Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's The WallBuilders Show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Man the year is almost over. We are right at the end of 2024, still taking on those hot topics and winning folks and so many good things that happened in 2020 for so many tough things. I mean, it was the good, the bad and the ugly, obviously, all year long. But we are nearing the end. Kind of to wrap up the year, we're going to share with you a pro-family legislators conference presentation by Kelly Shackelford. There's going to be such good news going into 2025, and it's going to give us all of almost marching orders. It's going to give us some ideas on things to do. It's going to give us, you know, some some good news going into the end of the year to to look back on some of the victories that we've had, but also to recognize that we still have a lot of work to do. Folks, This is this is a you know, this is a generational fight. We've said this for a long time around here while bowlers this this takes time that you have to build the foundations. You have to teach people, educate them and get them out there actually taking action on these things. And so I think it's appropriate that we're getting close to closing out the year with, you know, sort of the well, religious liberty is is where this whole thing started. I mean, that's what got David Barton started. And in doing WallBuilders was seen our religious liberty taken away, seeing the terrible results of taking away kids religious liberty and schools, allowing prayer in schools and the impact of that years later on the country. And so just seeing that returning now and watching these victories on religious liberty, it's just refreshing and I hope gives us an energy going into 2025. By the way, Emery Green, America's Constitution coach, here with David and Tim Barton, David Barton's America's premier historian and our founder at Wall Brothers, Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. All three of us, you can learn more right here at our website wallbuilders.com wallbuilders.com that if you missed any of the radio programs over the last few weeks go to WallBuilders Dot show WallBuilders dot show for the radio links very quick and easy way to listen to the programs over the last few weeks. All right so we're going to jump into that program of legislators conference happening just a few weeks ago. If you're not familiar with that, if you're a first time listener to WallBuilders, our Legislators conference is a special time once a year where we get state reps and state senators from across the nation to come into Dallas-Fort Worth, and they spend several days with us. They get to hear from all kinds of great speakers. They get a chance to really interact in a in a way that sharpens their countenance. It's that iron sharpening iron. And it's it's a tremendous, tremendous event. We had a really amazing time few weeks ago, the largest one we've ever had. It was it was just incredible. And of course, a lot of hope in the air for sure, but also real action steps. These these times together are at the legislators. Conferences are not just theory. It's okay, what can we do in practice? What can we go back to our states and pass in our state legislatures to really take back ground? And that's going to happen in 2025. It's going to be very, very exciting. But Kelly Shackelford was one of our speakers. Almost every time we have this conference, Kelly comes over and speaks. If you're not familiar with Kelly, you probably are. You just don't realize it. So many of the Supreme Court victories of the last few years have happened because of Kelly's Organization for Liberty and frankly, Kelly's work. Man, this guy is he does incredible, incredible work. And even in the midst of a family, you know, trials and health issues and all kinds of things like this guy just stays in the fight, man. He's just he's just an inspiration. So Kelly Shackelford is first Liberty. You can check them out at first liberty.org its first liberty.org and also a great organization to give to you I know it's the last few days of the year people are making their last minute final contributions for those tax deductions. I understand. I get it. My wife and I do the exact same thing. We sit down and say, okay, who would we not give in to this year? And we are not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but we set aside a little bit each year to be able to give to the organizations that that we think are making the most difference in the culture and and you know, tend to be we tend to get to those who are where where the money's going to make the most difference in. And I think first liberty is definitely one of those obviously WallBuilders is one of those. And as as you know if you're longtime listener, Patriot Academy is near and dear to my heart, of course, and to David and Cheryl and and Tim and Gabi, who helped us start Patriot Academy. But today, I want to emphasize first Liberty as we bring on Kelly's presentation, think about go to our website first Liberty Dawg, and supporting them and what they're doing. And they do a phenomenal job. But as I was saying, if you're not familiar with them, the Supreme Court victories they've had have been just incredible. And Kelly and his whole team, our everybody over there at First Liberty really thankful for them. And what I encourage you to get on their email list, one of the cool things you can do at their website is get on their Friday insider alerts and it's just a quick read. Let you know what's going on that week in on your on the front lines of these legal battles and what they are working on really easy to sign up for that so be sure visit first liberty.org we got to take a quick break. When we come back, we will be joining Kelly Shackelford at the Pro-family legislators conference will be right back. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:06:12] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Going to jump right in with Kelly Shackleford at the Pro-family Legislators conference. 

Kelly Shakleford [00:06:18] I I'm going to say something that you might not know because this really started before the election. Everybody's kind of encouraged that the election's over. But there are more opportunities to advance religious freedom than we have ever had right now. I mean, so you're going to be busy. You're going to have some great opportunities ahead of you. So I want to I want to lay out those basics first. Now, everybody in here knows first what's first Liberty. First Liberty's the largest legal organization in the country. That all we do is religious freedom. So take Coach Kennedy. What happens if if you're Coach Kennedy and, you know, you get fired for going to, a, need to say a prayer? I mean, coaches don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars. Go hire a legal team. So that ended up costing over $7 million. Right. But because we were able to help Coach Kennedy, we not only won for Coach Kennedy, but we set a precedent there, really changed the future of our country. And so that's why we do what we do. And I think it's important to kind of go through first because as Christians, a lot of times we kind of think, yeah, religious freedom is important because it just means I get to live my faith. It's so much bigger than that. Our founders called this our first freedom because they understood if you lose this freedom, you will lose all of your freedoms. And you know, I see people all the time that come to me as I speak from other countries that say, you know, I'm not a I'm not a believer, I'm not a religious person like you, but I think what you're doing is the most important thing anybody is doing in this country, because I and you feel in the country I saw them take away. They took down the religious symbols. They they they shut the churches. And then shortly thereafter, I lost my political freedoms. And I'm thinking of a guy right now handing me a check for $5,000, and he said, I will be supporting you from now on. He's not a believer. But every few months we get a check from this guy because he wants his political freedoms. And the reason that is the one thing that a totalitarian regime will never allow our citizens who hold an allegiance to one higher than the government. So whenever that type of power coalescing occurs, the first flashpoint will always be religious freedom. And if you lose at that point, you will lose all of your freedoms. And we don't have to even this is not even a theory. What are we just experienced in Covid in the United States? What happened when mayors and governors and and county commissioners got power they had never had before? What was the legal flashpoint in court? It wasn't business. Lawsuits from all the businesses who were shut down. It was the churches and synagogues that were being shut down. We won every single case we filed in Covid all across the country for churches and synagogues. But what was fascinating is within usually about two weeks of us winning on behalf of the churches, all the businesses were freed and opened up. Amazing how that works. So now and let me tell you, the model, too, I just before I start zoom and do cases and stuff, what we do, we do very differently. There are a lot of legal nonprofits in the country that focus on all kinds of stuff. Left wing, right wing. They have the same model. Raise as much money as you can raise. Use that money to hire as many attorneys as you can. Put them in an office in D.C. or L.A. or New York, and then fly around the country and covers many cases you can cover. That is not our model. Our model is there's all these believers who went to law school because they wanted to stand for what was right. They wanted to ride in on the on behalf of righteousness and save the day. Right. And these are now the best litigators at the most powerful law firms in the world. And they've done honorable work for their clients, but they've never gotten to do a case for the kingdom. We come and sit down with them. We say, Look, if we bring you what you need on our staff are number one in their class from all the top law schools in the country, and all they do is religious freedom. We've got a media team that will come around you because these are heavy media cases. If we bring you everything you need, are you willing to give your time and bring your law firm free of charge? They're like, Man, I've been waiting my whole life. Sign me up. And you can imagine when they get that first case for the first time in their life, all their talent, all their training, everything they've ever learned in litigation they get to use for the kingdom. They have never felt that before. And it's kind of unfair. But we now know we have them for the rest of their lives as one of our volunteer attorneys because they're going to do another one. And what's amazing about this is I did this because I knew we could get a lot more bang for our buck. We could we could bless a lot of attorneys and we could we could have bigger teams. We could just, you know, I thought that would be great. And sure enough, average case, every 10,000 we span, we get 60,000 donated. So it's like a 6 to 1 leveraging. It's like the lows in the fish. Right. 

Rick Green [00:11:07] A first quick break. We'll be right back. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:12:18] Welcome back toThe WallBuilders Show. If you're just tuning in with us on today's program, we are listening to Kelly Shackelford present at the Pro-family Legislators Conference. Let's jump right back in with Kelly. 

Kelly Shakleford [00:12:27] But what I didn't count on was the win loss ratio. This was God's plan, and that is if you watch legal nonprofits, they are created to go after something big, something difficult, you know, industry, government, some problem. And so if they win 40% of their cases, they are really good. Our win right now, 26 years in a row, every single year has been above 90%. And that's that's God's favor, but it's also his method. You know, I mean, there's just something special about watching these attorneys who never get to give their talent for the Lord and they get to do it. And because of that, these clients get $2,000 an hour attorneys who they could never afford. And then the result is this victory that protects everybody in the body of Christ. It's exactly how the Lord wants us working together. So that being the case, you know, I said, you know, this is kind of the key to all your other freedoms. How are we doing? Well, I'll probably not convince you. We're in a war in this country about religious freedom. Right. I mean, I got I can't tell you about 360 cases we had over the last year. Right. But I mean, things like a mom who just wanted to go you know, there was a controversy at the school board, which is common these days. And she said, you know, I'm just going to go in my time and I'm going to say, I just I think we've got to come together. You know, we've got to come together. We're never going to solve these issues of transparency and accountability and these arguments going on. And so I'm just going to pray. And school board president says you're not allowed to do that here. She's like, Excuse me, you're not allowed to do that here. And now I love America because the crowd decided, You ain't telling me I'm not doing that. So they broke out into the Lord's Prayer. But then the school board president says, okay, we're shutting down the meeting. And then on the microphone he asks the police officers to throw these people out of the room. Now, you think I'm making this up? Well, that's why I brought you the video. So here's the here's the video. 

Speaker 4 [00:14:30] We have to work together to do this. So I would like to ask if you guys don't mind, I'd like to pray for Suffolk Public Schools with all of you. If you like to take a moment. Your heads, please. Anybody? Anybody you just got. I apologize. We can't do that. Why can't we? I like to pray for our students in our school. That's not in what you signed up to do, ma'am. Well, it's in regards to all of this is transparency. Accountability. I'm praying that we do do that now. No, ma'am. We ask that you get back to on to your topic. No one is my topic, sir. Well, then it's not permitted at this time. To pray for our schools is not permitted. That's correct. Okay. So now each of you hear this. If anybody would like to pray with me after the meeting outside, I'd invite you because I think that that's the only way that we're going to come together is through God in our faith. I believe that we may that I'll always pray. I mean, I love prayer, but this is not the place per the law. And we're going to atournyhile if you could speak to it, not here with our father. Who are you hearing of at this time? We're going to go to recess. All right. Has the officers to remove the officers during recess? Can you clear the room? I. I see. 

Kelly Shakleford [00:16:12] And now my favorite part of the video is the police officers who slowly move down the aisle. They actually might have had a class on the Constitution. I don't know. Needless to say, we went back. They've changed their position. She went back. She prayed that won't happen again in the school district. But these are the kind of things that are happening around our country. It's hard to believe We've got to whole areas that are just totally new like we you know, these are huge areas that will be decided in the next 5 or 6 years. Churches, I mean, we didn't used to have to have cases where pastors were being criminally prosecuted for being pastors, for feeding, you know, a hungry person, for taking care of a homeless person. We've got a whole just a whole basket full of these cases now all over the country. And I mean, the best example would be Dad's place. Pastor Chris Carvel, 19 criminal charges against him in Ohio. Why? What did he do? He must have done something really bad because he refused to lock the doors of his church in Ohio in February when it was freezing cold and there were people outside because there was no room in the homeless shelter. Freezing to death. 19. They came in on Sunday morning. 19 criminal charges against him. Right. We've you think? Well, I'm sure this has gone away. I know that he's he's had attack after attack after attack all in the last it's been going on almost a year. He's twice he sat in a hearing with us and said, I'm not sure what's going to happen today, but if they rule against me and tell me I have to close the doors of my church, he said, I'm going to jail and so I need to prepare for that. This is what's happening in America. And we've got people, again, homeless missions. We've got churches that are trying to help people get off the streets. All this. Right. So that's going to be we're having battles. This is something that legislators certainly can can get involved in in different ways. But just realize there's a battle going on in this arena. Secondly is parental rights. We're in the next 5 or 6 years. We're going to establish what I think most of us believe, but which evidently a lot of schools do not believe, and that's that the parents are the authority over their children. And this is a huge deal. And I by the way, I didn't even mention we've also got synagogue cases across the country, like all over the country. This one, you think, well, what's the deal? They can they can build anything they want on this property. They can build a church. They can build, you know, their home. They can build a business. There's only one thing that's not allowed. A synagogue. Why? Well, we don't have to guess. They said in the public meeting, we don't want, quote, those people in our neighborhood. 

Rick Green [00:19:16] Quick break. Everybody will be right back. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:21:25] Alright folks just jump right back in to Kelly Shackelford presentation at the Pro-family Legislators conference. 

Kelly Shakleford [00:21:30] These are the kind of attacks we're dealing with on churches and synagogues across the country. Right. But it's also, as I mentioned, this attack on the authority. Who is the authority over children. And we've got lots of cases, But this is a great example. This is a school district that has said we're going to have every fifth grader as part of our required assignment to read a book to the kindergartners asking the kindergartners to question their gender. I mean, outright, by the way, specific training to the teachers that they are not to tell the parents about this. Not. And of course, you're probably aware in California they have a law that says you're not allowed. Even the school district decides that you should tell your parents if your child is having a gender dysphoria issue, you're not allowed. It's against the law in California. Well, this gets worse. It's bad enough already, but it gets worse because the kids come home to their parents and say, I've got a problem with this. I can't do this. This violates my beliefs, my conscience. So they go to the school and say, our children need a religious objection. Being forced to to ask kindergartners to question their gender. They said, no, we're not giving religious exemptions. You're willing to force your child to violate their faith. They say, well, we'll see you in federal court. And that's where we are right now in federal district court. But this is this is going to be a battle and this is going to be decided and it matters. Now, I'll talk a little bit about, you know, who are judges are it's going to matter because this is going to make it the Supreme Court. Look, we have cases going back 100 years that the parents are the ones with the fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children. But that was in the context of they have a right to pick a private school. Some states are trying to say, you got to go to public school, but what if you're in public school and your child in there? Well, they think, well, we're the parents now because your child is in our school. And you know what? No, that's not the way it works. You can't use compulsory attendance to force people into a school and then say you now have you serve the parents. You know, they have you know, even the most well-intentioned bureaucrat can never compete with the love of a mom or dad. And every American knows this. And I think we are going to win this in a major way. But we're going to fight. District by district, state by state, until we get these precedents at the highest level. So those are big issues. We've got issues going on with with employment. Turbo can a great example. This is the kind of stuff going on around the country. This is a great company. They give a ton of a lot of probably a majority of their profits to overseas missionary work. Just great people, the owners of this. And somebody came forward with them. They have a health care plan that everybody can be a part of. And then they say, if you don't want it, we'll give you $35,000. You just buy whatever plan you want for your family, everything else. That way, you know, you can do what you want. There's a transgender employee who is suing them because they will not include a sex change in the main health care plan. It's not good enough that you allow them money to do whatever they want. They want to force this Christian company to put this in their plan. And so this is the kind of fight we're having over the right of people of faith to run their business according to their faith. And I think we're going to win these. But this is a big battle. We're having the same thing with employees, which I'll tell you about in a mental a Supreme Court case. We have cases all across the country with people at these woke corporations where they're trying to force them to violate their faith, which they cannot do. It's against the law. So I say all this sounds a little depressive, right? So here's the good news is we're winning in these cases, right? Over 90% of the cases, the Navy SEALs case, I think a lot of you know about that. This is 35 Navy SEALs that during the vaccine mandate said, look, I can't do this. This violates my faith and I'm going to go through the process to get an accommodation. Well, instead of following the law, the government decided they just start we don't have to follow law to start punishing these guys. I mean, these are most of these guys have traumatic brain injury because of the service they give to our country. I don't know if you know this, but, more seals die in training than even in these dangerous missions. 

Rick Green [00:25:54] Alright folks. We're out of time for today. We're going to have to get the conclusion next Monday. So have a fantastic weekend on Monday, we'll get the second half of this presentation from Kelly Shackleford. And then, of course, Monday morning, you can actually get both parts of this particular program, Kelly's presentation that is at the pro-family legislative conference by going to our website Wallbuilders.show for all of our radio programing and then of course wallbuilders.com for all of the tools and educational materials and updates and and all of the things that you've known to, you know you come over the years you've fallen in love with WallBuilders because of the history that you learn and the and the biblical historical constitutional perspective. Well, so much of that is right there at the website wallbuilders.com so be sure of is that over the weekend as well have a great weekend we'll be back with you on Monday. You've been listening to the WallBuilders show.