Some more mature readers would recall the 1970’s TV comedy: The Odd Couple starring Tony Randall as Felix Unger and Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison. They were a great example of characters that you would not expect to work well together.
Sometimes, the biggest impact comes from the most unlikely of places.
I’d like to introduce you to my new favourite “odd couple”: Michael O’Fallon and James Lindsay.
Michael O’Fallon is a Christian author, speaker and historian. Previously, O’Fallon served in various consulting roles, helping organisations prepare for and comply with emerging financial frameworks. When confronted with the implications of the most recent of these, O’Fallon left that industry and sacrificed much to found Sovereign Nations, an organisation dedicated to the preservation of national sovereignty.
Dr. James Lindsay is an American author, cultural critic, and mathematician. He is as an atheist (agnostic) and considers himself to be left-leaning. He is known for submitting deliberate hoaxes to academic publications, and for his involvement in the grievance studies affair. When confronted with the implications of this, Lindsay left his teaching position to study and speak about what he had discovered. His wife told him he had 18 months to figure out how that would support his family financially. He founded the media site: New Discourses – Pursuing the light of objective truth in subjective darkness.
Over the last few years, O’Fallon and Lindsay have partnered to support radically conservative groups such as Mom’s for Liberty, Turning Point USA, and the conservative wing of the US Southern Baptist Convention.
Impact
Tom Ascol is senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida.
He was the conservative nominee for the position of President of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest group of evangelical Christian pastors in the US. If there was such a thing as a Protestant Pope, Ascol would be in the running for that position.
In June 2022, Ascol commenced a speech to pastors and lay leaders, with the following words:
“As Mike [O’Fallon] and others have said: ‘we must engage.’ I identified with what James Lindsay said earlier, when he acknowledged last year… ‘I feel like I’m late to the battle…’ I’m late to engage … These things were taking place long before I could get my mind around them and I’d had opportunity to see them and confront them. Mike [O’Fallon], others were telling me about them but I just couldn’t see it and finally did begin to see it, it’s like ‘oh, no,’ this has gone on so long, so far. I must get in the game and when that dawned on me, I repented, seriously repented before God, to the congregation I serve, to the elders and acknowledged that this is something I should not have been asleep on.
So, being awakened to it, what do we do? Well first of all, if you haven’t been involved, I would encourage you and call upon you to repent. We have a Gospel, we have a saviour who shed His blood for us and so, if you find yourself having been derelict in your duty to Him, there’s no shame, no embarrassment in repenting and acknowledging that and praise God that He’s bringing that to your attention, but get in the game. How? Take seriously the Biblical warnings and admonitions we have in the Bible for our everyday Christian living.
J.C. Ryle in his wonderful book on holiness said this
‘the man who is content to sit ignorantly by his own fireside, wrapped up in his own private affairs and has no public eye for what is going on in the church and the world is a miserable patriot and a poor style of Christian.’
I don’t want to be either one of those and I would trust that being here for this conference, neither do you.”
Why should Ascol listen to someone who’s been labelled as a “Rightwing Christian extremist”? Worse yet, an agnostic hoaxer with a degree in Mathematics?
Well, it’s clear that this duo has left an indelible mark on perhaps the most powerful conservative protestant Christian voice today. But what did they have to say?
I’ve written this article simply to introduce my new odd couple. When I refer to them in future articles, I’d suggest that you take heed, wake up, repent if necessary and get in the game.