Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's a WallBuilder Show on a Thursday, which means it's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Thank you for joining us today. Be sure and send your questions in radio@wallbuilders.com. If you got a question about the founders or the Constitution or maybe something that's happening right now in our government, and perhaps a biblical perspective on that or a historical perspective or a constitutional perspective. So we appreciate you joining us. I'm Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. And guys, we got a lot of good questions. And the first one's actually a combined question. And I've been hearing this a lot and of course we've seen a lot of coverage on this community in Dallas that is apparently gonna be a planned Muslim community. So a couple of questions specific to that and then we'll dive in. Jeremy, Senator, the first one, he said, I'm a native Texan who's always lived in Texas. I'm beginning to be concerned about a push for non-Christian religions in Texas that lawmakers seem to be supporting or at the very least not resisting. In Sugarland, we see several issues such as electing a Muslim to the Texas legislature, allowing a 90-foot tall statue of the Hindu god Hanuman and allowing an open air iftar. Then there's a planned Muslim city in DFW called Epic City, which includes a mosque and a faith-based school. There are other examples of this sort of thing happening across Texas and the US. Can you speak to the founders intent to these sorts of things as they apply to non-Christian religions? Can you also speak to how this has been handled historically? I'd also like to know your thoughts in general about all these things. And then Aronson also asking essentially about the same thing, basically saying this town would not be controlled by any US government or law enforcement agency. Now that part, I don't even know how they would pull that off. That's what you would have to do to have Sharia law. But guys, you know, I actually got cornered by a reporter on this just the other day. So I'll add a third question to you guys to consider, because, you know, she was trying to because, of course, I was talking about the Christian foundations of the nation and how good it was the Ten Commandments. We're going to go back into schools and chaplains in schools. And and so she brought this up. She was like, well, I guess you're okay with Imams and and and this and that about Muslims. I said, well. You know, it doesn't matter what I think. But Benjamin Rush said he'd rather learn from Confucius or Muhammad if you were going to secular. But that's not what we do here. He said we chose the Christian religion because it's the best religion. Produces the best results. So that's what should be taught in America if you want the best citizens. Anyway, just throw that into the mix because I know that's where people are going with this. They're like, well, if you can't have Muslim, all these things or Hindu or whatever, then how can you possibly have Christian? So I know I threw a lot at you guys. Now you have like 25 minutes to figure out how to answer all that. 

David Barton [00:02:21] Well, part of the problem that we have here is, and it is a problem, is a vacuum is always filled. And so if you don't have something good there, something is going to come in. And we've been kicking Christianity out. I think that is the only religion in America where you can overtly attack it, make fun of it, to ride it, et cetera, and not get in any kind of trouble at all. Anything else, you're gonna get in trouble for doing that. But we have kicked that religion out and therefore you have created a vacuum. 

Rick Green [00:02:46] Willingly removed right David willing like a lot of the Christian community willing to recessed and removed from the arena and left 

David Barton [00:02:52] Yeah, we backed out we just completely back much much the community backed out. There were some legal losses and then after that well We don't want to this or that or whatever and so we backed down and so what happens is you're seeing this across the country, you've already seen it in Dearborn, Michigan with a complete Muslim community there that's this for all practical purposes separate from from other municipal things, Minneapolis, St Paul you see it with with Omar the the congresswoman there and it's like she's got a whole different world that she represents and it has very little to do with the constitution government And so she's you know, just a strange vote there But that's that rep she's a representative from that community and so you're seeing this across the country in so many areas and it's not like the founding fathers didn't have different communities, they did, in Pennsylvania Ben Franklin was really concerned that there were more German speakers in Pennsylvania than they were English speakers in Pennsylvania he thought English should be the first language and it was kind of like the debate that we had 30 years ago in the border with you know, with bilingual and Hispanic, and do you do that in schools, or do you English as the first language? And all that stuff they went through back then. But the difference was they didn't have something attacking their value system. And they had not given up that value system, and they had embedded that educationally. They had embedded it culturally. It was embedded in the founding documents. It was imbedded in the law books. And we've been throwing that out for the last 40, 50, 60 years. This is where people now talk about a secular constitution. Founding fathers would not only have laughed you out of the room, they would have rebuked you out the room if you had said that. There was nothing secular in their mindset on that constitution. And so we've gone 60 years of forcing secularism into the public square, and now we welcome everything except Christian expression back in public. You can do any kind of religious activities in schools without much opposition, but if you do a Christian one, you're going to get opposition even though that is legal with the new court cases. So a lot of this comes from the fact that you have that vacuum, but then you have other problems as well because if you do, for example, have a community, and I've talked to a number of Texas state representatives on this, and they're really concerned about it. I mean, you can't do Sharia law because you have to swear allegiance to the Constitution, and there's many places where Sharia Law is not compatible with the Constitution. And it's the same thing with Christianity. Christianity may have some practices that, I don't know of any that actually violate or would be in difference to the constitution, but you do have that in Islam that are different. Christianity has some that constitution doesn't necessarily incorporate into the public square, but it doesn't necessary prohibit those activities unless you want to say, well, there are Christian groups that do certain weird things, you know, polygamy was one, there were a number of Christian groups who did that and they said, no, you can't do that. I mean, you can believe that, but you can't practice that. And so when you get to Sharia law, this is something that actually contradicts many civil laws and that's where you have a real problem is how do you take note to uphold the constitution and then practice laws that violate the constitution? That's a tough thing to do and that is what concerns a lot of our state reps here in Texas. 

Tim Barton [00:05:56] Well, and it's worth noting, too, that as you're talking about some of the contradictions, maybe, in even as out of Christianity and what people might look up with the law, it's worthy noting not only were there Christians that supported polygamy, there were Christians that used the Bible to support slavery, but there were Christian using the Bible point out why all those ideas were wrong. Because God's idea from the beginning, God didn't give Adam multiple wives. He gave Adam Eve. When God created humanity, God did not... Create this idea of enslaving those around you of this conquer and conquest that came after the fall, and so the people that were fighting against those kind of things were using the Bible to do it as well. The reason some of that also matters for this is the founding fathers recognized the Bible had the best objective standards of morality, and we've played this thought experiment a little bit before on the radio program of if we recognize that there's only three options for truth or morality. It's either subjective. It's collective or it's objective. Subjective means it's up to each individual. So it's subject to the thoughts, the ideas, the whims, the feelings, the emotions of the person. In a country, really even a family can't function like that because if each person determines for themselves what's right and wrong, then you can't ever tell anybody they're wrong because they thought it was right and they're gonna do it. And if somebody thinks it's right to take a gun and go into a school and kill kids, well, who are we to say they're wrong? Well, clearly it's wrong, right? But this is why subjective morality, subjective truth doesn't work because truth can't be up to every individual how they feel, want, or think in that moment. And then we could say collective is another option where people say, well let's just vote on it. Let's pass the laws on this! And that would be the collective idea, that a collective group of people come together and they come up with these ideas. But if it's based on the collective, it's obvious there have been times when the collective has been wrong and it would be easy to point to places like Germany in World War II, but we could point to Russia, we could to China, we could points to nations all over the world right now that the collective doesn't have what we would consider maybe some of the highest objective moral values. But I'll also point out that if you look for the history of the world, recorded human history, for the last thousands and thousands of years, the standard that was accepted by the majority of the world until like a hundred something years ago was enslaving other people. The collective agreed that was an acceptable expression, behavior and practice among civilizations and nations. So if we say collectively, we're gonna decide, well, what if collectively they choose things that we know are morally wrong? Well, if we can't do subjective, we can do collective, then we have to do objective. Which means there's something beyond us that we point to, which would be something like the Bible. Now, the Jews would say, well, that's why we have the Torah, and the Muslims might say, that is why we have the Quran, and if we're going to say, okay, well there is, in fairness, more than one kind of objective standard. There are different groups that have an objective standard, and so then we'd have to ask the question, well if we are going to use an objective standard, which one do we use? And this is where you can have an easy comparison to see, well who do we want to follow? And when I say easy comparison, 

Rick Green [00:08:54] Who's getting the best results, right? Like, who's getting, yeah. 

Tim Barton [00:08:56] Yes, I would make it even easier. I would say, who is the hero of each religion? And let's compare heroes, right? Because the hero of Christianity is Jesus, right. Who is the Hero of Islam? It's Mohammed, okay. So Jesus, who taught... That we should treat other people the way we want to be treated, we should love our neighbors ourselves, sacrificial love, and then you have Muhammad who agreed that you should kill your enemies, who agreed with war, who agree with enslavement, who agreed with multiple brides, etc. And by the way, I'm not getting into even the weeds of nuance of what some people could say about Muhammad, where they could go even further, but the point is when If you compare the two... It's clear, it should be, that if we're going to follow one example or the other, well, Jesus seems like the right example, that the guy who was loving and kind and humble and faithful and sacrificial and giving, but the reason I'm pointing this out is because one of the things the founding fathers did, they were brilliant in their thinking, but they examined, John Adams says I've examined all religions and nothing compares to the Bible. The Bible is the best of all books. That was his assessment of it. But when they said they compared all religions, the founding fathers were incredible thinkers. They were avid readers. A guy like Jefferson who read every moral thinker and philosopher out there you can imagine, and he said there's no moral teacher like that of Jesus, which is why he encouraged and promoted Jesus. And of course, some might argue, but Jefferson wasn't really a Christian. Well, that would be then even more significant that Jefferson, who you might argue wasn't a Christian, is saying Jesus was the greatest moral teacher there ever was, right. This is why the founding fathers, even the ones who we might argue didn't believe in Jesus, argued the Bible and Jesus should be the foundation for what we do. And then why we go even further with this is because the Bible was the textbook used in education. Jesus was the example that we were pointing kids to in early education, literally from the time of the pilgrims up until like the 1960s. That was the norm in public school education. And why that matters is the US Supreme Court has come out and said, that what we do in education there has to be a long-standing history and tradition, and if there is, there should be a presumption of constitutionality. Now, let me connect the dots real quick on this. There's not a long standing history and tradition of Islam being taught in education in public schools in America. That's not what was the foundation, the fabric, the backbone of American education. It was Christianity. It was the Bible. It was learning about the Ten Commandments. It's learning about Jesus. That is a longstanding history and tradition. And so even when we look at what's constitutional, like what standards can you uphold? Where can we apply that in government? Where can't we apply it? The Supreme Court has correctly identified if there's a long standing history and tradition, there should be a presumption of constitutionality. So not only did the founding fathers arrive at the logical conclusion that the Bible is a standard we should follow, Jesus is the quote unquote hero we should be looking to because there's no better moral teacher than Jesus. This is a standard we should implement and we did implement it that was the foundation of our nation up until just a couple decades ago but we're now at a place we can restore that and so when you see places, cities, even sometimes in states where they're arguing, well, if you allow Christianity, you have to allow Islam, there's not a longstanding history and tradition, number one. And then dad, number two, as you said, if we're saying we're going to allow things to come in where we are setting up an independent government that is directly and explicitly going against the U S constitution, that is in fact unconstitutional 

David Barton [00:12:26] And see that's part of the part of the fact that goes with this as well is there a separatist community in the sense that they're separating from others and they're selling land and this is the way the representatives and the senators have told me but they're selling houses and land etc except if you leave that house you have to sell it back to the community it's not your private property so you can take it and use it and leaves it but it's and you don't get to keep it. So if you leave it, you don't take it with you, and you can't sell to who you want to. And so what you're creating here is a parallel separatist community government. Now, I will go back to something I said at the beginning is you're looking at a vacuum being filled here. In the case of this Dallas community, you gotta back up 25, 30 years ago when at that point in time, they started electing their first members to the city council and started electing their first member to the school board. And they've steadily done that over the last 25 years. And now over at South Lake Carroll area and that vicinity where this community is going in, they've been able to take much of city government. They've been to take take much of the school government. They've able to much of this. And so with that, they can create policies that are favorable for what they wanna do. But again, you're creating a parallel separatist government here. You're not pledging to the Constitution. You're using the Constitution to give you an avenue to pledge to something that's parallel to that, that is in many ways a replacement. And the difference with that is I was talking to one of the leaders in Ohio, and Vivek. So Vivek, who ran for president, he's now running for governor in Ohio. And it looks like everybody else has dropped out, yours has dropped out. So looks like Vivek's gonna be governor there, but Vivek is Hindu. But Vivek has already said, I'm choosing the Christian lieutenant governor. So he's not trying to advance his religion above all things, he's trying to help the state. He wants to be a good leader for the state, and he wants to protect the culture that's there. And so that's a real different approach from creating the separatist parallel approach that says we're gonna use the Constitution to create our own essential country or city or whatever, which is what you see in Dearborn, Michigan and what you seen in Minneapolis, St. Paul, many other communities, where that it's not contributing to the overall health of the entire community, it's creating, it's using the Constitution to do something that benefits itself and not the country. And that's whole different motivation and that's the red flag. But the answer to all the questions being asked, we don't know yet. The legislature is working on trying to make sure that this power does not get out of hand, that they can't do all the things they want to in that city. They've got to be subject to the Constitution. And that means you can't sell your private property back to only that owner. You've got be able to sell it to people that you choose to sell to, etc. So it's a battle ongoing over there. But this happens because 25 and 30 years ago, constitutional Christians and others were just not running for school board and they weren't running for city council. Other people came in that did and they've used the system to be able to get here to this point and you can't fault them for using the system now where they went ahead with it is not where most people want to go and so that's where we are now is make a decision. What do you do now? You're 25 30 years into this thing 

Rick Green [00:15:29] And I think one of the most important take home messages for us here, especially with our WallBuilders audiences, is what you started with, David, which is the vacuum. And we need to fill the vacuum and stop leaving the vacuum, and if we recede, when we step out of the culture, when step out of society, someone that doesn't share our values is going to step into that space, and you know, Christians have got to once again recognize that those mountains, those areas of the cultures have to be taken. We have to lead in those areas, and we have to raise up the leaders that can do well in those areas. Anyway, we're going to take a quick break. We've got more of your questions folks. Send them in to radio at Wobblers.com. Stay with us on the Wobbler show. 

Rick Green [00:17:11] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. This is Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Next question up is out of Cleveland, Tennessee. Josh, thanks for sending this in, man. He said, hi David, Tim, and Rick. I love what you guys do. I'm a big history guy. I love studying and learning more of the truth of our nation. Have a question about Thomas Jefferson. Why do some seminaries, whenever they teach about taking the Bible out of context, they always refer to Thomas Jefferson and quote, the morals and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, unquote. I've been reading a few books on biblical doctrine to go along with my personal devotions. I have come across more than once about how Thomas Jefferson would pick and choose what he believed in the Bible. I've read that Jefferson lies and did a little more research to back up my argument against opposition. I've shared your book and other videos and articles I found with my pastor and with a good friend of mine who happens to be going through seminary and has just been taught about Jefferson in the so-called, quote, Jefferson Bible, unquote. Thank you again for all that you do. I've been a follower since 2011, 2012, when I saw your Revolutionary War video on TBN about the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Thank you, Josh, for sending it in. And of course, Jefferson lies just for any listeners that may not be aware is David's book debunking a lot of these things that the Josh's is raising and a lot of other things about Jefferson. It's a very thorough, basically a response to what academia has done to try to destroy Jefferson or at least destroy Jefferson's perception for Christians and and make Christians think that he was, you know, very anti Christian. So anyway, Jefferson Lies. Is what he's referring to. And guys, I mean, David, you cover this thoroughly in the book, but even let's just start with the whole Jefferson Bible. Is there a Jefferson Bible? 

David Barton [00:18:41] Yeah, the Jefferson Bible goes back to Jefferson himself having a real affinity for native tribes. He was a great friend of native tribes, but he was also a great advocate for getting moral teachings of Christ into the native tribes. And he thought that that was the best moral teaching that existed and that getting that system of morality into native tribes would be really good. And one of his friends gave him a sermon from a guy over in Scotland who was talking and he was a missionary to native tribes. And he was saying, look, if you want to reach the native tribes of the gospel, do not give them a Bible. They might open that thing to Leviticus. I mean, and that's not a good way to start new Christians out is to read the book of Leviticas. That's why when, when we have new Christians today, oftentimes you give them the book Of Romans and ask them to read The Book Of Romans or you ask them read a simple book out of the New Testament. It's a starting place. You don't want to start with the heavy stuff. And so what happened was this guy over in Scotland, went through and took out the key teachings about Jesus out of the Gospels and took those key teachings and said, look, if you will have them read these things about Christ, they'll know who Christ is and what he's done and what He teaches and what His beliefs are and this is a good way to get them started and then you can get them a full Bible later. And by the way, the friend also pointed out, and by the this is lot cheaper rather than paying for a whole Bible when they're not going to need to read 90% of it right at first, maybe later. Start with something like this simple abridged gospel. And so he went through, took the red letters of Jesus pretty much and put that together. And Jefferson looked at that and said, I really like that. So Jefferson went through and did the same thing. He followed that recommendation and he went there and took the key teachings of Jesus and put them together. And then he sent that to a friend and said here'd be a good way to get this to the Indians. So what's happened over time, people said, oh, look at all the stuff he cut out. No, it's not what he cut, it was what he'd cut in. It's what he put in. Well, he left out all the miraculous stuff as Jesus. No, he did not. He has miracles of Jesus in there. He has so much about Jesus. It is the red letters of Jesus. It's the teachings of Jesus, and so what happens is people talk about, well, the Jefferson Bible takes this stuff out. That tells you that that is a person who has not read the so-called Jefferson Bible. Anybody who's read the Jefferson Bible can't repeat the narratives they hear from their professors. This goes back to something Jesus himself taught in Luke 6:40, where he said every student when he's fully trained to be like his teacher. What you've got is pastors and others repeating what seminary people told them, and it was seminary who did not read the abridgment of the Gospels done by Jefferson to see what was in it. They're just repeating what Dickinson said, I think it was back in 1905, a guy wrote about this and made Jefferson into a deist over it, and everybody's repeated his work since then rather than reading it for themselves. So that's kind of the bottom line on it. 

Tim Barton [00:21:23] Well, Dad, I would add also, just as a point of clarity, if people went back and read, so Jefferson did one, as you mentioned, 1804, which was the abridgment for the use of Indians as a philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, and then he did the one in 1820, which is Life and Morals of Jesus and Nazareth Extracted Textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French, and English, And in both of those, he does cut out things. He does cut out portions that do include miracles. It does include angels and demons and heaven and hell. And this is where people say, see, he cut all those things out. And as we would point out, well, have you read what he included, right? And you said it's important what he cut in. Well, ultimately, both of those were for a purpose. And in both of the 1804 and the 1820 version, I would encourage people just look at the verses that are there. Because there is a list of what verses were included and then go read those verses and you will find that even though there were portions He certainly did cut things out He also in those very verses included mentions of miracles and even the telling of some of the miracles in mentions of angels and demons in heaven and hell and so the very things people say he cut out there were sections where that was cut out, but he didn't remove all of those mentions from those two different editions and had he really meant what people say he was trying to do, he would have excluded all of them the fact that he removed part of them and not all of Them is also something significant and not that we need to psychoanalyze and go back and say well Here's what he was thinking and here's why we know that well He didn't write exactly what he thinking with all of what he did. We do know some of what He wrote we do know SOME explanation, but again the point is it's not that he didn't cut certain things out because he did but he didn't cut out everything that people say he cut out. It didn't include all the miracles of Jesus, but it did include some of the miracles of Jesus. It didn't include every mention of heaven and hell and angels and demons, but did include some mentions of heaven and hell, and angels, and demons. And, and the fact that in an abridgment, He's not putting the whole Gospels there, but he's including part of it, and he doesn't remove all of those things? Well, then the argument that says, well, he cut out everything he didn't believe in, like heaven and hell and angels and demons and miracles, you would go, well then, wait a second, I just read it, he just included this miracle. If he didn't believe in miracles, why is this miracle in here? If he doesn' believe and angels, and demons, and heaven, and hell, then why does it talk about it in this verse that's literally in the 1804, that's in the 1820 version, and this is where a lot of times, Dad, as you mentioned, people repeat this narrative. And they've bought into this idea and most of them have never read any of them for themselves. And again, I'll go back. It's not that Jefferson didn't cut stuff out. He just didn't come out everything they say he cut out. And he very likely didn't do it for the reason they're saying he actually did it for which changes the whole narritive. 

David Barton [00:24:09]  And you know, looking at Jefferson and what he did. I mean, I listen to the chronological Bible. I'm going through the Bible, and so I listen to it, and the chronological bible. And yesterday, because it's chronological, I got the same teaching to Jesus four times. But if you're trying to create something that is simple for people who have not been exposed to it. You're not going to need to say something four times, you just kind of reduce it and go to the heart of what's there. And Here's what I want you to know. And I think that's what Jefferson was trying to do with the Native Americans, because they had not been exposed to Jesus. They didn't know anything about the life of Jesus or who he was or what he said or what he did. This is new to them. And so it's kind of like doing a kid's version. You don't put everything in there, but you want to get kind of the tone right. And you kind of want to get the story right and you want to make sure you know that this was a good guy who did who did miracles and he helped people and he fed people and healed people. And so that's really more of what you get in there. And so to have a theological argument over here's what Jefferson left out, that's missing the point. Who was he trying to reach? What kind of audience was he reaching? That's like looking at a kid's Bible and saying, hey, you don't have the complete theological tenets in here of everything Christianity believes. You're right, because it's a kid Bible. And that's pretty much what he was doing was this is a starter, beginning starter place for people who don't know anything about Jesus or who he is. And when you look at it from that perspective, those arguments really do seem silly in so many ways. As we pointed, Tim and I both mentioned, those people clearly have not read what Jefferson wrote. They've read what other people said and criticized. Go read it for yourself. It's pretty clear what he was trying to do. 

Rick Green [00:25:45] Hey guys, just a quick reminder on why it's important the view of Jefferson, like why do we care how people view Jefferson on these issues? 

Tim Barton [00:25:52] Well, I would say, and we're almost out of time, I would it's super important because, even as we get ready to celebrate the 250th, when people look at the declaration, Jefferson is one of the most malign founding fathers, whether it be on religion or on the slavery topic. And one of reasons I think he's been a unique target for the left is because, if you can take down Jefferson, if you take down Washington, then you can argue against the foundation of America and say, we need to replace this whole thing instead of saying, let's celebrate the remarkable thing America has become. And I think it's part of why we not openly defend the legacy of Jefferson and, and whitewashing, but say, let's tell the truth. And when you tell the true, Jefferson does have a legacy that certainly is worthy of honor and appreciation. 

Rick Green [00:26:36] And for a deeper answer to all of these questions, Jefferson lies available right now at wallbuilders.com. Thanks so much for listening today. You've been listening to The WallBuilder Show.