Rick Green: 0:08
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It's WallBuilders, where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective, here with David Barton. He's America's premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach and a former Texas legislator. Thanks so much for being a part of us, not only listening to the program, but actually coming alongside us and helping us to educate and equip and inspire people across the nation to be good citizens, to be biblical citizens that help to restore liberty in this country. You can be a part of that in a couple of ways. Number one just share the program. Just be a force multiplier. Get this program in as many hands as you can. Share it on social media, send the link out to your friends and family, let people know about it, and then go to the website today and make a contribution. By doing that, you're helping us to reach more people. It allows us you know we're a listener-supported program, so it allows us to be on more stations across the country. It allows us to reach more people, train more pastors and legislators and teachers and all the other things that we're doing to get people equipped to be good citizens. When you donate, it's an investment in freedom and we appreciate very much you being a part of that. Check it out today at WallBuilders.com. You can make a one-time or monthly contribution. It's a great way to come alongside us. Alright, guys got a really interesting program today. Andy Gould's going to be with us with a school board member by the name of Heather Rooks, and it's a really interesting case that First Liberty Institute has taken. This is one of the school board victories where somebody got involved because they were tired of the schools, you know, indoctrinating the kids and all the porn in the schools and all that stuff trying to clean up the school and she read Bible verses or quoted Bible verses and they literally wanted to silence her. It's okay to quote from pretty much anybody else, I guess, but for quoting a Bible verse you get silence these days at some of these school boards. Imagine what's happening in the classroom.

David Barton: 1:56
You know it is crazy, but that's not unexpected right now and that's why we're seeing so many parents run for school boards because it's gotten so illogical. At a place where you send your children to be educated to be a good citizen, you don't want to practice free speech, even though that's constitutional and you're supposed to teach about the Constitution and where you send kids to learn the right things, they're not learning that, and so that is a really clear demonstration of why you need to change in school boards in so many places across the nation. And just the fact that she, as an adult, can't talk to a group of adults and say what she believes in that group of adults simply because it is on school grounds. That's ridiculous.

Tim Barton: 2:32
This is pretty consistent with what we've seen from school boards, where you have parents show up and they will read some of the books. Right, just an excerpt from some of the books that are being promoted in middle school or elementary and high school times. And often I mean Rick, you alluded to this early it's the graphic nature of the sexual content, and we've seen so many videos where somebody from the school board say, excuse me, you can't read that, it's inappropriate, and they'll cut the mic off. We're not surprised seeing a school board at this point telling somebody that they shouldn't be reading or saying something. And yet the fact that now we're not talking about this really aggressive sexual content, we're talking about the Bible. And to go even further, I would imagine that even though in the Bible for those of us that study the word, there are some places in the Bible that maybe if you were reading that part, you're like you know that might be the best part to read right now. Right, you're reading about Lot and his two daughters. You're like, yeah, that's not the most appropriate for school board, but I just have a feeling, right, it probably was much more of the encouraging, uplifting promises of God, not something dealing with the debauchery sinfulness of man that the Bible very clearly highlights. The reason Jesus came is because we were all sinners, and the Bible is pretty clear at showing the examples of some of the major failures from some of the players historically in the biblical narrative. With that being said, this is again a unique example where this is a school board not telling a parent they can't read something because it's inappropriate in the sexual graphic nature. This is somebody finding the content inappropriate because it's religious and specifically because it's Christian. We've talked about it before. I have a hard time thinking that they would stop someone reading some kind of religious material if it was Buddhist or Hindu or Islamic in nature. But we certainly see the hostility much more aggressively revealed when it tends to be Christian, which is so inconsistent with the very foundation of education in America, going back to the fact that pilgrims are the ones that really are credited with starting public education, public schools in America, and they did it entirely for religious reasons, as identified by the fact their first law dealing with education, requiring school to be a thing, requiring towns to have schools and kids to go to schools. The law was known as the Old Deluder Satan Act, where they identified that the chief project of the Old Deluder, Satan, was to keep men from knowledge of scriptures in former times when the Bible was in an unknown tongue and people couldn't read it. But now that the Bible in English, so they need to teach kids in English so they can read the Bible and know what the Bible says. That was a first educational law in America was we were going to have schools to make sure kids can read the Bible, and now that we're coming to a place that a school board member cannot even quote a Bible verse. This is pretty ridiculous and certainly the opposite of the intent of education in America.

Rick Green: 5:25
Well, folks, we've got both the attorney and the school board member going to be with us Andy Gould from First Liberty, our good friends over there that do so much of this and do it so well and then Heather Rooks will be with us as well. So stay with us, we'll be right back on WallBuilders.

Tim Barton: 5:50
This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American History. Alexis de Tocqueville, a political official from France, traveled to the United States in 1831 and penned his observations in the now-famous book Democracy in America. Being from France, what he found in America was completely unexpected to him, he reported, upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention, and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this. In France, I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions, but in America I found that they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country. De Tocqueville recognize that it was biblical Christianity and the morals it produced that made America great. For more information about Alexis de Tocqueville and the positive influence of Christianity in early America, go to WallBuilders.com.

Rick Green: 6:47
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. It's great to have, of course, as always, we love First Liberty and the great work that they do. Andy Gould from First Liberty is with us and his client, heather Rooks, who just, I mean, is leading the way on the front lines of the religious liberty wars in America, serving on a school board in Arizona. Heather, Andy, thank you all so much for coming on today. 

Andy Gould:
It's our pleasure, Rick.

Heather Rooks: 7:09
Thanks for having us on.

Rick Green: 7:10
Yeah, you bet, Heather, Just first of all just kind of tell the story of what happened. Literally not allowed to quote from the Bible, read directly from the Bible at a school board meeting. When did this happen? What exactly happened?

Heather Rooks: 7:26
Yeah, so I first started my term as a new elected school board member in January of this year, 2023. And I, under my board comments, I quoted Joshua 1:9, and then I thanked kind of the community and everybody for helping with the campaign and so I started to then read it at each board meeting under our board comments as board members, we give individual comments just to kind of help me with getting those that strength from hearing God's word and giving me the courage to fill this seat and to make these important decisions when it comes to children's education. And so reading those scriptures was just helping me in my comfort and my courage and strength from God's word.

Rick Green: 8:18
Okay, just to put this in context for our audience. I had no idea, by the way, that it was Joshua 1:9 that you were reading. I guess I should have done my homework better on this interview. This is my favorite verse! Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. I mean literally. You're just quoting what is one of the most famous verses out of the Bible that should encourage everybody. Don't be dismayed, don't be discouraged, you know. Don't be afraid. Why would anybody object to this?

Heather Rooks: 8:45
Right, and actually it was each board meeting. I would just look to God. Like God, what do you kind of convey to me, like, show me which verse is going to help me through these meetings? And I would read a different verse each meeting. That just gave me that strength, it gave me that courage, and so there was a different one at each meeting. And then I was told that I was not allowed to do that.

Rick Green: 9:12
So I'm guessing, Andy I don't know if this has come up in your negotiations with the board's attorney but if she had read from I don't know Walt Whitman, if she had read from you know Hammurabi or anything else out there, probably no problem.

Andy Gould: 9:32
Probably. It seems to be that the one thing you can't read from is the Bible, and it's a shocking stance really to take, especially given the fact that we have a long history of presidents and public officials quoting scripture throughout the history of this country including, I might add, president Biden and President Obama that they've quoted scripture. So there's nothing novel or new about a government official quoting scripture for strength or encouragement and, for goodness sakes, they have the Bible in the school library. So she's quoting from a book that students can access in the library. I think, Rick, if I were to put my finger on it, it's just a lack of understanding, or perhaps an unwillingness to understand the establishment clause and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

Rick Green: 10:33
Yeah, they kind of forget about that free exercise part, just the establishment parts all they ever talk about. And maybe you've run into this and, Heather, you may be able to speak to this as well. Yeah, usually the legal counsel for school boards is either taught nothing about freedom of religion or the First Amendment or they only get establishment clause stuff. I mean, 25 years ago I sent the American Family Associations In God we Trust posters to every campus in my district as a legislator. It's the National motto, all of that good stuff. And one particular school district voted 7-0 not to do it because of legal counsel saying, oh, this would violate separation of church and state and stuff. And of course we showed up at the school board meeting with 300 people in God we Trust shirts and they changed their vote to 7-0 the other way but I'm guessing you're running into that. You're probably not dealing with legal counsel that's like you, Andy, and First Liberty that's steeped in this stuff. Have you been able to educate them with the case law and just the history and the things you just said about the founders and gotten them to wake up, or are they digging in?

Andy Gould: 11:41
Well, let me jump in on that one. We call it the Phantom Establishment Clause and it's the idea of anything at all that mentions religion in any way, or the Bible or anything, violates the Establishment Clause. And so they practice sort of this defensive type of litigation of what. We don't want any trouble here, we don't want any issues, and I'll say this I mean, you know, given how litigious the society is, and there are some groups and Heather can certainly speak to this that have attacked her and written letters about her to the school board that are, you know, very secular type groups. It may have given the school boards pause, but, that being said, the First Amendment law, the Establishment Clause law and free exercise law has changed and has opened up, especially in the past five or six years, with Coach Kennedy's case and 303 creative and some of these big cases.

Rick Green: 12:51
Yeah, it's moving the right direction, without question. You guys have had phenomenal victories. I mean, the Kennedy case seems to have changed the landscape completely. Maybe even you know back to what the founders actually intended. This thing called freedom of religion. Heather, what kind of toll has that taken on you? You know the attacks and you know you've stepped into leadership here and taken a positive stand. But you're over the target so you're taking flak. How's that weighing on you and your family?

Heather Rooks: 13:19
You know it's an eye-opening for sure, just as a first newly elected board member. I'm just a mom and a wife and so just I guess I'm just kind of shocked by a lot of it, because this is our home America and it's just kind of shocking to see what transpires, what goes on, and that's why just reading those verses during those board meetings it just it really gives me calmness, it gives me peace, it gives me strength and just you know, staying strong in my faith and so that you know I don't... I want to rely on him through these times, and so it's just kind of shocking to see a lot of it going on.

Rick Green: 14:10
Well, this is. You know, this is a battle happening in quite literally every community in America. A lot of smaller towns think that, you know, parents think this isn't, this stuff isn't an issue at their local schools and that sort of thing. But it's happening everywhere. And I wanted to see if you could tell me just a little bit about Peoria, of course, the old political expression how does that play in Peoria? It's Peoria Illinois, you're Peoria Arizona. But it still matters, how does it play in Peoria Arizona? I mean, how are people there? You know, overall, is this a community that you would call a leftist community or is this a conservative community? Is it right in the middle? What would you describe the community as, and how have people responded other than the detractors?

Heather Rooks: 14:53
You know I actually, so, I grew up in this community, I graduated from Peoria Unified School District, so I've lived here my whole life and I think it's more of there's just a lot of frustration, there's a lot of miscommunication and that's really sad to see. And the only thing that I can speak of is during the election, when the votes came down to it, I had over 42,000 votes. I had the most votes in Peoria Unified School Board member history of a candidate, so that should speak a lot of volume. And we only had three people running. There were two seats up.

Rick Green: 15:35
Wait a minute 40-something thousand votes for school board!? School board's usually like a thousand or two thousand votes. This must be a massive school. That's more than a state legislative race in Texas gets a lot of times.

Heather Rooks: 15:49
Yeah, it's the fourth largest district in Arizona, so I've never done this before. I've never run for a school board seat. It's my first time and someone had said, well, that's the most votes in school board candidate history in Peoria Unified, of 42,000 votes. So that should just speak for itself with what the community was wanting for their kids' education.

Rick Green: 16:17
Yeah, yeah, no doubt, you mentioned the president's kind of congress, all the different calls to prayer and fasting, humiliation and all the things in our history that were official public statements. What is the specific objection that the school district has to quoting from the Bible or reading from the Bible? And then, if you could include in that answer, catch us up also on just where you are legally with this. Is it in court, and when would you expect this to be resolved?

Andy Gould: 16:54
Their specific objection is they claim for a school board member to cite the Bible during the school board meeting violates the establishment clause. That's their position. They've also made another claim about public meeting laws. I don't know if that's going to make it into the case or not. So what we did is we filed a lawsuit in a federal court here in Arizona in Phoenix seeking a declaration that Heather can read a verse. It doesn't violate the First Amendment, it doesn't violate the establishment clause and an injunction directing the school district to let her read her verse during her member comment. Now, we filed that lawsuit about three or four weeks ago. It took some time to get it served. We now have a law firm that's appeared for the school district and they have a few more weeks to respond. So this is the part of the case where we kind of await what the response is going to be. Is it going to be an answer? Is it going to be a motion? We may take some strategic positions, depending on that response, about whether we file certain things with the court. So it will be quiet for a few more weeks and things will start to happen towards the end of the year.

Rick Green: 18:22
Alright, well, we would love to have y'all back for an update as this moves forward. Heather, one more question, just in terms of the situation there in Peoria, and you may or may not want to answer this. Do you have any, any allies on the board? I mean, you feel like you're kind of one. I don't know how many y'all have there, seven. We have seven on all our school boards in Texas. Is it larger than that? I'm guessing with a bigger district.

Heather Rooks: 18:43
Yeah, we actually have five board member seats and right now I am the lone one on the school board. That is, and we actually have a vacant seat that they're going to be appointing somebody through a process through Maricopa County Superintendent Office. But it's definitely eye-opening sitting up there and I ask a lot of questions and I think that that's an important thing to do when you're in that role as a governing board. So, yeah, it's kind of up there.

Rick Green: 19:21
Yeah, let me just encourage you, if I could, as we're closing out here. We know a lot of folks that have been the first one to get on the board and then the next cycle they get one or two more. In our case, in Texas, with seven, three is not enough. You need three out of the five, obviously, and then it sometimes takes three cycles to finally get to that fourth vote and have a majority out of seven here in Texas. There for you to get to three, don't grow weary and well-doing. We're praying for you and encouraging our listeners to get involved all over the country in these types of races. So stand firm, even if you don't get to a majority and never get to win those votes. You are getting to be that positive voice and so these things into that community. And, as we like to say around here at WallBuilders and quoting John Quincy Adams duty is ours, results are God's. So, heather, thank you for doing your duty. Andy, same to you. Thanks for stepping in and helping in this case. And for folks who want to follow the case, I'm guessing, go to First Liberty and they can also get on your email list and make donations and help you guys there, but FirstLiberty.org is the website there. Thank y'all so much for joining us today.

Heather Rooks: 20:25
Thank you.

Andy Gould:
Thank you, Rick. We appreciate it.

Rick Green: 20:27
Stay with us folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Tim Barton: 20:38
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 wanna go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity and our faith as well. I wanna 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. In 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. It’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at WallBuilders. com that’s www.WallBuilders.com .

Rick Green: 21:41
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Back with David and Tim now, and guys, I love the boldness of this school board member. I love the fact First Liberty's right there and I can't help but think, because I'm thinking about her situation and reading the Bible at the meeting you know last week, there was a whole lot about Mike Johnson. We played his speech and everybody was already starting to go after him for his biblical belief, and in his interview with Hannity he made it very clear. You want to know my worldview? Take a Bible off the shelf and read it. That's my worldview and I'm so, I just feel like we're actually getting the Bible back into the national conversation and it being, you know, being more, reminding people that it is the foundation. This is. This is, I think, a really good thing to see.

David Barton: 22:23
It is. And it's so striking too, because as we go that way, there's a lot of opposition. But I go back to what George Washington said, that if you want political prosperity, you have to build political prosperity on religion and morality, which means bringing religion and morality into the public square, the public market. And so here's a school board. They are willing to go to court against her to keep her from reading the scriptures. I mean, that's how hostile it is, Not that they just jumped her. Now that the lawsuits come, they're willing to go to court and fight in court to keep her from reading the scriptures. That's a lot of hostility and that's not political prosperity when you get that.

Tim Barton: 22:56
Well and I think their attorney pointed out that the school board still does have time to respond before it goes to court. But the fact it's taking them this long to respond certainly is an indication that they don't seem to be wanting to go the opposite direction, and I mean Dad to your point. It would not be inconsistent, Again, it would not be inconsistent with what we've seen so many school boards do, that they take a hard line on things where they are clearly on the wrong side of the issue, that the first amendment is very clear that you're not supposed to restrict the free exercise of somebody's religion so long as it does not violate someone else's constitutional right, and clearly it doesn't for a school board member to have the freedom of speech or the free expression of religion, which, of course, is why we are so grateful for First Liberty and the work they've been doing for so long. But one of the things I thought about as I was listening to the interview and remembering just kind of the details of this specific story, as she was told she's not supposed to quote the Bible, I thought about all those parents that would take a book from the library and read the content and the school board's like, no, you can't read that content out loud, and I thought you know I'm pretty sure the Bible is probably in their school library as well, so this is not just hostility against her religious faith and expression. This is literally again a school board saying you're not allowed to read from a book or quote from a book that we have in our library available for students to see and read. It shows again the hypocrisy of some of these school boards and why it matters so much that we get more involved than our local school board, that we start electing the right kind of school board members, because, Dad, as you pointed out, as a school board looks like they're ready to go to court over this. This is something that if we had the right kind of school board, they would know that this is an unconstitutional fight, as they're trying to silence the free speech of this individual. They shouldn't be doing this. But you need the right kind of school board members to understand basic constitutional principles.

David Barton: 24:50
And you know, as you pointed out, Rick, the size of her district as a school board member. You have state reps in Texas who get less votes than what she got. So getting 42,000 votes for school board, that's a big district. And so people may think, well, it doesn't happen that way in rural districts. Let me tell you we just found out something in Texas just in the last couple weeks. It blows my mind, rural districts we think, well, that's kind of cowboy country, that's redneck country. There are a lot more conservative there, there are country folks are just different from city folks. We're not Houston, we're not Dallas, we're not Austin. And what we found is that in rural districts in Texas, 81% of citizens vote Republican, which is the more conservative choice Republican Democrat. 81% vote Republican. But we found out that school teachers in rural districts of all the contributions, political contributions given by school teachers in rural districts, 92% of those contributions go to Democrat candidates. So you may have a conservative rural district, think you're really conservative, you may like your teachers there, but that doesn't mean they're conservative or they like the First Amendment or a constitution or anything else. And so this, this is something that affects every single school district in the nation and hopefully, hopefully, Heather will be able to win this. I think she will. It should be a piece of cake. I just can't believe the school district's fighting that. But it's going to be fun to hear the final results of this case.

Rick Green: 26:05
Alright folks out of time for today. Thanks so much for joining us on WallBuilders today. Be sure and check out again the website WallBuilders.com. Lots of great tools available for you there, but also the great place to make a contribution. Make an investment in freedom by donating today to WallBuilders allows us not only to do the radio program, reach more people with these truths every day, but also to equip and train pastors and legislators and teachers and young people. All the different things we're doing. Thanks for being a part of it. Make that donation today at WallBuilders.com. Thanks so much for listening to WallBuilders.