Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the 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. Appreciate you joining us. Be sure to visit our websites today. Wallbuilders.com and WallBuilders.show go to wallbuilders.com for just a wealth of information all our different programs all the different events we have coming up in 2025. Everything's available right there at WallBuilders.com. And then if you just want to listen to some of the programs you might have missed over the last few weeks or months, that's WallBuilders.Show. That's also the easiest way to share the program. So you like what you're hearing. You know, other people need to hear it as well. Go to WallBuilders.show, grab those links, send them out to your friends and family. Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. And we've got George Barna coming on a little later, guys. And you all, of course, work closely with George, you know, in polling and data. And we have him at the Pro-family legislators conference all the time. This guy's really got his poll is, you know, finger on the pulse of America, probably better than any pollster out there. He does these huge surveys and gives us a good idea of what's the what's the thought process, not just moment in time, what somebody would vote for, but kind of what do they believe and where are we headed as a nation? So it's going to be really interesting to have him on and sort of look back at the election results and what he gleaned from the people that showed up and why they voted the way they did. 

David Barton [00:01:24] Yeah, you know, one of the interesting things that the polling has shown for a number of years and it goes back to something you find in James where says you shouldn't look in a mirror and then see what you look like and then turn away and not fix the problems you see in the mirror kind of thing. And polling has always been a good indication of what's what's right and what's wrong. And when you look at polling, you can say, here's the problems we need to address. Or you look at Paul and say, hey, here's our strengths. We need to capitalize on this. And so it's really like having a checkup from a doctor. You go in and the doctors say, hey, you really need to start working on this or taking this vitamin or or stop eating this kind of food. And we try to respond to that just out of health. And so when you examine yourself and that's one of the things the Bible tells us in First Corinthians is if you would judge yourself, you wouldn't be judged if you would stand and put a hard standard on yourself according to what the Bible expects of you, It's going to go a whole lot easier for you when you stand at the judgment time. Have to answer to the father because he's already told you how he's going to judge. He's already told you what he wants from you, what he expects from you. And if you can master that now, then when you stand in front of him, he says, well done, good and faithful servant, instead of, why didn't you do this? I told you to do this. I gave you clear guidance on this and you didn't do it. And so polling is one of those those times that really, if you're willing to be honest and willing to have the courage to change, it's the time when you look in the spiritual mirror and say, well, here's what I did right. Here's what I didn't do right. We got to change that. And and in the case of looking at the culture of America, there is no question that the church at large I don't mean a denomination. I don't mean a local church. I mean the church at large in America is a solution for all the problems that are out there. At the same time, the church at large in America is the cause for all the problems that are out there. It's got both of them. I mean, if it was doing the right thing, it wouldn't have the problems we've got. And they exist because the church is not doing the right thing. So let's go fix the problems. But sometimes the church won't do that  

Tim Barton [00:03:15] And let me let me throw in for the skeptical listener. Obviously, there are sin in the world and the church can't remove sin. But the reason that sin has been so prevalent, the reason that so much evil has been so rampant and run wild for so long is been because the church has not engaged in culture in ways that it should. We have them in the salt and light in ways we should. And it doesn't mean when you're the salt and light that there is no evil. Ultimately, until Jesus makes a new heaven, new earth, right? Until there is eternity, until there is heaven, there's going to be evil. So that's not and I'm saying this again, for the skeptic who's out there being like, well, David Barton said no. Obviously, we're saying this with some caveat in context. But Dad, to your point, when you look at America, if you go back to the founding era, it's not that there weren't problems in the founding era, but when you look at the history of our nation, every time there were major problems and America overcame those problems, it was because of the influence and leadership of the church. Every time that those problems began to reveal themselves and those problems grew, it was because of the inactivity and the lack of leadership from the church. And so the church has been really one of the best indicators, or maybe culture is the best indicator of what the church has done or not done, but the church's involvement or lack thereof has been one of the most direct impact related things on culture and society. To your point, and I think a lot of Americans, a lot of Christians don't understand this, where we've grown up thinking that the Christians aren't supposed to engage in certain areas. We bought into this even inside of Christianity. We've bought into a lot of these false narratives of separation of church and state thinking that's constitutional. And because we want a sports constitution, we support that Separate institutions does not mean secular institutions. And this is where we've gotten it wrong for so long. If you go back and study Moses and Aaron when God is giving. Overall to Moses for Israel How to build a nation. Moses is the one in charge of the government. Moses is the one that gets the Ten Commandments. Ten Commandments was written for a nation, for a government. There's nothing secular about that now. Moses and Aaron a different jobs. Aaron was in charge of the tabernacle. He was in charge of what we would kind of know was like the church. They were in charge of different institutions, but neither one was secular. Separate but not secular. Today, we make the mistake of thinking that separation of church and state is the secularization of the state from the church. And that's not what the Founding Fathers believed. It's not what the Bible teaches, unfortunately. It's what a lot of Christians in America believe is that Christians shouldn't be involved in certain things. But the things that we don't get involved in, it allows evil, it allows immorality, it allows darkness. And in whatever kind of sin and wickedness, we want to identify it, whatever label we want to put on it. It allows that to be more prevalent because Christians have not engaged that area with salt and light. We've not been the preservative. We've not been the ones to cast out darkness and to remove evil from that situation. And the reason America has been different from so many nations for so long is because we had Christians who understood this and who work to engage it, that God made families and God made the church, but God also made the government. And God should be a part of all of those institutions in this nation. And the better we understand that, the better the nation does. 

David Barton [00:06:37] And there's probably nobody better at helping us understand that than George Barna. George, all the research he does after the election was over, he went back and did polling on the people who went out, who voted, who did, who did and what they were thinking. And so he really has a great analysis, I guess you could call it an autopsy of the election or a postmortem if you want to go in and see what caused what happened. And it's it's always a really healthy look to know what caused what worked and what caused what didn't work. So you can do the right things and not do the other things. And and that's what he's got for us with the stats that he's done in this post-election analysis. George Barna, our special guest, will be right back on The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:08:23] Welcome back to the Wall Motor Show. Thanks so much for staying with us. Always great to have a George Barna and its post-election. Man. George, your survey before the election woke up so many churches and so many people, they saw the stats and said, man, we've got to get the word out. I had a lot of people tell me that was what got them engaged. So thank you for having such a positive impact and and excited to hear what you think of the results at the end of the day. 

George Barna [00:08:46] You know, a lot of those people wouldn't have been woken up if you and David Barton and a few others, Chad Connelly and a few others hadn't been relentless road warriors, letting people know that information, letting them know that we are going to lose this election unless the church wakes up and takes this seriously. Fortunately, I mean, what we found in the election is that it was Christians that determine the outcome of the election. And the way that works is Christian self-identified Christians at least represented about seven out of every ten votes. So even even though Mrs. Harris won a bigger victory with the non-Christians in America, she took about 60% of their vote. Mr. Trump got about 38% of the Christian vote among people who called themselves Christians. Mr. Trump had a resounding 56 to 43 victory. And when that 56% represent 70% of the vote, that's that's what turned it around. So really, this election was decided by Christians. Now, I defy you to go out and find one secular or mainstream or legacy media outlets that talk about the impact of the Christian vote. It wasn't really measured much at all in the exit polls, wasn't discussed at all in the news. And yet that's something else that's going to be important for churches to let their people know and for church ministries to let their followers. Now, when we turn out to vote, we shape an election. We change the world. You depend on what Christians do. 

Rick Green [00:10:23] Well, and the results are just astounding. It would be hard for any Christian to look at, you know, the release of the pro-life activists, the, you know, just go down the list that the right out of the gate, male and female. I mean, reinstating the military, you know, guys who got kicked out for I mean, just you just I mean, we could go all day about all the victories. But the point is, for a Christian, how do they look at that and not go, okay, we we pick the right guy. This is this is what needed to happen. And I'm so glad. Christian, is it? It is shocking to me that it was only 56%. Honestly. I mean, I know I know. You warned us about that. Was that did you break that down further into the to do you know denominations are I forget what you call them surges. Is that right? 

George Barna [00:11:04] Sage Cons? 

Rick Green [00:11:05] Sage Cons.. That's it? I guess so. I don't even know I'm making them. You're going to use that in your next survey? I just know that George is going to come out with a new survey and he's going to create something, you know, self offering gospel evangelicals. There you go. There's your new your new survey group. 

George Barna [00:11:23] I tell you what, I'm going to let you do that research and I'm going to go. And I do. But yeah, I mean, we did break it down, you know, not necessarily by denomination. We look at Protestant, Catholic. Among Protestants, 60% voted for Mr. Trump, 39% for Mrs. Harris. Among Catholics who usually go Democrat. This time, they broke 51 for Mr. Trump, 49 for Mrs. Harris. Again, that was a pretty important break right there. If you want to look at Sage Cons, which stands for Spiritually Active Governance, Engaged Conservative Christians, a hugely important group. They had 90% who voted for Mr. Trump, 10% who voted for Mrs. Harris. So, yeah, you know, but you look at theologically identified, born again Christians, 64% for Mr. Trump, 35 for Mrs. Harris. You look at evangelical church attenders, 64/34 people with a biblical worldview, 75/23 for Mr. Trump. So the groups that that kind of get what the Bible's teaching heavily broke for Mr. Trump. 

Rick Green [00:12:39] That. That sounds to me like then the more a pastor is actually applying scripture to our day to day life, which theSage Cons would would be getting because they're being active and the more likely you're going to vote for policies that are biblical, like we could spend the whole show talking about Trump's policies being more biblical than than what we had with Biden for the for the four years. Let's assume that for a second. If pastors are doing their job, we get the results at the polling place. Does that sound about accurate? 

George Barna [00:13:10] Yeah. So, I mean, let me just respond to that a little bit. And one of the things that we found in the course of the research is that Christians, even those who vote, don't put much energy or time into studying the election. For instance, we found that among the self-identified Christians in the country the month before Election Day. So like, you know, first week of October, the first week in November, they spent a total on average, a total of about two hours investigating the election, doing research, reading up about the election, trying to trying to understand what's going on. So not only do we need Christian leaders to encourage people to, you know, really think about things in a Christian manner, to go back to scriptural teaching, figure out what that has to do with potential public policy, who's going to represent that biblical oriented public policy best? But we've got to encourage them to actually reprioritize their time during these kind of election seasons so that they're much better equipped, much better informed. And when they do cast a vote, they're going to cast an informed and hopefully biblical vote. 

Rick Green [00:14:31] That's going to be so important going forward, George, because obviously with Trump, you have the personality issue and it's so well known and this was such an obvious, you know, disparity between the two candidates and world views. It's not always that easy, right? It's it's sometimes you got to be able to read through the rhetoric and all those things. So all the things you just described, getting that depth, I guess would be the right way to say it, of a biblical worldview is going to be critical. 

George Barna [00:14:52] And that's another thing that we discovered in this election is that really, even though it was unspoken, nobody except maybe me and you guys talked about it. World view was the central election of the issue because as people were trying to figure out who am I going to vote for? And they're trying to figure out what do they stand for? What are they going to compare that to? What are they going to link to in their own life? Well, it's got to be their worldview because their worldview is their decision making filter. Every decision they make, every moment of every day of their life flows through their worldview. And therefore, worldview ultimately was the thing that won this election for Donald Trump. Even though there are only 4% of adults in America who have a biblical worldview, people still were voting on the basis of worldview. What does that tell us as we broke it down after the election? One of the things we discovered is what that meant is that people actually were voting self-interest, not biblical morality. And so, fortunately, they preferred the positions of Mr. Trump on things like the economy, on things like crime, on things like immigration. Now, the way people interpreted those, it was going back to scripture and saying what's morally right to do? What they were saying is what's going to improve my life? What's going to advance my personal best interests. In other words, how can I make more money? How can I have a better job? How can I feel more secure? How can my family be safer as opposed to how can I do things to bless people? And how can we use public policy to do the same? 

Rick Green [00:16:26] Sounds to me like we have an opportunity to connect the dots and say that pain that you felt is because of the bad policy that didn't come from a biblical worldview, and we could help you avoid that pain in the future by having good policies that are a biblical worldview. Teach them that a biblical worldview creates a good society. And then while we're at it, hopefully they get convicted to actually treat their neighbor the way they want to be want to be treated. It also seems like the most important thing the church can do is teach biblical worldview. We had we had Judge Ginn on from Southern Evangelical Seminary last weekend, and we talked about that, how getting pastors to know it's important to do biblical worldview. My my own church in Texas, we're doing a Wednesday night deal on biblical worldview. In fact, my pastor quoted you so many times, I told him, Stop, stop quoting George Barna. No, seriously, it is it is so good. And he really is. I mean, that seems like what we got to get churches to start teaching biblical worldview. They do the deep dive and start learning these things. 

George Barna [00:17:20] Yeah, I mean, we really do. And the best place to start that is with children because a person's worldview, as we've talked about or is developed by the age of 13. So when we're working with adults, either voting population, it's kind of a different game if they don't have a biblical worldview. That's a multiyear process of trying to transition a person from one of the other non biblical worldviews, whether it's secular humanism, postmodernism, eastern mysticism, Marxism. You know, there are dozens of those alternative worldviews, all of which are based on lies, all of which deceive us, all of which manipulate us, none of which help us. And so ultimately, what we want to do is get people to recognize not only is the biblical worldview the right way to go because it honors or respects God, but God gives us that way of understanding and responding to life because he made it for our benefit. And so, yes, the biblical worldview, if we were to follow it, how do you think America became a great nation in the first place? That's go back to the founding fathers like you do all the time. And when you teach what the founding fathers wrote, what they spoke, what they taught, what they passed in terms of policy, the structures they developed, all of that was based on biblical thinking, trying to understand how only God ordained that we should live, and therefore how do we build a country around that? How do we develop community around that? How do we develop a lifestyle around that? That's what a biblical worldview does. The founders got it. Remember, we came here to America for religious freedom or freedom from work, freedom from these alternative worldviews. We wanted to get back to the Bible. And we're in one of those phases of American history right now where that's exactly what we need to do again. We don't necessarily need to leave America, but we need to leave our unbiblical ways of life and thinking and return back to what made us great. Return back to God's Word. 

Rick Green [00:19:26] Boy, it sure seems like we have a window of opportunity to do that because the appetite so different now than it was even just a few years ago. And it's not just I mean, it's it's happening with with obviously, obviously people that are listening now. It's their responsibility to do that with their own children and grandchildren and with themselves. But even with the public schools, we have more opportunity than than we've seen in my lifetime to get that good education and that good that good world view back into the classroom. I mean, I'm talking to folks about curriculum in the public schools in Texas and Oklahoma and other places. We saw some really good stuff in Texas last year with all kinds of biblical references and and teaching the golden rule and all this. So it's just seems like there's a chance to inch back or hopefully we take great strides back in the education side and maybe school choice does that as well because you get more kids into schools that are teaching those values, whether it's homeschooling or private schooling. I mean, this is a window of opportunity to take education back and and start teaching the good stuff at the young age, like you're saying. It seems so simplistic, but it's true. We moved away from all that in Education's over 60 years. We started teaching. You know, we taught multiple generations without the biblical worldview. We saw the pain of that and the bad policies and bad politicians. So we're going to have to start at that age. You were talking about and look at this as a generational fight, not one election. Right? 

George Barna [00:20:44] Absolutely. You know, and one of the other things that came out of the research of the election is that socialism isn't dead. We can't assume because we elected a conservative, a fairly conservative leader. And we've got other conservatives around the country who got put back into office or into office for the first time. That doesn't mean that there is this conservative revolution taking place. I mean, we're in a nation where about a third of the country still think socialism will be better than capitalism. And we're in a nation where a lot of schools are trying to brainwash our kids to buy into that. Yeah. So when you talk about taking the schools back, that's a critical element of this. And that that ties right in with the biblical worldview, develop children. 

Rick Green [00:21:29] George, I'm so thankful for you, man. You really help illuminate these things that that we need to know so that we can take good strategic actions, just like the data that's necessary to take the business step right in the same way for us culturally. You give us the data necessary to take the right strategic and tactical steps. Like we watch that chessboard, but you give us the ability to make the right moves and thinking culturally for a generation, not just for one election. So really, really appreciate your brother. God bless you and thanks for coming back on WallBuilders. 

George Barna [00:21:59] Thanks so much. Keep it up. 

Rick Green [00:22:01] Stay with us, folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton. 

Rick Green [00:23:10] Welcome back to our show. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to George Barna for joining us once again. You can also see, George in our biblical Citizenship in Modern America. Course that's available right wallbuilders.com. Be sure and have that class with people. Don't just do it at home by yourself. Get some people over to the living room or the church and and sit around and watch the videos together and then talk about it. Talk about what you can do in your community. But thankful for George being in that as well. All right, David. Tim, you know, obviously still a lot of work to do based on what he was saying. But, you know, good signs of the trends. 

David Barton [00:23:42] Well, and great conclusions, too. I am I was really impressed with they said this election was decided by the Christians. They said when we turn out the vote, we shape an election. We change the world. And he gave stats like on the sage cards, the socially active government engaged conservatives. The 90% of sage cons voted for Trump. And then we went to biblical worldview 75/23 voted for Trump. So the more biblical your worldview, the more likely you were to choose someone who reflected those moral and religious values and and policies that the Bible itself sets forth. This has nothing to do with personalities. I don't care which personality you like, Kamala or Trump. You may not like Trump personality. The question is what are your policies going to be? And so those that understood the Bible was a 3 to 1 margin for Trump. And so overall, I mean, when you look at what we got, the good news is that 56% of Christians overall selected Trump. The bad news is that only 56% of Christians selected Trump as 44% of Christians that don't understand basic moral values or restraints of government or purpose of government, etc.. But it's decided by Christians, and that's good news. 

Tim Barton [00:24:49] And dad it also might be when you're talking about 56% of Christians that supported, but that so many didn't. It might not necessarily be for all of them. They don't have Christian values. It might be they were listening to the news media and what the news media was saying about Trump more than paying attention and judging a tree by the fruits to some extent, because certainly the way the news media was portraying him, he was the great evil, right? I mean, they were literally like calling him a Hitler, this communist dictator, etc.. And so depending on what news outlet you watch and who's framing the conversation and whose labels you are believing about, someone you know, Kamala could be this loving, peaceful, kind, sweet person and trump this evil Hitler. So I would say it's it's still possible that there are some people that are just absolutely ignorant, confused, etc.. Maybe there are some Christians that are on the wrong side. But ultimately, as George pointed out, as as the church goes, so goes America. And this really is a good place for us to be able to look and go, okay, we we see we need some discipleship inside the church. We need to help disciple, friends, family, those we're connected to, to have more of a biblical perspective, a biblical understanding and a biblical foundation and not be so swayed by the media or whatever kind of online personality might be suggesting maybe some of these negative, quote unquote, evils about President Trump. 

Rick Green [00:26:15] Yes, exactly what we said. We've still got a lot of work to do. But man, the ship is turning and it's turning in the right direction. So, so much, so much good, good news there and good signs of where everything's headed. But that means press the gas, folks. Let's make sure that we're pressing our advantage while we have the momentum. Again, one of the things you can do is go to WallBuilders Icons. They get biblical citizenship and modern America invites friends and family over and start discipling right there in your home or your church and get engaged in the culture. Thanks so much for listening to The WallBuilders Show.