Speaker A: Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast, the Internet’s courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. Here, our host uses his experience as both an attorney and an atheist to put religion on trial. We solemnly swear that it is the most informative, educational, and entertaining taining jury duty you will ever do. And now it’s time for the Cross examiner.

Speaker B: Welcome. Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast. Today I’m starting a new type of episode. It’s a quick take type. I think I’ll call it the rocket docket. If you’re familiar with legal jargon, a court that hears a lot of cases where things happen kind of quickly is called the rocket docket. So maybe it’ll be the Cross examiner rocket docket. So these will be off the cuff, unscripted reaction and analysis of issues in the news that we are interested in religion, government, Christian nationalism, general skepticism, those sorts of things. I previously had an episode that was, uh, called Why We Care. So maybe this is going to be part of that. The Why We Care episodes were an answer to the question that we get all the time in the atheist community, especially for, uh, atheist activists. And the question is as follows hey, if you aren’t convinced that there’s a God, or if you think there is no God, then why are you so active? Why are you so angry? Why are you so vocal about religion? It seems like you really do believe in a God and you’re trying to convince yourself that it’s not true so you can go out and sin or some variation of that. Basically, why do you care? That’s the question we get all the time. And the answer is, we’ve got children dying across this country because of religious based medical neglect. We’ve got people in government trying to force their religion on our children. We’ve got people in Congress saying we don’t have to investigate climate change because God promised he would never flood the earth. I wouldn’t care if it was like stamp collecting, right? If people were just off in their corners collecting stamps on their own and not enforcing their stamped collecting beliefs on the rest of us, I wouldn’t give a shit. I wouldn’t have this podcast. But because people are threatening this planet, threatening my life, threatening the lives of my children, I felt compelled to speak out. We saw the beginnings of this threat, starting with the Obama era and culminating so far in the January 6 religious riot, which is what it was. It was a race riot. It was a religious riot. People who felt put out by the fact that a black man was elected president and all the surveys and studies show that this is what was going on felt like they were being replaced. You had Tucker Carlson on the air talking about the replacement theory, white replacement theory, which is the talking points of the Nazi party. That’s where we are as a country so today I heard something that compelled me to get online and tell you about it because it’s dangerous. What you’re about to hear is dangerous. So let me give you some setup. There is a pastor named Kent Christmas who is part of Regeneration Nashville. That is his, um, ministry. That is his church. I believe they are part of a larger set of ministries called Regeneration Nation. And he is, uh, one of these evangelical preachers who has created a church and got some good photo shoots so that he’s got lots of pictures of himself looking cool and friendly on his website. If you go to Regenerationnasheville.org, you can take a look at this. And of course, in the top menu, there’s multiple ways you can give them money. There’s a give item that we’ve seen on every church we visit. There’s also an online store and, uh, Destination Miracle, uh, uh, link that’ll talk to you about ways you can give them money when you come to donate, uh, for their projects, there’s lots of ways for you to give them money. Let’s put it that way. So this guy is well known for people who watch for right wing terrorists. Basically, this guy is a, uh, conspiracy theorist. He believes that Biden lost by 80 or 90 million votes. I mean, he’s one of these extreme, like, let’s see how far I can take this and have people still give me money. Um, there’s part of me that believes there’s a bunch of right wing influencers that have a secret back room somewhere where they’re like, I bet you can’t say this and walk away from walk away with people supporting you. I bet you can’t say that Biden lost by 80 million and still have supporters. And they go out there and do it, and nobody blinks an eye, right? So that’s this guy. He loves Trump. Of course, he’s a conspiracy theorist. He’s repeatedly declared that God will kill, start killing soon, wicked elected officials. He’s also, again, to the theme of my podcast, spread massive amounts of misinformation other than this election stuff. He has said that it is he’s told his congregants it is legal for up to 21 days after a birth, a full term birth, that you can kill a baby. That is an exact quote from this man. So this is who we’re dealing with. Well, today I saw a video of a sermon he gave two days ago. And I think I’m going to play it for you. I’m going to play the operative part for you. And then I’m going to tell you what he said, because he gets into that, uh, parachion, uh, style where he’s saying, uh, those words, uh, that way that people do when they want to, for some reason, sound passionate. Although I’ve always thought that just sounds a little silly. But I will play the video, and then I will tell you what he said so you can understand it. And I think just hearing this will make you understand how dangerous what he is saying really is. So here he is in his well produced sermon that he broadcasts around the world.

Speaker C: I am at war with evil. Hallelujah. This is one preacher that’s not backing down. I can tell you this. I will give my life for the gospel. You want to know why the Muslim faith has had its advancements? It’s because the Muslims were willing to die, uh, for their belief. They were willing to strap bombs to their chest. They believed in the afterlife. God, give us some men and women, uh, that’ll get a hold of some passion in their spirit that says, I will lay down my life for the Gospel. This same was born in blood.

Speaker B: So let me translate that for you. He said, quote, I am at war with evil. This is one preacher that is not backing down. I can tell you this. I will give my life for the gospel. You want to know why the Muslim faith has had its advancements? It’s because the Muslims were willing to die for their beliefs. They were willing to strap bombs to their chest. They believed in the afterlife. Here’s the most dangerous part. After saying that, he says, God, give us some men and women that will get a hold of some passion in their spirit and say, I will lay down my life for the Gospel. So he talks about Muslims strapping bombs to their chest because they were faithful and they believed in their afterlife. He talks about how he’s willing to die. And then he says, God, give us some men and women that will get a hold of some passion in their spirit and say, I will lay down my life for the gospel. Basically, God, give me some good Christians who will kill themselves, who will blow themselves up in terrorist acts for the Gospel. And then he concludes with, this thing was born in blood. This thing Christianity, this revolution, this rebellion, this insurgency, this terrorist organization, which is how they’re starting to conceive of themselves, perceive themselves as their religion dwindles and their power dwindles. They’re panicking. And it’s this type of stuff that we’ve been waiting for. This is the type of preaching that is so dangerous that we should be keeping an eye on this guy. And we are. The reason I found out about this is there’s an organization called Right Wing Watch. And they call to attention these sorts of speeches because this guy isn’t some country bumpkin with three people in some ramshackle church. This guy has very close ties to the Prophetic movement and the MAGA Christian nationalists. And he appears on programs like Flashpoint, which airs on Kenneth Copeland’s network. This is big time. And here he is saying, the Muslims do it right? They strap bombs to their chest. This is something called stochastic terrorism. That basically means it will induce an individual act that can’t be specifically predicted. This guy is not saying, you bob in the front row. Go make a bomb and go blow up this abortion clinic, or go blow up that library that’s having a drag queen come in and read to the kids. He’s not doing that. But we know that, statistically speaking, that if people keep talking like this, it is a near certainty that someone who’s listening to him will do this. Someone will say, this man is speaking to God. And God is saying he needs warriors. God is saying, I need to strike a blow for Christian faith and for good old family values. I’m going to do exactly what this man is suggesting. I’m going to make a bomb and I’m going to kill people. And in the history of the United States, if we’ve learned anything, is that when we have a domestic terrorist, it isn’t always just one guy killing an abortion doctor or going in and shooting up a synagogue or a temple. It can be much, much worse. Take a look at a man named Timothy McVeigh. If you don’t know who he was, he was the guy who blew up the Alfred P. Murra Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. I believe it was, yes, 95. This guy was a veteran and a conspiracy theorist. And he cited the same passages and the same philosophy that many of these Christian nationalists cite today. To be clear, he was not a Christian nationalist. He was a conspiracy theorist. Uh, at heart, he was somebody who hated the United States government because he had been in war. And he took a particular view on the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents. And to get an idea of what was in his mind, he was radicalized and disassociated himself from his previous friends. He wrote his friend Steve Hodge a 23 page farewell letter in which he said things like the following I know in my heart that I am right in my struggle, Steve. I have come to peace with myself, my God, and my cause. Blood will flow in the streets, Steve. Good versus evil, free men versus socialist wannabe slaves. Pray it is not your blood, my friend. This is the type of radicalization that happens when you listen to preachers like this guy who are telling people the Muslims are doing it right because they’re strapping bombs to their chest. Well, Timothy McVeigh created a whole truck full of explosives and blew up an entire building. He killed 168 people, which included 19 kids that were in a daycare center on the second floor. 684 other people were injured. And to give you an idea of the people we are dealing with, he was wearing a T shirt when he got arrested. And that T shirt had a picture of Abraham Lincoln on the front with the motto, Six semper tyrannis, which means, Thus always to tyrants. This was the phrase that John Wilkes Booth shouted after he had shot and killed Lincoln, thus always to tyrants. On the back of his t shirt, he had a picture of three blood droplets and the Thomas Jefferson quote. Quote, the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. This is the t shirt that he was wearing when he got arrested and pictures of it were all over the media. This is the fact that has always blown my mind about our country. The day after he was arrested for killing 169 people, including 19 kids, the company that sold that t shirt, sold out of that t shirt. Think about that. This is how long this has been going on. This is obviously that Jefferson quote we still see today at Trump rallies this threat of civil war. That quote I had in my last, uh, episode by Kerry Lake, who said, if you’re going to come after Trump with this indictment, you got to get through me and millions of other Trump supporters, and we are all members of the NRA. This is the language of civil war. This is the language of domestic terrorism, of political violence. So when we have this preacher saying the Muslims strap bombs to themselves, he doesn’t say it, but included in parentheses and go kill people through terrorist attacks. And that’s a good thing. And oh Lord, I wish somebody would send me some good Christians who would have that passion and lay down their lives. We know that over time we are going to get more Timothy McVeigh’s. And it may not just be a bomb, like I said on his chest. It may be a whole truck. It may be another daycare. It may be your children that don’t come home from school one day, because this pastor is out here telling his flock and telling everybody listening online, the Kenneth Copeland Network. It’s a good thing when people die for their religion and take a bunch of, uh, evil, devil worshipping federalists with them. So the question from my perspective, from an attorney perspective, is what can we do about it? This will be protected speech. This speech will be protected by the First Amendment. The government cannot go in and arrest this guy. If we went in and arrested him and said, hey, we are locking you up because you said these things, that is a violation of the First Amendment. There was a case called Brandenburg versus Ohio from 1969. It was a Supreme Court case in which the court held that the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is, quote, directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action. That’s the key phrase and is likely to incite or produce such action. So you need two things. The speech is directed to inciting imminent lawless action. It is somebody saying, hey, put this bomb on you and go over there and blow up that school. Or more realistically, hey, march over to that capitol building and stop this fake election. That’s imminent lawless action. It’s going to happen right now. But you also need something else. It can’t just be directed to doing this. It has to be likely to incite or produce such action. So if I say, hey, uh, accountants of the world, rise up over the lack of staples in our staple gun and go and kill the manufacturers of the staple guns right now, the likelihood that people are going to do that, obviously is subjective. Like, if I’m the leader of the National Association of Accountants, maybe it’s more likely that they’ll follow me. But if I’m just some guy on the Internet, it’s very unlikely. I am still directing you to go and do something, uh, uh, illegal, some imminent lawless action. But the likelihood that it’s going to actually produce such action is so low, I probably would be protected speech. So the question is, is this preacher, is he directing imminent lawless action? No. He’s not saying, you strap on this bomb and go kill somebody. Do we know, statistically speaking, that this sort of speech will eventually produce people who will do these sorts of things? Yes. And that’s where there’s a bit of a disconnect when you’re, uh, an advocate for the First Amendment, there are a lot of lines that you have to draw. There’s a lot of gray area. We do regulate and prohibit a ton of speech in this country. You are not allowed to give medical, uh, advice if you’re not a doctor, right? You’re not allowed to practice medicine. You’re not allowed to lie about your product. You’re not allowed to divulge secrets, Mr. Trump. You are not allowed to lie about somebody else to their detriment. There’s a lot of ways we regulate speech. We like to think, uh, free country, we’ve got absolute free speech. No, we don’t. We really don’t. We have some of the best free speech available on the planet, that’s to be sure. But don’t get fooled by those who say you can’t regulate any speech. I’m not advocating for regulating this guy’s speech, but it’s a useful test case to see where you fall on the spectrum. But this is a tough area, because if we were to arrest this guy and hold that the Constitution allows us to lock this guy up, we might think that in the immediate case that that’s a good thing. But in the long run, that’s a hammer that you give to every one of your opponents. That’s a hammer you give to the Trump administration if he gets elected again. And you can bet they will use it. And anytime you create a rule that is subject to interpretation, sooner or later the interpreter will be somebody that you don’t agree with, and they will bend and even snap any reasonable definitions to come up with a decision where they can use that tool against you and beat you with that hammer. So the court has wisely said, we’re going to draw the line at imminent. It’s got to be imminent lawless action. If it’s not imminent, then the speaker isn’t the problem. The problem, if something happens, is with the listener. That’s the part to remember. That’s sort of what Brandenburg versus Ohio is really about, in my mind, is at what point do we stop blaming the speaker and start blaming the listener? Now, we can still blame the listener. If he said, hey, you put on this bomb and go blow up that building over there right now, yes, if that person did it, they’re a murderer. But we can also punish the speaker because he directed this person to do it. But if he says it would be nice if sometime in the future somebody did this, that’s opinion, right? He’s expressing his opinion, and we expect rational, reasonable people to disagree with that opinion. And that’s why we do podcasts like this, is to call him out as soon as he says this and say, this is wrong. And quite frankly, it’s not Christian. I think all my Christian friends would agree this is not Christian. I would expect within the next several days, every major Christian organization should come out against this guy. This is abhorrent. This is promoting terrorism, domestic terrorism. And let’s be clear about the context here. The FBI, for years, ever since Obama again, January 6, was a race riot and a religion riot. Ever since Obama, we have been aware that Christian nationalism, radicalized Christian nationalism, is the number one domestic threat in this country. There are terrorists trying to figure out how to blow up the next building, how to do the next January 6. Here is a Trump supporter who was interviewed outside of the courthouse when Trump was being indicted this week for 37 counts of federal criminal behavior.

Speaker D: Well, if he gets indoctrinated, january 6 is going to look like a playground. It’s going to look like a playground from the inside voices that I hear from all the militias and everything else. It’s going to be a playground. But if they want to fight, bring it. This country is so left right now, but we got to bring it back to the right. We got to get right on the right path. We got to bring everything back. If we don’t, we’re going to crumble. We’re going to be a third world nation. We have to stand up for that flag. We have to stand up for our beliefs, and we got to put God back in this country. If we forget about Him, he’s going to forget about us. And right now, we’re forgetting Him, and we’re forgetting Israel. We forget both of those. Read your Bible. Read your Bible, because there’s a lot of boys like me that are ready. All we need is an order. We’re ready.

Speaker B: All we need is an order, and we’re ready. This is the powder keg that is the Christian nationalist terrorist movement in United States. Let’s ignore the fact that he said, if Trump gets indoctrinated, then we’re going to rise up. I thought that was ironic to the nth degree on so many levels, but you kind of need somebody that ignorant. And meanwhile, earlier in the interview, he claimed to have been a federal agent for 19 years and that his antifa was spitting on his daughter and all these sort of things like, cool story, bro. Right? And then he says indoctrinated instead of indicted. And he said earlier, uh, after he told the antifa story, he said, we were told we had to refrain ourselves. That’s who we’re dealing with. A man who believes that this country is so far left that it’s going to crumble. These are the people that this preacher is talking to. This man is ready to snap. He believes that his government is gone and that all he’s waiting on is a signal. And we will, quote, make January 6 look like a playground. So what can we do about it? Right? We can’t arrest the preacher because he is not promoting imminent lawless action. We can’t arrest this guy who said, we will do something in the future. Again, he’s talking about the future. He’s not talking about a conspiracy at this point, although he hinted at it. From what I’m hearing on the inside, all these militia people were just waiting for a signal. One could possibly say, if I’m a prosecutor, that’s enough to ask the FBI to start researching this, because depending on the facts, you might already have a conspiracy. So you might have reasonable suspicion to believe that there is ongoing criminal activity. So you could start investigating this guy, but you can’t really investigate even the preacher until he crosses some other sort of line, right? You can’t investigate legal behavior. We don’t want the government going in and saying, all right, I don’t have any reasonable suspicion that any crime has been committed, but I’m going to investigate you to see what I find. That is not allowed, and we don’t want it to be allowed. You don’t want the opposing party to get into power and say, oh, I don’t like what you’re saying on your podcast. I’m going to investigate you. Here’s a search warrant for your house. Let me find what I can dig up. That’s not a country we want to live in. That is a country that the Christian nationalists want to live in. There’s this fantasy that every fascist has that no matter how incompetent they are, like the guy we heard in this video, that they are somehow going to be part of the ruling class when the fascists take over, that they will somehow be the boot owner and not the boot liquor. And history has shown us that they end up suffering just as much. That’s the saddest part about it. Um, probably not the saddest part. The saddest part is that people anywhere would consider this a good way of creating, uh, political change. But a very sad part about it is that these people have not cracked history books. They can’t be self reflective. They can’t analyze and say, wow, I am espousing fascist beliefs here. And history teaches us that when a fascist regime takes over, everybody suffers. Everybody is very nervous. Everybody is now subject to state inspection and loyalty tests. And show me your papers. That’s where this guy’s philosophy would go, and he doesn’t even know it. So I just wanted to bring this particular speech that happened yesterday to your attention, because it is the most dramatic example I found to date of somebody advocating terrorism in the United States while walking a line that stays on the legal side of things. And again, not a country bumpkin, not some fly by night guy in a rundown little building that has a webcam. This is a major production. He appears on the Kenneth Copeland Network, which shows around the world, and he’s saying, we need Christians to strap bombs to their chest and start blowing things up. That’s what we know. He means, we all know that. So be aware. Support right wingwatch.org. Support freedom from religion@ffrf.org, and write to your congressman, call them and say, this is very concerning. This needs to be investigated. We need to consider what we can do on a legislative front, on a policy front, to push back against the domestic terrorists that are inspired by Christian nationalism and all the misinformation that’s running with it. I hope you like this. These are going to be unscripted, off the cuff, quick. I think I am going to call it Rocket Docket, a quick take on something that’s very urgent. So thank you for listening. If you have any feedback or comments or anything that comes up, if you see something that would be good for the Rocket docket, please email me at ideas@thecrossexaminer.net. I’ll see you next time.

Speaker A: This has been the Cross examiner podcast, the Internet’s courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider subscribing. See you soon.