Intro [00:00:03] The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. In war, there is no substitute for victory. Let us never negotiate out of fear. We stand undivided, forever united. Fighting hand in hand for the liberty we burn. For glory and honor, for our sons and daughters. 

Rick Green [00:00:40] You've found your way to the intersection of faith and politics. WallBuilders Live with David Barton and Rick Green also found online at wallbuilderslive.com and wallbuilder.com and also on Facebook. You can follow us there as well and comment on the shows as you get a chance to listen to them. In fact, you might have a show you'd like us to cover, a topic or an interview. You can email that to us at radio@wallbuilders.com and we also encourage you to let your local station know if you'd like to hear us locally and we're not on a station there close to you. If you're not familiar with which station we're on close to you, then go check it out at wallbuilderslive.com. Here we go to Building on the American Heritage series with David Barton. Christian involvement in government and in civil government, is that appropriate? Should we as Christians be involved in government and should we take our Christian values into government? 

David Barton [00:01:22] The answer of is it appropriate, better question is, is it biblical? And the answer is yes, it is biblical. You look at all of those in the Bible who are involved in the civil arena. What you have is Hebrews 11 is the Faith Hall of Fame, all the heroes of our faith. Well, everybody listed from verses 22 through 34 was involved in civil government. Now why would God put them in as heroes and hold them up to us and say, hey, you can be like these guys if he thought we shouldn't be involved in the civil area. 

Rick Green [00:01:48] Wait, wait, politicians in the Faith Hall of Fame here? 

David Barton [00:01:50] It gets worse than that in the Bible. If I go to Romans 13, twice in verse 4 and once in verse 6, God says those that are in civil government are, quote, ministers of God. That's the same term minister that you have for a church. 

Rick Green [00:02:05] So that means government is a mission feild just like anything else? 

David Barton [00:02:07] See, God doesn't make the distinction between secular and spiritual that we do. I mean, can you imagine being at the Great Weather on Judgment and everybody come before and the books are open, you get the Lamb's Book of Life and the works and everybody's getting judged and here comes a guy and God says, oh, let this guy off. He's a politician. My word didn't apply. No, everybody's going to be judged by his standards. The Bible applies to every aspect of life. God does not make that artificial distinction of this is secular, this is spiritual. He wants everything to be under the principles that he's given us because it's for our best good. I mean he tells us, everything I tell you is to make you successful, to make you prosperous. Deuteronomy 6:24, Joshua 1:8, all those things are for our benefit. Take what happens in Luke 19, where Jesus tells the story of how he gets the servants together and he gives to each one of them a mina, that trust. And one guy took the mina, didn't do anything with it. One guy took a mina and turned it into five. One guy to the mina and turn it into ten. And as we know, it says, well done, good and faithful servant. I don't know why, but we stop it right there. But that's not what he said. He said to the first guy, hey, you took the one turn into five, well done good and fateful servant. I'm going to make you a ruler over five cities. And the other guy says, hey, you took one turn into ten. I'm going to make you a ruler over ten cities. Well, wait a minute, I thought you were rewarding me. You put me in government? I'm gonna be a ruler of cities? That's the way God views it. How come we don't see that as a reward? He sees that as reward. He's dead serious about this. You've done so well. I'm put you in the civil arena. I'm making you a rule over five cities or ten cities, make you governor or state rep or whatever it is. That's biblical and we knew that. 

Rick Green [00:03:27] It seems like the perception today though from the Christian community is if you're in politics you can't be a good Christian. You can't good and holy if you are in that arena or even business in some other areas. 

David Barton [00:03:39] But you hit it. that's the perception. That's not the biblical perception. As a matter of fact, here's a bunch of historical sermons. Here's a sermon from 1799, one of the leading theologians of the day, Jeremiah Morse, and his sermon on citizens, the duties of citizens in America. Here's one from 1825. The duties of an American citizen is delivered on the day of public fasting. Oh, that's even worse. Government declared a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer? Yeah. See, we didn't think there was a secular spiritual arena. God's principles applied to all. Here's the sermon from 1864. On the relation of the citizen to the government. Every generation before this one thought it was fine to be involved. And what's happened is we've let the secular world say, hey, you spiritual people shouldn't get involved in ours. This is ours. Who said it was theirs? When did they get to take it over? When did we get told we couldn't be involved? We got the same rights of the citizens than anybody else does. We don't lose our rights for being a Christian. But somehow we've left the secular people tell us what we can and can't do and what we have to thank and what can't thank. 

Rick Green [00:04:31] What's the right response to that now? You seem to see more and more pastors speaking out on this issue and even encouraging young people if God's called you in that arena to go. 

Rick Green [00:04:38] That's right. 

David Barton [00:04:38] Well, we should be doing it. 

David Barton [00:04:39] Oh, you bet. We've got to get involved. I mean, the Bible says the earth is the Lord and the fullness thereof. Everything except politics. It doesn't say that. 

Rick Green [00:04:46] No exceptions. 

David Barton [00:04:46] It's his. Everything is his. And what we do by pulling ourselves out of the civil arena, I mean one thing for sure, Jesus said, hey, you're salt. You're the thing that preserves this. Well, guess what? If we pull ourselves out the civil arenas, we've pulled the preservative out. It's going to get rotten real quick. I wonder why business is so corrupt now. We've all these guys on Wall Street and Bernie Madoff's going into jail. It's because we've got all the Christian guys out of business and they took their values with them and now the un-Christian guy. It's just simple. We've got to be involved in every single aspect of life and living. 

Rick Green [00:05:16] Okay, David, how about some questions on Christian involvement in politics? Yeah, let's do it. 

Speaker [00:05:19] I want to be an informed citizen, but I also want to know that my information is reliable. Where can I go for information that I can trust? 

Rick Green [00:05:26] Sounds like somebody that wants to go vote, wants to maybe even volunteer and help candidates or contribute to candidates. But how do I find out who the good folks are and get good information? 

David Barton [00:05:34] There are several ways of doing that. One is one of the things that we've done over the years is created a website that is known as ChristianVoterGuide.com or JudeoChristianVoterguide.com and what we do is we collect what would be called the pro-family voters guides of where candidates stand on biblical issues. So federal candidates, a lot of state candidates, but governors and representatives and senators and presidents. So they go to that voting guide and they can get that. That's one way to do it. 

Rick Green [00:05:59] And this is the one that's got the map on it, so I can actually click on my state and it'll pull and it will pull up all the ones from my particular... 

David Barton [00:06:01] That's right. That's right. And what you'll find is that a lot of states will have some type of voter guide that monitors where people are. For example, National Right to Life, that's a national group, but there's state right to life groups and they will monitor where an individual is on the life issue. And by the way, let me just do a little commercial here for a minute on the issue of life. You go back to the founding fathers when they told us in the declaration that among other rights were three, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Those are inalienable rights, which means they're God-given rights. Pursuit of happiness, they defined as the ability to pursue and to acquire and own and enjoy your own property. So what they're saying is, look, God-given rights that you have, the right to life, the right liberty, the rights to property, and they said there are others, but these are the three we're listening to the declaration. They came back 11 years later and listed a bunch of others. But it's interesting that Sam Adams and others looked at that and said, no, that's a priority. Life is first, then liberty, then property. But life is at the beginning. He said first is a right to live. And in this culture today, we say, well, wouldn't it have been cool if they'd been talking about the abortion issue back then? And I don't know why we think that they weren't, yeah, because they were, I mean, back in the 1770s, Thomas Jefferson was passing anti-abortion laws. As long as there had been people who were pregnant, there were people who didn't want to be pregnant. So abortion was an issue back, then. It's actually written about by James Wilson, one of the founding fathers who signed the declaration and the Constitution, who started the first law school in America, who was an original Supreme Court justice. He wrote about that abortion issue. And in talking about that... He said, in the contemplations of law, life, from its commencement to its close, is protected by the common law. He said in the contemplations of the law, as soon as it's known that there's life in the womb, it's protected by common law." 

Rick Green [00:07:37] So if they'd believe that, that when they said the purpose of government was to protect life, they had to be thinking, even in the cases of abortion, you need to protect lives. 

David Barton [00:07:44] John Witherspoon made a great point. He said, the difference between America and Europe on the abortion issue is, over there in Europe, they think that parents create life, so they allow parents to take life, because they created it. Here in America, we know that parents didn't create that life. God created that life, we don't allow parents take life. He said only over that secular thing do you think that, well, it's my child, I created it, and I don't want it to be born, so I'll take it out. He said, you can't do that in America. In America, we recognize that God creates life. Parents were involved, but God created that life, and therefore you cannot take that life. So not even the parents can take that. Not even the parent. And that's John Witherspoon. John Witherpoon, signer of the Declaration, president of Princeton University, said this is the big difference between America and Europe, and that's an abortion issue. So when you look at the abortion issue, what you'll find, and the reason the founding fathers put that at the top of the list is, if a candidate will not protect the first of your inalienable rights, the most important, you're not going to protect the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth. And that's why you'll find, if you can find where a candidate stands on the life issue, if you could find on that issue, and all the years I've been involved in politics, deal with politics, deal with thousands of candidates and elected officials and congressmen, governors and presidents, if I can find out where someone is on the live issue, the abortion issue, with 90% certainty, I can tell you where they are on every other, I can you where they'll be on taxing and spending, I can where they'll be on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, I can show you where they'll on the START Treaty. I can tell you where they're going to be on bailouts, I can where they're going to on any other issue. 

Rick Green [00:09:07] Even though you haven't looked at their voting record yet on that stuff. 

David Barton [00:09:09] If you know if they're pro-life or not, it'll indicate. What I know from their voting record is if they do not protect life, which is the first of the inalienable rights, they won't protect the First Amendment right to worship God according to the dictates of conscience. They're going to be against life, they're also going to say, oh we don't need kids mentioning God at a graduation, we need a separation church and state, we don't want anybody talking about God publicly, they'll be wrong on the First Amendment rights. 

Rick Green [00:09:31] Because if they're not willing to defend that most importantly, why would they defend the others? 

Rick Green [00:09:35] If they're wrong on the life issue, they'll be wrong on the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment, the right to keep them by arms, the founding fathers call that the biblical right of self-defense. Strange thing, people that are pro-abortion are anti-defend yourself. If they are wrong on the life issue they'll be wrong with the Third Amendment, which is the sanctity of the home. They'll get marriage wrong. It's a strange thing that those that are pro-abortion are also, we want a new version, new arrangement of marriage. If they're wrong on the life issue, they'll be wrong on the Fifth Amendment issue of protecting private property of eminent domain and other things. If they are wrong on the life issues, you'll find that they vote wrong on every other inalienable right. Now, there is a movement in America that says we don't care about those, those are all social issues. All we care about are economic issues. And so there's movements out there that say we don't care about abortion or marriage or anything, we just want them to stop spending, we don't want a mortgage in our children's future... okay, if that's your issue, then for the federal level, there are groups that do nothing but monitor economic votes. Groups like the National Tax Payers, all they do is monitor. So you can look up your 

Rick Green [00:10:30] monitor, meaning they're watching those votes and they're listing how each member votes on all these economic... 

David Barton [00:10:34] On economic issues and there's hundreds of votes. And so what they do is they rank every, there's 435 members in the House, there's 100 members in the Senate, they will rank every one of those representative senators on the best economic people. So the number one economic guy in the House who protects money the most, who spends it the least, all the way down through those who will take every bit of money they can, spend it and go in debt, they rank them all. It's a strange thing if I will take their voting record on the life issue and bump it up against their economic vote, it's almost exactly the same. 

Rick Green [00:11:04] If they were good on the money issues, it turns out. 

David Barton [00:11:06] They were good on the life issues. 

Rick Green [00:11:07] Yeah, that one comes first. That's the philosophy. 

David Barton [00:11:10] It's interesting. You're 100% right to life, you're nearly always 100% on economic issues. You're 76% right to life. You're about 76% on economic issue. 

Rick Green [00:11:18] You're zero on right to life, you're about zero. So you rarely, if ever, find somebody that's 100% pro-life and terrible on economic issues or somebody that's great on economic issue but terrible on the life. See, it makes sense. 

David Barton [00:11:26] It makes a lot of sense because if they won't protect your life, they sure won't protect your money. Your money is a lot lower than your life is and if they won't protect life, they won't t protect money. So it turns out that from my standpoint, even though there's those voting records out there on all these different issues, I go to the life issue first because if I care about my money, I want somebody who understands that you 

Rick Green [00:11:45] That was always the reason I would ask like a commissioner candidate or something like that was I thought, well this is the farm team, they may be in the legislature. That's right. But you giving me a whole added reason, it also will affect how they're spending my county dollars, how they are spending my school board dollars. Exactly right. 

David Barton [00:11:57] So that is an issue. Now, you go to voters guides like christianvoterguide.com and it's linked to hundreds and hundreds of these pro-family biblical issue voting guides from across the country and that's a good way to know where candidates stand. But the other thing is every single candidate like in federal office or state office has voting records. You can go to state archives, you can go in the case of federal, the Library of Congress monitors every vote and you can go to thomas.loc.gov and you can pull up their votes on any issue. You can pull their votes on environment or anything else you want. They're all there. So because of what we have with accessibility through internet type stuff today, real easy to know where everybody is. 

Rick Green [00:12:34] Okay, back to the audience. Let's get another question on Christian's involvement in civic government. 

Speaker [00:12:37] I want to believe that Christians like me can make a difference at the polls, but there are times when my vote feels insignificant. Is there any correlation between the amount of Christian participation and the outcome of any election? 

Rick Green [00:12:48] This one hits a little close to home for me, David. I mean, my first election, I lost by 20 votes out of 30,000, and then won by 36. So clearly I've experienced that every vote really does matter, but I think people sometimes feel like, I'm just one vote. How can I make a difference in this big picture? And that is part of the problem we have. 

David Barton [00:13:02] With having a nation of more than 300 million folks, we say, golly, I'm just one person. But you know, what happens is the feeling that you have is being just one percent, tens of millions feel the same thing. And so we say I'm this one, what can I do? Well, yeah, there's only one raindrop among millions in a cloud, but all those millions put together make a flood. And so what happens is we get ourselves talked out individually, saying I'm I'm one, I don't feel significant. You may not feel significant, but there's a ton of other Americans that feel the way you do, and if all of them will go vote, it makes a huge, massive difference. Now, is there a correlation between Christians getting involved, even when we feel insignificant, and what happens in the election? The answer is yes. This is something we've been tracking for a number of years. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to grab my computer, sit it up here, I'm just gonna go through some stats. 

Rick Green [00:13:42] These are, for instance, voting stats, how often do you show up or how many show up? 

David Barton [00:13:47] Voting stats. If Christians show up, and if they carry their values with them, and what the result, and these are all federal elections. I'mma take you back to 1992 to 1996. In that period of time, there was a 17% decrease in the number of Christians who voted in an election. The next four years, between 96 and 2000, there's an additional decrease of 23%. So eight years in a row, we're going downhill. Eight years in row, we have dropped four election cycles. Eight years, we've dropped 40% of Christian voter turnout. The problem is Proverbs 29:2, when the righteous rule, the people rejoice. Well, if the righteous don't elect the righteous, they won't get there. I mean, it's not gonna be the pro-abortion people that elect pro-life people to office. You gotta have people with the same values. So when there's a 40% drop in Christian voter turnout, it's 40% less likely you're gonna get a God-fearing person office who holds those biblical values. So after having seen that plunge in those four election cycles, nearly 10% in election cycle, a lot of effort went into the 2002 election to get Christian voter turn out back up. And with all this effort that was being put in into voting, it did result in an uptick of voting. And the reason that it's significant is in that 2000 election, there are what are called evangelical voters, born-again voters, Christian voters. An evangelical voter is someone who says, I go to church at least once a week. I pray, I read the Bible at least one a week, I have a life-changing experience with Jesus. That's an evangelical. So it's a serious- 

Rick Green [00:15:04] It's not all Christians, not everybody in church is a specific- Those are the ones that are considered to be very active in their faith.  

Rick Green [00:15:14] Have you ever wanted to learn more about the United States Constitution, but just felt like, man, the classes are boring, or it's just that old language from 200 years ago, or I don't know where to start? People wanna know, but it gets frustrating because you don't where to look for truth about the Constitution either. Well, we've got a special program for you available now called Constitution Alive with David Barton and Rick Green. And it's actually a teaching done on the Constitution at Independence Hall in the very room where the Constitution was framed. We take you both to Philadelphia, to the Cradle of Liberty in Independence Hall, and to the Wall Builders Library, where David Barton brings the history to life to teach the original intent of our founding fathers. We call it the Quick Start Guide to the Constitution because in just a few hours through these videos, you will learn the Citizen's Guide to America's Constitution. You'll learn what you need to do. To help save our Constitutional Republic. It's fun, it's entertaining, and it's gonna inspire you to do your part to preserve freedom for future generations. It's called Constitution Alive with David Barton and Rick Green. You can find out more information on our website now at wallbuilders.com. 

David Barton [00:16:25] Well, there's 60 million in America in the 2000 election, but only 15 million voted. 

Rick Green [00:16:30] One out of four. 

David Barton [00:16:30] One out of four. Only 25% of Bible-believing active Christians voted. 

Rick Green [00:16:34] That means if I'm sitting in church on Sunday morning and I voted, there's at least three. Three sitting beside you that did not vote. They could have. 

David Barton [00:16:40] And see, of the 60 million, 24 million were not even registered to vote. So even though Jesus says, go be salt, go light, 40% of evangelicals said, not me, man. I refuse to be salt and light. Totally checked out of the process. That by itself is enough to say, you know, if evangelicals had showed up, there wouldn't even be a culture war in America today. I mean, we're in the culture war. It's kind of tied, we are even, but we've only had one-fourth of the team on the field is what it amounts to. 

Rick Green [00:17:03] Because it's not just who you're electing, it's the policy that results from that, right? And that's what you mean, you'd win all those cultural issues because you got good people in. 

David Barton [00:17:09] And so in 2002, that's why there was such an effort. And so with all the effort that went in 2002 was an uptick of 2% Christian voter turnout. 

Rick Green [00:17:16] That doesn't sound like a big increase, 2%. 

David Barton [00:17:18] But it is big because you've been losing 10% in election for four straight elections. You've regained 10%, you're up two on top of that. That's a 12% trend swing. 

Rick Green [00:17:25] So you've turned it around. You can measure that. 

David Barton [00:17:27] Now, the 12% trends swing, we can measure by looking at what's called exit polling. Exit polling says, you voted. Tell me why you voted? What we found was in the 2002 election. 41% of people who voted said, I voted the way I did because of abortion. Abortion is what drove my vote. Now significantly within that group, 23% said, I vote straight pro-life and 16% said well, I voted straight pro abortion. Well, that's a 7% advantage if you're pro-live. The pro-lifers now number the pro-abortion folks. So a 7%, advantage that'll make a difference in a lot of elections where you have a pro-like person running as a pro abortionist. 

Rick Green [00:17:59] And make sure you understand what you're saying. So 41% of them said abortion was what drove my vote. And of those people, far more of them said I'm going to vote for pro-life reasons. And then there was a... 

David Barton [00:18:10] I voted for this person because they're a pro-life person versus I voted this person because they were a pro abortion person. Which gave an advantage to candidates that were pro-live. That's right, gave a 7% advantage. Now, the results of that was seen, for example, at the federal level. Congress of the United States, the freshman class of 2002 contained 54 freshmen. That's a fairly large freshman class. 54 freshmen, of the 54, 36 of them were pro life, which is a 67% pro-lifed class. 

Rick Green [00:18:34] So that advantage in the voting hours resulted in an advantage in... 

David Barton [00:18:37] I have an elevated number of people who voted and said, I think abortion is an important issue, got people elected to Congress who said, we want to protect life. Two thirds of those elected to congress in the house that year said, we're here to protect lives. In the Senate that year, we elected 10 freshmen US senators. Eight out of the 10 were pro-life, pro-faith, pro-family. Even better. Now we're, what is it, 80%? The Senate's where we need the most help. 80%, we got an 80% class. Now that's good, that's 2002. Then we come to 2004. 2004, we actually had a 93% increase in Christian voter turnout. We had been down at 15 million evangelicals and it came up to 29.8 million. So almost double, still less than half, but almost double. And the result of that was exit polling. You look at it again, 42% said I voted the way I did because of abortion. But instead of having a seven point advantage in favor of pro-life people, it was actually up to having a 12 point advantage in favor. So now it's easier to elect a pro-lifed people because more pro-live people went to vote. The result of was the freshmen class of 2004, which in that class had 40. Freshman house members and two thirds were pro-live, pro-faith, pro-family. In the Senate that year, you had nine US senators and seven of the nine were pro live, pro- faith, pro family. Now, let me put that together. In two elections, we have elected 94 members of the House of Representatives and two-thirds of them are pro-life, pro-faith, or family. In the senate, we've elected 19 US senators in two elections and 15 of the 19, or 79% are pro life. That's good stuff. But you elect them, you put them there because you want policies. They want- 

Rick Green [00:20:03] You want the victories at the policy level. So we win voted, we got good people elected. What happened after that? 

David Barton [00:20:08] The problem we have is that what has happened for a number of years is we have not passed any pro-life laws. I mean, since Roe v Wade, Congress has not done a single thing to restrict the jurisdiction. Now they have 19 measures where they restrict the funding of abortion, the Hyde Amendment says you can't use federal funds for abortions. And we got the Weldon-Dickey policy and the Kemp cast and all these things about you. 

Rick Green [00:20:26] So we didn't stop abortion, but we had some victories where-. 

David Barton [00:20:28] We just said we're not gonna spend our money to do it. Well, this new class comes in 2002, 2004, they're highly pro-life because the voters were highly pro life. And they didn't pass the first law to restrict the jurisdiction abortion, they passed the first four laws to restrict jurisdiction abortion. 

Rick Green [00:20:42] So we'd gone 30 years with no restrictions. 

David Barton [00:20:44] And now we get, and for instance, Infant Born Alive Protection Act, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, the Fetal Farming Ban, four major laws. And by the way, statistics show that as a result of those laws, abortion went down in America 24%. So guess what? We showed up, we cared our values, we elected people who had our values. They get in office, they legislated with those values, it made a difference in politics. Absolutely. Now that's 2004. Then we go to 2006. In 2006, there's a 30% drop in Christian voter turnout. 

Rick Green [00:21:12] We've been doing better for two election cycles. We've going up. 

David Barton [00:21:14] And now we're down, 30% drop. We went from that 28.9 million down to 20.5 million evangelical voters in federal elections. And so at that point, having a drop, we elected, that year the freshman class of the house was 54 members of Congress. Only 17 were pro-life. That's a 31% pro-live class. Guess what? Christians didn't show up, they didn't carry their values, and now we have two thirds of the freshman classes pro-abortion, anti-marriage, anti-religious, we're going backwards. In the Senate that year, we had 10 freshman senators. Only one of the 10 was pro-life, pro-faith, pro family. We went from 80% freshman class to 10%. 

Rick Green [00:21:51] To a 10%. 

David Barton [00:21:51] Because we dropped, that 30% drop in Christian voter turnout. And by the way, having 10 freshman Senators and only one thought marriage should be between a man and a woman, the statistics nationally at that point were 72% of the nation believed marriage should be between a men and a women. Wait a minute, that means seven out of 10 senators should have been for a marriage. Should have been, yeah. Yeah, but see, this is what people have to learn. Congress never reflects the values of the people. It only reflects the values of those who voted in the last election. 

Rick Green [00:22:14] So even though you've got a nation this big, the Congress is not going to reflect the values of all those people. It's only that part that shows up. It's the only part that showed up voted. And we're not part of that. 

David Barton [00:22:23] and we didn't show up to vote. Now, when you get to 2008, we have an upturn in Christian voter turnout again. 66% showed up, 66% increase in 2008. And so at that point we've gone up to 34.1 million, which is a big number. But the problem was exit polling. That year, all these Christians showed up and they did not carry their values with them. Only 6% thought that abortion was an issue, either for or against. Only 1% thought that marriage was an issue. Where it was, what, 41% in the start of the year? 42%. Now we're down to 6%. And so Christians showed up, but they didn't carry their values. The result in 2008 was we elected 57 freshmen to Congress. 

Rick Green [00:22:59] I gotta ask you, when you say they didn't carry their values, what do you mean? That they're voting on- 

David Barton [00:23:02] They went voting on all the, we don't care what abortion is. We gotta save the economy. We don't cared abortion is, we gotta fix foreign affairs. We don't care, they didn't care about the value issues they carried about all these other issues and caring about the other issues, they elected people to office who didn't hold their values. And so out of the 57 freshmen that we sent to Congress in 2008, only 23 were pro-life. That's 40%. Had been more Christians show up, the more pro-live people you get. Now we had Christians show-up highest that it had been and we're down below. 50% were 40%. So Christians were showing up but they were voting just like non-Christians. That's right, they were not, there's no Christian reflection in their vote. In the Senate that year, we elected in 2008, elected 14 freshmen senators. Out of the 14 freshmen Senators, only two were pro-life. It's 14%. So we didn't care about, we showed up, but we didn't carry biblical values with us when we went to vote. We carried our pocket book, but we did'n carry biblical value. Now, having said that, let's go to the 2010 election because in the 2010 elections, you actually have the highest- recorded Christian voter turnout in recent years. And you also have a huge advantage in carrying their values. For example, 2008, only 6% said abortion's issue. 2010, you had 30% who said it was the driving issue. Not just an issue, but the driving issues. And of that, you had 22% said, we vote pro-life only. 8% said well we vote pro-abortion only. Now we got a 14-point advantage. Biggest advantage we've seen. That's gonna elect a lot of people to office. That's the biggest one we've ever seen. The high Christian voter turnout. So the freshman class of 2010, pretty significant. Instead of having 54, 56, 58 freshmen as we've been having in previous years, the freshman classes of 2010 is 97 freshmen. Almost twice the size. 81 of them are pro-life. 

Rick Green [00:24:45] That is the highest percentage we've seen as well. 

David Barton [00:24:47] 84% pro-live Congress. Pro-life, pro-marriage, pro family. Highest turnout Christian voters. They carry biblical values with them. This is the most pro-life. As a result of 2010, that produced the most pro-live Congress since Roe v. Wade. And you look at the Senate, there were 16 freshmen senators elected in 2010. 13 of the 16 were pro-lifed, pro-faith. We're back to 81% again. You know, it makes a huge difference. 

Rick Green [00:25:15] So it takes both, though. You gotta show up. You gotta bring your values with you. If Christians will show up and they'll vote their values, then you get elected. 

David Barton [00:25:22] Even if they feel like they're the only one on the ship, even if they felt like it's a Titanic and I'm standing alone, you'll find out you're not alone. There's millions of people who have that same feeling of isolation that you do. If you just do what's right. If you go vote and carry your values with you and vote for people. Again, we talked about life is the first issue. If you get that one right, all this other stuff's gonna work. You get the life issue right. The economics is gonna work, see the scripture says righteousness exalts a nation, not economics exalts the nation. If you wanna be exalted, you can have righteous policies. That's biblical issues. It's not economic issues. When we vote our pocketbook above righteousness, we lose every time. We'll lose economics and we'll lose righteousness. So it's a great question. Is there a correlation between Christian voting and the stats? Yes, there absolutely is. And if we'll just go do that. If we'll carry, vote as a Christian, carry our biblical values with us, protect life and protect marriage and all those things. Man, it makes a huge difference. And as we saw in 2002, 2004, you start getting the laws passed that look like the values of the country. 

Rick Green [00:26:19] So the system works. We just have to work the system. Do the right thing and we'll get the good result. That's exactly right. That's exact right. Thanks for listening today, folks. Many of you have the DVD set of the American Heritage Series. You can get the sequel, which is building on the American heritage series. A lot of new material, some fantastic programs you wanna have in your library. You can it at our website today at wallbuilders.com.