[00:13] Welcome. For years, I was on the inside. I saw how power really works, how decisions are made, how secrets are kept. Then I exposed the truth about the deep state, and the deep state tried to ruin my life. But they failed. Because the American people deserve to know who is pulling the strings and why. This isn't theory, it's experience. My experience. I'm John Kiriakou. This is the deep state.
[00:44] I want to bring on now Jay Dyer. Jay is a well-known YouTuber, a Christian apologist, a theologian, and podcaster. He discusses topics from Christianity to geopolitics to the deep state. Jay, one of the most important issues, uh, on the international stage right now, is the issue of the ever-expanding, ever-increasing number of, uh, Jewish settlements in traditionally Palestinian lands, especially, of course, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. There was
[01:15] a an article in Haaretz about a week ago saying that by Christmas of this year, there will be no Christians left in Nazareth. There have been Christians in Nazareth for more than 2,000 years, and they'll be gone. Bethlehem is another traditionally Christian city, before that a village, that will soon no longer be Christian. And that may account for the reason why
[01:46] there are so many Palestinian Christians in the United States. They've been forced out. Do you see any way to reverse this trend? Or is the US government all in to help the Israeli government push religious minorities out of the Holy Land. >> That's a great and difficult question. I think the key uh locus of change would have to be waking up more and more people to the problems of Christian Zionism. That's
[02:17] something that we focused a lot on on my channel in the last several years. And you know, so many people in the Bible Belt in the in the Midwest, they've really been captive to this false ideology which makes them think that they've a religious duty to support a modern atheist socialistic nation-state that was really sort of the um experiment, you could say, of the British Empire and of even before that, Rothschild interests to sort of set up [clears throat] a pilgrimage site which eventually become a tool, a geopolitical tool of the British Empire. So, there's really nothing explicitly Christian
[02:50] about it. And the more that you go into historical Christianity prior to modern evangelicalism, there's even less support for any idea of a nation-state of Israel or some sort of Zionist uh state that we have a duty to support. So, I think if we can really uh wrest away from the the mindset, the grip that this idea has on so many people in America in the Bible Belt, we'll probably be a lot better uh down the road, at least in terms of removing this this uh subversion, this foreign
[03:20] subversion is really what it is. Uh and it's been entrenched for so long that it's really difficult to to get rid of it. But beyond that, I think um you know, beyond the theological side of it, there's the more um geopolitical power influence of you know, control of foreign policy which has really probably been there for decades uh beyond past even, you know, the time of uh Desert Storm and all that kind of stuff. I think we had We were doing Israel's bidding probably before that even. And I think you can demonstrate that. So, if
[03:50] we can continue to uh battle within uh the political sphere there's really in the last couple years as you know there's been a huge rift within Maga for those who are beginning to wake up to this and those who are I would say still agents of subversion and influence. So if we can continue to really push that that rift I think we can see some change. >> I'm glad that you brought that up because that was one of the things I wanted to jump into right away. Alan Dershowitz the the famous maybe infamous
[04:23] Professor Emeritus of law at Harvard University and the mentor to Senator Ted Cruz once said that Ted Cruz was the smartest student that he ever had but then in a recent interview that I know right I got to I got to chuckle a lot of it too. >> It's hard not to giggle at that one though. >> In a recent interview that that Ted Cruz had with Tucker Carlson he was [snorts] he was intellectually unprepared for the questions that Tucker had for him about these various about these various
[04:54] issues. Now I'm a little bit embarrassed to tell you that years ago I was an adjunct professor of intelligence studies at Liberty University which is the the biggest evangelical university in the world. I'm an orthodox Christian like you are I'm not evangelical but they liked my position on torture. They said that torture wasn't Christian and would I like to teach these classes I said yes I'm glad that I did they were lovely people but we had fundamental
[05:24] disagreements on the role of evangelical Christianity in the Middle East. I would posit that there is no role for evangelical Christianity in the Middle East because evangelical Christianity in my humble opinion is an arm of Zionism. And so I was never able to wrap my head around how these Christians or these these people who call themselves Christians with a straight face
[05:56] can tell you that they're doing the right thing by supporting Israel as it wipes out ancient Christianity. Do you have any response to that? How is it that they're able to justify this policy to themselves? >> Well, to quote John Hagee against you, John, it's the blood moons. The blood moons of Israel show us that Jesus is not the Messiah. >> I couldn't resist throwing in a John Hagee in >> Oh, boy. Oh, boy. >> I was raised Southern Baptist, so I
[06:29] understand the mindset and I can tell you that for many of the people in that that milieu, it simply doesn't occur to them to think or question that way. They've never thought about what was Christianity like in the first 500,000 years of the church. What is the history of Christianity in the Middle East? For most Bible Belt, you know, evangelical-minded people, as you would know from being at Liberty, I mean, it's just sort of a question they've never even entertained. And when I was 18 or
[06:59] 19, I remember buying my first Bible that I bought on my own that wasn't given to me by Sunday school or whatever was a prophecy study Bible. I remember buying it at a Christian bookstore. I read it. I thought, oh, we're supposed to, you know, just sort of default support modern nation-state of Israel cuz it's all this biblical prophecy stuff. And you know, we saw Trump a week or two ago saying, you know, bless those that bless Israel. I will bless those we have a love of duty. Everybody has to support Israel no matter what. Uh, but that's all false, right? Because every one of the church
[07:30] fathers, 100% consistently across the board, all of the those very people who put the Bible together, they were unanimous in their interpretation, like Saint Paul in Galatians 6, the church is the spiritual Israel. So, really it would be a kind of Judaizing move to go retrograde, to go back to the sort of Old Testament mindset and to go back to what you said about the persecution of Christianity and sort of stamping it out in those cities. People need to understand, which I didn't understand when I was an evangelical Zionist, that rabbinical Judaism actually pronounces
[08:02] curses on what they call the minim. The minim are the Christians and this goes back to the 2nd 3rd century when there was this fissure between Judaism at that time, which [clears throat] was still proto-rabbinic Judaism, and Christianity going their separate ways. And part of what defines rabbinic Judaism is actually their anti-Christian stance. So, that's what the attitude actually is and if we understand that, you know, I think most Bible Belt people think of Islam as a threat to the West
[08:32] and I think that it is, as I've studied Islam in depth for the last 10 years or so, but they don't understand that it's the same idea, same ideology, perhaps even more vicious within the Talmudic and rabbinic teachings that that really require serious [clears throat] practitioners of Judaism to use any means necessary really to to get rid of Christianity. So, yeah, everything you said is correct, but I just simply think that that the people in the Bible Belt probably has never even entertained these these types
[09:03] of questions. >> With this expansion of of settlements, with you know, war against Iran, with well, it's not just against Iran, it's against Lebanon, it's against Syria, it's it's against you know, Christians in the in the West Bank. What do you think of the notion that's floating around now that the Israelis have been emboldened to the point where they might even consider attacking or
[09:33] dismantling the Al-Aqsa Mosque in order to then build the Third temple, which they believe they are they are religiously driven to do. They they've been commanded by God to do. Is that something that we should expect to see? >> It's definitely a possibility. I think that um you know, if you study the history of uh Israeli operations, the Mossad. I'm certainly no expert. I've just read some books on it over the years. Um I don't think they would be at all
[10:03] beyond doing some sort of false flag or something like that. It's very plausible. Um you know, how they would go about that or what how that might happen. You know, they could just simply say that Iran shot a missile or something like that or could be a bomb goes off, blame it on whoever. That's certainly a possibility. Um And I think that again, like you're we're saying with our our previous audience of the sort of evangelical mighty people, they don't understand that um the the there's the evangelical Zionist
[10:34] idea of the end times and you have to kind of allow this stuff to happen and Israel can do whatever it wants because they think this will further sort of the return of Christ and the rapture and the you know, final millennium and all this kind of nonsense. But there's also the rabbinic idea, which is split between whether or not they have to be in the the promised land and build uh the temple before the Messiah comes or the Orthodox other Orthodox Jews that think that they're not supposed to be there uh because the Messiah hasn't come. That's
[11:04] really a minority of them. So, I think that yeah, there's a there's definitely a possibility that they could engage in some sort of some some type of a false flag for sure. I mean, Israel would has a history of using false flags just like many nations have. So, absolutely. >> Yeah, help me understand um the the ideology of of evangelical Christians, especially in the United States because a lot of these these beliefs, you mentioned for example, the rapture. The the rapture is a late 19th century
[11:36] you know, British American Protestant development. It it doesn't appear anywhere in in the Bible or the ancient writings, etc. I I was talking to the daughter of of a friend of mine who is an evangelical Christian and has volunteered to go overseas and um and do some missionary work. I asked her where she was going. And she said North Macedonia. I said, "Why?" She said, "Why not?" I said, "Because
[12:07] they're already Christian." Why aren't you going to Africa? Right? Or go to the Middle East somewhere. And she looked at me like I had two heads. Because an Orthodox Christian's not a real Christian, right? I mean, isn't that what they're led to believe these days? >> Absolutely. And and to tie that in just briefly with what you mentioned earlier on, the idea that evangelical Christianity is also an arm of Zionism and also an arm I would argue of the American
[12:37] Pentagon or deep state. There's a lot of history that goes into missionaries being used and recruited for intelligence work, for all kinds of stuff. Uh other countries such as Russia for example ban groups like Jehovah's Witnesses or uh things like Scientology because sometimes they're cut out, sometimes they're used for that stuff. So, uh it's not just a matter of persecuting religious groups, it has to do as you would know with espionage. So, there's that angle too which the US uses a lot of these um evangelical groups for what
[13:09] it calls soft power to try to promote uh American ideology in other countries. Um this was used heavily in the Ukraine, used heavily in the Cold War. There's giant historical, you know, scholarly texts on that. But beyond that, I think you're right that uh for the evangelical mind, I don't think they would see these groups as really Christian. So, they're just sort of nominally Christian or Christian in name. Funny you said that. I was actually on a evangelical guy's podcast the other day, and he was saying, "I come from Lithuania. Everybody's
[13:39] nominally Christian, but in in America, I really found evangelical true Christianity." And I I just thought that was I was like, "Well, but but what makes that true?" And he's like, "Well, I had this experience, right?" So, it's it's very experiential and emotionally based. It's not actually based in sort of ritual and tradition and history. Uh, there's a lot of um emotivism involved in that sort of evangelical Bible thumping, you know, Billy Sunday style revivalist stuff that goes back to, you could say, America's founding with Puritans and the new light
[14:10] and all that. Anyway, uh your question though, I think, was more so about um like, why why do we have to do this missionary work when they're already Christian? And I think it's just a defective and sort of ignorant view of Christianity and not understanding that a lot of this is geopolitics, and a lot of this is groups being used, and they don't even understand that they're being used. And that's a huge challenge. And I I I've been talking about this for a long time, and probably not going to convince a lot of people in the Bible Belt that
[14:40] >> [laughter] >> that their churches are being used for Israeli foreign policy. But, actually from the Tucker interview, like exactly from the Tucker interview and the the Tucker B interview, they're actually becoming more They're becoming more and more aware that like man, uh you know, Huckabee really had no idea what he was talking about. And And Tucker really asked him pretty basic-level questions, and there was a lot of fumbling. So, this is causing quite a few people, I think, to uh at least maybe not get into the geopolitical stuff too heavy, but at least question, "Well, wait a minute.
[15:11] Why are we supposed to do whatever Israel says? What What does that have to do, you know, with American uh foreign policy?" And, you know, here's Trump doing pretty good things the second round, and then suddenly everything is sort of going haywire once he's got to listen to whatever Bibi says. >> Stay with us, Jay. We're going to take a short break and come right back. When we come back, we will have more with Jay Dyer. I'm John Kiriakou and this is the deep state. Stay right there.
[15:52] Welcome back to the deep state. I'm John Kiriakou. We're joined back again today by our guest Jay Dyer, podcaster, theologian, and expert debater. Thanks so much for being with us, Jay. You know, one of the things that has always struck me about um evangelicals and and their sort of religious political ideology is they believe they can force God's hand.
[16:23] >> Yeah. >> By encouraging Jews to to move to Israel, for example, right? Because the Messiah can't come back until all the Jews have returned to Israel, but it they just don't get that it's not up to man to make that decision and to force God's hand. They really believe that this is something that they can accomplish and that's why they won't even engage you in a conversation about the rightness or the wrongfulness of a policy like that. >> Yeah, you know, it's funny I because I actually challenged quite a few um
[16:55] proponents of this over the last year or 2 years to a public debate. Uh I had some back and forth with Dinesh D'Souza who's a who's a massive Christian Zionist. And of course he would not do it. He declined multiple times. Uh some of the other big evangelical megachurch pastors uh I've tried to reach out and get get them to have some kind of engagement or discussion. And of course none of them would actually do it. So, it was really surprising to me that Huckabee that uh Tucker Huckabee and uh uh what's his face were actually willing to to do that interview because they
[17:26] it's almost like they were I mean, it's like they live in another reality almost, right? And and and I say that because I grew up with Baptist pastors and I think Mike Huckabee in that interview he came off as the archetypal Baptist pastor that that I grew up with. And so to see that kind of an archetype, you know, really just sort of fumble and just sort of melt in the midst of that basic level of questioning was a huge blow. >> [clears throat] >> Um but yeah, I just I don't think that
[17:57] that those questions are ever asked but by the evangelical mindset, but um I'm glad that they're being forced to to ask these questions now because it's really, as you know, uh these are the types of things could they can really undo the country. >> Yes. >> Right? >> Without a doubt. >> And it's it doesn't mean that if we don't do Israeli foreign policy that we have to suddenly hate all Jews or hate people. Everything is always cast in a in a propaganda way in a false dialectic of oh if you don't support whatever Bibi says, then you must
[18:28] hate uh all all Jews or something like that. That's that's a false false dichotomy. That's a non sequitur. It doesn't follow that because I don't want to do their foreign policy that I hate them, but it's just not rational. It's not Christian. It's not sensible. It's a historical. And like you said, you know, the whole rapture ideology was really invented and pushed by famous Zionists in America like Samuel Untermyer. >> Mhm. >> Uh he was a huge part of why Scofield was able to get that whole movement and I idea uh going uh without throughout
[18:58] the Bible Belt. And you know, you being Orthodox, you know, you don't you don't you don't think about it like a Baptist thinks about it like where you grow up just reading this book and sort of the book is sort of the the end-all be-all, and you don't even think about, well, who put the book together? And what's the history behind the book, right? And then when you start asking those questions, a lot of times, as as I did in my 20s, it tends to lead you out of the the Baptist mindset, and you begin to also realize, well, maybe this recent
[19:29] eschatological view of the rapture and the the millennium and all that, maybe that's a new teaching. Maybe that's not actually a biblical ancient teaching. When you realize that, you know, one of the most powerful verses, and I know you this doesn't have to be a big theology chat, but Matthew 21:43, Jesus gives a parable, and he says to the Jews, to the Pharisees, he says, "The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation producing the fruits thereof." The nation there being, I think, the Gentile and Jewish church that was soon to emerge, which would supplant and
[20:01] really be the fulfillment of what the flesh nation-state of Israel was. And I remember reading that as an evangelical Zionist, and I thought, "Man, this really doesn't work with my theology of when Jesus comes back, he'll set up that earthly kingdom in Israel, and we have to do what the nation-state of Israel wants, because that's God's chosen people." Jesus is simply literally saying, "No, no, in this first advent, this kingdom is taken from you. It's not your possession anymore. It's the church." >> I want to ask you about an article that was published in the New York Times a
[20:31] couple of weeks ago. Um it was a fascinating piece to me, and it was it was essentially something that we Orthodox already knew, that there were more conversions from evangelical Protestantism in the United States to the Orthodox Church than to any other denomination or any other faith. And primarily, that's because people are searching for tradition. Right? They're they're searching for
[21:02] something with a history. If you're Orthodox, you've known that all your life. Especially the Antiochian Orthodox Church or or the Orthodox Church in America, there are in in many parishes majority converts that that make up the parish. It's a wonderful thing. That's not how the New York Times meant it. The New York Times meant it to be that this was something that we should be worried about. Because these these converts to
[21:32] Orthodoxy are very conservative. And some of them are extremely right-wing or alt-right. And they believe, God forbid, they believe in a traditional home where the woman doesn't work outside the home and other silliness through this article. Um a similar article was was published in 2005 that didn't have all the negatives attached to it, but they were saying, you know, this Orthodox Church is something that's very appealing to
[22:03] people who feel like they're missing something in Evangelical Christianity, especially in the United States. Why do you think that there was this pushback against Orthodoxy by a mainstream outlet like the New York Times? Why wouldn't they have just Why wouldn't they have presented this as "Hey, there's something interesting going on in the religious community in America. Here's what it is." Why was this something that we should fear? >> The establishment left in America,
[22:34] particularly through the outlets like New York Times or and even the the fake conservative outlets, I've been approached a lot of DMs from Wall Street Journal, these types of organizations that have reached out to say, "Hey, you know, you end up doing a lot of these debates. I'd like to talk to you about why Orthodoxy is growing and this and that." There's probably been five or 10 of those over the last several years and I always say no because I know that they're going to write a hit piece and try to say that I'm a follower of, you know, tiny mustache man even though I critique
[23:05] eugenics and that whole ideology all the time. So So I tend I tend to just assume that they're going to be hit hit pieces and I did see what you're talking about and I think that you know, from the vantage point of the establishment they're always interested in what the intellectual currents are, what the reaction will be to the prevailing status quo. And so they're probably looking to see what the trend is and why is this trend happening? Who who's the voices of this? Uh so I think they're probably figuring out who to target, who to try to take down, who to you know, make look bad. And they always default to the same
[23:36] really weak mo uh ad hominems that just don't work anymore. I mean, they used It used to work 20 years ago if mainstream media said somebody was a bad person. But now that the establishment defends the most degenerate practices, you know, harming children with cutting off their genitalia, nobody perceives them to have a moral high ground anymore. So I just don't think it's effective, it doesn't work like it used to. The same with calling everybody anti-Semitic for critiquing Zionism or for Israeli foreign policy. It's lost
[24:07] its power. Uh which is something that, you know, Twitter has helped to affect in the last couple years. Um and it's and it's funny because, you know, there's that old interview with Victor Ostrovsky who wrote, you know, by way of deception. He's on YouTube and he's like 20 years ago, 30 years ago saying at the at C-SPAN he's like, "Yeah, it's a trick we use, you know, if you somebody says something you don't like, you just call them anti-Semitic." So anyway, that's the reason why they're doing it is to make us look bad, but it doesn't work. Um but also I think that, like you said,
[24:38] the internet is forcing people to ask questions that they probably never would have asked. Especially the younger you go. Now, there's downsides obviously to Gen Z, Gen Alpha spending all their time on the internet. But there's also perhaps some upsides, which is that quite a few of them are beginning to ask questions and find answers a lot quicker >> Mhm. >> than a boomers or Gen X could even imagine. Uh for example, I remember somebody, I forget who it was, I was reading somebody that was saying that basically, you know, what a what a CIA
[25:09] section chief would have spent months trying to uh you know, find sources for and and get collated information to pass on to somebody in the 1970s, '60s, or '70s, you can basically collate that information and get those answers uh within a few minutes nowadays. So, it's like and I know there's downsides to AI. I'm not touting AI. I'm just saying that if you know what you're doing, you can really find uh you know, solid answers. And so, people the younger you get, the more people are saying, "Well, wait a minute. Why are we supposed to just do whatever Israel
[25:41] says?" This question is still mind-boggling to most boomers, especially evangelical boomers, right? >> Yeah. >> Uh this is just you just don't even ask that. It's not even a question with within the domain of what types of questions can be asked. So, I think the the younger you go, the more radical the questioning uh is and it's more normative. And so, there's a quickening amongst that group to see the uh lack of foundations for a lot of the evangelical ideas, whether it's the Zionist dispensational end time stuff,
[26:12] or whether it's no tradition, no liturgy, no history, just sort of a you know, Billy Bob Baptist strip mall do it on your own type of church. I think people are really quickly seeing through a lot of the uh flimsiness uh of the foundations. >> And thank you for watching. This is the deep state, and I'm John Kiriakou. We'll see you next time.
[26:53] Welcome. For years, I was on the inside. I saw how power really works, how decisions are made, how secrets are kept. Then I exposed the truth about the deep state, and the deep state tried to ruin my life. But they failed. Because the American people deserve to know who is pulling the strings and why. This isn't theory, it's experience, my experience. I'm John Kiriakou. This is the deep state.
[27:24] I want to bring on now Jay Dyer. Jay is a well-known YouTuber, a Christian apologist, a theologian, and podcaster. He discusses topics from Christianity to geopolitics to the deep state. I want to ask you about this whole anti-Semitism thing, and I I have a personal bias. Uh I like to think that I'm an even-handed person. I was trained as a as an analyst, where I I base my
[27:55] opinions on the facts as we know the facts. Um I'm a supporter of human rights. I've made that clear over the last two decades. Uh to great personal cost. But uh the Israeli foreign minister's political director wrote an article uh about 2 months ago in a scholarly journal funded by the Israeli government, in which he called me "noted anti-Semite John Kiriakou." Well, like you just said, that's a trope that they throw out all
[28:27] the time. I have a dear friend who 25 years ago was in the uh Israeli special forces. He's now an American citizen. And he told me that in school, they were taught to do that. Where where they were taught if any foreigner, non-Israeli, criticized the Israeli government in any way they were to accuse the person of anti-Semitism in order to silence them. And now we see it all the time. I'm noted anti-Semite John Kiriakou. Tucker
[28:58] Carlson is anti-Semite of the year, Tucker Carlson. You mentioned a second ago, and I I want to agree wholeheartedly that Twitter has changed that. Where we can respond immediately. It's not about anti-Semitism, it's about human rights. I I was on the Piers Morgan show a couple of weeks ago and um I was on with uh General uh Danny Ayalon and uh Alan Dershowitz and Scott Horton. Scott Horton and I were on the
[29:29] one side, Ayalon and Dershowitz were on the other. And um I did the least amount of talking of of all the guests cuz you know, that show you constantly just interrupt everybody else. So finally Piers Morgan asked me "Do you believe that October 7th was a terrorist attack?" And I said, "In that the the targets were primarily civilians, yes, of course. Do you believe that Hamas is a terrorist organization?" I said, "I don't believe Hamas was set up as a terrorist
[29:59] organization. I believe it was set up as an organization of national liberation. But again, if the goal is to attack civilian populations for the purpose of instilling a feeling of terror for political purposes, yes, of course." "Then what is your complaint about Israel?" I said, "Come on, Piers." I said, "You cannot have as your policy kill everybody." Killing everybody is not a policy. It's a genocide. It's a crime against humanity. In many cases, it's a war
[30:31] crime. You can't just decide, "Well, I think what our policy is going to be is just kill everyone, women, children, the sick, the elderly and then expect the United States to say, "Okay, we're with you. We're going to help you kill everyone." Do you think that we've turned a corner, perhaps? There was a Gallup poll that was released just a week ago that showed for the very first time a majority of Democrats, a plurality of Americans, support the Palestinian side and not the
[31:03] Israeli side. Is that temporary or do you think we've turned a corner and and these constant accusations that if you don't agree with absolutely everything that Benjamin Netanyahu says or Itamar Ben-Gvir or or Smotrich or any of these other extremists, that you're anti-Semitic. Do you think we're getting past that? >> Absolutely, because uh I see hundreds and hundreds, thousands of comments and and posts, you know, last 2 years of people pushing back on
[31:35] this very trick. And you know, I first encountered this uh in 2007. I remember I was writing some blog posts where I began to critique Zionism because I was out of my, you know, even well out of my evangelical phase and and you know, at the time I was Roman Catholic and I was uh not at all interested in supporting some, you know, socialist atheist nation-state's foreign policy designs which have nothing to do with with Christianity or America uh other than perhaps the the military-industrial complex um perhaps have some interest there, but other than
[32:06] that, um I remember writing some posts in in 2007, '8, '9 on a blog back then. I remember getting I had other evangelical groups reaching out threatening to get me fired from where I worked because I had written mild critiques of Zionism and uh I realized very quickly that, oh, this is actually a, you know, thing you can't talk about this. You can't question this. This is deeply entrenched across the board uh in America and um since that time, it's It's to me to see from 2007, 8, 9 and the
[32:38] level of censorship that was put into place even back in the early 2010s. I remember I got the first one-year ban that I never I mean I may not be the actual first remember. I got the first one-year ban from Facebook for questioning aspects of Zionist stuff. This is 2012 or 13. We had a huge debate in comments and I got a message next day, you're banned for 1 year from Facebook because you touched on, you know, quote anti-Semitic topics. Now, uh I'm only saying those as sort of just my own personal experience examples.
[33:10] Uh and then you fast forward to now to see millions and millions of people beginning to say, "Hey, wait a minute. This makes no sense." And I always caution people that when you get the pendulum swinging in the other direction, a lot of times what the system or the establishment wants to do is then swing everybody in even to a further extreme to make it look absurd. And so you have within the last couple years all of these neo-pagan Hitler bots that pop up everywhere just pushing uh national socialism as if this is some actual real thing that you could go back to, which is absurd to me, but I think
[33:42] that's we have to be careful about going to this extreme and trying to have a level, rational, realistic head about what is actually possible. We're not going to have a führer. We're not going to We're not going to have a king. Uh we're not going to have these things. We need to think logically and realistically about where we are and it absolutely is a massive victory to be able to talk about these things, to begin to shift American opinion away from the default position that we have to do whatever Bibi says. And it's just so ridiculous when you see these old
[34:13] clips where 30, 25 years ago, 20 years ago, you see Bibis like, "You want to do change Iran, beam into Iran, Melrose Place or 90210 and it will change the call He's literally saying like Hollywood will change Iran if you just use the the mind control pop culture." And there's that other clip where he says uh America does whatever Israel wants. We've got him by the, you know, ball by the balls or whatever he says. It's like he just says this stuff openly. But but but if you say what he says, you're bad for quoting him. Well,
[34:45] it's a hypocritical double standard and everybody's just tired of it. So, absolutely the the the the tides are turning. >> [snorts] >> You know, one of the other things that bothers me very much is when people present the issue as this either/or, this black and white issue. >> Yes. >> Well, you know, you're going to support the Muslims, they'll throw you off the roof if you're gay. Or oh, I suppose you've been to a church in the Middle East. Actually, I've been to a lot of churches in the Middle East. A lot. I
[35:15] was at the dedication of the first Greek Orthodox Church in Bahrain. I attended an Armenian Orthodox Church when I was stationed in Kuwait. There are churches all over Doha and Abu Dhabi and Dubai. One of the oldest continuously operating Christian church in the world is in Iran. Um St. Porphyrios Church, which is the the oldest continuously operating Orthodox Church, Christian Church in the world, was in Gaza and then the Israelis
[35:47] bombed it and killed 14 women and children inside. So, yeah, there are a lot of churches in the Middle East. The first time I went to uh the first time I went to Damascus, Syria, 1993, under that dreaded dictator, Hafez al-Assad, I went to church on Sunday in a church where St. Paul preached. So, yes, there are a lot of churches in the Middle East. A lot. And it's not an either/or prospect where you have to be with the Israelis. You have to be with
[36:18] the Zionists or else the Muslims are going to torture you and hang you and kill you and throw you off a roof and bulldoze your churches. It's actually the Israelis that stand in the way of maintenance of the churches. >> Yeah, this is a really frustrating issue to deal with because when it tips over into the religious domain, everybody just assumes you either have to choose Israel or you choose Hamas >> Right. >> some sort of some sort of Muslim faction or something like that. And you know, people don't even know
[36:49] that in the Middle Ages and obviously I'm not saying we could go back to this, but in the middle in the Middle Ages Jerusalem was at one point a Christian kingdom. So, there's no necessity to this being either a Jewish or an Islamic place. It's had a very diverse It's had a pagan history, right? It's been all kinds of things for thousands of years. So, everyone just sort of defaults to whatever is presented as a false choice that you're either with Hamas or you are or with with the Zionists and with Israel. And and you know, it doesn't
[37:19] matter how many times you hammer that home. That's a really difficult thing for people to to figure out because the humans just tend to fall into the camps of good guy bad guys. It's so easy to do that. It's kind of a default probably from tribal times. Well, my tribe's good. You guys are the bad guys. So, we just think of it that way. Most war propaganda operates in that very simple low tier kind of Well, they threw the babies out of the incubators and are you supporting the babies being thrown out of incubators? Well, then you better go to war, right? Um and I you know, I
[37:51] think yeah, you you would know this from your history of of teaching and tenure that this is this is how propaganda works, right? You you know this well. So, um if we can see through that and see that it's not it's not a You don't have to choose one of these one of the other. And the there's nuance, there's complexity, you know, Israel the one of the reasons that Israel wanted it wanted for many years to support Hamas. This is from many Israeli sources was as a counter balance to the PLO cuz they
[38:22] really didn't like the PLO. >> Right. >> And uh Israel has admitted and said many times that a lot of these groups can function as destabilizing forces as well. So, these proxy groups these radical uh Salafi Wahhabi uh you know, Sunni groups can be of great power for uh actually giving also Israel the excuse that >> we have these uh you know, problems all around us. Therefore, America, you have to support us. Otherwise, you're anti-Semitic because look, we have all
[38:52] of these groups around us that are threats. Well, why are you aiding the threats then? Why are you fomenting destabilization in a lot of these countries? Uh by design and by admission. They even admit this, right? So, um Yeah, I think that's an element that people don't don't don't see, which is that the destabilization doesn't just keep those that are around Israel sort of off-kilter. It also allows Israel to have an excuse to basically, you know, beg the US and tell the US what to do and give them infinite amounts of money.
[39:23] So, it's a it's all uh very very cunning, I guess you could say, if you think about what's really going on. But, everybody's just sort of trapped in in this mode, and we're beginning to come out of it of thinking in just good guy, bad guy. But, it's like, well, if you've watched The Sopranos, you know, Tony Soprano goes to war with uh one point the five families. >> Right. >> So, who's the good guy, bad guy, right? I mean, it's like, well, they're both bad guys, right? So, it's not like we have to choose uh you know, Hamas or or or Israel. But, uh the more you learn
[39:55] about this subject, the more I think you see that it's not good guys, bad guys, but from another perspective, from a religious perspective on what basis are we supposed to just do whatever Netanyahu says? >> Stay with us, Jay. We're going to take a short break and come right back. When we come back, we will have more with Jay Dyer. I'm John Kiriakou, and this is The deep state. Stay right there.
[40:30] Welcome back to the deep state. I'm John Kiriakou. We're joined back again today by our guest Jay Dyer, podcaster, theologian, and expert debater. Thanks so much for being with us, Jay. Uh you you made me think of of something that happened to me, wow, 26 years ago. My my two oldest sons, I have five children. My two oldest, I I only had two at the time. They were very very much into this um fake wrestling, WWE,
[41:01] World Wrestling Entertainment, fake wrestling. And so, I I decided to to treat them, and I bought us three tickets to see the wrestling matches at Madison Square Garden in uh in New York. And it starts, and they're smashing chairs over each other's heads, and throwing each other onto tables, and the tables collapse, and people are screaming and cheering. And I said to my my oldest son, who at the time was, I think, eight. I said,
[41:31] "I don't think I understand. Which one is the good guy?" And he said, and this was very wise. He said, "That's just it, Dad. There is no good guy." And so much about world affairs can be explained with that one sentence. It's not just possible, it's in many cases common, that in these big global situations we find our ourselves in. There simply is no good guy.
[42:02] >> Yeah. >> So, I want to ask you, in terms of religious minorities in the in the Middle East, but but particularly Christian minorities in the Middle East. And they don't even have to be indigenous. Maybe they're, you know, third country nationals. Uh Let's say uh Sri Lankan Christians working in in Kuwait or whatever they happen to be. How do you do assess the freedom that Christians have to practice their faith in the Middle East today? Are things getting better? Are
[42:34] they getting worse? Does it depend on what country we're talking about? How do you assess that? >> Well, I would assume that it it you you you kind of alluded to this earlier that it really depends on which nation we're talking about because uh I got more interested in in some of this Middle Eastern, you know, religious sectarian stuff probably in around the time of 2012, 13, 14, and 15 when there was really a push to remove Assad. And I had some friends that were journalists that had gone to Syria many times to
[43:05] cover stuff. And so I got more and more interested in that cuz I wanted to understand Well, now wait a minute. I thought he's Muslim, right? Cuz a lot of, you know, evangelicals, a lot of people in America they think, well, if you're Muslim, then you're all Sunni, you know, radical clerical, you know, Wahhabis and you got to shut everything down. But there's quite a bit of diversity in sectarian groups amongst Islam. And like you mentioned with Assad, you know, Assad had a reputation for uh being pretty liberal when it came to the the rights of Christians to uh to practice and to worship. Uh
[43:38] particularly Orthodox Christians, you know, in in in Syria. So, what we're being told really didn't make sense with what the reality was that I was hearing from people who were visiting Syria. You know, they could go to Damascus, like you mentioned earlier, where Paul taught, and go to to a to an Orthodox church. But meanwhile, the BBC is saying, "Assad is gassing his own people." >> That's right. >> Which was just obvious, you know, propaganda. And so, you know, what and and I think similar situations in Iran, there might be other uh limitations on what you can and can't do, uh but I think there's a little more
[44:10] freedom there than there would be in Saudi Arabia. Now, Saudi Arabia is the ally of America, but you can't preach Christianity or have a church >> in Saudi Arabia. So, we begin to see, well, wait a minute, that makes no sense. Total hypocrisy that Well, we got to go over there and fight for the Christians' freedoms in America in the Middle East cuz the Muslims are shutting them down. Well, if that was the case, then we would not have a friendship with Saudi Arabia because that that makes no sense, right? So, um it really depends on all these different flavors of Islam, and, you know, I had questions about
[44:41] 9/11 back in 2003 and 4. And, but I didn't know anything about Islam. And I had I think again, everybody just assumes that, you know, Islam is this monolithic thing, and it's not. It's very different, very diverse. Sunnis hate Shia. They've been fighting for centuries. Uh there's all kinds of different you know, levels, you could say. There's a spectrum uh of what's allowed and not allowed in in different I mean, the British Empire used Sunnis to fight the Ottomans. So, you've got Muslim against Muslim there. So, um
[45:12] my assessment would be that it probably depends on which area that we're talking about. And, although Israel perhaps uh was not as heavy-handed against Christianity uh in the past several decades that they as they could have been, they I think they're beginning now to show their true colors to see this is what they really wanted. They would definitely be heavy-handed against Christianity had they the opportunity to do so. Um and, ironically, yeah, they would be more anti-Christian than some of the
[45:43] Islamic nations. >> Right. I want to switch gears, if we may, and I want to ask you about the relationship between the Orthodox Church and nationalism. We we hear a lot, well, those of us who follow developments in the Orthodox world, hear a lot about nationalism and the role that it has in places like Russia or Serbia, possibly Ukraine. The Greeks have gotten away from nationalism.
[46:14] The The Antiochians are too oppressed to even have to be to be able to deal with something like nationalism. Nationalism. What is What is your view on this? Is nationalism within the church a positive force or is it something that we should worry about? >> Depends on what you mean. >> Well, to quote Jordan Peterson, depends on what [clears throat] you mean. Well, because now nationalism has a long history of prior to the French Revolution, uh what was the conception of a nation-state was more of an ethnos,
[46:45] right? So, in the New Testament, the Greek word that's used is the ethnoy or the ethnos. Baptize the ethnos, the nations. And uh presumably the mindset of the biblical biblical authors would have been something like the table of nations in Genesis that you have these sort of genealogical groups that extend out of the, you know, original nations of Genesis 10, but um as you get up towards the French Revolution, I'm not trying to do a whole history lesson here, but it's important because there's different conceptions of what a nation-state is.
[47:16] And so, after the French Revolution, there's a much more post-Enlightenment, post-mod- not post-modern, but post post-revolutionary idea of a nation-state being something not necessarily tied to an ethnos or a people, but something more propositional connected to a Republican style, you know, statement of constitutional principles. And that's what we have in a lot of modern nation-states, which is why they don't really match up with the nationalism that we see in the Middle Ages or, uh you know, in the in the
[47:46] Patristic era. So, I think the Byzantine model at least always tried to stress a balance of the one and the many. I'm not saying that they successfully always accomplished this, but the idea was that you would have a uh an imperium with a common religious ideology which would unite people, but you wouldn't want to necessarily absolutely destroy or dilute the various people groups. And so, there's always going to be a challenge there to maintain that balance of the one and the many, which is what we call that philosophy. That's just whether the principle of unity or principle of multiplicity, which one has
[48:18] priority? Well, maybe we should like the Trinity or like the idea of the the bishops in the church, maybe there's a unity and a plurality that's a a balance at the same time. So, I think the Byzantine model was intended to have that balance. [clears throat] Once you have the dissolution of the Byzantine Empire or something akin to a a state power of Christianity, now we're in this weird phase where it's sort of like yeah, we kind of have these nations or people groups, like you said with Serbia, uh or Russia, but they're not it's not like
[48:49] the way we think of a nation-state prior to that uh you know, French Revolutionary period, because like in Russia, they have, you know, massive amounts of in in in uh in Moscow, massive amounts of Muslims in Moscow, which [clears throat] technically really wouldn't be the same ethnos, even though they could conceivably be a part of the modern nation-state. Uh and likewise in America being an enlightenment experience the experiment, you have uh a propositional nation with people from all over the world sort of mix mixing in a I wouldn't
[49:21] say melting pot. I don't think it was the original idea, but now it is a melting pot for better for worse. Uh so, it's really complex and and difficult. I know that the the Russian church issued a document uh some years ago, 2014 or so, uh about the Russian church's attitude on uh nationhood and nation and nationalism. And I think the idea is that we want to have a degree of acceptance and appreciation. We don't want everybody's people group to be diluted and destroyed. That would be like Babel, But we also don't want to
[49:53] exalt the nation state to a form of what's called phyletism, which is the idea that the people group and the ethnos are superior to the universality of the gospel. So the gospel calls everybody. Everybody can be part of the same faith, but anytime there's a temptation to make the nation state It's It's It's almost like the Judaizing idea of going back to we are God's chosen people because we're the Greeks or we're the Russians, right? That would be a a lateral move back to the Old Testament. The idea is that you can have a nation
[50:25] state, but it's supposed to be kind of subordinate to the faith, right? So as long as we avoid phyletism, there's I think there's hope and there's possibility for uh unity amongst multiplicity. >> And thank you for watching. This is the deep state, and I'm John Kiriakou. We'll see you next time.
[51:06] Welcome. For years, I was on the inside. I saw how power really works, how decisions are made, how secrets are kept. Then I exposed the truth about the deep state, and the deep state tried to ruin my life. But they failed. Because the American people deserve to know who is pulling the strings and why. This isn't theory, it's experience. My experience. I'm John Kiriakou. This is the deep state.
[51:37] I want to bring on now Jay Dyer. Jay is a well-known YouTuber, a Christian apologist, a theologian, and podcaster. He discusses topics from Christianity to geopolitics to the deep state. Yeah, I wrote myself a note as as you were speaking because you made me think that maybe there are lessons that we can learn from the Byzantine Empire. It failed in the end, but but what lessons do you think can be
[52:08] drawn from this historical relationship between the church and the empire? They were two separate things with separate leaderships, but they were but they were one as part of the nation-state. Is that practical in today's world? >> Well, this this is probably the thing that would most go against the grain of everything that people think, right? Like to say that there could be a you know, a synergy or a symphonia
[52:38] between church and state is very antithetical to everything after the enlightenment. And with good reason because I in my view the papacy was very abusive to this you know, idea of the not separation of separation of powers. It's not that there was this supposedly separation of church and state, but depending on what you mean by that. Basically, there's a sphere that the church is involved in and there's a sphere of life that the state's involved in and there might be some you know, overlap there, but they're two
[53:08] heads of the same body of the Byzantine eagle is the idea. So, I think that there will always be a tendency to move in that direction because in my view there's no such thing as a purely neutral view of the world. And other religions like Islam, you know, they don't see a separation between the sacred and the secular. Or they at least they don't tend to the more orthodox Muslims don't tend to see it that way and and a lot of people in the west I think would see that as a weakness, but they might actually be a
[53:39] strength because it allows their people to really push their religion in every area of life. And I think people in the West are going to have to make a decision between a type of Christianity that is all-encompassing and does have an impact on the civil state or they're going to have to choose something like that because the enlightenment idea of everybody having a kind of a a neutral um a neutral uh almost deistic like Freemasonic
[54:10] enlightenment principle of well, we can all just agree that we should have freedom of religion, freedom of speech, these sort of negative liberties. I just don't think that's going to work in the future to give um adequate place for the relationship of church and state. I think that people are going to be getting to say, "Well, wait wait a minute. So, I've got Christianity over here. If Christianity, so-called, is telling me that the state should be atheistic and secular, but privately I can have my own private Christianity, then I've got Islam over here where God
[54:42] is Allah is the lord of every area of life. Well, this kind of makes a little more sense than this idea that God is only the lord of your personal life, but he has nothing to do with the state." This is literally I mean, I don't know how people in America and the West came to this conclusion, especially in the Orthodox world. This is like Quakerism. This is Robert Roger Williams' Baptist stuff. It blows my mind that the whole history of the church is, you know, said idea at least of symphonia once the church was not little no longer persecuted after Constantine and
[55:13] Theodosius. Uh so, yeah, I tend to take a pretty uh you know, unpopular stance that uh Americanism is not necessarily the history of Orthodox Christianity. >> When I was studying Islam in college, uh literally the first thing that we were taught was that Islam is a religion, but not just a religion. It's also a social construct. It's a it's an economic system. It's a way of life. It's everything. >> It's also a whole theory of law. >> law. That's exactly right. How do you
[55:43] think Orthodox Christians should view economic systems? Capitalism, socialism, communism. Is there a role for Orthodox philosophy in secular economic systems? >> Um yeah. And but I want to be clear that for us, I think the way that we should is we talked earlier about dialectics, right? And false choices. So, a lot of
[56:14] times what happens, people think they'll say, "Well, you either love Jesus and you follow the spiritual stuff or you're in the world, right? Well, not everybody is a monastic. Not everybody is called to that life. So, many of us, most of us are going to be in the world. And so, it's possible to have, number one, you know, the religious priorities, if you're a believing Orthodox Christian, that's your higher priority. Right? You can also have other interests and things that you do in the world where
[56:45] you apply those principles in the world without sacrificing that being the number one. And that's because in Orthodox metaphysics, I don't want to get too too out here, but we believe, contrary to a lot of the medieval Latin theology, that there's actually a multiplicity of goods. In other words, if you chose to be single or to be celibate, that doesn't make married life bad >> Mhm. >> That's right. >> It just means, perhaps, that it's a lesser good, okay? But there's nothing inherently wrong with lesser goods. But
[57:17] in a lot of medieval and ancient Augustinian ideology, there's it's always a presentation of a false either/or. Well, either you choose the good path of celibacy or you choose an evil path of being married. And And Augustine even himself said at times that he he he though he had to admit that marriage was a sacrament, he said he could never understand how it would be possible that marital union could be a sacrament because for him it always necessitated some degree of sin. He says that in City of God. And I'm just using it as an example to say now this is
[57:49] misunderstanding that in the Orthodox metaphysic there are multiple goods, right? Creation is good. It's not the highest good, but it's still a good. And the the fact that it's not the highest good doesn't make it an evil, right? So >> That's right. >> yes, there can be application of these principles to economics. Economics itself is not evil, but it's not the highest good. Uh philosophy, right? Can be done right, can be done well. There were countless famous Byzantine philosophers. Uh you know, some of the greatest saints in the Orthodox Church
[58:19] like St. Photius, they were the most learned men in in their times in Byzantium. So there's nothing inherently wrong with academia or scholasticism or economics or whatever. Um I think that in my my view that there are a lot of insights that Austrian economics has. It's there's some positives there. I also have some criticisms there. Uh I mean I'm a promoter. I do believe Bitcoin is good. I think it's ethical money. Uh but I wouldn't say that that's necessarily right like tied to my Orthodox faith. I don't judge a person, you know, if they
[58:50] don't believe in Bitcoin or whatever, but um and I'm not at all a socialist or a communist or a Marxist, but I do think there should be kind of kind of critique or a limit on uh where Austrian economics could go crazy with with with the I I think it could lead to um a form of monopoly capitalism. I know that most of them would say it it doesn't, but I I think that it potentially could. So there's got to be some relationship between limitations and in regard to an authority or a state versus the freedom of the market. Otherwise you get
[59:22] rampant, you know, corporatism and just sort of corporate control of all society, which is really not a whole lot different from a top-down sort of communist control. So, I you know, I had a debate, funny you said that, I won't keep yapping, but I had a debate with uh Tim Pool, the the the the uh livestream host uh a month ago. And this was exactly the topic we debated. He said, "Um company towns, there's nothing wrong with that, right? There's nothing There's no slavery. You're free to to come or go." Well, none of that's actually true. In a company town, you have to use the
[1:06:13] >> Uh this is another John, you're really good at these nuanced tough questions. No easy questions from John Kiriakou. [laughter] Um uh which is good for an interview. So, I I tend to be pretty critical of the green movement and the green agenda because uh there's a good book I read some years back by a woman named Rosa Corey. Uh and she she's a little out there, but she has some really good I think critiques of this perspective. Um I think that again there's got to be some kinds of ethical uh and legal
[1:06:46] limitations on what corporations can do because you know, for one, if we really cared about this is similar to the hypocrisy with Saudi Arabia. Like if we really cared about the environment and we cared about uh you know, health, then we wouldn't have had GMOs. We would have listened to the type of critiques that RFK Jr. makes now about our terrible food supply a long time ago. And the green agenda uh maybe at times in in early on like they might have had
[1:07:17] some of those types of critiques. But nowadays it's not that. I think it's pretty much a corporate agenda. It's on board with uh a lot of the you know United Nations World World Economic Forum types of agendas which I think are ultimately tied into a kind of uh depopulation ethos. It's about austerity. It's about corporate control. It's not about the environment. I think that um if it was about the environment and health we would have again had uh we would have had similar ideas about
[1:07:48] food that Europe has. Like give you I give you an anecdotal example. Like I can't eat American dairy or pasta. I mean it just ruins my stomach. But I spent uh 2 weeks in Italy on an Orthodox pilgrimage. I could eat anything I wanted. So I don't know about the bureaucracy. I'm not a fan of the EU. But like they have at least an idea that food should actually be food. Okay, in America we have corporate uh just processed nonsense which destroys the gut. And I'm not
[1:08:20] trying to get off into health stuff. But that's an example to me of well if the green agenda was really about the environment and about health it would be about that. It would have a pro-human attitude. It would not have an anti-natalist perspective and it's almost always wrapped up with anti-natalism. So I would say that to me that suggests that unfortunately uh Patriarch Bartholomew uh has a lot of other interests that he answers to probably other than um putting theology first. >> Mhm. >> Uh and I know that's probably true for a
[1:08:51] lot of bishops and patriarchs have to deal with the politics of the church, have to deal with the state. It's complex. It's nuanced. Uh but I really feel like and I mean you can make similar criticisms of Patriarch Kirill too in certain ways, but I think that when it comes to the green agenda, I definitely think it's a corporate scam in my view. >> And and what about media, especially global media or homogenization of media? What do you think the Orthodox response should be to that? >> Ooh. Um
[1:09:23] You know, I have some friends uh that are starting up some some Orthodox outlets. Logos media is a new thing that's popping up. >> Yeah, it's >> Um you know, I I I didn't expect I didn't expect would doing this sort of stuff on a YouTube channel that we would have the effect that we've had over the last eight years. So, this is all kind of blossoming and burgeoning uh as a snowball kind of unexpected. So, I think that the Orthodox >> for it, Jay. There's a thirst for it. That's why That's why That's why we need
[1:09:54] people like you talking about these issues. People are flocking to you because they believe that you have the answer to these questions. They They need to hear what you have to say. >> And all I have to do is just give a confident, assertive appearance of knowing the answers and No, I'm joking. >> There you go. >> I don't know the answers. I know some answers perhaps, but uh um You know, what all I'm saying there is just that, you know, we began really just kind of doing debates for fun and and, you know, doing silly stuff on
[1:10:24] YouTube for fun and it sort of turned into something that we didn't expect. So, I think that more Orthodox content content creators should come about. I'd like to see that. I'd like to see them doing it on their own. I don't think the future is the legacy system or going back to some sort of network style. People can do that if they want. They can mimic it or whatever, but the the future is what we're doing right here. This is the future is now. This is what what is the future We're doing it. This is it. So, I have absolutely. And by the way, in 20 17, '18 when we we started doing debates
[1:10:56] and talking about a lot of theology, there were hardly any Orthodox YouTube channels or or Orthodox priests or content creators. There was a handful. I think Patristic Nectar was around. There was Father Peter Heers. But that was there was not many, okay? And then we started talking about it just on the front on the side for fun. And now it's everywhere. So, and by the way, I've seen in the last month, probably five to 10 YouTube [clears throat] uh channels of Protestants saying, "I'm going to Orthodoxy."
[1:11:27] So, this is really having an effect. And uh I think the key is to not fall into thinking that it needs to be a corporate thing because I was talking to Father Moses the other day. His channel Moses McPherson out of Austin, his channel's blown up to 200,000 subscribers within a couple years that they just sit in the back of of his house or in the back of the church and they just just have a little, you know, interview and technology's cheap now. You can do this on your own. So, that's the future is doing what we're doing. >> Wow. I want to ask you too about
[1:11:58] artificial intelligence. Does the Orthodox Church have a position on AI? Should the Orthodox Church have a position on AI? Or maybe even a better way to to ask it would be, is there a way for the Orthodox Church to use AI? >> Um I remember I remember once I'm not a huge fan of Alexander Schmemann, but I remember one time I read a thing of him saying that
[1:12:28] he was tempted by thinking that maybe the Amish were right that electricity was demonic. I first thought that was funny. But uh I would say probably something similar. I think that that in time we begin to recognize and receive the idea that, well, you know, it's kind of omnipresent and it seems like it's it's here to stay. So, I don't think it's the devil's creation. Um I mean AI is a complex one because there are potentialities that it could ruin society. I'm not an expert in this area.
[1:13:00] I can give just my opinions. I think that it could be a dangerous thing that could really it's going to replace a lot of people's jobs obviously. But also I wonder if if it might also partly be a fad because a lot of the art, a lot of the stuff that it does, it's kind of it's kind of slop. You know, everybody calls it AI slop. >> Yes. >> So I feel like people will always want real human musicians, real human art. I don't think they're going to want to
[1:13:31] just see the same, you know, easily reproducible AI materials. So my guess would be that probably there there is a way for Orthodox to have because really for me and I think even at most people at this stage and maybe the Pentagon has something 10 times crazier that's 20 years ahead of us, I don't know, but what we have right now is really just a kind of a a search engine that talks back to you and gets half of the things wrong. Like it doesn't not that impressive so
[1:14:01] far. It could be in the future. It could be something dangerous, but I would say that it's just perhaps potentially a more efficient search engine at this point, but uh uh I don't think the AI itself would be in any way inherently evil per se. >> I want to ask you a couple of questions. We have a little bit of time left, but one I'm going to preface it by saying I grew up in a small town in Western Pennsylvania in Amish country as a matter of fact. Which would account for my bias against Amish people, but that's a separate issue. Um
[1:14:32] >> I make the same joke. >> [laughter] >> Um >> people they used to steal my dad's mail and he would always fuss about that. >> Yeah, they do the craziest things. And they talk about you right in front of your face in that in that medieval German language. Anyway, in our little town we had a very robust Orthodox community. The The Greek Orthodox Church was the largest, but there was a very large healthy Russian Orthodox Church, Antiochian Orthodox
[1:15:04] Church that was established in the 1920s by Syrian um immigrants. It It sort of became a church of converts. We had the Serbians, we had the the Belorussians, we had uh a Bulgarian Church, a Romanian Church, six, seven, eight different Orthodox churches. Okay. That sounds great on the surface of things. But pan-Orthodoxy was something that just never happened in the town. Maybe a
[1:15:34] handful of Greeks would go to the Syrian Hefla and uh buy some kibbies and, you know, sit and have a drink. Uh maybe we would go to the Russian uh Christmas celebration. We always went to the Russian Christmas celebration. But otherwise, we didn't go to each other's churches. Maybe during Holy Week there would be an effort to get everybody together for, you know, a Lenten dinner or something like that. Is that Is Is the idea of pan-Orthodoxy healthier today than it was 50 years
[1:16:06] ago? Or is this something that we've we've lost, we've missed? And And why is it that the Orthodox churches are divided largely along national identity lines? >> I think the ancient world, if you read the uh like Council of Nicaea, you know, Canon uh 6 of Nicaea says that the different patriarchates in the different nation states kind of have their own
[1:16:36] modus operandi. So, it just sort of developed, I think, naturally out of the history of the church, that there would be ethnologically connected liturgies and confessions and and styles of worship and understanding. So, history is a huge part of that and I doubt that it'll ever totally go away. But, one thing I have noticed is that like in my Russian church, uh when I first started attending there, it was me and a couple other English-speaking families and like 30
[1:17:08] Russians. >> Mhm. >> And now our church is probably 50 Russians and probably 70 English-speaking converts. So, ironically, and it's very similar to you mentioned earlier the Antiochians, you know, that when I came into the church it was through the Antiochians and those are largely convert parishes and so those tend to be amazingly diverse now because they chose to accept a lot of these converts. So, it does exist. It's just kind of with Orthodoxy in America, especially, it's really wild.
[1:17:39] It's so random. It really just depends on where you go and it's a kind of a Russian roulette as to what you're going to get, right? You don't know if you're going to get a totally, you know, Russian-speaking parish where if you're a average white dude or a black dude, you're like, I feel out of place here. I remember the first time I went to the Antiochian church in in Florida, uh I was thinking, oh, this will be like the Antiochian church in Nashville, which is like all former Protestant Bible Belt people and I go in there, I'm the only white dude and the whole liturgy is in Arabic and I'm like, okay.
[1:18:11] >> [laughter] >> And thank you for watching. This is the deep state and I'm John Kiriakou. We'll see you next time.