Finding Your Spine

Seth Gruber, founder of The White Rose Resistance and author of The 1916 Project and The Last Stand, argues that the modern evangelical habit of reducing the Christian’s public duty to evangelism is a recent departure. The dominion mandate given in Genesis and repeated after the flood still stands, he says, and the early church’s transformation of Roman culture shows what is possible when believers treat cultural engagement as ordinary obedience rather than a threat to the gospel.  

Gruber distinguishes the Greek words for a private antagonist and a public enemy of mankind, contending that love for personal enemies does not require gentle accommodation of those who target the preborn or children. He walks through Isaiah’s rebuke of worship offered by people whose hands are full of blood, the historic role of the local church in opposing child sacrifice and sexual exploitation, and Tom Holland’s claim that Western moral assumptions about life, law, and the vulnerable are borrowed Christian capital. He also cites J.D. Unwin’s 1934 study of 86 civilizations and the claim that codified total sexual freedom precedes civilizational collapse within roughly a century. The conversation frames the present moment as a last stand for the church to recover its older public calling.

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:01:46 – Raise Children in the Fight
00:03:23 – History as High Ground
00:04:54 – Blueprint in the Pages
00:07:59 – Seeker-Sensitive Shift
00:09:54 – Dominion Is Inevitable
00:11:32 – Private and Public Enemies
00:15:58 – The War Declared
00:18:43 – Abortion as Parody
00:21:59 – Before the Pro-Life Movement
00:24:02 – Tom Holland’s Dominion
00:26:43 – Flower Pulled from Soil
00:28:25 – Church Flatulent or Militant
00:30:09 – Why “Last Stand”
00:31:19 – Unwin’s 86 Civilizations
00:33:58 – The Ticking Clock

You can find out more about Seth's work at https://sethgruber.com/ or at https://thewhiterose.life/

You can follow Chase Spears on X @DrChaseSpears. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your favorite episodes to keep the conversation going.

To learn more about the Herzog Foundation, visit HerzogFoundation.com. Like and follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram, or sign up to receive monthly email updates.

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Aaron Burns, founder of Burns & Company, talks about his film Jimmy, which follows Jimmy Stewart from his Academy Award win through World War II service and the making of It’s a Wonderful Life. Burns discovered the story in a Guideposts article Stewart wrote decades ago and realized the actor’s real-life journey was as compelling as any role he played. Stewart came from a long line of veterans, enlisted in the Army Air Corps after the studio blocked his draft notice, flew 20 combat missions over Europe, and came home with what was then called “flak happy.”  

The film, starring KJ Apa, explores how that experience shaped the prayer scene in It’s a Wonderful Life and the man Stewart became afterward: a husband, father, churchgoer, and Air Force Reserve brigadier general. Burns also discusses raising the “spiritual temperature” on set, the difference between amusement, propaganda, and entertainment, and how faith-rooted films have grown in production quality. He traces his own path from backyard movies to mentorship under the Kendrick brothers and explains why he measures success by faithfulness rather than results. Jimmy opens in theaters November 6.

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:02:16 – How Stewart Landed on Radar
00:04:02 – Trailer Plays
00:06:13 – Casting KJ Apa
00:09:40 – From Oscar to Enlistment
00:12:24 – Studio and Government Resistance
00:14:21 – Combat and the Toll
00:15:51 – Healing on the Set
00:20:12 – Raising Spiritual Temperature
00:23:12 – Be Kind
00:24:46 – Faith in Hollywood
00:26:35 – Amusement, Propaganda, Entertainment
00:29:07 – Backyard Movies to Filmmaking
00:32:40 – Quality of Christian Film
00:34:13 – Finances and the Audience
00:37:06 – No Clear Career Path
00:40:18 – Faith Over Fear
00:42:56 – November 6 and Vet Tix

You can find out more about Aaron's work at https://www.burnsco.us/ and find showtimes for Jimmy at https://www.jimmythemovie.com/

You can follow Chase Spears on X @DrChaseSpears. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your favorite episodes to keep the conversation going.

To learn more about the Herzog Foundation, visit HerzogFoundation.com. Like and follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram, or sign up to receive monthly email updates.

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Michael Clary, Senior Pastor of Christ the King Church in Northern Kentucky and author of Loser Theology: Why Weak Men Will Not Inherit the Earth, argues that a popular strain of teaching conditions Christians to treat passivity as faithfulness. The cross was necessary, he says, but the crown was always the goal. Isolating the hours before the crucifixion and ignoring Jesus’ public authority, or Paul’s command to act like men and be strong, produces a piety that feels humble while undermining the duty to assert Christ’s lordship.  

Clary traces the pattern to a neo-Gnostic split that treats only inner spiritual acts as truly Christian and leaves politics, work, and cultural stewardship in the category of worldliness. Evangelism then becomes the sole public duty, often practiced by punching right and coddling left. He discusses Russell Moore’s support for mosque construction and David French’s description of drag-queen story hour as a blessing of liberty, arguing that both land in the same place as secular critics of Christian public influence. The conversation also covers passive versus active righteousness, the stewardship mandate that the Great Commission did not revoke, and the cost of a church that has been discipled into thinking suffering under bad policy is proof it is doing it right.

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:01:10 – Pastor and Author
00:03:16 – Planting the Church
00:06:00 – Defining Loser Theology
00:08:27 – Cherry-Picking the Cross
00:10:33 – Cross Before the Crown
00:12:57 – Paul Was Not a Fatalist
00:15:07 – Weakness Is Not the Goal
00:19:12 – Only Evangelism Matters
00:20:47 – Neo-Gnostic Split
00:23:27 – Woke Evangelism
00:25:13 – Punch Right, Coddle Left
00:26:25 – Cultural Shibboleths
00:28:56 – Russell Moore Alignment
00:33:35 – French on Drag Story Hour
00:36:42 – Why He Wrote the Book
00:40:36 – Suffering as Works
00:41:12 – Passive Then Active
00:43:45 – Run the Race to Win

You can find out more about Michael Clary and his work at https://www.dmichaelclary.com/

You can follow Chase Spears on X @DrChaseSpears. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your favorite episodes to keep the conversation going.

To learn more about the Herzog Foundation, visit HerzogFoundation.com. Like and follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram, or sign up to receive monthly email updates.

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Jesse Boulden, Director of the ALERT Academy in Big Sandy, Texas, argues that courage is less a gift some men are born with than a capacity that has to be used. Scripture keeps telling people to be courageous, he says, and his own father’s hard years in the Navy made the point concrete. At ALERT, a gap-year program of discipleship, emergency training, and service, young men practice that muscle in small reps before they fight fires, dive, or deploy.  

Boulden distinguishes real courage from the fake kind that talks big online and then refuses a face-to-face cost. He also warns that well-meant parental protection can bubble-wrap sons until they will not take a risk. Freedom and safety do not travel together. The conversation moves through public speaking, a broken obstacle course at officer candidate school, the leadership tests of 2020, and the fear of man that makes God look small. Boulden says a culture survives only if it has children and a pipeline that turns boys into men of self-control. Fathers do most of that work. ALERT tries to stand in the gap Ron Fuhrman opened in 1994: nine weeks of boot camp, emergency skills, a specialty, and a bias for service.

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:03:09 – How Jesse Came to ALERT
00:05:20 – Can Courage Be Trained
00:06:02 – Courage Like a Muscle
00:08:36 – False Courage Online
00:10:25 – Parents and Bubble Wrap
00:13:06 – Boys in the Creek
00:14:19 – Freedom Versus Safety
00:16:00 – Public Speaking Reps
00:18:31 – A Broken Obstacle Course
00:20:05 – 2020 Exposed the Cracks
00:21:11 – Courage Must Be Renewed
00:23:28 – Fear of Man
00:25:04 – Calls Based on Truth
00:27:16 – Harder Days Ahead
00:28:49 – Apathy Is Not Inevitable
00:30:22 – Boys Must Become Men
00:33:25 – Fathers Do the Forming
00:36:22 – What ALERT Actually Is
00:41:26 – Why He Stayed
00:42:06 – The Men Are the Mission  

Find out more about Jesse and his work at ALERT Academy here: https://alertacademy.com/

You can follow Chase Spears on X @DrChaseSpears. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your favorite episodes to keep the conversation going.

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Lathan Watts, vice president of public affairs at Alliance Defending Freedom, explains how ADF fights in court, in legislatures, and in public for the God-given right to live and speak the truth. He describes clients who never asked to become test cases, cases that can last years, and a public-affairs job that translates legal work so ordinary people can recognize when their rights are being crossed. Watts answers Christians who treat persecution as a reason not to use the law. He points to the Apostle Paul appealing to Caesar and treats American constitutional protections as a stewardship trust, not a talent to bury.

The episode surveys recent Supreme Court work: a Colorado counseling ban, a New Jersey pregnancy center fight, and women’s-sports laws in Idaho and West Virginia. Watts argues that gender ideology now touches speech, religious liberty, and parental rights at once. He rejects the claim that law cannot teach morality, walks through the Declaration’s theological assumptions, and contrasts ordered liberty with the French Revolution’s collapse into chaos. The charge is simple: keep using the courts, keep forming consciences, and do not surrender what was given.

00:00:00 – Introduction

00:03:55 – Court of Public Opinion

00:08:00 – Conscience Protects All

00:12:19 – How a Client Case Starts

00:15:22 – Four Supreme Court Wins

00:16:04 – Counseling Ban Struck Down

00:17:28 – Pregnancy Center Harassment

00:19:05 – Women’s Sports Laws Stand

00:21:24 – One Ideology Many Rights

00:25:07 – Law Teaches Morality

00:27:43 – Theology of the Founding

00:32:17 – Ordered Liberty Not Chaos

00:36:22 – From Law to Messaging

You can find out more about the work Lathan Watts does at https://adflegal.org/profile/lathan-watts/

You can follow Chase Spears on X @DrChaseSpears. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your favorite episodes to keep the conversation going.

To learn more about the Herzog Foundation, visit HerzogFoundation.com. Like and follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram, or sign up to receive monthly email updates.

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Tim Goeglein, vice president of external and government relations at Focus on the Family, argues that faith and public life were never meant to be strangers. Drawing on years in the Bush White House, the Senate, and Washington advocacy, he says the American story repeatedly turns on the church: the Revolution, the fight against the slave trade, the Cold War, and the pro-life movement. He revisits Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists and Washington’s letter to Rhode Island’s Jewish congregation to show that religious liberty was never a high wall shutting conviction out of civic life. 

The conversation then turns to what Goeglein calls the permanent things: marriage, family, parental rights, conscience, and the meaning of words. He frames the country’s deepest problem as a spiritual crisis of moral relativism and defines conservatism as reforming in order to preserve. Goeglein discusses a hopeful turn among young men toward marriage and faith, the harder trend among many young women, and the “unmarriageable” pool of men who are neither in school nor at work. In Aaron Renn’s “negative world,” he says the local church is still the best place to teach friendship, dating, and the family before those goods are forgotten.

00:00:00 – Introduction

00:01:35 – Focus on the Family

00:03:13 – Speaking in Public

00:04:01 – Faith and Government

00:06:45 – Danbury Letter Myth

00:08:07 – Washington on Virtue

00:10:17 – A Moral Republic

00:12:04 – Church Family Government

00:14:40 – What Really Matters

00:19:12 – Conservatism and Christ

00:20:44 – Reform to Preserve

00:23:19 – Young Men Turning

00:24:41 – Restoring the American Male

00:27:27 – Living in Negative World

00:28:54 – Church and Relationships

You can find out more about Tim Goeglein and Focus on the Family here: https://www.focusonthefamily.com/contributors/tim-goeglein/

You can follow Chase Spears on X @DrChaseSpears. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your favorite episodes to keep the conversation going.

To learn more about the Herzog Foundation, visit HerzogFoundation.com. Like and follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram, or sign up to receive monthly email updates.

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Sam Rolofson, a serving Army officer and trainer of future leaders, talks about what happens when a fighting force tries to run on several incompatible moral systems at once. He traces the tension from equal-opportunity classrooms to Army values such as respect and dignity, which sound universal until leaders treat them as preferences instead of truths grounded in something higher. Vague language about readiness and lethality, he argues, lets officials justify almost any policy after the fact.

The conversation turns to moral injury: the hidden cost of lying for a green box, enforcing rules you do not believe, or watching standards collapse after Afghanistan. Rolofson wants professional military education to teach worldview and philosophy so commanders can decide what is right rather than hide behind lawyers. He then walks through the GOMAR system—tens of thousands of permanently filed reprimands, investigations built on hearsay, and an appeals path so slow that soldiers must prove their own innocence while the Army assumes the file is correct. Zero-defect culture, he says, produces glass-jawed commanders and erodes the warrior ethos. His counsel to cadets is simple: stay true to yourself.

00:00:00 – Introduction

00:00:55 – Speaking While Still Serving

00:04:26 – Competing Army Worldviews

00:06:52 – Equal Opportunity Training

00:09:14 – Respect Without a Center

00:11:22 – Dignity and Combat Paradox

00:12:42 – Has Anything Changed

00:14:41 – Careerists Versus Warriors

00:17:37 – Vague Value Language

00:20:05 – What Moral Injury Is

00:22:28 – Spiritual Readiness and PME

00:25:15 – Ivy League Fellowships

00:28:34 – How GOMARs Work

00:32:02 – Permanent Filing Numbers

00:35:11 – Prove Your Own Innocence

00:40:47 – Zero Tolerance Culture

00:43:46 – Glass-Jawed Commanders

00:46:43 – Warrior Ethos Eroded

00:48:50 – Advice to Cadets

You can follow Chase Spears on X @DrChaseSpears. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your favorite episodes to keep the conversation going.

To learn more about the Herzog Foundation, visit HerzogFoundation.com. Like and follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram, or sign up to receive monthly email updates.

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Pastor J. Chase Davis of The Well Church in Boulder, Colorado, discusses Offensive Christianity and why Christian men should stop treating manhood as a liability. He explains the book’s double meaning: the gospel will offend a dying world, and Christians are called to go on offense rather than hide in a bunker until Christ returns.

Davis contrasts piety with pietism, arguing that a split between body and soul has taught many evangelicals to treat business, politics, family formation, and national life as dirty distractions from “spiritual” things. He traces that split to Enlightenment rationalism and later pietistic strains that emptied desire, delayed responsibility, and recast testosterone as a problem. The conversation turns to the full character of Christ—not only the cross, but His public confrontation, resurrection authority, and present reign—then to media that trains boys to see fathers as fools. Davis describes how his church talks with men about work, fitness, home defense, and disagreement, and warns that if churches will not speak to young men’s hunger for mission, pagan voices will. The episode closes with practical tests for spotting pietism in otherwise Bible-believing churches.

00:00:00 – Introduction

00:05:50 – Dominion and the Great Commission

00:09:22 – Law and Christian Influence

00:11:31 – Piety Versus Pietism

00:17:10 – Fear of Giving Offense

00:20:06 – Full Character of Christ

00:24:27 – Culture Talking Down to Men

00:29:16 – What Men’s Ministry Should Be

00:35:36 – Cancel Culture in Church

00:40:50 – How Wide Pietism Runs

00:43:20 – Tests That Reveal Pietism

You can follow Chase Spears on X @DrChaseSpears. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your favorite episodes to keep the conversation going.

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Brett Craig, an award-winning advertising creative and chief creative officer of XX/XY Athletics, talks about standing up for women’s sports from inside an industry that rarely rewards that kind of candor. After years making Super Bowl work for major brands, he now helps lead the rare apparel company willing to say men do not belong in women’s competition. The conversation covers why so many executives stay quiet even when their daughters are at stake, how wealth and distance can insulate people from consequences, and why giants such as Nike still treat the issue as untouchable. Craig recounts the ads that turned attention back to girls’ lost opportunities, including a film later shared by J.K. Rowling. He also tells the story behind his exit from agency life: a 2020 cancellation over a five-year-old casting email, the closed doors that followed, a short stretch at The Daily Wire, and the sense that those losses redirected his craft. The episode ends with a harder question of vocation—whether gifts honed selling tacos and beer can be used instead to tell the truth, take the cost, and refuse to hide.

00:00:00 – Introduction

00:01:49 – Pressure Not to Speak

00:03:13 – Grace Versus Urgency

00:07:42 – How the Brand Began

00:09:23 – Real Girls Rock

00:11:56 – Why Nike Stays Quiet

00:16:07 – Path Into Advertising

00:21:40 – Why Bad Campaigns Happen

00:27:17 – Why He Left Agencies

00:36:28 – Counting the Cost

00:40:35 – Using Gifts for Truth

You can follow Chase Spears on X @DrChaseSpears. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your favorite episodes to keep the conversation going.

To learn more about the Herzog Foundation, visit HerzogFoundation.com. Like and follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram, or sign up to receive monthly email updates.

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Dr. Matthew Mehan, associate dean and associate professor of government at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C., discusses The American Book of Fables and why stories still form citizens. A scholar of literature, rhetoric, and civic education, Mehan argues that arguments alone are not enough. People also need images that teach them to love courage, self-government, and the land. He explains how the book weaves fables, nursery rhymes, founding letters, and frontier accounts across 13 American regions, each tied to a phrase from the Declaration of Independence. 

The conversation ranges from the New England Primer and the Columbian Orator to Daniel Boone, wagon trains at Council Grove, and the difference between liberty and law on the Great Plains. Mehan warns that cozy, softened children’s literature has drained grit from the American imagination, while rival narratives rush in to replace our history. He calls for gratitude to forebears, discernment about the images we give children, and a frontier spirit aimed not only west, but east—toward recultivating American towns, checking foreign threats, and forming tough citizens for the next three centuries.

00:00:00 – Introduction

00:00:28 – Why Fables Matter

00:02:03 – Literature and Civic Education

00:03:29 – Teaching Mind and Heart

00:04:00 – Stories That Shape Children

00:05:13 – Settlement and Revolution

00:06:02 – Courage at the Backbone

00:07:37 – Primer and Columbian Orator

00:08:50 – Recapturing American Grit

00:10:48 – Declaration as Framework

00:12:08 – Toughness of the Pioneers

00:14:12 – Recapturing Frontier Spirit

00:16:56 – Americanizing the Fable

00:19:35 – Imagination Against Softness

00:21:46 – Daniel Boone’s Sacrifice

00:24:26 – True Stories Versus False Ones

00:25:43 – History Contains a Story

00:28:43 – Hidden Nursery Rhyme Meanings

00:31:26 – Losing Touch With Origins

00:31:33 – Face East and Stay Tough

00:33:58 – Conquer or Be Conquered

00:36:19 – Unchanging Principles of Justice

00:37:26 – War for the Sake of Peace

00:39:33 – Raising the Literary Standard

00:40:25 – Discerning Books and Images

00:42:07 – Wit Married to Wisdom

You can find out more about Dr. Mehan here: https://dc.hillsdale.edu/Profiles/Matthew-Mehan/

You can order The American Book of Fables here: https://www.amazon.com/American-Book-Fables-Matthew-Mehan/dp/B0G1XYVC54

You can follow Chase Spears on X @DrChaseSpears. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your favorite episodes to keep the conversation going.

To learn more about the Herzog Foundation, visit HerzogFoundation.com. Like and follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram, or sign up to receive monthly email updates.

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