What To Expect In 2020 “€“ With David Barton, Part 3: Today we share a special session from the ProFamily Legislators Conference. You”€™ll hear how more of the courts of America are now rightly assuming religious expressions are constitutional unless proven otherwise. Tune in to hear the exciting ripple effects of this seismic shift!

Air Date: 01/02/2020

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live where we’re talking about today’s hottest topics on policy and faith and the culture, always from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. My name is Rick Green, I’m America’s Constitution coach and a former Texas legislature, here with David Barton, America’s premier historian and the founder of WallBuilders and Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders.

But today, we’re going to go straight to the ProFamily Legislators Conference, we’re going to pick up with David Barton. The last two days here on WallBuilders Live, we’ve been sharing his presentation, “€œWhat to expect in 2020″€ and today we get the conclusion. This is the beginning of the year. This is the time as you’re making your New Year’s resolutions, as you’re thinking about what you’re going to do this year, this is the time to commit to be a good citizen, to do your part to preserve freedom for the next generation. And at the end of the program, I’m going to give you a couple action steps on how to do that. But right now, let’s go to pick up right where we left off yesterday with David Barton. Here’s “€œWhat to expect in 2020″€.

David:

So what’s happened is we’ve shifted the presumption. We’ve now put it in favor of religion instead of against religion. See, we were favoring the secular side, that got preference, now we’re favoring the religious side over this”€¦ so it’s a huge seismic land shift. The ripple effect has been pretty amazing.

The Bladensburg Decision

On the same day the court gave the Bladensburg decision, they said now we had another decision that was at the court, we’re sending it back to Pensacola, Florida. This is a World War Two cross on public land in Pensacola. And they said, lower court, pay attention to what we just did with the Bladensburg cross.

And so they sent it back to the lower court and it ordered the lower court to rethink its earlier ruling against that cross. Having seen what we just did and upholding Bladensburg, want you guys give this another look.

What does that mean? You better come back with the right decision, is what the court just told them. You better get this one right. So that’s actually two cross cases we won that day: World War One, World War Two. Here’s a football, thank cross real incited in football prayer, but I’ll read it to you because these media articles are too small to read from a distance.

A week after the US Supreme Court ruled that a large cross can remain on public land in Maryland, the decision is being cited in a legal battle about whether a Tampa Christian school should have been allowed to offer a prayer over a stadium loudspeaker before a high school football championship game. Now why would that be in question? Because we’ve had prayer football games for more than a century and we’ve used loudspeaker for decades and decades. See, it goes back to this thing that if it’s a long-standing expression moment, simple practice that requires the presumption of constitutionality, we’re going to assume that’s been going on for a while, this is constitutional whether the other courts liked it or not.

Bibles and the VA

Then you have this without a VA Department. This is a missing man display, one of the VA hospitals. It had a Bible there. That’s a Bible from a World War Two soldier and it’s there and they have this to honor that. And the VA said, you know what, under Lemon Test, there’s not a primarily secular purpose for having that Bible out, so you got to take it down and you can’t pass out Bibles, you can’t give out Bibles to the VA hospitals. And then that decision came down and when that decision came down, VA hospitals can now distribute and display Bibles under revised policies.

In the wake of a US Supreme Court decision permitting a cross to remain on a public highway, the Department of Veteran Affairs has revised its policies and religious symbols and displays of VA facilities. You can now distribute and display. I can give out Bibles at a VA hospital now and that’s not a problem. Why? Because we’ve had military Bible since 1680. I mean, that goes back a long way. Before we had a constitution, we had military Bible. But see, now look at the landscape the shifting as we”€™re”€¦ these are not the new stories you’ve been hearing, but I’m telling you there’s something going on, show you another one. This goes back to that long-standing presumption.

This is the county seal for Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. Anybody see a potential litigation problem with that seal? Now, we’ve had a lot of city seal crosses and city seal cases. Los Cruces, New Mexico. In Spanish, Las Cruces means the crosses.

Crosses and Seals

So in the city seal of Las Cruces, there were crosses until the court said oh no, no, there’s not a primarily secular purpose or crosses, take him out. Los Angeles had crosses, take him out. Zion, Illinois had crosses. I mean, all these cities and counties that were founded with religious motivations had crosses them, but all those crosses were tiny. I mean, the cross that was at the LA city seal was so tiny, it took a microscope to see it. Doesn’t take a microscope to see that one. That’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen a seal at all.

And I count nine different symbols in that seal and that is clearly the largest symbol there. There’s no way this one stands except federal appeals court overturns decision banning the cross from the city seal. A three-judge US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has ruled unanimously that the inclusion of a Latin cross on the county seal does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution. The decision handed down Thursday overturns an earlier ruling in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania made by District Judge, Edward Smith. So we have this, the seal has been in use for more than 70 years without complaint. There it is. It”€™s historic. It’s been there for a while. We’ve had city seals with crosses for a long time. No evidence suggests this was due to a climate of intimidation the Judges noted in their decision. So again, long-standing religiously expressive mind in a symbol”€¦ see the whole landscape is shift because now, the presumption is we’re going to presume they”€™re Constitution unless you can prove they’re not.

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Public Prayer

David:

We have not won a city seal case in my lifetime, I got right here, right okay? That goes a few years. We’ve not won a city seal case in my lifetime. This is the first one we won in my lifetime. Pennsylvania House policy banning atheists from opening prayer does not violate the Constitution. Not only does Pennsylvania legislature open prayer, they won’t let atheist be the ones to open it. Atheist say, well, we can give a devotional, we can give an inspirational thought. And they say, no, we’re going to require people who believe in God to open it with prayer. We’re going to require that it be literal prayer. And you know that that’s not going to fly in any federal court, because now we’re favoring religion over non-religion which is courts have said for four years you can’t favor religion over non-religion except they won this. The court relied heavily on historical practice and reading a decision. The first legislative body to have open prayer and it was in 1774 with the Continental Congress. We’ve been doing it since 1774.

Citing the Supreme Court’s recent decision”€¦ so here we’re citing this court to say, look, how much stuff were winning now that we’ve not been winning in years and years and years and it all goes back to, this had been going on for a long time. We’ve got religious liberty opportunities that were winning now that we’ve not won in my lifetime. We’ve got some things coming at us they’re allowing us to shift some things. Start thinking that way, because the landscape is about to shift on this. Unless Trump loses the election and one of our guys dies and they get one of their appointment on the court, then it’s a different situation. But at this point with 158 Judges in place, you can have a different way of looking at legislation in years to come. Final area that we’re dealing with right now is gender identity.

Christian Businesses and the Equality Act

The case that the Supreme Court is whether and it’s Christian, a Christian business owner fired to transgender guy because it was causing distress for his customers and that’s at the court. And so what Matt Staver was talking about with the Equality Act, that’s essentially what the court is going to decide right now. Do Christian beliefs Trump LGBTQ rights? Does this transgender guy who got fired from a funeral home?

Because somebody died in the family, the family comes to see the body and here”€™s a guy with a beard and a dress and that kind of creates a little bit of distress for the family when they’re saying that. And the Christian funeral home said, we don’t need that kind of distraction. By the way, when I hired you, you had our code of conduct and you knew what’s required of you and the fact that you’ve changed, allows me to fire you. Well, you fired because I was transgender? Yeah, but you knew the code of conduct. So all of this is who’s going to win this thing, LGBTQ or will it be the Christian business owner? That’s what’s at the court now. And this is where we did a lot of polling as well. This is the case we were only concerned about.

But as Matt mentioned earlier, he mentioned the Glisten poll where that we’re seeing us change in Gen-Xers. Let me show you the Harris poll and what it means from Millennials. GLAAD Harris Poll shows decline in LGBTQ acceptance among Millennials. So that’s the two youngest generations, Millennials and Gen-Xers.

Millennials and the LGBTQ Agenda

It says a startling 42% of millennial males are uncomfortable learning that the child has had a lesson on LGBT history at school or has a homosexual teacher. That’s up from 27% just two years ago. So now you’re up to 40% of Millennials which is the most supportive LGTBQ, even they are saying I don’t like LGBTQ lessons for my kids. Continues.

36% of Millennials are not comfortable when they learned that a family member is homosexual, there’s only 29% a year ago. Perhaps they’re observing the abnormalities associated with homosexuality close up is theoretical, but now that they’re seeing behavior and what goes on, they’re not liking it as much.

In 2016, now this is huge, in 2016, 63% of Millennials consider themselves allies the LGBT movement. That number fell to 53%. In 2017, it plunge to 45% last year. That’s down 18 points in just two years. When you’ve got 18 points that fall in a poll in two years, oh my gosh, you’ve got a seismic shift occurring. So what had been the biggest support body for LGBTQ was the younger voters, the Millennials and the Gen-Xers now appears to be going in a totally different direction. Which also says something about what could happen in future, so especially if we win these cases.

So all of that with public religious expressions, the one other case I’ll tell you about, it’s the case that we asked legislators sign on to, is a scholarship program for low-income Montana students. Children Montana have been stripped of their rights to participate in a modest scholarship program simply because they attend religious schools.

The Blaine Amendment

Now the cases Espinoza, this is at the court this year, this would be decided this year. And what happened was the Montana tax credit scholarship program allows my tenants a tax credit for $150 their contributions to properly run scholarship program. However, the Montana Department of Revenue refused to implement the program citing the state’s Blaine amendment.

ConstitutionCoach.com

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Bring people together and get them excited about being a biblical citizen. You host our Constitution class, our biblical citizenship class right there in your home, in your church, at your community center, we’ll give you the tools, we’ll train you. David Barton, myself and others will be the ones on the videos doing the teaching. You pass out the workbooks put on the video and then have a great time of fellowship, engaging and equipping and inspiring each other to make the difference in your community.

Constitutioncoach.com is the place to sign up. We’re going to do a free webinar about how to do this. On January 16th, you can sign up right there at constitutioncoach.com, we look forward to visiting with you and equipping you to be the catalyst in your community to preserve freedom for future generations. Got to do your part. It’s 2020, let’s all go out and make a difference.

The Anti-Sectarian Amendment

David:

The Blaine amendment goes back to 1875. James G. Blaine introduced that amendment in the federal Congress. Congress voted on that constitutional amendment, it did not pass. The 40 States picked it up. Now the Blaine amendment said no money raised by taxation any State for this part of public school shall ever be under control of any religious set. That is a single denomination. We’re not going to have a State established denomination like we had in Europe. We’re not going to let the Lutheran’s run Germany. We’re not going to let the Anglicans run Great Britain. We’re not going to let one sect run the schools of the State. That’s not religion. That’s sect that is a denomination.

So what they had was Blaine amendment and these blue States, that’s the 40 states that have a Blaine amendment. It’s anti-sectarian. You can’t let one denomination run the education. It’s not anti-religious, it’s anti-sectarian. What happened was the State courts have interpreted the Blaine amendment to be anti-religious. Totally different thing.

So what’s happened is this case is now at the Supreme Court and will decide whether we go back to the meaning of sectarian. If it does, Blaine amendments could be coming down in 40 States pretty quick. They had a big hole poked in them a few years ago with the Trinity Lutheran case where the Missouri said we can’t let this playground in Missouri be part of the State program for safety with kids on playgrounds because they’re a church playground. Well, the State said you can’t do that. If it’s a school Church playground, it’s part of, you got to provide equal services.

Religious Freedom

That was a hole in the Blaine amendment. This could knock Blaine amendment out. If your State loses a Blaine amendment, what can you do in your state if that Blaine amendment goes away? Don’t know. You might start thinking about it because it could be going away fairly soon. So just throwing that out.

So religious freedom, we did national poll. As I mentioned for that case that the Kelly had last year. And here’s some interesting things we found. On rhetoric, we tested 20 religious words to see how they went publicly and there’s all the cross tabs in it. But it’s interesting to me see how it was generationally. Here’s some of the 20 terms we tested to see how they flew different generations.

When we tested religious liberty, that generally was a positive phrase. Millennials, it was 49%, but Gen X was 53% and boomers 66% and elders were 83%. So that’s still generally an acceptable phrase to say religious liberty. Here’s what was absolutely surprising.

If you change one word, change it from religious liberty to religious freedom, look how far it jumped. So why don’t you change one word in the way talk. Don’t talk about religious liberty, talk about religious freedom and then suddenly the ears are a whole lot more receptive to what you’re saying. Doesn’t change your message at all, it just changes the way you deliver your message. That makes sense? Look at the difference. Watch this.

In God We Trust

If you use the word, Christian, is still pretty favorable. If you use the word, Jesus Christ, look what happens. Now I never would have”€¦ I thought that was the other way. I thought Christian was a softer term than Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is a much more favorable term than is Christian. So don’t talk about Christian, talk about in Jesus Christ. That’s a better deal anyway, you got stronger support for it.

Look at this. “€˜In God we trust’, that had pretty good support. But if you talk about “€˜One nation under God”€™, look how much higher it went. So if you start using phrases like Jesus Christ and one nation under God and religious freedom, I mean this is not bad stuff and that’s good. But look what happens if you just change a few words. It goes through the roof. See that’s why messaging can become important. This all makes sense?

Alright, let me show you the stuff we found on gender identity. This is also so sexual orientation, gender identities, NRO’s, all these different acronyms that are out there. HROs, Human Rights Ordinances. So with that, again national polling. And what we found were three things.

Number one, we found there were clear opinions on LGBTQ, but there were not many convictions. A lot of opinions, not many convictions. So while we see polling numbers that generally favor LGBTQ, they’re not strong based. They”€™re numbers right now, but people don’t hold strong convictions about it.

Conservative Inclinations Appear on Polling

I love this in this quarter. I put it, I think fun. I should have the courage of my lack of convictions, exactly and that’s where most of the nation is on the LGBTQ. Now, there’s clearly sections on the side that have very strong opinions, but in the middle, we found that they’re willing to be persuaded. They don’t have a strong opinion yet. So that was the first thing is that you can talk about these things and you’re going to make some loud-mouthed mad and you are going to get hate mail. But generally, most people haven’t made up their mind on this yet. They’re kind of still reasonable and they’re not going to be the ones that respond to you. But you know, generally, they were pretty squishy on most issues related to LGBTQ.

The second thing that I’ll point out is they had conservative inclinations. When George pushed him in the questions and gave them scenarios, if they were pushed, they defaulted to a conservative position. Now they didn’t have a strong conviction on it, but that was where they landed if they got pushed on it. And that’s why we think some of the numbers are showing better for young people. Now that they’re seeing the pushiness of the other side, you know, they were taught how intolerant the Christians were, well now, the LGBTQ is looking for Christians to sue and take the court and people in the middle aren’t liking that.

 

Front Sight Firearms Training Institute

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In fact, if you go to my website right now today at rickgreen.com, you can watch the video of Dennis Prager training at front side or Larry Elder training the front side or Tim Barton and myself training out there front side. It’s an opportunity for you to learn how to defend yourself and your family to make sure that you’re ready and able to do that. It is a fantastic place to train. They train literally 30,000-40,000 people a year and they’re just wonderful to work with. And you can go with us, we’re headed back out. We’re going to have a great time out there as the WallBuilders family.

And if you’re a supporter of WallBuilders, we have an amazing deal for you, it’s actually going to cost you one-tenth the normal price to attend this two-day handgun training because you’re going with us and you’ll also get the Constitution crash course. I’ll be teaching on the constitution. You”€™ll get the intellectual ammunition that you need to defend the Second Amendment and our Constitution as well as getting the physical training on how to defend yourself and your family. And this is for everyone: guys, gals, everyone should take this class. For no matter how much you shot your whole life or if you’ve never touched a gun, learn how to defend your family.

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 Christian Beliefs and LGBT Rights

David:

And so what happens is when you push them, they hit up more conservative, which is the second thing. And then the third thing I’ll point to is that if a conflict arises between LGBT rights and Christian beliefs and a lot of people are good-hearted and they just want both sides to get along, but as we know and as Matt said, both sides cannot get along. Even in the Employment non-discrimination Act, the LGBTQ has said they will no longer support any kind of a religious exemption and that they don’t want to get along, we know that. Something I covered here three or four years ago as you look at Genesis 19, in Judges 19, those two passages in the Bible make it real clear the LGBTQ side and the other people, they’ll never get along, there’s just no middle ground there.

And so there’s been all these editorial cartoons that show the two sides and there’s a civil war and there’s a big wall between them and there’s no middle ground. And so what happened is in the polling, when George proposed scenarios were that LGBTQ and Christian beliefs could not get along, there was irreconcilable differences. What was amazing was by a huge margin, LGBTQ demands must give way to religious belief. The people ended up that if this cost religious beliefs, so all of that to say all of these three issues are out there, that’s what we’re dealing with, that’s what we’re trying to take care of right now.

Laying the Groundwork

But there’s a lot of stuff we think will be coming back to you in the next three to five years. You might start thinking ahead and see what you can do to lay the groundwork for it, so that when it gets dumped on you by Supreme Court, you don’t look up and say, what in the heck just happened, I’m not prepared for this. So think about what it might mean.

I’m going to encourage you to be extremely aggressive. The other thing I’ll tell you to be aggressive about is the courts are also doing a good job about striking down regulatory agency policies. Congress introduced what”€™s called the Rein Act. The Rein Act says no bureaucratic policy can go into effect if it has an economic impact of more than $100 million. Now, $100 million, that’s big in the federal budget, I mean that’s big in the State budget not big in the federal budget. But they’re saying if it has this much economic impact, then it has to be voted on by Congress. It can’t go through an agency if it has a big”€¦ You might consider something like that at the State level. That state agencies can’t create policies that have an economic impact, it has to go through us, the legislature to do that.

So the budget is something at the federal level, they”€™re working on. But we’re seeing courts come down on the side of Congress on this. They’re saying agencies can’t make law, it takes the legislature to make law.

Foundations of Truth

See, look at regulatory things that are in your State and see what you can start taking back in hand, because again the courts are also moving that direction. As you get these 158 Judges and more that will be appointed moving in that direction, they’re going in a much more constitutional direction.

Final thing I’ll give you is we also have this, is called Foundations of Truth, it’s a website. We design this first off for pastors. We have a list of tens of thousands of pastors and we wanted them to start thinking biblically about every conceivable issue out there. So every week, three articles come out on items that are in the news and those items that are in the news, whatever is in the news for that week take a look at it from a constitutional, historical and a biblical perspective, trying to help Christians and pastors think more biblically and be able to address the issues that are in the news from the pulpit and do it from the biblical perspective.

So if you want this, want information on this, you can go to the website. We white label everything. You will not find a single author behind any article, because we don’t want people to say, oh Barton wrote that, that’s bad or Barton wrote that, that’s good. We don’t want the personalities there. We want the content to stand out. So everything is white-labelled, it can be taken use by anybody. If you want to put any of these up on your website, you’re welcome to.

There are all articles that are out there for free.

What To Expect in 2020 “€“ With David Barton

You can put your name on it and you can be the author of the article as far as we care, we don’t care. We just want the content out there. So if you’ve got constituents that want a good news source, that’s conservative news with the biblical viewpoint, this is where you can go.

Rick:

Friends, you’ve been listening to David Barton in his presentation, “€œWhat to expect in 2020.”€ He gave it just a few weeks ago at the ProFamily Legislators Conference. If you just tuned in today, you can get the whole presentation right now at our website wallbuilderslive.com. It’s a three-part series. So it’s today, yesterday and the day before to get all three parts.

And be sure and share it with your friends and family. Get them excited about 2020, get them excited about preserving freedom for future generations and you be the catalyst in your community to help make that happen. The first thing I’m going to encourage you to do is go to wallbuilderslive.com today and make a contribution, because your dollars invested in WallBuilders Live equip pastors and young leaders and legislators and citizens all over the nation to do their part to preserve freedom for future generations.

But the second thing I want to challenge you to do is be the catalyst. In your community, start hosting our biblical citizenship class in your church or in your home or in wherever, anywhere in your community. You can do that at constitutioncoach.com. We do webinars and training sessions for you. We have in-person trainings. We will prepare you and equip you, you then become the catalyst in your community. Check it out the constitutioncoach.com today.

Thanks so much for listening. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.