Kirk Cameron is an actor and producer best known for his role as Mike Seaver on the hit TV show Growing Pains, but he s also starred in Fireproof and Way of the Master, and is currently on a 30-city tour for his Marriage and Parenting Conference, Living Room Reset. In this Sunday Special, Kirk talks about how he became an Evangelical Christian, why he left the entertainment industry, and what it was like growing up with a family that grew up in the 80s and 90s as a fan of the Fonz character, Henry Winkler. He also talks about why he made the decision to leave acting and pursue a career as a Christian, and why it was so radical for him to become an evangelical. He talks about the challenges he faced growing up as an actor, and how he overcame them, and the lessons he learned along the way. You can find out more about him in this episode of The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and become a supporter of his work by searching for "Ben Shapiro" on iTunes. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and tell a friend about Ben Shapiro on Anchor.fm and we'll send him your thoughts on the show. Thanks for listening! Ben Shapiro's Sunday Special is a must-listen! See linktr.ee/BenShapiroThing to get 10% off your first month with discount code: CHANGE10 at checkout. CHECK OUT TODAY! It helps spread the word to your friends, family and family about the show! and fellow listeners everywhere! Get 10% all year long with discount codes to get 20% off their first month, and get 5% off the entire month, plus free shipping throughout the rest of the entire year, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday shipping offers, plus a FREE shipping offer, and they'll get an ad-free VIP membership when you shop at 7/27th gets the best deal, shipping starts start after Dec 31st, only 3 months get 7 months get VIP access to the deal starts, only 2 months get a maximum discount, they get 7% OFF $99, VIP access, and 7% off VIP access gets 5% OFF, and I'll get a limited promo code CHECKED, they'll also get a FREE FASTEST PRICING offer, AND they'll receive 20% OFF OFF THE FIRST MONTH AND VIP PROMOTION ONLY TWO MONTH SUPPORT ONLY, AND ALL THE MONEY IS PRICED TO BUY 5 STARED IN CHECK AND PATREON PRODUCED TO CHECKING IN TO CHEER AND VIP SUPPORT AND PROGRAMMING IN THE CHALLENGE?
00:01:23.000I have to say, I was kind of insulted that, you know, I have a name profile and yet my wife was far more excited that you were coming on the Sunday Special than that I actually host the Sunday Special.
00:01:33.000Well, you know, it is fun and it's funny.
00:01:36.000So many people grew up in the 1980s with Growing Pains and shows like that and Who's the Boss and other kinds of shows, and you just feel like these people grew up with you in your living room, so it's like they're family.
00:01:49.000It was Henry Winkler, and I was pretty excited when I met him. - So in a second, I wanna ask you about what happened while you were on Growing Pains and your shift to Christianity, 'cause that was obviously the defining feature of not only your life, but also of your move and your career.
00:02:03.000I'm gonna ask you about that in just a second.
00:02:05.000But first, let's talk about a simple fact, That is, governments can manipulate how much your money is worth.
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00:02:46.000Birchgold, they've been with us since the very beginning.
00:03:19.000So let's talk a little bit about what has become sort of the defining feature.
00:03:22.000Whenever there's an article about you in the press, it's always about your shift to Christianity while you were playing Mike Seaver on Growing Pains, which is a radical shift, at least from the outside, just because the character of Mike Seaver is so different from somebody who would become an evangelical Christian.
00:03:35.000So what exactly happened to you and what was that experience like?
00:03:38.000Well, I didn't grow up in a religious home, so I never went to church.
00:03:42.000In fact, I thought that Jesus was part of a different trinity, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and God.
00:03:50.000So, that was never on the radar, but I actually met a girl on the set who was really cute, and she invited me to go meet her family, and it was a Sunday morning at church.
00:04:02.000And I heard a message from the minister that just I was answering questions that I was asking, existential questions, philosophical questions, and I got thinking about the fact that one day I would die, and if really intelligent people believe in the existence of God, maybe I'm wrong as an atheist, and at least I ought to reach out.
00:04:23.000And I heard this message of God's grace and His love and His forgiveness, and I remember sitting in my sports car on the side of the road at 17 years old, and I thought about, I could get hit by a drunk driver, I could die today, And if what that man said is true, I'm not going to heaven because of my attitude.
00:04:41.000You know, I was the big man on campus.
00:04:43.000I was Mike Seaver on Growing Pains, and everything was on my terms.
00:04:46.000But I understood that a relationship with God would have to be on His terms.
00:04:56.000And somebody gave me a Bible, I started to read it, I started to go to church, and asked a million questions.
00:05:02.000Listening to guys like Ravi Zacharias, who I loved the interview that you had with him.
00:05:07.000Listening to guys like John MacArthur and others who really got me I was captivated by the message of the gospel, and I wanted to live my life in a way that was different, saying thank you to the one that gave me air to breathe, water to drink, and I was 17.
00:05:25.000So, as a 17-year-old kid trying to figure out your own identity, I know I...
00:06:03.000She was like, great, I would love to go to church.
00:06:05.000But the problem was my mom and dad were separated at the time.
00:06:09.000Providentially, this news of me going to church actually brought my dad to church, and my mom was like, you're not going to church with the kids without me!
00:06:19.000And so, that actually was one of the things that I think added to them reconciling their relationship, and then we were all coming together, and we were praying together, and going to church together, and it was a really beautiful, positive thing in our family.
00:06:34.000So how were you received in the industry when you decided to make this move?
00:06:37.000I mean, both my parents work in the industry.
00:06:38.000I spend a lot of time around people in the industry.
00:06:40.000I know that when my mom, she has four, there are four kids in our family, and she works at a very high level in terms of business production.
00:06:48.000I remember when she would go to events and people would ask how many kids she had and she'd say four.
00:07:25.000But it was kind of funny because really I think the changes were I just wasn't dropping as many F-bombs.
00:07:30.000You know, I wasn't going to the same parties and I wasn't interested in some of the stuff that my friends were interested in.
00:07:36.000And I think over time it's really served me well.
00:07:41.000So there may be some parts that I had to pass on because of content or conscience issues, but at the end of the day
00:07:52.000Look at me, I'm sitting here with Ben Shapiro on your show, married for 29 years, I have six kids, I'm working on projects that I'm passionate about, and I'm trying to spread a message of life and light, and I think all that is because God has pointed me in a direction that I think works.
00:08:20.000I remember talking to Patty Heaton about this, one of my friends.
00:08:22.000And Patty, I said to her, you know, have you lost parts because of this, because she's so pro-life, and outspokenly so.
00:08:29.000And she said, I don't think so, but let me call you back.
00:08:30.000She called me back 48 hours later, said, yeah, I just found out I lost seven specific parts because of this.
00:08:35.000So did you feel any blowback from folks in the industry, or was it something where it was sort of a natural progression toward more parts you wanted to do?
00:09:03.000By the time I graduated high school, doors were opening for an acting career, and I thought I might as well keep this career going, and the doors that were opening were lining up with what was happening to me on the inside.
00:09:14.000I want to be about things that promote faith.
00:09:16.000I want to be about things that promote family and marriage.
00:09:22.000And that was a chance to be a part of a really cool, inspiring movie.
00:09:26.000I was part of a documentary called Monumental, which explored the founding principles of our forefathers, the pilgrims.
00:09:34.000And I retraced their escape route out of England to Holland, where they spent all those years with their pastor before coming over on the Mayflower.
00:09:43.000And so it wasn't ever like I felt that people's disagreements with my faith or my values was inhibiting my career.
00:09:54.000I I felt like my clearer direction of where I wanted to go was lining up with the doors that were opening.
00:10:00.000And here I am looking in the rearview mirror saying, this has been awesome.
00:12:18.000We love seeing each other when we do have the chance.
00:12:20.000So you've been making Christian content and conservative content or at least traditionally oriented family content for a while.
00:12:28.000Why do you think it is that it's been left to sort of non-mainstream outlets in Hollywood to do all of that?
00:12:32.000It's been a constant source of frustration for a lot of conservatives that I know that the studios will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on movies that have an incredibly select audience of apparently very Yeah.
00:12:44.000blue people living in very blue areas, and they just ignore an entire swath of people who believe in religious faith, and that's left to sort of smaller studios to distribute.
00:12:53.000Fireproof is, of course, the best example of this, a movie that was made on a shoestring budget and then goes on to do $30 million at the box office because Hollywood completely ignores this entire segment of the American population.
00:13:05.000I I travel all around the country teaching on the subject of marriage and parenting because I think family is so important.
00:13:12.000I think when the family crumbles, the nation crumbles.
00:13:14.000And what I find everywhere that I go is that there are people of faith, I call it the family of faith, everywhere who believe In the kinds of values and think that character and virtue is essentially important, more so than politics, more so than the economy, more so than these other things.
00:13:36.000I don't know why there aren't more projects like this, but I think that there are becoming more and more of these things.
00:13:43.000More with technology being the way that it is, you don't have to depend on a studio distribution system, you don't have to depend on studio funding, you can grab a camera and you can have a YouTube channel and you can start making stuff.
00:13:54.000More independent movies are coming around this way.
00:13:57.000I would think, actually I would love to ask you that, why you think, I wonder if there aren't political reasonings behind all of that.
00:14:03.000I mean, I certainly think that I wrote a book in 2014 about the TV industry called Primetime Propaganda.
00:14:07.000And I went and interviewed probably a hundred different executives and producers and creators on TV shows.
00:14:14.000And many of them would say openly that they had legitimate scorn for people in the middle of the country with whom they disagreed on these sorts of areas.
00:14:21.000They felt that the real issues that were perplexing people were not issues of faith.
00:14:25.000Those weren't the people they were speaking to.
00:14:28.000And a lot of that was because I think the artistic endeavor, from where I sit, very much seems to be, from people I was talking to, reflective of the people who surround you.
00:14:36.000So when I talk to some of the creators of Friends, which is a lifestyle completely foreign to my own, and foreign to a lot of people in the middle of the country, people who are in their early 30s acting like they're 17 years old living in an apartment together, all single, they have a kid at one point out of wedlock.
00:14:48.000The kid disappears for several years, the kid sort of shows up randomly several seasons later, and that's treated as perfectly normal.
00:14:55.000They even make a joke of it in the show.
00:14:56.000And I remember talking to Myra Kaufman, who is one of the creators of Friends, and she said, right, but those are the people who I'm surrounded by.
00:15:03.000And so, in other words, the bubble that you live in really defines the people who you're speaking to.
00:15:07.000And so because the creative industry is drawn so much from LA, New York, San Francisco, and so little from So what seems like there's such fertile ground for so many of these projects with this underserved market and that's what I'm trying to do.
00:15:19.000there's this broad kind of gap in the market.
00:15:20.000So what seems like there's such fertile ground for so many of these projects with this underserved market, and that's what I'm trying to do.
00:15:29.000I would love to be a part of more movies, more television shows, documentaries, live events.
00:15:59.000And so we have a very diverse group of people in our home.
00:16:05.000I think people want and appreciate things that help them live life in a way that just causes people to flourish, families to flourish, and the nation to flourish.
00:16:16.000So I'm going to ask you about the family and parenting stuff, which is really where you're putting most of your time these days.
00:16:20.000But first, you've heard about cryptocurrency and you thought, that sounds weird.
00:16:24.000Crypto and currency, why are they in the same word?
00:16:26.000Well, the reason they're in the same word is because, effectively speaking, what cryptocurrency is, it is a digital way for you to protect your assets.
00:16:34.000Well, they've created a thing called blockchain, and then they create a cryptocurrency, and then governments can't manipulate how much that currency is worth.
00:19:32.000This is a little random, but one of my son's friends came home from college, and his girlfriend had come home from college, and over Christmas I was saying to them, hey, how's things going?
00:20:08.000When I got ordained, we went to the presidential library, and it was drizzling rain outside, but we just walked up with some flowers, and I pronounced you man and wife, and poof, off they went to Paris.
00:22:03.000You know, I mean, that's just such a hard one, right?
00:22:05.000You know, when something as sacred and intimate as a marriage relationship gets violated in that kind of a way, it's so hard to put the pieces back.
00:22:29.000Often when we're dating our spouse or our girlfriend or our boyfriend, if we don't have any money and we're just sitting on the floor of an empty apartment eating pizza out of a box with no money to buy anything better, we're good.
00:22:43.000We can look at each other and gaze into one another's eyes for hours without saying a word, and we got no communication problems.
00:22:49.000But when selfishness creeps in, and it's like when you're spending the money that I made, All of a sudden, communication's a problem, intimacy's a problem, money's a problem, and so I think it's the selfishness thing, it's the me monster, always ends up being the culprit.
00:23:03.000Yeah, not to give a Hebrew biblical scriptural analysis, but the word for love in Hebrew is ahava, and the root of that word is hav, which is the same as to give, so the root of love is to give.
00:23:15.000I've always felt that when people call into my show and ask about this sort of thing, the first thing that I always say is, if you have all the expectations of yourself but none of your spouse, you'll have a good marriage.
00:23:26.000And if you married the right person, then that won't ruin the marriage.
00:23:28.000People seem to think that if you expect a lot of yourself and nothing from your spouse, your spouse is going to go like eat Cheetos in the corner and let everything go.
00:23:34.000But if you married the right person, they're thinking the same thing, that the expectation is on them and they don't expect Yeah, that's such a good point.
00:23:40.000And that's one of the messages that came out of that movie, Fireproof, was even if you haven't married the right person, if I can try to get my part right, maybe I will be used as sort of a vessel to bring about change in my spouse over time.
00:23:48.000And that's one of the messages that came out of that movie Fireproof was even if you haven't married the right person, if I can try to get my part right, maybe I will be used as sort of a vessel to bring about change in my spouse over time.
00:24:03.000I can't force it, but maybe I can lead by example and that'll bring some sort of transformation to my relationship if I'm patient.
00:24:11.000I mean, this is going to sound kind of sexist, but it's not meant to be.
00:24:14.000I firmly believe, my wife believes this too, so it's not that sexist, that the strength of a good marriage really relies on the man, meaning that women tend to be more attuned to what it takes to make a good marriage.
00:24:27.000Men tend to be less attuned to that, and so the marriage is only going to be as good as the man is toward the woman.
00:24:40.000I am full up, and we have a third coming in March, so we're not quite full up, but that's going to be interesting, and hopefully we'll have more after that.
00:24:47.000But you have six, and they're all within, you said, a six-year span?
00:25:14.000You know, I mean, my mom would come over sometimes, but we never, actually, we never had a nanny, and really, we could've used some help, but I think Chelsea was just always so all in that it was like, that's what she wanted her hands full of all the time, and she still does.
00:25:28.000She thinks that that's like the most beautiful, wonderful thing in the whole world.
00:25:32.000How could I ask for anything more than being a mom?
00:25:34.000And to be there for all those little moments is just something she treasured, which I'm thankful for.
00:25:40.000And as they've gotten older, I'm just warning you, it doesn't really get easier.
00:26:27.000I thought, I don't need to be the DNA donor.
00:26:29.000There's kids who need a dad and a mom.
00:26:31.000So we got in touch with an agency, and we adopted our son Jack, and it was such a great experience for us and for them that they said there's another little girl that is needing a home.
00:26:43.000And so Bella was adopted, and then a year later it was Anna, and then it was Luke.
00:26:47.000And so we had four, and then all of a sudden, Chelsea says to me, hey, I think the kitchen, the bathroom sink is broken.
00:27:53.000I'm certainly not an expert in this, but one of the things, the three keys that Chelsea and I have always come back to when we're up at night going, oh, I'm a horrible parent, you know, have I done this right?
00:27:59.000for parents as the kids start to get older?
00:28:04.000I'm certainly not an expert in this, but one of the things that the three keys that Chelsea and I have always come back to when we're up at night going, oh, I'm a horrible parent.
00:28:34.000You know, that's why he likes to walk around in your shoes or likes to pick up your briefcase.
00:28:38.000And so if I want my kids to be joyful, if I want my kids to be compassionate, if I want my kids to trust God in difficult circumstances, model it for them.
00:28:48.000Show them what it looks like so that they don't have to figure it out.
00:29:47.000You know, I mean, the kids get inundated with so much error, with so much, you know, right is wrong, wrong is right.
00:29:54.000And for me, I go to God's Word, those principles, those ancient truths that I can always go to.
00:30:02.000You know, you talked about the Hebrew Scriptures and the Book of Proverbs.
00:30:05.000How amazing is the Book of Proverbs to go back in there and say, What are the time-tested principles that always produce blessing and good things and protection?
00:30:17.000I want my kids to learn those things and know that truth is not relative when it comes to morality and things like that.
00:30:25.000Truth is something that they can build their life on.
00:30:29.000I mean, this seems to be one of the areas where our society has really gone off the rails, is this belief that we should raise our kids in sort of Rousseauian fashion, just let them free in the wilderness and then they can discover their own values.
00:30:40.000I've noticed that society, particularly these days, wants to do this with Everything related to boys and girls.
00:30:45.000They want to suggest that kids are going to basically form their own values in every particular way.
00:30:52.000And that if you inculcate any sort of values in your kids, you're actually acting as a tyrant.
00:30:56.000That what you actually should be doing is allowing their brains that are unformed to just experience the world, take in those perceptions, and then form their own value systems.
00:31:04.000It seems to be not working particularly well for the society at large.
00:31:08.000So what are some values that you want to make sure kids see?
00:31:11.000I mean, yeah, I mean, that doesn't work for any other discipline, right?
00:31:14.000Like, if you're going to go into law, do you just say, hey, figure it all out?
00:31:16.000I know you're going to go to law school, you're going to learn, understand the principles.
00:31:21.000You know, people are going to go to war, you're going to train them on the principles of how to use, you know, the weapons and things like that, not just figuring it out on their own.
00:31:30.000So, the values that I want to teach my kids, I think, are values like trusting in God, Virtue and character, and considering other people more important than yourself.
00:31:48.000I think those are the values that not only make human beings flourish individually, make them pleasant people, but it makes families flourish, it makes marriages flourish, and I think it's what makes a nation flourish.
00:32:00.000I think these are the principles that our country was built on, and every time that we get away from those things, we suffer.
00:32:11.000We go the wrong direction and we can tell by the consequences, the law of cause and effect, that this isn't working well.
00:32:16.000So I want to teach my kids those ancient truths and those Judeo-Christian principles and that worldview that led to the freest, most blessed and prosperous nation the world's ever known.
00:32:28.000So in a second I want to ask you about the biggest mistake you think you've made as a parent.
00:32:54.000According to recent reports, Hackers can make up to $1,000 from selling someone's personal information on the dark web, making people like me and you easy and lucrative targets.
00:33:52.000This is only beginning to dawn on me now because before there were two and four, one and three, and they weren't really taking everything in.
00:33:59.000Now, if I let a curse word slip, the chances that it will be in the next sentence by my child are at least 127%.
00:34:05.000And so I've been noticing that every bad thing that I do immediately comes back to me.
00:34:09.000And so it highlights all the worst parts of you.
00:34:11.000You don't actually get to see the best parts of you so much.
00:34:13.000You get to see all the worst things that you do immediately mirrored back at you.
00:34:16.000And it's scaring the living out of me, to be honest with you.
00:35:02.000I was talking this morning on social media about how my kids have finally gotten into Star Wars, which is fun, because now we can share that.
00:35:08.000And so we've been having lightsaber battles, me and my five-year-old, and we have it all on video.
00:35:12.000And it's adorable, but I can't put that up on social Yeah.
00:35:14.000because people are horrible and they will go after your kids and it really is terrible.
00:35:18.000So you're somebody who's been in the public eye a lot longer than I have.
00:35:21.000And how are you able to maintain protection?
00:35:24.000I mean, this is really an advice question.
00:35:25.000How are you able to maintain protection of your kids being in the public eye as much as you are? - Somehow we were able to really just not have pictures of our kids or anything on the internet for the longest time.
00:35:35.000Now, once our kids had phones and they've got their own Instagram account, you know, they're wanting to post as much as they can.
00:35:41.000And now that our kids are older, it's a bit different.
00:35:43.000But yeah, we're very similar to the way that you and your wife feel about that.
00:35:48.000I'm like, if someone's gonna get upset with me, get upset with me.
00:35:50.000If someone wants to show up at, you know, and have a conversation with me.
00:35:54.000Like, I don't want you to know where I live and actually have my kids answer the door or have you come after my kids or say mean things about them.
00:36:01.000So we just kept that real quiet and I was really diligent about it.
00:36:07.000So I think when people look at religious people, I'm a person of faith, you're a person of faith, but when people look at religious people, they tend to think, at least in the secular community, look at that happy idiot, look at that guy.
00:36:19.000Doesn't he understand that we are all going to suffer, that we are all going to die, that things are bad in the world?
00:36:24.000Haven't they ever struggled with faith?
00:36:26.000And it's a point of high irritation for me as a person of faith because I've yet to meet a person who's actually religious who's never struggled at all with faith.
00:36:33.000So what are some of the ways in which you've struggled with your own faith over the years?
00:36:38.000In the ways that I've struggled with my faith over the years, you know, I've never wanted to be someone who believed in fairy tales or be accused of being someone who believes in fairy tales.
00:36:53.000And coming from an atheistic background or just a sort of like secular humanist background, I wanted to really make sure, and so I felt like, have I really examined all the evidence?
00:37:03.000How can there be someone like Sam Harris, or how can I have these other people who are so intelligent?
00:37:08.000Clearly, they've got a size 10 brain, and mine's not that size, but I believe that if I sincerely Do the best that I can, if I have faith, if I believe and I ask God, I believe He's kind enough to reveal Himself to me.
00:37:27.000And so, I have struggled with the intellect and the reason versus the faith, and I don't think that they're pitted against one another by any means.
00:37:36.000In fact, I think they go very well together, but sometimes I get into pitting them against one another and wondering, you know, is there some stone I've not yet uncovered to unravel everything that I believe?
00:37:52.000And the more and more that I examine those things and I ask those deep questions, the more and more I believe that my faith in God has been well placed.
00:38:01.000And when it comes to your kids, are all of your kids people of faith as well?
00:38:10.000They certainly grew up with a lot of faith in our home, but that's something that's so personal that I can say we go to church or we don't go to church or this or that, but in terms of a living, vibrant relationship with God where I talk to God, I believe that God directs me, that's something that's so personal that I think it's sort of on a
00:38:35.000You know, it's something that's in seed form with some of our kids, and it's something that's maturing and bearing fruit with others.
00:38:40.000So you talked a little bit earlier about the values that undergird the country.
00:38:43.000When we look at the state of the country right now, it's so divisive.
00:38:46.000Everybody seems to be at each other's throats.
00:38:48.000What do you think is the biggest problem facing the country in terms of the country coming—it feels like it's coming apart?
00:38:56.000You're more positioned to answer that.
00:38:59.000And I feel like maybe my role in the public square, you know, sometimes I wonder, why does anybody care what Mike Seaver has to say after all of these years?
00:39:09.000And I think that I've been given a platform.
00:39:16.000And perhaps my role is to continue to point people not toward the specific details of what's getting everybody fighting with one another, but point them higher to the larger principles at play that historically have given us a country where we can debate about these things.
00:39:33.000And we can have respectful conversations and discourse about these things without killing each other over it.
00:39:40.000And we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion and we have these things that we all love.
00:39:45.000And so, I'm not sure if I could point to one particular issue, but I can point to the principles that will solve that issue, and I think that's why I'm trying to focus my energy not on everything that interests me or fascinates me, but on the areas where I think I'm uniquely positioned to make a difference.
00:40:06.000And that's why I made a documentary called Monumental, or a movie like Fireproof, and I'm doing these marriage and parenting things.
00:40:13.000You still have a lot of friends in Hollywood, obviously.
00:40:15.000I know there are some conservatives in Hollywood.
00:40:23.000Would people be shocked to learn how many religious people or would they be shocked to learn how few religious people there are in Hollywood?
00:40:33.000I mean, it's amazing to me when you grow up in Los Angeles, you have this impression that there are not very many people of faith.
00:40:41.000Not just in Los Angeles, but around the world, like atheism is dominating the world, and that's just not true.
00:40:46.000The statistics that I've read are that well over 90% of the world is very religious, different religions, but people are people of faith.
00:40:56.000Here in Hollywood, I think that there are more people of faith than you would think, or that people would think, but many of them are very cautious about expressing that faith.
00:41:06.000Many people think that like what I've done, like talking about my faith would be sort of suicide for a career.
00:41:10.000Yeah, but I have faith in a faithful God who's opened up doors so that I can continue doing what I love, and I think it's really helping people.
00:41:17.000And so I think more and more people of faith you'll see be coming out of the closet.
00:41:22.000And not just in Hollywood, but all around the country and the world, people are making projects where faith is at the center because it does well at the box office.
00:41:32.000And so I think that's encouraging and drawing people out rather than being afraid of the faithless in Hollywood.
00:41:38.000I mean, this is one of the questions that I've gotten a lot from conservative friends of mine in Hollywood is, how quiet should I keep this?
00:41:43.000Should I come out of the closet and just be conservative?
00:41:45.000And honestly, I've had to say, it really is a question for you to answer because only you know the risk factors involved with your career and losing an income and with your kids and all of this.
00:41:55.000But I mean, you do see the social sanctions that are brought to bear on people.
00:41:58.000Just for going to a particular church.
00:41:59.000I remember Chris Pratt going to a church that was considered pro-traditional marriage.
00:42:03.000Suddenly he was getting all sorts of flack, even though he never made a statement on the issue one way or another.
00:42:08.000And so the idea of people in Hollywood just beginning to come out and say, yes, I'm a person of faith.
00:42:15.000It seems like the social sanctions are incredibly strong.
00:42:17.000So what would your advice be to people who haven't done what you've done and just come out and said, listen, here's who I am and here's what I believe and deal with it?
00:43:49.000And I learned that these were the free thinking, out of the box, Faithful people who came here to do something that in their minds had not been tried successfully for 3,000 years since the ancient Hebrew Republic under the leadership of Moses.
00:44:06.000They felt that the ancient Hebrews were given the divine constitution in the Torah and they wanted to import those principles of liberty and justice to the New World.
00:44:17.000Our pilgrim forefathers and foremothers left us what I call the secret sauce recipe for how to build a free and just society under the word of God.
00:44:29.000And they left it for us in the form of this monument, which the real one is 81 feet tall.
00:44:56.000It's called the National Monument to the Forefathers, and I hired the Weta Workshop, who does all the sculpting for the rings, to capture all of the detail.
00:45:05.000If I can, I'd love to just explain it to you.
00:45:15.000So, history tells us that our forefathers and foremothers believed this, that to have a functioning society that was free, you had to start with, what's it say right here?
00:46:17.000And they believe that God's Word needed to be proclaimed so that there was a transformation of the heart, that the grace of God would change you on the inside, so then you loved the standard on the outside.
00:46:29.000Once you had good morality, then you could make good laws in your nation.
00:46:33.000And there's the judge, he's sitting on his chair, and he's holding the book of law, and his book is directly beneath the book in faith's hand, which is the scriptures, signifying that man's laws must line up under God's laws, or they're not good laws.
00:46:47.000And on his right, it's justice, on his left is mercy.
00:46:51.000So there had to be a balance between justice and mercy.
00:46:54.000Once you have civility in your society, then you can educate your kids.
00:46:59.000And there's a mother there, or a parent, who's wearing the wreath of victory, holding the book of knowledge, and on her right, it goes right back to the book of Proverbs, there's the youth, because they believe that if you train up your child in the way they should go, When they're old, and here's the old man with a long white beard.
00:48:32.000So, what is it about our culture that gets all this so wrong?
00:48:35.000I mean, now every Thanksgiving there's a big fuss over the pilgrims and how the pilgrims were actually oppressors and how this civilization coming to this hemisphere was a bad thing.
00:48:56.000Often people find what they're looking for, you know?
00:48:58.000And if I'm looking for these kinds of principles, I can find them.
00:49:03.000I can find them particularly in history.
00:49:05.000And when I go back and I look at cultures and nations that abide by these kinds of principles and values, good things result.
00:49:14.000Every time we get away from them, bad things result.
00:49:17.000So, you know, if faith is in God and liberty is the result, boy, If we put our faith in the state or faith in the government or faith in something other than the kindest, most benevolent person in the universe, I think what happens is it changes your morality.
00:49:38.000It changes the laws that you pass in your nation.
00:49:40.000You teach those things to your kids and you don't end up with Liberty Man as the result.
00:49:45.000You end up with the Lion of Tyranny and Liberty Man's leg hanging out of the lion's mouth.
00:49:51.000And I fear that so many nations have gone that way and that we may go the same if we don't get back to what works.
00:49:58.000Well, I'm going to spend a moment figuring out where to put this in my house.
00:50:13.000And this one, I want to give this one to the president.
00:50:17.000I want to give one to the vice president, to all politicians, presidents of universities, ministers, and parents who want to teach these things to their kids.
00:50:25.000What if I use it as sort of an imposing intimidation factor for my children?
00:50:28.000So they sit one day, they do something wrong, and they just wake up, and it's right next to them.
00:50:41.000In a second, I want to ask you about the kind of old conservative question whether culture is upstream of politics or politics is upstream of culture.
00:50:50.000I'm going to ask you about that in just one second.
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00:52:07.000Okay, so I want to ask you, because you're so engaged in the culture, whether you think that, at this point, the future of America rests in a change to culture or a change to politics?
00:52:15.000And this is really sort of a raging debate, even within the right, in recent days.
00:52:20.000One of my old mentors, Andrew Breitbart, used to say, culture is upstream of politics, that you've got to work first on changing the culture.
00:52:25.000That's what Hollywood did so successfully.
00:52:27.000They changed the way that we think about the world, and then politics necessarily followed how we thought about the world.
00:52:31.000And then there are a lot of people who believe No, the culture's been largely lost and the only way to restore the culture is by grabbing the high reins of politics and then trying to almost cram down your viewpoint or instill your viewpoint through the education system.
00:52:45.000Do you think that if you're a conservative and you have a hundred bucks to spend, you're going to give it away this year, should you be trying to put it into sort of politics or should you be trying to put it into either your church on the one hand or into like actual cultural pursuits that are not necessarily just your church?
00:52:59.000So being a guy who's in the entertainment industry, I'm not saying this just because I work in this space, but I really do think that Instagram and Facebook is influencing my children more than just about anything else that I can think of in the political world.
00:53:20.000I think that politics is downstream of culture, as you've mentioned.
00:53:25.000I think that the hearts and minds of young people are being formed and then they vote accordingly.
00:53:32.000They pull those people in and then they pass those laws accordingly.
00:53:35.000That's why I think that we need good people in the entertainment industry.
00:53:40.000in the places where stories are being told that are capturing the hearts and minds of people.
00:53:44.000So while people may say like, hey, let's get out of Hollywood, right?
00:53:50.000That's a dirty place that, you know, they generate a lot of filth.
00:53:54.000Well, I think it's kind of like politics.
00:53:57.000You know, if you don't like it, change it.
00:54:00.000So come on in and we need people who are going to assume positions of leadership in the entertainment industry, in the storytelling world, because that's what our kids are listening to, the music and movies and television and the arts.
00:55:14.000He's pretty much of an entertainer and a ham, so he might follow in my footsteps.
00:55:19.000But we never really embraced the The Hollywood lifestyle and the Hollywood circles of friends, we kind of lived on the outskirts.
00:55:30.000We kind of lived in more of a rural area for Los Angeles, and we spent our time outside in the mountains, hiking, going to the beach, you know, playing in the mud with our kids, much more so than really being part of that entertainment industry scene.
00:55:45.000Well, one of the interesting debates that's broken out on the right is also a debate about sort of what is OK to watch, as a religious person or as a conservative.
00:55:52.000So I have friends like David French, and David is very religious.
00:55:55.000He was a lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom, and he's filed lawsuits on behalf of religious freedom all over the country.
00:56:15.000Where do you come down on sort of what do you think it's appropriate for religious people to watch or how do you think religious people should engage with entertainment?
00:56:31.000I want to have integrity, and I think integrity means who I am in public is the same as who I am in private, that I don't have dual personalities.
00:56:44.000When I'm watching television or I'm listening to music, I want to be the same person that I'm going to be even when I'm in front of my kids.
00:56:52.000I want my whole life to On and Got, the whole thing.
00:56:57.000So for us, actually the television is just rarely on in our house, so for us we're watching The Voice or a basketball game or a football game and we're watching, you know, Chopped, because we like to cook.
00:57:13.000But those are sort of the staples in our house.
00:57:16.000Not so much the sitcoms or the one-hour dramas.
00:58:17.000So you've been watching sort of the era of Me Too, and one of the things that's been interesting to watch has been how Hollywood has dealt with Me Too, because obviously Me Too started in Hollywood, and then Hollywood has immediately decided that it's Hollywood's place to lecture the rest of America on Me Too, which has been Quite amusing.
00:58:31.000The same people who held up Harvey Weinstein as a moral hero for decades have now decided that they get to, at the Oscars, explain to the rest of America exactly how terrible it is to mistreat women, which some of us already actually knew.
00:58:44.000You've had this rule for quite a while that you won't kiss any woman who is not your wife, on screen or off.
00:58:49.000So when did you decide to implement that rule, given the fact you're an actor?
00:58:59.000I made a promise to my wife at the altar, and I figured like, you know, other than being an actor, guys don't have this understanding with their wives that they get to go to work and kiss other women that they're not married to.
00:59:08.000But sort of like everybody gets a free pass in my business, and I was like, no, my wife's not into that.
00:59:50.000I think everybody would like to have the confidence and the trust in their spouse that even when they're not around, that they're That they are who they think they are.
01:00:03.000And that's really what I'm striving to be.
01:00:07.000So I want to ask you about this amazing new pro-life movie that you're coming out with.
01:00:10.000You were telling me a little bit about it before the show, and it sounds incredible.
01:00:13.000But if you want to hear about it, you have to go over to dailywire.com slash subscribe, give us your money, and you can hear the end of our conversation over there.
01:00:21.000Kirk, thank you so much for coming by.