Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 292 ｜ Trump vs. Biden 2020： Religious Liberty

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Today we are continuing our series. Last week

00:00:16.480 we talked about our first election-related issue, which was abortion, and then we compared

00:00:22.680 Republicans and Democrats, Trump and Biden. On that issue, we talked about what abortion is,

00:00:28.400 why it is important for Christians to care about, and why we should be considering it

00:00:33.040 when we are considering our vote. And today we will be talking about religious liberty. Now,

00:00:39.020 I am so excited about this, not just because I like this topic, but also because at the end of

00:00:44.880 this conversation, I am going to be talking to Dr. John MacArthur. I know a ton of you who are

00:00:50.880 listening to this love John MacArthur. You have been reading him for years, maybe decades if you're

00:00:55.560 that old. He has had a huge influence on my life, in my faith, my theology. He's had an influence on

00:01:01.440 my husband and even his parents. I mean, his influence really spans across the decades and

00:01:07.400 around the world, and I am so excited to get to talk to him at the end of this episode. So

00:01:12.140 make sure that you stay tuned in for that. Before that, we have a lot to talk about. Okay, so I have

00:01:18.300 to give you a good amount of context on religious liberty before we even get into Trump versus

00:01:25.420 Biden. And really, this is going to be worldview versus worldview rather than as much about the two

00:01:33.380 candidates, although we will get into that. We will talk about some Democratic policies versus

00:01:39.080 some Republican policies. But it's really one of those issues where we just view things differently

00:01:45.600 because the assumptions that we carry in to our perspectives on the world, they really differ

00:01:54.120 on this particular issue, and they really affect how we see something like religious liberty. And so

00:01:59.940 we are going to be talking really more from that angle than getting into the specifics about policy.

00:02:06.220 We could easily do a part two on this, by the way, to get into those specifics, and maybe we will.

00:02:11.240 But I want to talk about where this comes from, why this principle is so important, what happens to

00:02:16.980 countries when this principle of religious liberty, when this right of religious liberty is taken away

00:02:22.920 or inhibited, because it will give us context and explain why it is so important for us to prioritize

00:02:29.060 it. Not just as Christians, but whoever you are listening to this podcast, this is an important

00:02:35.220 liberty for us to protect no matter what. Before I get into that, you guys, just got to remind you

00:02:41.240 once again, you're not enough and that's okay escaping the toxic culture of self-love. I am so excited

00:02:46.880 and so grateful for how many people have bought it over the past week and a half or so. How many

00:02:52.900 women have joined my Women's Book Club with Allie Stuckey? We just started going through the book

00:02:56.820 together. There's a study guide that is available that I am going to make available to you guys if you

00:03:02.080 want to lead the study at home. But join the Facebook group, even if you join in the middle of our

00:03:06.640 discussion, that is perfectly fine. You can catch up. You're not enough and that's okay. You can go

00:03:11.960 to AllieBethStuckey.com book. That's where you can find it. Thank you guys so much for all of your

00:03:17.060 support. And for those of you who bought the book, it really does mean a whole lot to me. Okay, let's

00:03:21.780 get into this. So religious liberty, it can be most succinctly described as the right to believe or not

00:03:28.240 to believe as you see fit and to worship or not to worship as you see fit. And this is another one of

00:03:34.100 those episodes, by the way, if you're watching it on YouTube, where I really have to look down at my

00:03:38.020 notes a lot, because I want to make sure that the details that I have in here are exactly relayed.

00:03:44.980 The First Amendment to the Constitution says this, Congress shall make no law respecting an

00:03:49.660 establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Pretty clear that is one of

00:03:56.260 five freedoms, five rights that is protected in the First Amendment. They are all interconnected and

00:04:01.340 interdependent. The first one is that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment

00:04:06.260 of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Article six of the Constitution says this,

00:04:12.400 no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust

00:04:18.240 under the United States. This does not just limit the power of the federal government to get in the

00:04:24.300 way of your religious beliefs or your non-religious beliefs. It also limits the power of local

00:04:29.620 governments from doing so via the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says, quote,

00:04:34.840 no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of

00:04:41.440 the United States. Now, I think that it would be in our best interest to do a little constitutional and

00:04:48.140 American history lesson for a second, because that helps us understand, once again, just how crucial

00:04:53.320 this right is. So let's back up for just a second. Let us first talk about something very basic,

00:05:00.060 the Constitution. What is it? I know that some of you who are listening to this are like,

00:05:04.180 are you serious? We have to talk about what the Constitution is. But there may be people out there

00:05:09.500 who don't really know. Maybe you haven't thought about it in decades since your high school civics

00:05:13.340 class, or maybe you're in high school, or maybe you're even in middle school, and you haven't learned

00:05:17.700 about this yet. So I don't want to take it for granted. Not everyone is a civics expert. And

00:05:22.760 maybe you've just never really thought about what the Constitution is. The Constitution, as I have

00:05:28.400 explained before, is the supreme law of the land. It originally contained seven sections that outline

00:05:33.360 the separation of powers of the government, the structure and function of the federal government,

00:05:37.960 the rights and responsibilities of the state governments, and the process of ratifying the

00:05:42.440 Constitution. Ratify means to consent to something so as to make it official, binding, and valid.

00:05:49.500 The Constitution officially came into force in 1789. And since then, it has been amended 27 times.

00:05:56.500 So there are 27 amendments to the Constitution. The first 10 amendments to the Constitution are known

00:06:02.360 as the Bill of Rights, which guarantee our rights as citizens of the United States. So the Bill of Rights

00:06:09.740 limits the power of the government by guaranteeing the rights that are unalienable to us. So that means

00:06:15.460 they are inborn rights. They are God-given rights. And because God is higher than the government,

00:06:21.120 the government cannot take away the rights that he gave to us. That is the mentality, that is the

00:06:27.120 thinking, that is the belief system of the founders that laid the groundwork for our Constitution

00:06:33.280 and our Declaration of Independence. And just as a note, those who tried to say that America had a

00:06:39.560 secular founding, that we are a fundamentally secular nation, they are mistaken. America did not

00:06:45.440 establish a state religion, obviously, as we will get into today. But we are founded on biblical

00:06:51.940 principles, on the primary belief that we all have a creator that transcends governmental authority.

00:06:57.260 And without that fundamental belief, there is no argument for the government not having the power to

00:07:02.980 take or give your rights as it sees fit, which is why, by the way, as we will explain more today,

00:07:09.540 increased godlessness in a society always results in more government because the government ends up

00:07:15.460 replacing God. You will always worship something and look to something to care for you. If you are not

00:07:20.680 looking to God as your great moral lawgiver, you will look to the government to do that. That's just what

00:07:26.260 happens. So the founders believed in God-given rights outlined in the Bill of Rights. And the only

00:07:31.320 way legally for a citizen to be deprived of his basic rights pertaining to life, liberty, or property

00:07:37.300 is, as Amendment 5 in the Bill of Rights makes clear, is by, quote, due process of law. Amendment 6

00:07:44.100 describes what exactly this means, quote, in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy

00:07:50.540 the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the

00:07:56.040 crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law,

00:08:01.160 and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, to be confronted with the witnesses

00:08:04.920 against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have

00:08:09.780 the assistance of counsel for his defense. These are all, again, biblical principles. We will talk

00:08:15.080 more about this amendment in our episode on impartial justice. But as it pertains to the conversation

00:08:20.540 today, it simply gives us context in discussing what the Bill of Rights is and what it means for

00:08:26.200 us. These are rights that the founders believed, asserted, came from God. They are inherent. They are

00:08:32.000 protected. This is essentially what it means to be a conservative. Our rights come from God, not the

00:08:38.140 government. That is why when you try to remove God from the argument for conservatism, it very quickly

00:08:43.940 falls apart. So the Bill of Rights does not give us our rights. It acknowledges our rights that

00:08:50.660 pre-existed the formation of our government or any government. And in so doing, it limits the power

00:08:56.060 of the government. The first three words of the Constitution are this, we the people. Our government

00:09:01.960 in America is to be subject to the consent of the governed. It is to be formed by us, directed by us,

00:09:09.520 changed by us as we see fit. And as many times as we as a country have forgotten that, as many times

00:09:17.400 as we have fallen short of that, especially today, as we see petty tyrants across the country

00:09:23.640 exercising their authority in a way that takes away the freedom that is inherent to American citizens.

00:09:32.580 This principle is still what makes our country the greatest country in the world. It is what

00:09:37.860 has always set us apart and still does. I want to read a part of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address,

00:09:44.200 which emphasizes this even further as he underscores the sacrifice that American men paid

00:09:49.760 to end the atrocity of slavery so that we could better live out the premise upon which America

00:09:55.460 was founded. And I promise, I know it seems like we're going down some rabbit trails, but I promise

00:09:59.820 that all of this context does matter. You guys probably know the beginning of this address.

00:10:05.080 Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation conceived

00:10:10.000 in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Again, a biblical principle.

00:10:16.640 Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived

00:10:21.500 and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come

00:10:26.480 to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives

00:10:31.600 that that nation might live. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it

00:10:37.440 can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living rather, to be dedicated here to the

00:10:43.260 unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be

00:10:50.860 here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead, we take increased

00:10:56.560 devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly

00:11:03.320 resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new

00:11:09.280 birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from

00:11:16.040 the earth. I think that is just as applicable to us today in 2020 as it was then. And I think that

00:11:23.320 we should internalize those words as much as we possibly can, especially when it pertains to the

00:11:28.820 liberty of free worship and free, the right of free worship and free belief. A government of, by, and for

00:11:37.180 the people, a nation free from tyranny whose fundamental rights are recognized as God-given rather than

00:11:42.760 government contrived, is what men and women from the revolution until today have fought and died to

00:11:49.700 secure. And as we know, as Lincoln well knew, America has failed to live out that ideal in several

00:11:56.980 seasons of our history. But as I have argued many times on this podcast, the arc of American history

00:12:03.160 is bent toward liberty and justice for all. America started as a radical, never tried before experiment in

00:12:09.980 liberty and self-governance. So of course, it has been rocky at times. Men and women are imperfect. We are

00:12:15.380 sinful. We try and we fall. We try and we fall. We try and we fail. That is how all experiments go,

00:12:22.900 especially experiments as great as the American one. But the uniqueness of the American spirit is that we

00:12:29.660 are relentless in our insistence upon getting back up and righting our wrongs. And I know, again,

00:12:35.660 it seems like I'm going down rabbit trails, but they are necessary to provide context and to underscore

00:12:41.660 just how important this primary liberty is. I just take so much issue with people who mythologize

00:12:48.140 American history into a narrative that we have been irrevocably, endemically marred by racism,

00:12:56.820 by injustice, and by brutality our entire existence. It's just not true. No one, no nation,

00:13:04.660 no nation has ever been perfect. Every nation has had the same injustices that America has had. We have

00:13:10.620 had injustices, many injustices. We have injustices that are prolonged to this day. Abortion is an

00:13:17.520 injustice that is celebrated to this day. So you don't have to tell me that America has not properly

00:13:22.300 and perfectly lived out her ideals and in many ways still doesn't to this day. But no one, no nation

00:13:28.860 has fought as hard for the least of these than America has. And that is just a fact. We have fought wars,

00:13:35.520 we've protested, we've marched, we've loved, we've served, we've legislated to ensure that the promise

00:13:40.640 of liberty and justice for all is for everyone. The difference between the fights that valiant

00:13:46.040 Americans have fought and the fight that is being waged today on the left is that the premises and the

00:13:51.200 aims are completely different. The fight today is not based on fact. It is not based on truth. It is not

00:13:57.560 based on equality and equity. It is based in doing away with America and the American institutions that have

00:14:04.620 held us together for so long. So as I say, if we have a problem with certain practices and systems

00:14:10.800 in place in America today, the solution is not as many of the activists in the streets of our major

00:14:17.260 cities are suggesting is not destruction or revolution against our foundations. It is in going back to our

00:14:24.420 foundations. So it is not in revolution. It is in remembrance. But we have to agree on some things in

00:14:30.960 order to move forward together. We have to agree that freedom is better than tyranny. We have to agree

00:14:36.100 that God-given rights are better than government-given rights. We have to agree on equality and

00:14:42.100 impartiality under the law. We have to agree that objective truth exists. We have to have a basic

00:14:48.040 agreement on right versus wrong, justice versus injustice. If we cannot, then I do not believe that

00:14:54.540 we can move forward together. There will be a split. There will be some sort of a major revolution

00:15:02.880 and the revolutionaries will be and terrorize the rest of us into submission. History shows us this

00:15:08.740 with leftist revolutions time and time again. And the founders knew all of this and they knew the

00:15:14.540 easiest way, the primary way for dictators to gain power is to control religion, to control people's

00:15:21.880 beliefs, their conscience. In every communist and fascist regime that you have ever heard about,

00:15:28.160 the first priority is to outlaw freedom of religion. And the second is to abolish and control

00:15:34.220 the nuclear family. And all of this is tied up in a suppression of the press and a suppression of speech

00:15:40.500 as well. Because autocrats, in order to maintain power, they must ensure that the people derive their

00:15:46.640 rights and their values from him, the dictator, from the government, not from their faith and not

00:15:52.720 from their family. So they have to immediately tear down those institutions in order to centralize power.

00:15:58.580 Communism and fascism are very similar in that they are looking to centralize power in the name of what

00:16:06.200 they purport to be virtuous goals. In China, let's go through some examples. In China, Mao established

00:16:14.040 atheism as the official belief system in China and viewed all religion as a threat. This is a Marxist

00:16:19.780 idea that religion inhibits the advancement of communism. And Mao believed this. He believed that

00:16:25.760 since communism had taken root and the workers were finally in power, you hear that language a lot,

00:16:31.260 the power of the workers or the liberation of the so-called workers, that's a communistic idea,

00:16:36.640 that's communistic rhetoric. He believed that they didn't need faith to help them or save them. So he

00:16:41.300 closed down churches. He abused and murdered and jailed ministers and churchgoers. All religious

00:16:46.620 traditions were replaced with discussion of politics and worship of the Communist Party. This

00:16:52.120 was all accomplished through force and massive propaganda. Communists are commies going to call

00:16:57.800 me. This is what they always do. This is what they're still doing today. This is still happening in

00:17:02.260 China today, where they have over a million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps, where they detain

00:17:07.800 people arbitrarily for worshiping God, where prisoners and religious rebels have their organs

00:17:13.920 harvested while they're still alive, so China can continue to make millions off their transplant

00:17:19.040 industry. This is communism today. It's always been communism. They have banned the sale of Bibles.

00:17:24.980 They're currently working on rewriting the Bible to be more communist-friendly in China. So it's important

00:17:31.480 to note, guys, that they actually have to rewrite the Bible to be communist-friendly. Some of y'all who think

00:17:36.480 Christianity is friendly to communism, you need to talk to some Chinese people. This is the brutality

00:17:40.940 and the totalitarian control of communism. Like I said, it always has been. They are going to rural

00:17:46.940 areas right now, and they are trying to replace worship of God with worship of the party. This is what

00:17:53.040 they always do. Lying is a tenet of communism. Lying, propaganda, manipulation, outright falsification.

00:18:00.180 This is how they convince their own people of the goodness and the purity of communism. This is how

00:18:05.880 they convince the rest of the world that they're actually doing very well. In Cambodia,

00:18:10.640 Pol Pot, the infamous communist dictator, declared 1975 year zero. He relocated Cambodians to farming

00:18:17.980 communes where he wanted them to share, quote, in the spoils of their labor and were untainted by the

00:18:24.260 evils of money, wealth, and religion. So he got rid of the country's currency, outlawed the ownership

00:18:31.280 of private property and the practice of religion. Again, sounds really familiar. Please, if you don't

00:18:36.960 know what happened in communist Cambodia, read about the Khmer Rouge, about the splitting up of

00:18:42.060 families, the recruiting of child soldiers, the killing fields. That, again, is communism. It is

00:18:48.260 the nature of communism where all leftism is eventually going. In socialist communist Soviet Russia,

00:18:54.500 several anti-religious campaigns were waged on and off from 1917 to 1990 in an effort to establish

00:19:01.720 Marxist-Leninist atheism. After the Bolshevik socialist revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks

00:19:07.520 established something called the People's Commissariat for Enlightenment, which created the

00:19:12.260 All-Russian Union of Teachers Internationalists for the purpose of removing religious instruction from

00:19:17.960 school curricula. Again, sounds familiar. Lenin tolerated religious people only insofar as they were

00:19:24.300 willing to advance the Communist Party's goals. Article 13 of the Russian Communist Party RCP

00:19:29.820 stated this, quote,

00:19:32.180 As far as religion is concerned, the RCP will not be satisfied by the decreed separation of church and

00:19:38.200 state. The party aims at the complete destruction of links between the exploiting classes and religious

00:19:44.540 propaganda while assisting the actual liberation of the working masses. Again, you hear that language

00:19:50.300 that unfortunately we are hearing today, liberation of the working class, what they mean is communism,

00:19:55.380 from religious prejudices and organizing the broadest possible education, enlightening, and

00:20:01.520 anti-religious propaganda. So that was a tenet of the Russian Communist Party. Again, does this sound

00:20:08.240 familiar? It is the same language being used by many on the left here today. Not everyone, but many,

00:20:14.700 an increasing number, liberation of the working masses, liberation from religious prejudices, what many

00:20:21.240 today on the left call bigotry if you simply just believe in the Bible. In North Korea, quote,

00:20:27.600 Once the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, names can be very misleading, was established in 1948. The regime

00:20:34.360 suppressed religious freedom by arousing the sense of struggle against anti-revolutionary elements and spreading

00:20:40.580 anti-religious sentiments far and wide to strengthen the socialist revolutionary force. In my book club,

00:20:46.840 we read a book called Nothing to Envy. I highly recommend it if you did not read it with us or if you haven't

00:20:52.400 read it. It is a compelling book about life today in North Korea, as well as some of the recent history

00:20:57.800 of North Korea. And you read about the constant anti-religion, anti-capitalist, anti-Western propaganda

00:21:05.100 that is constantly used by the government, even as the people were and are starving at the hands of

00:21:11.680 communism. I just hope, again, that you see the connection between communism everywhere and the

00:21:17.540 communist sentiments that are still here in the mainstream, at least taking on, at least right now,

00:21:24.720 they are still taking on the name of democratic socialism, but it is the same worldview. They might not

00:21:31.000 they might not be advocating for the same exact policies yet, but it is the same goal. It is the

00:21:36.400 same perspective of the world. In Cuba, under communist dictator Fidel Castro, religion was violently

00:21:43.120 restricted. In 1991, Cuba lost its main financial backer, the USSR. And so Castro did start to loosen

00:21:51.020 restrictions on Catholicism so that Catholicism could become a diplomatic partner in helping him accomplish

00:21:57.360 his communistic, socialistic, social vision. And yes, I am using those words kind of interchangeably.

00:22:04.680 They're not the exact same thing. But Vladimir Lenin said himself that communism is the goal of

00:22:10.120 socialism. The guy that every socialist quotes and hails as a hero, German philosopher and economist

00:22:17.060 Karl Marx, he wrote the Communist Manifesto. And so while socialists will say it's not the same thing as

00:22:23.760 communism, you won't get a socialist to decry or denounce communism either. Because again, it is the

00:22:29.440 same worldview. It is the same ultimate vision. Castro, as you probably know, jailed and murdered

00:22:36.440 all political dissidents. Cuba is still, thanks to communism, completely stuck in the 1950s. According

00:22:43.800 to the U.S. Embassy in Cuba in 2019, quote, the Cuban Communist Party, through its Office of Religious

00:22:49.760 Affairs and the government's Ministry of Justice, continued to control most aspects of religious

00:22:54.800 life. Observers said the government continued to use threats, international and domestic travel

00:22:59.300 restrictions, detentions, and violence against some religious leaders and their followers,

00:23:03.700 and restricted the rights of prisoners to practice religion freely. Media and religious leaders and

00:23:08.280 the government continued to harass or detain members of religious groups advocating for greater

00:23:13.320 religious and political freedom. Let's read that last line again.

00:23:16.560 Media and religious leaders said the government continued to harass or detain members of religious

00:23:22.400 groups advocating for greater religious and political freedom. In Nazi Germany, the Nazi government

00:23:29.940 established the Reich Church under the leadership of Ludwig Müller in 1933. The Reich Church aimed to be a

00:23:36.800 new national church, which advocated a form of Nazi Christianity and instructed preachers to exclude

00:23:43.340 any teaching from the Old Testament, since the Old Testament was seen as a Jewish document. It

00:23:50.320 instructed preachers to exclude any teachings that might go up against Nazi ideology. Of course, we know

00:23:58.340 what the Nazis did to people who disobeyed, what they did to the Jews, what they did to all religious

00:24:03.420 minorities. Nazi, as you may know, stands for National Socialist. They were indeed fascist. There is no doubt

00:24:10.740 about that, but they also implemented forms of socialism like nationalizing all private industries

00:24:16.140 and controlling the consciences or attempting to control the consciences of their people. In East

00:24:23.120 Berlin, the socialist side of Germany for decades in the 20th century, the state-sponsored belief system

00:24:29.480 was atheist. The Western side after World War II was capitalist and Christianity thrived there. And still to

00:24:36.420 this day, the religious differences between Eastern and Western Germany are huge. The majority of Eastern

00:24:41.960 Germans are atheists. According to Pew Research, 60% of Eastern Germans say that religion is not

00:24:48.300 important in their lives compared to 60% of Western Germans who say that religion is important in their

00:24:54.320 lives. If you look also, I just think it's interesting to note, if you look at the level of life satisfaction

00:25:00.460 between capitalist, free Western Germany and socialist, tyrannical Eastern Germany in 1991,

00:25:06.080 so two years after the Berlin Wall fell, according to the same Pew Research poll, only 15% of Eastern

00:25:15.100 Germans, of East Germans said that they were satisfied with their lives. Only 15% compared to 52%

00:25:21.860 of Western Germans. And then what happened for the Eastern Germans after the Berlin Wall fell,

00:25:28.000 and they were free to enjoy the effects of capitalism. Life satisfaction from 1991 to 2009 went up from 15%

00:25:36.920 to 43%, and it is much higher today. Still, it's a little bit higher in Western Germany, but they're

00:25:44.600 very close now. Socialism is a lie. It's a lie. Communism is a lie. It is a lie that capitalism

00:25:51.980 is inherently oppressive. It is a lie that capitalism is making people miserable. It is a lie.

00:25:58.000 Socialism and communism make people miserable. They take away people's freedoms, their ability to be

00:26:03.780 productive. They always seek to destroy faith and destroy family. Let history be our guide. Like,

00:26:10.460 we don't have to blindly wander through the future and wonder what it would be like if we had a socialist

00:26:16.520 country. Like, we can look at countries today that are dominated by socialism and realize there is no

00:26:22.100 freedom there that we enjoy so much here today. Yes, socialism and communism, again, they can be

00:26:33.220 used, I believe, interchangeably because they are so similar and their end goals are the same. So do not

00:26:41.920 be fooled by the people who say, oh, socialism and communism don't have anything to do with one

00:26:47.300 another. They very much do. It is not a coincidence that everywhere you see socialism and communism,

00:26:52.480 you see the severe persecution of religious activity and the attempt to institutionalize

00:26:58.020 atheism. It is no coincidence that where freedom and capitalism thrive, Christianity thrives,

00:27:03.580 and the bigger the government gets, the more godless the populace gets, the more passionate they get

00:27:08.520 about causes like abortion and euthanasia. It's not a coincidence. We're talking about world views here.

00:27:15.420 It's all interconnected. As I've said, you are voting in November for a world view. It is no coincidence

00:27:23.660 that, according to Pew Research, 70% of atheists vote Democrat in America. 70%. And that atheists and

00:27:31.340 agnostics are more likely to support Bernie Sanders, according to Pew, than any other candidate. It is a

00:27:37.240 world view that he is espousing. The bigger the government, the less religious liberty, and the more

00:27:43.340 animosity toward religion. And where there is no religious liberty, there is no liberty, period.

00:27:49.180 If you do not have freedom of conscience, then you have no freedom at all. The founders knew that.

00:27:55.240 That is why it is the first right articulated in our Bill of Rights. And it is the freedom that

00:28:00.380 must be safeguarded today if we are to maintain any of our other freedoms.

00:28:05.260 Now, what I argue is, of course, taking precedence, what should take precedence over any other right

00:28:15.000 is the right to life. It has to exist, logically, before any other right to exist. We are entitled,

00:28:20.900 the Declaration of Independence tells us, to life, to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And liberty,

00:28:26.540 nor happiness, can't exist without, first, the right to life. And that is why life comes before

00:28:34.040 liberty or the pursuit of happiness. And yet, today in America, we are robbing thousands of

00:28:39.600 unborn children of that right every day in the name of women's empowerment. So, if you want to

00:28:45.180 know why it seems like a large portion of the country does not care about religious liberty,

00:28:50.000 does not care about any of the freedoms protected in the Bill of Rights, especially our First Amendment,

00:28:54.920 it is because we have decided to throw to the wayside the most fundamental right that we have,

00:28:59.640 which is the right to life. We have decided that people who cannot defend themselves,

00:29:04.540 that they should be discarded in the name of empowerment and choice. And the reason I believe

00:29:10.540 that we have disregarded that right is because godlessness in America has increased more and

00:29:16.700 more rapidly than any other country in the world in the past 12 years alone. Much of this is because of

00:29:24.240 increased indoctrination in our schools, the utter failure of our churches to preach the gospel and

00:29:29.980 to speak to the issues that matter, the dereliction of duty of a lot of parents to teach theology,

00:29:36.280 to teach worldview issues to their children, the indoctrination of the entertainment industry,

00:29:42.980 the secularist leftist perspective constantly propagated by our media. It is no coincidence,

00:29:50.320 as I say, that as the country goes further to the left, we become more godless and vice versa.

00:29:56.780 And as that happens, the country gets more chaotic, as you can see, and there's less tolerance

00:30:02.160 for religion and any non-far-left belief. This is Marxism. It has always been Marxism.

00:30:10.460 Black Lives Matter admits to being Marxist. The leaders are open supporters of communist regimes

00:30:17.480 in South America. We have talked about this on this podcast. This is a worldview that is espoused

00:30:23.740 by them. It's espoused by groups like Antifa. These are the groups that are terrorizing America's

00:30:29.140 major cities, as we discussed last Wednesday. These are the groups glorified and hoisted up by the

00:30:34.340 Democratic Party. These are the groups that are destroying Democratic-led cities with total impunity

00:30:39.480 at the expense of the most poor and vulnerable. And it's all being done in the name of equality and

00:30:44.760 justice and compassion that is always the stated premise of communism and socialism. And it never

00:30:49.860 delivers on those promises. So we fight for the rights to worship as we see fit, understanding that

00:30:58.220 it is one of the first casualties of communist revolutions, of leftist revolutions. And make no

00:31:03.960 mistake, one is being waged right now behind the facade of the unity and the compassion of the DNC.

00:31:10.140 I don't think that Biden is a communist. I don't think that Biden is a socialist. Kamala Harris is

00:31:14.860 probably neither of those things either. But in the same way that the Obama administration was used

00:31:19.340 to usher in far-left policies, the left moved far to the left during Obama's eight years.

00:31:25.080 Patriotism among the left dwindled dramatically. We've talked about the Gallup polls and the Pew

00:31:30.160 research polls that prove that. We've talked about that on this podcast. In the same way that they

00:31:35.300 were used as a vessel for far-left sentiments and policies and organizations, this next administration

00:31:42.140 will absolutely be the same. I do think that Kamala Harris is far-left. I think that Joe Biden

00:31:48.100 simply acquiesces on these issues because he knows that he has to in order to be in charge. But I don't

00:31:53.160 want you to think that I'm just exaggerating here and calling Joe Biden a communist. I don't believe

00:31:59.320 that he is. But do I believe that he is going to be the vessel by which these radical leftist values

00:32:08.140 are ushered in even further into America? I absolutely do. George Washington said this message

00:32:13.740 to the annual meeting of Quaker 1789. Quote,

00:32:17.060 The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreeably to their conscience

00:32:21.880 is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also their rights. The founders rebelled against the

00:32:27.960 religious tyranny of the Church of England, loyalists to England and America, actually thought of the

00:32:33.180 entire revolution as nothing more than a religious rebellion by the Presbyterians to the Church of

00:32:38.420 England. And there was a major religious component to it. That is true. No doubt the spirit of the

00:32:44.720 Protestant Reformation, which sought to free Christians from spiritual tyranny, what was the

00:32:49.920 tyranny at the time of the Catholic Church, and encouraged lay people to read their own Bible,

00:32:54.820 to have their own relationship with Christ, to understand theology on their own. No doubt that

00:32:59.820 that spirit also spurred the American Revolution, which sought obviously freedom from the tyranny of

00:33:06.700 Britain, including the spiritual tyranny of the Church of England. It was Roger Williams, a 17th century

00:33:11.780 Puritan preacher in Massachusetts, who brought forth the importance of soul liberty, a freedom to

00:33:16.620 follow God without government coercion, and the freedom of the Church to operate without

00:33:21.260 the direction of the state. Later, George Mason and James Madison and Thomas Jefferson fought for

00:33:27.740 religious liberty. The idea went from tolerance, which George Mason advocated for, to free exercise

00:33:34.740 and disestablishment and separation. Madison and Jefferson were influenced by the Enlightenment, but

00:33:41.080 they were helped in their quest, in their cause for religious liberty, by the Protestants in their state

00:33:45.960 of Virginia, who wanted nothing to do with the official denomination at the time of Virginia, which was

00:33:51.800 Anglicanism. This is a quote from Freedom Forum Institute. Quote, the revivalist message of salvation

00:33:59.320 through Christ alone evoked a deeply personal and emotional response in thousands of Americans. So this was

00:34:06.440 during the Great Awakening. That idea that was a rallying cry of the Protestant affirmation, that by grace,

00:34:13.340 through faith a Christian is saved, helps solidify freedom of religion in this country. Reformed

00:34:18.760 Christians, we are just fighting against tyranny since 1517. As Scottish reformer John Knox said,

00:34:24.820 and as many Christians have echoed, since resistance to tyrants is obedience to God. This is part of the

00:34:31.100 spirit of Protestantism. So let us read once again the first part of the First Amendment to the Constitution

00:34:37.240 and Article 6 of the Constitution. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

00:34:44.540 or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Article 6 of the Constitution says this, no religious test

00:34:51.120 shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. Let us

00:34:58.660 quickly break this down. No establishment means that the government cannot establish an official religion

00:35:05.500 or actively promote a particular religion. So the Supreme Court has said that the government must

00:35:10.420 maintain, quote, benevolent neutrality toward religion. That means they can't discriminate against

00:35:15.480 religions. They also can't be hostile against religion. The free exercise of religion means that

00:35:21.940 every citizen can believe and practice how they see fit. But there are exceptions to this. Of course,

00:35:28.700 the Supreme Court has ruled generally you cannot break otherwise binding laws in the name of religious

00:35:34.360 freedom unless it can be proven that that law specifically discriminates against religion or

00:35:40.560 another constitutional right like free speech. Let's talk about the separation of church and state

00:35:46.680 because this is brought up a lot. Because even though the separation of church and state is not in the

00:35:52.160 Constitution, it is an important American foundational principle. It does not mean, as many who tend to be on

00:35:59.340 the left want it to me, that there is no mention of God or there should be no mention of God or that we

00:36:04.820 don't apply biblical principles to our law and that they shouldn't shape our ideas at all. They do. They

00:36:11.460 have to. Like it or not, the Bible is the best guidebook for lawmaking that we have, for defining justice

00:36:17.660 that we have. And the founders knew that. The separation of church and state protects the state from the church,

00:36:23.920 meaning a particular religion will not be forced upon the people. And even more importantly, it is

00:36:29.400 meant to protect the church from the state. The state does not have the authority to govern the affairs

00:36:36.140 of the church. So church and state are separate, but God and law are not necessarily separate, and religion

00:36:42.960 and public life are not separate. Religious organizations are free to try to influence public policy and to

00:36:49.840 raise concerns about moral and political issues in the public square. Many on the left do not believe

00:36:55.000 that this should be the case. They believe some, like Bernie Sanders, believe that there should be no

00:37:00.340 mention of God or biblical principles in the public square. The reason, of course, that is problematic

00:37:06.320 is because not only is it a violation of the First Amendment, not only the freedom of religion, but also

00:37:12.580 the freedom of speech, it's also problematic because without God, without ascribing to a higher

00:37:18.020 authority, we have no ultimate source of truth, no arbiter of morality. And all of our debates and

00:37:23.680 discussions are subjective and ultimately meaningless. Furthermore, the First Amendment, like I said, the

00:37:29.340 First Amendment right to free speech protects our right to talk about God. And so, of course, talking about

00:37:35.840 God, allowing God to influence our public dialogue and our public decisions, of course, is allowed, and I

00:37:41.680 would argue, important. George Washington said this, quote, of all the dispositions and habits which lead

00:37:48.220 to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man

00:37:53.660 claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness,

00:37:59.720 these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man,

00:38:05.820 ought to respect and to cherish them. He and many of the other founders believed that while religion

00:38:10.940 should be free, you should be free to worship, not worship, believe and not believe, he also believed that

00:38:16.160 it is vital to a society that is based on self-governance. He knew that men and women are not good on our

00:38:24.120 own, embridling our passions that get the best of us, that we actually need to ascribe to a higher

00:38:29.420 authority. We must follow God and his law to live peacefully together. That is what many of the founders

00:38:35.980 believed. John Adams said the same, quote, we have no government armed with power capable of contending

00:38:42.860 with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. We are seeing right now a populace that

00:38:48.300 is unbridled by morality and religion, and he says that we don't have a government armed with that kind

00:38:53.140 of power. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our constitution as

00:38:59.000 a whale goes through a net. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

00:39:05.100 It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. He, of course, is absolutely right.

00:39:11.880 When you don't believe that our rights come from a creator, when you don't believe

00:39:16.240 in a supreme moral lawgiver, then we are all our own gods, our own arbiters of truth.

00:39:22.100 And it erupts in first anarchy and then tyranny, as the people with power claim to be the only ones

00:39:28.840 to be able to tell us right and wrong and to be able to rein in what they call our less desirable

00:39:34.960 attributes and beliefs. I talk about this in my book. This is the effect of making ourselves our

00:39:41.760 own God in replacing the God of scripture with the God of self, of placing ourselves on the thrones of

00:39:47.820 our lives. We make ourselves the arbiters of truth, and it leads to chaos not only in our own lives,

00:39:53.000 but also in society as a whole. When you take God out of everything, we begin to deny the very

00:39:59.520 existence of objective reality, like human biology in two making four. It ends in chaos, which again,

00:40:07.040 ends up ending in tyranny. Chaos, the anarchy that leads to tyranny, are exactly what the founders

00:40:13.920 wanted to avoid. They trusted people to be free in their relationship with God, but they knew that

00:40:20.620 faith and morality that comes from that relationship was necessary to function as a country.

00:40:25.960 Let's talk about Section 6 of the Constitution quickly. No religious task for any government

00:40:31.140 office in the United States. You can't require someone to ascribe to a religious belief system

00:40:36.660 or denounce a certain belief system to hold office. Now, this has become a trend, unfortunately,

00:40:42.160 especially recently among Democratic senators to ask judicial nominees about their religious beliefs.

00:40:48.800 Senators Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono targeted judicial nominee Brian Buescher. He's a Catholic.

00:40:54.680 During his confirmation because of his association with Catholic charitable organization Knights of

00:41:00.700 Columbus, according to the Associated Press, here were some of the questions.

00:41:04.940 The Knights of Columbus has taken a number of extreme positions, said Ms. Hirono, Hawaii Democrat,

00:41:09.760 citing the group's opposition to same-sex marriage. If confirmed, do you intend to end your

00:41:14.200 membership with this organization to avoid any appearance of bias? Ms. Harris asked Mr. Buescher,

00:41:20.420 who became a member 25 years ago as a teenager. Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed

00:41:26.440 a woman's right to choose when you joined the organization? Mr. Buescher was 18 years old when

00:41:32.560 he joined this Catholic charitable organization, which has millions of members. Mr. Buescher, who said

00:41:37.860 he would abide by the code of conduct for U.S. judges regarding his affiliation, said his participation

00:41:42.840 has centered on, quote, charitable and community events in local Catholic parishes. Democratic Senator

00:41:48.160 Cory Booker did the same thing to Naomi Rao in her Senate confirmation hearing, pressing her on

00:41:53.520 whether or not she believes gay relationships are sinful. That is none of Cory Booker's business. But

00:42:00.420 many Democrats in Congress right now believe that there should be religious tests for these positions,

00:42:08.600 but only against Christians because they believe that biblical Christian views inhibit you from being

00:42:15.300 able to do an adequate job. Honestly, a lot of them believe it inhibits you from being able to even

00:42:21.720 be a decent person in their eyes. This is one of the reasons why our constitutional right to religious

00:42:27.640 liberty is so crucial. There is hostility, unfortunately, in our government toward religion,

00:42:33.700 and the First Amendment and Article 6 are meant to protect us from the effect of that hostility.

00:42:39.160 AOC recently gave a speech in Congress saying that religious liberty has been used to justify

00:42:44.080 bigotry. No, no. Accusations of bigotry have been used as an excuse to attack religious liberty.

00:42:51.720 We have a constitutional right in America to religious liberty. We do not have a constitutional

00:42:56.240 right in America not to be offended. Remember Jack Phillips, the Colorado cake baker who refused to make

00:43:02.480 a wedding cake for a gay couple who specifically targeted his shop for this reason and pursued him

00:43:08.020 legally until his life was almost completely ruined, his business almost completely gone under,

00:43:13.260 to try to force him to bake that specific cake. He would bake a regular cake for them, but he was

00:43:19.640 not willing to endorse gay marriage by baking a cake for that particular purpose, for the purpose of

00:43:26.740 gay marriage. He also doesn't make Halloween cakes. This guy is a conservative Christian and he wants to

00:43:32.960 operate his business in a way that he sees fit and he should absolutely have the right to do so.

00:43:38.760 Democrats in general do not believe that you should be able to practice your religion if it gets in

00:43:45.480 the way of what they view as progressive. They're not talking about infringing on other people's rights.

00:43:50.240 They're talking about getting in the way of what they view as progressive. There will come a day

00:43:55.500 if progressives, if you want to call them that, have their way. There will come a day when pastors

00:44:01.720 will be forced to marry gay couples or resign, stop preaching about sin, or close down their church.

00:44:07.380 Free speech and freedom of religion to the radical left wing with increasing influence over the

00:44:12.740 Democratic Party see free speech and freedom of religion as oppressive forces hurting the

00:44:18.040 marginalized. They believe, like the left in Europe has already said that they believe and has already

00:44:23.980 implemented in many ways, that there should be limits to what you can and cannot say and even

00:44:29.000 what you can and cannot believe. There are already policies in place like this in New York and

00:44:33.080 California, totally unconstitutional, but they threaten to fine you if you, quote, misgender

00:44:38.380 someone. The DOJ, however, under Trump, created a religious liberty task force under Jeff Sessions

00:44:45.740 to ensure that the religious liberty of all people is being protected across the country, that people

00:44:51.480 could run their businesses and live their lives in accordance to their religious values. Democrats went

00:44:57.580 berserk on this, just completely lost their minds, saying again that this is just an excuse for

00:45:02.380 bigotry. Remember the propaganda and the articles that were put out in the USSR in order to defend

00:45:10.860 cracking down on religious liberty. They made the same argument that religious liberty is just another

00:45:16.420 excuse for prejudice. That is communist propaganda then, it's communist propaganda now. Secretary of State

00:45:22.360 Mike Pompeo under Trump has been a vigilant defender of religious liberty. He created a commission on

00:45:27.640 unalienable rights to reexamine where here and around the world religious liberty and other kinds of

00:45:35.280 liberty are being infringed upon, and this has been a high priority of the Trump administration. The DNC had

00:45:44.700 a statement about the creation of this commission, and it said this, it is, quote, further proof that

00:45:51.540 Republicans continue to push forward an agenda completely out of step with the American people

00:45:56.480 and our values. Religious liberty is a threat to leftism. It is a threat to the ideology of the

00:46:03.420 Democratic Party. Do I think that every Democrat in the Democratic Party feels this way? No, I don't.

00:46:07.880 I think that there are a lot of sincere people who believe in religious liberty that are a part of

00:46:12.640 the Democratic Party for a variety of reasons, but just understand that coming from the leadership and

00:46:17.300 coming from the movement that is getting more and more popular in the Democratic Party,

00:46:20.600 this is what is coming down the pipeline, an animosity towards religious liberty and labeling

00:46:25.540 the freedom of religion, which is our most fundamental right, as just an excuse for bigotry.

00:46:30.740 That is not what it is. It is the accusations of bigotry that are an excuse for infringing on

00:46:36.560 people's fundamental right to worship and believe how they see fit. Democrats have long believed that

00:46:43.260 religious groups should be made to comply with the atheistic worldview. The Obamacare mandate that forced

00:46:49.180 all employers, religious or not, to provide insurance for birth control for their employees,

00:46:54.280 even the kind that are abortifacients, is clearly an infringement upon religious liberty in the left

00:46:59.560 represented by the New York Times, for example. They scoffed at this idea at the time when people said,

00:47:05.200 hey, this is going to get in the way of religious liberty for religious organizations who don't want

00:47:09.520 to cover these kinds of medications. They said, oh, that's just ridiculous. But Little Sisters of the Poor,

00:47:15.200 a Catholic group, has been in a legal battle over this for years. Now, thankfully, in 2017,

00:47:22.540 Trump signed an executive order offering regulatory relief for organizations like the Little Sisters of

00:47:28.540 the Poor. And this year, thanks to conservative justices, the Supreme Court upheld that executive

00:47:34.240 order that the left tried so hard to fight against. That was one decision in July in the way of religious

00:47:40.640 liberty. That was really good. And then another decision in Our Lady of Guadalupe versus Morrissey

00:47:47.740 Baru, Justice Alito, reasoned that the responsibility goes to the core mission of most private religious

00:47:53.260 schools to be able to choose what kind of teachers they want to be able to teach religion. This was about

00:48:01.240 whether or not these organizations are allowed to basically hire the people that they see fit in

00:48:06.280 accordance with their values. Religious liberty requires leaving employment decisions, touching on

00:48:11.800 that particular mission to the school. So those were good decisions made, thanks mostly to the

00:48:17.120 conservative justices made in decision made in made in July. And we can thank President Trump at least

00:48:24.600 partly for that. Bill Barr has been a great defender of religious liberty. He gave a speech last year.

00:48:31.660 I believe it was last year. I don't have the date right in front of me. It might have been 2018. But

00:48:35.800 he delivered a speech about religious liberty at Notre Dame that made Democrats go crazy. He talked

00:48:42.600 about how there is an effort to replace the Judeo-Christian moral system with secularism and the

00:48:47.620 doctrine of moral relativism. Traditional religious values are not decaying, but rather are the target of

00:48:53.560 organized destruction, he argued. He also said that secularists have attacked religion and those who hold

00:49:00.160 religious beliefs with, quote, social, educational, and professional ostracism, lawsuits, and social

00:49:06.120 media campaigns. Those who practice their faith publicly are shamed or sometimes sued into submission

00:49:11.940 like Jack Phillips, while those who hold their beliefs privately are encouraged to keep their beliefs to

00:49:17.500 themselves and to not impose them or not even speak about them in fear of imposing them on someone else.

00:49:25.180 He and his assistant attorney general have been working to protect the liberty of churches across the country

00:49:31.040 who are being discriminatorily targeted by lockdown measures, by mostly Democratic city officials and governors.

00:49:38.740 Whereas Democrats, on the other hand, like I said, the ideology that is taking over the Democratic Party,

00:49:44.420 even if not every single politician or every single person who is a part of the Democratic Party believes this,

00:49:49.320 and I believe there are weak people on the Republican side in the way of religious liberty as well.

00:49:54.960 But when we're talking about worldviews, when we're talking about priorities, religious liberty,

00:49:59.240 according to the majority of the Democratic Party today, is something they believe that needs to give

00:50:05.240 way to other privileges and to other feelings, basically. The Equality Act is a great example of that.

00:50:13.780 So I did an entire episode on the Equality Act, and even though it sounds good, of course,

00:50:18.900 the name of these acts and these pieces of legislation on the left and the right,

00:50:24.080 they try to make it as good and as inarguable as possible so that if you stand against it,

00:50:29.340 you seem like a really bad person. But this Equality Act is not about equality.

00:50:33.800 It is about inequality and prejudice against people who hold religious and biblical views.

00:50:39.480 And it's such a good example of how the left and the Democratic Party sees the issue of religious

00:50:44.940 liberty. So I'll read you some of what I talked about in that episode from, I think it was almost

00:50:51.980 two years ago now that we, or maybe it was a year ago now that we talked about this. I'll read you

00:50:56.480 some of what I said then. So the Equality Act makes irrelevant any religious or conscience exemptions

00:51:02.260 for doctors, for example. Under this bill, a doctor is required to perform sex change surgery and

00:51:08.140 provide hormone therapy even to children. Now they can maybe find protection from that under the free

00:51:14.220 exercise arguments or other conscience objection legislation, but that is completely unsure. So

00:51:19.900 that's a very precarious position to be in as a doctor. Religious schools would be regulated under

00:51:25.660 this act. So private schools basically are no longer private under the Equality Act, which they will

00:51:31.260 continue to try to push through forever for infinity until they get it done. Even if they, even if this

00:51:38.880 religious school takes no funding whatsoever from the federal government, meaning that they could not

00:51:44.320 choose to hire or fire a teacher based on their belief system. So if a Christian school, a traditional

00:51:50.800 Christian school, they found out that one of their teachers is gay, they found out that one of their

00:51:55.440 teachers is transitioning. For example, they would not be allowed to fire that teacher under the

00:52:01.240 Equality Act. It doesn't matter if that violates the belief system of this school. And again, whether

00:52:07.000 or not you believe that, whether or not you believe in what that school believes and what that Christian

00:52:14.800 school believes, whether or not you agree with the decision to fire someone based on their sexual

00:52:19.300 orientation or their so-called gender identity, you can see the problem with the government encroaching

00:52:25.060 on the religious liberty of organizations and schools like this. And you can see how that is a threat to

00:52:31.040 all of our freedoms. The Bible is obviously clear about marriage and gender. And so what this Equality

00:52:37.160 Act is saying is that a school that says that they abide by the Bible, they're based on biblical

00:52:43.160 principles that you are not actually allowed to live that out. You are not actually allowed to run your

00:52:48.620 business in a way that abides by the belief that you have. That is essentially what the Equality Act

00:52:54.480 is trying to ensure that whether you're a doctor, whether you're a Christian school,

00:53:00.400 whether you're a Christian organization, whether you're a Christian individual, that your beliefs

00:53:05.340 are not going to get in the way of far-left progressivism. And so it's really almost a

00:53:12.640 replacement of religion with progressivism rather than just an inhibition of religion altogether.

00:53:20.200 This, of course, is tyranny. There is a Supreme Court case, Employment Division v. Smith, that held

00:53:25.420 that religious dissenters are subject to generally applicable laws, which means under the Equality

00:53:30.000 Act, there would be very little, some but little recourse for religious people who object to these

00:53:35.060 kinds of laws. Under this act, athletic teams would be forced to allow transgender boys and girls to

00:53:40.500 compete on athletic teams that correspond to their so-called gender identity rather than their sex.

00:53:46.080 Again, there could be some judicial interpretation that would rule in favor of objections to this,

00:53:51.480 but in general, under this act, they would have that right. That means co-ed locker rooms. That means

00:53:59.420 co-ed athletic teams. That means your girls have no refuge, no safety, no recourse, really no real

00:54:07.300 athletic competition whatsoever under the so-called Equality Act. This is not just an attack on women and the

00:54:13.540 safety of girls. It is also an attack on religious beliefs and religious liberty. It is a disastrous

00:54:19.700 act. It looks to replace what is what we know as a right, something like the right to free speech or

00:54:28.980 the right to religious liberty with privileges and to exchange those definitions without us really

00:54:36.100 noticing. And in that way, we are accepting tyranny in the name of compassion. According to National

00:54:42.700 Review, under the guise of anti-discrimination protections, the bill redefines sex to include

00:54:47.680 gender identity, undermines religious freedom, gives males who identify as females the right to

00:54:52.420 women's spaces, and sets a dangerous political precedent for the medicalization of gender-confused

00:54:57.320 youth. There are Republicans in the House who have tried to add amendments to ensure some more freedom

00:55:02.020 for organizations and schools. Representative Tom McClintock, Republican from California,

00:55:06.860 his amendment would have ensured that the bill would not be, quote,

00:55:10.660 construed to require a health care provider to affirm the self-professed gender identity of a

00:55:15.300 minor. He explained why he added this amendment to the National Review. H.R. 5 is a dangerous attempt

00:55:20.720 by the Democrats to use the force of the government to bend biology and human nature to their ideological

00:55:25.880 whims. I'm not surprised that my amendment to ensure that physicians cannot be sued for exercising

00:55:30.840 their professional medical judgment was rejected. So under this act, doctors aren't even allowed to say,

00:55:37.600 you know, I actually don't think that it's best to chemically castrate this child. I actually don't

00:55:42.640 think that it's best to do a double mastectomy on this young woman. She doesn't actually seem to have

00:55:48.400 gender dysphoria. Under this act, under the so-called Equality Act, a doctor is not even able to use his

00:55:56.560 medical reasoning and his medical justification to deny someone this surgery. And furthermore,

00:56:04.700 he is not able to do so from a religious or a moral perspective either. And so an amendment by

00:56:11.120 this congressperson was added and the Democrats rejected it. He said, viewed along with the

00:56:16.140 rejection of my colleague's amendment relating to protecting parents from being sued for discrimination

00:56:20.920 for the act of parenting, the Democrats' radical agenda is on full display in the House. So under this

00:56:27.240 act, parents who don't want their child to be put on puberty blockers, don't want their child to

00:56:32.280 transition. Parents who know and love their child more than anyone else. Parents who say, hey, I'm

00:56:36.900 willing to work with my child who might be struggling with gender dysphoria. I love my child. I accept my

00:56:41.400 child, but I don't think we should go down the road of chemical castration. I don't think that we should

00:56:46.100 go down the road of puberty blockers. I don't think that my eight-year-old child needs to go down

00:56:50.680 the path of transitioning. Under this act, those parents would be liable to be sued. Same with parents

00:56:56.540 who say, hey, I want to protect my 13-year-old daughter. I don't want her to be in a locker room with the

00:57:00.040 boy. Under this Equality Act that is being sponsored by Democrats, parents would be in

00:57:05.640 trouble with the law who decide to parent how they see fit. This is a worldview. This is a

00:57:10.340 communistic far-left worldview that the Democrats are trying hard to push through. It is not just

00:57:16.540 in severing the relationship between the parent and the child. It is in tearing down all institutions

00:57:21.500 that are higher than the government. Because like all communists and all socialists,

00:57:27.140 they do not want the populace to derive our values, to derive authority and autonomy from anything

00:57:34.380 other than the government. And so these are far-left ideologies that are being pushed through by the

00:57:40.020 Democratic Party. Even though I don't think a majority of Democrats would call themselves

00:57:43.740 communists, I don't think that they believe all things that are communists. I think a lot of them

00:57:47.500 aren't even conscious about some of the ideologies that are packed into the legislation and the

00:57:53.400 movements that they are defending and that they are pushing forward. I certainly, like I said,

00:57:58.940 do not think that Joe Biden would articulate a lot of values and a lot of the principles that we

00:58:05.720 talked about the left representing today. I think probably personally, he is somewhat of a moderate.

00:58:11.460 Now, we know from last week, he's not a moderate on abortion. He is very radical on that.

00:58:15.960 But probably personally, he is a little moderate. But he has gone way far to the left just in the past

00:58:22.700 year to try to appease the far left so he can make sure that he is getting voted in. I mean,

00:58:27.520 that's why he got together with Bernie Sanders, his unity task force, to come up with the policy

00:58:33.320 prescriptions for all the things that are going on. And one of them is making sure that we defund

00:58:39.180 charter schools and that we stand against the expansion of charter schools. They're not for school

00:58:45.340 choice. They're for taking away the Hyde Amendment, which says that taxpayers cannot fund abortion.

00:58:51.200 He obviously chose a vice president who, in 2019, was the most liberal senator in the Senate,

00:58:59.980 even more liberal than Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders was second most liberal. And so

00:59:03.640 he has surrounded himself by radical leftists. His administration is going to be used for this

00:59:09.520 ideology, which is rabidly anti-religious liberty, rabidly anti-First Amendment, rabidly anti-family,

00:59:19.740 unfortunately, rabidly anti-faith, even if many of these people do not personally embody those

00:59:25.800 values. So I'm not trying to indict people that don't need to be indicted. I'm not trying to

00:59:30.460 exaggerate. I'm not trying to tell you anything that's not true. I'm trying to show you that

00:59:34.920 you're looking at an entire interconnected ideology for people who say, well, you know, I kind of agree

00:59:40.640 with Democrats on that one thing, or I'm not so sure about Trump's tweets. Just realize that you are

00:59:46.220 voting for a cohesive worldview. You are voting for a cohesive ideology. And ideology, I believe,

00:59:53.800 on the left is very destructive. Once again, do I like everything that Trump says? No, I do not.

00:59:59.540 Do I like everything that Trump tweets? No, I do not. If I could advise Trump, I would have advised him

01:00:06.000 to do a lot of things differently and say a lot of things differently over the past few years. Do I

01:00:12.280 believe that he is our savior? Do I believe that he is our hope? Do I have hope in any one political

01:00:17.400 party or any one politician or any one president? I absolutely don't. But as I said on the on last

01:00:24.300 Monday, I do believe in the importance of voting and the importance of knowing about the issues and

01:00:30.000 the importance of caring about the issues because policies affect flesh and blood people. They affect

01:00:34.340 the most, the least of these. They affect the most the people on the outskirts of society. And I believe

01:00:39.680 it is my duty as someone with the privilege and the right to vote and to read and to talk and to

01:00:44.060 care about these issues, to speak up about the things that are important and to encourage other

01:00:48.760 people to be educated and to vote as well. And hey, maybe you'll disagree with me, but I'm trying

01:00:53.500 to give you as much of my perspective as I possibly can and warn you and warn you about the destructive

01:00:59.400 ideology that is coming from the left, that is coming for your children, that is coming for your

01:01:03.520 family, that is coming from your church. And no, you're not going to see it when you watch the DNC.

01:01:07.500 You're not going to see it when you watch MSNBC and CNN, of course, because they're carrying water

01:01:11.540 for them. And this is always how these revolutions, these tyrannical revolutions start. They've got the

01:01:16.600 people on the front lines who sound really good, say the right things, they use the propaganda.

01:01:20.620 Then they've got all the people in Portland and Seattle doing the destroying. And so we just need

01:01:26.520 to be on guard. And quite frankly, it's a very privileged argument to use Trump's tweets and some of the

01:01:34.460 things that he has said as a reason not to vote for him. They don't affect anyone. Trump's tweets don't

01:01:38.680 affect anyone. Trump's words a lot of times, sometimes they do, but Trump's words a lot of times, his

01:01:44.820 gaffes a lot of times, they don't affect anyone. And you know what? The left thinks the same thing about

01:01:48.800 Biden. He's had a lot of gaffes. He said a lot of things that could be construed as racist. He has been

01:01:53.140 accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment. And the left, like the right, has said, you know what?

01:01:57.940 I'm taking the good with the bad of voting for a worldview. I'm voting for the policies that I

01:02:01.900 think are best for the country. And I am going to try to argue with you Monday after Monday that

01:02:07.060 the leftist worldview is a destructive one and the conservative worldview is one that I believe is

01:02:12.860 best for every demographic of the country. Is it perfect? No, because people aren't perfect and I

01:02:18.760 don't ascribe to any one worldly ideology perfectly. And I rejoice in the fact that one day I will be

01:02:26.660 in the presence of my savior with people who I disagreed with politically on earth and we will

01:02:32.180 finally be together worshiping the perfect king. But until then, until then, I am going to be

01:02:38.700 advocating for what I believe to be just policies, just ideals, and a worldview that I think benefits

01:02:47.460 every single kind of person in this country. Okay, that's my whole spiel. Now to the part that you

01:02:54.520 guys have been waiting for, I know this is a little bit of a long episode, but it's worth it.

01:02:59.120 Here, without further ado, is Dr. John MacArthur. Dr. MacArthur, thank you so much for joining me.

01:03:06.260 Well, it's my pleasure, Allie Beth. Thank you for the privilege.

01:03:08.660 Yes. Can you briefly give us an update on the latest attempts by the California government to

01:03:14.520 inhibit your church's right to worship?

01:03:17.000 Yeah, sort of up to the moment. They had told us they're going to fine us $20,000. They're going

01:03:24.600 to fine me $8,000. The church $12,000. We're violating a court order. We went back to court

01:03:30.420 to show the court that there was no court order. They were trying to force a court order that didn't

01:03:36.380 exist. And so the judge says there is no violation of a court order. There is no contempt of court.

01:03:42.700 And he said, Grace Church is the only church in California free to worship indoors. And you can't

01:03:48.460 get another injunction against them this week either. So they're free to meet on this coming

01:03:54.280 Sunday. So the judge actually said to them, this is the third time you've come to court trying to

01:03:59.440 get an injunction to keep these people from having church. What is your objective in this? So he was

01:04:05.120 not favorable to this continued effort in the courts to shut us down.

01:04:10.300 And did they have an answer for that? What their objective is?

01:04:15.160 We know what their objective is. I don't know if they articulated it to the judge,

01:04:19.360 but there was a lot of disrespect thrown at that judge I heard in that event because they were not

01:04:24.840 happy about it. But their goal is to put on us such onerous requirements that they're impossible for us

01:04:31.840 to meet. It's about an inch thick of health requirements that we could never possibly come up to.

01:04:38.920 So it essentially would be a shutdown. And they keep pushing for all of those. They won't take

01:04:45.200 a mitigated list of those things or a smaller list. They want the whole thing. And so it's

01:04:49.780 essentially a shutdown.

01:04:51.660 Right. I have heard you articulate this, but I'm not sure everyone listening has. In the beginning,

01:04:57.460 Grace Church, like most churches, decided that you were not going to meet together in person.

01:05:01.980 You delivered your sermons virtually, but then there was a shift. There was a change over the past

01:05:07.140 couple of months. Can you explain kind of how you guys came to the decision to start meeting in

01:05:12.600 person again? Yeah. At the very outset, we were told millions of people were going to die.

01:05:18.820 Millions of Americans were going to die. This was going to be something like the Spanish flu back in

01:05:23.460 1918. So we don't want to kill anybody, obviously. So we said, hey, if this is as deadly as we're hearing,

01:05:34.160 we need to obey what the leaders are telling us. So I said, we'll do a live stream. And we

01:05:41.700 translated it into five languages. And it went around the world. And our people watched on

01:05:45.420 television. After about three or four weeks, they started to come back. We didn't say anything.

01:05:50.440 They knew I was preaching in the worship center every Sunday. They just started coming back. And

01:05:54.940 there were dozens. And then there were hundreds. And then there were thousands. And they began to

01:06:00.100 realize that the narrative just did not match reality. When it became apparent that 99.99% of

01:06:09.040 Californians will survive this, they didn't believe that this was a legitimate fear. They just said,

01:06:17.200 look, we're adults. We're going to make our own decision. We didn't say anything about them coming

01:06:22.960 back. We didn't mandate that. We just wanted to see what the people would decide on their own

01:06:28.440 when reality took over from the, I think, purposeful fear that was thrown out at everybody

01:06:36.160 at the beginning.

01:06:37.600 Were you surprised that this has caused such an uproar, both in the secular world, but also

01:06:45.580 within the church? You've got some evangelicals that have been pushing back on y'all's decision.

01:06:49.760 Did that shock you at all?

01:06:51.260 It doesn't shock me for a number of reasons, Allie Beth. And the number one reason, I think,

01:06:59.780 is that pragmatism has had such a huge impact on the church, that the church is more concerned about

01:07:05.760 what the unbelieving world thinks of it than it is about ministering to the saints. The church has

01:07:11.480 become an event to attract nonbelievers. So if you're going to do that, then you've got to buy into

01:07:17.500 the conventional attitudes of those people and not offend them. If that's your goal, that's what

01:07:21.660 pragmatic goals will do. Then you've got to go with the flow of the culture. You can't go against

01:07:27.180 that. So from my standpoint, look, the only stock and trade we have is the truth. The church is the

01:07:32.780 pillar and ground of the truth. We want our people to know the truth about the Bible. But, you know,

01:07:37.520 the Apostle Paul said, preach the word in season and out of season. What he meant by that is,

01:07:41.960 preach the word in relation to the seasons you're in. Jesus said to the Pharisees and scribes,

01:07:48.000 you can tell the weather, but you don't know the season of redemption you're in. And I think being

01:07:53.280 able to understand what is going on and to preach in accordance with that, without attacking the

01:08:01.320 culture, without basically shaming people in any way, we have to be the people of the truth. So

01:08:08.420 we never have told our people that we buy into the pandemic. We've given them statistics continually,

01:08:14.880 and they have seen them themselves. At California right now, there is, I suppose, with COVID,

01:08:22.460 one death per 100,000 people. And they're still mandating a complete lockdown and trying to lock

01:08:30.560 down Grace Church with that low death rate. So there's much more to this than any kind of

01:08:37.880 health issue. I know you can't speculate, but if you if you could, what do you think are some of

01:08:45.340 the motives behind a lockdown that just doesn't seem to correlate with science? And maybe just

01:08:51.920 even in relation to shutting down things like worship? First of all, we did a little study and

01:08:57.960 the number of deaths in California this year from January to August is exactly the rate it's been

01:09:06.020 going for the last 10 years. There's about 15 more deaths this year per 100,000 by all means of

01:09:14.880 death than there were in 2019. This is not an epidemic. The numbers indicate to us that something

01:09:20.860 else is going on. Masks is another issue. If you want to go around with a bacterial zoo on your face

01:09:28.560 and think that's going to make you healthy, I don't think you're thinking very deeply about that.

01:09:34.420 So I but the proof of one thing is coming out in all of this, you don't need an army to conquer a

01:09:39.980 nation. All you need is fear. Right. And you can literally overpower. Look, this country has

01:09:45.380 sacrificed tens of thousands of lives to gain our freedom. And people are going to give it all up

01:09:51.780 if the government will protect them from some nebulous virus. Right. It shows you the weakness

01:09:57.540 of this generation and it shows you the susceptibility to suggestion and the ease with which

01:10:04.000 fear can dominate people not related to reality, actually. And the fear is so great that if you

01:10:10.380 don't do what you should do, you get yelled at in very many places. So it's a palpable fear that

01:10:16.140 people have. We've tried to quietly remove that fear by just doing what we normally do. And people

01:10:23.660 come and they're they're not afraid. They're they're joyful. They're happy. They're thrilled

01:10:27.960 to be here. And thousands are coming and more every single week. We've got them all over the campus,

01:10:33.420 outdoors, indoors, in the tent, in every room in our facility. And they're not afraid. And I just

01:10:39.240 think carrying out the narrative now for thinking people is a really hard thing to do.

01:10:43.960 Yes, absolutely. Could you give some encouragement to people who maybe they're in a church where their

01:10:52.120 pastor is not taking the same stance that you are, but they wish that they were. And they're just

01:10:56.580 afraid. They're afraid of encroaching restrictions by the government on things like freedom of worship.

01:11:03.100 And maybe they're looking to the horizon. They're seeing the possibility of more severe persecution of

01:11:08.340 Christians in this country. And they're maybe not afraid of the virus, but they're afraid of that.

01:11:13.020 And they just don't know what to do. And they don't see enough leaders standing up.

01:11:17.440 What would be your encouragement to that Christian right now?

01:11:21.080 Well, look, first of all, you know, the word of God commands you to worship, to come together,

01:11:27.560 to not forsake the assembling of yourselves together as a manner of some is come together

01:11:31.120 to stimulate one another to love and good works.

01:11:34.360 You know, in the book of First Corinthians, when the Apostle Paul is writing to the church and

01:11:38.640 talking about the Lord's table in that chapter over and over, it says, when you come together,

01:11:43.800 when you come together, when you come together, when you come together, this is the church.

01:11:47.480 The church isn't a video experience. The church is life on life. And you need to be the church.

01:11:55.160 You also need not only to follow the word of God, but also realize Christ is the head of the church,

01:11:59.620 not any political entity, not any government agency, and not any person in power.

01:12:05.000 Christ is the head of the church. Give glory to him by being the church. And then you need to

01:12:10.940 understand that you don't really have anything to fear in terms of the threat of this virus,

01:12:17.220 because the statistics are just so minuscule. The deaths are people, basically, I'll give you

01:12:24.420 one statistic. In California, the average death of COVID is 78. In California, the average death

01:12:30.340 normally is age 78. So there's not a significant difference from this virus and any other normal

01:12:39.440 year. So you have to do that examination to the point where you can satisfy your own mind.

01:12:46.820 But I think it's even more than that. I think people know that they don't see dead bodies all

01:12:51.780 around, that their worlds, they may know somebody who had COVID and didn't even know they had it,

01:12:57.600 but they found out when they were tested, or they may know somebody that had an illness. But

01:13:01.300 we know it isn't a deadly illness. Everybody should know that. And you have to decide what

01:13:07.820 your priorities are. We always say, you know, I'm not concerned about people dying of COVID. I'm

01:13:14.260 concerned about people dying in sin. And 100% of the people who are alive are going to die. And

01:13:21.000 after that, the judgment, and we need to be the light for the gospel.

01:13:24.060 I tell pastors, have church. Have church and let Christ defend you.

01:13:28.760 Yes, yes. Well, thank you so much. And just really quickly, I like to ask a particular guest

01:13:33.860 to do this. If you could just share the gospel with as much time as you have left for the people

01:13:40.200 who have never heard it or who need to hear it again. If you could please do that for my audience,

01:13:45.900 then that would be so greatly appreciated.

01:13:47.460 Sure. Look, the real pandemic in the world is sin. The Bible says all have sinned, come short of the

01:13:55.400 glory of God. The wages of sin is death, the soul that sins, it shall die. It's appointed unto man

01:14:00.540 once to die, and after this, the judgment. You're going to live forever. The Bible says you're going

01:14:04.940 to live forever, either in hell, out of the presence of God, in conscious punishment forever,

01:14:09.660 or in heaven, in joy and peace and bliss forever. Death is not the end. Death is the beginning of

01:14:17.340 eternity. And the questions in life are not related to how successful are you, or how good is your

01:14:23.420 marriage, or how fulfilled are you. The real question in life is, what are you going to do when

01:14:29.500 this life ends and you face God? There's only one way to have your sins forgiven and enter heaven,

01:14:36.800 and that is by putting your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who died in the place of sinners,

01:14:42.420 to pay the penalty for their sin, and then rose from the dead. And by the power of his resurrection,

01:14:48.560 he'll raise all of those who believe in him to eternal glory. Christ is the only Savior,

01:14:55.260 and you need to put your trust in Christ. And the joy of heaven will be waiting for you,

01:14:59.840 and the joy of heaven will back up into this life, so that because your eternity is settled,

01:15:05.080 your life here on earth will be filled with joy, peace, and hope. Amen. Thank you so much,

01:15:11.220 Dr. MacArthur. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. My pleasure. Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - August 24, 2020

Ep 292 ｜ Trump vs. Biden 2020： Religious Liberty ｜ Guest： John MacArthur

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