A Trickster God and the Worst Wedding Ever  🔗 **Source:** [A Trickster God and the Worst Wedding Ever](https://share.snipd.com/episode/03c5c0bd-5bda-44f3-95f3-6c1c0282fd18) ## Highlights - **Christian Nationalism Anchored In Royal Propaganda** - Joel Webin models hardcore Christian nationalism by appealing to Josiah's violent reforms in 2 Kings to justify authoritarian theocratic goals. - Dan Beecher and Dan McClellan point out this is royal propaganda and selectively ignores New Testament limits on political power. Transcript: Dan Beecher So Joel Webin is like your quintessential Christian nationalist. You have some soft Christian nationalists. You have some people like, I don't really know what that means. But it sounds good. Dan McClellan I like my nation and I like being a Christian. So it sounds pretty good to be a Christian nationalist. Dan Beecher It just means you're a Christian and you love your country, right? No, this is hardcore Christian nationalism. This guy is the president and founder of something called Right Response Ministries and the senior pastor of Covenant Bible Church, which is in Austin, Texas. So you know it's good. Right? Dan McClellan It's in the liberal part of Texas, so it must be okay. Dan Beecher And he has a podcast, obviously. I mean, he's a white man. We all have them. Yeah, you're issued a podcast if you grew up in the suburbs. Hopefully everybody gets that reference as well. But he recently made some comments. Recently, this show might be airing like a month from now. Yeah, in 10 years. We'll see. It was a bit ago for you, but he was reading a passage out of 2 Kings 23. Authorization to talk about the goals that ([Time 0:04:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6f9e5add-fb66-49ad-9188-490507b6a4eb)) - **Advocating Deception As Political Strategy** - Webin and his co-host urge politicians to hide theocratic aims during campaigns and enact them after winning power. - They frame deception as a pragmatic necessity: 'hide your power levels' to avoid being 'sideline[d]'. Transcript: Dan Beecher This is what I believe should happen. Yes, that will not happen in Texas, at least in the next 10 years. Who knows what the Lord does? Practically speaking, though, we're very far away from that. And then goes into the deception part of all of this. You, if you are a politician running for office, don't say that. We have to live in the real world. Let me pause for a second and make sure that's abundantly clear. When Wesley says, if you are a Texas politician or aspiring you're campaigning or want to be, don't say that. And what he means by that is on this particular topic, you've got to hide your power levels. You say that the people aren't ready for it. Your kids are going to love it, but the adults are not quite ready for that one, and so don't say it. But we're saying, in principle, that is perfectly permissible. That's why we started, right? It's not just a random Bible verse just to start with the Bible and pretend that we're biblical. No, we start with a Bible verse, a passage that actually pertains. It has relevancy to the topic of today's podcast. And then goes on to say that this idea is, it's not just biblical, it's American. But he says that kind of purity spiraling will put you on the bench. It'll sideline you. It'll function as a liability. ([Time 0:11:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/82be717d-76ca-413a-acda-fcaadb73d77f))