How the Popularity of Pete Buttigieg Reflects the Worldview Transformation of America

How the popularity of Pete Buttigieg reflects the worldview transformation of America.

That is the topic we'll discuss today right here on the Christian worldview radio program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news that all people can be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ. So what has made this young man so attractive to voters above far more prominent candidates such as Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, former Texas Republican Representative Beto O'Rourke and others? Prominent liberal writer Andrew Sullivan already sought to answer the question in a New York magazine article titled, Is Pete Buttigieg a Transformational Candidate?

Buttigieg certainly has a rare resume. He's a Harvard graduate. He's a Rhodes Scholar with honors from Oxford. He's a veteran of the US Navy and he's the mayor of South Bend becoming that position at age 29. He also speaks eight languages and is a pianist, certainly an accomplished individual. And he also professes to be a Christian and speaks regularly of his quote progressive faith.

He is also married to a man. And as for his family background, the Washington Examiner reports that Buttigieg's father was a Marxist professor at Notre Dame. Now taken all together, one might ask, is Mayor Pete Buttigieg a reflection of the changing worldview in our country? And joining us today to discuss this is Greg Gilbert.

He's the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. He's going to talk about the political divide in this country, the progressive interpretation of scripture, and the face off between religious rights versus the demands of the homosexual transgender movement. I talked to Greg this week and let's get to the first segment of that conversation. I wanted to get your thoughts on so many of the things that are going on in our country, in the church, even in the political realm right now. I think believers watch what's going on in Washington and the culture and people are concerned, have questions. Where is this all going? And so I picked a number of topics that we've covered, let's say, over the last four to six months on the Christian worldview.

And I thought we'd just ask you to get your input, your perspective on some of these issues. And the first one is on the division in our political realm right now. Just recently, the Mueller report, the Robert Mueller report was released after two years and an estimated $34 million in lawyers and FBI agents trying to find this collusion that the Democrats and the media were just night after night beating the drum that this is there, that he colluded with Russia to win the election and so forth.

Well, lo and behold, the report came out and there was no collusion. What does this say to where we are politically from a divided standpoint in our country? Are we at the point of irreconcilable differences where the good of the country can't be achieved anymore because we're just trying to defeat the other side? David, thanks for having me on your show.

It's always a pleasure to be with you. I certainly hope not. I'm 42 years old, so I didn't live through the 1960s and 1970s, except the last three years of the 70s as a baby. But it does seem like, and I've heard people who did live through those decades say that it seems like the country is as divided as it was in the 1960s and 70s, and perhaps even more so. But I hope we're not at the point of completely irreconcilable differences. My hope is that a lot of the animosity that seems to be rising to the top in social media and cable news and all the rest will eventually just get to such a point of high torque that something will give. And we'll just have to realize, look, we are all humans here, and we're all Americans, and we've got to figure out a way to not spend our energies just destroying one another and the leaders of one another's various political parties, but get on with figuring out some of the solutions to the problems that the country faces. Part of the trouble is that we're not, the different sides in America don't even seem agreed on what the problems are. So we may end up having to back up some and even do some work identifying what the biggest problems in the country are.

But I'm hopeful that over the next few years, we'll be able to do that. We hear the word socialism being bandied about right now. The leading candidate running for president in 2020 is Bernie Sanders. He's an avowed Democrat socialist. The most popular Democrat maybe in the whole party right now is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another Democrat socialist. Do you think socialism is actually on the rise in this country? It seems to be more accepted in the millennial generation.

What does that really mean for the country? I think a lot of young people say, my age and a little bit younger down into college age years, I think that they are intrigued by the idea of socialism, democratic socialism as they see it in various countries in Europe and all the rest. I think there are fundamental differences between, for example, Scandinavian countries that have adopted a sort of democratic socialism and the United States of America. This is just a vast, vast country with a lot of different kinds of people.

It doesn't seem like that sort of model is going to work here in quite the same way. But I think it's intriguing to younger people. My grandparents' generation lived through the Great Depression. My parents' generation lived through the Vietnam War, etc.

And I think that there's a generation rising, including my own, frankly, with the exception of 9-11, that didn't have to live through any of those extreme hardships. And so I think it makes an idea like socialism look more realistic for the United States than it actually is. Greg Gilbert with us today on the Christian worldview. Let's talk about how faith is in the political realm in some ways. You have Bernie Sanders, as I mentioned, Joe Biden, those are the two leading candidates. But the third candidate right now is, his name is Pete Buttigieg. He is the mayor from South Bend, Indiana. But his resume is really quite, quite amazing. He was a US Marine. He's a Rhodes Scholar. He went to Harvard and Cambridge. And notably, he's an open homosexual and quote unquote, married to a man.

He's in his late 30s. And he's running third as a candidate for president. And I could go more into his background. But let's just jump to a soundbite of a recent CNN town hall, where Pete Buttigieg did an interview and was talking about the faith of Mike Pence, the vice president.

Let's listen to that and I'll get your follow up. The question I'd like to ask you is, as you pointed out, Vice President Pence is obviously quite conservative. And in regard to these conservative views and regard to religion and his sexuality, in comparison to the average voter or the voter in Indiana, let's say, are his views an aberration or is this really representative of the state or are most people more like you in your more liberal views about us as humans?

Please don't judge my state by our former governor. I think those views are so out of line with where anybody is. And look, I've got to tell you, this was kind of a difficult journey for a lot of people. I mean, if you were conservative and you're from an older generation and you were brought up by people you trusted to believe that it was morally wrong to be, for example, in a same sex marriage. And then the pace of change has happened so quickly. I've benefited from the pace of that change.

But I also understand how disorienting it must be for people to have gone through that. So, when we had this huge and painful controversy in 2018, when Mike Pence divided our state with this so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was really a license to discriminate, provided you remembered to mention your religion as an excuse for discriminating. That's what that was. When that happened, we worked really hard to invite people who were struggling to come onto the right side of history but wanted to get there to feel that we weren't going to judge them because they had struggled. We just wanted them on our side. But the amazing thing that happened in Indiana was that Democrats and Republicans rose up. There was a coalition of mayors, business leaders, sports leaders.

I think even NASCAR put out a statement saying they were disappointed. And the business Republicans in our state revolted right alongside us progressives. And so that shows me that there is a belief in just decency that really does stand against that kind of social extremism. And my hope is that same decency can be summoned from our communities in red states and blue states to change what's happening in the politics of our country before it's too late. Okay, Greg, that was Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, running third right now as a Democrat candidate for president.

And he had a completely different spin on looking at Vice President Pence, a professed Christian, and his extremist views and so forth. It seems like the issues of homosexuality and transgenderism, those two issues, or the LGBTQ movement, is the issues around so much of how society is changing. Why are those issues the ones that are creating all the cultural and societal change in this country?

And why has that been able to happen so quickly in this country? You know, this is just the latest fruit of a movement that started back in the back in the 1960s in earnest, even before that, you know, and not so not so obviously, but the sexual revolution just precedes the pace, right. And so, you know, as people were warning in the early 2000s, as you give more ground in the sexual revolution, the more ground the sexual revolution wants to take. The interesting worldview thing to note about what Pete Buttigieg was saying there is the assumption that morality changes, given enough time. You know, he wasn't just talking about social change, he was talking about moral change, right. If you were brought up to think that being in a same-sex sexual relationship was morally wrong, things have changed, he said, and therefore that must leave you feeling disoriented.

Well, no. I mean, there are a couple of assumptions there. One is that morality changes along with society's opinions, which is not true. Morality is hard-coded into the cosmos because it's hard-coded from the character of God, which never changes. And second, you know, we Christians are not disoriented by the pace of change. We have our feet firmly planted on the rock of Scripture, we know what is right and what is wrong.

Yes, there are questions that are going to arise about how to talk about these things, answers that are given to new questions. That's happened in every generation of Christian existence. But we're not disoriented. It's not like we don't know what's going on anymore, and the world around us that's careening toward more and more sexual liberation knows exactly where it's going.

That's not it at all. If anything, the sexual revolution is the thing that is careening out of control to the point that—I forget what state it was, but you can have biological males win first, second, and third place in the women's 100-meter dash for the state championship. So look at that, then look at Christian morality, and you tell me which one is careening out of control and disoriented. All right, Greg Gilbert with us today in the Christian Real View talking about how the popularity of Pete Buttigieg reflects the worldview transformation in America.

If you're listening to the soundbite of him at that town hall, you realize that what a person who can state so many falsehoods so adeptly in such a short amount of time, how dangerous that is for our society to believe them, and of course for him as well. We'll come back. We have much more coming up on this topic. This is the Christian Real View.

I'm David Wheaton. at University of Northwestern St. Paul and will feature Curtis Bowers, producer of the award-winning Agenda Films, speaking on how socialism is impacting the country and the church. No registration, no cost, free will offering. Seating on first-come basis, max capacity 315.

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Our website is thechristianworldview.org. Just want to remind you and encourage you to put in your calendar the upcoming Christian World View speaker series event with Curtis Bowers on socialism on Friday, May 10th, 7 p.m. Central time, University of Northwestern St. Paul, free admission, no registration required. Also for our out-of-state listeners, you can be watching this live streaming on Facebook again Friday, May 10th, 7 p.m. Today in the program, we're talking about some current events, what's going on in our culture, the changing worldview in America with Greg Gilbert.

He's our typical guest actually on Easter weekend. He's going to be coming up next weekend as well, but I thought it'd be interesting to get his perspective on some of the topics we've been covering recently on the program. So we're going over faith and politics and socialism, the division in politics, and so these issues, in addition to what the rising star of Pete Buttigieg says about the worldview transformation in America. Let's get back to the second segment of the interview with Pastor Greg Gilbert.

I think it's almost a showdown between, on one hand, the religious rights of Christians to practice their faith as their biblical convictions would command them to, versus the demands of this LGBTQ movement. And recently we did a program on this taking place at your alma mater, Yale, in the law school there. The Yale Law School, some of the conservatives in the law school invited the Federalist Society to bring the Alliance Defending Freedom on campus to speak.

This was just an event of their own. They weren't forcing anyone to attend, and it was a huge blowback to this from all different kinds of organizations at Yale because of the fact that ADF had defended Jack Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado for refusing to participate and bake a cake for a homosexual so-called wedding. And now it's turned out that Yale has taken it one step further and won't offer student assistance to those who work for an organization like ADF or another one like it that take a stance on biblical marriage. How do you see this playing out in the future, this battle between religious rights versus LGBT demands for those of us who are going to hold to biblical convictions based on the Word of God, on marriage and morality and religious freedom and things actually enshrined in our Constitution, the very First Amendment? I think it could go a couple of ways. I think the movement that we have right now to shut out various groups and voices from a national conversation from the public square, I think that could become so unwieldy that the nation backs off from that course.

I hope that's the way we go. I mean, the Yale Law School thing is one example of that. Another one that's been in the news lately are airports, for example, shutting Chick-fil-A out of opening businesses in their airports because Chick-fil-A takes certain Christian stances on certain moral issues. You know, right now a lot of that is targeted at religious conservatives, at Christians, evangelical Christians. I wonder, though, if that will get so out of hand that the nation will back off from it.

Maybe. If not, though, we're going to find ourselves in the same kind of situation that the early Christians found themselves in, where in order to participate in the markets, you had to burn a pinch of incense in worship to the emperor, and Christians just simply could not do that, and so they were excluded from certain portions of society. I hope it doesn't get to that sort of thing here in the United States, but it might. I think basically American Christians have been on a holiday from history for about the last 300 years. Most of our brothers and sisters around the world and throughout history have dealt with the unhappiness of the world with our convictions.

We here in America have basically not had to deal with that for about 300 years now, but I'm afraid we're about to get a face full of it. Yeah, I think you're right about that because I gave the example at Yale, but you're absolutely correct to say that there are examples of this going on all over the place, and there's a marginalization going on. If you hold to biblical marriage and morality, you're pushed to the side, and you can see this in questioning of judges now for federal judgeships.

You have people questioning. Yeah, I don't know if you know the columnist Ross Douthat of the New York Times. A year or two ago, he wrote a column called The Terms of Our Surrender, in which he said, I think it was right after the Obergefell decision handed down by the Supreme Court that legalized gay marriage nationwide. He just basically made the point that, look, conservatives, at least on this issue, have lost the culture war. The only question left is whether the American left is going to pursue terms of surrender that will allow the survival of a minority view, or whether they're going to try to push that minority view first to the edge and then off the edge. At the time, he wasn't sure. I wonder if Douthat would update that article at this point and say, yeah, they seem to have chosen the latter in terms of allowing no quarter.

But we'll see if that's sustainable. Yeah, I do remember that column now. That was very starkly written and foreboding for the future of this country. Greg Gilbert again with us today on the Christian worldview, the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church. He's going to join us next weekend on the program for our annual Easter special with him as we talk about identification with Christ. There's a website where you can hear him preach at ThirdAvenue.org. We thought we'd expand out his involvement to go from Easter to doing some current events and some topics we've recently been covering on the program here. The next topic that we've been paying attention to, we haven't really done a show on it yet, but is this reinterpretation of the Bible where you get those who are liberal theologically and politically, who have a much different spin on Scripture than an orthodox historical interpretation?

And I'm going to use Pete Buttigieg again, the candidate for president, since he's a professing Christian. Again, he's homosexual. He's married to a man. He's a Rhodes Scholar. He's a U.S. Marine and so forth.

He's running third in the presidential race. I want to play two sound bites from him back to back just to give an example of this kind of reinterpretation of Scripture and then get you to follow up and comment. South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg sent a message to Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday saying his identity as a gay man has brought him closer to God. The 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful spoke to members of the Victory Fund, an LGBTQ political action committee. Buttigieg, who is married to a man, criticized Pence for his stances on gay marriage. Buttigieg also said Pence's problem is not with him, but with a higher power. I can tell you that if me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. And that's the thing I wish the Mike Pence's of the world would understand that if you've got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me.

Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator. OK, and this one, Greg, the second one is from that CNN town hall again. Do you think Vice President Pence would be a better or worse president than President Trump?

I don't know. It's really strange because I used to at least believe that he believed in our, I've disagreed with him ferociously on these things, but I thought, well, at least he believes in our institutions and he's not personally corrupt. But then how could he get on board with this presidency? How could somebody who, you know, his interpretation of scripture is pretty different from mine to begin with. OK, my understanding of scripture is that it is about protecting the stranger and the prisoner and the poor person and that idea of welcome.

That's what I get in the gospel when I'm in church. And his has a lot more to do with sexuality and, I don't know, a certain view of rectitude. But even if you buy into that, how could he allow himself to become the cheerleader of the porn star presidency? Is it that he is it that he stopped believing in scripture when he started believing in Donald Trump? I don't know.

I don't know. OK, that's Pete Buttigieg running for president. And there's a lot in those two sound bites, Greg, that I'm sure you could you could analyze. But the overarching thing that's going on here is there's a complete reinterpretation of what the Bible says with regards to morality and marriage and what's moral, that kind of thing. How about evangelicals? Do you think they're going to, hate to use the word fall for that, but that reimagining of scripture?

I don't think evangelicals as a whole will. I think what you've got to do in order to talk like Mayor Buttigieg was talking right there is that you have to conceive of scripture as being just like so many of the other incomprehensible quote unquote religious books that exist throughout the world. And you have to say that it doesn't have a meaning of its own. Whatever meaning might be in there is completely hidden. And the way you should read it is with an entirely subjective approach. So whatever you get out of this, however it speaks to you, however you'd like to think about it and interpret it, is the way that it is to be interpreted for you. And then you can have an argument on other grounds about whose interpretation or feeling is correct.

But of course, evangelicals know that that's ridiculous. The Bible is not like other incomprehensible quote unquote religious documents. It says what it says. It says what it says very clearly. It's not that hard to figure out what it says and what it means. I think a fair-minded, clear-eyed look at scripture just simply doesn't allow for that whole, I interpret, you interpret, they interpret, let's all just bang our heads together with our interpretations approach to the Bible. It says what it says and it says what it says very clearly.

It certainly does. You're listening to Greg Gilbert today on the Christian worldview radio program, the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. We're talking about various political events and topics we have covered recently in the program and getting him to comment on a lot of the topics have to do with what the third in line right now, third in the race, the polling for the Democrat nomination for President Pete Buttigieg has been saying about Mike Pence, about religion, about homosexuality. And as I'm listening again to these sound bites, so many falsehoods are so easily come off his tongue. That kind of person is dangerous. When some people start believing those lies, things really change.

We'll come back. We have much more with Greg Gilbert here on the Christian worldview radio program. I'm David Wheaton. I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world that have disease from their parents that have no chance in the world to be a human being. Practically delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things.

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How you can support the ministry of the Christian worldview as well. One thing we have coming up that's really close in our in our windshield here is the Christian worldview speaker series event on Friday, May 10th at the University of Northwestern St. Paul. Seven p.m. That's on a Friday evening, May 10th with Curtis Bowers. And he's going to be speaking on socialism. He is the producer of those award winning agenda films that talks about the socialist and communist influence in America. That's going to be very much looking forward to that event.

Hope you can come to it. And today in the program, we're talking about some even some of those ideas. I didn't get into this very much, but maybe we'll have time later in the program that we're talking about Pete Buttigieg and his his worldview, his, quote, progressive Christian beliefs. And his father, he was an only child, and his father, according to the Washington Examiner, it's pretty convincing that he was a professor at Notre Dame, but he was a strong advocate and involved heavily in Marxism. And you can read that article is linked on our Web site, the Christian worldview dot org.

So this this young man had a quite a background and influence in his home and has grown up to really, I think, fulfill the vision of his father, both in his political views and also in his moral life as well. But we have one more segment with Greg Gilbert. We have much more follow up after the segment.

So let's get back to the final segment today with Greg Gilbert, the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. One thing since the election of President Trump has been that evangelicals have been accused of being hypocritical for supporting such a man who is an adulterer and with the porn star and and, you know, just his personal manner, his boorish behavior and his tweets and all that, that how can you as Christians support such a man? So one more soundbite. This is a meet the press. And again, Pete Buttigieg, the mayor from Indiana, talking about the hypocrisy of someone like Donald Trump and really implicating evangelicals for supporting him.

Here's that soundbite. You said something rather strong about the president that you said it's hard to look at his actions and believe that they are the actions of somebody who believes in God. How do you square that assessment with the fact that the evangelical Christian community is so devoted to his candidacy? Well, it's something that really frustrates me because the hypocrisy is unbelievable. Here you have somebody who not only acts in a way that is not consistent with anything that I hear in scripture or in church where it's about lifting up the least among us and taking care of strangers, which is another word for immigrants, and making sure that you're focusing your effort on the poor, but also personally how you're supposed to conduct yourself.

Not chest thumping look at me-ism, but humbling yourself before others. Foot washing is one of the central images in the New Testament. And we see the diametric opposite of that in this presidency. I think there was perhaps a cynical process where he decided to, for example, begin to pretend to be pro-life and govern accordingly, which was good enough to bring many evangelicals over to his side. But even on the version of Christianity that you hear from the religious right, which is about sexual ethics, I can't believe that somebody who was caught writing hush money checks to adult film actresses is somebody they should be lifting up as the kind of person you want to be leading this nation. This idea that it's hypocritical for evangelicals to vote for Donald Trump, what are your thoughts on that particular accusation we've been hearing over and over? I think hypocrisy, the word hypocrisy, it's just a strange word to use here, given that our electoral system is a binary one.

And the fact that in any given election, essentially, once you get past the primaries, you're faced with a choice between essentially two fallen human beings. So the charge of hypocrisy is one that could be thrown at every vote by every citizen of the United States for all of time, because people are flawed, and you can always pick out one thing or another to say, well, that's hypocritical. If you think back to 2016, if a Christian decided that the best thing for them to do was not to vote for Donald Trump and to vote for Hillary Clinton, I think it would be equally easy and probably equally accurate to say that is hypocritical, because you say you are pro-life, for instance, and Hillary Clinton is very much not that. So how is that not hypocritical, right? So I think that category of hypocrisy can be thrown in every direction all the time when it comes to a binary electoral system.

So I think it's a really strong rhetorical strategy that both parties are throwing at each other constantly. But at the end of the day, it's not really very helpful in any kind of faithful moral analysis of the situation. Final question for you, Greg, as we think about some of these issues we've talked about today from the division, the divisiveness of our political realm right now to socialism being on the rise, that worldview, especially when the younger generation, a reinterpretation of the Bible, religious rights versus LGBTQ demands. As we think about all these things, Christians can see these things on the television, can read them on the internet, it can make people feel, Christians feel unstable as to what is happening to our country.

What is your encouragement for believers in how to remain stable, to have stability in the midst of this uneven, uneasy time? Yeah, well, politicians have always quoted the Bible, and it's always a fairly flimsy ploy to seem like they're on your side when they do that. You don't find very many politicians that really seem to understand what the Bible's about, they'll almost always ethicize it, right? It's all about behavior, it's all about what we should do, when of course the Bible's not about that at all. It's about the story of God's redemption of fallen humanity through the redemption of a savior, his son Jesus, right?

None of them are going to talk like that. So I think as Christians, our job is not to take some politician's rhetorical recounting of what they think the Bible says as gospel truth, whether it's coming from the side that you fancy yourself to be on or not. As Christians, we need to know what the Bible is about, we need to have our own, not just opinions, but our own educated knowledge of what the Bible says and is, and not be carried away by some politician who happens to be on our side saying things that sound relatively good, but are just not the story of the Bible when it comes right down to it. Well, we appreciate your coming on the program today to talk about these things, Greg, and just getting your insight as a pastor, someone who's in the Word and preaching the Word. So thank you for that, and we're really looking forward to having you on the program next week for Easter as well.

Thanks again. Yeah, thanks, David. Always great to be with you. Okay, we really appreciate Greg Gilbert and the insight he always brings to the program. You probably remember him as the guest we have on almost every year. I think this is going to be the sixth year that we're going to be having him on for the annual Easter special program next weekend. He's going to be talking about a really important topic that's not very discussed is our union or identification with Christ and his death and resurrection.

So you're not going to want to miss that interview next week. But this week we were talking about some current events and recent topics we did in the program. I was thinking that how did this one candidate, Pete Buttigieg, actually speak to all the topics we've been covering recently on the program, whether the division in politics or socialism on the rise or the reimagining of scripture or the changing worldview of the country, because everything he's been saying really encapsulates that. And there was an interview done on CBS with Emma Green. I believe she's a writer for The Atlantic, and she talked about Pete Buttigieg and the role of faith for Democrats in this upcoming election.

I'll play that soundbite then we'll have some follow up comments on it. As much as it seems sort of obvious to us in this generation, though, it's interesting to point out that, you know, political ideas around gay lifestyle have certainly evolved quickly, even under the Obama administration, correct? Well, we've seen even within the last five years or so, public opinion in America has shifted radically to embrace same sex marriage, to see someone like Pete Buttigieg, especially among those millennials, as being part of a normal relationship in a normal household.

Absolutely. And so why is he in a unique position then among the Democratic candidates? Well, we see that the way he talks about religion is really authentic. He clearly has grappled with faith in his own life. He's an Episcopalian.

He quotes the Bible and talks about ideas from Jesus with ease and confidence. And this isn't always something that we see from the Democratic side, even among the current field of Democratic hopefuls. So do you think the hope is here or the strategy is by talking about faith and really doubling down on it, he can attract those voters who might be a little hesitant to vote for the first openly gay presidential candidate?

I think that's the case. And I think across candidates from Cory Booker to Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, we've seen this tentative use of religious rhetoric to try to connect with voters. And I think this comes from a recognition that Democrats have a real case to be made here. The word hypocrisy comes up a lot in my reporting. People who feel as though the Republicans, President Trump, don't necessarily live out the religious ideals that they want to see. And I think Democrats see an opening, Pete Buttigieg included. Why has the religious far right, though, been so supportive of President Trump in the face of some of the things, as Pete Buttigieg would point out, seem to go so strongly against their teachings?

I've seen a real sense of fracture in my reporting. You know, that number that's now become famous, 81 percent of white evangelicals supporting President Trump in 2016. Among those 81 percent, we see an enormous variation in why people chose to pull that lever in favor of Trump. Some people wanted to see abortion off of the Supreme Court and off of our laws. Some people wanted to have a president who would stand up for their religious point of view. Some people just really didn't like Hillary Clinton. So we have seen that there's a lot of support on that conservative religious side of the spectrum.

But even so, there are a lot of voters in the middle who identify as religious, who are hoping to find a candidate who can in some way speak to their needs, their concerns, the issues that they care about. And they're hoping that's going to be Pete Buttigieg. And boy, the irony of this side by Pete Buttigieg calling Vice President Pence a hypocrite.

Wow. He's viewing so many falsehoods so easily off his tongue. We'll get into that after the break and talk about this, this gospel that Pete Buttigieg is saying that he believes in his interpretation of scripture. One more segment coming up here on the Christian worldview.

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You can also order by calling our office toll free at 1-888-646-2233. That's 1-888-646-2233 or visit the Christian worldview dot org. How the popularity of Pete Buttigieg reflects the worldview transformation of America, and it reflects it, I think, very, very accurately. And while there's a lot here and you're going to be hearing a lot more from the media, they are going to push this man very, very hard. I mean, just think about it. He's a mayor of a relatively small town in Indiana, and now he's running third of all these national candidates in the Democratic nomination for president.

Pretty incredible. It's pretty audacious of him even to run for president. If you think about it, he's barely old enough to run for president.

Hasn't held any state office, national office, 37 years old, and he's going to be pushed very, very hard. His name is spelled B-U-T-T-I-G-I-E-G, and it's pronounced Buddha, like Buddha, and then Judge, Buddha Judge. And there was an article on him in the Washington Post. We have it linked at our website, the Christian worldview dot org.

Need to read some of these articles and be informed on these topics. Evangelicals help get Trump into the White House is the title. Pete Buttigieg believes the religious left will get him out. Buttigieg said, I think there's an opportunity, hopefully for religion to be not so much used as a cudgel, but invoked as a way of calling us to higher values. But Buttigieg wants a, quote, less dogmatic religious left to counter the religious right, an unofficial coalition of religious conservatives that for decades has helped get mostly Republicans in office. He said, I think it's unfortunate that the Democratic Party has lost touch with religious tradition that I think can help explain and relate our values.

At least in my interpretation, it helps to root in religion a lot of what it is we do believe in when it comes to protecting the sick and the stranger and the poor, as well as skepticism of the wealthy and the powerful and the established, unquote. He thinks President Trump has found favor among white evangelicals and white Catholics because of his opposition to abortion, he said. But Buttigieg said he believes the president is behaving, quote, in bad faith and said there's no evidence that he doesn't favor abortion rights deep down. Quote, I do think it's strange, though, knowing that no matter where you are politically, the gospel is so much about inclusion and decency and humility and care for the least among us, that a wealthy, powerful, chest thumping, self oriented, philandering figure like this can have any credibility at all among religious people, unquote.

In other words, he's shaming those who support who voted for President Trump. How can you vote for such a pathetic human being, as if Buttigieg is the exemplar of moral and religious and gospel rectitude? Buttigieg spoke about Pence using a story about the danger of Pharisees and hypocrites from the Bible. He just attacks Mike Pence like crazy from the same state. Mike Pence has been nothing but nice to him, apparently, but he just trashes Mike Pence whenever he can.

Don't be fooled. He can talk negatively about Donald Trump and his behavior. But Mike Pence is the nicest guy from all sides, accounts as a very nice guy, but they hate him as well because of his viewpoints. When you see someone who has such a dogmatic take on faith, said Buttigieg, and bringing it into public life regarding Pence being willing to attach themselves to this administration for the purpose of gaining power, it is alarmingly resonant with some New Testament themes and not in a good way. He understands why people believe the Christian faith leads them to oppose same-sex marriage, but hopes they encounter scripture interpreted in a different way. I hope that teachings about inclusion and love win out over what I personally consider to be a handful of scriptures that reflect the moral expectations of the era in which they were recorded. I could go on and on, but we're running out of time.

Let's just have some following comments on this. For progressive Christians, those who consider themselves liberal, like Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the way they interpret scripture, the emphasis is always on the collective, not the individual. It's always on collective doing good works, not the biblical clear call for individual salvation through Jesus Christ. Jesus called to help the poor, and the hurting, which he did do, is prioritized far above his call to repent and believe the gospel. The Bible teaches, though, that good works are the evidence of saving faith, not the means of obtaining it.

Very important. Progressives Christians like Buttigieg do not believe in the inerrancy of scripture, they do not believe in the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as there's one way to be right with God, and thus they preach, I'm going to say this, a false gospel of saving man from his physical problems, physical dangers, rather than the true gospel of saving individual souls from the great spiritual danger of being unreconciled with God. I mean, how can a man call himself a Christian when he is openly and unrepentantly practicing what the Bible calls sin? Look at Romans 1 says, I'm encouraging you, do not let the exterior persona or the words that come so easily and naturally out of Buttigieg's mouth fool you. He is a person who has, as Romans 1 says, degrading passions, a depraved mind, commits unnatural indecent acts, as Romans 1 says, with men. Those are not my words, that's what the Bible says. He is a Christian in profession only. Unless he repents, the Bible says, he will not inherit the kingdom of God. He will be judged and sent to hell. It says in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9, Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? And who are these unrighteous?

Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, thieves, covetous, drunkers, revilers, or swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. Those are those who practice such things and do not repent and believe in Christ as paying the penalty that they deserve for practicing them. Such were some of you, here's the good news for Pete Buttigieg, if he repents, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God, you can be saved, even if you have practiced those things. Donald Trump has been an adulterer. I do not know if he's repentant about it, but according to Romans 1, homosexual desires and actions are a deeper form of depravity than heterosexual immorality.

There were adulterers in scripture like King David and King Solomon, they're never described as having degrading passions, exchanging the natural for the unnatural, committing indecent acts and having a depraved mind. And the gospel, most importantly of all, is not about helping the poor and the stranger and the hurting. The gospel is described in 1 Corinthians 15 that says, I delivered to you of first importance that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. That is the gospel. Now the outworking of the gospel when you're saved is yes, to help the poor and the hurting and the lame, but the gospel is not that. That's an outworking of the gospel. Thanks for joining us today on the Christian Real View.

Until next weekend, everyone, on Easter, think biblically and live accordingly. TheChristianWorldview.org or call us toll free at 1-888-646-2233. The Christian World View is a weekly one hour radio program that is furnished by the Overcomer Foundation and is supported by listeners and sponsors. Request one of our current resources with your donation of any amount. Go to TheChristianWorldview.org or call us toll free at 1-888-646-2233 or write to us at Box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. That's Box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian World View. Until next time, think biblically and live accordingly.