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I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST
One Nation Under Paganism? with Pastor Lucas Miles
00:49:29
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- [00:03]
Frank Turek
Ladies and gentlemen, you've probably heard the term paganism. It's sort of an older term. What does it mean? And is paganism really a threat to Christianity? Is it really a threat to America? And what about Marxism? What about the two together? What about this? What should we think about it? How do we protect ourselves and our kids from ideas that are not only false, but poisonous to a functioning society, to a functioning community, and ultimately to the gospel? Well, for that, I'm going to bring my friend, the great Lucas Miles on the program because he's just written a book forward by Charlie Kirk called Pagan Threat Confronting America's Godless Uprising. And Lucas has written several books, including Woke Jesus and others. He. He is a pastor in South Bend, Indiana, but he also serves as the president of TP USA Faith. He's been on the program before. We just did the University of Georgia together last week doing Q and A. Here he is, the great Lucas Miles. Lucas, shut up.
- [01:14]
Lucas Miles
Crowd.
- [01:14]
Frank Turek
Shut up. Okay, there they go. Lucas, we had a great time at Georgia, despite it was a bit somber since it's the first event we've done since Charlie. What did you think of the questions we got the other day at Georgia?
- [01:27]
Lucas Miles
You know, it's interesting. We used to do these events obviously more outside, and we've moved them inside for the time being. It's changed maybe a little bit of the type of crowd that we get. You know, for the most part, we're getting a lot of people who are very positive towards Christianity, towards biblical ideas. You know, a couple people that. That maybe are approaching with the mic with some divergent, you know, questions. But overall, a lot of support right now, but honestly, eager to get back out into the public square as much as possible where some of those naysayers are, because that's where I love the dialogue.
- [02:01]
Frank Turek
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it was a fun dialogue. We didn't really have a whole bunch of skepticism. I've noticed since Charlie's death, we're getting a lot more questions on evangelism and how to bring other people into the faith than we are. Skepticism. We had a few skeptical questions at a Western Carolina when I was there a week after Charlie's death, but most of them have been really positive. As you just say, there's more Christians showing up who want to do something for Christ, which is really, really good news. Now, before we get into the pagan threat, how did you get connected with tpusa? How did Charlie even know about you? Why did he recruit you to be the President of TPUSA?
- [02:40]
Lucas Miles
Faith I first met Charlie in 2020 at the National Religious Broadcasters. I had seen probably a few of his. Didn't know a lot about him yet or really a lot about Turning Point. Actually, the first time I met with a TPUSA faith rep while I was pastoring and I knew very little about them, I thought, this can't be true. They're promising me all this free stuff and all these conferences for free and I don't have to pay anything. I mean, I thought I was getting sold a timeshare. I was trying to figure out where the catch was. Now that I'm, now that I'm overseeing the faith department, you know, at tpusa, it's, I can tell you it's the real deal. There really is just all this benefit and all this free resources, resources for pastors. And you know, really Turning Point's not asking for anything, you know, back other than stand for biblical truth in the pulpit. You know, what a, what a novel idea for pastors. So I got to know Charlie a little bit, you know, kind of our relationship was a slow evolution from 2020 to 2022, 2023. In about a year and a half ago, he had asked me if I would consider stepping into the lead role for TPUSA Faith. He really felt that they needed a pastoral figure at the helm who could kind of be in the day to day operations, but also interact with pastors across this country at a high level and really just, you know, help build relationship with air and cast Vision. As soon as he asked me, I knew it was a God idea. I just didn't know how I was going to continue pastoring at the same time. And Charlie had originally asked me to kind of quit everything and move to Phoenix. And as we talked about it, I think that he and I were both convinced that in order to reach the pastors in this nation effectively, it's helpful to also have a pulpit of my own. And so I preach in South Bend, Indiana. I travel a lot during the week and I commute often to Phoenix to our headquarters there, overseeing Our team, about 40 staff members, some of the finest colleagues I've ever worked with at TPUSA Faith who are across this country calling on the nation's pastors. And so it was an honor in my life to serve Charlie the last year and a half. And we're ready and willing to keep that vision going, you know, as we move forward.
- [04:49]
Frank Turek
What is the name of your church in South Bend so people can know?
- [04:51]
Lucas Miles
Yeah, so it's called Influence Church. There's no, I in the front. It's just a capital inn. And we have really exploded with this groundswell of growth since Charlie's assassination. I put a 45 foot banner of Charlie Kirk on the outside of the building for the first month or, you know, so. And we went from about 250 people or so to now over 500 that are attending on a regular basis. It's been quite remarkable to see this revival, you know, firsthand, you know, here in a rather blue area in a red state.
- [05:24]
Frank Turek
Yeah, you're right up there near Notre Dame, are you not?
- [05:26]
Lucas Miles
Yeah, we had, we had the regime of Mayor Pete for quite some time in our area. So, yeah, I'm about 10 minutes to campus. Wow.
- [05:34]
Frank Turek
Well, let's talk about paganism. That's kind of a word we don't use much anymore. Let's define our terms. Lukas, what is it? What is paganism?
- [05:41]
Lucas Miles
So paganism on a broad stroke level, I think it'd be fair to say, is any sort of religious practice or path that is trying to look for a connection to the divine outside of the God of the Bible. I think more specifically, people think of it typically in terms of things like Wicca, occults, witchcraft, Druidism, shamanism, sort of these alternative pathways outside of the primary major religions that people typically think about, such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, et cetera. I could make a pretty strong case that Islam is actually a pagan faith, but I don't deal with that quite as much in this book as I do some of these other pathways and what we're seeing, and you kind of alluded to this in your intro and is that these ancient esoteric beliefs are getting incorporated into a Marxist substructure and we're seeing this kind of blending that's happening. And I think ultimately that's leading to this pagan threat that we're talking about.
- [06:43]
Frank Turek
Well, let's deal with that for just a second. The Marxist substructure, this oppressor, oppressed sort of worldview that people have, which I think has polluted enough minds, even the mind of Charlie's alleged killer, to think that anybody who disagreed with him is automatically an oppressor and must die. Where does this come from, this oppressor, oppressed sort of binary that these people put on individuals in society?
- [07:13]
Lucas Miles
Yeah, I think that, you know, obviously we could get way into the weeds and talk about, you know, Marx's, you know, kind of infatuation with a lot of Hegel's ideas and how those shaped, you know, where he went at a basic framework it's what you described. Marxism has within it always an oppressor and oppressed. It comes from Hegel's master slave dialectic. And so for Marx, that was the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat, bourgeoisie being the oppressors, the proletariat being the oppressed, and that it was necessary in order to bring about kind of this socialist utopia that is talked about so much in Marxism that you have to have the oppressed rise up and basically take over and win dominance over the oppressed. But Marxism is not really satisfied with that. The proletarian, the bourgeoisie, was very niche into Marx's geography and period in time. It's expanded since then. And for liberation theologians, it was the rich versus poor. For black liberation theology, which is a mixture of Christianity and Marxism, it was the black Jesus versus the white Jesus. It was the oppressor versus the oppressed. You have things like, I just saw a video today on basically critical fat theory that skinny people are oppressing people who are, you know, have a few extra pounds on them, and they are, you know, basically, you know, collaborating together to make sure that airplane seats won't fit them, and they're trying to oppress them and these sorts of things. We have critical queer theory that it is the straight people are oppressing those who are of an LGBT perspective. And so this is branched out into any time that you can get people to divide over some sort of issue that you're going to have one that's seen as the oppressor and one that's seen as the oppressed. And I think this is driving the division that we see in our society, and it's intentional, because if you can divide society in these terms, what you can do is you can get all these subgroups that see themselves as the minorities or the oppressed, you can get them to kind of band together and then to take over the dominant position. So in this case, Christianity has been the dominant worldview in this nation, really, since our founding. And so now what we're seeing is the Marxists, the pagans, and the LGBT all working together, try to overthrow that.
- [09:39]
Frank Turek
And we're going to see the implications of that right after the break with my guest, Lucas Miles. His brand new book, Pagan Threat Forward by Charlie Kirk, will open your eyes to what's going on and hopefully enable you to reach out to people who may think this way so you can disabuse them of this theory of conflict that is driving the country and people apart. Back in just a couple of minutes. Don't Go anywhere. Welcome back to I Don't have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. With me, Frank Turek on the American Family Radio Network. My guest today, the great Lucas Miles, author of Woke Jesus, but also the brand new book, Pagan Threat Confronting America's Godless Uprising. And just before the break, we were talking about this worldview that comes out of my Marxism, that you're either an oppressor or you're oppressed. This is not a Christian worldview, and it's driving the conflict in our nation. Can you unpack why it's not a Christian worldview? How it opposes Christianity, Lucas. And how it's driving conflict?
- [10:47]
Lucas Miles
Yeah, 100%. And so, first off, thanks for having me on, Frank. Appreciate you. And just all the work that you're doing, you know, when you look at this. So Christianity, we see themes like stewardship, personal responsibility, the work of an individual that, you know, ultimately, when we come before the Lord, you know, we're not coming as a people group, we're coming as an individual based upon whether or not we had a relationship with Christ, a declaration of faith. And ultimately, we're bringing. Not that we're saved by our works, but it is our life that is coming before the Lord as an individual. You can't make that journey with anybody else. I don't get to heaven through anybody else's position. It's me and the Lord, and I have to reconcile my heart to that. When we look at this idea of oppressor versus oppressed, I think a good place to go would be what happened after the death of George Floyd, the rise of blm. There were a lot of Christians, progressive Christians in most cases, who were talking about this issue of that they are being oppressed because of their skin color or their country of origin or their socioeconomic status. And they were essentially saying that there was a form of persecution they were experiencing because of these things. I believe, and I presented that this is actually robbing God of the only thing that we can give him on this side of eternity that we can't give him in heaven. And that is a joyful, faithful response in the face of Christian persecution. If I am being persecuted because I have a certain particular color of skin or a certain socioeconomic status, rather than I'm being persecuted for Christ, then I'm actually taking honor that is due the Lord in that persecution. You know, you take the death and the assassination of Charlie Kirk. If Charlie was killed for being white, if he was killed for, you know, being a Republican, if he was killed because he supported Donald Trump, rather than. He was killed because he was a believer standing up for his faith. We have robbed God of the glory and honor due in his martyrdom, and we've ascribed it instead to some sort of marker on Charlie's life. And it's elevating man over God. We can't give God glory in persecution, in eternity, because there won't be any more persecution, but there's persecution now. And when we take the. When we take the credit for that, for our descriptors rather than for God, I think we are robbing him in that moment.
- [13:05]
Frank Turek
Yes. Well said. And the reason Charlie was conservative, the reason he was supporting the platform of the Republicans, was because of his faith.
- [13:18]
Lucas Miles
Yes.
- [13:19]
Frank Turek
Not the other way around. His faith drove his politics. His politics didn't drive his faith. And I see that too often that too many people have their politics, and then they go look for a faith that supports what they already believe. Politically, that's getting the cart before the horse. That's saying that this world is more important than Jesus, when in fact, Jesus has the proper plan for this world. And it's not aborting your children. It's not mutilating your children. It's not getting rid of all borders. It's not. Not judging people based on their skin color. Yet that's what this particular Marxist ideology does. You know, it started as just economic Marxism. Right. How did it then sort of cascade into all these cultural issues?
- [14:03]
Lucas Miles
Lucas, you know, I think that the whole concept of Marxism is this idea of, you know, driving the expansion of. This is the use of what is known as useful idiots. Right. That you have to find other people, groups that you can kind of rile up, that can join forces with you, that can help you in the same objectives. It's sort of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And so you're seeing these groups that are pro Palestine and pro LGBT that have nothing really in common, or at least in theory from a dogmatic standpoint or a doctrinal standpoint, but yet they'll stand next to each other and support one another because they're both against the same thing. And that is what they view to be the ultimate oppressor. And. And that is Christianity and Jesus Christ. In fact, there was a movement in early feminism. We can see some glimpses of this even before that. But in the late 1800s, into the early 1900s, there was sort of this revived idea that Satan was. Or Lucifer was essentially like a Prometheus in that, you know, not just bringing fire to mankind, but bringing free will to mankind and that he was trying to liberate us from this oppressive creator God. It's sort of a form of gnosticism revived. And it was Satan who was the one who was bringing this. And specifically, he brings this to the woman which gives birth to first wave feminism in the late 1800s. And so we see this idea kind of keep coming to the surface. And ultimately, if you're going to take Marxism to the fullest extent, the most radical extreme, God is the oppressor. Satan or Lucifer is the oppressed. And we need to join forces with him as we try to carry out this human revolt against the divine. And I think ultimately that's what Marxism is.
- [15:49]
Frank Turek
Someone wrote a book called the Long War against God. I can't remember who that was, but that is essentially what you're saying here. And the people that are putting forth this idea now, quite obviously there are oppressors out there, and there are people who are oppressed. But to judge people based on a superficial category they're in, like the color of their skin as they're automatically an oppressor or oppressed. How is that anti Christian? Explain.
- [16:21]
Lucas Miles
Yeah, I think that, you know, we are defined first and foremost by who we are in Christ. I'm not defined by these external metrics. It doesn't. You know, the Bible says that every tongue and every tribe, you know, every people, every nation will be, you know, incorporated into that wedding feast of the lamb, spending eternity with the Lord. And so there is not a distinction between only certain races or that's actually racist to hold that position. And so when we take a position that people are a certain way simply because of their country of origin or the color of their skin, that is, in fact, the definition of what racism is. And we are, you know, we're ascribing to people the very thing that, you know, that we're afraid of being accused of ourselves. I mean, it's. The double speak here is rich with, you know, just deceptive irony. You know, at that moment, you know.
- [17:14]
Frank Turek
I'm reading the first chapter of the book here, the Pagan Threat, and I notice that there seems to be a merging of paganism and Marxism, particularly on the issue of abortion. Yeah, can you unpack that a little bit for us, Lucas?
- [17:28]
Lucas Miles
Yeah. So within one of the tenets of paganism on. And I think this is a pretty broad stroke idea that we see, whether it's in witchcraft or Wiccan or shamanism or something like that, is the idea that everything is sacred. And this is why, you know, when I say pagan threat. The threat is not individual pagans. The threat is an intentional supplanting of the Christian worldview to replace it with a dominant pagan worldview so that Marxist ideas can be accepted. Christianity and Marxism are antithetical to each other. But if you can introduce this pagan worldview as the dominant worldview. Now, Marxism doesn't have the same. There's not the same rough edges on it because moralistically, paganism is much more pliable and flexible to be able to embrace ideas such as killing your child and calling that healthcare. So when it comes to abortion, in fact I quote, there's a Native American activist, kind of Marxist author that I quote in the book. And they refer to both birth and abortion as both being sacred and that you see the sacredness in each of these things and that it's really, you know, we either get to choose life or we choose death. And, you know, Scripture talks about that, condemning the choosing of death. But pagans talk about that as in, both are beautiful and both have the opportunity to participate with the divine. It's a failure to understand the value of human life. And when you see life and death as the same, that might sound great on the Lion King as the circle of life, but. But that is not a moral, biblical, ethical worldview at any level.
- [19:04]
Frank Turek
So Marxism is known as atheistic. Are you saying if you combine it with certain mystical pagan practices, it might be easier to swallow for people that are religiously oriented?
- [19:14]
Lucas Miles
Yeah. So if we think about the Hegelian dialectic, and if we need to, you know, you know, continue this, we can. But you have thesis plus antithesis equals synthesis. That's kind of the equation. So you take the dominant idea, which would be, you know, let's say something like capitalism in after the war. Then you have. You're gonna put what, the opposite of that, the antithesis, which might be, you know, socialism. And then on the other side, you get democratic socialism that we're seeing pushed today. It's gonna take the framework of capitalism and some of the language, but the content, the directives from that antithesis being socialism. So democratic socialism is really just socialism trying to pretend like it's free market. And so the same thing with faith. So you have Christianity being that thesis, that dominant worldview. Then you're going to take the opposite of that, which is Marxism, kind of this anti God, antichrist, godless perspective theory. And then on the other side of that, you're going to get a religious zealous Marxism or religious fundamentalist Marxism. It takes the language of Christianity. So it likes. It likes the ideas such as justice or injustice. It likes the ideas of compassion, it likes the ideas of mercy. It can leverage those to push things like open borders or something like that and tolerance. It'll steal all these things, package them in a way that it looks spiritual, it looks religious, but it's still peddling that same anti God framework.
- [20:47]
Frank Turek
Yeah, that's very interesting because Satan comes as an angel of light. He's going to take things that we like and think are good and stuff those words with different meanings in different formats. So how is that being. Or how is this kind of synthesis between say, Christianity and Marxism, which is really more Marxism than Christianity, although it uses some of the same words. How is that being pushed on young people right now, Lucas?
- [21:16]
Lucas Miles
So, yeah, we're seeing it both in and out of the church. After the death of Charlie, we saw instant revival across the country. It wasn't full of funded. Nobody stood up and said, let's have a revival, guys. Nobody threw millions of dollars at that initially to make it happen. Just all of a sudden that weekend, tons of people showed up to church who don't normally. Tons of people bought Bibles that don't normally do that. And there was just a natural inclination and response of the heart to the Lord. We're not seeing that with paganism. We had people like GK Chesterton who said paganism was dead, but yet we see it revived. And how did it get revived? It got revived because it was funded. It got revived because it was pushed. You start looking at even like, you know, kids cartoons or movies and the ideas of witchcraft, of Wiccan, of things like occultic practices. How many films are pushing this? They have been peddling this for a really long time, funding this, pushing this on children. And they use that kind of, you know, it's known as the Mott and Bailey fallacy. Where you have this area that is Mott and Bailey was an old fortified structure where it had like a village down at the bottom and then this fortified kind of hill on the, on the backside of it. If the villagers were attacked, they could retreat into this fortified area. And so this is a fallacy that people use. So you do something like say the mutilation of a, of a child with transgender surgeries. And then you're going to retreat as soon as somebody accuses you and you're going to call that gender affirming case. They're using this Mott and Bailey back and forth. And that's just one of many ways of doing this.
- [22:49]
Frank Turek
There's many examples of that. Friends, you're being duped. You're being deceived. And the worst part about being deceived is you don't know you're being deceived. So we're going to show you where you're being deceived. Right after the break. We're talking to Lucas Miles. I'm Frank Tuerk. You're listening to I Don't have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Back after the break.
- [23:09]
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- [23:52]
Frank Turek
Welcome to I Don't have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, ladies and gentlemen. Coming up, I want to let you know we'll be at Ohio State October 3rd. Not October 3rd, November 3rd. That's Monday. This coming Monday for if God why Evil? At Q and A honor of Charlie Kirk, then Lord willing, we will be down in Texas doing our unshaken event at Stonebriar Church in Frisco, Texas. That is, I think on the 8th. I'll be speaking at the services on November 9th. Then Lord willing, UC Berkeley was supposed to go there with Charlie. He'll remain in glory. I'll be there with Rob Schneider, that is on November 10th. That's Monday. Then University of Alabama on the 13th of November, I think that's a Thursday. And then Boise State will be on November 20th. Keep an eye on the calendar for all that. They will be live streamed except the Berkeley event. The Berkeley event will come out later. That's run by TP usa, our friends at tpusa. So keep an eye on the calendar for that. Thank you for all your prayers and financial support. We now every time we go to a college campus, instead of $5,000, it's $15,000 because we, we have to bring our own security. So thanks for all the help you can give us. It's a tax deductible donation@crossexamine.org and my guest Lucas Miles. Lucas, we were together at University of Georgia. You have other events coming up where.
- [25:12]
Lucas Miles
You'Re going to be I do. Yeah. I've got. I've got a big event in Phoenix next week that I'll be doing then. I'm also in. I'm in Idaho at University of Iowa or, excuse me, University of Idaho in November. We've also got a couple more stops in. We're in Florida. We're in. Gosh, I'm all over the place. I think Iowa, a few others. So lots of stuff coming up.
- [25:34]
Frank Turek
Where's the calendar? Where can people see?
- [25:36]
Lucas Miles
Yes, you can go to lucasmiles.org and we also announce all of these if it's with turningpoint@tpusafaith.com, definitely follow us on Instagram or other social media platforms and we post the schedules there.
- [25:47]
Frank Turek
So Lucas is doing TP USA events and his own events, and he's doing Prove Me Wrong. In fact, you're going to be with Greg Laurie in Phoenix, aren't you?
- [25:55]
Lucas Miles
Yeah, Greg Laurie with Phoenix at Dream City Church. That'll be a big one next. Next Wednesday.
- [26:00]
Frank Turek
Yeah, November 5th. So if you're anywhere near Phoenix, check that out. I just had the privilege of doing a podcast with Greg on Friday when I was in California. We're going to have him on the show in a couple weeks. He is actually going to Utah and doing a. A crusade there. This was all scheduled before Charlie's murder. He's still going there in mid November. I want to say it's November 17th, so keep an eye on that, ladies and gentlemen, as well. Lucas, before the break, you were talking about a Mott Bailey situation. Go unpack that further. What is that again? We kind of ran up against a break quickly there.
- [26:34]
Lucas Miles
Yeah, always hard to introduce complicated philosophical ideas with a buzzer. So a Mott and Bailey fallacy. It's basically a concept based upon a medieval form of a structure with a fort behind it. And so if you picture what the Bailey was, was essentially kind of like a little village at the bottom of a hill where the houses would be, the homes would be. It's where people spent most of their time. And then if somebody was attacking them, they could retreat back into the Mott. It's M O T T E, which is sort of up the hill with more fortified structure and a more defendable position. And so what this looks like from a. From an argumentation standpoint is the Bailey, the village at the bottom is the more radical perspective. It is the harder to defend portion of the argument. And so if I made a statement like, you know, well, even if you take something like abortion and you say, I believe that it is completely within our rights to dismember a child in the womb and to take their life. Okay, that is a radical statement. But the moment that you start to attack that, they're going to retreat up the hill and they're going to say, no, no, no, I'm just talking about women's health care. That's all I'm referring to. I just saying that I support women's healthcare. So it's a way to kind of have this double speak so that anytime when they're by themselves, when they're kind of pushing this in their own camp, they're advancing these radical ideas, the Bailey. And anytime that they are confronted on that, they're going to retreat back to the mother. So, you know, for instance, we see this from. If we talk about within paganism, we see this with the idea of specifically Earth worship. And so if you read a lot of these radical environmentalists in their own papers, their own books, they will talk about the worship of Gaia, the Earth goddess. They will talk about the symbiotic nature of the entire Earth, that we have to be in the same frequency and the same, you know, kind of in sync with this Earth goddess. And. And the importance of that. There was even one gentleman, I quote, that was referring to how he believes that Covid was this goddess being angered and essentially wiping out a portion of the population to show her disdain with human behavior. But when you start challenging that, they're going to go back to just the environmental scientific language, which is easier to defend that fortified position of, no, this is just global warming we're concerned about, or this is just, you know, some sort of, you know, stewardship for the planet or, you know, what was pushed on Christians for time. No, this is just creation care, you know, and so they're going to have this language that sounds defendable at those moments. And so this is being used to radically advance things forward and then to retreat when they're found out or accused to give this more defensible position.
- [29:26]
Frank Turek
So you're being lied to, essentially.
- [29:28]
Lucas Miles
That's exactly very, very effectively, because the double speak allows them to go back and forth. It's the same thing that we saw in, you know, critical theory in the 60s with Herbert Marcuse, you know, who was kind of a rock star of the critical theory space, and who wrote this paper called Repressive Tolerance. And we hear this word tolerance right from the left all the time. But when they say tolerance, they don't mean tolerance like you, and I mean tolerance. If we say the word tolerance, you mean just a general tolerance towards everybody, the different views. And we just, you know, we're not going to get riled up about this. We're going to allow them to have their opinion and, and celebrate free speech. When the left says tolerance, according to Marcuse, that this tolerance should be a demanding, a silencing on the right of any conservative idea and a celebration of every idea that comes from the left. And so tolerance comes with a unique definition. And we see that Moton Bailey approach, that doublespeak approach, you know, in operation there as well.
- [30:24]
Frank Turek
How does this infiltrate school curricula? Do you know? I mean. Yeah, so kind of idea.
- [30:30]
Lucas Miles
Yeah, so there was, there's probably, I mean, there's several factors here. So another, another player in this space was Paulo Freire, and he was kind of the father of, of critical pedagogy or critical education. And you know, this is not for those maybe new to these terms. We're not talking about critical thinking, which is a good thing. We should all support critical thinking, asking tough questions, you know, working through problems and processes. But critical theory or critical education is education based upon a Marxist framework. And so what they would do and what Freire introduced was this idea that critical pedagogy, you can start this very young by using even like spelling words that are going to start coinciding with later themes you're going to build on. So when critical theory, or excuse me, critical race theory, was being discussed so much in the public square, anytime that a conservative went after it, they would go into that mot and they would say, no, no, no, this is just something taught at law school. This would never be introduced at A K through 12 school. But what they were doing is they were using K through 12, specifically all the way down to younger children. They're giving them a spelling test. And what are the words? Diversity, inclusion, race, you know, division, you know, revolution, conflict. They're giving him words that are going to start tipping the hat and nodding the hat to these later ideas that they're going to introduce as they get older. Of course, they're not teaching a legal critical race theory at a kindergarten level, but they're going to start introducing things that set a framework for slow indoctrination. This Paulo Freire actually talked about this, promoted this idea, and he has read in virtually every single university across this country when, you know, people go to school to become a teacher, they are studying and reading Paulo Freire and his ideas. And these are very much seen in the American education system.
- [32:17]
Frank Turek
Yes, but they're going to say, kids, what are your pronouns? And oh, what's your race? And how many different oppressive qualities do you have? You're oppressed in so many different ways. I mean, why do they always go after the kids? Lucas, why the kids?
- [32:31]
Lucas Miles
Great question. It is because the goal of Marxism is to control the means of production. And yes, that started from an economic standpoint, but the nature of Marxism is that they eat their own. And so what that means is that they will literally, you know, you have that Hegelian dialectic, thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Eventually Marxism becomes the thesis. And once he's the thesis, then you have to get something to oppose him and start, you know, so you have the neo Marxists that come out on the other side of that. They're going to keep pushing. This is why you wake up and you go, 10 years ago, I never thought it would be this bad. And then 10 years later you wake up and you go, 10 years ago, I never thought it would be this bad. You know, because they're going to keep inventing ways of doing, doing evil, pushing this. It is progress for the sake of progress with no destination in mind. As Christians, we are trying to progress as well, but we're trying to progress, to be conformed to the image of Christ. There's a destination in mind, not just progress for progress sake. They're going after the children because ultimately the children are the greatest means of production. It is the reproduction of a civilization through young minds that is the number one commodity that a Marxist wants to control.
- [33:40]
Frank Turek
Now, how are modern pagan values being disguised as, as so called progressive Christianity?
- [33:47]
Lucas Miles
Yeah, so I think that, you know, within, within Christianity we see several things. So I think a way that soft paganism kind of worked its way into the church was through the Enneagram. This was something that was, that was introduced. The Enneagram is a, you know, presented as, again, kind of a personality profile or test. That's the, that's the Mott side of the argument for it. It's really when you talk to the founder, the founders on YouTube describing this himself, saying that the Enneagram, he received this information about these various personalities through what he called automatic writing. Basically a spirit guide taking his hand and controlling him and spitting out these dominant personalities on the other side of that. And now we have Christian pastors that are Enneagram coaches pushing this on their people. I think we see this too in some camps. I think some of the intercession, or maybe even some of the more radical charismatic camps. This is not an anti gifts of the spirit statement when I say this, but I think that there are groups that have, you know, gotten into witchcraft in order to fight what they believe are evil spirits. I had somebody I talked to here recently that was concerned that somebody had put a hex on them or some sort of spell on them from a demonic standpoint or witchcraft standpoint. They were a Christian themselves and so they felt like they needed to go find somebody to undo this spell. And I said, well, it sounds like you're talking about dark magic was performed on you and so you're going to look for somebody to perform white magic to get rid of it. You know, all you need is Jesus Christ.
- [35:12]
Frank Turek
Thank you, Gandalf.
- [35:13]
Lucas Miles
Yeah, exactly. Like if Jesus broke the curse of sin and death on the cross, then certainly any other hex or spell that might be thrown at a believer, no weapon formed against. So instead we should just be quoting the word and you know, and you know, allowing just the word of God to protect us and cover us, be that front and rear guard. And so Christians, I think without even realizing it, get sucked into kind of this culture in, sometimes in a reactionary response to things that paganism is throwing at them.
- [35:42]
Frank Turek
How about the progressive part of it? You got progressive Christians who are denying the authority of the Bible, denying atonement, denying Jesus is the only way, of course, denying the sexual prescriptions of the Bible. How does that fit in here?
- [35:57]
Lucas Miles
You know, I just made a video earlier today responding to Brandon Robertson, who's a well known, quote unquote progressive Christian Christian. And he was, he was responding to another pastor himself who made the claim that, that the Bible, you know, the original claim this pastor made was that the Bible condemns all sexual encounters outside of the marriage bed. And then he.
- [36:22]
Frank Turek
Hold the thought, hold the thought. Because we're going to unpack that after the break and we're also going to get to, we're also going to get to. What can you do about it? We don't want it to be all bad news. The book Pagan Threat will help you do something about it. We're going to give you some ideas after the break. After we unpack what Lucas was just bringing up. You're listening. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. The book is Pagan Threat by Lucas Miles. My guest today, Forward by Charlie Kirk. Right after the break. We'll be back. I'm talking to my friend Lucas Miles. His brand new book Pagan Threat Confronting America's Godless Uprising. And of course, what you can do about it Just before the break, Lucas, we were talking about a, a video that you were critiquing. Why don't you just retell the story and take it from there? Yeah.
- [37:14]
Lucas Miles
So there's a pastor who made a video that, that went fairly viral talking about how the Bible condemns all sexual activity outside of the marriage bed, which I think is a pretty orthodox Christian perspective. And so this progressive Christian responds to that, Brandon Robertson, and he makes the statement that, well, this is actually not true, that because of a mistranslation in the 1611 King James Bible where the word, the Greek word porneia was mistranslated as fornication, that this created this confusion. But really the word, what it means is prostitution.
- [37:52]
Frank Turek
Okay.
- [37:53]
Lucas Miles
And so he's making the case that this word is not referring to just a blanket sexual immorality or fornication, but it's referring specifically to prostitution. Now that sounds great if you're a critical theorist or a progressive Christian. I mean, look, hang my hat on that. But when you read that in context, the passages. So Matthew, was it 5, I think 32, where Jesus talks about divorce. He says that, you know, that divorce is only. Essentially the teaching there is that divorce is only allowed in the instance of. And the word is porneia. And what is translated commonly sexual immorality or fornication. Basically, if somebody violates the marriage bed, the spouse who did not violate the marriage bed has the right, if they choose to be able to, from a Christian vantage point, divorce their spouse. Now, I would say if they can work that out, they're better blessed if they can see reconciliation. But Jesus gives that permission. And so if you insert Brannon's definition there of prostitution, it doesn't make sense. It's a super niche thing, takes the context out of the passage. And so again, it's this double speak. They're going to play with words. They're going to try to tell you that the Greek definition's off, that none of this stuff is accurate in these things because they're literally taking kind of a black Sharpie marker and have to kind of cross out certain Bible passages in order to make their theology stand. And I think that is definitely a position of weakness. And progressive Christianity, I think it's important that people know this is a brand new invention we're talking about. It has, you know, less than 100 years of theological stance behind it, if not even several decades, you know, at a minimum, where people are making these claims versus the 2000 years of Christian orthodoxy that we have that has taken the position opposed to what we're seeing presented by progressive Christianity.
- [39:44]
Frank Turek
You know, the question I often ask nonbelievers is if Christianity were true, would you become a Christian? For somebody like this who claims to be a progressive Christian, I might ask such a person, if Jesus wanted you to live a chaste life, would you obey him? Yeah. And I suspect the answer is no. I suspect the answer is no. My God is my sexuality.
- [40:05]
Lucas Miles
Yeah. And I think that's what we see. It's the holy trinity. Right of the left is that diversity, equity, inclusion. And I think that I've made the point before that their form of worship is sexuality, Their cathedral is the environment. And I think that it is a deception across every level. But unfortunately, through TikTok and through these quick platforms, a lot of young people are falling for this. These viral videos are very convincing. And if you're not actually doing the study and the research yourself, you could fall into a lot of deception.
- [40:41]
Frank Turek
Give us some good news, Lucas. What does the book Pagan threat tell us to do? Or what advice would you give us to sort of turn people back to the truth?
- [40:51]
Lucas Miles
Well, look, I think your audience especially will be familiar with this term is that we need a new apology. We need a new apologetic for this time period. Christianity won over pagan Rome because of the apologies of people like Justin Martyr and Jerome, offering a defense of the faith and, you know, really combating some of the accusations against Christianity. For the first time, really in virtually almost 2,000 years, we are seeing the church vilified for taking a righteous stand. In the past, Hollywood would have condemned the church of being holier than thou or goody two shoes or something like that. Now we're being called racist and bigoted. As a result, we need a new apology. How are we going to do that? I think we have to return to primary doctrine. So I have a seven step plan at the end of this book. Essentially, we return to primary doctrine. We unify around the truths of the major tenants of Christianity. We refuse to divide over secondary positions. I think we need to revisit, really to ramp up our work in evangelism. It's easier than ever to do evangelism today. All I gotta do is pick up my cell phone, walk down to the street corner and say, hey, I make content for social media. Can I ask you a couple questions about spirituality? And next thing you know, I'm talking to somebody about Jesus and able to share it with the world when I'm done. I think that we have to recognize the average age of a pastor in America is 57 means that some of the places where young people are congregating are become harder and harder for pastors to be able to reach. It's college campuses, you know, high school cafeterias, it's chat rooms, online discord channels, TikTok lives, X spaces, you know, gaming chat rooms. These all become very difficult to access. And so we need an intentional strategy that incorporates technology to reach this next generation. This is the COVID generation. They were birthed in isolation. They missed their proms, they missed dating, they missed hanging out with friends. They were, you know, they grew up in their mom's basement, and a lot of them haven't left there. We have to think strategically to be able to reach them. These are people that have been, in many cases, embedded online, especially those that are probably the most fragile. And we have to figure out how to use the Internet, I think, to be able to go where they are and be all things, all people, to reach them with the gospel.
- [42:59]
Frank Turek
Can you give me some of the essentials that you think are primary doctrine that we're, you know, if you don't agree with this, you're not part of what we would call historic orthodox Christianity.
- [43:09]
Lucas Miles
I would point people to say something like the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed. They're going to introduce ideas of God as the Creator, Jesus is Lord, the Trinity, heaven and hell, things like the return of Christ, depravity of man, salvation by grace through faith, the Trinity, if I didn't say that, and, you know, virgin birth. These are primary doctrines. Now what's happening is, you know, Christians are, you know, generally kind of going, oh, yeah, yeah. And then we're fighting over secondary positions. If somebody holds to primary doctrines of Christianity, they are a believer. They are assuming that they're genuine in their position. They are. They are a believer. If they are, have put their faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, they're saved, and we should treat them as a brother or sister in Christ. But we are seeing way too much fighting, and the left is getting these minority positions, and they're banding together against us and against conservatism. On the right, we're seeing differences that we have on a secondary level, differences of spiritual gifts, views of women in leadership, once saved, always saved versus losing your salvation. I can debate those biblically. I have strong positions on all of those things that I'm going to teach at my local church. But when it comes outside of the four walls of my local church, if another believer has a different position and they are unified, the authority of The Word, the lordship of Jesus, the Trinity, heaven and hell, the. They recognize the dangers of Marxism and paganism and Islam. I'm going to stand united with them despite any secondary differences that I have, rather than backbiting and beating each other up over this. Because if we don't, we are just. We're only as strong, you know, we're a body trying to operate as individual parts, and we're not near as strong as we could be if we actually work together.
- [44:44]
Frank Turek
I know you can't speak for everybody at tpusa, but one thing I've heard about TPUSA is people will say, well, the tent's too big. You got people in there, you know, who don't. Who don't align as Christians. How would you respond to that?
- [44:55]
Lucas Miles
So I think it's important to understand the difference, first of all, between, you know, Turning Point USA and TPUSA Faith. So Turning Point usa, it really exists to, you know, to spread conservative values across the American people. And it is, you know, very focused on this next generation, college campuses, high schools, et cetera. And it is big ten. Charlie was always big ten in that way. I want to see everybody vote conservative. I don't care if whether they're sexuality, their religion, anything like that. I want to see conservative ideas move forward in this nation because that's how we win, ultimately win back our country. But when it comes to Christianity, TPUSA Faith is exclusively a Christian arm of this organization that is focused on the church. Born again believers. My whole staff are born again believers that work at TPUSA Faith. But we still have to be somewhat broader tent across Christianity. We're not going to allow ideas that aren't Christian to take the stage, you know, at any sort of, you know, dominant position at a TPUSA Faith event. But we are going to allow people that hold different secondary positions to be able to stand up together, even though there might be differences that we can debate over a cup of coffee. We're going to celebrate the fact that we are unified in Christ and we're going to circle the wagon in that way to stand strong together. There's a lot of people that want to stand on the outside that try to be heresy hunters and doctrine police that are going to criticize us about certain people that we platform because they don't understand actually what we're trying to do and they don't actually understand what's at stake. They still think that this is a church or a local church. TPA Faith is not a local church. It's A gathering of pastors, really, from across the nation coming together. Think of it more like a, A, you know, digital council of Nicaea or an ongoing council of Nicaea. We're gathering these people together. There's going to be different ideas that are there, but we want everybody in the room because that's where we're going to work the, these ideas out. And ultimately we want to see the church stand strong, unified, and if we're actually going to have a chance of pushing back paganism, Islamicists, Marxists, et cetera in this country.
- [46:53]
Frank Turek
How has TPUSA faith changed since Charlie has been murdered in terms of its growth? Lucas?
- [46:58]
Lucas Miles
You know, I think in some ways everything has changed, and in other ways nothing has changed. And what I mean by that is this. Charlie, he gathered around himself gladiators. He put people in place that he found from all across this nation that had the same heart that he did for building, for expanding this message, for getting in the trenches and working these things out. And he had a roadmap that he drilled into us that we've been able to continue to follow in his absence. I don't think we realized that Charlie was preparing us for this moment, but I think in many ways, even if Charlie didn't realize it, that he was preparing us for this moment. And so we are in a great place as an organization. With that said, obviously, we're doing what we're doing through the lens of tremendous grief. This is unimaginable what has happened here with the assassination of martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. But there has been such a groundswell of support and just revival that is taking place across this nation. We've doubled our number of pastors that we're working with. We just recently had 200,000 plus what we call faith IDs, basically new people writing us in, new individuals writing us saying they want to get more connected with what we're doing. After the memorial. We are, you know, our courses are. That we offer free courses. We have a course called. You have a course with us. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist with. We have our first truths course. We have a new course on Islam we just recorded. These courses are exploding. Churches are sharing them and viewing them within their church, using them for small groups and main sessions and everything else. The interest is exploding. And I'll tell you what, we're going to ensure that Charlie did not die in vain and this mission is continued. And Charlie would want us to get back to work. That's exactly what we've done. And we got a lot of work to do.
- [48:36]
Frank Turek
Amen. Great stuff, Lucas. The book is called Pagan Threat. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, you need to get a copy. As you can see, Lucas is very articulate, and he's spot on in so many of these issues. Thanks, Lucas.
- [48:45]
Lucas Miles
Thank you.
- [48:46]
Frank Turek
That's Lucas Miles.
- [48:47]
Lucas Miles
Check him out.
- [48:48]
Frank Turek
Also@lucasmiles.org org lucasmiles.org you'll see him on the road as well, and it's been great being with your friends. We'll see you at Ohio State on Monday night. Lord willing. God bless.
- [49:04]
Radio Announcer
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