711: Donald and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad War plus Preston Sprinkle

Horrible, no good, very bad day? Well, that title sums up what most Americans think about

Trump's new war with Iran. Caitlyn explains why the war is a moral based on Christian theology, Phil channels as reclying to define America's new heads on pikes foreign policy, and I say why the war fits Donald Trump's long pattern of laziness and impatience. Then, Preston Sprinkle is back on the show to discuss his new book from Genesis to Junia about his journey to determine what the Bible really says about women in leadership. Also this week, Americans were the only

people in a worldwide survey to say most of their fellow citizens are bad people, and we have some happy puppy news. Before we jump into it, we have an exciting announcement about the 2026 Holy Post live events. We're doing a few gatherings this year, just three, but each one will be a live recording of the podcast, which means plenty of conversation,

audience interaction, and probably a few unscripted moments will all regret later. First

up, we have Atlanta on April 22nd. Phil Caitlyn and I are going to be joined by LaCray for what should be a really thoughtful and fun conversation about faith, culture, and whatever else comes up when you put the four of us on a stage together. Then this fall, we're going to be heading to Chicago and New York City for two more live recordings, and we're

“going to share details about those events when we get closer. If you want to join us”

in Atlanta on April 22nd, tickets are on sale now at holypost.com/events. We'd love to see you there. So, we'll check it out again. It's holypost.com/events. Here is episode 711. Hey there. Welcome back to the Holy Post podcast. I'm Phil Visier. I'm here with two people. One, that was your last week. And one that wasn't high Caitlyn chess. Hi, wait, what happened last week? Oh, it was you. It was, it was me and the Caitlyn. Nice to

know I was missed. Yeah, wait, what was different? What was different? What's something different? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sky to Tony. Hi, hi. How was your time away? With Amanda? It could not have been better. Really? Wow, did you go on a private plane? No. Okay, no. But you last minute switched your reservation from Dubai. Yeah, no, no. I spoke at a conference in Phoenix that Caleb Campbell was putting on

“in the communities of Flourishing. I think it was called okay. And so we were in Phoenix”

for two nights. And then we spent a couple extra days in Scottsdale. It was our anniversary weekend. What anniversary? 27th. 27th. That's a lot. And we just like, it was great. The whole thing was wonderful. Oh, okay. Scottsdale, we did some stuff. We did nothing. We did some stuff. Yeah, it was a what happens in Scottsdale. Stay isn't Scottsdale. Okay, so we don't know what you did. Can I plug a place like this isn't a sponsor or anything? Yeah, we stayed

at a hat. We get a hat. I was going to buy a hat, but they were too expensive. We stayed at the Valley Hotel Valley. Oh, you familiar with that place? Yeah, I think I've walked by it. Oh, it's so cool. It's this mid-century modern hotel from the 1950s that is like

this little time capsule. And service was amazing. Folks are great. Oh, could you not get

a hat that says, oh, it's Valley. Oh, it looks very madmen. Yeah, it's very madmen. Yeah, I walked by it. And I booked it because I thought it looked cool. I like the location. And

“we just absolutely loved it there. It was so cool. I think Lisa and I ate at a Mexican restaurant”

not far from there that's almost entirely outdoors around one giant tree. Did you see something I've seen that? Once we like checked into that hotel, we were there for two nights. Yeah, I didn't get my car back. My rental car. I didn't even need to get a rental car. I was a stupid waste of money, but because we just walked all over Scottsdale for that. So it's such a great location. Yeah. So anyway, shout out to the Valley. Oh, you guys were great. Anyone

who wants to go there, tell them sky sent you out. Oh, and somebody get them a hat. I just want to see the hats. Yeah. See how mid century they're very mid century. Very mid century. It's what? Every all the cool cats we're wearing in 1952. Ah, time for the theme song. sometimes other people. Holy post-sponsored by feeding America. We're called to care for the least of these, to love our neighbors. And even at a nation as wealthy as America, hunger is an issue

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First, because forming new habits is just a hard thing to do for anybody. But secondly,

it's hard because the new year starts in the middle of winter. The coldest, darkest, most miserable time of the year. And I struggle to get my carcass out of bed and get going in the morning. And when my resolutions have to do with my health or fitness, that's a real problem. That's also why it's important for all of us to find easy wins whenever possible. Simple things we can do for our health that don't take a lot of effort so we can stay with them

for the long haul. AG1 is a great example. Just 20 seconds, one scoop, eight ounces of water, done. Drink it first thing in the morning before your tea or coffee before you even check your phone. It will become a micro habit that anchors everything else and a good springboard for the rest of your healthy habits. And it's not too late to create a new healthy habit for 2026 by starting AG1 for yourself. It's something I've actually been able to stay consistent with.

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five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure to check out drink AG1.com/holypost to get this

offer that's drink AG1.com/holypost to start the year on a healthier note and thanks to AG1 for sponsoring this episode. In animal news, sky's new dog has a name. Yes. What? We've all been waiting. All of America. We've been bred. Bated breath. What theologian? What profound mystery? Which church father are you referencing with the new dog? Ted. Ted. In honor of Trinity's seminary? No, in honor of of Lazo. Ted Lazo. Ted Lazo. Ted Lazo. Yeah. Does the dog look like Ted Lazo? No,

I think he's got that kind of gentle playfulness. Because our other dog is named Steve. Yes, Steve and Ted. Yeah. That's cute. And like couldn't you find a theological? I'm sure there's there's a theater in the church. This is really cute because maybe your dogs can be friends

“with no and I's dog when we get him because he has a name that sort of matches too. What's that dog?”

Jack. Well, men named dogs, you know. Well Steve was named after Steve Harrington from Stranger Things. Cute. And Ted's named after Ted Lazo. I thought you were going to do a Stranger Things. That was possible. I wanted it. It is just hard to yell out the back door. Camille or Deva Gorgon? I think my wife and some of the girls, they liked the idea of Teddy. That's Nickname because he's like a teddy bear. But I said we will only I would only agree to this name if it was officially

Ted. Yeah. On the birth certificate. Yeah, because that's embarrassing when you're a full-grown man dog. Right. And he is a man dog. Ted's going to be very good. He's a man dog. Yeah. He's a man. He's a big, big, bigger than Steve. Much. Steve's 40 pounds. How old is Steve? Steve is five. It's old and old. Okay. So they'll live like that. Yeah. But Ted, we're going to pick him up next week. Oh. And Ted. Oh, you're still on half. We don't have to. We can need to be with his mom. That's right. Oh, okay. But he's a friend of ours. Yeah. I have Ted because

he's on a farm nearby. He's on a farm. But Ted will probably be 80 to 90 pounds. Farmer Ted. Whoa. Wow. Yeah, a big dog. What kind of dog is it again? Burn a doodle. Yeah. Burn those are cute. Those are really cute. Okay. Well, there you go. That's the animal update this week. No animal last week. It was snow leopard mulling a skier. Yeah. Yeah. This is more chipper. Yeah. Thanks for everyone who sent in names suggestions. We took none of them. Yeah. I could have predicted that. Yeah. I feel like I could have

predicted that. Last week, we started a new war. We tried to talk about it without sky. But it just, you know, we needed sky. Because you, you are in tune with geopolitics. Yeah. That's my role here. Yeah. You. Wow. You have opinions. Of course I have opinions for being an expert.

“Right. And that's, unfortunately, that is the case today. What's interesting is how much I think”

my perception of our war in Iran has changed just in the last week to maybe this is something that's going to take a few days and we're making a point and that'll be the end of it too. Oh, no.

This is, no. This is not, you know, well, maybe it'll just be amazing. And the regime just rolls over

and says, okay, we're done. No. No. They're not, they're not going anywhere. My concern is that I'm afraid we might be following the path of what Netanyahu, his attitude toward Gaza

until you give up at which point we will have created a humanitarian crisis of unknown scale.

But it's not on us. It's on you. And I don't, I don't like that attitude. Right. And I don't know that Donald Trump has a problem with that sort of thing. Well, you made the, you know, it's your fault. I keep hitting you. And it's hurting the people around you. But it's your fault.

“I think, I mean, there's so many angles on this that we could get into. First of all,”

and we don't have to spend time on this, Caitlin, you're the, you know, more than I do about this. But I think from any Christian point of view, there is no just war theory that encapsulates this war. Like you can't justify this war by any Christian doctrine. It's, it's an immoral on Christian war. They were about to strike us. But there's no evidence of that whatsoever. And number two, from the American point of view, this is an unconstitutional war because the president did not see

congressional approval or even any attempt to persuade the American public or their representatives that this war was necessary. And the other side would say, actually, we've been at war with them for 40 years. Okay. So I would just on those two fronts, on the Christian front, on an American front, this is bad from top to bottom. I think what's perhaps more interesting to talk about is how the launching of this war fits a pattern with Donald Trump that I think might be the most

frightening aspect of his character, okay, which is this man is profoundly undisciplined and lazy. And what happens over and over and over again is he just does things or says things. And because there's this narrative on the Maga right that he's somehow a genius playing for dimensional chess, that when he just says things or does things, everyone around him then spins up into how can we make this look like it was brilliant when everyone knows it was ridiculous.

Someone counted 17 different justifications given so far for entering the war. So let's just some that are conflicting with each other. Let's just back up for a minute and talk about a few examples over his two administrations now where Trump has made very quick decisions that ended up back firing on him. But in the midst of it, the people around him were telling

“all of us how brain it was. Sharpie gate. Remember Sharpie gate? Oh yeah. This is when the”

hurricane was going to hit. Yeah. When he said it was going to hit Alabama. Alabama, but no indication was showing it was going to hit Alabama. Right. So he drew onto a map that it was hitting Alabama. That's right. And then they came up with all these justifications for how the map was

wrong and Trump was right. But of course it never hit Alabama. The family separation policy in 2018.

He just pushed that through saying any people who cross the borders, families were going to be separated and then Jeff Sessions at the time, the attorney general had to go out and give a justification for why we're separating families. He famously quoted Matthew Roman's 13 and I love Roman's 13. And it was in so handy. It was a horrific immoral policy that suddenly the people around him had to justify. Right when he took office in 2017, he banned all travel from Muslim countries. Yeah.

And they had to spin that and it turned out it was completely illegal and they had to reverse it. The cuts to USAID that happened last year right after he came to office. He just cut all this stuff without any slowness to to audit these programs to determine which ones were actually good and which one. And then they had to come up with all these ridiculous explanations. So the bomb first, right figure out if you hit the right things later, which includes your own

department. He's so impatient that he just bulldozed the east wing of the White House because he didn't want to go through the normal policy procedures for changing the White House. Greenland, he suddenly decides we need to have Greenland and goes on this rant against our NATO allies. And then everyone around is going, oh no, no, this was a strategically important thing. We have

we meant to do this. We've been planning it for a month. Isn't it amazing how if Greenland

was so strategically important? We haven't heard a word about it in a couple of months because it's just no longer on the front of his mind or pardoning all the J6 people. Originally the plan was they were going to go case by case and decide which ones were worthy of a pardon and the violent ones were not going to get pardoned. But Trump has said it just took too long. He didn't want to do that. So he just pardoned all of them. And then they come up with these crazy justifications

“for pardoning all of them. Here's the thing, every single president going back to Jimmy Carter when”

the Iranian Revolution happened in 1979, Republican and Democrat, every single American president has said a direct war with Iran is a terrible idea because it would be uncontained and the fallout would be too unpredictable and every one of them decided on some form of either strategic diplomacy or sanctions or something other than a direct war. And Donald Trump comes along and is just too impatient for that and says, no, I'm just going to, I'm smarter than all those presidents that came

before me. And we're supposed to believe that this guy with this track record of impatience and laziness is somehow smarter than any previous American president and he's playing four

the next 9/11. Oh, at some point in the next 10 years there's going to be a massive terrorist attack

“maybe not on US soil but against US interests. That's what happened 9/11 happened because of the”

first call for in 1991. Al Qaeda issued a g-hod arguing that American troops in Saudi Arabia

was a violation of the Holy Land and called for an attack on the United States. It took 10 years before the attack was executed but that's what led to it. Same thing with attacking Libya in 1986 when the Reagan administration went after Libya, they responded two and a half years later by Downing Pan Am 103 bombing that jetliner. He's basically guaranteed we're going to have another 9/11 kind of thing because there are people loyal to Iran and the Islamic regime

they're all over the world and sleeper cells. They're going to retaliate regardless of what happens to the regime and Iran and is lack of discipline and foresight thinking he's smarter than any previous

president or administration is opened up Pandora's box. But he had the brilliance to hire that 24-year-old

kid who is right out of college to be the head of anti-terrorism. Right after the tell guts the anti-terrorism department at the FBI. Yeah see it's four-dimensional chess or is it just eating the pieces? And this is what drives me this is my primary problem with Trump and the magma movement. Every single president since World War II, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, one, Clinton, Bush to Obama even Biden. All of them have believed in

the new world order of free trade democracy. All of them have believed in NATO. All of them have believed to direct war with Iran as a bad idea. All of them have believed that Canada is our

closest ally and best trading partner. And they were all wrong. And that's my point is either you

have to believe that all of those presidents for the last 80 years were stupid and wrong and moronic. Despite overseeing the longest extension of American power and growth in our history,

“you have to believe all those presidents were moronic and wrong and Trump is the first genius to”

come along to figure out that tariffs and alienating our allies and attacking Iran's a good idea. Or maybe Trump's the moron. Maybe that's the right way to think about it. I knew we should ask sky when we get back. I also think it's important to note, you said that's the beginning about just war theory. It's not even just about having a just justification for going to war. One of the requirements of the Christian account of just war theory is that you actually think

you can do something. You have a hope of success at whatever the goal is of freeing a marginalized group of people or of defeating some power that's wrong. You have to hope you have to have a reasonable hope of success and a plan for what you do with the people who are caught in the crosshairs. Those are both conditions that your point about Trump are entirely not present in this case and are not just procedural matters. Those are deeply moral matters. If can you enter into

“something, the hope of success is not just like it wouldn't be wise for you to get into a war”

that if you didn't have a hope of succeeding at, you are going to needlessly cause deaths of people if you don't have an idea that what you are doing causes an outcome that is a not just adjust means but adjust outcome to the means that you are using. Again, it gets to laziness. It takes a lot of work to do that in advance. I had a thought that it was wondering if it was a good thought and then I heard as recline have the same thought. It's a pretty good thought. I was looking

at looking at Venezuela. That was outside. Tell us. Can you see it from your back there? I call it. If I go high enough. I was looking at Venezuela and now you're on and there's talk of regime change but isn't really about regime change because neither regime is going to, we're not doing what you would have to do to change the regime. What we're doing and what seems to be the goal is if there's a bad guy, we don't like that won't do what we say. We want to demonstrate

that we can kill them whenever we want to. Right. So that the next bad guy, we don't care if the next guy is also a bad guy that represses his people or is corrupt. We care if he's compliant. If he's our bad guy. If he's if he's compliant to the desires of the Trump administration and then I was listening to Ezra Klein and he said, I have a new theory about what's going on and I call it the head on a pike that we want to show that we can put your head on a pike anytime

we want and you can't do anything about it. Rather than previously, even if there were oil concerns at play and we had say the vice president was an oil executive and his former company would benefit massively from what we were doing overseas. Even if that was the case, the president would still say

completely different. We're not promoting democracy. We're saying we don't like you and so we're

going to show how long our reach is and how powerful we are. We're going to basically be the guy

who says, hey, nice regime you got hate to see something happen to. Yeah, Trump operates like a mob boss. He does. And the thing is, again, every prior president since World War II has known that the United States has the strongest military in the world. Like we could put anyone's head on a pike we wanted. Why didn't they do that? Because they had a longer vision. They understand if we operate that way, at some point it's going to turn around and backfire on us and so they went for the

long game. They played the persuasion game. They said we want to be on the side of democracy and liberalism and free markets and open trade and all these different ideas and we're going to work towards that end. And Trump doesn't have the patience or discipline to do that. And so what he's now attempting both in Venezuela, he's and there's Sabre rattling now about Cuba. He's already launched attacks against Ecuador. No one's paying attention to that. He's now attacked more countries than any

“president. I think in the 20th century and without congressional approval on any of them,”

he's attacking Nigeria all these different places because he's operating like, I've got the most

powerful military in the world. I can do whatever I want. And he doesn't think about the consequences

of the future of this country when some of those people go, you know, what America? We're going to hit you right back. We can do whatever we want to. Yeah, since we're not there's no longer a higher standard of behavior that we're holding ourselves to. Might makes right. I was going to say, and to be clear, lots of people did not do that in the past, not just because they thought long term, that's not a good strategy. Lots of people in the past did not do that because they

thought that's wrong. Right. Like we've so become desensitized to the just like sheer evil in a lot of our political institutions that we forget that we used to expect people to do moral good things. And they often did not, but we still had the expectation that they would do something good and critiques them when they did not. And instead it's like, we just hope we can convince Trump that this is not in his interest, which is not how we used to hold politicians to account,

at least not universally. Yeah. So we're now creating a humanitarian crisis in Cuba by denying them oil. So if they don't have fuel, they can't run their generators to keep power on and they're going to have food shortages shortly. But it's our way of saying, hey, we don't like you. So, you know, nice country, you have pideosome habit to it. And we don't really care about the collateral damage. It's the it's the it's the flippancy towards collateral damage. Right. Which is the same thing

with the immigration policy, with mass deportations. Hey, 0.02% of these people are murderers. So we're going to get rid of all of the people. Like what? And so you end up with a picture of a five-year-old and bunny ears being detained by ICE agents. And then people yelling at you like, oh, that's an emotional plea. You're trying to do a toxic empathy on me by making me care about collateral damage.

“I think we need to care about collateral damage. Yeah. I remember back in 2003 in the run-up to the”

Iraq war. The whole country was debating whether or not that war was justifiable or not. And I have my opinion. I'm sure others do too. But at the time, George W. Bush and his circuits went out for months and months and months trying to make the case. His colon power went to the United Nations. Everyone was making the case for why war was necessary. We had a family gathering. I don't remember what it was Thanksgiving or Easter or something or other. We were at my in-laws house. And around the table,

we were all having the conversation debate. You know, should we go to war? Should we not go to war? At the head of the table was my wife's grandfather who was a career marine. He had fought in Korea. Just tough as nails. He was from Texas. Like he was a big George W. Bush fan. Very conservative

and is outlook on everything. And he was quiet during the whole conversation. Finally, someone said,

"Grandpa, what do you think?" And the table got quiet because here's the one person at the table who has like the moral credibility to speak into this. And he just said, "I've been in war.

“War is a terrible thing. You should never go to war unless it's absolutely necessary.”

This war is not necessary." And no one had another word to say. And he's since passed away. But like, I think about this. And I'm not trying to defend Iran in any way. It's a whole regime that's done horrible things. But to Caitlin's point, like, if you're going to go into a battle like this, you have to have a plan. You have to minimize civilian deaths. You have to have a plan to get American civilians out of there. You have to figure out what comes next. You have to figure

out what's the government going to look like. But they had none of this figured out. And it wasn't necessary. There wasn't an intimate, imminent threat. So, on every level, whether it's constitutional, moral, theological, or humanitarian, this is wrong. And no one is holding this president accountable

Oh, well, what about, just debating which I got like four stories in front of you.

I was like really curious, I'm holding all that in for two weeks. I don't know. I wanted you. I wanted you to vent. And Israel has started bombing civilian infrastructure. They started bombing energy infrastructure, which is obviously, you know, we just want to choke them. And we don't care what, and it's what Netanyahu did in Gaza. We just want to choke them. No aid in their out.

“No power, no electricity, no water. You know, like, what are you doing besides that those are war crimes?”

But what are you doing is, well, we have to get them to surrender the leaders. And when you're dealing with people that are so ideologically committed to the states, they've set up.

They will let, we know that the Iranian leadership will watch their people suffer because they just

shot 10 to 30,000 a few weeks ago. You know, so we know that choking the civilian population is not going to affect regime change. And yet, here we go. I'm not happy about this. I'm not happy about this. Okay. What do we do? What do we do? Side podcast about it. What do we do? Call your representative in Congress? Yeah, say this is, and the vast majority of Americans were opposed to starting a war in Iran. So I think this will have ramifications in the midterms. Question is, how is it gone

before then? How many people have died? What to get to that point? What worries me is, again, because of his laziness and impatience, I think Trump might realize where this is going,

that it's not going to go well and just stop and walk away. And at that point, you go, okay,

the people who are left to suffer at that point are the Iranian people. Yeah. And you've, you've, you've poked the bear and at some point there's going to be retaliation,

“probably in the form of terrorists attack. So what good is come of this? So that's what happens when”

you get at somebody with, with the wrong temperament to be president of the United States, without the character. This is why at the end of the day, policies matter, of course, character matters more than anything. And this man has needed the character nor the temperament to be commander-in-chief. Okay. Interesting. Oh, okay. I just, I do think we don't have much to say in terms of what we can do, but I do think it sounds very cliche and people hate when you say this.

Literally, this is like one of the perfect examples of the scenarios imagined in Scripture, where the main teaching is just pray. Because most of the time, when anyone of the people of God in Scripture are addressed about anything political, the assumption is something like what we are experiencing now, which is incredibly limited ability to do anything about it. And it can sound really cliche when there are tangible things you can do. And then there are

“times when you just come to the limits of what you can do and you should pray. And we are people who”

actually believe God answers prayers and intervenes ministry. So just because you can fill the oval office with pastors all putting hands on you and praying for you, which our president did last week, doesn't mean what you're doing is Christian. Okay. You can call me on that. I'll take that to my grave. My hill to die on. U.S. was the only country in a worldwide survey to say most of its most of our fellow citizens are bad people. This is a little, I don't, not sure. Should I be surprised?

Should I be a concern? It seems like I should be concerned. From Indonesia to Nigeria to Greece, people around the world see some slice of their fellow citizens as immoral or unethical. But there is only one country. Well, of the 23 they surveyed. Where the majority of residents say their countrymen are bad. The United States is a Pew research survey released last Thursday finds that 53% of American adults describe the morality and ethics of their fellow citizens as

bad. 53. In the 24 other countries, pulled by Pew, most people said other residents are somewhat good or good. At the opposite end of the spectrum from the United States, it must be just a North America thing. We North Americans just think we're all evil. No wait. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Canada, where Pew found that 92% of people say their fellow Canadians are good, while just 7% say they're bad. So in America, 53 of us say our fellow Americans are bad people

in Canada, 7% say their fellow Canadians. So what is wrong? Why are we so bad? We are just bad people. Well, we think everyone else also do think we're wrong. I don't know. One of the ones that concerned by the most is that it said that a median across countries, I have to look at the US one. 77% of adults said that married people having an affair is morally unacceptable.

countries surveyed, showed a partisan bias, meaning that people who preferred political -- who's

“preferred political party is out of power are particularly likely to view their fellow citizens as”

immoral. In the US, Pew found that 60% of Democrats and those who lean democratic saw their fellow citizens as morally or ethically bad, while 46% of Republicans did. So Democrats are more likely to think Americans are evil. But if they did the survey a couple years ago when Biden was in power when the Democrats had control of the Senate, I wonder if it would have looked different. Possibly. Possibly. This is in -- this story was in Washington Post, and the interview

to our friend Karen Smalla prior, who said today's political leaders along with algorithms and

swarms of social media bots fuel the idea that bad people are everywhere. Almost every moral

issue has become politicized. We have two parties that cannot and will not work with another, one another, and demonize one another. So it's not surprising at all that our perception of one another's goodness is so low. Amen. Yeah, I think the economic incentive is demonization. Make people afraid of their fellow neighbors and Balkanize the country. Why is Canada so different? Why does Canada not need to do that? Why

“don't you need to do that to get elected in Canada? And why don't social media algorithms work”

the same? Part of it is they have a parliamentary system. It's not just two parties. It's just

harder to demonize that many discrete groups of people. So we simplified things to make it easier

to push buttons that that panked in very broad brushes. Canadians tend to blame people in power and elites one expert said, but it's not directed at other Canadians. Another Pew poll showed a sharp rise among Americans in their negative views about people from the other political party that rose dramatically from 2016 to 2022. So we're much more likely. Now 72% of Americans say that Democrats are immoral and 63% of Democrats say that Republicans are immoral.

There was a study I forget if it was Gallop or Pew back in the 60s they asked people if you're if you're adult young adult child married somebody from the other political party. Would you care and the majority of Americans did not care in the 1960s whether they're future sun and law dotter and law was of the opposite political party. They re-did that more recently and like it's inverted. People be devastated if your son or daughter married somebody of the other political party.

You can marry someone of a different race as long as they vote like right because political identification has become so core to people's identities now in a way that it hadn't been in prior generation. Do you think that's good or bad? I generally think that's bad.

“So what do we do about that? And how should Christians be offsetting this dynamic?”

Is this just a sign that we're all really good Calvinists and we're just total depravity? Top to bottom. Is this why you ask me if my fellow citizens are evil? I say of course they are total depravity. I'm a good Calvinist. I think it's I don't know if it's Calvinism as much as it's algorithms and the big sort where we just don't know enough people that are different from ourselves. Also most I mean like I'm going to try and knock it like too far into this but if a

thorough going Calvinist would one think that more true of themselves than if they're fellow citizens. And to the reform tradition more broadly has had a pretty high view of how much we can change our communities and the world for to look more like the kingdom of God. Most of this data seems to suggest that like people think their neighbors are bad and the world is bad. Like things are going poorly. Whereas most Calvinists are at history have thought

people are made in the image of God. They're very deeply corrupted and broken by sin but also we have the ability to not only share the gospel but to organize communities in such a way that things can be different than they are and this seems just pessimistic more than Calvinistic. Yeah the Washington Post not only quotes our friend Karen Swallow prior they also quote a Dietrich Bonhoeffer scholar Victoria Barnett who said that in the 1930s there were

that Bonhoeffer wrote there were so many Christian groups in the U.S. that quote they couldn't even agree when something was heretical. Unquote America he thought didn't really have a shared creed instead Barnett says America is a political system in which religion and morality become used by political leaders which in turn can lead to great cynicism about public morality and intense polarization. A great disagree to discuss amongst yourselves. He said that almost 100

years ago. Yeah in the 1930s. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Hey, hey you theologian of politics.

reason I was like short-circuiting there for a minute was the first sentence I was so like what on earth they couldn't even agree something was readable. Yeah that's the history of Protestant Christianity there. I don't think that's distinctly American. I do think it is I mean the reformers were pretty sure when someone was a heretic. But they disagree amongst themselves deeply. Yeah that's right. That's like the history of Protestantism is like having very different ideas

about who's heretical. The idea that I mean the the thing that Bonhoeffer is getting out there that I think tons of people for a long time have said about America is we are unique as a country and that we both place a very high value on religion sometimes Christianity specifically as a symbol

as a sense of community as an ideal. But we have never had a state church. We find that

apparent and what you end up with when religion deeply matters but you don't have a state church. For all of the ills of a state church one of the positive things is in many European countries at least it was kind of there. It didn't need to be this like marker or symbol for a lot of politicians. It was ingrained in the history. So that often meant it was trivialized and like cease to have any influence. But it wasn't used by politicians in the way that faith is often used by politicians

in America. You don't have a state church that also means you don't have a state church that can say this politician interpreted scripture wrongly. They don't get to do that they're done. Instead you have tons of different religious authorities that are all competing and disagreeing with each other

“and for most Christians or for most Americans honestly faith by a politician just sort of is a”

political tool which goes to the cynicism. It's actually sort of refreshing to know that that's been

true for a very long time. We've always been somewhat cynical about it and we have different

waves of wanting our politicians to use it for our own goals or not. But in reality I think most Christians even in the country whether they're on the right or on the left kind of acknowledge that politicians use it as just a way to try to garden or some sort of support. It doesn't mean it's not effective. It are often as effective. There are very few people that are actually concerned with like does this politician share my sincere faith and are they're like fruit of the

spirit that evidence it? So what would we be better off if we had a state church and there was an office of heresy and they could think that they're aware. This is what we believe this is the creed of the United States of America, the Christian nation and now that makes us think each other were better people. Maybe it wouldn't be good anyway. I don't know if it would make us think we're better people. But this is where it's like I don't think a state church is a good idea. I do think there are some

benefits historically to having had a state church in the past in the way that it's worked out politically. For us there are great pros to not having a state church. One of the hills is some of the things that we're seeing today. Do you think this has been exacerbated? Yes or no in the correct answer is yes. Do you think this has been exacerbated by the way we demonized? Wanted to demonize for example

“the welfare state by going with stereotypes of welfare queens where you say see all those poor people?”

Their cheaters, their lazy cheaters so that it became politically convenient for us to think of large groups of people that 100 years ago we would have thought of as the poor or the needy and we now think of as grifters or hand out folks. Because if there's that, if everyone who's on welfare is a bad person we are a nation full of bad people. That's one example of many. This is where I was going to say it was the best example. It's a really good example. It's a good example.

It's a good example. It's like good example. It's like that. As a recline hasn't even had time to say that. He didn't even say that. Yeah. He's about to be. I think he goes back to what you said at the beginning about like how do we get here? What do we do about that? I don't think many of us have learned to have an ingrained impulse that I think we need to have of any story I'm being sold whether it's by a politician, whether it's in a movie, whether it's an ad. I'm watching

that paint some people is good guys and some people's people as bad guys. I should have an ingrained suspicion of those stories. That's a deeply Christian impulse to just say that's not how the world works. But it's really hard for us to learn. I mean, I've even been trying to do this when it comes to like people who I know I disagree with politically, whether it's actual political actors like in the Trump administration or stories about conservative communities that are dealing with

with immigration or whatever it is. If it's a group of people I am kind to think. I disagree with

“deeply about something that is both political and moral and I think they are really wrong. I've really”

tried recently when I read a story about them to have my first impulse be one, this cannot possibly

describe all of the group of people that are being described here. Like not everyone in any place in the country, not anyone who not everyone who voted for Trump, not every in any group of people, this cannot be describing all of them uniformly because it that's just not how it works.

And that feels pious and it feels like it might cause you to to overlook some real evils.

But for me personally, if it's a group of people that I already been kind to disagree with,

“I already know that I have a list of things that I think are wrong. I'm not going to be very”

inclined in that moment to disregard those things. I am going to be inclined to think along the lines of this data. There's just something, there's nothing redeemable in any of that. And I'm trying to stop that worst impulse in me. Amen, all that. But no, no, but I think that what part of it fuels this is also in our system, the way you win an election is by appealing to disgruntled people and rather than offering them hope you offer them blame. Yeah, it's just easier. And so I think

as America because of various things, more and more people are struggling in different ways, as we've seen manufacturing decline, as we've seen diversity increase, as we see certain groups, especially women are doing better and better in the marketplace and education and men falling further and further behind. There's a lot of discontent brewing under the surface and our sight is the gap between the wealthy, the poor gets wider as the middle class shrinks. All these

different things are happening. People are discontent rather than saying, here's a way forward, or here's a solution, or here's some hope. It's so much easier to win an audience or an office by saying, here's who to blame. And the more you blame different groups, whether it's welfare recipients, or immigrants, or pick your group, you then convince more and more Americans to

“distrust or think of their fellow Americans as problematic and evil. And that's how you get to”

that statistic. There was a panel at a Fort Worth church last week that discussed among other things, whether Islam, this was in, oh, yeah, it's in Fort Worth in Texas, that's in Texas, Katelyn. Yes, it is. Whether Islam should be banned from the United States and all or just Texas, and whether Muslims should be deported and, and the theory was, well, they have to defend

Texas against the threat of Islam. So the idea was we could basically say, and this is a state

representative of a Texas politician, in the state of Texas, we get to define what a religion is, and Islam is not a religion protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution. Instead, it's a political system, not a religion, and then we could ban it. And if people are, you know, extremely Muslim, we could then deport them. What bothers me is if someone would say, oh, I hate Christians, and you say, why? And say, well, the Westboro Baptist does okay. Right.

“That's what Christians are. It's he said, no, that's not what, that's ridiculous. You're painting”

with such a, but if someone says, oh, look what that Muslim did, that's why I hate Muslims, or look what that immigrant did. That's why I hate immigrants, or look what that transgender person did. That's why we got to get rid of transgenderism. It's like, don't you see you're doing this thing. I mean, this, again, it's people appealing to your lizard brain, make them afraid, and then mobilize that fear to win votes and donations. You got to have another to other.

And it's so strange to use any kind of Christian language along these lines. It's not strange and that it's historically unprecedented, it's very historically precedented. But the community, like the churches I grew up in, the missions organizations that would come and talk to us, like the entire approach and vibe was people are wrong, and they might even do really wrong things because of their wrong religious beliefs. But they are humans made in God's image,

and we love them. And our goal is is actually to share the gospel with, like, this language is is destructive and oriented towards destruction of the person, not even defeat of the ideas. And that's not only counter to the American ethos, but counter to how Christians, even in the last 50 years have talked about people in this country or people outside this country that disagree with us religiously. This is the, this is the part that I just cannot get my brain around.

And it goes back to what we talked about with Iran earlier in the episode. There are so many people out there claiming to make both American and Christian arguments, which are profoundly un-Christian and un-American. Like you cannot say that we're going to deny Muslim Americans the right to practice their religion and do that in the name of the Constitution and in the name of Christianity because that kind of dehumanization is neither Christian nor

American. But the threat is so great, sky. You don't know what time it is. If you knew what time it was, you would, you know what, realize, the God I worship is the same yesterday today and from no, no, even God knows what time it is. And he's saying, "Oh my God, I need your help." Oh my, me! What can we do about this? Somebody banned the Muslims from Texas.

Oh, hey everybody, we're having fun. We have fun, we're always having fun. There's hope. There's always hope.

They are not there enough. Not innately fun. But I hope you're encouraged by the conversation,

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This episode is brought to you by Public Good Generation. The Center for Christianity and Public

Life's Summer Civics Program for high school students who want to connect their Christian faith to public life and leadership. Today's teens are growing up in a world where politics feels chaotic

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working in government, advocacy, and journalism. Students tour DC's monuments, build friendships with like-minded peers, and reflect on how spiritual formations shapes our politics and with need-based scholarships available cost doesn't have to stand in the way. If you know a high school student who's ready to grow in faith and public purpose, send them to www.cc publiclife.org/holypost and encourage them to apply by Wednesday April 15th. The comedian Mike

Perbiglia often talks about the thing beneath the thing. It's his way of saying that the issue on the surface isn't the full story or even the real story. There's more going on underneath the surface that we rarely acknowledge or talk about. That's kind of how I feel about the debate in our churches over women and leadership. It's not really a new issue, but in recent years it feels like it's gotten a lot more contentious and nasty. On the surface people will debate

passages of scripture. What exactly did Paul mean in 1st Timothy 2 or 1st Corinthians about this or that thing or why is Junia a woman called an apostle? That's the stuff we have on the surface that we argue about, but those things aren't the real thing. They're not what's beneath the surface. There are deeper issues going on than just how we read certain passages of the Bible. My guest today, Preston Sprinkle, has written a very helpful book called "From Genesis to Junia."

An honest search for what the Bible really says about women in leadership. It's a walk through all of the relevant parts of both the old and new testimonies about women in leadership. Preston studies each text reviews different scholarly articles and points of view on it. And he comes to his own conclusion about this question. The book is an excellent guide to what I would consider the surface issue of women in church leadership. And by that,

But in my conversation with Preston today, I wanted to look at the thing beneath the thing.

“I wanted to hear his thoughts on what's really fueling this debate right now”

and what it might mean for the future of the church in America. Preston Sprinkle is a biblical scholar, international speaker, podcaster, and a New York Times bestselling author who's written over a dozen books. He serves as the president of the center of faith, sexuality, and gender, and the president of theology in the raw ministries, which includes the theology in the raw podcast and the annual exiles and Babylon conference.

Here's my conversation with Preston Sprinkle. Preston Sprinkle, welcome back to the Holy Post. Yeah, thanks for having me back on. And you're in studio. I am in studio. This is different. I'm glad you're here. You're new book from Genesis to Junia in an honest search for what the Bible really says about women in leadership. Okay, before we even jump into this, we often get comments from our audience

like you guys are using words and talking about terms that I'm familiar with. So let's just define a couple of terms that are going to come look a lot. Yeah. As succinctly as possible, define complementary inism and egalitarianism. Okay. Yeah,

complementary inism basically believes that while the male and female sexes complement each other,

we're different, but complementary. Leadership role, all kinds of leadership roles, teaching, preaching, pasturing, and eldering, whatever, are reserved only for men. There's a soft complementary view, which says that women can teach and preach and do ministry things, leadership things, but under the authority of an all-male like eldership team. So there's still male, ultimate male authority. So the top spots have to be male. Yeah,

exactly. Yeah. Okay. And then egalitarianism. There I don't think there is a soft egalitarianism, but I'm just basically, they would say all roles and positions of leadership, teaching, preaching, or open-up, and women alone. Right. So obviously egalitarian means equal. Right. And that's equal access, not just equal in value, but equal access to all roles. And I will say there are problems with all the terms I know. I mean, egalitarianism is, it can have some

secular connotations, and obviously when, especially like Christians or even Jolk who Christians use of the term, they're not meaning the same thing that somebody who's outside the faith might mean by the term. Okay. A couple things. First of all, you are not the first person on this podcast. What's about these? I know. It's part of this. This is the first book on the top. Well, not the first book. Again, not the first guest we've had. It's all we've talked about this many

many times over the years. You've done a number of other interviews about your book. I really want to recommend the one you did with Mike Eury on Voxology. You will probably link to that or give access to it because you guys do a good job in that conversation of digging into the texts and getting into the, the stuff that's in your book, which is great. So let's sort of this. It's kind of a really basic question. Yeah. There are other scholars that have spent decades on this topic and written

volumes about it. We've had some of them on this show. We need Jay Gupta. You've cited

in the book. He does a great job looking at First Timothy, too, which is one of the most critical

texts and debated texts. Beth Allison Barr, who's a church historian, talks a lot about the history of this issue throughout the centuries. Yeah. Why is Preston sprinkle jumping into this? And what,

“and I think you do have a unique contribution to make, but what is a unique contribution of this book?”

Well, let me first of all say, I did not intend to make a unique contribution. And this book started as just my own personal research interest. In fact, you know, it's something I've wanted to research for a long time. It's always been an issue I thought about just haven't had time to research. So I've always kind of played the fifth on where I stand, you know? I'm pretty sure like you, I think, raised it a very strong commentary in background. That was how I know.

Okay. My background is. Okay. Okay. Whatever. Anyway, that was a background. It came from, it made sense to me, but then as I met people who held different views, who deeply respect scripture, I was like, oh, maybe maybe I need to study this out before I really have a position. And so it wasn't until a few years ago when I had time to do that. So I even, to your question, when I started researching the project, I was like, do I even want to make this a book? I mean,

maybe it would be helpful, but there's been so much written on that trying to make a unique contribution. I'm just trying to figure this out for myself. But my publisher was like, well, as well, you know, get it out there. So I'm sure it'd be helpful for somebody. So I don't, I didn't go in with, oh, here is a gaping hole in the conversation I'm trying to fill. Now, whether the end product does make some kind of unique contribution. I hope, I hope it does.

I hope the approach I take might be a little unique. And there are some extra general things

“that I think some scholars in the conversation haven't drawn out as well. And, you know, again,”

looking at the final product now, I really want this book to be a very fair

everybody else is wrong. And I'm going to spend, you know, 300 pages proving this view that I already

“have, you know, my book is tracing kind of in real time, my exagetical journey. So it has that kind of”

discovery motif. But yeah, it wasn't, I wasn't trying to, I didn't, yeah, I wasn't trying to make it, you know, I didn't do it when I started. Well, when I say unique, I, I don't think you are

introducing some, never before, right, of theory of some textures, right, right. That's not the unique

contribution. But as I went through the book, I thought to myself, when I encounter people, especially in church leadership, who are wrestling with this question and who come from a strong emphasis on the authority of scripture, your book is a great introductory survey of all of the critical texts. Yeah. So just looking at the table of contents, so people know this. First chapter is Adam and Eve in Genesis 1, 2, 3. Then next chapter is women in the Old Testament, then women in the

ministry of Jesus, leaders in leadership in the early church, women in the ministry of Paul, particularly Roman 16, female prophets in the New Testament, marriage, headship and submission from Ephesians 5, man is ahead of the woman, first Corinthians 11, women are to be silent in all churches,

first Corinthians 14, and then women teaching authority the big dozey, first Timothy chapter two,

I mentioned earlier, and then at the end you give your conclusion. So all the big ones like this, this is a good, it's accessible. You don't have to be a Bible scholar read, although it helps a little

“bit, but it's a good survey of all the debated texts and issues. So in that regard, I think it”

is a really helpful resource. And because you've talked about these issues so much elsewhere, and so I don't want to necessarily dig into the particular text here, though you do a good job with them. I want to talk about why is this still such a debated issue? And I guess you and I have landed in the same place on this. I don't know if you care to, because the book's out now. It's out. So at the very end you do wrap up your thinking and I highlight it. I could read it directly

from the book unless you just want to summarize where you landed. No, I land the, yeah, that's all positions of leadership and whatever in the church are open to men and women like. So egalitarian, as I say in the conclusion, I don't love that term. I just don't love labels and terminology, but for lack of better terms, I land, well, let me say this. I believe the egalitarian view best represents the most faithful reading of the scriptures. And that's something that I

cannot overemphasize that I'm, my focus is deeply, and narrowly, just exgegetical. I want to know what this ancient religious document says about women in church leadership. So yeah, I don't come at it from a broad theological level or even like, you know, men and women are equal. Therefore, you know, I don't use those kind of arguments. It is really what does the text say. So I'm deeply compelled by the best reading of scripture for the egalitarian view. Right. I want to come back

to that in a second. To quote you in the book, you said, I believe the Bible says women can teach

an exercise leadership at every level in the church. This is the interesting part of my mind. I don't hold this view at the same level of confidence as I hold doctrines like the Trinity or the deity of Christ. I still think some complementary arguments have exgegetical credibility, but after a long incident, it's tedious journey. I believe the egalitarian view is more biblical persuasive and picking that up a little bit later. Um, Buddha, you say,

does this mean I also think that a Fermi women in all areas of leadership is a matter of orthodoxy?

“No, I don't think it is. While women in leadership is a very important topic, I think the Bible”

is less clear on this topic than say the doctrines affirmed in the nice and creed, like the Trinity and the Trinity. Right. It's your way it sounds of not accusing complementarians of being heretics. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this is where I want to go, though, because the position you are holding and I'm holding as well in this, I agree with you. I think we both say this is the best reading of scripture we can get to. It does however fly against the tradition of the church

over two thousand years, which in some ways mirrors your journey on the doctrine of Hell. And mine to be fair. Like again, I took an extensive time studying that issue. You did to you wrote a whole book on it. I wrote part of a book on it. And in both of our cases, we landed on a view of Hell, which we think is faithful to scripture, but cuts against the grain of not all of, but a significant chunk of church history. So how do you deal with that

reconciliation? That's a good question. I would say, as you know, at least with Hell, when you get to the kind of pre-niceine church fathers, it really early church fathers. You had some not just diversity, but you know, a decent number that seemed to be more on the

can serve in all positions of authority and leadership, you know, bishops and overseers, whatever

you know, I elders, I'm not an early church historian from my, you know, like survey of some of those texts. It seems like that, you know, decans, they could be for sure decans. And there are some texts that seem to say they can hold other positions of authority, but the overwhelming,

“well, I mean, majority I think in church history is, you know, the head, you know, the bishop,”

the head leaders and a church should be mad. Yeah, but my right on, yeah, you are, and you talk about this in the book a little bit, including in the concluding chapter. And again, there's a link here between Hell and women. Don't take that too far, but I need the editor on that. So going to the doctrine of Hell, one of the reasons why the eternal conscious format view of Hell would sometimes known as the traditional view of Hell came to have such prominence in the church was because of

the influence of Greek philosophy. Yes. Plotonic Greek philosophy said that the human soul is indestructible. Right. And if so, if a human soul cannot be destroyed, what happens to the unredeemed human souls? Well, they must be in court. It's just a logical thing. Similarly, not just from Greek thinking, but ancient thinking was that women were just intrinsically inferior to men. They were not as strong. They were not as intelligent. They were not as virtuous. Women are inferior or unformed men,

and some was the popular view. And if that view comes into the church, the natural assumptions are going to be, well, of course, they can't be in leadership. Of course, they shouldn't be teaching and leading and all that. So it isn't that these ideas were deeply rooted in the reading of scripture, it's that they were imported from pagan and sources. Yeah. So that's the link I see here. It's just that we've held on to them for so long that some people assume they are the biblical view.

“I think you're right. Again, this is not my area. Early, you know, my knowledge really starts to”

fade out after 80, 70, you know, after 80, 90 when the New Testament is completed. So but my sense is, yeah, it seems like the early church was deeply influenced by some platonic or even arrested. When it comes to like even Plato and Aristotle, they had to kind of different views in women. And Aristotle is the one who was very much like the deformed, you know, a woman is like a deformed man. That's not an exact quote, but we're Plato. He had a

higher view of women at the same. It's sort of the stoics and there's still not to where I think Jesus and Paul were. But there was some diversity there, but yeah, the early church did seem to assume an adopt that view that women are sort of intrinsically ontologically inferior to two men. That seems, again, in my, in my surface reading of these texts, that seems pretty pervasive.

“Now, again, you go into this in the book, most not all, but most complementarians don't hold”

that view. They don't believe women are inferior. It's not the air stillian or platonic views of

women as half-baked men, basically. So given that and given the preponderance of evidence,

inscription, a lot of the works have been done, why are we, why is this issue seeming to gain more and more and more traction rather than lose it back in the 90s when I was in seminary and kind of it was an issue, but it feels so much more heated today than it did 25, 30 years ago. What do you think about this? This is a surprise to be, as I said earlier, when I started writing a book back in 2022, I was like, this isn't going to be a copy, no one's going to be interested, this issue settled,

people were on the tribes, and I'm a Johnny Cummiley, like I, you know, I should have written this 25 years ago, and then maybe it would have been relevant, it was kind of how it went in. And again, it was just, I just wanted to figure this out for myself. I agree with you that it does seem to be just in the last even couple years, a lot of people are rethinking or or thinking through it for

the first time or haven't settled or are looking to understand what the Bible says. And so I don't

know, Scott, I don't know where that's come from. I mean, some possibilities, you know, you do, you seem to have just on the broader socio-political scene, almost like a, and you would know more about this than I would, but like a resurgence of a, a very, a very, right wing or very, very conservative view of kind of lots of things, but also male and female roles, you know, you have kind of a movement of, you know, people, you know, women wanted to be trad wives, you know,

that's kind of a hot thing now. And Doug Wilson's making a comeback, it seems like, you know, preached up Pentagon recently and stuff. And you know, so I don't, that kind of like, very conservative

it's gained some prominence recently. Would you, I, yeah, 100% agree. And maybe that's kind of intertwined

with this conversation. You've done a lot of work on LGBTQ stuff. You've interviewed tons of people on those issues. And you probably are better positioned than I am to talk about all the dynamics of our culture in the last 10 years, more on gender, right? There's tons of ambiguity about gender and identity. And where does that come from? What's it rooted in and can it change? All of those

“debates are raging right now. And I think there's a younger generation of people who are very”

confused about, what does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman? And in that uncertainty, there's a market for people with answers that sound certain. And so there's a strong

segment of the culture that desperately wants definitive boundaries on what is masculinity and what

is femininity. And some parts of the church are eager to give them that. And they, I would argue, sometimes overextend those arguments into all kinds of areas. Yeah. Maybe are unnecessary. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. And even, you think about like the, the, the kind of disturbing popularity of people like Andrew Tate or Nick Fuentes, and you hear them talk about men and women, or even some other names that I'm less familiar with. But you hear him talk and it's like,

what year is this? You know, like, but these are massively popular voices in in some circles.

“You know, so yeah. And the church typically follows or at least is directly influenced by”

socio cultural political trends. And so maybe this kind of resurgence of going back to kind of

well, we'll set out dated, but maybe older views of like rigid masculinity and femininity, maybe that's playing a role in the church where you're thinking, you know, male female roles. Well, part of this is the fear that if you abandon traditional male roles in the church or allow women into those roles, you're, you've just given up the ghosts like the whole thing falls apart. And before you know it, you've got gay marriage and transgender this and every woke terrifying

thing that people are worried about comes flooding in. Why do you think that's not the case, or a false argument? And unfair to peg all of that onto the role, this issue of wheelchair. I mean, it's kind of like the slippery slope. It's totally the same approach. So this step and you're going to go take this step and this step and this step and this step. And I like to wrap remind people that the slippery slope has two sides. You know, is it possible for you to take kind of a

“step towards quote unquote liberalism and then you take two more steps and three more steps?”

Yeah, sure. I've seen people do that. I don't know if the hermeneutic is intrinsically related to that. Like if you interpret the Bible this way, therefore you're going to land on this view, this view and all these other issues, you would at least need to prove that the hermeneutic is related. I talk about in the end of the book that I don't think there's a direct hermeneutical association between women in leadership and same-sex marriage. I think these

are, you know, they involve the sexes, you know, but they're really distinct topics. And so there's no reason why if you arrive at an egalitarian view hermeneutically that that same hermeneutic should push you towards same-sex. Right. One of the basic points on that front is there are dozens of examples of women in leadership roles or engage in leadership behavior in scripture. There are zero examples in scripture of the affirmation of any same-sex relationship, certainly no same-sex

marriage. You can argue that's a result of not existing in the ancient world, but those data points just don't exist. And some people assume that egalitarianism has to diminish the differences between men and women to get to their view. Right. And some maybe do that, but more like evangelical egalitarians would say, no, we absolutely honor and respect male female differences. We just don't think those differences exclude people for leadership. So

whereas same-sex marriage, you know, would oftentimes downplay the significance of sex differences in the scriptural narrative. What do you do with people who equate this issue with one's view of biblical authority? And what I mean many years ago when I was working at CTE, I interviewed a well-known church leader who was very reformed in his theology, and I asked, and he was not super well-known at the time. So I asked him like, how would you define

your kind of doctrinal viewpoint? And he proceeded to give me the two-lip five points of Calvinism

and he's like, yeah, basically. And I asked him, why have you added keeping women out of leadership

“roles as an essential doctrine, along with irresistible grace and unlimited at a tone,”

or limited tone at all these other Calvinist things? And he said, well, because it serves as a litmus task for whether or not you take scripture seriously. So in his view, if you allow women in leadership, you don't take the Bible seriously. Why does that you persist when there's so many folks like you and others who totally affirm the authority and inspiration of scripture that argue from scripture women should be in leadership? I very much resonate with that perspective.

That's that's a perspective I held for many years that the only faithful way to read the Bible. If you take the Bible seriously, it's inevitable you will arrive at a complementary position.

Just look at first Timothy, too. Just read the text. Twelve mil apostles. Adam was born first.

And you grew up with these arguments and the re-scripture through that lens and it just has this

“kind of self-luping effect where that's the only way you think one can interpret these passages.”

I say these, what I'm going to say, I mean, like the actual definitions of the words I'm going to use. I don't mean this to be like a demeaning way, but I think it's naive and ignorant to have that view. Now even the sense that there are very compelling ex-jetical arguments based on the Greek words based on a historical grammatical reading of scripture, do your words studies, look up what these words mean, look at the context, do the things we learned and

Bible college, that conservative Bible college and there are very compelling ex-jetical reasons for the view you and I hold. I would say a much more faithful reading of scripture. Somebody says, wow, you're egalitarian. Well, you must not be reading the Bible correctly. That is, from my vantage point, by definition, just a naive comment. Like you're just naive. You haven't done your homework. Otherwise, you wouldn't say that. And it's ignorant in a sense.

It's just unknowing. I'm not saying you're stupid or anything. I'm just saying, like you haven't

taken a time to look at how the Greek word "authentane" is used in papyri in the second century

and how that informs first Timothy 12, 12, 12, B. Right. You haven't looked at how the Greek word "guar" is connected to 2012 and into 2013. The law of Prima-Genitor, the first born son, on and on, you know, right. They're parading back the sound bite they've heard of their lives, that if you believe in women in ministry, you just don't take the Bible seriously. I haven't dug deeper. Right. Okay. Yeah. I'm not saying that for everybody because I know some

good solid scholars who are complementary and who do know these arguments, they're wrestles with it and they've landed on a complementary. But they also wouldn't, I don't, the ones I'm thinking I wouldn't say, you're denying the Google authority. They would just say I significantly disagree with your interpretation, but I don't think you're throwing out the Bible. And to be fair, there are, I've encountered egalitarians. Oh yeah. That don't know the Bible very well, either. Yeah.

They base their egalitarianism on something other than a deep investigation study the scriptures as well, which gets me to a broader point again, like how much of this ongoing debate within the church is really about biblical scholarship and how much of it is about tribal identity. Right. You know, if you're part of that conservative reformed network of guys, like you, you'd be kicked out the moment you'd read the women in leadership on the flip side. If you're in a

part of a more socially or politically progressive church community, might be as conservative as ever and scripture, if you allow any second guessing of the role of women in leadership, you'd be booted from your community. So is it really about we're circling the wagons on our identity groups and tribal groups and protecting that regardless of what scripture might say or not say on the topic? I mean, that's a generalization to you, yeah. So I don't want to put

“everyone in the camp, but I think yeah, of course, of course, we have many Christians have”

tribal commitments, tribal allegiances, and even on a psychological level, Jonathan Height talks about this, many of the psychologists talk about this, that we have a hive mind, like beehives. We just, our identity is found in the hive and other bees who are swarming around us. So are you worried about getting stung with what you've done in this book? I mean, you get kicked out of the community.

where they, as you even said, this is one of the litmus tests whether you can even be long to

our tribe. So on both sides, I'm glad you hit both, both, and you've dealt with this on other issues as well. But like, have you been in anticipation of this book being released? Have you been thinking through how you're going to talk to those people who come after you? What? Is the approach age just read the book? Is it just, I did the work, is the Bible thing? Or when you're dealing with somebody who's clearly not rooting their argument in exegesis, but they're rooting it in tribal

identity, how do you approach those conversations? I kind of don't. I'm not part of, I'm not really

“part of any tribe, honestly. I'm not part of the nomination, I'm not on stuff at a chair,”

I'm not on a school, kind of a theological mat, for good or for ill. I've got a good community people, but it's not like a theological tribe or we all say the same thing. But people that are locked in those tribes that will be really upset at my book that will probably bypass the arguments and just condemn my conclusion. I'm just not, we're brothers and sisters in Christ, hopefully, but I'm just not interested in those kind, that kind of thinking. I'm very interested in

people who say, "Man, this is a tough issue. I really want to understand what the Bible says. They may even say, "Hey, I don't need a problem with women leading, but I still need it." How do we

get around? What do we do? What do we do with First Timothy too? Like that genuinely curious person?

I think there's more out there than we think. There's not on social media. That's the person I want to dialogue with. When I wrote my first book, which was not about any of this stuff, it was about consumerism and church. I remember a friend of mine who was on staff at a mega church gave it to the senior pastor, his boss, to read. Like a week or two later, his boss handed him the book back. He said, "Did you read it? Can we talk about it?" He said, "No, I started it,

but I can't read this book." My friend asked them, "Why?" The senior pastor apparently said to him, "I can't read this book because if I do it, it'll ruin my ministry." In other words,

I want to keep my head in the sand. I don't want to be awake to these realities. What do you say to

the person who is curious, who wants to pick up your book and read these things, but is in a system, in a church, in a denomination, in a tribe that is planted its flag on complementarynessism and is worried what reading your book and having their eyes open to some of these extra-dedical views will do. Another way of asking it is, what advice do you have for the person who sympathetic to your view, but is trying to operate within a complementary and system? There's different scenarios. I can think

of somebody's on staff at a church and maybe they're not the lead pastor or maybe many of the other leaders are on a certain page with this topic and say they read my book and they're not on that page, but they still love the church and those are tough. Those are tough environments. Those are really tough. I don't have to divide into our camps or is there a way to cooperate with people who

“hold it? I think there's a way to cooperate for sure. But I was going to say, if you're”

so that's on the one side. I don't want to be sensitive to the different contexts in which people might be living and doing ministry and there's complexity there. But if you call yourself a Christian leader and you say you believe in biblical authority and the God who breathes stars into existence also breathes out his word and your convinced his word says one thing and you want to put your head in this sand and say, well, I'm going to choose my tribe over following God's word and I'm

going to say, you're probably not equipped for leadership. Okay. A stewarding God's word to God's people. Now again, I want to put that last, maybe some of what's common in conversation with certain scenarios where somebody is not just saying, gosh, the Bible says this, but I'm not going to teach it, but like, okay, but I'm in an environment where, you know, I can't change the direction of the church. I've talked to my leaders. They're not on the same page. I'm a part of a team.

And so I have to kind of submit my view to the view of the, the rest of the leaders. Like that's,

“I think that's a different, different thing that you're talking about where somebody who is a”

teacher of God's word, maybe, we're out of fear of rocking the boat or something like that. Fear of like, yeah, losing their job or something that they're not going to say what they believe the Bible says. Right. That's an issue of courage. Yes. But the separate issue is, in my personal

reading of scripture, but I'm part of a denomination, a church, network, whatever, where good people

and thoughtful people have landed on the other side of this. Yeah. Where does the preponderance of authority lie? Is it with me and my conviction and my study or with the group that I'm a part of

“and do, I think this gets, there's so many issues where this has come up, including politics and”

magazines, where I think I've encountered people, had conversations with the people about the political realities going on in America right now and they will agree with me 100%. But they won't admit it because to admit it would be to say that, well, my parents are wrong or my community is wrong or my church is wrong and there's so much desire to not alienate from that community and not

to disparage a community that they feel the tension between truth and belonging. Yeah. And I think

that plays into this issue a lot too. Yeah, that's good. Okay. So yeah, I imagine scenarios where kind of similar to the one I shared earlier, like where you have your convictions, but your part of a community that doesn't hold at the same convictions and it's not out of fear, it's not out of like, yeah, scared of getting kicked out of the community, but it's out of maybe humility where you will submit to this community, the consensus in the community or a part of,

not that you agree with it, but you will sort of abide by it if you will. I remember talking to Sandy Richter who's egalitarian, old hasn't scholar and she even said something to blue my mind. I'm she is one of the best old testament scholars and even juggles in today. A humble person, a PhD from Harvard, brilliant scholar. She even said, if I was in a context where me preaching would disrupt the unity of the church, I would choose unity over me, like fighting to

get beyond a pulpit and preach. I would submit to my commentary brothers and sisters for the

“sake of unity. I'm one level I respect that and another level I think I disagree with it.”

And here's why, if I'm in that environment, she's talking like a temporary, like if she's going to speak at a church or something like that, she's just passing through. It's not the community, she's a part of it. I don't want to just quote it. Here's where this gets really tricky and we got to wrap this up in a minute, but like if I'm in a community, if I have a conviction, that women should be allowed in all roles of leadership, and my community doesn't,

as a man in that community, I still have access to all of those roles. I'll tolerate this because it doesn't hurt me directly. It hurts me indirectly. It hurts me because all of my sisters who are gifted in those roles, I'm not benefiting from their gifts being used in my community. So it's an indirect harm to me. It's not a direct harm, but if you're a woman in one of those communities, gifted in leadership or teaching in ways, and you are barred from those things. It's pretty hard to say

to that. Sister, like hey, you just need to submit to your community. Yeah. And that's my whole issue with this topic. It's not just, oh, we have honest disagreements in how we're reading these different texts. The consequences of where you land as massive implications for the full expression of the gifts, the Holy Spirit is given, to 50% of God's people. Yeah. That's huge. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's where I'm already giving this question from people like saying, hey, I'm convinced

of the view you land on. Not just because of my book, but maybe that further than it, but they said, I'm going to, I am in a complementary context. What do you recommend? I think it's a case by case.

I don't know. Like, are there, is this crucial enough for, first of all, are you like a, do you have

access to the leadership? Are you a leader? Do you have some kind of influence on the, the leadership

“of the church? Or if you don't, then I don't know how much you can do, then you need to decide, like,”

is this issue important for me enough to lead the church? Or are there so many other great things about the church? And going to another church that maybe holds to women in leadership has a whole host of other things that wouldn't, you know, agree with or wouldn't resonate with. So I just, there's no one size fits all. I just, you know, encourage people to wrestle, you know, wrestle with the tension. And yeah, like you said, if, especially as a guy, we have the privilege of, you know,

for us, this is a, is more, not completely, but more of an app, not abstract, but it doesn't directly affect us personally. But like you said, it does affect the body if gifted, women of God

that is, that's an intense issue to wrestle with. Sure. All right, last question before we do a

bonus segment, even I both agreed that rewind 20, 25 years. Yeah. This issue was there, but it wasn't as heated as it seems to be now. Project ahead 20 or 25 years. What do you think this is going in the church? Do you think it's going to get more divisive? Are we going to see, uh, is this kind of the

“new divine line between fundamentalist evangelicals and more? Neo evangelicals, if you want to use”

an old 20th century term, is, do you think this is going to burn itself out? Like eventually, this is going to go away, and no one's really going to care about anymore, and it's going to be more or less a gallitarian. Product, where's this headed? I, um, I don't know. I mean, really, I mean, it kind of began to surface like in the '70s, right, with, um, '70s and '80s, and you had the paper group in book that came out and the wake of that, and then you had the response to that, and

the evangelical theological society, so she back in the '80s and '90s, lots of, it really flared up then. Then it seemed like academic circles it did, but, I mean, and it did in some, I mean, some of the rappers had their flare up and stuff. I'm just thinking to my adult life, starting in the '90s, it was there. It wasn't the constant fight that it seems to be now. So, and I

“think we talked about this earlier, like, I think it's cultural things that have made it much”

more pressing than it was 30 years ago. I'm just wondering, is it, do you think this peaks and kind of diminishes or calms down or becomes less divisive? Does the church just adopt one view overwhelmingly and it kind of disappears as others you have? Or, you know, if you ask me 10 years ago, I'd probably have a more confident answer, especially working in areas of sexuality and gender, I could kind of, I felt pretty confident at predicting trends. And now looking back, I'm like, oh,

yeah, the, where I thought we would be in '26 is, yeah, a lot different than what I would have said in 2020 or 2015. So, I don't know, honestly, I'm not just a punting here. I think it, I want to think that it will resurface periodically, because even like, okay, people are settled in their view, people are settled in their tribes, but what about young seminary students and young, like, everybody at some point, every leader, at some point has to go through their own

exagetical journey. Well, they should. They don't have to. Most, okay, maybe that's ambitious, many, hopefully many church leaders will wrestle with this issue extensively at some point, early, hopefully in their ministry. So, every generation is going to have a new set of church leaders that aren't coming out of the womb with a view, or, well, and so that, that tells me that it could be kind of an issue that will keep coming up. We'll more and more denominations,

so I don't want to view, I don't know. I mean, denominations, I'm not a denominational

expert. There's been some unpredictable things that happened to denominations that I never

thought of what it seemed. So, I don't know, man, what do you think? No. You're the prophet, son of a prophet. No. But you pay, you have a really good eye on these kind of cultural movements

“and stuff. I, I've expressed my views on this so many times over the years on the show, and I think”

people can go back and find that if they want. I don't think this is going away. I think it is the new mark of fundamentalism. It's, it's a litmus test for all the things we talked about before, but at the end of the day, I tend to view these issues not through a theological lens, but in economic lens, I know that sounds Marxist of me. And I asked myself, what is the economic incentive

for complementaryism? And here's what it comes down to for me. Who benefits? The greatest beneficiary

of complementaryism are mediocre men. Because if you're mediocre as a speaker, as a teacher, as a leader, you're more likely to find a position if half the population is barred from that position. But the moment you allow women into the mix, mediocre men lose. And so gifted men, called men, mature men, have nothing to fear from women and leadership in ministry. Media, okay, men have a lot to fear. And until that issues dealt with, I think they're going to fight to the nail to hang on to this.

And I'm not saying that's the motivation of everybody. I have respect for those who do the ex-genital work and are not just conforming to their tribe and maybe land differently than I do. There's a place for that. And there's church history that they can stand on in some cases,

ministry is real. No, that's, I'll need to chew on that. That's pretty provocative.

“All right, we're going to leave it there. And we're going to, but your second rock is we're”

going to do a bonus here for people for Holy Post Plus. So if you're a Holy Post Plus subscriber,

we're going to go to a totally different direction. Kind of, have a little nervous guy. No, we're going

to dive it. But thank you, President. You mentioned, you know, no one comes out of the wound with this

“idea already fully formed. You have to do your own research and your new book is a great addition”

to that library of resources from Genesis to Junia and on a search for what the Bible really says about women and leadership. Thanks for reading here. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me out.

“An occasional button news. Visit HolyPost.com for show notes, new stories, HolyPost merchandise,”

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