Stephen K. Bannon (8:50)
And once one, I think this is my realization when I think about it and how morality is not complete. Western people and Christians will say they're moral, but again, it's through a materialist paradigm. And you know that by simply looking at what used to be the greatest sins and the greatest evils for a society, and all of them are, to various degrees, completely accepted by Christians today. And all one has to do is look at the sexual mores of the west today. And very few Christians will even argue or talk about it or even dispute it. And they'd be, of course, scandalized to feel like they have to talk about it. But if you look at historic Christianity, biblical Christianity, Christianity in all of its forms, something like sexual mores, sexual sins, that was one of the pinnacles and one of the most unquestioned aspects of Christianity. So you see, this is why. Why is it not being mentioned? Because, well, no one's hurting anyone. And so that's what I mean. That's a perfect example of how a Christian adopts the materialist worldview. Now, there used to be something, and just to make it simple, you may have heard, I'm sure you have, of course, many Catholics, Anglicans, of the seven deadly sins, which actually very much informed the worldview of Christians in the pre modern era. And they are, I often miss, but let's see, wrath, greed, gluttony, envy, lust, sloth. And I always miss one pride. Oh, yeah, the worst one. Yeah, I know the root of them all. Yeah, you're right. Okay, so think about those seven things now, okay? That is what a Christian society thought about. Now, these are all metaphysical. They're not material. Okay? These were metaphysical principles. This is what Christianity was all about. Notice killing is not one of the seven deadly sins. Why? Because it's a byproduct. Of course. It's evil and you shouldn't do it, but it wasn't seen as a root cause. Now, when I look at these, the seven deadly sins, which were fundamental to a Christian society, Christian to Christendom, essentially, for centuries up until actually quite recently, not only are they not something that we talk about or something we condemn, they are, in fact, what we now celebrate. And much of our economy is based on it. And we call ourselves Christians, and we live with it, and we live in peace with this. And I find that very interesting. Pride. Pride, of course, is exalted pride. You know, pride month. Think about that. Lust, that's everywhere you look. It's promoted. It's glamorized envy. Just think social media, okay? Gluttony, turn TV on. Everything's about putting images of food, sloth. So it's kind of amazing that to me, these are the principal issues. These are the first things that were actually at the heart of a Christian order, and they've just been completely so jettisoned. And very few Christians even understand this. And that's the point. This is so subtle and so incremental that. And the reason is, the best way I can put it, is because Christians, one way or the other, over the decades and possibly centuries, have just adopted a very materialist worldview, which is that, yeah, we talk about the afterlife, we talk about sin, we talk about being saved, but in the end, when it comes to society, we begin and end with just not hurting people. Okay? So that's become the ultimate Christian virtue, and it is a virtue. I'm not arguing that, but I'm trying to say there was so much more above it, which actually gave meaning to life. Now, what happens when societies such as Western society, European society, jettisons what I'm talking about, which is essentially the metaphysical aspect of Christianity? You can actually call it the spiritual aspect, because the physical or material aspect, what's the corollary is the metaphysical, the beyond the physical. Well, that's the spiritual. And I just think it's funny because a lot of Christians today, when they say the word spiritual, it means some sort of abstract, fuzzy feeling. Actually, I think to be spiritual is to be engaged and to comprehend and try to exercise the metaphysical aspects of Christianity. The things that are beyond the physical, that are not measurable, that deal with morals and ethics and that sort of thing. Now, when all that is jettisoned, as it has been in recent generations, a vacuum is created. And that's, I think, where we are. And what does nature abhor? It abhors a vacuum. Enter Islam. Well, Islam, of course, is its own body system. It's its own religion. It has its own teachings. You know, one can be very hostile to it or critical of it, and I'm of course associated with those views. But we have to be honest, it also brings a sort of traditional worldview. It knows what a woman is and it knows what a man is. It's not confused about that, for example. And it has all sorts of things that were very traditional that Europeans and Christians would have agreed with historically. So I think that aspect and its confidence. So now you have a vacuum in Europe, in the west in general, because of the reasons I've outlined dealing with the sort of slow melting away of Christianity based on these philosophical or epistemological underpinnings. Now you have Islam coming in and it may have all its problems and all, but it's still, it's very visceral. It's down to earth. And it does offer all of these things that are filling the vacuum. Okay? And this is why you find Western people who are turned off and find no resonance in modern secular liberal culture, and they turn to something like Islam, which on the heart of it doesn't make any sense. I wager if those people actually had a true Christian upbringing or according to the way I'm trying to describe it, which is actually much more fused with a metaphysical understanding, they would not find Islam appealing. But that's what I mean. There's a vacuum now. So that even something that is inherently inferior in as much as it offers something of a primordial conservative worldview that still resonates with all humans, then it becomes appealing and then it's all, especially in this country, it's coalescing in a very strange way. As you all know now that there's a new blasphemy code or about Islam, a new anti Islamophobia or anti Islam hostility thing. And of course, this is just this is that one more way to help Islam to become more empowered, more entrenched. You can't even criticize, criticize it. And I haven't looked as closely as I'd like to, the wording, but it seems it's very fuzzy, intentionally so and vague, so that anything it says, things like encouraging hostility or well, who's going to decide all that? And all of this. So the kind of Christianity that I'd like to see go away and I'd like to see it sort of bring back a more traditional form of Christianity that prevailed during Christendom. Well, what I call, let's put it this way, I've tried to coin a word, I call it doormat Christianity. And I think this is the modern form of Christianity whereby Christians are taught, again, in keeping with what I'm saying, this materialist idea to just be doormats. Okay, Christianity begins and ends by you being a doormat. You're non confrontational, you lay down, everyone walks all over you and then you get to pat yourself on the shoulder and say, hey, look, I'm virtuous, I'm good. It's also a way to make, it's a way of making turning of vice, cowardice into a virtue, I think. And that's why become very prevalent what I call doormat Christianity. Doormat Christianity is not going to stand up against Islam. And that's what we're seeing. In fact, that kind of Christianity, which is completely about just being passive. Who do you think benefits from it most of all? It's probably the more of an enemy you are to Christianity, the more the prevalent form of doormat Christianity works and serves perfectly to empower the opposite forces. So I think Christians need to recapture and reclaim a sense of morality and a sense of the metaphysical because otherwise you don't. It's. And again, I'm going back to the first premises. These are the building blocks. Without these, I don't believe that, let's say the Islam problem cannot necessarily be addressed in and of itself. You can't maintain a sort of this current culture which with all its confusions and sort of break away from Christianity and then be able to resist something like Islam. I think it's all very interconnected. If you go back, and you can easily see this, go back a century to the way Western Europeans and Westerners thought and Christians thought, you wouldn't have this Islam problem at all even if it existed. It would immediately be solved. So I think there's a lot of paralysis going on amongst Christians because they just feel like, like I said, the best they can do is to just be just what they've been taught and bred, including, like I said, by forces that don't like Christianity. I saw a video in the Super Bowl a couple years ago and as you know, super bowl commercials, super bowl commercials tend to, they're very prominent and very mainstream and all it was was images of people washing people's feet. But for some reason all the People who were washing their feet looked like white traditional Christian people. And all the people getting their feet washed were, well, one was a trans man, one was obviously it was like on a migrant border and it was an illegal migrant. One was a woman committing an abort or at an abortion center. And people are protesting, but another woman's washing her feet and all. And one was a criminal and a policeman was washing his feet. And then it ended up by seeing Jesus didn't hate, he washed feet. And you can just see that kind of message, how it is completely geared to weakening Christianity by also but making you think you're being a good Christian because there's no balance. Of course Jesus washed feet. That's not my argument. But there was a balance. Jesus also hurled tables and made a court of whips and drove people and livestock. So there is a room, I believe, for, well, the Bible says so righteous indignation that is at least funneled in a proper way. And all of that, I guess, is missing. And in as much as people don't get that, I think a lot of this is futile and I'll end it by what I call the two swords theology. I just wrote a book that came out a few months ago. It's called the Two Swords of Christ and it deals with the military orders and their battles with Islam, the Templars and Hospitallers. But there's a second meaning to the title and it's basically in Luke where Christ says he doesn't have a garment, sell it and buy a sword. And the disciples say, lord, here are two swords. And he says, that is enough. Now, of course, the modern day Christians, that means absolutely nothing. It doesn't mean anything about a real sword. But of course there's a long and deep tradition, pre modern, especially medieval understanding, which is the two swords. One is spiritual, which I think modern Christians still accept spiritual warfare, but one is secular warfare. Okay? And that was the whole rationale for just war. That was the whole rationale for the Crusades, which I'm sure a lot of people think think are not what they really were. But so that kind of mentality. And again, it's not about physical, not necessarily literal, it's just about being bold and militant, at least vocally and in your approach to what's happening. Because if you look back, you zoom out and see what's been going on, it's just been one incremental slow degrade. And no matter how many, no matter what people are saying or doing or books or conferences, if you look at the scale, it goes down. It's like one step forward, three steps back, and that's how it's been going. So I think in part with Christian revival and the Islam threat, Christians just need to again, go to these first things and really recapture a sense of morality that is above and beyond just physical considerations. And once that is done, because like I said, it's all interconnected, the Islam question will become a lot easier to answer almost instinctively and very natively in