10. The Pope's Death, Pete Hegseth, and the "Christian Persecution" Fantasy

Summary

The Tim & April Show – Episode 10 Summary

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Tim & April Show
• Host/Author: The New Evangelicals
• Description: Where we unravel faith, politics, and culture.
• Episode: 10. The Pope's Death, Pete Hegseth, and the "Christian Persecution" Fantasy
• Release Date: April 25, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 10 of The Tim & April Show, hosts Tim Whitaker and April the Joy delve into a series of intertwined topics that highlight the tumultuous intersection of faith, politics, and culture in contemporary society. From the unexpected financial downturn of Tesla to the passing of Pope Francis, and the ongoing narrative of Christian persecution, the episode presents a critical examination of current events affecting the evangelical community and beyond.

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Tesla's Financial Struggles and Elon Musk

The episode opens with a discussion on Tesla's recent financial performance, highlighting a staggering 71% drop in net income for the first quarter. Tim Whitaker comments on the severity of this decline, likening it to "a meteor just booming" (04:08). April the Joy underscores the gravity of the situation, noting that such a significant downturn is "bad news" for any business.

Notable Quotes:

• Tim Whitaker [04:08]: "Tesla was down 71% in Q1 as far as profits go, which is outlandish for any business."
• April the Joy [04:19]: "A 71% drop in profit is not what you want to see. That's bad news right there."

The hosts explore the reasons behind Tesla's financial woes, attributing a portion of the decline to the potential elimination of federal government subsidies and tax credits. Whitaker sarcastically remarks on the government's role, stating, "Tesla would have lost hundreds of millions of dollars had it not earned $400 million in interest on cash and investments" (04:22). They critically analyze Elon Musk's strategies to cut government spending, pointing out the unrealistic expectations and significant reductions in projected savings.

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Pope Francis' Passing and Its Impact

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to the unexpected passing of Pope Francis. April the Joy reflects on Pope Francis' contributions, emphasizing his role as a compassionate and humanitarian leader within the Catholic Church. She highlights his efforts in advocating for the marginalized, reforming church elitism, and addressing climate change.

Notable Quotes:

• April the Joy [17:44]: "Pope Francis was a very genuinely compassionate Pope...He was vocal about humanitarian needs in Gaza."
• Tim Whitaker [20:54]: "He was the first Pope to authorize blessings for same-sex couples. That's a huge step in the right direction."

Whitaker provides a historical perspective on Pope Francis, noting his unique position as the first Latin American and Jesuit to be elected Pope. He credits the Jesuit order's focus on aiding the poor and marginalized as influencing Francis' outward-facing and reformative approach within the Church.

The hosts also discuss the impending conclave to elect a new Pope, anticipating tension between progressive and conservative factions within the Catholic Church. They express concern over potential conflicts reminiscent of historical religious schisms, forecasting a possible "battle" over the future direction of Catholicism.

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Anti-Christian Bias Task Force

The episode shifts focus to a controversial initiative announced by the Trump administration: the establishment of a task force aimed at eradicating anti-Christian bias within the government. Tim Whitaker criticizes the premise, arguing that such a task force is unnecessary given the predominance of Christians in government roles.

Notable Quotes:

• Tim Whitaker [42:18]: "Nothing says anti-Christian like the majority of government, politicians or government, the majority of politicians being Christian."
• April the Joy [43:18]: "Conservative Christians have been taught that Christians are persecuted...but most people in America have claimed some sort of Christianity."

Whitaker and April the Joy contend that the task force serves as a "Trojan horse" for maintaining Christian nationalist power, rather than genuinely addressing any form of discrimination. They assert that the initiative is more about preserving political privilege and enabling discrimination against marginalized groups rather than protecting Christians.

Notable Quote:

• Tim Whitaker [46:07]: "Christian supremacists are trying to maintain their privilege at the expense of everyone else."

The hosts warn of potential misuse of the task force's reporting mechanisms, suggesting that it could be exploited to target individuals or groups that the Christian nationalist agenda opposes.

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Anti-Catholic Sentiment among Evangelicals

A significant theme in this episode is the deep-seated anti-Catholic prejudice prevalent within certain evangelical circles. Whitaker and April the Joy share personal anecdotes and broader observations about the historical and ongoing tensions between Protestants and Catholics.

Notable Quotes:

• April the Joy [26:27]: "Catholicism is a wicked pagan religion that is Antichrist and anti-Bible."
• Tim Whitaker [28:20]: "It is wishful thinking to assume that people in the Roman Catholic Church are genuine Christians."

The hosts critique prominent evangelical figures, such as John MacArthur, for perpetuating narratives that discredit Catholicism as a true expression of Christianity. They highlight misconceptions and theological misunderstandings that fuel this animosity, emphasizing the irony that the Catholic Church predates Protestantism by over a millennium.

Notable Quote:

• Tim Whitaker [28:01]: "No one is perfect...But being on the outside of it now, it just is really wild to watch these churches be so focused on attracting as many people as possible..."

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Pete Hegseth and Security Issues

Turning to political figures, the episode scrutinizes Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, highlighting his repeated lapses in security protocol. The hosts discuss incidents where Hegseth shared sensitive information via unsecured channels, leading to national security concerns.

Notable Quotes:

• Tim Whitaker [63:56]: "He willingly shared sensitive national security information on a signal chat with his wife and brother-in-law."
• April the Joy [65:00]: "His wife, brother, and personal lawyer in a group chat dropping information about war plans in Signal."

Whitaker condemns Hegseth's actions as egregious breaches of protocol, questioning his qualifications and integrity. They draw parallels to past political scandals, underscoring the potential dangers such behavior poses to national security and the military's effectiveness.

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Christian Nationalism Deep Dives

Throughout the episode, Tim and April emphasize their ongoing series of deep dives into Christian nationalism. They outline their plans to explore various aspects and key figures within this movement, aiming to illuminate the motivations and consequences of blending religious ideology with political power.

Notable Quotes:

• Tim Whitaker [74:05]: "Christian nationalism is not built around a particular theology or doctrine about God. It's built on an ideology and a political viewpoint."
• April the Joy [75:16]: "Christian nationalism is about weaponizing religion to discriminate against people that they just don't like."

The hosts critique the fusion of religious fervor with nationalist politics, arguing that it often leads to exclusionary and oppressive policies. They highlight the misrepresentation of Christian doctrines to justify political agendas, stressing the need for vigilance against such distortions.

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Christian Cringe Segment: Parody of Defying Gravity

In a lighter yet critical segment titled "Christian Cringe," Tim and April showcase a parody by a small church that reimagines the song "Defying Gravity" from the musical Wicked as "Defying Graves." The hosts express their disapproval of the effort, citing poor production quality and the inappropriate merging of secular media with religious messages.

Notable Quotes:

• Tim Whitaker [80:16]: "Defying Graves for me; you can pull him down, Linda. Follow him with me."
• April the Joy [86:33]: "It's pure cringe."

They critique the attempt to appropriate popular culture for evangelical purposes, suggesting that such endeavors often miss the mark both artistically and doctrinally. The segment serves as a commentary on the sometimes forced and insincere attempts to make faith-based content appealing to broader audiences.

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Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, Tim and April reflect on the broader implications of Christian nationalism and its impact on American society. They reiterate the importance of understanding the underlying motivations behind political actions disguised as religious initiatives. The hosts emphasize their commitment to exposing and critiquing the misuse of faith for political gain, urging listeners to remain informed and critical of such movements.

Notable Quotes:

• Tim Whitaker [59:12]: "Jesus says, these people praise me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."
• April the Joy [75:16]: "Christian nationalism is about weaponizing religion to discriminate against people that they just don't like."

The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to engage with the content thoughtfully, subscribe for future deep dives, and stay informed on the evolving landscape of faith and politics.

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Key Takeaways:

• Tesla's significant financial drop is partly linked to potential losses from government subsidies and changing political climates influenced by Elon Musk's strategies.
• The passing of Pope Francis marks the end of an era characterized by his humanitarian efforts and progressive reforms within the Catholic Church.
• The Trump administration's creation of a task force to combat anti-Christian bias is viewed critically as a tool for maintaining Christian nationalist power rather than addressing genuine discrimination.
• There is persistent and intense anti-Catholic sentiment within certain evangelical factions, rooted in historical misunderstandings and theological disputes.
• Pete Hegseth's security lapses highlight concerns about accountability and competence within political leadership roles.
• Christian nationalism, as critiqued by the hosts, involves the politicization of religion to enforce exclusionary and oppressive policies, rather than upholding genuine Christian values.
• Attempts to merge popular culture with evangelical messages, as seen in the "Defying Graves" parody, often result in misguided and ineffective outreach efforts.

Final Note: For listeners interested in exploring these topics further, Tim and April encourage subscribing to their YouTube channel and podcast, where they continue to provide in-depth analyses and discussions on the interplay between faith, politics, and culture.

Transcript

[Tim Whitaker]

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[April the Joy]

You're listening to a new evangelicals production, the Tim and April show, where we unravel faith, politics and culture.

[Tim Whitaker]

Oh, hi.

[April the Joy]

Hi.

[Tim Whitaker]

Hello, April.

[April the Joy]

Welcome to the show.

[Tim Whitaker]

Hello, friends. Welcome in. We have one hell of a show planned because everything is broken. Everything is falling apart.

[April the Joy]

This is the first episode we're in our show rundown at the very bottom. I have like honorable mention topics that are huge topics we could do a whole show on by themselves. So who knows if we'll get to everything. I'm sure we will not because what even is this life right now? Too many things.

[Tim Whitaker]

A hundred percent. Friends, welcome into the Tim and April Show. We go live every Thursday at noon Eastern. We also do deep dives on Christian nationalism on Monday. So make sure that you are subscribed to the YouTube channel. Give this video a like if you're watching it right now, that would mean so much to us. It helps let YouTube know that more people want to see this video. Like I said, welcome in. I am Tim Whitaker. That is April the Joy. We do this show twice a week now, which is amazing. Yeah, there's so much to get into. And we'll. We'll get into it because I'm not sure about you, April, but I always feel like I am just every time I turn my phone on, which is too much, by the way. It's like just standing in front of a fire hose. I just feel like I am like trying to catch water. But it's just so much. There is so much happening at all times and it's hard to keep up, frankly.

[April the Joy]

It is hard to keep up. It's just a constant flow of not just news, but pretty bad news and just honestly, like insane headlines that at one point in my life I didn't think I would see. But we did want to start off with some good news, right?

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah. So, yes, I mean, it's good news. It's good news for, for most people. It's not good news for some person.

[April the Joy]

For some people, if you're named Elon Musk, not good news. But for everyone else, I mean, Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk has been lamenting the absolute, what would like, nose dive profits for Tesla.

[Tim Whitaker]

It's like a, it's just, it's like a meteor just booming. Right. Right. To planet Tesla. Yeah. So it turns out that Tesla was down 71% in Q1 as far as profits go, which is outlandish for any or any business. I mean, any business at all. Small, large, medium, doesn't matter. 71% is. That is, I mean, it's almost, it's almost like, like the Onion wrote that article. It's so outlandish to me.

[April the Joy]

Yeah, no, that, that is, if you are a business person, a 71% drop in profit is, is not what you want to see. That's, that's bad news right there.

[Tim Whitaker]

Bad news bears. Bad news bears.

[April the Joy]

Yeah. And so, and according to that article from the New York Times, says the earnings were well below Wall Street's expectations. Tesla would have lost hundreds of millions of dollars had it not earned $400 million in interest on cash and investments. And then an additional $595 million from selling credits to other car makers that failed to meet emissions regulations that Mr. Trump has pledged to eliminate. So I. Once those, if I'm reading it right, I think once those are eliminated, which would be bad because that helps control that, it helps climate change. But it sounds like Elon Musk himself is, would lose even more money once those, once that's eliminated.

[Tim Whitaker]

I mean, it turns out that that pesky federal government that's too big and too bloated is actually helping keep Tesla afloat. Who would have thought, who would have thought that that government subsidies and tax credits and, and selling credits based on federal regulations and FDA reg. What's the department that regulates the environment? Thank you. Geez Louise. Yeah, the epa. It turns out that, you know, some of those things are part of the reason why Tesla did not completely lose out on everything. According to USA Today, it says that Tesla's earnings showed a 71% drop in net income and a 9% decline in revenue. And that Elon attributed, attributes some of this to rapidly evolving trade policy and changing political, political sentiment. But analysts express concerns that, you know, maybe part of the real problem here is the fact that Elon Musk, you know, tried to gut the government from the inside out as an unelected bureaucrat. And also, I don't know, was really controversial for how he did it, including lying. And the American population was like, you know what? We're going to boycott Tesla. Maybe, maybe that has something to do.

[April the Joy]

Maybe not. Five percent drop, perhaps.

[Tim Whitaker]

Perhaps. I mean, it's hard to say. Maybe most Americans don't like when unelected billionaires give Nazi salutes in honor of their new commander in chief, because 71% is not a bump in the road. And that's not just because of economic, like, turbulence or things like that. This is because Americans were like, no, absolutely freaking not. We are boycotting this man and everything he stands for. So that's some good news that. That is good news today that I'm happy to see.

[April the Joy]

Did you ever pull that audio of Trump saying, I love Tesla. I do have a great time.

[Tim Whitaker]

I know, I know. I love Tesla.

[April the Joy]

I know all of them. The chat mentioned, I love Tesla. And I'm like, oh, that.

[Tim Whitaker]

I love it.

[April the Joy]

I love Tesla.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it really is unbelievable when you think about it, that, you know, are we, we're almost at the 100 day mark, I think, for Trump's presidency.

[April the Joy]

And to think, has it only been 100 days?

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, I mean, and the wild thing is, so, so the other crazy part about the whole thing with do that is that they came in like Elon. So Elon, when he was campaigning with Trump, said, he said that we can initially cut $7 trillion out of the government. And then when he got into his Doge position, he said, okay, we can cut a trillion dollars from the government. So he already really lowered expectations. And then, and then it turns out that now he's walked that back and he anticipates that they would cut about $150 billion, which is 85% less than what they initially said, according to. This is the New York Times. And then according to New York Times, it says even that figure may be too high, according to a New York Times analysis of Doge's claims. And that's because when Mr. Musk's group tallies up its savings so far, it inflates its progress by including billion dollar errors by counting spending that will not happen in the next fiscal year. And by making guesses about spending that might happen at all. One of the group's largest claims, in fact, involves canceling a contract that did not even exist. Although the government says it had merely asked for proposals in that case and had not settled on a vendor or a price. Mr. Musk's group ignored that uncertainty and assigned itself a large and very specific amount of credit for canceling it. It is.

[April the Joy]

What, a failure.

[Tim Whitaker]

And, but also, like meritocracy, baby.

[April the Joy]

I mean, we love to see it. We love to see karma consequences for actions like, you know, and for the people that are saying the boycotts and the protests are not working, like, yes, this. This is a clear show that it does work. And, and it's not just Americans that boycotted Tesla. I mean, there are people, all countries, all over the world boycotting Tesla as well, because of what they are seeing happening in America 100. I also don't want to just. He also caused a lot of damage. The usaid.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yes.

[April the Joy]

The, you know, they're. They're cutting back on medical research, on cancer research. Like, so many of the cuts that he has done is going to be detrimental moving forward, and I don't know how we recover from that. But at least he's also miserable, so.

[Tim Whitaker]

Makes me very happy, honestly. I mean, I, I don't like taking. I don't like rejoicing in other people's misery. But in Elon's case, I absolutely am rejoicing that because hopefully it tells him that he is that his views and policies or, you know, his actions are not popular for most Americans. Right. This, and this goes back to the bigger point that, that, that these Christian nationalists who have helped kind of get Trump elected, etcetera, you know, all of this stuff, it's not popular. It's not popular at all. And it affects real people. Right. I mean, we talked about how the USAID getting rid of that whole department, that's like the human humanitarian arm government. And to have a billionaire go in and just gut it and then be supported by Christian nationalists is just unbelievable to witness. But the free market has spoken. Elon, we don't like what you're doing, so cut it out.

[April the Joy]

Yeah. Get out of here. What is that? Remember on Full House? Cut it out, Joey. Wow.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yes, I do. Now, that's a deep dive.

[April the Joy]

Yeah, that, that, that was like, came from the depths of my brain just then. Okay. Do you, do you have our golf tracker since we do.

[Tim Whitaker]

Oh, I do. I do. Yeah.

[April the Joy]

That is one thing that we do.

[Tim Whitaker]

Let's pull that up. So we. We. We are. We're gonna stop tracking the price of eggs. And the reason why is because they've leveled out. They're pretty much sitting at about 292 a dozen. So they're still higher than what they were a year ago under President Biden, but they're not nearly as high as they were in January. So we'll keep you guys apprised of that, but it's not really worth covering a whole lot.

[April the Joy]

Yeah. And also, I don't know if eggs are the best, like, tell of how the economy is doing.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right, right. That. That is fair. That is fair. Yeah. So Trump golf tracker. Okay. As of. Let's see. As of today, 94 days in office, 24 days spent golfing equals 25% of the time Trump has been on a golf course.

[April the Joy]

Okay, so that's gone down a little bit. I feel like it was 27% last week.

[Tim Whitaker]

It was 26, like, 0.25% last week.

[April the Joy]

So barely gone down. But regardless, a quarter of his time has been spent golfing.

[Tim Whitaker]

So golfing and, and, and winning tournaments on. On Mar a Lago and other. I mean, there's. I live in New Jersey, and there's a golf course that's like. I think it's called the Trump Golf Course. He goes to play tournaments up there, and he tends to always win them. It. It, It's. I mean, look, you have to laugh at it because it's just so ridiculous. But also, we both know that if Joe Biden was golfing the way that Trump was golfing, it'd be all over Fox News and Oan and one American and Newsmax, because Biden was. Now, you know, Biden's the vacationing president who just isn't getting anything done as the economy tanks. Like, that's what's so frustrating about this whole thing, is that if the shoes on the other foot, if it was President Kamala Harris in office and the stock market tanked the way that it has tanked. Right. And she was on vacation or golfing 25% of the time, you. You bet your ass that they be all over it. But because it's Trump, we're so back, baby. We're so back.

[April the Joy]

Yeah. Well, if there's one thing they're consistent on, it's being hypocrites. So that's fun. So big news that happened this past Monday morning. So obviously this past weekend, we had Easter. You know, the. The holiday of all holidays. If you are a Christian, the Super Bowl.

[Tim Whitaker]

If you're an evangelical Christian, your big, your big Sunday production happens, you know.

[April the Joy]

Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

[Tim Whitaker]

Hoping to save souls.

[April the Joy]

Wait till you see our weird Christian video we have for you later.

[Tim Whitaker]

This might be the cringiest one perhaps of all time. I mean, it's so painful. But we'll, we'll get to, we'll get to it.

[April the Joy]

Yeah. So this is when all, you know that the, your, your campus, your, your mega church campuses are doing multiple services, are pulling out all the stops. This is when they're expecting, you know, the heathens and the sinners to show up to church. For the people that only go on Christmas and Easter, it's, it's a big, big, big weekend. But Monday morning. Yeah, go ahead.

[Tim Whitaker]

Well, I was just going to say that I also want to add that for, in particular for evangelical churches, this is like their biggest Sunday for potentially winning souls to join their church. So there's a huge emphasis on bragging about how many souls you and your people saved that day. And then all these churches post about, we've had 500 souls, one for Christ. We had a thousand people make a commitment to Jesus. Of course, the problem with this is that most people don't know what they're signing up for and most people don't ever go back. So it becomes this really weird numbers game with absolutely no fruit or foundation underneath of it, but it is, listen, I'm guilty of being part of that world and drumming in those environments and praying for that to happen. So certainly, you know, I have plenty of guilt on my own hands for this. But being on the outside of it now, it just is really wild to watch these churches be so focused on attracting as many people as possible in the hopes that they walk down an aisle, pray a prayer so they can sign a card that says, I committed to Jesus today so then they can brag about it on social media.

[April the Joy]

Little connect card. We had so many people fill out our connect cards and are now going to our small group and now go on to Sunday school and look how many kids participated in our egg hunt. And we had bounce houses and yeah, very much a numbers game. It happens every year. This year fell on 420.

[Tim Whitaker]

Ironic.

[April the Joy]

I did not see any Christians mad at Trump for turning Easter into a marijuana day because they certainly blamed Biden last year for turning into a trans visibility day because they don't know how calendars work.

[Tim Whitaker]

Nope.

[April the Joy]

But okay, skit serious. Pope Francis passed away early Monday morning. He, he was able to attend his Easter. I think he attended His Easter service. Regardless, he met J.D. vance. Those big news, because J.D. vance was at the Vatican over the weekend on Saturday, met with Pope Francis's number two. And, and according to ap, some people were reporting that Pope Francis did not attend that meeting, but kind of sent his number two where they had. What was it, an exchanging of opinions, which feels like a nice way to say they disagreed. Right on. Especially like the. How the Trump administration is treating immigrants. Pope Francis has been, had been previously very outspoken against the Trump administration and how they were inhumanely treating migrants and refugees. And there are some memes going around about JD Vance meeting the Pope that we won't share here.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're gonna take the high road on that one. But if you Google it, you might find things we could just say that way.

[April the Joy]

Yeah, yeah. The one silver lining, I mean, there's.

[Tim Whitaker]

A comment he met JD Vance, then he peaced out. I mean, you know. Yeah, you could say that.

[April the Joy]

I mean, if you see like this is the guy who's second in line to become president of the free world, you know, who knows how long it'll be free? But I mean, yeah, I don't know if that would be the most encouraging desire to live, you know, after meeting him.

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay, sorry. Get through this. That's okay. You're good?

[April the Joy]

Yeah. Gosh, what is happening? It's, it's not even Monday, it's Thursday.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah.

[April the Joy]

But, yeah, so Pope Francis, I would say so obviously we're not Catholic.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right.

[April the Joy]

But from everything that I have known about Pope Francis, and obviously he was not perfect. He's still leader of a church that has caused a lot of harm to a lot of people. But it did seem like Pope Francis was one of the more genuinely compassionate popes in my lifetime. Anyway, he was very vocal about humanitarian needs in Gaza. He was just a. I would say a very humanitarian Pope. And I've seen some clips of him, you know, just the way that he's answered questions and, and some, some things that he's said that just, just seem to be very genuinely, that maybe moved the needle of the Catholic Church slightly to be more loving and inclusive.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah. So a couple, a couple things about Pope Francis that I think is just so interesting. First off, he was the first Latin American and member of the Jesuit order to be elected Pope in the church's 2000 year history. And he was also the first Pope to call himself Francis. What's interesting about this too is that he was part of the Jesuit order, and Jesuits are really focused on helping the poor and marginalized around the world. They even founded the Jesuit Refugee Service during the Vietnam war in the 80s or in the early 1980s was when they founded it in response to the Vietnam War. And it's one of the most active organizations globally today that helps refugees and asylum seekers around the world, regardless of their faith. So he's part of that order, which makes sense because he had a huge emphasis, like you said April, on advocating for the marginalized and the poor. He called priests in Gaza nightly and he would seek updates on both Christians and Muslims in the area. He quickly gained a reputation as a modernizer with an outward facing approach, which saw him speak out boldly on human humanitarian crises such as migration, war on climate change. He sought to reform the church by tackling elitist mentalities among the clergy, demanding a compassionate approach to divorcing gay Catholics and insisting that the church welcomes everyone. And he also did try to take measures to hold the Catholic Church accountable for sex abuse crimes, although those measures did fall short. And as we know, abuse has plagued the Catholic Church. But he really, like, was really passionate about doing everything he could to try and minimize that and into seek reforms to hold bishops and other clergy accountable. And he was the first priest or first pope, sorry, to authorize blessings for same sex couples. That's, again, I know that there are some people listening who are like, you know, too little, too late. I totally get that. Right. We're not here to minimize the, the, the real damage that Christianity, including the, including the Catholic Church, has done to many different types of people. But the fact that the most powerful person in the Catholic Church, right, the Pope, would say that I'm giving authorization for priests to bless same sex couples is a huge, a huge step in the right direction for sure. So again, you know, no one is perfect. There are plenty of flaws that we can pick apart, including things in the Catholic Church. You and I are not Catholic, so it's not really our job. But it is pretty, it is pretty impressive to see, you know, what he did for who he was in the Catholic Church.

[April the Joy]

Yeah. And it will be interesting in the next week or so as they pick the new Pope with the conclave, which, you know, if you have not seen the movie Conclave, it came out last year. It is fantastic. It is very well done. It's fiction, so it's not based on actual people, but it basically takes place. The whole movie is about a Pope dying and then the entire process that happens for electing a new pope and some of the, the people in the running for the new Pope in the movie are very similar to kind of what's happening in real time. Because now you're going to see this push between the more progressive Catholics and then your more, you know, traditional conservative Catholics. And a lot of the more conservative ones really were not a fan of Pope Francis because of the more progressive views that they believe that he had. And so there's this real push to try to move Catholicism back to be pretty right wing, which would not be great considering the world that we're in right now. But we're, you're going to be seeing a battle with that in mind. But there's also some other people similar to Pope Francis who are a little more progressive in their views or even moderate that would probably try to continue what, what Pope Francis did, including. You have a video of one of them.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right. This is, I'm gonna play a video from Cardinal Luis Antonio Tegel. He's a potential successor. He's, he's in the running to become the next Pope. Before I do that, friends, welcome in. By the way, if you're just joining the stream, make sure to give this video a like, it would help us out so, so much. It lets YouTube know that hey, people are into this. So if you're enjoying what we're talking about, if you like being here, give the video a like and make sure to sub to the ch. So let's get into this one. This is actually, I think a really powerful short video. It's not long, it's about two minutes. But this is, this is a potential successor to Pope Francis. And I got this from the account Dream for America. They're a pro democracy group. Check this out. I think it's a really great minute and a half here. How many factory workers are being denied the right wages for the God called prophet? How many women are being sacrificed to the God called domination? How many children are being sacrificed to the God called lust? How many trees, rivers, hills are being sacrificed to the God called progress? And how many poor people are being sacrificed to the God of greed and defenseless people sacrifice to the God of national security. My, my, my, I, I, I think, I mean that's powerful. What's disappointing is that people, a lot of evangelicals and others will see that and go another woke potential, you know, scenario for, for the, the new Pope. But what's so discouraging is that first off this, this cardinal is actually from the Philippines. He has really no context. Like his world is not American politics. But number two, like if you just dare, I oversimplify it. And say, follow the teachings of Jesus. If you read the Sermon on the Mount, if you read, you know, the, the, the, the, if you, if you drink from the well of robust Christian teaching both in Protestant and Catholic circles, those are very typical, understandable, rational ideas to have that, that, that Jesus would be against militarism, that he would be against the pillaging of the planet. Right. For, for profit. These are great things. But we're in such a hyper like right wing climate in America that for a Pope or for a Cardinal to say this will be interpreted by some as being part of the Democratic party, which isn't even the case. It's frustrating because it's so good. I thought that whole line he said, I'm like, yes, this is so good. I love it.

[April the Joy]

Yeah. And it's very anti Christian nationalist too. What, what they're saying, you know, take care of the least of these. It's very, you know, Gospel 101. If you're reading the red letters especially, which is interesting why so many people had such bad things to say about Pope Francis. But it goes beyond even just because he seemed a little more progressive.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah.

[April the Joy]

Because as you and I know being raised Protestant evangelical, there is a lot of anti Catholic sentiment built in to a lot. May not, maybe not the official belief system, but it was definitely taught to me. Like, I don't know what you were taught about the end times and the Rapture and all of that, but there were probably two potential people who are probably going to be the Antichrist. One was whatever Democrat was running for president.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right.

[April the Joy]

But the second one, and this was the one that most people that I knew like in my circles believed it would be the Antichrist, was the Pope. We believed that the Pope would be the Antichrist. I was taught that Catholics were not true Christians because they worshiped Mary and that they had, they made idols of the saints and that they didn't actually have a relationship with Jesus because they had to go through a priest.

[Tim Whitaker]

That's exactly. I mean, so I, I wasn't taught directly that the Pope is probably the Antichrist, but everything else, I was absolutely taught that it's a workspace salvation. It's not biblical. They worship Mary. They're not true Christians. Which is ironic considering that Catholicism predates the Protestant Reformation by like over a thousand years. Right.

[April the Joy]

Like, yeah, we come from, we come from Catholics.

[Tim Whitaker]

Before Martin Luther came along, the Catholic Church was there. Right. So I guess until Martin Luther came along, no one believed the true gospel, which when you really think about it, is wild. But yeah, I mean, absolutely grew up with very strong anti Catholic sentiment. In fact, I actually have a small clip that we'll play of John MacArthur, who is, in my background, one of, like, the. The. The most authoritative pastors who, who has shaped the theology of so many people. And this, I think. I think this clip here is a really good example of the type of anti Catholic sentiment and how direct they were about Catholics not being true Christians. So listen to this clip. And it is important for us to understand what it is that Roman Catholic.

[April the Joy]

Theology teaches and what it is that.

[Tim Whitaker]

Catholics believe and advocate. It is important for a number of reasons. The first and foremost reason that presents itself to me in this day is that evangelicalism is in a big hurry to redefine Catholic people as brothers and sisters in Christ. There is an eager, eagerness to accept them because they talk about God and.

[April the Joy]

Christ and the Holy Spirit and the.

[Tim Whitaker]

Cross and the resurrection and even the Scripture. It is wishful thinking, however, to assume that people in the Roman Catholic Church are genuine Christians. In order to be genuine Christians, they would have to believe something other than Roman Catholic theology. Wow. Wow, John. I mean, who made him the gatekeeper of what it means to be a Christian?

[April the Joy]

And I guess like before, before the Protestant Reformation, just nobody was Christian.

[Tim Whitaker]

No. No one. No one.

[April the Joy]

Everyone.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, no one. And by the way, we should say that, that there have been several reputable articles that have come out over the years that John MacArthur protected two men on his staff who sa their own children. And apparently for John, those men can still be Christians, no problem. But Catholics, Catholics, Nope. They are just. They're too far out of. Of the bounds of orthodox Christianity, which is hilarious because Catholics arguably are way more orthodox than Protestants, especially the modern evangelical empire that we call, you know, evangelicalism or the Protestant theology today. It's. It's wild. The, the irony is not lost on.

[April the Joy]

Me, which is why it is so interesting to see, you know, really more traditional conservative Catholics who are Christian nationalist and the Christian nationalist Protestants coming together.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah.

[April the Joy]

In order to make America Christian. But there's this underlying, like, I would say almost hatred or at least just like, mass judgment of, like, we despise each other. Like, at the bottom line. Like, if the theocracy were to happen.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right.

[April the Joy]

It would be like Crusades 2.0, you know, for sure, the Protestants and Catholics would not be getting along well.

[Tim Whitaker]

And here's the crazy part, right? So John MacArthur is the same. Will also say that, like, you know, hey, God is using Trump and J.D. vance. And J.D. vance is a Catholic. So like there is for Christian nationalists, there is a superseding unifying identity marker that is more political than theological. However, April, to your point, whenever they get the power, which Christianity is going to win out, is it going to be like the trad Catholic ideology? Is it the John MacArthur Christian nationalism? Is it the Sean Foyt charismatic Christian nationalism? They're just setting themselves up for some kind of massive war over who the true believers are. Yeah, it's wild to witness.

[April the Joy]

Although I meant to say 30 years war, not the Crusades. Crusades was a different war. Another. Another Abrahamic war.

[Tim Whitaker]

There's a lot of wars in, in our history.

[April the Joy]

So many wars. But yeah, so there was a lot of.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, yeah, there was, there was, wasn't.

[April the Joy]

There Catholic sentiment immediately being posted after Pope Francis passed away? In case y'all don't believe us, like. Yeah, here's someone. This is just in my feed that I saw. If your pastor is mourning over the Pope, he's a demon too.

[Tim Whitaker]

A hundred.

[April the Joy]

So not even just the Pope is a demon. Anyone you know, grieving over his passing, also a demon.

[Tim Whitaker]

I think this is probably the most notorious one that we've seen.

[April the Joy]

Yep, yep. So Marjorie Taylor Greene, congresswoman, tweeted out just hours after Pope Francis died. She said today there were major shifts in global leaderships. Evil is being defeated by the hand of God.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, Yeah. I would call this Christian supremacy. I would say that, you know, I would say that Christian nationalist is a good term to use, but another term that could be even more applicable at times like this is Christian supremacist. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is a Christian supremacist. She believes that her incredibly narrow and fundamentalist understanding, and also I would argue, ignorant and anti intellectual understanding of the Bible and the faithful reigns supreme. To the point where you literally think that God, the God that you serve, is killing people who, who you think are heretical. I mean, wow. Yeah, wow, that's. That's quite the statement to make.

[April the Joy]

Also, he was already ill. You know, like he had been in and out of the hospital like a lot recently. You know, it was, it was not necessarily shocking that he passed away.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah. But you know, you know, April, you know how, how folks like mtgr, they're always looking for connections. Right? Everything is a conspiracy. Everything is connected. Everything happens for a reason. When it happens against you, it's the enemy. When it happens in your, in your. You know, if it happens in a way that you agree with it, it is obviously God doing it. Like, there's. It's tough Because I don't want to, like, I don't want to be mean or like, even talk down to someone like mtg. But she's so anti intellectual. She's so, she's so foolish. And there's, there's no way to reason with that kind of foolishness. And unfortunately, she has a lot of power because she's a federal lawmaker. Like that. That's the scariest part. If, if she was some person in her church saying crazy stuff online, like, okay, you have a right to say whatever you want. Who cares? She has power in the federal government and believes this stuff for real. That's what makes it so scary.

[April the Joy]

Yeah. No, it's the fact that she even gets reelected after, like, crazy things that she has shocking said and done. I used to go to church in her district in Georgia. Yeah. And that church was also pretty Christian nationalist, so.

[Tim Whitaker]

I'm glad you survived foreign. Here's another one that we have that you can read this one, April. It's a real doozy.

[April the Joy]

With God as my witness, I'm not trying to come off as super spiritual, but I absolutely had a vision this morning. Oh, absolutely. I seen Pope Francis walking in hell with Satan beside him. In the vision, I could. This is all one run on sentence, by the way. In the vision, I could tell that the Pope knew he had been serving Satan this whole time. But he didn't realize that he was going to have to burn all throughout eternity in a lake of fire. The devil had deceived him and used him to deceive hundreds of millions of other people. He was just a throwaway tool of the devil. But we need to know and realize that in the end, only those who never received a love for the truth are going to be deceived. A hundred. One hundred.

[Tim Whitaker]

But with God as your witness, this person's not trying to come off as super spiritual.

[April the Joy]

No, they just had a vision. Pope Francis walking with Satan in hell.

[Tim Whitaker]

But, but, but God is my witness. I'm not trying to come off a super spiritual.

[April the Joy]

Right, but listen, the Pope knew he had been serving Satan the whole time.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, of course, of course.

[April the Joy]

I didn't think he'd end up in hell with Satan. Seems legit. I don't know.

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay, here's another one.

[April the Joy]

All right. It's from Joshua. Catholicism is not Christianity, and Christianity is not Catholicism. Catholicism is a wicked pagan religion that is Antichrist and anti Bible.

[Tim Whitaker]

100.

[April the Joy]

Pope Francis.

[Tim Whitaker]

I, I, I, I grew, Listen, I grew up with a version of this, right? I mean, it wasn't that extreme. But my gosh, like, it's astounding the level of ignorance that is out there on matters like this, even after doing this work for three, four years, still astounds me that there are people who think this is like a, a solid take. It's a. Catholicism is the earliest version or one of the earliest versions of Christianity. They would argue along with the Eastern Orthodox. They argue about this, that they have a direct lineage from the apostles to the Pope. And so it's, it's just, it's just wild. It's wild to see people throw out 2, 000 years of theology and tradition and just history and be like, nah, it's nonsense. But my conservative evangelical Christian nationalist understanding of the world is totally the truth. Maga.

[April the Joy]

Oh my gosh. No, I know, I will say, like, I, like, I believe Catholics are Christians just going to say that, but I did go to the Vatican. Well, here's the thing. I'm, I'm. If you claim to be Christian in regardless of which denomination, whether you're Catholic or Protestant, like, I believe. Right, you're a Christian. Like, I'm not, I'm not one to do the no true Scotsman fallacy and say they're not true Christians, especially when it comes to the Catholic Church, which is a very ancient church, like far older than. Yeah, evangelicals, like evangelicals, we're like the newest new kid on the block of Christianity. We like make stuff up all the time anyway. But I went to the Vatican back in 2015 and I took the like three hour tour, like guided tour where they go through like all the history of the Popes. And I will say if you know the history of the popes, like there was a time where there were like two Popes and, and like they believed like whatever the Pope said was of God. And at one point you had two popes and they're like going against each other. And there were some really awful popes that did some really terrible things historically. I personally like, could never be Catholic for that for like that reason alone. Like, I mean, I'm just, I'm not a fan of the institutional church anyway. But sometimes I'll have people in my comments that are like, well, you deconstructed evangelicalism, but that's only because that was not the true church. And I'm like, ye, yeah, no Catholics, y'all have done some things too, like not to beat up the, like bring up the, the war, you know, Like, I'm just saying we all have our problems. None of us are perfect.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, the the house of Christian thought has a lot of skeletons in all of the rooms that exist. Right. Because people are not perfect and they're broken. And Catholicism has its fair share of major, major problems, for sure. I think what is so interesting to me is to watch people really think that, that they're brand new in the, in the scope of human history. They're a brand new expression of Christianity that's very unorthodox in many, many ways, somehow is representative of the entire Christian tradition. Right. Because you think about, you have just, just think about the three schisms alone. Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox and Protestantism. Right? Those are three major church schisms. They have different books in their Bibles. Ethan. Orthodox. They're. There's different books depending on what church you go to. Sometimes then you have the Protestant Orthodox, you know, the Protestant Bible, et cetera. And to watch people argue over who has the one true faith, who has the one true expression of Christianity, when you, it's. It's comical to me because it's like the Spider man meme. They're all just pointing at each other. It's like, guys, like, maybe, maybe there are parts of the traditions from all of us that we can share in and that we can learn from and maybe think about the world is bigger than any one tradition because maybe God is bigger than any one tradition. Like maybe the God of the universe who created everything is bigger than your Bible believing only church down the street or the Catholic church down the road or the Eastern Orthodox church somewhere in Europe. Right. Maybe it's God is bigger than all of that.

[April the Joy]

Yeah. And I think, I think all of us are finding certain, like finding out certain truths about God, but none of us have it all. Correct. Like it's impossible. The world is so big and God is so big that there's just no way. Also, lest I remind you, there's over 45,000 Christian denominations currently in the world. Yeah, currently.

[Tim Whitaker]

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Sentience soy. Give us a super chat. Thank you so much.

[April the Joy]

That means the world.

[Tim Whitaker]

Just so you all know, any super chats go directly to make this show possible. They go to overhead covering our costs, etc. So it means the world. Thank you so much, friends. April and I, we love going live. Going live at least once a week is one of my favorite things to do. I love being in the moment. It just feels different. So make sure you give this stream a. Like, we love doing this and we have more to get into. You want to kind of keep moving into, you know, speaking of evangelicalism and Christian Supremacy.

[April the Joy]

Yeah, yeah. So we're talking about anti Catholic bias. Yeah, that we just showed you how anti Christian bias.

[Tim Whitaker]

Boo. There it is. I love it. Pam Bondi. Oh my goodness. Oh goodness. There's so much to say. We're not going to play this whole clip, but she announced the following. And by the way, Pete Hegseth is to her left. Marco Rubio is to her right. We'll talk about Pete in a few minutes here. But here's what she said this week. Here we go.

[April the Joy]

Today, we're excited to be here for the launch of the task force to eradicate anti Christian bias as outlined the President's executive order. Joining me today are members of the task force and individuals who have been impacted by the anti Christian bias. Together this task force will identify any unlawful anti Christian policies, practices or conduct across the government, seek input from the faith based organizations and state governments to end anti Christian bias, find and fix deficiencies in existing and regulatory practices that might contribute to the anti Christian bias.

[Tim Whitaker]

All right, we'll cut off there. Yeah. So essentially there is a task force, there's, there's a task force seeking to eradicate anti Christian bias in the government. Because April, nothing says anti Christian like the majority of government, politician or government, the majority of politicians being Christian. Like literally. I think it's, I think the status, 89% of Congress identifies as Christian. But hey, there is deep seated anti Christian bias that is so pro, it's, it's so profound in our government that we need a task force to eradicate it.

[April the Joy]

Also, every single president has claimed some form of, of Christianity in some way. Like the, the idea that there's this anti Christian bias is laughable, but it goes right along. Speaking of things, we were taught with this persecution complex.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yes.

[April the Joy]

That conservative Christians have, I mean, I grew up, I was taught that Christians are persecuted, you know, because Jesus said the world will hate you like it hated me. And so if you were not being hated, you were not really living out your faith. Like because, because being persecuted and, and being, you know, people not liking you was almost a sign of being a good Christian. Yes, but most people in America, you know, have claimed some sort of Christianity. Like Christianity is the main religion of America.

[Tim Whitaker]

And that's because what we're talking about here is not Christian anti bias. We're talking about Christian supremacist anti bias. Right, because you're right. I mean there's. First off, let's just be very clear. There's not one single study, there's not one piece of empirical data that would support these claims. The White House has given no examples except for one, which was a completely misconstrued piece of information. It was around a pro life group that literally invaded an abortion clinic. And I think the nurse's arm was broken through throughout the whole thing. And they got arrested. And right wing Christian nationalists were like, oh, my God. Government persecution. These pro lifers were. We're just being peaceful. They weren't. That's their only example. Right? So this is not about protecting Christians or even protecting religious groups in America. This is about Christian supremacists, Christian nationalists, maintaining their privilege at the expense of everyone else. Because I'll tell you what, when it comes to progressive Christians, when it comes to Catholics, when it comes to non Christian nationalist Christians, they don't care about them. They don't care at all about them. Christian identity means nothing when they think that person is quote, unquote, a legal immigrant, such as the case in Kilmar Abrego's situation. Right? He is Christian. I mean, he appeals to God all the time. His wife appeals to God all the time. They don't care about that. They care about maintaining their access to power and control inside the government. So, you know, this is totally a Trojan horse. And it comes down to maintaining certain political views that most people think are, you know, not good or maintaining their. Their ability to be bigoted without feeling like, you know, the government can infringe on that right? To be bigoted. Honestly, it comes back down to white supremacy. I hate to say that, but this is the same argument that Bob Jones in the 60s used, right? Oh, my God. You're infringing on our religious freedom to maintain racial segregation inside of our universities. How dare the government try and tell us that we can't do that. It's the same idea here. It's wild.

[April the Joy]

Yeah, well, it's really just a dog whistle. When they say anti Christian bias, they mean anti Christian nationalism. Because what do they mean when they say anti Christian bias anyway? They're not talking about taking care of the poor. They're not talking about welcoming the immigrant.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right?

[April the Joy]

You know, so there was this email that the, the VA had sent out to all of its employees that said, the VA Task force now requests all VA employees to submit any instance of anti Christian discrimination to anti-Christian bias [e-mail].

[Tim Whitaker]

Say it one more time, April. So we can all write that down.

[April the Joy]

Anti-Christian bias reporting a.gov so, you know.

[Tim Whitaker]

If you see something, friends say something.

[April the Joy]

You know, I think we could report easily. The Trump administration Cutting USAID that takes away food, shelter, water from the least of these worldwide.

[Tim Whitaker]

I would agree. Yeah. Or, or we can report the Trump administration for trying to illegally deport people who are Christians in America. I think that's more anti Christian bias as well. Yeah.

[April the Joy]

If you want to get real annoying. I, I've seen Donald Trump wear mixed fabrics.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yep. Absolutely. No, I agree.

[April the Joy]

And we have to call anti Christian. Are we going here? You can find a verse to go against pretty much anything. You know, it would be a reality. Be a real shame if people spammed that email.

[Tim Whitaker]

It would be. That would be horrible. I, I recommend that we, we definitely do not do that. No, no.

[April the Joy]

Definitely do not email anti-christian bias reporting a.gov with, with anything that goes against Donald Trump. Don't do that.

[Tim Whitaker]

So according to. This is from the ap, the veterans, the VA Secretary, Doug Collins, he sent, he sent a department wide email requesting employees to report any allegations of anti Christian discrimination among their colleagues. The email, which was reviewed by the Associated Press, asks for names, dates and locations of any alleged incidents to be reported to an internal email address. Are you. I mean, that is wild. Talk about big government. Talk about the nanny state, talk about tyranny. Oh, oh my goodness.

[April the Joy]

There is a. Some of the examples that they gave too. The department is seeking, quote, any adverse responses to requests for religious exemptions under the previous vaccine mandates.

[Tim Whitaker]

Wow.

[April the Joy]

And quote, any retaliatory actions taken or threatened in response to abstaining from certain procedures or treatments. For example, abortion or hormone therapy. I now, to be clear, I don't know. I have never heard a single person who was forced to get an abortion or hormone therapy. I don't even understand where they're like, I don't believe there's any evidence for what they're saying.

[Tim Whitaker]

Well, I think what they're saying is that, and I could be wrong. But the way I would interpret that is if a healthcare practitioner has a religious, you know, a religious reason for not performing an abortion or giving hormone therapy, they can deny the patient that.

[April the Joy]

Care person giving their procedure.

[Tim Whitaker]

That's how I read it. Because how else would that work? You know, like this is for the va, you know, and so again, I could be wrong. That's, that's how I read it. But it sounds more of like, hey, if you're a government employee, you don't have to do these things based on, on religious freedom. And if you and someone, you know, if you see this happening or if you are challenged by that, you can report it as anti Christian discrimination. And Then we'll take care of it.

[April the Joy]

It's also just wild to me about the vaccine mandate because that's one thing that they pushed as being like religious persecution. There are people trying to claim religious exemption from getting vaccines. There's literally nothing in the Bible that you could point to as like, I understand people not wanting to get vaccines, but to use like, oh, it goes against my religion as a Christian, it's just not true. It does not go against your religion to not get a vaccine.

[Tim Whitaker]

During COVID Awakened Church, which is a Christian nationalist church, was giving anyone who wanted one a religious, religious exemption form to not take the COVID vaccine. They were literally like, hey, if you need a form for any reason, we'll give it to you. Wink, wink. It's absolutely wild. And it's also wild to think about how much Christianity is infused into our culture. Christian holidays, right? Our, our entire economy in society revolves around Christmas and Easter, Spring break, all of these things. You have entire industries that are Christian, based in entertainment and publishing in, in music, right? You have pastors. There's a quarter of a million churches in America. A quarter of a million. That's a lot of churches. The government is full of Christians. Evangelicals are the most powerful voting block, arguably of religious identifying people in America. They literally shape elections. And these people really think that they are being persecuted for their faith. They, because they have a, they have, I call it the American Christian persecution complex. They really are looking for any reason to, to find persecution so they can cry foul as they are the large or the most privileged group of people to exist in the nation. I'll never forget, I went to, you know, Charlie Kirk, our, our friend over there at Turning Point usa. I went to one of their pastor summits maybe two years ago. And a pastor, this is when, when President Biden was still in the office, he said from the stage that he's truly concerned that at any moment the Biden administration is going to throw him in prison. And I grew up believing that. I was taught, thanks to talk radio and my church, that at any moment liberals are going to kick down doors, throw people in prison, tear up their Bible and feed it to them and then laugh in their face about it. That, that that's the kind of delusion many of these Christians have. And now those same Christians have access to political power that allow us, that allow them to form anti Christian biases or task force.

[April the Joy]

No, it's really, it's just shocking. The thing, the weird thing about it is there is a time in my life like 15 years ago that I would have been so excited about this because I genuinely believed that Christians in America were persecuted.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah.

[April the Joy]

Despite having never been persecuted and I actively tried, I was very obnoxious about spreading my faith and telling people about Jesus in public. Like in my public school, literally no one ever kicked me out. No one ever told me I couldn't do that. No one ever was even really that me, like, mean to me because most people that I was talking to were also Christian or, you know, had no problem with it. What they're talking about is they're losing their right to discriminate, to, to say no to certain groups of people that they think go against their religion. But the problem is, is in America, one of our founding, like, principles was freedom from religion, which was that people can practice and believe any religion that they want to or not. There is no statewide religion, there's no enforce. Because what's going to happen in this anti Christian bias, in their attempt to weed out what they're calling anti Christian bias, they're actually going to be biased against everybody that does not believe exactly what they believe, including a lot of Christians like you and I. There's a lot of progressive Christian denominations, there's a lot of moderate Christian denominations that don't fall into this Christian nationalist sect that are going to directly be harmed by this attempt. Because what they're really talking about is, oh, I, I was forced to hire a trans person.

[Tim Whitaker]

Exactly.

[April the Joy]

You know, not. And the thing, no one's being forced to hire a trans person, but they're, they're like, they're making this like, persecution complex. Like the whole, like the idea of baking a cake for a gay wedding, like they're, they like that, that was a big story, you know, several years ago in Colorado. Yeah. They tried to frame as Christian persecution, but the problem is you are a public business.

[Tim Whitaker]

That's right.

[April the Joy]

And like, that's not Christian persecution. What that is, is you actually persecuting a gay couple for no reason. It's discrimination and causing harm and, and like literally judging someone that you don't know who's making decisions that go against your beliefs but don't go against their beliefs. And the whole, it's just so fearing because, because you also know, like bringing in the hypocrisy of it all. You know, they, they wouldn't bake a cake for a gay wedding. But I know for a fact a lot of these same people that wouldn't attend a gay wedding because it goes against their religion are attending a lot of Christians Second, third, fourth, fifth weddings.

[Tim Whitaker]

Or, or worshiping a man on his third marriage who's been found liable for sexually assaulting a woman like that. Somehow that's not an issue for them. 100. It's the same, although there are different factors because history rhymes, it doesn't repeat itself. It's the same logic as, as white Southern evangelicals justifying their right to discriminate against black people in business based on their religious views. It's the same idea behind it. Right. We would never tolerate that today. But for some reason, some Christians think that it's totally acceptable to be able to do it to other types of people because in their mind, the Bible told them so. It's almost. And, and it's, it's really sneaky because the right wing media complex is really good at smearing the actual stories. For example, I'm sure you've heard it a lot growing up, April. I did. They took God out of public schools. Did you know that you can't pray in public school? I heard that all the time. You can't bring your Bible in a public school. That is not true. What got removed was the ability for teachers who are acting on behalf of the government to lead students through prayer because it would, it would violate the religious freedom of other students who weren't Christian. But students can pray in school. Students can bring their Bible in school. You can do all of that. In fact, I was, I used to work for Child Evangelism Fellowship, cef, one of the biggest organizations that reaches boys and girls with the gospel of Christ. They had after school Bible programs inside public schools that, that, that students could attend. So this narrative that you hear, the poll still exists.

[April the Joy]

Did you ever go see you at the poll?

[Tim Whitaker]

Of course I did, April.

[April the Joy]

In public school.

[Tim Whitaker]

Of course. I was bold. I was loud and proud. So, so you're absolutely correct. Like, this is not about religious freedom. It's about weaponizing religion to discriminate against people that they just don't like. Because if this was about sexual purity or even following the Bible, any, any baker who was asked to perform or who was asked to bake a cake for a couple might ask, well, are you greedy? Well, is this, is this your first or second marriage? Have you guys had, have you guys been having premarital sex? Because I can't bake a cake for someone who doesn't follow a biblical worldview. Right. I would have more respect for a baker who was like, look, I have a, a questionnaire of all of my clients for weddings that they have to Go through. I. Okay, I. I still disagree, but I at least are being consistent. But it's not about that. It's not even about sexual purity. It's about making sure that gay people don't feel welcome because America. And that's what this whole anti Christian nationalism task force is about. It's about being able to discriminate against people that they just don't like.

[April the Joy]

Yeah, well, and it's also, I. I do think it's a way to draw attention from the fact that they are harming a lot of people. Like immigrants, like refugees, like women, like LGBTQ People just announced they were going to defund the LGBTQ youth suicide hotline.

[Tim Whitaker]

I know. What the hell.

[April the Joy]

I do think what they're doing here is almost like the showmanship of Christianity, of, like, well, look where. We are the Christian party. We are the Christian administration. Because, look, we're. Look at all these things we're doing for Christians. We're weeding out anti Christian bias while enacting some of the most antichrist policies, like, in existence, which I think. And we'll talk about this some on Monday. Like, the things that kind of keep Christians in this Christian nationalist movement is because when you see, like, oh, look, they are. Look, this is the most pro life president we've ever had. This is the most Christian. Like, he's openly talking about Jesus and Easter. He's openly talking about wanting to protect Christianity.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right.

[April the Joy]

It almost can keep them from seeing the actual harm being caused and the actual weaponization of Scripture of harming people in the name of God. It's because you're seeing what you would perceive as good.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right?

[April the Joy]

So you can ignore all the bad. And it's a lot of bad. It is a lot of bad.

[Tim Whitaker]

It's like Jesus says, these people praise me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. I can think of no greater example in our current cultural moment than the Trump administration and the Christians who support him. In the name of biblical values, in the name of Jesus, in the name of. This is how a Christian nation would behave. A Christian nation would not defund access to suicide hotlines that help millions of people, including LGBTQ +Youth. Someone in the chat said that they're also trying to defund the veteran suicide line as well. I believe that because. Because these. April, I. I don't. I don't want to sound this way, but after studying this for so long, I have to say it. These people are cruel. And that's why they like Trump, because Trump is cruel. Because they worship a Cruel God. Christian nationalists worship a cruel God. A God that is jealous, a God that is. Is built on vengeance. A God that is going to punish all of his enemies in hell forever. That's why they love Trump. Trump is. Is the incarnation of the authoritarian God that these people worship. There's just no other way to say it besides saying it like that fact. There's all these connections. Trump wants 24. 7 praise and adoration. And I'm not sure about you, April, but I was taught that when I die and go to heaven, I'm gonna praise God forever because God is worthy of my praise. That's all I'm gonna do. I'm gonna sit in some arena and just sing songs to God because that's all that. That's just my calling life is to worship someone else forever. Like, there's all these correlations, there's all these connections that you can make between how Trump behaves and the God of Christian nationalism. And it's cruel. It is cruel. It is in. It's inhumane, it's dehumanizing. It does not see other humans on the outside group as made in the image of God like they are. It's based on supremacy. And this is the result. This is the result of a Christian nationalist agenda being implemented into our government. And we're less than 100 days in. It's wild.

[April the Joy]

Yeah, it's. It's really interesting. In the last several minutes, I was just curious of Pam Bondi's actual, like, her religious affiliation and her Christian background. Obviously, she's making a big show of you're kind of heading up this anti Christian bias task force. I can't find, at least in, like, my initial search, anywhere where she, like, she talks about her beliefs or her Christian background. She does have some ties to receiving a fundraiser from Scientologists, oddly enough. And it does seem like she has some connections with nar, but I don't see, like, we. Maybe we could do a deep dive on her at some point, because I want to know what her actual Christian background is.

[Tim Whitaker]

I would not be surprised if there really isn't one. Right. And by the way, friends, welcome in. Make sure to give this video a, like, sub to the channel, all that good stuff. But. But, like, you know, we have to understand that, that Christian nationalism and I, I just did a video on this that we're going to drop on the New Evangelicals channel maybe next week. But Christian nationalism is not built around a particular theology or doctrine about God. It's built on an ideology and a political viewpoint, and then the theology is kind of secondary. This is why, for example, an atheist like James Lindsay. Right. Can be platformed at the Turning Point USA Pastor Summit because he says the right things that buy into their culture war. Right. So Christian nationalists are not super focused, at least right now at this point, on the right theology. This is why Catholics like J.D. vance and Doug Wilson or John MacArthur will work together. So Pam Body doesn't have to be an actual, even professing Christian. Trump isn't a professing Christian. Right. But Trump will give them access to the power and control that they want. And so because Christian nationalism is, Is the foundation of it is power, Right. The foundation of Christian nationalism. It's not following Jesus. It's not trying to please God. It's none of that. It is trying to gain access to power. And so because of that, they will use whoever they can, including someone like Pam Bondi, if she will say the right things. And that's the connection.

[April the Joy]

Right. Same thing with how they're using Trump.

[Tim Whitaker]

You know, exactly. 100.

[April the Joy]

We don't. We're not seeing a lot of good fruit in his life.

[Tim Whitaker]

No, it doesn't matter.

[April the Joy]

Yeah. So anyway. Yeah. So there's another, you know, just a friendly reminder. Anti-Christian bias. Reporting.gov is the email address to report anti Christian bias.

[Tim Whitaker]

Do we need to move on to another piece of news that dropped this week? Oh, there's so much. We got this guy, Pete Heck, speaking of Christian nationalists, I mean, this guy loves Doug Wilson. This guy is pretty much all about the Crusades all over again. He now runs the world's biggest and most powerful military. So that's great. He's also incompetent.

[April the Joy]

Is he?

[Tim Whitaker]

I mean, when I think of meritocracy, I think of no one more qualified than Pete. He.

[April the Joy]

Seth, clearly. I mean, I think of meritocracy. I, I do think of him just because of how, how many times he. He said that word in his confirmation hearing that was like word of the day.

[Tim Whitaker]

So, I mean, friends, I'm sure a lot of you have followed the news. You know, Pete Hegseth came under real criticism along with many others, because there was a signal chat where they accidentally, they accidentally added a reporter from the Atlantic and they were dropping, like, very classified information in a signal chat, which is, like, mind blowing. I mean, think they were talking about war, war strikes in Yemen and I mean, things that were clearly confidential. And of course, they all denied it and all this stuff. Well, Pete is back in the news because it turns out he did it again, only it's even worse because he added his wife and I think brother or brother in law to the chat.

[April the Joy]

His wife, brother, and personal lawyer.

[Tim Whitaker]

Oh, my God. Can you just imagine. Can you. Oh, my goodness. I. Can you imagine that this bro, like, dude, have you not, like, learned your lesson? No, of course not. Oh, my gosh. Your wife and your brother and your personal lawyer in a group chat dropping information about war plans in signal. You want to. You want to hear his response to some of this?

[April the Joy]

I do want to hear the response. I also just want to point out the absolute outrage that happened in 2015, leading up to the 2016 election over Hillary Clinton's emails. She didn't even forward them to bad people. She just had. She just brought her classified or, like, access classified emails at home. And like, conservatives lost their minds over that.

[Tim Whitaker]

Dude. They still talk about her. They still talk about Hillary Clinton's emails. They're obsessed. They're obsessed. Right?

[April the Joy]

But literally here you have the Secretary of Defense sending military plans, like active military plans on an unauthorized server to unauthorized people.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah. Yeah. This is. According to NBC News. Shortly before the US Military conducted a complex operation striking the Iran Bhakt Houthis in Yemen, the Defense Secretary shared sensitive national security and operational information about American troops on a signal chat with his wife, his brother, and his personal lawyer. People who had no reason to need to. Who had no reason to need to know about these upcoming strikes. By the way, can I just say, on a practical level, man, does this put actual troops in danger like this for a second? Forget about all the talking points, all the meritocracy nonsense like just doing this. Doing this puts actual people in harm's way. I know, it's. I thought these people were pro military. I thought these people cared about, you know, national security and making America strong. And, you know, Pete Hegset brags about being a wartime, you know, person who's all about. About making the Pentagon in the military more strong and stronger again. And this is what you do. This does the complete opposite. So obviously he's come under fire. Let's hear how he responded. Here. Here's one good video on this.

[C]

No one's texting war plans. You know why I said that? Because I'm in the bowels of the Pentagon every single day. Just 10 minutes ago, I was looking at actual war plans of things that were ongoing or pending, things to happen, because that's on a regular basis on classified systems. That's my job for the war fighters, for the President, United States. I look at War plans every single day. What was shared over signal then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination, other things. That's what I've said from the beginning. At the beginning, it was left wing reporters from the Atlantic who got a hold of it and then wanted to create a problem for the President. This is what it's all about trying to get at President Trump and his agenda now here at the Defense Department. Because, Brian, I want this to be very clear, okay? We take the classification of information, very important. It's very significant to us that we safeguard it. And so when we had leaks, which we have had here, we did a serious leak investigation.

[Tim Whitaker]

Bro, you're the leak.

[April the Joy]

You're the leak. And also the guy from the Atlantic, they got a hold of to him.

[Tim Whitaker]

You, one of your dudes, added him to the group chat. He didn't get a hold of it. You opened the door and said, come on in. Oh, my God. I mean, you know, talk about accountability, right? Talk about own, you know, manning up. Because listen, Pete's all about that, that real, you know, strong masculinity that, that takes ownership and leads your family the right way. Nothing says accountability and strong, you know, biblical manhood like deflecting and blaming everyone else, just like Adam did in the garden, might I add. Right? Who did Adam blame? Right. I guess we can, we can, we can say that.

[April the Joy]

Yeah. If we haven't, we've discussed too, when he was in the process of being confirmed, he said that he'd stop drinking if he was confirmed. I don't know, actually has done that. But like, there's been reports of his time at Fox News where he'd like show up with alcohol on his breath, like in the morning, like he has a history of drinking. And I've seen someone online, which I just think is a funny thing, calling him Whiskey Leaks. Anyway, that's just. I enjoy that nickname.

[Tim Whitaker]

Let's play the clip of Pete talking about this with his kids behind him, because even his kids. See how cringe this is from the.

[April the Joy]

Easter White House event from like this past weekend.

[C]

Yeah.

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay.

[April the Joy]

Family Friendly Affair.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, yeah. All right, here we go. All right, Listen to this. It does.

[C]

They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations. Not going to work with me because we're changing the Defense Department. Putting the Pentagon back in the hands of war fighters and anonymous smear from disgruntled former employees on old news. Doesn't matter. So I'm happy to be here at the Easter Egg Roll with my dad and my kids, because, you know, this is what we're doing it for. These kids right here. This is why we're fighting the fake news media. This is why we're fighting slash and burn Democrats. This is why we're fighting hoaxters. Hoaxters?

[Tim Whitaker]

This group.

[C]

No, no, this group right here, full of hoaxers that peddle anonymous sources from leakers with axes to grind. And then you put it all together as if it's some news story. And when we know it, we know exactly what it is. So I'm really proud of what we're doing for the president. Fighting hard across the board, and I'm gonna go roll some Easter eggs with my kids. Thank you very much.

[Tim Whitaker]

His kids are mortified.

[April the Joy]

That's like, yeah, like Melissa in the chat, looks like camera, like he's on the office. Like, those are some Jim Halpert looks right there of, like, just staring at the camera, like, okay, dad. Also, I love how at the very beginning, he was like, it's just some anonymous sources from disgruntled employees. Okay, which was it? Are they employees that you can name or are they anonymous?

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, who are these people? I mean, look, it's obvious why Trump picked him, because he's just like, Trump. His plan is to lie and deflect out of everything again. No, there's no real accountability. They're not willing to own anything. It's everyone else's fault. Like, they are the world's biggest snowflakes, right? These people, they, they, they, they. They try to exude this masculinity of, like, the ideal American man, but really they're weak and they're cowards and they're. They're just. They're little boys inside, you know, and they're just trying to look for attention and be validated by other men. And it turns out that instead they deflect and sound incredibly weak, because they are.

[April the Joy]

I think it's very fitting, actually, that he is the Secretary of Defense, because he has been nothing but defensive since he's been. Since he's got the role. I mean, he. All he's had to defend himself. Like, that's all he's doing. Like, he just digs himself into a hole, like, clearly just coming. Seeming to be a bit unhinged.

[Tim Whitaker]

Now, there are. There are rumors, I think, that the Trump administration is denying this, where there are rumors that. That they're trying to get this guy out because they're like, oh, my God, this guy's a shit show. Which, I mean, again, with Trump, no matter what he says, I never trust him because he lies profusely. But I honestly would not be surprised if if behind the scenes his team is like, this guy's got to go. He's got to go. Which honestly, again, if you're trying to build a strong military, what you don't want is your secretary of defense putting classified information in signal chats with either journalists or your own family members. Like that. That is, that's egregious. That is absolutely egregious. So that's what NPR is saying, as someone in the chat says. But the White House, as far as I know as of this stream is, is denying it. So we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens.

[April the Joy]

We shall see. Yeah. Well, so a couple other things that have happened that we can just touch on because, I mean, there's a million things we'll probably, sometime in the next few weeks, I think maybe try to do a deeper episode on what RFK Jr is doing specifically when it comes to autism. And some of the things he's saying right now about autistic people are just egregious, terrible and wrong. And. Yeah, so, so, so he's, he's kind of making his whole thing about finding cures for autism.

[Tim Whitaker]

Maybe this is a good place to say that. What we're doing friends on the show is that on Thursdays we're going live and we're covering whatever's happening in the news in real time. But on Mondays, we're dropping episodes that are deep dives on Christian nationalism and the world of people that are kind of behind all of this. So we did one last week talking about just kind of the big picture overview. We talked about, we're talk about Paul the White this Monday and we're booking more and more, really experts to help you better understand what's behind some of this stuff, including someone to talk about RFK and his abhorrent and ignorant and dehumanizing comments about people with autism. So, so we're working on doing that. So make sure that you subscribe to the channel or if you want, you can also find this on podcast as well. So we, we drop these episodes on podcast and on the YouTube channel, but make sure that you sub because we are here to help you better understand what's behind this. Because if we do that, then we can better resist it. That's the plan.

[April the Joy]

Yes. Yes. So every Monday we'll go a deep dive into someone or something relating to Christian nationalism, you know, or evangelicalism, whatever is going on. And then we'll go live on Thursdays that will cover more newsy things.

[Tim Whitaker]

The other big story that, well, it's big, but, but it, you know, we can mention it here, is that this is, I keep thinking about how low can this administration get? Lower and lower and lower and lower. And it always seems to surprise me. And most recently, I'm not sure if you saw this, April, but the wife of Kilmar Rayo Garcia, her address was doxed by the government. They dropped her address on it on an ex post and that forced her to find a safe house for her and her child. I, I am blown away by that. I mean, that, that's not an accident. That is absolutely intentional, in my opinion.

[April the Joy]

Well, yeah, and they're continuing to double down on painting Abrego Garcia as dangerous and violent. And as a result, obviously, his wife is going to be. I mean, I mean, there are some people in these right wing spaces, spaces that are absolutely dangerous and unhinged that send death threats and, and threaten actual physical violence towards people all the time. And I guess you could say that for all sides have violent people. But it does seem like right wing are especially unhinged. And so the government doxing a private citizen like that is just, is just absolutely terrible. It's awful. She's already going through so much grief on the fact that her husband was just ripped away and like the father of her children, like, ripped away from their home, like already having to deal with the immense grief and, and, you know, trauma from that to now, having to go to a safe house because your own government doxed you.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yes, yes, exactly. So this is according to New Republic. At one point, the Department of Homeland Security posted online an order of protection that Jennifer Vasquezura had sought but later abandoned against her husband. And that order contained, contained Vasquezura's home address unredacted. And she said, I don't feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions. So, yeah, I mean, this absolutely is a thing. It absolutely has happened. And don't forget, her and her husband did not ask for this. The government, Trump's own government, has admitted that they made an administrative error when they deported Kilmar for absolutely no reason. Absolutely no reason. And now what they're saying is that, well, we can't bring him back. So the government totally messed this one up. They're doing Nothing to bring him back. He's currently sitting in a prison in El Salvador away from his family. His son has autism as well. And now his wife is saying, yeah. And on top of that, the government not only posted an online order, not only posted an order of protection that I did seek at one point, but later abandoned because we worked through it, but my address was on there and it was unredacted. That that is intentional. That there's no way you make that mistake. That is an intentional thing to do from this administration. Because this administration is built on the dehumanization of brown skinned people. I mean, Trump said this during his campaign, that they're, that, that immigrants. And we all know who we think about when we think about the word immigrant, that they're poisoning the blood of society, of our country. This is what he ran on and now it's what he's doing. And real people are being really hurt. It's unfathomable, but it's true.

[April the Joy]

Right. Well. And the reason we have certain images when we think of immigrant is because of the way that, of who they talk about when they're talking about coming across the border, they're not talking about the Canadian border.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right.

[April the Joy]

They're specifically talking about south of the border and what that means and the dehumanization of.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah.

[April the Joy]

Of people that we should be loving as Christian. Talk about anti Christian bias. Like dehumanizing entire groups of people I would say is anti Christian. I, I especially say.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, especially when you, when you lie about them. Right. Because I mean that that's the big thing is they call it a migrant crime wave. We're being invaded. That statistically is completely untrue. Undocumented immigrants are half as likely to commit crimes as their native born count as their native born counterparts. Full stop. And so what we have happening here is a complete smear campaign which is also anti Christian and it's hurting people and it's again, cruelty is the point. They, there are people out there, there are Christian nationalists out there who absolutely love the fact that Kilmar is not in the country. They love that his wife is in fear. They think it's not a big deal that the government posted her home address. And we do know that statistically right wing, right wing extremists are more likely to commit violence. They are. And so I absolutely understand why Jennifer would go into hiding because I don't trust Matt Walsh's audience at all to not do something completely abhorrent and cruel to this person. So, yeah, we'll keep you all apprised on how the story shakes out? But that's the current update on. On Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his wife right now.

[April the Joy]

Yeah. Yeah. So do we want to go to our final segment?

[Tim Whitaker]

Oh, boy. We have to.

[April the Joy]

We have to apologize in advance for the cringe you all are about to witness. Weird Christian.

[Tim Whitaker]

Oh, friends, once again, by the way, thank you so much for being here. We have 300 people watching live with us. I love that. Make sure to give this video a. Like, subscribe to the channel. We go live every Thursday at noon and we drop new episodes on Mondays, both on podcasts and on YouTube. April, we've seen a lot of weird Christian bleep in our life. This one, though, it's a new level, dude. It's a. It's a new level, in my opinion.

[April the Joy]

I mean, I will say I've seen levels like this. I don't know if it went to a new low, but it's low if you grew up in evangelicalism. One thing that has happened a lot in, like, an attempt to evangelize and to bring in, you know, quote unquote, secular people is you take things that are really popular in the world, in culture, and you make them Christian. Like, I don't know how many times we sing. Well, like a secular song. Like, we sing a Coldplay song. You change the words.

[Tim Whitaker]

Sure, sure.

[April the Joy]

To make it Christian. And then it's a worship song. You know, there was a. There's a girl who changed the lyrics to a little Nas X song like, several years ago instead of like, call me by your name. You know, he'll. He'll call you by your name, like, talking about Jesus and stuff. So this is a thing. It is a thing.

[Tim Whitaker]

Before. Can. Can. I'm gonna switch to the shot and let the. Let people who are watching just see what this parody is or that parody, sorry, this cover is. And then we'll get into it. So brace yourself, friends, because for Easter, a church that we're not going to name. Listen, this is a small church. We don't want anything being sent their way, so we're not going to name them. But they. They did this. They did this. They did a cover of Wicked Defying Gravity, but they called it Defying Graves for me.

[April the Joy]

Yeah, boy.

[Tim Whitaker]

Should I just play a little bit and get kind of get us warmed up? Okay, I'm just going to start randomly. We will get to the end.

[April the Joy]

Yeah. So for those listening, you've got a clear Eliphaba character dressed in all black with a braid and the glasses and her skin is green. And then you have a Glinda character in a pink dress and blonde hair.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, and. And here's what it sounds like. Here's a little excerpt.

[April the Joy]

Future I'll never know Too long we've been afraid of our sin and shame Thinking we've lost But I know love it died for me upon the cross.

[Tim Whitaker]

Where Jesus is defying graves for me and there he is defying grace for me.

[April the Joy]

And you can pull him down, Linda. Follow him with me. Think of what we could do together.

[Tim Whitaker]

Unlimited. God's love is unlimited with Jesus. We'll be the greatest team there's ever been. All our lives the way he planned him. Okay, I gotta pause. I gotta pause. I can't do it, April. I just. I can't do it.

[April the Joy]

Also, like, you could just. You had mentioned this earlier. We were talking about it like. Like you could just keep it. Defying gravity.

[Tim Whitaker]

Totally.

[April the Joy]

If you believe in, like, Jesus ascending into heaven, like, he is defying gravity, like, you could just leave it.

[Tim Whitaker]

Literally. It works, actually, quite well.

[April the Joy]

It's quite clever, defying graves for me, like, you know, and I guess maybe they're including Lazarus, because I do think he defied one grave. Unless you want to bring up, you know, lazarus, come forth. So I guess you could go plural. You know, you could have said defining grace, maybe. I don't know. Defying grace for me just feels also like.

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay, look, I'm April. You're a musician. I'm a musician. We both, you know, do this passionately. We're also creatives. I mean, the camera, it's overexposed. It looks horrible. It doesn't sound good. And. And two of them are singing, but there's only one track. It doesn't make sense. And I'm gonna. We're gonna play a little bit more. We have to, because the ending part is where it really ramps up. So here's. Here's how. Here's how they. They end this. This. This cover day.

[April the Joy]

He'd rise and if you wanna rise too his love can set you free.

[Tim Whitaker]

To all Take his message back from me Tell them how he's defying graves.

[April the Joy]

For me He's a risen high Defying.

[Tim Whitaker]

Graves for me for his glory and.

[April the Joy]

Renown and nothing that I've ever done no wickedness there ever was is ever gonna bring Go down.

[Tim Whitaker]

Okay, I'll stop. I'll stop. I'll stop.

[April the Joy]

You know, I know she does. She does go to the.

[Tim Whitaker]

Oh, is that here.

[April the Joy]

She does it. Yeah.

[Tim Whitaker]

Oh, here we go.

[April the Joy]

Down.

[Tim Whitaker]

The comments. I'm dying.

[April the Joy]

He is risen.

[Tim Whitaker]

Are these guys trying to make people atheists?

[April the Joy]

Oh, man.

[Tim Whitaker]

April, you know what I should have done? I should, I should have played this smarter. I should have said, I'm gonna play the 5 minute clip all the way through unless people give us super chats up to a certain amount.

[April the Joy]

Make us stop.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's what I should have done. Stupid me. But yeah, yeah, that's what we got on. On this week's Christian Cringe.

[April the Joy]

Like the way this is shot too, it is so bright in the background. Like, I know.

[Tim Whitaker]

Well, it's overexposed.

[April the Joy]

This is produced like they shot a music video, which means they recorded the music.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, right.

[April the Joy]

I mean, like as a, as a singer, I've definitely have had pitchy performances in my life, for sure. I don't know. Like they recorded that.

[Tim Whitaker]

Like, that's what gets me. Okay, so for. For those of you out there who maybe have never been in a recording studio or who are not musicians, when you go to record, you listen back to your take very, very closely because you want it to be as perfect as possible. So the fact that people recorded this and said, good enough. Let's post just says a lot. It says a lot because. And again, April, to your point, people can be pitchy. I used to be a drummer. We make mistakes. But then you re record and you fix them. You don't just put it out there as like, this is it, this is gonna do it. Oh my gosh. It's painful.

[April the Joy]

I know. And, and like too that you can hear that, that these, that they can sing. Like, they obviously have some range. They hit.

[Tim Whitaker]

I think it's just her though. I think it's just one. Well, if you listen to that track, which I won't do again, friends, I will not play it again. It's just one voice.

[April the Joy]

Well, there were different sections where the blonde girl was singing solo, but I don't know if one person recorded.

[Tim Whitaker]

I don't know, I couldn't hear a distinction. But that could be true.

[April the Joy]

I just really want just Christians to stop hijacking non Christian art. Make your own art. Like there was a church. I don't remember where it was from, but last year, the year before, did a whole Lion King.

[Tim Whitaker]

Yes.

[April the Joy]

I've seen them, you know, product like, like play, but made it about Jesus. Like it was the Easter message. I've also seen them do it with like Marvel. There's just like, just, just stop. Just stop. Like, why?

[Tim Whitaker]

Why can I be honest and listen, people who are Ex evangelicals are not going to like this. But the, like, the, the church music industry has come a long freaking way. There are some really good bangers in that world. There's a lot of creativity. There's a lot. You have the. I mean, there's some great stuff you don't need to rip off as something that happens in the secular world and call it Defying Graves. For me, that's another piece of this. Like, I don't. Guys, you're in, you're in the room trying to create a title. That's what you came up. Defying Graves For Me. Oh, goodness. It's. It's pure cringe. It's pure cringe.

[April the Joy]

And honestly, like, maybe don't go after, like, one of the harder songs to sing like Cynthia.

[Tim Whitaker]

Right?

[April the Joy]

We're not all Cynthia, you know, like, she's a rock star. I, I, I can't sing that song the way, like, I would not put that out there. I know I would sound bad, so I wouldn't do it.

[Tim Whitaker]

You know, I know vocalists, but that song sounds incredibly difficult to pull off, period. It just, it sounds, there's a lot of runs and really high notes. I don't know how you all do it, but even I know it sounds technical. So, yeah, I. Anyway, it was, it was that. That's what we got for I, I Christian. I.

[April the Joy]

One thing that I, I just done before that's kind of fun just to kind of give Christians a taste of their own medicine is to rewrite Christian songs but make them secular. Like, one time I rewrote the lyrics to God's Not Dead, and I made it, tupac's not dead. You know, because there's a reason conspiracies that he's still alive. Yeah, I did like a, of like a few years ago, but it was like, tupac's not dead. He's surely alive. He's living out his best life somewhere on an island. Tupac's not dead. He's surely, like, we should just do it back to him, you know?

[Tim Whitaker]

Yeah, right.

[April the Joy]

And I did it. I did Instead of Corn, like that cornerstone song for Christian nationalists. Re rewrite it if like, they were honest, where it's like Trump Alone. Roger Stone.

[Tim Whitaker]

I. That was when I first discovered you. That was the first video I ever saw. You had like the, the little hat on and everything. And I showed Sarah. I was like, this is. I am dying. It is hilarious. We should, for next week, maybe we should pull that just so we can play it. Because honestly, I think it's one of you do a lot of amazing pieces of content, and they're all very creative. That one tickled me, though. I was like, it got me. This is brilliant. I'm in. Follow. That was the one where I said, I'm into this creator. Follow.

[April the Joy]

Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So maybe we can find some more Christian songs and rewrite them and just pay it back, you know, like, I love it.

[Tim Whitaker]

I love it.

[April the Joy]

Sweet.

[Tim Whitaker]

Well, there we go, friends. Another episode in the books that are live covered a lot of things today and we'll be keeping you apprised as the world of American politics continues to unravel. So keep it right here because we're just spreading all the good news that's going on in the world so much.

[April the Joy]

But, hey, Elon Musk is sad today.

[Tim Whitaker]

I love that. Yes, I do. 70% drop. What a time to be alive. All right, friends, listen. Thanks again for listening. It means the world. Make sure to give this video a like subscribe to the channel if you're listening on podcasts. Thank you so much. It means the world as well. We'll be back here on Monday with another episode deep diving into Christian nationalism and Paula White. It's coming up. So talk to you all soon. Bye.