Transcription
Thanks for coming back.
Yeah, thanks.
Maybe you can help solve a mystery. So, I've always known that different people have different views on Israel. I've never been upset about it. Post Gaza, I'm rethinking about if all those views are legitimate, but I know that decent people have different views on Israel. Totally fine. And that includes Christians. And but in the past year, it does seem that for some Christian leaders, I don't want to call anyone out by name, but Israel is the only thing that matters. So they'll approach fellow Christians with one question in mind. Where does this person stand on the government of Israel?
Mhm.
And so it occupies a much greater percentage of mental disc space than I ever imagined certainly than it does for me. So uh what is that? Well, it's the old covenant. You know, I was raised just non- denominational Christian in large scale churches and we were pro-Israel. It's just a consistent deal when you look at I'm always going to go back to scripture. So, I'm always going to use the Bible to reference my perspective and what I what I think is going on.
Yes,
the nation state of Israel has just become an idol to the church in regards to how they perceive of them, but how they some of them perceive it. And you have to ask why. And so we've done a little digging in regards to some farilings and and others. And and when you look at the old covenant in the Bible, it's one of those spots or parts of the covenant that you can weaponize. Israel is one of them. Giving and generosity. Tithing is one of them. And when Christ came, he he came to fulfill that whole old covenant, that whole contract. A new covenant. It's literally a new covenant. So that old covenant is complete, done, fulfilled, put on the shelf. A new contract is in place. And that's Christ contract, Christ covenant. And um if you're if you're a Bible believing Christian, but what that new covenant does is it takes the teeth out of the old covenant, the old contracts, you know, that Mosaic law. But people like to lean on that contract and that law because you can weapon, I'm going to say weaponize it. You can build empires again and build power structures around basically double dipping in covenants. So you can say take some things that Jesus said and grab a couple things from the old covenant and mash them together and you have just a different you have Judeo-Christianity,
you know, not Christianity and not Judaism, you have Judeo-Christianity.
Um, it's like a Reese's peanut butter cup.
Exactly. It's it's it's neither or. It's it's so Israel, the nation state, has become one of those cards that you can pull and say, "Hey, if you don't back the nation state, then you clearly don't believe this book or or you know that God is our God." And so I always push back. I consider myself kind of an auditor in this regard. So I wanted to audit the nation state of Israel and say, "What is it exactly scripturally?"
So that is boy, it's it's jarring to hear you put it so plainly, but that is really what they're saying. If you don't support the Netanyahu government, you're not a Christian.
Yeah, I've heard it. I I've heard that. And
some like the the dimmer ones like Huckabe just say it out loud. But that is the assumption behind a lot of it.
Well, and if and if my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ haven't read the book in its entirety, then they'll take what Huckabe or what their potential pastor says from the stage as as scripturally sound. And so that's what I've had a great time doing.
I disagree. I mean, yeah, I've read the book, by the way, more than once,
but I didn't need to read it to know that Jesus is probably not endorsing killing the innocent, killing kids.
Well, I would say there's even a naive there's strategic ignorance around that, right? Like in season one of the religion business, uh, a development economist breaks down what strategic ignorance is. And we as humans want to stay strategically ignorant of things that push against our bias.
Boy, I've been there.
Yeah. And so have I. And so that's the thing is is as we grow and hopefully mature, we look at the the surroundings and say, "Okay, what is truth and what is not truth?"
Yes.
And a really simple truth is the nation state of Israel is not the ethnic tribe that's described in the Torah. And so if that's our baseline, then okay, now we can reshape our we can look at what's truth and not truth and and see, you know, where people are leveraging that card or weaponizing that card for their own gain. But you would think again even if you you're not familiar with the details of that book, you haven't read the Older New Testaments, you would sort of intuit it, you would sense that Jesus is not in favor of say like genocide.
Correct. I I would hope. But but there's always a counterargument like in these FAR documents, you know, the um you know these it literally the foreign agent is Israel Minister of Foreign Affairs, you know, and
so I I keep stepping up. So what are those documents? So you're you're basically saying in order to understand this you look not just at the theology but at the money.
Correct. At the money because so okay. Yes. I think most people would say genocide in Gaza is wrong.
Right. But then they then they will always find a counter which is well there's bad things. There's there's there's evil inside Gaza that needs to be removed. Right. And so that's where this FAR document is interesting is because you can see the nation state weaponizing the American church to sway their opinion to say, "Hey, you know what? No, the genocide is rationalized and we're not going to call it genocide because of X, Y, and Z." So that's what this document just shows. It shows that millions of dollars came from the nation state of Israel to sway massive mega churches in America or at least the pastors. Because when you can sway the pastor, the pastor can sway their congregation.
So how does it work?
How does in regards to the system?
Yeah, the system. What what are the fair means? Foreign Agent Registration Act.
Correct.
What do those documents show?
So this one shows in particular um basically uh we'll call it like a marketing effort and and ironically this is this is fun. There's multiple pages of just hundreds of churches on the West Coast um that have very large audiences. And what it is is it's a marketing effort. It's a geo fencing effort. So if you go to your church and you walk into that building, there is a digital geoence. And if you ping your phone, that geoence is triggered. And what that means is they're going to get your phone's IP address. They're going to start sending you messages and sending you advertising that's pro-Israel and, you know, anti-Palestine for lack of a and it says all this in the documents. And so, ironically, this is what I called my dad this morning because I was like, "Hey, what church did we go to when we were kids?" And sure enough, the churches, the two churches I went to, from the day I was born to 21 years older on that list. And so that means had I walked into those churches, I could have potentially been geofenced and then they would have tracked my phone and they could ping me pro-nation state Israel material. And so this effort is funded by Israel, by the nation state of Israel.
And is it um when you say funded, like does money flow to the church? Does the church know that it's
congregations being geofenced?
Uh the uh No, not necessarily. So that's where it gets dark is um the church doesn't even know that they're being targeted. And so it's like a it's a over it's like a subversive targeting.
There's a foreign government doing this to our churches here.
Correct. A great example would be like, hey, if I if my kids are in college and the Chinese
What if the Iranian government was doing this to us?
What or chi China, Russia, Iran, what happens if they were targeting our universities? We would be up in arms. So, we have a a foreign government targeting our churches. And then at the same time, they also are targeting the pastors wanting them to come over to Israel, the nation state. They walk through, you know, the um, you know, they they give them tours of the historical sites, which is awesome, but they're leveraging the Old Testament and these historical sites to basically calcify the nation state and say, "Oh, what we're doing is is biblical, and what Palestine and and these evil, these these other evil people are doing needs to be wiped out." Like a great like there's some I highlighted some of it for you in this document, but it's wild. um once you get past the the the list of hundreds of churches um it's such a long document but so a Christian ready show faith by works a Christian education and Israeli information campaign the goal is to combat low American evangelical Christian approval of the nation state of Israel says it right there so this this entire goal to geoence your church is to com combat your low approval rating of a nation state well maybe we should question like why Is there a low approval rating? Are you committing genocide? Like that might be a reason why there's no
And that does affect approval ratings.
100%. And so the messaging that we are going to use inside this geoence, it's all pro-Israel and an anti-Palestinian state. And they list the messaging that they're going to that they're going to hit these
anti Palestinian state.
Yep. Um the first is of course Hamas is a Palestinian terrorist organization. Um there was never a state of Palestine at any time in history. So these are the bullet points that you're going to see on your phones from this campaign. And then you can just keep going. There's there's a pastoral and education resources. So they're going to give pastors educational resources that's pro- nation state Israel and anti-Palestine. They're going to go to college and Christian college universities and do the same thing. And you can just go through it. So this was millions of dollars was spent on this campaign. And this is my favorite one. Ready? They proudly in their digital support effort. This is the largest geo fencing and Christian targeting campaign in US history. That's what they call it in their own in their own documentation. We're targeting Christians and this is the largest targeting of Christians ever. And then they go to Christian events. And this is a funny one for me. Um if you know Greg Lowry, but uh his church is Harvest in Riverside and he puts on these big festivals. Uh and he's in he's in a big scandal right now cuz he had a um he ran orphanage his church ran orphanages in um in where was it? Ah man, it's it's in the show in Eastern Europe. And one of the pastors there allegedly raped and sodomized hundreds, potentially hundreds of orphans there. And Greg Lowry knew about it. They sent a team over and he did nothing about it because it was such a big revenue generator. And uh he's he's one of the he's actually he's ironically hopefully their main spokesperson. They've got a photo of him in their deck too saying we want Greg Loward to be the face of this.
Seriously?
Yeah. So millions, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs spends millions of dollars geofencing our churches for pro-Israeli pro- nation state Israeli propaganda. And if your pastor's behind it, then hey, your pastor's going to say the same.
It's just hard to believe. You know, there's this line in Mark 13, I think, where Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, he's like, or saying to others, religious leaders are in trouble because they wander around in their long flowing robes. and they get respect from everyone in the marketplace, but they're actually cheating widows out of their property. And you read that and you're like, would a religious leader really cheat a widow out of her property? Like, that's just crazy. Only in first century Palestine could that ever happen. And then you hear like, it's just amazing. It's It's just hard. It's hard. It's hard to believe a religious person would do that. Well, there's there's religious organizations that are registered at churches that literally buy out permanent life insurance policies from elderly people that need money for pennies on the dollar. Actually, actually, yeah. Part of their business model as a church is to basically go up to a widow or or elderly couple that's struggling and say, "You know what? We're just going to buy your permanent life insurance policy that you've been paying down for 40 years for pennies on the dollar cuz you need money." There's one that's built, I was told, a $700 million war chest based came off of that. They have 700 million sitting in the bank off of buying out elderly people's permanent life insurance policies.
Oh, so they are and and my my translation reads devouring widows houses and they're devouring houses in the name of Jesus. So, what's in your toothpaste? If you're using the brand you grew up with, you probably don't want to know. The ingredients likely include fluoride, something called SLS, glycerin, foaming agents. It's a chemical cocktail. Van Man's toothpaste is different. Their miracle toothpowder is changing everything. And people are ditching traditional toothpaste filled with chemicals by the thousands. Van Man's toothpowder uses ingredients with the same mineral structure as your teeth that remmineralizes them and strengthens your enamel naturally. No fluoride at all and totally edible. You could put it on toast. Not that you'd want to, but you could. People who use it report whiteter teeth, less plaque. They wake up without that gross film on their gums. And here's the amazing part. Vivid dreams are back. You dream clearly when you stop coating your mouth in fluoride every night. Did you know that? Pretty amazing. Tells you a lot. So make the switch. Visit vanman.shop/tucker. Use the code Tucker for 15% off your first order. vanman.shop/tucker. Use the code Tucker. 15% off. VanMan. Real ingredients. Zero exceptions.
Who uh registered for this?
Um, this was a uh uh an LLC named Show Faith by Works registered in my hometown, San Diego, California. But the name of the foreign principal is Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Right on the right on the cover, page one.
How many um pastors know that there's an effort like this behind their views on Israel?
I'm going to say strategic ignorance. I I think they just see it as as gossip online. They don't want to get involved. Um this is a hot button top topic for my family, you know, cuz I have I have family that are retired pastors or my my uncle's a missionary in Kev. Like I'm very very close to this and most of them just don't want to believe it, you know.
So they don't believe that money is actually coming from a foreign government to influence the opinions of their
correct. Well, and if and if I even put this in front of them, they'd point to the book
And say, "What?"
And they'd say, "Nathan, like Israel, bless Israel and you'll be blessed."
Does it say that?
No, no, no, no. And we went through the We had a great conversation about this.
I just love that.
Yeah. Yeah. We had a great conversation about this earlier. It's uh it's this idea and and since our last conversation when we were talking about it is finished when Christ says it's finished on the cross. I just went down a full rabbit hole in regards to digesting that old covenant verse new covenant concept. And there is no way scripturally you can double dip in both the old covenant and the new covenant in the Bible. If you are a Christfollowing Christian, that old covenant, that old contract is fulfilled and done.
Yes.
We don't look backwards. There's a great analogy that I was or maybe
Why the curtain in the temple is rent.
Yes. Let let me know if this is a good analogy or if I'm way off base, but like I I'm a laborer, right? And I need a job. And you're like, "Hey, Nathan, here's the contract. If you mow my lawns, cut my trees, and and clean my pool, like we're good. I'll pay you at the end of the day." So that day I show up, I mow your lawn, I cut your trees to like exactly how you want it. I clean the pool and you're like, "Here's your payment, Nathan." And I go on and I'm like, "I fulfilled my contract with Tucker and I'm going to go to the next house." Right? But instead, I wake up the next morning. I go, "You know what? I'm going to go back to Tucker's house and I'm just going to start doing stuff. Cut the trees, mow the lawn again, even though it's already done, and he's not going to pay me because I fulfilled the contract with you. I'm supposed to look forward and move on to the new contract." But this is what churches are doing. They're like, "No, no. We're going to come back to this old one and play in it because we like some of the some of the things in here. We like to cherrypick parts of the old covenant because it justifies our current model. The tithe justifies how we can fund the business, right? Israel justifies how we can drum up attention for this idea of old tribal old tribal Israel. But it's we're just grasping at straws, if that makes sense. Because Christ's message and his new covenant is a It's it's an unconditional but very unknown. You you march into the unknown in his covenant. You have to have full faith in him and the Holy Spirit. Legal legalistic covenants just they're easy to understand, right? You give me 10% or 23.3% based off of Old Testament tithe laws and you're good, right? You're done, Tucker. Go on your way. But Christ says, "No, no, no, no. You have the capacity and the the knowledge to give. What does your heart tell you?"
Yes. Yes. So it means you have to stand up and lead, right? In Hebrews, it talks about you are your own priest. Now, like there's no mediator between the uh the Holy of Holies and the outer courts. Like you, Christ is that medi mediator and you walk straight through into the holy of holies. But that means you have to stand up and understand it and take responsibility and be that priest. But so if you're that priest, what does it mean? You don't need the institution anymore. The model, you don't need to sit in that pew, right? Like you have you have Christ. You have his word, his logos like his in you on your heart and mind.
So you got to lead, Tucker. You got to lead like Christ. That's a dangerous dangerous man or woman to be walking around in in any community or any government because hey, this this architecture, this legal architecture of America doesn't hold me in. This this does. This book does. And so we've we've kncapped Christianity and we've put it on a shelf and we've consumeri consumerized we've you know we've turned it into a con consumer product and now we just have a bunch of kneecap Christians walking around giving their 10% if that to a church to an institution that is not biblically sound and then we can support nation state of Israel and say hey I'm a Bible believing Christian when at the end of the day like no I believe in in what we've built. I believe in the institution we've built, but I don't necessarily believe this book.
Well, that's a wrong turn if you arrive at that conclusion. So, how I mean, I always want to assume that people are employing what you called strategic ignorance. They they don't know because they don't want to know and therefore they're not honestly quite as guilty as someone who knows and does it anyway. But given that, how big is the economy around this question? Like I notice all these pastors going to Israel on these trips. I've known a lot of them who do that. Is that all paid for by donors or the government?
Yeah, there's there's an estimated Let me I want to make sure I I pronounce the name right. It is um where is it? SJ something. It's uh about 320 million a year is dumped into this bucket to get to get pastors overseas. Oh, there we go. Uh the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews generates about 315 million a year in individual donor giving. And what that does is it so let's let's let's dissect that name for a second, right? International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. Okay. 315ish million goes into that pool every year. You'd think it's to educate people on the historical sites, right? I'm a Christian. I'd love to see
You know, all all all these beautiful historical sites. I've been to Rome and hunched down in the prison where Paul was held like that. You get to experience this stuff and you're like, "Wow, this is real." Like it h, you know, it happened. I can see Paul's journey and I can see the hill Christ died on and it's it's real powerful. But that 315 million is going to border security. It's going to ambulances inside Israel. It's going to um
border security.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what
Israeli border security.
Yeah. So it it says it on their website. This is where this money goes. So when you think about this, this isn't this isn't an international fellowship of Jews and Christians. Because if it was an international fellowship of Jews and Christians, you'd care about the Christians in Gaza.
Of course,
you'd care about the Christians in Lebanon. You'd care, you know, you'd care about these Christians in these other parts of this region just being obliterated,
killed by the government.
Yeah.
But so what this is is it's actually a fund that's just calcifying the nation state of Israel and utilizing the historical sites as the rationale for this fund. But the money is going to the ongoing operations of the government of Israel.
Part of it. Yeah. And then what you're doing is you're bringing pastors over and saying, "Look at all these beautiful historical sites." Does that make sense? So you're taking the faith and you're using the faith as the as the the cookie, so to speak, or the carrot to to explain the nation state of Israel in their in their actions. And you're using Christian donor money. That's 315 million of from Christians, individual Christians
that are giving generously to this fund with strategically ignorance with their ignorance, you know, with their what does the Bible talk about scales on the ice, right? So, you can't see through your scales,
but what you're actually funding is part of this war mechanism.
It's just like the LDS church and in their investments in um you know, defense companies. Southern Baptist Convention, same thing. Guidest is heavily invested in weaponry of war. Are you serious?
Yeah. So, we've we've created machines. We've created this this Christian machine, this apparatus that funds what we think ignorantly is good- intentioned international fellowship of Christians and Jews. But no, what it's doing is it's calcifying a nation state that that is bombing Christians in other parts of that region, killing them, and they're justifying it. And this money is going to those efforts. Part of part of that money is going to those efforts. is absolutely crazy.
Mhm.
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How many people who are involved in this? No.
Involved in this fund.
Yeah.
I I don't think I don't think any of them would would rationally sit here and say, "Oh, I I know about that." You know, no. No. We want to get our pastor over to Israel to experience the historical sites, Nathan. Okay, cool. That that's that's not bad, right? But what you don't realize is you're funding security on the border. You're funding, which which I think is great, ambulances when a bomb comes over into Israel, but you should also be funding ambulances when a bomb goes into Gaza if that's your mission.
Yeah. And you certainly shouldn't be funding bombs into Gaza.
Correct.
Which is what in effect you're doing because you're freeing up
correct
those resources. Wow. That is really um so now there is in part thanks to your efforts an awareness of a lot of this in a way that there wasn't a couple of years ago. Like there are a lot of people including we the Pharaoh report said it there are a lot of evangelicals who are skeptical suddenly about whether it's a good idea to support Israel. What are pastors like this are they getting push back? Like what's their experience?
They're kind of a lot of these p So this this far doc a lot of these churches are mega churches. They went after the they they geofence the big boys.
Mhm.
Right. Because big like if if you geofence a small to rural church in Pennsylvania that has 75 members, what's what's the point of that? No, I want to geoence a church that has 7,500 members, 10,000 members.
And so the these guys are already big influencers in regards to their their church and then in regards to the social media sphere. So they just like calcify together. You know, you have you have groups of them now just come going on podcasts, sitting doing the same thing we are.
Is that true?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Defending these positions.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um his name is Jack Hibbs. He was on a podcast the other day. Um and he said, uh, you know, Israel was created created in a day and there's prophetic words in the Bible that say that. Well, no, they signed the documents in a day, but that the nation state of Israel was decades in coming. And so, does that make sense? They just take they'll take a scripture out of context and apply it to the nation state and then everybody will take that same sound bite. Similar to what I said with with you last that Christianity is more of a socialist construct than a capitalist construct. Everybody goes, "Oh, Nathan's a socialist. Tucker had a socialist on. He's a communist." Same thing. You take three or four words
And you can create whatever, you know, whatever conversation you want around.
So you're not a socialist.
I am not a socialist. No.
Yeah. Um, but it's all part of the propaganda machine. I mean, they don't for sure,
right? So, but like someone like Jack Kibbs or not, you know, to call him out by name, uh, he deserves it, but um, sorry, excuse me. Trying to stay Christian. Um, does he get any push back or do do or another way to ask would be, do pastors like that have growing churches or shrinking churches? Like, is this is Christian Zionism in retreat or is it expanding?
I I can't speak empirically on that. Um, but I would say it's retreating from from from just my my sphere of influence. Um, you know, a lot of these churches now are are their congregation shrinking and they have these huge buildings. So, what they're doing is they're putting up curtains about halfway through the pews and and they shove everybody to the front so people can't sit in the back anymore. So, they're starting to stack their churches, if that makes sense. They look full, but they're really at 20%
really.
And then what they do, a lot of them do on their socials, like we have we have a solid online presence. We will never delete a comment. We will never block someone unless they're actually threatening someone. But what these guys do a lot of times is they'll curate their comments. So they'll block us or block our followers and just delete any comment that has a negative, you know, negative push back on what they're saying. And so when you go on on some of these pastors Instagrams, it's just nothing but hearts and loves and you're 100% accurate pastor. Lovely, lovely, lovely. But it's because they've just curated the content. And so Christianity, institutional Christianity and these big organizations is just a curated um business set on top of the gospel. And and so when I look at their especially Jack Hibbs and these other guys who are very pro-Zionist in regards to their agenda, most of their comments are just curated. And so that that always makes me smile because
But does Jack Hibbs have a a congregation? Is there like a a church where he's preaching every Sunday?
Yeah, he's a preacher. Yeah.
And is it a growing church? Do you know?
I honestly I haven't done much research on Jack Hibs. I just I just smile whenever I see his his social content. We there's there's a lot of pastors out here, Tucker. There's 400,000 churches in the US. And so um unfortunately I can't we can't look at them all. But what we're trying to do is we're looking at patterns, right? were um recently someone sent me a book and and in the book they defined my character type and yours as an auditor basically like you guys are here to audit the systems we've built whether that be our government whether that be our our religious institutions and we're here to say hey what part of these systems isn't aligning with with the ethos underneath it so in Christianity what part of the machine that we've built the tradition isn't aligning with scripture and the nation state is one of those you know tithe is one of running organizations with no external accountability where millions funnels in is one of those. None of that is is inherently biblical or Christlike. Right.
Tithing is not scriptural.
Tithing tithing is not scriptural for a modern day Christian.
Huh.
Yeah.
So, where does the notion come from?
Um, it's it's actually only flared back in the last couple hundred years. So, tithing was not a thing. You can go through the the the history of Christianity from Christ from Christ on and Christians weren't tithing. And tithe literally means ten a tenth translates to a tenth. And so most not all but a lot of churches today and pastors today present that hey you need to tithe. Give us 10% of your revenue because the Bible says to tithe. Well the Old Testament the Mosaic laws say to tithe. But what's funny is there's not one tithe in the Old Testament. There's three. So if a tenth mean or if tithe means a tenth, technically you're supposed to be paying three tenths. Now the difference is the third tithe was only once every 3 years. So there's three tithes. So if you're a pastor out there preaching tithe, you need to be preaching 23.3%. From your congregation, not 10% if you want to lean on the biblical tithe. But so when you look at the tithe laws, Israel of the Bible is is a theocracy. So those tithes were actually a form of taxation. It's what kept up government and religion. It was combined. Today, we're not a theocracy. We're we're a democratic republic.
So what the church has done, the recent church, the modern church in the last couple hundred years, is they needed to figure out a revenue stream. So, I'll get I'll say with good intentions, these pastors looked to the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, and said, "Hey, like the Levites were asking for 10%." or demanding 10% based off based off the Mosaic law, so we should ask for 10%. And it baked in this legalistic demand from your congregation and then, hey, if you don't tithe, Tucker, to me, you're a bad boy. The Bible says to tithe. But when you look at the New Testament, remember Paul was a Pharisees Pharisee. He was the man who knew the law better than anybody. So Paul wrote a bulk of the modern New Testament. So if Paul expected you to tithe, you better believe he would have said in his epistles, "Hey Tucker, you're going to tithe to your body and then we're going to distribute it." He didn't say that. Christ never said that. Instead, it was free will generosity. So Tucker, you're going to give from the desire and passion of your heart, and you're not going to know what your left hand is doing or your right hand is doing because we don't want you to basically build systems on top of this generosity. And the crazy part about the New Testament generosity is when when these early churches would pull resources, it would always go to poorer gatherings, to poorer communities. They weren't insulating themselves and building corporations. They were just distributing it wherever there was a need. And so what the tithe has done is in the last 200 years is it's given a a fixed revenue stream to an institution to a tradition we've built on top of Christ. And now that we've been teach we've been I've been taught I was taught tithing from childhood. Now that we've been taught this tithing model they can't it'd be really bad for them to go hey actually the tithe really isn't isn't biblically accurate. We need we need you just to be generous. And here this is a fun one or it's not fun. It's very sad. Um someone someone sent me this. Um and it's a it's a slip that a child brought home. Um and so this was going to a a he was I think the the child was between 10 or 14 years old. And this is what they were taught in their in their youth group. my commitment. I am expanding my generosity to multiply by committing to the following over the next year. So, Tucker, you're a 12-y old boy. Ready? You're gonna tithe, Tucker, 10% from your allowance. It was on the sheet. Ready? You're going to give a percentage of your birthday money or Christmas money to the church. You're going to earn money, yard work, etc. And specifically, you're going to do that for multiplication. And then here's the other. Ready? You're going to sell some of your electronics. You're going to take clothes to a resale shop and you're going to give a portion of your savings to the church. This went to a little kid. And at the bottom, you're going to add it all up and tell this church what your total commitment is
in writing.
In writing. That went to a child.
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So, what do the churches do with the money? Well, they they'll say they give some of it away, but statistically based off the financial but the financial data about um 70% just goes to buildings and salaries and less than six six cents of every dollar ever leaves the institutional walls now. And so what we've built is just traditions. Like it takes me back to the story of Christ in the temple. He, you know, when he's when he's whipping and he said, "You've turned my father's house into a robber's den." We've built institutions on top of the teachings of Christ. And that institution now is so hungry financially that it just pulls all resources in to the point where where you're telling kids to sell their electronics and give us the money. Hey, actually, no. take your clothes to a thrift store and then bring us that money. Hey, you know, give a portion of your savings to us as well. Like you're you're
indoctrinating a child into this thinking.
And none of that is is in the New Testament.
Well, Jesus doesn't say sell everything you have and give it to the church. He says give it to the poor.
Poor. Correct. So, what we've done is we've just built businesses, unaccountable, non-transparent businesses on the top of Christ. and on the top of the scriptures. And when you look at what the church was in America, the church was actually the um the institution that pushed back against government encroachment. It pushed back against human greed. And it and it and it did rightfully so. It was the community. It was like the the community think tank for lack of a better term. And this is we'll go to this socialist comment. Right? So I said last time Christianity is more socialist than capitalistic. America is our econom our economy is built on capitalism. A a great social concept because it lifts people in in in nations out of poverty but there is that marginalized that's left behind. Christianity is in that marginalized. That's why we pull our resources and give to the poor. And so Christianity is not about ownership. Christianity is not about um growth and profits at all costs. Christianity is the opposite. And so Christianity is is the hard line against power and against authority. But what's happened is we've taken those structures, those capitalistic structures, and brought it into the church and brought it into an institution that is antithetical to that. And so now the institutional church has been co-opted by the very mechanisms it's supposed to push against. All in the name of Christ. So, hey, bring more money. Hey, and it's been it's been co-opted by the politic now, too. And so, the church, the beautiful body of Christ, is now um an MLM, a multi-level marketing scheme, for lack of a better term. It's a franchise, you know, and you can see it play out. You know, a lot of a lot of as denominations die, evangelical, non-denominational churches are flourishing. And so, what's happening is now they're building satellite campuses. So, it's like we're going to build as many campuses as possible. We're going to get you guys to turn and burn. So, you're going to come in, you have an hour and a half, grab a coffee, grab a donut. We're going to sing some emotional songs. We're going to give you some a couple scripture verses and then get out. We got to do it again. And so, we've franchised faith and we haven't franchised it in a good way either. I feel we franchised it in like a fast food way, right? It's like the cheapest, fastest, quickest way to turn and burn this thing. And so what we've done is we've commoditized Christianity when it wasn't supposed to be commoditized. And now we've tribal we've we it's tribalism too. Now we're either right or left. So now it's it you can see the politic grabbing on to it and weaponizing it as well.
Are most churches pretty open about their politics now.
Oh, very. Yeah.
Really?
Yeah. Very. Well, the Johnson amendment was supposed to like keep that at bay, but Trump basically wiped the Johnson amendment out.
What was the Johnson amendment?
The Johnson amendment was you couldn't um uh I don't have the exact language, but you you couldn't um advocate for specific candidates from the pulpit.
Yes.
And so uh and and you'd get in trouble. You could potentially lose your tax exempt status if you did that. Well, Trump basically wiped that out. So what's happened is you literally have pastors from the pulpit and I and I've been to these churches saying exactly who you should vote for because there's no fear anymore about losing your tax exempt status. So the church, not all churches, but many churches, whether right or left, are just um champions for tribal party, political parties at this point. And and like you're you'll be hardressed to go to actually I would love anybody to DM us if you go to a church that doesn't preach tithe and doesn't preach politics from the pulpit. That you're going to be hardressed to find a su a successful church really doing that today. Yeah. I I've never seen that.
Really?
No.
Oh. Have Do do you go to many big churches? Many like mega churches. Okay. Well, that's a problem.
Yeah. So, that's the problem. Yeah. I go to a lot of them. That's that's what I visit.
And they're open about this or that candidate.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
They can't just say, "Give to Caesar what Caesars." They have to like
Well, that's a funny one. Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars and render to God the things that are gods. Cuz that's a that's an inflection point for the church, too,
right? your your congregation pays taxes, but why do you why does the church have this interesting carve out where they don't pay tax?
I don't know.
Well, it's it goes back to 1913. And
yeah, the I said I when we talked last I talked about kind of the weaponization or the the box that churches climbed into, religious organizations climbed into, which is the 14-point checklist.
I think tax exemption was the carrot for them to climb in. It's, hey Tucker, we're going to give your church tax exempt status. You don't have to pay taxes, but you're going to have to play by these rules. And so you climbed into the box and now this box can be weaponized right or left. Now foreign agents can come in and just sell concepts to the box, if that makes sense. And hey, if I do anything wrong, if I don't live inside these 14 points, I might get kicked out of this box, which which what is getting kicked out? Lose your tax exempt status. Great. Who cares? lose it.
Are there churches that don't claim tax exempt status?
There's a couple. Yeah. Very. It's there's a I would there's there's a new model that um you know, like I called us kind of auditors on systems. We don't get we don't get anything perfect, but we we we're just trying to get things right. More Christlike. Yeah.
And so I I don't only want to be an auditor. I want to be um a reformer. I want us to help usher in change that's more Christlike. And so as we look at the system, there are legal structures that um hedge against man's evil hearts, for lack of a better term. We corrupt things.
There's no better term.
Thank you. And so how I think it'd be really brilliant if we were honest enough with ourselves as Christians and as me as as leaders to be like, "Hey, let's build a system." And our founding fathers did this brilliantly. They're like, "Let's build a system that keeps it safe from ourselves."
Exactly. And so I think there's going to be a new wave of pastors and a new wave of Christian leaders that say how
Do we build a system because we do need a system that is protected from ourselves? And I think it starts with uh open source accounting so everybody can see where the money goes. And then there's legal architecture that you can play into that's not tax exemption that doesn't have to do with tax exemption that builds a better ecosystem for a transparent church. And that's what we're really we're working on. We have some really cool stuff happening over the next few months because of that.
>> God gave me a Ferrari. >> He gave his son and you want to argue about 10%? >> Millions of Christians donate to their church every week. It's generous and it goes to a nonprofit. >> Can I get another amen? >> Well, it turns out the nonprofit designation is one of the most powerful legal and financial protections in all American law. >> $53 billion is stolen every year. >> Mind your own business. In fact, some of the most powerful financial institutions in America are not banks. They are churches. In the for-profit world, if you went out and raised money for something like this and didn't build it, that would be called fraud. But in the religious world, we call it faith.
>> Filmmaker Nathan Abfel set out to find out what is happening here. >> You have been warned for criminal trespass. You are being detained. >> This is not a series that attacks faith. This is a series that attacks people who are using faith to get rich. At what point do we call this not only a business but a straight-up scam? >> We have a new multi-part series called the religion business and it covers it all. It's now available at tucker carlson.com.
I would assume all churches would have transparent accounting. >> No. Very um as denominations denominational structure you you had to be transparent with the denomination, which is good. But as denominations die and non-denominationalism is rising, non-denominational churches are are accountable to no other church. >> Most usually some people will say, "Oh, no, this church has this pastor sits on my >> Yeah. But it's like there's no handing over of P&L statements or budgets. Um so what's happened is a lot of churches like there's a church in Florida, their budget is um $91 million a year. Their congregation gets a single sheet of paper with three little like three pie charts on it. and says, "Here's where your $91 million went."
>> Where does it actually go, do you think? >> Like, there's just buckets, you know? There's just massive buckets. 20 I don't have the the pie charts in front of me, but 27% goes to salary. Okay. Well, what does the head pastor make? You don't need to know, Tucker. They don't tell you what the pastor makes. >> No, you don't know what the pastor makes. This is the crazy part is you don't know their retirement packages. And and I've I've heard about his retire this individual's retirement package. Um, this church in particular, uh, we did a series of videos on because they took a PPP loan, a $1.7 million PPP loan in 2020. A few months later, they bought a $12.7 million hunting ranch and then a few months after that, the PPP loan got forgiven and it was dumped on the American taxpayer. >> No, they forgave those loans. Mhm. And my question, my only my question was, hey, is this Christlike to claim financial hardship, take a $1.7 million PPP loan as you're buying an almost $13 million property for the church that's not essential, and then you dump $1.7 million worth of debt onto the American taxpayer? That doesn't sound very Christlike. And I got eaten alive for that comment.
>> What was Jesus's real estate portfolio? >> Huge. The world The son of man has no place to lay his head. I think he said you had zero real estate portfolio. What kind of You got a negative reaction to that. >> Horrible. >> How? >> Yeah, because it goes back to Israel. This is a good correlation actually. They said, "Nathan, look at how many baptisms they're doing. Look at how many salvations they're doing." And they go, "How dare you quite?" And then one individual even put the the percentage of the total PPP loan forgiveness debt in a comment and he goes, "Nathan, this is all it is to the American public." He tried to rationalize it. He's like, "It's 0.22% or whatever of the total PPP loan debt. So why do you care?" And that is that is the the biggest issue I have with all of this is >> I mean that reasoning justifies like I don't know shoplifting from a grocery store. They got tons of food. Exactly. >> What What percentage if I steal this candy bar, what percentage of the total candy bar inventory is that? It's just 0 point point point point. >> That sounds pretty Christlike, right? >> Oh man, it's it's so the but here's the thing as an auditor and I'm going to use this term. It's exhausting because there's just so much corruption in the system. And so I'm really excited for the next six months because it's okay, how do we become the leaders in the change, you know, and how do we show different models and say, hey, here's how we can do it different differently. Here's how we can build systems to protect it against ourselves.
>> So if you don't mind, will you describe the ideal model for an American church? >> I don't like we're or what would be a massive improvement? >> Um, transparent accounting is is b is base level step one. like your congregation, your donors should know where every dollar goes and they should be able to ask. Your pastor's salary should be public knowledge. Just like if um if I invest in a for-profit publicly traded company, I know those executive salaries. Of course, >> I know where the money goes. >> So why should that I I invest in that company, if I donate and fund this organization, I should know where the money goes as well. >> But they don't disclose that. >> They don't disclose that. No. Many churches do not. So there's there's great I have a lot of friends and denominations, Methodist, Methodist, Baptist, you know, and and their salaries are known for the most part. And so I love it because it checks them at the door. There is that check if that makes sense. And my Methodist friends in Florida, you guys know who you are. like they're hilarious because they're bivocational >> and they're like, "Nathan, half our pews are filled with drug addicts and homeless, >> you know, but we're on the front lines and and their program is so awesome and they've basically turned their their church into a um a co-op where all these community nonprofits can thrive and encourage each other and and they've just given parts of the building to the nonprofits and it's become this community hub." And I'm like, "Oh, Jesus is right here. I feel, you know, I feel him." You got you got homeless people coming in getting meals. you have um uh handicapped children in the little school there. It's beautiful, you know. And then you have people in the community packaging up food and I'm like, "Oh, I feel it. I feel the work, you know, and uh and then I walk into a a church where I don't know the pastor's salary where he just acquired a $12.75 million hunting ranch." And um and I'm like, "Okay, I'll grab a donut and a cup of coffee and see the performance." And usually the performance is on the projector screen. I don't even see him in person. Really? >> Mhm. Yeah. >> And no one knows what his salary or retirement packages. >> Well, I'm sure a few people on the elder board do. But yeah, it's um
>> What would happen if a church just declined nonprofit status? >> I think that's the most brilliant option out there. Uh because what it does is it holds you liable to the Fed and the state. Um you're rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesars and uh then you're not liable to get in that box. I think it'd be a like I think it'd be a really fun experiment. All of this is an experiment, right? America is an experiment, a governing experiment. Yes. Our our institutions that we've built on top of Christ, those are just experiments. Those are traditions of men. >> And when we can see it for that, and that's not doctrine, then we can audit the the experiments and say, where are we failing? And I think a really cool experiment would be to start a church as a for-profit vehicle. And here's a great example. If if the religion business takes off and we're doing season three and four and we keep going as we reform the system, we'll need a space eventually to build our sets out because our sets are sitting in storage right now. And we're talking about internally, okay, how does our for-profit business help the community? Well, all of a sudden, we have warehouse space. Let's hold a church. Let's hold a gathering. I hold two a week right now. One's in my house. And I'm like, well, we could make it a little bigger, and we don't even need to ask people for money cuz God's blessed us with the space, you know? We could we could start a church organically like that to where a for-profit vehicle funds the ability to hold church to hold the gathering if that makes sense.
>> So why don't people do it? >> I think it's just nonprofit status is a really easy thing to grab. You know in 1913 when the nonprofit sector was carved out there was 12,000 organizations. Today there's 1.9 million nonprofits. So you say okay Tucker well you know population expansion. Well, the population only expanded 4.3% in the last 110 years. So you do the math that would put put us around 65,000 organizations. So you ask you have to ask why is there a gap from 65,000 organizations to 1.9 million. The sector just exploded. And it's because there's less accountability in the legal architecture. And then religious exemptions are just completely dark. And what I mean by that is they file no 990 with the IRS. They file very few documents with the state. And so the church, the institution which is supposed to be the beacon of light plays in the darkest legal architecture there is in the US and it's just become status quo. Now it's like hey let's start a church. And now what's cool is not what's cool it's I shouldn't say that it's very pathetic is certain denominations have lobbied the government over the last 50 years to add add vocabulary in front of the word church. So now, if I have a church that's not a nonprofit that that has religious exemptions, so I don't file an I90, I can start acquiring for-profit companies and pulling them under my church banner as a church. So I can have an investment fund registered as a church. I can have a TV network registered as a church. I can have a radio station registered as a church. I can take almost any vehicle, any any legal for-profit business and bring it under my church, and it gets to reclassify as a church. You have organizations like Compassion International, um, Robbie Zachcharias Ministries. These these organizations used to file 990s because they were regular nonprofits and they reclassified as a church. So it means they no longer had to file 990s.
>> You can do that with any business. >> If you have a church, you can you can b you can bring it under your fold as what's called an auxiliary, a convention or association. There's different classifications and you can basically build a conglomerate as a church. So, a thrift store, that same that same um same church in Florida has a thrift store. A thrift store is registered as a church. It files no 9990s. You're selling clothes. Well, let me rephrase that. You're taking clothes for free, washing them, and then selling them as opposed to just giving them away to people who need clothes, but you're making a profit off of that. But why would a thrift store be registered as a church? So, you can start building these businesses, these conglomerates, and all under the banner of one church. >> And none of them pay taxes. >> None of them. No, they they do not pay taxes. Um, and what's crazy is that same church, they have a a new uh business, relatively new. It's it's basically a consulting firm to build your church. So, Tucker, you you can hire my consulting firm and I'm going to teach you how to build your church. I'm going to give, you know, lay it out for you, talk about the screens and everything. That's registered as a church as well. So a consulting firm to teach you how to build a building is registered as a church. So that means it files no 990s. No one knows what people are making at the executive level. It's just like religion is the organized organized nonprofit religious exemptions are the perfect vehicle to just abuse the system. And I'm not saying everybody's doing that, but I'm saying the legal architecture is the perfect vehicle for abuse. The Mormon, the LDS church, Mormon church, um, is one of the biggest land owners in the United States. >> They were the second largest private land owner. They might be the first now. >> Wow. >> Yeah.
>> So, what like how big is the enterprise and what's its purpose? >> The LDS church. >> Yeah. >> Uh, the LDS church is their net assets are about $350 billion um billion with a B. Um they have they have over $300 billion in the market just invested um through a through a hedge fund called Enzyme Peak Advisors. They'll hit a trillion dollars if they continue the growth rate. They'll hit a trillion dollars in net assets in the next 15 years. And the crazy part about the LDS church is they make so much profit in the market. They made $25 billion last year in interest alone in the market. The entire global LDS church costs around $7 billion to run. So that means they could fund the church in perpetuity just off a percentage of the interest they make in the market. But they still demand that their congregants give them 10% a year. And they'll push Mormon my my Mormon my my Mormon friends are going to push back and say Nathan like hey you know we we don't have it's not a demand. Yes, it is. Cuz you don't get to get into your celestial kingdom unless you pay your tithe, your 10% your tithe. And so they could cut off. They could say, "Hey guys, stop giving to us right now. Give to the community. Give to people in need. Take that 10% and give to people in need." But they don't. They say, "Give it to us still." And they could fund the church in perpetuity just off a percentage.
>> So what are you doing? What's the point of all this? >> They're I'll I'll argue for them. They're going to say, "Nathan, you know, Joseph in Egypt, he stockpiled for seven years >> um for the seven-year famine. That's what we're doing." Well, you've stockpiled indefinitely. Like, you you could fund the church indefinitely just off the interest. So, I don't know what they're doing. That would be their only rationale. But I I see it as it's like the Lord of the Rings, right? There's the shiny ring. Like, their hedge fund is their ring, and they just can't give it up. And so, it's just it's just growing.
>> Do pastors actually get rich doing the job? Are there some who do? >> Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Uh um Kenneth Copeland I I've seen estimates. No one knows what they're No one knows the exact number because it's it's it's not the salaries aren't known, but some estimates Kenneth Copeland is worth $700 million. Around $700 million. Yeah. >> Is that I mean that I mean since Jesus does say it's harder for a rich man to get to heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle, >> but possible. >> Yeah. Uh that seems like very obviously the wrong path for a Christian church. >> 100%. Well, there's a there's a beautiful part of the New Testament where Paul defines leadership qualifications. >> Yes. >> And lover of money is is one of them. You cannot be a lover of money. You need to live modestly. Right. And it's like it's painted in there. And there are amazing pastors and shepherds out there that live by that standard. But there's this growing number and and I and again it goes back to that socialist comment. When we see Christianity as a capitalistic venture and we build businesses on top of Christ with capitalism in mind, that's what happens. It does see I mean this is as someone who loves America and is very pro America it pains me to say this but I do think that Christianity as a religious faith as the you know the key to eternal life as is something bigger than any nation state even your own. >> Mhm. >> And so you probably want to keep your religion from becoming infected by cultural assumptions that are just by definition bound to a time and place like this is about eternity, right? >> Yeah. And to what extent do you think so that's my preface just to let this not an anti-American statement at all. I love America but I don't want Christianity to reflect America. I want Christianity to change America. >> Amen. And again Christianity was the hard line against corruption like like the church was supposed to be the anti like the antithesis of corruption. And instead the system and this is I I really want people to ask why has it corrupted? is the the institutional model has corrupted to mirror our corruption in government. It they run simultaneously now. The government says we're going to collect taxes, you know, and you're going to give it to us. And with these with the with these massive bills, you're never going to going to know where the spending goes. You just got to give us more money. The churches are doing the same thing. They're saying, "Hey, you're going to give us your money. We're going to build the system. You got to trust us. And now we're going to start petitioning your kids to go sell their electronics to give us, you know, >> to give it to us. to us in the name of Jesus. You know, it's just it's such a sad spot to be right now to look at to look at the body of Christ that I love and it's just I always use the analogy we've built a tradition. We've built an institution, an expensive machine, a a consumerist machine that entertains us and keeps us fed. But that institution has chained chained us to the pews financially. Cuz if we leave, if you actually if you actually preached this whole book in its entirety, a lot of people would get up and leave because they'd be called to go out. They'd say, "Hey, God's calling me to do this other thing." >> But but with that goes my money and my time and my attention. And so the the model we've built is actually antithetical to the calling in the in in the gospels.
>> So the theology that these churches preach serves serves the church, not the kingdom of God. >> I've Yes. And I've said one statement that people have hung me for. I've said anybody who plays in this system for a full career gets eaten by the system. And and you've nailed that. When you play for the institution, when you are on stage and you have this $70 million a year operating cost, your message, your your theology, everything you preach from giving kids sheets on how to give you more money shifts to build and calcify the machine we've built on top of Christ. >> No, that makes total sense. >> And and I've and I've talked to amazing pastors who've just been eaten by the machine. And then the good ones, here's the sad part. As the big ones grow, they drain resources from the small churches that are actually still embedded in the community doing the good work. And a lot of those small ones shut down. Statistically, right now, church closure is outpacing church expansion. And the churches that are closing are the small ones. And those small churches are the backbone of their local communities. And so when I say uh all pastors who play by the system die by the system, even the even the good ones get eaten by the system because the big church gobbles up their congregation and gobbles up the resources that funded this beautiful small community church. >> Is anyone pointing any of this out? Do you feel like a voice in the wilderness? >> I did for a couple years. Um but but I think our message is starting to resonate and there's other there's other watchmen on the wall so to speak. Um that's in Ezekiel I think Ezekiel 3.
>> So there's clearly a a religious revival going on in the United States, a Christian revival. Where are people going? >> That's that's a really good question. I think people are searching. They don't know there there's some go to the mega church. Some hopefully go to scripture and just sit quietly and read scripture and pray. Yes. Um my my encouragement would be to go go find a small church in your area. >> Yeah. >> Like that church needs your help. Those smaller pastors that that are often bivocational because even their even their congregation can't fund a full-time salary. Go support them with your time, with your with your talent, with your with your resource. Like those small ones and and and and ironically the small ones need your help. It's like they need you to to help with the kids. So bivocational means that the the pastor is a >> carpenter, roofer, >> 100%. And that's with the beautiful pastors that I've sat with because I've sat with probably a thousand plus pastors around the US at this point over the last 5 years is the bivocational ones are usually the ones preaching the the um the most biblical theology. >> I've noticed that. Yes, I've noticed that. >> Because their salary, their livelihood, their the food that sits in front of their kids is not dependent on this book. Well, that was Paul's model is the you know, the first great evangelist was making tents. >> Yeah. Well, and there's a there and you know, it's the Bible speaks about, hey, if you if you make your living from from the gospel, you have your reward. >> You've been p you've been paid your reward >> and and I I want my my reward to be upstairs. You know,
>> How do you the big denominations you think are less corrupt? >> No, the big I wouldn't say that. the big denominations just have hierarchical oversight on the on the financials. And so um it used to it it does bring some accountability to the system, but it's not it's not quality accountability, but there is some structure. Um like method Methodists for example, you know, um what your Methodist pastor makes. It's a baseline. And so you're not joining the Methodist church to get rich. No, >> but like Baptists have slipped a bit, you know. I know I know Baptist pastors that are very well off, you know, and no um just cuz they've kind of taken the non-denominational model. Uh a a great example is there's a there's a a massive church and and here's another example to the capitalist mindset. Remember when we talked about franchises? Like Christianity is almost becoming franchises. So when you bring really smart businessmen and women into leadership at these churches, they bring their capitalist business mindset into the machine and it it's corrupting the machine. And what I mean by that is I'm going to give two examples. There's a uh there's a a very large church in Houston. Oh, your family go Second Baptist, right? So that's a billion dollar enterprise that's been funded by Houstononians for almost a hundred years. So local Houston Christians generously gave to build this tradition, this awesome tradition. It's a school. It's a church. It's a lot of things. But now it's all that power has been consolidated into six people's hands. And they can decide what to do with that billion in assets. They can move it out of state. They can sell off parts of it. And so what I mean by that is when we franchise out Christianity, the resources don't stay in the town that funded it. And a great example is there's this small church in Sarasota that I visited and it was acquired by a church in Dallas. And so these individuals in Sarasota funded this building for years and now the church in Dallas can just sell it off whenever it wants and all that resource heads to Dallas. And so the people in Sarasota, the Christians in Sarasota gave generously. And that's what I mean is all money and resource ends up siloing at the top. Now >> why would a church in Dallas want a church in Sarasota? >> I've got my opinion. I I think it's to justify the beachfront home in Florida. Wow. Yeah. But but so the what I'm seeing is and what we're seeing is money siloing at a national level and then what does that mean? It means you can all of a sudden these national groups and these these big conglomerates become what like become political apparatus basically. just a surprising but I guess not really surprising to learn that what's happening to every other part of our society is happening to churches where your vet is now owned by some private equity concern out of New York and your >> stores in your town are gone because of >> Amazon and Walmart and like it it just the big things get bigger, the small things disappear. >> We call it the Walmart effect in the religion business. When a mega church moves into a a town, it it has to find consumers somewhere. >> Yes. >> So it looks so that it attracts, you know, there's everybody's not Christian. There's only so many Christians in in your town. So what happens is the the mega church draws Christians and consumers from the small churches, entertains them and bedazzles them and gives them a good sprinkle donut. And then the small churches close. And what happens is usually the Walmart moves on. The mega church corrupts. It's usually a sex scandal or a financial scandal that shuts down and then there's no small churches anymore which were the backbone of the community. >> And so the Walmart effect is in full effect and there again I don't want to just be an auditor. There's there's beautiful reform on the horizon because I'm seeing home churches spring up all over the all over the US. I'm seeing people actually go back to the small churches in their community because they're looking for authenticity. the the non-denominational kid me who who ran around on stage and did every you know goofy thing my church would put on and I had a great time is I'm I love exploring Catholicism and and orthodoxy in I call it the kaleidoscope of Christianity because I want to see where every denomination um thrives and then where I think theological pinch points are because then I can build my own perspective on this on this book and now my faith is my own if that makes sense and so I love going to small churches now. Um it's kind of like my my jam. >> Well, they're great. >> Yeah, >> they're great. I've been to Yeah. regularly. Been to a church with three other people. >> Mhm. And I'll tell you this, the I I get arrested at at big churches. I get kicked out of big churches. Even when I'm just going to visit without cameras if I just want to go see sit, but I have never had a bad experience ever at a small church. Totally agree. >> I usually have people come up and they're like, "Oh, you're the religion business guy." And they like hug me or want to, you know, want to sit with us and it's it's awesome. and they're like, "Oh, you're great. Cool. Awesome." >> That's >> Yeah.
>> So, last question, which is like a big question. Well, it's a small topic, but I think it's a metaphor. And it's about the treatment of Palestinian Christians, which is how I got into all this drama in the first place, because I just noticed that Christians in the United States, some of whom loved Israel, and that didn't bother me at all, >> but were going out of their way to ignore what was happening to their brothers in Christ in the Middle East. And I was offended by that, and so began all of this. But um is that changing? >> Are you seeing greater concern from Christian churches about what's happening to Christians in the Middle East, the Holy Land? >> I wouldn't I wouldn't say it it's changing at the the institutional level. It's changing at the individual level. Is it? >> I think it is. Yeah. I I have um so many healthy conversations with my Christian brothers and sisters um about this topic in particular and uh people are just Christians are waking up. They don't really know where to go. >> Right. >> You know, it's it's when the scales fall off for the first time, you're looking around and you're like, "Whoa, >> this is far more beautiful and far more complex than I realized." >> Yes. Exactly. But it's um we as Christians can just look to the scripture and look to the Bible and say this is our road map and that's it. And God will walk us out. And so I do think at the institutional level I haven't seen change but at the individual level I've seen massive massive theological change over the last couple years >> really. >> And who's leading that? >> Um >> or people just independently coming to >> I'm going to say watchmen on the wall. like there's there's a lot of people out there that are digging and then they'll put their they'll put their research online. They'll put it on social media. Um they'll reach out to us. I'm I'm just one of many. We're just one of many that are starting to um pick up the Bible and say, "Let's read this cover to cover." And >> it used to be that the critics of Christian churches in the United States of their corruption, of their scandals, were all anti-Christian. Mhm. >> So, as way to undermine, you know, the Boston Globe with its spotlight series, you really got the sense like >> they just hate the Catholic Church for other reasons, >> which I think is true. But, um, now you're seeing criticism of this kind of behavior of church behavior from people who are mad because they're really sincere Christians. >> Mhm. And I even have massive like there's a pastor who's been on your show, uh, great guy. He's a good friend of mine and uh we're developing a relationship and he he he's he's he works at a very large church, one of the biggest in the US and he none of what I say scares him. He's like I agree with everything >> really. Yeah. >> And I'm like awesome. So even even at the pastoral level there's starting to be a shift where they're like we should be the beacon of truth and the beacon of light and transparency. And so I think there's going to become a tipping there's going to be a tipping point in the next 6 to 12 months where the whole machine the apparatus starts steering away.
>> Also to me a tip off is defensiveness. >> We're all defensive when called out on what we're doing wrong. I certainly am. >> But we're not supposed to be. >> Yeah. >> And we're number one called to humility. That's like the >> ticket price for admission I think is you know we're screwed up and need help. >> That's why we're here. >> Yeah. So to hear that people are willing to acknowledge what they're doing wrong without being defensive seems like the best sign ever. It's I'm really excited and I think could you and I both agree that we sit here as as men who are evil like at our core and Christ gave us the example to chase after >> and I think if we can get more people around the table with that as the baseline >> then we can look at the institutions my own institutions the the corporation that we built on top of the religion business we're looking at because we're like is this the best vehicle like to do what we need to do we don't think it is right we want to be we want to be the beacon of transparency. So, >> do you ever go to an AA meeting? >> No. >> You got to go to an AA meeting. You don't need to be an alcoholic to to enjoy the beauty of an AA meeting. I don't want to drink, but I still like I love AA meetings because >> the the price of being able to speak is admitting in public how screwed up you are. >> And it just changes the vibe completely. >> Like there's no hierarchy at all. The one thing that unites every person in the room is their common flaw. Mhm. >> Yeah. >> And it's that's the basis of like truth and love, right? >> So, what happens if the church took that model and said, "Okay, let's all gather around this table. We're all poss. Let's just admit that. Okay. How do we fix this?" Right? How do we fix what we've built? I think it would be the most collaborative >> um fulfilling experience for totally small pastors, big pastors alike. >> I totally agree. >> So, let's get that together. >> You should go to an A meeting. And and I don't go often enough, but occasionally I go and there's like there's always the guy who's like still shaking, you know, he just got off it and then there's the guy who's, >> you know, been off for 40 years and he's like got his life together, he's maybe rich and they're exactly the same. >> Yeah. >> As people as we all are. Every person >> is united in >> Well, that's why Christ crushed hierarchies. >> Exactly. >> He's like, "All all of you guys are the same. There's no hierarchy except the father. We got one good teacher, you know, and it's but we've built hierarchies again on top of Christ. I I I say um you know, prior to the Reformation, there was one church, this monarchical Roman Catholic Church. And the Reformation, Calvin, Zingley, you know, Luther, they came in and they they the leaders of the the leaders of the reformation really shook the church. And all we did though, they didn't shake they shook everything except one thing. They didn't shake the institutional structure. And so what happened was the Reformation came through. They broke the stained glass. They burned cathedrals down. You know, they're like, "We're going to do it differently." Which was awesome. Good intention. But as they came over to America, we just built the same structure again. We built a non-transparent, unaccountable, financially hungry machine with usually one person at the head. So I always tell people, we have 400,000 mini Vaticans in America now. There's 400,000 estimated 400,000 churches. We've just built 400,000 mini Vaticanans, right? And so we just built hierarchy again and it's like no, we got to we got to crush all of them. >> I agree with that. I agree with that absolutely vehemently. Thank you for this film and for all the work that you've done on it. >> Thank you for having me on this topic despite the abuse you've taken. Yeah. >> Thank you.