Audio only:
In this episode Trent addresses the antisemitic controversy surrounding the online use of the phrase “Christ is King” in light of staff changes at the Daily Wire.
Transcription:
Trent:
Last week, Candace Owens and the Daily Wire ended their relationship and there’s been a debate about a phrase that’s become popular on the internet since then. Christ is king. On the one side you have people saying this is an affirmation of the Christian faith and a desire to not give into secular culture. On the other side, you have people saying the phrase Christ is king is antisemitic, or it can be antisemitic and it’s being used by others to express contempt for Jewish people. So let’s take a closer look right at the outset. We should agree. It is true. Christ is king. This is not a bad phrase. I’ve used it myself several times to communicate the truth that society is not immune to God’s commands. So society, any country can’t defend things like legal abortion by an appeal to separation of church and state. Christ is king overall, but that does not mean every single use of the phrase Christ is king is good.
Some people who use this phrase are taking the Lord’s name in vain, or they’re using Christianity as a prop to promote their own sinful behavior. One example would be Andrew Tate, a self-described Muslim who is admitted to pimping women out and is being charged with rape and sex trafficking by the Romanian government. He writes, as a Muslim, it warms my heart to see the resurgence of spirited Christian declarations. Christ is king and I pray Christianity regains its strength and protects its societies against the pervasive and constant erosion of morality by the devotees of Satan. If you accept everything, you stand for nothing. This is a bunch of self-serving garbage, and my favorite reply to this, along with all the actual Muslims who are offended by Tate saying Christ is king, is from Byzantine Scotus who said, if we treated Christ as king, you’d be in prison.
So not every use of the phrase is good. If the phrase Christ is king becomes popular among a group of people who celebrate certain evils, then an otherwise good phrase can become problematic and you can question the motives of that group of people who say it. For example, in Arabic, the AK beer or the phrase Ahu akbar, it roughly means God is great or God is greater. The word Allah is just the Arabic word for God. It was used by Arabic Christians long before Muhammad preached his religion of Islam. Arabic Christians still use the word Allah to refer to God.
CLIP:
Arabic speaking Christians say words like in Allah, Allah, since Allah means God or are these words too much associated with Islam? There are words that are culturally appropriated by very specific groups, especially in the Middle East. There’s actually nothing wrong with saying in Allah, even as a Christian I use that term often. What it really means is whatever the Lord wills. So the word Allah in Arabic just means God or Lord, right?
Trent:
So there’s nothing wrong with the phrase Ahu Akbar because Arabic Christians use this phrase to say God is great, is that some Muslims have co-opted the phrase for sinful purposes like terrorism. They’ll exclaim ahu wakbar before committing an act of terror. So if a certain group of people who downplay, mock, or even endorse the sin of terrorism, like to use the phrase Ahu Akbar, then that needs to be called out. Even though there’s nothing wrong with saying God is great in Arabic. Likewise, if groups of people who downplay, mock, or even endorse the sin of antisemitism, use the phrase Christ is king, then that too needs to be called out even though there’s nothing wrong with saying Christ is king. Now almost everyone agrees antisemitism is sinful. They just disagree on what counts as antisemitism. For example, nearly everyone agrees that hating people because of their genetics and trying to exterminate them is evil, but critics who are accused of antisemitism often say they don’t do that or they’re not arguing for that, so they are not guilty of the sin of antisemitism.
However, there’s more to antisemitism than just the most extreme examples. Now, I want to be clear that not every charge of antisemitism is true. I have been accused of antisemitism for simply comparing the dehumanization of unborn children that leads to abortion, to the dehumanization of Jewish people that led to the Holocaust. It is not antisemitic to be critical of the Jewish faith by pointing out that it contains falsehoods such as the Jewish faith’s denial of Jesus Christ’s messianic and divine status. It’s not antisemitic to be critical of the modern nation of Israel, and it’s not antisemitic to simply offend Jewish people or their sensibilities provided what you’re saying is the truth done in charity. For example, in 2021, Pope Francis gave a homily on St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians where he said, of the mosaic law, which is the foundational text of Judaism that the law however does not give life.
It does not offer the fulfillment of the promise because it is not capable of being able to fulfill it. Those who seek life need to look to the promise and to its fulfillment in Christ. Leaders of Judaism in Israel criticize these remarks, but the Pope was just saying what the New Testament teaches in Galatians 3 21. For if a law had been given which could make alive, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. The mosaic law does not give spiritual or eternal life with God. Only Christ’s sacrifice can give us that kind of life. It’s not antisemitic to say that all people, including Jewish people should become Catholic and receive the gift of eternal life. However, the Second Vatican Council condemns racial hatred and unbending ideologies that continue to divide men and place them in opposing camps and also with respect to the fundamental rights of the person.
Every type of discrimination, whether social or cultural, whether based on sex, race, color, social condition, language or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God’s intent. So racism is evil, as is antisemitism, but what is the true antisemitism that’s evil? The easiest way to spot it would be to just replace the word Jews with the word Catholics. If the actions become a sinful form of bigotry when Catholics are involved, then they are also a sinful form of bigotry when they’re done against Jews. So for example, it is not antisemitic to argue Judaism is false or to help Jews convert to Christianity or to criticize the nation of Israel’s political decisions because it’s not anti-Catholic bigotry to argue Catholicism is false or to help Catholics convert to Protestantism or to criticize the Vatican’s political decisions. I think Protestants are wrong to reject Catholicism and it’s wrong for them to help people leave the church, but I would not say they are being bigoted or prejudicial or anti-Catholic in that sense.
Likewise, a Jew should be able to say he thinks I’m wrong about Judaism, but I am not a bigot if I help Jewish people become Christian. However, in one of my past episodes, which I’ll link below, I showed how anti Catholicism is. As the Protestant author Philip Jenkins said, the last acceptable prejudice, Jenkins himself called it the thinking man’s antisemitism. Though as we’ve seen in stories about Ivy League campuses, antisemitism is enjoying a resurgence among the cultural elite. So here’s a quick survey of past sinful anti-Catholic bigotry and how if you swap Catholics for Jews, you get clear examples of antisemitic bigotry that is incompatible with Catholicism. These would include the following first cartoons that depict Catholics as subversive revolutionaries working on behalf of the Vatican, including as an octopus trying to take over the world. If it’s wrong to slander Catholics with these kinds of globalist conspiracies, then it’s wrong to smear Jews with similar kinds of conspiracies.
Unjust discrimination doesn’t include simply being killed or imprisoned or denied a job. You can unjustly discriminate against a group. You can harm a people group by simply spreading lies about them that motivates others to commit violence against that group. For example, past conspiracies about the Catholic church led hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan to burn down Catholic parishes because they thought that those churches had a secret weapons cachet in their basement for the coming revolution spurred on by the Pope and history is replete with examples of Jewish synagogues being burned down and Jews being killed in response to similar conspiracy theories. Number two, complaining that there are too many Catholics in institutions of power, such as at one time there being seven members of the US Supreme Court having been raised Catholic. I
CLIP – Mrs. Feinstein:
Think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.
Trent:
If it’s bigoted to say there are too many Catholics in a certain institution, then it’s also bigoted to say there are too many Jews in Hollywood or Wall Street. For example. Number three saying Catholics are prone to certain vices like being drunk, aggressive, being an uneducated immigrant or the more recent stereotype of the pedophile priest. There are of course individual Catholics who conform to these stereotypes just as there are individual Jews who conform to Jewish stereotypes. But if it’s wrong to say that Catholics as a group embody these vices, if that’s prejudicial bigotry, then it’s also wrong and bigoted to say that all Jews conform to stereotypes or that Jews are uniquely responsible for various social ills when many racial groups are involved in those ills like pornography or abortion. Number four saying Catholics are so bad for the social order, and so it’s justified for the government to forcibly expel them, such as in the year 1700 when the Massachusetts colony passed the act against Jesuits and pop priests which banned Catholic clergy from the colony or to at least ban Catholics from doing things like holding political office.
Antisemites do the same thing when they say Jews should be forcibly expelled in the present because past governments unjustly exiled and mistreated them. Using past mistreatment of Jews to justify current mistreatment is as wrong as using past anti Catholicism to justify current anti Catholicism. It also doesn’t matter if the church did this in the past. Not everything the church did in its historical practice was good, and the church fathers and theologians were not infallible in their opinions on these matters. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas said The Jews by reason of their fault are sentenced to perpetual servitude and thus the lords of the lands in which they dwell may take things from them as though they were their own. A doctor of the church endorsing an injustice against a certain group of people does not make those acts. Just some theologians and doctors of the church made mistakes and judgment or operated under mistaken cultural norms, and we can learn from them by not repeating their mistakes.
You can appreciate a Catholic author while recognizing that not everything they said was good. Many people like GK Chesterton for example, but Chesterton also said it is not that Jews are traitors, but rather that traitors are Jews. The fact that over 1300 people liked this tweet quoting Chesterton refutes Catholics who say antisemitism isn’t even a thing anymore. Finally, anti-Catholic to claim to be a historian while rewriting Catholic to suit your anti-Catholic prejudice. This includes falsely blaming Catholics for things in the past. They did not do burning down the library of Alexandria as well as ignoring actual injustices committed against Catholics or even claiming the injustices were made up and never happened. This kind of person is not an eccentric historian. They’d be an ideologue wielding history as a weapon against Catholics and Antisemites do the same thing when they falsely attribute historical crimes like blood libel to Jewish people and reject true crimes committed against Jews like the targeted murder of Jews during the Holocaust.
With instruments like gas chambers, it is antisemitic to deny the traditional view of the Holocaust if you are doing so so that you can have free reign to extol the antisemitic virtues of someone like Adolf Hitler and use them to slander the Jewish people as being a threat to society, and many people who do this like to say Christ is king while they’re doing it. That’s why the phrase Christ is king has recently become so problematic, not because of the phrase, but because of a small group of people associated with it. For example, here is Nick Fuentes, a well-known holocaust denni at a rally discussing the alleged problem of too many Jews being in powerful positions in society. I’ll play the whole clip, so I’m not accused of taking what he said out of context.
CLIP – Nick Fuentes::
Now, you have in the universities, in the media and Hollywood and finance and government, and some people say, well, they’re not all Jewish. It’s like, okay, well, it’s half or two thirds or three quarters. What’s the other quarter? What’s the other third? What’s the other half? It’s not Catholics, it’s not hardcore God believe in Christians. It’s all kinds of other atheists, whatever you want to call it, and so I don’t want to say, Hey, let’s all attack one group, but there’s a big problem when the leadership isn’t Christian. We have big problems as a society when the people aren’t Christian. What happens when the king and queen aren’t Christian? What happens when the aristocracy isn’t Christian? What happens when the cities and the business owners aren’t Christian? Well take a look around you. It’s exactly what we have now, and so many of the problems that we can point to which are blamed on various things, ideology, government, on other groups or populations can be attributable to the loss of faith and the loss of any kind of adherence to an objective morality.
Trent:
Now, I agree with him, it would be better if faithful Christians ran society, so that’s not a bad thing to peacefully work towards. However, what Fuentes says next takes an anti-Semitic turn,
CLIP – Nick Fuentes::
And so that’s a long way of saying I love Hitler
Christ is king, Christ is king, Christ is king.
Trent:
Escape, and the joke about Hitler is not a one-off piece of irony. Here’s Fuentes praising Hitler at length.
CLIP – Nick Fuentes::
I saw something on Twitter. I don’t even know if this is true, but something on Twitter said all of Hitler’s girlfriends were 16 and 17 and Alex Jones. I don’t even know if that’s true, but if that is, that’s probably why Alex Jones called Hitler a pedophile, and it’s like you be saying the same thing about Hitler. MLK was a rapist and Hitler was a pedophile. It’s like, you know what? The world’s a little bit more complicated than that, okay? The world’s a little bit more complicated than you’re making it out to be. Hitler was a pedophile and kind of a pagan. It’s like, well, he was also really cool, so time to grow up. We’re not children anymore. Am I right? Am I right? Am I right, boys? Am I right? Let’s go. He was also really cool, and any boy knows that anybody who watches these videos where he is rolling down the street and stuff, it’s like, this guy’s awesome. This guy’s cool.
Trent:
There’s a lot more that can be said about the precise place Jewish people have in the plan of salvation or how antisemites misinterpret the Bible and previous magisterial teaching. I may address those issues in a future episode as well as refute the arguments antisemites make in defense of their various conspiracy theories. For now, my goal has just been to show that antisemitism which mirrors anti Catholicism in its conspiratorial slandering of a people who seek to worship God is evil, and no one who proclaims Christ is king should be celebrating evil ever. In 1925, Pope Pius XI established the feast of Christ the king because as he put it, the rebellion of individuals and states against the authority of Christ has produced deplorable consequences. These deplorable consequences included godless states like the Soviet Union, but it would soon manifest in counterfeit state-sponsored religions. In 1937 in Pope 11th had an encyclical written in German smuggled in a Nazi Germany to be read in Catholic churches.
It condemned those who idolize race and said, whoever distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God, he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds. Many of the Nazi elite believed national socialism was incompatible Christianity. However, some Nazis tried to create a framework called positive Christianity that would use a Nazi view of the faith to unite Protestants and Catholics, but positive Christianity was only appealing to about a half a million. So-called German Christians whose beliefs are chronicled dod Bergen’s book, twisted Cross, the German Christian movement In the Third Reich, Nazi theologians also promoted this view by establishing the Institute for the Study and eradication of Jewish influence on German religious life. This is chronicled in Heschel’s book, the Aryan Jesus Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. Fortunately, brave Catholics and Protestants like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Father Maximilian Kolby were willing to stand against the Nazi appropriation of Christianity, eventually paying for it with their lives in Nazi concentration camps.
For these men, Christ was truly their king, and Hitler was not awesome. Denying the Holocaust happened is a slap in the face to the real Christians who were willing to give their lives to save people from genocide, the true spirit of Christ. The king can be seen in a secret radio campaign led by Septin Delmer, a British journalist who was born in Germany and knew Hitler personally. These radio shows that sounded like real German broadcasts hurt Nazi morale by broadcasting allied victories as well as rumors of things like Nazi officers sleeping with German soldiers’ wives while they’re dying on the front lines. However, one of the stations was hosted by a rural Austrian priest who didn’t resort to any propaganda or falsehoods. All he did was describe true reports about how thousands of sick people, political prisoners, and Jews were being killed in concentration camp gas chambers, and the station’s name was Christ Deon in English, Christ the king. As we enter into Holy Week, I pray all of us will strive to make Christ the king of our own lives and reject any ideology that would slander the Jewish people. Since our Lord said in John 4 22 that salvation is from the Jews. Thank you so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.