Rick Green: 0:12
You found your way to the intersection of faith and culture. This is the place where we talk about the hot topics going on in the culture, but from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. That's so rare today. Most people today is just how they feel. It's just what's popular. They mostly look to other people for how to take their position on whatever's going on in the culture, whatever the issues being debated are all about Not here at WallBuilders. Here at WallBuilders we say, okay, what can history teach us about this? There's times in history where people have done things the right way and gotten good results. We can learn from that. Done things the wrong way, gotten bad results. We can learn from that. And so we look at history. We, of course, look at the Constitution here in America. That's our job as good citizens. We're going to live under the American Constitution and play by those rules. But most importantly, we look biblically. What can we learn from the Bible about the right way to do things? How do we learn from the Bible, the instruction manual given to us from the Creator about how to treat our neighbors, how to form our societies, how to raise our families, how to take care of our property, how to run our businesses, all of those things, and it's just wonderful to know that he's given us the answers to all the tough questions. There's nothing that we're facing that there's not an answer there, and so we appreciate the opportunity to dive into a lot of those issues, and we appreciate you being a part of the program by listening, by sharing it with your friends and family. Be a force multiplier, take links to the program, share it out there, let people know about it, but also by participating, send it in questions. You've got questions that you can send us radio@WallBuilders.com. It's radio@WallBuilders.com. We appreciate you sending those in to us. We're going to dive into those questions right now. Jump into the first question today, and that one comes from Esther. She said I listen to your podcast every day and I learn something new every day. She said I have some friends who attend public school and I was just wondering if they would be allowed to present the gospel or not. And then she also asked how do we reach out to our legislators and those in Congress and let them know how we feel about their decisions and how we can make a change for the better? Thank you for your podcast. I really appreciate it. Praying for you all have a great weekend, God bless. Alright, two great questions, guys, from Esther. First of all, if you've got somebody in public school, can they share the gospel? Are they allowed to present the gospel? And then, secondly, how do we best influence our legislators? How do we reach out to them not only our state legislators, but members of Congress? How do we tell them about how we feel about their decisions and how we'd like to see a change for the better?

Tim Barton: 2:30
Well, guys, this is something that we've had many of our friends, I think, address over the years. It's a good question. Groups like First Liberty with Kelly Shackleford and Liberty Counts with Mat Staver and Lines Defending Freedom so many great attorneys over there, brad Degas Pacific Justice Institute, so many friends are so excited with where things are now because we are seeing more religious liberty than we've ever seen in our nation's history, especially over the last well, at least since the founding era, maybe certainly since Abraham Lincoln, and it's a large part because we have a Supreme Court that now recognizes original intent and actual wording of the US Constitution and trying to restore things back to where they were. All that to say is, with this religious liberty religious freedom, unquestionably there is freedom for students to be able to share the gospel, for students to bring the Bible, for students to hand out religious material and tracts at school, and they still have to abide by school rules and policy. Right, they can't be getting up in front of the class during math while the math teacher is trying to teach a lesson and then, you know, presuming the gospel as a distraction from the lesson. They still have to operate according to some basic guidelines and respects of decency in the school. However, when it comes to having a religious freedom to be able to share the gospel absolutely and unquestionably, students have that right. Where we've seen some challenges over the last couple of decades, it's much more been regarding teachers and parents. The Supreme Court has long upheld the rights of students to their freedom of speech and their freedom of religious expression, so this is something that really has not been all that contested. There have been a few cases where some lower court judges would say, ah, students can't do that, but this is something that pretty much universally, the Supreme Court upheld that students have the right to freedom of speech, to freedom of religious expression, and they certainly can share the gospel in public schools.

Rick Green: 4:30
Yeah, of course it's people get. You know, when we hear stuff about separation of terms of state or we hear you know schools, people being sued and that sort of thing, then students sometimes get the chilling effect and they think that they're the ones that they have to be quieter, they have to back off and we I don't think we've ever lost those suits right, like it's the stuff for kids clubs and when it's the kids leading the way. That's just always been. You know, even when we had the bad Supreme Court decisions for years with regard to what teachers could do or schools could do or whatever, the kids could always express their faith.

David Barton: 5:03
Well, here's an easy way to remember it Any school at all that allows students to talk about gender transitioning, you're allowed to share the gospel, and any school that does not allow students to talk about gender transitioning, you're allowed to share the gospel.

Rick Green: 5:18
So I saw that coming. I'm not sure. Yeah, it's free speech.

David Barton: 5:24
Any school has to allow free speech. Now, as Tim said, it can't be disruptive, but it is student speech and they've got a viewpoint and they're allowed to share it. So it's yeah, and people need to be aggressive with doing that. By the way, you'll always have administrators say you can't do it. Yes, you can, and so be aggressive with that. Go on the offense.

Rick Green: 5:43
And when you say aggressive, of course you don't mean in the middle of class, say, hey, teacher, I need 20 minutes to Right. You know that's not what you mean. But you mean, you know, being bold in your faith and not being afraid to share with others and you, but with wisdom and choosing the right times and, of course, being good at sharing the gospel, which means, you know, not just hitting people over the head. It's a lot of that we think is a given, but then of course, people love to use our words against us.

David Barton: 6:06
So on the part about how do we reach out to our legislators and those in Congress, let them know how we feel about decisions they're making. I've been really surprised in the last couple of years to see and I guess maybe this goes back to when we were teaching civics and teaching government which we don't teach anymore in schools and even in churches. We were talking about how to contact legislators and the kind of tone you use, and I've been really surprised at how many of our friends in Congress, even conservative friends, are getting yelled at and getting scrimmed at and getting threatened and all sorts of stuff, even by conservative people who are upset with them, and so the whole tone it's taken on a tone now that I haven't seen in my lifetime. Of course we're more polarized, we're more weaponized and everything else, but I think that's drawing our people into being like them. If they're going to be like that, we're going to be like that, and that's just not the right way to respond. So I want to take just a couple minutes to throw out a couple of scriptures on how you talk to these guys and remember you're a Christian, you're a believer, you're supposed to be following the Bible. You don't forget that just because you might want to talk to your legislators. So the first thing is build a relationship with these guys, even if you disagree with them, you need to respect them. Paul was talking about the fact that, hey, you're not supposed to speak evil of the leader of your nation. That's where I am, even with Biden's. I may disagree with his policies, but I still refrain from making fun of him. I still refrain from trying to mock him or scorn him or look at what he's doing because of the age or anything else. That's just, that's not acceptable. And so remember, even as Paul was talking about that, the angels were there as put over Moses body. They didn't even rebuke the devil. They said the Lord rebuked you and they had this humility about them that was very different from what we see today, where everybody is an expert and you're going to do what I want you to because I've told you to. So, back up, these guys are representatives and they are servants of the people. Build a relationship with them where you can talk with them.

Tim Barton: 8:10
Well, and Dad, as you're saying that too, I think there's a couple of things that we can balance in that statement. First of all, before I get to the balance statement, I do want to point out a lot of times people look at elected officials and even though we can dislike a lot of them some of the ones maybe we do like, we feel like they have to be a significant person, prestigious person. They have to have some unique talent, skill, ability. And we know a lot of legislators and we've worked with a lot over the years and we've actually been opposition in many respects to some legislation that some were passing. That was really, we thought, unconstitutional, ungodly, whatever the case might have been. But the more we're around elected officials, the more we realize that they're really just normal people and if you walk into a, let's say, restaurant, in that restaurant you might have some doctors. In the restaurant you might have some teachers, you might have some attorneys, you might have some farmers. You might have some really intelligent people. You might have some really dumb people in that restaurant. Congress, state legislators they're the exact same way. So the idea of how do we approach these people it would be no different than how you would approach anybody else in your life, because, by and large, these people really are not that special. You have people like a Thomas Massey that he and his wife both graduated from MIT and this dude's coming up with inventions on his weekends while he's still a member of Congress. I mean, there are some pretty unique, brilliant members of Congress. However, the majority of our elected officials don't fall in that category. But, Dad, then the other thing that I would say is a balance is certainly, when we look at the Bible, there's examples where that King David wouldn't even speak against King Saul when before David was king, and he wouldn't speak against Saul because he said that's the Lord's anointed. But and, Dad, I'd be interested to hear your thought on this and you do have a balance where Jesus called somebody a fox right, a wicked fox. Well, that was actually a political leader he was talking about and he was calling somebody out for doing the wrong thing. In fact, John the Baptist right called out a religious leader for marrying his brother's wife. There definitely are times when it would be appropriate and, Dad, I know that this is not a disagreement in this, you're talking general tone in general, but I mean you good prophets. There were certainly times prophets called out the political leaders and if they were unrighteous and ungodly and being unjust, they would call them out for being unrighteous and ungodly and unjust, and they didn't always hold back. But there certainly is a balance, that we can't just dislike somebody and therefore we're going to be rude, we're going to lose all kinds of manners or the idea of respecting a position of authority, and now we're going to embrace the unrestrained behavior that we so often see from people that do not embrace Christian morals or not, to just throw it at one part or the other, but certainly something that we saw during maybe some of the riots we've seen in some of these cities over the last couple of years, where people would just throw off any kind of restraints and they would go and do all kinds of evil. We cannot become like that which we recognize to be immoral, ungodly or unjust If there's somebody else yelling and cussing and screaming. We don't want to debase ourselves by going to that level. As Christians we're supposed to be above that and different than that. But it doesn't mean that we can't call out people that are doing ungodly things just because they're a political leader.

David Barton: 11:45
Yeah, and with that it's exactly right, tim. There are times when you have to call people out, but part of it is your attitude. If you have an attitude of meanness, you're going at it the wrong way. Anybody that's got kids, you have to call your kids out. That doesn't mean you love them less, but hopefully you don't berate them and you don't make fun of them and you don't mock them and you don't act with meanness. You have a love and you say, hey, you need to know what the truth is and what you're doing is wrong. And that's what prophets do. They will call out on the wrong, they will speak the truth. But with elected officials, I mean, you've got to create a relationship with them. If you expect them to listen to you. If you come in the room and you're yelling and screaming at a holler, they're going to turn around and walk out the room, maybe not physically, but at least they're going to turn you off. And if you create a relationship with someone, it's a whole lot easier to apply discipline when you need to say, hey, you were really wrong with this, just like with your kids. If you can love your kids and create that atmosphere where you got a good relationship. They trust you. You have that relationship, then you can also correct when you need to, and they know that you're not hating them and not being mean when you do that. And I think attitude is a whole lot of what goes with this Cause. Let me just I'm going to read some of these verses. And this is the way Christians are to behave. This is what the Bible says about how we behave, proverbs 25-15,. A soft and gentle tongue breaks the most bone-like resistance. So a soft and gentle tongue. Make sure you keep that attitude, even if you have to rebuke, even if you have to challenge and correct. A soft and humble attitude. Now here's one out of Philippians 2-4,. Do everything without grumbling or arguing. And that's the same thing when you talk to your legislator. Be appreciative of listen. It is not easy to be a leader in Congress. It's not easy to be a leader in state house, state legislature it's not easy. You always make somebody mad. Be appreciative, in fact they're willing to take some of this stuff on and be a leader for you. Probably you don't want to do it, otherwise you'd be doing it. So be appreciative of at least the position they've got. Psalm 1835 it says your gentleness makes me great. What makes you great? Your gentleness makes you great. So recall gentleness when you're trying to. It's so easy now, with polarized media and everything else, getting us all hyped up, to be so angry and yell at them. Here's one. I love this one in 2nd Timothy 2, 25, 26,. It says gently instruct those who oppose the truth, gently instruct them. Perhaps God will change those people's hearts and they'll learn the truth. Then they'll come to their senses and escape from the devil's trap. But it all starts with gently instructing and then, in Matthew 712, the golden rule says that everything treat people the way you want them to treat you. Imagine the letter you write them. If you got that letter from someone disagreeing with you, how would you react? How would you respond? So go back to treating these guys as elected officials. They are an official authority. They've been elected to that position. Respect that position, whether you agree or disagree with them. Respect the position God's. Put them in, because God's the one who ordains government or ordains government leaders. Then, once you do that, build a relationship with them. Let them know that when you contact them and, by the way, when you contact them, do not deliver a sermon and do not write an epistle, paul and Corinthians. What you want to do is about a paragraph law. What you want to do in that paragraph is you want to say hey, mr Congressman, here's what I want. I'm going to tell you real simply, here's what I want, here's why I want it. I'm going to explain it to you and I'm going to appreciate your action on this and these to be done short. Rick, you got that when you were a state legislator. You know the difference in people Even if they disagree with you, you can still respect them if they respect you. And so I'm just seeing so much go on with our state legislators now and the kind of mail they get, even supporters. That has such a bad tone to it. So I'm going to encourage everybody Contact your legislator, your state legislator, your city council, start building relationships with them. Say, hey, I'm a constituent, I really appreciate your sermon, appreciate what you're doing. And then, if you'll do that two or three times, then you'll be able to call and say, hey, would you pay attention to this issue here? I really think this is important. I'd appreciate if you'd voted against it. Or the other way is hey, I think you got that broke wrong. I'll just give an example. Here in Texas we had a bunch of Republicans vote against school choice. And I'll say, guys, you do realize you support socialism because you just killed competition and any system that's not allowed competition is socialism. And you're a conservative Republicans I can't believe you would support socialism. But you killed competition here in Texas with education. And you can do that. If you've had a relationship with them, you can rejuke them in a nice way, call them out. But it's all about tone and relationship, and so I just think it's time that we take a little bit of time here to say, guys, you got to get involved with your elected officials at every level, but tone is everything and relationship is everything. They need to hear from you. When they do it right, when they get a vote right, you need to praise them and thank them and say, hey, that was really good, I appreciate your courage. And then when you write them and say, hey, you really messed up on this one, they don't think it's a personal attack because you've already been talking to them, you've already built a relationship, you're a nice person, and that's super, super, super important. And we just can't be the angry guys, we can't be the black lives matter on the Christian side. Quite frankly, we can't go on and try to destroy stuff and tear it up and I'm going to impose my will on you. So that's my little tirade on this, but I think it's super important that we contact all of our elected officials at every level and start building a relationship at hey. Is there anything I can praise specifically for you? How's your family? Anything I'm praying for? Just offer service to them. Don't expect them to be your slaves, because they're not. They're your elected officials. They are public servants and you need to serve them as well. If anyone's going to be great among you, Jesus said, let them become the servant of all, and that includes us as electors. We need to be servants as well, and we need to serve those who are in office, because they do make sacrifice. So, Rick, I'll let you take it from there. That's by a little tirade on this.

Rick Green: 17:49
Man, bro, I mean it's so good. It's so good and it's honestly common sense and we think about that kind of stuff maybe in our relationships with family or people in church or whatever. That's the way we should think about these legislators. And even as you were saying that, I started thinking about the fact that I can remember this. When you would only hear from someone on that one issue and they were angry because maybe they disagreed with you on that one issue, you didn't know that they were actually someone that was with you on 90% of the issues, because they never let you know about those things. So it's like if you do what you just said and I hear from you on all these issues where we agree, then when you send me the disagreement, it will make me pause and say, wait a minute, that's someone I respect, that's with me on all this other stuff, that I miss something here, whereas if that's the only time I ever heard from you, I'm just putting you over here in the box of oh, that's just one of the naysayers out there, that's just one of the people that probably disagrees with me on everything. So that's a really, really good point you just said, and so I'm going to actually put a commercial in here. We have seen the ability for citizens to better relate to their legislators as a result of going through either the Military Patriot Academy Leadership Congress or the Constitution Coach Leadership Congress Obviously the students. But for older people that are older than 25, of any age, you can come to the Capitol and go through a simulation and when you do that, man, it makes it so much easier. You understand the process. You understand how hard it is to get a bill passed, how they do have to compromise and they do have to work things out and they do have to build a coalition. So I highly recommend check out PatriotAcademycom today, not just 16 to 25 year olds. If you're older than 25, just sign up as a coach for free and you can come to the Coach Congress and for a week you get to be a legislator at the Capitol. What a way to learn how to then communicate with your legislator better. And we really have a heart for this to have people able to do exactly what David just said all over the nation, able to communicate with their legislators effectively. What a great way to have a positive influence on what's going on out there. Fantastic question. Thank you so much for sending that in and Esther for being willing to send those Other people that want to send questions. We're going to go to break, but you can send your questions in to radio@WallBuilders.com. radio@WallBuilders.com and it can be a Constitution question, it might be a process question, just whatever you got. What's the Bible say about how to do some of the things or respond to some of the things going on in the culture? radio@WallBuilders.com We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to wallbuilders.

Tim Barton: 20:12
Hey guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called the American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that's just not known or not told today and, we would say, very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 Project it's say, America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we're against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There's so many things attacking America. Well, is America worth defending? What is a true story of America? We actually have written and told that story, starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln. We tell the story of America not as a story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It's a story you want to check out, WallBuilders.com the American Story.

Rick Green: 21:14
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. It's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. We're diving into your questions, and Esther had two great ones for the first half of our program. Now we're going to dive into a question from let's see, here we have next.

David Barton: 21:26
Rick, I was going through questions. I found one. Here's one directed you, so I get to ask you.

Rick Green: 21:32
You don't get to answer many of them but you get this one, it's test time.

David Barton: 21:35
So this is from David, Leake City, Texas. This is how David, Rick and Tim. He says I love your show. Thanks for all you do to educate, inspire and influence people to be better patriots. Rick, my wife and I are looking forward to seeing you at the Constitutional Defense Training down in.

Rick Green: 21:49
Frederick Street.

David Barton: 21:50
He says how's that for slipping in the shameless plug from Patriot Academy in the training? Yeah, David, thank you for doing that. He said I recently read that the US House of Representatives rules allow for non-member to be elected as Speaker of the House. I read in Article 1, section 2, doesn't explicitly restrict the Speaker eligibility to just members of the House. So is it really possible for a non-member to be elected Speaker? Has it happened before? And here's a just for fun question what do you think would happen if President Trump was elected Speaker? There you go, rick. What do you want to do with that one?

Rick Green: 22:22
Well, I'll answer the last one first. We'd have a lot of fun, let's put it that way If Donald Trump was Speaker of the House. We would all tune in every day. It would be a great reality show and probably break all the ratings and everyone would learn a lot about procedure, including Donald Trump probably. But anyway, yeah. So it doesn't actually say that it has to be a member. You know, in Robert's Rules, which is not what they go by in the House, but in Robert's Rules if you do have a non-voting member, a non-member service chair, they don't get to vote. But they're kind of like procedural, they can just like run everything, and so everybody's kind of operated under that assumption that you could appoint somebody. There was a lot of actually a lot of, I think momentum for Trump to be the Speaker whenever McCarthy was removed. But yeah, certainly my reading and from what I understand of historical precedent, there is no prohibition against that Speaker being a non-member, non-member of Congress. It would be almost ministerial, if that makes sense. But I'm assuming they could still appoint and decide who was going to be chairs and that sort of thing. It's just never happened. But man, wouldn't that be interesting. Donald Trump, as Now, I'll tell you what I would like about that, David. Most of all is that would put Donald Trump in the position of being the main negotiator with Biden and with Mitch McConnell and with Chuck Schumer, and all of us would enjoy watching that happen again. But I don't think that's going to happen, even though I think he said that on the steps of the courthouse, didn't he? In one of the many cases where he's being persecuted not prosecuted but persecuted he actually said yeah, I would do that. If they needed my help, I would go.

Tim Barton: 23:59
That would also put him as third in line for the presidency again.

Rick Green: 24:03
Yeah, as he's being announced. Yeah, oh boy.

David Barton: 24:07
Well, great question. I think one of the unintended consequences is that it would. You would absolutely know his and the swap really quick If he got into the house. It would be such a polarized Washington DC Every agency that comes before Congress for any kind of stuff man would they roll out of the woodwork to oppose him and to criticize him. And you think he's got lawsuits. Now Wait till something happens. If he were to be elected Speaker, you'd have so many constitutional lawsuits filed, but every leftist liberal out there it'd be held up for months on whether he could be Speaker and go to the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court would very clearly say hey, this is not our stuff. We don't make the rules for the house the rules make. That's right. So it would involve every branch, every aspect of government, every agency of government. They would come to the top in a way we haven't seen, but that'd be my prediction. I don't know, maybe not, but that's my prediction. And Rick, in the little time we got left, one more question on President Trump. This comes from Johnny. He says does a past president have pardon power? That is, can President Trump pardon himself? Thank you for your answer.

Rick Green: 25:17
Rick, no, I think you have to be sitting president to have that power, of course, to exercise those Article 2 powers. So he couldn't pardon himself at this point. Could he pardon himself while he was in office? Probably so If he were still in office and he gave himself a blanket pardon for anything that he had done while president. That you know, we don't. I can't think of any president that's ever done anything like that. But they've done it for other people. But, yeah, definitely I don't think there's any way to make an argument that he could use any article two powers once he's no longer president. And you know, as we're closing out, I'll say thank you, David, for that shameless plug of Constitutional Defense. Anybody that wants to join us, you can also go to PatriotAcademy.com where you want to come to the Coach Congress next summer, which we highly recommend. It's first week of August. We have a great time at the Capitol. The kids are over on the House side and we got the coaches and the military veterans on the Senate side and it's just a great way to really learn the process. You get to hear from David and Tim and a lot of our friends across the country that come in and teach during that week. So it's a wonderful fun time. And then that's also where you can sign up for that Constitutional Defense training and come out and check out the new campus in Fredericksburg and get a handgun class and a Constitution class. So check that out today at PatriotAcademy.com and send your questions to radio@WallBuilders.com. That's radio@WallBuilders.com and you've been listening to Foundations of Freedom Thursday here on WallBuilders.