Conservative Girl Dad Christianity w/ Kruptos: Ep. 488

But you know what, I'll try my best. I think I'm getting better at them at the very least. So you know what, forgive me if you will. Lack of preparation in habits. I put a lot of these out at the very least productive. That's not really what I'm here to talk about is media inside Baseball of having a podcast that sort of stuff. This is a follow up to the episode I did with Benjamin Michael a few days back talking about young men coming back to church.

I like doing these sort of alternate perspectives. I did one recently on the election Thomas Massey, first with Carl Dahl than with Ronald Dobson, that many of you have expressed your opinions about, and I appreciate those opinions, but I think it's interesting to take multiple looks at the same issue, because look, I have my opinions, my guests have their opinions, and I feel like it's worth getting

multiple signs. And so this is with my good buddy Kruptos, I haven't talked to in a long time about young men coming back to church, and he brought up a number of really interesting things that I hadn't even considered, things that I know, things that I talk about often, but it never brought to bear on this, particularly talking about the difference between men and women, how men and women have become two separate, antagonistic political blocks, which obviously

is not a good thing, and how that's sort of affecting these weird dynamics as now there are congregations which have an increasing amount of radicalized young men in them. The genesis for this particular conversation is an article written by Rod Dreer responding to some random woman. It's not good. You actually will probably hear me get unusually heated drop some game rewards about my friend Ronathan Dreyer. And by

my friend, I mean I do not like him. I think he's bad and writes bad articles, and you will hear me say that in pretty explicit detail. The point is he adopts the position that I'm seeing more and more of, which is the conservative quote unquote older man saying, oh this is horrible. These young men are so radicalized.

Where'd they get these ideas? He doesn't talk like that, but in my head he does, basically saying the exact same thing the progressive elites say, like when they're talking about young white men, and it's incredibly short sighted, it's incredibly stupid, and to be honest, it's only going to serve to radicalize these guys further because the attitude I hear over and over and over again is. I want

to get away from it. I want something that is untouched by it, progressivism, woke, genc, whatever term you use for it. I want to worship in a way that is removed from that. Right, I don't have to touch that sort of oil slick to get through it. And for many of these older people, they've sort of just abs absorbed. Rather those guys are bad and there's something wrong about them.

They need to be pushed out. And if anything, the places where they're rough, where they say things are not really supposed to or they may take you a little too far and maybe a little bit of cervic maybe a little bit autistic, as we might say. That's a real problem. It's a very deep moral issue, especially in comparison to you know, minor things like you know, heresy, having only fans whatever. That's all minor stuff. We don't care about that, and it's never stated, well not I

should say never, It rarely stated that explicitly. But really what we're seeing there is sort of cultural vestige. They've absorbed that from wider kind of mainstream culture, and they're bringing in to the church and placing it on the same level of doctrine, so to speak and it's frustrating.

is one these articles are stupid. They're not real arguments, right, These things are sort of put out for public consumption in a way like, oh, yes, I have horrible stories. I'm just so beautiful that many men many men, and I turn them all down. That's perfect. There's some peacocking going on with this, and also it's the Internet. That narrative, of course is massively boosted. But also I think we're seeing that breakdown those two political groups classes, men and

women looking for different things. Women looking for husband or at least looking for male attention, and guys who obviously want that. You know, they are traditionally minded, they want to have a family, genuinely interested in the creator or having a relationship with God connecting to something outside of themselves. So I always think we're seeing a mismatch there. It's

an interesting thing. And unless you ever doubt that conservatives, and I don't literally just mean political conservatives, but people of that bent sort of sociological niche are almost preternaturally gifted with the ability to distract, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. These people who for decades have been wishing and hoping and waiting for young people right to have our own youth movement, well, not like that. I don't want those gross, icky guys who say bad things.

I don't want in cells quote unquote. And of course, what does in cell mean in a religious context, of conservative religious context, where you're not supposed to be having sex outside of a very specific context. It's almost a meaningless term. It is so clearly sort of appended on

from wider culture. It's ridiculous. Especially ridiculous is that many of these conservatives have made arguments prayers one, but there are many others that these young men have listened to, and they made these young men the horribly naive conclusion that these arguments were sincere, that they meant them all the way and that's not true. They only meant them a little bit. They only meant them sixty percent of the way there. And when someone takes their idea and says, yes,

that's true, let's do it, they lose it. They freak out there no, no, no, no. You weren't actually supposed to pay attention. You weren't actually supposed to read what I said and run with You were just supposed to use it as a sort of an opportunistic attack against the woke. But if you actually think that woke is enough of a problem to do something about me, And of course when I say wof, I'm using it in

their terminology. I don't like that term when you're a problem, I don't think they're going to That attitude is so self defeat. It's it's so clearly and totally obviously stupid. It's not gonna go anywhere. But it is frustrating. It's frustrating to see these guys flounder to try and take cheap shots at guys who are doing what they're supposed to do, who are trying to better themselves, trying to index themselves to logos, to truth, to the fabric of reality,

you're doing exactly what adamized young men should do. It's absurd, completely and totally absurd. And again, I'm not the biggest anti feminist. I'm certainly not feminist, but it's not my beat. You don't hear me talking about it a lot. But you also see the kind of slavish devotion that many American Christian leaders have towards women, like the concept of women again as a political group, where they almost view

them as being like holy or sacred. And I've a very controversial view of women that I believe that they're human. You know, they do bad things, sometimes they do good things, and they're virtues and vices that the fair sex is more inclined to than my audience. I know there are women. There must be women that listen to this. I mean, there's enough of you. I joked a while back that I have no Korean listeners. Apparently I do. I have one, at least one who sent me a message. So if

you're actually don't don't do that, don't do that. I don't care. But point is right, women are human is a very radical position. Apparently that women can do bad things and women can do good things. But this sort of conservative girl dad brain use all men as sort of uniquely flawed, predatory and probably I'm just ready to shoot up a school, and women as at best, at worst only mistaken. Right, Oh, you had an only fans

you were deceived. Now you've repented, and I want to say, right as a Christian that repentance is very important, much in the same way that there are certainly flawed. There certainly sins. Men are more I guess you could say men are more prone to and those again require repentance. But you know, it seems only fair that you know, repentance is as repentance does that sin should be treated

relatively equally. Obviously, maybe if you have Jeffrey Dahmer coming in, you might maybe take his word for it, but you know, don't give them a knife. You know, you check up

on him. But when you see that double standard, when you see one group one sex being treated with kid clubs and the other one being being down, the other one being constantly criticized, viewed as uniquely morally responsible and sinister, it's like, well, that same attitude is what drove young men away from progressive politics, what drove men away from academia. The corporate world. But you're doing the same thing, You're

making exactly the same mistake. And particularly for people who criticize those institutions, it's even more deeply ironic, because, according to their writings, I was sure that you were a dissident, you were willing to live not by lies, you were willing to apparently be thrown into the goolog But we had a little bit of social disapprobation, a little bit of criticism, kind of a raised eyebrow, and you melt,

turn to nothing, completely and totally cock out. The question is, of course why, And that's a question that you know we've answered elsewhere, of course. But for those guys who are doing something countercultural, who are doing something difficult, who want something strenuous, who want something that requires something of them, when they see a man who and it's not just one,

there are many like this. When they see men who, out of one side of their mouth talk about their deep, abiding commitment and on the other compromise under the smallest amount of pressure, they're not impressed. Far from it. They see that weakness. And I see men my own community online elsewhere, who were looking for elders to respect, who are looking for men that they can model themselves after,

and they're not finding it. Certainly, there are exceptions to that rule, many on the show, many in my personal life, but I can see that frustration building and it's entirely reasonable. Look, we are called to respect our elders, respect our parents, both literal and metaphorical. But there is an incommon duty, right sort of reciprocal one on our elders to be

worthy of respect. And that doesn't mean agreeing with me, Like there are a great number of people I don't agree with politically or would think that my politics are pants shittingly retarded, but I can respect them. That's a good man, the man who's lived his life well. And when you don't see that, well, those guys aren't going to stick around. They're going to go somewhere else. And I think that's what we have seen. To what we are seeing Church is a comedian metaphor. They has seen

many others. So how's that for a slightly hungover, so off the cuff rant. Three days after I recorded the podcast, I don't think it was too bad. A little shorter than normal. Sorry it's past my bedtime, but let me turn you over to the interview with the cryptos. But before I do, check out our sponsors Axios Remote Fitness and Coaching. Did it work out today?

money grubbing. It's because the lowest amount I could set it to on one of the other platforms was six dollars, and it didn't seem fair to make it five on some and six on others. But it's not retroactive, so if you're already paying, it doesn't matter for you. But just going forward, it's the same everywhere now there's no gap. Just because I feel like that's fair, that makes sense. I mean, if it really bothers you the twelve dollars a year, if you meet me im personals, I don't know,

I'll buy you a beer or something. Make it up to you. I don't know, and don't let everyone do it, but I would actually I'll honor that. How's that for a sponsorship read? Probably not that good anyway, here's gryptos. All right, Cryptos, welcome back to the Jay Burden Show.

Are you ready to go? And you're like, oh, yeah, I forgot about that.

And I can always I don't have to generally cancel unless I have a client who has a hard scheduling thing, and then I will sometimes read book, but it's but yeah, so for the most part, that's it's nice to be able to sort of fill and do that, you know, and in turn on my show, like I kind of do the opposite. I have found myself as of late leaning on a narrow list, in part because I mine is not an interview show. I do conversations. And that

was what something somebody early on. They said, you know, let the guests talk, and I'm like, well, no, I'm not there to interview the guest. I'm here to have a conversation with him, which means we should be talking about the same amount of time. And black Horse noted for he says, he says, you tend to generally tend to do interviews as to way to work out things that you want to write. And I think once that sort of clicked with me and I find myself I

do do that. Where I'm looking on right now, a very big piece that's up to about nine thousand words, but I've had like three, i think three conversations sort of dance around pieces of that that allowed me to kind of talk it out out loud, both on my

channel and others and that kind of helps. So that's kind of what I do, is if I have an interesting conversation that I want to have with somebody, that I have them on And oftentimes I have the same four or five people on regularly because I've been enjoying the conversations I have with them. So that's just one of the ways it works.

This is something that you do kind of watching tape and watching how other people do it because there are a number of different kind of stylistic focuses people you know people do and so you know, again just as

someone who does this professionally, it's kind of interesting. But Cryptos, you and I are actually here to sort of record a follow up to a discussion from I guess a year and a half ago now on your show on your sub stack, and it was titled something incredibly inflammatory like the Hitler youth are coming to church, and I like.

to get anywhere. And if you're if you have a group of elites who are actually devout Christians, like not just faking it because you know it's civic religion, but are actually devout Christians, that works generally far better than the other way around. And that was It's sort of an anodyne topic, felt a nice fun title like, you know, the Case for Course of Christianity, which is my best doing article because who's the gentleman from gab.

article eclipsed ten thousand views, which is funny. But that one got within fifty I think, I think only eight like nine, eight hundred and seventy five or something like that. I mean like one hundred and twenty hundred and fifty kind of thing close to ten thousand views, which is was quite so that's my best performing piece, largely because

Andrew Torba flogged it for me. But again, shocking title, not much, but you know, the content is fairly I'm not nearly athratical, as I like to pretend I am sometimes my or that my wife thinks I am.

And then also it was trending younger. It's not necessarily that you know, more of gen Z in relation to previous generations is going to church, but the proportion of those that do that attend seriously and are going to traditional denominations, a term that will no doubt trigger the Catholics in the Orthodox will be nice to you. I promise is higher, right it is?

grasp sort of the full context of what has happened. So, yes, young men are returning to church, right, but we have to remember that this is in the context of a looming demographic crisis in the churches that is comparable to the looming demographic crisis in society, and a sense that the baby boomers are dying off and as they die off, you know, it's very different from the regular population, where you can invite people from say, Indian so forth, and

they can come and work in in your restaurants and do all these other you know, and you have people coming from Mexico to mow your lawn and be your nanny and all these sort of things. But for the most part, many of these immigrants are not filling up churches, or at least not traditional pot Protestant churches in that regard.

And even if they're doing, even if they are Catholic, they're in a separate stream from sort of what you would think of as traditional sort of Anglo Catholic churches and these sort of sort of English speaking Protestant Catholic and Orthodox churches in that regard, and so that sometimes the immigration side of it doesn't really affect the sort of the main bulk of churches in North America. So there's still a looming demographic crisis, and these young men

that are coming back. The numbers are when you look at sort of church growth and percentages, like you know, the churches are still shrinking, but in these one category there is a noticeable increase. And it's happening in France, it's happening in England, and it's happening in North America

that young men are returning to church. They're not returning into church in statistically significant amounts enough to sort of quote unquote save the churches from their own demographic decline, but the numbers are noticeable nonetheless, because this is the one area where actual growth is happening. Like you go into churches, and you'll often go in and you'll see like a couple buddies, young guys who will sit in turn. They're the same guys, and they're just they're just there

every week. They're just young guys, and it's fun to engage with them because a lot of them are really really serious about their faith, and nobody is taking them into hands. Nobody knows what to do with them and what they're looking for. I myself have a twenty one year old son who grew up Protestant, and we we're in, you know, part because my parents were, you know, we're very much part of the sort of the church growth movement.

They did a church plant when I was young, so I grew up in a church plant and and my mom, you know, blessed her soul. Did it old school like the door knocking, just basically inviting people to church thing. And if you saw my mother that you would think it was hilarious because she's like one of these quiet, saintly women. But she was good at it, she you know. And then the the when they came to be, they moved into the town, I moved away from home and then my parents moved to where I am now and

they started attending a large megachurch here in town. And it was nice to go to church with my parents. So I'm now at a large megachurch even though it's not really my thing. And yeah, so it is what it is. But my son grew up in this church, and you know, it was decent for him. But being away at university, he made friends with a young man who's Catholic and serious about his faith, and so he started to attend a Catholic church and get very serious

about going. He goes to like, Okay, so this is a twenty one year old young man who's away from home. Now what when for my age, you know, I'm in my fifties, and for people in their forties and some in their thirties, what did you do when you went away from home? Well, you stopped going to church oftentimes because nobody made you go. And that, like university and getting away from home was where a lot of young

people wandered away from the church. You know, sometimes they got connected with a local church or youthful christ movement or you know, I think now they call it P two C. You know, power to change they got involved in some of those movements, and they hung on with the churches. Sometimes they left there, you know, the denominational church that they grew up in and went to a

big megachurch because it's more fun. But for whatever reason, this college young you know, eighteen to twenty five age group was a time when many, many, many young people drifted away from church. The universities didn't help because the universities undermined all of their faith foundations, asking questions, challenging them and so forth. So many began to question the path of their parents and they drifted away. Now you get you know, young men like my son, who are exploited.

So I asked him, I said, you know, because there's a really devout Baptist congregation just around the corner from where he lives. And I said, well, why not there? And his answer was he says, well, he says, the Catholic Church just seems more serious. And I'm like, that's really And I think some of it is the attraction

to the old rituals. But you know, like how Catholic Church works, they have like massive every day right, So if he doesn't have something going on, like literally, this is a twenty one year old young man who goes to Mass like five times a week. I just like, I thank the Lord that is his passion for his faith is wonderful. But it's just like and I kind of get it. And like, so I'm reading a lot of this interest discourse and I'm like, yeah, I'm watching

it firsthand. And my son, like this is he's explored. You know, he might have been an Ortho bro, you know, a young Ortho bro, but because he happened one of his best friends at university is a like a you know, a towny so to speak, and went to the local university and had connections with the local church that he just dragged my son out. And now he's a Catholic and in one of the oldest congregations actually in what was then Upper Canada. It's the Congrege that the church

he has goes back actually to the seventeen hundreds. It's a beautiful building. But yeah, so but yeah, so he he he that's you know, and he's not alone, and so they're looking for something and nobody's ready to give to it. You know. It's it's kind of different when you're the dad, because you can't it's hard ready to disciple your own kids, you know, to give them the

kind of structure. But so they're looking for some I think the young men especially are looking for someone to give them structure, to to discipline them in a sense and disciple them. But I think they're also looking for more. I think they're looking, you know, and I talk a lot about technology and you know, technique and how you know Heidegger's notion how technology inframes us in you know, that whole sort of standing ready waiting to be how can we be used and pumped into the machine? Right?

So it turns everything into something that is what's the word like standing in guard or something that that that that high degree uses. And but I think there's this in framing, is that the young man, especially, I think sense that in churches that here's the people that can maybe help me connect, like break through the frame and connect me with something real with God. And I think that, you know, I think that's in some sense what my son is looking for. He's looking for the grounded nature

of historic liturgy. And there is a sense of seriousness about the people that are devout Catholics. In some ways, sometimes I think there's a there's a seriousness about devout Catholics that many devout Protestants don't have. I think that's the way to put it. And so that earnestness is something that appeals to him. And then you know, I don't know. I think it's maybe normalacy is something else,

like the structure of the normalcy. And I know that this whole thing gets dragged into, like we were talking about an article before. The thing that gets dragged into this whole the dating discourse. And I think that this is in some ways something that the dating discourse. When women look at young men coming back to church, they perceive it differently, I think than young men who come back to church. The men are not looking for the

same things that women are. And women are looking for a husband, and they're looking for you know, they want marriageable men, whereas I think young guys they'd like to get married. But I think what the men are looking for is they're looking for God. They're looking for something real, and it's it's and I think, you know, like that article you sent me, you know, she's like, well, like why would they why would I marry one of these guys?

You know, they're all like fat overweight, they don't seem to have any motivation, blah blah blah, not really that you know, hypergamy is a thing. And these ordinary guys are just in lieu of what their parents and grandparents have, you know, the whole dating scene, getting out, getting married,

normal life, normal job. They know that life is not giving them that they don't necessarily have the language to articulate it, and if they tried to articulate it, they look like either racists or sexists or bigots or whatever, you know what I mean, or ungrateful, or that they're lazy, and they you know, all of these things that they normally get the characterizations dumped on them. And I think a lot of these young men are looking for something

to give them, like a place of refuge. They want to they want faith to be real because they need it to be real. If that does that make sense, That's the kind of things I'm sensing my own son, you know, and I'm looking at him and his friends, and they're all kind of the same, and and I think, you know, they're they're they don't know what they're looking for. They're looking for something real, and so we've just like my wife and I have just said, like we're we

don't get it. We don't necessarily approve because you know, we're devoute Protestants, but if this is the path that God takes him on, we will support it.

a program. It's more of a social group targeting exactly this demo kind of twenty two to thirty five colleged kind of kid number two, right, and we've noticed the increase. But when I was speaking to our pastors, he said, yeah, in the last five years, our number of new members, right, So the amount of people becoming new members is gone up about three times three XD and the average age of a new member has dropped by around twenty five years.

So this is a pretty significant demographic change. A lot of this, you're also seeing a sorting happening within American Christianity, So fewer young people are going to the sort of like charismatic kind of megachurch style, and more of them are returning to liturgical worship. Now, obviously you know the Orthodox are exploding in relative terms. Of course, we understand that going from twenty to ninety is not in the grand scheme of things. A large number percentage wise is huge.

They're just similar kind of transformation going on within the Catholic Church, be it slightly different, And I think we're seeing a couple of demographic trends hitting all at once, which is one for my generation. Even in the Bible Belt, there is absolutely no social pressure to go to church whatsoever. There's no real advancement to be had from that. So if you or your parents were just sort of going because that's what you did, well, you don't bother anymore.

There's no advantage to be had in that.

wise that will produce a shift. And also we understand the children of liberal Christians tend to drop Christian They tend to not even bother with the pretense of religion. This has very much happened in the Catholic Church. I am not Catholic, but if you look at the demographic or political affiliation of priests in the Catholic Church, it went from about two thirds liberal to roughly eighty percent extremely conservative in the last sixty five years plus or minus,

because again, who takes this seriously? So that is a notable shift, and I think it is also highly dependent on sort of what church you find yourself in. Now, the interesting element is, look this article. I'm not going to link it because it's not a good article. It's not worth your time reading. It is basically a woman with if they checkered past, coming to church and saying the guys here are gross and icky. I don't like them. Someone needs to fix it. Not worth your time, don't bother.

I got rage baited by it. I won't inflict that on anyone else. And there are a couple things there. One is this a serious critique, No, not really, but it has been amplified by the conservative quote unquote elements in American Christianity, several figures that are oftentimes referenced on

this podcast. I'm trying not to do it now, but the sort of kind of squishy conservatives, the people who are very very worried about woke and they don't to talk about that, but are also extremely worried about radical young men. And you brought up the fact that there are young men genuinely seeking God, looking for something stable.

I think that is why we are seeing as sorting two more traditional forms of worship, looking for something that is old, ancient and to the smallest degree possible affected by the modern world.

And you don't want your church to feel unground. Like so if you're looking to be grounded, you're not going to go into a megachurch, because the megachurch just extends that hyperreality experience. You're looking for something grounded. Hence, you know, Catholic like traditional Catholic liturgy, Orthodoxy, Conservative Protestant churches, and and those are where people, these these young guys tend to be drifting because they're looking for their world to be grounded when it's not grounded.

not going to work. And I think part of the reason you see young men going to conservative churches is exactly that I want something untouched by the rot, the you know, the sort of nothing from the never ending story. And it's funny. There was an incident I've mentioned multiple times.

So as I've said before, you know, I've been kind of put in a leadership role in this group of young people, and so I've met a lot of them, right, a lot of people who are getting married in their early twenties, you know, taking church seriously, quite traditional and coming from these kind of older figures in the church who are unsure how to deal with this demographic change.

There's been a lot of confusion because the common wisdom for a lot of people, and look, most of these people are not really political, They're not thinking about issues in the same way that you or I do cryptos. The common accepted wisdom is that young people are more progressive,

and so to appeal to them, we must meet them there. Right, we will compromise on, you know, certain aspects in order to reach out to that that idea that you know, a church's success is determined by, you know, the number of butts and seats. In order to do that, we must sort of tailor our message. And there's a very funny interaction between a older, more progressive I don't mean

to say a progressive, but leaning in that direction. Woman had a professional career that sort of type, and one of these guys who I met through this group, who's you know, I don't know him super well, he's maybe twenty three, getting married soon, and she, of course brings out this sort of you know, mealy mouthed, watered down conservative feminist take of oh, you know, we've got to let women do X, Y or C. And she was had sort of deliberately brought together a group of young

people as an audience for this. Right, you can sort of see the wheels turning of Oh, this is how I get what I want done. I'll collect the young people together because they'll be on my side. And you know, I'm playing my cards close to my chest. I'm not trying to out myself, as you know, the highly prominent controversial online figure. I have been assured that I am, so you know, I'm offering a little bit of pushback. But this guy just goes hammer and tongs with her,

you know, really like going to the mat. And I was surprised. She was even more so. And we had a conversation afterwards, and it was really interesting because the conclusion that I mean, it's the same thing I thought, But the conclusion I'm hearing from him, I'm hearing echoed from other people, is no, I won't let you have this too. You guys have everything else. Everything else has been poisoned in that way. I am here to avoid that.

with that. I'm also in that demographic, but it's created this sort of bizarre situation where these churches are being offered the next generation, but they look at them as being kind of gross and icky, like, oh, you're not supposed to say that. Oh you're not supposed to push that hard on that issue. And it's sort of an interesting dynamic. But I've been winging on for a while. No, that's fine, back.

will destroy whatever institution you have. And he says that out of one side of his mouth and out of the other side of his mouth. He returns to center, which for him is limp wristed fagotry. Sorry, cryptos, carry on. Finally, my chimpal it's fine.

It's a it's a classic bait and switch. And the problem is is that the Christian life, when you read about it in the Bible, and you listen to the words of Jesus, listen to what you know, even the Old Testament, what God called his people to be relative to the nations, that it's difficult and hard. All of the things the nations pursue are all things that are corrupting and ultimately end in the demise and collapse of

individuals and societies. And so there is a call within scripture to take of you know, the narrow path, and it's a narrow path is hard, you know, take up your cross and follow me. And you know, you can see in the Gospels where Jesus actually pushes people away because they're not serious. And there is an integrity with that, you know, the sense of I like I speak in parables because I don't actually want you to understand the message,

which is largely what he says. And for many of us today that just like we can't compute that, like, how does that help you with growing a church? While Jesus really wasn't interested in growing churches. And that may strike you as odd, but that's not the case. And so the scriptures present it with a very there's a seriousness. It's not a dourness, but there is a it's a serious business. The faith and pursuit of God in this

thing is a serious business. So if you come in and say, hey, it's fun, it's easy, get to know us. It's not that difficult, it's not that hard. What happens is is that the switch never happens because nobody if it once it's fun and easy. If you think and you try to pitch it that coming to God is fun and easy. Nobody wants it to be hard. And this is especially true with the baby boomers. And I

was talking with somebody recently who's a baby boomer. He admitted, he says, you know, he says, I know, the people in my generation, we don't want it to be hard work. And we don't want the faith to be hard work. We want it to come easily. And so there is this kind of Boomer version and you know, we call it, like, you know, the Boomer truth regime. But it begins with this idea that I think, you know, it's sort of

the summer of love continued all the way through life. Right, so everything is going to be free and easy and it's not going to cost anything. And this down you know, this goes down to you know, we're going to heal all the wounds in society and we're going to you know, peace and love and kumbay a. Right, it's all going to be good again. And so, you know, there's a number of political decisions downstream from that, Like one is

the cruise shipification of everything. Right, you know, you hire immigrant later so you can have cheap cruises and you can enjoy your life and it's free and easy, and a lot of that gets extended through, you know, and you combine that with you know, the post war consensus of we're going to end racism and we're going to end anti Semitism and we're going to you know, create this peaceful world. And Hitler is the greatest evil of

all time. And well, you know, young men who want to come to church because they read the Bible and it shows a hard life and they want somebody to walk alongside them in a hard life. And they come to a church where everything is free and easy. There's a disconnect there. And the people who are in leadership now they really have no idea how to deal with these young men because they've never done it themselves. Unfortunately, and this is the hard truth. There are some men

who have walked in faith. There's some men who've taken the narrow path, and some men who have you know, lived faithfully. But the bulk of people who show up in church, unfortunately, you know, bless their souls are just they're not doing the work. And as a results, when these young men show up and they want to say, hey, show me how to do the work, nobody knows what

to do with them. And then you know that So that's that's one piece of it, is that sort of bait and switch that's happened, you know, over the last fifty years or so. This is large of the church that I grew up in and lived through. And then in addition, you have these other discord like you have the cracking and the breaking of the post war consensus.

But then you also have this other piece of you know, the women's discourse and women complaining about why life isn't working out for them, you know, the feminist dream isn't a reality, and like why men are terrible and all these things, and there is a there's a profound disconnect. So these men are coming into church, and I think the women think these men are coming into church looking

for them, and they're not. That's the funny thing I think is that these men aren't actually looking for women like again, come back to my son, like you never hear them talk about I hope to find a nice girl church dad. You know, he's looking for a serious

faith life. He maybe already recognizes that, you know, maybe there that he isn't good, that that the girls are just not going to be attracted to kind of a quiet, geeky guy who's awkward and shy, and you know, he's just you know, all the things the girls complain about. My son is smart, he's intelligent, he's probably going to do very well in life, but he's deeply shy about women.

He's put on a couple of pounds in university because he eats like crap, and it's it's one of these things where he, you know, like, my son is the kind of boy that these girls complain about, and yet knowing things as is sort of on this side of things as a man, he's exactly the kind of guy that you want to marry because he's going to be devoted, he's going to be committed, he's going to take care, he's going to be a good father, he's going to

be a good provider. He's exactly what you're looking for. But you're not looking for him because you've been fed this discourse about what you think you want, and it's you know, it's based on mass media realities. And so women are walking around this is one discourse. Men are

coming into church with this very different discourse. And then the older group have a different understanding of church, and there's a collision course coming here somewhere, and you know, like like I characterize it this way, you know, the Hitler youth come to church, not in the sense to say these young kids are Nazis, but I, frank, thankfully I have kids about the same age who are involved in the internet discourse, and so I get them showing me memes and stuff, and a lot of these kids

are horribly politically incorrect behind the scenes, but they've learned, they've learned how to navigate public private conversations, you know, so they will like they will chastise you, like, Okay, I touched. I shouldn't get your show banned.

an A at the end. If you're going to use it ironically and talk about why can't we say the word blank, you have to use it without the art because if you she's trying to explain to my wife like that, the whole thing of how to property navigate, even in discussion about saying the N word, how to say the N word property so you don't get yourself into trouble, you know, these types of things, you just

can't say it that way. And so it was like, you know, so these kids know exactly how to navigate all of the language, but yet behind the scenes they will talk, you know, very very frankly about things like mass immigration, about you know, future prospects for work, future prospects for buying a house, you know, the whole dating

discourse and all of these types of things. And as a as a friend group, they're just they're they're conservative, but they are very politically incorrect and very much raised on internet discourse. Like it's just it just they breathe it naturally in the same way that we woke up and watched Saturday Morning cartoons. These kids are you know, living Instagram, and Instagram means you know, that's kind of

the thing. And so they come into church care even if they're not, you know, reading all of the canon of right wing thought, they're coming into church having been raised on these internet memes. And as we know, and we're very aware, the memes that women view and the memes that young men and young boys view are often very very different, and they don't understand. And so the discourse for women's discourse and the discourse for men's discourse

has very much sharply divided. And so now they're talking past each other, you know. You know, Dave Green, bless his soul, tries to fix this and bridge this, but yeah, like I'm not sure, like I you know, it's it's

very very hard. You have to be incredibly patient with it because, as you know, people, you say something to someone and they'll agree with you, and then they'll just go back and forget about the conversation they had with you, right, And so it's it's kind of the thing where like like I said, I think there's a collision course coming at some point, but you know what will result from that, But I think that the men, the young men who are coming into church, the majority of them, are coming

because they're looking for something serious that they can't find in the world, you know, the world of images, memes, all the rest of it. They want something grounded, and they want older men and women to help ground them, if that makes sense. And then the older folks are not ready, because of their own faith practice, to ground them, and they're not ready to grapple with internet discourse, like live internet discourse, not the filtered stuff they get on on Facebook.

say that. But in all seriousness, I think there's another dynamic at work, which is, and I see this pretty dramatically in my own congregation as well as others, that a lot of older people don't necessarily understand how politicized culture has become and the importance of certain phrases and topics.

And so it's a pretty common experience with this group, with my circle of friends, for someone older in a well meaning way to say one of these buzzwords, right, one of these phrases, and half the room sort of picks their head up, like, wait a minute, what did you just say?

few years leads you to insanity. I think that's a big part of it. Also, while we're talking about the kind of male female dis sports, there is also a baseline feminism in many women that is sort of When I say pre political, I mean that it is not a well formed idea. It's not something they sat down and reasoned their way through. It's just sort of osmosis.

And even if they are in a community where that is not the stated goal, not the stated set of values, well guess what, six days a week, you're still getting that sort of in the air you breathe. I think that's another gap, setting aside another very basic fact, which is effectively men and women have become separate, competing political blocks, which is most definitely not a good thing. It is true,

particularly in the US. You can look at the twenty twenty four election, you can look at opinions on any number of issues.

year old British feminist. Whatever your mental image of that is her absolutely losing it over a recent piece of polling that was basically asking a very large sample size I think it was like eight thousand different respondents across the entire age slider what their opinions on the question A woman should always obey her husband, and unsurprisingly every group majority disapproved. Right, as you can also imagine, in general,

men tend to like that idea better than women. But the most interesting piece of that was for Generation Z they answered yes to that question in both men and women at the highest rate of any group since the Silent Generation. They were three x the respondents as millennials, higher than baby boomers. So again that total for women was eighteen percent. Now eighteen percent is a distinct minority, but that is a major cultural shift. Millennials were at

six percent, going from six to eighteen. Again, that's a lot.

those are starting to bite. And I think it's especially interesting if we look at churches where you have a minority of people who really care a lot and take things very seriously, how that population over indexes in the direction in the control of an institution over time is Look, we're all elite theorists. Here we understand the om sized impact of a highly motivated minority. Right, this is how.

to church. You wanted quote unquote conservative young people, and now you've got them. And it's sort of the monkey's paw.

But anyways, like I, but she is one of the few authors out there, thinkers out there who understands that in order to properly understand feminism you have to basically go back to pre industrialization the like in order to understand it meaningfully. The shortest time frame that you really need to be operating on, and you can probably extend this all the way back to the high middle ages if you really want to. But the shortest reasonable time frame has to go back to the late seventeen hundreds

and early eighteen hundreds. And unless you're talking about the growth of these issues in that kind of time frame, if you're just beginning with the pale like Frank, I don't have interest in or even with like women getting the vote, I don't really have interest in talking to you because unless you understand why women were outclamoring for the vote in the first place, which is like, you know, go back another hundred years, your grasp of what's going

on isn't sufficient to really talk about the issue. You know, So Dave gets it, you know, Dave Green gets it, and Mary Harrington gets it. But you've got a series of complex of So let's let's put it this way. Women have always been smart and capable, and there's nobody that wants to deny You shouldn't be denying this that

women aren't smart and capable. But what industrialization did and modernity, the changes that happened with modernity, with the rise of the merchant classes and the growing middle class, and then with the social disruption caused by industrialization, that there was a shift in the role and orientation with Traditionally, the women were oriented around what would be called the household, and so it would be either small tradesmen, professionals, farmers,

or whatever. But the basic social life would be the household, and you would have a patriarch a matron in the household, and you would have their own kids. Plus you would have apprentices or farm hands, and you would have like the the young ladies, I don't know, maids or maids is probably not right, but they would be taken into the family and they would become part of a larger household and a successful household. Even these are like sort

of under the gentry. Like so these are sort of you're not really middle class, but they're under the gentry, and they, you know, some of these households could be between like eleven and twenty people in a successful you know farm or you know, trades practice or whatever. But this was your political social unit and that matron and patriarch. They basically when you went into service for some either as an apprentice or in the house, they took control

over your life. So they would decide who and when if you were ready to be married, not your own parents. These types of things, and the role of women in that household was very full. So they were part you know, healthcare, part education, part you know, running the business. There was a political role for them in the community. There was this whole stable, rich role. When industrialization shattered this and these women had to go into the cities, you basically

had a choice. You either went into the factory and worked, or you stayed at home. And largely your role at home, you know, as it emerged up to the eighteen hundreds and into the twentieth century, your role was basically a nanny and a housekeeper, a nanny and a cook, and all of the rich social roles because everything else had been passed off with healthcare, with retirement, homes, with education, all these other things. Even the political had been passed

off on to these large mass organizations. And so when you look at even the word economy in the Greek we konomia means the household, like the running of the household. So what happened was is all the stuff that women did through industrialization was taken out of the household and put into the main of society, and then men build a world like the organizational world that mimiced the household. So in many ways, what managerialism does is it mimics

the household. Women are really particularly well adapted for the administrative state, and so they then all the work that they used to do they're now doing outside of the home. So they're doing teacher work, they're doing administrative work, they're

doing social work, psychology. All of the things that they used to do in the context of the household, women are doing now doing outside of the household, right, And so you have to understand this context is that you took everything from them to build the modern mested industrial economy, and now women are doing the jobs that you set them up to do in a sense by creating this managerial context, and this is really what they're best at doing.

And so now they're out there doing it. And women are capable and smart, and so you might want them to go back to being housewives and running a household. But unless you're like I am, well, we have a family business and my wife handles the back end of my business and does all of those rich roles, Like my wife has a pretty full role around the house, you know, and doing the things here in terms of

my business. You I don't get it. So far a lot of guys, you know, saying well, we're going to take away the vote, We're going to you know, they need to go back house. Okay, you could say that, but largely if you want to accomplish that, you basically have to go back to the pre industrial to Europe, to like the middle of the seventeen hundreds, you know, because because you have to give back a life, Like what are these women going to do? Are they just going to sit at home and be like nanny's and

house keepers? You know, like that's you know, there's a lot of women who are capable of much more, and in an environment where there's a rich political, economic, and so forth, where the household is a center light, they can thrive in that regard and that so there's a sense of capable. Women have always been capable, but they just did it within a social context that allowed them

to do that without disrupting the roles. And it was done on a scale of the village, so you didn't have the problems of hypergamy, where mass media then confronts women with the image of Prince Charming and all of the movie stars and this is the guy you should be looking and romance novel like romance literature, I mean goes back all the way to the Middle Ages, like the High Middle Ages. In the courtship type stories. You know, the woman gets married off to an older nobleman. She's

unhappy in her marriage, she treats her poorly. Then she finds this young love and you know, they have the whole unrequited love thing. I mean, all these stories are very, very old, and now you see them on tea every time in the wrong com right. So you have these things, and so this is what women have the image of their mind. And so you fed this through and now they're looking all looking for prince charming, the guy they see on television, the guy they see on social media.

They're not looking for that nice young man in the village that they used to be looking for and building a household. Right. So and so you place all this context. Now, the church diagram or the church discourse is in this completely socially broken world, and men are struggling to find grounding. Women are living in a fantasy world. And also in this new world where everything that women used to do in the household they now have to go out of

the household to do. So they're at work, and then they want to do it in the churches as well, said well, if I can do it in the business world, why can't I do in the churches? And the old way of doing it is quite simply like, we know you're capable, but that's just not the role God gave you,

you know. And it's very very hard to tell a woman that when everywhere else in life she's out doing business, out doing this because that's where the household has now been put out in public, and so now you're going to put her back in a box again, and women

are naturally chafing against that. So the you're not really like, there's no real way to fix the problem unless you have total societal collapse, you know, and you go back to basically because you can unwind and you can see how the problem develops historically over two hundred three hundred years, But how do you get back to a point where like, you can't there is no fix for this problem, that's

basically what it is. And so now you've got this confrontation unless you begin to and this is another reason why I'm an advocate for parallelism. Unless churches are very very serious about being separate societies in which they do things differently and in terms of and that means not just having like Bible studies. It means your church should be thinking of itself in terms of like almost like

a nation a community. So that's like I'm the big piece that I'm writing now, and that means providing an economic life for for a community. So I you know, if I see it like not that I want to have a quote unquote the plan, because that's part of

the problems people having plans and solutions. But if you look back to the sort of like what was life before all of the changes with modern industrial society, and you're sort of like, well, can we build a parallel community that somehow evokes some of that that allows us

to reorder life? So we be we intentionally resist going off and joining the fortune five hundred company, and we stay home and we found small businesses and we have a community of households that are you know, these types of things, and you do it kind of organically, you know, I mean, I don't know, I just I'm trying to paint a picture for people here. But this is really why in a part parallels and this is a sense it's funny come back to like sort of Rod Dreer,

which it in his own way. Rod Dreer sometimes is accidentally right, like the Benedict option is still the right idea. It's just Dreyer just kind of put it forward in the stupid its way possible because because when I read that book, I looked at it and says, well, that's basically what my reformed community is, you know, like our our ethno nationalist kind of expat church community. You know, many of the people in our in our community are

small businessmen and they're farmers. And part of it hangs together because they're small businessmen and farmers because then husband and wives are doing these roles although it is praying and it is disintegrating unfortunately in part because just the pressures of of you know, North American Western modernity just pulls people out of these you know, out of the small businesses into quote unquote careers and that's where all of the big rewards are and so forth and so forth.

But you know, so yeah, this, you know it dovetails. I've been rambling on here, but this sort of dovetails back into this sort of church environment that you've got to begin thinking about church as a political community unto itself.

And then how do we reorder our church life to create smaller spaces where women and men can reorder their lives and you know, break the pattern because you know, if women are involved, if they're part of the main of culture, like I don't know how you you know, they're looking for prince charming, and young men are looking to find spiritual grounding, and they're talking past each other and they're not building families and they're not finding each

other because they're looking for different things. And that's and then the old folks are looking for life on a cruise ship. You know, these are all like very harsh characterizations, but they want an easy life, you know, provided for them on the cheap like so like and that the young men are looking for, like give me a hard life and disciplinely and show me how to meet God like for real, not just the similar crum of meeting

God that feels good, but the actual real thing. And it's an and women like will find me a husband, but like the man from the fairy tales, and you're like, your guest is as good as mine is. How to fix that? Like Dave has certainly trying you know, tried to lay out some of it, but it's these are very and it's again it is all coming to a head. But the thing is, young men are coming back to church and they are looking for a serious faith life and bad and nobody's there to help them. I don't know,

I'm not this is this. I mean, you know, I've been a kind of a dumorous mood the last couple of weeks. You're sort of catching me in one of these, you know, phases of mine.

of the progressive cold. I mean imagine like the former Speaker of the House talking with the nons on Twitter and bantering with them and getting just chewed up day in and day out, trying to justify his failed record. That's what we're doing with Aeron O'Toole. But anyway, that's

another side. Come join the fun if you want. And then on substack, where I do most of my serious stuff is I have my own IP or like web address which is sort of www dot seeking the Hidden Thing dot com, so seeking the Hidden Thing all one word dot com and you'll find most of my serious work there.