Mike Winger Slams Joel Webbon, Promotes ‘Careful’ Christian Nationalism

Mike Winger is a former youth pastor and current YouTuber known for his online ministry, BibleThinker. His channel has close to 1 million subscribers, and it focuses on in-depth Bible studies, apologetics, and occasionally discernment or even anti-discernment. Joel Webbon has commented in the past that there’s nothing really special about Mike’s ministry other than first-mover advantage, which we would agree with as Winger’s content addresses low-hanging fruit. Recently, Winger posted a video response to the Charlie Kirk memorial, entitled “Charlie Kirk, the Memorial, and how I am changing.”

The change that has happened is that Mike Winger is now convinced that Christians should move forward in political advocacy. You can view the relevant clip on 𝕏 right here, with full context. Seemingly, this is Winger “coming out” as a Christian nationalist.

That would be something to celebrate, except for the fact that Mike immediately starts to counter-signal against what he calls “extremist voices.” His thought process is that if all of the wise and balanced pastors essentially reject Christian nationalism, that will only leave unwise and unbalanced pastors like Joel Webbon of Right Response Ministries. Notably, this is the only example that Mike gives.

Mike Winger references two tweets that Joel Webbon put out as evidence that Joel is an extremist. First, he claims that Joel told people to leave their church if the pastor did not discuss the Kirk assassination. What Webbon actually said was that if your pastor had spoken about George Floyd but refused to discuss Kirk, you should leave the church. That is completely reasonable. We should always be cognizant of red flags that appear in the pulpit.

Second, Mike brings up that Joel said, “You killed Charlie. Now you get Nick [Fuentes]. Enjoy.” This was not a celebratory tweet, nor was it an endorsement of Fuentes. Joel was saying that the left killed the chief spokesperson of the moderate right, so now they’ll get someone worse who is far right. “Here are your just desserts,” in other words. There’s nothing extreme, unbalanced, or unwise about any of this.

Mike Winger believes that what the CN movement needs are thoughtful, careful men, so that we can “maintain our Christian values” in pursuit of a Christian nation. Honestly, it is the height of hubris for him to attempt to tone police a movement 30 seconds after he has joined it. But even worse than that, he’s just wrong. We certainly do not need more careful men at this juncture. As Doug Wilson so eloquently said,

Desperate times call for faithful men, and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.