Rick Green: 0:09
 Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It's WallBuilders and we're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Appreciate you joining us today. We encourage you to not just listen today, but to take action. Get involved, be a part of the solution, so much that you can be a part of it. Our goal today, on a Good News Friday, is to encourage you, let you hear these great victories that are happening and look for ways that you can be a part of a Good News story by being involved in your family, your community, your state and, of course, our nation. So that means go to WallBuilders.com today, get some of those materials, maybe at that website, donate today. You can do that at WallBuildersLive.com or at WallBuilders.com, but those donations help us to get the truth out there and equip more people to create more Good News stories. Or it might be that you just get some of the materials and you invite friends and family over to go through those things and help to solve the civic and biblical ignorance problem that is producing the bad government problems that we have in our nation. Whatever the direction is that you want to go, we just encourage you to take action as we enjoy this Good News today, time to dive in. Folks, buckle up. We're going to get as much good news in as we can. David, get us started, brother.

David Barton: 1:20
Well, I'm going to go with some survey results. Looking at the church in America overall is some good news. It's going to start with some questions for you guys, however. So we've got dozens and dozens of denominations in America and there are what are called the mainstream denominations, the mainstream. In polling usually that's seven different denominations. Do you know what they are? Baptists Mainstream Now, Baptists considered evangelical. Even Southern Baptists is not a mainstream denomination.

Tim Barton: 1:45
Okay. So then Episcopalians, episcopalian, yes, okay. Anglicans.

David Barton: 1:49
Methodists, anglicans, methodists, anglicans, be considered Episcopalians. There's technically a difference, but they group them together. Okay, so does that mean Catholics are part of this? Catholics are not.

Tim Barton: 2:00
They consider Protestant denominations, catholics not considered, I'm just saying Episcopalian, anglican, catholic. It's a real similar in a lot of ways. Okay, so Episcopalian and Anglican are one on this list.

David Barton: 2:12
Presbyterian. Presbyterian is Presbyterian Church USA or PCA USA, Cameron and Al.

Tim Barton: 2:21
because of the distinction, I can name more denominations.

David Barton: 2:24
There's several Presbyterian denominations. There's PCA, usa PCA, there's the Wisconsin you know all those different groups, but the PCA USA Presbyterian Church, here they are, here they come. So the United Methodist Church, which is splitting, but United Methodist, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the American Baptist Churches, the Presbyterian Church, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church slash Disciples of Christ. So those are the seven mainstream denominations in America. Now, when you look at those seven mainstream denominations, which would you choose as being the most liberal among the clergy? We're talking only the pastors of these churches who are the most liberal. Which nomination has the most liberal pastors?

Tim Barton: 3:09
It's got to be one of the United's, that's right.

David Barton: 3:11
That's so true. United Church of Christ 84% of their pastors self-identify as liberal. Behind that is Presbyterian Church, usa 70% identify as liberal. Episcopal Church 69% identify as liberal. That's the clergy. Then the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America 68% liberal. Disciples of Christ 62% liberal. Now, if you get down into under 50%, the United Methodist Church 44% liberal. And the American Baptist Church, usa 26% liberal. So those are the two least liberal of the seven mainstream. I guess the good news is it doesn't appear the pastors are having much impact on their congregation. So is that because not very many people attend those churches? Oh, no plenty of people. But even if they attended, you would still expect them to reflect whoever's there. So this is not my numbers, it's by percentages. So what happens is now that that's liberals. Now, when you go to Democrat etc. Among all those seven denominations put together, 49% of those nomination clergy call themselves Democrats. So that's counting the two more conservative, the five more liberal, but all that clergy, out of the seven groups, 49% called themselves Democrats. Only 30% of parishioners call themselves Democrats, so they're not having much of an evangelistic effect even on their own congregation. 28% of the clergy call themselves independent, but 26% of their congregations are independent, and only 14% of those clergy call themselves Republican, and yet 34% of the congregation calls themselves Republican. So it's good that, and we talk about how bad the church condition is at times, but it looks like the parishioners, at least on the liberal side, are not going with their liberal ministers, and so I mean it was really pretty amazing to see the difference between the congregation and the churches. So I think it's really healthy and that's good news overall that people are tending to be more conservative than the liberal leaders. Hopefully that'll follow in politics and Democrats as well.

Tim Barton: 5:23
Well, and certainly I think there is a positive component to that I would have a hard time thinking, sitting under those kind of leaders, that you're getting a biblical message and therefore, even though you might not have the same reflected values when it comes to politics, you're probably not getting any kind of solid biblical teaching when it comes to a biblical worldview perspective. And so I certainly would like to think that for many of those people they had to be going. You know what? Maybe we need to find a different church, maybe we need to find a different pastor, a different leader, and this is not an attack specifically at a political party, but identifying right now what are the values of the Democrat party, and they are not pro-life, they are not pro-marriage, they are not pro-Israel Things that some pretty basic things in the Bible. And if you are the senior pastor and you are against basic teachings of the Bible, then if you are a Bible-believing Christian, you need to be challenging that leader based on what the Bible says, or finding a place that teaches more of what the Bible says.

David Barton: 6:25
And I agree, if you're a Bible-believing Christian with the United Church of Christ. They are so anti-Jesus as a Christian denomination they're so anti-Jesus. I don't know that it's possible to actually find Christ in a biblical way except by yourself in most of those churches.

Tim Barton: 6:45
Well, and to that point, I mean, we do know some people that have said and they didn't hear about Jesus till they left. Some of those, denominations and, with that being said, right understanding that, as we're talking about this, this is a generalization to my extent, because we know there are churches that are breaking away from these denominations because of the unbiblical nature of what that some of these denominations have taken, which is additional good news. So I think, overarching, there's definitely good news in that the values of some of these leaders is not necessarily being fully embraced by the congregation. However, it'd be better news for many of those congregants to say, hey, we're going to find a new pastor or find a new church, because certainly they're not getting good biblical teaching in that place. That's right.

Rick Green: 7:25
Yeah, I think it's great news because I always have thought when I watch these news clips or read a story of one of these, like you're saying, Tim, united whatever churches, and they have some lesbian pastor you know up there marrying two other lesbians or whatever, I've always thought, okay, if you're, if you're allowing that to happen in your church, you must be a liberal, like you must be a left-winger if you're staying in a church like that. So to hear that even in those very liberal churches, that they are not a majority liberal and that there's still a decent chunk of conservatives in there, I agree with you, tim. Like what are you doing sitting in that pew? Get out of there and get to it a decent church. But I had just written the whole congregate. I just assumed the whole congregation was left-wingers or they wouldn't put up with that stuff. So that actually is a great, a great, a great new story, dave, because it tells you there's hope to win over that part of the congregation at least out of those liberal churches and get them away it also goes against progressive thing that you can't necessarily divide people in the groups.

David Barton: 8:23
They don't always fit neatly in the groups, like progressives, have you think. So what you've got here is, even though these are groups of denominations, there's a lot of good people in there still, and that's that's good.

Tim Barton: 8:34
Well, I think it goes back to also when we talk about what does the Bible do? That that over overarching theme in the Bible. Jesus clearly was not into categorizing people in groups and categories per se. We know the Apostle Paul wrote that in Christ there is no male, there's no female, there's no Jew, there's no Greek, there's no Scythian, no Bond slave free. Right, we're all one in Christ and in Jesus, the. The only example he really gave us there was two groups it was the sheep and the goats. It was those that that knew and did the will of the father versus those that did not know or do the will of the father. And so the, I think, as a Christian, the only two accurate categories those that that no one follow God and those that don't know or don't follow God. And so if we talk about groups, certainly as Christians we would say, hey, you're not supposed to put people in groups except the one group that is acceptable according to scripture is do you know God or do you not know God? Because if you don't know God, we want to tell you about Jesus. Right, that we have. We have a friend, you should meet him. He's a great guy. We want you to know him, and so definitely as a Christian. When we look at groups, the only the only filter we should see is do these people know God or they do they need to know God? So that can help us and our motivation of how we engage in conversation good stuff, good stuff, all right, tim.

Rick Green: 9:49
Good piece of our, piece of good news from you before we go to break.

Tim Barton: 9:54
Alright. Well, I have a huge stack in front of me. I just pulled a couple off the top. This one says not on my watch. Iowa Governor says no to new COVID mandates. And Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has really become a rock star in many regards when it comes to some very basic biblical, constitutional issues, they've been in Iowa. They've been a champion for the pro-life movement. When Roe versus Wade was overturned with the Dobs decision, it went back to the states. Iowa is one of many states that took some pretty bold stance, some bold action to protect unborn in their state, and Governor Reynolds has been very strong on that. Well, they also were one of the states back in 2020 that followed kind of the lead. We know there was some vocal leadership from, for example, rhonda Santas in Florida. Certainly, governor Noem in South Dakota took some heat at times and she stood up at times trying to protect freedom in different places. There were a couple governors that got some notoriety for that. Well, Governor Reynolds didn't get as much notoriety, but she certainly was very strong in many respects in certain issues, and so now there's allegedly a new wave of COVID that is hitting the nation, and so that's why you need to get your 85th booster or whatever number we're on now and not to get sidetracked with that conversation too much. However, she says that in Iowa there will be no mandate and in fact one of the individuals that oversees some of the health concerns the Public Health Association Executive Director, lena Tucker. It looks like reindeer and I'm sure it's not how our last name's pronounced Reamders. I don't know, I messed that name up. Somebody from Iowa you can help me out, let me know how to pronounce that name. But she says it doesn't mean that there might not be some local area in the state where some local entity might put up some kind of restriction. But she identified there is no state restriction that's coming out. And so for the Biden administration to be playing up how dangerous this new strand of COVID is and you have to get your new boosters and maybe we might have to go back to masking and there might be new mandates and even, as the Biden administration is suggesting that maybe we should turn over the health decisions of America to the who or whatever kind of circumstance situation that might look like when you have governor standing up and saying, yeah, we're not playing that game anymore. This is really good and really healthy when you now have more assertion of the 10th Amendment by these governors, more of the states right saying look, federal government, you don't have the right, you don't have the authority to come in here and shut us down, to lock us down, to put these new mandates. We're not doing that anymore, and so that's just one more piece of really good news coming from Governor Kim Reynolds in Iowa. So many good things that she has done over the last couple of years. This is just one more example when she says they will not do any of these lockdowns probably ever again to get the indication from her, but anyway not for this new variant, and that is good news.

Rick Green: 13:03
Yeah, great news it's, especially as so many other people were considering and even pushing now towards. There's some schools there's even a school here in Texas already going back to mandates and so, yeah, really really good news. And she was one of the better ones, let's say she was maybe not quite as good as DeSantis, but got jumped back in the right column very quickly and has been fantastic every since. Very much like it to DeSantis, so Iowans are very blessed to have her as governor. Tell you what? Let's take a break, We'll be right back. We've got more good news. David Barton up next with the next piece of good news. Stay with us. You're listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton: 13:42
Hi, friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don't know much about American history, or even heroes of the faith, and I know oftentimes 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. 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: 14:45
Welcome back to Walberters. Thanks for staying with us. It's Good News. Friday and David was up next.

David Barton: 14:50
Well, this one, this is an inter. I guess both of my stories so far have been kind of twisted. Good news, in a way.

Tim Barton: 14:58
You might have misunderstood what this is about. I was going to say twisted good news we're going to have a new program on Walberters.

David Barton: 15:05
Yes, I'll just read the headline here. It says after three years, student payments are back. Student loan payments officially resume Sunday, after borrowers were let off the hook for more than three years by a pause initiated by Biden. So, biden, no, I'm not going to make you pay your student loan. And it's interesting, I just I'm looking at the way that students, some students and the left has responded to this. The founder of the Student Debt Crisis Center said it's a sad day for student loan borrowers and for the country that student loans have to come back on. It's a sad day when you have to repay your loan.

Tim Barton: 15:46
Oh, man, I'm always sad when I have to keep my word. Every time I have to do what I said I was going to do, it makes me so sad they should have known I was lying and I wasn't going to pay. I was never going to repay that loan. Come on, guys.

David Barton: 16:01
So the Biden administration has let 28 million borrowers off the hook with repayments. So far he's lost every court case. There have been a number of court cases, At the Supreme Court included. He's lost every single case. So now he's forced to come back on and collect the money and et cetera. Now I don't know, Is this going to illustrate how bad education is? Because some of the students who are now having to repay their debt are going on a student debt strike.

Rick Green: 16:30
No, oh, you've got to be kidding me.

David Barton: 16:35
Can I go on a house mortgage strike? No, make it the car strike.

Tim Barton: 16:39
I mean a credit card strike Technically you can go on strike, there's just certain consequences to not paying your mortgage.

David Barton: 16:47
That's my point, because if I go on a house strike, I'm going to lose my house. If I go on a car strike, I'll lose my car. They can't lose their education because they apparently didn't get one. So if they go on a student debt strike, I'm not sure that they've lost anything.

Tim Barton: 16:58
Yeah, I think at this point, what they're missing is they should be demanding a refund for their lack of education.

David Barton: 17:04
Exactly Not to cancel the loan.

Tim Barton: 17:07
My university should have to repay what I paid because clearly they did not get the education they should have gotten.

David Barton: 17:14
And it says that if students who have debt that more than half say well, I can't afford to make any payments and 22% say I never had a plan to make payments, so how are we even teaching basic economics if that's your approach to getting a loan and you haven't thought about it or you have no plans to pay it off?

Tim Barton: 17:34
And I think there's a balance with us a little bit too. Right, because for some of those people, 20% said we never intended to pay it. Right, because Joe Biden literally ran saying that we're going to make college free. That was part of the Democrat Party Initiative, part of their slogan, part of what Biden encouraged was that college is going to be free. And so if in the last two or three years, you've been going to college, yeah, I totally understand why someone might have thought, hey, this is going to be free because this is what they told me. But it's a reflection that in our education system, what we have done is we've created a system that has made people incredibly gullible, where they're going to believe what they're told, they're going to do what they're told, depending on who it is telling them and, ultimately, who those leaders are. So if it's their teachers, if it's a Democrat Party, and what they're learning from those teachers and from the Democrat Party is that you don't trust Republicans and if they say something, they're liars and you need to shout them down, you need to cancel them. This is the environment they've grown up in. So on some level, I can have some level of maybe empathetic understanding that if this is what you've heard. I get where you're coming from and I understand why you'd be frustrated if you've been lied to and you believed the lie. But you should not blame the system, because the system didn't make you sign an agreement, didn't make you sign a contract, didn't make you go to school there. So you ought to be mad at the Democrat Party, mad at the Democrat leadership, mad at Joe Biden for what he did, instead of whatever solution of going on strike, whatever that's going to look like. All that to say is I really do understand why it could be a challenge for young people who haven't been taught genuinely in educational systems and structures to be critical thinkers, to be problem solvers. They haven't learned some of these reasoning skills. And then they're told if you want to do something with your life, you need to continue on your education and for many people, they got a college degree and then got out and they couldn't find a job and whatever degree field they had and maybe right, maybe because of their lack of ability performance with their degree, maybe because it was in a field that was so narrow there weren't those opportunities. Again, I understand that there could be some frustration here, but the reality is. It should not be the responsibility of the rest of us, who are hardworking Americans, who are individuals, who have jobs, who pay taxes, to then bear the tax burden for a really terrible education and for a loan that we did not take out. Therefore, we should not have to pay it back. So it is good news. This has failed everywhere it's gone. It is a little sad how upset some of these students are, but I understand again because they've been lied to. I totally get why they might be frustrated, but at some point people need to wake up and realize that these politicians have been lying to them and maybe that means you need to stop supporting that side of that political party, because they are just using you for their advantage and it's not benefiting you.

David Barton: 20:28
That is so accurate, so correct, so common sense. And speaking of common sense, we appear to have another lack of common sense. I'm looking at a headline that has just come across where Biden is announcing he is reinstituting the debt cancellation program. So even after the court is telling me he has to, even after his administration announces is going back online, he just popped back in and said no, we're going to cancel debts again.

Tim Barton: 20:53
it'll be another lawsuit, it'll keep going Now do you think maybe with a reelection bid coming up, that maybe there's new promises that are being made. Right, because, I mean, I think it was the middle of the week that we saw this announcement, I think it was on Wednesday. They made this announcement. But ultimately, when you have an education system that's taught people to be gullible, taught people to just repeat what they're told to do, what they're told to do, repeat what's been said to them, and then you're going to tell them hey guys, it's these evil Republicans that have stopped us from being able to do this, but we're going to do it this time. Keep voting for us. It very much is similar to me of things like what LBJ said, what FDR did with the new deal expanding the welfare state, what Lenin Mains Johnson with his war on poverty, where he said we are going to get certain people in the population to vote for us for the rest of their life. They won't even know why and they will always now vote for our party. This is what Biden ultimately is trying to do is buy votes. The reason that you are offering all these illegal immigrants coming across the southern border different kinds of identification and licenses is because if you vote, you have to have some kind of license or identification. Well, why are you giving those to illegal citizens who haven't even gone to their court date, who haven't even found out if they can remain in the country? Why are you giving the opportunity for them to commit fraud in voting illegally? Why would you do this? Well, this is part of, unfortunately, what Democrats have done in trying to buy votes so that to that point moralized coming out. The good news is this is not one in any court case whatsoever, and every single judge that's looked at this said yeah, you don't have the authority, you can't do this. So the fact he's trying it yet again certainly seems only politically motivated, not like he's trying to help college students as much as he's trying to secure more votes for a coming election.

Rick Green: 22:42
Alright, we got time for one more piece of good news, Tim. What are we closing out with today?

Tim Barton: 22:47
Well, this one is a study that came out from Heritage and this is I don't know, it's 10 or 12 pages, 14 pages of this article that I have in my hand and it says 2023, the year of education freedom, and it goes through and identifies so many states that have taken steps for parental choice and education, including states like Arkansas, which have made some major strides, and that it goes through Florida and Iowa, and in this article it really does it break down, it goes into great detail, as I mentioned, when it's 10, 12, 14 pages. There is so much information on these states, on what they've done in Indiana, going through some of what they've done in Montana, and one of the things that we are seeing is how much states are recognizing the benefits of what choice does, because competition in the marketplace always helps improve what those products are. When you don't have a monopoly, then under a monopoly, you can't control the quality, you can't control the price, but when there is competition, it impacts the quality of the goods and service, it impacts the value, what we're paying for that and for so many states. They recognize there's a lot of failing schools, specifically in a lot of the larger cities. There's a lot of lower level schools as far as the ranking system of schools, of how they perform, of how their students perform on academic testing, and there's a lot of schools that perform very poorly and, unfortunately, parents get stuck in those schools and for many parents, they are in a situation where, financially, they can't afford to have a different option, and so some of these schools have now been given opportunities or students in those schools have been given opportunities through so much progress made on this educational freedom front. So this is from heritageorg. It's 2023, colon, the year of education freedom, if people want to look this up and see I don't have time to go through how much incredible thing has been going on, but this is something we are seeing more and more states recognizing the value of competition, the value of alternate education, giving students a way out in some of these failing school districts, and this is a very beneficial thing. Unfortunately, there's a lot of homeschool families, there's a lot of conservatives that oppose school choice because they think it's going to put more and more strings on these finances and therefore the government's going to control all these different schools and the government's going to be able to put the same nonsense from public education into these Christian and private schools or even homeschool families. But the reality is, Dad, how many states?

David Barton: 25:18
Did 32 states have school choice? All 32 states have been dozens of studies. 93% of the studies show that where you have school choice, scores go up, costs go down. So the taxpayers and it's all choice. If you don't want it, don't take it, but at least save me some of my own money that I'm paying. At least give me some smarter kids in the state, even if they're not in my family so.

Tim Barton: 25:38
So to your point, right for many families that are concerned about this, if you're concerned about they're being government strings attached to these dollars, well then you don't have to take the dollars. But for some of these families that their kids are in an inner city school and they have no other option For then homeschool conservative families say well, we can't support this because we don't want more government strings. I don't know. I understand you don't have to take this, but if it's an opportunity for someone who's stuck in a failing school to have another option, chance, we ought to be concerned enough about the kids in these failing schools to give them a chance and Competition. The marketplace is always great. Again, this is heritage steady, it's totally worth reading. But a lot of good progress made in 2023 on the educational freedom standpoint, yeah that that issue is.

Rick Green: 26:19
It's kind of like, you know, a few years back we had pro-life victory after pro-life victory after pro-life victory. We're getting more and more school choice victories, so hopefully that snowball effect will continue. Thanks for listening today, folks. We'll have more good news for you next week. You've been listening to WallBuilders.