Andy Dahl

Orthodox Christian, husband, father of 3, Illinois refugee, and rebuilding my health.

[Andy Dahl @OGCanterbury]

@willainsworthAL Don't vote. It just encourages the bastards.

[Andy Dahl @OGCanterbury]

@RealCandaceO CDS is real.

[Orthodoxy Above The Clouds @noetic_healing]

@w_bitterman Jesus saves me everyday

[JD™ @LostMyHats]

The “what about Islam” sophomorisms that @dreverettpiper, the former university professor, is engaging in are so sub-intellectual it’s hard to fathom he was ever given a doctorate degree (until you remember it’s in Student Affairs Administration, and then it tracks).

The suspected barnyard botherer, the alleged fornicator of the fowl, the rumored Wesleyan wing-dingler, then went and jumped the shark in Nigeria. He wrote:

"Mr. Hall’s claim of Muslim benevolence toward Christians is nonsense, and Mr. Carlson’s platforming of such abhorrent views serves only to betray his antipathy for biblical Christians who, even as we speak, are being butchered at the hands of, you guessed it, Muslims in Nigeria and elsewhere around the world. Claiming that Muslims have been “very kind” to Christians is nothing but a shameful lie."

The “shameful lie,” of course, is anything that Piper alleged I actually said. The "abhorrent views" were an actual historic fact he did not attempt to dispute. He did not, in the course of the entire article, provide a single quotation of my remarks. That is an extraordinary omission for a column whose title announces to the world that “JD Hall and Tucker Carlson Are Lying About Islam.” If I lied, quote the lie. If Tucker lied, quote the lie. Put the offending words on the page, explain what is false about them, and demonstrate the falsehood. This should not require a terminal degree. Instead, Piper spent an entire column arguing with a sentence he wrote himself.

I made a specific historical comparison concerning Christians in Palestine, the Ottoman millet system, church taxation, and the treatment of Christian institutions and holy sites. Piper transformed that into the sweeping proposition that Muslims have always been nice to Christians everywhere, then galloped across fourteen centuries of Islamic conquest looking for atrocities to disprove the proposition nobody made. He might as well rebut my claim that the Germans make good automobiles by producing photographs from Auschwitz. Yes, Everett. The Germans did that too. Now would you like to return to the subject?

And that is the remarkable thing about his article. Piper can tell me about jizya. He can tell me about dhimmitude. He can take us to Nigeria. He can describe Islamic persecution until his Student Affairs Administration doctorate catches fire from the exertion. What he apparently cannot do is confront the comparison that produced this entire tantrum: How are Christians being treated in the Holy Land right now, by the government Christian Zionists like Everett Piper have spent years training American evangelicals to defend reflexively?

That question is radioactive because “but Islam” does not answer it.

Islam is false. Muhammad is a false prophet. Islamic empires have committed atrocities against Christians. Muslims are murdering Christians in Nigeria this afternoon, and every Christian with a functioning conscience should condemn it without qualification. None of that purchases Israel a single indulgence for mistreating Christians. Not one. The sins of Muslims do not become righteousness in Jewish hands. There is no moral accounting system in which enough burned churches in Nigeria earn the Israeli government store credit for abusing Christians in Jerusalem.

Christian Zionism desperately needs that accounting system because otherwise Israel has to be judged by the same standard as everybody else. Suddenly “What about Islam?” becomes considerably less useful. Suddenly the Christian being spat upon in Jerusalem matters even if a Muslim murdered another Christian in Nigeria. Suddenly the church facing government pressure matters even if Ottoman rulers were bastards five hundred years ago. Suddenly Israel does not get graded against Muhammad. It gets graded against justice. And that is the conversation Piper does not want to have.

So he poisoned the well. He waved his doctorate around. He called historic Christian orthodoxy “worn out.” He replaced Zionism with “the Jews,” replaced my argument with his paraphrase of it, replaced churches with Christians, replaced Palestine with the entire Islamic world, and finally replaced the twenty-first century with whatever century contained a Muslim atrocity useful to his argument. Every substitution moved the reader one step farther from the thing I actually said until Piper was bravely defeating an argument whose only identifiable author was Everett Piper. Then he called me a liar.

That is why this is bigger than one stupid Washington Times column. Christian Zionism has trained otherwise intelligent Christians to believe that defending the modern Israeli state is somehow adjacent to defending God Himself. Once that premise gets lodged deeply enough, normal Christian moral reasoning begins to malfunction. The Ninth Commandment becomes negotiable. Partiality becomes faithfulness. Ethnic favoritism becomes biblical theology. Criticism of the Israeli government becomes hostility toward “the Jews.” Christians suffering under that government become inconvenient complications, while atrocities committed by Muslims somewhere else are dragged onto the stage to explain why nobody should look too closely at Tel Aviv.

So I will leave Dr. Everett Piper, the alleged feather-philandering cluckold, with the standard he should have begun with: If you’re going to accuse someone of lying, you need to quote the actual lie. And when somebody points out the mistreatment of Christians, try defending the Christians before demanding that everyone admire the people mistreating them.

You do not need a terminal degree to understand any of that. Apparently, having one doesn’t help.

There is a reason this kind of Zionist polemic almost always arrives as a column, a monologue, or a sermon delivered safely into an audience already trained to applaud it. Piper's argument works only if his readers never hear the interview he claims to be rebutting. Inside the BoomerCon echo chamber, he can replace my words with his paraphrase, announce “here's the proof,” and blast the resulting straw man through a megaphone to people who already agree with him. A debate would ruin the trick. I would be sitting six feet away with the inconvenient ability to say, “I didn't say that. Play the clip.” Then Piper would have to defend his characterization, and if not, then defend his character for lying. He can call me stupid from the safety of the Washington Times.

Put us behind two microphones with a moderator and the actual interview queued up, and he would collapse before the first commercial break. I'd make him make Dinesh look like a scholar. He knows it, I know it, and I suspect that is why I will be waiting a very long time for the good doctor of “Student Affairs Administration” to send the debate invitation.

[JD™ @LostMyHats]

In an extreme display of jackassery credentialism @dreverettpiper ridiculed me for not having a "terminal degree." He's right. I don't have a doctorate. I do, in fact, have degrees in both history and religion, including graduate-level (not that it matters in the slightest). But because it is not "terminal," it earned ridicule from Dr. Piper.

So naturally I became curious. What is Dr. Piper's doctorate actually in? Then, I look it up.

Theology? Nope.

Biblical studies? No.

Church history? Negative.

Religious studies? Not that either.

Dr. Everett Piper's terminal degree is in Student Affairs Administration.

Yes. The man waving his doctorate around as a reason you should take his theological pronouncements more seriously than mine possesses the sort of doctorate one acquires to become exceptionally qualified at administering students. His academic specialization is not Pauline theology, Second Temple Judaism, hermeneutics, Hebrew, Greek, systematic theology, or the history of Christian interpretation. It is university administration.

This is credentialism at its dumbest because Piper isn't even appealing to a relevant credential. He is effectively barging into a theological argument, slapping a Ph.D. on the table, and hoping it qualifies him to administer student hacky sack tournaments and a frisbee golf league. I mean, I little people call me a stupid hillbilly or chicken farmer all day, and am happy to lean into that, but I'm not going to have my credentials questioned by a man who spent 20 years discussing when to order new tampon machines for the girls' dorm.

Sorry. Your doctorate in "student affairs" does not overrule my degree in religion and graduate degree in history, when the topic is religion and history. And all of this, in a conversation outside the realm of ivory towers where a degree doesn't matter at all. It's worse than academic snobbery. It's gay academic snobbery. That's the worst kind. It's terminal.

But if the contest is going to be academic weiner-measuring, perhaps the man with the doctorate in Student Affairs Administration should stop swinging it around in a theological debate like he just returned from defending his dissertation under Augustine.

[Andy Dahl @OGCanterbury]

@Fr_RonPG @mugjudge In the Prodigal Son, if the father had sold the fatted calf to replace the wastefulness of the son, then *maybe* you'd have at least an inkling that PSA could be true. But it's not.

[Remote Orthodoxy (Fr. Ron) @Fr_RonPG]

@30MinMinistries According to you, seems the only choice other than the Holy Sacraments (nay, "Mysteries") of the Church is to climb up on a cross.

Tough choice. 🙄

[Orthodoxy Above The Clouds @noetic_healing]

Protestants even you can pray this prayer from the Divine Liturgy before we stand before and hear the Holy Gospel

“Shine in our hearts, O loving Master, the pure light of your divine knowledge and open the eyes of our mind to understand the proclamations of your Gospel. Instill within us fear of your blessed commandments, so that trampling down all fleshly desires we may lead a spiritual life, thinking and doing everything with a view to pleasing you. For you are the illumination of our souls and bodies, O Christ our God, and to you we ascribe glory, along with your Father who is without beginning and your all-holy and good and life-giving Spirit, now and for ever and unto the ages of ages.”

[That Drunk Pirate @onedrunkpirate]

Acquire a peaceful spirit, and thousands around you will be saved.
-St. Seraphim of Sarov

[Missie Bootstrap @MammaKat23]

What happened to this @paleochristcon ? For those of us who have seen a lot of Andrew Wilson debates, we have all seen him completely make a shift after TPUSA paying him. I'm seeing it everywhere. You cannot refute this. It's the same with some other influencers. They got their payday and they need to own up to it. I hope Candace Owens brings this up!
@RealCandaceO
@IanCarrollShow

[TheOrthodoxWay @_theorthodoxway]

“No matter how just your words may be, you ruin everything when you speak with anger.”
- St. John Chrysostom

[Artifex Memoriarum @ArtifexMemor]

yeah, it’s funny.

the Andrew Wilsons and Gary Meltons of the world will hide behind “well actually, humans just change their views as new evidence comes out.”

ok. what, from the last 10 months, makes anyone at @TPUSA look more innocent? 🤣

going from hating them to suddenly supporting them — with this timeline and these receipts — doesn’t say “truth seeker.”

it says you bent the knee.

[Mike @scotchandbbq]

@jlippincott Fixed it.

[Chuck Dagger @ChunkNFried]

@SenRandPaul @johnpavlovitz Unfortunately you can’t help him, he needs brain surgery

[Orthodoxy Above The Clouds @noetic_healing]

First it’s Jay. Now it’s those two . They take the worst Orthodoxy Has to offer and out them against each other?

Why are we wasting our time entertaining these things?

[Artifex Memoriarum @ArtifexMemor]

You and your wife are both soulless shills who are selling out their fellow Christians for a few extra shekels

You both hated @charliekirk11 before it was financially lucrative to defend The Widow

[Andy Dahl @OGCanterbury]

@Savsays You wouldn’t believe it if we told you.

[Andy Dahl @OGCanterbury]

@onedrunkpirate I'm just following along with everyone else. I'm not a teacher or one to be followed, for sure. I do bow while being censed and do make the sign of the cross. Not sure what I'm doing. :)

[Andy Dahl @OGCanterbury]

@onedrunkpirate I do mostly. Try and reinforce it and agree with the prayer. But I’m a baby and still learning.

[Andy Dahl @OGCanterbury]

@onedrunkpirate Don’t forget your sign of the cross.