matt intro chapter

0:00

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I hope Matthew Scobin and his entire family are gang-raged by illegal immigrants and left in the street to die.

0:11

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

That was the text of one of the letters that Hope College received on Wednesday, November 5th, 2025.

0:40

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

That day saw the highest amount of incoming email and web traffic in recent memory, and the majority of the letters were along the same lines.

1:39

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There's a protocol for these sorts of things.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Based on the content, the communications department alerted public safety, then alerted the local police.

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Who stationed a police officer outside of me, standing in God all day.

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Although this was probably a necessary letter, after all, was more a wish than a threat.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

But as far as I know, I weren't getting the actual credible threats made against me that day.

3:31

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Still, I was grateful for the police, I was cautious, especially since I was traveling that day.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

But my wife, Sarah, and our three kids, Sophie, Lucy, and Oliver, were at home without me.

4:08

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I called Sarah and asked if she wanted me to come home.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

But it seemed like she and the kids were.

4:30

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

But as usual, she was significantly less rattled than I was by the people.

4:40

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I said, I guess this is just part of the price of being a disruptor, she said, nonchalant.

5:13

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

For my own part, I didn't feel capable of shrugging it off quite so easily.

5:37

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

The immediate cause of all the unwanted attention was an article published the day before, titled

5:56

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Hope College, The Downfall of a Grecian Institution.

6:05

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

The article appeared on a website called Louder with Crowder, one which I had never heard

6:13

S… Speaker 3 (matt intro chapter)

of, but which plenty of other people apparently had.

7:11

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

At the time, the website had three million followers on Facebook, and the article about

7:19

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

our little Christian liberal arts college on the shores of Lake Michigan came as soon

7:43

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

as it was published, the most popular article on the site overall for several days.

8:06

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

I don't know why some posts go viral and others don't.

8:18

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

All I know is that in our little corner of the world, within 72 hours, it was impossible

8:28

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

to run into someone who hadn't heard about it.

8:46

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

The piece was published by an alum of our college, by a woman named Kate Cornell.

8:57

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

I've never met Kate, but would happy to meet her someday, so long as it's under different

9:18

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

circumstances than she envisions.

9:25

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

In the article, Ms. Cornell includes a link to the full text of the letter she had sent me

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

some months prior.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I trust that she did indeed send it, although I never received it.

9:57

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I trust that she did indeed send it, although I never received it.

9:58

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I would actually encourage you to find that in your place I'm going to place in your

9:58

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

practice, but if you open one's confiance, then you're compan Kathy Napolitik.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

The letter carried a subject line in regards to the spiritual court, and ended with a sentence,

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I look forward to the day I see one battle for you.

10:47

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

To be fair, this line, the meaning of this line, was a bit ambiguous in the context of the letter of the whole.

11:01

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And a superficial interpretation was that Ms. Vornell was encouraging us to join the battle on her side.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

She looked forward to the day when she joined her in the battle that was already raging, which we had strongly chosen to be non-combatants.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Because of the letter's overall tone, the last line carried with it a darker secondary feeling as well.

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And if you don't get in line and join the battle on the right side, then I look forward to the day when I meet you on the battlefield as your enemy, when we get to do combat face-to-face.

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For my own part, I can say that I look forward to neither of these things.

13:10

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

I don't want to fight alongside Ms. Vornell, because I don't want the war she is waging.

14:16

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I don't believe in the war she is waging.

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

I don't want to fight against her for the same reason.

15:27

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

The article chrono revealed the way in which, under my leadership, the previously Christian

16:33

S… Speaker 3 (matt intro chapter)

college, college which was conservative and Christian, is now going secular and liberal,

16:48

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

and it's been lost to the world mind virus. This was a force used to me and left me shaking my

17:27

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

head incredulous at how much times have changed. Growing up, I was always the most conservative

17:43

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

person I knew. There weren't that many elementary schoolers. This hero was Ronald Reagan.

18:28

S… Speaker 3 (matt intro chapter)

The question of Republican versus Democrat was as simple as the question of good versus evil.

18:36

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Not that Democrats themselves were evil. It was just their ideology that was from the devil.

18:58

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I grew up in a world where the villains were communism in all of its forms,

19:17

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

whether overt or covert. And there was no question that Democrats were usually just communists in disguise.

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I'm not sure if maybe he was in a OWN. But, really?

19:50

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Well, let's say that, while you're just clicking on the screen, I don't have a writer.

19:50

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

You need a writer to tell us what happened.

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It's a writer to write an writer's letter.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

That's a writer to write the book on my screen, and then the improv has you too.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Once you started raising taxes on the rich and giving handouts to the poor, it was only a matter of time before you would become a completely dysfunctional, centrally run economy with people standing in line for bread or soup.

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But here's the craziest part. The craziest part is that three decades later, comma, I still largely hold the same views, not the part about communist ideology being from the devil, or all the democrats being covert communists.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

My views on economic policy have certainly mellowed and become more nuanced with age, but I'm still a free market guy deep down.

22:39

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I now see Reagan's overall legacy as being more mixed, but I can't escape.

23:09

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

But it still feels true to me that ineptitude and dysfunction within government will increase proportional to the government's size.

23:37

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I still have a deeply libertarian and streaking, which I see as a form of patriotism.

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After all, that's how our country got here, by resisting tyranny, by protesting that no king or president had the right to make decisions for everybody else.

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Three order paragraphs.

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For more than just boyhood attachments, they matured with me and gave shape to my ambitions.

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Political activism had been a prominent part of college life in the United States during the 1960s and 70s.

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

But by the 1990s, when I was an undergraduate, that was no longer true.

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

No matter. It didn't stop me.

27:11

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I was into politics after it was school.

27:19

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

The common end of four became trendy again.

27:28

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

In the 90s, politics was boring.

27:40

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Part of that had to do with the fact that something from the census was being developed after Reagan.

28:04

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

The next two presidents, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, were both centrists.

28:26

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Both skilled negotiators who made compromises to build coalitions.

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Clinton declared that the era of the government was over.

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

None of this did anything to lower my sense of the stakes of the poor.

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

As a college student, I founded the chapter of the College Republicans.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Good-bye.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Good-bye.

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Good-bye.

29:50

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Transcription by CastingWords

30:03

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

and managed a state congressional campaign which I won. I was selected as a White House intern

30:19

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

in the George W. Bush White House administration. After graduation, my first two paid jobs after

30:53

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

graduation, after finishing a public policy degree, but working for Nick Romney, Massachusetts,

31:07

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

and then returning to the Bush White House working under Hank Paulson at the Treasury Department.

31:48

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

I eventually ended up in New York working for the New York Stock Exchange. Throughout

32:27

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

this time, I continued to feel like I was often the most conservative person in every

32:32

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

room. My favorite article every week was Peggy Noonan's column in the Wall Street Journal.

33:16

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Noonan had been Reagan's speechwriter. I eventually figured out that Reagan was just the actor.

33:37

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

It was the words and ideas of Peggy Noonan and others like her that I had really

33:44

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

fallen above him. 2019, after 20 years working in public sector and off Wall Street, my professional

34:41

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

life took an abrupt turn.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Thank you.

35:05

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I applied for the presidency of my alma mater.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

As far as I know, I'm the only applicant.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Out of hundreds of applications, mine was the only one submitted by someone without a PhD.

35:37

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I'm also fairly certain it's the only application submitted by someone under 40 years old.

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In other words, I was unqualified for this job, according to every traditional mentor.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

My application shouldn't have even made it to the second round.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

It should have been automatically thrown out after the first most basic level of screening.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Instead, after a lengthy process, the college ended up making me their fortunate president.

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This is a story worth telling in its own right.

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One which I'll revisit in a later chapter of the book.

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

But for now, I'm only bringing it up for the sake of providing some necessary context.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

In order to understand the conservative backlash to my presidency, the absurdity of the conservative backlash to my presidency,

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

it's important to understand why I was selected as president to begin with.

38:30

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Hope College has long inhabited the middle ground in the Christian college landscape.

39:21

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Remaining for decades a school that defies easy categorization.

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

There are two main types of Christian schools.

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The vast majority of colleges can classify it as one or two other.

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Hope has seemed to...

39:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

We're only going to talk about these days because the letzten of the springайThe Sols is not going to have any derechos, but I'm using theDIthis channel to make sure it's the strategy item.

39:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Hope has been said that the importance to the return of the presidential panel announced this year, thanks for the actions we were available.

39:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Hope lives have been advanced times a year we were playing for action.

39:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

It hasn't been tied for Dusk 잘-9 Deadly as a first period of the national panel.

40:00

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

vacillate between or to be both at the same time. The first type of Christian school is a

40:07

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

fundamentalist one. That word has fallen out of fashion for obvious reasons. What today we call

40:30

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

evangelicalism was originally called neo-evangelicalism, a term coined in the 1940s

40:54

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

for a specific purpose, to serve as a substitute for the term fundamentalist, which had a branding

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

problem. But evangelical schools, every evangelical college existing today was formerly a fundamentalist

41:52

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

one. Some schools, such as Liberty University, only dropped the fundamentalist label quite recently,

42:51

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

whereas others saw the marketing advantages immediately and immediately began substituting

43:08

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

evangelical for fundamentalist and all of their materials. Regardless, this is the first type of

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Christian college in the United States today, one which is solidly, staunchly fundamentalist or

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

evangelical. Other than Liberty, the most well-known schools in this category

43:56

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

that brought students nationwide would include Lincoln College in Illinois, Fordham College,

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Massachusetts, and Biola University in Los Angeles. But there are hundreds of regional schools with an

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

ethos similar to those three. If you live in central California, you might look at Westmont,

44:45

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

whereas if you live in the Midwest, you might look at Taylor, or in Pacific Northwest, Seattle Pacific.

44:51

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

But it's not just a state of economics, the percentage of the local teachers are a state of the world,

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

We're not saying the 16th largest school in recycling, and the department of the world

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

But it's just a state of the world.

44:52

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Thank you.

45:00

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Southern California and Florida alone

45:03

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

have many dozens of colleges falling into this bucket.

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Second bucket is far smaller.

45:21

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

That's historically Christian schools

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

that still have a Christian identity,

45:32

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

but are not, clearly don't belong

46:07

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

within the evangelical fold.

46:20

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Most notable, these schools often maintain

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

their denominational ties.

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Most notable,

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

a university in this category would be Baylor.

46:43

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

No one would mistake it for a conventional institution.

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

It has far more in common with large

46:59

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

private secular universities than it does with Biola or me,

47:03

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and yet it's not secular.

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

It still calls itself a Christian school

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

and still has certain Christian elements

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

that might not be present elsewhere.

47:42

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

In between, or as I said, bouncing back and forth,

47:48

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

depending on the decade, is Hope.

48:10

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

As of the 1980s, it looked very much to be heading in the Baylor direction, if not worse.

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What makes Baylor unique is that it hasn't gone all the way.

48:29

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Most schools on a similar trajectory end up dropping their Christian identity altogether, and it looked like that might happen in Hope.

48:48

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Then, in the 1990s, during my student days in Hope, I had the mistake of hiring a chaplain who was solidly planted within the fundamentalist evangelical fold.

49:24

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I call it a mistake because I don't think they know that they were partying for a mistake from their perspective.

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From my perspective, I would call it providential.

49:41

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

The chaplain's name was Ben Patterson, and he ended up being...

49:56

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

The chaplain's name was Ben Patterson, and he ended up being...

49:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

...

49:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

...

50:20

S… Speaker 3 (matt intro chapter)

absolutely transforming my life. During those years,

51:11

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Leighton was experiencing what is known in

51:17

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Evangelical War as a revival.

51:37

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

This term has been given many

51:40

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

definitions through centuries, but for our purposes, it's best

51:45

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

to think of a revival as a sudden

51:53

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

uptick in religious fervor on a heart

52:08

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

level. Revival doesn't mean books or sermons

52:20

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

or treatises. It means more songs or

52:31

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

confessions or tears. Each revival has its own

52:43

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

origin story. There's always some sort of spark

52:49

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

that seems to come up just at the right time, catching dry kindling and bursting

53:04

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

into flame. The 1994 Revival Week

53:12

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

had been sparked by spontaneous

53:18

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

opened my camp for the purpose of

53:27

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

confessing

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S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

sin. By one

53:33

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

16, in front of an

53:35

S… Speaker 5 (matt intro chapter)

auditorium,

53:40

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

told hundreds of strangers

53:42

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

the temptation they had been struggling

53:46

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

with, asked for forgiveness,

53:56

S… Speaker 4 (matt intro chapter)

and invited God

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S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

to cleanse them of their

53:59

S… Speaker 3 (matt intro chapter)

sin. A month later, the whole

54:57

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

can you proceed to flame.

55:18

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

that suddenly God previously was subject to people we can,

55:22

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

was now somewhat experienced. It's important to know that the revival experience is not

55:58

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

the defining trait of fundamentalist evangelicalism. In fact, evangelicalism has always had a

56:09

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

tenuous relationship with revival, but evangelicals are more likely to seek revival

56:46

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

or be open to ban their non-evangelical families. To the majority of the home college community,

57:16

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

beaten revival looked like an absurd neurosis, but to Ben Patterson looked like a game.

57:39

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

If it worked there, maybe it would work at home. So we tried it. We invited students to come forward

57:52

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

and invest their sins in public, and the results were far more dramatic in what it occurred to me.

58:24

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

One of the things that separates evangelical schools from the non-evangelical is the question of whether

58:34

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Christian activities are mandatory or not. For example, Baylor still offers a chapel service,

58:53

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

but it's not mandatory. Whereas, at most evangelical schools, chapel attendance is required. Likewise,

59:17

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

evangelical schools usually require a student to stay in effect. You cannot enroll at all unless you

59:29

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

profess to be a Christian before a tribulation. Whereas a Christian school in a Baylor mode would

59:43

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

have no such requirement. This is the sense in which hope was meaning in a decidedly non-evangelical direction.

59:59

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I would still be honest and elkaar if you don't have to be honest with you.

59:59

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That's what I would say before the 21st century.

59:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

How are you on a board?

1:00:00

S… Speaker 4 (matt intro chapter)

There was no statement of faith requirement for students to sign, and chapel attendance

1:00:10

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

was optional.

1:00:16

S… Speaker 4 (matt intro chapter)

Thus, at a school of 4,000 undergraduates with a chapel that could fit around 1,000 people,

1:00:32

S… Speaker 4 (matt intro chapter)

there were usually only a dozen or two that showed up prior to the revival, that is.

1:00:45

S… Speaker 3 (matt intro chapter)

But in months, the same band that had swept, we were speaking over, but in a context that

1:01:20

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

had been far less from the just to begin with.

1:01:30

S… Speaker 4 (matt intro chapter)

It's one thing to witness the effects of the revival at Evangelical School, where people

1:01:52

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

may sing louder and longer than before, but chapel attendance remains the same.

1:01:59

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

It's quite another thing to witness what happened at Hope, which was chapel attendance increasing

1:02:06

S… Speaker 4 (matt intro chapter)

from 20 to 1,000 over the period of several months.

1:02:18

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

So it's not a flash at hand.

1:02:28

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Chapel has, chapel services at Hope have been at or near capacity ever since.

1:03:13

S… Speaker 4 (matt intro chapter)

Eventually, coalitions at Hope that were of the more secular liberal persuasion got their

1:03:28

S… Speaker 4 (matt intro chapter)

act together and sent Ben Patterson all its way.

1:03:35

S… Speaker 4 (matt intro chapter)

But the damage had been done, and ever since, Hope has been in something of a tug of war between

1:03:53

S… Speaker 3 (matt intro chapter)

conservative Christians and secular liberals, conservative Evangelicals versus non-Evangelical

1:04:30

S… Speaker 4 (matt intro chapter)

Christians who, to their detractors, look like nothing more than secular liberals.

1:04:44

S… Speaker 4 (matt intro chapter)

That's a lot of backstory, but it's important to understand all that in order to understand

1:04:55

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

where I fit into the mix.

1:04:56

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Now we want to imagine in theерaters too much.

1:04:57

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Your

1:04:57

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

You

1:05:08

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

I had been hired by the Ben Patterson crowd, specifically for the purpose of taking college

1:05:24

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

in a Ben Patterson direction.

1:05:33

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

My predecessor had been pushed out for being too liberal and not Christian enough.

1:05:47

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

One of my biggest selling points was how decidedly and enthusiastically evangelical

1:06:06

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I was.

1:06:16

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Part of what furnished my evangelical credentials was my politicals.

1:06:28

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

The attitudes I had growing up toward Democrats have long been one of the hallmarks of evangelical

1:06:37

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

movement.

1:06:45

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

On the one hand, evangelicals have always professed that politics isn't what matters most and

1:06:55

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

have been.

1:07:10

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Until recent years, it was considered inappropriate to advocate for conservative.

1:07:26

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Political positions from evangelicals.

1:07:38

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

That taboo vanished in 2016, in 2020, but I'll get to that later.

1:08:01

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Evangelicals are one of my youth.

1:08:03

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

We weren't supposed to focus on politics.

1:08:07

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

We were supposed to focus on Jesus.

1:08:09

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Or at least that was the official motto.

1:08:20

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

But underneath, other well-established dynamics were like, the politics wasn't talked about

1:08:39

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

much.

1:08:41

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

It was understood that good Christians would vote Republican.

1:09:18

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Originally, that wasn't about abortion, but about communism.

1:09:32

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Reagan was the first Republican candidate to try to court the evangelical vote through the abortion

1:09:47

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

issue.

1:09:50

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

But it would be several more decades before Republicans...

1:09:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

The recent

1:09:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

OK, so we won't be Arab consequences, but we're not clear.

1:09:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Our task was on the right hand.

1:09:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I mean, it was great.

1:09:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Well, it was clear.

1:09:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Now, of course, our mission is to support us that we can get into the 19th

1:10:00

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

National Convention would successfully convert vast swaths of evangelicalism to singularity

1:10:08

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

voters. When I was growing up, it wasn't like this. Yes, of course, we were pro-life. There

1:10:34

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

were just one more reason for the Republican. But in those days, the primary reason for

1:10:47

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

being a Republican was just that it was more prudent. It worked. It made sense. It was

1:11:01

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

wise, as opposed to the token ideals of the Democratic Party. We had seen that through

1:11:28

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

the Soviet Union, those ideals would implement and turn into fire. It was never said that

1:11:36

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

we were Republicans because we were Christians. It was more like the two just happened to go

1:11:44

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

together. Like the type of person that happened to embrace Christianity also happened to principles

1:12:09

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

of the Republican Party. Like they both came from the same mindset. But no one would have

1:12:22

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

ever said that Christianity required devotion to the Republican Party because that would

1:12:36

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

have violated the more basic evangelical tenet that it's not about politics and that Jesus

1:12:55

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

is for everybody. Back then, the notion that our churches would have been comprised of members of one

1:13:10

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

political party would have been seen as problematic. We took pride in the fact that some evangelicals

1:13:36

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

were Democrats, even if we were prone to debate them or looked at them a bit suspiciously. Back then,

1:14:08

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

there was still such a thing as progressive evangelicals. If the standard bearers for these were Billy

1:14:42

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Graham and Carl F. M. K. of Christian today, then the standard bearers for the progressive evangelical minority

1:15:00

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

campolo and cider this term is not evangelism it's a christian school in the baylor but campolo

1:15:19

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

and cider were very much a part of the evangelical both their theology as well as their

1:15:37

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

personal networks they hung out at with the evangelicals they spoke at the evangelicals

1:16:06

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

and they were unapologetically supportive of the democratic party as well they sought a tension

1:16:25

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

between these two affiliations proof of that is perhaps got us captured by the name of the

1:16:43

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

evangelism evangelicals form the government to be sure there weren't many scatolo and cider made

1:17:06

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

their case but didn't make much of a dent but they were considered evangelicals nonetheless

1:17:54

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

they were considered part of us while that recent history is worth reviewing for several reasons

1:18:17

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

one of which we get to later there is no such thing as progressive evangelicals

1:18:35

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

this category has completely collapsed and that's worth looking into but that's not great and i'm

1:18:57

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

bringing it up now i'm bringing it up now to make it much smaller i was never a progressive with that

1:19:05

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

i was always the normal the regular kind conservative kind there was nothing fishy about my affiliations or

1:19:24

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

independence the fact that i was so active in the republican party served as double confirmation that i was a good

1:19:43

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

evangelical one that could be trusted that's not to say that the political

1:19:57

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

as i was so active as it has gotten this last year or the left is like another evangelical

1:19:57

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

house

1:19:57

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

while staying in schools

1:20:00

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

commitments alone would have suggested this they just amplified my already stellar evangelical

1:20:19

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

credentials and ever since the revival at home those had been quite solid as well i was one of

1:21:13

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

the students who caught fire during that hope revival and the flame never burned down god

1:21:34

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

became real to me in that chapel i experienced a zeal for god a desire to give him everything

1:22:17

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

desire to submit to him to live my life in the word answer his will to offer my life as an offering

1:22:35

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

of grace to him at least that's how i would have put it in my heart assaulted prophets but how does

1:23:07

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

this seal get translated into real life within the context of evangelicals i put it like that because

1:23:30

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

i think it's important to recognize that had i experienced different how to experience the same

1:23:39

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

sensations in a different religious context i might have been given different advice

1:23:49

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

for example many traditions would have encouraged me to focus my channel my zeal toward helping the poor

1:24:36

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

evangelicalism wasn't against this but it wasn't necessarily for it either instead it

1:24:55

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

gave a much simpler answer to the question of

1:25:00

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Now what? If you love God, be the best Christian you can be. If you want to serve God, get more

1:25:12

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

involved in church and help others to do the same. So this is what I did. I've not only been

1:25:31

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

part of an evangelical church for my entire adult life, attending every Sunday, but I've also

1:25:41

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

participated in all of the extracurriculars. We never skipped Sundays, but we also never skipped

1:25:57

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

small group during the week. My wife Sarah and I were always part of the small group, and for the

1:26:11

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

majority of our marriage, led and hosted one in our home. I also served as an elder at our church

1:26:25

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

and would preach once a quarter or so. When I did, I'd invite all of my co-workers to come hear me.

1:26:46

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

This is evangelism. This is what evangelicals do. And that is who Hope College wanted to hire.

1:27:37

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

That's why they hired me. Not in spite of my conservative evangelical credentials, but because

1:27:43

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

of them. They hired me to take the school in conservative evangelical direction. Not quite

1:28:07

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

fundamentalist. Definitely leading more that way. This is what I planned to do. Not only that,

1:28:18

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

this is what I thought I was doing. If anything, I was afraid of being too Christian, even at a Christian

1:29:17

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

college. My annual State of the College addresses ended up feeling more like sermons than policy switches.

1:29:34

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

state of the state. But, and it's just that I think of as a sort of pro- Prophecy, the state

1:29:34

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

of the state. not only that, but because of the state of the state. Not only that, it's also

1:30:03

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I just as often felt like I was a pastor.

1:30:10

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I felt as much like a pastor.

1:30:14

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I felt more like a pastor than anything else.

1:30:48

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

My only concern was wanting to not alienate

1:30:52

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

a significant portion of our faculty, staff, and student body

1:31:04

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

that wasn't part of an evangelical club.

1:31:17

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Again, hope doesn't have a statement of faith.

1:31:24

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

And I like that.

1:31:32

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I like that our campus was made up of people

1:31:46

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

who might not have the same views as me,

1:31:49

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

people who were still undecided.

1:31:57

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

It's important to me that this part of our campus community

1:32:10

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

find me that some accepting and understanding

1:32:22

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

because that's how they would have found Jesus.

1:32:27

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I didn't want to meet anyone over the head of Christianity

1:32:38

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

and was always a bit scared of getting in trouble

1:32:42

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

for saying Jesus or the Holy Spirit.

1:32:54

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

too many times.

1:33:07

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

That's how things were.

1:33:10

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

That's where things stood.

1:33:29

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

But that was before the world lost its mind.

1:33:49

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

That's how I thought things would stay.

1:34:03

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I didn't know that the world was about to lose its mind.

1:34:46

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I said earlier that the Board of Trustees had chosen me

1:34:50

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

because of my evangelical conservative credentials.

1:34:51

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

www.evangelical conservative credentials.

1:34:52

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

www.evangelical conservative credentials.

1:34:53

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Paul

1:34:53

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

You

1:35:10

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

but obviously it wasn't just that it wasn't like they were going to hand the presidency to

1:35:24

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

a 39 year old banker just because he happened to preach

1:35:31

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

what caught the court's attention was the specific vision i had the school's future

1:35:47

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

vision which i believe was given to me by god i'll tell that whole story in a later chapter

1:35:58

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

but for now you don't need to believe that it came from god because the vision makes so much sense

1:36:17

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

that it can stand on its own two legs plenty of other people had had the same idea which i assume

1:36:33

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

in their case wasn't necessarily divinely inspired when i say it was from god i just mean that god

1:36:49

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

is the one who gave me and told me where to look the idea is called pay it for intuition 10 to 15

1:37:15

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

years ago everybody was talking about it then it seemed to fizzle out concept is incredibly

1:37:25

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

straightforward instead of having students take out loans to pay exorbitant tuition rates

1:37:39

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

instead of students paying for their education out front they pay installments the rest of their lives

1:38:25

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

in that sense arrangement they're also thought of as a pay it back system but the sense in which

1:38:37

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

it's a paid forward system is that each student's education is being paid for by the students who

1:38:45

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

have gone before them they're being given an education for free and then over the course of

1:38:56

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

their career they will pay for someone else's education just as someone paid for theirs i felt like god

1:39:14

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

highlighted this financial bottle for me that told me to stake my entire candidacy on it first that

1:39:26

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

sounded strange it was an incredibly specific policy for folks to be talking about outside

1:40:01

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

It also felt quite difficult to walk in there as someone who already felt unqualified and

1:40:15

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

say as a complete outsider of the higher education, we need to stop charging a tuition.

1:40:19

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I thought I would be laughed out of the room, but I decided to start doing some research,

1:40:39

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

see if I did make sense of why such a proposal might be something that I want to focus on.

1:40:53

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

And what I discovered...

1:41:08

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

was surprising to say the least.

1:41:27

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Because my entire career had been related to finance in one way or another, I was pretty

1:41:51

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

in-depth at basing financial analysis.

1:42:00

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I knew how to look at financial statements alongside other market indicators and assess

1:42:11

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

the overall financial health of a given company or industry.

1:42:15

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

So when I decided to apply for the whole presidency, I began digging into these metrics at colleges

1:43:41

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

and universities, trying to get a sense of the overall business model.

1:43:47

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

So instead, I was met with a discovery I would have never expected.

1:44:30

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Higher education was a single share for exceptions to this ultra-aliened institutions with massive

1:44:50

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

investments in the end of the spectrum.

1:44:56

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

And for the profit, here we go.

1:44:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

So thank you, sir.

1:44:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

OK.

1:44:59

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

All right.

1:45:02

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

universities on the other. Both of those categories of schools were doing just fine.

1:45:16

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

It was a good time. But the vast majority of American colleges didn't fall into either one

1:45:31

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

of those categories. Non-profit schools with small endowments. Looking at the numbers, I just couldn't

1:46:00

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

see how any of these schools would survive after 100 years or college. The only way they had managed

1:46:22

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

to survive up until this point was by astronomically raising the price of tuition each year at a rate

1:46:43

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

far outpacing inflation or price increases in any other industry. Normally this is not a viable

1:47:04

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

strategy for balancing the books. If a company is offering goods or services at a certain price

1:47:22

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

in response to a certain level of demand, they can't raise the price without reducing demand.

1:47:41

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

And unless there's something weird going on, you can't just 10x the amount you're charging and

1:47:52

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

expect people to pay. They'll simply go without. So there was something weird going on. And it had to

1:48:18

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

be the federal loans. Originally, if a student wanted to take out a loan in order to finance

1:48:29

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

their college education, they'd have to get that loan from a bank just like any other loan. And the

1:48:38

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

bank's willingness to lend would be based on the same factors it would get for other types of lending

1:49:12

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

loans. In order to assess the likelihood that the borrower would pay in full. But this led to loans being hard to come by.

1:50:10

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

do you want to lend a thousand dollars to an 18-year-old against them so the federal government

1:50:26

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

started at first they were only putting their thumb on the scale passing bills that made

1:50:56

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

incentivize banks to adopt more lenient standards but eventually they just took over in 1994

1:51:09

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

before the direct loan program was introduced and ever since the vast majority of college tuition

1:51:34

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

bills in this country have been paid directly by the u.s treasury the idea behind the direct

1:52:18

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

loan program was the same as the idea behind bills previous bills which had made the loan

1:52:35

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

assistance of access the college was thought to be a big thing part of the university ever since the

1:52:54

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

gi bill the idea of the federal government trying to incentivize psychology education

1:53:16

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

had been seen as a bipartisan patriotic similar to incentivizing first-time requires so given this

1:53:33

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

purpose it was expected that getting a student loan directly from the government would be

1:53:48

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

even easier than it had been that the government's requirements for issuing costs would be less

1:54:00

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

stringent that's not what happened what happened is that instead of loosening requirements

1:54:25

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

direct loan program gradually eliminated virtually every requirement for qualifying for loan there was no

1:54:56

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

eventually

1:55:03

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

As requirements continue to be eliminated, as limits continue to increase, getting a federal loan for the full amount of your tuition was as easy as asking for it.

1:55:44

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Decades later, we are now, what was clear from the outset to anyone who had any knowledge of lending practices was that the vast majority of these loans would be defaulted on.

1:56:13

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

So, banks have to know how to tell a good loan from a bad one. If they wouldn't, they'd go out of business.

1:57:11

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

But in the federal government's case, because the direct loans were such a small percentage of the federal budget overall, and because the budget overall wasn't anywhere close to balanced,

1:57:30

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

the fact that the Treasury was pleading hundreds of millions of dollars a year on their student loans that would never be paid didn't seem to bother anyone.

1:57:57

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

It was as though no one was really paying attention, as though no one really cared.

1:58:02

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

It was as though there was only one directive to make college as accessible as possible, even if that means not asking any questions.

1:59:21

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

The reason a service provider can't keep raising their prices is because their customers don't have an unlimited ability to pay.

1:59:40

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

All of a sudden, the primary customer of American colleges and universities became the federal government itself, which very much indeed seemed to have an unlimited ability to pay.

2:00:02

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Thus, when colleges would keep raising their tuition year after year, the government simply raised its loan loans.

2:00:35

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

What's important to understand is that colleges weren't doing this in an attempt to get rich.

2:01:04

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

This wasn't some sort of embezzlement scheme, nor were they intentionally trying to take advantage or exploit in any way.

2:01:53

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I mean, they kept raising prices out of a sense of necessity to balance their own budgets.

2:02:06

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

The reason their own budgets had loomed so significantly is a separate and more complicated issue.

2:02:35

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

But for now, suffice it to say that colleges were charging more because it had gotten more expensive to run college.

2:03:10

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

And the government was closing the gap.

2:03:15

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

All of this was so familiar to me.

2:03:18

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

My days in the Treasury Department had been during the 2008 financial crisis.

2:03:26

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

Every morning, the top headline would be in reference to what we had discussed in conference rooms the day before.

2:03:42

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

It would be about decisions we had made in conference rooms the day before.

2:04:37

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Of these decisions, the most controversial were those pertaining to bailouts.

2:04:48

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

We'll see you next time.

2:04:48

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

Thank you.

2:05:02

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

providing free money to American banks that were deemed too big to fail. According to the laws of

2:05:24

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

the market, these banks should have collapsed. They had bet big and bet unwisely, but instead

2:05:44

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

of facing the consequences, the government passed the expense of the taxpayers. The logic was

2:06:20

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

essentially, if this bank can't stay open on its own, we'll just have to give it a lot of money to help

2:06:28

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

them. And the logic was the same, colleges and universities. If colleges can't stay open unless

2:07:01

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

they charge tuition so high that students can't pay it, then I guess we'll just have to pay it.

2:07:12

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

This system had been in operation for decades and seemed to be working just fine. But as I took a

2:07:30

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

closer look at it, it wasn't hard to see that it was fundamentally unsystemable. We couldn't keep

2:07:44

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

this up forever. If colleges kept raising tuition at the same rate they had been, and if students

2:08:11

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

kept defaulting off loans at the same rate they had been, then eventually student default rates

2:08:31

S… Speaker 2 (matt intro chapter)

would rise a bit higher. At which point, direct law program would become politically untenable.

2:09:38

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

It looked to me like the whole thing was about to come crashing down. But what could be done about

2:09:56

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

it? That's where pay it forward tuition comes.

2:10:00

S… Speaker 1 (matt intro chapter)

I'm sorry.

matt intro chapter

_Dürs

Bu transkripsiýa hakda AI-den sora