Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the WallBuilder Show taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. I'm Rick Green, America's constitution coach here with David Barton and Tim Barton, and we've got a little bit more of our special programming for you from rebuilding Liberty. I say a little more, actually several more days. We did week one yesterday and the day before. So if you miss those, you just got to go to Wallbuilders.show and you can listen to that entire segment of the new rebuilding Liberty course. If you want the entire course, it's available to you right now at Patriot academy.com by signing up as a coach and the videos will be in your dashboard. So not only listen to it like we can do here on the radio program, but be able to watch the videos as well. What we're going to do now is go ahead and give you week two, even though we just did week one yesterday and the day before we're gonna go ahead and jump into week two or episode two, restoring religious Liberty. You're going love this lot of great information, a lot of great action steps as well And we'll get basically a broad range of action steps so that you're not pigeon-holed into saying, well, I could do that one, or that one's too impossible for me. No, we're gonna give you lots of options. So one of those, you're gonna be able to do. And in each of these episodes, there's multiple action steps for you to choose from. So that may not make sense yet, but it will as you listen to the episode. So let's jump right in. This is Rebuilding Liberty, episode two. Called Restoring Religious Liberty. The purpose of this course is to make sure that they know why that flag is worthy of being waved. 

Tim Barton [00:01:44] Wherever you are watching from, we're not rebuilding a structure without giving the right foundation. 

Speaker [00:01:50] And our burden should be to transform a moment into a movement. The entire globe is moving towards the right. 

David Barton [00:02:04] Recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States. I thought our founding fathers were much atheists, agnostics, and deists who wanted a secular public square who didn't want the Bible in schools. 

Speaker [00:02:14] Fight like it's your last breath. 

Speaker [00:02:17] But know this, the truth is over the facts that God's not giving you a spirit of fear or the power of love and a sound mind. What do I want my legacy to be on the way out? That I was safe or that I was dangerous. Know this nation is not perfect. I'll take America for any other country and nation on the face of this planet. How about you? 

Rick Green [00:02:42] Welcome back to week two of Rebuilding Liberty. Last week, we began to just kind of get the big picture of what we're doing. We went through the Declaration of Independence that we'll be celebrating in just over a year. We talked about those principles in the declaration, but tonight we're really gonna dive in to those foundations. We said last week from the Declaration of Independence that we should lay our government and its foundation on the principles and organize its powers in such forms as we think would most affect our safety. And happiness. So tonight we're going to talk about those principles that we're laying that foundation on and our master bricklayer tonight that is going to be teaching. Is one of my mentors. I think the greatest historian alive in America today. He is America's premier historian, read more of the founding fathers than anyone alive today. I would even argue he probably has retained more than the next 10 historians combined. It's absolutely incredible what David Barton has done for our country. He's literally the George Whitefield of our day. He's our Nehemiah and I'm proud to call him a mentor. I first found David Barton when somebody handed me one of those old cassette tapes. Anybody remember those Yeah, they handed me this cassette tape and I hated history up to that point. So boring. I just, you know, all you did was memorize dates and names and, and places. And I popped in that cassette and history came to life. I could see what was happening. I was literally watching history happen through the eyes of the people that experienced it. David's an absolute master. At bringing that to life. So I fell in love with it. I started gobbling up everything he put out. I had this box in my truck. I called it my university on wheels and I had all of his cassette tapes. I was memorizing everything he had. Then I started using it as I go out there and speak and then one day I'm giving this speech and I had no idea his parents were in the audience. I'm using all of this material and they didn't used to tell it this way and he would probably deny it, but I'm pretty sure his mom went to him and said, hey, this kid has stolen all your material. So you might as well hire him. So that's how I got connected to David and Cheryl. And they've been wonderful mentors to carry me both. And we're thrilled to be a part of wall builders. I can genuinely say it's professional honor of my life to have learned at this man's feet for the last two decades and to be able to march into battle after battle with him. And we are blessed to have him tonight to help us rebuild Liberty. Y'all welcome your master bricklayer for the night, David Barton. Appreciate you brother. 

David Barton [00:05:04] Thanks man. Hey guys, good to be with you. Now I want to take you into history that's probably a little more recent. People actually in this room, some would have been alive at the time of this history. And it goes back to actually what happened in 1962. It's part of legal history. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1962, they came down with a decision that was called Engel versus Vitell. In that decision, they said, you know, we've had prayer in public for a long time. We've had praying in schools for a longtime, but we're not going to do that anymore. And so what they did at that point in time, they said, no, prayer in school is no longer constitutional. Now, at this point in time, we're coming up on two centuries under the constitution. We've done this for two centuries, but it's not going to be constitutional anymore within 12 months and two more decisions Abington v. Schempp And Merrick Collette. They said, and by the way, this thing about using the Bible in schools, we're not doing that anymore either. Now this is something that has been in part of education all the way back prior to the constitution, but they said we're not doing this anymore and so on a 12 month period of time and Pre-Decisions they've completely changed the culture of America as far as religious expression goes. And so this is what happened. This is where progressivism really became standardized in the court. They just kind of made up stuff because time to make progress. So what you find is this approach that they took, it had no historical legal precedent and they acknowledged that in their decisions. They said, what we're doing here has no historical, no legal precedent, it's just time to do something new in America. What happened was so many cases came to the court that you start saying, wait a minute, does the First Amendment, what does it mean now? And the court said, well, we'll tell you what it means. The First Amendment is essentially what we will tell you. The court started getting so many challenges to public religious expression that they said, look, we can't take all of these. We have to come up with a standard whereby you can know what is and isn't constitutional. And that case was in 1971. It's called Lemon versus Kurtzman. And what they came up with was a three-pronged test. It's now called the Lemon test because it came out of the limited beast carcassment test. Case and they said okay if you want to know if something is constitutional the number one thing to tell you if a religious activity is constitutional if its primary purpose is secular. 

Speaker [00:07:09] Called Lemon. It is aptly named, it is a lemon of a case. And really it goes back, it's our establishment clause. The very first thing when you get into the First Amendment is not establishing religion. And that's because, of course, our founders came from like the Church of England and we didn't want there to be a nationally established church. But in Lemon, in the early 1970s, they said, well, we think it means more than that. We think it means that anywhere government is, religion can't be. And so our whole lives, it's been for 50 years, nativity scenes are banned on the lawn of a county or a city. A menorah for Hanukkah. 

Rick Green [00:07:50] Well, how many cases have you tried over a cross in a cemetery? All over the place. Yeah, yeah. 

Speaker [00:07:55] And even the stuff we see in schools with religion happens at school and it's like there's a fire. Why? Because any of that is in the Constitution, no, because of the Lemon case. It was cited over 7,000 times in 50 years to attack religious freedom. 

David Barton [00:08:13] The number one thing to tell you if a religious activity is constitutional, if its primary purpose is secular. Now, can you name a religious activity whose primary purpose is secular? 

Rick Green [00:08:25] Alright, quick break everybody. We've got to interrupt for just a second here. Stay with us. You're listening to The WallBuilder Show. 

Rick Green [00:09:37] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks for listening to Rebuilding Liberty. Hopefully you're going to get excited about this and host a Rebuilding Liberty class in your home or at your church or wherever it might be. We encourage everyone to be a part of it. Let's jump right back in where we left off before the break. 

David Barton [00:09:53] Since that time, in 1971, the court has signed the limit test over 7,000 times. Every conceivable aspect of faith and public life has come before the court, and the court said, no, no, we gave you the Lemon tests. If it's not primarily secular, it's unconstitutional. And this is where we become a very secularist society. I don't say secular, secularist. It's committed to secularism. It's intolerant of religion. So the whole thing turned in the culture. Fortunately, it didn't stay that way. We've had a change and that change is really in more recent years. That change occurred when we had a Supreme Court that actually started reading the Constitution of the United States. That's a novel idea. You're taking note to uphold it. Why don't you read it? They did and they said, we can't come to the same conclusion that previous courts have come to. 2019, there was a case that reached the court. It was, this is called the Bladensburg cross. This is a war memorial cross at the end of world war one. And there were about 25 moms in Maryland whose sons had been killed in WWI and they erected this cross on city land to say we want to honor the memory, not only of our sons, but of all those that were lost in World War I. 

Speaker [00:10:58] We started really going after this four years ago when we had the Bladensburg Cross case, which is a veteran's memorial that was put up by mothers who lost their sons in World War I. And it sat there for almost 100 years until the American Humanist Association said, hey, you can't have this cross. You know, at the Court of Appeals, they said, yeah, you know, why don't you just cut the arms off the cross and that way nobody will be offended and we won't have to tear it down. And we were like, wow, that's the craziest thing. That was a federal Court of appeals judge. And they ruled two to one. After almost 100 years, it was unconstitutional. So when we went to the Supreme Court, we just thought, you know, I just cannot imagine this Supreme Court tearing down a hundred-year-old Veterans Memorial. So maybe this is the time to go after Lemon. I mean, it's 50 years, it's 7,000 citations, it really is an uphill battle. 

David Barton [00:11:44] And so what happened was that same years when the Coach Kennedy case came to the court, you remember it was Kennedy versus Bremerton, Bremerson School District at West Coast would not let him pray after a football game. Football coach, after the game's over, he goes out, he kneels down by himself, he prays by himself. Silent prayer, you can't do that. That's unconstitutional. People might see you doing something religious and you can do that, 

Speaker [00:12:06] And so when we got to the Coach Kennedy case, we were like, you know, there's never been a case at the Supreme Court on the rights of teachers or coaches with regard to their faith. So if we push for this sort of grand slam, get rid of Lemon, we might blow the case up. Let's win a really big case. And so we'll have the Lemon argument in here, but that won't be our main argument. Midway through the oral argument, just out of nowhere, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, you know Justice Kavanaagh, Justice Gorsich start talking about. You know, I think it's time we might need to get rid of lemon. And we're just like, are you there? Oh, we're in shock. Our eyes are as big as silver dollars because we can't believe they're saying this. And we thought, but do they have the votes? And then the decision comes down and they reverse lemon. Wow. And I mean, the dissent is going crazy. I mean 50 years, 7,000 citations over. Everywhere a cross went down, it comes back up. Everywhere Ten Commandments was put in the closet, it comes out. 

David Barton [00:13:06] And so the court at that time made this statement. They said, long-standing, religiously expressive monuments, symbols, and practices require a strong presumption of constitutionality. If you can show us that this has been in the culture for a long period of time, we're going to presume that it's constitutional. 

Speaker [00:13:24] And the lemon test was, you know, it's gone, right? So what's the new test for the establishment clause? What they said is, if something is a part of our history and tradition, some religious practice that we've done, then it is presumptively protected. We're not gonna say you can't do that. So like, you now, prayer before the legislature. Well, the founders had a chaplain. So this idea that, oh, you can't pray, this takes care of a lot of the ridiculous attacks in God We Trust on the Coin, all these attacks that we've had to deal with. The Pledge of Allegiance, we had to defend the Pledge of Allegience in federal courts. I mean, this takes of all that and takes us back to really who we are as a country when we found it and the principles that we were trying to protect. 

David Barton [00:14:13] So nearly everything that's been used to force secularization on America is now out the door. Now this is not what most people know about today. They haven't heard about that strange thing. The media doesn't cover this kind of stuff. When you have a pro-faith and pro-constitution kind of victory, don't cover that. So let's go back to what they said in 2019. Long-standing religiously expressive practices require a strong presumption of constitutionality. This is now what's called the history and tradition test. If you can show that something has a history and tradition in America, we're going to assume, presume that it's constitutional. Now, how about the Bible in schools? Is there a history in tradition of Bible schools? Let me take you back and take you to the beginning because this is a lot more than constitutional. We're going go all the way back to the year 1643. That's the year the first public school law was passed in America. The second public school off past America, 1647. But all of these early colonists that came over, they brought their kids with them and they're landing in places where there are no schools and we need schools because we want our kids to be educated. And so they start these schools. Now, as a result of that, this is the first law book in America. It goes back to 1650. This book is called the Code of 1650, you can see right there the Code is 1650 this contains the first public school law. Now that first public-school law What's the title of that public school law? Interestingly, it's called the Old Deluder Satan Act. Now that's a fairly interesting title for a public school of law. And it says this. It says, it being the one chief project of that old deluder Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the scriptures as he had Satan's number one purpose is to keep us from knowing the scriptures. That's how we had all the darkness in Europe. Every time we went to the scriptures, that's where light came and we made advances. And we're not going to have that darkness here in America. We're going to make sure everybody can read the scripture. So said when you get 50 people into a community, you, you get a teacher. And when you got a hundred people in the community, you build them a school. So this is the first public school law in America, the older Luther Satan act and then that's 1690. And it's interesting that by the time you get even just several generations later, strikingly, because we educated both boys and girls, This backwood colony of Massachusetts had the highest literacy rate for women of anywhere in the world, higher than France and Spain and England. Because you see, we thought everybody needs to know how to read so that you can read the scriptures. And so our literacy rate was through the roof. So even in this backwoods wilderness colony, higher literacy rate than, than across the rest of the world. Now, if you go to another year, let's take 1690. 1690 is the year that our very first school textbook came out that was printed in America. Prior to that, we use textbooks that came from the continent, England or wherever else. This is that very first public school textbook that's right here. It is called the New England Primer. This little bitty book right there called the new England Primmer. And we use that New England primer from 1690 all the way into the 20th century. This was still used as a first grade textbook. Now, when you go into it, they go through the ABC, show you how to read. And then after they do that, they start associating certain concepts with ABCs. This is called the rhyming alphabet. You see, if they're A, in Adam's fall, we send all B, having to find the Bible mind, C, Christ crucified for sinners died. And by the way, their S's don't look the same as our S's today, like the word sinner and sin. That's because they had two S's back then, a hard S and a soft S as much of a German influence. We got away from that in about 1812. But prior to that, as you read old books, there's that F that often appears as an S. But nonetheless, it continues. G as runs the glass, our life does pass. H, my book and heart must never part. Now, this is what we're learning in first grade. This is how we're learnin' the ABCs in first-grade. And then you learn the ABCS by memorization of a passage associated with it. 

Rick Green [00:18:18] I gotta do another quick break today folks, stay with us, you're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:19:29] Welcome back to The Wall Builder Show. We're in the middle of rebuilding liberty. We've started the week two, or episode two, Restoring Religious Liberty program today. Let's get a little bit more of that today, and then we'll get the conclusion tomorrow. Let's jump back in. 

David Barton [00:19:43] By the way, you see the picture of the heart and the Bible inside the heart. My book, Heart Must Never Part, and it's what we're imparting from the very beginning. And you see here, A, alphabet of lessons for you. The wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother. That's a Bible verse. B, betters a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble where therewith. Another Bible verse, C, coming to Christ, all ye that labor or have he laden, he will give you rest. Another Bible, we're memorizing Bible verses in the very first... Of the school textbook ever done in America. That's the way every student learned the ABCs because that's just what we did in education. That's a history and tradition of education. If you go to 1781, in 1781 this is the end of the American War for Independence. We have just defeated the British at the Battle of Yorktown and as a result of that, the British have laid down their arms and for the first time since we, back in 1607, We're no longer under British domain. They do not rule us anymore. And so as a result of that, the King, it doesn't matter what he says. Well, one of the things the King said was that if you live in any English speaking country, you cannot print a Bible in English. You will use the one that we tell you to use. And so there were several Bibles that were fairly critical of the King like the Geneva Bible, the Pilgrims and Puritans brought with them. It was very critical of many bad practices that were not biblical in Europe. And it said so. And Kings didn't like that. So they said, no, no. We'll tell you what Bible to use. Well, now that we've beat the British, we're not under that law anymore. So we beat them in 1781 and the first English language Bible ever printed in America came out in 1782. It's one of the rarest books in the world. They printed 10,000 of them. There's two or three dozen left today. That's all for now, thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one. Book is exceptionally rare, and it's striking that in this book, as you look inside it, there are several things that kind of stand out at you. Number one, it's printed by Robert Aiken. Why is that important? Because he's the official printer of the U.S. Congress. He does all the printing for Congress. And you continue to look inside that and, oh my goodness, there's a congressional committee talking about this Bible. And you continued to look past that and you see down here that it says, United States and Congress assembled. Recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States. I thought our founding fathers were a bunch of atheists, agnostics, and deists who wanted a secular public square who didn't want the Bible in schools. And by the way, Robert Aiken, as he's going through explaining this to Congress, Robert Acan told them very clearly, he said, this is a neat edition of The Holy Scriptures for the use of our schools. What a perfect Bible for every school to be able to use, and here's actually his handwritten document saying that to Congress. So you look back to 1782. That's a fairly significant time when it comes to the Bible in schools, when you have a history and tradition test. So this is the first Bible printed America called the Bible, the revolution, first English language Bible printed in America, the Bible of the revolution. Then let's go to 1789. George Washington is now president and we have a lot of territory in the United States that is not yet part of the United States. It's called the Northwest territory. There's also the Southern territory and central territories, but they said, you know, we've got the 13 colonies over here now, 13 states. What are we going to do with all this other territory? How did they become states in the United States? And so they went through and laid out the provisions that if you want to become a state, number one, number two, and they went though all the stuff they did. And so it's called originally the Northwest Ordinance because it was passed for the Northwest Territory. Now 32 states after that came in under those provisions, but it's interesting. Article three says religion, morality, and knowledge be necessary to good government, the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. So signed by George Washington and federal law, this is the provision whereby states can come in in the United States if your schools are encouraging religion, morality, and knowledge. That's the way you become a state in the United States, and that's interesting. We're told today, oh no, education gotta be secular. Just go back and check a number of the state constitutions, the number of state constitutions say forever in the schools of this state, religion and morality will be taught as well as knowledge. Why did they say that? Because that's the requirement become part of the United States given us by the Founding Fathers signed by George Washington secular education was not part of their concept but then again the court never claimed that it was it just said we're gonna do something different and now all the legal experts in the last 50 years said oh no that's what the founding fathers wanted no no no go back to the original stuff it's quite different 1790 involves a founding father named Benjamin Rush now Benjamin Rush signer the declaration John Adams said he's one of three most notable founders. So out of 250 founders, John Adams says Benjamin Rush is one of the three most notable. So when you look at Benjamin Rush, one of things that makes him significant, there's a whole lot of stuff, by the way, he is an awesome guy. But one of those things is he's called the father of public schools under the constitution. And that's because in 1790, he did this piece. He said, you know, we used to be 13 nations. Now we're one nation. What do we need to be teaching in our schools for us all to remain one nation? What do we have to teach to keep us unified rather than having 13 different nations? And so he goes through and lays out in this and, and he says, and this, he says the only foundation for a useful education or republic is to be laid in religion. Without this, there can be no virtue. Without virtue, there can no Liberty and Liberty is the object in life of all Republican governments. So here are some of the educational essays. This is where he says religion has got to be central to education. If we want to use it. And that's what he says, the only foundation for a useful education. Now you got all sorts of other education, but if you want a useful education, you got to lay it in religion. So the next year he came out with this piece, the Bible in schools. This little piece right here, he gave a dozen reasons why we would never take the Bible out of schools in America. Now this is father public schools under the constitution. He started five universities, three still go today. He did so much awesome work in education. And by the way, this piece explains the Bible contains more knowledge to man in his present state than any other book in the world. This is why we teach it in schools. It's the most useful book out there. And it has all the stuff you need to know about medicine, about science, about ethics, about law, about business or whatever. And that's what we believed about the Bible. That's why we taught it for so long. 

Rick Green [00:26:15] All right, everybody, we're out of time for today. We will get the conclusion of week two, episode two of Rebuilding Liberty called Restoring Religious Liberty. We'll get that tomorrow. All of it will be available at our website, wallbuilders.show. And then of course, if you want to get the entire course, the videos, everything and the workbooks and thumb drives and all that will be coming soon. But right now, if just want to the videos you can get those in our dashboard as a coach and that's free. So go sign up as a host or coach at PatriotAcademy.com. Thanks for listening today, folks. You've been listening to The WallBuilder Show.