If your pastor told you that he just wanted God back in America, and then you saw pictures online of him attending a Masonic lodge lecture on the topic of the Antichrist, delivered by a homosexual, libertarian, techno-authoritarian, transhumanist billionaire venture capitalist, would you be concerned?
You might hesitate, I suppose, asking, “What if my pastor went there to share Christ with the speaker?” Yes, great, every Christian would support that.
But what if I then informed you that your pastor actually hadn’t been straight with you, that he had joined a very theologically suspect, semi-secretive manosphere-cult a few years back, and that he’d subsequently embraced the concept of “good deceit,” Critical Theory as a useful tool, antisemitism, ripping the vote away from women and/or creating a “Christian nation” through a dictatorial “Protestant Franco?” What if you learned that the same multi-hyphenated billionaire actually funds elements within the broader movement to which this manosphere cult subscribes?
And what if I then told you that there was no evidence of your pastor evangelizing at the event, only absorbing alongside other manosphere-cult members the eschatological take of the billionaire, who’s been accused of holding to “pro-extinctionism?”
Might you then start wondering if your pastor, outed for his interest in gleaning theology from such a figure, had been misleading you all along about his extremely tame-sounding “put God back in America” talk?
I really hope thousands of Christians who still look to the Christian Nationalists for any guidance will take what is actually that very serious question to heart. Maybe then, some will reconsider their alliances with some of the best-known men who are pushing for control of the Southern Baptist Convention, after they attended just such a lecture featuring the aforementioned billionaire and co-founder of Palantir Technologies, Peter Thiel.
We have Phil Williams, chief investigative reporter at News Channel 5 in Nashville, to thank for breaking the story. On Tuesday, Williams posted pictures on X of some of the best-known Woke Right Christian Nationalists arriving at the Thiel lecture, located at the Nashville-based Grand Lodge of Tennessee, the main governing body of Freemasonry in that state.
These men included:
William Wolfe, executive director of American Reformer’s Center for Baptist Leadership, recently under fire for his dispensationalist-bashing, “stop the Nazi hunting” speech at NatCon Jerusalem
Joshua Abbotoy, co-founder of American Reformer and CEO of the “aligned community” RidgeRunner project in Appalachia
Andrew Isker, antisemitic podcaster and pastor, whose church near Abbotoy’s RidgeRunner project is “invite only”
Joshua Haymes, another podcaster, who’s claimed that “liberalism is a greater threat to the US than neo-Nazism.”
There they all were, grinning as they made their way through the metal detector that would usher them into the Freemasonry venue.
It was all to see Thiel, also co-founder of PayPal, who’s known as a big political donor and widely recognized as Vice President J.D. Vance’s mentor. In addition, he was the first Republican National Convention speaker to proclaim, back in 2016, “I am proud to be gay; I am proud to be a Republican.” Interestingly, he and William Wolfe both appeared as speakers at the NatCon3 gathering in 2022.
More recently, Society for American Civic Renewal founder and self-described “warlord” Charles Haywood – whose Dallas SACR lodge was founded by American Reformer’s Nate Fischer – noted on X that both he and Thiel fund the “Dissident Right,” albeit different elements of the movement.
And it was Thiel who infamously wrote in 2009: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” adding: “In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called ‘social democracy.’ The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it. … I have focused my efforts on new technologies that may create a new space for freedom.”
Wherever the “Dissident Right” ultimately ends up, the upshot is that the money behind these Christian Nationalists helps fuel a movement that is known for rejecting traditionally held mainstream conservatism in favor of more authoritarian ideologies.
For the Christian who understands biblical eschatology, this knowledge doesn’t soothe; it actually arouses more concern about how Christian Nationalism actually might lead the church astray in the end times.
Along those lines, we must exercise not only biblical discernment, but some rational analysis: Why would any biblical, American Christian sign off on the idea that “freedom and democracy are (not) compatible?” Why would a man like William Wolfe – who regularly opposes LGBT ideology on X – jettison his biblical worldview about sexuality just to sneak off to hear a homosexual man “married” to another man lecture him about the Antichrist? It’s absurd to the point of dark comedy. No, make that “absurd to the point of spiritual darkness.”
And what of the fact that multiple Christian Nationalist men who were caught on camera entering the Thiel lecture wrote nary an X post beforehand, telling their naive followers where they were headed on Monday night? What’s to hide, boys?
Unfortunately, Wolfe and Abbotoy, who have been relentless (and often deceptive) during their constant pursuit of Southern Baptist Convention control, have demonstrated a clear pattern over the last few years of not telling people what they’re really doing behind the scenes. So why wouldn’t they keep the Thiel lecture appearance under wraps (thank the Lord for good journalists)?
Most importantly, why should any Christian trust these men or their fraudulent “save the SBC” crowing anymore?
They shouldn’t. Especially not after this.
Frightening, all of this.
But Mrs Mefferd, actually yes, democracy as such is incompatible with freedom, which is why we have a Bill of Rights, fought the Civil War, added new Amendments to the Constitution.
Creator-endowed “unalienable” rights to life, liberty, and so on, cannot be made subject to the will or whims of the majority, but must be protected, must be made, as the Declaration says, legally “secure,” kept well away from any possibility of a judicial, legislative or popular “veto.”