Preserving Heritage and Embracing Religious Liberty on Good News Friday

Rick Green: 0:00

Welcome to the intersection of faith in the culture. It's WallBuilders. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach and a former Texas legislator. I'm here with David Barton. He's America's premier historian and our founder here at WallBuilders. Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and all three of us are looking forward to sharing with you a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective of all the hot topics of the day. You can learn more at our website, wallbuilders. com. Wallbuilderslive. com That's the place where you can get archives of the program If you want to go back and pick up some of the shows you missed over the last few weeks or months.

Rick Green: 0:38

It's all available there and we encourage you to grab some of those links, share them with your friends and family. That's how the program grows. When you recommend it and you share it with folks, we greatly appreciate it. That makes you a force multiplier. So not only are you learning these things, not only are you getting educated and inspired and making a difference in your community, but then you're encouraging others to do the same. That's the kind of multiplication that we need in order for this nation to be saved.

Rick Green: 1:01

We got to get more people involved folks, I mean. I love the fact that everybody's waking up over the last couple of years and finally saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, can government actually run my life? So people are asking these questions because their rights have been violated and they're finally saying what is the proper role of government? Well, that's what we talk about here at WallBuilders quite often the proper role of government, what it should be doing, what it shouldn't be doing. In fact, we encourage you to take one of our Constitution classes. Go to biblicalcitizens. com today and you can become one of our biblical citizenship coaches, hosting that class in your home or at your church. It's free! Go there and get that and get started. You can be the catalyst for a restoration of biblical values and constitutional principles.

Rick Green: 1:37

We're going to always bring you truth on this program. We just want to challenge you to help expand that truth. That also means making a donation, walbuilderslive. com. Your donation will help us reach more people, allow us to do more trainings for pastors and students and all these different things. Thanks for being a part of the solution. And today we're in fact going to give you that perspective with a lot of good news. So it's Good News Friday. Around here at WallBuilders, we love Fridays, getting a lot of good news for you, David and Tim, have been compiling some of these stories that the major media doesn't cover and that we want to share with you today, to give you some encouragement, to show you that the system works when we work it. Principles of liberty are not dead, and it's time to get into some of those good news stories. David Barton is going to start us with the first piece of good news, and I haven't done this in a while, so I'm going to guess we're going to the courts in Wisconsin.

David Barton: 2:24

I hope you don't spend much money gambling, because you will lose a lot. Kara will be, so picked at you.

Rick Green: 2:30

Wait let me guess again. My guess is that we're not going to the courts, nor are we gonna do a Good News Friday Story from Wisconsin. Is that a smarter way to lay that bet out there?

David Barton: 2:42

Yeah, that's good, now you're about 95% right, so you turned out to be wrong.

Rick Green: 2:47

You were right, well y'all just that y'all have so much. Y'all have so much good news from so many places, it's impossible to guess right. It's just everywhere. All right, man, where are we really going?

David Barton: 2:56

Well, we're going to Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania, we're going to Philadelphia area and Philadelphia. Now Pennsylvania, go back, Pennsylvania is is one of the early colonies founded by William Penn back in 1681. He helped create their frame of government etc. But if you'll back up three years when we had all COVID stuff going, and that's when black lives matter really took off and became big across the Nation, and despite all the COVID shutdowns, it didn't shut down the riots and didn't shut down the burnings. And so you see all these statues, dozens and scores of statues being torn down, just trying to wipe out the heritage in the nation. And that same spirit of wokeness, the Biden administration is moving forward and and the the park service decided they're going to take down the statue of William Penn there. The founder of Pennsylvania, but they're going to take down his statue because that's not a very welcome figure and you really need a different view of history then these, these colonial guys who were so oppressive and not welcoming, and and man, when I saw this I went through the room and, by the way, when it was announced by the, by administration, we suddenly got contacted by all sorts of state legislators in Pennsylvania saying what hey, can you guys help us, who are some good attorneys we can get on this? This is absolutely insane and it is just to back up.

David Barton: 4:10

William Penn was actually given the land of Pennsylvania by the King, Charles II, because Charles II, old William Penn's father, a really big debt and didn't have the money to pay it. So the King says hey, William, I'll give you all this land I own over in that new place called America and that'll be the way I pay your debt. And so Penn gets tied over to this land called Pennsylvania and he gets over there and says you know that the king I mean this is what Kings do he really don't know what he's talking about. It's private property. The king doesn't own the land. The native tribes own the land over here and I'm not going to take the land just because the king said I had it. So he comes to Pennsylvania and he gets with the native tribes and said hey guys, this is the land I would like to be able to purchase as a colony, as a place for religious liberty, where people can get along together and we can work out differences in a very civil way. And he said can I buy this land from you? And so the various tribes said, yeah, we'll sell you that land is so those treaties is exist and you can look at them.

David Barton: 5:07

William Penn signed the treaties with these native tribes. Native tribes said yeah, we'll get that land to you for in exchange for what you're giving us. And both sides were happy with the exchange. Both sides felt like they had done a really good deal. But then another tribe came forward, said don't wait a minute before that tribe sold it to you, they stole the land from us and we're the actual owners of that that land. And Penn says well, I'll buy it from you too. So Penn then turns around and buys the same land from the second tribe. And then another tribe comes forward and said yeah, before those guys sat in who were stolen from the other guys, they stole it from us. So Penn tried to do the right thing actually does three different tribe payments for tribes who are claiming the same land, but it was taken from them by other Indian tribes.

David Barton: 5:47

So this is not colonialism forcing their way down that the throat of the Native Americans and forcing them to conform. And they're top of that, when he gets there, unlike so many other places in the world, he doesn't set up a state established religion. I mean, if you're in France, you got to be Catholic, and if you're in England, you got to be Anglican, and if you're in in Germany, you got to be Lutheran. He says, hey, whatever your religious belief is, you're welcome here in Pennsylvania. We're not gonna have the state tell you what your belief is.

David Barton: 6:14

There's so much good about William Penn that became a model for so much of what we have in our bill of rights today, and so the the protection of private property and self-government. He set up this great system of self-government where the people are the ones who make the decisions. You don't have leaders telling you, it's the people. And everything about Pennsylvania, maybe more than most other colonies in America, there's so much good there to point out. Now, were their bad things have happened. Sure, because people were involved. But is it the story that the the wolf wants to tell? Absolutely not. And so here you've got this great model and the Biden Park services says oh no, no, we've got to take that out. That's not a very welcoming figure.

David Barton: 6:55

Well, there was such an outcry and there were enough historians and citizens who got involved and said are you guys complete idiots? Do you not know that this may be the best, the best example of what's right about America and you want to tear it down? And so that the session to take William Penn down lasted three days and then they reverse themselves and said whoops our bad , we're not gonna do that after all. So that is really good news that there was enough public outcry and enough legislative outcry and even the Democrats in Pennsylvania told the Biden administration you guys are crazy. I mean the governor there, democrat governor, democrat senator, us senator. They all weighed in and said you guys clearly don't know who William Penn is. So the good news is it is staying there and hopefully we can start teaching better history so that we don't even have to go through these things anymore and we'll know who the really good guys actually are.

Tim Barton: 7:48

And there are some great resources out there on William Penn, by the way, if people want to learn more about him and a shameless plug we do talk about him in our book, the American Story of the Beginnings, as we lay out the foundation of so much of the early colonies in America, and specifically the New England and Northern colonies, where virtually every Northern and New England colony was founded by religious individuals seeking religious freedom, escaping religious persecution that endured over in Europe, and so this is part of the fabric and foundation of America that more people knew we would probably have a very different thought, feeling and really approach even to our nation as a whole.

Tim Barton: 8:26

So I highly encourage people go back, learn the story of William Penn. Again, a lot of great resources out there. I think our friend Steve McDowell from the Providence Foundation has written about him. I think Bill Federer is written about him. We have stuff on him as well with the American Story. So we definitely encourage you to find out more about William Penn and certainly many of the other incredible leaders that were the founders of these early colonies and the leaders early in our nation.

Rick Green: 8:49

Well, I know we probably don't disagree enough on this program. People probably say you probably have more viewers if you all just yelled at each other once in a while. But I'm gonna disagree with you guys on this story. This is a bad news story, really bad news, because when this first came out, I texted our state ambassador for the Constitutional Coach Program there in Pennsylvania and I said Tony, we want that statue for the Patriot Academy campus, so let's hope they decide to get rid of it and then you make sure that they ship it down to Fredericksburg,T exas. So I'm just gonna disagree with you guys. It would have been a lot better to get that statue and put it in Fredericksburg and not have the culture win, because I'm selfish. Okay, no, seriously, it's a great story. But I really did text her when that happened. So I was like I can't believe they're gonna get rid of William Penn. We'll take him! He'll be our hero in Texas! We'll take him!. All right, Tim, what's your first piece of good news today?

Tim Barton: 9:34

Well, I can follow on and saying that we have taken many great heroes in Texas, like a Davey Crockett and a Sam Houston and many others, right. So hey, you send them to us. We will make them great.

Tim Barton: 9:44

My story is coming from Beckett and they have an article out or they had a study out. The article is by Life News but the title says support for religious freedom in America hits highest mark. Now, just for people to wrap their head around this the the largest support in the history of these studies, the support for religious freedom in its highest score ever, with 69%. Now when I'm saying that right, we're not talking about the way people viewed this back in the founding era, the 1780s, the 1790s. We're not talking about maybe, probably this these studies were done even after Ronald Reagan was president, so we're talking much more in the last couple of decades, but the the highest support ever for religious freedom. On a scale of 0 to 100, 69% of the individuals in America said they support religious freedom. And there was a lot of things in this study from Beckett where they went through and saw what people's views were on really multiple different issues. They have an index and so they go as they break it down, they go from kind of different age, demographic, really interesting a lot of opinions where Americans are now that if we look back a couple years ago we knew it should have been higher. So, for example, they identify that over two thirds, or 67%, of Americans believe that parents should be the primary educators of their children and should be able to opt them out of school curriculum if the parents believe the material is inappropriate or violates their religious beliefs. Now, we knew the majority of parents were not OK. When you have different academic and political leaders saying that parents should have no say in their child's education, that the government should be the ones taking care of what kids learn and what they know and what they believe, and parents really shouldn't be that involved, we knew that was not going to be correct in the view of what most Americans thought. And yet we saw we did not see enough pushback initially. And then, of course, moms begin waking up, dads being waking up, grandparents woke up and they were showing up at the school board meetings over the last couple of years, but we're talking about the vast majority of Americans recognizing that this is not what we want to do. So, as it goes through this study, they're breaking down the information they found and they identify that, when you look at the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which actually, in 2023, celebrated its 30th anniversary and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was a standard.

Tim Barton: 12:18

The federal government was given that they cannot burden religious freedom unless they have a compelling reason. So, for example, if someone was saying my religion is to murder people, okay, well, the government has a compelling interest to protect the right to life and to not allow people to murder, so they're going to get involved in that. So they have to have a compelling reason to limit someone's religious freedom or their religious actions or beliefs in action. And then, number two, they have chosen the option least restrictive of the religious freedoms. So if they said look, you had lots of options, if you wanted to pray at a certain place, but you decided to bring a massive amplifier with a microphone into the school cafeteria and this six year old is screaming in the microphone or prayer, that's not really the best way to do that. We can say yes, you should be able to pray over your meal, pray with your friends, have a prayer meeting but when you get a little obnoxious with this, there is a parameter that the government can say right, that's a little too much, but they have to do the least restrictive means possible.

Tim Barton: 13:29

While looking at this study, and overwhelming, 88% of Americans favored the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and an even stronger standard for religious freedom. So I can go through more of this article, but the bottom line is that we are seeing such a stronger standard for religious freedom and, guys, at this point it feels like it's been a decade ago. But the COVID lockdown just a couple of years ago, when that was happening, there were a lot of Christians, there were a lot of pastors who were saying, hey, we will close our church down as long as it needs to, and churches shouldn't have special privileges. Right, just because the liquor store is open, just because you can go to a marijuana dispensary, just because the strip club is open, doesn't mean churches should be open. Now, as stupid as that is, that is a position a lot of pastors and even some Christians took. And so now, seeing this incredible shift, reversal from what culture is understanding about this, that is incredibly encouraging. 88% of Americans favored very strong protections for religious freedom. That's good news.

Rick Green: 14:37

Very good news. Time for a break, guys. We'll be right back more good news when we return. You're listening to the wall builder show.

Tim Barton: 14:46

Hi, friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders.

Tim Barton: 14:48

This is the time when most Americans don't know much about American history, or even heroes of the faith, and I know often times for parents we're trying to find good content for our kids to read and if you remember, back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has the faith Hall of Fame where they outlined the leaders of faith that had gone before them.

Tim Barton: 15:03

Well, this is something that, as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity and our faith as well. I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called the courageous leaders collection, and this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers, and there's a second collection called heroes of history, and this collection you'll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, friends the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it's a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at wallbuilders. com that's www. wallbuilders. com.

Rick Green: 15:49

Welcome back to The WallB uilders Show. More good news coming at you.

David Barton: 15:53

This is an interesting story dealing with immigration. I guess one piece of good news is that even the, the blue cities, a lot of the large blue cities, are recognizing that the federal government's not doing the right thing with immigration and they're not controlling the borders. And so all these blue mayors are reaching out to the Biden administration saying, hey, all these people you're letting come across are taking so much money out of what we have in the city, we're having to provide services we wouldn't normally have to provide and we need billions and billions and billions from you. So there's a recognition, even on the left, that immigration is not headed the right direction. Well, one of those places where some immigrants have showed up is New York City, and I found it amazing, by the way, when Governors like, Governor Abbott was was taking it, and Governor DeSantis, they were bussing immigrants to all these other places or flying them to these places when there's as many as a hundred immigrants that would show up, these mayors were claiming hey, that's gonna that, that's gonna ruin the city, we don't have that much money. We're going., hey, in Texas, we get twenty seven hundred a day and you're looking at a hundred. You can't handle that? What is it for us in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, elsewhere? So all that to say that in New York City, as they've had s everal thousand immigrants that have have gone to New York City and they're not being able to handle it, the story here is that they have taken one of their high schools in New York City, Madison High School. They have closed it down. That's a large high school, has 3400 students. But they have closed the high school down and sent all the students home and said, hey guys, you're just gonna have to learn online or do what you can, but we need that high school to house the immigrants that are here. We have illegal immigrants, we've got to take care of them. So what you've seen is is number one they're saying kids, your education is not nearly as important as taking care of these illegal immigrants, so we're sending you home so we can take care of them.

David Barton: 17:41

And let me just do a little biblical verse here. T his is a matter of priorities for what you're seeing New York City and if you go back to the Bible in 1st Timothy 5:8, this is if you don't take care of your own household, the people in your household, and take care of them first, it says you're worse than an infidel. You've denied the faith. What they've done is they're not taking care of their own citizens, they're taking care of other citizens, and they thus violated that biblical priority. You take care of your own stuff first. You take care of your house, your community, your home, and then you take care other stuff after that. So it's not that the Bible is against helping the immigrants, against helping the needy. Yes, you have the orphans and the widows and those that are need, but your first priority is taking care of your house and then this.

David Barton: 18:22

So all of this to say what's the good news out of this really weird story out of New York City? And this is good news tongue-in-cheek. You guys may slap me down for this, but the good news in this is that these 3400 kids that are not gonna be in New York City schools are now going to get a better education by not being in school. This is going to improve their education. They have a much better opportunity to get truth and and to find better forms of education online with all these other schools out there and parents will be much more able to see what's going on, just as they did in COVID and that's what led to so much school choice out of the COVID stuff. Parents said I can't believe they're teaching this to my kids. So I think this is gonna be really good for those kids because they will get a better education now being away from the indoctrination New York City. But that's my tongue-in-cheek good news. I think it really actually is gonna be good news.

Tim Barton: 19:13

Well and dad, t's it's only good news, depending on what source they pick, because they choose another woke education structure or another woke school, obviously it's a problem, and I say that not belittling what you're saying, but recognizing that this is one of the reasons we have encouraged so many parents that you need to be very proactive and engaged in your child's education, because the vast majority of curriculum, or of teachers at least teaching curriculum in public schools. They're embracing a very radical ideology and even though, again, we know a lot of really good public school individuals, that we have some in our family, there's people that we love, that we know are doing an incredible job. We know there's people that have prayed and feel God has called them to be a teacher in a public school or maybe administration or a principal, superintendent. We know some really good people in the system. It doesn't change the fact that so much of what is being taught in the public education, the public school system, is really really bad propaganda is unbiblical, is immoral and is not what kids need to be learning. It's why we've been encouraging parents you really need to prayerfully consider where your kids need to be going to school that there isn't accountability for that.

Tim Barton: 20:26

Right when Jesus.. There's a couple of interesting things. When you look at Jesus, what did he say was some of the most significant, strictest things? Right, he said well, the unforgivable sin is blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Okay, check right. What would maybe we scale above or below, or maybe not above, because something is unforgivable, except that one identified in scripture by Jesus. But maybe right below that, he said if anyone calls this one of these little ones to stubble, it's better that a millstone, a giant rock, be tied around their neck and thrown into the ocean. Now, Jesus is not encouraging suicide for individuals, but he's highlighting the importance of the rising generation. People that are going to intentionally mislead the rising generation, there is a incredibly high standard of judgment. He says better for you to just get yourself like literally kill yourself in that scenario, don't risk misleading these kids because of the judgment, the consequences you will face because of that.

Tim Barton: 21:20

Now, the reason I bring this up is parents are the ones that are told they're in charge of the instruction for their kids, and most parents have no idea what their kids are learning. Therefore, they don't even know that their kids are being lied to, that they're being programmed, that this propaganda is coming against them. Parents, we would highly encourage you, you need to think about where your kids are in school and what they're learning. Do we really know the teachers in the world view the teachers? The teachers believe in truth? Do they believe in biblical standards of morality? This is important stuff to know as we navigate the education system.

Tim Barton: 21:52

So, dad, kind of back a little bit when you're tongue-in-cheek, they're gonna learn more not being in that school system. Well, it's very possible they actually will learn way more being out of that system. Even if a parent just said hey, here's a couple of books we're gonna homeschool you. Read these at home. They'll probably get a far better education. But it does matter incredibly much what the ideology and what the philosophy of that educator is. You can go from one school to the next, but if those teachers have the same ideas about education or using the same curriculum, you haven't solved any problems. You have to change the world view of the people that are teaching that rising generation 32 states now embrace school choice, so that's even some of the blue states.

David Barton: 22:30

32 states now embrace school choice, so that's even some of the blue states. So this is starting to catch on. The states are seeing how bad their education is. 32 states now have school choice in some form.

Rick Green: 22:38

Yeah, Tim, even as the parents are starting to look, there is starting to be more solutions as well. I know we've all three been, you know, to a ton of different homeschool conventions and talked at private schools and we're seeing that growth of other options for parents as well. School choice is growing all over the country, so more and more states are adopting that. So this is all good news. There really is an education revolution happening right now and you're right, it goes back to they saw all the parents saw this evil stuff being taught and they said I finally woke up, I gotta do something different. I think people just didn't wanna believe that that school they grew up in played ball for, or whatever it might be, could possibly be this bad, but it is folks. And so it's really good to see this revolution in education happening. All right, Tim, we got time for one more. Go for it, man.

Tim Barton: 23:18

All right. Well, this one is coming out of California and we have joked often when you find good news coming out of California, right, we're all a little shocked. Well, this is good news coming from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and we've had good news a couple of times from them, but generally that's a very liberal court. Well, this one is dealing with California and specifically the city of Berkeley. They impose new standards where they said that you are not allowed to have any gas stove. So for all buildings that were being done, commercial buildings, any of the new building projects they could not have gas stoves. And, of course, if you're talking commercial industry buildings and you're talking restaurants, the vast majority of restaurants are using gas stoves. So it's absolutely damaging, hindering a lot of the food industry. What's remarkable is the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals there's actually a judge that already ruled against that standard from Berkeley, saying, hey, you're wrong, you cannot do this. And they cited something all the way back from 1975, it's the ECPA, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which prevents cities from, and even states from, going against what kind of standards might be in place from the federal government, etc. It really is kind of in the weeds.

Tim Barton: 24:38

I don't want to get into the weeds on this a lot, but what's interesting about this is, in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the judges that ruled in favor of these restaurants using gas stoves. They said , you can't just have arbitrary application and that goes against the Constitution or federal law. States can't arbitrarily do that. There was a dissenting judge on this panel and the judge said , even though all that stuff might be true, that the city should be allowed to do this because banning gas stoves will help prevent climate change and climate change is the biggest threat to our democracy. You know, echoing that kind of nonsense lying in that judge may be also where noting was appointed by President Obama, so very leftist judge. But the good news is that now even the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals the panel has identified that California cannot ban gas stoves not something I thought I would see coming from the Ninth Circuit. So that's really good news.

Rick Green: 25:33

Well, it's great to highlight the good news. That's why we do good news Fridays. We want to encourage you, if you'd like more good news, to go to our website today at WallBuildersLivecom. You can go in the archive section there and get some of the previous Friday programs and then we'll hit more good news next Friday. We really appreciate you as a listener.

Rick Green: 25:47

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Rick Green: 26:28

So thanks so much for doing that, also want to challenge you to start a Constitution class in your home or at your church. We call it Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. It's a fun class to host. It is totally free for you and for your students. Check that out today at BiblicalCitizens. com. Thanks so much for listening. Today you've been listening to WallBuilders Live.