Jay Dyer vs Jake Brancatella: Islam Or Christianity Which Is Best for Society? MDD Debate

Summary

Jay'sAnalysis — Debate Summary
Jay Dyer vs Jake Brancatella: Islam or Christianity — Which Is Best for Society?
Date: August 7, 2026

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Main Theme

This episode features a high-level debate between Jay Dyer, Orthodox Christian author and cultural commentator, and Jake Brancatella, prominent Islamic apologist. Moderated by James from Modern Day Debate, the core question is: “Which is best for society—Islam or Christianity?” The focus is on historical effectiveness, societal order, and doctrinal clarity, with both participants delving into theology, social policy, and the practical outcomes of Christian and Islamic civilizations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Opening Statements

Jay Dyer (03:32–14:38)

• Presents Byzantine (Orthodox Christian) civilization as the “most successful Christian civilization in world history” and credits its success to its legal and social innovations rooted in biblical law and tradition.
• Argues Christianity uniquely introduced social protections for underclasses, especially women and war captives (e.g., Deuteronomy 21).
• Notes Western achievements (universities, hospitals, technology) as emergent from Christian principles.
• Contrasts Trinitarian Christianity (emphasizing love, immanence, and transcendence of God) with Islam’s “master/slave” theology.
• Criticizes the Qur’an’s approach to war captives (Qur’an 4:24) as granting fewer protections.
• Credits Christian society for forbidding usury and blames currency debasement and usury for Byzantium’s downfall.
• Asserts even the “golden age” of Islam was a product of appropriating Greek philosophy, itself part of Christian-Western intellectual tradition.

“In the Christian conception of society, there is the honor and duty that we owe to God and that forms the basis of the law in the society. And the church becomes that foundation.” — Jay Dyer (17:30)

Jake Brancatella (20:20–31:55)

• Acknowledges Jay’s historical framing but insists the debate is about practical social benefit, not abstract truth.
• Criticizes Christianity for lacking a clear, revealed social order or explicit doctrine of governance—citing the New Testament’s lack of legal code and Jesus declining to be a judge (Luke 12).
• Argues Christian historical states borrowed their law and order from pagan Rome, with Byzantium merely a “baptized Rome.”
• Elevates Islam for offering a total system: contracts, inheritance, mandatory poor tax (zakat)—all from revelation.
• Points to the persistent retention and demographic strength of Islam globally, versus “museum‐piece” Christian polities (no remaining Orthodox monarchies).
• Cites Orthodox canon law’s ambiguity on the state’s relationship to killing in war, as evidence for the church-state divide.
• Spotlights successes: alcohol prohibition & social order in Muslim societies; “highest religious retention on earth.”

“Islam offers society a revealed order, a living history and measurable results, and Orthodoxy on all three counts offers none.” — Jake Brancatella (21:38)

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2. Rebuttals (Five Minutes Each)

Jay Dyer (33:04–38:09)

• Emphasizes Christianity’s historical record of theocratic or monarchic structures, denying that early Christian debates on state involvement demonstrate a lack of doctrine.
• Highlights Romans 13 and the longstanding “symphonia” (dual authority of church and state) as core to both east and west until modern revolutions.
• Argues that bad rulers/tyrants are a universal, not confessional, problem—not evidence of religious failure.
• Maintains that most of the social order built by Christian civilization is directly traceable to biblical and early church principles.

“The authority for the temporal realm comes from the spiritual. The church is not apolitical, it’s separate. There’s a division of spheres.” — Jay Dyer (33:18)

Jake Brancatella (38:22–43:29)

• Quotes Christian critics (Michael Jones): “Christianity is not a political system or a culture. When you try to weaponize Christianity to be something it was never intended to be, you will always lose.”
• Argues Reformation and Protestant individualism naturally led to Protestant and then liberal separation of church and state.
• Raises the centrality of Old Testament (not New) in Dyer’s arguments, suggesting Christ did not intend to restore Mosaic political order.

“A lot of what Jay is saying is coming from the Old Testament, not the New Testament. The question is why? Why didn’t Christ re-establish that?” — Jake Brancatella (41:57)

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3. Open Dialogue (43:42–93:41)

Major Concepts Explored

Historical Arc of Christian Civilization

• Jay: Early church focus wasn’t politics due to Roman persecution, but when Christianized, principles were applied (prophecies, church fathers—Clement, Athanasius).
• Protestants’ sola scriptura and individual interpretation led, over time, to collapse of unified Christian politics.

Symphonia & Governance

• “For over a thousand years…really no dissension amongst significant groups east and west in this principle of Symphonia. … Two heads—spiritual and temporal—they work in harmony as the same body.” — Jay Dyer (53:23)

Lack of Christian Unity Today

• Jake: Today’s Christians overwhelmingly do not support a theocratic or monarchist vision—practical implication is a lack of implementation or viability.
• Jay: Argumentum ad populum; historical presence of idea matters more than current popularity.

Relevance of Canon Law, Old Testament, & New Testament

• Jay: The Deuterocanon (Sirach, etc.) and Old Testament were always regarded as sources of guidance for Christian rulers.
• Jake: If so, why is the New Testament so ambiguous?

Can States Be “Christian” Now?

• Jay: The U.S. is “half-Christian”—mixed with Enlightenment values.
• Practical restoration not necessary to prove superiority: “The first three centuries conquered the Roman Empire and those prophecies were fulfilled. There’s no reason why it couldn’t happen again.” (80:26)
• Present lack of Christian monarchies does not preclude returning to such a system in the future.

Christian Resistance/Rebellion

• Christians should obey authorities unless commanded to violate God’s law (idolatry, etc). Revolution possible in instances of severe tyranny and a Christian majority.

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4. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Jay Dyer on Church-State partnership:

  “There is a division of spheres … That’s unfortunately one of the mistakes of the Enlightenment and the Protestant Reformation.” (33:11)

• Jake Brancatella on Islam’s revealed social order:

  “Our Prophet … did not merely preach a society, he governed one in Medina under a written constitution with revealed law covering family, contracts, crime, and a mandatory tax for the poor.” (23:18)

• On Scriptural clarity and rebellion:

  “So you have a case in which it’s supposedly legitimate [war], and yet in St. Basil’s canon, it explicitly says that they’re not clean in the sense that they can’t take communion.” — Jake (67:57) “It’s simply a sort of a penance that’s restorative. It has nothing to do with saying like, you’re excommunicated from the Church.” — Jay (68:24)

• On submission to rulers:

  “Paul still calls Nero … a providential, ordained ruler of God. So that means that there’s a duty, and his duty specifically is outlined there in Romans 13, to punish evildoers with the sword…” — Jay (83:41)

• On the cause of Western liberalism:

  “Secular liberalism comes pretty much out of the Protestant movement, not immediately, but eventually leads to that. And I think that it’s very clearly the case that it’s because there is a lack of clarity regarding church government and the government structure that is supposed to be in place…” — Jake (101:45)

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5. Audience Q&A Highlights (108:02–129:41)

• Q: Are Mosaic Law–style solutions the answer to social decay?
  • Jake: Yes, most people are not equipped to decide for themselves, so society needs “enforced by the state” religious law. (109:18)
• Q: On why Muslims immigrate to the West if Islam is superior.
  • Jake: “One reason is because supposed Christian nations like the US keep bombing the crap out of Muslim nations.... I left the US to live in a Muslim country.” (114:26)
• Q: Slavery and Christian ethics.
  • Jake: Slavery isn’t unjust in every condition; abolition is only good if you have that prior assumption. (127:16)
• Q: Liberal Muslims in U.S. politics.
  • Jake: “There’s hardly any of them and they’re all phonies.... Democrats promise [Muslims]... as long as they can have their mosque and do whatever they want. That’s the reasoning, but I don’t agree with it at all.” (115:58/128:13)
• Q: Are Islamic countries ideal models?
  • Jake: None fully implement Islamic law, but Gulf states are closer.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Description / Key Topic | Speaker(s) | |-------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------| | 01:00–03:32 | Moderator introduction & debate setup | Moderator | | 03:32–14:38 | Jay’s opening statement: Byzantine model, biblical justice, etc. | Jay Dyer | | 20:20–31:55 | Jake’s opening: revealed order, Christianity’s lack of governance | Jake Brancatella | | 33:04–38:09 | Jay’s rebuttal: historical continuity, not proof of failure | Jay Dyer | | 38:22–43:29 | Jake’s rebuttal: Protestantism/individualism & politics | Jake Brancatella | | 43:42–93:41 | Open dialogue: deep historical/theological discussion | Both | | 95:42–101:16| Jay’s closing: ambiguity isn’t proof, potential for restoration | Jay Dyer | | 101:31–106:40| Jake’s closing: Islam clearly political, practical superiority | Jake Brancatella | | 108:02–129:41| Audience Q&A: governance, ethics, demographics | Both |

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Summary & Takeaways

• Christianity (Jay Dyer): Proposes a sophisticated, historically proven system (Byzantium) where church and state work in “symphonia,” shaping just law, social welfare, and advancements in science and culture. Admits historical complexity, but sees potential for restoration of Christian order. Sees Trinitarian theology and love as unique social goods.
• Islam (Jake Brancatella): Praises Islam’s revealed, detailed, and durable social order as superior for producing sustainable families, sobriety, charity, and continuity of faith. Attributes collapse of Christian polities and rise of secularism to Christianity’s ambiguity on statecraft; offers Islam as the only doctrinally clear, empirically successful alternative.
• Overarching Dynamic: The debate hinges not on which religion is “true,” but which is historically and doctrinally better equipped to guide society for the common good, with both pointing to rival golden ages, scriptural mandates, and contemporary outcomes.

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For Listeners:
This debate is for anyone interested in the philosophical, historical, and practical ramifications of religious social orders. Both Jay Dyer and Jake Brancatella engage with intellectual rigor and challenge both sides’ assumptions, providing a rich exploration of Christianity and Islam’s roles in shaping civilization.

If you want timestamps or detail for any sub-section of the debate, let me know.

Transcript

[Jake Brancatella]

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[Jake Brancatella]

You think that your position is a minority view held amongst Christians today?

[Jay Dyer]

You know when Solomon has the two hoes and he, you know, does that wise thing where he tests the hoes and then he says, okay, now we know who the real mom is, right?

[Jake Brancatella]

He mentioned about usury. I think that's a point we can agree on. And there's another party that I don't know, sometimes we can't say their names, but I think they're largely responsible for that.

[Jay Dyer]

Nigerians.

[Jake Brancatella]

What's that?

[Jay Dyer]

Nigerians.

[Jake Brancatella]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jay Dyer]

He's applying the principle of of the law to the 304s and the thoughts T H o T that's Old Testament thought.

[Moderator (James)]

Special thanks to our sponsor Maine First Project. Fighting to put Mainers first. Check out main first project.org Huge thanks to Revival of the Anointed's rule Equipping Christians to fight for biblical values through policy victories. Check out revivethero.org our next speaker is an author and cultural commentator known for his extraordinary intellectual range, sharp wit and aggressive debate style. He's been on prominent platforms including Tucker Carlson and Tim Cassire all. Please join me in welcoming Jay Dyer. And returning to the stage. But before I do that, one really quick PSA is just to be sure because I don't want it to happen to anybody. If you have anything in your car, anything that's sitting out, go right now and just make sure it's not sitting out. As there was a. Somebody apparently has someone bright break into their vehicle earlier today. So even during the day, if you do have something sitting out on a seat or something, go now and you'll still be back on time. Introducing next, Jake is returning to the stage. Yeah, sorry, a little bit out of order. Jake Brancatella is a formidable Islamic apologist prepared to defend Islam's Broader visions for society. Please join me in welcoming Jake Brancatel. With that, we're going to jump right into it. Thanks for being here, folks. And I've got the timer set for you. Jay, the floor is all yours.

[Jay Dyer]

Oh, sorry.

[Moderator (James)]

Thank you so much. One last thing, and this gives those people that went out to their car a little bit of time, is these events are only possible thanks to sponsors, including Main first, but also roar. So I do want to welcome Mike from roar, as they make these events possible. Thank you so much for being with us, Mike.

[Mike Lefebvre (ROAR CEO)]

Thanks, James. You need me to stall? I appreciate that.

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[Mike Lefebvre (ROAR CEO)]

My name is Mike Lefebvre. I'm the founder and CEO of roar. I'll tell you just a little bit about that in just a second. But first, I want to say this is roar's launch party. I chose this to launch our organization, and it has been a long road, both figuratively and literally, to get here today. And I'm sure many of you can relate to that statement. And I just want to thank our God, Jesus Christ, for getting us all here today.

[Jay Dyer]

Appreciate that.

[Mike Lefebvre (ROAR CEO)]

So here. Here's a big problem. More than 35 million Christians don't vote in elections. Millions more Christians vote the wrong way against their own biblical values in elections. Rohr thinks that's a problem. We need to unite Christians voting together. ROAR is going across the country, one congregation at a time, making the case that it's a biblical mandate to get involved in government, civics, politics. I need your guys's help. I need volunteers, I need church invites, and I need donations. You can find me in the back, or if you're watching online, you can find me at ReviveTheror app. That's ReviveTherar app. Thank you guys so much. Let's get this thing going.

[Moderator (James)]

Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it, buddy. Indeed we will. With Jay. Your opening timer or opening statement? Timer is set. I'll start it on your first word.

[Jay Dyer]

I noticed my friend here came in his pajamas, but so did I. I'm just kidding, Jake. Jay gave me his book. I looked through it. I'm already Muslim, so debate's over. I give up. He convinced me, dude. All right, what's up, Texas? It is Sunday, 2005. We'll be live in the next four hours. That's Alex Jones. All right, Deuteronomy 21. We're going to go back to an area that you probably wouldn't expect, because usually we think of civilization as this political philosophy, this idea that whatever. No, actually, Western civilization, our civilization, including the civilization that I'm going to harken back to which is the model Christian civilization in my view Byzantium, the continuation of the Roman Empire. We're going to look at that, see how it was successful in what ways the Christian Imperium lasted as the longest Christian civilization and the most successful civilization in world history. If we go back to Deuteronomy and the Mosaic law, we have laws of warfare. The this is the first time as far as we know in ancient Near Eastern civilization that laws were introduced that protected what's going on everyone?

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[Jay Dyer]

captives amongst the slave class or captives amongst war. These laws gave a new level of protection that underclass or that women or that others did not have. Prior to that. Prior to that the typical attitude was that these were in a state of slavery. And so now we have a new introduction that the husband of these in in the situation if he would like to marry, he must marry and give legal status to captives warfare. The passage that is used here to protect these girls is the Hebrew word that signifies them as isha or young, that is young girl. So here we have for the first time the protection of the youth in the ancient world through mosaic law. Deuteronomy 21 this passage and no other passage. This passage does not allow for rape. In fact it forbids rape. And all other passages that discuss the possibility of rape are also explicit in condemnation in the Torah and in the Old Testament in numbers 31, which is a passage often cited by Muslims and other whose others who critique this. There's nothing said about sexuality in this passage. In fact, the Context is numbers 25 that a Moabite or a Midianite person was to be not allowed in because of the previous warfare that the Israelites had engaged against them for enticing them to worship BAAL and to commit orgies. But since these were not that generation, this next generation was to be protected. And you spared the virgins. They could then become members of the covenant community. You raised them and then at a certain age, you could marry them. This did not allow for rape. In fact, rape is forbidden. Deuteronomy 21:10-14, you are not allowed to defile the girls. And then later on, they are women in the Numbers and Deuteronomy palace. So in other words, it goes from young girls to, as they become older, they become members of the covenant community. They have certain legality and protection. Now, that is totally contrary to the typical attitude that we have amongst Muslim critics of the Old Testament, particularly the passages in Numbers, in Deuteronomy that are often cited, they're actually the opposite. The beginning of the protection all classes of society. As we get into modern civilization, we look back to our precedence, our heritage. That is Roman law, that is common law, that is biblical law, that is canon law. All of these legal traditions have an important crucial history when it comes to forming the society in the order that we have. Certainly I do not agree with every aspect of postmodern or even post Enlightenment society. The Enlightenment certainly had some good critiques of its previous papal civilization. But prior to that, there is the unknown imperium again of Byzantium. When the Christian Church was founded, the Christian Church was a tiny group that believed that it was the fulfillment of everything that Old Testament religion was pointing to. The Old Testament bequeathed to it, not just the general law of the Ten Commandments, but many other principles, including the notion of not just civil law that's based around the deity, but also canonical law or church law. Church law, for example, in the west began to give the accused rights. We might hear or think about the Inquisition. And although I don't agree with everything to do with the Roman Catholic Church, there's sometimes a bad attitude is given towards the Inquisition because we think of only the bad things. But actually, one of the things that the Inquisition introduced based on Biblical principles, was the idea of the rights of the accused, was the idea of defense of the accused. So a lot of the great heritage that we have in Western tradition does come from, again, not just Christian civilization, not just biblical texts, but also many examples of the appropriation and application of those principles. It's not just the legal realm and the realm of duties and obligations, etc. Or protecting those that might be a lower class. We also have the notion of universities, the notion of hospitals, the notion of advancements in technology, which no other Civilization or society was able to achieve like we have achieved. Again, certainly we have gone off in a wrong direction. But to blame that on Christianity, as I suspect some will do, I don't know, is in fact false. In other words, we can look at many religious societies in Islamic countries who were formerly dedicated to the principles of Islam and also took a secularizing or a liberalizing journey. Interestingly, many of the countries that are Islamic that went in a secularizing, industrializing pathway actually became monetarily successful. Other countries remained and are noted by many of the features that I'm sure everybody remembers. The Andrew versus Daniel Hakikaju debate, that's kind of a classic that highlighted a lot of the moral failures and features of a lot of Islamic society. I'm not going to rehearse that debate. I think everybody remembers that. So you have that in kind of in your mind. I want to focus on the other aspects that I think are also crucial kill shots for the attempt at thinking that Islamic society is some goal or some beneficial, better position. When we talk about what's the good or, or how would we judge between Christianity, in my view, orthodox Christianity being more advantageous to society versus Islam, I think we have to first of all think about what the good is. When we think about the type of deity that we have in Christianity, which is the focal point. Right. We have, for example, the idea of the balance of the one and the many. Of course, Jake does not like the Trinity, but he has the same problem, as we've highlighted in our previous debates, that when he tries to harmonize the 99 ontologies of Allah with the singular, singular essence of Allah, he's got the same metaphysical problem for us. We don't actually think that God being one and three is a problem. In fact, this becomes the pattern and the principle not just for church governance with bishops and many people. Also though, for the governance of society. Many orthodox theologians have pointed out that the idea of the imperium, many nations united by one faith, was the glue that held, that held the greatest civilization together in history, namely Byzantium. Byzantium was founded around the code of Saint Justinian, one of the great emperor saints. And the Saint Justinian was noted for shutting down many of the pagan philosophical academies. When those academies were shut down, particularly the Platonic academies, they were able to apply Aristotelian principles, not in toto, but many Aristotelian practical philosophical principles to the Eastern Roman imperium or Byzantium, to again create the most successful empire in world history. We're talking About a thousand plus years of thriving and surviving. We're talking about the greatest monetary policy in world history until they begin to money clip. Okay, Money clipping. I think you know what I'm talking

[Audience Member / Questioner]

about

[Jay Dyer]

debasing the currency, right? And I think again, that's just one ethical principle that we could think of. Christian society forbade usury prior to that. Now, granted, I think Islam would also agree with that. But the point here is that what actually began the unraveling of Byzantium was in fact the principles of monetary debasement, usury, and then opening the door to Islam that led to the collapse of Byzantium. Islam began to have what some have called a golden age. And this was what would characterize the rise of the Ottomans. Now, since the Ottoman decline, when the British Empire became the next successful world empire, the Islamic world has tended. I'm not saying that they all agree, but they've tended to speak of a decline and a desire to return to this golden age. And certainly we could say, well, Jay, don't you also think that there's a Byzantine golden age? I don't think that we can ever rebuild something from the past. The famous historian Oswald Spengler, philosopher history, noted that you can never recreate a past civilization, but you can build on what is there, standing on the shoulders of giants. And so I would say that the key point that we have lost in the west is probably something that he and I would agree on, the transcendent. The idea that law and society do have to be arranged around the transcendental idea of a God or of a deity. However, if that deity is a deity, that as the Quran says in multiple places, that he is the greatest of deceivers, that's probably not going to be good for society. In Christianity, we have a different idea of who God is. God is not just a single Unitarian, unknowable deity, unlike anything in the world, but he is rather one of us in the sense of becoming incarnate. He's not only one of us, but he's imminent and he's transcendent. He also gives us practical living, practical ways to understand and to know and to love people. And so love becomes a very crucial feature that is not really present in the Islamic ethos. I am not saying in some hippie, dippy sense that we base society upon just love, bro. No, I'm saying that we base it around what the Bible and the principles of the church say love is, which is the Ten Commandments and which is to guard those who are the weak, those who are our children, those who are our progeny. But in Quran 4:24, which is a passage not abrogated, we have the statement that you may take those in captivity amongst the women that which your right hand possesses. This is a very famous phrase. It's discussed many, many times by many Islamic scholars. And the hadiths also explain that what this means, and it has not been abrogated, is that in many cases you are obliged to marry, but in some cases, if it's a war captive, you can sex them up, right? That doesn't sound like the same ethic. It doesn't sound like the same deity. And remember the passages in Deuteronomy 21 and Numbers 31. We're not advocating for sexual license and grape with those captives. In fact, it is the opposite. You shall not sell her for money is in fact what it says. Now. How many? 30 seconds. And so what I think we want to see is that in the Islamic conception of God and society, it is a master slave relationship. In the Christian conception of society, there is the honor and duty that we owe to God and that forms the basis of the law in the society. And the church becomes that foundation. And in Islamic civilization, you'll find out that all of the great philosophy and the ideas are actually cribbed from the Greeks, which is actually part of Western civilization.

[Moderator (James)]

Thank you very much for that opening. Jake will give you the same 12 and a half minutes and the timer is set for you on your first word. I'll start it.

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[Jake Brancatella]

All right, thanks. I'm back here again and I'm definitely outnumbered as usual, but it's fine. I have no problem with it. I actually appreciate a lot of what Jay had to say regarding Christianity, but unfortunately, I don't think that the biblical text supports this position, and I don't think that many people in the audience would. But we'll see. Anyway, tonight's question is not which religion is true. Jay and I can debate that another night, and we've kind of debated that in another circumstance. Tonight's question is practical, which faith is better for society? And Jay has already told us how to decide it. I'm going to quote some of the things from his previous videos. In his own lecture on this subject, he said the whole matter comes down to one thing. Where there is, quote, a revealed doctrine of governance or not. Whether there is or not a revealed doctrine, I accept his standard completely. So hold both of us to it tonight and let me propose how we measure the results. A society is doing well when families hold together, when its people are sober, when the poor are provided for, when children are actually born, and when the faith of their fathers actually reaches the sons. Family, sobriety, charity, continuity, transmission. If Jay objects to any of these, let me know which one. One clarification before we begin. And it matters for how you score this debate. J typically, although there was a little bit of mixture in that opening statement, does not defend the Christianity of modern America or Europe in his own words, and I quote, in reality, democracies are oligarchies. He rejects the liberal west, root and branch. So tonight he cannot borrow its prestige, although I think he kind of did that he must defend what his tradition actually built when it held power. And he has told us what that is he did. In the opening statement, he says, and I quote, that the Symphonia was the norm throughout the Byzantine period. He's fixated on Byzantium as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, which I understand Byzantium and tsarist Russia. That is his exhibit. So hold him to that. Here is my case in one sentence. Islam offers society a revealed order, a living history and measurable results, and Orthodoxy on all three counts offers none. First, revelation versus improvisation. J says, the question is a revealed doctrine of governance. Very well. Open the New Testament and look for one. There is no criminal code, no commercial law, no constitution, no system of taxation for the poor. Jesus, peace be upon him, said plainly, my kingdom is not of this world. And In Luke chapter 12, a man brings him the ordinary social dispute, the most ordinary social dispute imaginable, inheritance. And Jesus answers, and I quote, man who made me a judge or an arbiter over you? He declines to legislate we must also never forget that Protestantism came out of Christianity, which Jay critiques. And I appreciated much of what he said in his recent interview with Tucker and was the eventual springboard to modern secular liberalism, which we both critique, which now pervades throughout Western society both in government and the minds of the people. All of this happened because the Bible and Christianity failed to set down clear regulations for society. Compare that with the Quran, which in chapter four legislates inheritance and whose longest verse is entirely devoted to contracts and debt. One revelation refuses the question of social order, the other answers it in detail. The earliest Christians read their scriptures exactly this way in the Epistle to Diogenes boast that Christians dwell in their homelands as sojourners. Tertullian declared that there was nothing more foreign to Christians than public affairs. Origen explained that Christians declined public office altogether. And on this remarkably Jay agrees with me. These are his words and I quote. In the first few centuries of Christianity they weren't intent on converting the emperor or bringing in a Christian empire. Exactly. So for 300 years the church was apolitical by its own proud self description and by Jay's own admission. So where did orthodox civilization come from? Jay kind of already admitted it. Not from the Gospel, from the empire. Christianity became a state religion by the decree of a Roman emperor Theodosius in 380. Its civil law was Justinian's code. Roman law which Jay did say. But it was Roman law lightly sprinkled with holy water. Sinfonia is Roman imperial architecture with icons on the walls. I call it what it is baptized Rome. Byzantium is not Christianity's design for society. It is Christianity's lack of a design filled in by Caesar. Islam is the mirror opposite our prophet. Peace and blessings be upon him. Did not merely preach a society, he governed one in Medina under a written constitution with revealed law covering family contracts, crime and a mandatory tax for the poor. We did not borrow a social order from a dying empire. We received one from heaven by Jay's own criterion, a revealed doctrine of governance. There is exactly one candidate on the stage. Second, the historical record. Suppose we grant him his baptized Rome. How did it perform? Judge the system by what it did to its own saints. In the 7th century emperors imposed a monothelite heresy, meaning Christ only had one will in the incarnate state as a state policy. The man who resisted Maximus the Confessor, whom Jay venerates as his church's great theologian, had his tongue cut out and his right hand cut off by the Orthodox emperor's state and died in exile. In the 8th century, Emperor Leo banned the icons and a council under his son ratified it. It was a doctrine dictated from the throne for over a century. And in 1721, fast forwarding. Peter the Great did not merely pressure the church. He abolished the Patriarchate of Moscow and ran the church as a government department under a lay bureaucrat for nearly 200 years. This is not one bad king. This is a system with no breaks. And his own church's law tells us why. Every state on earth rests at bottom on the lawful sword, armies, courts and punishment. But listen to Orthodoxy's own canon law about that sword. St. Basil's 13th canon, ratified as binding law by his church's own councils, says that the killing in war that is not reckoned as murder is even pardonable in defense of piety and yet leaves the hands not clean, and counsels the soldier to abstain from communion for three years, lawful and yet still defiling. And when Emperor Nicephorus Phocas, a warrior the church itself venerates, asked a patriarch to crown his fallen soldiers as martyrs when they were facing Muslims, the patriarch refused him, citing that very canon. It is recorded in his church's own canonical commentaries. A church whose priests may not bear arms, whose soldiers need three years cleansing after lawful war, is a church whose own law declares the state's business is not our business. Symphonia did not fall by accident, fail by accident. It was a marriage the bride's own law forbade, which is why again and again, the groom simply took command. And then later, the ledger. Byzantium fell. 1453. We know who that was to tsarist Russia destroyed 1917. Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, all of the crowns gone. Greece, an Orthodox nation voting freely, abolished its monarchy in 1974, 69% to 31. Tonight, the number of Orthodox monarchies on earth is exactly zero. And I do not need to argue the conclusion because Jay has argued it for me. His words, although he was a little bit softer, but this is what he said in a video on a topic. Restoring this system is, quote, not viable. And way down the road, his words, quote, it's larping to act like we're going to resurrect the Byzantine Empire. It's come and gone, dude. Yeah, it has. It's come and gone and dude, LARPing Jay's word, not mine. Meanwhile, Islamic law has been continuously practiced for 14 centuries and orders the daily lives of 2 billion people today. His model is a museum piece. Mine opens for prayer five times a day. Third, measurable results, because better for society is an empirical claim. Let us measure. Take one, social poison, alcohol. 2.6 million deaths every year by the world health organizations count with a massive share of the world's homicides, traffic deaths and battered families. Islam solved this by Revelation 14 centuries ago. And Muslim societies sit at the bottom of the world's consumption tables, while the heartland of Orthodox monarchy became the world's case study in alcohol catastrophe. And Islam does not merely prohibit, it provides zakat a mandatory transfer of wealth to the poor. Not charity we recommend, but law we obey. And the deepest measure does the society continue and does the faith transmit? Orthodoxy's heartlands are demographically collapsing. And after a thousand years of Symphonia, 6% of Orthodox Russians attend church weekly. Meanwhile, Muslims maintain the highest religious retention on earth. Islam is the fastest growing faith in the world. And on this once more, I call Jay as my witness. His words in his own lecture. Islam is, quote, destroying the west, theologically, philosophically speaking, demographically speaking, close quote. He meant it as an indictment of the West's weakness. But here what he conceded on the very measures this debate is about, he grants that Islam prevails. One tradition kept its children, the other kept its icons. So let me close where I began. Jay said, the question is whether there is a revealed doctrine of the magistrate. I agree. I have shown you the revealed order. His scriptures lack and mine contain a history in which his system devoured its saints, was disqualified by its own canons, and then went extinct, not coming back by J's words, while mine never stopped. And measurable results in sobriety, charity, families and faith. Transmitted results. He has conceded in his own voice. He must now show you a Christian social order that came from Christ rather than Caesar, a mechanism that stops the next Peter the Great, a single living example of what he proposes and results measured in lives, not incense. A kingdom not of this world cannot govern this world. Islam was sent to do exactly that. That is why on the question before us tonight, the answer is Islam. Thank you very much.

[Moderator (James)]

Thank you very much for that opening.

[Jay Dyer]

Like a little rebuttal, because if we immediately go into the 60 minutes, we won't be able. There's a lot that came up. So could we have like a five minute back and forth and then you do the open part or.

[Moderator (James)]

No, I have to defer to Jake just because you guys already agreed on the format. So, Jake, whether you want to grant that or a hybrid of something like that or with.

[Jake Brancatella]

How about five minutes rebuttal?

[Jay Dyer]

Yeah, time five and five. Deal and and then open. Is that cool?

[Moderator (James)]

Appreciate you. Got it. I've got the timer set for you for that five minute rebuttal. Jay, the floor is all yours.

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[Jake Brancatella]

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[Jay Dyer]

Yeah, only because a lot of things were brought up, which is fine. I know in an opening statement a lot's going to be brought up. And of course he can respond to. I want to note that. So first of all, yeah, I've said democracies are faking gay many times over. So I mean a lot of repeating all the stuff that I said and I think everybody here would agree democracy is fake and gay. So now we have a constitutional republic. And it is possible for a constitutional republic to be Christian or to be Christianized. I don't deny that. It's just that that doesn't exist in the history of the Church. The normative principle history of the church is in the Orthodox Church, for example, a coronation service where you have a king coronated by the church. And so the authority for the temporal realm comes from the spiritual. The church is not apolitical, it's separate. There's a division of spheres. And this is unfortunately one of the mistakes of the Enlightenment and the Protestant Reformation. But not even the first generation of Protestant reformers. They were in fact many of them monarchists. In fact, Luther's Reformation wouldn't have been successful in Germany had he not had the support of the German princes. So the early reformers were, except for Calvin, you know, monarchist or republican, but they were still theocrats. And so my position, by the way, not that the church is apolitical. In fact, the church has a lot to say about politics. I wrote an article, an essay many years ago you can find on my website. I won't read it all about the principle, the death penalty, for example. That's a principle that is carried over from the Old Testament to the New Testament. It's cited many times, the New Testament that you have, that the king has a duty to punish evildoers. Romans 13 Peter says that the king has a duty to enforce the moral law and its Punishments that does include the duty, death penalty. Because there was a debate in the first, second and third century about whether a Christian could be a member of the army or the state does not mean that the Church taught some other thing. There's a period, a time of controversy and debate, and at the Council of Nicaea, they actually decide and determine that, yes, you can be a soldier and be a Christian. So the canons in Nicaea include this principle. And they looked to the New Testament. Actually. When John the Baptist is asked, what must we do? When the soldiers, the Roman soldiers ask him, he says, do not abuse the people and do not charge too much in taxes. Thus, it is possible to be a soldier. The entire Byzantine model of the Basileus, as he's called, is that he is likened to King David. King David is the classic iconographic image of the king or the emperor in the Byzantine model. The New Testament has many, many, many passages that cite not just the Old Testament laws in a typological sense, but many of the moral principles of the Old Testament laws are carried over. Paul, in his letters, for example, cites not sewing together two cloths in the same garment, not sewing together the same seeds in a field. Those are ceremonial commands, but they carry a moral significance. And early Christian society, because it was not dominant, because it was in the catacombs, still had the principle, as you see with Saint Clement, for example, who taught the death penalty, Saint Athanasius, for example, who taught the death penalty, who also said, it's virtuous to kill in war. In the right scenario, in the right situation, it can be a virtue. Now, in the case of why there's a canon to forbid a person from communing in certain instances, that's because, like in the Old Testament, David was told, even though he was a virtuous hero in war, and God taught him to use his bow and to fight because he had killed so many, he was told, I don't want you to build the temple that will be Solomon, because your son is a son of peace. And the Church maintains that principle, that although you can still be saved, it is appropriate because of the nature of violence and warfare, that there's a time of repentance even in a virtuous time of warfare, because warfare is nasty. Jake's own position was actually riddled with a bunch of inconsistencies because he pointed to some bad leaders. Of course there's going to be bad tyrants and kings. That has nothing to do with whether Christianity is successful in building a civilization. In fact, I gave the example of The Christian Byzantine Empire as the longest lasting and most successful. Yes, it fell apart. But, Jake, there's been many bad sultans. According to your own position, does that mean that. Because I found a bad sultan here and there, from your view that, oh, I guess the whole thing has failed. It's just a really bad argument. Again, the fact that an emperor could apostatize or that an emperor could try to enforce heresy is irrelevant to the question of whether Christianity or Islam is better for society. Because, of course, we all would admit that you could have a corrupt ruler that has nothing to do with which system is actually beneficial to society. You said that the social order is not in the New Testament, it's borrowed. Again, there's countless passages in the New Testament that are also principled in the Old Testament. So the New Testament doesn't abrogate these principles. It continues these principles. For example, we have the laws of the kings in the Old Testament and the limitations in the Torah on kings. Those principles carried over into Christian civilization in Christian law. So the fact that there's a separation between church and state is not a division between church and state. So most of your argument hinged on a sort of Protestant understanding of what Symphonia actually is. Is that it?

[Moderator (James)]

That was about it.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Okay.

[Moderator (James)]

All right. Thank you very much for that rebuttal. Appreciate it. Jay. Got the timer set for you as well, Jake. Five minutes.

[Jake Brancatella]

Okay. I just want to say at the outset, I was not planning to machine gun tactic, Jay, at all. That wasn't the point. And it wasn't originally part the rebuttal, which I also thought was a bit strange. I thought there should be a rebuttal, so that's fine with me. But Jay has mentioned a lot of things, but one thing he mentioned about Protestantism. And it's true what I'm saying, but I want to actually give a quote from my previous debate opponent earlier today, Michael Jones, Inspiring philosophy. He says this. Christianity is not a political system or a culture. When you try to weaponize Christianity to be something it was never intended to be, you will always lose. So you're right, Jay. I am actually running an argument that is, I think, an outgrowth of Protestantism. But I think the question that we need to ask ourselves is why is that the case? How. And I'm actually genuinely interested to have this discussion in the open discussion section. Hopefully we'll all learn a lot, but I'm generally questioning how is it the case that secular liberalism became so abundant and so popular in the West? It seems to be a Natural outgrowth of Protestantism and its movement, which I see actually in. With respect to the political sphere, to be an outgrowth of the Bible. Now, that's obviously the debate. That's where Jay would disagree, but I'd like to really understand that from his perspective. So this isn't necessary. I mean, Michael might even be willing to come on the stage and debate Jay because I don't think he agrees with monarchies and theocracies and that sort of thing. And that's totally fine. But I'm just saying that this position is not merely mine, and I'm openly admitting that this is. At least this aspect of it is a critique from a form of Protestantism. Jay said a lot in his opening statement. Most of what he had to say, if you notice, regarding laws and legislation, and all of that came from two places. One, the Old Testament, and then two, which he mentioned earlier, was from St. Justinian. Now, I'm agreeing that that's where Jay's framework is for the debate, but I think we have to question why is it not embedded in the New Testament? Maybe Jay would argue that it is, and I'm happy to look at some of those passages. Yes, you made a. You made a point about the evil rulers and those who were tyrants and, you know, not necessarily following the law. Yes, I agree that this happened in Islamic history and that this happens even today in certain Islamic nations or Muslim nations. I wasn't making the argument purely based on that. I was saying that as opposed to Islam. And I'm happy to argue that there seems to be a much greater pattern of that in Jay's understanding, or not Jay's understanding, but the history in Christianity. That's what I was trying to argue. Not that one ruler makes it null and void. That's, you know, an evil ruler. But it seems to be much more pervasive. Let's see what else. I made some notes. He mentioned about usury. I think that's a point we can agree on. And there's another party that I don't know. Sometimes we can't say their names, but I think they're largely responsible for that.

[Jay Dyer]

Nigerians.

[Jake Brancatella]

What's that?

[Jay Dyer]

Nigerians.

[Jake Brancatella]

Yeah, exactly. So I think that's something that we can actually agree on. In fact, I think there's a lot that Jay and I can agree on. I think that both he and I deplore secular liberalism, which is pervasive in the West. I think we both do think it's what he said, gay and weird. But at the same time, I'M arguing that the reason why this came about in Western society is because I do think that there is a lack of clarity on the doctrine of the governance of the church and how it relates to society, especially in the New Testament. And because of that, that's why I think you get this outgrowth of Protestantism and even what we have in the US A separation of church and state, to the point where people like Michael Jones would criticize much of what Jay, I think, has to say about the monarchy and theocracy. Let me just see a couple more points here. Yeah, so. Oh, yeah, back to that point. That a lot, I want people to notice a lot of what Jay is saying is coming from the Old Testament, not the New Testament. The question is why? Why didn't Christ re establish that? It seems to be that everything that he was trying to say was not a political order. And yes, I agree that just because some people disagreed in the early church, that doesn't mean necessarily that's the correct position. But it seems that that was there very early on and we don't see that in Islam. Anyway, I think my time's up.

[Moderator (James)]

Thank you very much for that rebuttal as well from Jake. We will jump into the open dialogue, gentlemen. We will let this be as organic as you'd like it to be. If it gets crazy, I'll jump in. The floor is all yours.

[Jake Brancatella]

Yeah, I have a question if you don't mind, Jay. So, yeah, maybe you can help me out with this. So I think you agree with me that Western, the sort of secular liberalism that we experience in the west and the US and most European countries is an event and the Protestants in the audience might not like this, but is an eventual outgrowth of Protestantism. Now I'm making it a further one step back, further that I think that it's because Christianity didn't have clear dictates on the doctrine of, you know, how the church should relate to the state. Now obviously you don't agree with that. So how do you explain how this came to be out of Protestantism?

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[Jay Dyer]

One thing I would say is the concerns of the first, second, third century Church was not mainly politics, but it doesn't follow from a focus that's different, that therefore there is no doctrine of the state, there is no idea of a basileus or a theocracy. I would actually argue for a theocracy. So you have, for example, setting aside principles in Mosaic law, you have, for example, many Old Testament prophecies in Daniel 2 from our perspective, that the kingdom under which the empire or the Messiah would be born would eventually permeate and become the kingdom of the Messiah. For us, that's a prophecy of Christ's birth under the Roman Empire and the Christianization over time of the Roman Empire. So there's also, in many passages of Isaiah, we believe prophecies about the Christian kings that would come to be in the future. So these are principles that are there that you can even see the earliest Church fathers citing these Messianic prophecies as giving the idea at least that yeah, there's going to be the notion of Christian states in the future, but it was not their primary concern in the first, second, third century, when they're in the Catacombs, for example, to figure out the mechanics of the relationship of state and church. So it's only natural that when the Imperium does become Christianized, that's when we would start to see from the Edict of Toleration with Constantine. And then Theodosius is really the first emperor to put some Christian laws into practice. And then St. Justinian with his code being explicitly Christian. So the fact that it sort of evolves, it doesn't follow from that that the application evolves, that the principles were not in the New Testament or that they evolved. Because I could give you tons of examples of legal principles of continuity from Old to New Testament, which are in the New Testament and in the Church Fathers that are principles applied. Again, the death penalty is one classic example. It's assumed that the early Church tended to not affirm the death penalty. There are a couple Church fathers that do not, but actually the majority, if you look at the essay that I wrote on this at my website, I cite examples from Clement to Athanasius to Ambrose, all affirming the death penalty is just one example.

[Jake Brancatella]

I appreciate that my question is not more so about what happened in the early period, but from what you're saying is that wasn't their focus in the first three centuries. I understand that. Then you have, as you said, and we both agree with this historical narrative Justinian becomes explicitly Christian and then kind of develops further. But I guess my question is from that point, from Justinian going forward to wherever you demarcate, where, I don't know, either Byzantium fell or maybe even after that, because there's really no true Christian monarchies today. I mean, unless you can tell me one from, from, from that period. What, what changed? Why did it change from the Church having this vision which you deem to be correct to all of a sudden, you know, having what we experience today in the West? I mean, because it's, it's not governed by Christian law.

[Jay Dyer]

So basically even the Roman Catholic west after the schism for many centuries still maintained the same principle of the need for a Christian state, for Christian laws. So even if even within the schism of east and west, there's literally no difference between these two groups on this principle, now how that's applied. Yeah, of course the Roman Catholic west has a tendency to put the Papacy in a greater geopolitical position that we would disagree with. I noticed that one of your arguments, for example, was hinging on the idea that the Church is apolitical. No, no, what those canons mean is that members of the clergy are not supposed to be in the state. So that's our perspective on that. But to say explicitly where it began to devolve, I would say is you have a series of events that occur in the west, particularly Protestant Reformation, scientific Enlightenment, Enlightenment itself, scientific revolution, lightness. These three events I think are a cascading series of revolutions that really don't have much to do with Christianity. I think to be, I would criticize Protestants in that they might have helped that revolutionary fervor. I don't think they necessarily meant to do that, but I would say that. I know, I know that I think Jake's tactic is to set the Protestants and the Catholics and the Orthodox against each other. If that's a classic tactic, which I don't blame you for doing it because I did the same thing. Right. So I was like the Naim guy is like a Quran only and they don't like each other. So I don't blame Jake for doing it. So it's what you do in debates. But again I think that the Protestant Reformation has a revolutionary ethos to it that it even didn't intend because of the fact that the earliest Reformers were still monarchists. The English Reformation, even with Henry VIII as the so called head of the Church, I mean it still was a monarchical structure of the state. Even the Vatican with upheld this Principle, the Christian state until the time of Vatican ii. So the. I mean, I'm trying to take up the time, but the simple answer is there's a series of revolutions, and those revolutions affect the Islamic world just as much as the West. So, I mean, perhaps you could argue that Islam more explicitly maintained the belief that it should be that God's law should apply to the state. I would agree with you, but I would not say that that's the consistent traditional Christian position. It happens to be the Protestant tendency, even though the first generation Protestants didn't really believe that.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Right.

[Jake Brancatella]

I'm not trying to do that in a bad way. I genuinely believe that narrative. I believe the narrative that this was an outgrowth of Protestantism. I mean, I think when you have sola scriptura, which is essentially a denial of the church's authority to preach and teach what is the correct understanding of scripture, and then you make yourself that authority, this sort of individualism, rightly, not rightly, but naturally leads to. I'm not saying there are obviously links in the chain along the way, but I'm thinking, I'm saying that I think this Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura, and in its crudest form, just me and my Bible in my closet, eventually leads to, well, not only do you not want Rome to tell you what is the understanding of scripture, you don't want any legislative authority over you to be governing by laws that they see as Christian when you don't agree with that. And so I think it is an eventual natural outgrowth of Protestantism and the doctrine of sola scriptura, which leads to this kind of fundamental societal individualism that we experience in the West. I don't think, really, I don't think anybody should deny that, especially if you're not Protestant. So I'm not using that as a gotcha. I genuinely believe that that was a trajectory. However, I want to give the Protestants a little bit more credit in saying that. Well, I don't think that this happened out of nowhere. Where did they, where did they get this idea or belief from that the, the church should not really be involved in the state. I mean, it seems to me, and, and what you said, I, I do kind of appreciate that, that in the. Is from the Islamic perspective, I think the reason why this happened is because Islam, whether you agree with the laws or not, that's not really the discussion right now is that it is very clearly political. There is no separation between church and state, or church and mosque. It's very, very explicit and clear. And I think that Lack of clarity that exists or doesn't exist in Christianity is the reason why you eventually had the Protestant Reformation. And then what I think this sort of secular liberalism, which eventually is an outgrowth of Protestantism, is because the Church and the Bible were not as clear on its doctrine of church and state. That's what I'm arguing.

[Jay Dyer]

If they were not that clear, you would not have the level of unanimity from the 4th century until even literally up until 17, 1800s when the revolutions took over Europe. I mean, you have over a thousand years of really no dissension amongst significant groups east and west in this principle of Symphonia. In fact, Holy Roman Empire amongst the Catholics had the exact same symbol of the double headed eagle that the Eastern Byzantine Empire has of the double headed eagle. And for those that don't know the meaning of that is you have one body of the people and two heads. The two heads just simply symbolize two different aspects of human society, the spiritual and the temporal. They work in harmony because it's the same body, but they have two different spheres or roles. This actually comes out of the Old Testament. If you look at the Old Testament, there's a clear delineated spheres of authority to where, for example, you can't, you know, Saul in one case is castigated because Saul tries to do priestly functions. And within the Mosaic Law he had this clear delineation that there's a difference between the laws of kings. Again, Moses had a little book about laws of kings from the Torah and then principles that governed the Levitical priesthood. That principle was then adopted. I'm not saying the Levitical laws themselves, but the principle was adopted when society became Christianized. There were some groups in the first and second century who were not the most educated Christians who thought that it was the end of the world, Jesus was going to immediately come back. And so they didn't think under this time of persecution that they would be put in a situation where they would apply biblical principles and then later canonical canon law principles, church law principles to society once the imperium became Christianized, it's only natural that they would apply those. But here's the thing, the New Testament is not unclear about that. And if you've got over a thousand years of unanimity between east and west, even if they disagree theologically, they still agree on this principle all the way up until perhaps the 17, 1800s is really when this begins to be questioned. So where's that lack of clarity for those that are millennium plus?

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[Jake Brancatella]

Okay, so what I see is that in the early period, as you said, there wasn't consensus on the correct view of the church and state. And then in the latter portion we also have this confusion. But then we have a middle period, which I agree. In the Roman west and in the east you do have an agreed upon standard in which Christians seem to be agreeing that no, there is this symphonia and there is this involvement in the state, but from the church. I agree with that. But I'm saying is in Islam you don't have that. You can disagree with the laws, you can disagree with what, whatever else, the application of it. But we see very early on that Islam is political. There was no, there were many disputes and debates, even theologically in early early Islam, but this wasn't really one of them. There was debate over who should be the political leader, sure. But there wasn't debate over there being political leaders and them fundamentally instituting Islamic law. You see that all the way up to the current day. Now, of course, as I, as you rightly said, that this sort of secular liberalism has also hit Muslim lands. And, and sure there are problems there, but I don't think it is nearly as bad as it is in the West. And I think it's because Muslims have a much more foundational understanding of the relationship between Islamic law and society, where that's really, I, to be honest, I think it's lacking in if you're correct, if you're correct about the correct view of how Christianity sees church and state, then you should be doing a lot more lectures on this because it seems that most Americans and most supposed Christians in the west don't view it this way. They, they don't view it this way really at all. And that's why you have people like Michael Jones or I know, and you've not criticized him, but Trent Horn and even Catholics, where the Catholics previously or the Roman west would have agreed with the east and kind of your view of, of government and structure, where today you don't really see that there aren't Too many Catholics who believe that, other than maybe some trad cats, not too many Protestants who believe that. And then it's just a small amount of Diorites, to be honest with you.

[Jay Dyer]

Is Trent still here, by the way?

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Is Trent.

[Jay Dyer]

Did Trent leave? Oh, I was going to say a cuss word to make him leave because

[Jake Brancatella]

Trent Warren was here before. Yeah, because I saw a guy that was wearing a Trent Horn badge, but it didn't look like Trent Horn. It was weird.

[Jay Dyer]

That was his imposter body double. So he didn't want to get assassinated. So he has a hired body double in case, like if he's around me. So now I'm joking. Well, so you said. Joe, one thing I want to highlight. That's not the main point. But you said there wasn't a consensus. And. But who do you. Do you mean in the first three centuries when the church is being persecuted, why would there be a consensus when you admitted that the correct position could still be there in a period when it's debated? I mean, Islam is full of non consensus and debates. So.

[Jake Brancatella]

Yeah.

[Jay Dyer]

Who are you talking about when there's not a consensus? You just mean the first three centuries.

[Jake Brancatella]

Yeah, I'm just talking about the early period. And I agree that just because there wasn't a consensus doesn't mean that your representation or your position is incorrect. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that it appears that it's not as clear in early Christianity as it is in Islam. As you said, there were theological debates if the, for example, is the Quran created or not? I'm not trying to waste time, but there wasn't a debate. And there were debates about who should be the ruler politically in Islam, and that's why we have a division between Sunni and Shia. But there was no debate about whether or not Islam should be political in that way. That's what I was trying to say.

[Jay Dyer]

Okay, but I mean, in the case of Nicaea, for example, if there's debate and Nicaea settles a dispute and the canons note that you can be a Christian and a soldier, then how does that. How is that a problem for my position? Because something's debated for a period.

[Jake Brancatella]

I just don't understand the argument that I'm making. And it's not, it doesn't follow necessarily. I'm not arguing that, but I think it counts as evidence against the position is that it seems that because there is this and not a small difference, a wide, I would say a wide difference for several hundred years. And then you also have that Taking place again today where your position. I mean, I'll ask you this. Do you think that your position is a minority view held amongst Christians today?

[Jay Dyer]

Well, if you use the term Christian

[Jake Brancatella]

broadly in a broad way, yeah, I'm saying. Including people who call themselves Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant. Yeah, I know you would agree. You would probably say some of these guys are phonies. I understand. But I'm saying, and people who identify as Christian today, wouldn't you agree that your position is a minority and most people don't believe in that who call themselves Christian?

[Jay Dyer]

Yes, but in terms of the prompt of the debate, in terms of how this would prove which is better for society, it only really betters society. If the Islamic position actually has the good for society and if it's correct that the church's focus is not primarily political, that does. It just simply doesn't follow from that that it has nothing to say about the political. So if the argument is that the Bible gives rise to the revolutions of Protestantism or something like that, I just simply think that's a correlation without causation in the sense that. Oh, so because the Bible existed and Jake's understanding that the Bible's New Testament is more Protestant in its view of church and state. I think you have to demonstrate that first. I don't think you could demonstrate that. And the fact that in the first, second, third century, some people disputed that. It simply just doesn't follow that there is no Christian doctrine of the states. So again, it's not that strong of an argument if the same flaws apply to. By the way, so the fact that Islam does believe, quote, in a theocracy, has that actually successfully always been applied throughout the centuries of Islamic history? Just think about terms like the way that the legal rulings in FIC and whatnot in your system are applied. I mean, it's not always consistently applied, is it?

[Jake Brancatella]

No.

[Jay Dyer]

Okay, so the idea that the consistent application somehow necessarily proves or shows that your position is better, I just simply think doesn't follow.

[Jake Brancatella]

Not so the original question I asked, and that's what I'm inviting you to do, and maybe I'm just missing it. So I have my own thesis about why this happened. I explained it. And you're saying, well, it's a question correlation, but not necessarily causation. I understand that. So that's why I'm inviting you to explain. And maybe I'm missing it. What was the clear causation of. Okay, forget about the first 300 years. I understand what you're saying there, but what was exactly the clear causation from where the Roman west, the Catholics and the east, even after they separated, had this agreement. And now it's like. And I'm not saying this to be funny, I'm just saying in reality now it's just Jay Dyer and his crew and some Orthodox who believe this, and pretty much everybody else has gone by the wayside. It seems like a really sharp decline that happened very quickly. Now, I gave my reasoning or what how of, you know, historical kind of argument of why I think this happened, that now you don't believe it's the Bible's fault, you don't believe it's the New Testament fault. So that's why I'm kind of inviting you to explain the causation.

[Jay Dyer]

So if we set aside that early issue, then I would say if you look at the 11th century, there's a huge revolution that even Roman Catholic scholars would admit. You have people like Congar and Dvornik, the famous UNIA scholar, they admit that there's a revolution in ecclesiology in the West. It's known as the Gregorian reforms. And what's unique about this is that the papacy begins to take on a new geopolitical role. I think that we can try to be charitable and fair, as fair as we can to the Roman Catholics of that period. I'm not blaming every Roman Catholic of that time period. I think that the schism began in 1054 and then sort of flourished or it grew apart over time. But it's unanimously nowadays admitted, even amongst Catholic scholars, that this period is a revolution in ecclesiology. Now, that might sound abstract and not like a huge deal, but the reason that matters is that prior to that, canon law in the east and the west forbade the Church from being the state. So we're not saying that the Church has no thing to say to the state or that the Church doesn't work. In Symphonia again, that was the norm even prior to the 11th century. But when you have the papacy saying, I am now a geopolitical power, I am now going to take the sword, the papacy begins to have standing armies. They begin to have warrior monks, monastic orders that have the sword. Again, in the Byzantine model, the sword isn't bad. It's exercised as Romans 13 says, the Imperium has the Diaconos. That's the same word as deacon in Romans 13. So Paul is calling the emperor a deacon. That means he has a quasi religious role. So even in the New Testament, the idea of Romans 13 is not a radical separation of church and state. That's a Roger Williams Baptist idea. Very, very late. So 11th century is a key move to where the papacy takes on geopolitical world power. That begins a process, in my view, that culminates in a Reformation rejection of some of those papal excesses. And most of the reformers, as we all know, Protestantism, is protesting the papal Roman Catholic system. So not everything in the papal Roman Catholic system is wrong. But what they are protesting is in some cases, the overstepping, particularly in the political realm. If you look at Western European history, the German princes, other princes, they re. They did not like the papacy stepping into the temporal sphere. They resented that. So the Reformation was partly a rejection of that. So if you want the long sort of causal chain which I do think is there, you could say, yeah, there's a long series of revolutions that begins with Gregorian reforms in 11th century. And by the way, many of those popes in the 11th century, I want to say the majority of them actually, for 70 years, were actually appointed by German kings. So it's nepotism that set the stage for down the road what would become the Reformation. So, yeah, I do think you could trace it this way and then past that if you want to get up into like the Bolsheviks and all that. I mean, that's all Western banking money that was funding all of that. So that's the long of it. But none of that has anything to do with whether the position was actually in the New Testament.

[Jake Brancatella]

Okay, you mentioned about warrior monks and stuff like that. I know, obviously it did exist. But what do you make of my citation of Basil's canon that specifically mentions that even if the war is quote, unquote justified, that people who come back from that are not actually to partake in communion for three years? So you have a case in which it's supposedly legitimate. And yet in St. Basil's canon, it explicitly says that they're not clean in the sense that they can't take communion.

[Jay Dyer]

Yeah. So again, just like with.

[Jake Brancatella]

That was part of. Sorry to cut you, but that was part of canon that was instituted as canon law.

[Jay Dyer]

Right. So the way canon law functions in Orthodox Church, you can look at the canons of Trello, one of the very last canon of Trello in the Orthodox Church says that the application of these principles is up to the prerogatives of the bishop. So for us, the local bishop is the applier of that. That doesn't mean that it's do whatever you want, but that he does have the final say. So because for us, there's not really a higher authority than that. So for us, that type of application would be applied first of all on a case by case basis. So it is, it is possible that a person doesn't have to be under the canonical penalty of three years. But the principle is there because as we said, even King David in the Old Testament was a righteous warrior whom God taught how to fight because he had shed so much blood, there were certain things that were not appropriate for him. So it's a canonical penalty that has nothing to do with saying you're not saved. It's just saying out of reverence for the sacrament, we're going to impose a time where you do penance, because most of the time, even if you're just in the war, in the battle, you've still probably sinned in some way in our perspective. So it's simply a sort of a penance that's restorative. It has nothing to do with saying like, you're excommunicated from the Church. It's not like that at all.

[Jake Brancatella]

Yeah, yeah, I'm not saying that, but okay, I guess you kind of answered at the end that you would agree. I mean, I don't have this position, but for you. And the way you see this canon law, which comes from Basil, is that inevitably in war there's going to be sins committed, even if it's supposed to be a just war. And therefore because of that, I mean, do you still see that as justified today? Is that something that you would agree should be reinstated if there was such a monarchy that that would be something to reinstate?

[Jay Dyer]

And again, these penalties are not applied by the monarch. These are penalties applied by the Church. So the Church applies the canons in at the local setting. So all the monarch's job is to do is to enforce what the New Testament, not just in Romans 13, but for example, Paul says to Timothy that the state has the job, the duty to punish evildoers. And then he lists a series of offenses that are particularly egregious, such as murder, etc. So the state's role is not to enforce Church code. Even the Roman Catholic west had a distinction between the penalties that the Church would give. And so, for example, even when there were heretical laws in the Middle west, the Inquisition would hand those people over to the state. They typically, except for the Spanish Inquisition, which was under Isabella, it was separate from the Papal Inquisition. You hand it over to the state. So in the same case with St. Justinian, like the Church might make a ruling. For example, Basil has a canon about abortion. The church doesn't say, like you're sentenced to death. It's handed over to the state. And then the king makes that decision. And we simply see that as modeled with Solomon. You know, when Solomon has the two hoes and he, you know, does that wise thing where he tests the hoes and then he says, okay, now we know who the real mom is. Right. So he's applying the principle of, of the law to the 304s and the thoughts. T H O T. That's Old Testament thought. Anyway, that's a thought exercise right there. Yeah, I'll be here all week.

[Jake Brancatella]

Yeah, so let me get. Because you didn't respond to this, but I mentioned a lot, so it's fine.

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[Jake Brancatella]

I mentioned Luke chapter 12 in the scenario where a man brings an issue of inheritance and Jesus answers, man, who made me a judge or an arbiter over you? Why? If he. If Jesus is supposed to be the head of the church, right? And you see that, or as you're claiming the church is not supposed to be completely apolitical, why would Jesus respond in this way?

[Jay Dyer]

Great question, in fact, and a lot of Protestants would bring up that same passage. So for us, first of all, in Jesus's first coming, in his quote, humiliation, we see the ministry that he's doing as specifically fulfilling the role of the humble servant. But even in the Old Testament, that would not be something that you would only take that kind of a ruling to the state. So in his first coming, he is specifically not in any role of state in the exaltation and ascension. We think that when he ascended, he then became King of kings. Thus monarchy continues on even via the Book of Revelation calling him King of Kings. So all earthly kings are underneath the supreme king. So it wouldn't be sensible. And it's the same with the woman in adultery. We believe Jesus is the one that gave those Old Testament laws. I know you know that we believe that, but I'm saying that for the audience, right? So it's not a different God of the Old Testament or something like that. So Jesus is the one that laid down those penalties. And certainly as the supreme judge, he has the authority to abrogate or to relax a penalty. But there's several cases in the New Testament where people come to Jesus with legal matters or personal vengeance matters. And he simply says, that's not what my mission is at this point. But that does not mean. And let's take one, one example in Matthew 5, when he talks about, you know, don't, you know, if somebody slaps you, give him the other cheek. Right. And this is oftentimes cited as, oh, we're supposed to be pacifists. We don't read the Bible in isolation from the rest of the passages. Right. This is talking about personal vengeance. It has nothing to do with saying that you can't have, you know, righteous judgment in a law court. Because there's many places where the New Testament gives principles for judges and for rulers. The Book of Proverbs, which is always used by the early Church. It was, according to Saint Athanasius, the catechism for converts, including the Deuterocanon. It's full of principles of justice in weights and balances. That's money. Principles of kings and judges that they shouldn't take bribes. Those are all statements to rulers in the political realm. In the polis. It's just simply not what Jesus focus was in his three years of ministry, which was about accomplishing what the Father had set him out to do.

[Jake Brancatella]

Okay, so it seems like, to kind of summarize, you're saying that that was not Jesus's initial earthly ministry.

[Jay Dyer]

Correct.

[Jake Brancatella]

Was not to be, you know, a political figure or to be instituting, you know, these specific laws in that way. Okay, so I mean, maybe that's where you're trying to say that Protestantism or the. The eventual outgrowth of complete separation between church and state is due to a misunderstanding of applying Jesus's initial earthly ministry.

[Jay Dyer]

Yes.

[Jake Brancatella]

And his initial kind of, you know, campaign and what he was supposed to be doing to later after the Ascension and going forward. Is that correct?

[Jay Dyer]

Yeah. So like in the Old Testament, you have many places, again, like, where there's prophecies that the kings of the nations and the Gentiles would convert. You have, you know, Psalm 45, which is about, in our view of Jesus and Mary, but we also think it's about kings and magistrates converting. So there's laws for magistrates and even those penal sanctions at times. You can see throughout Byzantine code, like, I'm not saying that they're being Judaizers and like, copy pasting, but they're using the principles of the Old Testament penal sanctions and the Mosaic Law and even applying those in a social setting. So it's only natural that when Christian societies become predominantly Christian that they would function that way. And I just don't see why any of that. None of that demonstrates that it's unclear in the New Testament.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Okay.

[Jake Brancatella]

Is there any Christian monarchy today or theocracy?

[Jay Dyer]

I don't. Not that I'm aware of, other than nominally okay. And I mean, there are monarchs, but they're nominally okay.

[Jake Brancatella]

Now, when I quoted you from a video where you discussed this topic in detail as attempting to reinstitute it, and you kind of mentioned in your opening statement, I don't mean making, you know, society exactly what the Byzantine Empire was like. I'm not saying that. But how do you envision anything coming remotely close to that, given the situation that we're in? And I think it is related to the question of the debate because, you know, we're talking a lot about theory here and kind of, you know, what the principles are of Christianity as you see it in the Old Testament and the New Testament. But in terms of practical application, it seems to be really lacking. You know, you're representing. I'm not saying it's incorrect view. I mean, I've tried to argue for that. But you're representing a view which you're admitting is held by a minority of Christ, quote unquote, Christians today. So even if you're correct, it seems like there's no genuine practical application of that anyway. So how does that really help society if it's never been instituted or it's not for several hundred years?

[Jay Dyer]

Yeah, it's a fair question. I think, if you look at, as we mentioned in last night's debate, right. If I was Isaiah and it was, you know, I was being taken into Babylonian captivity and I'd been given these prophecies, prophecies that from our perspective, are predicting the conversion of the Gentile nations to worship the God of Israel, to worship Yahweh, that would seem totally impossible. How could that ever be? If you look at the first century, when Jesus is doing his ministry, right in the Book of John, he says, if I be lifted up, I will draw all nations unto myself. I mean, Christianity is a tiny sect. This seems absolutely outlandish and impossible. In the Magnificat in Luke, the Theotokos, St. Mary says, all generations henceforth will call me blessed. These are pretty profound prophecies. And again, at that time, that would seem preposterous. How would all the nations call this random virgin in Israel blessed? That seems crazy. And yet here we are 2000 years later and many, many millions, perhaps billions of people have called her blessed. So even the latest scholars dating those texts would still date it within the time frame when the Church was a tiny minority being persecuted. My point in all that is just simply to say that just because something is not the present dominant idea has nothing to do with whether it could be. And when you look at the way that the first three centuries of the Church eventually took over the Roman Empire, it wasn't with swords, it was with the blood of the martyrs. That's what actually converted Byzantium, made Byzantium what it is. It was built on the blood of the martyrs. So in the same way, just because at this present moment there's not explicitly Christian states, and by the way, it doesn't necessarily have to be a monarchy, it's just simply that in the history of the Church, what we have is the imperium as the norm. So we would argue that it is an emperor, it is an imperium, and it is kings and queens, the one in the many relationship, in that sort of Byzantine model that is the ideal. Is it possible to have a Christian republic? It's possible. Perhaps there have been theologians that have argued it's possible it hasn't existed really yet. But again, I don't have to prove that right now. My position is to be dominant if in the first three centuries it took over and perhaps the Internet will bring orthodox Christianity, it's bringing millions of people into the Church. I think in the next 10 years. We've already seen tens of thousands just this year, so I think more Diorites.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Right?

[Jay Dyer]

Well, again, orthodox Christianity isn't Diorites, but I'm just simply saying that we don't know if three centuries conquered the Roman Empire and those prophecies were fulfilled. There's no reason why. And some of the, even the most, you know, anti Christian global elites actually write in their text that they are concerned of a rise of Christian theocracy. So again, the fact that. But none of that has anything to do with proving that Islam is better for society.

[Jake Brancatella]

Correct. But what my basic proposal, throughout my opening statement and what I've been questioning is that if one religion is going to be better for society, it has to have a political view, a political perspective. Obviously I've tried to argue that I don't think that Christianity has an explicit enough political doctrine. And that's why we see in the early period where there's some disagreement, as you said, and then today where pretty much nobody believes in it and then we have a period which, you know,

[Jay Dyer]

whatever, but that would just be appeal to masses like so what if you know, it doesn't none of those things prove that there isn't that teaching just because a lot of people don't believe it or not know it.

[Jake Brancatella]

No, but I'm saying to you that I think it stands to reason that if it's so, if the positions regarding it are so diverse in the early period and the late period, I don't think it's, it's merely because of what you stated earlier. I think that there is a lack of clarity in the New Testament. I think that even Jesus's earthly ministry, as you said, in the way that you're interpreting it, he was, was not a political figure in that way.

[Jay Dyer]

But when Jesus is ministering, right. The apostles epistles for example have not been written. Okay, so to take an instance and say, well in this case, because Jesus didn't give a legal ruling, therefore the New Testament doesn't have clear teachings on the rules and principles of the state. And I'm saying there's many, many passages that from our perspective providentially would be included included in scripture which do consistently comment on that. And even if there's debate in the first and second century amongst a lot of the, you know, apologists and people that end up even not being in the church like origin, that's really irrelevant to whether there is a doctrine of the state in the New Testament. And I've not seen how you've shown any significant evidence yet that there's not a Christian doctrine of the state. Because I can keep going with more passages that demonstrate.

[Jake Brancatella]

Okay, so what do you think is the and it's not built upon one you. If you want to give two or three, that's fine. What do you think are the clear list Clearest sorry passages in the New Testament specifically, not the Old Testament in the New Testament specifically that support your position.

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[Jay Dyer]

Well, the first, most obvious one would be Romans 13, where, as I said, Paul specifically calls. And note, this is at the time when it's a persecuting pagan emperor. This is Nero, who absolutely hates the Church. And Paul still calls Nero, much like you see in the Book of Daniel, with the way Daniel treats Nebuchadnezzar. Paul still calls him a Diaconos, a providential, ordained ruler of God. So that means that there's a duty, and his duty specifically is outlined there in Romans 13, to punish evildoers with the sword, and that is the death penalty. I don't think any exegetes, even if they're liberals, would disagree that that's what Paul thought it meant. And then if we look at, for example, Romans 1 and 2, there's very similar principles there that the natural, even the natural law teaches us that the state has this role. He says explicitly to Timothy that the law exists, and that's of course enforced by the legal the ruler, the king, the law exists to punish. And then he lists a series of sins that are particularly egregious. And again, the assumption is there in Romans 1, Romans 13, and in the passage to Timothy, those are particularly egregious and perhaps even capital offenses. So these are just three off of the cuff. There are many more. And like I said, it was normative even in Athanasius and St. Alexander's Day. This is like the year 300. It was normative for every catechumen to come into the Church to read the Deuterocanon and to read Proverbs. Now, I know a lot of Protestants might not be familiar with the deuterocanonical text, but the deuterocanical texts have tons of information about kings, magistrates, judges, rulers. For example, the Book of Sirach, again with Saint Athanasius, has every catechumen reading. It's full of practical advice and practical principles that relate to all the things that we're talking about. Simply reading the Book of Sirach alone, as Saint Athanasius mandates all of the converts do, would actually answer every one of these qualms. That's just Syracuse.

[Jake Brancatella]

So you first mentioned Romans 13, and it seems to be advocating for submission to Nero. Right. So I don't understand how this supports your position, because it seems like it's an example of the apostles making peace with a pagan state, which would basically be my argument, not yours.

[Jay Dyer]

No. So again, if you look at Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar is a pagan. And the whole purpose and point of the book of Daniel is that eventually Nebuchadnezzar is humbled and he converts to believe in some sense in the one true God. But that doesn't mean that it's the, the job of Daniel to revolt or overthrow him.

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[Jay Dyer]

Obviously he's in a situation, situation where they're taken into captivity. And so the recognition is that even though he's a pagan, there's a providential role that he serves. So Paul is Talking about Romans 13, the providential duty that any ruler or head of state has to God. Now, whether those people follow those duties or whether they're wicked, that's a different question because they're providentially there. So, so our perspective is that, and this is why there's so many martyrs, we don't worship Nero. We can allow Nero to be the providentially ordained ruler. That doesn't mean that God doesn't want Nero to follow Christian principles. But whether he does is a different question. And that's a separate question from when there is a Christian king, he has even more of an obligation and duty to follow the biblical principles.

[Jake Brancatella]

Is there such thing as righteous rebellion against people like Nero? Is that possible in the orthodox Church?

[Jay Dyer]

So this is a different question in terms of, like, could there be situations where, case by case basis, you could have a civilizational struggle, something like that. And there is in the Byzantine history, situations where there could be legitimate revolution. But that's a separate question from whether or not the New Testament teaches that we are supposed to. For example, the New Testament is there to confirm the fulfillment of the prophecies of Christ. But again, the reason I went to see Sirach is that it's not the mindset even of the first, second, third century church because they were all using the deuterocanonical text. It's not our mindset that we only look into the New Testament to see. Are there verses that give a list of legal principles? There's actually are some. But I'm saying that the catechumens are not just reading the New Testament because they don't even necessarily have an entire New Testament. They're also reading the Book of Sirach, which is literally full of every aspect of society. It's like 60 plus chapters, all aspects of society being covered, even magistrates, judges, rulers, kings. The Book of Proverbs has dozens of proverbs about kings. So all of those would be being read. And so the argument seems to hinge on everybody just reading the Gospels and then coming up with a Vague notion of the state. That's not true.

[Jake Brancatella]

Well, it seems to me in this case and in other passages that.

[Jay Dyer]

One more point on that, actually, the Deuterocanon is a great point here because to the point of the Reformation, because the Reformation doesn't believe in the Deuterocanon. They didn't have that for catechumens. You're actually leaving out a gigantic portion of the Book of Sirach, which would be about Christian kings.

[Jake Brancatella]

Okay. The question, the reason why I think it's related, why I'm asking about possible rebellion is because if you have this idea of, you know, the Church being involved in political affairs and submitting to the ruler, is there supposed to be submission to the ruler in this case, even if he's a pagan? That's what I'm trying to understand. Okay, so, so if, if the Christian laws, right, are supposed to be instituted, why would Christians be required? It seems like they're required actually not to rebel, to render onto Caesar, to just basically submit to the authority, whether they're Christian and instituting Christian values or not.

[Jay Dyer]

So basically, the Church, again at the first, second, third century, when they're under the, in the catacombs, being persecuted, they have the same attitude as, for example, Daniel and Babylon. Right. So first of all, just practically speaking, it's not feasible to, to engage in a. There's no way Daniel could have, like, politically revolted. So it's different from the case of like, say, the Maccabees, where there was a potentiality of some successful revolt. That's just, practically speaking, that's a separate question from when or if you could revolt. So, but in the case of the early Church fathers, there's a lot of discussion of this, and the principle is that there's authorities and there's authorities above those authorities. So, for example, and I think even Roman Catholics, everybody agrees with those, perhaps even Protestants, we believe that we are to obey the existing authorities except when they go outside of their legitimate sphere. So when Nero said, you have to worship the image of me and say that I'm God, that's when the early martyrs thought, no, that's where we have to draw the line now. You are going against the higher authority. So in anything that they're not directly violating God's law, etc. Ten Commandments, then we do have a duty actually to obey the higher authority. And this is. I mean, the same principle is applied all over Western law. That's why you couldn't get away with just saying, you know, in warfare, oh, well, my commanding you know, officer told me to rape and kill, so I'm not guilty. You're still guilty because there's a higher authority above that. That's a legal principle.

[Jake Brancatella]

Okay, but in the case of Nero, for example, or somebody else who's a pagan ruler and they are requiring or demanding that Christians engage in idolatry, then I mean, I guess at what point is it to say, okay, we're not following this particular law that the Nero or this pagan ruler is trying to institute versus when does it go so far to say, well, we're not only not following it, but we need to remove this guy because he's going so far beyond him that we actually now have to remove him and institute a Christian ruler in that place?

[Jay Dyer]

Well, I think that in the history of Western civilization, when societies became predominantly Christian is when they began to think about Christian law and a Christian ruler. And so when you have that majority, that's why orthodox Christianity is not primarily a political movement. So it's, again, it's just a source. It's like a situation of emphases. So we're not going to emphasize the political, but by not emphasizing that as number one, it doesn't follow from that that we don't have anything to say the political. That's the divide that I think the modern sort of Baptist evangelical mindset has about church and state. So if there were a situation where, I don't know, there was a majority Christian country, and you see this in the history of Byzantium, at times there were revolutions. If, for example, there was, you know, a subversive ruler or something like that, there could conceivably be a revolution in that case. That could be argued for. But again, that's not analogous to when the church is being persecuted because it's not in a Christian society. It's having to function within a society, persecuting it. And so when it permeates, though, and there's Christian laws, then those rulers are held accountable to those Christian laws. Prior to that, he's accountable to God. But the church doesn't have political power. Christians don't have political power, but when they do, there is a change of situation.

[Jake Brancatella]

Would you consider the US to be a Christian nation?

[Jay Dyer]

I typically argue that the United States is half Christian.

[Jake Brancatella]

What does that mean?

[Moderator (James)]

The end of the open dialogue. You finish that thought.

[Jake Brancatella]

Okay.

[Jay Dyer]

It just simply means that some of the principles of the founding of America were, were Christian in nature and ethos, its history. But it was also mixed up with a lot of Enlightenment ideas that are fundamentally not Christian.

[Jake Brancatella]

Okay. The reason why I'm asking because I think that the US Would be an example or should be an example of where it's gone beyond a certain point that I mean, I'm not Christian, but I would advocate for a rebellion because of the fact that there are so many laws in the US that are fundamentally against Christianity and Christian values. You know, abortion, I can name several. And that I think, oh, I have

[Jay Dyer]

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[Jake Brancatella]

I think would demand actually what, what we're.

[Jay Dyer]

I see. Well, so from the orthodox perspective, we don't believe that we even really have a relevance to the political realm in terms of power. Not in terms of our moral, you know, teaching and saying what ought to be the case. We can always exercise that. But in terms of political power, that's only when you have a majority of a society. As an orthodox Christian, would you even entertain that type of a question from our perspective at that point when there's Christian laws? Yeah, maybe. But first of all, America's founded as a Protestant nation. You know, maybe in two, 300 years it could be an orthodox country. But that's not a present question. And no, orthodox Christians are not called to engage in political. Political revolution.

[Jake Brancatella]

Okay, I'll leave it there.

[Moderator (James)]

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for that open dialogue. We'll jump into the five minute. We'll jump into the five minute closings and I will start it on your first word. Jay?

[Jay Dyer]

Yeah, I think, you know, this is interesting because I didn't know where this debate was going to go and I, it got, it got very historical, which is cool because this is not the type of debate that I've usually done. Usually the debates are very heavily philosophical. So this was engaging. It was a new kind of pathway. I appreciate that. Appreciate Jake asking a lot of questions. But I don't think that out of this argument, because there's lack of clarity at certain times in the west about the relationship of church and state that have follows from that, that somehow there therefore Islam would be the solution or therefore Islam has a better answer. As Jake admitted, many Islamic countries are also susceptible to all of the same problems of, excuse me, secular enlightenment ideas, etc, Islamic society is, I think, plagued with again, many of the problems that Andrew highlighted in the debates that he's had with hey, Daniel Hakikachu and others. I think those are problems that are pretty kind of glaring, that Western societies, for all of their problems, they're not subject to those problems. So I don't think that Islam is going to be a solution, especially when, if we're looking for unanimity, if we're looking for, you know, sort of black and white answers. Well, if in Islamic law there's fic, which does not have consistent rulings on a host of moral issues, I don't think that that's going to be a solution. Again, if he's admitted that there's ambiguity and contradictions perhaps in the rulings of Islamic law or fic, I don't see how his position is in any better state than what he was arguing about. My position having a lack of clarity in the first three centuries. And he even sort of admitted throughout the debate that, yeah, I mean, you do have a consistent, you know, millennia plus of position of Christian theocracy and Byzantium, but, but a lot of people today don't believe that. Again, that has nothing to do with which one's correct, which one is therefore better for society. I think in my opening statement I outlined many principles, many ideas that Christian Western civilization does possess. Because we are still having the remnants of Christianity, there's a lot of potential as to where we could go. And we see this in the Old Testament as well. In many cases in the Old Testament, Israel is unfaithful, Israel falls into idolatry, they fall into all the same sins that we're falling into today. And Israel is always called back to repentance and to God. And by following God's law, they find, as we read in, you know, Chronicles, the famous passage, right, if my people who are called by my name, if they humble themselves and repent, then I will come and I will bless their land. Now, ultimately we know that's about, in our view, a type of the church, but it still applies to the civil society as well. The fact that a lot of the New Testament Testament focuses on the spiritual, it doesn't follow from that that we're supposed to be Marcionites or Gnostics and therefore think that, well, the state doesn't matter, we don't care. And in fact, at DebateCon 10, two debates with Trent Horn, I will be debating Trent Horn on that very principle. Did the Catholic Church depart from church and state teaching? And does the Orthodox church still maintain a consistent symphony of teaching? So that will be fun at debate content. Just a little plug. But again, I just don't think I didn't hear anything in Jake's argumentation that made me convinced or would make me to think that Islam would be better for society. I think that again, I didn't really get into the philosophical side of it, but even some of the philosophical advancements that you find supposedly in Islam and you could find this in even, you know, standard Sunni texts, it's really just stuff that came from Greek philosophers, from Aristotle and others, which are part of our heritage of Western civilization. And I don't think those things are somehow magically in the Quran. I think they're literally clearly borrowed from the, the Western tradition. And as Western civilization people we can include and we can say that Greek philosophers had a lot of insights. We can appreciate Aristotle, we can appreciate Plato, we can look at elements of Roman law, canon law, not because they're quote, pagan. In our view, there's nothing inherently bad. If there was a just law in Rome under the pagan period. There's nothing wrong with the church when it gets ascendancy. And when Christianity and Christians have temporal power, there's nothing wrong with them baptizing and using those principles as long as they're not idolatrous. So that we have to be careful we're not engaging in idolatry.

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[Jay Dyer]

But we can still baptize these elements of culture that are existing, that are good. Hence why our civilization has a confluence of interests. It could be Roman law, it could be English common law. Even those things have a precedent in Christian ideas, biblical ideas. And because the modern world has rejected that theocratic principle, it doesn't follow from that. That that's, I mean, I would just simply say that that's why we're seeing a lot of the bad things happening, is that we simply don't recognize that God has something to say to the state as well.

[Moderator (James)]

Thank you very much for that closing.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Jay.

[Moderator (James)]

We'll kick it over to Jake for his five minute closing as well.

[Jake Brancatella]

Okay. I do want to say that I agree with Jay that I'm kind of happy the, the way the debate went in terms of discussing mainly the historical aspect and some texts in the Bible, because Jay and I previously had a debate that was mainly philosophical, so this one is pretty much completely different, mostly historical. I do want to say that the reason why I'm arguing that Islam is better for society, although we didn't go into many specifics on this point, but from an abstract perspective, it seems to me that Islam from the Quran and authentic hadith is very clearly political. There is no separation between mosque and state or church and state for analogy. And I'm making the argument that the reason why we see Western society in the position that it is in today is because there is a lack of clarity in the biblical text. Jay tried and respect to him for that, but I don't see very clear texts in the Bible that are supporting the theocracy or monarchy vision that Jay deems fit. I just don't see it. I think that, yes, there's a lot of laws and principles from the Old Testament and Jay was making a lot to do about biblical prophecies that prophesy things that are going to happen in the future. But again, Prof. Supposed prophecies and things from the Old Testament that are supposed to be instated in the New Testament, which don't clearly seem to be. And I think the example that you brought from, I think it was Romans, of, of Nero, I think actually goes against your vision and what you've said, because it's an idea where someone who's completely opposed to Christianity, we're just not. Maybe in your private lives, maybe you can reject worshiping idols and things like that, but we're supposed to just allow this person to institute any of these laws that he wants, even if they're totally against Christianity and Christian principles. And I just see that as fundamentally problematic. I have made a lot to do about Jay's position being a minority today because we're talking part of the debate is about the practical application of the view. Can Islam and its principles, can it actually be applied today? And I think that it can and that it is not 100% in the way that I would like it to be, but it certainly is much more in Muslim countries than you see in the supposed Christian West. And we have to ask the question, well, why is that? Why is it that the supposed Christian west has been affected in a much greater sense by secular liberalism than anything that you see in Muslim countries. I myself, I live in a Muslim country, Morocco, of course, it doesn't institute all of the laws and Islamic laws in the way that I think it should, but nevertheless, it does so in much greater terms than anything that we see in the west, in my opinion. So I think that Islam has a lot to say about the society, some of that Christians wouldn't like. And I think part of the reason is because they've been affected by the secular West. For example, I think Jay would probably agree with me that blasphemy laws should be instated and that he wouldn't have a problem with the, you know, Christian church advocating for that. I do as well. But many Christians who live in the west have been affected by this idea of secular liberalism that, okay, as long as we're not sort of physically harming anyone, then basically we should let people do whatever they want and love is love. So we can have all these different kinds of marriages, although they don't allow, it's illegal for Muslim men to marry more than one woman. But that's another inconsistency within the sort of secular liberal frame framework. But my argument is that secular liberalism comes pretty much out of the Protestant movement, not immediately, but eventually leads to that. And I think that it's very clearly the case that it's because there is a lack of clarity regarding church government and the government structure that is supposed to be in place that is envisioned by Christianity in the Bible. I don't think it's clear at all. I think that Jay has tried to give passages, try to give examples of prophecies from the Old Testament and so on and so forth, but the New Testament doesn't really clearly reinstitute any of that from the Old Testament. There's no details about exactly what's supposed to happen and business transactions and all the nitty gritty details that are supposed to run society that exists in developed Jewish law and Islamic law. Yes, there are different differences amongst scholars in Islamic law, but the fact that we have clear Islamic law and debates amongst the scholars shows that there is a clear position. Thank you.

[Moderator (James)]

Thank you very much for that closing, Jake. With that, we're gonna go into the Q and A. But first want to give a huge thank you to our sponsors, including main First Project, Roar, Uncensored America and Apologetics arc. We appreciate their support of fair debates. Check out their links in the description box right now. Also, quick housekeeping note is if you can let me know, is there anyone here who only has a ticket for Saturday. And who wanted to do a meet and greet and photo with Jay?

[Jake Brancatella]

Probably not too many.

[Moderator (James)]

Then immediately after this debate, we'll do those. It looks like we got about five people. So after this debate, please do a favor and don't come up to the stage just yet. We're gonna have those five people get their meet and greet and photo with Jay before they have to leave for the rest of the weekend. But with that, we'll start the Q and A. Come on up, Marion.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Thank you.

[Moderator (James)]

One sec. Just so people can hear. I know that it's. If you can do a favor, just so people around you can hear when Jay or when the questioner is asking a question, if you can keep the conversation down. Otherwise, if you want to have a conversation in the hallway, it's totally cool.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

So Jake, I've appreciated the intellectual honesty and sincerity you've brought this whole day. It's actually quite joyous. So my background is I've never watched Jay Dyer. I was brought here by a friend. But I am an orthodox Christian and I do agree with a lot of what Mr. Dyer is saying. My question really is like orthodoxy posits a new way of life for people that addresses more of the root cause of humanity's condition more than say, the surface causes with polity and the governance of peoples. So really, I know that we don't have a system, but is it safe to say that like Bronze Age Age esque mosaics are the solution for addressing the root cause in people when that has obviously not worked with the Jews?

[Jake Brancatella]

I, I didn't hear the last part.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

I'm sorry. So would you say that would Mosaic speaks? Like, would Mosaic esque solutions say with like, with like the law of Moses or like what? Or like with the Quran? And forgive me, I, I don't, I know very little about is. But what are these solutions? The way to address the root cause with people, you know, when it did not work with say the Jews?

[Jake Brancatella]

I think that it is, I don't know, I think Jay might even agree with me about that. That I think that we have to get back to. I mean, of course I don't agree with the Bible. So I'm going to say from my perspective, Islamic principles and Islamic law, I think that that is the way. And unfortunately a lot of people think, oh well, just, you know, there shouldn't be any pressure from the state and there shouldn't be any obvious leanings of what religion and laws are being instituted based upon said religion. I just think that that's wrong. I think that most people are not equipped to make their own decisions a lot of the times, and they need to be told what is correct and what is right. And I think that it needs to be enforced by the state. And I think the problem that we see in the west is allowing everybody to just kind of make up their own mind and follow whatever they want, and it leads to chaos and destruction.

[Jay Dyer]

Well, why are you in a scientist onesie? Oh, I like it. It's crazy. Ready for you with a tie. All right, so Jay clearly won because he's got the better hat. A woman's hat, too, by the way. It's my wife's hat. My question's for Jake. So you said that the Christian Scriptures don't have any teachings on political systems. If that's true, then why did God appoint the monarchy of David? And I have two different scriptures to quote for that. Samuel 5:12 said, and David knew that the Lord had established him king over Israel, that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of the people of Israel. And then Chronicles 28:4 says, David says, the Lord God of Israel chose me from.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

For all.

[Jay Dyer]

From all of my father's house to be king over Israel forever.

[Jake Brancatella]

Yeah. So again. And Jay. I don't think Jay mentioned specifically those passages. He might have. I'm not sure. But most and much of what's quoted is coming from the Old Testament. Okay, So I agree that the Jews. And this is why you see this, right? The Jews and the Muslims have a very developed tradition of Jewish law and Islamic law. You don't see that in the Christian west or even the east, there's not a very developed system of law. Now, you do have things like canon law, and we discussed some of those things before, but it's nowhere near as developed as anything that exists in Jewish law or Muslim law, which Jay mentioned earlier as fiqh. And I think that the reason is because the New Testament is. Is not clear. It doesn't have any clear passages like you mentioned in the Old Testament. It just doesn't exist.

[Jay Dyer]

So in response to that, as I noted, it's an assumption that the early Christians and even the later Christians only cared about what the New Testament said. We always held all of those principles to be the case. Again, Saint Athanasius. One of the most important patriarchates in the entire history of the Church is the Alexandria Patriarchate. And their norm, according to Athanasius's letters, was all catechumens are brought into the Church. Reading all the Deuterocanonical texts. That would mean again, countless verses throughout Sirach, about kings and the principles of the Davidic iconographic representation that every basileus, that's the Byzantine idea of the ruler, he's a basileus that's based on the idea of David. So it's just simply not the case that the church didn't look to all these Old Testament principles.

[Moderator (James)]

And then for the Q and A line, if you guys can do me a favor and slide all the way, just single file that way the cameras are able to see the speakers. All right. And then we'll keep you tight. This way, that way. There you go.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

All right.

[Jake Brancatella]

Hey, everybody.

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[Audience Member / Questioner]

So this debate is about what is better for society. And you argue that Islam is better because. Because Protestantism led to individuality, which eventually led to liberalism, which I agree liberalism is not the best for society. But I think your argument fails in that Islam would all have also had this liberal ideology influence, except every time it starts up in a free Islamic society, they crush it through violence, war and dictatorship, killing their own people. And you can see that in places like Iran and other places where revolution have taken place. And I would go on farther, that even with the richest nation in the world, Saudi Arabia, Islamic nations have done nothing over the last two centuries to invent any great revolution for society. Meanwhile, a bunch of Christian farmers overthrew the greatest colonizing nation the world has ever seen and built the most powerful nation of the modern era. And even in this liberal revolution, America has maintained its Christian foundation while peacefully exploring revolutionary ideas and democracy. And I so I would say ask you, if Islam is better, why are your people massively immigrating to all the Christian nations and don't stay in their own?

[Jake Brancatella]

One of the reasons is because supposed Christian nations like the US Keep bombing the crap out of Muslim nations. And so they're living in situations in which there's not a good economy. They're being bombed. I can go through so many examples of that. But I myself, I left the US to live in a Muslim country, and I think Muslims should too. So maybe we agree on that.

[Jay Dyer]

Well, I just wanted to say the word shit because I see that Trent Horn is in the back and I want to know if he's going to leave the room if I say the four letter word. No. Okay. I'm just joking, Trent.

[Jake Brancatella]

I think. I think Trent should take my place for the rest of the debate.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Oh, no, I just agree that the Muslims should go back to their nation and leave America.

[Jake Brancatella]

You disagree with that?

[Audience Member / Questioner]

No, I agree they should stop immigrating here and taking over Frisco. It'd be great.

[Jake Brancatella]

I agree too.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

I.

[Jake Brancatella]

That's one thing I agree on.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Hey, Jake, I just wanted to ask you. You say that Islam is better or would be better for American society because Protestantism, liberal Christianity imposes liberalism. But I want to ask you if it, if Islam would better American society, why is it the case that every single Congress person on the federal level level in the United States have all been liberal Democrats that actually contribute to these things that you criticize?

[Jake Brancatella]

In other words, you're saying that liberal democracy is a good thing. Is that what you're trying to say?

[Audience Member / Questioner]

No, I said if you're saying it's a bad thing and that Islam would be the alternative, why is it that every single Muslim representative on the federal level in Congress, every single single one of them, were liberal Democrats?

[Jake Brancatella]

Well, there's hardly any of them. There's a few. And they're all phonies.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

I guess that's the answer. Submit to wrong J.

[Jake Brancatella]

I don't think that's gonna happen.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Hi. This question is actually directed at. This question is actually directed at both you guys. As an ex atheist, this question used to be kind of the center point of why I was an atheist. I think both Christianity and Islam agree and teach that human beings often fail to live according to God's will and what he teaches us. However, if followers repeatedly misuse or distort the religion throughout history, we see in Christianity, through the Crusades, Islam. I think a lot of it goes without saying. I mean, we see isis, we see what happens in the Middle East. How should an outsider determine whether these failures reflect the human nature itself or actually something that it reveals about the religion itself? And is there any threshold where the consistent fruit of a movement should cause us to question the movement's teachings themselves?

[Jake Brancatella]

Do you want to answer first, Jay?

[Jay Dyer]

Well, I mean, the examples were kind of complex. I don't think that with, you know, issues like the Crusades, there's a simple, you know, good guy, bad Guy and oh, that was all bad or that was all good. I mean, all of these situations or examples are extremely complex and it's very difficult to say in broad brushstrokes that this is all the fault of the religion. Right. Like I wouldn't want to say that because the Western civilization birthed, you know, liberalism and atheism in the modern era that therefore all of Christianity. It's just very difficult. It's a complex question. I just don't know if you can immediately identify unless it's something egregious. And I think that in my perspective, you know, a lot of Islamic teachings are egregiously wrong. Those things would be to me indicators, but that's also going to be based on my paradigm. So I think ultimately, you know, this is, I'm not trying to cop out, but ultimately it's going to be a paradigm level question depending upon what you consider to be good and bad. And if you're an atheist, I don't think atheists even have a basis to say what's good and bad. So they're just going to confirm with their own assumptions whatever they don't like based on interpreting some event like the Crusades or whatever.

[Jake Brancatella]

And did you say you're an atheist or ex atheist? Oh, okay, yeah, so I was just confused.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Attribute a lot of my atheism towards the fact that many religions justify evil acts through text or through their religion itself.

[Jake Brancatella]

Okay, yeah, I mean that certainly happens. It happens in Christianity, happens in Islam, but I don't think that that necessarily refutes the religion or indicates it.

[Jay Dyer]

Right.

[Jake Brancatella]

If there is a clear pattern that happens over and over again and that the people themselves, pretty much all of them are agreeing that it's from the religion, then that would call into question, as Jay said, whether or not you agree with said position. So, for example, of course I don't support ISIS at all, but I do believe that jihad or warfare is legitimate. So yeah, it just all depends on the situation.

[Moderator (James)]

Ready for you?

[Audience Member / Questioner]

My question is for the Muslim. You say that the Islamic religion is best for society. So from a society like the, the Al Qaeda under, in Afghanistan, you have the education of women that are, is barred after grade six. You have their restriction of public employment, you have their freedom movement restricted. You have women being spit on and beaten for not wearing a head covering. You have Muslim women being attacked just for whatever, whatever the man wants. And you have mass rape of Muslim women. And you also have harlots and harem for Muslim women where a man can take multiple wives and then you also, you also have bacha bazi boys. So how do you reconcile this with the original premise of the debate being how is this better for society?

[Jake Brancatella]

You seem pretty upset by what you said. You got a nice hat there. It's better than J's. But no, just because there are some Muslims and I would dispute a lot of the things that you said. But even if I granted that there are some Muslims who are doing things, things like as you mentioned, bachabazi stuff in Afghanistan, that doesn't mean that it's correct. There's nothing in, in the Quran or Islamic law which supports that type of behavior at all. So there's always going to be people who claim to be a particular religion who actually do heinous things and there's no way around that. That's just going to happen.

[Jay Dyer]

Out of curiosity, what do you, is there a society that you do think exists that has a good form of Islamic law and practice?

[Jake Brancatella]

There are some more than others, but none completely are instituting Islamic law. But I mean, I can give you my view of which ones I think are better. I think a lot of the Gulf states are.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Would you agree that your supposed prophet and in my opinion, demon who married a six year old girl is the pinnacle of your religion and the ideal state of your society?

[Jake Brancatella]

No, it's not the pinnacle of the religion. Just because the prophet did something that doesn't make it the pinnacle of the religion.

[Moderator (James)]

We're going to the next question.

[Mike Lefebvre (ROAR CEO)]

All right.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

My question is in the line of the relationship between the church and the state. The Eastern Orthodox Church historically have been tied or married to the political unit that they exist in. The Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Greek, Ethiopian, Eritrean. Now usually they tend to support the state even in times of war. Now doesn't that put the Christian communities in those political units in danger of warring with each other? And we can see at the example of the Russian Orthodox Church supporting Putin, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church supporting Ukraine warring with each other.

[Jay Dyer]

Yeah.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

I have firsthand witnessed Eritreans and Ethiopian scoptic Christians warring with each other. How is that good for Christian societies in those states?

[Jay Dyer]

Why would that be good? What in anything that I argued would make you think that I'm saying that would be good?

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Well, because the Eastern Orthodox Church is always tied to the political unit.

[Jay Dyer]

Well, because the church has something to say to politics and has a doctrine of symphonia, it again doesn't follow from that that it will always be explicated or done in the right way. We would simply Say that it's actually impossible, which I would agree with Jake. It's really not possible to have a secular view of the state. If you are a religious believer, it becomes really, you really just cut God off from that area of society and you act as if, as many Baptists think, right, that, well, I have my own personal religious belief, but it's nothing really to do with the state. So you kind of create this division between two realms. But there's never been a situation in Christian history or the Old Testament where God didn't have principles and things to say to the state. So the fact that you find examples, and by the way, there is no historical Ukrainian Orthodox Church that doesn't exist. What exists is the church. Huh.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Ukrainian Orthodox Church exists now and Ukraine.

[Jay Dyer]

Okay, where did that come from? Do you know where it came from?

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Well, we can go into that, but either way.

[Jay Dyer]

Well, it was created by the State Department. It was created by the State Department. So that's why there's a Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Prior to the existence of Ukraine, which comes out of World War I, there was only the Russian church there. There was no Ukrainian Orthodox church separate from Moscow. That's a creation of the West. So if your idea is that the separate separation of church and state is the ideal, it's ironic that it's actually the American government that created that separation there with the Church of Ukraine and with Moscow. So I'm simply saying that there will always be, as Papa Natsiev said in his famous book Reflections of a Russian Statesman, if you have this strict division of church and state, not just separation, but division of the church from the state, you don't actually get freedom and liberty. What you you get is a new church running the state. Namely the state becomes the church running the state. So I'm saying it's not possible to have what you're assuming. I'm assuming you're arguing.

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[Audience Member / Questioner]

Either way, Christians in those countries are waring with each other. That's my point. Also, if Russia or Ukraine or Ethiopia or Eritrea in which these churches exist, if they were to collapse, the church also is affected or would collapse with them. We're adding the Protestant tradition. If the US were to go down, the Methodist church or any Protestant church wouldn't go down with the state.

[Jay Dyer]

No, I don't think that's true at all. Again, there were no Protestant Methodist churches for centuries of existence for the first 1500 years of the church. Right. I mean, John WESLEY, Methodism, that's 1700s. So the idea that somehow Protestantism is protected because it's not tied to the state, that's not even classical Protestantism. All the first generation reformers utilized the state to promote their Reformation. Luther used the German princes. The history of the, of the Methodist Church is bound up with the Anglican Church. So what you're arguing for is really just a fiction that doesn't actually exist.

[Moderator (James)]

Gotta go to the next person. I'm sorry, I've given you like. I just want to make sure that they get to ask their questions before. Go ahead. Okay. This is for Jake.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

I just had a question. Isn't the abolition of slavery in the Christian that began in the Christian world, isn't that a good argument for the

[Moderator (James)]

strength of Christian ethics and establishing a

[Audience Member / Questioner]

just society because it's rooted in a recognition of everybody being made in God's

[Moderator (James)]

image and the primacy of love of neighbor as a duty?

[Jake Brancatella]

Only if you think that slavery in any condition is unjust, which I don't agree with.

[Audience Member / Questioner]

Okay.

[Moderator (James)]

But surely you would agree that we're in a much better state now that

[Audience Member / Questioner]

the conditions of things like chattel slavery are gone and that country after country has abolished slavery. Don't you think that's on net a good effect?

[Jake Brancatella]

I think that that is a good thing. Yeah.

[Jay Dyer]

I just have a question for Jake.

[Jake Brancatella]

Yeah.

[Jay Dyer]

Your whole debate, your whole deal was that liberalism is bad, which we agree on. My question to you is if it's so bad, why the hypocrisy that every city that is Muslim here in the United States votes for them?

[Jake Brancatella]

Why do Muslims vote for liberals? I guess is your question.

[Jay Dyer]

They work for democratic liberalism, ideology that you guys do not support, but you're using it to take over this country.

[Jake Brancatella]

I don't think we're taking over the country or about 1% of the population. So what's that?

[Jay Dyer]

That's your goal?

[Jake Brancatella]

It's not my goal. Well, I left. I'm out of here. I don't want nothing to do with the U.S. sure, sure. So I think that the reason is because secular liberalism has the facade of Allowing people to do whatever they want. Want. And that's what a lot of these Democrats and leftists promise Muslims. They think that because they're the extreme minority, they have to support that they want. They're okay to allow gays to get married and do those things so long as they can have their mosque and do whatever they want. That's the reasoning behind it. But I don't agree with it at all.

[Jay Dyer]

All right, well, you're one of the few. But I mean, in my. My personal opinion, I agree with you. There should be more religion and the government. Maybe we keep you, all of you

[Jake Brancatella]

guys out of this country. I'm not here, so it's fine with me.

[Jay Dyer]

I would just like to. I would like to thank both Muslims that came to debate to. To me for actually just arguing against Protestantism, because both Muslims, the whole argument was against Protestantism, so.

[Jake Brancatella]

And. And arguing against Trent Horn, too. Don't forget about that.

[Moderator (James)]

We were out. Do want to do a couple of quick housekeeping things before we do one final round of applause? Jay is correct. Trent Horn and Jay have agreed to a debate late this year. That will be December 13th. In that weekend, we're still negotiating on venues. But you also want to show this beauty as my editor just made this today as Jay Dyer will be also facing Dr. David Wood this fall. So that'll be at 20 DebateCon 9 in Orlando. Tickets will go on sale within the next week. We have a newsletter if you'd like to join that. That's at our YouTube about page, and that's where we send out basically whenever we do launch our next tickets for our next event. So we are looking forward to Jay and Dr. David Wood facing off twice at that fall conference in Orlando, which, by the way, that hotel has a water park. I'm not joking. It's amazing. But with that. All right, we're good. Bob, other housekeeping thing, and then we'll give a final round of applause. Remember to take anything out of your car. Don't leave anything in your car. Don't let it be a temptation to anybody. With that. One final round of. Go ahead, Jay.

[Jay Dyer]

Also, I do have about five books left. We sold out almost all the books last night, but there are some books. And I'll be out there if you guys want to get some books.

[Moderator (James)]

Oh, that's right. And then we'll also do that meet and greet for those, like, four or five people really quick after the debate. But one last round of applause. Jake and Jay, it's been a true pleasure to have you guys? Special thanks to our sponsors Main First Project Revival of the Anointed's Rule Uncensored America Patrick O' Neill Ark. Apologetics, Yonaguni International Cuisine and SDA Special thanks to our sponsor Maine First Project Fighting to put Mainers first. Check out mainfirstproject.org Huge thanks to Revival of the Anointed's Rule Equipping Christians to fight for Biblical values through policy victories. Check out revivetheroor.org Special thanks to our sponsor Uncensored America. Want to host a controversial speaker on your college campus? Start a chapter now on your campus at UncensoredAmerica us huge thanks to our sponsor Apologetics ARC. Check out their app today by downloading it first. Peter 3:15 says always be ready to give a defense. Huge thank you to our sponsor Yonaguni International Cuisine of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. Check them out on your next trip. Special thanks to our sage sponsor s da

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