The following is a pre-recorded program.
So, is it a good thing that the state of Louisiana is demanding that every public classroom in the state has a copy of the Ten Commandments hung on the wall? It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on the line of fire. And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Hey friends, Michael Brown.
Welcome to The Line of Fire. We're going to have a very important discussion today with my long-time friend and colleague, Christian attorney, Joe Enfranco. But, I want to put a timestamp on this. We are recording this early Thursday afternoon on June 27th. So, there may be some very major Supreme Court decisions that drop tomorrow, Friday. But, when you are hearing this, it will be on Monday, July 1st. So, we're recording this now. It's before the presidential debate.
So, if you're wondering why we're not commenting on the debate or why we're not commenting on some major decisions that the court may drop tomorrow, it's because they haven't happened yet from our perspective. We are here, friends, to infuse you, as always, with faith and truth and courage to help you stand strong on the frontlines. I encourage every one of you, if you're not getting our monthly frontline newsletter, it's beautifully produced, it's digital, it's free, it's inspirational, it's informational, it's importational.
Go to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org, and click subscribe. Joe and Franco and I have known each other for decades, the better part of 40 years, when we met on Long Island when I was teaching at Christ for the Nations Institute. He was part of a Christian firm there, Christian attorney firm on Long Island, and then was called by the Lord to the Phoenix, Arizona area and was a senior attorney for years with the Alliance Defending Freedom, and years ahead would tell me what was coming and where things were going to go and what votes would be critical.
And there's so much that's going on, so many major decisions. I asked Joe if he'd come on the air with us. So, Joe, thanks for joining us on The Line of Fire.
It's a pleasure to be with you, Mike. So how many years did you serve the ADF? Oh, it was about 18 years, and my main role there, in addition to the litigation, was working with what we called the Allied Attorney Network. We had a network of attorneys in private practice, over 3,000 when I left, and I was sort of, for lack of a better description, a mentor or a coach. Because if you don't do these cases, First Amendment, religious liberty cases, you don't know the area. If you asked me to do a real estate closing, I'd be at C. But I can comment on a complex First Amendment case.
It's just what you do. And so ADF used that network to promote the litigation more broadly. A number of the cases got to the Supreme Court. The Colorado Baker case, which everyone seems to know, started with a local allied attorney I worked with through the early stages of the case, for example, and there are many cases like that. So it was a great run.
I loved being there. So just folks that may not be familiar with the ADF, Bill Bright and other Christian leaders founded it years back, it had this network of attorneys across the country, ultimately thousands of them, who would provide a certain amount of hours for free for Christian service. So let's say that you were a local baker and a transgender individual came in and wanted you to bake a cake, celebrating their transition surgery, and you politely declined and they take you to court, then an ADF attorney would come alongside Gratis and begin to work on this, and ultimately it could move its way up the chain and some went into the Supreme Court.
So this is a very powerful movement, not the only organization doing this, but a very powerful movement has brought about some positive change in America, hasn't it? Yeah, I mean, ADF has a large number of wins at the Supreme Court. And just to be clear, ADF has its own staff of attorneys, the largest in the world. We have an international presence as well.
We have an office in India. The Allied Attorney Network is kind of an extension of ADF's own litigation team. And there's, you know, we've been called by our opponents a powerhouse, the most powerful presence.
And I speak as if I'm still there, you know, old habits die hard. But yeah, I mean, ADF has really become kind of the leader nationally on these cases. And people who follow these stories, generally more conservative new sites will frequently see, you know, Alliance Defending Freedom mentioned. You know, it's interesting, when God first began to burden me about gay activism, starting on 2004, 2005, one of the first books I read was written by lead ADF attorneys called The Homosexual Agenda. And you and I got talking about how neither of us saw this coming or saw what our role would be.
But you were telling me almost 20 years ago that hardly a week goes by where there's not a case that one of your attorneys is involved in. Right. Right.
Yeah. You know, and the interesting thing is, you know, we could see it all along. You know, this is not prophetic insight. This is the writings of the thinkers, the lead thinkers, academicians, you know, kind of broadly speaking, who have a different worldview. For example, they were talking about same sex marriage well before 2015. And interestingly, their reasoning wasn't, oh, we really want to get married. They often criticize that we've talked about this, this is patriarchal, outdated, Christian vestige and all that. But they believed that the issue was acceptance. And for them, when they gained marriage, they would therefore have societal acceptance.
And so going way back, you know, in the 80s and the 90s, there were plans for this. And transgenderism was part of it. And the things we tend to hear something and say, oh, it could never get that bad. But once everything slides further down the scale, what was previously unthinkable is a little bit closer. If, you know, 30 years ago, I told you that biologically male athletes would be racing against females and breaking every female record, you'd have laughed and said never. You know, that what was unthinkable at one time then becomes normative.
And ADF tries to see some of those things, you know, some of those things and get ahead of some of those trends. I remember it was 2009. I was just checking my calendar here.
You were part of some summer classes that we had at Fire School of Ministry dealing with the culture wars. And you got up and told our people that there was going to be a case that was going to go to the Supreme Court about redefining same sex quote marriage or redefining marriage, legalizing same sex quote marriage, that it was going to go to the Supreme Court, that it was going to be a five to four vote and that the likely deciding vote was Anthony Kennedy. This was six years in advance. And to you, like you said, it wasn't so much being prophetic as just reading what was there in front of you. Right.
That's right. And in fact, when Jack Phillips, the baker, went to the Supreme Court, we thought it was likely going to be a five four win and that Kennedy was going to be on our side because you understand how a justice thinks. And we knew that Kennedy kind of sticks up for the victim, the little person, that's his thinking. And Jack Phillips, you know, you had the individual with a conscience concern being persecuted by the state and you had the state showing overt hostility to religion and you had these ridiculous positions taken like, oh, we'd never make a gay baker bake a cake for, you know, the Westboro Baptist Church.
We'd never we'd never require a black baker, an African-American baker to make a cake for the KKK or a Jewish baker to make them, you know, a cake celebrating the Nazi event. We went we just kind of set it up that way because we knew that was their thinking. The only one who would ever be compelled to speak a message they didn't believe in was a Christian on the subject of sexual ethics. And we knew that Kennedy would react a certain way. So again, this is not prophetic so much as it is understanding the court, the arguments that appeal to particular justices. And the other side candidly does the same thing.
Yeah. And that's obviously that's what attorneys are going to do and what they do well for better or for worse. So, Joe, in your view, overall, having been on the front line so many years now, just being a consulting, being an elder, being a helper in so many ways in the church and counseling leaders and how to handle these complex issues, aside from your own spiritual encouragement in the Lord, the direction of cases overall Supreme Court down, the direction of cases overall in the last 10 or 20 years, does that encourage you or discourage you? Last 20 years, it encourages me.
It's interesting. The debate usually goes back to 1947 and 1948 because those are the first times you have cases ever seen in McCollum where the word separation of church and state appear in a decision. Everybody now takes for granted the mantra of separation of church and state. If you polled 100 ordinary non-attorney citizens, probably 95 of them would think it's in the Constitution.
Well, it's not. As you well know, it came from a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to a Danbury Baptist Church after he was elected. And he used that basically telling them they were going to be protected, that that wall protected faith from government intrusion. Well, that appears for the first time really in cases in 47, 48 applied not to protecting churches, but getting religious expression out of the government sphere. And then what happens is during the 50s and the 60s and the 70s, that trend picks up.
You find some of that happening in the 80s. Christian attorneys really get kind of on their game finally in the 80s and in the 90s because they realize what's happening. Dr. Dobson, one of the founders of ADF, used to say, Christians lost not because they had better lawyers on the other side. We lost because we didn't even show up to the fight.
We scarcely knew there was a fight. And so you have a series of cases in 62, Supreme Court strikes down prayer in public schools, 92, the five-four vote, they struck down graduation prayer. 63, Bible reading in school was unconstitutional. You know, 68, a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution was struck down. But then in 1987, you know, a state said, well, okay, if you teach evolution, you can teach creation with it.
That gets struck down. No, evolution is science. Creation is theology.
You can't teach it. So you had a long string of cases based on this concept of separation of church and state coming from something called the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment. And the Establishment Clause is simply this, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
That's it. The goal of it, anybody who knows anything about history, was that we didn't want a church of England or a national church as existed in other European states. The idea here was we're not going to have a national church. We have Puritans here. We have Quakers in Pennsylvania. We have a church in Puritans here. We have Quakers in Pennsylvania, Catholics in Maryland. We do not want a federal established church, and Congress is not allowed to do that. From that little phrase being imported, you know, into jurisprudence more deeply, all this separation of church and state stuff has come.
Now the part that's better understood, there's been a counter push in a lot of victories. All right, got to jump in here, friends. We've got a break coming up, an important announcement from our friends at TriVita. When we come back, here's where we dive in with Christian attorney, Joel Franklin.
Separation of church and state, what about the Ten Commandments in Louisiana? It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Shout out, as always, to our friends at TriVita, whose wellness products literally come from around the world.
You know, the intensity of my schedule, healthy eating is number one, exercise is super important, but with the intensity of schedule and wanting to make the most out of my life and run my race the best, TriVita supplements are great help as well. So you can check them out for yourself. Remember, 100% of your first order is donated to Line of Fire, 800-771-5584, the number to call. All right, if you're just tuning in, this broadcast with Christian attorney, longtime friend and colleague, Joanne Franco, was recorded on Thursday, June 27th. So any major Supreme Court decisions that were released later that day or on Friday, we're not commenting on today, but of course we will be commenting as relevant in the days ahead. So, Jo, major news out of Louisiana the last few weeks that the legislature there has decided that every classroom in the state must have the Ten Commandments posted there.
So every public classroom must have that. Some are thrilled. Some are saying, hey, it's just going back to our Christian roots. Others are saying absolute violation of separation of church and state. So before we get into specifics, like which version of the Ten Commandments, the Catholic versus Protestant, and those questions, before we get into any of that, your overall take in terms of good thing, bad thing, constitutional or not, give us a download.
Okay, a complex question. And I think in general, government recognizing religious heritage should be permitted. It's a good thing.
It's a proper thing. The complication happens when government prefers one religion to another. So just as a hypothetical, Mike, what if the state of Utah said, hey, every school in the state has to post something from the Book of Mormon, right?
I mean, it's a little more complex than we make it. And so one thing that we do agree on as a nation, I think it's important, is a government does not take sides. Government has to be neutral. A lot of the cases we won when I was at ADF and beyond have to do with government no longer being neutral.
They're stepping in. They're hostile to religion. They're treating Christian clubs less favorably. When I was back in New York, you know, and kind of we were overlapping there, I must have had 20 cases for Christian Bible clubs because schools didn't want them. You know, you can't meet, you can't have a room, you can't have funding.
And the courts kept not slapping the schools down. You can't do that. You have to be neutral. So overall, I would say this is a tough one. It's a tough one in a couple of respects. There's a Supreme Court decision exactly on point, Stone v. Graham from 1980. That said, illegal to post the Ten Commandments. So this case is a direct assault on Stone v. Graham, which was decided in a 5-4 vote.
You gotta love that, right? How clear is the Constitution when you have a 5-4 vote? And so I think what's behind the case is that the thinking might have been, and this is not based on any conversations.
I don't know. I'm not involved in the case. This is just my take on it. I think maybe you have legislators saying, hey, the court overruled Roe v. Wade. We think they got Stone v. Graham wrong. Let's ask them to overturn that as well. Having said that, while I hope the Ten Commandments wins, it's a more complicated case than maybe appears on the face of it, and it could go either way.
All right. So, Joe, you raised the question about what would happen, say, in Utah if the law was passed that you have to have excerpts from the Book of Mormon. And, you know, we could go to all kinds of extremes. Let's say you have a strong Muslim population in Dearborn, Michigan. Let's just say theoretically that the Muslim population grew and grew in Michigan.
I mean, it's a stretch. It grew to the point where they dominated the legislature, and they said, okay, we want to put the Quran or verses for the Quran in every classroom, et cetera, just to play out the scenario. Obviously, people would push back, well, America has roots as a Christian nation, and there's so much of the Ten Commandments in our imagery and our history, and the Bible is used as a textbook. So, what if instead of the legislature requiring it, the legislature said, hey, any school that wants to post them, you have the right to post it. Would that be a lot less dicey and perhaps more acceptable?
Yes, it would be a much easier case. When the country was founded and the First Amendment was passed, we were very distinctly, you know, a Judeo-Christian nation, very predominantly Christian. It was very accepting and tolerant of Jews, accepted atheism as part of the principles of governance that came from the Judeo-Christian worldview. You know, in 1952, you have a liberal Supreme Court justice, William O. Douglas, appointed by FDR, saying we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a supreme being. And when we guarantee the freedom to worship as one chooses, when the state allows religious instruction, we bring out the best of our traditions. It's close to a quote.
I might have paraphrased it a little bit there. We really had a Christian consensus. It was, in some respects, a civil Christian understanding. Some people have phrased it that way. You know, FDR led the nation in prayer during World War II.
Imagine that. And you had generally Catholics and Jews and all types of Protestants, denominational and otherwise agreeing. It's gotten more complex now, and there are larger subgroups.
We're still largely, very predominantly a Christian nation if you look at, you know, kind of the polling. But it does get more complex. Something allowing it would have certainly been an easier case to defend. The law, so you know, requires that it be posted.
It's got to be 11 by 14 with, you know, large enough print to read. And you're allowed to post with it, not require. You're permitted to under the law to post with it the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the Northwest Ordinance. So that's giving it, I think, an effort to give it a broader, you know, governance feels, documents that have to do with the founding of the nation. You know, the Declaration of Independence, of course, references God's, and God's and the law, you know, pardon me, the exact quote, is the escape from the United States. It's got to be an effort to give it a broader, you know, governance feels, documents that have to do with the founding of the nation. You know, the Declaration of Independence, of course, and God and the the law you know part of me at the the exact quote is escaping me you know well it certainly references a creator and all of that but implicitly recognizes God right so again this is going to be interesting to watch and and I just encourage believers to recognize that this is nuanced that that that for those that are super for it and and cheering it on just to recognize it is nuanced in terms of what is being required for every every classroom on the one hand compared to what kids have been indoctrinated with Joe you know there's the famous press conference where Governor DeSantis is reading some of the books in a children's library and and the news networks have to cut away because they can't allow that stuff to be aired even for an adult audience is inappropriate that's the whole point of it you know the outrageous degree of indoctrination for with various ideologies especially they'll be LGBTQ plus etc so you know on the one hand this is a clear pushback is going too far intentionally to try to provoke something to the Supreme Court is it is it shooting for the moon and it will settle for something less that'll be interesting to see so Joe just one minute overall do you think you could have a positive effect to have this on the walls that'll take more than a minute it's hard to say because if you have a kind of a ceremonial Christian Christianity observance you might be you might think you're doing more than you're actually doing God you don't you don't have individuals really coming to the ultimate questions about God and their salvation and their their requirement to live as God you know as our Creator wants you can almost get kind of a sense of false comfort but you you make an excellent you know point Mike and that is the lawsuit paper very interesting I've reviewed all of them they sound in parental rights and protecting children again seeing things there's a delicious irony here because when we bring our cases we talk about parental rights and it's interesting the same forces behind us have no problem with exposing kids to transgenderism every kind of your area pornography and all those things and then they would say well we're educated we know better all right you gotta you gotta jump over gotta jump in you gotta continue on the other side of the grave it's the line of fire with your host dr. Michael Brown get on the line of fire by calling eight six six three four truth here again is dr. Michael Brown welcome back to the line of fire Michael Brown with Christian attorney Joe and Franco longtime friend and colleague longtime senior attorney with the Alliance defending freedom we are recording this early afternoon Eastern time on June 27th which is Thursday I'm dating it for you because tomorrow our time few days behind us from when you're listening this there would be some major Supreme Court decisions dropping and then tonight is the Supreme Court excuse me the presidential debate by the time you're listening to this on Monday or thereafter on a podcast that's already happened so if you're wondering why aren't we talking about this and this because they haven't happened yet from our vantage point so we're talking about the Ten Commandments we're talking about Louisiana law now that states that they have to be posted in every classroom in the state so Joe the the argument would be those who have other goals they want to indoctrinate kids to understand maybe they have an inner trans identity or hey some kids are gay some kids are straight and you should understand that and some families have two mommies and some families have two daddies and you should understand that or you know American history we have to understand there's the colonizer and the colonized and the oppressor the oppressed and intersectionality and so on and so forth so they can do that because it's not religion you see once you come in with Ten Commandments or biblical morality that's religion so that's the difference they can indoctrinate all they want that's fine that's secular but we can't because that's religion so you've heard that endlessly how do we respond to that yeah and it's a rigged game you know I did many debates over the years against it was an atheist and I would say well if if my Christian principles cannot influence legislation or policy why can your atheistic principles do that and they would typically respond well because it's not religion well they you know that's what's kind of a logic you call it a tautology right you I I win because I win and you would point out well that's dishonest what's at the basis of this as a way of organizing existence the meaning of life our purpose for being here and atheism is a philosophical belief as much as theism broadly speaking so in debates we would kind of get into some of that stuff and all and yet that was how they tried to play the game early on the argument the legal arguments used to be you cannot prefer one sect over another you can't have one law for Catholics and another for Presbyterians you know and or any variation of that well at some point the ACLU tactic was to lump all Christian beliefs together and then say oh you cannot prefer Christianity to any other faith and then the last step in that process was to say oh you can't even prefer religion and God to non religion so by that standard anytime you invoke God or make any religious reference you lose automatically that was what they were trying to do and thankfully in the case law we we beat back that understanding but boy you make a really good point Mike in the law and I reviewed you know the papers pretty carefully the they're using our arguments it's it's fascinating they're talking about parental rights divisions you know they've got plaintiffs in here who say oh we're atheists oh we're Jewish oh we're Presbyterians and you know you're you're promoting a particular brand of Protestantism we're Catholic and and that's preference of one over another which we've always said shouldn't happen and they're saying as parents we don't want our kids exposed to things it's just interesting that they're concerned about protecting kids and parental rights in this case but when they are promoting you know transgenderism or all kinds of stuff they argue you know strenuously that parents should have no rights not only to opt out not even to be informed of when the teaching is happening yeah so kind of if it's their worldview parental rights are irrelevant because we know better and you you know dummies out there but oh if you're trying to have some kind of moral teaching here we can't have the kids you know exposed to that so interesting you can show them pornography but heaven forbid they see you know the name of God on the walls they walk into school that that's though that's kind of the worldview behind it putting aside the technical issues with the case yeah exactly and that's where we have to push back either parental rights matter or they don't matter either parents have a say over what their kids learn in school or they don't so coming back then one more issue on the Ten Commandments some say well why not have verses from the Sermon on the Mount and or you know gospel invitation or something like that and a general answer might be well this is part of Judeo-Christian foundation and everybody agrees on the Ten Commandments I mean even theoretically aside from the Sabbath being on the on the seventh day which Christians are not going to follow but Muslims would would agree with the commandments as well in the importance of a Sabbath anyway but when you when you when you put it on the wall and say okay this is now generic you raise the issue of Catholics have a different version they divide the commandments differently and the the commandment not to covet which is in two parts they make his two separate Commandments and then that removes the commandment against graven images of course I believe it's an important commandment but then on the other hand it is the seventh day Sabbath which the Ten Commandments advocate not an eighth day not our first day of the week Sabbath of Sunday so it's it's not quite as simple as it seems is it no it's not and there are also Jewish plaintiffs in the case and they're making the argument that the Hebrew you know tend to traditional Hebrew writings you know not the Septuagint on you know on the Ten Commandments are different yet I have the world's greatest expert on that you you can comment on whether that's so or not but that's a real that's a real problem that's a real concern because I think we agree we don't want to have one religion preferred over another government is supposed to accommodate it's not supposed to be in the business of promoting a particular religion at the expense of others and that's the theory that they're raising in this case and it does kind of complicate the case I think the plaintiffs will be asked questions like your Muslim hypothetical or you know Utah votes to have the Book of Mormon do states have the right to do that at what point does it violate federal protections and all that so there were real serious questions raised in the case and you never know if this case ends up being a loss in Louisiana and the Supreme Court someday says the rental rights are so important they must be able to direct their children's education I for one would think wow that's really good because we're gonna take that that Supreme Court language and launch into a lot of awful teaching where parents don't have rights so you want to be careful you know there's always there can be unintended consequences both ways with these types of cases that's one of the intriguing thing for lawyers we're always thinking if I win this case if I open the door to something else that I don't want to face down the road right so you know for example when I think of what you're saying you've got one state now that's advocating for the posting the Ten Commandments but you've got virtually every state in a battle over an activist agenda being imposed on on our kids and for example the state of Maryland had said you can't and this is getting Muslims upset those you can't even opt out if if we're going to be teaching a radical transgender ideology one day you can't even have your kid opt out it's completely outrageous so that's in every state so it could be a loss in one state about parental because of parental rights eats to least your victory in every state which leads them to a logical question in terms of what comes next what's the result and we've got four minutes and then and one more segment to continue but the overturning of Roe v. Wade a cause for rejoicing something that that many felt was impossible for decades seemed overwhelming especially with the reinforcing of Roe v. Wade in the 80s decision with Planned Parenthood massive decision encouraging in terms of now state laws can be passed and babies lives are being saved on the other hand has been a radical pushback that could have influenced some of the midterm vote so overall is this a cause for rejoicing did it happen too soon should the court have taken one step and done this more incrementally I I said we should rejoice but I know the other arguments so your take on we have a three minutes now and then on Roe v. Wade specifically yeah yeah yeah it was interesting a couple of the conservative justices said we've we we can uphold the state law in question in that case the Dobbs case without overturning Roe v. Wade we should just do that we should just uphold you know that I believe it was a 10-week abortion BAM there's a lot of variations 10 12 8 you know right I'm sure it was 10 and that we in that case and you know you know Chief Justice Roberts for example so we shouldn't have needed to reach that now there's a really interesting point I mean Roe v. Wade is overturned I think Americans sometimes tend to be event oriented we win the big game we're a champion we win this we achieve that we've done it it's not so life is a process yeah and their Roe v. Wade is overturned and in a relatively conservative state like Ohio now there's stronger abortion rights happened in Michigan in Arizona my home state now it's coming up for a vote this November part of the problem was you had a culture that was that was deeply entrenched in the thinking of Roe v. Wade the rights of the individual over the Creator the discussion was transformed the early days groups like Planned Parenthood would sell it's a mass of cells it's not really a person they don't even try to do that anymore because of 3d and 4d sonographs you can see an infant in the womb sucking his or her thumb now they just rely on it's my right it's an elevation of the rights over the rightful place of the Creator and we were not aware but we were aware but we were not ready for where the society was as a whole the overturning Roe v. Wade just started the the public debate and initially there were setbacks I think it's good because ultimately pro-life people can make the case what does it mean to be an image bearer of God how is it we can we can support life and want to you know restrict abortion but still love people support women support babies you know we're not the ogres there's a there's a holistic philosophy of life it goes to how we treat people the end of life and all of that so now the work of the church is just beginning and the difficult work of saving lives and saving children and transforming lives has to happen on a grassroots level so that that's but it doesn't work there's so many people I've talked to we won we overturned Roe v. Wade oh no no no no the fight is just beginning you landed on the Normandy Beach you got a beach head yeah you got a lot more fighting ahead of you yeah you know when we we have graduation and our School of Ministry after three years to two years of classes then semester of internship and then semester for the classes and we get to graduation I would sometimes bring the graduation message which was welcome to the starting line you've made it to the starting line so that's that's her out with Roe v. Wade a massive decision a massive victory and answer the prayer but just the beginning now of what would be a many many year-long cultural debate we'll be right back it's the line of fire with your host dr. Michael Brown get on the line of fire by calling eight six six three four truth here again is dr. Michael Brown welcome back to the line of fire Michael Brown delighted to have with me longtime friend colleague Christian attorney John Franco he's been my go-to guy for many many years when legal issues come up questions of church and state he's been my go-to guy knowing the word knowing the Lord and knowing the law hey just a reminder every week we send out an update with the latest articles I've written with the latest videos we have produced and this way you don't have to worry about missing any of them they'll be great resources for you for your ministry for your family for your friends you get it automatically just by going to the line of fire org the line of fire org just click subscribe to get our monthly frontline newsletter and our weekly updates Joe so we've been talking about the ideological battle now with the overturning of row v wave we've been talking about Ten Commandments and classrooms church and state issues etc I want to tie in something which is very different but related because you're in on this as well we hear a lot these days about NAR or NAR or New Apostolic Reformation Matthew Taylor research scholar who is dug into the archives of Peter Wagner had access to his materials studied this extensively he believes that this is a theological movement with strong political implications and was directly involved with the events of January 6th and the storming of the Capitol others other critics whose work I have largely questioned they've said that this is the it's kind of every charismatic extreme or error they group it together under what they call NAR which I said the NAR the critics doesn't exist but there is this real New Apostolic Reformation so we go back to the Ten Commandments and and and this idea of what we're gonna have them now by law in every classroom is there some larger Christian dominionist movement you're aware of you've you've worked for years with the internet international call coalition of apostolic leaders you know the good from the bad in your view is there some nationwide Christian based movement that has some type of dominionist mentality that we're going to take over we're going to pose as someone says exactly what happened in Louisiana that's exactly what we're talking about what's your take as an insider both in the Christian world and the larger legal world yeah great question boy my opinion is NAR you know Christian nationalism is kind of like the Illuminati for the left yep there's no there's no organizes don't group of people sitting around in a room plotting here's the next you know dominionist effort and all that there are people who think alike as with any movement you're going to find people who make ill-considered statements in the Ten Commandments lawsuit the plaintiffs quote a few officials you know in an interview or here or there you know essentially making comments to the effect that we want to bring God back so they're going to try to you know take those statements either out of context or that weren't intended that way to say oh see that's what's behind it they're out to promote God they want a theocracy and when people use those terms with me I always say stop define Christian nationalism you know define NAR and there's and that's people on the other side there's never a cogent description oh you want to push your religious values you know well sometimes it's even as Mike it's even as subtle as you want your faith beliefs to influence public policy and law well if that makes you a Christian nationalist them then I am but I'll sometimes look at people like that and say okay so I guess you don't want my Judeo Christian views on thou shalt not kill thou shalt not steal you don't want those influencing policy you'd be advocating against those we should be allowed to kill and steal because we don't want to promote a Judeo Christian worldview you know you can get into nonsense like that and it remains nonsense and sometimes this stuff is just plain silly but yeah it you know it's it's a again it's a kind of convenient thing and hey I've seen people on our side of the fence broadly speaking you know passionately describing what the leftist movement of the Illuminati is doing and plans they're making and this and that and you know I think you have to be careful the human mind tends to look for patterns the brain is you know why do we see a man on the moon we tend to look for patterns and I'm not talking about paranoia I'm talking about just you look at data your brain is organized to see connections that's how we learn it's how we think it's how we process life and sometimes that style of human thinking will look at something like Christian nationalism pick out a few quotes and then here's what I know is happening ah there's the proof there's the proof you know so they're illogical arguments and all that but yeah you know we we deal with them and nobody does a better job of patiently and kindly refuting those than you you do it graciously you do it in love and you know sometimes people are they sort of of the school don't try to confuse me with the facts I know what I believe well you know you know Joe it's really interesting there's about to be a long dialogue that I had with Doug Gavette and Holly Pivik who've really focused on so-called NAR and and I said their their NAR doesn't exist theirs is a grouping of various beliefs some extremes some dangerous in the larger charismatic Pentecostal world put together under the rubric of NAR a lot of stuff they critique I agree with a lot of stuff they critique I've agreed with for years and said myself you would agree with for years in fact leaders in the International Coalition of Apostolic leaders have been raising those same critiques for years and years so a lot of what they say is accurate and right on and then a lot of it becomes nebulous and everything becomes NAR and woo it's an art or your NAR I'm gonna hear that day and night I hear that day and night so what I found interesting Joe was I saw him one of their books they had referenced a colleague of ours as being NAR I thought I'm constantly hearing him bashing a lot of things associated with Peter Wagner New Apostolic Reformation it's not to bash Peter Wagner here but just to to say I'm constantly hearing him take very different views so I sent him a series of questions do you believe that every church needs to be in under an apostolic leader do you believe that apostles today have exceptional authority like the 12 apostles what I thought having read their material Doug and Holly's material carefully I thought that these were good questions to ask based on their views and beliefs their definitions of NAR and then I asked Mark and said how do you feel about this and he gave me all these I didn't I didn't go into details as to why I just wanted to know his views on these things he laid out no no no no no no no so I came to them and said okay look at this list here's the way this guy responds I'm not telling you who he is because I didn't want to prejudice it I just wanted to look based on that and then I said how how could this be this this guy be categorized as NAR in your book I have colleagues who definitely fit the NAR description absolutely that's who they are that's what they believe you know that's their successes of Peter Wagner they're in that camp they believe that absolutely so anyway I found out from Doug and Holly that I didn't ask the right questions I was told no no no those aren't the right questions I think well I think I'm a thinking guy too I read your stuff carefully highlighted annotated it read it carefully got ready for hours and hours of dialogue how are these not the right questions so it's like no our NAR is everywhere but unless you ask the exact right questions you can't really identify it and to me it's it becomes so nebulous and then you have to be the specialist you know exactly how to identify it but it's everywhere it becomes useless and then whatever real issues there are that we should look at and wherever there is some radical Christian supremacism like in Nick Fuentes or we're some of our friends or colleagues might have some extreme things they've expressed where we need to raise concern you can't do it because it's just like the Illuminati as you were saying all right three minutes back to you for closing thoughts yeah so it's very interesting case I don't know how it's going to turn out and sometimes things turn out unexpectedly I think the biggest challenges will be that you have you have a credible argument to some degree made in the pleadings that shapes this up as a preference of one type of Christian faith over another or a Christian faith over Judaism and things like that I think that's where you know somebody's going to have to be careful and think through does that open the door that permits you to have a preference of one faith over another but again you know the next horizon I think in a lot of our cases is parental rights there's a there's a status a totalitarian instinct among a lot of you know even friends and acquaintances on the left that they know better and how we should raise our kids and the next grade I think Beachhead is parental rights the Supreme Court has talked about it in passing there's no strong body of law there's a lot of interesting ironies in this you know I I would almost if I were the state say hey you make a very good point about parental rights we want the court to recognize strongly there are parental rights and if someday you ended up with a Supreme Court decision strongly affirming parental rights it helps our side much more than the other side now I don't know that that would be enough to overturn a case because I think Louisiana is trying to present this as a broad ceremonial history the Supreme Court for example now upholds ceremonial crosses they did so in a case called the Bladensburg cross they they've really hacked up what was called the lemon test which came out of a case by that name we would joke they squeezed the lemon the lemon test gave you the strict separation of church and state they've kind of undone that and now you could have you know you can have a chaplain in a legislative body you can open in prayer and hey you haven't yet we want a case in the Supreme Court out of New York the right to mentally open in prayer but of local ministers pray in a Christian tradition and don't you have in the Supreme Court building itself images going back to Ten Commandments Ten Commandments exactly or God save his honorable court you know there's a kind of a broad recognition of those things I think that the legislators in Louisiana were intending this to be something along those lines the fact that it you know was going to be portrayed with the Declaration of Independence or you know other governing type documents was a way of saying oh this is about the end of the one those in our laws I think that's what they were shooting for if they're able to create a record to that effect then they could win the case all right two friends up I can't believe it obviously go get Joe back on maybe one day we can do it live and you can call in the questions we are out of time
