Welcome to AFA at Home, a production of American Family association

Walker Wildmon: Welcome to AFA at Home, a production of American Family association in partnership with AFA Action. The mission of AFA is to inform, equip, and activate individuals and families to transform American culture and to give aid to the church here and abroad in its task of fulfilling the Great Commission. America, as we know, is at a crossroad, a crucial crossroad. One path leads to more government and less freedom. The other path leads to less government and ensures our constitutional liberties are preserved. Today, we have a panel. We're going to have a couple panels over the next hour or so, but right now we have Star Parker, president and founder of cure, our urban CURE center for Urban renewal and Education. Thank you, Star.

Star Parker: You're welcome.

Star Parker: Thank you.

Walker Wildmon: And then we have Sandy Rios. Many of you know Sandy from American Family Radio. She's a host of Sandy Rios in the Morning on afr, and she's also director of Governmental affairs for American Family Association. Thank you, Sandy.

Sandy Rios: Thank you, Walker.

Walker Wildmon: And then lastly for this segment, we have Dr. Richard Land, President of Southern Evangelical Seminary, and he's also chief editor for the Christian post. Thank you, Dr. Land.

Dr. Richard Land: Good to be with you.

Walker Wildmon: So this topic we're gonna. Or this, segment, we're gonna talk about two topics, and then. And then we'll flow from there.

The Supreme Court is embroiled in a battle over First Amendment religious freedom

But the first thing just to get us started is the issue of religious liberty. And this, this, this, battle over our First Amendment rights as Christians and as Americans. This struggle is not new. It's been around for a long time. Hence, we have the First Amendment. And before, before Dr. Lan, I ask you a question. I want to read the First Amendment, because oftentimes the topic of religious liberty gets discussed, and we don't even go back to where it came from. We don't even go back to why we have, the First Amendment. So the First Amendment says, congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or of the right of the people to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. And so, Dr. Lamb, in your book the Divided States of America, you talk about early America and even then a battle of religious freedom. So tell us a little bit about if you see any comparisons, or similarities between early American religious freedom struggles and then what we're seeing now in 2020.

Dr. Richard Land: Well, the threat to religious liberty is just as real, but I think it's a very different kind of threat. In the colonial era, nine of the original 13 states had established religions. They had Episcopalian in the north in the south and Congregational in the north and Presbyterian in the middle colonies. and only four did not have a tax supported official state church that discriminated against people who weren't part of that church. And because of the Great Awakening which transformed America, let's understand that the America that we started with was a product of the Great Awakening. it wasn't founded in 68, it was start. The Puritans didn't even come until the next year. And so after the Great Awakening occurred and America became a much more religious country, there was a continued chafing about that. They wanted freedom. They wanted to have a free, unfettered access without any preferred religion from the government. And so when it came time for the first for the Constitution to be ratified, the Baptists who had the swing vote were not going to vote for it until they cut a deal. John Leland, who was the most famous Baptist preacher of the 18th century, and John Leland and James Madison had a three hour conversation in the snow. They were rugged back in those days, and they cut a deal. And the deal was the Baptists would vote for the Constitution. And Madison promised the first Congress he would bring in an amendment that says Congress shall make no law affecting an establishment of religion nor interfering with the free exercise thereof. So you had, at the federal level you had a, guaranteed religious freedom. And that began to trickle down. By 1832 all the states had gotten rid of their state supported churches. but there was real religious persecution. There is no question about that. I mean in the decade before the Revolution, 500 Baptist preachers were thrown in jail in Virginia for quote, disturbing the peace. Now that's not the worst definition of preaching I've ever heard. Disturbing the peace. But what they meant by it was they were preaching without a license from the state. And they said we don't need a license from the state, we have a license from God. And today I see the same thing happening and it's in subtle ways and some not so subtle. I mean I'm very disturbed by this last term of the Supreme Court. John Roberts has gone awol. John Roberts says that it's okay to shut down the churches because they're not asking the churches to do anything. They're not asking symphonies or movie theaters to do. Well I got news for John Roberts. The First Amendment puts religion first. And we have rights that other people, other groups don't have. And to put us on even par is terrible. And it didn't take long for it to get even worse because then in the Nevada ruling, a judge in Nevada said that casinos had more rights than churches do. And the churches need to be outraged by this. They need to frankly, not comply. They need to withdraw their consent. We're governed by the consent of the governed. I withdraw my consent. And I'm glad John MacArthur is withdrawn his consent to.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah, absolutely. And that's the only way that we're going to be able to preserve the freedoms that we're talking about.

Dr. Richard Land: If we don't practice our rights, we lose them.

Walker Wildmon: Right? Amen.

 What can Christians do to fight back against COVID crackdown

Well, Sandy, I want to pitch it over to you. Dr. land just brought up the issue about not only do you have the Nevada churches that are having Trouble meeting over 50 people, and the Supreme Court weighed in on that on the wrong side. We've seen the struggle in California with Pastor, John MacArthur, Grace Community Church. But this is not just an isolated incident. This is going on in states all across m. NewSong York, NewSong York state and NewSong York City has been blocking, synagogues and churches from meeting. so what can we do as Christians to fight back in a way that is effective?

Sandy Rios: Well, I think first of all, it needs to be said that, most churches complied. Let's talk about COVID spot specifically right now. Most churches complied with shutting down, with masks, with social distancing, with whatever, cleaning whatever, because they felt it was a part of good citizenship to do that. And then as the weeks and months went on, it became apparent that the dangers of COVID were well overstated. The death rates were over reported. It just wasn't in the scope of things. In the scheme of things, it wasn't that big. And so I think Pastor John MacArthur has really taken the lead on this and done us a great service. He just wrote a paper called Christ not Caesar, the head of the church. And his point, one of his major points is that churches don't have the right to guide their people and pastors and elders because of the first Amendment. It's because of God's word. Our authority is God's word. Yes, in Romans 13, of course, we are to honor our leaders, and our governments and respect and follow the laws. But the line is crossed when we are told that we cannot. When there's a conflict, we have to obey God rather than man. So John MacArthur's point is that, listen, civil authorities don't have any right to come into a church and say, you can't Sing. You have to stand this distance apart. You have to wipe everything down. They have no authority in the church and how it works. And it's the elders and the pastors and elders and pastors have given up their role. I realized that at the beginning it seemed logical because it came, like, under Romans 13, if we're going to put it in scriptural terms, because we are to obey as much as we can the laws of our land. But as the weeks and months went on and we realized that the COVID 19 threats were much less than what we're being told, the death rate was not what they were claiming. We're finding more about that now. Churches need, like John MacArthur's church, to start taking back their responsibility. They're the ones responsible for their congregation. Governments cannot tell us not to pray with people, not to sing, not to hug, not to counsel. It is the antithesis of God's word when we yield to that. Because God is all about relationship. His relationship with man, our relationship with each other, our fellowship within the church. When we punish people, we put them in solitary confinement. We put children in time out. It is the antithesis of God's way. And so I'm just. I am saying to pastors and members of churches across the country, take your church back. Look at John MacArthur. I think he is really the leader on this. By the way, he's paying a heavy price for this right now. he's going to be. He will by the time this. We hear this. The city of Los Angeles has taken away their parking lot. They've given them, they've had possession of that property for. They've been able to use it for 45 years. And now they're taking that back. It's a tremendous problem for them. And they're being fined for meeting. And so is, Rob McCoy of Godspeak Calvary Church. He's being fined every time their church meets. So this is not without cost. And you know what? That's as it should be. We are not to live safely. We are to do what's right, no matter what comes.

Walker Wildmon: Starr.

Star Parker: I think it's more than that. I think that God is not only showing the pastors that have a backbone, because many of the pastors in California organized very early. And John has taken a wonderful lead on this to be that faith since he's already an international figure. But this didn't start yesterday. This didn't start because of COVID We've seen the. I'm a, California resident. We've seen the State come in on many opportunities to try to close down the voice of the Lord in the church. But we also, the crossroad you talked about, have to be concerned about the churches that are not participating. Those that are saying that what the government is doing is okay, those that are still saying that, you know what, actually I'm having more fun now that I'm at home without my congregation. Tides are up because people are afraid and I'm going golfing.

One in five churches are set to close permanently, according to a study

So I just wanted to interject that I think that there are two crossroads here. Not just for the commending that needs to go on for those that are standing, but to challenge those that are not.

Walker Wildmon: Dr. Land, one of the one study I saw recently showed one in five churches are set to close down permanently. This is a US study because they were already struggling with membership, with tithing, with honestly just participation in the local assembly. And this has just finished them off. It's similar to a lot of small businesses. But, the long term impacts of this. We look at everything on a daily basis, which sometimes is good. But talk about the long term impact of having a church shut down for a year.

Dr. Richard Land: Well, I think it is going to have a long term impact. I think some of the smaller churches, the ones that have difficulty having an online presence because they just don't have the technology, they are going to end up closing down. Now it is true that we have seen an increase in attendance, with virtual attendance and an increase in giving and also an increase in evangelism. They are able to reach out to reach people that will not come to church, but they will watch or they will come to a drive in and do it that way. But, I think that I had to confess when I went back to church for the first time, I, had to confess to the Lord that I had taken public worship for granted. there is a reason why God says not to forsake the assembly of ourselves together. In the book of Hebrews. There is something, there is something mystical. As a Baptist, I get a little nervous about mystical. But there is something mystical about simultaneously having fellowship with God and horizontally having fellowship with your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ that you just don't get, virtually. and I think that, churches need to grasp that and understand that. I do think that a lot of people have much more appreciation for public worship than they did. I know I do. but also I'm disappointed in the supine nature of too many of our churches who just are rolling over and just doing whatever the state Says to do. And you know, this goes this strain of render unto Caesar that which is Caesar, unto God that which is God's. The ultimate authority belongs to God. That's why totalitarians always hate Christians, because they know that there's authority bigger in our lives than they are. even in 1776, before we were a country, when we just declared our independence, before we had the Constitution, and when Britain had just sent the largest fleet to ever leave British soil to invade before Normandy, when they sent 100,000 troops to try to recapture the colonies, we still gave conscientious objection to the Quakers. The Continental Congress recognized that the Quakers had a religious right not to serve in the army. So freedom of conscience, freedom of religion has been the guiding north star of the American republic from the beginning. If we lose that, if we lose that, we've lost something very powerful.

Star Parker: I think that to your point about the churches closing down, they have to ask themselves, why is it that they were utilizing this type of magnificence or mystic in a community that all they did was stay open on Sunday morning and maybe Tuesday night, and then the rest of the time they're not occupying, they're not being the ambassador to those very communities they say that they're serving. So I think that this is an inflection point for all of us, including, the Christians who would sit home and not even have a desire to be in fellowship with others, but also for the pastors themselves that have been sitting there with this type of opportunity to be a real witness in the community, and they're never there.

Sandy Rios: I think so too. I think this is a real bellwether. I would also say that I think part of this we have to think about human nature. If you've ever had a long distance relationship with anyone, like you're in love. Okay, so, I'm a girl, so I'll say he moves to overseas and I talk to him every day and my heart beats and. But he's gone.

Walker Wildmon: Not your husband, Bruce?

Sandy Rios: Yeah, I'm not getting that personal. This is, a situation I'm making up. So this is what happens to people. So then the person, the boy is gone. And then he has to be extended. And then he has to be extended, and maybe he's even at war. And then soon, like, you still talk, but you kind of lose your. And if it goes on too long, you actually very likely will fall out of love. This is exactly what happens. We think we're fine giving's up. Not a big deal. Actually, I'M kind of enjoying watching television at home. I don't have to get dressed up and I could drink my coffee. But it is not going to last. And to pastors, this is not going to last. You're going to lose your people, you're going to lose your church. God is not going to. I'm not worried about God losing his influence or Jesus being. Not being Lord anymore, because we're not. It's not that. Because he'll find other people who will appreciate and love and serve him with passion. And I am concerned about members who are so content, to be at home right now, who think this is a great time for my family, this is a great time for me to catch up with my. The damage that's being done. I just want people to think outside of their personal skin to what's happening.

Star Parker: And in particular, when you think about it, we have gotten to where, when you look at the data from 50 years ago, religious expression was the most important common value. Now less than 100 million Americans even get up and go to church on Sunday. And then they're hurrying up, so they get to a football game. So we're already in competition with the world. And what has happened now, with three months of sitting inside, people are becoming very comfortable, as you're saying.

We need an awakening in America's churches

Sandy Rios: You know, One thing that Dr. Land said earlier that I was just reading recently, some writings about the Great Awakening, and one thing I didn't ever realize, I always think of the Great Awakening as this big revival, which it was, that took place in this country. We had two great awakenings, some say three, but two. But the Awakening was a reference not to people that for the first time heard the message of the Gospel and gave their hearts to Christ, but people who had knowledge of God, who had knowledge of God's word, but were asleep and dead to Him. It was an awakening. And that's really what I think we need now. We have so many people, people in our churches now, many of you listening, pastors even, who are asleep at the wheel and they need to awake arise. And that's what I'm praying. The quickening of the Holy Spirit, the, pouring out and the awakening of God's people so that we. I'm a star. I'm with Dr. Lan. I myself have taken for granted worshiping in person. I've enjoyed not having. When I was a kid, I was in church all the time. I've enjoyed not having to do that all the time. But I've been in other countries, many other countries, visiting with Believers under persecution who will go through heaven and earth for hours to get to a service where they can be together under great danger and duress. Where is that? In us?

Walker Wildmon: Yeah, that reminds me of something I was going to transition to, and that is like, what's going on in China? I mean, in China you have to have the underground church. You have to watch your back before you go into a building because you're going to go up and have church. my brother's been there. Many in our ministry have been to China. and that's what they've been living under for years and years and years. but back to the point about the church in America and what we're struggling with, George Barna did a study a few years ago, and it was a very, it was a very pessimistic study, if you want to put it that way. But it basically showed that the actual number of Bible believing Christians in America who have a biblical worldview, who have a scriptural worldview, drops down into the single digits of the overall people who identify as Christians in America. And I'm just wondering before COVID and before the government started coming after our churches so intensely, as Star mentioned, it's been happening before that, but as intense as this is, it's almost revealed who the 5%, who the 10% are. They're the ones that are still showing up at church now. They're the John MacArthur's. we forgot our first love.

Star Parker: But I think that what we'll discover is how hard life is outside of church life. And I don't know that we've reached that bottom yet in the response, like you're pointing out, Sandy, of how many are so comfortable now that they don't even think that, they can go back to church. They might not go back to church. How comfortable the pastors are in them not coming back to church. How many are not even fighting in the cultural war that we're in today. So it could get really dark. And in fact, a few years ago, when I first started penning my newest book, Necessary Noise, I looked at that, persecuted church that you described, in those other places. And when I asked the Lord, wow, we could really go here ourselves, he said, you know what? The one thing about American Christians is they do know how, we do know how. We don't expect it for ourselves, but we do know how to help a persecuted church. So once we get over the shock, maybe we'll recover our first love.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah.

Dr. Land says tech giants are practicing censorship on the Internet

Dr. Lan, I want to transition to another Topic the topic of censorship or some kind of cancel culture. And really this has been happening. We've been talking about the COVID 19, pandemic. And you can't even put out certain information on big tech platforms without it being filtered through some kind of moderator. And then if they don't like it, they'll either put a note saying how your post is wrong or they'll just take it down. but this almost, I don't think Americans have realized that this is what China does. That's what they do is they filter. Literally everything that goes on the Internet in China goes through the government first. we're seeing that through the private sector. Facebook, Google, Twitter. Talk a little bit about how that could have a long term, impact on the information that we get day to day.

Dr. Richard Land: Well, it's a tremendous threat and one that is not generally, well known. It needs to be far more well known. the tech giants are practicing censorship every day on who can be on their server and who can advertise, who can sell their product. And they are overwhelmingly prejudiced against conservatives, politically and religiously. and you know, this is the new lingua franca. I mean, you know, as one of my younger colleagues said to me, We've had a 65% increase in enrollment because we went to a real emphasis on recruiting digitally because we found the people we're trying to catch, they swim in the Internet. And one of my younger colleagues said to me, Dr. Land, if you're not on social media, you don't exist. And for people under 35, that's true. If you're not on social media, you don't exist. And so they really have the ability to, censor what Americans get to hear and Americans ability to express themselves. And I think it's time for the government to get involved. I normally don't like the government getting involved in these issues, but the government has to be the umpire sometimes. And these tech giants have the same kind of monopoly that Standard Oil had in the 1890s when they had a monopoly on oil and Teddy Roosevelt had to step in with the Sherman Antitrust act to keep them from monopolizing the oil industry. We need to have government regulations so that right now the Internet companies, they get special dispensations from the government to keep them from being sued. That needs to go away. They need to be just as vulnerable to being sued as print publishers are and they need to regulate it so that we can have true freedom of speech in the Internet.

Sandy Rios: Just One thing to add, you know, contrast with Standard Oil and the big oligarchs, if you want to call them that, of the turn of the century that did have monopolies. The difference here is that these tech giants are targeting private citizens, they are harming private citizens, targeting people for their opinions. And the argument for regulation is that because they're more like a utility. What if you couldn't get water if you didn't have the right thought? What if you couldn't get electricity and

Dr. Richard Land: they're trying to shut off water to John MacArthur's church?

Sandy Rios: Well, that's right.

Dr. Richard Land: Water and electricity.

Sandy Rios: Yes. Good parking.

Walker Wildmon: His public parking.

Sandy Rios: So they are sort of a public utility of a very different sort. And that's the argument, and I think it's a good one. I agree with Dr. Land. We're going to have to step in. I think people should understand the kind when we say censorship. There are all kinds of ways they do this. Like, for instance, Google, you know, when you. Almost everyone has Google worldwide, I think they have 95% of the market worldwide. So if you're searching for something and you enter into the little search thing, what happens is what they're supposed to do. What they did originally was the most common thing that most people are looking at under that subject with those three words you type in would pop up in order of its prominence. But that's not the way it happens anymore. What they have done is they have, you know, they always say it's the, What do they call their algorithms? It's the algorithms. You know, the algorithms made them do it.

Walker Wildmon: It's kind of like the algorithms that

Sandy Rios: they wrote, like the devil made me do it. But not really, because what they're doing is censoring. If you really want to find a conservative viewpoint on three things that you enter, that's not going to happen. You know, you'll get the NewSong York Times view, you'll get, you know, whatever a platform you. But you will not NewSong York Times or Washington Post or something else. But you will not get Daily Caller, you will not get Breitbart, you will not get the most popular. And in fact, some subjects won't even come up. You know, some things, like, I was looking just this week for some of the, information on the riots, and I could not find, unless I had to put down the name of the outlet that I knew would have some information on it, and then the subject matter, and then it would come up. But they're controlling everything that you see. Most people don't even know about the things we know because it doesn't come up. They think innocently or I looked on Wikipedia which is completely controlled by the left and so they think they know the truth, but they don't.

Star Parker: Usually though in a free market society you open up more avenues for other markets to get in. I'm just not sure that I want the folks that are running Washington now I work in Washington D.C. i'm not sure that we should be so quick to call for them to be the mediator in this area. This is a new phenomenon. It is similar but not like the oil companies as Sandy pointed out because this is individualism. sometimes I think as body Christ, we're late to the game and then we find out that it's been rigged. We. But I'm one that wants a little bit more information before we start talking about censoring, having big government censor private companies because we don't have the convenience of finding.

Dr. Richard Land: We're not censoring.

Star Parker: Well, but the discussions have just started and they're starting with the Congress that I don't trust them.

Dr. Richard Land: But what they want to do, they're not trying to censor them. First of all, we're not going to give you a special regulator.

Star Parker: No, I understand.

Dr. Richard Land: So the private individuals can sue.

Star Parker: I understand.

Walker Wildmon: There's your Elizabeth Warren side and then there's a side that I think we're talking about. So Elizabeth Warren, she wants to jump in and basically take over private companies like Facebook for their purposes. It'll end up being But then there's the section 230 which gets into the federal law and how basically Congress, Washington created this special one liner. That's right.

Star Parker: That's right.

Walker Wildmon: Gives these companies immunity.

Star Parker: So that's where we want to get rid of you. Right. Treat them as other telecommunications as opposed

Walker Wildmon: to platform versus publisher discussion.

Dr. Richard Land: That's exactly right.

Star Parker: And that's what needs to be said. Yes, it has to be clear. Yes, I agree there.

Sandy Rios: I think Star probably you would agree with me.

 The ideal solution is a free market solution

The ideal solution is a free market solution. Obviously if we could come up with another Google.

Star Parker: No, this is a no. This is an answer as well. But I know more government hand in deciding that they are going to force a private company to have more sensors and try to figure out and sort through if it's fair or not. I think that it's just better to get rid of the special concessions.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah.

Sandy Rios: But I think that if we had free market solutions that's even better.

Dr. Richard Land: And that's where the Standard Oil Thing does come into play because what Standard Oil was doing was keeping other. They were wiping out the competition, wiping out other people's ability to go into the oil business. And so what you need to do is you need to say, you know, there has to be competition. And so the government just makes sure that everybody's playing fair and.

Star Parker: Exactly. And to your point, Richard, they're actually, some of these companies are doing just that. They're buying their competition, dismantling it. So I don't, I don't disagree that there should be something, but I just don't think that it should be an over regulation of the industry.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah, you do. We do need to be careful when Washington starts crafting legislation for this. You need to keep an eye on it.

Star Parker: Well, the devil is always in the details.

Sandy Rios: The problem with Google too, specifically? Well, not just Google, Facebook too. They have these mega headquarters in Washington and they are deeply ingrained in so many, even conservative organizations. They've given huge amounts of money to some that we have trusted.

Star Parker: I think lobbying is a beautiful thing. Yeah, I know a lot of people don't like lobbyists, but lobbyists are like lawyers. You love them when you need them. And the reason that they have their lobbyists there, which they. It's really an interesting phenomenon. Great irony. Because they're the ones that hate lobby. They're the ones that are always coming out against those that try to protect interest of big business. And now they find themselves in big business and in the hot seat. And so yes, I think that we should watch the lobbyists.

Sandy Rios: But I also think, okay, who I fault, I don't fault the lobbyists because that's what I did with, you know, anytime, all of us in DC, Dr. Land too, we advocate for our position. That's lobbying.

Dr. Richard Land: We were public policy advocates.

Star Parker: We persuade.

Dr. Richard Land: We were tax exempt. So I actually won a court case. I won a court case against the District of Columbia. We did public policy advocacy.

Sandy Rios: Yes, well, we have the 501C4 did a lot of lobbying and we lobbied for our position. So my point is, not that I think the fault lies on for me, conservatives and conservative organizations taking money and then being controlled, that's the fault. And I don't, I'm a. I strongly believe that private, especially Christian organizations should not take public money. I just, I just draw the line there. I wouldn't do it when I was president of Concerned Women for America. And I think they've polluted a lot of the conservative groups in D.C. from my perspective. And I've seen their positions change on issues as a result of that. So my point is that Google has a ton of influence. They even have it in the White House. And so, that's dangerous because they're doing dangerous things. And some of the things they're doing are good, right? Yeah. It's like Facebook. Some of the things they're doing are good, but they're doing terrible things as well.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah, they don't need to be the ones writing the legislation to rein themselves in. I think that's the point of their influence in Washington, because some of the senators and congressmen will let Facebook and Google and others write the big tech fix, to amend Section 230, which is not going to fix anything.

Star Parker: We do it all the time and we all know it all.

Sandy Rios: That's reasonable.

Star Parker: We're at the table when they're writing legislation on housing policy. As an organization, we want to be at the table when they're writing education policy. Yeah. That's what people do. The challenge for us is that they got out there so quickly and got our children and everybody else on there. They monopolized the industry. And now we're trying to figure out where to go from here.

Walker Wildmon: Right. You gotta be first to the game. Not.

Dr. Richard Land: I wanna be a little schoolmarmish here. I really do think that all of us, all of us need to discipline, ourselves and help our children to discipline themselves on how much they're on social media. because it's addictive. and the people in the industry admit that it's addictive. And, especially impacting our young people. All of us, we can remember before social media, they can't. And there's a sociologist at San Diego State that's just done a new study, and she says something sociologists never say. You've never heard a sociologist say this? Without exception. Without exception, children, young people who are on. The more they are on social media, the more depressed they are. And the less they are on social media, the less they are depressed they are without exception. Now that means that because they're spending time by themselves and they're in these virtual. They have a virtual relationship.

Star Parker: But I want to make a point here as well. When you talk about, you know, our role as. It's not just being in the room where they're writing the legislation, it's also being on their board. Did you notice that when all the big tech guys were called in and they're sitting for the. The congressional hearing rooms, the Christian advocates, the good guys on our side were asking them, questions about censorship. The Black Caucus members, every one of them, one by one by one, asked them about their boards. This is where we need to. We're going to either pull out of society or we're going to fight in society.

70% of conservative content on Facebook is censored

And, you know, it's kind of like you can be the fan in the stand screaming at the team, or you can be the manager of the team. And I think that if we join their boards, we might have a different scenario in the end.

Sandy Rios: Star's right about that for sure. And that's a hope. Like, we should do another segment on that.

Star Parker: You should teach our young people to. Instead of joining these special identified clubs so that they can track you and know where you are and what your worldview are. You need to do the. Esther, you pretend you're somebody else until you're asked and you're on their board and you're the president of the company by now.

Walker Wildmon: Amen.

Sandy Rios: I do think, though, ah, back. Well, I just think that back to social media and its influence. and it's censorship, which is what you ask initially. Walker, we have to. Please. I have to say that what's happening is if you hold the biblical worldview, you can call it conservative, but it comes from biblical scripture. Worldview, you are being blocked. I interviewed a Facebook whistleblower about a month or six weeks ago, and he talked about already, probably, I believe he said 70% of conservative content is censored. You just don't know it.

Star Parker: Right.

Sandy Rios: So you're like, posting things, sending things out, and it never being seen. And we also, we have seen with our eyes in living color. Shall I use that word, Black Lives Matter? taking over Facebook and the threats and people being canceled, it's becoming very dangerous. I don't want to understate that. I want. It's. I started with Google. I kind of got us off track. Google is doing their part, but Facebook and Twitter are war zones, and they're winning the war.

Dr. Richard Land: It's a virtual lynch mobile.

Walker Wildmon: They've admitted they're going to get involved, they call it, to shape the outcome of America. That's what they've said publicly. So, you've been listening and watching to AFA at Home, a production of American Family association in conjunction with AFA Actions. Stay tuned. In the next segment, we'll have David and Jason Benham. We'll also have Abraham Hamilton iii. See you in a few minutes.

AFA at Home is a production of American Family association

Welcome back to AFA at Home, a production of American Family association, including conjunction with AFA action. You can always visit the website afaaction.net and find a lot of great content and information, especially heading into election season. AFA Action, produces a voter guide there that you can go and check out. So afaaction.net great information as we head into an election there. I want to welcome our panel for this segment. We're going to talk about life and the importance and the sanctity of life. We'll also talk about judges and the judicial branch and the, the good and bad role that they can play in our country. I want to welcome David and Jason Benham. Welcome to the show guys.

David Benham: Thanks man. And you got it right. David, Jason.

Walker Wildmon: David, Jason. I had to remind myself before we started.

David Benham: David's always first here.

Walker Wildmon: Was a struggle when I was getting ready for this is. How do I introduce you? I've got author, speaker and creator of Expert Ownership, your latest project.

David Benham: That's great. That sounds perfect. I wrote most of the books. He's just kind of the co author there.

Walker Wildmon: He's your assistant.

David Benham: That's right.

Walker Wildmon: Abraham Hamilton III is a host of Hamilton Corner on American Family Radio and also general counsel for American Family Association. Welcome Abe.

Abraham Hamilton III: Thank you.

David Perry was arrested while protesting abortion outside of Charlotte clinic

Walker Wildmon: So to get us started here, you know the topic of life and the definition of life. If you ask the general public, you're going to get all kind of stuff about what does life mean? What's the importance of life, of human life. And more specifically when we talk about life, we're talking about how God created all of mankind in his image, which goes well with our latest documentary, in His Image and how each person that God created is worthy of dignity and respect. that's what we're talking about when we're talking about life. David, you were at a, I caught this on Twitter right when, the day it happened. But you were on outside of a, you were doing a peaceful protest outside of a abortion clinic or a baby killing facility and you were arrested. Tell us a little bit about that.

David Benham: Well, it actually wasn't a peaceful protest, though it could have been. We have a ministry, that we started in 2010. My brother and I, at the height of our business we recognized, you know, here in Charlotte, North Carolina, which is where we live, we have three abortion facilities. And what were we as believers doing? Not just to be against abortion but to bring life. So we wanted to partner all the life affirming ministries together in our city so that we could mobilize a sidewalk, army of missionaries to do some sidewalk counseling to help These abortion determined and abortion minded mothers so that if they chose life, they would then have a host of resources that could help them alongside that baby. So we put it together 10 years later, over 5,000 mothers had chosen life. And then all of a sudden Covid hits at the beginning of this year. And when they came out with the essential businesses. Abortion, of course, was abortion. Abc, liquor stores, casinos are all essential. And yet, pro life sidewalk counseling was not considered to be essential. And so what we did was we got down to a skeleton crew of sidewalk counselors. We had three sidewalk counselors out there at the facility. and they, were socially distanced, hand sanitizer, the whole nine yards. And I got a phone call Saturday morning, 7:00'. Clock. Hey, David, they're about to make arrests of our sidewalk counselors. I said, this is insane. There's no reason they should arrest US because number one, we're a 501C3 but number two, we're practicing all of the social distancing guidelines. So I show up outside. Now remember 10 days later was going to be the first riot in the streets with thousands of people blowing up cars and you know, hammering out business, owners, windows and stuff. And there was no problem with that. But I show up to the abortion facility and There were about 12 police officers there. We had three sidewalk counselors. So I went across by myself to the other side of the street and the police surrounded me. And the guy in charge said, you've got to leave. You're leading a protest of more than 10 people. I was like, more than 10 people? What, what are you, you counting the officers too? And anyway, you see it on Facebook, you know, and we go back and forth. And at that moment, I'd never been arrested before a day in my life. And I had to draw a line like, I am not going to leave because I think we're in a moment where biblical Christianity is under attack far more than just, oh, you're protesting and you're not supposed to do this in the midst of COVID It wasn't that, that had nothing to do with it. It was, this guy's a conservative, this guy is a believer. This guy is standing against the agenda of abortion and therefore we're going to arrest him.

Jason Benham: So they arrested me.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah. And that case is still ongoing, right? It is still on. That's all you're gonna say about that?

Jason Benham: You gotta tell them real quick, briefly

David Benham: what happened in the jail cell. So I get, I get arrested and they cuff me and they Take me downtown. By the way, while I was getting cuffed, a mother was on our mobile ultrasound unit who chose life. And we got her plugged into our mentor network. So we're gonna be there with her. Prenatal visits, the whole 9 yards baby shower. It's amazing. So anyway, I'm downtown and I, they put me in, in the holding cell and I see a young African American man over there. And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go over there and minister to this guy. So he and I strike up a conversation. I start, he's 19, he's on drugs, you know, and I'm witnessing. 30 minutes later, the door opens and there's my dad, hands cuffed behind his back, like, what are you doing? He goes, well, I heard they arrested you. So I went down there and told him they should be making arrests, on pro life Christians. And they arrested me. So now we're talking. My dad and I are now talking. 30 minutes later, door opens up, my 20 year old son, hands cuffed behind his back.

Walker Wildmon: I'm like, what are you m doing?

David Benham: Totally.

Jason Benham: All the while I was sitting by the pool just enjoying.

David Benham: He wasn't doing anything.

Walker Wildmon: You were raising bail money, right?

David Benham: That's exactly what he was doing. He wasn't doing anything. So we, we sued the city. The city wants it dropped. And, they're basically all but begging for it to be dropped. But we're going after him. We're going to hit them right smack in the mouth. Because I care for my grandchildren and my great grandchildren and I think that these freedoms need to be fought for. So that's what we're doing.

Walker Wildmon: Jason, talk a little bit about the spiritual aspect that we have here. This is not just a battle between mayors and governors who want to arrest Christians and shut churches down. Ultimately, this is a spiritual battle.

Jason Benham: Oh man. It's light versus darkness. It's good versus evil. And specifically when you talk about the life issue, this has been the number one core issue since the dawn of mankind. I mean, being pro life today isn't just another issue. It is the key, critical issue. I mean, you just think about it when you're looking back in the Bible. Anytime God plans for deliverance, Satan counters with destruction. And then when Satan plans for destruction, God counters with deliverance. You look at the children of Israel. When they were enslaved in Egypt, they cried out for deliverer. And God sent him one. He sent to Moses. And what form did Moses come in? The form of a baby. Right at the exact Same time that Moses shows up. What was the plan that was hatched in Pharaoh's mind? Let's kill the babies.

Walker Wildmon: Yes.

Jason Benham: Right. a couple thousand years later, it's time for God to send the ultimate deliverer. Here's his plan for deliverance. And he sends his own son. In what form? A baby. What was the exact plan that was hatched in Herod's mind at the time of Jesus birth? Kill the babies. You see, this has been a spiritual battle all along. This is why we can't just sit back and go, you know what? I think I'm going to stand for one hour a year on Sanctity of Life Sunday, which is a great thing to do, but it requires more than that. But this is a spiritual battle, and we all are required to toe the line and take a stand.

Walker Wildmon: Abe, without the right to live and to be protected in your person and, and to thrive as a human, which we talked about when we're talking about life here, if you don't, if you can't protect that right, how can we expect the government to protect all the other rights that follow?

Abraham Hamilton III: The short answer is that we can't. it's remarkable that we even have a conversation about the legalization of slaughtering children in the womb. That if you even look to the preamble to the United States Constitution, a part of the purpose of the Constitution was to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity. How can you have posterity? If you allow the unsanctioned. I mean, you allow the unlimited slaughter of children, you can't have posterity. And we, you know, we try to do these word games, baby or fetus, which is remarkable to me because fetus is just a Latin word that means baby. So you're not saying anything else. And then when you trace it all the way back to Scripture, you think about when, you know, Elizabeth, it was visited by Mary, and the Bible says the baby leapt in her womb. The Greek word is, which is the exact same word that when Jesus is later on talking and the people are saying, nah, keep the kids away from him, and Jesus says, no, suffer the little children to come unto me. The Greek word there again is brephos. There's no distinction from God's economy between a child in the womb and a child outside of the womb. And so what we see happening in our society is the empowerment of the spiritual darkness that will allow the slaughter of children. And so you cannot tell me that you have a compassionate concern for the preservation of our country and the people in our nation. If you simultaneously support slaughtering the most, vulnerable, the most innocent and the most defenseless among us.

David Benham: Can I say one thing on that real quick? Because even just listening to you talk about that, as believers, as the Church of Jesus Christ, we're the pillar in support of the truth. Speaking these truths is so vital. And when we do this, we're shining the light, you know, because the problem is not the presence of darkness, the fact that abortion exists. The problem is the absence of light.

Abraham Hamilton III: Come on.

David Benham: Because light always overcomes the darkness. And we shine our light two ways. Matthew 5, 16. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works. See, I can't believe he actually finished it. And they may glorify your one thing for. But honestly, it's the good works of life in the church, because we want to make disciples. We want to help these abortion vulnerable mothers. They feel they have no other choice over, what, 87, 88% of them. Statistics say that if the father would take responsibility, that they wouldn't be getting that abortion. So we really have to engage with good works in terms of the family. American Family Association. Thank God for you guys. On the other hand, when we shine the light, John, chapter three. And darkness hates the light because it exposes that its deeds are evil. And so we see, see this evil agenda through Planned Parenthood and through really the radicalization of the Democratic Party. I mean, just, they hate when we shine that light. And so what we're doing in the church today, dim that light a little bit so that everybody can get along. Dim that light just a touch so I can get more Instagram followers or a bigger book deal or my image, my income and my influence are tied to people liking me and me being cool. So I spend more time accessorizing my outfit than getting into the word of God. That's where God, I believe, is getting the church of Jesus Christ. I'm sorry, I'm preaching right now. I felt like I wanted to share that after he said that.

 Christian should be uncomfortable with comfortable Christianity

Walker Wildmon: Jason, I think David hit on a good point there that we need to expound upon, and that is comfortable Christianity. You know, maybe at one time in America, there was comfortable Christianity, but we're at a point where you're either all in or you're not. And so talk a little bit about the difficulties Christians should expect when they're living out their faith in all aspects of life.

Jason Benham: You know, comfort always leads to cowardice. I mean, you just think about Peter, you know, here the Guy was, he's

David Benham: like, man, I'm never going to deny you to Jesus.

Jason Benham: And sure enough, you know, the enemy shows up, he reaches for the wrong weapon and Jesus has to show him who he really is apart from being filled with the Holy Spirit. And then Peter follows at a distance and finds himself warming himself by the fire. What is it about warming himself by the fire? I mean that's like, it's like it's cold outside. I got to get comfortable, right? So he's, he's warming himself by the fire. And comfort always leads to cowardice. It always will. So we have to get, we have to get comfortable with discomfort. David and I like to say that more is accomplished in the pain cave than the comfort zone. You didn't get as good looking as you are and as in shape as you are awesome trials without doing some

David Benham: push ups and some sit ups.

Jason Benham: And those things are hard, but know you strength comes through strain. And what we have to do is recognize as believers is that, you know, the Bible has a warning label on it, not a party invitation. Look, we're to be trained in boot camp, not a bounce house. Because warriors aren't trained in a bounce house. Christians today, I think are starting to discover that here on the earth we are the church militant, which means we have to have that fight mentality in the spirit. We can reach out with compassion to all people, but we've got to resist with boldness any idea that enslaves people. And we have to recognize it's a fight. And when you talk like that and when you talk like you were talking

David Benham: earlier, there are going to be a

Jason Benham: lot of people that aren't going to like us. But you got to get comfortable with that because that's where Peter was and that's where so many of the founding fathers were.

Abraham Hamilton III: Yeah, absolutely right. The scripture tells us that the Lord has ordained his bride to be a peculiar people. You know it, which is instantly countercultural because we live in this time of social media, you know, likes and follows and all of these things. But peculiarity is intrinsic to the call to be a Christ follower. You know, and then you, you have the text in First Peter, chapter two. To always be reason to give a. To always be ready to give a reason for the hope that you have any. Who would ask. Oftentimes people think we should be sitting around waiting for someone to ask, ask a question. But the reality is Peter is literally conveying that our lives should be lived in such a way to where it compels the question. Our lives are Lived to such a degree, to such a commitment to Christ, where it compels, Man, I noticed that you talk about this life issue. Why are you so concerned about this? You know, I notice, Walker, that you guys stand. But these. Why do you do that? Our lives, it's not that we're running around wanting to be, you know, weird just to be weird, or wanted to be opposite of everybody else, but our lives should be lived to such a degree where it compels the question, why are you not going along with the flow? Why are you not following along with the trend? And when that is presented to us, we are always ready to give the reason. But you notice the lifestyle precedes the ultimately apologetic encounter. The lifestyle is what compels the encounter. And unfortunately, many of our, brethren are living in the social media culture, not online, but living in real life, Living for likes and living for followers and living, you know, for Instagram filters and all these kinds, Kinds of things. When the reality is, man, this is a. This is a call to peculiarity. Yeah, it's high time we became not just comfortable, we thrive in that peculiarity.

Jason Benham: Everything that he says is better than what we say.

David Benham: I agree.

Jason Benham: And even in the way he says is so educated.

Walker Wildmon: So we're just going to dismiss you guys. That's right. We're. We need an audience here.

Family is the foundation or the launching pad for discipleship making

No, hey, one thing you talk about on your show on AFR on American Family Radio. And I think it's important to emphasize, you know, we can have these church, programs. You can have different discipleship groups, you can have Sunday school. All that's great. It plays an important role in the health of the body of Christ. But talk a little bit about the family, about God's design for the family, and how really that's like the foundation or the launching pad for discipleship making and really important m. Culture impact.

Abraham Hamilton III: Yeah. the creator of heaven and earth could have created however he chose to do so. But he did so in a specific way. It's recorded for us in the book of Genesis, where it's not only recording anthropological history, but it's also conveying theological truth. The first institution that God ever created was the family. The first command ever issued to mankind was issued within the context of family. Be fruitful, multiply replenish the earth. If you compare, that description in the Book of Genesis to the Great Commission, they're really parallel in the instruction. And what's often happened is many in the body of Christ, we've exported the responsibility of making disciples within our own families. To the experts, you know, the youth pastor do it, or the school to do it, or somebody else will do it. When the reality is the scripture says that the parents have the primary responsibility of making disciples of, their offspring. And the unfortunate truth is that one of, if not the most vital resource in the body of Christ, which is children born to Christian families. We have been, have oftentimes been shuttled to Caesar to be discipled. Yet we become aghast when we have children coming home as Romans, when the facts are. Ephesians 6 says, fathers, do not exasperate your children. Rather rear them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Nurture and admonition in the Greek is paideia, which means the instruction and training in all things concerning the mental, mentality, and the morals. Biblically speaking, there's no distinction between reading, writing, and arithmetic and spiritual development. The concept that they are bifurcated is literally a worldly concept. But when we have this notion to where we have allowed that separation to occur, and then we export the discipleship responsibility to the experts, what we fail to realize is that we are, you know, we're scoring points for the working against ourselves, unintentionally working against ourselves. Sure, because one of the most critical components in disciple making is time. Deuteronomy 6 lays it out. It's time. And unfortunately, we've allowed other things to encroach. I was talking to these guys earlier. It's easy to point our fingers externally to say, oh, the big bad wolf is coming. Oh, the big bad socialists are coming. But the reality is that, as you referred to earlier, darkness is not an affirmative force. It merely reoccupies the space that the light is vacated. So if we have a populace that's privy. Ah. Or given to be receptive to these notions, we have to ask ourselves the questions.

David Benham: Where have we been?

Abraham Hamilton III: Where have we been?

Walker Wildmon: Yeah, where's the light? David?

North Carolina passed a controversial transgender bathroom bill in February

another topic that ties in well with God's creation, with life is the topic of human sexuality. How did God design creation? How did he design Adam and Eve? How did he design all of us to where we can be obedient to his calling, his design? This started well, A more modern example of this assault on God's design for human sexuality really began in North Carolina when it comes to legislative stuff. House Bill 2, I think this is back in 2016ish. And north, Carolina decided it would be a good idea to allow. Well, no, the House bill too, was a defense. Going after Charlotte.

David Benham: That's Right.

Walker Wildmon: Tell us a little bit about that.

David Benham: The city council of Charlotte. Okay, so our mayor was elected, and she's, a Democrat and radical, regressive. I like your word they use.

Jason Benham: Let me just say this real quick. The mayor was elected, but in that particular election, only 8% of evangelical Christians showed up to vote. Wow.

David Benham: 92% sat at home.

Jason Benham: So then we shouldn't be surprised whenever the result.

David Benham: And the city council in the city of Charlotte was flipped to the radical regressives, and the mayor was put in by the Human Rights Campaign. And then the very first thing they did.

Jason Benham: Boom.

David Benham: She's in. In January, in February, they came up with a transgender bathroom bill. They want to open up all the bathrooms because transgender people are somehow under attack. Now, when asked, because we showed up at the meeting, when asked, what are the criminal activity? Like, what are. Do we see, court cases? Do we see, any of these abuses in the police department? show us where these are. And they didn't exist.

Walker Wildmon: Right.

David Benham: So they. I remember they ended the meeting and then came back with 200 cases that now of transgenders that were abused. And you read them, and they were completely made up, like somebody. One of them was. I was. Somebody called me a guy driving, you know, riding by on a bike when I identify as a woman. Anyway, it was all kinds of nonsense. So they're making this law, and by the way, good law is to be based on an objective standard for people's safety, not a subjective standard for someone's comfort. So what they were doing is removing the objectivity of law, making it subjective, based on feelings for comfort, not for safety. And so what they did, and they cloak it in the words of safety. So they passed this transgender bathroom bill in Charlotte, in Charlotte, city of Charlotte. And then the North Carolina state legislature, as a response to that, enacted House Bill 2, which was basically biological. Sex is defined as male or female at birth. What was your plumbing at birth? Period.

Jason Benham: Right.

David Benham: I don't take all of traffic laws and redefine them because some people are colorblind. Red means stop. Green means go. That's the law. We make exceptions for the colorblind people, but you have to learn how to go with it. You don't ruin all of traffic and create chaos because some people are colorblind. So with that same reasoning was House bill, too. And then, of course, all the minions of hell came out. You know, this is a real spiritual battle. Bruce Springsteen took his concert away. I mean, dudes that I love, Russell Wilson was supposed to get married North Carolina said, I ain't gonna do it. NBA then pulls out of the All Star Game.

Walker Wildmon: we went after PayPal.

David Benham: All this PayPal, it's like, what happened?

Jason Benham: They wanted to remove their sex segregated sports from, a state that was

David Benham: going to have sex segregated bathrooms. So it's like, wait, we're going to have the NCAA men's basketball tournament? But you say men go to the men's room and women go to the women's room, and we're taking our men's tournament out of your state. It was nonsense. So. But what. What was happening, honestly, is it's just total and complete confusion and chaos, which only comes from Satan. We understand this. It comes from the devil.

Walker Wildmon: And.

David Benham: And they got. Because politics is downstream from culture. They got big business, they got athletes, they got entertainers to do the bidding and to do the speaking for this radical revolution. Well, Jason and I are looking at Christians. I'm looking at the Christian celebrities. I'm looking at these Christian musicians that have millions of followers. I'm looking at all of them, even some of these pastors. I'm like, where are you? Speak, for heaven's sakes. And we didn't see anyone speaking. So he and I spoke up. And then, of course, you know, we had already been fired by hgtv, so what else are we gonna lose? We'll lose some more business. So we spoke up, and they came at us. I mean, we were headline, Charlotte observer hates us.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah.

David Benham: And they were just drilling us over and over. And then in the middle of all this, they began Drag Queen Story Hour. And in Charlotte, they had this big old 6364 dude dressed up as a demon woman. I kid you not, Horns. I put it on our Twitter.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah, we covered that story.

David Benham: And he comes in. I'm not supposed to say he.

Kim Weeks says transgenderism moves from natural to unnatural sin

I'm supposed to say she comes in and reads to about 60 kids. And Jason and I were like, this is wrong. This is immoral. What is he doing on Friday night before he came on Saturday morning? You know where he was? He was at Club Scorpio, dancing on a pole. That's what he was doing. And people are like, I can't believe you're talking like this. I'm like, well, we got to speak the truth. You're using our kids as social experiments. I'm getting a little passionate here. Well, anyway, so then the Charlotte observer runs a story after the Drag Queen Story Hour. And Jason and I are in the article, they said, not even though bigoted transphobenham Brothers could stop Transgender Story Hour. And when I read that, it was one of the first times I've actually felt honored. Thank God I'm in that article because

Walker Wildmon: you were speaking up.

David Benham: Thank God I'm in that article now. I hadn't always got it right. I've been a coward on many occasions.

Jason Benham: There were plenty of times David felt honored when people said, you look just like your brother.

David Benham: That's true. Back to this smart Alec. But back to this. I was like, thank God, you know, like, if I'm standing before Jesus one day and he says, what have you done for the least of these, well, Lord, in Jesus name, for the unborn and for these children that are being plugged into our social experiments. We were a voice. You know, they made fun of us, but we were a voice. And so, it's like, that's one

Jason Benham: of the few ways that we can

David Benham: do our best to shine the light.

Walker Wildmon: Jason, this. You had obergefell In 2015, the Supreme Court opinion that attempted to legalize homosexual, quote, marriage. and many. I know many Christians who thought that was it. This discussion is over. That's side one. And then we're gonna move on. Little did we know, a few months later, here comes North Carolina, here comes the bathroom bill. Here comes transgenderism. Here comes Drag Queen Story Hour. It's never enough. And that's what we've been trying to warn Christians in America is that they're not just trying to get one thing. They're going all the way. The full destruction of God's design for human sexuality.

Jason Benham: And you look, and we find ourselves in the exact same spot where Paul was when he was writing the book of Roman. And in Romans 1, you know, we find the famous verse, I am not ashamed of the Gospel, you know? And before that, one of the reasons why he had to say that was because he laced into what was going on there in Rome and in Corinth and some other places. And we see the five step, path to sin and destruction that was taking place where they denied truth, then they had a darkened heart, then they displaced God. And just follow these next two, because this is where we find ourselves now, why we continue to see ourselves on a slippery slope, and why we need to continue to be the light. When you've displaced God, the only thing that is left are degrading passions. That's where natural sin turns to unnatural. Like a natural sin being angry enough with somebody to want to kill them. An unnatural sin where a mom wants to kill her own baby. So you move from a natural sin to an unnatural sin. Like a natural sin to commit adultery. Unnatural sin. To want to do that with someone of the same sex. So it moves from natural to unnatural. That's a degrading passion. But then, if we don't handle degrading passions right, it ultimately leads to a depraved mind. And that's the mind that cannot distinguish between good and evil, where you literally look and you can't tell one from the other. And not only that, but then you celebrate. Those partake of, eat.

David Benham: And then there's one more step it goes. So the radical agenda, it goes to acceptance. All we want acceptance. And then it goes, no, we want appreciation. And then from appreciation, no, we want celebration. And then we're now shifting to no, we want participation. You're gonna participate in this, or else you're gonna be out. Yeah, that's where we are.

Jason Benham: And if you don't participate, it's criminal. It's criminalization.

Walker Wildmon: Yes. You know, which we saw with Kim Davis in Kentucky.

Dr. Richard Land: Totally.

Walker Wildmon: Weeks after the 2015 decision with the Burger Fell, Abe. We talked about being salt and light for believers, and that's the top priority. Discipleship, making, knowing God's word. Apologetics is top priority.

Sometimes institutions follow culture or even sometimes try to shape culture

But society is often shaped by laws, good and bad. We've talked about that. Talk, a little bit about how the role of. You have the legislative branch and the judicial branch, which is taking on too much power. But talk a little bit about how sometimes those, institutions follow culture or even sometimes try to shape culture.

Abraham Hamilton III: Yeah. you know, people often say, well, you know, why do you care about law? Because you can't legislate morality when that, honestly, is a misnomer. All law is a fundamental determination of right versus wrong. You know, and again, you see principles laid out in scripture. You know, the apostle Paul preaching salvation by grace through faith, even preaching it to a gentile audience. He's asked, well, then, what's the benefit of the law? And Paul communicates that the law is how I knew when I traversed God's standard. And Paul even writes in Galatians 3 that the law was actually the schoolmaster, the trainer of the heart and mind, the trainer of the conscience, in anticipation of Christ in that particular context. And we actually have seen the same thing in our country. And I say all the time that, changes in law, changes in. Do result in the changes in the hearts and minds of the people who are subject to that particular law over time. See, it's distinct from a cataclysmic encounter with Jesus Christ, because that's often immediate. But changes in law over time end up impacting you. A couple brief examples. The Loving vs. Virginia case, 1967. I know it's a Supreme Court case, but the way that with the effectlessness of our Congress, that doesn't hold the judiciary accountable. prior to Loving versus Virginia, you had states in the United States of America that prohibited people from being married based on skin color differences. After Loving vs. Virginia was decided, you see that changed. And now, even though I know there are a couple crazy people, by and large, you won't find anybody will come out publicly and profess that people shouldn't be married based on different skin colors.

Stephen McDowell: Right.

Abraham Hamilton III: same thing happened in 1973. January 22nd, the day that shall forever live in infamy. Roe versus Wade. Prior to Roe versus Wade, you would rarely have people to be willing to discuss killing a child and a woman in public, let alone mount m a party platform, stage and shout for the rights for it. following the Roe vs. Wade decision, you have people literally right now debating whether or not taxpayers should directly fund the killing of children. Right now, that's happening. changes in the understanding of the law in 1973 resulted in the changes in the heart and the minds of the people governed by it.

Walker Wildmon: Right.

Abraham Hamilton III: We have another example. the Obergefell decision is another example. You know, prior to obergefell, there were 31 states that amended their state constitutions or passed legislation to define marriage as the exclusive, lifelong union of one man and one woman.

Walker Wildmon: Until the Supreme Court.

Abraham Hamilton III: The Supreme Court steps in in 2015, we're not even discussing that anymore. We're talking about transgenderism. Changes in the law resulted in the changes in the hearts and the minds of the people governed by that law. And now, leading up to today, we had just a couple months ago, in the Bostic opinion, Justice Gorsuch ruled in the employment context. But I've argued before that the result of the ruling is going to be extended beyond the employment context.

David Benham: Oh, it absolutely will.

Abraham Hamilton III: That, you cannot differentiate between a man and a woman within the employment context. That is considered invidious discrimination. and I am telling you that that will have downline implications for our country. So changes in the law does result in the change, does result in changes in the hearts and the minds of the people who are submitted to it. You know, because the way we understand and apply Supreme Court precedent, people understand it as the exclusive, ultimate law of the land. It will result in the changes in the hearts and minds of the people that are governed by it.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah. This is why it's so important to be involved in every aspect of society, whether it be business owners, whether it be in the legal community, judges, corporate leaders, church leaders. I mean Christians need to be salt and light everywhere, so that we can continue to shape and change and transform culture. David, Jason, Abe. Thanks guys.

Dr. Richard Land: Thank you man, that was awesome.

Walker Wildmon: Alright, you've been watching AFA at Home. We'll be back in a few minutes.

AFA at Home will discuss socialism, Marxism, and other topics

Welcome back to AFA at Home. Glad m that you're joining us. this evening, last few segments we've had various guests on, talked about various topics. But we're going to wrap up this segment and wrap up really the whole show talking about socialism, Marxism, and really how it takes a society back and takes it and makes it regress instead of progress. So we'll talk about that. on the panel we have returning Dr. Richard Land, President of Southern Evangelical Seminary and also editor of the Christian Post. We have Star Parker joining us again from the center now the Urban center for Cultural Urban and Renewal and education. Yeah. And then, Tim Barton. I'm not even looking at my paper, so Tim Barton, president of Wall Builders based in Texas. Yes, Glad to have you. Tim, good to be with you.

Tim Ferriss: There's a lot of overlap between socialism and communism

to start the segment, I think it's important to you hear the term socialism, Marxism, communism, and not everyone knows really what's going on, what it is, what the definitions are. So I think it's important to really dissect these definitions, these terms so that we know what we're talking about when we use them. Tim, give us a little backgrounder of how socialism, communism, Marxism, how all these play and complement each other and not a good lie.

Stephen McDowell: Sure, there's a lot of overlap and today a lot of the conversation is that no, really these are different things because some people perceive one maybe as negative, but socialism, that's really a friendly thing, right. We're just sharing and it's equality and none of us are against sharing inequality. And this is one of the appeals to a lot of Christians is that as Christians we're supposed to love each other, we're supposed to share. But that's really kind of a breakdown misnomer of what socialism is. Socialism is the government controlling the means of production, government controlling private property, government controlling individuals. And so at this point you're removing individual responsibility, you're removing the freedom of choice. And a lot of people would say well that's more of communism. And we forget that really there's a lot of overlap between socialism and communism. Vladimir Lenin, who back In Russia, early 1900s, he says, well, the goal of socialism is communism, that this is just a step in the right direction. Karl Marx, right, the guy that we look to for Marxism, Karl Marx wrote about six steps getting to communism. Step number five was socialism. So this is just leading you in that direction. And the reason it eventually ends up being with guns is because in socialism, you don't have the same levels of voluntary participation that you need. And so then you have to employ the guns to make people do what you want them to do. The idea of people sharing or even a Christian version of socialism, I see where some people draw that conclusion. When you look at, for example, the Book of Acts, it says that all the believers came together, they had a common lot, a common purse, and people were giving so they could share with need. As Christians, we should be committed to helping people in need.

Walker Wildmon: We should want to help people own our own volition.

Stephen McDowell: Well, that's where I'm going, right? We should want to help people that, that are in need, that are less fortunate. With that being said, everybody was able to give what they wanted to contribute at their own pace. Socialism in reality has never worked across any kind of level of global industry. And even if you look in early America, go back to the pilgrims, there would not be a more prime example for people that might have made this work. The pilgrims, the Puritan pilgrims, were people who loved God, they served God, they loved each other, they knew the Bible. And when they got to America, they tried a form of socialism. They tried to make it work. And Governor Bradford, you can read in his journal, he says, we thought we were wiser than God because they were trying to do something that God had not instructed. This is the way you're supposed to do it. You should have individual responsibility and individual work. But what they discovered is people begin faking sickness and injury because when everybody gets to enjoy the same amount, no matter who does what level of labor, it actually incentivizes people to be more lazy. And so your productivity level comes down. And Governor Bradford said, we didn't have the food, we didn't have the shelter, we didn't have the fuel, we didn't have the homes, we didn't have anything we needed. And so they end up. That first year, half of them died. The system did not work. Governor Bradford, after only a year or two, they changed the system and say we should go to an individual responsibility, to a free market system. And when they did, within only a Couple years, Plymouth became the most productive colony in the entire English system. Per capita individual free market capitalism is very, very successful. But in America, one of the appeals now is that as Christians, we should support socialism because that's godly. That's sharing. No, no, God encourages us as individuals to share. It never encourages the government to come and take over people's homes, take over their finances, take over their businesses. And that's really what socialism does. That's not a godly way to do it.

Star says socialism removes individual liberty, but it also reduces quality of life

Walker Wildmon: Yeah, Star, talk a little bit about this. Is not the primary reason that socialism and Marxism and communism are bad is because it removes individual liberty, but it also reduces quality of life. Tim hinted at this a little bit. But as Americans and as Christians, we want the best quality of life for the most people. And so this is more, this is equally about quality of life as it is about individual liberty.

Star Parker: It is so, biggest problem with the welfare state, which is socialism. We already have it in our country. We've done it for the last 50 years with our poor. So we don't have to go to Venezuela, we don't have to go to Cuba to see what happens with socialism. We can go to Compton, we can go to Camden, we can go to any and every inner city in our country and see what happens when government controls distribution and production. As you're saying, it takes away the uniqueness of all man, and all individuals. You know, when you think about one size fits all, as ladies know that it really doesn't. A size 2 is not a 22 and it's not going to fit. And this one size fits all attempt to alleviate pain is inconsistent with scripture. Two things you have against you when you try to build out a socialistic system. One, you have scriptural references that tell us don't covet. It's rooted in covetousness. Somebody has something somebody else doesn't have. So we hire politicians to take it from them. But you also steal from that unique individual in that God distributed talent. He gave. Well, we have one, scripture that tells us he gave one man five. He gave another two. He gave another one. And then he wanted them to use their uniqueness to make better, to create in his image. So when you think about socialism, you have to think about government taking all and thinking that then they can hand it out. And Richard, you said earlier you've actually lived in a socialist country, so to see it doesn't work work really well. But Marxism, I think, is much more dangerous in that it steals from the individual. It's one thing for government to say we're going to take over distribution and, production so that we can kind of figure out who gets what. But when you take away the uniqueness that Marxism does, to pretend that we are all exactly the same, it is just not true. We are not the same. We have our experiences, we have our environments. There are many contributing factors to what's broken down in our society today. And there is really only one answer to fix it. And that is a unique relationship with the Lord, because once you do that, then he starts sorting through the other details. But I agree with the both of you that when you talk about charity, it belongs to the church individually. When Acts, brought in one purse, it was unique individuals saying, here's what I have. And we see many opportunities for that inscription, including the lady with her one little widow's mite.

Walker Wildmon: Amen. M. Dr. Lamb.

Dr. Richard Land: Well, first of all, the experiment in the Book of Acts didn't work. And so finally they said, if you don't work, you don't eat, because they were having the same problem. I did live in a socialist country for three years. I lived in late socialist Britain between 72 and 75, and it was awful. Nothing worked. England is an island of coal. and the socialist government came in in 1945. By 1947, they were having to import coal. And the reason is the miners got paid the same, no matter how much or how little coal they dug. Well, they dug less and less coal every year. the fundamental reason that socialism, Marxism, communism don't work is that they are fundamentally opposite to what the Bible says about human beings. Human beings are born with a nature and an environment inclined towards sin. We're sinners, and we're not going to work very hard and use our abilities unless, we get to keep a significant portion of that which we make. And, when you. Socialism basically says man is either neutral or good and he will work according to his ability and receive according to his need. That's simply not true. It's never happened. And you would think that just empirically, the last half of the 20th century would have put the death knell on communism and socialism. Because once China adopted a capitalist economic system, they still have a communist political system, but they have an economic system that is capitalist. And India abandoned socialism and went capitalist. They've eliminated more poverty in two generations than they would have in a hundred generations under socialism. And the emerging countries that have adopted capitalism have grown and their people prosper. The ones who have adopted socialism have gone right down the tubes. Look at Venezuela. In 1955, Venezuela had the highest per capita income of the world. They had a higher per capita income than we had in the United States. Now it's a desperately poor country where babies and children are dying of malnutrition because of communism. it just doesn't work. It simply doesn't work. And, you know, it's. Churchill once said, if you're not a Liberal when you're 20, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative when you're 40, you have no head. So our young people, they don't. First of all, I find most young people are stump ignorant when it comes to history. They don't know anything about history because they're not taught in school. And secondly, it sounds good, but then when you become a parent, you become a father or a mother, and you start dealing with the real world. You understand? I had a friend of mine who's.

Star Parker: But that's where it falls apart, though, because you talk about our youth. Why 40? Because marriage has collapsed. They're not getting married. When you look at the marital, numbers in the 60s and 70s, you had 70% of the adults married. Today that number is under 50%. So that's one of the reasons you start seeing those youth who are not, by the time they're 40, adopting principles that are more stable.

Dr. Richard Land: I had a friend, whose daughter went off to college, and she had a good friend that went with her. He picks her up at the airport after the first semester. And he said, how are things going? Well, fine, you know. You made all A's? Yes. What about Kathi? Well, Kathi did a lot of parties. She only made Cs. And she had told her father she was now a Democrat.

Everything we're seeing, from abolish the police to, um, universal basic income

And he said, well, I think you ought to give half your grades to Kathi. And he said, well, that wouldn't be fair. He said, welcome back to the Republican Party.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah. And the point you made earlier, Dr. Lan, about human nature is bent towards sin and selfishness. We see that clearly in scripture. Tim, the common theme that we're seeing here amongst really just mainly one political party, even though neither party is perfect, but one is way off bounds with reality. But everything we're seeing, from abolish the police to, universal basic income, all these socialist ideas are based on this falsehood that all men are good. And that if you abolish the police, everyone's gonna behave. Nobody's gonna get shot, nobody's gonna get robbed. But reality tells us that that's. It's the exact opposite.

Stephen McDowell: It absolutely does. It's one of the things that one of the challenges looking at cultures, not only do we have a generation that doesn't know history, we have Christians who don't know the Bible. And so we're proposing solutions that the Bible would tell us don't work. Even the idea of socialism that so many Christians are now supporting. If you look at the institutions that God creates in scripture, you have the family, you have the church, and you have government. If you go throughout all of scripture and every time God talks about the poor to give us directives of what we should do, there's more than 200 references to the poor in the Bible. But if you say, okay, so when God talks about the poor, was this command given to government or to the church or to the family? What you will discover is there's really only two things God ever told government about the poor was don't show favoritism m against them because they're poor and give them justice in the courts. That's all government's supposed to do. So where should charity come from? Well, it arguably should come from the family, from the church, from the individual is what Scripture teaches us. And here's where it's even fascinating to me is looking at, ah, the fact that we would argue from our position that the government's really pretty incompetent in many areas doesn't do a very good job if you look at what they do when it comes to the welfare state. 70% of every dollar that is raised in the welfare state does not reach the intended target. It is spent on the bureaucracy, administration, or red tape before it even gets to the intended target. Which means only 30 cents out of every dollar that is taken in taxes for welfare actually goes to welfare. And this is where I always want to stop and ask people. Now wait a second. If, let's say that $100 million the government has in spending in this one area and they only, only 30 million of that 100 million goes, what if $100 million was given to your church and said we want you to use it for the poor? How much of that $100 million would go to the poor?

Dr. Richard Land: Unfortunately.

Star Parker: Unfortunately, it's nothing near that. In fact, you know what we spend annually? $900 billion right in the welfare state. When you look at the 13 different departments in D.C. that handle what some would call supposed charity. 900 billion. We spent 24 trillion. Since the war on Poverty started, we have not moved the poverty needle at all. It's still right about 25% of the population. But what we did move was marriage. And so now you have in particular an African American community in the 60s where 70% of the husbands were in the homes with their wives raising their children to today, 75% of our children are born out of marriage. So in our intersection cities now we are seeing all this energy of these 12, 13, 14 year old young boys who do not have a dad to channel it towards sports or studies. So it's spilling into the streets. And that's one of the crises that is confronting us. And the only way we're going to solve it is to dismantle that wealth as well.

Dr. Richard Land: And the other thing too is that capitalism we know from history, from observation in history, capitalism produces wealth and then you can decide how you're going to distribute the wealth. Socialism doesn't produce wealth. All socialism does is continue to argue over how you're going to more equitably divide a never growing pie. Capitalism grows pies, which you can then decide how to, you know, we have the highest standard of living of any common folk in the world in America. And the reason is because we've had capitalism now, we've had government regulation to keep people like Standard Oil from making monopolies and we've had labor unions to protect, workers. But we have allowed people the freedom to, go out and use their creativity. And it benefits everybody, it creates more wealth. And to me it's amazing how people just insist on believing this myth. And I think it has to do with human hubris. I think human beings want to believe that they're good. They want to believe that they're perfect, able. And if they have a problem, it's not their fault, it's their environment's fault. You know, now I'm willing, I acknowledge that your environment impacts you. It does. I mean, you know, if you're raised without a father, it impacts you. If you're raised in poverty, it impacts you. But Christianity tells us ultimately every individual is responsible for their own conduct.

Star Parker: Yeah, you know, it's interesting, the COO of our organization, Urban Cure, Dr. William Allen, is the one that uncovered the rules of civility that George Washington had written. and now, you know, it's in print and others have it in print and we're distributing now through our churches to, our market. But what's interesting in him penning those rules is his story. You talk about someone without a dad. He pinned those. He did not have a dad. And his dad, he needed to find himself. And so for People to pretend that you can't take a life of discipline and turn it into something in this country, they're lying about the country. And when you think about what made America work, you've mentioned a couple of times the capitalism. Barry Asmus did a book, the Poverty of Nations. We've seen a lot, heard a lot about the wealth of Nations. And when he did this book, he had a co author, but I don't know him personally, so I never remember his name. But what they discovered in going around the world, what is America? It's not like de Tocqueville did and said, why is this so vibrant? Where he found the expression of churches, but they looked at capitalism. But even in countries where you don't couple capitalism with Christianity and a constitution, those three things are why America's free. And that's what we have to preserve, that's what we have to hold on to. Because even as you're talking about the different elements of capitalism that are in the communist country of China right now, it's brutal. When you have to have the hand of the state come in and take everything you own, you still don't own your own. And that's why poverty is in excess there. And it's very cruel to the Muslims.

Dr. Richard Land: And you have no privacy.

Star Parker: You have no privacy whatsoever.

Dr. Richard Land: They have made Orwell come true. What they're doing in China with their technology, in terms of spying on people in their homes, I mean, it is Orwell come true.

Star Parker: And people don't think that that's what was happening during COVID They still don't believe that. If you have that one machine now that has your whole life in it, and they're putting in mechanisms so that they can discover every place that you're going. They're forcing people to say, we're going to track you based on some virus that you might get. Even though we know that we're likely not going to get, we have to be very, very suspicious of this transition in our society that's being forced on us by, movements like Black Lives Matter and Atifa, because they are after those three Cs. They are really going to try to destroy the capitalist to Christianity in our Constitution.

Tim Land: Many people are bashing America and praising China

Walker Wildmon: Tim, I want you to talk a little bit about China. We mentioned it here, but what you have right now in America is you have many American corporations that are thriving under a free market system and getting very wealthy off of it, which is great for them. but you have, and then you have a lot of sports teams which make millions and millions. It's a billion dollar market on people watching them throw baseball and dunk and they're using their talents and that's great, I like sports. But then a lot of those same people are bashing America and praising China.

Stephen McDowell: Right?

Walker Wildmon: That is, that is squashing freedoms. Left, Right.

Stephen McDowell: So right now in China, slavery is legal. And we know there are more than a million and a half people that are in legal slavery in China. we know that when what they just did, taking over Hong Kong, overthrowing, right, a free nation, so to speak, which was part of what the original agreement was many, many years ago. We know they are a very abusive nation. And even Dr. Land, to your point, the fact that communism, is still their political system, but they have a capitalist system economically, it's crazy. When you're in a system economically where you are an economic slave and all of what you make goes to the government, when they say, hey, we'll let you keep 50% of it, that's still an exorbitant amount the government is keeping. But now when you're incentivized that you get a reward for your labor. China still has a very abusive, even economic government, but they're at least getting a little bit of reward, which is encouraging them to work harder, which is why their productivity is rising so much. But China is a very, very corrupt nation. And so the, our country did that during slavery.

Star Parker: They would pay the slave, and then the slave actually felt a little bit more free and privileged because they get a little bit of money to maybe go somewhere else. But at the end of the day, they didn't own themselves, they didn't own their own time. And that's the difference between communism, and freedom is that you own your time. And, then that's where we get to decide. But to your point, I think that, man, it is hubris. We pretend that we should be free enough to not have to be responsible for our own time. We allow government to make decisions for us. We even allow our boss to make decisions for us. That you have to put in a time clock just to show up, you know. So I think that everything is being realigned and I think that it could get a whole lot darker, before it gets lighter. And I think that judgment begins with the body of Christ. So it's going to get darker for us. That baby boom generation that got very comfortable as couch Christians is in the hot seat right now.

Part of the goal of Marxism is to destroy the existing system

Stephen McDowell: And this is where also to me, Marxism becomes a very big factor in this country because you Were mentioning even sports teams that are supporting China. And they're doing this as they oppose America. Part of the goal of Marxism is you want to destroy the existing system. And this is very much what we're seeing in America, we're seeing in educational institutions, is that America is fundamentally bad. And the reason it becomes self evident, because you can't replace the Constitution. If there were good people who gave us a constitution, if this is a good document, if what we have in America is good, then you don't change it. So you have to show that everything was bad, everything is evil.

Walker Wildmon: And that's why, which is the rewriting of the history.

Stephen McDowell: That's exactly what we're seeing. And that's why I'm saying that too.

Dr. Richard Land: You have to destroy, you have to take away the legitimacy of the previous system. That's what they did with communism in Russia, that's what they did, in China. you have to destroy. Because China had a very ancient civilization and they were very proud of it. They had to completely take away people's confidence in it. It was wicked and evil. And you know, the idea that America was founded in 1619 when the first slaves appeared on the North American continent, the Puritans didn't even come until the next year. And if we have a formative influence on America, it's the Puritans, the city on a hill. slavery has always been, Slavery and race have always been the serpent in the American Garden of Eden. Native Americans.

Star Parker: But we were born again. And I think with that civil war we were born again. We get born again and start afresh when we're born again in our personal lives and to connect with the Lord. But we were born again as a nation. In fact, if you read through the Gettysburg Address at Lincoln, he said we were a new nation. And for people to keep insisting we're not and forcing our youth to buy this idea. The damage that we've seen over the last 50 years and the collapse in our urban communities, in particular in our black community, is now rapidly in our bigger community, in a majority community. We're looking at Adiwetlaquin birth rates that were 30, that were 3% of 60s amongst whites that are now at 30%. And these are the kids that are in these streets. They have no hope, they have no future because they have no family and they've disconnected from the religion.

Dr. Richard Land: The black unemployment rate in 1960 was 5%.

Star Parker: yes, that's exactly right, 5%.

Dr. Richard Land: But what we did with the best of intentions, what we did with the Great Society and with the welfare state.

Star Parker: The best of intentions we're going to fight. Now we're going to argue over whether those intentions were true.

Dr. Richard Land: Most Americans that were voting for it

Star Parker: because they were lazy, they didn't want to give it up themselves. Let's redistribute, because then that way I don't have to do much.

Dr. Richard Land: We made a single woman with children a viable economic unit. And the oldest lesson of public policy, you can take this to the bank. That which you tax, you will get less of. That which you subsidize, you will get more of. We subsidized illegitimacy starting in the 1960s, and we've gotten a, bumper back.

Star Parker: Well, we should have never bought into it. God told us what to do. He said, bring it into the stores. If we tithe and we talented and we gave up our time, we wouldn't have this welfare state. And the problem with it, I know, because they gave it over. I don't agree with even the beginning. Oh, it was good intentions. No, it wasn't. It was wrong, and we knew it was wrong. And people wanted to do it anyway because they were too lazy to get involved in the lives of those that needed the most themselves and start.

Stephen McDowell: Let me point out too, I think it's a really good point that good intentions are not always God intentions. Right? You think about when Jesus is taking the disciples and he's making his last journey into Jerusalem. He tells them, I'm about to go and lay down my life, be crucified. And Peter says, lord forbid it, may it never be. And he said, get behind me, Satan, because you're thinking from a human perspective and not from God. And it's very possible in a good heart to think you're doing something good. And that's not godly at all.

Walker Wildmon: It's deception.

Stephen McDowell: A good heart is not godly.

Star Parker: I want to meet somebody that was thinking that they were doing something good because I haven't met them yet. Well, not during the engineering of the welfare state. I don't see it.

Dr. Richard Land: Maybe not the engineers, but the people who voted in. They said, these people are. We need to help those who are less fortunate.

Stephen McDowell: But this is where you have Christians right now. But why would Christians support socialism?

Dr. Richard Land: I was there.

Star Parker: You were girl, I might not.

Dr. Richard Land: I was there.

Walker Wildmon: This is the story.

70% of Americans don't have a biblical worldview, according to poll

This is the story of bad policy, though, right? The story of bad policy is the politicians in Washington. I'm talking about America here. They convince the populace that their bad idea is actually a Good idea, right?

Stephen McDowell: That's right.

Walker Wildmon: And even though they know it's a horrible idea.

Star Parker: Well, it's the same thing we're dealing with and we're talking about right now. They have convinced our children that these are good ideas through the assessables we call schools, then the universities. But when is it that a Christian is going to say, wait a minute, the scripture says the train of my child. Why did I turn them over to the state in the first place? It is not, it is not a secret that, that Horace Mann and the rest of them that engineered this whole we're going to get all the kids in one classroom idea weren't Marxists themselves. This is not what God intended. And so until we back up and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, what said the scripture? You have two ways of reading the Bible. You read the Bible and you say, God is true, we're the liar. Or you read the Bible and say, oh, but that was for that time, and maybe it's not for today. And when you read it like that, you buy into ideas like the social media.

Stephen McDowell: But that's also by the assumption that people are reading the Bible.

David Benham: Right.

Stephen McDowell: And I think we would argue the biggest problem in American culture is that people don't know the Bible, they don't live according to the Bible. And this is why we see even problems inside the churches, because even pastors

David Benham: aren't always doing well.

Dr. Richard Land: You saw, you saw the, the survey done by, Barna. How many pastors had a biblical worldview? Pastors.

Stephen McDowell: Right.

Dr. Richard Land: Half of Protestant pastors had a biblical worldview. Half. And the highest was Baptist at 70%, which makes me really depressed that 30% didn't. And the lowest was Methodist at 20%. But only half of the pastors. With shepherds like that, who needs wolves?

Stephen McDowell: Right? And that also would assume that the pastors who have a biblical worldview are communicating that from the pulpit. Because we also know from studies is that even the ones who think biblically don't always speak biblically.

Walker Wildmon: They may fill out the survey.

David Benham: Right?

Dr. Richard Land: That's right.

Stephen McDowell: That's right.

Walker Wildmon: But are they carrying it out or

Star Parker: is the word worldview subjective? It depends on how they interpret it, too, because I'm surprised that half would even say that they, have a biblical worldview. When you look at the state of the church today, I mean, where are the people that are getting up in Nevada to say, what do you mean, we're not going to church? If 100,000 people got up and went to church, I bet they won't Arrest them all. Where's the tension?

Walker Wildmon: I think what you're seeing here is people might know the right answers, 50% might know on paper, here's my biblical worldview. And they might say, I believe that. But taking that and putting it into action, then it begins to dwindle. And we talked about it earlier, in an earlier segment about how the church, we talked about another Barna study along similar lines. Talked about how many just self described Christians or evangelicals actually had a biblical worldview. And I think one of the main problems that we're seeing that's leading to this limited number of people with a biblical worldview is because they're afraid of the repercussions that they're going to face in society, amongst their families and their friends if they hold true to scripture. Because we're living in the day of cancel culture, of getting shouted down, of getting fired from your job, because you don't believe, what the culture says. So when you start putting, when the heat, when the fire gets hot, people start backing out, right?

Stephen McDowell: And right now we see from polling that 70% of Americans don't even want to express what they believe on social media, at work, whatever else, because they're afraid of the repercussions they might get. And so right now with 70% of

Star Parker: catacombs, this is sad to me, right? You know, this woman, Emily Gow, she is an attorney, like she's an international attorney, that does, religious liberty. And she did it all around the world for Coptics, for China, for those that are really, really in hard situations. And she returned to the country and now she's working as a fellowship over at the Heritage foundation in Washington D.C. and so she's asked often, she said, why would you come back? This, this is what people want to know. Why would you come back to America? We're not under that type of persecution. This is your specialty. She said, well, actually we are. She said, because she came back to this country to practice law, right after homosexual marriage became a national law. And she said, because there are four stages you go through before you get put to death, and America in two years moved into the third stage, to your point that we, if we get to the place that we won't speak to the truth in love, and sometimes love is really hard, then we're going to deserve the persecution that we're going into. Because if we're afraid just because someone may call us a name, you know, I hear people all the time, well, even In Washington. I work in Washington. Well, they're going to call me a racist. I'm like, would you rather be called a coward? I mean, come on now, let's be at least a little, you know, more, have more backbone about what name they could call. But when you're about talking, talking about Coptic versus someone may call me a name on the Internet, I'm really looking for the body of Christ to go through a real, real hard next couple of years so that we will come up much brighter.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah. Dr. Lamb, when you look in scripture, you see, especially the early church, you see Paul and others, they went through difficulty left and right. It was not an easy life. And so I think the church needs to understand that an obedient life to God's word is not the easy route.

Dr. Richard Land: All who will live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer, said Paul. So if we're not suffering somewhere for our witness to Jesus, then our witness to Jesus isn't what it ought to be.

Star Parker: We think that to lose our car, you know, we go through an economic hard time, oh, I have to move out of my 3,000 square foot house. I mean, my goodness. I think that judgment is about us. And because we've gone very, very far after eight years of Barack Obama, I think that a lot of people that were in that, you know, the frog and the kettle, who now, they thought they were just a hot tub and were just kind of having fun, realize that this is, we're in a war. And we've been in this war a long time. And so I thank God that he turned up the heat so that we would jump up out of there. And I thank God that people elected Donald Trump because I think that we were at that critical crossroads similar to the 1850s. We couldn't go on anymore and we needed a narcissistic throw the brick up against the wall. We needed a pharaoh. Joseph did well under Pharaoh. Pharaoh. I don't think he changed, but I know that Joseph fared well and so did his people.

Tim Ferriss: If Donald Trump is not reelected, America will be fundamentally different

Dr. Richard Land: I think that, the single most perspicacious comment I heard about the 2016 election came from Brit Hume. And it was the day of the inauguration, as Barack Obama's helicopter was getting ready to lift off. Brit Hume said there's going to be a lot written about the legacy, and said about the legacy or, what's the legacy of Barack Obama? He said it really can be summed up in two words. Donald Trump. He tried to push the country further left than the country wanted to go. And it caused the reaction, which is Donald Trump, which has now caused a counter reaction. That's why this election is going to be so tense, it's going to be so intense, it's going to be so ugly because you're getting the maximum effort from both groups, and both groups understand what's at stake in democracies. Normally, if you lose an election, you can come back the next election and you can turn it around. But some elections are so important, there's no coming back. If Lincoln had not been elected, we wouldn't have the United States of America. If Donald Trump is not reelected, then we're going to be a fundamentally different country in a way that will be impossible to come back, to turn back.

Star Parker: And they've said that, they've said that many a times that that's what's at stake. The question is, are Christians hearing that this is what is at stake, and are they going to show up, to make sure that we get some peace at some point? When we walked out, you were there at the White House after the,

Walker Wildmon: speech by the President.

Star Parker: Well, what it was, was the GOP convention, okay? They had the convention, the RNC convention, where the President accepted the nomination to be the next leader of the Republican Party. And I'm telling you, that vile venom that it wasn't. I mean, you were there, they accosted you. And I'm going to tell you that it was, You can't describe that kind of evil. I don't even think Hollywood and their movies have put that kind of.

Dr. Richard Land: I've seen that. I've seen that intense hatred look before. I saw it when I was in Saudi Arabia. I was with the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. We were on, a fact finding tour. And we were at this meeting. There were these two women in their 40s, I guess they were in the black garb. And I mean, they hated us. I mean, I told my colleague, I said, they had a party on nine, 11, I guarantee you. And when I was in Bethlehem and they had Palestinian security guards, and this Palestinian security guard, he looked at me and he wanted to cut my throat. I mean, he hated me because of who I was. And I had the same look from the Klan in 1969. I was working in the summer on a war on poverty, project. And the Klan, this Klansman, he wanted to kill me. He wanted to kill me. And I mean, these people had a look of such intense.

Star Parker: And it's the same tactics of the truth.

Dr. Richard Land: It's got to be corroding their souls.

Star Parker: Well, and that's what we have. That's where our hope is that we have to remember that even they can be evangelized. I mean, m. Come on. I look at my background and say, wow, God could save me, he could save them. M as well. But you're right. And it is, it was just like that spirit that you saw with the Al Qaeda and the rest of them. It was just so dark, in their eyes. There's just no light there whatsoever. And I think that we should be very concerned that immediately after the election we better get about evangelizing this society.

Dr. Richard Land: Well, let me just warn everybody, if we win this election, buckle your seatbelt.

Star Parker: Oh, it's going to get hard.

Dr. Richard Land: Because if we win this election, and I think we're going to win it, if we win this election, if you think what they did after 2016 was bad, they're going to have a. They're going to have a complete, utter nervous breakdown. The left is.

Walker Wildmon: Tim, Tim, talk a little bit about the. We have a lot of people watching at home. We've got a lot of good information. We've broken down really the agenda of darkness is what it is. Sure. and how it's trying to destroy America. But tell the people viewing just a few things if they're at home and they're going, alright, I'm ready, what can I do?

Stephen McDowell: Yeah, so bottom line is make sure we're ready to vote. obviously American Family association, you guys put out a great voters guide. We vote on policy, not on personality. The Bible tells us that righteousness is what exalts a nation. And so we want to promote principles of righteousness beyond anything else. Righteousness is what the Bible says you seek first the kingdom of God and is righteousness. If you look at issues of righteousness, I think there's no question you could talk about the issue of a right to life. You could talk about religious liberty, you talk about positions with Israel, things that this administration has done a very, very good job on. Those are issues of righteousness. And when you start going through your list of the 15 things you care about, I would just challenge you put those in the Bible and see how does the Bible prioritize things. And I would argue that life, religious liberty, Israel, all are some of God's top issues because those are things that would bring blessings and cursings on nation based on those positions.

The first thing to do is make sure we're ready to vote

So the first thing to do is make sure we're ready to vote. But also even looking at local elections right now, what we've seen from so many of the shutdowns, people have discovered for the first time who their mayor is. I didn't know who they guy was because, less than 5, 6% of people vote in those kind of mayoral elections.

Star Parker: right, but school board right now,

Stephen McDowell: schools that are promoting the 1619 Project as curriculum for public schools. And you can be a homeschool parent, you can be a Christian school parent and be a part of the school board to get on school board might take a hundred votes.

Star Parker: Well, but after the Espinosa decision, I think that is also an opportunity for money to follow children's assignments school's parents want. So I'm encouraging Christian school parents to start. Oh my goodness. Start educating your own children and bring in a couple of them who can't do that themselves and start with the old good old fashioned schoolhouse again. But in the voting, take one friend, just one friend. You just need to take one friend with you. And I think that, we'll see a landslide that will change the course of the country.

Dr. Richard Land: We all have a circle of influence. Every one of us has a circle of influence. People that are influenced, say, and what we do. And we need to activate that circle of influence. We need to talk to our friends, to our family members, to our acquaintances about the issues and try to convince them, you know, I think that one thing grandparents can do, grandparents can have a ministry in their grandchildren's lives because the parents are awfully busy and they may not realize what's being done to their kids in school. So grandpa and granny can talk to them about America. They can talk to them about what made this country special, what made this country unique. and they can have an educational impact on their grandchildren.

Walker Wildmon: That's good. Well, you've been watching AFA at Home, a production of American Family Association. As Tim mentioned, AFA Action produces a voter guide each election cycle. Very informative. You can find out where candidates receive, who they receive money from, what are their positions on various issues. It gets very in depth. So you can decide at various levels of state and federal government who to vote for, who best shares your values. Thank you for tuning in to AFA at Home.

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked national debates about the proper role of government and how much authority it should have in citizens’ daily lives. In this first episode of afa@HOME, three different panels discuss the importance of limited government and devoted church attendance with an emphasis on the importance of being bold and taking a stand even when you’re the odd man out.