Welcome to Family Policy Matters, a weekly podcast and radio show produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, I'm John Rust and president of NC Family, and each week on Family Policy Matters, we welcome experts and policy leaders to discuss topics that impact faith and family here in North Carolina. Our prayer is that this program will help encourage and equip you to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state, and nation. And now here's the host of Family Policy Matters, Tracy DeVed-Griggs. Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters.
In just a few short months, the entire Bible will be read out loud from Genesis to Revelation within easy walking distance of our nation's seat of government. It's called America Reads the Bible, and it's meant to be a call to America, reminiscent of Nehemiah and Ezra when they called the Israelites to remember who they were as God's people and to start acting like it.
Well, Ben Quine is vice president of the sponsoring organization called Christians Engaged. He joins us today to talk about why they believe that America Reads the Bible is vital for our nation, especially at this point in time. Ben Quine, welcome to Family Policy Matters. Thanks, Tracy. It's great to be here.
All right.
Well, just tell us about America Reads the Bible. When and where will it be? And why do you think it's so important for our country, especially right now? We are so excited. About this event, Tracy.
It's going to be April 18 to 25.
So, just a few short weeks away in Washington, D.C. We're going to celebrate America's 250th birthday by reading the whole Bible. We have an opening night celebration on Saturday, the 18th at 7 p.m. It's going to be an amazing teaching time and kind of a teaching party for the church. And then, starting that next morning, Sunday to Saturday, 9 a.m.
to 9 p.m., we're going to read the whole Bible, Genesis to Revelation, from the world stage of the Museum of the Bible. But it's not just going to be in D.C., it's also going to be in churches and universities, homes across the country, and businesses because it's streamed on Great American Pure Flicks.
So everyone can watch this, everyone can be part of it. And we really believe it's going to be the largest public Bible reading event in American history. I love that you asked why it is important. And I think it's so important because God's word has the answers for life. Proverbs 14:12 says there is a way that seems right to a man or a culture, there's a way that seems right to the smartest people, but it leads to death.
And if we don't base our lives on God's word, if we're not seeking his truth and his wisdom, we'll self-destruct. And that's because we have sin in our hearts.
So we really need to be based on God's word. And that's what this event is all about.
Well, tell us a little bit about Christians Engaged, your organization, which of course is sponsoring this America Reads the Bible. How does this fit in with your goals as an organization? Christians Engaged is a ministry of family policy alliance. And so our main objective is to advance biblical values through civic engagement. What that means is that we love Jesus and we love his word and we love the local church.
And we want to equip believers to live that out, to live as disciples, to live as salt and light, and to love our neighbors. Christian Engaged president is a lady named Bunny Pounds. And the Lord put this event on her heart a couple years ago, really to be, as you said earlier, an Ezra moment for our country where God's word becomes the spiritual foundation for our lives. Lives. And we live out that as we pray for our country, as we vote in every election, as we get engaged.
And we believe this can be an event that really raises up godly leaders. And we want to see the church across the country recognize again that, as Paul wrote to Timothy, that all scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. And when he wrote that, he was actually talking about the Old Testament. That was the scripture that they had and that they loved at that point. Of course, we love both Old and New Testaments, but we want to see God's Word become that foundation that we turn to for every area of our life, whether that's public, private, whether that's on church on Sunday morning, in our workplaces, in our schools.
We want God's Word to be the foundation that we base everything on.
So I'm hearing in my brain people who are not believers or not religious, and unfortunately, sometimes even Christians saying, oh, what about separation of church and state?
So, how does this not conflict with that concept?
Well, it's a great question. Because there's such a misunderstanding around this idea of separation of church and state.
So, if you go back to the founders, they never even considered what we have this modern idea that we call separation of church and state. It's not in any of our founding documents. Let that sink in. Separation of church and state is not in our Constitution. It's not in our declaration.
In fact, the opposite is true. In the declaration, of course, it says we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator.
So, there's a reference to God as the creator right there in the first sentences of our founding. The founders believe that God's word should be central to our country. They believe that the church should be the conscience for the state, but they wanted the church to be protected from the state.
So, when Jefferson was writing the letter to the Dan Bray Baptist, where he used that phrase, there is a wall of separation, what he was referring to is the fact that the church would be protected against the overreach of the state, not that the church couldn't be involved in matters of the state. And of course, there are nuances on both sides that we're not going to be able to get into in this short time. But if people want to dig more deeply into this, I understand that you have done a lot of work. One is a Bible study series, Answers for Difficult Days.
Well, tell us about these resources that you have created and how we could take a look at those. My first career was actually as a piano teacher. And so I was involved in telling kids about how beautiful classical music can be and teaching them to grow in that. And I saw that people were wrestling all around me with questions in our culture that were very important, significant questions, but not looking to the Bible.
So the Lord really kind of changed my trajectory and inspired me to start writing these Bible studies on very key issues like justice and economics, racism, conduct, and how we can look at them from a biblical worldview.
So we have Bible studies and devotionals on those on the Christians Engaged website. We've also created video courses on each of these that you can. Use in small groups at churches or individuals, really to dig into God's word for those answers. And then, my most recent book, I'm so excited about, my wife and I have been working on this one for many years. We just released, it's called The Biblical Worldview Primer.
And it's perfect family devotional to pass truth onto the next generation. But we really dig into the story of scripture, the story of salvation, how we all need to individually respond to the gospel, and then what it looks like to live out our lives in virtue, in character, in terms of these cultural issues. And then, lastly, this touches on your first question here. How does it apply to our government? How does our biblical worldview impact our government?
And specifically, how did it impact the foundings? There's a great section in there on the Constitution and the founders related to the biblical worldview. I think people would love checking that out.
So, talk about why you chose to read the Bible out loud, where you did, because you're just right there. Are there some implications, even spiritually, do you think, by doing that? that. Absolutely.
So all through history, and especially if you look at the Old Testament, you see again and again, Proverbs says that when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan. That's Proverbs 29, too. And we've seen. If you look at the kings of Israel, when there's a godly king, someone like Josiah or Hezekiah or King David, they're a blessing to the people. But when you have wicked leaders like Ahab, the people suffer.
And so that's why we wanted to do it in DC. And we're so excited to have so many national leaders coming to read members of the cabinet, members of Congress. But we also have, we love this, we have local leaders from across the country, really in all areas, governments. We have governors coming, state legislators, but we also have leaders from business and entertainment, education, ministry leaders and pastors, because we're acknowledging that the most high rules in the kingdoms of men and gives them to whom he will. That's what he said in Daniel.
God is our king and our lawgiver and our judge, and we're submitting to him. You know, you seem to be suggesting that all leaders that are Christian are good leaders. And we know that's not always the case.
So are we calling some of these Christian leaders to be better as well? That's such an important role for us, especially as Americans. And it's unique. And one of the most powerful, beautiful things we have in our Constitution is that the leaders are actually accountable to the people. They work for us.
And so that's one of the main things we do at Christians Engage. We equip every believer to pray, vote, and engage. We keep it real simple. How can I make a difference? You can pray, you can vote, and you can engage.
And what we want to see is leaders that truly love the Lord and are implementing biblical policies who are doing the right thing for the right reason. And, you know, if they're not doing that, we should replace them with leaders who are going to do that, who are going to prioritize godly values. And it's such a beautiful thing that we can do that peacefully and in a legal way in this country.
So we need to take advantage of that. You know, one of my favorite churches in the New Testament. Testament is the Berean church, you know, and they were always taking everything, even that Paul said, you know, I mean, it was Paul was teaching at your church. You might be afraid to do this, but even what Paul said, they would take it back to the scripture and they would make sure that it agreed. I just wonder how many of us Christians are willing to do that with the leaders that we have that say they are Christians.
Well, you know, the statistics are pretty tragic, actually.
So George Barna does a worldview inventory every year. And last year, he determined that 66% of Americans claim to be Christians. We identify as Christians. Of course, I'm a Christian. But as he asked the next level of questions, things like, how do you get salvation?
You know, is Jesus fully God and fully man? Is the Bible God's word? He determined that actually only about 4% of Americans hold a biblical worldview.
So not only are we not holding our leaders accountable, we're not even submitting our lives to God's word. We need to be doing that. And then if you look at our cultural engagement, about half of the people in the country are not even registered to vote.
Now that includes children, so it's not the end of the world, but we could be doing a lot better in terms of voter registration. Half aren't registered, but then on an average election, about half of those don't vote at all.
So when you look at the people sitting in a pew at a church on a given Sunday, only about a quarter of those people are actually voting.
So we need to do a lot better on building our own biblical worldview, submitting our every thought to Christ. You know, the great commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
So we need to be submitting our mind to God's word. And then we need to be loving our neighbor as ourself by voting for godly leaders. When people get together with their families across the country, perhaps even go to Washington, D.C. to witness some of this being read out loud in person, what are you hoping will happen at the end of that time? We really want to see people hear from God, especially in those passages that maybe we have neglected or passages that we have written off and said, oh, you know, God can't speak to me through Leviticus.
He absolutely can. It's so beautiful. All of scripture has something that we can learn from. God can speak to us.
So we really want to see God touch people's hearts. We want to see a Bible revival where we turn to the Lord's word every day. We really only made it this far as a country by God's grace, and we can't make it further without him.
So we would love to see people plug into their local church. We want to see people, we're going to be offering free discipleship resources as a part of this, as a follow-up.
So we want to see people connecting and digging deeper, not just this one-time event, but really developing a lifestyle of Bible study and connecting with the Lord and with fellow believers. And you mentioned people watching across the country. What are you hoping that will look like? Are you hoping that churches will come together and be showing it, that families will get together? What does that look like in your mind?
Yeah, there's so many opportunities and different ways that can happen.
So, for instance, Colorado Christian University, they're going to stream the whole event in their chapel so that every student can be part of it. It's going to be streamed on Great American Pureflix.
So, any family, any individual across the country can watch as much as they'd like of the reading. We're so excited. We would love to see it in businesses, you know, in waiting rooms where it's just coming together around God's word and saying, Let's read the Bible together. It's going to be free for anybody to do that. And we love to see churches opening up.
We're connecting with churches across the country. They're going to be hosting special events, streaming the opening ceremony. There's incredible opportunities for churches to really grow and do outreach, love on their communities, and come together to pray through this event.
So, just so many great ways churches and individuals can get involved. Right.
So, tell us, if people do want to travel to DC, though, and become a part of this, how would they go about doing that? First thing is to go to Americareadstebible.com. And all the information is on there. You can find the schedule. You can get tickets.
We have a hotel group that we have special reservation discounts for.
So every information is right there on AmericaReadstheBible.com. And we would love to have everyone join us. We have about 13,000 tickets or so available for the whole week.
So there's plenty of tickets. We would love to have everybody come and join us. All right.
Well, before we close up, if you could remind our listeners where they can go to find your organization, Christians Engaged, in case they want to go and take a look at your resources. It's ChristiansEngaged.org. ChristiansEngaged.org. Thank you so much for all your good work. And we're very excited to see how this is going to go with America Reads the Bible.
Thank you, Ben Quine, Vice President of Christians Engaged, for being with us today on family policy matters. Thank you for listening to Family Policy Matters. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review. To learn more about NC Family and the work we do to promote and preserve faith and family in North Carolina, visit our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org.
And check us out on social media at NC Family Policy. Thanks and may God bless you and your family.
