniel for sharing this thing this has been very clarifying for me doing these episodes you know I walk away with greater clarity and thanks for the audience for people who are listening, you know, inspire us to do this, to be able to communicate with you all. I was thinking about that specifically with this because this is very clarifying for me. So hopefully it helps other people too. But thank you all because it's been clarifying for me.

Let's hope so. Eric, gracias mucho. Everybody else, thank you so much. We'll catch you in the next one. Peace. [music]