00:00:00.000Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Hanna Ford, a weekly politics show of the
00:00:21.080Western Standard. It is Thursday, June the 4th. With us tonight is COVID resistance hero Pastor
00:00:28.400Tim Stephens of Fairview Baptist Church. Reverend Stephens, welcome to the show. It's good to be
00:00:33.960here. Good to have you. We're talking this morning about the relationship between church and state,
00:00:40.020which many people believe is becoming more difficult to manage in Canada. Pastor Stephens,
00:00:46.700you have certainly had your own difficulties during the COVID-19 crisis. You initially
00:00:51.040complied with public health orders by pausing in-person services. However, then you resumed
00:00:57.820services in defiance of state orders, and that led to multiple arrests in 2021. You were arrested
00:01:04.200twice, spent a total of 21 days in jail, including your wedding anniversary, and with June in mind,
00:01:13.240Father's Day, and you faced charges under public health orders. One notable arrest involved police
00:01:19.960tracking an outdoor service of yours, an outdoor service, using a helicopter.
00:01:26.320So I guess my first question, are you just a bad person?
00:01:31.440Were you ever found guilty of anything?
00:01:34.380Well, I wasn't found guilty of anything.
00:01:35.760There was a few charges that we defended successfully in court,
00:01:40.840and then the other ones eventually were dropped along with the dropping of the health orders as well.
00:01:46.140um so no i was not found guilty of anything during that time but that but the punishment
00:01:51.580is the process that they put of course so the state said that you must close your church during
00:01:57.280covid you said no you answer to a higher authority than the state and in the end the state was not
00:02:04.580able to was not able to contest that successfully yeah well they never we never really finalize
00:02:12.560everything in court we still have some court action that we've filed against the government
00:02:16.380that we're in the process of doing but the the tension of course is well what the bible says
00:02:22.020about submitting to our authorities and to the magistrate like it says in romans 13 but of course
00:02:27.600there's the tension comes in whenever god commands us as the church to gather together not forsake
00:02:33.740that assembly and so not just myself but our congregation became convinced that this was a
00:02:39.140case where we must obey God and not men and still tried to conduct myself in a way that was honorable
00:02:45.620toward the governing authorities hopefully that was seen during my arrest and other interactions
00:02:49.420with the police but ultimately we had to continue to gather together and do what was right before God
00:02:55.060well Tim COVID has come and gone and all charges as you say were either dropped or you were found
00:03:01.540not guilty on those that weren't dropped now you spoke at a recent event the Dominion of Canada
00:03:08.260a conference and you said that when god is separated from the state and the state puts
00:03:12.880itself in the place of god i think your your phrase was we see a myriad of problems so
00:03:20.380strikes me that your theology on all of this is a lot more than covid of course yeah covid was just
00:03:29.500one expression so what are these problems what what is this myriad well see the issue is let's
00:03:37.020say the government takes a neutral position when it comes to religions and we have a pluralistic
00:03:41.300society well well then who is the one who says okay these are the common values that we have
00:03:47.360well it has to be the state uh what what does proper accommodation look like what does what
00:03:52.840does marriage look like what should the family look like and how it ends up the state is the
00:03:57.040one that then is the authority that defines all those things so in in a pluralistic society you
00:04:02.100have the state itself becoming the highest authority the supreme authority so essentially
00:04:05.540essentially god but see what i was going to say is essentially making religious decisions of course
00:04:11.400and we've seen of late is not the church becoming more political um but we've seen the state
00:04:18.320becoming more religious as it seeks to define marriage as it seeks to you know rule on things
00:04:23.360like abortion or euthanasia these issues that were typically the domain of of of church or
00:04:29.840Christian values, now the state is entering into that area. And so the biggest issue, of course,
00:04:37.360is just defining morality. And we live in a day and age where even things like a man or woman
00:04:42.520is up for grabs in terms of how do you define that. And so the state has put itself in that
00:04:47.940position of being the, you know, the determiner of those significant moral values. And so we
00:04:55.660We live in a day and age now where we see so much moral chaos and confusion because there is no shared standard that we have as a society about what is right, what is wrong, what is up, down, what is male, what is female, what's marriage, what's family.
00:05:12.180And so we have these ethics that are not, they're amorphous, they're not defined.
00:05:25.040And then, of course, along with that, with the state being in this position of authority and even defining morality, well, then you have the state reaching its tentacles into all facets of our life.
00:05:37.080And so whether that's in the family or in education, welfare, health care, the state sees all of these things because on the landmass of our country, that it has jurisdiction and authority over all those areas.
00:05:51.260And so we move into a situation where we have essentially a soft totalitarianism.
00:05:57.960Now, totalitarianism is not gulags and those kind of things, but it just means the state sees itself as having total control or total jurisdiction over all facets of life.
00:06:11.700And we see that increasingly, and people are responding, whether Christians or not, they're saying, hey, we're losing our freedoms.
00:08:06.820I think historically, with the 1960s, we see a change of religion here in Canada, where you have Pierre Trudeau and others talking about individual rights.
00:08:17.360And what they meant by that was humanistic, secular values, and who can argue against individual rights?
00:08:23.960But these were promoting the ideas of the individual as opposed to the values of God that had founded our society.
00:08:33.240And so we see in the 60s a big shift in the morality, in the ethics. And now that has permeated through, you know, all of our institutions of higher learning into our governments, into our politicians. And so now we're groaning a little bit under the effects of that because ideas have consequences.
00:08:50.140so to beg the question a little all right i think i agree with you that it started in the 1960s
00:08:58.300but what was it that triggered that was i mean was it a reaction to the horrors of the second
00:09:05.460world war was it the intentional action of activists who were acting out the things that
00:09:13.900they learned at universities or novel theories of social organization is this the communist party
00:09:20.700that was failing elsewhere working itself in there's many different theories that i've had put
00:09:27.420to me what's your theory yeah i'm not sure yeah i'm not sure if you can point our finger into some
00:09:32.140one facet but i'd say in terms of the ideas that undergird that that now are bearing its fruit
00:09:37.400You have to look back to Karl Marx or Gramsci, these other Marxists. And in these world wars, we went to fight against these ideas. But now it seems that even some of the politicians that we vote for in our country and south of the border have the same values as those communistic leaders of yesteryear.
00:09:57.720and so we've already seen the destruction of communism we've seen its tendency towards
00:10:03.320totalitarianism even though its ideals are you know putting the means of production in the hands
00:10:09.920of the people and this is going to be a society of equality and so this ideal egalitarianism is
00:10:16.100still promoted today but but the method is is going through more this humanist that Karl Marx
00:10:22.660all these other men, they hated God. They wanted society without God. They saw the family as an
00:10:27.780hierarchy in the family as part of this tyranny, and that needs to be torn down. And so his idea,
00:10:34.760along with others, was you tear down the structures of Christianity, and what will emerge from that
00:10:39.660will be this utopian society. But it's obviously more dystopian than utopian.
00:10:44.680Is this a new challenge for the church?
00:10:47.100I think it's a new challenge for the church because many pastors, and myself included, in the past especially, we feel like, oh, we can't get involved in the area of politics.
00:10:58.320And so whether that's Marxism or other areas, well, those are really ideas outside of our task of just teaching the Bible and helping people to live a moral life and find their way to heaven and be reconciled through Jesus.
00:11:12.520and so many pastors feel really uncomfortable dealing with these these broader ideas but it's
00:11:19.000important for us to realize as christians that uh jesus christ as king of kings and lord of lords
00:11:25.620and his word it speaks to everything in our life it's not that you find a chapter and verse about
00:11:31.040everything like changing your oil in your car or things like that but but the bible does speak to
00:11:35.760everything if you're a mechanic the bible does speak about how you ought to operate as mechanic
00:11:39.920If you're a politician, if you're a lawyer, the Bible has wisdom on how you ought to operate.
00:11:47.020But then we've bought into the secular lie that really the Christian faith and other religions are just something between your ears and to keep private and internal and shouldn't impact how you live your life in the public sphere.
00:12:00.840When I asked you if this was something new for the church, I actually had in the back of my mind the condition, the relationship between the church.
00:12:09.920the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago when obviously famously many Christians paid with their lives
00:12:17.200for their beliefs. But as you described what was happening to the state in Canada today,
00:12:23.640assuming the moral authority to make decisions on what people thought believed and how they
00:12:30.020behaved, I can't help thinking of the cult of emperor worship that defined the Roman Empire.
00:17:31.420So how then, as somebody who cares about these things, do you get other people to care about
00:17:42.100these things which although they may not articulate that straight out are actually
00:17:47.080fundamental to what they think is their right to live the way they want to live right and i think
00:17:52.880that's a that's a key way to think about it is we think of the ideas of of liberty and freedom
00:17:59.980and justice we want to live in a society of peace and harmony we want to live in a society of high
00:18:06.200trust where you're you're not putting bars on your windows to protect you from your neighbors like
00:18:11.840uh we know what it means to live in a society like that because we've we've seen a society like that
00:18:17.340and so well the question the question then becomes well what it what are the ideas the
00:18:22.540founding values that that give rise to that kind of society and and i'm i'm convinced and in history
00:18:27.960but bears that out it's that the influence of the christian faith wherever it goes
00:18:31.580it produces a society of of freedom um of individual responsibility which then leads to
00:18:38.700trust prosperity and so it's in my mind it's helpful to lead with some of those values that
00:18:44.460people see as values and then demonstrating how the christian faith that leads those ideas that
00:18:51.220we so desire i hope people give you the time to consider what you're saying um you recently
00:19:01.000addressed the dominion conference and there you argued that separating the state from god turns
00:19:10.680the state into a short-sighted weak incompetent demigod and yet this is the state that can say
00:19:20.860you are not following the prescribed set of beliefs you believe that there are only two sexes0.96
00:19:28.800You don't believe that there were murders in residential schools on the scale that indigenous people are claiming.0.56
00:19:39.720That may well seem to me or you to be short-sighted, weakened, and incompetent, but they're very serious about it, and they have the power of the sword to enforce it.
00:19:49.640So, tell me something that can give Christians and other people who are not Christians,
00:20:03.060but also who find this kind of government dictating of what they are to believe and hold as truth, to be highly objectionable, where do they start?
00:20:14.020I think people need to realize that there's no such thing as neutrality. There's a few ideas that we need to grasp. There's no idea of neutrality. When someone says secular, they are feigning neutrality, but it's not actually neutral.
00:20:33.820because when we come down to those questions of morality what what is what is your source of
00:20:39.000of authority is it shifting human opinion is it something transcendent is it based upon scripture
00:20:44.100what what what is your source of authority and so when you understand that secularism is not
00:20:51.720just the absence of religion it's it's another religion it's another worldview there's ideas
00:20:57.980about right and wrong there's ideas about what happens after we die there's ideas about our
00:21:02.940origins the very questions that that religion um deals with also secularism and materialism
00:21:10.300deals with those same same questions and has its own answers and so when people realize that it's
00:21:15.520not as if canada presently is just a religious now we've adopted another religion and it's hard
00:21:24.120to define because it doesn't have churches but it's in our institutions or schools it's on the
00:21:29.080tv and media and so to be able to identify that and then to understand that in this clash of
00:21:34.560worldviews well ultimately it's it's it's it's the one true and living god who has made us or
00:21:41.580it's is a lie it's truth or it's error and um and so people first need to recognize that
00:21:48.920religious ideas ideas of origin ideas of life after death ideas of morality
00:21:54.460they're unavoidable and they impact our society they impact our government and so we must first
00:22:03.500realize that and then we can start asking okay now what is the truth behind some of these worldview
00:22:10.200ideas you have a big task before you you and the others at the dominion conference
00:22:17.500i only wish i could say that most people were listening and thinking about that but the what
00:22:23.160you have just described in the last 20 minutes is foundational for what happens to this country
00:22:28.540in the next 100 years um back 100 years and you can you can see the benefits of the the kind of
00:22:35.900christian worldview that prevailed um i'm going to give you the last word and i don't want you
00:22:43.520to be pessimistic give us some hope here but what is the next 100 years going to look like
00:22:49.660Well, I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball. God knows. But I am hopeful. And the reason why I'm hopeful is because I believe many people, whether religious or not, are realizing that the direction of our country and other Western countries is heading in a bankrupt direction.
00:23:05.700It's like we're a bouquet of flowers and we're cut flowers and we're starting to wilt and wither.
00:23:13.240We recognize we have no root, no foundation.
00:23:15.820I've seen recent polls that demonstrate that church attendance for the first time in decades is now increasing.
00:23:21.880And especially among young men, our church is full of young men.
00:23:24.180And so the future to me, the next generation, I believe is aware of the lies of secularism, is looking for truth, looking for a firm foundation.
00:23:36.240They want someone to tell them what a man is, what a woman is.
00:23:39.180They know that intuitively and to live according to that principle and recovering some of those ideas and history that we've forgotten.
00:23:45.400So I'm very encouraged and hopeful, and I would encourage Christians and pastors especially to speak up, use your voice, and teach God's word as it pertains to all aspects of our life, whether family or government affairs.
00:24:23.800But in good conscience, how far can a Christian take this?
00:24:27.760Could, for example, a Christian actually take up arms in pursuit of a free Alberta and still be on the right side of God?0.94
00:24:39.120Well, I don't think so. I think the Bible is clear that the way of Christ is a way of peace.
00:24:45.620If you think about Christian movements in the past, they have gained their influence through persuasion, not through force or through violence.
00:24:53.500even you think about christians in rome like you mentioned uh earlier the the whole idea of the
00:25:00.240roman empire eventually being converted is because christians suffered well and they did so with uh
00:25:06.480with love and with truth and so the way of christ is the way of love the way of self-sacrifice
00:25:10.500and i believe that's what we need to be focusing on even here now well thank you and on that note
00:25:17.640i think we shall end appreciate you coming in to share your thoughts with us about alberta
00:25:22.940independence god king and country it's been a pleasure thank you very much pastor tim
00:25:28.680thank you for the western standard i'm nigel hannaford