Intersection of Faith and Culture

Rick Green 0:07

This is the intersection of faith and the culture . Thanks for joining us today on WallBuilders . We're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical , historical and constitutional perspective . If you want to know the right position on any issue out there , that's how you do it . You say , hey , what does the Bible have to say about this ? I got to be in God's word every day to know these things . But then what can history teach me about this as well ? What works and doesn't work ? History shows us that . And then , of course , our Constitution . If you're going to apply these things appropriately under our system of government , we have to know the Constitution and get that constitutional perspective as well . So that's why we always say WallBuilders Live looking at things from a biblical , historical and constitutional perspective . We're doing that with David Barton . This guy is America's premier historian . I am so honored to get to work with David . For the last couple of decades I've run into so many people that are serving in the legislatures of states all over the country , in Congress in Washington DC , school boards , city councils , you name it that say I ran for office because I saw this from David Barton or I read this from David Barton . David has been a catalyst for restoring biblical values and constitutional principles and so thankful for that and just thrilled to be here with WallBuilders and of course the name WallBuilders others comes from that scripture in Nehemiah that says arise and rebuild the walls that we may no longer be a reproach . We've got to rebuild the foundations . Folks , right here in America there's major cracks in the foundation . We've got real problems and rotten the culture . But the good news is it's been revealed over the last couple of years . Sunlight is the best disinfectant and now we know it's there and we're learning what to do to restore the foundations in America . So we're here with David . We're also here with Tim Barton . He's a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders . You ought to book him into your community , to your church , to your business organization to speak . I'm telling you he'll light people on fire . He'll get them excited , give them hope and give them answers to how to turn this culture around . My name is Rick Green . I'm a former Texas legislator and America's constitution coach . So let's get started today .

Rick Green 2:02

Our very special guests about their new book today are these guys named David and Tim Barton . I don't know if anybody listening to the WallBuilders show is familiar with them or not . This may be maybe first time on the show first , maybe thousandth time on the show , I don't know . 10,000 , I don't have any shows we've done at this point . But actually no , instead of having an outside guest today , we've got David and Tim as our guest .

Rick Green 2:22

Because I'm not going to say it , my daughter said it yes , finally , the second installment of the American story . She's been waiting , guys . And so she said finally , not me , everybody's been waiting . They're excited about this new installment of The American Story . So today we'll be talking about that and what's going to be available . What's different about this one from the first one ? And I think at one point you guys told me you might end up with maybe four or five volumes in The American Story before you're done with this . But man , let's talk about it . So where did you leave off with the first version of The American Story , our first book of The American Story ?

David Barton 2:57

Well , the first part of The American Story starts with Christopher Columbus and so it goes from Christopher Columbus . Our intent was to go through the Constitutional Convention , but the book came out not long after the 1619 project came out . And the 1619 project was all about America , systemically racist , et cetera . And we thought , you know , we ought to at least go through the end of Lincoln and show the end of slavery in America and how good America has been on that single issue . Despite having flaws and failures , she is just ahead of so many other nations .

David Barton 3:28

Is there stopping at the Constitution convention ? We went ahead and jump forward and lightly skimmed stuff and they got to Lincoln under the end of slavery and then talked about that issue . So really , the majority of the book is from Columbus through the Constitution convention . And this one picks up after the Constitution convention and it says , ok , now that we have presidents , what does America look like ? And so we took the first seven presidents and we stopped after seven , because those first seven were all a part of the American founding . Individually , they not only were born before the American founding , but they either fought in the American founding or elected office during the American founding or had some position at that time .

Tim Barton 4:08

And dad, specifically when you're saying American founding , we're talking American Revolution , right , this ? We're not talking 1787 Constitution convention , we're talking big picture . You know , 1760 , 1770 , 1780s , they're all there . Andrew Jackson was someone who actually participated in the American Revolution . He was a teenager of the time , technically he was too young to be a soldier , but he got him signed up anyway , gets captured , is a prisoner of war , actually the rest of his life . He wore the , the scars that he received from a British officer who slashed him with a sword . So all of them were there , fought for America to become a nation and then they went through their presidencies and so all of them had a similar understanding of America , those formation principles . But it's so interesting , and certainly the fact that we've released this on President's Day could be very telling as well , because , as we are these presidents , every single one of these presidents , the first seven there are examples from them that you look at and go OK , that is what a leader should look like . If we're looking for a president of America and I know we can flip the lead say that like you need another George Washington . Well , we really do .

Tim Barton 5:20

But most people don't know those stories and they don't know what the presidents did that was right . What they did well , that they don't know what they really accomplished . One of the things we've talked about for a long time is when you look , for example , the founding fathers , if you look at the 56 guys inside the declaration , most people couldn't even tell you or couldn't identify five of the individuals in the painting . They're really famous painting of the Declaration of Independence where there's a committee of five and they're at the table presenting that , that original draft of the declaration to John Hancock . Most people can't tell you five individuals in that painting

Exploring Misconceptions About Founding Fathers

Tim Barton 5:54

. We know so little about the founding fathers would recognize their names and because we have a lot of familiarity with the names , we think we really know their stories . We really don't know their stories and as we unfolded these stories and dad you know I talked a lot about this as you were doing the vast majority of the research , the early writing on this and the things you were finding the discussions of not only what these presidents were doing sometimes that it was totally different than what we had and initially assumed or what we had learned early on , as we're doing a deeper dive into all of their lives and discovering that even we had it embrace some of the agenda .

Tim Barton 6:34

So we have a lot of mutual assumptions about them , things that I've kind of become standard and really not dissimilar from the first American story . When we go through , people like Columbus and the pilgrims or Jamestown and you realize that even though we know those names , we really don't know the stories and most people have embraced a lot of the narrative that is not historically correct about those individuals . We do that and found out a lot with the president and as we're looking at a presidential election coming up and we're trying to figure out man , how are we gonna survive ? What is gonna look like ? We have a lot of really good examples , illustrations of what to do and sometimes even what not to do . What are the consequences of that ? We can spend a lot of time diving into that .

Rick Green 7:18

Yeah , actually, before you go any further , I think people should know if they're not familiar with WallBuilders . I mean , this has always been your approach . The WallBuilders has always done the good , the bad , the ugly right , not a sugar coated , just wave the flag . America's perfect , never did anything wrong , but instead , hey , America's done things that are wrong , just like any other nation the good , the bad , the ugly , in its totality , greatest nation the world's ever known . But we're not going to shy away from , like you said , learning , from learning what not to do as well as what to do good stuff , man , that's the way to do it .

Tim Barton 7:49

Well , and this has certainly become the mantra in more recent years the last decade or two , because now the more recent attacks are the founding fathers weren't perfect . That didn't used to be discussion we had . Dad , I remember you and I talking a lot about this a couple of years ago and the reason we didn't used to have the discussion about us acknowledging the founding fathers weren't perfect is because there was enough of a biblical understanding and culture , the idea that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God , that there was none righteous no , not one . There were all sinners who needed a savior . There was enough general knowledge of that in the population that we didn't have to back up and point out to people hey , we know the founding fathers weren't perfect . The general assumption our starting place was , of course , they weren't perfect . That's why Jesus came , because nobody was perfect .

Tim Barton 8:41

But when we had started seeing much more of the rise of cancel culture . Part of the cancel culture is they wanna cancel people for not being perfect , and they really . They were removing that individual from the context of their times or from even the understanding , the context of the world and culture around them . So , for example , to say that , well , the founding fathers had slaves . Yes , you know what, so did every other major world leader up to the 1700s . That's the way it was in the world, right ? You pick any major hero you want in world history , whether they were a king or a queen , or if they were a leader and they had money and power , you know what else they had ? Slaves . That's the way the world was and that's not a justification . That's just understanding how the world operated up to that point .

Tim Barton 9:28

But then keeping it in context , who were the first political leaders that , when they got in charge of a nation , they start changing the laws against slavery , promoting the rights of all individuals , with the idea that all men are created equal ? And this happened in America from the founding fathers . This is part of what made them so unique and as we look now , at a time when we're having to figure out what kind of leader are we gonna have and it looks like we're between a Donald Trump and a Joe Biden they're the leading candidates right now . Certainly , we would not have either one of them anywhere close to the class probably the founding fathers , although when you start to learn a little bit more about people like James Monroe or Andrew Jackson , you might be like you know what , Donald Trump might be a little more Andrew Jackson-ous than most people realize , although probably the Democrats have much more in common with the Andrew Jackson philosophy .

Tim Barton 10:26

And this is where we go to the book . We start unfolding part of what they did . We don't make a ton of direct connections to current events because we didn't have to . And when you go through things like let's talk about the post office for a second , and what did Andrew Jackson do when he became president with the post office ?

David Barton 10:47

Yeah , it's a really interesting thing . When Andrew Jackson became president , he contacted Elon Musk over at action , he got Zuckerberg over at Facebook and he got them to agree to pull down conservative messaging . And so when Jackson became president , he was able to use social media . And then you're going . What the heck are you talking about ? Okay , let me go back to Jackson and his

The American Story Book Series

David Barton 11:08

day .

David Barton 11:08

When Jackson became president , he did something that had never been done before . He decided that he would take one of his campaign managers and make them the postmaster general . So he took one of his cabinet guys what he called the kitchen cabinet and one of his campaign directors and said all right , you're now over the post office . And then he made the post office a cabinet level department . And then , after he did that and he had his campaign manager and he said now you are free to say that with the post office , you don't have to deliver mail that you disagree with . And so what happened ?

David Barton 11:41

Particularly in the South , with Andrew Jackson being pro-slavery and Duff Green and others being pro-slavery , they told the postmasters of the South any abolition material that comes from the North , you do not have to deliver in the South , so you're allowed to censor things . And it's the same social media stuff we get today , with Biden contacting and saying , hey , you need to shut off the debate of these conservatives , you don't need . It's exactly the same thing , it's just different technology . But that was the first time we saw that was Andrew Jackson , when he used the force of federal government to censor political messages of political opponents on a non-constitutional basis . It was really quite amazing , quite unbelievable , and they actually did a drawing of that back then , which we have that drawing from back at the time of Andrew Jackson , where it shows that these guys are gathered outside post offices , going through the mail and they're burning the abolition mail they disagree with, taking the messages and burning it . So that's one of the many things that well , what we're doing today it's not the first time this has been done .

Tim Barton 12:46

Jackson was the first one , too , who really deviated from kind of like George Washington's idea that we're going to have good leaders from every state come and they're going to be part of the cabinet . Jackson is the one that ushers in this idea that to the winner belong to spoils , and he didn't care if someone was qualified or not , he only cared that they were on team Jackson . So he began to just incredible swath , wipe out everybody that was in leadership and put in people that were loyal to him , whether or not they were actually qualified for that position, right ? We started thinking about what presidents have largely done when they appoint people at at different cabinet positions and agencies, and who's going to be the diplomat here ? Who was a campaign supporter ? Who was a campaign donor ? Who was out on the campaign trail doing things ? Jackson started something that was very contrary to much of the founding fathers , and as we go through this book with every president there are there's really fun stories . Just like we try to do The first American Story , we try to tell a lot of stories to help people connect and understand part of who they were and how they thought , and you can kind of draw some deductions maybe of how they were motivated and how they interacted with people . You can see those things we talked about , some of the biggest challenges they had in their life and their relationships and their presidencies , and again , it's very story oriented and we walk through this and one of the the guide blocks we use even as we evaluate the president . George Washington

Tim Barton 14:17

as he is leaving office he delivers his farewell address and the farewell address is what he encourages every American to remember . These are what he thought would be the keys for American success going forward and it's really fascinating when you take some of those key principles from the farewell address and then you hold them up to other presidents . The fascinating part is based on how well they did at following the advice he delivered . It actually is interesting . The ones that followed his advice really well had pretty successful presidencies . The ones who did not follow his advice really a lot of dark things happened under their leadership .

Tim Barton 15:00

That when people look at America and they say America was bad and evil because of doing his x , y or z things anything bad , largely speaking that you're going to find fall within America in the early years and there's not nearly as much in the early years as later , that's for sure , but it would be when people got away from the advice Washington gave in the farewell address . Well , the farewell address used to be something that every school kid used to read , that people used to have to memorize portions of that . That was common in education through the 1800s , through the mid 1900s . It's only been a more recent decades that schools have stopped teaching or requiring students to memorize the right essays about the farewell address that this was one of the most politically astute pieces of advice ever delivered by a president . Today most people don't know it .

Tim Barton 15:45

We revisit that a little bit in this book as well . Once we go through the life of Washington , we go through the advice he gave of how America succeed and be strong and certainly , as we're looking at they're right now , there's primaries and states . People are trying to figure out who's going to be the leaders from , from their party on their tickets , and then we're going to be looking at choosing a president and senators and congressmen and governors and, right, state rep state senators . We're going to be choosing a lot of leaders here in the coming months and there is so much wisdom that the founding fathers gave us in their lives and their letters and in their example of things we should and shouldn't do . It really was a fun book to write and there are so many fun stories in there .

Rick Green 16:29

Okay, so now I know we have a lot more to cover about the book , but but while we're kind of setting it up , so what do you predict as the series here ? I know you guys are already working on book three and I bet David's got like book four , book five , already outlined in his head at least , if not on a computer somewhere . But I mean , we've got a lot to learn about American history and this is a great way to give people installments on on learning these specific sections of time .

David Barton 16:55

I think , Rick , the way it looks right now , there will be four American story books that cover from Columbus up through the 20th century . Really , Reagan is the last president we really cover intensely and with Reagan was really responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union . So now you're into the 1990s kind of frame and so we look at Reagan and what happened as a result of what Reagan did . So we get up almost to where we are now . So what we're looking at is the first book was Columbus and the really early stuff . This book is like the first 40 , 50 years of the 1800s .

David Barton 17:32

The next book is going to be kind of well , let's go from the Great Awakening to the end of the 1800s and then the final book will be the 1900s . So it looks like four and it's really . You know , we're going to have break off books . There's going to be one with just black heroes and one with go west young men , all the Western expansion , all the Western heroes , and so there's a lot of stuff we'll do as well , but there's going to be probably four that will be the baseline kind of books .

Tim Barton 17:59

And that is something that I had to negotiate with him , because originally there was going to be three books and then , as he starts doing more research , he's like we got to include all these stories and then it was not just going to be four , it was like going to be six or eight and he's like it's got a great series . And I was like dad , that that is too much for a series , we're going to lose people along the way . I mean , really , I felt like four was a lot for a series . I felt like Lord of the Rings right , they were on the money . You got a three series , that's what you need , but it's going to be a four part series . And then , dad , as you mentioned , there's going to be a lot of spinoff books . We're going to have some and these are kind of working thought ideas for us but , like kids of courage , some of the young , incredible stories , young leaders , young heroes , incredible things they did . Westward expansions will Go West Young Man , some of the incredible black heroes of American history . There's a lot of spinoff books from so many fun stories that were just too many to fit into this overall idea . So there's going to be four books .

Tim Barton 18:53

We think in the series , The American Story , and then we're also right now actively beginning to work on doing some curriculum for the first one and it's going to have a test book and a quiz book and maybe a study guide and teachers books . So we're working on doing things . So maybe , God willing , by the fall we'll be able to even have some curriculum rolling out with this and eventually maybe have an entire history curriculum , a history series . Some of the people have asked for years , for decades . Really , please , would WallBuilders do a history curriculum . We need this and we knew there was a need . We've looked at several actually Christian curriculums and we realized that even some of the prominent Christian curriculums don't do a great job in several areas . So we know there is a incredible need and that is something that we are actively working on as well .

Tim Barton 19:42

So we're thinking right now a four part series for the American story series and then hopefully we'll have curriculum to go with each one of those four . So it could be you know a parent want to do them a semester , you know so a freshman , sophomore , junior , senior , and that's a semester course , or you can do it for a year , or if you want to start in fifth grade or eighth grade . We're going to leave this to parents , but it's going to be something that hopefully is super easy for parents to pick up , give their kids the book , have them read . There's a quiz book , a test book , a study book , kind of workbook . To go along with it , a teacher's guide .

Tim Barton 20:15

We want to make this as easy as possible for parents to help their kids rediscover this , because we know if we don't reach the rising generation , there is no hope for America . And we also recognize that in the midst of reaching the rising generation it's not just about saving America , it's understanding that God's ways work and this is the example of history . When people followed God's ways and they followed God's plan standards that the principal set out in the Bible , it worked better for them and we want to lay that out for kids . When you see these standards whether it be the free market economic system laid out in Scripture , right ? Whether it be the relational dynamic that God set out for man and wife , husband and wife and obviously we don't get that out a lot in these books , but it's understanding that what God lays out in the Bible , those principles , when you follow biblical principles , it goes better for you as an individual , for your family and certainly for the nation .

Rick Green 21:11

Alright , we're gonna take a quick break , guys . I was just thinking that , Tim , since you used Lord of the Rings , I was trying to think of the right analogy . It's one Constitution to rule them all . I don't know , man . Okay , that was weak .

Rick Green 21:20

Alright stay with us folks , we'll be right back . You're listening to The WallB uilders Show .

Leadership Void in America

Rick Green 21:27

Have you noticed the vacuum of leadership in America ? We're looking around for leaders of principle to step up and too often no one is there . God is raising up a generation of young leaders with a passion for impacting the world around them . They're crying out for the mentorship and leadership training they need . Patriot Academy was created to meet that need . Patriot Academy graduates now serve in state capitals around America , in the halls of Congress , in business , in the film industry , in the pulpit , in every area of the culture . They're leading effectively and impacting the world around them .

Rick Green 21:59

Patriot Academy is now expanding across the nation and now's your chance to experience this Life-changing week that trains champions to change the world . Visit Patriotac ademy . com for dates and locations . Our core program is still for young leaders 16 to 25 years old , but we also now have a citizen track for adults . So visit the website today to learn more . Help us fill the void of leadership in America . Join us in training champions to change the world at Patriota cademy . com . Welcome back to WallBuilders . We're talking about the new book just out this week The American Story .

Tim Barton 22:35

Rick I the entire break . I was a little bothered because I think the one ring to rule them all was a bad thing . Right , Like that was a bad ring . That's we're taking you to burn in the fire, that's not the Constitution .

Rick Green 22:45

You don't want to burn the Constitution ? Is that what you're saying ?

Tim Barton 22:48

You know the one , the one document to rule them all . That would be like communism , marxism , socialism , right , that's probably the wrong direction . Communism manifesto , the Constitution . I don't know what would be the opposite side of that , but that would be the Constitution .

Rick Green 23:04

We want the good one , not the bad one so the whole point with with the American story this time is how did we build this Republic ? What was the secret sauce as they designed this system in those first few presidents ? And and it really kind of finding their way into this . And so people are gonna get all those heroic stories . They're gonna get stories of where we made mistakes and where we could do better , actually , guys , I think you know there's too much to cover today , so we're gonna talk about this again tomorrow , but where can people get the book ? Let's make sure we cover that before we close out today .

Tim Barton 23:37

Yeah , well , wallbuilders . com is the best place to go for people to get the book . It would be super easy to identify . It'll be right there on the front page of the web . But one of the things that that's worth noting . Dad , I mean you for many decades , Rick for maybe a decade less and me a decade or two less, we've been telling these stories about George Washington and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and and really highlighting some of the brilliance of their lives and how God used them .

Tim Barton 24:05

And , and I mentioned earlier , most people just don't know their stories . So the fact that we are taking time and for each one of these in you know it's seven presidents we can only tell so much about them . We we highlight at one point that , like even George Washington , trying to condense the story of George Washington , I felt a little bit and this is not to be sacrilegious , but I felt a little bit like when the apostle John finishes the gospel of John and at the very end he says if I were to include all the stories , i t would fill up every book . The books would fill up like the entire ocean . The world could not contain all the stories of what Jesus did , of who he was . Well , it's a little bit that feels sometimes like George Washington . Some of these individuals who were almost larger than life . There's so many stories about them so we didn't tell all the stories but we definitely highlighted some of the key stories of , what shaped them , of who they were and the things that really people ought to know .

Tim Barton 25:02

Each president there's probably 30 or 40 pages on each president and , even though that might feel like a lot that it's broken up , there's a lot of chapters . So if you haven't read the first book , you go get the first book . It's really really good content , information , but each chapter is only a couple pages . So you , you kind of feel like a winner as you're reading . You're like I just read a chapter . It was two and a half pages , it was three and a half pages . It really does give you a little bit of a self-confidence boost as you're reading through this . We try to break it down . Really bite-sized pieces make it easy .

Tim Barton 25:32

But we want people to rediscover who these men were . These were the men that that literally shaped the Trajectory of America , the founding fathers , the Revolution that birthed America as a free nation . But then , once we have the Constitution , once we have these early presidents, they're the ones that put the ship in the ocean , they're the ones that set sail , they're the ones directing which way the nation is gonna go . And as we're navigating the nation right now , trying to figure out what's gonna happen in our future , this is where we should go back and revisit some of these men . Go back to their ideas . Go relearn from history , to things that worked , that didn't work . What kind of leader do we need ? What kind of ideas should we stay away from ?

Building the Republic Through Education

Tim Barton 26:11

The American story building the Republic is such a great resource at wallbuilders . com .

Rick Green 26:16

All right , guys , we're out of time for today , but we're gonna pick up this topic tomorrow . We're gonna talk about the importance of this , how you can use this book to teach yourself and your family and , of course , talk a little bit more about the future and where we might be able to go with curriculum and really reforming education , especially history , and getting good social studies back into the classroom for kids all over the country . So appreciate you listening today . Be sure and visit the website today and get both the first book in the series , The American Story , and then the new one out this week . You've been listening to The WallB uilders Show .